Eighty Is Not Enough: One Actor's Journey Through American Entertainment

by Dick van Patten

  A few incidents on Mama illustrate Sid’s point. Each of the Mama episodes consisted of five scenes. If you were finished after an early scene, you could go home. There was no reshooting and no curtain calls. One night, believing he was done, Judson Laire took off for home before the show ended. He forgot he was in the fifth scene! So there we were, the whole family, but no Papa—while Judson was calmly riding away in his taxi. His calm didn’t last. Suddenly he realized he was in the final scene, and in a tremendous panic he had the taxi driver turn around and speed back to the studio. He didn’t make it.

  And we didn’t know what to do. Millions of people were watching live. So, Ralph Nelson came to the rescue. He got down on his hands and knees behind the set. And whenever we came to one of Papa’s lines, we ran to the back door and talked as if he were in the backyard. Ralph would answer as if he were Papa, but from a place where no one could see him. It looked ridiculous. I remember Peggy Wood was very upset, but Ralph kept saying: “Don’t worry, no one will notice it.” But of course, they did. The next morning I was listening to the popular The Dorothy and Dick Show on the radio, and all they talked about was the screwup last night on Mama.

  In another episode, a young Jack Lemmon knocked on the door for his date with Katrin. Rosemary answered and said: “Oh won’t you come in.” She was then supposed to say: “I haven’t a single solitary thing planned.” Instead, she got the words all jumbled and said: “Oh won’t you come in, I haven’t a thinkle sing planned solitary.”

  The moment she said it, she broke out laughing and couldn’t say her next lines. And so the cameraman, not knowing what to do, turned his camera on me. But by then I was also laughing so hard, I couldn’t stop. The two of us just stood there in front of millions of viewers laughing uncontrollably. So the panicked cameraman again switched the camera to Peggy Wood just in time to catch her yelling out: “Get those Goddamn brats off the stage!” The next day, of course, the incident was the talk of the town.

  But the honor for the most embarrassing early live TV moment is certainly reserved for Philip Loeb, the father in The Goldbergs. In one of their episodes, there was a scene in which several of the men were taking a sauna with their towels wrapped around them. But Phil hadn’t done such a good job in wrapping his towel, at least the part covering his genitalia. So now there were millions of men, women and children all over the country staring at Phil’s testicles. Live television could be tough!

  Peggy was only half wrong in calling Rosemary and me “brats.” The truth is I often didn’t follow the rules and occasionally that got me into some real jams. One day while rehearsing, a pair of very serious looking guys—Rosemary thought they looked like a couple of Humphrey Bogarts, all dressed with long trench coats and dark felt fedoras—came right into our rehearsal flashing their police badges. The next thing I knew, they had grabbed me and dragged me off to the Long Island City Department of Corrections. It turned out I had ignored a few parking tickets—well, not really a few; it was more like fifty.

  It happened to be an interesting time to land in lockup, as all the other prisoners were very impressed with their newest inmate. Not me, but a fellow named Willie Sutton! Anyway, they gave me a shirt to wear that had the letters, D.O.C., which, like an idiot, I thought was a nickname. I figured that in prison everyone gets a nickname and mine was Doc. I found out later it means Department of Corrections. When I was on the way out, all the prisoners gave me their wives and girlfriends’ phone numbers to call. So I made the calls, and with every single one I got the same response: “He can sit there, for all I care.”

  Fortunately, our producer, Carol Irwin, had clout. Friendly with a well-known Manhattan judge, Carol reached out for assistance. Showtime was approaching, and I was stuck in the city lockup. The judge agreed to help, but it came with a price. He wanted a small part in an episode. So to get me out of jail, Carol arranged to have the judge come in and do a cameo playing a local judge in the show. It was a small price to pay.

  Friday nights after each performance, the Mama cast and crew would head out to a restaurant, usually the House of Chan. I never went. In my twenties at the time, I preferred the fights at the Garden and later a burlesque show. They kept after me, but I continued to politely decline. Finally Carol decided that if I wouldn’t go out with them, they’d come out with me. So that night the whole cast and crew of Mama headed to the fights and a burlesque theater in Newark, New Jersey.

