Chapter 3
My Three Sons filmed at Desilu Studios, a production facility that had originally been the legendary RKO studios until Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz purchased it in 1957. The husband and wife team, whom I’d grown up revering on I Love Lucy, turned it into the biggest independent studio in Hollywood, pioneering a lot of what we know today as standard practice in television such as use of multi cameras, filming in front of a live audience, and the idea of syndication. Desilu produced some of the biggest hits of the time: The Andy Griffith Show, Mission: Impossible, Hogan’s Heroes, The Lucy Show, and The Dick Van Dyke Show. When Lucy and Desi divorced in 1960, she ended up with the studio and proved that not only was she one of Hollywood’s most gifted comediennes, but was also a savvy producer and business person. Here’s some great Lucy trivia — against a lot of advice to the contrary, she gave Gene Roddenberry the green light for Star Trek. And she produced its first season.
Eventually Desilu was purchased by Paramount Studios — which it neighbored — and was swallowed up in its sprawling campus. A decade later I’d be back on the former Desilu grounds in sound stages 30 and 31 filming Little House on the Prairie.
On that first day on My Three Sons, at 6 am I drove into the Gower Street entrance and went into hair and make-up. I’d memorized my lines and was ready to go. Before filming started that day though there was a lull and I went outside into a courtyard where I saw an extremely nervous young actor. He told me it was his first TV role, his first day on a sound stage, and he looked like he was going to throw up. I told him he’d be fine and offered to run lines. You’d never know today that Beau Bridges had ever experienced a moment of anxiety in his life, he’s so often cast as a loveable laid-back guy. But we’re all young and terrified once.
Back on the set it was a real treat to work with the cast and crew of the show, especially, as I’d anticipated, with William Frawley, who played the show’s grandfather Bub O’Casey. Bill was a grouchy, foul-mouthed old son of a bitch, whom I came to adore. We didn’t have any scenes together but there’s a lot of down time on a set and you get to know the other actors. During filming on this and other episodes I was later on, we’d go to lunch together at Nicodell on Melrose, where everyone from Paramount had eaten since the 1930s. He always entered through the kitchen and there was perpetually a red-leather booth waiting for him. He’d glare at the waitress over the menu and shoot his mouth of with stuff like, “What kinda goddamn slop are you gonna poison me with today?” Under all that he was a sweetheart. My parents visited the set once while we were filming an episode a year or two later and Bill was so kind to them. I have a black and white photograph of Bill with my mom, dad, and me. It’s one of my most treasured mementos.
Then, of course, there was Tim Considine. Tim had grown up in Beverly Hills, an enclave of wealth and privilege that made Yuba City feel like the Ozarks, and had been famous most of his life. Before showing up on millions of TV sets around the country on My Three Sons each week, he’d come though the Disney star-making machine, appearing in a couple of Disney films including The Shaggy Dog in which he played opposite Fred MacMurray (as he did on My Three Sons). Of course before that he starred in two long-running serials on The Mickey Mouse Club.
For the world’s first generation of kids who grew up on television, Tim was a big deal. He had the honest face of American boyhood, straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting. He played decency, tenacity, and friendship with a touch of twinkly mischievousness that every kid growing up in the ‘50s hoped to embody. There wasn’t a mother in the country who wouldn’t die to have their daughter on the arm of Tim Considine.
One of the first scenes I shot on that episode of My Three Sons was with Beau Bridges and Tim. I played Agnes, a dreamy girl who had landed in the sports department of the high school newspaper and hoped to write her stories in the form of poems. Beau was a kid who was trying to get out of doing any work at all and Tim’s Mike Douglas character was attempting to organize our efforts as sports editor. It was fun, goofy material and I had a wonderful time. (You can find this episode, called “Deadline,” on YouTube.)
I really liked Tim. Well, I more than liked him. I had a huge crush on him and tried to figure out how to get his attention. I was only going to be on set for about three days so I didn’t have a lot of time to make an impression.
The set for the Douglas home was all in one area of the sound stage and at one point during a break I went into one of the bedrooms and laid down on one of the beds. (I could have just as easily relaxed by plopping down in one of the living room chairs or in one of the chairs provided off the set.) This was — let’s just be honest — a total girl move. I spread myself out alluringly (or so I imagined) on the bed cover and pretended to take a nap, knowing that Tim and another guy were nearby. As I’d hoped, they wandered into the bedroom, where I’d laid my trap. Thinking I was asleep they stood at the end of the bed whispering to each other about me — apparently they liked what they saw. I continued to snooze, sweetly oblivious to their admiration.
This was truly acting.
Okay, as amateur-hour as this may have been, something worked because not long after I shot that episode, the telephone rang at my little one-bedroom apartment in Burbank. It was Tim calling to ask if I wanted to go out. I don’t remember what we did or where we went on that first date or even of the ones that followed soon after, I can only remember the feeling of it all, which was totally thrilling. Even though I was now 21, had done some film and TV work, had met a lot of celebrities by now, I was still a teenage fan-girl when it came to Tim.
Fortunately, things clicked between us. We started seeing each other pretty regularly at that point. He introduced me to his mother, Carmen, and I began to be included in family dinners and events.
At the time we met, Tim and his mom lived in a two-apartment building — she had the lower story, he had the upper — between Sunset Boulevard and Fountain. In some cases this kind of proximity to a guy’s mom might have stopped a pair of 21-year-olds from getting sexually active or from smoking pot. But while not ideal, it didn’t slow us down. The situation improved when not long afterward, Carmen moved to a pretty house in Beverly Hills and Tim rented his own house in Laurel Canyon where our privacy was complete.
Not that we were living together. That still wasn’t widely done at the time and I don’t think either of us was really ready for that level of commitment. With my first drizzle of money, I had secured a little one-bedroom, $125-a-month apartment near Warner Brothers Studios. It sat on a quiet residential street in Burbank where I’d occasionally see the singing cowboy, Gene Autry, park his huge Cadillac under my window and visit a Chinese woman who was my neighbor and his mistress.
