Punched off a Train by Clint Eastwood and the Path to Resilience | Stuntwoman Marneen Fields

Hello listeners. You know, Sharon and I went back and forth and whether we should record something, and we really didn't know what to say. But at the same time, I hate to not say anything, So I'm going to paraphrase some quotes I found online and I hope it's helpful. In the darkest of times. Hope has the power to sustain us.

Hope is the pathway to resilience when the world is experiencing great turmoil. Please remember that humanity strength lies in resilience and our unwavering spirit to overcome. Throughout the span of history, people have faced unimaginable challenges and have emerged stronger. Acts of kindness, compassion, and bravery have shone brightly even in the most despairing moments. In the face of adversity.

Communities must come together, Individuals must rise to the occasion, and stories of hope must be found. They are all around. Even when overshadowed by anguish and feelings of hopelessness, you are not alone. Collective action can give us purpose and healing in fearful times. Prioritize your mental and physical health.

Be in the world, Look for joy, share a hug. Together, We look for ways toward healing, restoring our faith in humanity, and moving forward. Weirdy Way Media and so pretty through the city. Welcome to Eighties TV Ladies, where we look back in order to leap forward. Here are your hosts, Susan Lambert had Him and Sharon Johnson.

Hello. I'm Susan and I'm Sharon. You know, Susan, you missed a lot when you missed the fortieth anniversary of Scarecrow and Missus King Reunion last October. Yes, Sharon, And it's not something I feel bad about at all, just because you and Melissa met Martha Smith, Bruce Boxleitner, Eugenie Ross, Lemming, Brad Buckner, and so many of our fans in person, and I didn't. I'm perfectly fine with that.

Ah. Well, it was for a good cause in your case. I mean, I totally understand, totally totally understand your feeling. But we also had the opportunity to meet an amazing lady that we're going to be talking about today. Would she be an amazing eighties TV lady?

Bye Goodness? Yes, she is absolutely I love that. Who is it, Sharon? Her name is Marnine Fields and she's an award winning actress singer and stunt woman. She started working in television in nineteen seventy six and went on to appear in over one hundred and fifty films, TV series, music videos, and worked with actors and producers like Clint Eastwood, Stanley Kramer, Priscilla Presley, Tom Jones, James Garner.

Shirley Jones, Michael Kaine, Jeff Goldbloom, Dick Van Dijk, and of course, Bruce Boxleitner. She was a stunt woman on shows like Scarecromisus King, Lou Grant, Party Boys, and Nancy Drew Mysteries, The Man from Atlantis, The Fall Guy Murder. She wrote Dynasty and a ton of films, including Clintiswood's The Gauntlet. This Field is also a screenwriter, songwriter, composer, singer and author. Her story is a fascinating one of talent and resilience.

We are thrilled to welcome Marning Fields to eighties TV ladies. Thank you for joining us. Thank you very much for having me. I'm so thrilled. We're so happy to finally have the chance to talk with you and hear all about your life and various careers.

Yes, because you've done so many things. You're a singer, a songwriter, you're a filmmaker, you're an actress, and you've been a stunt woman, so many different things. Funny chance, do you have a favorite or any of those at the top of your list of things that you do well? Anything to do with music. Singing is my passion and it's where it's most challenging for me, and it's what I always wanted to do since I was a little girl.

I wanted to be a famous singer since first grade and I learned my first song, but I didn't think I could make it. And while I was in college on a gymnastics scholarship, I would go past the music room and I always wanted to be in there. Instead of going to the gym to do the gymnastics, I wanted to be the girl at the piano doing all the scales. So it took a long time, and after a bad car accident that ended my stunt career and derailed my acting career temporarily, I got in touch with my childhood dream of becoming a singer. That's amazing.

Do you remember what it was when you were a child that made you think, oh my gosh, I'd love to be a singer. I'd love to do this. Well. In first grade, they passed out instruments and I was late that day. And I don't know why I was late, but I was late to school.

And when I got there, all they had left was and I'm little, you know, and all they had was a giant string bass, and so that was my instrument, and I took it back and forth to school, and kids in the neighborhood in Culver City they still remember me dragging that bass back and forth to school every day in the little red wagon. And I was playing keyboards in my room, and I was also taking clarinet lessons, so everything. My dad was a square dance caller and a country western singer, and he had the first national TV show in the fifties based out of mine, not North Dakota, and so he said it two years old. I used to tap him on the foot and say, no, Daddy, it goes like this. I'd listen to him practice.

And both my parents had beautiful voices, and my brothers too, real talented as singers and actors and speakers, and one of my brothers is a comedian, and so it was always in the family. But it was that day in school and it was roro row your boat, and they passed out the music and we did it in around half did. Row row row your ro ro and we went. Around and it was just nothing else touched my heart as much. Growing up, every song was my favorite song.

