The Encyclopedia of Feature Players of Hollywood, Volume 2

By Jim Goldrup

Learn from the following actors and actresses what it was like for the feature players of Hollywood working in films during its Golden Era. Read of their often humorous and exciting stories as they lived out their lives & careers behind and in front of the camera.

Featured in this volume:

Gordon Gebert
Bruce Gordon
Leo Gordon
Dabbs Greer
Duane Grey
James Griffith
Kevin Hagen
Don Haggerty
Alan Hale Jr.
Lois Hall
Peter Hansen
John Hart
Don C. Harvey
Joe Haworth
Myron Healey
John Hoyt
Russell Johnson
Ed Kemmer
Bill Kennedy
George Keymas
Wright King
Robert Knapp
Keith Larsen
Harry Lauter
Marc Lawrence
Norman Leavitt
George J. Lewis
Fred Libby
Pierce Lyden
James Lydon
Peter Mamakos
Beth Marion
Sean McClory
Jan Merlin
John Merton
Ewing Mitchell
Steve Mitchell
Tom Monroe
Peggy Moran
Jeff Morrow
Lori Nelson
Allan Nixon
Edward Norris
Dan O’Herlihy
Bradley Page
Michael Pate
House Peters Jr.
Paul Picerni
John Pickard
Philip Pine
Mala Powers
Guy Prescott
William Pullen
Denver Pyle

About the Authors

Tom and Jim Goldrup, sons of Eugene and Fernita (McKillop) Goldrup, were born in Palo Alto, California, and raised in the historic town of Sonoma in that state. They, with older brothers Bill and Ray, had a strong love of the movies, which was aided by their father building their first television set in 1949. After growing to adulthood, Ray made a living as a screenplay writer, and Tom and Jim pursued a less successful career as actors. They also turned to writing, having a book, Growing Up on the Set, a book based on former child performers in Hollywood, published in 2001. They have also interviewed over one hundred and fifty actors—these interviews serve as the basis for this book. They reside in Ben Lomond, California, where they are active in the local theater. In between their writing and acting they enjoy travel, having recently visited Nepal and India where they trekked in the Himalaya Mountains.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BearManor Media
• Release date: Aug 5, 2016
• ISBN: 9781370894932

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The Encyclopedia of Feature Players of Hollywood, Volume 2

© 2012 Tom and Jim Goldrup. All Rights Reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, digital, photocopying or recording, except for the inclusion in a review, without permission in writing from the publisher.

This version of the book may be slightly abridged from the print version.

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgments

Gordon Gebert

Bruce Gordon

Leo Gordon

Dabbs Greer

Duane Grey

James Griffith

Kevin Hagen

Don Haggerty

Alan Hale, Jr.

Lois Hall

Peter Hansen

John Hart

Don C. Harvey

Joe Haworth

Myron Healey

John Hoyt

Russell Johnson

Ed Kemmer

Bill Kennedy

George Keymas

Wright King

Robert Knapp

Keith Larsen

Harry Lauter

Marc Lawrence

Norman Leavitt

George J. Lewis

Fred Libby

Pierce Lyden

James Lydon

Peter Mamakos

Beth Marion

Sean McClory

Jan Merlin

John Merton

Ewing Mitchell

Steve Mitchell

Tom Monroe

Peggy Moran

Jeff Morrow

Lori Nelson

Allan Nixon

Edward Norris

Dan O’Herlihy

Bradley Page

Michael Pate

House Peters, Jr.

Paul Picerni

John Pickard

Phillip Pine

Mala Powers

Guy Prescott

William Pullen

Denver Pyle

About The Authors

Acknowledgments

This book is dedicated to our parents, Eugene and Fernita (McKillop) Goldrup and to our very good friend, Walter Reed. The stories included in these volumes are based on personal interviews that the authors had with the performers. Seven of these were through correspondence; eight were interviews with the actor by telephone; eight were with the next of kin to the deceased featured player, one we were given permission by the daughter to use information from the journal and scrapbooks of her deceased father; and the remaining one hundred and thirty-six were done in person with the performer.

We wish to offer acknowledgements to the following people who helped in making these books possible. First and foremost, we thank each of the performers that are included in this volume of works who kindly granted us personal interviews. Another hearty thank you goes to our editor, Annette Lloyd, and the typesetter, Allan Duffin, for their many hours devoted to helping make this book possible. In addition, our gratitude goes out to: Ed Begley Jr., Jim Bobitushi, Beatrice Bratton, Jack Bray, Marion Carney, Eddie Firestone, Michael Fitzgerald, Bill Goldrup, Marilee Goldrup, Ray Goldrup, Sandy Grabman, Dorothy Harvey, Jamie, Nancy and Pat Haworth, Joe Haworth Jr., Edith Lane, Bob and Susan LaVarre, Jon Libby, Boyd and Donna Magers, Michelle McNair, John Nelson, Ray Nielsen, Ben Ohmart, Tony Paterson, Tony Phipps (of Screen Actors Guild), Frankie Prather, Mrs. Marshal Reed, Warner Richmond Jr., Ian Ritchie, Wayne Short, Reijo Sippola, Betty Strom, Susan Swann, and Frankie Thomas.

Gordon Gebert

Gordon Gebert was born October 17, 1941 in Des Moines, Iowa. My dad was in the trucking business all through Iowa and into Illinois, he told us. I used to travel with him sometimes. My father was also an amateur actor who did little theater at Drake University in Des Moines. I did two or three shows there with my father, and my parents had me take some drama lessons.

