I sat in that damn box for an hour before my buddies found a rope and reeled me in.
One Saturday night a bunch of us were arrested for fighting, and they put us in a big holding cell. My dad came in and told the other kids one by one: “Your father’s here, you can go home. Your father’s here, you can go home.” Then he looked at me and said, “Your father didn’t show up.”
I was in that cell all night. By morning I figured that any minute he’d come and take me home for a whippin’ and a good breakfast, but I stayed there all day, with every drunk and vagrant in town. I stayed in that damn cell for two days! I know it sounds harsh, but it straightened me out. I never got in trouble after that. I think that lesson saved me, along with the fact that there were very few illegal drugs floating around back then.
—
MY DAD was a great man, but sometimes he did things that were hard to swallow if you didn’t know who he really was. He was judgmental, if not downright prejudiced, and it could be cruel. There was a wonderful girl in my high school named Sally; she was half Seminole. The guys called her “Sally Seminole,” which made me mad. Her whole family worked as migrant laborers, and she’d miss school when they had to pick tomatoes. When she wasn’t working we’d ride the bus together and talk all the way to school. I had a crush on her and tried to get her to go out with me, but she said, “No, I’d better not.”
But one day around Christmas she came and knocked on the door. I wanted to ask her in, but my dad was standing there. He didn’t say anything, but I could tell he didn’t want her to come in the house. Sally got the message, too, and she left.
I was ashamed of him, but more ashamed of myself. I wanted to tell him how hurtful he’d been, but I didn’t have the courage. It’s one of the biggest sorrows of my life, because I looked up to my dad. To this day it’s hard for me to understand how he could have such a blind spot.
After we graduated, I never saw Sally again, though I tried to find her. Told she lived in a trailer in the middle of nowhere, I drove out to the address I’d been given, but the trailer was gone. I wish I knew what happened to her.
Yet Big Burt could be generous and compassionate. I had a friend in junior high named Jimmy Hooks. He had an alcoholic mother and an absent father, and it was tough on him. I went home with him one day after school and saw him fight a grown man. Damn near whipped the guy, too. I felt sorry for Jimmy and admired his guts. I felt he deserved better. “Hooksey,” I said, “you’re coming home with me.”
When we got to the house, I said to my mom, “Jimmy’s gonna live with us from now on.”
“We’ll talk about it when Big Burt gets home,” she said.
My dad knew about Jimmy’s situation, him being the police chief and it being a small town. “Yes, son, he can live here,” he said. “But we’ve got rules in this house, and you’ll both have to abide by them. Come upstairs.” He opened my closet, put his hand in the middle of the clothes, and went pffft, dividing them in half. “Jimmy, these are your clothes over here, and those are Buddy’s over there,” he said.
Gee, I didn’t even get a chance to pick ’em out or anything.
My parents legally adopted Jimmy and treated him like a son from then on.
Jimmy has a winning personality and everybody likes him. He was a pretty good football player, too. He wasn’t big, but he made up in desire for what he lacked in athletic ability. He became a high school football coach, and when my dad talked about the two of us, he considered Jimmy the bigger success.
Unfortunately, Jimmy and I haven’t stayed close over the years. It isn’t his fault. The gal he married wasn’t crazy about me. She thought I should have been more attentive to Jim and helped him more financially, but I’d already helped him a lot, and there came a time when I thought he should strike out on his own. As it was, he had every break anybody could ask for, and I was disappointed with him in that sense. I thought he could have done better if he’d tried harder.
—
RIVIERA BEACH—growing up, I thought it was pronounced “Riveera”—was a tough town on the wrong side of the river, but the people there respected Big Burt. He’d take me with him sometimes to places I had no business going, and Mom wasn’t thrilled about the idea. One night when I was sixteen, he said, “C’mon, we’re going down to the Blue Heron.” It was a bar that was scary to drive by in your car. He had to go in and arrest a couple of hard guys. There were already two cops there, but the guys said, “We ain’t goin’ nowhere until the chief comes.”
