Speaker 1: This is Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the
Speaker 1: Thing from My Heart Radio. Over the course of her
Speaker 1: illustrious career, Marlo Thomas has broken barriers for women. As
Speaker 1: an award winning actress, Marlowe became a household name from
Speaker 1: her portrayal of Anne Marie, the lead in the television
Speaker 1: show That Girl, a woman who in the late sixties
Speaker 1: wanted a career more than a family. An outspoken feminist,
Speaker 1: marlow then used her fame to launch Free to Be
Speaker 1: You and Me, which was first an album than a book,
Speaker 1: and eventually an Emmy and Peabody Award winning TV show
Speaker 1: for children that challenged gender norms and became a touchstone
Speaker 1: for a general ration of feminists. Her best selling books
Speaker 1: include a memoir about growing up the adored daughter of
Speaker 1: TV star Danny Thomas, and just last year, she and
Speaker 1: her husband Phil Donahue released a book and podcast of
Speaker 1: marriage advice called from interviews with other happy, long lasting couples.
Speaker 1: As a philanthropist, she's continued her family's support for St.
Speaker 1: Jude's Children's Research Hospital in Memphis, which her father founded
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty two. All in all, quite a life
Speaker 1: for that girl growing up in Beverly Hills. Marlowe says
Speaker 1: she and her siblings spent a lot of time on
Speaker 1: the set of The Danny Thomas Show, her father's TV series,
Speaker 1: which ran for eleven seasons between nineteen fifty three to
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty four. We all used to work at the
Speaker 1: studio in the summer, you know, running film back and forth,
Speaker 1: and when we could drive, we'd drop off scripts. So
Speaker 1: we were kind of like interns, and my dad would
Speaker 1: pay us an allowance to keep us off the street.
Speaker 1: And my dad was a kind of guy, and I
Speaker 1: have a feeling you're this way. He loved having his
Speaker 1: kids around him. He just loved it. And when we
Speaker 1: were children, we were allowed to sit in on writers meetings.
Speaker 1: We'd sit on the floor and the writers would all
Speaker 1: be talking about coming up stories or my dad's act
Speaker 1: in Las Vegas, and I would laugh and Dad would say, Oh,
Speaker 1: my kid loves it. Why did you like that, honey?
Speaker 1: What was funny about that to you? He was interested.
Speaker 1: And then sometimes I'd say something and he'd say, my
Speaker 1: kids are so funny. They are funnier than I am.
Speaker 1: So he gave us this feeling. He kind of empowered us.
Speaker 1: I mean, I always thought I was brilliant, and I
Speaker 1: have no idea if I am or I am not,
Speaker 1: but I think I am because he said I was,
Speaker 1: and he did that for all of us. He gave
Speaker 1: us that. It's like Lauren Michaels would always say that
Speaker 1: his kids were like his focus group. Yeah. I used
Speaker 1: to say to Lauren, you know, you're a couple of
Speaker 1: generations removed from some of the musical acts that are
Speaker 1: starring on the show. Now, his daughter Sophie is older.
Speaker 1: Now she's graduating college. But when Sophie was a teenager
Speaker 1: and going to school in New York, I'd say to Lauren,
Speaker 1: how do you determine who the musical acts are on
Speaker 1: the show? And he'd say, who's ever in Sophie's iPod?
Speaker 1: That's right, he just went to music stremely to see
Speaker 1: who she was listening to. But tell people how the studio,
Speaker 1: what studio was he at? It was a Desilu, Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that was like what like Sunset Gower somewhere in
Speaker 1: like Hollywood. Yeah, it was below Sunset on Gower. But
Speaker 1: you were born in Michigan. Yeah, but for five minutes,
Speaker 1: I was born in Detroit. Now, why was the family
Speaker 1: in Detroit. My mom had a radio show there, the
Speaker 1: Sweet Singer of Sweet Songs, and my dad came on
Speaker 1: as an announcer and they fell in love. And then
Speaker 1: he wanted to go to ship Cargo with the bigger nightclubs,
Speaker 1: where he was really a nightclub performer. So she had
Speaker 1: to make the decision in those days, give up the
Speaker 1: show and go with the guy she loved to Chicago.
Speaker 1: She got pregnant and that was the decision, and off
Speaker 1: they went to Chicago for a couple of years, and
Speaker 1: then a blast Vogo was coming through on whatever that was,
Speaker 1: that Pacific Railroad. He represented Sinatra and Danny Kay and
Speaker 1: Judy Garland, so he was very well known. And he
Speaker 1: was told that there was a great comic he should
Speaker 1: stop and see on his way to New York, and
Speaker 1: he saw my father and he signed him up and
Speaker 1: brought him to Hollywood right away. And he said to
Speaker 1: my father, you know you're a star. You should come
Speaker 1: to come to l Ay. That's a pattern of your family.
Speaker 1: The women in your family marrying men that they meet
Speaker 1: on radio shows and TV shows. Right, So you're you're
Speaker 1: out there in the fifties, you moved to California. Where
Speaker 1: did you go to school out there, Beverly Hills High School. No,
Speaker 1: Marry Amount went to Mary. She went to a Catholic school. Yeah,
Speaker 1: your father is an old school Lebanese and went to Mary.
