70s and 80s Fun, Family and The Rockford Files l Elayne Heilveil

Eighties tend so pretty babies into the city, treated getting good money a man world. Welcome to Eighties TV Ladies. You're your hosts Sharon Johnson and Susan Lambert had him Hello. I'm Susan and I'm Sharon. Today's guests is a true eighties TV lady, and we'll share with us some of her experiences acting on classic seventies and eighties television.

Sharon, you never know where you're gonna find an eighties TV lady. Let me tell you. I was at a play reading and the playwright turned out to be none other than Miss Elaine Hileville, so of course we had to get her on the show. I know it feels like, dear listeners, that all I do is go to parties and play events and run into amazing, cool actresses. And I'd like to think that my life is always like that, even though it isn't.

However, since I've been doing eighties TV Ladies, it does feel like sometimes it is like that, So keep it coming, Universe. Let's hope I run into Debbie Allen and Janet Jackson next. Would that it were so ha. The aforementioned Miss Elainehivel as an actress, director, and award winning playwright. As an actress, she starred in numerous film, television and theater productions, including being directed by such greats as Mike Nichols and Mark Rydell in the first season of ABC's Family.

She has guested on so many shows from that time period like Rockford Files, The Waltons, Hawaii Five, O, Hill Street Blues, and Mary Tyler Moore. She starred in the cult classic film Payday with Rip Torn and numerous TV movies, including A Cry for Help opposite Robert Culp, Birds of Prey opposite David Jansen, and along with Dame Judith Anderson, appeared in the Chinese Prime Minister. She is also a voice actor, narrating audio classics like Wuthering Heights. As a playwright, she has been published by Dramatic Publishing, Applause Books, and Smith and Krause. Please welcome to eighties TV ladies, Miss Elaine Hilville.

Hi, Hello, We're so happy to have you here. So, Elaine, we are fascinated to hear your story. How did you get started in Hollywood and becoming an actress? Well, I started in the fifth grade and I had to read some poem in class, and I thought, I don't know, and my brother gave me this last minute thing and it was called The Creation by James Weldon Johnson, and he was a black poet and pastor, and he wrote this amazing sermon and I thought, I can't read this. This is just gorgeous.

It's about the It was called the Creation and how God created. But I had nothing else, so I was embarrassed. And I read this thing in front of my fourth or fifth grade class, and all of a sudden, this I was like this thin and this voice comes out of nowhere and it was like Amy McPherson or whatever, yeah, you know, the great orator that and God said, and I was really embarrassed, and tears started coming down my you know cheeks, and you know, let there be light, and you know, into it he blew the breath of life, and man became a living soul. Amen, amen, you know, and something took over it and everybody kind of went like that, including myself, and I was embarrassed. And I won the declamation contest and I did just like you know, and you know, I was shaking when I said, into it, he Brew the breath of life, you know, and then I auditioned for the High School of Performing Arts.

I actually wanted to be a dancer, but I never had any dance classes. So I did, you know, my little poem and I did some blind Girl from a letter from this Lonely Heart, and I got into performing arts in New York and that was pretty special. I mean, you know, at fifteen, you're writing on the subways and stepping over bodies on forty sixth Street in New York. But I was traveling from Queens, you know, so it was like two buses and subways and you're kind of on your own. And at that time, there were like topless go go dancers on bars and a lot of inebriated people on the streets that you thought were dead and you were afraid of stepping over them.

And you went and I probably saw the most talent then and there, even in all my working years. And I think and because it had nothing to do with money, it had nothing to do with you know, where you came from. It was such an eclectic mix of people, and some people came with no shoes, you know, because you didn't have to pay to go there. It was all your talent. And I really think it saved lives at that time because people either would have shot up or you know, there was a lot of trauma going on in backgrounds that made us you know, I thought maybe I was too normal to be an actress.

But it turned out I found out later that I wasn't all that normal and I did have issue, you know, but compared to a lot of what was going on. So you saw all this exuberance and dancers in the afternoon were dancing at lunchtime. And so this is when I mean the movie and the TV show Fame are kind of based on and I got to tell you the movie and the show in reality, it was much even richer because the stories that were very personal. The teachers had their own stuff, you know. So and we were introduced at that time to like the beginnings of method acting, and you know, so we had all this and when there was a fire drill on forty sixth and Broadway, we'd be walking down in groups of people that in costumes.

There's witches and old people and old age makeup. You know. Now we look at our friends that are still around and it's like it looks like you didn't take your makeup off from old age class what happened. So you know, that's where I started, and then I went I did Summerstock in the summers, and then I went to Carnegie Mellon University after that, and then went to New York after and continued to do my like summer stock, and I met an agent there who was somebody I met a friend of mine who on the street who had an age said, you got a call, you know somebody I called this big agent, I guess. And I walked in and she said, you can do it.

You can have this name. I've been looking for somebody that could have this name, and you can do it. And I said yeah, and she said Daisy asked her, and I said, hmm, you know what I mean. Yeah, So Elaine Heilville didn't exactly. It's it's been an albatross.

But I did not go with Daisy Aster. You. I did not go with Daisy Aster. But I did get a phone call from her saying, I have an appointment for you. Franco ZEPHYRELLI is in town and he's doing Romeo and Juliet and I set up an appointment for you.

And I said, oh, I'm sorry, I can't make it. I'm going up to like Pennsylvania to do summer Stock, you know, I mean it was just a different mentality. And then I kind of burned myself out from a lost love in college and I was coughing and got pneumonia. In Central Park. There's this music playing the Beatles.