I went in with my dad, but I stopped at the end of the bar to watch. Both guys had knives. Dad said, “Put the knives on the bar,” and they did. He picked one up. “This is a nice knife,” he said as he jammed it into the bar, causing the blade to break off. “But a lousy blade,” he quickly added. Then he threw the handle at him. I thought we’d have to fight our way out, but everybody in the place seemed to think that was terrific, including the two guys!
We all went out and got in the car. They were in the backseat and I was in front with my dad. “Your dad’s a hell of a man,” one of them said, and the other nodded. I was amazed that they were praising him while he was taking them to jail.
Big Burt was tough, all right. He thought acting was for sissies. When I was in junior college taking theater classes, whenever he was pissed off at me he’d say, “Is that an acting thing you’re doing?” And whenever I mentioned the name of one of my friends, he’d say, “Is he an actor or does he work?” He thought it was a candy-ass profession. I hoped he’d get over it, but years later, after I’d done a television series, he said, “When are you going to get a real job?”
“I think this is it, Dad.”
“It’s not a real job. You’re just playacting.”
He never acknowledged that I was any good at it. He was of course the police chief, and all the officers under him were proud of me. I asked them, “Does he ever talk about me?”
“Nope.”
—
IN 1960, just before I went to Germany to do a picture called Armored Command, Dad gave me the name of a woman there and asked me to look her up.
“She may not be alive,” I said.
“She’s alive,” he said.
“How do you know her?”
“She’s a friend.”
I phoned the lady when I got there. I sound like my father on the phone, and when she heard my voice she said, “Burt?”
“Yes.”
“Oh, Burt . . .”
Uh-oh, I thought. “Not Burt senior, Burt junior,” I said.
There was a long pause before she said, “Please come visit me.”
The house was more like a castle. It was on top of a mountain, at the end of a winding road. When I got out of the car a woman who looked like Grace Kelly was standing there to greet me. She gave me a great big hug.
We went inside and made a tour of the house. There were huge paintings of her relatives on the walls, all highly decorated soldiers. And then we came to a portrait of my dad.
“Do you like it?” she said.
“Yes, it’s beautiful.”
“Would you take a photograph home and show it to your father?”
I said I would, so she snapped a picture. Then she took one of me and said, “I’d like to put your picture on the wall, too.” By this time I was a little numb, but I told her I was flattered.
We spent the rest of the afternoon talking about my father.
The next morning on the set, a German reporter came up to me and said, “I understand you looked up your father’s sweetheart.”
“Not his sweetheart,” I said, “his friend.”
I did everything I could to prevent it, but the story broke in the European tabloids. I felt responsible for the invasion of the lady’s privacy, and I was so embarrassed, I never called her again.
When I got home, I told my dad that
I met her and that she was beautiful and sweet. When I told him about the portrait, he seemed touched.
“She wanted my picture, too,” I said, “so I guess we’ll both be on the wall.”
“That’s nice,” he said. “But please don’t tell your mother or your sister about it.”
—
THE FIRST TIME my dad came to visit me in Hollywood, the only actor he wanted to meet was Charles Durning. Charley was, without a doubt, the best actor I ever worked with. Everything he did was completely real. It was never like he was reciting lines, it was like he was talking to you. He was loved and respected by his fellow actors, but at the same time they were scared to death of him, because they knew his war record. What they didn’t know was that in his youth, Charley had been a hell of a boxer. Here’s a trivia question: Which two actors were on the same fight card at Madison Square Garden? Charles Durning and Jack Warden, who fought under the name Red Costello. Two of our best character actors fought on the same fight card!
I’d heard that Charley earned a Silver Star and three Purple Hearts during World War II, but I never knew the details because, like my dad, he wouldn’t talk about it. I found out on my own that he was temporarily blinded and spent three years in military hospitals being treated for shrapnel wounds. After he got out of the hospital, he enrolled in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York on the GI Bill, but they kicked him out. They said he didn’t have the talent to be an actor. But he kept at it, doing bit parts while working as a doorman, night watchman, cabdriver, dishwasher, and ballroom dancing instructor at an Arthur Murray studio.
