They were both really very nice and patient. I was especially nervous and self-conscious around Redford. I passed by him on the set once after lunch while he was taking a bite out of something and I flippantly said, "Oh, eating again?" Why did I say thaaaaat? I wanted to stab myself in the head with my plastic fork.
As I was getting acting jobs, opportunities for my mother were drying up. This is what happens in the friendly, loyal movie business as one gets older. Being shrewd, talented, and resourceful, she moved on to creating a sitcom that she could star in. Whitney always felt that there was a series in her, that the obstacles she faced as a single parent raising children were fodder for great social comedy. So she pitched an idea to her husband, Allan, about a divorced woman raising a teenager on her own in Indianapolis, and her hope was that she and I would star as mother and daughter. For the next five or six years Allan shopped the premise around with the piquant working title of 38 ... 18 ... And ..., meant to suggest both age and a woman's measurements. Mostly Allan heard a lot of nos. By the mid-'70s, though, he was a writer-producer on Norman Lear's popular Chicago-based sitcom, Good Times. Allan ran the idea past Norman, who commissioned him to write a pilot script.
By the time 38 ... 18 ... And ... made it through Lear's famously soul-crushing development process of notes and rewrites and polishes, it had become One Day at a Time, a half-hour comedy-drama about Ann Romano, a divorced woman in her thirties hoping to reclaim her independence while raising two teenage daughters, Julie and Barbara Cooper. Not only did this mean that Whitney, who was pushing fifty, was now too old to play the character based on herself, but to heap insult upon injury, Norman Lear refused to let her audition, not even as a courtesy. Theater actress and former child star Bonnie Franklin was cast, and the role put her on the map. As disappointed and irked as my mother was, when One Day at a Time premiered in December of 1975, Whitney got out there and did press for it, bringing attention to and wringing whatever glory she could out of her "Created by Whitney Blake and Allan Manings" credit. Given that the series eventually ran on CBS for eight highly successful seasons, that was eight years of being reminded of what could have been. That must have felt like a constant painful reprimand for her.
Watching Whitney struggle was a perpetual reminder for me to appreciate the work that came my way--even when it was a freaky, wrongheaded TV movie like Bittersweet Love, which David retitled Bittersweet Turkey. I starred as a young woman who meets a man (played by Scott Hylands), falls in love, gets married, then, after discovering she's with child, finds out that her husband is also her half brother. Oops! Headlining in an incest movie--and a bad one at that--isn't what made this experience memorable. It was the genuinely talented, seasoned actors who were featured in the cast as well: the amazing Celeste Holm, Robert Lansing, and Robert Alda. And the actress cast in the role of both my and my husband-sibling's mother was Hollywood icon Lana Turner.
Working with her was exciting and peculiar. It was dispiriting that, given that Ms. Turner had been a larger-than-life star for decades, she turned in a crazily hammy performance and it was pretty clear she was drinking through most of her scenes. There was one scene where I walked into the foyer of a very grand house with a circular stairway, at the top of which is Turner, who's supposed to greet me from the landing. But she would be slurring her words and so the director kept yelling, "Cut." We'd start again, and Lana would come out and do the same thing. And then she'd apologize profusely. She was holding a paper cup in her hand during most of the takes and I was wondering what she would do if they made her put it down. They didn't, so we just had a very long day. I vowed to myself never to behave so unprofessionally.
Chapter 8
Ted, Eva, and Kate in front of our house.
In 1975, Fred Silverman, then the head of programming at ABC, was trying to figure out how to fix a series he felt had promise, a one-hour TV drama called The Best Years. It had been inspired by PBS's groundbreaking weekly documentary series An American Family, and everything about the project had a special shimmer. The script--about the daily struggles of a normal, middle-class, married couple living with their three children in suburban Pasadena--was written by the esteemed Jay Presson Allen. Award-winning film and theater director Mike Nichols had come on as executive producer and assembled a prestige cast including noted stage actors Sada Thompson and James Broderick (Matthew's dad) as the parents and Gary Frank and young Kristy McNichol as two of the three children. Execs at ABC, it was reported, had emerged weeping from the pilot screening. (This was a good sign?)
There was some difficulty, however, with the casting of Kate and Doug Lawrence's eldest daughter, Nancy Lawrence Maitland, a newly divorced single mom, played in the six-part miniseries by an actress named Elayne Heilveil. When Family went to the full series, Heilveil bowed out of the show and Jane Actman replaced her. But Fred Silverman still felt that the balance in the casting was slightly off; he wanted someone older in the role of Nancy when it started up production at Fox Studios in its first official season as a series. Without consulting anyone--not even Carol and Nigel McKeand, the executive producers who were assigned to run the day-to-day production--Silverman decided I was the one for the job.
