Working

by Studs Terkel

  I came out of a movie house one day. I hadn’t gone more than few feet when two guys moved in on me, pushed me against the wall. I thought I was being held up. They flashed badges. They were detectives. One said, “Would you mind coming back into the lobby?” I said, “What for?” “We’d like to talk to you.” So they moved me back and there was a woman, screaming, “That’s him, he’s the one!” Somebody had stolen her purse in the movie house and she fingered me. I played a gangster on TV in those days. The boss would say, “Hey, Shorty, do this.” And I’d say, “Yeah boss.” They were all alike. I asked the woman if she had seen ’T Men in Action’ on Thursday. This was Saturday. “Oh, my God,” she said, “That’s where I saw you.” (Laughs.) The dicks couldn’t do enough. They drove me home in their car.

  People still come up to me, even to this day. They’re generally very polite. They say, “Excuse me, I don’t mean to impose, I just want to tell you that I enjoy your commercials very much.” Every once in a while I run into somebody who says, “I saw you in The Great Sebastian,”17 or, “I saw you in Cactus Flower.” But everybody doesn’t go to the theater. Everybody has television.18 People ask for my autograph on the street, anywhere. Quite often someone will say he saw me in such and such a play. But it’s really the commercials.

  I’m a working actor. If you want to work, you have to do everything. To me, acting is a craft, a way of life. I have never been obsessed with the sickening drive inside to become a star. Possibly it’s because I came into it very late in life. I was thirty-seven years old when I became a professional actor. I was a little more realistic about life. I knew the percentage of somebody who is five feet six and a half inches tall, who is dark and ethnic looking. The chances of becoming a star were quite remote. I’ve conditioned myself not to want it, because the odds against it are too great.

  Since I came to New York, I’ve never been out of work. I’ve had only one relatively poor period, because my face became too familiar in television commercials. Where it got kinda lean, you begin to wonder if maybe you’ve gotten too old or whether you’re worn-out. Through all these years, I went from one thing into another. I’d finish a play, there’d be a movie. In-between there’d be TV plays, there’d be commercials. I’ve signed with an office, all they do is TV commercials. Financially I’m not concerned. I have a little better than a hundred grand in the market. I want to go live in Mexico, but who wants to stop working?

  “When I first came to New York I did what everybody else did. You took your pictures, you got your eight-by-ten glossies, and you called up or you wrote a letter, and you made an appointment to see an agent or the casting director. I’d write a letter and I’d say, ‘This is my picture. This is what I’ve done. I would appreciate an interview at your convenience.’ Invariably I’d get a letter back saying, ‘Come in on such-and-such a date.’ After you’ve done that, you’d drop a note saying, ‘I’m just reminding you, I’m back in town, I’m available.’ Now it’s all done through agents.

  “I’ve never submitted to any kind of cattle call. Some agents will call all the actors they know and send them down. So there’s hundreds of actors scuffling, trying to get in. I have an appointment at a given hour. I’m ushered in and treated with respect. What governs your getting that job—so many things over which you have no control. Often they say, ‘Gee, he’s fine for the part.’ They get a different star and you’re put into juxtaposition to him. Suddenly they say, ‘Instead of using Arny, we’re gonna get a big fat guy.’ These are the vagaries of the business. You learn to live with them. With a financial cushion it’s easier, I suppose.” (Laughs.)

  If you’re not a star, there is humiliation and degradation—if you allow it to happen to you. People who do the hiring can be very rude at times. You don’t find that too much in the theater, because the theater still has a certain nicety to it. You find it in TV commercial casting. They’re deluged. Many people, having seen the commercials, say, “Hell, I could do that.” You take a guy playing a truckdriver. So a truckdriver says, “Hell, I can do that.” It’s always been an overcrowded field simply because there was never enough work for actors. Residuals, that’s the thing that’s kept actors going through the years when there wasn’t any work.

