Jack Nicholson Interview - Part 3

by Peter Bogdanovich

from Suddeutsche Zeitung Magazin

You never stopped.  
And I just like fun - I’ve had a lot of fun. I didn’t know for most of my life that that was good too, that you could work and have fun. I thought you had to be grim. You don’t know. I mean, let’s be honest, I’ve always been a confident person in a certain way, within reason. But we don’t know what we can do. I didn’t learn much about filmmaking in the two years I worked there. I mainly did look at movie stars. Stuff sunk in, I knew about the things that related to my job, production things and all that.  
 
But you were there at MGM during the last few years of the old Studio Star System.  
I saw everybody working. I was on those sound stages a lot. And decisions they’d make - [studio head] Dory Schary wouldn’t let any television come near the MGM lot. He was the last of them - and that’s why Universal shot up. Cameramen had in their contracts - not that they couldn’t watch television - they couldn’t own a television set. And, of course, television wound up saving them. But, you know, I saw everybody. Monroe, Bogie, Hepburn, Brando, Spencer Tracy, everybody worked there in the years I was there - it was hog heaven for me.  
 
You were a big movie fan?  
Oh, huge. And a weird one, too. I laid out on the lawn one day to try and get a look at Lana Turner’s underpants.  
 
Did it work?  
Well, not quite underpants, she was getting in a wagon - I got some leg in there.  
 
Was that an interesting period for you?  
Oh, totally fascinating. Watching the pictures, hearing the stories old George Godfrey told to me on the tram, he knew every story in the history of MGM. Judy Garland, Mickey Rooney, scandals, every story there was on that lot.  
 
What was your actual job?  
I did a lot of things. I prepared the paper for the cartoonists and kept -  
 
You were in the cartoon department for the whole time you were at Metro?  
Yeah. In fact, I might still be there if they hadn’t closed the place up. Well, this story I have told a million times - how I got started as an actor: [Producer] Joe Pasternak was sort of wild - and I talked to him a lot - he did all those musicals there. One day, in the elevator, he said, “Did you ever think about being an actor, kid?” And I said, “No.” Of course I had, a little bit, but I said no. So I go back, and my boss [cartoonist] Bill Hannah calls me up at the office, he says, “Jack, did you talk to Joe Pasternak in the elevator?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “Did he ask you if you wanted to be an actor?” I said, “Yeah.” He said, “What did you tell him?” I said, I said no.’” He said, “Well, what the fuck do you want to be - an office boy all your fuckin’ life?” So they hooked up with the Talent Department and I read my first scene with them. This is how little I knew: when they said, Take this scene and we’ll have you read the scene,” I thought it was about reading. I took it home, threw it on the top of my bureau and didn’t even look at it for the next week and a half. I ran into the messenger room, when they told me what a reading was I grabbed Ilona - she was a messenger girl - we read the scene together.  
 
Amazing. And that’s how you started acting?  
Yeah. They sent me to the Players Ring Theater for seasoning. It was the only theater functioning in L.A. Other than road companies, just The Players Ring and the Players. That was another great experience.  
 
What did you do there?  
I’m back to where I started - I managed the theater. And went to classes. Joe Flynn, the actor (McHale’s Navy. and many other things), was teaching the class the first night I went. I sit there and he talks to me. He looks at me and he says, “Look, this is the end of this session, and I don’t know how much I can teach an actor anyway.” I said, “Huh?” He says, “I do the best I can. But I’m gonna tell you one thing, everybody that you run into in this business is gonna try and get you to take voice lessons and change your voice. Don’t do it. That’s all I got to say.” That’s the first thing I ever heard in an acting class! “Don’t do it.” And, of course, all movie stars are made by their voices.  
 
You mean like Bogart or Jimmy Stewart or Gable or Wayne...  
I took the first lesson, no voice lesson. And I believed him. It’s the first thing I heard, why not? He’s a known actor, I’m not.  
 
Smart piece of advice.  
Great to get it as the first and only thing. Where did this perception come from? I know I have an unusual voice - it has smoothed out a little over the years, but I didn’t know then. It’s something you don’t think of, really. But it is a fact. And you can’t grow it. It’s your voice.  
 
That was the first and only piece of advice you got in acting, period?  
That was it. Now, at that time - there was not much television in L.A. - so all the great character actors and people who weren’t movie stars or constantly employed in the movies, all wanted to work at these theaters. And they always auditioned for two plays - you know, one at each theater at the same time, so maybe not everybody, but a good slice of the working professional actors of Hollywood at that time would come down to these auditions. And I watched them read [audition], right? For three weeks. And I sat there and all I could think was, “None of these sonsabitches can read. I can’t be that bad.” I knew they were good actors, it wasn’t that I thought they were horrible. Because, you know, if you see Percy Shelton or whoever it may be, Robert Horton, Robert Vaughn - you know they’re good, but reading’s tough. And you know at that time I didn’t have any [method acting] experience so I’m expecting ‘em to give a performance. And I’m thinking, “Jesus Christ, I might have a shot in here.” So those were the first two things I learned.

