Photoplay (Jan-Jun 1960)

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B-12 7021 Santa Monica Blvd., Hollywood 38, Calif, tered and, looking at himself for the first time, he saw that his clothes were covered with blood. “You okay, Troy?” his friend cried frantically. But he couldn't answer. He went into shock. Within a few minutes, they were picked up and driven to a nearby emergency hospital; he could not remember any of this. The doctor came back into the room. “Somebody must certainly be watching over you, son,” he smiled. “You’ve a slight concussion — we had to put forty stitches in that scalp wound — and the rest of you is pretty badly bruised. But you’ll be all right in a couple of weeks,” he said reassuringly as he leaned over and gave him a little white pill. He sipped some water through a glass straw and watched the doctor walk around to the foot of the bed and pick up his chart. “After an accident like that one, you should be dead,” the doctor said, almost to himself, then looked up. “I don’t know who you are, just your name here on the chart, but He must be saving you for something special — something very special.” He watched the doctor leave the room. His head still ached, but it felt a little better when he closed his eyes. He could still hear the doctor’s words echoing in his mind. 1 don’t know who you are . . . who you are . . . who you are . . . He was Merle Johnson, Jr., he said over and over to himself in a sing-song way as though almost trying to convince himself. He was born in New York City on January 27, 1937. He loved his mother. She was once an actress. That was how she’d met his father, when she appeared in a play that he wrote and directed. His father was dead He wanted to be an actor. He always did. In fact, the very first time he ran away from home was because he wanted to act, like his mother had. He packed a box of animal crackers, took his roller skates, an apple and a shiny copper penny which seemed to him to be enough to start him on his way. He snuck out of the house and walked slowly down the block, all the while turning his head to see if someone was coming after him. He didn’t see his mother, who watched from the front window and let him get just far enough away to think he’d managed his escape, before she went running down the walk after him. He was two years old A few years later, his family moved to a big house, with lots of rooms that kind of rambled, in Bayport, on Long Island, and that’s where he started school. He hadn’t changed his mind about being an actor but, just then, the most important thing was to make the other kids like him. At first they didn’t; he was different. The minute he got to the schoolyard — when he saw all the kids staring at him — he knew that something was wrong. He quickly glanced down at the new gray flannel suit his mother had bought for his first day at school and, reassured, he walked past the other kids and on into the school building. But all through class he could feel their eyes on him. “What’s wrong?” he kept asking himself and then, when the bell finally rang and all the kids filed out into the schoolyard, he found out. Suddenly, from behind him, a bunch of boys grabbed his arms and pulled him toward a tree at the side of the playground, where they tied him, Indianstyle. “Look at the sissy,” they shouted between hoots of laughter as they danced around him in a circle. “That’s a ni-i-i-ce suit,” they chanted, pretending to admire it. Then he knew; they were all dressed in jeans and most of them wore tee shirts. When they finally untied him, he flung out his arms in rage, pushing the four to the ground. Then he ran home, trying to hold back his tears, and told his mother he’d never wear that suit again — never! That afternoon, his mother bought him his first pair of blue jeans and the next morning he turned up at school in the most beat-up outfit of any boy in the class. On the way, he’d rubbed dirt all over his shirt and torn a hole in the knee of his jeans with his pen-knife. When he got to school, he walked proudly into the yard, sure that by getting dirty he was now one of them. After that, school wasn’t so bad, except for the day the principal called his mother and asked her to come down to the school to see him. They talked for a few minutes and the principal told her how nicely her son was adjusting to school. Then he took off his glasses and started polishing them with a big white handkerchief. Finally he gave an embarrassed cough and looked over at the pretty, well-dressed woman who sat across the desk from him trying to hide her concern. “Mrs. Johnson,” he began in a gentk voice, “Merle obviously comes from sucl a nice home that we— his teacher and I— wonder why you send him to school ir such dirty clothes?” His mother guessed, right away, that h< changed back into his clean clothes a; soon as he reached home but she didn’ give him away. That afternoon, when hi got home, they had a long talk and afte that he wore his clean jeans to school Surprisingly, he found it no longer madi any difference to the other kids. Life was a breeze but when he’d jus i turned eleven, he was asked to grov up quickly. It was the beginning o three terrible, confusing years. One afternoon after school, when h arrived home, he found the doctor then His dad was sick. “Amystrophic latera sclerosis,” the doctor told his mother. I rare disease with a strange-soundin name, but he knew what it was. He’ heard that Lou Gehrig, the baseball her< had the same kind of paralysis of th spinal cord and had died of it. “Will my dad die, too?” he wanted t ask the doctor, but when he tried h couldn’t say the word, die, so he didn ask. His sister Evie was only two and a ha then, and she couldn’t understand wh Daddy couldn’t pick her up or take hi for piggyback rides. And after a while, h couldn’t speak, he’d lost the power to d so. Three years after that afternoon, whe he was fourteen, his father died. The bi house was now full with women: h grandmother, his mother and his siste He was the man of the house, they tol him, but deep inside, he didn’t feel lik one. But he tried, for their sake, to pla his new role. The big house seemed strange withoi his father. They talked about him ofte:< trying to do what he would have wante them all to do. Like college. “Perhaps, tl University of Michigan,” his mother suj; gested. “Your father went there.” But he didn’t want to go to college, t wanted to go to New York to study ac ing. He had to make his own life. So, ; eighteen, he ran away from home one again. This time, he didn’t have to snei out of the house. He simply stuffed ; many belongings as he could into a bea up leather suitcase and headed for Ne York. The suitcase had belonged to h father, and it was still covered with trav stickers from all over the world. He ke it beside him as he sat looking out tl 88