I liked everyone, both personally and professionally, on Damaged Goods and when we finished I thought we’d all stay in touch and get together often and be great friends. It didn’t happen. And such is the life of an actor. There can be tears but there’s also a lot of joy in it. You get the best (and occasionally worst) of people — very open, creative, electrifying people. Making a film can be a close, passionate interaction—and then it’s over.
I didn’t hear much from anyone back home in Yuba City about my first foray into the movie business. But I learned years later from a friend of my dad’s that Damaged Goods had a weeklong run at the Yuba City drive-in and my dad was there every night watching in his pick-up.
While Mory Schoolhouse had turned me away, back at school I found others perfectly willing to help me get in trouble. A group of guys who studied at the Pasadena Playhouse lived in a house together that acquired the name Heartbreak Hotel. This was Bill McKinney and Mako, who I mentioned earlier, and a third guy, Carl Munson. Oh my, I thought Carl Munson was so hot. My roommate Lydia and I and other kids would party frequently at the Heartbreak Hotel. And one night after a lot of drinking Carl pulled me upstairs, we flopped on a bed, and about 30 seconds later I’d officially lost my virginity.
“What the hell?” I thought, “That was it? That’s all there is?”
Sex had come with such a long, huge, myth-sized build-up — all the late night talks with other girls, all the years of wondering what it was like, and all the scheming to make it happen. I’d always figured it to be like skydiving while eating a birthday cake and painting the Mona Lisa.
In fact it all came down to a few seconds of being wrestled around on some college guy’s stale, unmade bed.
“So now I’m a woman,” I thought.
I soon learned though that sex is like playing the tuba — to get really good it’s practice, practice, practice. And as with most things I had a highly developed worth ethic.
Likewise by my second year at the Playhouse, all the work I’d put in was paying off, securing lead roles in plays, including performances for the paying public. (A lot of the work up to that point had been part of the school curriculum and was seen only by teachers and fellow students.)
Even better, as Damaged Good wrapped, I started reading for parts on television and was being sent out for advertising work.
I was thrilled beyond words when my agent called and said I’d nailed down a role on an episode of The Loretta Young Show. While not a show you hear much about today, it was a big hit at the time. NBC aired episodes twice, first in its evening primetime slot and again in the afternoon, when it could be enjoyed by its core female audience.
Each episode started with Loretta Young, a film star from Hollywood’s golden age, making a glamorous entrance in a swirling gown and introducing that week’s story –always an inspirational tale in which a woman learned an important life lesson. Loretta was a strict Catholic and a renowned tight-ass, who would fine crew members for swearing. (It was also pretty well known in Hollywood that during the shooting of the 1935 film Call of the Wild Clark Gable had sired her daughter, Judy Lewis, whom Loretta had claimed for years was adopted. The rest of America would not learn this until 2000, when Young allowed her authorized biography to be published after her death.)
The show was produced at Samuel Goldwyn Studios on the corner of Formosa Avenue and Santa Monica Blvd in West Hollywood, on a lot originally owned by Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks as United Artists, where countless great old movies had been shot.
My call time was 6 a.m. for hair and makeup and we started shooting at 8 a.m. The director walked us through our blocking, the crew lit the scene, and we were off and running.
My character on that first episode was a girl who attends Alateen (Alcoholics Anonymous for teenagers) for support because her mother is an alcoholic. As such the first lines I ever spoke on television were:
God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,
The courage to change the things I can,
And the wisdom to know the difference.
It’s the “Serenity Prayer,” an important mantra in addiction recovery, and the fact that these were my first lines on television was something that would seem supremely ironic years later.
The actress playing my mother, Audrey Totter, who in real life didn’t touch alcohol at all, was brilliant at playing drunk. I watched her as we filmed, so impressed at the subtle touches she brought to her performance. Playing drunk convincingly is often under-playing it, and she was one of the best.
As a young actor I had a lot to learn. The three weeks on Damaged Goods had taught me a few basics such as hitting my mark, which can be a bit of a trick. Before a scene is filmed you typically first block it — meaning the director has you physically walk or go through the movements. This gets the actors and the cinematographer (camera operator) on the same page in terms of what’s going to happen while the camera’s rolling. The cinematographer needs to make sure the lighting and camera set-up throughout the scene are going to work and the actor needs to make sure not to wander out of camera range or to lose their light. If you’re just standing or sitting in one place then that’s pretty simple. But a lot of scenes ask the actor to walk a few feet and then stop at some point. Where you stop needs to be a fixed distance from the camera lens so that you’ll be in focus. Where you’re supposed to stop is marked on the floor with an X of something, like black electrical tape. The trick to hitting your mark is that you need to be able to get there without looking at it, although I see actors all the time who to my eye are pretty obviously searching the floor for that X.
I got pretty good at hitting my mark and throughout the years I’d show others who were new to it how it was done. On the movie Tremors, in the late 1980s, I taught country music singer Reba McEntire how to hit her mark — she was a quick study. The trick is to keep it in your peripheral vision without betraying that to the all-seeing eye of the camera.
