Back in the Saddle (Excerpt)

Marilyn Beck and Stacy Jenel Smith - May 1, 2000

With reports by Stephanie DuBois

Richard Crenna reports to Vancouver, British Columbia, on May 23 to start "By Dawn's Early Light" -- again. The veteran actor was about to begin the Showtime movie last summer, "but on the first take of the first scene on the first day, I fell off the top of a fence, tore my hamstring, and injured the rotator cuff on my right shoulder." He required surgery on the shoulder -- and was laid up for nine months. "I envisioned them helicoptering in a different actor the next day, but they shut down the production. The producer said, 'We want you to do it.'" The modern western, in which David Carradine and Stella Stevens co-star, has Crenna as a rancher whose daughter's rebellious son is sent to stay with him.

"A love story between an older man and his grandson," he calls it. Crenna found himself doing overlapping projects almost "as soon as I was standing and walking around again." He plays a billionaire who gets involved with Tyne Daly's character in a three-episode arc of "Judging Amy" that began last week. And he's an old pal of Jessica Fletcher's who gets caught up in a murder case with her on CBS's May 18 "Murder She Wrote: A Story to Die For" tele-pic. "How fortunate could I be," he notes, "working with two of the grand ladies of the theater at the same time?"


Copyright © 2000 Marilyn Beck and Stacy Jenel Smith. All rights reserved.