GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DRIVE - June 1971 THE UNDERGRADUATE - July 1971 (The Partridge Family)

My final two bookings for THE PARTRIDGE FAMILY were not back-to-back.  There had been a PARTRIDGE episode guest starring Bobby Sherman that spurred the network to order the  development of a new series to star Sherman, GETTING TOGETHER.  The spinoff was being produced by the same Bob Claver executive-produced unit at Screen Gems doing THE PARTRIDGE FAMILY and I was booked to direct several of them.  Two of those assignments fell between the two PARTRIDGES.  More of that later. 

GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DRIVE was the most situatioh driven (as opposed to character driven) episode of the seven PARTRIDGES I directed.  That’s not necessarily a bad thing.  And that didn’t really change my approach in directing the material.  I still approached each scene with the same question:  what is this scene about?  And then planned the staging (no matter how outrageous I considered it) as realistically as possible.  If that meant I couldn’t dig as deep into the motivations and emotions of the characters as I would like to -- so be it!

And what replaces character?  Slap stick!

Again are you saying, “What’s wrong with Senensky?  Everything seems normal and real. They needed a driver.  They hired a driver."  Well hold onto your hats; we’re about to make a very sharp turn.

We never left the Columbia Ranch to film this episode.  The shots of the bus traveling down the road were lifted out of stock.  The gas station was an exterior set on the ranch.

Two years before this I had directed AN F FOR MRS. L on THE COURTSHIP OF EDDIE’S FATHER that had a similar format; Eddie suspected Mrs. Livingstone was going to commit Hara Kiri and so he spied on her.  But the mood of that piece was serious; it examined what occurred when a seven year old boy’s imagination encountered a frightening circumstance.  This outing with Danny was at the other extreme.  Danny’s suspicion about Johnny leads to his spying on him.  Danny becomes Sam Spade and the comedy was in the eleven year old’s vision of how to be Sam Spade.

Of the PARTRIDGES I directed, this episode gave the versatile Dave Madden the broadest opportunity to shine.

This was the second and final time I got to stage an all-out concert and again I requested that there be no set and no extras.  But I didn’t want to just repeat what we had done before, so I asked the gifted director of photography, Fred Jackman, if we could use star filters.  He enthusiastically said yes.

The following day the producer phoned the set to tell me how much he liked the dailies.  He said to tell Fred Jackman he was especially pleased with the photography in the concert sequence.  I suggested that it would be nice if he told Fred personally, so I called Fred to the phone.  After the call Fred told me that the producer had asked him what kind of spotlights he used.  I asked, “What did you tell him?”  Fred said, “Oh, I just told him they were some of my own personal lights.”

And after all of this (and many apologies to Johnny) it all ended in a happy ending.

I think it was during this episode that I realized one day Shirley was very nervous and edgy.  That wasn’t like her.  She told me she had just found out her son, Shaun, had arranged a performance of his band for that very night.  I don’t remember whether the performance was going to be a concert or an appearance in some club, but here was this Academny Award winniing actress, the star of one of the most popular shows currently on television, totally amazed that this twelve year old had accomplished all of this without her knowledge.  And beside that she was scared, full of stage fright, behaving like a typical, nervous backstage mother.  It was charming.

The Bobby Sherman spinoff, GETTING TOGETHER, was just going into production.  Because i was going to direct one of the early episodes (I think possibly even the kickoff first show) I was involved in casting sessions for some of the series running characters.  Millie Gussie, a true Hollywood veteran, was the casting director.  There was a long parade of talent coming through to compete.  The only one I remember was a young DIane Keaton, who auditioned... and giggled a lot.  But for some reason beside Millie, the producer and me, there were five or six writers sitting in on the sessions.  It was unusual and it was a disaster.  The writers must have thought they were in a script conference. You would have thought they were there to audition for some standup comedy show.  Their comments and one-liners made it impossible to focus on the acting talent.  I felt it was unfair to the actors to have to perform before that inattentive group.  Later when callbacks were scheduled, I told Millie I would not be attending; I considered the behavior of the group rude and embarrassing.  MIllie understood.  I had the feeling she felt the same way.

