25 Surprising Facts About One Day at a Time | Whitney Blake, Valerie Bertinelli & Schneider Secrets

Welcome to 80s TV Ladies, where we hold on tight and muddle through one day at a time. We are your hosts. Sharon Johnson and Susan Lambert-Haddam. And I'm Susan. And I'm Sharon.

We're going to spend a few episodes looking back at the 1975 to 1984 show, One Day at a Time. So we thought we'd kick you off with a few fun facts about the show to get us started. I'm curious, listeners, if you guys watched the original One Day at a Time and what you remember about it. Sharon, did you? What do you remember about it?

I did. I watched it from the beginning and I remembered much about the relationships between the characters. But in rewatching episodes, realized I didn't really remember that much about most of the storylines and such. And then at some point, probably when I went off to college and didn't have access to a television, I didn't watch much of any of the last few seasons. But yeah, I absolutely did watch it and really thoroughly enjoyed it at the time.

What about you? Yes, I did indeed watch it at the time. I think I've talked about this before. My mom was a single mom with two daughters. And it just so happened that at that point, my mom looked very much like Bonnie Franklin in that show.

She had the bob and the sort of more blonde, but reddish blonde hair. Maybe if she'll let me, I'll put a picture up somewhere on social media so that you guys will see what she looked like at that time, because... It really was startling. And I was asking my sister what she remembered. She said, I remembered that mom looked like Bonnie Franklin on the show and that Schneider was creepy.

I think we've got to talk about that. What about you and your sister? Did you guys feel that the relationship with Barbara and Julie mirrored yours in any way? It didn't necessarily mirror our relationship because we didn't fight as much as they fought, even though we did fight. By the time we were in high school, though, it was starting to lessen.

We fought a lot as little kids, and my sister sat on me a lot. But my sister was probably a little bit wilder than I was, and I was sort of the good one. But we were both so good, it was really kind of ridiculous. So we were both kind of Barbara. I think what's interesting in looking back at it is I'm shocked at just how 70s it is, right?

Oh, yeah. It started in 70s and the way the kids talk, what they're talking about, and I'm shocked. A little bit well it was a whole new world for kid characters on tv these were these these were the kind of characters that were starting to show up in the 70s and toward a large extent extended forward the kids of the you know 60s and before who mostly tended to be you know quote-unquote good kids and didn't really talk back to their parents or express opinions but It's not that they didn't get into hijinks, but it was a totally different tone when it came to kids in the 70s, I think. That was kind of the beginning. I think so, too.

And I also think it was very interesting because, you know, it was the Norman Lear show, and Norman Lear shows were very adult to me. All in the Family felt like a very adult show. Maud felt like a very adult show, and it was a bunch of adults yelling at each other in my realm of memory. And yet this was about a mother and two daughters. And the daughters were definitely in the wheelhouse of our age.

They were a little bit older, but it felt very much like our life to a degree, even though it was a lot less yelling in our household until my sister really hit those teenage years. And then there was a lot of yelling. Yeah, so I think there was a certain, like probably a year or two where our relationship with our mom did reflect a little bit of the Bonnie Franklin, Barbara and Julie relationship. I really remember it fondly, and yet I also know I dropped off, right? Once the girls got old enough and started getting married and all that stuff, I kind of was gone.

I didn't keep watching it. And part of that, I was older and in high school and then in college, and it ended when I left for college. Anyway, well, let's give the rundown, shall we? Let's do that. So Bonnie Franklin starred as divorced mother Anne Romano, who moves herself and her teenage daughters, the rebellious older Julie, played by Mackenzie Phillips, and the level-headed, wisecracking younger sister Barbara, played by Valerie Bertinelli, from their home in small-town Logansport, Indiana, to big capital city Indianapolis.

Moving to the big city. The big city. Moving on up. Anne struggles to maintain her role as mother while making sure that Her daughters have the freedom that she didn't have as a young woman. And meanwhile, the building superintendent, Dwayne Schneider, played by Pat Harrington Jr., often pops in to provide usually unwanted advice to them, especially Anne.

And that's really the main characters. And then people come and go. The show ran from December 16th, 1975 to May 28th, 1984. Nine seasons, 209 episodes. It inspired a successful reboot on Netflix, which ran from 2017 to 2020, and starred Rita Moreno, Justina Machado, Isabella Gomez, and Marcel Ruiz as the two kids.

