John Stamos is probably best known for his role as Uncle Jesse on the 1990s sitcom Full House. And he’s cool with that. But he’d also like you to know that he is a drummer (for The Beach Boys, no less), a Broadway star, and a dad. In his new memoir, If You Would Have Told Me, he talks about working in his father’s Orange County restaurant to earn money for Disneyland tickets, becoming a teen heartthrob (and facing all the messy stuff that came after), and then reaching his most important role: dad.
“The most gratifying thing is that this is my life, man. It's not like a TV show that doesn't last or a movie or something,” Stamos notes. “It's like theater where there was nobody editing this, nobody putting in stuff that they wanted in there. This is me, writing with my heart.”
A few themes run throughout the book, including the importance of work, which he picked up from his dad. “When I got on General Hospital, I called home and everybody was around the phone back then, and I said, ‘Sit down …I got bad news. I got it.’ My sisters and my mom were screaming and you could hear my dad in the background going, ‘Tell them you can't work on Sundays. You're my Sunday guy.’” He would continue to man the grill in his father’s restaurant for many months into his run on the soap opera.
Another is his reverence for mentors who came before him like Jack Klugman, Don Rickles and Garry Marshall, who he says was “like a second father.” Studying the greats helped Stamos hone his comedic chops and make career choices, like jumping to the stage.
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His move to theater had him play the emcee in Cabaret, a role “that was a highlight of my life,” he says. But it was performing with James Earl Jones in Gore Vidal’s play Best Man that taught him his biggest showbiz lesson. At the end of the run, he told Earl Jones, “‘You've done something for me that nobody has. You've given me real legitimacy. I got to be on stage with you in this important play. … I think people are seeing me in a different light now. And it's because of you.’”
They exited to screaming fans calling Stamos “Uncle Jesse.” Stamos recalls, “I couldn't even look at [Jones]. But I finally took one quick glance and somebody had their phone, they're sticking [it] in his face going, ‘James, could you say, ‘Luke, I'm your father?’ [James Earl Jones played Darth Vader in the Star Wars franchise.] And I looked at him and he looked at me. All right, that's who we are. And that's okay.”
Stamos’ book also underscores the importance of his family, chosen and otherwise, with an especially heart-rending chapter on losing his Full House co-star and dear friend, Bob Saget.
“Bob never left anything on the table. He always said, ‘I love you. I care about you.’ And that's part of his legacy,” shares Stamos, who will never forget his final meal with Saget and his wife.
“The last time I saw him, we went to dinner, the four of us. And he was just everything I wanted Bob to be that night. … The two of us sat back and go, ‘Look at our wives. Wow, we're the two luckiest guys on the planet.’ It was beautiful. And usually you're in a hurry to go somewhere, do something. And for whatever reason we said, ‘We don’t have to be anywhere, let’s order some dessert, a little coffee.’ … I didn't know that was gonna be my last dinner with him. And so my advice is that if you’re out to dinner or spending time with someone you love, slow down a little bit, order the cake.”