This isn't the first time Dick Van Patten has been out to Ten Chimneys.
The 81-year-old actor best-remembered as the dad on ABC's "Eight is Enough" will be returning to the Waukesha County summer home of the late acting legends Lynn Fontanne and Alfred Lunt Saturday to talk about his career in the first of this year's series of "Conversations at Ten Chimneys."
Van Patten was a teen actor when he was picked to play the acting couple's son in a play called "O Mistress Mine."
"It was such a big part that they wanted to work with me at their home," Van Patten recalled during a Wednesday phone conversation. "So they brought me out before rehearsals started."
So the young Van Patten began a three-year professional relationship with the legendary acting couple by spending several weeks with the Lunts some 65 years ago.
"They were like a mother and father to me," said Van Patten, admitting "she was more private. I never got to close to her."
But "he loved the circus," Van Patten said of Alfred Lunt. "He used to take me to the rehearsals of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus." Among the other interests they shared: burlesque comedians.
Van Patten's Saturday evening lecture comes at a time when he's been thinking a lot about his career.
His memoir, "Eighty is Not Enough" came out late last year, and the actor said he was pushed by a close friend to share the stories he's collected during an acting career that began on Broadway when he was a boy.
"He keeps telling me over the last few years, 'You should write a book. You need to write a book.'"
You can just imagine that pushy friend, Mel Brooks, offering his advice to Van Patten.
Just so it's clear that Van Patten's memoir isn't a sign that he's ending his career, he's working on a new HBO pilot, "Luck," with Dustin Hoffman. The possible show -- from David Milch and Michael Mann -- looks at the characters who are regulars at a horse track.
"As long as I can keep doing it, I don't think of retirement," Van Patten said of an acting career that stretches back to the 1930s.
The details on seeing Van Patten: Tickets start at $25 for Van Patten's "Conversation at Ten Chimneys," at 8 p.m. Saturday. Tickets may be reserved by calling (262) 968-4110.
Packages are available that include the book, and Van Patten will sign copies of his memoir at the Ten Chimneys Museum Store. The hardcover edition is $22.95.
On TV: TLC is planning on bringing back "American Chopper" after all, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
- Moonwalking Buzz Aldrin was sent home Tuesday night from ABC's "Dancing with the Stars."
- Fox's "American Idol" is bringing back last year's second-place finisher, Adam Lambert next week as a mentor for this year's finalists. He tweets: "Don't worry America: I will be beyond family friendly."
- TVGuide.com says Maura Tierney will return to acting next year in the final season of FX's "Rescue Me," reprising her role as Denis Leary's love interest. Tierney was originally supposed to be in NBC's "Parenthood," until cancer treatment sidelined her.
The latest from the Muppets: There have been periodic videos released by the Muppets on YouTube, and the latest is this not-so-soft-and-cuddly take on "Stand By Me."
Tim Cuprisin is the media columnist for OnMilwaukee.com. He's been a journalist for 30 years, starting in 1979 as a police reporter at the old City News Bureau of Chicago, a legendary wire service that's the reputed source of the journalistic maxim "if your mother says she loves you, check it out." He spent a couple years in the mean streets of his native Chicago, and then moved on to the Green Bay Press-Gazette and USA Today, before coming to the Milwaukee Journal in 1986.
A general assignment reporter, Cuprisin traveled Eastern Europe on several projects, starting with a look at Poland after five years of martial law, and a tour of six countries in the region after the Berlin Wall opened and Communism fell. He spent six weeks traversing the lands of the former Yugoslavia in 1994, linking Milwaukee Serbs, Croats and Bosnians with their war-torn homeland.
In the fall of 1994, a lifetime of serious television viewing earned him a daily column in the Milwaukee Journal (and, later the Journal Sentinel) focusing on TV and radio. For 15 years, he has chronicled the changes rocking broadcasting, both nationally and in Milwaukee, an effort he continues at OnMilwaukee.com.
When he's not watching TV, Cuprisin enjoys tending to his vegetable garden in the backyard of his home in Whitefish Bay, cooking and traveling.
