It really came down to the wire. In fact, I wouldn’t meet our Julie McCoy until the first day of shooting. We shot the first scenes for our pilot aboard the Queen Mary, that massive, beautiful old ship docked down in Long Beach. The interiors and even the pools were built on the Twentieth Century Fox lot and were exact replicas of the interiors and pools on two real-life Princess cruise ships. Cruising wasn’t a popular industry in those days. Princess only had two ships, total. Having never been on a cruise myself, I instantly became intrigued by the whole idea. The only thing we cheated a bit on our sets was the size of the rooms: the cabins on real ships aren’t as big as the ones on our show. We needed room to fit people and cameras and lights, and for the actors to move around. Once the show became a hit, we’d get letters from people who took cruises, complaining that their rooms were small! They accused us of false advertising.
Anyway, the first time I laid eyes on Lauren Tewes—whom we all called Cindy (she was born Cynthia Lauren Tewes, and only used Lauren professionally)—I understood exactly what Aaron and the network had been looking so long and hard to find. She was perfect for the role of Julie! And you know who finally found her? Candy Spelling, Aaron’s wife. She had a flash of genius one day when they were talking about how tough it had been to cast Julie. She remembered a girl who had played a one-day role on Aaron’s other megahit, Charlie’s Angels. She thought this girl, whoever she was, would be perfect. So Aaron listened to his wife. They looked her up, tracked her down, and just like that this young actress with just a handful of one-off credits to her name got a call to come in for a starring role on this pilot.
With Cindy on board as Julie McCoy, we got to work. I put on that captain’s uniform for the very first time and stepped into the role of Captain Merrill Stubing. The captain had originally been conceived as a stern, authoritative boss—but I saw him as something different. I saw him as a leader: the kind of guy who cares deeply about his crew, and his passengers, and who takes responsibility for his crew and his passengers in a loving way. So in that sense, Merrill Stubing would become more of a father figure in my hands. I thought that was important. To me, that seemed like the type of guy people would like to watch week after week on TV.
The cast got along well on that shoot. Bernie and I had a million laughs. We shot that pilot over the course of about a week, we all said good-bye and good luck, and then we went off to wait. Lots of pilots are shot every year. Very few get made into TV shows. That’s just a fact. So I didn’t get wound up or worried about it. I just did my job, hoped for the best, and moved on.
I auditioned for Gower Champion, and he cast me in Annie Get Your Gun, starring Debbie Reynolds as Annie Oakley—Debbie Reynolds, whom I had fallen in love with in college when I first saw her in the movie Singin’ in the Rain. I could not believe I had this opportunity! Over the course of the coming weeks, this musical started really turning into something big. We were set to open in San Francisco with a twenty-eight-piece orchestra. It was a dream come true for me! I’d never worked on a musical of that size and scope before. This was Broadway quality, and Broadway big. Finally I had achieved the melding of my musical interests and acting interests, going all the way back to those childhood days when my uncle Al brought me to the theater in Manhattan. The costumes, the makeup, the orchestra, the lights—and I was in the center! I couldn’t believe it was happening to me. I was so excited, I almost forgot about The Love Boat.
Six days before our big opening in San Francisco, I came home from rehearsal and Patti met me at the door, excited. “Aaron wants you to call,” she said. “They sold The Love Boat!”
I panicked. I didn’t think it would sell so quickly. I said, “Patti, if I have to pick, I’m gonna stay with Annie Get Your Gun. I’ve been waiting a lifetime to do a musical like this.”
She understood completely. If it had come down to a choice, I would have turned down The Love Boat. That’s how much I love the stage.
I called Aaron and he was so excited: “Gavin! I can’t believe it! They saw it today and they pushed the buttons on the computers for the Captain. The buttons went through the roof!” He was talking about a test screening they had done of the pilot episode to gauge audience reaction. They pull a random selection of the viewing public into a room with ratings buttons on their seats, and the audience members push buttons to express how they’re feeling as they watch a show, in real time. TV was getting more and more sophisticated. And apparently, the moment I appeared on screen in that captain’s uniform, the audience went nuts—in a good way. “They couldn’t believe it was you! They loved it. You’re gonna be on the air! We’re gonna start shooting!” Aaron said. He was like a kid, he was so enthusiastic. I love that kind of enthusiasm in a person!
