In Memoriam

Of the many ways we could categorize the actors and actresses who were on Family Ties and are no longer living, here are a few: the grandparents; the guest stars who carried an episode; the scene stealers; the ones who were more voice than body; those who died too young and those who were older. Of course there is some overlap, and of course more than 30 years after the show began, there are more departed than I have room to mention here. Here are a few profiles and highlights:

The Grandparents

                     

(Clockwise from top left: John Randolph, Anne Seymour, Dick Sargent, and Priscilla Morrill). Only Morrill, who played Elyse's mother, appeared in more than one episode, but the others turned in memorable performances, particularly Randolph as Steven's conservative father. He delivers both great smiles like the one above and a stinging rebuke of Steven's '60s ways. Seymour's long career stretched back to 1944 and included appearances on The Motorola Television Hour, The United States Steel Hour, and The Alcoa Hour - affiliations the character Alex would have no doubt admired. Sargent came out late in life, in 1991, just three years before his death from prostrate cancer.

The Guest Star

(Clockwise from top left: Jack Somack, River Phoenix, Brownie McGhee, and Mason Adams). If you're of a certain age, Phoenix is the one who stops you in your tracks; he shows up in that argyle sweater to tutor Alex in Advanced Non-Euclidean Geometry in season four. He's a 13 year-old math whiz, a graduate student already, and he falls for Jennifer only to discover that she, like, actually likes 13 year-old things and not attending tenure parties. Neither Phoenix nor Somack are given much to do in their roles - Somack plays a sweet small business owner and Alex's boss in season one - but they are fun to watch. In contrast, the show revolves around Adams and McGhee when they guest star in seasons five and six, respectively. McGhee was a blues musician with a long career who had started acting in the late '70s, and he plays a musician-turned-bus driver who Alex convinces to come out of retirement for a performance. Adams is one of Alex's economics professors; you may know him from Lou Grant. I'll write more about his performance when I post about recommended episodes, but for now I'll just say that the portrait he paints of higher ed in 1986 feels alternately eerily prescient and like a beautiful object lifted from a time capsule.

The Scene Stealers
(Left: Mary Jackson; below, Ron Karabatsos and Anne Ramsey). Jackson sells the Keatons a gun in season one after their home is robbed; (they decide to get rid of it by the end of the episode, which is titled charmingly, "Have Gun, Will Unravel"). Ramsey you might recognize from Goonies; she's yet another nanny/housekeeper candidate. She thought the advertised salary was a "misprint" and lambasts germs during her interview. Karabatsos is the plumber who lends his truck to Steven during the two-part "Birth of a Keaton" episode where Elyse goes into labor at PBS during a pledge drive - and a blizzard. He's a genial, bearish presence during all the stress.

More Voice than Body
We never see Bill in the season three episode where Alex and his friend James (played by Jeffrey Joseph, still very much alive!) work at a student help hotline, but we hear him loud and clear: he's looking for a reason to live. Alex and James are new to the hotline and scramble trying to help the suicidal Bill. There are a lot of moments like the one pictured, where they look at speakers, and it's a testament to the script and Sam Whipple's voice that we feel as captivated as Alex and James. Whipple actually shows up in the next episode, but his role is far more minor in the flesh than it is as the confused, vulnerable, but ultimately hopeful Bill. Whipple himself died of cancer at 41.




There are better images of Meg Wyllie in the season five episode where Alex meets with a psychiatrist to talk about the death of his friend, Greg. But we quickly learn that her power is in her voice. The lights come up behind that window and we simultaneously hear Wyllie's chirping, prodding voice saying, "I'll bet Alex knows the answer." We're in his memory of being seven years old with his teacher's voice repeating "Alex knows, Alex knows" separating him from his classmates socially, putting pressure on him to succeed. Wyllie's back is turned to us most of the time; she does so much with just her voice. Her scenes in this episode reminded me of The Geranium on the Windowsill Just Died But Teacher You Went Right On, published in 1971, around the time Alex would have been seven. (If I'm remembering correctly, Albert Cullum dedicates his book to "all those who died in the arms of compulsory education."Alex, of course, survived).

The Young  

(From top to bottom, left to right: Bridgette Andersen, Diana Bellamy, Bibi Besch, and Stephen Lee). The line between "young" and not, when it comes to death, can get subjective after a certain age, so to throw my subjective two cents in, I feel like anyone younger than 70 can count as "young." Andersen, who played kid-Mallory in a season one flashback, reportedly died of a drug overdose at age 21. (She's possibly best known for Savannah Smiles, a movie I loved as a kid). Besch (who plays Jennifer's steely high school principal in season six) was 56; Bellamy was 57 (she plays a warm, encouraging therapist who leads a group that Alex and his girlfriend Lauren attend). Both women died of cancer. Stephen Lee was Jennifer's aggrieved manager at Chicken Heaven, a fast food restaurant; Jennifer's friend and co-worker wreaks havoc, including spraying water all over the prep area and Lee, the boss. Lee died just a few weeks ago of a heart attack; he was 59.

