The Other Side of Me

The Other Side of Me Page 30

When John Ross made the deal for Patty to star in the television series, he arranged to have himself put on the payroll as associate producer. Asked what his duties were, he was vague.

The producers said, "His job is to keep Patty happy and to stay out of everybody's way."

One day, Ross came into my office near tears. "What's the matter?" I asked. "What's happened?"

"Life magazine is coming to the studio today to cover the rehearsal."

"Well, that's good, isn't it?"

"No." He was trying not to cry. "Now Life magazine is going to know that I don't have a secretary."

As the date approached for the first airing of The Patty Duke Show, we had a problem. Our producer-director, Bill Asher, was a man who liked to be simultaneously involved in several different projects. As a result, he was behind schedule on our show. None of the shows was completed.

Bill came to me and said, "Ed Scherick, the head of ABC, wants to take a look at our pilot show. I'm not sure which one he'll like, 'The French Teacher' or 'House Guest.'"

"The French Teacher" starred Jean-Pierre Aumont and the story involved Patty falling in love with him and making plans for her future as his wife. "House Guest" was about an eccentric rich aunt who moved into the Lane household and drove everyone crazy.

"I want you to run the two pictures for Scherick and let him pick out the one that he likes best."

"Fine," I agreed.

The following morning, we set up a running for Ed Scherick and several other executives from ABC. He had brought his wife and his sister and there were cordial introductions all around.

The lights dimmed and the screenings began. "The French Teacher" had not yet been edited or scored because Bill Asher was so busy, and several special effects were missing. "House Guest" had not yet been edited or scored and several special effects were missing. The overall effect was dreadful.

When the lights came up, Scherick got to his feet, glared at me, and said, "I don't give a damn which one you put on first." He and his entourage stormed out of the room.

I sat there, deflated. Maybe Todd had been right.

Our opening night premiere was upon us and we had to make a decision. Asher now worked day and night to complete the two shows. Since the network no longer cared about our show, we had to decide which episode to air first.

Things were so chaotic that on the opening night of The Patty Duke Show, "The French Teacher" played in the western half of the United States and "House Guest" played in the eastern half.

The Wednesday morning that the show was to air, I was walking through the studio lobby when Eddie Applegate came running in. He hurried over to the pay phone, felt in his pockets, and turned to me, in a panic.

"Do you have a dime?"

"Sure." I took one out of my pocket. "What's wrong?"

"I have to call the president of ABC."

"The president of -  Why, Eddie?"

"I just found out that the show I'm in is playing in the east and my folks are in the west."

It took a moment for me to digest this. "You're going to ask the president of ABC to switch the shows around, so that your folks can see you?"

"Yes."

I put the dime back in my pocket. "Eddie, he may be busy with other things today. I would forget it."

The reviews the following morning were generally favorable. Typical of those reviews was the Hollywood Reporter's.

It read: "This could be it - the TV fun the teens and their parents have been waiting for . . . a captivating click."

More importantly, the ratings were even stronger than we had hoped for. We were all thrilled.

The following day, Daily Variety carried a two-page ad from ABC. It read: "Nice girls finish first. We always knew that Patty Duke was going to be a hit."

Right.

The shooting of The Patty Duke Show the first year was uneventful. I decided it would be fun to use some guest stars. The idea worked well. I wrote scripts around Frankie Avalon, Troy Donahue, Sal Mineo, and others.

During our hiatus, Jorja and I decided to take Mary on a cruise. As a rule, when I am working on a project and I travel, I take all the scripts with me, in case there's a problem. But in this instance I did not feel it was necessary. All the shows for the first year had already been shot.

My mistake.

One morning, onboard ship, I received a cable to call the studio immediately. I could not imagine what the problem was.

When someone in production at the studio answered, I asked, "What's going on?"

"We're a minute short on 'The Green-Eyed Monster,' three minutes short on 'Practice Makes Perfect,' two minutes short on 'Simon Says,' and a minute and a half short on 'Patty, the Organizer.' We need you to expand those scenes and we need it done fast."

