The Passions of Robert Wagner

Robert Wagner has been an actor for so long that most people know something about him. They probably know that he's had three successful, long running television series; that he's co-starred in movies with the likes of Spencer Tracy, Sir Laurence Olivier and Susan Haward; that he was married to the Academy Award - winning actress Natalie Wood; that even in middle age, he's still boyishly handsome and in good shape. They might even know that he has three daughters (and two stepsons) and that his steady companion is actress Jill St. John. When they might not know about Wagner is that he's an avid environmentalist. That he raises orchids in a greenhouse attached to his house; that he's an expert at Italian cooking (following a three-year stint in Italy); and that he raises horses and tries his hand at ranching.

"My daughter got me into horses again. She started riding and I would go with her and smell the horses and suddenly here I am in the business and she's out doing something else," says Wagner while sitting near the brick-lined swimming pool in his Spanish-style garden. but he's obviously not complaining as he launches into a lyrical description of a prosaic event. "I was plowing a few weeks ago with a horse-drawn plow. I never had the experience before of being on the back of an animal, hearing the land being broken, the sound oft he harness jingling. The horses kick up the ground with their hooves as they move through it and in the rear, well, they fertilize where they've been."

Wagner owns a ranch in Northern California with twenty horses, including Quarter and Arabian as well as some cutting horses ("You know," he explains, "the type that help divide or cut the cattle. I have one that just won the Las Vegas Cutting Horse Contest.") He also raises with Brahman cattle, has three horses in thoroughbred racing, and has been growing hay.

"It's a fabulous business," says Wagner, who's obviously hooked on horses. "I breed horses and sell them. They're amazing animals. They've maintained their evolutionary character and haven't changed much in hundreds of years."

Wagner grew up around horses. Though he was originally from Northport, near Traverse City, Michigan, where his dad worked in the steel industry, Wagner moved to Santa Monica when he was around ten. He used to ride horses through the hills that surround his house. Southern California is where he grew up and the house that he now owns is part of his boyhood memories, incorporating several of his passions - the outdoors, the movies and horses. "When I was a kid, my father had a barn on the other side," says Wagner, gesturing toward the guest house he had built several years ago for his mother. "The Riviera Polo Fields were across the street. If you ever see old photos of actors playing polo, that's where they were. We used to have horses over there and we would ride along this trail, and we could look in at this house and property. The guy who built it was the foremost architect of California ranch houses - he died recently - he was the one who invented the sliding glass door and this was his first house in this area. He was the man who developed the indoor/outdoor concept."

It wasn't only horses that fascinated Wagner, it was also the actors playing polo across the fields. As a kid, Wagner always hung around the movies and went to school with kids whose families were in the business. He was fascinated by the industry, acted, in high school, and made a deal with his dad when he graduated from Saint Monica High School. If he couldn't make inroads with his acting career with in a year, he'd quit and join his dad in the manufacturing business. "I think, like all fathers," says Wagner, "that mine wanted me to be involved with a career that had stability. And he didn't see that acting provided that."

Wagner won his wager. Within a year, Wagner was under contract to 20th Century Fox for a ninty-day test option which turned into a seven-year contract. He had just turned nineteen and he was earning $75 a week, which he considered to be quite good. "I started working as an extra," recalls Wagner. "I did that for a year, but my whole thrust was to become a contract player. So I made the rounds, made a lot of readings and did a lot of tests and all."

And he had a role - albeit a small one - in the movie With a Song In My Heart starring Susan Hayward. It was a sixty-second spot for Wagner. He played a crippled soldier whose misty-eyed response to Hayward's singing brought a huge rush of positive letters and comments to the studio. Not long after, Spencer Tracy tapped him for the role of his son in Broken Lance and then his callow and greedy nephew in The Mountain. Wagner played the avaricious and murderous nephew so well in this psychological/adventure movie that he went on to star in over thirty major screen movies.

"The studios gave you an opportunity to work on the stage, in the movies, to take acting lessons, to take fencing lessons, to learn how to ride, to work with people, to be around the crews, the camera, everything," recalls Wagner. "They literally groomed me from the beginning. So my roots and my allegiances are really to the world of film. I talked to Henry Fonda about that once. He really liked the stage - he had originated so many parts on Broadway. But I like the film business. You can go on location and you come into a new environment, a new texture of people. In the theater, every night you have to bring that back up again. I just never got into that. I've been groomed for the motion picture industry. When I started, I met a man who said that you could go two ways in this. You could either go to New York and start in the theater and start making the rounds and be discovered through that and then get into the motion picture business, or you could start within the industry. That's what I chose to do."

Besides motion pictures, Wagner is probably best known for his television series. He played the lithesome, reformed cat burglar in "It Takes A Thief" and then went on to star as a reformed and charming con man in "Switch." Both of these long running series paired Wagner with father figures in the form of Fred Astaire and Eddie Albert. Both of the shows were hits. The next series for Wagner found him with a different partner - this time former "Girl From Uncle," Stefanie Powers. The show was "Hart to Hart" and the premise was a rich, madly in love couple who solved crimes while being witty and debonair. It was a less cynical, less brittle version of "Moonlighting" and it was a success.

