April 27, 2021 • 38 mins
Marlo Thomas has been breaking barriers for women for more than five decades as an actress and activist. As an award-winning actress, Marlo became a household name as Ann-Marie, the lead in the television show That Girl, a woman who, in the late 60s, wanted a career more than a family. An outspoken feminist, Marlo then launched Free to Be...You and Me, which was first an album, then a book, and eventually, an Emmy and Peabody award-winning TV show for children that challenged gender norms and became a touchstone for a generation of feminists. Her best-selling books include a memoir about growing up an adored daughter of TV star Danny Thomas, and, just last year, she and her husband Phil Donahue released a book, What Makes a Marriage Last: 40 Celebrated Couples Share with Us the Secrets to a Happy Life, and a podcast, Double Date, filled with marriage advice. All in all, quite a life for That Girl.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Thing from My Heart Radio. Over the course of her
illustrious career, Marlo Thomas has broken barriers for women. As
an award winning actress, Marlowe became a household name from
her portrayal of Anne Marie, the lead in the television
(00:23):
show That Girl, a woman who in the late sixties
wanted a career more than a family. An outspoken feminist,
(00:43):
marlow then used her fame to launch Free to Be
You and Me, which was first an album than a book,
and eventually an Emmy and Peabody Award winning TV show
for children that challenged gender norms and became a touchstone
for a general ration of feminists. Her best selling books
(01:13):
include a memoir about growing up the adored daughter of
TV star Danny Thomas, and just last year, she and
her husband Phil Donahue released a book and podcast of
marriage advice called from interviews with other happy, long lasting couples.
As a philanthropist, she's continued her family's support for St.
(01:37):
Jude's Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, which her father founded
in nineteen sixty two. All in all, quite a life
for that girl growing up in Beverly Hills. Marlowe says
she and her siblings spent a lot of time on
the set of The Danny Thomas Show, her father's TV series,
which ran for eleven seasons between nineteen fifty three to
(02:00):
nineteen sixty four. We all used to work at the
studio in the summer, you know, running film back and forth,
and when we could drive, we'd drop off scripts. So
we were kind of like interns, and my dad would
pay us an allowance to keep us off the street.
And my dad was a kind of guy, and I
have a feeling you're this way. He loved having his
(02:22):
kids around him. He just loved it. And when we
were children, we were allowed to sit in on writers meetings.
We'd sit on the floor and the writers would all
be talking about coming up stories or my dad's act
in Las Vegas, and I would laugh and Dad would say, Oh,
my kid loves it. Why did you like that, honey?
What was funny about that to you? He was interested.
(02:43):
And then sometimes I'd say something and he'd say, my
kids are so funny. They are funnier than I am.
So he gave us this feeling. He kind of empowered us.
I mean, I always thought I was brilliant, and I
have no idea if I am or I am not,
but I think I am because he said I was,
and he did that for all of us. He gave
us that. It's like Lauren Michaels would always say that
(03:03):
his kids were like his focus group. Yeah. I used
to say to Lauren, you know, you're a couple of
generations removed from some of the musical acts that are
starring on the show. Now, his daughter Sophie is older.
Now she's graduating college. But when Sophie was a teenager
and going to school in New York, I'd say to Lauren,
how do you determine who the musical acts are on
the show? And he'd say, who's ever in Sophie's iPod?
(03:26):
That's right, he just went to music stremely to see
who she was listening to. But tell people how the studio,
what studio was he at? It was a Desilu, Yeah,
and that was like what like Sunset Gower somewhere in
like Hollywood. Yeah, it was below Sunset on Gower. But
you were born in Michigan. Yeah, but for five minutes,
(03:47):
I was born in Detroit. Now, why was the family
in Detroit. My mom had a radio show there, the
Sweet Singer of Sweet Songs, and my dad came on
as an announcer and they fell in love. And then
he wanted to go to ship Cargo with the bigger nightclubs,
where he was really a nightclub performer. So she had
to make the decision in those days, give up the
show and go with the guy she loved to Chicago.
(04:10):
She got pregnant and that was the decision, and off
they went to Chicago for a couple of years, and
then a blast Vogo was coming through on whatever that was,
that Pacific Railroad. He represented Sinatra and Danny Kay and
Judy Garland, so he was very well known. And he
was told that there was a great comic he should
(04:30):
stop and see on his way to New York, and
he saw my father and he signed him up and
brought him to Hollywood right away. And he said to
my father, you know you're a star. You should come
to come to l Ay. That's a pattern of your family.
The women in your family marrying men that they meet
on radio shows and TV shows. Right, So you're you're
out there in the fifties, you moved to California. Where
(04:51):
did you go to school out there, Beverly Hills High School. No,
Marry Amount went to Mary. She went to a Catholic school. Yeah,
your father is an old school Lebanese and went to Mary.
My husband went to Notre Dame. So we were raised
the same way. Actually, and he's from Cleveland and I'm
from Beverly Hills. But we have the same upbringing, really
strict Catholic upbringing. Yeah. Yeah. And when the time comes
(05:14):
for you to launch your own career, you start that
girl in nineteen six and you're a young woman. You're
very young. Right when I had done a pilot. You know,
everything in this business is wonderfully progressive. I had bumped
around doing seventy seven Sunset Strip and Dobie Gillis and
(05:37):
all these terrible shows. Lauren Baby did Doobie Gillis did
do Mr. Red. Not that bad, but pretty bad. I
did all those shows. I played a Chinese girl on Bonanza.
Nobody knew what to do with me. I was a
Chinese girl. I played the Hawaiian girl. I played an
Arabian girl. They never saw me as the girl next door.
You wouldn't get cast as the Chinese girl now right,
(05:58):
but with my coloring, I'm out of action, dark hair,
dark eyes, so they could only they never saw me
as the girl next door. But I was cast in
a pilot at Universal called twos Company, which was an
adorable show about a young couple, and it didn't sell.
But the head of the network called me, Edgar Sherrick,
and he said, Claire, All almost bought the show because
(06:20):
they think you can be a TV star, so we'd
like to talk to you. So I went in. I
was disappointed the show didn't sell because I loved it,
and they said, we want to do a show starring you.
And they gave me a whole bunch of scripts to read.
And I called him up and I said, all the
shows you've given me to read, the girl is the
wife of somebody, the secretary of somebody, the daughter of somebody.
(06:43):
Have you ever thought about doing a show with a girl?
Is that somebody? And he said, would anybody watch a
show like that? I said, I think so. When I
gave him a book Feminine Mystique, I said, read this.
He called me up and he said, this is what's
going to happen to my wife. And it did, actually,
so we built a show based on that. A girl
like me graduated from college. I didn't want to get married,
wanted to be an actress, want to move to the
(07:04):
big city. And everybody said it wouldn't succeed. And that
first night, Wow, it got a forty share on ABC. Yeah,
and all of a sudden, I was the ultimate girl
next door, which was so funny because I could never
get cast like that. And then I became the girl
next door so much in people's minds that it's very
hard for me to play meaner people. The murderous. Yeah,
(07:25):
I have a script for you where you play a
woman that murders people. That's what I want. I'm having
trouble raising money for the film that us and I'll
do it for nothing. A lot of the financiers, a
lot of the investors I'm talking to, aren't buying you
as a murderous but I'll work on it. I can
do it. But let me ask you this. Obviously, in
the sixties, the looming cultural reality is the Vietnam War,
(07:47):
and a lot of programming and a lot of music
and things are things that help us to forget and feminism,
in my mind, doesn't really get rolling till the seventies,
and Your and Your show is over by seventy one.
We're gonna talk later on about Free to Be You
and Me. But at the moment that you do the show,
you were doing Barefoot in the Park in London, right.
And I often tell people that when a company is
(08:11):
kind of mounting up their slate, it's a relatively new company.
So when HBO decides it wants to do original program
and they get Sarah Jessica to do Sex in the City,
they get Jimmiguan Delfini and David Chase to do the Sopranos,
and they pay these people a lot of money to
stay with the show and do the hit show for
a long long time. And really, ABC was a fledgling
(08:32):
network in the sixties. I mean there was CBS, there
was NBC, and ABC was like the redheaded step child
behind the two of them, and Leonard Goldberg and all
those people were building the company during that time. Did
you feel that was a part of their faith in
you and their needed you were part of building that network. Yeah,
money doesn't talk, it it speaks obscenities. Right, Claire Ale
(08:53):
was willing to put up all the money from my show.
They wanted a woman, a young woman, to sell shampoo,
and I was there girl. I mean, there wasn't another
girl they could see yet, and I'm sure there were many,
but there wasn't one. They saw me as I could
sell the shampoo and the conditioner and the makeup and everything,
and so they fixated on me, and that gave me
(09:15):
tremendous power to get my show done. And so as
we embarked on how to get this show written and created,
I used to play charades with Bill Persky and Sam Denoff,
who had won a couple of Emmys for The Dick
Van Dyke Show. And so I said to them ABC
wants to do a show with me, and we're looking
for writers. Would you ever consider writing a show about
(09:37):
a girl? Because they'd only written guy shows? And they
said that would be great. We'd love to talk about it.
Mike Nichols had cast me in Barefoot in London. They
came to London to see my opening night and then
they decided to do it, and so they wrote the
pilot and when it's sold, they weren't willing to sign
(09:57):
up for five years. Nobody really wants to sign the
five year contract, as you know, everybody, you know, we
cringe when we see a five year contract. And Danny
Arnold was going to be the producer. He only wanted
to sign up for two years billion sound. So the
only person who said I'll be here for five years
was me, So I became the producer. Otherwise, had they
(10:18):
said it, they probably would have been the producer. So
not only did I become the producer, I own the negative.
I own the whole thing. And that only happened because
I was the only one who said I'll do it,
and I had learned so much working from my father
at the studio. Nothing was a mystery. And you know,
in every profession, whether it's show business or law or
(10:41):
interior design or whatever it is, it's mysterious. But when
you know the language, it isn't. I mean, I knew
what a scrim was, and it with dailies where I
knew what the editing machine with the three heads looked like.
I knew what musical scoring was. I knew what a
red tape was. I knew it all so because I
had just been a buzz gone the wall, being the
(11:02):
one who carried the film from one end of the
studio to the other, and been interested and sat in
and watched people. I was very knowledgeable, and I certainly
was knowledgeable about comedy. I mean I knew comedy. I
done Barefoot in the Park, I done under the Young
Me Contry. I had done Class Menagerie. I had done
a million plays by then. I was only years old.
(11:24):
But as you know, when you start out, you're just
doing stock, you know, or three city plays. I did
two for the Seesaw in three cities. So I was
very good on the stage. I mean I had my
sea legs, so I was ready. You know. Whenever I
speak at colleges and stuff, and people asked me, you know,
how do I get started? I said, started a little theater.
(11:46):
Get into little theater, and do as many plays as
you can do, because I believe everybody gets a shot,
but not everybody gets a second shot. But if you're
ready for your first shot, I was. When I was
cast by Mike and Barefoot. I auditioned for him about
I don't know a hundred people. They gave me Marty
Milner as my partner. We said, how do you do it?
Got up on staff, Yeah, and I got the part.
(12:10):
And Mike said to me later, who are you what
have you done? And I told him, for a kid,
I was pretty seasoned and so I was ready. So
when I came back from Barefoot, I was really strong.
I've been a year there and I was very strong,
And so by strong, I mean not scared, knowing how
to do it and trusting my instincts. I love working
(12:33):
with actors. I love being a part of a company,
and we had a great company. Ted Bessel was as
a propos of what you said about, you know, being
in the theater. I always tell people when they're younger,
I say do anything, as I don't have a lot
of pride about what you do. Don't say no to anything.
You've got to put that energy out there and give
it up, you know what I mean. Now, I know
(12:53):
that the world was much smaller than it is now.
Now there's so many shows. There's too many shows. There's
no way we can have everything be good. I mean,
there's just too much content out there, and and everybody's
chasing the same actress, everybody's chasing the same writers. And
for you, back then per Sky and these famous writers,
I'm imagining that the television landscape was very finite back then,
(13:14):
so finding good writers there weren't a lot of them
were there right right now? They weren't. No, they were
pretty stellar. The show was that good because they were
so good as you. Danny Arnold later created Barney Miller,
which is a fantastic show, and Billy went on to
do Kayton Alley and a whole lot of very good
women shows. He got to become a real guru for
(13:37):
women shows. They were very gifted people, and they the
thing is that they would rewrite everything. You know, we'd
get a script and it would be kind of so so,
but it had a good premise, and they rewrite the
hell out of it, bring it back to the table,
and it was fantastic. And then the person whose name
was on it would win an Emmy for it. And
then somebody like you would call and say, is this
(13:57):
the same Joe Blow that you had? Because his is
not very good. Our guys had completely redone it. Actress
and activist Marlowe Thomas Her push for equal rights was
part of a larger conversation about gender equality in the seventies.
(14:18):
Feminism was also a heated topic in my two thousand
twelve conversation with author Erica Jong and her daughter Molly Jong. Fast.
I think that women who are fourteen fifteen are in
the most difficult position they have ever been in modern society.
What do you think about I mean, I agree, I
think there's a lot of sexuality. I think it's not
(14:40):
explained to young girls in a way very confusing Molly.
But I think that's a legacy of the feminist movement.
I mean, we said we want a legacy of the
feminist movement. It is a legacy, and here I really
feel fierce. It is the legacy of a distortion of
women's desire for equal rights. Equal riots are not platforms,
(15:02):
shoots and naked clothes because but you can't blow up
an atom bomb and then choose how it's going to go.
Here more of my conversation with Erica Jong and Molly
young Fast at Here's the Thing dot Org. After the break,
Marlowe Thomas explains why she went to New York to
(15:22):
study acting with Lee Strasburg after her success on TV.
I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing.
(15:44):
As executive producer and star of That Girl, Marlowe Thomas
worked closely with the writers to make her character and
Marie more believable. Yeah, it's a regular company. You know.
You sit around and say, let's do an arc where
she's looking for a job and she gets these four jobs,
and let's do an arc where her father wants to
(16:05):
move back home, and you know, and so you you
talk about the arc, and and then we'd read, have
a table read, and and everybody would give their comments.
There were very few times where, you know, there were
any huge debates. You know, I've always felt about story
that what's right always wins. You know. The first year
(16:28):
was a little difficult because I was the only girl
on the staff. You know, they staffed the show. I
didn't staff the show. I didn't know any writers. I
was a kid. How would I know writers. So they
staffed the show with a lot of terrific guy writers,
in which I would say, I don't think a girl
would say that to her father, or I don't know
that's the way a girl would end an argument with
her boyfriend. So we'd have these debates. So finally Danny Arnold,
(16:51):
who was one of the smartest guys in the world, said,
you know what we need. We need a female story editor.
You can't be the only girl in the room and
so the female story editor came on, and that was
heaven because she was able from her expertise and her
ability to write, to say, you know, let's go this way.
The only real debate we ever had was they wanted
(17:13):
to be a wedding for the last show. Clara wanted
a wedding. ABC wanted a wedding. The producers wanted a wedding.
And I said, we can't do a wedding. We can't
end the show with a wedding. If we end the
show with a wedding. This audience, which has followed this
character for five years, she's independent, she doesn't want to
(17:34):
get married, she's not sure she wants to get married,
she wants a career. We've had so many of those conversations.
To have a wedding is to betray them. I think
we're saying that's the only happy ending, and lots of
shows end with weddings. I don't want this show to
end with a wedding. And that was a problem. That
was the only one. And the interesting thing is, I mean,
(17:56):
obviously they let me have it that way. And then
a couple of years later, Billy and Sambo said to me,
that was such a right idea, because of it had
gone into syndication. That way, the show was over. Once
you see the show run through and you see the wedding,
then you know how the story ends. But I would
have felt it would have been a wrong message to
(18:17):
say this is the only happy ending. And Alec, I'll
tell you the mail that poured in about that. Thank you,
thank you Marlon for not copping out. Thank you, thank
you for not ending with a wedding. I mean, they
really they wanted to see it. They've been hanging onto
the fact that this is the one single girl on television.
