Mike Douglas 1976 Interview..

"The Great Houdini "

Mike Douglas...We're at a restaurant in Hollywood with a young actor and all the girls are going to scream all across the nation when I say his name. He plays half of the hit series Starsky and Hutch, his partner David Soul co-hosted with us and I'm especially pleased to meet Paul Michael Glaser. Paul welcome to the show, do all the girls scream at you when they see you on the street?

PMG...All the time. (laughs)

Mike...How do you handle that? That’s marvelous isn't it? After all these years.

PMG...I don't complain about that no, that's really something, I expected something to happen but I never expected it to happen on this scale. It's really something.

Mike...How long have you been at it? Are you an overnight success?

PMG...No, I don’t think an overnight success exist, sometimes it feels like it was overnight, television is so fast. I've been at it about 15 years, classical, theatrical background, a few years of paying my dues out here.

Mike...Yeah, college?

PMG...Yes I went to Tulane University and graduated Boston University .

Mike...Are you from the east?

PMG...Yep, Boston .

Mike...I knew you were an easterner.

PMG...Could you tell?

Mike...I knew it! I could hear it in your speech. You and David personally, what's different about you 2 guys?

PMG...I would say that a simple way of putting it would be that I tend to be more the extrovert, Davey the introvert. I tend to express my pleasures and displeasures a little more verbal.

Mike...You must like each other because the chemistry has to be right.

PMG...Yeah, you can't fake it, I can once in a while I'll look at Davey and when I go in to do some looping and I watch him on the screen, I can tell when Davey and I were not hitting it off. What's fascinating is the subtle ways, the very subtle ways, and anybody who's involved in any kind of an intense relationship knows only too well what this means, a lot of times someone is sitting across the table who is a stranger to either one of you or both of you looks at the other and boom, just that little thing.

Mike...How do you work around it when you and he are not really jelling?

PMG...We try to get to it as soon as possible, when I say get I mean we get to the fact that if we're ticked off with each other or upset about something we try to discuss it. We have a very good dialog like that, we discuss things, we have our disagreements and agreements, it's really a fascinating situation because it is to all senses and purposes a marriage, doing a television series, conditions under which you shoot it is a very intense experience. The first season was marked by a very definite drive on both our parts to survive, just to make that thing happen, to make it work. An interesting thing that's happening this season I find is that as last season I tended to be more of an extrovert, I'm trying to learn how to lay back a little more this season, to kind of round out my ability as an actor, a lot of times it's easier for me to be aggressive and to go to it, to act out, as opposed to just sit back and listen, Davey is a very good listener, he's very good at that, so I'm trying to pick up some of his values and he's trying to pick up mine, so it's giving it a different color to the series right now.

Mike...I think the average person looks at guys like you and David with this kind of success and they think, well they have a hit series, it's just going to sit back and ride with the tide, and that’s not true, you continuously work at your craft, don't you?

PMG...Yeah, I think you don't have a choice if you’re primarily involved as an artist. There are great many pressures which you know about more than I because you've been involved in the business longer than I have, the precious time you deal with success and identity and popularity and acceptance and these things tend to lead you astray at times, so it's very important to focus as an artist.

Mike...You have a great deal of first class stage experience, did you have to go in and actually do an audition for Starsky?

PMG...Yeah, they had already signed David to do Hutch and they were looking for someone to play Starsky. I got the call, I went in and met them, and the first time I read I only got a few lines out of my mouth and they said that's enough, thank you and I took it to mean well that's one more job, on to the next. Then I was called back and I met the producers Aaron Spelling and Len Goldberg, and the ABC executives were there, the director, and I walked into the room and I hadn’t seen Davey for quite a while, we first me in New York 9 years ago.

We looked at each other and there was that click.. that kinda we can make this work, and we read. Well I had when I left the house that morning there was a big brass bowl of walnuts on the table, so I picked up a few and I stuck them in my pocket, so when I went in to read I took them out and just started eating the walnuts.

Mike...Broke the shell around them.

PMG...Oh yeah, so I started eating them, other actors were appreciating it as a trick, keep yourself involved. I used to have an acting teacher who used to say when your having trouble with a scene, he'd give you a list of numbers like 6 digit numbers about 10 of them, then he'd say now I want you to add them up in the course of a scene, really concentrate, so I did that and I guess they liked the walnuts and me.

Mike...You recently did the great Houdini T.V movie that aired recently. What was it that intrigued you about Houdini?

PMG...Well, Houdini for me was such a driven man, it's hard to find that phenomenon that he was, that existed in an age when people were very involved in having a need to believe in man's ability to escape, and wanting it so badly that they were willing to suspend their disbelief and to get behind this man who was a great showman, an incredible showman, a better showman than a magician, his slight of hand was not that good.

Mike...What’s ahead for Paul Michael Glaser?

PMG...Well, I obviously look forward to making the bridge from television to features, it's a broader canvas.

Mike...That's not easy for a lot of people.

PMG...No, it's recognizingly difficult.

Mike...However there are big stars who have made that transition.

PMG...Yeah, I'm fortunate I think in that I’ve been able to create in Starsky a character that hits on many levels, perhaps I'll be able to avoid as ridged a typecasting as happens to other actors.

Mike...Thank you very much for being here Paul Michael Glaser.

PMG...Thank you, I enjoyed it.

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