Confessions of a Prairie Bitch (16 page)

I think that one of the reasons this episode became so popular is because it blatantly parodies classic films. Besides
The Wizard of Oz,
we have a definite homage to
What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?
When Melissa takes me out in the chair for my “fresh air” and begins pushing me up the hill, the imagery is unmistakable: the blond curls, the bitchy attitude versus the poor put-upon girl with the long brown hair. But now there’s a twist. Which one is in the chair today? Oh my God! Blanche has finally put Jane in the wheelchair! I have had many people who saw this episode in adulthood tell me that they howl with laughter at the physical resemblance to a bizarre role reversal, with me as Bette Davis and Melissa as Joan Crawford. They smugly ask if I or anyone on the show had ever “made the connection.” What they don’t realize is, not only did we make the connection, but we got the joke while we were filming it. All the grown-ups on the set knew the film very well, and Melissa and I were fans of the pre-cable “midnight movies” that ran on weekends and so had seen most of the great creepy classics. Indeed, as we rehearsed pushing me to the top of the hill, giggles broke out here and there among the crew. And then the whispers. “Oh my God, it so is!” “Yeah, isn’t it?” “Yeah, but the other one’s in the chair!” “Oh my God! It’s Blanche’s revenge!” And what revenge! All the way down the hill into the water.

A lot of fans ask if I actually performed this stunt myself. The answer is yes. And no. First was the great push off, the launch. For this, a steel cable was attached to the back of the chair. Melissa pushed and let go, and I screamed as the chair began to tip over the edge…and stopped. The cable jerked taught, and the chair stayed put. But I almost didn’t. You see, there was nothing holding me in the chair. I was just sitting there sliding around in my nightgown with no seat belt, nothing. If the chair jerked to a stop, and I didn’t…Oh well. So I clutched the armrests as best I could with one hand not working that well.

Then came the big plunge. First thing I did was get out of the chair and walk away to let the stunt girl sit down. This was actually dangerous stuff, and Michael wouldn’t have let me do it if I wanted to. Not only did the stunt girl manage to stay in the thing as it rattled and bounced down the rocky slope, when she hit the water, she shot out of the chair and did a full somersault into the air before splashing down. Without hurting herself. Or having the wig fly off. I was very impressed.

But I wasn’t totally off the hook. They still needed footage of me in the chair. So they took me to another hill, down by the Little House itself. It was less steep, with no water at the bottom, but much, much longer. This was to give ample time to capture me on film, screaming my head off. The grips set up a dolly so that the camera was on wheels, and they laid down boards like temporary railroad tracks for it to roll down. The camera was kept secure, of course. Me, again, not so much. Ropes were attached to the chair, not for safety, really, but so that the crew could steer it a bit in order to get a good shot and to keep it from running into the camera. The priorities were clear: a good camera would cost a lot more to replace than a child actor.

I had no lines per se—all I had to do was go for a ride and scream. A lot. How hard could it be? Action! And the chair took off. Fast. Downhill. Over the rocks. Lots of rocks, large rocks, that caused the chair to buck and bounce sometimes right off the ground and tilt wildly from side to side. If you recall, this was not a wheelchair in the way we think of wheelchairs today—large, heavy, sturdily built things intended to navigate streets and curbs, something a disabled person could drive to work. This was a wheelchair designed back when the disabled were referred to as “invalids” and expected to go no farther than their carpeted front parlor. It was barely intended for outdoor use and certainly never meant to roll downhill at high speed. Which is why, among other things, there was no seat belt. So, every time it hit a bump, which was pretty much constantly, I felt my butt bounce right up off and nearly out of the chair. And every time it landed, I felt it slam into my tailbone. My teeth were rattling in my head. I was hanging on for dear life, hoping my hands wouldn’t sweat too much and make me lose my grip.

After an excruciating and terrifying couple of minutes, the chair finally stopped, and they cut. It was agreed that we needed another take. Back up the hill the camera, chair, and I went. I figured this wouldn’t be so bad, now that I had the hang of it. Action! The chair went even faster this time. And now for kicks and dramatic effect, the crew members holding the ropes thought it would be a great idea to tell me that the rope had broken. They started yelling, “Oh no, the rope broke!” and simply let go of their end. On top of trying to scream loudly and convincingly for the scene, I was convinced I was going to fall out of the stupid chair, get my nightgown caught in the wheels, and get myself ripped to shreds. Besides that, the ride was now so bumpy I was starting to hear what sounded like the screws and bolts that held the chair together coming apart, combined with the sound of what seemed like my brain vibrating inside my head. And did anybody remember that I had a real broken arm? I screamed bloody murder.