Usually I’d spend time at Tim’s place, though every now and then we’d find ourselves holed up at mine.
Dating Tim had dimensions I hadn’t anticipated. We were having a ridiculously good time going to movie premieres, charity events, and parties of all sorts. His mom would take me aside and insist I wear her ermine stole or chinchilla coat for a big night — in an era when such things were acceptable. What I hadn’t foreseen were all the logistics that went into an evening out. Tim had a publicity rep and so did I. They were always on the lookout for ways to get our faces into newspapers and magazines, which wasn’t a huge uphill climb really, we were a popular couple for a while, but our reps had to work together, coordinating our arrival and movements with event planners and with writers, editors, and photographers.
Because Tim had grown up appearing on television and in film — he landed his first onscreen role at the age of 11 — I realized that he was a little weary of acting and the whole mechanics of fame; none of it was new and exotic, as it was for me. Besides his own acting career, he’d grown up in a legendary show business family.
In the early 1900s his maternal grandfather, Alexander Pantages, had been a powerhouse impresario based in Seattle, who owned a chain of some 50 Vaudeville houses throughout the Western states while Tim’s grandfather on his dad’s side, John Considine, had been one of Pantages’ bitterest rivals in the theater world, owning his own string of Vaudeville houses. When Tim’s parents, John W. Considine, Jr., and Carmen Pantages married it was truly the joining of two great, warring households, in near Romeo and Juliet fashion.
After the death of Vaudeville Tim’s family was able to convert some of the old song-and-dance halls into movie theaters. His uncle Rodney Pantages managed the Hollywood Pantages Theater until he sold it to RKO in 1949.
Tim’s father cut his own path as a prolific film producer beginning in the silent era. Working from the 1920s up through the mid-1940s he produced more than 50 movies, among them were hits like Boys Town and Puttin’ on the Ritz, working with a who’s-who list of the legends who forged the film industry — DW Griffin, Buster Keaton, Rudolph Valentino, John Barrymore, Mary Astor, Ernst Lubitsch, Samuel Goldwyn, and Louis B. Mayer.
There had been a great deal of money in the family at one point though by the time I came along, I think Carmen was to some degree living off the largess of Tim’s Uncle Lloyd, a deeply tanned and fashionably flamboyant soul.
Because acting had lost some of its glitter, Tim had started to explore other interests such as writing, directing, photography, and, easily his favorite, getting behind the wheel of a race car, specifically Go Cart racing. During our dating life more and more of his life was centered around the track hanging out with drivers and mechanics. I’d go with him and it was fun at first — what woman doesn’t enjoy being with a funny, popular guy. Over time, Tim taught me a lot of driving secrets. We’d race each other down Mulholland Drive — Tim in the Mini Cooper, me in the Mercedes — he’d give me hand signals for when to brake and when to accelerate.
At one point he recruited me to drive a Go Cart in a 150-mile race. He was impressed when, while speeding down the track, he saw me reach back behind my head and, without needing to turn and look, adjust the carburetor.
Afterward he said, “How’d you know how to do that?”
“I had to adjust,” I said matter-of-factly. “The engine was running too rich.”
Sometimes those farm girl skills gained me an extra point or two in his favor.
Even though we spent a lot of time together and I’d become close to his family throughout this time Tim was still seeing other women, which I only knew about in the vaguest way. I didn’t ask about any of it and didn’t want to know. It was just easier. Likewise I was still seeing other men though no one I really cared about.
Tim and I were floating along in a sunny bubble, going out on the town, partying with friends. It was all pretty easy. I was having a good time, overall, and it seemed like he was too. I figured at some point we’d get married. He’d see me as his one and only and would surprise me with an engagement ring, we’d stand up in a church and pledge ourselves to be faithful, and things would change. I’d be important to him.
None of this passed between us out loud. I wonder how many 22-year-olds are able to put words to such half-felt, vague sensations of the heart.
I was passively thinking that things would just work themselves out. I didn’t have enough life experience to believe otherwise. And my own sense of self-worth was pretty shaky. I was still, in my mind (and I believed in his mind too), Charlotte from Yuba City, while he was Tim from Beverly Hills. I was the country mouse, the wannabe.
Whatever Tim wasn’t giving me emotionally in reality was amplified by my own sense that I really didn’t deserve much and anything nice that came my way was probably some sort of accident. Those old waves of “I’m not good enough” that I’d felt so early on at the Pasadena Playhouse and in high school were always there in the background.
One day while shopping for a few things, I came out of a department store on Hollywood Boulevard and staggered, feeling like I was going to pass out. I caught myself and hung on until I could get to my car and start feeling more stable. I wasn’t a hypochondriac but it was such an unnerving, out-of-the-blue moment I visited my doctor to see if everything was okay. Then came the shock — I was pregnant.
Yes, Tim and I had been having sex but I’d faithfully used birth control and thought I’d eliminated pregnancy as a possibility.
As the news sunk in, my most immediate thought was that I didn’t feel ready for motherhood, but then again who does? I remember sitting in my car after the doctor’s appointment trying to think this through and the only thing that came to mind was that this was it — this was when Tim and I would get married. This is what would set things in motion. I’d tell him about the pregnancy. He’d probably freak out a bit but then he’d calm down, think it over, and say we should tie the knot.
When I drove over to Laurel Canyon and broke the news to Tim though, where I had been confused, he had clarity — he wasn’t ready for marriage, wasn’t ready to become a parent, and I should get an abortion.
It was a lot to take in.
I felt Tim was right that a pregnancy wasn’t a sound basis for a wedding. I think that’s what he meant. Though what he’d actually said was that he didn’t want to get married. To me. The inner voice that constantly whispered, “You’re not good enough” had once again been proven right. This was more evidence that I didn’t hit a high enough standard for Tim.
Would I ever? What would I need to do to earn a place in his world?
