STRICKEN WITH MS, MADLYN RHUE STILL A WORKING ACTRESS

M adlyn Rhue is dancing.

The orchestra is playing Cole Porter in an elegant, filmy sequence resembling a 1940s musical. Madlyn glides nimbly and gracefully to the music, her long legs carrying her up a flight of marble stairs to a vast mirrored ballroom romantically lit by crystal chandeliers. There she is met by her tall, tuxedoed partner. Her long, milky white gown sparkles and her translucent sleeves billow as she’s twirled by him across the polished floor. She’s dancing wonderfully.

It’s a dream.

Actress Madlyn Rhue has multiple sclerosis, a chronic, progressive disease of the central nervous system. These days she dances only in her dreams and in her memories.

“At the Emmys a number of years ago, they cleared the floor for Earl Holliman and me,� she said. “It was Fred and Ginger. I’m a wonderful dancer.�

Was a wonderful dancer.

Rhue began her show business career as a 17-year-old dancer in New York’s Copacabana before moving on to the Latin Quarter and ultimately becoming a successful actress. And now, 33 years later, she’s in a wheelchair, an actress with 10 movies and scores of television credits in her past, stricken with a disease for which there’s no known cure.

“I still dream about dancing,� she said before describing her partner in those chalky musicals of her fantasies. “I dream about a specific man, because I don’t have one in my life right now. Sometimes the man looks like a truck driver who flirted with me.�

Rhue also dreams about tennis, which she once played three times a week. “I see the same people in the dreams who I played,� she said. “I’m at the net and I always win.�

In a much different way and for much higher stakes, Rhue is now seeking to win again. She is one of several MS sufferers helping to promote the Sept. 17 “Dinner of Champions� benefit put on by the Southern California chapter of the National Multiple Sclerosis Society.

MS hit and floored Rhue like a sharp crack across the face.

“I got it 10 years ago for my 40th birthday,� she cracked, displaying the lusty humor that mingles with traces of melancholy. “I was in the Broadway with my girlfriend, Suzanne (Pleshette). I turned to talk to her and suddenly I threw up, urinated and fainted.�

An accurate diagnosis took nearly a year. “At first they said I had ‘slow foot’--muscles that have gone lax,� she said. There were other signs, though, of something more serious--such as breaking a leg and not being able to walk when the cast was removed.

Rhue cried and cursed when told finally that she had MS. She’d been one of those artists whose face was more familiar than her name--not quite a star, but a good, steadily working character actress who was in her prime.

Give or take an occasional bit role, however, an actress with MS was potentially an actress without work in an industry that, especially then, recoiled from hiring the handicapped for acting roles.

A “gimp,� as Rhue now playfully calls herself, could be a big inconvenience on the set. Moreover, shows don’t take chances on major casting choices they can’t routinely insure against catastrophe. “And you’re not insurable if you have a disease of a continuing nature,� Rhue said.

So she hid her MS, and for years only her doctor knew about her illness. “I was telling people I had a car accident,� Rhue said.

The injuries from her “accidents� oddly lingered. As the disease increasingly took its toll on her legs, she stopped wearing high heels to avoid toppling over. At first she needed only one cane to walk, then two.

The actress was giving her most convincing performance.

Her alibis somehow worked, and she managed to continue working, even getting recurring roles on the syndicated “Fame� series and the NBC soap opera “Days of Our Lives,� using furniture or items for support. And if it weren’t car mishaps--she appeared to be curiously accident-prone--she would complain about her arthritic hip acting up again.

“Some people didn’t buy it and thought I was lying to get attention,� Rhue recalled. “That’s Hollywood. Some people thought I had cancer and was going to die any moment. Others thought I was a head case. That’s Hollywood, too.�

As the disease progressed, so did the problems and anxiety of the once-married Rhue, who lives alone in a Beverly Hills apartment. “I would make appointments to see people,� she said, “and awaken the next day and not be able to get out of bed. And I would be afraid in front of the camera, afraid I would start crying out of tenseness, throw up out of nervousness or faint from the heat. The heat is very hard on people with MS because it makes the body swell.�

Ultimately, even the two canes weren’t enough for Rhue. Two years ago, she began using a wheelchair, and today can walk only four or five steps before having to sit.

The wheelchair brought her MS officially out of the closet and, in effect, put her acting career in . The good news was that going public meant unburdening her closest friends who had known of her MS in recent years, such as Pleshette and Loretta Switt, of having to cover for her disability. The bad news was her career. She didn’t appear to have one.

“I got one job in 1985,� she said. “I got one job in 1986. I’ve had three in 1987.�

There were times when she felt almost suicidal, she said, partly from not getting work, partly from difficulties in her personal life.

Upon learning that Rhue had MS, one of her friends advised her to check into the Motion Picture and Television Country Home and Hospital immediately so that she “wouldn’t be a drain on people.�

Rhue was devastated. “I said, ‘Listen, I could go become a bag lady, too.’ And I’d spent so much time and been so good to this person. Those things really depressed me,� she said, emotionally, her voice cracking and her eyes tearing. “But others have been so good to me. . . I. . . I. . . well, I never knew I had so many. . . .� Her voice trailed off.

Rhue now faces an unfair stigma that has long frustrated the handicapped--that somehow disability equals asexuality. “It’s a big gap in my life right now that I don’t have anyone to love, and no man loves me,� she said. “When you have something like MS, it’s a problem. It’s interesting how men look at you. They don’t. The men who want to date me are men who haven’t seen my wheelchair.

Although friends are helping her get a motorized wheelchair and special van, Rhue says that she has now exhausted her savings and is trying to scrape by on residuals and disability payments in addition to rare acting jobs.

“If there are 47 people who can do a role and I’m the only one who is handicapped, I ain’t gonna get it, because it’s easier for them if they pick someone else,� she said. “Oh, they’ll say, ‘This won’t work, but we’ll keep an eye out for something else.’ But I don’t want a ‘poor Madlyn’ job that’s given to me because I can’t walk. And I don’t want a part specifically for a handicapped person. I just want a part.�

That’s exactly what her 1987 jobs have been, one playing a judge on a episode of NBC’s “L.A. Law� in the coming season and another as a ballistics expert on two episodes of the CBS series “Houston Knights,� one that aired this summer and another being shot next week. “You don’t know how the ballistics expert got in the wheelchair,� she said. “I’m just in the wheelchair, that’s all.�

Like all handicapped actors--who as a group have just begun to get a fairer shake in the industry--Rhue wants to work, badly. “Look, I didn’t think I acted just with my legs,� she said. “I’m in remission now, and this is as bad as it’s going to get for me. This is going to sound schmaltzy, but my mother taught me that I was put on this earth to do something special. Then I got MS. Well, I think I’m going to be the one who reverses it.�

A little Cole Porter, please, and “Begin the Beguine.