And I had not lost my hearing yet. I didn't lose the left ear of my hearing till eighteen, and then I didn't lose half of the ride ear until the two thousands. I remember I was in there. I was sweeping the garage one day and what came on was I love you more today than yesterday, and I was just I went crazy. And so I knew at that moment sweeping the garage and spinning around with the broom and that I was a musical performing artist.

And I still love rock opera, and I hope I've got a lot of songs coming forward, and I hope, you know, the world gets to hear more of what I've composed, and you know, I still do a lot of other things, but that's my favorite. And no stage fright. As a kid, I know, for me, that was always a big deal performing in front of people or getting up in front of people, always gave me pause. Oh well that, you know, that is such a great question because nobody's asked me that. But there was, you know, I was like in Girl Scouts and Brownies.

I think this was in Brownies, and they chose me to do the color guards progression and they're going to take the stage and all this, and so I got out on the stage and I said, I was supposed to say color Guards advance, and everyone was going to and instead I came out on this stage. And this is typical of me still to today. I can make these kind of airs. I say color guards dismissed, nobody advanced, and so that was really frightening for me. I don't have any stage fright now because of the years that have gone into all of this from the gymnastics, but that memory always sticks with me that I'm going to get up there and I'm going to end it.

Before it begins. But you didn't let it stop you witch, clearly. So that's great. Oh yeah, I didn't let it stop me. But oh oh my god, I still remember that day if I think about it, and the embarrassment.

I'm curious. I want to go back to you lost your hearing, you were a stuntwoman without hearing, Like, does that affect your balance and just really your ability to work. Yeah, that's very true. Well, I lost all the hearing in the left ear at eighteen years old, and it took eighty decibels just leaving a fraction without entering the equilibrium nerves. Had it killed the equilibrium nerves, I would not be morning fields because I was a champion college gymnast on balance beam.

Then also floor exercise. What got me to be the number one gymnast at Utah State University was I was able to perform moves similar to Oga Corbett if you remember her, those back layouts to the straddle, and I practiced real hard for it. I would have been better as a swimmer. I probably could have made the Olympics. But yeah, it affected.

I was on a show and I remember that I went the wrong way, so I got really worried that had that been explosions and I went the wrong way or I didn't hear. But then shortly after that I had the car accident. In my stunt career was ended overnight as quickly as it had begun. My stunt career and stunt acting that's like a wonder to behold, which you guys know, you know, it's like, oh my God. And my phone rang off the hook for fifteen years.

Can you do this? Can you? Are you available? Can you do this? Can you do this?

And it was so exciting and all the stars. And then as I had the car accident, the career ended as suddenly overnight and the phone didn't ring again for twelve years as I went through horrific abdominal operations fighting for my life. And that's when I crawled to the microphone and sat on my bed and learned one hundred and fifty songs and I said, if I ever get back on my feet, I'm going to sing. And I never thought I'd get back on my feet. But in nineteen ninety nine, I met a doctor who saved my life, performed the final operation.

And this was five major abdominal operations, losing everything internally. UCLA would not do the surgery, they said it was too dangerous, and he did it. I survived and I was healed by Jesus and I got stronger and I've been pain free and got back on my feet, got baptized, and it's just a miracle. But it's been very difficult. Yeah, how do you like?

That's a lot. You seem like a very persistent person. I'm always curious about how strong stunt women are and how much they risk in terms of injury and then recovery and what you go through in healing from stuff. Is you always have that sort of the dark night of the soul. Right in the times that I've been injured or sick, were not well, you really have to push through.

How do you do that? What works for you? Well? I love that term dark knight of the soul? Wow, Because I was the fall girl.

Something always went wrong, but I wasn't badly injured. I would recover. There were lots of whiplashes, There were lots of bruises, Like I fought with Freddy Krueger and his steel fingernails, and they always put the woman and they had me in a pair of shorts and we did this fight scene and so I got home my massive bruises. But you know all that mattered that day? Was it?

After we did that fight so many times, I felt like a champion. I was like, you know, wow, But the car accident which I was. It was not It was not a film. You had a just a car. Yeah.

I was just driving home one day and an uninsured motorist in a big white truck ran a red light in the rain and I was second car through the light, and it just so happens. It was on Violand at moor Park and Studio City and there was a dip. I'd probably be dead, but he came. He took the He hit me right here. I looked up.

I said, oh my god, he's gonna hit me, and I went I felt an angel in the car, first of all. I felt a very powerful force in that car, and I turned my back. All I could think it was to turn my. Back, like as if it was a high fall, and give him, give my bag. And I was a strong, little champion.

