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

  Probably because of Vincent’s reputation as a world-class tennis player, they decided I should play a match against the great Bjorn Borg. I remember they were really enthusiastic when they suggested the idea; they were also certain I would share their enthusiasm.

  But I’d already played tennis with great players—including my own sons and other tour players at a large number of celebrity tournaments. So they were surprised when I said I really wasn’t interested. But I proposed an alternative: I’d love to run a race against a great jockey. At first, they balked. But I persisted, and after a while they started warming up to the idea. Soon they suggested getting Willie Shoemaker, the all-time great jockey whose loss at Belmont Park on Gallant Man had sent me into the real estate profession. Despite that debacle, I’d always loved to watch Willie race.

  I had developed a friendship with Chris McCarron, however, who was fast becoming one of the great jockeys of his generation. I explained to them that Chris was going to be a Hall of Fame Jockey—which he now is—and that he had just won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness in 1987. When they gave me the green light, I called Chris, and he immediately agreed. Finally, I would get the chance to be a real jockey. I only wished my grandfather, Jimmy Vincent, was alive to watch.

  The race was held at Hollywood Park. Everything was all set, but on the big day, Marge Everett, the owner of the track, came running out, saying we couldn’t race. It turned out she was unable to get me insured. The insurance company wouldn’t indemnify the track if something happened to me in the starting gate.

  Most people think horse racing is dangerous because of the speed and the proximity of the horses to one another. But the most perilous moment is actually just as the horses are coming out of the gate. A few years later there was a tragic accident at the Santa Anita track, the track made famous in the film, Seabiscuit, when a jockey, Alvero Pineda, was adjusting his helmet in the stall. His horse reared and threw Pineda upward so he hit his head on the steel top of the starting gate. The blow killed him. Since then the roofs have been changed to rubber. To add to the tragedy, Pineda’s brother, Roberto, also died in a race in Pimlico, Maryland.

  Someone suggested we could still do it if I started with the gate open. We all agreed. The cameramen set it up so it appeared as if the gate was closed. Everyone was ready. They gave me a faster horse because at 165 pounds, I was much heavier than Chris who weighed just 110 pounds. He was a real thoroughbred racehorse who was competing in major races at the time. In fact, Chris had ridden my horse a number of times, and it turned out to be a good thing for me that he had. As we waited for the start, Chris said to me: “Dick, when he gets under the finish line, he has a tendency to bear out, and if you’re not expecting it, he’ll throw you. So when you pass the line, take a good hold of him up here, so he doesn’t turn out on you,” pointing to the place on the reins he wanted me to grab.

  That was just what I needed to hear: my horse had a mind of his own! My son Nels was terrified as his sixty-year-old father prepared to take off for the full, five furloughs on a real thoroughbred horse in a race against one of the top jockeys in the world.

  The bell sounded, and we were off. I’ll never forget those two minutes. My horse ran like the wind. We actually kept even with Chris all the way around the track. When we hit the homestretch, we were neck and neck. For a brief moment I actually thought I might win. But the truly great jockeys, like Chris, know just what to do in a pinch, and Chris pulled it out in a photo finish.

  And just as Chris predicted, the moment we crossed the finish line, my horse began bucking violently to the right. Had I been unaware, he would have thrown me. Instead, I pulled up on the reins just as Chris showed me, and the horse immediately straightened out. It’s a good thing Chris warned me, or I would have been splattered all over Hollywood Park.

  I’ve always admired jockeys. They really are terrific athletes. Many people think it’s all the horse, but that’s not true. If they’re riding Secretariat or, more recently, Big Brown, or my grandfather’s favorite, Man o’ War, then, naturally, the horse is the key. But a great jockey will almost always beat a lesser jockey who’s on a faster horse.

