by Nick Nolte
But the day before we were scheduled to drive east across Colorado’s plain en route to possible danger, I backed out, tendering some excuse about needing to stay in town to ensure that all my ducks were in a row for the upcoming theater season. But the truth was that I was chickenshit. White Southerners were not taking kindly to priests and nuns and college kids coming into their cities and towns to foment trouble, as they saw it, and volunteers in many states were being harassed, beaten, even murdered in the name of keeping the South forever segregated. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., his black constituents, and thousands of white supporters were bravely standing up against the South’s—and the nation’s—reprehensible racial history, but when it came time for me to rise and be counted, too, it turned out that I simply didn’t have the guts to contribute.
The bright side of this episode was that it confirmed for me that I was truly an actor. What it did was finally demand that I question whether I could be satisfied with a life in which I was solely and completely committed to acting. Could I be happy knowing that my main contribution would be in the shared experience of theater?
The answer, I determined, was yes. I never looked back with regret at not finishing a football career, because I had found something that provided adrenaline as well as the exploration of my creative and sensitive being. I also loved the way in which once a play started, I was in total control. I understood that the stage is a world that is predetermined in many ways, one in which art shapes and gives meaning to what is otherwise terribly mundane or difficult. For me, acting had already proven to be wonderfully therapeutic. I had become an actor because real life was hard for me. Sometimes it was really rough. Acting was different from real life, yet it gave me the chance to search for complex stories that helped me understand and cope with what I encountered away from the stage lights.
BACK HOME IN PHOENIX AT THE END OF THAT SUMMER, I REALLY began to feel like I was finding my groove as an actor—and as a student, as hard as that was to believe. Kit Carson and Helen Langworthy had proven to me that teachers could rock your world, if you let them, and for the first time in my life I found myself enjoying the structure that taking classes offered. In addition to my workload at the Little Theatre, I enrolled in a few acting classes at Phoenix College, where the drama department was excellent, and where a fine director and teacher named John Paul sized me up as we rehearsed Inherit the Wind. The play was a tall task for college kids, but my fellow players and I relished the experience. I even found myself appreciating Mr. Paul’s backhanded compliment when he suggested, “Nolte, I know you’re a Method guy, but sometimes you simply must do the directed deed, interior motivation be damned.” Then he added, even more to the point, “Step away from technique with this and just sing it out. Just physically do this!”
For the record, I have never considered myself a Method actor, despite borrowing liberally from Stanislavski’s playbook. The Method requires you to pull out pieces of your own experience to match the emotional quality required for the work at hand. In addition to the Method, I like to think that I’m from the whatever-it-takes-to-resonate-with-a-character school. And what it took for me was a hell of a lot of hard work. My dyslexic challenges with reading turned line-learning into a hellish ordeal, for example. So, I compensated by first writing out every character’s dialogue in longhand—not only my own. Eventually, I’d feel like I wrote the play, but more than that, after about a month I could begin to create my character from his words and actions on the page, my imagination, and sometimes the current experiences of my personal life. My characters would finally come into their own as we rehearsed—and this is basically how I go about my business even to this day.
I learned a ton from John Paul and his acting class and the plays we produced, but even more from Allen Dutton, a surrealistic photographer who had been a student and friend of Minor White, the hugely renowned American photographer who had recently begun to teach in the new visual arts department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Both Dutton and White agreed that photography’s goal was to disrupt an object’s cliché in the photographer’s memory bank, and instead capture a new relationship between it and how it was perceived. The effect was radically different from the pictorial style of Ansel Adams, although all three of them were enormously interested in landscapes. But Dutton and White didn’t want to document beauty; what they sought was to persuade viewers to see, truly see, in entirely innovative ways.
Despite being way overqualified to be teaching at a community college, Allen was a terrific teacher and he had unusual patience with beginners for a man of his stature. With his help, I built a darkroom and learned open-tank film development. As obsessive as I could be back then, with my camera in hand I began to explore Phoenix like it was the most fascinating place on the planet. In the midsixties, it was still a dyed-in-the-wool frontier town, which meant from my perspective that it was full of visual delights.
