A SUCKER FOR A MAN IN UNIFORM : Star of Washington’s New Daytime Drama Sets Hearts Aflutter

At the precise moment that Tom Selleck is running out of steam and Hawaiian shirts, and Don Johnson’s stubble is taking on a Skid Row dreariness, a new face blazoned across the nation’s televisions has set American women’s hearts to fluttering once again.

A tantalizing new leading man has sprung full-blown onto the screen, in the hottest daytime soap opera going.

He’s everything the magazines say that the modern woman is looking for: a vulnerable-yet-strong Alan Alda type with the sensitive eyes of a cocker spaniel, a snappy dresser whose carefully combed brunette forelock still drops over his furrowed brow when he is concentrating and makes you long to brush it back with your hand.

He is a man of mystery, like Brenda Starr’s eye-patched Basil St. John, a man with good posture and a misty past--we don’t even know for sure how old he is.

This heartthrob’s name is . . . Lt. Col. Oliver L. North.

If we have nothing else to thank President Reagan for, we have this: The breaking Reagan-Armics scandal has brought us, live and in color, the adorably dimpled, earnest phiz of Ollie North.

At the televised House Foreign Affairs Committee hearing, he comported himself with such dignified rectitude and subdued emotion that Democrats were prompted to commend his sense of duty--one of them to the tune of a $250 defense fund contribution--and one flamboyant Republican was moved to paraphrase Rudyard Kipling’s jingoistic stanzas, substituting Oliver’s name.

And for those of us in the TV audience with a full set of X chromosomes, he was all that and something more, a teddy bear in uniform. As a friend said, you wanted to cuddle him and reassure him--Oh, Ollie, it’s OK--all in the face of the most acute political scandal in the last six years.

Another acquaintance, an Army brat who reacts to the sight of a uniform like some people do to a puff adder, confessed that she found herself thinking how cute he is.

“This is incredible,” remarked a Washington journalist friend who does not want her husband to hear this, “but watching him on the news last night, in his uniform and kind of all choked up, I thought, this guy is CUTE. Then I thought, ‘What am I saying?’ ”

And me? I’m ready to write to the Pentagon for an autographed photo.

So what is it about Ollie North that lends him such peculiar glamour? For me, it’s certainly not his zealous politics; I never felt even a tremor for the pathologically scary Gordon Liddy. Is it grace under pressure? Is it hazel eyes under sensitive brows?

Maybe part of it is his unlikely name, Oliver--like Oliver Twist, the spunky Dickens orphan who had the nerve to ask for seconds. “Please, sir, I want some more.” More gruel, Oliver? More shoulder-held anti-tank missiles? Anything you want, Dollface.

How can you not fall for a teary-eyed guy who had that kind of a week? Not only was he summoned to Capitol Hill’s televised hearings--drawing the mighty wrath of Middle America by preempting its game shows and soap operas--but Army’s football team trounced his Navy alma mater, 27-7. And if all that wasn’t enough, last month some political antagonist poisoned his dog.

Maybe it’s those boyish, Norman Rockwell jug-ears, like the Prince of Wales’, above the olive-drab uniform with its chestful of fruit-salad combat ribbons. Even off-duty, in his nerdy plaid shirt and Topsiders, he exudes “It”--virtuously.

This rough-tough Marine rolls down the window of his car to ask the media mob politely to be careful and step back: “I don’t want anybody to get hurt.” This man who earned two Purple Hearts and a Silver Star for “conventional and unconventional warfare” in Southeast Asia fastens his seat belt.

Please, send the Marine--to my house.

I have never been too smitten by many of the usual heroes of legend and real-life--priggish, boring milksops most of them. Give me the vulnerable, misunderstood quasi-villain, the man under attack: Dracula, my first passion . . . Grendel . . . Tybalt . . . David Stockman.

No doubt about it, Ollie North is my kind of man. The strong, silent type-- very silent.

In another age, he would have stood erect in front of a World War I firing squad--no need to bind his hands; this breed of gentleman won’t run--gallantly blindfolded with his regimental colors, refusing to sully his lips with a last Gauloise, the good scout to the heroic end.

Somebody hook me up to a Nielsen box; I haven’t watched this much television since I had the measles.

And I can’t wait for the videocassette.