People: Catherine Mann

CATHERINE MANN: LOVE BOAT TO CAPITOL HILL, AND OUT

Where do you go after having lived in Hollywood and Washington, D.C.? Well, Catherine Mann, '65, author of three novels and former correspondent for Entertainment Tonight and former editor of Teen magazine, has moved to Sioux City, Iowa.

'They were both one-company towns, one based on entertainment and one based on power,' she explains. 'I was right at home in Hollywood but felt like a fish out of water in D.C.'

She moved to the nation's capitol after marrying Iowa congressman Fred Grandy, better known as Gopher on TV's Love Boat. 'I remember at one party, someone saw my husband and swatted me out of the way to get his autograph,' she recalls. 'I felt like someone's appendage.'

But, following a habit that helped her survive MSU, she took notes and came out with her third novel, Capitol Hill (Dell, 1992), a romantic thriller that will surely increase the public loathing of politicians. 'Only one good thing came out of Washington--my daughter,' says Catherine. 'Monica (age 3) was a miracle. Until she was born, I thought my biological clock had stopped.'

Now happily settled in Sioux City, the home base for Fred, from which he might run for governor in 1994, Mann is writing a fourth novel. 'You won't believe this, but I got a D in my first English class at MSU,' she recalls. 'I had great ideas but didn't know how to organize them.'

Catherine learned real fast--eventually graduating cum laude. Her interest in theater--she played Desdemona in Othello and was president of MSU Players--led her to New York, where then-mayor John Linsay named her a goodwill ambassador. She then embarked on a TV career that took her to Hollywood. In 1987, she met Grandy when E.T. assigned her to interview him. The rest--marriage, politics, daughter Monica, and three novels--reads like a Love Boat script . . . to be continued.