| abstract
| - Q: What are your favorite episodes of Lost in Space, one from each season? A: I would almost have to have a list in front of me to be accurate, but I would say, off the top of my head, "The Keeper" from the first season would be my favorite. You pick one from the second season. I can't think of any from the second season that are particularly inspiring to me. And the third season, right now, my favorite would maybe be "The Anti-Matter Man." Q: What guest star did you enjoy working with the most? A: Well, I liked working with Kurt Russell, because he and I worked together on Disney films when I was a kid. It was nice to work with him. I liked working with Michael Rennie because I thought he was a great actor, and he gave probably one of the best performances we had. I liked working with Albert Salmi a lot, and I liked working with Warren Oates a lot. Q: What was the worst episode... A: ... "The Great Vegetable Rebellion." Q: From each season? A: Well, "The Great Vegetable Rebellion" was just a horrible show. Q: Why didn't you like it? A: It was about a talking carrot holding us all captive. A talking carrot, now come on. "The Great Vegetable Rebellion" was my least favorite Lost in Space episode from the third season. From the second season, and I wish I had a list or something, I'm not that familiar with all the shows I must say, but I'll just pick one now, "The Promised Planet" since you just reminded me of it with your novelization of it. I would say that's my least favorite of the second season, just because it's fresh in my mind now and it's so silly. [laughter] Q: Yes, but it was in the third season. A: I can't think of any really too clearly. When I was shooting Lost in Space, I enjoyed working every day, and I never judged the show artistically at that point in time. As far as I was concerned, Will Robinson was always very sincere, whether he was talking to a carrot or whether he was talking to the Keeper. Reflecting on those shows when I watch them now, I like Will Robinson talking to the Keeper and I like the feeling of the Robinsons and that general attitude of those early Lost in Spaces, and a few of the later ones. The "camp" Lost in Spaces, the ones that are just really silly, when we're all in ridiculous hats, or with motorcycle gangs, or dragons or just things that I feel are a bit hard to accept in any type of science fiction reality. Those are shows that I look at and I'm smiling and I'm glad people laugh and I'm glad people like them, but personally they're not my favorite shows. I don't watch those anymore. If I get up on Saturday and I turn on the TV and I see a silly, camp Lost in Space, I'll just turn it off, and I won't bother to videotape it or something. But if I turn on Lost in Space and it's a black and white one, I'll watch it. Let me make it clear, I'm not saying they're bad. I'm just saying they don't do as much personally as the earlier ones do, the black and white ones, or "The Anti-Matter Man" type of later episodes. Those are the shows that I particularly like, when everyone has something to do. I like those shows much more, when the cast is involved en masse, when we all have something to do, more than the shows that just kind of focused on me, Smith, and the Robot (not necessarily in that order). Q: What was the financial arrangement for you on the show? A: Actors get paid on a television series, generally speaking, weekly. Per episode, you're paid, not withstanding overtime or whatever additions there might be, you get a weekly salary. If you're under eighteen, and you're under contract to a television studio, such as I was when you're doing a television series, there's a law that is affectionately called "The Jackie Coogan Law", where a certain percentage of a minor's salary is placed in trust. Jackie Coogan was a child star who did many films with Charlie Chaplin, most famous of which is a film called The Kid, and he was basically worth a million dollars or so by the time he was twelve and never saw a penny of it because his parents spent it all. So they enacted a law that was called "The Jackie Coogan Law," and a certain percentage of that money that a minor earns goes into a trust, a government trust, and the rest of the percentage that a minor earns goes to himself, or his family. Now my family, knock wood or whatever, were wealthy. They didn't need to take my money, so my father invested my money for me. So it was fine. Q: How did you get along with the cast? A: Fine. Guy Williams and I got along great. He taught me how to fence, you know he did Zorro and everything. I had a real good time with Guy. I used to tease him about combing his hair a lot all the time, we used to get along really well. June was a joy to be with, and is one of the most lovely ladies I've ever met. She used to play Scrabble with me all the time, Password, a very intellectualized mind. June and I got along just great. Mark and I had a very special relationship. I used to think of him as Batman and me as Robin, kind of like his little partner. And Mark used to do crazy things. We used to get in some pretty funny situations . . . Q: Can you elaborate on some of the strange or funny events in detail? A: Mark and I used to have fun a lot. We used to do things like take executive's golf carts. You know, those little electric carts that you drive around in. Well, the executives at the studio would have