It's a long and winding bro duh you know too. And I'm crying like copiously in center back, breaking down, coughing, and I go and do like a show week in summer Stock, and I'm just like exhausted. And the last day I come down with like one hundred and four fever pneumonia. And my parents had moved to LA, and I thought I need help, and I came out to LA and stayed with them for not that long. Went into the hospital.

Yes, and yeah, I broke a rib from coughing so much and it took a while to heal. But I met an agent kind of via New York to hear and sent me on an audition for a film called Payday. And I was reading my first kind of film script. You know, there was like no dialogue in film script. It was a whole different world.

So I was not snotty, but I think I must have had an inner attitude. And I went to this interview and there was an eight x ten photo of an actress who I knew that looked like was going to get the part. It was a Southern groupie. And this was my only experience that was like this. So I'm prefacing it by saying that casting director said, well, there's actually a scene in the movie where the character is topless, so I have to see what that's going to look like.

And how old are you at this point twenty two? I just graduated. And I looked at him. I just broke out laughing and I said, you've got to be kidding. Are women buying this?

I? And he yeah. It was like, you're kidding me, you know? And he he was like, you're right. And he makes a phone call and he calls the director.

I didn't know who he was talking to, and he said, I think you need to come down here and meet this girl. So they said could you hang out for a little while, And I guess the director was staying nearby and he came over and I said sure, and he said, do you mind, like, can we just take a walk and talk or something? And I said yeah, I had nothing much to do that day. That was my point. And I remember we walked took a walk on the street.

It was the studio on Gower, Yeah, and I just remember walking down the street. I don't remember what we were talking about. He was just asking me questions and it was like, okay, nice to me. It was Darryl Duke, the director, and that was it. And the next thing I knew they asked if I would do a screen test.

But it turned out later after we got to know each other, Darryl and I and work together, you know, many times after that. He said, you know one of the reasons why you got the film, and I said, no, I mean I did a really good screen test, which I've written. You know, your nerves take over and it's sometimes helpful. And he said, because when I asked if you would just take a walk with me and talk, you were like, sure, I'll go. And that was the character.

She was a groupie that went on a trip, on a road trip with a you know, a country western singer, and it was that attitude that he picked up. Cut to a few years later, I had actually it sounds like I have a history of this, but it wasn't. I had some minor surgery the day before, and I got a call to read for a Hill Street Blues and I remember walking into the audition and I had on this big, like cow neck sweater, like I just threw it on and I walked in and there's all of the producers of the show, which were like twenty, were sitting there and I slumped in my seat for the reading, not intention and I read the part and it was a part of a Patty Hurst kind of character. And I found out later one of the reasons I got that part again.

They said to me after I got cast, They said, do you mind wearing that sweater that you wore? Because you came in and you sort of sunk in your sweater and it was like you were sinking. And the character had been in hiding for years and she was coming out of like shock from being caught and everything. And I went, you could never ever plan anything like that. I mean, you couldn't do these things consciously, so that plus nerves can get you far well.

And I think that's you know, I've helped a lot of act and actresses with their audition tapes, and it's almost never about you. It's about really whatever they're looking for, if you if you walk in and you suddenly present with something that matches, and then it also has to do with who else they're casting, what the network is doing, what somebody for lunch that day. You just have to sort of keep auditioning. And the other thing is I think there was something in me and maybe it was like coming up from the subways and the streets when you're young, you know that that kind of knew that. And so for anybody that's auditioning and stuff, it's it's so not about you what exactly what you're saying.

You come in with who you are, and somehow at that time, I don't think I could do it. Now, you know too much. Life has happened, and in a way, you know, you can become more self conscious in some strange way because you have layers that you didn't have then. I didn't have that kind of desperation, I guess because I had those years before, eight years of you know, performing arts and Carnegie. But it's so about not personal, you know, but about saying like in some ways, the more you can be both yourself into that character in that moment, whether you're feeling bad, like and kind of using whatever you have, using who you are and what do that?

And you have a cut visit and I tried to put him in the back room but here he wouldn't hear of it, wouldn't. Yes, they do, they do that, Murphy Murphy. It's quite all right, Murphy Law to go back to payday. Yes, when they were asking you to take your shirt off, that was for the role that you ended up getting or was that for a different role. That was for the role that I ended up getting.

And what's okay? We can free associate. Is it's okay? Yeah, that's what we do best. Yes.

So there was a scene with Rip Torn where my character was in. They were in bed together and the scene opens with him rolling off of me and we go to shoot it. That was it, That was the only thing. And we go to shoot it and I said to the director and we like, pin the the blanket, you know, up so that when he rolls over it doesn't go down because I was not into that, you know, And he said yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we start the scene and you know, I have the blanket kind of touched up to here and Rip is on top of me and he rolls over and he takes the blanket with him, and so the blanket goes down to like here, you know, the middle of one's boob, and I'm like, and the director and the camera man said no, no, no, don't worry, don't worry.

We're only shooting here. Up. It didn't nothing, nothing happened. So it was like this, okay, okay, right, hut too. I see the movie and it turns out there's like a half boob shot.

They lied, yeah, right, okay. I just looked away for an eighth of a second and that was kind of the extent of it. Cut too. Years later, I meet somebody, some friend of mine, this guy, and I said, oh, yeah, you know I or something like that. So he goes and looks me up and he goes, you know the first thing that comes up when you look your name up?

And I said no, and he said, Elaine Hileville nude shots, Oh my goodness, And it was like what I didn't even remember. And there was a shot. And I said to actually, my brother, how do they even find these things? There's no stills of this or anything. And he said, they freeze framed and then they post it.

