Photoplay (Jul-Dec 1954)

he matured a great deal both in his thinking and serious application to his work. We spent a great deal of time together. He introduced me to my first Notre Dame football game and to driving in the California traffic. I had driven in Ireland, but I was hesitant to drive here until R. J. got me out into the traffic and gave me confidence. As a student, his increasing application of concentration to his studies was very gratifying. I was amazed from the first — for one who admittedly had made small use of it— by his retentive memory. He was preparing for the steel world then, but instead the celluloid world captured him. . . .” You, R. J., are impressed by the hours the priest spends preparing you for the business world, and you respond gratefully. According to the high school annual, “The Compass,” your favorite saying this senior year is “That’s very dapper,” and your favorite pastime “listening to Louis Armstrong.” You make the glee club, you’re active in dramatics, in swimming and tennis, and you are touchingly overwhelmed when the students vote you senior-class president. It’s June 12, 1949 — commencement. You’re handed a green leather diploma and you are on the threshold of an exciting new life. A life which will surprise some of your classmates, including Bob Smith — today a very successful insurance man. “I was in Korea with the Seventh Army when I saw ‘With a Song in My Heart,’ and realized the shell-shocked soldier was R. J. I hadn’t even heard he was in the movies. In school, he was a devil-maycare, easy going kid. To see him portraying such a serious role — and doing it so i| well — I was surprised. All the guys thought he was great. I kept thinking I went to school with this kid, but I never realized he had so much on the ball. Yet, when I thought about it, the more I realized it was always there.” It was always there, all right, and although you make every effort to prepare seriously for the place your father has made for you, your own dream remains. You work in steel mills back East this summer, learning firsthand everything from the furnacing and milling to the marketing of steel. You take a job in your father’s office going after new accounts. He pays you a retainer of two hundred dollars a month and plans to divide the profits with you at the end of the year. For a boy of nineteen this is a bonanza. For your father it means the fulfillment of a lifelong ambition. But you yourself know this is not your life. Nor can it ever be. Your heart is within those studio walls and sound stages you pass on the way to work each day. One night, the night that is to change your whole life, you tell him. Nobody knows better than you, R. J., just what happened that night. “Looking back now I was pretty selfish, Ralph. I didn’t know then what a blow it would really be to Dad. How many plans he’d made for the two of us. He was disappointed all right, but how disappointed he didn’t let me know then. And me — I was concerned with what I wanted to do. Even though I’m sure he hoped it would prove just a whim, when I asked Dad to back me for a year, he agreed. If he hadn’t, I could have become embittered and resentful, and he could have changed my whole life. What a guy!” September 1949 and “What a guy!” is right. When nothing happens to help you realize the dreams that mean your own happiness, your father seeks advice from an old friend, director William Wellman, who gives you a double bit in his M-G-M picture, “The Happy Years.” In your first scene, you play a tough catcher on a kids’ baseball team with a catcher’s mask completely covering your face. You make $37.50 for the day’s work, and, tired but happy, you insist on celebrating by taking your parents to dinner at The Beachcombers Restaurant in Hollywood and paying the check. A few years later, you are to celebrate there another occasion — the most exciting event of your life. Even behind a catcher’s mask director William Wellman sees great promise in you. Suppose, Bill Wellman, you tell us why. “Because I made Bob do a bit part that needed an experienced actor, Ralph, and Bob played it like a professional. All I remember advising was, ‘Think you can do it and you can.’ But I can’t take any credit for discovering Bob Wagner. As much as Bob wanted this, he would have stuck to it no matter how long until one way or another he got a break. I tried to get M-G-M to sign him, but they thought I was crazy. They couldn’t see him at all then.” Yes, despite director Wellman’s personal pitch, the talent department there discourages you, advising you to go to New York and study for two years, get yourself an agent and then come back and talk to them. Nor will Wellman’s agent handle you. He explains kindly that he cannot give you the time and attention a newcomer should have. Finally, the big management corporation, MCA, agrees to sign you if you will study at Pasadena Playhouse for a year. You arrange to meet at the agency on a Monday morning. But on Sunday night at a friend’s restaurant, the Beverly Gourmet, you’re clowning around and singing with the piano player, whom you know, when a star-maker, Henry Willson, observes and sees screen possibilities in you. 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