Interesting that they went for a boy and a girl this time. Yeah, that was one of the big changes. And of course, they had Rita Moreno's character, Lydia, playing a live-in grandmother. That, of course, added a lot of fun. Changed the dynamics and what the story was about in some ways, but I think was obviously a great change, mostly because it was Rita Moreno.

It also made a lot of sense culturally, in that Hispanic families tend to have multi-generations all living under the same roof. Okay, so I tried to find somewhat surprising facts. Yes, they were to me as well. Starting with the first one, that the show was inspired by real life. The series was created by husband-wife writing team Whitney Blake and Alan Mannings.

It was based directly on Blake's experience as a single mother raising three children after her divorce from her first husband. Now, creator Whitley Blake... Sorry, you called her Whitley. Whitley. I did.

That's another show. Okay. Sorry. An interesting fact is that one of Whitney Blake's... God, I cannot do it.

Okay. Another interesting fact is that one of Whitley... I want to say Whitley so hard. I don't know. Okay.

I'm going to do it. I can do it. I have faith. You can do it. An interesting fact is that one of Whitney Blake's three kids... turned out to be actress Meredith Baxter, who starred in Family Ties later.

So I thought that was really cool. I had no idea. I really had no idea that Meredith Baxter had grown up in a showbiz family. Whitney was also a former actress herself, most famously the mom on Hazel, who turned to directing and producing in her later years, I think when she stopped getting as many roles in the ageism of Hollywood. she ended up being a producer and creator with her husband, Alan Manning. And then they created this incredible show that really did change television history in a lot of ways.

It really was groundbreaking in so many ways. It's a little sad, though, that the person whose life the show is based on sort of got lost in history because most people know this show as a Norman Lear show. And I'm not saying that He didn't have a contribution or et cetera, but it's a shame. Yeah, it is sort of a shame. And yet I think it feels very different from some of the other Norman Lear shows.

It really does. It has a different feel. And part of it is it's the beginning of a new era in sitcoms where the sitcoms just feel differently. This show feels. Very different from All in the Family and Maud.

It just does. And some of that may be the Whitney and Alan influence. Some of that, I think, is the changing times of sitcoms. I think if this wasn't the first, it was close to the first of the Norman Lear shows where there were kids in the forefront as opposed to in the background. I mean, you think about All in the Family, all the characters are adults.

Maude, all the characters are adults, except for Maude's grandson, who's just sort of there in the background. But Julie and Barbara are very much front and center and very important characters in the show. So maybe that had a little bit to do, too, with the difference in tone. Again, not to say that Norman Lear was not a great television producer. He was.

But it would have been nice to share a little of the credit, you know, in this case. Technically, her name's there, but that is history also very happily grabbing onto the famous man. in front of other women maybe doing a little bit more work than you. Expected in the background. Exactly. Anyway.

I did also find out that in the initial pilot script, ann romano was a nurse not in advertising or publicity and she had only one daughter and the studio said so they went back and reworked it to two daughters and the original pilot title when they shot it was three to get. Ready interesting Perhaps some of those changes were part of the Norman Lear influence, if you will. But the fact that they made Anne an advertising executive as opposed to a nurse, which is not then a typical kind of job that many women held. And when she shows up, I don't think she has a job, I think, at the very beginning of the show. But she's interested in that.

She wants to do something that feels exciting to her. Which is also kind of unusual for the 70s. It was the beginning of seeing working women who were not married, right? I mean, Mary Tyler Moore being kind of the big one before that. But yeah, it was really Norman Lear that brought that special mix of serious subjects with humor and with this really frank discussion of the moral conundrums that come with that.

The moral conundrums that come with that. having trouble saying conundrum. Every third word is what I'm having trouble saying today. Well, not to mention some of the challenges facing families in the mid-70s, in particular, families where divorce is part of the story and how they move forward from there. That's one of the other surprising facts. When it premiered in December of 1975, it was only the second primetime sitcom to feature a divorced mother as the lead character following The Lucy Show, which was, of course, Lucille Ball, who could do whatever she wanted, and was basically creating shows that sort of mirrored her life, whether it was having a baby or getting a divorce.

So I think it was mirroring what was happening in both the women's movement, but also the fact that women were not only getting divorced and moving on with their lives, but they were moving into the workforce. They were raising their kids as working mothers. And that was something my mom was doing. Another interesting fact is that only three of the original cast stayed on the show for the entire run. Bonnie Franklin, Pat Harrington Jr., and Valerie Bertinelli.