The other consideration was career-related. How could our PR reps ever spin this one to the America of the early 1960s? An era so obsessed with sexual purity that Dick Van Dyke and Mary Tyler Moore, who played married people on The Dick Van Dyke show, couldn’t been seen in the same bed together. An era in which Lucille Ball had fought the network censors to use the word “pregnant” on her show — and had lost.
The idea of clean-cut TV star Tim Considine marrying his pregnant girlfriend would not play well. It would damage both of our careers — his more — and it could even hurt My Three Sons — meanings the careers and incomes of everyone on the show, cast and crew — people we both cared deeply for.
Within a few days I came around to the idea that if we weren’t going to get married then, ending the pregnancy would be the best of bad options. Could I have raised a baby on my own? Of course. There are always ways to make that happen. But it would’ve been nearly unheard of then. I couldn’t go back to Yuba City — the embarrassment and pain for my parents would’ve been off the charts. I couldn’t do that to them. I didn’t have the wherewithal financially or emotionally to raise a child on my own. I was 22 and single and oh, yeah, I partied a lot. If Tim didn’t want me enough to marry me, if he didn’t want the child, then I couldn’t see moving forward with it on my own.
Abortion wasn’t legal in the U.S. so not knowing of any options in Los Angeles, I flew down to San Diego, then rented a car and drove to Tijuana, Mexico, with Tim’s brother John. Tim felt like it was too risky career-wise to be spotted going into an abortion clinic — it would have been juicy fodder for the tabloids, which even then could be pretty awful.
It took a while to find the clinic, which was above a dentist’s office. Once inside, the physician was all business. There was no “How’re you feeling?” or “Are you comfortable?” There was no one to talk me through the procedure or hold my hand. I wasn’t sure exactly what was going to happen but I knew it wasn’t going to be good.
I was instructed to get my legs into the metal stirrups and after a quick exam, out came the terrifying-looking equipment. Since I was in my first trimester, it probably took about ten minutes but an abortion without anesthesia seems like forever. It felt like the doctor was ripping my insides out. The pain was brutal and petrifying, like something from a medieval dungeon. I tried to hold it together but the pain and fear was overwhelming. I lost control, pleading with the physician to stop, trying to pull myself out of the stirrups and two nurses had to hold me down.
When it was over, I felt as torn up in soul as I did in body. Once I got my clothes on I stumbled down the stairs where John was waiting for me. I was nauseated and crying. In the car I was throwing up. At the U.S.-Mexican Border, the officer asked where home was and I was so out of it I said Yuba City. By the time we got to the airport in San Diego blood had soaked through my pants so John had me wait in the ladies room and he went to buy me a new pair of jeans.
On the plane back to L.A., I was shaking and sick, praying the bleeding would stop.
I had difficulty forgiving Tim for not going with me. One part of me understood it — protecting your career was important. At the same time, I kept thinking, when two people are really together, you shared messy, painful, frightening ordeals like this. Getting pregnant takes two — it’s not as if I’d done this to myself. If I were really important, he’d have insisted on being there. He’d have held me. He’d have made me feel loved.
Looking back now, I realize that after the abortion, my drinking picked up, which is saying a lot. Going all the way back to my Pasadena Playhouse days, I’d enjoyed cocktails, beer, and wine as part of a night out. (Or, really, a night in. Any night would do.) But even then I was drinking three times more than most of my friends, which I didn’t see at the time. I thought I was just being a normal kid.
Now I found that night after night instead of a glass or two of wine, I might have most of a bottle on my own and then switch to vodka. Alcohol stepped in where my relationship with Tim let me down, making me feel attractive and special. At least temporarily.
If this is going to be an honest portrait of my life at this point, I don’t want to give the impression that it was all darkness. Far from it. There was always a lot going on and much of it was really fun. Friends came over a lot to Tim’s Laurel Canyon house — actors, musicians, and people we knew in the industry. We’d get high, talk and laugh a lot, play board games, dance and listen to music. In a way, we’d recreated those Friday and Saturday nights I’d grown up with in Yuba City. We made it our own, of course, but it felt like I had entered that secret club of adulthood that had seemed so distant and inscrutable — and exciting — as a child.
And life went on. Tim kept going to the studio filming My Three Sons. He was not only acting but was more and more often directing episodes. I kept up a busy schedule too with TV parts and advertising gigs. In March 1964 I was at The Cellar Theater in a well-received revival of the play “The Front Page” directed by Ken Rose, one of my teachers from the Pasadena Playhouse. Among the cast was Sid Haig, another buddy from the Playhouse (who would go on to Comic-Con fame at the evil clown figure, Captain Spaulding, in Rob Zombie’s House of a Thousand Corpses and The Devil’s Rejects.)
Tim and I dated for four years until, in the spring of 1965, talk of marriage started up between us. I don’t remember who said what but the idea began to grow seemingly on its own. He didn’t propose to me on a bended knee or any of that. We just slowly started to talk about it and then it became a reality. We were engaged.
News of our engagement made all the entertainment press. TV Picture Life wrote breathlessly that Tim had presented me with a diamond-shaped wristwatch, which made me “the first girl in Hollywood to have a diamond too large to wear any place but the wrist.” Meanwhile, Teen World magazine, claimed that Tim had slipped a huge diamond ring on my finger. Uh-huh. Pure La-La-Land stuff.
What actually happened is that early in our relationship we’d spent the day at Disneyland and at a shop on Main Street USA he purchased an enamel ring with two Siamese Dancers engraved on it, which I slipped onto the ring finger of my right hand. A few years later when we made the decision to become engaged, Tim simply took my hands and switched the ring from my right hand to the left.
In one sense it seemed kind of sweet and goofy, in another I knew if he’d chosen to he could have given me something really elegant from a jeweler in Beverly Hills. I tried not to interpret this gesture too closely but you can guess what that voice of “you’re not good enough” was whispering to me.
