“You ought to be ashamed of yourself!” he scolded. “A public servant like you!”
I blinked.
I performed.
“I know, it’s a terrible thing!” I told him. “One of my constituents was extremely depressed, and he needed someone to drink with, so he could get his problem out. So I had to join him in the drinking.”
The senior officer frowned. “Yes, but still,” he began, shaking his head.
And after another scolding and a stern warning, they let me go.
Another lesson in the power of television. And how easy it is, intentionally or accidentally, to abuse it.
One of the greatest things about playing Quentin Durgens for three years was that I actually impressed both my biggest fan and my greatest critic: Charm. She candidly told one interviewer that before she saw me in the series, she thought I was “a darling actor and a good leading man – a good young leading man. But when I saw him do Quentin Durgens I thought no, this is it, this is big-time. This boy’s a star. And I hadn’t seen that before.”
Charm hadn’t seen me as a star. She hadn’t seen me as the President of the United States, either. But she was about to.
Colossus: The Forbin Project was stylishly scripted by James Bridges, who would go on to pen The Paper Chase and The China Syndrome. The story was a cautionary tale about the potential perils of creating artificial intelligence, no doubt inspired in part by the unhinged H.A.L. in Stanley Kubrick’s big box office hit from the previous year, 2001: A Space Odyssey. In Bridges’ scenario, scientists join an American supercomputer with a Russian supercomputer to form one brilliant colossal computer to benefit both nations. Unfortunately, the Colossus decides to take over the planet, and the scientists who created it are forced to go underground to fight it. The tagline said it all: We built a super computer with a mind of its own and now we must fight it for the world!
A year earlier, in 1968, Bobby Kennedy had been assassinated. An American producer had seen an episode of Durgens and thought I had a Kennedy look about me, so he cast me as the young U.S. president. I went down to Hollywood and we shot it on the Universal back lot. I played the understandably perturbed but undeniably Kennedy-esque leader of the free world; old pro Bill Schallert played the head of the CIA, and the supporting cast included Marion Ross, who would go on to play Ron Howard’s mother for ten, yes, ten consecutive years on Happy Days.
The two leads, the actors playing the American scientists, were Eric Braeden and Susan Clark, both contract players at Universal Studios, and I enjoyed working with Susan again. Susan was a seasoned CBC veteran who had starred in a number of classical productions for the network’s prestigious Festival series. We had worked together on Taming of the Shrew; Larry Dane and my friend Kenneth Welsh appeared with her in Hedda Gabler. She was also an accomplished stage actor, but there was no doubt that her great face and her great voice were made for film. She was also the last of the Universal players. She had signed a ten-year contract, considered a “slave contract” in Hollywood, after studio scouts saw her do Abelard and Heloise on CBC’s Festival. Susan had only two or three years to go on her contract, but she never stopped working, or learning. She had already worked with Clint Eastwood and Robert Redford when the studio cast her in this one. (Eastwood and Burt Reynolds had also been Universal “slaves” until the studio, seeing little hope for their future as screen actors, fired them both.) She made at least twenty movies for Universal, but ironically it was television where she would really shine, first as track-and-field Olympian Babe Didrikson Zaharias, then as controversial aviatrix Amelia Earhart, and then in her own hit comedy series, Webster, with her husband Alex Karras and diminutive scene-stealer Emmanuel Lewis.
Susan’s co-star was not a happy camper. Despite winning plaudits in earlier appearances in TV series like The Rat Patrol, the studio had made him change his name from Hans Gudegast (“too German!”) to Eric Braeden for this film. Colossus: The Forbin Project was his first leading role. Ten years later, with no major screen roles coming his way, he would reluctantly agree to join the cast of a U.S. daytime soap called The Young and the Restless. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Shooting my scenes on Colossus took me twelve weeks. I loved working in Hollywood. The whole place was steeped in history and legend. It didn’t take much to please my eye. I could be happy just looking at ceilings. Even when I could see only the tops of buildings I could still tell when they were built. The sidewalks were filled with careers that had gone well and careers that had not gone well. Every time you turned a corner in Hollywood, there was more history waiting for you, if you truly wanted to see it. And I wanted to see it.
