Prairie Tale: A Memoir

by Melissa Gilbert

  “Shit,” Kevin said.

  “I have never seen people behave more horribly in my life,” I said.

  Kevin apologized for not being there.

  “There is a silver lining here, though.”

  “What’s that?”

  “I must finally be rid of the Half Pint image because these people really hate me!”

  Not everyone hated me, though. One day I was in my office when an assistant came in looking flustered. She said Marlon Brando was on the phone for me. I glanced at the phone on my desk; the light indicated a call was on hold. I glanced back at the redheaded woman as if to say, “Really? Marlon Brando?”

  “I think it’s really him,” she said.

  I picked up the phone and said, “This is President Gilbert.”

  The man on the other end introduced himself. He was indeed Marlon Brando. He said he thought it was great I was the new president.

  “God, I couldn’t stand that other guy,” he said.

  “Thank you very much,” I said. “Your confidence means a lot to me.”

  Then he said he needed some help tracking down several residual checks from The Godfather. I knew there had been a problem with getting residual checks to people in a timely fashion, but I still couldn’t help myself from blurting out, “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  “Oh, no, no, no, no,” he said. “I’m very serious.”

  I walked down to the residuals department and explained that Marlon Brando had just called to say he was behind and we needed to figure it out as soon as possible. It turned out he was right. Three days later, I received another call from Mr. Brando. He thanked me for getting him the dough.

  “The other guy never helped me,” he said.

  “Well, I try,” I said.

  “That’s why I like you.”

  twenty-nine

  A PAIN IN THE NECK

  I still had to work, and I couldn’t have felt more comfortable when I made the pilot Then Came Jones in summer 2002. It was a twisted Western that starred Sean Patrick Flanery as a small-town whorehouse owner turned sheriff with a nervous stomach, and me as his reformed alcoholic sister. I loved the script, the Western-style clothes felt familiar, and best of all, we shot at the Big Sky Ranch, the same place we had used to shoot exteriors for Little House, so it felt like home.

  On the first day, I stepped out of my dressing trailer, turned the corner, and heard someone shout, “Hey, Half Pint, you old rat ass.” I instantly recognized that voice. It was Jack Lilly, the man who had taught me how to ride a horse on Little House. Denny Allen, our former wrangler, was next to him. They had been training the guys on the show to ride and shoot and act like cowboys. I half expected to see Mike around the corner with his shirt off.

  We enjoyed a warm reunion and laughed as I read from a press release I had in my hand about the show taking place in Texas at the dawn of the twentieth century—“when men were men, and women loved them anyway.” Unfortunately, when ABC tested the show, the results came back saying that TV audiences didn’t want to watch a Western. I thought that was a lot of horseshit. I was disappointed; I had enjoyed the job and everyone involved, and it would have been a joy to work with them for an extended period of time.

  In hindsight, my life may have already been too busy to take on a full-time acting job. The SAG presidency consumed way more time than I had ever imagined, but I didn’t know how to do it or anything else halfway. Bruce resented the intrusion into our lives—the phone rang constantly, and there were always meetings to attend, trips out of town, or strategies to plot. He was only half joking when he said he would run for a spot on the board of directors to ensure he saw me regularly. He did, and he won.

  Thanks to a rule change, all hundred-plus seats on the board were up for reelection that year, and I ended up with a super majority in the boardroom. As a result, meetings that had routinely lasted from six hours to two days were completed within two hours. Mike banged the gavel in Hollywood Division meetings in record time.

  Everything from work to my home life, including my sobriety, was in pretty good running order, except for one major pain in my neck. It really was a pain in my neck, too. Ever since the fall I took nearly ten years earlier on Sweet Justice, the discs in my neck had been degenerating and causing an increasing amount of pain. I had been under the consultation of renowned spinal specialist Dr. Robert Bray, and we’d been doing everything to avoid surgery. Acupuncture, physical therapy. But over the years my neck got worse and worse. Tired of flare-ups that would paralyze my left arm and leave me couch-bound, taking Vicodin like Pez when I was trying to stay sober, I went in for tests, which revealed several leaky discs as well as bone spurs that clamped down on the roots of nerves coming out of my spine.

