Growing up, one of my favorite (and most recognizable) kid actors was Ike Eisnemann. From the television show The Fantastic Journey to appearances on most of the shows I watched (including ABC Afterschool Specials, Little House on the Prairie, CHiPs, Voyagers!, Fantasy Island, Wonder Woman, and The Jeffersons), Eisenmann was a consistent presence. In 1975, Ike appeared in what might be his defining role, Tony, in the film Escape to Witch Mountain, based on the book by Alexander Key. In the film, Tony, and his sister Tina (Kim Richards), both blessed with extraordinary abilities, are being pursued by a scheming millionaire. The film’s success reunited the actors for a sequel which was released three years later.
Meanwhile, in Akron, Ohio, Dion Labriola’s all-consuming childhood quest was to contact his boyhood idol, Eisenmann. Learning that he and the actor an interest in animation, Dion’s goal was to befriend Ike and ask him to star in an animated science-fiction epic that he was forever developing in an overstuffed three-ring binder. Years later, their paths cross and Labriola revealed a connection that Ike was completely unaware of.
Ike took some time to discuss the documentary, his career, and his relationship with his late father with Forces of Geek.
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Forces of Geek: Dear Ike chronicles the obsessive childhood quest of writer/director Dion Labriola to contact you in hopes of having you star in his animated sci-fi epic. Watching the film and knowing you participated in it willingly had me a little concerned that your appearance would focus on you taking out restraining orders and footage of Dion stalking you. As it turns out, it was something far more unique and special. Without revealing too much, from your side of things, what was the experience like for you?
Ike Eisenmann: It was fascinating for me in many ways. Learning about Dion’s story, which was a total and complete result of, as we often like to say, a series of wonderful coincidences.
Andy Steinlen, who’s in the film and was very good friends with Dion’s, was a very good friend of mine back in the day. And Andy didn’t know very much about Dion’s early life experience with me until he mentioned my name to Dion and all of this sort of unraveled after that point. When Andy came to me and said, “look, Dion’s got an idea for a film. Here’s the backstory. Would you be interested in being a part of it?”
I said, “of course, absolutely I would.”
And I was absolutely blown away because I’ve never read a letter from Dion. I never saw a letter from Dion. I don’t know how that disconnect actually happened, but obviously, it did. And it turned into a whirlwind young life experience for Dion and, then being asked to be a part of this project. I was happy to do it. I was excited to do it. Yet even though Dion had tried to explain what he hoped to accomplish, I had really no idea quite what it was going to be about or how it was going to unfold.
Even though Dion set out with a certain idea in mind, I think it evolved over the course of his development of it, especially based upon our interview. And I was honored and excited to be the subject of something in a direct and indirect way at the same time. So it was very, very interesting and pretty much my involvement was one day of on camera interview with Dion; and everything from that one afternoon that he put into the film. I decided, as well as Andy and Dion, that I was not going to see anything until the film was completely done.
I didn’t see it in progress. I stayed completely out of it. I let it breathe in its own way and do its own thing. And honestly, I saw it for the first time last week and I was absolutely blown away. It was unexpected. It was emotional for me. And it was very powerful.
I’ll be honest with you, I find it’s always jarring to see myself in something, so I had to pull out a little bit to try to experience it as the standalone project that is and I look forward to seeing it a second time; I will get to very soon, so that I can have an impact me even more, but it was profound for me. And I know it was a bit of a dream come true for Dion and it’s in its abstract way.
In the past I’ve interviewed a lot of people; many of them who I was a fan of growing up who I feel resonate with a certain age group; in particular the Gen-X audience and some of those people have very tragic stories and others who just had normal lives.
And this film is very unique. The Ike Eisenmann that Dion was writing to isn’t the person I’m talking to now. He was a kid. And Dion, who was also a kid, saw someone with mutual interests and envisioned a friendship based around that. I hope that the film finds the audience it deserves because it really is a special story.I was born in 1971 and you were pretty much everywhere at the time. And I think you resonated with young viewers. How did you get into acting?