  Several years ago, Tim Conway, who is not only a dear friend but one of the great comic actors, along with Chris McCarron and his wife, Judy, started a charity called the Don MacBeth Fund. It was named after a jockey whom Tim and Chris both admired for the help he had given to other jockeys when they were down on their luck. MacBeth died of cancer in 1987, and the Memorial Fund was immediately begun, helping out injured and disabled jockeys. Unfortunately, accidents happen far too frequently, and often the jockeys don’t have the means to support themselves. There’s a special place in my heart for the courageous athletes who mount a thousand-pound thoroughbred and put themselves on the line day after day.

  * * *

  In 1990, I began my final television show, WIOU. This was the sixth straight decade that I took a recurring role in a TV series. I don’t know if that’s a record, but it must be close. In fact, I nearly had it going for seven. My dear friend Joe Urbanczyk, a cameraman on the popular That ’70s Show, recommended that since it dealt with the 1970s, they might have a spot for me. It turned out they liked the idea and brought me in to play a recurring role as “Murph” a drinking buddy of Red Foreman, played by Kurtwood Smith. Unfortunately, after appearing in just one episode, I had a stroke and that ended that.

  WIOU seemed like a hit in the making. A situation dramedy created by Kathryn Pratt and John Eisendrath that took place in a Chicago television newsroom. There was some real authenticity to it as both Pratt and Eisendrath were themselves former news reporters in Chicago.

  I played the wacky weatherman, Floyd Graham, who had a penchant for creating new-fangled words by combining two words—like snow and rain as “snain.” Floyd’s good-natured malapropisms made him enormously popular with the news audience.

  But Floyd had another aspect of his character that I discovered when I auditioned: he was going blind. Kathryn told me that he would be a very funny character, but that he was going to have this serious story line as well. At first, I was concerned. It was risky, and I remember asking Kathryn if she really thought the character could continue to be funny after he had gone blind. Later she told L.A. Times reporter, Diane Haithman, she had doubts about it herself.

  During her career in a newsroom, Kathryn had actually known a pair of newsmen who provided the inspiration for Floyd—one who lost his hearing and another who was replaced because of his age. Watching both these men struggle with those obstacles left an impression on her, and she very much wanted to convey that struggle to the audience.

  When the script for the episode where Floyd goes blind was completed, they decided to try it out on a test audience—but not any old audience, one that Haithman rightly described as “a usually ignored demographic group: people with disabilities.” In January of 1991, we did a special performance at the TODD/AO Studios for an audience of people who were blind, deaf and even in wheelchairs. It was an interesting night. One thing we all learned was the importance of being open about disabilities. I’d been using expressions like “sight-impaired” and “hearing-impaired,” which, I found out, didn’t go over well with the crowd. One of the audience members told Haithman: “I think there’s not a single one of us in this room who hasn’t denied their disabilities,” but, he continued, that’s not something that should be encouraged. One person said flatly: “I’m blind. I’m not sight-impaired.”

  Throughout the duration of the show, I met quite a number of blind people, and it reinforced for me just how fortunate I’d been in my life. Many of them thought I was doing something wonderful by helping bring disabled people out of the shadows. But it was Kathryn who deserved credit for whatever contribution the character of Floyd Graham made toward greater acceptance of disabilities in the workplace. More important, it’s one thing to play a blind person in a television show, it’s quite another to be faced with the terrible obstacles that confro
nt people with disabilities all day, every day. During my time on WIOU I learned a lot about the courage of so many people who face and overcome their disabilities.

  WIOU received terrific reviews. The New York Post praised the casting of John Shea and Helen Shaver in the leads. They even found some nice words for the aging weatherman: “[B]y casting Dick Van Patten [as Floyd Graham] WIOU has filled that role with perfect, almost perverse, precision.”

  But nothing in life is certain. There have been shows I never thought would last, and they went for years and others, like WIOU, that were well-received by the critics, enjoyed good ratings and seemed to have the kind of story lines and writing that can turn a show into a hit, and yet they get cancelled. WIOU lasted for two seasons, and suddenly we were all shocked to find out it was all over. It’s too bad. It was a great show and should have lasted for years.