Television has never been shy about stealing from the movies.  I should know.  I’ve been involved in several of those thefts.  On DR KILDARE, when I was the assistant to the producer, Buzz Kulik directed a lovely episode, SHINING IMAGE starring Suzanne Pleshette, that was a revisit to Bette Davis’ classic weeper, DARK VICTORY.  On THE FBI I directed an episode, ORDEAL, that was a rip-off of the French film, WAGES OF FEAR.  On STAR TREK the episode OBSESSION was MOBY DICK in space.  PRINTERS DEVIL on TWILIGHT ZONE was just another version of FAUST.  I directed a Movie-of-the-Week, DEATH CRUISE, that was another version of Agatha Christie’s TEN LITTLE INDIANS that had been filmed as AND THEN THERE WERE NONE.  (Our version however only involved six little Indians.)  And then there was the series, NANNY AND THE PROFESSOR, which owed a great debt to MARY POPPINS.  But all of these shows had one thing in common -- they didn’t acknowledge their connection to their previous source.

Not so my next THE PARTRIDGE FAMILY.  Direct reference was not only made to its source several times in scenes in the show, the title of the episode itself paid homage:  THE UNDERGRADUATE.

The college we chose for our location was USC, the University of Southern California.  That was my first time filming there.  Many years later I would spend a great deal of time on the campus on PAPER CHASE, which had USC representing Harvard Law School.

The magic of the editing room.  There was a scene I filmed of Shirley and Paul in a classroom that came between the scene where they meet and the scene having coffee.  We wanted to lose that scene, but there was a line by Paul at the end of the classroom scene (he offered to buy Shirley a cup of coffee) that we needed to bridge from the meeting scene to the coffee scene.  How did the editor do it?  He took that line and put it in the last shot of the meeting scene when Paul was turned away from the camera.

The day we filmed at USC, we continued after dark to film the following car scene with Shirley and Paul.

This was the only time I worked with Michael Burns, but I had been aware of him since 1962 when he had appeared in what I remember as a wonderful series, IT’S A MAN’S WORLD, produced by Peter Tewksbury.  It had to be exceptional.  It only lasted for ten episodes.  Six years after completing this current episode, Michael retired from film, returned to college to pursue his interest in history.  He graduated from the University of California and earned his Ph. D. from Yale University.  He was a professor of history for twenty-two years before retiring. Academe's gain -- film's loss!

The next is my favorite scene in this episode (starting with opening the door for the visitors).

I have to interject and say, I think the person who really makes this scene work is Norman Fell.  Imagine what this scene would be like if the father had been played leering with the sexy innuendoes.  The thought makes me shudder.

And that was the end of my PARTRIDGE FAMILY involvement.  In fact after that I only directed two other half hour comedies; I was back directing hour dramatic shows.  I guess the comedy producers were saying the David Victor line in reverse: “We can’t hire him to direct comedy; he’s a dramatic director.”

Forty years later I am still a little astounded.  What was it about this show that made it so successfu?  What was it about this show that still appeals to people all these years later, as proven by the successful marketing of the series on DVD.  I don’t have the answer.  But I do know that I too am a fan; probably a bigger admirer today than I was back then.

THE FORTY YEAR ITCH, DORA, DORA, DORA - May-June 1971 (The Partridge Family)

During their first season THE PARTRIDGE FAMILY had a charming episode, WHATEVER HAPPENED TO THE OLD SONGS, that brought Shirley’s parents to her home for a visit.  The parents were played by Ray Bolger and Rosemary De Camp.  As happened regularly in series televison, when guest star appearances proved successful, the stars were brought back for repeat performances.  It was my good fortune to guide them through their return visit.

The little blond boy coming down the stairs was the newest addition to the family, Brian Forster, who was now playing Chris .  The father of Jeremy Gelbwaks, the original Chris, had been transferred out of California and Jeremy, faced with having to choose between the Partridge family and the Gelbwaks family, departed with the family of his birth.  End of a drumming career.