Photos of Tim and me applying for our marriage license appeared in the Los Angeles Times and other LA media outlets — in many cases on the front page. A friend in England sent a clipping from London’s Evening News in which news of our imminent nuptials appeared in a news box above the main headline
Tim and I married at 3 pm on October 23, 1965, at Bel Air Presbyterian. John was Tim’s best man and several close friends such as Liz Baron and Lydia Banks were my maids of honor. Lydia was my roommate at the Pasadena Playhouse and had married fellow student — and great friend — David Banks. I had been a maid of honor in their wedding. Among the guests were Fred MacMurray (the only time I met him) and the other cast members from My Three Sons such as Don Grady, Stanley Livingston, William Demarest, and Bill Frawley, who’d recently lost his spot on the show. The studio had replaced Bill earlier that year because they could no longer insure him due to declining health. He didn’t take it well and I heard that he would still drop by the set now and again and wasn’t terribly nice to William Demarest, who was a really sweet guy who did a terrific job on the show as Bill’s replacement, Uncle Charley. At the wedding though everyone was on their best behavior. Bill gave Tim and me a very funny letter saying he couldn’t decide what to get for us. And even though it was possible we needed a bird cage he was giving us $100; he exhorted us not to spend it all at once. Bill died about four months later of a heart attack and we missed him terribly.
After the wedding, I found Tim’s mom and sister packing my bags for our honeymoon. Which was odd to me. We had tickets for New York with a later stopover in Nassau. And while I was thrilled at the prospect, since I’d never been east of Denver, packing is something I thought of myself as qualified to do. I tried to think of it as a nice gesture but that voice of inadequacy inside of me strongly suspected it had something to do with Charlotte from Yuba City not being up to the task, not really knowing what to wear in front of the press or East Coast society types. The family had a reputation to keep up and it was going to take an extra boost to get this country girl to look the part.
Or — wait — was it their way of showing some kindness and generosity? Was I unfairly misjudging them through the filter of my crappy self-worth?
When we arrived at the airport with a group of family and friends, Tim handed me a document titled “Itinerary for Mr. and Mrs. Tim Considine” provided by our travel agent. I scanned the top of the thrice-folded sheet. Okay, as expected, Los Angeles to Chicago, then Chicago to…wait, what? Chicago to PARIS…? Paris to ROME! Rome to VENICE! Venice to MADRID! Madrid to LONDON! Oh my God.
We were going to Europe — everywhere in Europe — for six weeks!
What a wonderful surprise my darling had arranged and what a doofus I felt like for not suspecting a thing — having my bags packed for me all became clear. I have a great picture of us with our friends as we boarded the steps up to the plane. No elevated boarding structure in those days. Tim and I are in suits, me with a hat and gloves. So proper. So young.
As we traveled, our honeymoon received a lot of press coverage thanks to our hard-working PR agents. Fortunately though in this era before rabid paparazzi we had plenty of time to ourselves and enjoyed many under-the-radar adventures.
In London I realized immediately that all the girls were wearing miniskirts and I folded the top of my skirt over a few times to keep up.
Rome was everything it promised to be. Our hotel stood at the top of the Spanish Steps with easy access to the Western Union office frequented by all the local American students. We took side trips as suggested by our Fielding Guidebook and wandered the Trevi gardens and the Coliseum. After about a week of pasta I was dying for some good old American food. Mr. Fielding’s book listed a hamburger spot so we consulted the map and soon we were chowing down on burgers, like those from home, along with patatine fritte.
In the booth next to us we noticed an older American couple, who we figured were probably satisfying a craving for food from home as well. I watched as Tim picked up our guidebook and looked at the couple then glanced back at the book. It was Temple Fielding, our guidebook’s author. What a cool opportunity.
We introduced ourselves and they congratulated us on our wedding. We were pleased to tell him how wonderful his book had made our first European trip. As we chatted Mr. Fielding asked about our next stop and we said we’d been invited to spend several days on the west coast of Italy in a little town called Porto Santo Stefano. He knew it well and said that not only was it a lovely seaside town but in fact they had a friend there, the Contessa Lily Gerini.
“That’s who we’re staying with!” Tim answered.
The Contessa was a friend of Tim’s mother and had arranged a visit. They wished us well as we left for our hotel.
Our train trip to Porto Santo Stephano was confusing. We didn’t speak Italian making all the station announcements indecipherable. Holding our tickets and our train change instructions, we were at the mercy of the conductor who occasionally walked through our car. Lots of hand signals finally got through to us that we must change at the next station. With papers, passports, and tickets waving we managed to get on the right car at last.
Waiting for us at the station was the Contessa’s driver in a beautiful Mustang convertible. He told us that Lily Gerini was an American woman from Chicago who married a titled Italian and owned half of the Appian Way. She had built a villa on top of Nero’s birthplace and was renowned for her entertaining. A short and lively ride brought us to the villa and Lily.
“My darlings at last! Forgive us for not waiting,” she said, urging us inside.
We walked into a large room with about 20 people already into their meal. Snatches of Italian, Spanish, and French conversation floated back and forth across the table. We were ushered to our seats, Tim way down and across from me as they always do at such dinner parties. Once seated I surveyed my place setting and found an alarming fan of cutlery. Some of the utensils were as foreign as the food before me. I hadn’t learned any of this in my fast-track charm school.
The dinner mate on my left was a handsome young man, barely older than me. He registered my confusion and leaned over and whispered in a polished Spanish accent, “It’s easy. You only have to start from the outside and work your way in.” We both laughed and I was grateful he didn’t treat me like an American rube. He inquired about our trip and I told him that after a brief train ride to Modena, Italy, where Tim wanted to tour the Ferrari factory, we were on our way to Madrid. He seemed familiar with both places and assured me that we would have a memorable time.
As it turned out my dinner companion knew more about silverware and expensive cars than I’d imagined. Ten years later when he, Juan Carlos, was crowned King of Spain, I realized I’d learned a lesson in table manners from European royalty.
And as Spain’s future monarch had predicted, Tim did indeed enjoy the time we spent in Modena. He loved the Ferrari he tried out so much that he ordered one to be shipped to Los Angeles, where he planned to pay for it at the Beverly Hills dealership. Gulp. Though I had little knowledge of Tim’s finances I wasn’t at all sure he (or we) could afford that. But he was thinking like a TV and film star. The money would show up. The future was golden.
After we returned Tim and I were the “It Couple” for a while and we had lots of adventures that were documented in gossip columns and industry papers.
One night in Hollywood we were at a restaurant waiting for our table when in walked Charlton Heston, whom Tim knew from a film they’d worked on together with Julie Andrews in 1955, Private War of Major Benson. Heston in gregarious style came over with that radiant “Ben Hur” smile and greeted Tim by name. It was then Tim’s turn to greet him back and to introduce me. I could tell that even though he knew Heston, Tim was a pretty star struck. He looked at Heston. Heston looked back and then looked at me. I smiled at Heston and then at Tim. This went on for a long awkward moment until finally Charlton Heston gave Tim a “Good to see you” nod and walked away. I laughed and said to Tim, “Did you forget his name?” And he said, “No, I forgot yours!”
While I was still working like crazy to ramp-up my career — auditions, business lunches, parties, the chase for parts — Tim was pulling away from acting. While on our honeymoon, Tim’s agent had engineered a career-crippling disaster. Tim had expressed the desire to direct more episodes of My Three Sons and his agent had gone to the producers — while we were in Europe — and tried playing hard-ball, demanding that Tim direct half of the next season’s episodes. It was an all-or-nothing proposition. The producers went for nothing and promptly cut Tim from the show.
It wouldn’t be his only post-honeymoon disappointment.
Thinking it was time for the Ferrari he ordered to arrive, Tim stopped by the dealership in Beverly Hills where it was to be delivered. When he asked about the car he learned that, yes, it had arrived but actor Steve McQueen had been at the dealership that day, seen it, and wanting to throw some of his The Great Escape money around bought it on the spot.
Tim was furious but the truth is it was the best thing that could’ve happened. Neither of us had a Ferrari income at that point.
Tim spun into a funk, started spending more and more time in his dark room working on photography projects, and didn’t leave the house much. He stopped going to auditions and let his hair grow, which he stubbornly refused to cut and as a result started losing out on new roles. His mother and his agent begged him to get a haircut — nope. He wasn’t going to do it. He spent more and more time with his racecars and other interests. He and his brother John were working on scripts for a TV show they planned to pitch to the networks.
He was also settling into marriage, partying less, and becoming a homebody. In fact one night he said we should stop drinking and smoking pot altogether. Looking back I think this must have come, as least in part, from my own drinking. Not long before this, we’d invited some neighbors over for dinner and before they’d arrived, while cooking I’d downed an entire bottle of wine and had passed out. Tim was stuck with the job of a very awkward last minute cancellation.
While Tim did indeed stop drinking and smoking weed, I couldn’t imagine life without alcohol. Our entire social life centered on hanging out and having drinks or getting high. Rather than do as he suggested, I not only continued but almost certainly drank more. And since I couldn’t do this at home — or at least didn’t find it fun anymore under Tim’s sober gaze — we started spending less and less time together. He’d be at home or off behind the wheel of a racecar and I’d be out drinking with friends, and in many cases making new friends he knew nothing about.
He was in the Air Force Reserves, which meant he was gone for a training weekend once a month and I took advantage of those absences to pack in some extra fun.
On the acting front I was pursing every opportunity — TV, film, special appearances, and advertising. At one point I was so busy my agent started being contacted for “a Charlotte Stewart type but not Charlotte because she’s in everything.” Call it a farm girl’s work ethic.
In October 1966, I was back at The Cellar Theater in a production of La Ronde, a farce set in Vienna in the late 1800s, again directed by Ken Rose. The Los Angeles Times reviewer found a lot to dislike in the production though I was one of two performers she found some merit in saying that I “had my moments.” Seriously. That’s as good as the review got.
In 1968, I landed a part in Speedway, which starred Elvis Presley, toward the end of the run of bubble gum films he appeared in in the 1960s. It was such a treat to play a couple of scenes with him at MGM. In real life Elvis was as startlingly handsome and gracious as I’d always imagined. One afternoon, while waiting out a lengthy set-up for a scene he caught my eye, called me over, and set me up with a chair next to his. My stomach did a flip-flop because, well, he was Elvis — hands-down the most famous person on the planet — and I had no idea what he wanted. When I settled in he took my hand and apologized for the movie.
“It’s a terrible film,” he said and gave a deep sigh. “I get the girl, I get the car…”
Beyond the predictable script he thought the music written for him to perform was thin, uninspired, and forgettable.
This put me in a weird spot. How to respond? “Yes, Elvis, your movie is crap.”
I just wanted him to keep talking in the silky, smooth, Southern voice. And to keep holding my hand. The fact that I wasn’t visibly freaking out is probably the best acting of my life.
Whatever I said in response did the trick because he did keep talking about how he’d dreamed of being movies, like any regular boy or girl, and how that had turned into making B-grade romps like Girl Happy and Clambake. One topic led to another and before I realized it an hour sailed by as he told me about his life, his music, and his mama — the whole time holding my hand. He was by turns funny, intense, and thoughtful. It was very sweet and it was the first time I saw him as a person, not as an icon or a star but as a very nice, vulnerable guy — almost a kid — who was caught up in a career like a typhoon. It was one of my first experiences meeting a music legend, only to discover a kind, thoughtful, shy, and uncertain artist behind all the fame and tabloid stories. It was not to be my last such experience. His conversation with me ended abruptly, when his manager, Col. Tom Parker, walked into the sound stage. Elvis was up and out of his chair like a shot and nearly standing at attention in Parker’s presence, confirming a lot of what I’d heard about the hold Parker had over him.
