Trying to Doctor an Ailing Career

He went from hot property to cold amid reports of bizarre behavior; now he’s back as an E/R physician

By Jack Hicks

The brown-and-white wing tips come alive and shuffle a tap dance the owner learned back in New York at age 8, when he was cute little Elliott Goldstein and vaudeville packed the Palace. Meaty at 46, 6-foot-3, 230-pound Elliott Gould is as unpredictable as ever, hoofing in proof atop his publicist’s Beverly Hills coffee table as a CBS-TV rep stares nervously, certain the actor will cripple himself or—worse—weird out right here in the first minute of the interview.

“I started out dancing,” Gould says in Brooklyn cadences, settling into a chocolate velvet sofa, propping his wing tips up, tamping a briar pipe. “I danced with Josh White when I was 10. And my first real TV job was on the old Ernie Kovacs Show, just out of high school. I was one of 50 guys who tap-danced in the chorus as Edie Adams sang ‘Lullaby of Broadway’.”

Gould’s brown eyes still twinkle under mossy brows and droopy lids, and he is casually rumpled as usual in a blue shirt and tan corduroys, a hem string winding down a yellow sock. But the ’60s and flower power and the dazzling promise that once had him termed “the American Jean-Paul Belmondo” are gone, and so are his signature mutton chops and walrus mustache.

Following a 1971 personal and professional disaster he terms “The Debacle,” Gould spent a 13-year exile working mostly in unseen or soon forgotten B films, many made in Europe. He returns to the public eye via the medium of his show-business youth—network television. Cleanshaven and close-cropped, Gould stars as a gambling, cigar-smoking divorcé, emergency-room physician Dr. Howard Sheinfeld, in CBS’s Wednesday night sitcom E/R.

He comes back to prominence after having been the hot young film star of the late ’60s and early ’70s—a frantic period in which he made six films in 15 months, emerged a generation’s antihero for M*A*S*H, Getting Straight and Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (Academy Award nomination for this one), posed for the cover of Time, gave an endless interview to Playboy, was cited as an emerging film producer in a lengthy Fortune article and was voted Star of the Year by theater owners. He was all but consecrated when Swedish director Ingmar Bergman tabbed him as his first American lead for The Touch in 1970.

“I thought,” Gould says grandiosely, “when I came home from Sweden, I’d be met with a ticker-tape parade...I’d proven I was a worldclass actor—I could now accept the torch. But oy vey!” he holds his head in both hands. “I was so...naive. I call it ‘The Debacle’ because I wasn’t stable enough to take the reins of my own life.”

A grand understatement. Fortune turned quickly, first with a divorce from Barbra Streisand (Gould once described their union as “a bath of lava”), a formality that rekindled memories of the painful early years when studios suffered Elliott in order to sign Barbra, and stagehands mocked him as “Mr. Streisand.”

More importantly, his Brodsky-Gould production company failed to complete the film A Glimpse of Tiger. After four nightmarish days of watching a troubled Gould battle with himself, cast and director, Warner Bros. halted filming, declaring the project impossible to finish, specifically because of producer-star Gould’s “difficulties.” There are few more effective ways to end a career, and four self-destructive days in Elliott Gould’s life very efficiently erased a reputation that had grown steadily since his first Broadway lead in 1962 in I Can Get It for You Wholesale.

Show-business gossip flew from coast to coast: Gould had fought with director Anthony Harvey before firing him during the first day of filming; had threatened costar Kim Darby (True Grit); was freaked out on drugs (he denies it) and/or emotionally unhinged. By the third day, the set was said to have been an armed camp, with armed security guards patrolling the New York location to guarantee that order would prevail. On the fourth, when a Warner Bros. executive moved in to halt production, a loyal crew cut telephone lines to prevent the executive from making that final call to Hollywood.

What really happened?

Gould met partner Jack Brodsky, a publicist, during the filming of Streisand’s Funny Girl in 1967, and when the two formed their production company and released Little Murders in 1971 (an agreement with Woody Allen for another film was also being discussed), they were among the hottest new companies in Hollywood. When Warner Bros. agreed to a two-picture deal, the first to be the fantasy A Glimpse of Tiger, they were well and loudly launched. Four days in New York changed all that.

