Q 6

PLAYBOY: Defend game shows.

Ed Begley, Jr.: I love 'em. I've been a celebrity contestant on all of them: $25,000 Pyramid, Wheel of Fortune, Body Language, Hollywood Squares Match Game Hour, Tattle Tales. I've been giving it a rest lately, not that I feel aloof. Quite the opposite. My friend Dabney Coleman told me a couple years ago to stop doing them. I said, "But, Dabney, I really enjoy them. I mean, I'd pay them to let me play the games!" So he said, OK, play them. But six months ago, again, he told me, "I don't care if you like them; stop it! People don't think of you as an actor if you're doing game shows." That's very unfortunate; you should be able to do what you want, but it doesn't seem to work that way. Those shows, for me, are a great rush. My biggest regret is having to give up the Pyramid. It's the best game around.

Q 7

PLAYBOY: Your first acting job was a role on My Three Sons. What's something only a 17-year-old would observe about Fred MacMurray?

Ed Begley, Jr.: I seem to remember he packed a sack lunch. He wouldn't go eat at the commissary. I thought it unusual. I don't know if it was a dietary or a financial consideration. Well, actually, it must have been dietary, because he could certainly afford to eat Van Nuys for lunch if he wanted. He once owned a portion of what's now Century City, I think. He's a very nice guy.

On the show, though, I played a friend of Chip's who tricked him into dating a girl with a broken leg. I was a shyster. But what I remember best was the excitement of finally getting to act. I had a great attraction to the trappings of it: you know, standing in front of the camera, under the lights, with the make-up on. In fact, I left my make-up on when I went on my paper route that afternoon, hoping that somebody would notice and ask me about it. I had always been very pale, so I liked the way it looked. Gave me a little sheen, a little color. I'm not exactly a tanned individual, even today.

Q 8

PLAYBOY: Assemble a random retrospective, with running commentary, of your most forgettable cameo roles in television and film.

Ed Begley, Jr.: Got a week? I've done little parts in maybe 40 movies and about 100 television jobs before St. Elsewhere. In This Is Spinal Tap, I played the drummer who died in a bizarre gardening accident. Total screen time of about a minute. My arm was yanked off in Cat People. I was killed by a frying pan in Eating Raoul. I was a C.B. priest in Citizens Band. My meatiest film role was in Transylvania 6-5000; unfortunately, the meat was chuck roast. I belonged to a club that was hazing Potsie and Ralph Malph on Happy Days until the Fonz exposed us. On Room 222, I was usually the gangly basketball player, Stretch Webster. On The Doris Day Show, I played the mail-room boy who tried to impress everybody with his beard, only you couldn't see it. My voice was in Ordinary People, during the flashback scene where they're putting Timothy Hutton into the ambulance. When somebody yells, "Watch your backs!"--that's me.

Oh, and let's not forget my Disney years. I made a lot of those Kurt Russell movies: The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, Now You See Him, Now You Don't, Superdad, and so on. Thinking back, I don't know if they wanted to hire me as much as they did my glasses. I had these unusual sort of geeky-looking glasses then. These weren't props that I kept in a drawer somewhere; they were my street glasses. Whenever the casting guy from Disney would call, he'd say, "You're bringing the glasses, right? Don't forget the glasses."

Q 9

PLAYBOY: Compare Ed Begley, Sr., with Ed Begley, Jr.

Ed Begley, Jr.: I promised myself that I would never be anything like him, typical of father-son relationships. He died right after my teen years, but we had some good times together before he passed away, thank God. Still, a lot of the tone of our relationship remains, and this is the area in which I'm exactly like him. For instance, he had a short temper about things around the house, which he used sarcasm to deal with. I developed that myself though I've tried to eliminate it. Rather than say, "Listen, would you please water the lawn?" the approach was, "Eddie, I don't want you watering that lawn! Sit down here. You've had a hard day watching TV, damn it!" I don't know that this is the best way to motivate your kids.

On camera, of course, he was considered one of the great angry actors. But right up to the moment they'd start rolling, he was the nicest guy on the set. He got along with all the Teamsters, the electricians, the grips. I fancy myself that way as well. Also, he had a very quick gait. He would move from point A to point B at great speed. As a kid, I thought that was the way you walked. And I have longer legs. So when I go to the corner store, I really boogie.

Q 10

PLAYBOY: Is it true that you broke your father's Oscar?

Ed Begley, Jr.: My father had won the supporting-actor Oscar in 1962 for Sweet Bird of Youth, and whenever we went on vacations, he took it with him. He had a little velvet sheath to cover it and he carried it in the back of the car. People would ask to have their pictures taken with him and he'd get out the Oscar. He'd say, "Here, look. Heavy, isn't it?" People would hold it for photographs, you know.

Now, I personally don't remember spending a lot of time holding it. One summer, though, we were at Los Angeles Airport and he asked me to hold it while he went for our tickets. I was kind of nervous about touching it, and I somehow fumbled and dropped it, loosening the base. He came back: "OK, Eddie, I've got the tick----What the hell have you done, boy? Ehh-deeeeee! Ehh-deeeee!" I mean, he had that voice. No need for corporal punishment--the voice alone was enough to make you think you were going to die. In the end, the Academy's trophy shop fixed it, and it sits, repaired, on my mantel to this day.

Q 11

PLAYBOY: What's the most impossible advice your friend Jack Nicholson ever gave you?

Ed Begley, Jr.: Just recently, he told me [doing a perfect Nicholson], "Go for the leading-man parts, Begs." He'd seen me doing some silly stuff on television and he said, "What do you want to do that for, Beg? You need that stuff? Go for the leading man, Beg. Don't make the move on the game show. You're out there doin' some John Denver ski thing, lookin' like a mo-mo. Don't do it to me, Beg. Go leader!"

I don't fancy myself a leading man. I'd really like to play a villain with arched eyebrows, though. I don't always want to be the lovable, goofy jerk, which is how people usually see me. I want to be evil.

Q 12

PLAYBOY: You had a drinking problem in the Seventies that you've always been open about. Can you recall the worst night in your alcoholic life?

Ed Begley, Jr.: It wasn't even a night. It was a day. I was at a bar and it was one of those days when you can't get drunk anymore. I mean, you're drinking, but you can't get drunk. And you can't get sober, either. You can't wash the pain away. You're caught in this terrible limbo that you know will end in extreme physical pain. It's like a bad movie, a nightmarish sort of feeling. Most people with grave alcoholic problems get to that point. You can anesthetize your central nervous system for only so long, and then, finally, there's a note that's due and payable. You just keep rolling over the interest for however long you stay drunk. But one day it has to come due. That, for me, was rock bottom.