Don Adams: Always Smart

March 31, 2025November 13, 2024 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

This month our blog series is titled “All About The Bill Dana Show.” The first week in March we learned about the show and now we have been spending time with some of the cast. We end our series with Don Adams.

Adams was born Donald James Yarmy in Manhattan in 1923. Don was a blend of cultures, Hungarian Jewish on his dad’s side and Irish-American on his mom’s. Don was raised Catholic while his brother Dick was raised Jewish. I could not find out what their sister decided to do. She later became a writer under the name Gloria Burton and wrote a script for Get Smart. His brother was also an actor. Dick has about 50 acting credits and appeared in many of the most popular sitcoms during the sixties and seventies, including three appearances on Get Smart.

Adams dropped out of high school and went to work as a theater usher. In 1941 he joined the US Marine Corp. At one point he was injured during a Japanese assault on Tulagi. He was the only survivor from his platoon. While recovering, he came down with blackwater fever, a side effect from malaria and was evacuated to New Zealand. He was not expected to recover, but when he did, he was sent back to the US as a Marine drill instructor.

After his discharge, he moved to Florida to work as a comedian. He refused to do material he considered “blue” and was fired.

In 1947 he married Adelaide Efantis, and her stage name was Adelaide Adams. Don decided to take the name Adams as well for his stage name. He worked as a commercial artist and cashier to support their family.

In 1954, Don was the winner of Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts with a comedy act written by Bill Dana. He began making appearances on The Steve Allen Show, where Dana was a writer. In 1961 he became a regular on the Perry Como Show.

About this time, Don and Adelaide divorced, and Adams married Dorothy Bracken, another actress. They split up in 1977 when he married Judy Luciano, also an actress but that marriage also ended in divorce. (I could only find one credit for his last two wives; Bracken was on Get Smart, while Luciano appeared on The Love Boat.)

While discussing his marriages, Don said “I’m no longer independently wealthy. I guess it’s the result of too many wives, too many kids and too much alimony. I’ve been paying alimony since I was 14 and child support since 15. That’s a joke, but not by much. . . I like getting married, but I don’t like being married.”

In 1963 Adams was offered the role of Byron Glick, hotel detective on The Bill Dana Show. As we’ve discussed this month, the show was on the air for a season and a half. While working on the show, Don was also the voice of cartoon Tennessee Tuxedo which he continued doing until 1973.

During those years he also made an appearance on The Danny Thomas Show and on Pat Paulsen’s Comedy Hour.

In 1965 he was offered the role of Maxwell Smart in a new spy satire, Get Smart.

The sixties saw westerns being overtaken by spy shows such as The Man From U.N.C.L.E., I Spy, The Pink Panther, and The Avengers. Mel Brooks and Buck Henry decided to try their hand at writing a campy sitcom and Get Smart was born.

The role of Smart was created for Tom Poston, but ABC turned it down, and NBC said yes. They had Adams under contract, so he got the part. Rounding out the cast was Edward Platt as the Chief and Barbara Feldon as Agent 99.

Smart and 99 had great chemistry and married in a later season. Feldon and Adams remained life-long friends.

One of the most memorable parts of the show was all the catch phrases Adams created on the show including “Sorry about that Chief,” “Would you believe,” and “Missed it by that much.”

In addition to acting, Adams worked as a producer and director on the show. He was nominated for an Emmy from 1966-1969. He won three of those, losing to William Windom for the little-remembered one-season show, My World and Welcome to It. Lloyd Haynes from Room 222 and Bill Cosby for The Bill Cosby Show were also nominated that year.

The show moved to CBS for the final season, but the ratings never recovered, and the show was canceled after that year.

Like so many of our successful actors with unusual characters, Adams suffered from typecasting after the show ended. He did become part of two additional sitcom casts during his career.

In 1971 he was on The Partners. According to imdb.com, the plot is that “Lennie Crooke and George Robinson are inept detectives teamed up to solve crimes. Captain Andrews is their exasperated boss, Sgt. Higgenbottom is a smarmy co-worker, and Freddy confesses to most of the neighborhood crimes.” Adams played Crooke, but the show only produced 20 episodes.

In 1985, Adams tried a sitcom again on Check it Out. This one was about a grocery store and its employees. Adams played Howard Bannister. The show lasted three seasons, ending in 1988. The show was not very popular in the US but was a hit in Canada.

In between those two shows, Adams appeared in a handful of series including Fantasy Island, The Fall Guy, The Love Boat, Empty Nest, and Nick Freno: Licensed Teacher. He made most of his salary appearing in nightclubs. He also had his Smart character resurrected in several big screen films and television series.

Because of the typecasting, he returned to animation and found a lot of success, especially with Inspector Gadget which he voiced from 1983-1999.

He also tried his hand at a game show. Called Don Adams’ Screen Test, it had an interesting concept. The show was filmed in two 15-minute parts; Adams would randomly select an audience member to recreate a scene from a Hollywood movie such as From Here to Eternity with Adams as director. It ended after 26 episodes.

In his spare time, it sounds like he visited the racetracks, betting on horses. He also spent a night a week at the Playboy Mansion playing cards with Caan and Rickles. He loved history and studied Abraham Lincoln and Adolf Hitler in depth. He also wrote poetry and painted.

Don passed away in 2005 from a lung infection and lymphoma. The eulogists at his funeral included James Caan, Bill Dana, Barbara Feldon, and Don Rickles.

It’s hard to know what to make of Adams’ career. Obviously, he was hard working, an excellent Marine, and a man of many interests. He was fired for not performing blue material but then put horse racing and gambling above the needs of his family, according to several of his friends. He created the amazing role of Maxwell Smart, one of the best characters in television history, but that feat kept him from achieving other great roles in the following decades due to typecasting. It sounds like Check It Out was very popular in Canada, so maybe if he had been given a few chances to create characters different from Smart in a couple other sitcoms, it would have helped.

I feel bad for those actors who are so successful in the characters they help create that they are barred from future jobs, but then again, those characters are some of the best actors in television: George Reeves as Superman, Ray Walston as My Favorite Martian, Henry Winkler from Happy Days, Frank Cady from Green Acres, and Jack Klugman from The Odd Couple. I guess you trade being warmly remembered for fewer quality roles.

Apart from Get Smart, I knew little about Adams before writing this blog, so it was fun to get to know him a bit.

Bill Dana: Actor? Script Writer? Author? Talent Agent? Yep

March 10, 2025November 13, 2024 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

This month we are exploring The Bill Dana Show for our blog series. Last week we talked a bit about the show itself, and for the rest of the weeks, we are looking at some of the other cast members’ careers. Today we begin with Bill Dana himself.

Dana was born William Szathmary in Quincy, Massachusetts in 1924. He was the youngest of six children. His older brother Arthur was fluent in several languages and inspired Bill to learn different accents.

Dana served with the US Army during WWII as a machine gunner and was awarded the Bronze Star Medal.

After the war, Bill enrolled at Emerson College. After graduation, he was hired as a page at NBC’s Studio 6B, or 30 Rock. He was also trying to break into comedy performing around New York. During the fifties he appeared on The Imogene Coca Show. He also did some writing and producing for The Spike Jones Show.

