Set Designers: Creating Homes for Our Favorite Characters

October 19, 2026March 10, 2026 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

We are continuing to our series, “Behind the Scenes.” Today we are learning a bit about the career of a set designer. When we think of our favorite sitcoms from the past, many of us remember their houses as places we visited and know well. Think about The Brady Bunch and their seventies kitchen or Frasier’s apartment full of elegant things and then Martin’s old chair right in the middle of it.

Set designers have similar jobs as costumers except that they are dressing and accessorizing the places where the characters live, work, and do life. They research specific time periods to get historical details right; they create detailed sketches, 3D models, and blueprints for home design and furniture placement; and they work hard to ensure that every home looks like the character who inhabits it. In addition, they oversee construction, painting and installation of sets, and manage the budget. They study architectural styles, the science of color, and develop an awareness of how rooms and homes flow both for movement of actors and allowing equipment like cameras to be set up.

I thought it was hard to find information about costumers and makeup artists, but set designers are no easier to learn about. Let’s meet a few of them.

📷artdepartmental.com Rob and Laura Petrie’s living room

Ken Swartz was born in Oregon in 1913. He began his career in the 1940s working as a set decorator and he remained in film for a couple of decades, but television is where he made his mark. He took his film experience to the small screen working on many popular shows including The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Andy Griffith Show, The Danny Thomas Show, The Joey Bishop Show, and I Spy in the sixties. In the seventies he worked on The Rookies. I have talked about Sheldon Leonard many times over the years and what a professional he was and his high-quality standards. Swartz’s shows in the sixties were all Leonard shows, so he must have been very good at his job to keep getting hired show after show.

Swartz died in Los Angeles in 1973, putting an end to his career at age 60. The cause of his death was never disclosed. While his career was much shorter than we would have liked, he designed many iconic homes for some of our favorite characters like Rob and Laura Petrie’s suburban home; Aunt Bee, Andy, and Opie’s southern house; and the beauty and grandeur of the I Spy sets.

Audrey Blasdel-Goddard was born in California in 1930. After receiving a Master’s degree from UC Berkeley in 1954, she worked as a social worker for three years. During that time, she transitioned to work as a script supervisor for eight years before deciding she wanted to become a set decorator. From 1965-1988, she designed movie and television sets.

Blasdel-Goddard became a producer at Columbia TV from 1976-1982; however, from 1975 until 1991, she also worked at Columbia heading the TV Property Department. She was the first woman to head a major studio property department. Later in 1991 she moved to Sony Pictures for the final seventeen years of her career at which time she retired.

Audrey had an amazingly successful career in television and film, but it was not easy for her to get established. She spent two years working on the television show Sky King learning to be a set decorator. While working as a script supervisor during the day, she attended art school and interior design classes at night.

When she felt qualified, she applied for acceptance into the Union and was told by a business agent, Ed LeRoy, “We haven’t taken a woman into this union, except seamstresses, since it was called the IA.” When she shared her experiences with Universal Property Head John McCarthy and art director Frank Arrigo, they hired her for decorating jobs on shows like The Munsters. After the required thirty days on the job, she submitted her application and dues for membership. After four months of waiting, the Union called the studio and told them to fire her because they hadn’t received an application or payment. Luckily, she kept her receipt from her money order, and after producing it, her paperwork was suddenly “found.” A year and a half after starting her job as a set decorator, she finally got into the Union.

When Audrey worked at Sony, she was asked to run a prop house, so she built the inventory from scratch. She was also a partner in the Hollywood Central prop house.

📷davidcassidy.com Partridge Family Kitchen

📷davidcassicy.com Partridge Family Garage

In addition to The Munsters, her television work includes Pistols ‘n Petticoats, The Partridge Family, Police Woman, Fantasy Island, Hart to Hart, Crazy Like a Fox, TJ Hooker, and Designing Women.

Blasdel-Goddard is now enjoying retirement, spending lots of time with her family, attending book clubs, doing charity work, and traveling.

I appreciated learning more about these hard-working professionals who help create the shows and characters we fall in love with during our lives. Special thanks to Audrey Blasdel-Goddard for persevering in a hard-to-overcome men’s world in set designing and property supervision. Any of their lives would make an exciting movie. Fun Fact: If you are reading this and thinking about some of your favorite television homes, check out Mark Bennett’s book, TV Sets: Fantasy Blueprints of Classic TV Homes.

Costumers: Bringing Characters to Life

October 5, 2026March 8, 2026 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

This month we are going “Behind the Scenes” to learn more about the people who work to make television shows great off the screen. Today we get to learn about costume designers.

Costume designers visually define characters. They break down scripts, research time periods, manage budgets, and collaborate with directors and producers to ensure visual consistency. They also oversee fittings, tailor garments, and supervise the wardrobe department on the set.