I knew the problem now, but I had no solution. When I write a script, I concentrate on it. But when I finish it and move on to the next project, I have pretty well forgotten the first one. As a result, I had no idea what any of those scripts were even about.

I went back to our cabin and told Jorja what had happened. "I don't know what I'm going to do," I said. "I'll probably have to go back to New York and take a look at those scripts, to refresh my memory."

Mary, our eight-year-old genius, spoke up. "No, you won't, Papa. I remember those plots." And she proceeded to recite them, scene by scene.

That evening, I was able to cable the new pages back to the studio.

Near the end of the first year of The Patty Duke Show, I received a call from Hollywood. "Screen Gems wants you to create a television series for them."

Screen Gems was a subsidiary of Columbia Pictures.

"Are you interested?"

"Certainly." My attitude about television had completely changed.

"They would like you to come up with an idea for a show and meet with them in Hollywood. How soon can you do that?"

"How about Monday?"

I'd had an idea about doing a show with a genie. I knew that genie projects had been done, but they had always consisted of a giant man, like Burl Ives, coming out of a bottle, saying, "What can I do for you, Master?"

I thought it would be intriguing to make the genie a beautiful young nubile girl, saying, "What can I do for you, Master?" That was the project I decided to create for Screen Gems.

My agent had taken me literally and had made an appointment for a meeting on Monday at Screen Gems. It was now Friday. On Saturday morning, I called in a secretary and started dictating a brief outline of the genie script. As I progressed, however, I began to put in more dialogue and camera angles and soon I thought I might as well write a full teleplay. I went back to the beginning and dictated the entire script. It was finished by Sunday night, just in time for me to race to the airport to catch my plane to Los Angeles.

The meeting at Screen Gems went well. I met Jerry Hyams, one of the top executives, Chuck Fries, and Jackie Cooper, a former child actor who was now head of Screen Gems Productions. They were enthusiastic about the teleplay.

"How would you like to have your own company and produce it here?" Jerry Hyams asked.

I thought about The Patty Duke Show. No one had ever told me that I could not do two shows at once. "No problem," I said.

The deal was made.

When I returned to New York, there was a message waiting for me that Screen Gems had already made a deal with NBC for I Dream of Jeannie. I would now have two weekly situation comedies on the air. I was bicoastal.

Jerry Hyams arranged for me to see the pilot of a new show about to go on the air. I loved it. I thought it was charming and was going to be a big hit.

"How would you like to produce it?" Jerry Hyams asked.

I shook my head. Instead of saying yes, which I wanted to do, I said no. There will be times, with no warning, you will lose control of your words and your actions.

Bewitched turned out to be an enormous hit.

We were shooting The Patty Duke Show in New York and we were going to shoot I Dream of Jeannie in Hollywood. Since I was producing Jeannie and I was deeply involved, I began hiring some writers for The Patty Duke Show. I found myself flying to Hollywood almost every weekend. I spent my time on the plane working on Patty Duke scripts, and three days a week preparing Jeannie. The Beverly Hills Hotel became my home away from home.

On my next trip to California, all hell broke loose. Mort Werner, the head of NBC, sent for me. He was grim.

"I have a memo here from our standards and practices department, Sheldon." He shoved it at me.

As I started to read it, I realized what had happened. The network had awakened to the fact that in those closely censored days, they had bought a show that was about a nubile, half-naked young woman, living alone with a bachelor, constantly asking, "What can I do for you, Master?" They had panicked. The memo was eighteen pages long. It contained orders like:

They must never touch each other.

We will see Jeannie go into her bottle to sleep alone.

We will see Tony go into his bed to sleep alone.

Jeannie must never go into Tony's bedroom.

Never let Tony go into Jeannie's bottle.

And on and on for eighteen pages.

When I finished reading, Mort Werner said to me, "What are you going to do about it? This network cannot afford to air a show like this." The word "cancellation" hung in the air.

I took a deep breath. "I'm doing a comedy. I don't intend to make it titillating. There will be no sexual innuendoes or double entendres."

