Confessions of a Prairie Bitch

by Alison Arngrim

  “I am most certainly not going to give a make-up exam to someone who is out of school making more money than I do.”

  And then he went into a bizarre tirade about teachers in France. “Do you know how much teachers are paid in France? Do you? Teachers are respected in France, you know!”

  I didn’t know what to do except back slowly out of the room. I went to the girls’ dean, with whom I had been told to talk if I had “any problems.” I didn’t know what on earth she would do with this, but I thought I’d take a shot. She was very understanding. She assured me, “Don’t worry about this. You just go on to your other class. I’ll deal with him.”

  Then I ran into Radames Pera, who was not only a student at Hollywood High but was on Little House on the Prairie as well. He played John Jr., Mary’s gorgeous boyfriend. Michael had decided to postpone the whole plotline about her blindness indefinitely and let her become a romantic lead. Radames was supposed to marry her. Unfortunately, Melissa Sue hated his guts, refused to kiss him, and eventually he left the show. So, of course, that meant Michael had to go back to the old plotline and make her blind. The logical consequences of one’s actions or spiritual karma? You decide.

  I, on the other hand, was crazy about Radames and could not believe Missy didn’t like kissing him. I seriously thought about asking her if I could stunt double for her. I would have been quite happy to lighten that part of her workload. Radames had no romantic interest in me, of course. But he was still very helpful when it came to Mr. Haig.

  “Oh, he did exactly the same thing to me when I was in his class,” he said calmly.

  “What?” I was amazed.

  “He does that to all the actors. Did he give you the speech about ‘teachers being respected in France’?”

  It turned out Mr. Haig indeed had done this over and over to many students with acting careers. The girls’ dean called him into her office, and the outcome was that he gave me my assignments and make-up tests. But no matter what I did in that class, good or bad, I never got a grade anywhere above a C–.

  My other favorite class was “office service,” a totally useless class where we learned to operate all manner of completely out-of-date office machinery that hardly anyone used in the late ’70s—like a mimeograph machine and a switchboard. Only the biggest geeks took office service. That’s how I met my friend Gertrude. She had the little pointy glasses, got straight A’s, and was the only person I knew under sixty-five who wore sweater guards.

  Gertrude was shy but very sweet. She didn’t like to talk about her family. One day we were talking about religion, and one girl said she was Catholic. I said we didn’t really have a religion at my house, and another girl explained the Jewish holidays. When we asked Gertrude what religion, if any, her family practiced, she seemed embarrassed and said, “Oh, we’re kind of different.” Everyone backed off and left her alone and went on to discuss another religion. The poor girl; we assumed they must be Jehovah’s Witnesses or something.

  She had a geeky mom, a geeky dad, a geeky brother whom I already knew from school, and a geeky kid sister. They all wore trench coats and big, thick glasses, her dad’s and brother’s Buddy Holly–style black frames with masking tape on them.

  While still in high school I had begun my foray into stand-up comedy. One night Gertrude came to see me and brought her entire oddball family with her. Afterward while chatting in the parking lot, my mother asked Gertrude’s dad what he did for a living. “Oh, I work at NASA,” he said excitedly. “Oh, how nice,” said my mother, trying to make conversation.

  He went on about all the rocket ships and things he worked on, in very geeky detail. Then he added, “And I’m also high priest of my local Church of Satan.”

  Come again? I thought I hadn’t heard him right, and my parents looked confused by this, too. He couldn’t have really just said that, could he? But he had, and he kept going. “Yes, my whole family are Satanists.”

  And that’s when he got out the pictures. So help me God, he had wallet-sized photos of them all posing and smiling in black robes. “In fact, my daughter is the youngest child ever to be inducted into the Church of Satan. Here she is at her first black mass.”

  My parents just kept glazed smiles through his spiel, not saying a word.

  He finally wrapped up his happy tour of the underworld, and they all said good night and went home. There was the world’s longest silence.

  Finally, my mother slowly turned to me and said, “And you thought your parents were weird!”

  * * *

  LITTLE HOUSE SHOUT-OUTS

  I remember the first time I realized that Little House had become part of the fabric of our culture. I was fifteen years old and had gone to see the movie Network with some “regular” (non–show biz) friends from school.