Speaker 1: My husband went to Notre Dame. So we were raised
Speaker 1: the same way. Actually, and he's from Cleveland and I'm
Speaker 1: from Beverly Hills. But we have the same upbringing, really
Speaker 1: strict Catholic upbringing. Yeah. Yeah. And when the time comes
Speaker 1: for you to launch your own career, you start that
Speaker 1: girl in nineteen six and you're a young woman. You're
Speaker 1: very young. Right when I had done a pilot. You know,
Speaker 1: everything in this business is wonderfully progressive. I had bumped
Speaker 1: around doing seventy seven Sunset Strip and Dobie Gillis and
Speaker 1: all these terrible shows. Lauren Baby did Doobie Gillis did
Speaker 1: do Mr. Red. Not that bad, but pretty bad. I
Speaker 1: did all those shows. I played a Chinese girl on Bonanza.
Speaker 1: Nobody knew what to do with me. I was a
Speaker 1: Chinese girl. I played the Hawaiian girl. I played an
Speaker 1: Arabian girl. They never saw me as the girl next door.
Speaker 1: You wouldn't get cast as the Chinese girl now right,
Speaker 1: but with my coloring, I'm out of action, dark hair,
Speaker 1: dark eyes, so they could only they never saw me
Speaker 1: as the girl next door. But I was cast in
Speaker 1: a pilot at Universal called twos Company, which was an
Speaker 1: adorable show about a young couple, and it didn't sell.
Speaker 1: But the head of the network called me, Edgar Sherrick,
Speaker 1: and he said, Claire, All almost bought the show because
Speaker 1: they think you can be a TV star, so we'd
Speaker 1: like to talk to you. So I went in. I
Speaker 1: was disappointed the show didn't sell because I loved it,
Speaker 1: and they said, we want to do a show starring you.
Speaker 1: And they gave me a whole bunch of scripts to read.
Speaker 1: And I called him up and I said, all the
Speaker 1: shows you've given me to read, the girl is the
Speaker 1: wife of somebody, the secretary of somebody, the daughter of somebody.
Speaker 1: Have you ever thought about doing a show with a girl?
Speaker 1: Is that somebody? And he said, would anybody watch a
Speaker 1: show like that? I said, I think so. When I
Speaker 1: gave him a book Feminine Mystique, I said, read this.
Speaker 1: He called me up and he said, this is what's
Speaker 1: going to happen to my wife. And it did, actually,
Speaker 1: so we built a show based on that. A girl
Speaker 1: like me graduated from college. I didn't want to get married,
Speaker 1: wanted to be an actress, want to move to the
Speaker 1: big city. And everybody said it wouldn't succeed. And that
Speaker 1: first night, Wow, it got a forty share on ABC. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and all of a sudden, I was the ultimate girl
Speaker 1: next door, which was so funny because I could never
Speaker 1: get cast like that. And then I became the girl
Speaker 1: next door so much in people's minds that it's very
Speaker 1: hard for me to play meaner people. The murderous. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I have a script for you where you play a
Speaker 1: woman that murders people. That's what I want. I'm having
Speaker 1: trouble raising money for the film that us and I'll
Speaker 1: do it for nothing. A lot of the financiers, a
Speaker 1: lot of the investors I'm talking to, aren't buying you
Speaker 1: as a murderous but I'll work on it. I can
Speaker 1: do it. But let me ask you this. Obviously, in
Speaker 1: the sixties, the looming cultural reality is the Vietnam War,
Speaker 1: and a lot of programming and a lot of music
Speaker 1: and things are things that help us to forget and feminism,
Speaker 1: in my mind, doesn't really get rolling till the seventies,
Speaker 1: and Your and Your show is over by seventy one.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk later on about Free to Be You
Speaker 1: and Me. But at the moment that you do the show,
Speaker 1: you were doing Barefoot in the Park in London, right.
Speaker 1: And I often tell people that when a company is
Speaker 1: kind of mounting up their slate, it's a relatively new company.
Speaker 1: So when HBO decides it wants to do original program
Speaker 1: and they get Sarah Jessica to do Sex in the City,
Speaker 1: they get Jimmiguan Delfini and David Chase to do the Sopranos,
Speaker 1: and they pay these people a lot of money to
Speaker 1: stay with the show and do the hit show for
Speaker 1: a long long time. And really, ABC was a fledgling
Speaker 1: network in the sixties. I mean there was CBS, there
Speaker 1: was NBC, and ABC was like the redheaded step child
Speaker 1: behind the two of them, and Leonard Goldberg and all
Speaker 1: those people were building the company during that time. Did
Speaker 1: you feel that was a part of their faith in
Speaker 1: you and their needed you were part of building that network. Yeah,
Speaker 1: money doesn't talk, it it speaks obscenities. Right, Claire Ale
Speaker 1: was willing to put up all the money from my show.
Speaker 1: They wanted a woman, a young woman, to sell shampoo,
Speaker 1: and I was there girl. I mean, there wasn't another
Speaker 1: girl they could see yet, and I'm sure there were many,
Speaker 1: but there wasn't one. They saw me as I could
Speaker 1: sell the shampoo and the conditioner and the makeup and everything,
Speaker 1: and so they fixated on me, and that gave me
Speaker 1: tremendous power to get my show done. And so as
Speaker 1: we embarked on how to get this show written and created,
Speaker 1: I used to play charades with Bill Persky and Sam Denoff,
Speaker 1: who had won a couple of Emmys for The Dick
Speaker 1: Van Dyke Show. And so I said to them ABC
Speaker 1: wants to do a show with me, and we're looking
Speaker 1: for writers. Would you ever consider writing a show about
Speaker 1: a girl? Because they'd only written guy shows? And they
Speaker 1: said that would be great. We'd love to talk about it.