In about 1947, Gordon’s father bought a business in California and the family moved out there. When we left, the man who was head of the little theatre at Drake University suggested to my parents that if I wanted to continue acting, that we might contact a friend of his at the Pasadena Playhouse, Gordon recalled. "So not long after we got to California my mother took me to the Pasadena Playhouse, and shortly thereafter I did a play with a bunch of boys in it. An agent, who specialized in child actors, saw me there and suggested to my mother that she would help us pursue professional acting in movies. She handled hundreds of kids and would send us out on mass interviews, and a lot of us got a toe-hold that way. From one interview I did a movie called Come to the Stable with Loretta Young."

We asked Gordon if he had any reflections on his first film. I was seven years old, he recounted, and it was on Twentieth Century lot. It was the first time I was on a movie set and it was a pretty fantastic thing. I had no idea how a movie was made. I remember Loretta Young was very sweet and very nice and very pretty.

After finishing his first film, Gordon was given a bit part in Holiday Affair, which starred Janet Leigh, Robert Mitchum and Wendell Corey. There was a boy who had the lead, and I played his downstairs neighbor, Joey; maybe there were two scenes, he reflected. They had already been shooting for a couple of weeks when I came on and did the bit part, and the director was having trouble with the boy. He wasn’t taking direction well and wasn’t working out. He liked the way I took direction and liked me. I did a couple of screen tests after hours and went to his house and interviewed. I remember my whole family going, meeting his son, and being at his house for a Saturday afternoon, and that Monday they started the movie all over again with me in the lead. The other boy was let go, and I don’t know what ever happened to him. That was an independent film, but done at RKO.

"Most of Holiday Affair was done in the summer, which is interesting because it is a winter movie, with all our winter clothes in California summer, Gordon continued. It was released that Christmas and did pretty well. Don Hartman had purchased the rights to a short story in Saturday Evening Post or Colliers, did the screenplay and produced and directed it. He later went on to become head of Paramount Studios."

RKO Then put Gordon under contract, and loaned him out to Warner Brothers to do Flame and the Arrow. Gordon’s reflections of this film were Burt Lancaster and Nick Cravat. They did all there own stunts and they pushed everybody to do more stunts than they did on most sets. There was an atmosphere of taking a little bit more risks, and the regular actors being a little more involved in things. I remember being thrown through the air, and I rode a lot more in that. Burt Lancaster was very professional and great to work with; a lovely guy. He was really wonderful. In fact, I got a photograph of my eighth birthday, which was on the set, of him blowing out the candles with me.

Another film that Gordon appeared in was a Western with Joel McCrea titled Saddle Tramp. There were four of us kids in that: Jimmy Hunt, Greg Moffett, Orley Lindgren and myself. I remember the director, Hugo Fregonese, had a terrible time with us four boys, he laughed. We were always pinching each other and horsing around. There were four stand-in’s for the lighting, so there were eight boys on the set ranging in age from ten down to six. It was a nightmare. I can remember us riding furiously at lunch time and at breaks at Jauregui Ranch and on the back lot at Universal, and from time to time the assistant director or director getting upset, or even our mothers or the welfare worker-teacher getting upset, that we were riding a little too fast or dangerously.

Asked if he learned to ride horses for the movie roles, Gordon replied "My mother had me taking all kinds of lessons. I took some riding lessons, but I also learned to ride on the set or out on location. Two areas I recall going to on a number of films, and later on television, were Juaregui Ranch and Vasquez Rocks. The wranglers in those days would let us ride. I remember especially on Saddle Tramp on the Universal lot where all those tourist things are now, that was all back lot with rolling grassy hills and the Saddle Tramp ranch. I used to ride back there at lunch time and on breaks. So I took riding lessons to some extent, but how many riding lessons does a seven or eight year old kid need?"

In Narrow Margin, another RKO release, Gordon played the son of Jacqueline White, a witness aboard a train on the way to testify in a murder trial. Charles McGraw is the officer chosen to protect her. Most of the action in the film took place aboard the train. We asked Gordon of any memories in the making of this film noir classic. I think if I had stayed in California I would have ended up on the other side of the camera, he said. "Because as a kid I was always very fascinated with the technical stuff, photography in particular, lighting, special effects, and that sort of thing. So I remember very vividly all the shots on the train. There were several trains that were set up on the set. They were cut away, and I remember them bouncing them for the shots. I don’t remember McGraw at all. Some people I do remember: Burt Lancaster was a wonderful person, a great guy to work with, great with the kids on the set. I remember that very distinctly, and that was the case with Loretta Young. Janet Leigh, Robert Mitchum and Wendell Corey were also great to work with and great with kids. But I don’t really remember Narrow Margin other than being on the set in the cut away cars."

Gordon had a lead role in House on Telegraph Hill, which starred Valentine Cortessa and Richard Basehart. That was a great movie and it was my first experience in San Francisco, he related. We shot the whole thing on Telegraph Hill. There’s a big old house there, and then we used the grounds of Coit Tower for the grounds of the house. It was a great experience. Valentine Cortessa was wonderful; just great. I played her son in it. She was really warm and we took a real liking to each other, so there was a real chemistry between her and I. The other interesting little tid-bit is that she and Richard Basehart got together and ended up getting married. I remember them on the set holding hands, and being away from others talking. It was pretty clear that there was a romance developing.

Among the other stars that Gordon worked with on screen was John Wayne in Flying Leathernecks and Operation Pacific. In his reflections on the former, Gordon told us I played his son, and he brings me a Japanese sword when he comes home after killing all kinds of people and shooting down all kinds of planes. He was a very nice guy, again very professional and very easy to work with. I remember him very distinctly asking me to call him Duke. I ran into him once or twice somewhere along the line and he remembered me and we chatted. A very nice guy.