In the end, I lived, and we got some really great footage, but this sequence definitely qualifies for the category of “Do Not Try This at Home.” And we mustn’t forget the water. Thankfully, I didn’t have to do the back flip. I just had to “emerge” from the pond, adding a sound track of wailing and crying. But I had one teeny problem: the plaster cast. You can’t get those things wet, or they’ll disintegrate. At home, when I took a shower, I was told to put a plastic trash bag over it, so we removed my fake 1800s splint and put a plastic trash bag over my cast and secured it with rubber bands. The splint went back on over that. And into the pond I went.

This was not a natural pond. Nothing in Walnut Grove was. It was Simi Valley, where there was no water. It was a desert. There was no cute little brook by the Ingalls house, no stream to turn a mill wheel. The water was all fake, brought in from the outside, pumped in artificially. And not being a real running stream, it got a bit, shall we say, stagnant. Just like my first pond in “Country Girls,” it was covered in thick, gunky algae. I have no idea what possible germs or parasites lived in it. I had to not just get in it, but put my face under the water and come up spitting. Again, total immersion.

Michael and I stood there in the stagnant, moss-covered pool of goo while the cameramen set up the shot. It seemed we were always standing around together in foul water. Was this man trying to drown me? Did he have some sort of fetish? Michael turned to me and asked, “Do you have a swimming pool at your house?” “No,” I replied. “Well, good,” he smiled brightly, “because after this you can swim in your toilet!”

I took a very deep breath, closed my eyes tight, and down I went. When I came up, there was just enough water up my nose and on my lips that I didn’t have to get too big a drink of the stuff to spit it all over the place and sputter wildly. I heaved out all my breath in one of those great big, pitiful Nellie wails, and after the “Cut!” everyone hooted and cheered and clapped. As I climbed out, I saw that in addition to the slime and the algae, I now had several small snails on my nightgown and in my hair. Ah, the glamour of show business.

I think it was the huge success of this moment that prompted the large number of episodes over the years that involved dunking Nellie into ponds, rivers, and mud puddles and pouring things like water, dirt, eggs, and flour over my head. I apparently give my best performances when I have crap all over me. Because of this, I have developed a deep, lifelong appreciation of the joy and wonder of very hot baths and showers with lots of soap.

People often ask, “What the hell are you doing in there so long?”
Sigh
. Just trying to get clean, just trying to get clean.

CHAPTER TWELVE

BOOBS, BOYS, AND SATAN

NELLIE:
What do you want to know?

LAURA:
Well, what is it about you that attracts men?

NELLIE:
Well, that’s obvious, isn’t it? My natural attributes.

LAURA:
Like what?

NELLIE:
Like my natural curly hair, and my smile. Mother says I’m beautiful, but I wouldn’t go that far.

LAURA:
Neither would I!

T
he set of
Little House
was an interesting place to go through puberty, especially as a girl. It was an insanely male-dominated, testosterone-fueled environment. Yet our crew was protective and territorial when it came to us girls. I have heard horror stories from other teenage actresses who had the misfortune to develop breasts in the presence of an all-male film crew: cat calls, obscene propositions, grabbing, and pinching. But this wasn’t how it was done on our set and certainly not to me. The impression I was given in no uncertain terms was that if anyone bothered me, all I had to do was tell one of the guys on the crew, and the body would never be found.

I had huge crushes on both Ronnie, the prop man (and not just because he had all the peppermint sticks in the mercantile), and Ron Cardarelli, the key grip. Cardarelli was a classic New York Italian type, in the Fonzie/Vinnie Barbarino mold, complete with a cigarette behind his ear and a toothpick hanging out of his mouth. He even sometimes said, “Yo.” I practically swooned.

I think it was the contrast that was such a turn-on. All of us actresses were covered from neck to ankle in our modest 1800s finery, all ruffles, lace petticoats, and pantaloons. Ours was different from the other shows on TV at the time. Shows like
Charlie’s Angels
had plotlines filled with discos, strip clubs, and hookers, any excuse to get the female cast into skimpy outfits for what had even been officially referred to by the networks as “T&A”: tits and ass. From what I’ve heard, executives routinely sent memos to show producers demanding “more T&A!” What on earth could the network demand from
Little House
? More bodice and bustle? Michael Landon and his sweaty chest were the closest thing to sex on the show. Even kissing was considered a big deal and usually followed by an immediate proposal of marriage. And with so many children present, nearly all the time, the actors and show personnel made at least an attempt to restrain themselves from any of the blatant sluttiness that was common on sets. This atmosphere, along with the costumes, gave the whole set a weird feeling of overheated, quasi-repressed Victorian sexuality. It was always there, simmering and bubbling under the surface.

