#343 Happy Days at The Office and Matlock with Linda Purl

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Jeff Dwoskin 0:28

all right. Pam, thank you so much for that amazing introduction to get the show going each and every week, and this week was no exception. Welcome everybody to episode 343 of classic conversations. As always, I am your host, Jeff Dwoskin, excited to have you back for what's sure to be a nostalgic filled episode with my guest, Linda Purl Fonz, girlfriend Pam Beasley's mom on the office matlock's daughter, oh my God, and she sings voice of an angel. We've got so much to talk about, and that's coming up in just a few seconds. And in these few seconds, Mickey and Michelle Stevenson were here last week. We talked all about Motown and their latest collaboration. Do not miss that amazing episode. But right now, Linda Purl takes us through a journey through her career, acting, singing. This episode has it all enjoy. All right, everyone. I'm excited to introduce my next guest actress and singer. Loved her and happy days. Matlock, last day of Pompeii. Oh yes, I was just in Italy, so that one popped up the office and so much more. She also is the voice of an angel. We're gonna dive into that as well. Welcome to the show. Linda Purl,

Linda Purl 1:47

hi there. Thanks for having me.

Jeff Dwoskin 1:49

Great to have you. Oh, you have a hook poster behind you.

Linda Purl 1:52

I do. You know I'm staying with my dear friends, Jim Hart, who wrote and Judy his wife, Judy Hart, who wrote hooks. So, yeah, oh, that's fine. Son's bedroom in New York. And there's that wonderful poster of that wonderful film, cool

Jeff Dwoskin 2:08

behind me. I have Henry Winkler's the fonts just to make you feel comfortable. Okay, yes, Linda, you just your resume is just so long. That's because

Linda Purl 2:18

I'm too old. It's just staggering. It's like, what, I had a, not a huge birthday, but I'm facing a huge birthday pretty soon, and I'm like, just in denial. It's like, when did that happen? I don't know. Yeah, I'm grateful for it. It's a gypsy life, you know? It's just a gypsy life. My hair doing it's terrible. So, yeah, you kind of bounce around. And I very always consider myself a journeyman actress. So you just kind of go to whatever the universe wants to offer. You sort of go with the flow. Amazing.

Jeff Dwoskin 2:48

I I love to kind of hear like the origin stories. I know you spent a lot of your early years in Japan. Did you start acting in Japan as well?

Linda Purl 2:59

I did my my dad was in business over there, so my folks lived over there for little over 30 years, and my all my childhood years were there, and my folks were theater centric. My dad's parents had been vaudeville performers, and so dad grew up on the road. And it's really, it's where his I don't know his sweet spot was his joy, His Church, His but of course, with the depression, his parents said, over our dead body, are you going to go into the yard? So he happened to been an exceptionally brilliant man. So fortunately for him, he had other options, and he became a Triple Threat engineer, civil, mechanical and chemical engineer, you know. And it was a time of such building in the 50s and 60s. So he had a big career in Union Carbide and and my mother had been a ballerina. So it was really, in many ways, it was their meeting ground. It was sort of their their arena of fun. And in Japan in the 60s, when I was growing up, there was a moment of tremendous cultural inhale. There was a great curiosity about the West and being an art centric culture, they just rightly assumed that the best way to do that was to just open the doors and have everyone come it was a very interesting time. Of course, as a kid, you take the privileges of youth, you know, all of them for granted, I certainly did. But there were Broadway touring companies that came through on a regular basis. The Royal Shakespeare Company came through. And then they had relations behind Japan had relations behind the Iron Curtain. So Soviet companies came through, the Kirov Ballet, the Bolshoi opera, the Bolshoi Ballet, you know, Moscow Philharmonic. So it was, it was just all going on, and my parents availed themselves and us to my sister and I to a lot of it, and we had a big old house, not because we were wealthy. It was just what the company, you know, afforded them with a lot of guest rooms. And certainly in the early days of the 60s, there just there weren't a lot of hotel. But we had all these guest rooms so people would come and stay, sometimes just for a few weeks or but sometimes for months. We had Fulbright Scholars there. Tennessee Williams lived to this for about a month. At some point, Henry Mancini stayed. So, you know, I just never knew who was going to show up at breakfast. But the thing is, that was the conversation around the dinner table with whoever was there. And it was this vibrant sort of cultural exchange between dancers and painters and scholars. And, you know, 99.9% of it went over my head, but you kind of pick things up. And also, many families were only in Japan for a couple of years. That was far more than normal things company would move families around, but my family stayed put. So having been there from a very early age, I spoke the language my home life leaned me, tilted me head first into a life in the arts. So going to work at a young age for Japanese theater companies and film companies was just a normal thing to do. And again, there was a kind of, not kind of, there was this great curiosity about Westerners and I look like I look with funny color eyes and funny colored hair. So So I worked a lot in Japan, and it was not ever for a career. It was just fun. And it kind of fell into my lap. I was kind of a freak, because there was nobody else there who, you know, had the language, who had the interest. I was sort of it. So if they needed a weirdo, I, you know, I got cast, and I trained at a Japanese Academy there. And when I was about 15, I thought, Oh, I wonder what it's like to work with my own peers and not just get hired because I had a foreign language and had yellow hair. One thing led to another, and I eventually made my way back to the States, but it was a wonderful training ground. I draw on those experiences, even those friendships. I was in Japan fairly recently and reconnected with some people that I'd worked with as a child, and I'm just so profoundly grateful for those young years on TV sets or movie sets or studying or backstage. There's some that tradition of being an apprentice. I mean, you do your own work, but you see and you notice how other people warm up, or how other people rehearse, or how they memorize, or, you know, and that all sort of filters into your subconscious and very eventually becomes your own, your own process. Amazing,