  I went in for surgery feeling confident in Dr. Bray, but scared of the possible side effects, since the doctors would be going through the front of my neck to get to my spine. In the operating room, as the anesthesia began to take effect, I grabbed Dr. B.’s shirt, pulled him toward me, and said, “If you screw this up, my husband and my sons are going to kick your ass.” Then I was out like a light.

  Luckily, he was a good sport—and an even better surgeon. I woke up several hours later in the recovery room, and after the grogginess began to wear off, I realized something extraordinary. My neck didn’t hurt. Nothing hurt. I had been living with a low-grade level of pain that was so constant I had grown used to it.

  When my doctor came in and asked how I was doing, I started to cry. I told him that I had pain from the surgery, but it was different than I was used to. The pain that brought me to him in the first place was gone. I could also hear better, which was weird. He laughed knowingly and said, “Yeah, you were a mess.”

  After recovering, I dove into the process of trying to merge SAG and AFTRA. A meeting developed into committees that explored the issues for both sides and eventually led to a plan for consolidation and affiliation that I really thought we could get passed. While working on the plan, I attended an AFL-CIO and AFTRA event at Ron Burkle’s home, kicking off the Working Families campaign. A number of high-profile SAG and AFTRA members were in attendance that night.

  Bruce was out of town, so I asked Kevin Spacey to be my date. We met for tea at the Ivy in Beverly Hills and then Kevin drove both of us up to the Burkle mansion. He drove like a maniac through back alleys to escape paparazzi that had chased us after we left the restaurant. He very calmly turned to me at one point and said, “Don’t worry, I’ve taken an evasive driving course.”

  I walked into Burkle’s house and came face-to-face with a marvelous van Gogh painting, a real one, which enchanted me for about twenty minutes. There was a van Gogh inches away from me. I was standing in some pretty rarefied air there. Indeed, the event’s headliner was former president Bill Clinton. Kevin engineered a quick introduction beforehand, and then at the end of the evening we were cracking jokes in the corner about some poor schmuck’s toupee when Clinton sauntered over and began talking to us.

  Actually, he talked to Kevin. I just nodded, trying really hard not to say anything stupid. I figured I had to nod, smile, and keep my mouth shut for about ten minutes, and then Clinton would move on. Instead, looking right at me, he asked, “What are y’all doing after this?”

  “I’m in Kevin’s car,” I said hurriedly. “So I go wherever he goes.”

  Clinton looked over at Kevin.

  “Why don’t you guys come with me?” he asked.

  He was heading to a fund-raiser for Senator Thomas Harkin at Haim Saban’s house and then another at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Kevin blurted out that he was in, and I said, “Sure, whatever.” Before we left, my pal John Connolly, AFTRA’s president, said that AFL-CIO president John Sweeney wanted to take us out to dinner. The political move would have been to accept, but I said no thanks and explained I was about to leave with President Clinton.

  “Kevin and I are going,” I said.

  I was trying so hard to be cool. Now I wonder if I came off that w
ay. As Kevin and I climbed into the backseats of a large black Suburban—Clinton and a Secret Service agent were in the middle row, another Secret Service agent drove, and an assistant sat beside him—I could sense myself quickly running through my reserves of coolness.

  We got about a half block down the street when I saw flashing lights from cop cars behind us. I immediately thought, Oh my God, the Beverly Hills police are pulling us over. Wait till they find out whom they’re going to ticket. I was about to say something, then thought better of it, and I was glad I did. It turned out not to be the police but the police escort. There went my last ounce of cool.

  We were chatting when Clinton received a call from Senator Tom Daschle. From what I was able to hear, Daschle wanted to talk through strategy about how to deter President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld from invading Iraq. I looked at Kevin nervously; I was unsure if we should be eavesdropping on this conversation. It wasn’t like listening to someone talk about getting a plumber to fix a leak. They were talking about how to get people on board to block the country from going to war with a country that had nothing to do with the September 11 attack on the United States. It was power personified.

