Remembering 'King Of Daytime TV' Phil Donahue
46:05 Share

Support for this NPR podcast and the following message come from the UPS Store. Open this Wednesday. Come into your local store today. Most locations are independently owned. Products, services, pricing, and hours of operation may vary. See center for details. The UPS Store. Be unstoppable. This is Fresh Air. I'm TV critic David Bianculli. Today, we're starting off by remembering Phil Donahue, the pioneering TV talk show host who died Sunday at age 88.

We'll listen back to a conversation between him and Terry Gross from 1985, and we'll begin with this appreciation. The Phil Donahue Show began in 1967 as a local series in Dayton, Ohio. It was syndicated nationally in 1969 and relocated to Chicago in 1974, with the show's title shortened to just Donahue.

That was because by then, the talk show host and his unusual format were equally familiar to and embraced by national TV audiences. Ten years later, another Chicago talk show began outperforming him in the ratings. A show hosted by a young woman named Oprah Winfrey, whose approach to television owed much to her Chicago predecessor. Donahue moved his program to New York, where he continued his passionate brand of talk show TV until 1996.

Before Phil Donahue, most talk shows were forums for celebrities to plug their latest projects. Donahue did some of that, too, and he wasn't above pandering for ratings. In an effort to appeal to his largely female daytime audience, he did several shows featuring strip club male dancers from Chippendales. But Donahue, like his talk show audience, seemed as interested in listening as in talking, and his conversations were unprecedentedly inclusive and wide-ranging.

He took on topics few others would go near. In 1982, while still broadcasting from Chicago, he addressed a very serious topic that still, at that time, was unfamiliar to many people. A significant and...

serious disease has struck the gay community and let's see how much sense we can make out of this at the outset. First of all, you don't have to be gay to get this. But most of those who are afflicted are members of the gay community and an alarming percentage of those who are afflicted live in the New York City area. Although again, our guest wants you to know that it is not exclusive to New York City.

And as with so many things in medicine, researchers and lots of people who are working overtime trying to figure this thing out have, there's a lot of mystery attending it. And we really don't know all the answers. But we do have a good deal of tragedy that has already hit. Larry Kramer is here. Mr. Kramer is a screenwriter, producer of the film Women in Love and lots of other things.

and he has... have you lost 17 friends? That's right, Phil. 17 of your friends have died. 17 very close friends, all men under 50 years old, all men at the peak of their usefulness to society, of their creative ability. This is over a two-year period. My 17th friend died

two weeks ago. Phil Donahue kept returning to that issue and famously built programs around Ryan White, the young hemophiliac teenager who developed AIDS after a blood transfusion. When Ryan White died in 1990 at age 18, Elton John was one of his pallbearers. Phil Donahue was another.

Even on shows that were much lighter in tone, Phil Donahue would involve his audience. Not just the studio audience, where he famously would stroll into the crowd with his microphone to let them ask questions of his guests, but also viewers at home who could and did call in. It was an early example of the town hall talk show concept, and Donahue kept things moving briskly. Here he is in 1986 from New York, devoting that day's show to Joan Rivers.

She had just broken with Johnny Carson and The Tonight Show to agree to star in her own talk show for the fledgling Fox Network. Her show wouldn't premiere until the following year, but her move already was seen as controversial. In this clip from Donahue, we hear an audience member ask a question, then a caller. Both elicit delightful responses. What do you do for relaxation? What do you do to relax? Read.

My husband and I get into bed and unfortunately...

Are you there? Hi, go ahead. Hi, how are you? I'm good. I just want to tell you that I'm really proud of you, Joan. You're a fabulous friend. You recognize this boy? You've been really supportive of me when I needed you. I can't tell you, I'm so happy that I'm going to be able to not have to go on the Carson show to be with you. Sure. You old bitch. Oh, my God.

You know, of all the people, let me tell you, of all the people, I know what it's like to be on the hot seat, you know, when you do something that people aren't thrilled with. And it took a lot of guts. And, you know, this is America. Everybody deserves to make their mark, to get their break, and then to take it. I love you so much.

But Donahue didn't rely only on his studio audience and calling viewers to ask questions and engage with his guests. He was a very good interviewer. He wasn't above probing and challenging his guests. And essentially, he changed the tone and direction of the TV talk show. Like Dick Cavett, whose program went national the same year, Donahue presided over a talk show that was smart and presumed its audience to be intelligent as well.

