AN OLD-FASHIONED GIRL IN THE 241H CENTURY

By Earl Wingard

All day long Heather Menzies lives precariously in the danger filled world of the Twenty-fourth Century, performing her starring role as Jessica in MGM Television's LOGAN'S RUN, new science fiction series seen Monday nights on CBS.

Then, at work day's end, she throws her personal time machine into reverse and goes home to a house filled with antiques. This occupation of two worlds so far apart might seem a bit unusual, but Heather Menzies is not a usual person. For one thing, Heather never grew up with a home base, which might explain her interest in antiques as a means of establishing roots into the past.

"My father, who is an artist, always had a kind of gypsy spirit and couldn't stay in one place very long," explains Heather. "So we just moved, constantly moved."

Heather's parents emigrated from Scotland to Toronto, Canada, where Heather was born.

The route then led from Toronto to Vancouver to Miami to Long Beach to England, back to Long Beach to North Hollywood to Hollywood to Burbank to Sherman Oaks.

Now Heather and her husband, Robert Urich (a regular in the "Soap" series), live in a Connecticut-type house in a Connecticut-type setting in Studio City in Los Angeles' suburban San Fernando Valley. "It's really old-fashioned," Heather enthuses. "A lot of antiques, pretty wallpaper on the walls, a lot of brass and, of course, oak furniture.

"One of my goals in life is to live some day in a place like Connecticut or Vermont. Some place with seasons. That's my favorite part of the country and although I haven't seen all of it, I've loved every bit of what I've seen."

In the meantime, Heather luxuriates in the pseudo-Connecticut atmosphere she has created in southern California. "I have a huge vegetable garden in the backyard, "the blue eyed, blonde actress continues. My husband has been into gardening always, and he taught me a lot.

Then I learned a lot just from doing it. Like watching things die and then realizing that you have to water them once in awhile. "But we came out pretty well, a lot of brocolli, cauliflower, cucumbers, green peppers, carrots and strawberries. Just about everything we like ." Cooking is another hobby of Heather's because she finds it "very therapeutic ."

" After I've been working all day, " she says, " I come home in the evening and cook up a storm. I look up recipes for things to cook and then change them around to what I think they should be. "I love to cook Italian dishes . I cook a great spaghetti and I make a great lasagna, and there's a chicken prosciutto dish that I make with cheese. "I love to try new recipes and my husband serves as kind of a guinea pig. Sometimes they're disastrous and I never make them again, but usually they work out pretty good."

Besides collecting antiques for her house, gardening and cooking, the very active Ms. Menzies enjoys participation sports. "I love to go horseback riding, or go to the beach for a day, even if it's raining," she continues. "I jog a lot and I play tennis. I love to ski, in fact, I love anything that's outside. That's one reason I want to move to the country eventually, when we can. When we don't have to be in town all the tirne."

In the meantime, it's early to bed and early to rise for Heather Menzies as she works long hours five days a week on the filming of LOGAN'S RUN, along with her co-stars Gregory Harrison, Donald Moffat and Randy Powell. The rigorous schedules result from the insistence by executive producers Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts that each hour show be treated as if it were a feature motion picture. It's up to producer Leonard Katzman, Heather and the others to follo," through.

That's the way it is in the Twentieth Centurey and that's probably the way it still will be in the Twenty-fourth.