For a
couple of years before America entered World War II and a year or so afterward,
my father tried to make a go of it as an actor at the vaunted Pasadena
Playhouse in Southern California. A number of actors went from the Playhouse to
long careers in TV and the movies. Dad wasn’t one of them.
But those
few years before he decided a business career was more likely to pay the bills
were his bohemian experience, even though he was a bit older (early thirties)
when he got into acting. And there were stories from that period that earned
him a place in the spotlight at parties for years to come.
For
instance, he acted alongside Raymond Burr in Arsenic and Old Lace, though “acted alongside” may be overstating
the case a bit. Burr had the Boris Karloff role, the juiciest part in the play,
whereas Dad was one of the two police officers who came to arrest him in the
closing minutes. You probably didn’t need to remove a second glove to count the
number of his lines.
I’ll Make It Good on Payday
When Burr
struck acting gold by being cast as Perry Mason in the TV series, we heard a
lot about how Dad once loaned him $5 to make it to payday. I never did get
around to tracking down Burr’s side of the story, but they’re both dead now, so
it probably doesn’t matter.
It was the
dog story, though, that was the hit of the party, and Dad told it so often he
had it down, like a professional comedian. In one of the plays he was in (I
don’t remember the name) there was a trained dog that had been taught to bark
on cue.
That
particular play opened with a family sitting around the living room of its home
in the Midwest, waiting for the son to come back from the war. After a few
minutes of expository dialogue, one of the lines cued the dog to jump up and
begin barking, signaling that the son was arriving home.
The dog was
a trouper, but one night it came down with a virus, which went undetected by
the dog’s handler or anyone in the cast. The play started, as usual, before a
full house, and when the cue came for the dog to bark, the dog did nothing.
Ad Lib With Unintended Consequences
Had the dog
barked as scheduled, one of the actors was to follow with the line, “Listen, I
think the dog’s trying to tell us something.” After a brief hesitation, the
actor ad libbed the line as, “Look, I think the dog’s trying to tell us
something.”
At which
point the dog, who had been curled up by a chair, rose shakily to its feet,
looked the actor in the eye, lifted one of its hind legs, and peed all over the
stage floor.
The way Dad
told the story, for about five seconds it was so quiet you could hear a pin
drop. Then the actor who ad-libbed the line was overcome by the absurdity of
the situation and let out a snorting snicker. The other actors on stage began
laughing uncontrollably, and the audience followed suit.
A minute
later, the whole house and all the actors were still roaring with laughter, and
the house manager made the call to lower the curtain, declare an intermission,
and start the play over once everyone had pulled it together. The show went on,
but everyone who was there that night probably never forgot it.
Dad never
said what happened to the dog afterward.