Speaker 1: Mike Nichols had cast me in Barefoot in London. They
Speaker 1: came to London to see my opening night and then
Speaker 1: they decided to do it, and so they wrote the
Speaker 1: pilot and when it's sold, they weren't willing to sign
Speaker 1: up for five years. Nobody really wants to sign the
Speaker 1: five year contract, as you know, everybody, you know, we
Speaker 1: cringe when we see a five year contract. And Danny
Speaker 1: Arnold was going to be the producer. He only wanted
Speaker 1: to sign up for two years billion sound. So the
Speaker 1: only person who said I'll be here for five years
Speaker 1: was me, So I became the producer. Otherwise, had they
Speaker 1: said it, they probably would have been the producer. So
Speaker 1: not only did I become the producer, I own the negative.
Speaker 1: I own the whole thing. And that only happened because
Speaker 1: I was the only one who said I'll do it,
Speaker 1: and I had learned so much working from my father
Speaker 1: at the studio. Nothing was a mystery. And you know,
Speaker 1: in every profession, whether it's show business or law or
Speaker 1: interior design or whatever it is, it's mysterious. But when
Speaker 1: you know the language, it isn't. I mean, I knew
Speaker 1: what a scrim was, and it with dailies where I
Speaker 1: knew what the editing machine with the three heads looked like.
Speaker 1: I knew what musical scoring was. I knew what a
Speaker 1: red tape was. I knew it all so because I
Speaker 1: had just been a buzz gone the wall, being the
Speaker 1: one who carried the film from one end of the
Speaker 1: studio to the other, and been interested and sat in
Speaker 1: and watched people. I was very knowledgeable, and I certainly
Speaker 1: was knowledgeable about comedy. I mean I knew comedy. I
Speaker 1: done Barefoot in the Park, I done under the Young
Speaker 1: Me Contry. I had done Class Menagerie. I had done
Speaker 1: a million plays by then. I was only years old.
Speaker 1: But as you know, when you start out, you're just
Speaker 1: doing stock, you know, or three city plays. I did
Speaker 1: two for the Seesaw in three cities. So I was
Speaker 1: very good on the stage. I mean I had my
Speaker 1: sea legs, so I was ready. You know. Whenever I
Speaker 1: speak at colleges and stuff, and people asked me, you know,
Speaker 1: how do I get started? I said, started a little theater.
Speaker 1: Get into little theater, and do as many plays as
Speaker 1: you can do, because I believe everybody gets a shot,
Speaker 1: but not everybody gets a second shot. But if you're
Speaker 1: ready for your first shot, I was. When I was
Speaker 1: cast by Mike and Barefoot. I auditioned for him about
Speaker 1: I don't know a hundred people. They gave me Marty
Speaker 1: Milner as my partner. We said, how do you do it?
Speaker 1: Got up on staff, Yeah, and I got the part.
Speaker 1: And Mike said to me later, who are you what
Speaker 1: have you done? And I told him, for a kid,
Speaker 1: I was pretty seasoned and so I was ready. So
Speaker 1: when I came back from Barefoot, I was really strong.
Speaker 1: I've been a year there and I was very strong,
Speaker 1: And so by strong, I mean not scared, knowing how
Speaker 1: to do it and trusting my instincts. I love working
Speaker 1: with actors. I love being a part of a company,
Speaker 1: and we had a great company. Ted Bessel was as
Speaker 1: a propos of what you said about, you know, being
Speaker 1: in the theater. I always tell people when they're younger,
Speaker 1: I say do anything, as I don't have a lot
Speaker 1: of pride about what you do. Don't say no to anything.
Speaker 1: You've got to put that energy out there and give
Speaker 1: it up, you know what I mean. Now, I know
Speaker 1: that the world was much smaller than it is now.
Speaker 1: Now there's so many shows. There's too many shows. There's
Speaker 1: no way we can have everything be good. I mean,
Speaker 1: there's just too much content out there, and and everybody's
Speaker 1: chasing the same actress, everybody's chasing the same writers. And
Speaker 1: for you, back then per Sky and these famous writers,
Speaker 1: I'm imagining that the television landscape was very finite back then,
Speaker 1: so finding good writers there weren't a lot of them
Speaker 1: were there right right now? They weren't. No, they were
Speaker 1: pretty stellar. The show was that good because they were
Speaker 1: so good as you. Danny Arnold later created Barney Miller,
Speaker 1: which is a fantastic show, and Billy went on to
Speaker 1: do Kayton Alley and a whole lot of very good
Speaker 1: women shows. He got to become a real guru for
Speaker 1: women shows. They were very gifted people, and they the
Speaker 1: thing is that they would rewrite everything. You know, we'd
Speaker 1: get a script and it would be kind of so so,
Speaker 1: but it had a good premise, and they rewrite the
Speaker 1: hell out of it, bring it back to the table,
Speaker 1: and it was fantastic. And then the person whose name
Speaker 1: was on it would win an Emmy for it. And
Speaker 1: then somebody like you would call and say, is this
Speaker 1: the same Joe Blow that you had? Because his is
Speaker 1: not very good. Our guys had completely redone it. Actress
Speaker 1: and activist Marlowe Thomas Her push for equal rights was
Speaker 1: part of a larger conversation about gender equality in the seventies.