Older folks around town liked to listen to country music, while the younger set loved the music of a onetime local DJ named Lee Hazlewood. He had this lonesome-drifter storytelling style that fit the desert perfectly, it seemed to me. Lee wrote songs with and produced albums for another Phoenix guy named Duane Eddy, a twangy “rebel” guitarist who was also wildly popular. Some people labeled their music “cowboy psychedelic,” even though none of us had any idea what “psychedelic” meant yet. Whatever their roots, the two musicians provided me with a personal, expeditionary soundtrack on the radio while I drove.
As I explored the valley, I was drawn to barbed wire in all its myriad presentations, but foremost I liked to photograph Mexican cemeteries, where tombstones, shrines, plastic Jesuses, and fading pink plastic flowers kept me shooting images for hours on end. I was always drawn to bright colors, even though I exclusively used black and white film, maybe because I saw a powerful kind of symbolism in black and white, which could transform “reality” into something similar yet artistically very different in much the same way that a performance onstage could do.
My photographs began to make an impression on Allen, which thrilled me, and I loved the fact that in addition to being a master of his craft he was something of a skeptical jester, open to any lame-brained idea without letting the cheese slide completely off his cracker. “Life is a gag worthy of a loose solemnity,” he’d say. Then another time, it was, “Nick, don’t dismiss anyone or any idea. The learning curve bends in mysterious ways.”
The veracity of that remark became obvious on the day he received a package from Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert, who later would become known as Ram Dass. Following their instructions and using the LSD the package supplied, we drove out into the desert; chewed little pieces of paper, then swallowed them; and crawled into our sleeping bags, from which we didn’t reemerge for many hours. The drug came on in slow, rolling waves, each one unhitching superfluous gray matter as it did its magic. I noticed that I could trace the wind in my mind before I could hear or feel it. Then the earth was alive and breathing, something I thought I already knew, but I wasn’t aware of the miracle’s magnitude before that moment. I recognized that tumbleweeds have personalities and that flies just want to be our friends.
The LSD peaked inside me, bombarding me with images that were like splattering color on any surface I imagined. It was awe inspiring. Allen was equally moved, and soon thereafter the experience changed his entire approach to photography. He adopted a collage technique, incorporating composite imagery into his work and blending separate pictures into one layered photo before Photoshop was created.
Over that year we took five more trips together, always with wonderful results.
My takeaway was that while science represents what we know and can prove, it’s up to mysticism to creatively imagine answers to the unknown. Photography and acting are both mystical endeavors in the end, aimed at helping us understand what we otherwise cannot know. I can’t overstate the broadening effect Allen Dutton had on my life in those days, and how his influence has continu
ed for decades. He taught me that creative pursuits require both space and the ability to forget what you think you know. We always need new eyes before we can rebuild anything, he was enough of a friend and mentor to help me understand.
I WAS CAST IN THE ROLE OF HELEN KELLER’S BROTHER IN THE Phoenix Little Theatre’s production of The Miracle Worker early in 1966. I was twenty-five years old. A stunning brunette named Sheila Page who was the belle of the local theater scene won the role of Annie Sullivan, the young woman responsible for Helen’s breakthrough therapy. Sheila was ten years older than me, divorced with two children, and a fine actress. Following our premiere performance on a January evening, the cast joined our patrons for an opening reception. Every man who was present was shooting for Sheila.
Yet Sheila wouldn’t have it. That flood of testosterone-fueled attention annoyed her enough that she took me by the arm and whispered, “You’re with me now, Nick,” and she kept me close by her side for the remainder of the event. I was shocked and elated but assumed she’d recruited me just to usher her through the evening.
