If you're one of the handful of people who didn't see Steven Spielberg's Raiders of the Lost Ark, then you missed that hilarious scene in which Karen Allen sat in a smoky foreign bar while other hairy hulks watched with admiration. The blue-eyed Allen, who looks a little like a young Patricia Neal, made the most of her chances in that movie. And she was good in it, bringing to it just the right mix of feistiness and sexiness. The trouble is that ever since, she's been referred to as Karen (Raiders of the Lost Ark) Allen. And to tell the truth, she's sick of it. "I have done other things," she said the other day, sitting in her hotel suite surrounded by balls of colored wool that she's fashioning into a splendid-looking blanket. She has. She has.
Ten Movies
Ten movies, in fact. Among them Alan Parker's Shoot the Moon, in which she played Albert Finney's mistress; Cruising, in which she played cop Al Pacino's girlfriend; and Starman, in which she played the widow who helps alien Jeff Bridges escape the planet. You'd forgotten? Now you see why she's always referred to as Karen (Raiders of the Lost Ark) Allen. So what to do? "Wait patiently," she said. "Wait for the film which will give me a chance to show what I can really do." So she's waiting. She was in town the other day making a guest appearance in an "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" TV segment directed by Christopher Crowe. The segment was her choice. They gave her a big book with 250 synopses of old Hitchcock stories and asked her to pick one she liked. She read them all and found one that sounded good — "The Creeper." It was shot in five days. "Those sort of things are fun to do," she said. "And right now, I don't want to commit to another feature unless it's something I'm wild to do. I'm not interested in making just another movie. Says Alan Parker, who cast her in Shoot the Moon because he was much impressed with her earlier work: "She's right. Here's an actress who refused just to trade on her looks, which she could easily do. She really wanted to do good work, to tackle parts that are challenging. But they're few and far between for actresses." So Karen Allen decided it was time to do theatre. "People thought I was made to go back to the theater after being in films like Raiders of the Lost Ark and Shoot the Moon," she said. "But I had to. I hadn't done any stage work for five years, and I needed to remind myself why I became an actress in the first place.
Two years off
So she took off for two years — and made her mark in plays like "Two for the Seesaw" at the Berkshire Theatre Festival; "Monday After the Miracle," which ran only briefly on Broadway but earned her raves from the New York Times, and "Extremities," which she took over from Susan Sarandon. "I love theatre because it gives me the chance to grow in a part," she said. "You can strive for perfection and sometimes almost attain it. That's impossible in movies. That's why I'm beginning to think that some actors should never watch their old films. "I watched an early film of mine on TV recently — A Small Circle of Friends. When it first came out, I quite enjoyed it; I thought I wasn't too bad in it. But this time I sat watching it and thinking, 'Oh, no. What was I thinking of?' But there it was, a performance frozen for all time. That's what's so frustrating. You can't go back and change it." Since getting her chance seven years ago in the low-budget but high-profit National Lampoon's Animal House, she has worked fairly consistently. And there's only one movie, William Friedkin's Cruising, that she prefers not to talk about. As one critic observed at the time: "In this movie, her character was not supposed to know what was going on in Al Pacino's life, particularly when he disappeared into the homosexual underground in search of a killer. So Friedkin reasoned, Why did she need to see a script?" She never saw one. "I wouldn't do that again," she said firmly. "Oh, maybe if Fellini or Bergman offered me a film. Or Woody Allen. Otherwise, no. I learned my lesson. What she's trying to do now is learn more about the technique of film-making.
Didn't pay attention
"With my first films, I was so busy just trying to be a good actress I didn't pay attention to anything else," she said. "Now I do. Now I watch everything that's happening. So if the day ever comes when I have to argue with a director about how to make a scene better, I want to be sure I really know how. "Of course, the best thing of all is to work with a director who really wants you, who hasn't taken you because he couldn't get someone else. That doesn't happen often." But it did happen with Until September, directed by Richard Marquand. That movie, a slight love story about an American girl visiting Paris who gets involved with a married French banker (Thierry L'hermitte), was absolutely roasted by the critics and thrown to the trash heap. Marquand has since exonerated himself in the eyes of reviewers by coming up with The Jagged Edge [not to mention Return of the Jedi]. But Allen still finds the abuse piled on this slender movie inexplicable. "Was it because the man was married and we were just having an affair?" she asked. "Why did that make them so angry? It was just a sweet romantic little film and it didn't deserve such abuse.
Admires Williams
At the moment, of course, her thoughts are centered on "The Glass Menagerie." She is a great admirer of Tennessee Williams and, three years ago at the Williamstown Theatre, Mass., she appeared in "Tennessee Williams: A Celebration" in which, along with others, she played several characters from his plays. It was at Williamstown that this production of "Glass Menagerie" was first staged this summer. "We did just eight performances, as we were the last play of the season," she said. "We got raves and everyong told us, 'You must keep this going. It's so good.' So now we're doing it at the Long Wharf. Then we're shooting it for TV. Then we'll take it to London. "That's a real thrill. I was in London 13 years ago with the first play I ever did — "Saint," about the life of St. Columba, who exiled himself on the Scottish island of Iona. We played it first in the actual church he built on Iona — and then did it in some London churches. This time it'll be a real theatre."