Years back I tried to get on WHO WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE. Had to traipse up to the ABC building somewhere around 65th Street where I was packed into a large room with a couple hundred other hopefuls. We took a written test, sat and waited while they were graded. Then, those with a sufficiently high score were asked to stay to be interviewed by someone from the show.

First time I went I flunked the test. I was mortified. But not defeated.

I went back at least six more times and each time passed through to the interview.

The interviewers, about half a dozen of 'em, sat at a line of tables and talked generalities with us. I'm almost proud to say that I never got past the interview. I mean, let's face it, I can be damn unpleasant in person. (As opposed to my devastatingly charming online persona.)

By the last time I was interviewed, I thought maybe I'd figured out how to fool 'em, figured how to play the game.  Felt pretty optimistic till I got a look at the guy at the next interview table: a retired Navy admiral in full dress regalia. With medals. I said to my interviewer, nodding toward the admiral, "I got a pretty good guess who's gonna be on the show very soon."

She didn't laugh and I failed again. That was the last straw.

Too bad. I coulda used a million bucks.

I just watched the last third or so of IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE. Of course, I’ve seen it, by actual count, 67 million times before. Since my first viewing I’ve been impressed by the movie. Since my second or third viewing, I’ve realized that James Stewart’s performance was really good. Then I realized it was great. Then I realized it was shatteringly brilliant. And today, for the first time, I truly really appreciated, as an actor, what’s going on here.

People, even including show biz types, try to accept a movie on its own terms, as some sort of removed reality. Then if they really stop and think about it, they recognize an actor doing good work, a director in charge, designers getting it right. As concerns the actual nuts-and-bolts of filmmaking, that’s usually the end of it.

As an actor you sometimes go one step further: “Oh, nice line reading…nice subtle reaction there… I love the way he walked out of the room..”  Stuff like that. But usually not much more.

Today, though, watching the last half hour of IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE, something more occurred to me. This is something I could have, maybe should have, thought of long ago. But I didn’t, so leave me be. I’m doing the best I can.

What I’m thinking about starts in the movie with the missing $8000. I know I don’t have to explain that because we’ve all seen the movie. Anyway, that’s when George Bailey’s life really, ultimately goes straight to hell. For the next extended section of the movie, Jimmy Stewart plays anger, fear, desperation, all the bad stuff. And he plays it extremely well. EXTREMELY well.

Then, finally, after Clarence has done his magic, George gets it. The snow starts falling again, his lip starts bleeding again, Zuzu’s petals make their return. And George Bailey is happy. He’s as happy as anyone in human history has ever been. Jimmy Stewart has to play that, and he plays it extremely well. EXTREMELY well.

But what really occurred to me for the first time today was… The scenes with desperate George probably took a week to film, at the least. And every day of that week or more, actor Stewart had to be at the very extremity of anger and fear and desperation over and over again. He probably had to be suicidal for a full day. 

Then, thank God, the misery is past and it’s time to be happy. This is no easier, believe me. Stewart had to be at the opposite extremity now, happier than humans are allowed to be. He had to experience and evince pure joy. For another week. Every day, over and over, he had to smile till his cheeks hurt, laugh and make it real, love all these people who are, really, just other actors.

This sort of acting, in extremis, is difficult on stage eight times a week, really difficult. So difficult, in fact, that it’s often not really achieved. But to do it over and over, day after day, for a week or more, first maximally miserable, then impossibly joyful, that was Mr. Stewart’s assignment. Something almost impossible, I’d think. But there it is. The proof of it is on the screen and it is undeniable. 

And, though it’s really beside the point, it’s still worth remembering that this was the first performance for an actor after years of war. Genuine war, in his case. Actual dangerous, life-threatening, soul-changing war.

Mr. Stewart…Bravo. Brav-the-damn-o.

 

My first memory of American politics is 1956, when, six-years-old, I loved the conventions. It was exciting. Yelling, signs, balloons, people with microphones. I remember a delegate being asked which candidate he was supporting and tossing off a name which the interviewer had never heard before. Somebody said, “I guess he’s a favorite son.” I couldn’t figure what that meant.  My parents had two sons. Was I the “favorite?”

