When actress Karen Grassle was asked by the stewardess in the first-class cabin if she’d like some wine before takeoff, she nonchalantly replied: “Oh, just a little please.”
The TV star, who played doting wife and mother Caroline “Ma” Ingalls in the smash-hit show “Little House on The Prairie,” gave no hint that the glass of white was supplementing the copious amounts of alcohol she’d already consumed at the airport.
Still, it wasn’t long before she was making out with the guy sitting next to her and in a boozy haze, agreed to go home with him once they landed.
“I was a mess,” Grassle told The Post in an exclusive interview. “My life was spinning out of control.”
Now, almost five decades after her reckless behavior aboard the plane, she has opened up about her wild, emotionally-damaging past in the late ’60s and ’70s.
Her on-screen persona in the G-rated series about the wholesome Ingalls family was the polar opposite of her true character — a self-hating addict who tottered on the brink of despair.
Grassle’s new memoir, “Bright Lights, Prairie Dust: Reflections on Life, Loss, and Love from Little House’s Ma” (She Writes Press), out Nov. 16, charts the highs and lows of her private life and showbiz career.
The candid book recounts experiences including her string of failed romances, two unwanted pregnancies, her exposure to a sexually-transmitted disease and her rocky relationship with actor, director and producer Michael Landon, the driving force behind “Little House.”
As the mother-of-one explained: “It took me a long time to really dig in and fully uncover the layers of my story.
“I had to resist my natural propensity for privacy to get to the truth.”
Grassle, now 79, was born and raised in Berkeley, Calif., where she still lives today.
Her father, Eugene, an independent realtor, was a suicidal alcoholic, while her long-suffering mother, Frae, was a “tough, determined” schoolteacher who overcame hardship during the Great Depression.
“It was wonderful to have that strong female role model as inspiration for Caroline,” the actress said, adding: “Especially as my life was so different.”
She landed the coveted part of Ma in January 1973 after moving from New York to Los Angeles. When she was based in Manhattan, the London-trained thespian worked mostly in theater, appearing on Broadway and in a Shakespeare in the Park production of “Cymbeline” alongside Christopher Walken and Sam Waterston.
It was a particularly challenging period since she was unhappily married to actor Leon Russom (the first of her three former husbands), whom she divorced in 1970. Meanwhile, the money she earned from the stage was a pittance.
Sadly, she followed her dad’s example by hitting the bottle — a destructive habit that began when she was studying at the University of California, Berkeley, a hippy enclave where she was prone to anxiety and occasionally self-harmed.
But, as Grassle pointed out, her “limited budget” in New York helped contain her drinking at the time. “My apartment was on First Avenue on a block with a methadone clinic,” Grassle recalled of the location near the East River, noting that junkies would pass out in the vestibule of her building. She constantly worried about making the rent and the cost of repairs to her battered old car.
It was a major triumph when, as a complete unknown, she won the role of Ma in “Little House,” the “vision” of “Bonanza” heartthrob Landon, who took the part of Charles “Pa” Ingalls himself. Her TV spouse saw the potential of a small-screen adaptation of the memoirs of settler Laura Ingalls Wilder and put his reputation on the line to helm the show.
“I was told to wear a dress and no make-up,” Grassle wrote about her instructions before her nerve-wracking audition at Paramount Studios.
“In the 70s, it was common for actresses in Hollywood to wear tight jeans and little tops that revealed their midriffs, false eyelashes and plenty of eyeliner,” she described. “That look was ‘in,’ but the look, [my] agent said, was not helping Michael Landon cast Caroline Ingalls, Pioneer Mom.”
She invested $40 — a large amount of cash at the time — in a modest woolen dress with a turtle neck and flared skirt. She sneakily ignored the order to come bare-faced by dabbing on a touch of brown eyeshadow.
The strategy worked. Within minutes of finishing a trial scene, Landon “sprung up from the floor like a jack-in-the-box and exclaimed: “Send her to wardrobe!”
Grassle looks back with fondness on the filming of the first season of “Little House” in rural Sonora, Calif. She forged a special bond with Melissa Gilbert, her on-screen daughter, who played Laura Ingalls, aka “Half Pint,” the apple of Pa’s eye.
She said she also “spent a lot of energy developing relationships” with Melissa Sue Anderson and identical twins, Lindsay and Sidney Greenbush, (respectively cast as Laura’s sisters Mary and Carrie) “so they felt comfortable doing scenes with me as their mother.”
As for Landon, Grassle initially found him a demanding boss who was also an “amazing, multi-talented person.”
“He was very highly strung, but he was carrying the weight of the show on his shoulders.”
At the height of her fame, Grassle was paid between $2,000 and $4,000 a week — enough to frequent fancy cocktail lounges and restaurants. Meanwhile, as accomplished as she was, the thirtysomething actress began to question her abilities and obsess about her performance during the punishing “Little House” filming schedule. It didn’t help that there was a bar on set.
