Jennifer Edwards on Acting, Meeting James Coburn, and the NFL's Infamous 'Heidi' Game

The KCET Cinema Series held a James Coburn film night on Wednesday, October 5 at the historic Aero Theatre in Santa Monica with a rare 35 mm print screening of "The Carey Treatment." The 1972 thriller was directed by Blake Edwards and stars Coburn as a doctor trying to clear his colleague of a murder charge. 

Before the screening, KCET Cinema Series host Pete Hammond led a Q&A session with actress Jennifer Edwards, who plays a teenage girl with information that may help Dr. Carey's investigation. Edwards, who is also the daughter of director Blake Edwards, shared her insight on "The Carey Treatment" and also talked about her work in the 1968 television adaptation of "Heidi," which gained notoriety when it aired over the last few minutes of a Jets vs. Raiders football game. 

The KCET Cinema Series fall season is generously sponsored by the James and Paula Coburn Foundation. It concludes on October 10 with a screening of "American Pastoral." 

The following is a portion of Hammond's interview with Jennifer Edwards, edited for length and clarity. 

On the story behind making "The Carey Treatment." 

I was 13 at the time, so I would hear stories through closed doors and screaming and yelling and all these different things. 

The bottom line, from what I understand, is that Jim Aubrey was a very power-hungry kind of maniacal guy who wanted power over all the film that was being shot underneath him. He had taken a film that my dad had done before this one, "Wild Rovers," and because my father at the time didn't have final cut, Aubrey seemed to think that he knew better on how to edit a movie and went in and pretty much destroyed "Wild Rovers." "Wild Rovers" now you can find with the director's cut and it's a completely different movie. Same sort of thing with this film... he pretty much did the same sort of thing with this one. 

I think my dad was contractually obligated to do another movie under the Aubrey umbrella, if you will, but he was not a very... there were stories of Aubrey throwing women out of windows and hitting them. He was a scary dude. You'll see Skye Aubrey, who is Jim Aubrey's daughter, is actually in this movie and she was a really fantastic actress. But, that was one of the things too was that my dad had to have Skye in the movie, but she actually delivered. There were a lot of very strange things that happened. The producers on the film were trying to get me to do cocaine. I was 13... my father heard about it, got the Boston teamsters. [Laughter.] There was a movie within a movie in this thing. 

On how Jennifer Edwards was cast in "The Carey Treatment."

In the script and in the actual novel, there is a young, 13-year-old girl, ironically, and my father had said to the producers and everything, my daughter had just starred in something and maybe she would be right for this. I was brought in. I was tested amongst a lot of other girls and he said "I'm not going to interfere, I don't want to be partial or anything." So he didn't have anything to do with the casting process and it turned it out that they liked me enough and said, "yeah, we want to use her." So it was the first time he and I actually worked together as director and actor. 

It was great. Ironically, at the time, Lydia [her character] is a boarding school student and I was as well. I grew up in London at the time and I was a boarding school student, so I felt like I knew who she was right off the bat. 

On working with James Coburn.

I knew — I called him Jimmy — because he had done two other films with my father. In fact, I suppose you could say that the first time I was ever on screen was when I was in "What Did You Do in the War, Daddy?" I was just in the festival scene. I was on somebody's shoulders, so I had known him from the time. I was maybe seven years old and his daughter and I were friends — we grew up together and had sleepovers — so I knew him socially. But, he was very protective and he felt very safe. We have a scene in this that you'll see that was kind of a scary scene. We actually did most of the stunts ourselves, Jimmy and I, but I trusted him and my father trusted him with me doing these stunts with him. He was fantastic. He was great. 

We didn't really rehearse. It was one of those shoot the rehearsal. 

On "Heidi," Edwards' first starring role and the TV movie that interrupted a football game.

Ironically, I was visiting from London. I was visiting the set, my dad was shooting "The Party" with Peter Sellers and I was hanging around the set and somebody saw me and said, "Who's that?" ...And they found out that I was Blake Edwards' daughter and it went to his PR guy that they had been looking for this girl to play Heidi and my dad was contacted and heard that it was Delbert Mann who had just won an Oscar for "Marty" and he was going to direct this thing. So my dad came to me and said, "you were seen" and "do you want to meet?" I hadn't done anything acting-wise at all, but I said OK. So I went and I met with Delbert Mann and he liked me and he said he wanted to screen test me, so that was the next step. I was screen-tested. I heard that they had screen-tested over 1,000 girls or something, so nobody ever thought that anything was ever going to happen. But, I screen-tested and within a few days, it was like, well, you got the part and you're going to Switzerland and what time is it? I was just gone. I was in the Alps with pigtails. 

Because I was in London at the time, I knew it was airing. And the next day, I got all these calls from my dad and different people and I was starting to see newspaper clippings and, you know, 'the little brat in the white stockings stole the New York Jets' and 'Joe Namath hates the little girl [laughter].' It was just bizarre. I was 10 years old. It wasn't me. Then, over the years, I found out that NBC was told specifically, 7 o'clock, "Heidi" comes on, no fail, and that's what happened and the switchboard blew up and people were shooting themselves. 

For years, they called the phones at NBC the "Heidi phones." I always say that my tombstone will say, "She was a great moment in sports."

About 10 years ago, I was sitting on a plane. Now, [Joe Namath] used to go on "The Tonight Show" and talk about me, Heidi, and we had never met. It was a thing going around for a while of possibly doing a "Love Boat" with me and him. [Laughter.] But, I'm sitting on a plane and we're delayed and I'm thinking, why are we delayed, what's going on? And, all of a sudden, I see Joe Namath walking down the aisle and I'm thinking, that's why they held the plane. I'm sitting in an aisle seat and literally, across the aisle he sits, directly across the aisle from me. So, I wait until we take off and I lean in at one point, about 30 minutes into the flight, and I said, "Excuse me, Mr. Namath, do you remember the Heidi game?" He looked at me and said, "Yeah, of course I do." I said, "Hi, I'm Heidi." [Laughter.] We literally switched, he asked if the person next to him, so, we sat together for six hours and exchanged phone numbers and he never called me back. 

On her current projects.

I wrote a novel, "When Angels Cry." You can find it. It's gotten great reviews. I've written a couple screenplays that have just been optioned and I have another one that has a producer interested and I write songs with my fiancé, who is a fantastic composer and, yeah, just keep the creative juices flowing.