MISFITS OF SCIENCE: An Oral History (Pt. 3)

Missed Pt. 2? You’ll want to read that first, which you can do by clicking here.

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Nwo ahead and dive into Pt. 3, and remember…

“When the unusual becomes the usual, the impossible becomes possible, the incredible becomes credible, and the weird gets weirder, who do you blame? The Misfits of Science!”

Our Very Special Guest Star

Mark Thomas Miller: I was so happy to see when Dean Devlin made it with Independence Day. When I met him on Misfits of Science, he was such a nice guy, and you could tell that he really loved the business and wanted to do more. So I remember hanging out with him on the backlot. That was really cool.

Donald Todd: Dean Devlin was in my first episode, which was the first one after the pilot: “Your Place or Mayan?” And the reason I know that title is because residual checks still come in with that title on ‘em. Otherwise, I would have no idea! But he was this kid, I thought he was a great actor, and it was a bizarre episode where they discover where the Mayans went: they disappeared under Beverly Hills, where there are Mayan ruins. And we built this enormous temple with Dean Devlin’s face on it! We built it! There was no CGI. They actually built a massive temple with Dean Devlin’s face on it. I’ve run into him a couple of times at various things, and I still have that picture of the temple, so I keep telling him that, if he’s not nice to me, he’s gonna see that again. But, yeah, he was an amazingly talented actor. He turned into a very successful writer and producer, but he could’ve done just great as just an actor.

James Parriott: Yeah, I remember Dean…and the Mayan temple! That temple…okay, so Alan Levi, who’s a friend of mine, was a supervising producer, and he directed that episode. And kind of behind my back…he really pissed me off, I have to tell you…he authorized the building of that temple, telling me, “Oh, it’s okay, we can afford it, we can afford it…” But you’re given a certain budget for sets, and that temple ate up a huge portion of that. We had to use it again, in fact. It was very costly.

Donald Todd: We had Ray Walston and June Allyson on an episode called “Steer Crazy,” which had to do with tainted beef or something that made old people young again, or something like that.

James Parriott: Dorothy Hamill was on the show. She didn’t do much, but she came in and gave us a cameo one day because of Dean Paul. She used to be married to him. That was sweet. I mean, he was still in love with her. She just couldn’t handle his career. And his womanizing. He deeply regretted that. I know it was one of the deep regrets of his life.

Mark Thomas Miller: There are just so many nice people that you meet. Then some of the stuff you remember is not so great, like, when the girl you’ve got to kiss is a chain smoker, and you’re, like, “Really? I’ve got to make out with a girl who chain smokes…?” Gee whiz…

Donald Todd: I really need to go back and look at the list of guest stars, because I love being able to say, “Oh, my God, I worked with them!” But that’s when I was at the beginning of my career, and a lot of the people we were casting were sort of in the middle of theirs, so I just can’t recall everyone who was on the show offhand. Nowadays I can tell you everybody I’ve ever cast, to the point where I’m really boring to my kids and wife, because I’ll say, “Oh, y’know, I worked with that person, I cast that person…” And they’re, like, “Yeah, that’s great…”

It’s funny, but just last night I went to see a play that both Diane Cary and Joel Polis are in, and Joel was in an episode of Misfits. First time I ever worked with him, in fact. Morrie actually did more on that episode than I did, but I thought Joel was a really talented guy. He went on to have a recurring role on Cheers as Gary of Gary’s Olde Town Tavern. But to see him in this play last night with Diane…I thought about the Misfits connection, and I was just, like, “Wow, it just never stops…”

Speaking of Joel Polis…

Joel Polis (Lonnie & Dwayne in “Twin Engines”): The crazy thing about that episode of Misfits of Science is that here I was playing identical twins…and I’m actually an identical twin! When I told the director, Burt Brinckerhoff, who also had an identical twin, he flew my brother Jerry out from the east coast to do the over-the-shoulder work in the episode. It was very trippy! Synchronistic and weird. But my brother had a great time coming out here and getting to watch a TV show be filmed. That was when guest stars really were guest stars. Now we just do exposition. Back then, though, especially with that role, I was the main event…and it was pretty great being the main event!

I was playing a motorcycle racer who was having these flashbacks, sort of, where I could kind of see my brother’s life. The character was from Boone, North Carolina, so I remember getting some kind of recordings of people from Boone so I could do an authentic accent. We were shooting out at Magic Mountain, and they gave me a Ninja. I can’t remember if it was a 750 or 900, but…I wasn’t that experienced on a motorcycle. But, boy, every time I was off the camera, I was riding that bike all around the lot, just having a good ol’ time…until one of the producers got a little bit worried, and he told me not to ride the bike between takes. I’ve actually got a snapshot somewhere of myself in that beautiful leather racing uniform that you wear when you race, and, God, that was a trip dressing up like that. Also, there was a very beautiful woman who was a guest star, and…I forget exactly what she did. But Paul Koslo was also a guest star, and he was a trip. I’d only been out in L.A. for a year, but he’d been out here for a lot longer than me, and he had a lot of stories to tell me. It was great fun.