Some of this was because Mackenzie Phillips, during the course of the run of the show, faced severe drug addiction issues. struggles and challenges because of her behavior and her late arrivals and or not arrivals. She was written out in season five, brought back in season seven, and then written off again in season nine. And then the other thing. That I found was interesting is that there was then a rotating cast of sometimes recurring characters. There'd be characters that would stay for a season or two, maybe even three, but they weren't weren't staying for the whole length of the show.

So it was just that core three that stayed for the entire run. Which is not unusual. And then maybe they just felt that they weren't quite finding the right characters, the right stories, the right actors in particular for the relationships with Barbara or with Anne. They had to find their way. And I think eventually they did.

Mackenzie Phillips, it was, oh God. Now it's happening to me. I'm very sorry. It's my fault. I started.

It. Mackenzie Phillips is the daughter of John Phillips, founder of the 1960 folk rock group, The Mamas and the Papas. He was a drug addict and she was raised in that culture, which probably had a lot to do with her struggles. Happily, she does seem to have gotten past all of that as raising a son and seems to be doing quite well at the moment. So give her a lot of credit for that.

She's really done the struggle. I mean, she started doing drugs at like 11 or something insane and had 60s, 70s Hollywood culture as the bedrock of her life, which is a very big challenge, I think, to have any kind of normal life after that. She was just 16 when she was cast in the show, and Bertinelli was just 15 years old when she was cast as Barbara Cooper. It was her first major television role after doing some commercials for Valerie Bertinelli, which I thought was interesting and fun. Next, Anne's maiden name made a statement.

Lead actress Bonnie Franklin pushed for her character to keep her maiden name, Anne Romano, rather than her ex-husband's last name, Cooper, which was a progressive move for the mid-1970s. And I think they kind of dealt with a little bit of the confusion about whose last name is whose here and there throughout the show. But yeah, that was a big swing I think they took at the time. It was a big deal. I do know that was something that my mom kept her last name, which was Lambert, her married name, mostly because it was our name.

So I think she kept it for that. When she got remarried, she changed it to her new husband's name. It was interesting. My mom was in many ways very conservative, but then in a lot of ways, very liberal. And part of that liberal and feminist aspect, which I think she would not have called herself a feminist for most of my life.

I'm not even sure she'd do it now, but she lived a feminist life. And so she was thoughtful about a lot of things that she did. But she also was very respectful of the institution of marriage as well. It was a very interesting statement to be made. And it's stunning to remember how controversial things like that were. in 1970s and even 80s television.

It was a huge deal for that to be a thing, and they made it a thing. So good on them. One Day at a Time was also a massive ratings hit for CBS. For multiple seasons, ranked in the top 10 most watched shows in the United States, pretty crazy how influential that show could be and how much conversation would be had. Schneider had a signature look.

Pat Harrington Jr. came up with Dwayne Schneider's iconic look himself, including the vest and the cigarette tucked in his shirt sleeve. Pat Harrington won both an Emmy Award in 1984 and a Golden Globe in 1981 for his fan-favorite portrayal of the apartment superintendent. And we have to talk about Schneider for a minute. We do. Schneider was creepy.

Schneider in the pilot is letting himself into the apartment secretly that the women live in. It's really creepy. And that happens a lot. He just shows up. It's a very sitcom move, but when it's women living alone and this super creepy and super sort of lecherous-y Certainly early on, in the later seasons, he becomes very much a father or brother or uncle figure.

He is very, actually, there's a whole episode where Julie is fixing his pants, and so he's in his underwear, and he's so embarrassed, and he's kind of covering himself, and you're like, that is not the Schneider of the first season. No. Not at all. Happily, he did evolve in a good way. Yeah, and watching it now... particularly those early seasons, you're like, what is happening?

This is horrific. The amount of basically inappropriate behavior on his part is tremendous. Pretty horrifying but play for comedy gold yeah and i'll be honest i it didn't even occur to me that it was anything other than funny at the time because i think that was the the sort of thing you would see on television shows and certainly the way he played schneider he no way shape or form seemed threatening in any way but you change the tone just a little bit and it becomes very very creepy He's kind of the Lenny and Squiggy of the show. The Kramer, as it were. He was the original Kramer, for sure.