In the last few years, Wagner's made several movies including a mini-series with Jaclyn Smith based on Sidney Sheldon's best selling novel, The Windmills of the Gods. He also hosted an environmental show in November on toxic waste - one of his big concerns. Now, he's going to be returning to the weekly grind of a series planned for Fall 1990. Though the storyline is under wraps, in the traditional Wagner vehicle it will involve both humor and adventure. Besides that, he has a television movie coming out next season. Paired with Leslie-Ann Down, the movie is a remake of the classic Indiscreet which starred Cary Grant.

Grant, of course, played the original It Takes A Thief role in the Alfred Hitchcock classic. Wagner has been called "The Small Screen Version of Cary Grant" and the actor is among Wagner's favorites, along with Jack Nicholson, Kevin Costner, Al Pacino and Dustin Hoffman. In his career, Wagner's starred with countless actors and actresses in many movies and he's loved every minute of it. He just helped organize a memorial tribute for another of his favorites, Bette Davis, on Wagner's Stage 18. And there's a list of actors he'd like to work with in the future. Those include Angela Landsbury, Ann-Margret and Meryl Streep.

"Actors and actresses have to much to give," says Wagner. "They have new ideas, new feelings. They have so many to offer. It's always a surprise what they'll be like. And I think it's pictures about people that made our craft. The blockbusters are nice, but I think that the strongest movies are those about people. That's how people got started watching movies, they wanted to see actors like Charlie Chaplin or actresses like Mary Pickford. And that's still true. I like pictures that have passion about the people who are in them. I like the way Jack Nicholson engages himself in his material and I like the passion of how he commits himself to a picture. I have worked with both Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward and I admire the choices they've made, the commitment and the compassion they have toward what they do. I'm not talking about success here. I'm not talking about whether it is a hit or not. I'm talking about what they attempted to do and the way that certain actors and actresses put themselves into it with the total commitment. I appreciate that, and I am constantly in wonder about it."

Wagner pauses in the midst of his ruminations about the movie business. The house is peaceful, comfortable. Wagner's three daughters, who live with him, are away. In the background, there are noises from the kitchen as the maid prepares lunch. Jill St. John is walking back and forth, carrying empty plastic bags, as she packs for their trip the next day to the ranch in Northern California. "You know," he continues, "I have been an executive producer, which means I came in with the property and then I got the people around to make the deals, so I've had a producing career. But what I really like best is to be in front of the camera. That's one thing about a television series. You keep looking for something fresh and trying to get good stories and get it to work. So it's hard sometimes in a series to have character revelations where you have things that represent what you are and where you come from. Usually you are answering questions or asking them and making the plot move along. That's why I was lucky in "Hart to Hart," says Wagner with a shrug. Stefanie built my character tremendously. We worked into each other and could expose that aspect of our personalities."

The boyish shrug, along with humorous asides and slightly risque comments, became Wagner trademarks in his television series. These characteristics are also present off screen. When Jill St. John takes a break from packing, she flops on a couch opposite him and the two immediately start teasing each other.

"I imagine R.J.'s told you about how he taught me everything there is to know about cooking," says St. John, who is currently authoring her second cookbook and who, for three years, had a monthly cooking column in a nationwide Sunday magazine.

"Everything," says Wagner. The two appear to share a lot of interests. They ski together - she has a home in Aspen. They ranch together - there's a photo on the fireplace mantle of St. John riding a horse. They fly fish together - there's a picture of the two of them dressed in down jackets holding fishing rods amidst a rugged terrain (they like to go someplace really far away - like Alaska or the mountains - to do their fishing). They cook together. And they also raise orchids.

"I've been raising orchids for about fifteen years," says Wagner. "Maybe twenty." He points to a couple of blooming speciments that sit on the coffee table. "When I moved here, I built an orchid house. Jill designed it and it has simulated sunlight that changes four times a year to lengthen or shorten the hours of daylight. We have climate control with an air conditioner and heater and moisture control too."

It's obvious from listening to Wagner talk that he's passionately interested in many things - in fact the word passion works its way into his vocabulary frequently - and when he does take an interest in something, he does it wholeheartedly. How many people turn a taste for orchids into a climate - controlled greenhouse full of them? Or an interest in horses into a ranch where hay is grown and horses pull plows? Or a passion for watching movies into a life-long career?

Wagner's done just that. So in between growing cattleyas, fly fishing, pushing his environmental causes and growing hay, Wagner will continue to star in movies and on television - probably playing parts that call for him to be very witty and debonair - and no one watching him will suspect that he probably had to scrape horse fertilizer from his shoes before coming to the studio that day.

Jane Ammeson