Growing Up Laughing

by Marlo Thomas

  I knew I didn’t want to give up my dreams for love and miss them for the rest of my life, like my mother.

  I knew I didn’t want to be dominated by another person.

  And, most important, I knew I always wanted to have a place to go. That above all. No one would ever say about me, “Where’s she gonna go?”

  So when I told my mother I had fallen in love with a divorced man who lived with his four young sons, she said, “Oh, what a joke on you!” A below-the-belt punch line if there ever was one, but it still made me laugh. My mom knew a good set-up when she heard one, and my life had been the perfect set-up for that line.

  Not only had I always had a fight-and-flee response to commitment and marriage, I was also the girl who had a stockpile of sassy remarks, like “Marriage is like living with a jailer you have to please.” And “Marriage is like a vacuum cleaner—you stick it to your ear and it sucks out all your energy and ambition.”

  I was “pinned” in college, but that was the fun, romantic thing to do. And romance I liked. I also liked men—their soft, fuzzy necks, their strong legs, their firm behinds. And in the morning there was something about a man in a terry-cloth robe—I always had a strong genetic urge to start squeezing orange juice. But still . . .

  My eyes were on the horizon, not on the hearth. And I actually felt betrayed by my best girlfriends as they dreamily walked down the aisle.

  Hey, what about that swell loft we were gonna get together?

  How ’bout that great trip to the Far East we had planned?

  One by one they deserted me. Sometimes I wondered if I was the only girl in the world who felt like I did. Then I read The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan. And I knew I wasn’t.

  Around this time, I was screen-tested for a TV pilot for ABC called Two’s Company. I was thrilled when I got the part, and the pilot was terrific. It didn’t sell. No big news—most pilots don’t sell. But the show brought me to the attention of Edgar Scherick, the head of programming for ABC. Scherick told me that he and the people from Clairol, one of the network’s prime sponsors, thought I could be a television star, and he described a few ideas they had for a show for me. In all of the shows, I’d be playing the wife of someone, or the secretary of someone, or the daughter of someone.

  I hesitated for a moment, then charged ahead.

  “Mr. Scherick, did you ever think about doing a show where the girl is ‘the someone’?” I asked. “You know, a girl like me—graduated from college, doesn’t want to get married and has a dream of her own.”

  Scherick looked at me like I was speaking in Swahili.

  “Would anyone watch a show like that?” he said. I asked him to read The Feminine Mystique—which he did. He was a one-of-a-kind executive. He called me after he finished the book and said, “Is this going to happen to my wife?” He was so intense he made me laugh. Then he said, “Everybody thinks I’m crazy, but I’m going to go with you on this.”

  Edgar (by this time he was Edgar) was the true father of That Girl. And a true mentor of this one.

  Despite Edgar’s support, there wasn’t a lot of enthusiasm for the premise of the show. And the research proved it. Television audiences didn’t like show business stories, they didn’t like girls without families and they didn’t much care for shows starring actors no one ever heard of.

  But the night we premiered, we won our time slot. What happened? What happened was that this girl, who seemed like a revolutionary figure to the men in suits who did the research, was not a revolutionary figure at all. She was a fait accompli. There were millions of That Girls in homes across America. We were not our mother’s daughters. We were a whole different breed. As Billy Persky would later proudly note, “We threw a grenade into the bunker and cleared the way for Mary Richards and Kate and Allie and everyone else to walk right in.”

  Once we began taping the series, the mail started pouring in—and it was startling. We got the usual “I love your haircut” type of letter. But I was also receiving mail from desperate young females unloading their secrets.

  “I’m 16 years old and I’m pregnant, and I can’t tell my father. What should I do?”

  “I’m 23 years old, and have two kids, no job and a husband who hits me. What should I do?”

  I didn’t expect it. I was doing a comedy show. But the more I read these letters, the more I realized that these young women had no one to go to but this fictional young woman they identified with on TV. They laughed with me, so they felt they knew me. I was close to their age. And I felt responsible.