Like Oprah Winfrey and Rosie O'Donnell and Ellen DeGeneres, all of whom came after him, Donahue's show was, in a word, civil. The opposite side of the spectrum was popular, too, personified by the antagonistic and exploitive bottom-feeding shows by Jerry Springer. But Phil Donahue changed TV for the better, not for the worse. Terry Gross spoke to Phil Donahue in 1985, and she asked him why he involved the audience during his program.

Well, first of all, I'd like you to believe that I was brilliant enough to sit down and decide to do all these things. Our show, like life itself, evolved. I replaced a variety show in Dayton, Ohio in 1967, and in so doing inherited an audience that had already received tickets for a program that includes song, dance, piano, and also you got to wave when the camera turned on you.

rather than dismiss the audience why we invited them to come in and watch as I interviewed Madeline Murray O'Hare. I honestly don't remember how long it took, but after several shows, it was clear that what was happening during the commercials was in many ways more interesting and instructive than was happening between the host and the guest. And on one day, I jumped out of the chair and went into the audience...

And it was really that moment is what, we didn't know it then, what subsequently made the program, what shall we say, different and I think absorbing enough to hold a viewer for an hour. There are other conventions that you violated too, like turning the show over to issues instead of just doing fashion shows and dieting. That too was a matter of survival. Since our show came from Dayton, Ohio, we did not have

the stars that we were accustomed to seeing on talk shows available to us. So, and we had five days a week to fill. And what we discovered very early on was that if the issue was right, you could have a show that was far more interesting with a guest who did not have celebrity stature. And it was 1967, the war was raging.

protests, our cities were burning, Martin Luther King had been assassinated, I said Bobby Kennedy, and suddenly we found that we were surrounded by some very volatile ideas and conflicts about which the audience cared very deeply. It was our first real exposure to the fact that out there during the daytime were a lot of people who wanted more than just games and soaps, women who were concerned about more than just covered dishes and needlepoint,

And women who were, in effect, saying, please don't patronize us, just give us the information, we'll make our own decision. And we were off to the races. Were you ever at all disappointed that you were going to be on in the morning, knowing that the morning audience is always called the housewife audience?

Well, that stereotype existed, the prejudice continued, and I think continues today. I don't think it's as widespread, nor is it as powerful as it once was. What does that mean in broadcasting terms when they say, you know, it's the housewives who listen? What does that mean to broadcasters or to broadcasting executives? I think, first of all, it means a woman with hair curlers perhaps sitting under a hair dryer and reading a movie magazine. It also means a very important marketing target.

a person who buys everything that Procter & Gamble produces. And it also means, sadly, a person who doesn't have much of an interest in politics or much of a vision beyond the front lawn. I really don't think that that overstates the very damaging stereotype that existed within the broadcasting industry at the time. And we were very pleased. One of the things about which we're most proud is that the program demonstrated that those were people

The audience during the day wanted a program like ours for a long time, and we were just fortunate enough to come along and give it to them. Were you advised not to do that, though? Were you told, look, Phil, wise up. They don't want to hear about issues. You've got to do celebrities and cosmetics. That advice continued for quite a while. As you may know, we did not burn the town down immediately. We did well in Dayton, Ohio. But the thought of syndicating our program was really an absurdity.

We had no desk, no couch, no band, no Phyllis Diller, no funny sidekick. We had really none of the conventions. Our program was also very visually dull. We had no spinning wheel. We were surrounded by programs wherein contestants were dressed like chicken salad sandwiches, or a man said, come on down, and you had all kinds of excitement and the possibility of winning a car, or in those days, maybe $5,000. Against this kind of energy, it was a

It took, at the very least, some chutzpah. It made us very nervous, I have to say, that I was nervous myself. Well, when we finally syndicated in 69, we got into three markets, and then six, and then four, and then eight, and then five. We stuttered and stopped and started again. And on those occasions when we would get flat, we had a lot of pressure to throw pies, as you might say, to...

to juice the show up, to make it more interesting. There was also a lot of resentment, a lot of resistance to the notion that the attention span of the viewer would be long enough to hold one guest for an hour. As you know, the book about television or the audience today is make sure you do it in six minutes and then bring out the talking Pekingese, and we disproved them.