Beyond these kinds of basics came a whole other level of understanding of how a scene is shot. Among my first scenes on that episode was at the family dinner table, in which we were served a beef stew prepared by one of the prop guys. It smelled unbearably delicious and I was starved. The director said “Action” and I dug in with gusto not realizing that I’d have to match those actions (shoveling food into my mouth) while we continued to shoot and re-shoot the scene, meaning that the prop guy kept refilling my bowl and I had to keep eating and eating and eating — for four hours. I thought I was going to explode. You’ll notice that when experienced actors are sitting around a dinner table they move their forks around, they cut their meat, they might even lift a spoon as though about to take a bite but in most cases they eat next to nothing. Of course there are exceptions. Once on a TV commercial I was directed to give the featured burger a big chomp and just off camera there sat a bucket that let me spit out each bite over the hours of filming.
While I was doing that episode, shooting at the same time on the Goldwyn lot on a different sound stage was the glorious, sprawling musical West Side Story. Every day at lunchtime the commissary (the studio cafeteria) was packed with sexy young singers, dancers, and actors. In the lunch line I made sure to strike up a conversation with a lean, dark-haired guy who was so insanely good looking I thought I’d die, an actor I recognized from a couple of previous films. His name was Richard Beymer, one of the West Side Story leads, and a guy I would know, as it turns out, for a long, long time — eventually working together 30 years down the road on Twin Peaks, where he played Benjamin Horne. He was another one who was brilliant at getting me into trouble — but that would come later.
My agent found loads of advertising work for me — everything from Olympia beer to Head & Shoulders shampoo to one of my favorites, a magazine ad for a product called “Wate-On,” a diet supplement that gave skinny girls the womanly curves they so urgently yearn for.
To get my face and name out there, I hired a publicity agent who landed me
in magazines such as Teen Screen, Teen World, Celebrity Hairdos, and Teen Life. I’d go on PR-engineered dates for the cameras with other young performers and we’d have a great time. These fake romantic outings — such as one I had with heartthrob singer Bobby Vinton — would grace the magazines of various teen magazines and make young hearts across the country dream of Hollywood. The name of the game was getting your name and photo in print as often as possible. To that end there were countless rounds of publicity appearances, such as being a cigarette girl at this or that charity ball. I was at the same events with girls such as Stefanie Powers, later of the show Hart to Hart, and Linda Evans, who went on to star in The Big Valley and in Dynasty. We were all out there hoofing it to get our careers off the ground. For a while I was doing ten times more publicity for my acting career than I was actually acting, my face showing up in everything from TV Guide to Mechanix Illustrated.
About this time, my agent gave me news that rocked my world — I’d been hired for a guest role on the hugely popular show on ABC, My Three Sons (it later moved to CBS in 1965 when the show went from black and white to color). Not only would a part like this give me great exposure, it’d give me the chance to work with actors I’d long idolized. Growing up watching I Love Lucy I was thrilled at the chance to work with William Frawley, who had been Lucy and Ricky’s neighbor Fred Mertz and was now in the cast of My Three Sons. The other was one I’d had a crush on for such a long time — since the days I’d rush home from elementary school and plop down in front of the TV to watch The Adventures of Spin and Marty — I’m talking about the dreamy Tim Considine.
A few days before my gig on My Three Sons a friend invited me along to a big birthday party in the Hollywood Hills for the singer Dinah Washington, who unfortunately died far too young. If you don’t know her music, do yourself a favor and find it online. You can thank me later. The party was pure magic — there I was listening to Sam Cook and Ella Fitzgerald sing happy birthday to Dinah. And as I looked across the huge, grand piano, there on the far side stood Tim Considine. With his date. He was looking straight at me. Like he was burning laser beams through me with his eyes. Well, how could I miss this opportunity? I edged around the piano, politely elbowing and excusing myself, until I was next to him and introduced myself and said we’d be working together in a few days. He seemed delighted and we chatted for a few minutes in a completely normal, sociable way while inside my head I was screaming, “I’m talking to Tim Considine!”
Getting the chance to work on My Three Sons would do more than give me a career boost and a chance to meet a couple of my idols. It would upend my entire world.
Chapter 3
Tim and Elvis
My Three Sons filmed at Desilu Studios, a production facility that had originally been the legendary RKO studios until Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz purchased it in 1957. The husband and wife team, whom I’d grown up revering on I Love Lucy, turned it into the biggest independent studio in Hollywood, pioneering a lot of what we know today as standard practice in television such as use of multi cameras, filming in front of a live audience, and the idea of syndication. Desilu produced some of the biggest hits of the time: The Andy Griffith Show, Mission: Impossible, Hogan’s Heroes, The Lucy Show, and The Dick Van Dyke Show. When Lucy and Desi divorced in 1960, she ended up with the studio and proved that not only was she one of Hollywood’s most gifted comediennes, but was also a savvy producer and business person. Here’s some great Lucy trivia — against a lot of advice to the contrary, she gave Gene Roddenberry the green light for Star Trek. And she produced its first season.
Eventually Desilu was purchased by Paramount Studios — which it neighbored — and was swallowed up in its sprawling campus. A decade later I’d be back on the former Desilu grounds in sound stages 30 and 31 filming Little House on the Prairie.