Speaker 1: Feminism was also a heated topic in my two thousand
Speaker 1: twelve conversation with author Erica Jong and her daughter Molly Jong. Fast.
Speaker 1: I think that women who are fourteen fifteen are in
Speaker 1: the most difficult position they have ever been in modern society.
Speaker 1: What do you think about I mean, I agree, I
Speaker 1: think there's a lot of sexuality. I think it's not
Speaker 1: explained to young girls in a way very confusing Molly.
Speaker 1: But I think that's a legacy of the feminist movement.
Speaker 1: I mean, we said we want a legacy of the
Speaker 1: feminist movement. It is a legacy, and here I really
Speaker 1: feel fierce. It is the legacy of a distortion of
Speaker 1: women's desire for equal rights. Equal riots are not platforms,
Speaker 1: shoots and naked clothes because but you can't blow up
Speaker 1: an atom bomb and then choose how it's going to go.
Speaker 1: Here more of my conversation with Erica Jong and Molly
Speaker 1: young Fast at Here's the Thing dot Org. After the break,
Speaker 1: Marlowe Thomas explains why she went to New York to
Speaker 1: study acting with Lee Strasburg after her success on TV.
Speaker 1: I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's the Thing.
Speaker 1: As executive producer and star of That Girl, Marlowe Thomas
Speaker 1: worked closely with the writers to make her character and
Speaker 1: Marie more believable. Yeah, it's a regular company. You know.
Speaker 1: You sit around and say, let's do an arc where
Speaker 1: she's looking for a job and she gets these four jobs,
Speaker 1: and let's do an arc where her father wants to
Speaker 1: move back home, and you know, and so you you
Speaker 1: talk about the arc, and and then we'd read, have
Speaker 1: a table read, and and everybody would give their comments.
Speaker 1: There were very few times where, you know, there were
Speaker 1: any huge debates. You know, I've always felt about story
Speaker 1: that what's right always wins. You know. The first year
Speaker 1: was a little difficult because I was the only girl
Speaker 1: on the staff. You know, they staffed the show. I
Speaker 1: didn't staff the show. I didn't know any writers. I
Speaker 1: was a kid. How would I know writers. So they
Speaker 1: staffed the show with a lot of terrific guy writers,
Speaker 1: in which I would say, I don't think a girl
Speaker 1: would say that to her father, or I don't know
Speaker 1: that's the way a girl would end an argument with
Speaker 1: her boyfriend. So we'd have these debates. So finally Danny Arnold,
Speaker 1: who was one of the smartest guys in the world, said,
Speaker 1: you know what we need. We need a female story editor.
Speaker 1: You can't be the only girl in the room and
Speaker 1: so the female story editor came on, and that was
Speaker 1: heaven because she was able from her expertise and her
Speaker 1: ability to write, to say, you know, let's go this way.
Speaker 1: The only real debate we ever had was they wanted
Speaker 1: to be a wedding for the last show. Clara wanted
Speaker 1: a wedding. ABC wanted a wedding. The producers wanted a wedding.
Speaker 1: And I said, we can't do a wedding. We can't
Speaker 1: end the show with a wedding. If we end the
Speaker 1: show with a wedding. This audience, which has followed this
Speaker 1: character for five years, she's independent, she doesn't want to
Speaker 1: get married, she's not sure she wants to get married,
Speaker 1: she wants a career. We've had so many of those conversations.
Speaker 1: To have a wedding is to betray them. I think
Speaker 1: we're saying that's the only happy ending, and lots of
Speaker 1: shows end with weddings. I don't want this show to
Speaker 1: end with a wedding. And that was a problem. That
Speaker 1: was the only one. And the interesting thing is, I mean,
Speaker 1: obviously they let me have it that way. And then
Speaker 1: a couple of years later, Billy and Sambo said to me,
Speaker 1: that was such a right idea, because of it had
Speaker 1: gone into syndication. That way, the show was over. Once
Speaker 1: you see the show run through and you see the wedding,
Speaker 1: then you know how the story ends. But I would
Speaker 1: have felt it would have been a wrong message to
Speaker 1: say this is the only happy ending. And Alec, I'll
Speaker 1: tell you the mail that poured in about that. Thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you Marlon for not copping out. Thank you, thank
Speaker 1: you for not ending with a wedding. I mean, they
Speaker 1: really they wanted to see it. They've been hanging onto
Speaker 1: the fact that this is the one single girl on television.
Speaker 1: Had never been a single girl before. There's this one
Speaker 1: single girl, and she doesn't get married at the end.
Speaker 1: And I always had a thing growing up, which is
Speaker 1: why I did Free to Be You and Me that
Speaker 1: every princess married the prince. That was the only happy
Speaker 1: ending of a fairy tale. And I hope your children,
Speaker 1: in fact, I'm going to send you Free to Be
Speaker 1: this week. Your children should listen to Free to Be
Speaker 1: You and Me, because there is no one happy ending.
Speaker 1: Your boys and your girls will have the happy ending
Speaker 1: that they create for themselves, not one that goes along
Speaker 1: with what every other boy and every other girl has done.
