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And thus was established the foreignness and the cuteness and the spunk—whereupon Latka moved to Alex who was using the pay phone and Alex said it was not a good time to work on the English lessons (LATKA STARTS TO WALK AWAY DEJECTED. DEJECTED ISN’T THE WORD—HE HAS TAKEN VULNERABLE TOO FAR), then Alex reconsidered and Latka eagerly read aloud from his phrasebook “‘Lesson twelve: tenk you chambermaid for your excellent serveece, I am glad I don’t require medical asseestance’” and then he shuffled to a bench to sit beside new driver Elaine Nardo (played by Marilu Henner) on whose shoulder he innocently rested his head (THIS GIVES HER PAUSE, BUT HE IS SO SWEET … THEN … LIKE A LOCKSMITH PICKING A LOCK, HE BEGINS SLOWLY PULLING THE ZIPPER OF HER BLOUSE DOWN), and, shocked, she pushed him away and he said, “No bed?” and she firmly replied, “No bed.” And this would be the debut of Latka Gravas, as seen in the series premiere Tuesday, September 12 at 9:30 P.M. (Eastern Standard Time) over the ABC television network which still had no interest in broadcasting his special and now here he was again not only as Foreign Man but as Foreign Man reborn according to the whim of others who had relieved him of the character’s creative custody and who would dictate the character’s inner life and motivation and destiny. Foreign Man was no longer his, but theirs. It was part of the package.

Resigned to this reality, he did what was required of him as best as he could from the remove he required himself to maintain. The producers, meanwhile, respectfully gave him leeway the other actors quickly began to resent. He came late for rehearsals, when he elected to come to rehearsals, which he would soon stop doing altogether, because he didn’t need rehearsals because he had a photographic memory and always knew his lines cold. When present, he regularly disappeared to meditate for long stretches, often in his car, where production assistants would be sent to retrieve him. Everyone was made to wait for him and then he would wander back to rejoin the enterprise and pretend not to notice all the glowering. “I defended him strong to the cast,” said Jim Brooks, “but the cast did not like the way he monkeyed with them. They were really furious. It would bubble up. I remember defending him by always saying, ‘But he’s an artist.’ And they would respond, ‘An artist doesn’t piss on other artists!’” Jeff Conaway, who played the role of struggling actor Bobby Wheeler, came to openly hate his guts—“I didn’t see the big deal about this guy. The producers were obviously crazy about him. I thought he was like a José Jimenez ripoff.” Tony Danza, who played boxer Tony Banta, had the same initial misgivings—“I always liked to say that he wouldn’t have lasted long in my neighborhood. He was so bizarre—I wanted to know who this guy was and he would give you nothing. Sometimes he wouldn’t even acknowledge you to your face; he’d look right through you.” Danza once greeted one of his late arrivals by accosting him with a fire extinguisher—“I figured I’d shoot him, get him aggravated, and maybe we could have it out, you know? I could say, ‘Why don’t you just join in with us here!’ So I take the fire extinguisher and start spraying him near the dressing rooms. And he just stands there. He doesn’t say a word. And I continue to shoot and just empty the thing. And now I’m the maddest guy in the world—because he never even reacts! I didn’t get any reaction. It drove me nuts. Jim Brooks had to take me aside later and tell me, ‘Hey, Tony, no soaking the actors.’”

He kept his walls erect always. On Friday nights, when the show would be filmed before a live audience in bleachers, he sealed himself inside of Latka, interacted with cast and crew only as Latka, took notes from the producers and from director James Burrows and afterward told them tenk you veddy much. Marilu Henner would recall, “If someone in the audience asked him to do Elvis Presley, he’d do Latka doing Elvis Presley: You ain’t nutting but a hound dog. Andy was nowhere to be found.”

Amid the new sitcom lifestyle,