Characters’ wardrobes have changed during the years. If you watch shows from the fifties to the early seventies, you will notice that the characters have a clothes inventory for the season. You will see characters wearing these clothes over and over during the year. Gracie Allen used to do her own shopping for the dresses she wore on the set.

Costumer designers can design and create clothing for a character, or they can purchase the wardrobes. Sometimes costumers work with big-name designers like Nolan Miller who design clothes for a television character. On That Girl, Ann Marie wore a lot of clothing designed by Marilyn Lewis. On Green Acres, Lisa Douglas’s negligees were purchased from Lucie Ann.

Starting in the late seventies and eighties, it became more common for characters to have new clothing for each episode. If you watch Dynasty or Charlie’s Angels, you probably never see an outfit a second time.

Costumer designers ensure historical accuracy by doing research into time periods and geographical locations. This is reflected in shows like Mad Men or That Seventies Show.

Designing for specific characters includes knowing their personality, creating color schemes that convey emotions, patterns that reflect a personal style, choosing shapes and forms that express a character’s message or social class. Think about a show like Golden Girls where each character has a very different look.

Additionally, designers must consider the set and background colors to make sure the characters are wearing complementary shades or sometimes wearing a clashing color to stand out.

Let’s meet a few television costume designers.

Harald Johnson

Harald Johnson’s work can be seen on The Dick Van Dyke Show, I Spy, and The Mod Squad. He was a member of the motion picture costumers for more than forty years.

In a 2023 online article by Matt Spaiser (https://www.bondsuits.com/the-stylish-beverly-hills-suits-of-the-dick-van-dyke-show/), he shares the following:

“As Rob Petrie, Van Dyke dressed in bespoke suits, which were known simply as ‘custom’ in America. Though the credits read, ‘Mr. Van Dyke’s Wardrobe furnished by “Botany” 500, Tailored by Daroff’, this was not the case literally. Van Dyke used a Beverly Hills tailor named Harry Cherry for his suits. Harry Cherry was the designer of the clothes and the shop proprietor with his name on the door, but he had cutters and tailors working for him.

The famous wardrobe credit was not entirely truthful. This is from the The Dick Van Dyke Show episode ‘My Neighbor’s Husband’s Other Life’.

Botany 500, an average-quality American clothier, paid for their name in the credits and, according to Vince Waldon’s book The Official Dick Van Dyke Show Book, also paid for Van Dyke’s wardrobe. The credit is cleverly and deceptively worded to mean that Daroff tailored clothes for Botany 500, not for Van Dyke. Botany 500 ‘furnished’ Van Dyke’s suits, in the form of paying his tailor. Van Dyke also appeared in advertisements for Botany 500.

In Waldron’s book, the show’s head of costuming Harald Johnson is quoted, ‘Dick was very, very particular about his clothes … He never wore off-the-rack suits. The only things he ever wore that were not custom-made were sportswear items.’ Johnson also said that the deal with Botany 500 provided the show’s producers Sheldon Leonard and Carl Reiner with suits from the same tailor who dressed Van Dyke.

Botany 500 paid a large sum for the Harry Cherry suits, jackets, and trousers. In a series of advertisements in the Los Angeles Times in 1958 promoting a clearance sale of his ready-to-wear clothes—he was shifting to selling only custom clothes—his ready-to-wear suits originally cost from $125 to $225 and were made of ‘Italian and English imported fabrics in 100% cashmere, cashmere-silk and wool, Italian silks, mohairs, lightweight worsted, silk and mohair, etc.’ “

The clothes worn by Mary Tyler Moore and Rose Marie were provided by various suppliers, most of them based in Los Angeles. In Vince Waldron’s book, The Official Dick Van Dyke Show Book, Harald Johnson “negotiated deals with a variety of California-based women’s clothing designers, most of whom were only too happy to loan samples of their latest fashion lines to the show’s female stars in exchange for the exposure and – of course – a prominent plug in the show’s closing credits.”

Mary refused to wear the typical and unrealistic clothing other housewives were wearing on television. In a 2021 online article https://www.cnn.com/style/article/mary-tyler-moore-capri-pants), she was quoted, “I said, I’ve seen all the other actresses, and they’re always running the vacuum in these little flowered frocks with high heels on, and I don’t do that,” she recalled to NPR. “And I don’t know any of my friends who do that. So why don’t we try to make this real? And I’ll dress on the show the way I do in real life. … Within a few weeks, we were sneaking (pants) into a few other scenes in every episode.

Vincent Dee

Born in Pennsylvania in 1915, Vincent Dee passed away in 2006. With almost 100 credits, he was a prolific designer. According to BackstageAudition.com, his “contributions as a costume supervisor are nothing short of extraordinary. His passion for storytelling, coupled with his unparalleled skill in costume design, has brought characters to life in a way that captivates audiences worldwide. Dee’s legacy as a master of his craft will undoubtedly continue to inspire future generations of costumer designers and enthusiasts alike.”

Dee began as a costumer designer on television from 1954 to 1978. He was part of the cast for many popular series including Tales of West Fargo, Bachelor Father, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Leave It to Beaver, Wagon Train, McHale’s Navy, The Munsters, and The Virginian.

Bachelor Father is one of my favorites and the characters’ wardrobes are spot on. Bentley Gregg is clad in the tailored suits a wealthy attorney would wear. His teen niece Kelly wears typical high school fashion with a polished, upscale vibe. And Peter switches his clothing from white shirt when working at the house to more casual, informal clothing when he’s out and about.

Then you have Leave It to Beaver. June is often made fun of for her flowing dresses and pearls. Barbara Billingsley often told the story about why she wore pearls. She had a large hollow in her neck which became more obvious on screen, so the pearls covered up that stark look. Ward, the businessman is usually in suits or casual attire for golfing. Beaver and Wally wear the typical clothing for boys their age: jeans, flannel shirts, sweaters. The Cleavers are the poster family for a wholesome, clean-cut, conservative family of that time.

The Munsters were a satire of the typical sixties’ family. However, Eddie Munster dressed nothing like Beaver. He wore the same outfit in every show: a velvet suit with short pants and a shite collar with a jacket and gray knee socks. Poor Fred wore heavy looking clothing as a mortician. He was given build-up shoes to expand his 5”6” frame to 7’. His clothing weighed about 50 pounds so there were fans and lemonade and water for him between takes. Lily gives a nod to The Bride of Frankenstein from 1935 with her black and white hair and long, flowing gown.

An interesting story about Dee concerned Edith Head, an amazing designer who often found herself involved in scandals and unethical behavior toward other designers. In a 7-29-2024 online article (https://www.okcmoa.com/edith-heads-controversies) by Kristen Pignuolo, we learn that Head was responsible for promoting The Sting and making sure the actors were happy with their costumes. However, she did no design work for the film. That fell to Peter Saldutti and Vincent Dee who worked with Paul Newman and Robert Redford and Andrea Weaver who was the women’s costumer. The Sting won Best Costume Design. Head received the Oscar and during her acceptance speech failed to even mention Saldutti, Dee, or Weaver.

I think the world of costuming is fascinating. You have all the creative license, scandal, and intrigue of any television plot. I wish we knew more about these hard-working, creative individuals who made our characters so real for us.

Sandra Gould: What a Character

November 24, 2025July 28, 2025 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

We are winding up our blog series “What a Character” with Sandra Gould. I have to be honest, I had an unfair bias against Sandra Gould. I didn’t know a lot about her career, I just knew that she replaced Alice Pearce as Gladys Kravitz, and it was a bad replacement. It wasn’t Sandra’s fault—I blame the show’s producers.

Some actors truly are irreplaceable. Eartha Kitt, while a great Cat Woman, just wasn’t Julie Newmar. Imagine trying to replace Henry Winkler as the Fonz halfway into the show. Can you picture tuning into MASH and finding Hawkeye was now played by someone other than Alan Alda? Pearce was perfect in that role and, despite her being nosy and annoying, she was likable and that is hard to do. Gould’s Gladys was loud and brash, and I felt like I heard fingernails on a chalkboard whenever she was in a scene.

As long as I’m oversharing, I never cared for Dick Sargent either. While he was able to replace Dick York in some ways, York was just Darrin. Okay, I’m done and ready to talk about the good aspects of Sandra Gould and her long career.

Gould was born in Brooklyn in 1916. She entered the entertainment business early becoming a kid dancer in the Cat Skills by age 13.

Gould found a lot of success on radio, appearing on “My Friend Irma” and “Duffy’s Tavern.” Her first radio job came along when she was only 9 on “The Danny Thomas Show.” Gould was with Jack Benny for almost fifteen years.

In 1938 she married Larry Berns, a broadcasting executive. They were married until his death in 1965. Berns joined CBS in 1942 writing and producing radio and TV series including Our Miss Brooks. He later worked on McHale’s Navy and Broadside.

Sandra’s first role was in the big screen T-Men in 1947. Most of her roles were inept or gabby women, typically a telephone operator, nurse, receptionist, landlady, or saleswoman. Gould once mentioned that she played an operator more than any other actress. I did notice 10-15% of her roles mentioned switchboard operators.

