Eldergays, tell me about Marlo Thomas

Wait 'til you see her hot fiancé Donald Hollinger.

I had dinner with in a private home back in 1992.

She was lovely.

Marlo?

The Cuntiest Cunt Who Evrer Cunted.

Yeah, do a search, OP. DL hates her, as does the one friend I have who has worked with her. But THAT GIRL was an adorable show.

She's the ultimate neppo baby, sucking on her daddy's hairy teet. That Girl was a lame ball of corn, and she has no actual sense of humor.

Oh, gurl. (OP, not the number two here),

I knew enough between the stories of her throwing Thanksgiving turkey at Phil across the table and the fact that she was rude to my Aunt Alma at dinner once in a way that resulted in food landing on dear Alma's blouse, who had to go to Confession over what she said afterwards that I never wanted to have food around her unless I held a skewer.

(shaking head side to side with a blank expression and vague but sincere smile)

I don't know her.

"Daddy always kept chocolet bars out on the coffee table for us kids! YUM!"

She's been covered with thick Lebanese black body hair her whole life, along with a sense of entitlement...

Now her hair is undyed hair is coarse and gray...and she's a really BITTER old crone

I believe that's the first episode, OP. She's shown into her new apartment by the doorman. I don't remember any other episode where a doorman was even referenced.

I recall You Tube had several clips of the various opening credits for all the seasons of That Girl, and now they are all gone. Isn't it stupid to have them taken down when they are basically free promotion for the show?

I was well aware of her reputation when I met her, but can’t deny that in the small setting I was in (5 or 6 people), she behaved herself.

Well, Marlo was "That Girl" and now she looks like that hag, Faye Dunaway!

So, we had That Girl, Mary Tyler Moore, and Maude to teach the women folk to go to work. Obviously it was made to be entertaining and appealing for obvious reasons.

She taught me to have a rich daddy to pay for my Manhattan apartment.

Read the book her butler wrote about her. Desmond Atholl. She was/is a capital C Cunt

I'm very worldly and sophisticated about these things and I know for a fact that her father was a lesbian.

Marlo has been married to Oprah predecessor Phil Donahue for 42 years.

Her cheeky, hippy adjacent kids’ album Free to Be You & Me was filled with *stars, questioned some gender norms and holds up pretty well, though a few things are dated.

Mel Brooks, Rosie Grier, Carol Channing, Tommy Smothers etc.

Not even many 27 year old Nepo Babies get their own network TV...

Thank you for the replies. She seems like an interesting lady. Did she really throw food at her husband?

Anyway, the programme seems bright and breezy, like a TV version of a Doris Day film. I’m going to make it my post-work, pre-dinner treat for a while.

I feel like That Girl has aged pretty well. I especially enjoy the episodes where you can see Broadway show posters of the period. And Ethel Merman is on twice!

I've used this as my desktop background...

That Girl is light enjoyment. Ted Bessell is good as boyfriend Donald.

*

There are five seasons of the (it was canceled in the middle of the fifth season). In the first season Ann’s apartment was different from the one she had during the rest of the show (when she was shown to be living in a brownstone), and it even had a front desk. The whole series is available on a few free streaming services though I guess you’d have to use a VPN to watch it that way if you don’t live in the US.

I think Marlo was around 30 when the show started but Ann was supposed to be in her early 20s. For the first couple of seasons she pulled off the girlish schtick fairly well, but with her extreme nose job, pale pale makeup and ever thicker black hair pieces (and ever increasing mugging rather than acting), she eventually began to appear rather over the top and not appealing.

That Girl is a nice look at 1960s New York City.

It was very much the “Sex & the City” and “Friends” of its day in that it encouraged thousands of girls to move to NYC.

In the closing credits, she is flying a kite on the West Side Piers where many gay men indulged their carnal desires at night.

The glass coffee table in her apartment was divine, but strangely hard to keep clean....

Brini's opening...

Enjoy! Everyone fan has a favorite show. Mine is the one starring eldergay icon Ethel Merman.

Ted Bessell was adorable as Donald. As a baby gayling I watched the show for him not really knowing why. I was saddened to hear he died in the late 1990s, far too young. It was reported that he was a devout Catholic and daily mass attender. Not sure when that started.

I loved her as the title character in the Banshees of Inisherin.

I loved the way the show always started with some kind of setup that ended with someone pointing to her and saying, "That girl!"

The original pilot is odd. It used to be on YouTube. Ted Bessell is still her boyfriend, but his name is Don Blue Sky and he's her agent. Her parents are played by Penny Santon and Harold Gould (Rhoda's father/Miles Weber.)

That Girl was one of my earliest TV memories (aged 3-4), and I liked to reenact Margo’s hijinks in the opening theme, including the hair tousle.

I loved Family Guy's parody of the show's opening.

I saw her on some talk show after she married Phil. I guess he had a son or two at the time.

She said the first thing she did was «  color code » the towels (?)… this seemed rather odd to me.

I’ll never forget an episode of Donahue where Ryan white was the guest . Phil made some lame comment about how even though Ryan had HIV, wasn’t it great that he had all this «  celebrity . »

« I’m going to die. » Ryan said

I think I love you, R34! I did exactly the same thing at the same age. I kept trying to do the hair tousle for my mother. I asked her, "Am I doing it?" She said, "Your hair's not long enough." She understood me.

She had her face redone.

Wonder how much her new mug cost.

R16, that book’s description!

I prefered That Black Girl!

r39 And on the left in that photo, the future producer/exec. producer of DL faves such as "Soap," "It's A Living," and, of course, "Golden Girls."

R42, I never knew that Tony Thomas was Danny Thomas’ son. I need to turn in my GG Fan Club membership card.

I fell in love with you at first read, OP.

[quote] I had dinner with in a private home back in 1992. She was lovely. —Greg02116

Uh huh, Sure you did. What did she serve, Greg?

I love the episode when she calls Ethyl Merman "Ethyl Mermill" !!

r46 E-T-H-E-L

r47 Whatever...

Whatever?

SLAP! SLAP! SLAP! SLAP! SLAP!

How DARE you!

[quote] Uh huh, Sure you did. What did she serve, Greg?

If you think that your opinion matters to me, then you are mistaken.

She didn’t serve anything. She was a guest, as was I. And I have no recollection of what was served at this event thirty years ago.

We were there to watch her movie portrayal of someone I knew and at whose home we were.

[quote]So far, there was some business about a desk, and now she is dressed as a mop. I believe hijinks may ensue. Does this series keep up this standard?

Dressing as a mop is a standard of hijinks that cannot possibly be maintained, let alone surpassed.

In the Spirit is fun...

Her father enjoyed admiring unique food entrees set upon midcentury glass kidney coffee tables, from below.

He was a real aficionado of yesterday’s fare.

We still haven't recovered from his passing!

I still giggle at "Make Boom for Daddy."

I don't believe a single word of OP's opening gambit scenario.

R39, about 30 years ago, Tony was a hot guy, Handsome face, beautiful beard.

Like Miss Ann Marie could afford that Werle and Cardinali wardrobe.

R13- You little HOMOSEXUAL man.

Thanks to this thread, I finally broke down and bought the damn book. A whopping four dollars!

She looks like Gloria Estefan at R38.

I watch it everyday on cable. Ted Bessell (and Bernie Kopell) both had nice, thick asses.

………..

Marlo was conceived on a glass coffee table, OP. After the fruitful assignation, her mom Rose Marie got under the table for reasons lost to history.

Shocked in the course of reading this thread to learn that Bernie Kopell is still alive.

STOP...

R34 - Just for you...

That Girl is not given the credit it deserves. Love Marlo too.

And Marlo loves you too, you great unwashed mass of an adoring fan stranger.

No thx

“SHE WAS REAL FAT!” 🫨

Even as an eight-year-old, I felt tingly when watching Ted Bessell on the show. I wondered how much body hair he had. I assumed there was a lot.

Judging by the fur you could see peaking over his shirts, my guess is that he was very hirsute.

My tale of Marlo, Phil and special guest... she was the star of a HartfordStage production of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?". Robert Foxworth played George to her Martha - and he was good!

Show time! Oh no, we're waiting. And we're waiting. Entrance from the top of house, Phil Donahue and special guest appearance by Bella Abzug! People begin to applaud - I privately want to vomit.

Show begins... Marlo is "fine" as Martha, but I never 'see' a Martha. I only see Marlo pretending to be Martha. And then I realize why... she looks like That Girl and her hairstyle is completely wrong for Martha... it's the usual hairdo that you'd expect from Ms. Thomas. This was an actor being actorly but not giving up their public persona.

Here's a link to the 1992 NY times review - they were not kind... oh and Bella Abzug? B-L-E-C-C-H.

R75 From the review:

[quote] Nick and Honey, entrapped by humiliation -- which Nick later comes to call "aimless, pointless butchery"

Having come to the review from a link in Datalounge, I read that as "aimless, pointless bitchery" and had to go back and read it again!

