Before you became an actor, you started out as the driver for Robert Goulet and Carol Lawrence. What was that unexpected introduction to show business like?
I was working in Las Vegas; I had a part-time job after school running an art gallery at the Frontier Hotel, one of the gambling hotels, and Robert Goulet was performing there. I met them, and they said, "You're going to go with us on our tour next year. You're driving a Dodge Travco motorhome." I was 19. I go, "A Dodge mobile home with these big stars on board?" Robert Goulet and Carol Lawrence were at the top of their game there; they flew me to New York, and I'd never been to a big city like that, so I was terrified.
Do you have any particular anecdotes from that time?
Yes. In fact, Carol Lawrence was performing at the Garden State Art Festival, and as soon as I landed, they said, "You're going to be driving Ms. Lawrence into New York City to her dentist." I'd never been to New York. So, I was in New Jersey, Carol was in the back, and I drove through the Lincoln Tunnel. The first time I came out, I was in Manhattan, and there was a stoplight. But I couldn't see the stoplight because there were these trucks covering it, and it was on the right-hand side. So, I went halfway through the intersection, and I realized it was a red light. I backed up, but there was a policeman. The policeman said, "Roll down your window. Did you see the red light?" I replied, "I've never been to New York City, and the red lights are usually in the middle of the street. There was a truck there..." I was going off like this. He looked at the dashboard, and it said the Garden State Art Festival. He looked in the back and recognized Carol. He added, "Oh, hello, Ms. Lawrence. Young man, be careful next time. Go on." So, because of the celebrity, I got out of it. I knew I wanted to be an actor; you can get out of anything.
How did you transition to acting in Shakespearean plays?
I called my mom and told her that I was going to move to New York. I got temporary jobs, and I auditioned for the American Shakespeare Festival at Stratford, Connecticut. It was run by the Juilliard School of Music, which was one of the top schools in the world. I didn't know anything about Shakespeare. I'm from Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and I had a Southern accent. So, I auditioned, and I got the job—Ariel in The Tempest, understudying. On the first day of rehearsal at the Manhattan Club in New York, I went, "All hail, great master! Grave sir, hail! I come to answer thy best pleasure; be't to fly, to swim..." They said, "Wesley, not on our stage." I replied, "What's wrong?" They added, "Your accent." I said, "What accent?" (laughs). And so, for the next nine months, I had speech classes to learn how to get rid of the accent. Anyway, that started my professional career.
Before making the leap to stardom, you were chosen to replace David Cassidy on The Partridge Family, who was leaving the show at the height of its success. How did the opportunity to audition for the role come about, and what happened that prevented it from coming to fruition?
David had decided to leave the show, and the network was really angry because the show was a hit, but he wanted to go off and do other things. I went to Bobby Sherman's house and recorded a song for ABC. Then, I had to go back to ABC and lip-sync the song. And I got the job. They cast me as the next-door neighbor, and I had a single dad in the show. David was going to go off to college, Shirley Jones was going to be interested in my dad, and I was going to become the lead singer of The Partridge Family. And then, that was going to be the show. Back in those days, we all knew each other. It was a small community, like Shaun Cassidy, Leif Garrett, and all the DeFranco kids. So, when David heard that I got the job replacing him, he decided, "I think I'll stay." And so, I didn't get to do it. They said, "Well, David's staying. Too bad."
Shortly after, you were offered the role of Mike Horton on the soap opera Days of Our Lives, where you worked from 1974 to 1981. Since you were the tenth actor to play that role, why do you think it was recast so many times?
There was a younger version of the character. They've gone on to recast it many times. But, you know, when I got on, he went from being a little kid to a teenager. I was just one of the regular Horton family members, one of the stars of the show. And I loved doing it. Some of the cast are still friends of mine today.
You were there for a long time, and your character was very popular...
Yeah, it was fun. Actually, they gave me the biggest mailbox because I had the most fan mail of all the cast members. And believe me, some of those divas weren't happy about that. They were like, "Oh, you get more fan mail than I do?" Those soap opera girls could be very vicious to each other. I remember one of them— I think it was Mary Frann, who went on to be on the Bob Newhart show, Newhart, where she played his wife. I remember she was coming out; she'd just finished her scene, and as the other actress was just about to go in, Mary looked at her with disdain and said, "You're wearing that? Oh, mmm..." And the girl said, "What's wrong? What's wrong with it?" They were ruthless to each other sometimes.
