Pieces of My Heart (5 page)

In my callowness, I thought the power of a part was judged by the amount of time the character is on screen; I hadn’t seen Bill Wellman’s
Wings,
which featured Gary Cooper in a scene that lasted about two minutes. Before that, Coop was just another young actor; after that, he was a star. After
With a Song in My Heart
opened, Susan was nominated for an Oscar for best actress, the film was a big hit, and I wasn’t exactly a star but for the first time people knew who I was. The Korean War was on, and to the women in the audience that boy I played represented the men in their lives—mothers thought of their sons, wives thought of their husbands, and girls thought of their sweethearts.

I was good enough in these pictures, but I was so terribly young. The energy and innocence you can see in
With a Song in My Heart
and
Stars and Stripes Forever
isn’t acting—that was me. Walter Lang and his wife Fieldsie liked me, and Walter often took me fishing. Walter was a very solid human being, and Fieldsie was a ballsy, lovable woman. She had been a bathing beauty for Mack Sennett, and after that she had been Carole Lombard’s secretary. Clark Gable remained close to them after Carole’s death; he would often come to their house to play poker. The result was that Gable and I became closer than we had been as golfer and caddy.

My first real trial by fire was John Ford. Believe me, if you can survive John Ford in a bad mood, you can survive anything. Jimmy Cagney and Dan Dailey were the stars of
What Price Glory?,
which was originally a very strong antiwar statement in its theatrical version and in Raoul Walsh’s 1926 silent version. In Ford’s version, it became mostly about male camaraderie. Besides Cagney and Dailey, the cast was dotted with wonderful character actors—Bill Demarest, James Gleason, Wallace Ford—and then there was me, the green kid, which in Ford’s world was a euphemism for “designated patsy.”

Ford was a tall, lean man who had had a distinguished career in the Navy during World War II (he would eventually rise to the rank of admiral) as a break from his distinguished career in Hollywood (he won five Oscars). He wore a slouch hat and dark glasses and had a sharp, pointed command personality, although he never raised his voice. Ford didn’t call me RJ and didn’t even call me Bob. Throughout the picture, he called me Boob. One day we were shooting on the French street that had been built for
The Song of Bernadette
. I was to come out of a house with Bill Demarest, Wally Ford, and Dan Dailey. We did a take, Ford said, “Cut,” and then he walked the length of the street and came up to me.

“You know, Boob, if you can’t see the camera, the camera can’t see you. You be clear to the camera.” And then he pushed me, hard. I wasn’t expecting it, and I fell flat on my ass. By the time I hit the ground, he’d turned and was walking back up the street. I was too stunned to be angry. I struggled to my feet and said, “My God!”

Jim Cagney was standing next to me and said, “Don’t worry, kid. He does that. You’ll be all right. Just remember your lines, that’s all you have to do.”

If Ford had had the camera running when he knocked me down, I would have gotten the Academy Award. Another time he picked up a rock and started to throw it at me. He was basically interested in destabilizing me, and he succeeded. He scared the living hell out of me. The fact that he had scared the living hell out of John Wayne, Harry Carey Jr., Ward Bond, and practically every other person who had ever worked with him was very small consolation.

One day on the set Ford was sitting in his director’s chair when he turned to me. “Boob?” he said.

“Yes, sir, Mr. Ford!”

“Don’t look now. Over there? That man? That’s Barry Norton. He played your part in the original picture. He’s the king of the queens. He’s an extra now. That can happen to you.”

“Yes, sir, Mr. Ford.” I turned around and bumped into another man. “That’s King Baggott,” Ford said. “He used to make $27,500 a week. See where he is now, Boob?”

What a tough son of a bitch. I didn’t find out until years later that the second guy wasn’t King Baggott; King Baggott had been a high-priced actor and director who drank himself out of the business and ended up as a security guard at MGM. He died in 1948, the year I signed with Fox and a couple of years before I worked with Ford on
What Price Glory?
But it might as well have been King Baggott, because whoever that man was, Ford used him to scare the hell out of me, and I’ve never forgotten the lesson. He was telling me that making movies was a brutal business, that things end, and I needed to hold on to my money. He was telling me something I needed to learn, and for that I thank him, if not for the way he told me.