To talk with Elliott Gould about “The Debacle” is to enter a world in which there are no simple sentences or linear narratives. He is a complex man, mystic and coarse by turn, candid and murky, and like many actors, he is eloquent and expressive within the context of a script, but elusive in real life.

Gould admits he “frightened people on ‘Tiger,’ but only because of my character. I showed up with a six-day beard, a cigar butt in my mouth, and knee-length pea-coat on. Around my waist, I wore an American-flag scarf. I was a wild character, and I finally couldn’t—or wouldn’t—vacillate between the role of actor and producer. In a sense, I scuttled my own ship.”

He insists, though, that he was “sabotaged by people on my own payroll—cosmic embezzlers—who took and took and took and never gave back,” and while he took full fiscal responsibility for the cancellation, there is a residue of bitterness. “I was threatened by men with weapons on my own movie set. I was forced to stay away. As a result of that, I couldn’t work for nearly two years—I was blackballed,” he says.

A source once very close to Brodsky-Gould, one who saw “The Debacle” firsthand, is more direct: “Whether it was from drugs, or the influence of the young woman now his wife [Jennifer Bogart, 15 years his junior, whom Gould has married twice, in 1974 and 1978], or his friend Keith Carradine, who was always around, Elliott went crazy. Not crazy enough to commit, but enough to think he had such unbridled power he could rule the universe. When he found he couldn’t, he got terribly paranoid.

“Frankly, there were a lot of drugged-out people walking the streets in those days, but Elliott hadn’t seemed that way and was very successful, and more was coming fast. I think he was unable to stand success. He felt unworthy and unable to handle it, so he self-destructed.”

Producer Paul Heller, the Warner Bros. executive on the Tiger set, generally concurs: “It was a shame—a delicious screenplay, perfect for Elliott, and it would’ve established him for years to come. But the truth is, he was in no kind of condition to make a film. As to why, I’m not equipped to say.

“Yes,” Heller goes on. “Elliott did fire director Tony Harvey; there was great turmoil, and yes, there were finally security people there. Kim Darby was quite afraid of Elliott, so we hired several, as window dressing, to calm her.

“I remember sitting at the location in Central Park, waiting for Elliott to show,” Heller concludes. “If he didn’t, I had to shut the picture down. He didn’t, and every phone booth in the area had had the wires cut.”

Gould replies: “I was very unstable, but it wasn’t drugs. Sure, I smoked grass and did psychedelics a little, but I was not a druggy or a crazy. Gimme a break—I was a lamb, unaware of the laws of the jungle. I was right at the end of six years of therapy when the roof fell in. Drugs? Just an excuse for people who didn’t know or understand me. Lambs,” he concludes in a Robert Blake patois, “just don’t last long in the jungle.”

For two years, no studio would risk hiring him. When United Artists did approach him for The Long Goodbye, a precondition was a rigorous psychiatric evaluation. “I took all the tests, and finally, they put 19 needles in my head to study my brain waves. At last, I was certified sane. How many of us,” he brightens, “are certified by document as being sane?”

Gould has spent recent years in pulling together the threads of his reputation and psyche, and fathering and nourishing a second family. He’s worked often, but on B films like Whiffs and S*P*Y*S. The material has been thinner than he’d like, but he has higher hopes for E/R. Hollywood wiseacres say he’s perfect as Sheinfeld, the ER physician. After all, he’s spent a decade giving mouth-to-mouth to a career DOA after a short and booming life.

Family comes up often in his discussion, perhaps because of his own traumatic youth. “My parents should never have married,” he says quietly. “I remember standing in the darkness of the bathroom when I was 3, listening to them bicker, wondering how I could help them get along.” Mother Lucille was a classic “stage-door mama,” enrolling her son early in a show-biz school, showing the little song-and-dance man off at every bar mitzvah in Bensonhurst. She changed his name to Gould on the day of his first local TV appearance—without his knowledge—“because it sounded better,” and later observed that “by 12, he was a has-been. He was too old to be cute.”

