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GH: In your autobiography, you wrote that one of your least favorite episodes was when you had to dress up as the Tooth Fairy?

DM: Yeah, I suppose the public thinks that was funny. I remember in high school, one of the things they used to do in a variety show that was put on at the school, was get the basketball team to dress up in girl's costumes and do a dance number or something. Everyone seemed to think that was funny. I never thought that was funny. I thought that was cheap humor at the cheapest level. I never thought it was funny to watch and I really didn't think it was funny to do. But, you do what they write. The sequence where I came into the house thinking there was a costume party? You remember how angry I was coming in? It was not hard to act that at all.

GH: Is that the only time you had to wear that costume?

DM: Well, that costume, yes. However in the fourth year when we went to Acapulco and filmed on the cruise ship, they had me in a tutu. That was even more ridiculous because in the fourth year I had a moustache. There I was in a wig and a tutu and my moustache.

GH: whose decision was it to add the muttonchops and moustache in the fourth season?

DM: Well, I grew the moustache during the hiatus period and I went to Bob Claver at the beginning of the fourth season and asked if I could keep the moustache. I would have shaved it off if they wanted, but I asked if I could keep it. And he said it was all right to keep it.

GH: You reunited with Arte Johnson, your co-star from "Laugh-In," in two different "Partridge Family" episodes. Were the two of you still in touch after you left the show?

DM: Oh, yeah very much so. As a matter of fact, after Partridge was over, Arte and I did the musical, "A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum" together at a theater-in-the-round in Milwaukee. He played Pseudolus and I played Hysterium. We had a wonderful time doing that. We had a duet together and his nose about comes up to my navel, which was a funny visual. There again, I'm dressed as a woman - this time a courtesan. There's a song we sing called "I'm Lovely." That was the only time I thought being dressed up like that was actually funny. Only because of the ridiculousness of it, and they were dressing me up to hide me. So there was a good reason for it. And, being in counterpoint with Arte made it funny. And one thing I am not when I dress up as a woman is "lovely."

GH: You really shined in "Hel-l-l-l-p!" - the episode where Reuben, Keith and Danny follow Shirley and Laurie as they go camping in the woods. Was that a fun episode to do?

DM: Sure. I really did those pratfalls, too. They were going to hire a stuntman to do the falls, and I said, "No. It's an easy fall. I can do that." Usually they don't let you do things like that, but I did. That was a good show. If you ever watch it again, there's a scene where we are on a hillside looking down at their campsite. I got something in my left eye and made the mistake of rubbing my eye and I scraped the cornea. I don't know if you've ever done that, but it was terribly painful. And of course your eye waters like crazy. They couldn't let me go to have it taken care of with the doctor in town until after the scenes were done. So I had to work with a scraped cornea. So if you ever look at some of the close-up shots, you'll notice that one eye is watering like crazy.

GH: Towards the end of the season, Reuben is chased by the Papago Indians in "All's Fair In Love And Wars." That was also an episode where you're slapstick abilities got to shine.

DM: Right. I walked into the scene and said, "Pinchface is here." I had dressed myself up as an Indian to get myself past the other Indians. Yeah, that was pretty funny.

GH: You worked with so many well-known sitcom directors on the show: E.W. Swackhamer, Ralph Senesky, Paul Junger Witt, Bob Claver, Lou Antonio, etc. Do any behind-the-scenes stories come to mind working with any of them?

DM: There was one director named Herb Kenwith. He directed the episode where Laurie got braces. ("Old Scrapmouth") He was so mean, especially to the kids. I don't think he liked kids. I think he was also gay. Herb Kenwith created such havoc with the kids that Shirley went to the Producer and said, "If you ever hire that Director for this show again, I won't be on it." She was very upset with how he treated the kids. He was all right with us, the adults but with Danny and the kids, he wasn't good with them at all. He just didn't have the knack for working with children. He's probably glad that they wouldn't let him come back. I don't think he had a good time.

GH: How does the chain of command work on a set? Who's in charge on a daily basis?

DM: On the set, whoever was the director of that particular show is in charge. We had multiple directors as you know, so whoever the director was that week is who's in charge on any set. Producers sometimes drop by, sometimes they don't. Usually they're in their offices.

GH: You told an interesting story in your autobiography about the episode, "Each Dawn I Diet," in which Reuben and Danny make a bet. Can you share that with us here?

DM: Well, I think what I said is that it was a ridiculous premise. Because if I quit smoking and never went back to smoking, then Danny, in order to win would have to diet the rest of his life. It's not a comparative thing to compare smoking with dieting.

GH: Didn't the episode also convince you to quit smoking?

DM: Well, I had been thinking about quitting anyway so I don't know how much the episode had to do with it.

GH: When did you get interested in photography?

DM: Oh, I've always been interested. I bought a camera in the service. I took a lot of pictures in North Africa. I took a couple of furloughs to Europe and took a bunch of pictures there too. I'm not sure where they are though. That was 1951 so it's been a long time. 57 years?

