Rosemarie and I were married in January 1956.Īnd right away she began trying to teach me to look at my career with detachment. It was basic to her whole outlook, and it was basic to my feeling that this was a girl I wanted to live with for the rest of my life. It took me some time to discover that when Rosemarie said she wasn’t in charge of her own life, she meant that God was. “Once I discovered that, I stopped thinking of other people as threats.” “I’m not in charge of my own life,” Rosemarie said. Sometime later, when I met Rosemarie again, I told her how greatly I admired the way she had handled the two women and asked her how she did it. Before long they were following her around -as though they fed on her security. As naturally and unselfconsciously as a child, she stepped up to those two women and made friends of them. I watched to see how Rosemarie would counterattack. Sure enough, two of the older gals started in on her: the snide remark, the innuendo, the small cruelties. I’d seen the situation many times and knew how vicious the infighting between the ladies could be. Here was a very pretty young actress, new to Hollywood–potentially a threat to some of the older women in the room. One day I was in a roomful of actors when Rosemarie walked in. A person who helped me do this was a young girl, Rosemarie Bowe, who had just come to Hollywood from Tacoma, Washington. If competitiveness was starting to show in my face, I thought, it was time I took a careful look at myself. As we shook hands he said just seven words: I hadn’t realized how deep that attitude ran until the night I met a discerning young man. Yet in spite of Spencer Tracy’s veiled warning, and in spite of my own luck, I still could not abandon the idea that success just had to depend on outdoing the other guy. When the announcement was made that I was playing the male lead in Deanna Durbin’s new picture, I’m sure a lot of young actors asked each other, “How come he was chosen? I’m better trained.” I “looked the part,” and for no stronger reason than that I was offered a chance at a dream. He hadn’t asked if I could act, or even if I wanted to. READ MORE: MICHAEL LANDON ON GOD’S BLESSINGS He took one look at me and asked, “How’d you like to play opposite Miss Durbin?” While we were talking, the director walked in. I had a tenuous claim to friendship with Deanna Durbin: I was the “friend of a friend.” So trading on this close relationship, I visited this young actress one day at her studio. How the competitor in me resisted this idea! I rejected it even when luck stepped in and smiled on me personally. There is an ingredient in success which goes beyond effort, even beyond talent–an element of luck, of knowing the right person, of being in the right place at the right time, of simple, gratuitous fate. “How come she got that part? My tryouts were better.” And the trouble was, it was often true. Every time a part was cast there would be general grumbling. I saw this myself as my training as an actor began. It might be an asset on the polo field, but Spencer knew that outside the limited world of sports, effort and results do not always go hand in hand. I think he was talking about my overly competitive spirit. “We’ve just lost a good polo player and gained a lousy actor.”
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |