by Erik Tarloff
Well, as far as we were concerned, when it came to funny Lenny was the burning bush, the fucking voice of God. So I think that pep talk was the clincher for Chance. And it turned out to be terrific advice. It’s a shame he never got to do another comedy after that. He had the chops. He proved it. He could have been like Lemmon or Matthau, great at drama, great at comedy, a sure thing no matter what the project called for. [sighs] Such a loss. And such a great guy.
James Sterling
He was undecided about doing a comedy, the movie that became Not My Fault! He was very uncertain about his ability to pull it off. One of his friends—I think it was some stand-up comic, actually—told him the secret to playing comedy is to play it completely straight. Odd advice to get from a comedian, although sound as far as it goes. Still, not the whole story. You can’t be grim about what you’re doing. There’s an added element, a kind of lightness to your performance, a buoyancy—it’s very hard to describe—that transforms drama into something funny. God knows I’m not known for comedy myself, if anything I fear I’m considered somewhat humorless. Or so my wife tells me. She sometimes calls me a pompous ass. [laughs] But hey, I teach acting, I have to understand all sorts of styles, and I flatter myself I have some insight into all of them.
But what I was getting at with Chance is very hard to explain, and all but impossible to teach. It isn’t really a matter of technique as such. It’s more a matter of conveying…befuddlement? Confusion? A kind of very human helplessness or klutziness, something the audience can immediately relate to. Or an awareness of the insanity of normal life, maybe? An awareness that doesn’t exempt one from being a full participant in it.
So, because my groping for an explanation felt so abstract, and because what I was describing was so hard to achieve based on words alone, I suggested to Chance we do something I’ve never done with a student before. I said, “Look, clear your schedule for a day and come on over to my place. We’re going to screen some movies.” I wanted him to watch how some actors who were good solid dramatic actors could also be great at comedy. I didn’t want him to watch W. C. Fields or the Marx Brothers or Laurel and Hardy, I wanted him to see actors. So we looked at Hank Fonda in The Lady Eve, Clark Gable in It Happened One Night, Jimmy Stewart and Cary Grant in The Philadelphia Story, Bill Powell in The Thin Man, Gary Cooper in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town. Coop was always a bit of a stiff, but he managed to figure out how to make it work for him, even in comedy.
So that was a very long session for us. I canceled all my classes that day. We broke for lunch, but otherwise we just stared at a screen in the dark. It was great fun for me—I loved all those movies and relished the opportunity to see them again—and my daughter came in at one point and sat down and watched The Lady Eve with us to her very evident enjoyment, and then quietly slipped out again. And you know, by then she’d become pretty blasé about meeting movie stars, they were in and out of the house all the time, she might brag about it to her friends but she played it cool herself. Nevertheless, she was pretty thrilled to be sitting in our den watching a movie with Chance Hardwick. I think all her friends had a huge crush on him by then, and so did she. Every once in a while I’d catch her stealing a glance at him, maybe to see if he was laughing at the same things that were making her laugh. But I honestly don’t believe he laughed once all day. He just watched intently, nodding from time to time, and occasionally making a note in this little notebook he kept with him. And when I finally turned the lights back on, we looked at each other bleary-eyed for a few seconds, and then he said to me, “Okay, got it. Thanks, Jim.”
As I was showing him out, I told him I wasn’t going to charge him for the session. But he insisted. He said, “Are you joking? Of course you need to charge me. I’ll pay any fee you name.”
“But I didn’t give you any coaching. We just watched some movies. Which I probably enjoyed a lot more than you did.”
And he said, “I can’t tell you how helpful this has been. Invaluable.”
And that was that. He was off and running.
Charles Cox (director)
I admit I had my doubts about Hardwick being in the picture. I’d mostly worked with actors familiar with high-style comedy, many with Broadway backgrounds, guys and gals for whom comedy was second nature. I was always confident they could deliver, they’d know where the laughs were and how to time them. I wasn’t so sure about Chance Hardwick. He was a great actor, I never doubted that, but I thought of him as a gloomy Gus, a soulful kind of guy, with angst his basic stock in trade. Still, the studio wanted him—wanted him? Hell, it was a Chance Hardwick picture—and once filming got underway, he turned out to be a dream to work with.
