Emmy-winning actors Bonnie Bartlett Daniels and William Daniels have been married for 72 years, a veritable eternity by Hollywood requirements. While their union has stood the take a look at of time, they encountered some deeply private challenges early on.
Speaking to Fox News Digital to advertise her new memoir, “Middle of the Rainbow,” Bartlett Daniels mentioned she and her husband had a “little bit of an open marriage at first,” however later needed to reassess their relationship after Daniels had an affair.
“It was at a time in New York when there was a lot of sex and a lot of people doing all kinds of things, you know ― very free,” the actor, whose credit embody “Little House on the Prairie” and “St. Elsewhere,” informed the outlet. “But I don’t know if there was a lack of commitment a little bit, and that’s not good. So there was a lot of pain connected with any transgression, with any extramarital thing.”
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Daniels, greatest recognized to fashionable audiences as Mr. Feeny on “Boy Meets World,” first met Bartlett Daniels when the 2 had been college students at Northwestern University close to Chicago. The couple married in 1951 however, based on Bartlett Daniels’ ebook, it wasn’t lengthy earlier than she started to hunt out a “kindler and gentler man.”
“I never felt guilty because I never felt tied to fidelity, and neither did Bill,” she wrote, alluding to a monthslong affair she had with an unnamed actor. By the early Nineteen Seventies, nonetheless, she started to alter her perspective upon studying Daniels had begun pursuing a relationship with a feminine producer in New York.
Daniel’s affair left her “devastated” on the time, she mentioned. These days, nonetheless, their relationship is stronger than ever.

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“Bill always said, ‘We had three different marriages.’ We’ve been together for so long, more than 70 years ― a long time,” Bartlett Daniels defined. “I’m 93, and I met Bill when I was 18, so we had to grow up together.”
While a lot of the early buzz on “Middle of the Rainbow” has emphasised Bartlett Daniels’ relationship along with her husband, the actor additionally opens up about being the alleged sufferer of sexual assault in 1957 when she appeared on the cleaning soap opera “Love of Life.”
She additionally touches on the friendship she solid with Marilyn Monroe after the 2 girls shared the identical appearing instructor, Lee Strasberg.
“She always sat down in the front and she was extremely attentive,” she informed Fox News Digital. “She was an amazing student in that way… The Marilyn you knew was all made up, but the voice was there, the eyes were there, the gorgeous eyes, but without makeup and hair and so on.”