Modern Screen (Dec 1954 - Dec 1955)

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So we visited the plants in Pennsylvania, j Indiana, Missouri and Maryland. After the trip I still didn't go for the j steel business, but I did learn one thing and I'm a little embarrassed to admit it. For all the years of my life I had had j a really great guy for a father. A man who cared for me deeply, not just as a son, but as a person. It was only because I I knew this that I had the courage to tell him that I still didn't think I wanted a j career in steel. (I didn't know until recently how much that decision had disap I pointed my father.) But Dad didn't bat an eyelash. We had a long talk and agreed that I would have another year. If I didn't make some kind j of real progress in twelve months, I'd give up my ambition to be an actor. Dad even helped by talking to Director William Wellman, who got me a bit part in The Happy Years. I know there are thousands of kids my own age who have prayed for a break like that. But, as you'll see, "influence" doesn't really count. I had one bit line and a quick appearance on the screen in a catcher's mask in a baseball game. Well, the film played all over the country and no one in Hollywood seemed the least bit concerned with the identity of the guy behind the chicken wire. But a few months later, my parents and I went to a dinner party at a Hollywood i restaurant. Strictly for kicks I joined an old buddy of mine, Lou Spence, at the i piano and we clowned our way through a couple of songs. When I got back to the table my father handed me a note from actors' agent Henry Willson. It said: "If you are interested in a motion picture career, see me at my office." I was there at nine the next morning. From that moment on things got rough. Tr wasn't until I had appeared in more , than fifty screen tests with other aspiring actors that 20th Century-Fox felt I was worth using. Five years have passed since that first one, Halls Of Montezuma. Now I'm working on a different kind of picture, A Kiss Before Dying. In it I play a killer and murder a very nice blonde girl named Joanne Woodward. (You'll be seeing more of Joanne in the movies, because she is a fine actress.) So at twenty-five, with fourteen pic | tures completed, I guess I've done pretty well. But none of it would have been possible without the directors, cameramen, technicians, plus the all-important dramatic coaching of Natasha Lytess and Helena Sorrell. It has been work for them. I hope I'm worth it. I^Totion picture acting is a full-time job. It demands nearly all the days of your life. If you're not working on one picture you're thinking hard about the next one. Now we're talking about marriage. And I've seen too many Hollywood people regard that in much the same way as they regard a picture. If they aren't in the middle of a marriage they're thinking hard about the next. That may be the reason I won't marry an actress. Acting would take as much of her time as it will of mine and we'd end up being strangers to one another. I am the son of a man and a woman who have shown, not talked about, the kind of real happiness that God planned for the beings He made in His own image. My parents' affection for each other and their children will be part of me for the rest of my life. We can only try and hope for their kind of love. And it isn't that I'm pessimistic about marriage. Just cautious.