I started getting parts where I quickly learned that the abuse I got in Uta’s class and at the Pittsburgh Playhouse also came from nervous directors. My first live television appearance was on the hour-long Armstrong Circle Theatre. It was about the nuclear submarine the USS Nautilus going under the North Pole. The director, who had not said anything to me throughout rehearsal, suddenly took me aside close to airtime and angrily said, “If you keep doing what you’re doing, you’re going to make a fool of yourself—not just yourself but the whole cast—not just the cast but the United States Navy.” I had no idea what he was talking about, so I asked. He said, “You’re coming off stupid.” I have a copy of that show from 1958. I looked at it recently, and unless I drastically changed my performance just before airtime, which I doubt, I’d say the director was coming off hysterically.
I’ve since heard from others that his behavior toward me wasn’t unique. I think most of us have had problems only with people who’ve had problems with many others. In the 1960s, I auditioned for a Broadway show that was going to be directed by a very famous Broadway director, an icon in the world of comedy. As I came onstage, he shouted to me from the audience, “Charlie Baker [the head of the William Morris Agency’s theater department] tells me you’re the funniest young actor in New York. Let me see you do something funny!” I made a face, and everyone laughed. Then I began to read for the role. I was about five lines in when the icon called out to me from the back of the theater in what sounded to me like a disgusted voice, “It’s a comedy, Charlie!” I stared at him a moment and said, “I know.” Needless to say, I didn’t get the part, which was eventually given to an excellent young dramatic actor who had never been known for comedy, before or since.
This very successful director came from a school of comedy you most often see today in sitcoms. Set up—joke. Set up—joke. I’ve never worked liked that. Comedy can come by more than one choice. If you embody the character as best you can, the rhythm most likely will not be set up—joke but will come from the character’s natural rhythm, which will vary according to the character.
Directors of the old school not only don’t care for this, it alienates them, because they don’t understand what’s happening.
That wasn’t the first time that happened to me. In my second Broadway show, the director of the Rock Hudson and Doris Day movies critically told the leading man, who happily passed it on to me, “I have no idea what Grodin is doing out there,” but the audience’s response to me made his comment irrelevant.
Early in my career I wrote a piece of material and sent it to a famous comedian. He graciously responded and said he thought it was funny, but he wrote all his own material. He then added, “Don’t make a career out of me.” I was never sure if that last line was a joke, but years later I ran into him when he had also become a famous director, and he ranted and carried on quite seriously about how offended he was that he wasn’t asked by the studio to direct a movie I had written.
Different versions of that happened over the years. Once in a dramatic role I was supposed to physically assault the great actor Pat Hingle, who was making his first appearance since falling down an elevator shaft in real life. Pat was on crutches, so naturally I was somewhat careful about how aggressively I went after him. The director, a real bully, shouted over the PA system, “You’re coming off like a sissy.” He also ridiculed James Caan, who did a lot better for himself in the years to come than the director did.
Robert Redford was also in the cast, but I don’t remember the director ever yelling at him. There’s something about Redford that would discourage that. He and I hung out a bit when we were both in our early twenties. We once went over to the one-room studio he was renting on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. He said the first day he moved in, he opened a closet door to hang up his jacket and found there was a bedroom there!