While she continued to appear in movies, most of her acting credits came on television. She appeared in Oboler Comedy Theater in 1949. In the early days of television, many of the series were drama or comedy reenactments of movies or plays. Sometimes, new stories were written for these episodes. Gould continued with these roles into the mid-fifties.

From 1952-55 she appeared as Mildred on I Married Joan. This series starred Joan Davis and Jim Backus. He was a judge, and she was another “Lucy Ricardo” always getting into mischief or causing hardships for her husband.

Gould was kept very busy with offers during the end of the fifties and throughout the sixties. She could be seen doing comedy on Our Miss Brooks, I Love Lucy, The Jack Benny Program, My Three Sons, The Brady Bunch, and I Dream of Jeannie among others. She also tried western life on Wagon Train. Her drama performances included Hawaiian Eye and I Spy. She even dipped her toe into animation on The Flintstones.

At the end of the sixties, she was given the Glady Kravitz role. Pearce and Gould split the character’s appearances: Pearce had 27 episodes with Gould having 29.

Gould had stepped away from acting for a time. She published two books for girls: Always Say Maybe and Sexpots and Pans. They both seem quite dated today in their advice to girls to get the right type of husband. At the time she accepted the role of Gladys she said she had gone through a very rough year. Her husband died. Then her writing partner Peter Barry died. Then Alice Pearce, who was a good friend of hers. She had no desire to take over the role, but George Tobias who played Abner and was also a friend, called her to come in for an audition.

I could not find any information about she and Barry collaborating. One article specifically mentioned that they wrote scripts for Honey West, Tammy, and The John Forsythe Show, but I don’t see either of their names as writers for these shows. Barry is listed as a writer for 23 shows in the late fifties and early sixties, and he was a radio scriptwriter. Perhaps they had written some scripts that were never filmed.

I guess I am in the minority on the Bewitched issue because most sites I visited described her role similarly, usually something like Hollywood Spotlight’s description: “her over-the-top performance and shrill voice were popular with viewers, and she succeeded ultimately in making the character her own.” She also reprised her role as Gladys in the sitcom Tabitha in 1977 which was about Darrin and Samantha’s daughter as an adult.

Some time during her stint on Bewitched, she got married again to Hollingsworth Morse, and they were together until his death in 1988. Hollingsworth was a director and assistant director on almost 90 programs and movies including McHale’s Navy, Dukes of Hazzard, and Mork and Mindy.

The seventies and eighties found her primarily in drama roles, although she could be spotted in a handful of sitcoms. You can catch her on Columbo, Marcus Welby MD, Ironside, Crazy Like a Fox, and MacGyver. During the nineties, she took on roles that were described as “old lady” on Friends and on her last appearance which was Boy Meets World in 1999.

Not long after filming this episode, Gould passed away from a stroke following heart surgery.

Gould had a long and successful career and certainly made the nosy, gabby character her own. I’m glad the job on Bewitched helped her get through a very sad and difficult time in her life. However, I still am claiming she was not right for Gladys who should have been written off the show and just replaced with a new neighbor. But I respect Gould and the characters she made her own on the big and little screens.

Camp Runamuck: Campers Loved It More than Viewers

May 26, 2025April 27, 2025 / thewritelife61 / Leave a comment

This month we are checking out a few sitcoms that are rarely remembered anymore. Today we are exploring the show Camp Runamuck. It debuted on NBC in 1965 and featured campers for 26 weeks before being cancelled.

Dave Madden was counselor Pruett; Commander Wivenhoe was played by Arch Johnson, and senior counselor Spiffy was played by David Ketchum. In the pilot, one of my favorites, Frank DeVol, played Doc Joslyn but illness forced him to hand over the part to Leonard Stone. Bobby Darrin sang the theme song.

If you are a fan of The Partridge Family, you will appreciate that this show was the introduction of actor Dave Madden, later Rueben who would manage the Partridges. Johnson began on television in the fifties, but this was his first cast role. Ketchum started his career a decade after Johnson and this was his second starring role after being in I’m Dickens, He’s Fenster in 1962. One camper who is featured in two of the 26 episodes is Maureen McCormick. This was the year she started her acting career, also appearing in Bewitched, The Farmer’s Daughter, and Honey West. Before becoming Marcia Brady, she would also show up in My Three Sons and I Dream of Jeannie.

Wivenhoe was an interesting camp leader. He didn’t like kids, didn’t like to part with his money, and didn’t appreciate the 6am morning wake-up song sung by the girls across the lake accompanied by a bugle. He did like playing golf and enjoying a quince for breakfast.

Across the lake was Camp Divine owned by Eulalia (Hermione Baddeley) who was helped by counselors Mahalia May (Alice Nunn) and Caprice Yeudleman (Nina Wayne).

