by A M Homes
MS. HOMES: So tell me your names again.
MR. FARRELL: Tommy. And this is Bobbi, B-O-B-B I, Farrell. F as in Frank, A-R-R-E-L-L.
MS. HOMES: And where were you born?
MR. FARRELL: In Hollywood. My mother was Glenda Farrell, and she was a big star at Warner Brothers. I grew up on the Warner Brothers lot. So I thought, gee, this is the only business to be in. [laughter] After school every day, we had a chauffeur and houseman, and he would pick me up at school, and then we drove to the studio and waited for mom to be finished. … I got to know a lot of people. Jimmy Cagney, and Bogart, and all the Warner brothers sons.
MRS. FARRELL: But you stayed out here when your mother first went back to Broadway, right?
MR. FARRELL: No that was in ’39 where she went back to New York. I went to St. John’s Military Academy.
MS. HOMES: Did you ever think you might go into the military?
MR. FARRELL: No. I thought I might be a cowboy for a while, and I was. I went to the University of Arizona, and in the spring and fall roundups, they would hire kids from school. I played polo there for two years. And my grandpa was an old horse trader. So he told me how to handle the rope when I was about six or so. I roped every cat and dog in the neighborhood! [laughter]
MS. HOMES: And when you worked as a cowboy, were you the only kid from Hollywood working as a cowboy?
MR. FARRELL: Yes.
MS. HOMES: And did you really rope?
MR. FARRELL: Yes, I did. I roped right up until 1992 … ’93 … I used to do the Ben Johnson Pro-Celebrity.
MRS. FARRELL: There weren’t many cowboys in cowboy pictures. He never knew which he wanted to be, a cowboy or an actor.
MR. FARRELL: I really wanted to be a cowboy, but acting paid better.
MS. HOMES: Funny how that is!
MR. FARRELL: But I guess you could say I was pretty much of a rounded actor. I started out on Broadway, did three shows, then I went into nightclubs and vaudeville. I went into television—movies first, and then television. I was under contract to Desilu; I did a series there. I did eleven shows with Lucy, and twenty-two shows with Red Skelton. And I headlined in Vegas. I headlined the Palace in New York in vaudeville, in 1953. Opened the Fontainebleau down in Miami. I played Ciro’s here.
MS. HOMES: And how did you two meet?
MR. FARRELL: Blind date.
MRS. FARRELL: We’ve been married forty years.
MR. FARRELL: Yeah. We went out to dinner at a place called Steer’s Restaurant, on La Cienega.
MS. HOMES: And how did it go?
MR. FARRELL: She thought I was crazy!
MS. HOMES: Hal, how long have you guys known each other?
MR. RIDDLE: When I was a youngster, I used to read about him with his mother, and I’d see his picture in the magazines, so when I came here you can imagine what a surprise … you know, as a kid I used to see his picture, and we talked about Glenda Farrell, with her little boy. Little Tommy. And he’d be with her because they were really inseparable.
MR. FARRELL: I was in a show in New York, and he came to see it.
MR. RIDDLE: Barefoot Boy with Cheek. That was the name of it. And it starred Nancy Walker.
MR. FARRELL: And Red Buttons.
MR. RIDDLE: And written by Max Shulman, who wrote an awful lot of good stuff. But I remember it was in 1946, that was on Broadway.
MRS. FARRELL: Isn’t that the one you got immediately after the war?
MR. FARRELL: Yeah. I got out of the army. I was in the Army Air Force. We did this show on Broadway, and then we went to Europe, and we were a five-man unit. We used to do hospitals, you know? Entertain the guys in the hospital, in the wards. Red Buttons was one of the guys. He taught me how to dance and we did a dance act. … I got out of the army, and two weeks later I was in the play.
MR. RIDDLE: I didn’t become a professional actor until I was twenty-eight. I went into summer stock, my roommate was Jack Lemmon. My first summer stock was 1948, at Hayloft Summer theater. And Jack was the resident juvenile. And I played small parts, and was a secretary to the director and the producer. Then when Jack finished his plays there that summer, he didn’t finish, he left three plays before it ended. He went to New York to do his first TV show, called That Wonderful Guy. And then I took over his roles in the summer theater. And we’ve been friends ever since.
MS. HOMES: Where were you born?
MR. RIDDLE: Calhoun, Kentucky. Green River in Kentucky.
MS. HOMES: When did you come to California?
