After receiving an honorable discharge, he went to New York and paid his dues in the classic, serious actor, way. He worked for legendary theater producer Joe Papp's New York Shakespeare Festival, then moved on to make his Broadway debut in playwright Ron Cowen's Summertree. He worked with the Lincoln Center repertory group and played Mark Elliot in the soap opera Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing. Along the way, he amassed an impressive collection of commendations: the Clarence Derwent Award, the Barter Theatre Award, and the Theatre World Award, but it was his work on the soap opera that brought him the greatest popularity up to this point. I think this galled him; he'd have much preferred that it come from his theater work.
David was just coming off a critically acclaimed stage turn in George Bernard Shaw's Major Barbara at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles when he was cast in Bridget Loves Bernie. Jack had even told me he'd heard great things about "this David Birney," that he was someone to pay attention to.
So I did. I was very aware that I was working with quite an accomplished actor. I, on the other hand, was still unsteady on my feet. I might have had some natural instincts, but I wasn't always sure how to make the most of a line reading, time an entrance, or use the camera to my advantage. David would often correct me, suggest a different line reading or another position in front of the camera. He was so knowledgeable. You cannot imagine how heady it was that this golden boy of the theater world was interested in me.
Perhaps six months later, about a week before Bridget Loves Bernie aired, CBS sent us both back to New York to do publicity and suddenly there we were, the costars of a new series, fielding reporters' questions about the show and being ferried around Manhattan in a limousine. One night David and I were off to see a play. When our limo pulled up in front of the theater, a guy named Broadway Dave, one of those local characters who hangs out along the Great White Way hoping to spot celebrities, ran over to our car. Before our driver could get out, Broadway Dave opened our door, stuck his head in, checked us out, and then turned to the crowd. "It's NOBODY!" he howled with disappointment, and slammed the door shut. I was a nobody and was pleased to be recognized, but David was a known entity in New York, so this must have been ego bruising.
But when Bridget Loves Bernie debuted on Saturday night at 8:30 p.m. on September 16, 1972, everything changed very quickly. It got big ratings right out of the gate, eventually becoming the fifth most watched show in America. At that time, before the world of hundreds of channels and more diffuse ratings numbers we live in today, that meant a lot of people--tens of millions, numbers you only see shows like American Idol getting now--were tuning in. Of course, we had something of a boost in the fact that CBS scheduled us in the slot between two of its biggest shows, All in the Family and The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Nothing against our series, but a program about cleaning carpets would have done well in that spot.
Another factor in our success was that the series generated a lot of press, much of it having to do with the show's subject of interfaith marriage, but also about what was going on with David and me behind the scenes. Let's face it: two young, attractive actors playing an embattled couple whose love knows no bounds, while having a real-life affair away from the cameras, is a time-honored media hook, and somehow the story got out. Our relationship seemed to garner some attention. In early September, a good ten days before the show aired, a photo of the two of us seated and lightly holding hands appeared as a one-page Fall Preview ministory in TV Guide.
Three weeks later, roughly two weeks after the premiere, we were upgraded, with a shot of just our heads, shown in intimate profile as we smiled happily at each other, plastered on the cover of that same publication. (I thought David looked great; all I could see of me was my overbite.) I was already smitten with David at the time but I had no idea how he felt about me. Thinking back on the photo of me and David "lightly holding hands" makes me wonder what he thought of that. He rarely, if ever, allowed any public display of affection. Walking on the street he'd always pull his hand away if I tried to grasp it. I came to interpret that as his not wanting me to have any claim on him, to not assume we were "a couple." Even after we'd been married many years, I still had that same feeling. Because, if we were a couple, well, that closed off other possibilities, didn't it? So how that hand holding in the photo came to be is a puzzle; it must have caused him some discomfort.
Years later my stepfather Allan would tell me an anecdote about my mother's reaction to the pilot episode of Bridget Loves Bernie. Just before they fade out of the very last scene, when Bridget and Bernie kiss, David moved close to me, gently cupped my cheek and part of my forehead with his hand, then tilted my head over to one side so I was completely obscured and only his face filled the screen.
I was too green to get what was going on. To me, I was just getting kissed on camera. I didn't yet understand what the camera saw. But Whitney knew. Allan told me she turned to him and groaned, "That fucking actor."
The truth was, I liked making Bridget Loves Bernie. I liked the process. I liked going to work five days a week. There was much laughter among all the actors. The show was where I began my lifelong habit of making friends with the hair and makeup department. Like David, the rest of our fabulous cast were all seasoned professionals and I was so new to the game that I felt like a pretender. I had a hard time finding my rightful place in the mix. It was the folks in the hair, makeup, and wardrobe departments whom I felt most comfortable with; they talked to me, I felt welcomed there. But on the set, I was uncomfortable with the attention we as actors would get from the folks in these departments. Although it was part of their job to check us thoroughly before a shot because it was required that we look the best that we could, it still felt like overexercised vanity to be looking at myself so many times a day.