    Having loved the ‘56 conventions, I was primed for 1960. It didn’t disappoint. So many people wanted the Democratic nomination that it felt like a gameshow. And I loved the name of the Republican Vice-Presidential candidate: Henry Cabot Lodge.  I learned that “Cabot” was a  big name in New England, as witness this:

Boston, the home of the bean and the cod,

Where theLowells speak only to Cabots,

And the Cabots speak only to God.

             We had a mock election in our 5th Grade classroom, I was campaign manager for Richard Nixon. Sorry. And we won! Well… Indiana.

Our next door neighbor, Mr. Pangburn, asked me who my parents were voting for. Even at ten years of age, I knew better than to answer, so I said, “I don’t know.”

He said, “They’d better vote for Nixon. If Kennedy wins, the Pope will be running this country.” Even to a kid, that sounded wacky.

With no school on election day, I worked for my dad. Hey, I was ten years old. A guy’s gotta make a living. At the end of the day, I wanted to get home to watch election returns. But Dad stopped on the way, leaving me in the truck while he talked business with someone. He took forever so the returns started rolling in without me. 

‘64-- not much of interest. I was LBJ, all the way, but I remember that Barry Goldwater, the Republican candidate, while obviously WRONG about everything, still seemed so disturbingly smart.

‘68 was memorable, for all the wrong reasons. I watched as the Chicago police rioted and as Mayor Daley’s face was forever ingrained in my brain as the precise image of corruption.

My dad dropped by in his police car one night during the convention. I sat in the police car and raged about what was happening in Chicago. It was the cops I was particularly angry about, and my dad sat there listening, in his police uniform. All he said was, “mmm…uh huh…” He’d never seen me in this mood. No one had.

‘72, finally of age to vote. As the bumper stickers would soon read: “Don’t blame me, I voted for George.”  McGovern, that is.

‘80--I voted for a third-party candidate. I was a Carter man, but it was obvious that Reagan would take Indiana easily. Well…Indiana.  I read that the third party guy, John Anderson, would only receive federal matching funds if his vote total reached a certain level. So I voted for him, hoping to stave off his bankruptcy.

‘72 again: I accompanied Dad to his voting place. I was told that I should vote there. No, I said, this is not my voting place. Yes, someone with my name was on their list, but the address was not mine. “That’s not me,” I said  

But a guy--the son of our sitting mayor and also a jerk--was haranguing me to vote, assuming that I would vote for his dad. 

He put his arm around my shoulder, and whispered, “c’mon, what does it matter? And you could vote again at your other place.” And he laughed. So, okay. I voted there where I shouldn’t. I voted for the guy running against his dad. As I left, we exchanged winks at having cheated the system.

And, no, I didn’t vote twice.  

 There are three people in the photo, two women and one man. The camera recorded this image outdoors, on a gray day, in a cemetery. The black and white image is clearly old. From another time.

The man is in a coffin and he is, without doubt, dead. The coffin is standing upright, though leaning back a few degrees in order, I assume, to insure that the corpse wouldn’t pitch forward, out of frame. Because what’s a corpse photo without the corpse? 

The guy looks pretty darn awful. Utterly, undeniably dead, and terribly, terribly unhappy. Two glum, plain-faced women, both in long plain black dresses, stand on either side of his container. Probably wife and daughter. Their look toward the camera is no warmer than his, just with their eyes open. They both look like the farm wife in Grant Wood’s “American Gothic” only maybe a little sadder. Maybe their mouths are a bit more downturned. Sad they were, but not terribly, terribly unhappy like the enboxed gentleman. I assume this was because they, unlike Dad, were still alive.

My grandmother had this photo and that’s how I came to see it. Assumedly the people, living and dead, were family to us in some fashion. I’m guessing my sister has the photo now. She can have it, she can keep it. I don’t want it, wouldn’t have it. I don’t care to stare at the dead, kin or not. I saw it once and that was enough. That was too much actually, because I still see it. 

Like right now.