The Older Ones



Doris Belack (left) had acting credits that included the film Tootsie and TV that ranged from The Patty Duke Show to Law & Order (she had a recurring role as a judge). On Family Ties she was Mallory's boss at a clothing store. Julie Harris (right) also had credits that went back to the 1940s; she played Mallory's older college classmate who Mallory discriminates against because of her age. (We'd call Harris's character "non-traditional" now, though demographically she's becoming far more traditional). 

John Ingle (below left) is the justice of the peace who nearly marries Mallory and Nick in season five. Alex rushes in to break up the wedding but interrupts another young couple by accident; they decide to listen to him anyway. Ingle delivers his best lines with gusto: "This is a first for me: two marriages wiped out with one objection. A nuptial double play." He shakes Alex's hand and says, "Congratulations." His screen career began relatively late, in the early '80s, but he worked prolifically until his death in 2012. 

Peter Schrum plays the real deal Santa Claus in season six; (Alex has a job playing Santa at the mall). Like Ingle, he began acting later in life and continued almost until his death in 2003.

 


Richard Kuss (left) plays a man whose wife has had a heart attack, and he's one of the people who befriends the Keatons when Steven suffers a heart attack himself and undergoes surgery in season seven. He had been acting since the 1950s.

Finally, season seven's "Get Me to the Living Room on Time," features Andy befriending a couple at a retirement home during a class visit. The couple (played by Douglas Seale and Marie Denn, below right) decide to marry in the Keatons' living room. In addition to screen work, Seale acted on the stage and did voice work; one of his last roles was to voice the Sultan in the movie Aladdin. Denn had appeared on The Brady Brunch, The Rockford Files, and other TV shows and movies. The wedding episode is full of great old actors, including Joshua Shelley (below left) as a jokey resident at the retirement home. After a career that began in the late 1940s, this was one of his last roles; he died the next year, in 1990.

Tom and Judith and Geena and Daphne

Despite my previous posts' focus on serious political and social issues, Family Ties was very funny at times and, more to the point, concerned with never straying too far from comedy, from the attempt to be funny. What's fascinating to me is that, given just 20-odd minutes to tell a story, comedies like this persisted in trying to tackle difficult topics at all.

Take the story of Uncle Ned, played by probably the most famous guest actor on the series. We meet him in season one; it turns out he's on the run after embezzling 4.5 million dollars from the corporation where he was vice president. When he comes back to visit in season two, he has a drinking problem brought on by how his life has unraveled. He downs a bottle of vanilla extract and ends up hitting Alex. Not funny stuff.

Here's Uncle Ned calling AA. More on the character of the landline phone in a later post.

Yet even in these social issues with a capital-S episodes, there are lots of jokes, most of which land with at least some of the studio audience. But when Ned finally calls AA for help, and opens with, "Would you be interested in subscribing to the Columbus Express?" the studio audience doesn't laugh, and it's not supposed to. In that moment, the show performs the neat trick of holding a mirror up to some of its own comedic impulses.

Tom Hanks's character also has a purple problem, or rather, the whole episode does.
But then again, this aired in January 1984, just a few months before Purple Rain. 
Maybe purple was the zeitgeist. 

Other guest stars are enlisted for similarly serious parts, as when Judith Light plays the new production assistant who propositions Steven in season two.

Who's the boss? This happily married father of three.
Also, who knew PBS could be the site of such intrigue?  

Even Geena Davis's story arc as the beautiful-yet-inept housekeeper ends on a serious note when she quits the gig to focus on the personal problems she'd been running away from.

"Do you have any references?" Alex asks during the interview.
"No," she answers brightly. Hired!

The guest star whose role surprised me the most though was Daphne Zuniga, playing a classmate of Alex's. She's the smart girl who has had a crush on him from afar, and he asks her to the senior prom when the girl he really wants to take says no. But then that girl changes her mind, Alex has two dates to the prom who don't know about each other, etc., etc.

Glasses were just really big in 1984, OK?
I love you Daphne, but I'm really waiting for Tracy Pollan to show up.

