TV Radio Mirror (Jan - Jun 1955)

who were quite the rage at the time. But she was still quite young — as was Dick — and not entirely sure of herself. The deadlock between them was finally broken by what could have been a serious accident. Leslie Howard was notoriously nearsighted and was almost struck by a cab, one evening, in front of the theater. Dick pushed him out of the way but was knocked down himself. As a result, Gay started coming around to inquire how Dick was coming along. Dick recovered, married Gay, and the two have been devoted to each other ever since. Needless to say, they don't regret the accident that brought them together! They have one son, Richard, Jr., now five and a half, a mighty handsome lad who is the light of their lives. Gay has since given up her own career but shares her husband's intense interest in his work. She cues him, helps him rehearse his scripts, and never tires of discussing his professional problems with him. Dick has implicit confidence in her judgment. "Gay is probably my severest critic," he says. "She'll never hesitate to tell me I'm miserable. She does, frequently. But when she tells me I'm good — then I relax." Aside from the interest they share in Dick's work and in their child, they think alike in other respects as well. Like his wife, Dick Coogan comes from an old and honorable family. One of his forebears owned and gave his name to the piece of land still known as Coogan's Bluff, up where the Giants play their home games. Dick, however, was born and grew up in Madison, New Jersey, being one of ten children, six boys and four girls. All of them were highly energetic and sports minded, and Dick claims that, until a few years ago, his mother could beat any of them at tennis. Dick also was — and is — a crack athlete who spent most of his younger years in the pursuit of sports. Possessing strength, stamina, and a high degree of natural coordination, Dick tried everything in sports and was good at everything he tried. His passion for sports very nearly cost him his life, however, and indirectly led him to seek a career as an actor. As a child, he once suffered a mild attack of rheumatic fever. Thinking he'd outgrown it, he didn't pay much further attention to it, for knowledge of the disease wasn't as far advanced then as it is today. Whenever there was snow on the ground, he'd spend all afternoon out-ofdoors, doing his own special, daredevil brand of skiing and ski jumping. With his pals and his brothers, he had staked out a ski run which led from the top of a nearby hill through the town, winding up at a roof top from which they then jumped, skipping across a couple of driveways. Frequent spills were, of course, inevitable. After one such afternoon, while sitting around in wet clothes at the house of a friend, Dick caught a severe throat infection which, in turn, led to a renewed attack of rheumatic fever. The second attack, doctors now know, is the one that's dangerous. Dick was ill for a long time, and, when he recovered at last, his heart had suffered serious damage. He was told he'd have to give up all further athletics, perhaps forever. Dick was in high school at the time and had been one of Madison High's star athletes. Giving that up was a terrible blow to him. His parents and his teachers knew that the only way they could keep Dick away from the gym, track and tennis court was to give him another interest. Miss Hutchins, the school's drama coach, had a hunch that dramatics might be the answer. She thought the tall, good-looking lad would like it and would be good at it. Given the lead in a one-act play, Dick caught fire. Following that, he worked out a kind of Martin-and-Lewis routine with his chum Bud Turner. The act went over big with their own high school crowd, and when they were invited to repeat it for the local Rotary, Kiwanis, Lions and Elks — and were paid to do it, too — Dick definitely caught the bug. After graduation, Dick's friend Turner dropped out and has since become an executive at Pathe-News. But Dick himself — whose graduation was somewhat delayed because of his previous illness — decided to make acting his life's work. On the advice of his teacher, he enrolled at Emerson College, near Boston, to study dramatics. He stayed only a year. "I noticed most of the graduates seemed to wind up teaching elocution at some college or another," Dick relates. "That wasn't what I wanted to do. I wanted action." Action — in New York — was slow in coming, however. After breaking the ice with his walk-on part in "Hamlet," he wangled a few more bit parts, occasionally had a chance to speak a few lines and, once in a while, found work in radio. Like most young actors, he had to depend on odd $1,000.00 REWARD 78 ... is offered for information leading to the arrest of dangerous "wanted" criminals. Hear details about the $1,000.00 reward on ... 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Dick is proud of his ability to work — and work well — with his hands. "I made pretty good money at that war plant," he recalls. "We were paid on a piece-work basis, and that suited me fine. I learned to develop speed and rhythm, and turned the stuff out fast. It was fun." He claims that, by proving himself competent with his hands, he has somehow acquired greater confidence as an actor, too. Since the end of the war, however, it hasn't in any way been necessary for Dick to do manual labor to support himself. In radio — aside from fairly steady work in such shows as Abie's Irish Rose, The Fighting Senator, Ellery Queen, Gangbusters, The Shadow, Mr. District Attorney, Famous Jury Trials, Radio Reader's Digest, and Silver Theater — he appeared in many dramatic programs with such stars as Helen Hayes, Laurence Olivier, Nazimova, Jane Cowl and Raymond Massey. In television, he made his debut back in 1945, with an appearance in "The Front Page," continuing to work in the medium occasionally until 1949, when his association became semi-permanent. Cast as Captain Video, he became an idol of the younger generation. But playing to a live audience is very important to Dick, as it is to all real actors, and he was gratified that — along with success in radio and television — came a series of equally successful parts in Broadway productions. Since 1945, he's been seen on Broadway in "Alice in Arms," with Kirk Douglas; John Patrick's "The Hasty Heart," with Richard Basehart; "Skipper Next to God," with John Garfield; and "Strange Bedfellows," with Joan Tetzel. In 1947, he was in a brilliant staging by Jose Ferrer of four short O'Neill plays about the sea. And, in 1949, he played opposite Mae West in a hit revival of "Diamond Lil." Dick enjoyed being in that play (which had originated Mae's famous line, "Come up and see me some time"), and came away with great affection and admiration for Miss West, but he almost clashed with her before the play opened. Mae had done the play so many times she could practically run through it in her sleep. She'd played it for years on Broadway and finished a long-run revival in England before bringing it back to New York. By then, she'd had a number of leading men, for whose exact position on stage in each scene she'd developed a diagram that made tedious rehearsals unnecessary for her. Dick, confronted with chalk lines and numbered positions— instead of the voluptuous Miss West — felt very much like a robot. He pleaded with Mae to let him try to develop his own character, becoming quite bullheaded about the whole thing. Mae finally agreed, and, from that time on, always referred affectionately to Dick as "the actor." Dick could afford a measure of independence, because he was already doing well as Captain Video. He says that having two good things at the same time seems to be some kind of a pattern in his career: