Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, February 2, 1993 TAG: 9302020064
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: NITA LELYVELD ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
HOLLYWOOD `HICKS' ARE CLOSE TO CLINTONS
Harry Thomason likes to brag that the Arkansas town he comes from - Hampton - makes Bill Clinton's home town of Hope look like "a major metropolis."His wife, Linda Bloodworth-Thomason, who grew up over the border in Poplar Bluff, Mo., says her own experience was shaped by tales of her outspoken Arkansas grandfather, who was shot to death by the Ku Klux Klan before she was born.
The immensely successful television duo say it's this shared Ozark heritage that cemented their decade-long friendship with Bill and Hillary Clinton.
Arkansans have to stick together, says Bloodworth-Thomason.
"We are all people from a poor rural state who are trying to do something at a national level," she said. "If you're from Arkansas, you do have to get up a little earlier and go to bed a little later and try to be a little smarter than everyone else."
The Thomasons - responsible for the hit TV shows "Designing Women," "Evening Shade," and "Hearts Afire" - have been highly visible since Clinton began running for president last year. Too much so, they say.
"We feel we've been overpublicized and overcredited in the campaign," said Bloodworth-Thomason, who's worried about more publicity during Clinton's inaugural festivities.
Bloodworth-Thomason made "The Man From Hope," the 14-minute touchy-feely video of Clinton's life that some credit with turning the tide of the campaign.
She also sent her shows' hairdresser and wardrobe consultant to help Hillary Rodham Clinton in Little Rock - a move which some say completely transformed Mrs. Clinton's image.
But she says she was just being a friend and has never once sat down and talked appearance with Hillary Clinton.
"This is a woman with 400 projects. I've got three TV shows," she said. "We've got other things to think about."
Bloodworth-Thomason bristles at the suggestion that the friendship she and her husband share with the Clintons is going to give the Hollywood world entree to the White House.
"First of all, we don't know many heads of studios and we don't know a lot of people in Hollywood. Most of our family and many of our friends are in Arkansas and Missouri. We basically work 16 hours a day, seven days a week," she says. "We are not lobbyists for the Hollywood community, and we wouldn't be remotely interested in doing that."
Harry Thomason met Bill Clinton in the 1960s through Thomason's brother, Danny, now an optometrist in Little Rock, Ark.
Thomason was a high school football coach at the time. Clinton was a student, waiting to head to Oxford University on a Rhodes scholarship.
Bloodworth-Thomason remembers the first time she met the Clintons, when they invited her and Thomason to the Arkansas Governor's Mansion for breakfast. Hillary Clinton answered the door herself, wearing jeans, a sweater with a teddy bear on it and a big smile on her face. Chelsea Clinton was holding her hand.
"We just had a great time that morning in the kitchen," Bloodworth-Thomason said. "Within five minutes, I was sitting on the counter, dangling my legs and telling stories."
It was their shared strong accents that first brought Bloodworth and Thomason together more than a decade ago.
Bloodworth heard Thomason talking in an office near hers on a CBS-TV lot, and came over and introduced herself, saying, "I hear there's another hick on the lot."
That was 1980. In 1983, they married and started their own company, Mozark Productions (named for their home states, Missouri and Arkansas).
There's a lot of their lives in the shows they've created.
Thomason had always wanted to be a football coach, and high-school coaching was his first career. Burt Reynolds plays a high school coach in the show "Evening Shade."
Bloodworth-Thomason had expected to follow in the footsteps of her father and grandfather as a lawyer.
The characters in the pair's first big hit, "Designing Women," are female versions of the hard-drinking lawyers who sat around in her family's living room in Poplar Bluff, Mo., when she was growing up.
She came to California on a whim after she graduated from college in Missouri, and she planned at the time to enter law school soon. But she never did. First she was a schoolteacher in Watts. Then she met actress Mary Kay Place and they began writing scripts together.
They started writing for "M*A*S*H" in 1974, and got an Emmy nomination for their first episode. Bloodworth-Thomason's career was launched.
Thomason got tired of coaching after six years, and decided to be a filmmaker.
At Mozark, Bloodworth-Thomason is the creator, writer and producer. Thomason directs. They are very much a team.
He is 52, she is 45, and their years together have been an incredible success story. They are millionaires many times over. But they still feel their emotional center is down South.