When I was cast to play the role of Greg Nelson on the popular soap opera, All My Children, I had no idea what I was getting into. I had never watched daytime TV before. It didn’t take long to discover it was a huge phenomenon in a world of its own. All My Children was always rated in the top three out of the thirteen soaps produced and aired then, with AMC averaging an audience of close to twenty million viewers per day. I had been on the show just under four weeks when I received my first small packet of fan mail. At home in my apartment after work, I opened the packet and read the letters. There were five of them.
“Dear Greg, send me an autographed picture.”
“Greg, you’re good. Send me an autographed picture please!”
“Greg, be good to Jenny, she loves you. Send photo!”
“Dear Greg, I love you. I wish I were Jenny.”
“Dear Greg, will you be on AMC for a long time? I hope so. Yours truly. Oh, and send me an autographed picture!”
I wrote thank you notes to all five and mailed them the next day. The following week the front office handed me another packet of fan mail, this time twice the size of the week before.
“Greg, be careful, Liza is sneaky. Send autograph!”
“Dear Greg, I would like a friendship with you. Send picture, please.”
“You and Jenny make a really good couple. Send autograph!”
“Greg, the kiss on the envelope is mine and I send it to you. Please send picture!”
“Greg, I need two autographed pictures. Thank you.”
“I love All My Children, especially you and Jenny. Please, can I have a picture?”
“You are the favorite at my sorority. We would like to invite you to be an honorary member.”
“A bunch of us at the University schedule our classes around AMC and hang out in the dorm lounge during lunch. We love your show and need a picture of you for our wall. Please send!”
“I wish we could be friends. I watch All My Children every day.”
“You were not on the show today and it made me sad. Please send autograph. Hurry!”
The following week the fan mail quadrupled. There was no way I could possibly write back to all of them. But it was about this time that a very nice person left me a message saying she noticed that I didn’t have a fan club and would I like her to handle one for me. I leaped at the offer and thanked her profusely. The amount of fan mail coming in continued to increase each week, and it was just too much for me to handle. This woman who created and ran my fan club was a Godsend.
Every Friday I would leave that week’s bag of fan mail with the guard at the front desk entrance to the studio for the fan club to pick up. Before doing that, I’d remove ten or so letters and read them to keep a sense of how the fans were feeling about the show. The popularity of the Jenny and Greg storyline had quickly shot through the roof as the ratings continued to climb. The ABC publicity department had us promoting the show across the country. We were interviewed on all the major affiliate talk shows and major national talk shows, from Oprah on down. We were plastered on magazine covers like LIFE, People, TV Guide and all the rest of the daytime mags. Week after week the fan mail continued to pour in.
One week I pulled a letter out of the bag that was much thicker than the rest. It had a certain heft and I guessed it might be serious in nature. Turning it over to examine the return address, I saw the name, Shirley P. Opening the envelope, I found a five-page single-spaced handwritten letter inside. I also found a photo of a naked woman.
Disbelieving, with a grimace on my face that could have turned permanent had it not been for my dressing room mate entering just then, I said, “Darnell, look what I just got”. He looked down at the photo on the desk, and said,
“Whoa! Who’s that?” Darnell picked up the picture.
“I don’t know. A fan.” I shrugged.
“Yikes.” He tossed the photo down.
“What should I do?”
“Don’t ask me. She’s your fan.
He grabbed his script and scooted quickly out the door.
Looking down at the photo again, hoping to unsee what I saw, I picked it up and shoved it far into the back of the desk drawer. Out of sight, out of mind.
The following week another thick letter arrived from Shirley, but this time not only was there another handwritten letter and another naked photo, there was also a cassette tape. Frightfully curious to hear what she had to say, and against my better judgment, I popped her cassette into my Sony Walkman and pressed play. What came through my headphones was a deepthroated sultry voice, talking to me in a whispery tone, as if I was right there with her. She said she had to talk softly because her husband was in the other room, and he hated it when she talked to me. She said he would slap her in the face because she would shout out my name, “Greg, Greg!” when they were having sex. She said she couldn’t wait much longer for us to finally be together, and that the love we shared could overcome any obstacles. As she was talking, she started to undress me, describing in detail her unbuttoning my shirt, exposing my chest and shoulders, and marveling at my sexiness as she disrobed the rest of my clothes. Feeling seriously freaked out, it got even weirder. As I reached over to turn off the audio tape, I heard a child in the background begin to cry. Shirley said, “Don’t worry, that’s just our baby.”
Clicking off the Walkman, I tossed the letter, the photo, and the cassette tape to the back of the desk drawer, again. She obviously was a fan with some very loose marbles, and the best plan of action was to ignore her. But the following week an even thicker envelope arrived, this time with three cassette tapes accompanying the handwritten letter and another naked photo. I listened to about thirty seconds of one tape, and it was the same disturbing scenario, where she took off my clothes and began touching me, while her baby cried in the background. This was becoming way too worrying. I called my friend and lawyer, David, and explained to him what was going on. He said to bring all the material down to his place after work.
The first thing David did was eye the photos.
“Not much of a looker,” he said. “But I’ll give her an A for effort.” Then he quickly read the letters, shaking his head, and saying, “Jesus”, from time to time. Finally, he said, “Let’s listen to the tapes.” David began to chuckle almost immediately at the graphic nature of Shirley’s descriptions of her sexual fantasies, with me as the hero. His insensitivity didn’t sit right with me. This was a precarious situation, even a dangerous one, and his lack of concern, not to mention his lack of empathy for this deranged woman, was insulting. David turned off the Walkman.