You hadn't really considered much about feminism in 1967 when you started doing the show. Looking back now, when you look at your early days of hosting and compare it to your way of doing it now, do you think that you were doing anything then that you'd now think of as being patronizing or chauvinistic? I'm sure that I did. I was raised in a—pardon my voice, I've got a crick in—that'll go away in a moment—

I was raised in a world where men led and women served. All of the people in my childhood who had any authority at all were males, including the priests who said Mass while I served. The adult nun who taught me, a woman, was not permitted on the altar while I, a child, was permitted to serve Mass. And I think that I discovered probably too late that...

These experiences leave a legacy which do not depart from the soul very easily. And to this day, I think I'm struggling with those early experiences. I just had the good fortune of having a professional life that allowed me to meet people like Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan and others who said, among other things, that children in this culture get too much mother and not enough father. When they said that, they made me very nervous indeed because it was certainly true in my case.

And I think to this day I have a tendency to perhaps, I think patronizing habits die a very slow death, and I know that I'm capable of that behavior now and then. I'm not as bad as I used to be.

You're sometimes called TV's leading feminist or morning TV's only feminist or things like that. And I wonder if you have any ideas about why women on TV don't seem to be able to identify themselves as feminists. Sometimes I think that for a woman to identify herself as a feminist who's in broadcasting, it's seen as something that might compromise her professionalism. Yeah.

I suppose you could say, I've never thought about it, your question provokes the possibility that it is easier for a male to be a feminist than a woman. You get, at least you get the possibility that your daughter will be exposed to ideas that you want her, that remind her that it's important that she be an independent person, forsake the Cinderella fairy tale.

be capable of accommodating her own needs on her own in the event that she makes a bad choice in terms of a relationship or a marriage. And at the same time, you get whatever comfort might come from the fact that a male is making these points since all the years of most of us in my age group have featured males in positions of authority. Interesting possibility. I don't know. I think the point should be made that...

that the fact that I am considered to be this leading male feminist is itself indicting. I embraced the politics of the feminist movement a long time ago for selfish reasons. First of all, I have a daughter. But I certainly can't claim to have the academic credentials or the informed historical perspective of feminist politics.

that a lot of other people who don't have to happen to have the good fortune of a talk of having a talk show might have so it's really i think a sign of this enormous struggle that after all this work that these women all of many of whom are out there early getting whistled at and having their sex preference questioned and

who were really being derisively treated by a largely male press, look up 20 years after this wave has already been underway and discover that their number one male or that one of their leading male supporters is Phil Donahue.

I'm not mock humble at all when I say that I didn't wake up one morning and decide to be a feminist. It's been a very difficult struggle. It's very hard to walk away from all the free services that women have provided me all my life. My mother never missed a meal, and I went right from her to a wife who never missed a meal and also dutifully raised five children while I went out and did what you did in the 50s. I got promoted and

I was a workaholic, and now I realize that in that process, I was not a party to shared parenthood, and I think that the losers in that case were my children. You've written in your autobiography a couple of years ago about how during your first marriage, you were much more conventional in your attitude towards gender. And I sometimes think about how your first wife must feel now

hearing all this talk about Phil Donahue, Mr. Feminist, when she was married to pre-feminist Phil Donahue and saw the earlier side of you. I think it's a painful thing for her. I made it clear who I was and who I wasn't in my autobiography. It would be better if someone else said this, but I think it's a reasonably honest review of who I was and wasn't in the early years of our marriage.

What has happened, I think, is that media has, I think, in a kind of short-circuit way, presented me as the single father, who this, who that. Single fathers get a lot more attention than single mothers. Single mothers are supposed to be wonderful. Single fathers are little boys lost that you just kind of want to love, and isn't he struggling to do a nice job, what a wonderful guy he must be.

I really feel pretty good about my single fatherhood, having presided over the household while my sons were going through high school. But I do not deserve the award of Father of the Year. I was scared. I really didn't... My father was a fellow who worked 9 to 9 selling furniture, so while he loved me and was a very civil, gentle, insightful man...

he was, because of his workaholism, an absentee father in many ways. So I really didn't have a whole... I was a very, very uneasy single parent. And while I did struggle through it, and I'm very grateful for the relationship that I enjoy with my children today, I wasn't what you would... I wasn't the father that my billing might suggest today.

