By Bill O'Hallaren
Submitted by taxifan

Katherine Helmond, the serenely dippy Mona on ABC's Who's the Boss?, suspects that actors, who are otherwise her favorite people, aren't always as bright as they should be. Especially in judging their own kind.

She gives as an example the moment two seasons ago when she arrived on the Benson set with the news that she was going to direct that week's episode. The reaction of some of the actors "was dismaying. They thought it was a joke. All their questions were for some zany, ding-y woman, and they were quite taken aback when she didn't materialize."

Helmond was especially disappointed, because "actors are the first to resent typecasting, yet some who should have know better thought they were going to meet Jessica Tate," the role Helmond sparkled in on Soap. One who didn't was Benson's star, Robert Guillaume, who had okayed her assignment.

"Bob is an old friend, but he could have said behind my back, 'Sure, she's a friend, but I don't want her coming in here experimenting on my show.' Instead, he gave me that first break." She quickly established herself as an anything-but-Jessica-Tate-type director and can now divide her time between being wonderfully dithery on camera and cracking the whip behind it. "If Katherine decides to devote full time to directing, she'll be one of the best," according to her mentor, veteran comedy director Jay Sandrich.

The businesslike way in which Helmond went about becoming a director tells a good deal about the real woman. "First, I was approved for the American Film Institute's Directing Workshop for Women. Then I sat in back of booths and listened and watched and asked questions-and I wasn't afraid to ask dumb questions. Then I kept pressing, asking to be let in. I would call people, do you have a slot open? When they say no six times, you have to call a seventh and eighth." In time she did two Bensons and will do at least two more, plus a couple of Who's the Boss? episodes.

Helmond is flattered that Jessica Tate made such an impression and says Soap itself "was simply a heavenly time. None of us will ever forget a minute of it." She says this seriously, as she says almost everything, because this is a logical, organized woman who doesn't make jokes or say anything feathery and usually speaks in the rounded sentences of a veteran stage actor in love with the sound of words. She is also, in the words of Boss's Tony Danza, "one foxy old broad."

Danza admits being a somewhat more than casual Helmond fan. "She's the kind of lady, well, you wet your finger before you touch her because she's hot stuff. A sharpo. A ball of fire."

Danza concedes he and the lady are somewhat differing types. "She don't smoke, drink, eat meat, nothing. Sometimes I get whacked out and wake up in the dressing room."

She is also a powerful influence on the set. "In the pecking order, I'm supposed to be the boss," says Danza, "but sometimes she seems in charge. When we need a laugh we turn to Katherine. And you should see her face when one of us steps on a laugh. Ouch!"

Helmond describes Danza as "a high-powered energy machine" whose life style may offer room for improvement, but "he's so lovable, and genuinely fond of children." It seems agreed she's somewhat the headmistress on the set, and in addition to advising where the laughs are and reminding Danza of the perils of wine, women and hours that cause the eyes to redden, she leads the lunch-hour tap dancing.

"It gives us a chance to do something with the children [Danny Pintauro and Alyssa Milano] in which they're naturally better and they enjoy seeing us make fools of ourselves." Of the children: "They are well behaved and not bratty, thank heavens." You gather that is high, and somewhat rare, praise for child actors.

Blake Hunter and Martin Cohan, executive producers of Boss, originally had a much younger Mona in mind. "She's was going to be Angela's older sister," Hunter recalls. "Then someone mentioned Katherine might be available. Just like that, the older sister became the mother."

Actually, Helmond was only available for a week. "I had made this pilot with Charles Durning and we were told we were certain to be picked up. I explained this to Blake and Marty and the said, 'Well, if you're only available for a week, at least do the pilot'." As it turned out, the Durning show didn't survive and Who's the Boss? got a flamboyant mother and, at no extra cost, a comedy doctor.

Judith Light, who plays Angela, notes, "Katherine will just say, 'Change this word and you'll get a laugh,' and she's always right." Isn't Helmond, with those big, innocent eyes, a bit of a scene-stealer? Says Light, diplomatically, "She's so vibrant it's hard to miss her. I know I don't take my eyes off her. A couple of times she completely broke me up and it happened so fast it stayed on the tape."

On the show, Helmond always seems to get the slyly sexual lines. Hunter has found "Katherine is the mistress of little sexual undertones. She comes as close to innuendo as anyone on TV without offending." Says Helmond, perhaps a bit smugly, "There are certain ways to say things that are risqué without offending." Whatever, the show has been a winner for ABC in an otherwise bleak time and in at least one recent week had the top rating of anything on the network.

Helmond describes her comedy style as "keeping a feather floating out there and no matter what, you don't want to let it fall. It's so much better than swinging a sledgehammer." For those who don't understand what she means, there's always another police show.

No one except herself ever thought of linking Helmond and comedy prior to Soap. Producers looked into her tiny, expressive face and saw a little lady buffeted by a cruel world. When she came to Hollywood, after years of serious stage work, "I was always cast as the long-suffering, beaten wife."

Not that she minded Hollywood. "My first job was Gunsmoke, where I stood on a box and talked to Jim Arness. When I came to work I found my trailer filled with flowers and fruit and when my check came, I said, "Wow, I may do this again'."

Some 20 years ago, Helmond was working as a typist in Manhattan during the day to afford the luxury of doing little theater at night. Now she and husband David Christian have a house on Long Island, an apartment in New York, and recently she has been looking for a home in Hollywood.

She and Christian, an artist and designer, have been living together for 23 years and married for 14. Christian, 10 years her junior, prefers the East. "We are separated for months, so people ask, 'Do you trust him? Does he trust you?' I don't cloud my mind with thoughts like that. If people are going to move away from you emotionally you can be together night and day and they'll still go," explains Helmond. They have never had children, "by our own choice." Sandrich says, "It's amazing to see a couple so separated and yet so caring."

Helmond, at 51, could forget both American acting and directing and have a sparkling new career in England, where she is rapidly becoming a cult figure. She has finished "Brazil," her second movie with the Monty Python zanies, with more promised. "It seems I play the kind of eccentric rich lady the British love." An English friend told her, "You remind me so much of Lady Peel [comedienne Bea Lillie], I always expect you to lift your skirts and roller-skate away."