Carol Kane has mastered a new language for her role as Andy Kaufman's wife on 'Taxi' By Ellen Torgenson Shaw

The first thing Carol Kane did in Taxi was to appear in a guest spot three times-as Latka Gravas's lady friend. Simka- and win an Emmy for the role. The second thing whe did, after she became his wife, and a regular on the whow, was to learn the "Latka language" from Andy Kaufman, who plays Latka and invented his lingo--a combination of glottal gobbledygook and Lowr Slobovian that sounds like nonsense syllables with a Romanian overlay.
"It's a made-up language," Kane says. "Andy made it up and got a very specific sound to it. The script is in English. You just open your mouth and dive in," changing English to "Latka" as you go.
Kane made her first foray in Latkaese while dining--at his request--with Kaufman, who informed her that during the meal they would not speak English. "It is the perfect way to learn a language." she says. And she doesn't need a script in front of her to speak the argot. give her a sentence and she comes up with the translation. "Pleae pass the salt," for example, quickly becomes "Bisha ga ba ba."
Kane, 30, has been acting since she was an 8-year-old in a nonprofessional theater company in Cleveland where she was born. "Work is the most nourishing thing so far in my life," she once told KNBC-TV talk-show host Keith Berwick. "I have fun at work. I make my relationships at work. My sense of values is at work. I get myself out of bed to go to work."
Kane is willing to talk for hours about filmmaking and the theater, bringing characters to life and thinking of parts she will essay in the future. Despite the obsession with herself suggested by 16 years of psychoanalyis, she is curiously free from the thoughtless vanity and narcissism of the ordinary actor. If she is not a star, she is not a starlet either, but a grave, humorous, perceptive woman: a truth teller if she answers a question. When queried about her age, she forthrightly admits it. "I can play a woman 20 or a woman 35 with the right hair and makeup," she squeaks. Her looks have been a matter of interest to many a reporter, most of whom travel back in time to declare she looks like a Botticelli. It is not exactly untrue. Her coloring is fair, her skin is pure and her large eyes are a pale, aquamarine blue. She is beautiful in her own odd, mad way: she looks like a hip water nymph, Venus rising from the waves dressed in a jogging suit. Kane makes little effort to set off her copious flyaway blonde hair and flawless skin, dressing as she mostly does in mismatching thrift-shop or Salvation-Army-style clothes. Generally admired for both her Pre-Ralphaelite looks and her acting, she has had at least one detractor. Critic John Simon said she looked like "an albino witch" in the Lincoln Center production of "The Tempest." "You have to have the stomach for ugliness to admire Carol kane," Simon wrote.
Rehearsing on the set of Taxi, though, it is clear she is elementally happy. Reading her lines at the top of her voice, hitting her marks, moving into position with the other actors, Kane looks blissful. The scene calls for her to be kissed by Danny De Vito (Louie). Everytime he sweeps her into his arms, she giggles. Finally, she settles down and fives a performance that could easily be taped then and there.
Already Kane has achieved, in a small steady way, something most actors don't- she works nearly all the time. Never enough, naturally. "You think you're halfway up the ladder," she says, when the slide back down begins. But she is far enough up the ladder now not to have to work in health-food stores, as she did in her acting youth. Not only did Kane star in "Hester Street" (as the young wife), she appeared with Jack Nicholson in "The Last Detail" (as a prostitute), with Woody Allen in "Annie Hall" (as his first wife) and with Al Pacino in "Dog Day Afternoon". Kane's roles have ranged from psychotic young women to screaming women victims of mad killers to puzzled housewives.
Her Taxi character, Simka, is not Miss Carol Kane at all. "Simka is fun," Kane says. "The way she is now is a big leap: she's evolving like I'm evolving. I could go on playing her for quite a while. I get a kick out of her. I start laughing when she does...whatever comes into her brain she spits out. I'm not like that, and when I am, I tend to regret it. I mull a lot over what I do. There's a whole lot of stuff I feel free to express in my own voice. She is liberating. She is direct."
Kane is pensive, circuitous, subterranean. And temperamental, according to herself and nobody else. "I learned a lot on Taxi aabout controlling my temper," she says. "It is clear to me that they [the cast members] have made a great deal of effort in being decent to each other. That makes for an indescribable warmth. I'm very nervous when I work, and when you're nervous, you have a short fuse."
Kane's self-admitted temper exploded during a recent photo session for TV GUIDE. At first, she insisted to the photo editor that she be properly lit so that her face would appear to the best advantage--a not unreasonable request, and in Hollywoood, a not too uncommon request. Indeed, the photo editor assured her that TV GUIDE wanted her to look her best too. According to the photo editor, the first photo setup went well; everyone was pleased. On a second setup, Kane demanded that TV GUIDE give her the Polaroids (that are used as preliminary test photos in all sessions) She said she wanted them to show to a director from whom she wanted a job.
The photo editor refused and explained that all photographic materials belonged to TV GUIDE. If she wished, said the photo editor, she could hire the same photographer. Kane then had a full-blown temper tantrum, raging and screaming that "you're trying to ruin my career. My face is my career." With that, Kane flounced off to her bedroom (the photo session took place in her West Hollywood apartment), and the photo editor and photographer prepared to leave. Then Kane flounced back in and said, "Well, even if you won't do me a favor, I'll complete the session." Which she did. Without enthusiasm.

Kane had been more relaxed during an interview in her apartment. Whe settled down for a chat there one day, clutching an empty, white plastic cigarette holder. She gave up smoking a few years ago. She was also drinking fresh-squeezed carrot juice and eating vitamin pills because she wanted to lose some weight and get back to her 102 pounds, just about right for her fragile, 5-foot, 2-inch size. At the Paramount Commissary, a few days earlier, Kane had eaten a dish of boiled zucchini that looked like a burnt lawn, pineapple and coffee. She is a vegetarian. "I only eat things that you don't have to kill," she says. "I don't feel good about taking somebody else's life if I don't have to." As she finishes her carrot juice, she talks about her past.
Her father is an architect and her mother is a jazz interpreter and improviser in Paris. When Carol was 12, her mother and father were divorced. It is a time in her life she remembers with a desparate sadness. The death of her parents marriage troubled the hypersensitive young girl and sent her into early analysis. From 12 to 14, she attended boarding school, moved in with her mother in New York at 14, and after high school bought her own studio loft from a trust fund left her by her grandfather. At 16, she was already working full time in the company of "The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie," and at 17 began her movie career in "Carnal Knowledge."

In 1979, a veteran of 23 films and much theater, Kane was not exactly sure she wanted to attempt television. Then she met James Brooks, one of the executive producers and creators of Taxi, through Penny Marshall, a friend of both.
"As I recall," Brooks says, "Carol came to see men for advice on doing TV. She did a guest spot on Taxi [to see how she would do]. It went through the roof. She did two more spots and won an Emmy for her second appearance. I think she respected our show, respected the actors. And she brings a wonderful spirit to the company."
Now, though, having had success, minor fame, the adoration of her profession, she wouldn't mind security. "I was paid $475 a week for 'Hester Street,' she says, adding that since it was a quality picture, she was delighted to do it for such a small sum (by Hollywood standards). And she would still--original vagabond that she is--travel to any point on the globe to do a film she believed had artistic merit. She would even do the Johny Carson show.
When she won her Emmy, Carson's scout called her for a preinterview. Kane thought she dazzled em with her intelligence, her sparkle, her wit. "But I felt a deep certainty I had failed." And so she had. Carson never called her to come on his show. END