Screenland (May-Oct 1942)

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U.S.Eye-Glasses Co..1557Milwaukee Av.,Dept.7-109,Chicago into the insurance business. Finally we wound up in Seattle, and started working out of there, doing one-night stands. After six months of that, we split up. After six months of that, any team would split up. "I worked by myself a couple of years in night clubs, stock companies, even walkathons. Then I landed a master-of-ceremonies spot in a Kansas City theater. I did a little wisecracking and I did a little singing. I began to have a feminine following, of sorts. Any male singer, even if he had only one arm, would still have a feminine following. But the manager of the theater thought I was somebody Hollywood ought to know about." Jack shakes his head about the myopia of theater managers. "I kept shaking my head then, too. I didn't feel that I had what it took to beat down any Hollywood gates. The manager wrote to the head of a certain studio. The Big Boss wrote to me, saying he'd like to test me. So I came out to do a test. The head man got one look at me, and said, 'No, no, you're not the movie type.' But he sent me to the studio dramatic coach, to see what the feminine vote might be. The lady said, 'No talent whatsoever.' That got me kinda mad. I wanted to stick around just to show people. "The head man said he'd test me, anyway. I said, 'No, just give me my fare back to Kansas City.' So he gave me the fare and_ I went out and rented a room and started making the rounds of the studios, meanwhile taking some acting lessons on the side at a Little Theater. "I worked as an extra for a spell. Then I began getting bits here and there at $25 a day. Then $50 a day. When I hit $75 a day, that was Shangri-La. And when RKO signed me to do character parts — well, that was the millennium. "The understanding was that I would do comedy. And the first thing they assigned me was a comedy role — on loanout. I took it big. I killed guys on that sound-stage, with laughter. And the director, for some strange reason, let me run wild. I overdid everything. I mugged, I went in for wide gestures, and I shouted my lines. I was still playing to the last row in the balcony. And I was so conspicuously hammy, I cried when I saw the picture. "The Front Office shuddered when they saw it. There were only so many comedy roles in any picture — and, after that, they didn't quite trust me with any of them. So the roles I got turned out to be heavies. That was the era of fast-talking guys. I played one after another — forty-one in one year, to be exact. A steady stream of louses. "But I still wasn't a heel. There's a subtle difference between a heavy and a heel. A heavy is a no-good right from the start — a chronic criminal. A heel is a guy who goes through the motions of playing fair until a crisis comes along. Then he turns tricky." Playing all those heavies, Jack developed one outstanding conviction: "Any comic, no matter how bad, can be a good heavy. I proved that. When I started playing those heavies, I didn't know anything about acting except telling a few corny jokes. "But RKO used this pan of mine in so many pictures, all B's, that they finally got tired of seeing it after a year and a half. They let me go. I thought I was all washed up. Through. Finished. And maybe I would have been — if it hadn't been for Director Lewis Milestone. He was Fate in disguise. "Milestone takes a fiendish delight in casting contrary to type and making it come out right. And he picked me to experiment with in 'Lucky Partners' — in the role of the insurance salesman who was Ginger Rogers' fiance. It's sort of funny that I had to play an insurance salesman to start going places as an actor. "The character wasn't a dumb guy. He had a veneer of education. He was wise to the facts of life. He was even smart enough to try to make out that he was broadminded, but on the q. t. he was also obeying the impulses of a jealous male. And playing both sides of the fence, he didn't outsmart anybody but himself. "Any other director would have picked Ralph Bellamy for the role. It was right up Bellamy's alley. But Milestone was just perverse enough to want someone totally unexpected in the part. He tested fifty thousand guys for it, and finally got around to me. RKO threw up its hands. 'Why, he only plays bits,' they told Milestone. 'You don't want him. He's very hokey.' But Milestone kept saying, stubbornly 'He's the guy I want' RKO finally gave in. And the first job I got, after they let me go, was right back on that lot. "I realized it was my one big chance. Everybody knew what Rogers and Colman could do — but I was somebody they hadn't seen before, because they hadn't seen any of those B's T had been in, and I was playing the third most important role. I said to myself, 'If I can hit this, the momentum ought to carry me along for another year or so, anyway.' So, scared stiff, I gave it everything I had. I drew myself a mental picture of that character, and I hewed to those lines — with an almighty amount of help from Milestone. "Ever since, I've been able to make a decent living — playing a diversification of heels. I think I've played every kind now but the rubber kind. That's why it baffles me when people ask, 'Are you really like you are on the screen?' Which heel are they referring to?" There's one notable difference between Carson on the screen and Carson off it. "Invariably, on the screen," he points out, "I'm as brassy as a bugle. And, with mockmodesty, I keep tooting my own horn. I suppose it's natural for people to wonder if I'm a big blowhard in person, too. Everybody knows that every actor has an exhibitionist complex, of sorts, or he wouldn't be an actor. But what everybody doesn't know is that a great many actors are only covering up inferiority complexes. I used to ask myself, when I first came to Hollywood, 'How do these movie people get so much brass, so much self-confidence?' It took me quite a while to find out that it was just a bluff. Get past that bluff and they're just as homey as anybody else, and just as afraid inside of not being liked. That guy over there in the corner" — he nodded toward Jimmy Cagney's table — "is a perfect example. On the screen, he plays guys who are cocky and as hard as nails. And off the screen he belittles everything he does, he's that afraid he isn't getting it across. "Every night I tell my wife: 'They're going to find out some day that I'm not the actor I'm trying to make 'em think I am.' "But I'm a little better at bluffing than I used to be. When I first came out here, I couldn't talk to people — I was that nervous inside. My agent would take me along to have me meet some producer, but once we got in the Big Man's office, I made about as much noise — and as much impression— as the upholstery on the furniture. My agent had to keep telling me, 'Give more of yourself away, when you meet these big shots. Don't be ashamed of what you've got to offer.' "And Director Jack Conway did something for me when he said, 'You have a lot on the ball, but the trouble with you is, you have lard in your spine. When you play a scene with a couple of stars, remember you're just as important to yourself as they are to themselves.' I gritted these molars together and vowed: 'I'll polish that up a bit.' 84 SCREENLAND