Morris - My Hollywood Stories

Edited by Carin Galsett

Published by
Ermor Enterprises
8004 Fareholm Drive
Los Angeles, CA 90046

Copyright 2014 by Eric Morris
All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.

ALSO BY ERIC MORRIS

No Acting Please (with Joan Hotchkis)
Being & Doing
Irreverent Acting
Acting from the Ultimate Consciousness
Acting, Imaging, and the Unconscious
The Diary of a Professional Experiencer
Freeing the Actor

AUDIO TAPES

The Craft of Acting
The MegApproaches
Imaging for Acting

THE ERIC MORRIS ACTORS WORKSHOP IS LOCATED AT:
5657 Wilshire Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90036 (323)466-9250

Internet Web site
www.ericmorris.com

INTRODUCTION

This book is a compilation of short stories and anecdotes from the world of show business, the film industry and television. A number of them come from my own experiences, things that happened to me; others were told to me by an actor, a director, or a producer friend of mine. Some are humorous, while others are spicy, sexy, interesting, or obnoxious. I truly believe that most of them are real. Every tale I write about that reflects a personal experience is totally true and honest. I have not changed or exaggerated any details of my own stories. The stories that were told to me by other people, however, may have been embellished somewhat. They are only as honest and truthful as the people who related them, so it is up to the reader to determine their veracity. I am sure that the hearsay stories might have undergone additions or deletions, but I have not printed anything that was not received from a reliable source. By way of a disclaimer, I have to say that some of the things I relate have been Hollywood folklore for many years and have been told and retold many times by many people, so please understand that if you have any doubts about the truth of a story, you can sprinkle it with a grain of salt.

You have all seen television shows and movies about the crazy and underhanded things that go on in politics. Well, Hollywood is very much like Washington, D.C., in that respect. During the period that followed World War II there was a blanket over Hollywood: It was the time of the Red Scare. People were searching for Communists everywhere, and the industry was a target of many of the right-wingers. The House Un-American Activities Committee, created to ferret out all of the so-called Reds and headed by Senator McCarthy, was responsible for ruining the lives of hundreds of actors, directors, and writers. The notorious Hollywood Ten were writers who were blacklisted and couldnt work in the film industry. Several of them wrote under assumed names.

Sex is a commodity in Hollywood, and many careers have been made by women lying on their back in service to fat, repulsive producers, who can only get laid because of their power to supply opportunities to desperate and hungry people. Those occurrences and hundreds more take place every day in Hollywood. For the most part they never break the surface, and they go unnoticed by the world.

So, you see, all of what will be related in this book is not funny. I share a little of what I know, not because I am angry or bitter; quite the contrary, I feel quite successful and accomplished in my profession and am not dependent on the insecure sycophants who are in a position to hurt people. The book is meant, not to be a Hollywood expos, but essentially to enlighten and entertain. I have been an actor in Hollywood for sixty years and have been teaching acting for fifty-two of those years, so I have accumulated quite a few experiences in that time. Many of the stories and events related here will humanize iconic figures who until now have existed only on the screen, and quite a few are about older actors whom the younger readers of this book may be unfamiliar with. It is, however, important that Hollywood history should be known by actors and others who are interested in the evolution of the motion-picture industry. Those stories reflect a period in Hollywood which was the end of the studio system, a time when each of the major studios had a stable of famous actors under contract, whom they would at times loan out to other studios for a film. I am hoping that those tales will entice younger readers to explore the past and learn that the future is totally dependent on what came before. The past is prologue.

There was a TV show that aired sometime in the eighties or nineties called The Naked City. The prologue I believea voice oversaid, There are eight million stories in the city. This is one of them. There are probably many more than eight million Hollywood stories. Here are some of them.

HI, DIDDLE DEE DEE, AN ACTORS LIFE FOR ME. ITS A WONDERFUL LIFE?

TAKE FROM OUT THE POCKET THE GUN!

One of my very early acting jobs was a small part on a television show called The Court of Last Resort, which focused on investigating prisoners who either had been unjustly convicted or had served a large amount of time and been rehabilitated. After the ordeal, or when it was obvious that they had paid their debt to society, they were freed.

My part was only in the teaser of the show. I was the young perpetrator of a crime that would send me to prison for many years. I was to enter a small grocery store with the intent of robbing it with a gun. I was supposed to come into the storea set on a soundstagelook around, see the owner behind the counter, pull out a pistol and tell the owner to put up his hands. He was to reach for something under the counter, and I had to shoot him and run out of the store. The next scene is where I am being led to a prison cell. The guard locks the cell door; I turn around, and with a look of evil hatred, spit at him. The camera moves to my face, which morphs into the face of Vaughn Taylor, the actor playing the older me, the leading role. That is my entire part as written, and it only takes place in the few moments of the teaser of the show. Sounds like a simple obligation to address, right? Well, it may sound funny now, but at the time it was a fucking nightmare that haunted my acting career for years after.

The director, a man named Reginald Le Borg, was from Hungary or somewhere in middle Europe. His English vocabulary was extremely limited, and he should have been directing foot traffic in the outer reaches of Mongolia! He had the sensitivity of a dead pig and even less concern for the sensitivity of the actor.

I showed up on the set quite early that day, reported to the makeup person and was costumed in an outfit indigenous to the period: pants, a shirt, a necktie, a sports jacket, and a hat. When the time came to shoot the scene, I stood outside the door to the grocery store, waiting excitedly to hear Action! Everything was in place and everyone was quiet. A few minutes passed, and finally I heard a voice on the other side of the door shout, Come, come. What was that? I wondered. A new way to call for action? So I entered, looked around, and immediately heard, No, look to de right to dat pole over der, and den look to heem at de conter.

Take two: I made my entrance again and that time turned my head somewhat mechanically to look at the pole, thinking all the while that it was unnatural for a robber to look so far away from the proprietor. Again I heard a shout: Cut! No, no, make it easy! What the fuck did that mean? More natural?

Take three: Now rattled and uptight about every movement I was about to make, I entered the store again, turned my head to the right, saw the pole, looked at the proprietor, and reached into my pocket for a gun that was the size of a small cannon. Lo and behold, the hammer caught in the opening of the pocket and would not come out. Pulling on the jacket, I ended up lifting it up to the middle of my chest. Cut! came booming out from the other side of the set. Le Borg waddled over to me. Vats wrong? he asked. Cant you pull the gun out? Didnt you practice before showing up to the set, or are you really ignorant about guns? I explained that the opening of the pocket was too narrow for me to get the gun out. He screamed for the costumer to come and fix it, while mumbling something in a foreign language under his breath. Ripping out the entire inside pocket of the jacket, the costume person did not in any way address the narrow opening, but I was too scared to say anything at that point, so we continued the scene from where I had to pull the gun out of my pocket.