I understand that Sid and Marty Krofft had some difficulty convincing you to star in the cult classic Land of the Lost since you didn't want to play a 16-year-old. Is that right?
Well, yeah. I was in New York when I got the phone call that I got Land of the Lost. I'd actually flown to New York because David Merrick, who produced Broadway shows, wanted me to go in and star in Candide to replace the guy who was doing it. I was on Days of Our Lives, and I thought, "Do I really want to play 16?" Because I was 21 at the time. And I am so glad that I said yes, because Land of the Lost has been absolutely one of the greatest joys of my life.
How were you offered the role?
A friend of mine called. I had just gotten to Hollywood, pretty much about a year or so before, and he said, "Listen, do you want to go swimming at Sid Krofft's house? A pool party." I said, "Sid Krofft... Oh yeah, he does the Saturday morning shows." So I went to Sid's house with my friend Bruce, and I thought it was going to be a big party, but it was just five of us. Sid lives in a house that you would hope you would live in. It's three acres in Hollywood Hills, and it's all twisting, and the fireplace is all catawampus and stuff like that. I mean, it looks like a Hobbit lives there. He is there with his parrot and his cats. It's really wonderful. And so Sid and I hit it off. We sat and talked by his pool all afternoon, and as I was leaving, Sid said to me, "Wesley, here's the phone number of the casting director. I've got a new show. I want you to do it." So I called the casting director on Monday, went in, and they gave me the job. I was very, very lucky.
How did they complete the cast of the show?
Sid said they cast everybody around me. That's why Spencer Milligan looks so much like me: it's because they chose him so that we look like father and son. And then Kathy Coleman, who's one of my best friends still to this day, came in to play Holly...
Did I hear somebody say Kathy Coleman?
I have a surprise for you, Guido: Kathy Coleman from Land of the Lost.
(From this moment on, actress Kathy Coleman enters the conversation, and she will be referred to as KC. On the other hand, Wesley Eure will be referred to as WE.)
KC: Nice to meet you, Guido.
Nice to meet you, Kathy. I'm very glad you can join us for this interview. What do you think the current perception of the series is in terms of its visual aspect?
KC: You know, we've had people say, "Well, the show is good and the writing is really good..." But the graphics now have become like an art form, and people really are appreciating them for, you know, the difficulty of that.
WE: We didn't have CGI back then, and so everything, for people today, looks old school, but there's a charm to that because it all was real back in the day. It was written by the Star Trek writers. David Gerrold, who wrote the episode The Trouble with Tribbles, was our head writer. Even Walter Koenig, who played Chekov in the original Star Trek series, created Enik, the talking Sleestak.
Spencer Milligan, who played your father, sadly passed away last year. I heard that there was an issue between him and the producers that led to him leaving the show...
KC: Well, he wanted to get a piece of the merchandise, and he just asked for a small percentage, but he didn't ask just for himself. He asked for all of us to be able to have a small part of the lunch boxes, games, coloring books. There were so many different products out there that they were making and selling...
WE: With our face on it.
KC: Right. And they said no to him. And he said, "You know what? Adiós, amigos." And he left.
WE: So we did three seasons, and Spencer left at the start of the third season.
Was his departure one of the reasons for the show's cancellation after the following season?
KC: I would say it probably played a part in it.
WE: Yeah, it was kind of our «jumping the shark» moment. There was a show called Happy Days years ago, and Fonzie was a main character. And what happened was they were running out of storylines after all these years, so they went to Hawaii, and there's an episode where Fonzie's skiing, and he jumps over a shark. And everybody said, "That's the day the show ended." It became so unbelievable. They were just desperate for an idea. So, «jumping the shark» in show business means it's the moment in time when a show just becomes irrelevant, and it loses the magic. And I think when Spencer left and our Uncle Jack came in, it was over.
KC: We lost the writers too.
WE: Yeah, we lost David Gerrold, Norman Spinrad, D. C. Fontana...
KC: Kind of lost the meat and potatoes of our show. And we were the icing on the cake. But you have to have the meat and potatoes.
