I thought, If my grandmother could see me now.
Lew Ayres and Janet Gaynor came on for one episode. She won the first Oscar in the history of Oscars, and this was the third time I got to work with Lew. The first was on The Big Valley, playing the heavies, and then he came to play my father on MTM. Janet Gaynor’s husband had produced the last play that I did on Broadway, way back in 1962—the one that closed so quickly it left me desperate and worried enough to sign on for the “glorified extra” role on McHale’s Navy. Such a small world. They were both such talented actors, and I’m humbled to think that her role on The Love Boat would mark the very last role of Janet’s life. She died in 1984.
I swear I could live off the richness of that history alone.
I mean, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Ginger Rogers were on our show. What a treat! I was talking to Ginger Rogers—which was ground-shaking for me to begin with—just before the shoot and she said, “Who’s going to play my boyfriend on this?” I said, “Didn’t you hear? It’s Douglas Fairbanks Jr.” She said, “My God, I haven’t seen him since we were engaged.” Turns out they had broken up long ago, and they were reunited for the very first time on our show.
Raymond Burr came on—what a thrill that was for me. I had done small roles on Perry Mason and Ironside. And now he’s coming on my show? I was enamored of his talent. He had such a great presence. (Did you know he raised orchids as a hobby? Interesting side note for such a big guy.) He brought his friend on the boat as well. He was an older guy. It was nice that we had an atmosphere on that set in which people could bring their significant others along and no one would mind—and no one would talk about it, since it obviously would have caused some controversy back in the day. (Burr’s homosexuality wouldn’t be revealed until sometime after his death in 1993.)
Susan Strasberg came on the show too. She was a delight to work with. You think of The Diary of Anne Frank, all this beautiful work she did, and the friendship she shared with Marilyn Monroe, and then all those years later she killed herself. Why? Someone of such talent. I can never understand why.
So many of the great actors who came on our show have passed on. I don’t want to dwell on it. It’s too sad to even think about. Especially since I had such laughs on that show each and every week.
I got to work with the hilarious Phyllis Diller one time. She played an inspector or something and she started coming after the Captain. There was one scene where she climbed up on the desk trying to get me! We had so much fun on that shoot. And Rue McClanahan was one of my favorite comedic actresses. I just loved her. She came on cruises with us and would pick up all sorts of young sailors everywhere she went. Her Golden Girls character (a few years later) would turn out to be a lot like she was in real life! I remember when I first came to California, one of my costars in A Hatful of Rain, John Patrick Hayes, knocked on my door and said, “Look what I got!” He had picked up an Oscar nomination for Best Short Subject—but what he really wanted to show off was his girlfriend. It was Rue! What a hot ticket she was.
The older ladies loved to come on our show, in part, because we had a phenomenal makeup guy, Larry Darr, “The Cowboy,” a real artist who would do everything in his power to make them look good. He used something called “facelift tape” to give them a little lift when necessary. He just loved working with older women, especially the grande dames of stage and screen, and there wasn’t a one of them who didn’t look great on our show.
I was able to bring my friends onto the show at times too. Ted Knight came on a couple of episodes, one in Japan, and once when I had broken my leg. I had fallen in Australia while we were shooting, and he and I played captains together. We both got to wear a uniform! That was fun. We laughed and laughed, like we always did. He also took a cruise with us up to Alaska one time, where our characters competed against each other in a dogsledding competition. (Only the dogsledding was filmed on the back lot at Warner Brothers Studio!)
Valerie Harper came on and joined us on a cruise to Egypt, of all places. It was so great to spend time with her again, and on a journey like that. One of the big perks of getting to do this show was taking real-life cruises. We would shoot most things at the studio, and we would take seven-day cruises to Mexico on one of the two Princess ships to get exterior shots, usually returning to some port at the end of the day. Then, every once in a while, especially as the show grew in popularity, we would take off on a trip somewhere in Europe. As the Captain, they’d always put me up in the biggest, most beautiful cabin on the boat. When Valerie came on that trip to Egypt, she brought her husband, Tony, along, and I offered my cabin to them. “Take it! I’m just one guy. You’ll enjoy it. It’s the chance of a lifetime!” I said. But Valerie wouldn’t hear of it. She insisted that I keep that big room.
