Two-time Emmy award winning actress Bonnie Bartlett returns to Dial the Gate to share the story of her recent published memoir, “Middle of the Rainbow,” and to answer your questions LIVE! We also welcome producer Linda “GateGabber” Furey back on to the program to help share her story.

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Timecodes
0:00 – Splash Screen
00:25 – Opening Credits
00:55 – Welcome and Episode Outline
01:54 – Welcoming Bonnie and Linda
02:30 – Bonnie’s Memoir, Middle of the Rainbow
09:15 – Linda’s Thoughts on Bonnie’s Memoir
12:34 – Bonnie’s Stories Work with Various Directors
18:02 – Finding Her Voice in Writing
20:32 – Historical Culture
24:29 – Bonnie’s Husband and Connection
28:45 – Acting and Prep
34:20 – Studying with an Acting Teacher
39:45 – Elia Kazan and Naming Names in the Communist Party
46:25 – Wrapping up with Bonnie
47:01 – Continuing Discussion on Bonnie’s Memoir
56:42 – Post-Interview Housekeeping
59:12 – End Credits

***

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TRANSCRIPT
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David Read
Hello everyone, and welcome back to Dial the Gate, episode 172 of the Stargate Oral History Project. My name is David Read, thank you so much for joining me. We are privileged to welcome the return of Bonnie Bartlett Daniels for this episode. She’s going to share some details about her newly released memoir Middle of the Rainbow. I’ll be sharing links on where you can get that. Before we get started, if you enjoy Stargate, and you want to see more content like this on YouTube, please click that Like button, it makes a difference with YouTube and will help the show continue to grow its audience. And please also consider sharing this video with a Stargate friend. And if you want to get notified about future episodes, click the Subscribe icon. And giving the bell icon a click will notify you the moment a new video drops and you’ll get my notifications of any last minute guests changes. As we have Bonnie live this episode, you can submit questions to her in the chat and my moderators will get those over to me for the second half of the episode. I am really privileged to be here with my producer, Linda “GateGabber” Furey. And apparently Cat. Cat is good. Very well, Amelia. And Bonnie Bartlett Daniels, of course, is returning. She played Linea in Stargate SG-1. We had her on last year and we had such a good time together, it was like, “You know what, we’ve got to have her back, especially when her book comes out.” Bonnie, thank you so much for being here.

Bonnie Bartlett
Thank you for having me.

David Read
This is a real treat. So your book’s been out for, what is it now?

Bonnie Bartlett
A month, I think.

David Read
A month. What has the feedback been like? What has the reaction been like?Tell us about the response for it and what you’ve learned as a result of sharing this story?

Bonnie Bartlett
Yes. Well, you know, it’s like, you know when you do a play, or a movie or anything, you don’t know what you’ve got until you have the audience and you get the response. And it’s always not what you expect. So the response -the early response — to this, was a whole big blow up about an open marriage. They all said, “Oh this was an open marriage.” I had never used that term in the book at all. I just told things as they happened, you know, and as they related to my main theme, which was to kind of recover from the bad things that happen to you, particularly the things that had to do with men’s power over women, and their ability to do bad things to you when you couldn’t do anything back. You couldn’t speak up, you couldn’t protest. You just had to let it happen. And it hurt you. And, you know, I was fortunate to have a lot of therapy, because I worked and I made enough money to pay for it. So that helped me a lot. But anyway, that was surprising to me, that everybody picked up on that so much, you know, and they made a big thing about it. And I kept having to say “No, that’s not what the book is about. That’s not what the book is about. It’s about those things happened and I put them in there.” But no, our marriage was never what I would call an open marriage ever. It was… we were very young. We only got married because we wanted to have sex and at that time, you couldn’t do that. I mean, in the university that we went to — Northwestern, which is a wonderful school — but they had freshman Dean, Dean of Women, called me in and said “We have seen you in the basement with this young man from Broadway from New York, and we wonder is he having a bad influence on you?” Well, first of all, we were rehearsing, but that’s all right. And then she said, “Should I call your parents?” And I said, “No!” I didn’t say it that way. I just said “no,” because I didn’t do that in those days. “No, ma’am.” “Is this the role that you’re playing, Barbara Allen in Dark Of The Moon, is this having a bad effect on you?” Because she’s kind of a wild country girl. I said, “No, it’s wonderful.” And she said, “Well, all right.” And I got up and walked out. Inside, I’m thinking, “How dare she interfere in my life.” you know?

David Read
And your work.

