In 1954 I met my first director. A wonderful woman named Lena E. Lovegrove. Dowager type. Pince-nez and the lot. She had formed a small theatre group who played only three nights at a time on a little stage they rented at the YMHA. We did Ruth Gordon’s play Years Ago. In 1953 MGM had made it into a movie with Spencer Tracy and Jean Simmons called The Actress, and I played the part Tracy had played. And there we were, doing it in Winnipeg.
I’d never acted before, never been on stage, but Ms. Lovegrove had asked me beforehand if I had been on stage, and I said I had, of course – hell yes! But, I added, I don’t know how to do small parts. For some reason they were simply beyond me; I just couldn’t imagine how other people managed to do them. Far too difficult for me, I said; I only do leads. Besides, where I was living was beyond the city limits, and commuting every day, going back and forth every day for a small part, just wouldn’t be worth my while. So she gave me the lead in Years Ago and I had to watch other actors putting on makeup, because I didn’t even know how to do that.
While we were in rehearsals I discovered that there was another stage company in town, another little theatre group up on Main Street. And someone from our cast was talking to someone from their cast, and someone from their cast had dropped out of the role of Sebastian in the show they were doing. I ran up the street and got the part of Sebastian in the show they were doing – Twelfth Night.
With no experience yet, no instance where I had actually walked across a stage, I now had two parts, in two different plays – one of them by William Shakespeare.
I haven’t had such guts since.
My first review came from Winnipeg Press theatre critic Frank Morriss, who would soon trade his Manitoba theatre beat for the more prestigious role of film critic for the Globe and Mail in Toronto. Of my debut in the Ruth Gordon play he wrote something like: “Despite his obvious youth, and ill-advised make-up, Pinset [sic] played his part with vigour.” Or relish. Whatever. Who cares? Name in the paper and all. And not for any indictable offence!
My Shakespearean debut was somewhat less auspicious. I developed a nervous giggle that became a bloody nuisance to everyone else in the cast, a tick that still comes back to haunt me from time to time. Somehow I got away with the language, even when I exchanged calm for my more Newfoundlandese cam. Before I could get too embarrassed about it, the purists in the crowd decided that cam was probably truer to the Renaissance English spoken by Shakespeare and his company, and by the time we opened the entire cast had adopted my bastardized pronunciation as their own.
(God only knows what the audience thought. We couldn’t round up enough of them to find out.)
So I played those two roles, and hoped something else would come along. And it did – a shipboard romantic comedy called Just Married which, despite all manufactured legends to the contrary, was the first play ever performed on the Rainbow Stage, an enduring and endearing outdoor theatre which was still struggling to establish itself as a showcase for musical comedies. Meanwhile, Lena Lovegrove was mounting a new production of Gaslight. Gaslight had starred Charles Boyer and Ingrid Bergman onscreen after premiering on Broadway as Angel Street with Vincent Price and Judith Evelyn. I played the sinister husband, and I also did the artwork for the poster, and it all went very well. According to the review by Frank Morriss, who this time round graciously included all the consonants in my last name, I too did very well. And of course I believed that, and took it with me wherever I would go. You couldn’t bring me down again with claws. As far as I was concerned, I was on my way.
I started to get some radio work at CBC. I loved doing it – still do – but back then it was also a wonderful way to work on my dialect problem. I still had a Newfoundland accent as thick as Gander fog. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to sound like I came from Newfoundland; I didn’t want to sound like I came from anywhere. That way I might get across the message that I was very worldly, that I was very much at home on international stages, and that they would be very lucky to get me.
I was hoping the girls I met would feel the same way. As new as I was to theatre, I recall practicing the pretense of being experienced in the world of romance on a young actress. I remember trying to come off as a boy-man of the world in all things at this shaky time of personal development, which my mirror had been witness to, before my hitting the streets; not unlike De Niro had done in Taxi Driver.
Having exhausted the mirror, but convincingly identifying myself in that same mirror as a passable bargain to the as yet faceless paramour born to mate me, I was not at all prepared for the assessment I would receive from the one I had planted my roving feet for.
