by Peter Corris
Browning Without a
Cause
By Peter Corris
Copyright ©Peter Corris, 2014
First published by Imprint, 1995
For Bill Garner
For help in the preparation of this book, the writer wishes to thank Jean Bedford, John Baxter, the Marrickville Public Library and Video Ezi, Marrickville.
CONTENTS
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Notes
1
WHEN I got back to America after working on Elephant Walk with Vivien Leigh, Peter Finch and Dana Andrews involving my being kidnapped by Tamil rebels, charged by a rogue elephant and toasted in a fire-walking ceremony,1 I made two very rash vows. The first was to 'love, honour and cherish, forsaking all others etc.' Louise Townshend whom I married in front of Judge B. Perfect Walker at the Encino courthouse in the San Fernando Valley. It was Louise's first marriage and my third or fourth, depending on how you count.2 She looked suitably beautiful and virginal in white (all Hollywood brides manage to look like virgins even if it's their tenth time at bat and they've still got their diaphragm in from the night before), and I looked grizzled, humble and mature — well, I was an actor after all.
My second vow was never to work again on a film in a foreign country. I definitely meant to abide by both of these undertakings and, by my standards, I made a fair fist of the first one. I broke the second within a year by signing up for a part in Giant. I can hear you saying that Giant was shot in Texas with American actors. True, but if you think Texas in 1954 wasn't a foreign country and that Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean weren't alien beings, guess again.
I got back to LA in the early summer of 1953, after Louise and I had taken a long, pre-honeymoon trip around the States finding out if we could get along in the bathroom as well as the bedroom.
Things were looking pretty good. I had money honestly earned in my pocket for one thing, and although I wasn't going to get an acting credit for Elephant Walk, I felt sure that the good work I'd done behind the scenes would boost my stocks. It isn't everyone who's faced down a charging elephant with a pistol. Dana Andrews had seen the whole show and was bound to have told all his drinking pals about it. For another, I had the money to pay back Johnny Stompanato and I did it, as they say in the business, toot sweet. I had owed him a lot of money as a result of a long losing streak on the horses, at cards and picking fighters with glass jaws. If Johnny the Stomp couldn't collect from your pocket he liked to keep his hand in at the strong-arm stuff by collecting in the form of cracking your skull and breaking your bones. It was to avoid this that I'd left for England in 1953. A few years on and Lana Turner's daughter Cheryl Crane was to cancel everyone's debts to Johnny with a carving knife. Johnny's funeral was well and cheerfully attended. But that's looking ahead to a happier time.
The first thing I did on getting back to Hollywood was marry Louise, the second was call on my agent N. Robert Silkstein. I did things in that order because Bobby Silk would have had a hundred and one reasons why I shouldn't get married. The only marriages agents approved of were ones they arranged themselves or could see a buck in. There was nothing for Bobby in my getting hitched to an Australian nurse who thought movies were for going to see rather than working in. On the other hand, like a lot of his kind, he was a sentimentalist who approved of the institution of marriage — as witness his own five or six ventures — and would accept mine as an accomplished fact if he had to.
'Dick, I couldn't be happier for you,' Bobby said after offering me a cigar which I declined. Louise's only fault in my eyes were an excessive interest in illness and disease. She was a bit ahead of her time in stressing the connection between smoking and lung cancer and she'd compelled me to try to quit. I felt a thousand regrets as I watched Bobby light up his massive stogie. I knew his prostate was shot so there was always a chance he'd have to slip away for a piss and I might get to have a few draws. This is the sort of miserable thinking tobacco addiction can lead to.
'Thanks, Bobby. She's a great girl. She'll keep me on the straight and narrow for sure. She's already got me to cut down on cigarettes and off hard liquor. I'm fitter than I've been for years.'
Through a cloud of expensive blue smoke, Bobby looked me over like a chef selecting beef. 'Yeah, you look good. I could lose a few pounds myself.'