“You earned this,” she said to me.
I have to tell you, that was an incredibly sweet thing for her to say. I’ll never forget it. She has always been someone special to me.
Of course, the best friend of all that I got to bring aboard so many of those cruises, and to bring to the set for a whole series of roles on the show, was Patti. The first time she landed a role was a surprise. The two of us were invited to Cindy’s (Julie McCoy’s) first wedding, in 1977, and Aaron Spelling happened to be sitting in the pew right in front of us. Out of the blue he turned around and said, “Patti, I’ve got a great role for you on next week’s show!”
I had never asked about having Patti on the show. As much as I loved working with her, and was actively working with her onstage every chance I got—we had a whole second nightclub act that we put together during my Love Boat years—it just didn’t seem kosher to ask your boss to give a role to your wife, you know what I mean? But that’s just the kind of guy Aaron was. Patti would come on and play six different roles on different episodes of The Love Boat over the years. She would even take a cue from my old days and wear different wigs at times, so no one would recognize her. It was fantastic, and we would cherish those moments together, working and laughing and setting sail to foreign lands.
I went to Japan, where I performed Kabuki in full makeup and robes for one segment of the show. I saw the Great Wall of China. (Fred said it was a “nice” wall.) I traveled through Greece (where young Prince Albert II of Monaco developed a crush on Jill Whelan, our little Vicki, and followed her all over). I went to Russia. And I’ll never forget that trip with Valerie, in Egypt, where I saw the pyramids, and the Sphinx, and the Kissing Camel . . .
“What’s the ‘Kissing Camel,’” you ask? Let’s hope you never have to find out in person. One day in Egypt, we had wrapped up the shoot, and my producer Doug Cramer came running over to me: “Gavin, we’ve got this camel here. They call him the Kissing Camel. I want you to take off your hat and let him kiss your bald head!”
I said, “Oh, Doug, are you crazy?!”
“It will make Time magazine!” he insisted.
Alexis Smith was on that episode. That husky-voiced actress who’d had so much acclaim for her roles opposite Cary Grant and Paul Newman and so many others in the 1940s and 1950s did a few episodes of The Love Boat over the years. I turned to Alexis and said, “Isn’t this awful, what we do?”
She just laughed, knowingly. Anyone who’s been on top has had to do some embarrassing things for the sake of publicity. It’s just a part of the business.
Anyway, I relented, and the camel came over. I took off my hat, the camel puckered its lips, and its handler pulled it closer and closer. Those beasts—they regurgitate their food, and their breath is just awful—but I swear that camel’s handler had worse breath than the camel! Finally, it planted a big, sloppy, beastly kiss on my bald head. They took the photo, and wouldn’t you know it? It really did make Time magazine. There it was, for the world to see. So I guess it was worth the embarrassment. And the stench.
Getting to see all of that history all over the world was amazing. And getting to make history on our show was amazing too.
We had Sir John Mills and his dau
ghters, Juliet Mills and Hayley Mills, all on one episode at the same time. We were the first show to have all three members of that acting family working together, ever. Juliet Mills and I played opposite each other, and we revised our “relationship” on a show called Hotel later too. But I’ll never forget when I welcomed John onto the ship. His hand was wringing wet. We stopped shooting and he said to me, in that charming British accent of his, “It’s rather like going back to school, isn’t it, old boy?” Even a famous actor like that can still get nervous coming onto a new show, I thought. How about that?
In 1984, we had Vanessa Williams on our show—after her Miss America crown had been stripped. Someone had unearthed some controversial photos of her in rather un-ladylike poses and sold them to Penthouse magazine, so to have that former Miss America on a show as wholesome and family friendly as The Love Boat, playing herself, in a segment titled “Hit or Miss America,” was very controversial.