Having used up a good-sized part of the evening at the theatre, at what would turn out to be a silent farce for the Blind institute – oh yes, sight gags for the unsighted – I took the young date to a late supper – a snail and snapper seafood reminder never to eat snail or snapper as long as I ate.
Not to worry. Could I erase the whole of this black Friday’s night with a pleasurable walk from the bus to her place, perhaps? She answered “yes.” And I almost had enough of things of interest to fill the final half-kilometre or so, which I had already shared with the mirror. Though wit is not as appreciated when reheated – have you noticed that?
It was obvious by the post-snail dinner travesty that this evening might wind up on lips that were not mine. As I closed in on her mouth, she came up perhaps with the only remark that stood a chance to shrink every part of me but my shoes, and the certainty of a decent curtain.
I had complimented her effusively, I thought, expecting one in return, and didn’t it come?
“I don’t mean this the way it will sound,” said she. “And you’re very nice,” she added. “Almost unexpectedly so, but …”
Well! Was I going to get a kick in my nuts in payment for a night of poor theatre and an unsuccessful snail-and-snapper yak-tasty supper and my frayed collar and cuffs?
“No,” she said. “But I can’t see us as a serious item, physically.”
I shouldn’t have pressed. She next suggested that I had “a man’s face on a boy’s body.”
What? screamed my pride, silently. Are you the same thing I put in a half a day of my life with?
“What the fuck does that mean? A boy’s body? Feel that!” I screamed, loud enough to unhinge rutting neighbourhood dogs.
She cast her eyes elsewhere, as if to say: I happen to think that type is very important, and I haven’t found mine yet.
“Well, good luck, baby,” said I, on a romantic note. “Even the heart is a muscle, and mine would stand up to the best of them!”
With that, I made it to my rented room, and another trip to the fucking mirror!
“Lying bastard!” said I.
“Prove her wrong,” said It.
“Make up your shagging mind!” I topped.
It took me barely short of eighteen months to buff the boy’s body to at least that of a suitable car jockey at an annual Brazilian ball. Trouble was, I now had a boy’s head on a man’s body. And I could hear my mirror laugh me into manhood.
Being on stage at night meant rearranging my calendar. I could teach ballroom dancing only in the afternoons, because mornings were occupied with my third career as a sign painter. Still, could Broadway be much closer?
Winnipeg had a vibrant history of legitimate theatre and vaudeville. The two major houses were the Dominion, which had opened in 1904, and the Pantages, which had opened as a vaudeville theatre in 1914. The Pantages had originally presented three performances each day, and showcased such comedians as Stan Laurel and Buster Keaton and novelty acts like U.S. heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey, who challenged members of the audience to go a few rounds with him on stage. The Dominion alternated between “high-class” vaudeville and touring companies, hosting its own musical stock company as well as sponsoring many amateur performances.
As a city Winnipeg might as well have been surrounded by water. Our audiences didn’t depend on anyone else. They served thems
elves. The lifestyle was warm and welcoming, primarily because of the European influences on the community, which happily included a love of theatre. Immediately ahead of me, looming large on my narrow horizon, were the two men who would create the most thrilling time I’ve spent in theatre before or since. John Hirsch, who became one of the most brilliant directors this country has ever produced, had joined forces with the writer and actor Tom Hendry, who became one of the most brilliant producers this country has ever produced, and the two opened their own theatre company at the old Dominion. They called it Theatre 77, because it was exactly seventy-seven steps from the intersection at the heart of the city, Portage and Main.
The first production was The Italian Straw Hat, and I was cast as the butler. (No, not the lead; Hirsch and Hendry were not so easy to fool.) I then proceeded to contract the scurrilous Asian flu, and ten minutes before show time I was still burning up, flat on my back in the wings, encased in a blanket, shaking uncontrollably, with no possible way of going on. But when I heard the strains of God Save the Queen I got to my feet, threw off the blanket, did the play, and subsequently partied all night with the cast. It was my first experience, but not my last, with the power of theatre as an antidote for flu, fever, and just about anything.
