This Is Your Captain Speaking: My Fantastic Voyage Through Hollywood, Faith & Life by MacLeod Gavin

Author:MacLeod, Gavin [MacLeod, Gavin]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: ebook
Publisher: Thomas Nelson
Published: 2013-10-22T07:00:00+00:00

14

THE FAME GAME

ALL THE ACTORS ON THE MARY TYLER MOORE Show had millions upon millions of adoring fans throughout the 1970s. It’s not like TV today, where just a fraction of a percentage point of Americans watches any given episode at any given time. In those days, you had millions upon millions of viewers, all watching at the same time. There were no DVRs. Heck, the VCR wasn’t even around yet! There was no competition from the Internet or anywhere else. So you watched your shows when they were on, and then the next day everyone talked about them.

I gotta tell you, being in America’s living rooms week after week was a gift from God to me! People felt they knew me. Really knew me.

Murray represented all the brown-baggers—not just in newsrooms, but in all sorts of professions. He was the kind of guy who never got a raise and had to get an extra job to buy something for his kids, or to buy something nice for his wife. In some ways, that made him one of the most approachable, relatable characters on TV. Being that relatable brings a very different kind of fame than people like Steve McQueen experienced.

Speaking of whom, the last time I saw Steve McQueen in person I was on my way to work at The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and I was getting well known. A car pulled up alongside me on Vincente Boulevard. It was Steve and his bride, Ali MacGraw, who now lives in Santa Fe. She did Love Story with Ryan O’Neal; she’s wonderful. He waved and smiled, and gave me a thumbs-up. He was clearly aware of what I was up to and all the fame that was coming my way.

Then he got cancer. He went to Mexico and all over trying to find a cure. I remember he filmed this Swedish play. He had a beard on, and he was big, and you would never know it was Steve McQueen. I didn’t see it at that time, because I just couldn’t. It was too heartbreaking for me. But years later I watched it. Even in that state he had that vulnerability—that power in the close-up of the camera lens.

Thinking back to the Steve McQueen I knew, the thing I really remember is that he never knew his mother. His aunt had raised him. He had heard that his mother was in California, so he came out here to find her, and she died the day before he got here. So he had a chip on his shoulder. The story goes that he was in a Boys Town over in Chatsworth. And I tell you, whatever he learned in the Actors Studio about “making moments” as an actor, he used—and he made them on film. In film you can take all the time you want in the world, which you can’t do in theater. He used that to his advantage. But the vulnerability he had, you’re born with that. And that’s really something.

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