“Oh, right. No, no sir, no more skateboarding. No.”
Then he was back to his grinning, giggling self, and I was slapped on the back and told I could go. As soon as the door closed behind me, I could hear Michael shouting: “JESUS CHRIST! HE SAID SHE HAD A TINY LITTLE CAST! DID YOU SEE THAT FUCKING THING?” I could hear what sounded like fists being pounded on desks, wastebaskets being kicked across the room. “WHAT THE HELL ARE WE GOING TO DO WITH THAT?” Then it quieted down to murmurs and whispers.
After a while the door opened again. Michael was all smiles, as if nothing had happened. I was invited back in and told that they had come up with a solution. Because the first part of the “Bunny” episode involved my being in an accident and faking a serious injury, they would write into the script that I did in fact have a minor injury. Nellie would break her arm and get bruised in the fall (lending some believability to her claims of paralysis), and the real cast would be covered in an 1800s version. The next episode would be delayed, by switching it out with one I wasn’t in, and by that time I would be down to a small cast or something easily dealt with through camera angles. Again, Michael tousled my hair and said, “Remember, no more skateboards, right?” And then this gem: “If you ever break your arm skateboarding again…” He paused, flashing me a dimpled Charles Ingalls grin, which then suddenly disappeared. “I’ll break the other one.” This was followed by his high-pitched maniacal laughter. A joke, of course, but I decided that skateboarding might be bad for my health in more ways than one.
Shooting the episode was like making an action film. There were all kinds of stunt people and special effects involved. Who would be beating the horse? Not me! I couldn’t ride to begin with, and in my current condition I was not going anywhere near a horse. I stood on a ladder, as the cameramen shot me from the chest up to avoid the cast, and using my good arm, I proceeded to whip the living daylights out of the side of the ladder. The editors crosscut this with footage of the professional stunt girl on a real horse pretending to beat him while he was doing all sorts of rearing and bucking maneuvers that would be utterly impossible for an amateur like me. She took off at a furious speed heading straight for a tree. Cut.
Now, how do you have someone ride face first into a tree branch at high speed and be knocked unconscious without killing them? You fake it. I sat on a box. Two grips held a piece of Plexiglas in front of my face. I bounced a little as if riding, and at the crucial moment, another grip swung a tree branch into the Plexiglas—slam! I simply rolled my eyes back into my head and fell off the box. I was good at falling over, and I was even better at playing dead or unconscious. I lay back in the nice, cool grass—a real treat, as usually in Simi we were stomping around in the hot sun, on the gravel road—and tried not to actually fall asleep. Here we were under the trees, and all I had to do was lie there with my eyes closed and look injured. And I was getting paid the same as I did for walking and talking. It was very relaxing. I nearly dozed off once or twice, as I listened to the two Melissas’ frantic whispers take after take: “She’s hurt bad!” “Quick! Get Doc Baker!” I greedily reveled in what it would be like to actually have anybody worry about me that much. (I sure as hell didn’t hear anything like that when I was lying on my back in the parking lot with the real broken arm.) I could see how Nellie would think this was the start of something good.
Just as I was thinking this was really the life, and I might never open my eyes, I felt a strange sensation in my nose. It wasn’t the blood—they had put a lovely cinematic trickle of fake blood running out of my nose for this shot. There was something else there now. In my nose! And then I heard “Shhh…keep it rolling and…cut!” followed by the infamous shrieking giggle. I opened my eyes. While I played dead, instead of just saying “cut” to end the scene, Michael had quietly reached over and stuck his finger up my nose and insisted that they get it all on film.
I got to spend most of the episode in bed. I liked the big Nellie brass bed I had on the show and developed quite a fixation on brass beds because of it. In fact, the first bed I owned when I had my own place was brass, and I insisted on nothing but brass beds for years. For my pretend injuries, the makeup artists did a good job re-creating my real skateboard-related wounds. I had a big bruise on my head in the same spot I had given myself the real one the week before. This was bigger and more purple and made out of a sort of waxy putty. At the end of the day, I could peel it off and stick it on the wall or on my bedpost like a piece of gum. The first day I wore it home and tried to convince my mother I’d fallen again and that it was real. (She didn’t buy it.) After that, I stuck it on my notebook and took it to school.
