Eighty Is Not Enough: One Actor's Journey Through American Entertainment
Copyright © 2009 Dick Van Patten
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eBook International Standard Book Number (ISBN): 978-1-61467-116-9
Original Source: Print Edition 2009 (ISBN: 978-1-60747-700-6)
Library of Congress Cataloging-In-Publication Data Available
Kindle Edition: 1.00 (7/28/2011)
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Van Patten, Dick.
Eighty is not enough! : one actor's journey through American entertainment / Dick Van Patten and Robert Baer.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-60747-700-6 (hardcover)
1. Van Patten, Dick. 2. Actors--United States--Biography. I. Baer, Robert. II. Title.
PN2287.V337A3 2009
792.02'8092--dc22
[B]
2009034311
Book Design by: Marti Lou Critchfield
Printed in the United States of America
Phoenix Books, Inc.
9465 Wilshire Boulevard, Suite 840
Beverly Hills, CA 90212
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
FOR MOM
WHO WAS THERE FOR ME AT THE BEGINNING
AND
FOR PAT
WHO'S BEEN THERE FOR ME EVER SINCE
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Chapter 1 KNOCKOUT
Chapter 2 EARLY DAYS
Chapter 3 MR. PERSONALITY
Chapter 4 LAND OF BROKEN DREAMS
Chapter 5 STAGESTRUCK
Chapter 6 BROADWAY
Chapter 7 THE LAST CASUALTY
Chapter 8 THE ETERNAL ROAD
Chapter 9 MENAGERIE
Chapter 10 AND THEY'RE OFF!
Chapter 11 A BROADWAY RÉSUMÉ
Chapter 12 THE FAMILY HEARTH
Chapter 13 THE AMERICAN WAY
Chapter 14 THE GREAT FAIR OF '39
Chapter 15 THE LAND IS BRIGHT
Chapter 16 DANCING WITH THE STARS
Chapter 17 THE SKIN OF OUR TEETH
Chapter 18 HOW TO BEAT THE RACES
Chapter 19 TROUBLE AT HOME
Chapter 20 TOMORROW THE WORLD
Chapter 21 KIRK & THE BOYS
Chapter 22 THE MAGIC OF LUNT & FONTANNE
Chapter 23 COMING OF AGE IN THE BIG APPLE
Chapter 24 PENETRATOR
Chapter 25 SIDESHOWS
Chapter 26 MAMA: A BRAVE NEW WORLD
Chapter 27 MISTER ROBERTS
Chapter 28 COMMAND PERFORMANCE
Chapter 29 DREAM GIRL
Chapter 30 EVERY SO OFTEN!
Chapter 31 SLIPPING AWAY
Chapter 32 FLITTING OFF
Chapter 33 CRASH
Chapter 34 FLEETING FAME
Chapter 35 TOUGH CHOICES
Chapter 36 THE ROAD BACK
Chapter 37 THREE'S A CHARM!
Chapter 38 THE PHONES ARE RINGING AGAIN
Chapter 39 MEL
Chapter 40 MEMORY OF A DARK TIME
Chapter 41 BACK TO BROADWAY
Chapter 42 CONNING THE CON MAN
Chapter 43 FARRAH
Chapter 44 GOODBYE
Chapter 45 EIGHT IS ENOUGH
Chapter 46 BREAKFAST AT WIMBLEDON
Chapter 47 AFRICA
Chapter 48 LIFE AFTER EIGHT IS ENOUGH
Chapter 49 EIGHTY IS NOT ENOUGH
EPILOGUE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
1
KNOCKOUT
John Henry was down. It was only the first round, but I knew it was over. Above the roar of the crowd, I could hear the excitement in the announcer’s voice as I moved closer to the old Emerson radio against the back wall in the dressing room. I waited as the referee down the street at the Garden began the count.
