Free Confessions of a Prairie Bitch by Alison Arngrim Page B

Mary? She was a little girl, for heaven’s sake! My aunt chided, “Oh, honey, you don’t mean that! You don’t really hate her now, do you?”
    “Yes, I do!” Melissa squeaked. “I hate her, and she hates me. She tried to kill me, you know. And she’ll kill you, too, if she gets the chance!” And then she ran off.
    It was as if we were suddenly in the middle of a really bad prison movie with an all-midget cast. We had just been told to “watch our backs” by someone who looked like a talking Holly Hobby doll. And this “terror of the cell block” we were to fear? What was she, ten ? Melissa Gilbert had to be putting us on. Obviously, this was not true. She didn’t mean “kill” for God’s sake—the kid was a major drama queen already. But there was something very unsettling and insistent about her warning. My aunt and I slowly turned and stared at each other. Just what sort of place was this?
    After imprisoning myself in my fabulous costume, we proceeded to makeup. On some shows, depending on the studio, there might be a whole makeup room or department, but in most cases, it was more what you would call a “makeup and hair area.” That’s what Little House had, and entering it was like falling into a time warp. The makeup tables were the old white-painted wooden kind, with the huge mirrors lit up with dozens of bulbs like you’d see in the movies. There were wigs on old-fashioned cloth wig heads and manual curling irons—not those cute little thermostatically controlled things you plug in, but clattering, scissorlike iron rods (no Teflon coating here!) you put in the oven to heat.
    The hairdressers put the irons in the oven until they were so hot, you could run a cloth ribbon through them to take out the wrinkles. And you always knew when you accidentally picked up a synthetic ribbon because it melted and smoked. This is what they announced they were going to run through my hair every morning.
    All of the equipment was the same stuff they had been using for decades. Also apparently in continuous use for decades were the hair stylists, Larry Germain and Gladys Witten-Coy. They, along with the equally ancient makeup crew, Allan “Whitey” Snyder and Hank Edds, had worked with every major star since the beginning of time: Marilyn Monroe, Bette Davis, Joan Crawford. Many child and teen stars fancy themselves divas and cop quite the attitude in hair and makeup. I would have paid money to have seen any of them try that on Little House. Really, go on, try it. Strike a pose with people who kept Bette Davis in line and told Joan Crawford where she could bloody well get off.
    Makeup and hair quickly became known as a demilitarized zone. Absolutely no arguing, no yelling, no pushing, no shoving. Just “Yes, ma’am,” “No, ma’am, “Yes, sir,” “No, sir.” If you had somehow, God forbid, gotten into any sort of an argument with anyone elsewhere, you weren’t going to finish it here. Not only would the tribal elders of hair and makeup not put up with it, but absolutely anything you said and did while in the chair would be immediately reported to those in charge. You were cordially invited to leave your bullshit at the door. In a way, it was the safest place on the set.
    It was probably for the best that this is where I had my initial encounter with Melissa Sue Anderson, the girl who had been selected to play the sweet, beautiful Mary Ingalls, the girl who, I had just been warned, might be dangerous. She didn’t look like a “killer.” She looked like, well, a little girl. But not just any little girl. She had a large, round face (what Auntie Marion would eventually take to calling “that great moon face of hers”), with her hair pulled back to show an enormous smooth, high forehead. She had the most gorgeous, huge blue eyes, small, perfect lips, and the same adorable, TV-ready pug nose that I saw on Linda Blair and all those girls at auditions who got the part of the cheerleader instead of me. Her