It's a big deal. Yeah, according to my ex's Wikipedia, we're still married and that was twenty years ago. So I've never been one to somebody said to me, once, you're you're staring in three things this week and nobody knows who you are, you know, And I just I never was just always very insular and kind of private and didn't know from PR or anything like that. So it's just a whole I never had illusions of being famous or anything like that. I just wanted to try to do good work and feel good about the work.

Well, just you feel good. Now. I've course had to go track down all of your credits and all that stuff. So we've been googling you a lot, and I have not come across any serious photos I have either, O goodness, so this must have been nobody's interested anymore. You your search history is based on what you've searched before.

So if you are searching for new photos of people and then you search somebody, it might come up. Yes, yes, so it's not something I normally search. Yes, that's true. That's true. You know, we could do a whole segment on that alone.

But I think other than that, honestly, I have never ever had that used in a way it felt, and maybe it was because I did more television and it was faster. So the higher up you went for me, and we're not talking about the Harvey Weinsteins and things like that, but the more kind of class people had, and the more humble I mean, you meet like Mike Nichols and you know, and they were just you know, writing you personal notes after an audition, I mean, and they treated you with such kindness. I remember when I went up for this series Family that was produced by Mike Nichols, and Mike Nichols and Mark Rydell who directed on Golden Pond and just Lovely, Lovely and start out as in they were the ones who cast it.

They were the only ones there, and I remember going in and there were two other actresses waiting in the room to go in, and I guess it had been down to us. And Mike Nichols asked me, He said, are you nervous, you know? And I said, it's just the weirdest thing. I'm not nervous at all. And he said, yeah, I know, he said when I right before I went on with he used to do Nichols and may you know, he said, I would fall asleep.

He said, there's a name for that, and there's some long name that you're so nervous that you're almost dead, and he said and he just you know, it was like, but you were just treated kind of like with respect. And I think that's what I felt. Higher up, I ever really worked for people that were in another category that was like, you know, the hair in order. I mean, when they left family, they did the pilot and they left and they kind of got their credit for consulting and stuff like that. Spelling Goldberg took over and it became a Spelling Goldberg situation.

And I was not that. You know. They would say fix her hair, you know, and Mark would just say leave her alone, you know. And so I think I just was not like a regular type. And some people recognize that.

I mean I was doing something once and I was starring in some TV movie and I was standing off to the side and a few people passerbys were watching them shoot and they said, oh, they're doing a movie. Who's staring in this? And I said I am, And I said, no, no, really, who's storing in it? And I should no, no, no, you know, coming from theater, my theater background, people would say, if they saw me in something, what did they do to you? You know, because it's a different medium, and it's if I was doing it now, I think that I'd have a whole different way of kind of navigating because it's less dimensional, you know, so now we get kind of grittier stuff.

I think, you know, the material is grittier. The characters back then, like in the seventies or eighties, they were much more girls in jeopardy and you know, things like that, and you did a lot of that, right, I did a lot of that, and they were token kind of they were the better roles, but they were token roles, you know. And I always thought if I ever did like which I wouldn't, like a memoir or something, it would be called Get the Girl, because you know, there were there would be shots of me having a brain tumor being having locked in a straight jacket, you know, being jumped out of helicopters and running and being suicidal, you know, like different cuts of girl in Jeopardy. And I didn't they you know, the ad or the assistant director would call you and they'd say get the girl, you know, because you almost didn't have a name.

It was the girl. In trouble in Jeopardy. You know, so I think it's a little different now and performing says are can be a lot richer and and you know, multi leveled and you can see more. But it's it's a very different, very different skill, and it so depends on using yourself in a different way to be honest, to be to film, film and television. Even film is different than television.

That is so interesting. Sharon Glass talked about that. She talked about did she Yeah, she talked about the difference. She said, I think I'm built for like I love my relationship with the lens. Yes, you know, you just want moments that feel like you're really there and you're with somebody.

Yeah. Yeah, you know I did a lot of things that were you know, a girl committing suicide, is that the that's the calling? And I was going to ask her, Oh what was I to word with him? And like you probably didn't, we did. I never met him.

Oh it's too bad. I never met him. But what I did do on that show was I wore Columbo's trench coat in the whole show. You what happened. We went to the wardrobe department and I was going to be in a trench coat.

And you know, actors when they wear the same thing, have doubles and triples of the same thing. And on it was a tag that said, Colombo, that's awesome. I was wearing Columbo's trench coat in the whole TV movie and were you Like, basically the whole time going, Peter Falk was wearing this Peter I am in Peter fox skin. But the thing about that was that that was based on a kind of a true story. And a girl called into a talk show and the talk show guy was very rash and harsh, you know, and she said, you know, something like is life worth living?

You know, I don't remember what the lines were, but she was definitely in need and in trouble. And he came back with some snarky comment and said like, yeah, well then why don't you off yourself or something? You know, life is so crappy, why don't you do that? And then all these people call in say how could you say that? And then they start looking for her, So it cuts back and forth between him and me in terms of searching for me where I was.

And at the end of that script, she ends up being saved the last minute and I was talking to the director and I said, you know, I don't think she should be saved because this is real and it's not where everybody gets saved at the last minute. So if somebody is really thinking about this, they've got to know that there's consequences, you know what I mean. And that was real and that really happened, and the comment back was, we cannot show a violent death on ABC at that time of a girl, so it had to be that way. Did you find that you often were in a situation or found yourself speaking to the director or someone else in the production about your thoughts about what was going on with your character or what was happening.

