This Is Your Captain Speaking: My Fantastic Voyage Through Hollywood, Faith & Life

by MacLeod, Gavin

  There were so many talented actors who worked on that show. You might not remember this, but a little girl by the name of Helen Hunt played my daughter. Once she grew up, my “daughter” got more nominations for Emmys, Oscars, and SAG Awards than I could even dream of! She’s an amazing actress.

  Johnny Carson did an episode too. Mary’s character was known for having her parties fail. She never knew how to give a party. So she came to the office this one day and said, “You’ll never guess what happened. Johnny Carson’s in town and he said he would come to my house for the party tonight!” We were all so excited, we got there early and were waiting and waiting for him, and then all of a sudden the lights blew out. There was a power failure. You hear a knock at the door and someone comes in: “Hello, Mary? Mary? This is Johnny.” (Chances are you can hear his voice in your head, too, can’t you?) He came in and we played the whole scene in darkness. Talk about the genius of the writing on that show! That one was Jim Brooks’s doing. Jim Brooks, who would go on to co-create Taxi and become an Oscar-winning film writer/director with Terms of Endearment and Broadcast News. When I tell you we were working with the best of the best on that show, I mean it. It was really something special!

  Johnny came in for one afternoon, shot his part, and that was it. He was fabulous to work with. He was friendly and nice to everyone. I met him at a party at Chasen’s restaurant one time, and he seemed like a very affable guy. And boy oh boy, when he got in front of an audience? Magic. Just humble, brilliant, magic.

  The First Lady, Mrs. Ford, came on the show once. Gloria Steinem used to come by just to watch us and see what we were doing. I tell you, it was heady stuff!

  And then there was the episode titled “Chuckles Bites the Dust.” TV Guide once called it the funniest half hour in the history of comedy. David Lloyd wrote that episode. David Lloyd, who would go on to The Bob Newhart Show, Taxi, Cheers, Frasier, and Wings!

  Jay Sandrich, who was our primary director, didn’t want to direct it. He said, “Death isn’t funny.” So they got this talented actress on board instead, Joan Darling. She directed it—and got nominated for an Emmy for it.

  Mary was absolutely brilliant in that groundbreaking episode. She is a fabulous actress. She can do anything. The plot was all about Chuckles the Clown, who we’d talked about quite often on the show. He was sort of a mythical character you heard about but didn’t really see. The story went that he was walking in the parade that morning, and he was dressed like Peter Peanut, and the elephant that was walking behind him got hungry and tried to “shell” him. And he died!

  Lou comes in and says, “Isn’t that terrible?”

  Sure, it was terrible. But the circumstances were so outrageous, some of us just couldn’t stop laughing.

  I said to him, “Yeah. It could have been a disaster. You know how hard it is to stop after just one peanut!”

  Wow! That was the first major laugh of that episode. It brought the house down. It was the only other time I remember when we had to stop the cameras. The audience wouldn’t stop laughing! Murray rarely got guffaws, but some of his wit was really something, and that was easily the biggest laugh I got on the whole series.

  If you’ve never had the privilege of watching The Mary Tyler Moore Show, that is certainly one episode not to be missed. It turned comedy on its head and was simultaneously so moving and real. What a treat to be a part of something so special.

  The producers of that show were smart too. They brought in new writers every year to join the regular crew, to bring fresh ideas to the table. What a gift! Especially considering that those core writers we had were some of the most incredible minds in the business. Besides Jim and Allan, there was Ed Weinberger, who would go on to co-create The Cosby Show. Dave Davis would co-create Taxi with Jim, and The Bob Newhart Show with Lorenzo Music. David was also the guy who created the little “meowing” kitten that came on at the end of the show under the MTM logo—a funny play on the MGM lion; and he’s been in a relationship with Julie Kavner (the voice of Marge Simpson) since sometime in the mid-1970s, when they met on the set of Rhoda! Don’t you love all the history, and the way these people meet and develop careers and relationships?

  Stan Daniels, another one of our brilliant writers, passed away in 2007. He had parents in vaudeville and wrote for The Dean Martin Show before coming to MTM. Stan was really important to me, personally, and I said so when I spoke at his funeral.