The opening featured a peppy tune with fifes and you see the lake and hear the music before you see the camp counselors leading the campers (all in white; the poor laundry crew) marching down the road.

Most of the plots featured the counselors as opposed to the campers. Typical plots were the female campers being ordered to steal Wivenhoe’s bathtub so they could take a real bath and the boys getting it back. In another episode, the campers learn a civics lesson. They are given the task of electing a camp commander. However, the candidate who gets in becomes a dictator and tries to put everyone who had been in charge, namely the adults, in jail. This sounds vaguely familiar from the recent news.

In the credits I learned Cal Howard was in charge of visual gags. I never had seen that designation before in a sitcom. Howard, who was born in 1911 and passed away in 1993, had a long career as an actor and writer. He received 178 writing credits, mostly in animation. He worked for Walter Lanz and Walt Disney and wrote a few Bugs Bunny and Alvin and the Chipmunks episodes.

Just to add a sense of weirdness and whimsy to the series, two bears named Irving and Virginia would share their opinions of what was going on around the camp.

The series was up against The Wild Wild West and The Flintstones, pretty tough competition for the time. First of all it was on Friday nights when many viewers might be starting their weekend celebrations. The Flintstones was originally written for adults, but by 1965 families were watching the show together. The Wild Wild West was new, but immediately hit the top 30, and it was followed by another new CBS show, Hogan’s Heroes, and then Gomer Pyle, USMC, so most television fans were glued to that network Friday nights. Other new NBC shows included Get Smart, I Dream of Jeannie, and I Spy so competition was tough to retain a schedule spot. ABC didn’t have a lot of hits that year but they did debut three shows that I liked but all faded away within two seasons: Batman, Honey West, and Gidget.

Camp Runamuck might have gotten a second season if it didn’t have so much competition to deal with. If you loved camp as a kid, or hated camp as a kid, it might be worthwhile to watch a few shows and see what you think.

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.

Shirley’s World: Doomed to Fail

February 3, 2025November 10, 2024 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

As we ponder the What in the World? blog series this month, today we are taking a look at Shirley’s World.

This sitcom starred Shirley MacLaine as a photographer. For a variety of reasons, this show was doomed to fail. Let’s learn why that was the case.

ABC aired this show in 1971. It was co-produced by ITC Entertainment, a British company and American producer Sheldon Leonard. As I’ve said many times, Sheldon is one of my favorite classic television people. When he did a show, quality was guaranteed. In this sitcom, Shirley Logan (Shirley MacLaine) worked at World Illustrated magazine and her editor Dennis Croft (John Gregson) sent her around the world on assignments. However, Shirley always managed to find herself in dangerous situations while trying to help clients she was only supposed to photograph. One site described it as “the indomitable and highly resourceful Shirley met more than her share of high drama and intrigue—meeting would-be Soviet defectors, interviewing film stars, and even becoming a circus clown—with a few hilarious moments along the way.”

The opening of the show is very confusing. It’s a collage of photos one after another of Shirley with her camera out and about. If you didn’t know what the show was about, and it sounds like a lot of the crew and cast never did figure that out, you would assume this was a documentary or a mystery show. It does not read as a comedy.

There is a similarity to Sheldon Leonard’s series I Spy with shows set around the world. Rather than being videotaped, this series was shot on film. Because it was set all over, the producers decided against a laugh track or live audience. This gave the sense of a mini film; although laugh tracks can be annoying, the lack of laughter was also a detriment for a sitcom.

I could not determine what set things off, but MacLaine and her British crew had what was often described as a “mutual loathing” of each other. She also seemed to have issues with the writers. After voicing often how much she disliked some of the scripts, she was banned from seeing them until 48 hours before shooting began. Eleven writers were credited with scripts, including Rob Reiner. From what I read about “fans,” the writing did leave a lot to be desired.

The show aired Wednesday nights. It was up against the second half of Medical Center and the NBC Mystery Movie which included Columbo, McMillan and Wife, and McCloud. So not only was it against two shows in the top 20, but if someone began watching either of those two shows, they were not switching halfway through the episode to watch Shirley’s World.

David Hofstede reviewed the show in his Comfort TV blog in February of 2023 (https://comforttv.blogspot.com/2023/02/shirley-you-cant-be-serious-visiting.html). As he tells us, “I gave up after ten episodes because all of them suffered from the same flaws. There’s nothing here for a viewer to follow that seems at all credible. Shirley MacLaine’s acting talent is unquestionable, from The Apartment to Sweet Charity to Terms of Endearment. Yet here she doesn’t seem to know what to do with the character or the situations she encounters. She laughs in serious moments—is that because she didn’t know what else to do?”

Another review mentioned that apart from one small reference to Shirley being from Idaho, we don’t know anything about her.