It had been five months since I had directed my last THE PARTRIDGE FAMILY.  I was returning to do four in a row and this recasting of Brian Forster created a minor problem for me.  To get to the root of that problem we need to flash back to a Saturday afternoon in 1960 when I received a telephone call from Stanley Smith, the casting director at the Pasadena Playhouse.  Stanley told me a production of Somerset Maugham’s THE CIRCLE starring Estelle Winwood had recently gone into rehearsal and they wanted to replace the director.  Would I be available to come in and take over.  At this point in my career, English high comedy was not one of my strong suits.  I had directed a production of Noel Coward’s BLITHE SPIRIT years before, and I considered it one of my poorest achievements.  I told Stanley I didn’t think I was the person for this assignment, and I gave him the name of someone who I thought should do itl.  A half hour later Stanley called back to say the person I had recommended was not available, would I reconsider.  My counter suggestion was that I would like to come in, meet the cast and have a read-through before making a decision.  That meeting took place the next evening.  After the reading I had only one reservation about the cast.  I told the Playhouse if I could replace the actress playing the younger woman with Rachel Ames, I would do it.  I had already directed Rachel in two stage productions, and she was well known to the Playhouse; her parents were Dorothy Adams and Byron Foulger, two fine actor closely associated with the Pasadena Playhouse.  The Playhouse agreed to my request.  The problem as it relates to THE PARTRIDGE FAMILY?  Brian Forster’s mother, who would be accompanying him to the set each day, was the actress I dumped.

In their first season visit Shirley’s father decided he wanted to go into show business, wanted to join their singing group.  Her mother thought it was a dumb idea.  It was a charming, generation gap story and the bickering parents provided an ongoing comedy background to the conflict in the foreground.  For this return visit the bickering took center stage; but it was no longer just bickering, it was out-and-out warfare heading for divorce.   The problem we faced was to prevent the audience from becoming as disenchanted with the visitors as the Partridge family was.   

The production facilities for THE PARTRIDGE FAMILY  were excellent.  Not only were the exteriors of the Partridge home and its surrounding neighborhood plus the village exteriors we filmed on TO PLAY OR NOT TO PLAY on the Columbia Ranch, there were also two sound stages on the lot for our interiors.  It was all very convenient.  This episode provided my first departure for a location off the lot.

For the musical number for this episode I was back in the nightclub set I so disliked, but the script necessitated the return.  At least the red drapes had been removed.  Was I unhappy?  Not on your life.  Who could be unhappy having OKLAHOMA’s Laurey, CAROUSEL’s Julie Jordan and Marian, the librariam from THE MUSIC MAN singing, while the Scarecrow from THE WIZARD OF OZ danced with the mother of that YANKEE DOODLE DANDY, George M. Cohan.  That was a day on a soundstage made in heaven.

The show had two happy endings.  Brian’s mother and I had no problem because of the previous Pasadena Playhouse incident.  The subject was never mentioned.

My second outing of the quartet, like PARTRIDGE UP A PEAR TREE from the previous season, had a plot that I thought was genuinely funny.

I don’t know who recorded the song that Robyn Millan lip-synced to, but I certainly owed her a big debt of gratitude.

Alvina Krause was a magnificent acting professor at Northwestern University.  When I was a student there, she stated something in one of her acting seminars that I found useful throughout my career; people under emotional stress take refuge in props.  In the following scene (with that lovely four-poster bed just sitting there) I made that suggestion to Shirley.

 

The following day after dailies the producer phoned me on the set to tell me how funny he thought that scene was.  My response:  “Phallic, wasn’t it?”

Jack Burns was an actor, writer, producer -- a jack of all trades, but in his case master of all.  He started out as half of a comedy team with George Carlin.  I thought he was proof of that adage about directing -- 90% is in the casting.

  

And once again a return to the set I abhorred, but this time it was a little less objectionable; it was converted into a military base auditorium.

