Article 1

TV Mirror Feb 1970
"I Fell In Love With A Married Man"
written by: Jack Holland

The "news" as given by a female TV reporter, was startling: "Roger Perry has just wrapped a ring around the fourth finger left hand of Jo Anne Worley. It's wedding bells for them soon." I knew of Jo Anne's dating, but had not heard of any marriage plans. And since Jo Anne and I have been friends from the day she played her first role on stage in a show I was doing, I had more than a passing interest. I know how very much marriage means to Jo Anne! The report turned out to be not quite true. But beyond it lay a bigger story: the story of an incomplete love with no ending yet in sight.

Let's go back to the beginning-to 1959. The setting: the old Music Box Theatre in Hollywood. The situation: Jo Anne was playing in a musical (without pay) on weekends, and Roger was starring in Mr. Roberts during the week (also without pay). One night, Jo Anne went to see the play. She saw his electric performance and said to herself, Hmmm, nice! He lit up the stage-and her heart. But Roger wasn't even aware that Jo Anne existed, and she was too shy to let him know she was there. Also- though Jo Anne did not know it at the time-she had fallen in love with a young married man whose wife was expecting a baby! When she learned these facts about Roger she became more inconspicuous. So all that passed between them then was an occasional nod, a brief "Hi."

"I really liked his acting-and him." Jo Anne told me recently when we got together during a filming break from Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In. "He was like a light to me." She paused and added somewhat wistfully, "I was a blank to him." "Obviously, I made no attempt to get to know him better at that time. How could I? I've never made a point of going after married men. But I had a crush on him. A big-sized girl crush. Not an infatuation- that's for the older set. But I knew all about him, all I could: how ambitious he was, that he worked at RCA pressing records, that he had a great smile, that he wasn't too outgoing, that he had a warm smile..."

She broke off with a sudden laugh (her usual escape route) and concluded, "That's a lot of reacting for someone who doesn't really exist- in another's eyes." She laughed even louder, but I have learned that Jo Anne often laughs the loudest when she's the most unhappy. There are two Jo Anne Worleys: the raucous comedienne, and the sensitive person who looks within herself in moments of aloneness- and waits for the meaningful dream in her life.

Jo Anne is actually a shy person, believe it or not! When she first came to Hollywood, her shyness was quite aggravated. She learned- the hard way- to cover it up by appearing to be an out-and-out extrovert. Today, just as in 1959, she is a girl who regards marriage as the most important thing in her life. It is the answer to everything. Love comes to her but marriage dances past her. So she has gone on laughing her way out of heartache.

When, after a while, Jo Anne and Roger went their separate ways-never even having had lunch together! She went to New York and into the second lead of the touring company of Carnival. And, one night when Carnival was in Los Angeles, Roger dropped around to see it.

"But he didn't even come back stage to see me," she remarked ruefully. This time, however, it didn't matter quite so much- because of a man she'd met when the show was in Cleveland. "I met him the same way I did Roger- when I saw him in a show. It was the touring company of the revue, The Second City. I saw him on stage and very much like what I saw."

"After the performance, there was a party on stage and I was introduced to him. We seemed to get along very well and began to date. Often. Later we worked together in a show called Happy Medium in Chicago, and then in New York in Second City. He was warm, intelligent, sensitive and had a good sense of humor. Even though I instinctively heard the word caution, I felt myself collapsing inside. I knew I was in love."

Though Jo Anne once said that the men she knew either wanted to do her hair or were married, she had experienced love that had some meaning. There were those who wanted to marry her but whom she didn't want to marry. Instead, she seemed to fall in love with those who were not ready for marriage. And so it was with this new love.

He and Jo Anne talked of marriage-seriously-but he balked at the thought. "Look, it won't work," he would say. "Right now, I'm not working and you're just starting. You're on your way to stardom-I know that-and I couldn't ever compete with my wife."

Jo Anne tried to reason with him that her career would never be a problem. She knew that would take a back seat for a marriage. But he wouldn't be convinced. He walked out of her life.

"Never a bride?"
"It took me two years to get over this," Jo Anne said quietly. "Shortly after we broke up, we were in another show together, but by now he was involved with another girl-which neatly reopened the wounds. Not long after that, he got married."

She smiled reflectively and added, "You know, it's a funny thing. Whenever I broke up with a guy, the next month or so, I'd get a wedding announcement from his bride-to-be. I began to feel like 'always a bridesmaid never a bride.' I was very clever at picking the wrong men to fall in love with.'

Heartache has never been easy for Jo Anne to take. She gives all of herself when she's in love. She leads with her heart. And when it's over- she turns to her work with a passionate intensity.

