[Piers Morgan, Cnn Anchor:] Tonight, from "That Girl" to "Free to be You and Me," Marlo Thomas. Now she talks about the cause that's closest to her heart.
[Marlo Thomas, Actress:] You save a child's life.
[Morgan:] And about her life with husband Phil Donohue. You still take baths together in a huge bathtub with wine?
[Thomas:] Yeah. Well, what about that where did you get that from?
[Morgan:] My sources. Also, the Olympic golden girl that America fell in love with.
[Gabrielle Douglas, Gold Medalist:] Gabby, Gab, Gabinator, Gabster.
[Morgan:] Gabrielle Douglas. Plus, a true American icon, Willie Nelson. Back on the road again and nearly 80 years. I'll ask him the big question, just how many girls has he loved before?
[Willie Nelson, Musician:] The reason divorces are so expensive is they're worth it.
[Morgan:] The hits just keep on coming for Willie Nelson, and I don't just mean his songs. Did you wake up this morning and have a quick, you know?
[Nelson:] I probably did. I probably did.
[Morgan:] A very entertaining interview. This is PIERS MORGAN TONIGHT. Marlo Thomas will always be "That Girl," a TV icon. She's also making a mark as an activist and as an author and with her incredible work with St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. And she joins me now. Welcome to you.
[Thomas:] Thank you.
[Morgan:] A veritable legend. How do you feel about being called a legend?
[Thomas:] I don't relate to it.
[Morgan:] How do you see yourself now? Do you see yourself still primarily as an entertainer, as a fundraiser, as an author? I know you've contributed over 100 pieces to the AOL site from from about women and so on every every month. What do you see your role as these days?
[Thomas:] Well, I'm a woman who's interested in a lot of things. I did a play on Broadway last year for Elaine May. I just did "The New Normal." I was playing Ellen Barkin's boss. I and I raise $800 million a year for St. Jude.
[Morgan:] Which is unbelievable.
[Thomas:] Yes, it is.
[Morgan:] And we'll come to that in more detail.
[Thomas:] Yes.
[Morgan:] I interviewed your husband, Phil Donohue.
[Thomas:] Uh-huh.
[Morgan:] And he was fantastic back in January.
[Thomas:] Yes, he is.
[Morgan:] He called you an impure thought. Any response?
[Thomas:] Yes, I like it.
[Morgan:] Yet he went further. You've been married for 32 years.
[Thomas:] Yes.
[Morgan:] And he went further and said this about you. Let's watch this.
[Phil Donohue, Former Talk Show:] She was just, obviously, a very exciting person. She was not only gorgeous, she had great facility with language and she had opinions and she was a feminist. She was somebody you could argue with. She really had something to say that you could push back or agree with or bounce off of. And here I am, 30 32 years later.
[Thomas:] He's the cutest, isn't he? He really is.
[Morgan:] He's a fascinating guy.
[Thomas:] Yes, he is.
[Morgan:] I loved meeting him. But what do you think the secret of longevity in a marriage is?
[Thomas:] Listening is one of them. And, caring, you know, to that we you listen, you hear it and you don't always have to fix it. One of the great things I learned, because I'm a fixer, was that most of the time, what Phil really wanted was not me to tell him how to fix it, but just to listen so that he could get he could get it all out. I think that's a big deal. And, of course, all the other things love and affection and sexual chemistry and interesting things...
[Morgan:] Do you still take baths together in that huge bathtub with wine?
[Thomas:] Yes, well, what about that? Where'd you get that from?
[Morgan:] My sources.
[Thomas:] Yes, I do.
[Morgan:] How big is this bathtub?
[Thomas:] Come on over.
[Morgan:] The other thing you were obviously legendary for was "Free to be You and Me."
[Thomas:] Um-hmm.
[Morgan:] And it was 40 years ago it seems amazing now...
[Thomas:] Yes.
[Morgan:] but you talked of fairness and freedom, of racial harmony, sexual equality. It really was a trailblazer. There were so many things in its time.
[Thomas:] Um-hmm.
[Morgan:] How far do you feel America has now come since then?