  When Clinton hung up, he swung around, and without mentioning a word about his previous conversation, he told stories about his childhood. He said he was working on his autobiography. He was delightful, charming, smart, funny, easy to talk to, and thoroughly, disarmingly magnetic. I had seen his charisma work its magic in a room full of people. One-on-one in the back of a car, he was almost overwhelming. I could see why people fell all over him.

  We were late to the fund-raiser at Saban’s magnificent house, but apparently Clinton ran on his own time schedule. It was nothing for him to be an hour or two late. The Secret Service guys told me it was called “Clinton time.” Whenever he got to an event was when it started for him, and everyone was thrilled he was there. Afterward, on our way to the next event, we somehow got on the subject of nose jobs. I described a letter I’d recently received from a girl who wrote how much alike she thought we were.

  “Get this—she said, ‘I am also the victim of a botched nose job,’” I said.

  Both Kevin and Clinton laughed. The former president then told a story about former supporters of his who had strongly advised him to get his nose done before he ran for president. They didn’t think he could win with his real nose. He laughingly said, “They thought it was functional, but not presidential.”

  We were having a good time when we pulled in front of the Beverly Hills Hotel for the last event. The walkway leading into the hotel was lined with a crowd five deep on both sides. People screamed his name. It was like being with all four Beatles rolled into one. As we walked in, Marty Sheen came walking out of the hotel. He said hi to Kevin; then he looked at Clinton and said, “Mr. President”; and then he looked at me and said, “Madam President.” Since Marty occupied the top office on West Wing, I quickly picked it up and said, “Mr. President.” Then I looked at Clinton and said, “Mr. President.” Though amused, Clinton put out his hand to indicate he wasn’t going to enter into our Marx Brothers–like silliness. But he added, “Actually, Melissa is the only real president among us, the only one who’s actually in office.”

  After that, Clinton, Kevin, and I were taken into the kitchen behind the stage of the ballroom where the former president was set to speak. While he waited for his introduction, he shook hands and posed for photos with the kitchen staff, from the chefs to the waiters to the busboys. He took time to acknowledge everyone. I was impressed with his ability to connect with people. But then, that’s what made him Bill Clinton.

  At some point, Kevin, who was getting ready to start filming Beyond the Sea, started singing “Mack the Knife,” and the next thing I knew, the two of them were singing and bopping along. I chimed in, too. Around one in the morning, we finally rolled back up to Burkle’s house. They invited me to stay and play cards. But frankly, I was out of cool, and moments away from saying or doing something totally dorky. I let a Secret Service agent drive me back to my car and went home replaying the whole evening in my mind.

  I was fully rehabbed from neck surgery and feeling strong and fresh when I flew up to Calgary to work on Hollywood Wives: The New Generation, a TV movie event based on Jackie Collins’s best-selling novel. On and off camera, the movie, whose cast included Farrah Fawcett, Robin Givens, and my longtime friend Jack Scalia, was full of Jackie’s trademark excess. At the first photo shoot, Farrah took one look at Robin and me, then ran back to her trailer, sobbing, “They’re so much younger than me.” We waited three hours while she redid her makeup. But waiting for Farrah, who was listed number one on the call sheet, became part of the routine. Every day I came in and asked, “How’s Number One today?” Let me just say I read three novels while shooting the movie. Still, I adored Farrah. There was something about her vulnerability that made me want to protect her.

  If Farrah was fragile, there was one person on the set with the strength of ten: Jackie Collins. I loved and admired her. She was a real dame—a strong woman who existed successfully in a man’s world without sacrificing an ounce of her femininity. In fact, she oozed femininity. Jackie had everything figured out, including men and women, sex, money, and power. She shared her expertise on wardrobe, jewelry, and looking sexy, and the stories she told on the set were better than her books. She knew the most delicious dirt about everyone. She told me about a superstar singer turned actress who would check into the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills to get a manicure and pedicure, strip off all her clothes, and then order room service so she could see the reaction on the waiter’s face when he walked in and saw her nude while getting her nails done.