Maybe I could do both. My friend Larry was doing both, and our pal Al Waxman was doing both. They were always jumping in their cars, going back and forth, from Toronto to L.A., from L.A. to Toronto.
At home the phone was strangely silent. Durgens was over, and other producers were pitching other new series to take its spot on the CBC schedule, with other up-and-coming actors looking for their big break.
Charm had decided to put her career on hold for a while to focus on our greatest production, our brand-new baby daughter Leah, and her joyful gurglings filled our days and nights with delight and wonder. I was thrilled to be a father again, but anxious, too. I knew I would have to wait a while, most likely quite a while, before I would be offered another series. So we decided to take on Hollywood. We packed our bags, and our toddler’s toys, and set out for California.
hooray for hollywood
ALL THOSE YEARS OF BEING SEDUCED BY THE IMAGES on the silver screen had given me an encyclopedic knowledge of American character actors. Everyone knew who the stars were, but Porky Pinsent knew the names and credits of every key supporting player. These men and women were household faces, yet remained mostly anonymous to everyone in both the public and, with the possible exception of casting directors, the industry. And they were exceptionally approachable, of course, because they were not hounded for autographs; off-screen they were hardly ever recognized, even on Hollywood Boulevard. So if you went up to them and introduced yourself, and told them how much you admired or appreciated their work, their reaction was truly something to see.
“Look, there’s Dick Foran!” I exclaimed to Perry one day in L.A. He followed my gaze to a man crossing the street almost a full block away and shook his head in amazement.
“Jesus, Gordon!” he cried. “Where does that come from?”
I just grinned. I was probably more impressed by Hollywood than some, because I knew so much about it. I remember seeing Huntz Hall, from the Dead End Kids, sitting at a drugstore counter having a coffee, and no one paying any attention to him whatsoever. Because of course they didn’t know who he was, let alone who he had been. And I kept thinking, Omigod, it’s Huntz Hall!
I remember walking in to the Cock ’n’ Bull on Sunset with Larry, and there was Sonny Tufts, sitting at the bar, telling these wonderful stories to the bartender, who was clearly bored to tears. And I was there another time when Marlene Dietrich came in, so tiny, hiding behind these big shades.
One time, when I was working at Universal, the man putting on my makeup was one of the Westmore brothers, and on one of the shelves behind him were the plaster-cast makeup heads they used for Bogart and all these other stars. In some ways, especially at moments like this, Hollywood had a lovely small-town familiarity for me. It was comfortable for me at the beginning. To be in the history. Because in my head I was Hollywood. No two ways about it. And they treated me professionally. They had great respect for Canadians anyway, and wondered where we got all this experience that we’ve got. That was a nice feeling, that I wasn’t really starting at the beginning again.
I was also dazzled by the crews. Hollywood film and television crews were amazing. I remember in one of the things I was in, one of those weekly series, that the makeup guy went all the way back to Juarez. I can’t tell you how much I loved it, how thrilled I was to meet him. When I was doing The
Forbin Project this fella kept coming up and standing next to me, an old guy with a little hat on his head, and he said, “You got a double yet?” And I said, no, I don’t. “I’ll be your double. My name is Mickey.” And suddenly they would start calling for him: “Where’s Mickey? Where’s Gordon’s double?” And he was always over in the corner, playing cards with the crew. Because they had all known each other forever, and Mickey went all the way back to King of Kings. The first one.
That was wonderful. To sit in a car with the crew, being driven to the Mojave Desert at six in the morning, with guys who did every movie you ever wanted to see. And they all talked about it. “Remember Robert Preston? Remember that time when he did all those stunts?” “Yes, he was real good. But not as good as the guys in Gunga Din, they really gave them a run for their money.”
I had chills.
I knew Brando’s makeup man too. He had been John Barrymore’s makeup man. And the stretch from one to the other took decades and decades of film history.
