LIFE WITH MOTHER

For Life magazine’s ballyhooed “Celebrating the Movies” edition, motherhood almost spoiled the cover shot of the Big Five Femmes--Jane Fonda, Jessica Lange, Barbra Streisand, Goldie Hawn and Sally Field.

Entertainment Editor Jim Watters said, “It wasn’t egos but motherhood that ran interference for us when we began to put together that photo session.” That is, Lange was pregnant and wanted to pose after having her baby; by then, Hawn was five months pregnant. But “she didn’t blink an eye about posing that way.”

The group was photographed one Sunday in March at Greg Gorman’s Hollywood Hills studio. (Irony: Gorman shot the unauthorized cover photo of Streisand on Shaun Considine’s unauthorized bio.) They were asked to arrive made up and with their hair done (“What surprised us was that they all had, basically, the same hair color”).

The stars--who range in age from 37 (Lange) to 48 (Fonda)--come off as starlets. The only wrinkles on the page are a few around Fonda’s eyes. It’s due to their beauty, insisted Watters. “It’s a longtime Life tradition not to touch up photos.”

Well, the photog helped. “Let’s face it,” Watters admitted. “The proper pose and lighting can hide little imperfections.”