those all the time, and even the guys who would deliver the mail would do it in those, too. So if there was one of those lying around outside the set and we didn't have anything to do, we'd take it on a joy ride, you know, and leave it someplace ridiculous where they'd never find it or something. Just silly things like that. Mark used to...I remember once when he brought like a 25 pound bag of peanuts, and he climbed up to the top of the rafters on stage 11 (I think it was stage 11, it might have been stage 6)...I don't want to leave anyone out in this cast, though. Marta, I want to thank Marta because she turned me on to Bob Dylan and she turned me on to The Byrds, which are and were great influences in my musicianship. We used to sing a lot. I had a stereo in my dressing room, and I always had my guitar with me. Q: ...And you played in the Pilot, I believe... A: ...Greensleeves, and I played Sloop John B in another show as well, one of the Lost in Space's. But anyway, Marta turned me on to some folk-rock music that I really still like, and I thank her for that. Angela and I got along great. We were with each other all the time. And Jonathan and I, you know, worked together all of the time. We had a great time, and I respect him a lot. And Bob was a great guy, too. So now I've included everyone and I don't want to get letters about not including anyone. Q: Now Mark, you had him climbing up to the rafter of stage...11? Or whatever. A: He had this big bag, this huge bag of peanuts. He got up to the top of the rafters and he'd start throwing all of these peanuts down at everyone at the end of the day. Everyone thought he'd lost his mind, but I thought it was pretty funny myself. Some other antics that we got into: There are these great big tunnels that run throughout the underground of 20th Century-Fox, like a maze, a big labyrinth. It's really great, I mean, it's under Century City and everything . . ." Q: Are they still there? A: Oh, well they have to be there. Q: What were they used for? A: There's generators under there, for power, and fuses and all sorts of things like that. I think also, during World War II, you see the studios were 'bombing targets', in case of an enemy attack on this coast. The studios weren't allowed to camouflage their sound stages because they were decoys for real airports, because they looked like hangers, they were so huge. At least this is what my mother told me, and she was a secretary at 20th during the war. So it's possible that part of this was like an underground shelter. I mean, I don't know that's how it was designed, but it's possible that it did serve that purpose. But anyway, me and Marta and Mark and Angela, we used to just go underground, you know, and get flashlights and stuff, and just go down through these tunnels when we'd have a few hours off, for hours. And I mean it was really spooky, we weren't allowed to be there, but it was fun." Q: And the famous "water fight". Could you explain that in detail. When I read that originally, you said, "Then the classic water fight between me and Angela." But you... A: You had to be there. I mean, it loses everything in its translation. If you said, "A couple of kids had a water fight", right? It's, well...but if you were there, and you saw cups of water being hurled back and forth from one bathroom to another. Between the sound stages, and this was on stage 5, I believe. Before you get in the sound stages, a corridor with like a cigarette machine and a candy bar machine and a drinking fountain. Just a little hallway corridor, and on one end of it is the Men's Room, and on another end of it is the Women's Room, and then here's the door to the stages, okay. So, Angela was in the Women's Room. And somehow or another, I guess it was me who started it, you know, I probably just tossed a cup of water through the open window above the door. She started tossing it back, and before you knew it, you know, we were just throwing buckets of water around at each other, and the whole corridor was sopping wet, and we had our costumes all ruined. It was just fun. Then everybody went crazy, you know, the teachers went crazy, and the mothers went crazy, and the assistant directors went crazy, but that's their job. You had to be there. Q: When did all this happen? A: 1965. Q: What was on stage 11 and stage 6? A: Well, by the end of our show or the middle of our show, we had three permanent stages, and I think they were stage 11 and stage 6 and stage 22 or something (22 was one of the newer stages). One stage was the interior of part of the Jupiter 2, on another stage was the campsite, you know, with just the front of the Jupiter 2 and then the immediate surroundings around there, and then on another stage we would have other things. Q: Did you or anyone else become injured on the set at any time? A: Well, during the course of all those special effects and stunts that we had, everyone got banged around a bit. No one was ever really hurt too seriously. Mark had a motorcycle accident coming to the studio one day, that was kind of frightening. Right at the beginning of the show, as a matter of fact, when we first started. Nothing too serious ever happened, just lumps and bangs and scratches and cuts. Nobody like, ever had to go to the hospital, at least that I can remember right now. I think the monkey, the Bloop bit Angela's brother Christopher when he was a baby, I