I remember doing a monologue in a trailer. Being from the theater, I was used to studying performances, and this was the first experience I had with just doing it full-out and letting the chips fall where they may, which is how a lot of movie and TV actors work, because you can pick the best take. I just remember it was a little scary for me, and yet at the same time it was a real growth experience at that time for me, because I’d been much more used to the theater rather than television or movies.

I also remember Courteney Cox following me around. I finally turned to her one day and said, “What are you doing?” And she said, “I…I just love the way you’re working! I want to watch you work!” It was so sweet. I think she was only, like, 18 or something at the time, and she was young, innocent, beautiful, blah blah blah. I remember Mark Miller was a little inexperienced, but he was a good-looking guy who got himself a good TV gig, so good for him. He was a very nice guy. I was shocked when I heard that Kevin Peter Hall had died. He went way too soon. He was a sweetheart, too. And I was heartbroken when I heard that Dean Paul Martin had died. He was such a helpful, humble actor. It was just a lovely set to be on, and I was thrilled to be there and work with everybody.

Burt Brinckerhoff lives in Jackson Hole now, he comes in once in awhile to work, but he was so sweet. We worked together really well. He was an actor turned director, and he was really great to me. I’d been on the east coast for 10 years, studying at Yale Drama School and all that, so I hadn’t seen a bunch of my California colleagues for awhile, and a lot of people complemented me on my work on that episode. It was great fun.

Mark Thomas Miller: I remember (“Twin Engines”) because it had the guy playing twins, but I didn’t realize until recently that the guy who wrote the story for it, Tim Kring, went on to create Heroes and Touch. That was a good episode, though. Actually, it was one of the best.

James Parriott: I guess Tim sort of did an update of Misfits, didn’t he? That’s sort of what Heroes was. When Heroes came out, everyone said, “Hey, that’s Misfits…but better!”

Donald Todd: I was at the Writers Guild awards when Tim Kring was doing Heroes and…I think I did Samantha Who? that year, and I said, “Oh, yeah, you did a Misfits!” He said, “I sure did!” But he didn’t remember much about it, frankly. I think it might’ve been one where we were in a hurry and I took it over and did the rewrite, which is why I remember it a bit better. We were always in such a hurry, but that’s one where we were really in a hurry, which is why I took it over from Tim for the rewrite.

Mark Thomas Miller: That was also around the time when they were trying to get me to do a lot more and to talk a lot more, because they realized the character was popular, but…I certainly didn’t resist, but I didn’t really agree with it. It was, like, I think my character was better in short, small doses, and to suddenly have him pushing the storyline kind of took some of the power away from him, the emphasis on all the cute little things he said all the time. I remember that particular episode a lot, though, because we were at Magic Mountain. That was a gas. I got to ride motorcycles around. But I didn’t realize about Tim Kring. If you get hold of him, tell him I’ll take a job on Touch if he’s got one. I’ll be done with this (business) in about 18 months, I’ll be retired, and I want to act again. I think I do, anyway. I mean, what a great job to grow old with, right? I want to be like Peter Boyle on Everybody Loves Raymond, just sitting in a chair with brilliant young people all around you, doing comedy and laughing. I can’t think of a better way to hit my sixties and seventies.

A Few (or More) Words from a Few Other Guest Stars

Jesse Dizon (Link in “Lost Link”): When I did Misfits of Science, it was almost like old home week, because Universal had been very good to me up to that point, but it was funny because, when my agent called, he said I had an appointment to meet with the producers on a new show, and when I asked if he had a script, he said, “No, they just want to speak with you.” I was a little surprised, but I said, “Oh, okay.” When I went into the room, I knew nothing about the project, and I was going to ask exactly what the heck this was all about, but there were a lot of people in there, and the only person I recognized was Jim Parriott, who I’d known for years, since he was a young writer, even before he did The Bionic Woman. I also knew his wife Diane, because she and I had been on stage together, so every time I saw that Jim had gotten another job, I’d go, “Yes!” [Laughs.] I was always one of his biggest cheerleaders. It was always kind of nice to see everyone progressing in their careers, because we were all about the same age and at Universal at the same time. I still love and watch the projects he does, including the one he just did recently with Ashley Judd, Missing. When I saw him in the room, I didn’t go overboard, I just shook his hand like we were meeting for the first time, because I didn’t want to influence the other people. If they liked me or didn’t like me, it was just gonna be straight business.