They managed to turn my 1970s cast into an 1800s version with wood and cloth by covering it with boards and bandaging up the whole mess. It looked very sturdy, which was a good thing, because even if they didn’t have to cover the cast, we certainly had to cover the autographs. After Michael, everyone on the show signed it. People wrote all sorts of rude things, drew pictures. It was great! And then came the wheelchair.
Propelling yourself in a nineteenth-century-era wicker wheelchair is not like pushing yourself around in an efficient streamlined chair. It requires a lot more effort, and steering is nearly impossible. In the scene where Doc Baker unveils the chair and lets Nellie try it out, he says, “It’s all right; you can use your other arm.” In the script, Nellie’s arm injury didn’t interfere with movement. But because of the way my arm was broken, and because the cast went up over my elbow, actually turning the wheel was extremely difficult. Every time he said that, I kept wanting to yell, “No, I can’t!”
I particularly enjoyed the scene where Willie catches Nellie out of the chair, and she has to threaten him to keep silent. Jonathan was still quite small then. I could practically pick him up and sling him over my shoulder if I wanted to, and he would go along with anything that was thrown at him in a scene. If I was supposed to hit him, I only had to tap him, and he would throw himself across the room and collapse on the floor as if I had punched him full force. When he got up, he would grin with pride and ask, “How was that?”
In this scene, when he came into the room, I had to figure out how to grab him, blow out the candle he was carrying, turn him around, shut the door, and clap my hand over his mouth, all while only able to use one arm. I don’t know how I did it, but it looked great. In one quick move, I wound up with my good arm wrapped around his throat, and my hand over his mouth like I was going to smother him. I held the candle in my other hand next to his face so I could hit him with it if I had to. I looked really menacing.
In later years, looking at this scene, I do get a slight case of the shudders. I watch how expertly I pin him, stifle his ability to scream, then threaten him and explain why we were going to do things my way. I would ask where on earth I’d ever seen anybody do anything so horrible to anyone, but I didn’t have to. And my imitation had been perfect.
After an entire hour of tormenting everyone in Walnut Grove with my fake invalid act, things finally hit the fan. Mrs. Oleson goes to collect Laura’s horse in order to have it killed. They even dressed her in an almost exact replica of the costume worn by the old lady who comes to take Toto in The Wizard of Oz. “You and your little dog, too,” indeed. She had on a black-and-gray-checked dress and a straw hat—just like Elmira Gulch. But who could resist the chance to put Katherine MacGregor in Margaret Hamilton drag? And with Melissa doing her best Judy Garland choked sobs (“Please don’t take my horse!”)? Well, it was priceless.
I think that one of the reasons this episode became so popular is because it blatantly parodies classic films. Besides The Wizard of Oz, we have a definite homage to What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? When Melissa takes me out in the chair for my “fresh air” and begins pushing me up the hill, the imagery is unmistakable: the blond curls, the bitchy attitude versus the poor put-upon girl with the long brown hair. But now there’s a twist. Which one is in the chair today? Oh my God! Blanche has finally put Jane in the wheelchair! I have
had many people who saw this episode in adulthood tell me that they howl with laughter at the physical resemblance to a bizarre role reversal, with me as Bette Davis and Melissa as Joan Crawford. They smugly ask if I or anyone on the show had ever “made the connection.” What they don’t realize is, not only did we make the connection, but we got the joke while we were filming it. All the grown-ups on the set knew the film very well, and Melissa and I were fans of the pre-cable “midnight movies” that ran on weekends and so had seen most of the great creepy classics. Indeed, as we rehearsed pushing me to the top of the hill, giggles broke out here and there among the crew. And then the whispers. “Oh my God, it so is!” “Yeah, isn’t it?” “Yeah, but the other one’s in the chair!” “Oh my God! It’s Blanche’s revenge!” And what revenge! All the way down the hill into the water.
A lot of fans ask if I actually performed this stunt myself. The answer is yes. And no. First was the great push off, the launch. For this, a steel cable was attached to the back of the chair. Melissa pushed and let go, and I screamed as the chair began to tip over the edge…and stopped. The cable jerked taught, and the chair stayed put. But I almost didn’t. You see, there was nothing holding me in the chair. I was just sitting there sliding around in my nightgown with no seat belt, nothing. If the chair jerked to a stop, and I didn’t…Oh well. So I clutched the armrests as best I could with one hand not working that well.
