The Globe and Mail (Canada)

April 11, 1987 Saturday

Versatility keeps the camera rolling for Arkin

BYLINE: IVOR DAVIS; GAM

LENGTH: 564 words

DATELINE: Los Angeles CA

BY IVOR DAVIS
LOS ANGELES
WHEN THEY offered Alan Arkin his own TV series, the brilliantly versatile
actor's first reaction was one of dread. "I didn't need it," says Arkin.
"I like the East Coast and I didn't want to have to disrupt my life and my
family."

Yet Arkin succumbed because, as he puts it, "there were a few fringe
benefits that they threw in." One of the things that persuaded him to
become the star of Harry, an ABC replacement series about the antics of a
likeable purchasing agent in a large metropolitan hospital, was the fact
that two of the regulars on the show will be his son Anthony and his
author/actress wife Barbara Dana. She plays Dr. Sandy Clifton, a
psychiatrist who enjoys hanging out with Harry and his friends.

"I would not have done it without my family along," says Arkin.

"It never entered my mind to do a series. My first reaction was 'who
needs it?' But now we can work together and if the show goes well then
we'll be able to keep it in the family, so to speak."

Before Harry was taped in Hollywood, Arkin worked without other members
of his clan in a very different piece of "entertainment" - a powerful,
three-hour movie, Escape From Sobibor (CBS and Global, Sunday at 8 p.m.).

In Sobibor, Arkin plays a Jewish concentration camp inmate who helps
plot the historic breakout from the German camp in eastern Poland.

The telefilm also features an international cast including Joanna
Pacula, Englishman Jack Shepherd and Dutch actor Rutger Hauer, who plays a
Russian Jewish soldier incarcerated with Arkin.

The movie is a chilling dramatization of the real escape in October,
1943. It was the biggest breakout from a concentration camp on record -
300 made it to safety.

The experience of filming Sobibor in Yugoslavia and recreating the
atrocities of the death camps was moving and often painful.

"While we were shooting there, some of the survivors were on hand as
consultants on the movie and it was excruciating for them," Arkin recalls.

His time on Harry, however, has been vastly different. "Harry is no
Sergeant Bilko," he says. "Some people have described him as a sleazeball
but I would call him unorthodox. He's working in this hospital supply room
and on the edge of life and death but not involved directly with it. I
didn't want to be in a show with a lot of insult humor and I didn't want
Harry to be a con man. He's a nice guy who just hates doing it by the
book. He's not a criminal but his morality doesn't fall into the tradition
of what others think is normal. I mean he sells off equipment but not for
personal profit - he does it so the hospital can buy X-ray machinery."

Besides the three Arkins, Harry's regulars in the first 13 episodes
include Richard Lewis, as a lovable neurotic, Thom Bray, Holland Taylor,
Matt Craven and Kurt Knudson. Arkin is also one of the show's producers,
along with Barry Levinson, who has a long record of TV series.

Arkin's solid body of work includes Broadway plays and such movies as
The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming, Catch-22 and Joshua Then
and Now.

"I wouldn't mind setting up an annuity for myself and my family with
(this) show," he says. "You can get incredibly wealthy from a hit show. I
don't think of myself as wildly ambitious. Doing the series in Hollywood
has meant I miss walking the dog and looking out of the window in New
York. But if the series does well we can move production to Manhattan.
That would be nice."