There's a Kramer aspect to Schneider that is very much apparent. But it became such a huge part of that show that kind of by season two, they're just giving him bits. There's just extended time on Schneider doing something very Schneider-y in the apartment. That becomes very funny, and then they kind of develop him more as a character. But he stays with that family.

He shows up in the later seasons in the girls' apartments when they're married and having babies. He keeps showing up like he's Kramer. Well, he's, yeah, I mean, he acts like he's part of the family, and they let him because I guess he sort of grew on them to a large extent. But yeah, the character became integral to the family and the Romano Coopers. It was, yeah, it's not a character that you would see today played for laughs.

And certainly the Schneider character is very different on the reboot, which we'll talk about later, I'm sure. But yeah, for the time, he just seemed very benign, but yeah, it's a little cringy every now and then. Yeah, he's the super and the handyman and the snoop. And the gossip. And I do love also, there's like a time around 1977, right after I'm assuming Smokey and the Bandit came out, he's into CB radio. there'll be a crisis and he'll be like, I'm going to go check with my CB radio folks.

That's on multiple episodes calling into the CB radio crowd. And that's such a 1970s, late 70s aspect of our culture that just literally does not exist at all and is so hard to explain to anyone that didn't experience it. Yeah, you know, I'd be interested to sit down with someone who didn't see the original episode, especially a Gen Zer or something, and have them see what they think about Schneider. They don't know anything about it the first time, you know? And they see this character come through the front door.

I can only imagine what the reaction might be. And we're so lucky because I think I can't wait to show this show to the 90s TV babies. Yes! I think it is a show that very few of them will know. Now, Sarita has an education in television beyond most normal babies, 90s babies.

It may not be a show that they even know anything about other than the reboot. They would know the reboot. So it might be interesting for them to see where it came from. You know, I did see something somewhere about Pat Harrington having a hand in writing on some of the scripts, but I haven't been able to find out which ones. But it would certainly be great to be able to know some of the ways he had in shaping the character.

For sure. And I think he really did become... so iconic, so much a part. Like, he would make an entrance and the audience would lose it. It was sort of the Daryl, Daryl, and Daryl of Newhart. And he was all three wrapped in one.

And sometimes he'd come in early in the show, do his little Schneider stick, and then he'd be gone, you know. But they really do involve him in a lot. I mean, he's very involved in whatever drama is going on with the kids, whether somebody's missing or He's like, I'm going to help, but he's almost always the comic relief on these heavier episodes when they are tackling kind of a Norman Lear subject. Do you want to do the next one? Yeah.

So Bonnie Franklin is such an interesting actress. She was a child actress. She was nominated for a Tony for her 1970 Broadway debut in the musical Applause. which is based on the 1950s film All About Eve, which if you haven't watched, you totally should. She had a lot of input with the writers to ensure that the relationship for the girls and the arguments and the world they were doing felt grounded and authentic. And she has become really tied to that show, though she had an incredible career before and after that.

But you can't think of that show without thinking of her. Honestly, I didn't. It was a different time, of course, but I... don't remember seeing her in anything before One Day at a Time, but yeah, she was quite a find, I think, and really perfect in this role. I think because she came from Broadway, as women were breaking in in the late 70s and early 80s, I have no doubt that they were like, ooh, we need Bonnie Franklin to have a show. When her name came up, it was, oh, we can hang something on this actress.

She's so incredibly charming, and She's like cute, but also an adult. She's sort of a little bit of a grown-up Mary Tyler Moore, right? Because she has kids, she has more gravitas, but she's still perky and pixie and, you know, seems like she's about four feet tall. She's very tiny, like Spitfire. Anne had several serious relationships. relationships throughout the course of the show, starting with David Cain, played by Richard Mazur.

He was her first love interest on the show and was her lawyer, her divorce lawyer, and appeared in season one. He asked to leave in season two because he felt the unconsummated romance limited his character. So he moved on. He moved on. He asked to get off a hit show because he didn't have lots to do.

I think there is one episode. If I remember correctly, that is very much where she wants to have sex with him. And they're discussing whether they're going to have sex or not. And she's like, right now, I just need this other kind of relationship. But it's so weird and interesting.

Another aspect of the show where you're like, wait, she's dating her divorce lawyer? Yeah. Ethically, this is insane, right? You're like, this is so wrong. Were there no rules?

When I was re-watching it, I didn't remember that aspect at all. I kind of barely remembered how much she dated. So she had these three major relationships, but she was dating a lot, which also was very unusual. She was a mother, right? It's one thing for Mary Tyler Moore to be dating.