  At the time, I was dating Rita Moreno. Recently arrived in New York City with her mother from Puerto Rico, Rita was still an unknown, aspiring actress. Perhaps we got along because her mom, like mine, was determined that her child would become a star. Her efforts paid off a few years later when Rita won great acclaim for her unforgettable role as Anita in West Side Story.

  The downside to dating Rita was that her mom always insisted on coming out with us. On that night I also arranged a date for Rosemary with a questionable character I knew as “Midtown Murray.” I won’t say “Midtown” was a thief, but he used to show up with a box full of expensive Patek Philippe watches and swear he got them legitimately. So I took a bunch and sold them to the folks on the show. Judson and Rosemary each bought one for $250.

  Most of them, especially Peggy and Rosemary, were less than pleased with the brutality of the fights. But that was nothing next to the fiasco at the midnight show in Newark. In every burlesque there’s a stripper who removes her clothes to the rhythm of a song played by a live band. But this time it was a little different. The stripper that night was the famous Blaze Starr, who had a notorious affair with Louisiana governor, Earl Long. Their story was the basis for the 1980 film, Blaze, with Paul Newman and Lolita Davidovich.

  That night, Blaze decided to do a “strip-on.” This meant she started out buck-naked and then put her clothes on—one piece at a time. So when the curtain opened, there was this woman standing there completely naked on the stage. The Mama cast was mortified. Rita’s mother was also fuming. I still remember Rosemary putting her hands in front of her eyes so she couldn’t see the naked woman. Carol was also livid. Only Ralph Nelson thought it was funny, and his laughing made things worse for me.

  That was the last time they ever joined me after the show. It was also the end of my relationship with Rita Moreno. Her mother wasn’t about to have her girl running around to cheap burlesque houses with Dick Van Patten.

  * * *

  For several years our principal competition was The Goldbergs. For a time, both shows were filmed at the Liederkranz Hall on 55th Street—Mama on Friday night and The Goldbergs on Monday night. Using the same studio caused some tension, particularly between Peggy Wood and Gertrude Berg, who were always fighting over little things, like who got the bigger dressing room. I guess it was natural since each was the matriarch of a major television series competing for ratings.

  Still, everyone respected Gertrude Berg. She not only starred as the matriarch of The Goldbergs, but she was its creator and writer. Also, The Goldbergs had been on the radio for twenty years, beginning in 1929. Throughout the life of the show, Gertrude had grown into an important figure, both in the Jewish community and in the entire entertainment world. Not afraid to air her political views, particularly her support for President Roosevelt, Gertrude was willing to run the risk of sparking negative responses and alienating some producers and sponsors.

  In his biography of Berg, Glenn Smith Jr., recounts an episode of The Goldbergs inspired by the atrocious “Kristallnacht” when Nazi thugs smashed the windows of Jewish shops across Germany. In the show, someone throws a rock through the window of The Goldbergs home during Passover service, and Molly has to comfort the children. She also insists on continuing with the service. It reminded me of the mob outside the home of Martin Gunther in The American Way shouting “Slacker” at the German-American family. Berg’s principles would be tested again during the blacklisting controversy that swirled around Philip Loeb, who played Jake Goldberg, the father in the show.

  Everyone was aware of L
oeb’s entanglement in the political mess involving the congressional investigation into entertainers. Both Elia Kazan and Lee J. Cobb had testified before the House Committee for Un-American Activities that Loeb had been a communist. Then in September of 1950, a report came out in a journal also charging Loeb with communist ties. He denied it, but General Foods, which owned CBS, began to pressure Gertrude Berg to fire him. She refused. But shortly afterwards, Loeb resigned, reportedly receiving a substantial settlement. A few years later, Phil committed suicide, taking an overdose of sleeping pills in the Taft Hotel in New York City. Loeb is considered by many to be a casualty of blacklisting.

