hello,’ and one man said to the other one, ‘I know her,” and the other one said, ‘Well, I know her, too.’” she said. “And I thought, ‘Well, no one’s going to say that about me — ‘I know her’ in the Biblical sense, you know. So it was a culture in the ’50s where, well, Marilyn Monroe made use of it. Many actresses made use of that and got ahead that way. I was so well brought up, so I was always cautious and careful with myself and watching.”
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It makes me cry. It’s hard for me to think that I, that I followed my dream and I did this. Can you believe that? Can you believe that?
Ross voiced Grandma SquarePants for the cartoon “SpongeBob SquarePants.” — Courtesy television still
cast-turned-softball team got on the bus at five in the morning. From the bus, they took a plane to Okinawa, Japan, to play at a Marines base. That was the first time Albert Lea native Dan Whelan met Marion Ross. Whelan was serving in the Marine Corps in Okinawa in November 1983 when he said they were given the day off work to watch a baseball game. Whelan said he got there early enough to get autographs from the “Happy Days” actors as they got off the bus. “For us it was a thrill, being a big ‘Happy Days’ fan growing up,” Whelan said. When Ross came to Albert Lea for her book signing in September, he took a picture of Ross and him in Okinawa to the library. It lives in a red-covered scrapbook in between photos of Whelan with other cast members. He is wearing BDUs, while the “Happy Days” crew is dressed in red baseball uniforms. The “Happy Days” team won the ballgame. “We just figured (the Marine team) let them beat ’em,” Whelan said. ‘What I was raised to be here is really what I am’ On “Happy Days” itself, Ross said her role started as a quite minimal one because the father was a more dominant character, as was Tom Bosley himself. “As the years went on, my part got better and better all the time,” she said. Still, she had a lot of “mother lines.” “I was very accomodating,” Ross said. “I was not rebellious at all and not assertive. … I’m a perfect product of the ’50s.” She said it was easy for Bosley to dominate the set and the show. “You have to learn to be canny, and if you’re Irish to begin with, you learn to be charming and manipulative, dishonest, all those womanly things, and I would make all those things work for me,” Ross said. “Now, there’s a young generation of women who don’t have to do that.” Ross was under contract with Paramount Studios at age 23, and she said she was warned not to wander around the sound stages alone. “It’s not safe for you,” people told her. “One time I’m sitting on the soundstage watching and there were two men near me and a beautiful girl walked by and she said, ‘Oh, 38 | ALBERT LEA MAGAZINE
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— Actress Marion Ross
When her contract with Paramount wasn’t renewed, she said she was relieved. She spent a lot of time in her younger years thinking she wasn’t quite tough enough. “I’m feeling stupid about myself,” she said. “I’m thinking, ‘Why don’t you wise up? Why don’t you get a little swifter? Maybe you could get ahead more.’ … I was very concerned about what kind of person I was on the inside.” As far as who that person is now, Albert Lean Pat Mulso, who met
Ross and Tom Bosley played Marion and Howard Cunningham on the TV show “Happy Days.” — Courtesy television still