He met Don Adams and began writing routines for him in the fifties. He and Don would be part of each other’s lives for a bit. Don would be one of the cast members on The Bill Dana Show. Dana would appear on Adams’ show Get Smart, and Dana’s older brother Irving was the composer of the Get Smart theme song. Bill would also cowrite the script for the Get Smart film The Nude Bomb.

In the late fifties, Steve Allen hired Dana as a writer. Bill created a character, Jose Jimenez, for the “Man in the Street” segments of Allen’s show. Soon Jose became his alter ego. He made appearances as Jose on The Red Skelton Show, The Spike Jones Show, The Danny Thomas Show, and The Ed Sullivan Show. He even had a comedy album featuring the character.

Dana told a story on Ed Sullivan’s show that some people truly thought he was Jose Jimenez. One lady who met him out and about asked if his birth name was Jose Jimenez and he told her, “No, it’s Bill Szathmary.” She said “Wow, no wonder you changed it to Jimenez.”

In 1961, Dana began a recurring role on The Danny Thomas Show. He played Jimenez as an elevator operator. People responded so well that Danny Thomas and Leonard Sheldon spun off the character, now a bellhop at a luxury New York hotel, and The Bill Dana Show was created. In addition to Adams, Jonathan Harrison was part of the cast and Maggie Peterson joined them in season two. The show was on the air for one and a half seasons.

As we discussed last week, some people saw Jimenez as a hard-working immigrant who noticed some of the crazy things Americans did, and others saw him as a stereotyped Latino caricature. The pre-show Jimenez fit the second description better and the show Jimenez leaned more toward the first portrayal. However, as the character developed, viewers were not flocking to the show. It was also up against Lassie which at the time was a huge family show on Sunday nights.

The last time Jimenez was on the screen as a character was a 1966 episode of Batman in a cameo on the famous wall. Later Dana apologized for his caricature of Jimenez and became a bit of an activist for Latino causes. The National Hispanic Media Coalition endorsed the Jose Jimenez character and invited Dana to sit on their advisory board.

Dana jumped back and forth from actor to writer for a couple of decades. He wrote the script for All in the Family’s episode “Sammy’s Visit” starring Sammy Davis Jr. He also wrote for Bridget Loves Bernie, Chico and the Man, Donny and Marie, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, and Matlock.

His acting landed him in The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, Love American Style, The Snoop Sisters, Police Woman, McMillan and Wife, Ellery Queen, Switch, Vega$, Fantasy Island, The Facts of Life, and Empty Nest among a few others.

He had recurring roles on two additional shows during his career. He was on St. Elsewhere as Howie Mandel’s character’s father for three episodes. He also was Angelo on six episodes of The Golden Girls.

One of his last projects was founding the American Comedy Archives at Emerson College. He and Jenni Matz interviewed more than 60 comedians for this archive, including Phyllis Diller, Norman Lear, Carl Reiner, Betty White, and Jonathan Winters.

Dana was a man of many talents. He also ran a talent management company and an advertising agency. He wrote a book, The Laughter Prescription, with Dr. Laurence J. Peter.

Dana passed away in June of 2017 at his home in Nashville.

Certainly, Dana had a full career. I think starting off with the Jose debacle probably kept him from getting different roles early in his career. He also didn’t seem to know what he wanted to be when he grew up. Was he a comedy writer? A dramatic writer? A variety show writer? Was he an actor? A talent agent? An author? Not that you can’t be more than one thing in life, but in the span of three decades he never seemed to settle on one or two careers. Hopefully he had fun and enjoyed all the different hats he wore.

Marcia Wallace: What a Character

July 22, 2024March 14, 2024 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

When trying to decide who to include in our Supportive Women blog series this month, Marcia Wallace was a no-brainer. Carol was one of my favorite characters on television on The Bob Newhart Show, and I love the fact that her role carried over into an episode of Murphy Brown.

Marcia Wallace was born in 1942 in Iowa. Her father owned a general store where she and her siblings often worked. After performing in a school play, one of her teachers encouraged her to pursue an acting career. After graduation, Marcia enrolled in Parsons College in Fairfield, Iowa where she received a full scholarship. She majored in English and Theater.

Upon her college graduation, Marcia decided to move to New York. The country gal had $148 in her savings. When she arrived in the Big Apple, she took on a variety of part-time jobs including typing scripts and substitute teaching. She joined a summer stock company and did a few commercials. She worked in a Greenwich Village nightclub for a year before creating an improv group, The Fourth Wall, with several friends. While she kept the friends, she lost 100 pounds.

Eventually, Wallace was offered a job with The Merv Griffin Show. When Merv decided to move to LA, he asked Wallace to move with them. She was able to obtain a few roles in series after moving to California. During the sixties and early seventies, she was on Bewitched, The Brady Bunch, Columbo, and Love American Style.

After Bill Paley had seen her on Merv Griffin, Grant Tinker (producer) called her to offer her a role on a new sitcom, The Bob Newhart Show. The role of Carol was written specifically for her.

Marcia loved her time on the sitcom. She said Bob was the Fred Astaire of comedy, making it look so easy. She also praised Bob for being a treasure. Because of the way the scripts were written, the show doesn’t date itself. It was about human relationships and people struggling to make them work and make life better.

When The Bob Newhart Show went off the air six years later, Marcia jumped on the game show circuit. Shecould be seen on Password Plus; Super Password; Hollywood Squares; Crosswits; Hot Potato; The $25,000 Pyramid; Win, Lose, or Draw; Tattletales; To Tell the Truth; Family Feud; Card Sharks; and my favorite, Match Game.

Like so many actresses and actors who perform their role so well, Marcia was typecast after the show ended. In an interview, she said that “I have heard ‘You’re too recognizable for this part.’ I remember once, I desperately wanted to be on the series Nine to Five and they just weren’t going to see me because of that. Every once in a while, something would break my heart.”

Wallace also made appearances on The Love Boat and Fantasy Island in the seventies. During the eighties she would show up on CHiPs, Magnum PI, Taxi, Murder She Wrote, Night Court, and ALF, among other shows.

One of my favorite appearances of Wallace’s occurred in the mid-nineties on Murphy Brown. If you were a fan of that show, you know Murphy could not keep a secretary. There was even a support group that started of her former secretaries. However, when Carol Kester came to work for her, she was overjoyed. Carol was the role Wallace played on The Bob Newhart Show. Unfortunately for Murphy, at one point during the show, Bob Newhart shows up and convinces Carol to return to work for him and Jerry and Murphy lost her perfect assistant.

Most of Wallace’s work after 2000 was for voice work with one exception. In 2009, she had a recurring role on The Young and the Restless as Annie Wilkes for 14 episodes.

In 1985 Marcia was diagnosed with breast cancer. She survived it and became an activist and lecturer on the topic. In 2007, she won the Gilda Radner Courage Award for her work in this area.

In 1986 Marcia married Dennis Hawley in a Buddhist ceremony. Dennis renovated and managed hotels. The couple adopted a little boy, but Dennis passed away three years later.

In 1989, a new type of show debuted called The Simpsons. Marcia was asked to provide the voice of Edna Krabappel, school teacher. She probably did not realize she would be associated with that role for another 24 years. Her role as Edna did not end until her passing.

In addition to her television work, Wallace performed on stage. She produced and starred in “An Almost Perfect Person,” a female version of “The Odd Couple,” “Same Time, Next Year” and many others.

In 2004, Wallace published an autobiography, Don’t Look Back, We’re Not Going That Way. She honestly discussed her breast cancer, the loss of her husband, her nervous breakdown, being a single mother, and the ups and downs of her career.

Marcia died from pneumonia and sepsis in 2013. Her coworkers commented on her passing. Yeardley Smith, who voices Lisa on The Simpsons, said “Heaven is now a much funnier place because of you, Marcia.” Bob Newhart said that “Marcia’s death came as quite a shock, she left us too early. She was a talented actress and dear friend.”

I’m so sad that Marcia was typecast and unable to get the roles that she wanted. The networks were very shortsighted during those decades. They didn’t give television fans enough credit for being resilient enough to love the character of Carol while being able to love another character played by Wallace. You saw the same things happen to Adam West, Alan Alda, and Henry Winkler. If that perspective had continued, we never would have had Mary Richards on The Mary Tyler Moore Show or Jay Pritchett from Modern Family. If someone could be a hit as Al Bundy and then go on to star in another show, anyone can get beyond being stereotyped. Marcia Wallace proved that anyone could survive life’s disappointments with determination and a sense of humor, and perhaps that was her greatest role for us.

Supertrain: The Show That Derailed Before It Got Going

June 24, 2024May 20, 2024 / thewritelife61 / 4 Comments

We are winding up our series, Casting Celebrities. This month we have looked at several shows that relied on stars for their characters every week. We’ve checked out Love American Style, Fantasy Island, and The Love Boat. If you don’t remember today’s show, don’t beat yourself up about it. It was on the air for less than three months. That said, they still had a lot of stars show up. While Love American Style had 109 episodes, Fantasy Island claims 154, and The Love Boat includes 250, this show had 9!

Supertrain debuted on NBC in February of 1979. Here is part of the problem: it was described as a science fiction-adventure-drama. Sounds like a show that isn’t sure what it is.

Instead of an exotic island or a cruise ship, this show takes place aboard a nuclear-powered high-speed super train. However, it might as well have been a cruise ship. You could swim in the pool, go to the gym, or the library. There was plenty of shopping and nightlife including a discotheque. It ran between New York City and Los Angeles, with stops in Chicago, Denver, and for some strange reason, a fictional town of Desert Junction in Texas.

Problem number two for the show: it was the most expensive series to be produced at that time. NBC paid $10 million for three trains. There was a full-size train with passenger cars and two model trains for exterior shots.

Ned Parsons was brought on as art director to build the train. Parsons moved from his home in Newport Beach to the MGM studio lot for three months. He was on call 24 hours a day, supervising 200 construction workers who covered three shifts. The costs to do this averaged $60,000 a day for building materials. The lumber used for the set could have built 22 homes.

Before the show even aired, it was reported that the network had spent $12 million dollars. And despite the high cost of the train, there were a lot of complaints about it being unattractive and unrealistic. It was described as dark and dingy; one article said it was more of a superbus than a supertrain. Although they publicized this train as a high-speed one, viewers asked if it goes 200 mph, why does it take so long to go from New York to Los Angeles?

Problem number three: it was heavily advertised but received poor reviews and low ratings. More people tuned in to watch a 2-hour episode of Charlie’s Angels than the 2-hour debut of this show.

Problem number four: to help the quality and ratings, the producer was replaced, the cast was cut in half and some of them switched jobs, and it became more of a sitcom , and it was moved from Wednesdays to Saturdays. What? Remember this show only lasted nine episodes.

Once the cast shake up took place, five remaining characters were left. Dr. Dan Lewis (Robert Alda), nurse Rose Casey (Nita Talbot), conductor Harry Flood (Edward Andrews), relations officer Dave Noonan (Patrick Collins), and chief porter George Boone (Harrison Page). Seems like an experienced and quality cast, so I don’t think any of the blame falls on them.

The BBC bought the show for $25,000 an episode before it was shown on American television. Their plan was to begin airing the show in the fall of 1979, but remember by May of 1979 the show was off the network so BBC never aired any of the episodes.

One bright spot coming through the tunnel for the show was the music, with the exception of the second theme song which was listed as blah. Bob Cobert provided the primarily disco music. Cobert won an Emmy for his music in War and Remembrance.

Supertrain has been called one of the greatest television flops ever and that’s not an exaggeration. Here are a few of the reactions critics had to the show in 1979. A Variety review said “it’s a Love Boat on wheels which has yet to get on track.”

TV Guide reviewer Robert MacKenzie said that “in the long two-hour premiere, Steve Lawrence was a talent agent and gambling addict in debt to a gangster named Big Ed. Aboard the Supertrain, someone kept trying to put Lawrence away by planting a suitcase bomb in his room, dumping him into a pool when he was unconscious, and locking him in a steam room with friend Don Meredith. Our attention was called to several suspects . . . sometime in the second hour I wanted to get off and catch a bus home.”

Telefilm Review shared that “NBC’s highly promoted show Supertrain features a slick new train of tomorrow, with a script from yesterday . . . it seeks to overwhelm but underwhelms instead.”

Nothing I read gives me any reason to contradict any of these reviews. One fun story I could take away from this debacle was building the train and then what happened to such a behemoth and the model trains? We know one of the model trains crashed and was ruined during the show’s production. Were the others scrapped to recoup at least a small cost? Nope.

According to a Herald-Mail article from July of 2018, Ben Thoburn went to Hagerstown to pick up a jukebox he purchased and saw an old train in the guy’s barn. It was much bigger than a typical model railroad set. Plexiglass served as windows and it had a futuristic design.

Thoburn bought the train and then set about researching it. Jack Morrissey was a LA film producer who bought the train from Thoburn. According to Thoburn, NBC sold the model train to a manufacturer in Philadelphia. When the company went bankrupt (maybe the train is cursed), the train was left in its headquarters. A cabinet maker eventually bought the building and sold the train to the man Thorburn bought it from. Because some other items were stacked on some of the cars, there was a little bit of damage. Morissey didn’t have specific plans for the train; he just wanted a piece of television history. At least something good was salvaged from this otherwise not-good show.

While we are finished with our exploration of the four shows that featured stars in their casts, I did promise to provide one more fun fact. There are a lot of stars who were on Fantasy Island and The Love Boat. When you add in Love American Style, that number is still quite high. However, remember Supertrain was only one the air for nine episodes. So what stars appeared on all four of these series? Let’s find out.

That roster includes eleven stars. None of the crew or staff appeared on all four shows. Regular cast members Edward Andrews and Nita Talbot both appeared on all four shows. Henry Jones shows up on all of them, but I do have a disclaimer that he was on The New Love American Style, a reboot that happened in 1985. We are left with Billy Barty, Hans Conried, Steve Franken, Elaine Joyce, Bernie Kopell, Roddy McDowell, Abe Vigoda, and Keenan Wynn as the remaining stars who can be found on all four shows. Equally as fascinating was the fact that Ron Delaney, Al Hansen, Disco Flo, Michael Minor, Chris Moriana, Bob Shaw, and Annie Starr only appeared on Supertrain and they have no other acting credits at all. Was their affiliation with the show so bad they quit acting? Who knows without a lot more research.

