McQueen didn’t last that long in the play, and he’d be the first one to tell you that live theater wasn’t his strong suit. But my mother, whom I got tickets for whenever I could, saw three people play that leading role: Ben Gazzara, Steve McQueen, and Peter Mark Richman (who replaced Steve after he left). I asked her, “Mom, who did you like the best of those boys?” And she said, “That McQueen boy.” I was surprised. I said, “Could you even hear him?” She said, “A little.” I asked, “Well, what was it you liked about him?”
Her response said it all: “I don’t know. I just wanted to put my arms around him.” Steve McQueen had a vulnerability that makes certain actors shine.
Broadway’s a funny place. As I learned the ropes, I found out that the curtain puller made more money than some of us actors on the stage—including me. He worked two theaters that were right near each other, running back and forth between them on the same nights, so he got paid by both shows! That blew me away. Here I was putting in all this work and practice, and the guy who opened and closed the curtains made more dough. I wasn’t in this for the money, though. The reward was bigger than money. Standing there, hearing that applause on Broadway? It’s like taking a shot of B12. There’s nothing like it.
I basked in the warmth of that applause for a good couple of months before tragedy struck. My wife lost the baby. She was pretty far along. But one day, she started having pains. Rootie was never one to complain, so I called the doctor, and they told us to get to the hospital. They put her in a ward with a few other people, with nothing but thin curtains between the beds. At one point, Rootie asked me if I could close the window. She said she felt cold. I looked around, and the window wasn’t open. It wasn’t cold in that room at all. Something was wrong. Suddenly she felt pains again, and I ran to get the nurse. She called in another nurse, and then another, and suddenly they pulled the curtain closed so I couldn’t see anything.
There weren’t any screams. I didn’t know what was happening. But when they opened the curtain I saw a metal pan—and blood. I couldn’t believe it. The doctor had heard a heartbeat. We thought everything was okay. They didn’t have ultrasounds and all the technology they have today. I felt lost. So did Rootie, of course. We were crushed, and we cried in each other’s arms.
The doctor recommended that she have a hysterectomy at that point, but Rootie refused. We wanted kids. We had to try again. I had dreamed of having four kids, ever since I was in high school. I don’t know why, but I just envisioned myself as the father of four children. No matter how painful that loss had been, we both insisted that we would try again.
It was the second time in my life that I’d been affected so deeply and closely by death. Finding the strength to go on isn’t easy. I spent a lot of time in church. It was the only place I knew to find some solace. I guess being dragged along by my mother as a kid had instilled something important in me.
By the grace of God, we both got through it. We were young and idealistic, and Rootie was so brave. We weren’t going to give up. Rather than let myself fall into a depression, or to think that life as I knew it was over, or to give up on my dreams, I found a new strength. A strength that once again fired me up to live. To go after my dreams even more than before. To not let anything stop me.
My friend Vince was right about A Hatful of Rain: they were getting ready to close it. I got to enjoy that Broadway run for about six months before they closed up shop and took that show on the road. They asked me to go on the road, too, but I turned them down. I didn’t want to leave my wife for so long. They understood, and they found another actor to take my place. It was just a few performances in, though, when Frank Corsaro himself called me from the road: “Gavin, this guy can’t cut it. I’m pleading with you to please go on the road. Do me a favor.”
I said, “Well, you certainly did me a favor giving me my first show.” I talked to Rootie about it. She had gone back to dancing after she recovered, and she said I should do it. She knew it would be good for my career and ultimately good for both of us—even if it meant sacrificing our being together in the short term.
So off I went. I took the train out of Grand Central Station, headed for Chicago. At dinnertime I found myself sitting in the dining car with Harry Guardino. There was a red rose on our table, and when I looked at that rose, it struck me like a bolt of lightning. It happened just as the train approached Pleasantville. I could hardly believe it! I looked out the window and looked and looked, until finally I saw it: that little hill behind our old apartment where I used to stand and watch the train go by when I was just a kid.
Holy smokes! I thought. I’m actually starting to achieve some of my dreams!
We were on the road for about seven months in A Hatful of Rain. A young actress named Diane Ladd joined the cast at one point. And when Peter Mark Richmond left with his wife, Helen, Ben Gazzara came back to the show and toured with us. The rotation of actors and the nature of a road tour allowed me to understudy different parts and to wind up playing some of the bigger parts in different cities. Because I had the hairpiece, I could get away with playing the Man in Hallway role, and then step into one of the bigger junkie roles too. The audience didn’t recognize me at all. It was fabulous! And there was something about being a young bald guy that made me believable in those junkie roles. I don’t know why audiences think junkies should be bald, but I was a hit everywhere we went.
For me, traveling to all of those different cities gave me a chance to see some beautiful sights too—including some stunning churches. I loved feeling the presence of God in those magnificent buildings. Some of the other guys in the show patronized other sorts of establishments in each city on the tour. There was a lot of carousing going on, and the fact that they would bring different women back to the hotel rooms we shared made for some awkward moments. I learned how to pretend to be fast asleep pretty quickly! I called home to my wife whenever I could and made the most of every moment I had on that stage.
