Hollywood or bust??

Driving the Nova in the Mojave Desert

Close resemblance of the exterior

When I was four years old - and nine months, I started school. It seemed incredible to me that I would have to go somewhere every day for the rest of my life – infants school, junior school, senior school and then work.

On that day, or days not long afterwards, I found something very important to me, that I was Irish. All the other kids spoke with English dialects and I had a Dublin brogue - if it is a brogue at that time of life.

I didn't want to go to school at all, never did for the rest of my time there, and when I was dropped off at Clifton Road Junior and Infants School, I wouldn't go in; as soon as the mammy dropped me off I followed her back home; eventually a teacher – Miss Jones – picked me up and carried me in – me kicking and screaming - and this would happen for a few days. 

Eventually someone else would take me to school. As I intimated, I never did like school, even though I got on very well with the other kids, the class clowns, which I eventually became, making the other children laugh at my strange accent – but not as strange as theirs.

One of the days, somewhere along the line, my accent changed but I would revert to it in the evenings when I got home and, it wasn't for a very long time that I gave in to the English all together.

The pronunciation of the word 'walk' and 'work' would stay with me till I purposely changed it to the English way.

Three times a year we would go back to Dublin and I would speak with a Dublin accent almost as soon as we arrived but back to the English as soon as I got back to school.

I remember one day I was talking to a pal and I didn't realise I was using a Dublin accent when he ran away and shouted 'he's talking Irish' and I got back to the local way of talking.

There was another little complication, as my other granny and grandad moved across to Manchester, together with seven of their children; my mother was the eldest and the eighth who stayed in Dublin. So we would visit Manchester quite often, and when my brother was born (in Manchester) I stayed for a while up there with my granny and that accent had an influence on me too.

We lived in an inner city neighbourhood called Balsall Heath; it was bordered by Moseley and Sparkbrook, an immigrant part of Birmingham; Irish immigrants and West Indians. 

I loved the way the Jamaican men walked about in their powder blue double breasted suits with a kind of balloon at the knee down to about fourteen inches around the ankle – so easy, so relaxed as they glided along.

They would wear those suits on Sundays. All the rest of the people, that I knew, were Irish as they were friends of my folks and we had an Irish doctor.

The suits the West Indians wore were also worn by Clark Kent and would have the same top button missing on the double breasted jacket and that, even these days, is what I draw when I doodle. The square shoulders, the shape of the lapels and the missing button. Then I would add a head and the legs would disappear to a point.

I told my brothers that I was Superman and hid my cloak under the bed. I'm not sure of this is true, but I can't deny running up the garden trying to fly – or it may be a dream.

We lived in a house – no bigger than a cottage – which had a bay window and I would climb on to the top of the window, with my cloak, or some other disguise, and scare my brother who would be in bed.

One of the characters was a Mister Cruikshank and for this I would wear a top hat and a beard.

I was obsessed with America and when I left school at the age of fifteen I told my mother that would be going to America at the age of 24. I would save £1 a week for nine years and go.

My dad was a barber in Dublin, and so was his brother, but when he came to England he didn't do it any more. He said he didn't like it, he didn't like breathing the smell of hair and whiskers so he got a job on the railway – that's why we went to Dublin three times a year on our free passes.

Of course he would cut our hair up to the age of fifteen but when I wanted it longer – he would always give short back and sides – I went to another barber and that barber was an Irishman, of course, and he told me that being a barber in America was a well paid job, so as soon as I left school, I went to every barbers in the area to see if I could get a job as an apprentice;

Not to be.

My dad did well at the railway and by the time I was fifteen he was a boss at Lawley Street Goods Depot. My mother worked for a manufacturing company in the city centre and ended up as a company director there.

But I didn't put that pound a week away for my trip to America (I hate people calling it The States by the way) and a new way if life.

I learned funny things when I actually did go to America, I went there, ostensibly, to act as I was an actor in the UK.

I liked the American Style of acting and their commitment and I learned that all actors are encouraged to carry on studying and this I did.

I played roles that I never would be considered for in London – one day someone said he would like me to play in The Dresser which is a famous play about an old actor and his dresser - very good, very funny, but he didn't want me to play the dresser, he wanted me to play SIR. Not a chance in a million years in London and I also played a work shop production of Richard III playing him - limp and all.

One of the first TV roles I went for was to play Isaac Newton in an episode of one of the Star Treks – again I would probably play the cleaner in his lab in London; it was refreshing!