There have been local stations that have blacked out some of your programs, either portions of it or they've played a rerun instead of carrying the regular show. And I guess some of the subjects have been showing an abortion, showing a birth.

Do you approve of them doing it? Do you think that that's... Well, obviously you don't, but do you think that's an example of, you know, democracy in action or the opposite? No, I do. I think this... I think our... I think the syndicated method of distribution of program material is the most democratic. We paid our dues for this. Not being on a network means that one vice president can't, while he's shaving on a Tuesday morning, decide that we're finished. Peoria can cancel our show, but I'm still on the air in Indianapolis.

At the same time, individual stations can make a decision about what they may or may not want to broadcast. While it is true we have a contract to provide a program to them, they have no obligation to broadcast it. They are responsible for what goes off the top of their tower, and they retain the last final word on whether this or that program airs. I think that's as democratic as you get in our business. On those occasions when someone cancels our show, I do call them. I mean, I think...

I make it clear, look, you're the customer, and if you and I are going to have a fight here, you're going to win. It's your station. But please let me appeal this. We wouldn't have sent you this program if we thought it wasn't a broadcast quality. And then I attempt to engage them in a dialogue about why they did it and why we did it. And I think it serves to let them know that we're not cavalier about people canceling the program, and the next time they think about it, at least they'll know that we're watching them. Phil Donahue, speaking to Terry Gross in 1985.

The pioneering TV talk show host died Sunday. He was 88 years old. After a break, we remember actress Jenna Rollins, who died last week at age 94. And Justin Chang reviews the new film Close Your Eyes. I'm David Bianculli, and this is Fresh Air.

This message comes from AppleCard. If you love iPhone, you'll love AppleCard. It comes with the privacy and security you expect from Apple. Plus, you earn up to 3% daily cash back on every purchase, which can automatically earn interest when you open a high-yield savings account through AppleCard. A

This message comes from NPR sponsor Merrill. Whatever your financial goals are, you want a straightforward path there. But the real world doesn't usually work that way. Merrill understands that.

That's why, with a dedicated Merrill advisor, you get a personalized plan and a clear path forward. Go to ml.com slash bullish to learn more. Merrill, a Bank of America company. What would you like the power to do? Investing involves risk. Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Incorporated, registered broker-dealer, registered investment advisor, member SIPC.

This message comes from NPR sponsor, Rosetta Stone, an expert in language learning for 30 years. Right now, NPR listeners can get Rosetta Stone's lifetime membership to 25 different languages for 50% off. Learn more at rosettastone.com slash NPR. Now, we're going to remember Jenna Rollins, the actress best known for collaborating with her husband, director John Cassavetes.

Their independent films, made in the 1970s and 80s, were often raw and improvised. Rollins died last week at the age of 94. She played a housewife having a nervous breakdown in A Woman Under the Influence, a prostitute in Faces, and a former gangster's maul in Gloria.

She was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for two of those dramatic performances. But her film debut was in the 1958 comedy The High Cost of Loving, playing the wife of José Ferrer. Here's a scene in which the two are eating breakfast. He's just read something out loud from the newspaper. Now it's her turn to read from the paper. She's trying to let him know she's pregnant, but he's not getting it. Page one, my sections.

Mr. and Mrs. Jim Fry, after nine years of marriage, proudly announced that a new baby appears to be on the way. Oh, imagine that. Imagine what? What you just read. What did I just read? About those people getting married. I didn't say that. I said after nine years of marriage, a baby. A B-A-B-Y, baby.

Here's another clip. Jenna Rollins is in the 1974 film A Woman Under the Influence. She plays a suburban housewife with three kids, and she's having an emotional breakdown. She's become hysterical, and her husband, played by Peter Falk, slaps and then hugs her. You're going to be committed. Go to the hospital until you get better. I'm not sore at you. I mean, you hit me. You never did that before. I feel that if that's what you...

you feel bad about. I always understood you and you always understood me and it was always just how it was and that's it. Till death do us part, Nick, you said it. Remember he said, do you, Mabel Mortensen, take this man? I do. I do, Nick. I do. Remember I said, it's going to work because I'm already pregnant. Don't let that mind run away on you. Do you remember how you laughed? Don't make me laugh. You laughed. Don't you remember it?

