An Improvised Life Read Free

scene painter.
    Consistent with a lot of my father’s luck, the job didn’t pan out. The week we arrived in Los Angeles a strike was called in the studios that lasted six months, and my father’s first and only opportunity in the movie business dried up, but I was in heaven. We were in L.A. The golden land. The place where all my dreams would come true. We were in the movie capital of the world and I knew I’d be discovered within ten minutes of arriving.
    Our first home was in the hills directly above Hollywood Boulevard, and every day after school I’d hike down to that magic street in the hopes that something major and life-changing would happen to me. Once I saw Sidney Toler, the actor who’d played Charlie Chan, and another time I passed Charlie Ruggles striding briskly down the boulevard, dressed to the teeth. Other than knowing they were professionals, I barely knew who they were, and I wasn’t a fan of either actor, but seeing them in person, two honest-to-God, real-life movie stars, walking down the street just like ordinary people, thrilled me more than if I’d seen the president of the United States. There they were in three dimensions, real and tangible people. Their heads were no larger than mine, no matter how big they’d seemed in the movie theaters. It gave me hope.
    I enrolled in junior high and found that miraculously there was a course called acting in the curriculum. It was taught by a warm, wonderful woman named Mrs. Lewis,
who enjoyed her students and loved the process of putting on plays. We felt safe with her, and we all took chances, and had a terrific time. I felt nurtured and cared for and appreciated in school for perhaps the first time in my life. Her class was virtually the only thing I remember from junior high.
    In high school things weren’t as promising. The drama teacher was a failed actor with a lantern jaw and long grey hair. He looked like a cliché from a third-rate Shakespearean touring company, which is exactly what he’d been. His primary activity was telling us endless stories of his triumphs in little theaters around the country. Back then, we were properly impressed. The one comment I can remember his making about my work, probably casual on his part, seared me like a branding iron. “You might end up being a comedian,” he said, “but you’ll never be an actor.” His remark was tossed off, something he probably forgot the minute he said it, but now fifty years later it still lives with me. Without his help or encouragement I auditioned for all the school plays and got leads in every one. There was also a course in radio broadcasting taught by a wonderful woman named Lucy Assadorian. She was a tiny, immaculately dressed, beautiful woman who was worshipped by every boy in the class. With her encouragement, along with the radio plays we put on in her class and the stage plays I was cast in, I managed to survive high school.
    Throughout the entire four years, I don’t believe I ever opened a work of nonfiction. I cut every possible class to
hang out in the theater, forging the names of teachers and my parents whenever I had to. The teachers used to say to me on a regular basis, “Alan, you could do so much for this school if you put your mind to it.” I didn’t want to put my mind to it. I didn’t want to do anything for the school. It wasn’t doing much for me and I thought it only fair to reciprocate. How I graduated remains a mystery.
    Chorus was of some interest to me. So was a class in ceramics run by a Miss Beatty, a wonderfully imaginative, eccentric, and completely unappreciated woman who at one point literally chased me around her studio with a glaze pot in an attempt to have me at least try to work with the stuff. I refused. All of my ceramics remained rough terra cotta. I also remember one history teacher, Mr. Engles, a thoroughly decent man with a passion for history so great that he allowed us to approach the subject from any vantage point that made