  * * *

  Meanwhile my life path once again led me back to my friends in the animal kingdom. In 1989, I had lunch during a guest appearance on the John Davidson Show with the band’s drummer, Joey Herrick, an animal lover deeply involved with rescuing abused and neglected dogs and cats. Joey piqued my interest with an idea for developing a healthier pet food, and so we soon started up our own company, Natural Balance. For the past twenty years, I’ve been traveling across the country hawking healthier meals to a curious clientele of cats and dogs, as well as lions, tigers, cheetahs, polar bears and even snakes.

  Working with Natural Balance has made it possible for me to become more involved with the wonderful people who raise and train seeing-eye dogs. Natural Balance lends support for many groups like Guide Dogs of the Desert and Guide Dogs of America, all wonderful organizations, that provide well-trained dogs for the blind free of cost. These groups, made up of many hundreds of hard-working volunteers, really do make a difference in people’s lives, and I’m so proud and grateful to be a part of it.

  * * *

  Recalling the abrupt cancellation of WIOU, I just commented that nothing in life is certain. But perhaps, that’s not entirely true. There is one thing we can all count on—sooner or later that reliable old pump inside our chest, faithfully working its magic every moment of our lives, will one day grow a little weary. When that happens, the blood stops flowing, and suddenly life is never the same again. That happened to me in January of 2006, when I suffered the first of two strokes.

  I won’t deny that it’s been a struggle. I’ve had to hang up my beloved tennis racket, and pizza with all the toppings is pretty much a thing of the past. It’s true we don’t realize just how much the small pleasures mean until they’re gone.

  A second stroke followed in July of 2007. Afterwards, the doctors worried that medication alone was insufficient—the valve had to come out. And, of course, that meant a new one had to go in. Those who face this surgery will appreciate my skepticism when Dr. Greg Kay, my dear friend, who after retiring from medicine joined us at Natural Balance, explained that they were going to replace my old valve with a new one—and it would come from a pig!

  My family insisted, and in September of 2008, I had the surgery. Dr. Alfredo Trento, the brilliant Director of Cardiothoracic Surgery at Cedars Sinai Hospital, saved my life. While my health’s not perfect, I’m immensely grateful for the miracles performed by so many dedicated people—nurses, doctors and volunteers—for me and millions like me. Getting through this ordeal has meant leaning heavily for support on those I love, having confidence in my doctors and faith that God has a plan. In the end, they all came through!

  49

  EIGHTY IS NOT ENOUGH

  Each person writes his own life-script. No one formula fits all. If we look for a single path, a perfect model on how to respond to the joys and adversities that confront us, we’ll always be disappointed. In the end, we all have to find our own way; the way that works best for us. I’ve never dwelled on the paths not taken. It’s a waste of time and energy. It’s today and tomorrow, not yesterday, that matters most.

  Life, of course, is complicated. But I think that’s a blessing. It reflects the fact that we are all so very different. It’s true in acting, just as in life. My friend Ralph Nelson, whom I worked with in The Wind Is Ninety and I Remember Mama, once told me a great story that’s right on point. After directing the film Requiem for a Heavyweight, Ralph said to me: “Dickie, it’s the funniest thing. I was doing a scene with Jackie Gleason, Anthony Quinn and Mickey Rooney. Now before the scene, Anthony Quinn said to me, ‘I have to get in the mood before I do this.’ So he went off by himself to take some time alone and think about the character and the scene. And while Quinn was getting in the mood, Gleason was practicing his golf swing, and Mickey was on the phone with his bookie. Then as soon as Quinn said, ‘All right, I’m ready,’ we started shooting. And the amazing thing is that all three were terrific.”

  What worked for Gleason or Rooney didn’t work for Quinn—and vice versa. No one was right or wrong. It simply reflected different approaches to acting, which in the end produced good performances all around.