  So my assistants and I tried to find places of refuge for these young women. We hunted in city after city, but there weren’t any such places. This was before the term “battered wives.” Back then, it was just called “unlucky.” That mail politicized me. And as much as anything else I had witnessed in my life, it was the seed for much of what I’d put my energy toward in the years ahead.

  Even though the show was doing well, the battles went on. Some at the network wanted my character to have an aunt move into her apartment with her.

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Because people would prefer to see a girl living in a family unit.”

  “A family unit?” I countered. “The Fugitive doesn’t even have a city. Why do I have to have a family?”

  The debates weren’t just in the executive offices. We were finding our way in the writers’ room, as well. One week, we were reading the script for the next episode, when I stopped cold at a joke. The story was about computer dating. Ann Marie sends in her picture, as does a handsome young man (played by comedian Rich Little). On the night of the big date, Ann is getting dressed when the doorbell rings. So her neighbor, Ruthie (played by Ruth Buzzi), runs to answer the door. Ruth had become famous for her funny characters on the variety show Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In. An audience favorite was a funny-looking biddy who was suspicious of all men and rapped them on the head with her purse.

  In our script, when Ruth opens the door, Rich was to look at my picture in his hand, then at her, and mutter, “She must have gone right through the windshield.” The guys in the room thought this was very funny.

  I hated that joke. It undermined everything I believed we should be saying to girls. And I didn’t want Ruth to feel insulted.

  “I want to take this out,” I said.

  “Why?” Ruth asked. “It’s funny.”

  “It’s not funny, Ruth, it’s demeaning.”

  “Hey, c’mon,” she said. “It’s my bread and butter.”

  I should have known. I grew up with comedians. Phyllis Diller had made a livelihood with this kind of self-deprecating routine. The joke stayed in, but I was always uncomfortable that it was in my show.

  AFTER THE FIRST successful year of That Girl, an agent had the idea of my playing the part of Gloria Steinem, a young reporter who had gone undercover as a bunny at the Playboy Club and revealed what young women were being put through on the job. The agent set up a meeting to discuss the deal with Gloria and me. This would be the first time Gloria and I met.

  Gloria and I go glam—wind machine and all.

  We sat across from the agent at his desk. He beamed appreciatively at us.

  “Boy,” he said, “I don’t know which one of you I’d like to fuck first.”

  Boy, did he pick the wrong two women to say that to. I don’t think we heard anything else he said that day. The meeting—and the idea—came to an immediate end. But Gloria and I were at the beginning of a long and deep friendship.

  SOON AFTER, Gloria called me and asked if I would pitch in for her at a welfare mothers event in New Hampshire.

  “Welfare mothers? Are you crazy? They’ll hate me,” I said. “I’m a kid from Beverly Hills and I don’t have any children. What will I talk to them about?”

  “Trust me,” Gloria said. “They’ll love you—and you’ll love them. You’re all women.”

  I was terrified. But I wanted to rise to the occasion, and I think I was curious to see if these wome
n and I would be able to connect. So I started by talking about family.

  I told them about my grandmothers, and made them laugh with stories of Grandma the drummer, and how independent and eccentric she was. I told them about the time my mother had received a beautiful silver picture frame, and how she’d asked Grandma for a photograph of her to put in it. I knew what my mother wanted. She wanted a mother-like portrait of Grandma in a lovely dress and a string of pearls, her hair in a neat bun. But what Grandma sent was a picture of herself dressed as a fortune-teller—with wild scarves, gypsy earrings, a crystal ball and a mischievous grin.

  Marching for the ERA in Chicago, with Bella Abzug (IN HAT, SECOND FROM THE LEFT), Phil, Betty Friedan (FAR RIGHT) and thousands of women warriors.

  “This is the show woman who is your mother,” Grandma was saying. “Frame that!”

