Ive decided to translate this article for TrishDR and maybe you, Lori, would want to take it for your site, too, after youve corrected the mistakes I mean what does not sound English here. I know there ARE rather many factual mistakes here as well but it was not me who wrote the article, so they must stay the way they are BTW we could have a contest like we had once: how many things are wrong here concerning Lane
I do not know why there should have occurred so much misunderstanding every time when Lane was in Russia (maybe he should have had me for his translator)
Antenna 1995
WILL JULIA MARRY MASON?
Author: Elena Serova
For the second time in the last two years the legendary Mason Capwell has visited Russia. And every time he has skipped Moscow. Last summer he came to St. Petersburg for the festival White Nights. This year hes visited Belarus. This year Mason has come to fulfill the request of the FIDOF chairperson Armando Moreno to greet the participants of the Slavyansky Bazar (Slav Market) Festival in Vitebsk. Lane Davies who on screen was the rebellious Capwell is a personal friend of Prof. Moreno and a representative of the FIDOF headquarters. So he fulfilled the task with pleasure.
THE LUBE MUSICIANS ARE CRAZY ABOUT LANE
A sleeping car ticket to Vitebsk had been reserved for the actor. However, receiving the Belarus visa took more time than the festival organizers had planned. The actor well known all over the world appeared to be a modest and unpretentious man. He agreed to take a bus ride with pleasure. Actually he had to share the bus with the musicians from the (Russian) Lube band: the bus had been reserved for them. During the trip the musicians grew quite fond of the overseas star.
The first time the journalists had a chance to see Lane Davies was at a round table conference organized on occasion of the FIDOF celebrating 30 years of existence. The actor in a dark-blue shirt and a light-grey jacket was smiling to the people present heartily. All the female pen acrobats never took their eyes off him, and each of the ladies was sure it was her he was smiling at, exclusively. The girls found that in real life he looked younger and more attractive than on screen.
The chairman of the round table, the president of the Slavyansky Bazar corporation Serguey Vinnikov was also influenced by the screen images charms, so he introduced not Lane Davies but Mr. Mason, much to the journalists delight. Lane said he was used to such slips. Davies was asked why he had come to Vitebsk, if he was familiar with Slav culture. Lane said frankly he was familiar only with Slav music and that hed come because he liked to travel, generally. Then the Vitebsk journalists started fishing for compliments to their native town. Mason was not greedy with them. Almost all the journalists wanted to ask whether Mason would marry Julia or not, but none of them dared to: the atmosphere of the round table did not presuppose such questions.
HAMLET? CAN DO
After the conference was over the correspondents surrounded the actor. Each of them asked for a specific time for an interview. There were so many requests that it was decided to organize a press conference. To add to this, they tried to intercept Mason in the Vitebsk hotel he was staying at. (By the way, not all Russian stars agree to stay here. Igor Nikolaev, Philipp Kirkorov, Oleg Gazmanov and many others prefer the elite hotel Eridan. Davies was quite satisfied with the de luxe suite at Vitebsk.) At the elevators Mason was met by the nimble Ukrainian journalists who managed to learn the answer to the great mystery of the actors gastronomic preferences.
Mason was just about to have a cup of coffee, so he told the girls. In Vitebsk Davies appeared to be too shy to order any special food for himself, though it was hard for him as a vegetarian to choose the dishes to his taste. At first he had to live on bread and coffee; later a vegetable table was organized for him and so he managed to taste the famous Belarus deruns (a national Belarus dish).
In the evening, at the press conference the conference hall was packed full. The first question, naturally, was how much in common Lane had with Mason. Mason and I have the same sense of humor, Davies said. He added Mason was ambitious like himself but smarter. On the other hand, I have a higher self-esteem, and also I drink less, the actor stated. But on the whole, when you have played a role for five years, willy-nilly you become more and more like your character.
Lane Davies is a graduate of New York University theatre dept. He started his acting career with a number of soap operas after which he was invited to play Mason in Santa Barbara. Davies says they were shooting SB in the mornings five days a week, and in the evenings he was to play in his own Santa Susana Repertory Theatre now Hamlet, now Macbeth. After a while, combining these activities was too much for Lane and he had to bid farewell to Mason. After they had completed their work in SB, several actors, including Lane Davies, made a world tour to promote the show in the countries where it was on. (Today it is being aired in 36 countries.) During the trip he made friends with the actors who played the roles of Ted, Sophia and Julia, and they still are in touch.
LANE MAKES NO SLIPSHOD WORKER
After the tour Lane married and now lives quite happily with his wife and two sons who are 3 and 4. We have only boys in our family, Davies says. My brothers and I have all in all 9 sons and not a single daughter. By the way, the actor refused to give the names of his wife and sons. He was even too superstitious to write them down on paper. (I cannot but say that the same newspaper had mentioned their names more than once before; another newspaper proudly announced Lane named one of his sons Mason: they must have misheard Nathan Olga) When asked what his wife was, Lane said that being his wife was a hard enough job; to add to this, shes a producer at his theatre.
Davies has no ideas about his sons future. The main thing for them is to grow up good, decent people, he says, and what they become politicians or actors is not that important. I can say one thing: I am not going to waste my energy trying to interfere in case they want to become actors, the way it was once done with me.
The journalists really wanted to know who Davies would give his heart to if he were Mason. It appeared Masons tastes were not too different from the actors: From the human point of view Marys closer to me, from the emotional point of view its Julia. Lane was reproached that he had given five years of his life to the soap. Wouldnt it be better to devote all this time to Shakespeare? an exalte journalist exclaimed. Shakespeare is very good, Davies said, but I wanted to play a contemporary man. To work at such a complicated character as Mason was interesting to me.
As to other facts from Lane Davies biography, we managed to find out that he lives in Los Angeles and at leisure likes fishing. When asked how big the biggest fish hed ever caught was, he gaily threw his arms very wide so that the fish he was showing seemed just a little smaller than a shark. But the main question all the mass media people were interested in, that is would Julia marry Mason, Lane did not answer. A commercial secret.
THE STAR RELAXING
In Vitebsk Davies had no chance to go fishing though there are enough fish in the local rivers. The cinema star was being entertained with the high society parties. At the banquet dedicated to the 25th anniversary of the Russkaya Pesnya (Russian Song) band, the actor drank mineral water. But later the atmosphere of the Russian feast produced a relaxing effect on Mason, and he tasted vodka, after which he let a well-known journalist Galina Kmit sit for a while in his lap.
The actor was generous in receiving his fans love. The autographs he gave in Vitebsk are countless. The journalists were the luckiest. After the press conference they had a chance to take pictures with the beloved character. He was holding the girls round the waist with an overseas tenderness.
Lane spent little time indoors. He went for walks in Vitebsk, always surrounded by crowds of natives, visited receptions and the art-caf where the festival people were drinking spirits and discussing the news. He seldom changed out of the jeans and the jacket into a suit. Only once Lane really looked solemn: at the festival closing concert. In a black tux the actor went out to the stage and sang a simple song. He was greeted with an ovation that many pop stars can only dream of. As Davies admitted he had never studied singing professionally and he sang only in musicals. However, it was unimportant. He could do without singing at all. It was enough for him to enter the stage to delight the many thousands audience. The public were looking at Lane with loving eyes; but what they really were interested in was whether Julia would marry Mason or not
