Chapter 12
We lived in South Queens for quite a while, near the ocean. One day my hand was hanging off the bed and I suddenly felt water there. The ocean had come up too high and we’d been flooded—no joke! We were practically underwater. So we got the hell out of there fast and found another place in Jackson Heights, not too far from the site of the 1939 World’s Fair.
The new place was even worse. The woman upstairs wore the highest heels in America. She sounded like a big hailstorm every time she walked. Seven dogs lived in the apartment with her. When she left those dogs were by themselves, and the place stank. I was so mad I put my fist through the wall. It was a hellhole. I didn’t want my wife and daughter living there.
But better days were around the corner.
Through the grapevine, I heard they were casting a picture called The Whistle at Eaton Falls and were looking for people. I decided to go to the production office and see what it was all about. I walked in like I belonged there—which was the only way to do it without an appointment—and asked the nice lady sitting behind a desk, “Do you think there’d be anything for me in this picture?”
She looked up and said, “Just a moment.”
I thought she was going to get a security guy. Instead, she came back with a gentleman who had a thick German accent. Turned out he was the director. His name was Robert Siodmak, and he had made some great pictures, like The Killers with Burt Lancaster and Ava Gardner and The Suspect with Charles Laughton.
Siodmak looked me up and down and said, “You come see me tomorrow. I’ll give you a screen test.”
I was the very last person to be shot. By the time they got to me they were hurrying things along so it was “MOS,” which in Hollywood lingo meant without sound. The original director who used the phrase was European, and with his accent it came out “Mitt Out Sound.” Hence, “MOS.”
Mr. Siodmak said, “Smile.”
I asked him, “What should I say?”
Since there was no sound on the film, he said “Just say ‘shit’ over and over!”
Later, when the producer looked at my face on the screen he said, “Gee, he’s got a nice smile. What’s he saying?”
I’m told the director replied with a little smile of his own, “I don’t know, but whatever it was made him smile.”
When they called to tell me I’d booked the film, I thought I was going to do a couple of days’ work as an extra. In fact, I was playing a featured role, the foreman of a factory. I was in some pretty good company: Lloyd Bridges, Dorothy Gish, Carleton Carpenter, Murray Hamilton, Anne Francis, and Arthur O’Connell, with whom I’d reteam twenty-two years later in The Poseidon Adventure. Not a bad way to start! Even though I was new to the medium, I understood how a camera worked thanks to my experience in television. I don’t mean mechanically, I mean what it saw. For example, I had learned that if they were only shooting your face, you had to be expressive without using your hands. No one was going to see them. Likewise, I couldn’t be as broad as I was onstage. The camera saw everything and then blew it up forty feet tall.
I must have done okay because I was asked to read for another movie after that, The Mob, starring Broderick Crawford. Unlike the Siodmak film, this one was going to be shot in Hollywood. I went to the casting call, saw the other actors, then walked over to the casting director, a man named Maxwell Arnow.
I said, “Do you mind very much if I don’t watch the others, sir?”
He said, “No, no, that’s okay. Just wait in the hall.”
I walked out and sat on a hard wooden bench and waited. I wasn’t being a snob or anything: I just wanted my interpretation to be fresh. I didn’t want to be watching Mr. Arnow or anyone else as they reacted to things. Their expressions would color my own audition.
Finally, the last actor walked out and I was brought in.
I had noticed the position of the chair was different than when I’d come in. It had been sat in. I figured I’d do something different.
I said to Mr. Arnow and his panel, “Would you mind very much if I sat on the edge of the desk?”
“Not at all,” Mr. Arnow said. “In fact, that’s a good idea.”
So I cleared a space and sat on the edge of the desk and I looked at an imaginary character as the script girl started reading the other lines off-camera.
During the course of the scene I leaned over and swatted the character that I was supposedly looking at, smacked him one across the puss. And I said the line—I’ll never forget it—“Now, are you going to tell me or aren’t you?”
When I finished, the director laughed and said “Okay, cut, print. I’ll see you in Hollywood.”
Two weeks later Arnow called and made it official. Leaving Rhoda and our daughter with her parents, I went west to play a union thug named Joe Castro. I hadn’t been to Los Angeles since my navy days, and it had changed a great deal. The world markets had been partly closed to Hollywood during the war. Now they were open again, and everyone wanted Hollywood films. Studios, independent producers, and even the fledgling TV networks with their filmed half-hour crime shows and situation comedies were keeping soundstages humming.
I enjoyed working with Crawford, who had won an Oscar for All the King’s Men the year before. He was a very nice guy personally, very unassuming, and he had an amazing photographic memory. I really envied him that. He could look at a page of script once, then turn around and do it perfectly.
I don’t remember much else about the film, except that this intense, wiry kid named Charlie Bronson had a small, uncredited part as a longshoreman. Talk about paying your dues: it would be another ten years before he achieved stardom in a picture called The Magnificent Seven.
After finishing The Mob, Columbia wanted to get full value for their airplane ticket. So they put me in China Corsair, where I played Hu Chang, a Chinese shopkeeper. At four in the morning I used to show up at the makeup center in Columbia Studios on Gower Street and they’d put on adhesive strips to hold my eyes back. I wore them all day long. I could hardly see where the hell I was going, and when I sweated under those lights the tape had to be reapplied.
I remember one scene where I was supposed to go into the water. They had a stunt guy standing by, ready to jump in for me, but I didn’t want any part of that. I was a sailor. I’d been in the drink before, as you may recall. So I jumped. Everybody hurried over to get me out before I drowned, but I was already climbing the ladder. They just thought that was tremendous, and Arnow wanted to give me a seven-year contract on the spot. The only catch: I’d have to move to Los Angeles.
I thought about that overnight and I knew it’d never fly. My wife would never come because she wanted to be close to her parents, who were in New York. When I politely—and regretfully—declined the offer, the head of Columbia Pictures, Harry Cohn himself, came down to the set to see me. He was every inch the ferocious Hollywood mogul, with his coat thrown over his shoulders (in those days that was considered real chic, very European ) and a couple of secretaries in tow. He glared at me and said, “We’re going to give you $150 a week and you’re going to make pictures for us.”
I said, “Mr. Cohn, sir, I think that’s wonderful and I appreciate it very much. But I can’t take it.”
“What do you mean you can’t take it? How much are you making back in New York?”
“Well,” I said, “in a good week I can make twice that in TV.”
“How many good weeks do you have?” he asked without missing a beat.
“Not enough,” I admitted with a grin. “But my wife is attached to her family and she doesn’t like California. So what am I gonna do?”
“Is she Jewish?” he asked. Cohn himself was Jewish.
“As a matter of fact she is.”
He snorted, “Damn Jews are all alike. When you’re finished with this picture, get the hell out of here.”
Wow, I thought. There goes my movie career!
After he’d gone, Arnow came over to me and said, “Listen, don’t worry about it. He throws a lot of people off the lot until he needs them again. If something comes along, I’ll have you back. Don’t you worry.”
I couldn’t promise I wouldn’t worry, but I thanked him very much. In retrospect, though, I’m glad I didn’t take the deal. In those days they put contract players into everything, and you couldn’t say no. It’s true that they taught you all kinds of skills—riding, dancing, swordplay, all of that. But it was difficult to break out, especially with all the stars they had under contract.
Because China Corsair was a low-budget production, it actually came out before The Whistle at Eaton Falls—so, technically, that was my film debut. Thanks to Arnow, though, it wasn’t my last.