Audition for Jon Jory

Jon Jory was artistic director at Actors Theater of Louisville.  The Theater had

blossomed under Jory’s stewardship and was becoming even bigger, premiering

shows which would transfer to Broadway or Off-Broadway, fostering plays which

would win major literary prizes. Jory was the man behind the curtain,

orchestrating all that.

And, 1971 or ‘72, I was going to audition for him. For the life of me, I cannot

remember how the audition came about. It was nothing I arranged. Somebody--

no idea who--told me I had an audition appointment with Jory. I’m sure I asked

how this came to be, but I have no memory of ever knowing.

I was nervous. To me, Actors Theater was the bigtime, the real bigtime, second

only MAYBE to Broadway. And I was going to audition for Mr. Actors Theater

himself. So, yeah, nervous.

The day arrived, I entered the building and met Jon Jory. He led me into the

theater auditorium.

I stepped on stage. He sat, entirely by himself, in the house. He asked what I

was going to do. I told him I had a monologue from HENRY V. It wasn’t

really a monologue, at least Shakespeare wouldn’t recognize it as such. I’d

taken a large section of the proposal scene and edited it into a one-man thing. 

It was a wonderful bunch of words, touching and romantic and quite funny.

My paste-job ran about nine minutes. But that, of course, is too much for most

situations, so I’d also figured out a couple of shorter versions, one about six

minutes, one about four.  But no shorter than that. At four minutes, all that was

left was gold.

At whichever length, I did it. As I recall, I did hear Mr. Jory laugh. When I

finished he said, more or less, “very nice. What else do you have?” Ah. I was

not prepared for that. I figured it was just a fluke that I was auditioning for this

man. While I hoped that he’d take me seriously, I didn’t expect him to give me

a lot of time. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

“Another monologue?” I asked. 

“Yes, if you have something.”

Did I have another monologue? Well…yes. And no. I had memorized Tom’s

opening speech from THE GLASS MENAGERIE, simply because I liked it.

But I’d never rehearsed it, never thought about actually using it. I had never

even spoken it aloud. So no way I should be premiering such an unknown,

unplanned quantity at any audition, certainly not a big one like this. 

  I said, “Yes, I have the opening speech from GLASS MENAGERIE.”

Yeah, I said that. 

“Great,” he said, “perfect.”

This is not a practice I recommend to young actors. Or to old actors. Or dead

actors. It was a stupid, reckless thing to do. But…Jon Jory wanted to hear

more from me. I was flattered. So I did it.

And it was…I think…all right. Such a wonderful speech. “Yes, I have tricks

in my pocket, I have things up my sleeve. But I am the very opposite of a

stage magician. He gives you illusion disguised as reality. I give you reality

in the pleasant guise of illusion…” 

When I finished, Mr. Jory again said something nice, then stood and said,

“let’s go up to my office.”  More unexpectedness. We traipsed upstairs to

his small office. He sat behind his desk and I sat in the “client’s chair”.  He

asked if I’d like a cup of coffee. Uh..well, yeah. Sure. 

So we sat sipping coffee and talking, just barely-over-voting-age me and

the director of a bigtime regional theater. At one point he had to take a

phone call. I started to leave but he said, “no, just sit, this won’t take

long.” He talked to someone for about four or five minutes as I sipped

coffee and pretended that this sort of thing happened to me every day. 

Once off the phone Jon Jory offered me a job. Unbelievable. It wasn’t

a job on the main stage but rather a spot in their Adventure Theater

troupe. These guys toured around the state, performing at high schools

and colleges.  On occasional Monday nights, the main Actors stage was

turned over to them for a performance of whatever they’d been doing. 

Secondary company or not, I was bowled over. I said, “thank you. I’d

have to figure how it would fit in around my classes…”

He jumped in, “you’re still in school?”

“Yes,” I said, “I’m….”

Jory said, “I withdraw the offer. I’m not taking anyone out of school.”

Then he talked about my future. Mine. He said I should consider

post-grad work at a school with a solid theater program. He named a

couple that he thought were good and said, “if you do that, come see me

and I’ll write you a recommendation.”