I got into the business because of my father.
My father had his own television show in Houston, Texas that started before I was born. So I ended up, quite literally growing up in a show business family, in a sense.
I was actually on his television show for the first time when I was two years old and I appeared on it, on each subsequent birthday, my brother did as well.
By the time I was six years old, my father wanted to leave that show and pursue a bigger career in Los Angeles, hopefully.
That’s what his goal was.
So we moved to L.A. and learned very quickly that it was fairly common practice; if there were people in show business who had children who had any sort of inclination towards the industry, they got them involved doing commercials and whatever else that might result from that.
I very much wanted to be a part of that world when I was a child, but I never articulated it. So my father one day said, “Hey, would you like to try and do commercials?” I was over the moon excited.
And I said, “yes, absolutely. I would love to do that.”
It did not take long at all before things just took off. I started doing a lot of commercials. Then I did an episode of Gunsmoke shortly after that, which turned into a guest appearance on Kung Fu, Emergency!, and then an ABC Afterschool Special that I starred in, which then led me to my opportunity at Disney.
Even though I auditioned for Disney a whole lot before I got Escape to Witch Mountain. So after a pretty good run of television commercial work, I ended up getting the part in Escape, and the rest just unfolded from there. And that was a monstrously, huge, exciting thing for me, because from the second I understood what it meant to be a part of the business. Disney was always something that was a part of my life from a very young age.
That was my big dream to do something, anything at Disney that I could. So it was tremendously exciting for me to land that role and have everything else take off.
One of the remarkable things about the Witch Mountain films was how Disney utilized some amazing actors such as Eddie Albert, Ray Milland, Donald Pleasance, Bette Davis and Christopher Lee to co-star opposite you and Kim Richards. Were you aware of who these actors were at the time and do you have any memories about working with them?
Yeah, I was aware. I was quite an avid consumer of movies and television when I was very young. So watching a lot of old, black and white movies, I knew who Ray Milland was, I was very much aware of Donald Pleasance. And of course, Eddie Albert from Green Acres, that’s what I primarily knew him from; not so much as his film work.
There really wasn’t anyone that I didn’t know. So it was always exciting for me to be able to work with these people that I had watched in other things. I’m often asked if I was intimidated by that in any way. And I never was because I was very much a professional. I loved my job. I loved to do my job and I loved to be treated like a professional, not treated like a child. And I think that was one of the things that I appreciated the most about all of these amazing, talented people. They treated me like a coworker; very supportive, very kind. I never had really any problems with anyone at any time.
And I will say Bette Davis was probably the most intimidating personality that I encountered, for reasons the entire cinematic world knows. She was notorious for being demanding and tough and difficult; all of these things that turned out to be only half true. She was a fascinating personality to work with. I got to work very closely with her because I was standing right next to her for most of my work on Return From Witch Mountain.
So I got to watch her play her little manipulative games with the crew and little demands she would make. Some of them slightly outrageous, most of them practical. And would watch everyone run around to try to make sure her needs were met. And then she would lean into me and say, “This is what it’s like to be a movie star.” (laughs) She was really fascinating and lovely and she had a great sense of humor and was incredibly witty. So by and large, just to make a generalization, I have adored the many personalities and stars that I’ve had the chance to work with. It’s a very different thing to meet someone and then get a chance to work with them and spend intimate time with them. I learned a lot from everyone.
You and Kim Richards who played your sister, Tina, in the series, you guys made a cameo in Race to Witch Mountain. And then you also had your own short that you directed, the Blair Witch Mountain Project.
That was a blast to do. (laughs).
It never came up regarding Disney, but it was hilarious for both Kim and I, because for both of us it was another job.
So I auditioned, she auditioned. I got the part, she got the part; We had no idea.
So we showed up on our first day on set and we looked at each other and said, “Oh my God, I don’t believe it.”
