Janet Jones

Starting her movie career Cinderella style, with a sunny-California twist, Janet Jones was lobbing balls over the net on the courts at La Costa resort when director Garry Marshall approached her. He saw a beautiful blonde with a marvelous body, just what he needed for The Flamingo Kid. "Garry walked over to me and said, 'I think you'd be right for my new movie starring Matt Dillon.' " Janet still calls it a dream come true, grateful because she "never had to beat the pavements" but soon began to get phone calls about reading more movie scripts as well as about posing for Vogue and Harper's Bazaar. She wound up on the cover of Life. Anyone for tennis?

Girl watching becomes a subtle art when there's a Janet Jones to contemplate. Believe it or not, this all-American beauty insists she was chiefly celebrated right through high school for her skill at softball. "The guys wouldn't start the game till I finished my dinner," says Janet, adding, "I guess I stopped looking like one of the boys when I was about 18."

By that time, number six in the Jones family line-up of seven kids had already traded her baseball cleats for dancing slippers and won a Miss Dance of America title. She joined a San Francisco ballet troupe but decided that the rigorously disciplined life of a ballerina was not her style. "I wanted more freedom, more fun...more time to be with my friends." So she moved to L.A., got a job on (concluded on page 144)Janet Jones(continued from page 128) TV's Dance Fever, acquired an agent and began doing commercials for such products as Kodak, Shasta cola and Wrangler jeans.

The stroke of luck that led to her role in Flamingo Kid came about because she had taken up tennis with actor-athlete Nels Van Patten. Their four-years-plus relationship ended about the time Janet went into A Chorus Line. The film didn't fare so well, either, but Janet recalls it as "a fantastic learning experience," noting that she also remains good friends with Nels. In her code of cheerful fatalism, what happens is most likely what's meant to be.

What happened next was her major role as a gymnast in American Anthem. "To do it was thrilling, even if the movie as a whole didn't really work out. Seeing myself up on a screen that much, my first real starring part, was a little scary, a terrific responsibility. Thank God I saw it with Vitas, and he was proud of me, because he knows I give all I've got in whatever I do."

Now settled into an engagement to tennis star Gerulaitis—they haven't set a wedding date yet—Janet calls her off-the-court courtships pure coincidence. "I wasn't ever a tennis fan. Until I met the Van Patten family, I didn't even know how to keep score—though I did meet Vitas once, when I was 17, and had an instant crush on him."

That crush took years to blossom. Once known—not unlike his close friend John McEnroe—for his volatile behavior during matches, Gerulaitis is "semiretired" from competition, devoting himself to business, to bicoastal romancing of fair Janet and to a charitable youth foundation that bears his name. "People always loved him because he was so colorful on the court," Janet notes. "In private, he's fun and very giving—a great guy with a heart of gold."

Before Miss Jones officially becomes Mrs. G., both agree there's much to do. "We definitely want a family, but we have to get our careers going first. I'm up for a couple of new movies. Vitas plans to open a tennis camp in either Delray Beach or Malibu. And we'll be deeply involved together in a wonderful club he just opened in Dallas, called Pasha. It's elegant—a sort of disco for socialites who like to dress up but not as wild as the Hard Rock Cafe, right down the street."

Meanwhile, they're commuting from Dallas to his Kings Point mansion on Long Island's North Shore and to Janet's Los Angeles loft and making numerous jet stops in between. Discussing her Playboy appearance over lunch on a rainy afternoon in New York, Janet smiles. "My mother's worried, of course. But so far I've been very fortunate in my choices. Choosing the right men, the right friends, the career moves that have turned out best for me. I'm happy, I'm lucky, but I don't plan that far ahead—except that when I was a little girl and hated cleaning my room, I always told my mom that someday I'd have a maid." Now, of course, she can afford one. Will success and domestic help spoil Janet Jones? Probably not, according to her own footnote: "Last night, I was doing Vitas' washing and ironing when he came in and said, 'Well, this is a sight for sore eyes.'" And so she is.