In the early decades of television, we saw many stars who made that transition to television beautifully—Burns and Allen, Jack Benny, Debbie Reynolds, but there are also plenty like Henry Fonda and Jimmy Stewart who didn’t.

I understand 20/20 is everything as we look back in time, but it’s hard to understand how this show even got on the air. We have a great film star in MacLaine and an amazing producer in Leonard, and that is about it for the positives.

The show was expensive to create due to overseas locations and untypical filming techniques, it was poorly written, the character was never developed, the bi-nation crew didn’t get along, it was put on the schedule against two top-twenty shows that were an hour long, and never seemed to figure out if it was a sitcom, a drama, or a mystery.

Some things are just not meant to be, and Shirley’s World appears to be one of them.

The Rifleman: Spinning Through Life

September 30, 2024March 14, 2024 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

As we wind up our Riding the Range blog series, we end with another show set in the 1880s: The Rifleman.

The series was set in the New Mexico Territory and starred Chuck Connors as Lucas McCain and Johnny Crawford as his son Mark. The show was on ABC from 1958 through April 1963. Lucas McCain was one of the first single parents on television.

The show was created by Arnold Laven and developed by Sam Peckinpah. Peckinpah would go on to direct many famous westerns. The pilot episode was written by Peckinpah and Dennis Hopper starred in it. It was aired on Dick Powell’s Zane Grey Theatre. Some famous people worked behind the scenes. Connors would write several of the episodes and Robert Culp, who would become the co-star of I Spy, wrote a two-part episode. Ida Lupino directed “The Assault” in 1961.

McCain was a Union soldier in the American Civil War. His wife died from smallpox when their son was six, and McCain and Mark move from Oklahoma to New Mexico where Lucas buys a ranch outside North Fork. McCain is not a perfect father; he is often stubborn and opinionated. Sometimes he seems overprotective of his son. He tries to teach Mark life lessons. In one episode, he tells him “A man doesn’t run from a fight, Mark, but that doesn’t mean you go looking to run to one.”

Chuck Connors was offered the role of McCain but turned it down because he thought the salary was too low. Several other actors were tested but no one had the same chemistry with the young boy that Connors did, so they made him another offer with a higher salary.

There are some North Fork folk who show up on many of the shows including bartender Marshal Micha Torrance (Paul Fix), Frank (Bill Quinn), hotel owner Lou (Patricia Blair), blacksmith Nels (Joe Higgins), banker John (Harlan Warde), general store owners Milly (Joan Taylor) and Hattie (Hope Summers), and hotel clerk Eddie (John Harmon). Bill Quinn was Bob Newhart’s father-in-law. Patricia Blair left in 1963 to star in Daniel Boone. Hope Summers moved to Mayberry after the show ended and became Aunt Bee’s best friend. Joan Taylor only did a few shows after The Rifleman, but she came into the show with quite a few television appearances. Higgins, Warde, and Harmon were prolific actors who had very successful careers.

Quite a few well-known stars make their appearance during the run of the show. Some of them include Harry Carey Jr., John Carradine, Lon Chaney Jr., Ellen Corby, Robert Culp, Sammy Davis Jr., Jack Elam, Dabbs Greer, Buddy Hackett, Michael Landon, Agnes Moorehead, Denver Pyle, Pernell Roberts, Robert Vaughn, and Adam West.

There were so many westerns on the air during the fifties and sixties that most of them needed a hook to set them apart. McCain was called The Rifleman because he used a modified Winchester Model 1892 rifle with a large ring lever. The lever design allowed him to cock the rifle by spinning it in his hand and it was rigged to rapid fire which we saw demonstrated in the opening of every show. I guess no one was bothered by the fact that McCain used a rifle that would not be invented until ten years later than the time the show was set in.

The show was on Tuesday nights for the first three seasons. For season four, it moved to Mondays. After the fifth season, the show was canceled due to low ratings. However, Connors and Crawford remained life-long friends. Connors admired Crawford’s work on the set and said he always respected the cast and crew.

Crawford began his career as a Mouseketeer, one of the original 24. After the show ended, he became a pop singer with five hits. “Cindy’s Birthday” was his most famous and it was No. 8 on the Billboard 100 in 1962. Crawford came into the show with thirty acting credits, and he would go on to have thirty more after the show ended, but he never starred in another series.

Fun fact, The Rifleman was one of the few American shows that was allowed to be shown on Russian television. Apparently Breshnev loved the show. Later he met Chuck Connors when he came to the US. The actor made several trips to Russia.