MR. RIDDLE: I was in New York City doing stage work for twelve years, from ’48 to ’57. I did my first film in New York City, called Cop Hater, with Robert Loggia. And then I was called out here in 1957 to do Onionhead at Warner Brothers with Andy Griffith. And I’ve been here ever since.
MS. HOMES: When you moved out here, where did you move to?
MR. RIDDLE: Hmm, it’s very interesting. Because when New York actors get out here, the first thing they tell you is the Chateau Marmont. Well, I call the Chateau Marmont and they said uh, we’re absolutely booked, we’re not supposed to tell you this, but the New York actors we can’t handle go to the Montecito in Hollywood. So boy, I barreled right to the Montecito. But when you read movie magazines, boy you knew about the Chateau Marmont. Garbo stayed there! And some of the great stars. Jean Harlow, in between one or two of her marriages, she went there. I lived in Santa Monica before I got out here. And I loved it very much. Of course I really like it here. Boy, for retirement this is the ideal place.
MR. FARRELL: Nothing can touch this place.
MRS. FARRELL: Nothing.
MR. FARRELL: In the whole country, or Europe. Nothing is that good.
MRS. FARRELL: They hide it. It’s a hideaway. When he first got cancer, they put him on the list.
MR. RIDDLE: They used to call this the best kept secret in the industry.
MRS. FARRELL: A. M., I’d like to introduce you to … Virginia, let me introduce you to A. M.
MS. HOMES: Virginia, were you born here? In California?
MS. MCDOWALL: No, London. We arrived in New York on October 3, 1940.
MS. HOMES: And when did you come to California?
MS. MCDOWALL: Almost immediately. We both did the test for How Green Was My Valley. And they put him under contract right away—we hardly had a moment. They whisked us to the Beverly Wilshire.
MR. RIDDLE: Now, I decided when I was about nine years old that I was gonna come to Hollywood. And I lived in Dawson Springs, Kentucky. It’s funny how we had different paths. … My idea was to come here and be a movie star.
MS. HOMES: And Tommy, when you were a kid and your mom was a big movie star, did it occur to you, “Oh my mom is a big movie star?” Or you just thought, this is my life.
MR. FARRELL: That’s where she works—at Warner Brothers. That was her job. And she worked hard, and I realized that was no picnic either. Especially being under contract at Warner’s at the time, she would do two and three pictures at the same time. And run from one stage, change costumes, and on the other stage. Change, then go back to the other stage.
MRS. FARRELL: That was one of the problems of contracts. They have a contract with you and they just throw you everywhere.
MR. RIDDLE: And they just use them like they do racehorses.
MR. FARRELL: I was fifteen years old before I found out that that-son-of-a-bitch-Jack-Gordon wasn’t one word! [laughter]
MS. HOMES: Virginia, what are some of your earliest memories of working in the industry?
MS. MCDOWALL: I acted a little bit in Man Hunt, as the postmistress’s daughter. With Tyrone Power and Joan Fontaine, of course. That was the first. Apropos of nothing, but drinking tea, I was talking to someone the other day … this has nothing to do with anything, but I have a theory about how England won the war! [laughter]
MRS. FARRELL: With tea?
MS. MCDOWALL: With tea! Because after every bombing, you know, you’d come up out of the cellar, or wherever, whatever hole, and someone would
say, put the kettle on, let’s have a cup of tea! And everyone carried a thermos and a gas mask. [laughter]
MS. HOMES: What is it like to be in a community here where everyone did work in the industry? It’s obviously very different from being in any other retirement place where you arrive and no one knows who you are.
MRS. FARRELL: It really is the commonality that makes it a community.
MR. RIDDLE: I think what makes it kind of unique also, and you’ve heard me mention this before—other people, when they retire, they leave the people they work with, and they’re put out to pasture. They’re given the gold watch or whatever, and then they’re through. We retire here, and then we move out here, and we go right on being a part of our industry. We stopped acting in front of the camera or doing whatever we did behind, but now we’re still part of the family. We go right on. Which is really quite a remarkable thing when you stop to think about it.
MS. MCDOWALL: My brother and I used to entertain out here in the 40s when we were kids.
MS. HOMES: Virginia, how did it happen that you were here for the ground breaking?
