Up Till Now: The Autobiography

do this play he loved. The cast included Jack Cassidy, Cameron Mitchell, Buddy Ebsen, Martin Sheen, and Richard Basehart.
    The other shows I was doing all worked on a very tight schedule, with very little time to rehearse. On Star Trek, for example, we shot each show in six days and finished each day at exactly 6:18. There was no provision for overtime in the budget. So even if we were in the middle of a scene, at 6:18 we shut down and went home. Six-eighteen, done. Most series worked pretty much the same way. We weren’t creating art, we were churning out television shows. I showed up on time, performed my role, and went home. If it’s Tuesday I’m a doctor with a gambling problem. Six days later I’m a newspaperman introducing publisher Gene Barry to the world of witchcraft. But The Andersonville Trial was a very different situation, this was... public television! This was a prestigious production! I knew it was prestigious because it paid less than network shows.
    We had almost two weeks of rehearsal. Rather than being filmed, the show was being done on tape so it would have the look and feel of a stage production. The play itself explored the moral ambiguity of the situation, in which the accused prison commander had apparently tried to get food for his prisoners but had been torn between his duty to the Confederacy and his obligation to his prisoners. I had a scene near the end in which I was questioning the commander, Richard Basehart, about his actions. I’d been a stage and television lawyer for many years, so I knew how to question a witness for the camera. But toward the end of rehearsals Scott sat down with me and said, “You know, the way you’re playing that last scene is the way I played it to begin with.” But then he proceeded to tell me that his performance had evolved during the stage run. Instead of attacking the witness with the fury of an angry DA, he said, eventually he’d identified with the pain of the commandant who had been caught in this terrible situation. “You know, what I found was that rather than expressing anger, anguish worked a lot better there.”
    It was only a small suggestion, but it changed my entire interpretationof my character. It added yet more depth to the play. “Gee, George,” I said. “I don’t think so.”
    “Just try it,” he suggested.
    Of course it worked. It was the best piece of direction that I can remember being given in all those years. The program was an artistic success, winning three Emmys—including the Outstanding Single Program of the Year—and a Peabody Award. As it turned out, this show changed my life—although not as I might have expected.
    During rehearsals I’d met a lovely woman named Marcy Lafferty, a young actress George Scott had hired to run lines with the cast. Apparently I was the only member of the cast who took advantage of her—to rehearse my lines. To rehearse my lines! But as Marcy once said, “Bill didn’t want to get involved...I fell in lust with him.”
    We dated very happily for a couple of years. My girls liked her immediately, and on weekends we’d take them camping and skiing. Marcy had a wonderful sense of humor and was a ready participant in my adventures. She even willingly went with me to see every single kung fu picture ever made. Our relationship was so comfortable it never occurred to me that we should get married. I’d been married and I wasn’t very good at it. But early in 1973 she casually asked one day, “Look, I don’t want to rush you or anything, but I can’t go on like this. Are we going to get married in the next five years?”
    “Well,” I said, “what about next week?” This was my first second marriage. I remember reading a newspaper story about the marriage in which Marcy was quoted as saying she was very surprised when I proposed. And I thought, she was surprised? During our marriage ceremony I remember hearing a sob coming from somewhere. I turned and looked around curiously to see who was so moved emotionally by my marriage that they were crying. It turned out to be me . I was sobbing.
    As it turned out there really was only one thing wrong with our marriage. Me. I hadn’t learned anything from the failure of my firstmarriage. Marcy and I had a very passionate relationship; when we were in love, we were really in love, but when I got angry ...One night, I remember, we were in a restaurant and got into a big argument. I have no memory what it was about, but I was