Something important was happening to me. I had now been acting for over five years. I had always been doing scenes, getting used to being in front of tough teachers, and in spite of a general lack of encouragement, I was gaining confidence.
I was also fortunate enough in my first year with Uta to become friends with a young woman named Eleni Kiamos who suggested me for a leading role in an off-off-Broadway play where I got a nice notice in a trade paper that led to my getting an agent.
Once I asked my agent’s partner if I should have pictures made, and he said, “Sure. Then the people who don’t want to see you will know who it is they don’t want to see.”
There was only one place I was working. That was on the Sunday morning dramas on CBS filmed in New York City. Eleni had introduced me to the casting director, who was her friend. With a friend like Eleni you don’t need many friends. I seemed to be a favorite over there and only there. One day a group of us gathered around a table for a reading. As I recall there were James Earl Jones, Ossie Davis, and Ruby Dee, among others. After the reading, the producer and director decided they didn’t need so many people. They gave five or six actors (not me) twenty-five dollars and thanked them for coming, making at least some feel they weren’t good enough. When I saw that, I went to the person responsible for hiring me and said, “This is inappropriate. You really can’t do that.” She said, “This is the way we do it.” I said, “I can’t let that happen.” She said, “Well, if you want to report it, we’ll hire the people, and you’ll never work here again,” and that’s exactly what happened. There’s something called principle, and it always came ahead of anything for me when I realized something was wrong, simply because I had no choice. It wasn’t that I was such a wonderful person. I simply had no choice.