Gordon worked with child actor Gary Gray in one of the RKO Pal shorts, Pal, Canine Detective, which also featured Flame, a dog star of the 1940’s, as the title character. I don’t remember Flame, he stated, but I do remember Gary and his mother, a very sweet person. I remember all the kids were mostly a lot of fun and great guys and gals, everybody was really nice and very good to work with. The only exception to that is Carol Lynley. I did a live TV show when I was sixteen or seventeen, Junior Miss, and Dennis Hopper played a suitor to Carol Lynley. He and I went out to lunch a couple of times, he was six or seven years older than me, and he played this very proper kind of kid. I remember Carol Lynley was not great to work with. We were all getting older and those that were going to take on airs started to take on airs. But Jimmy Hunt, Gary Gray and Tommy Rettig were all great guys to work with and all had a great time."

Gordon described his school experience, and what it was like being a child actor and trying to get a good education at the same time. I went to a private school. I couldn’t be in a public school because I was in and out. And they had horses, so I rode a lot…Constantly. But I also took roping lessons, all kinds of dance, singing and acting lessons.

I switched to public school in junior high and went to Van Nuys Junior High School and Van Nuys High School, he continued. Asked if other kids treated him any differently because of he being in movies, Gordon answered, "Yea, sometimes kids are a little snotty about it, and some kids a little overly solicitous. But I’ll tell you who was one of the classmates of mine. Cheryl, one of the Mousketeers, and most of the big public schools had a couple of kids that were in the business so it wasn’t a huge deal for most kids. A lot of kid’s parents were in the business in the technical end or bit actors. Another good friend was Rick Anderson, his father was a cameraman on Father Knows Best. Carl Betz’s son was somebody I knew too."

"From about the fifth grade on I really resented the business and didn’t like it at times. Not being with my friends and not being able to play sports. For example, I remember going on little league parades with my friends. Stacy Keach was one of my best friends. He was not in the business at the time, he wanted to be desperately, but his father forbade him to be in the business. He coveted what I was able to do, absolutely envious beyond belief that I was doing acting and he couldn’t. Of course, when he did graduate work at Yale, without his father realizing it, he went into the Yale Drama School and the rest is history. But he was my best friend, and he played little league and I couldn’t. He played Pop Warner football and I couldn’t. I really resented that terribly, but as I look back on that now, the business was a fabulous experience. It’s one that not one in a million kids get a chance to do, but there are other similar experiences. It was almost like being a prince or part of a royal family, very enriching and I had a lot of fun there, and look back at it really fondly and wouldn’t trade one minute of it for all the world. But I’m glad I got out. And I got out after the school year in college. The last thing I did was a bit part in Absent Minded Professor with Fred MacMurray."

What was school like on the set while working in a picture? "There were two kinds of school. When I was under contract to RKO there was a little to-do because they just wanted to send me back to regular school for several months at a time when I wasn’t actually working, but the state said no way, you’ve got to school him on the lot. Actually what happened was that they loaned me out to Warners to do Flame and the Arrow, but when it came time to come back to RKO to go to school, RKO said `No, just put him back in school,’ and the state said, `No, you can’t do that. As long as he’s under contract you have to school him.’ So RKO made a deal with Warner Brothers to leave me in school there as they had a little school house, where Debbie Reynolds was finishing up her senior year as a high school student. So she and I were in school together. I was in the second or third grade and she was a senior in high school. We had great fun going to school together; there was only the two of us."

That was when we were under contract but not working, Gordon stated. When we were working we had school for three hours. To this day I hate being interrupted, because what happened was that you start working on school work and then you’d be interrupted to go back to the set and you might work for fifteen or twenty minutes and then you go back to school. So most days, school was this putting together fifteen or twenty minute time to make up three hours with a private tutor. Now I have to say I got a great education. I had great tutors. As a matter of fact, in the ninth grade, which would make me about thirteen or fourteen, I went to San Francisco to do a stage play, and I was in school three hours a day with a private tutor and then did the play at night. I did a performance each night and then a couple of matinees.

What was the play, we asked. "Anniversary Waltz, Gordon answered. That had played successful for about four years on Broadway. Randolph Hale, of the Hale Department Store chain, was producing, in association with some producer in Los Angeles, and they made a deal where they would run four weeks in Los Angeles and then bring the play to San Francisco. That would split the production cost. We did it for four weeks at the Carthay Circle, and then we went to San Francisco and played at the Alcazar Theater. We were supposed to be there for two weeks, two extended to four weeks, four extended to six, and we ended up staying there for nearly a year. It broke all records. We did it from September 1955 through the following June or July. I lived there and had a private tutor for three hours a day. That was really a major formulation of my value of education, and I went on to college, obtained my Master’s Degree, and I’m now a college professor, and that was all a direct result of that private tutor in San Francisco. He was really a great guy and taught me to value education and learning."

We were really treated well, Gordon continued as he related his experience in San Francisco. We became celebrities because it was a long running play, and everybody saw it. The other thing, I’m an architect and planner now, and my perception of the city and how cities can be and what they’re like to live in is a result of spending a whole year at a very formative time in San Francisco, and going to work every night on the cable car, taking taxi’s and buses everywhere and living just outside of downtown; totally different than Los Angeles. I was just old enough to be independent where I could take a bus anywhere I wanted. My mom was there with me the whole time and my dad came up on weekends. I never did get back to Los Angeles at all for ten or eleven months. We had Tuesday through Sunday regular shows, we were dark on Monday night, but we had matinees on Saturday and Wednesday. Eight performances a week. So there was no way I could get home.

The one break I used to get was on Monday we were dark, and I remember at some point a couple of times taking the train with some other kids and a parent down to Santa Cruz, where there was a boardwalk with a roller coaster by the sea. I don’t remember how long the train took, maybe a couple of hours. Boy, that train was a zoo, he laughed.

Did Gordon, as an actor, have a preference for film or stage? Not really at the time. I think stage is pretty demanding. You get a cold or are sick and don’t feel like going on, you’re tired.. You do it anyway. Film is pretty grueling also while the film is going. It’s every day and early calls and so on. I think probably at the time my preference was for film, because the other thing is if you mess up you just do another take, whereas you are right out there in front of the audience. As an adult, actors clearly get a lot more satisfaction out of live performance.

Returning to Los Angeles after the close of the play, Gordon played Audie Murphy as a boy in Murphy’s autobiographical To Hell and Back. We asked if Murphy personally chose him for the role. Yes. I remember the interview very distinctly. They interviewed a bunch of kids, and I was selected along with four or five others, and then we were interviewed by Audie Murphy. A very nice guy, very low key. Their only concern was our hair coloring was a little different, so they doctored up my hair for that. We did that in Bakersfield.

Between his film roles, Gordon also worked in television. "I did Gunsmoke, Fury, Wild Bill Hickock, a couple of Father Knows Best, he stated. I did a number of pilots that never quite clicked, which maybe was good, maybe it was bad. I don’t know. One pilot I did was a Bachelor Father kind of thing, where Gary Merrill was a bachelor and had a couple of kids. Another, Robert Young owed Ford Theatre one more script, which was just before Father Knows Best started. Ford Theatre was a different screenplay each week. There were four stars, and Young was one of them, and they would alternate each week. They each did thirteen for the year and he owed them one, so they grabbed the Father Knows Best script and recast it and liked the cast very much. There was discussion that they might have me recast in that before it got started, but it wasn’t possible because the contracts were all signed with the other actors. So I almost did a couple of series but nothing quite clicked."

And what did Gordon think of live television? Grueling, horrible. We didn’t have teleprompters or anything at that point. No cue cards; nothing, he explained. "NBC had an hour long drama on every day, Matinee Theatre, where I played a cadet in a military school and it was heavy drama. This was no fun. We did a couple of read-throughs on a Thursday and Friday, and then we did heavy rehearsals for four days and then we did it the fifth day. Boy, that was grueling. Scary. Because not only did you have to know your lines and your cues, but you also had to know where to stand and how to stand and where the cameras were. There were three cameras, and it was really tough. There were also a few critical moments where you had to be facing the right way where you’d be cheating your look one way for the camera, and then when another camera was cut in you had to cheat your look the other way and time it with the switch. Oh, it was tough."

Gordon not only worked before the camera and on stage, but also performed on radio. Gordon reprised his role of Timmy from Holiday Affair, working opposite Laraine Day in the Janet Leigh part. Radio was great because I was old enough to read, and I had my own mike that was down a little bit low, which was right next to the other actors. It was an interesting experience, he concluded.

We asked Gordon if he had any favorite role from his acting career, and he answered "Yea, the one I resented the most at the time which was Anniversary Waltz in San Francisco. Fabulous experience. Lived in some great apartments in San Francisco, met great people, being on stage for nearly a year eight times a week was a tremendous discipline. So everything about it was great. San Francisco is a fabulous city. So I would say that probably was my favorite. The other was Flame and the Arrow because of Burt Lancaster and the type of movie it was."

Gordon decided to leave the business when he was about twenty years old because he had no interest in it. I just left, Gordon stated. "I got out of LA, and totally out of the business. I had gone to UCLA for two years, switched to architecture for a year at USC, and then decided to go all out for architecture and realized the only way I could do that was to shake lose of Los Angeles.

"What happened is that during the summer I decided to take a trip around the United States while I was at USC. I sold my Porsche and bought a Volkswagen, and just started out across the southern route through Arizona, Texas to Louisiana, along the gulf coast, down to the Florida Keys, and up the east coast. When I got to the east coast it was early July. I had worked for a company with a branch office in Los Angeles, that also had an office in New York, and another in Cambridge, Massachusetts, so when I came into New York I checked at that office just to get my mail, sort of a way station, and the guy that ran the office there and I became good buddies. I said I want to go to school, and he said `Why don’t you go up to MIT, because the people who own this main part of the company are also professors at MIT; maybe they could help you out.’

So I went up to Cambridge and met the principals in the company. One of them, who was an architect, got me into MIT that September. I went to MIT, and then went to Princeton for graduate school, stayed on and taught at Princeton for a couple of years, went to City College and helped set up a new school of architecture there, and then was Dean there for five or six years, and now I’m just a professor.

Gordon also became involved in local politics. He ran for Mayor several years ago and just barely missed it. I stayed very active in politics, Gordon related, "and I’m now a trustee, which is like a city councilman, and, hey, that’s all acting. That’s more acting than acting, he laughed. And as a politician, Gordon has used his earlier experiences from radio and live television. I’ve done live TV here on cable as a politician. It’s pretty simple. First of all there’s no script; second of all there is no blocking, you’re just sitting down. I’ve done quite a bit of cable TV news here. I’ve also done a lot of radio locally as a politician. I like radio best, you can grimace and do stuff to relieve the tension, just making sure your voice doesn’t follow the grimace," he laughed.

When Gordon is away from his job today, what are some things that he enjoys doing. "In Holiday Affair, a toy model Lionel Train was very prominent, he stated. In fact, the opening and closing credits were on a train going around in the snow. My dad arranged to get that train and gave it to me for Christmas. I still have it. My son absolutely loves trains, and so we are very into model trains and that sort of thing. The other thing my wife, my son and I are into is travel. We travel three or four times a year, and I think kind of being flexible about things is a result of being in the movie business as a kid. Not knowing if I were going to be in school at any one moment, working here for a couple of weeks and there for a month, being in San Francisco for a year and so on. On one hand that makes me appreciate home and being in one place, and on the other hand, there’s nothing greater than getting away and traveling. I remember very vividly mornings going on six o’clock calls and getting on the bus or in the limo and going out on location. I used to love going out on location. I remember that very well.