Jeff Dwoskin 7:36

the Toho gyno Academy, I said that it says the only foreigner to train now, was it? Was it they didn't let foreigners in? Or you're the first one to apply? I

Linda Purl 7:47

was the first one to apply, and I don't know if they ever recovered. I don't know if anybody else went. I honestly, I don't even know if the academy still exists. It probably does being Toho. So, yeah, I mean, well, the other thing is that I was working for Toho a fair amount, and so that was just what they did. It was like, and maybe even model, probably modeled on the old Hollywood system where you would work, but you would study all of those wonderful movie stars they had singing and tap dancing they were trained and all of that in the event they'd be called on to use it. As long as I was working for toho, I was just, you know, shoveled into the school, and it was, what else you gonna do on a Saturday, you know, or after school. And the training was interesting because it was Western training. This was not for any of the classical Japanese modes of entertainment. Well, first of all, they're all performed by men, the Kabuki and no and all that is all boondock was all men. So that was not allowed for me, the jazz dance, the acting techniques, they were sort of the Japanese understanding of the modern art movement that was birthed in the 50s in the States. So the Actors Studio and jazz dance, and there was certainly ballet, their feeling, and when I adapted, was that you you have to have ballet, because then you know what the line is. You know what this, what the specific classical line is. And then you break it. Then you can break it with modern dance and jazz dance to have that classical spine in you, if you will, then you have some place to start from. It's sort of like, you know, raising your kids, going going to church, and then they'll decide what they want to be later. But at least they have a kind of a starting point, you know, you learn the alphabet and then you can read whatever you want. So it was, that was sort of the thinking behind the dance, but the acting was was kind of weird, because the Japanese acting style, then in the commercial theater, which is where I worked, was very strict and antithetical to what was going on in the States, which was shocking when I came to the States. At 15 and started studying at Neighborhood Playhouse, like, what the heck is going on? It was so emotional, emotional based it had, you know, you didn't obey any laws of projecting or facing front to the audience so they could see you. I mean, it was wild. And I probably, you know, spent a long time sort of finding my own balance, because I didn't jettison one completely, nor the other.

Jeff Dwoskin 10:26

I wanted to go back you just kind of casually said, oh. Henry Mancini was at our house for quite Yeah.

Linda Purl 10:32

Oh crazy, yeah.

Jeff Dwoskin 10:34

I was hoping you're like, oh and yeah. I sort of inspired the Pink Panther theme. Oh

Linda Purl 10:40

yeah. No, I so Andy Williams was a huge star in Japan. There was one night, maybe Sunday night or Saturday night, where, for whatever reason, they aired 30 minutes of the Andy Williams Show, and we sat glued in front of the television, at least my parents did to 30 minutes on a tiny black and white screen of entertainment that was done in English, no matter where they were in the program. At 30 minutes, it was over. It was a was Nancy Wilson was in the middle of a song. It was over. If Andy Williams is somewhere in the middle of Moon River was over. So Andrew Mancini too. So I say that, I think, I mean, obviously they work together great deal. I assuming Mancini did the music in any event. Andy Williams was on a big concert tour of Japan, and Mr. Mancini was there as his conductor and music director.

Jeff Dwoskin 11:33

It's really cool. So when you came to the US, did you immediately start training Lee strath, like did you act? Did you jump right into that? Or did that take time when you're 15? Like, what was the pretty

Linda Purl 11:45

much did? I went to school in England first, just for two summers, which was kind of a good breaking point. So at 14 and 15, I guess, I went to study in London and and that was very first of all, it was in English, obviously. So that was one adjustment, and the other was that it was much closer to the Japanese training than what I came upon a few months later in America. So it was much more formal, much more classically oriented, which was the basic bent of the Japanese training now i Then I went to boarding school for a few months, and sort of got to do junior senior year in a hurry, sort of in one in one go. So at 15, end of my 15th year, I was now living in New York, and which was crazy. I think my parents, what were they thinking? I mean, obviously they got the apartment and stuff, and it was like, see ya. And I was great. I mean, Tokyo was a safe city, very safe. I mean, you couldn't get in trouble if you tried to. And my parents had lived out of America for long enough to think, Well, New York is just like Tokyo. Not so much. I think because I was just so Pollyanna, it was like, everything is everything's fine. And I would take the subway to Times Square in the 70s. Are you kidding? Take my little tap classes and then, you know, get on the shuttle and go back to my apartment in Murray Hill at 15. I think, Oh my gosh. Anyway, it was all perfect. Had a wonderful time I never had. I mean, people were getting mugged on a regular basis. And I think if someone saw me, they just must have thought, oh, that poor idiot child, we're just going to leave her alone. It was wonderful. And I studied at the Neighborhood Playhouse, absolutely terrifying. They would do things like improv, and they would sort of encourage you to throw a temper tantrum. I'd never seen anyone get angry in my life that didn't happen in Japan, maybe if I'd been raised in Rome or Barcelona or some wonderful Latin country. But that was not mine. It was like it was, I came from world of please and thank you. In Catholic girls school, it's like crazy. So I didn't last there too long, but I went to what for me, was a bit more mild at the Lee Strasberg Institute, and that sort of became my training home. But then I got a job. I did a soap opera for a couple of years in New York and and that was great, because then you're, you know, rubbing elbows with colleagues, and again, that sort of apprenticeship, and I could see how the American actors were working, and kind of fell in with that. And at 15, you're pretty malleable, so