My next film, back at Goldwyn Studio, was The Cheyenne Social Club with Jimmy Stewart and Henry Fonda, directed by the great Gene Kelly. I played a saloon girl and in my first scene was to enter through the swing-doors with food on a tray for Stewart and Fonda. When I heard Gene Kelly say “Action,” I swung through the doors and all the food on the tray sailed halfway across the set, which got a big laugh, especially from all the barflies. The scenes I was in were all with the guys in the saloon, a bunch of old time cowboy actors from the early days. Between set ups they’d sit around and swap stories about shooting Westerns all the way back to the days of silent flickers. What a hoot to hang out with those guys. Gene was a joy to work with too. One day at lunchtime a group of us were heading out to the Formosa Cafe up on the corner and I asked him if he’d dance with me. He said, “Sure, what would you like to do?” I asked him if he’d do the scissor-step and he seemed surprised that I’d know it. So Gene Kelly and I did the scissor-step together down the middle of Formosa Avenue.
It was a kick to work with legends like Jimmy Stewart and Henry Fonda, though beyond shooting our scenes together we didn’t exactly hang out and practice our dance moves. In the long periods of downtime on the set Jimmy Stewart, who had recently lost his stepson in Vietnam, would sit on the steps of his dressing trailer playing the accordion to himself. Jimmy had been a heroic figure in World War II as a wing commander for a bomber squadron based in Southern England. His courage and commitment had inspired a whole generation. But that was a different war and a different time. I wondered what his thoughts were now but he kept them to himself. Henry Fonda was a pretty keep-to-himself guy too. I always called him Mr. Fonda, which he preferred to anything less formal. I did try to warm up to him at the cast party when I pulled him into a stairwell and asked if he had any weed. This made him grumpier than usual and he stalked off saying, “I think it’s my son you want to talk to.”
I had a great deal more success in this regard — in the weed-scoring department — when I appeared on a western series on NBC called The Virginian, as the ditz wife of actor Dennis Weaver. What a foul mood Dennis was in on that shoot. Took himself very seriously and took an almost instant and long-lasting dislike to me; I was never sure why.
The episode was called “The Dark Train” in which the cast spent six days on small set built to look like the interior of a passenger train from the late 1800s. To give the sense of movement over tracks and terrain, the entire set was jiggled this way and that throughout the six-day shoot.
By the end of it the entire cast was pretty exhausted from all the jostling and to celebrate the end of our travails, most of us (minus Dennis) gathered in one of the dressing trailers to share the comforts of weed. When we were all feeling pretty fantastic, there was a sudden, loud knock at the door. We got busy inside the trailer opening windows and fanning smoke and arranging ourselves in such a way as to not look stoned.
When we opened the door, an assistant director was there to inform us that noise on the set had ruined the sound and that we all needed to come back to loop (meaning re-record) our dialogue. They hadn’t taught us at the Pasadena Playhouse how not to sound high when you are. It’s just one of those skills you pick up on the job.
Leaving the old west behind for a while, I got to fly to Hawaii and play a drug addict on an episode of Hawaii Five-O. The thing is I actually had a lot of weed in my luggage — we’ll call this method acting. The driver who picked me up at the airport in Hawaii was a big Samoan guy who was really easy to talk to and likeable. He helped get all my bags into the hotel and as a thank-you I gave him a couple of joints, which he appreciated. Out on my balcony I saw him crossing the courtyard below. He’d already lit one up and when he saw me he gave me the “OK” sign. Apparently my L.A. pot measured up to his Maui-Wowie standards. So far so good.
In one of my first scenes I was running down the street toward the camera, which was mounted on a car and moving away from me. I tripped and fell and wound up in the hospital with a broken kneecap. For the remainder of the shoot they had to find ways of shooting me from the waist up to avoid the cast on my leg. In the long shots, like where you’d see me walking away, they had to find a body double, who also had my long blonde hair.
And yes, in this episode, I worked with Hawaii Five-0 star Jack Lord. Jack was a big shot on the island. He owned a huge house in Honolulu and was the resident star in those parts — you got the sense just from the way he moved through the world that he was very much lord of the manor, no pun intended. He seemed unusually aware of his status and his appearance, even by TV standards. Though we were shooting an episode in the first season of the show, already the joke among the crew was that they could only shoot outdoors if the wind was coming from the right direction and didn’t mess up Jack’s hair.
In this episode Jack and I had an emotional scene in which I’m lying in a hospital bed — a fake one this time versus the real one I’d recently been in. And while we were shooting, he was holding my hand and nearly crushing it to a pulp. Did he think this was going to improve my acting? I don’t think I’ve ever been happier to end a scene with anyone.
Of course, did I say anything to him in between takes? Did I ask the big deal TV star to stop mangling my hand?
Nope. Speaking up for myself was not on my list of skills.
Back home I auditioned relentlessly and got guest roles on shows that have sunk into pop-culture oblivion such as The F.B.I., The Young Lawyers, and The Interns.
But good things come to those who audition, and a great career boost came with getting parts on Bonanza, an iconic show even at the time, during which I got to see the young Michael Landon at work. Even though Lorne Greene was billed as the star of the show, really it was Mike, who played “Little Joe.” Even then he was Mr. Charisma. What woman wouldn’t melt at least a little at that smile? But Mike was more than a pretty face and a pair of suspenders. He was ambitious and driven. He was a good writer, who had a dead-on understanding of story and character. He knew how to make an audience care. Sounds easy, I guess, but nothing could be more difficult.
