Friendship Without Warmth Is...

The autobiography I was writing for Doubleday on my experiences in the television industry before Nancy Evans got canned is still a work-in-progress. Only now am I beginning to understand what Faulkner meant when he wrote about the death of his "darlings." One of mine follows. Excised from "The Book" (as I've come to refer to the thing that occupies so much of what used to be called spare time), this yarn took place in the '60s at the old Fox-Western lot where I was producing Daniel Boone, starring Fess Parker.

Early in our third season, the daily production report indicated that the current episode we were shooting was going to be short. That's not acceptable in television. Good, bad or whatever, an hour show has to be 46 minutes long. The rest of the hour is devoted to titles and commercials, but 46 minutes of story is what you are required to deliver. (In the '80s, on Moonlighting, Glen Caron would devise some classic fillers for these circumstances, but it was not the sort of thing I could get away with on Boone or even Cagney & Lacey, although I wish I'd thought of it.)

I went to Jack and told him the situation. (Jack R. Guss was the writing staff. That's how we did it in those days. Not five or six writer/producers, just me, sometimes an assistant, and one story editor.)

Jack's primary job was nurturing the freelance writers I had hired. He was terrific at it, for he truly loved writing and writers. His secondary job was polishing and adjusting scripts for production. The problem of being "short" fell into this category. I explained the situation to Jack, told him what sets were still "hot" and which actors were still available in the two shooting days remaining of this particular episode. We needed a couple of minutes of length, two or three pages. Within a couple of hours or so, Jack was in NY office with the solution.

The story involved Boone's traveling into Delaware Indian Country to see a warring chieftain with whom our hero had a friendly relationship. Boone was charged with seeking a peace with the aggrieved warrior. In the new scene Jack wrote, the only set required was a campfire area (we had that) and the only actors were Fess, William Smith (who played the young chief) and the boy who played his son. All were available and under contract to us. In the new scene, Boone and the chief were talking (good story clarification dialogue by Guss) when the young boy drew his tiny bow, aimed at the alien white man and fired. His arrow narrowly missed its target.

The chief, angered by his son's inhospitable act, moved quickly and raised his arm to punish the lad, but Boone stayed his hand. The frontiersman looked his contemporary in the eye and said: "My friend, the Delaware have a saying: 'Friendship without warmth is a waste of beaver.'"

Now this was 1969, the story took place in the 18th century. There was no double entendre. A beaver was a furry little animal one made hats out of and that was it. Still, I called Jack back in.

"Great scene, Jack. But tell me something: What does 'friendship without warmth is a waste of beaver' mean?" "I don't know," came the reply, "I just thought it sounded kinda mystical and Oriental. I like it."

"I like it, too," I said. "I was just curious."

The scene was given to mimeograph and sent to the set to be filmed the next day on location, the last day of photography on the episode. Forty-eight hours later I was in the screening room looking at the previous day's film.

There was Boone and the Delaware chief. There was the hostile boy reaching for his weapon and "zap," there was the near miss. The chief quickly moved toward his son to strike him, but true to form and script, Boone stayed his hand. "My friend," he said, "don't punish your son. There was no harm done."

"What!!!" I screamed. "What happened to 'friendship without warmth is a waste of beaver'?"

"Fess wouldn't say it," our beleaguered director, Bill Wiard, confessed.

I stormed down to the set. It was the first day of shooting on yet another episode. I waited patiently for a break in the action, then motioned to Fess to please join me outside the stage.

"Mr. Parker," I began, "you are no doubt one of television's finest actors -- there are even reports that you are a fairly decent director. But let me tell you something, sir, you are one lousy writer and if you ever change another line of dialogue on one of our scripts without calling me, I will, in the future, have all screenplays delivered without dialogue for your character coupled with a notation that 'Mr. Parker will make up his words as he goes along'!"

The hair on the back of Parker's neck was curling. "What are you talking about?" he bellowed.

"I'm talking about 'friendship without warmth is a waste of beaver'!" I screamed back.

"I didn't know what that meant!" He was talking as loud as I.

"Of course you didn't, you big donkey, but Daniel Boone would know"

At 6'7" he loomed over me. I believe a debate was going on inside his head as to whether or not to squash me like a bug. (I'm not that intuitive... all you had to do was be there and you could read it on his face.) At last his expression changed, which I read to be something like: "I own 30% of this show and this kid owns zip, but if he cares this much I'm not going to discourage him." What he said was: "You're right, boss. It won't happen again." And it never did.

I was going to tell that story as part of my eulogy at Jack's funeral in December '87. His bereaved widow, Maggie, called and asked me to speak at the funeral and then, in her confused state, gave me the wrong time, so I missed the funeral by one hour and 45 minutes. I felt badly, missing the opportunity of saying good-bye to this loved one, but I will tell him now what I would have said then: Friendship without warmth is, indeed, a waste of beaver.

Two-time EMMY Award winning producer, Barney Rosenzweig, is currently in pre-production on Christy, based on the novel by Catherine Marshall, as his next dramatic series for CBS.