During my second year at Fox, I had bought a new car, a Fiat 124 Spider (total price, $3,487). My brother Bob and I had rented a funky little two-bedroom cottage on Beverly Glen. After three years in the minors, Bob, with a bad right knee, had decided to hang it up—and not without regret, I might add.
Our place was in an artist community about halfway between Mulholland and Sunset with the tiny Beverly Glen Market in the middle. Bob went into the “family business,” becoming director of leasing for Sav-on drugstores. As for me? Now that I’d been fired from Fox, I went down to the unemployment office in Hollywood and put in my application.
It was hard to understand what I can only describe as a real sense of loss. I had felt a yearning for connection with this tribe of actors. We had become a real family and had drawn close. It was like high school graduation—everybody vows to keep in touch, but it doesn’t ever work that way. Happily, my friendships with Sam and Linda were built to last.
I was out of the Fox program for less than a month when I got an acting job, and it was for 20th Century–Fox. Apparently, I had to get fired by the studio before I could get hired by the studio. It was a TV western called Lancer, in its first season on CBS. The only reason anyone remembers Lancer at all is that it’s the show Leonardo DiCaprio is doing in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, Quentin Tarantino’s gritty look back at the industry circa 1969.
The episode I appeared in was “Death Bait,” and I was thrilled to be the star of a network TV show. Actually, that’s not true. I was the star of the teaser, the scene at the beginning of the show meant to grab viewers’ attention. That’s not exactly true, either. The real star of the teaser was James Olson, a Chicago-based stage actor who’d already appeared alongside Joanne Woodward in Rachel, Rachel, an Academy Award nominee for Best Picture. But being cast in Lancer was still a very big deal to me.
Olson plays a big, mean-looking stranger with three guns, a hook for a hand, and a vicious German shepherd. My character is a drunken cowboy who decides to pick a fight with him. Not too smart!
“Hey, mister,” I say with an evil laugh. “With a dog like that, I’ll bet you don’t even take a gun when you go bear hunting.” As the man stares down at his drink, I turn to my friend at the bar. “Wish I had me a dog like that,” I say, noticeably slurring my words. “I’d put a saddle on him and ride him clean to Kansas City.”
With that, the man rattles a chain with his hook, and the growling dog lunges at me, pinning me against the wall of the saloon.
That was the scene. I acted my little brain out, eager to make a good impression. But when I looked over at the director, he was huddled with the dog trainer, and they were both staring at me.
A word about actor paranoia: For a new actor, full of nerves and anticipation, there is almost nothing that can make you feel better about the scene you just did. If the director doesn’t say anything, you figure, He’s giving up on me—it’s hopeless. If he says, “That was good—let’s try it again,” you think, That was awful. He’s just trying to relax me in the hope of getting something out of me that’s barely acceptable. If the director says, “Sorry, we had a problem with the sound—can we do that over?” you’re convinced: The sound was fine. He’s just blaming the sound guy so I don’t get even more paranoid.
I tensed up as the dog trainer walked across the set in my direction. He leaned in close and whispered conspiratorially: “The director doesn’t think the dog is acting ferocious enough.”
It wasn’t me! It was the dog’s fault! Then the trainer slipped something mushy into my hand. “Here’s a piece of steak,” he said. “Show the meat to the dog. Then conceal it in your fist. When the dog starts to back you up, hold your fist up to your throat. And the dog will come for you.”
A word about a young actor’s compulsion to please: Not for one second did I examine the wisdom of doing what the dog trainer asked me to, no matter how dangerous it might be. Plenty of actors—I’ve known a few—were tragically injured doing something wildly risky in a scene. I was just so glad it wasn’t my fault that the words came flying out of my mouth. “Okay, okay. Whatever you say. Sure, I can do that.”
We did the scene a second time. I held the meat to my throat, and the dog was appropriately ferocious. Then the director said, “Cut! That was great. Thank you, Tom. Tom, isn’t it?”
The episode aired on January 14, 1969, two weeks shy of my twenty-fourth birthday. The truth is, I acted my little brain out. But looking back on my performance, I see that was the problem. My drunken cowboy displayed almost every stock-company cliché there is. I was playing a drunk, so I tried to prove I was drunk. A good actor does what drunks do, which is try to prove he’s sober. It’s the same when good actors play bad guys. Bad guys don’t think they’re bad. So good actors don’t give them evil laughs.
I was sitting with my brother Bob in front of the television, watching my first real job as a professional actor. When the teaser was over, there was a moment of silence, and then Bob said, “That was nice.” The phone rang, as it often would in the future at times like this. It was my mom and dad.
“Good job,” my father said in the most optimistic tone he could muster, quickly adding, “I’ll put your mother on.” She said something to me I would hear again and again over the years and would always welcome.
