There i go again, p.1
There I Go Again, page 1
“Bill Daniels is the personification of the humor, the humility, the humanity, and the dignity of the acting profession. Read his book.”
—WARREN BEATTY
“There I Go Again is an American success story of a boy who thought he’d be tap dancing on radio, only to end up excelling in theater on Broadway, motion pictures, television, and ultimately becoming the president of the Screen Actors Guild. . . . There I Go Again is honest, smart, witty, and intelligent. I enjoyed every moment of it.”
—ELLIOTT GOULD
“Bless you, Bill Daniels! Thanks to your wonderful book, I get to live the best years of my life over again—the magical ’80s when we did St. Elsewhere. And not just those wonderful times—I get to relive Two for the Road, The Graduate, and 1776 in the bargain. What a treat!”
—ED BEGLEY JR.
“Sharing Bill Daniels’s triumphs and disappointments is a deeply satisfying experience. His candor is as refreshing as it is admirable, while his portrait of an actor’s life both onstage and on TV is as entertaining as it is illuminating. And his gripping depiction of his two years as president of the Screen Actors Guild is practically worth the price of the book!”
—SHELDON HARNICK, lyricist who helped create Fiorello! and Fiddler on the Roof
“A wonderful journey through the life of one of our finest actors. Bill Daniels has always been at the head of our class. But those who are lucky enough to spend time with him know he’s in a class by himself.”
—MICHAEL JACOBS, writer and producer
THERE I GO AGAIN
WILLIAM DANIELS
There I Go Again | How I Came to Be Mr. Feeny, John Adams, Dr. Craig, KITT, and Many Others
Potomac Books
AN IMPRINT OF THE UNIVERSITY OF NEBRASKA PRESS
© 2017 by William Daniels
Cover designed by University of Nebraska Press; cover image from ABC Photo Archives, © ABC/Getty Images
Author photo © Nadia Pandolfo
“The Legacy of 1776” was originally published in March 2016 in New York City Center’s Playbill and is reprinted courtesy of Playbill.
All rights reserved. Potomac Books is an imprint of the University of Nebraska Press.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Daniels, William, 1927– author.
Title: There I go again: how I came to be Mr. Feeny, John Adams, Dr. Craig, Kitt, and many others / William Daniels.
Description: Lincoln: Potomac Books, 2017.
Identifiers: LCCN 2016035738
ISBN 9781612348520 (cloth: alk. paper)
ISBN 9781612349022 (epub)
ISBN 9781612349039 (mobi)
ISBN 9781612349046 (pdf)
Subjects: LCSH: Daniels, William, 1927– | Actors—United States—Biography.
Classification: LCC PN2287.D27 A3 2017 | DDC 791.4502/8092 [B]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016035738
The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.