So I sat there, they were explaining the character to me, and they said, “Well, it’s going to be demanding,” because the role of Link didn’t speak a language that anybody knew, because he was just discovered, so I would have to come up with a language. Later, it turned out he was from the Philippines, but they didn’t tell me one way or the other at the time. But I said, “That’s okay.” And they said, “Link is very physical, he has emotions ranging from gentle love to violence.” And I said, “Okay,” but with that in mind, I then said, “Would you like to see some of possible ways that I could do it?” And they seemed surprised. They were, like, “Oh, uh, yeah, that’d be fine!” As if they weren’t going to ask me to do anything, since I volunteered it. I can’t remember everything I did, but I know that at the end of it…I was a gymnast, so I was pretty physical to begin with, but at the end of it I sweating, exhausted, and even wiping tears from my eyes. The room was very quiet. And then finally they said, “Oh, okay, thank you!” So I stood up, shook their hands, and I gave a checking look over at Jim, but he had this smile on his face, so I said, “Okay, everything’s okay, I didn’t embarrass him!” I felt pretty good as I left the office, and it wasn’t long before I got the call that I was going to be working at Universal again, so I said, “Cool! Now can I see the script?” [Laughs.] So then I read the script, and I went, “Wow, this character, he is the episode. Oh, my God, this is gonna be fun!”

The day of work, the limo picks me up, and most of the cast were already inside the limo except for Dino—I guess he was already on the set—and after I introduced myself, Kevin Peter Hall said, “So you’re the one people are talking about!” And I go, “Oh, uh, sure, I guess…” I didn’t really know how to take that. All I knew is that I was working. It’s always fun to get paid to pretend. Once we got to the set, I met Dino, and the first thing I said was, “Dino, Desi, and Billy!” And that put this humble smile on his face, and that set a very nice tone for our relationship that was to come. I also mentioned to him that my daughter Stephanie, who was a regular on Mork and Mindy at the time, was also a friend of his son, Alex, so that was a nice icebreaker. And when he told me about flying airplanes, I said, “Well, you know, I was in the Civil Air Patrol,” and he said, “Yeah, but I fly jets on the weekends!” [Laughs.]

When we got to the set and got in front of the cameras, I hear someone yell, “Ramon!” That was the name of my character on Operation Petticoat. I turned around, and it was Frank Thackery, the director of photography, who comes up and gives me a hug and starts talking to his crew about how, “Oh, this is Jesse, he was in MacArthur, he was in Operation Petticoat,” just on and on and on, and I can see the faces of Courteney, Mark, and Kevin just looking, their mouths dropping. And I thought, “Maybe that’s what they were talking about, the fact that everybody already seems to know me.” Generally when you’re on a set, everyone’s a stranger, and if there’s maybe one other person who knows you, that helps ease the whole day, but this show…I had friends, there was a family environment, and it’s, like, if you like the people, you know them, and you know they like your work, then not only does it make the week go by faster, but you find yourself wanting to do an even better job than usual

So we’re setting up at the Shambala Preserve, the animal preserve set up by Tippi Hedren, and there was one scene that I remember in particular where, if you remember, I explain that my child died and his spirit is inside this wooden carving, and I need to put the carving on the Space Shuttle, but they don’t get what I’m saying because they don’t understand my language, and I’m trying to explain it, but I’m getting frustrated. For that scene, I told Chris (Leitch), the director, “You know, I prefer not to go all out on the rehearsal, but I’ll walk it through so the cameras get it right.” He looks over at Frank, and Frank goes, “Okay, kid, not a problem,” because he knows it’s going to be a very emotional scene. So we start getting everything ready, and nobody really knows what I’m going to do, because all the script really says is that these people walk in and Link begins to try to give them this message. There’s not a lot of dialogue, just a lot of physical things, and the hope is that I can express them.

The scene was with Jennifer Holmes, whose character’s name was Jane…to my Tarzan! [Laughs.] And she was pregnant—not just her character, but Jennifer herself—so I came up to her and started stroking her stomach. And the camera’s rolling, and she didn’t know what I was going to do, so then I looked up at her, and everyone’s looking at what’s going on as I start going through the explanation, becoming angry, then caring, then very violent, and then at the end of it I break down and start crying, and I’m just totally spent. At that point, Johnny B, Mark Miller’s character, was supposed to come over to me, but instead of just doing that, since I’d thrown the doll in the water, he went over into the water and picked it up and brought it over…and that was a cut, so they started filming the insert shots of everyone else’s reactions and the rest of the scene.

The next day, though, Mark came over to me and said, “Oh, Jesse, I really screwed up.” I said, “What happened?” He said, “I walked into the water!” And I looked at him and I started to smile, and I said, “And you didn’t blow up?” [Laughs.] Because his thing was involving electricity, so if he’d walked into the water, that would’ve been it for him! He said, “Yeah, sorry, I got so involved in watching you that it just seemed like I should go over and get the doll for you!” That’s just one point where I really felt the warmth of the cast. Chris, the director, was so great, letting me play and just try doing things that I wanted to do, and if he wanted to add something else, I was glad to add that, too.