GH: You told a story once about bringing your camera to the set, and how that could have been problematic?

DM: Well, it was illegal. It's illegal for an actor or anybody for that matter to bring a camera to the set. The reason being that they have professional photographers on set and they didn't want anybody taking pictures that would create competition. It was kind of a union rule, I guess. So what I did, because I wanted to take pictures, is the first time we went on location, which was to Griffith Park -- which was on location, not really a set -- I took pictures of the crews doing their jobs including the Director. I had 8 X 10s made up of them at their jobs and gave them all color 8 X 10s. I did this on a couple of occasions. Then I brought the camera to the set but didn't take any pictures of the Partridge Family, I took pictures of the crew working on the set. I took a lot of pictures of the Director and made up a collage and I gave it to him as a gift. And by doing this I sort of eased my way in so that they got used to seeing me with my camera. Because if one person had ever said, "Hey - that actor Dave Madden has a camera on the set and he's not allowed," and they came to me and said "You're not allowed to have that camera on the set," that would have been it. I would not have been able to bring the camera back on the set for the entire run of the series. So I had to be very careful in how I went about doing it. But it worked and as a result I got to take a lot of pictures I wouldn't have been able to take.

GH: How did you manage to squeeze in two guest appearances on "Love American Style" during "The Partridge Family" years in 1972 and 1973?

DM: That was during the hiatus period. We have about a three-month hiatus on a television series and then you go back and start working on the fall season. Usually by January or February or March you had finished working on all the episodes for that season. Then you'd have April, May and June off and then by the end of June you'd come back and start shooting segments for the fall season. So it was during the hiatus period that I did those. I also did three shows on "The New Love American Style" many years after that, when they brought it back to TV in 1985.

GH: What can you tell us about your episodes?

DM: I remember the first two shows I did. One was called "Love and the Topless Policy" and I played a co-owner of a bar/restaurant that decided to have the waitresses go topless and bring in more business. Of course they rebelled against it. So the other owner and I, in the end, wound up working topless as waiters. It was silly. That would never happen. The other one was called "Love and the Singing Suitor," and was about a guy who was madly in love with musicals. He thought musicals were practically what real life should be. And so in the office where he worked he fell in love with one of his co-workers and would start singing to her to entertain her. I remember that somewhere in the story there was a scene where he was singing and the walls opened up and the whole set became a 1940s Hollywood musical set with dancers and everything.

GH: What was your experience like working with Ray Bolger and Margaret Hamilton?

DM: Oh, it was great. I think it was more of a treat for me than it was the younger people. I got to chat with Ray in between scenes. Margaret told me stories about "The Wizard of Oz" and an accident she had while filming a scene, where she caught on fire. She was a real pro and it was nice getting to know her. They were both very nice people. That was a kick. I enjoyed working with them.

GH: In an effort to break free of the "teen idol image", David Cassidy was interviewed in the May 1972 issue of Rolling Stone, which was accompanied with a semi-nude photo layout taken by Annie Liebovitz. Do you remember that causing a lot of commotion?

DM: Well, I remember that he did that but it certainly didn't cause problems on set. Whether it raised havoc in the offices, I don't know. I told them, "I hope you're not too upset with David over this because I've been asked to do a nude layout for a magazine as well." They asked which magazine, and I said, "Popular Mechanics." I remember making a few jokes about it but I don't remember there being a whole big thing. Of course, it wasn't frontal nudity. In those days that would have been death.

GH: The following year, 1973, you voiced the role of a ram in Hanna-Barbera's animated feature film, "Charlotte's Web."

DM: Sure! And Danny played a little boy named Avery. I don't think I even auditioned for that. I remember Tony Randall was playing the rat and they were very unhappy with his version of the rat. So they brought in Paul Lynde, and re-did the rat's voice with Paul Lynde after we had all gone. So the version with Tony Randall never got on the screen.

GH: Did you record with the whole cast?

DM: I didn't because I had something else to do. So I went in one day and did all my lines in that day. But the rest of the cast, it was an ensemble job. It was very popular. To my knowledge, it was the most popular feature that Hanna-Barbera had ever done.

GH: The Screen Gems/ABC press material for the fourth season announced the addition of Ricky Segall to the cast, as well as Alan Bursky who was to play Reuben's nephew, Alan. Yet Alan Kincaid was only in one episode. Do you know why?

DM: They hired him for seven shows. The show that he was in was a disaster. I mean, he was so bad. He had one scene where he simply had to walk from the living room out the front door and they had to shoot it twelve times. He may have had one line in that scene. Shirley was so upset with him, not only because he was so bad but because he had an attitude problem, I think. She went to Producers and said that if they were going to have him in other shows, to write her out of the scenes. She didn't want to work with him anymore. And so they had to pay him off and let him go.

GH: What were you thoughts of adding Ricky Segall as the Partridges' new next-door neighbor?

DM: I thought it was a dumb idea. They also brought in Andy and David Williams, too.

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