For Irene
Contents
List of Illustrations
Preface
Acknowledgments
1. I’d Rather Be Elsewhere
2. Life with Mother
3. Life with Father
4. Offstage in the Theater of War
5. Go West, Young Man, to Northwestern
6. If I Can Make It There
7. I’ve Been to the Zoo
8. Sing Out, Louise!
9. A Thousand and One Clowns
10. On a Clear Day You Can See Paris
11. Buck and Mike
12. 1776
13. Hooray for Hollywood
14. Home Sweet Homes
15. Boy Oh Boy
16. Mr. President
17. Epilogue?
Appendix: The Legacy of 1776: A Conversation with William Daniels and Lin-Manuel Miranda
Illustrations
1. Irene and Charlie Daniels, 1917
2. Billy Daniels, 1929 (age two)
3. Billy Daniels, 1931 (age four)
4. Billy and Jackie Daniels (ages nine and seven)
5. Billy and Jackie Daniels (ages fourteen and twelve)
6. Billy, Jackie, and Carol Daniels (ages fifteen, thirteen, and five)
7. Billy and Jackie Daniels, radio show
8. Billy in Life with Father (age fifteen)
9. Army Staff Sergeant William Daniels (age eighteen)
10. Bill and Bonnie Bartlett Daniels, 1951
11. Seagulls Over Sorrento, 1952
12. William Daniels and George Maharis in The Zoo Story, 1960
13. The Strasberg family outside the Actors Studio, 1960
14. William Daniels as Captain Nice, 1967
15. William Daniels in The Graduate, 1967
16. William Daniels in The Graduate (costume fitting), 1967
17. William Daniels in Two for the Road, 1967
18. William Daniels as John Adams in 1776, 1969
19. William Daniels as John Adams in the White House, 1971
20. William Daniels as John Quincy Adams in The Adams Chronicles, 1976
21. William Daniels as John Quincy Adams in The Adams Chronicles, 1976
22. William Daniels as Dr. Craig in St. Elsewhere, 1982
23. On the set with Bill and Bonnie, St. Elsewhere, 1980s
24. William and Bonnie Bartlett Daniels at the Emmy Awards, 1986
25. William Daniels and David Hasselhoff, 1982
26. KITT, the car from Knight Rider, 1982
27. William Daniels as Mr. Feeny with Ben Savage, 1993
28. The cast of Boy Meets World, 1993
29. The cast of Boy Meets World, 1993
30. Lin-Manuel Miranda and Bill backstage at Hamilton, 2016
Preface
Whatever success I’ve had in my life—and I’ve had considerable success—has come to me almost accidentally. Granted I developed acting ability and I’ve worked hard at it. You don’t do years and years of eight performances a week on Broadway or on tour or six and seven years of starring roles on television series without working hard. But still, I’m left with the feeling that none of my success was really due to me.
When I’m sent a script to consider, I only see its problems, not its strengths. I have almost always had to be talked into a role, even when the project turned out to be tremendously successful. I’ve been known to go to the wrong theater to audition for a role I subsequently got—and played for years. Once, while auditioning for a musical, I forgot the lyrics of a song I’d sung for months on Broadway; they hired me anyway. I insisted on having no billing on a series I thought was silly, and that series (Knight Rider) ran for years and even after all this time I still get fan mail.
I went “ass backwards” into just about everything—and what a lucky guy I’ve been.
Acknowledgments
I wrote this manuscript in longhand on yellow legal pads, so I have to first thank Rachael Lobermann, who spent many hours typing it all up. I have excellent handwriting, but I don’t know a damn thing about computers.
Laurie Horowitz took the typed pages and made them resemble something that looked like a book, with paragraphs and everything.
In today’s literary landscape getting a publishing deal is difficult to say the least, and so I’m immensely grateful to my literary agents Elizabeth Evans and Laura Biagi with Jean V. Naggar Literary Agency. Elizabeth was the first person interested in shopping the book to publishers, and together with Laura I was introduced to the University of Nebraska Press and the Potomac Books imprint. Acquisitions editor Tom Swanson has been immensely supportive.
Tom’s assistant Emily Wendell, along with Jenny Worman and Brian Hamilton, were all very helpful with technical matters.
Jay Matthews had written a wonderful article about the St. Elsewhere Emmy night for the Washington Post, and so I turned to him and his wife Linda to create a presentation for the publisher (and it was instrumental in selling the book to Potomac).
Finally I’d like to thank Loren Lester, who not only suggested the title but also brought his showbiz knowledge and communication skills to writing and editing the final manuscript.
Note: If I failed to mention my wife, Bonnie, it wouldn’t be the first time, but without her this book, and my life as detailed here, would not have been possible.
1
I’d Rather Be Elsewhere
In 1985 I was nominated for a third straight Emmy award for St. Elsewhere, the NBC series I did from 1982 to 1988. Having lost twice, I didn’t want to go to the Emmy Awards show and lose a third straight time, but there I was with my wife Bonnie, dressed to the hilt, starting out in the limousine but not getting very far. Halfway between the Coldwater Canyon and Laurel Canyon exits on the freeway the limo conked out. The motor went dead—and there we sat.
Since Bonnie’s gown was even less conducive to hiking through the Valley heat than my tuxedo, she stayed in the car with the driver and I walked the half mile to the Laurel Canyon exit. As I trudged under the tunnel of the freeway on my way home, a car stopped and a little old lady leaned out the car window.
“Can we drive you?”
There I was in a tux, collar unbuttoned, tie undone, looking like a short Dean Martin coming home from an all-night binge, and two little old ladies (one driving) wanted to take me home.