The artistry that John Hirsch brought to Arthur Miller’s classic Death of a Salesman single-handedly resurrected Winnipeg theatre in 1958. That stellar production also introduced me to an ambitious young actor who would become my lifelong friend. John Hirsch and Tom Hendry were looking to build a nucleus of actors, and Perry Rosemond was one of their recruits. I played Happy – Willy Loman’s amoral youngest son, Hap – and Perry played Bernard, the next-door neighbour’s son, a childhood friend of Hap’s older brother Biff and now a successful lawyer. My role was bigger than his, and Perry made sure I knew he coveted it. Every night, as we waited in the wings to go on, Perry would start to sing, in a small voice barely above a whisper:
I want to be / Happy
If you can be / Happy
Why can’t I be / Happy too?*
Perry often said, “Nobody has ever played Bernard like me!” And that’s true. Because he always connected humour to everything he did. He also adored show business humour – especially the stories you couldn’t make up. In one scene in Salesman my character, Hap, sits in a bar with his older brother Biff – Donnelly Rhodes played the waiter – and a couple of curvaceous young hookers walk in. One girl is particularly well endowed, prompting my character Hap to remark, “Hey, get a load of them binoculars!”
We got through the read-throughs and the rehearsals, and finally the dress rehearsal, but I could see that the actress playing the hooker with the big bosom was unhappy about something, because she kept sulking.
“What’s wrong?” I asked her.
“Everybody’s got their props but me!” she complained. “When do I get my binoculars?”
You can imagine Perry’s reaction.
Perry’s mother and father were wonderful. They were naturally funny people, so he came by it honestly. We’d be watching a ball game on television and his mother would pass by on her way to the kitchen. “That Yogi!” she would say, glancing at the screen, “he got fat!” When Perry was living in Toronto and, later, Los Angeles, I would still stay with them when I went back to Winnipeg for jobs, and at one point my picture was on their living room mantel, next to his.
One time I came back to Winnipeg to do Two for the Seesaw with Lillian Lewis, a talented local actress. The play was a very demanding two-hander, with Lillian and I attempting to top the original performances of Anne Bancroft and Henry Fonda on Broadway in 1958 and Shirley MacLaine and Robert Mitchum onscreen in 1962. Perry had also returned to Winnipeg and applied for a job at the CBC, and while he was waiting for his phone to ring he took a small part in the Manitoba Theatre Centre production of Mister Roberts, playing Mannion, the lead supporting sailor in the play. John Hirsch was directing this new production, and Perry and I were bunking together at his parents’ place while I was in rehearsal for Seesaw. One evening Perry fell on stage and hurt his leg, and by morning the leg had swelled up beyond belief. And he had a performance that night. And he said, “Gordon, I don’t think I’m going to make it. Would you go on for me?”
“But Perry,’ ” I said, “I’m in rehearsals for Two for the Seesaw!”
Perry had this whine he would use, and he’d say, Oh. Come. On. Gordon in this pleading voice until it was pointless to refuse.
“All right, all right!” I said, “I’ll do it.”
We start rehearsing some of the lines. This is around four o’clock in the afternoon, and curtain is at 8 p.m. And Perry keeps pumping the lines at me, and I keep trying to learn them. At about 6:30 p.m. we take a cab to the theatre, and of course John Hirsch has no idea what we’re planning, but he happens to be at the performance that night. And Len Cariou is getting into makeup – he’s playing Ensign Pulver, the role David Wayne played on Broadway and Jack Lemmon played in the movie. And Donnelly Rhodes is already there, he’s in it too, and he’s getting into his sailor suit. I approach Nadine Kelly, the wardrobe lady, to see if she has an extra sailor suit, which she does. So I put it on. And suddenly Perry limps in, and he’s wearing a sailor suit. And I say, “What are you doing?” And he says, “Well, I thought you could do the fight and I could do the lines.”
“Fight?” I say. “What fight?’ ” Because this is the first I’ve heard about it.
“You have a fight on stage with Donnelly,” he says. “So you can do the fight, and I can do the lines.”