It's another thing for a divorced mother to be dating. Unprecedented, I would say. As far as the David Cain character, I remember him very vividly because I didn't think they had any chemistry together in that first season was really adamant. Maybe that's too strong a word, but made it very clear that he wanted to marry her. And she kept going, no, no, no, not ready for that.

And I kept saying, yeah, I can do better. So I was not at all unhappy when David... Moved on. Yes, left the show. And no shade on the actor.

I just didn't think it made a lot of sense at that point. I totally agree with you. It felt very awkward the whole time. Not just because ethical considerations, but mostly because, again, they just felt very different. Like, He was younger than her?

Mm-hmm. Because she's like. In her 30s or 35 or 30... 35. She had to be in her mid-30s, I think.

I know that her ex-husband was about 10 years older than she was. So I'm assuming she got married... Yeah, I think she got married young, like 1920. Yeah. Yeah.

So.... Considering how old the girls are. She had to have been in her mid-30s. I think I was also thinking, you just got out of a marriage. Why in the world would you want to step right back into another one?

Not that there's anything wrong with that, but, you know, if it's the right person, but. It's one of my least favorite parts of season one, is that relationship, for sure. Because it feels awkward, because you're like, what are you doing? Like, you're spending a lot of time discussing this thing that you're like, this clearly isn't something you want. Like, no wonder he's like, okay, clearly they don't want me on the show.

Yeah. If she's not even going to sleep with me, what am I going to do? The next serious partner was Nick Hendriss, played by Ron Rifkin. And he had a son. And so they have this serious relationship.

And then he is killed offscreen. And she then adopts, basically, his kid. Is he preteen? Yeah, I think he's preteen. Alex.

And that felt like such a, okay, we're running out of ideas. All the kids that we had to have kid stuff happening have grown up, gotten married, or in serious relationships, and we need a little more kid energy. We need some kid energy in the sitcom now. And then her final love interest is Sam Royer. I would say arguably my favorite, played by Howard Hessman.

That may be one of the reasons. And she marries him, I would say, the best partner for her. He has so clearly got his own life, but also supports her. He's willing to work with her on all of her things. And he really supported her as an independent woman.

They felt like they fit. I think it really was a good relationship for the end of that show. Yeah, I agree. And for those who didn't put it together, Howard Hessman played Johnny Fever, one of the DJs on WKRP in Cincinnati, before making his way onto One Day at a Time, I actually had forgotten. And maybe because this was the part of the show that I didn't watch that regularly towards the end, I'd forgotten he was on this show.

So I was like, oh, this is great. It's always nice to see actors that you enjoy, that you like, show up in things. I agree. I think by the time that relationship came along, I think it was really a good match for her, despite the fact that he is also her son-in-law's father. I forgot that part, too.

You're right. I sort of conveniently forget that. Part. They made it work. What can you do?

That is hilarious. What I love is that she had a healthy dating life throughout the show. And again, that is something that was pretty rare before. starting in 1975. It was played pretty normally. She had a romantic life in addition to being a mom.

Right. And a job. And I wouldn't be surprised to find that that character was the first one that had that kind of a social life. She's a mom. She's got these two kids.

I mean, yes, they're teenagers, but nevertheless, she's out living her life, too, and making new apologies for it, which is great. Yeah, there's a lot of those early storylines in this show that she talks a lot about how she didn't really have a chance to fully grow up before she got married. That she just thought you went straight into marriage and she wants more than that for her daughters. And so there are times when she's sort of re-experiencing being single, being young, being like definitely having her own sort of re-adolescence. And they kind of talk about it a little bit. during the show and address it somewhat in very interesting ways where she's like, I didn't know how to do this.

Or I want you girls to have something I didn't have. I want you to have this future and opportunities and different ways of looking at the world that I didn't have. And that was very much a message that we got from our moms a lot of times of like, you can do whatever you want. And my mom got that from her mom who said, Nobody gets married until they have their college degree. To her two daughters, a very unusual thing to say to your daughters in the South, though they had come from the North, but a very unusual thing to say to your daughters.

In the 40s and 50s and early 60s. Absolutely. You're going to get an education first. We have to take a break. We'll be right back with more surprising facts about One Day at a Time.

