My Days
Page 25
EK: No. Her role on Happy Days wasn’t really an issue at all. I had a tight group of girlfriends, and they had all known my mom before she did Happy Days, so they were quite aware of who she really was. And then, as I got older—to be honest—there were people I met and knew, some who were even friends, that didn’t know my mother was Marion Ross. When the show had become this smash hit, I always wanted to make sure people wanted to be around me or be friends with me because of me, not because of who my mother was. It also seemed braggy to tell anyone who she was, so unless it came up, I usually wouldn’t say anything.
DL: Thanks to you, your brother and your respective spouses, your mother is now a three-time grandmother. Can you draw any parallels to or point to the differences of how she relates with her grandchildren as opposed to the relationship she had with you and Jim when you were kids?
EK: She is completely different [laughing]! I mean, completely! She doesn’t have a disciplinary bone in her body when they are around. She lets them do whatever they want to do. If they are at her house and want cake for breakfast, which they always do, they get cake for breakfast. She really is a fantastic grandmother. The kind of grandmother every kid would want. And her grandchildren really adore her. In many ways, she was very strict with us when we were kids. As I mentioned before, she was always very moralistic and big on teaching us right from wrong. Of course, just like all kids, we had our rebellious moments, but overall, we were always pretty darn good kids, and I think that stems from that strong moral center she instilled in us.
DL: The first thing that will always come to mind with people when they see your mom or hear her name is Happy Days and Mrs. C, but you have seen her in so many roles, onstage as well as on television. Of everything she has done professionally, is there anything that is a particular favorite with you?
EK: Of every role she has ever done, I love her as Sophie Berger in Brooklyn Bridge the most. That was a role she had to fight for, and she was absolutely brilliant in it. As far as I’m concerned, that was the performance of her career. Of course she was great in Happy Days—that goes without saying—but it is as Sophie that you see what an insanely skilled actress she is. Because of that show, to this day, people think she really is Jewish.
DL: Do you have any outstanding memory of your mom—something she said or did, or that you did together—that will always stick out in your mind?
EK: One of my favorite stories about her is, ironically, one that neither she nor my brother remembers, but it is one of my favorite memories. Jim and I were very young, and for some reason, we got this idea in our heads that we wanted to dig this giant hole in our backyard. I don’t know why—maybe we thought there was some sort of treasure to be found or something—but we were kind of obsessed with it, and my mom would never let us do it. So one Christmas, we woke up and began to open our presents, and one of them was a scroll that looked very courtly and very official and that read: “You may dig a hole in the backyard” [laughing]. It was the best Christmas present ever! It was like getting the go-ahead to be bad [laughing]. After that, we just ignored all the other gifts and ran out back, grabbed our shovels, and started digging this huge hole. It just kills me that neither Jim nor my mother remembers that, and I just wish I still had the scroll to prove that I’m not crazy or didn’t dream it. It was a great present and a great memory for me.
I also have one other story about my mother that I’ll never forget, and that says a lot about her. When I was young, because of the issues with my father, I felt unsafe at times. Like I wasn’t on solid ground. After my father left, I was afraid something would happen to my mother and then wondered what would happen to me and my brother. During their separation and divorce, my mom was tense and would get uncharacteristically upset about things. It was just sort of chaotic. I would lie awake at night and my mind would play all sorts of tricks on me and I would panic and think she might die. I will tell you, I was truly crazy with panic at times over her dying.
I would go to her and say, “I’m worried that you are going to die. Are you ever going to die?” I would be in tears, and my mother would hold me and say, “I will never die. Never! That will just never happen!” She would be so convincing that I would totally believe her, and this great sense of peace and relief would come over me. That lie was such a great lie! The best lie! She could have been real with me and said something like, “Well, you know, we’re all going to die someday, but that will be a long, long time from now.” But she didn’t say that. She sensed that I needed full assurance that she would never die. She knew in her heart that I wasn’t ready to deal with anything other than knowing everything would be okay and that she would never die. I will always love her for lying to me like that [laughs].
DL: I guess it could also be said that your mother perpetuated the lie for years that she would never write an autobiography. Or maybe she was always telling the truth all along and then had a change of heart. Whatever the case, now that she has documented her life story in a book, what do you hope people will come away with from reading it?
EK: I would hope that they will see that she is incredibly bright. I mean, she is really smart. She has also always been a very reasonable human being. She is an incredibly good listener. She’ll take all sides of an argument and hear them out. She is also ambitious beyond measure. I wish I had a fraction of the drive and fight that she has. I would also hope they would see what a unique and shining star she is. That may sound corny, but it’s the truth. Yes, I may be a bit jaded because she’s my mom, but I have met a lot of people throughout my life, and I can tell you without hesitation, there is something special about Marion Ross. She drives me crazy sometimes, but she is special, and I’m grateful to be her daughter.
DL: If you had to summarize your mother in one sentence, what would you say?
EK: [laughing hysterically] My mom is a thorn in my side that I couldn’t live without.