Sheila had other intentions. Within the year, we were married by a justice of the peace. It was a perfect plan, she convinced me, and I went along without hesitation. I liked her maturity, she was sultry and mysterious and sexy as hell, and we both were actors. She didn’t have to convince me much to say yes. My parents liked Sheila’s sophistication and supported the marriage. Our marriage was unconventional from start to finish.
I had an easy rapport with her kids and was able to create a solid relationship with them by assuring them that I wouldn’t try to replace their father in any way. I would be their older friend they could always count on and if they called, I would come. From the outset, Sheila decreed that we would have an open marriage; the free-loving sixties were in full bloom and I couldn’t believe my good fortune. Our dalliances with other people seemed to suit both of us—except for the one time when we engaged in an entirely disastrous foursome. One thing I took away from that awkward night was if there isn’t equal attraction among the players, the game doesn’t work. In most ways our relationship was something of a dream come true for this twenty-five-year-old guy who wanted a family life but wasn’t ready for one. It perfectly suited Sheila’s needs as well. She had been married for ten years prior, to a strict Jewish man, and had begun to feel stifled by her life. Now she could spread her wings as an actress and build one that suited her. Soon it was time for me to return to Greeley, and Sheila and I entered a long stretch of time in which we were apart much more often than we were together.
BACK IN GREELEY FOR THE THIRD SUMMER, I WAS GREETED with the news that our renowned director and mentor Helen Langworthy had retired. I was disappointed, but as a veteran by now, I had a say in what plays scheduled for that summer I would perform in, and John Osborne’s Luther was irresistible. The young director was a guy named John Willcoxon; he tapped me for the challenging lead role of Martin Luther, and together we and the rest of our company pulled off something of a triumph, at least on a Colorado-sized scale.
The play is a powerful depiction of Martin Luther’s life, from his spiritual crisis and anger at the Catholic Church to his instigation of the Protestant Reformation, and it’s a great piece that truly tests its lead’s capabilities. The British actor Albert Finney had set the bar very high with his tour-de-force 1961 performance in the play’s premiere in England. Five years later in the American heartland, portraying a disaffected youth was right up my alley—I certainly understood the complexities of a nervous breakdown. But by act 3, inhabiting Luther as an old man became a monumental challenge for me. My youth and inexperience with the breadth and depths of life prevented me from really mastering that portion of Osborne’s story, but I acquitted myself reasonably well.
Osborne used Luther’s constipation as a metaphor for the kink in his soul. It could’ve been substituted for my inability to learn the lines as well. During one rehearsal, it came to a head as I flubbed another speech. Exasperated, I belly-flopped on the stage, then proceeded to pound it furiously in frustration while screaming and moaning, “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t . . .” The young actress playing Katherine was taken aback, scolding me unsympathetically, “That’s no way for an actor to behave.” Willcoxon gently rose to my defense, saying, “No, Nick is right, that’s exactly how Luther felt.” His support led me to dust myself off and try again. I eventually was able to spit out the dialogue—not that anyone would’ve noticed with all the sweat gushing out of me like a fountain.
Although I didn’t know until after the performance—and thank God I didn’t—my dad, by himself, came to Greeley and watched a performance. Luther was the only play he ever saw me perform in. He was blown away. After the performance, with the audience cheering repeatedly at curtain call, we went out for a bite to eat at a nearby diner. “Where did that come from, Nick?” he asked, hoping to understand how I pulled the tortured complexity of Luther from inside me.
His question made clear how impressed he was—and proud—and it meant the world to me that I had done something away from the football field that affected him and made him believe his son had survived his crack-up and now was thriving. I remembered answering as if it were no big deal. “It’s always been in there, Pop,” I told him.
BACK IN PHOENIX AGAIN IN THE FALL OF 1966, I WAS APPROACHED by a colleague, Mel Weiser, to join a new theater company called the Actors Inner Circle. I was sold on their promises of risk-taking productions and unconventional concepts. The plan was to mount twelve productions a year, like Harold Pinter’s The Caretaker and Tennessee Williams’s Orpheus Descending, in which I starred as Val, a young man with a guitar, a snakeskin jacket, a questionable past, and animal erotic energy. Sheila played Lady, a middle-aged woman with a dying husband who sees in Val the possibility of new life he seems to offer her, a tempting antidote to her loveless marriage and boring, small-town world. Sheila and I could be dynamic together onstage—and we often were—despite the increasing challenges that open marriage and constant separation posed. Then we were separated once more.