What surprised me is that Alex chooses Rachel, Daphne's character, just because she's the kinder, smarter, and funnier of the two. I've been so conditioned to expect certain kinds of romantic narratives that I kept waiting for her to take off those glasses so he could recognize her beauty. Not only does Rachel keep her glasses on, never once taking them off, but also in a later episode she becomes valedictorian instead of Alex, and, after he overcomes a sexist and jealous reaction, their relationship survives. That's what we're to believe anyway, but we never see her again. Ah, the unpredictable life of a guest star.  

Swimming Away from "LeAnne"

I've been thinking a lot about course evaluations lately, probably because I'm teaching at a university and it's my first job out of grad school and my contract has not been officially renewed. And because my numbers from last quarter are not what I would have liked and there's at least one review of my teaching on Rate My Professor that is negative. (So, you know, no reason!)

I say "at least one" because I haven't been able to bring myself to go back there after seeing that one, the first. I used to Google my name occasionally because I thought that being aware of search results was part of being a responsible adult in the world. And I did find it interesting to see what made it to the front page - my participation in the Seattle Edible Book festival or my tutoring bio or a short story I wrote when I was 14, somehow surfacing from the Internet deep 20 years later.

I guess I was a digital innocent though, because all that stuff was positive or neutral (well, maybe not everything in that story. Who is only admiring of their 14 year-old self other than some 14 year-olds?) Now I'm finding that I don't want to know about this self out of there that's supposedly me. Maybe it sounds funny or hypocritical to write that here, on a blog - if I don't want to participate in the Internet, what am I doing here?

I used to want to be famous, or at least have famous friends. When I was 11, I wanted to be orphaned so I could live with the cast of Cheers. (There's so many things wrong with that sentence, aren't there?) But if I can't handle ordinary disgruntled students, how could I handle 1/10th of the negative attention someone like Anna Gunn gets? (Woman, you are amazing).

Anyway, I've also been re-reading Art and Fear. Here's a passage I like:

                     The audience is seldom in a position to grant (or withhold)  
                     approval on the one issue that really counts - namely, whether
                     or not you're making progress in your work. They're in a good
                     position to comment on how they're moved (or challenged or
                     entertained) by the finished product, but have little knowledge
                     or interest in your process.

Students aren't an audience, but they (rightfully) don't care about the teacher's process of learning to become a teacher. They can talk authoritatively about the finished product of our classroom, but they don't know if I'm making progress. In teaching, unlike in art, progress isn't the one thing that really counts; it's pretty low on the list, below, you know, student learning. And I want to learn from my students in all the genres available to me, including their direct, written assessments. But they aren't taught how to write course evaluations, so the Internet (Rate My Professor, etc.) is their main teacher. And the Internet has a tendency to teach its students to be mean. Just ask Anna Gunn.

What am I doing here? I'm processing stuff, on my own terms. I'm having a conversation with you dear, few readers (hello there!) I'm not trying to create a brand or become famous. I'm not checking to see who Google thinks I am today. I have colleagues whom I like and respect who can read what their students think of them and more or less happily swim up and away; maybe someday I'll be like them. But for now I fear that if I swim into the deep of who the Internet thinks I am, I'll only get lost. Is there a name for this purposeful turning away other than "thin-skinned"?

Harry Potter and the Audacious Author

Over (non-butter)beers the other night, a friend and I discussed the recent ending of the "Harry Potter" franchise and sundry related topics, including J.K. Rowling's 2007 outing of her Dumbledore character as gay. I remember that at the time I was outraged that an author would impose a vision of a character retroactively; if it wasn't explicit in the book, I railed to my roommates (designated innocent bystanders to my rants, 2002-2007), it by definition couldn't be declared true. A gay Dumbledore was a legitimate interpretation, based on the text, but nothing more.

Reading Edward Rothstein's appraisal of the situation made me feel instantly calmer; I wasn't alone (and he thought of perspectives I hadn't considered). For example:

The pure-bloods here are blinded by their pride, but Harry and his friends see something more profound, a threat that goes beyond self-interest and identity. This is why Dumbledore’s supposed gayness is ultimately as unimportant as Ron’s shabby clothes. These wounded outsiders recognize the nature of evil, and finally that is what matters.

Whatever you think of Rowling's statement, it does feel like a particularly noticeable piece of a larger picture. Now not only do authors add to their works by producing new books, but between those there are infinite opportunities (and, some would argue, necessities) for self-promotion and production: multi-media interviews, articles, columns, blog posts, and more. And sure it helps to be a Rowling if you want people to pay attention, but anyone can seek (and find) an audience, however small. And if your job (as mine is about to be) is to analyze a work, how much of this extra information do you incorporate - or leave aside? If your assignment is a book published in 2009 and you find a blog entry by that author from last week - is that relevant?