Plus, I’m an actor. Getting high marks from an audience was as flattering as could be. I was thrilled. When he finally let me get a word in, though, I said nervously, “Aaron, I’m gonna open up in San Francisco in a few days in Annie Get Your Gun.” I was scared to death. I wasn’t sure what he would say.
“Well,” he said, without skipping a beat, “I told you I’d work around you, so I’m gonna work around you.”
Simple as that. Aaron Spelling, this powerful mogul of a man, would let me do the musical at the same time we were shooting the show. So we made the deal. The Mary Tyler Moore Show went off the air in the spring of 1977, and The Love Boat came on the air that same fall. As far as viewers were concerned, it was almost like Murray Slaughter got a promotion. A promotion to the number one position on a show: the Captain. Murray struck gold!
Murray was the underdog, the guy who works hard but never catches a big break—and now here I was, Gavin MacLeod, suiting up and getting to be the boss. They were two completely different shows, on two different networks, but there was something about that underdog, everyday guy making good that resonated with audiences. And to think that two previous pilots of The Love Boat, starring two different and capable actors in the role of the Captain, had failed! It makes you wonder sometimes: Why me?
Looking back on it, the only explanation I have for how any of this amazing voyage of my life has unfolded is that it was all part of God’s plan. He had bigger things in store for me. Bigger things than I possibly could have imagined. I mean, honestly, can you imagine anything bigger than landing the top role on a primetime television series that would become a huge hit? I certainly couldn’t have imagined anything bigger than that in 1977. It would take decades for me to understand the true path I was on.
The whole thing was also rather ironic, given the fact that I never picked up so much as an Emmy nomination during my seven-year run on MTM. I started The Love Boat—and wound up having the longest-running show of any of the MTM cast members. Who’d have thought?
And I still got to pursue my first passion—live theater!
Let me explain to you just how accommodating Aaron Spelling was with me. Every day I would shoot The Love Boat. About four fifteen in the afternoon, one of his drivers would pick me up and take me to LAX, where I’d fly to San Francisco and go right to the theater. I’d have something to eat. Do the show. Fly home late at night.
Patti liked to say, “There’s a man that gets into my bed at one thirty in the morning and leaves at six. I hope to God it’s my husband.”
I’d do that schedule during the week, and then on the weekends I would stay up in San Francisco and do the musical full-time. We would close up there after five or six weeks and then open in downtown LA So I was still doing both things, but at least I didn’t have to fly. At that particular time, Annie Get Your Gun made more money at the Dorothy Chandler Theater than any other musical before. Aaron worked around my schedule, exactly as he said he would.
Good things happen to people who keep their word. Aaron Spelling could’ve said, “Look kid, come on. You’re gonna be seen by the world here. What are you doing, a little facacta musical?” But he didn’t say that. He worked around it.
He used to be an actor, so he knew.
He also knew how to make a hit—despite what the critics thought. The critics hated us! I’m sure most viewers have forgotten, but reviewers referred to The Love Boat as “mindless television.” They predicted it would sink like the Titanic!
In fact, at one of our presentations before the show launched, a critic asked me directly, “Why would you want to do this show?”
“Because I liked it,” I said. “I think I’m an ordinary person, and I think I would like to see a show like this, with big stars on the water, and life changes, and happy endings every week. What do you want for an hour of television?”
Sometimes the critics don’t know what they’re talking about. Plain and simple. Their tastes are often very different from those of the general public. That “mindless television” show not only became a hit, lighting up living rooms all over America every Saturday night for the next nine years, but it caught on in countries all over the world. It had something special that reached across borders and appealed to many cultures.