So now suddenly Mister Roberts has an extra sailor going on stage. Instead of Mannion coming out alone, two guys, me and Perry, walk out on stage together. And it’s coming to Mannion’s first line, we both know the cue, and we both know whoever says it will be stuck with the part for the night. And Perry looks at me, and I look at him, and he says Mannion’s first line. We play out the rest of the scene, and Perry and Donnelly start to get into it – “Oh yeah?” “Yeah!” “Oh yeah?” “Yeah!” – and Perry calls Donnelly a dirty sonovabitch, and Donnelly tells Perry he can go to hell.
Perry says, “You can’t talk to me that way!” and is about to plunge in for the fight. Or would be, except for his bad leg and his new sidekick. So instead he turns to me and says, “Go get him, Ernie!”
Suddenly my character – who doesn’t exist – has a name: Ernie. So I go in and do the fight. And John Hirsch is just sitting there, shaking his head, wondering what we’re going to do next. And the producer of Two for the Seesaw is also in the audience that night, and almost goes into cardiac arrest when he sees me on stage, because if I injure myself they will be doing One for the Seesaw. And the next day Perry is in the hospital, having his knee attended to, and somebody else – not me! – is playing Mannion.
Perry and I laugh about it every time we hear the name Ernie. “And I think, my God, did that really happen?” says Perry. Yes, it really did.
The name of the company, Theatre 77, had been changed almost immediately to the Manitoba Theatre Centre, and I was gob-smacked happy to be working on its stage. I played Mortimer Brewster in Arsenic and Old Lace, Johnny Pope in A Hatful of Rain, George in Of Mice and Men, Tom in The Glass Menagerie. I had said goodbye to daylight, but the MTC was an extraordinary classroom for me. Tom Hendry thrived in the shadows, in his usual mode of controlled concern for the over-all, and John Hirsch was the most truthful director I would ever work with. The work he did at the Rainbow Stage could match work done anywhere. He could shift effortlessly from musical comedy to the classics; it didn’t appear to faze him one bit. Years later I was lucky enough to enjoy his influence again, when he revolutionized the drama department at CBC Television. And when I left Winnipeg, which had become and still remains one of my favourite cities, he knew he could call me at any time, for anything – providing it was the lead – and I would come running.
A dozen or so years later I was living in Hollywood, and in my free time, which I had entirely too m
uch of, I used to go hiking in the Hollywood Hills with Marlon Brando. John Hirsch called and asked me if I wanted to do Guys and Dolls with Denise Fergusson, Dean Regan, and Judy Armstrong at the Manitoba Theatre Centre. I would be playing Sky Masterson, the role that Brando had played in the 1955 MGM film version.
I jumped at it, of course. But Brando was shocked.
“Wait a minute, wait a minute,” said Marlon with a disdainful squint. “You’re going to Winnipeg? To do a twenty-year-old musical?”
“No,” I said, “I’m going to Winnipeg to do a show for John Hirsch.”
* “I Want to Be Happy,” Vincent Youmans and Irving Caesar, from No, No, Nanette (1925).
let’s kiss and make up
I WAS LYING ON THE STRAW FLOOR OF A SCUMMY South American jail, writhing in pain.
I caught a glimpse of my reflection in a jagged piece of glass. There was no getting around it. I looked terrible. But then, that was the whole idea.
My first network drama – thank you, CBC Winnipeg! – and I could just imagine the scene in Grand Falls, with the whole family hunkered around the black-and-white TV set, watching my auspicious screen debut in 1955.
This new medium of television, I’d decided, could learn a lot from us theatre folk. For one thing, what was the big deal about going “live”? We came from the Theatre. We went “live” every night. And for another, the CBC makeup department didn’t seem to have a knack for realism. I was playing a rebel hero who had just received a beating from two prison guards, but the makeup they had put on me was, in my opinion, far too subtle.
I had heard that such famous fellow thespians as Bette Davis had experienced the same kind of creative incompetence. In one of her movies the character she was playing was supposed to be in hospital after a car crash, and Ms. Davis felt the Warner Bros. makeup artists were more concerned about making her look pretty than injured. So when the crew broke for lunch she went to a doctor friend and said, “I’ve been in a terrible car crash. I’m lucky to be alive. What would I look like?” An hour later she returned to the studio with her left leg in a cast, her right arm in a sling, and her head bandaged in such a way that you could hardly see her left eye.
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