I knew the choreographer, so when everyone was coming out through the stage door I asked, “Who was that little blonde?” She said, “Oh, that was Patti Steele.” (Kendig was her maiden name, I would learn a little later. Not a name you hear very often.)
A few minutes later, Patti walked out and the choreographer introduced us. “Oh, I know you!” Patti said to me. “I love your show.” So we talked for a bit.
There was something special about her. I don’t want to say I met my soul mate, because part of my soul was with Rootie. We had been in and out of marriage counseling for nearly eight years. We had tried. We really had. But I felt a pull to be somewhere else so often.
And I felt something for Patti right away. There was a connection there.
I asked her what she did at Words and Music, and she told me she was a dance teacher. She was about to start a new tap-dancing class, and I had always wanted to learn tap, so I enrolled in the program.
I wasn’t much of a tap dancer, so I would always be in the back of the class. “You ruined every class you ever attended!” she likes to tell me. Still, we got to know each other.
I did a show there, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. She played one of the dancing twins in that show, together with a talented singer and dancer named Albeth Paris. So we got to know each other a little bit more. Loretta Swit (from M*A*S*H) was in that show, too, as one of the dancing girls. It was a really great group! Everybody from The Mary Tyler Moore Show came to see it, and they went crazy for it. I was flattered because the lyricist who wrote “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” Yip Harburg, came to see it. He also wrote, “Buddy Can You Spare a Dime” and “Ten Cents a Dance.” He’s one of the great lyricists of all time! Anyway, he came to see us and he said I did well. That really meant a lot to me. Onna White, the famous choreographer who did The Music Man in New York and so many other things, also came to see us. She enjoyed my musical theater work too. To be acting by day on a hit TV show and moonlighting in theater was so fulfilling and gratifying, I can hardly contain myself when I write about it!
There was nothing romantic between Patti and me in the beginning. I want to make that clear. But we became friends, and the feelings that were bubbling underneath were very real and very strong. People in Words and Music used to say we were like two peas in a pod.
Before anything romantic started, I thought Patti was such a great person that I tried to set her up on dates. Jim Brooks had gotten a divorce, and I tried to set him up with her. I said, “Jim, wait ’til you meet the girl who’s coming to see the show tonight.”
Jim was a young guy then. He said, “Gavin, she’s too old for me!” Ha!
Patti is two weeks younger than I am. We’re the same astrological sign. Not that it matters to me now, but we’re both Pisces. (Patti was getting into astrology and New Age thought during that period—an attempt at finding some peace in life that we would explore together, and which I’ll discuss later on.) She used to say, “Once a Pisces makes up his mind, anyone can change it.”
She was working at an advertising agency by day back then. She had been divorced and was earning a living as a secretary. She and her three beautiful children, Thomas, Stephanie (the actress, who was fourteen when we met), and Andrew lived in a house over in Santa Monica. I used to go to voice lessons over in that seaside town, and I’d drive past her house on the way. She had rosebushes out front, and she would be out trimming the roses when I would drive past. I would always look for her.
I still lived in Granada Hills, so I’d go home afterward. But I started to think about her. A lot.
When the Primetime Emmy nominations were announced in 1971, The Mary Tyler Moore Show was the big story of the day. Mary was nominated. Ed was nominated. The writers were nominated. The show itself was nominated. Valerie was nominated.
I wasn’t.
I’ll admit I was feeling melancholy about it, even though I was happy for everybody else. I was glad for all of us to get the recognition for the work our whole crew had done. We had all worked so hard!
But that morning, as she read the paper, Rootie commented on the number of nominations. “Everybody got one but you,” she said. She didn’t say it in a mean way. She was just pointing it out. The thing is, I didn’t need it to be pointed out. It stung enough as it was.
On that very same morning, Patti called and left me a friendly message. She said, “I just read the paper and I’m so sorry. If you want to talk about anything, give me a call.” It was like somebody understood. Without me saying a word, she understood that I might be hurting, and understood that perhaps I was feeling a little left behind, or not “in the same league” as the rest of the actors on my show.