Yeah, there was one time when I thought I was really proud of myself and one time when I was really not. And you have to be so oh careful with that in terms of where you are with it. The time that I was really proud of myself and when I figured something out in that moment, I was doing a Walton's and I was playing a blind girl and I had this really long speech about what it felt like to be blind, and I was like, you don't understand, you know, I you know what it feels like long, long speech, which was most actors would be thrilled. And I read it and I thought, this doesn't sound right. I can't say this.

It doesn't feel honest, you know. It felt kind of like a cliche idea of it. And I thought, I'm just a guest guest star. I'm not a regular and I don't even know if a're regular, and so I can't go to the writer and say anything. I can't go to the director and say anything.

It's like, who do you think you are? And this also goes back to Payday because there's a lot of situations like that, and I thought, I don't want to say this. I mean, it's cutting my lines. It's it's not real. And I went I thought, I'm going to the top and I went to Richard Thomas.

I was going to say you went to joy Don boy, and I thought, who could I go to? And very privately and I didn't really know him, you know, I was just I said, Richard, you see these lines, but somehow I don't know what do you feel? What if you said them, like I said, because it's not feeling right that I'm saying them, But if you say them, I can then say and I ended up just pounding on his chest without really saying those words. It was like, no, you don't know. And then he got to say, I know it feels like this, and it's like no, and he got He was happy because he got more lines, and I was like, yes, I did the right thing, you know.

And then so that was one brownie point. I have two a lot more brownie point. That was it. I got another one. The director told me to not do something.

Can you say what show? What movie? Well, one incident was in Family Okay, first season. Everybody was wonderful, but it was a director that say to Thompson. The lead actress was like director, and we were doing a scene together and I started to cry.

She was saying something to me and I started to cry and it felt appropriate to me, you know, And he said, no, no, no, I don't want you to do that. And he said, just don't do anything. It's your face, you know, you know what I mean, It's okay. And I didn't know what to do. I did not know what to do.

And it was early on in the season, and you know, and I spoke to an actor friend of mine and I said, what should I do? And he suggested. He said, you know, you can go okay, okay, and then when the camera rolls, you just do what you do and it's on film. No, I did not go over well, I have never ever been yelled at. Oh my, And I think and says nothing against any Sata was great.

It had nothing against that. But I think he really was wanting to protect who he was protecting and put the focus there, you know, and he did not want some younger actress, you know what I mean, to make it look like it was about her, you know, And so that happened on that And then when I was doing Payday, there were a lot of scenes and as an actor, you know, you look at the structure of something and I'm going, well, this is the turning point of her character. She was in a department store with Rip Torn and everybody was falling all over him, and she gets to see why, you know, she got so enamored and take the trip with him, you know, because he's such a big deal. And this scene was in a department store and I didn't even have anything to say.

It wasn't about that, but it was me experiencing the glory of being in the glory of somebody, you know, and so I got to be Google eyed. And it turned out right before we were shooting that the writer, Don Carpenter was there and the director, and he said, we're cutting that scene. And that happened a lot in television two is that you take a part and it's a lot richer than you think it is, and then you get pink pages and yellow pages and orange pages because you know, they have to cut it for time, for money, whatever. And he said, no, I mean we have to cut it and it's not integral to it, and I'm sure budget wise it was exterior with a lot of you know. And I said, no, you can't cut that scene.

It's the turning point and blah blah, and he said, well, you go home. And we were all staying like at a you know, Motel six in Georgia somewhere, you know, and you give me like five reasons why we should keep this scene. So I do my homework and I give him the five reasons, thinking, okay, you know. So he looks at it and he reads it and he says, oh, little girl, you've got a lot to learn. Okay.

So that was that, and then reviews came out and The first review in the New York Times of the first Thing that you do says basically, this movie is off. It's blah blah blah, and everybody got slashed. And I'm standing there reading your first review in the New York Times, you know, being slashed, and I'm going, yeah, well that's sort of what I thought, and that's that okay. Then it turns out some weeks later it gets re reviewed by Pauline Kale, who was like the big time, the new hot Yeah, she was like the critic, and she comes out and it makes the top ten movies of the year as this classic you know before it was before Nashville. It was, you know, this this kind of new wave thing.

But in her review it said, but there was just something missing. It had a flatness to it. So years you years later, I'm doing a play Jules five for play and I got to meet Juels Fiber and he cast me and Don Carpenter lived in Marin and he came and I got like two dozen roses or something, and there's a little note on the roses like fifteen years later, and all it said was you were right awesome. I know, So didn't I really make up for it. You know.

It was like, you know, when you're young, I think you have a kind of some people have a kind of naturalness that you know. When you get old, older, I think you come maybe come back to that a little bit. But it takes a long time because you get It's not that you're beaten down, but you get more aware of it's not proper to do certain things. It was like at one point I decided I wanted to write an article about something, and I found the editor of the magazine. It was a magazine, and I thought, if I do it an article, they could buy the article rather than a spec script, you know what I mean.

I was like trying to figure out the easier way to do something, and I looked up the editor's name and I had an idea for a story, and I called the editor. I didn't know that you don't do that. And a friend of mine was like an editor at Viking or Dunton, and I told her and she said, you call the editor and I said yeah. She picked up. And you know, when you get older, I could never do you know what I mean?

You like, you get layers. And that's why I think circling back to performing arts. I think we didn't have those layers then, and we were of a certain age where we just were open books. It was fame. You were dancing in the streets and everyone wanted to watch you.