And the producers had no idea that she and I played brother and sister in these two films. It was kind of baffling to me. So we just laughed it off and we had a great time because it was a very cheesy horror TV movie, and everybody played it up from Richard Crenna to Yvette Mimieux and both Kim and I just milked it for all it was worth and just had a really great time.
It was great to see her again because our paths didn’t cross very much, unless something Disney came up or you know in that case, we both got cast again as brother and sister. And that was one of the things that I remember when auditioning for Escape, because very soon after I auditioned for it, there was a screen test that was done at the studio and Kim and I screen tested together.
And I remember walking up and being introduced to her by the casting director. And I thought, “Wow. This girl could totally and completely be my sister.” I recognized it right away.
So it suddenly, wasn’t such a big coincidence that she and I were also cast as brother and sister in something else because we just looked so much alike.
So that was it. It was hilarious.
Through the seventies, to the mid eighties, you were a character actor. You showed up on episodic, television and movies. And then you kind of moved on to other passions. Were you still enjoying acting at this point or were you just kind of ready for a change?
That’s a great question and I don’t get asked that a lot. I was ready for a change to be completely honest. And a lot of people don’t know about the second part of my career in Hollywood. Honestly, by the time I was in my early twenties, I had worked for about fifteen solid years and I had grown very, very much tired of, what I called it, the grind of Hollywood.
It’s hard for people to understand. I wanted to be a part of the business. I enjoyed being an actor and playing my roles, but I wasn’t a performer by nature. And when I say that, I mean, performers love to perform. They just want to get out and perform. And so much of being an actor is auditioning. And I hated it; I grew to just absolutely loathe auditioning. You spend most of your time doing it and usually like the ratio of auditions versus what you actually book is very low and it’s true for everyone. So it just wore on me. I was tired. I’d spent pretty much the bulk of my life up to that point in the business, in that capacity.
And I was looking for something else. And I found it in the form of an area of post-production that very few people know anything about. It goes by many names: looping, ADR group, ADR work.
Where to finish movies and TV shows, all of the background audio for these films has to be recorded in a studio with a small group of actors so that the sound editors and sound designers can create the entire soundscape you see. People just take it for granted that they see a group scene, or they see a restaurant scene where everyone just has recorded all those voices in the background just talking, and that’s actually not the case. Technically they can’t do that. So a group of actors then is hired to come in afterwards and just record audio.
Sometimes we re-voice people. We do all kinds of different things. And I started doing that, in the mid-Eighties or so, and ended up turning into an amazingly fun creative career for me, where I was still working as an actor. I was still getting to do something technical that I loved. But it was completely behind the scenes. I didn’t have to audition for it. And it turned into a twenty, twenty-five year second career where I worked on over a thousand movies and very few people know anything about that. It almost seemed like I disappeared from the industry, but I didn’t, I was just involved in something very different that was great fun and very rewarding.
One of your earliest jobs was The Little Green Sprout for Green Giant commercials and I also know you not just ADR, but you did actual voice work including several Miyazki movies and various animated series. For those projects you did not just ADR, but actual voice acting. Did you consider that the same thing as the ADR process, or is it voice acting? Did you audition for these roles?
The Miyazaki films actually were ADR projects. I can’t say that’s not true. I did voice a few characters as did all of the members of my group. After starting for a little while, a few of us got together and formed our own group called the LA Maddogs, which I was a partner in. And actually the go-to ADR group in Hollywood for the very wonderful run we had and we were brought onto the Miyazaki films.
They were fascinating to work on and they did need some ancillary characters voiced. So we would all just kind of take turns and fill those characters in. So those were not things I auditioned for, but my animation history did you mention The Little Green Sprout?
Yeah, he was your first job in Hollywood, right?
It wasn’t my first job in Hollywood. No, I had done other commercials before that, but it was my first animated.
That really whet my appetite for voiceover work, even at a very young age, because I found voiceover work to be absolutely incredibly fascinating. I mean, I’ve worked with on the Green Spout commercials with Paul Frees, who was one of the biggest voiceover actors of the time. You probably know who he is. He was the voice of like the Pirates of the Caribbean, Disneyland, Disneyworld, The Haunted Mansion and, oh my God, just everything.
