Catching up with WKRP's Little Big Guy

It's that time of year when those of us raised on television equate Thanksgiving with the WKRP in Cincinnati pop-culture staple "Turkeys Away."  The seminal episode aired during the first season and while that's, by and large, the show many think of first when it comes to the series, another episode that year introduced another character who loomed large on the canvas, even though he actually only made one appearance.

I'm referring to Arthur Carlson Jr., the militant young son of the often-befuddled but always affable station owner. Little Arthur was played by Sparky Marcus, a wide-eyed fresh-faced boy seen a lot on the small screen and an occasional movie in the late '70s who also voiced Richie Rich and other characters in the early and mid-'80s. 

Today, Marcus Issoglio understandably no longer goes by Sparky. He's no longer in the acting business and he likes it that way, having been a physical therapist for over three decades. But he recalls his time on the WKRP set very fondly, and as his 19-year-old son, Aidan, has hit certain age benchmarks, it's reminded Marcus of his own unique childhood.

We've all heard many cautionary tales about child actors over the years. While Marcus has his fair share of those, he avoided the darker side of fame -- "I didn't do drugs, I didn't crash cars." But he's got plenty of horror stories about stage parents and misbehaving co-stars to go around.

It all started relatively well. At barely 6 years old, Marcus had never been on an airplane when he booked Friendly Persuasion, a 1975 TV movie starring Richard Kiley and Shirley Knight. It's one of his earliest memories, particularly the fact he was called upon to feed a goose bigger than he was on camera --- and the goose attacked him. 

He remembers filming a 1977 Christmas episode of Nancy Drew Mysteries at Universal Studios. An unknown man lurked around the set, reportedly beating up people, so Marcus was walked to the car after hours every night. But that might have seemed like nothing compared to what happened on The Bad News Bears' short-lived TV adaptation in 1979-80. "You can't put seven or eight prepubescents in the same room and expect no problems," he laughed. 

The WKRP in Cincinnati casting process wasn't quite the cattle call he experienced for other shows. "They were looking for a certain look or size," Marcus recalled. "I'm not kidding, I saw some three-headed kids in other interviews ... I mean, auditions."

The half-hour comedy about a ragtag group of radio station employees was markedly different than other shows he had been on. On Monday, he got the script. By Thursday, they were doing a trial run and taping was on Friday. 

"Doing a live show is so much more of a rush than a taped show," Marcus said. "Every moment of the day is planned. ... There's one stage you film on and one you block on. You end up learning everybody's lines. The jokes aren't even funny to us anymore. They're funny to the audience."

In fact, the more humorous things that happened were off camera, such as when Tim Reid's Venus Flytrap picked him up by his uniform. In rehearsal, when the angry Venus grabbed Little Arthur's lapels, they ripped off. "We were laughing so hard," Marcus said.

To fans, the subject matter may make it hard to believe the actors were having so much fun. The script by show creator Hugh Wilson might be deemed politically incorrect by today's standards. The 11-year-old talks down to the disc jockey, even referring to the Black man as "Boy." 

"Truthfully, I was so naive, I had to be coached on that," Marcus said. "It was tough for Tim. He was so gracious about it. ... I'm not that person. It couldn't get any further away from me, although I always wanted to go to military school. I didn't have that mentality."

Since then, the barometer of political correctness has certainly changed and a script with that kind of confrontation might not be aired today.  "The censors wouldn't let get through now," Marcus said. "It flipped, the social context [changed], but you can still say bad words. How did they put it on Star Trek?  Now you can use 'colorful metaphors.'"

Even Loni Anderson's normally calm, cool and collected Jennifer Marlowe got physical with Marcus after Little Arthur rooted through her pocketbook. In character, she gave him a good throttling, but all of it was very carefully blocked out. "It looked worse than it ever was," Marcus said. "It was nothing."

That was a lot different than what Marcus experienced on other shows. On the '70s cult hit Mary Hartman Mary Hartman, he played Jimmy Joe Jeeter, whom Marcus described as a "bit of a butthead." And although traditionally shows did everything in rehearsal the way they would for taping, it got a little bit different when TV dad Dabney Coleman had to spank him in one episode. "When we recorded, he unleashed on me," Marcus remembered.

WKRP dad Gordon Jump went a lot easier on him. "The key to the episode was the father-son relationship," he said. "I was a big fan of the show, so I was so happy to be able to play that role."

After a serious talk with his father at the end of the episode, they got to have some fun on camera with the toys in the Big Guy's desk. The scene was capped off with Arthur and Little Arthur throwing foam basketballs into a hoop on the station manager's door. They'd been working on that shot all week without success. "We actually hit it," Marcus remembered of the taping. "They said don't worry, that they would cut away ... but we hit it."

Marcus had such a great time with the cast that the serious nature of the subject matter didn't even sink in. He can still go on at length about Howard Hesseman being "frickin' funnier" than fans can imagine and how nice Reid and Anderson were to him. The show invited him to the wrap party when the series ended, even though he had only been on the one episode. 

