THEY TOLD JAMIE FARR TO KEEP HIS EYES OPEN… BUT HE COULDN’T.
Rosalind Chao remembers the heat more than anything else. It was a specific kind of California heat that felt like it belonged in another hemisphere, a thick, dusty…
THE DAY MAXWELL KLINGER LOST A WAR WITH THE MALIBU MUD
I was sitting on a stage in North Carolina a few years back for one of those nostalgia conventions. The room was packed with people wearing olive drab…
THE SCREEN’S MOST PIOUS PRIEST… BUT HIS HARDEST PRAYER WAS PRIVATE
The dusty hills of Malibu Creek State Park often felt a world away from the reality of 1970s Los Angeles. On the set of the most popular show…
THE SOUND WAS JUST A CUE… UNTIL IT STOPPED THE WORLD.
The sun over the Santa Monica Mountains has a way of bleaching the color out of everything it touches. It is the kind of heat that doesn’t just…
THE MAN WHO SPENT ELEVEN YEARS TRYING TO LEAVE… CHOSE TO STAY.
Jamie and Loretta were sitting in the back of a dimly lit room, tucked away from the flashbulbs and the repetitive questions of the reporters. It had been…
THE DAY THE GIANT BIRD SUIT DECLARED WAR ON THE SURGERY TENT
I remember sitting on that stage at the collectors’ convention a few years back, looking out at a sea of faces that still, after all these decades, looked…
THE DAY HARRY MORGAN COMPLETELY BROKE THE OPERATING ROOM TENSION
I was sitting in the studio for an episode of my podcast, Clear+Vivid, and my guest brought up the idea of professional composure. They asked me if I…
THE ARROGANT ARISTOCRAT… BUT HIS TRUTH WAS HIDDEN IN THE SILENCE
The fog off the coast of Newport, Oregon, has a way of swallowing everything whole. It rolls in from the Pacific, thick and grey, turning the jagged cliffs…
THE ARROGANT ARISTOCRAT… BUT HIS REAL LIFE WAS A QUIET REBELLION
When the black sedan pulled up to the set of the most popular show in America in 1977, the man who stepped out didn’t look like a revolutionary….
THE JEEP WAS RUSTING IN THE SUN… UNTIL MIKE STEPPED INSIDE.
The California sun was hitting the metal just right, casting a long, jagged shadow across the gravel. It was a shade of olive drab that shouldn’t have meant…