![]() Rich, dark, sassy, slangy and street-smart. We’d have had to hire a private detective to find out where the hell it was playing. It was just a short subject, something they filled in with when they couldn’t get Mickey Mouse. I don’t know if anybody else saw it, but we never did. Mom, of course, thought I was going to be a big movie star and she told everyone to watch for the picture. I saw a little bit of this epic one time at the studio, but that was all. I must have hit that hard painted pavement about fifty times before the man hollered “Cut.” The second morning when I showed up at the studio I was so sore I couldn’t even think about breaking my falls. And there was nothing to break my falls except the flesh on my bones. Each time I took a fall I landed on the hard old floor painted to look like sidewalk. He knocked me down about twenty times the first day of shooting. Opposite me there was a comedian who’ll kill me because I can’t remember his name. The rough part, of course, was that I had to play a chippie. It was a musical, with a little story to it, and it gave me a chance to sing a song - a real weird and pretty blues number. ![]() From that I got a real part in a short featuring Duke Ellington. He got me a part out there playing mob scenes in a picture with Paul Robeson. Not Hollywood, just Astoria, Long Island. ![]() With all this acting experience behind me, Shelton thought I was ready for a crack at the movies. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |