Another door opens 19

  I returned from the O'Neil with renewed confidence. I had more than held my own on stage with some of the best actors from New York and Los Angeles. Even though I still had no agent, I was called in for a interview for a major film.

I was given no script but I had an interview with the casting director that went very well and the proof of that was a callback to meet with the lead actor that I had a lot of respect. Again the interview went well as I was able to talk about acting with the star and again I was callbacked to meet with the director.

With three interviews and no script , I had no idea what they were looking for except the character was from a tough neighborhood in the Bronx. That can mean anything and when I went into the interview with the big director, in a condo on 57 st and Park Avenue. I reacted like anyone from that kind of neighborhood and commented how beautiful the condo was and the spectacular view out the window. The director was sort of condescending and remarked that he had a even better place in Malibu.

I didn't get the role and when I went to see the film a couple of years later I got angry. The characters were fighters and wise guys which I could play if I got up 4 in the morning with a hangover. I know that the persona, of a ordinary working man, I showed to the director was not what they wanted and if I knew what they wanted I could have done it with ease. Everybody says just be yourself on a interview but I am many different people, I am a chameleon and can change to whatever is needed.

I didn't get the big film,it would have been a great shot but that kind of luck is not my destiny. So, I had to slug it out off-off Broadway some more and I started to get calls from some of the better off-off Broadway theaters.

 I accepted a role at the IRT theater for a new play "Windfall Apples" a period 1940's original play. I bring this play up because it was the first time I worked with an actor that would intentionally try to upstage me. During our scenes together he would break the blocking, that we had worked on, and walk upstage as far as he could. When I caught on to what he was doing, I would turn my back to him and just talk to him over my shoulder. If I got a laugh on a certain line, the next night he would slam a door or fake cough on my line.

Why an actor would do this is beyond me. It certainly doesn't make the scene better . The thought would  intrude in my mind while I'm onstage with him,"look what this asshole is doing".Thankfully, these kind of actors don't last long and are weeded out because no project can be successful with such a selfish pos.99% of the time, I have had great experiences with actors and the trust we developed with each other on stage would last for years offstage. 

An acting teacher I had at HB Studios recommended me for a play at the Jewish Rep Theater. It was an old play "The Gentle People" by Irwin Shaw originally done on Broadway in the 1930's. The character I was to play was Goff, the main antagonist in the play.

Goff was a gangster that worked alone and also a romantic. This guy was extorting this poor fisherman and the same time seducing the fisherman's daughter. You gotta love this guy. He was totally evil but I didn't approach him that way. There was a piece of dialogue between him and the fisherman that was the key to the character. The fisherman asks Goff "What do you got inside you" Goff answers " I got what I learned on the brake rods,poolrooms, food lines and dive bars all across this country, I got rock inside me old man" .

That was the only way he knew to survive in 1930's depression America. Goff worked alone and in the play it is indicated that Goff uses a gun but I decided to use a flip open knife that with practice, I was able to flip it open instantly with a flick of my wrist.

I received one of my greatest compliments from the audience. At the end of the play, the fishermen, that Goff is terrorizing, decide to kill him as this is the only way they can get him out of their lives. They take Goff out on their boat and mange to throw him overboard and he drowns. Every night when I was thrown over the side of the boat, The audience cheered and applauded.

I received a call from a director that I met up at the O'Neil. He said he was doing a reading for a new play for Joe Papp, the producer of The New York Shakespeare Festival or Public Theater, the foremost equity theater in New York. Many successful Broadway plays have come out of there such as: Chorus Line and many others.

He didn't ask me to do the reading but would I mind reading one of the parts for rehearsal as the actor doing the part couldn't make it that day. Of coarse I said I would do it.

The day of the rehearsal came and there were 10 people in the cast, all on the fast track of acting signed with some of the best agents in town.

The play was a comedy "Sorrows of Stephen"and the part I was reading was very funny and when I read with the lead actor J, a yuppie to his bones, I got a lot of laughs from the other actors watching.

When rehearsal was over, the writer P asked me how I liked the play. I told him, and it was the truth, that I really liked it. The director S, asked me if I was available to do the reading for Papp. Well, I didn't have to look in my appointment book when I said yes. The other actor that was supposed to do the reading was never mentioned again and I was set to do it.

So, this was some kind of sneaky audition in that if they didn't want me, there would be no hard feelings.