On that first day on My Three Sons, at 6 am I drove into the Gower Street entrance and went into hair and make-up. I’d memorized my lines and was ready to go. Before filming started that day though there was a lull and I went outside into a courtyard where I saw an extremely nervous young actor. He told me it was his first TV role, his first day on a sound stage, and he looked like he was going to throw up. I told him he’d be fine and offered to run lines. You’d never know today that Beau Bridges had ever experienced a moment of anxiety in his life, he’s so often cast as a loveable laid-back guy. But we’re all young and terrified once.
Back on the set it was a real treat to work with the cast and crew of the show, especially, as I’d anticipated, with William Frawley, who played the show’s grandfather Bub O’Casey. Bill was a grouchy, foul-mouthed old son of a bitch, whom I came to adore. We didn’t have any scenes together but there’s a lot of down time on a set and you get to know the other actors. During filming on this and other episodes I was later on, we’d go to lunch together at Nicodell on Melrose, where everyone from Paramount had eaten since the 1930s. He always entered through the kitchen and there was perpetually a red-leather booth waiting for him. He’d glare at the waitress over the menu and shoot his mouth of with stuff like, “What kinda goddamn slop are you gonna poison me with today?” Under all that he was a sweetheart. My parents visited the set once while we were filming an episode a year or two later and Bill was so kind to them. I have a black and white photograph of Bill with my mom, dad, and me. It’s one of my most treasured mementos.
Then, of course, there was Tim Considine. Tim had grown up in Beverly Hills, an enclave of wealth and privilege that made Yuba City feel like the Ozarks, and had been famous most of his life. Before showing up on millions of TV sets around the country on My Three Sons each week, he’d come though the Disney star-making machine, appearing in a couple of Disney films including The Shaggy Dog in which he played opposite Fred MacMurray (as he did on My Three Sons). Of course before that he starred in two long-running serials on The Mickey Mouse Club.
For the world’s first generation of kids who grew up on television, Tim was a big deal. He had the honest face of American boyhood, straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting. He played decency, tenacity, and friendship with a touch of twinkly mischievousness that every kid growing up in the ‘50s hoped to embody. There wasn’t a mother in the country who wouldn’t die to have their daughter on the arm of Tim Considine.
One of the first scenes I shot on that episode of My Three Sons was with Beau Bridges and Tim. I played Agnes, a dreamy girl who had landed in the sports department of the high school newspaper and hoped to write her stories in the form of poems. Beau was a kid who was trying to get out of doing any work at all and Tim’s Mike Douglas character was attempting to organize our efforts as sports editor. It was fun, goofy material and I had a wonderful time. (You can find this episode, called “Deadline,” on YouTube.)
I really liked Tim. Well, I more than liked him. I had a huge crush on him and tried to figure out how to get his attention. I was only going to be on set for about three days so I didn’t have a lot of time to make an impression.
The set for the Douglas home was all in one area of the sound stage and at one point during a break I went into one of the bedrooms and laid down on one of the beds. (I could have just as easily relaxed by plopping down in one of the living room chairs or in one of the chairs provided off the set.) This was — let’s just be honest — a total girl move. I spread myself out alluringly (or so I imagined) on the bed cover and pretended to take a nap, knowing that Tim and another guy were nearby. As I’d hoped, they wandered into the bedroom, where I’d laid my trap. Thinking I was asleep they stood at the end of the bed whispering to each other about me — apparently they liked what they saw. I continued to snooze, sweetly oblivious to their admiration.
This was truly acting.
Okay, as amateur-hour as this may have been, something worked because not long after I shot that episode, the telephone rang at my little one-bedroom apartment in Burbank. It was Tim calling to ask if I wanted to go out. I don’t remember what we did or where we went on that first dat
e or even of the ones that followed soon after, I can only remember the feeling of it all, which was totally thrilling. Even though I was now 21, had done some film and TV work, had met a lot of celebrities by now, I was still a teenage fan-girl when it came to Tim.
Fortunately, things clicked between us. We started seeing each other pretty regularly at that point. He introduced me to his mother, Carmen, and I began to be included in family dinners and events.
At the time we met, Tim and his mom lived in a two-apartment building — she had the lower story, he had the upper — between Sunset Boulevard and Fountain. In some cases this kind of proximity to a guy’s mom might have stopped a pair of 21-year-olds from getting sexually active or from smoking pot. But while not ideal, it didn’t slow us down. The situation improved when not long afterward, Carmen moved to a pretty house in Beverly Hills and Tim rented his own house in Laurel Canyon where our privacy was complete.
Not that we were living together. That still wasn’t widely done at the time and I don’t think either of us was really ready for that level of commitment. With my first drizzle of money, I had secured a little one-bedroom, $125-a-month apartment near Warner Brothers Studios. It sat on a quiet residential street in Burbank where I’d occasionally see the singing cowboy, Gene Autry, park his huge Cadillac under my window and visit a Chinese woman who was my neighbor and his mistress.
Little House in the Hollywood Hills Page 4
