Prairie Tale: A Memoir Page 5

  For different reasons, Karen Grassle, who played Michael’s wife and my mother, Caroline Ingalls, also made a strong impression on me. Extremely beautiful, she was very different from the women in my life, especially my mother, who was dark and exotic, a gorgeous gypsy out of Beverly Hills via Brooklyn. Karen was blond and blue-eyed, cut from the Grace Kelly mold. She’d trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, one of the oldest acting schools in England and among the world’s finest.

  Karen did the same sort of actor exercises as Katherine Helmond, which had mesmerized me, except Karen went even further. For instance, she made strange sounds as she did her vocal warmups. At first, I giggled and had to hide my imprudence by turning away or making an excuse to leave the room momentarily. But over time my amusement turned into curiosity, and I watched her closely, the way she used her hands and the way she breathed. I watched her a lot, in fact, and I like to think there’s some of her in me as an actor.

  I’d met Melissa Sue Anderson at my screen test, but we got to know each other much better while on location. We played sisters and were only a couple years apart in age, but from the start, for whatever reason, we never had a real sisterly kinship. She was a strikingly pretty girl, and I wasn’t, at least I didn’t think so. As we got older, she was the girl everyone wanted to marry, and I was the plucky one they wanted to go fishing with.

  There was a distance to her, a coldness, though sometimes I wonder if it was just that I never knew how to get her to let me in. She wasn’t easy to get along with. I think her reserve came across on-screen and was certainly apparent offscreen, whereas I wore my emotions as if they were a neon green T-shirt that glowed in the dark.

  My mother was the same way. Good or bad, our relationship was on full display whether we were behind the closed door of my dressing room or in front of the entire crew. Everyone experienced our affection and our arguments. Melissa and her mother were more contained, more controlled, more private, more connected. She was her mother’s universe. The license plate on her mom’s car was 3MISSY—it was her third car since Missy was born.

  Right away we faced the dilemma of having two Melissas on the same set. Her nickname was Missy, and though my dad called me Missy-do or Wissy-do, almost no one else ever did because I made it clear I thought it was the stupidest nickname ever invented. Michael was the one who confronted the two-Melissas issue. He said, “Why don’t we solve this problem before it even starts.”

  “Okay,” I said, as others around the two of us nodded in agreement. None of us would’ve dared disagree with Michael.

  “She’s going to be Missy,” he said, looking at Melissa Sue Anderson. And then turning to me, he said, “And we’ll just call you Half Pint.”

  It worked for me. Half Pint was also my character’s nickname, so it seemed like an obvious choice. Though at one point a short time later I walked up to Michael and said, “Or you can call me Moisha.” He looked down at me with a scrunched-up face.

  “What?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, backpedaling slightly. “I said you could also call me Moisha if you wanted.”

  “Moisha?” he said.

  “I heard it somewhere,” I said. “It seemed cool.”

  Michael hadn’t moved a muscle. He stared at me as if I was nuts. Finally, he shook his head and laughed.

  “I think we’ll stick with Half Pint.”

  Twins Lindsay and Sidney Greenbush played the Ingalls’ youngest girl, Carrie. The girls were poised, pint-size showbiz veterans and impossibly adorable, with gorgeous, saucer-size blue eyes. I thought of them as toys, tiny living dolls that were there as much for my amusement between scenes as to actually work in front of the camera. I also gravitated toward Victor French, who played Isaiah Edwards, the kindhearted neighbor and Laura’s special friend. He was hilarious and great with us kids.

  Of course, Michael set the tone with all of the junior actors. There was a lot of tactile affection, hugging, embracing, and snuggling that made people feel good, close, and loved. I’d never been tossed into the air so much. It was all part of the bonding that took place as we became a family.

  This coming together of various people was similar to what I’d been through when Harold and his family came into my life, only on a larger scale. There were people I liked very much, some I didn’t, and a few I didn’t connect with at all. For Michael, it was about creating a family. Many on the crew had worked with him on Bonanza, and some had even been with him before that on other shows. He inspired loyalty and expected it in return. You couldn’t get a position on one of his crews unless your father was on the crew and left the job to you when he died. He treated his crews the same way he treated his friends and family: there was no special favoritism, no caste system. The only two people I remember getting their own trailer were Mariette Hartley and Patricia Neal. Mariette was breast-feeding a newborn, and Patricia was recovering from a stroke. Everyone else had the same kind of room on a honey wagon, including Michael.

  Actually, he was always Mike. I was quickly corrected after the first time I called him Mr. Landon. “It’s Mike,” he said. Even though I’d never referred to an adult by his first name, it was Mike from then on. Everyone referred to him as Mike, never Mr. or sir or Michael. Just Mike. And Karen was Karen. Victor was Victor. Melissa Sue was Missy. And I was Half Pint.

  Some of Mike’s kids visited the set as we shot the pilot, including his daughter Cheryl, who was grown up (she was seventeen, but that was grown up to me) and beautiful, and Leslie and Michael Jr., all of whom added to the fun and sense of family. At night, the adults went out to dinner in various groups, leaving the kids at the motel to do our homework and study our lines. We were too young and well behaved to get into trouble.