I was still curious, though, to find out what Kevin had been talking about when he made that comment in the limo, and I remembered something that I’d learned long ago: if you want to know something, take the assistant director out to lunch. [Laughs.] Well, as it happened, the A.D. on the episode was Gary Strangis, whose sister was Judy Strangis, who I’d worked with on Room 222 years before. So we went to the commissary for lunch, and I said to him, “You know, I’m just curious: what were people saying about me before I came onto the show?” Well, the producers had come down to the production office and said, “We’re gonna need a mime teacher, and we’ll probably need a gymnastics coach, and a language person who can come up with all the stuff for Link.” But as they’re arranging all of these people, the day after my interview, I don’t know if it was Jim or who it was, but they said, “Y’know what? Cancel all of that. We got Jesse Dizon. He can do it all.” [Laughs.] Greg told me that, and I was, like, “Wow, that’s pretty cool!”

I had some stuntmen doubling for me on various scenes, of course, but there was one scene at the end of the episode where we were at Edwards Air Force Base, and there’s a Space Shuttle where I’m supposed to take this doll, which is supposed to house my son’s soul, and I say goodbye to the Misfits. Now, we were running late that day because we had a lot of stuff to do, and the sun was going down, and we had time just for one take of this one scene, where I say goodbye, I turn and face the Space Shuttle, and I just turn and walk toward the Shuttle. The sun’s setting, so it’s a very picturesque shot, so it was important to get it nailed...because it looked good, but also because the Air Force wanted us off the base! [Laughs.]

So we start the scene, I say goodbye, and I start walking…and walking and walking and walking and walking. Finally, they yelled “cut,” by which point I’ve walked a really long distance. Everyone’s cheering, they’re going, “We did it! We’re on time! Jesse, we love you!” At this point, I turn around and, screaming, I go, “Excuse me, can someone come pick me up?” They said, “What’s the matter?” Now, if you remember the episode, Link was barefoot the whole time, even when he was tripping down Hollywood Boulevard. Well, after I said goodbye and took my first step, it was right onto a huge thorn—we’re talking about an inch and a half—from one of the short bushes that I had to walk over. This is my first step, but I had to keep walking, and fortunately the camera was behind me, because I was crying, and it’s also fortunate that it was supposed to be a slow, dramatic, heartfelt walk away, because that’s about as fast as I could move! So, thankfully, one of the grips ran down and picked me up, and they saw all this blood coming out of my foot, and I turned around to Chris and say weakly, “We got the shot, right?” [Laughs.] Dino comes over and gives me a hug and says, “Yeah, we got the shot! Now somebody call the nurse!”

Christopher Murray (Syl in “Sort of Looking for Gina”): Actually, Misfits of Science was a pretty formative moment for my acting career, because most of what I’d done…I mean, I did a lot of theater in New York before I moved back to L.A., but from there was it pretty much just day-player stuff, so Misfits of Science was one of my first, if not the very first, weekly paychecks. I had to work so many different jobs to support my acting habit, so I always looked at that kind of stuff as free money, because when you have a job that you love, it’s like you’re not working at all. So it was just crazy and such a big thrill to arrive on the set and see your name on the honey wagon. And the craft service…that’s the reason I do it! Craft service always had the best doughnuts. Now they’re on a health-food jag, so it’s more about hummus and whole-grain crackers, but back in the day... You kind of get jaded after awhile, and you start to really hate the honey wagon, because it’s a sign of your stature. You want a two-banger, so you don’t have to smell the bathroom all day long. But still being early days, yeah, that was a big deal for me.

My dad (Don Murray) had done a movie with Eva Marie Saint, Hatful of Rain, and I grew up with (her husband) Jeffrey Hayden’s kids, ‘cause I grew up in Brentwood, so when I went to the audition and saw that it was Jeffrey directing… He couldn’t believe it, ‘cause mostly I played sort of normal nice guys, and on this one I was a bit rough and raw. He said, “How can you be such a nice guy and such a good bad guy?” After a string of auditions where I didn’t hear anything, he told my dad that he sat down at the meeting afterwards and said, “Gentlemen, how can there be any doubt?” And they all agreed. So that was a big moment. A blissful moment later eclipsed by other breakthrough moments, but a fond memory nonetheless.

Playing the bad guy is always more fun than playing the good guy, because it gives you more to do. I always play bad guys with an impish grin rather than twirling my moustache and going, “Ha ha HA!” I remember Kevin’s character could shrink, and in the stand-off at the end, I’m holding a gun on Dean Paul Martin and we’ve got the drop on ‘em…and suddenly this six-foot-something black guy appears in his underwear! Jeffrey Hayden was, like, “Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait! Stop right here! This is going out on national TV, you’re doing a scene that’s supposed to be the height of drama, and all of a sudden this six-foot-something, half-naked black guy appears…? What’s going on here?” I think that must’ve been a real challenge for them. Everybody else on the show, if they appeared or disappeared, their clothes went with them, but the giant shrinking man…I think he had them stymied for a bit! But what was great about it was that it was long before the days of CGI, before green screen had come as far as it has. So they had to do everything in three-dimensional live action, which is a lot more of a challenge and a lot more of a chance to exercise creativity rather than hiring 300 computer geeks to sit there for months in a darkened room, chained to their laptops. They could work with miniatures and other stuff. It must’ve been a lot more fun.