"They were great. That was a child-friendly set," Marcus said. "I melded with these guys and we all bonded. It was like being with your friends. We were having a blast. It was everyone -- the crew and the director (Will Mackenzie) and the sound guy (Ken Becker). ... When I look at a show like that, you really feel the warmth, I think it's always going to translate to the screen." 

Marcus was suitably impressed by the subtle work done by members of the cast. To this day, he's tickled by Richard Sanders donning a bandage on a different body part each week as Les Nessman. In fact, he could even get credit for the bandage's placement for "Young Master Carlson." 

"I said, 'Put it on your ear,' and he did," Marcus said. "That is how you draw attention to a secondary or a tertiary character. Gordon did this thing in which he switched the pens in his pen holder, taking one out of one and putting it in the other, shticking around with it. He looked like he was lost in his own words. And that's how you make an impression."

That made it easier for Marcus to cry when tears were called for during Jump's serious talk with Little Arthur. "That was the real thing, because I had that chemistry (with Gordon)," he said.  "I don't have a trick for that. It came to me naturally. In all my years, I only had one problem on the worst movie ever made -- Goldie and the Boxer Go to Hollywood." 

Record companies in the day sent their new releases to the WKRP in Cincinnati set for promotional purposes in hopes of getting publicity on the show, so Marcus left the studio after his work was completed with a new Grease soundtrack and Gene Simmons' solo album. "Young Master Carlson" first aired on April 30, 1979, living on with the rest of the show in syndication. 

"When I think of the top five things, WKRP is one or two," he said of ranking his experience on the show. "I can't think of anything I had a better time on than that. ... I had a good time with Scatman Crothers [on 1979's animated short Banjo the Woodpile Cat]. And the Goodtime Girls [a 1989 sitcom starring Annie Potts, Lorna Patterson, Georgia Engel, Peter Scolari and Adrian Zmed]. That was a great cast. Fun times."

Being on sets was all Marcus knew during the '70s. Reminiscent of Les Nessman in the second-season episode "Baseball," Marcus missed out on a lot of things like playing sports, particularly during summer, which was "child actor season" since the kids didn't have to be in school. As he remembers it, peers who kept getting jobs just showed up, shut up and hit their marks. "I grew up with adults," he said. "I didn't relate to kids back then." 

And it increasingly took a toll on Marcus. For every fun WKRP booking, there was another that was much rougher on him, like portraying the only child on The Nancy Walker Show in 1976-77. "Nancy Walker hated me," Marcus said. "She would not talk to me, she would not look at me," he said. "That set was frigid at best, at least for me it was. I generally hung out with the crew, they were always nice to me." 

Even worse, there were "Me Too" moments that had to be dealt with while he was on the sets of Trapper John, M.D. and Goldie and the Boxer Go to Hollywood. To add injury to insult, he suffered a concussion and a split forehead while playing a 17-year-old with a hormone deficiency at age 13 on Trapper John. After the Bad News Bears, he continued doing mostly voice work -- "It doesn't matter if you have a broken arm or zits" -- until he was finished school.

Marcus' parents made him stay in the business to make money long after he had lost interest. "When I turned 18, I just said no more," he recalled. "I just said, 'You can't make me.' The day after I graduated from high school, I left home. I became a physical therapy aide and then got my license. I've been lucky, I've been working in it for 33 years."

Today, Marcus lives in a small town of 7,000 in California with his wife and son. His career occasionally comes up, like when Nancy Cartwright published a book with a picture of her and Marcus from Saturday Supercade's "Space Ace: 1984-1985") or when he was included in an awards ceremony video tribute for Freaky Friday co-star Jodie Foster. That's when he's been asked if he "goes by Sparky?" To which his answer inevitably has been, "It depends who's asking."

Although Little Arthur was mentioned often throughout the rest of WKRP's run, Marcus didn't appear on the show again. He thought he might have a chance when the show rebooted with Jump in the fold for two seasons as The New WKRP in Cincinnati in 1991. "I almost thought my phone would ring," Marcus said. "I don't know if I would have done it, though."

He doesn't often get recognized or bring up his time on television or in the movies, preferring to leave it in the past. At one point, one of Aidan's teachers called about screening Freaky Friday in class, and Marcus respectfully declined. "I said, 'Please, don't," he recalled. "I was tortured all through elementary and junior high school. You get judged on that stuff." 

So what does Marcus love as much as fans love rediscovering WKRP? In addition to being a huge fan of the New Orleans Saints, he and wife Jennifer enjoy watching shows like House, Bones and The Big Bang Theory. Although he bemoans that most of them are off the air -- the WKRP fans feel your pain -- he doesn't get so into them that he jumps on message boards or listen to podcasts about them. He doesn't have many mementos from his time in the spotlight, but he's occasionally been able to pick up a WKRP photo on eBay. 

"I haven't seen that episode in 30 years," Marcus admitted. "I'm flattered that anybody remembers. It's a different place and a different life. ... I'm fat and happy and living in northern California." -- Paige Schector