Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1955)

Aldo’s brother Guido did not have a car. Guido read in the San Francisco newspapers that Columbia was looking for football players to be in “Saturday’s Hero.” He persuaded Aldo to drive him down. Once there, Aldo decided to be interviewed, too. The man in charge listened to him and laughed. “Come back when you don’t have a cold,” he said. “I don’t have a cold,” Aldo said. “I talk this way.” “Have you ever acted?” “No.” The man shrugged. “If you can’t act . . .” “I can act,” Aldo said. “Just listen to me.” It was a challenge. At that time, at that place, it was the biggest challenge in the world. He had already made a start on his political career. So he delivered one of the campaign speeches that had elected his constable — a job equivalent to police chief — of Crockett, California. The speech won him a part as John Derek’s roommate. The same challenge that kept a young boy from drowning made an older one do something that happens once in a million times, get a good part in a good picture without ever having acted before. That was not luck. It was just something that happens to people who are foolish enough to swallow dreams. There is something else that seems to happen to such people. They grow up to be very nice. Intelligent, not overly critical of life or people, their hair turned golden by the sun, they are always bounding after rainbows, and the sound that they make is laughter. There was nothing much for Aldo Ray to laugh about when he was a child. Born September 25, 1926, he was three years old when the Depression left men begging for jobs as day laborers at the sugar refinery in Crockett. Silvio da Re, his father, was one of the lucky ones. His job paid $4.50 a day. It. was enough for a man who had only come to America nine years earlier, a man who still spoke Italian in his home. By 1937, there was not even a job. There was a strike instead, a strike so important that it was written about in the New York newspapers, so violent that for three months the schools in Crockett were closed. Silvio and his wife, Maria, and their six children sat home and waited, while goons and scabs from the factory fought in the streets outside. This is Aldo’s version of the waiting: “We didn’t have much money, but what did that matter? Every day we looked at the wine that Papa had made the summer before, to be certain it didn’t turn sour. Then we went fishing. We fished every day, and there was always fish soup on the stove and fried fish for supper, and Guido and I — we were the oldest — even made some money. I was eleven, and Guido was ten, and we collected old scraps of copper. We averaged fifty cents a week from the junkman.” That was not Aldo’s only job. When he was eight, he had gotten a job in a grocery store. He worked after school, Saturdays and Sundays. In return, he got five dollars a month and all the fruit and vegetables that were about to spoil. He got a bonus, too. Each week the market held a drawing for free bags of canned food and vegetables, a drawing that was more important to them than a drawing today for a 1955 Ford. And each week, the owner put one of the bags aside for Aldo. Even now the owner smiles when he thinks of the boy. “He was always laughing, always dreaming, always running very fast as though there was something p ahead that he wanted to catch up to and that he was still too young to catch. But I think we all knew that he would catch up to that goal of his someday.” I O Aldo does not think that he became really independent until he was thirteen. That summer, Angelo, a friend of the family, gave him a job. Angelo had forty acres of land where he raised artichokes, and he and Aldo worked the land alone. Angelo called him “II Matto” — the crazy one. “He was, crazy,” Angelo has said. “I take him out to a field — a big field. I tell to him plow it. I leave him. He does not come in to lunch. Then, about two o’clock, he comes back. He is covered with dust, with sweat. “ ‘How much have you done?’ I ask him. “ ‘How much?’ he says. ‘I’ve finished it.’ ” Angelo scratched his head. “A field that would take a hired man a day and a half. A field I would plow in a day. And he — II Matto — he does it in four hours.” For his summer’s work, Aldo got room, board and $60. He took the money home, put fifty dollars in his pocket and went to talk to his father. He went to talk about football. In his first year of high school, he had been on the freshman team and he had broken a leg. But now he had plowed all summer, and he knew the leg was well. He took the fifty dollars out of his pocket. “Papa,” he said, “for the doctor, when I broke my leg.” Then he smiled. “Now,” he said, “now I can play football again.” The other ten dollars bought two pairs of corduroy pants. Never again did his family pay for his clothes. “I was the oldest,” he has said. “I had to do it.” The next summer his salary was tripled. Angelo felt that his fourteen-year-old helper was worth the money. When he was not working, Aldo was winning prizes and presidencies. He was an officer of every class from the second grade through the twelfth for at least one semester. The other semester of each year he was such diverse things as Thrift Manager (second grade), Keeper of the Rabbits (third grade), and Commissioner of Boys’ Athletics (sophomore year). He has been characterized as ambitious, determined and determinedly forthright. One of his teachers had reason to remember the last. When he was graduated from grammar school, he took the prize for athletics, the prize for general scholarship, the prize for English, the prize for sportsmanship and the prize for mathematics. The American Legion Award for allaround student was given to another boy. After the assembly, he walked politely up to the judges and asked why. It seemed to him that if he had won all the other prizes the school offered, he was its all Color portraits of Janet Leigh, Mitzi Gaynor and Elaine Stewart by Stern, Donna Reed and Mona Freeman by Hayden; Doris Day by Six; George Nader by Bell; Anne Francis, June Allyson, Janet Leigh, Barbara Rush and Kim Novak by Ornitz; Pier Angeli by Six; Aldo Ray by Cronenweth; Jane Powell by Apger; Marlon Brando by Powolny; Jane Russell by Jones around student. He still feels this w ;| It is not conceit. It is an honesty tin is almost brutal and it is still with hit] both as his greatest asset and his sever ! fault. It was also the cause of his fi 3 quarrel with Jeff. They had been married three wee! 1 and friends were coming to dinner, jl had made hors d’oeuvres and Aldo hi been official taster. The hors d’oeu\ 1 was, he said, the worst thing he had tastl in his life. The rest can be imagined. Despite his brilliant honesty, he is rl a diamond in the rough, waiting to I pounded and polished into shape. He -wl president of the California Scholars! H Federation at Crockett High School fi two years and he was awarded a scholal ship to the University of California wh he graduated. But it was 1944 and there was a w going on. So Aldo Ray became Seam. Ray and was sent to Saipan. After while, Saipan was no longer target pra tice for the Japanese. So, when a noti went up on the bulletin board that tr; outs would be held the next day for t “frogmen” — underwater demolition tear — Aldo decided to volunteer. So did every one of the other one thoi sand two hundred and fifty-four sailc on Saipan. There had been a rumor th the frogmen would be sent back to t United States to train, and they all showup at the edge of the Pacific for the trouts. They were pushed into four lines by tl harried commanding officer, told to swi to the coral reef about a mile away ai sent off at three minute intervals. “Some of them couldn’t swim at al Aldo said, grinning at the thought. “Thi just thrashed around and tried to kefrom being stepped on. Finally, one the officers waded in and pulled them ou Aldo was in the last line. A hundryards out, he had passed most of the mi in the third line. Five hundred yards fro shore, he was first. From then on, ] merely lengthened his lead. He was sittii on the coral reef for almost five minut before the second man panted up. Aldo and thirteen others were chosi and shipped to Hawaii for training, fi training was brief. He managed to g himself attached as a replacement to team that was going back to the Sou Pacific. Their job was to reconnoiter ai report everything they saw and felt frc the point they were dropped off (usual five hundred yards from shore) in to tl beach. Three days before American assai troops landed, Aldo and his team swe the beach at Okinawa. As they did in all their missions, thswam in when it was turning light — the early morning. They had no aqi lungs, only swim fins, goggles and knivi and they swam on the surface. But tl Japanese shore defense never even foui out they were there. A little later in the war, they we dropped off the coast of Japan. Their j< then was to make sure there were i mines, and their mission took them le than forty mles from the bombed ci of Hiroshima. After that, the war was ended for Aid He traded his swim fins for his old un versity scholarship. And the old drea began to flop around a bit again. 1 1 looked for a place to start. He decided run for constable of Crockett. It was fine job, but there was one obstacle. Tl man who was constable had been doing good job for fifteen years. It is almost impossible to dislodge man who has been doing a good job f* ; fifteen years. It is even more difficu 1 when you are still in college and yc are only twenty-three years old. But Alt