Jeff Dwoskin 14:23

you just kind of go with the flow. Got it was that secret storm.

Linda Purl 14:27

You did your homework. That's impressive. Okay, so, all right, so

Jeff Dwoskin 14:30

you're doing soaps I did see, like you did Hawaii Five. Oh, before the Jonathan Demi movie, crazy mama with the interesting thing to me about the crazy mama movie. Besides being able to work with, course, Leachman and all that was, this was part of the Roger Corman and a system of movies, so where a lot of huge directors like Jonathan Demi and James Cameron, etc, got started. So it was like, Well, I don't know if Roger was Roger Corman there, or is it like his wife was producing that one?

Linda Purl 15:00

Yeah, Julie, yeah. You know, a little bit, Chris was so long ago, but I Yes, they were. I have such fond memories. In fact, Donnie, most has been a lifelong friend. We met as teenagers in New York, and that was it. We just bonded. And, you know, we did Happy Days and all of that, but we did this movie together. And when Cloris Leachman passed, not all that long ago, we wrote back and forth to say, how lucky were we that we got to work with her specifically, but also someone of that caliber and brilliance when we were so when we were babies, basically we were, both of us were 18. Donnie might be a year older, so he might have been 19, I'm not sure. Yeah, that was a very special film. Again, we didn't necessarily know it at the time. We just knew we were having a fun time working on a film, but Cloris was Cloris was one of a kind. She she was a creative force. She was an engine. And also to have Anne southern on the set. So Anne was from a different generation. They had very different ways of working. So there was a little bit of sort of diva stuff going on. Why not? And

Jeff Dwoskin 16:07

then Jim Backus, yeah. Thurston Howell, this is a big one this. And then film debut of Bill Paxton and Dennis Quaid, really? Yeah? Well, yeah, I was in, if it's Courtney to Wikipedia,

Linda Purl 16:22

it's something maybe

Jeff Dwoskin 16:24

they had. They probably like, maybe some small roles or something. And then you, you did with Bill Paxton, you did later Mighty Joe Young,

Linda Purl 16:30

I did, what a loss. That was just, I mean, what a lovely, lovely man. He was just tragic when he, yeah, this was snatched. That was terrible.

Jeff Dwoskin 16:44

Yeah, he was awesome. One of those actors you just, was always, just really fun to watch. Always great. Always Donnie most. So do you guys sing together? Because, like, I interviewed him too a little bit ago, and like, both of you kind of got, you got the same jazzy vibes going.

Linda Purl 17:00

He's always been crazy for particularly for Bobby Darin, when we were doing uso tours for Happy Days, is kind of when we first started to sing together. You know, for so long, both of our lives and careers were not really focused on on music. So, yeah, the last 15 or more years, I guess we've had a chance to do to perform together, either we'll do a duet show, or Donnie will kindly invite me to guest on one of his concerts, and and vice versa. And it's always so much fun. He's so good. He's so joyful on stage. It's, it's a treat to, you know, to watch him, but also to perform with him, because he just, he's so happy in the moment of it.

Jeff Dwoskin 17:49

I know. Well, finally, because Anson Williams, I think, is one that got to sing all the time on Happy days.

Linda Purl 17:54

Yeah, Anson sings too. Have a whole Happy Days Tour. Well, they could, I tell you what, Jimmy Dunn, who is one of our executive or producers on that, and writers, you know, famous songwriter, and there, there was a lot of, a lot of other talent, but that's often the case. I'm sure you find that when you talk to your people, you know, they're, they're people who actors who sing and dancers who act and etc, a lot of cross pollination. Oh,

Jeff Dwoskin 18:23

yes. Okay, so let's, I like to cover this with any of my guests that have been on it, because I love The Love Boat, and everyone's, most everyone's been on The Love Boat, I feel you were on a two parter, but you, you had a special kind of role in that, meaning, like, you got to dress as a guy too.

