I found an old book via Amazon, published in mid-1976, called TV Talk 2, by Peggy Herz. It was published by Scholastic, so I think it was aimed towards younger readers. But it is still a fun read, and interesting to see what these sitcom stars of the time had to say. Here's all who was interviewed:

1. Lindsay Wagner (Bionic Woman)
2. Penny Marshall and Cindy Williams (Laverne & Shirley)
3. Gregory Sierra and Hal Linden (Barney Miller)
4. Mackenzie Phillips and Valerie Bertinelli (One Day at a Time)
5. Paul Michael Glaser and David Soul (Starsky & Hutch)
6. Gabe Kaplan, John Travolta, Ron Palillo and Lawrence-Hilton Jacobs (Welcome Back, Kotter)
7. Devon Scott (The Tony Randall Show)
8. John Schuck (Holmes & Yoyo)

I will transcribe each interview and paste it on the respective show pages - hope everyone enjoys!! :D

This section of the book is almost 30 pages long, so I'm going to break it down by actor. Here goes:



Who would have believed that a TV series about a group of students called the sweathogs would become one of the top shows on the air? That's exactly what happened to Welcome Back, Kotter, a series about a Brooklyn high school teacher and his class of "underachievers".

Comedian Gabriel Kaplan plays Gabe Kotter, the teacher. Kotter was a student in James Buchanan High School in Brooklyn. He was one of the losers. Then he decided to go to college and become a teacher. Now he is back, teaching a remedial class.

"This show is much more interesting than the old Room 222 series," John Travolta told me in an interview. John plays Vinnie Barbarino, one of the ringleaders in Kotter's class. "The kids are troublemakers, but in a harmless way. They give the teacher a hard time. But that's part of being in school! There wasn't much conflict in Room 222.

"There's never been a TV series about a remedial class," John added. "Kids are getting a bigger kick out of it than anyone else."

Gabe Kaplan helped create the series. The characters are based on people he knew when he was in high school - in Brooklyn, New York, of course! He worked hard to get in the types of people he remembers, including the wheeler-dealer, the yo-yo, the super-dude, and the clown.

Gabe himself went to Erasmus Hall High School in Brooklyn, a school very much like James Buchanan in the TV series. He didn't make it all the way through, however. "I left in my senior year," he told me during a luncheon interview. "I have some happy memories of school, but mainly it was a pretty confusing time. I didn't know what I wanted to do. I had decided I was not going to college and I saw nothing that I wanted that I could get with a high school diploma. I wanted to play baseball. I was missing some credits, so I wouldn't have graduated that year anyway."

Students in Gabe's high school were ranked in a one-through-five system. I was always in the fours, next to the dumbest," Gabe recalled. "Once you tell a kid that, he quits trying.

"I was a good baseball player, but not great. I was 17 when I left school. I went to Florida. I tried out for minor league clubs in Florida and Texas. You don't need that much money to try out. I had some savings and I took odd jobs to make money. For four years I did various things - mainly nothing. Then I decided that maybe I wanted to be an actor."

Things might have been different if Gabe had had a teacher like Gabe Kotter, but he didn't. "I was turned off by school," Gabe admitted. "Nobody in school showed any interest in me. Occasionally they would call me in an say I did well on tests, why wasn't my average higher? The things they said were fine, then I'd leave and that was it. I never had a Mr. Kotter or anybody like him.

"I was really drifting during those years after I left school. I made money and spent what I made. I was really lucky. Anything could have happened to me. At this point, my chances of being happy and successful were very slim. I don't recommend doing what I did," Gabe stressed. "Maybe you don't have to have a degree to get ahead in life, but unless you have a goal and know what you want to do, it's better to stay in school. You shouldn't quit just because you are confused or don't know what you want to do. You may not believe education can help you in a practical way, but it can't hurt you. It enlarges your mind."

Gabe's baseball career didn't work out, so one summer he took a job as a bellboy at a Lakewood, New Jersey, hotel. He spent his free time watching stand-up comics do their routines. And suddenly, one day, he said to himself: "Hey, I can do that!"

