Just Another Sunday With Mary Hartman

"Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman" may have seemed like a spontaneous nightly gathering of dysfunctional misfits, but bringing that bizarre community to life required long hours and intense dedication.

Norman Lear, the executive producer, was already on the far side of maturity, but the people who worked at the KTLA offices on Sunset Boulevard were mostly young, energetic, and eager to depart from reality and cross the border into Fernwood territory.

The shared commitment to delivering five shows a week created tensions, demanded personal sacrifices, but also forged meaningful relationships.  For the time that we were there, family resided in Fernwood.

Pat was one exceptional member of the Fernwood family.  She was my boss's secretary and instantly became my friend.  Smart, outgoing, aggressively kind, and under the circumstances, miraculously competent, Pat was always relied on to get the job done.

Nobody's perfect, however, and there was that one little problem.  Little, yes, but it might just have registered on the Richter Scale.

It was a Sunday morning.  Louise Lasser, Mary Hartman herself, discovered that her script for the following day did not contain the necessary revisions.  She called Pat at home and started yelling.  And didn't stop.

Unable to interrupt the very volatile Louise, Pat quietly passed the phone receiver to her husband, grabbed the correct script, jumped in her car, put on the gas, and didn't look back.

She lived near the Rose Bowl in Pasadena.  Louise lived in Malibu, about fifty miles away.  No matter.  Pat had a job to do.  She survived the traffic ordeal and an hour and a half later arrived at Louise's seaside home.  She found the star still on the phone, still yelling.

It was a tribute to the stamina of both women.