Confessions of a Prairie Bitch: How I Survived Nellie Oleson and Learned to Love Being Hated

These days, the phrase “former child star” has pretty much the same cultural resonance as “disgruntled postal worker,” “lone gunman” and “he was quiet and kept to himself.” When you hear those words, you don’t immediately think of success stories like Ron Howard, Jodie Foster or Jason Bateman — your mind turns instead to the cast of DIFF’RENT STROKES, Lindsay Lohan, Corey Haim or Scott Baio (who, admittedly, hasn’t committed any crimes, but does seem to be a major-league asshole).

The lesson of these sad stories is pretty clear: There is nothing harder in life than to once be adored by millions and then see that love slip cruelly away, especially when you have the whole rest of your life to feel its absence.

But what of a “former child star” who was never loved? Who was never adored by millions? Who played a character so exquisitely detestable, strangers occasionally responded to her presence with threats of violence? Such is the story of Alison Arngrim, known around the world as the blond Satan-spawn nemesis of Melissa Gilbert’s sweet Laura Ingalls, which she has documented in her new autobiography, CONFESSIONS OF A PRAIRIE BITCH: HOW I SURVIVED NELLIE OLESON AND LEARNED TO LOVE BEING HATED.

Based on the title alone, you can tell that this isn’t going to be a standard, C-list nostalgia bio, and it isn’t, thanks entirely to Arngrim’s refreshing honesty and a sense of humor honed from years of doing stand-up comedy in Los Angeles (the title actually comes directly from her popular one-woman show). CONFESSIONS is that rare showbiz bio that actually would be just as entertaining if its author hadn’t actually starred in one of the most popular TV shows of the ’70s and ’80s.

But that’s not to say that there isn’t a lot of fun to be had reading about the behind-the-scenes antics of LITTLE HOUSE ON THE PRAIRIE, the most gosh-darn wholesome hour of family values Christian goodness television has ever given us — especially when many of them involve the show’s wildly charismatic Jewish producer/star who liked to start the morning with four fingers of Wild Turkey and never wore underwear beneath his very tight pants, because he knew that was what brought most of his target demo back each and every week.

Arngrim is honest without being vindictive, which is a trap many similar books fall into. For example, she makes it clear that co-star Melissa Sue Anderson (Laura’s eventually blind sister, Mary) was a flaming bitch on wheels who was disliked by pretty much everyone on the set, but she admits that there may have been outside factors responsible for Anderson’s flaming-bitch-on-wheeliness that she was never privileged enough to know about.

As funny as the book often is, there is much darkness to be found as well. Like a lot of “former child stars,” Arngrim was a victim of sexual abuse — in this case, at the hands of her older brother, Stefan (who himself was a child star on Irwin Allen’s LAND OF THE GIANTS and most recently had a small role in this summer’s THE A-TEAM). In her case, though, she was able to avoid the pitfalls that befall many who undergo such a trauma by seeking the right kind of professional help. (There’s a very funny moment in the book where she declines a doctor’s prescription of Valium, causing the doctor to respond, “Ohhh … you actually want to do something about your problems.”)

Equally traumatic is the death of her TV husband and close friend, Steve Tracy, a closeted gay actor who contracted AIDS back when it was still being referred to as GRID (Gay Related Immune Deficiency). Unwilling to get the boob and nose jobs her agents and parents insisted would help her sagging post-LITTLE HOUSE career, she instead started working at an AIDS hotline and as a celebrity advocate for the disease, which allowed her to meet her second (and current) husband.

The fact that Arngrim faced such dark moments in her young life, yet managed to come away from them normal and unscathed seems — as her book’s subtitle suggests — directly attributable to the hatred she experienced as a result of her most famous role. Rather than diminish her, the antipathy she faced gave her a sense of confidence and apathy toward criticism that strengthened her and kept her name out of the tabloids once the spotlight faded. There’s a lesson there, and thankfully it’s packaged so engrossingly, I devoured it all in the course of single afternoon.

Coincidentally, the publication of CONFESSIONS was concurrent with the release of THE WAY I SEE IT: A LOOK BACK AT MY LIFE ON LITTLE HOUSE by that supposed flaming bitch on wheels, Ms. Anderson. I haven’t read it and wasn’t planning on doing so (after glancing through it in the bookstore and noting that she only devotes two pages to her starring role in the slasher movie classic HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME), but after having read CONFESSIONS OF A PRAIRIE BITCH, I have to admit I am sorely tempted, if only to find out how much of Arngrim’s view of what went on matches up to that of someone who apparently was a lot more like Nellie Oleson in real life than she ever was. —Allan Mott

Buy it at Amazon.

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