  For about an hour, I felt like a regular teenager, enjoying the anonymity of the darkened movie theater. And then one of the characters on the screen began ranting and raving at Faye Dunaway about the scheduling of her show. She was furious about being opposite hit shows with which she couldn’t compete in the ratings: “…and NBC’s got Little House on the Prairie!” she spits in rage.

  My friends all turned and stared at me. I was so embarrassed I wanted to pull up the floorboards of the theater and jump in. I slumped down in my seat and cringed.

  But I eventually realized there was no escape. I now know that when I watch TV, go to the movies, listen to music, there’s a pretty good chance someone will make a joke about Little House on the Prairie or Nellie Oleson. Once I finally gave in and accepted this phenomenon, I was able to beam with pride at the references—for example, while watching the episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 in which the show’s cohosts send up Michael Landon’s I Was a Teenage Werewolf, Servo says, “I think Nellie Oleson’s behind the whole thing!”

  Here are some of the other endless cracks that have been made about the Prairie in popular culture.

  SANFORD AND SON, 1975

  Fred’s idea for a series about pioneer plumbers is titled Little Outhouses on the Prairie.

  CREEPY CLASSICS, 1987

  Vincent Price jokingly refers to Michael Landon’s most famous show as Little Howl on the Prairie, while showing a clip of him as a werewolf in Teenage Werewolf.

  FAMILY GUY, “FORE, FATHER” EPISODE, 2000

  Father Charles Ingalls plays cruel pranks on his blind daughter, Mary.

  THAT ’70S SHOW, “RAMBLE ON” EPISODE, 2002

  Eric tells Kelso that Hyde likes to watch Little House on the Prairie. Hyde admits it, because “the show reminds him of a simpler time.”

  LAW & ORDER: SPECIAL VICTIMS UNIT, “PHILADELPHIA” EPISODE, 2007

  Benson’s brother asks her which show she prefers: Dukes of Hazzard or Little House.

  ROBOT CHICKEN, 2007

  An episode is titled “Slaughterhouse on the Prairie.”

  * * *

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  BEING SOLD INTO MARRIAGE: THE ARRIVAL OF STEVE TRACY

  NELLIE: But [Percival] likes my food; it doesn’t make him sick!

  MRS. OLESON: Well, of course HE likes it; he’s used to it! He’s Jewish. A person can get used to ANYTHING! Look at the cannibals…they eat each other, and they think it’s just dandy!

  We all had to be married off. That’s what people did on the prairie. Laura’s marriage was preordained in the books. The real Nellie married, too, and even got divorced (not as many times as Gladys). Mary got a lucky break on the show; she landed a hunky blind teacher (played by Linwood Boomer), thanks to some creative writing on the part of our TV team. In the books and in real life, she went blind at a young age and spent the remainder of her life tatting and crap like that.

  At this stage, all bets were off on plotlines. When Michael and coproducer Ed Friendly split in the third year, it was like a bizarre, ugly divorce. They divided up the show and Laura Ingalls’s life, like furniture. Michael kept the show, obviously, but Ed Friendly, thinking he might do something with this idea
later, kept the rights to Laura’s life story after sixteen. Michael, who always liked to see how far he could go from the books, now had an excuse to do just that.

  Nobody was fighting for the rights to the marriage of Nellie Oleson. Most people didn’t believe they would find anyone to marry her. I sure didn’t. But one morning during the end of Season 6, I was in makeup when Michael came bounding in to break the news. “You’re getting married! It’s gonna be great!” he said. Then he ran out of the room. I figured he’d lost it for good this time. What horrible person would marry Nellie Oleson?

  When he ran back in, I said, “Nellie Oleson can’t get married. Hitler hasn’t been born yet.”

  He snorted and said, “Oh, you’ll love this! It’s a short, little guy, but he won’t take any crap! And he’s Jewish!” He grinned triumphantly.