Linda Purl 18:39

I did, yeah, I put on a beard. It was pretty funny. Well, I loved Aaron's spelling. Aaron was an old school producer, and was responsible for some healthy percentage of my career period. And, you know, he got a lot of flack for his the way he, you know, had women portrayed in his shows. They were always, you know, very glamorous and big shoulder pads and flippy do hairdos and stuff. But, I mean, fair enough, but he knew what was selling in that era. I would argue that he did more for women, actors, for actresses, than any other producers, consistently. I mean, when he, you know, he put so many women on the map and gave them their financial everything, you know. I mean, they earned it, but he was, he was very generous, profoundly loyal, profoundly loyal as a producer. So loveboat, yeah. Well, they called, and it was Aaron, so I knew the answer was going to be yes, but the real reason I said yes is because we actually went through the Panama Canal. That was a treat. And that was pretty funny, because we you know, on the ship you can't bring extras, so you have to rely on other passengers on the ship to be the extras. And the first several days of shooting, people were like, yes, I've signed me up. I want to do it. And by the. And they were like, it was so boring for them, because you have to sit around and repeat and move from one shez to the next and go get your drink, your pina colada at the bar, and then do that 15 times till they get all the coverage. And people were like, get me out of here. So by the end of it, they were begging people and probably giving them bingo prizes to to come and be extras for us, but it was fun. And oh my gosh. What a cast. What a cast. Besides Andy Stevens, who is dear friend, we did a couple of other projects together, but there was Lana Turner, Stuart Granger and Baxter Liz Ashley. So the dinners were hysterical. I mean, the stories that we would hear just, you know, wonderful, wonderful to be able to have time with those people love boat

Jeff Dwoskin 20:48

was great at grabbing and bringing on the older actors who were amazing. So it's, you know, a lot of times when I Love Boat, usually they start with, yeah, but it was just the set, so you got to actually go on the cruise. You did, yeah, so that's cool. That was a two part, and you left off, uh, one major group star that was on that episode, Menudo, with a young, very young, Ricky Martin, yeah, yeah. You have to wait 45 minutes into the second episode to hear them saying, but worth it, right? All right. So that was a fun role. It must have been a different kind of role, because trying to stick it to this guy for not hiring you, you get to dress up as a guy the old, I'm gonna hire, yeah, who happens to be the same girl that I turned out very

Linda Purl 21:33

interesting, because I, you know, once you were in all that beard and stuff and keep it on all day, you know, I would walk back to my cabin if I had some time off or something, and it was just that, that little bit people would would react to you differently. It was just a very different vibe to walk down the street as a guy. Now, maybe they just thought I looked incredibly weird and people, but there was, it was, it was, it was interesting. I thought, okay, I mean to literally walk 10th of a mile in somebody else's moccasins. It was, it was kind of fun.

Jeff Dwoskin 22:11

We won't spoil whether you guys fall in love at the end or not. We'll let everyone watch the episode. Okay, so anyway, so that was fun. I did mention last days of Pompeii. When I introduce you, I just, we had just been to Italy, and I went to Pompeii, so it was like, when I saw it, I'm like, oh,

Linda Purl 22:28

that's, oh, wow, oh, lucky you how beautiful.

Jeff Dwoskin 22:32

Yeah, it's, it's, it's amazing. It was very cool. We had a guide, and they very interesting. Yes, was that a big mini series at the time, last days of Pompeii,

Linda Purl 22:43

it was, and I tell you to see Ned Beatty and Ernie Borgnine running around in a toga was priceless, absolutely priceless. We had such a lark on that. I mean, come on, we were shooting in Italy for three months actually. And then we, you know, it's the 80s, so there was nothing but pots of money, not for us, but everybody else. And so they wanted Olivier for this, which was lovely, and he was to come to Italy and film then, but film there rather. But his health was such that that was questionable. Producers said, no problem. They built Pompeii at Pinewood Studios outside of England, and we decamped for the last several weeks to England and shot the rest of it in England, and so that Lord Olivier could be in our cast. And that was spectacular. I mean, my gosh, wow, when you were on with him, everybody was better. It was like playing tennis with a really good player. You You just, you bring your A game as best, as best as you can. It was funny. They, they had scenes of the extras, as one does in an arena, you know, sort of thumbs up, you know, let the line eat the guy, kind of thing. And the editors, after we've been filming in England for the editors, said, this isn't going to cut because we have in other scenes that we're splicing in. We have the Italian extras who are tan and their body language is very touchy feely, very, very con. Now we can't, doesn't cut with the English extras, who are spindly, like gray, and they're holding their togas like, like a polite Butler, you know, at a posh restaurant, and there, there's no contact, it's ever so proper. So we had to go back. They had to lather the English extras up with body paint. And, you know, I don't know, feed them a pint of beer or something like that, and said, tuck in and, you know, grab your neighbor and stuff. So those unintended consequences of switching cultures, the body language didn't match.

