Like most people, I was scared to stand up in front of an audience and speak. I never did any acting in school. Strangely, though, whenever I was at a children’s show and they asked for volunteers, I was always eager to climb on stage and perform.
I overcame my fear of public speaking when I enrolled in the Dale Carnegie course. That’s the course that teaches you “How To Win Friends And Influence People”. I went through the course 9 times. First time was as a paying customer and the next seven times as a “Graduate Assistant”. For a change of pace and a bit of fun, I went through the 9th course in reverse. Unfortunately, taking the course backwards undid all my hard work as I learned “How To Lose Friends and Alienate People”. 😊
During my career in the Disability Insurance business I must have given over a hundred lectures. Naturally I injected my own peculiar sense of humour into these lectures and I got a lot of positive feedback which, of course, only encouraged me. I got to a point where I was ready for The Tonight Show.
In 1980 I was approached by B’nai Brith and asked if I would like to try out for a part in a new movie being shot in Toronto. The movie was to be called “Escape From Iran”. It’s the story of how Canadian Ambassador, Ken Taylor, helped a group of American diplomats escape from Iran during the Iranian Revolution. I was to play an Iranian street trader. The whole scene was to be shot in Kensington Market in downtown Toronto.
I got the part and on a cold morning in the winter, I showed up ready to go. I spent 6 hours on the set. My actual time on screen is less than 30 seconds and I didn’t have any lines. I think I got $60 for my role. It cost me $15 to park and $10 for lunch. Still, I had a story to tell my grandchildren. You can view my movie debut below. Don’t worry about the low volume, I don’t have a speaking part.
Some months later I got another call from B’nai Brith. They wanted to do a short play about anti-Semitism. It was a 20-minute piece about the need for racial tolerance. I agreed and the next thing I know we were doing rehearsals. There were 4 others in the cast. We put the sketch on in front of a B’nai Brith audience and it was extremely well received. From my point of view, I was glad it was over. It was a lot of work and I had 2 young children.
A few days after the sketch was performed, I was asked if I would come down to the Nevele Hotel, in the Catskills in upstate New York and perform the sketch again, but this time it would be in front of the International B’nai Brith congregation. B’nai Brith held their annual conventions at the Nevele every year and it was usually quite a turnout of Jewish dignitaries from all over North America. Oh jeez!
I didn’t want to perform in front of that big an audience. I also didn’t want to spend money to go down there. So I said, “Sure, I’ll do it, as long as you fly me down there”. I knew B’nai Brith would never spring for that. Or so I thought. A few days later I get a call. “It’s all arranged. We’ve rented a Beechcraft 6-seater plane and we’re flying you and the rest of the cast down for one night”.
We flew out of Toronto Island airport and landed a few hours later in Ellenville airport, a few miles from The Nevele.
I don’t remember if we had time for a rehearsal, but we went on stage that evening.
The sketch ended and there was little or no applause. Nothing like we had received in Toronto. As we left the stage I was very puzzled. Very puzzled until it was pointed out to me that I had blown my lines and skipped ahead by at least a paragraph. I had, in fact, skipped ahead and left out the whole point of the story. Embarrassing, to say the least.
From time to time I bump into some of the cast and we still laugh at the craziness.
The London Community Players
Hay Fever
In 1986 I joined the London Community Players. I had done about 80, 3-hour seminars in the past 2 years, introducing The Paul Revere Insurance disability products. As I said before, I felt ready for the Tonight Show, but I’d settle for a more local and attainable goal, amateur theatre.
The first play I tried out for was Hay Fever, by Noel Coward. Hay Fever is one of Noel Coward’s most durable comedies, continuing to delight audiences with its astute observations on family relationships and rivalries.
In 1986 the LCP was located in the Gallery Theatre on York Street. It barely sat 100 people, but it had a stage and I was on it.
Hay Fever tells the story of a busy weekend at a country house, where each member of the Bliss family has invited a guest to stay, without informing anyone else.
I read for the part of Richard Greatham, a house guest and a proper English diplomat. I got the part and 3 months of rehearsals began for the play which would run for 10 days.
There was one scene in the play where I was alone on stage. It was morning and I was helping myself to a breakfast of eggs and bacon etc. I took my breakfast to the table and was supposed to wait for the next character to arrive.