He went on, “if you don’t want to go to school, you should go to New

York. BUT…if you plan to take acting classes, call me and I’ll recommend

some people. You have to be careful. 95% of acting teachers are fakes and

scams.” 

And that was it. Jon Jory had given me more than 45 minutes of his time.

And he’d offered kind assistance. I was never so happy after an audition

from which I got no work.

I never had another one-on-one with the man, but I’d occasionally see

him in the lobby when I’d attend shows at ATL. He’d always walk over,

shake my hand and ask how I was. He called me Mr. Pruitt, I called him

Mr. Jory. 

I never worked at Actors Theater, and that’s too bad. But my meeting

with Jon Jory was a nice substitute.

 

        I do know what I look like, I really do. Every couple of days I force myself to take a look at the old man in the mirror. He’s craggy and saggy, scarred and marred. His eyes are clear and still blue, but everything else about his looks is pretty disastrous. Still… horrible as the decay has been, I think he’s still recognizable as the young man he once was.

Today my sister sent me a recent photo of my ex. We split over 50 years ago and it’s been almost that long since I last saw her. I would, of course, expect that time has had its evil way with her as it does with all of us. She would no longer be the trim, pretty, fit brunette that she had been. I understood that. But the image of her I saw today was shocking. 

It wasn’t just that she was aged, though she was. Nor was it that she was rather ugly, though she certainly was. She looked not just like an older person, she looked like a different person. Not only did she not look like her young self in any way, she looked like an entirely different sort of person--a person who was hard and cold. And legendarily unattractive. 

I told my sister--and I meant it--that if I’d been shown that picture without the person having been identified, if I’d been told that this was someone I knew years ago…I would never have guessed it was her. I would have guessed every other white female I’d ever met in this world before guessing it was my ex. It was unbelievable.

        At least it’s a boost to my ego. Next time I see that ancient troll in the mirror, I expect I’ll think my decline, bad as it is, to also be not unlike that of the aged Cary Grant. An exaggeration, yes, but in the right direction.

The New York Times recently published a list of “The Best Books of the 21st Century”

and they got a lot of nice (and some snippy) publicity for it. The list was compiled from

the choices of over 500 writers, critics, celebrities, and maybe some real people too.

This was quickly and efficiently followed by another list, this from the comments and

offerings of Times’ readers. 

Since I don’t read a lot of new fiction, aside from a few primarily genre authors, I didn’t expect to have read many of these titles. And I was right. From the original “experts’” list, I had read exactly one of the 100. That’s a solid 1%.  That one book was LINCOLN IN THE BARDO, which I had read only at the insistence of a casual friend.

As I expected, I did a little better on the Readers’ list. Four of 100 (4 sweet %). These were: LINCOLN IN THE BARDO (again), HAMNET, 11/22/63, and THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY.

I’d love to say that I’m going to make a strong effort to read all those other unread modern books, going to take a lot of those folks’ suggestions. But I’m not. Frankly, while those may be wonderful books, genuine classics-to-be, they just don’t seem interesting to me. Call me doofus, I don’t care. I already have a couple of shelves of unread books to conquer. Plus I’m sure there will be more from Stephen King, Michael Connelly, John Sandford, Nick Hornby. Those are my 21st century books. So, thanks Times, but I’m good.

Today is my mother’s 100th birthday. Spoiler!--she didn’t make it. 

Momma’s was not a joy-filled life. Most of her 83 years were not so good.

Too much illness, too much sadness, too much worry, too much poverty,

too little joy by far. 

If I could know that she’d live 17 more GOOD years, I’d wish she was still

here. But odds being what they are, and age being what it is, the cards are

seriously stacked against that.

         So I'll not be selfish and, instead, try to be glad she was spared the likelihood

of more unhappy years.

         Whatever I am is entirely due to my mom. Those who know me will, I hope,

forgive her for this. She did the best she could with the materials at hand.

I miss you, Momma, not only on this centenary, but every day.  To you,

to the empty, unhearing air, I wish a Happy Birthday.