At one time, she was voted the biggest prima donna in Hollywood and the person most difficult to work with.

"Free to Be You and Me" wasn't just an album, it was a children's TV special. I saw it when I was a kid, and I was bored to tears.

The only thing I remember about it is being shocked that Roberta Flack was fat. (Yes, I was a judgmental little cunt even back then).

Carried on her father's work with St Jude and has had a long and successful marriage for decades. Her one and only. That says alot about her.

^ really?

A lot of dysfunctional co-dependent relationships last for years...

She was nice to the That Girl crew.

She really liked Ted and was very upset at his death.

She made sure the guests on the show were taken care of and had a good experience.

She humiliated the actor who played her father, allegedly by writing the scene that had him in drag and pop out of wedding cake. She was one of the few on that closed set and it was reported she was cackling at the retakes.

R14 She was single, most single women worked. And many married women if they didn't have kids. And anyway she was an aspiring actress, so who did that teach to go to work? Aspiring actresses?

TV led us all to believe that they would be unlimited jobs in acting, advertising and architecture thanks to lying sitcoms like That Girl, Bewitched and Brady Bunch. Oh and rockstars.

Oh please, r82. Lew Parker was an old-school Broadway performer whose father was in Vaudeville. Being in drag (which he wasn't even completely in) was hardly humiliating for him.

[quote]That says alot about her.

Your inability to spell says a lot about you.

Marlo (much like Lucy) has a terrible reputation among airline personnel...

Apart from being generally cunty to all the flight crew,

Marlo's been known to give the flight attendants instructions for the pilot in flight, including instructions on how to adjust the temperature of the cabin and the volume of the announcements.

Like her father, she's also known use racist terms and she hates going to Memphis, because she considers it too black and poor

If Phil had played George to her Martha, Marlo might have got a better handle on the role and gone for the jugular.

[quote]He was a real aficionado of yesterday’s fare.

And sometimes the day before yesterday, depending.

True…true.

R87 Why would she have to go to Memphis?

Lew & Ethel

I just received notification about Marlo Thomas's Tablescapes collection at Williams-Sonoma! Shop Now from this Lifestyle Brand Legend!

So exciting!

I see the actress from early SVU and Devil's Advocate—Tamara Tunie—at Marlo's dinner party! Are they friends or is she acting?

She is still with husband Phil Donahue who was Oprah before Oprah.

R96 Chicago only had room for one...PD moved to tape in NYC and OW went national in Chicago.

OP's setup is COMPLETE BULLSHIT.

Marlo's mother Rose Marie was an alcoholic who taught Marlo that she was "Hollywood Royalty".

While Danny could be charming, he was also a screamer and at times, impossible to work with...

Danny and Rose Marie built an 18,000 sq ft house in the affluent Trousdale Estates neighborhood in 1970. While the exterior had a Moorish flair, the inside was decorated so badly, it was said to resemble a low-rent casino without the slot machines...just hideous beyond belief.

[quote]Read the book her butler wrote about her. Desmond Atholl. She was/is a capital C Cunt

No - don't bother. Apparently she swears a lot. That's all I learned from that book.

And Danny spent a fortune on enormous Rococo glass coffee tables.

he Broadway opening of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" sent a seismic shock through the American theater. In common with "Look Back in Anger" in England, the Edward Albee play was something new and bracing in an art that was trapped by tradition. With surgical precision, "Virginia Woolf" revealed the psychological truths within a disastrous, festering marriage.

The play awakened a dormant theater at the same time it offended the Pulitzer Prize committee, which rejected its justified nomination as the finest drama of its season. Still, 1962 was very much Mr. Albee's year. Coming after his Off Broadway one-acts, the play confirmed his artistry and its success opened doors for writers like Sam Shepard, Lanford Wilson and David Mamet who followed him in replenishing the theater. Thirty years later, "Virginia Woolf," in revival at the Hartford Stage Company, retains its natural ferocity and brilliance. This is in spite of a production that is crucially marred in one of its two principal roles.

Although Robert Foxworth has all the self-harmful bitterness for George, Marlo Thomas is an unsuitable Martha. She takes a straightforward approach and misses the primal terror that is so essential to the character. As described by the author, Martha is "a large, boisterous woman." Ms. Thomas is petite and neatly groomed. At the very least, she should have decosmetized her looks, as Elizabeth Taylor did in the film version of the play. The character is blowzy, the better to exude blatant sensuality.