I hope you enjoyed learning more about these celebrity shows and learning which stars managed to get jobs on all four of these shows.

The Love Boat: Overflowing with Celebrities

June 17, 2024May 20, 2024 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

This month in Casting for Celebrities, we are looking at some of the shows that used television and movie stars in their casts every week. The Love Boat was on the water from 1977 until 1986. An extension of the show, The Love Boat: The Next Wave, was on from 1998-1999 with many of the original characters. There were also four three-hour specials aired in 1986, 1987, and 1990.

If you are one of the five people in America that have never seen the show, it aired on ABC on Saturday nights. It was another Aaron Spelling production like Fantasy Island which we discussed last week.

A book, The Love Boats, by Jeraldine Saunders who was a cruise director for a passenger cruise line was used as the basis for the original made-for-tv movie in 1976.

The stars on this show played guests (and occasionally themselves) on the MS Pacific Princess run by Captain Merrill Stubing (Gavin MacLeod). His crew included Dr. Adam Bricker (Bernie Kopell), Purser Gopher Smith (Fred Grandy), bartender Isaac Washington (Ted Lange), and cruise director Julie McCoy (Lauren Tewes). In season three, Stubing’s daughter Vickie (Jill Whelan) came aboard. During the last three seasons, photographer Ace Covington Evans (Ted McGinley) joined the group and Judy McCoy (Patricia Klous) who was Julie’s sister took her place for the final two seasons.

Lucky crew, this series was sometimes set on board the Pacific Princess or the Island Princess, depending on their schedules. A handful of other boats were used in several episodes and movies as well. Many of the shows were filmed in California. Unfortunately, both the Pacific Princess and the Island Princess were sold for scrap in 2013 and 2015 respectively.

Each episode contained several stories and all three titles are combined in one series title; for example “Captain & the Lady/Centerfold/One If by Land.”

Jack Jones sang The Love Boat theme. (Note: Dionne Warwick recorded the song for the final season, but I never learned why.) The lyrics were written by Paul Williams and the music was composed by Charles Fox. The words were:

Love, exciting and new
Come aboard, we’re expecting you
Love, life’s sweetest reward
Let it flow, it floats back to you

Love Boat soon will be making another run
The Love Boat promises something for everyone
Set a course for adventure
Your mind on a new romance

Love won’t hurt anymore
It’s an open smile on a friendly shore
Yes, love
It’s love

Love Boat soon will be making another run
The Love Boat promises something for everyone
Set a course for adventure
Your mind on a new romance

Love won’t hurt anymore
It’s an open smile on a friendly shore
It’s love, it’s love, it’s love
It’s the Love Boat, it’s the Love Boat

For its first seven seasons, the show was very successful. It usually ranked in the top twenty. However, after falling out of the top thirty and then the top fifty the next year, the show was canceled after nine years.

Spelling offered McLeod the role of Captain Stubing. Ted Lange did not have to audition. He was offered the role after being seen on a previous show, That’s My Mama. Spelling’s first choice for Dr. Bricker was Dick Van Patten but because he was involved with Eight is Enough, Kopell got the role. Lauren Tewes was chosen from a group of more than a hundred actresses auditioning for the role.

More than 550 guest stars appeared on the show during its run. There were movie stars like Gene Kelly, Ginger Rogers, and Joan Fontaine. There were Broadway stars including Ethel Merman and Robert Goulet. TV stars abounded like Don Adams, Lorne Greene, Florence Henderson, and Eve Arden. Music was represented by The Pointer Sisters, Cab Calloway, and Janet Jackson. Sports stars were on board including Dick Butkus and Joe Namath. And then there were the celebrities like Bob Mackie and Andy Warhol. Marion Ross holds the record with 14 appearances.

For some reason, The Love Boat does not have the same “time warp” problems as Fantasy Island. It’s been translated into more than 29 different languages and appeared in more than 93 countries. It’s very popular in syndication.

Before the Hallmark Channel debuted, this is where you went to watch people fall in love every week. It’s hard to remember how many people just happened to run into an ex on the ship or meet the perfect soul mate after being mistreated.

Apparently, the cast is still close. In a recent interview, Lange said his experience on The Love Boat was life changing. He also said that the beauty of the show was that they are all still friends. “I just directed Fred in ‘Give ‘em Hell Harry’ in Indiana and I’m going to New York to stay with Bernie and his wife. . . . Bernie is more like my brother, and Fred is like my best friend.”

Whelan described McLeod as an “incredible, protective man. He was just like a dad.”

If you need a reminder that love is still alive and well, you can check out the show on DVD or on ME TV on Sundays.

Welcome to Fantasy Island

June 10, 2024June 17, 2024 / thewritelife61 / 4 Comments

This month our theme is Casting Celebrities. We are looking at a few shows that relied on a cast of famous stars for their weekly episodes. The world of island drama with Mr. Roarke and Tattoo was on television from 1977 to 1984 on Fantasy Island. Ricardo Montalban was Mr. Roarke and Herve Villechaize was his assistant Tattoo.

Instead of a vacation cruise, guests paid to travel to the island for their fantasy of choice.

Before airing as a regular series, the plot was developed for two made-for-tv movies in 1977 and 1978. The show was put on the fall schedule in 1978. All we knew about the island is that it was a mysterious place located somewhere near Devil’s Island in the Atlantic Ocean. (Most descriptions locate it in the Pacific Ocean but the show references being near Devil’s Island which is in the Atlantic.)

Even if you did not watch the show, you probably quoted Tattoo’s weekly comment, “De plane! De plane!” which is what he shouted when he rang the bell to indicate that the guests arrived. In 1981 Wendy Schaal joined the cast as Roarke’s assistant Julie, and we later learned she was his goddaughter. Villechaize was replaced in the fifth season by Lawrence (Christopher Hewett from Mr. Belvedere) who took on the role of an English butler type of character. Apparently Villechaize caused problems for the producers. He continually propositioned women and quarrelled with the staff. When he demanded the same salary as Montalban, he was fired.

Once the guests departed the plane, Roarke gathered them around and explained to his assistant what the nature of their fantasy was. He then lifted his glass and said, “My dear guests, I am Mr. Roarke, your host. Welcome to Fantasy Island.”

The writers were a bit secretive about Roarke’s age. Some episodes mention he was friends with Helen of Troy and Cleopatra; others discuss the fact that he knew mermaids, ghosts, genies and even the devil (played by Roddy McDowall).

Most of the time, the guests’ fantasies did not work out quite the way they had planned. Roarke tried to use this as a life lesson. However, Roarke did make it clear that he had no way of interfering in a fantasy once it began, and the guests had to finish out the story.

According to the first television movie, guests paid $50,000 to live out their fantasy which would be about $175,000 today. Somehow a few people who were not well off won trips or Roarke accepted much less money, even $10, from one young girl.

The plots of these fantasies varied quite a bit. Sometimes, someone was reunited with an old love. Sometimes they tracked down someone who had hurt, or even killed, a family member. Some had a tinge or more of supernatural elements.

The executive producer was Aaron Spelling. Spelling related a story that he and Leonard Goldberg were pitching some series ideas to ABC’s Brandon Stoddard. When he rejected all their ideas, a frustrated Spelling said, “What do you want? An island that people can go to for all their sexual fantasies will be realized?” Stoddard surprised them by saying yes.