Had never been a single girl before. There's this one
(18:38):
single girl, and she doesn't get married at the end.
And I always had a thing growing up, which is
why I did Free to Be You and Me that
every princess married the prince. That was the only happy
ending of a fairy tale. And I hope your children,
in fact, I'm going to send you Free to Be
this week. Your children should listen to Free to Be
You and Me, because there is no one happy ending.
(19:02):
Your boys and your girls will have the happy ending
that they create for themselves, not one that goes along
with what every other boy and every other girl has done.
So when the show is over, when did you go
to the actor's studio after that? Because you were in
Hollywood doing the show. So when the shows are you
moved to New York. Well, I they wanted us to
(19:23):
do two more years, and they wanted me and Chatty
to get married. I didn't want to get married, but
they said, well, they're just two two more years because
they really needed that girl. I mean, there weren't a
lot of hits on ABC, as you remember. And I said,
I just can't I was a girl when we started.
I'm a woman now. I can't be the same little
girl running around trying to get a job. I mean
it's I'm too old now, you know, I'm thirty one.
(19:44):
That decide to move on and I got a script.
It was called Crackers. It was about a woman who
was a drunk and it was a very touching story.
And I read it and I thought, I don't know
how to do this. Everything I had done had been
in this comedic vein Barefoot in the Park and all
the stuff I've done, I mean even Glass Menagerie didn't
(20:08):
have that kind of character that you had to, you know,
to play a good drunk and to have come out
of that and all the would come from the withdrawal
to bring yourself out, yourself up. I didn't know how
to do it. So I called Ellen Burson, who I
had met a few times. So she said, you got
to go to leave Strasburg. So I called him. He
said he'd meet me. I flew to New York and
(20:28):
he said to me, you're a big story. You've got
a lot of awards. What do you want to come
to class for. I said, because I only know how
to do what I know how to do, and I've
gotten by on a lot of charm and comedy instinct.
He said, don't look a gift horse in the mouth,
my dear. I said, I'm not complaining. I'm just saying,
(20:50):
that's that's what I got, That's my whole bag. So
he said okay, And after that I started doing work.
I mean, I want an Emmy is Best Dramatic Actress
playing a schizophrenic. After that that Lee Grant cast me
in It was called Nobody's Child. And I don't I'm
not saying this to toot my own horn, but I'm
(21:11):
saying this to prove what acting classes do for you.
I was up against Vanessa Redgrave, Katherine Hepburn, Jenna Rollins
and Mayor Winningham. And I won that Emmy, and I
would not have won that I had I not stopped
my career and worked on my work for three years.
(21:32):
And I say often to people, sometimes your career gets
in the way of your work. You've got to stop
and do your work and figure out what it is
you want. When I quit that girl, my father said
to me, you have to be crazy. You are the
heir apparent to Lucille Ball. I said, Daddy, I know
(21:52):
that's a great compliment, but I don't want to be
Lucille Ball. I respect Lucille Ball. She's a genius. That's
just out where I'm headed. I want to I want
to be a lot of other people now now free
to be you and me. How did that start? It
really happened because of my niece. As you as you
know and as you can hear from what I'm saying,
(22:13):
I was born a feminist. I mean I really was.
My father used to call me misindependence. As a child,
I always had an idea of what I wanted to do,
and I wanted to do a single girl on television.
I gave feminine mystique to the head of the network.
I was obviously always going in that direction. And and
when I was doing that, girl, I got a lot
of mail from young women that was shocking. I get
(22:36):
a letter from a sixteen year old girl who said,
I'm pregnant. I can't tell my father. Where can I go?
I'm twenty two years old and might have two children
and my husband beats me up. Where could I go?
So I said to my secretaries we called them at
the time, I had two of them. I said, I
don't know where the hell is somebody going in Duluth
if they're pregnant. Where does somebody go in Salt Lake
(22:58):
City if they're being beaten up? As I've looked around,
and we looked around, there wasn't any place. There were
no legal advisors. There's no place for a woman or
a girl to go for safety or counsel or anything
which politicized me. That's how I met Gloria Steinem and
all these women and created the Misfoundation for women. All
(23:19):
that happened because of the mail I got, because there
was no place for women to go. But then my
sister had a baby, the first grandchild in our family,
and she was about four and a half or so,
and I was reading the books in her bedroom and
they were all the thing about the the boys do this,
and the girls do that, and the Princess Mary is
the prince at the end of the thing. And I
(23:40):
said to my sister, this is such rubbish. It took
us thirty years to get over this. You gotta get
her something else. So I went to the bookstore to
find something else, and there wasn't anything. So I decided
to do one on my own. So I created Free
to Be You and Me for her. I really had
no intentionive of becoming a big franchise. I just wanted
(24:01):
to do something that would have stories for boys and
girls that said they could be anything they wanted to be.
That it would be non racist and non sexist. And
so I got together with friends like shel Silverstein and
Herb Gardener and and Clei Band who had done the
music and lyrics for chorus Line, and Patty Chayevsky, he
was a friend of Herbies, and a bunch of people
(24:22):
we sat around and said, I said, okay, let's rewrite
our childhood. What would you have liked to have heard
when you were a kid, and her gardener said, I
would have liked to have heard that it was okay
for a boy to cry and that it wasn't sissy.
And Carol Hall wrote that wonderful song, It's all Right
to Cry, which has become a classic, and we got
Rosie Greer to sing it, which was great, and then
(24:44):
I and then I said, I want there to be
a story where the princess does not marry the prince
at the end and goes on to her own life,
and and she's not a blonde, she's a brunette like
me with olive skin. We did that one. We did Atlanta,
which she runs in the race and chooses her own life.
So we rewrote all the things and the company was
(25:06):
called Bill Records at the time, you know, I was
a big shot, and so they made the record and
Alan Alda directed the written pieces that Mel Brooks to
play one of the babies with me, that the two
babies who don't know who's a boy and who's a girl,
and Mel and Carl Reiner wrote it. It It was hilariously funny.
They way we did the whole thing, and he said,
you know, you're not going to sell more than fifteen
(25:27):
thousand records. I said, that's okay. We're not doing this
for the money. We want to change the world, one
five year old at a time. Well, it went gold,
and it went platinum, and then we did the book
and it wasn't number one on the best seller lists
that we did the special one at Emmy and the Peabody.
I mean, it's just because there's been nothing like it.
And just last week it was inducted into the Library
(25:48):
of Congress with albums along with Janet Jackson, Kermit the Frog,
and Thomas Edison, of all people. So when an idea
is right and it wasn't, you know, I didn't write
the pieces. I I conceived the idea and assigned the pieces.
But I'm not that kind of writer. I couldn't write
(26:09):
a song. But you know, Alec, I'm sure you feel
this in your work. If something comes organically from you,
as that girl did, as Free to Be did, is
something you really believe and you want to do. It
does touch other people, you know, It isn't like, oh,
I think it would be really commercial. If I did
a show about this, that's probably not going to be successful.
(26:31):
But if it comes out of your own desire to
write or wrong, or change the world, or express this
thing that's so on fire inside of you that has
a very good chance I believe of being successful. Actress
and activist Marlowe Thomas. This is It's all Right to Cry,
(26:53):
sung by Rosie Greer from Free to Be You and Me.
That's right, Rosie Greer, the NFL defensive tackle. It's all right, cry, Ryan,
get the fat out all of you. It's all right cry.
(27:13):
It might make you feel better when we come back.
Marlowe Thomas talks about her forty year marriage to talk
show host Phil Donohue. If you're enjoying this conversation, tell
a friend and be sure to follow Here's the Thing
(27:35):
on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening
to Here's the Thing. For much of the seventies, Marlowe
Thomas was a proud single woman with no interest in
getting married, and then a guest appearance on a daytime
(27:57):
talk show in changed everything. I just never wanted to
be married, you know, it just wasn't for me. I
I had an idea of what I wanted to do.