From Ms. Thomas's entrance on John Conklin's surprisingly unimaginative set and her utterance of the line, "What a dump," it is evident that the actress is not equal to the challenge. She does not bray and she has no bite, as demanded by the role. One keeps wondering what she is doing in Martha's house (she is certainly not in Martha's shoes). By playing the role as she does, she diminishes the intensity of her relationship with George. Anyone seeing the play for the first time might think of them as a bickering couple and not as mutually destructive people, in George's words, who have suffered so much "blood under the bridge."

She only begins to rise to the emotional demands of the role at the end of the play, the aftermath of exorcism. After a disheartening delivery of the frantic monologue that opens the third act, she conveys a glimmer of the defeat that surrounds her. As a woman who has endured a marriage of lies, she moves past the point of accommodation and gropes for life support.

The final tearful scene between the married couple reminds one that Ms. Thomas has residual resources, as demonstrated in the television movie "Nobody's Child." But in this performance she does not encompass Martha, and Paul Weidner, as director, is unable to help her. His staging has an efficiency but not the assurance that he brought to previous Albee productions at Hartford Stage, including a "Tiny Alice" that was superior to the Broadway original.

Mr. Foxworth is in every way a contrast to his co-star. He assumes his role like a hair shirt made to his measure. Arriving home as an absent-minded academic, he soon delineates the despair of a man who has willed himself into failure. All he has left is his self-appointed role as eternal sparring partner. The actor is easily in a class with his predecessors in the role, Arthur Hill and Richard Burton (in the film).

Delivered with Mr. Foxworth's expert timing, the playwright's lines zing with accuracy. They are as fresh as when they were written, the elaborate tales from a professor's past as well as the acerbic give and take. In the actor's performance, George knows exactly how far he has fallen and how much guilt he carries.

With Burke Moses as the opportunistic young teacher, Nick, Mr. Foxworth finds a worthy antagonist for his game of "get the guest." Mr. Moses is so slick and sure of himself that he can casually unveil his own family secrets. He stresses the technocratic side of Nick, earning George's approbation as one of the "wave of future boys." The confrontations between Mr. Foxworth and Mr. Moses are the most forceful moments on stage. As Nick's mousy wife, Heather Ehlers conveys the limited demands of her character.

"Virginia Woolf" still has explosive power, but for renewed realization it must have an actress who can assume the full wounding dimensions of Mr. Albee's Martha.

R24 & R27 - totally the same, watched the reruns in the morning at ages 3-4 or so and was fascinated. I remember trying to recreate the openings and being really gobsmacked when she would see herself in the department store window (and the kite!).

But what about her TABLESCAPES!?

“I remember you when YOU WERE FAT!”

Was Donahue married when they got together?

I remember my mom was a big fan of both and of their romance. We watched a clip of their meeting for the first time (on his show), which my mom had seen live… you could really feel the flirting.

R107, no Phil was single, divorced with grown children IIRC...

Thanks, R108!

[quote] Marlo's mother Rose Marie was an alcoholic who taught Marlo that she was "Hollywood Royalty".

Oh wow, I never knew Rose Marie was Marlo's mother. She always looked more like gal pal of Kaye Ballard.

One of the first TV nepo babies.

When I saw Ted Bessell on "That Girl", even though I was eight or nine years old, I imagined him naked. He showed a bit of a hairy chest in his collar. I thought the rest of his chest was extremely hairy and that he had an enormous bush over a long cock. I was fascinated by male nipples at the time and I really wanted to see his. Luckily, there were a lot of men willing to appear shirtless on the TV shows.

Bessell was THICC, and you could often see the lines of his briefs whenever his pants were tight enough.

Good lord. Mrs. Donahue has entered LaToya Jackson territory.

Her phone is her life.

Bizarrely, Mike Nichols apparently at 1 point wanted to shoot a remake of VIRGINIA WOOLF starring Miss Thomas. No idea whether that was before or after he directed her on Broadway in SOCIAL SECURITY.

The good: life long liberal activist and philanthropist married for decades to a nice guy.

The bad: unpleasant sort of kick down personality- in person she is quite opposite of That Girl. I saw her with Phil fast walking on Nantucket- she was 10 or 15 feet ahead of him and yelling at him. It was pretty funny. A great old friend who has been a major player in Democratic politics for decades (nicest guy) has confirmed how difficult she can be.

Laugh if you will but I but some of her napkins from WS, and everyone is always complimenting them.

Marlo sure did shoot her shot with Phil!