In a way, every show we did was historic. Think about this: we had the Temptations, Hulk Hogan, and Andy Warhol all on the same episode. Can you even imagine that? All on the same hour of television? When would that ever happen today? All of those fantastic talents from completely different worlds, colliding on one ship. I can’t imagine any show that could bring such diverse personalities together, let alone have a broad-enough fan base to want to watch all of them together in one show!
Andy Warhol and I wound up posing for the cover of L.A. Weekly magazine. He was dressed all in black (of course), and I stood in my Captain whites. I liked him a lot. He wrote about me, too, in his book called Andy Warhol’s Party Book. He and I spent an entire lunch hour taking pictures together. I had first met him a few days earlier at my producer Doug Cramer’s house. Doug threw a big party to welcome him to town. Andy was a very shy guy. He had four or five people who traveled with him to protect him and all that kind of stuff, and he wore that strange hairpiece. But he was very sweet and dear to me. It was quite an honor to spend a lunch hour with Andy Warhol. He didn’t talk that much, though. I probably said more to the photographer, Jim McHugh, who was doing the shoot!
It’s almost surreal to think about how popular The Love Boat became, and how my role of the Captain became sort of iconic in that era. I was just an actor, playing my part, learning my lines, trying to make Captain Stubing as honorable and likable a guy as I could. Yet here I was being photographed with Andy Warhol, an icon of that era if there ever was one; and sharing the TV screen with The Temptations, that iconic group, and Hulk Hogan, the most iconic professional wrestler of all time—the guy who set the bar for everyone else!
It’s hard to see it for all it is when you’re in the middle of it. I felt the same way about The Mary Tyler Moore Show. I was acting, learning my lines, prepping for stage work during our breaks. It was the critics and audiences who had the luxury of indulging in the cultural meaning of the work more than any of us actors—until it was all over and we could look back on it, I suppose. Even so, I never let go of the awe and wonder: the fact that little old me got to stand in the presence of so much greatness.
17
MY CREW
EVERYBODY LOVED THE CAPTAIN. PART OF IT, I think, was that no one could believe that this tanned Captain in dark glasses could possibly be the same guy who played Murray. I think that’s why the transition worked. Everybody knew Murray. And when we put in the extra effort to make Merrill Stubing a likable guy on every level, that really went far in embedding this Captain in the consciousness of the audience.
I talked to our producer, Gordon Farr, about the Captain’s sternness in the early scripts, and he’s the one who first said, “We want to soften him up and make him more like you.” I said, “Okay, let me start working on that.” And I did.
I love playing the stern guy, the heavy, the deeply flawed character. That stuff is great to play as an actor, much more rewarding than playing a nice guy. But playing Captain Stubing as a man who was caring, who helped people with their problems, was better for the show.
He was the antithesis of Murray in some ways. Murray had a typewriter. This guy had a whole ship and thousands of people under him. He had to have authority, and in that regard, I don’t think it was my acting so much as my uniform that made an impact. I’ve found that uniforms say a lot. If you put a guy in a uniform, people will listen to him more than if he’s in street clothes, or even his sailor whites. Even though I was only acting, I emanated a sense of authority whenever I put on that uniform. The uniform itself was what did it. It’s a symbol of authority. And the writers made sure the Captain lived up to that authority.
When you think of a captain’s responsibility in real life, it’s not just for himself; it truly is for every single person on that ship. You may not have noticed this when you watched the show, but the Captain never drank. Not a drop. We tried to make that point, subtly. It was mentioned once on an earlier episode, when Ray Miland, a young Mark Harmon, Lorne Greene, Eleanor Parker, Charlene Tilton, Donny Most, and some other wonderful actors—including our daughter Stephanie—were on the show. We hit some terrible waves on that cruise up to Alaska. It was frightening. We did our best to keep it from the press because we didn’t want people to think cruising was dangerous. But it wasn’t until a later show, when Raymond Burr came on and played a heavy drinker, that the Captain got a chance to pull his character aside and reveal his full history: Captain Stubing had been an alcoholic when he was younger, and he spoke about how you can ruin every moment in your life, and not even remember them. It was certainly a truth that resonated with me, as an actor and a human being.