  Because my father had died when I was a kid, it had always been important to me to get a compliment or a pat on the back from an older man. And whenever I had a good show on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Stan would come over at the end and say, “You did good, kid.” It brings a tear to my eye just thinking about it. That meant so much to me.

  He was one of the most creative men I ever knew. And I don’t know if he ever knew that what he was doing was so important to me, but he made me feel like a mensch. This guy was brilliant too. He wrote musicals; he wrote everything. He was a tennis player, strong as can be. To warm up the audience before our Friday night tapings, he would go out and perform “Old Man River” as an old Jewish guy with a thick accent. He rolled and spat those R’s out, and half-spoke/half-sang each line, “He just keep rrrolling, just keep rrrrolling along.”

  The audience would be rolling!

  I performed a little bit of that in his style for him at his funeral. Patti and I made a donation in his name to the Actors Home out there too. There are certain people you can still see in your mind’s eye, as if they’re still alive. Stan was always kind. Always nice. And I’ll never forget what he did for me.

  During those seven years, people got married, people got divorced, people had children, and people died. All of that happened in that MTM family, and by family, I mean much more than just the actors you saw. Our MTM family was the writers; it was the prop men; it was the costumers. It was a huge group. It’s so much more than what you see on TV. And we all shared in the show’s success, whether we won awards as individuals or not.

  Funny enough, in all those years I played Murray Slaughter, with all of the Emmys that show picked up, I never got one myself. I was never even nominated. When every other actor on your show gets a nomination (or two or three) and many of them actually win one of those golden-winged statues (or two or three) and you don’t? I tell you, it builds you as a human being.

  Whether a person wins only has so much to do with a person’s talent. I’ve come to realize this through the years. Certain parts are written in certain ways that attract attention and votes. Murray wasn’t written that way. He wasn’t flashy. He was low-key. But I was sad about not being nominated, for sure. Who wouldn’t be? Especially after that final season, when I knew I wouldn’t have another chance. I couldn’t imagine I’d ever get to act on another show that was so well written, let alone so culturally important. Not getting nominated didn’t crush me, but it was a letdown.

  Remember what I said about our writers taking cues from our real lives? Well, in the last season, they wrote an episode for Murray, addressing the fact that he never won an award. The fictional TV news awards on our show were called the Teddies. Ironically, in the fictional storyline Murray had at least been nominated. Who would believe that he wouldn’t even get nominated? But he never got the chance to go up on that stage and accept one of those awards. So on this episode, Lou heard a rumor and said, “I shouldn’t tell you this, Murray, but I heard you won!”

  “I won?”

  Murray could hardly believe it: he won for Best Writer! So they all went to the awards show, and the announcer said, “And now for the Best Writer . . .” As Murray started walking up to the stage, they called another writer’s name. Lou had heard wrong. Murray was heartbroken.

  There was a party at Mary’s house afterward, and Mary tried to cheer Murray up. She said, “Well, tell us what your speech was going to be.” And my character said, “You know, this means so much to me, but I could never do it without my coworkers. Mary is the best, and Lou, and Ted . . .”
It was a heart-wrenching moment, because it was the truth! If I ever got the chance to give an Emmy acceptance speech, it would have gone just like that. I was so thankful to each of those actors, and to those producers, and to those writers, and to our whole MTM family for giving me the opportunity to play that lovable brown-bagger, Murray.

  After all, the real reward for playing that part was a gift like no other: I had a name now. Regional theaters all over the country wanted well-known TV stars to come anchor their plays and musicals. Now I could help draw big audiences. Can you begin to imagine how excited I was when those calls started to come in? Being on the MTM Show meant that during every vacation, during every hiatus, I would get to go on the road and do live theater—the thing I loved most in the world.

  And the real blessing was, more often than not, I’d get to do it with Patti.

  13

  LEARNING TO QUIT

  MY LIFE WAS ON THE UPSWING ALL THROUGH the mid- to late 1970s, and I’m pretty sure I know one of the reasons for it: I stopped drinking.