And he was mad as a toad. Don't do that. Hey, don't be sad. I know you love me. In the 1980 film Gloria, Rollins plays a woman who had been connected to the mafia. She's asked by neighbors, who know that they're about to be executed by the mob, to take care of their six-year-old son. But the mob wants the boy because his parents have given him the book they kept on mafia business. Gloria doesn't have maternal feelings.

In this scene, she's on the street and is trying to ditch the kid when a car full of mobsters pulls up. She's carrying a gun in her purse. Gloria. Yes? You know, we're not interested in you. All we want is the book and the kid. Do you understand? Sure. Gloria, why don't you take a walk? We'll take care of that kid. You got that book, kid? Come here. Frank, what are you going to do? Shoot a six-year-old Puerto Rican kid on the street?

You don't know nothing. He don't even speak English. That isn't the last time in the film she opens fire on the mobsters and gets away with it, by the way. Terry talked with Jenna Rollins in 1996.

Gloria was, in a way, really out of character film for you. It's an action film, in a way, and you're pretty handy with a gun in the film, not your typical role. Did you enjoy that change of pace? I loved it. It was such a fantasy. I mean, here I am, and I'm going to take on the whole mafia and beat them, which is...

sort of an incredible power trip. While being very motherly at the same time. Yes, while being very motherly at the time. But it was... I remember it was so strange carrying that gun at first. And then after a while, because I always carried it in my purse, so I could shoot through the purse if I needed to. Gloria, I'm speaking of, not me. And...

Then afterwards, I was carrying the purse, because, you know, the prop man comes and takes it from you so there won't be an accident or anything every occasion. And then all of a sudden, my purse would seem very light. And I thought, my, you get...

You get used to things very quickly. It was, the whole thing was, and it was a tough picture physically because I was running around in those four-inch heel sandals and carrying a child over my shoulder and running through Harlem and, you know, 98 degrees heat and a thousand humidity or something. So that it was a picture you got into shape very quickly.

A Woman Under the Influence, directed by your late husband, John Cassavetes. You played a woman married to a character played by Peter Falk. You're having a nervous breakdown, and you just unravel more and more as the movie goes on. Had you seen somebody going through that before taking on the role, somebody who you could think about while doing the movie? Not one person. I wasn't thinking of one person. A part is like reading a detective story.

You don't write it. You don't start it in the middle. You interpret it. And very often you find things that they're doing, the character that you're doing, that puzzles you. And you wonder how and why. And so you take as much of... Because I believe that all of us have every quality. All of us. It's a matter of degree. And acting is a matter...

of increasing the degree or decreasing. But it's always there and you can always find it inside of you. And think about things that you've seen and heard and people you've known and all you need is just a little, it can be like a little piece of rice. But once you have the feeling, then you can enlarge it and take it where you wish to.

You and your late husband, John Cassavetes, were making independent films before I think there was even a name for it. You were really pioneers of that in the movie industry. Why did you start? Why did you start finding your own little niche away from the larger industry? Well, of course, as you say, you don't think of yourself as a pioneer or even you don't think of yourself...

In any particular way, it's just that you want to express a different kind of story, a different kind of... We felt that there's so much more that could be said on film and that films could be much more personal to the audience, that you could do pictures that were actually...

something that people would relate to because it was in their own lives. Because all of them really essentially are about love and the loss of love or how to survive love or how to find love or how to keep love or what you do, which is really the eternal problem for all of us. And we thought it could be

It could be shown in a more natural setting, a more accessible way, rather than just, say, an action film or... A glamorous romance. Escape, yeah, escape film. But it's not that we wanted them to stop doing that kind of film. We just felt that there was a lot of room for a lot of kinds of film. Can you describe a little bit about...

What the guidelines for improvisation were within the films that you made with John Cassavetes, how much improvisation was there? What were the parameters for that? The first film that he made, Shadows, was entirely improvised. I wasn't in that. And so then he did develop a reputation from that as doing everything improvisationally. But actually, after that, he always had a script written

And, you know, not just a thrown-together script, a real script. But then when we would have, if you'd have a problem with a scene or... John's theory was that if he got a bunch of good actors together and there was a problem, that it was the writer's problem.

