How does this adorable, long-run hit show manage to keep ticking every week like a solid-gold clock? Visit Susan Saint James, Jane Curtin & Company on the set and find out. On a bleak blue Monday morning recently, the cast of Kate & Allie con- vened around a long table in the basement Green Room of the Ed Sullivan Theatre in New York.

Even reading a script they had seen only once before in their lives, wearing pardon-me-but-l-just-fell-out-of-bed rehearsal clothes (denims, T-shirts, scarves, sneakers, hair undone, cheeks un- rouged, jeans unpressed and so on), Susan Saint James, Jane Curtin & Company possess that enviable magic that can charm birds off trees and, with a little bit of luck, audiences away from other channels. Susan and Jane, those divorced and dauntless moms, and Ari (Meyers) and Allison (Smith) and Freddy (Kochler), their TV children, all spend more time together on the set on West 53rd Street than they do in their own homes. With Bill Persky, the show's director, and Bob Randall its head writer (not to mention dozens of unsung production people who form their crackerjack support system), they have managed to keep the show as fresh as new-baked bread for nearly 100 episodes now. In a television era that one eminent critic, John J. O'Connor of the New York Times, recently termed the Vulgarity Sweepstakes, here is one sitcom that does not sacrifice sweet rationality to raunchiness or tastelessness. Instead, it discovers its subject matter, and its honest sexiness, in the everyday realities that contemporary men and women confront. How the devil do they do it?, you might wonder. I certainly did. So Bill Persky invited me to live with the show for a week and experience the magic firsthand. DAY ONE By the time we walk through the stage door on Monday morning, Bob Randall (with staff writers Anne Flett and Chuck Ranberg) has already hammered out a script that swings— almost—as smoothly as a pendulum. The work of the next four days will consist of removing the almost from that con- struction: cutting and tightening, adding new business and new lines, subtracting the ones that don't play. "The Band Singer," an episode about young love today, has been designed to showcase Allison Smith's singing voice, which Susan Saint James as she listens, enraptured, terms "perfectly stunning." The players on Kate & Allie are one-for- all and all-for-one, regardless of what you may have heard about the two stars "fending." Let's get that straight at the start. Jane and Susan, while deeply compatible performers, are also vastly different personalities—off-screen as well as on. Susan bubbles nearly all the time like a hot kettle on the stove. Jane, a much cooler and more private person, saves most of her effervescence for her work. As Kate and Allie, these two women share a house on Bank Street in Greenwich Village because, at the moment, it works for them. They share the stage on West 53rd Street for the same essential reason. And the personal dynamic between the ebullient, outgoing Susan and the inward-looking, cerebral Jane gives pungent life to their show. "Working with Jane is pretty great," says Susan between scenes. "We have the same work habits, the same back- grounds. We both went to the same Catholic boarding school [in different cities], the Academy of the Sacred Heart." Their "only contretemps," Susan emphasizes, arose "when I got pregnant. It unbalanced the whole work load." (She has four children, ranging in age from 16 to one year old; Jane has one child, Tess, age five.) "So my great happiness was everyone else's burden. But, like all the great couples in America, Jane and I worked right through it. Playing together is like a marriage. Because we have a contract, we're stuck with each other. And we stuck with each other," Susan adds with evident satisfaction. On the set, Allison Smith has just finished belting out her big song, "Goodbye to You" Now all of 18, she played Annie in the hit musical Annie on Broadway, starting at age ten. So the magnitude and caliber of her voice comes as no surprise to Bill Persky and Bob Randall. Writer Randall - bearded and bright-eyed --- and director Persky --with a mop of steely-gray hair and the face of a troubled prize fighter -- are both in their 50s and the divorced fa thers of grown children. They know the Kate & Allie territory as well as their own kitchens, where they have both done time. But two middle-aged guys at the helm of a basically-about- women sitcom? It may seem to the onlooker a contradiction in terms. "The show's not about women," Persky objects. "It's about people, not sex or gender. We always find ways to make it funny and enlightening. But we never set out to do heavy themes or 'issue' shows. Our thinking always starts with 'This incident happened,' not with *We have something to say.' " Yet Kate & Allie always --implicitly -- has something to say, "not only about divorce, generational discord and the problems inherent in heterosex, but also about race relations and -- in an episode titled The Gay Landlady --about homosexuality, too," says the director. Today, the show is about loving a young man who only likes you. Allison, who plays teenage Jennie, has big eyes for band leader Jonathan Scherick, who plays Howard. "I'm really pretty raw. This is like the biggest thing I've ever done in my life," Scherick confides on Day One, and by Day Four hands in a polished, warm, thoughtful performance. No small thanks to Bill Persky, who shepherds him through the week as if preparing for a Broadway opening night rather than an ephemeral half hour on the tube. On the set the group chemistry goes into action very fast. When Suze (as he calls her) says to Billy (as she calls him), "I think that's out of character for Kate," he doesn't give her a hard time. She is Kate. She knows. So Billy, consummate diplomat and pragmatic director, makes a fast change in the dialogue. They have four short days to perform a miracle, for heaven's sake—and create the world of Kate & Allie anew. (Persky never loses his temper for an instant all week—until the end of Day Three, when he bellows, on behalf of his hardworking stage manager, Rob Bruce- Baron: "This man is fighting for his life every day, and there's nothing but noise on the set! So settle down and shut up. " Everyone instantly shuts up.) "We're just like a family," the director remarks in a quiet moment. "Sometimes I get angry; sometimes Susan or Jane gets angry. There are times when they're impossible to deal with and times when all is smooth and calm. Although they're not social best friends and they don't hang out together, they're enormously respectful of each other's skills." After lunch on Day One, the cast reassembles for the first time on the well- used Kate & Allie kitchen/living-room set. The actors still read, sitting down, from their yellow scripts. At Persky's suggestion, Susan devises some lines in French for the opening scene. "I'd demand a writing credit!" says Jane mis- chievously. Then by three o'clock, scripts still in hand, Jane and Susan have gotten up from their chairs and started to move around. By four o'clock, Persky informs the cast, "We're long. I'd like to make another cut." He has been cutting and trim- ming all day. A few minutes later, he says to his stars, "Susan and Jane, you can split if you like. I'll work with the kids from here on." Broad smiles from the stars. *Tou mean split as in split?" Susan asks. Allison and Jonathan move to one of the temporary sets, Club 87, for another rendition ofAllison's musical number. It is so strong, polished and effective that Persky—reassured—breaks early for the day.