TV Radio Mirror (Jul - Dec 1956)

Karl was "alternate" to Leif Erickson during the entire run of the Broadway hit, "Tea and Sympathy." ("An 'alternate,'" Karl explains, "is a sort of glorified understudy, the difference being that the alternate— unlike the understudy — is not required to remain in the theater during performances of the play. Much of the time I sat at home and collected my pay. But — since a star's misfortune is an alternate's break, and Erickson was twice invalided out of the cast — I did get to play opposite Deborah Kerr for two weeks, and later opposite Joan Fontaine, who stepped into the part when Deborah stepped out.") And now, for Karl, the doctor's role in NBC Radio's The Doctor's Wife . . . the exciting assignment as Arthur Tate in CBS-TV's Search For Tomorrow . . . and guest spots in other TV dramas, such as the judge he recently played on Robert Montgomery's presentation of "Ephraim Tutt." "Currently," says Karl, "I'm also doing a rather interesting job for Jackie Gleason Enterprises — that of recording Dickens' 'Tale of Two Cities,' in which I play the romantic lead of Charles Darnay. I also do a great deal of recording for the American Foundation for the Blind. I talk the 'talking books,' " he explains. "The one I just finished was the first volume of the Truman memoirs, 'Year of Decision,' for which Truman himself recorded the introduction. Very rewarding work it is, too . . . the kind of 'reward' that stays with you." It's been a hard apprenticeship to a craft, nonetheless, and a long one. None of this arriving at a tremendous financial and career success too soon — as movie stars often do, for instance . . . which may account for the fact that so few of this "new species" of performers are exhibitionists or spendthrifts, and so many are substantial citizens, family men with their heads on their shoulders and their feet on the ground. . . . "The Family Man Playing on Television," said Karl, "is, I think, as apt a title or description as can be found for the modern actor bred by television. "The honesty and dependability which Grandfather Weber ascribed to 'the family man,'" he laughs, "are qualities to be hoped for in every man — whether perennial bachelor or proud father, mimic or missionary. But, on TV, they are assets without which you could not survive for long. Machinery is terribly honest. In other words, the camera doesn't lie. Especially about those of us who, like myself, play a running part on a TV serial— which means that we are in the homes of our viewers almost every day. "In a sense, we live out a story, instead of acting it, and are thought of more as friends and neighbors sharing our problems, than as actors performing a script. Because this is so, we must be what we seem to be. For instance, Arthur Tate on Search For Tomorrow is a sometimes misguided but essentially honest, good, kind and well-meaning fellow. If I were not much the same," Karl grins, "sometimes misguided— but, I hope, reasonably honest and kind and well-meaning — I would soon be read out of the script . . . and out of the home. "As for dependability: When you're playing a running part on TV, you have a script to learn every night, five nights a week, and a clock to watch— because a T split second, one way or the other, can v play havoc with a show. On TV, the R medium which can least tolerate personal irresponsibility, being dependable is more necessary than having the genius of a 72 Brando or the gl£*mour of a Lollobrigida. "To be one of the 'clear-eyed, clearheaded, competent men' so respected by Grandfather Weber," Karl adds, "is also a must for anyone in broadcasting. Especially so on television, which is more taxing, more demanding that any other medium . . . for on TV, remember, there are no retakes — all your mistakes are right out in view, with no chance of undoing them. However, if you are 'clear-eyed and clear-headed' — well -rested and alert, that is — the margin for error is narrowed appreciably. And being 'competent,' professionally competent, is your one hope of covering — if not erasing — a mistake." Much of the kinship among his colleagues, Karl believes, may be attributed to the fact that, by and large, they come from similar backgrounds . . . from the Midwest (as Karl himself did) . . . from small towns (as he did) . . . many of them from farms . . . "or, as I did," he says, "from a kind of farm — forty acres, lots of milk cows, assorted poultry, truck gardens — at the far edge of town." (The town was Columbus Junction, Iowa.) Many of TV's regulars, like Karl himself, are also members of large and typically average-American families: "We were six," says Karl, "at home. One of my brothers is an electronics engineer, one is an etymologist, the third is an architect. One of my two sisters (both now married) is a C.P.A. My dad, George William Weber, who started life as a schoolteacher, was to become — successively— superintendent of schools, president of the local bank, owner and operator of a farm-produce and grain-elevator business, and is now a state senator in Iowa. My mother's 'profession' — like my wife's — is that of housewife and mother . . . the one profession that is never expendable." r rom such a background and such a family, what