T.G.I.F.
CASTING NEWS
ENTERTAINMENT GUIDE
VOLUME IV NUMBER 3 THROUGH FEBRUARY 10, 1977

In a huge gloomy hangar of a building, thirty people watched a brightly lit circle of light, where Jackie Cooper was directing the star, Robert Conrad, and the costar, Robert Ginty in a poker table scene for Universal Studio's successful television series "Baa Baa Black Sheep."
"That's great, really great," Cooper said. Everyone relaxed, and Robert Ginty walked over to our table wearing the khaki uniform of T.J. Wiley, the WWII fighter pilot whose character he plays.
As he sat down, the sandy-haired actor grinned and said, "Well, here we are in the cocktail lounge of the 'Baa Baa Black Sheep,'" indicating the set, a faithful reconstruction of the officers' club of the famous air unit.
The set swirled with the activity of grips, gaffers, electricians, script girls and uniformed actors and actresses getting greedy for the next scene.
Ready Ginty was not, the day he got the part of T.J. Wiley.
"When I got to the studio for my interview, after having experienced two flat tires on my elegant '66 Plymouth, I had to run to get there." Ginty says, "I saw this craggy old little guy sitting there and didn't know who he was, so I said hello."
The man was Pappy Boyington, the person probably most responsible for casting Ginty as T.J. Wiley.
Ginty lit a cigarette and laughed when asked if talking to strangers is usual to him, "I will say hello to anybody when I need a job, " he said.
According to Ginty, talking is a consistent part of his makeup.
"I talk constantly, I'll talk to anybody. I get in major conversations with Scotty at the (Universal) gate before I get in here in the morning."
Talking even plays a part in T.J. Wiley on the show.
"T.J. talks a great deal about his heroics in the plane, with tremendous reliance on his vivid imagination" Ginty said.
During a lull on the set, Jackie Cooper came of to kid Ginty, and to keep the reporter, in Cooper's words, "honest."
Working with some of the best directors in the country on the series and learning other aspects of the industry have given Ginty an education.
There are long hours when Ginty is off camera because of the large cast of characters on the show and the complicated shooting of the aircraft scenes on location at Indian Dunes but Ginty regards this as an advantage.
"You can't help but learn a great deal about the camera." Ginty said, "I sit behind the camera a great deal of time and Ed, our director of photography , explains the lenses to me."
Also Ginty pointed out, "You spend a lot of time with scripts because they are handed down to you early' there are many changes. We write certain scenes ourselves.
"If the scene doesn't seem to play right - you discuss it with the director - you come up with your own dialogue or you go home; come back with it.
"I enjoy doing the series a great deal. I am in the process of writing a script for the show and I also hope to direct next season."
In one show he is actually a hero, shooting down Japan's greatest ace by accident. "T.J. happens to bump into him," Ginty said, with a grin, "and shoots him down while heis guns were going."
Just then, Jackie Cooper called for places, QUIET.
After the scene, Ginty came back and explained it.
"It is a fine scene as a director (Cooper) demands a lot," Ginty reflected and then said, "he has a very clever idea of how he wants it shot. One of the things, directors on this series do is to try to get more cinemagraphic style into their shooting, than just the usual over the shoulder, television closeup, master shot, and wrap-it-up kind of thing. They try to mix the shots up a lot," Ginty Said. "to get a different feel, a different look to our show."
Television acting, according to Ginty, is not as easy as it might look. "It is a very nerve wracking business, the pressure and the difficulties of making it look easy, trying to make like your not acting all the time."
Pointing to an example in the scene he had just finished, he puffed on his cigarette and said, "You could just utter words or else you can give it the quality of a personal relationship with seven different people at a table."
Ginty had to learn how to use the medium of the camera in a hurry.
"Oh, you become real clever at not putting things in front of your face," he said with a wry smile, "that is one of the things you learn real quick being here everyday."
Asked if being a running costar on a successful TV series had solved all his problems, Ginty replied, "Do I have any problems. Look the building you are in looks like a factory, and I come to work at seven in the morning and leave at seven at night, that is twelve hours a day, five day s a week and my weekends are spent trying to figure about the following weeks script - does that sound like somebody that has no problems?" Ginty asked and then said, "or that I am a star with everything made."
That day Ginty's scenes were filmed in two parts, which require a very special mental discipline.
"It is the strain of concentration over a long period of time - to do this interview with you - then go back and in that scene and have to match scenes in the 'Master', which we did at nine o'clock in the morning, with the scenes we are doing now."
The 'Master' Ginty explained, is where they shoot the whole scene with all the characters in it from one camera angle. Then, later, they go back, and break it down into individual segment film, to get all the individual reactions from different camera angles. Then, they edit it all together to get maybe two or three minutes of film.
At this point the grips (led by someone named George) moved a stage wall though the table where we were sitting, explaining that "War is Hell."
After retreating to another section of the set, Ginty continued.
Asked, shy, he though the series had been so successful, he speculated that it was probably a mixture of seven unknowns, new faces, new actors that the audience took to plus the presence of Robert Conrad.
"He is the kind of guy, who when he goes on Merv Griffin, brings us with him' anytime he has been on a promotional tour we go with him' he has never gone on a talk show without mentioning everyone of us," and then Ginty said with a smile, "let's face it, sometimes, it's hard to remember seven names but he takes the time."
Some things not even a good director or an experienced star can teach a new actor.
"It's, what, we call TT for the 'Skoots", "Ginty said. "TT is an expression for money, your money is in the TT's (close ups) which make you a success as an actor.
"When the camera comes in there, it is what Jack Cooper calls the 'no nonsense' close-up - if you ain't got it, you can't act it, it is either in your eyes or inside you, or it isn't there."
"Acting is a craft, which is very much dealing with yourself, not attaching things on to yourself. When you get right down to the bottom line Laurence Olivier is Laurence Olivier in every part he has played.
"You can't change who you are and you shouldn't." Ginty said, "that is really all you have to give."
Asked what he keeps private about himself, he said. "Everything that I am not telling you."
At this rejoinder, everyone at the table laughed, and the reporter was deservedly abashed.
Ginty has strong feelings about T.J. Wiley and what the character should represent.
"It was no party then, some people get confused about watching the drinking on the show, and think that these fighter pilots were drinking all the time, no they were not, but they were in constant fear of death, they lived with death everyday.
"In my feelings about war and about what I do in this show, I am constantly pushing for dialogue about the fact, that, maybe I don't think that WWII is the greatest thing that ever happened to humanity."
Fighter pilots were a very special type of combat soldier Ginty thinks.
"They had an incredible sense of fair play, there are no injuries when you fly a Corsair, or for the Japanese pilot in the Zero, you go, either you come home or your finished.
"Fighter pilots were very competitive personalities' they had enormous respect even for their enemies."
The character of T.J. Wiley was patterned to some extent after a real life pilot, a friend of Pappy Boyington's named Junior Higher.
(Junior Higher was actually killed in combat during WWII.)
Breaking away from his serious mood for a moment, Ginty described one aspect of the series that is neither humorous, educational nor profound - just cold.
"When you are out in that weather, it is mighty cold out there on that location at Indian Dunes," Ginty smiled ruefully saying, "and there we are making out like we are in the South Pacific walking around in our skivvies."
Asked where he is going from her, Ginty says, "Lunch."