He was 21 when he began his new career. "In the beginning I did jokes and impressions and things I had heard older comics do," Gabe said. "I wasn't doing anything very original." But gradually he began to develop his own material. "I began to talk about my personal life," he told me. His comedy act began to take off. He began to play the better club and to appear on various TV talk shows and specials. He'd found the secret. "Now I don't do anything that doesn't come from my own personal feelings," he said.

One night in August 1974, he was appearing at The Comedy Store in West Hollywood when producer Alan Sacks stopped by. Sacks is also a Brooklynite; Gabe's routine about his Brooklyn school days cracked him up. Shortly after, Sacks and Gabe Kaplan got together over lunch - and the idea for the Welcome Back, Kotter series was born.

They took their idea to executive producer James Komack, a former stand-up comic himself. At first, Komack didn't like the idea at all. But he came around, and sold ABC on the idea of a series. Then the problems began.

Casting was one of the problems. Could Hollywood actors play Brooklyn high school students? Gabe wasn't at all sure. "We found John Travolta out here in California," Gabe remembered. "But the three actors they had in mind for the other parts weren't right. I said, 'We've got to go to New York.' There was a big argument." But Gabe got his way.

"Alan Sacks and I went first. We narrowed the field down from 200 to 20. Then Jimmy Komack came in. We tested eight kids and picked the four best. All four had New York experience; all four were experienced actors."

The producers put together a Welcome Back, Kotter film which ABC showed to its affiliated stations. Many of the station managers didn't like it. They thought the kids were "too threatening".

"Our original idea had been to do a kind of funny blackboard-jungle-type show," Gabe said. "We kept taking out things that people might object to. Kids liked it instantly, but a lot of adults didn't like the first show."

As the weeks went by, viewers began to take to the show, however. Gabe and the young people learned from each other. "I wasn't an actor," Gabe admitted. "I watched them and learned. And they learned from me - about timing and working before an audience. The characters are based on people from my comedy act but each actor has had to do his own thing with the character he's playing. He's had to make the role his own, and that's what they've all done."

The success of the series has sent Gabe's career into orbit. He is in great demand for personal appearances around the country. "Some people see me as Mr. Kotter," Gabe acknowledged. "Others come to see Gabe Kaplan, the comedian. So I talk about the show, how it began, and so on.

"The characters in the show are universal," Gabe added. "Everybody know a Horshack, a Barbarino...They're very appealing. Mr. Kotter is the teacher everyone would like to have had. He treats kids as individuals."

There is something very ironic about someone who was a high school dropout in real life playing the teacher of the sweathogs! Reading between the lines of this article it seems like Gabe Kaplan and James Komack didn't see eye to eye right from the start!

Definitely - but at least early on Gabe won the battles!!!

Ron Palillo and I had lunch one day in the commissary at ABC. Welcome Back, Kotter was in rehearsal that day. Cast members were eating at various tables around the dining room. Gabe Kaplan was at a nearby table throwing occasional cracks in our direction. Ron just laughed. The Kotter group has become a close-knit family. They like and respect each other.

I asked Ron how the series had affected his life.

"It hasn't changed it in outward ways," he replied. "It's just nice to have some security. An actor has none, which is probably why he's an actor. It's nice to know I have some money stashed away so I can get through the tough times if they happen. Also, I suppose it's changed my life because now people know who I am. And people are a lot nicer to me!"

"Mention the star of the show!" Gabe called to him.

"He's going to be canonized," Ron said, looking at Gabe. "Right out of a canon." Then he continued his thought. "I like to be very quiet. I like privacy," Ron said. "In that respect my life has not changed."

Ron, I discovered, is a very bright, talkative, personable young man. "I was doing the play Hot L Baltimore when they were casting this series," he explained. "I didn't want to try out for a part in it, but my agent said I should. I knew the character was supposed to be someone tough, so I got all dressed up that way and walked in. Gabe and Alan Sacks took one look at me and said, 'If you can act, you've got the part.'" Ron laughed. "Then they found out I wasn't really tough!"

Horshack's laugh and voice are very distinctive. "They just came out at the reading," Ron admitted. "All I knew was that the kids came from Brooklyn. I could do the New York accent. But at the first reading my voice was different. It was kind of a cross between a whine and a groan. All from nerves, probably! All of a sudden I saw a line and thought maybe Horshack should think of it as a joke.

