At the Beverly Hills Playhouse, we had ten Japanese soldiers hunkered down on the left side of the stage and ten American G.I.’s (including me ... and the Negro from the song) clumped together on the right side. As the action progressed, we inched (literally) toward each other, pausing occasionally to break out into song and dance.
In the end, my pacifist Negro pal dies tragically in my arms, and a similar senseless fate befalls his Japanese counterpart. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house, mainly because everybody left at intermission.
I approached my role, the Innocent Midwestern Kid, like Olivier preparing to do Hamlet. Frankly, I was happy to be working and had convinced myself that we were on the verge of making theatrical history. I even asked Karen to bring her parents, Ben and Nancy, to see me work. When Karen announced our engagement a short time later, it’s no small wonder they warned her: “Are you sure you want to marry an actor?”
Once we opened and the incredulous reviews were in, I saw the musical in a new light. We approached it as a drama, a serious statement about the “madness of war.” It should have been comedy, which it was, unintentionally.
My only defense: I was just the actor, I didn’t write this shit.
I followed up Purple Hearts, easily my worst play, with a theater piece that ranks as my best. Talk about a creative whiplash.
The play was called Creeps, a story about four men afflicted with cerebral palsy who are living at a run-down institution. The spirit of the play is similar to the story of the Elephant Man. It depicts people with CP as intelligent and sensitive, normal in every way except for their contorted speech and appearance. Because of these external burdens, they find themselves ostracized by society.
The play’s theme resonated with me. I knew what it felt like to be shunned, too, having been labeled (unfairly in my mind) as a has-been. Granted, being spurned by Hollywood was a minor offense compared to the rejection that people with CP experience. Still, as an actor, I found an emotional connection.
The play’s director, Jeff Murray, accompanied me to an L.A. county facility, a home for people with CP, to study physical and speech impediments. One woman in particular, Karen Dick, became a role model for my character. Her handicaps, contorted limbs and strangled speech, would have driven the average normal person to consider ending their lives. Not Karen, though. She faced every obstacle with courageous determination and self-effacing humor. Eventually, she left the institution, got a job, and even bought a home. Karen Dick is a winner and inspired me to never give up, never let other people define who you really are.
During the fourteen-month run at Theatre Theater in 1983, the play was a huge critical hit and won numerous awards. The work I did in Creeps was an artistic highlight. It made me grow as an actor. Perhaps more important, playing a person with CP made me reevaluate the rejection I was feeling in my own life. It became clear that you either succumb to your condition or you face it head on and conquer it, no matter what the outside world thinks about you. It’s a matter of heart over mind.
CHAPTER 41
Wanted, Again
In the 1980s, my focus was on theater because that’s the only place I could practice my craft. The eight-year drought in TV that began in 1975 ended when I was cast in a TV movie, High School, U.S.A. Ironically, the cast was a hodgepodge of ex–child stars (me, Tony Dow, Todd Bridges, Elinor Donahue, etc... . ) playing teachers and TV’s current child stars (Michael J. Fox, Crispin Glover, Nancy McKeon) were the students. It was high concept at its tackiest.
Michael J. Fox was the hottest young actor on the tube at that time. He seemed cocky as hell, too, oblivious to how fickle youthful fame can be. I couldn’t resist reminding him of this fact during a cast publicity photo. He was kneeling in front of me, Jerry Mathers and Frank Bank (both from Leave It to Beaver) and Bob Denver and Dwayne Hickman (both from Dobie Gillis). I tapped Michael on the shoulder, drawing his attention to the motley crew standing right behind him. I whispered in a gleeful, ghostly voice: “We’ll be waiting for you.”
Michael snorted sarcastically. “Yeah, sure.” Lucky for him, he was about to start work on Back to the Future. That mega-hit franchise launched his film career. He could have just as easily joined our ranks. You never know.
I followed the TV movie with guest spots on a couple of hit TV shows, Simon & Simon and Hart to Hart. Out of nowhere, things started looking up. The film industry is such a crazy, unpredictable business that it’s hard to say what might have precipitated this mini-revival. A few things come to mind.