I was solid, but I was real tiny. I had the little popeye muscles, one hundred and fifteen pounds. And I turned my back. But as he came through the front door, and he took the whole left side of the car off, and I got shoved somehow into the gear shift and my seat snapped and the seat belt locked me in, and he then I hit to dip, so he then slid in the back door, and the whole back door sliced the back seat, so if anyone would have been sitting there, they'd be dead completely. But then it spun the car, so there was this horrible vertigo and it took me a block, like a whole block, and I ended up somewhere and the next thing I remember the bluest eyes, Are you okay?

These gorgeous blue eyes, And he got me cut out of the seat belt, and the ambulance came. They transferred me hospitals. I was in and out of consciousness for like five days. I don't remember being transferred from hospitals. And that's that's when things were really bad.

And I laid in neck and pelvic traction for ten months in the hospital. I didn't know what And I got out of that and it took me a year to hang laundry again because my arms were on the steering wheel. But I started to get stronger, and about two years into it, I went back to work, and so I would get on stage to do my theater stuff. I couldn't remember the lines. So I went on large doses of vitamins and coleen and anocetol to get my brain functioning back.

And I'll still mess up. I still get you know, I went back to work at you know, on fall Guy, and didn't do real hard stuff. But then I got called to play a murder. She wrote doubling Linda Hamilton from the terminator as a tennis pro. So I was real good at tennis, and I was like almost a pro from high school.

And so I got out there and I'm the tennis pro and at one point I go up for the ball and I just kind of fall back. Well, I hit my bottom and I'm there on the set and I went into the most excruciating pain, and I. Didn't dare tell anyone. So I got into the bathtub that night and my stomach now had blown up the size of a watermelon, and I'm like, oh no, something's really wrong. So we called the ambulance and there was a tumor where that tissue tried to regrow that was ripped those several years prior, and it was attaching to the bladder, and if a tumor attaches to the bladder, you're dead in seconds.

So they were in the Motion Picture hospital and they rushed me in to emergency surgery. And for twelve years I had a bleeding disorder and stood in the doorway, screaming in heights of excruciating pain. And so I lived on. My residuals and I took work as a spiritual advisor, laying on my bed, sitting on my bed and still trying to bring money in, just losing everything. I no one will ever know.

And when I. Moved, I would have to get down on the floor and push the boxes with my legs. I was too weak to stand up. When you lay for twelve years and you have your stomach cut open, and you're open there and the lower you know, there's a lot. That goes on that's between life and.

Death, and so I have a lot to say about different things. And when you go through twelve years of that, you come out of it very peaceful. And you come out of it. I was never violent to begin with. But you don't have a lot of the negative emotions that other people are running around with because you've barely made you know.

It's a miracle, but. It would be really I think understandable if having gone through all of that you did, there were still caring number of negative emotions. I think it's remarkable that you're not, and how much better that makes things for you. On a day to day basis. So that's how I then became a songwriter because during all this and crawling to the microphone and learning, and I sang Barber streisand every day because I thought, if I try hard on it, one day, I'll sound like her.

But you know what, I'll never say, I don't have the instrument. I'm alto soprano. I do sing a few of her songs, but not either. You don't hear Barbara Streisand but I was like, I will become the best singer I can be, which is the same with gymnastics. I didn't do one hand standard flip club.

I did thousands upon thousands. And you know, it sounds like you were able to use that resilience to really focus on what you love and get better and better at it it and sort of that constant seeking for stuff. I mean, it's just incredibly impressive. I'm incredibly you know. My sister and I were talking about female stunt women and she's like, well, there are bades and I'm we're going to have to bleep that because we don't have.

Yeah, I'm not your average stunt woman because I was so gentle and peaceful and I had the gymnastics talent. You know, I wasn't a motorcycle girl. I didn't grow up with horses. I had the swimming and the gymnastics and dance. But what's interesting is when you mentioned resilience.

I created a short documentary about my life that I'm expanding into a full documentary and it's the resilience of Marnine Fields. That's amazing. Well, so I have lots of questions about the shows that you were on as a stunt woman. And I got to tell you might be tiny and very filled with love, which I love, but you threw yourself around a little. It's unbelievable what I got called to do.

You know? I did the feet first jump off the first Interstate Bank building in a neglichet and little fluffy slippers with a little heel, and that was seventy six stories high at night? Was that the Quincy one? Yeah? The Quincy depth of Beauty?

Quincy depth of Beauty? Okay, how do you do that? Well, mainly it's like how did I get that job? I was? I was walking through the halls of Universal Studio, And what's so interesting is it sometimes I get stopped and people would say, you.

Know, are you Marne Field? Yes? And then one day I was stopped and this girl says, what's your name and I said marnying In Fields and she said, oh, you're in payroll every week and I, you know, I worked all the time. So I was walking through the hall and a guy bolts out of the production office and he says, Martin Fields, come here. He says, are you available Friday night?

