Zoneboy
08-24-2010, 12:57 AM
Link (http://www.montereyherald.com/local/ci_15865642)
Two young American POWs, faces darkened with dirt, crawl under the barracks on their bellies, dodging searchlights from guard towers in the opening reel of "Stalag 17," the classic 1953 film starring William Holden, Otto Preminger and Harvey Lembeck.
They duck into a tunnel, emerge on the other side, and make a mad dash — but they are gunned down.
The second man shot, a handsome, young actor named Peter Baldwin, was a 1950s contract player at Paramount Studios — part of the studio's "Golden Circle of Newcomers" — whose U.S. acting career would fizzle, as so many did.
But the Pebble Beach resident, now 79, embarked on a storybook career on the other side of the camera, as a director, calling the shots on many of iconic TV series: "The Andy Griffith Show," "The Dick Van Dyke Show," "Sanford and Son," "Mary Tyler Moore," "The Bob Newhart Show," "The Brady Bunch," and "The Wonder Years," for which Baldwin won an Emmy in 1988.
Baldwin had only dabbled in community theater when, as a 21-year-old Stanford student, a girlfriend dragged him into the university's Frost Amphitheatre where a Paramount talent scout offered him $100 to come to Hollywood for a screen test. In the spring of 1951 he found himself opposite a contract actress, reading lines as they gazed dreamily over the water.
"If you ever get lost and want to find me," he whispered, "just look over your shoulder, at Polaris. That's the North Star."
He gave the starlet a kiss. Then a giant lamp above the head of director Jerry Hopper began to smoke and caught fire.
"He was directing me, saying, 'OK, when you get to that line, slow down. Slow down!' And I'm pointing over his head, saying, 'Is that thing supposed to be doing that?' And he's getting annoyed with me, yelling, 'Doing what? Doing what? Oh, my God! FIRE! FIRE!"
After the flames were doused, they painted up Baldwin's face and arms "because they wanted to see how I looked as an Indian."
The studio czars liked the tall, dark, handsome athlete — he briefly played baseball and football at Stanford, signed him to a seven-year contract, and gave him the bit part in "Stalag 17," directed by Billy Wilder.
During a midnight dinner break on that set, the cast and crew went to a Calabasas restaurant where Wilder shouted, "Who wants a tartar steak?"
"Bill Holden immediately said, 'I do,'" Baldwin remembered. "And steak was exactly what I wanted, so I said, 'I do, too!' Everybody else kind of mumbled and distanced themselves, though, and Wilder said, 'Oh, what a bunch of cowards' ... which made me nervous."
The kid discovered that steak tartare is essentially raw hamburger, with a raw egg cracked on top. He somehow conquered his gag reflex, ate the meat, and won an invitation to return to the set in the stretch limo with Wilder and Holden.
That October, Baldwin found himself watching the 1951 Dodgers-Giants baseball playoff on TV alongside Holden when an actress tugged on his sleeve and begged for a ride home.
"We left, I drove her home, and got back to the studio just in time to see Holden walking out, saying, 'Wow, what a finish, huh?'
"I told him I hadn't seen it, so he sat me down on the curb and literally acted out the entire ninth inning of the game, all the way through Bobby Thomson's home run, and it was an amazing thing to watch."
In 1953, the year "Stalag 17" was released, Baldwin appeared in "The Girls of Pleasure Island," "Houdini," and "Little Boy Lost."
A 3½-year stint in the Navy followed, then he returned to Hollywood for roles in "The Ten Commandments (1956)," "Short Cut To Hell ('57), "The Tin Star" ('57) "Teacher's Pet," ('58) and "I Married a Monster from Outer Space" ('58).
A foray into television netted appearances in "The Untouchables," "Perry Mason" and "Ben Casey." Baldwin also got roles in Italy, one of which was under the direction of Roberto Rossellini.
In Italy, he gravitated toward directing. That career took off after producer Sheldon Leonard invited him onto the set of "The Dick Van Dyke Show," then hired him to interpret for an Italian child actress on "Make Room for Daddy."
"When I got that job, for $200 a week, I had no income at all," he recalled. "My friend, Leonard Nimoy, who worked all night for a taxi company, was supposed to take me down there to fill out an application. I got to call him up that night and say, 'I'm not coming because I got a job!'"
Leonard hired him to direct two episodes "Dick Van Dyke" in 1964, which led to "The Andy Griffith Show," "Gomer Pyle," "The Partridge Family," ""Mary Tyler Moore," "Love American Style," "Sanford and Son," "The Brady Bunch," "The Bob Newhart Show," and numerous others.
