Eighty Is Not Enough: One Actor's Journey Through American Entertainment Read online

  Quickly the Jacksons became like family. The kids played sports together and hung out all the time. Every day I could hear them practicing their music in the garage. Michael became especially attached to Pat. He came by every day to see the kids. If the kids weren’t home yet, he was so nice that he would always agree to help out if Pat was working hard in the house.

  Years later, Michael and Pat just missed running into each other in Las Vegas, and Michael thoughtfully left a note for Pat who arrived after he left. In it, he remembered the time he spent with her on Queens Road. Pat still has the note: “Mrs. Van Patten: It’s Michael here. I truly love you and miss you. Please say hello to the kids. I miss cleaning your house.”

  As our families grew close, I could see that the Jacksons were well-behaved, polite and fun-loving kids. Pat and I believed they were a fine family, although later revelations by some of the children paint a somewhat different picture.

  I remember one time when I did something really stupid. Deciding it was time for all the boys to learn a little something about the great outdoors, I piled the Van Patten and Jackson broods into the station wagon for a camping trip. Now Hollywood may not seem like a rural place to most people, but compared to New York City it’s like living in the Australian outback. In fact, there are a series of mountain ranges that surround Los Angeles—the famous Hollywood sign is on one of these, and there are many more.

  Like my father, I believed in living healthy, which for him meant going to the park in the middle of the winter and shoveling the snow off the handball court and then playing until your body temperature rose to the point that you’d be sweating even though it was below zero. That ruggedness was something I admired and wanted to instill in my own kids.

  We drove way up to the top of the mountain in Griffith Park where we found an old campsite. I helped pitch a couple of tents when suddenly I remembered that I had an important appointment that evening. I made the command decision that the boys would stay, and I would pick them up in the morning. And so, just as it was getting dark, I left a crew of three Van Pattens from New York City and several Jacksons from Gary, Indiana, all alone to fend for themselves way up in the mountain lion–coyote-infested hills of Griffith Park. To make it worse, later that night a tremendous thunderstorm hit the region which, as I later learned, had its epicenter pretty much right over Camp Van-Jackson!

  When I came back the next day, I was lucky they were all alive. Shivering, rain-soaked and scared to death, they vowed never to go camping again. I felt terrible.

  After the extraction, the Jackson parents still let their kids play with mine—although I’m sure they would have been a little more reticent had Dick Van Patten proposed any more great ideas about toughening-up the kids.

  All of our kids were athletic, and they played a good deal of touch football on the street in the cul-de-sac on Queens Road. One day, Nels recalls, they were in the middle of a game when suddenly Michael came running out of his house, followed by Marlon and Jermaine, with a transistor radio in his hands screaming at all the kids: “We’re on the radio! We’re on the radio! They’re playing our song on the radio!” They all stopped and gathered around the little transistor and then began dancing wildly on the corner of Hollywood Boulevard and Queens Road as everyone listened to the Jackson’s first chart record—“I Want You Back.”

  It was the beginning of one of the most extraordinary success stories in the history of popular music. Within months, the Jacksons released, “ABC” which shot to Number 1 on the charts, and soon our friends and neighbors from Queens Road were off to super-stardom, with Michael and Janet eventually rising into the stratosphere of American music and popular culture.

  Later, we saw a cloud descend over Michael’s life. In truth, I have no insight or knowledge about it—nor do my children or wife. Then, just when it seemed he was turning a new page with hopeful plans for a massive international tour, the bombshell came—Michael was dead. Like everyone, Pat and I were stunned—and deeply saddened. We have only wonderful memories of a precocious, fun-loving, enormously talented and endearing child who carried his own unique innocence and charm into our home on Queens Road. He came from what to us was a wonderful family, and I have only the fondest memories of our time as neighbors.

