I was grateful just to have dinner with other people. So often David and I would be at dinner, out or at home, and we'd eat in silence. He rarely seemed to have anything to say to me and he seemed uninterested in anything I said to him. I'd be thrashing about in my head, trying to come up with some question I could ask that would elicit an answer that I hoped would then become a conversation, yes? Sometimes this tactic would backfire: if he just found me tiresome, then I would become the target. It could be excruciating. Having other folks, nice people, around was a great remedy.
An example of why the friendship meant so much to me was when I gave birth to Kate and David left town to go skiing for about a week. Almost immediately, I got a powerful case of the flu; I was so sick I couldn't stand up. I called for help, and Janet appeared on my doorstep at once and took Teddy, Eva, and my newborn baby to her house and cared for them until I was better. I didn't know there were people who did this for other people.
We'd all been friends for about two years and we were out one night at one of our regular restaurants. I believe there was some discussion going on about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Janet added her opinion about something, and David suddenly started shouting at her. He said something to the effect of, "That is the stupidest thing I've ever heard anyone say and I don't know why the fuck I bother spending time with you." He stood up and said, "This is the end. I don't ever want to do this again." And he left. I followed David as he stormed out of the restaurant, asking, "What? What happened? I don't get it. What did she say that made you so mad?" I was used to David getting angry for no reason, but what was that about? I had no idea. These were lovely people, people we both liked. David didn't answer and we drove home in silence.
I continued to go over to Janet's because she had become such an integral part of my life. We'd talk about our little girls and their school; I'd talk about Teddy and our neighborhood children dynamics. Janet would talk about John's job or a trip they were taking, but we never brought up what happened. I'd never told her my difficulties with David and I didn't at this time either. I didn't tell her David was making snide remarks to me about still going over to see her, disparaging her character and how she was a waste of my time. Some part of me was hoping this would all pass, that Janet would miraculously be reinstated in David's good graces and we could go on as before, which I so desperately wanted. And I thought if I told her about him, she wouldn't want to reconnect, even if it were possible. Surprisingly, John and David did see each other once or twice after that, but then John called him and said, "I don't want to spend time with you if you don't want to spend time with my wife." All was lost for me at that point. I didn't know how to keep returning to her warm kitchen while this albatross was hanging on my neck. We were at a loss as to how to continue pretending there was no elephant in the room, so we sadly decided to end it "for now," limply leaving open the possibility of reconnecting. All my ties to the Taylors were severed. I felt strangled, with no words to say or anyone to say them to. I felt hopeless and desperately alone.
Sometimes I'd think about that evening and wonder what Janet could have possibly said that could have so ignited David's fury. It wasn't until years and years later, after David and I were divorced, that I got some clarity. Being resilient despite the problems of their parents, Eva and Mary had remained good friends all through high school and news of our divorce reached the Taylors. Janet called me. There had never been any animosity between us, but we hadn't exchanged a word in years. She said she had something to tell me about that evening some sixteen years or so ago.
When we met up, Janet explained that she hadn't told me anything about that night at the time for fear of hurting me. She thought David and I had a good marriage and she didn't want to be a part of causing any problem. She hadn't even told her husband until he and David ceased their friendship. Apparently, on the day of our last dinner together, Janet had been at home alone when David appeared without announcement. He'd made a pass at her; when she rejected him he made a derisive comment and left. And that night we all had dinner together. Maybe he was covering up and saving face the only way he knew how. But oh, did he have to make a pass at my only friend?
Having an explanation was not much comfort, to be honest. It had been such a profound and inexplicable loss that now made sense when put in context because it wasn't the first time. I'd been sitting at David's desk in our bedroom on the phone some years before, talking with who knows who, and my eyes settled on a half-written letter, in David's handwriting, open on the desk. A line leapt out at me ... "I should have married you instead of Meredith." What? What? It was addressed to Augusta, a woman David had spoken of frequently, whom he'd met while filming in England. When I confronted him, he hotly denied he was having an affair with her and reamed me for invading his privacy. I felt squashed and humiliated once again. He could shut me up and I would stay shut up. I felt like the verbal rug had been pulled out from under me. Somehow, I bought that I was wrong in this exchange and he seemed to come out clean while I was left hot, confused, in a blinding, unventable rage. It felt useless to say anything to him. I'd grown up with no voice and I'd married someone who allowed me no voice. This perpetuated the feelings of hopelessness and powerlessness and shame. I had a voice screaming in my head, sometimes at David but just as often at myself, thrashing myself for my cowardice and ineptitude. It undermined my being a mother because I had no confidence.
Teddy and Eva had an altercation one evening, as often happens with kids, upstairs in Ted's room, and I was in there, trying to sort things out quietly without drawing David's attention, when he bounded up the stairs and took over, berating me for not being the adult, giving all the power to the kids, and forcing him to be the bad guy. No resolution was reached with the kids and we all felt smacked and crappy, but it sure got quiet really fast, which must have been the objective because David seemed to feel much better.
Thank God for work. I think I would have lost my mind if I didn't have a place to go to feel valuable, where I could make a contribution, where people actually seemed to like me. Working, I could have ideas that wouldn't get shot down; I could make choices that weren't belittled. Working, I could discuss approaches to a scene, argue a character's point of view with give-and-take and not be humiliated if I made a wrong step or didn't understand something. I was funny, I was smart, I was present and felt in command of myself. All this left me when I headed home. So I was thrilled to keep the work coming in.
During one hiatus from Family, I landed the miniseries adaptation of Louisa May Alcott's Little Women, playing the eldest sister, Meg March. What a great cast: William Shatner, Susan Dey, William Schallert; Dorothy McGuire was the March sisters' beloved Marmee, and our aunt was played by the stunning Oscar-winning actress Greer Garson.
However, classic stories and stellar casts do not guarantee a successful movie, and this remake was no exception. Ultimately, I thought it was dull and uncompelling.
The most remarkable element in it to me was that the incredible Edith Head did the costumes: another Oscar-winning Hollywood legend in our midst. I was intimidated by her reputation as a stickler for period accuracy and the impressive history and temper of this tiny woman when I met her in the Universal wardrobe department. She looked just as she always had: short dark blunt-cut hair with bangs and thick oversized glasses. She had pulled several costumes for me from the Civil War costume archives and they were hung around the room on display. My heart sank as she watched me try them on. The style of the time was a pretty high neckline, sort of a crewneck shape, and the long full skirt had a fairly high waist, several inches above the navel. This was not a flattering look for the big-busted girl. Now, having already been working with fitters and looking at myself in wardrobe for a few years and having lived with this body for years more than that, I had a good sense of what suited me and how to fix what didn't. I needed more skin, more of a dip in the bodice, and not such a high waist, but wasn't this accurate for the period? I certainly wasn't about to sta
rt giving Edith Head pointers on how to make my wardrobe look better for me.
I just stood there miserably in one dress after another, afraid to say anything as she tapped a pencil and looked me up and down. "Okay," she said, "this is what we will do. We'll lengthen this"--showing me how she would drop the waistline slightly--"which will give you a longer line and pull you in here but drop this down just enough," showing how she would create a lacy faux V-line over the bodice that totally solved my bust problem! "Is that consistent with the period, though?" I asked. And she said in an overly theatrical way, "It's faaar more important that my women look faaabulous. And who will know?"
Family was a critical darling, and garnered two Emmy Awards for Kristy McNichol and one each for Sada Thompson and Gary Frank. Jim Broderick and I were both nominated but didn't win. Our show was a feather in the cap of its executive producer, Aaron Spelling, who at the time was mostly known for much lighter fare like Charlie's Angels. But Family never did well in the ratings; in 1980, after five seasons, ABC finally pulled the plug. Because I enjoyed the consistency and stability of being able to work regularly, I spent the hiatus before Family's final year making an overheated, unwieldy, three-part, six-hour TV miniseries, a Gone With the Wind knock-off called Beulah Land. Based on a pair of Lonnie Coleman novels, Beulah Land told the story of Sarah Pennington Kendrick, a beautiful Southern belle (played by Lesley Ann Warren) who ends up the boss of her own sprawling plantation. I played Lauretta, Sarah's sort of slutty sister.
I always loved my hiatus projects, partly because it gave me a chance to get a break from David but also because I got to do a total about-face and be a wildly different character, meet new people, have great new experiences. Beulah Land was an exception because for the most part it was a pretty hideous experience. First of all, the shoot never seemed to end: we worked from January until Easter of 1979. We filmed in Natchez, Mississippi. It was unbelievably cold, and we were deluged with rain and rain and rain. There were mudslides along the Mississippi River and our sets were buried. Mud was up to our corsets (yes, another Civil War piece). Everything that could go wrong did. In the middle of stressful filming, our first director, Virgil Vogel, had a heart attack and we shut down for two weeks and went home until another director, Harry Falk, could be brought in. No one seemed to get along. Some of the African American actors in the cast protested the hackneyed way they perceived Beulah Land portrayed slaves and its obsession with interracial romance subplots. Actors were sick or having meltdowns and not emerging from their trailers. One of the production assistants, an active alcoholic, was so depressed and miserable that I dreaded knocking on his trailer door, fearful I'd find him hanging inside. I think someone made up T-shirts that read "Happiness is Natchez in the rearview mirror."
I didn't mind living for three months in the Ramada Inn on a hill over the banks of the Mississippi, except it was downwind from the paper factory, which produced odors unknown to anyone new to these parts. Oh my God, an unparalleled fetor emanated from that factory when the wind blew just so, and I'd have to stuff wet towels under my door and around the windows to hold off the stench. But the rank wind and the majestic, powerful Mississippi somehow coexisted, and my first action every morning was, through the closed window, to check out the river and count the vessels--see what kind of activity was going on: long freight barges, gambling steamships, private motorboats. The river itself had the buzz of a small metropolis.