Bonnie Bartlett
And my work, and that’s gone. That’s gone now. I mean, that would never happen today, at Northwestern. There were still a lot of very old-fashioned ideas, you know. So the book is really meant to be a history, in a way, of a life that has gone through a lot of bads and goods, and, you know, ups and downs and all of this stuff. And ended up successfully, or as I say, realizing that I have lived in the middle of the rainbow. I have lived in the middle of the rainbow, with all that has gone because as many bads, there are goods, you know. And progress has been made by women. It’s been made quite a bit, now. The equality is still not there, but it’s… we’re not the same, but we’re equal. That’s the trick in life, I think, in every way. In other words, very, very famous people and powerful people, they are equal to everybody. They may not be the same, they may have more of this or that or the other thing, but they’re only equal in their rights and their behavior and everything. They’re just equal, they’re not better. I learned that with some big superstars, a big superstar, who was [an] amazing performer. And she felt she had the right — because we had the same decorator for a while — she’s felt she had the right to have them give things to her or take things to her. Because instead of paying more, doing more, because she was so successful, she felt she had the right because she was who she was, that they should just give her things, or she could just take them, not return them, you know, things like that, which is some very strange thinking to me. To me, my Midwestern beliefs, and if… I know that there have been actresses who have said, “No, you do my hair, because I’m whoever I am.” And it should be just the opposite. And it’s, you’ve got more money than most people, so you can, you pay me. In other words, I find that extraordinary thinking that they would — anybody would — want it for free because I’m ‘me’, and what about you who don’t have as much as… that’s crazy. But a lot of performers and stars do that.

David Read
They feel they’ve earned it. You know, through their status.

Bonnie Bartlett
Yes. It’s their status. Now, it’s different, like, there’s no question about if you go into a restaurant, and they give you a special table. That’s different, but you pay for it.

David Read
Right? You’re paying for it.

Bonnie Bartlett
You’re paying for it. That’s all I’m saying. I know you’re gonna get a lot of special things. But if… you don’t take money from people that you haven’t earned, that they need, you know, that sort of thing.

David Read
You don’t then advance your station in spite of someone else.

Bonnie Bartlett
That’s right.

David Read
You know, you give back where you can when it’s possible to.

Bonnie Bartlett
That’s right. That’s right. That’s right. That’s right.

David Read
Linda, what were some of your takeaways from the book and what would you like to present to Bonnie with your reading of this? And I will follow you.

Linda Furey
First of all, I am so glad you told your story. You went through a lot with different men in your life.

Bonnie Bartlett
Starting with my father that was the most one, because I was so young, and you know, a little girl. I was a little girl and I was treated, always, like a woman. You know, it’s terrible.

Linda Furey
Yeah, and so many young women go through similar things, and I work with disadvantaged youth at the school that I’m at, and the statistics are appalling. They really are. And the fact that you’ve spoken out about this is very important. So thank you for writing this.

Bonnie Bartlett
Yes, I know it happens a lot more than we talk about.

Linda Furey
Yeah, and it needs to be talked about.

Bonnie Bartlett
And in much more horrendous situations, much more horrendous.

Linda Furey
Yeah, that’s definitely true.

Bonnie Bartlett
With the educated as well as the uneducated, you know what I mean? A lot of different things, in the uneducated, but in the educated it’s very bad, very bad. It’s not good.

Linda Furey
No, I was unsurprised by what you had to say about men in the industry. And there was one point where you were talking about on St. Elsewhere, where you had an idea for a storyline that you really wanted to pitch. And it was a very good one that they eventually ended up using. But you had to have your husband take the idea to them.

Bonnie Bartlett
They wouldn’t have listened to me. And they were all good men, but they wouldn’t have listened to me. I mean, the women… I know, Christina, who was on the show with me, presented something once and it hurt her. It hurt her. Rather than follow a good story, which happened to include you, they would take something away from her. I mean, really, really did happen.

Linda Furey
Yeah, I really appreciate the fact that you were terribly clever and got your idea there by the route that was available.

Bonnie Bartlett
Well I was lucky because I was married to the lead on the show who they would listen to.

Linda Furey
Yeah. And I see that a lot all through your story, is that you have cleverly found the right route. And I took that away from the story too, that “OK, if they’re not hearing me,” you got to think about how else can you get your message to the right place so that it gets heard and acted upon.

David Read
You have to read the group that you’re in, and act accordingly based on the rules of that group.

Bonnie Bartlett
That’s right. With Michael Landon, it was a little different, because I don’t know of anybody who did what I did, and got away with it. Because he at least, he saw it. And he said… he saw that I was right.

David Read
Michael Landon?

Bonnie Bartlett
Yeah.

David Read
Yeah.

Linda Furey
Yeah. The part where you…

Bonnie Bartlett
Changed the whole scene. I changed the whole scene. Because Michael was kind of first — he was very hands on — and he came in, and he set up a scene. And he used the stand-ins to set up the scene. So he set up the whole scene with the lighting man, you know, with the light, all the technical people so that they could see what they had that light and so forth. And he set up the whole scene that way with the stand-ins, we didn’t come in. And then he brought us all in and he said, “OK, you’re gonna do this, and then you say…” And I loved the scene. And it was a dramatic scene, it wasn’t a comedy, it was a dramatic scene. And I said, I just went over quietly, and I said, “Michael, I’d like to show you how I think this should go.” And he looked at me and he said, “OK.” He greatly respected me, and that helps. He really did. And so everybody went away, and I said, “See, if he would be here and do it this way, and then we would talk and then…” I re-did the whole scene, physically.

David Read
Wow.

Bonnie Bartlett
And I knew it was right. It was… it would work. And he just stood there a minute and he’s — the cinematographer was right next to him — and he said, “How long?” and the [cinematographer] said, “An hour or so.” And time is money.