And I said I thought about yes, And he says, are you able to do a high fall or high jump? Sure? Of course. I didn't think it was going to be. Seventy six stories high on the edge of the building.

Now, the jump itself was only twenty or thirty feet and they brought in. It was in the gutter and the building has since burned down, but it was the highest building. And just being on the ledge and there's one photo up on my IMDb where I do three clips of that job and I have an arrow going to me way up there, and I'm like such a tiny spick And I was on that ledge and when I hit those boxes, they're supposed to collapse. Well, I hit the boxes and I started to balance because I was so little and I'm in those heels. Luckily I was a gymnast because I thought to sit in my bottom down.

Otherwise I'd be dead. I would have went right off that edge. But many of my things were like that, and it was really frightening, and I was like kind of glancing down. I do want to back up and start with where you started. So you were a gymnast, and what made you decide to go into stunts.

Well, I was home from college on an ankle reconstruction surgery before any of this stunts took place. Somehow, I did not ever say to myself, this can't be done. You've had that ankle surgery. This can't be done. You have this hearing impairment, this can't be done.

It's just crazy, you know when you think about it now. But being a pioneering stunt woman, they didn't have things worked out back then, all of us, we all took it hard. You know, we didn't have the air bag. I went into an air bag once. As a gymnast, I had a spring floor once.

I got to tumble one day on a spring floor. Whoa. You know the rest of it was. All my legs and I got beat up by a Wonder Woman on a show where I had to act like she had thrown me no jerk off cables back then for use on me. I did high falls.

I did a high fall from the boiler room swinging catwalk of the Queen Mary into only some blankets blankets because they couldn't get even a small twin mattress through the door. Well, here's some blankets to fall on twenty feet. What was that for? Yeah, that was for Goliath Awaits. So I had this horrible ankle surgery, which ended my last year of college at Utah State.

My dad insisted that I come home to Ventura and my older brother, Bobby Fields, he went down to his stunt school, Paul Stater Stunt School, and he says, I can't do this stuff, my sister can. And so I went down and Paul stayed to recognize a champion athlete and gymnast in me. Took me under his wing and he discovered me, Paul Stater, and he discovered a lot of us, a lot of your most famous stuntmen, a few women, but mainly stunt men who became the top coordinators of the day. They came out of Paul's school and I was twenty one and Paul was already sixty five or sixty seven, and Paul did we did a double person high dive with him over me where we both go off the bridge at the same time on Man from Atlanta.

And he was like sixty seven or something when he did that dive with me, and just an amazing man. And he got me into the screen actors Skilled on a movie of the week called The Spell. I landed the acting role of one of the mischievous school mates, and then I also climbed the rope without my legs. But then I also had to do the high backward high fall from the dangling rope onto a little mattress. And that's my first job in the industry.

And that then words started to spread, and that's why I was. I had so much work. I'm so thrilled I did because I missed that gymnastics. I don't miss the stunts. Then you worked on Wonder Woman, And did you work with Linda Carter?

Yes, she was the main person in the scene with me, and she beat me up and threw me all over her apartment and I had to fly over the couches onto my back on the hardwood floor, you know, but I was chained on how to do all of this. The gymnastics. Very few women. I think I was the only real champion gymnast doing stunts. So years, the early years.

Now there's lots of them, but back then, you know, when I got my scholarship in gymnastics, there were only three in the whole United States that received that. They didn't give athletics scholarships, so went back then. That's what's remarkable is like, okay, I didn't have a gymnastics coach learning back flip flops. I went into the gymnasium on the hardwood floor and I started with backwalkover. Both legs, backwalk.

Over there, and one day I said, you know, I think I'm going to try that flip flop. And same with balance beam. I remember practicing on the balance being and doing front walkovers, which is a blind trick in the man's storage. And I learned to tumble on old gray wrestler match and I would walk on my hands. The same year I was playing that bass and the Culver City kids remember this.

They count to see how far I could go. They gather around, Okay, walk on your you know, walk on my hands. While they walked on their feet, and that's a real sick How. Far can she go? And I'm back and I'm stronger today than ever now with my productions, and I want to prove I can go further.

After that first job doing stunts, did you make kind of a decision at that point that that was the direction you really wanted to focus on. I wanted to act, and I kept doing stunts because I got these stunt acting jobs, this small role and then the stunt or a scream or just a couple of lines of dialogue. And that hall stater discovered me in summer of seventy six. By December of seventy six and early seventy seven, I was one of the top stunt. Women in the world those years.

Then in nineteen seventy nine, I met Victor French of Highway to Heaven and Little House on Prairie, and he was everything that my mind understood as an actor. And so I became real serious about being a famous actress. And I was just on the brink when I had the car accident. I had landed some guest star roles, I had landed a big role and hit the film Hellhole, and I was doing theater. I had just finished The Tenth Man on Stage and a lot of fifteen plays in the Los Angeles area.