would you expect of a young man who married the girl with whom he went to college but that he would be living with her happily ever after? Which is what "family man" Weber is doing. "We started going steady, Marge and I," says Karl, "at Cornell, back in Iowa. Then we were separated for two years, while Marge was in England working as research assistant to a professor of history. It has been said that separation extinguishes a small flame but fans a large one. To explain the way it was with us, I need only say that, as immediately as possible after Marge's return, we were married — by her father — on the Cornell campus where we first met." Now . . . seventeen years, three children and one dog later . . . the Webers are living in the house they built three years ago, on a bluff overlooking Woodcliff Lake, in northern New Jersey. The children are Lynn, sixteen, chic, dark and charming to the eye, who has recently given up a career in baby-sitting for the more lucrative one of modeling ("locally," her father says, "not in New York — not yet, anyway"); Christopher, a sturdy, enterprising twelve-year-old; and Mark, the youngest, who is six. The dog, a collie registered with the American Kennel Club as "Star Mist of Woodcliff," is just plain "Misty" to the folks at home. The nineroom, three-bathroom house, on four acres of land, is of cypress construction faced with stone . . . and — as might be expected of a man with Christian Weber as a forbear — Karl, the journeyman, has been on the job from the first spadeful of the excavation to the laying on of the roof. "I did all the stone masonry myself," he says, with proper pride, "me, and my cement-mixer! I even quarried the redstone for the landscaping of the bluff. I've done all the terracing and planting, some of the cabinet work inside, all the painting and papering, helped put in the macadam road and driveways . . . and, after three years in residence, there's still more to be done!" An extraordinary house, as fabulous to look at as it is functional to five in, its "big deal" is the curved, 35-by-25-foot living room, the front wall of which is glass — a 35-foot wall of Thermopane — and the back wall consisting of a 25-foot stone fireplace framed by a cherry overmantel, cherry bookshelves and matching cabinets which contain the TV set, hi-fi equipment and radio. "Mostly cherry paneling and glass," Karl says of the living room. "Marge made the draperies — bought hundreds of yards of ecru denim at thirty-five cents a yard, and put in countless thousands of stitches! "Usually, however, the curtains are not drawn," Karl adds, "and to sit by the fire on a winter's day, as we often do, and watch the snow drift by the wall of glass, the birch trees making patterns, a flock of red-breasted birds winging by, is to be — warm and spellbound — in a winter wonderland. Foxes come to call, too, and deer. Forty-five minutes from Broadway . . . and deer tracks in the snow! In the spring, there are the dogwoods — we have literally thousands of them. And. in the summer, our beautiful, plentiful vegetable garden, quite a large rose garden, and a separate cutting garden. Gardening," Karl says "is a hobby Marge shares with me. It is my great hobby, in fact . . . and also derives from Grandfather Weber — of whom people used to say: 'Christian Weber can stick a hickory ax-handle in the ground and it will sprout leaves.' "But," Karl continues soberly, "although a man can build a house of stone and wood, pay the bill and all that, it is a woman who creates the atmosphere in which the life of the house is lived. And Marge is the creator of the clear, bright, warming atmosphere in which the life of our house is lived. ... I would say this of Majorie: She makes a Fine Art of living. The children bear witness to this. They are attractive, they are tractable, because they are appreciated as well as loved. We have no domestic help at all, so they feel needed, too. It's a cooperative, all-for-one and one-for-all family life we live — and not only in the bedmaking and dishwashing departments, either! Every night, I sit down with my children and we do our 'homework' together — they with their schoolbooks, and I with my script. Chris 'cues' me ... as I cue them, whenever they ask. "The fact that Marge and I are completely non-competitive," he says seriously, "contributes to the completely normal, average-American life we live. There are many happy marriages among people in the same profession, but — I like it this way. Sort of the way it was at home, in Iowa. Marge is interested in my work, understands it and is very helpful. But she is not at all a 'studio wife,' and is the least theatrical person I've ever known. She doesn't tend to dramatize things — or to dramatize herself, least of all." Karl tells about the accident: Shortly after the Webers were in the house, and were putting in the macadam driveways, a truck pulled up to the door one morning, heavily laden with boiling hot asphalt. As Marge — wearing shorts, for it was summertime — stood near by, talking with the driver, something in the truck suddenly gave way and a stream of the molten stuff poured over her bare legs. It was pain not to be borne . . . but Marjorie, says Marjorie's husband, bore