Charley got his big break when Joseph Papp asked him to audition for the New York Shakespeare Festival and cast him in dozens of plays. He made a big impression in That Championship Season (1972) on Broadway, then did a long string of standout roles in films like The Sting (1973), Dog Day Afternoon (1975), Tootsie (1982), To Be or Not to Be (1983), and O Brother, Where Art Thou? (2000).
Over the years Charley and I made four or five films and did Evening Shade on television together. For as long as I knew him, he was always working. Yet he was insecure. He doubted his ability as an actor, and between roles he thought he’d never work again.
When Big Burt and Charley got together and began comparing notes, they realized that they’d been on the same beach in Normandy together. They’d sit for hours talking about the war. Charley was one of the few actors my dad had any use for, and it wasn’t because he was an actor.
Big Burt was strict while I was growing up, but he never mistreated me, at least not on purpose. He taught me to accept the consequences of my actions like a man and to be the last one standing in a fight. Sure, there were times where he couldn’t rise above his prejudices, but I forgave him for it. My mom died in 1992, when she was ninety. After that he was very dear to me. He died in his sleep exactly ten years later, at ninety-five. He never said he loved me, but he did finally say that he was proud of me. And that was enough.
Mo Mustaine
Kreig “Mo” Mustaine has been my best friend since junior high. Everyone called him Mo because he’s part Mohawk. We played football, baseball, and basketball together through high school. He was a terrific athlete. Mo didn’t have it easy growing up. His father wasn’t around and his mother struggled. He wanted to go to college and play football, but he had to work, so after high school he got a job with an electrical company. All the guys with football scholarships felt sorry for “poor Mo.” Well, poor Mo is retired now, but at one point he had 150 electricians working for him and all you saw around West Palm Beach was Mo Mustaine Electric billboards and trucks.
Mo was always one of the “neat” fellas. His trademark was taping his socks up. He said he did it because he couldn’t stand it when they flopped down. What he didn’t point out was that he had the skinniest legs in the world. Tall socks and skinny legs. (I hope he won’t mind me telling this, but he still tapes his socks up!) He also bleached his hair blond in front. Like I said, one of the neat fellas.
Most of the boys in junior high came to school barefoot, and I didn’t want anybody to think I was a candy-ass, so I’d leave the house with my shoes on, hide them in a palmetto bush, and pray it didn’t rain. Mo and I both played football barefoot. He even kicked extra points that way. When we got to high school, they made us wear football shoes and we were convinced it slowed us down.
We had occasional whippings in school, for talking or laughing or whatever. One day Mo and I were both getting it at the same time. We grabbed our balls and bent over. Mo would get five slaps and then I’d get five and so on. I wasn’t about to cry and neither was Mo. It always makes ’em mad when they can’t make you cry.
South Florida was a wonderful place to grow up in. I spent many an afternoon diving off the bridge over the Boynton Beach Inlet. It was a high span, and what made the dive more interesting were the turrets on either side of the deck. I’d climb on top of one and be fifty feet above the water. The tourists would pull over to watch, and Mo and the guys would run around taking up a collection. We learned to get the money in advance, because the audience wouldn’t always be there when I came back. I could make five or six bucks on a good day.
The Everglades were our backyard, and we’d go out on airboats and bulldog deer. The boat would come up behind one and you’d jump out and grab the deer around the neck. Not only was it cruel to the deer, it was stupid: their hooves were like knives and you had to watch out for the horns, too. Plus there were gators everywhere. I didn’t bulldog them, but I did swim in their vicinity. I’d see their little eyes and think, This could be trouble. Brilliant! That’s when I learned to swim really fast, and how to board a boat without hopping in, just shooting right onto it from the water in one swimming motion.