remember that. He just got bit by a chimpanzee, got a tetanus shot, I guess. Didn't lose a finger or anything. Oh, I'll tell you something: the ostriches were awful. They had ostriches in the pilot, and they were just kicking and spitting at everybody. I hated them! I didn't like the ostriches at all. Don't ever work with ostriches. Q: How did you and Angela like working with the Bloop? A: [It was] a cute, nice chimpanzee named Debbie. Lou Shoemaker was its trainer, and Angela really liked working with it, a little more than I did. Well, it was more her thing. Penny was supposed to be more of a zoologist type of a character, and Will was more of a engineer, electronics type. Originally we all had these clear-cut characters, you know. Maureen was Dr. Maureen Robinson, and she was biophysics, or whatever. Professor Robinson was, you know. And Don was the military pilot Major, and his job was really just to know how the Jupiter 2 worked, and I think Judy was into the plants, and getting all of that stuff together. At least that's how I remember it, but things change. Q: You said that you designed some costumes. A: Oh yeah, I used to design costumes. I was a big comic book fan, I still am a big comic book fan, and I wanted to look like one of the Legion of Super Heroes or something. So I would draw little costumes for Will, you know, and I knew at the beginning of every season we were going to get a new look, we'd get a new costume, and I never liked the ones I got after the first season at all. I hated the second season costume and I hated the third season costume, and I really wanted a different one. So I was constantly sending in these sketches of the kind of costume I wanted. Q: What did the other cast members think about their costumes? A: No, everyone liked them, I'm sure. We really didn't talk about it too much, but I'm sure everyone liked them. I remember Jonathan . . . . when we first got the second batch of costumes, which was somewhere mid through the first season, Jonathan's tunic or top was yellow, and he didn't like that and he got brown. He didn't like being in yellow, so he changed that. Q: What happened to the costumes after each shooting day? A: They got cleaned. [laughter] Q: I mean, did you wear them home or what? A: No, no. You'd go to work in the morning, right, and you'd go to your dressing room. And you'd get out of your clothes, and you'd get into your costume, and then you'd go to makeup. Or you'd go to makeup first, depending on the schedule of the day. Q: Did you eat lunch at the studio? A: Well, we had a lunch time, and lots of times we'd eat at the studio, and lots of times we'd just go out. Angela and I used to go to the restaurants at, like, the May Company or the Broadway or somewhere, and we'd only have an hour, so we'd jump in our cars with our moms, or whatever, and we'd go to May Company or Broadway, and we'd eat. And we'd be in our costumes, and we'd kind of look ridiculous. [laughter] And we'd always do the same things: I'd buy a Kingston Trio record, and she'd buy a Beatle record or something, and I'd buy a Hardy Boy book, and she'd buy a Nancy Drew book. And then we'd go back. Q: What was the food like at the studios, though. I frequently hear all these rumors that it's really terrible. A: Oh, not at all. It depends on the studio...I haven't eaten at any of the studios in the last five years, so I can't really be a judge of that, but the food at 20th Century-Fox was great. There was a little truck that came by, like you see at a football game or something, a caterer's truck. You'd get little honey cakes or lemonade or coffee or sweet rolls. Q: Did you have to pay for any of this, out of your own pocket? A: Sure. They figure they're paying you a lot of money, right, every week to make this television series, you can buy your own lunch. They give you a lunch hour. Q: One full hour? A: One hour, or sometimes in the case of me and Angela, because of the labor laws, we could only work a certain amount of hours a day. If they gave us an hour and a half lunch, they could work us a half hour later, you see. So sometimes they'd give us an hour and a half or a two hour lunch even, rarely, but they'd give us a two hour lunch. That way they'd be able to keep us later, and they'd save some of our shots till the end of the day for whatever reasons that need be. It all has to do with union things over time and stuff. If June, for instance, had a 6:30 in the morning call, well she'd go on overtime at maybe 5:30. If I came in at 9:00, then I could only work till six. I couldn't work any later than that. It's all these little things that you didn't ...it's hard to explain. I didn't have any say in it, no one has any say in it. That's what the assistant directors and the producers and everybody worry about, little union laws that have to be followed perfectly. If you're a minute overtime, you know, it starts to become hundreds and hundreds of dollars, per person, for everyone in the cast and the crew. As far as being under 18, you couldn't work a minute after the given allotted amount of time. They'd just pull the plug out and say, 'Kids got to go, that's it.' Q: I guess that they had a trailer outside for you and Angela to do your studies in. A: Oh yeah, a trailer. It was just a trailer, and that was like a dressing room. Q: Did you do well in your schooling at the studio? A: Yeah, I did okay. I did okay