HOLLYWOOD -- If you saw the movie 'Kramer vs. Kramer,' you will remember Dustin Hoffman won the Oscar for best actor and Meryl Streep won the best supporting actress Academy Award.
But you will also remember, especially if you're a man, the splendid naked lady in the hallway of Hoffman's apartment who encounters his 6-year-old son.
The marvelous nude was played by Jobeth Williams.
Jobeth was a little known stage and TV actress -- soap operas such as 'The Guiding Light' -- when she was cast as Hoffman's lover, her first movie role, in the Oscar-winning film.
A Texas beauty with a prim and proper background, Jobeth was hesitant about shucking her clothes, especially in the scene with little Justin Henry.
'I was afraid my nudity would traumatize the little boy,' she recalled. 'I had visions he might spend the rest of his life with a psychiatrist.'
As it turned out, the little boy took one look, yawned and went on with the scene. This was no heartbreaking blow to Jobeth who, relieved by the kid's ennui, played the scene to perfection.
There probably isn't a movie producer or director alive who did not see 'Kramer vs. Kramer.' Those who did were mightily impressed with Jobeth -- and not just her body.
Her brief appearance in 'Kramer' led to a co-starring role with Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor in 'Stir Crazy' and 'Dogs of War' with Christopher Walken. Now she stars in the blockbuster horror film 'Poltergeist.'
Jobeth is well aware that a single scene in the buff established her as a film actress. It changed the course of her personal life as well as her professional career.
She is now married to director John Pasquin and has moved from New York to Hollywood.
There is a breezy, All-American look to the youthful actress and a talent that immediately attracts an audience, even fully clothed.
Jobeth, however, is back to T-shirt and panties in the final fifth of 'Poltergeist,' a frenzied series of scenes in which she is confronted by eerie, unknown forces of evil.
'The fewer clothes a person wears, the more vulnerable she is,' said Jobeth. 'If I'd been wearing jeans or something, my character would have appeared more able to cope with the physical elements involved.'
Jobeth spent five weeks of the production whipped by wind machines, soaking wet and covered with slimy, oozy mud. For the better part of two weeks she found herself in a mud-filled swimming pool filled with rotting corpses.
She was bruised, scratched and suffered bloody knees and elbows in the rough and tumble scenes of confrontation with the forces of the dead.
'I took a physical beating,' Jobeth said, 'but it was worth it.
'In the beginning I had second thoughts about 'Poltergeist.' I'm not a horror film fan. I read the script and discovered there was no blood, nobody gets killed and there's very little violence.
'I knew if Steven (Raiders of the Lost Ark) Spielberg was producing 'Poltergeist' it would be a quality film. He was on the set every day.
'To me, 'Poltergeist' is a psychological horror film with a positive, spiritual side to it -- mother love, caring people and family unity.
'Even so, it was difficult to act in a picture where the special effects were opticals which were cut into the film after we actors finished work. The effects are terrific, the product of George Lucas and his merry players.
'We had to react to our own imaginations instead of life-threatening horrors which were supposed to scare us. Steve would wave a stick off camera and say, 'This is your eye line, and what you see is going to be very scary.'
'We'd ask him what we were supposed to be looking at and he would say, 'We don't know what it looks like yet.''
Jobeth had to see 'Poltergeist' in a theater to learn what had terrified her. She was not disappointed. On the other hand, she wasn't frightened either.
'I was surprised and pleased by the special effects,' she said, smiling, 'but they weren't half as scary as what I dreamed up for myself on the set.'
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