On Bonanza, like lots of Westerns, we filmed interior scenes at Paramount Studios and the exteriors at sprawling Big Sky Movie Ranch, located outside of Los Angeles in Simi Valley. (This is exactly what we’d do a few years down the road, when Michael was the boss of his own show, Little House on the Prairie.) In one sequence, the script called for me to escape from a bad guy who was inside my cabin, a scene that we shot on a Paramount sound stage. A week or so later they needed to film me bursting out of the front door of the cabin at that same level of distress. At Big Sky I was inside the ramshackle house set waiting to hear the director call “Action.” I prepped myself on the other side of the door, breathing heavily and getting myself into the right mindset. When I heard “Action,” I flew through the door and thanks to hyperventilation promptly blacked out, landing in the huge arms of Dan Blocker, who played “Hoss.”
There are worse places to end up.
On the set of Ben Casey in an episode called “For Jimmy, The Best of Everything,” I had a scene with Peter Falk — this was just before he played his career-defining role of Columbo. I was a medical student and Peter was a doctor who asked a question of me. The line I had in response to his question was pretty complicated, full of medical jargon, and I “went up,” meaning the line just vanished from my mind while the cameras were rolling. Instead of stopping and waiting for me to pull it together, Peter, who got his start in off-Broadway theater, just kept going, goading me for the answer like a real doctor would until the line just tumbled out of me. And I loved him for it. It made the scene feel real, provoking the very reaction a flustered student might give.
Also for Paramount I was briefly in The Slender Thread, a film directed by Sydney Pollack — it was his first feature though he’d acted and directed in TV for a long time. I played a telephone operator receiving a desperate call from Sidney Poitier at a suicide crisis center. Poitier was trying to track down the location of a suicidal caller (played by Anne Bancroft). We filmed the scene in an actual telephone company, in which there was a long bank of switching panels where operators would move plugs around a grid to connect calls. My scene was pretty simple. I was to take the call, recognize the gravity of the situation and ask my supervisor over to deal with it.
In the first couple of takes I really laid on the shock and explosiveness of the situation — throwing as much movement and “acting” into my few seconds of screen time as possible. Finally Sydney called “Cut” and came over, put his hand on my shoulder and said gently, “She’s just a telephone operator.” We shot the scene again and this time I took my performance down about ten notches, which worked. But it was at times like this when I wondered how much more I had to learn. Since the days of mastering the art of hitting my mark on Damaged Goods or eating so much I nearly burst on The Loretta Young Show, I hoped that I was getting better. Hoped I was learning my craft. But was I?
While jobs were coming in — TV, film and advertising — the thing I still lacked was confidence. Every time I was in front of a camera, I felt like a screw-up. Cast members were usually very supportive — though I could always find a Dennis Weaver who’d treat me like dirt. My career felt fragile like I was just one blown line away from seeing it all end. I couldn’t shake that feeling of being in a sound stage filled with crew and cast all waiting for me to cross a room or deliver a line and looking around thinking “I wonder if they know I don’t know what I’m doing.” Still, just as at the Pasadena Playhouse when I’d been invited to leave the program, I kept going to auditions, kept working at it. I still had no Plan B.
The fact is I had learned a lot about both the craft and logistics of acting since my first on-screen roles. By logistics I mean things like which gate you enter at Warner Brothers, where hair and makeup is located at CBS, where you’ll find stage 13 at Paramount (there is no stage 13 — ha!). And as far as craft goes, I mean what can you deliver emotionally, what kind of authenticity can you bring to a character when the director says “Action” and the crew goes silent and 150 lights in the rigging overhead are warming your skin.
Something was working because I was getting parts. But I’d often find myself on set preparing for a scene and feel my breath coming more quickly and a rising sense of panic like “I don’t know if I can do this.” Or I’d feel as though the people who’d hired me hadn’t done their homework and didn’t realize their mistake.
The truth is I was well liked. A number of directors hired me for multiple projects. Part of that may have been because I was never any trouble — always showed up prepared, didn’t question anything, simply did my lines and got out of the way.
Peter Tewksbury, whose career went back to the early days of television, directed all the episodes that I was in on My Three Sons and later asked me to come play a role on another show he was directing called It’s a Man’s World. And then again, when he moved into features and was directing the Sandra Dee and George Hamilton big-screen comedy, Doctor, You Must Be Kidding, he again asked me to come play a role.
The sense of inadequacy I felt with Tim was mirrored in my lack of confidence on set. And like anyone would, I looked for ways to bolster my feelings about myself. Alcohol was an obvious crutch but with Tim’s self-imposed sobriety, I could really only indulge in that away from him.
Drinking was only part of the picture though. I was hungry for something deeper. Something bigger than myself. Something spiritual. Growing up, our family had been more or less Catholic. My dad never went to any sort of church but my mom was sort of a holiday Catholic, going to Mass on Christmas Eve. My sister Barbara Jean, however, was big into it, in part perhaps because it offered an escape from our home. She nearly always took me to Mass with her. When I moved away and went to the Pasadena Playhouse I attended Mass regularly there. Not entirely because I was a serious believer but because it was a connection to home.
While dating Tim, a friend had invited me to check out the Hollywood Christian Group. There were a lot of familiar industry faces at these once-a-week meetings. And it wasn’t heavy-duty stuff. I just found it inspirational. One night the speaker was Dale Evans, who was well-known for appearing on TV and film alongside her husband, Roy Rogers, whom I’d almost met as a child. I don’t remember the specifics of what Dale talked about that night — probably things that had happened in her life and ways that her beliefs had seen her through hard times.
On the way home in the car, I came to a stop light on Vine Street when suddenly I had the feeling that my dad needed something. He needed it urgently. I didn’t know what it was but I felt his presence right there with me. I’d never felt such a powerful sense of someone being with me like that.
I knew my parents were on a little getaway together in Calistoga, up in Napa Valley, spending a few days at one of their favorite hot springs spas. I couldn’t imagine what this feeling meant but right then and there, I did the only thing I could. I prayed for my dad — asking God that Honey get whatever it was he needed.
Back at my apartment, about an hour later I got a telephone call from my brother Lewis — Dad had died. My sweet, quiet, loving father was suddenly gone.
Earlier that day at the spa, he’d walked from their room out to the truck to retrieve something and he’d had a sudden, incapacitating spasm of pain in his abdomen. The agony was so intense he couldn’t move. He could only honk the horn until help came.