Speaker 1: So when the show is over, when did you go
Speaker 1: to the actor's studio after that? Because you were in
Speaker 1: Hollywood doing the show. So when the shows are you
Speaker 1: moved to New York. Well, I they wanted us to
Speaker 1: do two more years, and they wanted me and Chatty
Speaker 1: to get married. I didn't want to get married, but
Speaker 1: they said, well, they're just two two more years because
Speaker 1: they really needed that girl. I mean, there weren't a
Speaker 1: lot of hits on ABC, as you remember. And I said,
Speaker 1: I just can't I was a girl when we started.
Speaker 1: I'm a woman now. I can't be the same little
Speaker 1: girl running around trying to get a job. I mean
Speaker 1: it's I'm too old now, you know, I'm thirty one.
Speaker 1: That decide to move on and I got a script.
Speaker 1: It was called Crackers. It was about a woman who
Speaker 1: was a drunk and it was a very touching story.
Speaker 1: And I read it and I thought, I don't know
Speaker 1: how to do this. Everything I had done had been
Speaker 1: in this comedic vein Barefoot in the Park and all
Speaker 1: the stuff I've done, I mean even Glass Menagerie didn't
Speaker 1: have that kind of character that you had to, you know,
Speaker 1: to play a good drunk and to have come out
Speaker 1: of that and all the would come from the withdrawal
Speaker 1: to bring yourself out, yourself up. I didn't know how
Speaker 1: to do it. So I called Ellen Burson, who I
Speaker 1: had met a few times. So she said, you got
Speaker 1: to go to leave Strasburg. So I called him. He
Speaker 1: said he'd meet me. I flew to New York and
Speaker 1: he said to me, you're a big story. You've got
Speaker 1: a lot of awards. What do you want to come
Speaker 1: to class for. I said, because I only know how
Speaker 1: to do what I know how to do, and I've
Speaker 1: gotten by on a lot of charm and comedy instinct.
Speaker 1: He said, don't look a gift horse in the mouth,
Speaker 1: my dear. I said, I'm not complaining. I'm just saying,
Speaker 1: that's that's what I got, That's my whole bag. So
Speaker 1: he said okay, And after that I started doing work.
Speaker 1: I mean, I want an Emmy is Best Dramatic Actress
Speaker 1: playing a schizophrenic. After that that Lee Grant cast me
Speaker 1: in It was called Nobody's Child. And I don't I'm
Speaker 1: not saying this to toot my own horn, but I'm
Speaker 1: saying this to prove what acting classes do for you.
Speaker 1: I was up against Vanessa Redgrave, Katherine Hepburn, Jenna Rollins
Speaker 1: and Mayor Winningham. And I won that Emmy, and I
Speaker 1: would not have won that I had I not stopped
Speaker 1: my career and worked on my work for three years.
Speaker 1: And I say often to people, sometimes your career gets
Speaker 1: in the way of your work. You've got to stop
Speaker 1: and do your work and figure out what it is
Speaker 1: you want. When I quit that girl, my father said
Speaker 1: to me, you have to be crazy. You are the
Speaker 1: heir apparent to Lucille Ball. I said, Daddy, I know
Speaker 1: that's a great compliment, but I don't want to be
Speaker 1: Lucille Ball. I respect Lucille Ball. She's a genius. That's
Speaker 1: just out where I'm headed. I want to I want
Speaker 1: to be a lot of other people now now free
Speaker 1: to be you and me. How did that start? It
Speaker 1: really happened because of my niece. As you as you
Speaker 1: know and as you can hear from what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: I was born a feminist. I mean I really was.
Speaker 1: My father used to call me misindependence. As a child,
Speaker 1: I always had an idea of what I wanted to do,
Speaker 1: and I wanted to do a single girl on television.
Speaker 1: I gave feminine mystique to the head of the network.
Speaker 1: I was obviously always going in that direction. And and
Speaker 1: when I was doing that, girl, I got a lot
Speaker 1: of mail from young women that was shocking. I get
Speaker 1: a letter from a sixteen year old girl who said,
Speaker 1: I'm pregnant. I can't tell my father. Where can I go?
Speaker 1: I'm twenty two years old and might have two children
Speaker 1: and my husband beats me up. Where could I go?
Speaker 1: So I said to my secretaries we called them at
Speaker 1: the time, I had two of them. I said, I
Speaker 1: don't know where the hell is somebody going in Duluth
Speaker 1: if they're pregnant. Where does somebody go in Salt Lake
Speaker 1: City if they're being beaten up? As I've looked around,
Speaker 1: and we looked around, there wasn't any place. There were
Speaker 1: no legal advisors. There's no place for a woman or
Speaker 1: a girl to go for safety or counsel or anything
Speaker 1: which politicized me. That's how I met Gloria Steinem and
Speaker 1: all these women and created the Misfoundation for women. All
Speaker 1: that happened because of the mail I got, because there
Speaker 1: was no place for women to go. But then my
Speaker 1: sister had a baby, the first grandchild in our family,
Speaker 1: and she was about four and a half or so,
Speaker 1: and I was reading the books in her bedroom and
Speaker 1: they were all the thing about the the boys do this,
Speaker 1: and the girls do that, and the Princess Mary is
Speaker 1: the prince at the end of the thing. And I
Speaker 1: said to my sister, this is such rubbish. It took
Speaker 1: us thirty years to get over this. You gotta get
Speaker 1: her something else. So I went to the bookstore to
Speaker 1: find something else, and there wasn't anything. So I decided
Speaker 1: to do one on my own. So I created Free
Speaker 1: to Be You and Me for her. I really had
Speaker 1: no intentionive of becoming a big franchise. I just wanted
Speaker 1: to do something that would have stories for boys and
Speaker 1: girls that said they could be anything they wanted to be.
