‘THERE WERE TIMES, DEAR’ : SHIRLEY JONES DUE ON PBS IN FILM ON ALZHEIMER’S

When Shirley Jones agreed to star in “There Were Times, Dear,” she expected that the film would be used only to raise funds for organizations involved in helping Alzheimer’s disease victims and their families.

The limited likely audience for such a film didn’t worry Jones. Meaty roles for 53-year-old actresses are hard to find. “I think I want to do this for nothing,” she heard herself saying. Or almost nothing, anyway--the minimum Screen Actors Guild wage.

But what started as a labor of love has turned out to be something that PBS thought millions might want to watch. “There Were Times, Dear,” starring Jones, Len Cariou, Cynthia Eilbacher and Dana Elcar, will air on PBS (Wednesday at 9 p.m. on KVCR Channel 24 and at 10 p.m. on KOCE Channel 50, and Thursday at 10 p.m. on KCET Channel 28).

Curled up on a sofa in the Beverly Hills home she shares with husband Marty Ingels, Jones says, “We worked our fannies off, and we all had good feelings about ‘There Were Times, Dear.’ Sometimes you do things like this that are a wonderful experience, BUT . . . This one has blossomed. In the year and a half since it was completed, the film has raised more than a million dollars for research.”

The airing on PBS is a bonus, and Jones hopes it will lead to more work. She acknowledges the difficulty of finding good parts. “I’m a little too young for this one,” she says, “a little too old for that one. No one is going to cast me as a grandmother, even though I am one.”

With her pixie haircut, Jones resembles a college cheerleader more than a grandmother.

During her 33-year acting career, Jones has made 20 movies including “Oklahoma,” “The Music Man” and “Elmer Gantry,” for which she won an Oscar. She also appeared in ABC’s “The Partridge Family” for five years with her stepson David Cassidy.

After the series ended in 1974, she appeared in occasional film and TV roles, but Los Angeles residents saw more of her as a Ralphs supermarket spokeswoman, a job she has now given up after a four-year run. Currently, she makes appearances on the concert circuit.

Nancy Malone, who directed and co-produced “There Were Times, Dear,” sought out Jones for the role of the care-ridden wife because, she explains, “Shirley has a very loving, warm personality. She doesn’t project Angst. “

Jones’ participation didn’t sway CBS, which at the time perceived a film about Alzheimer’s disease as being too downbeat. However, the network later aired another film on the subject. “Do You Remember Love” starred Richard Kiley and Joanne Woodward, who won an Emmy for her performance as a college professor suffering from Alzheimer’s.

“That film is more from the victim’s point of view,” Jones said. “Ours deals with Alzheimer’s disease as a family problem.”

In “There Were Times, Dear,” Susanne and Bob Millard (played by Jones and Cariou) have been happily married for 25 years. When Bob starts forgetting things, it doesn’t seem serious. But after getting lost on a camping trip, he consults a doctor and discovers he has Alzheimer’s disease. The film follows Bob’s downhill slide but focuses primarily on how it affects his wife.

“It’s horrible to look into the eyes of someone you care for and there’s no memory of what you shared,” Malone said. “It’s like losing your soul. And there’s no cure.”

Malone, who regularly directs episodes of “Dynasty” and “Hotel,” became concerned about Alzheimer’s disease, a form of senility, after reading about it in a magazine.

“So little is done by the U.S. government about older people,” she complains. “If you’re a child or even a dog, you get more attention than if you’re an older person in need of help. We somehow walk around in a Peter Pan fantasy that we aren’t going to have these problems.”

When CBS rebuffed their project, Malone and her production partner, Linda Hope, decided that the best way they could help Alzheimer’s victims and their families was to make a film that could be used for fund-raising.

The American Film Institute’s Independent Filmmaker Program awarded them a $20,000 grant, and they “hustled” the rest of the $330,000 budget from such sources as Gloria Monty, Peg Yorkin, Bob and Dolores Hope (Linda Hope’s parents), the Lawrence Welk Foundation, Occidental Petroleum and Sandoz Pharmaceuticals Corp.

Since the film was completed 18 months ago, Malone and Hope have been personally shipping out their four “There Were Times, Dear” prints to Alzheimer’s chapters, nursing homes and hospitals around the country.

When South Carolina Educational Television thought the film deserved an airing on PBS, Sandoz Pharmaceuticals agreed to underwrite the cost, plus the 30-minute discussion that will follow.

But their struggle isn’t over, even now. Malone and Hope are busily calling PBS stations to encourage them to air “There Were Times, Dear” at the time it was set to air nationally. Local programmers use their own discretion in scheduling. Malone says, “It’s amazing even to this moment how difficult everything has been.”