A Marriage Made In Mystery -- For Jim And Pat French, Radio Dramas - Like Life - Are Better As A Duet

BELLEVUE

After nearly 50 years of marriage, Jim and Pat French tune in to one another so well they can finish one another's sentences.

Yet the best testament to their marriage may be that they don't.

Instead, their marriage, like their respective businesses, thrives as a partnership.

Neither Jim nor his nickname, "Gentleman Jim" - earned during four decades as a Seattle radio personality - has retired. Although he left KIRO-AM's "Midday" show in 1994, Jim spends his days writing and producing radio dramas that air nationwide on nearly 200 stations.

Pat teaches acting and voice-over classes at Bellevue Community College and Discover U.

Tomorrow they will combine their talents - a typical co-production for his Jim French Productions and her Communication Media Workshops - when Pat's students perform three of Jim's radio dramas at the East Shore Readers Theater.

There will be sound effects and microphones, and the performance will be staged like a radio drama. Unlike Jim's renowned "KIRO Mystery Playhouse" sessions, performed on the last Monday of the month at Seattle's Museum of History & Industry, tomorrow's show won't be recorded.

Jim wrote the dramas and sometimes acts in them, but usually he just watches the performances.

"I can write, I can act, but I can't direct," Jim says. "I tried directing for several years, but I did it as a writer, telling the actor how to read the lines. I was robbing the actor of their voice."

Then one day he got sick.

Pat directed the radio drama. She coaxed terrific performances from the actors. Jim heard the difference and promptly hired her.

It was once again a professional marriage to match their domestic one.

They have often worked together. They first met when Jim was a student at Pasadena City College in California, producing a play. Pat volunteered to do the makeup.

"I asked her out when she was doing my makeup," he says. "She turned me down, but I was persistent."

After their marriage, Jim got a job in Honolulu. Each morning they did a show together called "Over the Coffee Cups." Pat was bored after the brief segments and got a second job at the Waikiki Liberty House department store.

"One day Jimmy Stewart and his wife walked in," Pat says. "I waited on them."

Stewart recognized Pat's voice - he had just heard the couple's show.

"That dear, sweet, wonderful man invited me out to lunch," she says. "Three things he told me were burned into my brain.

"If you want to be in this business you have to truly love yourself to give yourself away to an audience. Find your own speech pattern, own it and use it. And third, always let your audience know what you're feeling."

Pat bases her 25-plus-year teaching career on those principles.

In 1952 Jim brought his voice and Pat her teaching style to the Northwest. They raised a son, Jeff, and daughter, Lee Anne, in their south Bellevue home, a self-designed Colonial house on a wooded lot.

Together and separately, Jim and Pat are local icons.

Jim's deep, calm voice still is recognized throughout the community. One of Pat's commercial successes lives on in Seattle's collective memory. She was the Red Tag Lady for Lamonts. Although the commercials ended several years ago, people recognize her voice as the zany character behind the campaign.

Their radio dramas have gained so many fans that Jim has released six cassettes of his Harry Nile detective stories. They're also permanent residents.

"We've never considered living anywhere else," Jim says. "You can lose your job overnight in radio - that's typical of the business. But I always said I'd stay here. I can do lots of other stuff."

In the early 1970s, KVI radio, then his professional home, experimented with "Theater of the Mind" radio dramas. Jim wrote one for them. Then another. Then it became a weekly series called "Crisis."

At KIRO the format was revised and still airs weekly.

The radio dramas have proved so popular that tickets, available through KIRO, are required for the free monthly recording sessions. For Jim, who has considered radio magical since he was a child, this is a nearly perfect career.

"All I ever wanted was to be the announcer who said, `This is CBS, Columbia Broadcasting System.' To me that's the gold stars on the shoulder," Jim says. "I never got to say it."

But he's happy. Instead he writes the magic for a diverse audience.

"And the audience isn't just blue-haired old people," Jim says. "The front row is always children who are fascinated with people standing around reading stories from scripts," says Pat.

That's one marketing battle they still fight.

"Too many program managers across the country are 25- to 35-year-olds who don't realize how diverse our audience is," says Pat. "The way the kids watch just blows us away."

Sherry Grindeland's phone message number is 206-515-5633. Her e-mail address is: sgri-new@seatimes.com

--------- If you go ---------

"Comedy in Three Acts," "Murder on the Mississippi" and "Baumann and the Box" will be performed at 7:30 p.m. tomorrow at the East Shore Readers Theater at East Shore Unitarian Church, 12700 S.E. 32nd St., Bellevue. Suggested donation: $5.