So, that was really great fun for me. And, then I went on and auditioned for other things. There’s actually another animated commercial that I did that was an absolute blast. I have to be honest with you. I think I did before the Green Sprout commercial, it was for the introduction of Rolling Writers’ brand new writing instrument called the Pentel pen. And I played a little animated kid who could roll his ‘r’s.
I was so fortunate to be able to work in all these different areas. In animation I did a short-lived animated series called the Ring Raiders, which was terribly disappointing because it got canceled practically before we finished recording all the episodes.
I did a voice on the Go-Bots animated series. I took over for another actor who stopped doing this particular character and I picked up his role for a season or so, and a variety of other animated projects. I worked with Frank Welker. It’s just like the thing was, and I think that the thing that I love about all of this is I was as much in awe of the talent as I was talented and working right alongside them.
Watching people do animation was just absolutely extraordinary. And I just loved the whole voiceover area. So when I moved into ADR, it was just an absolute blast. It was just way too much fun to be able to have and get paid for it.
One passion that both you and Dion share is animation. When working for Disney were you looking at acting as a stepping stone into animation?
Well, probably. I could have gone down that road as an artist because I’ve been an artist my whole life. I could draw before I could read and write. I drew all the time. I very much trained myself with Disney animation books.
Mickey Mouse helped me learn how to do characters. And I started making my own characters and I had a varied style, I didn’t have a particularly set style to my work.
Anything that kind of interested me I could mimic or I could go down that path. And by the time I was working on Return From Witch Mountain I had amassed quite a huge stack of sketchbooks and unfinished work. I thought being an animator would just be the greatest thing in the world.
And, and I walked right into the animation building and I cannot remember the head of animation at the time, but his office was not far inside the building and I very, very cautiously went in and introduced myself and he knew the film that was being done on the set. He was very gracious to me and welcomed me in.
And I said, I just would love it. If you could take a look at my work and see if I have any talent in this area. And he looked through it and on the spot offered to send me to CalArts once I graduated high school.
So I had that offer from Disney to go and learn the fundamentals of it. But by the time I graduated high school, I was no longer as interested in pursuing that as a career, as I had been in my more ambitious teenage years. I don’t regret not going into it. I think over the longterm when you turn a passion into a job, it becomes work. I am very selfish. I said, I really don’t ever want to work again for the rest of my life. And I never really have, I’ve always done things that were fun that I enjoy. That they didn’t really work. And so, you know, that’s kind of the evolution of that.
Your mutual friend, producer Andy Steinlen finally got you and Dion together. You had the opportunity of going through the correspondence that Dion had sent you over the years. Unable to reach you at the time, Dion sent a letter to your Dad, Albert Able, who sent a lovely response apologizing and explaining how much mail you get and how busy you were working. It meant a lot to Dion, but you got to read it for the first time and the look on your face when you read it, it resonated that he wrote to you via Dion. Was reading this letter a cathartic experience? What was the experience like?
Cathartic is an excellent word. It didn’t occur to me at the time, quite like that that’s what it was. It was very impactful. And Dion didn’t warn me about it, and Andy said there are some things that Dion would like you to read on camera and get my reaction and thoughts on the spot. So when I did read that letter, it was very powerful for me in a number of ways that were enlightening and tragic and sad.
I had a very contentious relationship with my father to say the least, without going into great detail.
He was a very dissatisfied, angry man who wanted to be a star. My father wanted to be a star more than anything in the world. I never wanted to be a star. I just wanted to be a part of the business and I am becoming quite literally a star and my career eclipsed his so fast and furiously that I had lived a young life of bitter resentment that was heaped upon me from my father. He both wanted my career to go on because he thought he could piggyback onto my career and I paid for it in many ways and we did not have a close relationship as hard as I tried at times to try to work that out.