"We also see a Broadway show once a month. We go in the afternoon for a matinee. We leave here at one o’clock and can be at a two-thirty performance and have time for lunch. My wife (who is an author of eight books) has always been a tremendous movie fan. Her mother used to take her to the movies a couple of times a week when she was four or five years old, and she really knows her movies. She and her sister remembered me from Holiday Affair because they used to see it every Christmas. So she has collected as many of my tapes as she could find, publicity stills, and is always on the lookout to collect stuff. She is very excited about it all."

We asked Gordon if he could sum up his feelings about his career as a child actor. A great experience, tremendously enriching, he said. It gave me opportunities to do things I couldn’t have otherwise done. Also it developed my finances early, and in some ways I’m still benefiting from that. I ended up learning to do things, being comfortable with people, liking people and judging people in ways that most kids have to wait for years to learn. Great experience; loved it.

Film Credits: 1949: Come to the Stable; Holiday Affair. 1950:The Flame and the Arrow; Saddle Tramp; Pal, Fugitive Dog (short). 1951: Flying Leathernecks; Night into Morning; The House on Telegraph Hill; Fourteen Hours; Pal’s Gallant Journey (short). 1952: The Narrow Margin; Chicago Calling. 1955: To Hell and Back. 1958: Summer Love.

Bruce Gordon

I was born in Fitchburg, Massachusetts a long time ago, just after the Pilgrim’s landed at Plymouth Rock, Bruce laughed. In reality, Bruce entered the world stage on February 1, 1916 at Fitchburg, Massachusetts. My brothers and I had the usual life of a working man’s family — going to school; playing around; waiting for papa to come home; waiting for mama to cook dinner and that sort of thing.

About mid 1925, the Gordon family moved to New Jersey. When Bruce was about nine years old he was in a Columbus State Pageant. Just to show you how fate starts you off, the part they gave me to play was a heavy. I played King Ferdinand, who wouldn’t give Columbus any money to discover America. So I guess that set the tone for me for my future career because there’s been many heavies after that, he commented. The pageant was his first experience on the stage, but at the age of nine years he was too young to be interested in the theatre.

It wasn’t until his second experience that he actually became interested and that was when he joined the Dramatic Society in high school. When he graduated from high school he was living in Brooklyn, right near the center of the theatre district. He would go over to New York to look for an acting job and went to work at Macy’s as a clerk, and also obtained employment as an usher at several theatres. In between these Bruce was able to get little acting jobs. There was an actor who had a roving company and he’d get actors together for a play and he wouldn’t pay royalties, Bruce stated. We’d rehearse in somebody’s apartment and then he’d book us into a women’s club in Stanford, Connecticut or Mt. Vernon and pay us each five dollars a performance. There was no admission charge, but the way this actor in charge of the company would collect money would be to come out after the second act and ask for contributions from the audience. And all the quarters would drop in. So we got paid with quarters, Bruce smiled.

Bruce was still new on the stage and the other actors in these performances were older character actors. They would grab me when I came off stage and say, ‘Listen you son of a bitch, you ever do that again to me on stage I’ll kill you!’ I said, ‘What did I do?’ ‘You walked in front of me when I had my good line; you ruined my joke.’ That’s how I got my practical experience.

Talking about his beginnings in his acting career, Bruce told us, You know, when you’re twenty years old and you’re asked if you have any experience or what you can do, you can do everything and, of course, you lie like hell about the previous experience you had. So when they were casting these melodramas at the American Music Hall, and of course in those old time melodramas you could be as corny as you wanted to be and it didn’t make any difference, they’d ask you if you could sing and dance, and you’d say, ‘Oh, sure.’ You get up and make a sound and if they needed a base and you happened to be a base, they would hire you. Twenty dollars a week. So that’s how I really started. Then I began meeting people in the profession.

In those days in New York City, the producers had regular casting hours from ten to twelve on Wednesday mornings. These were big producers at that time, such as Arthur Hopkins and Brock Pemberton. One could make their rounds on Wednesday mornings knocking on their doors and asking, Any casting today? They would look up and check you to see if you happened to fit a part they needed and would either say, No, not today. See me next week, or Come back later; come back at two o’clock. Bruce told us, "You think, oh boy, he’s interested. And that’s how you got a job. But then it changed; it got to be a rat race. These old producers died off and the procedures died out too, and then they developed casting agents and casting consultants, so it became very formalized. That was my early training, right there in New York City and I stayed there mostly in New York for twenty years working for various people, going on the road.

Between ‘37 and ’57, I did many things, Bruce stated. In 1939, just after working at the American Music Hall, they were sending a company out on tour with a play called Kiss the Boys Goodbye, written by Claire Booth Luce. It had been a big success at the Henry Miller Theatre in New York; the second company was already established at Chicago, and they sent a third company out. Bruce read for it and that’s when he first met Antoinette Perry, who was a big director and for whom the Tony Awards were named. She directed all of Brock Pemberton’s plays. Bruce got the role that was played on Broadway by Sheldon Leonard, that of a young Hollywood producer. We were a company of young people, mostly inexperienced, and of course we all thought we were great, Bruce reflected. We toured in that for about five or six months. We went to the west coast and were no great shakes because we were actually learning ourselves. Brock Pemberton came out to the coast during this tour and after a performance he called all of us down into the basement. I think this was the Geary or the Curran Theatre in San Francisco. He blazed into us; he gave us hell. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ And we thought we were marvelous, Bruce laughed.

He was in the original company of Arsenic and Old Lace, which opened in 1941. I was the cop who was told by the lieutenant to go down in the cellar with Karloff and see if there are any bodies there, he told us. I had a line where I said, ‘I’m not going down with him. He looks like Boris Karloff.’ Whereupon Karloff leaped for my neck, we struggle and my buddy hits him over the head. I was on Broadway with that for nineteen months, then toured for about a year and then I got nabbed out on the west coast and I was drafted. I went into the navy and was in for about three years. Russell Krouse, who was one of the producers for the show, told Bruce, Don’t worry kid, I was in the same fix you’re in in World War I. I thought my writing career was over because I was going in the navy, and look what happened. Chin up. When Bruce was discharged from the Navy he went to see Russell Krouse and Howard Lindsey. Krouse said to Bruce, Oh, hi kid. You’re out, huh? Nice to see you. And that was the end of that.