  And my mother did. She put it right on the piano in our living room. When my little friends came to our house and asked me who the lady in the picture was, I didn’t even hesitate.

  “That’s my mother’s fortune-teller,” I’d say.

  I also talked to the welfare mothers about the other women in my family. About my mom giving up the work she loved to be with my dad. About my aunts and their marriages, and how they had been dismissed because they were women. By the end of the night, we were laughing and crying, and Gloria had opened my eyes and my heart to the connections that we women have with each other.

  AND THEN I met Bella.

  Bella Abzug was a big, strong, brilliant woman. She was a lawyer and a fearless congresswoman from New York who fought for women’s rights and all the causes she believed in with a fierce sense of justice and outrage. For those of us who worked alongside her, she was both an inspiration and a mentor. Some people would describe Bella as “the one with the big hat.” They didn’t know Bella. She wore dozens of hats, and shielded all of us with her broad brim.

  She also had a great sense of humor that she often used to make a political point. It was in the midst of the heated fight for the Equal Rights Amendment that she made that memorable quip: “True equality will come not when a female Einstein is recognized as quickly as a male Einstein, but when a female schlemiel is promoted as quickly as a male schlemiel.”

  At a backyard fund-raiser with “Tanta Bella” and Carol Burnett.

  I called her “Tanta Bella.” She was the loving, demanding aunt, always advising Gloria and me about everything, including marriage. She was happily married to Martin Abzug, the most supportive man in the world, and they had two great daughters. She saw no reason why Gloria and I couldn’t do the same.

  She was crazy about Phil, and taunted me about marrying him. “What’s wrong with you?” she said. “You think you’re going to do better than this?” Bella was something else.

  Shortly after I was married, I was on a flight to Chicago. I’d just been seated, when Bella bounded onto a plane (everything she did was big), and when she saw me, she bellowed in her loudest voice, “When are you going to have a baby?!” Everybody looked at us. I was mortified. So I bellowed back, “I got married. Make Gloria have the baby.” One of the few times I got in the last word with Bella.

  Phil and I were married quietly at my parents’ house in May of 1980, with just our families present. The night before, I wrote Gloria a letter. I was worried that when she heard the news, she would feel abandoned, as I had felt when all my friends got married many years before. We had both been single for such a long time, and we’d reveled in it. A lot of young girls had written me, saying that when their mothers nagged them about settling down, they’d use me as an example.

  A happy coalition (from left), Letty Cottin Pogrebin, Gloria and Pat Carbine, all of us cofounders of the Ms. Foundation.

  With matching cigars: the men in my life.

  “Marlo Thomas isn’t married, and she’s not crazy.”

  I think Gloria and I felt we always had each other to point to, as well. It was a bond between us. And now I was breaking it. But she was happy for me, and when Phil and I returned from our honeymoon, she and Bella threw me a bridal shower. They made little posters with every disparaging comment I’d ever made about marriage and hung them around the room. What a shock it was to see them all together like that. No wonder I never wanted to marry.

  But I don’t think anyone was more surprised that I was getting married than my mother. She kept asking Phil at our wedding, “How did you get her to do this?” Dad was simply happy that I had found this lovely man and that I was finally settling down. He celebrated in the Lebanese tradition by taking his handy old shotgun outside and firing it three times into the sky. Of course, the neighbors called the police, but it was good to know that the years had not lessened “Orson’s” sense of the dramatic.

  WHEN PHIL AND I were on the plane to Greece for our honeymoon, he left his seat to go to the bathroom. The woman sitting across from us noticed my wedding band.

  “You’re Marlo Thomas, aren’t you?” she said. “Did you get married?”

  This was the first person outside of our families to know about our wedding. I blushed, in my new bride role.

  “Yes,” I said shyly. “We were married yesterday.”

  “Why?” she said. “I am so disappointed. Why would you get married?”

  I was stunned. Oh my God, I thought, what have I done? Women like this have been looking to me to set an example of independence. And now I’ve let them all down.