  The people who owned the small motel where we stayed had a puppy, a fluffy black poodle, which I played with every day after work. I ate breakfast and dinner at the diner there. It was such a different lifestyle than at home, and I was happy exploring this newfound freedom. I enjoyed the familiarity of seeing people I knew almost every place I went, whether roaming around the motel or sitting at the counter in the diner.

  I still dream about that motel. I got to go down to the diner in the morning by myself, greeting the waitresses and manager through my sleep-filled eyes, carrying my mom’s thermoses, which I filled with fresh, hot, black coffee (I can still remember the strong aroma) and left outside her door. Then I went back for my breakfast. People from the crew wandering in would say good morning and ask how I slept or if I felt good about the day ahead.

  I sat at the counter, staring at the big machine from which the waitresses got hot cocoa. There was a sign on it that said “hot whipped cocoa supreme,” and I spent most of every morning trying to figure out what the hell was so supreme about their hot cocoa.

  It’s funny to think about how much time I spent as a kid trying to figure things out.

  Everyone grew close quickly, which was a new experience for me, and it explains why I became upset after shooting Victor French’s last scene and saying good-bye to him before he returned to L.A. After developing family-like relationships, I didn’t want to say good-bye to Victor or anyone else. I thought we were making a movie. I wasn’t aware of the possibility that it might be turned into a series. My expectations were carefully managed.

  I also had a real affinity for Victor’s double, Jack Lilly. I liked everyone, really—they were all nice. Who wouldn’t like being around people who showered you with affection and always had a kind word, a joke, or a funny face? Compared to the real world, it was like make-believe. A lot of the crew had their families with them, including their kids, which made it fun for me; it was also one of the reasons people wanted to work on Mike’s shows. If you went on location, you got to bring your family.

  Mike worked everyone hard. He was a perfectionist. But he did things first-class. We traveled by private jet, on big planes, and everyone piled in together. I can remember getting on board and hearing Mike playfully barking at makeup a
rtist Whitey Snider to sit next to him because “if the plane goes down, I want to look good.”

  I was impressed when I was told Whitey had been Marilyn Monroe’s personal makeup artist. That seemed incredible to me, to be that close to someone who had been that close to a legend, who’d touched her face and also touched mine. He carried a money clip she’d given him. The engraving said, “To Whitey, while I’m still warm. Love, Marilyn.”

  Sometimes he let me hold the clip. I’d clasp the metal in my hands and think, God, she picked this out and had it engraved. A few years later, when I was a teenager, Whitey told me that he did Marilyn’s makeup after her autopsy, before she was placed in her casket.

  I also counted hairstylist Larry Germaine as one of my instant pals. Considered among Hollywood’s legendary hairstylists, he did my hair every day, and I treasured the time I spent with him. From the moment you sat in his chair, he transported you from reality into a private conversation that seemed more interesting than anything else going on around you. I was so pleased he seemed to want to talk to me; later, when I was older, he told me how he got his start in the business. He’d been an undertaker until one day they brought in a kid who’d been hit by a train and the parents wanted an open casket. He had to put that kid back together, doing the hair and makeup, everything, like a jigsaw puzzle, and it was too emotional for him. He quit and got into show business, where they faked the crashes and everyone looked pretty when they died.

  The only trauma on the Little House set came at the end of January, almost four weeks after we began shooting, when it was time to pack up and say good-bye. I had a hard time returning home, but I soon fell easily into the same old routines. I went back to school and had sleepovers with my best friend, Tracy Nelson. Home life was the same as usual: cuddling with my mom and reading, torturing and being tortured by my nasty little brother. Still, I missed the work and the affirmation that came from it. I especially missed the attachments I’d made to people.

  I was down in the dumps whenever I imagined not seeing them again, but my mood did a one-eighty at the end of February when Mike gathered everyone in a theater on the Paramount lot to watch the film on a large movie screen. My heart warmed upon hearing him call me Half Pint again. I cried and laughed through the movie, as did my family, who filled the seats on both sides of me. I was surprised by the music. I was even more surprised by my performance. Was that really me?

  I can recall feeling calm as I sat in the theater. I wasn’t nervous at all about what my family and others would think. All the self-doubt and pressure came years later. Back then, on that night, I was simply dazed and dazzled.

  NBC aired the movie in March and it did extremely well. By then, we’d received word the network wanted to move ahead with a series. My mother was beside herself. I got a congratulatory call from Mike. My grandparents, on separate occasions, of course, since they couldn’t be in the same room together, smothered me with kisses. Papa Harry gave me his own compliment, saved for truly special occasions. “What a girl this is!” My dad’s reaction was the best. He gave me a hug, then stepped back and took in all forty-eight inches of me with a proud, satisfied grin.

  “See, Missy-do,” he said. “I told you something better would come along.”

  five

  LITTLE HOUSE

  In the late eighties, a friend of mine, Dean Cameron, was shooting a movie called Summer School on the Paramount lot. They were shooting a classroom scene, and between takes, he rummaged through the papers the prop guys had stuffed into the school desks and pulled out a paper that now hangs framed in my study. It was the call sheet for my original Little House screen test.