You guys met me on the Scarecrow Missus King, and it was at that time I was ready to break as an actress in James Fargo, and they cast me right there to play Dorothy. So you played Dorothy in Scarecromess kse yes, you broke Lee Stetson's heart before Kate Jackson. That's right, that's right. And that was such a big day. And then that was nineteen eighty five.

And so you asked me earlier, you know, how did I keep going on the darkest night? And had I not had this huge success? And what's so amazing is today it's all coming back. I'm winning awards and things for all of that that I did in the seventies and eighties. And there were powerful men that believed in me and told me keep going, keep punching, stay in there, you can do it.

My mom was very, very disabled, and she came to some gymnastics meeting and she was there the day we filmed the Dorothy things. But she was severely disabled. And then my dad very very abusive, so I was never allowed even to talk about any of what I did. I look at it now and I'm like, whoa, you know, it was really something. Yeah, I mean the man from Atlanta stuff is pretty amazing.

Yeah. Yeah, And I was a regular on that. Yeah, and like you were clearly a swimmer. Did you study scuba diving or yeah? I'm then advanced certified scuba diver.

Paul took me out one day to be on the Poseidon Adventure to double Shirley. Jones, and he made me fill. Bags of oysters that he would grabbed the oyster pud till it was so heavy you could hardly swim. And then I took the Advanced Diver program, and I just want to say. I was the worst in the class.

It was really hard. I took the Basic first, then I took the Intermediate, then I took the Advance and the Advanced Tadlight night dives. They drop you in the middle of the ocean and down at the bottom with your compass. You got to find a little on the ocean floor, so no air. You got to take one deep breath and you got to go down, down, down and look for this bag.

And then you got to blow the bag till its surfaces till its surfaces, and that's one of the tests, and then you got. To come up. So wow, no, thank you. It's very impressive. Oh my goodness.

I imagine you were one of the few women on these sets, and it sounds like there were a lot of guys that were incredibly supportive. But did it feel weird? Did you ever feel like what am I doing here? Yeah? I worked.

I mean so many days I was the only woman out on something with the group of stunt guys. So you know, in your life where you're at, you usually meet guys to date, and so I dated a couple stunt guys because that's what you know. I was young just before the accident, and they broke my heart. Of course, two of them broke. My heart, and I wanted to get married, and you know, but then I had the accident, couldn't have children, so whatever, that's life, that's what all the people say.

But I wouldn't have become the broken hearted songwriter. I was meant to go through all this to be able. To I don't know, who knows. When you were doing those swimming stuff, so much of it looked like it was really out on real water and not just in pols. Yeah, we're out on Catalina Island and we weren't in tanks or anything.

We're the real McCoy there. And I did an underwater fight scene with him, and I'm the first woman that was photographed, if not maybe possible with the only woman doing the Man from Atlanta's swim. I play that alien that dives off the bridge. But then I also did everything for Belinda Montgomery on this series, and I am the one who dove out of the helicopter to give him mouth to mouth necessitation to pull him out. And he is so nice and oh my god, he was just so handsome back then.

I hear he's going to remake Man from Atlantis. Oh, Patrick Duffy, I like that. I did a lot of scuba stuff. I did a project Ufo and Beyond the Poseidon for Shirley Jones, and. Then you worked for Shirley Jones again on her show, her Shirley Show, which she.

Asked for me after the Beyond the Poseidon And if you look at my face, I mean I look so much like her, and she was the most classy and sophisticated and the carriage and to stand next to her, and I think in the late seventies early eighties she was driving like a Bentley or something that said Missus Angeles was a license played. I believe it was gold if I remember. But she was so great and it was quite an honor. That's amazing. And then you know you wanted to be an actress, so you're actually also when you're doubling someone, it's so important that you act like them, right, yes, And when you're doing the doubling, you know, how would you prepare for basically being able to do that stunt as the role?

Well, one of the things as a stunt woman is you always keep your face away from camera so that you know you can't really be seen. But as an actress and as a stunt person, one of the things Paul stayed at an amazing wife and she taught us study them, study their mannerisms. And I looked. It was so weird because someone yesterday told me you. Look like this person, this actress, and I looked like so many of the actresses, Like I doubled Kim Cattrell on Hardy Boy Nancy Drew's back then, and we were the same age or she was a year older than me, or some brown hair, and I looked like just much like hers.

I looked like June Lockhart, and also as much as I looked like Jane Seymour. And when I was a Jane Seymour, you know, they put me in the long wig and everybody the hoots and hollers and oh wow, you know, so there's something about her magical hair. But I looked like I looked so much like so many of them, Linda Peurle. I doubled her and still look quite a bit like her. So I don't know what it was.

