Eighty Is Not Enough: One Actor's Journey Through American Entertainment (17 page)

They rehearsed for a couple of days with Jackie when suddenly they called and asked me to come back. I believe the change was prompted by Ralph Nelson, whom I had worked with in
The Wind Is Ninety
and was now a producer and the principal director of
Mama
. I returned, but I did feel sorry for Jackie. He was a friend, and I know how tough it can be to lose a part—especially after you think you already have it.

Once we started shooting, I immediately learned something about this new medium: it was powerful. I had already been well known as a model, a child actor, an adolescent star who worked on Broadway with the Lunts, and an actor with major roles in hundreds of radio programs. But all of that paled next to television. Even at the height of my career with the Lunts, I could walk into a restaurant, have a quiet meal with friends, and never be recognized. All that changed overnight. Suddenly everywhere I went people were coming up, asking me if I was that guy Nels on TV.

I was also among the very few people who immediately transitioned from a large role on Broadway to a large role on television—and the difference was truly dramatic. I had been in front of large crowds since I was five years old, but I never felt like a celebrity. With television, that also changed—both for good and for bad. It made me recognize not just that my life was changing, but that the whole nature of American entertainment was in transition.

Getting ready for the premiere of
Mama
was a difficult task for everyone. Besides
The Goldbergs
who had started just a few months earlier, there was no precedent for the kind of live episodic television that we were shooting. Worthington Minor, a CBS executive—and also the father of Peter Minor, the boy from
On Borrowed Time
—was involved both with
Mama
and
The Goldbergs
and described the uncharted waters of live television: “It was all new and terrifyingly complex. Since until now no one had ever tried to do it before, nobody really knew how to do anything. An ‘old hand’ was somebody who’d worked on the show last week.” Minor was right. Nearly everybody involved with the show, including me, had the majority of their experience in theater and radio.

I Remember Mama
opened on July 1, 1949. It was an immediate hit. Within a short time millions of people were tuning in every Friday night to watch the travails of this family of Norwegian immigrants. Until the show closed in 1957, we performed 500 episodes. I remember Ralph Nelson joking to me during the last show, “If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you 500 times….” During those eight years, I grew from a young man to an adult. I married and had all three of my children before the final performance of
Mama
.

As with Tom Bradford in
Eight Is Enough
, when you perform a role for that long, particularly a part that changes with each performance—unlike those long-running plays where the story is always the same—it’s hard not to develop a sentimental attachment to the fictional character. For me, Nels Hansen was almost real.

Like all the characters, he was the original brainchild of Kathryn Forbes. But Nels also became a creation of the principal writer Frank Gabrielson and, ultimately, my own interpretation and personality added to the mix—all of which created the young man who came each week, with his family, into the homes of millions of Americans.

During the years on
Mama
, the producers would bring in different people to play mine or Rosemary’s friends. Often these would be recurring roles. Three young actors who played for varying periods would later become film legends: James Dean, Paul Newman and Jack Lemmon.

The one most involved was James Dean, and we became good friends for a while. He was a couple of years younger than me and seemed to like to tag along all the time. Often that meant going to the Forrest Hotel for a game of poker. Jimmy never played, but he was content to sit behind me and get us cigarettes and cokes and hang out all night just watching the game.

In 1952, I was going to be away from the show for a few weeks. I suggested to Ralph Nelson that James take over as Nels while I was gone. Ralph agreed, and for several weeks James Dean played my part on
I Remember Mama
. I’ve noticed that in accounts of James Dean’s life, this fact is usually downplayed. But, the truth is that his first national exposure came playing Nels in
Mama
.

Although I wasn’t there at the time, Rosemary Rice remembers it well. It was clear to her and to others that James really wasn’t suited for the part. There was always something a little dark about James’s personality, very unlike Nels, an upbeat, happy member of an idyllic family. Later, when asked about the short-lived change in Nels, Rosemary would pay me a wonderful compliment, saying that “Dick Van Patten was irreplaceable.” I don’t know whether that’s true, but I can say that there was a special magic among all the cast members that was, indeed, irreplaceable.

Of all the stars who appeared on the show, including Paul Newman, James Dean, Jason Robards and Jack Lemmon, Jimmy was the last I would have expected to become a star, much less an iconic figure in American culture. But, looking back, it’s also not so surprising that he would come to symbolize a kind of disaffected element of American youth. He was brilliant in
Rebel Without a Cause
and his role was, of course, far more tailored to his particular personality than Nels Hansen.

Like millions of Americans, I was deeply saddened by James’s premature death in a car crash in 1955. I still think of him as that interesting young kid who used to tag along to my poker games and who took over my spot for a few weeks on the show. But, of course, he became much more than that, and I’m proud to have worked with and gotten to know him in the days before he really entered our consciousness as the ultimate American rebel.

*  *  *

Live television was very different than the recorded shows we watch today. Sid Caesar, one of my all-time favorite comics and among the earliest stars of television with his 1950 show,
The Sid Caesar Hour
, said it best: “People today have no idea what live television means.” It meant “flying by the seat of your pants.” There were “no cue cards, Teleprompters, no second chances and no net. You only had one chance and that’s it. If a fly landed on your nose, you squinted and you kept walking and talking, or you incorporated the fly into the scene.”

A few incidents on
Mama
illustrate Sid’s point. Each of the
Mama
episodes consisted of five scenes. If you were finished after an early scene, you could go home. There was no reshooting and no curtain calls. One night, believing he was done, Judson Laire took off for home before the show ended. He forgot he was in the fifth scene! So there we were, the whole family, but no Papa—while Judson was calmly riding away in his taxi. His calm didn’t last. Suddenly he realized he was in the final scene, and in a tremendous panic he had the taxi driver turn around and speed back to the studio. He didn’t make it.