I think I was working with Burt Reynolds on Dan August when I was asked to report to the continuity woman for something, and she was sitting there with this big leather folder, a very large folder, and inside it was the current script we were shooting. And later I learned that she had done continuity for Gone With the Wind, and the big leather binder she carried was the same one she had used then, when she was working for Selznick. Oh. My. God.
I loved that stuff. I fell for all of it. Working on The Forbin Project had given me a taste for feature films. I wanted to do more of them.
Getting settled in Hollywood was an experience in itself. Fears that Martin Luther King’s funeral the previous April would set off more riots proved unfounded but were frightening nonetheless. Friends of ours had gone to their local liquor store to pick up some wine for dinner when they heard a voice commanding them to fall on their knees. The man who was talking to them pointed a gun at their heads and said, “Kneel down for Martin Luther King.” And they did. And they looked up a minute later, and there was no one standing behind them. So they got back up on their feet and scurried out of there as fast as they could.
Charm and Leah had just flown in from Toronto and I had insisted on meeting them at the airport – I wanted to show off for Charm, show her I knew my way around. But I was never a great driver. On the way in from the airport I missed the turn at La Cienega Boulevard, and I kept driving, and driving, and driving, and I started to notice that the farther we drove, the more black people there were on the streets. So finally I said, “Charm, in case you’re wondering, I’ve taken you this way because I thought it was important for you to see Watts.” And she just rolled her eyes, of course, because she knew I was lost. We could still see traces, lots of traces, of the riots that had decimated that neighbourhood three years earlier.
We had rented an apartment in Blair House on Roscomare on the outskirts of Hollywood, close to Bel Air, so we’d have a home base while we went house-hunting. One of my most vivid memories of our time there is of Charm making us a wonderful chicken dinner. She wouldn’t let me help. She wouldn’t even let me in the pokey little gallery kitchen. “Don’t bother me, Sir Raleigh! Go to sea! I’ll call you when it’s ready.” So Leah and I played games until Charm summoned us to the table. I don’t know what it was that she did with that chicken. Maybe it was something as simple as a pesto – I can’t really tell you. But it was sensational.
By now Leah was enrolled in day care, and shortly after we arrived Charm did a quick guest shot as an exchange teacher on an episode of Room 222 with Michael Constantine and the talented Denise Nicholas, who I would end up working with a few years later. But the role she most wanted to play, much to the delight of Leah and myself, was wife and mother, which is probably why I can look back at my Hollywood years today without shuddering. Charm made a home for us wherever we happened to be.
At times I didn’t appreciate that as much as I should have. Especially on weekends. My pal Larry Dane and I suffered from the same affliction. We hated holidays and weekends. On Friday at five o’clock, casting directors and agents went home, and we knew that the phone wasn’t going to ring for the next two days. And it was horrible, and we couldn’t wait until Monday at nine o’clock, when something, anything, could possibly happen.
I had applied for my green card in Los Angeles when I was hired to play the president in The Forbin Project. My application was approved, and I picked it up in Massachusetts when I flew to Boston to shoot The Thomas Crown Affair, the original Thomas Crown, with Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway and Christopher Chapman’s brilliant kaleidoscope images, for Norman Jewison. Then, as now, Norman was always looking to showcase Canadian actors in his films whenever he could. But I wasn’t happy with my work in the film, and I suspect Norman wasn’t all that thrilled with it either. I had made the mistake of being too prepared. I was playing Faye Dunaway’s boyfriend, an insurance salesman, and I thought that the role was underwritten, so I arrived with a character delivery of my own, which maybe wasn’t the best plan. Should have left it entirely up to the director. Still, now I had my green card.
I had come to Hollywood to do movies. However, first and foremost I was a product of television, and Canadian television at that. On American television established American stars got the leads. You could guest star as the villain, which I did in a number of series. When my phone rang, which was not nearly as frequently as I would have liked, it was mostly for guest spots, playing that week’s bad guy on someone else’s series.