Next: my final two treks down Partridge Lane with Shirley acting a television version of Mrs. Robinson from THE GRADUATE.

TO PLAY OR NOT TO PLAY, PARTRIDGE UP A PEAR TREE - December 1970 (The Partridge Family)

Do you remember the Swiss village in THE NEW ADVENTURES OF HEIDI?

Eight years before I filmed that, I filmed the same location on the Columbia ranch in Burbank to open the second episode that I directed of THE PARTRIDGE FAMILY.

Michael Lembeck, who played Marc, had been in a production of DAN AUGUST that I directed a couple of months earlier.  When he came in to audition for the producers, he asked if the role of Marino had been cast.  It hadn’t been at that point.  Michael was the one who suggested his father, Harvey Lembeck for the role.  Harvey was a wonderful actor and comedian.  Remember him as one of the prisoners in STALAG 17?   Michael Lembeck several years later moved behind the cameras to become an Emmy award-winning director.

I was told that one of the directors (who shall remain nameless) of THE PARTRIDGE FAMILY came into the producer’s office on his first day of prep, tossed his script on the producer’s desk and said, “Okay!  What are we going to do with this whale shit?”  I never did that.  Besides, on this script I would have been limited to, possibly, a very large tuna.  But from here on this script did present a problem.  Laurie, because of her friendship for Marc, refuses to perform.  And everything comes to a standstill.  Drama is action, doing something.  Sitting around refusing to do something isn’t very exciting.  Then riding to the rescue is the least believable savior, young Danny.  He locks Marino and Marc in the office and conducts a binding arbitration meeting.  But this drama is behind locked doors, off camera.  That could have been a funny scene. Finally they reach an agreement and the Partridges are able to open -- on the same small nightclub set I had silently objected to on WHEN MOTHER GETS MARRIED, with the same red drapes although they were hung differently, and with 13 extras plus the 5 standins as the packed house audience attending the Partridges’ debut.

The following week the script for PARTRIDGE UP A PEAR TREE was definitely an improvement.  It had a totally believable situation involving Keith and the family.  And importantly, it was a situation with promising prospects to be funny.

The exterior of the Partridge house was on the Columbia Ranch, same area in Burbank as the exterior club setting of the previous episode.  And I have to add, I was happy to direct an opening teaser that hooked its audience without a violent killing like those I had staged on all of the FBI episodes I directed.

Keith’s “I’m thinking, I”m thinking...” came from one of the classic comedy bits of all time.  On the Jack Benny radio show in the thirties Jack was at the race track when a race track tout (I’m sure it was Sheldon Leonard) accosts him with “Your money or your life.”  Silence.  Again, more insistently, “Your money or your life.”  Again silence.  Then “I said your money or your life.”  And Jack’s response, “I’m thinking, I’m thinking.”  I have to admit, I remember listening to that original broadcast.

 If you’re going to steal, steal from the best.  Remember Orson Welles’ opera sequence in CITIZEN KANE?  I had another musical number in this episode, and this time I stated I wanted no set.  Which meant no audience.  Which meant no extras.  I think it was probably the no extras that did it.  I had no trouble getting that approved. 

I admit, I’m old-fashioned.  I like my stories to be entertaining, but I also appreciate when they include a small moral lesson.

I also enjoy a happy ending.

I want to put in a word in defense of the producers.  Theirs was a formidable task.  There were twenty-five episodes of THE PARTRIDGE FAMILY their first season, twenty-four their second.  The series lasted four seasons for a grand total of ninety-six episodes.  True the number of shows per season had shrunk since 1961, when thirty-two episodes of DR. KILDARE were produced its first year on the air.  I don’t think the lesser number was created at the studio based on their ability to deliver.  I’m certain it was a decision at the network, where they realized they could make more money by ordering fewer shows.  