One of the nice things about a series ending is that you can look back on it, whole, and see patterns and themes and know it's complete. You can talk about it as an entity in a way you can't while it's still in progress. Even with a single work, editors can insert new or restore old material into it in later versions and those can both inform and exist separately from the earlier editions. (You see this in everything from E.T.'s 20th anniversary edition replacing police officer's guns with walkie-talkies to the 1995 edition of The Diary of a Young Girl restoring entries dealing with sexuality that Otto Frank had omitted from the original). But when an author says after publication, "My character is X," well, what should we call that? Pulling a Rowling?

The Great Nanny Crop-Out

Babysitting the other night, after the tyke fell asleep I leafed through two celebrity-focused magazines belonging to the mom. Each had a photo that struck me as surprisingly creepy: in one, Heidi Klum, her kids, and another woman are walking down a street. But the woman, who trails the others, has her head neatly covered...by a box of text. In the second, Sarah Jessica Parker is described as walking with her twins. But she holds the hand of only one; the other is holding hands with a woman who walks behind the actress, and while most of the woman's face is obscured by Parker's head, she looks into the camera with her left eye.

The editors' choice to crop out nannies from celebrity photographs - and for many celebrity moms to present their lives as child care-free - has been written about well in other places. What interests me is the pervasive psychology of breezily commenting on the famous person's every move while not acknowledging the visible presence of the woman in the background.

A head eclipsed by words, a lone, staring eye: these would be strange (or comical) editing choices in any publication. But in a celebrity magazine, where all that matters is the famous person, the nanny (or other accidentally photographed staff) is viewed as so inconsequential that hastily or mostly cropping her out is considered good enough. Who's looking at her anyway?

The Casting Couch in My Mind

I am unable to read a short story or novel without imagining the characters as real people. In a newspaper article, I can read about Dr. X from institution Y without pausing, but in a book I would have to decide she was Alfre Woodard before I could continue.

Many times a character is introduced before he or she is fully described; then I have to cast as best as I can, sometimes stopping later on to re-envision. But sometimes I just ignore elements of the author's description if I feel that my choice captures the essence of the character. For instance, in my favorite book from 2010, A Visit from the Goon Squad, I cast Gillian Jacobs (best known as Britta on Community) as one of the central characters, Sasha, even though the character has red hair and the actress doesn't. Can I just dye the actress's hair in my mind? Um, no - not unless I've seen her in a role with red hair.

This process might sound cumbersome - or crazy! - but usually takes less than a minute and isn't confined to famous people; if a friend, co-worker or family member fits the part best, that person gets the role. When I worked at an after school program, those kids populated any stories with children. And now that I don't know as many kids, well, let's just say that the girls from "Nurse Jackie" have had lots of work.

I've found articles and blog posts fiercely debating the casting choices for a beloved book-turned-movie. (See "The Hunger Games" for a recent example). But I'm not finding picks for books with no immediate film plans, which makes me wonder: is this visualization practice common, but we only hear, "I always saw Robert Downey Jr. in the role," when Hollywood gets involved? Or is it relatively rare?

There are teacher guides and scholarly articles commending visualization as a reading comprehension tool. But those count "visualization" as imagining anything in the text, from setting to vocabulary. The need for actual people to populate stories isn't involuntary, so it's not synesthesia. But what is it?

Six Degrees of I Know Someone Famous

I took a creative writing class in college with this guy. I had an adolescent correspondence with a becoming-famous author. And, creme de la creme, something I said (or my boisterous laugh) made this person swivel on his stool and smile at me in a Dean and Deluca.

And that's just me: a friend took a cooking class with a Hughesian actress; my parents inherited a garden plot from the wife of this Munster; and my mother's ex-husband's wife once went on a date with this new retiree.

None of those stories even involved getting on the Internet! Don't get me wrong - it's thrilling when an author or an actor answers my emails. But do we still rank highest the sightings, shared courses and chance interactions with famous people?

The School of Ted Kennedy Humor

In the film "When Harry Met Sally," one of my favorite jokes occurs when Billy Crystal's character tells Bruno Kirby's character (we miss you, Bruno Kirby) about the new woman he is dating. He illustrates her relative youth by saying, "When I asked her where she was when Kennedy was shot she said, 'Ted Kennedy was shot?'"

But ever since Ted Kennedy's death on August 25th of this year, I have been thinking about that joke differently. True, Senator Kennedy did not die because of gun violence. But the joke also worked because he was alive - and more than just alive, a stalwart, dependable in his endurance.

I think there should be a name for when events cause the fundamental humor behind a joke to transform overnight.