For A Martinez and E-Wife, Linda – Married Life Was Hell…Living Together is Heaven!

From two different worlds, they had nothing going for them – but love!

 by Jean A. Adams

Movie Mirror, August 1974  

Evening was taking over the campus, casting long shadows across the paths, creating unusual designs on the grounds.  A young couple walked slowly down a walk-way, holding hands, speaking in low tones – conversing in a way that told the world around them they were in love.  But they were unlikely lovers.  He bore the ruggedly handsome countenance of his Mexican-American background, the air of a free spirit, while she carried all the refinements of an upper-class American family.  People used to stare at us a lot,” smiles A Martinez in recollection.  We were really ‘The Lady and the Tramp.’  I was the kid from the poor background, living in a commune near the beach.  Linda was the sorority girl from the upper-class family.”

          Whatever the class identities, A Martinez and his lovely sorority girl fell in love and got married.  And their love affair turned into sheer agony.

          Today, Martinez , who was the 17-year-old wrangler on ABC’s The Cowboys, but is actually 25 with the maturity of 50, looks back on his brief two-year marriage philosophically.

          “We nearly destroyed one another.  First of all, we married just too darn young.  We had no idea what we wanted.  But we liked each other a lot, and we wanted it to work out.  I mean, the thought of a marriage failing when you’re THAT young is hard to accept.”

          “We tried everything to keep the marriage together—we tried SO HARD.  And we tore each other to pieces emotionally. It would have been better if we’d been able to just let go.”

          The final realization that the union was over smothered the two young people with unhappiness.  Reluctantly they parted, and attempted to reconstruct their shattered lives.

          “I was in a terrible state,” recalls the young actor.  “I’d be at work on a movie or TV show, and it seemed all I could do just to get through the scene.  Thank God for my younger brother who stayed with me the whole time and was right there when I needed him.  I don’t know how I would have made it without my family.”

          It was a feeling Martinez has had over and over in his young life, for he comes from a very close, caring family.  The eldest of six offspring, he had plenty of support in his time of need.

          Martinez threw himself into his work, and gradually the pain ebbed from his heart.  He had become a fine young actor who was in demand for various roles, and, having fought his way through the crushing experience of his marriage, breaking up, had grown emotionally into an adult.

          “We were completely apart, Linda and I.  We just lost one another,” he details.  Then, one day, a year later, through some quirk of fate, some defiance of reason, they were in love all over again.

          “Sometimes you have to be apart for a while, you have to have room and time to g et your growing in.  It was the best thing in the world for us both.  When we went back together again, well, it’s just been great.  For two years now we’ve had just the greatest life.  I couldn’t ask for a better one.”

          Although the couple never remarried, A Martinez has no particular desire to do so.  He considers himself single, “but I have the security and good side of a married relationship.”

          He recalls that he met Linda during a UCLA acting class, when they were assigned a particular scene together.  They worked on their assignment for the entire session of school, “and by then we knew we were really close – for a lot of reasons.”

          Martinez was surprised that his attractive co-star felt toward him as he felt toward her, because he was, at the time, considered quite the off-beat character.

          “I was living in this commune in Venice , California .  I guess it was kind of freaky, but I’m glad I did it.  I grew up in such a straight-line way that it was necessary at some point to let myself out a ways, to let go.  I think it’s the only way to develop discipline.  How else will you know how to exert control if you’ve never known what it means to be out of control of your own life.”

          It’s doubtful A Martinez has ever been very far out of control—at least if he has had anything to say about a situation.  He remembers one of his earliest lessons in developing discipline—a lesson he learned on the athletic field.

          “I was just a kid and I was participating in a track meet.  There was this one kid who was a runner, like myself, and who was my idol.  I thought he could do no wrong.  One day before a race, I was kind of bugging him, saying things like, ‘Hey man, you gotta win this race.’  Well, finally he got mad and told me, ‘Listen, why don’t you quit pressuring me and get out there and win it yourself.  I don’t see you at the front of the pack!’

          “Well, that day I did better than I’d ever done before.  I guess the adrenalin was really pumping or something.  I had a new challenge.  But I’ve heard that our bodies are capable of a lot of things when we really push.  I learned a lot about discipline that day.”

          A Martinez also learned a lot about discipline from his own family—a family steeped in closeness and a deep sense of caring.  Martinez considers himself a lucky man to have had such a growing-up experience.

          “My father was determined that we would never have to deal with a barrio way of life.  He bent over backwards to anglicize his family.”

          The attractive young actor claims “that I sometimes wonder if I didn’t grow up too straight—if you know what I mean.  I did all the right tings, studied hard, worked hard, went to college.”

          He feels that escaping the entrapments of the barrio gave him a better life than many young Mexican-Americans enjoy, but there are times he wishes he understood that particular way of life better than he does. 

          “In some of my roles, I’ve needed a better touch with the ‘street.’”  Indeed in his very first role, Martinez played a young Mexican boy.  It was a role which came to him through his acting classes—and one which he claims he’d never have won if he hadn’t gone to school and hadn’t had some acting skills.

          “There are so few Mexican American kids around with any training at all, that if you have it, you’re a cinch to get some work.  The more tools you have to work with, the better chance you have to make your way in this world.”

          He’s making his way just fine these days.  And, in fact, through the exposure given him by his Cowboys series, has become a teenage favorite—a distinction he’s not certain he wants. 

          “Everyone tells me I should be excited, flattered, and all that.  I guess I am in most ways, but I’d really rather people took me more seriously.”

          He is a serious young man who doesn’t want to be trapped into the confines of being a teen idol.  Unlike most teen idols, he was not a teenager when the honor came, nor does he make his living from a teenage buying public.

          And in his efforts to step away from the teen limelight, he doesn’t mind being candid about his age or his personal at-home life.  He has no background in order to make the impression of being a swinging young bachelor.

          A Martinez has never been afraid to admit his feelings about anyone.  Today, after being out of his family nest for so long, he still maintains a closeness with his parents and younger brothers and sisters.  In fact, he’s been spending his spare time lately helping to redecorate his parents’ home so they can sell it and move to larger quarters.

          His next professional plan is to return to music, the field he started out in as a youngster.  Then, he had his own rock band—he’d like to do that again.  He has built recording facilities in his own hillside home and is working on an album now.

          Whatever happens with A Martinez, you know he’ll be able to handle it.  That’s the kind of young man he is—and Hollywood could use more of his kind.

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