[Thomas:] Well, we've come pretty far. I think children who are bullied are not very free to be, and anti-bullying is something I think we should all be thinking about. But one of the things that we felt was "Free to be you and me" was really part of the women's movement, you know. We were working very hard to have women heard. And it seemed, also, that you kind of had to start with one 5-year-old at a time and try to get them to start to see that boys and girls could play together, could share the world together. So I think we're getting there. I mean, there are only, what, about 20 women who are now heads of Fortune 500 companies. We have about, oh, I don't know, 20 women going to the Senate and
[Morgan:] We could have the first female president...
[Thomas:] Yes...
[Morgan:] of course, next time.
[Thomas:] we certainly could. Of course, there are 20 women all over the world who are running countries, so we're late getting to having a leader of a country. But we'll but we're getting there.
[Morgan:] When you see what's happened with gay rights in particular, that's moving very fast in America now.
[Thomas:] Yes. Yes. But, it's a long time coming. People have been gay for a long time and had their rights taken from them. So it's the gay rights movement is an exciting movement, because to really see it, you know, going from here to there quite this quickly.
[Morgan:] Are you pleased that President Obama got reelected?
[Thomas:] Yes, very much so.
[Morgan:] Why?
[Thomas:] I think he's a good man. I think he cares about people. I as a health activist, I think he is trying very hard to help people get good access to care.
[Morgan:] Your father said there were two kinds of people in the world, givers and takers.
[Thomas:] Um-hmm.
[Morgan:] The takers may eat better, the givers will sleep better.
[Thomas:] Yes, I think that's true.
[Morgan:] Do you sleep well?
[Thomas:] I do. How about you?
[Morgan:] Probably not as well as you. But I don't raise $800 million a year.
[Thomas:] No.
[Morgan:] It is extraordinary. I mean, some of these statistics, there are 7,800 children are treated there completely free of charge every year.
[Thomas:] Yes.
[Morgan:] You've raised an average $800 million a year...
[Thomas:] Yes.
[Morgan:] which finances this. But what's extraordinary, between Thanksgiving and New Year, I think, in the since 2004, you've raised $312 million just in that period.
[Thomas:] Yes. Yes.
[Morgan:] Which is amazing. But it shows me, also, that America, for a lot of the faults that it has right now and they get well talked about very it's a very giving...
[Thomas:] Very.
[Morgan:] big-hearted country.
[Thomas:] Absolutely. And also, a lot of people know about St. Jude firsthand. It's amazing. There's no place that I go to speak is that there's someone that doesn't stand up and say, my cousin went there, my neighbor went there, we're using the protocols in our city. You know, our children are are laboratories. They may not be in every community, but our discoveries are. So everything that we're doing is being sent out worldwide, all of our discoveries. What's in what's what distinguishes St. Jude from all the other hospitals, all the other children's hospitals, is that we're a research center and a treatment center.
[Morgan:] Yes.
[Thomas:] So every child has a scientist and a doctor working on their case. And every child is getting a customized treatment. That's why we've been able to raise these survival rates, like with ALL, the most common form of cancer in kids, is leukemia, from 4 percent when my dad opened the hospital, to 94 percent today. But what's exciting is working on that 6 percent, you know, to to find the the customized treatment that is going to bring every single one of those kids.
[Morgan:] It's amazing the breakthroughs that come...
[Thomas:] Yes.
[Morgan:] with all these treatments.
[Thomas:] Right.
[Morgan:] I know somebody who is involved with bone cancers, in in Los Angeles, actually, who said that just very recently, they had a new breakthrough...
[Thomas:] Um-hmm.
[Morgan:] which meant that women who had before have had to have a leg amputated...
[Thomas:] Yes.
[Morgan:] for a particular type of bone cancer, can now walk out. And that's happened in the last year.
[Thomas:] Well, we...
[Morgan:] And that must be replicated in all sorts of areas.
[Thomas:] Well, we do that with osteosarcoma with children. We cut out the piece of bone that isn't that has the cancer. We put in a titanium rod. And then every couple of months, as the child grows, we will have a magnet that's that makes that rod grow with the child. I mean, that system and years ago, you'd amputate the leg.