So then we would stop and we'd talk about it, rehearse, improvise, and, you know, work about it as much as we needed to. And then when we thought we had it, he'd go in and sit down and write the scene from the improvisation the way he wanted it.

And that's how we did most of them. Not all of them. There were lots of improvisations all the way through to the last films that we made. But mainly they were very scripted. And so even the parts that were improvised by the time you did the final take, it had been scripted based on the improvisation? Mostly. I was thinking of one that is just the opposite of that in our last picture, Love Streams.

I played a woman who loved too much, who loved her husband too much, who loved her children too much. I did everything too much. She just drove everybody crazy with her excessiveness. It says in the script that she calls the husband home from a business meeting and the child home from school because she knows that they are not getting enough fun out of life. So they come home thinking something important is happening.

And then there was just this one little sentence, really. And it said, they come home and sit down, she makes them laugh. And I said, what does that mean, John? And how does she make them laugh? He said, don't worry about it. He said, I've got something great planned. You're going to love it. I said, well, but...

Do you have any hints or anything? He said, no. He said, I don't want to ruin it for you. He said, just wait. And I said, this is making me hysterical. And he said, no, I'm telling you. He said, I don't want to even give it away. So we got to the day that we were going to shoot, and he said, stay in the dressing room. I don't want you to see the preparations. And now I just, I really was truly hysterical.

And finally he came and he said, okay. He said, now, come on out. And we were shooting in the backyard of this beautiful home. And there was Seymour Cassell and Risa Blewett, who were playing my husband and child. And they're both sitting there.

And they had a long picnic table. And on top of the picnic table, there were about a hundred of those crazy little games that you see, those clattering, chattering false teeth and eyes that pop out on springs and catch your bottles that look like they're getting stuff all over you. All that terrible, those joke store games. And...

John said, there, what do you think? I said, what do you mean, what do I think? Well, what am I supposed to do here? He said, make them laugh. I said, with these? I said, which ones? He said, all of them. He said, we've got a minute to shoot it, he said, and use every one, make them laugh, and then go jump off the diving board into the pool. So I said, well, shall we rehearse? He said, no, no, no. No, he said, I don't want to ruin the spontaneity of it. He said, okay, roll them.

So I just wildly started, you know, with the eyes and the ketchup and the thing. And, of course, he had already told them not to laugh because...

In their characters, they were not amused that they'd been brought home. And so now I got wilder and wilder trying just anything. And finally, the minute had gone by and I went and jumped off the diving board. Then, of course, I realized why I was jumping off the diving board because he had planned that they weren't going to laugh. Now, that kind of improvisation was...

Quite rare, because there was no rehearsal, there was no talking, there was nothing. It was just, you just went for it. And, you know, he was right. It was more fun to do that scene. It's when I look back on it with a lot of happiness. Jenna Rollins, speaking with Terry Gross in 1996. More after a break. This is Fresh Air.

The following message comes from NPR sponsor Ameriprise Financial. Chief Market Strategist Anthony Saglin-Benny shares how his team helps provide advisors and clients with information to navigate important decisions.

I think about what clients have had to endure over the last couple of years with record high inflation and changes in interest rates. And so it can be scary for a client trying to figure out what's happening in the markets and the economy. Here at Ameriprise, our team is really focused on trying to make sense of what's happening in all of these trends and then applying it

back to portfolios. And so given how uncertain the environment has been over the last couple years, our financial advisors can help clients navigate this uncertainty with more perspective and hopefully with more confidence. For more information and important disclosures, visit Ameriprise.com slash advice.

Securities offered by Ameriprise Financial Services, LLC. Member FINRA and SIPC. This message comes from NPR sponsor, Instacart. Worried about letting someone else pick out the perfect avocado for your perfect impress them on the third date guacamole?

Well, good thing Instacart shoppers are as picky as you are. They find ripe avocados like it's their guac on the line. So let Instacart shoppers overthink your groceries so that you can overthink what you'll wear on that third date. Download the Instacart app to get free delivery on your first three orders while supplies last. Minimum $10 per order. Additional terms apply.

Your father, I believe, was a state senator when you were growing up. Do I have that right? In Wisconsin. In Wisconsin. And this was U.S. Senate? Oh, state senate. Right. In the state senate. No, state senate. Progressive Party, which doesn't exist anymore. It was the La Follette Party. Did you ever have to be the model daughter while your father was in politics? Or is that also too far in the past to remember? No.