Jeff Dwoskin 24:50

It's something you wouldn't think about until, like, right? And you're like, watching it, and it was like, that's, it's very interesting. That's really interesting. Sorry. To interrupt. Have to take a quick break. I do want to thank everyone for their support of the sponsors. When you support the sponsors, you're supporting us here at Classic conversations, and that's how we keep the lights on. And now back to my amazing conversation with Linda Purl. Was the young pioneers trying to capitalize on the Little House on the Prairie and all that. I know it's a wilder,

Linda Purl 25:22

I'm sure it was. It was the same producer, Ed friendly. I loved that show so much, and it should have gone on. We got caught in a bad everybody's gone now, so I can sort of say this, but we got caught in a funny, I don't know, boy battle between the producer and the head of the network, and they didn't like each other. They had liked each other. They fell out of love business, love with each other, and they just stepped on each other's toes, which was so sad, was unnecessary. Of course, we felt particularly unnecessary because it was it spelled the demise of a show that that should have gone on. It was a it was a beautiful show. It was well written, beautiful cast. And I love everything about it. I love the story. I love the values. I loved the the spirit of adventure in the story, but also just to do it, you know, I loved doing a Western and so lifelong friendships developed from that. In fact, the girl that played the initial, the original Nelly, was that her name now that, anyway, the neighbor, the lovely neighbor, so she is now she became a stunt coordinator, sort of one of the first women to become a stunt coordinator in LA and then left that work, became a sheriff in North Carolina, and now she's, she's in Asheville as we speak, because she's been working for FEMA for about 10 years. So she's, you know, first responder. She she and her team were there the day after Helene did what it did in Asheville. It's God's work that those folks are doing. Wow,

Jeff Dwoskin 27:01

yeah, that is important work in this time frame, like some of your earlier coffee, as you mentioned, you're a journey person, kind of going in and out. Are there any, like, ones that nobody talks about, that you're like, oh, people should talk about this,

Linda Purl 27:13

like normal people. Was a very special project for me. It was such an education and on many levels. I mean, Sean Cassidy, first of all, was so fabulous. What a brilliant guy he is. I mean, writer, he can do everything. He can just do it all. And he was so wonderful to work with, and so wonderful in the role. But also we it's based on a true story of many mentally handicapped couple who fell in love and the family around him, around Roger, around the young man in the story. So we got to hang out with them. They were always on the set, and his parents were always on the set. And that was a real indoctrination for me, the courage that the family and the couple themselves demonstrated, I mean, they were real pioneers in the field. They not the, not Virginia, the wife's character. This was not her experience growing up. Roger's parents, the young man. They discovered when he was about two that he was not quite, you know, he wasn't evolving at a normal pace, and then he was diagnosed, and he he never really aged past about age five, but the parents said so the you know, once he was in school, they the school wanted to Beverly Hills, public school wanted to kick him out. And the parents just kept saying, why? What harm is he doing? Why? And they said that all their lives, all their lives, they said that and they change. They got people to thinking. They got laws changed. And curiously, Roger was a classmate of David Cassidy's. So Roger stayed in school until, I think, seventh grade, and then he moved to an institution that was wonderful, and, you know, progressive, and could live there. And when they he met Virginia, and they fell in love, and they wanted to get married, and the California state law was such that they weren't allowed to and his parents, again, said, Why? Why not? What's wrong? And they got the laws changed. You know, you meet people who are ordinary citizens, who've been put in an extraordinary circumstance, and they work for the greater good, I mean their own good as parents, dynamically, but clearly, for the greater good. And you just think if such a challenge, fraction of that challenge was put on me, you would just hope that you would find the inner resilience, the courage, the creativity that they found and lived. They were real change makers, so it was a life lesson to do that, and a real privilege. Sounds like

Jeff Dwoskin 29:55

it had a huge impact on you. Yeah, all right, let's get back to Donnie most. And Happy days. How did, did Donnie help you get the original? He did okay,

Linda Purl 30:05

yet he called me and he so they were in their first season. They'd done the pilot. It was picked up. And he called me and he said, Linda, there's this part for a girlfriend, for Richie, for Ron Richie Cunningham for Ron Howard. And he said, You should go up for it. So I did, you know, tip my agent off, and I'm in the anyway, I got the role, which was so much fun, and it was a recurring character of called Gloria, as Richie's, Richie's girlfriend. But, you know, as things started to evolve, the series was created to be Ron's series, he was the star, but as happens, sometimes what they couldn't possibly have imagined was that it was the Fonzie character that really sort of took off. So the template shifted, and Ron had always wanted to direct it was kind of spelled an easy exit for him, because he had something to go to, actually right on to directing a Roger Corman film. So once Ron was leaving the show, they didn't have any need for ancillary characters around Ron. So I was out of a job, like no. And then many years later, I went back as as a different character, kind of crazy, not

Jeff Dwoskin 31:19

just any different character, fonzie's main squeeze, yep,

Linda Purl 31:24

his fiancee. I got so much hate mail for that, like, you can't have him. He's mine. Like, sorry, it's make believe. You do realize this? It was like going home in many ways, because I'd worked with all of them at the beginning when they were thinking, gosh, is it going to go on for another season? And we hope so. And then coming on at the last couple of years, you know, they had all been through so much together. They'd been to the stratosphere, and we're still sort of hovering there. Now, Anson and Donnie had left the show by then, but when we'd go out and Gary Marshall had us do uso tours, everybody was there. Donnie was there, Anson was there. So much fun. But it was just to have had that. I mean, it would have been special to do, even if I was a newbie coming into Happy Days, but because there was that sort of patina of history there, and I'd known them when they were, you know, at the very beginning stages, it was, it was a very lovely set to be on.

