Eighty Is Not Enough: One Actor's Journey Through American Entertainment by Dick van Patten Page B
Authors: Dick van Patten
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I’d been expelled from the school. Nobody ever mentioned it, and I had the impression they simply thought I quit. And I certainly wasn’t going to bring it up. Anyway, I very much appreciated their gesture, and I hope they let me keep the diploma now that they know the real story.
19
T ROUBLE AT H OME
While I was working on The Skin of Our Teeth , things got bad at home with Mom and Dad. Throughout the early years of my mother pushing me and Joyce into show business, my father was proud, supportive, and enthusiastic. But in time her ambitions took over my mother’s life. All of her time was consumed with meeting people in the business, arranging tryouts, preparing us for rehearsals and always being on the hunt for the next big opportunity.
For me, that was fine. I enjoyed my life as a child actor. And, as I’ve said, I really owe everything I have to my mother and her determination. But the obsession with our careers began to take a toll on her marriage. My father began to miss his wife. He felt she was ignoring him, and no doubt he was right. When that kind of distance arises in a marriage, trouble is just around the corner.
As is often the case, it began at work. My father was selling furniture at Flint & Horner in Manhattan, where he met a young and attractive Italian girl, Eleanor Della-Gatta. They began having an affair, and my mother, completely absorbed in the theater world, was oblivious.
Then one day the girl’s mother showed up at our house. She broke the news to my mother and said she wanted it stopped. Mom was stunned. At first, she didn’t believe the woman. But that night she confronted my father, and he admitted it. A few days later, he moved out. Just like that, Mom’s life was turned upside down.
Dad took an apartment in Richmond Hill. For a while, things really fell to pieces. I’d wake up in the middle of the night and hear Mom crying in her room. One day she asked me to go talk Dad into coming back. I didn’t want to do it, but she was so distraught I couldn’t say no.
I remember walking up the steps to his apartment, while she waited down on the street. I asked him to come home. I’m sure it was difficult for him as he tried to explain to me that it was impossible. I didn’t really understand it all. I just wanted him to come back. But he wouldn’t.
In a short time, Dad enlisted in the Marines. I guess he wanted to get away from it all. Many years later, after Mom died, he wrote Joyce and me a letter trying to explain the reason for his leaving: “Once you were safely launched in the theatre,” he wrote to us, “I found the life we had imposed upon ourselves too one-dimensional. We lived, ate, [and] talked theatre. There was no room for anything else. We gradually grew apart.”
It was a tough time. I was just fourteen, and my father was gone. It was even worse for Joyce. She was only nine years old, and she adored my father. Without him around, I think Joyce felt much more alone. She and I responded very differently to the whole process of being child actors. She felt the pressure a great deal more than I did and came to resent my mother’s obsession with the entertainment world. At an early age, she had begun looking to Dad when things got tough for her.
Joyce also felt we were measured too much by our success. If we were working, we were treated one way; if we didn’t get a job, it was something different. I didn’t notice it as much, but Joyce was right; things did change depending on whether or not we were working.
Joyce rebelled. At sixteen, she left home, eloping with an older fellow, Tom King, an aspiring actor, who would later be a highly successful television executive for ABC. Joyce and Tom had a son, Casey, my nephew, who now, along with my three children, is my closest friend.
In retrospect, I think there was a parallel between Joyce and my father. Each decided at some point they’d had enough of a home where everything revolved around getting ahead in the
19
T ROUBLE AT H OME
While I was working on The Skin of Our Teeth , things got bad at home with Mom and Dad. Throughout the early years of my mother pushing me and Joyce into show business, my father was proud, supportive, and enthusiastic. But in time her ambitions took over my mother’s life. All of her time was consumed with meeting people in the business, arranging tryouts, preparing us for rehearsals and always being on the hunt for the next big opportunity.
For me, that was fine. I enjoyed my life as a child actor. And, as I’ve said, I really owe everything I have to my mother and her determination. But the obsession with our careers began to take a toll on her marriage. My father began to miss his wife. He felt she was ignoring him, and no doubt he was right. When that kind of distance arises in a marriage, trouble is just around the corner.
As is often the case, it began at work. My father was selling furniture at Flint & Horner in Manhattan, where he met a young and attractive Italian girl, Eleanor Della-Gatta. They began having an affair, and my mother, completely absorbed in the theater world, was oblivious.
Then one day the girl’s mother showed up at our house. She broke the news to my mother and said she wanted it stopped. Mom was stunned. At first, she didn’t believe the woman. But that night she confronted my father, and he admitted it. A few days later, he moved out. Just like that, Mom’s life was turned upside down.
Dad took an apartment in Richmond Hill. For a while, things really fell to pieces. I’d wake up in the middle of the night and hear Mom crying in her room. One day she asked me to go talk Dad into coming back. I didn’t want to do it, but she was so distraught I couldn’t say no.
I remember walking up the steps to his apartment, while she waited down on the street. I asked him to come home. I’m sure it was difficult for him as he tried to explain to me that it was impossible. I didn’t really understand it all. I just wanted him to come back. But he wouldn’t.
In a short time, Dad enlisted in the Marines. I guess he wanted to get away from it all. Many years later, after Mom died, he wrote Joyce and me a letter trying to explain the reason for his leaving: “Once you were safely launched in the theatre,” he wrote to us, “I found the life we had imposed upon ourselves too one-dimensional. We lived, ate, [and] talked theatre. There was no room for anything else. We gradually grew apart.”
It was a tough time. I was just fourteen, and my father was gone. It was even worse for Joyce. She was only nine years old, and she adored my father. Without him around, I think Joyce felt much more alone. She and I responded very differently to the whole process of being child actors. She felt the pressure a great deal more than I did and came to resent my mother’s obsession with the entertainment world. At an early age, she had begun looking to Dad when things got tough for her.
Joyce also felt we were measured too much by our success. If we were working, we were treated one way; if we didn’t get a job, it was something different. I didn’t notice it as much, but Joyce was right; things did change depending on whether or not we were working.
Joyce rebelled. At sixteen, she left home, eloping with an older fellow, Tom King, an aspiring actor, who would later be a highly successful television executive for ABC. Joyce and Tom had a son, Casey, my nephew, who now, along with my three children, is my closest friend.
In retrospect, I think there was a parallel between Joyce and my father. Each decided at some point they’d had enough of a home where everything revolved around getting ahead in the
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