The thing that really struck me, though, was this: fame couldn’t keep him from cancer. Fame couldn’t keep him from heartache. Fame couldn’t keep him alive. Thinking about the meteoric rise of Steve McQueen, and the sadness of the end of his life, made me wonder. To be close to a guy like that, even briefly, put a lot of things into perspective for me.
Fame, for me, in the way I achieved it with the down-to-earth character of Murray, didn’t put me up on some kind of a pedestal. People would approach me in a friendly way, as if they knew me. They were happy to see me. Not giddy, not screaming like people did for some big-screen idol, but just happy. I’ve always enjoyed meeting people, and I’m always gracious signing autographs or taking pictures. Why wouldn’t I be? This is the best job in the world! Being on TV allowed me to be on the stage, whenever I wanted. What a gift!
As our salaries went up on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and went up significantly in the series that followed that show, my fame also allowed me to buy some nice things. I fell in love with real estate and architecture, and I would move Patti and the kids into a series of ever-bigger, ever-nicer houses as the years went by. (Rootie and our kids were content to stay put in the house in Granada Hills, where Rootie still lives to this day.) I picked up a fabulous apartment in New York City, just east of Central Park and across the street from the Metropolitan Museum of Art. We moved into the Pacific Palisades at one point, on the western-most edge of the United States, on the brink of the Pacific Ocean. And Patti and I bought a house in Palm Springs, where we could get away from the hustle and bustle (and traffic) of Los Angeles.
But the best house that TV-fame money would buy wasn’t for me. It was for my mom: I was able to buy her a nice condo back in Pleasantville. It was right down the street from the Catholic church, within walking distance of everywhere she needed to be. Years later, when she was forced to give up her driver’s license, that turned into a bigger blessing than either of us ever could have imagined.
I counted my blessings all the time as my fame grew. I counted those blessings because I also knew that fame could bring plenty of curses.
My friend Ted Knight wound up experiencing the curse side of things because of the very same show we were on together. Ted was brilliant in the role of Ted Baxter. Audiences loved him. But I’m glad I saw him prior to that in his dramatic work, because he would never get to do that sort of work again after The Mary Tyler Moore Show. That really bothered him. He would say, “The character’s name is Ted, my name’s Ted, and when I walk into places everyone says ‘Ted’ and starts laughing.” It was over for him after that. He was never accepted again as a serious actor. And I’ve gotta say, when I saw him play Hornbeck in Inherit the Wind, he was better than Tony Randall, and even Gene Kelly, who played the role in the movie version. I didn’t know Ted back when I saw him in that, so I’m impartial when I say this: he brought so much to that role, he even took on the look of Hornbeck. He was just so powerful. And then I saw him play the DA in the play Compulsion. He was great in that too. He did a movie about the Lincoln-Douglass debates. So many incredible dramatic roles!
Ted was heartbroken over being typecast, and his experience proved to me that your success can also be your downfall. It can keep you from doing other work that you love. In that regard, I was very glad I played Murray. He was so relatable, so approachable, so friendly, and so real, I had a feeling it wouldn’t harm my career going forward one bit.
Boy, would that be an understatement!
Jessica Tandy once said that as an actor, you often get paid the most for the roles that require the least amount of work. That was certainly true of Murray. This was nothing like playing Leach, or Big Chicken, or any of those tough character roles I had once played. In a lot of ways, Murray was a lot like me. I knew this guy. He was an underdog. He worked hard. He cared deeply about his family and friends. He wanted to do the right thing. So I just sort of played myself a lot of the time, and as a result, theaters all over the country were thrilled to have a “big television actor” grace their stage. They had no idea that I probably would have done those plays for free, just to get the chance to take lead roles in some of those fabulous musicals. I was living the dream. And Patti was right there at my side.
Patti and I created our first nightclub act during my MTM days. We put together a whole song-and-dance show, and we took it to a beautiful theater in Texas. My fame allowed me to not only do what I love but do it with my wife. I was blessed.
Fame also got me noticed by some people who really meant a lot to me.
When Bing Crosby was in the hospital, not long before he died, Mary Tyler Moore went to pay him a visit. She came back and told me that Bing wanted her to tell me something: he was “proud of me.” More than a decade had gone by since I’d had my little moment with Bing on the set of High Time. I had no thought in my brain that a guy like that would even remember who I was. But he did. And he was proud of me. What a fantastic feeling that was.
Yet, in some ways, all the fame and attention I was getting scared me a bit. I was acutely aware that fame wouldn’t protect me from illness, or from loss, or from any of the heartache that I didn’t want to feel in life.
I often think of the losses that Mary Tyler Moore has endured. This fabulous actress and wonderful human being lost her sister right after the MTM Show ended. Two years after that, she lost her son in a horrible accident. She lost her brother in the 1990s too.
During the 1970s, I didn’t know how I would handle that sort of loss in my life. I was terrified. Where would I turn if something terrible happened? I didn’t even have the church anymore. As a Catholic, once you get a divorce, you’re excommunicated. You’re out! So throughout my rise to fame, I stumbled, spiritually speaking.