WE: And I had to go back into the studio because I sang the theme songs for Land of the Lost. So, I had to re-record the theme song because it changed. Kathy, should we? I mean, really...
KC: The updated one?
WE: No, the first one. Here's the theme song.
Wesley and Kathy go on to sing the theme songs from Land of the Lost.
KC and WE:
Marshall, Will, and Holly
On a routine expedition,
Met the greatest earthquake ever known.
High on the rapids,
It struck their tiny raft (Aaah),
And plunged them down a thousand feet below,
To the Land of the Lost,
To the Land of the Lost.
WE: And then Grumpy, the dinosaur, goes, "ROAR!"
KC: Let's do the season three one.
KC and WE:
Will and Holly Marshall,
As the earth beneath them trembled,
Lost their father through the door of time.
Uncle Jack went searching,
And found those kids at last,
Looking for a way to escape, escape, escape
From the Land of the Lost,
From the Land of the Lost. (ROAR!)
Wow, such fun songs!
WE: Aren't they fun? If you watch Family Guy, there's an episode where Peter Griffin is auditioning for a local theater group, and he sings the theme song to Land of the Lost.
What are your thoughts on the film adaptation?
WE: Wah, wah, wah.
KC: It was called Land of the Lost, but it wasn't Land of the Lost; it was like a spoof on it. And so it didn't have the family dynamic, it didn't have the moral, you know, parts of our show. I don't know what it was.
WE: And obviously, it tanked. It didn't do very well; it lost Universal a lot of money. But what's interesting about the film is, if you watch it now, all these years later, it's funny. But for everybody who thought it was going to be Land of the Lost, they were disappointed. But Will Ferrell could not have been kinder to Kathy and me on the set. In fact, years ago, he played a character before Land of the Lost called Marshal Willenholly, which was the name of our characters. So, he's a huge fan of our show.
And what about the remake they did on TV in the '90s?
KC: I only saw half of an episode of it.
WE: I never watched it.
KC: Yeah, I auditioned for it, and they decided to go with that cave-girl.
WE: They had a jeep, they changed the whole sort of premise of it, and added some new monsters.
KC: They didn't have a very cute Cha-Ka...
WE: And it didn't work. It lasted, I think, one year, or at least half a season or whatever it lasted. But Land of the Lost has had this kind of resurgence, and it's because of the science fiction writers and the creativity of Sid and Marty Krofft. It's funny, I remember a few years ago, it suddenly went from Land of the Lost, an old TV show, to Land of the Lost, the cult classic television show. And, you know, Kathy and I do a lot of autograph conventions. We travel the world and try to meet our fans...
KC: It was about, I don't know, eight years ago or something. We had been going to the shows, and we'd just sign autographs and take selfies and things like that with the fans. And then I thought, you know, we need to reinvent ourselves. So I thought, "What these people would really love is a more interactive thing with us." So I said, "Why don't we bring a raft? And then we'll put the people in the raft, and we'll take a picture. We can take them on, like the song says, a routine expedition." So now, we have life jackets that we put on them, and we have the oars that we bring.
And I've seen you appear with celebrity friends and colleagues.
WE: Every celebrity you can imagine.
KC: They all now want to get in there.
WE: From John Schneider to the people from Leave It to Beaver, from Little House on the Prairie, from Happy Days, from The Brady Bunch. All of those people have been in the raft. And what's funny is, when we do these shows, we get to fanboy out because we may be behind the table, but we're sitting next to people like Lou Ferrigno, who played the Hulk, and we go, "Oh, my gosh. I can't believe he's there." And some of the celebrities go, "Ah, I don't want to get in the raft." Well, they start seeing everybody getting in the raft, and by the second day, they always come up to us and go, "Can I get in your raft and have a picture?"
KC: Dawn Wells from Gilligan's Island, she was Mary Ann. She got into our raft one time, and she was so funny. She said, "Does this raft ride come with coffee? Do you serve coffee on this ride?" We thought that was really funny, and then years later, Teresa Ganzel was standing there with a cup of coffee, wearing a dress and high heels. And she said, "Oh, I can't get in the raft dressed like this. Plus, I have a cup of coffee." And I said, "No, as a matter of fact, you have to get in the raft because now we can say, yes, we do serve coffee."
