“A celebrity is a person who works hard all of their life to become well known, and then wears dark glasses to avoid being recognized.” Fred Allen
By Gregory N. Joseph
THE GOOD NEWS at the 1970 annual Screen Actors Guild meeting at the storied Hollywood Palladium was that SAG president Charlton Heston was about to present the organization’s eighth annual Life Achievement Award to fellow movie star Gregory Peck.
I was there in the auditorium with what seemed like every recognizable face in Hollywood, green as grass, a newly minted SAG member and at that point a five-month resident of Hollywood, my bachelor apartment a stone’s throw away.
I sat as close to the stage as I could, in the lefthand section, right on the aisle — a spot that almost turned out to be as much curse as blessing (years later, Screen Actor Magazine marked an anniversary of the event with a huge, double-page photo — and there I was, as wide-eyed as Bambi, but twice as gullible. A few chairs away, seated in the same row, was former SAG president and “Laura” film-noir star Dana Andrews; I mean, I was in very good company).
But first, a little history about the Palladium to put things in perspective.
The legendary Art Deco building at 6215 Sunset Boulevard opened on Halloween night in 1940, thanks to the $1.6 million largesse of Los Angeles Times publisher Norman Chandler.
To say that the list of performers who appeared there over the years is varied and eclectic is an understatement in the extreme.
The Tommy Dorsey Orchestra featuring a boy singer named Frank Sinatra, not quite yet arrived, gave the inaugural performance there (Judy Garland and Bob Hope were in attendance, along with a crowd of 10,000).
Conceived as a venue for Big Bands, Collier’s magazine referred to the Palladium as “the biggest night club on earth,” covering nearly two acres and boasting six bars, where people could eat, drink and dance. Lana Turner enthused that she went there “four or five times a week.”
In the ensuing years, the Palladium was home to everything from the starchy “The Lawrence Welk Show” to the ribald “Richard Pryor: Live on the Sunset Strip,” with films such as “The Blues Brothers” and “Day of the Locust” sprinkled liberally throughout. It hosted political rallies, high school proms, rock ‘n roll acts— and awards shows like the one I was attending.
An aging grande dame a little worn around the edges, it still managed to retain its status as a ranking member of Hollywood culture that was mentioned in the same breath as such landmarks as the Brown Derby, the Earl Carroll Theatre and the Café Montmartre (the latter where, at its zenith, you might see Joan Crawford well before her “Mommie Dearest” days dancing on a tabletop or Rudolph Valentino having a bite to eat as his dinner companion squeezed her pet chihuahua).
The Palladium was two miles, a mere five minutes, from my little apartment just off Hollywood Boulevard (at 1769 North Orange Drive, if you’re wondering), which was a stone’s throw from yet another Hollywood landmark, Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.
I chose to walk to the SAG meeting, full of vim and vigor, heady in the belief that I had somehow arrived and stardom was, literally, just around the corner.
The afternoon of this momentous occasion in my life, attending the annual SAG gathering, began cheerily enough, with great promise, starring two of the era’s Oscar-winning silver-screen titans: SAG president Heston presented a delighted Peck with the life achievement award (I must admit this came as something of a shock: the last time I had seen them together was when they were convincingly knocking heads as adversaries in William Wyler’s big-screen epic Western “The Big Country” a decade earlier. If this makes me sound a bit naive, so be it, but I was amazed at how well they seemed to get along).
Then all hell broke loose.
The actors Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland, fresh off filming “Klute,” which would bring Fonda her first Academy Award, were at the height of their anti-everything cycle, and on this day they were attacking SAG for not being diversified enough. That came as an immense surprise to me, since the organization’s board members, seated onstage, seemed pretty darned diverse to me, featuring everyone from Native American Jay Silverheels, Tonto himself, to actresses like Kathleen Freeman and Kathleen Nolan of “Real McCoys” fame, the latter slated to become the first woman president of the body a few years later.
Ms. Fonda and Sutherland seemed to want to talk, and so they they did, via microphones that had been set up in the aisles so that members could question Heston and the board.
There were plenty of pressing issues.
A whopping 42% of the SAG membership was unemployed, and because of that the guild and IATSE (the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees) had signed a lower-budget contract designed to bring production back to Hollywood (the agreement was called the “Comeback Contract”).
Seated as I was right on the aisle, Ms. Fonda became my new best friend, at least geographically. No matter what anyone said or how well they said it or what facts they quoted, she had a ready answer and sped back to the microphone. And — almost — to me. (It occurred to me that I’d better have something to say if she sped too hard, missed the mic and landed in my lap; it could be the ultimate career changer.)
Finally, the dignified and reserved character actor John Randolph, just coming off a dynamic performance as the “old” version of Rock Hudson in the film “Seconds,” attempted to bring reason and decorum back to the session. Avuncular and extraordinarily well-spoken, appearing dignified in a cardigan sweater, he removed his glasses repeatedly and leaned in to the mic, moving his arms and hands in way that must have taken years onstage to perfect. (Alas, this was not to be Mr. Randolph’s worst experience at a gathering of actors; at the 1986 Oscar ceremonies telecast, his wife, actress Sarah Cunningham, would die of an asthma attack.)
It went on like that for a very long time. Aside from Mr. Peck receiving his award, something that seemed to please him greatly and drew an awful lot of applause, nothing seemed to get solved. Jane and Donald remained very upset.
As I walked back to my little apartment, I was dazed and a little frightened: What had I gotten into? I mean, was this what notoriety and stardom was like?
More than a half-century later, I’m still searching for the answer to that one. But I’ll hazard a guess and say I think it is.