David Read
You’re dealing with a penny-pincher here. Sometimes, apparently, he would shoot the rehearsal to film in one take and that was it.

Bonnie Bartlett
Yeah. Yeah. And so the cinematographer [said], “About an hour, maybe.” So everybody went away and they re-did the whole scene. And then we came in and then we did it. They re-lit it, they re-lit it. That’s what takes the time, you know, all the lighting and everything. Because we’re in different places. So they had to re-do and nobody ever said anything, I never said anything to him about it, he never said anything, we never spoke about it. But it was because he did respect me and I could show him what I wanted in the scene, he gave it to me. And that was very unusual, very unusual. That was a really amazing thing. And with Ivan Reitman, the same way. Ivan Reitman, I said — Twins — I said, “No, I don’t want to do it.” And my agent said, “You’re crazy.” And I said, “Well, I don’t like it. I don’t like the part. I don’t… there’s nothing there.” So he told Ivan, “Bonnie is going to withdraw. She’s not going to do it.” And Ivan said, “I want you to bring her in for lunch.” Well, it’s his lunch, not mine. “And I want to talk to her.” And Harry said, “OK.” And he said, “I don’t want you, I just want her.” So I went in, and he’s having his lunch. And he said, “Why don’t you like this part?” I said, “Because it’s nothing, it’s not filled in any way.” He said, “Well, why? What would you do?” And I said, “Well,” and I start at the beginning, and I said, “At least there, why is she there? What is she gonna say? What is that about?” Then I went through the whole thing with all these little, tiny moments. And I said, “She has to be this, she has to be doing this. She has to, she has to come in with something here, or she has to…” And I went through the whole thing, you know, scene by scene, and suggestion after suggestion. So he said, finally he said, “OK, Bonnie. I tell you what, I can’t force you to do this part and to make this movie with me. But I will tell you one thing, I’m going to use every one of your suggestions.” Wasn’t that clever of him?

David Read
“So why don’t you come on board and get paid for the use of your ideas?”

Bonnie Bartlett
Yeah. So I mean, it was so clever, and he was wonderful with me through the whole thing, through the whole thing. And he was just a wonderful director. Gone now, but it was a great show. It was a marvelous movie. And I was wrong about that. I didn’t know who Schwarzenegger was. I didn’t know… I knew Danny, but I didn’t know Schwarzenegger. And I love both of them, they’re terrific guys. And I’ve been so lucky, because I’ve had… I’ve worked with so many really good, wonderful people in Hollywood. I mean, really have a lot of… seldom has there been a bad situation. Seldom.

David Read
I noticed as the story went went on, from my own personal perspective, there was more jumping around earlier in the book — but this is what I took away from it — as you wrote, you appeared, visibly, to become a better writer.

Linda Furey
Yeah, I get that too.

Bonnie Bartlett
Oh, really?

David Read
As you proceeded through this story. Did you feel you found your voice?

Bonnie Bartlett
I had trouble, I’m not a natural writer. I had written a script of the section about the adoption and the death of my baby. I had written a script — a screenplay — about that years ago, years ago. But it was a screenplay. And so when I came back to writing more — the book, and the Me Too and all of that stuff — I took that screenplay, and there’s two chapters there that I made them a narrative. So that section, there are… it is hard to put it all together, that section was all written earlier, but as a screenplay, and then I made it a narrative. Because that was such an important part of my life and I had to put that in there. And I had written it exactly as it happened. And that was when I was 30… it happened and I was in my mid 30s when I lost the baby. I was in my mid 40s when I wrote that section as a screenplay. And then all the rest, when I went back to it, was a struggle. Was a struggle to write and to have to go back all the time and say, “How did you feel?” I had a guy — a wonderful guy who helped me — to just… I insisted it be my words, my writing, but he would say, “But what were you thinking there? How did it feel? How did it make you feel?” So he made me go deeper.

David Read
Encouraged you to express yourself.

Bonnie Bartlett
Very much so. He said, “Just write it all out.” I said, “How do I write this about myself?” He said, “Start at the beginning with your father, and just write it all out. All the way through.” And then of course, we had to figure out where to put things in the book. That was complicated. That was hard. You know, because it was kind of disjointed. We did eliminate one chapter that he felt I had… was not smart enough to write. And that was the one on ‘woke’. And I had everything in there. Things that he said, like he was shocked when he knew that, as a little girl, I loved minstrels. You know, I never blackfaced, but I would always, you know… the things we did when I was a little girl.

Linda Furey
But it was part of the culture. I mean, my grandmother, her father did some vaudeville.

David Read
Yes.

Linda Furey
She talked about that, about going to minstrel shows as a girl and how it was great entertainment. And society saw nothing wrong with it at the time. I mean, we look back and we’re kind of appalled, but at the time, it was accepted.

Bonnie Bartlett
Totally accepted. Jack Benny’s Rochester. If you think back, Jack Benny was one of our favorite shows. He was a great — my husband adored him — he was a great comedian. And then you think back, like Rochester was very big on that show. And the fact that they were, I mean, for them, it was great that they all got work and everything. But all of that work, most of it, based on humor that we look at them as different.