Speaker 1: That it would be non racist and non sexist. And
Speaker 1: so I got together with friends like shel Silverstein and
Speaker 1: Herb Gardener and and Clei Band who had done the
Speaker 1: music and lyrics for chorus Line, and Patty Chayevsky, he
Speaker 1: was a friend of Herbies, and a bunch of people
Speaker 1: we sat around and said, I said, okay, let's rewrite
Speaker 1: our childhood. What would you have liked to have heard
Speaker 1: when you were a kid, and her gardener said, I
Speaker 1: would have liked to have heard that it was okay
Speaker 1: for a boy to cry and that it wasn't sissy.
Speaker 1: And Carol Hall wrote that wonderful song, It's all Right
Speaker 1: to Cry, which has become a classic, and we got
Speaker 1: Rosie Greer to sing it, which was great, and then
Speaker 1: I and then I said, I want there to be
Speaker 1: a story where the princess does not marry the prince
Speaker 1: at the end and goes on to her own life,
Speaker 1: and and she's not a blonde, she's a brunette like
Speaker 1: me with olive skin. We did that one. We did Atlanta,
Speaker 1: which she runs in the race and chooses her own life.
Speaker 1: So we rewrote all the things and the company was
Speaker 1: called Bill Records at the time, you know, I was
Speaker 1: a big shot, and so they made the record and
Speaker 1: Alan Alda directed the written pieces that Mel Brooks to
Speaker 1: play one of the babies with me, that the two
Speaker 1: babies who don't know who's a boy and who's a girl,
Speaker 1: and Mel and Carl Reiner wrote it. It It was hilariously funny.
Speaker 1: They way we did the whole thing, and he said,
Speaker 1: you know, you're not going to sell more than fifteen
Speaker 1: thousand records. I said, that's okay. We're not doing this
Speaker 1: for the money. We want to change the world, one
Speaker 1: five year old at a time. Well, it went gold,
Speaker 1: and it went platinum, and then we did the book
Speaker 1: and it wasn't number one on the best seller lists
Speaker 1: that we did the special one at Emmy and the Peabody.
Speaker 1: I mean, it's just because there's been nothing like it.
Speaker 1: And just last week it was inducted into the Library
Speaker 1: of Congress with albums along with Janet Jackson, Kermit the Frog,
Speaker 1: and Thomas Edison, of all people. So when an idea
Speaker 1: is right and it wasn't, you know, I didn't write
Speaker 1: the pieces. I I conceived the idea and assigned the pieces.
Speaker 1: But I'm not that kind of writer. I couldn't write
Speaker 1: a song. But you know, Alec, I'm sure you feel
Speaker 1: this in your work. If something comes organically from you,
Speaker 1: as that girl did, as Free to Be did, is
Speaker 1: something you really believe and you want to do. It
Speaker 1: does touch other people, you know, It isn't like, oh,
Speaker 1: I think it would be really commercial. If I did
Speaker 1: a show about this, that's probably not going to be successful.
Speaker 1: But if it comes out of your own desire to
Speaker 1: write or wrong, or change the world, or express this
Speaker 1: thing that's so on fire inside of you that has
Speaker 1: a very good chance I believe of being successful. Actress
Speaker 1: and activist Marlowe Thomas. This is It's all Right to Cry,
Speaker 1: sung by Rosie Greer from Free to Be You and Me.
Speaker 1: That's right, Rosie Greer, the NFL defensive tackle. It's all right, cry, Ryan,
Speaker 1: get the fat out all of you. It's all right cry.
Speaker 1: It might make you feel better when we come back.
Speaker 1: Marlowe Thomas talks about her forty year marriage to talk
Speaker 1: show host Phil Donohue. If you're enjoying this conversation, tell
Speaker 1: a friend and be sure to follow Here's the Thing
Speaker 1: on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening
Speaker 1: to Here's the Thing. For much of the seventies, Marlowe
Speaker 1: Thomas was a proud single woman with no interest in
Speaker 1: getting married, and then a guest appearance on a daytime
Speaker 1: talk show in changed everything. I just never wanted to
Speaker 1: be married, you know, it just wasn't for me. I
Speaker 1: I had an idea of what I wanted to do.
Speaker 1: I wanted to go to London and do a play.
Speaker 1: I wanted to be free to take any opportunity that
Speaker 1: and I don't mean in a romantic way. I had
Speaker 1: a lot of fabulous boyfriends, but I just I just
Speaker 1: wanted to experience so much. And my husband got married
Speaker 1: at twenty one, and he said to me one day,
Speaker 1: how the hell did you have the guts not to
Speaker 1: get married early? I said, because I'm a girl. I
Speaker 1: knew damn well, if I got married, I'd be responsible
Speaker 1: for the babies, for the house, for the husband, for
Speaker 1: the everything I grew up with. That I know. I'm
Speaker 1: of a Lebanese family and an Italian family, and there
Speaker 1: are a lot like the Irish, as you and phil are.
