My Days Page 24
In 2008 Ellen married Scott Kreamer, who is also a talented television writer and producer and has done work on numerous animated and children’s programs. Ellen and Scott have also given me two more beautiful grandchildren, Roxane Marion, who was born in 2010, and her little brother, Hap Henry, who is just a year younger.
I guess, like any parent, I could ramble on and on about how I raised my kids and where I feel I did good or failed in my parenting style. But, I think, as with my Happy Days family, it would be far more interesting to turn it over to David and let him go directly to the source: the products of my parenting style.
“As a mother, she may not have done everything perfect and right like Mrs. C, but she did a whole lot more right than she did wrong, and I’m forever grateful to her for that.”
—Jim Meskimen
David Laurell (DL): You know that your mom was very hesitant about writing this book, and, frankly, had it not been for your pushing her to do it, she never would have done it. Now that she has not only been persuaded but has actually done it, what are your feelings about her candid honesty, especially in regard to what she has shared about your father?
Jim Meskimen (JM): I knew if she ever did a book, she would be very honest and open about who she is and what she has gone through in her life. That is just her. I have no problem in having her tell her story, because I believe it is one that will help people who may be in a similar situation. I also think that by her telling the story of her relationship with my father, readers will learn that one of my mother’s greatest qualities is that she has always been a helper. She tried to help my father, just like when she was a young girl, she tried to help her mother raise a child who was physically handicapped. She also helped her brother, Gordon, directly in many ways, right up until his death in 1995. She saw herself as a helper. I have seen her go out of her way to help many people over the years.
Maybe she didn’t have all the perfect tools for being married to an alcoholic. But it was different in those days. There was not the kind of understanding and help and support like there is today. As for my dad, the fact is he was an alcoholic, and trying to help an alcoholic is a very tough thing to do. Very few people succeed at it. It’s just a bigger problem than most people are equipped to handle. Why? Because it doesn’t make sense why the person you are so greatly trying to help continues to fail—why they continue to drink even when they are aware of the damage it is doing to themselves and their family.
In my dad’s case, here was this handsome and intriguing man that she wanted to share her life with. She found him mysterious and interesting. She admired him and loved the fact that they had similar interests. All she ever wanted was for him to be a great success, whether that be as an actor or in whatever field he wanted to pursue. She wanted to help him to achieve that success and to have a stable family life. But he just wasn’t capable of that, and he never really wanted children. My mother thought that with her help and support, she could change him and help him have this great life. I totally understand that, because, as a child, I tried to do the same thing. I always wanted to amuse him. I wanted to give him a reason to live. But that was impossible, because it was beyond anything I had the power to do. It took a couple of decades for me to understand that.
DL: You know that your mom has said that for many years she never really got it, that your dad was an alcoholic.
JM: I can understand her not getting it. She grew up in that era in which people drank . . . a lot! It was just a part of life for many people in the 1950s and ’60s. I had never really noticed anything up until I was around eight years old. He had left us, and I would go and visit him. It was when I saw him outside of our home, in his own place, that I slowly became aware that he had a problem. But it was very confusing for me. Anyone who has ever dealt with alcoholism in their family knows it is very typical to be dealing with two distinctly different personalities. That was the way it was with my dad, and it was what confused me. During a certain time of day, he would be easy to get along with, and then, usually around nightfall, he would start to drink more heavily and would turn into a dangerous kind of person.
DL: While your mother ultimately had to give up trying to be helpful to him and on trying to make their relationship and marriage work, it seems she also always harbored feelings for him. What was your relationship like with him? Did you feel he tried to be a good father?
JM: Maybe he tried to some extent, but not being able to take responsibility for his alcohol problem trumped all the good things he may have tried to do. But I understand where my mother is coming from. I’m very grateful to him for giving me an appreciation for the arts, music and theater and poetry. He knew a lot about movies, and he shared that information with me.
As for the guidance and parenting part, that was his weakness. I think he was also conflicted and confused about being a parent. He had sought treatment with psychologists and psychiatrists. He seemed to have an aversion to being a parent. Maybe he equated being parental with being responsible. That was a bad word for him because he wasn’t a responsible person. He was always going out of his way to not be parental. He kind of treated me like an equal or a friend. Which isn’t in itself a bad thing. The bad part was in that he wasn’t always the kind of friend you would ever want to have. He was always wary about giving any sort of advice or guidance. He had so little trust in his own vision of what was right and what was wrong that I don’t think he could have ever been of help to himself, much less anyone else.
DL: Did you continue to have a relationship with him till the end of his life?
