Hi, this is Gilbert Gottfried. This is Gilbert Gottfried's amazing colossal podcast. I am here with my cohost Frank Santopadre

and once again, we're recording at Not Make with our engineer, Frank Verde Rosa. Our guest this week is one of the most prolific visible and respected actresses of the last seven decades and a member of a prominent showbiz family with dozens and I mean dozens of film and TV roles to her credit.

You've seen our classic television shows like Dunn Smoke, The Untouchables, The Andy Griffiths Show, The Danny K Show, Columbo, Love American Style, Leod Couple, The Sopranos, Desperate Housewives, Boardwalk Empire and even the original outer limits and twilight zone.

She's also appeared in well-known films such as I Love You Alice Beatopolis, The Bad News Bears, Meme, Mickey and Nikki, The Falcon and The Snowman, St. Elmo's Fire Blind Date and Monkey Shines.

And in hit stage plays like I ought to be in pictures same time next year, Jake Swimming and right in beach memoirs in a long and extremely active performing career that began even before her first birthday.

She's worked with Jack Benny, Dean Martin, Elvis Presley, Lucille Ball, Kirk Douglas, Milton Burrell, Brock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor and Peter Sellers as well as former podcast guest, Lee Grant, Matthew Brotterick, Bruce Stern, Jessica Walter, Ron Lee.

And Dick Van Dyke, just the name of you. We are pleased to welcome to the show an actor's actor and a woman who once auditioned for the role of Bonnie Blue Butler in 1939's Gone With The Wind.

The personal and multitalented Joyce Van Patton.

What an introduction. Wow, I did all that, huh?

Did you think you had a career?

No, but I did. I kind of have a dim memory of getting on a phony horse over a 20th Century Fox when they had studios in New York and trying to get into Gone With The Wind.

I have a kind of memory of that. Well, you had to be five.

I was something. Yeah, I was like a child. I was definitely a child. And I never thought the girl that did it was very good.

So you stayed bitter about it. I was still bitter all these years.

You're one of those guests where I was thinking of trying to weigh the introduction and saying, just name a TV show or movie and chances are she was staggering.

Well, you know, really, when I first went to California, I had done a lot of stage work.

Then I went to Los Angeles in the 60s. It was very easy to get on television. It's become very complicated now.

There are so many decisions in people. But then they would just, because we came from Broadway, that was a new thing.

They were excited that all those New York actors came to that particular time in the 60s and wanted to do television. That was big. That was exciting.

And you would just get jobs. Now, it's so complicated. I don't know anybody can say it. You just went from show to show.

But director liked you. It was either you or somebody else. It wasn't like 12 women all piled into an audition. It was all simpler.

Maybe because television was still relatively new. Yeah, it was relatively new. And it was exciting. You know, it was all different.

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