Mel and I received offers from Roy Disney to star in an episode of Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color on television in 1968. I hadn’t done any TV except for a commercial or two but I was curious, so I took the job. A production in the mountains near Flagstaff, “The Feather Farm” was an episode about a couple of ostrich ranchers and their many tribulations. It went on and on for two grueling months—largely because those funny animals refused to do as they were told. One ostrich would go left, one would go right, and the one Mel was riding would zigzag all over the place while Mel swung a little broom maniacally in an attempt to steer. Apparently, they weren’t ready for prime time.
When I finally returned to Phoenix—worn out but with change in my pocket—I tried to catch up on what had been transpiring in Sheila’s life, only to hear rather nonchalantly from her that she had been enjoying sex with our friend Travis.
Even though we had an agreement, I went ape-shit at the news, as things are different when close friends are involved. I think I moved in and out of our house about seven times that first week I was home. It was clear that I had a serious jealous streak inside me, no matter how open-minded I pretended to be, and my wife was not sympathetic. This was our deal, after all, she reminded me, and I finally scooped up my pride and went back to her—for a bit.
Actors Inner Circle was suddenly disbanded when Mel and Michael Byron, its codirectors, were offered Broadway jobs, dropped everything they were doing in the desert, and headed to New York City. The rest of us were left high and dry, angry as hell and uncertain about our futures. One night at a bar where several of us were trying to generate some possibilities and a good buzz, Bob Aden, a seasoned actor at the Arizona Repertory Theatre, told me that the Old Log Theatre in Excelsior, Minnesota, was looking for a lead actor. I barely knew Bob, but I guessed that he recognized a lifer when he saw one. Fate continued to shine favorably in my direction when I needed it most.
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bsp; I called the Old Log’s director, a guy named Don Stolz who had been running the operation since the forties. I explained my situation, asking, “What if I showed up tomorrow? Would you give me a shot?” I think he was impressed, but I was so amped up he had to interrupt, saying, “Son, what’s your name?” “Oh, yeah, that’s important, my name is Nick Nolte.” “See you tomorrow then, Mr. Nick Nolte.” I hung up, then I shared the news with Sheila that she and the kids were going to be on their own again for a while, that I needed to try it out as work had disappeared in Phoenix and this was an important opportunity. Sheila was beginning to see that our open life was expanding geographically. Her father, Lenny Page, had been the master of ceremonies at the Glen Island Casino in New Rochelle, New York, and had worked with Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., and the like. He had asked her early on what she was going to do when “Nick [made] it big.” Apparently, he felt I had what it took and was worried about his daughter. She had shrugged and said, “We’ll deal with that when it comes.” It appeared the time was rapidly coming.
THE OLD LOG THEATRE, CITED AS ONE OF THE LONGEST continually operating professional theaters in America, was Don Stolz’s baby and had been for many years. It specialized in presenting family entertainment and light comedies and farces—precisely the sorts of productions that, at the time, I felt weren’t my cup of tea. But the truth was that these plays depend on an easygoing pizzazz that just didn’t come naturally to me. My stock in trade was intensity, but my ferocity, in fact, was a crutch, and Stolz was onto my act very early.
In one of our first rehearsals, he really gave me the business, punctuating his response to his new actor’s attitude with words I’ll never forget and for which I’m forever grateful. “As long as you judge these characters, Nick,” he said in his plainspoken manner, “you’ll never understand them.” His remarks cured me of my egotism instantly, and for three excellent years in Excelsior, I learned teamwork, punctuality, and sacrifice, and I’ve never been tempted to try to steal the show in all the work I’ve done since.