I just guess it was just looked like a lot of different people. Then they put you in the wig and the outfit and there you are, Yes on, Lou Grant, you actually got to play a gymnast. Yes, you've really studied what I did. I love it, Lou Grant. I got called in to play, I got cast as a famous Belgium gymnas Olga, and I got to do some flip flops and they didn't film it right.

And I have this complain about a lot of different things. I mean, they should have done those flip flops from this angle rather than me. Come. I mean, you see me. But they're flawless flip flops, and I would have liked to have seen them, and I wanted to add a flipper, a twist or something.

But I was so happy to get that. But you didn't get to work with at Asner, no matter. No, just the other photographer and news reporter. Well, that's interesting that you were talking about how you might have shot your flip flops from a different angle. Perhaps even then sort of the beginnings of thinking like a director was kind of there.

Well, Paul Schater taught us early in my career where to put the camera to get the best shot. And if you wanted a high fall, look higher, you place it low angle. Yeah, and what did you do on Battlestar Galactica. These are all my favorite shows, right, so I grew up on these shows. Well, Battlestar Galactica, I doubled Jane Seymour and I did several episodes for her.

Do you remember when they were in like the Egyptian Tomb and there was the earthquake and it fell on them. Well, I was her and all that stuff fell on me and crashing, and I was a fighter pilot and I was one of the girls that was a fighter pilot, no dialogue, but I was in the console room where there was we got hit by other spaceship and I went over the rail and different falling into different things. And then also during a lot of explosion stuff where I'd be running through the camp and the girl you see in the air in the explosions getting blown up, that was me. In one of those. I split my pants because I had the.

Little gird ale on under the pants, and I was so embarrassed that I ran and did this and booth, there went the pants. My big stunt on Battlestar Galacta was the camel scene. There's a fight scene on camel instead of horseback, and I come out the door and I'm shooting, and imagine this, okay, I with one arm. He scoops me up onto the back of the camel, but I don't get to sit in the hump. I'm on the butt of the camel and I've got one arm and we're dodging in and out and all these bullets and everything, and I'm.

Pulling on for dear life. And right before I went to do that stunt that day, I got artificial nails for the first time. And of course they ripped right office. But I was little back then and able to get hooped up onto the back butt of a camel that high. I had to clear it, and we did it.

Good night again night. Now I'm trying to figure out which episode involved a cow. Now I have to do a Battlestar glastico very visit. Why don't we take a little break? Okay, Well, I could listen to you all day.

Your voice is so beautiful. Oh thank you. All right, little break and then we come back and talk about the movies and a little more TV. Okay, we're back. I mean, this is really exciting to be recognized as one of the eighties TV ladies, you know, coming from stunts.

It's just really great. And that's been really a great joy for us to be able to talk to you and to all the women that were so vital to this time. And women were just coming stunt women, right, you were on the beginning of things, and that is a really exciting time. It's also really tough time, right to be the first one through the door, the first one doing stuff, because there's not a lot of models to follow, right, You're not like, oh, I know what my career is going to look. For, especially the type of stunts I did.

I mean they had the horse girls, and they had the cars and motorcycles, but big stunts on the small screen. And that's exactly what I did. I did big stunts because I did more TV and movies of the week than I did in the feature films. Like you'll look at some stunt women, like someone like Debbie Evans who's done a lot of motorcycles and cars, and she's done more film. But I was just TV.

So I really am, you know. An eighties TV lady, Eighties TV lady. I was going to ask you about other stunt women that you either met or were like, oh I'm always going up against her, or just were mentors, or I mean what it was to meet other stunt women at that time. Well, I didn't meet very many. I didn't work with very many, that's for sure.

I had a friend, Paula Moody Meyer. We came out of the stunt school together and she died very tragically in a horse riding accident in her backyard. And she was my one friend that was also a stunt woman. But we would go years I didn't see her and she was very small. I was small also, but she was much smaller than me.

And she doubled Sissy's Basic and Morgan Fairchild, and I got called one day to double Morgan Fairchild. Paula wasn't available on. Time Express and it was the Vincent Pride short lived series. I had to ride on the back. Seat of a bicycle built for two, and we have a bicycle accident with another bike colliding into us on the bridge at Columbia Ranch, and it throws us.

And the bike into the water. But keep in mind, now I'm in the trapped I'm in the back seat of the bicycle built for two. It's blind. I can't see when he's gonna hit us. And I got to clear that bike so it doesn't break my legs so I can.

And it's shallow water. I was always going into shallow water. The double dive with paul had like six feet. But that bicycle built for two trick was probably one of the slipperiest potential for broken legs that you could ever. You should see it.