Actors are a funny bunch. We can be hard on ourselves. Our self-esteem can be pummeled pretty easily. As a dancer, Rootie understood those feelings. She just handled them in a very different way. A tougher, more pragmatic way. Looking back, I can see that we were just a little different, Rootie and me.
I called Patti back. We talked. I felt like she understood me. I made her laugh, but more importantly, I think, she made me laugh. Uncontrollably, at times. I just felt happy whenever I was around her. I wanted her to be in my life every day.
It wasn’t long afterward that Rootie took the kids and drove up to visit her parents in Seattle. My mother, who was visiting us at the time, went to Seattle with them.
I suddenly had the chance to spend some time alone with Patti for a couple of days—and that’s when I knew.
When Rootie came back, I selfishly told her, “I want a divorce.”
It was, I think, the most heartbreaking thing I’ve ever had to do. But there was no turning back. My marriage to Rootie was over—and I had fallen in love with Patti.
I told my mother and the first thing she said was, “What are they gonna think?”
I said, “Who’s they, Mom?”
“The family back home.”
I said, “I don’t care about that.”
My mother was so hurt. She said she wanted to go home, so I arranged a flight and drove her to the airport. I said, “Mom, please don’t think ill of me. It’s just what’s happened.”
She was getting ready to get on the plane when she looked at me—my beautiful mother—and said, “You know? I’ve never understood you. But I love you anyway.” I was crushed. For all the work I’d done, I hadn’t made enough money to take care of her quite the way I wanted to. Thankfully, that would soon change. But in that moment, all I felt was that I had let my mother down.
I let my kids down too. I remember going into the backyard with them, to tell them that their mom and I were getting a divorce. Our dog had recently died, and David was so upset about the divorce, as if those two things were related: first the dog, and now this. He kicked a table and stormed away while my daughters bawled their little eyes out. Keith, our oldest, was just sullen.
If Patti hadn’t come into my life, would I have stuck it out in my marriage to Rootie? I don’t know. Maybe. Even if I had, it would have fallen apart in a matter of months. My daughters had bunk beds in the bedroom next to ours, and Julie would tell me much later, “Daddy, we used to cry just listening to you two fight in there.” It’s sad. It’s terrible.
I think immaturity might be a word that describes it, as I reflect on it now. Getting married at twenty-four years old, back then I think I hadn’t lived enough. I hadn’t experienced enough to get married. It doesn’t mean you don’t love somebody. I loved Rootie. I always will.
I regret so much. You can’t go home again, but I regret not being with my kids every single day. I moved in with Patti in Santa Monica. Being twenty miles away from my kids was miserable. I would see them every weekend, but it wasn’t the same. We all used to go to church together, and bring the kids up for Communion, and I was doing everything with the children up until the split. I helped with their homework, and their school projects. We had just been in that glorious musical together. Only now? I barely saw them, and when I did they
were often upset with me.
Their mother was so good. She was there. She was there to discipline them, and to be their friend, and she was their rock. She was a wonderful mother. That was a gift from God. I’ve asked for forgiveness from all of my kids, and I believe they’ve all forgiven me. But it took a long time. They didn’t accept Patti in the beginning. Who could blame them? It was a difficult time for all of us—Rootie as much as anyone.
The marriage had been strained for so long. In reflecting back, those were my drinking days, and I know that hurt my marriage. But I tell you, she’s a fabulous person. Many years later, I asked Rootie for forgiveness, and she forgave me. I’m thankful for that. But I’ll always be sad about what I did to her.
The strange thing is, what I had learned in my career was now happening in my personal life too: one door closes; another one opens.
As painful as it was, the ending of my first marriage marked a new beginning in my life. To me, Patti was, and is, a miracle. She would change my life in so many positive ways, I can hardly begin to count them. I never expected to have more than four children in my life, yet I grew to love her three children. Suddenly there were seven kids in my life who all meant the world to me.