"I think the original way the producers saw Horshack was as the class loser. But when we got into doing the show, they came to consider Horshack as probably the smartest one in the class. We took off from there. Now Horshack is opening up. He's not changing, but opening up," Ron added thoughtfully.

"I didn't want to make him a one-dimensional cartoon character who laughs at everything," Ron noted. "Horshack has been acting dumb for a reason. He started out as a kind of mascot for the other kids. Now he's one of them. He's becoming more and more himself. That's what Kotter has done for him. All the kids are changing because of this teacher - and they're changing for the better. Horshack is just starting to learn for himself. If Kotter weren't there, Horshack probably never would have learned."

When the show first came on the air, some viewers thought Horshack was ********. "That made me very angry," Ron said vehemently. "I went on a tour of several cities to promote the show, and I talked to TV editors who thought Horshack was ********. My question to them was: 'Do you think Edith Bunker is ********?' There's very little difference. People pinned that label on Horshack because he is young. If you act that way when you're older they just say you're a little slow! I have played a ******** boy in a play and I have worked with ******** children. If anyone thinks I'd stoop for a low joke by playing him ******** when he's not, they're SICK."

Ron shook his head disgustedly. "At first, Horshack would talk only when Barbarino said, 'You may talk now." That's going on in schools today. It always has! ********? Go to schools and see the kids! They are crying out for attention and that's not because they are ********! They are asking for help.

"Horshack is doing the same thing. He has no family life. His only life is Gabe Kotter and the three other kids. His family life is wretched! Now, with a little attention, he's coming out of it." Ron smiled. "He'll always be a little weird, of course, because Horshack is weird. But he's not afraid anymore to show that he's smart. He's not afraid to disagree with his friends."

At that moment, Gabe Kaplan finished his lunch and walked by. "Just say the star is the best," he joked, and Ron laughed.

"I think the show has risen in popularity, not because it takes place in Brooklyn, but because it's true," he said. "It doesn't matter if you come from Oshkosh or Minneapolis or Brooklyn - everybody has been or known these four characters. They might act a little differently, but they are essentially the same people you went to school with. We're taking these types and making real people of them.

"I also think we're touching on real issues and real problems," Ron pointed out. There's been a grain of truth in all the shows. In the show we're working on right now, the guys are forming a gang and Horshack wants no part of it. That's peer pressure. A lot of our shows deal with peer pressure."

Ron was born in New Haven, CT. His father was the Postmaster of Whitneyville, CT. "My father died when I was nine," Ron remembered. "About that time the Chesire Community Theatre was doing a play. My mother thought it would be good for me to get out and meet people. I got a part in the play - and for a long time she regretted encouraging me! She got me into the theater and then she was sorry. She didn't want to see me with no money.

"My father's death was traumatic," Ron admitted. "I realized what had happened when I was nine. But the loss didn't really manifest itself to me until I was 14 or 15. By that time, though, I'd become independent enough to hold it and deal with it and understand it."

Theater became his all-consuming interest. "I was obsessed with it," he acknowledged. When he was 14, he started his own theater and ran it for four years. It was called the Black Friars Summer Theater, and it was commercially successful.

After graduating from high school in Cheshire, Ron attended the University of CT where he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in theater. "My mother worked four or five jobs to put my brothers and sister through college," Ron said. "I got a scholarship and worked summers."

Ron toured with a Shakespearean company and appeared with a repertory company in Florida. "That experience was invaluable. It gave me a very heavy sense of technique. Technique is very important when you're doing a show like Kotter. I think I should explain technique. Technique is being able to play the same part in different situations and keeping the character consistent and real. It's knowing how to get laughs while staying in the framework of the character. All of that is technique and it's very important. You have to have it to survive for any length of time."

Because of his interest in theater, Ron has become a Shakespearean scholar as well as a student of Greek theater. "I'm an actor," he said. "Though I think there are parts of Horshack in me, I also think I'm very different at this point. I've played many different roles. I like to get exposure in other things. Horshack is an important part of my life but I'm not him. I had a very strong classical background in the theater."

