My Days Page 15

  I enjoyed Sandra’s company very much. We became fast friends, and in the crazy and unpredictable world that show business is, she unexpectedly played an important role as another piece of the puzzle—another vital stepping-stone—in making my childhood dream come true by inviting me to join her for dinner one evening. When I arrived for dinner, I learned that Sandra and I would be joined by another one of her friends, Millie Gussie, who was a casting director. We had a wonderful evening together, and as the night wore on, we began talking about our upcoming projects. Sandra was looking forward to the next season of Bewitched; Millie had so many irons in the fire, my head was swimming; and I, embarrassingly, had nothing to share.

  “Well,” Millie said slowly in response to my shrug over having nothing planned, “I would like you to come by my office. I’m looking to cast a role that I think you may be perfect for.”

  Chapter 13

  My “Lovely” Big Break

  The role Millie was looking to fill was that of an all-American-type 1950s mother and housewife for a pilot that had been written and was being produced and directed by a man by the name of Garry Marshall. Garry, I would quickly learn, had been a joke writer for various comedians, including Joey Bishop and Phil Foster. He had also been a writer for The Jack Paar Tonight Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Joey Bishop Show, The Danny Thomas Show and The Lucy Show.

  A few years earlier, he had created and produced a sitcom for NBC called Hey, Landlord, which starred Will Hutchins, who was best known for the role of lawyer Tom Brewster in the popular Warner Bros. Western television series Sugarfoot, which aired on ABC from 1957 to 1961. In Hey, Landlord, Hutchins played a man who inherited from his uncle an apartment building filled with colorful tenants, and while the show lasted only for one season, it set Garry up for what would be his first major success: the ABC television series The Odd Couple, which starred Tony Randall and Jack Klugman and was adapted from Neil Simon’s play by the same name. As a 1968 feature film, The Odd Couple had been a box office hit for Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau.

  Enjoying the success of The Odd Couple, Garry knew the iron was hot to strike with another show, and with the turbulent 1960s behind us and the United States still embroiled in the very contentious Vietnam War, he reasoned Americans were primed for a show that would take them back to the simpler times of the 1950s. The new show he created, which Millie was casting the mother for, was called New Family in Town. Garry was green-lighted to do a pilot of the show, with its idealized vision of life during the Eisenhower administration, for Paramount. Millie and Garry obviously thought I had the wholesome maternal look they were searching for, and I was cast in the role of Marion, the mother of a Midwestern family known as the Cunninghams.

  After finishing my work in Airport, I was still in desperate need of work and continued to get small roles in various television series until Garry was finally ready to shoot the pilot for New Family in Town. Along with me, the cast included Harold Gould, in the role of my husband, Howard; Ron Howard and Ric Carrott as my sons, Richie and Chuck; Susan Neher as my daughter, Joanie; and Anson Williams as Richie’s best friend, “Potsie.”

  I knew of Gould’s work, which paralleled mine: extensive work in theater and a string of small roles in films and television shows. I was also well aware of Ron, who had been a fixture on television since he was five years old and had played the part of the little boy with the lisp in the 1962 film version of The Music Man and, of course, Opie Taylor in the hit CBS sitcom The Andy Griffith Show. As for the other cast members, Ric and Susan had done very little professional acting work, and Anson’s only claims to fame were appearing in theatrical productions at Burbank High School, where he had also been the captain of the track team, and appeared in a few commercials including one for McDonald’s.

  By this time in my career, I had appeared in enough pilots that had never seen the light of day to know better than to get my hopes up. To me, Marion Cunningham was just another role, although I believe I may have, for a fleeting moment, let myself revel in the idea that Garry was right, that Americans were ready for a little soda-shop-sweet nostalgia, that the show would be picked up and would become a hit, that my financial woes would be forgotten, and that my dream of becoming a star would finally become a reality.

  If, in fact, I did allow myself that foolish pleasure, it was short lived. Paramount passed on New Family in Town, and as was done in those days, the pilot was recycled with a new title, “Love and the Television Set” (later retitled “Love and the Happy Days” for syndication), for the television series Love, American Style. Hearing that a pilot was turned down is always disappointing, but shooting a pilot is also something every actor (perhaps as a defense mechanism to ward off depression) goes into knowing that the odds are against it getting picked up. And so it was back to the grind of finding television work, which, for the first time in a long time, began to get less and less frequent.

  I’m not quite sure as to why I hit a dry period of television work, but for whatever reason, I had to find something—anything—and fast. Whenever actors hit a period like that, they think back on everyone they have ever worked with or for and then attempt to reach out to them. It was no different for me, and as I went through my contacts, I thought of a conversation I had had with some of my fellow passengers while doing Airport. We were having the typical type of conversation that actors have about the agents, casting people, producers and directors we have worked for, and as we chatted away, it came up that I had been involved with the Old Globe Theatre and knew Craig Noel. There we were, sitting on this fake airplane between scenes, and all these actors were contorting themselves and bending over their seats to hear what I was saying.

  “Oh my! You know Craig Noel,” I remember one of them saying in disbelief.

  “I do,” I replied. “And he told me anytime I wanted to do a play, I should just let him know.”

