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"Sir!"
A television crew member salutes David James Elliott during a dinner break on the set of JAG. It's a friendly tease, camaraderie language amont the cast and producers of this NBC drama series about the adventures of lawyers assigned to the U.S. Navy's Judge Advocate General. JAG had been on hiatus from its Saturday slot, but returned to Wednesday nights on March 13.
For his star role of Lt. Cmdr. Harmon Rabb Jr., Elliott has been studying up on salutes and military mores and manners. Inside his Hollywood trailer, there is a copy of The Manual of Judge Advocate General, The Fundamentals of Naval Leadership, The Naval Term Dictionary, Letters Home from Vietnam, and a number of other such books.
"When I watch other movies or shows now, if the salute is off even a fraction, I can tell, and I know that though our uniforms have pockets you never, never put your hands in them," he said with a laugh, leaning against the trailer door in his crisp, close-fit khaki uniform with his character name stamped on the belt buckle.
On a more personal level, Elliott keeps a picture in his wallet that his grandfather sent home to his grandmother during World War II. Brownish-gray, the photo shows a group of men in uniform, helmets askew. His grandfather, seen in the picture, had written on the back the names of his fellow troopers along with the comment, "Seven good reasons why we are going to win the war. You know the other reason, I hope."
"I also listen to tapes. Want to hear one?" Elliott asked, slotting in a drill team training cassette. A marching cadence barks out instructions. "It's all very hard. It's difficult. We're going to do it together!" Starring in an hourlong TV series is hard work, too. "When you are shooting at least 11 pages of script a day and working 14- to 15-hour days, you've got to have time to prepare, learn lines, think about what you are doing. It leaves little time for anything else, except time with your family," said Elliott, who has a 3-year-old daughter with his wife, actress [Nanci] Chambers.
JAG is the latest creation from writer-producer Don Bellisario, alumnus of Magnum, P.I. and Quantum Leap, which made TV stars of Tom Selleck and Scott Bakula. It's obvious, looking at Elliott, that he has the same potential to attract male and female fans. The Canadian actor is in his mid-30s. He's 6 feet 4 inches tall. His easy, good looks are enhanced by smoky eyes that seem to change color with mood or uniform, whether dress white, courtroom blue, or workaday khaki. His manner is confident, sensible, neither overtly boastful nor falsely modest. His dark hair is close-cropped, very different from his teen years, when he was a long-haired member of a rock and punk band.
"I loved music. I still do, but it wasn't quite whole enough for me," Elliott said. "So when I discovered acting, which I fell into blindly, I really fell in love." A high school teacher suggested Elliott go into acting after reading part of King Lear aloud in class. Elliott liked the idea and auditioned for Ryerson Polytechnic Institute in Toronto. Though in those days he'd never even seen a play, he won a place by faking his way through a scene from a Sam Shepard play and by singing "Zip-a-dee Doo-Dah."
"I guess because I'd never acted I hadn't picked up any bad habits, and they saw me as some sort of diamond in the rough they could maybe make something of," he said.
After graduation, his career began with two years at Ontario's Stratford Shakespearean Festival. He went on to a hit performance as a stripper in the farcical play B-Movie, which traveled to the Edinburgh Festival. His fame heightened in Canada in the CBC series Street Legal, where he came on board as a cop who took up with the leading lawyer but stayed on to become a star private investigator.
Elliott was then encouraged to try Hollywood, which proved tougher to break into than expected for someone with his looks and credentials. He started out with a few small roles in series like China Beach and Doogie Howser.
The actor finally got some visibility with a role in the series The Untouchables, and in various love interest parts, a boyfriend with an alcohol problem opposite Courtney Thorne-Smith on Melrose Place, and a furniture moving hunk (with no furniture of his own), who dates Elaine on Seinfeld. Elliott said he'd like to see more humor surface in JAG.
"I feel there is endless story potential because of all the issues we can touch on, but I also want the show to be relationship-driven rather than plot-driven, because that is what I think builds and holds an audience."
With a new senior female officer joining the series, he just might see that happen.
