Kliph Nesteroff: You did a lot of Gunsmoke and Have Gun, Will Travel.
Peggy Webber: Gunsmoke was more about love stories and people.
Kliph Nesteroff: I didn’t like it much when I was a kid.
Peggy Webber: Yeah, you wouldn’t.
Kliph Nesteroff: When it came to westerns on radio, I liked the Six Shooter starring Jimmy Stewart.
Peggy Webber: I loved Jimmy Stewart. He and Henry Fonda were very close friends and they both had that intimate sound in their voice. Easy going.
Kliph Nesteroff: I loved most of the movies he was in. The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance…
Peggy Webber: Yes, my friend Lee Marvin, that was one his first starring roles. I remember Lee was so excited. He lived next door to me. He and I costarred in a show that I never see mentioned called Front Row Center. It was an hour-long, live drama. I played a woman working in a department store and Lee played this crazy, murderous killer who comes in who wants to date me. When the store closes he locks himself in. It was a television show. He’s chasing me floor to floor, elevator to elevator, escalator to escalator (laughs), all this stuff. We got to be really good friends. When we moved in next door to each other, it was strictly an accident.
Kliph Nesteroff: A coincidence.
Peggy Webber: Yeah. He jumped over the fence with a cup of coffee and he kept following me around while the moving people were bringing in the furniture. He said, “You don’t like me, do you?” I said, “I like you fine.” He said, “No, you don’t like me.” I said, “I like you fine, but I’m busy right now.” He said, “Oh. Okay.” He was like a little kid.
He came back one day when we were making ice cream on a Sunday afternoon when my children were very little. My husband bought all the ingredients and we were trying to make it and over the fence comes Lee Marvin again. He says, “I know how to do it!” He knew exactly how much to put in and he made it and we all ate it and enjoyed it and he became my husband’s best friend. The two of them became very buddy-buddy.
And then he jumped into the septic tank, which we had just changed. We put a new septic tank in. But he got down in there, in that muck. We bought the house, but the previous owners had been renting it out to college boys or something. It had a lot of “balloons” floating around and Lee said, “There are a lot of old balloons in here - did you have a party or something?”
Kliph Nesteroff: (laughs)
Peggy Webber: He didn’t know what they were. My husband, being a doctor, knew. But he was always there when we needed him and he was a good friend. At first I thought Lee was too full of himself. He seemed in love with himself, that kind of attitude. You don’t see that as often nowadays, but at that time, it was right after World War Two, and there were a lot of men who thought that was the way to behave.
Kliph Nesteroff: Bravado.
Peggy Webber: Yeah. He lived next door to us for about twelve years and then they moved to the beach. They bought a beach house. We did too. They recommended the one for us to buy.
Kliph Nesteroff: Lee Marvin has always been one of my favorite actors.
Peggy Webber: I’m glad to hear it because a lot of people thought he was not that good. He did win an Oscar for that drunk part.
Kliph Nesteroff: Cat Ballou.
Peggy Webber: He was such a good friend to me. He said, “I want to bring my scripts to you first, and you tell me if you think they’re good.” I thought that was the greatest compliment another actor can give another actor. I was quite flattered about that.
Kliph Nesteroff: You mean before he decided whether or not to accept a part, he wanted your opinion about the script.
Peggy Webber: He would ask me if I thought it was good for him. We went up into the mountains to a cabin, I don’t know if they owned it or just rented it, but he and his wife and his children would go up there and they would invite us to come up and we’d rent a cabin. I had just finished doing Peter Pan in the theater [at 1735 Vine Street] where I had been flying and doing a lot of exercises. The day after it closed, I bent over to pick up a fork and something in my back went “boing!”. So I was in great pain, but I had to drive the children up to this lodge.
It was freezing and I was supposed to turn on the heat under our house and I was dying with this pain. Lee came up early and found me lying there on my back and he said, “How are you doing? Your husband told me you hurt your back? I talked to somebody at the drugstore and he said there’s only one thing that will kill the pain.” He got it for me and I was to take a teaspoon every four hours or something. It did the job, so I was able to go under the house and turn the heat on. But he was thoughtful. He was really down to earth. His parents used to come visit from New York. And his brother who was crazier than a loon. He was really crazy and they knew it and they laughed at him. He imitated trains. He imitated all the different trains, he would howl and whistle. You’d think, “What is he doing? Enjoying himself like this?”
Kliph Nesteroff: What did Lee Marvin’s brother do for living?
Peggy Webber: I don’t think he did anything. He was just living at home. I remember my aunt Mabel came to visit and at the point she was overweight and had heavy arms. She was sitting outside under an awning and Lee’s crazy brother came over and said, “Mmmmm, I love big arms!” (laughs) He didn’t even know who she was! But Lee laughed at him and said, “Oh, he’ll grow out of it.” He was in his forties!
Kliph Nesteroff: So you and Lee Marvin lived next door to each other for twelve years? How long was Rod Serling your neighbor?
Peggy Webber: Oh, he lived up the hill. He was further. He and Louis Nye.
Kliph Nesteroff: That was in Pacific Palisades?
Peggy Webber: Yeah.
Kliph Nesteroff: Or Rustic Canyon?
Peggy Webber: Rustic Canyon. It’s right below Pacific Palisades. I produced a lot of shows before I met these people and of course Lee and I had already done a live show together. And then he got M-Squad and I did two or three of those.
In one I played a girl that he’s trying to make out with. She’s a criminal and she resents his trying to flirt with her when she knows he’s the police. So that was one of them. And another was with Richard Hale playing opposite me and it was something to do with baseball. I don’t remember the story.
Kliph Nesteroff: I know the music better than I know the show. You rarely see any M-Squad these days. Was it a good show?
Peggy Webber: I don’t think it was as good as Dragnet. He had to go to Chicago to do it.
Kliph Nesteroff: It had that jazzy soundtrack.
Peggy Webber: Well, he loved jazz music.
Kliph Nesteroff: Lee Marvin? So did Jack Webb.
Peggy Webber: They both did. That’s true. I hadn’t thought of that. He worked with Jack, mostly after I left for Japan when my doctor - husband took a job with the Atomic Bomb Casualty Commission.
Afterwards, when I came back, because I had played the Spanish woman who steals a baby in “The Big Mother,” everybody remembered that show. It was the first Dragnet that was more a drama than a newscast. This one was emotional. And so everywhere I’d go people would say, “We saw you on Dragnet!” But this was four years after. So it was quite an effective show.
Kliph Nesteroff: They probably reran it.
Peggy Webber: Well, they ran it twice that I know of.
Kliph Nesteroff: What did people recognize you from the most?
Peggy Webber: Well, up to that point, it was “The Big Mother.” And people who listened to Dragnet on the radio would write me letters saying, “We love you as Ma Friday.” They thought she was so funny - and she was. The character was very well written. After I got divorced I moved up north with my children to Cambria. I decided I would live in the country and that was where everyone seemed to know me. I worked in a shop to help a family out and people would come in, “I know you! I remember you!” That was the first time I really got that.
Kliph Nesteroff: Back in those days, someone like Bob Denver would do an episode of Gilligan’s Island, and the next day everywhere he went, absolutely everybody knew who he was.
Peggy Webber: Yeah. He hated that show.