William Daniels, St. Elsewhere's Dr. Mark Craig, discusses the show in an interview about his career.
The Television Academy Foundation has posted an interview with William Daniels from August, 2017. On YouTube, the interview is conveniently broken down into clips, but you can watch the whole thing on the Television Academy Foundation website.
From On Call: The Official Newsletter of the St. Elsewhere Appreciation Club, March 1998, volume 2, number 1.
During its six year run on NBC, St. Elsewhere captured sixty-two Emmy nominations and fourteen wins... an impressive feat by anyone's standards. But now, for the first time, the stories BEHIND the statistics can be revealed. Following months of research and scores of interviews, ON CALL has learned not just about the heartaches and triumphs, but how St. Elsewhere actually played a role in shaping the Emmy awards as we know them today... and in so doing, helped to improve a system that once denied our favourite show its top prize, year after year.
1983 - "REGULARS EVICTED BY THE HOMELESS"
In its first season, St. Elsewhere racked up ten nominations and three wins. That year, behind-the-scenes nominations went to SOUND MIXING (for episode #16, "THE COUNT")... SOUND EDITING (for episode #19, "WORKING")... and ART DIRECTION (for episode #1, "PILOT").
Ed Flanders
ED FLANDERS won for Lead Actor, and even though it was his third Emmy, the recognition didn't go to his head.
CODY LAMBERT (Ed's former wife)... "When I first met him in Malibu he had them (the Emmy statuettes) on a simple shelf in the back of the house - he didn't even have a display case or anything - he lived very simply."
In his brief acceptance speech Ed even diverted the spotlight from himself.
CODY LAMBERT... "I remember him being disappointed that year that the writers didn't get more attention... when he won (I remember) him thanking the writers saying, 'Where would we be without them.'"
Perhaps, though, the most significant aspect of the 1983 Emmys were the awards for Supporting Actor and Actress. Ed Begley, Jr. was nominated, and should have won, but the nods when to James Coco and Doris Roberts for their portrayals of a homeless couple (episode #4, "CORA AND ARNIE"). As a result, some of the case were (despite their happiness for Doris and Jimmy) somewhat offended that any guest star could walk away with an award that should have gone to a regular performer in the series.
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."
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.
Mrs. Hufnagel checks out of St. Eligius one last time, and William Daniels picks up an Emmy.
"Cretan" Nurse Lucy Papandrao (Jennifer Savidge) tries to fix
the bed for Mrs. Hufnagel (Florence Halop).
In Edward Copeland's 30th anniversary retrospective, this section covers the show's most memorable recurring character, the acid-tongued patient who just wouldn't go away, Mrs. Hufnagel (Florence Halop). The show's writers had come to love writing the "Hufnagel Spot" in each episode, delighting in spinning out insult after insult at the expense of the show's main characters.
At this point, she's been re-admitted at least six times, each time with a more serious ailment. But the show's medical adviser insisted that in real life, a patient spending that much time at a hospital would have one of two fates: either she'd get better and be gone for good, or she'd succumb to her illness(es), and be gone for good. Left to the whims of St. Elsewhere's writers, the choice was clear.
In "Murder, She Rote", Mrs Hufnagel is recovering from open-heart surgery to repair an aneurysm. She buzzes the nurses' station, where Nurse Lucy Papandrao (Jennifer Savidge) is loath to answer yet another call from the abrasive patient. Hufnagel had been trying to adjust the bed so she could sit up, but like most things at St. Eligius, the bed malfunctioned. In her annoyance, she addresses Lucy as "cretin," but then covers by claiming she was referring to Nurse Papandrao's ethnicity, as her descendants hailed from the Isle of Crete. After calling the Greeks "a distrustful lot" and getting a shot in at Aristotle Onassis, Mrs. Hufnagel does something uncharacteristic: she thanks Lucy for the help.
Her bed has malfunctioned again, this time at the foot end, when Dr. Victor Ehrlich (Ed Begley, Jr.) arrives to check up on the post-op patient. You know she's not doing well when she mistakes the pale blond doctor for his colleague, Dr. Philip Chandler (Denzel Washington), and says her chest feels "like Buddy Rich's snare drum." Victor needs to check her potassium levels, but Hufnagel refuses to be pricked with a needle, and then confuses her doctor for a former regular customer at the diner she owned with her husband (called Flo & Eddie's). She complains about the food, which she claims is causing the bubbles in her head (like Lawrence Welk). Ehrlich, already late for rounds, loses his last shred of patience and leaves, her potassium levels unchecked.
Luther (Eric Laneuville) finds no pulse, and St. Eligius claims
another victim.
Once again, we see Nurse Papandrao get another buzz from Hufnagel's room, but this time she ignores it. Orderly Luther Hawkins (Eric Laneuville) is making the rounds, collecting garbage. This sets up one of St. Elsewhere's most memorable images -- this time, her bed malfunctioned on both ends, and she's trapped in the folded-up bed. But she's not moving. Luther checks her pulse and her arm goes limp, call button still in hand. Finding no heartbeat, he calls a code.
When we return from the act break, it's official -- after 17 episodes and 40 minutes of resuscitation efforts, Mrs. Hufnagel is dead. On the way to the morgue, Luther informs Dr. Mark Craig (William Daniels) that one of his patients has passed away. When Luther explains that her cardiac arrest may have been triggered when she was swallowed up by the bed, Chief of Services Dr. Daniel Auschlander (Norman Lloyd) can't help but burst into laughter. Dr. Craig doesn't find losing a patient so funny. Director of Medicine Dr. Donald Westphall (Ed Flanders) agrees that the case had been manhandled from the start, but Craig goes a step further -- she "was murdered, same as if she'd been knifed in an alley," and he is determined to see that the guilty parties pay.