My primary consolation during
What Price Glory?
was Corinne Calvet, a gorgeous woman but one who didn’t have the clarity needed for a major career. As for Jimmy Cagney, he was as wonderful to me as Ford was harsh. I had known Cagney when I was a kid, when I had jogged his horses for him. Jimmy kept Morgans and trotters, and he was a very giving, generous man whom I had admired for years. Here I was, only a couple of years into my career, and I ended up dying in his arms in a John Ford movie!

As an actor, Cagney was very free and open. The emotional coloring of his work could vary quite a bit from take to take, although he was always very concerned about matching his action. Among that generation of actors, the only one with whom I worked who I found to be uninterested in much variation was Henry Fonda. He didn’t vary much, and he didn’t use much. He didn’t even use other actors much.

Throughout this period I trusted in Darryl to do right by me, and I must say that he never failed me, not once. The studio system could be emotionally difficult, because I wasn’t the only hopeful juvenile leading man being groomed for a career. There were a dozen or so at each studio, all starting out at $75 a week, all more or less good-looking, all more or less types who could conceivably replace an older leading man who was already at the studio. I was tagged as a possible replacement for Tyrone Power, as was Jeffrey Hunter—a fine man, a good actor, and a valued friend. One of the small tortures of the way the studios operated was that there were plenty of other people who were something like you. Every time you looked around, you saw someone who was a living, breathing implication that you were replaceable. And the sad fact was that you were.

On the other hand, the studio system gave you opportunities to fail, to learn, to fail less miserably, to gradually master your craft. And the studio did have a way of taking care of you if it thought you had something. For the publicity tour for
Let’s Make It Legal,
MacDonald Carey, Joyce McKenzie, Larry Carr, and I were sent on the road. We went through Philadelphia and then on to a lot of Midwest towns, dancing and singing on the stage, then signing autographs as a live attraction before the film. We all lived together, and it was fun.

Mac Carey had been around for years, making a hit on Broadway in
Lady in the Dark
with Gertrude Lawrence and working with Hitchcock in
Shadow of a Doubt
and a lot of other movies. Mac was kind enough to take me under his wing and tell me how the studio game was played—what things were important and what things weren’t.

For most of the tour Mac and I roomed together, but just after we got to New York the studio put us up at the Warwick Hotel, right across the street from the Stage Delicatessen. At that point his wife came to town, so I was thrown out of the room. His wife promptly got pregnant, and I’ve always thought I deserved at least some of the credit.

I had been to New York only once before—my dad had taken us there—but I had never been there professionally, and on an expense account to boot, and that made all the difference in the world. I’ve been passionate about the city ever since, at the studio’s expense or my own.

For the most part, I wasn’t disappointed by the people I was meeting around the studio, although Paul Douglas was certainly an exception. He was a brusque, unpleasant man, always carrying around a sour edge about something or another. I’ve never understood why someone would want to live like that; whenever I’ve had a problem with somebody, I confront it head-on. And then I step back and wait. I usually find that the direct approach works.

T
he perquisites of a rising young actor in Hollywood were and are obvious, and I did my best to get my share.

I met Joan Crawford at a cocktail party and sensed that she was interested in me. She suggested I follow her back to her house in Brentwood. After I got there, she asked me if I would like a swim. Sure, I said. She told me that there were some trunks down by the pool and I could help myself. I went down to the pool, took my clothes off, put on a pair of trunks, and got in the pool.

After a few minutes, Joan came out of the house with absolutely nothing on, did a very graceful dive off the board, swam the length of the pool underwater, and came up right between my legs.

“Hi there!” she said in her brightest, most vivacious voice. It was a lovely, creative invitation, and I responded accordingly. She was a dynamic lover, both domineering—which you might expect—and yielding—which you might not. All in all, a memorable one-night stand.

