TV SERIES GIVES BURSTYN HER HARDEST CHALLENGE

“What I have always hoped for is a really long career, and if you are going to have one, you are going to have your ups and your downs,” said veteran stage and screen actress Ellen Burstyn, acknowledging the mixed results of a recent round of appearances on television.

Burstyn, who received Oscar and Tony awards, respectively, for her roles in “Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore” and “Same Time, Next Year,” has been busy working for the small screen recently. She has appeared in such well-received TV movies as “The People vs. Jean Harris,” for which she received an Emmy Award nomination, and she will be seen in another TV movie, “Something in Common,” Sunday at 9 p.m. on CBS.

In her latest role, Burstyn plays a widowed book editor engaged in a struggle with relationships--with her son, her father and a new man in her life. Appearing with Burstyn are Tuesday Weld, Don Murray, Eli Wallach and Patrick Cassidy.

However, it is her weekly half-hour situation comedy for ABC, “The Ellen Burstyn Show,” that has presented the actress with her toughest television challenge. The series, which Burstyn helped develop and which marks her first regular appearance on a television series in 20 years, is placing third in its Saturday 8:30 p.m. time slot, and its future is in serious doubt.

In the series, Burstyn plays Ellen Brewer, an independent-minded, divorced college professor who shares her Baltimore home with her divorced, 25-year-old daughter, her grandson and her outspoken mother, played by another stage veteran, Elaine Stritch.

“The combination of problems has been enormous, but we have learned a lot and I think we can work out the problems if only we can stay on the air,” Burstyn said this week during a candid interview in her office here at the Actors Studio. Burstyn is artistic director of the acting studio that for so long was headed by the late Lee Strasberg.

Listing what she believes to be the major problems plaguing the series--including scripts, the hectic production schedule and its time slot (it follows the failing “Life With Lucy”), Burstyn said: “There are just so many things that can go wrong, and only so much you can handle, and when you cross a certain line, it’s like being on the Titanic.

“I’ve worked harder on this (series) than on anything I’ve ever done; I’ve fought a good fight,” she continued. “I hope it survives, but if it doesn’t, I can’t say I didn’t try; I can’t fault myself.”

Burstyn said she wanted to return to television, where she started 30 years ago on “The Jackie Gleason Show,” because of the few opportunities available in films and on the New York stage. “I decided I wasn’t working enough and that I should stop waiting for the perfect (project) and just work to get things as good as I can,” she said.

She said that she found “many more opportunities on television” for good roles in projects that deal with contemporary issues and themes.

Burstyn said that she undertook to develop the weekly series with executive producer Norman Steinberg for Disney Productions and ABC because “it met a lot of my requirements.” In particular, she cited the fact the show is being taped before a studio audience in New York, where both Burstyn and Stritch prefer to make their home.

But Burstyn, who last appeared regularly in a TV series 20 years ago--in “Ironhorse” and “The Doctors”--said that she “miscalculated” the situation-comedy form and the requirements of tape (as opposed to film) production.

“It didn’t occur to me that the form was that different from all I’ve done before, because I have done everything. But suddenly I saw I was doing all I’ve done before at once , and with only one week in which to do it,” she said.

“What we need is time, new studio facilities and support,” the actress said.

“It takes time for the whole thing to come together,” she said. “Time for the writers to get to know the actors and what we can do, time to develop the characters. . . . I don’t see how a show can become itself in a few weeks. It really takes time.”

Burstyn said that it is only now, as they are nearing completion of the 13 episodes initially ordered by ABC, that she, Steinberg--who also came to the series with relatively little television experience--and the rest of the cast, creative team and crew are adjusting to what she termed “the process.”

“It’s hard to do a light, lovely comedy when everybody’s tense, underrehearsed and exhausted,” said Burstyn, citing some production days that have run as late as 2 a.m.

Burstyn also expressed frustration over the unanticipated technical problems connected with shooting the series at ABC’s mid-Manhattan news facilities, rather than in a more spacious studio facility. With the ill-equipped studio came a rotating technical crew accustomed to the news, sports and daytime soap operas shot in New York, rather than to situation comedy, according to Burstyn.

“I used to say they weren’t doing ‘The Ellen Burstyn Show,’ they were doing ‘The Ellen Burstyn Shift ,’ ” she said wryly, noting that a more consistent, more experienced crew was just now falling into place.

Burstyn resisted placing blame for the problems she recounted. But she did say that the “creative input” guaranteed her as co-owner, with Steinberg, became irrelevant because the production pressures on her “take everything I’ve got.”

“The system is very tough and not conducive to making art,” Burstyn concluded. “I think we should do everything we can to be as good as we can on television, and I would like to be able to continue to try and meet that challenge. We have learned a lot of lessons, but we can only apply them if we get to stay on the air.”