It was 1939. I was ten years old, and Joe Louis was my hero. As I stood there pressed up to the radio, Joe’s opponent, a tough but aging former light-heavyweight champion named John Henry Lewis, was on the canvas. It was his second trip down in the first two minutes of the fight. The first time, Joe had knocked him clear through the ropes. Ten seconds later, the referee called the fight, and I raced out of the dressing room, bursting to tell the very next person I saw that the great Brown Bomber was still Champion of the World.
Fredric March stood in the wings of Broadway’s Center Theater. He was growing anxious, his entrance cue fast approaching. March was starring in The American Way—a popular Broadway spectacle, directed by the great George S. Kaufman, telling the story of a German-American named Martin Gunther, a man torn by mixed loyalties to his old and new countries in the late 1920s. Gunther’s divided loyalties would be further tested by the prejudice rising against his family as tensions in America later mounted along with the emergence of Hitler and the Nazis in Europe.
I reached the wings. I was playing Gunther’s grandson, Karl. Taking Fredric March’s hand, we waited together for our cue. At the moment, I was only vaguely aware that Fredric March was special. Standing there with him, I wouldn’t have known why. I wouldn’t have known that he won the Academy Award for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in 1932, nor that just a year before he was again nominated for his acclaimed performance in the smash hit, A Star is Born. None of that mattered to me. I had far more important news to relate.
“Louis won!” I blurted out. I was beside myself with excitement as I looked up, expecting March to be just as thrilled as I was. Instead, he glared back. Instantly, I saw something was wrong. This was Rockefeller Center. The play was a tremendous production with a cast and crew of over two hundred and fifty people. The seats were packed with New Yorkers who came to the theater in the hope of finding some small relief from the stress of ten years of the Great Depression and new anxieties over an impending World War. I wasn’t aware of all that, but I could tell that Fredric March was mad—and worse still, he was mad at me.
“Get your mind on your acting,” he snapped. “This is more important than the fight.” His tone startled me. For a moment I was devastated. We stood there waiting in silence. But seconds later the cue came, and we stepped out together under the bright stage lights of Broadway.
As we did, I found myself transforming. Quickly I became Karl Gunther, another young boy living in an entirely different world than mine. And just as fast, I forgot all about the fight. The old guy was right. The show really was more important. For the next seventy years in this line of work, I’ve come to realize that the show is always more important. That’s a lesson I first learned from Fredric March—and one I’d never forget.
That night—and every night—my Mom was backstage. Josephine Acerno Van Patten—everyone called her “Jo”—was quite simply the most extraordinary person I’ve ever known. Consider what she accomplished: in the midst of the Great Depression, Jo had this crazy idea that her two kids could be stars on Broadway. Without money, connections, access or advantages of any kind, she somehow, through sheer force of will, turned that crazy dream into reality. When she passed away in 1975, my father wrote poignantly to my sister Joyce and me, reminding us of just how important she was to our success: it was Mom’s “persistence and doggedness that put you where you are today.”
Dad was right. But it’s also true that her pursuit of that dream cost her dear
ly; probably even her marriage. She made that sacrifice, not because she wanted to, but, I believe, because she had no choice. Unrelenting ambition was something written in her nature. She felt it every minute of every day. Most important, she could never settle for not trying. It was one thing to fail, but, for Mom, it was unforgivable not to try. And so, my mother was utterly relentless, a force of nature, the likes of which I’ve never seen.
When I think about my mother in those early days in the 1930s and 1940s, I’m reminded of the ongoing debate about whether parents should bring their children into the world of entertainment. It’s something people will forever debate. The clash of opinion in my own family is striking. My sister Joyce and I have such different memories of life as child actors that I sometimes think we must have come from different homes.
