{"id":10638,"date":"2022-12-29T17:50:54","date_gmt":"2022-12-29T17:50:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=10638"},"modified":"2022-12-31T15:20:53","modified_gmt":"2022-12-31T15:20:53","slug":"ted-dansons-epiphany-in-the-african-desert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/?p=10638","title":{"rendered":"Ted Danson\u2019s epiphany in the African desert"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Ray Bennett<\/p>\n

LONDON \u2013 Ted Danson, who turns 75 today, has had an astonishingly successful career on television but there was a time when he wanted something else. After his sitcom \u2019Cheers\u2019 became a massive hit in the early Eighties, his dream was to be a big-time movie star.<\/p>\n

He had appeared in series TV, made his feature film debut in \u2018The Onion Field\u2019 with John Savage and James Woods and had a decent role in \u2018Body Heat\u2019 with William Hurt and Kathleen Turner.<\/p>\n

With \u2018Cheers\u2019 riding high, he told me, \u2018I was like, oh, please let some movie come along that will make me a big star and I don\u2019t have to worry about whether or not I\u2019m going to make it in movies.\u2019<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>He had leading roles in three pictures \u2013 \u2018Little Treasure\u2019 (1885) with Margot Kidder and Burt Lancaster (left), \u2018Just Between Friends\u2019 (1986) with Mary Tyler Moore and Christine Lahti and a Blake Edwards race-track comedy \u2018A Fine Mess\u2019 (1986) with Howie Mandel. They all failed with critics and audiences.<\/p>\n

\u2018It was amazing to work with Burt Lancaster but when \u201cLittle Treasure\u2019 came out, it disappeared. Then \u201cJust Between Friends\u201d and I was, like, Damn! So, please, Mr. Blake Edwards or whoever, please come along. Then \u201cA Fine Mess\u201d and again it was Damn!\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Cheers\u2019 went on to long-running success and Danson put his feature film dreams on hold. Instead, he turned to producing with a TV movie called \u2018When the Bough Breaks\u2019. Then he went to East Africa to executive produce and star in \u2018We Are the Children\u2019. He played a cynical but decent photojournalist opposite Ally Sheedy as an idealistic doctor confronted with the extreme poverty of the region.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Filming took place in the Kaisuti desert (pictured below), three hundred and fifty miles north of Nairobi, a region inhabited by the Rondilli tribe who had been devastated by famine in 1981.<\/p>\n

The experience affected Danson deeply as it reminded him of his youth. His father, Ned Danson, had been director of the Museum and Research Center of Northern Arizona and the actor grew up in the ponderosa playing with kids from the Hopi and Navajo Indian reservations there.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u2018It was a powerful cultural, spiritual background of incredible beauty and great friends,\u2019 he told me. \u2018In East Africa, we were in the middle of the desert and I cannot impress upon you too much how remote it was but I\u2019ve never felt more at peace. I really felt as if I had come home. It was the Hopi times one hundred. It really was like a spiritual experience.\u2019 \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Once, in the desert, he was talking to a Rondilli boy old enough to have learned a little English. He was scratching letters on his leg with a twig. \u2018He asked me what was my name. I said Ted and he wrote it on his leg and stared at it. Then he asked me what it meant. I experienced this sadness, such a loss, over the fact that my name means nothing or, if it does, I\u2019m not aware of it. No matter how you cut it, in the end you\u2019re just another white guy from L.A.\u2019<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I had spent time on the set of \u2018A Fine Mess\u2019 on location at the Hollywood Race Track in Inglewood, CA. Danson was as you would hope, cheerful and amiable, clowning with Mandel (left), the air rich with the aroma of horse manure and marijuana.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

After my interview with him early in 1987, he had a couple more stabs at a bigscreen career. Joel Schumacher\u2019s \u2018Cousins\u2019 with Isabella Rossellini, a remake of the French romantic comedy \u2018Cousin Cousine\u2019, was notable mostly for a great score by the late Angelo Badalamenti. \u2018Three Men and a Baby\u2019 also was based on a French film, \u2018Trois hommes et un couffin\u2019 (Three Men and a Cradle). Directed by Leonard Nimoy, it was the biggest theatrical hit of 1987 but did little to sustain movie careers for Danson or co-star Tom Selleck while Steve Gutenberg continued to muddle along. A sequel, \u2018Three Men and a Little Lady\u2019 came and went. Later, Danson had a small role in \u2018Saving Private Ryan\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018Cheers\u2019 ran for 270 episodes until 1993 and he has had several series since then including 22 episodes of the newspaper sitcom \u2018Ink\u2019, co-starring his wife Mary Steenbergen, whom he had met when they co-starred in a movie called \u2018Pontiac Moon\u2019 in 1994. He played a doctor in 122 episodes of \u2018Becker\u2019 and 14 episodes of \u2018Help Me Help You\u2019. He was a guest star in 23 episodes of Glenn Close\u2019s legal series \u2018Damagaes\u2019 and in 24 editions of Jason Schwartzman\u2019s offbeat comedy \u2018Bored to Death\u2019.<\/p>\n

Subsequently, he did 84 episodes of \u2018CSI: Crime Scene Investigation\u2019 and 10 episodes of \u2018CSI: Cyber\u2019, 50 episodes of \u2018The Good Place\u2019 with Kristen Bell and he appeared in 30 editions of Larry David\u2019s \u2018Curb Your Enthusiasm\u2019. Most recently, Danson had the title role in 20 episodes of \u2018Mr. Mayor\u2019, a comedy creaded by \u201930 Rock\u2019 alums Robert Carlock and Tina Fey.<\/p>\n

Very few actors can claim the success he has had. Given the parlous state of movies these days, he\u2019s been much better off without them.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Ray Bennett LONDON \u2013 Ted Danson, who turns 75 today, has had an astonishingly successful career on television but there was a time when he wanted something else. After his sitcom \u2019Cheers\u2019 became a massive hit in the early … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6,1263,2257,15],"tags":[5297,5298,5296],"class_list":["post-10638","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film","category-interviews","category-memory-lane","category-recalling","category-television","tag-cheers","tag-we-are-the-children","tag-ted-danson"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10638","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10638"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10638\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10649,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10638\/revisions\/10649"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10638"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10638"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thecliffedge.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10638"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}