Even though my little one, Kate, was not quite two at the time, I was very happy to have a steady gig again. She was a joy and a delight. She was strong, precocious, and smarter than me; I'd be hard put to find someone who made me laugh so much. Eva and Teddy were darling with her, let her trot after them into the pool or out into the neighboring bamboo to play. I loved having the quiet at-home stretch with her but being home full-time became difficult for me. I had some help but never from David. He was good for playing with Kate in the pool or having her perform for admirers or putting on a good daddy show when an audience was around, but he was never a helpmate, even though he'd been so adamant about wanting his own child. It was clear he felt that child care was my job; he wouldn't do it but he had strong opinions about how I did it. Correcting me in front of the children and calling me names were his most reliable tactics, particularly when there were witnesses because he knew that enhanced my shame quotient. Consequently, I was more than ready for the relief of a soundstage when the Family offer came.
My first week on Family was spent reshooting scenes from episodes that had originally been filmed with Jane Actman. To save the production time, they only reshot my character Nancy's singles or angles that included Nancy. That meant that I had to replicate every position, gesture, or action that the previous Nancy had chosen so that I fit in the rest of the puzzle. And I had to say my lines with the same intent and inflection as the previous Nancy so that original reactions of the other characters would still seem responsive with my Nancy. Grrr. I stuck to my usual mode of working: I arrived on the set on time and prepared, kept quiet, and did my work, but it felt horrible. I had my head screwed on wrong and felt hobbled and uncreative. What about my interpretation of Nancy's lines, huh? My lack of humility and experience were showing. Toward the end of that week, during a brief break, I was on the living room set, brooding and resentful. Jim Broderick sat down with me on the sofa and we just stared up into the rafters, at the platforms and catwalks that crisscrossed the upper domain of the cavernous soundstage.
"See that door waayyy up there?" said Jim, pointing at a tiny portal near the roof.
"Yes," I replied.
"You know what's up there?"
"No."
"That's where we keep allll the old Nancys."
It was the only reference anyone had made to my predicament. But Jimmy seemed to understand how difficult it was for me, so I developed an instant crush on him; he was darling, kind, and perceptive. He was also a beautiful actor, low-key and very present. I never felt like he was acting. His words just seemed to come as if he'd thought them up on the spot. I didn't think his fine, subtle work got enough credit; I figure no one could tell he was acting.
As casual as it was on the set, Family was a show with serious intentions. It tried to reali
stically address the uncertainties of everyday life; at a time when TV families lived an idealized, laugh-track existence, the Lawrence clan bickered, sulked, and were short-tempered with one another. And at the end of the day they hadn't always healed their rifts or retained their loving equilibrium.
Jim's character, the kindhearted Doug Lawrence, was an independent lawyer, while Sada Thompson's Kate was a housewife and the slightly stern center of the family. Gary Frank played the Lawrences' only son, Willie, who was very idealistic and had dropped out of high school to pursue a career as a writer. Buddy, the youngest daughter, who tended toward frank, thought-provoking declarations, was played by Kristy McNichol. My character, their eldest daughter, Nancy, was there, it seemed, to try everyone's patience at every turn. In the original miniseries a pregnant twenty-four-year-old Nancy catches her husband sleeping with her friend and they struggle to move beyond his infidelity issues. But by the time I came into the picture, Nancy had a young son, Timmy, and was living in her parents' back guesthouse. She was married, divorced, and a single parent when far too young (hey, this could have been my story!), and many episodes focused on Nancy taking advantage of her parents' and siblings' willingness to double as free child care while she goes off on dates that often end the following morning.
The part of Nancy was everything that's fun to play: spiky, selfish, shortsighted. Because so many producers were invested in their characters' being likable, there weren't many regulars on shows at the time teeming with such unappealing personality traits as I got to display. I loved that the McKeands were willing to write Nancy so unattractive and so real. I'd have these great scenes where, say, Buddy would come into my house and sweetly ask, "Oh, Nancy, I don't know how to dance. Can you show me how to dance?" And instead of giving the expected positive answer, they'd let me totally dismiss her with an "Uh, no. Sorry ..." I wasn't burdened with being a role model for young adults. I was allowed to play a totally normal albeit exceedingly self-centered young adult. And audiences got to see the consequences of such behavior--it didn't happen in a void. She never got away with much. Someone was always calling her out for her thoughtlessness, usually Momma Kate.
I didn't have to do any research for this part; it all came embarrassingly easy. I would read a scene in which Nancy totally takes advantage of someone, tramples all over their feelings, and folks would be all upset and retaliate and I'd be thinking, "So ... what's the problem? She didn't mean to hurt them," as if intentions mattered. It is chastening to realize how much I identified with this self-absorbed girl. I too had married and divorced young, had been ill equipped to be a parent, and had flailed about looking for some guy; wasn't some guy supposed to carry me?
Kristy McNichol, at fourteen, was sweet and seemed to be very much at home in front of the camera. Since I didn't work with her all that often, I didn't get to know her very well and there was quite a disparity in our ages, so I probably wasn't that different from the show's Nancy. I wouldn't have showed her how to dance, either.
I do have one vivid memory of shooting a scene of Nancy and Buddy at a park, sitting in the swings. Kristy and I said our lines and I recall thinking, This is grueling; nothing is coming back from her. I emote, I give some feeling, and she simply sits there, twisting in the swing, limply delivering her lines. I've got to make it look like something is actually happening in this scene.