And there in the sweltering heat of Simi, surrounding all the proper, corseted ladies, was the crew: all male, every one of them stripped to the waist, in jeans or shorts, covered in sweat and tattoos, reeking of beer and cigarettes, muscles rippling as they climbed ladders, hoisted heavy equipment, and reached up to adjust smoking-hot lights. There was something very
Lady Chatterley
about the whole thing. But despite their powerful position, the men on the crew did nothing but take care of me. They doted on me and told me to eat my vegetables and drink my milk. When I got braces, Cardarelli nicknamed me “Teeth” and kept reminding me how beautiful my smile would be when they came off.

Only once did I ever hear one of them make a remark indicating they had even noticed my development. I was wearing one of my usual lunchtime outfits. I didn’t dare eat lunch in my costumes because I was a notorious spiller of food and drink, and one spot would be a disaster. So I always took off the dress and wore the petticoats, tights, and boots, but topped off with a T-shirt. Sometimes, I ditched the petticoats, too, and wore cutoff shorts over the tights. This was a particularly fetching look—revealing yet functional, like some sort of odd dance rehearsal outfit, combined with the ringlets and high-heeled boots. I looked a little like a girl superhero in a Japanese comic book. I was drinking a pint of milk. I was one of the only teenage girls I knew who drank milk regularly and actually preferred it to soda. I was leaning back, taking a long drag of milk, when I noticed two crew members staring at me. They just stared and didn’t say a word. Finally, one turned to the other and said quietly, “I don’t know. Must be all that milk.” That is as close to a comment on my body as I got from any of them in my seven years on the show.

Some people, however, were another story. Poor Baby Carrie. Not only was she one of the most hapless, dopiest children in television history, but she was played by twins. It took two people to play someone that dumb. But they weren’t dumb. They were just babies. Adorable babies. Rachel Lindsay and Robin Sidney Greenbush had already had what could be called a successful career before
Little House.
Together, they had played the baby in the movie
Sunshine.
They were also from a crazy show-business family, as their father was Billy Green Bush from
Five Easy Pieces
and that weird Robert Blake movie,
Electra Glide in Blue.
But we didn’t really see much of him. We got Carol, their mother, instead.

People have often asked me, “Just what is wrong with Baby Carrie?” “Why can’t Baby Carrie talk properly?” The girls seem to be perfectly nice, intelligent, articulate young women now, so how come on the show, every line of Baby Carrie’s dialogue sounded like “Pah! Umma gumma boo gurble twee!” Well, if you ever met their mother, you’d understand. Even though she was a grown woman—an attractive, blond, heavily made-up woman, a twang-talkin’, southern-fried, good ol’ gal—a lot of what she said sounded very much like “Umma gumma boo gurble twee,” thanks to her countrified accent. Why does Baby Carrie fall down the hill during the opening credits? Because she was stupid and clumsy? No. Here’s what really happened.

They always switched the girls out every few hours, so they could take naps. It was the first season, the first episode, and when it was time to shoot the “Baby Carrie runs down the hill” scene, the director called for a “fresh twin.” Mother Carol grabbed up the resting child and quickly put her little shoes back on. On the wrong feet. So the poor thing, who had only recently mastered walking, tried to run down a steep, rock-covered, gopher hole–scarred hill with her clunky high-button shoes on the opposite feet. Not surprisingly, she went down like a ton of bricks. But since Michael decided it was much too hilarious to reshoot, it now runs forever and ever, over and over again, at the beginning of every show.

To this day, I have no idea how Carol’s daughters turned out as well adjusted as they did. She traumatized me, and I only had to be around her a few hours a day on the set. So there I was, during the taping of the fourth season, walking out of my dressing room in Simi Valley, wearing a T-shirt over my camisole. I had barely gotten the door open, when I heard a loud whoop. It sounded like some kind of waterbird coming in for a landing. It was the unmistakable voice of Carol Greenbush. As I stepped out onto the stairs of the trailer, she screamed in my general direction: “GET A LOAD OF THEM JUGS!” I froze in my tracks.

I was mortified. I was being screamed at, catcalled about my body parts in public, and it wasn’t even by a guy. Not a crew member, not some hairy construction worker, but Baby Carrie’s mother. I turned around, went back into my trailer, shut the door, and didn’t come out until after lunch. My aunt tried to reason with Carol about her behavior, but I don’t know that reason was possible with her. She never stopped coming up with gems like this.

Sometime later, when I was at least mercifully closer to eighteen, she marched into makeup and brayed at the top of her lungs, “Alison! Did you pose nude for
Playboy
?” It couldn’t have been later than seven in the morning. I finished cringing and answered her.

“Uh, no. Not that I recall. Why?”