In that period, Bruce didn’t work for about a year. A lot of us didn’t, Bruce mentioned. Lived on fifty-two twenty; that was the fifty-two twenty club where we got twenty dollars a week for fifty-two weeks. I remember this handout while you got readjusted, and I just couldn’t get a job. Then Bruce joined the American Theatre Wing in New York and was in their first acting class. Antoinette Perry and a group of patriotic women had formed the American Theatre Wing, which established a stage door canteen during World War II in New York. A stage door canteen was a place where G.I.’s could come in and get a bite to eat and dance and amuse themselves. "While I was in Arsenic and Old Lace in 1942 we were already at war, I was working at the stage door canteen too, he informed us. I was driving a truck and picking up contributions of food from various restaurants and bring it back to the canteen. As the war ended, the American Theatre Wing established a school for actors; for professional people to readjust themselves professionally, because you get kind of rusty as there’s no place to act in the service; you’re doing other things." Bruce graduated in the American Theatre Wings first acting class, and the graduation was doing scenes from plays.

At that time Maurice Evans, a famous Shakespearian actor, was going to go on a tour with a production of G.I. Hamlet, which had been successful in Hawaii. Evans was an English actor who became an American citizen and was a captain in the U.S. Army during the war, stationed in Hawaii where he was putting on shows for the G.I.’s. He produced this version of Hamlet which was called the G.I. Hamlet. It was a shorter version and performed in Victorian dress, and because of its success he decided to take it on tour. His production manager was at the graduation of the American Theatre Wing and saw Bruce doing a loud mouth scene from Room Service. I played, I think it was, the hotel owner who comes in and says, ‘Jumping butterballs,’ or something like that. It had nothing to do with Shakespeare, he informed us. After this performance, that production manager got hold of Bruce and said, We’d like you to come out on this tour with us. He hadn’t worked in over a year and now somebody was offering a job. Bruce asked, What do you mean? He answered, "I like what you’ve done on the stage and there’s a part for you in G.I. Hamlet. Gee, Horatio or maybe Hamlet, Bruce thought. The production manager said, Come to the office Monday morning, and please don’t accept any other offers. Bruce told us, I said, ‘Oh no.’ I hadn’t worked in years and he’s asking me not to take another job. I went down Monday morning and I got the job. It was playing Marcellus, which is a small part, but actually I understudied Claudius and that’s how it all started. That was 1946, and I was out on that for forty-four weeks. I did play Claudius in St. Louis at the American Theatre which was in the American Hotel, so everybody stayed at the hotel. After a matinee I came back to the hotel; thought that I would catch a little nap before performance that night. In the lobby is sitting Claudius, Henry Edwards — a wonderful English actor — and his wife. He looked like death, very pale and I thought, ‘uh-oh,’ and my dinner just dropped because I was his understudy and I could see he wasn’t feeling well. Bud Williams, his production manager, was sitting there and he said, ‘Oh Bruce, how do you feel about going on tonight?’ That was about 6:30 and the performance starts at 8:30. I was up on the lines, but it’s one thing to know the lines and to know that you’re actually going to play it. So they called Evans, and some other key people, like Queen Gertrude, and got me on stage and through the moves. I was just trying to co-ordinate the two. I was letter perfect; I did the performance. The important thing was that I kept the curtain up because Evans wouldn’t dream of dropping the curtain and saying the refunds are at the box office. I guess most managers are that way: they want to keep the money. Anyway, that’s how I got to play Claudius and I played it for a week. That was a good experience."

In 1947, after finishing the Hamlet tour, Bruce got a role in Antony and Cleopatra, which starred Katharine Cornell. Unbeknownst to him, Maruice Evans had sent a letter to Guthrie McClintic recommending certain people from his G.I. Hamlet company for Antony and Cleopatra. When I called and asked about casting, they arranged an appointment and I got a reading with McClintic, Bruce said. He got the small role of Ventidius, but understudied the character Enobarbus, which was played by Kent Smith. The play opened in New York and ran for about four months and then toured, closing in Chicago in 1948. Bruce and another actor in the company, Ollie Cliff, applied as drivers to drive a brand new Cadillac out to the west coast. Cliff lived on the coast and Bruce had wanted to go to La Jolla because the stage manager of Antony and Cleopatra was going to run the La Jolla Theatre. At that time, the La Jolla Players was run by Gregory Peck, Dorothy McGuire, Jennifer Jones and Joseph Cotten, and that was their way in keeping a hand in the theatre. I wanted to get out there because it was so close to Hollywood and I wanted to get into pictures too, Bruce related. They gave Bruce and Ollie ten days to drive from Chicago and the trip was paid for, except their living expenses. "We got to the west coast and I got to La Jolla and, lo and behold, sometime that summer I got a job in a play called Road To Rome, with Eve Arden and Wendell Corey." When the play ended, Bruce went up to Hollywood, got an agent and got into the last Marx Brothers picture, Love Happy, with Ilona Massey, Melville Cooper and Raymond Burr. Groucho wasn’t in it, which was a mistake, he told us. It would have improved the picture. I was on that about five or six weeks and all of a sudden they were paying me all of this money.

After this film, Guthrie McClintic sent Bruce a telegram saying that Judith Anderson was taking the play, Medea, on tour and starting on the west coast. Raymond Burr, whom Bruce had become friends with, and his agent both recommended that he stay. The play was offering two hundred and fifty dollars a week. His agent told him that he couldn’t guarantee work, so Gordon went for the more sure thing.

