Part 3

Pittman said, "Listen, I don't know how you should play this. You're on your own!" [Laughs] So that was it, I was on my own! I played a bum who put on the shoes of a dead gangster and then "became" the gangster.

When an actor reads a script and figures out how he'd like to play his part, then gets to the set, does he really want to have a director now to be telling him how he should do his job?

I think it should be a joint effort, with suggestions from both parties kind of melding into something that comes out right. So I never forgot Pittman saying to me, "I don't know what to tell ya!" I met Rod Serling - not on that show, but I had met him before. He smoked far too much, but otherwise he was a very personable guy. Years later I was in [the 1985 Twilight Zone], and in my episode of that I worked with Ken Tobey, who I'd first met at the Barter Theater in 1940. We've been friends ever since, so that was kind of fun.

Don't take this the wrong way, but I "buy" you as a bad guy quicker than I "buy" you as a good guy. Which do you prefer playing?

That's not a good question, really. I think, first of all, that bad guys are the better parts. Everybody has to go through that bad guy phase; all the so-called leading man play bad guys first, they always have. I think my record goes probably about 50-50 between the good guys and the bad guys, and it doesn't make any difference to me because, as I say, work is work.

Another of the series you were in a couple times was Alfred Hitchcock Presents, with both of your episodes directed by Robert Stevens.

The Hitchcock shows were fun to do. I had worked with Robert Stevens in New York in one of those live shows back there, and.he was nervous, that's about all I can say [laughs]! But, he got the work done. I had met Alfred Hitchcock before and after I did Alfred Hitchcock Presents-he wasn't involved on that show, really, it was Joan Harrison and Norman Lloyd. I was interviewed by Hitchcock for one of his films, North by Northwest [1959]. He knew my work-or said he did. That's exactly what he said, he said, "I'm familiar with Mr. Stevens' work" which I took very badly, because I didn't get the part [laughs]!

How about The Outer Limits?

Keeper of the Purple Twilight - that's another one where the director [Charles Haas] said, "I can't tell ya how to do this, you have to do it yourself." I remember that very well, that he couldn't help me either!

What do you think of science fiction movies and TV shows? Do you ever get the idea that people who like science fiction are screwy?

No, I don't think they're screwy. (Maybe a little strange!) But working in science fiction doesn't bother me, not if the script is good. That's the secret of any film or play: If the script is good, you can go to work. If the script is nonsensical, then you feel that maybe you shouldn't do it.

Speaking of nonsensical scripts, what were your impressions of Cyborg 2087?

By and large it wasn't a bad picture, as I recall, given the premise - which was pretty outlandish. But it had some awful good people in it. I had known Mike Rennie from way back in Fox days, and we used to play cards together - poker and stuff. I thought Mike was a super guy, I liked him and we got along very well. Wendell Corey I had known from New York, and "Dobie" Carey was also in it. I'd known him and his mother [actress Olive Carey] and his aunt and the whole bunch of them from years back.

Cyborg was one of Wendell Corey's last pictures. Did he seem to be ailing?

No, he didn't. But he couldn't stop talking! He was a recovering alcoholic, and I guess talking was a replacement for drinking, because he went on and on and on and on. It was a sad thing for me to see Wendell come down to something [like Cyborg 2087], because he was an excellent, excellent actor. He was never a bad actor-he wasn't bad in this!-but he couldn't get a job, I guess because of the reputation that he had acquired while he was really drinking. He wasn't drinking on these last things but he couldn't stop talking!

You were also on various Irwin Allen science fiction TV series.

I got along with Irwin pretty well, and I guess he liked my work because I was on several of them. The Time Tunnel, Land of the Giants - I think I did two of those. And then of course Voyage [to the Bottom of the Sea]. Dick Basehart was a very close friend of mine. We were both at Fox at the same time, and before that-back in New York - we lived on the same street in Greenwich Village, Perry Street. He was married to Valentina Cortese [1951-60], and then she left him - she went off to Italy and took their son with her. One day I found Dick on the street, wandering around - he didn't know where he was going [laughs]! So I took him in and found him an apartment next to mine over on Olympic Boulevard in West Beverly Hills. For months, he had a standing phone call in to Italy, but she never answered it. He was very upset about the whole thing. But we had a marvelous apartment. We had adjoining apartments, so we opened it up and we had a big one! Dick and I got along very well; we took a nice trip to Mexico one time, one weekend, and I was his only witness when it finally came down to [getting] his divorce from Valentina in Santa Monica Court. He had to give her a whole bunch of stuff, I think. And I introduced him to his next wife, Diana Lotery. She had had a very small part in a picture I was doing in England, because her father was a distributor of films there.