But the staff responsible for delivering these scripts was small.  Besides creator Bernard Slade (and I don’t know how involved he was) there was Executive Producer Bob Claver, Producer Paul Junger Witt and Story Consultant Dale McRaven; and only one of the three was a writer.  The scripts were written under their supervision by free lance writers.  That was a lot of plot, a lot of funny lines to keep churning out.  No one ever started out to write a bad script.  But many times what began as possibly a good idea in a one-sentence pitch, just didn’t evolve as hoped for.  One time when I was griping because I had just finished directing one of those literary miscarriages during the season I directed every other show on THE FBI, producer Charles Larson said to me, “There are going to be some lemons; you have to accept your share.”  Those weren't his exact words, but the meaning was clear.  I think the  amazing thing  was how few sour ones ended up in the basket.

Next on RALPH’S TREK -- the Partridges keep singing.

WHEN MOTHER GETS MARRIED - June, 1970 (The Partridge Family)

In the aftermath of THE THOLIAN WEB debacle (one incident being David Victor refusing to hire me to direct MARCUS WELBY because he said I was now directing comedy), an unexpected booking was to direct an episode of THE PARTRIDGE FAMILY.  My previous nine comedy outings on THE COURTSHIP OF EDDIE’S FATHER had really been as much “dramody” as comedy.  But by this time I had also directed episodes of THE BILL COSBY SHOW (not the later THE COSBY SHOW about the Huxtable family, his first comedy series about a gym instructor) and NANNY AND THE PROFESSOR.  And the prospect of working on a musical series was interesting and challenging.   

A technique I had been introduced to very early in my training as a stage director was to break the script down into French scenes.  A new French scene occurs whenever the number of characters in the scene changes; in plain words when a new character enters or when one of the characters in the scene exits.  It is a way of breaking the script down into manageable units.  For film I found the structure of the screenplay already had the script broken down into comparable units.  So at the start of every project I would make a chart like the following one for this episode.

The episode I was assigned, WHEN MOTHER GETS MARRIED, was written by the show’s creator, Bernard Slade.  I found him to be a very gifted comedy writer.  Now I preferred to direct scripts where the plot development arose out of the interaction of the characters, rather than those where the demands of the plot itself was the motivating force driving the plot.  I thought if the plot for this episode did not dig too deeply into the possible seriousness of the situation, that if at times it was predictable, his dialogue was very actable;  more importantly, it was funny.

Although in the next year I would direct six more episodes of the show, this was the only one where I had any direct contact with Slade.  But my suspicions were that he continued to be directly involved with all of the scripts.  A dozen years later I would see Earl Hamner carefully Waltonizing the dialogue of material that passed across his desk on its way to the soundstage.  There was a consistent comedy quality to the dialogue on this show (and the subsequent ones I directed) that made me think Bernie was doing just that.

At this time he told me about a pilot he had just completed starring Jose Ferrer as an angel who comes to earth each week to solve some person’s dilemma.   When Ferrer showed up at the studio to start production, he wore a small pierced gold hoop earring in one ear;  he refused to remove it and that was the way the pilot was filmed.  Bernie told me that when they screened the completed pilot for the network executives, one of those present questioned, “Why was that character wearing an earring?”  Bernie’s response:  “Where else would an angel wear his halo when visiting earth.”  I told you he wrote funny dialogue.

The production schedule for THE PARTRIDGE FAMILY was unlike the other comedies I had directed.  Monday was assigned as the day for a production meeting followed by a reading of the script by the cast and then a rehearsal.  The next three days were for filming.  Friday was a pick-up day when needed; usually musical numbers that had not been completed would be filmed at that time.  So on my first Monday I reported to the studio, had the production meeting and then met with the cast for a reading and a rehearsal.  Big mistake!  The combination of light weight material and a cast with so many children didn’t work well around a rehearsal table.  That was the first and last time I tried that.  And the actors were happier with the day off.