And he was really funny in the picture. Different style from what I was used to, very understated, never reaching for the laugh, odd line-readings, off-kilter timing. Took some getting used to. The first few days while we were actually on the set, I couldn’t tell what the hell he was up to, and I kept shooting and reshooting hoping to get enough coverage so we could stitch together an acceptable performance. But every time I took a look at the dailies, I realized how wrong I’d been, it was obvious he was scoring. And after a few days of that I relaxed. It was clear I could trust his instincts.
And his chemistry with Dolly Murray was great. Now, I never worried about Dolly. She was an excellent comic actress, always sexy and sweet and funny, a pretty rare combination at the best of times, so I knew she’d be fine. But I honestly don’t believe she’s ever been better than she was in Not My Fault! And I’m not claiming any special credit for that. There was a kind of electric current between her and Chance, and it gave her performance an added oomph. Their scenes together are a thing of beauty, both the ones where they’re at each other’s throats and the ones where they’re lovey-dovey. So charming you could plotz.
Dolores Murray (actress)
I can’t deny I developed a huge crush on Chance while we were shooting Not My Fault! Who would blame me? He was so gorgeous, and so funny, so amazingly sweet. Dreamy. The kind of boy girls swoon over, and their mothers fall in love with too. I cherished his company. We laughed almost nonstop during that shoot. He and Charlie Cox had this funny rat-a-tat going, you could tell they really dug each other, and he usually hung out with his pal Gil, who had a small part in the picture, and he was a really funny guy too, funny and crude and…well, today you’d call him politically incorrect, but he wasn’t offensive. I didn’t think he was, anyway. And they were kind enough to let me join them as a sort of honorary third musketeer.
I don’t know if Chance was aware I was carrying a torch for him. Oh, probably. I don’t think he missed much of anything. But we didn’t talk about it, goodness knows, and he didn’t give me the slightest indication of romantic interest. Unlike Gil, who was always sniffing around and making suggestive comments. But like I said, Gil was funny about it, not obnoxious. Of course, today women would probably be quick to cry sexual harassment at the things Gil said, but honestly, it was all manageable and quite amusing. And I knew Chance was involved with that artist, the French girl, and while I don’t know how serious they were, they were serious enough, so I didn’t have any serious expectations of him. Just…I mean, I wasn’t a teenager anymore, but I felt like a teenager. I had teenage fantasies. With an admixture of grown-up lust.
What made it complicated, at least a little bit complicated, is that the publicity people wanted to feature us as having a romance of sorts. Now, my image—this was mainly the doing of my own personal publicist at Rogers and Cowan, who was working in tandem with the studio people—my image was of a pure, devout Catholic girl. They even played up the fact that I’d once considered becoming a nun. Of course that was when I was fourteen or so, and it lasted all of maybe two weeks before I realized I didn’t have a calling, and besides, I liked boys too much. But it was enough for the PR people to inflate it and run with it. They thought it was an intriguing hook. For reasons I’ll never understand, some people find
celibacy sexy. If that’s not a paradox, nothing is. But anyway, because of that, Chance and I didn’t have to pretend to be sleeping together, they just wanted us to be seen going out on dates and to act like we were smitten. Which didn’t take any acting on my part! So we went out a few times, for dinner or a show, and Chance was good company, and we had a perfectly fine time—I was delighted to be able to see him out of school, so to speak—and the studio made sure photographers were on hand. And then we’d go our separate ways.