My divorce from Rootie was finalized in 1973, and Patti I got married on February 22, 1974—George Washington’s birthday. The wedding had a red-white-and-blue theme to mark the day. There’s a photograph from just after the ceremony. It’s us and all the kids, and only one kid is smiling. Acceptance would take time, on both sides. But it would come. As would a whole lot of happiness.
I was starting a whole new life, smack-dab in the middle of that fabulous moment in my blossoming career.
12
CHUCKLES
TO SAY THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW WAS A HIT is an understatement. It was huge. And I’m proud to say that every one of us who worked on it—the writers, the actors, the directors, the crew—played a part in that show’s success.
During rehearsals, we sat around a big worktable, with fruit in the center. The smokers sat at one end and the nonsmokers sat at the other end, and we would work on the script and our delivery and our ideas. We would go back and forth and work around this table, the same way they did on the old Dick Van Dyke Show. Five days a week we were around that table. Even on shooting days, on Fridays, when a live audience would come in for our tapings, that morning we’d gather around the table and run lines or whatever we had to do.
We had a fabulous blessing in Marge Mullen. She was our script girl, keeping track of all the changes and everything, but she did much more than that. She had worked on Dick Van Dyke, too, and she was always full of ideas. She’d throw something out there, and we’d try it, and the writers would put it in. Week after week this would happen.
We all contributed ideas during rehearsals. It was like a committee—and let me tell you, that is not the norm! Jackie Cooper came to direct one time. He was the head of Screen Gems, and he wasn’t used to that sort of collaborative atmosphere. He wanted to be one director, that’s it. But we’d do a scene, and he’d get it all set up just the way he wanted, and then all of a sudden Jim and Allan would pipe up, “Why don’t we try this, instead?” We were all used to that. He wasn’t. He only directed one episode.
It really was a committee, and everybody participated. You have to have a lot of respect for one another to do that. And we did. I used to go out and watch Mary and Val do their scenes, when it was just the girls. It was such a treat to get to see them all work. I could have stayed in my dressing room or gone home at times, but I didn’t want to miss seeing the other actors do their thing. We were that kind of a cast.
The writers would take cues from our lives too. They were so inventive. One day on the way home from rehearsal, I stopped into a store called The May Company to pick up something, and out in the lobby they had a new display of hairpieces. I went right over there, naturally, and the sales guy tried something on me. (I’m pretty sure his name was Ziggy.) He thought it looked great. I thought it looked great! So I bought it. I wore it home, and the kids screamed. No one was used to seeing me with a hairpiece at this point. Everyone was used to me as bald-headed Murray! So I thought, I’m gonna wear it to work tomorrow.
I walked in with my Hawaiian shirt and the hairpiece on, and the cast didn’t know who I was for a minute. Once they recognized me, they screamed! Mary said, “Show it to the boys!” So I went and showed it to the writers, and they all cracked up. A couple of weeks later we got a new script, and it was a story about how Ted is unable to do the news one night, so Murray jumps in and does it for him—with his hairpiece on. Turns out, he’s worse than Ted! After all of his criticizing Ted for blowing his lines, Murray couldn’t read the news on-air to save his life. And the hairpiece was ridiculous on the head of this humble brown-bagger of a character.
I still have that hairpiece. I bring it with me sometimes and wear it when I give talks. I say, “You may remember this from The Mary Tyler Moore Show that we did waaaaaay back when.”
That’s how adaptable and creative and quick the writers were with ideas.
I’ve mentioned already how Murray was really the third guy on that show. Even so, the writers turned their attention to him a few times and centered whole episodes on Murray’s life. Those were wonderful to play.
