An Itch in Old Calabasas

I don’t think I’ve ever had this kind of interview before.

Most of the time, I ask a question and the person answers, and even though the answer might be a little obscure, I can figure it out. That’s what we get paid to do, figure things out.

But then there’s Sharon Farrell. She’s an actress who has been in some pretty good movies, like “The Reivers” with Steve McQueen, and is currently involved in trying to save the 145-year-old Leonis Adobe in Old Town Calabasas from the bulldozers of Caltrans.

Sharon, who has blonde Shirley Temple curls and the intensity of a coiled spring, is putting together a party during which celebrity-artists will auction their paintings to benefit a Save the Adobe Fund.

She herself is something of an accomplished artist who paints a couple of days a week at the Red River Gallery across from the aforementioned sacred adobe.

When I met her at the gallery she was working on a canvas which she had turned upside down in order to preserve her point of view. At least, that’s what I think she said.

Getting information from Farrell involved an effort I had not anticipated. For instance, I asked how she got started painting. This was her answer:

“Steve McQueen saw I was intense I guess and should get a hobby it was ‘The Reivers’ and we moved from Topanga to Beverly Hills and now Chance won’t see me so we moved back to Topanga and got a Jacuzzi and one day I’m making sardine sandwiches for a football team in Beverly Hills and suddenly I’m not a mom anymore well what’re you going to do the kid is growing up anyhow there I am working on a film and everyone is buying my paintings and it’s a whole new thing for me but my husband says I ruined the painting do you think I should take the bridge out?”

Whaaat?

She scratched and bounced as she talked, like Tigger in “Winnie the Pooh.” Also, which should be obvious, she spoke without punctuations and managed to slip from one subject to another with a facility that was almost supernatural.

I don’t know why she scratched. She seemed pretty clean to me and probably didn’t have fleas, although I know for a fact there are fleas in Topanga. I think it was a nervous itch.

Anyhow, there she was scratching and bouncing around the gallery, with me trying to figure out what she was saying.

I even went back twice in an effort to make sense out of my notes. The second time I took a tape recorder which I hardly ever use because they get awkward and require too much time to listen to when you should be good enough to get a quote without a machine in your hand my God I’m beginning to write the way she talks!

Wait a minute, everybody stay calm.

It’s a simple situation, really. Caltrans wants to put in a $40-million freeway interchange that would take out part of the famous old Leonis Adobe and alter the nature of the picturesque Western-type settlement around it.

A couple of lawsuits have been filed and a lot of people are damned mad at Caltrans. There is nothing more savage than a preservationist in the attack. They’ll kill to protect the past.

I think it’s that kind of spirit that has got Sharon Farrell scratching and bouncing. Or maybe she scratches and bounces all the time, who knows? Actresses are a funny bunch.

I wanted to do a kind of mini-profile on Farrell, but I would have to commit the rest of my career to plucking answers from her monologues, like an archeologist trying to make sense out of hieroglyphics.

The woman never seems to breathe during her replies. I tried to interrupt a couple of times but she sailed past me like a ship in a storm. So I just let her talk and took what I needed.

I asked, for instance, “Where you from, Sharon?”

She said: “Iowa and Kentucky too I guess I spent a lot of time at grandma’s home with cows and chickens and pigs and that’s what I wanted in Topanga what I mean I did everything for my kid and now he says why did you take us out of Topanga Barbra Streisand goes over and spies on her kids you know you want to be friends and they don’t want to see you.”

“Iowa, huh?”

You get the idea. Anyhow, everyone is welcome to attend the party and auction at the Red River Gallery Feb. 24, a Saturday. It’s free.

According to Farrell, maybe Doug McClure will be there and Bo Hopkins though that isn’t for sure and Ron Palillo from “Welcome Back Kotter” remember that great show and she wishes to God Barbara Carrera would stop being so shy and show up and she’s got calls in to Jack Palance and Dennis Weaver did she say that Bruce Boxleitner came by one day on his horse?

Probably.