“Well, I heard that
somebody
from
Little House
had posed nude for
Playboy,
and I knew it couldn’t be Melissa Gilbert cuz she’s too young, and I figured it couldn’t be Melissa Sue cuz who’d pay to see her? So I figured you being the only one with a good body, it had to be you!”

I sighed and tried to figure out through my morning haze if this outburst could possibly be construed as a compliment. I assured her that, however she felt about it, if she was looking for me to appear anywhere nude,
Playboy
or otherwise, she was in for a very long wait.

So I was the first one on the show to get boobs. What was strange for me was it wasn’t like that at school. I was always one of the youngest in my class, and it seemed that all the girls I hung out with were Jewish or Italian. They had training bras in the fifth grade. I was a skinny Scotch-Irish girl who was still flat enough to go shirtless like a boy while they were all wearing C cups. But on the set of
Little House,
I was the oldest, and both Melissas were of similar genetic stock, so I won the race. It shouldn’t have been a race, of course, but not only were we being compared all the time, there was the matter of the swimsuit.

Gladys had a swimsuit. It was from her glamour days, a genuine Schiaparelli gold lamé one-piece, Roman toga–style swimsuit. I couldn’t imagine anyone actually swimming in it. But it was fabulous. Gladys told us that “whoever could fit into the suit first” would get it. Clearly, one had to have breasts that filled out the top.

Melissa Sue wasn’t interested. It was me versus Melissa Gilbert in the battle of the boobs. Melissa wanted it so much, I actually caught her doing those isometric flexing exercises that are supposed to make your boobs bigger. They didn’t work. The swimsuit still hangs in my closet.

I was also the first to get my period. Melissa got hers much later. I have no idea when Melissa Sue got hers. (As far as I know, Melissa Sue Anderson does not even go to the toilet.) Despite all the films and brochures, my period still came as a total shock. I was nearly fifteen and had probably given up looking for it. And although all the material warned about “some discomfort,” it didn’t really tell the truth. It didn’t say it would hurt like hell.

I first noticed something was wrong after eating lunch one day at the infamously bad Paramount Studios commissary. They later redid the place, but at the time, it was well known as a good place to get food poisoning. So when on the way home from work I rolled into a ball in the backseat of the car and started moaning and complaining of violent cramping, all Auntie Marion could ask was, “Did you have the corned beef and cabbage?”

But I hadn’t had the corned beef and cabbage. And when I got home, I felt much worse. My parents were ready to call a doctor, until I came out of the bathroom and announced what was really happening. My mother, wanting to be progressive, said that it should be a cause for celebration; it was a sign of growing up, young womanhood and all that. Periods were treated as something shameful when she was a girl, and she wasn’t going to have any of that. She went to the corner liquor store and bought me a bottle of champagne and a box of Kotex pads, the kind with a belt.

I said, “Yeah, great.
Whatever.
” Taking the champagne, I used it to wash down a handful of Tylenol and locked myself in my room. I had never been in so much pain. I couldn’t believe women did this every month. But I would soon become an expert on the subject. I got rid of the horrendous bulky pads—they were like wearing a sofa cushion between my legs—and learned how to use tampons.

And then, of course, being the sharing type, I taught everyone else. I was the hit of Melissa Gilbert’s next slumber party, where I was the only girl who had started her period. All the other attendees were younger, like Melissa, or even later bloomers than me. I demonstrated the Playtex tampon versus a regular Tampax tampon in a glass of water like in the commercial. Everyone “oohed” and “aahed” as the Playtex showed its superior absorbency. But there was one thing I hadn’t told them about: PMS. They had to find this out the hard way.

One night a few months later, the girls were staying up late talking, and I was exhausted. We were having the party in the “maid’s quarters” and were all laid out on sleeping bags in the main room. This meant I could conveniently crawl off into the bedroom and shut the door to sleep. They decided to play a prank. While I was asleep (out cold, apparently), Melissa and the others snuck into the room and put things in my bed: a rock, some hair curlers, a brush, some—unused, thankfully—Kotex pads. Then they all snuck back out and waited for the fun to start. They got much more than they bargained for. I was a day and a half away from my period.

In the middle of the night, I rolled over onto a rock.
What the hell?!
Then I found the brush. And the Kotex.
What the fucking hell?
I don’t wake up in the best of moods to begin with, but something about rolling over onto that rock really got me going. I wasn’t completely awake, but I remember picking up every single thing in the bed, going to the door and opening it, and then throwing everything as hard as I could into the main room. I didn’t look to see where any of it landed. I think my eyes were still closed. Then I stumbled back to the bed and fell asleep.

When I woke up, it was later, much later. Like noon. I walked out into the living room, which was empty. I went into the house and found the girls sitting around the kitchen table. They looked terrified at the sight of me.

“Hey, what time is it? How come nobody woke me up for breakfast?” I mumbled.