  My sister Joyce was convinced not only that Phil Loeb was blacklisted, but that there was a widespread practice that ruined many careers. Consequently, Joyce became politically active around that time in an effort to prevent blacklisting. It was then that she met Martin Balsam, who was also very outspoken on the subject. Eventually she married Marty, and they had a daughter, Talia Balsam, who grew up to have a wonderful acting career, with many appearances in movies and popular television shows.

  Beyond her politics, Gertrude was an entertainer who clearly saw the possibilities of television. As Smith points out, she wanted to follow Ed Sullivan and Milton Berle into the new medium. Sullivan was hosting Toast of the Town, the precursor to his famous The Ed Sullivan Show and Berle had his Texaco Star Theater, each of which were tremendously popular variety shows. Like the producer of Mama, Carol Irwin, Berg thought television was ripe for what Smith calls an “episodic video stage play with continuing story lines and an established set of related characters”—in short, a situation comedy/drama.

  * * *

  Of the 500 live broadcasts of Mama the most popular by far was “The Night the Animals Talked.” It was a wonderful Christmas story, first airing in December of 1950. After the show, there was so much positive fan mail that Carol and Ralph decided to do it over again each year at Christmas time. It was beautifully conceived and written by Frank Gabrielson, the marvelous writer who as much as anyone deserves credit for the tremendous success of the show.

  “The Night the Animals Talked” began with Mama telling a story to young Dagmar about an old-time Christmas back in Norway. The story dissolves back to a Norwegian home with all the same characters as the Hansen family in San Francisco, but also with a cow named Hilda and a goat named Olaf. Television critics Christopher Denis and Michael Denis describe the “touching, beautiful scene wherein Papa tells little Dagmar how the animals were given the gift of speech only for a few hours each Christmas Eve as a heavenly reward for their protection and devotion to the Christ Child in the stable in Bethlehem.”

  But in the episode, there are thieves outside the home who plan to steal from the house when everyone is asleep. Before they can complete their scheme, the little girl, played by Robin Morgan, gets up at midnight and sneaks outside to try to hear the animals talk. She urges the goat and cow: “It’s midnight. It’s when Jesus was born…. Say something.”

  The thieves are hiding, and they decide to answer, projecting their voices so that the child thinks it’s the animals talking. As they speak with her, they trick her into going back to the house and getting the family’s “silver” as a gift for the Lord Jesus. But Papa and Nels catch the thieves, while, themselves, pretending to be the animals talking. Instead of turning them over to the Sheriff, however, the family decides to invite them into their home for the Christmas celebration.

  “The Night the Animals Talked” was a deeply Christian show. Christopher and Michael Denis describe it as an episode “with powerful religious overtones,” but which were “readily acceptable to mass audiences in those days.” It even ended on a spiritual note when it appeared that perhaps the final words in the barn really were spoken by Hilda and Olaf, the cow and the goat. Little Dagmar queries her father about the voices she heard: “If it was not you and it was not Nels then who was it? I wonder.” The episode was scored with the religious hymn: “Oh Come all ye Faithful.”

  No doubt, this beautiful Christmas tale attracted such a tremendous audience due to its affirmation of faith and its celebration of the birth of Jesus. But it was also a parable that taught universal lessons—the importance of timeless values such as caring for others, and, in the case of the two thieves, the power of forgiveness.

  Another well-known episode and one of my very favorites was “Katrin’s Wedding,” featuring Rosemary Rice. Katrin had always dreamed of a big wedding, but plans quickly changed when her fiancé, Phil, had to suddenly leave for France to fight in World War I. Mama expressed her anxiety about the war that rings true even today: “When I read in the papers the things that happen in France!” she exclaimed to Papa with great sadness.

  Katrin and Phil decided to have the wedding immediately in the Hansen’s small San Francisco home. There was a moment of drama when Katrin, while waiting upstairs, became anxious and frightened about leaving the comfort of her home and family on Steiner Street.

  Mama, as always, comforted her. One thing about Mama’s lessons was that they never avoided the truth. Mama told Katrin that after coming to America from Norway, she never saw her own mother again—something that must ring true for many first-generation immigrants. But, she further explained, the distance never stopped her from loving her mother, nor did it mean she would never feel close to her again. It was a moving scene, and Rosemary and Peggy played it beautifully.