in the subjects I liked, and I got by in the subjects I didn't like. I found it very difficult to carry the amount of workload as an actor, and then have to carry the amount of scholastic work as well. I didn't enjoy working on the set and having a great time, and saving the universe and really doing an exciting bit on the show, and then have to run right back out to this trailer and take tests in geography or something. No kid likes to go to school, I don't think, and any kid would have liked to have been doing what I was doing. So, I mean, I didn't enjoy going to school. I gave the teachers a bit of a hard time. I was a brat in school. I was very professional on the set with the directors and everyone, but I was a bit of a brat to the teachers, I think. I had to let that out somewhere. Q: Did you ever complain to anyone or refuse to put up with all that? A: Well, there was no one to complain to. I mean, the rules are the rules, and if I were going to work I had to go to school, and if I didn't work, I'd be in school anyway. I did fine in school, you know. I graduated, then I went to college for a while, and I was always a 'B student'. Q: Were you and Angela in the same trailer? A: We were in the same trailer, yeah. She was in a different grade than I was. The welfare workers there have to be able to teach you anything from the first grade through high school. They have to be able to teach a whole bunch of different subjects: French, Spanish, Arithmetic, History, English...everything. Q: Have you met any of the cast or guest stars following the cancellation of the series? A: Well, Angela and I continued on going to school together after the show ended. Then we dated each other and stuff, and hung out for several years, and I saw Angela a lot. I used to see Mark at some political rallies, and then I saw Mark a few years ago. We got together here. He originally was going to work on the new script, The Epilogue with me. It didn't turn out that way, but we got together for a nice, positive meeting there. I had lunch with Jonathan, Marta, and Bob May recently. I communicate with June through Christmas cards and phone calls, twice a year maybe. Nothing too regular, but I've always kept in touch with June. I went to see her play, in fact, with Angela. She was doing a play here last year, and we went to see that together. Angela does sing. I don't think she's ever pursued a career as a singer, although she did make a record when she was about seven called "Angela Cartwright Sings" or "America's Little Darling Sings", or something. An album. I think she also made a single of "Rain" by The Beatles, you know, in 1967. I think she might have done that, in fact I know she did it. I don't know if it was released, but I know she did it. Yeah, Angela sings, she sings fine. We used to do personal appearances together, and she would sing at those and so would I. I would bring my guitar, and we would sing Simon and Garfunkel songs. We did them off and on from when the show was on the air through 1970. Not very often, but we'd go out to a Navy base or something and we'd sign autographs and sing a few songs and stuff. I haven't seen Guy since the show ended at all, and I guess that's about it. Q: What was your very first project? A: Well, the very, very, very first show I ever did was an episode of a television series called Riverboat, and that was in 1959. I was five. Although I had done a Romper Room, which was just kind of a kid's TV show, anyone could do Romper Room, and I was four and a half or four. But Riverboat was the first thing I ever did, and then the next year, 1960, I started doing a bunch of the featured roles, starring roles, things like Loretta Young and the Twilight Zones and Alfred Hitchcocks. Q: How did you like the Twilight Zones? A: I loved the Twilight Zones. This sounds a little silly, but I think they're my favorite pieces of child acting that I did in a sense. I mean, I can't compare what I was doing at six to what I would do at twenty-five, it's just a different catalog, but I really liked the Twilight Zones, and I feel proud of those shows. Q: How many did you do? Were you in any of the hour-long episodes? A: No, I did three Twilight Zones and I did three Hitchcocks. I did about a hundred different guest shots on TV, outside of the 83 Lost in Space. Q: And then after Lost in Space ended? A: Right after Lost in Space ended, I starred in a Disney film called Rascal. That was a pretty good film, I liked that film. It was the story of a boy growing up in the turn of the century, and the summer he spends with a pet raccoon that he takes in. A typical Disney film, but it was really nice, well done. Steve Forrest played my father. It was also about the relationship between a boy and the father. When the father is out on the road a lot trying to sell things, and the boy doesn't have a mother, and the closeness and the distance between them. Q: And then after that? A: Well, I did a lot of different little TV guest shots, and then I did Bless the Beasts and the Children. Bless the Beasts and the Children was about misfits and their place in society, and it was kind of a blunt social statement on some of the social...it's a very dated film when I watch it now, but check it out if it comes out on TV, you know. Q: Then after Bless the Beasts, you did a series, Sunshine. How'd you like that? A: I loved that. We did three