More Daughters for ‘Everydad’ : Actor who put family over his career stars in ‘Aspirin and Elephants’

His face and voice are as familiar as they come--the byproduct of more than 30 plays, 80 films and 600 television appearances. On TV, especially, he’s been Everydad: on “The Patty Duke Show,” “The Nancy Drew Mysteries,” “Gidget” and “The New Gidget.” Now, William Schallert is playing another father of daughters in Jerry Mayer’s new comedy, “Aspirin and Elephants,” at the Santa Monica Playhouse.

Set on a cruise ship bound for Leningrad, the story finds Schallert’s character newly recovered from a heart attack, celebrating his 50th wedding anniversary on a family vacation that includes his two grown daughters and their respective, problematic spouses. Mayer--whose first play, “Almost Perfect,” recounted a troubled time early in his marriage--is again skating on autobiographical ice, drawing heavily on a vacation that actually took place several years ago with his wife, Emily, and her family.

“Fundamentally, my character, Junior, is based on this real-life guy, Buddy, who was a clothing manufacturer in St. Louis,” explained Schallert, 67. “And although Junior and Buddy share a lot of the same qualities--and there’s a certain area of interface where they’re alike, I’m not playing Buddy. I’m playing a guy named Junior, who’s a character in a play. So it’s not real-life anymore. Neil Simon does the same thing; any good writer does. Otherwise, what do you draw on?”

Though he has toiled in the theater for more than 40 years (his last local stage outing was in the original cast of “Tamara”), this is the first time Schallert has worked directly with an author on a world premiere.

“From the first day of rehearsals, Jerry was there. And he’s still there, monitoring and tinkering with the play, doing a little refurbishing--sometimes more than he should, then pulling back. It’s a real testing ground. Jerry comes out of television, where that’s the M.O. A writer spends his time reworking scripts in the rehearsal process. So sometimes we’d make suggestions: ‘It’d be helpful if I could have something here . . . ‘ He’d say, ‘Let me see what I can come up with’--and the next day, he’d have it.”

As the son of Edwin Schallert, who was drama editor at The Times from 1919 to 1958, and Elza Baumgarten, a free-lance journalist and radio host, he was well-schooled in the arts.

“I was very interested in being a composer,” Schallert said, referring to college studies with composer Arnold Schoenberg. “Or a singer. I played the piano too. But I couldn’t do any of them fast enough to make a living. I was just a good amateur talent. I was also working on the school paper at UCLA--and I was a campus stringer for the Herald-Examiner.”

It wasn’t where his heart was.

“I didn’t like writing that much--it was like pulling teeth for me,” Schallert admitted. A friend asked him to try out for a part in a student production of “Volpone,” and he got the part. That led to a call from a talent scout at 20th Century Fox, and after a stint in the service, he threw himself into acting. Graduating from UCLA in 1946, Schallert joined the local Circle Theatre;in 1949 he married fellow company member Lia Waggner. They have four grown sons, none of them actors.

Although he has maintained a very healthy career over the years, Schallert swears that a movie star’s salary was the furthest thing from his mind when he chose acting.

“Besides talent, I think the most important quality an actor has is need . I don’t know if I can define what that need is--but performing satisfies it. I tried directing;I don’t like it. The director’s need is to be the boss, and I’m not wild about being the boss. I often wonder how I let myself be seduced into running for president of the Screen Actors Guild if I didn’t want to be a director,” he chuckled, recalling his 1979-81 tenure. He is planning to run for treasurer in November.

Although most of his recent jobs have been in voice-overs, Schallert is still frequently recognized on the street.

“I’ve never been crushed by mobs of screaming fans,” he protests. “But yeah, more people recognize me today than 10 or 15 years ago. What’s happened is that the kids who watched me on ‘The Patty Duke Show’ are in their 30s now. They honk their horns at me on the street, lean out the windows and say, ‘I grew up with you! ‘ Well, that’s sweet. And now they’re running the show on ‘Nick at Nite,’ so there’s a whole new generation of kids seeing them.”

Though he has usually been cast as likeable types, a few years ago Schallert was offered a role as Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in a stage project being developed at the Odyssey. “After I did a little reading, I called them and said, ‘I can’t do this. I don’t want to find a justification for the Holocaust inside myself. I don’t want to go poking around till I find something that makes it possible for me to play a guy who could participate in that. If it’s in me, I’d rather not now t.’ I just found it too painful an issue for me to deal with; I didn’t want to put myself through that.”

He shook his head. “Maybe when I was younger, I would’ve done it because it was such a great part. Well, there are other things in life besides great parts. Along the way, I’ve had to make choices.”

One came in 1971, when a stage role in “The Trial of the Catonsville Nine” took him from the Taper to Off Broadway (where he won an Obie) on the way to Broadway. “It might have been wise for me to stay with the play, but I was missing the family so much. I’d been away five months, and I finally said, ‘Enough already. I’ve got to leave.’ ”

Today he is jubilant at the news that he and Lia are going to be grandparents for the first time.

“I’ve been fortunate to make my living mostly in the voice-over field,” Schallert said. (He can currently be heard in ads for Van de Kamp’s frozen fish and Mrs. Smith’s Pies. “I haven’t had to travel all over the world, as many actors do, on location with one movie role after another. And frankly, I’m grateful for that. In the long run, I decided that acting was how I made my living--and making a living had to do with providing support for the family, making sure the boys got started well in life. There are more important things than being a movie star. The most important, I think, is family.”