Jaclyn Smith and Richard Chamberlain Brought ‘The Bourne Identity’ to Screen Before Matt Damon Did

When you hear the name “Jason Bourne,” you likely think of Matt Damon’s amnesiac spy in the 2002 film The Bourne Identity and its sequels — or, if you’re a spy fiction buff, the Robert Ludlum novels on which those blockbusters were based. But Damon wasn’t the first Hollywood star to play Jason Bourne, nor was Franka Potente the first to play Marie, Bourne’s ally-turned-lover.

The first adaptation of the story to make it to screen was the 1988 TV movie The Bourne Identity, starring Richard Chamberlain (Dr. Kildare) as the titular spy and Jaclyn Smith (Charlie’s Angels) — who turns 80 on October 26 — as Marie.

The four-hour film aired on ABC over two nights in May 1988, following Chamberlain’s Bourne as he washes up on the shores of Southern France with no memory of who he is, why he has aptitudes for combat and language, and why assassins are hot on his trail.

A female Robert Ludlum fan wrote the script, bucking gendered biases in Hollywood

Carol Sobieski, who’d go on to posthumously earn an Oscar nomination for the 1992 film Fried Green Tomatoes, wrote the script for the Bourne Identity miniseries.

“I love Ludlum,” Sobieski told the Los Angeles Times in 1988. “I’ve read all his stuff. In fact, when I learned several years ago that Warner Bros. planned to make ‘The Bourne Identity’ into a feature, I made overtures toward writing the script. They hired a man.”

But that Bourne Identity film never reached fruition, so Warner Bros. TV took over the project and enlisted Alan Shayne, formerly the studio’s television division president, to executive-produce a TV movie version. And Shayne hired Sobieski.

Sobieski admitted to the Times writing an action-adventure script was a “stretch” for her and that she prefers “relationship stories.” But she knew women had already tackled the genre — she took inspiration in Ida Lupino, director and co-writer of the 1950s noir films Outrage and The Hitch-Hiker— and she focused on the story’s emotional punches while leaving many of the physical punches to director Roger Young (Magnum P.I.).

“She strengthened the relationships, the love story and all the interior struggle Bourne has with his identity,” Shayne said. “An action writer would have simply skimmed the surface. This is a love story and a very complicated character development for Richard Chamberlain. We tried to make sure it’s not just blood and guts.”

And both actors were surprised to learn a woman had scripted The Bourne Identity. “I thought a man would have to have written this kind of violence,” Smith told the newspaper.

Added Chamberlain, “I did have a whispering second thought when I heard a woman was going to write the script.”

Jaclyn Smith did her own stunts

Chamberlain and Smith filmed The Bourne Identity over three months in Europe in the winter of 1988, in locations including Paris and Nice, France; London, England; and Zurich, Switzerland, according to The New York Times. And the weather often proved insufferable — to some of the cast and crew, at least.

“I had four colds, and Richard never even had a toothache,” Shayne told the newspaper. (Chamberlain explained that he girded himself with cold-weather clothing. “Zurich in January, shooting at night, is not too hospitable,” he said. “I had mountains of electric socks sent over.”)

And the action scenes proved rigorous, too. Smith told the Southeast Missourian she did most of her own stunts. “I fell off pavements, I dragged Richard’s body up hills,” she said. “It was incredibly difficult, but you just forget about acting and do it.”

Chamberlain thought the 1988 miniseries did Ludlum better than the 2002 film adaptation.

In a 2010 Television Academy interview, Chamberlain said “taming the novel” was a challenge for the team behind 1988’s Bourne Identity. “The novel is so complicated, and to make it work for a four-hour drama was very difficult. We had endless script meetings [and] came out with a very, very good script, I think.”

In fact, he prefers his adaptation to the one starring Damon. “The first Bourne Identity movie, I thought, didn’t work nearly as well as ours because they had to drop so much of the story to get it into an hour and a half,” he said. “I thought they were good in it. And Matt Damon was very good in it, but the story was gone, and we handled the story, I think, very well. And Jaclyn Smith was wonderful in it.”

In the end, Chamberlain thoroughly enjoyed his time as Jason Bourne. “Playing a modern-day, fast-thinking tough guy — and you didn’t really know why he was so tough — was thrilling,” he recalled. “I loved doing it.”