Provincetown Advocate
October 30, 1986
By Bonnie Barber
Nearly three months ago, Debra Sandlund has appeared in two television beauty pageant programs and one A-Team episode, which has yet to be aired. Now, a scant 10 weeks later, the 24-year-old blonde actress is in Provincetown to play the role of Patty Lareine in Norman Mailer's Tough Guys Don't Dance.
Although she performed for a year in Chicago equity theater, and is a veteran of many Northwestern University stage shows in her native Illinois, Sandlund is a newcomer to show business, having no previous film experience.
Why did the film's creative forces choose such a risky unknown to play Timothy Madden's (Ryan O'Neal) beautiful and crafty Southern wife? Talent, they all replied.
The vivacity and energy that Sandlund displayed in her auditions were the qualities that sold director Norman Mailer.
"Patty Lareine won't work unless the woman who plays her is a believable social creature and a hostess of some dimension," Mailer said.
"She has more intensity than the others, and she was also very good. She takes direction beautifully and she's an intelligent actress."
The competition for the part of Patty Lareine was fierce with Sandlund beating out several big-name actresses to secure the part. Mailer said the numerous auditions all the actresses endured was like being in a race.
But while it may have been a close race at the beginning, Sandlund had sufficiently wowed everyone that she ran away from the pack.
"It was easy by the final audition," Mailer said, adding that he and three others making the decision looked at each other and nodded affirmatively after Sandlund's final audition for the part.
Tom Luddy, the producer of Tough Guys Don't Dance, credits producer Fred Roos for spotting Sandlund's talent in the first place. Roos is an associate of Luddy. They are both affiliated with Zoetrope Studios in San Francisco.
Roos, who most recently produced Francis Ford Coppola's Peggy Sue Got Married, is a former casting director and, therefore has been a judge of talent, Luddy said.
So how does Sandlund feel about all of this hullabaloo? Going from the beauty pageant to playing the wife of Ryan O'Neal on the big screen.
"I'm very excited," Sandlund said. "I guess you could say it's a big break."
In addition to being a big break for the actress from Mount Prospect, Ill., she also feels fortunate to have such a provocative part for her film debut.
"It's a wonderful part," Sandlund said. "There aren't parts like this that come along often. Patty Lareine is a larger-than-life personality," Sandlund said. "If it wasn't Patty Lareine that I was playing, I would tone it down a bit."
While Mailer has encouraged her to play the character with the larger-than-life approach, and assured her that her "size" is appropriate for fim, he did not want Sandlund to view any videotapes of her auditions.
Sandlund said Mailer didn't want her to view them and feel self-conscious about how she was playing the role. In playing Patty Lareine, Sandlund is drawing on the resentment she thinks Patty Lareine must have felt toward her mother.
"She's escaping her white-trash, small town background by using her wits and her beauty," Sandlund said.
While making her escape from her background, Patty Lareine progresses from an 18-year-old leading the hymns in the church of her swingning first husband, a minister played by Penn Gillette, to an airline stewardess who snags a wealthy Palm Beach husband, Meeks Wardley Hilby III, to the wife of a writer, Madden, whom she grows to resent for living off the money she secured in her divorce settlement.
While Patty Lareine's rise from the backwoods of North Carolina to the top of the social heap was an impressive achievement, it pales in comparison with the real-life ascent of Sandlund.
Sandlund's Hollywood career, and ultimately her road to Tough Guys Don't Dance, began this summer with appearances on television shows, The Miss Hollywood Pageant and Dreamgirl U.S.A.
Using her talents as a singer (she received both a bachelor's and a master's degree in voice performance), Sandlund performed an Italian aria to win two segments of Dreamgirl U.S.A.
For her winning peformances, she was awarded a Pontiac Fiero, a grand piano, and a trip to the Fiji Islands, which she still hasn't had the time to take.
After seeing Los Angeles during the four weeks she participated in these two pageants, Sandlund decided to sublet an apartment for a month to see how she liked the city.
During that time, she was determined to meet as many casting directors and producers as possible. But one producer beat her to the punch. He'd seen her on one of the beauty pageant shows, and was impressed enough to hook her up with a casting director.
Within two weeks she had her first television appearance on the A-Team. Soon afterward her agent sent her to audition for the part of Patty Lareine, and Sandlund was on her way to Provincetown.
Throughout all the excitement, Sandlund has managed to remain remarkably level-headed and unintimidated about working among such a stellar group.
Of her director, Sandlund said, "Norman is so warm and very easy to work with. And, of course, he's brilliant."
The one time she admitted to being a "tad overwhelmed" was when she joined O'Neal, Farrah Fawcett, Mailer, his wife, Norris Church Mailer, and Luddy for dinner at the Red Inn the night she arrived.
But Mailer and company quickly put her at ease. "Somehow he always puts me at ease," Sandlund said. "I think he's a dear."
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