Life Is Not a Stage Florence Henderson (13 ebook reader .txt) 📖

inner little voice warns, “If I don’t at least go and take the meeting, maybe my phone might not ring again. Perhaps my agent will think twice next time about submitting me for something else. Maybe that next time, he won’t bother to call about such and such a part that I really want.”

Backing down, I told him, “Okay, but I have to be on a plane to Houston tonight.” I was scheduled to begin an engagement there at the Shamrock Hotel. The rehearsal was the next day and the opening on the following. But today there was no excuse. The timing was opportune, because I was already in Los Angeles having just guested on Dean Martin. So I made the six-mile trip from the Beverly Hills Hotel to Paramount Studios in Hollywood for the meeting.

Entering the gates of Paramount that day (and every time thereafter) gave me goosebumps. I was always aware of the enormity of its history. I had loved movies all of my life. Going to the cinema was and remains to this day a sacred event, and for me, performing is like going to church. On the other side of those gates was where some of the greatest films of all time were shot. In the years to come, I thought of all the legendary stars who had used my dressing room and the parking space I now occupied. I thought about all the classics like Hitchcock’s The Man Who Knew Too Much, The Graduate, and Rosemary’s Baby that had been filmed on Stage 5, which would soon become my home away from home.

Once at the studio I was shown to an office where three people were waiting to meet me: the show’s creator, writer, and producer Sherwood Schwartz, studio production head Doug Cramer, and director John Rich. Sherwood was coming off the success of what would prove to be another all-time TV hit, Gilligan’s Island. He had worked for decades as a writer on some of the top radio shows of the 1940s and was a pioneer writer on 1950s TV comedy classics like Ozzie and Harriet, Red Skelton, and I Married Joan. His creativity extended to music as well—he cowrote the catchy theme songs for both Brady and Gilligan. When he was ninety-two years old in 2008, he finally got a Walk of Fame star on Hollywood Boulevard, and I was thrilled to be there to help honor him and participate in the ceremony. Doug oversaw Mission: Impossible and The Odd Couple for Paramount, but went on to his biggest success with Dynasty and The Love Boat in the 1980s, partnered with Aaron Spelling. The third person at the table was John Rich, a heavyweight in comedy television for directing Mister Ed, The Dick Van Dyke Show, All in the Family, Newhart, Barney Miller, and the list goes on.

After chatting for a few minutes, they cut to the chase. “Would you mind doing a scene on film for us?” they asked me. I told them about the plane I had to catch later that evening. No problem, they said.

Immediately, they dispatched me to a makeup trailer to get ready. It belonged to Star Trek. William Shatner was in there, and he wasn’t terribly friendly. “What is she doing in here?” It was as if I were an enemy Klingon who had invaded his trailer. What was also humorous was that he didn’t make the slightest gesture to discreetly lower his volume to avoid my hearing him. He obviously had no clue who I was, perhaps just another extra or a bit player that had wandered by mistake into the stars’ makeup room. Years later, I reminded him about the incident, and we had a good laugh about it.

There was more bizarre comedy inside that trailer before I left for the soundstage. The makeup artist happened to put some long eyelashes on me that would be more suitable if I were playing a streetwalker rather than the matriarch of a blended family of six children.

“What the hell is this?” I exclaimed. But I didn’t have the confidence yet to speak up and say, “No long fake eyelashes!”

You have to remember that actors are very careful and particular about their “look,” especially how their faces appear in makeup and how they’re lit. A light hitting you the wrong way will let everyone know how little sleep you had the night before or how the passage of time and hours in the sun have turned your face into cracked leather. It’s not about vanity. How the camera likes the actor is a crucial part of his equipment and maybe what got him the job. And often it is the actor himself who has to be vigilant, because if he doesn’t care about his appearance, usually no one else will. For that reason, I am so grateful for all I learned from all the talented makeup artists I’ve worked with over the years.

Before we started the scene, I wanted a clear disclaimer about the eyelashes. “I don’t think Carol Brady would wear these,” I told them. Doing my standard trick of trying to turn a negative once again into a positive, I got the point across with humor and everyone on the set cracked up. I personally would have chosen to give the character a different look, I told them. This memory is particularly ironic and amusing to me given the iconic fashion influence the show would grow to have. People made an absurdly big deal about how my hairstyles would morph into something new with the beginning of each season.

Anyway, I did the scene together with an actor (not my soon-to-be-costar Robert Reed) who was portraying my husband, and then I made the plane to Houston.

I was about to go onstage two nights later when the phone rang. It was Sandy. “They want you to come back right away to do the pilot,” he told me.

“I’m opening,” I told him.

“Talk to the promoter.”

So I went over to