All the Right Moves : The Gretzkys Get Personal About His Trade to L.A., Her Role in the Decision and the Uproar It All Prompted

Is she the siren who selfishly lured “The Great One” away from his adoring Canada to a new life in Hollywood?

Or is she the devoted wife who suddenly and unfairly became the scapegoat in the sensational, tear-filled trade of Edmonton Oiler hockey great Wayne Gretzky to the L.A. Kings?

In Canada and the United States, the news media decided fast--and furiously. Actress Janet Jones Gretzky was swiftly branded a “blond Jezebel” by a radio station in Canada, where Gretzky is considered a national treasure ranking with the maple leaf. On the Los Angeles airwaves, Gretzky’s bride of one month was compared to Yoko Ono, the woman blamed for the Beatles’ breakup.

USA Today concluded the morning after the trade that “Jones, 27, is the big reason Gretzky is making the move to Los Angeles.” And on “The Tonight Show,” guest host Garry Shandling echoed the situation’s soap-opera dramatics without assessing blame. Every time Shandling uttered something crazed or superficial, he turned to the camera and smiled: “Wayne, you’re gonna love it in L.A.”

It is a question, it would seem, that neither spouse would prefer to address. After initially agreeing to an interview, Janet Jones repeatedly postpones it, then cancels all together and finally agrees again. As a one-time Playboy cover girl and an actress who has been featured in such films as “The Flamingo Kid,” “A Chorus Line” and, most recently, “Police Academy V,” she is no stranger to the press.

But she is clearly a bit spooked on this stage, with the flood of attention on both sides of the border, and she later calls to apologize for the delays: “It’s this roller coaster we’ve been on.” When she finally arrives for the interview, she is 1 1/2 hours late.

Wayne Gretzky is on time, the interview scheduled to coincide with an appearance on the Prime Ticket cable network, which carries Kings games. While waiting for his wife to arrive, he apologizes and fields questions himself. Taking off an exquisitely tailored Versace jacket and placing it on the back of a folding chair on the grass at UCLA’s Drake Stadium, he sits down to talk.

“She deserves a medal,” he says, twisting his gold wedding band. “. . . We knew Janet was going to take some heat. . . . My dad said it best when he said this was the only time he’d ever heard of a man doing an $18-million favor for his wife.”

Gretzky, who led the Oilers to four Stanley Cup championships in the last five seasons, made newspaper front pages all over the world the day the trade was announced. But in the next day’s press he was accused of egomania and faking tears at his press conference. He refused to fight back.

His wife, however, could not resist. From Los Angeles, she told a reporter for the Edmonton Sun by phone that “(Oilers owner Peter) Pocklington is the reason Wayne’s gone. . . . You don’t make deals for $18 million to satisfy Wayne Gretzky’s wife. If this is to help my movie career, I wouldn’t be expecting a child at this time. I brought my car to Edmonton and we had every intention of living the rest of our lives in Edmonton and spending time in Los Angeles in Wayne’s off-season when we could.”

Now, as Gretzky reflects on the tumultuous events of the past week, has he in fact agreed to keep mum about who initiated the deal that brought him to Los Angeles? He smiles and offers a relaxed, unabashed “No comment.”

As for his reluctance to enter the fray: “I don’t think anybody needs to get into a war of words . . . a classy person keeps their mouth shut. . . . I get frustrated and upset like everyone else. I’m fortunate my wife takes the brunt of it, or my friends. She’s pretty open. She speaks her mind pretty well. What you see is what you get.

“I just walk away from it. . . . If I order a steak medium rare and it comes back well done, I eat it. I’ve got more things in life to worry about.”

A genial and unassuming man, Gretzky is a wonder to observe even in a simple interview situation. He is more attractive than in his photographs, laughing easily and flashing light-blue eyes the same shade as his pale-blue jeans.

But it’s his focus, his ability to concentrate intensely yet serenely on what’s happening in the moment, that’s most riveting. As he sits outdoors at the stadium and talks, Gretzky simultaneously manages to sign an autograph and to acknowledge the arrival of Kings owner Bruce McNall, track star Jackie Joyner-Kersee (also a guest on the Prime Ticket show) and several others.