“She’s obviously a lunatic.” David made the cuckoo gesture.
“Yeah, obviously.” I threw up my hands. “What should I do?”
“You two could raise a bunch of nut jobs.”
“You’re not much help here.”
“She’s written you love letters. Nothing illegal about that.”
“What about the naked pictures?”
“Playboy is legal. So are these.”
“And the audio tapes?
“Hey, it’s free speech, man.”
“Well, Jesus.”
“Want a beer?”
“Fuckin’ A.”
A couple of weeks went by without any further communication from Shirley. I thought maybe, just maybe, Shirley had grown tired of her campaign to win me over. Maybe she had moved on to assault and smother some other actor. But that turned out to be wishful thinking. Entering the studio one bright early morning, I said hello to the guard at the front desk, and then passed into the interior of the main hallway. The first person I saw coming toward me was one of the cameramen. We exchanged hellos as we passed by each other.
“By the way, congratulations.” He said.
“What?”
“Your wedding. I got the invitation. Thanks for the invite.”
“What wedding?” I stopped in my tracks.
“Your wedding. I got the invitation yesterday.”
“What invitation?”
“Here, it’s still in my bag.” He unzipped his backpack and pulled out a very official-looking, high-quality, gold-embossed wedding invitation, announcing the engagement of Shirley P. and Laurence Lau. The wedding reception was to be held at the ABC studio in a month.
“Oh my God. I don’t believe this.” Shocked, I looked up at the cameraman, and said, “This is fake. It’s not real.”
“Sure looks real,” he said.
“Yeah, it does. But it’s not. It’s an out-of-control fan.”
“So, you’re not getting married?” he asked.
“No!” I patted my coat down to find cigarettes.
“Wow. That’s really nutso”, he said, laughing.
“Yeah, no kidding.” I pulled out a Marlboro.
And as he turned away smiling, he started singing, “Going to the Chapel and we’re… going to get married…going to the Chapel… of love.”
“Not funny,” I yelled after him. My hands shook as I grabbed my lighter. I suddenly remembered I was in a no-smoking zone and shoved the lighter and unlit smoke into my pocket.
I hurried down the hall to where the mailboxes were, and every single cubicle had an invitation inside. Or most of them did, some early birds had already checked their mailbox and taken possession of the invite.
Then I heard someone approach me from behind and say, “Hey, Larry! Congratulations!” I turned around to see one of the assistant producers rushing by and waving an invitation at me. “I’ll be there!” And she quickly disappeared around the corner. It was six-thirty in the morning and people were arriving to start the day. The hustle and bustle had begun and so did the comments.
“Congratulations, Larry. Looking forward to it.”
“No! No! I’m not getting married.”
“But I have an invitation.”
“It’s a hoax. It’s not happening, someone’s playing a joke.”
“Pretty fancy for a joke.”
“Yeah, ha-ha.”
All day long I had to make these disavowals but by the end of the workday, I had successfully squelched the fast-spreading rumor of my imminent matrimony. Glad to be heading home, I had to confess that I was majorly tweaked. It was like an alien from another planet was lobbing mental psyche bombs at me. Lengthy handwritten letters, nude photos, daily phone calls to the front office, bi-weekly telegrams, salacious sex tapes, a baby crying in the background, an angry and violent husband, a marriage proposal, high-quality wedding invitations sent to every member of the cast and crew in the All My Children studio, I could only guess what might come next.
Seeking a little companionship to soothe my rattled brain, I called David again and told him about the day’s event. He said to come right over.
“This is top-quality stationary. She’s got money.” He said examining the invitation.
“She’s arranging our marriage.”
“Do you need a best man? I’m available.”
“What if she shows up?
“You’ll recognize her. You can run.”
“Very funny.”
“Another beer?”
“Fucking A.”
The next four weeks went by without any further communication from Shirley P. Maybe Shirley P. really was finished with me and had moved on. But I kept a close eye on the date of the big day, awaiting its approach with growing anxiety. Not knowing what to expect, I imagined the worst. Would Shirley actually show up? Would she have on a wedding dress? Would she bring her family and friends? Did she even have any? Would she create a scene when denied entry? The more I thought about it, the more I decided the best and most honorable thing to do would be to sneak in the back door of the studio where the loading ramps were located; wearing a baseball cap and large sunglasses to further conceal my identity. Then the appointed day arrived, and nothing happened. Breathing a huge sigh of relief, I continued this surreptitious strategy for a few days to make sure all was safe. And after a week, I returned to entering and exiting the studio from the front entrance. All was well. The crisis was averted.
But it wasn’t over for Shirley P. A week or so later, she launched another psycho bomb. It was a warning letter. I hadn’t picked her up at Times Square and taken her to the ABC Studios for our vows on the day of our wedding. Because of my betrayal, she said she had to prostitute herself to make the money she needed to buy a bus ticket to get back home. When her husband heard what had happened, he became furious and said he was going to go down to New York City and put some serious hurt on “Greg Nelson.” She said she tried to stop him, but he stormed past her in a rage.
Well, that was it. I couldn’t deal with it anymore. I needed help. I went to my producer and spelled out the dilemma. She said not to worry, they’d take care of it. And just like that I had the full weight of a major TV network in protection mode on my behalf. I don’t know what they did, but Shirley and her “husband” never approached me again. I imagined the network had its legal department send out a scary cease and desist order. Whatever they did it worked. The crazy little nightmare was over.
A couple of years later I moved over to a different soap opera on NBC. It was called Another World. Three months into this new job, I got a letter with a picture of a naked woman inside. It was Shirley P.