movies-of-the-week, and after each one we thought that would be the end of the project, and then we did one season as a series. And we released one album that went Gold in Australia, and we released one single that made the Top-Thirty charts here (I don't know if it was the Top-Thirty, Top-Forty anyway, on the easy listening charts here). And I felt real good about it, I enjoyed it a lot. That was the last thing I've done. Q: What was Sunshine about? A: It was about a band, which I was a part of, raising a little girl in Canada, basically. There was a featured guy, Cliff DeYoung, who played the father of the girl [Jill] but not by blood, by marriage, and then his wife had died, and it's a long story. I mean, it really is a long story, I can't summarize it. But the series was basically about the adventures of a trio of musicians in Canada, getting by with an alternative lifestyle and raising this little girl as straight ahead as possible. A cross between The Courtship of Eddie's Father and The Monkees. Q: What led to its demise? A: Bad ratings. Nobody watched it. I liked it, and it got good reviews. It had a cult following. Q: And that was your last regular TV series? A: Well, that's my last television deal. I've done some theatre work and some play reading here. In fact, I was reading a play a couple of months ago with Shirley Jones and Shaun Cassady, and some friends of mine. So I mean I am still exercising my ability a bit, but I haven't been working. The things I've been offered I haven't wanted to do, and the things I've wanted to do I haven't been able to get. Show biz. Q: What are your favorite television series, from the past, syndicated, and from the present? A: Twilight Zone, Saturday Night Live, Mission Impossible. You just said what were some of my favorite television shows, those are my favorite television shows. Q: And you've written a Lost in Space script with your partners Paul Gordon and Brian Greer. A: Yeah, Lost in Space: The Epilogue. I think it's real good. I like it a lot. I'd love to see it done, and the only way it's going to get done is if Irwin Allen believes it's a commercial product and a commercial idea. And I believe the best way for any producer to believe that it is commercial idea is hear from the people who would like to see it, so if there is anybody out there who would like to see Lost in Space done again as a theatrical film or as a movie-for-television, then I would highly recommend that you write a letter to Irwin Allen, care of the Burbank Studios, and let him know. I would highly suggest that they do that. Q: Okay, I wanted to ask you - every so often we keep hearing rumors about the idea of you reviving Lost in Space. A: It's been a project that's been going on for about three years now. I tried to get The Epilogue idea resolving Lost in Space done on film. I originally just wrote a treatment, that became a script, that became another script, and I finally got a couple of good versions that I felt really comfortable with, and I took them to CBS (who has a piece of the old television show) and they thought it was a great idea at the time. I took them to 20th Century-Fox, and then I gave copies to each of the cast members, and got their feedback on it and made changes according to their specifications, and then I went to Irwin Allen (who is the controlling factor here because he owns the majority of the rights to the show, and he created the characters and everything), and his attitude at the time (which at last time I spoke with him was about four or five months ago) - he was a little paranoid that if he did a film and a television feature, or a television thing that it would hurt his syndication royalty money with the reruns of Lost in Space. And he also thought that it might be past its prime and he didn't really think it was that great of an idea, so I started going around doing all these science-fiction conventions trying to get people's support for the idea and they were writing to Irwin, and supposedly that's still going on. The last time I spoke to Irwin, he had told me that if he does do a Lost in Space project, that it will more than likely be his script, his storyline, and he'll call me to tell me what time to show up. [much laughter] I wanted him to at least...I just said, "Well, you know, you want to see the story. So if you're going to do it, I've got a good written one here." And he said, "No, no. I can't hear your story, and if you send it in the mail, I can't read it because of legal problems..." And it was all kind of...you know, sounded a little phony to me, and I said, "Hey, you know, I'm not interested in infringing on your copyright, or suing you, or participating in royalties that I would be welcome to, and I just wanted to volunteer a storyline. That's all." And he was very definite, so I've just let it set on my back burner..." Q: Would you be willing to share with us a storyline? A: Storyline... well... roughly it would just kind of be based around: you take that group of people, stranded on a very small, uninhabited (at this point in time) asteroid in space where they've been stuck for maybe a dozen years or so, fifteen years or so, with a simple problem with that there's just no more fuel. So, it's a realistic fate that they're dealt - there's no deutronium on the planet they're on, which was our source of fuel, deutronium. There's no deutronium on the place that they've