I have seen this show on MeTV, and it is okay. I’m guessing that the reason it was on five seasons, and the reason it was canceled after five seasons, is because it was another western. Almost every western seemed to be successful in the fifties and sixties, but five years seems to be about the length of most of them with the exception of Gunsmoke, Bonanza and a handful of others. I have to admit that I am not drawn to McCain as a character, although I didn’t dislike him either. If you like westerns and have not seen it, it might be worth checking out.

Virginia Sale: What a Character

July 15, 2024July 1, 2024 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

We are learning about some of our favorite female character actresses. Today we are learning more about the life of Virginia Sale.

Virginia was born in 1899 in Illinois. Her father Frank was a dentist, and her mother Lillie Belle was a poet and truant officer for the Urbana Illinois School District. After graduation, she attended the University of Illinois for two years and then transferred to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York where she graduated in the early twenties. Her brother Charles was a vaudeville comic, and he persuaded her to go to Hollywood to pursue a film career.

She began her career in Hollywood as an extra. In 1931, she did an interview for the Kansas City Star where she said “I had known an assistant director [named Ned] when I lived in New York. He introduced me to King Vidor, then casting for The Crowd. He gave me quite a good bit in the picture, although it lasted only five days. When asked how much salary I wanted, Ned told me to say $350 a week. ‘Well, I think you ought to work for us for $25 a day’ the casting director said. ‘That’s an awful comedown I protested,’ trembling in my boots. ‘All right then, let’s compromise on $35 a day,’ he said. I was awfully glad to get it.” That would be almost $600 a day currently.

During her first two years in Hollywood, Virginia lived at the Hollywood Studio Club. She appeared in 54 films between 1930 and 1935.

The Hollywood Studio Club was created as a safe place for starlets to live. Mary Pickford, along with several other women, was trying to raise money to construct a new building to house actresses. Will Hays gave $20,000 and soon after the studios contributed. Julia Morgan was hired as the architect. She designed an Italian Renaissance Revival style building that opened in 1926. The first floor had a spacious lobby, a library, writing rooms, a dining room, and a stage. The upper stories were single, double, and triple rooms. Men were only allowed to be on the first floor. You had to be between 18-35 years old, be seeking work as an actress, and could stay a maximum of three years. A hundred women lived there, paying $10-15 a week for room and board.

Barbara Hale, Donna Reed, Dorothy Malone, Ann B. Davis, Barbara Eden, Sharon Tate, and Sally Struthers were just a few of the women who lived there. The most famous resident was Marilyn Monroe. After the culture shift in the sixties and seventies, the residents decreased until the Club could no longer financially exist. In 1975 the doors were closed, and the contents were auctioned off.

In Hollywood Sale was often cast as an older woman, even though she was still in her twenties. She entered the movie entertainment business just as silent films were ending. Her first role was in Legionnaires in Paris in 1927. During her film work, she met actor and studio executive Sam Wren, and they married in 1935. In 1936 they had twins named Virginia and Christopher.

In the thirties, Virginia developed a one-woman show based on her life growing up in Illinois which she called “American Sketches.” She performed the piece more than 6000 times throughout the thirties, forties, and fifties, even touring Europe during WWII. This sounds like it would have been a fun show to see. Some of the different pieces of the performance included: “Traveling on the Illinois Central” where she portrays a mother trying to keep her son under control after a visit with relatives; “Life of the Party” where she is a giggling, talkative woman who annoys a young man she is trying to impress;
“Mealtime in Indiana” where she impersonates a housewife trying to get ready for the Ladies Guild while preparing supper for her family; “Three O’Clock in the Morning” as a weary hostess trying to get her guests to go home, and “I Remember Abraham Lincoln” where she is Grandma Willoughby reminiscing about her encounters with Lincoln.

She also received some radio work, including a serial, For Those We Love, playing Martha the maid every Sunday for eight years.

Her film career continued to develop during those decades and she appeared in Topper, When Tomorrow Comes, They Died with Their Boots On, and Night and Day.

Sam served in WWII as part of the Air Corps. When he returned home, he had a six-year position as executive secretary for the Actor’s Equity. He was an executive at both Warner Brothers and Columbia studios.

In 1949 as television was developing, she and Sam created a sitcom, Wren’s Nest which featured the life of the Wrens starring Virginia, Sam, and the twins. The show aired three times a week. Virginia took over writing duties on the show. Many of her scripts were based on real events that happened to the family. The series contained 47 episodes.

During the fifties, Sale took a break from the big screen, focusing on television shows and commercials. She appeared in several series in the fifties, but she hit her stride during the sixties. If you watch a lot of television from that decade, you can catch her in a variety of shows including The Many Lives of Dobie Gillis, Ben Casey, The Beverly Hillbillies, Wild Wild West, The Andy Griffith Show, Green Acres, and I Spy. She had a recurring role on Petticoat Junction where she played several characters. Her final television role was in Police Woman in 1975.