JM: Our relationship dwindled considerably in his later years because as I got older, I did what my mother had tried to do: help him. I wanted to at least help him get cleaned up physically, but he flat out turned me down. At that point in time, when I really wanted to try and help him and he snubbed me, it was like, “Okay. Look, if you’re not even going to reach out for help when it is being offered, then I don’t know what else to do.” So from then on, I just kind of gave up on him and kept our relationship on a friendly basis. I visited him last in 1991, four years before he died. He was living in Texas, and I had to be there for an event, so my wife and I brought our daughter, who was just a baby, out for him to see her, and we stayed with him for a few days. After that, we would talk on the phone every now and then. We were always sociable.
DL: While your mother has become the quintessential “perfect all-American mom,” she sometimes questions if she was the best parent she could have been for you and Ellen in real life. Your witness, Mr. Meskimen.
JM: Well David, there was always some irony there for sure. While the world had come to know her as this wonder mom, in reality, by playing that role, it took her away from her own home and kids. I was kind of a snarky teenage boy when she was doing Happy Days, and I used to laugh about that. But, as far as her success as a mom, I think it’s important to remember, when we look at classic television moms—Mrs. C, Shirley Partridge, June Cleaver, Carol Brady—we are looking at a creation, a symbol of what we consider that job to be and what we considered that role to be. I have talked to a lot of people over the years that have told me that they considered my mom to be like their mom, like she raised them. I know my mother has heard that from a lot of fans over the years. I kind of understand that is an endearing way for them to tell her, or me, that they viewed her as the mom they wished they had—that we all wished we had.
But it is important to remember that Mrs. C was a character, and that there was a real person behind that character, with the flaws that every real person has, and that the fans who loved her as Mrs. C never had any personal relationship with her. My mom was a mom—a working mom. When she finished doing her job—which was to play the perfect mom—she would come home to us, and as far as I’m concerned, she was an excellent mom in a lot of ways, although a very different one than Mrs. C.
I would say the most important thing she gave me was a gift that only as I got older did I really appreciate, beca
use I came to learn how rare it is, and that was the gift of artistic encouragement. I am well aware that many kids who have artistic talents never get that from their parents. My mother always had a great appreciation of my artistic expression and a true respect for that. I know a lot of kids who had parents that said, “Look, if you are going to waste your time drawing or being a figure skater or playing your guitar, you had better have something else to back that up.” My mom was never like that. She was always so supportive and so openly admiring of my creations that it actually opened me up to pursue the career I have had. To me, that may have been her best quality.
DL: Your lives changed when she got the role on Happy Days. Can you talk about how it changed her?
JM: All for the good. We were always struggling financially before Happy Days, which seemed to always have her on edge. She was the one who was financially responsible for our family, as well as caring for me and Ellen. I know how tough that is with two parents, let alone one. I do remember times when she would cry or when she would get angry about the situation we were in. I was a kid and would sometimes say something snarky, and she would burst into tears. It is a dynamic that plays out in every family, no matter what their situation is.
But I would say things did change after she got Happy Days, and especially when the show became a hit. She became much more confident and seemed to have solutions to all the things that went into the making of a family. With that financial establishment in place, that was the biggest difference I saw in her, that she had great confidence. Remember, she had been aiming for that goal—to become an established actress—ever since she was a young girl. So she had accomplished that, and by doing that, she also was making a good living to support her family.
I think she was greatly nourished by success. That wasn’t to say things were perfect. She was gone a lot, although she would always find ladies from the church or neighbors or a housekeeper to take care of us. We were by no means latchkey kids, and we were never left wanting for anything. We were living in this very comfortable upper-middle-class environment and had nothing to complain about. As a teenager, I actually started to like the freedom I had, which most of my friends didn’t have. When she wasn’t around, I got a taste of being on my own and living by my own rules. Then, when she was back and all of a sudden wanted to enforce some rules, well, that didn’t work for me at times [laughing], and that turned into a point of friction.
But the big overriding thing was that she always took great care of us, and we were always well provided for, even before Happy Days. Then, when she got the show and it became really big, she was finally able to relax a bit. As the seasons of Happy Days went by, she took the time to expand her knowledge of things she was interested in, she grew as a person, she traveled, she became open to having a love life again, and, of course, she didn’t have to worry about making the car payment or the mortgage payment.
DL: Everyone has a few special memories of something they did with their mother at some point in their life. Is there one you would like to share?
JM: [laughing] This was so embarrassing, but it also gives you a look into the psyche of Marion.
When I was a senior in high school, we had this art fair. I was one of the kids in charge of setting up the performance part of it, and it was kind of a big deal. There was a showing of drawings and paintings, and then there was a performance and monologue part of it. Anyway, they had asked my mom to be a celebrity judge—the only judge. So I performed, including a monologue from a Shakespeare play. Well, my mother the judge awarded me first place. I’ll never forget what she said: “I want to award the first prize to my son, Jim, because I taught him everything he knows.”