been staying, so their fate is sealed, so they've accepted it to a degree, and they've kind of gutted the Jupiter 2 and turned it into separate dwellings. I have my character of Will, I had my character of Will having removed himself and living off in a distant 'iron mountain' someplace on the asteroid trying to come up with an alternative fuel process, and then having very little luck at that. And I had Don and Judy together...and they have a little 'new Will Robinson' child who's precocious, and is hanging out with Dr. Smith, as usual. The Robot is still the Robot, although over the years certain systems have been breaking down with great regularity, so he's more or less a kind of shadow of his former self. So what happened was - there's an alien spaceship up in space, a small spaceship like a dinghy from a larger craft. It gets hit by an asteroid and crashes on this planet where the Robinsons are, immediately killing all of its crew. Well, Dr. Smith, the Robot, and this new little child happen upon this crashed vehicle, and so they freak out and they tell all the other Robinsons what they've found. And that reunites the family, which we've established by now has been a lot of friction there. The family gets reunited with a common goal of trying to salvage pieces from this alien technological stuff and putting it into the Jupiter 2, making it flyable again. So the next quarter or half of the script was kind of showing that the Robinsons are made of the stuff that when put to the challenge, they can rise to it and get the vehicle happening again. So they got the Jupiter 2 to a state where they can basically fly. Then the mother ship of the alien ship picks up the signal of their little dinghy that has crashed on this asteroid, comes in and sees that its life forms are dead, and on its monitor sees the Robot transferring equipment from it to the Jupiter 2. Well, they automatically assume that the Robinsons are pirates, so to speak, pirating their ship and they killed their crew. So the first thing they do is blow the Robot to smithereens. The second thing they do is to open fire on the Robinsons, who are at this point just about ready to leave, everything was going good for them. Well, the Robinsons get out of the Jupiter 2 just in time to see it disintegrated - blown to pieces, so they surrender to these aliens and they are taken prisoner on this alien ship. That's a bit of a conflict, and then what we had going was that they were taken to a space station - this is really hard...I haven't really thought this out too clearly in a while, but they're taken up to this space station where each race from each planet has its own representative of justice and they realize that it's the Robinson party, and everything's been straightened out that they weren't responsible for the deaths of the alien crew. La-de-da - everybody's happy, we go back to Earth, the Robot's reassembled, and everyone's happy, and we put it to death. That was basically the plan for my show...of course Irwin Allen doesn't know that, but you guys do, so that's all right now. I wrote it with a couple a friends of mine - Paul Gordon and Brian Greer, but...it looks like if there will be a Lost in Space project in the future, that this will not be the synopsis of the plot, unfortunately. And I've been very tight-lipped about it for a couple of years, you know, I wouldn't want anyone to rip off my storyline, or this or that, and nowadays it's like: Hey, anybody who's interested in Lost in Space, if they want to know about it - fine. [laughter] Lately, I just finished a feature with Rick Springfield that's coming out in January [1984] , I think, called Hard to Hold, kind of a rock-and-roll love story. I play this character that was similar to a character I played in a short-lived television series called Sunshine in the seventies, kind of a wise-cracking musician-type of guy. I had a lot of fun doing that, and I've been writing songs for the group "America". I've written five songs on their last two records, and I play with them. I have my own project I'm connected with called "Barnes and Barnes", which has an album called Soak It Up, and a video called Soak It Up, coming out on CBS records in September. So I've been real busy lately and I've lost some Lost in Space energy. Because of Irwin Allen's forcefulness in refusing to hear my ideas, it's kind of taken a back seat. And that's what I've been up to. Q: I don't know how true this is, but I heard down the grapevine that Irwin Allen has his own script, 20th Century-Fox has given the go-ahead, CBS has given the go-ahead for it, and everyone had been signed up except you. [laughter] A: Well, nobody's been signed up for it. I mean, I'm sure of that. Q: In other words, it's just a rumor? A: Well, I can tell you that that's just...well, I don't know if Irwin Allen has a script, and I don't know if he's taken it to 20th, or anyone else. That part I don't know. But I do know that the other actors certainly haven't been signed to do anything. That much I guarantee, because I'm in touch with them all the time. And they did that Family Feud...did anyone see that Lost in Space Feud? I couldn't make that show...darn! I couldn't make that, but I thought it was kind of strange. Q: But did you see it? A: Yes, I saw it. Q: Did you like it? A: I don't like the Family Feud. It was great to see Guy Williams in there. I haven't physically