A month or so later I was
walking into the star dressing room on the set of "Diane".
It was all good fun and I was, after all, starring in the
picture. Yet something was holding me up. I couldn't put
my finger on it, but I was still sadly lacking in the right
kind of confidence. Later, I found out what it was. I had
left M.G.M. to go to Warners. It was there I met a man who
changed my life. No other single individual has had such
a profound effect on me.
The Hollywood of those days
was a strange place. I was going to play the Duke of Wellington's
nephew in "The Miracle". They heard me to speak
and told me my voice was "a little too English".
"What!" I said. "Too English to play the
Duke of Wellington's nephew!". "Well", they
said. "We wanna soften your accent a little."
So I was sent along to see
Joe Graham, who was Warners premier dialogue coach. We chatted
about nothing in particular and suddently he said: "Do
you believe in God?" I thought this a strange question
from someone allegedly teaching me how to speak. But I said:
"Yes. I don't believe in a man with a long white beard
sitting on a celestian throne. But there must be a brain
or a thought that created all this. This is to me God."
Jo said. "That's good. Then let me know ask you this.
If you believe there is a Go do you believe we are all more
or less equal?" "Yes". "So why should
you feel so inferior?" I said: "What makes you
think that I think I am inferior?" he said: "Did
you go to college?" "No". "How old were
you when you left school? "Fifteen." "Do
you feel when you meet most other people that they had a
better education than you?" "Yes". "You
regret not going to college?" "Yes". "Do
you feel you often use the wrong word, or mispronounce a
word?" "Yes". "That" said Joe,
"is your problem. The whole trouble with your speech
is that you keep your jaw stuck together because you're
frightened of what might come out. So your subconscious
is stopping you opening your mouth properly. If you believe
in God and we are all the same - then you must be no better
or no worse than anyone else. You only sin is not doing
more with the things you have." Our conversation continued
on this line for two more sessions. Imperceptibly I found
my mouth was more relaxed; I started to speak more easily
more often. I even began to propound on sibjects I knew
nothing about. But it just didn't worry me any more. I no
longer worried what people might think of me. And that -
in spite of not taking myself seriously - was what all my
problems were about. Joe, as a speech coach, was really
a marvellous psychiatrist. It also gave me such a deep understanding
of what acting is about; what people are about; what the
human race is about. I feel the greatest thing God ever
gave me was my meeting with Joe Graham. He opened up roads
that I knew were there, but I never had the courage to go
through the gates. His logic was impeccable. His understanding
of human nature as near total as it is likely to be found
in any one human being. He was concerned with the valuable
side of people's lives more than withe their faults and
failings. Talking about Errol Flynn once, for instance,
he wasn't even interested in the hell-raising and all the
legendary aspects of the man. To him, Flynn's beauty and
strenght lay in the fact that he also happened to have a
poetic mind of considerable substance. He ignored his public
image and concentrated on the truth about Flynn. All Joe
could talk about what Flynn would bite his nails to the
quick out of sheer nervousness. That he was frightened of
horses, in spite of all those swashbuckling scenes we remember
him for. To him, Flynn was not a man who drank himself to
death. He was a man who didn't really like drinking. Joe
always saw he right side of people while appreciating their
wrong sides. It was probably that that gave him his compassion
and his strenght. I like to feel he passed both on to me.
Joe steered me through "The
Miracle". He taught me how to react to relationships
and by so doing somehow managed to put my entire life into
focus. Nearly all the things I was vague about, yet instinctively
felt were there, Joe helped me put into little compartments
of clarity and hope. He was the guru and I the student at
his feet. When Warners asked me to change from films to
television and play the lead in "The Alaskans"
serie I stipulated that Joe had to be there on the set.
Once someone said to him: "Joe, you were made for Hollywood."
And Joe said: "No, Hollywood was made for me."
It typifies the man's thinking. While I'm on the subject
of Hollywood. You must have read stories about Jack Warner,
head of Warner Brothers, and his hard-headed approach to
business. Behind it there was extraordinary philanthropy
and understanding. One fleeting story that springs to mind
was when the wife of one Jack's directors died. Jack rang
the man after the funeral and apologised for not being there.
"I won't even go to my own funeral" he said. "They
depress me more than I can stand. But it doesn't mean I
wasn't thinking about it."
He then told him to take
off - out of America if he wanted. "Just let the accounts
department know where you are and every week pick up your
cheque. And by take-off I don't mean go away for six weeks.
Take six months or a couple of years. When you're ready
come back".
These are the kind of stories
that you don't hear of movie moguls. The Hollywood transition
period was on full heat. Television, which had killed most
of the film industry, was now reviving the major film studios.
They had learnt that if you can't make pictures for people
to see in cinemas then you make pictures for people to see
at home. In retrospect it was clumsy that the film backers
didn't see this simple principle earlier than they did.
They thought televison would destroy their industry. Instead
it gave it a wholenew purpose and an even greater outlet
for its products.
They told me me I was a star.
Which was as much a load of bull as telling me I was an
officer when I was in the Army. I did not - dare not - take
it seriously. To this day I don't feel like a star. My idea
of one is Paul Newman or Burt Lancaster or Gregory Peck,
or one of my best friends - Mike Caine. But I only become
a star in my own eyes when my agent is arguing with the
producer over money. At the same time, I began appreciating
the enormous power of television and how it could make you
a new type of star - probably greater than the traditional
Hollywood greats. When one grasps the fact that a television
show can be seen every week by 500 million people, one sees
that that is stardom of a different, even higher, strata.