The tour lasted forty weeks and he wound up back in New York. It was now 1949 and television was beginning to open up. It was a new media and everybody was interested in it and he started doing live television. There was no union covering this and the top salary was fifty dollars a week. I did other things too, Bruce said. "Katharine Cornell did a play called That Lady. There was no part for me but they wanted me to understudy Torin Thatcher. I was in that for a couple of months. At that time they were doing The King And I. I knew all the casting people in New York because I walked around and knocked on doors." He was doing a television show for the person who was the casting man for Rogers and Hammerstein. He gave Bruce a call and asked him if he would like to come up to New Haven because Murvyn Vye, who was playing the prime minister in the King and I, was leaving and the director wanted to meet Gordon. Sidney Lumet was directing the television show that Bruce was in and told him, Sure, go ahead.

Bruce went up to New Haven and met Rogers and Hammerstein. As soon as he met the director, Bruce told us, I knew I was dead. He was such a flaming homosexual for one thing and he had a bitchy quality when you were talking to him. You could be a homosexual, I don’t care, but don’t let it intrude through all this stuff. I told him that I think I’d better go back to New York and he said, ‘Okay. Stay the night in the hotel and then go back. Thanks very much for coming up.’ The next morning about six, I was in the bathroom shaving and the phone rang right through the wall and, lo and behold, I was right next door to this director and I could hear everything he said. He had a phone call from New York and somebody was obviously asking him about the production. He said, Oh, I don’t know. Bruce Gordon or somebody, Kent Smith’s understudy. No, they sent somebody up from New York. He looks too much the French headwaiter, window store dummy type.’ This is the impression I made. I got on the train and went back to New York, and Sidney Lumet said, ‘Well, just come on back in the show.’ I thought he’d have re-casted it by then because I spent about a day and-a-half away. No, he held the part open for me."

Soon Rogers and Hammerstein did a John Steinbeck play called Burning Bridges, with Kent Smith, Barbara Bel Geddes and Howard DaSilva; Guthrie McClintic directing. By that time Bruce and Guthrie were pretty friendly, and he said to Bruce, I want you to understudy Kent and Howard. Bruce replied, Always an understudy. Give me one of these parts. Anyway, he understudied and he met John and Elaine Steinbeck, who he said were just great people. That was a nice experience, even though the play didn’t run, Bruce mentioned. He next understudied Kent Smith in Wisteria Trees, which starred Helen Hayes. This play was produced by Leland Hayward, who was a big agent at that time, and was an adaptation of The Cherry Orchard. I didn’t play any part in that; I was just his understudy. I’d come to the theatre and if he was there, fine. I’d hang around a little while and leave. But I’ve always made it a habit of knowing the part because you never knew if he was going to leave. It so happened that Kent Smith was leaving the production and other actors around town knew the part was going to be available for several weeks, as the play was going to close. Understudies rarely get the part; it’s almost impossible, Bruce informed us. I don’t know what that is in the theatre, but they’ll hire somebody as an understudy and you think they have to depend upon that person, but that isn’t the way it works at all. They’ll let an understudy go on for one or two performances, but if it’s a question of continuing on for any length of time, then they’ll go on and recast the part. They scheduled a reading of actors for the part after performance one night and it was to be witnessed by Leland Hayward and Helen Hayes. She didn’t take part in the readings, her part being read by the stage manager. Bruce went on to tell us, There were five or six actors. I was one of them, but of course I didn’t need the script. I knew the play and I didn’t read anything; I acted with the stage manager and I got it. And the thing was, Helen Hayes was my greatest defender, my strongest support. She was telling Leland Hayward, ‘He knows the part; he’s acting it.’ For seven weeks I was leading man to Helen Hayes and I still can’t get over it.

After that, Bruce appeared in a play produced by the Theatre Guild and directed by an Englishman named Peter Ashmore. It starred Richard Burton and Dorothy McGuire. That’s where I met Burton and Hugh Griffith, Bruce reflected. I used to go out occasionally with them; I couldn’t keep up with these two crazy Welshmen. I really enjoyed them. But that play didn’t run; it ran about a week. And by that time, 1952, television was beginning to flourish.

Bruce appeared in about four hundred live television shows. He commented on this, saying, "Kinescope was a paper recording; they faded with time and there’s no record of anything. All gone between ‘47 and ‘57, which were the big years. In 1956 I did a Western where I played a real dirty, dog mean heavy on a live TV show out of New York in a studio. An agent saw it and called, and that’s how I got out to the west coast to do Have Gun – Will Travel."

At that time, Jane Wyman was doing the Jane Wyman Theater and she came to New York looking for leading men. Bruce got a job on that show and went out to the west coast again, returning to New York after completing it just in time to get a part in the final story on The Robert Montgomery Show. I think that was in June of ‘57, there were fifty-six live half hour shows out of New York. Bruce appeared in such shows as Dumont Theater, Kraft Theater, Danger, The Web, Studio One, Suspense and Ponds Theater. He worked on Captain Video for three weeks, telling us I was on that with Bob Middleton. We played two heavies and were on the moon fighting Captain Video. That was all live stuff and you would get five scripts at the beginning of the week. Thank God, most of our scenes were in the spaceship looking out, so you’d plaster all the pages around the porthole; you could read the stuff. New York was the hub for live television in the period from 1950 to 1957. Then the costs went up and they discovered it was cheaper to put the shows on film and the best place for that was on the west coast. As a result, television began to move out to California.

Talking about some things that happened while filming live television, Bruce said, In the early days of live TV the corpses would get up and walk away because you were always cued by the floor manager. They’d tap you on the foot. If you were shot, for instance, in the story and you’re lying there, sometimes you’d think you feel the tap and it would be something else and you’d get up and walk away and you’re still on camera. That happened quite often. And then the quick changes you’d have to make: you go through one door and then you have to work like hell to change your coat or something because you got to come right back in like it was two days later. But it was a lot of fun.