He looked at me for a long time. "We'll see."

Hurdle number one.

Hurdle number two: A memo from a vice president of NBC:

I have discussed your pilot script with several of my creative staff. We all agree that this is not going to work. It is a one-joke show, which means that it will be short-lived.

I was beginning to wonder why the network had bought the show in the first place. I sent my reply:

You are quite right. Jeannie is a one-joke show, and that's exactly why it's going to work. I Love Lucy is a one-joke show. The Beverly Hillbillies is a one-joke show. The Honeymooners is a one-joke show. The trick with all these shows is to entertainingly vary the joke each week. We all hope that Jeannie will last as long as I Love Lucy, The Honeymooners, and The Beverly Hillbillies.

I heard no more about it.

It was time to start casting. I found this to be the hardest part of being a producer. It was difficult for me to say no to an actor who came in to read for a part. They all felt that every audition was going to be the breakthrough they deserved. They had had a sleepless night, arisen early in the morning, bathed, dressed carefully, and tried to be optimistic.

I'm going to get the part.

I'm going to get the part.

I'm going to get the part.

And they walked into the audition with clammy hands and bright, fake smiles.

Casting the part of Jeannie was going to be of primary importance because our genie had to be seductive without being blatantly sexy, and likable with a sense of whimsy. We were fortunate because the first and last person we auditioned for the part was Barbara Eden. She was perfect.

She had a warm and naive quality that would appeal to an audience, along with a wonderful comedic sense. Barbara was married to Michael Ansara, an actor.

The next bit of casting was for the part of Anthony Nelson, her astronaut master. We tested half a dozen actors before Larry Hagman came up for the role. Hagman, the son of Broadway star Mary Martin, had been doing a soap opera, The Edge of Night, in New York and had not yet established himself. His screen test was brilliant and we immediately signed him.

We needed a confidant for him and we auditioned dozens of actors. I chose a hyper nightclub comic named Bill Daily who had never acted in television or films.

We had long discussions about directors. Norman Jewison, who later directed the hit movie The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming, read my script. He sent his agent into Screen Gems to make a deal, but when the agent insisted that Jewison get a percentage of the show, we had to start looking for another director.

Gene Nelson, who had starred in musical pictures at Warner Brothers and had directed The Andy Griffith Show and other television programs, came in to see me. We spent an hour talking about the show and I felt that he was right for it. He was hired.

Nineteen sixty-five was the year that every show on television changed from black and white to color. Every show, that is, except I Dream of Jeannie. I asked Jerry Hyams why Jeannie was not going to be shot in color.

"Because each show would cost an additional four hundred dollars."

"Jerry, this show has to be in color. I'll pay the difference out of my own pocket."

He looked at me and said, "Sidney, don't throw your money away."

What he was really saying was that no one expected Jeannie to go into a second year.

In 1965, while the studio was getting the Jeannie pilot ready to go, I returned to New York for a few days to see how things were going on Patty Duke, which was ending its second season.

John and Ethel were determined not to let anything separate them from their windfall. Whenever The Patty Duke Show was on hiatus, they took Patty along on their vacations. They arranged it so that Patty would never have an opportunity to meet a young man. When Patty was invited to a social or charity event, they went along to keep an eye on her. She was virtually a prisoner.

There was an assistant director on the show, twenty-five-year-old Harry Falk, who was a nice-looking, pleasant young man. When the Rosses noticed that Patty was spending time with him on the set, they immediately had him fired. Patty was devastated, but she said nothing.

Just before Patty's birthday, the company planned a party for her on the set.

Patty came to see me in my office. "I want to ask a favor of you, Sidney."

"Anything, Patty. What can I do for you?"

"I would like you to invite Harry Falk to my birthday party. Will you do that for me?"

"Of course I will."

The afternoon of the party, Harry Falk came onto the set. John and Ethel were visibly upset, but Patty ignored them. She walked over to greet Falk and they spent most of the time together. The repercussions were soon to come.