  The other actors seemed to be in a state of shock.

  “He really said that to you?” I recall one of them asking me.

  Well, he did say that to me, and while I hadn’t given that offer much, if any, thought in quite some time, with television work now scarce, I began thinking, Boy! I’ve got to take advantage of that contact.

  I began doing some research on what the Old Globe Theatre had on its slate, saw that they were going to be doing Tennessee Williams’s Summer and Smoke, and called Craig and told him that I was interested in taking him up on what I hoped was still a standing offer, and that I would like to return to my old stomping grounds in San Diego and do the role of Alma Winemiller.

  There was a short pause and more than a bit of surprise and hesitation in his voice as he said something like, “Huh! What? Oh! Alma, huh? Well, ah, yeah. I mean, sure, all right. Alma? Really? Well, yeah, I guess. Okay. Uh-huh.”

  Anyone else may have been a bit put off by his stammering, but I had two things on my mind that made me impervious to his lack of enthusiasm over my return to the boards of my old haunt: one, that he had given me a standing offer to perform at the Old Globe and, two, that I was taking him up on it because I needed a job! So I glossed over Craig’s surprising reaction, and then we arranged for a meeting to discuss further my taking the role of Alma. It was a good thing I didn’t know then what ensued right after we hung up.

  He announced to everyone in the office—all of whom remembered me—that he had just spoken to Marion Ross and she was interested in the role of Alma. According to the reports I received much later, everyone in the office looked at him in stunned silence and then at each other with blank stares.

  Yes, I was aware that I was a bit on the old side for the role. Okay, I’ll come out and admit it: I defiantly conjured up more of the image of the motherly Marion Cunningham than I did of the high-strung unmarried minister’s daughter, who, by the play’s end, had emerged from being a girl “suffocated in smoke from something on fire inside her” and was pleading for a steamy romance with the young doctor who lived next door, but, hey, I needed a blo
ody job!

  After my meeting with Craig, we decided that under his direction, we could make it work. He showed me how he wanted the part to be played and cast me as Alma. I made arrangements for where I would stay in San Diego, and while I did at times feel like I wasn’t really comfortable doing the part, mostly because I had been away from the stage for so long, I was glad to have the work. It also made me feel good to know that, no matter how far away I would ever roam, if I returned like a prodigal daughter after things went wrong, Craig would always be there to catch me and welcome me home.

  And then, one day, in my dressing room at the Old Globe Theatre, as I was preparing for a performance, it happened—the break I had been dreaming of and working toward for over thirty years.

  I don’t really remember if there was just one or two people present or if the entire office had crammed into my dressing room to break the news they had just read in the paper that the pilot I had done for Garry Marshall, the one that had aired as a Love, American Style episode, had been picked up by ABC. Here’s what I do remember: I turned around in my chair and screamed, “What! Please, get me that paper!”

  How I managed to concentrate on doing the show that night, I’ll never know. And if how I did that was a blur, things got even blurrier over the following days, when my agent informed me that they did, in fact, plan on staying with me for the role of Marion.

  “Now we have just got to get you out of that play,” said my agent.

  My manager disagreed. “No, stay in the play! There’s no reason you can’t do both. It’s a half-hour flight between Los Angeles and San Diego. You can fly up to L.A., get over to the studio, say, ‘Oh, Richie, you’re not eating, dear,’ and then return to San Diego and do the play.”

  Of course, that was an oversimplification, and in reality, it would never really work out logistically. And so, Craig, who was more than thrilled for me, released me from my contract, and back I went to where my Hollywood career had started all those years ago—the Paramount lot.

  Wow, I thought as I said good-bye to everyone at the Old Globe and headed back up to Los Angeles. How lucky I am to have taken that nonspeaking role in Airport, which led to meeting Sandra, who introduced me to Millie, who thought I’d be a good fit for Marion.

  I just constantly shook my head in amazement as the freeway signs kept indicating that L.A. was getting closer and closer. Maybe all that dreaming, hard work and prayers are about to pay off, I thought. Maybe this will really prove to be the big break I have craved for so many years. Maybe my time has finely come to leave being a nobody behind for good, to really do something with my life, and to never again have to worry about how I am going to pay the bills from month to month.

  As I neared L.A., I could see the Hollywood sign on Mount Lee out in the distance.

  “Wouldn’t that be just so lovely?” I kept repeating over and over as I headed home to Encino. “So very lovely.”

  Chapter 14

  My Dream Becomes a Happy Reality

  In much the same way that all the pieces of the puzzle came together for me to be selected for the role of Marion Cunningham, various elements had magically merged and made the powers that be at ABC decide to pick up Garry’s pilot.

  That all started in 1972, when, before he would become world renowned for the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises, a young filmmaker just a few years out of the University of Southern California named George Lucas decided to produce a screenplay he had written about his teenage years growing up in Modesto, California, in the early 1960s called American Graffiti.