David Read
The desire to look at the past solely with modern eyes has always been, in my opinion, intellectually dishonest. Because, you know, we communicate more now than we did about smaller issues, because we have the benefit of time to look at this and say, “OK, was this really a good thing?” And I think that’s something that we often forget. Because it’s so easy to go back and pick on something from 50, 60 years ago and say, “Aren’t they stupid?” Well, yeah, what do you think they’re gonna think about us now, 50 years from now?

Bonnie Bartlett
Right, exactly. And this gentleman who I told you about, Lauren, who helped me with so much of it, I took his advice on that. He said, “I just think that you’re not writing that chapter it’s too — what you say — it’s old. We all know, we know all that now, you don’t have to tell us. And I don’t want to make it look like, what, that I was part of something terrible? I mean, I was part of the culture. As you say, we did awful things. Now, I know that, you know. Just like now, we know that all the things men do because they have a little power and they can harass women and assault women and abuse women. We know that now, but we didn’t then. We didn’t know that we could speak up and say, “No.” When I spoke up about my father, my mother said, “Oh, he’s just being affectionate.” So that makes me stupid, right? That makes me, “Oh, there’s something wrong with me.” It’s always, “There’s something wrong with me.” And that’s what we do. That’s very debilitating. That doesn’t strengthen us. “Oh, something wrong with me. I’m the bad one. I’m the sick one. I’m the twisted one.”

Linda Furey
And when you hear it from another woman, that’s even worse, somehow. You know, because it’s like another woman is telling you your perception of this is completely wrong.

Bonnie Bartlett
Yes.

Linda Furey
Like it must really be true then.

Bonnie Bartlett
Yes, exactly. Exactly. “I’m bad. He’s okay, but I’m bad.”

David Read
Was there any… the one question that I really wanted to ask was, in conversations with Bill about this content, was there at any point any discussion between the two of you about, “Do we really want to release this part? Do you think that this is… I mean, this is about us, you know. Why do you want to release this to the world?” Was there any point, anything like that?

Bonnie Bartlett
No, not from him. But of course, if he had been 60? Yes. I couldn’t have done it then. But now, we are so close now. Incredibly close. And we are so dependent on each other, believably so. And we’re very affectionate and warm and so forth that he feels like all of that, “Oh Bonnie’s book. Yes, well, OK.” And he’s read it. But he didn’t say anything. He just said, “OK.” you know. He probably doesn’t even remember part of it. ‘Cause Bill doesn’t have the memory that I have. You know, he’s 95. So, if you notice, I mean, his book is all about stories, and it’s all personal. It’s mostly about stories. He’ll talk about politics, maybe or something like that, or he’ll talk… But he doesn’t talk about feelings. He doesn’t talk about it in life. He doesn’t talk about his feelings in life. Or even he’ll say, “I’m not in touch with my body.” He’s very strong. He’s lucky. He’s so good. 95 he’s still strong. But you’ll say, “How does that feel?” And he has to think about it. He doesn’t… I don’t know. We’re, you know, he’s just different than I am. I’m in touch with everything, all the time.

David Read
You bring up affection in the book, how it was something that you felt was lacking between the two of you. Is it something that you had to just work at over the years to be more conscious of between the two of you?

Bonnie Bartlett
I think so. Yeah, certainly for me. Certainly, for me, I had to consciously know, and find that I would watch other people. And I find, “Why don’t I do that? Why don’t I throw my arms around my girlfriends and hug them?” We didn’t do that. We just didn’t do that. We weren’t — it’s Midwestern, small town — we just weren’t… Strasberg always said that you had to have a little ethnic blood in you to be good actor. He always said that. You know, because they’re more expressive. Because what you have to have as an actor is to be expressive. So you have to find your way into that. And you’ve got to get into that expression or whatever it is. And yes, I definitely… Est was a very good thing for me to realize some of my lacks, if you will. As well as positives, it was a good thing, Est, for me. And any kind of analysis, any kind of philosophy or that kind of thing, you know, exploring things like that. And that’s where I saw a marvelous film on sex, was at Est. It was very revealing, to me. Because you know, what they show is not the greatest… they never show you good sex in the movies. They all just show you all these, you know, violent kind of, even the attractions are violent. They never show you a really kind of wonderful warm sex, you know.

David Read
Love making. Actual love making.

David Read
Love making, yes. That’s it.

David Read
It’s all just, “We’re moving the plot along!”

Bonnie Bartlett
Yeah, yeah.

David Read
We have an audience member, Lockwatcher, wanted to know, with Linea or a one off character, like your role in, for instance, Golden Girls, did you approach those characters differently for one-off roles compared to, like, your recurring role as Ellen in St. Elsewhere? Or was it all the same in terms of your, like, approach to sticking the landing?