"The Andy Griffith set had such a family feeling, very much like you'd imagine in Mayberry, itself," Baldwin said. "Andy was a wonderful person who invariably would have a funny line and say, 'Give that one to Don (Knotts), he'll kill with that line.'
"Floyd (actor Howard McNear) was pretty much the same in real life as he was on the show," he says. "He'd put his toupee on cockeyed, and we'd leave it that way. His wife, who was much younger and sort of took care of him, eventually would say, 'OK, c'mon, guys,' and straighten it out for him."
A similar family feeling was pervasive on the set of "Mary Tyler Moore," where, on breaks, cast members would play touch football between the sound stages.
"Ed Asner was a comedian only through the writing and his acting," Baldwin said. "And he was very serious about his blocking during those games. He was intense."
Cloris Leachman, an anti-smoking zealot, was known to walk up and snatch burning cigarettes out of the mouths of cast and crew members. Ted Knight would saunter up to Baldwin and say, "Y'know, the show's funnier in the newsroom. Why are we going back to Mary's apartment? What the hell is that? Who cares about the girls?"
And the star, Baldwin said, was the glue. "Mary was so easy to work with," he said. "Anything you'd suggest, she'd say 'OK, let's try it. Let's do it.' She was very much a leader, so people rarely griped about anything."
No longer dark, but still tall and handsome, Baldwin has been a Pebble Beach resident since 1987 with his wife, Terry. They'll celebrate 33 years of marriage in November. He has two daughters and a son and five grandchildren.
Baldwin's most-recent Hollywood work was the Shia Labeouf TV series, "Even Stevens," for which he directed six episodes from 2000-02.
The list of those he's worked with is eye-popping: Clark Gable, Doris Day, Richard Widmark, Lee J. Cobb, Henry Fonda, Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Tony Curtis, Bing Crosby, Shirley MacLaine and Carl Reiner, to name only a few.
"I'm writing my memoirs," he said. "I'm also part of a writing group that's putting together short stories that might become a book. I stay busy that way," he said."
"I think I'm retired now. Out of sight, out of mind, you know?" he added with a laugh. "But if something good came up, I'd do it in a minute. You bet I would."
Two young American POWs, faces darkened with dirt, crawl under the barracks on their bellies, dodging searchlights from guard towers in the opening reel of "Stalag 17," the classic 1953 film starring William Holden, Otto Preminger and Harvey Lembeck.
They duck into a tunnel, emerge on the other side, and make a mad dash — but they are gunned down.
The second man shot, a handsome, young actor named Peter Baldwin, was a 1950s contract player at Paramount Studios — part of the studio's "Golden Circle of Newcomers" — whose U.S. acting career would fizzle, as so many did.
But the Pebble Beach resident, now 79, embarked on a storybook career on the other side of the camera, as a director, calling the shots on many of iconic TV series: "The Andy Griffith Show," "The Dick Van Dyke Show," "Sanford and Son," "Mary Tyler Moore," "The Bob Newhart Show," "The Brady Bunch," and "The Wonder Years," for which Baldwin won an Emmy in 1988.
Baldwin had only dabbled in community theater when, as a 21-year-old Stanford student, a girlfriend dragged him into the university's Frost Amphitheatre where a Paramount talent scout offered him $100 to come to Hollywood for a screen test. In the spring of 1951 he found himself opposite a contract actress, reading lines as they gazed dreamily over the water.
"If you ever get lost and want to find me," he whispered, "just look over your shoulder, at Polaris. That's the North Star."
He gave the starlet a kiss. Then a giant lamp above the head of director Jerry Hopper began to smoke and caught fire.
"He was directing me, saying, 'OK, when you get to that line, slow down. Slow down!' And I'm pointing over his head, saying, 'Is that thing supposed to be doing that?' And he's getting annoyed with me, yelling, 'Doing what? Doing what? Oh, my God! FIRE! FIRE!"
After the flames were doused, they painted up Baldwin's face and arms "because they wanted to see how I looked as an Indian."
The studio czars liked the tall, dark, handsome athlete — he briefly played baseball and football at Stanford, signed him to a seven-year contract, and gave him the bit part in "Stalag 17," directed by Billy Wilder.
During a midnight dinner break on that set, the cast and crew went to a Calabasas restaurant where Wilder shouted, "Who wants a tartar steak?"