Oh, and one more thing: it gave birth to an entire industry. Cruising would become a new vacation option for millions of Americans. People everywhere started calling up their travel agents and saying they wanted to take a vacation on The Love Boat!
This role I was playing would turn into something much more than just a role. Over time, I would become part of the cruising industry—an industry I still remain a part of all these many years later. I mean, come on! Who would’ve thought?
16
SHIPMATES
YOU KNOW WHO WAS MAKING THE MOST MONEY on all of Aaron Spelling’s various productions back in those days? John Forsythe—and yours truly. Can you believe it? Me! This bald-headed kid from Pleasantville, New York, who mowed lawns for one dollar apiece, became one of the highest-paid actors around.
My salary wasn’t anywhere near what TV actors get paid today, believe me. Not even close. But Aaron paid me good money to play the Captain. His thing was that he would give you the money up front—and not a percentage on the back end. Not the residuals. You hear about the cast of Friends and some of these other shows in the decades that followed making more money after their shows went off the air and went into syndication than they did when they were actually doing the work. That definitely wasn’t the case with any of us. We only got residuals for the first six showings, and the amount of that residual payment would decrease each time the show aired. So I realized pretty early that I’d have to be careful to put my pennies away for the future. Who knew when all of this fabulousness in my life might come to a halt?
The thing is, the money almost didn’t matter. I know that sounds ridiculous, especially coming from someone who grew up poor, but it’s true. I was still getting to do live theater during our breaks and vacations, and I was getting more invites for bigger shows at bigger regional theaters all over the country. Plus, I was filled up and “paid” many lifetimes over simply by the experience of being on that show—by getting to act (and interact) with all of those fabulous stars of the stage and screen who came on each week as our guest stars.
How many men can tell you for certain that Joan Collins is a good kisser? I can! She came on the show and played this Elizabeth Taylor–type of character who wanted to make the Captain her tenth husband. It was fun to work opposite that fabulous lady.
I got to work with some of the hottest stars of the day, too, including Barbie Benton, who was dating Hugh Hefner at the time, and Farrah Fawcett, whose poster was pinned up in every teenage boy’s room in America. Boy, was that fabulous! We did a whole crossover episode with Charlie’s Angels in our second year, which was a pretty cutting-edge thing to do at that time (and certainly savvy marketing on the part of Aaron Spelling, as a creator behind both of those shows).
But for me, the biggest thrill I got was when we brought on some of the older talent. The show was such a gift to so many actors who had “passed their prime.” It was a godsend to old Hollywood. The only show that’s ever come close to us in featuring so many guest-starring roles for actors was Murder, She Wrote. But we had three story arcs per episode, and love stories, and opportunities for so many actors from the stage and screen to come aboard each week, there was truly nothing like it. I was so proud to be there, to glimpse that history, and to see these men and women, whom I’d admired from afar, up close and in action.
Given my love of musical theater, you can probably imagine the joy I derived from an episode we did called “The Love Boat Follies.” I got to do a musical number on my show with Ethel Merman, Carol Channing, Ann Miller, Della Reese, Van Johnson, and Cab Calloway! All legends, and many of whom have passed on now. Oh, the memories. I wore this sparkly silver jumpsuit in the big number at the end. Behind the scenes I remember Ethel and Carol argued over who’d get picked up first by the limo each morning—divas to the end.
I tell you something that bothers me, though: Carol Channing has never been honored at the Kennedy Center Honors. They’ve honored Chita Rivera and all of these other actresses for their legendary stage roles. Why not Carol? Think about Hello Dolly. She must’ve done that show more than anybody else in the world. To think I got to work with that fantastic talent. I saw her do Hello Dolly in her prime when I was younger, and now here I was working with her!
I felt the same enthusiasm for Ethel Merman. Sure, I got to meet her and go to her engagement party way back when I was on McHale’s Navy. But this was different. She was here now, on my show, and we were performing a musical number together. I was pinching myself the whole time. I should also mention that Ernie Borgnine did a Love Boat episode at one point too. To think I had played a “glorified extra” aboard his PT boat, and now I was welcoming him aboard my cruise ship as the Captain! It was great to see him. We had a few laughs reminiscing about the old days, that’s for sure. We had both come a long way.