MS. MCDOWALL: Well, because we had arrived in October, as I said. And Rod, it was a great year of publicity about him prior to the movie, And I guess someone invited him. [laughter]
MRS. FARRELL: His PR man. [laughter]
MS. HOMES: Virginia, how long have you lived here?
MS. MCDOWALL: Nine years.
MS. HOMES: And where were you living before you moved here?
MS. MCDOWALL: I was living in Hollywood.
MR. RIDDLE: Well you came at a very interesting time, because it was right in the middle of the war. I mean we hadn’t gotten into it. It was the middle of your war, just before we got into it. You came in ’40.
MS. MCDOWALL: Yeah, we used to spend time at the Hollywood Canteen. Rod was a busboy, and my mother ran the Coca-Cola stand. It was a different time, too. They wouldn’t let me dance, because I was too young. I think my big memory of nightclubs was when we got all dressed up and my brother took me to see Edith Piaf. And I cried my heart out. I’ve never forgotten that.
MR. RIDDLE: That reminds me of when I went to see Judy at the Palace. Oh, I tell you. It was just one of those performances you’ll never forget.
MRS. FARRELL: Tommy dated Judy.
MR. RIDDLE: Yes he did.
MR. FARRELL: Judy was my prom date!
MS. HOMES: Notice how you guys say Judy. Now in my generation we say Julia.
MR. FARRELL: But she was my prom date, my senior prom. We went in an MGM big limousine! With an MGM chauffeur.
MRS. FARRELL: How old was she?
MR. FARRELL: Judy was fifteen.
MRS. FARRELL: And you were?
MR. FARRELL: Sixteen. I met Judy at the Jitterbug House, with Sid Miller, and Jackie. And we hit it off, and she liked to dance, and I was a jitterbugging devil! [laughter]
MR. RIDDLE: Oh I tell you. Jitterbugging was our era.
MRS. FARRELL: Everyone wanted to be a drummer then.
MS. HOMES: Virginia, did you want to be a drummer? [laughter]
MS. MCDOWALL: No darling. I wanted to be a stage actress. I wanted to be Ellen Terry and marry Errol Flynn.
MR. RIDDLE: You know, most little boys have Babe Ruth for their hero. I had Clark Gable. He was the one, he was the big hero … if you ever see my cottage, I’ve got Gable pictures all over. Autographs. And of course my big dream was to be in a picture with Clark Gable. Well, as it turned out, I came to Hollywood, and I hadn’t been out here very long, and I needed a haircut, and a friend of mine says, “I belong to the Bel Air Country Club. Come out and use our barber.” He said, “It’s for members only, but by all means use him, he’s so good.” So I came out there, and I was having my hair cut, and I was always very sensitive about my big ears. And I told him, “Now don’t cut too much around …” And he said, “Well, it never bothered Clark Gable.” And I said, “Why? Did you cut his hair?” He said, “Well, I cut his hair.” And so we got to talking. I said, “Do you think some day when you know Gable is coming …?” And sure enough, he set it up and I got to meet him and talk to him.
MS. HOMES: For all of you, coming here from another country, growing up here—can you talk a little bit about both the fantasy of Hollywood and the dream? You lived the dream.
MS. MCDOWALL: Well, we fell into it because of the war. That’s it, to get away from the war.
MR. RIDDLE: My big dream had been built up by going to movies and reading the fan magazines. And just the glory of it, I got to do all this in the golden era. We had a Warner Brothers theater in my little town. I saw all the Warner Brothers pictures, MGM, all the big ones. So you see, I had a dream of Hollywood, and had I been able to come out here, as a teenager … it would have been so great. But by the time I got out here in ’57, the bubble had burst. The studios were breaking up. All the contract lists were going. I went to Warner Brothers to do my first picture. Imagine! Warner Brothers, where the gods lived on Olympus. And I went into the commissary and there was no one there. There were only two other pictures filming on the whole lot! Marjorie Morning Star, and the ending of The Old Man and the Sea.
MS. HOMES: Tommy, do you feel like there was a moment where it did start to fall apart?
MR. FARRELL: Well, the government decided that if you were a studio you shouldn’t own your own theaters anymore. And Warner Brothers, MGM, Paramount, they all got rid of their own theaters. Up to that point, every studio had an actors school, and they trained them. They taught them how to sing and dance, and ride horseback, and fence, and whatever the hell, you know. And the studios broke up.
MS. HOMES: Right. Virginia, you were in England and because of the war things were getting bad in England? How did you end up coming to the United States?