But the big thing hit me, the realization I mentioned earlier – I did a few films, won an award in the theatre, did voice overs and I realised that I had reached my goal. 

Other 'British/Irish actors were reaching for the prize, networking every time they had an opportunity and giving themselves five years or even two and then they were heading back. I didn't really want that – I realised it was America that I was after. 

I loved living there with the tales, the myths of the place, how parochial Los Angels was – the hamburger joints, the hot dog stands, the place itself with its art deco and fifties style architecture, the pictures of James Dean and Marilyn Monroe all over the place, Chili Jons in The Valley the company town -  the company being the movie business.

When I drove around in my old battered green 1973 Chevey Nova, I would head for Hollywood and Vine, instead of the fastest way home and drive along Fairfax to Fountain just to take in the buildings.

I had made it.

 

La La Land.

 

Well there we are: La La Land; my landlady, when I first moved to America said, in New York they call this place La La Land, and it was used in a derogatory way – taking the piss, as they say over here or what do you mean? when that phrase is used in La La Land or, Los Angeles. I have no idea how you would convey a meaning to it to people outside that vernacular; even taking the piss has another way of being said as taking the Mickey and sometimes even extracting the Michael.

My pal, after I told him what it meant used it on an occasion and said giving the piss – no.

I wrote about the movie, La La Land, on Facebook and, it seems, a lot of people liked it too.

It reminded me of all the great and good things about the place The Formosa (a restaurant on Santa Monica Blvd) Pink's (a hot dog stand on Le Brea), Angels Flight – there's a photo (above) I took of my daughter getting off Angels Flight some time ago.

There was actually a movie called Angels Flight which, I reckon, was in the forties. Black and white and I think a crime thriller.

It was a little rail car which travelled about forty or fifty feet to take the passengers down from one level to the other in Down Town LA.

But back to the movie La La Land, and it's a movie I have seen a number of times and still get a thrill out of all of it.

Some of the nasty stuff, I remember, like casting directors stopping you half way through an audition with a loud– thank you!!

Or even asking you to learn a long extract from a play and then when you turn up, all ready, word perfect and summoning up courage to go in and bare your soul to the soulless creature, they welcome you with 'just the closing two lines please.'

Now did I make a mistake here – I was called to go for an audition (in London they sometimes call them meetings!! they're auditions) for a role in a TV series. 

At the time I was with an agent I didn't like. He replaced one I did like who got me a part in an Indian movie, and his replacement was a shit bag. They don't like you calling them (the agents) in the morning as they are supposed to be busy putting their clients up for roles in movies and TV.

That agent said he didn't like calls before three and one day I called him at 2.55 and he tore me off a strip.

One day he called about this particular audition and I knew the series and he told me it was for the role of a doctor so wear a suit – which I did.

The temperature was in the 80s when I showed up and I was directed to the casting director's office.

I went in and I was shown to a seat by a girl who was filing papers in to the filing cabinet. I knew this wasn't the casting director and, as it turned out, wasn't even her assistant.

After the filing, she gave me a script and said 'ah you are our doctor – on page seventeen (or whatever) please.'

So I turned to page seventeen and looked for the doctor – one word ME.

And the line before from somebody else – Is there a doctor in the house?

Well I felt a little humiliated.

I thought, would they be thinking I was above myself if I walked out; would I get the who does he think he is, if I walked out; would I be able to inject something into it, have a chance as to which way I would play it; I didn't know. Maybe play the character with a limp – grow a beard?

She came to me and said 'are you ready?' and I said 'thank you for calling me in but I don't think it's up my street.'

'What?' she said.

'I don't think it's for me.' and I, very gently, handed the script back .

As I went down the stairs I felt like the guy who jumped off San Francisco suspension bridge and half way down changed his mind.

I called the agent and told him I'd turned it down and he said 'whaaaaat?'

It was at that moment I knew I'd done the right thing and it's what the girl in LA LA Land should have done each time she was insulted.

Of course the boss of the agent called me later. She was a woman of around 60 who had died her hair six months previously and it was white at the roots and black elsewhere.

She wanted to know who I thought I was etc and told me 'we have a saying here – there are no small parts just small actors . .' I said that's not here it's Stanislavsky (It might be)'

So I quit that agent and she said 'what am I going to do with your tapes' and I said 'put them in the bin.'

'In the what . . the . .?'

I said 'the trash.'

I never regretted it but maybe I was a bit too big for my boots; who cares?