Catching an Authentic Star

The moment to get a true look at a movie star may be shortly before he receives an award. Almost nothing is more revealing than listening to a star acknowledging stardom. Tonight, Jack Lemmon becomes the first of a Hollywood generation that came to prominence after World War II to win the American Film Institute’s Life Achievement Award.

Monday noonish was the moment to catch Lemmon in his Beverly Hills office--working on the acceptance speech, talking about the career, about his survival. Listening, you realize that almost nothing about stardom is accidental--even if you were an overnight star at 29, as Lemmon was, in George Cukor’s “It Should Happen to You.”

“The very reason we are sitting here talking,” Lemmon said, “is that I was able to deliver. But first the doors had to open. I had to get the part. Me, not somebody else.”

The actor elaborated: “I remember getting a little cocky after winning the Oscar for ‘Mister Roberts’ (1955). I remember walking down the street in New York with (actor) Myron McCormick, who was a father figure and a family friend of long standing. Myron had given me advice when I first came to New York to become an actor.

“Anyway, we were walking and I couldn’t stop talking about myself in ‘Mister Roberts.’ And Myron stopped me and said, ‘You know, I’ve been listening to you, just as an actor, and I’ve got to tell you something: There are six guys who could have done it as well. . . . But you got the part.’ And that’s it--I got the part. I want to get that in my speech Thursday (at the Beverly Hilton), the idea that doors can open. But then what? Luck comes in having whatever it takes to shape a career.”

Lemmon refuses to pinpoint why a career goes hot or cold: “But I will say this: When you’re conducting an overall career--be it in acting or golf . . . it’s a selfish process, if you do it correctly. You also must believe totally in what you are doing even if it is garbage.”

But what about luck? Even in his debut roles Lemmon was three for three--landing starring parts on Broadway, live TV and on screen. His Broadway lead in a 16-performance revival of “Room Service” earned him the attention of talent scout Max Arnow--which led to a screen test at Columbia, the picture with Cukor and a studio contract.

“But I wasn’t out of nowhere,” Lemmon added, meaning the 400 TV appearances in the five years after he graduated from Harvard. Appropriately it was his first TV job that Lemmon remembers as the pivot: “It was a $50 rip-off of ‘Charley’s Aunt’ called ‘The Arrival of Kitty,’ but I got the lead. (Casting director) Murray Holland read me for a day-and-a-half, which was a long time to read somebody when there are other shows going. But he read me and liked me.”

The 63-year-old Lemmon’s memory is very specific. For a moment he went into a grateful whisper: “There is a tremendous boost in playing a lead, especially in a first job. Because slips of confidence are built into an actor’s life. You go from thinking you will never work again to thinking you’re the greatest young actor in America.”

Lemmon learned to live with the roller coaster. “I think you do better work if you’re afraid,” he said simply. When he talks about fear, the trappings fall away and he turns into another Will-I-really-work-again? actor. “If you say to yourself, ‘I know how to do this,’ then the material begins to bend to you. And people want that to happen, they want that from you. Because it works.”

What works best for Lemmon is to keep perspective. “On ‘Save the Tiger,’ I started to crack up--crying jags driving to and from work, and so on. The character got to me. Then one day I realized what was happening, and I got back in control. There has to be a light in the back of your head that knows where the audience is. At no point should an actor lose control.”

Not even with an actress? Lemmon’s list of co-stars is surprising only in length and breadth--from Rita Hayworth, to Kim Novak, to Doris Day, and so on.

Lemmon spontaneously talked about some of the actresses.

Natalie Wood (“The Great Race”): “She was on one of the last TV shows I did, 1953 or ‘54, a mere baby. Later, during ‘The Great Race,’ I watched her and thought, ‘She’s not doing anything.’ Then I realized she was doing everything right. She truly understood movie acting.”

Shirley MacLaine (“The Apartment” and “Irma La Douce”): “It was like a third star, working with Shirley. The two of us had the kind of chemistry I have with (Walter) Matthau. I often think how much I want to work with her again. We only need the right property.”

Sandy Dennis (“The Out-Of-Towners”): “She had the discipline and timing to say a line like ‘Omigod!’ and make a scene work. If she batted an eyelash, she knew when to do it.”

Has Lemmon always known what to do when? Almost always he’s played contemporary men, and is very funny on the subject of period pieces. Harry Cohn, the late Columbia czar, screen-tested Lemmon and Rita Hayworth for “Joseph and His Brothers,” then scrapped the project.

Modern man is the quintessential Jack Lemmon role. “Yes, but I’m the one who decided it,” Lemmon responded. “I can only assume I understand modern characters better. That’s the attraction. . . . I could say I want to do Iago or Cyrano--but I can’t complain about parts I never had. Because I’ve had them all. Or opportunities missed. Because I had them all. And hopefully they’ll continue.”

Survival, Lemmon suggests, may be a matter of calmness. The leading lady in Lemmon’s first film was Judy Holliday, and from her Lemmon learned “the need for tranquility.”

“She understood timing so well she could use a stopwatch and match her moves every time. George Cukor liked long takes, and a lot of takes. Judy realized that it unsettled me to start a scene in the middle. Oddly enough, that’s never changed. It’s always made me crazy not to play scenes all the way through.”

Tonight Jack Lemmon plays it all the way through.