ALDA REVISITS THE WOMEN IN 'JAKE'S' LIFE.

Byline: Jay Bobbin Tribune Media Services 

It was a Broadway hit for a top playwright and a popular actor.

Now it's a made-for-TV film, reteaming the same duo.

Alan Alda earned a Tony Award nomination for "Jake's Women," Neil Simon's tale of a distraught writer who re-examines his past connections to other women, after his present wife (Anne Archer) asks him for a separation.

Simon himself adapted the story for the new CBS version that airs at 9 p.m. March 3, though the central character still tries to make things turn out differently, in both his current situation and his memories of previous relationships.

Among those he recalls: his sister (Julie Kavner, the voice of Marge on "The Simpsons"); his daughter (played as a youngster by Ashley Peldon, and in later years by "Father of the Bride's" Kimberly Williams).

Then there's his girlfriend (Lolita Davidovich), his therapist (Joyce Van Patten, who also played the part on Broadway); and his deceased first wife (Mira Sorvino, currently Oscar-nominated for Woody Allen's "Mighty Aphrodite").

Alda enjoyed working with Emmy-winning producer-director Glenn Jordan ("Barbarians at the Gate," "Promise") on the TV version of "Jake's Women," and said, "I always loved rehearsing the play, when we were in a little room and it was just for us, not trying to fill a 1400-seat (theater). This is a play in which the thought process is very complicated, and Glenn has this marvelous ability to comprehend what the piece is about intellectually, all the time. I think that made it work better."

In fact, Simon also admits that in certain ways, he prefers "Jake's Women" in its newer incarnation. He concedes that some other attempts to convert his plays into movies "didn't really work the way I would have liked them to, because I held onto the play too closely. Now, I try to use that as the reference point; I didn't look to use every line, every scene, every moment (in the TV adaptation of 'Jake's Women'). That opened up other avenues of investigation, and it solved a lot of the problems we had on stage."

Recent Kennedy Center Honors recipient Simon defines one of those "problems" as having been "how you get these people (who are) in his mind to appear and disappear. In the early production, they just walked out, and it was very difficult. Here, they just pop out of his mind onto the screen and then just pop away, so the movement and the rhythm of the piece is infinitely better now.

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Photo (Cover--Color) 'Jake's Women' Their impact on one man's life