THE GAZETTE, Camarillo, Ca, October 10, 1991 Doc Baker claimed he hadn't eaten so well since he was given a free meal for delivering a baby for Caroline Ingalls.
The good doctor doffed his hat in deference to the home made beef stew (guaranteed not to contain jackrabbits or prairie dogs) and apple pie served to him last Saturday night at Trinity Presbyterian Church in Camarillo. A visitor to this neck of the woods, Kevin Hagen, who played Dr. Hiram Baker on "Little House on the Prairie," had stopped by to share a bit of homespun wisdom with the Mariners, the church's seniors couples club.
The television actor, who says he is still recognized everywhere he goes as the kindly physician from the long-running series, brings his one-man presentation of life in pioneer times to groups. (Hagen will be the guest speaker at the Friends of the Library meeting on October 27th at 2 p.m.)
Hagen said he has done some shows since "Little House" went off the air, but they have been somewhat of an anticlimax, and he found himself stereotyped and out of circulation. He then decided to research and put together a 30 to 40 minute presentation on prairie wisdom, "Rather than go through the whole process of auditions and dealing with casting directors again, for roles I probably wouldn't like anyway," Hagen explained.
He is also making a film of the show for public access television, for which he is writing the music and on which he will also Sing.
Hagen, who is the son of two ex-ballroom exhibition dancers, did not originally choose show business as a profession. A native of Chicago, he moved to Oregon with his family where he majored in English and toyed with the idea of becoming a sportswriter. However, after a two-year stint in the Navy, he happened to take a course in political science in Portland which totally captivated his interest and he enrolled at the University of Southern California, from which 'he graduated with a bachelor's degree in international relations.
After traveling around Europe and working for the U.S. diplomatic corps for a while, Hagen decided he did not like working for the government and returned to America where he spent a year teaching ballroom dancing. Then followed a year of law school at U.C.L.A. "I quit when I realized I didn't want to do that, because the law didn't seem to have anything to do with justice."
He finally, at age 27, tried out for a play at a studio in Pacific Palisades owned by then-dancer Buddy Ebsen and his sister. And that was that.
"I found I had natural ability at this thing called acting," Hagen said.
He took lessons from Agnes Moorehead, did workshops and little theater productions, whatever he could find. His first movie role was a Disney film, "Light in the Forest," but he soon found his real niche as a television actor on "Dragnet," where he played, naturally, a 'bad guy. It took just a day and a half to film the half-hour epidsode, Hagen recalled.
"In those days they had you read from a teleprompter. They wouldn't let you memorize your lines because they wanted that flat monotone of someone reading. He wanted 'just the facts, ma'am, just the facts.' It was the effect they were after." From that time -- the mid-fifties -- until the early seventies the biggest market was for heavies in westerns and Hagen appeared in probably 200 such shows, he said, including "Bonanza," "Have Gun Will Travel," and "Rawhide." In fact, he and Michael Landon appeared in their first western together, "Wells Fargo" with Dale Robertson: Landon rode shotgun on the stagecoach Hagen, as head of the gang of outlaws, was trying to rob.
Inbetween roles Hagen sold cars and insurance, hung wallpaper and worked in a bank. And then Landon came along and invited Hagen to play the doctor on a new series he was going to produce, based on a popular series of children's books about life on the frontier. The rest is history; "Little House on the Prairie" ran for 9 years -- from 1974 to 1983 -- and won fans around the world.
His memories of those years were overwhelmingly positive, Hagen said.
"The sets of the shows I had been in were always chaotic and tense, with lots of shouting. But never on the set of 'Little House.' Michael wouldn't allow it, and he had complete control over the show. It was a joy to work with him. Every day was a good day and a fun day. He had the quickest wit of anyone I have ever known, and a warmth and a wonderful ability to communicate with people. It didn't matter that he was ten years younger than I -- you can trust younger people, you know," the former prairie doc told his audience.
"Landon also proved wholesome entertainment could be successful commercially, which most television executives didn't believe.
There are many in such positions of authority and control who claim they just produce what the public wants to see, but it's a two-way street. In large part I think the media helps create what society is, although in a way it is also a reflection of that society," Hagen continued.
Hagen said the best things about being associated with the show were, "Being in something I could be proud of and having a steady job." The actor also appreciated, as a single parent, being able to bring his son on the set and thereby spend a good quantity of time with him; his son even occasionally worked as an extra on the show.
In August Hagen, who now lives in Newbury Park, had both kneecaps replaced after many years of pain from arthritis, possibly induced by many rough-and-tumble stunts in his early years in those shoot-emups, he said. He is slowly returning to the green to regain his stance as an ace golfer.
So as not to spoil your enjoyment of the show, should you happen to catch Doc Baker spouting wisdom at the library or elsewhere, I will repeat just one question the good doctor threw out to his audience: "Where do you suppose the term the 'practice' of medicine came from? We just got better at doing it wrong."