That's really funny.
KC: Guido, it was a pleasure meeting you. I'm going to bow out gracefully. Wesley, do good for Guido. Goodbye!
Thank you, Kathy, for participating in this interview. Goodbye!
WE: I mean, I've always said to Sid and Marty, "You didn't just cast my television family. I ended up with a real-life family." But Kathy and I are truly like brother and sister. And we travel together, and sometimes we even bunk together. I feel so lucky. You know, Kathy had a very interesting life, and she's written a book, which you can get on Amazon, called Run, Holly, Run! It won a bunch of awards. And as she says, "Put on your big girl pants when you read it," because it's quite a tale of her life.
(From this moment on, actress Kathy Coleman exits the interview, leaving Wesley Eure as the only interviewee until the end of this conversation.)
Some sources report that you were supposed to play the role of Gopher on The Love Boat, but NBC didn't want to share you. Was this the reason why you weren't part of that show?
Yeah, my two shows, Land of the Lost and Days of Our Lives, were on NBC. They did a second pilot of The Love Boat, and I was supposed to play Gopher—that's what they told me. The ship was leaving on Friday, and the networks had made a deal that I could do both shows on ABC and NBC. Then, the night before, Thursday night or something, my agent or my manager got a call and said, "NBC's pulled out of the deal; they don't want to lose you." So... I could have been a congressman just like Fred Grandy (laughs). But Fred was amazing as Gopher.
Changing the subject from TV to film, you starred in a few movies in the late '70s. Do you feel it was difficult to become a film actor after being identified as a TV star?
I don't think so. Hanna-Barbera did the first movie called C.H.O.M.P.S. (Canine Home Protection System). It's like a Disney film where I invented a mechanical watchdog, and Valerie Bertinelli's my girlfriend. If you're a movie buff, back in the day, it had Red Buttons, Jim Backus, Hermione Baddeley, Chuck McCann—some very famous comedians—and it was quite a cast. That was fun, but then I started doing horror films, Jennifer and The Toolbox Murders. I'm not a very nice guy in the latter, and it was the drive-in box office hit of that year. It became a cult film. Stephen King said, "If you have to rent 10 films for Halloween, The Toolbox Murders is one of them." Now, it's a low-budget film, but it holds up.
Did people recognize you from your movies in the same way they recognized you from your TV shows?
Back in the day, I loved to roller skate in Venice Beach, California, and there were signs that said, "Do not stay after dark. Gangs. Beware." So, I was at Venice Beach one day with my roller skates, and I wasn't paying any attention to anything. Then, I suddenly looked around, and the streetlights were coming on. I went, "Oh, it's late." I looked around, and I realized I was in an isolated area of Venice, surrounded by a gang of guys, and I was terrified. I thought, "Okay, you've done it, Wesley. This is it. You're gonna get mugged, and you're gonna get hurt." This one guy skated up to me and asked, "You an actor?" I said, "Y-yeah..." He then asked, "The Toolbox Murders?" I said, "Y-yeah..." He replied, "Me no screw around with you, man." He was so scared of me. It was the other way around. They were a pretty tough group of guys, but they became friends of mine.
You just sang the theme song of Land of the Lost, and I understand you also explored a musical side in your career. Tell us about when you recorded with a boy band for the legendary Motown label.
Yeah, Motown. It was a group of four of us. Obviously, it didn't work out so well—you've never heard of us. But when I first started my career, everything I did, I got a job singing, so I worked with Mike Curb. In fact, Kathy, as a little girl, was in the Mike Curb Congregation, which performed all over the world and in Las Vegas, and she was the youngest member. Mike Curb, to this day, lives in Nashville, and he's one of the top music producers out there. He's incredible. But yeah, I dabbled musically. I used to open in Vegas for Bill Cosby. He had a big act at Harrah's, and I would sing and dance, with girls as backup singers, and have lots of fun.
You've also worked with The Osmonds, right?
Well, in the third season of Land of the Lost, they had me sing because they composed the new theme song. They would write songs for me—little, like one-minute songs—and orchestrate them. I'd go to their apartment in Santa Monica, California, and we'd record it, and I would later lip-sync it on the show.