  I’ve already mentioned the night I nearly drove off a cliff as I wallowed in self-pity in that inebriated state in my car on Mulholland Drive. I’ve mentioned how I stayed up all night drinking with Carroll O’Connor on Kelly’s Heroes. I talked a little bit about how I could get ugly, and get in fights with my wife when I drank.

  It’s not that I drank a lot, as I’ve said. I would have a little taste and I’d be out. I never had a capacity for a lot. And hard liquor? It only touched my lips when I was doing Operation Petticoat, when Arthur O’Connell invited me to the place he was living in down in Key West. A couple of us went down there, and he said, “You’ve gotta drink some Ballantine’s Scotch!”

  “Oh, who wants to drink that kind of stuff?” I said.

  “You gotta try some,” he insisted. “You’re not a man ’til you try some!”

  So I tried it and said, “Ick, this is like medicine!” But before you know it, we were there for a long time and I said, “Maybe I’ll have another one.” Even then I remember thinking, I don’t like this stuff. Why am I drinking it?

  I didn’t drink a lot—until I got on McHale’s Navy and was so unhappy. But after I was off that show, once my career was going a little better for me, I didn’t drink quite as often. But I still drank, and sometimes I drank too much.

  Just before we got married, Patti and I went to Reno, Nevada, to see our friend Kaye Ballard—the brilliantly talented actress, comedienne, and singer. I had done a run of Gypsy with Kaye earlier, in 1973 in San Diego, in a burlesque theater with Linda Kaye Henning. It was a terrific show, everybody will tell you. But that’s another story.

  Kaye was playing this gig in Reno with the Lennon Sisters, and she invited Patti and me to come see her. We met her afterward and had a good time, and I got to drinking some kind of alcohol. I don’t even remember what it was, but whatever it was, it went down easy. I lost track. I kept slurping them down until I was sloppy drunk. I remember thinking how much fun we all were having! Until afterward, on the way back to the hotel, when Patti said to me, “I want to tell you something. I don’t like you when you’re like this. My first husband was an alcoholic, and I’m not going to marry another one.”

  Boy, did that hit hard.

  An alcoholic. Was that what I was? I never wanted to be an alcoholic. I vowed that I wouldn’t be like my father. Whether or not I was an alcoholic, I certainly didn’t want to be perceived as an alcoholic, by anyone, and especially by the woman I loved. What am I doing? I thought. Am I turning into my father? Am I following in the gutter-bound footsteps of his father?

  I woke up the next morning and said to Patti, “I’ve got something to tell you. I really love you, and I’m never going to drink again.”

  That was 1974, and I haven’t had a drink since. Not one. I’ve never wanted it, never even craved it.

  Where did I get that sort of willpower? I think it had been there all along. I remembered that my grandfather did the same thing, so I knew I could do it too. Or maybe I just wasn’t a lush. Maybe I didn’t need alcohol like a lot of people do. I was just careless with it, and my carelessness was costing me.

  Or maybe, just maybe, it was God’s help once again.

  My grandfather, Jimmy Shea, the Irish master carpenter with the bald head, my mother’s father, had made that deal with God. When his son, Johnny, came home safe from the war, he never drank again. That story sure resonated with me that weekend.

  “I wasted forty-eight years of my life,” my grandfather had once told me. Here I was, already forty-two years old. I had let the bottle interfere with my first marriage already. I knew I didn’t want to waste any more of my life, so I resolved, “If my grandfather could do it, I can do it.” He was my blood. He’s part of me. And it was astounding to me to think about how much he changed once he stopped drinking. He was a scary, mean guy before that. Without the alcohol, he became funny. He became charming. He became loving. That real man was there all along, only the alcohol was hiding it! (What was it hiding in me?) My grandfather was still alive, and when I took Patti back east to see him for the first time, he said, “Did you bring your daughter to see me?” That Irish charm was there all the way ’til the end.

  I knew when I made that promise to Patti, it was a promise I could keep. If Grandpa could do it, I can do it. And I did it.

  Not drinking in a town full of drinkers, I did run into some resentment from some of my friends. I would go to parties and they would get high on booze, and one in particular—a big-name actor—came over to me once. I was just standing with Patti and he said, “You think you’re smart, don’t you? You’re not drinking and you’re looking down on us.” I thought, Why are you so unhappy? I couldn’t understand how my decision not to drink was somehow hurtful to him!