Bonnie Bartlett
My approach was the same. St. Elsewhere was different because Bill pulled me into it. It was a tiny part. And he saw a couple of jokes, because I was his… he had bragged. He loved the character, bragging about what he had done all the time, you know, and bragging about how he got his wife to stop smoking. You know, he was this guy and he told everybody that, and then of course, the minute he leaves to go to the bathroom or something, I pull out a cigarette and smoke a cigarette. It made a couple of good laughs. That was all I had to do, was in that first show. And they saw, even in that little bit, that Bill and I were funny together. ‘Cause we can be funny together and so they started writing. And then they got more and more into us and writing. It was good for the show. It was a good couple, it was a good ‘out of the hospital’ stuff. And we could do it like falling off a log. ‘Cause we had worked together, we’d studied together, we’d lived together, we did everything. So it was really easy. You didn’t have to prepare. So in that, no, there was no preparation at all. But, except technically, the cigarette, I don’t smoke. So he had to teach me.

David Read
There’s a trick to it. To making it look believable.

Bonnie Bartlett
Yeah, he has it. Oh, he’s very technically correct. He taught me how to take the pack, and do, you know, that. To shake it out and taught me how to smoke, like a man. So, they get the joke, you know? Because that’s all he cares about is the joke. So anyway, but any other role that wasn’t like me, yes, you have to look at it, and prepare it and figure out what it is. It’s the same kind of preparation that you would do for the theater, you know, as much as you can. But a lot of it is, when it’s quick, you just, you rely on your instincts. You rely on your instincts, when it’s so quick. Even a little bit, accustom yourself to the set and the people, as much as you can. You only have maybe a half an hour.

Linda Furey
Do you still use a lot of what you learned in classes with Lee Strasberg?

Bonnie Bartlett
Oh yeah. He was amazing. He can be very destructive. He could be a very destructive man. But a teacher. But oh yeah. There was nobody that I have ever seen better at spotting, in a young person, what was holding them back.

David Read
Wow. That’s not easy.

Bonnie Bartlett
No, that was his genius. He wasn’t a very good director, really. But that was his genius, as to being able to instinctively help a person to be themselves and to know how to work, where to go, what to use, where to go. And he always said, “Listen, if you’ve got it all there…” like we would say something about English actors or something, because they don’t do that. And he said, “They do it. It’s just that they know how to do it. It’s just there.” You know, “And they don’t need to study it. But they go deeper and deeper and deeper as they get older.” John Gielgud, as a young man, was a phony. He was a great Shakespearean. He did the poetry, Shakespeare, like, brilliant, brilliant, all of that. That our people don’t do that well at all. But, as he got older and older and older, he became more himself. And it was him. And those older parts, just amazing. Amazing. Because it was just him and it was method acting, if you will, only he didn’t know it.

David Read
Bonnie, we know you have to go. But if you don’t mind, I’d like Linda and me to continue to stick around to discuss the book. There’s whole sections that we want to go over, but I know you have to leave.

Bonnie Bartlett
OK, alright.

David Read
But, I mean, your time is up, I’m assuming?

Bonnie Bartlett
No, no, no, we can go on.

David Read
Can we? There’s so much more that I want to get into. How about this? How about you tell us when you have to go, and then we’ll just wrap it up then and then she and I will continue on? Does that work?

Bonnie Bartlett
OK. Now is this the same show? Or do you just…

David Read
Yeah this is same show.

Bonnie Bartlett
Oh, same show, OK.

David Read
Yes, yeah. This passage with studying with Lee — Do not be afraid to tell us when, “Guys I gotta get out of here.” Is that OK?

Bonnie Bartlett
OK.

David Read
OK. You write, “In the early years of studying with Lee in his private classes, many of us were afraid of his distain and disapproval. He could be incredibly cold. He had a way of terrorizing an actor who wasn’t delivering. Some of us would lie awake all night with anxiety before we had to present a scene in class. And when the scene we had prepared was over, the feeling of relief was so overwhelming, it eclipsed our concern about the quality of the work.” I found this fascinating.

Bonnie Bartlett
Lauren said that’s one of the best things I wrote.

David Read
It’s just crazy. You know, I don’t think there’s anyone who can’t relate to coming across a tyrant in their life who has control — either a teacher, like in grade school even, or in college — where that doesn’t affect you, and it’s like, as you said here, like, fun would have been surely some part of it, but he didn’t encourage that. You weren’t going to a fun house, you were going into a dark place where all you could do is hope to get out alive.