I was drug free and in love. Both things really lifted my spirits. Nobody wants to hire a slug. I was also hungrier for work than ever before. I had reached a point where it bugged the hell out of me that I could be dismissed by the industry so summarily. That stoked a fire in my gut, and I prepared for every audition like it was my last. My readings couldn’t be merely good; they had to be amazing. I had to blow the producers away so they would have no choice but to give me the role. That’s what I aimed for anyway.
I was on a roll, again, and got a nice supporting part in a major feature film, Masters of the Universe.
The Star Wars franchise was the envy of every studio for the millions of movie tickets it sold. More than that, the film’s characters were an ongoing, bottomless gold mine in the toy market. Every producer was hungry for a taste of the merchandising bonanza that followed a hit sci-fi film.
In the case of Masters, the studio was going to try something different: make a movie based on an existing line of action figures. Mattel Toys had already built the Masters toy line into a worldwide phenomenon. Every little boy under fourteen had He-Man, the hero, and Skeletor, the villain. In today’s parlance, the franchise was already a brand name and seemed like a slam-dunk at the box office.
The Swedish hulk, Dolph Lundgren, was hired to play He-Man opposite the brilliant actor, Frank Langella, as Skeletor. I was a mere earthling, Charlie, whose record store is demolished when the hero and villain do battle in my shop. Rounding out the cast was Courtney Cox (years before Friends), Billy Barty, and Christina Pickles, among others. The accountants were already counting the profits as production on the film began. They never foresaw the nightmares involved in making the movie.
Dolph Lundgren was an amazing physical specimen, perfect for He-Man, but was barely intelligible when acting. Example: He-Man would enter a scene and exclaim, “Grab Gwildor! (Billy Barty). Skeletor’s men are coming!” In rehearsals, Lundgren’s words were fairly clear. He wasn’t Richard Burton doing Hamlet, but it was passable English. Once the director yelled action, though, He-Man’s adrenaline kicked in and the words came out as: “Graeeeb, Gweeeelda! Skaaaalatooor’s mans ahhhrrrr kaaaaming!” Lundren was emoting in a language of his own making.
Apart from the fact that the star couldn’t be understood, a serious flaw, there were other production problems. The plan was to start shooting every night around eight o’clock, using downtown Whittier, California, as our main location. Most nights shooting for the first scene began at three in the morning, seven hours after our scheduled start. Why? I honestly don’t know.
An actor is supposed to get into wardrobe, put on makeup, do a rehearsal for the camera people, and wait for the crew to set up lights. Once that’s done, the actors are called to the set to start filming. If the scene is complicated (car chases, explosions, dancing girls), it can take an hour, sometimes two, to go from camera rehearsal to filming. On Masters, even the simplest of scenes, say two actors sitting on a bench talking, required endless hours to set up.
Meanwhile, the actors would sit around, shooting the shit, playing cards, reading the newspapers or, in some cases, doing drugs to keep awake. I was playing an earthling and spared the grief of having to sit around in some crazy alien makeup. Poor Frank Langella wasn’t so lucky, though. His entire head was encased in heavy prosthetic Skeletor makeup.
Every night Langella arrived at our location two hours before the other actors so the makeup artists could slather his face with
layers of gooey latex. The goop would then harden into a rubber skull mask and was claustrophobic as hell. Making things even more miserable for Langella, he could only eat liquid meals ingested through a straw, so as not to ruin the makeup.
Langella got so fed up with the routine of sitting around in full makeup every night for nine to ten hours, he eventually snapped. In a claustrophobic fit, he ripped at the layers of latex coating his face, yelling obscenities. Of course, the moment his face was finally freed, an assistant said they were ready to shoot his scene. With bits of rubber dangling from his nose and ears, Langella screamed, “Screw it. I’m going home!” And he did. The production of Masters seemed cursed with such moments.