Ron paused and smiled. "I had two or three friends in high school," he said. "I was Horshack in then in a sense. I was a strange kid. I was told by my friends that I either had to stop acting or I had to get out of the group of popular kids. I was kind of a weirdo in high school. Horshack went out and looked for friends his own age and got them. I found I could relate better to older people than to my peers. At 14 and 15 I was hanging out with college kids. My father's death made me grow up fast."

When he's not working, Ron enjoys running and swimming. Before the series, he lived in the East Village of New York. Now he's taken an apartment in West Hollywood, California. "I miss New York, but I'm beginning to like California," he said as he prepared to go back to work. "I miss the crowds, the pace, the tension of New York. There's so much to do there. Sometimes I feel like I'm wasting time out here because we have so much time off." With that, he grinned, said good-bye, and headed back to Mr. Kotter's classroom.

Excellent interviews. :cool: One thing I always liked about the cast of WBK is that the actors always seemed down to Earth. Even Travolta once he became a big star.

:yeahthat They do!! I'm going to try to get the interviews with Lawrence-Hilton Jacobs and John Travolta up by the end of the weekend. I also can't wait to see the whole gang on GMA in a few days!! :cool: :D

Lawrence-Hilton Jacobs has wanted to be an actor for as long as he can remember. He was born in NYC, one of nine children of Hilton and Clothilda Jacobs. "We lived in the projects, 10 blocks from where Harlem started," Larry told me in an interview. "All kinds of people lived in that area. They were of different backgrounds and different social levels. Growing up was really fun. I never went hungry. We all lived together. My father was in the Merchant Marines. He's retired now.

"The days weren't always easy, though," Larry added. "My father traveled. I had to rise above all of that. My older brother was 12 years older than I. He talked to me as a person. He and others helped give me confidence. A lot of kids don't have that direction. A lot of kids are put out on the street. I had friends who were on dope. A couple died. One is crazy now. I was fortunate. I had art work to get into. I played piano. I'd go out and play basketball. All of it was a learning process. I was fortunate I had direction and was able to rise above my surroundings.

"I started working when I was 11," Larry recalled. "A guy let me wash stairways in the building. I was independent. I did custodial work when I was 16. I delivered flowers and groceries. I was a message boy. I did a lot of things."

Larry's interest in high school was in art and design. "I went to the High School of Art and Design," he said. "You take different art tests and so on to get in there. I wanted to be an actor, but that was not readily available. I started acting when I was 15. I'm 23 now."

High school drama didn't appeal to him, however. "I'd watch the drama class, and I thought it was a joke," he admitted. "It was terrible. I was right - it was a waste of time. After high school, I won several scholarships, but I didn't want to go to college. I wanted to be an actor, and not a college actor. I tried finding a job. Ten months later I found a job in a department store. I got fired, though, so I started acting with the Al Fann Theatrical Ensemble. One thing led to another. I began to learn the business and get experience. I got into doing commercials. My first major job was in 1973; I graduated from high school in 1971."

Larry worked hard, and his work paid off. He is vehement about the importance of those early days. "I talk now to actors who don't think you have to study. You do! You must study and learn," he stressed. "You must know discouragement to know where you're going. I'd go on 20 auditions and not get the jobs. For seven months I tried to get commercials and didn't. At the end of each day I'd question myself, 'Why didn't I get that commercial?' Finally I began to understand myself. I began to pick up commercials. It doesn't take genius. It takes work.

"My older brothers and sisters wanted me to go to college. They thought I was crazy!" Larry laughed. "At first the only money I made was on my art work. I was going up to actors' ensemble every day. They couldn't understand. I was thinking of something farfetched to them. Once I decided to be an actor, though, I decided to go all the way.

"I'm very serious about my life and my work," Larry said. "School was important to me. I knew the only one who could get me out of the projects was me. I'm serious. I'm strong in my beliefs. I have a lot of confidence, not because I'm brilliant but because I work. I went to classes, plays, films..."

The longing to be an actor had been there for many years. "Acting just looked interesting to me. I would clown around. I put on puppet shows and so on. I'd see kids in films and thought it looked like fun," Larry remembered. "As I grew older, I became more interested. I began to do research. I began going to films and several times to study them. I was never in school plays, but I did church and community theater, off-Broadway and Broadway.