I tend see the positive; some might—and do—say that I stress the positive to the point of being blind to reality. But for me, my mother made this wonderful life I’ve enjoyed possible, and I find it hard to imagine what I would have done without her ambition and drive. Joyce, however, has always been more sensitive to the downside. Joyce, so highly intelligent, has deeply felt the very real underside of a life where getting that bigger and better role became the only measure of things. She rebelled against a world that placed such a high premium on show business success. Joyce left home early and carved out her own wonderful and successful life. As her older brother, I could not be more proud of what she has accomplished, both as a person and a performer.
So the question remains, do child actors lose their youth? Are they exposed too soon to the often cutthroat and unforgiving world of entertainment? Is there a price to be paid later when an overly-protected and idealized childhood is insufficient training for the real challenges of life that inevitably lurk around the corner? After years thinking about this question, I’ve come to believe there’s no one simple answer. What works for some, doesn’t work for others. That’s not a cop-out; it simply reflects the fact that people are different.
I played a television dad in Eight Is Enough. But playing a character in a television show doesn’t magically turn you into that character. Actors pretend to be policemen, doctors, and scientists, but that hardly gives them the courage of a cop, the judgment of a doctor, or the brilliance of a scientist. Oddly, I’ve known actors who confuse their real and fictional persona. Nothing is more absurd. Like everyone else, what I’ve learned about being a father has come from my own life, my own family and from the challenge of raising my own children.
Still, like any father, there were things I could bring to the role of a TV dad that may have contributed some authenticity to the show. Also, it’s inevitable that during a long-running show, relationships develop among the various characters, both on and off camera. Those relationships are as varied as they are in real life. There are the good things: admiration, pride, caring, and compassion; there are also the bad things, the worst of which is jealousy. Through the years I’ve tried to keep in touch with the casts of both Eight Is Enough and I Remember Mama. I’ve always considered them like second families. And like any family there have been successes and disappointments, even tragedies. There is a great deal of pressure on performers—especially young performers—when they come off a successful show. I’ve felt it myself, and I’ve seen many others confronted by it.
Over the past eighty years, I’ve been fortunate to see firsthand the many great changes in American entertainment. Most remarkable was the advent of television, and I’ve never lost my astonishment at its awesome power. I participated in the transition from radio to television in the late 1940s, and the power of the new medium was immediately recognizable. Recently, I was struck again by the magnitude of television’s place in American culture in a very personal way.
In the recent presidential election, Americans were fortunate to have two exceptional candidates in terms of their personal integrity and character. The nomination and election of the first African-American as President of the United States certainly reflects a tremendous advance from the days of my own youth when segregation and racial bias were still ugly stains on America. Regardless of one’s political views, all Americans should be proud of this extraordinary moment in our history.
Most astonishing to me, however, was that at a key moment in the campaign Eight Is Enough actually enjoyed a brief resurgence on the world stage. On the night of President Obama’s historic acceptance speech at Denver’s Invesco Field, I was watching at home with my family. About midway through, I nearly fell off my chair as the Democratic nominee made a clear reference to Eight Is Enough. “We love this country too much to let the next four years look just like the last eight,” Obama told the massive throng of supporters. “On November 4, we must stand up and say: ‘Eight is enough.’”
The next day in an article titled, “Somewhere, Dick Van Patten is Smiling,” television writer Michael Malone noted: “Even Dick Van Patten’s wise Bradford patriarch character couldn’t have predicted what would happen next.” He was right. No sooner than Obama said it, some eighty-thousand people began chanting in unison “Eight is enough, Eight is enough,” as literally tens, if not hundreds of millions of viewers watched worldwide. I sat there, not only “smiling,” but absolutely astonished.
