DUKE PONDERS ROLE AS SAG HEAD

When Patty Duke was in the fourth grade, she served as class treasurer. She hated it. Nobody liked the class treasurer. It would be her last political office until recently, when at 38 Duke became the second woman elected president of the Screen Actors Guild.

This second political foray looks more promising, judging from the friendly greetings and congratulations the petite actress received the other afternoon as she wended her way around the tables at Le Dome.

During a lunch of pasta and hot tea, Duke said that she hopes this cordiality becomes the trademark of her regime.

“Without meaning to sound egomaniacal, I fancy myself as someone who gets along with people,” she explained. “I love actors and found myself getting very disheartened about the way our union was being portrayed in the media. The hassling that would have been private guild business went very public.”

(Former president Ed Asner’s two-term administration from 1981-85 was marred by bitter acrimony and in-fighting between Asner and his supporters, and a splinter group--Actors Working for an Actor’s Union--spearheaded by Charlton Heston. The politically conservative Heston repeatedly accused Asner of bringing his own liberal political views to bear on union business.)

“It certainly didn’t hurt the reality of the union, which is fiscally sound and better than ever,” Duke said. “But the feeling of being a SAG member was one of slightly cringing, for some of us. I thought if I could just go in there and say, ‘All right, gang, why don’t we all just knock it off and play nice,’ we’d get our business done.

“I ran (for the presidency) mainly because of a real concern among my friends and myself that the union stood a threat of being weakened by folks who wanted to keep it small and elite. Well, I’ve got kids (Sean, 14, and MacKenzie, 12) who are guild members; I want to make sure this union exists for them.”

She defended Asner (who supported her during the campaign), saying: “All of Ed’s personal political causes really did not enter the board room. While it may sound absurd to say that Ed Asner could be naive, I do believe he had a certain naivete that he could expound on his personal political beliefs, and people wouldn’t assume that he was speaking for the guild.”

Duke, who sits closer to Asner politically than to Heston, maintained that she tackled that problem early on in her campaign.

“When I went in front of the nominating committee, their major concern was, ‘Where are you going politically here?’ I made it very clear that I was going to maintain my work in several areas and that they should make it clear to the membership that if people didn’t want that, then they shouldn’t vote for me.”

The actress said that she would continue to support issues concerning the nuclear freeze and the equal rights amendment “which I don’t think are political, although others might. The other groups I support concern themselves with violence against women and raising money for AIDS research, which are obviously not political issues.” She acknowledged that maintaining such impartiality would be tough: “I don’t believe that any of us has to give up our civil rights to do this job, and I love exercising my civil rights. I’m proud of being an American; I like the system. The system says that I get to tout who I like and why. I’ve chosen to find a way to do that--to not give up my civil rights and at the same time not put myself in the position where anyone can interpret who is speaking, Patty Duke the guild president or Patty Duke the person.”

The actress said that she would like to see the union portrayed as “a friendly, dignified, well-informed representative of 58,000 people. I want the warmth and the fun of actors to be witnessed again when people think in terms of our guild. That’s who we are; that’s who Ed Asner is. He didn’t have a chance to be that, though, he was too busy ducking.”

The SAG members who voted evidently had no problem with Duke’s views. The actress garnered 56% of the 19,751 ballots cast--a record turnout for the 58,000-member union.

Duke’s main opponent, Ed Nelson (who was backed by union conservatives) received 7,419 votes or 38% of the ballots cast. Dark horse candidates Tony Cecere and Charles Holden received 735 and 289 votes, respectively.

Duke said that the first priority for her administration is the issue of the proposed merger between SAG and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA), which has been kicking about for years.

“The membership has yet to vote on the issue, and we hope to accomplish it early in this term.”

She good-humoredly admitted that “all this will mean is that I’ll get a lot of applause for everybody else’s hard work.”

As she talked about another issue of concern--the coming contract negotiations with producers--she was interrupted by an agent friend who congratulated her and advised her to obtain a powerful contract negotiator for the union when the time came.

“Just remember one thing,” he told her ominously and mentioned the three top MCA/Universal executives. “Lew (Wasserman), Sid (Sheinberg) and Tom (Wertheimer) only understand power.” He looked at her meaningfully. “And the actors guild is nothing they fear.”

Duke laughed at his rather obvious statement. “Yes, I realize that.”

His comments raised the issue of a woman at the helm of a union. After all, Kathleen Nolan’s two-term stint as SAG president from 1975-79 had been rocky, as Duke well knew. (Among other things, Nolan fought to establish the National Women’s Conference Committee, which examined the quality and quantity of women’s roles on television.)

“It was at a time when very few women were making those kinds of moves and commitments. I don’t think she was considered threatening; I think it was, OK, let’s see how we can use this woman as a model to prove that they can’t do this.”

She smiled. “But she did it; she did extraordinary things.” However, Duke acknowledged that Nolan (and Asner) had warned her about the one major pitfall of the non-paying job: “It hurts you professionally. You aren’t considered available for work. I don’t want management (producers, movie studio and network executives) to think that this is now my chosen profession. My chosen profession is that of an actress. Both can be done.”

In fact, Duke had missed several weeks of campaigning while she shot a CBS movie of the week about a woman who joins the Army.

The actress, who won the 1963 Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for her role as Helen Keller in “The Miracle Worker,” maintained, “I want and need to work; I have a family to support.” (Duke and actor John Astin recently divorced.)

Actually, one of Duke’s jobs last year practically foreshadowed her current position when she played the first female President of the United States on the short-lived ABC series “Hail to the Chief.”

“For a while, when it was canceled, there was a moratorium on the words President and chief around my house,” she joked. “But now my kids are back to calling me ‘Madam President.’ ”

“In fact,” she mused, “I still have 17 satin jackets that say ‘Hail to the Chief’ around the house. I ought to wear them someplace.”