Putting lessons into a TV show isn’t easy without sounding corny, but The Love Boat made it work. In fact, we got letters from viewers who decided to quit drinking after that episode: “If the Captain can do it, so can I!” Talk about humbling.
Patti and I were walking to church one Sunday in New York City, and this lady stopped me and said, “Aren’t you the Captain?” I said, “Yes.” She said, “I want you to tell those writers something.” I thought, Uh-oh. Here we go.
To my delight, she said, “I looooove their messages—because they cover them with cotton candy.” I thought that was so interesting for a fan to say, because that’s a difficult thing for writers to do. That lady was right. Mary Tyler Moore used to say, “You don’t have to get hit over the head with a turkey bladder to make the laugh. The laugh is there!” The Love Boat’s approach to some very serious messages was handled in the same subtle way. Granted, some shows were better than others, but we had a great team.
Captain Stubing was a single guy, of course. He couldn’t be a “player,” the way Bernie was with his character, Doc. It wouldn’t be becoming of a Captain to be sleeping around with lots of different women. But the writers didn’t want him to seem loveless, either, so for one storyline they did a flashback. It showed Merrill in his younger days, having an affair with a beautiful girl. It was a warm scene in front of a fireplace, and very lovey-dovey. And he said to this girl, “Will you marry me?” She looked at him and replied, “On one condition. It’s either me or the sea.”
He couldn’t do it. The Captain couldn’t quit his job. His first love was the sea. His first love was being the Captain. That’s why he was still a bachelor.
I asked a real ship’s captain from England whether that storyline rang true. “Would this really happen?” I asked.
He said, “Gavin, I don’t want to tell you this, but it happened to me. I had to make a choice. It doesn’t mean that I haven’t stopped thinking about her. But somehow, the sea was in my blood.”
The depth of the Captain’s character, and the truth that served as the foundation of that character, resonated far and wide.
During the show’s second season, Aaron called me into his office. “Gavin, we have an idea about something, and I want to know what you think about it. What do you think about us bringing on a young girl as your daughter, to help us get the younger audience?”
I was confused. The Captain didn�
�t have a wife. I said, “Aaron, where is she going to come from?”
“She’s going to come from that affair you had with that beautiful girl who made you choose between her and the sea. This could be your daughter from her.”
It was brilliant.
I said, “If you think it will help the show, I’ll do it.” So they wrote an episode with a little girl who came aboard the ship. She had her aunt with her, and the aunt looked familiar to the Captain, but he couldn’t quite place her. She even went so far as to say, “Look at you; you both have the same blue eyes!” Then there’s a scene where he talked to the aunt, and the aunt didn’t reveal very much, but it was enough to raise some questions in his mind. When they docked, the little girl went missing. The Captain went looking for her and wound up at the house where the little girl and her mother used to live, before her mother passed away. He recognized the house. He’d been there before. He found the girl. She was sitting with her mother’s diary. She’d read it. That’s when the little girl said, “Tell me the truth. You’re my father, aren’t you?”
The Captain looked at her, knowing the answer would be life-changing. He thought back to the scene in front of the fireplace with his former lover, and he put it all together in his mind. He said, “I am.”
Those were some beautiful scenes. Very emotionally moving. A father and a daughter, discovering each other for the first time. The two of them decide they want to be together, so she joins him on the ship to live with her daddy as he sails the high seas. What a life for a little girl! Can you imagine? A lot of kids all over America suddenly wished the Captain were their dad!
Jill Whelan was cast in that role, and she was a natural-born actress. It marked the beginning of her career. In another small-world moment, she and her mother, Carol, had actually seen me in Annie Get Your Gun in San Francisco just as The Love Boat first set sail! Boy, time flies. Little Jill has her own kids now, sings at a club in New York, and has a successful radio show in Los Angeles. She was married to a very handsome guy she met in an elevator (which sounds like something right out of a script on our show), but she divorced him. She eventually remarried—on a Princess ship!—and her new husband is just great.
This Is Your Captain Speaking: My Fantastic Voyage Through Hollywood, Faith & Life Page 16