Around this same time I drove my 1950 Ford convertible into a drive-in restaurant called Jack’s at the Beach. The top was down, the day was lovely, and I was a young actor about town. I looked over, and there was Yvonne De Carlo next to me in her car. She was at the height of her career as well as of the physical splendor that was on display in tits-and-sand Universal pictures like
Song of Scheherazade
and
Slave Girl,
as well as noirs like
Brute Force
and
Criss Cross
. We looked each other over, and she nodded her head for me to come over. I backed my car up, parked it in the rear of the restaurant, and got into Yvonne’s car.

“I’m Robert Wagner.”

“I know. I’m Yvonne De Carlo.”

“I know. I’m such a fan of yours.”

One thing led to another, and we went back to her house. Three days later, I staggered out, depleted and disheveled. I wasn’t sure what month it was, but I dimly remembered leaving my car at the drive-in. Luckily, it was still parked where I’d left it.

A week later, I ran into Tony Curtis. “You can’t imagine what just happened to me,” he says. “I pull into Jack’s at the Beach. Yvonne De Carlo pulls up next to me! She looks at me, I look at her. Well, to make a long story short….”

I just stared at him, then I began laughing hysterically. Baby, I was in the movies!

It’s interesting how friendships form and either strengthen or recede with time. Tony Curtis and I were friends for years, had a bad falling-out, then patched things up. But Robert Stack and I were pals for more than forty years with never a cross word. Initially, it was based on the fact that each of us possessed an athletic skill the other one was interested in. Bob was a world-class skeet shooter, and he taught me how to shoot; I was a good golfer, and I taught him how to play. Beyond that, we shared a similar background and a positive outlook on life, and we both genuinely enjoyed being in show business.

Bob died in 2003, and I was so moved when he left me a beautiful pair of pearl and diamond studs, accompanied by a note he’d written thanking me for my friendship. Believe me, the honor was all mine.

T
here weren’t really issues with drugs in those days—the most you’d ever see was some marijuana if you were hanging around musicians. But one way or another, there has always been a need for people to blow off the steam that builds up in the pressure-cooker atmosphere of show business. Take, for instance, OK Freddy.

By common consent, OK Freddy had the biggest cock in Hollywood. It was twelve inches long, with the thickness of a baby’s arm. I never knew his real name—I don’t know that anyone did, as he seemed to be universally known as OK Freddy. Freddy was an extra, and he was always around and always working, mostly because if anybody, at any time, asked him, “Freddy, show us your cock,” Freddy would say, “Okay,” and bring it out—depending on the circumstances and the company, a formula for either enduring popularity or serious jail time. He was a very pleasant, amiable man, but then, most men would be pleasant and amiable if they were carrying what OK Freddy had.

My favorite experience with OK Freddy involved Gary Cooper, who loved practical jokes. Coop was throwing a party at his house, and among those attending was Henry Ford II and his wife. Coop had hired both OK Freddy and Vince Barnett for the evening. Barnett was a character actor who often played the part of a waiter at parties, where he would proceed to insult out-of-town guests or anybody else who didn’t know it was a setup. One of Vince’s set-pieces involved accusing people of stealing silver, but he would also customize his attacks. Once he told Jack Warner he didn’t know how to make pictures, and he also accused Charlie Chaplin of monopolizing the conversation. OK Freddy, also working the party as a waiter, carried a tray of hors d’oeuvres, among which was his massive unit, jostling the garnish and pâté.

For this particular party, Vince Barnett was playing the part of a doctor, and he got into a loud argument with Henry Ford II. Coop came over, pretended to be angry at his guest being insulted, and decked Barnett. When he hit the ground, Barnett bit down on a blood capsule he had in his mouth, and the fake blood cascaded down his chin and onto his white shirt. Mrs. Henry Ford II proceeded to faint dead away! Clearly, they didn’t have people like Vince Barnett and OK Freddy around the country clubs of Detroit.

A
fter
With a Song in My Heart
was released, the fan mail began to pour in. In those days the studio looked at fan mail the same way that modern TV networks do ratings—as a leading indicator that someone was provoking a reaction. Suddenly, there were thousands of letters every week asking for autographed photos, biographies, fan club information. I was becoming a bobby-sox idol, along with Tony Curtis and Rock Hudson. In very short order, the studio started up a monthly newsletter called
Wagner’s World,
and my fan club signed up 250,000 members.