Ode to Smart Women, and to the Only Jan Smithers Site on the Web

Ok, I know I promised I'd never do a drooling fan page. But I got to thinking about the ultimate Cloth Monkey Quirky Babe, the one celebrity woman who most exemplifies womanly perfection for me, the one fantasy woman who can after 20 years still move me . . .

Yep, it's Jan Smithers, who played the touchingly shy and neurotic Bailey Quarters on the wonderful sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati. In addition to being an intelligent cut above the competition, it also featured in its outstanding cast Ms. Smithers and the truly scary Loni Anderson. Why Loni captured the public attention instead of Jan is one of those mysteries, like Bill Clinton's second term, that sometimes make me think I'm the only sane person on the planet.

I don't know very much about Jan's private life. She was born in North Hollywood on July 3, 1949, and was married to James Brolin for some years. (He's now married to, of all people, Barbra Streisand, and I've been seeing him a lot more on TV lately.)

Her first claim to fame was a picture on the cover of a 1966 Newsweek, for a story on rebellious youth. According to those who have seen it, she was sitting on the back of a motorcycle, looking over her shoulder at the camera. (If anyone has a copy of this picture, I'll be glad to post it.) Her connection with motorcycles also led to an accident which left her with the slight winsome scar on her chin.

Her film career has been, well, a little lackluster. Her Internet Movie Database entry lists just three movies ("Where the Lillies Bloom (1974)," "When the North Wind Blows (1974)," and "Our Winning Season" (1978)) before her role in WKRP, and only two ("The Love Tapes (1982)" and "Mr. Nice Guy" (1987)) since. Only the first, written by The Waltons' Earl Hamner, garnered any critical notice. The fact that her last movie coincided with her marriage to Brolin would indicate she got out of the business to have children, but that's pure speculation.

When producer/creator Hugh Wilson was casting the pilot for WKRP, he made some inspired decisions, like offering the Johnny Fever role to Howard Hesseman, who had originally read for the Herb Tarlek part. But his casting of Jan was a no-brainer. "All the other actresses played shy," he said. "Jan was shy."

Why does Jan do it for me? Well, in addition to being simply beautiful, the glasses play a big part. I have always had an attraction for four-eyed women, and thinking about it now, I think that I got it from Bailey. (It's a chicken-and-egg question.) We all have our "types," a physical ideal we pick up from God knows where, against which we judge everyone we meet. Bailey was "my type" so exactly that for the last twenty years, I get a twinge in my heart whenever I see someone who even slightly resembles her.

We tend to think of women with glasses as "plain," in the sense that they have surrendered conventional beauty for the utility of being able to see better. The stereotype that women with glasses are smarter than others is also at work here -- I'll take brains over most everything else every time. I've always been a sucker for the almost obligatory scene in old movies where the "right hand gal" type, the smart one (Jean Arthur or Barbara Bel Geddes spring to mind), whips off her glasses and our hero, catching his breath, blurts out, "Why, Betty . . . you're beautiful!" (The absolute best such scene: Dorothy Malone in "The Big Sleep." Oh, my God . . . )

John Updike once wrote about plain, unadorned, natural women being "juicier" than the more conventionally attractive types, and as time has passed I have learned the great wisdom of that observation. All my best nights have been with librarians. None of them, unfortunately, have been with Jan Smithers.

If anyone has any further info on Jan, pictures I can post, or if (God help me) Jan herself runs across this page, please let me know. This page has the distinction of being the only Jan Smithers page on the Web, so by definition it's the best. Let's keep it that way.