When I later watched the episode, I fully expected to see myself in the swing, trying to save the day. Instead, I saw magic happening that I could not see when we shot it. I could see Buddy's thoughts form, feel her hesitancy, and then her words would spill out in a natural, complex, beautifully nuanced presentation. To me it had looked like she was doing absolutely nothing but the camera picked up on it differently. I looked at her with renewed respect and made a note to self not to leap with my judgment so quickly. I had to allow that it was entirely possible that I didn't know what I was talking about. It didn't surprise me that Family became Kristy's launching pad to teen megastardom.
As for my TV mom, Sada, I thought she was great; she had a sweet sense of humor and a very close bond with Jimmy Broderick. I shied away from her because it felt like she had a little edge; I was always somewhat afraid of people being angry with me. She could make me laugh, although I didn't think she liked me a lot. I think she was impatient with me, maybe thought I lacked focus; since I was pretty immature, she was probably right.
One day when we were just back in production from a several-month-long hiatus, I was sitting in my open dressing room--in those days they were no-frills and the size of large toolsheds, square and windowless. Ours were all situated in a row alongside the stage. The big wardrobe trailer was parked right next to us and I could hear Sada, inside the trailer, wailing in frustration to our darling Irish costumer, Shirley Cunningham, "EVERY SINGLE ONE OF MY DRESSES HAS SHRUNK!! I cannot believe this has happened again!" I popped my head out of my room just in time to see a slightly stouter Sada march out of the trailer in disgust.
Before I signed on for the part of Nancy, David was clear he really didn't want me working all the time because of the children and insisted that the job was not an option unless I was in only half of the episodes. Although I didn't like being dictated to, I didn't like being away from the little ones for long hours either, so a lighter load wasn't a bad idea. I could do that. And out of the house was out of the house.
I never really thought David's motive was about the best interests of the kids. That was always the banner he waved over me, but I felt it was because I was becoming known. I think he had a hard time as I started earning a higher profile. It seemed he felt it detracted from him. In my first season on Family, the entire cast was on the cover of TV Guide, which was great fun for me. It was the only magazine from the "industry" that came to our house, so the kids got to see it and I was really pleased. David didn't comment. When, perhaps a year later, I made the cover all by myself and Eva made a comment about how cool it was, David dismissed it with, "So, someone else will be on the cover next week." I had no illusions about being some big star. I understood the business was about promoting actors, ergo, promoting the shows, which promoted business. I never thought that being on a cover of something implied anything about me, although it seemed David thought I might think that, and he was the one to nip that in the bud. I started being careful to not talk about the show. I was afraid of sounding proud or pleased ... I knew I would just draw fire and give him some reason to belittle me. I worked on getting smaller.
During the four seasons I was on Family, David worked all the time, including on an NBC series based on Sidney Lumet's cop film Serpico. It must have crushed him when that series was canceled. I think he liked being identified with the heroic aspect of the character. He got to ride a motorcycle, and he'd grown a beard for the part since the real Serpico was bearded; it suited him and many people recognized him from that.
I brought that same sense of smallness to the fore anytime I was confronted with what I perceived as authority, be it my husband or my producers. One year during the contract negotiations, Jack, who was still my agent, said the Family producers refused to give me a raise. I had garnered a fair amount of attention and had been well received on the show and Jack had agreed that a small raise wasn't inappropriate. So I asked if instead they'd give me a car, as I knew this had been done in the past. I'm sure their sphincters tightened at that, envisioning pressure for some slinky European roadster. They asked me just what it was I wanted. I fixed them with my beady little mercenary eye and demanded a "little yellow Datsun station wagon" because I really needed one for driving my three kids to school before work. And they agreed! Thank goodness a Datsun was really what I wanted. I didn't have enough self-esteem to ask for a fancier car and this suited my purposes. The producers may have thought I was a patsy but I was thrilled.
Between Family, David, and three kids, I didn't have much time left over for socializing. So something I loved, when it happened, was when, after dinner, David would pull out his gui
tar and play Irish folk songs and we'd all sing as I did the dishes and the kids and I would harmonize and they'd dance around the kitchen. We all loved the strong sense of family and togetherness these evenings afforded us. The suspension of tension was relished all the more sweetly because we never knew how long it would last.
We still saw a lot of Oliver Clark but David seemed to have many other friends I didn't really know. I had made one friend, Janet Taylor. She lived two blocks over from our house and I met her when Eva was six and in class with Janet's daughter, Mary. Janet and I were both pregnant when we met at the girls' school down the hill; she was due a few months after me and we spent many hours together, usually in her kitchen, talking about husbands, children, families, and babies. I'd never had someone to relate these experiences with before; my other pregnancies had happened in a vacuum with no one to really reflect back to me what it was like for them. This was a delicious connection; this was a girl friend; she was a pretty woman, tall, with long brown hair, sparkling eyes, and a great generous heart. As it turned out, David got along well with her husband, John, who was just the most fabulous, easygoing guy, so we became a foursome! This was great! This was a new experience for me. Neither of them was in the business, so I figured no competitive feelings would arise for David. We'd go out periodically as a group, or we'd go to each other's houses, just like regular people did. We even spent some time in New York together and I have to say, I loved having a sense of community. I loved the example set by a couple that had such a warm, loving relationship.
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