The show was aired Saturday nights after The Love Boat for its entire run another Spelling show, which we’ll talk about next week.

Despite the exotic location, most of the series was filmed in Burbank, California.

The theme song behind the show was composed by Laurence Rosenthal.

The part of Roarke was first offered to Orson Wells, but Spelling put the kibosh on that because he knew Wells could be temperamental.

Like Love American Style, rather than each episode having a title, each individual fantasy story had its own title, which made for a lot of confusion.

Unfortunately, the show doesn’t hold up as well today as Love American Style or The Love Boat. It screams 1980s with the fashions and content echoing other shows of the era like Dynasty. Often lines were insensitive to specific people groups and cultural standards.

If I had to rate the four shows we are learning about this month, I have to admit that Fantasy Island would be the last one I would opt for. But if you have never seen the show, you should check out at least a couple episodes.

Love American Style: Love and the Celebrities

June 3, 2024March 22, 2024 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

This month we are starting a new blog series, Casting Celebrities. We’re going to take a look at four shows that featured a group of celebrities every week. We’ll learn more about Love, American Style; Fantasy Island; The Love Boat, and Supertrain. When we discuss Supertrain, we’ll also look at the small number of stars who appeared on all four shows.

Today we begin with Love, American Style. This show was an iconic 1970s show. Like Laugh In, the clothing, furnishings, and vocabulary do not make it timeless. But it was a lot of fun. This fast-paced anthology series featured two to four mini episodes each week, and between them were quick skits, often featuring a brass bed. Each smaller episode is titled “Love and the _______.”

A troupe of players was featured on each show for the in-between skits. These regulars included William Callaway, Buzz Cooper, Phyllis Davis, Mary Grover, James Hampton, Stuart Margolin, Lynn Marta, Barbara Minkus, and Tracy Reed. Margolin went on to a regular role in The Rockford Files; Tracy Reed was featured in McCloud and Knot’s Landing; Phyllis Davis was part of the cast of Vega$ and Magnum PI, and James Hampton will be familiar if you watched The Doris Day Show or F-Troop.

The show had a memorable and catchy theme song. Written by Arnold Margolin, the first year it was performed by The Cowsills. The snappy melody was set to the following words:

Love, Love, Love

Love, American Style,
Truer than the Red, White and Blue.
Love, American Style,
That’s me and you.

And on a star-spangled night my love,

My love come to me.
You can rest you head on my shoulder.
Out by the dawn’s early light, my love
I will defend your right to try.

Love, American Style,
That’s me and you.

During the second and subsequent years that Love, American Style was on the air, the theme song was performed by the Ron Hicklin Group. The Ron Hicklin Group could be heard in a variety of motion pictures and commercials, and they also appeared on recordings with stars such as Paul Revere and the Raiders and Cher. John and Tom Bahler, brothers who sang under The Charles Fox Singers were also part of this group. The band provided television theme song recordings including Batman, That Girl, Happy Days, and Laverne and Shirley. They also did the singing for The Partridge Family theme and songs performed on the show as well as the Brady Bunch Kids. Ron retired in the early 2000s, and Tom does a variety of things. He is also known for writing Bobby Sherman’s hit, “Julie Do You Love Me?”. John married Janet Lennon, one of the Lennon sisters who performed on The Lawrence Welk Show. He currently lives in Branson and conducts the “new” Lawrence Welk orchestra.

Paramount Television developed the show. The executive producer of the show was Arnold Margolin, Stuart’s brother. There were 53 different directors during the four-year run. The series received Emmy nominations for Outstanding Comedy Series in 1970 and 1971; Best Music Composition in 1971, 1972, and 1973, winning in 1973; and winning the Emmy in 1970 for Outstanding Original Music and Lyrics.

Many people wrote for the show, but Garry Marshall and Jerry Belson received the most credits. One of the writers, Peggy Elliott, was interviewed by the Huffington Post in May of 2013, and she talked about her time writing for the show.

“But the show I loved writing the most, was Love, American Style. For every other show, I was writing for characters created out of someone else’s head. Sure, we could create the occasional guest-star role, and we had been told to make every role, no matter how small, a real person. ‘Think of the actor who’s playing that delivery boy,’ I can hear Billy Persky, the co-creator or That Girl, say: ‘This is a big break for him — it’s the biggest role he’s had so far. Give him something to work with.’

But with Love, American Style, every character was our very own; every situation came out of our heads. Each segment of the hour the show ran each week was a one-act play created entirely by us. Added to the attraction was the fact that we could say and do things that were taboo on every other TV show in the early ‘70s. Arnold Margolin, co-creator of the show with Jim Parker, told me recently that the creative side of the network wanted the show to be more daring, while the censors kept their red pencils ready. There was a full-time position on the show just to run interference.

We must have put both sides through the hoops with one episode we wrote: ‘Love and The Hand-Maiden.’ A young guy was dating a centerfold model. As their relationship developed, he discovered that she had no problem with shedding her clothes, but she always kept her hands covered — with artful poses in magazines, and with gloves in real life. He became obsessed with seeing her hands and came up with one ruse after another to get her to take off her gloves. We had a ball writing it, with one double-entendre after another.”

If you were a star of any kind in the early 1970s, you most likely were on Love, American Style. The show produced 108 episodes, and those shows featured 1112 different actors. Some of the famous names showing up in the credits include Milton Berle, Sid Caesar, Phyllis Diller, Arte Johnson, Ozzie and Harriet Nelson, Regis Philbin, Burt Reynolds, Sonny and Cher, Flip Wilson, and Jo Anne Worley.

Brad Duke wrote a biography about Harrison Ford, and he said Ford had fond memories of appearing on Love, American Style. “He recalled that he had been given little time to prepare his wardrobe for the role of a philosophical hippie in the November 1969 episode, “Love and the Former Marriage.” He appeared on set with long hair and a beard thinking they were appropriate for the role. He was surprised when he was told he needed a haircut and trim and then was given a navy blue dress shirt and vinyl burgundy jeans with a large belt. They even had a scarf with a little ring to put around my neck. And I thought, someone has made a mistake here. So, rather than argue with the wardrobe people, I put on the clothes and went to find the producer. I walked on the set and he was pointed out. I tapped his shoulder and when he turned around he had on the same clothes I did. He was a hippie producer I guess. At least the check went through, and I got paid.”

The best way to get a good understanding of what the show was like is to look at a couple of the episodes.

January 23, 1970: Love and the Big Night

Starring Ann Elder, Buddy Lester, Frank Maxwell, Julie Newmar, and Tony Randall, this episode is often listed as a favorite of viewers. Randall is a married businessman who escorts his voluptuous secretary (Newmar) to her apartment after a late night at the office. Eager to get home to his wife, Randall hurriedly tries to open a stubborn jar of mayonnaise and winds up covered with mayo. Newmar cleans his suit, but while it’s drying, it’s stolen. After a series of amusing mishaps, Randall finally gets back to his own apartment and creeps into bed with his wife–only to find out she’s not there.