You know, we had a channel for something that we would have covered up if we didn't have an outlet. And I really think that kids and people that it can be such a healthy way can be, you know, to open yourself up and let out stuff that you wouldn't in life necessarily walk around being and so you get to sort of I always felt like if I tried to do anything back then, you know, it would be to connect and touch another person. And so that requires, I think, a certain vulnerability, no, and not have the lessons that you've learned, you know, or the skill that there's I mean, somebody like you look at Jennifer Lawrence now, I mean I think there's some wonderful younger actresses that are just like off the charts, and you see her in interviews and stuff, and she has this kutzpah.

You know, I don't think she's afraid of being exposed. You know, even when she is exposed or she makes something, she'll say, oh my god, I'm a jerk, and you're just drawn to that honesty, you know. Yeah. And sometimes even as a director, you can work with somebody and you could say, just stop it, hut it, you know, yeah, talk to me, just talk to me. And I had a teacher, I think it was Peggy Fury, and she had a whole following and I didn't I'd never followed anybody because I knew, you know, they were human.

And I took one class from her and I sat in and I was working at that time, so I didn't want to screw around too much with what I was doing. And I got up and I did a scene. And I was used to using my body because of my stage experience, you know, kind of expressing myself, and I was used to accessing things in a certain way, however way that was. And she said, okay, stop stop, stop stopping, said I want you to sit there, and you cannot move, just kind of move. And I thought, what is she doing.

She's taking away what I know how to do, you know, and she must think I'm terrible, I mean, and she was saying to everybody, all these other people, oh you're so you're so great, and I think they weren't that great, and she was like ripping me apart. So I sit there and you know, it was a very simple scene that wasn't showy but had a lot of stuff. And I'm sitting there and I'm just not moving, and I start talking and all of a sudden started coming up that I never even knew was there, and she it was like cut the extreme stuff, you know, but that which is what I felt like, was me. Yeah, and some deeper place came out. Yeah, And I never forgot that.

And I've seen some people directors work with actors or I've been directing some you know, theater stuff, and I watch and they're not getting at certain things, and then I'll go, all right, forget everything. I just need you, you know what I mean, to tell me what's going up in in here, what's going on? And it's like night and day, you see, like this whole other person kind of come out because we have ideas of things. And I said afterwards, you know, it's intimidating when you feel like you're taken down by a teacher like that that has such a reputation. And I said afterwards, I said, oh my god, she must have thought I was awful, and somebody said, no, she only does that to people she really like, you know, like, and I can see that when I'm working with people now.

Or I used to review plays and you get excited when you see something in somebody and you think maybe you can bring it out and it's really exciting, you know, and you go, Okay, don't do that, and it feels like you're kind of cutting them down and you have to do it in a certain way and you can't do it to everybody. But or when I would review something, you know, when it's not that good or people don't have it, you know that a lot of times they're not working for money or they're you know what I mean, and they it's more of a hobby or a wanna be a situation, and you kind of don't bother because it's not I mean, it's not fertile ground, you know what I mean. It's just like, but if you see somebody that has something and you feel you can bring something to it, then it becomes like, oh wait, I can feel you doing it.

That's your thing. I don't want to see your thing, you know, that's your default mechanism, you know how to do that. I don't want to see that the sort of actor tricks the acting when you get nervous, you go into your mode of being and you have like another face, you know, and it's like that's your fail safe and you do that, I think a lot on TV because you have Usually they don't have time. You have one take and the director barely talks to you because he doesn't have the time. He's looking at shots, he's looking at the sound, and they basically just have to cast it right and hope that you're there.

So you do a one take thing and you move on. Yeah, all right, Well, speaking of time, we're going to have to take a break. But I want to come back, and I want to We got it because we got to cover the Rockford Files. We gotta cover ten Speed and Brown Shoe. Okay, and we'll be back.

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Remember this is the year to invest in yourself. Oh my gosh, you did too Rodford Files episodes. So I'm curious what it was like to work with James Gardner and Stuart mcgolan because in one episode you marry him, you married I married Stuart, I married Angel. Well, where to begin. James Garner was absolutely, if possible, even sweeter than he appears.

And I do have a tiny, tiny story that links to this that he was nothing but genuinely a sweetheart. And he said something like he would have probably been a shoe salesman if it hadn't been for me to Rosenberg, his producer and manager, who kind of was his pusher, you know, into the business, because he was that kind of laid back and not that aggressive in that way, but just this kindest person, certainly to me. And I met this guy I was outside my home many years ago, and he said, oh, I saw that you worked with James Garner. And I said, yeah, he did it, and he said, oh, yeah, I met him. He's really awful.

He's just this terrible guy. And I said really, I mean, he was so nice to me. And I said, why what happened? See, you always have to ask and he said, well, I was on one of the shows and I was doing background and he was walking by and I said something to him and he didn't even turn around. He just kept walking.

And who does he think he is? And I'm thinking he's walking to do a shot. He might not even even heard the guy. He doesn't know him. And now this guy is telling everybody that Garner is this awful person.

Okay, all right, now we have another cut too, ready. So I'm shooting Payday and I'm doing Payday and I'm really nervous. I was getting over at that time, when my first thing, I was getting over that pneumonia thing that I had. I was nervous that I could even do it. And I never did a film before.

And you know, you have to hit your mark and you have to do all that. So I was just quiet and focused on what I needed to do, you know. I mean, like, I hit my mark on this line, blah blah blah. Okay to many years later, I'm doing Cry for Help, which was the suicide one and the Robert Colpe suicide and it was the last shot and we had just finished. I knew everything was going to be okay, meaning we did everything.

And I'm joking around with the crew, you know, because there I had to be lying almost dead in the Malibu Ocean, you know, the pier under the pier, you know. So I'm joking around and it's like, sure, we should know we did it. And this older DP director of photography comes up to me and said, boy, you have changed so much, And I said, what do you mean. It turned out he was the original DP on Payday and and Darryl Duke was directing Cry for Help. So he used you know, many like fifteen years later, and he said you were such a then, and I said what I really, that's not me, you know, And I said what he said?

