Celebrity Story: Author Ben Bryant with Alfred Hitchcock and Charles Bronson

Celebrity story

excerpt from Three Stages, Chapter 5: Back to the Biz: California & Arizona 1959–’62

“Late in 1961, I became involved with a Little Theatre group headed by an enthusiastic director, George Berkley. We did a number of “showcase” productions and one of the girls in the group had a boyfriend who was a casting director. I don’t remember his name (I think it was John something.) but I should because he was responsible for my getting the second best TV job I ever had. He worked at Revue Studio where the Alfred Hitchcock Show was produced.

“John liked me and my work, and in January (‘62) he called and asked who my agent was. He was impressed that it was Mitch Gertz and told me to stay by my phone. Soon Mitch called and gave me a date and time for an audition for the Hitchcock show and said, “Wear clothes that make you look fat.”

“The character I was up for was called “Fat Boy” and, although I wasn’t fat I was stocky. John had stacked the audition for me in that all the other candidates were thin. (One of them was Warren Oates who became one of Hollywood’s best-known character actors.) [I just realized that I misspelled his name in my book. I left out the E in Oates. Wherever you are, Warren, forgive me.] So I got the part, a good one: three days of work. The name of the episode was The Woman Who Wanted to Live and it starred Lola Albright and Charles Bronson.

“I played a guy driving a hot rod on a lonely road where Lola was fixing a flat. There were two other guys with me and we stopped and started hassling her. A wounded Charles Bronson got out of her car and told us to back off and leave the lady alone. I pulled a switchblade and began waving it at Bronson at which point he pulled a gun. In the rehearsal when he pulled the gun I dropped the knife and backed away. The director said. “No, no. Keep waving the knife.” I said, “Are you serious? He has a gun!?” The director said, “Fat Boy is not as smart as you are.”

The Author as "Fat Boy"

“I don’t remember much about Lola but Charlie was, and you may find this hard to believe, one of the funniest guys (not counting Robin Williams) I ever worked with. He was very friendly and loved to tell jokes. Mr. Hitchcock, who came to the set briefly, was very cool and standoffish.”

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By the time I did this shoot I had a lot more experience than when I worked my first film job with John Cassavetes. But compared to Charles Bronson I was still a neophyte. Real pros never give direction to their colleagues, even inexperienced ones. It’s simply not done. However, the best of them  – and that group included Charles Bronson – are able to coach in subtle ways. In our big scene (my only one) he used his eyes and artful head movement to clue me in. In this way I got more useful direction from him than I did from the director and no one but Charlie and me knew it was going on.

You can see the scene here.

Hitch – as he was known to his friends – was not fond of actors and although he was introduced to and shook hands with all of us, he showed the same stick-up-his-ass attitude to Charlie as he did to the rest of us. Lola Albright, however, got the big grin and a hug from the “great man”. Gee, I wonder why.

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