My mom said, “You were great, Tom.”
* * *
What did Owen McLean say in the Fox audition? “The kid is pretty green.” Well, I still was. A little more trained but with no idea how to apply it. And whether it’s sports or acting, it’s hard to keep your eye on the prize when you have no idea what the prize is going to be. I was developing what I would call a bricklayer’s mentality about goals. Brick by brick, I would discover the road and learn only later where it might take me. Until the talent program, I had done hardly anything that my big brother, Bob, hadn’t done first. And I had followed that road gratefully. The path I was on now wasn’t one that Bob or my dad or the rest of my family, for all their wisdom, could understand or help me with. But I realized I had an appetite for my new journey, and my family had given me the tools to take the risk.
When we were packing up at the end of the talent program, my friend Linda had told me that her boyfriend, Sal Dano, was going to teach an acting class, and she invited me to come. At the time, I didn’t really know if this was an opportunity or an obligation to a good friend.
I knew I needed to study. I wanted to study. But now it would be on my nickel. Linda’s idea was as good a place as any to start.
* * *
“You have an interview with Mae West at eight p.m. at Fox.”
I knew my agent’s secretary pretty well, and frankly, I could hear in her tone that she might be sending me up.
“You’re kidding me, right?”
“No. You have an interview with Mae West at eight p.m. . . . in her dressing room.”
Oh-kay! “For what?”
“The movie Myra Breckinridge.”
“Oh.”
That’s when I knew this was no send-up, that this was the real deal and a genuine opportunity.
Mae West hadn’t made a movie in twenty-seven years, a couple of years longer than I’d been alive. But I was a huge fan of her movies. She Done Him Wrong and I’m No Angel, both with Cary Grant, were a couple of my favorites. But my absolute number one Mae West movie was My Little Chickadee with W. C. Fields. She somehow combined the right blend of sex and humor that let her get away with a whole lot of things no one else could. Every time I watched Mae West in a movie, I gotta say I felt like I was getting away with something. She had the heat and the style to pull it off and didn’t mind carrying that over to her personal life. Gore Vidal’s book Myra Breckinridge being made into a movie had generated a ton of publicity, matched only by the idea of Mae West coming back to the screen. It’s the story of a man (played by movie critic Rex Reed) who comes out of a sex-change operation looking exactly like Raquel Welch (played, of course, by Raquel Welch). The movie would also feature my Dubonnet commercial partner, Farrah Fawcett.
It was dark when I approached the cottage that was Mae West’s dressing room.
I will admit that I thought, Mae West? At night? In her dressing room? . . . Nah! But still . . .
When I went in, the front room was full of young actors sitting and waiting. The far door opened, and a well-dressed man approached me. He reached out and shook my hand and said, “Fight on.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I’m Stanley Musgrove,” he said. “I work with Miss West, but I’m also president of Friends of the USC Libraries.”
His greeting was in the language of the loyal USC alumni. I replied in kind: “Great to be a Trojan.”
“Oh, you don’t have to wait,” he said. “Miss West will see you now.”
I didn’t look around to see the reaction of the actors who had been waiting as he escorted me into the other room.
And there she was.
Mae West.
Sitting in an elegant chair. Dressed elegantly, all in white. Looking ready for a night on the town in the 1930s. Yes, she was older. But still . . .
Stanley introduced me. She held out her hand and said, “How do you do?”
Actually, she didn’t say it like her persona on the screen. It was more like Old Brooklyn. I shook her hand. Mae West’s hand. And frankly, I don’t remember much about the rest of the very brief interview. To be honest, I was a bit starstruck, kinda like if I’d had an interview with John Wayne.
* * *
“You have an interview with Mae West at eight p.m. . . . in her apartment. That’s eight—”
“Yes, I heard you. Where is her apartment?”
The Ravenswood was an elegant old building between Sunset and Wilshire Boulevards that had been built by Paramount Pictures in the early days of the Great Depression. Ava Gardner, Clark Gable, and other stars had lived there during Hollywood’s Golden Age.
When I got in the elevator, my mind was racing again. So I get fired, and now I get my second opportunity in a month at the studio that fired me . . . And, oh yeah, what exactly am I walking into when I get off this elevator? Well, don’t know where I’m goin’, but there’s no use bein’ late.
The door opened, and there was Stanley, who escorted me inside. “It’s Miss West,” he whispered.
Everything was white. The walls were white. The carpet was white. The furniture was white. Even the grand piano was white. And seated in an elegant white chair was Miss West. She was dressed again for a night on the town, all in white. Miss West said hello and personally handed me some script pages. “I’d like you to read with me,” she said.
“Sure,” I answered, trying to sound like that happened every day.