Chapter 24
My Right-Hand Woman Gwen
I couldn’t bring myself to write this book without my team—my cast mates from Happy Days and my two children—and there is one more person who also must be included: my longtime personal assistant, confidant, traveling companion and dear friend, Gwen Berohn.
In the early 1990s, while I was doing Brooklyn Bridge, my assistant, who had been with me for many years, got married and decided she needed to spend time taking care of her husband instead of me. I thought, All right. That’s no problem. I can handle all my business affairs and obligations, answer fan mail, run my household, take care of all my personal business, from paying bills to food shopping, and still continue to work on a demanding show. At least I thought that for about twenty-four hours.
Once I came to my senses and realized I desperately needed help, fast, I started putting the word out. That word spread, and it eventually led me to a woman named Gwen who had been working on the game show Concentration. We spoke on the phone, and she sounded lovely. Even more important, she sounded like she really understood the inner workings of show business.
I invited her to come to Paramount, where we were doing Brooklyn Bridge, and as soon as I saw her, I just loved her face. She was so sweet looking that I put my hands on her cheeks and just kept telling her how much I loved her dear face. I couldn’t help myself! I think she thought I was kind of nuts, and later she told me she was sure I was going to give her a big kiss. Well, I didn’t, but I did think she just had the sweetest face.
So that little meeting went well, at least from my standpoint, and I guess I didn’t scare her too badly, because she agreed to come out to my home for a second meeting. When she arrived, I showed her around the house and grounds, and at one point she sheepishly asked me if I had a typewriter. That kind of caught me off guard, but I told her I thought there was one around somewhere, and if we couldn’t find it, we would surely get her one. Gwen took it all in stride, or should I say, she took me in stride, and I was very thrilled when she accepted the offer to come work with me.
If t
here was a typewriter around the house, we never found it, so we got her a nice new one, and within a very short time, I came to realize that bringing Gwen on board was one of the smartest things I’d ever done. She had worked in the entertainment business for quite a while and was well versed in how things worked. She understood the language of the business and the people of the business. She wasn’t the type to go all gushy and gaga when the phone rang and it was Henry Winkler or Ron Howard or Anson Williams. She was extremely professional and savvy and really worked well with everyone, from high-level studio executives and big stars to fans hoping to get an autograph or representatives of charitable organizations asking if I could attend their event. She treated everyone with the same professional courtesy, no matter who they were, and I quickly learned she was as genuinely sweet as her face, and a good, honest, hardworking person to boot. Within no time she became so valuable to me that I had no idea how I had ever gotten along without her.
Anyone who knows me knows I rarely go a week without having workers of some sort doing something at the Happy Days Farm. Gwen had no problem with that. She was great with the workmen. She knew how to handle them, how to handle any professional issues that needed to be dealt with, and, most importantly, she knew how to handle me and keep me going in the right direction.
Over the years—going on almost a quarter of a century now—Gwen hasn’t just become a valued assistant and close friend; she has become a member of our family. She comes to my house every day for however long it takes to get done what we have to do that day. She has become my travel companion, and I would say she knows more about me than anyone else. She has also been an invaluable resource to me in writing this book, so much so that I can emphatically say, without her, you would be reading someone else’s book at this very moment, because this one wouldn’t exist.
“Marion is one of those people who is goal oriented about each day. Just spend a day with her and you’ll get that. Every day she has things planned to be handled that day, and she makes sure those things happen. She’s the type of person who gets things done.” —Gwen Berohn
David Laurell (DL): So, just what is the career path that leads one to becoming Marion Ross’s personal assistant?
Gwen Berohn (GB): Well [laughing], it’s kind of a long story, so here goes. I began my career in entertainment in the late 1960s as a tour guide at 20th Century Fox. Unlike Universal Studios or Warner Bros., they only had tours of 20th Century Fox for a short time. There had been various productions that weren’t happy that the public was being brought on to the lot, but they put up with the tours until the summer of 1969, when they were doing scenes from Hello, Dolly! there. Barbra Streisand was upset about the tours. She felt they were disruptive and even invasive, and to be honest, we tour guides did really push it at times. From what we were told, one day, while they were in the middle of a scene, a tour came through and Streisand had enough. “If I see one more tour come through here,” she supposedly told the studio’s operation people, “I’m walking off of the set. ” Well, that was that. Not long after Streisand made that threat, the tours came to an end, and I was out of a job.
So, because I had experience as a studio tour guide, a friend of mine and I just drove over to NBC in Burbank, because we knew they were doing tours there. They were impressed that I had experience, and I got hired . . . as only the second girl to ever be hired as an NBC page up to that time. They didn’t even call me a page. They called me a “guidette.” So I was “Guidette Gwen.” At that time, the NBC page system was just an eighteen-month gig. After doing it for a year and a half, you either had to find another job within NBC or look elsewhere. So when there was a job available, they interviewed the pages first. I ended up getting a job in program merchandising. I worked on Hollywood Squares and many other shows. It was a great time to be at NBC. They were doing all the great shows of the time: Laugh-In, The Dean Martin Show, the Bob Hope specials. It was just a lot of fun.