  Through the years, Nels has remained friendly with Jermaine, and on occasion they still get together and reminisce about the days on Queens Road when our families, each looking for a start—in my case a new start—came together quite fortuitously and got to know each other before the good and bad of celebrity status made those kinds of relationships more difficult to sustain. Looking back, we were blessed to have had the Jackson family as our neighbors and our friends at that precarious moment in our lives. And with millions of others we will miss the enchanting young boy whose enormous charm and talent was so evident to all of us from the very beginning—a talent that despite his often troubled life would shine brighter than we could have ever imagined.

  38

  THE PHONES ARE RINGING AGAIN

  The Los Angeles run of Next was a success. Fortunately I received good reviews as Jimmy Coco’s replacement and was happy to be back with a significant part in a successful production. Things began to take off when Shirley Booth, whom Joyce had worked with in Tomorrow the World, enjoyed the show and recommended it to a talent scout from MGM. MGM was about to produce a television series with Herschel Bernardi, titled Arnie.

  I auditioned and got a supporting part in the show. At that point we decided to extend our stay in Los Angeles, possibly even making it permanent. I played Arnie’s neighbor and best friend and thoroughly enjoyed my work with Herschel. Although canceled after two seasons, it was a great show and brought me some visibility in Hollywood. Soon the phones were ringing for more parts, guest appearances in television series, and even some roles in movies. Over the next six years, between Arnie and the beginning of Eight Is Enough, I had a tremendous run of good luck. Suddenly the real estate days were gone, and I was back to entertainment full time. As I said, I was happy in New York, but entertainment is what I love, and I could not have been more thrilled at how things were turning out.

  The initial breaks were in television. I made an appearance with my old friend Larry Hagman on I Dream of Jeannie. I also did guest spots on That Girl, The Governor and J.J., Making It, Sanford and Son, The Don Rickles Show, The Paul Lynde Show, Hec Ramsey, The Doris Day Show, McMillan and Wife, Cannon, Love American Style, Banacek, Kolchak the Night Stalker, S.W.A.T., Adam 12, The Six Million Dollar Man, The Rookies, Medical Center, Emergency, Barnaby Jones, What’s Happening, The Streets of San Francisco, Maude, Ellery Queen, Wonder Woman and many more.

  One of my most enjoyable guest spots was on a show that was just starting to break away from the pack, headed for an eleven-year run that would make it an icon in American television history—Happy Days. My first role was in the third season, just around the time the Fonz was coming into his own. Fonzie, played by Henry Winkler, had originally been a minor character in the series, intended as a kind of dumb-guy foil for Ron Howard’s character, Richie Cunningham. But as the show progressed, it became clear that Winkler, a Yale Drama School graduate, was accomplishing something really unique, transforming “the Fonz” into a national sensation. I was delighted when I got the call for a guest spot, but even more excited when I read the script and saw that I would be working in a scene directly with Henry.

  The episode was called Fonzie the Salesman. The premise was that Herb, the owner of the garage where Fonzie worked as a mechanic, decided to sell the garage, and the new owner, Bertly Van Alden, played marvelously by Richard Stahl, was a super-rich eccentric who laid down a bunch of new regulations that Fonzie couldn’t accept—including a requirement that Fonz get a haircut. So Fonzie decided to buy his own garage. That’s where I came in as Bert Hunsberger, the loan officer at the bank, a Lodge friend of Richie’s father, Howard. At Howard’s invitation I met the Fonz at the Cunningham home to discuss a possible loan.

  The
writers got it perfect.

  Hunsberger: Let’s see. What kind of a loan are you applying for?

  The Fonz: Money.

  Hunsberger: Yes, Well I know that.

  The Fonz: Then Why’d ya ask?

  Hunsberger: Do you have collateral?

  The Fonz: No, man. I ain’t been sick a day in my life.

  And so it went on…until Fonzie declared that he’d “had enough of this nerd,” and stormed out.

  Happy Days, as they announced at the beginning of each show, was filmed before a live audience, and I remember that scene being a big hit. Two years later, they called again, this time for a two-part episode called The Graduation, which aired in 1977.

