Working Girl Cast Photo



Based on talent and dogged determination, gradually, Tom began working more often on episodic nighttime shows. But being a guest star in episodic nighttime TV was not a job that could sustain you financially or in career satisfaction. It's what you did while you were waiting to get a real part as a regular on a show or get discovered by the movies. He auditioned countless times for the small, thankless guest starring roles that no one respects you for doing or considers anything more than window dressing for the star. Those roles got no recognition at all in the industry and barely paid the bills, especially if they were on new shows which would never rerun or see the light of day again.

But our life in those early days in Hollywood was a phony as everything else in Hollywood. We were living paycheck to paycheck, always sweating how we'd pay the rent that month. The absolute terror that living like that instills in you, always one paycheck and one audition away from crashing and burning, is cruelly stressful. To be always living in what we referred to as 'survival mode' was exhausting both mentally and emotionally.

Tom's experience shooting the nighttime television series Working Girl is a fine example of how things work in Hollywood. He’d gotten a lead role in the series. It was a great role in a sitcom that was centered around a young woman making it in the business world. Tom had the plum part of her boss. And he got the “And Starring” billing card at the end of the crawl. The role was perfect for him. No one else could have exerted power and masculinity in such a disarming and charming way, allowing himself to appear just funny enough, without sacrificing the dignity of his character. He was born to play this role, and his reviews were terrific.

Here's the scene: It was high summer in LA. All the hills were brown and covered in dry, fire prone chaparral, primed for wildfire by the hot, incessant Santa Ana winds.

The Working Girl pilot had been shot and was in the can, ready for the big fall season when the networks roll out their best bets for ratings hits. We had been promised a highly coveted time slot on that fall schedule. We were on cloud nine and eagerly awaiting the call to start shooting the next episodes.

We'd been invited to the cast party. The address is Beverly Hills and the mansion did not disappoint. It was truly palatial, perched in lordly fashion atop the brown canyons with the endless, flat suburb city of LA splayed out in wrap around views from every room and the terrace.

We wandered out onto the patio with glasses of undoubtedly very expensive wine. Tom surveyed the Los Angeles basin and made his frequent pronouncement, "Hollywood is the end of Western Civilization". He glanced around the crowded room full of chattering media moguls and was suddenly reminded of the movie The Time Machine with Rod Taylor. "Look around," he said. "We're here with the Eloi. It's perfect. They're all blonde with perfect bodies, nobody looks more than twenty-seven, they live on fruit, don't work, and they're totally indifferent to anyone's suffering. They don't read or write, their books have turned to dust, and they spend their idle days cavorting in the sun. H.G. Wells described LA perfectly. Hollywood is the end of Western civilization."

He was right. There were beautiful people everywhere. We did our best not to be conspicuous Morlocks. This was a big moment for both of us, especially for me, because these days I was momming it at home with a three-year-old and working as a sales clerk. I've heard about all the excitement and glamour second hand from Tom. This was my night to mingle with the big shots.

Now, of course, post dream confession, I realize that Tom only brought me along because he had to. There was no way he could go to the cast party and leave me at home. I'd have been furious, and he’d have had to start explaining the inconvenient truth that as soon as this show took off, he was going to divorce me.

Looking back, I see that Tom never introduced me to any of the people from that show or any show. Though it could only have helped him, he didn't guide me to some special friend or influential producer and brag about me. He didn’t say here's my lovely wife, former Ford model, Barnard graduate and mother of our wonderful son. No. Never happened. When we were at business parties like this, he acted like he didn’t know me. His excuse was that he was networking. I should have noticed. I really can’t explain why I didn’t. I guess Hollywood was so new to me that I was intimidated. But I was only trotted out on special occasions, where there were tons of mingling strangers and lots of business pressure, which aided Tom in keeping me off balance.

We circulated and noticed that Nancy McKeon, our star, had not yet arrived. Maybe she'd skipped this party, we thought. After all, she was a pretty big TV star already. Circulating to the bar to get free drinks, Tom reconnected with me. Someone had just told him that Nancy McKeon had left the show and that Working Girl was no longer on the fall lineup. We switched our drink orders from wine to vodka. We were shattered. I was hardly able to remain standing. We heard people around the bar, producers, writers, etc. discussing the change. Everyone said it would be fine. The new girl tested just fine with the studio audiences. Who was that new girl? Oh, someone no one had ever heard of, a very young woman named Sandra Bullock.

Our big chance was blowing up in our face. Now what? The rest of the evening was a blur.

So how did this all get started? The day after his forty-fifth birthday, Tom had an audition for a nighttime series based on the recent hit movie Working Girl. He read for the part of Mr. Trask, the boss of the title character. At the audition, he met Nancy McKeon, the star of the show, and Tom Patchett and Ken Kaufman, of PKE productions. Tom Patchett was the co-creator of the recent, hugely successful TV series Alf, starring an irascible, alien puppet who invades a family. Ken Kaufman had worked successfully in TV and movies for many years, too, all top Hollywood talents, people that anyone would be lucky to work with.

Tom came home elated. He felt he'd given a great reading, and that everyone liked him. We'd been in Hollywood for about five years. This could be it for us, could change our lives, finally and not a moment too soon. Our dreams may come true: the house, the job, the kid, all at the same time, the whole deal. It's so close we can almost touch it.

No matter what, getting a nighttime comedy series in Hollywood is a definitive moment in any actor's life. You've made it to the top drawer of television productions. In those days, it could be the ticket to fabulous wealth and fame everlasting. We were a little excited. Yeah. Every time we drove across Beverly Glen Boulevard from the Valley to Beverly Hills, we picked out multi-million-dollar mansions that we would like to live in.

Naturally, I was picturing us living happily together in one of those mansions. The far more likely scenario was that I would join the legions of Hollywood ex-wives, ungratefully cast aside with whatever a divorce lawyer could wrest from the reluctant hands of their now famous spouses. I would have been just as shocked as any of those wives to discover that my loving husband had just been waiting for the opportune moment to be rid of me.

The pilot was filmed, and all went well. It was in the can, and we had a plum spot on the network's fall schedule. Right, and that euphoria lasted until we got to the Beverly Hills mansion cast party, when all bets were off. We were still on the schedule, but they were reshooting the pilot in September as a mid-season replacement with a brand new young actress cast as the Working Girl. Our new leading actress was Sandra Bullock, who at that time, no one had ever heard of.

We got the new script. It was completely different. The focus of the show had shifted from a woman's challenges in the workplace to more emphasis on the working girl's working-class background on Staten Island. It had become more of a class comedy.

The story was that when Nancy McKeon heard about the shift from a working woman’s story to a show where she'd have to play lots of scenes with parents again, she quit. She'd just come off eight years on The Facts of Life, where she literally grew up on television, complete with stage parents. At least, that was what we heard.

Everything started over again with the new star, Sandy Bullock. With a great sigh of relief, Tom came home and announced that this new actress met and exceeded everyone's expectations. Sandra Bullock was more than competent. Tom thought she was going to be great.