I wanted to go to London and do a play.
I wanted to be free to take any opportunity that
and I don't mean in a romantic way. I had
(28:17):
a lot of fabulous boyfriends, but I just I just
wanted to experience so much. And my husband got married
at twenty one, and he said to me one day,
how the hell did you have the guts not to
get married early? I said, because I'm a girl. I
knew damn well, if I got married, I'd be responsible
for the babies, for the house, for the husband, for
(28:39):
the everything I grew up with. That I know. I'm
of a Lebanese family and an Italian family, and there
are a lot like the Irish, as you and phil are.
You know. The mother runs the ruse. She takes care
of the children, and she has a thousand of them.
My father's one of ten, my mother's one of five.
My mother gave up her career and followed my father
around the country and really supported him in his career,
(29:02):
and that was her choice. I looked at that choice
and said, that's not for me. I wanted to be
my father. I wanted to be on stage. I used
to see my father in the Sands Hotel, in Las Vegas.
In his eyes would be shining and he was having
a ball and so happy. And that was it. I
I think I discovered what you say you're discovering now.
(29:25):
I discovered work made me happy. It made me happy
and my husband. In the last about six years, I
did a play off Broadway and to play on Broadway.
One was Elane May on Broadway and one was Joja
Petrol off Broadway. And Phil said to me, you're so
happy when you do a play. As far as I've
been certain, you could do a play every year, I'm
(29:45):
the happiest when I'm on stage. And so I made
that decision. I hadn't expected to meet Phil Um. It
was beyond my control. It's like a gag. I mean
he walked in the green room and it was a
shampoo commercial. I mean, his big blue eyes and that
shock a white hair, and I thought, oh my god.
(30:08):
And I was dating like three men at the time.
Phil said the same thing. He said, I I walked
down the hall after her, and I thought, my god,
she's a bad thought. And then we flirted for an
hour on his show. He asked me out the next night,
and that was it. But what change meaning? You've said
(30:28):
in interviews that you had a couple of different types
of boyfriends who had the hunky boyfriend. You know, you
had the leading man boyfriend, then you had the smart,
funny boyfriend to keep you interested. Well, you're very right.
My comment was that I, you know, the the you know,
the gorgeous guy, the hunk and everything. That guy was,
(30:49):
you know, a sexy turn on. And the other guy,
he was so smart that he taught me things. I
was very attracted to men like that who kind of
you know, just taught me about business or taught me
about life, who were just very smart, which the hunky
guy didn't really have that. And this was the first
time I met a man who had it all. Phil
(31:12):
was hunky and sexy and real smart, and it just
was it was a great package. And so at first,
the first thing that brings you together is the hunky,
sexy part. And then the more I got to know him,
just so wise and he always does the right thing.
He always ends up with the right spot. And you know,
(31:32):
Phil moved his show, his show, his whole show, all
the producers and everything to New York. I was living
in l A. He was living in Chicago, and I
had a big production company, had made twelve movies for
television in a row. He had his own show, and
he was raising four boys on his own. He was
getting his boys through school. Show every day at nine am.
(31:54):
Our lives were insane, and I said to him, he said,
he wanted me to move to Chicago. And I said, look,
at this point in my career, I really can't live
in Chicago. I could live in New York or l A.
He said, I can't live in l A. I'm not interested.
He's had no offense, but I'm not interested in interviewing actors.
So we picked New York and we moved everything to
(32:15):
New York, including his show. He said, let me just
get my boys to high school, which was like another
two or three years. He got his boys where we
bought an apartment, We got married, the boys got through
high school. He moved the show and everything, and we
made a life in New York, where neither of us lived.
We bought an apartment, we bought a house in Connecticut.
We we invented a life. Now. Obviously, another enormous part
(32:39):
of your family's legacy, your dad's legacy, and your legacy,
is St. Jude's talk to me about the genesis of
that and why Memphis. My father grew up very poor,
an immigrant family. My grandparents were from Lebanon. They had
no money. They came here with all their belongings in
cloth bags and arranged marriage. Had ten babies, nine boys,
(33:01):
and a girl without a doctor hot water and her sister.
So everybody in the neighborhood. They were everybody. They were Polish, Irish, Jewish, Chinese, Italian, Lebanese, whatever,
and they never went to a doctor, and they all
had jobs on consignment. I mean it was real, real
dirt poor people. And my father had little friends who
(33:24):
died of things like influenza and appendicitis, which are manageable situations,
but they died because they never could see a doctor.
So he had a very firsthand look at the inequity
of health care in this country, and that always was
in his mind. And so when he made a promise
to St. Jude, show me a sign that I can
(33:45):
make it in my career, because he was my father
was terrified of being poor and not being able to
raise his children the way his father was. So he
was willing to give up show business if he knew
what got assigned you to something else. Anyway, he got
a sign and he can tinued on his way. And
when he got very successful and quite wealthy, he decided
(34:06):
it was time to pay back and he wanted to
build a hospital for very ill children where nobody would
be turned away, not for race or religion, and no
one would pay for anything, not treatment, travel, housing, or food.
And he picked the South because and this was a
wonderful story. My father carried this little piece of paper
(34:26):
in his pocket for many years. He read in the
paper that a black boy eight years old in Mississippi
was hit by a car. A white guy hit him
on his bike. The white guy picked him up and
tried to get him to a hospital, but no emergency
room would take him because he was black, and he died.
So my father decided, I'm putting it in the South.
(34:48):
I want the kids from the South to be able
to get here too, And so he did. And it
was the first solely integrated hospital in the South. And
we have the largest program for sickle cell We have
eight hundred sickle cell patients and we have a black, white, Hispanic.
They come from all over the world. We even have
Amish people, which so stunned me because here these people
(35:11):
won't even have a zipper. But when it comes to
saving your kid, if your childhood sick, God forbid, you'd
sell your arm to get your kids. Well, these parents
come terrified they're gonna have to sell their house, that
everything else. They don't have to sell anything. They just
have to come there and we put them up in
beautiful housing, which, by the way, I do most of
the decorating. We can put up four hundred families for years,
(35:35):
two years at a time. It's an incredible place. Well,
let me just say this to you. I want you
to tell your husband that we'd love to have him
on the show. I didn't want you together because I
feel like a show with Phil Donahue. That's four segments
we need to do four hours before. Because I respect
him and I admire him, and he's got a lot
to say. We'd love to have him on because I'm
a huge fan of your husband. And what I love
about your husband was is that his political views, though
(35:58):
they tilted in a certain in the way, they weren't partisan.
Do you think that you agree with that? Through most
of his career. Yes, he got hit in the head,
got fired from MSNBC because he opposed the war in Iraq,
and it was an interesting time for him. Here's a
guy who'd been on the air for twenty nine years
in syndication. And when I first met him, he said,
(36:19):
I've got the best job in television. And I said why.
He said, because I can say anything I want to say.
And if you don't want to run it in Detroit,
you don't have to. But I'm I'm in two d
and fifty cities, so don't run it. So he wasn't
used to any kind of censorship overview. He just did
what he wanted. He went on MSNBC and the war
(36:41):
was ramping up against Iraq, so he put on fathers
who had lost their sons, both from Israel and Palestine,
to talk about what war really does. And these are
men who were opposite each other and in their beliefs,
but they had both lost sons in these wars. And
he had on all the people that were against the war,
(37:02):
the Colin Powells and all the people, and they were
all all the generals who were against the war. And
NBC told his producer, you've got to get filled to
get off the war thing. You know, NBC is run
by General Electric. General Electric makes things that go boom.
So he didn't stop because he felt it was not
(37:24):
only he wasn't being defiant, he was being a journalist.
He was saying he was showing the other side of this,
and all the other shows everywhere actually were for the war.
I just want to say this to you, and that
is you probably should go back on TV because you'd
still be the funniest, most sophisticated, gorgeous woman on TV.
(37:45):
Get that line from Lucy to you and Mary Tyler
Moore hovering around the same time onto Murphy Brown, those great,
great leading ladies of network television. God, I would love
to work with you one day. What a joy. Thank you.