  I did the same thing with cigarettes. I haven’t talked about the fact that I smoked because back then we didn’t think it was a big deal. Everybody smoked in those days! I tried maybe one cigarette in high school and then really started smoking in college. I remember once I saw a cigarette butt on the street and I picked it up and smoked it. That’s how bad the cravings got. After a while I was smoking two packs a day.

  When I first met Patti, she said, “Smoking is not good for you.” (Patti is responsible for cleaning up a lot of stuff in my life!) After I first started on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, I went to a doctor and he said, “I watch the show you’re on all the time. You’re in bad shape.”

  I said, “I am?”

  He said, “Yes, you are. I’ve run some tests, and you’ve gotta stop smoking. Do you want to see your grandkids?”

  “Of course I want to see my grandkids!”

  “You’ll never see ’em if you don’t stop smoking.”

  I was shocked. But I decided to listen to that doctor, and to Patti. I went home that day and said, “Kids. Look at these.” I held up my pack of cigarettes and declared, “I’m never going to smoke again.” I put down the box, and I never smoked again. I joined the nonsmokers’ side of the big worktable at the MTM Show and never felt better about a decision.

  If I can do it, anybody can do it. Willpower is strong! I believe that. You just have to have faith in yourself—and God—and make sure you know where your priorities stand.

  Years later I was forced to give up coffee for my health, and I did it the same way: cold turkey. When you have to make a decision in life, and the answer is just as clear-cut, black-and-white as a decision that could cost you your health or your love or your life, why would anyone hesitate to make the right decision?

  After quitting drinking, quitting smoking, even the painful “quitting” of my first marriage—after all of that, I was finally ready to start taking steps in the right direction with my life.

  It felt good. I felt good, for a while at least.

  They were only the first steps, though. I had no idea how much farther I still had to walk.

  14

  THE FAME GAME

  ALL THE ACTORS ON THE MAR
Y TYLER MOORE Show had millions upon millions of adoring fans throughout the 1970s. It’s not like TV today, where just a fraction of a percentage point of Americans watches any given episode at any given time. In those days, you had millions upon millions of viewers, all watching at the same time. There were no DVRs. Heck, the VCR wasn’t even around yet! There was no competition from the Internet or anywhere else. So you watched your shows when they were on, and then the next day everyone talked about them.

  I gotta tell you, being in America’s living rooms week after week was a gift from God to me! People felt they knew me. Really knew me.

  Murray represented all the brown-baggers—not just in newsrooms, but in all sorts of professions. He was the kind of guy who never got a raise and had to get an extra job to buy something for his kids, or to buy something nice for his wife. In some ways, that made him one of the most approachable, relatable characters on TV. Being that relatable brings a very different kind of fame than people like Steve McQueen experienced.

  Speaking of whom, the last time I saw Steve McQueen in person I was on my way to work at The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and I was getting well known. A car pulled up alongside me on Vincente Boulevard. It was Steve and his bride, Ali MacGraw, who now lives in Santa Fe. She did Love Story with Ryan O’Neal; she’s wonderful. He waved and smiled, and gave me a thumbs-up. He was clearly aware of what I was up to and all the fame that was coming my way.

  Then he got cancer. He went to Mexico and all over trying to find a cure. I remember he filmed this Swedish play. He had a beard on, and he was big, and you would never know it was Steve McQueen. I didn’t see it at that time, because I just couldn’t. It was too heartbreaking for me. But years later I watched it. Even in that state he had that vulnerability—that power in the close-up of the camera lens.

  Thinking back to the Steve McQueen I knew, the thing I really remember is that he never knew his mother. His aunt had raised him. He had heard that his mother was in California, so he came out here to find her, and she died the day before he got here. So he had a chip on his shoulder. The story goes that he was in a Boys Town over in Chatsworth. And I tell you, whatever he learned in the Actors Studio about “making moments” as an actor, he used—and he made them on film. In film you can take all the time you want in the world, which you can’t do in theater. He used that to his advantage. But the vulnerability he had, you’re born with that. And that’s really something.