Jeff Dwoskin 32:22

So besides the hate mail, what was it like working with Henry Winkler? I imagine it was, I mean, I only met him twice for five seconds, and nicest guy in the world, yeah,

Linda Purl 32:33

no, it was great. He's a wonderful actor. He's hardworking. I don't think he took, or takes a moment of that extraordinary ride for granted. He's nothing but but grateful for it. And we had, we had great people. Everywhere you look, there were great people. Jerry Marshall was a kind of genius. He just had his had that ability to get his finger on a pulse serially. And he, it's kind of gross, but we were on stage 17. Was always shot on stage 17. Once it went to three camera, you know, the success of Happy Days, rebuilt the Paramount lot. I mean, the money that that show generated, paved the streets, did the landscaping, built a new cafeteria, it goes on. So there were any number of improvements, creature comfort improvements that could have gone into stage 17. Gary never let them put in a second bathroom, sorry to tell you. And the dressing rooms were all very they were all uniform. They were perfectly functional. But there was, believe me, nothing fancy about them, and I thought that was part of Gary's genius. You know, he just leveled the playing field. Everybody would go back to their same little cubicle on their breaks if you needed a potty break. You know, everybody the crew, everybody Henry down to the janitor or over to the janitor, I should, more correctly say, and he had us play softball. I was a particularly terrible player, but Gary insisted, so they had to put up with me the best players, and there were some kick ass baseball players, and they had to deal with this nincompoop out in the field that didn't know, how do you put a glove on? But that was one of the many elements of Gary's genius. He just knew, if we're going to make this we're going to build this culture, this happy days culture, that's how it has to be. Has to be one for all, all for one and a real team spirit. It could never lose the atmosphere on that set. Could never lose touch with reality. Gary saw to that, you know, they it was like you would come across, you would open those big doors, and you would just leave the earth weights outside. There was never any language on the set. There was a things were corny, the cornier the joke, the better. You would sort of swim from the atmosphere on the set into doing the scene. And it was all the same. It was this. You were in the well. You were in the pool the whole time, and that was Gary and Jerry Paris, our director, Jerry, who was just, you know, he was born funny. He must have come out of the womb laughing and making people laugh. Quite a dynamic duo. And how lucky were we to have those giant people to be around and to you get those lessons, and you go, Oh, right, that's how to be. That's, that's, that's the way.

Jeff Dwoskin 35:25

So the show was very different. Then you were there in the in the early heyday, even. And so it sounds like you were even there before the whole shift. So you were, you were kind of there pre Fonz explosion. And then kind of, which, oddly enough, is why you left and then and then right, yeah, came back.

Linda Purl 35:46

That's very fun. Yeah, alright.

Jeff Dwoskin 35:48

So happy days. Awesome. And then I do want to just a shout out Heather O'Rourke, your daughter on the show. Such a such a tragic loss, but she is always in my head because poltergeist was, when I saw bolter guys, anytime I see a static TV, I just hear her going there, here.

Linda Purl 36:06

Yes, she was a darling girl. We had a lot of fun together. I saw her mother not all that long ago. Yeah, it's preservist,

Jeff Dwoskin 36:14

another big one, Matlock, you're in season one of Matlock. Matlock's daughter. Was that fine.

Linda Purl 36:20

It was fun to do. It was, yeah, it was first. I was thrilled to get to, you know, get the role and all of that. And, and I had not met Andy, you know, before we started to work together. So, and he was, he was not who I had imagined him to be. He was is very different. He was really, really smart. And I don't know that that would have been if someone had asked me to describe him before I met him, that probably wouldn't have been the first thing. But after hanging out with him, was like, oh god, he's he's wicked smart. He reads people. He was intuitive, of course, charming. I mean, just scary charming. Could wrap a crowd around his finger in a heartbeat. I've always been sad that that we didn't see more of him. I think he, you know, he found what worked for him, clearly, as few actors do, and he stayed in that alley. But, you know, we saw a glimpse of what he did and can do in facing a crowd. But I've always, I repeat myself with this, but I I've always sad I didn't see him do King Lear or Willy Loman and Death of a Salesman. He had, I think he he was touched as an actor. He had other great performances to which he would have brought tremendous depth and insight. And he was complicated. He was he'd been raised in a complicated time, in a complicated past. And a lot of great comics they have, they can have a dark side and and he had a dark side, which is not to judge, it's just what I observed I watched the other day because the Wall Street Journal wanted to do a little interview on it, the new Matlock, and it's fantastic. It's so good. I feel like, I mean, of course, it's a different time and all of that, but I feel like there were things in the original Matlock that didn't get explored, that they are clearly going to be able to explore with this, with this new version of of Matlock. So I'm very glad it's been rebooted, brought back to life with another brilliant actress, Kathy Bates.

Jeff Dwoskin 38:31

She's amazing. Kathy Bates is amazing. Oh, so, I mean, there's just another let me mention homeland for a second, because Mandy Patinkin is another one with a great voice. You guys could all tour together. I grew up my my mom used to listen to Mandy Patinkin. She loved Mandy patinka and I we she would play the Evita soundtrack. Yeah, not the soundtrack the original, yeah, later taken over by Antonio Banderas in the movie. But like with the original, was Mandy Patinkin. And just like, just so good, he's just so good, but he's so great an actor, too.