We'll give me a call, Alec, anytime, we will call you.
This was fun. Thank you, my very best to you,
and thank you thanks for having me. My thanks to
(38:06):
Marlow Thomas. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's
the Thing from My Heart Radio. We're produced by Kathleen Russo,
Carrie Donohue and Zach McNeice. Our engineer is Frank Imperial.
Thanks for listening.
This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Thing from My Heart Radio. Over the course of her
illustrious career, Marlo Thomas has broken barriers for women. As
an award winning actress, Marlowe became a household name from
her portrayal of Anne Marie, the lead in the television
(00:23):
show That Girl, a woman who in the late sixties
wanted a career more than a family. An outspoken feminist,
(00:43):
marlow then used her fame to launch Free to Be
You and Me, which was first an album than a book,
and eventually an Emmy and Peabody Award winning TV show
for children that challenged gender norms and became a touchstone
for a general ration of feminists. Her best selling books
(01:13):
include a memoir about growing up the adored daughter of
TV star Danny Thomas, and just last year, she and
her husband Phil Donahue released a book and podcast of
marriage advice called from interviews with other happy, long lasting couples.
As a philanthropist, she's continued her family's support for St.
(01:37):
Jude's Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, which her father founded
in nineteen sixty two. All in all, quite a life
for that girl growing up in Beverly Hills. Marlowe says
she and her siblings spent a lot of time on
the set of The Danny Thomas Show, her father's TV series,
which ran for eleven seasons between nineteen fifty three to
(02:00):
nineteen sixty four. We all used to work at the
studio in the summer, you know, running film back and forth,
and when we could drive, we'd drop off scripts. So
we were kind of like interns, and my dad would
pay us an allowance to keep us off the street.
And my dad was a kind of guy, and I
have a feeling you're this way. He loved having his
(02:22):
kids around him. He just loved it. And when we
were children, we were allowed to sit in on writers meetings.
We'd sit on the floor and the writers would all
be talking about coming up stories or my dad's act
in Las Vegas, and I would laugh and Dad would say, Oh,
my kid loves it. Why did you like that, honey?
What was funny about that to you? He was interested.
(02:43):
And then sometimes I'd say something and he'd say, my
kids are so funny. They are funnier than I am.
So he gave us this feeling. He kind of empowered us.
I mean, I always thought I was brilliant, and I
have no idea if I am or I am not,
but I think I am because he said I was,
and he did that for all of us. He gave
us that. It's like Lauren Michaels would always say that
(03:03):
his kids were like his focus group. Yeah. I used
to say to Lauren, you know, you're a couple of
generations removed from some of the musical acts that are
starring on the show. Now, his daughter Sophie is older.
Now she's graduating college. But when Sophie was a teenager
and going to school in New York, I'd say to Lauren,
how do you determine who the musical acts are on
the show? And he'd say, who's ever in Sophie's iPod?
(03:26):
That's right, he just went to music stremely to see
who she was listening to. But tell people how the studio,
what studio was he at? It was a Desilu, Yeah,
and that was like what like Sunset Gower somewhere in
like Hollywood. Yeah, it was below Sunset on Gower. But
you were born in Michigan. Yeah, but for five minutes,
(03:47):
I was born in Detroit. Now, why was the family
in Detroit. My mom had a radio show there, the
Sweet Singer of Sweet Songs, and my dad came on
as an announcer and they fell in love. And then
he wanted to go to ship Cargo with the bigger nightclubs,
where he was really a nightclub performer. So she had
to make the decision in those days, give up the
show and go with the guy she loved to Chicago.
(04:10):
She got pregnant and that was the decision, and off
they went to Chicago for a couple of years, and
then a blast Vogo was coming through on whatever that was,
that Pacific Railroad. He represented Sinatra and Danny Kay and
Judy Garland, so he was very well known. And he
was told that there was a great comic he should
(04:30):
stop and see on his way to New York, and
he saw my father and he signed him up and
brought him to Hollywood right away. And he said to
my father, you know you're a star. You should come
to come to l Ay. That's a pattern of your family.
The women in your family marrying men that they meet
on radio shows and TV shows. Right, So you're you're
out there in the fifties, you moved to California. Where
(04:51):
did you go to school out there, Beverly Hills High School. No,
Marry Amount went to Mary. She went to a Catholic school. Yeah,
your father is an old school Lebanese and went to Mary.
My husband went to Notre Dame. So we were raised
the same way. Actually, and he's from Cleveland and I'm
from Beverly Hills. But we have the same upbringing, really
strict Catholic upbringing. Yeah. Yeah. And when the time comes
(05:14):
for you to launch your own career, you start that
girl in nineteen six and you're a young woman. You're
very young. Right when I had done a pilot. You know,
everything in this business is wonderfully progressive. I had bumped
around doing seventy seven Sunset Strip and Dobie Gillis and
(05:37):
all these terrible shows. Lauren Baby did Doobie Gillis did
do Mr. Red. Not that bad, but pretty bad. I
did all those shows. I played a Chinese girl on Bonanza.
Nobody knew what to do with me. I was a
Chinese girl. I played the Hawaiian girl. I played an
Arabian girl. They never saw me as the girl next door.
You wouldn't get cast as the Chinese girl now right,
(05:58):
but with my coloring, I'm out of action, dark hair,
dark eyes, so they could only they never saw me
as the girl next door. But I was cast in
a pilot at Universal called twos Company, which was an
adorable show about a young couple, and it didn't sell.
But the head of the network called me, Edgar Sherrick,
and he said, Claire, All almost bought the show because
(06:20):
they think you can be a TV star, so we'd
like to talk to you. So I went in. I
was disappointed the show didn't sell because I loved it,
and they said, we want to do a show starring you.
And they gave me a whole bunch of scripts to read.
And I called him up and I said, all the
shows you've given me to read, the girl is the
wife of somebody, the secretary of somebody, the daughter of somebody.
(06:43):
Have you ever thought about doing a show with a girl?
Is that somebody? And he said, would anybody watch a
show like that? I said, I think so. When I
gave him a book Feminine Mystique, I said, read this.
He called me up and he said, this is what's
going to happen to my wife. And it did, actually,
so we built a show based on that. A girl
like me graduated from college. I didn't want to get married,
wanted to be an actress, want to move to the
(07:04):
big city. And everybody said it wouldn't succeed. And that
first night, Wow, it got a forty share on ABC. Yeah,
and all of a sudden, I was the ultimate girl
next door, which was so funny because I could never
get cast like that. And then I became the girl
next door so much in people's minds that it's very
hard for me to play meaner people. The murderous. Yeah,
(07:25):
I have a script for you where you play a
woman that murders people. That's what I want. I'm having
trouble raising money for the film that us and I'll
do it for nothing. A lot of the financiers, a
lot of the investors I'm talking to, aren't buying you
as a murderous but I'll work on it. I can
do it. But let me ask you this. Obviously, in
the sixties, the looming cultural reality is the Vietnam War,
(07:47):
and a lot of programming and a lot of music
and things are things that help us to forget and feminism,
in my mind, doesn't really get rolling till the seventies,
and Your and Your show is over by seventy one.
We're gonna talk later on about Free to Be You
and Me. But at the moment that you do the show,
you were doing Barefoot in the Park in London, right.
And I often tell people that when a company is
(08:11):
kind of mounting up their slate, it's a relatively new company.
So when HBO decides it wants to do original program
and they get Sarah Jessica to do Sex in the City,
they get Jimmiguan Delfini and David Chase to do the Sopranos,
and they pay these people a lot of money to
stay with the show and do the hit show for
a long long time. And really, ABC was a fledgling
(08:32):
network in the sixties. I mean there was CBS, there
was NBC, and ABC was like the redheaded step child
behind the two of them, and Leonard Goldberg and all
those people were building the company during that time. Did
you feel that was a part of their faith in
you and their needed you were part of building that network. Yeah,
money doesn't talk, it it speaks obscenities. Right, Claire Ale
(08:53):
was willing to put up all the money from my show.