  During Katrin’s wedding, there was a scene that reminds me of Sid Caesar’s description of the dangers of live television. With family and friends waiting downstairs—and with Dagmar playing “Here Comes the Bride” on the family piano—Katrin and the bridesmaids started down the stairs. Just as the first bridesmaid reached the bottom step, she lost her balance and stumbled. About to fall, she quickly reached out for the handrail and managed to catch herself, preventing a disastrous tumble to the ground on live television. The young actress regained her composure and continued leading the wedding procession so quickly, that it was hardly noticeable. As Sid said, on live television in front of millions of people, there were no second chances. Like that bridesmaid, we often had to recover and improvise in order to avoid calamity. Fortunately, we had such a wonderful group of actors that we always seemed to land on our feet.

  Mama was symbolic of a wholesome American family. Its enormous and continuing success was due to many factors. Kathryn Forbes, the author of Mama’s Bank Account, was asked in a 1956 interview: “Why has Mama been so popular…while other family-type programs have come and gone?” Kathryn noted that the show had always “retained the basic theme of the story—a child’s dream of ‘mama.’” She explained that her “only idea” in writing the novel “was to show that my grandmother was a wonderful person. I never realized how universal that theme is.” Peggy Wood would make a similar observation: “Each week as I get into the role, I’m reminded of my own mother. She’s the secret of my portrayal of Mama.”

  While I can certainly understand the very personal perspectives of both Kathryn and Peggy, there was also a more “universal” appeal to motherhood that drove the show and its ratings forward and upward for eight years. Our ability to convey that appeal was due in great part to our writers and directors. In fact, I believe that any show is only as good as its scripts and direction. We were fortunate to have brilliant writers in Frank Gabrielson and his staff, as well as an equally outstanding director in Ralph Nelson. Peggy Wood, speaking of both Frank and Ralph, correctly noted that “we had a feeling of security in them.” Both men had many other great accomplishments. Frank was a performer and writer on Broadway and television since the early 1930s while Ralph would go on to direct such hit films as Requiem for a Heavyweight and Lilies of the Field.

  In their book Favorite Families of TV, Christopher and Michael Denis begin with Mama. They rightly claim that in spite of all the technical and other difficulties of coping with the beginnings of television, the show had “heart”—“enough to carry this simple sweet show to g
lory during its eight-season run.” I couldn’t agree more. Mama came along as television was just getting underway. Its tremendous popularity helped set the stage for so many other shows—including Eight Is Enough—that through the years have tried to convey a similarly positive and healthy image of family life in America. I was proud to have been a part of it.

  27

  MISTER ROBERTS

  In the 1940s, it was rare for television actors in New York City to do additional work in the theater, especially during production. Today, it would be impossible. With the intense filming schedules of a typical television series, actors are far too busy to take theater work. Also, the center of television production is now in Hollywood, making it impossible for an actor to work on a TV set during the day, run off to Broadway at night and then return to the TV show the following morning.

  In 1949, however, my schedule on Mama included rehearsals five days a week and then a live telecast on Friday night at 8 p.m. That made it possible to work both on TV and on Broadway at the same time. Life would certainly be hectic, but it could be done.

  I remember when Henry Fonda returned to Broadway in 1948 after ten years away working in films. While auditioning for Mama, I heard of a new play directed by Joshua Logan, my old friend from On Borrowed Time, that dealt with the exploits of the crew of a World War II cargo ship, the USS Reluctant, and its tyrannical commander, Captain Morton. The leading character was the 2nd Lieutenant, Doug Roberts, who sided with the crew while doing his best to protect them from the Captain’s wrath. At the same time, Roberts desperately wanted a transfer to a warship so he could “get in the fight” before it was over. Although it had some extremely powerfully dramatic moments, the play, adapted by Logan and Thomas Heggen from Heggen’s novel Mister Roberts, was a comedy, with most of the humor centering on the character and crazy antics of the ship’s Morale and Laundry Officer, Ensign Frank Pulver.