Bobby was short, not much above five feet, and the slim youth he'd once been was now a memory, preserved only in twenty-year-old photographs. He'd grown two extra chins and looked as if he wore a Mae West under his shirt. He had stumpy arms and I wondered if he could get close enough to his desk to do any writing on it. But then, Bobby didn't do much writing. His method of communication, his weapon and wand, was the telephone and it was unusual in my experience to see him without one in his hand for this long. It must have been almost ten minutes. As if the thought had produced the effect, the phone rang and he snatched it up.
'Silkstein, yeah. Hey, Clark, good to hear from you.'
He covered the mouthpiece and winked at me. 'Gable,' he said. 'He's thinking of coming over to me."
'I didn't think it was Clark Kent.'
Bobby scowled, not liking jokes that deflated his importance. 'Yeah, baby. Yeah, well…Ok. Sure.'
He hung up and puffed on his cigar. 'No dice. So what? The guy's washed up anyway. Ok, Dick. So here you are, and here I am and what do you wanna do?'
'Do? I want to work of course. I'm a bit out of touch. What's coming up?'
He puffed more smoke and didn't answer. I knew that a new style of acting was coming in — one where the actor said as little as possible and when he did speak he mumbled so no one could hear him. Fine for Brando, but I hadn't expected it to be picked up by agents. I stared at him and wished I had a cigarette, or a scotch, or both, and it was only ten o'clock in the morning.
'Dick, Dick, I know you been away, boy. But not on the moon. Things have changed in this town.'
Sure,' I said. 'Got to expect that. Look, Bobby, I'm no chicken and I haven't exactly had a string of hits. I'm not looking for a five-year contract with Paramount. I'm talking a gangster flick with Warners, a Western with MGM…'
He shook his head. 'What I mean. Both dead ducks. All the gangsters shot each other. Cagney and Bogart and Robinson bumped each other off so many times people know what's going to happen the minute they come on the screen. They're yawning into their popcorn. And you know what they're calling Westerns now? Oaters, would you believe it?'
'All right. So what is being made? Musicals? War pictures? Horror stuff? Sports? What?'
More head-shaking. 'What's being made is not a lot.' Bobby looked pleased with himself for having said this and I have to admit it had the Goldwyn ring. He whipped a gold pen from his shirt pocket, opened a drawer, took out a notepad and scribbled.
'That's brilliant, Bobby,' I said. 'I'll tell everyone you said it, but it doesn't answer my question.'
He put the pen and pad away and held up two pudgy fingers — both with rings on them. 'Fucking television's kicking the shit outa movie audiences. Taking
s are down, way down.'
I almost laughed. It sounds strange now with big screens and colour and stereo and video recorders and the mute button, but TV seemed like small beer in the early 50s. It was before Gunsmoke and Peter Gunn and Peyton Place (that is, before good Western, detective or sex shows) and the few times I'd looked at the little black and white screen it was always Ozzie and Harriet or George and Gracie. Sports were another matter. Rocky Marciano was KO-ing them at the time, and the Rock's fights were always good to watch on TV, especially in a bar with a few like-minded souls. But I couldn't believe sitting at home staring at a piece of furniture would ever take the place of a night out at the movies with all the possibilities that offered. However, here was a man who ate, drank and breathed movies telling me forcibly it was so.
'It's a phase,' I said. 'People want to go out. They…'
'Some phase. I could show you the figures. You've got it wrong. People want to stay in. It's, whatcha call it, sociology.'
I gaped. I didn't know what sociology was then and still don't really, and I'd have bet my last dime Bobby Silk didn't either. But he had my attention.
'Folks are buying their own houses more than ever before. It's where they're spending their dough so it's where they wanna spend their time. It figures. Plus, the houses are getting more comfortable. They got washing machines and refrigerators. Mom wants to look at these gadgets, polish 'em for christ sake. Pop can keep his beer cold. They're staying home. The kids? Well, sure, they're going to drive-ins. Once a week maybe. That don't add up to the whole fucking family going to the movies a couple times a week.'