You didn't even talk to the crew like you were above it or something above it. I was terrified. You were twenty two. I was twenty two and terrified that I didn't even know if I was going to make it, you know what I mean, And I'm going, I'm shooting a movie. I just you know what I mean.

I was like in the hospital, you know, I was gaunt and scared, and I was like hoping that I didn't get it, because I you know, I really didn't know. I thought, you see you again, you can't trust what somebody says about somebody else unless you really really know this. And he said, and look at you. Now you're kidding and you're joking. I didn't tell jokes to the crew.

I was just in my little zone and I was trying to concentrate. I wasn't secure enough to joke around, and I was trying to, you know, stay in character. And that's what it was like. Boy, She's she's stuck up, like she's stuck up, and You're like, I'm acting opposite. Yeah, who was like flying off the Okay, you want to hear a restaurant?

Yes we do. So there was a scene in Payday and in this scene and this goes to Sharon, a question that you asked earlier about having potentially what do you do when you're supposed to do something as an actor, you know, and you run into it. And in the scene it said that my character cries. It was and I thought, no, I don't think she should cry. It's not part of the thing.

And so I said to the director before we shot the scene, just to let him know. I said, I just want you to know I'm not going to cry. He said, okay, you know. So we go to shoot the scene and I'm doing it the way I thought was the right way to do it, and Rip says, You're not going to cry, and I said, no, no, I'm not because it's just not going to and he goes make up and he calls makeup over and he goes, okay, roll it. Let's do the scene.

And they start rolling the camera and out of the blue, this person in makeup comes along with this thing that blows in your eye. Never saw this, never knew about it, and it was like a menthol air. Oh yeah, I never saw it since or heard of it. But I don't know if other people have used it or what. But the camera's rolling, we're going and she's blowing this thing in my eye and tears start coming down my face and we do the scene.

I was so angry. Yes, wow, it was like a such a violation, you know. And he said, don't worry, honey, you'll probably get like an Academy Award for it or something like that. And I went back to my hot to Motel six room and you know, I love the director, but he didn't stick up for me because Rip Torn was the movie and if he exploded and walked off, we didn't have a movie, you know. And so you know those glasses that they have that you drink from in the motel rooms and the paper stuffed in them, there are about five of them on the vanity, you know where the sink.

I took all five of those glasses, went outside the motel and there was this big brick wall and I went webb and I threw and broke every single one of those glasses. And that was like another one of my healthy moments of how do you get it out, you know, of your system, and it was that was kind of what happened. And sometimes you see things and you don't know, you know, accidents happen on film and they're you know, like in the Julia Roberts where she played the prostitute for that big film and that scene where she opens up right and you know, that was like a mistake and she just laughed and that became the go to moment in the in the movie. Well, I didn't really cry in that scene, but that's what happened.

So but they, you know, basically forced you to without without and yeah, you're out of you know, yes, that's that's crazy. Yeah, so you know, there's all kinds of ways to deal with that, and the way that he chose to do it is definitely not anywhere near the top of the list. It's off the bottom of the list. It's kind of crazy. Some people are very gutsy about it and say, too bad, I'm doing it this way, and then it's very hard.

It's like you then might get a reputation or you might get you know, canned people get labels, and you just don't know the story right right, So yep, all right, Just to throw back to Rockford Foust for a second. Yeah, the Rattlers episode, the episode where ye was directed by Matta Rosenberg. Do you remember what? Oh, you know what, that's so interesting. I didn't remember that.

But we were in a bank. Once. I was in a bank near Universal and I was, you know, waiting online, and there was a woman standing behind me and she said, excuse me, you look like an Elaine Hilville type. Oh really, I mean I know that anybody even knew my name. And it turned out I said, I am her, and she was made of Rosenberg.

But the strange thing about that episode is that I had already shot the other one first, the Rattlers or what you know episode, And at that time, unbeknownst to anybody, we were very very private about I was always private in my personal life. I was living with Stuart margoln Oh, and nobody knew. Wow, and out of the blue I got cast and he was so nervous about me being cast in something that he was familiar with that after we shot, and so nobody knew and nobody knew what you were sh No nobody knew after I mean, nobody ever knew. We were living together, and and Stuart, I never you know, I was always involved with like the other side of nepotism. Nobody wanted to work with anybody they were like with it was like too you know, it was too too fraud, you know, And you know, either let's be personal or not, you know, so nobody knew.

And then after we shot this scene, you know, he was like, butter. We would go to a hotel somewhere on locate, you know, location, and I'd have the TV blasting and I'd say, should I turn this down? He was learning lines, says no, no, no, no no. He was one of these, like brilliant that he could just look at something and he'd have the lines and he'd direct them and I would have to be up all night long saying them eighty thousand times. But anyway, we were doing this scene and afterwards he was really angry at himself.

I was so worried about what you were doing that I wasn't thinking about. I was watching you and I wasn't thinking and I don't even know what I did. So it was I mean, it was sweet, you know, but they get people get protective and nervous about that. So that is so interesting. And then you but you married him in the episode?

Was that weird? Well, no, because we were in such character, you know, and I that there wasn't any real reality to it, you know. And we shot it at this little church and Van Nuys and it was very much like, you know, I was some Armenian daughter with a brother, so it's a sister of something, and he was Angel, this wacky, funny character who you know is working a con. He is working a con, and so I don't think it really had any personal dynamic to it. We were just doing our thing.