Bonnie Bartlett
That’s right. That’s right. No Lauren loved that. Because Lauren was not a person who particularly appreciated Strasberg’s ways of working. And we talked a lot about it, and I got him to understand it. See, for somebody like Bill, who went in there — just because I was there, he went in — he would fight with Lee, they would yell at each other. And I’m crying. Because the moment… the first lecture that I heard from Lee, the first class, I didn’t know who he was. I went in completely not knowing about the group theater, or how much — we should have at Northwestern, but we didn’t. And so I went in completely, and not, you know, myself and everything. The minute I heard him lecture and talk, I thought, “Oh my God, I got to be able to do this. I want to be able to do this, I want to be up there myself, and not copying or imitating. I want to be there. I want to do that.” And so the minute you’re into that, he becomes like such an authority. You just have to be there with him and listen, and you know, do it, and he could be… he was egomaniac. And so he could be very cold. Not with stars. He was a star fucker, if you will. I mean, he was a… not with the stars. But I was in the private classes. And we were all you know, nothing, we were nobody. And every once in a while he would pick out a — mostly a guy — who he could see would be a big star, you know. A George Peppard. He would pick out somebody like that. And he would encourage them to go work, you know, that sort of thing. Now, when Bill came along, Bill had a lot of work done, a lot of technique. He worked on a lot of comic technique that he had learned on Broadway from Howard Lindsay. He worked on a lot, he had performed as a song and dance man. So he was out there, you know, doing all this stuff. And so he mentioned one time, Bill said, “Yeah, but there’s no pace.” And Lee, said “Pace! Pace! What are you talking about? We’re not talking about pace, that’s a director’s problem.” They wouldn’t yell back and forth. And I would be hysterical. I would be hysterical. Nobody had the guts to do that. And when we got friends, we were friends with them at their house and everything. Lee, who loved music the same way Bill loved music, they would go into a room and listen to records and various performances and compare them and stuff like that. Bill had no fear of him at all. No fear. And the two of them… and when Bill got up to do a song thing, there was a song exercise. And Lee said afterwards, “You know, I don’t know what to do with you. I don’t know what to do with you. You’re so slick. You’re so clever. You’re so slick. And I don’t know who you are. So I don’t know, how can I cast you if I don’t know who you are?” That, you know, got through to Bill because he was a “tennis any one” guy. So eventually, by the time Bill did The Zoo Story, Edward Albee’s first play, Lee came back and he said, “Oh, good work. Good work.” And he did, even though Bill didn’t agree with him many times, and he certainly didn’t agree with him as a director, but it helped him. It helped open Bill up and he never, never got that slick stuff, again. Tips on maybe once in a while when you’re tired. But he just went deeper and deeper and deeper. And all his work was wonderful after that. So he wouldn’t say he was a Strasberg. All he would say is “Strasberg helped me a lot.” And that’s what Lee could do. That’s what Lee could do.

David Read
Linda and I were talking about the House Un-American Activities Committee last night and Elliott Curzon, naming names. Linda can you explore a little bit of that? Because you had some…

Bonnie Bartlett
What I know of that is we got into New York just in time. I mean, it was too late to get involved and get into trouble or… I would have been in trouble. I would have. But I would never join the… no, these people actually did join the Communist Party. No, I never would have done that. But I would have been friends of, and you know. And Paula had joined the Communist Party…

David Read
Lee’s wife.

Bonnie Bartlett
Lee’s wife. Lee never joined the party. Lee would never do — nah — he’d never do that. But she didn’t and Kazan had too. And a lot of people, Jerry Robbins had, a lot of very famous people were members of the Communist Party, because it was a good thing to sign on to, “Oh, yeah, this is a good thing.” It was considered, you know, avant garde or whatever you want for playwrights and people, they were really members. Now, I remember that Lee came to class one day, and he sat down and it was the day that Kazan’s thing was in the…

David Read
I think we may have lost Bonnie. Maybe she’ll come back.

Linda Furey
Okay.

David Read
I think our time ran out with her. It’s like putting quarters into the machine. I want to hear more of what she has to say, though.

Linda Furey
Me too, particularly this story.

David Read
I know.

Linda Furey
[inaudible] in the book and doesn’t go into deeper detail. And I really want to…

David Read
This is a big moment… Oh, we lost her. Oh, are you… there she is.

Bonnie Bartlett
Are you there?

David Read
Yes, we are here.

Bonnie Bartlett
So anyway, I’m in the middle of that story. They came back. We went out but they came back.

David Read
Thank you. Sorry about that. That was weird.

Bonnie Bartlett
So anyway, he came into the class and he said, “I’m sure you know what happened today.” He said, “I just want you to know that Gadg came over…” That was his name, Gadg. They called him Gadget. Gadg Kazan. “…he came over to our house last night and told us what he was going to do. And told Paula, and we agreed that it was worth it, for him to continue to make movies.”

David Read
Wow.

Bonnie Bartlett
And so they both knew it was gonna happen. And Paula didn’t have a big career. She had nothing to lose. He did, because then, we don’t know for sure, but it looks like he probably could not have made a couple of great movies if he hadn’t done that. [Inaudible], there were other people too he named. There were other people besides Paula. So anybody that, you know, if you named people who had a career, you just about destroyed them. And he did that. He did that, Jerry Robbins did that. Yeah. In order to work. So in other words, you’re destroying somebody in order to work. In order to save yourself. The thing is that they already knew. So you weren’t the first person to name. No, they already knew the people. It was just a terrible situation.

David Read
You’re playing ball.

Bonnie Bartlett
Yeah.

David Read
Wow.

Bonnie Bartlett
Yeah.

David Read
Linda?

Linda Furey
So was Paula, she was teaching at the acting school?