I worked a lot with Michael Halsey, and that’s actually who I hung out with most of the time. That was a lot of laughs, ‘cause I kind of looked up to him, since he was a veteran of episodic television. Plus, he had that face, with kind of a Scott Glenn vibe: very attractive, but with a crease for every trauma that he’d ever been through. Talented guy. He’s still at it, too. And so am I, at least in some ways. At the moment, I’m having much more fun with my daughter’s career, because she’s 14 years old and still unfettered by the negative side of the business. In fact, she just did a Comcast commercial with Dennis Farina, who I worked with on Buddy Faro. But, you know, I can’t complain about my career, because…well, y’know, I have such a difference perspective. Even when I’m a day player, I usually run into somebody who’s worked with one of my parents, and we end up chatting, and…it’s more like joining the people you admire as a colleague rather than coming in as a total stranger. And that’s nice.

Dean Paul Martin came from kind of the same background. In fact, my mother (Hope Lange) did a movie called The Young Lions with his dad (Dean Martin). He was just a really nice guy, a really affable guy. It’s just ironic that the day his plane crashed—he was in the Air National Guard—was the first day I had a speaking role in a movie, the remake of And God Created Woman. So in addition to getting the role where I worked with him, the day he died was also a seminal moment in my career. But I just remember that, for the star of a show, he was just so nice…but, then, everyone was really nice back then.

Nowadays you have to be so guarded, and they treat the material like a national secret. You rarely get the entire script. On a show like Mad Men, we weren’t even allowed to take the material home! Even after we did the table read, we had to leave the script there. I just think it sets up this aura of exclusivity that I don’t find particularly helpful, because, y’know, as a weekly guest star or even as a day player, you’re still part of the team for that amount of time. Granted, they’re gonna go on with other episodes after you leave, but it’s hard enough to step into a group of people who’ve already been working together constantly and try to fit in. With this kind of separation that they’ve incorporated into the process…well, it’s just not as much fun as it used to be. You feel like you’re always auditioning, even when you’re already got the job! But, hey, it’s still the second best job in the world after Derek Jeter’s…

Rhonda Aldrich (Gina in “Sort of Looking for Gina”): It was a very fun show to work on. Lots of shows, when you go on to do an episodic gig, the main actors say “hello” and “goodbye” to you, and that’s about it, but everybody was really incredibly nice on the show. Several years before that, I’d actually gone on a date with Dean Paul Martin, so it was hilarious to walk on the set and go, “Oh, uh…hi, Dean!” I’d known Kevin, or at least I’d met him before, and he and Mark were just so sweet and giving and wonderful. Courteney, it was one of her first jobs, but I remember that she was a sweet and lovely person as well. And Max Wright, of course, was just hilarious.

The episode was called “Sort of Looking for Gina,” and it was a takeoff on Desperately Seeking Susan, so I was kind of a Madonna character. There was a period of time when I had my hair all curled up and I wore the doo-rags and the whole thing, and I would go in when they wanted somebody to play a Madonna-like character. And that’s what my career sort of was during that point in time. We went down to San Pedro, and because my character was homeless, I crashed some kind of party and was eating all their food. It was so much fun to do.

Jeffrey Hayden was just the sweetest man. He took his time, and he was just so great to work with. We did these scenes where we were down in these sewers, because I was part of this clan of kids that lived in these sewers. Hopefully you’ve seen the episode! Anyway, there’s this place where they have to carry me, because I’ve passed out, and I will never forget it because…I was one of these actresses that just completely gave myself into it, so I was acting like I was really passed out and was just completely limp. And as we ran through the sewer, Jeffrey Hayden yelled, “Cut!” And he came over to me and said, “You almost got your head slammed into the wall! You must never let somebody just carry you and not be aware of what’s going on. You’ve always got to watch your back.” Some directors would be just, like, “Oh, well, we got the shot, fine, let’s move on.” But he was always very conscious of what was going on, and that’s one of the things I remember most.

After the episode had wrapped…you know, this never happens, but Jeffrey Hayden called me a couple of days later and said, “Oh, your footage is great,” and all this stuff. It was, like, “Oh, my God, why can’t I have more experiences like that?” It was such a fun character to play, and just such a wonderful, quirky show.. There was this song they’d gotten the rights to (Dire Straits’ “Walk of Life”) that they used throughout the episode, including a moment where I’m hanging out, I’m spotted, and then I take off running. I think it was a really expensive song to get at the time, but it was really cool, and it really set the tone for the episode. It was just perfect.

