I enjoyed that difficult experience so much that when I was offered the romantic lead (let me repeat that for my own pleasure, when I was offered the romantic lead…) in a movie titled Senior Moment I approached it as I had the Halifax experience. I lived like a monk in a lovely hotel, eating nuts and figs and focusing on nothing but the movie.
People ask me why I did that. My answer is, Why not? The opportunity was there to do something I truly enjoyed. More than that, within days of the end of that shoot I flew to Europe to work with Henry Winkler, Terry Bradshaw, George Foreman, and young comedian Jeff Dye on the second season of a reality show titled Better Late Than Never. For this show, billed as “an international adventure in hope of having a life-changing experience,” we traipse around Asia and Europe having unscripted adventures. I was there for six more weeks.
Why not?
Just like everybody else, I have been working my entire life. I started working on a radio program when I was six years old and just never stopped. I never saw a reason to stop. There was never anything I wanted to do more than what I was doing. In some ways I have been a workaholic. I rarely go to Hollywood parties or spend hours just relaxing. For me, working is my relaxation. If I’m not performing or writing or being with my horses or dogs I am busy planning the next projects in my head. I am putting pieces together, trying to recruit people to bring my concepts into fruition. There is always a performance of some kind going on in my head, ideas presenting themselves for approval or dismissal, words at play, questions to be answered. It doesn’t stop, nor would I want it to stop. Actually, in all ways I am a workaholic.
Some of my work consisted of jobs I took because I needed the salary. But the only job I’ve ever done outside entertainment consisted of delivering orders to customers in cars at an Orange Julius in Montreal. I was not even a waiter, I was a server, and I wasn’t very good at it. I don’t remember why I took that job—I was earning a stipend for performing on local radio—but I did. The job description was basic: take this order to that car.
I like to believe I approached that job with my usual enthusiasm. But perhaps it would have been smarter to approach it with more focus. My second day on the job I tripped off a curb and dumped an entire order, including that deliciously refreshing Orange Julius drink, through an open car window. There isn’t much to be said when you fail at delivering a tray. I do remember taking a streetcar home, probably realizing my career in the service industry was over.
And also like everybody else I have had to work at jobs I did not like at all. I have done commercials that I knew I shouldn’t be doing. I have been in movies and TV shows that I knew I shouldn’t be doing. I have forgotten most of them, perhaps the only advantage of growing older, but they were mostly innocuous things that people hadn’t heard of or aren’t aware of, films and shows that failed and were forgotten or were never released. Projects that exist only on IMDb and usually draw the response “I never heard of that. I wonder what that one is about?” Here’s a suggestion: Don’t wonder; there is a reason you never heard about it.
I think every actor has these projects on their résumé. But there was one project that stands out as perhaps the silliest thing I have ever done. Among the movies and TV shows and books and records and concerts and all the rest, this is one I will never forget: I did a stand-up comedy act as Captain Kirk. It was an act that will live in infamy. It fell into the category “it seemed like a good idea at the time.”
I have done many live performances. I have luxuriated in the warmth of an audience’s laughter. I know how to tell a story to draw the largest response. That’s my job and my work. But this was different. I was performing the entire act in the character of James T. Kirk. I can’t recall why I did it or, mercifully, the material that I used. There was no “Spock and Bones walked into a transporter.” What I do remember is an entire audience staring at me with their mouths open in awe as we all realized we were in the middle of a complete disaster and there was no way to stop it. No one laughed with me or at me. They were as stunned as I was at this colossally bad idea. At least with bad movies, TV shows, or albums I didn’t have to look directly at an audience. Here I had no choice. But I kept going. This was one of those it-wasn’t-funny-at-the-time situations, which actually might be the worst possible way of reviewing a stand-up comedy routine.
But I kept going. I’ve never considered what my eulogy might be, but “He kept going” would not be bad. At times we all have to do work we don’t enjoy. Every career, like every life, is cyclical. No one goes through life in neutral. There are going to be great moments and stand-up moments. The question is what do you do when you find yourself in that situation? I kept going. I knew that performance was going to end or that TV show was going to be forgotten. I knew time would pass and with luck it would be forgotten. So I did the best job I could at that time while continuing to search for opportunities to do other things that I would enjoy more.
I know there are people caught in jobs they hate that they have to keep doing to pay their rent or support their family. The best advice I can give to people in that situation is to find a book that gives them better advice. This book isn’t it. This book is about what I have learned, and by the nature of my profession I have never been in that situation. My jobs end naturally. The movie is done. The show goes off the air. The audience responds. The Priceline negotiator drives off a cliff.
But when I have found myself caught in a bad situation, I have tried to find ways of making it at least palatable. The first thing I did was the best that I could. I had to perform and eliminate any negative thoughts about the situation. I couldn’t allow my anger or bitterness to erode my performance. I did the best I could. I learned to ignore both the emotional and physical pain and focus only on what I had to do in the moment. The ability to do that would seem to be a gift, but it isn’t; it is something I have learned how to do through experience.
