Up Till Now: The Autobiography

Julius Caesar . It was all the same to me: show up, know my lines, do the show, and start looking for the next job the next day. Occasionally programs would overlap, but generally producers were very good about arranging rehearsal times around other jobs.
    For the first time people began to recognize me on the street. They didn’t know exactly where they had seen me, but they knew my face was familiar. I can’t begin to tell how often people stopped me and said, “I know you from somewhere. Aren’t you a teacher at the high school?”
    I often found myself working with legendary movie stars, but generally they were older actors whose film careers had pretty much ended but whose name recognition made them valuable to TV producers. Many of them had difficulties adapting to the demands of live TV, including the short rehearsal schedules, the small budgets, the fact that they had to memorize their lines, and the unique technical demands. Movie sets were large and the cameras moved freely, often on cranes; TV studios were very small and the cameras were attached to long cables. Directors had to choreograph the movement of the cameras to ensure that the cables never crossed, so the actors were restricted in their movements. There was no room to improvise, you had to do a scene exactly as it had been done in rehearsal.
    I remember doing a show with Lon Chaney Jr., who had a drinking problem. In the first act we had a big fight scene in which we completely broke up a room. The furniture was all props, breakaway tables and chairs made of balsa, the vase was made of some kind of hard sugar, but because we had such a small budget we couldn’t afford to actually rehearse the action. If we broke it we couldn’t replace it. So instead we walked through the scene, each of us describing our actions. Chaney had memorized his movements: “Right here I pick up the chair and hit you over the shoulders with it and you roll backward. Then you fall over the table, which will break and I’ll pick up the leg and hit you over the head. You go down right on that markand the cameras’ll pick you up.” We went through it every day, being very careful not to break any of the breakaway furniture. Chaney was great. He showed up on time, sober, and had his lines down cold.
    I guess he began to get nervous during the dress rehearsal in the afternoon. But we went through the scene and everything seemed okay. “...I pick up the chair and hit you over the shoulders...”
    At the end of the dress rehearsal the director gathered the cast around him and gave us his final notes. “We’re going on in exactly forty-seven minutes. Good luck, everybody, it’s been a pleasure working with you. I know we’re going to have a wonderful show. Now you have a little time to eat because we’re going on in exactly forty-three minutes...”
    So we all went back to our dressing areas and got ready to do the show. Apparently Chaney started getting very nervous and to calm himself down had a few drinks. Forty-two minutes’ worth of drinks. He managed to get through the first part of the show until we reached the fight scene. As the scene started he looked at me angrily and said, “Right here I pick up the chair and hit you over the shoulders with it and you roll backward. Then you fall over the table...”
    With that the stage manager lifted his head and screamed, “We’re on the air, you son of a bitch!”
    That was the problem—and the excitement of live TV—it was live. Fortunately, my stage training had taught me how to deal with unexpected events. Once, for example, I was in a play in which the whole plot hinged on my shooting another actor, but when I reached for the prop gun it wasn’t there. The stage manager had forgotten to put it back after the previous performance. But the guy had to die or the play was over, so I picked up a corkscrew and screwed him to death.
    That presence of mind was perfect for live television. On one show I was involved in a shoot-out. The actor who had to shoot me got much too close, and when he shot me, the blank shell—which was made of wax—hit me right under my eye. It was painful as hell, but I just kept going. Keep going, that’s what actors do. Except the blank had caused a huge blood blister to form, a big red blot right under my eye. And it just kept growing, it kept getting bigger andbigger. It was like the blimp of blood blisters. It was like a clown’s red nose stuck to my face, growing and becoming