When I look back at it now, because I went out on a lot of those auditions, I actually had a lot of those clothes in my wardrobe at home, some of which were pretty scary. And that hair! But, of course, we all had hair like that in the ‘80s. Oh, now I’m scared. I might have to go on YouTube and watch the episode again. I did a movie very early on—it was called something else originally, but it ended up being called Jailbird Rock—and it was a girls-in-prison film shot in Buenos Aires, but I was never able to watch it. We have a copy of it. I met my husband on the film, he was one of the producers, but I refused to watch it.

And then all of a sudden it became this cult classic, and they were showing it at the Silent Movie Theater. I was at the opening of a play, and I bumped into a friend of mine who said, “I just saw you at the Silent Movie Theater last night!” I was, like, “Oh, my God. Okay, I have to watch this movie now…” And it was hilarious. For years, I was just, like, “I’m so embarrassed,” but thankfully, when I looked at it, I at least felt, “Okay, I set out to be tongue-in-cheek, and I managed to achieve that.” The internet has really come to haunt us. Sometimes it’s for the better, sometimes it’s for the worse, but everything we’ve ever done, no matter what it may have been, it’s all out there…including Misfits of Science!

Robin Riker (Sarah in “Grand Theft Bunny”): Years and years earlier, when I was about nine years old or something, Dino, Desi & Billy—Dean Martin, Jr., Desi Arnaz, Jr., and Billy Hinsche—had some hit songs, and I had a huge crush on them. And I remember writing the first and only fan letter that I’d ever written…and they wrote back! Or someone wrote back, anyway. I don’t know if it was them or not. It looked like a youthful hand had written it, so I think it probably was one of them…and I think it might’ve been Dean Paul Martin who wrote that. I think I got one from Billy, too. But, anyway, then we jump-cut to 1985: I’m a grown-up now, I’m auditioning for Misfits of Science, and Dean Paul is all grown up, too…and my crush continued! And, I must say, he returned it. I know he was married at the time, as was I, and nothing came of it other than a lunch, but it was very sweet, and I loved flirting with him. He was very nice, very fun, and always available to help out the other actors.

The episode was called “Grand Theft Bunny,” and we were the animal rights people. I just remember having a lot of fun doing the show because of what I got to play. She was kind of ditzy and sort of excitable, and I got to put a paper bag on my head and talk to the camera about why they shouldn’t be doing what they were doing. I had pretty much free reign from (director) Michael Switzer, who I went on to work for on a few other shows. I always liked working with him. He was generous and open and gave me a great deal of freedom to do what I wanted to do on Misfits of Science, and he has always been the same to me ever since. He trusts one’s instincts and gives you free reign, which I enjoy.

Another thing that came out of it was that the man who played one of my cohorts when we kidnapped the rabbits and tried to prevent them from being experimented on, or whatever it was they were doing that we didn’t like, his name is Robin Thomas, and we have become very good friends. We exchanged numbers, we sort of lived in the same neighborhood in the Hollywood hills, so we became friends. We don’t hang out on a regular basis, but we’re always delighted to see each other when we do.

At the time, I was married to my first husband, and we always had what was called the Wear Red and Bring Your Own Drinking Vessel Valentine’s Day Party. We were having that party right around the time we were doing that episode, so Courteney came, Kevin came, and Robin came. I don’t think Dean came, but most of the cast came, I believe. I think Dean may have been the only one who didn’t…and, y’know, it’s possible he did. It was a long time ago and many parties ago. But I definitely remember Kevin coming into our kitchen. You know how tall he was. Well, we were talking and laughing, and everybody’s having a good time, and Kevin put his drink down on the top of the refrigerator…literally. He was so tall that it was like his very own bar table!

A couple of years ago, just as Cougar Town was being cast, I went in to meet Bill Lawrence, the producer of the show, and, of course, Courteney. I don’t know if David (Arquette) was there with her, but Courteney was definitely in the room. Now, remember that, since doing Misfits of Science, I’d subsequently been a leading lady or a regular in four or five other television series, and I’ve acquired a lot of other credits in between those, but I like to keep my credits in the most current decade. So I do the audition, and I’m chatting with Bill Lawrence. I liked him, and he liked me, too. In fact, when I did the audition, he said, “My God, you’re the only person who’s ever read that line the way I intended it to be spoken!”