My mom followed the ambulance as it took him to St. Helena Hospital, which was only a few miles away. There they stabilized him and it looked like he was going to be okay. The truth is things weren’t good for him health-wise. He was 80 lbs. overweight or more and ten years prior had been diagnosed with cirrhosis of the liver from years of alcoholism. But that night, they’d knocked the pain in his liver and he was feeling better, though they’d need to keep him for a few days. My mom asked the physician if she should remain there or if she could run back to Yuba City to get the things they’d need for a longer stay. Because all signs were good, the physician said it’d be fine for her to go.
On her way back home that night, dad’s temperature spiked, and with very little warning he died, slipping from this world in an unfamiliar hospital room surrounded by strangers. For a guy who had always loved being around his family it must have been an awful and disorienting way to go. At the very moment of his passing I was on Vine St., sensing him calling out to me.
He was just 56 years old.
Even now, more than 50 years later, I still feel the loss of a girl losing her daddy. And tears still blur my eyes when I think of that night.
Tim had no interest in the Hollywood Christian Center nor in organized religion in general. He didn’t give me a hard time about going, it just wasn’t his thing. What he did have interest in was transcendental meditation and so on our second anniversary we went to the Westwood Meditation Center where we studied meditation techniques and were given our mantra — the multi-vowel word that you repeat as you descend into a meditative state. Typically each student is given their own mantra but since we were a couple we were given the same word, which I found annoying. I wanted my own.
We threw ourselves into mediation. Practicing at home, continuing to go to the center, and even going to a retreat in Tahoe where we worked with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who founded the Transcendental Meditation movement, videotaping his hours-long talks. Honestly, meditation didn’t do a lot for me. I was trying to find something that Tim and I could do together as a couple. That’s what couples do, right? Couple things. By now his Go Cart racing had become boring to me. Hanging out with the other drivers and mechanics and their wives was drudgery. His photography was interesting. He was really good. We’d become friends with Joni Mitchell, a Laurel Canyon neighbor and we’d go down to the Troubadour to watch her perform. Tim took a gazillion pictures of her. In fact one of his best is on the cover of her iconic Blue album.
The problem with photography is that he spent a lot of time in the dark room.
I kept up the mediation, at some point, simply for the social side of it. But I could feel things changing in our relationship…we were drifting from each other. Hollywood was old news to Tim but it was still a very shiny new object to me. I was in my twenties and living in a town of limitless possibilities — for work, for parties, for friends, for sex, for drugs, for everything that made being alive exhilarating.
It killed me to stay home at night. How could you possibly spend an evening at home when you were young and good-looking and in movies and in the heart of Tinseltown? Someone somewhere was having more fun than I was and I wanted that someone to be me.
At a meditation retreat I met Richard Beymer again — whom I’d first run into at the commissary at Goldwyn Studios while I was shooting The Loretta Young Show and he was filming West Side Story. I still thought Richard was one of the yummiest men alive and soon we were meeting up for drinks and seeing each other and all the rest.
Meanwhile, back in Laurel Canyon Tim and I lived next door to a well-known architect, Jon Jerde and his wife Gail. Jon was an intense, fascinating, brooding kind of guy. The sort who would tear through the Hollywood Hills on his motorcycle at three in the morning when he couldn’t sleep. When the timing was right, Jon or I would sneak through the opening in our back fence for a quickie.
Also, my old friend from the Pasadena Playhouse days, Stuart Margolin, lived around the corner. There was some long-standing attraction between us that had been the inspiration for his 1965 two-person one-act play called Involution, which Stuart directed and I performed at The Cellar Door Theater with Smokey Roberds. Coleman Andrews wrote a terrific review in the Free Press saying that the play was at times painful “because one has to constantly remind oneself that it is only a play, and not a nightmare repetition of something that took place in one’s own life not too long before.” He added that “Smokey Roberds and Charlotte Stewart live the play, as though it were written for them.” Funny Coleman should say that.
By now my relationship with Stuart had progressed a great deal past the stage of Involution in which we’d been dancing around the idea of mutual attraction. We were now getting together at his house or at mine whenever possible. There were other men too, like Johnny Mandel, the composer who wrote “Shadow of Your Smile” and “Suicide is Painless” and still others in situations best described as dressing-room flings.
There’s no way to dress any of this up as quirky, romantic, or adventurous. By our second year of marriage I was cheating on Tim.
Why did I sleep around? At the time, I told myself it was fun and it felt good. On a deeper level though, and in hindsight, I realize that an unsettling portrait of our relationship had emerged for me. The house we lived in was Tim’s house. My name wasn’t on it. We never had a joint bank account. He never visited my parents in Yuba City; they always had to come south. And then there was the business of the cheap Disneyland engagement ring. Yes, Tim married me, but underneath it all, I wasn’t sure why — I didn’t seem important to him. I didn’t feel like I measured up. This was never going to be a partnership. I was never going to have a say. He’d made that clear to me yet again when, as a wedding present he had bought me a 1966 Mustang, which I absolutely loved. Then one day I came home and it was gone. He informed me that he thought it was junk and — without any prior discussion — sold it to a friend of his. With no offer of a replacement car, my parents gave me their Country Squire Station Wagon, which I drove around Hollywood, while Tim drove his Mercedes.
By contrast, the men I slept with wanted me. I ranked high in their priorities. They risked a lot to be with me. I felt desired. I felt good enough. To them I wasn’t Charlotte from Yuba City. I was just Charlotte, an actress from Laurel Canyon — I was pretty, confident, sexy, and great in bed. That’s the Charlotte I wanted to be. But being her and being married to Tim meant telling a lot of lies about where I’d been, who I’d been with, how I’d spent my day, how I felt about our lives together. Lies that built up and up and up requiring more sex and more alcohol to make each day livable. Like drinking one poison as an antidote to another.