Well, I was not a hard child because I was a sick child. I was an invalid when I was little, and so I wasn't much of a handful. I was lying around looking pale and reading books and things. So I don't think that it was the same as if they had to trot me out with my little velveteen collar on or anything. I wasn't very involved in it.

What were you sick with? I don't know, some weird kidney disease. And then that went into double pneumonia and then that went into something. I think what I really think is my immune system probably was just not very developed. Because when I got to be a teenager, I'd never been sick again. I don't know. It was just one thing after another. But...

They were all very kind of serious things, asthma and all of those things. But then they just all kind of magically went away, so I think something just kicked in. Were you very unhappy during the period that you were sick? No. I...

I would like to have gone to school more in that sense, but I always was very happy reading. And everybody, you know, when you have a sickly kid, everybody's awfully nice to you. And they probably would have been anyway. But my mother would, in order to make me eat anything, she would go to all kinds of extremes and

I remember one time, I wouldn't eat carrots. I wouldn't eat anything yellow. So she cut a carrot into the shape of a goldfish.

And with a long tail. And then she put it in a goldfish bowl with water in it. And she came into where I was sick. And she said, I have an uncontrollable urge. She said, I can't stand it. I've got to eat this goldfish. I've got to do it. I said, no, no, no, no, no, don't do it. She said, I've got to unless you'll eat this carrot.

And so I said, oh, all right. But they would go to the most extraordinary kind of creative lengths to do these things for me. I really had a pretty happy childhood. Well, that sounds wonderful. It was. Did you write for comic books before acting? Yes. When I went to New York and...

I worked, and then I was out of a job, and so I got a job. Mr. Gleason, Lev Gleason, gave me a job writing Crime Does Not Pay comics. I wrote it for a long time, too, about a year or so. These were like action comics with a moral message? Yes. I always, of course, gave them an uplifting ending, a sudden conversion.

And when did you get seriously interested in acting? When I was about 14, I was living in Virginia, and I won a scholarship to a local repertory theater in Washington, D.C. Arlington is just outside of D.C. And so I...

It was a wonderful, wonderful repertory, too. I mean, they tried the hardest stuff. Talk about fools rushing in where angels fear to tread. We were doing Joan of Arc and Leglon and Richard III, and I was Richard, too. So, I mean, they had an open mind. And a marvelous, marvelous teacher. And I was the young one. Most of the guys were in their 20s and younger.

And it was serious. We all took it very seriously and worked very hard for several years there. Jenna Rollins, thank you so much for talking with us. Thank you. It's been a pleasure. Jenna Rollins, recorded in 1996. She died last week at the age of 94. Coming up, Justin Chang reviews the new film Close Your Eyes by the Spanish director who made the classic film The Spirit of the Beehive. This is Fresh Air.

This message comes from NPR sponsor Ford, introducing the Mustang Mach-E Rally. Chief Engineer Donna Dixon shares why the Mustang Mach-E Rally takes EVs further into the performance space. One thing drivers will love about the Rally is how capable it is. People need to get in and drive it because it just blows your mind when you get in and drive it. It holds true to having that pony on the front end.

Zero to 60 times are going to be extremely fast, 480 horsepower, and a MagnaRide suspension that is tuned for off-road. I'm sure they've never thought of taking a Mustang Coupe off-road, right? So to be able to expand that to not just being on a pavement track to now, hey, let's go have some fun in the dirt, you know, why not? It just shows you what we can do with our vehicles.

To learn more about the all-electric Mustang Mach-E Rally, go to Ford.com. Our film critic, Justin Chang, says Close Your Eyes is one of the best movies he's seen this year. It's the first feature in more than three decades from Spanish director Victor Arise, best known for his 1973 classic, The Spirit of the Beehive. Close Your Eyes follows a retired filmmaker trying to solve a mystery surrounding an unfinished production from many years ago.

Here is Justin's review. The Spanish director Victor Erice is one of our most revered, yet least prolific, European filmmakers. Over the past 50 years or so, he's directed just four features, starting with his masterful debut, The Spirit of the Beehive. That movie was a haunting family drama set in 1940, during the early days of the Franco dictatorship.