Family Before Careers

He knows when fans are lining up to watch him. He instantly notices when his wife finally arrives. And in the meantime, he talks freely and enthusiastically about how committed both he and Jones are to their their family. Indeed, he claims, they both put their relationship and their family (they are expecting a baby in January) ahead of their careers.

Hockey is not No. 1 for the world’s No. 1 hockey player?

“Hockey will always be No. 2 to my family,” Gretzky insists, adding that he can only play professional hockey for so long and that being happy in his life off the field is of far more importance--now and later.

Ditto for his wife: “If Janet’s got one fault, it’s that she didn’t want to concentrate so much on her career. I encourage her to work. I don’t want her to quit working.”

Jones shows up in an outfit almost identical to her husband’s (black jacket, light-blue jeans and black shoes), apologizes again for the assorted delays and seems ready for any questions.

Like Gretzky, also 27, Jones exhibits a stylish appearance and an easygoing demeanor. But she looks tired and weary, albeit relieved that the Canadians are no longer blaming her for Gretzky’s sudden departure.

“I think they could have been worse,” she says, laughing about the names she’d been called. But there is lingering frustration and nervousness in her voice as she speaks of the week’s events.

‘So Many Factors’

“Until people really know the real story--which some people will never know--our family and our friends know the real story. . . ,” she began, but didn’t finish the sentence. “There were so many factors to this story, but if people want to blame me and use me as an excuse, that’s all right.”

During the time she was living in Edmonton and thought that would be her permanent residence, Jones says, she decided she would “pretty much” have to give up her career.

“I was very sad,” she says. “I even stopped watching movies and going to the theater because I hadn’t accomplished my projects or my dreams yet. But I was willing to sacrifice that for my love of Wayne.”

Though a Los Angeles relocation is now certain, Jones says she was still “shook up that it happened. The last three or four months, we lived (with the thought) ‘Is something going to happen?’ or ‘Is nothing going to happen.’ I never knew where I’d end up. New York? Detroit? L.A.?”

She and her husband are looking for a house (with a tennis court) preferably in the Brentwood, Westwood or Pacific Palisades areas. And Jones doesn’t hide the fact that she is thrilled to be back in the city where she was born.

“I can’t even say the smog bothers me because it never did,” she said, explaining that she lived here a month and a half before her family moved to St. Louis and then she returned 10 years ago.

‘Dance Fever’ Contestant

When the subject shifts to familiar territory--how she got started in show biz and initially met Gretzky--Jones relaxes and notes that one of the many similarities she shares with her husband is the fact that they both left home at early ages to pursue their careers. He took off at 14, she at 17, though before she left St. Louis for Hollywood, she had danced in a Radio City Music Hall production of “Snow White” and appeared as a contestant on TV’s “Dance Fever.”

After her high school graduation, Jones says, she was offered an ongoing job on “Dance Fever,” a Merv Griffin production. The talk-show-host-turned-mogul remembers her well: “We all thought she was the prettiest young woman and a great dancer. We lost one of the women dancers who backed up the host. I remembered (Jones) and thought why not give her a chance.”

(Indeed, Griffin has not forgotten Jones. On the Friday night before Gretzky’s trade, he ran into her and Gretzky--standing in line at Trader Vic’s restaurant in Beverly Hills. Griffin was leaving and told Gretzky, “What are you doing in line?” Griffin said he got them seated right away, explaining: “I could do that because it’s my restaurant. That’s the true test of fame,” he added, “someone who doesn’t walk up to the door and say, ‘Do you know who I am?’ ”)

Jones stayed with Griffin’s show for 2 1/2 seasons. It was there she first met Gretzky, who appeared as a guest judge.

“I just pretty much thought he was a nice man, a polite person. I remember that very clearly,” she says. “Over the next eight years, we had a few meetings (at parties and events). We were acquaintance-type friends.”

The Reconnection

At that time, both were involved with others. Gretzky with Edmonton singer Vicki Moss, Jones with tennis star Nels Van Patten. Jones later became engaged to another tennis star, Vitas Gerulaitis, but broke it off. She and Gretzky reconnected at an NBA championship game last year and began seeing one another regularly.

