Just before I was going to graduate from high school and go to the University of Pittsburgh, I saw a movie, A Place in the Sun. I fell in love with Elizabeth Taylor, and as I watched Montgomery Clift I marveled at how easy acting seemed. On the spot, again thinking I could do anything I aspired to, I decided to be an actor instead of a journalist. Of course, I had no idea what I was getting into. My mother said, “Nobody makes a living in that field.” I didn’t realize how close to the truth that was. I simply said, “I’ll outwork everyone.” I don’t remember my dad hearing me say that. If Mother ever told him, I can only imagine the look of disbelief on his face.
I’ve always been fortunate to have a lot of friends, but sometime around my sophomore year in high school I developed a close friendship with another kid that was different from anything I had ever experienced.
We were about the same age, but he seemed older, more sophisticated. He was the one who had his own car—a red convertible. He was the one who was first to have sex with his girlfriend, something just about unheard of in high school in the fifties in Pittsburgh.
He was also devoted to me. When I kept getting elected president of the class, he identified with me so much, he said he felt he was getting elected. Some other buddies and I all looked up to him. He exuded confidence. Some of us even called him “Chief.”
I went to the University of Miami in Florida because he suggested it. I don’t know if Miami had a better drama department than the University of Pittsburgh. I never inquired about Carnegie Mellon (Carnegie Tech, as it was then called), even though it had the reputation of having one of the best drama departments in the country. It was in Pittsburgh, but I never even considered it. I can only assume that, having just lost my dad, I wanted to be around my best friend.
He graduated six months ahead of me and told me there was a dean from Pittsburgh at the University of Miami, and after a semester he felt I would be given a scholarship. I didn’t even question how that would happen. I just applied, got in, and went in September 1953.
Even though I wasn’t really aware of it, after my dad’s passing everything changed. I should have realized things were different, because I began to mess up in ways I never had before. I had graduated in February and wasn’t starting college for about six months, so I got a job at a local Buick dealership. I was a car jockey, which meant I was to drive new Buicks into different empty spaces in the huge showroom. I had never driven a car that went forward just by putting it in drive without touching the accelerator, so after denting a few new Buicks, I was told they wouldn’t need me on Friday. This was on a Thursday, so I asked, “Should I come in on Monday?” The answer was a simple no. Looking back, it was a very kind firing. A while later I was fired from a Mary Jane shoe store in Miami because I couldn’t find the shoes my female customer was wearing when she walked in! Talk about being preoccupied.
Ironically, my relationship with my friend began to unravel because I was no longer willing to look up to anyone. I guess I felt I had to take charge of everything in my life. I never looked down on anyone, but now I no longer looked up to anyone, either.
We were driving to the University of Miami in September. A third fella from another high school in Pittsburgh whom we had just met and who was to be a roommate was with us. My friend and I got into what began as a slight disagreement about, of all things, the color of the car in front of us. One of us felt it was dark green and the other black.
If we’d had disagreements in the past, and frankly I don’t remember any, I would concede the point, because, after all, he was the chief, but this time I didn’t. The dynamic of the friendship shifted right there over a meaningless disagreement about the color of a car. We drove the rest of the way to Florida pretty much in silence. The other kid looked on, I’m sure, baffled.
The three of us moved into an off-campus apartment. The other guy and I became buddies, and my former closest friend and I barely spoke. Quite simply, I no longer saw him as in charge, and we had lost what he must have seen as that essential condition.
I now know I was in a depression after my dad died, but I didn’t realize it then. I should have found it unusual that I, who had always been a happy kid, was suddenly staring into space for long periods of time. Worse, on more than one occasion I remember swimming far out in the Atlantic Ocean alone, with no one around. Unconsciously, I was being self-destructive. I mean, that’s where the sharks are.
I had one date at this so-called playboy school, the University of Miami, and I still had yet to kiss a girl, at least as far as I remember. Because of my depression, I had no interest in anything, including girls. Ellen Burstyn writes in her memoir that the first time I kissed her onstage in Same Time, Next Year… well, let’s just say she found it memorable. I had no idea I had so much to offer.
Three things happened at the university that were good signs for my future show-business endeavors.
All incoming freshman were given information about the university—kind of an orientation test. There was no grade, but they did announce that out of around a thousand students, only one got a perfect score. Young Chuck Grodin was now working hard at everything, and that’s obviously essential if you want to be successful, whatever your job.
I was taking a course in semantics. At one point the teacher announced that someone from the class would be asked to get up in front of a large assembly and give a speech. He said we would be given plenty of notice. One day, without any warning, he announced that we were going to a hall filled with hundreds of students, and one of us would volunteer to give a speech. The class nervously went into the assembly hall. No one wanted to get up there, so I did, following my pattern of jumping in if no one else did.
In front of at least five hundred people, I told a story about going on a hunting trip in Pennsylvania with my girlfriend. When the girl and I drifted in different directions, I went looking for her. In the distance I saw a bear dragging her lifeless body into the woods. I chased the bear, but never found it or my girlfriend.
Nobody said the story had to be true, but from that time on, I would often be pointed out on campus as the kid who lost his girlfriend to a bear. Looking back on my six months at the University of Miami, I realize I never factored in until recently that my unusual ability at eighteen to tell a story in front of five hundred people was definitely a good sign.
I had gone to the university to be a drama major so was very surprised to learn that, as an incoming freshman, I was not allowed to take an acting class. Somehow, I suppose because of the craziness of that concept, I was able to persuade an administrator to allow me into one. I’ve found common sense often will prevail.
Fortunately the class was taught by the head of the department, Professor Howard Koch. I remember going onstage only once. I did a monologue from Julius Caesar. On the way to the class I was so nervous I wished the ground would open up and swallow me. After all, my only other time on a stage was in Getting Gracie Graduated in eighth grade.
I couldn’t really understand Julius Caesar, but I was able to connect with the monologue, which I thought was about injustice. Later I realized it was a lot more complicated than that, but happily I didn’t know it at the time. At eighteen, I could identify with injustice, and as I began to shout out “Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears,” it seemed my body stopped shaking to hear what I had to say.
As my inspirational actor Montgomery Clift once said, “The body doesn’t know you’re acting.” After I was finished, a very pretty girl in the first row stared at me with a look I had never seen on a girl’s face, at least on a girl’s face looking at me. More importantly, Professor Koch said to me, “If you work hard, there’s no limit to how far you can go.”
I didn’t know at the time that those would be the last words of real encouragement I would hear for years from someone in authority.
At the Christmas break, I went home and auditioned for a scholarship at the Pittsburgh Playhouse. The monologue from Julius Caesar got me one. When I was in Pittsburgh during the break I suddenly realized there were no African Americans at the University of Miami. Racism was so taken for granted as the American way of life then. Unfortunately, I believe it still overwhelmingly is.
Only recently has it occurred to me that my place so soon after my father’s passing should have been with my mother. My brother had married, and my mom was alone. I’m stunned and embarrassed that I never thought of that.
I left Miami after six months and went to the Playhouse. I had no contact with my former friend, who remained in Florida and went into business there. Almost twenty years later, I was in Miami promoting a movie I had done, and I looked him up. We got together, and the evening was cordial, but that was it.
He came to see me a few years later in a Broadway show with my name on the marquee. He came to my dressing room afterward, sat on a sofa, and suddenly began to sob. I had no idea why. Eventually, he said, “No one could imagine you would be so successful, but I did.” I would be guessing as to why that provoked this man of forty to sob, and your guess would be as good as mine. In any case, after that night we never saw or spoke to each other again. Many relationships of all kinds just can’t survive a change in the dynamic.