“Uh, no thank you,” I said and continued walking. They slowly followed in the car. She leaned out the window again.
“We know who you are. Are you sure we can’t drive you?”
Well, what the hell.
“Okay,” I said and got into the backseat. “Take a right. I live just a couple of blocks down.”
They dropped me off in front of my house. Out of the monkey suit and on with the TV to watch a McEnroe tennis match.
Not for long. Bonnie was back with a new limo and was standing over me.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Watching John play—it’s the finals.” (I was a big McEnroe fan.)
“Bill,” she said, “if we don’t go, I am going to be so depressed. I’ve spent so many times buying a dress for an occasion, getting the makeup on, getting the hair done, getting all fixed up for something, and we don’t go, or we walk out, because you’re in a snit and I have to go out smiling at everybody, missing everything I was prepared to do. We walked out on the opening night party of The Graduate, and we walked out on the film premiere of 1776.” She paused, flustered, and then added, “Goddamnit, I just think you should at least be able to go there and sit through this thing. We’re going to Pasadena!”
So I did as she asked, but I was still seething. I got back into the monkey suit, climbed into the new limousine with Bonnie and the same driver, and headed off to Pasadena. Don Johnson was going to win. I knew it. I just knew it. I was certain the studio had sent him a limo that wouldn’t break down.
I don’t know how long the show had been going on when we arrived. We tip-toed down the aisle and into our row of reserved seats. Excuse me, sorry, excuse me.
We had just sat down when I heard, “And the award goes to William Daniels.”
Good God! Here we go again back down the row . . . excuse me, sorry, excuse me . . . bumping into people’s knees, getting out of the row. Someone slapped me on the back—“Congratulations!” Lord, I hadn’t prepared anything to say. Oh well. Up on the stage someone handed me the award.
“Thank you, thank you very much.” I looked out at the crowd. “You know, I almost didn’t make it here.” Big laugh.
I went on to tell them how the limo broke down and the two little old ladies, who were probably watching now, rescued me. “Thank you again for the ride,” I said.
I was getting laughs, so I figured all wasn’t lost. Later that night the press wanted to know if I’d made up the story I’d told in my acceptance speech. What a question. Why would I make up a story like that?
By 1987 I had had a total of five nominations and won twice for my work on St. Elsewhere, the famous one-hour series about life in a run-down Boston hospital. You might be confined here, but you’d rather be “elsewhere.” It was an ensemble show much in the spirit of the game-changing, Emmy-winning series Hill Street Blues, which was an ensemble cop show (also from MTM, Grant Tinker’s company, which was producing St. Elsewhere). And it paved the way for future hit medical dramas such as ER and Grey’s Anatomy. When St. Elsewhere was being developed, I received an offer to play the part of Dr. Mark Craig. An unprecedented five one-hour scripts came with the offer. There was a large cast of characters, an ensemble, with only the occasional appearance, often very brief, of Dr. Craig. When the producer, Bruce Paltrow, called to hear my reaction to the offer, I said that I thought the scripts were wonderful and often very funny but that the part of Dr. Craig was rather small.
“Billy, when the writers see what you do with it they will write for you.” And that was exactly what happened—the part got bigger and the storylines got deeper.
In my research for the role I trailed a real-life surgeon at UCLA and even watched him operate on the heart of a small child. He was a great doctor during surgery and a real son of a bitch outside the operating room. The Dr. Craig that the TV audience eventually saw was like this surgeon but also a lot like me. Just ask my wife. I can be rather abrupt, very critical, and sometimes judgmental—a real martinet. As the producers and writers got to know me, they poured all my traits, both positive and negative, into Dr. Craig, who was a great surgeon but not always a nice man. Dr. Craig considered himself the smartest man in the operating room, perhaps the smartest in the entire hospital, and he made no attempt to hide his sense of superiority.