February 25, 1972: Love and the Television Set

It starred Harold Gould, Marion Ross, Ron Howard, and Anson Williams. Reading this list of names might give you a hint about what happened to this episode after it aired. Garry Marshall had written a pilot about a 1950s family that did not sell. He turned it into an episode for Love, American Style. George Lucas caught the episode and was impressed with Ron Howard and offered him a role in his new movie American Graffiti about 1950s teens. The movie was so popular that the network decided to put Marshall’s pilot in the fall line-up as Happy Days. Harold Gould’s role was given to Tom Bosley for the series. When Love, American Style went into syndication, this episode was retitled “Love and the Happy Days.”

October 22, 1970: Love and the Bashful Groom

This is the episode I recall when I think of the series. When I watched it originally, I was staying overnight at my grandparents’ house and my grandmother was shocked at the “vulgarity.” It really seems quite tame today, but back then it probably was unexpected. She would approve of Tom Bahler marrying Janet Lennon though because I watched Lawrence Welk with her and my grandfather whenever I was at their house.

In this episode, Paul Petersen, Christopher Stone, Meredith MacRae, Jeff Donnell, and Dick Wilson are featured. Harold (Petersen) and Linda (MacRae) are getting married. He learns that she grew up in a nudist colony and is not comfortable being naked for his wedding. After a soul-searching talk with his best friend, and realizing he loves Linda enough to be uncomfortable, he decides to go through with the ceremony. He gets to the church a bit late and walks in, only to see that everyone else is dressed in their Sunday best. His bride informs him that they always dress up for weddings. One of the congregation members says something like “Let’s not make him uncomfortable,” and they all begin to undress. Of course, you see nothing improper, no naked bodies, only clothes flying. This was probably not the best episode to “expose” my grandmother to as a first glimpse of the show.

The show lasted for four years and was cancelled in 1973. In 1985, a reboot was created, but it was on in the mornings and only lasted a few months. The show was on at the same time as everyone’s favorite game show, The Price is Right. For the 1998 fall season, a pilot was created for prime time, but it was never ordered. While doing my research for this blog, I noticed that there was a Love, American Style project in production, so we may see it resurface again. I’m not sure I would want to watch a contemporary version of the show though. It was such a product of its time, and I fear what a current version would be like after seeing the reboot of Match Game which has been airing the past few years.

Julie Newmar: Batman’s Most Beautiful Villain

March 11, 2024February 17, 2024 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

This month we are learning a bit about the Batman villains and their careers. No study of Batman’s favorite nemesis would be complete without Cat Woman, Julie Newmar. Julie shared the role of Cat Woman with Eartha Kitt who appeared the final television season and Lee Meriwether who was so catty in the Batman movie. What else did Julie Newmar do during her career? Let’s find out.

Born Julia Chalene Newmeyer in 1933, Julie Newmar as she is known in the acting world, was a television and film actress, dancer, singer, and stage performer. But, as they say in the commercials, that’s not all. She also was known for writing, designing lingerie, and managing real estate investments.

Newmar was born in LA. Her father Don was head of the physical education department for the Los Angeles College. Her mother, of both Swedish and French descent, was a fashion designer under the name Chalene and later worked in real estate.

Julie began dancing early in life and performed as a prima ballerina with the Los Angeles Opera when she was only 15. With an IQ of 135, Newmar graduated from John Marshall High School at age 15. She continued dancing in films in the early fifties. At age 19, she was also working as a dancer/choreographer for Universal Studios. In 1954, she appeared in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers as Dorcas, one of the seven brides.

In 1955 she got her first Broadway appearance in “Silk Stockings.” She continued her movie and Broadway careers throughout her years in entertainment, appearing in 33 films in all.

Television is where Newmar gained most of her fame. Her first television appearance was on The Phil Silvers Show in 1957 and then Ominbus in 1959. But it was in the sixties that she became a household name. She started the decade in Adventure in Paradise in 1960, followed by a variety of shows including The Defenders, Route 66, and The Twilight Zone in the early sixties.

In 1964 she was offered the role of Rhoda on My Living Doll, where she played a robot. She was not enthralled with the choice of Bob Cummings as her costar and did not seem to enjoy her time on this show. She said that “They originally wanted Efrem Zimbalist Jr. It was not a flip part—it needed a straight actor who could play opposite this bizarre creature so the comedy would come off. That quality was lost when they hired Bob. The show could have been wonderful. I think it would have run for many seasons had they hired Efrem because he had the right qualities.”

After appearing in several comedies including The Beverly Hillbillies and F Troop, she received another recurring role as Cat Woman in Batman. She would appear in the series 13 times, 12 as Cat Woman, the only villain to make Batman question his morals, because we knew he was in love with her, and if she showed any sign of remorse, who knows where things might have gone. Her Cat Woman costume now lives at the Smithsonian Institution.

Newmar lived in Beekman Place in New York in the mid-sixties. One weekend her brother had come to visit her from Harvard. They were sitting around chatting when the phone rang. She was asked if she would like to play Cat Woman on the Batman series. She was a bit miffed because they said they were casting in California, and the role started on Monday. Her comment was “That’s how television is done: they never know what they are doing until yesterday.” When her brother heard Batman, he jumped up and said that was the favorite show at Harvard and they even skipped classes to watch it. He told her to take the role, so she did.

After Batman, she finished out the sixties in The Monkees, Star Trek, Get Smart and It Takes a Thief. With 11 seventies offers, you can see her in shows such as Bewitched, Columbo, McMillan and Wife, Love American Style, The Bionic Woman, and The Love Boat. One of my favorite made-for-tv movies was The Feminist and the Fuzz. It had an exceptional cast, including Newmar who appeared in the movie along with Barbara Eden, David Hartman, Jo Anne Worley, Farrah Fawcett, Harry Morgan, Herb Edelman, Penny Marshall, and John McGiver. This ensemble was directed by Jerry Paris, who directed so many great shows from The Dick Van Dyke Show to Happy Days.

Her other starring role in the seventies was a marriage to J. Holt Smith, an attorney. After the wedding, Newmar moved to Forth Worth, Texas until 1984 when they divorced.

The eighties was a more quiet decade for the actress but she did accept roles on CHiPs, Fantasy Island, and Hart to Hart. In 1992, she appeared in George Michael’s music video, “Too Funky,” She was still working in 2016 and 2017 in Batman animation features.

If you were a fan of Batman and Dark Shadows in the sixties, you were in luck when Newmar took on the role of Dr. Julia Hoffman (played in the original series by Grayson Hall) in Dark Shadows: Bloodline, the audio drama miniseries.

She was not just a pretty face, however. She received two US patents for pantyhose and one for a bra, under the name Nudemar. She also began investing in LA real estate and was credited with helping to improve the neighborhoods of La Brea Avenue and Fairfax Avenue. In one episode of My Living Doll, Rhoda is asked to play Chopin’s “Fantasie Impromptu” on the piano. Newmar played the piece herself. She had studied under concert pianist Dr. MacIntyre, and she said that scene is the only one she’s done with her playing the piano which had been her career choice before acting. One of Julie’s comments about herself was “Tell me I’m beautiful, it’s nothing. Tell me I’m intellectual—I know it. Tell me I’m funny, and it’s the greatest compliment in the world anyone could give me.”

Julie also enjoys art and gardening. She has a rose, a day lily, and an orchid named for her. Her gardens are often chosen as a spot for holding charity events.

