Screenland Plus TV-Land (Jul 1959 - May 1960)

THE CONQUEST OF HOLLYWOOD continued mitting uphill stage. "I used to go around to gas stations after they closed. I'd go from one gas station to another, pouring what little gas was left in the hose, maybe a quarter of a pint, into my own tank so I'd have enough gas to visit the studios the next day." His fantastic reserves of DDT, plus his pleasant acceptance of adversity, kept him afloat on Hollywood's choppy seas for a year. He existed on threadbare rations of bits on TV shows, including one memorable performance on Lux. "I was in it," he recalls, "with another guy no one had heard of — Guy Williams, who's now the star of 'Zorro.' He had a much fatter part than I. He had two lines. I had one." EDD's crucial break came when his agent sent him to Warner Bros, to read for a part in one of the "Cheyenne" films with Clint Walker. "Art Silver, the producer, said he knew I could do the part I came to try out for, but that there was a better one coming up the next week," Byrnes smiles. "I thought I was getting the brush-off, but I read the part anyway for William Orr, who heads the Warner TV setup, and for the director, and I got it." Unwittingly, Edd's big opportunity raised the already familiar and venerated image of Jimmy Cagney, the boy who had roamed the same Manhattan streets as he a generation before. "I played the part of a killer," Byrnes explains. "It was a Western remake of 'Angels With Dirty Faces.' I did the part that James Cagney played in the movie. He went to the electric chair. I went to the gallows." It was just the chance, to pounce on the obvious pun, that Byrnes had been dying for. His performance won him a term contract and another juicy killer part in "Girl On The Run," the pilot film of the then projected "77 Sunset Strip" series. Byrnes scored so well that he was written in as one of the regular stars. Meantime, he saw service in three Warner Bros, feature pictures — as Natalie Wood's adolescent boy friend in "Marjorie Morningstar," as one of the intrepid gladiators in "Darby's Rangers," and as the pharmacist's mate in the submarine suspenser, "Up Periscope." Edd Byrnes no longer has any trouble getting up the rent. He now shares with another buddy a more opulent two-story home in the Hollywood Hills, and he no longer has an agent problem. He is handled by William Morris, second only to MCA in the Hollywood empire. "After really meeting a movie star — Douglas was the first one I'd actually met — I was convinced that this was the life for me," Byrnes relates. But the bug had bitten him much earlier, and the virus proved recurrent. "Cagney was part of it, I'm sure," he 60 affirms. "He lived on East 78th Street, the same street I did. He grew up between First and Second Avenues. I grew up between Second and Third Avenues. All of us kids were always talking about Cagney. He was kind of a neighborhood hero. And I used to read all the fan magazines. I knew how everyone got into pictures and how they grew up. I used to see two or three movies a day in the summer when there was no school." Since Edd's allowance wasn't extravagant, he worked on an ice truck during the summer to earn extra money — not only for his family, which needed it, but so that he could pay movie admission. "I'd walk up five flights of stairs delivering ice," he thinks back with wry amusement. "The sweat would be pouring down me, and people would tell me how lucky I was to have such a nice cool job on an ice truck in the summer." Even now it is difficult for Edd to pinpoint just when the decision to become an actor finally jelled — when he was a kid movie fan, when he participated in the annual musical staged by the New York Turn Verein where he worked out as a tumbler and gymnast, or as a result of his first disappointment in love. "I guess I first became seriously interested in acting when the Turn Verein put on those plays," he says. "I remember in the finale I was supposed to take part in the re-enactment of the Iwo Jima flag raising. We all had Marine uniforms on, and I decided to be realistic. I got the other guys to come with me, and we ran dirt over our uniforms and spread burnt cork over our faces. We were a mess. The director came in, and he was fit to be tied. He made us all take a shower and shake the dust off our uniforms. He wanted us to go out there very clean and put up the flag." IF the Turn Verein provided Edd with a frustrating introduction to acting, it also provided him with an equally frustrating introduction to love, and thereby further provided him with an unexpected impetus to pursue an acting career. The girl in question attended the Turn Verein because, being a ballet dancer, she too was interested in gymnastics. "I had dated before, but never steady," Edd still speaks wistfully of the romance. "She was very lovely. I'd seen her around, but I never had the nerve to ask her out But every Sunday afternoon the boys and girls would have joint classes, and one Sunday her brother, who was a friend of mine, introduced me. It was love at first sight." It was almost a year before a nasty old serpent crawled into their Eden. "We were a hot item for nine months," Edd grins sheepishly. "Then we had a lovers' quarrel. That was five years ago, but I've gotten over it. It took me about a year. I was very depressed in the beginning. But I gradually began being myself again, and going out more. A year later she was having a romance with an other guy and broke up with him, and called me and wanted to get back together again. But it was too late. I'd gotten completely over it. I'd decided to become an actor." Edd says it like Charles Boyer renouncing Hedy Lamarr to join the Foreign Legion. Cured though he is of that early amour, Byrnes, now an ancient and confirmed bachelor of 25, still cherishes the memory of it. "That was my first and last love," he acknowledges. "I haven't had any love affair since. That was puppy love, a teenage romance. But what's that saying?" He finds the saying nicely without any prompting at all: "You get over your first love, but you never forget your first love!" There is no indication of who said it first, but Edd Byrnes gives it a good reading. He says it with feeling. If he is not marriage-minded today, it is not because his first love spoiled him for all others, but because he has a long way to go before he loses his taste for the joys of bachelorhood. Whatever his marital disinclination, there is very little doubt that he generates a heavy sexappeal fallout — on and off the parlor picture box. IN his associations with girls, as in his approach to life, Byrnes is fun-loving and laughing-eyed, and boyish and soft-spoken for all his assurance. They find him audacious but not overbearing, brash but not a boor. Perhaps one reason for his sex-appeal is that he is daring enough to expect his girls to be feminine rather than competitive. He spells out this all but extinct attitude when he explains why he's in no hurry to get married. "First of all," he points out with a sigh of relief, "I haven't met the right girl. Second, I'm not financially set yet. I still have a responsibility to my family. And fourth, I've never been tempted. I have to get more advanced in my career, and I have to have a lot more fun before I think of getting married. Maybe I'll be ready when I'm 30." It would seem clear that any girl interested in currying favor — let alone matrimony— with Edd must be willing to pamper him. "I like a girl that likes to smile," he smiles, meeting her on his own hypothetical terms. "She'd have to have a great sense of humor and understand my work. She'd have to share my interest in health foods, too. I'm such a bug on it. It's no fun to eat health foods alone. She'd have to sleep late. If she'd get out of bed in the morning and squeeze me my orange juice, that would be the end. If she's a good back rubber that would be in her favor, too. I love to have my back rubbed. Lower, honey, lower. She must have good manners. She would have to know how to entertain and be a good hostess if I threw a part)'." continued on page 65