"The Kotter thing happened almost by accident. I came out here to California to try out for a movie," Larry said. "They gave me a Kotter script and I met John Travolta. We read here, then I went back to New York and did the screen test there."

He got the part of the tall, lean Boom Boom Washington. And he, like all the people in Welcome Back, Kotter, has added his own distinctive touches to the character.

"I play a character and people think I am that character, that I am that way," Larry pointed out. "That's why acting is interesting. I can relate to Boom Boom. In junior high I played around a lot. I lived in the dean's office, practically, because I liked to play tricks on people.

"But Boom Boom and I are different people. He's a character I play - and perhaps an extension of myself. I take different qualities and put them in the character. That's fun. Boom Boom only goes to school because there's nothing else to do. Then he meets Kotter - and that's the first teacher Boom Boom could ever relate to. Kotter's been there. These kids can learn from him. Kotter teaches another route. The kids get entertained and involved.

"I think the show's appeal," Larry continued, "is that kids can relate to it. It may get crazy at times, but the characters are real. They are strong characters - not just one of them, but all of them. That's unusual in TV situation comedy.

"There is humor in the shows. You can sit back and really laugh. Sometimes the writers write things that won't work for a character, so we change lines. I have the best idea of my character because he's my creation. White writers may write something that's not right for me. We all created our own characters. That's good for the show; it's good for us.

"When I auditioned for this part, the character was tough and threatening," Larry said. "They didn't know where to go with him. I came up with the dancing and Mr. Kot-ter stuff. I made a whole different thing out of it. All of our characters are very different from when we started. I think the show had to change. When it first came on, people didn't know the characters. They were afraid of them. The kids are still street-wise, but they're not threatening."

Larry had some good teachers when he was growing up, he said. "I had a good music teacher in junior high," he recalled. "He kept great discipline. He called us meatheads. Kotter is like several teachers I had. He's a lot of things to these kids. He gives them attention and understanding. These kids do have intelligence. They are not conventional. They don't do things the conventional way. Other teachers couldn't teach them at all, though. They thought they were street bums."

How do young men in their 20s manage to look like teenagers? Larry laughed. "We shave and put on makeup," he answered. "But we don't really look like we're 16 or 17. It's all an attitude, an illusion. It's like you see a lamp hanging down on TV and you assume there's a ceiling there. There may not be. You see us sitting there in Kotter's classroom and you buy the idea that we belong there."

Has success changed Lawrence-Hilton Jacobs? It didn't look like it. He sat at lunch looking very mod in a red warm-up suit and a beige hat. He looked, in fact, like Boom Boom Washington as he ate a chef's salad and drank a glass of milk.

"I don't care about the whole Hollywood trip," he said. "I'm not in acting for the money. Of course you need money to live, but I'm concerned about my work. I'm not impressed by titles. I'm not going to lose perspective. I hope this will lead to where I, as an actor, can have a choice of roles. I hope it will lead me to directing films, and maybe producing and writing them. I'm fascinated by the work that goes on behind the camera.

"I'm getting more involved in writing music," Larry added. "Mainly I'm into jazz and popular ballad type things. I'm a very happy person. I see no reason to be sad. I have patience. I'm on the threshold of where I want to go as an actor. I know a lot about film and stage. TV is still new to me. I see a lot of great things happening."

Larry was in the films Claudine and Cooley High. "I also did Sojourner Truth on TV," he said. "I did about nine million commercials, voice-overs, modeling work, stage plays...I tried every avenue that was open."

All of that didn't leave much time for his art work. "I haven't done any real art work in several years," he said. "I'd like to get back with it, but my time is limited. In high school I was good in illustration. I especially liked cartooning. I did caricatures of people - and did sell some. I was a quick study in my courses. That's why I had time to clown around. I did well."

"Did you date much?" I asked him, and Larry grinned. "A friend and I had a thing going to see how many girls we could date. But today," he said, "I date several girls. A pretty figure and a pretty face attract me, but it's what they're about as individuals that's really important. I can't stand it when a young lady tries to be something she isn't. I like people for what they are, for themselves. I've gone out with some actresses. Some of them get on my nerves. They want to put on fronts and I'm not interested in that.