Years after Forbidden Planet, you went back into space on Star Trek.

I was doing a Bonanza for Marc Daniels, who was directing, and at one point during the last couple of days on the Bonanza I asked, "Where are you doing next, Marc?" He said, "I have to go to Paramount and do one of those Star Trek things." I said, "They owe me one over there" - and it was true, I forget why but they did owe me a show at Paramount. Well, we finish the Bonanza and about a week later I get a call from Paramount: Marc was gonna do this thing, and that's how I did the Star Trek, because he remembered that they "owed" me one.

Both Leslie Nielsen and Jack Kelly had love scenes with Anne Francis in Forbidden Planet - and you didn't-so it was nice to finally see you get a very similar one with Barbara Bouchet on Star Trek.

We were rehearsing one of the kiss scenes, where she was explaining to me about how humans apologize or something like that. In the rehearsal we kissed, and Marc Daniels yelled, "Close yer mouth!" And I remember saying, "Hey, it's only a rehearsal!" [Laughs]

Star Trek, like Forbidden Planet, has certainly remained popular.

Star Trek has become a lot larger than it was then, let's put it that way. Back then, people weren't dying to watch it every week.

And actors weren't dying to be in it.

Right. I met Gene Roddenberry, but that's all; he kept hands-off of the show, I think, and he didn't pal around on the set as far as I can remember. The show went very smoothly.

What were some of your most rewarding experiences in movies or TV?

The Richard Boone Show [the 1963-64 repertory theater-like anthology TV series]. Boone and I had worked together quite a bit: We were both at Fox and we were great friends, and we organized a workshop along the lines of the Actors Studio. We'd both gone to the Neighborhood Playhouse earlier, in New York, and then I was in the Actors Studios. He came out to Fox a few months before I did, and then found ourselves both at the same studio and they wouldn't let either one of us in their acting classes for the new stars and starlets! They thought we might be disruptive or something, and that we didn't need it - that was their attitude. So while we were still at Fox, we decided to start our own workshop. Later we got Jimmy Whitmore in it, so the three of us ran this workshop. We got together in various places - places we could get for nothing, mostly - and then we got a place at the Brentwood Country Mart. Whitmore organized that one, and we did have to pay for that. The three of us assumed all of the expenses and we "screened" everybody in it. The premise of the workshop was to have a place where actors could "stretch" and not be in danger of losing any employment by experimenting. We had a whole bunch of people, we "screened" everybody - we even screened Gary Cooper [laughs]! Pat Neal was in our group, and therefore he wanted to be a part of it.

Because they were an "item" at the time.

I know. I'll never forget, the three of us - almost beginners in the business - we interviewed Mr. Cooper, to see if he was fit to be in our group [laughs]! Anyway, he came and he worked - all because of her, I'm sure. We met once a week and people did scenes, and then we'd critique the scenes. We didn't charge anything, this was actors getting together to "stretch." We did two or three plays that got presented to the public, and we did a couple of short films. Then I guess it kind of petered out for a while. But one of the things that we agreed upon was, if ever any one of us really hit it big, we would try to do the same thing commercially. So when Boone hit it with his Have Gun Will Travel TV series, he sold the idea of The Richard Boone Show to the network, so we did get to do it commercially. We thought we were doing pretty good, until we found out we were cancelled by reading it in Variety on the set! But I did some of my best work there because I was allowed to do it.

And were most of the regulars on The Richard Boone Show part of your original group?

No, that's not the way it worked out; I was the only one, actually. But all of the people who were in the network show Boone and I had known and worked with before. Of course, both of us knew Harry Morgan very well, and my favorite person in the whole bunch was Jeanette Nolan. God, she was marvelous! So that's how that series got started, the idea of the Boone Show came out of our workshop.

And do you feel that you've fulfilled your "plan" during your 50 years in Hollywood?

Well, let's put it this way: Like the man says, "Like is a journey and I'm still enjoying the ride!"

interview used with kind permission by the author

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