But then they had all these cutbacks, and I got laid off. After that I moved on to work for the Screen Actors Guild, in their residuals department. That was the only job I have ever had that I absolutely hated. It was far too regimented for me. Right around that time I had gotten married, and then, after my son was born, I was talking to a friend who was working as a game show broker. She mentioned that she was going to be moving on in her career and asked me if I wanted her job. I was interested, and so I went down to meet her boss, who, like my friend, was also moving on to work on Sale of the Century. She liked me, and instead of interviewing me for the job I went for, she asked if I would like to come along with them instead. I did, and I really enjoyed working on Sale of the Century. I was in charge of getting the prizes, which entailed going to Beverly Hills and buying everything. After that I went to work for Mark Goodson, who was producing Concentration. I worked there for two years, until 1991, when the show was canceled.
That was when I got a call from my sister’s boyfriend, who told me he had heard that Marion Ross was looking for an assistant. My job with Concentration was ending on Friday, and that Wednesday was when my sister called and told me about Marion. I told her I was very interested and that led to me meeting Marion. She was doing Brooklyn Bridge at Paramount at that time. When I got over to the Paramount lot to meet her—for what I thought would be a formal job interview—all she did was come up to me, put her hands on both sides of my cheeks, and put her face right up to mine. My eyes were crossing, we were so close. She told me I had a sweet face and that I would do just fine. It was the weirdest job interview I’ve ever had. She didn’t ask me one question. She just gave me her home address and told me to come to her house on Friday night so we could talk.
When I showed up on Friday, she showed me around the house and the property but never asked me one question about my qualifications. Then she led me into the kitchen, where we sat down, and she said, “So, what is it that you do?” I told her I had been working on game shows, and she thought that was great. And that was that. We never talked about money or even about what it was I would be doing. She just told me I would be starting the following week and that my hours would be 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. It all happened so fast that I never even asked about the salary. Actually, I was too shy to ask about the salary. I was excited, but I was also concerned that I would not be making enough money. Well, I ended up making more money than I ever had made before. That was in September of 1991, and we have been together ever since. We are both in agreement that my coming to work for her was meant to be.
DL: Your job entails a rather diverse set of duties. What would you say is the most important thing to be on top of?
GB: My duties have changed many times over the years depending on what project or show Marion is doing. But the number one thing that has never changed is to always make sure that nothing gets out of hand. Marion is one of those people who stays on top of things, especially when it comes to her home and property. She gets things fixed right away—sometimes before they even need to be fixed [laughs]. She believes if you let anything go, it snowballs and becomes a much bigger thing to deal with. That is why it is pretty rare to have a day go by when there aren’t workmen doing something at the Happy Days Farm. I think there is something about having work going on around the house that makes her happy. She likes to see activity taking place all the time, and every day she asks me who will be coming on that day and what they will be working on. She loves that so much, I had a little sign made up for her that reads A DAY WITHOUT WORKMEN IS LIKE A DAY WITHOUT SUNSHINE.
DL: Everyone has an issue with their boss from time to time. Have you and Marion ever had a disagreement?
GB: We have honestly never had an argument. There have been times when I have put my two cents’ worth in about something, but whenever that has happened, she knows that it was just because I was trying to be helpful.
DL: There are few people who have spent as much time with Marion as you have. So spill the beans. What is she really like?
GB: I know that m
ost people, those who don’t know her personally, think of her as Mrs. C. Well, she is not completely that character, but she does have a lot of Mrs. C’s qualities. She is kind and caring. But I think the thing most people don’t know is that she is smart—very smart. She may seem to be somewhat hands off on certain things—work being done around the house or handling some of her business dealings—but that is only because she is intuitive about the people she works with and the ones who work for her. She has a high level of trust in them to handle things. She may seem to be hands off, but she is always very aware of what is going on.
I remember the first time I went with her to get her taxes done. She went out of the room for something, and the tax man said to me, “You know, Marion already knows everything I’m about to tell her. I have very few clients who keep track of things like she does.” So that’s really it. She is smart, kind and very ambitious. She is a dream to work for, and she has really taught me a lot, especially about accomplishing things. Marion is one of those people who is goal oriented about each day. Just spend a day with her and you’ll get that. Every day she has things planned to be handled that day, and she makes sure those things happen. She’s the type of person who gets things done.
Chapter 25
My Happiest Days
Right after we completed the last episode of Happy Days, the entire cast went off together to fulfill some obligations not pertaining to the show but to playing softball. When I returned from that last softball tour, it was the first time in over a decade that I didn’t have a commitment for the next day, the next month or the next season.
Over the years, I have had friends—actors—who, after finishing a long run in a play or a show, are craving some downtime. That wasn’t the case with me. By the time Happy Days had wrapped, Jim and Ellen were adults, with lives and careers of their own, and I was a tad bit obsessed with one thing: What’s next for me? For the first time in my life, making a paycheck was not the driving force to finding my next gig, but there was still something pushing me just as forcefully: my love of acting.