Then came the big plunge. First thing I did was get out of the chair and walk away to let the stunt girl sit down. This was actually dangerous stuff, and Michael wouldn’t have let me do it if I wanted to. Not only did the stunt girl manage to stay in the thing as it rattled and bounced down the rocky slope, when she hit the water, she shot out of the chair and did a full somersault into the air before splashing down. Without hurting herself. Or having the wig fly off. I was very impressed.
But I wasn’t totally off the hook. They still needed footage of me in the chair. So they took me to another hill, down by the Little House itself. It was less steep, with no water at the bottom, but much, much longer. This was to give ample time to capture me on film, screaming my head off. The grips set up a dolly so that the camera was on wheels, and they laid down boards like temporary railroad tracks for it to roll down. The camera was kept secure, of course. Me, again, not so much. Ropes were attached to the chair, not for safety, really, but so that the crew could steer it a bit in order to get a good shot and to keep it from running into the camera. The priorities were clear: a good camera would cost a lot more to replace than a child actor.
I had no lines per se—all I had to do was go for a ride and scream. A lot. How hard could it be? Action! And the chair took off. Fast. Downhill. Over the rocks. Lots of rocks, large rocks, that caused the chair to buck and bounce sometimes right off the ground and tilt wildly from side to side. If you recall, this was not a wheelchair in the way we think of wheelchairs today—large, heavy, sturdily built things intended to navigate streets and curbs, something a disabled person could drive to work. This was a wheelchair designed back when the disabled were referred to as “invalids” and expected to go no farther than their carpeted front parlor. It was barely intended for outdoor use and certainly never meant to roll downhill at high speed. Which is why, among other things, there was no seat belt. So, every time it hit a bump, which was pretty much constantly, I felt my butt bounce right up off and nearly out of the chair. And every time it landed, I felt it slam into my tailbone. My teeth were rattling in my head. I was hanging on for dear life, hoping my hands wouldn’t sweat too much and make me lose my grip.
After an excruciating and terrifying couple of minutes, the chair finally stopped, and they cut. It was agreed that we needed another take. Back up the hill the camera, chair, and I went. I figured this wouldn’t be so bad, now that I had the hang of it. Action! The chair went even faster this time. And now for kicks and dramatic effect, the crew members holding the ropes thought it would be a great idea to tell me that the rope had broken. They started yelling, “Oh no, the rope broke!” and simply let go of their end. On top of trying to scream loudly and convincingly for the scene, I was convinced I was going to fall out of the stupid chair, get my nightgown caught in the wheels, and get myself ripped to shreds. Besides that, the ride was now so bumpy I was starting to hear what sounded like the screws and bolts that held the chair together coming apart, combined with the sound of what seemed like my brain vibrating inside my head. And did anybody remember that I had a real broken arm? I screamed bloody murder.
In the end, I lived, and we got some really great footage, but this sequence definitely qualifies for the category of “Do Not Try This at Home.” And we mustn’t forget the water. Thankfully, I didn’t have to do the back flip. I just had to “emerge” from the pond, adding a sound track of wailing and crying. But I had one teeny problem: the plaster cast. You can’t get those things wet, or they’ll disintegrate. At home, when I took a shower, I was told to put a plastic trash bag over it, so we removed my fake 1800s splint and put a plastic trash bag over my cast and secured it with rubber bands. The splint went back on over that. And into the pond I went.
This was not a natural pond. Nothing in Walnut Grove was. It was Simi Valley, where there was no water. It was a desert. There was no cute little brook by the Ingalls house, no stream to turn a mill wheel. The water was all fake, brought in from the outside, pumped in artificially. And not being a real running stream, it got a bit, shall we say, stagnant. Just like my first pond in “Country Girls,” it was covered in thick, gunky algae. I have no idea what possible germs or parasites lived in it. I had to not just get in it, but put my face under the water and come up spitting. Again, total immersion.