  But how? Who? And wait, I was only seventeen. Oh, yes, but this was the prairie. Melissa Sue already had her TV husband, and Melissa Gilbert—although Laura was not old enough to marry yet—had already met her Almanzo. Getting married on TV is like living in a country where they have arranged marriages. You have no say whatsoever in the selection of your husband. You are told whom to marry and when. He may be older than you (all of our TV husbands, Dean Butler, Steve Tracy, and Linwood Boomer, were at least nine years our seniors), and you might not even meet him until right before the wedding.

  I reminded myself this was just TV, not reality. It wasn’t as if I was really walking down the aisle with a complete stranger. I would, however, be kissing him, hugging him, lying next to him in bed, and telling him how much I loved him…every day for the next few years…until death of our contracts or the show did us part. Sounded pretty real to me.

  Melissa moped and complained about having to “marry” Dean Butler, who played Almanzo. He was blond, and she didn’t like blonds, or the “hayseed” type. She liked them dark and mysterious. (Well, it turned out what she really liked was Rob Lowe, but there’s no accounting for taste.) And she was young. She not only hadn’t had sex yet, she hadn’t even kissed a boy in real life, and here she was having to lock lips with a twenty-something-year-old dude on camera, in front of God and millions of viewers every week. Worse, in front of her mother. Of course she hated it.

  I had kissed a boy before. A few of them. And I had gotten around to a few other things, too, with boys I actually wanted to be with. So I wasn’t suffering from any fear of kissing, but I sure wanted to know who the heck I was going to be locking lips with. When Melissa and I heard that the role of my husband, Percival, had been cast, and the actor was due to arrive on the set, we sat vigil, as if I had been sold off into marriage, and we were awaiting the arrival of the husband to come take me away to his village. Every man who walked onto the set was suspect. Is that him? we wondered.

  Well, not every man. You see, I had a disadvantage that Melissa and even Melissa Sue didn’t have to contend with. Both of their husbands were supposed to be handsome and dashing. I was the comic relief, and my husband had already been written as a comedic character, which meant that, unlike theirs—who had been pulled from the list of actors marked “leading men”—mine was going to be what they called a “character actor.” Translation? An ugly guy. All I could do was hope he wasn’t too hideous and that he at least had decent breath.

  We also knew Percival was supposed to be short. So we watched for every short guy who entered. After an hour of this, I was peeking through my fingers. It was too horrible to contemplate. And then Steve Tracy walked in. He was indeed short, and he wore glasses. But he wasn’t ugly; far from it. He had a big, beautiful mop of curly hair and sparkling eyes and freckles. He was cute. “Oh please, oh please, oh please let this be him!” I whispered, crossing my fingers so hard they hurt.

  He introduced himself. His name was Steve Tracy, and, yes, he was The Man Who Would Be Percival. Melissa immediately began interrogating him: Favorite food? Favorite movie? Type of music? He liked pizza, enjoyed some of the same movies we did, and listened to cool stuff like Echo and the Bunnymen.

  He did get awfully vague when she quizzed him about any possible girlfriends. Lucky for him, she didn’t just come right out and ask if him if he was gay. Not the first day, anyway. It would take us a week or two to figure that one out. But he passed inspection. He also had a sense of humor and the ability to withstand being interrogated by Melissa Gilbert. And he made a point of always carrying a bottle of Binaca breath spray in his left breast pocket, so that he could spray right before every kiss. He actually told us this up front and showed us the bottle. This was a man who had done his homework.

  Steve was fearless from day one. He had to be. He was walking into a hit show that had already been on for six years to play the husband of an established character, the villain, no less. As Percival, he had to be brave to stand up to Mrs. Oleson—and in real life he had to stand up to Katherine MacGregor. I wouldn’t have wished such a job on anyone. But Steve relished every minute. His comic timing was impeccable, and it was clear from our very first scene that we had chemistry.

  The episode was “He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not.” In it, Mrs. Oleson buys a hotel/restaurant for Nellie as a graduation gift, but Nellie is burning the toast, scaring off customers, and running the place into the ground. Out of desperation, Harriet hires Percival Dalton to teach Nellie how to cook and be more “hospitable” in the hospitality business. In one hilarious scene, Percival pours eggs over Nellie’s head; it’s our Taming of the Shrew moment. For continuity, the crew had to keep my wig, with the eggshells on it, overnight and put it back on me, reeking, the next morning.

