There I Go Again: How I Came to Be Mr. Feeny, John Adams, Dr. Craig, KITT, and Many Others

William Daniels is an actor and former president of the Screen Actors Guild. He won two Emmy Awards for his role as Dr. Mark Craig in St. Elsewhere and more recently reprised his role as Mr. Feeny in the Disney Channel sitcom Girl Meets World, the sequel series to Boy Meets World. There I Go Again is a celebrity memoir like no other, revealing the life of a man whose acting career has been so rich that millions of Americans know his face even while they might not recognize his name. William Daniels is an enigma -- a rare chameleon who has enjoyed massive success both in Hollywood and on Broadway and been embraced by fans of successive generations. Few of his peers inspire the fervor with which buffs celebrate his most iconic roles, among them George Feeny in Boy Meets World, the voice of KITT in Knight Rider, Dr. Mark Craig in St. Elsewhere, and John Adams in the play and film 1776. Daniels guides readers through some of Hollywood’s most cherished productions, offering recollections of entertainment legends including Lauren Bacall, Warren Beatty, Kirk Douglas, Michael Douglas, Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, Mike Nichols, Jason Robards, Barbra Streisand, and many more. Looking back on his seventy-five-plus-year career, Daniels realizes that although he never had the courage to say "no" to being an actor, he backed into stardom. With his wife, actress Bonnie Bartlett, by his side, he came to realize that he wound up exactly where he was supposed to be: on the screen and stage.

Read our book review here:
http://blog.sitcomsonline.com/2017/03/sitcomsonline-book-club-there-i-go.html

‘Boy Meets World’ Star William Daniels (aka Mr. Feeny) Opens Up About Being Forced To Perform As A Child Actor: 'I Didn't Know It Was Abuse'

http://www.thewrap.com/boy-meets-world-william-daniels-abused-child/

Daniels recalls in 'There I Go Again: How I Came to Be Mr. Feeny, John Adams, Dr. Craig, KITT & Many Others' that his mother dragged him to endless auditions from a very young age, pushing him to dance, sing and perform. He later began working alongside his sisters, Jacqueline and Carol, performing on radio shows and television throughout the week that would go late into the wee hours of the morning, as well as on weekends, while the children received little to no compensation for their talents.

“Many decades later, when I started writing this book, I started seeing a psychologist, Dr. Estelle Shane, who suggested that I was an abused child. I was shocked to hear such a description — that I had been robbed of a normal childhood, forced to perform and put into situations that I had no control over,” Daniels writes in his memoir. “It was unhealthy, my doctor said, that I was unable to express my anger, my fears and my dread of knowing what was expected of me in the future.”

“Also hurtful was my mother’s failure to say ‘good job’ or ‘well done,’ compliments surely all children need to hear. Mother believed, rather firmly, that children get ‘swelled heads’ if they had too much praise,” the book continues. “It has taken me a long time to agree with this diagnosis. It is true that my sisters and I were the tool’s of my mother’s ambitions — her ambitions not just for her children, but for herself.”

Speaking with PEOPLE, Daniels admits that he was initially in denial about being the victim of abuse as a child actor.

“I had no idea that — I didn’t feel like, ‘Oh my God, I’m being abused’ or anything like that. In fact, I didn’t really become that aware of it or aware of it at all when I was seeing an analyst who said, ‘You were being abused.’ And I said, ‘No, my mother wouldn’t.’ And she said, ‘Yes you were. You were forced onto the stage,’ ” Daniels tells PEOPLE. “They didn’t realize the pressure of performance that my sister and I went through. So they sat out in back or stood out back with the other parents. … It was during the Depression when kids became very popular performers because they didn’t have to pay them. So that’s what we did — many, many of those. Two or three a week sometimes. And I don’t know how we did it and got any sleep, because it was in the evening and we’d get home at 1 o’clock in the morning. But we did it and we didn’t feel like we were being abused. It didn’t occur to us until this analyst said to me, ‘No, you were being abused.’ And I thought, ‘Oh, yeah.’ I’m sure Irene — that’s my mother — didn’t feel that way.”

Years later, Daniels sat down with both his parents at his home in California and opened up to them about the pain of his past.

“I told them out here in our little pool house,” Daniels tells PEOPLE about the sit-down discussion. “[Irene] looked out on the glass doors onto the pool and never looked at me once when I told her this: That ‘You really put us through a lot.’ ”

“Dr. Shane said that it wasn’t depression. She said, ‘I think you’re in mourning for your lost childhood.’ My level of anxiety while reading these pages — some of which literally brought me to tears — finally convinced me of my psychologist’s analysis: I was indeed an abused child. Why did my mother have to drag us around, throwing back carpets in her friends’ apartments, demanding that we dance like trained monkeys?” he writes in the book. “And why was I such a wimp and couldn’t say no? In my defense, I was just a child. But still ….”