Speaker 1: You know. The mother runs the ruse. She takes care
Speaker 1: of the children, and she has a thousand of them.
Speaker 1: My father's one of ten, my mother's one of five.
Speaker 1: My mother gave up her career and followed my father
Speaker 1: around the country and really supported him in his career,
Speaker 1: and that was her choice. I looked at that choice
Speaker 1: and said, that's not for me. I wanted to be
Speaker 1: my father. I wanted to be on stage. I used
Speaker 1: to see my father in the Sands Hotel, in Las Vegas.
Speaker 1: In his eyes would be shining and he was having
Speaker 1: a ball and so happy. And that was it. I
Speaker 1: I think I discovered what you say you're discovering now.
Speaker 1: I discovered work made me happy. It made me happy
Speaker 1: and my husband. In the last about six years, I
Speaker 1: did a play off Broadway and to play on Broadway.
Speaker 1: One was Elane May on Broadway and one was Joja
Speaker 1: Petrol off Broadway. And Phil said to me, you're so
Speaker 1: happy when you do a play. As far as I've
Speaker 1: been certain, you could do a play every year, I'm
Speaker 1: the happiest when I'm on stage. And so I made
Speaker 1: that decision. I hadn't expected to meet Phil Um. It
Speaker 1: was beyond my control. It's like a gag. I mean
Speaker 1: he walked in the green room and it was a
Speaker 1: shampoo commercial. I mean, his big blue eyes and that
Speaker 1: shock a white hair, and I thought, oh my god.
Speaker 1: And I was dating like three men at the time.
Speaker 1: Phil said the same thing. He said, I I walked
Speaker 1: down the hall after her, and I thought, my god,
Speaker 1: she's a bad thought. And then we flirted for an
Speaker 1: hour on his show. He asked me out the next night,
Speaker 1: and that was it. But what change meaning? You've said
Speaker 1: in interviews that you had a couple of different types
Speaker 1: of boyfriends who had the hunky boyfriend. You know, you
Speaker 1: had the leading man boyfriend, then you had the smart,
Speaker 1: funny boyfriend to keep you interested. Well, you're very right.
Speaker 1: My comment was that I, you know, the the you know,
Speaker 1: the gorgeous guy, the hunk and everything. That guy was,
Speaker 1: you know, a sexy turn on. And the other guy,
Speaker 1: he was so smart that he taught me things. I
Speaker 1: was very attracted to men like that who kind of
Speaker 1: you know, just taught me about business or taught me
Speaker 1: about life, who were just very smart, which the hunky
Speaker 1: guy didn't really have that. And this was the first
Speaker 1: time I met a man who had it all. Phil
Speaker 1: was hunky and sexy and real smart, and it just
Speaker 1: was it was a great package. And so at first,
Speaker 1: the first thing that brings you together is the hunky,
Speaker 1: sexy part. And then the more I got to know him,
Speaker 1: just so wise and he always does the right thing.
Speaker 1: He always ends up with the right spot. And you know,
Speaker 1: Phil moved his show, his show, his whole show, all
Speaker 1: the producers and everything to New York. I was living
Speaker 1: in l A. He was living in Chicago, and I
Speaker 1: had a big production company, had made twelve movies for
Speaker 1: television in a row. He had his own show, and
Speaker 1: he was raising four boys on his own. He was
Speaker 1: getting his boys through school. Show every day at nine am.
Speaker 1: Our lives were insane, and I said to him, he said,
Speaker 1: he wanted me to move to Chicago. And I said, look,
Speaker 1: at this point in my career, I really can't live
Speaker 1: in Chicago. I could live in New York or l A.
Speaker 1: He said, I can't live in l A. I'm not interested.
Speaker 1: He's had no offense, but I'm not interested in interviewing actors.
Speaker 1: So we picked New York and we moved everything to
Speaker 1: New York, including his show. He said, let me just
Speaker 1: get my boys to high school, which was like another
Speaker 1: two or three years. He got his boys where we
Speaker 1: bought an apartment, We got married, the boys got through
Speaker 1: high school. He moved the show and everything, and we
Speaker 1: made a life in New York, where neither of us lived.
Speaker 1: We bought an apartment, we bought a house in Connecticut.
Speaker 1: We we invented a life. Now. Obviously, another enormous part
Speaker 1: of your family's legacy, your dad's legacy, and your legacy,
Speaker 1: is St. Jude's talk to me about the genesis of
Speaker 1: that and why Memphis. My father grew up very poor,
Speaker 1: an immigrant family. My grandparents were from Lebanon. They had
Speaker 1: no money. They came here with all their belongings in
Speaker 1: cloth bags and arranged marriage. Had ten babies, nine boys,
Speaker 1: and a girl without a doctor hot water and her sister.
Speaker 1: So everybody in the neighborhood. They were everybody. They were Polish, Irish, Jewish, Chinese, Italian, Lebanese, whatever,
Speaker 1: and they never went to a doctor, and they all
Speaker 1: had jobs on consignment. I mean it was real, real
Speaker 1: dirt poor people. And my father had little friends who
Speaker 1: died of things like influenza and appendicitis, which are manageable situations,
Speaker 1: but they died because they never could see a doctor.
