Leonard Maltin - Starstruck: My Unlikely Road to Hollywood

Also by Leonard Maltin

Leonard Maltins Movie Guide (as Editor)

Leonard Maltins Classic Movie Guide (as Editor)

Leonard Maltins Movie Encyclopedia (as Editor)

Leonard Maltins Family Film Guide (as Editor)

Movie Comedy Teams

Behind the Camera (The Art of the Cinematographer)

The Great Movie Shorts (Selected Short Subjects)

The Disney Films

The Little Rascals: The Life and Times of Our Gang (co-authored with Richard W. Bann)

The Great Movie Comedians

Carole Lombard

Of Mice and Magic: A History of American Animated Cartoons

The Big Broadcast: A Celebration of Radios Golden Age

The 151 Best Movies Youve Never Seen

Leonard Maltins Movie Crazy

Hooked on Hollywood

GoodKnight Books

2021 by JessieFilm Inc.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, or by an information storage and retrieval system without permission in writing from the publisher.

Published by GoodKnight Books, an imprint of Paladin Communications, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Printed in the United States of America.

ISBN 978-1-7352738-1-5

ISBN 978-1-7352738-2-2

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021936194

First Printing

Book and dust jacket design by Sharon Berk.

Cover photo of Leonard Maltin courtesy of REELZ. REELZ.

Dedicated with love and gratitude to Alice, Jessie, and Scott, who listened patiently as I rewound the events of my life over dinner, night after night. I am truly blessed.

And to dear Mercy Ingles, who takes such good care of us all.

I met my first movie star when I was 13 years old. Actually, he was more than a star: he was one of my heroes, Buster Keaton. My best friend and I read that he was making a film in downtown Manhattan and managed to track him down. It was an experience we will never forget.

Good timing and luck have defined my life from that day to this. How else can I explain getting my first book published when I was 18 years old or being hired to work on a hit television show when I never dreamt of a career in broadcasting? Even my academic career, teaching at the USC School of Cinematic Arts, came about by chance: the man who was hired to take over a popular, long-running course was having personal problems and they needed a replacement fast.

I chalk it up to serendipity, which the songwriting Sherman Brothers once defined as the art of happy accidents.

Over the years Ive met many people I grew up admiring as well as todays leading lights, but one thing has never changed: I remain an unabashed fan.

This seems to hold me in good stead with the people I encounter. I didnt understand why at first. Then I learned that the interviewers stars face on press junkets arent always fans or buffs. Sometimes they havent even bothered to watch the movies theyre supposed to be asking about!

Actors and other luminaries respond to genuine enthusiasm. Theyll tell stories they dont often share if they believe Im truly interested in hearing them. Morgan Freeman explained how he got his first job in movies, as a background extra in Sidney Lumets The Pawnbroker (1964). Lumet needed people to walk down a street on the upper West Side of Manhattan while the films star, Rod Steiger, stared through a chain link fence at a playground. With each take, Lumet used fewer people; he didnt want a crowd, just a sampling of passers-by. In the end he used only one person. It was Freeman, who did what no one else in the crowd had thought to do: he paused in his walk and lit a cigarette before continuing on. This completely natural moment caught the directors eye.

Years later, as a star, Freeman accosted an extra on one of his sets and asked him where he was going. Nervously, the fellow said he was headed from point A to point B. But where are you going and why are you going there? Freeman persisted. The flustered man said the assistant director had told him to cross from one spot to another. He didnt understand Freemans point: a believable extra should know who hes supposed to be and where hes heading. I hope someday he figured it out.

Ive had many odd, funny, and unusual experiences from the time, at age 14, that I was allowed entry into the underground world of old-movie buffs in Manhattan to attending my first Cinecon convention the following year (in Baraboo, Wisconsin); from my stumbling attempts to make 8mm silent movies with my friends (long before the invention of video) to several years of traipsing around the country giving college lectures. Once I appeared in a Midwestern campus ballroom that seated several thousand, but there were only 11 people in attendance. The promoters told me I drew the best turnout theyd had all week. When I asked students at another school how they had happened to book me, they explained that they had a certain amount left in their annual speaker budget so I was whom they could afford. I now think of these as character-building experiences.

I never kept a journal, but every now and then after a special day Ive been smart enough to jot down my thoughts. Im awfully glad I did; its one reason I can recreate so many incidents in detail. For the rest, Ive trusted my memory, with a little help from my family. So, step into the Wayback Machine with me as we travel through one lucky guys life experience.

As a boy I never considered myself unusual. Yet, instead of delivering newspapers, I had a TV Guide route. My father read two newspapers a day, but I never got into that habit, preferring to devour his weekly edition of Variety. I couldnt hit or throw a baseball, but I devised my own comic strip. At 12 I received rejection slips for my gag cartoons from The Saturday Evening Post and The New Yorker. I guess I wasnt usual after all.

The first movie image I clearly remember is the last scene of Walt Disneys Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which was reissued to theaters in 1955 when I was four. Movies were shown on a continuous basis in those days, so the minute a throng of parents dragged their kids out of the theater, my mother took me by the hand and led me inside before the current showing was over. Thats why the first image burned in my brain is the final shot of Walt Disneys film, with Prince Charming leading Snow White toward a gleaming golden sun.

Im pretty sure that took place at the Guild Theatre, the art deco movie house that stoodas a seeming afterthoughtbehind Radio City Music Hall on 50th Street in Manhattan. Several years later my parents took me back to the Guild to see Robert Youngsons 1958 compilation feature The Golden Age of Comedy. There was a life-sized standee of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy with Jean Harlow outside the theater, and it made a vivid impression on me, almost as vivid as the hilarious silent-comedy excerpts I got to see on the big screen. I was hooked, to put it mildly. (Years later, I got to know Bob Youngson and had the opportunity to thank him for making such a difference in my life.)

I became obsessed with silent comedy, which even turned up as kiddie-show fodder on television in those days. In 1959 Charlie Chaplin reissued his feature-length films, and I got to see Modern Times on a theater screen. It was a time of great discovery for me.