Michael and I stood there in the stagnant, moss-covered pool of goo while the cameramen set up the shot. It seemed we were always standing around together in foul water. Was this man trying to drown me? Did he have some sort of fetish? Michael turned to me and asked, “Do you have a swimming pool at your house?” “No,” I replied. “Well, good,” he smiled brightly, “because after this you can swim in your toilet!”
I took a very deep breath, closed my eyes tight, and down I went. When I came up, there was just enough water up my nose and on my lips that I didn’t have to get too big a drink of the stuff to spit it all over the place and sputter wildly. I heaved out all my breath in one of those great big, pitiful Nellie wails, and after the “Cut!” everyone hooted and cheered and clapped. As I climbed out, I saw that in addition to the slime and the algae, I now had several small snails on my nightgown and in my hair. Ah, the glamour of show business.
I think it was the huge success of this moment that prompted the large number of episodes over the years that involved dunking Nellie into ponds, rivers, and mud puddles and pouring things like water, dirt, eggs, and flour over my head. I apparently give my best performances when I have crap all over me. Because of this, I have developed a deep, lifelong appreciation of the joy and wonder of very hot baths and showers with lots of soap.
People often ask, “What the hell are you doing in there so long?” Sigh. Just trying to get clean, just trying to get clean.
CHAPTER TWELVE
BOOBS, BOYS, AND SATAN
NELLIE: What do you want to know?
LAURA: Well, what is it about you that attracts men?
NELLIE: Well, that’s obvious, isn’t it? My natural attributes.
LAURA: Like what?
NELLIE: Like my natural curly hair, and my smile. Mother says I’m beautiful, but I wouldn’t go that far.
LAURA: Neither would I!
The set of Little House was an interesting place to go through puberty, especially as a girl. It was an insanely male-dominated, testosterone-fueled environment. Yet our crew was protective and territorial when it came to us girls. I have heard horror stories from other teenage actresses who had the misfortune to develop breasts in the presence of an all-male film crew: cat calls, obscene propositions, grabbing, and pinching. But this wasn’t how it wa
s done on our set and certainly not to me. The impression I was given in no uncertain terms was that if anyone bothered me, all I had to do was tell one of the guys on the crew, and the body would never be found.
I had huge crushes on both Ronnie, the prop man (and not just because he had all the peppermint sticks in the mercantile), and Ron Cardarelli, the key grip. Cardarelli was a classic New York Italian type, in the Fonzie/Vinnie Barbarino mold, complete with a cigarette behind his ear and a toothpick hanging out of his mouth. He even sometimes said, “Yo.” I practically swooned.
I think it was the contrast that was such a turn-on. All of us actresses were covered from neck to ankle in our modest 1800s finery, all ruffles, lace petticoats, and pantaloons. Ours was different from the other shows on TV at the time. Shows like Charlie’s Angels had plotlines filled with discos, strip clubs, and hookers, any excuse to get the female cast into skimpy outfits for what had even been officially referred to by the networks as “T&A”: tits and ass. From what I’ve heard, executives routinely sent memos to show producers demanding “more T&A!” What on earth could the network demand from Little House? More bodice and bustle? Michael Landon and his sweaty chest were the closest thing to sex on the show. Even kissing was considered a big deal and usually followed by an immediate proposal of marriage. And with so many children present, nearly all the time, the actors and show personnel made at least an attempt to restrain themselves from any of the blatant sluttiness that was common on sets. This atmosphere, along with the costumes, gave the whole set a weird feeling of overheated, quasi-repressed Victorian sexuality. It was always there, simmering and bubbling under the surface.
And there in the sweltering heat of Simi, surrounding all the proper, corseted ladies, was the crew: all male, every one of them stripped to the waist, in jeans or shorts, covered in sweat and tattoos, reeking of beer and cigarettes, muscles rippling as they climbed ladders, hoisted heavy equipment, and reached up to adjust smoking-hot lights. There was something very Lady Chatterley about the whole thing. But despite their powerful position, the men on the crew did nothing but take care of me. They doted on me and told me to eat my vegetables and drink my milk. When I got braces, Cardarelli nicknamed me “Teeth” and kept reminding me how beautiful my smile would be when they came off.
Confessions of a Prairie Bitch Page 16