  In addition to guest spots, I was landing recurring roles in a variety of series. After Arnie, I took a role opposite Don Adams in a show called The Partners, where I played Sergeant Higgenbottom. Next, I worked for a few seasons on The New Dick Van Dyke Show, an attempt to revive the old show from the 1960s with Mary Tyler Moore. It was also the first time I met the show’s creator, Carl Reiner, and we developed a lifelong friendship. Carl, in my opinion, is one of the most intelligent and talented writers in television.

  The success I was enjoying in my comeback in the early years of the 1970s also included some interesting opportunities in the movies. A call came for a short role in a big-budget sci-fi thriller with Charlton Heston and Edward G. Robinson titled Soylent Green. I had already come to know Charlton from playing tennis with him at Merv Griffin’s house. But when I took the part, the one who really interested me was Eddie Robinson. I grew up watching Eddie in all those great gangster films like Little Caesar and my favorite, A Slight Case of Murder, a comic spoof on his gangster image, which, in my opinion, should have won him the Academy Award in 1938.

  I was in awe of Robinson. When I arrived on the set, I was delighted when he motioned for me to come over and talk with him. He was quite deaf at the time, wearing a well-concealed hearing aid, and as I sat with him I had to speak loudly. “I hear you worked with the Lunts,” he said. “I started with them too, you know.” Actually, I had no idea, but found out that he had worked in five different plays with Alfred and Lynn, including an acclaimed adaptation of Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov in 1927. I told him I wasn’t aware of that, and, like so many others, he responded, “Oh yes, they were the very best.” I, of course, agreed.

  Moments later, we took positions for our scene together. Soylent Green was a futuristic story in which the world had been devastated by global warming. Although much of it is a bit dated, Soylent’s premise is still relevant today. The film takes place in the year 2022. The people are barely surviving, and a police state has been imposed to maintain order. Because of the devastation, food is rationed. But it was not ordinary food. Rather it came in the form of a large pill heralded by the police state as containing all the nutrients necessary for survival. The food was called “soylent green.”

  Robinson played an aging New York City policeman, Sol Roth, who pestered his young partner, Robert Thorne, played by Charlton Heston, with memories of a world before the global catastrophe. Roth assists Thorne with his investigation of the murder of one of the heads of the company that manufactures “soylent green.” He discovers that “soylent green” is actually made from human remains. Upon learning this, Roth loses his desire to continue living and goes to a state-run euthanasia clinic to die. Prior to death, he is allowed twenty minutes to watch beautiful bucolic images of the world as it existed before the warming.

  It was my job to lead Roth to the room where he would die. At the time of the filming, I was unaware that Eddie Robinson, who did appear very frail, was actually in the end-stage of terminal cancer. In fact, he would die ten days after shooting stopped. In the movie I was supposed to say, “Come with me, Mr. Roth.” And then I would walk him arm-in-arm to the room where he would die. But, I was in such awe of him that I completely messed up the line. Instead, I said: “Come with me, Mr. Robinson.” The director, Richard Fleischer, yelled “cut,” and we did it again. Later I thought how strange it was that I had made that particular mistake at that moment in time, in effect beckoning Edward G. Robinson to his death, right before he was actually going to die.

  That death scene has since become kind of a sci-fi cult classic. Robinson’s wife, Jane, who had been coming to the set every day to look after him, declined to come on the day we filmed his death scene. She, of course, knew he was dying and seeing him acting out his own death was more than she could bear. I later learned that Charlton Heston was also aware that Robinson was dying. In that death scene, Heston’s character, Detective Robert Thorne, showed up outside the room where Robinson was lying in the bed looking for the last time at a video of the past when the earth was still beautiful. I told Thorne that he couldn’t speak with the dying Roth, and we ended up in a fight. Naturally, Thorne won, forcing me to allow him to speak with his partner for the final time through a telephone hookup.

  I stood right next to Charlton Heston throughout the scene. In fact, it was just the three of us on camera—Heston, Robinson and myself. As I listened to Heston speaking, I was immediately aware of a deep emotional quality in his acting. I have always thought that Charlton was a wonderful actor, but standing next to him at that moment, watching tears roll down his face, I was, myself, moved by the very real intensity of his performance. Thorne learns that his old, dying friend was right about his memories of a better world in the past. It was easily the best scene in the movie.