Linda Purl 39:04

Voice of an angel. Yeah, I was thrilled to work with him, particularly because I was a I was a fan. You look at him, course, he's a wonderful actor, but I look at this now, lovely guy, kind of a little scruffy of a certain age, and you know, if you didn't know, I mean, if you passed him on the street and didn't know, you could not imagine the sheer beauty that has poured out of that man through his voice. I mean, his tone so Bristol clear, his intentionality, his the depth of his emotion that he sings with, does everything with. So, yeah, that was a real, a real thrill.

Jeff Dwoskin 39:48

That's season one. You were in a few episodes. That's that is one of like, I mean, the whole series is great, but like, that first season is just insanely great season of television.

Linda Purl 39:59

What. They brought me on. They said, You know, it was just a six character arc. Of course, I was thrilled to be on, but the character was so interesting, I thought they're not going to kill her off. They've done too much work on this. Sure enough, they BAM in the back. It's like, no,

Jeff Dwoskin 40:13

no one's ever safe these days. Okay, okay, Pam, Beasley's mom on the office, working with Jenna Fisher and Steve corral. Was that, like, just so much fun.

Linda Purl 40:24

It was great. I was nervous going in, because for a few things, I thought, Oh, I'm, you know, coming into this show that is so well oiled, and am I going to fit? Is it going to be welcome? And and also, I just assumed that they did a lot of improv, and improvs are terrifying to me, and the moment I was on that set, it was like, Oh, I know this set. This is the happy day set in a very similar vibe in the way that Gary Marshall set the tone for Happy Days. Steve set the tone for the office. He did something remarkable. I've never heard of another actor or actress doing this. He I don't know what the film was, but when I was I guess, after the first year I was there, his contract was up for renewal, so he was absolutely legally within his rights to walk. And he had been offered some big movie, and he turned it down, which is risky, you know. Now I don't know if the feature waited for him, but in any event, in the moment, he turned it down and then came back to the office producers and said, I'll give you one year. You have one year to figure it out, to have you know how to move the show forward, how to kind of ease me out, ease somebody else in. And he did that because he loved everybody on the show. He wanted them not to suddenly wake up the next morning and realize that their show had been canceled, so they had a full season, then to plan fiscally, to get their house in order so they continue to pay the mortgage, or they could put the money aside for their kids college. I mean, it was a profoundly selfish, selfless thing to have done. And again, I never heard of anyone doing that of sack, because it was a scary sacrifice. What if the feature film career never came back? Fortunately, of course, it did for him. But there are no guarantees. There was no guarantee that that would happen. Just did the right thing. So as far as I'm concerned, that says everything about who he is.

Jeff Dwoskin 42:22

Yeah, he sounds like an amazing, amazing person. So many I know we could dive into a million other things, but I do want to talk about your music. Let's talk about your music. You have a beautiful voice, listening to some of your songs. And then I tell me, like, is this what you'd rather do? Like, would you just rather? Would you if you had a choices to act or just sing and tour like, which is singing your real passion

