Confessions of a Prairie Bitch (12 page)

Constantly being compared to her was tiresome as well. All three of us girls were under a microscope, with the producers, the crew, and all the stage mothers constantly measuring and noting every stage of development, comparing us to each other as if we were sisters.

The funny thing was, we couldn’t have been more different. Melissa Gilbert was a nice Jewish girl from a wealthy family in Encino, Melissa Sue Anderson was a devout Catholic in a single-parent home, and I was raised by an itinerant band of Canadian actors. The two Melissas and I were like some old joke about a priest, a minister, and a rabbi in a lifeboat. It was a wonder we spoke to each other at all.

And we were not the same age. I was the eldest, which confused many adults on the set. Melissa Sue looked older than I did, and so often when trying to excuse what was by then politely being referred to as her “aloofness,” people would say, “It’s a teenage phase. I’m sure Alison will be doing the same thing any minute.” Auntie Marion was quick to correct them on this issue. “Alison is almost a year older than Missy. I do not recall her ever going through a phase quite like
this.
” Although Auntie Marion stressed patience when dealing with “Missy,” she wasn’t past using her as an example. “Poor girl,” she’d say, “if she doesn’t change, that meanness will show up in her face. It always does, you know.” She informed me that people’s real selves always reveal themselves eventually; that those who are selfish, spoiled, and mean will age sooner and wrinkle earlier than those who are not. She said that if I was good and kind and patient, it would also show in my face; that I would age gracefully, and when I did get old, I would have laugh lines instead of deep furrows from frowning. I would have dismissed this as just a silly story to get young girls to be nice to each other, except that my aunt was in her seventies and looked years younger than all the other stage mothers on the set. The woman was clearly onto something.

Photographic Insert

Mom and Dad onstage in Canada in 1951. Yes, they were acting, but this scene could have been straight out of their real-life relationship.