"I like to listen to good music," Larry said, "and I watch TV. The four of us on the show also see each other a lot. We might as well live together! John Travolta and I are especially good friends. We're greedy. We love to eat, so we go out a lot. I like junk food - any kind of trash like pizza and hamburgers...We also love to go to the movies and we want to write a film.

"The four of us and Gabe have all helped each other," Larry observed. "If we didn't understand a scene, we'd get together on weekends and go over it. Gabe helped us in comedy, we've helped him in acting. What we have are people who care for each other on and off screen. That's what works for us."

I first met John Travolta in the summer of 1975. Welcome Back, Kotter had yet not come on the air. ABC believed that John was a young actor with a great deal of appeal. They weren't so sure about the show's chances, but who could tell?

Who could tell, indeed? The show became a hit - and John Travolta, as Vinnie Barbarino, became a teen idol. And why not? Barbarino is the ringleader of the Sweathogs - and that takes special talent!

John was born in Englewood, New Jersey, one of six children of Helen and Salvatore Travolta. He started his acting career at the encouragement of his mother, who had been active as a teacher, director and actress for 20 years.

"I went to high school in Englewood," John told me. "Our town was a mixture - middle class, wealthy, white, black. We all went to the same high school. "You know," he said, leaning closer, "an Italian kid dreams of being head of the Mafia. The role of Vinnie Barbarino doesn't fit me exactly, but I sure can grasp it. I grew up in that kind of background, around many tough people - at least they were tough on the outside."

John quit high school in his junior year to become a full-time actor. "I was doing summer stock then, and I was working too much to go to school at the same time," he explained. "I wanted to work. I enjoyed it. I just liked what I was doing! At first there was a little tension with my parents, but my interest was so strong. My mother understood what I wanted to do. I was 16. My three older sisters were all actresses. I had grown up watching them go through the problems of being actresses. I saw a lot of shows and plays. It was a natural thing. Acting was all around me.

"My mother directed a stock company in Englewood and did all kinds of things. She was going all the time. My father now owns a business in Hillsdale. He had been a semi-pro basketball player. My family life was very enjoyable," John remarked. "My father enjoyed all of our careers. He went to everything. My parents were totally interested in everything we did. My brothers were athletes.

"I got involved in community theatre as a child," John recalled. "When I was 14 I started going to New York to audition for professional parts. My first professional job was in summer stock in New Jersey. That was at the end of my sophomore year in high school." And that changed everything for John.

"Before that I lived a normal life. I just had regular friends and buddies. We played sports, I played basketball and football from grades 7-10," John said. "I enjoyed basketball more than football. I had a few chosen friends I communicated well with."

But gradually one job led to another - and the jobs began to overlap with school. "I couldn't do both and I wanted to work," John said. "My parents let me quit school. They understood what I wanted to do."

John got a job with a summer stock company in PA and then played in a revival of Rain in an off-Broadway production. He was in the national touring company of Grease. "We travelled all over the country," he said. "I also did Grease on Broadway and was in Over Here with the Andrews Sisters for nine months. That's enough for any one show!"

John moved to LA in 1972. He was 18 at the time. "I came out here, then I went back to NYC to do Grease...I hope I can balance my career on both coasts and continue to do both theater and TV," John explained.

The best part about his career, John said, "is that I've been able to get what I want out of life and I love that. Since I was five I've had an obsession with airplanes and I bought one. It's a two-seater Ercoupe.

"I have also bought my favorite kind of car in the whole world," John exclaimed. "It's a 1955 Thunderbird. Being an actor," he added, "is a well-rounded life. I have freedom to spend time with my plane and with people I like. I travel a lot and meet many people. Only through experience can you learn to deal with people. I've worked from the time I was 12. My first job was as a carpenter's helper. I put fabric on chairs and rebuilt tables."

Were there disadvantages to working so much?

"I don't think so," John replied. "When I was 14 and 15, I always tried to have something going. Moments when I wasn't playing basketball or acting or doing something, I fell apart. It's better to have something to do. It's tough to be a teenager," John remarked. "You start thinking of the years ahead. I can remember being 11 and thinking, 'I'm getting older...' Then you think, 'Soon I'll be out of high school. What will I do?' You have to deal with the real world then and it's frightening. It's frightening to think of not being a kid. Kids get away with a lot. People say, 'Oh, he's a teenager,' and they excuse you. So you try to get away with as much as you can. Then you get older and people expect more from you. You have to confront all of that and go through it. You can't avoid it. You might as well confront it and get through it."