The show had a thirteen-episode order, but it also had a rocky start. We were halfway through filming the first episode when Bruce Paltrow returned from finishing a feature film in London. When he saw the dailies, production came to a halt. The cast was told to take a few days off. Days turned into weeks, and when we were called back we found the director was gone, the cinematographer and camera crew were gone, and several of the actors had been replaced. The sets had been repainted a more drab color, ceilings had been put in to cut down the lighting, and the overall look was of a rather run-down hospital in a lower-class neighborhood of Boston, St. Eligius Hospital, whose façade appeared in the opening shot of the show. Paltrow put together a fine cast of actors, including Ed Flanders and Hollywood legend Norman Lloyd (who as of this writing is still working at the age of 102), along with Ed Begley Jr., Denzel Washington, Howie Mandel, Christina Pickles, Mark Harmon, and David Morse, who all became stars in their own right. During the show’s six-year run we also had a roster of guest stars that were the envy of any show before or since: Alfre Woodard, Helen Hunt, Kathy Bates, Tim Robbins, Dorothy McGuire, Betty White, Doris Roberts (who won an Emmy for her role), and Eva Le Gallienne. Real-life couple Steve Allen and Jayne Meadows had Emmy-nominated comedic recurring roles as the hippie parents of Ed Begley Jr.’s character.
And of course, my wife, Bonnie Bartlett, joined the cast in the fourth episode of our first season and remained with us for the entire six seasons of our run, garnering two Emmy Awards along the way.
The casting of Bonnie was rather fortuitous. In one episode, while performing a heart operation, Dr. Craig bragged about how he got his wife to stop smoking; he went out on their front lawn and yelled loudly about her smoking for all the neighborhood to hear and that did it—she stopped. In the next episode, at an awards dinner for “Surgeon of the Year,” an honor Craig continually assumed he would win but each year went away empty handed, there sat his wife, who proceeded to light up a cigarette when the doctor left the table for the men’s room. At the casting session for the episode, after a number of names were thrown around, Eileen Mack Knight, the casting director at MTM, said, “Why not ask his wife, Bonnie, if she might do it, as a favor?”
The part only had a line or two, and under normal circumstances Bonnie would have turned it down. But the scripts were so well written and we both had such high hopes for this show that she agreed to do it. Now came the hard part—Bonnie didn’t smoke! I took her out to the pool house, so as not to stink up our home, and we worked on it. It was a pain in the ass because I’d given up smoking about twenty years earlier, but I taught her how to hit the pack and pull out a cigarette, how to tap it on the back of her hand, how to light up—all of which she got down pat. But inhale—no way! She’d hold the smoke in her mouth and then kind of cough it out.
“Don’t cough it out—let it out slowly,” I said.
With luck she wouldn’t have a coughing spell. The whole preparation of lighting up sold it, and she got the laugh, but you shouldn’t look too closely at the actual drag on the cigarette.
The producer and writers must have liked the look of the two of us together because Mrs. Craig became a regular on the show, and she had many wonderful scenes with me and without me for the rest of our run.
For me the role of Dr. Craig was a joy to play. There were so many contradictions in his character—top-notch surgeon and strict disciplinarian in the operating room, yet so foolish in the outside world. Playing such a role over a long run offered a wide range of situations: at one end there was the challenge of facing the loss of a son and at the other the inanity of Dr. Craig’s desperately wanting to be named “Surgeon of the Year.” I enjoyed the freshness each new story offered, a welcome contrast at the time to the theater, where the same lines are said over and over again.
Led by Tom Fontana and John Masius, the writing was extraordinary for television—or anywhere else for that matter. St. Elsewhere succeeded not only because of good writing and a superb ensemble cast but because it always seemed believable to the audience. To capture the frenetic activity of a real hospital the producers relied on a theme song with a throbbing beat that became one of the show’s signatures. The music accompanied Dr. Craig and his colleagues in every episode as they strode through the corridors, patient records tucked under their arms, on the way to surgery. St. Elsewhere was one of the first TV shows to adopt that walk-fast-and-talk-fast technique, and it was not always easy to pull off. The cameraman had to hold the camera on his shoulder as he was pulled down the hallway on a dolly, shooting the actors behind him. If one person in the crowd of actors made a mistake, we would have to shoot it all over again, and it might take half a day. I personally liked the walk-and-talk scenes; they involved action and took the burden off the script, which otherwise would have to carry the show.
