Hollywood bows to Neil Simon How to fix dinner for 140- White House style Will Bobby Orr ever skate again?
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J weekly March 27,1978 Vol. 9 No. 12
4 12 26
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Mail People Picks & Pans Up Front
73
Sequel
78
Archie's "grandson," 26
Teacher
81
84
Medics 86
Bio A battered left knee stands between hockey superstar Bobby Orr and a comeback at 30
69
Off the Screen
In Her Own Words After a series of rail disasters, U.S. safety official Kay Bailey sees trouble down the line
In Style Gotta impossible yen? Call Renta Yenta
61
Adventure
Steven (Close Encounters) Spielberg made Amy Irving his girlfriend, but The Fury may make her a star
Only Goldilocks knows more about bears than Dr. Ralph Nelson
55
Star Tracks
Tracker Tom Brown stalks criminals instead of deer and finds himself on the horns of a dilemma
University of Chicago religion professor Mircea Eliade keeps faith in the creativity of the human spirit
51
Couples
"Miss Dubonnet" Pia Zadora Dick Cavett and Muhammad AN Quinn Cummings horses around Paloma Picasso Prince Charles in Rio The domestic Andy Young
It's back to showbiz for ex-nun Mary O'Hara, an Irish folksinger
43
Orr battles back, 61
90 94
People Puzzle Host Henry Haller knows what's cooking at the White House
98
Party
Lookout Race car driver Cathy Wormsbacher Mask maker Mike Bacarella
Neil Simon, the sunshine boy, is the target of a thundering Hollywood thank you
101
In Trouble Two West Virginia coal-mining families struggle to survive through the strike
104 PEOPLE WEEKLY, published weekly, except two issues combined in one at year-end, $31 per year U.S. and $39 per year Canada only, by Time Inc., 541 N. Fairbanks Court, Chicago, III. 60611. Principal office Rockefeller Center. New York, NY. 10020 James R Shepley, President; Edward Patrick Lenahan, Treasurer, Charles B. Bear, Secretary Second-class postage (061150) paid at Chicago. III. and at additional mailing offices. Authorized as second-class mail by the Post Office Dept., Ottawa. Canada and for payment of postage in cash. Direct subscription inquiries to PEOPLE WEEKLY, Time & Life Building, Chicago, Illinois 60611 Send all other mail to PEOPLE WEEKLY, Time & Life Building. Rockefeller Center. New York. N. Y 10020. The editors assume no responsibility for unsolicited photographs and manuscripts, which must be accompanied by a self-addressed, stamped envelope if the material is to be returned Š 1978 Time Inc. All rights reserved Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited
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When cancer struck, Terry King and Ian Glass wrote a unique love story
Rob Reiner and Sally Struthers bid the Bunkers a tearful goodbye Historian Doris Kearns Goodwin explores the evergreen mystique of the Red Sox Strong man Anastasio Somoza fights to keep Nicaragua all in the family
39
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Raquel Welch loves him, 69
Co ver photograph: Tandem Productions
Chatter
fer AR IS BORN AGAIN IN VERSE: FOLKSINGER MARY O'HARA HAS LEFT THE NUNNERY
O'Hara neither harps on her monastic past nor puts it down. Though now back in showbiz, she says, "Nuns are to be envied rather than pitied." CONTINUED
SequelcoNiiNUED
'Some people break inside a monastery; I just got chipped,' says ex-Sister Miriam In the 1970s the race is to the Swiftys. Certain people no sooner leave seats of power—or prison—than they are glommed upon by the Lazars of this world. In the instance of Mary O'Hara, though, it was England's Stanbrook Abbey that she left as Benedictine Sister Miriam. It is a truly different, affecting story and, even without Swifty himself, five publishers bid for it and "a major motion picture" is being negotiated. Mary was a 1950s forerunner of Joan Baez—with five LPs, two Ed Sullivan appearances and a British TV series to her credit—who's just now making a U.S. comeback at 42 after a terrible tragedy. "Please understand," says O'Hara of her defection from the nunnery, "that mine was no leap-over-the-wall affair. I don't regret a single moment of those Mary accepts congratulations backstage in London's Fairf ield Hall. A British critic compared her, justly, to Judy Collins.
121/2 years." In 1955, her career flourishing, the blue-eyed singer-harpist from Sligo, Ireland met and fell in love with Richard Selig, a Rhodes scholar and poet from New York City. Fifteen months after they were married, he died of Hodgkin's disease. "That night," recalls O'Hara, "I decided to go into a monastery. I felt I couldn't live
without Richard and if I couldn't give myself to God I would have to commit suicide." Mary fulfilled her contracted bookings and then joined 60 other women at the abbey. Her days, except for one hour at lunchtime, were spent in total silence. She did household chores, sewed and tended the garden. Her musical impulses lay dormant for years, but eventually they were aroused. A novice introduced O'Hara to the Beatles by singing a strange ditty about a yellow submarine. Then one day one of her own albums was delivered to the abbey. "I wept when I heard it," remembers Mary. "That night I wanted to sing again, and the abbess let me perform Danny Boy lor the other nuns." Sister Miriam found "wearing the habit went against the grain. I hated the headgear every time I had to put it on. One day while I was working in the vegetable garden," she recalls, "I found a piece of newspaper and was astounded at a picture in it of five people who looked like long-haired girls. They turned out to be the Rolling Stones." In her 10th year she began to lose weight and suffer from insomnia and severe headaches. She was sent to a convalescent home but when the symptoms returned, she knew it was time to leave. "Some people break inside a monastery," she says. "I just got chipped." O'Hara has now plunged into her new life "on the outside," as she calls it. She has transformed her tiny farmer's cottage near Salisbury Plain into a cozy bachelor girl's pad full of the latest records, Tolkien paperbacks and, most exotic of all, jars of moisturizer ("I had never heard of it before"). She is in the midst of a comeback tour which will be capped by a Carnegie Hall concert on April 14. Her repertoire ranges from traditional Irish folk songs and her own compositions to Bridge over Troubled Water. Between concerts O'Hara simply exults in the joys of earthly life. "I've rediscovered tennis," she beams. "I've even learned how to drive." And the future may hold the perfect Hollywood ending for her story. "I used to think," she muses, "that I could never be married to anyone but Richard—to do so would be infidelity. I don't see things that way anymore." ARTURO F.GONZALEZ O'Hara normally drives a Volkswagen Polo, but here she takes a hesitant turn aboard Cornelian, her landlord's Arabian. Photographs by Terence Spencer