But then…ah, what the heck, it was so long ago, and I haven’t been to confession in decades, so maybe telling you this will win me remission. See, when the picture was released, the studio sent us out to do a publicity tour. Some premieres, some local media, stuff like that. And one night we were in Seattle, and we’d gone to the opening. Chance said to me, “If I ever have to watch this movie again, I think I’ll kill myself,” which seemed funny at the time, but in retrospect maybe not so much—and the big press party afterward, and then we were both exhausted and drained but also really hepped up, the way you are in those circumstances, so we decided to have a drink in the hotel bar to unwind, and we finally dragged ourselves up to our rooms, which were next door to each other, and I…it was probably a combination of fatigue and alcohol and the feeling of being in a foreign setting, plus I’ll come clean and admit to all the unruly desire I’d been repressing for all those months, but I said, “So, do you want to come in?” And he said, “Oh yeah, I sure do.”
And we had a very passionate night. Very. Like…I don’t even have words. And if I did, I’d keep them to myself! [laughs] But that was that. He slipped out the next morning after giving me a little kiss on the forehead, nothing more intimate than that, and although afterward he was as friendly as ever, we never referred to that night again. I was too shy, and he…well, I suppose he preferred to pretend it had never happened. I was a teeny-weeny bit heartbroken, but I knew I had no right to expect anything else. So that’s how I consoled myself, by telling myself it was a magic night and that was a lot more than I could ever have realistically hoped for. Some consolation.
Dorothy Goren Mckenzie
My dad died right around the time Not My Fault! came out. He lived long enough to see it, though. I’m not saying it killed him, mind you, I’m just saying he saw it. Saw it and dumped all over it, naturally. Said it was the stupidest thing he’d ever seen. He offered that opinion a lot, so I guess those stupid things just kept topping each other. [laughs] What he really hated, what really irked the heck out of him, was the fact that when we saw it the audience loved it and my mom and I were laughing all the way through. We thought it was hysterical. We had no idea Chance could be so funny. We knew he could be funny in a dry, wry way, but not out-and-out hysterical like that. There’s that scene where he has one girl hiding in his bedroom and one girl obliviously puttering away in his kitchen and neither knows the other is there and he’s kind of going nuts, afraid they’ll discover each other, and he has that cross-eyed crazy look of terror on his face—I mean, he’s so scared, but also so aware how much he’s screwed up and how insane the situation is—it was such a hoot everybody in the audience was laughing so loud we couldn’t even hear the dialogue for close to a minute. But Dad just sat there glumly, robotically eating his popcorn and slurping his Coke and grunting his disapproval every once in a while.
It was interesting—this is just by the way—it was interesting the first time Gil appeared onscreen. I wasn’t expecting it at all, I didn’t know he had a part in the picture. Gave me a little…you know, it gave me that feeling you get. Down in your…in your nether regions. Sometimes your body remembers things you thought you’d forgot.
Anyhow, Daddy died suddenly—heart, which might have been the first definitive proof he actually had one—and Mom called Chance to tell him. And she wanted him to come home for the funeral. He refused. She was practically begging. I only heard her side of the conversation, but after they hung up and she stopped crying, she told me he said, “You know how I feel about Steve, Mom. It would be pure hypocrisy to pay my respects when I didn’t have any respect. I’m sorry if you’re hurting or you feel you have to pretend you’re hurting, but I don’t feel a goddamned thing.” And then he told her, “I’ll come home for your funeral, but I’ll be damned if I’d even travel around the block for his.” It didn’t occur to him, or to any of us, that he’d never get a chance to attend her funeral, that he’d pass years before she did.
Gil Fraser
Chance started hosting these all-day parties on weekends. All-day parties that sometimes stretched out into all-night parties. Not every weekend, of course, but maybe once or twice a month. The whole deal seemed out of character for him—he was never much of a social animal in the years we were closest. Sure, he liked going out every once in a while, but he always valued his solitude too, and he always seemed relieved when he got back home and could withdraw into his room. But, well, he had this big luxurious Malibu pad now and he had his fame and he had lots of money and he was moving in pretty elevated circles, so he started entertaining.
