On Call, Vol. 1, No. 2 - Personnel Profile: Bill and Bonnie Daniels... "The Story of How Captain Nice Met Alice Actress"

From On Call: The Official Newsletter of the St. Elsewhere Appreciation Club, July 1997, volume 1, number 2.

George and Gracie, Roy and Dale, Ozzie and Harriet. If there were a Hall of Fame for Television's Great Married Teams, they would be in it. But so would Bill Daniels and Bonnie Bartlett Daniels, whose body of work and critical acclaim is unparalleled. Bill Daniels was born in Brooklyn on March 31, 1927. His father Charles was a bricklayer and his mother Irene a telephone operator. It was Irene who pushed Bill and his sister to perform on stage as the Daniels Family Song and Dance Troupe. Later, Bill made his way to Broadway, appearing in "Life With Father", starting at age 14. His stage father was Howard Lindsay, a man who played an important role in Daniels' career.

BONNIE BARTLETT
"Bill's family all have thick Brooklyn accents. His father says terlet instead of toilet, and things like that. Bill tried very hard not to talk that way.

"Mr. Lindsay worked with Bill. He had a theatrical accent as actors did in those days, so Bill copied that."

Today, that accent (much like Norman Lloyd's) is Bill's stock in trade, and is second nature to him "except", says BARTLETT, "when he gets very angry...the Brooklyn accent will come out."

But while Daniels learned elocution from his stage father, it was his real life Dad who inspired Bill's most important trait...a serious work ethic.

BONNIE BARTLETT
"He's been in the business since he as four years old, and acting is something Bill does to make money."

SAGAN LEWIS
"Bill is one of those no-nonsense guys who expected people if they were being paid to do a job, to do it well."

On Call, Vol. 1, No. 2 - From the Discharge Department: St. Elsewhere's Last Episode, or "Bobby Ewing Takes a Shower with Rosebud"

From On Call: The Official Newsletter of the St. Elsewhere Appreciation Club, July 1997, volume 1, number 2.

Tom Fontana
Photo courtesy Butler Library,
Buffalo St. College

In the annals of television there have been many memorable swan songs. M*A*S*H brought tears from viewers, while Mary Tyler Moore elicited watery eyes from the characters themselves. Newhart took us back to Bob Newhart's bed with Emily, and Dallas allowed two devils to meet in one room. But no series ending has touched off so much debate as did St. Elsewhere's Episode #137, "The Last One". In the series finale, the camera zooms in on a close-up of Tommy Westphall's snow globe, only to reveal a model of St. Eligius inside - implying that the entire six season run had been a figment of an autistic child's imagination. But creating the snow globe concept wasn't the writers' first option, nor did it come easily.

TOM FONTANA
"First of all you should know that we went through a whole series of alternative endings, and they were pretty crazy--the ones we came up with. Such as Auschlander and Westphall having a conversation in Daniel's office, like they've had so many times before. And outside the window there was suddenly a bright flash."

ON CALL
"Not a nuclear war?"

TOM FONTANA
"Yes (laughs) and Auschlander says to Westphall 'What the hell was that?' Then the screen goes black. So you can see how much better the snow globe was already (laughs). The second one I remember is we had a scene where Westphall called Morrison into his office and was kind of ruminating about his life, and he admitted to Morrison that he was the second gunman in the Kennedy assassination, and that his whole life had been about paying the world back for killing Kennedy. So anyway, we got to the snow globe idea."

JOHN TINKER (Writer/Producer, St. Elsewhere / Executive Producer, Chicago Hope)
"I was there when the idea was born. I know it was not my idea., but I know exactly where we were standing in the hallway -- and it's my recollection we thought about it about two years prior to actually doing it. It wasn't something that we sat around and said, 'How can we end it?' We had had that notion a couple of years before the show went off the air, and I'm not sure we were specifically banking it for the end of the show."