"I'm inclined to let the work slide when I'm in love," she confesses, "But when it's over, I seem to drive myself. It's an escape, I guess. I have to admit this 'marriage would be fine but it's impossible for us' routine gets tiring. I've had this noble but about two times. Maybe three. Let's say two-and-a-half! I've never wanted a noble man-just a man who can let himself be loved and who will love without any fear."

All this naturally had an effect on her career. "The experience has matured me," she says with a light laugh. "They have made me a better comedienne, I think, because they have made me more sensitive to other people's hurts. I know more ways to get a laugh, through a tear. Comedy is, after all built on heartache."

Roger came back into her life when she returned to Hollywood to do The Mad Show. He came to see her in it, and she let him look at a script for a TV special she was going to do, called Laugh-In. He glanced at it and said, prophetically, "It'll never work."

Again, nothing happened. so far as she and Roger were concerned. But some time later, Jo Anne was in Las Vegas to do a nightclub act at the Sands. It was around Christmas and a card arrived for her-from Roger. She wondered, not for the first time, why there was such a chain reaction between them over the years. Cards and notes and sudden appearances whenever they could catch each other's shows.

She thought she was over that early crush on a married man. But suddenly old memories came back, old yearnings, and when she got back in town, she called him. This time they started dating. Roger had been divorced from his wife, he had just broken up with, so there were no blocks.

Then Jo Anne had to go to London to do a Tom Jones special.

"All the time I was in London, I thought of little but Roger," she admits. "I was doing a song he had co-written on the show, and the lyrics, the music only served as intensification of all I had felt before. I was supposed to do just one show there, but I was asked to do more."

"This was fine except that it meant being away from Roger! So I called him about the extra shows and he said, 'Okay, I'll fly over to see you.' You can imagine how I reacted to that!"

A happy, confusing time
After she had finished her commitments, she and Roger went to Ireland to get away from it all. It was an ideal place to go. Her TV show hadn't hit Ireland, so she wasn't recognized. There were no fans crowding around her. They arrived on St. Patrick's Day-a religious holiday there, and rather somber.

"The weather matched the mood of the festival," she remembered, "Cold and damp. But we didn't mind. We seemed to draw closer there. We were alone- we shut out the world. Roger was much freer, more relaxed than I had ever seen him, and I was too happy to have any other reaction than joy."

Yet during this time of aloneness, marriage wasn't discussed. Not that Jo Anne didn't want to, but she felt Roger wasn't ready to talk about it. She did find very bitter memories of his marriage, that it had left big scars emotionally. So she learned to accept the relationship in the same casual way he preferred.

Not that it was easy to be casual while denying all she felt inside! All the time, she kept wondering: Will he ask me to marry him? Why doesn't he? ? ?

It wasn't her career this time. She knew that. He was glad she was doing so well and he had been busy on TV, too. He didn't mind if she were the focal point of attention when they were out- he was just protective about her. For instance, when she and Roger later did Luv and Gypsy in summer stock, they were expected to sign autographs after the show and he worried about this imposition on her time and energy.

"I appreciate how he feels," Jo Anne told me, "But I also try to not discuss my work too much. I want him to feel he is the big important thing in my life- and he is. I also try to enter into what matters in his life. Mainly his children. He is so devoted to them and I feel the same about them. But he still hasn't asked me to marry him, and he won't discuss it."

Roger undoubtedly realizes some of his "reasons" are not entirely rational and that he is reacting more against a present one. But time is only thing that can make an effective change. In the meantime, he and Jo Anne are together much of the time. He is a steady customer at her house for dinner, and she delights in fixing all his favorite dishes.

Jo Anne admits she may have some characteristics that might not make her a good bet for marriage. Her jealously, for one. "I'm incredibly jealous of his attentions to other people. If we're at a party and he starts talking to some pretty girl, I get livid. The only thing we fight about is my jealously." "Not that we're entirely alike. He's sports-minded, and I'm not. I love to go shopping and he doesn't. These are minor things, though. What matters is that I don't feel complete without him."

When I asked her if Roger felt the same way, she said, "I'll have him call you and let you know. I'm not sure. I don't know if we'll get married. I hope so. But all I can do now is to enjoy the relationship for what it is. It would be silly for me to say there's no future for us. There could be. But I'm not going to push or pressure in any way. I never discuss marriage with him."

"But if he should ask me tomorrow to marry him oh! would I!"

And so Jo Anne Worley has gone on making the loud noises, making the big laugh on Laugh-In and other shows. Her career is in high gear, but inside she's been only half a woman. She'll always reach out for what really matters to her in life, though it's a double life she's been leading: the laugh outside, with the money and the fame- and the tears inside.

-Jack Holland