I went a couple of times and then I stopped. No, no, I was always invited. He didn’t drop me. Like I told you, he was a good pal. Chance not only invited me but used to argue with me when I made up some excuse, when I said I had other plans or I wasn’t feeling so good. He’d tell me who was going to be there and how it might be helpful for my career and what a good time I’d have. But I didn’t find it to be such a good time. Those things were always packed with stars and heavy hitters, with his Malibu neighbors and this new group of friends of his, and I never felt comfortable in that setting. I try not to be too conscious of status in my life, even in a town and a business as status-conscious as this one, but in that setting status was impossible to ignore. And in my case, to ignore my lesser status. I mean, Natalie and R. J. were often around, Steve McQueen, Russ Tamblyn, Roddy McDowell, Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor one time, Gore Vidal, Paul and Joanne…it was like the footprints at Grauman’s had grown bodies and sprung to life. Wall-to-wall fame and fortune, except there usually weren’t walls, the action was mostly out by the pool or down on the beach.
There’s a sort of freemasonry of fame, you know? A social club off limits to non-celebrities. Chance had had the secret handshake revealed to him, so to speak. He’d become a legitimate peer of such people. I definitely wasn’t. I was a steadily working actor, I had respectable status in the industry, but I wasn’t anything like Hollywood royalty, and being there made me feel like a hanger-on. Like part of Chance’s entourage, picking up scraps dropped from his table. A yes-man or a stooge. A younger, thinner Jilly Rizzo. I didn’t think of myself in those terms, and I didn’t like it. Plus, I didn’t like being ignored or just tolerated. So I stopped going pretty quickly.
But please don’t think it was Chance’s fault or Chance’s doing. He was always a good friend. He wanted me there, he treated me great, he never failed to introduce me around and tell people who I was and what I’d done. But the others…I mean, it isn’t like people were deliberately rude or anything. They just weren’t especially interested. I wasn’t on their level. If, say, I attached myself to a little conversational knot and offered a contribution, no one would tell me to butt out or say something dismissive. They usually just wouldn’t respond at all, they would pick up the conversation as if I hadn’t spoken. No matter whether what I’d said was interesting or valid or smart. And hey, I don’t even blame them. If I’d been one of them, I’d probably have acted the same way. You’re a star and you’re at a party with other stars, you want to hang out with your fellow stars, right? Measure yourself against them. You don’t want to waste your time with some zhlub off the street.
So there was a lot of sitting around the pool or lying out on the beach, and it was pretty delicious from one point of view, but if you were like me you’d just be sitting or lying there on your own for several hours with no one to talk to or flirt with, and that can get boring. And you
can start to feel like a pariah. You might say hello to one or two people and there was usually a barbecue and the food and drink was always good, it just wasn’t enough to keep me there. There was a lot of drinking and often a lot of pot, and I had no objection to either of those— I think heavier drugs came along later, although that wouldn’t have been Chance’s scene, it might have been some of his friends’ though—but I decided I preferred to see Chance one-on-one, or as a threesome with Briel, or on a double-date if I was seeing someone. It was much easier to be natural in that kind of situation. We’d all grab a bite someplace where we knew he wouldn’t be hassled, or go to a club to hear some music, and it was just amigos, none of that Hollywood crap.
Speaking of which, I don’t think Briel showed up at those Malibu marathons very often either. Maybe for reasons similar to mine, I don’t know. It was Chance’s new crowd, young up-and-comers. They were at the core of those parties. You know who I mean? They were like an earlier version of the eighties Brat Pack. They expected to inherit the whole world of showbiz soon. They had that kind of cockiness. And hey, some of them succeeded. They weren’t completely full of shit. But whether they were full of shit or not, they’d already established their own arrogant little clique, and if you weren’t part of it you didn’t feel welcome.
Also…well, you probably won’t be surprised to hear that sometimes these parties got a little rambunctious. I mean, think of it, the guests are lying out there in the sun wearing practically nothing, all these fabulous-looking people, and there’s alcohol and marijuana wherever you look, and you’re rich and you’re free and normal rules don’t seem to apply to you…so you can probably imagine that there were days when those parties more or less spontaneously turned into fuck-fests. And that wouldn’t have been Briel’s scene at all. Might have been mine, to be honest, but what could be worse than being the odd-man-out at an orgy?