Mo and I would go deep into the ’Glades to visit this amazing character, an American original who has become a legend in South Florida. His name was Vincent Nostokovich. During the Great Depression he left his home in Trenton, New Jersey, to ride the rails as a hobo. He wound up in Jupiter, Florida, changed his name to Trapper Nelson, and dropped out of society. With borrowed money he bought eight hundred acres deep in the jungle on the Loxahatchee River, and lived off the land by hunting, fishing, and trapping. At six-foot-four and 240 pounds, Trapper Nelson was known as the Tarzan of the Loxahatchee River.
Mo and I would skip school to go see him. The first time we went he put us through a rite of passage: We had to swing on a rope over a lagoon he said was filled with alligators, though we never saw one. We swung across praying the gators wouldn’t chomp our legs off. Trapper thought that was hysterical. He showed us how to set traps and skin small game. He could tell I wasn’t crazy about snakes, so he made me handle rattlers to conquer my fear. I’d grab it by the head and hold on for dear life.
“Isn’t that great?” he’d say.
“Yeah, just wonderful.”
We talked about everything, including politics. He had a hard-on for the government and he hated what the country was coming to. He said it was stupid for the United States to be the world’s policeman.
Though Trapper was a handsome man, he was a hermit, and everyone was surprised when he married a woman from Palm Beach and went to live with her. For one night. He couldn’t stand it, so he brought her back with him to the jungle. She stayed for one night and went back to Palm Beach, and that was the end of the marriage.
He kept buying acreage and eventually opened a zoo that became a tourist attraction. During the winter, Yankees would go there on a “jungle cruise” and walk around thinking they were in danger. When the state health department closed down the zoo in 1960, he couldn’t keep up the tax payments and lost most of his precious land, which made him even more of a hermit.
His death in 1968 from a shotgun blast to the stomach was ruled a suicide, but it was suspicious. The official story is that he was sick with cancer and depressed over losing most of his property, but I don’t believe it. H
e wasn’t the kind of man to kill himself. Developers wanted his remaining land, but he wouldn’t sell. Mo says that if Trapper had killed himself, he wouldn’t have used a shotgun, he would’ve let a rattlesnake do it. But I don’t think he would have done it at all. I think he was caught up in something he couldn’t control.
Mo and I stayed close, but on one occasion we didn’t let friendship get in the way of money. When we were sixteen I bought a motorbike from Mo. He’d paid twenty dollars for it and I drove a hard bargain: “It’s been used now!” So we agreed on seven bucks. I intended to ride it to school every day, but my dad didn’t approve. He said it was too far to take that little thing, but I was determined. I’d go out every day before school and it wouldn’t turn over. But it would start up miraculously on Saturday mornings. Dad was disconnecting the spark plug wires on weekdays and reconnecting them on weekends. I didn’t discover this until I was fifty years old. Dad didn’t tell me, he told Mo.
Like all teenage boys in those days, Mo and I were obsessed with cars. There was a nearby town called Kelsey City that was nothing but streets. No houses, no traffic signals, just streets. It was a casualty of the real estate booms and busts in Florida and a perfect place to take your girl to park. It’s where I taught Mo how to drive, in my dad’s Buick. Including how to parallel-park! As I look back, it warms me to know that I was able to do that for him, because we were like brothers.
In more ways than one. We had fraternities in high school, even though they were officially banned. All the neat guys belonged to one, so Mo and I joined Alpha Sigma Pi. Our frat colors were green and yellow. There was an advertising blimp the size of a car that hung over a local garage. They kept it inside during the day but brought it out at night and tied it to the building with ropes. One night at about midnight, Mo and I and a couple of fraternity brothers decided to take the blimp, paint it green and yellow, put a big ASP on it, and let it float over the high school. We untied the blimp and were each holding one of the ropes. It was fine until one guy let go. The blimp started to rise and another guy let go and then it really started going up. When Mo dropped off, he must have fallen ten feet.
But Enough About Me: A Memoir Page 2