TOM FONTANA
"Now, for me, I don't know if it was because the character was named Tommy, but I always took it very personally, and I loved the face that the entire show had existed in the imnd of a little boy named Tommy (laughs)."

But not everyone loved the idea. NORMAN LLOYD, who is a good friend and admirer of Tom Fontana's, voiced his concern at the outset.

NORMAN LLOYD
"I said to Tom, 'You're out of your mind!' 'No, it's great!', Tom said. So that's it, I had a point of not interfering in these things, and there was no reason for me to, but on this I saw the whole Orson Welles imitation here, and it just didn't sit right. I didn't understand it. What we were saying to an audience was 'everything we've shown you for six years didn't exist; it was in the mind of an autistic child, so I felt bad. I felt it was a cheat. I'm sorry to say that, but my love for this show is unequaled... I really objected to that last episode."

BONNIE BARTLETT and BILL DANIELS agreed.

BONNIE BARTLETT
"To me I didn't like it because it made the whole thing so confusing... that the whole thing was a figment of this boy's imagination in his autistic mind, and that Norman and Eddie were suddenly different people - I mean, it was just weird. My feeling about the last show was the that the writers wanted to do it, and they deserved to be allowed to do it. I did not personally like it, but I didn't care. I mean they (the writers) had done so much for us, and so much for the show that I thought 'if this is what they want to do -- OK, they have a right'."

BILL DANIELS
"I didn't much care for it, except these people keep coming to me over the years and saying how much they like it. There were people who felt it was very original, and wasn't a put down... just a very original way of ending it a la Orson Welles. I didn't buy it myself. It seemed too engineered and too conceptual - but it was at the end an dyou have to accept that some people hated it and some people loved it."

Like Norman, Bonnie, and Bill, ED BEGLEY, Jr. also had great respect for the writing team, but Begley's critique was more positive.

ED BEGLEY, JR
"It was very interesting and offbeat, that's for sure, but I would expect no less from them. That's the way they conducted the show from the beginning."

MARK TINKER offered insight into Fontana's approach. "Tom's take on writing is never let anybody get comfortable, always keep them on their heels, and surprise people to the point of shocking them sometimes, just because the status quo bores him.

"Incidentally, I though that the last episode was terrific! I don't feel any lack of closure, I loved the little twist on it. I hated that we were compared to the 'shower' episode of Dallas, and some people felt cheated by that whole thing with the kid. But for a unique way to go out, that was pretty cool."

To this day, Tom Fontana openly accepts responsibility for series television's most controversial ending, which for him, represented a personal challenge.

TOM FONTANA
"Somehow in my mind, what I thought it did was it said to not only the audience, but it said to us as writers on the show, that this was only a fantasy. It wasn't real, and as much as it was a part of my life, I kind of needed to let it go, and put it in its proper perspective... which was, after all, that it was just a television series. It wasn't life, which was a very hard thing for me to do."

And so, in 1988, Tommy Westphall (and his alter ego Tommy Fontana) turned our world upside down by telling us that St. Elsewhere never really existed, but if that is so, then perhaps young Westphall didn't exist either. Perhaps Daniel Auschlander slumped over his desk, lapsed into a coma, and dreamed that Tommy had imagined everything. Perhaps Auschlander is now recovered and serving as CEO Emeritus at St. Eligius. Well, we can only hope. But what we do know is that Tom Fontana is much too modest about the show's impact. St. Elsewhere was NOT "just a television series"... It was and is an American institution that has helped to improve our quality of life, influence medical careers, and even save lives. And those are realities that can't be shaken away in any size globe.

Originally produced by Longworth Communications.

On Call, Vol. 1, No. 2 - Medical Histories: St. Elsewhere Resuscitated

From On Call: The Official Newsletter of the St. Elsewhere Appreciation Club, July 1997, volume 1, number 2.