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The iconic theme song for One Day at a Time is called This Is It, was written by Brill Building songwriter Jeff Berry and Nancy Berry and sung by recording artist Polly Cutler. The Brill Building, it's really hard to say that. You have to be very careful as I'm saying it to make sure I don't screw it up. Back in the 60s was a place where songwriters would work and sell their songs. If you needed a song for an artist or if you're a producer or if you're an artist yourself, you could go there and find somebody to write you a song, and a lot of hit songs came out of that building.

I did not know that this song had any ties to the Brill Building, so that was really interesting to learn. I love that it's a husband and wife team, so I think that was really cool. And I think we have to talk about the reboot in a whole other episode to give it its due. But I do love that they use the same theme song, but sung by Gloria Estefan, who made it her own. And it's got a Latin beat and it's amazing, but it works so great.

Like both versions are incredibly memorable, incredibly fun. And I think perfect, perfect theme songs for their shows. Yeah, exactly. I agree completely. Okay, over the nine-year run, the show was taped in front of a live audience at three very famous locations.

CBS Television City, Metro Media Square, and a Universal Studios. And I don't know if that was usual at the time for a show like that to move around. I just assumed that pretty much a sitcom got set up and stayed in one location, but it was actually in three different studios. I had the same experience. feeling you did or the same impression you did show stayed where it was wherever it was it started that's kind of where it finished and i i don't think i've heard of metro media square before do you know where that is or was i'm not even sure if it still exists um i definitely know where universal studios is and i've heard of that but. Uh this was in hollywood i don't know it either it is not as famous as the other two which i do know and have been to and And the CBS television city is also very famous.

But this is on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood. It was the longtime home of KTTV, an early Fox network. But it was demolished in 2003 to build a high school. Ah, well, that's a shame. I'm just guessing, because I don't know.

There was such a change in the television industry between 1975 and 1984. Obviously, cable was coming in. certain elements of consolidation and the different ways television was made and sold and bought. And my guess is that it had to do with that, that it was suddenly, oh, we're going to do it here because we need that space for this other thing. Or Norman Lear made a different deal with somebody because he was so iconic and his deal may. Have ended in one place.

And I don't know, that'll be very interesting. Listeners, if you know, tell us why it would have done that. Yes, please. Inquiring minds would like to know. All right.

What else? Next, we have Elton John's fan mail. So, after Valerie Bertinelli and Mackenzie Phillips performed Don't Go Breaking My Heart in full Elton John drag on the show, the real Elton John sent Bertinelli a signed photograph praising the impression. That's very cool. And I feel like it's pretty early on in the show because it shows up in.

Their opening credits. Oh, that's right. Yeah. There was also an episode, of course, can I remember which one it was? No, I can't.

Which opens with Valerie Bertinelli calling a local Indianapolis hotel because Elton John is in town to do a concert and she's desperately trying to get somebody on the switchboard to put her through to them. She pretends to be calling from Buckingham Palace. She pretends to be calling for a sick friend or something and a couple other attempts that go nowhere. So it was. It was season two, episode 14.

Okay. Happy New Year, which aired originally December 28th, 1976. And Valley Bertinelli is dressed as Elton John. Mackenzie Phillips is dressed as Kiki Dee. They were putting on a variety show.

It's very cute. And they put some of those clips into the opening montage. the opening montage for season one is them basically doing the move. They're packing up and driving their station wagon to their new city and apartment. And so that's what that opening sequence is. And then I think in season two, it changes to this montage of.

Clips of them. I love that It was the time when celebrities also didn't necessarily have a lot of access to other celebrities, right? Unless you were on a special together, you know, you weren't following each other on Twitter, right? So you were writing letters to people. We clearly knew it was going to happen and clearly enjoyed it and was like, hey, that was really cool.

And then you're like, oh, now they're best friends. Right? And that, of course, leads us to, you know, one of the things that being a star on television got you to do is that you can go backstage at special concerts. And so Valerie Bertinelli met her future husband and rock guitarist Eddie Van Halen backstage at a concert in 1980 because she was a huge young star on television. And so she got to meet him.

Now, I'm going to bring in my sister one more time. And I were talking about one day at a time. And she's like, oh, and I remember being so disappointed when she married that rock guy. And I was like, Eddie Van Halen? Like, yes, because she seemed so nice.

And I was such a nerd and such a complete straight-laced idiot that I thought that it was scandalous and beneath her to marry him. Which I thought was so funny. He seemed to be one of the more harmless. if you will, rock stars. It wasn't Sid Vicious. Eddie Van Halen was horrifying to you?