  I don’t recall the first day we began shooting the series or anyone talking to me about the impact doing a series would have on my life, especially if the ratings equaled or bested the TV movie, which would mean being on a hit series, which is an altogether different experience than just being on TV. At this stage of my life, Little House on the Prairie is simply part of my cellular makeup.

  I remember life before getting the movie, and then the next thing I knew I was traipsing into Alison Arngrim’s trailer to give her the lowdown on the cast and crew. Alison joined us on the second episode, which was titled “Country Girls.” She played nasty Nellie Oleson and began referring to Laura and Mary as “country girls” almost as soon as we met her in school. My brother, Jonathan, played her younger brother, Willie.

  Though she was my great rival on the show, Alison and I became instant friends from the moment I confided, “There’s only one mean person on the show. Everyone else is great.” At lunch, we constantly tried to gross each other out by mixing together the most disgusting combinations of food—and eating them! One of my more memorable creations was butterscotch pudding and radishes. It wasn’t half bad.

  It was great to have a friend on the set. We celebrated birthdays together, had sleepovers, and got into adventures on the lot.

  I can’t imagine any better playground for a kid than Paramount Studios’ sprawl of soundstages, streets, and stars. We worked on stages 31 and 32, which were located at the back of the lot. Behind us, there was a cemetery on the other side of a large wall. Not any old cemetery, it was the final resting spot for Rudolph Valentino, Jayne Mansfield, Cecil B. DeMille, and other Hollywood luminaries. I thought being close to their and so many other grave sites was neat, in a creepy way, and I tried umpteen times to get a peek by climbing up the fence. I never made it, and I wouldn’t have even if I could’ve pulled myself up. Coiled barbed wire was strung along the top of the fence, preventing any break-ins or breakouts.

  I would arrive at work early in the morning, as the sun was starting its slow climb, and it would be dark on the soundstages—one held the interior and exterior of the little house and the inside and outside of the barn. The other held the interior of Oleson’s Mercantile, the church/school, and Doc Baker’s office—and it would be dark on the stage except for wherever we were shooting first. A white light bathed that corner of the Little House world and made it appear as if touched by a divine power.

  Our dressing rooms were small mobile homes parked in an alley in back of the stages. I went to school in a little dressing room that looked like a house on wheels, which was located outside the soundstages. My teacher on the set was Mrs. Helen Minniear. She would instruct me in all subjects from fourth grade through my last year of high school.

  At some point I would find my call sheet and look for my name, which was always third down from the top, following Mike and Karen. It was a small affirmation that I was really there, really a part of this dreamlike experience that felt like the greatest game of dress-up ever.

  Whenever possible I liked to wander into the writers’ offices and try to get the scoop on what they were planning for future scripts and who was coming on the show next. I wanted to know everything ahead of time; they called me precocious, but I could just as easily have been called nosy or annoying.

  I explored the lot whenever I was able to get away, which wasn’t often; I was unable to resist the lure of checking out the places where scenery was stored, the other soundstages, and the commissary, which was a hub of activity and star-gazing. Everybody on the lot working on TV shows or movies broke for lunch at approximately the same time and headed for the commissary, where my eyes darted across the large dining room. Oblivious to my own profile as one of the stars on a hit show, I was always looking around. I got excited whenever I saw someone famous, like Mork & Mindy stars Robin Williams and Pam Dawber or the guys from Happy Days.

  I used to meet up in line with Henry Winkler, one of the loveliest people in the business. As they’d say in Prairie speak, he and I took a shine to each other. We’d act out what we were having for lunch.

  “What are you having today?” he asked.

  “I’m having a hamburger,” I said.

  “Then I want to see you act a hamburger,” he said with a note of challenge in his voice.

  So I acted like a hamburger. I have to sa
y, the first time he suggested that game I thought he was nuts. But lunch with the Fonz got to be something I looked forward to. It wasn’t just a meal; it was a performance. He made me think as I ordered. How would I act a salad? What would I do to portray a grilled cheese? One day he cut in line behind me as I was taking my food.

  “How are the French fries?” he asked.

  I turned toward him.

  “Zee fries, zey are v’reee French today,” I said in a thick accent.

  The frown I wore while making the fourth episode was extremely unusual, but easily understood: I was unhappy I wasn’t in more of the episode. I was already starting to like work more than home. A week later, my smile was back and as bright as my mood. We were shooting the episode “Mr. Edwards’s Homecoming.” I had a scene at the end in which Dr. Baker softened the news I had to have my tonsils out by giving me a gigantic gumdrop. Since I wasn’t allowed any sugar at home, getting a piece of candy was like being handed an Oscar, and I savored every bite of that magnificent candy.

  We did five or six takes and I got a new gumdrop each time. Those were momentous occasions for me. I felt naughty as my mother watched disapprovingly. But what could she say? Eating the candy was part of my job.

  Even sweeter, Victor French returned to the series in that episode. It hadn’t been that long since I bid him a tearful good-bye both on and off camera during the pilot, but at the time I didn’t think I’d ever see him again, so I was beyond excited to have him back. I didn’t have to act in the scene when we were brought together again. I was genuinely happy.