But, anyway, afterward, one of them asked me a question or something, and I turned to Courteney and said, “You know, Courteney, you’ve actually been to my home.” She said, “Really?” I said, “Yeah, I did an episode of Misfits of Science and had a Valentine’s Day party, and you and Kevin and several of the other people came to the party.” And she looked at me and said, “You did Misfits of Science?” I said, “Yeah!” She said, “Why isn’t it on your resume?” I said, “Is it on yours?” She was, uh, not amused, I have to say. Not at all amused. She was not exactly warm and fuzzy to me. But, you know, some people are happy to meet somebody who knew them before they were famous, and then other people don’t want to ever be reminded that they have not always been famous. So I think maybe that was part of what happened. But I’m not sure. Either way, I didn’t get the part on Cougar Town.

John Schuck (Galenkov in “Grand Elusion”): I only remember two things from that week. The first was how very nice Dean Paul Martin was, extremely professional and very easy to talk to. His death was a big shock to the entire community. The second memory is that the character I played was Russian or Middle European, so my entire character was wrapped up in having a convincing accent. Well, maybe I would’ve gotten away with it if they hadn’t cast real Middle Europeans as my henchmen, but at least one of them was. As a result, my dialect was Middle something, but I’m sure I didn’t fool the majority of the viewers!

Andrew Masset (Cassatti in “Once Upon a Night”): Wow, this goes back… Let’s see, I remember Kevin Peter Hall, who was a very gentle and kind young man. I remember shooting in Long Beach one cold day, and I had a stunt double jump out of a helicopter high overhead into the freezing cold water in the inlet. At that moment, I was glad I was an actor and not a stuntman. I remember Courteney Cox—who was beautiful—asking the director in a scene when I drugged her if she would still be breathing if she was “under.” The director looked at me as if I was the one who had to answer that particular question, so I simply stated, “Sweetheart, you’re drugged, not dead.” Her response was, “Oh, okay!” I fell in love with her instantly. And I remember Dean Paul Martin seemed uncomfortable doing the show. Over lunch one day, he said his first love was flying. His was a sad end, I admit, but he was doing what he loved. All in all, it was a fun show and cast. It was gone quite quickly, though. But that’s Hollywood!

Joseph Brutsman (Agent Jeff in “Once Upon a Night”): I had been out of Juilliard for about a year and was working a great deal at the time. I always liked the Universal lot, and having worked for Norman Lear's company a couple summers earlier, I knew the lot well. I think I was cast because the "young awkward cop with the older gruff cop" thing was in, thanks to Beverly Hills Cop. I did a couple of Judge-Reinhold-type cops that year. Also that year, I started to sell screenplays with my writing partner and Juilliard classmate Tony Peck. Tony's father was Gregory Peck, and Tony said he had crossed paths through life with Dean Paul Martin, so I recall saying "Hi" to Dean Paul from Tony on the Misfits set. It was quite sad a couple years later when Dean Paul's plane crashed.

They were all very nice on the set, still thrilled to be on a new show. Of course, I recall Kevin being incredibly tall and Courteney being stunning; she was still "That Girl from the Springsteen Video," and while I don't recall having much or any scene-work with her, I do recall her coming on to the set and lighting it up with a smile. I also remember being thrilled to meet Max Wright. I loved him on Buffalo Bill, a great show. Years later, I was lucky enough to play Dabney Coleman's son on the sole season of The 'Slap' Maxwell Story.

Unfortunately, I never saw the episode, so I don't recall exactly what the action was, but on the set, you just nervously want to get it right, especially as a guest actor. I do recall being disappointed when the show was cancelled, though. They were a nice bunch. Also, back then a working actor got through the year by way of how many times a network would rerun an episode. Second and even third network rerun residuals meant something back in the day of three networks. Leaving the Misfits set on the final night of my work, though, I recall Robert Alan Browne, the gentleman who played my fellow cop, giving me real simple advice. As a young, dumb and then lucky actor, I had yet to ever file for unemployment. I didn't even know it was possible! He straightened me out on that. Very nice man. He showed me how all working actors usually file for it between jobs. I grew to understand all of that in the years to come.

Doug Hale: Misfits of Science is a series that’s so lost in the annals and mists of history that I didn’t realize that anybody was ever aware of it anymore! But it was one of those odd and peculiar little shows that obviously predated a lot of the superhero stuff in film and television. I did lots and lots and lots of television shows, most of which I’ve forgotten because they were instantly forgettable, but they paid well. I didn’t bump into the furniture, I tried to memorize my lines, and did my best to get out of there with my check intact. I was extremely fortunate to have entered the business when I did as a freelancer and to have mostly eased out of it now that I’m in my later years. But that particular show…

That was one of those shows where you had a group of recurring people, not all of whom were in every episode, and certainly not in every scene, and in shows like that, you go in, you do a week’s worth of work as a guest star or two or three days as a co-star, and, y’know, you go in, you do what you’re hired to do, and you take your money and run. You don’t expect to make friends with anybody beyond just affable exchanges with one another—a “hello,” a “how are you—and, depending on who you’re working with, hopefully you’ll get a little rehearsal time. Then you shoot it and you’re gone. But that particular show, because it had such a large cast, ended up being a pleasant experience for the week that I was there. It also helped, because we had rehearsal time.