Bonnie Bartlett
She was an assistant. She kind of was Lee’s assistant. And she wasn’t anywhere near the teacher he was. But she did go on to work with Marilyn [Monroe]. And I don’t know, I was not privy to their relationship that much. Except socially. You know, so I don’t know if… she’s got a terrible reputation. Terrible.

Linda Furey
Yeah. So she did still manage to have something of a career because she wasn’t a personality who was in front of the camera, or a big name.

Bonnie Bartlett
Right, right.

Linda Furey
I was wondering about that. Because I mean, she seems to be the, you know, like, “Let’s handpick a few sacrificial lambs to get committee to look the other way.” And, you know, I’m like, “Did he deliberately pick people who weren’t going to be too affected by it?”

Bonnie Bartlett
No, no, no.

Linda Furey
Was there that much thought, even, to it?

Bonnie Bartlett
No thought. Just anybody. Then what they did is, “Was so and so?” “Yes.” “Was so and so?” “Yeah.” You know, if you spoke, anybody… I had a very good friend who, yes a couple of people, very good friend who were destroyed in terms of making any kind of film. And they had big careers. Stanley Prager was the husband of a friend of mine. His career was destroyed. Howard Lindsay — Howard de Silva, not Howard Lindsey — Howard de Silva, his Hollywood career was destroyed. All his money gone, gone, gone. Everything went bye-bye because of that, yes.

Linda Furey
I guess it amazes and horrifies me so much, because so much of the acting community is Jewish. And in the wake of World War Two, here we come up with yet another situation where we’re looking for scapegoats. And we’re turning people in, because they’re a particular thing. And it’s just like, “Wow, this is like a minute later, and we’re doing the same thing again.”

Bonnie Bartlett
Yeah, yeah. Yeah. No, they were… communism. They were terrified. Nixon, his whole career was built on anti-communism. He was a bad, bad guy. And God knows, I don’t know who the people are today, I mean, I don’t know what they’re for. Are they just for power? Right?

David Read
Right.

Bonnie Bartlett
So. OK?

David Read
Thank you so much for joining us, Bonnie. This was a privilege to have you back and to have you share your story.

Bonnie Bartlett
You’ve been great. You’ve been great. And you’re serious. And it’s good.

David Read
Thank you so much for your time. You be well and take care of yourselves, OK?

Bonnie Bartlett
I will.

David Read
All my best to Bill.

Bonnie Bartlett
OK. Thank you.

David Read
Thank you. Bye bye.

Bonnie Bartlett
Bye bye.

David Read
Alright. What a remarkable human being and a remarkable story. Let me reconfigure this, folks, so that Linda and I can talk. Give me just a moment on this. Linda, what do you think?

Linda Furey
It’s just such a powerful story. I mean, because Bonnie has had the privilege of living to, you know, be older than…

David Read
An usual length of life.

Linda Furey
Yeah, she had an incredibly long career. And I mean, as recently as a couple of years ago, was still in something right? She has done some recent guest spots in various things. And I don’t think she has a plan of quitting.

David Read
I don’t think so, not based on the conversation with her.

Linda Furey
But her story spans just such a great swath of modern acting, that I was just finding it so fascinating to read. She’s got both her early career in theater that she talks about. And studying with Strasberg, who’s just absolutely legendary in the theater community. Both, you know, as a notorious devil and as a notoriously good teacher. I’ve read both about him. And, you know, here’s first person witness on that.

David Read
Correct, right down the line.

Linda Furey
Yes, both are true. But then also, you know, in the back half of the book, she talks about her career in television, starting with you know, Little House [on the Prairie] and other things. During the New York period of her life, she was on a soap opera. And she talks about what that early, you know, soap opera life was like, and how you were memorizing an entire script every night and going in the next day and doing it live. Not even filming it and then it goes out the next day, but boom, it was on the air and whatever you delivered was it.

David Read
Was it. I could not deal with that level of stress. I couldn’t. I quake over just a few lines when I’m, you know, performing in, well this has been years now, but you know. I couldn’t pull that off. That’s a muscle, you know. David Hewlett, we’ve talked about that with him on the show. You know, it goes in, it goes back out, and then that’s it. And, somehow, normally in the right order. So, just craziness.

Linda Furey
Just that he was, like, doing a new theatre production every single day. And you know, having to get the blocking right and having to get the words right, and how on earth they managed to light that, I don’t know. Because it does take, you know, an hour to set up the lights for every scene. So they must have just had fixed lighting and gone for it. I’d love a time machine to watch that. I really would. That would really float my boat.

David Read
We had the next best thing just joining us just now. Bonnie Bartlett Daniels, Middle of the Rainbow – How wife, mother and daughter managed to find herself and win two Emmys. This was released this past January. You can get it on Amazon. And it’s, like I told her before we got started and based on my conversations with you, you know, it’s intense. You know, and it’s brave.

Linda Furey
It is. It’s incredibly brave. I highly recommend it to all the feminists in the audience. I really found a lot of… she may not have intended it as advice to women, but I’m taking it that way. I definitely got some things out of it, that I’m gonna put into use in my own life as a woman. You know, about finding your voice and about, you know, standing up for yourself in different situations. And like I said earlier about creatively finding that way to get your idea heard.

