Eighty Is Not Enough: One Actor's Journey Through American Entertainment Read Free Page A

down the boardwalk at the world-famous Atlantic City Baby Contest, or when throngs of beautiful young ladies vied for recognition in the endless stream of beauty contests held by every town, county and state—not to mention Miss America.
    In the fall of 1934, when I was five years old, Mom learned of a talent contest for children held at the Willard Theater in Woodhaven, Queens, just a short distance from our home. I was already a precocious kid and beginning to enjoy some success on the modeling circuit, so the opportunity to step up to a stage performance seemed only natural. It was also what mom really wanted. The Willard Theater was a long way from Broadway, but I still remember her excitement the night I stood at a microphone on the Willard stage reciting a poem with the title, “Why I Love My Mother.” Frankly, I wasn’t too impressed with my performance, but I did come home the winner.
    The Willard prize sent me across town for the final round at the Loews State, the beautiful old theater on 44 th and Broadway in Manhattan, which is still among the most prominent theaters in New York City. The same contest I won in Queens had been held in all the five boroughs of New York, and the winners got to perform in the finals at the Manhattan Loews.
    I still remember the night. Just five years old in October of 1934, I arrived at the theater smartly dressed in short pants, blazer, and a little blue pea cap that I wore proudly as I stepped onstage for the big show. When my turn came, I walked out to the microphone and recited the same poem. As a tactical matter, I was a little uncertain about reciting poetry. Other kids were singing and dancing while all I did was recite my poem. But Mom knew better than me. And, once again, I came out on top. Now I was the proud winner of New York’s Loews/MGM Screen and Voice Contest for 1934.
    The most extraordinary part—and something of which I was pretty much oblivious—was that two of the contest judges were Eleanor Roosevelt, the First Lady of the United States, and Fiorello La Guardia, the Mayor of New York City. I don’t recall actually meeting them at the time. The finals were recorded, and it may have been that the First Lady and the Mayor viewed the film privately before making their choice. Anyway, my mother was ecstatic. We now had our first brush with the world beyond Kew Gardens. Eleanor Roosevelt and Mayor LaGuardia were already legendary figures, and I’m still grateful to them both for selecting the kid with nothing more than a navy pea cap and a poem about his mom.
    In retrospect, I also find it remarkable that the contest was filmed. Today everything is filmed; at a moment’s notice we turn our telephones into video recorders and store them as electronic files. But this was 1934. The “talkies,” beginning with Al Jolson’s The Jazz Singer in 1927, were only seven years old. It would take another five years before the world would know The Wizard of Oz or Gone with the Wind . To make an actual sound film of the contest meant it was something they took seriously, no doubt as a promotional piece for MGM and Loews. Winning the top prize was also a nice résumé item—one Mother was planning to use in the years ahead as she continued her relentless drive to make me an entertainer.
    The personality contest was also important in showing that I had no fear of the stage. Perhaps this experience at such an extremely young age helped remove the specter of stage fright—a condition that haunts many established actors, as well as those who might otherwise have tried their hand at acting. At an early age, speaking in front of a large crowd seemed as natural to me as talking at the dinner table.
    I also learned to memorize. I was too young to read, and so the poem was recited by heart. Since then I’ve never had a problem memorizing lines. I recall years later riding on the subway to performances of I Remember Mama , reading and memorizing the entire scripts before the