You got thrown off of a lot of things, like Jim Garner threw you off of a plane and. All James Garner he threw me out of a jet features at Night on Rock Fury. I did two extremely difficult stunts for James Garner, and I've been hugged by him. And what does that feel like to be hugged by jam. When you when the star is directing him, Clint Eastwood, Irwin Allen, when these incredibly brilliant, gracious, powerful, These men don't have a bad attitude.

These men aren't small. They don't belittle you, you know, and Bruce box Lightner, you know, and they come running up and they hug you and they tell you how great and how. Did you do it? It's like no tomorrow. So James Garner, it's at night.

Of course, you had to do everything at night in the dark. Backwards. So my seat catches on fire in the airplane. So I have that little battle first and we races me to the door and then he pushes me out with like no more. And I don't even have blankets on this one.

I don't have an airbag, I don't have a mat on anything except the runway. What and it said night? Wait, yeah, it said night, And I'm in the jet, so I gotta go out and I got to hit that runway and you know, and roll across it. Bang bang bang, and so this is really you just aren't going to believe this. We finish it and they bring the actors in and they bring a little block about this big, and they put her on the block.

They say, Okay, you're going to jump off the. Block, and you're going to act like you've jumped into the scene. She jumps off the block and breaks her ankle and it was so devastating. I felt so bad for her and I had just I mean, that was a good twenty five thirty foot feet first. That's insane.

So then the other stunt on Rockford Files another really just unbelievable. I'm on the back of a. Motorcycle as a rape victim, and he drives in. He spins around, and he says, what do we do with her? And he says, we get rid of it.

Now, keep in mind, I'm on the back of a motorcycle again easy for broken legs, and he reaches around. It goes like this throws me off the motorcycle. I got to clear that motorcycle with both legs up and over and land on my stomach. Just an angel on my shoulder and God's protection because I don't know how I cleared that motorcycle. But my big break came on the feature film The Gauntlet, where I got cast opposite Clint Eastwood and I got to beat him up and he punches me backwards with a half twist off the moving train.

Off a moving train, like a real life moving train. Yeah, a real life moving train, and only into some sand. Props brought a little wheelbarrow and they threw the sand in front of the train where I was going to jump, and then they threw. In some tumbleweeds. But the main thing about the stunt off the train and the Gauntlet is it I had to go backward out the door with the half twist, and the train is moving, and you have to position your body so you're going the same direction the train's going or you'll get sucked back under the wheels and crushed to death.

So I had to battle, and I can't describe to anyone what that was like, battling that train to keep my body going in that direction so I didn't get sucked back under. And then once the train leaves, the gravitational force leaves and you just drop like a sack of potatoes. And then you're hitting the ground owned at the weight and speed you were traveling, so you're really hitting that ground and flying. But he loved it, and I've talked to him since, and they gave me all the still photos. That was one of the most difficult stunts a woman did on film that year, if not the most difficult a young girl, and it launched my career overnight.

They had me in my stunt in all the papers. They put a black and white of Clint and Sondra on the lobby cart and my. Stunt under him. It's very impressive. It's very, very impressive, And that's a very kind of classic Clin Eastwood scene because before that stunt is you're fighting with Cline went on the train and then he sort of gets the upper hand and she's like, you wouldn't punch a woman, would you write?

That's exactly it? And then yeah, Samantha Done was who I was doubling there. But I beat him up when he was tied against the wall there, and I don't know, might be one of the only women who ever got to beat him up. But I just love him and I love his work. And I always say, and I always tell this, he was so dropped dead, gorgeous and handsome.

I couldn't take my eyes off him. I've never seen anyone as handsome as he was that year. I was like, you know, here, I am twenty one. I've just have you honestly ever seen anyone as handsome as he was when he was young? Yeah?

Young Paul Newman, I mean you know. Yeah, oh yeah, a young Paul Newman. Yeah, a young well Paul Newman at any age? Yes, Well, what was your favorite memory from that time? What's your favorite stunt?

Well, that would have to be the scarecrow, missus King. I would say that, just everything about that job. And do you remember Dorsy died there with all the roses, with. All the ras, and that's why he can't stand roses. Oh I know, Oh I know.

And I got to my dressing room and my mom was there that day and there's a knock on the door and it's Bruce and he's got a dozen roses for me. Were you there to hear the panel at the restaurant the evening of the forty year? I was there, but Susan unfortunately was not. You saw how we talked about it, and I was like, oh my God the handsome. He was so handsome, and he gave me a dozen roses, and I kept the roses for years till finally I kept just one rose.

Then, as a silly young girl, I put it in a piece of wax paper and I wrote, with love Bruce or something. I forget, but it's in my book. And then he married Melissa Gilbert after that, and I was heartbroke, and you were heartbroke. And I have to ask you about Riptide. My husband's big fan of Riptide.