John believes the young people in Kotter are fairly true to life. "They harass the teacher and so on," he pointed out. "That's all part of school. Ranking is part of school." John laughed. "I was an excellent ranker in school," he said. "I wasn't the champion, but I got a lot of laughs. I was something of a practical joker through school, though I tried not to do anything that would hurt another person.

"I had one teacher like Mr. Kotter," John added. "That teacher was very funny. He communicated with us. He handled us, but with a sense of humor. We laughed, but we learned. Kotter is that kind of teacher."

Welcome Back, Kotter is one of the few shows dealing with young people today. "Some of the things the kids say aren't quite like what real kids would say," John pointed out. "But they are more believable than any other teenagers you see on TV."

It seems there was more of John Travolta in Vinnie Barbarino then I ever realized!

Yup!! How was that for timing? I received the book in the mail and was able to transcribe these interviews just as the TV Land awards and cast reunion happened. :cool: :D

On a side note, John Travolta did drop out of high school, but he later got his GED - even after he became wildly successful and famous. He got his equivelancy diploma because he'd promised his dad he would. :D

Yup!! How was that for timing? I received the book in the mail and was able to transcribe these interviews just as the TV Land awards and cast reunion happened. :cool: :D

On a side note, John Travolta did drop out of high school, but he later got his GED - even after he became wildly successful and famous. He got his equivelancy diploma because he'd promised his dad he would. :D
Your timing is impeccable! That's cool that John fulfilled his promise to his Dad to get his GED!

Ron Palillo and I had lunch one day in the commissary at ABC. Welcome Back, Kotter was in rehearsal that day. Cast members were eating at various tables around the dining room. Gabe Kaplan was at a nearby table throwing occasional cracks in our direction. Ron just laughed. The Kotter group has become a close-knit family. They like and respect each other.

I asked Ron how the series had affected his life.

"It hasn't changed it in outward ways," he replied. "It's just nice to have some security. An actor has none, which is probably why he's an actor. It's nice to know I have some money stashed away so I can get through the tough times if they happen. Also, I suppose it's changed my life because now people know who I am. And people are a lot nicer to me!"

"Mention the star of the show!" Gabe called to him.

"He's going to be canonized," Ron said, looking at Gabe. "Right out of a canon." Then he continued his thought. "I like to be very quiet. I like privacy," Ron said. "In that respect my life has not changed."

Ron, I discovered, is a very bright, talkative, personable young man. "I was doing the play Hot L Baltimore when they were casting this series," he explained. "I didn't want to try out for a part in it, but my agent said I should. I knew the character was supposed to be someone tough, so I got all dressed up that way and walked in. Gabe and Alan Sacks took one look at me and said, 'If you can act, you've got the part.'" Ron laughed. "Then they found out I wasn't really tough!"

Horshack's laugh and voice are very distinctive. "They just came out at the reading," Ron admitted. "All I knew was that the kids came from Brooklyn. I could do the New York accent. But at the first reading my voice was different. It was kind of a cross between a whine and a groan. All from nerves, probably! All of a sudden I saw a line and thought maybe Horshack should think of it as a joke.

"I think the original way the producers saw Horshack was as the class loser. But when we got into doing the show, they came to consider Horshack as probably the smartest one in the class. We took off from there. Now Horshack is opening up. He's not changing, but opening up," Ron added thoughtfully.

"I didn't want to make him a one-dimensional cartoon character who laughs at everything," Ron noted. "Horshack has been acting dumb for a reason. He started out as a kind of mascot for the other kids. Now he's one of them. He's becoming more and more himself. That's what Kotter has done for him. All the kids are changing because of this teacher - and they're changing for the better. Horshack is just starting to learn for himself. If Kotter weren't there, Horshack probably never would have learned."

