Prairie Man: My Little House Life & Beyond by Dean Butler

Author:Dean Butler [Butler, Dean]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Biography & Autobiography, Entertainment & Performing Arts, Performing Arts, Television, Genres, Drama, Acting & Auditioning
ISBN: 9780806543291
Google: fkLaEAAAQBAJ
Amazon: 0806543299
Publisher: Citadel
Published: 2024-06-24T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 11

From Manly to Moondoggie

THAT ON-CAMERA KISS WITH MELISSA GILBERT WAS A DEFINING moment of my time on Little House, and indeed of my career. By a strange coincidence, another kiss landed me my first post-Little House gig. This next smooch, however, couldn’t have been more different from the one Almanzo planted on Laura.

My first venture into prime-time comedy—and my first real work after Little House—came with a 1984 guest slot on Who’s the Boss?. The Tony Danza/Judith Light show would be a hit on ABC, running for eight seasons. I was cast for an episode called “Mona Gets Pinned,” the fourth installment in the show’s first season. My character would be Jason, the college-aged love interest for Katherine Helmond, who played Mona. Helmond was fifty-five, and the setup was that she’d have a brief fling with a guy young enough to be her son.

Melissa never met me before I was cast to play her future husband. The producers of Who’s the Boss? took a very different approach. At the final callback, each of the aspiring Jasons was asked to meet Katherine—and sweep her into his arms with a passionate, juicy kiss. The producers said it was about finding someone with whom Katherine, an older married woman, could be comfortable. As had happened so often before, my upbringing and respect for women proved an important asset. The kiss I planted on Katherine Helmond got me the job, and I spent a week filming that fun episode.

Traditional multicamera sitcoms are very different from single camera shows like Little House. Working on a sitcom is like doing a little play each week. Day 1 starts with a table reading, and then you go straight into blocking and run-throughs. The script is continually rewritten as the writers and producers sharpen the humor based on what is and isn’t working. By the fourth day you’re working on the actual set with cameras, and on the last day there are final run-throughs, last tweaks of dialogue, and then two recorded performances in front of a live audience.

Katherine was wonderful, and very respectful of my inexperience in sitcoms. The cast and crew were a great group in rehearsal and on the stage. And yes, Katherine Helmond and I did have a few “after work meetings” to work on our scene together. Though the age gap was significant (Katherine was five years older than my mother), I was completely at ease. As Melissa Gilbert could attest, the discomfort of age-gap kissing scenes has less to do with the age of the older person than the age (and experience) of the younger!

My next job was a movie of the week called Gidget’s Summer Reunion, the latest revival of a franchise that had begun with the 1959 Sandra Dee movie and evolved into the famous Sally Field TV series.

Gidget had begun as a series of books written by a Jewish war refugee, Frederick Kohner. Kohner based Gidget (a blending of “girl” and “midget”) on his own daughter Kathy; the other characters and storylines were inspired by Kathy’s friends.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.