'I get it. But…'
Bobby waved his cigar. 'Did I say movies got only two strikes against them? There's three, maybe four.'
I'd never got very interested in baseball. I admit it's more interesting than cricket, but all those fat bellies and that tobacco chewing put me off. I also thought it had to be crooked — there were just too many ways to doctor things and it never surprised me to learn that the 1920 World Series was fixed. Still, I was pretty sure there was no such thing as four strikes, but when Bobby was in full flight there was no stopping him.
'We got the House Committee on Un-American Activities bullshit still stinking the joint up. The blacklist. The directors are scared, the writers are scared, some of the actors too. And Warners is the worst hit. All those social issue pictures they used to make, where the system is to blame? That all stinks now.'
'McCarthy's a windbag and a phoney. They're going to see through him sooner or later.'
'They seen through Hoover yet? And he's a schwartze and a fag. And there's more. The anti-trust laws took away the theatres from the studios. They can't open a picture big and pump it up themselves anymore. Gotta rely on selling the movie to the publicity machines and if they won't play there's no game.'
'You make it sound like the business is finished. You're looking prosperous still, Bobby. Good looking secretary out there. Redecorated office. What's this style called?'
Silkstein re-did his office every few years. I'd seen it look like a high school gymnasium, an Arab's tent and a French whorehouse. Now it was very plain, with bookshelves and leather sofas and polished wood.
'It's called American. Solid, reliable, homey. And if I'm still poking my nose above water it's because I could sniff the wind. I'm taking on TV people — writers, directors, actors, the works. The future's with TV. Believe me.'
'I can't. Can you imagine watching a movie on a screen that big. How'd Gone with the Wind look like that? Ridiculous!'
'You'd be surprised. All the studios are making dough selling their old movies to TV. Last thing. The male stars been dragging the women in for the past twenty years are getting old — Cooper, Wayne, Gable. Flynn's a wreck. That boat of his is a travelling bar plus pharmacy. They all got bags under their eyes and less hair. And this new guy, Brando, is he gonna do it all on his own? Name me one other actor under thirty the broads are interested in.'
I thought about it, and couldn't.
'You see what I mean, Dick. Now you, you don't exactly fit into the fresh face category yourself. Am I right?'
As I say, I was fit and by a quirk of nature I always looked twenty years younger than I really was, but there was no hiding the fact that 'mature' was putting it mildly. I'd looked forward to steady work in character parts, still getting the occasional girl and jumping on the odd horse. Now it looked as if I'd have to think again. I glanced around the room. Bobby had kept the old star photos pretty much in place — Bobby with Bogie (clowning with a gun), Bobby with Groucho (comparing cigars), Bobby with Jane Russell (wearing what had to be his highest pair of built-up shoes), but there were a few new faces I didn't know. I got up and went over to look at them more closely. The men all appeared much the same — blonde types with rugged jaws. I put my finger on one.
'Who's this?'
'George Reeves.'
'Never heard of him. What's he done?'
'Not a matter of what he's done. Nothing much. It's what he's gonna be — Superman. Big series going into production.'
'Jesus, Bobby. Have you no shame?' I moved my finger. 'What about this one?'
'Richard Carlson. He's in a show called I Led Three Lives, about a guy who's a member of the Communist Party but really works for the FBI.'
'Terrific. What's his other life?'
Bobby put his cigar down in the black glass ashtray and stared at the Norman Rockwell print on the wall. 'You know somethin', I don't know. I never asked.'
'Maybe the audience won't ask either. This television is for idiots, Bobby. Comic books that move and talk is what it sounds like to me.'
'It's where the money's going to be unless something amazing happens in pictures and I don't see it.'
'Three-d?'
'Don't make me laugh.'
'Cinemascope, then. Don't ask me what it is, but I've heard about it.'
'It just means big. Won't change a thing. So, Dick, I'm glad you're back and I'm glad you've got out from under Johnny Stomp, but…'
'You heard about that?'
