Part 16 (1/2)
Sent: July 16, 2001
Hi Baby,
Loved the song you wrote. I'll love it even more when I can hear you sing it. Sweetheart, there's no reason on earth that you can't ”do it all.” After all, isn't that what you've always done?
Love, Mama
After she left Pepperdine, Carrie began to actively pursue her acting and singing career. In 1985 she landed the continuing role of Reggie Higgins in the TV version of the movie musical Fame, about a group of students attending New York City's High School of Performing Arts. In its way, the show was a precursor to Glee. Reggie fit Carrie like a glove; a kind of kooky, bohemian girl who was the first in her school to wear dark nail polish and experiment with pink highlights in her blond hair! (These were Carrie's ideas for her character, not to mention the boas!)
I was invited to be a guest one week. The script was t.i.tled ”Reggie and Rose.” The story line featured me as Rose, a cafeteria worker befriended by Reggie. As a finale, we wound up performing the cla.s.sic ”We're a Couple of Swells” dressed like hobos.
Carrie and me as Reggie and Rose in an episode of Fame
We had a ball, and it was the first of several times Carrie and I were to act together. We appeared in a TV movie, Hostage. We played a musical mother and daughter on an episode of Carol & Company, and again in an episode of Touched by an Angel, where Carrie wound up being voted by the crew as their favorite guest star of all nine seasons. Why? Aside from always being on time, knowing her lines, and hitting her marks, I think it was because she never went back to her trailer between takes, preferring to sit and joke with the crew while waiting for the next setup. She also made it a point to know each and every crew member by name. She never forgot a single one.
Carrie and me as mother and daughter in an episode of Touched by an Angel
Earlier, in 1988, Carrie starred in what was to become a cult cla.s.sic, Tokyo Pop, where she played an American singer who goes to j.a.pan and gets involved with a j.a.panese singer and his band that makes it into the top ten on Tokyo's pop charts. She also wrote and sang the closing number that played during the end credits.
She received rave reviews for her performance, including this one by Los Angeles Times film critic Sheila Benson:
April 15, 1988
Loping through downtown Tokyo with her seven-league stride, her shades on her nose, her white-blond hair tucked up under a leopard pillbox, Carrie Hamilton stalks through Tokyo Pop and straight into our hearts.
When you leave the movie, all that stays clearly in focus is Hamilton. Even silhouetted against a Niagara of neon, she sucks in all the scene's energy, inadvertently, and probably even unconsciously. It's useless to try to concentrate on anyone else when Hamilton is up there, radiating away.
Carrie as Wendy in Tokyo Pop
Carrie was on her way. The phones kept ringing with new job offers. She even got a call from Marlon Brando, who had a project in mind. And what did she do? She turned them all down and decided to form her own band, Big Business, and to write and sing her own music in clubs.
To my surprise, I found myself turning into a stage mother, and begging her to reconsider. ”Honey, opportunities like this won't keep knocking at your door forever!”
”No, Mama, I don't care about being a 'star.' I just want to concentrate on something else that I love for a while. I don't know, I guess I do want to do it all.”