Modern Screen (Jan-Dec 1960)

shortly, one of the best athletes the school has ever known. By the time he was in his senior year he had copped most of the athletic prizes being handed out, as well as scholarships to two of the best colleges in the state. And then, less than a month before graduation, it happened — David was in a track meet, the last one of the year. He'd just won the most impressive event of them all. the pole-vault jump. The coach had given him his medal and he was walking back towards the locker room when a newspaper photographer came rushing up to him. "That was a sweet jump, kid." the photographer said. "•How about doing it once more so I can get a picture for my paper?" "Sure thing." David said. He turned and went back to the starting line. He looked over at the photographer, who had his camera in position. ""Give him a good picture now," he said to himself. He took a deep breath, and he began to run. He ran swiftly, beautifully, surely. His eyes were on the jump point straight ahead" and he didn't see the soda bottle somebody had dropped to the ground a few minutes earlier. The pain that came to his right knee was so intense when he hit it after tripping over the bottle that he passed out. The knee was busted; the damage was to be permanent. It was as if he knew it then, that moment, even in his blacked-out state. "My scholarship . . ." those who stooi around him remember him moaning. "My scholarship." A few days later, he limped into his coach's office. "Coach." he said, "I've been a little worried. Do you think the colleges will take me now, with my knee like this?" "I've been worried, too, David," the coach admitted. "I've phoned both the schools. They both say that they'll let us know the score within the week." But they never did. It was then when David decided to start all over again and work at the only thing he knew — acting. He had no money. He had no preparation for anything else. He found himself, strangely, wanting to be an actor now. A good one. So he went back to all the old studios where he'd worked. Strangely, though, nobody seemed too overjoyed to see him. Universal-International did put him on their payroll finally, however. And the long grind began. FOR SEVEN YEARS, minus two in the army. David toiled and struggled — "and nobody gave a damn." Other guys came to this town of Hollywood, he knew. Some made it big. Some didn't make it at all. But him. he just kept rolling along. He played bit parts in a couple of dozen pictures while he was at U-I. Mostly they were three and four-day deals, the kind where the director's only concern is getting you into the picture, then getting you out. Anyway, it was steady employment, at least. Up until 1956. that is, when the blight hit Hollywood and David got canned. He'd started at one hundred dollars a week and ended at three hundred, and this had been enough to keep him in debt. How does it happen — debt — to a guy earning a few c-notes a week? In Hollywood, what with agents' fees, new cars, new clothes, entertaining, bachelor boozing — it happens. "Man," David says, "it happened to me." So, came 1956 and he got the ax from U-I and. he figured, it was time for him to do or die in this business. And, for a time, it looked like lilies would be in order. First, there was the matter of a picture called Lafayette Escadrille. David's part was that of Tab Hunter's commanding officer. Played well, the part could easily have overshadowed Tab's. Unfortunately for David, he played it so well that after a few days of rushes word came down from the Warner Brothers' offices: Cut the Janssen part. Build up Hunters. Hunter is studio property! Bill Wellman, director of the picture, tried to fight the edict. But it was no go. Only David went. The next incident came when Wellman was approached by David Selznick to direct his upcoming A Farewell To Arms. Fine, Wellman said — but on one condition: He didn't want Rock Hudson for the lead, he wanted David Janssen. '"'David w-h-o?" Selznick asked. The deal was quickly called off. Finally, however, in the spring of '57, things changed for David and he got his first real break — the lead in the Richard Diamond show. The show began as a summer replacement. But it became obvious, after the first few weeks of ratings, that it would, in quick time, become one of the top weeklies of them all. As success stories go, it would seem right here that David Janssen was riding on Cloud Nine now, these first few months of his success. But. to tell the truth, he wasn't. He was making good money now, really good money: but he'd borrowed so much all along the way, that he was still in debt. And, though he had some stature now, some reason for happiness, he discovered suddenly that aside from his mother and his sisters, Terry and Jill, there was nobody else with whom he could share it. He had no friends. OUTWARDLY, HE LIVED IT UP all right. He drank with the best of them. He laughed with the funniest of them. He dated the most luscious of them. But, basically, he had no friends. Incidents in his childhood had made him steer away from relationships. "A cynicism of mine." he says. " — inbred maybe; I don't know — caused me to approach someone else's attempt at friendship from a negative point of view." He found himself always inclined to think: "There's a reason behind it. There's a catch. What does he want?" This is a Hollywood disease, easy to catch. And you fight it, or you don't. And David didn't. And so, there he was at twenty-seven, with things going pretty well for him. And, there he was, with his problems, a lost and lonely kind of guy. The three people really close to David — his mother and his sisters — would tell him that what he needed to solve these problems was, in simple English, a wife. ""Nuts," David would say. "I've got enough to worry about." "I need something." he'd say. "But I don't need that!" In interviews — and a whole rash of them started after the Diamond success — he would be asked the traditional question: "When you do get married, what are the qualities you would like your wife to have?" And David would answer, straightfaced, "First, she has to be willing to dye her hair every day, to disguise herself from creditors. . . ." And the reporter would stop writing, and laugh. And David Janssen would have gotten out of that one. And, yet, he knew deep in his heart that something was missing in his life. Not a wife, of course. ... Or so he thought! He met Ellie on Hallowe'en night, at a party, in 1957. He almost never did make that party. He'd worked hard that week, that day. He'd been invited to the party by some girl a few days earlier. 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