It was a bit difficult to believe, but there it was: actor Forrest Tucker's name and a quote of his among a list of Quotation Greats including Winston Churchill, Mark Twain, Groucho Marx and William Faulkner who once upon a time had some fun with Ernest Hemingway suggesting: "He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary."
Tucker, whose busy film career included nearly 100 action features during the 40s and 50s, was quoted as once saying: "He loves nature in spite of what it did to him." My Google find led to an unsuccessful search for the circumstances under which the actor made the comment. The Tucker quote, to my way of thinking, conjured up nouns of assemblage as in a leap of leopards, a streak of tigers or a shiver of sharks. Perhaps the observation was something less punishing like a flutter of butterflies directed at someone like Percy
Dovetonsils, Ernie Kovac's memorable comic invention. Disappointed, I maneuvered my way back to Word and decided to write a piece about a guy who fell somewhere between a friend and and acquaintance.
It was in a tent one 1965 morning during Tulsa's usually oppressive summer heat that I first met Forrest Tucker. I had seen him in countless movies plus on the stage in The Music Man. Certainly, Robert Preston was the penultimate Harold Hill, but Tucker's performance was uncommonly good.
The tent where I met Tucker had been erected by Station KTUL for a promotion under the direction of the talented Barbara Roberts. A press conference involved F Troop, a comedy to debut that Fall. Along was Tucker's F Troop sidekick, Larry Storch, plus their wives. Both were named Marilyn and each had a terrific sense of humor. Tucker and his Marilyn, a dancer, had recently married; they had met as cast members of The Music Man. Most of my conversation was with the two Marilyns while the actors tended to duties involved in promoting the show that would run two years.
The temperature in the tent soon became unbearable and Tucker and Storch, interviews and promo spots completed, wanted out of there. I was invited to accompany them to Southern Hills Country Club, then and of recent years the scene of some outstanding PGA Pro Tour tournaments. We sat on the veranda overlooking the 18th green. Drinks were ordered and Tucker's golf stories began. I learned that he belonged to five different clubs including Wentworth in England where he said par is 74, that he had a very low handicap (2) and played most of his golf at L.A.'s Lakeside Country Club whose membership was largely from show business.
Not all actors have commanding voices--particularly those whose efforts have been confined to TV. Tucker, on the other hand, first did burlesque eventually gaining considerable legitimate state experience. A very large blond fellow, he had a booming voice. In terms of sheer resonance, he was a challenge to James Earl Jones. Further, his physicality was such that it was much bandied about in film circles that Tucker would win Shower Champion honors at any athletic club.
With the golf stories completed and lunch ordered around 1:30 p.m., Tucker then launched into a series of observations about sex in the Orient. His voice roared providing minute details about explicit methods of achieving orgasm through the subtle use of bamboo splints upon which was lowered from the ceiling a cage containing a lady of the evening in a welcoming position.
Looking about, I could see that Tucker had caught not only our rapt attention but, also, those of nearby elderly ladies. They were inching forward in their chairs so that not a nuance of Tucker's vivid story-telling could be missed. By the time Tucker finished, the women had moved a good five feet from their tables.
The following January, I ran into the actor at Lakeside Country Club where I was the guest of Lindsey McGoffin, then TV Guide's Southern California printer. I saw Tucker on a back nine fairway running parallel to the hole I was playing. In his foursome was Gordon MacRae, his golf skills equal to those of Tucker. When it came to handicaps, Gordie had two--the other being liquor. As Tucker approached his drive, we saw each other and exchanged greetings. "How you doing, Tuck?" I shouted to him. "Hey, Bob. I'm doin' fine but Gordie's got a problem. He ran out of booze on the 11th hole and ever since he's been drinkin' the ball wash."
The country club scene in Los Angeles was like no other in those days and I suspect little has changed other than the price of membership. Actors, with one notable exception, could not belong to the Los Angeles Country Club--a bastion of old money accompanied by a plenitude of snobbery. The only actor to break the barrier was Randolph Scott who played in a lot of westerns. Scott found the idea of membership in the L.A. Country Club so enthralling that he signed a club affidavit that made it clear it accepted "no Jews, no Catholics and no actors." His reaction was to suggest that "if you've seen any of my pictures, you'll realize I'm no actor." He promised, Scott's honor, to never appear in another film and remains the only actor to make the grade. Asked if he would ever consider a membership in the LACC, Groucho Marx got off his most memorable line: "Why would I want to join a club that would have me as a member?"
Scott made his last film, Ride the High Country in 1962. Co-starring Joel McCrea and directed by Sam Peckinpah, it is probably his best picture. Oddly enough, it also was McCrea's last. Among Scott's many films, three were made with Forrest Tucker.