Then how did you get a gig?  
Well, the MGM guys - my first job - they had Matinee Theater. here. And they needed so many actors because they did a 90-minute drama every day. You went to work 2:30 in the morning, did a dress rehearsal -  
 
Television?  
Yeah. Live television - Matinee Theater. It was just starting. They built that whole NBC complex out there over this particular show. And that’s where television got started. Things like Playhouse 90., they were all shot in New York. There was some here. You know, I love L.A., I’m deep with L.A., I’m so crazy about it and its history. Remember, I don’t even know anybody, Peter. I worked around the theater and I asked Judson Taylor about classes, and he said, “One of the best is Jeff Corey. He doesn’t take everybody.” He set up an interview. I knew my contemporaries at the Players Ring, and the office girls, but it is a mysterious business from the outside. What the hell is it all about? I got serious once I started studying with Jeff.  
 
When I got my first part at the theater, I had two lines in Tea and Sympathy.. One friend of mine who wanted to be an opera singer watched every night because I so over-prepared. Every single night I got a laugh with these two lines. And nobody ever really understood why, including me. I have to think I was so over-cranked, coming in with the line - “Who wants to go mountain-climbing in the rain?” They went hysterical on every night. I got used to it, but I think it was because I was so new and raw, and I came in carrying that 500 extra pounds of acting so when that line came out, the audience always laughed.  
 
Did that do something to you, getting the laugh?  
When you are an honest hick, you tend to be overly cool. You tend to pretend you’re not a hick - I never even stayed for a curtain call - I went home - I was working in the daytime, too, at MGM. Jeff recommended me for one of Roger’s pictures. The first time I’d had an outside reading for anything. And I went so crazy, I got that part easy - I think immediately. That’s it - I got the lead in a picture, my first read, The Cry Baby Killer. [1958].  
 
Roger [Corman] directed it?  
No. He just financed it. Kind of a hostage-teenage picture. I was so over the top at the reading, and screaming - they made fun of me - but I got this part. And I thought, “That’s it. Movie star. What’s so tough?” Well, the picture didn’t even come out for eighteen months. We won’t discuss how good or bad I was, we’ll let the chips fall where they may. Plus, by then they convinced me I was also weird-looking.  
 
Really?  
Well, one casting agent started off with this: “We don’t know what we could use you for, but if we need ya, we’ll need ya bad.” I kinda staggered out of there with my ‘50s crewcut, thinking I was a Dartmouth man.  
 
So what happened after that picture?  
Nothing. Needless to say I was not a movie-star, that’s for sure. In fact, weirdly, they had the world premiere, eighteen months later, across the street from the poolhall I hung out at in Inglewood when I first got there. My mother had to hit somebody with her purse who was heckling me on the screen - it was so humiliating.  
 
Your mother or your grandmother?  
My grandmother.  
 
She got pissed off.  
Well, there was talking in the audience. “Shut up!” I don’t know if she actually hit him with her purse, but she protected me. When I did Little Shop of Horrors . [1960], I knew it was a comedy.  
 
You did know.  
You couldn’t not know - the weird voice and all that. But, when we went to the premiere of that, when my scenes were on, the audience went insane. I’d never had much of a positive reaction from a Roger picture. I had a hot date with me - when they roared with laughter, I went bright crimson red, I was so embarrassed. I didn’t know how - you think you know, but you don’t know anything. I was like crimson red sitting in the audience because they were laughing. I’m sitting there thinking, “Oh, God, man...” I didn’t think it was horrible because somewhere I know it’s a comedy but I was still embarrassed.  
 
Didn’t Roger shoot that in two days?  
Yeah. That’s why he shot it. “I want to prove that I can make a feature-length movie - ” (in those days they did a half-hour television show in three days shooting) “ - in less time than they make a half-hour television show.” And it was wild. First of all, for the audition Roger didn’t want to open the gates at the Chaplin studio because then he’d have to pay. So [John] Shaner and I come down to Chaplin, we had to climb over the fence to get in.  
 
Come on.  
Oh, no. Absolutely. That’s only the beginning. We now go in to read the scenes for Roger in the dentist’s office. John is the dead body - his scenes are before - and then I come in. We read the scenes, Roger said, “Gee, I didn’t know you could do that - fine.” “All right, you guys, you’ve got these parts.” “Really?” “Yeah,” he said, “Now - “ and he took the script - John’s part was on six and a half pages and mine was on five and a half. He gave John six, tore that one page in half, gave John his six and a half, gave me the other half - this is the epitome of how tight Roger played it. In my scene, while he was pulling my teeth, we’re shooting, and Jonathan Haze bumps into the dental machine which Roger had borrowed from his dentist and the thing starts teetering. (You know, everything was one take. And there was a little more to the scene.) The thing is teetering - Roger leapt into the shot and never even said cut. He just grabbed that dental machine and said, “Next set.” Oh, they were desperate days.