She had the first line: “ ‘Oh yeah. Well, I don’t care about your credits as long as you’re oversexed.’ ”
Suddenly, Miss West had turned into Mae West. She was completely in character. My line was right on the page in front of me. But all that would register in my mind was: Holy shit! That’s Mae West! And I just laughed.
Finally, I got the line out through my laughter.
That happened a couple more times during the read. When the short scene ended, she didn’t say anything. Then she got up and went over and leaned against the white piano. “Come here,” she said.
She was still Mae West. I got up slowly, went over, and stood in front of her.
“Put your hands on my waist.”
I put my hands on her waist.
“Spread your legs.”
Oh-kay! I spread my legs.
But it was Miss West who said, “Well?”
She was looking past me. Stanley, who I had completely forgotten was in the room, answered, “It’ll work, Miss West.”
It turned out that being only a little over five feet in height, she was concerned that six feet four might not work for what she had in mind. She wanted to create the impression that she was much taller, more statuesque. So spreading my legs was strictly business, and I was learning she was very much a businesswoman. You see, spreading my legs would make me shorter and her taller. When I found out she always wrote her own stuff, I thought maybe my nervous laughter made her think I was enjoying her writing. Which in a way I was, in addition to being starstruck. Or maybe my new friend Stanley had lobbied for me. Or accidentally turning my character into a pubescent sixteen-year-old was what she was looking for. I’m not sure why, but I got the job.
I would be playing Young Stud 4.
When I arrived for my first day on the set, my first part in a big movie, the second assistant director told me, “Relax. There’s no way we’re getting to you today. But stay close anyway.”
All the actors playing young studs just hung out all day. Secretly, I hoped to find my name on the back of one of the chairs, but day players aren’t afforded that luxury. The second day, I was told the same thing. But I had kept my eyes and ears open and learned some things. Richard Zanuck had hired a British director named Michael Sarne to do a ninth rewrite and direct the film. Evidently, Sarne was the kind of director who denied himself very little and liked to spend many hours by himself, “thinking.” Now, Raquel Welch was writing her own stuff. Mae West was, of course, writing her own stuff. And the two of them weren’t speaking. We all waited around the rest of the week and part of the second. I didn’t mind, since when you are hired at a day rate, each day you go over adds up to much more than had you been hired on at a cheaper weekly rate. I kept hoping that my Dubonnet flirting partner, Farrah Fawcett, would wander through, but no such luck.
The wardrobe department helped me pick one of my favorite suits to wear in the scene. That would make me feel more at home, a good sign. The suit was a tan six-button double-breasted tweed. I must say, I looked pretty good in it. Finally, sometime in the second week, we were told to get dressed. We were going to shoot the scene.
The first part of the scene was in a long hallway. Yes, it was white. Chairs for all the young studs were lined up against both walls. Day players often do their own standing in while the scene is lit. And with the picture so far over budget, no one was about to make an exception and hire stand-ins for us. Lighting took a long time, and the lights were hot. Really hot. My favorite suit was perfect for a brisk fall day in London but not here. And the double-breasted suit jacket had to be buttoned up or it wouldn’t look right. Before we were even ready to start, I was sweating.
In the scene, Mae West’s Leticia Van Allen, a casting agent with a propensity for seducing young men, is supposed to make a grand entrance. And enter she does, in a floor-length white gown with a long black stole and a furry hat of immense size. “I’ll be right with you, boys,” she announces. “Get your résumés out.”
She stops at the door to her office, looks back, and says to another young stud, “How tall are you?”
“Six feet, seven inches.”
“Never mind the six feet. Let’s talk about the seven inches.”
She goes inside, and her male assistant motions to me. “She’ll see you. Yes, you.”
We broke to set up the scene in her office. I quickly took off my jacket and realized I had already sweated through my only shirt. I tried to cool down, but by now the whole soundstage was hot.
Her office set had already been prelit. Very soon, the assistant director came and said to me, “We’re ready.”
A makeup person appeared and blotted me off. “You gotta calm down,” she said, “or you’re going to have flop sweat,” a condition I was about to discover.
A word to new actors: If you are on a hot set and start to sweat, don’t say to yourself, I can’t sweat. Don’t sweat. Don’t sweat.
I walked over to Mae West, who was looking at my résumé. I had my briefcase in hand, sweating even more and not feeling at all attractive. But Mae West, ever the professional, pressed on. “Oh, yeah,” she coos. “Well, I don’t care about your credits as long as you’re oversexed.”
“Oh, that’s one of my credits,” I assure her. At least I could remember my lines and didn’t laugh.
Right then, a curtain falls, revealing . . . “A bed!” I exclaim. “I never did see a bed in an office before!”
“Well, you see, I do a lot of night work sometimes. Come here.”
All you see is my briefcase drop and my résumé and her stole float to the floor. Then she says, “You impress me immensely. I’ll keep you in mind as a summer replacement.”