MS. MCDOWALL: We were there during the first spring year of the war, and we were not evacuated. We stayed in London, so I experienced a lot of the bombings. And my brother collected shrapnel like crazy. [laughter] All little boys did. And I sat there being petrified. Then the ship was ready—we went to Liverpool and were bombed like crazy. They were bombing Liverpool, because it was a port.
MS. HOMES: How old were you and your brother?
MS. MCDOWALL: I had my thirteenth birthday on the ship. My brother was twelve, going on twelve.
MS. HOMES: And your dad just sent the two of you on your own?
MS. MCDOWALL: No, no, with mother, who couldn’t wait to get to Hollywood. It was the best thing that ever happened to her! My mother was a rather volcanic lady. She was really an enormously interesting person, and a great raconteur. She had a gorgeous operatic voice; she had sung with Sousa in Fairmount Park in Philadelphia. I think her mother had wanted to be an actress. So it was a vicarious dream for her. Because we did work in England. My brother did sixteen films, and I think I did eight. So that when we did come in to New York, we had done a scene at the ship’s party. We did “Puck and the Fairy” from A Midsummer Night’s Dream. My mother just happened to have the costumes! [laughter] In the trunk, in this tiny cabin.
MR. FARRELL: Of course!
MR. RIDDLE: Not that she was a stage mother at all. No. Uh uh.
MS. MCDOWALL: She was really too much. So anyway, we did “Puck and the Fairy,” and then the ship docked. And people would say “Oh you should see those two darling little children!” [laughter] And they took photographs. There was a photograph in the New York Times. And some enterprising young man, either at Fox or the William Morris Agency, looked us up in the … they called it the Spotlight in England, a player’s directory. And that’s when Fox called and did the test.
MS. HOMES: You didn’t even know that was going to happen?
MS. MCDOWALL: No, we were supposed to live in White Plains, New York.
MS. HOMES: How glamorous was Hollywood when you got here?
MS. MCDOWALL: Well you must remember, we were children, in a sense. Although we did go to a lot of premieres, and stuff like that. The studio did a lot of publicity. Well, o
f course everyone was very glamorous.
MS. HOMES: Tommy, was your life very glamorous as a child, would you say?
MR. FARRELL: Oh yeah! We had parties at the house. And my mother was dating Cary Grant. No, my mother was dating his roommate, Randolph Scott. And Mary Ryan was my mother’s best friend, and she was dating Cary Grant. And they would come over to the house. And one day … I shouldn’t tell it. Yeah, I can tell it. [laughter] Louella Parsons. And her husband, Doc Martin.
MRS. FARRELL: Harry. Was it Harry?
MR. RIDDLE: It was Harry.
MR. FARRELL: Harry Martin.
MR. RIDDLE: Doc, they called him.
MR. FARRELL: Doc. And he drank a little bit.
MR. RIDDLE: Yes.
MR. FARRELL: Well so did she. At the house in Studio City, the living room was very French, pastel. And we had a big Louis XV couch in pastel blue satin. And, after about four or five martinis, Louella is sitting there on the couch, and she had an accident.
MR. RIDDLE: Oh my God!
MRS. FARRELL: Oh no!
MR. RIDDLE: And I said, Mom! Whup. [laughter]
MR. FARRELL: I was gonna say Lally just peed on the couch! [laughter]
MR. RIDDLE: Lally peed on the couch! [claps hands] I love it. I didn’t read those in the movie magazines.
CHAPTER NINE
The Castle on the Hill
“One story that I always loved,” says Griffin Dunne, “a friend of mine brought her best girlfriend out to see her. The girlfriend was from a little working class town in Massachusetts … a real wild party girl. I always pictured sort of Joan Cusack in Working Girl. Big hair, and big-boned, and really wild. So they went to a Hollywood party, and she met her favorite movie star. And all of a sudden … the girl was gone. She went off with the movie star. And they didn’t see her all night, but she got a call—‘I’m in his house. It’s the biggest house you ever saw.’ And she goes ‘Well, where is it?’ ‘I don’t know. But I’ll call you tomorrow and I’ll figure it out. I’m going to stay here. You wouldn’t believe the hallways. It’s like a big French castle—it’s this enormous house, and the kitchen is so small.’ So the next morning this girl finds out that her girlfriend was staying at the Chateau. The guy had told her that it was his house!”