Well, what I love is there's there's there's like great scenes with just you and James Garner in that episode, and then there's great scenes with you and I don't remember any of them. But because you're like, oh, and it is a somewhat impossible plot to follow, I can't. I was saying, I would get these scripts and I could never I never read them fully because I didn't understand them. They I just am very bad at figuring out who done it. And it was like, I know, this is a popular show and we love James Garner, but I can't figure these things out.

So I would just read my part, not figure and not have to know what was going on anywhere else. It was better because the character didn't know what was happening. I didn't know what was going on. Were you want to watch or rewatch your own work or did you basically stay away from them after Mostly sometimes I would see it like when it was on, but I never ever ever told anybody that I, you know, when something was on. I was just so I was okay, I'm okay in front of strangers, but people that I know, I you know, all the flags go up of not being good enough or being self conscious.

So I never ever told anybody or publicized anything. And I would maybe watch it once. I once watched Daily's once one daily meaning one day, and it was for this emergency thing, that emergency the show, Yes, the show, and I wasn't going to do the show because I didn't think anybody like me watched it, and you know, and I was wrong. That was like I got all this fan stuff saying I went into this career because of you, you know, like you and I did it and I went, oh god, people actually saw it. But I was no idea agency for I had no idea.

And the director I think of the show was like an Emmy winning writer and he had just directed, and I don't think he was like that great as a director. I don't mean in the episode, just just in general. He was just starting or something like that. And I said, how come you're doing it, you know, like, and he said, well, because I know I can write. You know, it was interesting.

But I saw a daily and I went, oh my god. I thought I didn't look bad in what I saw, and I usually think, you know, oh my god, you look terrible. I thought it looked like I could almost be a model who can't act, you know. I was like, looked okay in that shot. But man, was I bad, you know what I mean?

It was like I was dead. And I thought, I think I better either amp it up. You know, you can't. It's so hard when you haven't found your sweet spot, when you're not used to let's say television. And many years ago I saw Payday.

It was playing at like Grauman's Chinese Theater as some retrospective thing, and I snuck in and that's when I saw the boob shot for the first time. And I don't know if anybody would notice it. I thought I was completely different in the first half than in the second half. And I think think some might say it was better in the first half or worse in the first half. And I think I could see myself acting kind of a little bit in the first half, and I saw myself relaxing a little more in the second half, and it really changes.

It's it's a real art. It's a very cool, cool art, like to find your spot. Yeah, your energy, your spot. Yeah, it really is. So Yes, that's Rockford, that's Rockford.

Okay. So you also worked with Brian Keith in Hawaii. Yeah? Did you go to Hawaii for both that and Hawaii? I've o oh yeah, oh my god.

Yes, And this was the day when I don't know now because I haven't been doing it, but man, they treated you really nicely. I mean, everything first class. And you get to the what was it the Kahala Hilton and all kinds of fruit baskets and yes, and Brian Keith was adorable. And he had to write some prescription for some baby that I had that was deaf, and he was playing a doctor or something. And when he handed me the prescription, he wrote some funny note on it, you know what I mean, and it's like, Okay, I'm shooting this is my close up, please don't crack me up.

And yeah, and then the other the Hawaii five O was the same thing. And Stephen Boyd, who I guess was big in what was the movie Hercules? Or one of the big he was a huge star Spartan or you know, one of those things. He couldn't have been lovelier. And he shockingly passed away about two weeks after we shot that.

Oh wow, wow, But no, it was very lovely. I mean that they treated you know, they were really I don't know what they're doing now, but then it was they did kind of treat you very well. I don't I doubt that they're they're doing quite the same things these days. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they really did. It was very respectful.

And I got to go to Hawaii and I stayed and I think Stewart even joined me after one of the Hawaii fi os. Yeah, and we stayed for a little while. Okay, when you were talking just now talking with my husband and I couldn't hear what you guys were saying because he had my headphones. Did you tell him that you were in a relationship with Stuart my role one? I don't think so.

I don't think we got to that. Oh my god, he's about to lose his mind. Yeah, and he listens to this episode. I'm never going to tell him he's got to listen to Yeah, secrets all right? Then, I won't tell him either, But no, of course I can't tell him.

I'll last about a day pretending not to tell him. Stuart Stewart was the one who told me when the camera rolled to just do what I wanted to do, and that got me in so much trouble because he could get away with it. He could get away with it. You had to be really careful with you know, what position you were in, you know. So I'm sure he yeah, I'm sure nobody told him anything because he was just so brilliant, you know, in mind and his sweetheart.

Wow, that's amazing. All right, So Ten Speed and Brown Shoe, any any memories of shooting that and working with those two actors? The thing I think I did it. It was very short lived, right, I mean, it's like what six episodes or I don't even remember if it was a season. It was a season, but it was a short season.

It was fourteen episodes. It's going to start Jeff glip the for our listeners, Jeff Goldbloom, Ben Vereen. It was created by Stephen Kannell. Yeah, and like I'm a big Stephen Cannell Rockford, you know, yes, but it was short lived. But it's so weird.

It's such a weird show. It really is. It was very quirky and I never saw it actually, but what I do remember is we were sitting on set and Steve Kannell was sitting there. We were talking and I think it was the first episode, like really early on, and he said, you know what's interesting because they didn't know if the show was going to be picked up or not. And he said, what was really interesting about it was that if it's a flop the show, it's going to be on the actors and that they're going to have a hard time after but writer producers can go on interesting And I remember him saying that when we were having lunch one day, Jeff was there and Ben Veren was there and we were talking and it turned out that Ben Veren had gone to Performing Arts and Jeff Goldblum had auditioned for Carnegie and didn't make it.