even seen him in a long time. Q: Do you know where he is now? A: I have no idea. He looked terrific, and I know that he had a stroke last year and I was really kind of worried about him, you know, with his face being paralyzed (that's what June had told me - he was partially paralyzed), but he's fine now. At least he was during then...in the Family Feud. And I thought the show was ridiculous...you know, the questions: Name something blue...my mind is blank! [much laughter] It was ridiculous...but, it was good to see everybody. They looked great, I thought. I think we could be all back united on a set anytime anybody said to be there...if Guy Williams is going to be willing to do the Family Feud, I'd think he'd be more than willing to do a dramatic movie or a "Movie of the Week." Q: But they're all positive about your idea of the script, right? A: Well, they were when I spoke to them about it. But I'm sure they'd do anything if they said, "Here's your salary, and show up on the set and do it," as long as it wasn't, you know, along the "camp" lines of some of the episodes towards the end of the run, which I don't think it would be. I think the reason we got into those "talking carrot" vegetable shows and, you know, dragons wearing skirts, and all sorts of ridiculous stuff, was because of that pop-art, camp, sixties period, with the Batman series being on the air opposite us. But I think that was a, you know, that whole camp thing was a temporary thing. I doubt if that would be the direction anyone would want to see the show take again. I'm sure that Irwin would send it pretty much back to the basic characters he created in the beginning. Which I thought the first season of the series, the black-and-white stuff, was the best stuff...where everyone really had a defined character, and everyone on the family had a role in each of the shows. Then it kind of got into that "Smith-Will-Robot" syndrome every week which, I mean, for me was a lot of work and it was fun, but I much preferred it when everyone else was involved more...more interplay off the other characters. Q: Whatever happened to "Bill Mumy and the Igloos"? A: Oh my, "The Igloos" was a band of mine, a rock-and-roll band, that lasted for about a year and a half that played all the club scenes in California and did some demo recordings, you know, and didn't get a record deal. And what happened was - my drummer, the drummer at the time, got a gig with Mac Davis. And there was a saxophone player - Cloris Leachman's son, George. He was just a fantastic musician, and his father asked him if he'd be an associate producer on a film, so he went off to Iceland for like four months. So I lost my drummer and I lost my sax player, and I replaced the drummer. It wasn't quite the same, and without the sax player my energies started to dwindle a bit. It wasn't really a group effort, like a team, like you're in a band with everybody else and everyone holds their own weight and is responsible, and shares in the pleasures and in the sorrows of the work. It was more or less they were working for me, and I didn't really like that. So the Igloos kind of...melted, and I've been working with "America" mostly since that time, and "Barnes and Barnes". Q: Did you enjoy the opportunity of being able to both play and sing during the run of Lost in Space? A: Yeah, there was a couple of times. I played an old Beach Boys song in Lost in Space. Up there in 1998 singing "Sloop John B", which I thought was pretty funny, and there's another..."Greensleeves". I think we did it in the pilot, when I was ten years old. [singing] "Greensleeves". I cringe whenever I hear that. I just learned to play the guitar about three months before we did that. "Well, we need something in this kind of picnic scene. Billy, why don't you play your guitar?" "Uh, okay." [laughter] But yeah, I started playing when I was ten, and I started writing songs when I was about ten or eleven, and it's just been a natural progression. Acting, luckily, gave me the opportunity to explore other areas without having to tie myself down to another kind of job. If I wasn't working as an actor, I would just kind of skate for a while, skate through on the money I'd made and I could trust my instincts towards music, and it's paying off really well right now. I spent a year with Shaun Cassady at the height of his teen idolism, touring around the country, singing "Do Run Run" and "That's Rock and Roll" with him, which was a lot of fun. These were like super, big-time shows and stuff, we were playing in front of fifteen or twenty thousand people, and it was a good band, the musicians were all fine. A lot of old, good rock-and-roll songs, "Twist and Shout" and stuff like that, it was fun. So yes, I've enjoyed both without having to sacrifice one or the other. As far as the acting career goes, it just got to a point where the projects I wanted and the projects I were offered just weren't really matching up, and I felt like I had worked with such good people in the past, people who have quality shows like the Twilight Zones, or worked with Alfred Hitchcock, Walt Disney, just really fine, talented people, and at the end after Sunshine went off the air in '75, I was doing these three-camera videotape shows and stuff. I found myself not wanting to call my friends and say I had done a show, to check it out. I didn't like that feeling, so I figured I'd just