  I was afraid to ask what she knew about me. But then again, if I had, she might have warned me about the role I slipped back into on that movie—that of alcoholic. Bruce and Michael were with me during most of the production, and one night we were at dinner, along with my brilliant assistant Kari, and after they ordered drinks, I said, “You know what? I’m going to have a martini.”

  As the waiter wrote down my order, the others at the table—not Michael, but Bruce and Kari—looked at me with shock and confusion.

  “Why can’t I have a martini?” I said. “I’m not in pain anymore, not since my neck surgery. I’m not covering that up anymore. I’m no longer traveling with a box of painkillers and muscle relaxants. There’s nothing going on. I’m fine. I can have a drink.”

  I was doing cartwheels inside as I sipped my martini. I could hear my brain say, “Yeah, I’m drinking again.” The next day I called my shrink and told her that I’d broken my sobriety, but I felt confident I could have a drink here and there. She said, “Okay. If you say so.” Of course, that didn’t last long.

  Nor did the stability in my life. In July 2003, I decided to run for a second term as SAG president. I knew my job wasn’t finished after my effort to unite SAG and AFTRA barely missed. Although 58 percent of the membership voted for the merger, constitutionally it needed 60 percent to pass. In any other world, 58 percent would have been a mandate. In the world of SAG, it was a defeat. The theatrical contract between actors and studios was also up for negotiation. We had extended it the previous year in order to study what new media was going to look like in the future, and to avoid a possible lockout over issues we weren’t sure about, but the contract needed to be addressed.

  As I threw myself into both the contract and my campaign, Bruce landed a starring role in the series Young Blades. The series shot in Vancouver, requiring him to move there and be gone for large chunks of time. It was rough, and I handled the stress and strain by drinking more.

  In September, I won reelection to a second term, and Membership First once again took a stronghold in the Hollywood division. While my return to the union’s starring role was a vote of confidence for my platform, it wreaked havoc on my personal life. Bruce would come home on a break and resent me for being consumed by negotiations; and I would,
in turn, resent him. We weren’t communicating well, if at all; our biorhythms ran in opposite directions.

  That Bruce was in Canada shooting a movie when I celebrated my fortieth birthday didn’t help. I had a slumber party the night before with my closest girlfriends and then a larger bash the next night with all my favorite foods, dancing, and a screening in the backyard of my all-time favorite movie, My Favorite Year. It was a sort of last hurrah in the house; shortly thereafter we realized we needed to downsize, since one of us was not working as much as she had in the past as a result of the SAG presidency.

  There was other fallout from the presidency. The TV/Theatrical negotiation was taking a toll on me emotionally. It is very difficult to take a package of proposals into a negotiation and then begin the back-and-forth of deciding what goes and what stays. It’s almost like deciding which child will live and which will die.

  I spent many nights distracted, sleepless, tossing and turning with worry. One night, I fell asleep on Bruce’s side of the bed, which was wrought iron, with four large posts that had decorative vines and roses wrapping around them. In the middle of the night, I got up to go to the bathroom and on my way back I walked straight into the bed. I knew from the immediate pain I had done major damage. I just didn’t know how bad.

  Afraid to look, I went back into the bathroom and turned on the light. I saw that I had a gash across my forehead and a cut across my nose; in fact, there was a flap of skin hanging open next to my nose. Blood poured down my face and neck. After washing my face, I decided to call my dermatologist in the morning rather than wake Michael up and go to the emergency room. So I put butterfly Band-Aids on the flap next to my nose and somehow I managed to fall back asleep. In AA one would call that self-will run riot. In my world it was a perfect example of my constitutional incapability to ask for help.

  At seven the next morning, I dropped Michael off at school and went to the dermatologist, who put 15 stitches in my face, bandaged me up, and gave me a prescription for pain pills, and then I drove to the AMPTP headquarters for that day’s round of negotiations. Later, my car wouldn’t start and I needed a tow, which only added insult to injury.