  But it turned out that Charlton wasn’t just performing. As director Richard Fleischer later said of Heston’s performance in the scene, “Those were real tears.” Fleischer also knew that Robinson was dying.

  As I mentioned, Charlton was a regular on the tennis courts. Like me, he had a son who was moving up the junior tennis rankings in California. I remember one day in Arcadia Park, I was watching my son Vincent in a junior tournament, and Charlton’s son was also playing. Suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Charlton about thirty feet away from the courts, standing behind a tree. I thought that said a lot about the kind of man he was. Charlton was a giant star. He wanted to watch his son, but he didn’t want to distract attention from him and the other players by sitting in the stands. So he spent the whole time watching his boy play from behind a tree.

  A year later I worked a small part in another of these futuristic films of the early seventies, Westworld. Written and directed by Michael Crichton, Westworld, which starred Yul Brynner, James Brolin and Richard Benjamin, dealt with a kind of virtual reality vacation resort where guests interacted in fictional worlds based on medieval times and the old Wild West. I played one of the guests in West World. Everything was going fine until the robots started thinking for themselves and began killing the guests.

  Today we are more accustomed to the idea of robots taking on human characteristics, a theme used effectively in such hits as the Matrix, the Terminator and A.I. But in 1973, the concept was more striking and Westworld, with Brynner as a ruthless robot gunslinger hunting down Richard Benjamin and James Brolin, was an unnerving film.

  I played a kind of bumbling guest pretending to be a town sheriff. There was one scene where I was tough-talking to a crowd of townspeople about rounding up a posse. When I finished, I turned to open the door to the Sheriff’s Office and deliberately let the door hit me in the head for some comic relief. The director, Michael Crichton, thought my improvisation was over the top and asked me to do it again without the stumbling. I, of course, agreed, and we redid the shot.

  Over the many years I’ve learned to take direction well. I always assume that the director has a better overview of the picture and knows what’s best. This time, however, I was surprised when I saw the final version in the theater, and there I was banging my head into the door. Another sign of a good director is that he can go back in the cutting room, look at the daily rushes of film, and change his mind about what to use. I’m sure that’s what Michael did.

  39


  MEL

  Mel Brooks is one of my very closest friends. About two years ago, I suffered the first of two strokes. I was in my home in Sherman Oaks when it happened. Suddenly I became dizzy and unstable, and a moment later I had fallen into the sofa. I was alone in the house, and a thousand thoughts raced through my head. I was scared to death. I didn’t know what was happening, but I sure knew it wasn’t good. I managed to fumble my way to the cell phone on the kitchen table. When I got hold of it, I did what everyone does when they’re having a stroke—I called a comedian. In this case, my friend Mel Brooks.

  Mel answered. I said, “I’ve got a problem.” He said, “What’s the matter?” I told him, “I think I’m having a stroke. My whole arm is tingling, and now it’s going to my leg.” He practically took my ear off as he screamed at me: “Get to an Emergency Room! Call the Emergency Room!”

  People who know this story always ask, “Why on earth would you call Mel Brooks when you’re having a stroke?” Looking back it does seem a little ridiculous. I guess I should’ve called a doctor, the police, a family member. Instead, I called a comic—maybe I was just looking for one last laugh on the way out.

  But Mel is a really smart guy. He’s especially street smart—and street-smart guys are fast thinkers. If I was in a tough spot, like the time I was robbed at gunpoint, I’d want to be with Mel. He’s such a quick thinker he’d somehow get us out of the jam. Another close friend of mine is Carl Reiner, who is also good friends with Mel. As I’ve mentioned, Carl is extremely intelligent, but in a more cerebral way. If I was on one of those quiz programs, the ones where you’re allowed to call up somebody—a “lifeline”—when you don’t know the answer, I’d call Carl. But if I have another stroke—and if I decide to call a comic again—it’ll be Mel.