[Morgan:] Yes, amazing. Now, I want to hire you as my chief booker, because I just realized that you've managed to get Cecilia Vergara, Jennifer Aniston... Robin Williams, and others all to do these commercials with you. I can't get any of those on my show. How are you doing this?
[Thomas:] The bathtub is one of the ways. There's a lot of ways.
[Morgan:] Because, I mean Jennifer has been the you for a long time.
[Jennifer Aniston, Actress:] Some girls wish to grow up and be a princess. Other girls wish to simply grow up. Mae and Bailey are friends battling kidney cancer at St. Jude's Children Research Hospital. We developed a treatment for their cancer that's helping kids like them across America.
[Unidentified Child:] You know what I wish for?
[Aniston:] What's that, honey?
[Unidentified Child:] My hair back. And no more cancer.
[Aniston:] Girls, St. Jude is working on that.
[Morgan:] Is it hard to persuade the big stars or...
[Thomas:] Well, you know, I try to get them down there. The real secret is going to St. Jude and seeing the children. You know, I was never really expected to do this. I was never going to take this on. My father died 21 years ago, and he made it very clear to my sister and brother and I that it was not going to be our burden to carry, which was actually psychologically brilliant, because we all came about it our own way. But when you go there and you walk through the hall and you meet a father who tells you that he's already picked the funeral music for his child, or you meet a mother who I just just a few days ago, said to me that the doctors at another hospital told her to take her child home into hospice, and now she came to St. Jude and we've saved her child's life.
[Morgan:] Wow!
[Thomas:] And it's not that these other hospitals are bad. They're good hospitals.
[Morgan:] No.
[Thomas:] They're hospitals that we collaborate with...
[Morgan:] It's that St. Jude is a is amazingly good.
[Thomas:] Well, it's that we're it's that we're working they're working with what they know and we're working with what they don't know, because we're a research center. My dad wanted to build a place to study disease. It's a completely different math for a hospital. You know, there's a completely different mission, is to say we don't just want to make kids better, we want to find out what makes them sick, and we want to get a hold of that disease, find a the marker for that disease and and and put a drug on that marker.
[Morgan:] He'd be very proud of you, your father, I think, from... from what you've done...
[Thomas:] Thank you.
[Morgan:] in his legacy.
[Thomas:] Thank you.
[Morgan:] You're unbelievably, despite all this, still finding time to act. I don't know how you find the time, but you're you're a guest star on "The New Normal." Let's watch a clip from this.
[Unidentified Female:] I want to give up what I had in Ohio for something better here.
[Thomas:] What you need to give up is that 1980s Mervyn's power suit and the staggering jewel tone. Ug. You know, Jane, when I look at you, I see myself 10 years ago when I lost my husband and my way. I see a lot of the old me in you. And I don't like it.
[Morgan:] It's great to be acting with those great actors, huh?
[Thomas:] Oh, she is great. Yes. And Ryan Murphy, who writes and created that show, is great. Yes.
[Morgan:] So you're enjoying the acting still?
[Thomas:] Oh, I love it. I especially love the stage.
[Morgan:] Yes.
[Thomas:] Yes. It's it's so much fun to hear the audience laugh. It's so exciting. And to hear them open up their little purses and cry, too. I like that.
[Morgan:] Well, look, it's been lovely to meet you.
[Thomas:] Thank you.
[Morgan:] Send Phil my very best.
[Thomas:] I will.
[Morgan:] For more information on St. Jude Children's Research Hospital and the Thanks and Giving Campaign, you can go to StJude.org. It couldn't be easier than that.
[Thomas:] That's right.
[Morgan:] Best of luck with it, not that you need it. You do an amazing job with it...
[Thomas:] We need it. Are you kidding?
[Morgan:] You do. That's quite right. I'll say that again, then. StJude.org. Please contribute generously. Lovely to see you.
[Thomas:] Thank you. Thanks.
[Morgan:] We'll be right back.