Like Barbara Feldon from Get Smart, Julie Newmar is beautiful, bright, and funny. I hope she enjoyed her career. Obviously, she could have been a brain surgeon or any other profession of her choice. She seems like she would be a fun person to just hang out with and the conversation would never run out. Thank you, Julie Newmar for choosing the entertainment business over medical science for our sakes.

Not Anyone Can Pull a Stunt Like This

May 15, 2023May 12, 2023 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

Since this month is a Potpourri Month, I thought it might be fun to look at the career of stuntmen on television. I’m calling this one “Propourri” because you have to be well trained to do these types of stunts.

Left to right: stuntmen Bob Miles, Bob Herron, Whitey Hughes, actor Michael Dunn, stuntman John Hudkins, Bill Shannon, and actor Quintin Sondergaard. Photo: famousfix.com

A stuntman or stuntwoman is a person who performs dangerous action sequences in a movie or television show. They have usually had extensive training to do these perilous moves safely. Sometimes they are hired as a team with a stunt crew, rigging coordinator, and special effects coordinator.

Stuntmen like Evel Knievel are daredevils who perform for a live audience. If someone fills in for a specific actor all the time, they are stunt doubles. So, what type of stunts do these professionals perform? Sometimes it’s car crashes, explosions, fights, or falls.

The first stuntmen to entertain audiences were performers who traveled around, often in circuses. Later these types of performers worked with Buffalo Bill and in shows that celebrated the Old West.

Today we are going to concentrate on television performers. Currently, stunt professionals must be certified to obtain the insurance producers need to obtain.

The Academy of Television Arts and Sciences now awards Emmys for stunt coordinators but there is no Oscar for this work.

Life-threatening injuries are not uncommon in this work and sadly, deaths do still occur. While most of my research found stuntmen killed in movies, I only found one relating to television. In 1985, Reid Rondell was killed in a helicopter explosion filming Airwolf.

I thought it would be fun to look at the careers of a few stuntmen from the golden age of television. Most of these men made their money in films, but all three of them had successful careers working on television shows as well.

Whitey Hughes

Whitey Hughes was born in 1920 in Arkoma, Oklahoma. He grew up on a farm, so in addition to working with plows and horse teams, he learned to break horses with his father. When he was sixteen, the family moved to Los Angeles. After graduating from high school, Whitey became a Screen Actors Guild member in 1947.

Whitey began his movie career in 1946. During the fifties, he worked on a lot of western films. Hughes said that in the early part of his career, he often had to be a double for the leading lady. (We’ll come back to this subject later in the blog.) He did stunt work for a variety of actresses including Anne Baxter, Rita Hayworth, Barbara Hershey, Virginia Mayo, Stephanie Powers, and Lana Turner.

Speaking of women, one of the roles, Whitey loved best was being the husband of Dotti; they were married for seventy years.

During the fifties, Whitey worked on a lot of westerns including Cheyenne. In the sixties, you would see him on Rawhide or as Kurt Russell’s double on The Magical World of Disney. If you want to see him in action, the best show to watch would be The Wild Wild West; his crew did some amazing things on that show and Whitey coordinated the stunt work for 1965-1968.

The eighties found him in Fantasy Island, Wonder Woman, and BJ and the Bear while in the nineties he was part of Little House on the Prairie and The Fall Guy. His last work was in a movie in 1998. In 2009, Whitey died in his sleep. It is good he died peacefully; I can’t imagine the toll that this type of work took on his body for fifty years.

Hal Needham

Hal Needham was born in 1931 in Memphis, Tennessee. He served as a paratrooper in the US Army during the Korean War. After the war, he worked as an arborist doing tree-topping services. He was also the billboard model for Viceroy Cigarettes while he was trying to establish his career in Hollywood.

Hal’s first big job was the stunt double for Richard Boone on Have Gun, Will Travel. From 1957-63 he was in 225 episodes. During the sixties, he would show up in many television series including Laramie, Wagon Train, Laredo, The Wild, Wild West, Star Trek, Gunsmoke, Big Valley, and Mannix.

Hal was the highest-paid stuntman in the world. That seems fitting because during his career he broke 56 bones, broke his back twice, punctured a lung, and lost a few teeth.

Needham was responsible for wrecking hundreds of cars, fell from many buildings, was dragged by horses, perfected boat stunts and was the first human to test the car airbag.

He revolutionized the work of stuntmen and worked to get his craft recognized and appreciated. He mentored up-and-coming professionals.

His career transitioned from a stuntman to a stunt coordinator to a second unit director to a director. In all, he would work on 4500 television episodes and in 310 films, according to imdb.com. He made his directing debut on a movie he wrote called Smokey and the Bandit with Burt Reynolds and would go on to direct Hooper and The Cannonball Run for Reynolds among other series and films.

In 1977 Gabriel Toys debuted the Hal Needham Western Movie Stunt Set with a cardboard saloon movie set, lights, props, a movie camera, and an action figure that could break through a balcony railing, break a table and crash through the window. They have become highly collectible.

Needham owned a NASCAR race team. He also set a Guinness World Record as the financier and owner of the Budweiser Rocket Car which is now on display at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum.

He also managed to win both an Emmy and an Oscar. Reynolds and Needham were close friends; Needham lived in Reynold’s guest house for 12 years and their relationship was used as the basis for the plot in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

Bob Herron

Bob Herron was born in 1924 in California. When his parents divorced, he moved to Hawaii with his father. The swimming and high diving he did there was a boost to his stunt career. His mother married Ace Hudkins who was a supplier of horses to the movie industry. Herron helped his stepfather in this business before enlisting in the Navy.

In 1950 he began doing stunt work. His first job was on Rocky Mountain with Errol Flynn and he was shot off horses. This would be a piece of cake compared to his role in Oklahoma Crude where he fell 55 feet from the top of an oil derrick into a stack of boxes.

In the sixties, he began his stunt work on television. He was in Gunsmoke, I Spy, I Dream of Jeannie, The Man from UNCLE, The Girl from UNCLE, Star Trek, Mission Impossible, Get Smart, and Bonanza. He doubled for Ross Martin in The Wild, Wild West. During the seventies, he appeared on Petrocelli, Little House on the Prairie, Marcus Welby, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Rockford Files, Kojak, and Charlie’s Angels among other shows. He was still going in the eighties doing his stunts on Hart to Hart, Magnum PI, Remington Steele, the Dukes of Hazzard, Matt Houston, Airwolf, The A-Team, and MacGyver. Despite being almost seventy, he continued in the nineties on shows like Father Dowling’s Murder Mysteries, The Wonder Years, and Murder She Wrote.

I did smile a bit to see shows like I Dream of Jeannie and The Mary Tyler Moore Show on this list. The Jeannie episode is one where she brings her great-grandfather to Cocoa Beach to show Tony how to desalinate water and the Mary episode is one where Sue Anne falls in love with someone who doesn’t return the feelings. I guess it proves you never know where a stunt person will show up.

I don’t know how he managed to survive sixty years performing dangerous stunts but he must have been in amazing physical shape.

I did promise to come back to men having to double for women in the forties and fifties. Thankfully, that is no longer the case, and women’s numbers are increasing among the 3400 stunt performers in SAG.

Former gymnast Shauna Duggins did the hard fighting work in Jennifer Garner’s show Alias. Because pay is determined by union contracts, stuntwomen do not suffer from the pay discrimination that sometimes shows up in the industry. Stunt performers are paid a minimum of $1005 for one day of work and they can negotiate higher pay based on their experience.

Shauna Duggins and Jennifer Garner
Photo: broadwayworld.com

Duggins was at the University of California Davis when she first thought about being a stuntwoman. She learned more about martial arts and spent hours working out in gyms after graduation. In 2000 she auditioned for stunt work in The X Files as Krista Allen’s double and got the job. Then she was in Charlie’s Angels for Kelly Lynch and Cameron Diaz.

It was after that movie that she got the role on Alias where she worked for five years. To protect these women, SAG has a 24/7 hotline for performers to phone if they feel they have been the victim of sexual abuse.

In 2018 Duggins won an Emmy after twenty years in the business. Her advice to young women who decide to make this their career: “train as much as you can in various skills. Go to different gyms with stunt performers, train with all of them and just learn from each other.”

I’m glad we took some time to learn about the tough and dangerous job these performers do. It was so interesting to learn a little bit about some of these industry stars.

Bernard Fox: What a Character – Calling Dr. Bombay

September 12, 2022July 31, 2022 / thewritelife61 / 4 Comments

We are in the middle of our “What A Character” blog series. No overview of television character actors during the golden age would be complete without Bernard Fox.

As a young tyke, you still expect him to say, “Come along old chap.” Photo: tagswrc.com

Fox was meant to be an actor. He was born to Queenie and Gerald Lawson in Glamorgan, Wales. Both his parents were actors. Fox had his first film role at the age of 18 months. By 14 he was an apprentice assistant manager of a theater.

Bernard served with the Royal Navy during WWII as a minesweeper and then in the Korean War. From 1956-2004 he made more than 30 films. Ironically, he was in two different Titanic movies. In 1958 at the beginning of his career, he was in A Night to Remember and in 1997, at the end of his career, he was in the Oscar-nominated Titanic. He liked to say that he was the only person to survive the Titanic twice.

He began his television career in 1955 when he received a recurring role on the United Kingdom show Sixpenny Corner as Tom Norton. The show was centered around Bill and Sally Norton, a young married couple who ran a garage together. Fox played Bill’s youngest brother.

Eventually, he made his way to the United States. His first US show was in Wire Service in 1957, a show filmed at the Desilu studio. His next seven shows were filmed in the United Kingdom.

Fox mentioned that being a character actor was a mental strain. Early in his career, he had to worry about when the next job would be coming. He did post office work, logging, and other interesting jobs to get by. Once he got to America, he was able to rely on his acting career and didn’t have to moonlight anymore.

In 1962, he married his wife Jacqueline. They had two daughters. The same year he was back on US television with a regular role on The Danny Thomas Show. He played Danny’s English friend, Alfie Wingate. In 1963 he appeared on Ensign O’Toole, The Great Adventure, and General Hospital. The mid-sixties showed him in a variety of shows including McHale’s Navy, Perry Mason, The Dick Van Dyke Show, F-Troop, I Spy, I Dream of Jeannie, The Man From U.N.C.L.E., and The Farmer’s Daughter.

He had another recurring role during this era on The Andy Griffith Show as Andy’s friend/valet Malcolm Merriweather. Fox appeared on the show in season three. We see him pedaling his bike next to Andy’s squad car at Andy’s house and says, “Excuse me, Constable.” When Andy understands what he is saying, he explains that he is the sheriff. With all the quirky characters in Mayberry, Malcolm fit right in and it’s a charming scene.

He continued receiving regular work in the late sixties for The Monkees; The Wild, Wild West; Here Come the Brides; and Daniel Boone.

Monkeeing Around Photo: sunshinefactory.com

Bernard did not enjoy his time on The Monkees set. He called them “an amateur bunch of rabble rousers . . . a bunch of unprofessional idiots.” He said that “they’d have cans of chocolates or something in the cupboards and in between shots, they’d be cramming chocolates in their mouths.” Fox was amazed, he said he got used to it but “professionally speaking, I expected a bit more.”

It was in the late sixties that he received the role he may be best known for: Dr. Bombay on Bewitched.

In an interview on bewitched.net, Fox was asked about his popular character, Dr. Bombay. He said that the spin he put on the doctor made him more interesting, saying, “If I’d just gone for an ordinary doctor, you wouldn’t have heard any more about it. But because I made him such a colorful character, that’s why they wanted him back.” He said the character was “easy to write for” and the writers had him being summoned from all over the world. He showed up in a variety of costumes including a wet suit, a football uniform, a toga, a towel, and a matador costume among others.

Bernard discussed the stars on Bewitched. He said Marion Lorne was a “dear lady.” When asked about Agnes Moorhead, he said she was a “thoroughly professional lady” and that praise from her was a thrilling thing to get. He said that he “liked Dick very much, a fine actor. He was a darling man.” And about Elizabeth, he said, “she was always very sweet and knew her lines.” She liked to bet on horses and whenever she won, she treated the cast to a party on the set. He also said once she found out he had a vegetable garden, she got him a subscription to Gourmet Magazine which she renewed every year.

He fondly recalled one episode where he was supposed to be squeezing a lemon into clam dip. When he squeezed it, it went in Elizabeth’s eye. The director yelled, “cut” and re-filmed it, but it happened again. The director said, “Bet you can’t do it a third time,” but he did, so they left it in the show.

His career did not slow down in the seventies where you could watch him on The Partridge Family, Night Gallery, Love American Style, Columbo, Cannon, Soap, and MASH. When asked about his appearance on The Partridge Family, Fox said, “Oh, I loved Shirley, she’s a doll, she’s a really nice lady.”

Following the pattern, he also had a recurring role in this decade as Colonel Crittendon on Hogan’s Heroes. As Crittendon, he was incompetent and dense and drove Colonel Hogan crazy with his ineptness.

In his bewitched.net interview, Fox also discussed his role on Hogan’s Heroes a bit. He said that in one episode he had hidden some maps in a corn bin. When he lifted the lid, it came down on his head. He just put the lid up and carried on with the script. When the director asked about reshooting, Fox said it was fine, and they left it in the film. He did say when he was playing a role on Hogan’s Heroes and Bewitched at the same time, it could get a bit confusing. They typically worked it out. For example, he said one time the studios agreed that Fox would be on the Bewitched set Tuesday and Wednesday and on Hogan’s Heroes Thursday and Friday.

Offers did slow down a bit in the eighties and nineties, and he ventured into animation work during those two decades. However, he still accepted offers for Fantasy Island, Lou Grant, The Love Boat, Hart to Hart, The Jeffersons, Simon and Simon, and Murder She Wrote among others.

His last acting credit occurred in 2001 for Dharma and Greg.

Not only was Fox an actor but he was an expert in history of the theater. For fun, he enjoyed gardening, painting landscapes, and performing magic.

In 2016, Fox died from heart failure.

I’m so glad he was able to find a successful career on television in the United States. After learning in a previous blog what a legend Marion Lorne was in England where she lived much of her life, I like to think about Aunt Clara and Dr. Bombay sharing some time talking about the delightful English ways that they missed. Hopefully they served tea on the set once in a while.