Eventually, as I adapted to it, the smell faded to a mild irritant and I got on with nesting at the Ramada. I bought a little toaster oven and, because I'd just become a vegetarian, I baked potatoes with cheese or toasted rice cakes with cheese--just about anything with cheese. And I discovered the bar. Every night when the transportation van dropped me off after work, I'd head straight to the Ramada Inn bar and order two pina coladas or one pina colada and a brandy Alexander and trip off to my room and sip them while I watched my potato bake. It was better than television. I loved my evenings. I loved having alone time. I loved endless reading time. Except for my calls home every night, I talked to no one. My room was cozy and quiet and relaxing; I got a small buzz on (was it the cheese or the alcohol?) and I wasn't bothered by too much.
At the time, I wasn't much of a drinker and I stuck with the phoofy drinks that camouflaged the alcohol with lots of sugary calories. So, on this show it was the costumer telling me I was gaining weight. As it turned out, the style of dress from the years Beulah Land covered--1827 to the postwar Reconstruction--was very accommodating to my weight gain. I'd go to my trailer and say to the poor costumer in charge of lacing me into my corset, "Just yank 'em as tight as you can." The more she pulled, the more my waist pulled in, the more my bosoms heaved skyward. By the time we wrapped production, I could practically rest my chin on them.
A year or so after Family ended, David invited a writer-producer named Gary David Goldberg and his wife, Diana Meehan, over for dinner at our house. Gary was a guy on the rise. In recent years he'd worked on hot CBS sitcoms like The Bob Newhart Show and Lou Grant, and had made a name for himself in the industry as smart and witty. Around this time Gary had formed his own company, Ubu Productions, and was in the process of creating a series called The Bureau. He apparently was considering David for the lead and I think this dinner was the first time they were getting together.
I liked the process leading up to entertaining: straightening the house, coming up with a menu, drinking wine while puttering around the kitchen and cooking by myself, putting out the dishes, and setting the table. Maybe I just liked the idea of entertaining because the part I didn't care for was being with the guests. I didn't always know the guests but, in truth, it didn't really help if I did. I was pretty shy and shut down and although folks might have been warm to me, I don't know that I was able to reciprocate very much, so sure was I that I'd say something stupid that would draw criticism from David. And he would dismiss me in a manner that bespoke confidence that others shared his opinion, at which point I would just try to become invisible. So I'd serve the dinner and have absolutely no memory of the rest of the evening. Actually, I always thought I'd fallen asleep, although no one complained of my sinking into my soup. I have no recollection of most of those dinner parties--of what I served, of who was at my house, of what we talked about. That always perplexed me when I gave it any thought at all. Which I didn't, much.
No surprise that I didn't remember the actual dinner with Gary and Diana, but I do recall sitting in the living room with them after the meal while they discussed various projects with David. I couldn't say whether I participated in the conversation or not. They were warm and friendly when they departed and I thought nothing about them again. Until Gary called, saying that he was working on a comedy series about a couple of former hippies and their three conservative children. He thought I'd be perfect for the mother role. I didn't have to test for it. He was offering it to me.
What?
Memaw with Whitney and her brother Buddy.
My mother, Whitney Blake, in a publicity photo, circa 1958.
With my brothers, Richard and Brian, on the day of my mother's marriage to Jack Fields, 1956.
My seventh-grade school photo.
At seventeen in Ferndell Park. JOSHUA M. STOCKER
Ben, 1972.
With James Franciscus in Doc Elliot, 1973.
With David Hedison in The Cat Creature, 1973.
With David Birney in Connecticut, summer 1974. MARTHA SWOPE
The cast of Family, circa 1977.
(Left to right) Eve Plum, Dorothy McGuire, me, Ann Dusenberry, and Susan Dey in Little Women, 1978.
With Shelley Hack and Annette O'Toole in Vanities at the Westwood Playhouse, 1981. JAY THOMPSON
With David in the Caribbean during the first hiatus from Family Ties, circa 1983.
On the twins' baptism day. (Left to right) David holding Mollie, Ted, me, Eva holding Peter, and Kate.
With the twins.
Mollie and Peter.
With Mich
ael Gross on the set of Family Ties during our fifth season.
From the final season of Family Ties.
With David in the Dallas stage production of The Diaries of Adam and Eve, 1989.
As Betty Broderick, 1992.
With my darling brothers, Brian and Richard, and my mother, Whitney, circa 1994.
Poster from My Breast, 1994.
With Michael Blodgett at our wedding reception, 1995.
With Barbara Boxer, Allan, and Whitney at a fund-raiser.
With Michael Fox in a scene from Spin City, 1997.
With my mother, Whitney, in Malibu.
With John Heard and Peter Coyote in The Wednesday Woman, 2000.
Pumpkin hunting with Mollie and my granddaughter, Sophia, circa 2001.
Peter and Kate at Peter's graduation from Brentwood School in 2002.
Ted with his son, Eli.
Kate's wedding in Edgartown on Martha's Vineyard in 2005. (Left to right) Ted, Eva, me, Kate, David, Mollie, and Peter.
Peter, Richard, me, and Nancy sharing a laugh.
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