If the material was lightweight, the guest casting was not.  John McMartin was cast as Shirley’s date.  The year before John had starred in the film version of SWEET CHARITY, a role he had created in the Bob Fosse Broadway production.  The following year he would be one of the stars of Stephen Sondheim’s Broadway production of FOLLIES, my favorite Sondheim musical.  John was a magnificent stage actor.  When FOLLIES came to the Schubert Theatre in Century City on its national tour, I experienced a rare and exciting moment in theatre.  In the second act each of the four main characters had a musical number reflecting their personal emotional problem.  For his number John danced in the center of a long line of Rockette-type chorus girls.  In the middle of the number John suddenly went out of step with the line, then stopped, frozen, as if he had suddenly lost it.  It was mesmerizing and frightening.  I truly thought John was having some sort of seizure. But he recovered, the dance continued and I realized it was the character who had the disoriented moment, not John.  When I returned to the see the show a second time several months later, John had left the production.  I waited anxiously for that exciting second act moment.  But when it came, the replacement went out of step for a moment, then picked it back up.  He had executed the stage business, but only superficially.  He had filled John’s space on the stage, but he couldn’t fill his shoes.

I was not too happy with the set for our musical number.  I reallized that a nightclub set required fewer extras in the audience than would be needed for an auditorium set, but I didn’t think a rock group with five minors would be playing in a nightclub.  I thought they would be appearing in concert halls or on college campuses.  But I was still the new kid on the block, so I didn’t make any waves.  Fortunately the performance didn’t last too long; it became the background scoring for Shirley’s courtship montage.

About this time I’m sure you’re thinking, “What’s the matter with Senensky?  These people are acting like a normal family.”  Well let’s visit a steam room.

See what I mean?  All of a sudden we’re doing James Bond.  But doing it with two fine farceurs.  Dave Madden, who played Reuben, their manager, would be pretty much restricted to playing variations of this scene throughout the run of the series.  Eleven year old, precocious Danny Bonaduce was a find.  I don’t know what the original plans were for the character of Danny, but I’m sure that once Bonaduce entered the picture, those plans were expanded.  Danny had a natural, instinctive flair for delivering comedy lines.  And more importantly he did it with total reality.  He was an amazingly good actor, especially for one so young.  Incidentally that was not steam in the scene.  It was created by a bee smoker; not as warm as steam, but it always gave me a headache.

There are still more nefarious plot developments.

 

Did you recognize the actress playing Tina?  That was Jaclyn Smith, six years before she became one of CHARLIE’S ANGELS.

 

Now we couldn’t leave the plot hanging there; something had to be done so that Shirley remained the single parent of the five Partridge kids (single parents were very much in vogue on television), John McMartin would be free to return to New York to appear in FOLLIES,  and Dave Madden would be able to relax, knowing he was not being written out of the series.

When I was booked to direct this episode, I was also booked to direct an episode of THE INTERNES, a new medical series being produced by the same unit at Columbia Studio.  I was scheduled to start prep on that show when I finished WHEN MOTHER GETS MARRIED.  Before I could report, I was notified the episode was cancelled.  Fred Silverman, the head of production at ABC, had told the studio the script for that episode was unacceptable.  This being a new series, that was not an unusual occurrence.   The studio’s answer was that they did not have another script ready; that they would have to close down production, which would be costly. 

Mr. Silverman asked, “How costly?”  

The studio’s reply:  “$180,000.00.” 

Mr. Silverman:  “You’ve got it.”  

Tne network coughed up the $180,000.00; production on THE INTERNES closed down, and I was paid my director’s salary and rebooked to direct another episode at a later date.  But the story doesn’t end there.  A couple of weeks later I was back at the studio on a Friday to complete filming the musical number for WHEN MOTHER GETS MARRIED.  Jim Hogan, the production manager for both THE PARTRIDGE FAMILY and THE INTERNES, took me aside to tell me that the script for THE INTERNES that had been rejected by the network was starting to film the following Monday.  The script to be filmed was the same script that had been rejected; no revisons had been made.

And finally, I was booked to return to THE PARTRIDGE FAMILY in December for a double-header, two shows to be filmed back-to--back.  Next on RALPH'S TREK!