Speaker 1: So he had a very firsthand look at the inequity
Speaker 1: of health care in this country, and that always was
Speaker 1: in his mind. And so when he made a promise
Speaker 1: to St. Jude, show me a sign that I can
Speaker 1: make it in my career, because he was my father
Speaker 1: was terrified of being poor and not being able to
Speaker 1: raise his children the way his father was. So he
Speaker 1: was willing to give up show business if he knew
Speaker 1: what got assigned you to something else. Anyway, he got
Speaker 1: a sign and he can tinued on his way. And
Speaker 1: when he got very successful and quite wealthy, he decided
Speaker 1: it was time to pay back and he wanted to
Speaker 1: build a hospital for very ill children where nobody would
Speaker 1: be turned away, not for race or religion, and no
Speaker 1: one would pay for anything, not treatment, travel, housing, or food.
Speaker 1: And he picked the South because and this was a
Speaker 1: wonderful story. My father carried this little piece of paper
Speaker 1: in his pocket for many years. He read in the
Speaker 1: paper that a black boy eight years old in Mississippi
Speaker 1: was hit by a car. A white guy hit him
Speaker 1: on his bike. The white guy picked him up and
Speaker 1: tried to get him to a hospital, but no emergency
Speaker 1: room would take him because he was black, and he died.
Speaker 1: So my father decided, I'm putting it in the South.
Speaker 1: I want the kids from the South to be able
Speaker 1: to get here too, And so he did. And it
Speaker 1: was the first solely integrated hospital in the South. And
Speaker 1: we have the largest program for sickle cell We have
Speaker 1: eight hundred sickle cell patients and we have a black, white, Hispanic.
Speaker 1: They come from all over the world. We even have
Speaker 1: Amish people, which so stunned me because here these people
Speaker 1: won't even have a zipper. But when it comes to
Speaker 1: saving your kid, if your childhood sick, God forbid, you'd
Speaker 1: sell your arm to get your kids. Well, these parents
Speaker 1: come terrified they're gonna have to sell their house, that
Speaker 1: everything else. They don't have to sell anything. They just
Speaker 1: have to come there and we put them up in
Speaker 1: beautiful housing, which, by the way, I do most of
Speaker 1: the decorating. We can put up four hundred families for years,
Speaker 1: two years at a time. It's an incredible place. Well,
Speaker 1: let me just say this to you. I want you
Speaker 1: to tell your husband that we'd love to have him
Speaker 1: on the show. I didn't want you together because I
Speaker 1: feel like a show with Phil Donahue. That's four segments
Speaker 1: we need to do four hours before. Because I respect
Speaker 1: him and I admire him, and he's got a lot
Speaker 1: to say. We'd love to have him on because I'm
Speaker 1: a huge fan of your husband. And what I love
Speaker 1: about your husband was is that his political views, though
Speaker 1: they tilted in a certain in the way, they weren't partisan.
Speaker 1: Do you think that you agree with that? Through most
Speaker 1: of his career. Yes, he got hit in the head,
Speaker 1: got fired from MSNBC because he opposed the war in Iraq,
Speaker 1: and it was an interesting time for him. Here's a
Speaker 1: guy who'd been on the air for twenty nine years
Speaker 1: in syndication. And when I first met him, he said,
Speaker 1: I've got the best job in television. And I said why.
Speaker 1: He said, because I can say anything I want to say.
Speaker 1: And if you don't want to run it in Detroit,
Speaker 1: you don't have to. But I'm I'm in two d
Speaker 1: and fifty cities, so don't run it. So he wasn't
Speaker 1: used to any kind of censorship overview. He just did
Speaker 1: what he wanted. He went on MSNBC and the war
Speaker 1: was ramping up against Iraq, so he put on fathers
Speaker 1: who had lost their sons, both from Israel and Palestine,
Speaker 1: to talk about what war really does. And these are
Speaker 1: men who were opposite each other and in their beliefs,
Speaker 1: but they had both lost sons in these wars. And
Speaker 1: he had on all the people that were against the war,
Speaker 1: the Colin Powells and all the people, and they were
Speaker 1: all all the generals who were against the war. And
Speaker 1: NBC told his producer, you've got to get filled to
Speaker 1: get off the war thing. You know, NBC is run
Speaker 1: by General Electric. General Electric makes things that go boom.
Speaker 1: So he didn't stop because he felt it was not
Speaker 1: only he wasn't being defiant, he was being a journalist.
Speaker 1: He was saying he was showing the other side of this,
Speaker 1: and all the other shows everywhere actually were for the war.
Speaker 1: I just want to say this to you, and that
Speaker 1: is you probably should go back on TV because you'd
Speaker 1: still be the funniest, most sophisticated, gorgeous woman on TV.
Speaker 1: Get that line from Lucy to you and Mary Tyler
Speaker 1: Moore hovering around the same time onto Murphy Brown, those great,
Speaker 1: great leading ladies of network television. God, I would love
Speaker 1: to work with you one day. What a joy. Thank you.
Speaker 1: We'll give me a call, Alec, anytime, we will call you.
Speaker 1: This was fun. Thank you, my very best to you,
Speaker 1: and thank you thanks for having me. My thanks to
Speaker 1: Marlow Thomas. I'm Alec Baldwin and you're listening to Here's
Speaker 1: the Thing from My Heart Radio. We're produced by Kathleen Russo,
Speaker 1: Carrie Donohue and Zach McNeice. Our engineer is Frank Imperial.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.