Patti was exploring New Age religion when I met her, and we got into that whole thing as the 1970s progressed. It was great, on the surface at least, the whole idea that everything revolved around the self. You have the power to be healthy. You have the power to be fulfilled. You have the power to bring happiness into your life. It was all about you! And there was no such thing as sin. Boy, if that isn’t appealing to an actor who loves the spotlight, tell me what is?
The thing I was coming to realize is that fame doesn’t give a person fulfillment. Fame doesn’t protect a person from heartache. At its best, it opens some doors. It allows you to touch an audience. But making the most of that opportunity isn’t easy, and I sometimes wondered if I should be doing more with this gift that I had been given.
Increasingly I was seeing and interacting with people who had all the money in the world. I was starting to feel as if I had all the money in the world. Yet it started to set in that money didn’t matter. Money wasn’t an answer. Fame wasn’t an answer. There were days when I would know in my heart that I should feel as though I were on top of the world, but I didn’t feel that way. I felt a certain emptiness. A “hole.” A longing for something more, just as I had felt during my drinking years, in the years when my first marriage was struggling. It didn’t have anything to do with Patti. I loved her, she loved me, and the two of us were fabulous together. We had so much fun everywhere we went. We were always laughing, and that is certainly one of the most important ingredients in a successful marriage.
It was just a feeling that something was missing.
Fame and money were not providing the answers I was looking for. I didn’t really know I was looking for answers, to tell you the truth. I didn’t know I needed answers. Come to think of it, I didn’t even know what the questions were!
In the coming years I would experience fame unlike anything I ever imagined. Yet the more I “had it all,” the closer I would come to losing everything.
15
CLIMB ABOARD
THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW CAME TO A CLOSE, and our final episode was a classic. The collaborative spirit we all had behind the scenes played out in pure physical comedy, as our whole group gathered in the newsroom, arms around one another, holding so tightly that we didn�
��t want to let go. Under new management, all of our characters (except for Ted) had been fired from the six o’clock news! And when the tears started to flow and some of us needed a tissue, rather than let go of one another, we all shuffled across the floor in one mass toward the tissue box on Mary’s desk.
Boy oh boy, that moment when Mary was the last to leave, and she looked back into the empty newsroom for a moment before turning out the lights—wow. The end of an era for American television.
Not to mention the end of an era for me. I was out of a job!
Valerie had Rhoda. Ed was going directly into the one-hour drama Lou Grant. Ted was joining a new show called Too Close for Comfort. No one had any doubt that Mary would go on to anchor another hit show after all those Emmy wins. Everyone seemed destined to go on to big things!
Me? I was happy to take a break and to head to Palm Springs with my wife. Patti and I were spending more and more time in that beautiful desert oasis, and we were thinking of putting another nightclub act together. I wasn’t really interested in doing TV anymore. The stage was where I found my joy, and the opportunities just kept rolling in. I had my choice of choices! It was fabulous.
So we had our final MTM party, and at the end of the night, as I was packing a few final things from my dressing room into the trunk of my car in the parking lot, Mary’s manager walked up to me. “I’m so sad for you, Gavin. What are you going to do next?” I was shocked. I said, “Arthur, are you kidding? I feel like a bird that’s been let out of a cage. I’m going to land someplace and be very happy.” I meant it too. That whole notion of doors closing and opening had really sunk in by the time 1977 came around. I had a good feeling I would have plenty of opportunities going forward—and I was right.
Within days of our final MTM taping, my agent started calling me, trying to talk me back into television. He was getting offers, he said, and he convinced me to take a look. If the right thing comes along, I thought, who knows?
The first pilot to come my way was a cowboy show starring Jeff Bridges. I took a look at the script, and wouldn’t you know it? The character they wanted me to play was just like Murray Slaughter, only in a cowboy suit! It’s amazing how people can’t think outside the box. I read it and immediately said, “That’s not right for me.” The last thing I wanted to do was to be typecast.
The very next offer I got, my agent called and said, “Aaron Spelling wants you to do this pilot called The Love Boat.” This was just a couple of weeks after The Mary Tyler Moore Show finished shooting. “He wants you to play the captain of this cruise ship.”
I said, “Wasn’t that done before?” My agent wasn’t sure. I looked into it and in fact there had been two separate pilots for The Love Boat, both of which aired as TV movies, and both of which featured different captains. If the show hasn’t taken off after two pilots already, what hope does it have of getting on the air? I knew Aaron Spelling was a big deal. He was well on his way to becoming the king of television in those days. Nonetheless, I had doubts. I hadn’t seen those previous pilots, so I asked my agent for a straight-up answer.
“Did you read the script?” I asked.
“Yes,” he said.
“Well, what did you think of it?”
“I think it sucks.” God’s honest truth! Those were his exact words.
The fact that Aaron Spelling was interested in me was an enormous compliment, though, so I asked to read the script myself. I had him send it over, and I read it—and I started weeping at one of the stories.