And then it was done. My time with Mae West was over. And no matter how inescapably unqualified I was, it was so memorable.
Then I got a call from Stanley Musgrove. He said Miss West wanted me to join her for dinner at Chasen’s. Since 1936, Chasen’s had been a quintessential Hollywood hangout, frequented by luminaries like Frank Sinatra, Alfred Hitchcock, James Stewart, and Groucho Marx. Ronald Reagan proposed to Nancy Davis in a booth at Chasen’s. When Elizabeth Taylor was filming Cleopatra, she had several orders of Chasen’s chili flown to the set in Rome. Chasen’s was a place to be seen, I knew that much.
I also realized that Mae West knew how to exploit the Hollywood publicity machine. She knew she had a lot of heat with this movie in the can. My guess was that having a young man on her arm was part of maintaining that heat. I was learning fast that if you’re going to stay who you are in my new “town,” you need to grow up fast.
It turned out I was right. I had dinner with Miss West and, yes, Stanley. I can’t say it was a romantic dinner. But the people gawking at us didn’t know that. I valued the time with her, and I didn’t care what they thought. And Miss West knew exactly what they thought.
Then I was asked to escort her to a dinner at my alma mater. It was probably for the Friends of the USC Libraries. I sat between Miss West and the great director George Cukor, an old friend of hers. I guess I contributed to the conversation in some small way. Mr. Cukor was very nice and polite. And by now I felt like I knew Miss West a little better and was dying to tell her how much I liked her work. So I took a deep breath and said, “Miss West. I just loved your movie My Little Chickadee, with W. C. Fields.”
Her smile faded away. “I don’t like that man,” she said.
She seemed to take a deep breath, and she told me about a scene they had shot where Fields was playing a bartender. She had finished the scene and was leaving the set when the director said to her that the scene continued after her character exited. “And Mr. Fields has a couple of ideas he’d like to work with.”
She told the director that was fine.
As she recounted the story, she stopped and took a sip of water. She said that Fields had improvised a very involved sequence that was so good it stayed in the movie. She explained that she had worked long and hard to have her name above the title and to have the writing credit. Now Fields was demanding his name above the title and writing credit.
At this point, I was grateful for one small thing. I hadn’t told her that her scene with Fields was my favorite in the movie. Sadly, the two comic geniuses would never work together again.
Miss West could easily have shunned me for the rest of the evening. Instead, she took me in her confidence and cared enough to explain. A very kind gesture. But I still figured this would be our last go-round.
* * *
During our talent-program days, Sam and I would often hang out with our good friend Dennis Durney. Dennis had grown up in the business. His mom was Dorothy Kingsley, a prolific screenwriter whose films included lavish MGM musicals like Kiss Me Kate, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, and Frank Sinatra’s Pal Joey. But Dennis was more interested in the production end of the business. There was a regular group of people who would all show up in the same place, usually somewhere at Fox. Dennis, Sam, and I were regulars. And there was Esme Chandlee. Esme came from the world of my pal Sonia Wolfson. There is a famous picture of a luncheon at MGM Studios that seems to have been attended by every actor in the Hollywood film world. That’s where and when Esme got her start at MGM.
When Esme called, I figured she’d gotten my number from Dennis.
“Well, did you see it?” she asked.
“I’m sorry, Esme. See what?”
“The profile on Mae West.”
I wish I could remember the magazine, but I can tell you it wasn’t a short gossip item or a mention in somebody’s column. It was a serious in-depth profile about Mae West’s return to the screen. In the article, she was talking about discovering Cary Grant. She said a lot about that but finished with the line “Cary Grant had a look.”
And then: “Tom Selleck has a look.”
“You gotta do something with that,” Esme said to me.
“Because she used my name in a sentence?”
“Because she just compared you to Cary Grant.”
“Well, that’s really very nice,” I said. “But Cary Grant? That’s ridiculous.”
“Yes, dolly,” Esme said. “You do have a long way to go. But before the movie comes out, nobody knows that.”
Esme said she’d get me invited to the Myra Breckinridge premiere. I’d have to rent a tuxedo and limo. But I should trust her. It would be worth it. “I’ll make sure they take a lot of pictures. And don’t worry, you don’t have to pay me for anything.”
I’ve never forgotten that gesture. Esme and I would work together for decades to come.
As for Miss West, Esme had me come early to the premiere, when I wouldn’t have much competition for pictures. After the red carpet, I was milling around in the crowded theater lobby in my tuxedo, not knowing anyone and wishing I could have some popcorn. Suddenly, it seemed as if lightning had struck. I couldn’t really see anything. Miss West wasn’t six-four. But from the warm glow of what seemed to be a million flashbulbs, I knew that Mae West was making her entrance.