You got to sing with Diana Ross. What was that experience like?
I thought I was going to go to another planet. I was in Las Vegas, and she was performing at Caesars Palace. They had flown me to Vegas because I was co-hosting a radio show, as the normal host was gone. We finished, and there was time, so they said, "Let's go over to Diana Ross and see her show." The opening act had already finished, and Diana was just coming on. They snuck us into the back of the Caesars Palace showroom. I'm sitting back there, and she's singing, doing her show. Finally, she stops her concert and says, "Where is he?" I'm looking around thinking, "Oh, my god. There's some big celebrity here in the audience." She said, "Is he here? Where's Wesley Eure?" I was in shock because I'm a huge fan of hers. I started to shake, and those spotlights came on me. She said, "Come on stage, sing with me." I went on stage and sang Reach Out and Touch with her. Terrified. I went back to my seat, and I barely listened to her for the rest of the show. I thought, "What the hell's going on? This is crazy."
Did you get the chance to meet her offstage?
At the end of the show, her sister came running to our table and said, "Could you wait here? She'd like you to come back to the dressing room." And I said, "Sh-sh-sure." It turns out that she watched me on Days of Our Lives when she was pregnant with one of her kids, and she was a huge fan of mine from the shows I had done. She heard I sang, and that's why she invited me onstage. One of the guys I was with, from the radio station, was one of the big reviewers in Las Vegas. He said, "Wesley, she doesn't invite anybody back to her dressing room. That's unheard of. I've been covering her for years in Vegas. She's never once invited me back." One of the greatest gifts is the access I had in my life and career to famous people that I am in such awe of. And I never take it for granted.
Do you identify with the «teen heartthrob» label, the «teen idol» stuff?
I used to be on the cover of all those magazines—Tiger Beat, 16, all those. And it was just weird to me because I never saw myself as that person. That had not been my experience in life. Coming from a non-theatrical family, my family were all educators and professors, and, you know, down in the deep South in the United States, it was just odd. Especially when I started singing. When it got cold in the United States and everybody was sitting home in front of their TVs, they'd have these 24- or 48-hour telethons to raise money for March of Dimes and different diseases. I would fly someplace and host for 48 hours, singing and dancing and begging for money. For many years, I was the top fundraiser for March of Dimes. But that was an odd experience with the crowds and the girls and the screaming. Now, those days are long gone (laughs).
How would you describe your time as a host on the television show Finders Keepers, which aired on Nickelodeon in the late '80s?
I love game shows, and I always wanted to be a game show host. In fact, I was a regular on Password for many years. I used to play opposite Betty White, Elizabeth Montgomery from Bewitched, and Vicki Lawrence from The Carol Burnett Show. You know, I did all the game shows as a celebrity. But then I got a job hosting for Nickelodeon's Finders Keepers. It was truly one of the best experiences ever. I just had the best time. I did it for two seasons, and there's something wonderful about game shows. It's like guerrilla warfare, you know, it's guerrilla theater, where it's all live and whatever's going to happen, happens. And I liked that. I liked the spontaneity. I liked the unscripted nature of the show.
During that time, in the late '80s and early '90s, you had a connection with wrestling. What recollection from that period stands out the most to you?
That's another part of my life. I opened the first professional wrestling gym in Los Angeles called Slammers, and it taught TV wrestling. Our teacher was The Fabulous Moolah; she was one of the most famous female wrestlers of all time. I opened it with Verne Langdon, who was my makeup artist on Days of Our Lives. Back in the day, in the '50s, Gorgeous George was one of the most notorious wrestlers. He used to wear chiffon, and he was a big blonde guy like Hulk Hogan, but he would always wear female clothes and then beat everybody up. So, we opened the gym. He's long passed away, but his mistress lived in Apple Valley, California. We called her and said, "Listen, do you have any of George's old costumes?" She said, "Well, there's boxes in the garage. Come on up." So we drove up to Apple Valley, and in the garage were all these boxes. Some of them were mildewed from all the moisture, but we found all these different things from him. And we did a whole museum for George at Slammers as a tribute to one of the great wrestlers.
You also have a career as an author. You wrote a children's novel called The Red Wings of Christmas, which was published in 1992 and illustrated by Ron Palillo. On your website, you mentioned that Disney bought the rights to turn it into a feature film. Can you tell us how that offer came about?