Gould talks much more warmly of his own wife and children. Jason (18), a son by Streisand, who lives with her, recently entered college and completed his first short, noncommercial film—starring Elliott Gould. Gould and his wife, Jennifer, live in a comfortable Brentwood home with kids Molly (12) and Sam (11). “They got me through the darkness,” he says of his family. “They helped me be a whole person. Now I spend a lot of time in the serenity of home and family.”

Of the drug rumors that still pursue him, he scoffs. “Drugs? I’m embarrassingly clean these days. I don’t deny the past, but now I don’t drink or do hard drugs.”

If Gould has a habit, it seems to be an all-American addiction to sports, especially basketball. He is a regular visitor to The Forum in L.A. and the Garden in New York and his expertise is sufficiently recognized that he was invited to appear on Good Morning America to discuss the U.S. Olympic team.

Like many film stars drawn to television, Gould is attracted as much by the conditions of the work as the final product. In truth, if he ever wants to work in major films in this country again, he needs the exposure and a chance to indicate he is reliable. But Gould also values working regular hours and a chance to be home for dinner, and just as much, the camaraderie of a troupe, the sense of an extended cast family working together. “I’ve got a lot more pages to turn in life,” he says. “And I’m glad the next is E/R.”

Glad, too, are Embassy Television, CBS and the show’s other principals. Producer-writers Saul Turteltaub and Bernie Orenstein bring a healthy portfolio of comedy credits to the show, including Sanford and Son, and they just might be able to breathe some life into a waning form, the half-hour situation comedy. One thing’s for sure, it won’t be easy. CBS first scheduled the series on Tuesday nights, opposite The A-Team. In November, worried about the show’s less-than-healthy ratings, CBS moved E/R to Wednesday nights, opposite The Fall Guy and Highway to Heaven. The prognosis is shaky.

Adapted from a long-running Chicago play of the same name, E/R pits the rambling ex-wife-and-creditor-harassed Sheinfeld (Gould) against his younger, squeaky-bright superior, Dr. Eve Sheridan, played nicely by newcomer Mary McDonnell. Conchata Ferrell, as Nurse Thor, was strong and funny in the early episodes.

A redhead of large stature, Ferrell speaks directly to Gould’s reasons for coming to regular television. “Honey, he’s done just about everything else—why not television? We were three days into rehearsals when Elliott joined us, and I was impressed right away with his professionalism. You do sitcom in bits and pieces and have to be very focused. He knows all his lines cold and he’s not a prima donna. I know shows in which people load the Misery Boat and take you on their hellish voyage, but not Elliott Gould. Not the one I know.”

Two hours later, Gould stands smiling in blue-striped undershorts, an 8-inch Cubano especial jaunty in his clenched teeth, donning medical greens for promotional shots. Rock music thumps in the background as technicians light the stark white room for him and McDonnell. He mugs, sends the brown-and-whites into a little dance; he’s having a real good time putting his pants on. His hair is graying at the temples, his girth ampler than in the ’60s, but he’s enjoying his work, even the parts of it most stars find dronish. He and McDonnell have good chemistry under the spotlights, and he punctuates the session with anecdotes, often ribald, always warm and flawlessly spun.

His cigar brings Groucho Marx to mind. “Yessssss, Groucho,” he trills softly in close imitation. “I knew him well his last years—used to shave him every morning. He was one of my heroes. He told me about the time he went to the Academy Awards the year Charlie Chaplin got a Special Award. Chaplin leaned over to him and said, ‘Stay warm, Groucho—you’re next.’

“I really did shave him every morning. He liked to watch Jack Benny reruns in bed, and after I’d got to know him, I’d come over and shave him while he watched his pal.

“One morning, right before he started failing, he said, ‘Gould, get up there and change that light bulb.’ He waved at a light over the bed. I got up on this wobbly chair and screwed in a new bulb.

“ ‘Mah-vluss, mah-vluss,’ he said in this little voice from under the covers, an unlit cigar in his mouth. When I got down, he said. ‘Gould, that’s the best acting I ever saw you do. But stay warm, Gould, stay warm. I think you got a future.’ I hope he was right.”