I had no inkling that such a thing could happen. But it happened, and I was completely mortified. I was sure there would be all sorts of protests from the other kids’ parents [laughing]. But they just let her get away with it, and when I look back on it now, I see that it was a totally lovely thing to do on her part. My mother didn’t care how it looked. She never even gave it a thought that it would look bad. All she cared about was encouraging me and my artistic goals. She has always rewarded my artistic expression. If I had an art project to do, she was right there with me. She would make hot cocoa, and we would stay up and work on the project together. I was always one of her projects, and I think I turned out pretty well. As a mother, she may not have done everything perfect and right like Mrs. C, but she did a whole lot more right than she did wrong, and I’m forever grateful to her for that.
“My mom is a thorn in my side that I couldn’t live without.” —Ellen Kreamer
David Laurell (DL): As the daughter of America’s mom, tell us what your childhood was like.
Ellen Kreamer (EK): Well, I wasn’t Marion Cunningham’s daughter. I was Marion Ross’s daughter, and I really had a great childhood. I know that when I was young, my mom was struggling a lot, trying to be an actress, having her marriage fall apart, with two young children, providing for my brother and me. She was dealing with things that caused her a lot of anxiety. But I was a little girl and wasn’t really aware of those things.
I was never a coddled child. That would not have been my mother’s style. She wasn’t a Mrs. C kind of a mom who would slave over the stove, making dinners. For the most part, Jim and I would fend for ourselves. She always made sure we had plenty of provisions, or the neighbor up the street would send dinner down to us. But to us, that was just normal. She was a working mother, and we understood that. We certainly never suffered because of that. In fact, it was just the opposite. It was because she was working that we had the lifestyle we did once Happy Days became successful.
It was great to grow up as my mother’s daughter. She was always such a moral person. We really were raised with a strong sense of right and wrong. And she has always had this amazingly wonderful adventurous spirit about her. We had a lot of great adventures when we were kids. We would get into our Grand Prix and take off to go camping somewhere. There would be no planning. We would just go. We did things like that on a whim. What kid wouldn’t love that? So, I had a great childhood, but it wasn’t a Cunningham childhood.
DL: You were young when your parents separated and then divorced. As a child, were you at all aware of your father’s problems?
EK: I remember the exact moment I became aware that my dad was an alcoholic. I was six years old, and Jim, who is four years older than me, was always a really good artist. I remember he did a drawing of this odd amphibian-like creature trying to crawl out of a glass with liquid in it. I remember sitting and looking at it, and my mom said, “Do you know what that means?” I told her I didn’t, because I didn’t. To me, it was just some sort of a lizard crawling out of a glass. And then she explained to me that Jim’s drawing depicted an alcoholic. “That is what your daddy is, you know,” she told me.
Even though I was young, children are perceptive of things, and I remember piecing things together in my mind. I remember being aware that there were problems in our family, but I just figured every family had the same sort of problems. So yes, I was aware that my father had problems, but when you are young, you just love your parents, no matter what. But I also did know things weren’t good. Even as a little girl, I had heard my father yelling and shouting at times, and I totally related to that drawing Jim did.
DL: You mother would be the first to admit she was rather Pollyannaish about your father’s drinking and the difficulties she dealt with in her marriage for a very long time.
EK: My mother is a born optimist. So I don’t think it was odd that she was rather blind to his issues. When we were young, my mother was never the type who would bash my dad. Jim and I could tell that there was this underlying tension between them. I mean, we weren’t stupid. But I never had the feeling that she was ever trying to take him down or make him look bad in front of us. In fact, she was just the opposite. She would have done anything to help him and to change him, and when they separated, she knew it was important for us to still see him a
nd spend time with him—to have some sort of a relationship with him, even though it was sometimes hard to have any conversation with him.
I know my mother felt she had failed in her attempt to help him and that she couldn’t save her marriage, but there is one thing people should know about her: my mom is the kind of person who gets over things quickly—very quickly [laughs]. I have seen it happen over and over: something bad will happen, and she takes it in stride and then basically just moves on. I have to believe that kind of resilience, that capacity to bounce back, has a lot to do with the overdose of optimism she was born with. I sure wish I could be more like that.
I think that along with being an optimist, she is also extremely good at compartmentalizing things. I have seen her handle deaths of people very close to her in that fashion, and I wouldn’t consider it to be an unhealthy way to deal with the loss of someone if you are capable of doing that. She has all the normal feelings and emotions we all have, but she has this ability to not just get over things quickly, but then to suffer no ill effects from doing that. Maybe that comes from a great blend of optimism and inner strength. My mother isn’t one to linger on sadness—never has been. She doesn’t let it grab hold of her. I’ve seen her cry and become very emotional, but then, once it’s out of her system, she dusts herself off, and it’s just like, “Okay. Enough of that. Let’s move on.” Maybe that comes from the rugged ancestral Canadian blood she inherited [laughs].
DL: You said that your life growing up was not like the Cunninghams’. Were there kids you went to school with or friends of yours who did think that was what your life was like because Mrs. C was your mom?