Numerous writers commented on President Obama’s reference to the show. David Remnick gently lampooned the phrase in The New Yorker, noting that John F. Kennedy in his acceptance speech had cited the prophet Isaiah, Oliver Cromwell, Henry II, and Lloyd George, while Barack Obama chose to cite an old television show. Remnick wrote: “For the culturally disadvantaged, ‘Eight Is Enough’ is a reference to a Dick Van Patten sitcom of the late seventies.” Roger Catlin of the Hartford Courant wondered if “future historians [will] get all of its references centuries from now?” Will they know, Catlin wrote, that Obama was “gently referring to the 1970s sitcom starring Dick Van Patten?” And comedian Jon Stewart of The Daily Show also “picked up on the pop cultural reference.” The next day, Stewart poked fun at the line by constructing a mock speech made up only of television shows. Pretending to be a presidential candidate, Stewart announced: “We must take it One Day at a Time! To restore Good Times and Happy Days. Whether you’re Married with Children or just Friends, Cheers to you. Monday Night Football.”
I was delighted by the President’s reference to our show. But it also underscored the enormous power of television. Remnick, among the most prominent writers in America, argued that Obama’s “homey sloganeering”—which, according to Remnick, included the reference to Eight Is Enough—“worked.” In other words, Obama’s policy platform was best served when joined with a vision of what is good about America. Without overstating its significance, I think it’s fair to say that the ideal of an American family and a positive way of life was, for many people of President Obama’s generation, at least partially represented by the Bradford family. But never in my wildest dreams did I expect to hear it alluded to at this historic moment. I hope all the hundreds of people associated with the show were as thrilled as I was.
* * *
For nearly eight decades I’ve had the great fortune of playing thousands of roles before millions of people. I’ve enjoyed every step of the journey. Now, I look back with a mix of emotions; sadness for the people who are gone, nostalgia for times that have passed, but immense gratitude for the wonderful opportunities that came my way. I’ve titled this book Eighty Is Not Enough not just for the obvious play on words, but as a way of expressing the single idea that has governed my entire life; that every moment of life is precious; that every step we take is an adventure; that every day on earth is a gift from God.
I imagine that anyone turning eighty would say, “Eighty is not enough.” I hope that thought is moved less by a fear of what comes after this journey than a love of life itself. The truth is, I still wake up early to meet the new day. While I don’t jump out of bed with the nimbleness of my youth, I’ve retained a desire to see what’s new for today and what’s on the horizon
for tomorrow. I don’t believe that will ever change. My son, Jimmy, has recently described me as someone who enjoys the simple things in life: “My dad can find something awesome in a can of coke,” he says. I think he’s right. There is so much in this wonderful life we take for granted—things, as Jimmy says, we should really experience with a sense of awe.
I’ve also made more than my share of mistakes. I’ll talk about some of that; and I hope to do so in a way that’s honest, but without being hurtful to others. Revealing things backstage is always a bit dicey. But it’s the challenges we confront as much as our triumphs, the failings as much as the victories that reveal the full measure of our lives. When I decided to set down my memoirs, it was with the idea of showing that an imperfect life, as mine has been, can still be a wonderful life.
2
EARLY DAYS
My career began in a baby carriage. That’s how Mom always told it. Pushing me up and down the streets of Kew Gardens in the late 1920s, people would stop and comment to her: “You should bring that baby to a modeling agency!”
Most mothers hearing such flattery would be both delighted—and satisfied. But not Jo. Immediately she began imagining the possibilities. Mom had already been dreaming about Broadway and the world of entertainment she had come to love, but I was still too young for that. So why not get started with some modeling.
Attitude, I’m convinced, is the first step toward success of any kind. Nothing is more important than the ability to see or imagine something that appears unlikely, or even ridiculous, and still hold firmly to a belief that you can make it happen—even in the face of skepticism and ridicule. And that was Mom’s strength. Once the idea of turning me into a child model entered her head, she never let it go, and she had the kind of self-confidence to think that nothing was outside her grasp.
And so after a few baby-carriage compliments, Jo was on the hunt. She poured through newspapers and magazines looking for pictures of child models. As she did, she became even more convinced she could make it happen. First, she asked around and learned the names of all the modeling agencies in Manhattan; then she began taking me on the E-Train from Kew Gardens across the East River for interviews at the studios in Manhattan.