Many of their friends say it was true love from the start. “I was witness to their first date--not really a date--but their romance kind of blossomed on an evening we all had dinner together,” recalled actor Alan Thicke, a Canadian and longtime friend of Gretzky’s, who served as emcee at the couple’s July 16 wedding. “In fact, my wedding gift to them--and I’m still waiting for it to be delivered--is the cushions they sat on at La Serre with the date and their names on them. . . . I’ve seen them together several times during the year since they’ve been together and what I see is what all of us should wish for. It’s a little annoying, people that happy.”

Some of the delight that Jones and Gretzky take in each other is obvious as they pose for photos before the sun slips away. Without being asked to, Gretzky lightly nuzzles his bride and begins playfully kissing her. Later, after cameras were put away and they were leaving the stadium, he would touch her stomach and beam, “This was my wedding present.”

Until the trade, Jones’ pregnancy had been an easy one, she said. But with all the stress surrounding the announcement, she had suddenly become tired and “overemotional.”

Playboy Exposure

Now, though, the conflict is almost behind her, as easily dismissed as other old controversies she is still being asked about--like that cover and layout in Playboy last year, the one in which she appeared nude but strategically posed, so as not to reveal certain portions of her anatomy.

“I showed a lot of curves, but a lot of people do that in Vogue,” Jones maintains. “. . . I might have thought about not doing it if I had known how Wayne was looked up to by these people. . . . When we first started going out, I said, ‘Wayne, don’t be surprised if all they can talk about is Playboy.’ But he didn’t need me to defend myself at all.”

“You can’t see anything,” Gretzky says about the photos. “We talked about it one time and I showed it to my mother. My mother loved it. . . . Janet took a little heat over it in Canada. When I did the (Playboy) interview, nobody said anything.”

Gretzky appears similarly undisturbed that he is one in a series of star jocks with whom his wife has been romantically involved.

“It doesn’t matter who a person dated, it matters that the individual is a person of quality,” he says. “I married her because her morals and values were the same as mine. She wanted to get married and have a family. That’s more important to her than her career.”

‘Swim, Dive Like Crazy’

Jones figures she simply “has a lot in common with men who like sports.” According to director Garry Marshall, who gave Jones her first film break as the athletic girlfriend of Matt Dillon in “The Flamingo Kid,” the actress “is an excellent tennis player and actually played semi-pro softball in St. Louis and she can swim and dive like crazy.”

Marshall cast her after watching her play in the Carl Reiner celebrity tennis tournament in La Costa. “She didn’t have a lot of acting ability, but we worked with her and she came off very well,” he said.

“She wouldn’t be the first person I’d cast for a Victorian drama, but before you can change, you’ve got to be typecast. I think she could have a strong career doing some action and adventures, because she could run and jump with the best of the guys.”

Jones suspects that’s one of the reasons she wound up as Mrs. Great One: “Wayne said to me, ‘I don’t ever think I could be with a girl who’s not into sports because that’s what I do with my time off.’ We’re both jocks in other sports (besides hockey and dancing).”

Once Gretzky settles in Los Angeles, can we expect him to move more into his wife’s territory? Many have wondered if he will “go Hollywood.” As it turns out, he already has. A fan of soap operas, he got an opportunity to appear on “The Young and the Restless” when he was 20 and took it.

“I didn’t want to kick myself 20 years later for not doing it,” Gretzky explains, suggesting, however, that acting is not on his agenda at the moment.

“Too many athletes forget who they are and how they get where they are. I’ve been in the league 10 years and I’ve been hit on in every direction. My priority is my hockey. During the season, I’m not too flexible.”

Gone to Maui

Now, however, Jones and Gretzky are eager to get on with their honeymoon. They’ve taken a “pre-honeymoon,” Gretzky says, but since the wedding, they have been chiefly in Los Angeles as the deal was worked out. Midweek, they left for Maui, expecting also to visit St. Louis and Edmonton for a few days before settling down to what they hope will be a more normal life in Los Angeles.

Since the announcement of the trade, commentators have snickered at remarks by Gretzky’s agent that the move will provide the Gretzkys “more anonymity.” Some have observed they may be the first people in history to move to Los Angeles to avoid fame.

“In Edmonton, we were the only two people who were in the paper every day,” Gretzky explains. “Here there are 20 million people. It’ll be easier. There’s more to write about here than just hockey.”