'I heard about it. Like I say, there's not a lot around. You reckon this Elephant Hunt thing's going to be big? Might help you some.'
I considered the question. The shoot had been a shambles and I'd since been told that Vivien Leigh was having trouble completing her work on the pictures. What with nerves, booze, TB and Laurence Olivier — she had a hell of a lot of problems. Peter Finch wasn't a star yet and Dana Andrews was on the skids. I shook my head. 'It's Elephant Walk, and no, I don't think it'll be big.'
He re-lit his cigar, puffed, didn't like the taste and snuffed it out. I was beginning to feel like the stogie. 'Well, then, what can we do? Tell you something, there's a new country club opening up. You could give golf, tennis and riding lessons. I can maybe get you the job.'
I didn't have to think about that. I was too old to give tennis and riding lessons. Golf perhaps, but not all three. And the thought of Bobby Silk taking ten per cent of such sweaty earnings didn't appeal. I shook my head. 'What about some work in TV?'
'I thought you said it was for idiots.'
'What's more idiotic than starving in a land of plenty?'
'I'll see what I can do.'
2
SO began a period which I'd rather not recall. Only the absolute honesty of these memoirs (and the fact that everyone now is so obsessed with television) compels me to talk about it. For the next year and a bit I worked as a TV character actor and bit player, appearing in shows like Medic, The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, The Cisco Kid, The Lone Ranger, and, perhaps worst of all, Joe Palooka. The TV directors liked my looks — I was big and dark and battered and I could ride and shoot and fall down convincingly. I drank shots of cold tea in plaster-board bar-rooms and ducked and took punches and collected crummy pay cheques until I was almost stupefied by boredom. The trouble was, the work was there and it was steady and nothing else was on offer. I'd rented a nice house in Agoura in the Valley with a swimming pool
and tennis court because Louise had so much sexual energy I had to provide something to take the edge off it or she'd have killed me in the bedroom. But it all cost money, as did going to and throwing parties so's not to be forgotten, and driving and maintaining two decent cars. American in those days, of course.
After a while, Louise got bored with sitting around and playing tennis and swimming and screwing and she got herself a part-time job in Alameda Hospital. Louise had really blossomed in California. She was a California girl before anyone thought of such an animal — tall, blonde, suntanned, a real work-all-day and dance-all-night type. She had brains too and I often caught her boning up on medical textbooks. She was a wow at dinner parties with stories about doctors.
Eventually, everyone who doesn't look like Quasimodo, and even some who do, get swallowed up by the entertainment business in LA. Medic was a bit ahead of its time as a 'concept' as the jargon goes. It was hosted by Richard Boone who was to make it big in Have Gun will Travel (in which I was shot and killed a couple of times but that's a later story), and it dealt in a realistic way with medical matters. Boone, looking professional and reliable in his white coat, would come on and say, 'My name is Konrad Styner. I'm a doctor of medicine.' Then he'd give the title of the episode and the problem it dealt with. Then, 'Guardian of birth, healer of the sick, comforter of the aged. To the profession of medicine, to the men and women who labour in its cause, this story is dedicated.'
It might sound a little corny now, but it was a hell of a lot better than introductions such as, 'A fiery horse with the speed of light, a cloud of dust and a hearty hi-ho, Silver!' Medic was shot in real hospitals around Los Angeles and it was during an episode set in the Alameda casualty department that Boone met my Louise. She was always game for anything and willingly accepted the role of the nurse who battled to save the life of an accident victim given up for dead by everyone else. She looked terrific, did a great job, and was offered a spot on the show, playing the part of a visiting hospital supervisor who popped up from time to time to help get Styner out of a hole. Sometimes she'd put on a black wig and do a bit part, usually when they needed an English voice. Louise spoke with an Australian accent but in Hollywood that equals English. Her work on Boone's show led to other offers and pretty soon she was appearing on TV about as regularly as me.