By
Hal Humphrey
At
a Hollywood Little Theater production of Tennessee Williams' "The
Night of the Iguana" a patron was overheard whispering to his wife,
"That's Dr. Stone, but you wouldn't know him."
He
was referring to Carl Betz, who for six years has been the reliable
pediatrician and faithful husband to Donna Reed. Carl still is all of
those things, but on four nights a week during the past two months he
also has been portraying the same unfrocked and gin-soaked clergyman
which Richard Burton just finished doing in the movie version of "Iguana."
"I
understand," says Carl, "they had to tack a happy ending on
to the movie. That town of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, where they shot
it must be quite a place. Someone told me there are only 8500 people,
but the town has its own Alcoholics Anonymous branch."
Betz
is doing a sell-out business with the "Iguana" which also
stars Mala Powers and Helen Nash.
I
did not see Patrick O'Neal in the Broadway production and the Burton
movie hasn't been released but I'm sure neither O'Neal nor Burton would
have to give points to Carl. In a role demanding an almost constant
state of high emotion, Carl performs it with explosive yet believable
pitch.
Carl's
agent, of course, must bite his nails at the thought of his client expending
all of that energy for a paltry $40 per week. The only act of Carl's
which has kept the agent sane was his signing for another year with
Donna.
"Yes,
I signed up again last month, after another inner struggle with myself.
I did not want to do it. Oh, I am not mad at anyone, but this is the
sixth year for Dr. Stone. Migawd!" he exclaims, as if he had just
been stabbed.
He
signed again because his agent convinced Carl that a seventh year of
Dr. Stone can make Carl (and maybe even the agent) financially independent.
"It is something awfully nice to think about, isn't it?" adds
Carl, his fever suddenly subsiding.
I
asked how he thought he would endure another year of the confinement
and long hours required in filming the TV series and, more important,
how he could keep Dr. Stone from looking bored to death.
"Well,
one wy is by doing something on the side like 'Iguana.' You can see
I'm not doing it for the money. But I get rid of the vapors in my brain
this way. I don't have to keep my shirt buttoned up."
In
'Iguana," Carl's tropical costume is a pair of disheveled duck
pants and a Belafonte shirt (opened down to the fourth rib). Anyone
walking into Dr. Stone's neighborhood dressed this way would be arrested
on sight.
"In
a weekly series," Carl continues, "it also is important to
attain what Marlon Brando once called 'Controlled Improvisation.' This
is the art of making it look as if you were completely casual about
the whole thing."
Anyone
watching Carl in "The Donna Reed Show" knows he has accomplished
this feat. And that's why the gentleman mentioned in the beginning here
said "You wouldn't know him," when he spotted him in "Iguana."
Despite
the compunctions Carl may have at heading into a seventh year as TV's
Dr. Stone, he is practical and smart enough to know he is better off
than before.
"I
made pictures at 20th Century-Fox for a year, but the executive heads
there couldn't make up their minds if I was a hero or a heavy,"
he recalls, and such indecision didn't put him in a very big bargaining
position.
*article from the St.
Louis Globe-Democrat TV Digest, Feb. 22-28, 1964