After 2 performances I decided to improvise and managed to stretch my time alone on stage for a few extra minutes. Each performance found me adding a little bit extra to my part.
The next actor to come on stage had no verbal cue as to when to enter and based her entry on time alone. Since I kept expanding the time, it required some patience and experience on her part.
My first improvisation was to examine the eating utensils and then clean them with my napkin. I managed to stretch out the scene
by examining the knife at arm’s length and then I would pretend to use the knife as a mirror and start sprucing myself up using the fork as a comb. By this time the giggling coming from the audience was turning into laughter.
The next actor had no idea why the audience was laughing and eventually took a chance and appeared on stage.
In another scene, I was on stage by myself. The next actor to come on was waiting for me to take out a cigarette from a silver cigarette case. The click of the case closing was the cue to come on. I had done this scene a few times in front of an audience. Quite routine, except that this time the prop person had forgotten to give me the cigarette case.
Now I have to ad lib and hope that the actor can figure it out. So, I said out loud to no one in particular, “I wish I had my cigarette case with me, I could really do with one now”. And out came the actor. Was I relieved. However it turns out that she came out because she felt I’d had enough time on stage by myself and she wanted to move things along.
After the run there was the usual cast party.
Aunt Edwina
AUNT EDWINA is a comedy by William Douglas-Home. The plot is that Colonel Edward Ryan, D.S.O., M.F.H., is a well-known figure in the Home Counties, especially on the hunting field, so that when, as the result of taking some pills intended for one of his horses, he changes his sex it is not only the local Hunt Committee which is upset by the turn of events. The disaster took place in New York and when the Colonel arrives home wearing skirts his children David and Rosemary are appalled.
I played Major Reggie Privett, an old friend and army colleague. The strange part is that my cousin had married and divorced a young man who went on to get a sex change operation in 1979. You can read that story at https://goo.gl/jMV6Rq or use the QR code.
One of the cast members was a professional actor. He played the butler. His job was to announce people. There’s a point in the play where I am waiting, off-stage, to enter and my cue is “Here is Major Privett”. I don’t think he got the line right more than a few times during the 10 performances. Invariably I was introduced as “Captain” or “Colonel”, but seldom as “Major”. Part of acting is not only learning your own lines, but also the lines of the people you’re on stage with. I was relatively new to acting, 44 years old with two kids and a busy day job. I had a hard time remembering my lines, let alone others. So, there I was, waiting in the wings for my cue and trying to decide if today’s line would be correct or a derivative.
One performance saw me hurriedly arriving on stage, partly because I had missed the cue and partly because I had some nasal congestion that I couldn’t get rid of.
So there I was, on stage, desperately wanting to blow my nose or sniff. I couldn’t do either and just stood there as if I had forgotten my lines. The audience was silent. There was quite an awkward moment as I managed to sniff and clear my sinuses and then get the words out. Finally, I got it together and the play continued.
It was a lot of fun and I had a great time, but that was my last time acting, on stage, that is. It was getting too difficult for me to remember lines and work full-time.
Trying Out for a Canada Trust training video.
A few years later I got a call from a casting company to try out for a part in Canada Trust’s new training video. The video was centred on developing employee morale. The premise was that the Belgian fictional detective, Hercule Poirot, was going to find out who had killed morale in the branch.
I arrived at the shoot and discovered that I would not be needed for the role intended for me. Oh well. C’est la vie.
As I was leaving, I was asked if I could do a Belgian accent. Belgian? Isn’t that just French with a Yiddish attitude? So I said, “sure, why not”.
You can see my try-out below.
The only accent I could conjure up, at such short notice, was something between Maurice Chevalier and Jackie Mason. I call it Herschel Poirot.
Recently, I asked my Belgian friend for an opinion of my accent. Here’s his “tongue-in-cheek” answer.
“Superb, is of course the first word that comes to mind. Belgium has two languages, depending on whether one is Walloon (French) or Flem (Flemish/dutch). You, of course, have managed to include both of those dialects along with several others – well done, well worth the $’s they paid you.”
The piece is called “Who Killed Morale?” More like “Who Killed Acting?” I was paid $600 so I bought a leather jacket to replace one that was stolen. I still have the jacket, but not the shape to wear it.
Now that I look at it again, I think I look more like an Indian detective.