Oh A good lunch conversation. A good lunch conversation. Yeah, but that was that. So that was fantastic. And can you tell us a little bit about working on the Chinese Prime Minister TV movie and working yes, same Judith Anderson.

Yeah, that was from a play by Enid Bagnold, who wrote The Chalk Garden. And she was an old, you know, solid old playwright. And it was actually for something called Hollywood Television Theater, which was like a PBS, you know, one of their special shows. And I got friendly with Dame Judith and she was living in Santa Barbara, and I'd go up and spend some weekends at her house in Montecito, and she was wonderful. And one day she said she had beautiful home.

And I took pictures of her myself, you know, and have them. And in her garden she grew vegetables and everything. And she said to me once, you know, I'm getting rid of stuff. She was already older at that point, and she said, just pick anything that you want in my house and take it. Oh well, I mean there was a baby grand piano.

It's like hello, you know, I'll just roll this out the door. Don't mind me. I'll just make a phone call to my mover. And so there was this little I have it in my room, hand painted like wooden jewelry box that she had, and you know, I thought, I'm not going to take a portrait of her, you know what I mean? An oil painting or something.

They thought, no, I think I'll just take the little box. And I said, is this okay? She said, oh my goodness, that they gave me that when I played Hamlet. She played Hamlet, was in like Britain and toured as Hamlet, and that was the gift they gave her. So I have this note and this this hand painted jewelry box from Judith named Judith.

Yeah, that's pretty good. Yeah. And she had this big designer, like you know, Louis Vuitton or you know what I mean. It was, he's one of those people designed the clothes for the show. And I got to wear gene throughout the whole show.

She had downs and I got this big designer with jeans. So that was it. But yes, we became very close and it was a very special relationship afterwards, Lovely, that is so cool. Anybody else you worked with it, you're like, oh my god, this person was amazing or very very weird. Well we know already one of the possible weird persons.

But other than that, I mean, everybody really was menche you know. Yeah, yeah, all right, And so tell us a little bit about your theater work as a writer and director and actress. Yeah, and what you're up to now these days? Yeah, well I kind of am proud of certain things because it's not my first language. You know, it's like I'm speaking a second language.

And I never ever had aspirations to be a I mean, it just sort of happened. It's like, you know, you need something to do, and why not. And so I get to say this just to my close friends and now that you're gonna be my that's right, my pals, because you know so much about me more than most people. Now I get to say I get to count this is a secret because I don't post things. No, it's not.

I am in sixteen. This is just me because it's big best of anthologies like best short plays, best women's men's monologues, all of that stuff. And I'm really excited and proud, like to get published in real stuff. And these are like the editors from Samuel French and people that have read everything. So I get to go, you know, like, no, that's stuff.

I like whisper that you know and yes, yes, yes so And I did just recently what you saw Susan, which was a play at Theater West that started out as a short ten minute piece that was done by this spectacular actress, June Shriner, who's now starting to she was going to come back and do the full length play, but she was starring in a movie and it morphed into a full length play. But it was also in like Best Women's Monologues of twenty twenty or something, and it was one long, like fifteen minute monologue as a standalone piece. And then I wrote a lot more of those monologues and put it together as a full length and just recently kind of had that read of like a staged reading of that, and it's called it's called Nighty Night, and it takes place in the Bayou with kind of images of darkness and subconscious things going on.

And I love kind of that whole milieu of the South and the stories and motifs of the like monsters in the mud, you know, in the swamp land. So I'm doing two short comedies now just to get my brain out of that place. And it's going to be in a festival at Theater West. So I've kind of come full circle with starting out in the theater and then it's kind of like coming back home. I didn't do a lot of it when I was doing more television and things like that.

But it really does feel like you get to write and say longer speeches, you get to talk more well. I think one of the great things about you writing monologues. It makes a lot of sense because those are usually just very important training and learning for actors, right, yes, and having been an actor, you know what it is to break down a monologue. You know what it is to find your way through a monologue, and so approaching that as a writer must be just a really amazing thing. I really really think that writing and directing now, if you get blessed enough to work with good actors, so trust their instincts about if they can't say it, you know what I mean, I mean, then there's something usually wrong with the way it's written.

And I write in a kind of rhythm in the way that I hear it said, and you kind of listen, you know, all right? And you're very private, so can people find you somewhere or no? I don't have a website. No, And I've had people say I'll do a website for you, you know, because they've seen it, and I go, it's okay, it's okay. But they can email me.

Thank you so much for sharing all these amazing stories with us and your journey. It's been really great to have you on the show. Oh thank you. It's been wonderful meeting you and talking. It's been a lovely conversation and we can't thank you enough for bring to do this.

Thank you, bye bye for our audioography. For today, I want to recommend two books that are out now or about to be out. So fetch The Making of Mean Girls and Why We're So Obsessed with It by Jennifer Keishan Armstrong. Jennifer wrote the book When Women Invented Television, and we hope to interview her this year for eighties TV ladies. Also, you can pre order Stan Zimmerman's book The Girls from Golden to Gilmore.

It is releasing February thirteenth. Somewhat fun, some five day Moonlight exchange. Who just sat on? That's right, dear listeners. In light of Moonlighting coming to streaming, we are kicking off a series of episodes with our very special guest, the creator of Moonlighting himself, mister Glenn Gordon.

Karen, you do not want to miss this special interview. No, you don't, You do not want to miss a special interview. Yes I do, no you don't. Yes I do, no you don't. She's my sister and my daughter.

We hope Eighties 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 twenty first century. See you next time, handsel pretty to the city.