"Bill Holden immediately said, 'I do,'" Baldwin remembered. "And steak was exactly what I wanted, so I said, 'I do, too!' Everybody else kind of mumbled and distanced themselves, though, and Wilder said, 'Oh, what a bunch of cowards' ... which made me nervous."
The kid discovered that steak tartare is essentially raw hamburger, with a raw egg cracked on top. He somehow conquered his gag reflex, ate the meat, and won an invitation to return to the set in the stretch limo with Wilder and Holden.
That October, Baldwin found himself watching the 1951 Dodgers-Giants baseball playoff on TV alongside Holden when an actress tugged on his sleeve and begged for a ride home.
"We left, I drove her home, and got back to the studio just in time to see Holden walking out, saying, 'Wow, what a finish, huh?'
"I told him I hadn't seen it, so he sat me down on the curb and literally acted out the entire ninth inning of the game, all the way through Bobby Thomson's home run, and it was an amazing thing to watch."
In 1953, the year "Stalag 17" was released, Baldwin appeared in "The Girls of Pleasure Island," "Houdini," and "Little Boy Lost."
A 3½-year stint in the Navy followed, then he returned to Hollywood for roles in "The Ten Commandments (1956)," "Short Cut To Hell ('57), "The Tin Star" ('57) "Teacher's Pet," ('58) and "I Married a Monster from Outer Space" ('58).
A foray into television netted appearances in "The Untouchables," "Perry Mason" and "Ben Casey." Baldwin also got roles in Italy, one of which was under the direction of Roberto Rossellini.
In Italy, he gravitated toward directing. That career took off after producer Sheldon Leonard invited him onto the set of "The Dick Van Dyke Show," then hired him to interpret for an Italian child actress on "Make Room for Daddy."
"When I got that job, for $200 a week, I had no income at all," he recalled. "My friend, Leonard Nimoy, who worked all night for a taxi company, was supposed to take me down there to fill out an application. I got to call him up that night and say, 'I'm not coming because I got a job!'"
Leonard hired him to direct two episodes "Dick Van Dyke" in 1964, which led to "The Andy Griffith Show," "Gomer Pyle," "The Partridge Family," ""Mary Tyler Moore," "Love American Style," "Sanford and Son," "The Brady Bunch," "The Bob Newhart Show," and numerous others.
"The Andy Griffith set had such a family feeling, very much like you'd imagine in Mayberry, itself," Baldwin said. "Andy was a wonderful person who invariably would have a funny line and say, 'Give that one to Don (Knotts), he'll kill with that line.'
"Floyd (actor Howard McNear) was pretty much the same in real life as he was on the show," he says. "He'd put his toupee on cockeyed, and we'd leave it that way. His wife, who was much younger and sort of took care of him, eventually would say, 'OK, c'mon, guys,' and straighten it out for him."
A similar family feeling was pervasive on the set of "Mary Tyler Moore," where, on breaks, cast members would play touch football between the sound stages.
"Ed Asner was a comedian only through the writing and his acting," Baldwin said. "And he was very serious about his blocking during those games. He was intense."
Cloris Leachman, an anti-smoking zealot, was known to walk up and snatch burning cigarettes out of the mouths of cast and crew members. Ted Knight would saunter up to Baldwin and say, "Y'know, the show's funnier in the newsroom. Why are we going back to Mary's apartment? What the hell is that? Who cares about the girls?"
And the star, Baldwin said, was the glue. "Mary was so easy to work with," he said. "Anything you'd suggest, she'd say 'OK, let's try it. Let's do it.' She was very much a leader, so people rarely griped about anything."
No longer dark, but still tall and handsome, Baldwin has been a Pebble Beach resident since 1987 with his wife, Terry. They'll celebrate 33 years of marriage in November. He has two daughters and a son and five grandchildren.
Baldwin's most-recent Hollywood work was the Shia Labeouf TV series, "Even Stevens," for which he directed six episodes from 2000-02.
The list of those he's worked with is eye-popping: Clark Gable, Doris Day, Richard Widmark, Lee J. Cobb, Henry Fonda, Anthony Perkins, Janet Leigh, Tony Curtis, Bing Crosby, Shirley MacLaine and Carl Reiner, to name only a few.
"I'm writing my memoirs," he said. "I'm also part of a writing group that's putting together short stories that might become a book. I stay busy that way," he said."
"I think I'm retired now. Out of sight, out of mind, you know?" he added with a laugh. "But if something good came up, I'd do it in a minute. You bet I would."