It became so difficult that I parted ways with him completely. And so by the time I had participated in the film, I think it’s been about four years and I had learned not too long previous to that, my father had taken his own life at an advanced age.
I’m really sorry to hear that.
It was a very strange and shocking thing to learn. And I appreciate you saying that, but at the same time, it was almost like, okay. Somehow it made sense given who my father was, at least to me. So having a very unresolved relationship with someone who then chooses to take that action it’s very difficult to kind of wrap your brain around completely.
And when I read the letter that was written to Dion right there on the spot, it was so strange because those were all the words that I wish my father could have said to me all of my life, you know, very simply and clearly, and laid out, to a total and complete stranger. So, in a way, once I stepped back from it a little bit, I was able to kind of think, sometimes that’s the way these things work. You want to say things that you want to say to certain people in your life that you’re simply incapable of saying, and somehow channeling it over here. It comes out in a very loving, caring and supportive way because I remember reading it and even revisiting it, watching the film, everything you said in that letter is the same advice I would give to a young inspiring filmmaker, animator or storyteller. It’s exactly the same thing as if my father and I had talked about this and we never did.
Ike and Dion (photo credit: Nathan Ray)
We never had those kinds of conversations with each other. It gave me a sense of abstract closure with him, if you will. It saddened me because I knew suddenly that he was capable of something that I didn’t get to experience with him. No matter how hard I tried.
I know people who’ve taken their lives and although I can’t imagine how much pain they must be in, I think kind of selfish in the sense that the people who are left behind are left with questions that will never get answered.
I have to agree with you and I think it’s selfish also. It’s very complicated and I think for any human being to make that decision and take that action means to me that there were a tremendous amount of complicated forces churning inside of an individual that somehow that idea gives one more relief than moving forward and resolving or working through whatever it is that brings one to deciding that’s the course of action that makes the most sense to them. Because as obvious as it sounds, that’s the one course of action you can’t reverse. You can give up on the world, you can become a hermit and shun yourself from society. But once you take that tragic step, that’s it. You don’t have a chance to then work it out.
I think it’s the kind of thing also where mental health is now so much more discussed openly. That is not like it was, you know, 40 years ago or 20 years ago even where it was considered shameful. Now it’s something that everyone is aware of; depression and mental health. Everyone’s trying to work at helping one another; Be connected and be healed.
I’m very grateful that mental health now is such a high priority because I’ll be honest, I had my bouts with depression and I still struggle with anxiety in my life. Being a young person in a highly demanding industry took its toll.
I used to say a little perhaps too flippantly. “I was grateful that I survived my childhood without turning to drugs and alcohol or anything terribly destructive.” You know, a number of my peers did. We lost people that we cared about and worked with simply because it was so difficult to go through those experiences. And then there are other people where, you know, just a quote, unquote, normal life can lead to these difficult issues. And forty years ago, good grief, no one knew how to really manage it. I spent time in therapy. I sought out therapy because I said, “I know there’s something wrong with me. Cause I have a successful life and so much going for me, yet I’m struggling and I’m miserable and I don’t want to get out of bed”. And I needed to seek out help. And even the help that was available was very awkward back in those days.
It was fairly new. I first heard about the word depression, clinical depression, on The Phil Donahue show. I was watching one afternoon and all of a sudden I went, oh my God, I relate to this completely. So now what do I do? You know, maybe I can identify it, but what do I do with it? So in other words, we’ve come a long way. It’s been a long, hard road, and clearly mental health issues obviously lead directly to the sort of tragic decisions that many individuals make, which is unfortunate. But I think the more exposed, the more it’s talked about, the more people are aware that something can be done and that help and support is available out there.
So, you know, I would have been very grateful to have had more of that in the world when, when I was going through it.
Next year is the 40th anniversary of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. Your character, Peter Preston only appears briefly, but it’s revealed that he’s Scotty’s nephew. Any memories from the making of the film?
