MGM Shorts Story (1938)

6 Next to Charlie McCarthy, of course, critics consider Jolin Nesbitt of Passing Parade fame the discovery of 1!)37. And this is rather strange, because John Nesbitt just isn’t a li)37 model. Ify taste and inclination, Nesbitt dates himself as a Ihtli century figure — a charming, gay blade, with penchants for luxuries and leisure, for scholarliness and a privacy that are no more. His restlessness is that of a Don Quixote, and his versatility is not unlike that of old Hen Franklin. But anachronism that he is, his life would make good copy in any era. It’s a hectic career lie’s had, this John Nesbitt — from hitch-hiking to headlining. He became a business man at fourteen, and every summer and holiday, and some semesters cut from school, found him working at various trades — carpentering and painting backstage, surveying, publishing a magazine of his own writing. In 1!)30, with college behind him (St. Mary’s and Berkeley), Nesbitt played stock in Vancouver and Spokane, worked with little theatre groups, and toured with the Fritz Leiber Shakespearean repertoire . . . till the depression took the audience out of the theatre. In 1931 he was a newspaper reporter . . . until the day he had to phone a gentle-voiced woman and ask: “Was it your husband who was just electrocuted at the power plant?” It was . . . and Nesbitt was through with the tabloids. In 1932, completely broke, actually hungry most of the time, he made a meager living by typing radio scripts for an Oakland station ... at $23.50 a month. Came 1933, and an announcing offer from Spokane ... at $105 per month. Dislike radio as he did, this was no time to coldshoulder opportunity. In one bitter November week he hitch-hiked the 1 100 miles to Washington, and went on the staff at KGA. Within a month he was chief announcer. (The personnel turnover in radio is like that.) 1934 came and went, and Nesbitt was still in Spokane as production manager of KGA and KHQ . . . at $150 a month. 1935 found him out of a job again (radio is like that, too), hitchhiking back to San Francisco . . . with not a sou in his pocket, but a million-dollar program idea in his head. KFRC, the CBS outlet, had no use for his ideas, but it did give him a junior announcing post. Within two weeks he sold his idea for $250 a month, to NBC. The Nesbitt stock went up. 1937 brought him two weekly coast-to-coast broadcasts of his Passing Parade, a sponsored poetry program with Meredith Wilson’s orchestra, and a movie contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Oh yes, and a four figured weekly income. So Time hasn’t done so badly by John Nesbitt, after all. But Nesbitt isn’t satisfied. People whose talents are legion seldom are. Were it not for his contracts, he laments, he would devote his full energies to free lance writing, (Hmm — 1 wonder — has he ever written. free lancef), unless, of course, the old theatre bug got the best of him ... as it undoubtedly would. After all, the theatre is in his blood. The ghost of Hamlet himself runs in the Nesbitt blood . . . via Edwin Booth. So Nesbitt comes legitimately by that eloquence, that grand manner that distinguishes his from all the other voices on the airlanes. came a Booth only by birth, and the responsibility of the family repute and heritage was felt by each member. It was a banner to be borne, a challenge to be met. a destiny to be fulfilled. But to every family there comes a black sheep. Young Nesbitt explains the downfall of the Booths: “The assassination of Lincoln by John Wilkes Booth completely smashed the family, with the exception of Edwin, who was completely forgiven by the .American people. The rest of the Booths, however, were persecuted bittery. The brothers and sisters of John Wilkes, and all the other relations, changed their names and came out West. The connection with Booth was never mentioned by my grandmother, Elizab was simply the family skeleto: But no matter how rermrfe the kinship, nor how suppressed the reference, the influence was considerable. Perhaps here is proof positive that heredity dries tell. Or perhaps REPRINTED FROM JONES’ MAGAZINE About his Booth heritage, Nesbitt is modestly explicit. “My relationship to Edwin Booth has grown closer with every publicity story. It is really very vague. My maternal grandmother was a Booth, numbering the great Junius Brutus Booth as brother, and Edwin and John Wilkes as nephews.” Being a Booth in those days meant more than does being a Barrymore today. The Shakespeare tradition built up by Junius and Edwin lent a prestige to the name that was acknowledged by socialites and scholars as well as the theatre. One be lt was sharing the name of Booth, or the fascination of the Booth legend in the theatre world that captivated the imagination and ambition of John. Whatever the explanation, John Nesbitt determined as a child to become a Shakespearean actor, and he set aside an hour a day to read aloud the Immortal passages that he can quote ad infinitum today. This RE.ADING has been responsible, obviously, for the exquisite diction and resonant voice that today mark the envied Nesbitt delivery. As he points out, “So many of the passages in Shakespeare require the actor to give seven or eight lines without a breath that one gains a tremendous breathing capacity. It is so difficult to make the centuries-old meanings clear that one develops great clarity of diction. Likewise the rhythm and tempo of blank-verse become a part of one’s natural speech — hence the crystal clear and rhythmic voices of many of the old actors. Fritz Leiber s magnificent voice is one of the sole survivals in the modern theatre.” Environment has played its part, too, in molding Nesbitt. Born 27 years ago in British Columbia, reared partially in France and partially in America, he has spent most of his life en route someplace. Dr. Nesbitt, Sr., today pastor of the Alameda Unitarian Church, used to be a British Intelligence agent, and throughout his childhood John’s home was wherever political