That was funny. Yeah, and they got married in 1981. And were married for a long time. Yeah, and had a kid. Yeah.

I mean, I think he had drug issues as well. And I think that was one of the reasons they ended their relationship, or she ended their relationship. It's hard. It's hard out there for everybody. Next, let's talk about future directorial star Michael Lembeck, who joined in season five as Julie's husband, Max Horvath. later became a prolific director for television in particular, helming episodes of Friends, Everybody Loves Raymond, and Community.

And I believe he's won a couple of Emmys for some of the work he's done as well, to which I say good for him. Yeah, that's pretty amazing. You go from being a TV star to a director, which, again, is not that unusual, but I think that level of being, like, Again, that show was so huge, even through its last seasons, that then you're like, oh, okay, I think I'm done being a star. I'm going to start directing. Here's another fact.

Bonnie Franklin directed several episodes of One Day at a Time in the later seasons. I'll have to look up how many, but I know she did. Like, you know, those are big. You know, the shows that he worked on, she became clearly one of the top directors in sitcoms. I see that Bonnie Franklin directed two episodes in season nine.

Oh, so I guess just the last season. For some reason, I thought she directed sooner than that. Ave Romano, episode 16, and The Nearness of You, episode 20. So good for her. Yeah.

That's fantastic. That's good. And our past guest, Asad Kalata, as we're talking about directors, also directed an episode of One Day at a Time in 1981. What episode? Do you know what?

Do you have that in front of you? Let's see. Season 6, episode 19, and it's called Small Wonder 2. Okay. I'm so excited.

Maybe we'll have him back on. Wow. Just to talk about his one episode of One Day at a Time. It was so interesting in re-watching this how much, in addition to all the dating and boyfriend stuff and marriage stuff and dating wildly inappropriate people, There was also a lot of work stuff for the girls, like their workplace. They were out getting.

Jobs and trying to have jobs and having trouble with the jobs, which, again, I thought was really interesting. And meanwhile, Bonnie Franklin is moving up in this advertising space in this really real career way. It's very interesting. And it's not the whole point. We rarely see her.

I mean, there's not huge episodes of her at work. There's snippets of her at work for certain episodes. It's really interesting how she literally has a career over the course. She builds a career over the course of the show. And again, a very unusual trajectory for a show that started in 1975.

Absolutely. Mary Tyler Moore doesn't really change her job. Her title changes, but her job is the same. She's basically Lou Grant's coordinator. Right?

She's a producer. She gets titles. But her job is the same, and Bonnie Franklin's character, Anne Romano, grows into the job that she wants, which is really cool. Absolutely. So, Glenn Scarpelli was added to the show in season six as Alex Handra's son of Anne's boyfriend, Nick, played by Ron Rifkin.

By this point, I think the show is not as great as it has been. We are in season six of a nine-season show. All the kids have grown up, and they kind of clearly felt they needed another kid to show up and cause kid problems. Yeah, it's not the first time on TV that that's happened, where a long-running show which has a number of kids on it. Well, they need more younger kids and so they bring them on.

Happened on My Three Sons, happened on The Brady Bunch when they brought in Cousin Oliver, which a lot of fans just to this day really aren't particularly fond of poor little cousin Oliver. There are three other shows that popped into my head and I can't remember any of them at this point, but it's a normal thing. on shows that start with kids and then once the kids kind of outgrow their original role, if you will, they bring a new kid in. I thought it was interesting they went with a young man this time to sort of change up the dynamic a little bit. And then decades after the show ended, Bonnie Franklin reunited with Valerie Bertinelli on screen by making a guest appearance on the TV series Hot in Cleveland.

How fun that must have been for the two of them. Yes. It's been very interesting to watch Valerie Bertinelli's career. I mean, what a long trajectory of a career. And Hot in Cleveland being a show that the 90s TV babies forced us to watch.

They had on a lot of the 80s TV ladies on Hot in Cleveland. They were really doing it. So the 25th fact, the One Day at a Time reunion was an hour-long television special on CBS that aired February 22, 2005. And it brought back all the main original cast members to look back at the sitcom and quite delightful. Yeah, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

It really was a nice tribute to the show. Mackenzie Phillips was very candid about her trials and tribulations and how far she's come since then. And it was really nice to see them all together again. in one place and together on stage one last time. So I highly recommend it for anybody who's a fan of the show. And this is a fact I didn't put in there.