Linda Purl 42:47

or hard, that's really hard. I mean, they're inextricably related. And the music sort of came about because I was doing musicals as a as a kid growing up, and then I had a recording contract in Japan, and then suddenly in LA I wasn't involved with music anymore. There was, I wasn't doing many musicals on television. I was wasn't doing any musicals on stage. I was focused on the TV thing. So suddenly they had no music in my life, and I really started to miss it. Actually, it was with the happy days the USO tours and Jimmy Dunn, who I mentioned he was one of our producers, wonderful writer. So I started singing with Jimmy a little bit. If he was doing a concert in town, he'd kindly bring me in and we'd do a duet, or I'd just sing. And at one of these clubs, one of the owners said, Okay, so when are you going to do a nightclub act? Like, what are you talking about? It was one of the scariest things anyone had ever said to me, but I knew when he said it, that it was like someone had given me a challenge, and I I was going to have to explore it. So this gentleman set me up with a nightclub act director and music director like Hi. Who are you? What is this thing you do? So we started to play, and we built an act, and then we did it at the club, and it was absolutely terrifying, but thrilling, because for one thing, I had never done at that point, I'd never done a one woman show, and when you stop singing, it's your turn to talk, and when you stop talking, it's your turn to sing, so it's all you, and you're talking directly to the audience. So there's no safety of that, what we call the fourth wall, sort of pretending that there's no audience out there. It's just us here, you know, acting, there no cameras, there's no audience. It's just us. All of it was just a, you know, brand new, mind blowing learning experience. But I realized that you have autonomy. So if you with nightclub acts or cab reacts, you can call your buddies together, you build a show, and then you call around some clubs, and many of them will say no, but if you will say yes, so suddenly it put me in a position of not waiting for the phone to ring, for the next job to happen. I could there was always something I could be working at and can't just sing. All of a sudden you start. Have to keep at it. So you sing almost every day, and you know, you have to fit into the gown. So you kind of have to keep body together. So that having that continuum, which really started in my 30s, I guess, was a wonderful thing. And then all during the AIDS epidemic era, we were doing lots of fundraisers, the friendships, we didn't know it. We really didn't know it at the time, but there was a cadre of us living in LA who would do these things, and we spent a lot of time together backstage, rehearsing for songs, doing dance numbers, whatever. Those are, my chosen family to this day, they are we just thought we were doing something because our friends were dying of AIDS, but it turned out, and that's what we were doing, but it has turned out to be much more. We were really interweaving our life patterns together anyway, but music has become more important. About 16 years ago, I was introduced to this guy, Ted Firth, and at that point, I had worked with a music director I loved, still loved for years, but I always wanted to lean more towards jazz. And my former music director was not that was not his area of interest, particularly, and but I was invited to do this show in New York, and they said, you would, you have to use our music director? And I was like, well, that's okay. I was greedy for the job, so I sort of said, and I came in first day of rehearsal, and here's this young guy with this kind of this drippy fish handshake. And I just thought, Oh, this is terrible. And then he started playing the piano, and my life trajectory shifted, like, Who's that? This guy is a genius. His name is Ted Firth. We've done four albums together. He works with a lot of people, a lot of wonderful, wonderful people, but he was my guy. That's a kind of musical chemistry that you can't plan. So with my former music director's blessings, thanks have Thank heavens i i jumped ship to Ted, and with these 16 years, I'm working with him here in New York now, and I just, I always learn from him. He pushes me to new heights. He's so sophisticated in his choice is so supportive. It's a profound joy. And we do Great American Songbook, but in a jazz feel, so we kind of change things up a bit. I can't sing pop to save my life, but Great American Songbook, each song really is like a one act play. And so that's one of the ways in which the acting and the singing are profoundly intertwined. It's storytelling that happens to be set to beautiful melodies, and there's also just one time I got to do a musical for a year, eight shows a week. You are literally involved with harmony. Your being is involved in harmony. I came out of that, and I swear to God, the cells in my body had been restructured for the better. It just, it's very Woo. Woo thought. But I think there's, I mean, they say, you know, listen to Mozart and it's good for you. And Renee Fleming has this great book out, not called music in mind or mind and music, but it's, it's a series. It's a compilation of interviews with scientists, largely about the benefits of music. And boy, do I feel that now, I think, especially with the world, and there's a lot of divisive opinions. So in harmony is just the music that harmony provides us, church music, any kind of music, it's just it's above the fray. It's just above the price. So to be involved with that, I find very settling, very harmonizing, literally, very healthy. It's profoundly joyful for me. It is a joy like few others. Music

Jeff Dwoskin 48:45

is hugely comforting. Yeah, what's your favorite song to sing? Don't

Linda Purl 48:49

have one that's like, that's not fair. That's like choosing between children, although I just got to do MAME the musical. And wow, what. What a life Bon Bon experience that was if he walked into my life today, I think that might be, for the moment, a favorite, very

Jeff Dwoskin 49:07

cool. So you could stream Linda's music. I recommend Spotify, because when I tried to go to Amazon, kept wanting to play Pearl Jam. Oh, how funny. Play Linda Purl Pearl Jam. Jeremy. No stop. You just love doing it live though. I mean, recording an album is probably one thing, but like performing, it is really

Linda Purl 49:29

different. There's a there's so much to learn in the studio. There's so many choices. But I do live performance, yes, I mean, and that is something. I mean, I love doing film. I love the intimacy of film, but there's everything about doing a live performance. It is, it is the actor's medium, for better or worse, you're up there and you're, you know, and it's ephemeral. You do it together and with that group of audience. And that's it. It was finito, you know? It's just it. Poof. It goes away. My partner, Patrick. Definitely, and I got to do seven months on the road with a play in England, and oh my gosh, that was that was just so much fun be on stage together and to have that advanced series of adventures together,

Jeff Dwoskin 50:14

which which play was that

Linda Purl 50:16

we did. It was a thing called Catch me, if you can. But it's not based on the movie or the musical of late. It was a chestnut written in the 60s that had a run in the West End and Broadway, and they brought it out of mothballs, and it was a sort of a detective forest romp. We were doing it just coming out of covid So most of the theaters, certainly at the top of the tour were it was the first time anybody had been back to their theaters in two years time, so we could have stood up and read the phone book, and they would have been thrilled.

Jeff Dwoskin 50:47

It's Linda and Patrick, yay. We've just got out of the house for the first time in three years. Yes, yeah, Amazing. You're amazing. Thanks for hanging out with me and sharing all your stories.

Linda Purl 50:57

You're sharing your audience. I appreciate it. Well, you're in a whole part of the world, in Michigan. So enjoy it. Yes,

Jeff Dwoskin 51:04

I love Michigan. It's great. New York is great too. You can make it there. You can make it anywhere. Linda, oh, okay,

Linda Purl 51:14

thank you, Jeff. Take good care. All right.

Jeff Dwoskin 51:16

How amazing was Linda Purl, so many great stories, such an amazing background. Ah, loved every second of it. If Linda is in your town, go see her live singing, treat yourself to that amazing night out. Well, with the interview over, I know these just fly by. Can't believe it. Another huge thank you to Linda Purl and for hanging out with me. And thanks to all of you for coming back week after week. It means the world to me, and I'll see you next time.

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