After weeks of filming, the movie was far behind schedule and way over budget. Cannon Films (the producing company) was on the brink of bankruptcy, completely out of money, and stopped production before the film was completed. The Mattel Toy Company, having a keen interest in the film’s success, coughed up a few more bucks to shoot the final scene, a climactic fight between He-Man and Skeletor. For anyone who saw the movie, you might think that the battle was shot in a big dark box. It was. Mattel didn’t pony up very much dough.
Eventually, the film was released and sank like a brick at the box office. So much time had elapsed between the first day of filming and the premiere, the popularity of the He-Man craze had faded. Kids, ever the fickle consumers, had moved on to the next phenomenon: Transformers. My hopes of having an action figure made in my character’s image were history.
CHAPTER 42
Unwanted, Again
Just when I thought my career was out of the woods, another dark forest loomed in front of me. Film and TV work disappeared, again. This was a discouraging development, enough to drive a normal person insane, but I had seen a few ebbs and flows in my life by now. I didn’t like being out of work, but I could handle it.
Luckily, I had a support group to help keep me positive. I could commiserate with my pals, other talented artists like Steve Railsback, Robert Hummer, Alex Rocco, and my screenwriter pal, Brent Maddock, who would soon write the sci-fi film classic, Tremors. I also had my brother Stan who was fighting the exact same career windmills as me.
Most important, I had Karen. She was completely unimpressed by the glitz associated with actors. The highs and lows of my career were secondary to being a good husband and person. Thanks to her unconditional love, I began to separate my self-worth as a person from my worth as an actor in Hollywood. I still cared deeply about my career, but I also saw that I had another life to live besides acting. The trick was to get both things, home life and career, to flourish at the same time. I’d have to come up with another new plan to conquer Everest.
A wise, obviously unemployed actor once said, “The real job of an actor is the time spent looking for work, not the time spent acting.” I took that dictum to heart, sending out flyers to industry people to notify them of my plays, writing thank-you letters to anyone who’d give me an audition, and scouring the trade papers to keep tabs on upcoming projects, particularly if they were being developed by producers and directors I had worked for previously. Nothing much came out of this effort, but it did fill my days with purpose.
One of my other favorite activities was to drop in on former employers, directors like Richard Donner or Randal Kleiser, hoping to jog their memory and let them know that I was still alive. This was important, especially since I’d heard rumors that some fans thought I’d died in Vietnam!
Of course, meeting face to face with the industry elite meant getting past the surly guards who manned the gates at every studio. Once again, the walled compounds of Paramount, Universal, and 20th Century-Fox seemed like the impenetrable “forts” of my childhood. I had to be sneaky to gain access.
Warner Bros. in Burbank was my favorite studio for unsanctioned visits. I discovered an unlocked doorway at the outer wall near the main entrance. I’d loiter at the curb out by the street, waiting for three or four cars to line up at the gate. When the guards were busy checking identities, I’d casually slip through the doorway like a cat burglar. This system worked perfectly for months. Then, one day, a guard spotted me.
“Hey, you! Come here!” a uniformed man yelled.
I couldn’t bear the thought of being ejected by the goon. Running away seemed pretty humiliating, too, so I dashed through my secret entrance.
Once I was inside, I ran to a ladder attached to a building and climbed like a monkey on speed. Seconds later, three guards blasted through the door. My only option was to freeze, about halfway up the ladder. Thank God, they didn’t look up.
The goon squad dashed down the studio corridor, assuming they were hot on my trail. I continued my climb and hid on the roof for forty-five minutes. The whole time, I kept visualizing another news flash: “Unemployed Ex–Child Actor Caught Stalking the Stars at Warner Bros.!”
Once I got past the imagined shame, the charade was pretty exciting, and I climbed off the rooftop and continued on my trek around the lot. The guards must not have gotten a good look at my face because I crossed their paths a couple of times. I acted like I was some studio bigwig contemplating a deal and marched past them. As long as you looked like you belonged, nobody bothered you.