David Read
Whatever way. Yeah, I mean, she was clever, you know. She saw an opportunity there and she navigated it that way. She could have been like, “Well, you know, whatever.” But she saw a different in, and she was just pursuing the end result. And she did it, she got what she thought was best and, you know, it moved forward that way. There’s so much that we didn’t cover. The incident on V with the murder and starting up the very next day, you know, with a different member of… with someone cast. There was a murder of one of them. You want to abbreviate this really quick? They’re going to be like, “What? Murder? What? You didn’t get to that?”

Linda Furey
Yeah, Dominique Dunne was playing one of the younger characters on, and this was the original V mini-series. Marc Singer, and I forget who else was in the cast. But yeah, this young actress was murdered by an ex-boyfriend. And one of the other actors, the young gentleman who was playing Bonnie’s son on the series, was there in the house. And this murder took place. And he heard the whole thing. And then the next day, they’re at work. And there’s a new actress, already, bam, immediately cast, and they just continued on with filming as if this horrible thing hadn’t happened. And that just, that stunned me when I read it. And I get low budget productions, and if you pause in filming, maybe that kills the production. But a life had just been lost. And that just really horrified me.

David Read
Just absolutely extraordinary. You know, I mean, we talked about — last week with James Tichenor — on the set of Stargate SG-1, it was his episode, Menace, that was being filmed, and September 11 happened. And Martin Wood eventually called it and shut down the set. You know, and even in that situation, there was an instance of, you know, some people wanted to keep working, because to stop would have been akin to saying, “These evil people have won, and they’ve derailed our lives.” But the other side of that is, you know, Gatecon was happening that following weekend, and, you know, Allan and some of the other team there, they talked with Eric Avari, and they were like, “No, no, no. We’ve got…” That’s a little different. That’s a unique, specific event. They’re like, you know, “The show, we have to do the show.” It’s important to do it because of a host of different reasons. But yeah, I think, you know, a collective breath in terms of production is a good idea. When Cory Monteith died, the Glee production shut down for a few months, you know. They had to, in that situation, reconfigure the season. There’s a lot that goes into that. And, you know, going through Bonnie’s story is just, you know, it’s nearly 100 years of events and opportunities where she learned and adjusted her self and her path accordingly. It’s an extraordinary piece of work. And to have her on is just such a treat.

David Read
The people she’s worked with. I mean, she mentioned a few. I mean Marilyn, Marilyn Monroe. Robert De Niro. I believe… oh my god, there’s just so many.

David Read
Roy Scheider in seaQuest is one of my personal favorites.

Linda Furey
Yep. You know, and it’s just like every few pages another name of someone famous comes up and you’re like, “Oh my God.” You know, I just randomly open the book to see who I land on. And here is Barbara Bel Geddes who eventually played Jr. Ewing’s mother on Dallas.

David Read
That’s my mother’s generation.

Linda Furey
And further down, Montgomery Clift.

David Read
Right.

Linda Furey
Yeah, this is just an utterly fascinating book that touches on so much. Yeah. You can see all my post-it notes with all my many notes to self. Yeah, I very much got into this book. I get into any book. I think that’s known about me. But I particularly got into this one.

David Read
Well, I appreciate you joining me to share in this time of going through the content and sharing it with her, so it means the world to have you on the team and to get to really dive into this material with her was great. So I appreciate it.

Linda Furey
It was a real treat for me.

David Read
I’m glad.

Linda Furey
I’m considering this my birthday present from you.

David Read
There you go. Absolutely. Alright. I’m gonna go ahead and wrap up the show. Thanks, Linda. And thank you Bonnie Bartlett Daniels for joining us in this episode. Dial the Gate is brought to you every week for free, and we do appreciate you watching. But if you’re in the mood for some kind of Stargate related merchandise, consider buying yourself some themed swag. We’ve got t-shirts, tank tops, sweatshirts and hoodies for all ages, as well as cups and other accessories in a variety of sizes and colors at dialthegate.com/merch. Checkout is fast and easy. You can use your credit card or PayPal and thanks so much for your support. We really do appreciate it. We’ve got a pretty big slate of content coming up. We’ve got fanmade Lego Stargate sets premiering in an hour from now. That’s a pre-recorded segment with Stargate Lego fans and then tonight at four o’clock Pacific Time, Anna Galvin is going to be joining us to discuss her Stargate SG-1, Atlantis and Universe roles. Wednesday, February the 22nd, Writer, Senior Story Editor of Stargate SG-1, Tor Alexander Valenza is going to be joining us to discuss his episodes. And February the 25th, next Saturday, Morris Chapdelaine and Glynis Davies will be joining us currently. And I’ve got a few other surprises in the works. One I’m particularly excited about. I’ll be keeping you abreast of that as we move forward. Thanks so much for tuning in everyone. My appreciation to Linda, my moderating team Tracy, Jeremy, Summer, Rhys and Antony. Frederick Marcoux at ConceptsWeb who keeps dialthegate.com up and running. My name is David Read for Dial the Gate. Thanks so much for tuning in. And I’ll see you on the other side. That’s the wrong image.