In many instances the cause of the problem is other people. The work, the job, might be tolerable, but you are forced to work with people who don’t want to be there and take out their anger and frustrations on everyone around them. I have experienced that several times. I know the wrong way to handle it: I punched out a cast member onstage, which probably demonstrated a lack of restraint on my part—although admittedly it did feel great. We were in a scene that called for him to slap me on the back. Depending on whether or not he got a laugh from an earlier line, he would slap me hard or soft. I warned him that he was hitting me too hard. I complained to the producer, to Actors’ Equity, to anyone who would listen, and I told him the next time he did it I was going to deck him. I did.
That was one way to deal with the situation. I would not recommend that.
When I was in the play The World of Suzie Wong, our Suzie Wong didn’t want to be there. Our leading lady was a beautiful young Asian woman. It apparently never occurred to anyone that the fact that she barely spoke English might be a problem. Eventually, she wanted to get out of her contract. In my opinion, she did everything possible to sabotage the show. She would forget her lines; she would miss her cues; she would wander offstage and not come back. It was the actor’s nightmare come true. For the two years I was in that play with her, I would walk through the stage door fearful of what might happen onstage that night. Instead of reveling in the fact that my name was above the title on a Broadway theater marquee I was angry and confused and terrified.
The situation was even worse. The Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Flower Drum Song had opened about the same time we did and some of the newly formed suburban theater groups confused the two shows and mistakenly bought tickets for The World of Suzie Wong. We were sold out for almost two years. I had signed a run-of-play contract. So no matter how bad the show was, I was stuck in it for two years. When the curtain rose and no one broke out into a big raucous opening number, members of the audience initially were confused, then often dismayed. Occasionally hostile.
And then they had to sit through what at times bec
ame a shambles. I was onstage for most of the play. When the show fell apart it left me exposed. To the audience it appeared I was the one who had forgotten my lines or my actions. The audience didn’t know that the half of the play who did not speak English was offstage refusing to come on. I kept going. I did the best I could. Whenever possible, I got a laugh.
It was not funny at that time. I was at the beginning of my career and I was looking at the end of my career. This was supposed to be an important step in building my career; instead the building was collapsing. As difficult as it was for me, I never missed a performance. I showed up, I did my job to the best of my ability, and I remained hopeful that this would lead to a better situation.
No matter what it is you are doing, there always are going to be hurdles to be overcome. That’s part of the challenge; it also makes success more enjoyable. I only worked with Roger Corman once. Roger Corman was the master of B movies. It is impossible to know how many people began their careers working with him. I’m not sure that he was ecstatic about the movies he made, but he kept making them. His budgets were below minimal and he became a genius at doing things inexpensively; cutting corners is not a good thing, because it leads to cutting quality. But sometimes it becomes necessary just to get things done. Roger just wanted to get it on film, although that “it” was sometimes pretty dubious.
Corman always referred to the movie we did together as the only movie on which he lost money, and although I have the feeling he told that to many people, he also called it the best movie he ever made. And many years later it finally became profitable.
Budget versus quality was a battle we fought every day on Star Trek. On that set the lights went out at 6:12 whatever we were doing and that was it. There was no money in the budget for overtime. Six twelve, done. The production company had to do it that way because that was the dictate of the studio. The studio had to do it that way because the network wouldn’t pay anything additional. So the fish was stinking from the top and it made its way all the way down to the makeup artist or the quality of the food served by craft services. Not that craft services was feeding us rotten fish, of course. (Here’s an aside to young actors: Never, ever criticize craft services.)
By the time we got to our third season, when our already tiny budget was cut again, our goal became to see if we could get it done well as well as getting it done fast. That was our most difficult season but at least in some ways the most enjoyable because we were all fighting the same enemy. No matter what hurdles were put in our way, we got over them by 6:12.
We did whatever we could to make an often unpleasant situation enjoyable. We played practical jokes on one another, we formed a loose alliance against “the suits,” and we did the best possible job under the circumstances. There have been many millions of words written about Star Trek. I believe it is fair to say that no show in TV history has been more analyzed, criticized, or memorialized than Star Trek. I have read much of it. I’ve even written some of it. But I don’t recall ever seeing anyone claiming that the actors gave anything less than the best of their ability.
In my life this is simply another example of what at the moment appeared to be a disaster that instead became a rose. The result of our commitment to doing the best job we could in circumstances we all despised was something none of us could ever anticipate. We were doing our jobs, in some cases showing up for the desperately needed paycheck; we did not have the slightest suspicion we were making entertainment history. It never occurred to any of us that standing there holding cheap plastic guns and talking to rocks would eventually lead to long and successful careers. That’s really the message: Even under the worst circumstances do the very best job of which you are capable, because you never know who is watching you. In our case, literally. And you never know what it might lead to.
That certainly was not the only time in my career that I found myself wondering what I was doing there and waiting impatiently for 6:12 so I could go home. But my response in each of those situations was the same: Doing the best possible job. No matter what was happening around me. No matter if my costar refused to say her lines or another actor was punching me or I was making a movie in a language even I didn’t speak, I did the best job I was capable of doing and somehow it all worked out just fine.
I don’t know a lot of people who have retired and lived happily ever after. General MacArthur once said, “Old soldiers never die; they just fade away.” A similar thing might be said about actors: “Old actors never die: they just fade to black.” The people I have known in the entertainment industry have kept working as long as someone was willing to hire them. There is an old actors’ joke:
“I had a man ask me just yesterday if I had thought about retiring.”
“Really? That’s great. Who was it?”
“The director.”
The thought of retiring has never occurred to me. I know how fortunate I am that I am still being asked to do the job I’ve spent my life training to do. And, honestly, I think I am better at it now than I have ever been in my life. It’s taken me most of eighty years, but I’ve finally figured out how to do my job and I love doing it. And I intend to keep doing it as long as I am able. I am one of those very lucky people who is never going to retire.
No one should retire when their work remains pleasurable. What would I do if I retired? That’s the question I would ask anyone, whether they are a nuclear physicist or a laborer. If your job isn’t pleasant I understand the need to change, but retiring to sit on the back porch and rock will atrophy not only your body but also your mind, and it will do it within months. Personally, I have no reason to retire. I would end up doing exactly what I am doing now. I am one of those very fortunate people. I have spent my life doing work I loved, even when I didn’t love the job I was doing. People may retire from a job, but I don’t believe they should stop working.
My wife, Elizabeth, for example, was a wonderful horse trainer with her late husband. We met in that world. But after we married, being together meant that she could no longer continue that profession. So her work became taking care of us. In fact, although she sort of retired, she probably is busier than previously. She takes care of both of our schedules, makes certain that what needs to be done in my life is done, and takes care of our home and our immediate and extended families. She has become one of the primary professional judges in several different types of horse competitions. She has continued to ride and train a few horses and she has begun doing photography. Although she has no job she has to go to, she never stops working. And it seems to make her very happy.
When I write about the importance of work, that’s what I mean. Find that thing or those things you enjoy doing and do them. It doesn’t have to be a paid position, it might be volunteer work, or a hobby; it makes no difference. It’s that thing that you look forward to doing. A purpose to your day. That something from which you derive satisfaction.
Age isn’t a barrier. You can begin something at eighty-six and work at it. A good deal of my time is spent beginning new projects. Just after I celebrated my eighty-sixth birthday, for example, I read some beautiful poetry a military veteran had sent me and realized it could be the basis of a one-man show. In my mind I saw the finished product. It needed music and some minor staging, it certainly would take more than a year to produce it. I got very excited about it; I began trying to figure out which musicians might want to work with me developing it. As these thoughts ran through my mind I became energized.
Will it ever get done? Perhaps, but many years ago I saw a segment of the great Charles Kuralt’s “On the Road” series that obviously made an impact on me. A retired Wright, Minnesota, dairy farmer named Gordon Bushnell believed there should be a direct two-hundred-mile highway from Duluth to Fargo, so he set out to build it—by himself, with only a wheelbarrow, a shovel, and an old tractor. He was having some health problems, but as he discovered, “I started working, and the more I worked the better I felt. And the pain went away.… There’s fellas have re
tired—younger than I am—that go and sit down and listen to TV, and they’re dead.”
He worked on that highway for twenty years, completing nine miles when the piece was done. He was seventy-eight years old and had 191 miles to go. Obviously he would never complete it, but as Kuralt said, Bushnell had discovered that “it wasn’t the road that mattered; it was building the road.”
You have to build your own road, or nurture your own plants, or even chase Terry Bradshaw with a rotten fish. It is essential for your physical and mental well-being. If you’re a technician of any kind and you have computer skills, then sit down and work at that computer. If you have people skills, those don’t go away. Even if you have physical impairments that can be overcome to some extent, do what you can do. Challenge yourself. I know someone who began playing a guitar in his sixties. It was too late for him to fulfill his youthful ambition of becoming a rock star, but he worked at it. He improved. He learned how to play new chords and came close to making music. It wasn’t being a rock star that mattered; it was seeing himself getting a little bit better at the guitar every day that mattered.
He set a challenge for himself, learned to play the guitar, and trying to meet that challenge continues to bring him great pleasure. Work within your limitations, but work. Don’t sit in front of the TV set, unless of course you’re watching a show in which I’m involved, and let your life slip by without your even noticing it.
The fact that I don’t know how not to work has been a great blessing for me. It has kept me actively involved in life throughout my entire life. My suggestion is that you respond to anyone who asks what makes you happy with, “I’m working at it.”
8. Relationships Are Not All Relative
“ALONE.”
What a painful word this is for me. It carries with it so much meaning: Isolation. Estrangement. Abandonment. Loneliness. And fear.
Live Long and . . . Page 11