  I recently auditioned for a thing I’ll know about Monday. We go to Florida to shoot. It’s a comedy thing. He’s the king of gypsies and he’s talking about this particular rent-a-car system of trucks. There was a fella ahead of me who had a great handlebar mustache and a big thick head of hair. He looked like the most gorgeous gypsy in the world. (Laughs.) My only hope is that this guy couldn’t read—and he couldn’t. So I went in there with all the confidence in the world, ’cause I do all these cheesy accents. My agent called that they were all excited. I’ll know on Monday.

  I have one I’m shooting Tuesday for a bank. They called up and said, “Do you happen to have a derby?” I have one but I’ve never had the nerve to wear it. So I went to the audition with the derby on, and I had a pinstriped gray suit with a weskit. I was exactly what they wanted. I vacillate from little French or Italians, little maitre d’s to an elegant banker to a wild gypsy. These accents—in radio they called it “Continental.”

  Thursday I went up to Syracuse, another fella and I. We did a commercial for a little home snow plow. We’re out in this freezing, bitter cold. We spent from eight in the morning till five at night out in the snow. We were neighbors. He was shoveling snow and I came out of my garage, very dapper, with a derby on. I flip up the garage door and bring out my little machine and push the button and it starts. I do a debonair throw with the scarf. As I pass him with my little motorized snow cleaner, he looks up and I give him an up-yours, one-upmanship. And that’s the commercial. We had a hell of a good time all day long. You would think it’d be murder in the cold snow, but we enjoyed it very much. The difference between this and theater is it’s over in one day and it’s more pinpointed. But it’s still acting.

  I used to think to myself, This is not a life. A man ought to be something more important, ought to be a doctor or a lawyer or something that does something for other people. To be an actor is to be a selfish person. It’s a matter of ego, I think. Many actors make the mistake of thinking this is life. I have in recent years found my work somewhat meaningful. So many people have stopped me on the street and said, “I can’t tell you how much I enjoy what you’ve done.” If, for a moment or two, he can turn on his TV set and see you in a show or a commercial and it makes him a little happier—I think that’s important.

  I think of myself as someone who’s rational, who isn’t wild—except when I get certain comedic things to do. It is something bigger than life. It’s still rooted in truth, but it’s just a little bit larger. Rather than play comedy with a capital C, I love to find the qualities in a person, in a character, that are alive and human—even in a commercial.

  RIP TORN

  He came to the big city from a small town in East Texas. Because of some manner, inexplicable to those who hire actors, he has been declared “troublesome.” Though he has an excellent reputation as an actor, he has—to many producers and sponsors—a “reputation” as a person.

  “I have certain flaws in my make-up. Something called rise-ability. I get angry easily. I get saddened by things easily. I figured, as an actor, I could use my own kind of human machinery. The theater would be the place for my flaws to be my strengths. I thought theater was kind of a celebration of man, with situations that reflected man’s extremely comic and extremely tragic experiences. I say, ‘Yeah, I can do that. That’s the way I see life.’ Since I feel, I can use my feelings at work. In a lot of other types of work I can sweat—I sweat as an actor—but I can’t use my feelings. So I guess that’s why I became an actor. But I found out that’s not what they want. (Laughs.) They want you to be their Silly Putty.”

  Actors have become shills. I remember doin’ a television show, oh, about ten years ago—I haven’t worked on network television for about eight years. I was smokin’
a cigar. I was playing a Quantrell-type character, so I had a long Cuban cigar. I got up on a horse and we had to charge down a hill. It was a long shot. The director and the producer both hollered, “Cut! Cut! What’re you doin’ with that cigar in your mouth?” I said, “I don’t naturally smoke cigars, but I’m doing it for the role. They didn’t have cigarettes during the Civil War.” They said, “You don’t understand.” I said, “Oh, now I do understand. But this isn’t a cigarette program.” The sponsor was Pontiac. But this show had resale value. They didn’t want a Civil War character smoking a cigar because they might resell it to a cigarette company and my act might damage their commodity. They insisted I get rid of the cigar. We’re nothin’ but goddamned shills.

  An actor is used to sell products primarily. There’s good money in that. More than that, actors have become shills for politicians, even for some I like. I remember one of them talking of actors as political commodities. They want an actor to be the boss’s boy.

  I don’t have any contempt for people who do commercials. I’ve never been able to get even that kind of work. A friend of mine gave me a name, somebody to see. She said, “You’ll have to shave your beard.” This was long before beards and long hair were “in.” I said, “It’s only a voice-over, what difference does it make?” She said, “You won’t get in.” So I went up to read a Brylcreem commercial. There must have been forty people in the control booth. There usually are about five. It was as if everybody from all the offices of the agency were there. I didn’t get the job. They came to look at the freak. I went around and read about three or four commercials. They liked what I did, but I never got any work.

  I don’t know, maybe you don’t bow to them correctly. If I could learn that certain kind of bow, maybe I’d try it. It’s like the army. There’s a ruling in the army called “insubordination through manner.” You don’t do anything that could really be said, “I’m gonna bring that man up on company punishment. I’m gonna throw the book at ’im.” It’s his manner. He’ll be saying, “Yes sir” and “No sir.” But there’s something within his corporal being makes you say something in his manner is insubordinate. He doesn’t really kiss the golden spot in the right way. There’s something about him. In a horse you say, “He hasn’t quite been broken.” He doesn’t quite respond immediately to command or to the reins.

  Years ago, when I worked in Hollywood someone said, “You don’t understand. This town is run on fear. You don’t appear to be afraid.” Everyone has some kind of fears. I don’t think the antithesis of love and happiness is hatred. I think it’s fear. I think that’s what kills everything. There’s nothing wrong with righteous anger. But if you speak straight to them, even the sound is strange. I don’t know how to deal with this . . . I went to a party. A big producer gave it. It was alongside the pool. Must have been 150 people there. They had a diving board up in a tree. I remember when I was a kid, I could dive off a thing like that and do a double flip. Somebody said, “You never did that in your whole life.” I said, “I guess I could do it now.” He said, “That could be arranged.” They got me some trunks. I said, “We might as well make a bet on this. I’ll bet you a dollar.” I should have bet him a grand. All the people at this party watched me. I got up there and I did it. The guy very angrily gave me a dollar and nobody would speak to me the rest of the night. It was as if I’d done some offensive thing. He was some bigwig and had meant to humiliate me. By showing him I wasn’t bullshitting, I had committed some social gaffe. I should have taken the insult and said, “I guess you’re right.” I was never able to do that.

  A few years later, I was reading a Pan Am commercial. The man who wrote it came out of the control booth and said, “I remember you. I remember you around that pool in Hollywood. You thought you were pretty big in those days, didn’t you? You don’t remember me, do you?” I guess he was one of those who didn’t talk to me that night. He said, “You may not think artistry hasn’t gone into the writing of this material. I want to tell you that twenty lines of this commercial has more thought, more artistry, more time spent, more money spent than is spent on your usual Broadway play.” I said, “I believe you.” Then he said, “Give us a voice level, please.” I said, “Pan Am flies to—” He cut me off. “When you say that word ‘Pan Am’—” I said, “I’m just giving you a voice level. I’m not giving you a performance yet.” So I tried again. And he said, “Not much better.” He just wanted to cave my head in. Do you think he was getting even for my social gaffe? (Laughs.) Me being me?

  Who’s running things now? The salesman. You must be a salesman to reflect that culture, to be a success. People that write commercial jingles make more money than people that write operas. They’re more successful by somebody’s standards. That somebody is the salesman and he’s taken over. To the American public, an actor is unsuccessful unless he makes money.

  At my grandfather’s funeral, one of my uncles came forward and said to me, “No matter what you’ve become, we still love you. We would like you to know you have a place with us. So why don’t you stop that foolishness and come home?” They look upon me as a failure.

  The myth is: if you do commercials and you become financially successful, then you will do artistic work. I don’t know who’s ever done it. People say, “You’ve had your chance.” I was offered over sixty television series. But I always looked upon ’em as shills for products. I was always told, “If you go ahead and do this, you will be able to have the theater. You will be able to do the roles you want to do.” I know of no one who was able to do the other work he felt was his calling.

  A lot of young actors come up and say, “I have respect for you because you never sold out.” I’ve sold out a lot of times. We all have to make accommodations with the kind of society we live in. We gotta pay the rent. We do whatever we can. I’ve done jobs I wasn’t particularly proud of. You do the best you can with that. You try to make it a little better for your own self-respect. That’s what’s changed in the nature of work in this country—the lack of pride in the work itself. A man’s life is his work.

  Why, you don’t even have the kind of carpenters . . . He says, “Aw, fuck it.” You know they’re not even gonna countersink something when they should. They don’t have the pleasure in the work any more. Even in Mexico, there was something unique about the road work. The curbing is not laid out by machine, it’s handmade. So there’s little irregularities. That’s why the eye is rested even by the curbing in Mexico. And walls. Because it’s craftsmanship. You see humanity in a chair. And you know seven thousand didn’t come out in one day. It was made by some man’s hand. There’s artistry in that, and that’s what makes mankind happier. You work out of necessity, but in your work, you gotta have a little artistry too.

  EDDIE JAFFE

  I can’t relax. ’Cause when you ask a guy who’s fifty-eight years old, “What does a press agent do?” you force me to look back and see what a wasted life I’ve had. My hopes, my aspirations—what I did with them. What being a press agent does to you. What have I wound up with? Rooms full of clippings.

  Being called a press agent or a public relations man is really a matter of how much you get paid. You could say he’s an advocate in the court of public opinion. But it’s not really that deep. It’s a person who attracts attention to his client. I project myself into another person’s place. I say to them, “Why can’t you do this?” Or that? Bringing up all the ambitions I’d have in their place. The one thing every press agent must do is get a client. If you don’t get a client, you’re not a press agent.

  The occupation molds your personality. Publicity does that to people too. Calling an editor on the phone, asking favors, can be humiliating. Being refused a favor disturbs me, depresses me. That’s why I could never resign myself to being a press agent. Many are not aware they’re being turned down. They wouldn’t develop colitis like I did. That’s the way I act, emotionally, with my gut. That’s why I went to the analyst.

  He’s been at it for forty-two years. He h
as worked for comedians, singers, strippers, industries, governments, evangelists, and families of dead gangsters. “Press agenting covers a multitude of sins.”

  When he first began, “I went around to these guys’ offices. Most of them were gone. The landlord said, ‘Hey kid, want to make ten bucks? Find out where they moved, they stuck us for rent.’ About 1930, I looked in the phonebook under press agents, there were maybe eight or ten. Now there are pages of them. Here I was at the beginning of the industry and I wound up a little behind where I started.

  “Some con men sold me a concession at Billy Rose’s Fort Worth Frontier Centennial. I lost my inheritance, a couple of thousand bucks. That was ‘36. To avoid being arrested for vagrancy, I said, ‘I’m a press agent.’ They couldn’t prove I wasn’t. So I became a press agent.”

  While I was working a carnival in Norfolk, Virginia, I got a client, Adrienne the Psychic. The guy who owned the theater had a brother who was chief of detectives. He inspected the whorehouses and put a leaflet on every bed. I said, “Do you have any crimes you can’t solve?” They’d just arrested a guy who confessed. He was in a jail fifty miles away. He gave me the guy’s name. I went to the Rotarians and they said they’d have Adrienne as the guest of honor if she could solve the murder. So I coached Adrienne. She said, “Don’t tell me. I’m a psychic.” The editor of the paper was all set to give us the front page. A guy in the audience asked her the question. She gave the wrong initials and I didn’t get a goddamn line. I got the name for her but she wouldn’t take it. Some psychic!

  I made a deal with Margie Kelly, the stripper. I took her to the World’s Fair and arranged for her to call de Valera from the Irish Pavilion. I was going to get tremendous space in the Daily Mirror. Unfortunately the editor was Irish. He saw the spread: Stripper Margie Kelly Calls de Valera. He said, “I’m not gonna let any broad use Ireland and de Valera to get space.” We didn’t get a line.