I was lucky to work with the great character actors we had in our cast. There was no one who didn't adore David Doyle, who played Bridget's father on the series and later would become known as Bosley on Charlie's Angels. He made us laugh all the time. And I loved working with Audra Lindley--later of Three's Company fame as Mrs. Roper--who was my mother; and the great Bibi Osterwald and Harold J. Stone, who played Bernie's parents, were always sweet to me. In fact, the only member of the ensemble I didn't spend much time with was an older actor named Ned Glass, who played Bernie's wise, funny Uncle Moe Plotnick. Ned was darling, but he was also a client of Jack's; I thought that if Ned disapproved of anything I did, he'd tell Jack and then I'd be in trouble for ... something. One great thing about all of them was, because of their years in the business, they knew the score. They were grateful to be on a seemingly successful television series at their age. Whether or not they liked the show never really mattered. They just showed up and did their job.
The order for the first season of Bridget Loves Bernie was for twenty-four episodes. Because I was a lead on the series, that often meant twelve-hour days and coming home dog tired. It also meant figuring out how to establish a stable home environment for my children. I was able to have the production company hire my old friend Robin Steckler, who was now also divorced and had two young kids, to be my stand-in. Robin and kids moved into my four-bedroom house on Stone Canyon in Sherman Oaks and we hired a housekeeper to take care of Robin's children, Aimee and Jason, who were six and four, as well as Teddy and Eva, who were then five and three. In retrospect, in many ways I was replicating for my kids the same household structure that I found so lonely as the child of an acting mother. That said, I did try to keep my eye on my maternal responsibilities. By this point David and I were a pretty steady couple during the day but at night we'd sleep at our own houses so as not to confuse the children.
I knew what being taken care of by an endless stream of changing faces was like. For continuity's sake, Robin and I tried to find just one suitable nanny, but looking after four preschoolers was a tall order and it felt like we were always training someone new or some nanny was throwing up her hands and turning in her resignation. During breaks at work I'd call home f
rom the set to see how things were going. In those days, remember, there weren't cell phones. I'd use a stage phone, a big rotary-dial phone that was mounted on the wall. Right before the cameras rolled, a big warning bell alarm would sound, and the power to the telephone line would be shut off, rendering the phones inoperable.
Once I was making one of my regular "How are the kids; what's going on?" calls to the latest housekeeper, Barbara from Barbados. I was talking to her when I heard someone from the crew say, "All right. We're ready for the first team." I think I wasn't in that scene, but the loud warning bell sounded so I hissed to Barbara, "Oh, I've got to go. They're shooting," and the phone went dead. What I found out later, after I returned home to a shell-shocked housekeeper, was that Barbara had called the police, fearing for my safety! In my haste, it didn't occur to me to explain the studio phone situation to Barbara.
Our one-level house had four bedrooms, though it was by no means palatial. There was no yard, but it had a nice big kitchen/family room with a fireplace that was pretty much the center for us all. We had a picnic bench kitchen table, which handily seated four manic children and two weary mothers. The master suite was right off the family room. Three bedrooms opened onto a long hallway. The kids were divided up; one room bunked the girls, the other the boys. I took the small bedroom at the end of the hall and shared a bathroom with the kids. My room was cozy and had a window to the street. I tacked an Indian-print bedspread to the ceiling, creating a canopy, and made the room into my own little nest. I'm kind of hard put to explain why I didn't take the master suite. I was paying a larger portion of the rent, but I didn't feel comfortable taking that much space. So that was Robin's room for the year we all lived together. After they moved out, I eased myself into the suite comfortably.
Teddy was ensconced in kindergarten at a little neighborhood school down the street, and I'd try to get to school functions whenever possible. Once I stuck my head into a PTA meeting and I was shooed away with, "This is a meeting for parents, dear." Humph. I was twenty-five.
When the show took off, CBS amped up its publicity assault. David, seeing an opportunity, came up with an idea for a photo op. Why not fly us and a photographer up to Bear Valley, a ski resort located between Lake Tahoe and Yosemite, and do an article on Bernie teaching Bridget how to ski? What a great way to get free snow time and a little PR as well. Wildly enough, CBS agreed. But there was one hitch. David was an accomplished self-taught skier. I'd never skied a day in my life. To remedy the situation, it was decided that I'd take a couple of intensive private skiing lessons as soon as we arrived. I have never been much of a sportif but I was game. Watching David ski so gracefully, seemingly effortlessly, at first gave me the confidence that I'd be right behind him by the end of the day. (Does Canada or Tupperware come to mind?) So he whooshed off to enjoy himself, all lean and athletic in his ski outfit, while I, looking like the Michelin man in my rented puffy snow clothes (whose idea was it to belt my parka?), fastened brittle boards to my feet and clumsily duck-walked my way to my instructor and my first ski lift.
To this day I can't figure out why the instructor did this ... maybe he didn't understand what can't ski means. Maybe he couldn't bear my unwillingness to actually lean down the hill in the direction he wanted me to go. Maybe he didn't like his student sniveling in fear. After lunch, we wound up on one of the higher peaks in the resort, marked with a black diamond for "special!" Instead of the wide-open and smooth terrains I'd faced earlier in the day, this was narrow and had large bumps; it looked like many skiers before me had just been buried where they fell. Although I'm sure the teacher was shouting instructions at me as I hurtled off into space, I couldn't hear him over my own screams. Halfway down the slope, I handily sunk the tips of my skis into the topmost side of what I later learned was a mogul and flew ass over teakettle, wrenching my left knee, which didn't want to bend that way.