Most of my scenes were done with Max Wright. He was a New York actor, so we had that New York background in common. He’d apparently had some luck on Broadway, doing character roles of one sort of another, so I spent some delightful time with him. We had a long scene together, an interview scene, that ultimately was pared down for television because of time, but it was a nice little duet or verbal duel, as it were. So I enjoyed rehearsing with him and sitting around and chatting with him about this, that, and the other, but especially about New York. And then there was Mark Thomas Miller, the kid with the big ducktail who looked kind of like a refugee from the ‘50s. I also remember marveling at how tiny Courteney Cox. I mean, she was no bigger than a minute! Kevin Peter Hall was not in the episode for the most part, or at least he wasn’t particularly in my scenes, so I just met him briefly when he passed through on his way somewhere else.

Really, the only person that I had even remotely heard of on that show was Dean Paul Martin, who got his looks from his mama (Jeanne Biegger) and had that star-spangled pretty-boy face. I remember telling Dean Paul that his mother was a stunningly beautiful woman, to which he said, in effect, “So what else is new?” But she was quite a looker! Dean Paul was a down-to-earth young guy. As I say, he didn’t even vaguely resemble his dad, but he was in the Air Force Reserves, and so had I been as a cargo pilot, and with that in common, we used to chat about that. But, of course, alas and alack, it wasn’t too terribly long after they wrapped for the year and we all went to a wrap party at some bowling alley someplace over there by NBC that he was dead, having flown into the side of Mount San Gorgonio with his gunner in their…I believe they were flying an F-4. But he was a perfectly pleasant lad to be around.

After Dean Paul was killed…unlike Sinatra, who got his son back after they kidnapped him, Dean Martin didn’t get Dean Paul back. And they say he never got over it, never recovered, and that his health, along with various and sundry abuses that he heaped on it during his halcyon days, started going downhill in a hurry. It just got to the point where he didn’t want to leave the house. He became something of a hermit, his eyes got bad, and he really got worse and worse and worse. Sinatra tried to drag him back out on the road again with him and Sammy Davis, Jr., and that lasted about 20 minutes before Dean said, “Fuck it, I’m through.” And he went back home, he shut the door, and that was it. So they had to go get Liza Minnelli to finish that particular tour, I believe.

I asked Dean Paul about a story that I’d heard about his father that could’ve been apocryphal, who was one of those fellas that…he had a special table at La Scala on Canon Drive (in Beverly Hills) that he used to go to alone. He would go in on particular nights, sit there at the table by himself, have his food—the same dish, invariably—and a double scotch, and then he’d go home. But he always checked his car at the curb, and one occasion, he was apparently there with the family and… I said to Dean Paul, “I heard your dad got tired of you all to finish eating, so he went out to get his car, but they took too damned long to get it, so he strolled across the street, where there was an automobile dealership that happened to be open, and he actually bought another car. It all sounds so preposterous, but…” He said, “No, that’s true! He bought another car, and he said, ‘I want it right now,’ so they put some gas in it, and he drove it home!’”

And then he told me another story, one that I have since seen in print elsewhere, but…he said, “My father’s an early-to-bed, early-to-rise guy, and mostly he spends his life on the golf course. He’s an absentee father. He loves us and he dotes on us, but he’s gone on the golf course a lot. That’s where he truly relishes being. Not in front of the microphone, not in Vegas, not drinking booze and chasing chorus girls. He loves his golfing. But my mother would oftentimes around New Year’s and Christmas have these big parties for all of their friends, and she’d invite everyone from Johnny Carson to Sinatra to whomever up to their house.” But Dean was not a partygoer, and he was not one who relished the notion of a whole bunch of people making a lot of noise and getting a little bit loud and slightly drunk and tipsy ‘til all hours of the morning. So on one occasion, it looked like they weren’t going to go home as early as he would’ve liked them to, so he dismissed himself and went upstairs and called the police and reported the Martin household as being too loud and too raucous and disturbing the peace, and would the police please come over and calm that shit down? And, by God, the cops came to the Martin household and knocked on the door and said there had been complaints from the neighbors. It was quite some time before Jeanne ever found out that Dean had done that, but he got it quiet in a hurry so he could go to sleep! I just thought that was a funny, funny story.

So as you can tell, I had a delightful shoot. And they paid me a lot of money! Plus, we had good food. And it wasn’t one of those deals where it was, like, “Circle the wagon, and let’s not circulate with the hired help.” I will say that I do remember that Courteney Cox was somewhat shy and standoffish, but I can understand that. If you weren’t careful, you might step on Courteney, she was so tiny. It would’ve been stepping on some beautiful butterfly. She was so young-looking, too. She probably looked younger than she actually was. But I just couldn’t get over how tiny she was. I’d never been around an actress who was quite that tiny…