They wanted a woman, a young woman, to sell shampoo,
and I was there girl. I mean, there wasn't another
girl they could see yet, and I'm sure there were many,
but there wasn't one. They saw me as I could
sell the shampoo and the conditioner and the makeup and everything,
and so they fixated on me, and that gave me
(09:15):
tremendous power to get my show done. And so as
we embarked on how to get this show written and created,
I used to play charades with Bill Persky and Sam Denoff,
who had won a couple of Emmys for The Dick
Van Dyke Show. And so I said to them ABC
wants to do a show with me, and we're looking
for writers. Would you ever consider writing a show about
(09:37):
a girl? Because they'd only written guy shows? And they
said that would be great. We'd love to talk about it.
Mike Nichols had cast me in Barefoot in London. They
came to London to see my opening night and then
they decided to do it, and so they wrote the
pilot and when it's sold, they weren't willing to sign
(09:57):
up for five years. Nobody really wants to sign the
five year contract, as you know, everybody, you know, we
cringe when we see a five year contract. And Danny
Arnold was going to be the producer. He only wanted
to sign up for two years billion sound. So the
only person who said I'll be here for five years
was me, So I became the producer. Otherwise, had they
(10:18):
said it, they probably would have been the producer. So
not only did I become the producer, I own the negative.
I own the whole thing. And that only happened because
I was the only one who said I'll do it,
and I had learned so much working from my father
at the studio. Nothing was a mystery. And you know,
in every profession, whether it's show business or law or
(10:41):
interior design or whatever it is, it's mysterious. But when
you know the language, it isn't. I mean, I knew
what a scrim was, and it with dailies where I
knew what the editing machine with the three heads looked like.
I knew what musical scoring was. I knew what a
red tape was. I knew it all so because I
had just been a buzz gone the wall, being the
(11:02):
one who carried the film from one end of the
studio to the other, and been interested and sat in
and watched people. I was very knowledgeable, and I certainly
was knowledgeable about comedy. I mean I knew comedy. I
done Barefoot in the Park, I done under the Young
Me Contry. I had done Class Menagerie. I had done
a million plays by then. I was only years old.
(11:24):
But as you know, when you start out, you're just
doing stock, you know, or three city plays. I did
two for the Seesaw in three cities. So I was
very good on the stage. I mean I had my
sea legs, so I was ready. You know. Whenever I
speak at colleges and stuff, and people asked me, you know,
how do I get started? I said, started a little theater.
(11:46):
Get into little theater, and do as many plays as
you can do, because I believe everybody gets a shot,
but not everybody gets a second shot. But if you're
ready for your first shot, I was. When I was
cast by Mike and Barefoot. I auditioned for him about
I don't know a hundred people. They gave me Marty
Milner as my partner. We said, how do you do it?
Got up on staff, Yeah, and I got the part.
(12:10):
And Mike said to me later, who are you what
have you done? And I told him, for a kid,
I was pretty seasoned and so I was ready. So
when I came back from Barefoot, I was really strong.
I've been a year there and I was very strong,
And so by strong, I mean not scared, knowing how
to do it and trusting my instincts. I love working
(12:33):
with actors. I love being a part of a company,
and we had a great company. Ted Bessel was as
a propos of what you said about, you know, being
in the theater. I always tell people when they're younger,
I say do anything, as I don't have a lot
of pride about what you do. Don't say no to anything.
You've got to put that energy out there and give
it up, you know what I mean. Now, I know
(12:53):
that the world was much smaller than it is now.
Now there's so many shows. There's too many shows. There's
no way we can have everything be good. I mean,
there's just too much content out there, and and everybody's
chasing the same actress, everybody's chasing the same writers. And
for you, back then per Sky and these famous writers,
I'm imagining that the television landscape was very finite back then,
(13:14):
so finding good writers there weren't a lot of them
were there right right now? They weren't. No, they were
pretty stellar. The show was that good because they were
so good as you. Danny Arnold later created Barney Miller,
which is a fantastic show, and Billy went on to
do Kayton Alley and a whole lot of very good
women shows. He got to become a real guru for
(13:37):
women shows. They were very gifted people, and they the
thing is that they would rewrite everything. You know, we'd
get a script and it would be kind of so so,
but it had a good premise, and they rewrite the
hell out of it, bring it back to the table,
and it was fantastic. And then the person whose name
was on it would win an Emmy for it. And
then somebody like you would call and say, is this
(13:57):
the same Joe Blow that you had? Because his is
not very good. Our guys had completely redone it. Actress
and activist Marlowe Thomas Her push for equal rights was
part of a larger conversation about gender equality in the seventies.
(14:18):
Feminism was also a heated topic in my two thousand
twelve conversation with author Erica Jong and her daughter Molly Jong. Fast.
I think that women who are fourteen fifteen are in
the most difficult position they have ever been in modern society.
What do you think about I mean, I agree, I
think there's a lot of sexuality. I think it's not
(14:40):
explained to young girls in a way very confusing Molly.
But I think that's a legacy of the feminist movement.
I mean, we said we want a legacy of the
feminist movement. It is a legacy, and here I really
feel fierce. It is the legacy of a distortion of
women's desire for equal rights. Equal riots are not platforms,
(15:02):
shoots and naked clothes because but you can't blow up
an atom bomb and then choose how it's going to go.
Here more of my conversation with Erica Jong and Molly
young Fast at Here's the Thing dot Org. After the break,
Marlowe Thomas explains why she went to New York to
(15:22):
study acting with Lee Strasburg after her success on TV.
I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing.
(15:44):
As executive producer and star of That Girl, Marlowe Thomas
worked closely with the writers to make her character and
Marie more believable. Yeah, it's a regular company. You know.
You sit around and say, let's do an arc where
she's looking for a job and she gets these four jobs,
and let's do an arc where her father wants to
(16:05):
move back home, and you know, and so you you
talk about the arc, and and then we'd read, have
a table read, and and everybody would give their comments.
There were very few times where, you know, there were
any huge debates. You know, I've always felt about story
that what's right always wins. You know. The first year
(16:28):
was a little difficult because I was the only girl
on the staff. You know, they staffed the show. I
didn't staff the show. I didn't know any writers. I
was a kid. How would I know writers. So they
staffed the show with a lot of terrific guy writers,
in which I would say, I don't think a girl
would say that to her father, or I don't know
that's the way a girl would end an argument with
her boyfriend. So we'd have these debates. So finally Danny Arnold,
(16:51):
who was one of the smartest guys in the world, said,
you know what we need. We need a female story editor.
You can't be the only girl in the room and
so the female story editor came on, and that was
heaven because she was able from her expertise and her
ability to write, to say, you know, let's go this way.
The only real debate we ever had was they wanted
(17:13):
to be a wedding for the last show. Clara wanted
a wedding. ABC wanted a wedding. The producers wanted a wedding.
And I said, we can't do a wedding. We can't
end the show with a wedding. If we end the
show with a wedding. This audience, which has followed this
character for five years, she's independent, she doesn't want to
(17:34):
get married, she's not sure she wants to get married,
she wants a career. We've had so many of those conversations.
To have a wedding is to betray them. I think
we're saying that's the only happy ending, and lots of
shows end with weddings. I don't want this show to
end with a wedding. And that was a problem. That
was the only one. And the interesting thing is, I mean,
(17:56):
obviously they let me have it that way. And then
a couple of years later, Billy and Sambo said to me,
that was such a right idea, because of it had
gone into syndication. That way, the show was over. Once
you see the show run through and you see the wedding,
then you know how the story ends. But I would
have felt it would have been a wrong message to
(18:17):
say this is the only happy ending. And Alec, I'll
tell you the mail that poured in about that. Thank you,
thank you Marlon for not copping out. Thank you, thank
you for not ending with a wedding. I mean, they
really they wanted to see it. They've been hanging onto
the fact that this is the one single girl on television.
Had never been a single girl before. There's this one
(18:38):
single girl, and she doesn't get married at the end.
And I always had a thing growing up, which is
why I did Free to Be You and Me that
every princess married the prince. That was the only happy
ending of a fairy tale. And I hope your children,
in fact, I'm going to send you Free to Be
this week. Your children should listen to Free to Be
You and Me, because there is no one happy ending.