sit back and I'll wait until there's something I feel good about, and that's what I've been doing. There's been a lot of stuff in that interim, I've done some theatre work with Shirley Jones and David Cassady in L.A., and some other theatre projects which I'd never had an opportunity to do when I was young. I did a play called Back Street for a while, which was a musical. So I've had a pretty diverse career for the last ten years. I mean, up until '74 or '75, outside of a few musical things like you mentioned, I really did nothing but act and that was just it. but since then it's been split pretty well: music and acting, and it's worked out good. I got to write an episode of Sunshine, as a writer, which I thought was a nice basis to start a writing career. The first thing I wrote got produced on TV. So I told Irwin Allen, "Hey, it's not like I'm twelve years old, and I've never written anything. I've written shows for TV that have been produced. I think it's a good idea." But...he didn't want to hear it. He was afraid that because it's a castaway story and there's only so many basic ideas you can do in the first place, that my storyline might be similar to something he had written, and I'd take him to court and sue him. I said, "Hey, I'm not trying to infringe upon your copyrights here." But, you can't escape your destiny, and my destiny is not to write the Lost in Space movie I suppose, or to write one that no one ever sees on film, but...it's a good life. Q: You appeared in a couple of episodes of I Dream of Jeannie, where you portrayed Dr. Bellows' precocious nephew. Do you remember that? A: Sure. I was there. [laughter] Q: Did you enjoy that? A: Oh yeah. If you add it all up, including the eighty-some episodes of Lost in Space, I've done about 175 shows, right around there, give or take ten or so. Out of all of them, maybe two or three shows I didn't have a good time on, and that was generally because of friction with somebody in the cast or bad locations...I did a film called Papillion where I worked with Dustin Hoffman and Steve McQueen for three months, and I had quite a bit to do. Dulton Trumbo wrote the screenplay and he was dying of cancer at the time he was writing, so every day he was just turning out pages. Whatever he turned out we would shoot, and by the time we were done shooting they had shot 300 or 400 pages of stuff and they had 4 1/2 or 5 hours of film, I guess. They looked up and they said, "Okay, well we have to get rid of this, so what are we going to trim here. Mumy Goes!" [laughter] So basically if you ever see Papillion, I know it's been running on cable recently, watch for me on the boat scenes at the beginning. As soon as they get to Devil's Island, I kind of walk off into the water in this delirious state and get my head blown off...quite rapidly, which was a lot of fun, it was a good death scene actually. They put this mousetrap-type device on my forehead, with a phony piece of hair on top of it (basically, they shaved my head anyway, so there wasn't much hair). They put this little metal plate with a charge on it, and the mousetrap situation with some phony hair on top, then a small invisible tube that ran down my shirt to a little pumpertype unit in my hand. So I was supposed to walk out into the water, and this guard kind of blows my head off. So what they did is they'd set the charge off, the spring on the mousetrap unit would spring open releasing that piece of hair, and then I'd pump this blood-like stuff out of my head. All fine and well. Well, I had been scuba diving a lot, which is something I really haven't done in a quite a while, but at that point in time I was in really good, aquatic shape. You can't hear anything when your ears are underwater, so I was simply told to walk out there, you know, and when the thing went off, float down there like I was dead and pump the blood out of my head. I had Ann Hoffman, Dustin Hoffman's wife at the time, she was taking home movies of it for me on my little Kodak, and Dustin was sitting there watching it. I held my breath for...I suppose it was about two minutes or so, and I couldn't hear them yell, "Cut! Cut! Okay!" And I'm sitting there floating on top of the water, and Dustin jumped in the water and started swimming out there. They thought some maniac Jamaican had blown my brains out. So, if you ever see Papillion, see me floating there in the water and this traumatic experience for the Hoffmans. But anyway, that was kind of a disappointment, because I really wanted to do well in that film, and I ended up almost being embarrassed about it because it was a very, very small part by the time they were done with it. But...that's show biz again. You can't predict what an editor or a director will do with your work, which is another reason why I feel more comfortable really in the record business these days, because it's a situation where at least in the stuff I'm involved with, most of it, I'm writing it and I'm helping, or co-arranging or coproducing it. So pretty much by the time it comes out, I have the control over what it's going to be like, whereas in television or in films, you're completely at the mercy of other people, as it should be. It's just that sometimes those other people don't quite see things the way you see things, so somebody's disappointed...such as in Papillion. [laughter]
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)