Yeah, a lot of memories and, and too many to share with you right now. That was probably one of the most fun parts I’ve ever played and the smallest part I ever played, I think. I was as much a fan of Star Trek growing up as I was of Disney. And when it came down to the two things that I want to be a part of as an actor, I wanted to be a part of Disney and I would have loved to have been a part of Star Trek, and I had no idea that the first motion picture was coming out. Being a fan of the original series when it was first on the air and then went into syndication, I consumed it like mad, and I just thought, how neat would it be to work on that show?
So when I got the call to audition for Peter Preston, my agent asked, “are you available to audition tomorrow at three o’clock or at Paramount for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan?”
I screamed into the phone, “Are you kidding? Yes, I’m available!!!” And I thought, man, I don’t know what this is, but I’m going to work as hard as I can to get this part. And then when I got it, I thought, oh my God, now I’m part of Star Trek. How exciting is this? And then I read the script and I DIED!
That’s what was so humorous and ironic about the whole thing is like, I finally got, I got into that universe as well, and then immediately I was gone. But I had a blast. I really enjoyed everyone on the film. Although I will say for the record it was not an easy project to work on because there was a tremendous amount of tension on the set. After the pseudo failure of The Motion Picture, which actually did well at the box office, but it disappointed the fans so completely that it didn’t look like a success.
It’s a beautiful movie, but it’s a very slow paced movie. And I think post Star Wars, audiences wanted more action.
Absolutely. Yeah, it was, it was definitely, a misstep on the part of Paramount to approach it that way.
It had Robert Wise, an amazing filmmaker, but maybe not the best match for Star Trek
On Khan, even as we’re shooting it, the actors were very tense. I could feel a palpable insecurity from everyone from Shatner right down to Jimmy Doohan. In a lot of ways, I was a bit more of a seasoned performer than even some of them were, because I had been working in the industry for so long. They had been at it for so long, but, but I just thought, well, you know, all we can do is the best we can and whatever happens, happens. And so that was just a very interesting experience. And I completely credit Nick Meyer for an incredible script, a great story that he came up with and his very calm presence. I think the calmer, you are in a difficult situation that exudes a lot of power and he very much was a guiding force for everyone.
He took his time with every actor. He made sure he assuaged their concerns and walked them through everything, including Bill Shatner, who was constantly pulling on Nick, to see if he was approaching what he was doing in the right way. And that was something I found very fascinating because I thought of all of the Star Trek original cast members, Shatner always seemed like the one that knew exactly who his character was, how to be, and how to perform it. And he was even trying to walk an inappropriate, tightrope with his own performance to make sure it worked at the end of the day. And It did. It’s one of the most popular Star Trek titles out there. I’m proud to be a part of it.
You’re now living in Florida and writing your autobiography. What else do you have coming up?
I ran an animation studio for about five years, and then that ended, and I finally decided I’ve been working long enough, I’m going to retire.
And now that I’ve retired, I’m kind of almost busier than ever. I mean, I’ve been doing quite a bit of writing and recently completed a memoir about my career. And I’m very excited about that. It’s going to be shopped to publishers sometime in the next couple of months. And it lit the writing fire for me, and I’m playing around with outlining a couple of novels and writing some short stories and really looking forward to being published and having that like the next stage of my career in retirement happen (laughing).
Thank you so much for your career and your time and more importantly, thank you for being a part of my childhood.
I’m happy to have been a part of your childhood and great questions. Thank you, and you’re very welcome.
To follow Ike Eisenmann, visit Facebook.com/IkeEisenmann
For more about Dear Ike: Lost Letters to a Teen Idol visit DearIke.com
Dear Ike: Lost Letters to a Teen Idol will be screening at the following festivals:
- Film Fest Tucson – October 14–17
- Desperado LGBTQ Film Festival (Phoenix) – October 22-31d
- Orlando Film Festival – October 28 – November 4
- NewFilmmakers Los Angeles – November 5th-6th
- Napa Valley Film Festival – November 9-14