Well, I wrote this book, and like you said, Ron Palillo, who played Horshack on Welcome Back, Kotter, illustrated it. And there was this guy named Bill Melendez, who was a big animator for, I think, Snoopy and all the Christmas shows, but had also been an animator at Disney years ago. In the '40s or '30s, they had a fight with Walt Disney. They were wanting to start a union, so he kicked them off the lot. Bill Melendez had not been back to Disney in decades. He read my book. He was a big guy with a big mustache curled up. He said, "This book is a Disney movie." And he made an appointment with the studio.
What happened during that appointment?
We went to the Disney Studios in Burbank. We walked into the building, and the building we walked into was once his studio, where all the illustrators worked. It was now an administrative building. But as we were walking down the hall, there were all these cells from all the different movies that he had penned and colored. And he started to cry, this bear of a man. He said, "I did that. I also did that." We walked into the meeting with Roy Disney, who was Walt Disney's nephew, and my meeting consisted of this: Bill Melendez had my book, put it down on the table, and said, "This is the best book I've ever read. Disney's got to do it. Let's go, Wesley." And we walked out of the room. I got a call later that they optioned it, and I spent a year writing the script, playing the songs for Disney, and then it sat on a shelf and never got made. But if you want to read it, it's available on Amazon.
In the late 90s, you were one of the creators of Dragon Tales, an educational children's television series. What did that show mean to you?
I have lived half a year in Mexico, in Puerto Vallarta, for the last 11 years, and I'm a resident there now. So, to me, that's my heart. It was so nice that PBS had us make Dragon Tales bilingual. I have a lot of people from both sides of the U.S. border come up to me and say, "I learned English or I learned Spanish by watching Dragon Tales." In fact, somebody bought stuffed dolls of Zak and Wheezie, the two-headed dragon, in Buenos Aires and sent them to me with all the Spanish labeling and stuff like that.
Although you have a house in Palm Springs, as you just mentioned, you also spend part of your time in another home in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. What made you decide to buy property there?
I just love it there. I studied Spanish, even as a kid in Mississippi, and I've always been drawn to Mexico. I used to spend a lot of time back in the day in Acapulco in the '70s. To me, there's something so wonderful about that culture, and I feel welcomed and at home. As a matter of fact, I hope to live there permanently in the future, as my primary residence, rather than California.
How would you describe your connection to Latin culture?
It's just the people, the tradition, the food, it's the family, it's the acceptance. We walk on the Malecón in Puerto Vallarta, and I watch the kids running free. In America, everybody's like, ‘Get off that. Don't do this.' I even watch the dogs off-leash. It's just a world that's different. I even know friends who have come from places like Canada or the U.S. They'll say, "I can't believe my dog is playing with these other dogs. When we go back to the States, that dog is barking and biting. We come here to Puerto Vallarta and everything changes." Once they come into Mexico, they become calm. It's weird, and I know it sounds crazy. But it's true, and I've seen it many times. I think even the dogs feel the change in energy.
Is there any project, personal or professional, coming up in the near future? Do you have autograph conventions in sight? Are there any dates you want to promote?
Kathy and I are booked at a show coming up in Pennsylvania, I think, called Shore Leave. We do the Star Trek convention every year, the big one at the Rio Hotel in Las Vegas, and we're the only show other than Star Trek that they allow in because of our connection. Michael Westmore, who did all the monsters for them, did our monsters—our Sleestak, our Pakuni, and stuff like that. So, we are kind of like a little brother of Star Trek. No dates yet, but if you go to my website, it's wesleyeure.com, you'll find everything there—way more than you ever want to know about Kathy and myself (laughs).
What are you doing next aside from the conventions?
I'm doing three cruises back to back, but I'm just going as a tourist. Years ago, I used to have a company. I used to produce shows on cruise ships, like Crystal Cruises and Celebrity Cruises, and I would produce shows like an Irving Berlin show or big band shows. So, I love cruising, but this time I'm just going as a passenger, as a guest, and just hanging out. You know, I'm getting up there, I'm getting very long in the tooth, and just enjoying the last years, which are really nice. I feel very lucky.