“I spent my drinking career trying to get a handle on it,” Grassle told The Post about her high-functioning alcoholism. “I wanted to drink the way other people drank – just to have fun at the party.
“But it started to get bad. I’d get horribly drunk and would sob, cry and carry on. I’d feel like everything in my life was wrong.”
The situation only got worse when her dealings with Landon soured during an ongoing dispute over her salary. Tensions mounted ahead of the show’s second season when he refused her request for a raise. Much to Grassle’s indignation, he used the excuse that her earnings should correspond with those of the child actors.
“I felt insulted as his co-star on a hit series,” said Grassle, a mainstay of the “Little House” ensemble between 1973 and 1982. “I didn’t want to gouge anybody, but I expected a fair wage.” It was particularly infuriating when Landon claimed that audiences didn’t find her as popular as she thought.
Before long, “Ma” was given the cold shoulder. She was left out of storylines and her scenes were cut. Landon would elicit cheap laughs from the crew by mocking her figure and facial expressions when they reviewed her footage.
Most shocking was Landon’s increasingly foul language and rude conduct, Grassle said. These traits often surfaced during sequences shot in the Ingalls’ rudimentary bedroom when the on-set male workers egged him on.
“Mike would say ‘c__” and make disgusting jokes about how a woman smelled after sex,” recalled Grassle. She said Landon’s outrageous comments made her want “to disappear.”
“It was almost like I was frozen,” she said. “But, as a woman in the 1970s film industry, I was so accustomed to these putdowns, it never occurred to me to sharply rebuke him.”
She continued: “I kept up the professionalism. I’d be the good girl, play the part and hope.”
By now, her drinking — and the inevitable hangovers — wreaked havoc on her body and psyche. The incident with the stranger on the plane was typical of the risks she took with her safety and well-being.
“I don’t know what the public would have thought of Caroline Ingalls behaving like that,” she said. “Maybe they would have turned against me.”
Some of her more meaningful relationships were jeopardized because she couldn’t resist “unsuitable” types. “I was never a good judge of who would make a good partner,” she confessed, describing her younger self as somewhat “loose”.
“I was desperate and didn’t have a clue,” added Grassle. “I hate to say it, but the men [I dated] were with a mess.”
In the mid-’70s, she cheated on her then-fiancé with Gil Gerard, a dashing actor who made a guest appearance on “Little House.” Gerard, who took the lead in the sci-fi TV series “Buck Rogers in the 25th Century,” later contacted Grassle with the upsetting news that she may have contracted gonorrhea.
Speaking frankly about her alcohol dependence, Grassle explains in her book how she’d arrive on set after a heavy night of drinking feeling exhausted and nauseous. Red-eyed and puffy, the actress would rely on the hair and make-up artists to disguise the side effects.
“I got a coffee and trudged to the make-up trailer,” she recalled of one painful early start. “Larry and Whitey [the team who handled her appearance] put me back together, and I emerged from the caring cocoon with the head of Ma.”
It was only after she got sober that she recognized her subconscious yearning to beat her addiction and channel the grace and endurance of her alter-ego in “Little House.”
“I didn’t suspect that my true desire was for stability, a husband who wanted a family, and children of my own,” Grassle wrote in her memoir. “I didn’t have a clue that I wanted what Caroline Ingalls actually had.”
Happily, with the help of a determined friend and fellow alcoholic, Grassle found the courage to challenge her demons in 1977. Buoyed by a definitive victory in her years-long wage negotiations with Landon and NBC — she managed to double her salary — the actress ditched her old habits and embraced a healthy lifestyle.
The dramatic turnaround contributed to her subsequent reconciliation with Landon, who died of pancreatic cancer in 1991 at the age of 54. “I am very grateful that we mended our fences,” she said.
Meanwhile, after branching out from “Little House” to write and star in the 1978 project “Battered,” about domestic violence against women, Grassle became a high-profile advocate of equal rights.
These days her activism is focused on the ongoing campaign for reproductive freedom. The cause is particularly close to her heart since she underwent two terminations in her late twenties and early thirties before going on to have her son, Zach Radford, in 1985.
In her memoir, the Californian described the trauma of secretly traveling to Mexico for the first procedure before abortion was formally legalized in 1973.
“Society [still] needs to support women in their decisions,” Grassle said. “Whether it’s for a health reason — or any other personal reason — they should never be treated like criminals.”
As for Ma, Grassle is fiercely proud of the 182 episodes of “Little House” when she stole American hearts as the nation’s favorite mom.
“Caroline was an incredibly strong woman with a nature full of texture,” the actress concluded. “Her spirit is one to live by.”