Well, you know what's interesting is I was just going to tell you something about Riptide because I did an acting role on Riptide, playing the broken hearted waitress Pauline, and I cry, so here's a Riptide And I had to run with spike heels down a cobblestone street and it's so slippery, and you're running at full speed down that cobblestone streep, and I've got a manuscript in my arm. I've got the secret manuscript. So then I come to a bob wire fence, a flimsy bob wire fence, and it's so flimsy, and I've got the spike keels on. They're high for me. So I've got to go up to this fence.

Manuscript in one hand, and I got a scale this bob wire fence, get over the top of it and it's got the spike, you know, and get over and drop and escape. So I run up to this dang bob wire fence. And this is like the only time in my career I had to do something a couple of times because I'd always get it on one tank. But as I tried to climb that fence, those heels would fall off my heels and trap me like a spider in a whim. I'm trapped now on this bob wire fence.

No, it wasn't real barbed wire. It wasn't real. Yes it was, Yeah, it was what is happening in the eighties? What was real bob wire? They grew up a seventy six story building for goodness sake.

So that was the two riptides that I did. Oh my gosh. These were all big budget shows. They were all prime time, so it wasn't like today where everything's non union. And I mean, and this was like cream of the crop, and all the residuals that have followed, I mean, each of these shows have continued to pay all these years and those years that I was disabled, I lived on those residuals and disability and different things.

Then I did other jobs and had other money coming in, always working. I'm curious about the movie that you wrote and directed, Who's going to take care of Me? Well, I'm still working on that now. That is my mom's true story. She was very disabled and unable to write, so she kind of told some of what she wanted.

She had a tumor removed from her stomach that was the size of a grapefruit. She was in eighty five and she divorced my dad and she had a breakdown and she ran away. They diagnosed it as a viral schizophrenia. So she was missing for nine years, and I tried to bring her home and I found her within a couple of weeks after my baptism. And one of the promises of baptism is that your family will be reunited, and she was my best friend, so I didn't hesitate going and bringing her home, and I was able to bring her home to safety and take care of her for thirteen years.

And when she was found, she had a brain lymphoma now the size of a man's wallet on her face. She was so cute and so sweet. But it's a real I only her film right now. I'm still raising funds and I'm finishing editing part one. So it's a story that needs to be told because it can help.

It's not about being homeless, It's about the disease of schizophrenia. I'm fascinating. I was raised by a single mom. I think it's really fascinating when people talk about working with their mother or you know, realizing the mother daughter relationship in different ways, and so portraying your mother, particularly in something this dramatic, is such an interesting choice and such an interesting journey. It's an amazing story and I've written it and you're real proud of it.

That's cool. Yeah. So I was just going to ask what's up next for you? And it sounds like working on this and singing. Where can people find you.

On IMDb, dot me slash Marning Fields. Are you going to be singing somewhere? Yeah, I've got a lot of live performances. I've booked Las Vegas. I'm just always working.

I'm always working. You're like there's like an energizer bunny element. Where you just keep going. I keep going. You've had so much great things.

Yeah, this stuff just keeps coming to me, you know, like I don't turn down anything. That's how I've got so far. Thank you so much for sharing all. Thank you some wonderful stories with us. I know they are very unique and your journey, Ye, thank you.

Your story is remarkable on so many levels. And you're another one of the great eighties TV ladies that we've had the thank you joy of getting to meet and getting to know. So thank you, thank you, thank you very much for saying that, because that's what I need to hear so I can keep going with the stories since inspiring others, and because. It is a unique story. Yeah, your spirit is so amazing.

I'm really glad we got to talk with you. Me too, I've had a great time. Thanks bye. In today's audioography. You can find Marnine's info on Instagram and Facebook at Heavenly Waterfall per Days.

And you can find Marnine's acting book on Amazon. Marnine is crowdfunding for the award winning script she is turning into a movie about her mother's story. You can help support her film, Who's Going to take Care of Me at crowdfunder dot com, Slash who's going to take care of me? The links will be in our description. Once again, thank you all for listening.

Do you remember the amazing stunts of nineteen eighties television? Do you have any favorite stunts or stuntwomen you'd like us to try and track down. We're also looking for suggestions of any star trek ladies you want us to talk with. Send us your messages at our website eightiestv Ladies dot com. That's eight zero s TV l A d E s dot com.

We so appreciate your feedback. If you like our show, please leave us a rating and a review. On Apple Podcasts or Spotify. You can mention what shows or ladies you'd like us to cover her and don't miss our next episode where we begin our look at Mama's family. We hope Eighties TV Ladies brings you joy and laughter and lots of fabulous new and old shows to watch, all of which lead us forward toward being amazing ladies of the twenty first century.

Hand so pretty through the city, treated Pull the money in the world.