One of my favorites was an episode called “Strangers in the Night.” Lou Grant had broken up with his wife. Mary threw a party, and Barbara Barrie was there, playing a widow or divorcée, an attractive older woman, a piano teacher or something, and they tried to fix Lou up with her. But Barbara’s character had eyes for Murray. She invited Murray over to her house. Before he went to her house, he stopped and talked to Mary about it. He was nervous! I loved the friendship Mary and Murray had. He said to her, “I don’t know what to do. She’s going to have me at that house!” And Mary told him to be cool.
So Murray went over, and they talked, and they sat at the piano together—and I remember the song they played was, “Strangers in the night, drifting and dreaming . . .” Fans of The Mary Tyler Moore Show still bring up “Strangers in the Night” when they see me! Anyway, Barbara’s character made a play for Murray, and just before he left, she looked at him and said, “Give me a kiss before you go.” We had been doing the show three years at that point, and the live audience knew these characters inside and out, so when she said that line, and my (married) character looked at her, considering it for a moment, the live audience gasped. They started saying, “No, no, no!” They were saying it out loud! They didn’t want Murray to be a cheat!
Thankfully he left. He didn’t kiss her. Whew!
On the way home Murray stopped to see Mary. He said, “Nothing happened. I just couldn’t.” Mary was happy about it, and so was he. I got a lot of mail from that show. The temptations in life are something a lot of people understand, and they let me know it.
I also got a lot of mail on the episode where we adopted a Vietnamese boy. That was a beautiful thing with Joyce and me, to play parents in that sort of a situation. A lot of people also wrote in about the episode where I was moonlighting. Murray wanted to buy his wife a new car. He was gone so much, she thought he was having an affair with somebody. She finally confronted him, and he said, “No, no, honey.” The punch line is that even with a second job, he can’t afford to get her a new car. “You know that 1967 Chevy you always wanted? Well, that’s what you’re going to get.” Of course it was 1970-something! That got a big laugh. People could relate to this stuff. It was so real, and so humble. Murray was an average Joe, and the audience seemed to enjoy whenever he got the spotlight. I think they felt like they were getting a little spotlight too.
I got such a kick out of the writing on that show. The episode called “Not a Christmas Show” was one of my all-time favorites. All of the characters got snowed in at work, and the Happy Homemaker (played by Betty White) was preparing to do her Christmas program. None of us could go home, so she said, “Everybody come down to my set, and we’ll hav
e a Christmas party!” (Can’t you just hear her voice when you read that line? It’s amazing how strong of a voice she has!) The problem was that everybody in the newsroom was angry at everybody else. The characters were so upset with each other that we didn’t want to look at each other, didn’t want to talk to each other, didn’t want to see each other.
But we all went and sat around the table, and Betty said, “The first thing we have to do is put on our hats.” So we each put on a terrible hat, and the audience just roared. We were just sitting there, still so angry at one another, but wearing these ridiculous-looking hats on our heads. I swear, it took everything I had not to burst into laughter right along with the audience. It was hard to keep it in!
“And now we’re going to sing!” she said, and we all protested, “No! We’re not going to sing.” But finally Georgie started in that lispy voice of hers, “On the first day of Christmas . . .” and slowly we all joined in and started singing. Eventually the mood changed and we all stopped being so angry. That episode was an insightful look at friendship, and the strains we all go through, and the ridiculousness of life and work and how it all mixes together. John Chulay directed that one. He was our first assistant director, and—in another instance of small-world Hollywood—he was also first assistant director on Kelly’s Heroes. He was from Yugoslavia and joined us on that shoot because he could speak the language and knew his way around the culture. What a great guy, and what a great episode to get to direct!
As the show grew and grew, we had all kinds of talent come through. Walter Cronkite came on the show one time. We were doing a television news show. We talked about him all the time. He was the pinnacle of a newsman. And when he walked through those doors, the audience went crazy. They stood up and cheered. They cheered for so long, we had to stop the cameras and start again.
This Is Your Captain Speaking: My Fantastic Voyage Through Hollywood, Faith & Life Page 12