  Steve had to look exactly as he had the day before, too. So they splashed some beaten egg on his tie and the fly of his pants, where it had been the day before. As the prop man was on his knees, painting the yolk onto Steve’s crotch, Michael Landon walked up. He started cracking up and said: “You look like you just came out of the men’s room at Studio One.”

  Steve went pale. He couldn’t tell if Michael was screwing around or had just outed him on his second day of work.

  Steve was a hit with the audience. When he marched into the Mercantile and told Mrs. Oleson to “be quiet!” he instantaneously became a national hero. And boy, could he kiss. When Nellie declares her love, and Percival asks her to marry him right there in the street, we both agreed to just go for it. It was a full, openmouthed lip lock. It made sense to me and Steve. Nellie clearly had a lot of pent-up emotions she’d been suppressing for a really long time, and Percival was a grown man, not a shy teenage boy. They were madly in love, so we figured these two would be the kind to kiss their brains out when given the chance.

  Melissa watched from the wings and was scandalized. “Stop that!” she hissed at me between takes. “Stop what?” I laughed. “Stop kissing him like that! You look like a fish! It’s disgusting! Close your mouth, for God’s sake!”

  I couldn’t stop laughing. “We’re supposed to be in love,” I insisted. “And besides, I like kissing boys; it’s fun!”

  Melissa refused to watch the rest of the scene being shot. She was completely grossed out. So from then on, whenever she was around, Steve and I made a point of “overdoing it” just to drive her crazy.

  Melissa wasn’t the only one who noticed our gusto. A couple of months in, Steve and I found out about a “secret memo” discussing the various romantic couples on the show that was circulating among the producers. They were concerned that Laura and Almanzo didn’t really look “passionate” enough. Melissa and her husband, played by Dean Butler, were sweet together, but she looked so young, and he was so delicate with her, that it didn’t really generate what you would call sparks. It only became really noticeable that these two were mismatched when the next scene showed me and Steve happily slobbering all over each other. “Can’t they turn it up a bit?” the execs wanted to know. “Now, Nellie and Percival—those two look like they fuck like crazed weasels!”

  I nearly died. Steve joked, “Well, technically, we do. Just not each other
.” We were sorry we couldn’t tell everyone about this wonderful “review,” but it was supposed to be top secret. We really wanted to show up to work in T-shirts reading “Crazed Weasel 1” and “Crazed Weasel 2,” but we figured the producers would kill us.

  It didn’t take that long to work out the “Steve is gay” bit. Melissa turned to me one day and said, “Alison, your husband’s ears are pierced.” It was 1980, and ear piercing wasn’t as common as it is now, but I reasoned, “Lots of guys have a pierced ear.”

  “Both of them?” she asked. That was definitely not common.

  So we asked him. Steve hemmed and hawed and told some story about having them pierced years ago as a hippie. “They grow back,” was all Melissa said.

  Back then gay actors, especially actors on shows like Little House on the Prairie, didn’t come out of the closet. They often went to absurd lengths to make up cover relationships. But Steve didn’t have to worry about covering because everyone thought he was sleeping with me. It helped our performance enormously. There’s a wonderful scene in Season 7 in “Come, Let Us Reason Together” where Percival and Nellie are lying in bed laughing. Steve and I weren’t acting. We were actually hysterically cracking up under the covers.

  To begin with, we both had on funny underwear. I had blue panties that said “Friends Forever” on them, and he had briefs with some kind of cartoon pattern. We thought doing a bed scene might be difficult, and bringing our silliest panties would help break the ice. It did. In the scene, we talk about our insane parents and the fight they’ve been having over our soon-to-arrive baby. Percival’s parents are Orthodox Jews, and the Olesons, since they go to Reverend Alden’s church, are Christian, some kind of Protestants. The agreed solution was that if the baby was a boy, he would be raised Jewish; if a girl, Christian. Of course, Nellie winds up having twins, one of each, and each religious faction gets a baby.