Film director Andrew V. McLaglen, a San Juan Island friend when I lived there, told me 30 years later about directing Tucker in Chism, a 1970 movie staring John Wayne. McLaglen cast Tucker as the bad guy, an interesting decision since he had been playing heroes almost exclusively for more than 20 years. McLaglen, as second director of Sands of Iwo Jima, also was involved in Tucker's first transformation. Prior to the 1949 World War II film starring John Wayne, Tucker was cast as a bully or outlaw since The Westerner, his debut picture in 1940.
My favorite Tucker role is in Auntie Mame, that marvelous episodic frolic with Tucker as Beauregard Jackson Pickett Burnside. While the film is dominated by Rosalaind Russell's eccentric free thinker, the story line acquires an abrupt letdown when Tucker's character, married to Russell's, is killed in a mountain climbing accident. Playing second banana to a woman who feels that "life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death" is not easy. Tucker's character, however, is so ingratiating that his unusual demise (falling off the Matterhorn) casts a decided pall upon the artfully-created merriment. It's as sudden a shift in film mood as you will find in a comedy.
I saw Tucker a fair amount at Lakeside in the grill room where a lot of celebs (Walter Brennan and Gene Autry among them) ate and drank. I recall two or three telephone booths along one wall of the room. One day, with my back to the phones, I overheard someone explaining to "Mary" that he would be late getting home. An important meeting had come up unexpectedly and so and so on. Just about the time I had decided that the guy had me beaten in the Glib Sweepstakies Department and that maybe I should take lessons from him about phony calls home, the guy hung up and crossed the room. It was the remarkably well-preserved Charles "Buddy" Rogers who starred in Wings, the first Academy Award winner in 1927. The "Mary" he was speaking to was wife Mary Pickford. I don't know how many phone calls like that he made, but he sure lived a long time--more than 30 years beyond that day.
Lakeside club rules decreed the posting of members' unpaid bills. I recall seeing a very old (and quite small) one of actor Johnny (Tarzan) Weismuller. It seemed a cruel way to treat a guy with a good reputation who had brought a great deal of acclaim to the club.
If memory serves, it was that "Buddy" Rogers day at Lakeside that Tucker took me aside and asked if I'd like to join the club. He would sponsor me. A membership there cost almost as much as I made in a year working for TV Guide. Besides, owner Walter Annenberg had a decidedly dim view of country clubs and the chances of my employer picking up my golf tabs non-existent. "Sunnylands," the Annenerg estate in Palm Springs, had just been improved by a nine-hole course; the owner had three tees placed on each hole and he continued to refer to it as a 27-hole course until his death in 2002. His creation was the result of being challenged by the general manager of a nearby country club (or so the story went) who insisted Annenberg had been a member's guest more than the maximum number of times that year. The confrontation made things unpleasant for both the member and TV Guide's owner. Furious, Annenerg built his own course.
My Lakeside host, Lindsey McGoffin, knowing of Annenberg's attitude toward golfing employees, also knew I simply couldn't afford to pay the full freight. It was very nice of Tucker to take an interest in me.
The last time I saw the actor was in 1975 when I was working in public television at Chicago's WTTW. It was Springtime, the Channel 11 Auction was on, and my responsibilities included the creation of auctioneer teams. Tucker was in town doing a reprise of The Music Man (a show he performed 2,008 times) and I recall picking him up at the Ambassador East Hotel in my Vega whose shortcomings cannot possibly be minimized. Among other things, it was not designed for Harold Hill's bulk. Tuck managed to squeeze in and out of it and soon we were approaching the station's front door.
Tucker at that time was one of the most recognizable of working actors and, as if to set him further apart over the years from other blond and brawny types including Sonny Tufts, Alan Hale, Jr. and Brian Keith, he took to wearing a red carnation boutonniere at public appearances. It was his trademark and as associated with him as Hugh Hefner and a pipe or Michael Jackson and a glove although Jackson's disappearing nose was certainly becoming another.
While volunteers were signing in and receiving hand-lettered names, Tuck and I did an end run only to be pursued by a woman who worked at the station and whose name I have fortunately forgotten over the years. "Oh, you," she said directing her remark at Tucker. "You have to have a name badge."
Tuck, ever the gentleman and a bit surprised she didn't recognize him, offered a genial "that's mighty kind of you" in that down-home-in-Indiana voice he had developed since his birth in Plainfield. "I think folks will know who I am."
That wasn't enough for her. Onward she plowed waving Tuck's badge as we fled down the corridor leading to the auction. "You must have a badge. Everyone has a badge. We just can't have people here without a badge," she continued. Tucker did an outstanding job selling the kind of stuff available at what turned out to be the last year of the auction. General Manager Bill McCarter ended the event in spite of the money it raised. Not only was the money big but McCarter never understood the unique connection between the auction and the army of volunteers it brought into play.
Booze and cigarettes finally caught up with Tuck. He collapsed at ceremonies involving the placing of his star on a Hollywood Boulevard sidewalk. He died shortly after of lung cancer in 1986. He was 67 and his last years were not pleasant.
While largely an action film actor, Forrest Tucker's surprisingly good song and dance abilities can be found on You Tube.
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