One of the biggest thrills was getting the chance to play in Los Angeles. We had a lot of directors and producers come to see us, and the energy you receive as an actor in Hollywood is something else. In fact, during our run at a theater called the Huntington Hartford, I received an offer to go play the part of another junkie in a movie directed by André de Toth—the director of House of Wax, The Bounty Hunter, and more. I was astonished. There was just one problem: I couldn’t get out of the play. I had a contract. Not to mention I’m a loyal guy. I wasn’t going to abandon Frank Corsaro after all he’d done for me. I simply wouldn’t do that. As badly as I wanted to take that part, the timing just wasn’t right.
When the road tour finally closed in Boston, I couldn’t get that movie offer out of my mind, though. I got home to New York and I told my wife, “I think I have some action on the West Coast.”
5
HURRY FOR HOLLYWOOD
AFTER ALL THAT TIME, AFTER ALL OF THAT EFFORT, after getting my big break, I still couldn’t get an agent in New York—all because of my bald head. A lot of people don’t understand what a struggle showbiz can be, even after it seems like you’ve “made it.” At first it made me sick to my stomach. I thought, What kind of a business is this? I’m on Broadway, and I still can’t get an agent?
It was time to try something new. With California dreams rattling around my head, I started asking around to see if anyone I knew had any good contacts on the West Coast. Rosemary, a dancer who had been a roommate with my wife, was going with a guy named George, who said, “I know an agent in California named Lou Irwin. I’ll call him. He handles the Ritz Brothers and people like that. I’ll call him!” So he did. I flew out there, and I rented a car, and I was sitting in the waiting area at Lou Irwin’s office when I first met an actor named Ted Knight—yes, the very same Ted Knight I wound up working with on The Mary Tyler Moore Show in the 1970s. This was way back in 1957! He was just another actor trying to get work, just like me. He had already been in Hollywood for a while, though. We started talking, and
he insisted that I needed to get a business manager. “Business manager? I don’t have any money!” I said. “Neither do I!” he said. “But I’ve got a business manager . . .”
Ted was like my big brother, right from the start. It marked the beginning of a lifelong friendship.
Oh, and guess what? After all those agents dismissed me in New York City, Lou Irwin, the very first agent I saw in LA, took me on as a client right away. He liked my credentials, he said. You know what else he liked? The fact that I carried my hairpiece in a box when I went to see him. To him, the fact that I could play two very different looks, either with my hairpiece or without, could potentially get me in the door for some interesting character work.
“Great!” I said. I could hardly believe it. He saw my bald head as an asset. After all the rejection I’d faced, that was quite a turnaround for me.
While I was out there on that trip, inching closer and closer to thinking that Hollywood might be the town for me after all, I went to see a friend who knew a lot about the business. “Gavin,” he said, “the most important thing when you’re out here is that people have got to see you. They’re about to open A Hatful of Rain at the Players’ Ring Gallery Theater in West Hollywood, and I know that they’re not satisfied with the guy playing Mother. Why don’t you go see ’em?”
I had understudied for the part of the junkie named Mother on Broadway, and then taken that show out on the road for months. I could do that role, piece of cake. Still, I said to him, “I’ve been in that play for a year and a half. I don’t know.” He insisted it was worth it, so I called the producers and went down there. To my delight, they had actually seen me play the role at The Hartford, when I was on tour. They were excited to have me come by even before I got there. So I did a couple of lines and they said, “Okay. We open Tuesday night. Can you do it?”
It was almost too easy. Almost too good to be true. I said yes, and we talked about rehearsal times, and suddenly I found myself onstage with Robert Blake, Brian Hutton, Jocelyn Brando, Lee Farr, and Al Lettieri—all of these brilliant actors who would go on to do big, big things.
So that was that. My wife and I moved to Hollywood.
It’s funny how people in your hometown, your family, like to stay where they are, and they want you to stay too. My mother was so nervous about me moving to California. She didn’t think anyone could be an actor full-time. As if it weren’t a real job. Or maybe it just wasn’t possible for someone from our family. A lot of people have that self-doubt: “No one from our family could ever do that.” Well, why not? I could never understand what holds someone back. Why can’t someone go after his dreams? At least give it a shot, you know? There’s no one type of person or one type of family that gets to have all the success in life. There’s no rule that says you can’t be a successful actor because of your background, whatever that background might be. I assured her I had an agent and everything was gonna be all right.
Moms worry. It’s just in their nature, I suppose. But I thought back to that chance I had to get a job as a roofer after high school. I remember thinking, So I’m gonna put things on the roof? I would jump off the roof from boredom! I had to go to New York. I had to chase my dream. Some people are happy being roofers. People are happy being a lot of things. My instinct told me roofing wasn’t for me, and look where following that instinct took me: Hollywood. After only a few short years of trying.
I tell you, I was so grateful for the opportunities. Right from the start.
I suppose that sense of gratitude is why I’ve never been competitive with other actors. Whenever I walked into an audition, I was determined to do the best I could do, and that’s all, knowing, Hey, if somebody else gets the part, that’s okay. I’m gonna get my thing someday. And I did. More than I ever imagined.