  After eighty years, I’ve come to believe that life is similar. I’ve been caught up—perhaps too much—in the debates about child acting. My sister Joyce and I have very different attitudes about growing up as actors. It would be foolish to believe there are no problems with such a childhood. Clearly, behind the scenes of Eight Is Enough there were terrible difficulties, some tragic, that almost certainly were, to some degree, rooted in the pressures arising from those children being thrust into celebrity status.

  On the other hand, I recently saw an interview with Danny Bonaduce from The Partridge Family talking about his own struggle with drug addiction. He was asked whether his being a child actor was at the heart of his problem. Danny responded passionately: “That’s a lot of baloney. I was in a rehab with ninety other people, and none of them were child actors.”

  Danny’s response reflects the fact that people in all walks of life are confronted with the same difficulties. The question is not how those difficulties arise, but how we respond to them when they come. More important, in my view, than whether we were child actors, is whether we have the right people around for that moral support and guidance, so indispensable for the shaping and developing of good character. That’s why having a sound family structure—one we can lean on when the challenges of life come knocking—is so essential. If that family structure is absent, we’re going to have problems whether we’re onstage or not.

  This family framework of moral guidance was at the heart of both I Remember Mama and Eight Is Enough. For precisely that reason, each show struck a chord with millions of Americans. In the case of Eight Is Enough, I believe this came at an opportune moment when traditional institutions had been under attack, and Americans were hungry for a restoration of a healthy family life. Of course, we can never fully live up to the ideals of these fictional characters, but the very fact that we are imperfect is all the more reason to have something better than ourselves standing as a model. The ideal of Tom Bradford was clearly more than I could match, but he’s most certainly an ideal to which I can aspire.

  While I’ve lived the first eighty years with a great appreciation of life, still there are times when I’m saddened by the terrible losses that are inevitable when you hang around so long. It troubles me greatly to look through the old playbills from my childhood on Broadway and realize that pretty much all the people in all those great productions are gone—all the marvelous directors, Max Reinhardt, Joshua Logan, Elia Kazan, Guthrie McClintock, and George S. Kaufman, as well as the great actors, Alfred Lunt, Lynn Fontanne, Fredric March, Henry Fonda, Tallulah Bankhead, Melvyn Douglas, Ethel Barrymore and so many more. They were adults then, but they were as much a part of my childhood as the kids around the neighborhood, and when I reminisce about the past, those are the people I think about, next only to my own family.

  But I certainly don’t dwell on it all. It’s not in my nature to be morose. While many are gone, there are so many more to meet. I’m a natural o
ptimist. I still look forward to another day’s work on a set; watching a great horse turn it on down the homestretch; seeing a new magician dazzle us at the Magic Castle; hearing about the exploits of my children and grandchildren; and, above all, a quiet dinner with my wife, Pat. I’ve spoken a great deal about my Mom, partly because I loved her so and partly because she was so instrumental in my success. But my life’s happiness, I owe entirely to Pat Poole Van Patten, who has been there by my side every day for fifty-five years.

  Eighty is not enough! Not by a long shot. Life is so rich and interesting, and I’ll need another eighty before I’m ready to call it quits. But, of course, if I got my wish, I’d want even more. That’s why in the end, we have to learn to be satisfied with what we’ve had. In my case, that’s been a truly wonderful life, a loving family and the great fortune of entertaining millions of people. As I close, I’m reminded again of my parents at the Ziegfeld in 1928, stagestruck by the marvelous and groundbreaking story, song and dance of Edna Ferber’s Showboat. I was just on the way in that night, but now I’m a little like that timeless Mississippi—an old comic who just keeps rollin’ along. And with a little luck, I might even be around to take a few more bows. I hope so!

  EPILOGUE:

  A SPECIAL TRIBUTE TO

  DICK VAN PATTEN

  Throughout my life, I’ve marveled at the outpouring of love and affection from millions of people for my remarkable uncle, Dick Van Patten. What those people don’t know, however, is that Dick’s warm, caring and joyful public persona also reflects the private man. In fact, the real Dick Van Patten is even better!