And we didn’t know what to do. Millions of people were watching live. So, Ralph Nelson came to the rescue. He got down on his hands and knees behind the set. And whenever we came to one of Papa’s lines, we ran to the back door and talked as if he were in the backyard. Ralph would answer as if he were Papa, but from a place where no one could see him. It looked ridiculous. I remember Peggy Wood was very upset, but Ralph kept saying: “Don’t worry, no one will notice it.” But of course, they did. The next morning I was listening to the popular
The Dorothy and Dick Show
on the radio, and all they talked about was the screwup last night on
Mama
.

In another episode, a young Jack Lemmon knocked on the door for his date with Katrin. Rosemary answered and said: “Oh won’t you come in.” She was then supposed to say: “I haven’t a single solitary thing planned.” Instead, she got the words all jumbled and said: “Oh won’t you come in, I haven’t a thinkle sing planned solitary.”

The moment she said it, she broke out laughing and couldn’t say her next lines. And so the cameraman, not knowing what to do, turned his camera on me. But by then I was also laughing so hard, I couldn’t stop. The two of us just stood there in front of millions of viewers laughing uncontrollably. So the panicked cameraman again switched the camera to Peggy Wood just in time to catch her yelling out: “Get those Goddamn brats off the stage!” The next day, of course, the incident was the talk of the town.

But the honor for the most embarrassing early live TV moment is certainly reserved for Philip Loeb, the father in
The Goldbergs
. In one of their episodes, there was a scene in which several of the men were taking a sauna with their towels wrapped around them. But Phil hadn’t done such a good job in wrapping his towel, at least the part covering his genitalia. So now there were millions of men, women and children all over the country staring at Phil’s testicles. Live television could be tough!

Peggy was only half wrong in calling Rosemary and me “brats.” The truth is I often didn’t follow the rules and occasionally that got me into some real jams. One day while rehearsing, a pair of very serious looking guys—Rosemary thought they looked like a couple of Humphrey Bogarts, all dressed with long trench coats and dark felt fedoras—came right into our rehearsal flashing their police badges. The next thing I knew, they had grabbed me and dragged me off to the Long Island City Department of Corrections. It turned out I had ignored a few parking tickets—well, not really a few; it was more like fifty.

It happened to be an interesting time to land in lockup, as all the other prisoners were very impressed with their newest inmate. Not me, but a fellow named Willie Sutton! Anyway, they gave me a shirt to wear that had the letters, D.O.C., which, like an idiot, I thought was a nickname. I figured that in prison everyone gets a nickname and mine was Doc. I found out later it means Department of Corrections. When I was on the way out, all the prisoners gave me their wives and girlfriends’ phone numbers to call. So I made the calls, and with every single one I got the same response: “He can sit there, for all I care.”

Fortunately, our producer, Carol Irwin, had clout. Friendly with a well-known Manhattan judge, Carol reached out for assistance. Showtime was approaching, and I was stuck in the city lockup. The judge agreed to help, but it came with a price. He wanted a small part in an episode. So to get me out of jail, Carol arranged to have the judge come in and do a cameo playing a local judge in the show. It was a small price to pay.

Friday nights after each performance, the
Mama
cast and crew would head out to a restaurant, usually the House of Chan. I never went. In my twenties at the time, I preferred the fights at the Garden and later a burlesque show. They kept after me, but I continued to politely decline. Finally Carol decided that if I wouldn’t go out with them, they’d come out with me. So that night the whole cast and crew of
Mama
headed to the fights and a burlesque theater in Newark, New Jersey.

At the time, I was dating Rita Moreno. Recently arrived in New York City with her mother from Puerto Rico, Rita was still an unknown, aspiring actress. Perhaps we got along because her mom, like mine, was determined that her child would become a star. Her efforts paid off a few years later when Rita won great acclaim for her unforgettable role as Anita in
West Side Story
.

The downside to dating Rita was that her mom always insisted on coming out with us. On that night I also arranged a date for Rosemary with a questionable character I knew as “Midtown Murray.” I won’t say “Midtown” was a thief, but he used to show up with a box full of expensive Patek Philippe watches and swear he got them legitimately. So I took a bunch and sold them to the folks on the show. Judson and Rosemary each bought one for $250.

Most of them, especially Peggy and Rosemary, were less than pleased with the brutality of the fights. But that was nothing next to the fiasco at the midnight show in Newark. In every burlesque there’s a stripper who removes her clothes to the rhythm of a song played by a live band. But this time it was a little different. The stripper that night was the famous Blaze Starr, who had a notorious affair with Louisiana governor, Earl Long. Their story was the basis for the 1980 film,
Blaze
, with Paul Newman and Lolita Davidovich.

That night, Blaze decided to do a “strip-on.” This meant she started out buck-naked and then put her clothes on—one piece at a time. So when the curtain opened, there was this woman standing there completely naked on the stage. The
Mama
cast was mortified. Rita’s mother was also fuming. I still remember Rosemary putting her hands in front of her eyes so she couldn’t see the naked woman. Carol was also livid. Only Ralph Nelson thought it was funny, and his laughing made things worse for me.

That was the last time they ever joined me after the show. It was also the end of my relationship with Rita Moreno. Her mother wasn’t about to have her girl running around to cheap burlesque houses with Dick Van Patten.

*  *  *

For several years our principal competition was
The Goldbergs
. For a time, both shows were filmed at the Liederkranz Hall on 55
^th
Street—
Mama
on Friday night and
The Goldbergs
on Monday night. Using the same studio caused some tension, particularly between Peggy Wood and Gertrude Berg, who were always fighting over little things, like who got the bigger dressing room. I guess it was natural since each was the matriarch of a major television series competing for ratings.