The last episode of One Day at a Time was a backdoor pilot for a Schneider show, right? I agree. Yeah. Because it's all Schneider. And I just thought that was so interesting that they did it as the last episode.

So there's the last episode of the show. And then another man's shoes after his estranged brother's sudden death, Schneider assumes responsibility for his niece and nephew. And it's so clearly a pilot for a Schneider show. Yeah, with a host of wacky characters who hang out at this diner or a little store or something. Well, the place that they hang out and the kids and their father had lived upstairs.

So they've all been kind of looking out for the kids since the father had passed away and waiting for Schneider to come and hoping to be able to convince him to stay so the kids can stay. Of course, by the end of the pilot, he decides, yes, he's going to raise them with the help of these other people. And one of the kids is Corey Feldman. Yep. That's why it stood out for me because that kid walks in and I'm like, I know who that, oh my God, it took me a minute because I was like, who's that kid?

Who's that kid? Oh my God, it's Corey Feldman. So it never, I didn't, I mean, as I said earlier, I really had kind of stopped watching the show by that time. But I'd like to think I would have heard that they were doing something like that, because that does happen fairly regularly with shows, especially long-running shows. But for whatever reason, they decided not to move forward with it.

So it's just too bad. It might have been interesting. You never know. Yeah. But that was 1984.

And the next year, he would do The Goonies. He was around. I think he'd done Gremlins. He'd done Gremlins. But I think it was Goonies that I think made him Goonies was where he shined.

Oh, definitely. Yeah. That's the thing he's most known for, even to this day, I think. So I'm kind of glad the Schneider show didn't go. Oh, my gosh.

All right. Well, so that's 25 surprising facts about the Golden Girls. My God, I'm still moving in my head. About one day at a time. Yeah.

That theme song, very, very sticky. Very wonderful. As much as I enjoy the theme song, I have to admit, as I was re-watching episodes, Happily Tubi gives you a chance to skip past the theme song. It's so funny. Richard does not skip the intro ever, and he gets mad when I do.

Really? For any show, particularly if it's from the 70s or 80s. Well... Because that was... You know, he was.

Getting his snacks ready. He takes it personally when I want to skip the intro. I'm like, okay, we've heard this 15 times. I'm good. Let's go.

We know what's going to happen. When I'm doing them back to back, I don't even want to watch the recaps. One Day at a Time did change the opening. Over time, it changed a couple times. And so I would be like, oh, it's different.

I'll watch this. Yeah. And then I would be like, I'm good. Let's move on after that. Oh, my God.

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We're talking buttery soft bamboo sheets plus amazing pajamas. Go to 80s TV Ladies My Deals link in the show notes to see all of our fabulous deals. Use promo code 80s TV Ladies. That's 80s TV Ladies. In today's audiography, One Day at a Time is streaming on Tubi for free, and it's also available for purchase on Amazon and YouTube.

Be aware on Tubi. There's occasionally an episode that's not there or maybe misnumbered or something, but nevertheless, it's a good place to go to catch up on the show if you're so inclined. Mackenzie Phillips has written two books, Her latest is Hopeful Healing, Essays on Managing Recovery and Surviving Addiction, written in 2017. And her first book from 2011 was High on Arrival, a memoir. And they're both very interesting books, and particularly the Hopeful Healing about her recovery and her challenges with addiction.

Valerie Bertinelli is an author, too. She's written seven books, four memoirs, and three cookbooks. The most recent is Getting Naked. The Quiet Work of Becoming Perfectly Imperfect. Which just came out.

Yeah, it just came out, I think this year or last year. So links will be in our description and you can always find them at bookshop.org. Next up, because there's so much to say about One Day at a Time, I'm really enjoying finding all the nooks and crannies of it. Our next episode will be the top 10 most Norman Lear episodes of One Day at a Time. Now, it's hard not to also then pick a fan favorite, and these are not the same thing.

And they're not always the same ones, what I would say the controversial or approaching a topic with that typical Norman Lear humor and heart that really is a Norman Lear sitcom. And so that's the episodes I wanted to look at that really were kind of groundbreaking episodes. In their approach to. A topic that was usually taboo for most television, particular sitcoms. Okay.

Excellent. As always, we hope 80s TV ladies brings you joy and laughter and lots of fabulous new and old shows to watch. All of which will lead us forward toward being amazing ladies of the 21st century. Thank you.