In 1957, Bruce Gordon moved to the west coast. The Untouchables started the following year and Bruce had the semi-regular part of Frank Nitti. He told us, "It wasn’t produced as a series, but as a two part show on two successive Friday nights on The Westinghouse Friday Night Theater. It was so successful that ABC signed it as a series." Referring to the episode titled The Frank Nitti Story, which told of the death of Nitti, Bruce stated, That’s ridiculous; he didn’t die that way. Frank Nitti was a suicide in 1943. You see, Nitti was indicted in a big movie house extortion racket in 1943 in New York City. He lived in the suburbs of Chicago. He went back and they found his body against a fence. I’ve got the newspaper picture somewhere. Bruce argued with Quinn Martin and told him, Hey, I want to stay with the series. Martin said, This is the way it is written and this is the way it’s going to be done. Martin didn’t care; actually, he was having trouble and was preparing to leave and go to MGM. Jerry Thorpe, the new production man in the company, told Bruce, Oh, the hell with it! We don’t shoot these things in sequence anyway. So even though they had Nitti die under the subway train, they brought him back for future episodes. We asked Bruce if there was much competition for the role of Nitti and he answered, Well, I imagine so, but when I look back on it I can see that most of us were cast pretty much according to type; the way those people looked, because Bob Stack looks somewhat like Ness and I look somewhat like Nitti. So that was it; that’s the way they cast it.

Bruce said that he enjoyed working in the theatre more than films, "except that you reach a point where you just don’t want to learn the lines anymore. You know, you have to sustain a performance for three hours and you got to learn hundreds of lines. When production of The Untouchables ended in 1962, I did some dinner theatre. Then I did Run Buddy Run; that was a series that ran only one season. Then in ‘64 I did the play of A Man For All Seasons, and in ‘65 I went back to New York to do a play called Diamond Orchid, which didn’t run."

We asked him if he had a favorite part he played and Bruce replied, "Thomas Cromwell in A Man For All Seasons. I gravitate toward the literate things. I don’t care for, but I’ll do the mundane popular type of roles that you’ll see on TV because the money is good. But the things that really aren’t universally accepted like Shakespeare productions; I always enjoy them the most because I started in the theatre and I started in that sort of production. That’s why Thomas Cromwell. Just listening to the lines of A Man For All Seasons is so rewarding. Much more rewarding than popular writing."

In speaking about the changing film and television industry, Bruce stated, They don’t let you have any fun anymore. They’ve become so cost conscious. Before television, when they were just shooting long films, they took their time. There was no pressure; they had a budget. A costume drama would take a year to film; they just went on and on until they finished it. But with the advent of film production for television, with the networks hanging over them all the time, saying ‘Come on, we need that product,’ they don’t allow for jokes anymore. It used to be fun on the set, but now everybody’s too cost conscious, you know, ‘Come on, let’s go’; it’s no fun. I think the actors, in self defense, said, ‘Okay, if it’s no fun, pay me more money!’ We used to make little faces at each other off stage, but nothing really sensational.

Talking about his work in Westerns, he said, "I did a lot of those dirty dog Westerns. I was always up there at Ivarson’s Ranch, unshaven for three days because I knew I was going to wind up in the dust. I’ll never forget a Gunsmoke I did. I have no idea how tall Arness is; he’s a giant. There was a scene we had close together and when I saw it on the screen, I laughed. He told us that he didn’t know how the director ever permitted the scene to be filmed that way; they were so close together with Arness looking down at him and him scouring back up at Arness. Just the way that shot appeared, Bruce said It looked so ridiculous."

In 1973, Bruce left Hollywood and moved to New Mexico. He has worked in several plays at the College of Santa Fe and has done The Odd Couple at a dinner theatre in Albuquerque. I haven’t done anything for the last four or five years, he commented. Would he accept a part in a film if one should come up? Oh sure, he answered, but you know it’s a law of attrition, the older you get; if you’re out of sight, you’re out of mind. I don’t live there anymore so they tend to forget you; all these new people coming up — I understand that. You reach the point where I just don’t want to bother. It isn’t worth it, there’s no satisfaction unless you get an interesting role that has a beginning, a middle and end. Bruce mentioned that his wife, who passed away several years ago, used to pick up stray dogs and give them a home. She left me with a lot of dogs, he said, so I just said, ‘Oh the hell with it, I’ll just take care of the dogs.’ They’re a lot of fun and they don’t talk back. They’ve been very companionable. It’s pleasant in Santa Fe. The air is clean, the water is clean and it’s fine. And the winters aren’t too bad.

We asked him if he could sum up his feelings on his career. Bruce said, It’s hard to sum up. I’ve enjoyed every minute of it. I’ve enjoyed the work; that’s half the battle, if you enjoy what you’re doing. I guess many people reach a point where they look back and think, ‘I wonder if it was all worth it,’ but you have no choice because you’ve already lived it. You know, what the hell? There you are; you’re stuck. You’ve done it; you can’t go back and do it over and nobody will let you do it again, so there you are, he smiled. The thing of it is, is relax and enjoy life; keep well and stay well. We’re all locked into the same thing, aren’t we? and certain aspects of it are frustrating: Boy, I wish I would have done that! What’s the point of wishing? It’s all over and done with because even now you couldn’t change your ways and methods or your procedures. You’re still going to behave the way you’re programmed anyway. We’re all programmed certain ways. That’s my philosophy for the day and I’m stuck with it, Bruce laughed.

Bruce died on January 20, 2011 at Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Film Credits: 1949: Love Happy. 1958: The Buccaneer. 1959: Curse of the Undead. 1960: Key Witness. 1962: Riders on a Dead Horse; Tower of London; Scarface Mob (TV). 1968: