HEART TO HEART WITH MRS HART!
It’s 40 years since Stefanie Powers and Robert Wagner first starred in the glamorous TV classic. Now 76, Stefanie reveals how their friendship has endured illness, divorce and the sudden deaths of both their partners . . .
ABIzARRe thing occurs as I approach the gate of Stefanie Powers’s house in Beverly Hills. A bright-yellow Mercedes Benz two-seater comes careening round the corner, nearly knocking me off my feet.
Like the car in the iconic television series Hart To Hart, it is driven by a glamorous woman with big hair.
Of course, it is just a coincidence, not Jennifer Hart herself, the character first played by Powers 40 years ago.
A rather more sedate white Honda SUv sits in Powers’s driveway. But the 76-yearold woman who opens the red front door is as glamorous and svelte as ever. Older, of course, with her hair cut short in a bob. But still recognisably Mrs H.
She ushers me through her fabulous house, stuffed with museum-worthy African artefacts, and out to the garden, where we sit by the pool. It is movie-set perfect.
Three small dogs scamper around her feet. Sadly, none of them is called Freeway, the name of the Harts’ dog — as beloved a character as the human protagonists.
This is what happens when you meet a woman like Stefanie Powers: fact and fiction merge. So closely associated is she with the role of Jennifer Hart that it is sometimes hard, even for her, to see where one ends and the other begins.
Speaking about the extraordinary chemistry that permeated her on-screen marriage to Robert Wagner, aka Jonathan Hart, Powers says: ‘We chose to be together. We loved each other. We adored everything about each other.’
She quickly clarifies: ‘I’m talking about Jonathan and Jennifer.’
Freeway, of course, is dead now. And so is Lionel Stander, who played Max, the loyal chauffeur and butler, who memorably introduced each of the series’ 110 episodes in his gravelly voice: ‘This is my boss Jonathan Hart — a self-made millionaire. He’s quite a guy. This is Mrs H — she’s gorgeous. She’s one lady who knows how to take care of herself.
‘By the way, my name is Max. I take care of both of them, which ain’t easy; ’cause when they met, it was murder.’
‘It was a fantasy,’ says Powers, describing the allure of the show, ‘an escapist romantic comedy adventure. We just had to keep that bubble in the air.’
In its day, Hart To Hart was a global television hit, unusual in its mix of high glamour and adventure combined with an uncomplicated love story.
‘It was benign,’ says Powers. ‘You didn’t have to worry about bad language or X-rated [scenes]. The whole family enjoyed it.’
LIvIng on a beautiful estate in Bel Air, the Harts led a jetset lifestyle, which was constantly interrupted by ludicrous crimes, forcing them to work as amateur sleuths.
‘We went through a lot of friends,’ laughs Powers. ‘They were always disappearing or getting murdered or something horrible.’
Powers say she and Wagner, now 89, remain very close: ‘We can still push each other’s buttons today. We laugh all the time.’
He lives in Aspen with his wife, actress Jill St John, but always looks Stefanie up when he comes to town. ‘He’s coming in next week, so we’ll get together.’
She says they have a quasisibling relationship. ‘Siblings who really like each other — when we were working together, sometimes we would get into laughing fits and they’d have to send us home.’
Many people thought they were a couple in real life, too.
‘In the context of what our personal relationship actually is, that is absolutely hysterical,’ says Powers. She finds it hard to put into words the magic of their chemistry: ‘If I knew what the ingredients were, I would bottle it and make a fortune.’
When the show started, both had real-life partners. Robert was married to actress natalie Wood and Stefanie was in a relationship with William Holden, an American film star 24 years her senior.
But, in november 1981, both Wood and Holden died — Wood by drowning when she and Wagner were on a weekend sailing trip.
When I ask Powers how Wagner copes with the never-ending speculation surrounding the circumstances of Wood’s death (he has been named as a ‘person of interest’ by the authorities investigating her death), she says: ‘There are people who, whenever they can, try to make some money off of selling the story.’
Does it get to him? ‘I’m sure it gets to him,’ she says.
Holden, a known alcoholic, died by tripping and gashing his head in his Santa Monica apartment after drinking vodka.
‘That was a very, very tragic period,’ Powers says today, tears springing to her eyes. But Hart To Hart was mid-series — and the show had to go on. ‘We had an obligation; we didn’t have much choice.’
Did the double tragedy bring her and Wagner closer? ‘We were very close anyway,’ she says. ‘We held each other up.’
At the time of his death, Powers and Holden had separated as she could no longer cope with his alcoholism. But she still spoke to him every day.
‘I’d been away in Hawaii filming and he was not answering my phone calls.’
In the end, she heard the news of his death on the car radio.
Together for nine years, Powers says that, for most of that time, he was sober. ‘The middle seven years were brilliant. They were bookended [by alcoholism]. Alcohol was his mistress. It was inevitable that something bad was going to happen.’
Although she has been married twice — once to actor gary Lockwood (from 1966 to 1972) and later to a French count, Patrick Houitte de la Chesnais (1993 to 1999), it is clear that Holden was the love of her life.
She has no children, but says today: ‘I would have had a child with Bill, had he been able to. I just wanted to have a little more of him. But he had a very unfortunate infection due to a botched-up vasectomy which could not be reversed.’
The parrot they shared, Papuga, now 46, perches on her shoulder for some of our interview, heartily interjecting on occasion.
‘Bill would spend hours and hours trying to teach her to whistle the Colonel Bogey March,’ chuckles Powers.
Born in 1942 in Hollywood to Polish parents, Powers describes her childhood as happy ‘once my father was out of the house’. Her parents divorced when she was six. A cheerleader at Hollywood High School, Powers first trained as a dancer. ‘But when I was 15, I grew these two protuberances on my chest called t**s, which left me out of the ballet.’ Powers
says she was ‘never part of the beauty contest’ as a teenager. ‘I was a tomboy. I was always running around with the boys.’
After dance, she turned to acting, signing with Columbia at the age of 16. She played John Wayne’s daughter in McLintock!, opposite Tallulah Bankhead in Die! Die! My Darling! and, in 1966, starred in the short-lived The Girl From U.N.C.L.E. (a spin-off from The Man From U.N.C.L.E.).
But it was Hart To Hart that turned Stefanie Powers into a household name.
The studio originally wanted Wagner’s wife, Natalie Wood, to play Mrs H. But Wagner, who’d worked with Powers before, thought she was the best choice. Powers says: ‘It was not an overnight success, but once people discovered us, it took off. I remember the screams of fans when we won the People’s Choice Awards [in 1980] and we suddenly realised: “Oh my God, they really like us!” ’
Unlike some actors, who find it irritating to be associated with just one role, Powers is proud of her time as Jennifer Hart.
‘An awful lot of people still hold that show very dearly. My contractor [she has a team of builders working on her house] said he was channel-surfing last night and he found Hart To Hart. He said: “I was transfixed. It gave me the nicest nostalgic feeling.” I thought: “Isn’t that lovely.” ’
The series ended suddenly in 1984 when a new studio boss arrived. ‘It was so unexpected,’ says Powers. ‘I was in Paris filming Mistral’s Daughter and I got a phone call from RJ [Wagner’s nickname]. I was like: “Wait a minute, I’m not ready for this.” It was like somebody cut off my right arm. I was in tears for the rest of the night.’
Nearly a decade later, the show was back — but in a TV film format. There were eight Hart to Hart TV movies between 1993 and 1996.
In 1993, Powers and Wagner also appeared together in the West End in Love Letters. Since then, she has devoted her energies mostly to the stage and will star in a play called One November Yankee with Harry Hamlin, due to open in Wilmington, Delaware, in October. ‘It’s a two-hander and I play three different people.’
A few years ago, Powers appeared on I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! (she was ‘thrilled’, she later said, to be the first contestant voted off), and she still does the occasional film — she has a role in the upcoming The Artist’s Wife.
But she feels that Hollywood has changed for the worse.
‘It is a shadow of its former self,’ she says. ‘It has nothing to do with the industry I grew up in. Directors don’t make decisions — people who’ve never shot a roll of film make decisions.’
Nor does she have much truck with the #MeToo movement. ‘It’s just the latest kid on the block,’ she says. ‘If I was a young man today, I would be scared to death. What happened to flirtation?
‘It doesn’t offend me if a man says: “Hey cutie, you look great today.” And I can pat him on the ass just as well.
‘But, of course, the intimidation of women by men in powerful positions is unacceptable under any circumstance.’
No one ever took advantage of her, she says. ‘I never had any sexual predation. If anybody made a remark, I certainly was capable of making a remark back. No one ever chased me around a room. And if they had, I took karate. I simply wouldn’t have stood for it.’
These days, Powers is single — although she had a happy 14-year relationship with businessman Thomas Carroll, who died from skin cancer in 2014.
She cannot imagine sharing her life again. ‘I’m not out there. I’m not on the market. It is difficult to comprehend how it would work now because of the diverse nature of my choices in life.’
She is referring to the way she splits her time between Kenya (where she has a house and runs the William Holden Wildlife Foundation), Los Angeles and the UK, where she has a farm on the South Downs because she loves the English countryside.
‘Who would fit in with that?’ she points out. ‘And would I really want someone to fit in?’
REFRESHINGLY direct, Powers says there is not much she enjoys about getting older. ‘I don’t know what’s positive about it. You have to cope with an awful lot and you have to find whatever works for you, because nobody gets out of this alive.’
As well as losing many of her friends in recent years, she has suffered four bouts of cancer (‘lung cancer three times and breast cancer once’), so it is not surprising she is less concerned about superficial beauty routines these days.
‘I can’t be bothered with much, she says. ‘Everyone now looks like Kim Kardashian. I just want to say: “Don’t you know how vulgar you look?” ’
Having been vegetarian for many years, she now eats meat again (‘you need protein to fight cancer’), as well as doing Pilates, a jazz dance class twice a week and riding her horses.
She recounts an exchange with Prince Charles, with whom she occasionally used to play competitive polo. ‘Last time we marched out on the ground together, he said: “I don’t know how much longer I can do this.”
‘I’m older than him, so I said: “Please, sir, don’t give up.” ’
Does she ever imagine what Hart To Hart would be like now if it was still on?
She chuckles at the thought. ‘I don’t think RJ would be interested in running after villains now — unless he had a power-wheelchair. But we’d still be together. And it would still be a liability to be a friend of ours!’