When the show first came on the air, some viewers thought Horshack was ********. "That made me very angry," Ron said vehemently. "I went on a tour of several cities to promote the show, and I talked to TV editors who thought Horshack was ********. My question to them was: 'Do you think Edith Bunker is ********?' There's very little difference. People pinned that label on Horshack because he is young. If you act that way when you're older they just say you're a little slow! I have played a ******** boy in a play and I have worked with ******** children. If anyone thinks I'd stoop for a low joke by playing him ******** when he's not, they're SICK."

Ron shook his head disgustedly. "At first, Horshack would talk only when Barbarino said, 'You may talk now." That's going on in schools today. It always has! ********? Go to schools and see the kids! They are crying out for attention and that's not because they are ********! They are asking for help.

"Horshack is doing the same thing. He has no family life. His only life is Gabe Kotter and the three other kids. His family life is wretched! Now, with a little attention, he's coming out of it." Ron smiled. "He'll always be a little weird, of course, because Horshack is weird. But he's not afraid anymore to show that he's smart. He's not afraid to disagree with his friends."

At that moment, Gabe Kaplan finished his lunch and walked by. "Just say the star is the best," he joked, and Ron laughed.

"I think the show has risen in popularity, not because it takes place in Brooklyn, but because it's true," he said. "It doesn't matter if you come from Oshkosh or Minneapolis or Brooklyn - everybody has been or known these four characters. They might act a little differently, but they are essentially the same people you went to school with. We're taking these types and making real people of them.

"I also think we're touching on real issues and real problems," Ron pointed out. There's been a grain of truth in all the shows. In the show we're working on right now, the guys are forming a gang and Horshack wants no part of it. That's peer pressure. A lot of our shows deal with peer pressure."

Ron was born in New Haven, CT. His father was the Postmaster of Whitneyville, CT. "My father died when I was nine," Ron remembered. "About that time the Chesire Community Theatre was doing a play. My mother thought it would be good for me to get out and meet people. I got a part in the play - and for a long time she regretted encouraging me! She got me into the theater and then she was sorry. She didn't want to see me with no money.

"My father's death was traumatic," Ron admitted. "I realized what had happened when I was nine. But the loss didn't really manifest itself to me until I was 14 or 15. By that time, though, I'd become independent enough to hold it and deal with it and understand it."

Theater became his all-consuming interest. "I was obsessed with it," he acknowledged. When he was 14, he started his own theater and ran it for four years. It was called the Black Friars Summer Theater, and it was commercially successful.

After graduating from high school in Cheshire, Ron attended the University of CT where he received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in theater. "My mother worked four or five jobs to put my brothers and sister through college," Ron said. "I got a scholarship and worked summers."

Ron toured with a Shakespearean company and appeared with a repertory company in Florida. "That experience was invaluable. It gave me a very heavy sense of technique. Technique is very important when you're doing a show like Kotter. I think I should explain technique. Technique is being able to play the same part in different situations and keeping the character consistent and real. It's knowing how to get laughs while staying in the framework of the character. All of that is technique and it's very important. You have to have it to survive for any length of time."

Because of his interest in theater, Ron has become a Shakespearean scholar as well as a student of Greek theater. "I'm an actor," he said. "Though I think there are parts of Horshack in me, I also think I'm very different at this point. I've played many different roles. I like to get exposure in other things. Horshack is an important part of my life but I'm not him. I had a very strong classical background in the theater."

Ron paused and smiled. "I had two or three friends in high school," he said. "I was Horshack in then in a sense. I was a strange kid. I was told by my friends that I either had to stop acting or I had to get out of the group of popular kids. I was kind of a weirdo in high school. Horshack went out and looked for friends his own age and got them. I found I could relate better to older people than to my peers. At 14 and 15 I was hanging out with college kids. My father's death made me grow up fast."

When he's not working, Ron enjoys running and swimming. Before the series, he lived in the East Village of New York. Now he's taken an apartment in West Hollywood, California. "I miss New York, but I'm beginning to like California," he said as he prepared to go back to work. "I miss the crowds, the pace, the tension of New York. There's so much to do there. Sometimes I feel like I'm wasting time out here because we have so much time off." With that, he grinned, said good-bye, and headed back to Mr. Kotter's classroom.
:rip: Ron...he spent the final years of his life giving back, teaching acting to teenagers. What a wonderful man who will be missed!!!