The next time I visited the Warner Bros. lot (officially invited for a job audition) I noticed that my secret passage had a padlock on it. Bummer. I wasn’t deterred from my mission of prowling the studio, though. You never knew whom you’d bump into. One day, I had an unexpected encounter with Steven Spielberg.
I had just auditioned for a role in The Waltons (didn’t get it) and bumped into a man named William Fraker. He had been a camera assistant many years ago when I was working on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. In the intervening decades, he had moved up in the world and was now Steven Spielberg’s cinematographer on 1941, the director’s highly anticipated follow-up to Jaws. Fraker grabbed me by the arm and said I must come meet Steven. I didn’t protest.
To my amazement, Spielberg practically leaped out of his director’s chair to shake my hand. My Three Sons was one of his favorite shows as a kid, and Ernie Douglas was a character he strongly related to.
The next thing I know, Spielberg’s got me by the arm, dragging me over to meet Amy Irving (his future first wife) and John Belushi (he couldn’t have cared less). Spielberg then instructed me to stand with him next to the camera so I could watch the action. We parted ways with a friendly handshake. This was a very good day; perhaps the start of what could be a fruitful relationship. Things always seem to change, though.
Fast-forward five years, not long after E.T., Spielberg’s next phenomenal success. I was at Warner Bros. once again, and I met a friend who was working on the director’s next film, Twilight Zone: The Movie. My buddy called a higher-up on the film and got permission for me to enter the set, which was strictly off limits to visitors. The studio was guarding the secrets of the script, and Spielberg. Since I had seen him last, he had graduated from “boy wonder” to “film-making genius” and was the most valuable commodity in Hollywood.
I entered the cavernous stage and stood on the sidelines, watching Spielberg set up a shot. At last he glanced over at me, and I waved to him. I was expecting a replay of our first meeting: Steven welcoming me with a bear hug, ushering me around the set to meet the stars.
Instead, the director gave me an odd, puzzled stare, like he was thinking: Who the hell is that and how did he get in here? I watched him work for a few more minutes and realized he wasn’t coming over to say hi.
Since Spielberg is a bona fide filmmaking genius, I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt and assume I was interrupting his concentration on his work. One way or the other, it felt like I was getting the cold shoulder, so I decided to leave before I was asked to do so.
CHAPTER 43
Back to the Dinner Theater
A year after Masters had flopped, film and TV job offers were still nonexistent, so I headed back to the wonderful world of dinner theater, this
time in Kansas City. This trip was extra special, though, because Stan came out of acting retirement to join me on the road.
The first play we performed together was See How They Run at Tiffany’s Attic in K.C. On the surface, Tiffany’s theater looked quite impressive with massive chandeliers, red-flocked walls, and comfy leather booths on four tiers. Peek behind the curtain, though, and it had a serious problem: roaches.
Anytime food was prepared and served in mass quantities, the little buggers could come running. One night, right in the middle of the play, I heard troubled voices whispering in the front row. I kept my focus on Stan, trying to stay in the scene, but out of the corner of my eye I saw a man slapping the stage with his shoe. The audience roared as a roach, big as a Cadillac, ran back and forth trying to avoid the shoe’s crushing blow.
Judging by the crowd’s response, it seemed as if they were used to such spectacles, perhaps even looking forward to them. A collective Ahhhh! rang out once the bug was finally flattened. The focus then returned to the actors, and we continued on with the play. Talk about being upstaged.
Another night, the theater’s roof leaked during a tremendous Midwestern rainstorm, and steady streams of water dripped down onto the stage. The audience wasn’t getting wet, so the management decided the show must go on. Only the actors were getting drenched.
As the play progressed, so did the storm outside. One of the waterfalls pouring down from the ceiling was landing on a bed onstage, a focal point of the play, a farce called Little White Lies. Throughout the action, babies kept showing up on my doorstep and I would hide them in the bed. Every time I’d stuff a new baby (dolls, in reality) into the rain-soaked bed, the audience exploded with snickering laughter.
The Importance of Being Ernie: Page 19