  But then Phil returned to his seat. And I got over it.

  Chapter 43

  The Joke on Me

  My mother was right. The joke was on me. Me, who had carefully built a life around being on my own. Miss Independence.

  When I was doing my TV series, I had used my first money to buy myself a beautiful, big house on Angelo Drive in the hills above the Beverly Hills Hotel and, without the use of a wedding registry, had picked matching china, crystal and a silver pattern. Take that, traitorous girlfriends!

  And now here I was in Winnetka, a suburb of Chicago, moving in with a man who was raising four boys, ages 12 to 16—Michael, Kevin, Danny and Jimmy. His daughter, Mary Rose, lived with her mom in New Mexico. It would have been nice to have had one more female under our roof. I’d never seen so many jockstraps in my life. Or wet towels. It was like living in a frat house.

  But they were sweet, and they had done some organizing. They had all put their names on their underwear. It was the first time, however, that I had been with a man who had “Dad” written on his jockeys.

  But I adjusted fast. I took to hiding bottles of Coca-Cola under the bed. With four boys and assorted pals, it was them or me.

  I went into Jimmy’s room, where his socks stood up by themselves, and there were discarded pizza boxes under his bed. I told Phil about it.

  “Try not to think about it,” he said.

  It was all I thought about. I’d fall asleep with images of maggots dancing in my head. I had been raised by a drill sergeant kind of mother. “A place for everything and everything in its place” was her mantra. Maybe some place underneath all this mess I’d find my mantra.

  Terrified of being any part of the fantasies of teenage boys, I found the mornings especially challenging. I never left the bedroom in a robe or any kind of casual wear. I was always completely dressed, hair in place, as if their father and I had been having an all-night meeting in that room down the hall.

  And I was working hard to keep my feminist values up front, teaching Phil the smallest of things. Like what a hamper was for. What really got to me, though, was that all of them kept asking me where their things were.

  “Where are my shoes?” Phil would constantly ask.

  What is it about men? They think we women have a radar attached to our uterus. And the thing that killed me was that I knew where they were. I knew where Phil’s shoes were. I knew where all four boys’ shoes were.

  How did this happen? Had my mother secretly planted a chip in me at birth that would activate when I said “I do”? I w
as beginning to understand why there hadn’t been a female Shakespeare or Mozart. There wasn’t room in their heads for symphonies and sonnets—their brains were cluttered with where everyone’s shoes were.

  And through it all, I kept thinking, Now my mother is completely happy. Terre and Tony had been settled for some time, but that hadn’t stopped her one bit from continuously nagging me to join the betrothed battalion. And when her rhapsodizing about the glory of it all hadn’t made a dent in my resolve, she brought out the big guns: “You’ll die alone!” Nice.

  So when Mother called me in Chicago, where Phil and I were living the first summer after our May wedding, I regaled her with my marital adventure. I was Marloizing Phil’s house with new closets. I’d gotten the boys to come out of their rooms at the same time for the family dinner hour. I’d color-coded the towels.

  And brimming with newfound maternal pride, I told my mother that Phil was bragging to everyone about how I could talk to his sons individually.

  “She got the book on each of them very quickly,” he’d say. “Most people speak to them as a flock.”

  As I went on and on to my mother, knowing how thrilled she’d be by all of this, she interrupted.

  “What about your career?” she crisply asked.

  Yep, it stopped me, too. This woman had hounded me to get married for most of my life, but here it was: Underneath it all, she had been as conflicted about it as I was.

  I had always made the joke that I was “my mother’s revenge.” But like all good jokes, it was rooted in truth.

  ROUGHHOUSING with RITA . . .

  “I love being married. It’s so great to find that one special

  person you want to annoy for the rest of your life.”

  —Rita Rudner

  “I think men who have a pierced ear are better prepared for

  marriage. They’ve experienced pain and bought jewelry.”