There were three distinct stories in the pilot episode, but the one that got me was kind of like Love, American Style set on the water. The story went like this: an old Jewish man (who would be played by the great Phil Silvers when we shot it) was at the end of his life, and he had lost all of his friends. There was no more space in the cemetery. They’re piling ’em up! So he planned to go on the ship, die, and be thrown overboard. In the meantime, there was an older lady who showed up on the cruise by herself. (Audra Lindley, the actress who played Feldman’s wife on Three’s Company, would play the part.) These two met onboard, they talked, they danced—and they fell in love. These two old people. It was beautiful. It just touched my heart. And then she went to meet him toward the end of the cruise, and he was gone. He had passed away.
It made me cry.
There were two other stories in the pilot, one a sophisticated comedy, one a broad comedy. And I remember thinking, If there are three stories like this in every episode, and one of them is a poignant one like this, I’m in!
I read that script down in Palm Springs. I gave it to Patti to read too. I trust her judgment like no one else’s. “If they cast it right, and put it on the right time—there isn’t anything on television like this,” she told me, “and I think it can really make it.”
So I made an appointment to go see Aaron Spelling at his estate.
In the meantime, my agent called with another show for me to consider over at NBC. I wound up going to NBC first, to see Aaron Ruben, who produced The Andy Griffith Show. Turns out he wanted me to be the lead in his show too—a show about three guys who haven’t made it in life, who sit around making cryptic comments. They were unhappy guys. It was a good script, but like so many things I’ve read through the years, I just didn’t think it was for me.
So I went to Aaron Spelling’s house. I had never met him in person before, but I respected him so much. There he was, this little guy from Texas who used to get beat up, and now he was a huge success, becoming Mr. ABC. He was friendly as could be. The kind of guy who would never forget where he came from, no matter how much success he had.
I asked him whether The Love Boat would have those three storylines in every episode—two humorous, one serious—and he said yes.
In my mind, I knew I wanted it right then.
Aaron was very aware that I loved the theater, and he knew I didn’t want to give it up. He had also seen me do guest appearances on game shows like Hollywood Squares. I got a kick out of all that stuff, and I was honored to even be asked to be a part of those fun television moments. “I know you like diversification,” Aaron said. “I can work around you. I can make your part small one week so you can do what you want to do. I can make your part bigger one week. You can go do a game show, or theater, or other things. We can work around you. We’ll have a lot of guest stars. But we want you to play the Captain.”
I was thrilled. I was jumping up and down inside. Me? The Captain? The guy at the top? It seemed almost too good to be true! But I played it cool. I said, “I told my agent I wouldn’t say yes while I was here, and I’ve got another script by Aaron Ruben to read. So can I have a little time?”
Aaron said okay.
I went back to my agent, and I read Ruben’s script, and it had all these lines making fun of Jimmy Carter, who was president at the time, and it just wasn’t funny to me. It was too negative. I told my agent I didn’t want to do it. “They’re guys who don’t have a desire to make it. Why are they even alive?” I said. I wasn’t interested in doing something negative. Why would anybody be interested in watching something so negative? I turned it down, and that show never aired on TV.
So we called Aaron Spelling back, and we put together a deal to shoot the pilot for this show called The Love Boat.
In the meantime, Gower Champion called—the famous musical theater director who did Hello Dolly and so many big musicals on Broadway. He and Blake Edwards went to high school together. They had a part open in a production of Annie Get Your Gun that they were getting ready to do in San Francisco, and they wanted me to come in and audition for the second lead male role!
Have I mentioned before how everything seems to happen all at once in life?
The Love Boat was moving fast. Both Aaron and the network (ABC) were already happy with three of the cast members they had used in the second pilot: two young guys I had never met before, Fred Grandy in the role of the ship’s purser, “Gopher” Smith, and Ted Lange in the role of bartender Isaac Washi
ngton; and Bernie Koppel in the role of “Doc,” the ship’s doctor, Adam Bricker. I knew Bernie! I’d known him for a million years. He was one of those Hollywood actors who was all over the place, like me, so we’d cross paths everywhere. He had even done an episode of Mary Tyler Moore. Bernie is one of the funniest actors ever, and he’s an excellent dialectician. He can do any dialect in the book! If you saw him in Get Smart, that alone would tell you what he’s capable of. I was excited to work with him, and excited to meet the new guys too.
There was just one problem: they couldn’t find the right girl to play the cruise director, Julie McCoy. That part just didn’t click in either of the first two pilots, and both Aaron and the network wanted someone special. They wanted a “today” girl—a girl who looked like the living embodiment of a vibrant young woman in 1977. It’s funny, you would think that all sorts of vibrant young women who were hanging around Hollywood in 1977 would embody the look and style of 1977, wouldn’t you? But the show had something very specific they were after. They auditioned eleven girls opposite me, and that was after weeding through hundreds of potential actresses, and even flying some in from New York! They just couldn’t find her.
Two weeks before cameras were set to roll, we did our first reading—without a Julie. Someone on staff filled in and read her part as we sat around a table. Ted and Fred were both fabulous guys, and it was clear from the moment we started that Bernie and I clicked. We’d be the “old guys” in the cast, without question. We were in our forties! That’s over the hill, man! But who on earth was going to play the role of Julie?
This Is Your Captain Speaking: My Fantastic Voyage Through Hollywood, Faith & Life Page 14