I think my pure joy during the making of that “Follies” episode was balanced by the views of the critics when it aired: the reviewers hated it! The guy at the Los Angeles Times wrote, “When Gavin MacLeod finished his number, they should have torpedoed the ship.” Ha! I laughed my tail off at that comment. Fred Grandy got so mad, I can’t repeat what he said. But I was beyond worrying about the critics anymore. We had the love of the audience. That’s all that mattered. That dichotomy would be the story of The Love Boat from day one: the critics hated us; the people loved us. But it’s the people who kept us on the air.
The parade of talent seemed endless. One morning I arrived on the set to find some of the biggest legends from the theater world, the very people I wanted to be like when I grew up, all sitting together at the Captain’s Table—including Helen Hayes, the First Lady of the American Theater, and Maurice Evans. I could hardly talk! Yet they were the ones saying, “We’re a little nervous for this first scene.” They’re just like the rest of us! I thought.
I never stopped being in awe. Ever.
Milton Berle, Uncle Miltie himself, came on when he was getting older. He was still full of such wit, yet his memory wasn’t quite what it used to be. He was one of only two actors who came on who had to use cue cards (the old-fashioned kind that a guy would hold up with his hands, next to the camera). The other was Phil Silvers, whom they hired back a few years after that pilot episode he did so he could play the Captain’s father—mainly because he was bald, like me!
When Helen Hayes did her episode, we threw her a big party, on February 22, 1980, which also happened to be my sixth wedding anniversary with Patti. Oh my word, Patti was so vivacious. We both wore tuxedos to that party! There were all kinds of photographers and our picture wound up in the papers. We were in the papers a lot in those days. Ron Galella, the famous paparazzo, and lots of other paparazzi followed me around quite a bit, snapping pictures of me out on the town, or attending events in New York and LA. I was on a big TV show now, and the papers all wanted to know more about me. I think they were all hoping there would be some kind of a scandal to write about. Especially since I played such a nice guy on TV. They would sell a lot
of papers if the “nice guy” Gavin MacLeod turned out to be not so nice, wouldn’t they? I did my best to ignore that part of the business, and to concentrate on the parts that I love.
My jaw dropped to the floor week after week seeing what kind of guests would come on this show. Lillian Gish came on one time. Lillian Gish! The First Lady of American Cinema! This gorgeous creature with the fabulous eyes who lit up the screen when screens were first being lit up. An actress who had worked with D. W. Griffith, way back at the dawn of the film industry. I remember we were rehearsing a scene and she said, “Cinematographer? I can’t see his eyes. If I can’t see his eyes, I’m not going to do this scene. You have to see his eyes.” She made our cinematographer relight me so she could see my eyes! I was simply in awe.
In 1984 they flew Luise Rainer all the way in from France to do an episode. She was the first actress to win back-to-back Oscars, for The Great Ziegfeld and The Good Earth. She was ninety years old by then, and The Love Boat gave her a chance to play dual roles, one an elegant woman, one a maid. She was fabulous. All of that talent, sitting quietly, unused, untapped, was suddenly uncorked and allowed to breathe on the decks of the Pacific Princess. What a gift.
They brought on Joan Fontaine, who had starred opposite Laurence Olivier in Rebecca and wowed everyone in Jane Eyre; and not long after that they flew her older sister in, the grande dame herself, Olivia de Havilland, from Gone with the Wind and Robin Hood. These two sisters and megastars of the silver screen had stopped speaking to each other. Yet they both wound up acting on our show in their later years. My grandmother had taken me to the movies just to see Olivia de Havilland in To Each His Own in 1946—and here I was, holding her in my arms.
This Is Your Captain Speaking: My Fantastic Voyage Through Hollywood, Faith & Life Page 15