HOLLYWOOD -- Hollywood is thintown where the most undernourished women study their looking glasses and ask, 'Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is skinniest of them all?'
If the answer isn't, 'You, baby,' the actress is in deep trouble.
Thinness is a way of life in the movie-TV colony. The obsession with reedy silhouettes has had enormous consequences among female performers, most of them negative if not downright damaging.
Most of the glamour girls in this town smoke cigarettes. They smoke a lot of cigarettes to curb their appetites, more than willing to ignore the little warnings on the packages about damage to their health.
Almost all of the stars, male and female, are on perpetual diets, use sugar substitutes and drink no-cal beverages, often gallons of coffee, again to shrink their appetites.
There exists an unrelenting warfare against fat, which affects the whole country. Moviegoers and televiewers see such as Angie Dickinson, Jane Fonda, Barbra Streisand, Jill Clayburgh and Loni Anderson and follow suit.
Even a 10 such a Bo Derek, despite her bosomy endowment, is on a constant diet to keep the rest of herself slim and trim.
It was with keen concern, therefore, that Brenda Vaccaro, off on her honeymoon this month following her third marriage, asked the vital question of her full length mirror earlier this year and got 'Yeechh' for an answer.
Brenda, the husky-voiced beauty who starred in 'Midnight Cowboy,' 'Airport '77,' 'Capricorn One' and who won an Oscar nomination for 'Once Is Not Enough,' saw a much inflated Vaccaro in the mirror.
She was in the process of eating herself out of the screen acting business.
Determined to get back into shape, she fled to UCLA to enroll in the university's optifast program and lost 37 pounds in six weeks. She plans to lose another 20 so that she can face the mirror complacently.
'They held an election and thin won -- what can you do?' Brenda said, spreading her hands and fingers in a gesture of helplessness.
She and her mother were visiting, making final preparation for the wedding. Mrs. Vaccaro is tiny compared to her daughter.
'Since losing all those pounds I feel a lot better psychologically as well as physically. It's changed my whole lifestyle.
'I've been told dozens of times they want me to be thin for my roles. The people who count in this business demand it. Producers, and the public I guess, want their actresses to have the siren, sexy look.
'With all that weight I looked like a teacher or a civic-minded dowager or, well, matronly. You can't be heavy and look glamorous.
'They say the camera puts 10 to 15 pounds on you anyhow, so you've really got to be underweight to start with. Emaciated is fine. That's how I looked at my skinniest, 116 pounds, my best-ever weight.
'There's no doubt I've lost parts because I was too heavy. But no actress ever lost a role because she was too thin. You can't be too thin or too mean in this town. And sometimes the two go together. Who can be happy starving?
'So I report for work and say, 'Hi, I'm Reedy Wilma.' I used to say, 'I'm Bulbous Brenda who has bloomed again.'
'Anorexia nervosa is a terrible thing but I wish I had it.'
Brenda is a compulsive eater. She is Italian and hooked on pasta. Her mother owns famed Mario's restaurant in Dallas where Brenda easts like there is no tomorrow. Mention food, Brenda salivates.
It was no simple thing for Brenda to turn her life around and head for svelte. She was inspired, too, by her husband-to-be, photographer Chuck Cannizzaro.
'Chuck must really have been in love with me because when we met I was gaining,' Brenda said. 'But he didn't help much. Chuck's a great cook and when he wasn't cooking we were going out to fancy restaurants.
'My weight has always fluctuated because I love to eat. It's one of the great pleasures in life. Everybody's life.
'When I got heavy, I'd go on a diet. I went on all kinds of fad diets including the Scarsdale, the drinking man's diet, the skim milk and vegetable diet, the Cambridge diet, the eggs-onions-champagne and parsley diet.
'I even tried the Stillman diet, the Meninger Clinic diet, the eggs and wine diet and was drunk an entire day, the anphetamine diet and dropped 20 pounds in four days the hard way.
'Those gimmick diets aren't any good because you may lose weight but you don't keep it off. You have to undergo a behavioral modification diet that changes your eating habits for life if you want to stay slim.
'My mother's thin because she's vain,' Brenda said, pointing to her slender mother. 'Mother's side of the family had full clothes closets. My father's family had full refrigerators.
'I imagine your genes have something to do with your weight. But if you're in Hollywood and you're an actress, you have to forget all that. What you've got to remember at all times is stay thin or stay away.'
adv for pms fri Nov.