Sam passed away in 1962, and Virginia lived another thirty years, dying in 1992 from heart failure. Both Sam and Virginia are buried in Arlington National Cemetery. She spent her final years at the Motion Picture and Television Country Hospital in Woodland Hills, California.

Sale could thank Mary Pickford for her home once again. Pickford was part of the Motion Picture Relief Fund which she founded with Joseph Schenck and Reverend Neal Dodd. When several former Hollywood stars died destitute in the thirties, 48 acres were purchased in the San Fernando Valley to build a Motion Picture Country House. In 1948, the Motion Picture Hospital was dedicated on the grounds. Later television actors were invited to live there as well. By that time, the site included a retirement community with individual cottages, administrative offices, and a hospital. Fees are based on the ability to pay. Actors, artists, backlot men, cameramen, directors, extras, producers and security guards are all eligible to live there. To live there, residents must be at least 70 and have worked in the entertainment industry for at least 20 years.

It was fun to learn not only about Virginia Sales but also the places she lived at the beginning and the end of her career.

Vera Miles: What a Character

July 8, 2024July 1, 2024 / thewritelife61 / 2 Comments

During this month of Supportive Women, I am excited to learn more about Vera Miles. For four decades, Miles appeared in our homes as well as on the big screen. With 162 credits, she may have visited your living room more than most of your family members.

Vera Ralston was born in Boise City, Oklahoma in 1929. She grew up in Pratt, Kansas, and later she moved to Wichita where she graduated from high school and worked nights as a Western Union operator-typist. In 1948 she won the Miss Kansas pageant and was third runner-up in the Miss America contest that year. Miss Minnesota won the crown.

A year later she moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career in television and movies. Not long after arriving in Hollywood, Vera married photographer and stuntman Bob Miles. One source said that she enrolled at UCLA, hoping to become a teacher.

Bob Miles has 13 acting credits and 14 stuntman credits. The cast of Bonanza must have liked him because he appeared as a stuntman 99 times and as an actor on the show 76 times.

After the birth of her children, she began doing some modeling and taking on a few roles to help provide income. Vera used her husband’s last name because there was already a Vera Ralston in the industry.

She appeared as a contestant in a 1951 episode of You Bet Your Life with Groucho Marx. Along with her partner, she won $8 in the quiz portion of the show but gave the wrong response to the De Soto-Plymouth question which was “Who was the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court?” When Groucho asked her what titles she had held as a beauty contestant, in addition to Miss Kansas, she mentioned that she was Miss Chamber of Commerce, Miss Wichita, Miss Texas Grapefruit, and Miss New Maid Margarine.

She received her first movie role in 1950 and her first credit in 1952. In The Rose Bowl Story, a romantic comedy, she played a Tournament of Roses Queen. She would appear in about 40 additional movies during her career and quite a few made-for-television movies as well. She often worked with Alfred Hitchcock and was cast in Psycho.

In 1951 she appeared on Fireside Theater, her first television role. While she had more than 100 credits performing on television, surprisingly she never starred in a series. The only recurring character she had was Ernestine Coulter on My Three Sons.

In 1956 she married Gordon Scott after divorcing Miles in 1954. They also divorced in 1960. Scott appeared to only work in Hollywood for a five-year period according to imdb.com. From 1960-1971 she tried marriage again with Keith Larsen, but their marriage also ended in divorce. Since the third time was not the charm, for two years in the mid-seventies, she wed Robert Jones but that ended in divorce as well.

During the fifties, she fit roles around her movie appearances, and you can see her in episodes of dramatic theater shows. In the sixties, she had no trouble finding work and she showed up on The Twilight Zone, Route 66, Wagon Train, I Spy, The Man from UNCLE, The FBI, and Mannix. Work did not slow down in the seventies, and you can spot her in a variety of shows including Gunsmoke, Hawaii 5-O, Bonanza, Cannon, Columbo, and Barnaby Jones. She might have taken thing a bit easier in the eighties, but she still worked on four or five shows a year, including Magnum, PI; Little House on the Prairie; The Love Boat; Hotel; and Murder She Wrote. Her last credit was for a movie titled Separate Lives in 1995.

Miles was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and visited Salt Lake City quite often.

Early in her career, Miles appeared to be almost a clone of Grace Kelly but that never materialized into a movie star career. Hitchcock hired her for Vertigo with Jimmy Stewart, but her pregnancy caused her to back out of the movie, and Kim Novak received the starring role. Perhaps, that movie would have changed the trajectory of her film career. I’m surprised that she was never given an opportunity to star in a television show. With 162 credits, she had a prolific and busy career. I will definitely try to spot her when I watch some of my favorite classic shows.

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.