Wants Meaty Part : It’s a Dog’s Life, Rising Actor Finds

Even for a talented son of a bitch with wavy hair and brown eyes, Hollywood is one tough town.

They put him to work when he was a year old. They changed his name. When he finally got his big break out of TV commercials, he had to play second fiddle to a performer whose stature was, frankly, inferior to his own. He turned down one starring film role that would have ruined his “nice-guy” image.

And now, in one hectic weekend, he’s dragged from a TV appearance to a radio talk show, then to get his hair styled, and will spend today posing for photos with giggling fans, promoting a mineral water he doesn’t even drink.

His real ambition, of course, is to play the Broadway stage--as Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s cocker spaniel in “The Barretts of Wimpole Street.”

But here he was on Friday, showing his profile to a photographer at a Convention Center ski show--Moose, the St. Bernard, who never even saw snow until a couple of weeks ago, when a few flakes drifted past his kennel up in Acton.

Moose is an actor, a dog star, and a star’s business is to be seen. In truth, he is hard to miss, a lumbering 6-year-old who terrified new U.S. citizens as he ambled on pancake-sized paws into the Convention Center, where 6,600 immigrants were being sworn in.

For public relations purposes, the firm that hired him for this celebrity gig called him Bernard and slung around his neck a ceramic keg to remind the public of the brandy-filled casks carried by St. Bernards in the Alps.

Moose snubbed the mineral water, and conscious of Hollywood’s new “sober” image, passed up the brandy. And as for “Bernard,” it is a moniker he bore with grace, something stars have always had to put up with. Even Cary Grant was born Archibald Leach.

Discovered Young

Like Shirley Temple, Moose was discovered young. His personal agent, animal trainer Ray Berwick (who, like many Hollywood agents, owns his clients) says he saw the star quality when Moose was only 4 months old--that charm, that wonderful disposition, that quick ability to learn a part and, rarest of all in a St. Bernard, very little drooling.

Since then, there have been dog food commercials galore, in “action” roles like pulling kids in a wagon. And when he was only a year old, he got his big dramatic break in the Ronald Reagan-type role as the hero’s best friend in the TV series “Here’s Boomer.” (The mixed-mutt Boomer is a close friend and kennel-mate of Moose, but in all honesty, as a performer, just not of Moose’s breed.)

Then came roles in feature films, as the tag-along dog in the adventure-pics “Explorers” and “Gremlins”--always with his own portable dressing-room, the wooden one he takes along on all his shoots.

Wouldn’t Accept Role

But there was one role that Moose’s agents advised him to turn down--the baby-eating, berserk St. Bernard in “Cujo.” Moose’s public, they felt, simply wouldn’t accept him turning from nice guy to killer.

He doesn’t resent the “good-dog” type-casting, although he is between parts just now. This personal appearance bit began with sitting in front of a microphone at a morning radio show, and Moose is just not a morning dog, except when he’s due at the studio.

But by midday, in a far-ranging interview--as his personal handler Marylyn Corcoran toweled off his muzzle--he allowed as how he was sorry he has never been nominated for a Patsy, the animal equivalent of the Oscars, but there are so many really wonderful, wonderful performers out there who are so deserving.

“I have a feeling he will get one,” Berwick confided, out of Moose’s hearing. “We’re looking for something he can do that’s important.”