“They’re not calling you as frequently as you want them to call you,” said Larry, “because they don’t see you as a villain. They see you as a leading man. You need to nail a series for yourself.” One studio – I think it was Screen Gems I met with – liked the Durgens series and wanted me to do an American version called The Senator. This was a few years after Richard Crenna had played a state senator on Slattery’s People and a couple of years before another Canadian, Daryl Duke, picked up an Emmy for directing Hal Holbrook in a dramatic series called The Senator. But an American version of Durgens never happened.
Back in Toronto, CBC was telecasting an ambitious anthology series called Program X, produced by Paddy Sampson and George Jonas, with such directors as David Cronenberg, Lorne Michaels, and Jonas himself contributing their talents on a weekly basis. Producer Herb Roland persuaded them that I should do a one-man show, Bits & Pieces of Gordon Pinsent, a mix of dramatic readings, some of my poetry, and even a few tunes I’d come up with, accompanying myself on guitar. I wrote an excerpt of what would become John and the Missus. I did a bit of Cyrano, and an excerpt from Durgens, and that’s when I wrote “Easy Ridge.”
I need no rock to rest upon,
I need not be at home on time
No need to sing my distant song
in any other time but mine.*
I flew home to do it, then returned to L.A. I had talked myself into doing an episode of It Takes a Thief in fervent hope that I might get to work with Robert Wagner’s co-star, the legendary Fred Astaire. But unbeknownst to me, Fred had made an exceedingly elegant exit after the first five episodes – had he, I wondered, danced on the ceiling on his way out? – and I never even got to meet him.
CBC called again. Would I come back to Toronto to guest star in a new series? I said Yes, and played a reckless priest who wants to test his faith by shooting the rapids in an episode of Adventures in Rainbow Country.
Back in Hollywood I did a TV movie for the director Leo Penn, later famous as Sean Penn’s father. Talk about eclectic casting: Sharon Farrell, Sam Jaffe, Terry Moore (who was secretly married to Howard Hughes at the time, apparently), and Greg Mullavey, among many others, in a story about a family of doctors (Gary Collins, John Dehner, Susan Howard, and me) who suddenly find themselves up against a cholera epidemic and a movie star who refuses to accept treatment. The movie was called Quarantined, and it probably should have been, except for the fact that one of my cast-mates was the mercurially brilliant Wally Cox, who was
about to be our new neighbour. We had found a wonderful house up in the hills, off Mulholland Drive, with a spectacular view of the San Fernando Valley, and Charm was already deep in the process of transforming a house into a home.
The idea of working, of being busy, of being in demand, was slowly turning into a new kind of challenge for me. Suddenly I could find merit in a mediocre script if I thought it could be a legitimate stepping stone to my goals. And each film and TV series I did gave me fresh and frequently unwanted insights.
I had a wonderful publicist. She was Glen Campbell’s publicist too. Thanks to her efforts I was chosen Newcomer of the Year by Modern Screen, the monthly movie magazine that also served as the home base of Louella Parsons. On another occasion she positioned me next to another Hollywood gossip queen, Sheilah Graham,* at a luncheon honouring veteran producer Hal Wallis. Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton were at the head table with Wallis, but otherwise most of the tables in the hotel ballroom appeared to be populated by managers, studio executives, and bankers.
Miss Graham, who was clearly a fan of my publicist, was not shy when it came to expressing herself. “You’re the only actor in this room,” she noted pointedly. “I hope you appreciate that.”
I did.
I had four agents. I changed them like shirts. My favourite was a great fellow named Bill Barnes. He was wonderful, all long fingers, a character right out of the fifties. His face looked fat because his shirt was too tight, but he was a gentleman of another era. His favourite line was “Get out your paper and pencil. Take this down.” He had credentials, too, of sorts. He was Ryan O’Neal’s agent before (but, alas, not after) Ryan hit the jackpot with the TV series Peyton Place, and at one time he had also represented Sue Lyons, the young actress who played Lolita with James Mason and Shelley Winters and who attempted to lure Richard Burton away from Ava Gardner and Deborah Kerr in Night of the Iguana.
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