In fact, my friend was right: acting in that Players’ Ring production of A Hatful of Rain gave me just the visibility I needed. My agent could send people down to see me. It made a big difference. Fortuitously enough, a lot of television shows that had been shot in New York were relocating to Hollywood in those days, and it wasn’t long after Rootie and I settled in California when I got my first steady TV gig. You’ll never guess where? At Desilu Productions—Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz’s production company. Five years after I’d been so thrilled to give them a ride in my elevator at Radio City, here I was, an actor on their ever-evolving slate of TV shows. I didn’t get to work with Lucy or Desi directly, but to think I was now working for their company? Wow. And I worked a lot. Want to know why? Because of my bald head.
They produced The Sheriff of Cochese, Whirlybirds, and U.S. Marshalls—I did all those shows. Because I didn’t have hair, and I had hair in a box, I could play a young guy in one show, and then take off the hairpiece, change my clothes, and play a totally different guy in another show. The audience never caught on, because I looked so different with and without hair.
We shot all those half-hour shows in two and a half days each. It was a workout as an actor, I’ll tell you, jumping from one completely different role to another from day to day.
It was also there that I met and worked with a talented young actress who would become a lifelong friend: Marion Ross—who would eventually be known far and wide as “Mrs. C” from Happy Days.
Desilu was doing The Walter Winchell File, which was a hot show at that time, based on crime stories that famed gossip columnist Walter Winchell had covered while working as a journalist in New York City. I went in and picked up the script—there was the part of a bartender, and then there was the part of a young guy picking up women in a bar and taking them back, molesting them, stealing from them, and killing them. I figured I was going in to read for the bartender. So I went in and met Desi’s “henchman,” the guy who did all of Desi’s dirty work. He said, “You want to read?” I said, “Yeah!” So I started to read the bartender. And he said, “No, no. You’re here for the lead. I know all the other things you’ve done for us, so this is a courtesy thing.” I said, “Oh! So with my hair!” I put on my hair and got that part. Even though I was playing what’s referred to as a “heavy,” this criminal who did terrible things, I couldn’t help but infuse that character with a little bit of me. It’s a strange thing, and I say this not to be boastful but because I’ve never understood exactly what it is about me that makes audiences react this way: even when I’m playing a really terrible character, there’s something about me that audiences still like. It’s the strangest thing. But it worked for me in Hollywood, and this was one of the first instances where it really took off.
The studio got so much mail from that one show that they brought me back for another one. And in the other one, I played a John Garfield kind of character—also with the hair. They told me, “You’re going to be working with Marion Ross in this one.” I didn’t know who she was. “She’s a brilliant actress,” they said. “She’s doing a play in Santa Monica now and we’re so happy to have her.”
Marion played a Dinah Shore–like character, and we played opposite each other. The very first scene we had to do was at six forty-five in the morning. They introduced us. We shook hands. Then the director said, “This is the scene where you start to seduce her.” He placed Marion lying down on the divan. He put me on the floor and said, “Open your shirt and pull up your sleeves. Now, you’re going to con her into saying that if she opens the club for you, it can get a lot of attention.”
So just as the script suggested, I took her hand and started kissing her arm, and said, “You know, of all the singers around today, nobody comes close to you. And besides that, you’re beautiful. We could make great music together. All you’ve gotta do”—and I was kissing her—“is say yes.” I kissed her arm higher and higher. “Will you say yes?” By the time I worked up the arm and got to her neck, we were in love! I mean, imagine doing that sort of thing with someone you only just met. Marion and I laugh about it to this day. We were in our twenties, and we had so much fun together on that shoot, just as we did on the many, many shoot
s and shows we did together in the decades to come.
Marion and I have always been just friends, but I started to notice other actors and actresses would film a “love scene” like that and then continue their lovemaking off the set. There were a lot of guys in Hollywood who were fooling around behind their wives’ backs. I wasn’t one of them. Maybe it was my Catholic upbringing that kept me on the straight and narrow. There were times when I looked around and definitely felt like some kind of “square,” but in the end, I’m a lot happier with myself for making the right decisions.
All this incredible stuff, all this work, all this excitement happened in 1957 alone. It’s hard to imagine, even now, as I look back on it. I’ve tried to think about what it was that worked for me, and why I started to get work when other actors didn’t. A lot of young people just starting out in the business want to know the secret. And you know what the secret is? I think it’s simply that I didn’t give up. Remember, I had been on Broadway making less money than the curtain puller, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t get an agent. A lot of guys might have called it quits right there. A lot of wives might have pushed their husbands to hang up their hats and go get regular jobs at that point. But Rootie didn’t. And I couldn’t. I loved acting too much. I kept going, and I was fortunate enough to have a wife who supported me in that.
Another part of my early success? I finally found a way to turn my bald head into a positive rather than a negative. For some reason, having that bald head at such a young age gave me the edge I needed to play heavies, drug dealers, bad guys—even though there was something about my personality or my presence that made people like me, even when I was playing a bad character. And having the diversity of ages and character types with the hairpiece gave me that extra leg up when I needed it.
This Is Your Captain Speaking: My Fantastic Voyage Through Hollywood, Faith & Life Page 6