In surgery, Dr. Craig tells Ehrlich that he didn't see notes on Hufnagel's chart and informs him that she died ("with a snarl on her face...crushed by her bed like a clam," adds anesthesiologist Dr. Vijay Kochar (Kavi Raz)). Craig doesn't accept Victor's excuses for not cutting through his patient's anxiety and checking her potassium levels, and Craig hasn't ruled out Kochar as a suspect, either. He warns them that they'd better have their alibis together at the mortality conference.
Dr. Mark Craig (William Daniels) doesn't appreciate the
conclusion that Dr. Jacqueline Wade (Sagan Lewis) has
reached.
Dr. Jacqueline Wade (Sagan Lewis) and an unnamed pathologist perform Hufnagel's autopsy, and Jackie admits that for the first time, she doesn't care about a patient dying. She has found what likely caused her cardiac arrest -- the papillary muscle ruptured. When she reminds Dr. Craig that he nicked it during surgery, distracted by Ehrlich whining about cake frosting, he is aghast at the suggestion that he had made such an error. He insists that it must have been a pre-existing defect, and that the post-op notes he dictated after the procedure will reveal the truth (in his mind, that it must have been Wade who did it).
Later in his office, he listens to the tape. After jumping ahead a few times, he hears his own voice say the words he didn't want to hear: "detected small surgical nick on the mitral papillary muscle..." After ducking a phone call and re-listening a couple of times, he pulls the cassette out of the tape recorder and destroys it. He tries to go about his work, but he can't forget what happened.
The mortality conference begins, and Dr. Annie Cavanero (Cynthia Sikes) feels like she's in an Agatha Christie novel where everyone is a suspect. Ehrlich offers remorse for ignoring Mrs. Hufnagel's distress when he last saw her, but Dr. Craig is unusually forgiving (though he does tell Kochar, a frequent target of his abuse, to "book a passage to India"). After Dr. Chandler presents the first case, the matter of Mrs. Hufnagel's death is raised. Mark insists on handling it himself.
Here's the clip of Mrs. Hufnagel's blackly-comic end, Dr. Craig's determination to find who's to blame, and (at the thirteen-minute mark) the mortality conference where he must face the music.
Ladies and gentlemen, your 1985 Emmy winner for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Drama Series, William Daniels.
What I love about this story is that Dr. Craig insisted that he would give hell to whomever was responsible, and despite his ego, he holds true to his word. He may be brutal and demanding, but I have to respect him for eventually fessing up and holding himself to the same standard he holds others.
Some trivia, and by "trivia", and I mean trivial... The case Dr. Chandler presents at the mortality conference refers to the death of one Jeffrey Sagansky, a 32-year-old executive who collapsed in his screening room on Friday night between 8 and 10. I did a bit of research to figure out this joke.
Jeff Altman, Mitsuyo Nemoto and Keiko Masuda, a.k.a. Pink Lady and Jeff. Anyone know which one is Mie and
which one is Kei?
Tartikoff and company had their misses, too (like Manimal, or the decision to cancel Buffalo Bill). One of those weak spots was NBC's 1984-85 Friday night schedule, which featured two new series: the sci-fi fantasy V from 8 to 9, and the violent police action-drama Hunter from 9 to 10. V turned out to be a major flop with critics and viewers--not good when you're making the most expensive series ever produced at the time, at a cost of one million dollars per episode (and yet still filling it out with stock footage).
Hunter had the misfortune of being scheduled against CBS's juggernaut Dallas, but halfway through the year, executive producer Stephen J. Cannell held a private screening of an unaired two-part episode for Tartikoff in an effort to convince him that the show needed more time to attract viewers. The network boss agreed, put the show on hiatus for two months, and brought it back on Saturday nights, where ratings slowly began to climb. The following year, the show was retooled and became even more popular, and it stayed on the air for seven seasons.
I'm guessing the in-joke is that the writers felt that Sagansky's position at NBC became untenable after Cannell convinced Tartikoff that Hunter deserved another chance in a better time slot, coupled with the disaster that was V, or something like that. Things worked out just fine for Sagansky, though; he left to become President of Production and later President of TriStar Entertainment.
One of my goals with this blog is to tell the stories behind these quirky, arcane references. Why? Because I can. Thank you, Internet.
Introducing a listing of St. Elsewhere's formal honors, plus a few bits of awards trivia.
Made another new page, a list of awards that were bestowed upon St. Elsewhere during its six-year run. I've started with the 13 Emmy awards that the show won, and I intend to add nominations and other awards as well. The show received at least one Emmy award in each of its six seasons.
Some Emmy trivia:
In 1986, William Daniels and Bonnie Bartlett became the second real-life married couple to both win Emmys for playing a married couple. During that season, the fourth, the Craigs dealt with the death of their son Steven in a car accident, and cared for his newborn daughter while Steven's wife was in a coma.
Also in 1986, the show's most heavily decorated season, four Emmy awards, for writing, costume design, sound mixing and art direction, went to the two-part episode "Time Heals", which contains flashbacks from the hospital's history as St. Eligius celebrates its 50th anniversary. The episode does an excellent job of making each time period look convincing and distinct.
