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Nice Work if You Can Get It
by Dave Draper
Hollywood isn’t just around the corner. It’s a convoluted place where “stars” are born and celebrities of film and television, rock n’ roll work, congregate, celebrate, live n’ play. Hollywood is famous and infamous, a stretch of boulevards that sparkle at night and attract the weirdest creatures known to man. It is alluring hillsides, scrappy and steep upon which stilted houses perch and shaded hideaways snuggle. Privacy, secrecy, mystery and the unknown reside as an odd family in need of no one but each other.
“Good evening ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls and you muscle worshipers. Welcome to David the Gladiator. Tonight’s presentation?…” The words roll off my tongue as if I were again before the camera on Saturday night in 1963. “Tonight’s presentation stars Reg Park, Steve Reeves and Brad Harris in…”
I had seen half a dozen movies and watched less than fifty fidgety hours of TV before I left the swampy shores of Secaucus, New Jersey, for the emerald and gold of Santa Monica, California. I was clueless, penniless, green as unpicked apples and dumb. I was also quiet and in my silence people thought I was, perhaps, cool. Wrong, but it got me through the first months during which time I grew wider and like a chameleon took on the colors of my surroundings.
I discovered something soon after my Muscle Beach arrival: acceptance and indoctrination. Nobody worked. Wes, the lovable gym keeper, responsibly delivered mail for the postal service. Mighty Merle was a manager at Sears and Ronnie “Lead-us” taught geometry at Venice High. The rest of the guys were dutiful members of the Screen Extras Guild. Their chosen profession required that they call the SEG hotline late each morning to inquire of possible “extra work” for the following day. Extra work constituted the presence of any background person needed to complete a scene being filmed for either motion picture or television. You know the roll?—?the soldier on the battlefield, the audience at the opera or the man and lady chatting on the street corner. If work prevails, they spend the day on the set playing cards and gabbing until their services are needed. This activity provided a neat day’s pay and life was good. On an outstanding day you picked up a bit part, which calls for some action or speaking. “When the Captain arrives on the scene, get out of the police car and hand him the gun. Say to him, ‘I found it in the bushes, Sir.’?” Lights, camera, action. Heightened the fun and the wage considerably.
Bad days meant no work and you filed for unemployment and hung?out at the beach and lifted weights. Some guys hung out the whole summer as filming typically slowed to a crawl. Nice work if you can get it.
These guys and gals had a trim network going and when work was coming up in the future they were tuned in. The prosperous seasons were a gift from heaven; an ongoing extra part on a TV series that ran for many seasons was diamond-studded and came only to the honored, privileged and blessed. Everybody I knew was a soldier on the ’60s favorite, Combat. I think Zabo was a chief, my training partner was a spy and a few big blond dudes were enemy officers. I thought they had substantial occupations, Hollywood and all, and hoped I’d visit the place, and Disneyland, too, one day. Can’t do everything at once. I gotta get huge. I gotta get a car.
Six months in sunny California and New Jersey faded to gray. One of my most-prized possessions is my East Coast history. You don’t know the West unless you know the East. If you haven’t spent time in New York City, you’re simply guessing about the rest of the world. Who said that?
Anyway, one ordinary day word circulated through the gyms that the popular Los Angeles television station KHJ on Melrose in Hollywood was looking for a character to play the host of their upcoming Saturday prime-time evening show. The producers purchased a year’s supply of male-hero films from the past?—?Victor Mature, Errol Flynn, Steve Reeves, those guys?—?and needed someone to introduce the flicks and visit with the audience at breaks throughout the presentation.
What ensued was a common Hollywood peculiarity, a cattle call, where everyone who in any way resembled the sought-after player shows up in flipflops and jeans carrying lunch in a paper bag. One by one you’re sorted out by an assistant and his assistant until only a handful are surviving. I couldn’t resist joining in the action.
Vince Gironda was sitting on a curb in front of the studio drinking a cup of coffee. He was called before the camera for a screen test while I milled about the remaining short list like a stray dog. Is that Reg Lewis over there with Ray Rutledge and Dick Sweet, my training partner? My name was announced and I was ushered onto a sound stage, placed before a marker and asked to read a handheld teleprompter that said, “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, and you muscle worshippers. Welcome to The Gladiator. Tonight men with swords and shields will capture your hearts.”
It must have been my New Joisey accent. You ever hear a frightened bodybuilder from Secaucus pronounce “girls” or “worshippers”? They drop the R’s and kick ’em around da flaw. I got the part and they called the show David The Gladiator. Highest Saturday night ratings. I got me a car.