(19:02):
Your boys and your girls will have the happy ending
that they create for themselves, not one that goes along
with what every other boy and every other girl has done.
So when the show is over, when did you go
to the actor's studio after that? Because you were in
Hollywood doing the show. So when the shows are you
moved to New York. Well, I they wanted us to
(19:23):
do two more years, and they wanted me and Chatty
to get married. I didn't want to get married, but
they said, well, they're just two two more years because
they really needed that girl. I mean, there weren't a
lot of hits on ABC, as you remember. And I said,
I just can't I was a girl when we started.
I'm a woman now. I can't be the same little
girl running around trying to get a job. I mean
it's I'm too old now, you know, I'm thirty one.
(19:44):
That decide to move on and I got a script.
It was called Crackers. It was about a woman who
was a drunk and it was a very touching story.
And I read it and I thought, I don't know
how to do this. Everything I had done had been
in this comedic vein Barefoot in the Park and all
the stuff I've done, I mean even Glass Menagerie didn't
(20:08):
have that kind of character that you had to, you know,
to play a good drunk and to have come out
of that and all the would come from the withdrawal
to bring yourself out, yourself up. I didn't know how
to do it. So I called Ellen Burson, who I
had met a few times. So she said, you got
to go to leave Strasburg. So I called him. He
said he'd meet me. I flew to New York and
(20:28):
he said to me, you're a big story. You've got
a lot of awards. What do you want to come
to class for. I said, because I only know how
to do what I know how to do, and I've
gotten by on a lot of charm and comedy instinct.
He said, don't look a gift horse in the mouth,
my dear. I said, I'm not complaining. I'm just saying,
(20:50):
that's that's what I got, That's my whole bag. So
he said okay, And after that I started doing work.
I mean, I want an Emmy is Best Dramatic Actress
playing a schizophrenic. After that that Lee Grant cast me
in It was called Nobody's Child. And I don't I'm
not saying this to toot my own horn, but I'm
(21:11):
saying this to prove what acting classes do for you.
I was up against Vanessa Redgrave, Katherine Hepburn, Jenna Rollins
and Mayor Winningham. And I won that Emmy, and I
would not have won that I had I not stopped
my career and worked on my work for three years.
(21:32):
And I say often to people, sometimes your career gets
in the way of your work. You've got to stop
and do your work and figure out what it is
you want. When I quit that girl, my father said
to me, you have to be crazy. You are the
heir apparent to Lucille Ball. I said, Daddy, I know
(21:52):
that's a great compliment, but I don't want to be
Lucille Ball. I respect Lucille Ball. She's a genius. That's
just out where I'm headed. I want to I want
to be a lot of other people now now free
to be you and me. How did that start? It
really happened because of my niece. As you as you
know and as you can hear from what I'm saying,
(22:13):
I was born a feminist. I mean I really was.
My father used to call me misindependence. As a child,
I always had an idea of what I wanted to do,
and I wanted to do a single girl on television.
I gave feminine mystique to the head of the network.
I was obviously always going in that direction. And and
when I was doing that, girl, I got a lot
of mail from young women that was shocking. I get
(22:36):
a letter from a sixteen year old girl who said,
I'm pregnant. I can't tell my father. Where can I go?
I'm twenty two years old and might have two children
and my husband beats me up. Where could I go?
So I said to my secretaries we called them at
the time, I had two of them. I said, I
don't know where the hell is somebody going in Duluth
if they're pregnant. Where does somebody go in Salt Lake
(22:58):
City if they're being beaten up? As I've looked around,
and we looked around, there wasn't any place. There were
no legal advisors. There's no place for a woman or
a girl to go for safety or counsel or anything
which politicized me. That's how I met Gloria Steinem and
all these women and created the Misfoundation for women. All
(23:19):
that happened because of the mail I got, because there
was no place for women to go. But then my
sister had a baby, the first grandchild in our family,
and she was about four and a half or so,
and I was reading the books in her bedroom and
they were all the thing about the the boys do this,
and the girls do that, and the Princess Mary is
the prince at the end of the thing. And I
(23:40):
said to my sister, this is such rubbish. It took
us thirty years to get over this. You gotta get
her something else. So I went to the bookstore to
find something else, and there wasn't anything. So I decided
to do one on my own. So I created Free
to Be You and Me for her. I really had
no intentionive of becoming a big franchise. I just wanted
(24:01):
to do something that would have stories for boys and
girls that said they could be anything they wanted to be.
That it would be non racist and non sexist. And
so I got together with friends like shel Silverstein and
Herb Gardener and and Clei Band who had done the
music and lyrics for chorus Line, and Patty Chayevsky, he
was a friend of Herbies, and a bunch of people
(24:22):
we sat around and said, I said, okay, let's rewrite
our childhood. What would you have liked to have heard
when you were a kid, and her gardener said, I
would have liked to have heard that it was okay
for a boy to cry and that it wasn't sissy.
And Carol Hall wrote that wonderful song, It's all Right
to Cry, which has become a classic, and we got
Rosie Greer to sing it, which was great, and then
(24:44):
I and then I said, I want there to be
a story where the princess does not marry the prince
at the end and goes on to her own life,
and and she's not a blonde, she's a brunette like
me with olive skin. We did that one. We did Atlanta,
which she runs in the race and chooses her own life.
So we rewrote all the things and the company was
(25:06):
called Bill Records at the time, you know, I was
a big shot, and so they made the record and
Alan Alda directed the written pieces that Mel Brooks to
play one of the babies with me, that the two
babies who don't know who's a boy and who's a girl,
and Mel and Carl Reiner wrote it. It It was hilariously funny.
They way we did the whole thing, and he said,
you know, you're not going to sell more than fifteen
(25:27):
thousand records. I said, that's okay. We're not doing this
for the money. We want to change the world, one
five year old at a time. Well, it went gold,
and it went platinum, and then we did the book
and it wasn't number one on the best seller lists
that we did the special one at Emmy and the Peabody.
I mean, it's just because there's been nothing like it.
And just last week it was inducted into the Library
(25:48):
of Congress with albums along with Janet Jackson, Kermit the Frog,
and Thomas Edison, of all people. So when an idea
is right and it wasn't, you know, I didn't write
the pieces. I I conceived the idea and assigned the pieces.
But I'm not that kind of writer. I couldn't write
(26:09):
a song. But you know, Alec, I'm sure you feel
this in your work. If something comes organically from you,
as that girl did, as Free to Be did, is
something you really believe and you want to do. It
does touch other people, you know, It isn't like, oh,
I think it would be really commercial. If I did
a show about this, that's probably not going to be successful.
(26:31):
But if it comes out of your own desire to
write or wrong, or change the world, or express this
thing that's so on fire inside of you that has
a very good chance I believe of being successful. Actress
and activist Marlowe Thomas. This is It's all Right to Cry,
(26:53):
sung by Rosie Greer from Free to Be You and Me.
That's right, Rosie Greer, the NFL defensive tackle. It's all right, cry, Ryan,
get the fat out all of you. It's all right cry.
(27:13):
It might make you feel better when we come back.
Marlowe Thomas talks about her forty year marriage to talk
show host Phil Donohue. If you're enjoying this conversation, tell
a friend and be sure to follow Here's the Thing
(27:35):
on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever
you get your podcasts. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening
to Here's the Thing. For much of the seventies, Marlowe
Thomas was a proud single woman with no interest in
getting married, and then a guest appearance on a daytime
(27:57):
talk show in changed everything. I just never wanted to
be married, you know, it just wasn't for me. I
I had an idea of what I wanted to do.
I wanted to go to London and do a play.
I wanted to be free to take any opportunity that
and I don't mean in a romantic way. I had
(28:17):
a lot of fabulous boyfriends, but I just I just
wanted to experience so much. And my husband got married
at twenty one, and he said to me one day,
how the hell did you have the guts not to
get married early? I said, because I'm a girl. I
knew damn well, if I got married, I'd be responsible
for the babies, for the house, for the husband, for
(28:39):
the everything I grew up with. That I know. I'm
of a Lebanese family and an Italian family, and there
are a lot like the Irish, as you and phil are.
You know. The mother runs the ruse. She takes care
of the children, and she has a thousand of them.
My father's one of ten, my mother's one of five.
My mother gave up her career and followed my father
around the country and really supported him in his career,
(29:02):
and that was her choice. I looked at that choice
and said, that's not for me. I wanted to be
my father. I wanted to be on stage. I used
to see my father in the Sands Hotel, in Las Vegas.
In his eyes would be shining and he was having
a ball and so happy. And that was it. I
I think I discovered what you say you're discovering now.
(29:25):
I discovered work made me happy. It made me happy
and my husband. In the last about six years, I
did a play off Broadway and to play on Broadway.
One was Elane May on Broadway and one was Joja
Petrol off Broadway. And Phil said to me, you're so
happy when you do a play. As far as I've
been certain, you could do a play every year, I'm
(29:45):
the happiest when I'm on stage. And so I made
that decision. I hadn't expected to meet Phil Um. It
was beyond my control. It's like a gag. I mean
he walked in the green room and it was a
shampoo commercial. I mean, his big blue eyes and that
shock a white hair, and I thought, oh my god.
(30:08):
And I was dating like three men at the time.
Phil said the same thing. He said, I I walked
down the hall after her, and I thought, my god,
she's a bad thought. And then we flirted for an
hour on his show. He asked me out the next night,
and that was it. But what change meaning? You've said
(30:28):
in interviews that you had a couple of different types
of boyfriends who had the hunky boyfriend. You know, you
had the leading man boyfriend, then you had the smart,
funny boyfriend to keep you interested. Well, you're very right.
My comment was that I, you know, the the you know,
the gorgeous guy, the hunk and everything. That guy was,
(30:49):
you know, a sexy turn on. And the other guy,
he was so smart that he taught me things. I
was very attracted to men like that who kind of
you know, just taught me about business or taught me
about life, who were just very smart, which the hunky
guy didn't really have that. And this was the first
time I met a man who had it all. Phil
(31:12):
was hunky and sexy and real smart, and it just
was it was a great package. And so at first,
the first thing that brings you together is the hunky,
sexy part. And then the more I got to know him,
just so wise and he always does the right thing.
He always ends up with the right spot. And you know,
(31:32):
Phil moved his show, his show, his whole show, all
the producers and everything to New York. I was living
in l A. He was living in Chicago, and I
had a big production company, had made twelve movies for
television in a row. He had his own show, and
he was raising four boys on his own. He was
getting his boys through school. Show every day at nine am.
(31:54):
Our lives were insane, and I said to him, he said,
he wanted me to move to Chicago. And I said, look,
at this point in my career, I really can't live
in Chicago. I could live in New York or l A.
He said, I can't live in l A. I'm not interested.
He's had no offense, but I'm not interested in interviewing actors.
So we picked New York and we moved everything to
(32:15):
New York, including his show. He said, let me just
get my boys to high school, which was like another
two or three years. He got his boys where we
bought an apartment, We got married, the boys got through
high school. He moved the show and everything, and we
made a life in New York, where neither of us lived.
We bought an apartment, we bought a house in Connecticut.
We we invented a life. Now. Obviously, another enormous part
(32:39):
of your family's legacy, your dad's legacy, and your legacy,
is St. Jude's talk to me about the genesis of
that and why Memphis. My father grew up very poor,
an immigrant family. My grandparents were from Lebanon. They had
no money. They came here with all their belongings in
cloth bags and arranged marriage. Had ten babies, nine boys,
(33:01):
and a girl without a doctor hot water and her sister.
So everybody in the neighborhood. They were everybody. They were Polish, Irish, Jewish, Chinese, Italian, Lebanese, whatever,
and they never went to a doctor, and they all
had jobs on consignment. I mean it was real, real
dirt poor people. And my father had little friends who
(33:24):
died of things like influenza and appendicitis, which are manageable situations,
but they died because they never could see a doctor.
So he had a very firsthand look at the inequity
of health care in this country, and that always was
in his mind. And so when he made a promise
to St. Jude, show me a sign that I can
(33:45):
make it in my career, because he was my father
was terrified of being poor and not being able to
raise his children the way his father was. So he
was willing to give up show business if he knew
what got assigned you to something else. Anyway, he got
a sign and he can tinued on his way. And
when he got very successful and quite wealthy, he decided
(34:06):
it was time to pay back and he wanted to
build a hospital for very ill children where nobody would
be turned away, not for race or religion, and no
one would pay for anything, not treatment, travel, housing, or food.
And he picked the South because and this was a
wonderful story. My father carried this little piece of paper
(34:26):
in his pocket for many years. He read in the
paper that a black boy eight years old in Mississippi
was hit by a car. A white guy hit him
on his bike. The white guy picked him up and
tried to get him to a hospital, but no emergency
room would take him because he was black, and he died.
So my father decided, I'm putting it in the South.
(34:48):
I want the kids from the South to be able
to get here too, And so he did. And it
was the first solely integrated hospital in the South. And
we have the largest program for sickle cell We have
eight hundred sickle cell patients and we have a black, white, Hispanic.
They come from all over the world. We even have
Amish people, which so stunned me because here these people
(35:11):
won't even have a zipper. But when it comes to
saving your kid, if your childhood sick, God forbid, you'd
sell your arm to get your kids. Well, these parents
come terrified they're gonna have to sell their house, that
everything else. They don't have to sell anything. They just
have to come there and we put them up in
beautiful housing, which, by the way, I do most of
the decorating. We can put up four hundred families for years,
(35:35):
two years at a time. It's an incredible place. Well,
let me just say this to you. I want you
to tell your husband that we'd love to have him
on the show. I didn't want you together because I
feel like a show with Phil Donahue. That's four segments
we need to do four hours before. Because I respect
him and I admire him, and he's got a lot
to say. We'd love to have him on because I'm
a huge fan of your husband. And what I love
about your husband was is that his political views, though
(35:58):
they tilted in a certain in the way, they weren't partisan.
Do you think that you agree with that? Through most
of his career. Yes, he got hit in the head,
got fired from MSNBC because he opposed the war in Iraq,
and it was an interesting time for him. Here's a
guy who'd been on the air for twenty nine years
in syndication. And when I first met him, he said,
(36:19):
I've got the best job in television. And I said why.
He said, because I can say anything I want to say.
And if you don't want to run it in Detroit,
you don't have to. But I'm I'm in two d
and fifty cities, so don't run it. So he wasn't
used to any kind of censorship overview. He just did
what he wanted. He went on MSNBC and the war
(36:41):
was ramping up against Iraq, so he put on fathers
who had lost their sons, both from Israel and Palestine,
to talk about what war really does. And these are
men who were opposite each other and in their beliefs,
but they had both lost sons in these wars. And
he had on all the people that were against the war,
(37:02):
the Colin Powells and all the people, and they were
all all the generals who were against the war. And
NBC told his producer, you've got to get filled to
get off the war thing. You know, NBC is run
by General Electric. General Electric makes things that go boom.
So he didn't stop because he felt it was not
(37:24):
only he wasn't being defiant, he was being a journalist.
He was saying he was showing the other side of this,
and all the other shows everywhere actually were for the war.
I just want to say this to you, and that
is you probably should go back on TV because you'd
still be the funniest, most sophisticated, gorgeous woman on TV.
(37:45):
Get that line from Lucy to you and Mary Tyler
Moore hovering around the same time onto Murphy Brown, those great,
great leading ladies of network television. God, I would love
to work with you one day. What a joy. Thank you.
We'll give me a call, Alec, anytime, we will call you.
This was fun. Thank you, my very best to you,
and thank you thanks for having me. My thanks to
(38:06):
Marlow Thomas. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's
the Thing from My Heart Radio. We're produced by Kathleen Russo,
Carrie Donohue and Zach McNeice. Our engineer is Frank Imperial.
Thanks for listening.
Host
Alec Baldwin
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