  As Lucas began to put together the cast for his film, which would ultimately include the then unknown Richard Dreyfuss, Harrison Ford, Mackenzie Phillips, Cindy Williams and Suzanne Somers, he remembered seeing the Love, American Style episode about a 1950s family. Lucas did a little digging, found out that it had originally been a Garry Marshall pilot, called Garry’s office, and asked if he could view it. That arrangement was made, and Lucas was so impressed with Ron Howard in the role of Richie Cunningham that he cast him to play the recent high school graduate Steve Bolander in American Graffiti.

  Released in August of 1973, American Graffiti became a huge blockbuster hit—one of the top grossing films of that year—and then went on to receive five Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture. In the wake of American Graffiti’s success, coupled with the success of the musical Grease, which had opened on Broadway that summer, a wave of 1950s and ’60s nostalgia swept America, and ABC, which had previously snubbed Garry’s belief that the nation was ready for a good healthy dose of simpler times, was now desperate to get a nostalgia show slated for January of 1974. The call went out to Garry, a meeting was hastily arranged to view the pilot again, and the green light was given to bring back the Cunningham family in a show they retitled Happy Days.

  As soon as Garry knew it was all a “go,” I was contacted, as were Harold Gould and Ron Howard. Ron was available and interested; Harold was interested but not available. Committed to doing a play in Europe, he had to pass on reprising his role of Howard Cunningham, which meant Garry had to find a new actor to take on the role of the family’s patriarch.

  In what I thought was an ironic bit of fate, Harold’s loss of the role in Happy Days was the second time in less than a decade he had appeared as a father in a show’s pilot, only to have the show recast after being picked up. In 1965 he had originated the role of Lou Thomas, the Brewster, New York restaurateur father of the actress Ann Marie, who was played by Marlo Thomas, in the pilot for That Girl. Alas, when the show received the green light from ABC and was slated for the fall of 1966, the producers recast the father’s role with Lew Parker.

  I had felt bad that Harold missed out on getting the part on Happy Days, but in the ensuing years, fate would once again provide yet another twist when he was cast to play Martin Morgenstern, the father of Rhoda Morgenstern, played by Valerie Harper, on Rhoda, a role that earned him an Emmy Award nomination. Harold, who really chalked up a wonderful career, having done over three hundred television shows; twenty feature films, including The Sting, with Robert Redford and Paul Newman, which won Best Picture; and hundreds of stage plays, continued to work into his eighties, gaining renown as Miles Webber, the suitor of Rose Nylund, played by Betty White, on the hugely popular NBC series The Golden Girls.

  Faced with recasting Howard, Garry decided to offer the role to Tom Bosley. Tom had achieved great accolades, which even included a Tony Award, in the late 1950s and early 1960s for his role as former New York mayor Fiorello H. La Guardia in the long-running Broadway musical Fiorello! He then went on to appear in about a dozen feature films and numerous television shows and specials, including the TV film Arsenic & Old Lace, which aired on the anthology series Hallmark Hall of Fame; Car 54, Where Are You?; Bonanza; Bewitched; Get Smart; The Streets of San Francisco; The Virginian and many others.

  While Harold Gould had been reserved and very much the gentleman, I found Tom to be difficult to work with. From our very first meeting and table read, he had a lot of opinions and was forceful with Garry and the writers that Howard Cunningham would be a dominant figure in every episode. Okay, I remember thinking. He’s a pushy little fellow, huh. Well, it will be interesting to see how far they let him go and how long they will put up with his input and demands.

  As for me, I was just thrilled to be a part of it all, even though Marion’s role in the beginning was small and unimportant. My lines were usually not much more than an occasional “Oh, Howard,” “Oh, Richie,” “Dinner is almost ready,” or “What time will you be home?”

  Along with Ron, who was playing my son Richie, as he had in the pilot, the producers brought Anson Williams back to play Potsie Weber. To round out the new cast, they hired a darling young girl named Erin Moran to replace Susan Neher in the role of my daughter, Joanie. Erin’s parents were free-spirited types who had been pushing her into an acting career since she was very young. By the time she was six years old, she had done some commercial wor
k and had been cast in the CBS series Daktari, an adventure show that was based on the 1965 film Clarence, the Cross-Eyed Lion. On Daktari she played an orphan who was taken in by the veterinarian and conservationist Dr. Marsh Tracy, who was played by Marshall Thompson, at his Africa-based Wameru Study Center for Animal Behavior. In 1968 she appeared in the feature film How Sweet It Is!, with Debbie Reynolds, and by the early years of the 1970s, she was getting regular work on shows like The Don Rickles Show, The Courtship of Eddie’s Father, My Three Sons and Family Affair.

  The producers also brought in two New York actors, Donny Most and Henry Winkler, to play my son Richie’s friends Ralph Malph and Arthur “Fonzie” Fonzarelli. Donny was a quick-witted redhead who was very sweet but had very little professional experience. Henry was a very quiet fellow who always wore a Windbreaker and at first struck me as being moody and unfriendly. He had done some commercial and theater work before coming to Los Angeles, where he had landed small roles in episodes of The Mary Tyler Moore Show and The Bob Newhart Show. I was also told he had just completed shooting a feature film called The Lords of Flatbush, which had yet to be released. In the film he played a 1950s “greaser” type, which was what put him on the radar screen for the producers of Happy Days.