William Daniels admits to faking history grades before starring in '1776,' teaching as Mr. Feeny

Whether as multidisciplinary teacher Mr. Feeny on Boy Meets World or as John Adams in the film and stage adaptations of 1776, William Daniels played his part in schooling a generation in their American history.

In honor of an upcoming revival of 1776, New York City Center arranged a phone interview with Daniels and another founding father; Lin-Manuel Miranda, the star and creator of Hamilton.

In the interview, Daniels reveals frankly that he had little historical education before the immersive experience of 1776.

To be honest, I did not have a proper education. I was working. I was in Life with Father on Broadway, and my sister and I were a song-and-dance team that worked at night...I was never in class; I’d go in, say I had an appointment, and then go and read the New York Times. Somehow I decided that I wanted to go to Northwestern University, and they sent the fellow who ran my school a questionnaire about my grades. He called and said, “Bill, you’re applying to college?” I said, “Yes, yes, I am.” He said, “I have this form here about your grades—but, you know, we had a fire here, and all my records are lost. Do you remember any of your grades?” A light went on in my head. I said, “Yeah, I think I do.” We went down the whole list and made up a whole bunch of numbers. I’d never had American History, and I gave myself an 88.

Daniels performed 1776 on Broadway in 1969, in the same theater that now hosts Hamilton. 

"I read the script with a bunch of people at somebody’s apartment," Daniels recalled. "It was a little stiff; I remember thinking, 'We’re in the middle of Vietnam, for Christ’s sake, and they’re waving the flag?' I really had to be talked into doing it. At any rate, when the script came back to me, Peter Stone had taken ahold of it, and he’d gone back to the actual conversations in the Second Continental Congress. He had written them out on little cards and injected them into the script, and it made all the difference in the world. It added humor and conciseness and truth."

That same sense of history also inspired Miranda's writing of his hit broadway musical.

"I love that anecdote, because it gets at something that I discovered in writing Hamilton: the truth is invariably more interesting than anything a writer could make up," he said. "That Peter Stone went back to the texts written by these guys, who were petty, brilliant, compromised—that’s more interesting than any marble saints or plaster heroes you can create."

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

Miranda described the revised script for 1776 as "indelible," an iconic musical theater book that keeps viewers engaged, even between songs. Daniels felt that the 1972 screen adaptation lacked this quality.

"I was disappointed in the film," he said. "Because on a proscenium stage, the play had a certain style—and film is very realistic. And yet it worked, and people watch it.

Every year on July 4th, I get all these letters saying, 'You’ve made us look at history in a different way.' As a matter of fact, doing the show got me interested in history."

"1776 certainly paved the way for Hamilton—not just in that it’s about our founders, but also in that it engages fully with their humanity," Miranda added. "I think it makes them accessible to us in a very real way. To begin an opening number with everyone telling another guy to shut up—what better way to pull these people that we see on statues and on our currency off of the pedestal? It’s an extraordinary opening number."

Daniels agreed wholeheartedly, describing the songs of Hamilton.

"The way you put his story into music, into—I don’t know what you call it. Be-bop? Rap? It really grabs people," Daniels said. "And it has to grab people. Otherwise, it could be kind of boring just to talk about history."

Though they've never shared a stage, the actors found a connection through their characters.

"Adams and Hamilton were sort of the loudmouths of the founding fathers," Miranda said. "So it’s nice that they’ve spoken up and had their moments in 1776 and Hamilton, respectively."

While Daniels is regularly credited for helping spread a love of history, he reveals a different side to that story.

"Every year on July 4th, I get all these letters saying, 'You’ve made us look at history in a different way,'" he said. "As a matter of fact, doing the show got me interested in history."

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