"The Magnificent 7" - Masius, J. Tinker, Paltrow, Fontana,
M. Tinker, Eglee, Gibson

It is difficult to imagine now, but there almost wasn't a second season for St. Elsewhere. Many people credit Grant Tinker with saving the show, but others played key roles as well, including someone named Tartikoff. To understand the story behind St. Elsewhere's now famous "near death experience", ON CALL spoke with some of the folks whose lives were forever changed during the Spring of 1983.

MARK TINKER (Producer/Director, St. Elsewhere / Executive Producer, NYPD Blue)
"What happened is we were having really tepid ratings and going no place fast, and the Network was not really returning our calls... nothing much was going on. So John Masius and Tom Fontana (no longer under the aegis of Brand and Falsey) wrote an episode (#22) of that first year that I directed, that was very unlike everything else. It was more hopeful, it was brighter. It ended with the birth of Morrison's baby and, at the end, everyone "toasts to life", which was not such subtle irony (because) we were hoping the show would survive."

Still the was no word on renewal, except for speculation that "no news was bad news".

ED BEGLEY
"I don't remember it ever being officially canceled. I just remember Bruce Paltrow saying 'It doesn't look good'."

MARK TINKER
"So Bruce went to Paris and Tom Fontana went back to New York and John Masius went to Hawaii, and I'm by myself in the office sort of cleaning up loose ends, and show #22 airs. We get like a 26 share which was 10 points higher than we had been getting - maybe more, and that, coupled with Lilly Tartikoff saying to Brandon 'this show is great!...If this is what they're trying to do with it, you've got to pick it up!'."

Enter "Tinker the elder".

MARK TINKER
"My old man was in the meeting where they (NBC) were programming, and he picked up the little magnetic piece that said "St. Elsewhere", and he stuck it on the board and said, "This is coming back!' I didn't find out until many years later that he saved it."

Some critics have suggested that Grant's courageous decision might just have been a favor to his son... a claim that Mark disputes.

MARK TINKER
"He didn't even want me to come to the Company in the first place. He had to be talked into it by Arthur Price, who at the time was the number two guy (at MTM)... he didn't want nepotism... so it was very unlike him to (interfere)."

Prior to that fateful NBC programming meeting, though, most of St. Elsewhere's cast and crew had assumed the worst, and decided to move on with their lives.

TOM FONTANA (Writer/Producer, St. Elsewhere / Executive Producer, Homicide)
"You have to understand I had been a starving playwright in New York, so after the first season of St. Elsewhere, I had already made more money in one year than I could have ever conceived of that I was ever going to make in my lifetime. So I came back to New York the happiest little boy there was because I had money in the bank, and I was married to a woman I loved (Sagan Lewis), and I thought 'wasn't that a great experience!', and I was out of television. I was finished. I had said goodbye to everybody, and I was gone."

MARK TINKER
"So I got the call and everyone was gone. Now I'm calling everyone around the country saying 'hey, hey, we're back! Get back and write!'."

TOM FONTANA
"Well, I'm sitting there at the Writer's Theater, which is a theater I was involved in here in New York, and the phone rings and it's John Masius, and he goes, 'Guess what?' I said, 'What?'... he said, 'We're doing it again.' And I was like 'What are you talking about?' And John said, 'You've got to come back to California'. And that was scary because Falsey and Brand were gone and NBC waited until the last minute, so we virtually had no lead time. This was late May (and we always start shooting in July), so we had no time to write anything. We had no stuff... We had nobody. Basically, in terms of the staff, it was Paltrow (who wasn't writing at that point), Mark - who was occasionally writing, and Masius and me. Well, I got on a plane as fast as my little butt could get me on a plane, and I got to L.A. and Masius and I started writing. I think we wrote every day, weekends included, for six months. I mean, we never saw the light of day, because once we started, the race was on, and you couldn't stop. I mean, the wonderful thing about Bruce is, Bruce says 'You're a writer, I'm paying you to write, so write!' So you'd be in this kind of forced march behind Caesar, going, Well, Caesar's going to the Rubicon, I guess we're going too, you know (laughs). That's the kind of leader he is, I mean, you don't think about the consequences, you just jump."