It was also a passionate ode to cinema from a filmmaker who's always loved the movies, even when the movies haven't loved him back. He had a rough time with his 1983 film El Sur, a beautiful yet truncated work that was released in its unfinished form. In the years since, Erice has directed a number of projects, including the 1992 documentary The Quince Tree Sun and several shorts.

but he has struggled to get another fiction feature off the ground until now. The arrival of Erice's new movie, Close Your Eyes, would be welcome news, even if it weren't one of the best things I've seen this year. Manolo Solo plays a long-retired director named Miguel, who quit the biz in 1990 after one of his films shut down production.

The circumstances were mysterious. His star, a handsome actor named Julio Arenas, vanished without explanation and was presumed dead. Now it's 2012, and a Madrid-based TV journalist is investigating Julio's disappearance. After he's interviewed, Miguel stays in Madrid and makes inquiries of his own.

While Close Your Eyes unfolds at a leisurely pace over nearly three hours, it has the pull of a well-crafted detective story. Miguel reaches out to old friends and colleagues, like his longtime editor, Max, a hardcore cinephile who still has the never-screened footage from that halted production. Miguel also gets back in touch with Julio's daughter, who knew little about her father even before he went missing.

She's played, exquisitely, by Ana Torrent, who was just a young girl when she starred in The Spirit of the Beehive decades ago. It's a glorious, full-circle moment. Miguel's investigation doesn't yield any immediate answers, and he returns wistfully to his home on the Spanish coast. It's here that the action briefly pauses and settles into a simply magical interlude.

One night, while hanging out under the stars, Miguel picks up a guitar and performs a duet with his friend Tony. Purple eye in the canyon That's where I long to be With my three good companions Just my rifle, Tony, and me

I'm gonna hang my sombrero on the limb of a tree. Coming home, sweetheart darling, just play rifle, pony, and me.

You'll recognize that song if you've seen Howard Hawks' 1959 western, Rio Bravo, which is one of my own favorite movies. Maybe it's one of Erice's, too. Like Rio Bravo, Close Your Eyes turns out to be a story about community, about friendships forged under unlikely circumstances. Miguel's mission to solve the mystery of Julio's disappearance becomes a group effort.

as old and new friends come together to help him. You don't have to know Victor Erice's work to get swept up in Close Your Eyes, but those who do know his work will find the new film an almost unbearably moving experience. Erice is in many ways telling his own story. Miguel could be his stand-in, just as Miguel's unfinished film feels like a meta-commentary on some of Erice's own abandoned projects.

Miguel and his old editor Max reminisce about earlier better times for the film industry, and grouse about the changes wrought by digital technology. But despite his character's pessimism, Erice continues to show a hard-won faith in the movies. He knows that they can move us in ways that no other art form can. At one point, Erice ushers all his characters into a dilapidated old movie theater,

which is where Close Your Eyes becomes not just an engaging film, but a quietly transcendent one. I don't want to say too much about what happens, but it's worth discovering for yourself in a movie theater of your own. Justin Chang is a film critic for The New Yorker. He reviewed Close Your Eyes, which opens tomorrow in select theaters.

On Monday's show, Movie Icons. We begin a series of interviews from our archives with great actors. We'll start with Michael Caine, whose career includes the 60s film Alfie and the Dark Knight Batman films. And Robert Duvall will tell us about playing the consigliere in The Godfather and speaking the most famous line in Apocalypse Now. Hope you can join us. ♪

Fresh Air's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director and engineer is Audrey Bentham, with additional engineering support by Joyce Lieberman, Julian Hertzfeld, and Deanna Martinez. For Terry Gross and Tanya Mosley, I'm David Biancola. This message comes from NPR sponsor Merrill. Whatever your financial goals are, you want a straightforward path there. But the real world doesn't usually work that way. Merrill understands that.

That's why, with a dedicated Merrill advisor, you get a personalized plan and a clear path forward. Go to ml.com slash bullish to learn more. Merrill, a Bank of America company. What would you like the power to do? Investing involves risk. Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Incorporated, registered broker-dealer, registered investment advisor, member SIPC.

This message comes from Travel Nevada. Need a little space? They know a place, the big heart of Nevada. There's always something new to see, because Nevada has plenty of space to just be. Plan your trip at TravelNevada.com.