When Alison Arngrim Came to Visit

Over the years I've become fairly good friends with TV actress Alison Arngrim whose big claim to fame is she played Nellie Oleson on the hit TV show Little House on the Prairie in the 1970s from age 11-18. We met thru mutual LA friends. Now in her 40s, I'm always amazed that she is STILL able to make a decent living by talking about her long-ago career as a child star playing the evil Nellie, nemesis of goody-two shoes Melissa (Laura Ingalls) Gilbert. She was recently in Minneapolis to visit Melissa and to see her perform in the world premiere of the new Broadway-bound "Little House on the Prairie--the Musical" which sold out The Guthrie Theatre breaking box office records. She says it is quite a "hoot"...combining bits of the famed books by Laura Ingalls Wilder as well as characters and scenes from the TV version.

Sometimes when Alison is in New York she will stay with me and it's fun to have her...but being an actress-- she is almost always "on". It cracks me up. Like a lot of actress types, she's always "on" when we go out to eat, she's "on" when we ride the subway, she's "on" ALL THE TIME, with the exception perhaps of first thing in the morning before she's had her coffee.

Her husband Bob was with her on a visit last month. Bob is a professional musician (the band Catahoula) and quite talented in his own right. Bob's calm and steady and lots of fun...hardly anything fazes him. Alison travels around doing a one-woman show called "Confessions of a Prairie Bitch", again capitalizing on her natural comic ability and to regale her audience in a funny manner with endless stories of growing up on Little House....30 years ago.

Alison has stayed friends or acquaintances with many other current or former TV stars (Eve Plumb of The Brady Bunch, Paul Peterson of the Donna Reed Show, Melissa Gilbert, Dawn Wells from Gilligan's Island, Marie Osmond, and others). She renews these relationships by constantly seeing these people at autograph shows and events such as the TV Land Awards which she appeared on several months ago, flying on wires over the audience in the Santa Monica Airport hangar where they taped.

People come up to her CONSTANTLY to say "weren't you Nellie Oleson?" And Alison obligingly pulls out small pictures and with very little urging, autograph them. She claims Michael Landon always impressed on the kids how important your fans were and to always treat them well.
We were riding the subway from my apartment downtown to the Cutting Room where Alison performs when in New York and a family from France recognized her, not quite believing their luck. Apparently, Little House on the Prairie is still very hot in France. in fact Alison is always being flown over there for appearances on French TV. In Alison's words: "The French love Nellie...they don't think I'm a bitch...they just think I'm French!"