Meanwhile, cast members, unaware of the writers' panic in progress, were being notified to return.

BONNIE BARTLETT
"Well, we thought it was canceled. Bill had made some money - our boys were older, so we decided to go to Europe, and we went to Italy. And when we got back to the airport in New York, we called our son Robert and said 'Well Rob, we're back and we'll be home' and he said 'Your show got picked up'... and that's how we found out. Robert had taken the call from Bill's agent. It surprised us, we thought it was gone - we weren't counting on it at all."

ED BEGLEY
"I always knew we'd be picked up... Bruce said I was crazy for saying that. He had said, 'We don't have a prayer.' I am generally an optimist... I knew it would be picked up."

Thus, St. Elsewhere was resuscitated through a team effort with episode #22 serving as the catalyst. Credit went to: new writing, new direction, strong performances, a network executive's wife cheerleading from the sidelines, and Grant Tinker sticking his neck out.

MARK TINKER
"He sort of championed us. And as it turned out in the course of the six years our demographics (were strong)... if we were getting a 24 share, which was about our average, it really sold like a 30 or 32, because our viewers had the money and the intelligence, so at the time it was one of NBC's best demographically-oriented shows."

And so, here's to Mark, Tom and John... and here's to Grant and Lilly... and here's to everyone who helped revive television's greatest drama. Here then, is a "Toast of Life!".

Originally produced by Longworth Communications.

On Call, Vol. 1, No. 1 - Personnel File: Norman Lloyd ... "The Ultimate Pro"

From On Call: The Official Newsletter of the St. Elsewhere Appreciation Club, February 1997, volume 1, number 1.

As a child, Norman Lloyd would often accompany his mother to her Ladies Club meetings. There she sang beautiful melodies, while he bellowed out burlesque-style renderings, such as "Father get the hammer, there's a fly on baby's head!" Said Lloyd, "I did show a bit of talent - I used to do song and dance as a kid. The songs I sang were disgusting ... you know when you're nine years old and doing that, you're really repulsive."

Norman Lloyd, Age 15

But somehow his mother didn't think so. During the 1920s, "she took me to damn near every show that was on Broadway." Soon, Norman had caught a terminal case the acting bug.

Born in 1914, Norman is a native of Jersey City, New Jersey, but by age two his father (who was in the furniture business) had moved the family to Brooklyn, where young Norman became a "rabid Dodger fan," and a regular patron of Tom Mix movies, thus creating a balance to his love of theater that "sort of enabled me to stay with the circle of my kid friends."

Norman attended Boys High, located in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. "I was a moderately good student - a "B" student, not an "A" student. At Boys High we had some distinguished graduates - Aaron Copland, Norman Mailer, Isaac Asimov."

It is difficult to imagine Lloyd's lower east side origins from listening to him speak today. The woman responsible for eliminating his New York dialect was theater director Eva LeGaliienne, who told a 17-year-old Norman, "If you want to be a member of my acting company, you have to learn to speak better." LeGallienne assigned a speech teacher to Norman and the rest is history.

An Impromptu St. Elsewhere Reunion from 2011

An article with photos of a get-together at Art's Deli in Studio City, California featuring several of St. Elsewhere's cast and crew.

Abby Singer and Ed Begley, Jr. at Art's Deli, 2011.

Here's a link to an article from StudioCityPatch from August 20, 2011, featuring photos of an impromptu gathering of former St. Elsewhere cast and crew members at Art's Deli in Studio City, where legendary production manager Abby Singer is a regular. Gathered at this occasion were Singer, Ed Begley Jr., Ellen Bry, Eric Laneuville, associate producer Bethany Rooney (credited on St. Elsewhere as Beth Hillshafer), property master R.J. Visceglia, producer John Tinker, Matt Tinker, first assistant director Sara Fischer.

Check out the four photos and see how everyone's looking these days. Nice to see that they keep in touch!