Tina Hall - The Damned Book of Interviews

By Tina Hall

Copyright 2013 Tina Hall

First Digital Edition published by Crossroad Press

This book is dedicated to everyone who is in it, for their time, support, and kindness. I am eternally grateful.

Authors Note: Several of the individuals herein have been interviewed countless times, all of which appear in no particular order (All interviews have appeared at either TheDamnedInterviews.com, Maximumink.com., Guitar Digest, HauntedDigitalMagazine.com, Haunted After Dark, or TheOriginalVanGoghsEarAnthology.com.

ALL photos/images appear courtesy of their respective owners with permission given by each individual.

(John Gilmore, New York, 1956 - Photo by Tomas Milian)

John Gilmore is more than a former young actor; he is also one of the best known writers to deal with the glamour as well as the darker days of Hollywood. He was born in the Charity Ward of L.A. General Hospital, and raised in Hollywood. From his seven-year friendship with Marilyn Monroe which spawned Inside Marilyn Monroe , to his rather personal relationship with James Dean which began in 1953 and led to the books The Real James Dean , and Live-Fast, Die Young: Remembering the Short Life of James Dean , he introduces the world to a Hollywood sub-culture few could even imagine.

He delves into the darker side with works like, Manson: The Unholy Trail of Charlie and the Family, formerly The Garbage People. He is the author of the classic true crime, Severed: The True Story of the Black Dahlia, and Laid Bare: A Memoir of Wrecked Lives and the Hollywood Death Trip (wherein he recounts his experiences with Janis Joplin, Hank Williams, Jack Nicholson, Brigitte Bardot, Dennis Hopper, and Jayne Mansfield among others). He is currently working on his Magnum Opus novel, set in Hollywoods 50s and 60s, and a creative nonfiction on Bonnie and Clyde, due out in 2012.

What was it like growing up in Hollywood?

As a kid I was facing interchanging phases of L.A. life, of course Id lived nowhere else, so this was it, especially on the Hollywood side of the fence; movies three times a week, radio and seven daily newspapers; then crime-time L.A., cops, murders, stick-ups, the bleak fog of war hanging over all of it; war-time L.A., with round the clock defense and munitions plants, with nightly black-outs that brought fear and paranoia, the roar of airplanes overheadwere they ours? At the same time we listened to the Lone Ranger, to I Love a Mystery, to Inner Sanctum and Lights OutMix all that with swimming or horseback riding, the Clyde Beatty Circus or ice skating or hot dogs on the beach, the amusement piers Venice and Santa Monica, the drive-in movies and drive-in restaurants, chocolate malts and cheeseburgers and Hollywood High and pretty girls...all that on the surface of the life I led growing up in Hollywood.

What led you to first try your hand at acting?

Wasnt a try, but more of an obligation I didnt mind. My father, who I didnt live with, always a frustrated actor and artist, wound up as an influential L.A. police officer, and at one point was shooting police safety movies and guess what? They had a kid actor on handme. I did several of those short films, even some radio shows out of Station of the Stars on Sunset Boulevard, a police public service that also featured many promising movie starlets as well as established actresses like Bonita Granville, Ann Rutherford, Acquanetta the jungle girl, Joan Davis, Hillary Brooke, Ann Jeffreys, Brenda Marshall and other players I was acquainted with. I did a couple other kid parts on radio, and then worked in a few films.

What was it like to appear in a Gene Autry film? Were you a fan of his work as a child?

Gene Autry was Gene Autryyou took him or not. Before he became a big star in westerns, he was a strong singerkind of blues and folk, like Jimmie Rogers. What I did in the Autry picture was a small part, then a couple bits at Republic Studios, plus a bit part in a serial. Serials were very big as I grew up. Usually Id be the kid standing in the dust as the horses galloped past. Later in Hollywood High School, my girlfriends father was a cameraman for Gene Autry Productions, right across the street from the high school. My step-grandfather had been a head carpenter at RKO studios, and I was out there a number of times, but Dean Stockwell had been a big kid star, so I was kind of out of luck. I did meet and talk to Dana Andrews and Merle Oberon, and both said, I had to wait a few years because I was caught in that in-between state where life, Andrews said, looks like a bowl of limbo.

What was James Dean like? Is it true you, he and Eartha Kitt used to ride motorcycles across Sunset Boulevard? What was that like?

Id actually met Marilyn Monroe before I knew Dean, both occurring in 1953. I was advised to go to New York, get in a Broadway play, and then brought back to Hollywood with a studio contract. I had two mentors, Ida Lupino who was doing television, and John Hodiak who Id met at MGM. My mother, who I did not live with, had been a bit player at MGM, always wanting to be in pictures but never making the grade. Shed been a drinking pal of Jean Harlow. Separately, both Ida Lupino and John Hodiak suggested I head for the Big Apple until I got out of that in-between state in the bowl of limbo. It was in New York when I met James Dean, and hung around together, both of us mavericks in the real senseseparated from the mother, Jimmy by his moms death when he was a kid, and mine by divorce when I was six months old, then fostered to my grandmother in Hollywood. Our troubled pasts made both Dean and myself a little crazy, but withdrawn, intense and knotted into ourselves. We somehow understood one another without all the games, and then in 54 he went back to Hollywood to star in a movie that would shake the city like an earthquake. Strangely, he was starting at the very top and thered be no further place to climb to. I got to know Eartha Kitt from the dance studio where Jimmyd sometimes fooled around, and wed go to Horn and Hardarts, drink coffee and eat pie, sometimes in Greenwich Village, a blast back then. I went to San Francisco for a play, then back in Hollywood where I picked up my friendship with Dean. We both had motorcycles and buzzed around, especially a couple times on Pacific Coast Highway. One night Eartha rode on the back of Jimmys bike and we all had a laugh. She didnt ride that much, just a couple times. He was half-way through Rebel Without a Cause , and set to go to Texas on Giant, like immediately upon finishing Rebel, when I went back to New York for a television show. I remained in New York through the summer, and late September I learned Jimmy had been killed in a sports car on his way to a race. Hed only spent eighteen months in Hollywood, made just three movies, two hadnt even been released yet at the time of his death.

Do you remember first meeting Marilyn Monroe? What was running through your mind at the time?