The next thing I knew, the ski patrol was bringing me down the hill in a bucket sled. I remember being frightfully cold and feeling my lips go numb as I started to go into shock. From the ski resort I was taken by ambulance down to the nearest town, where they found I'd damaged some ligaments in my knee, and then they sent me back to Los Angeles in a hip-high cast. So much for the shots of Bridget and Bernie cavorting happily in the snow. David told me later that he'd had to pack up my clothes and things at the resort and bring them home for me. He said it felt like I was dead. For some reason, I found that touching. I thought it showed he cared for me.
Here's a lesson that CBS learned: Even if the leads of your series are young and healthy, your show still needs proper insurance coverage. Okay, I'd already had the one skiing mishap, but the lesson was reconfirmed roughly midway through the filming of BLB, our shorthand name for the series. One night I was at Alice's Restaurant on the Malibu Pier, having dinner with David and an actor friend of ours named Oliver Clark. We had a great time, but later that night I was kept awake by the worst stomachache ever. I was sure I had food poisoning. I felt somewhat better in the morning and went to work. Midday, the pain started up again; I was in such pain that sweat began pouring down my face; I could barely stand up to play my scene. By early evening the pain had subsided once more and I was actually on my way out to eat again with David and Oliver and I told them about what had happened. Oliver was very concerned and really pushed for me to go to the hospital.
It seemed like an overreaction to me because, after all, I was better. However, Oliver's persistence won out and when we got to the hospital, it didn't take long for the emergency room doctor to determine that I was in the middle of an appendicitis attack. I was taken into surgery with dispatch to have my appendix removed. I remember Teddy and Eva were brought to visit me at the hospital but they were too small to be allowed upstairs. The best we could do was wave to one another from the window. They looked so small from the second floor. Teddy had burst into tears when I came home in my skiing accident leg cast and had been afraid to come near me. But not even being allowed to be in the same room with each other was harder. They didn't understand.
This is where our show was in trouble. They had not insured me. And they had to shut down production for a week while I recovered from my appendectomy. Taking advantage of this little downtime, David took me, while I was so tender, to the seaside resort town of La Jolla, to an on-the-beach hotel. I'd not been there before and found it extraordinarily beautiful. The only thing I could do was lie in the sand, so we did that, loving the sun. David said he was going off for a run and would be back soon and he sprinted off. I was lying there on my back, kind of like an upended turtle--still weak from the surgery and in so much pain that I couldn't turn over without help. I was stuck on the sand, faceup, unable to move, anxiously charting the sun's progress until David returned from his long (and I thought later, selfish) run. I was burned and blistered but didn't have the words to say anything to him. I didn't know how to ask him to consider me.
The physical travails of BLB's star was nothing, however, compared to the storm of controversy that brewed when our show went on the air. Interfaith marriage may have been a lightning rod topic in the early '70s, but I think no one could have predicted the hullaballoo a lightweight little ethnic comedy would create. Early on, Jewish groups, typically with Conservative and Orthodox religious leaders, began complaining that the show didn't just stereotype Jews but also made marriage between Jews and Christians appear too easy, too attractive. To be fair, many Irish Catholics weren't too keen on the show, either. But their objections didn't come close to the uproar in Jewish communities: there were campaigns to get people to write protest letters to sponsors like Procter & Gamble, and one rabbi attempted to negotiate with CBS to get Bridget Loves Bernie taken off the air permanently. Compared to television these days, intermarriage seems like such a harmless plot device. However, Bernie's parents running Steinbergs' delicatessen and constantly making jokes about matzo ball soup and gefilte fish jokes only fueled the turning-Jews-into-cartoon-characters argument.
In order to respond to the criticism, the show's writing staff began to soften the scripts, which were never what you'd call edgy in the first place. Something as innocuous as Bernie saying, "I don't like my mother's cooking" would be examined, then reexamined, then rewritten, then reexamined, and then cut out entirely so as not to be seen as casting aspersions on Jewish cuisine or mothers! That kind of caution--self-censorship, really--only led to idealizing characters. Bernie became perfectly bland, Bridget became blandly perfect, and when that happens, nobody comes off as human. As the show went on, I began to wish that Bridget had a clubfoot or was maybe a kleptomaniac, some kind of detail that would allow me to bring contours to the character. I was learning what Whitney discovered from her Hazel experience: nice, cute, perfect isn't very interesting to play.
On the other hand, I was happy to have a regular job and to be taking home a paycheck. I was slowly getting established in television and it gave my iffy confidence a much-needed boost. But David was very serious about acting in all its permutations, so the change in the quality of the scripts drove him around the bend. He was always trashing BLB both to me and to the press. He thought the story lines were simpleminded and in dire need of a substance infusion beyond plots such as "Shall we get a puppy?" or "Shall we get a water bed?" He probably wasn't wrong, but his feelings seemed to take him overboard.
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