The day of the reading came and we were brought into Joe Papp's huge office.My character was a homeless guy who asks some guy for  a quarter and sees that he went to school with this obvious successful person. The reading went very well and the cast and I waited outside the theater as the director was talking with Joe. S came out finally and said it looks very good.

Four days later I received a call from the director saying that Joe Papp wanted to try the play out as a workshop and it was alright for me to do the part and that I would soon receive a call from the casting director. Now, I have been trying to get an audition for years with this casting director to no avail. She called me, in a very cold voice, and asked who my agent was.  I said I didn't have one at the moment and she said I am being offered the part and do I accept. Of coarse I said yes and I do believe from her cold and unfriendly voice that she hoped I would say no. I am sure that wasn't the way she would talk to a big agent or one of the elite, pampered upper class actors that she was accustomed.

I would encounter many people like her and L from the O'Neil and no matter how good I was, to them I was just some street person that wondered off the street into their world.

I didn't care,I would show them, they are no better than me, they just had better parents.

Burning my first bridge, then up to Bottom. 14

    Mid-Summer's rehearsals would not not start for a couple of months ,so I had time to study the play.

In the meantime, Owen, from Jimmy Ray's, turned me onto extra work in movies being shot in New York. Why not, it was a easy way to make a little money and see what it is like on a big time film set.

In New York, serious, out of work actors would do extra work to build up unemployment credits. In those days, you needed 20 weeks of work to qualify for unemployment checks. Unlike LA, where actors can get unemployment even if they worked just 1 week. I sometimes feel a little guilty about collecting in California for many years but if they are giving the money away, why not.

I did extra work a few times and did not like it.On a film set, there are very distinct class differences and extras are on the very bottom. The director, film crew and the cast barely acknowledge you're existence, except when needed and on some film sets, you are not allowed to look the principles in the eye. I knew my personality would not stand for this for too long, but I needed the money.

I was called to do extra work on a film " The King of the Gypsies". I dressed in my loudest clothes and went to the call. The director lined up all the extra gypsies and picked me for a upgrade to day player. This means 10 times the money of a extra plus eligible for residuals. It was a chase scene where I had to yell "hey" and "stop" a few times during the chase. It went very well and the director shook my hand at the end of the day and said "good job".

Two weeks later, I was called back by the extra CD for a big crowd scene, in the same film, King of the gypsies. They took me and all the other extras on a bus out to New Jersey. When we got there the CD starting handing out the extra paperwork. She stopped by me and gave me the slip. I told her, that I was not a extra but a day player and wanted the day player contract. She got very angry and said it was a mistake to ask me to come and why don't I just do the extra work for the day. I refused, she said she would remember that when she was casting again. I did not care, all I could think of was $600 for the day instead of $50 for extra. According to sag rules she had to pay for the day player. Then she said, she would not pay for "drop and pick-up" . I did not know what that meant so I agreed. "Drop and Pick-up" means she would not only have to pay me day player rate for the day, but the 2 weeks in between the 2 days. If I would have known that, I would have asked for that also. So, that was the end of my extra career. I was glad.

So , on to Bottom in "A Mid-Summer Nights Dream".  Bottom was a weaver, which was a working class guy back then. When I was speaking as Bottom, I made no attempt to cover my NY accent as the other actors used their own American accents, so why not me. I studied the play constantly, to know the meaning of what I was saying.

There is a great scene in the play when Bottom is acting before the duke. It shows you the great sense of humor that Shakespeare had because the play Bottom was doing was called "Pyramus and Thisby" which was a spoof of "Romeo and Juliet".

 I struggled with this part of the play until the director suggested that Bottom thinks he is the best actor in the world. Since Bottom is acting, I played the play within a play as if I was Richard Burton. Back then, Richard Burton was one of England's most popular actors. He spoke in a deep and pompous voice. I studied Burton in some of his roles and was able to imitate him quite well I thought. Playing a character that is acting, gives you license to do almost anything.

On Tuesday,January 25, 1977 Bruce Chadwick of "Daily News" wrote" Most of the performers are cast well and some are outstanding.The funniest scene in the play is the last one, when a group of laborers put on a play for the local royalty. The scene is stolen by John Del Regno as a Athenian named Bottom by way of the Brooklyn Bridge. His broad accent and bumbling creates a wave of hysteria in the theater."