Lying liars are all around us
The motto is enshrined in the classic western “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance”: When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.
That line is so pre-Google. In this age of Internet searches and Web detective work, legends have a hard time maintaining their cachet. Cases of creative biography suffer under the weight of tougher scrutiny.
Which brings us to the latest Hollywood debunking debate. Questions arose recently over whether new Writers Guild West President Charles Holland fibbed about having been both a college football player and a member of the Army’s Special Forces. Holland denied being untruthful, and the union’s board voted 10-6 to keep him on. Skeptics on the board predict the issue will linger; at the very least, the episode serves as a reminder of Hollywood’s long tradition of eyebrow-raising resumes. For example, in his new memoir, “Hollywood Animal,” Joe Eszterhas recounts his first screenplay deal. When answering Mike Medavoy’s questions about his writing abilities, Eszterhas told the United Artists studio chief that he had studied film in college and had written scripts before. Twenty years later, Medavoy told Eszterhas he knew the writer had been lying to his face, “but that wasn’t the question I was really asking you. The question I was asking you was if you really wanted to do this, and the lie told me that you did.” And thus a colossal career began with a whopper.
“There is a lore in our culture that bluffing your way into a great job or fabulous opportunity is kind of a quintessentially American thing to do,” says David Callahan, author of the new book “Cheating Culture: Why More Americans Are Doing Wrong to Get Ahead” (Harcourt). “That this is a country of risk takers with a lot of gumption.”
Take actor G.M. Anderson. He got his first acting job on “The Great Train Robbery,” in 1903. The director had asked if he could ride a horse. Anderson replied, “I was born on a saddle.” Then he tried to get on the horse from the wrong side. As the rest of the cast rode off into the shot, he was thrown to the ground and left behind. The director kindly gave him a walking role. From such bluff beginnings, “Bronco Billy” Anderson went on to become film’s first cowboy star, writing, directing and acting in hundreds of movies.
Author and film historian Anthony Slide tells of another early film cowboy, Tom Mix, who used to brag of his exploits fighting in the Boer Wars and the Boxer Rebellion. Totally untrue, Slide said; in fact, Mix had never left the U.S. during his military career.
Spurious pedigrees
Coming to Hollywood was almost synonymous with reinventing oneself. Actors coming from England often claimed to be stars of British cinema. Since nobody in the U.S. had seen their work, they could give themselves a pedigree they didn’t possess.
Sometimes lying was the most honorable way to deal with a dishonorable system. Because of the overt racism in the early days of film, black actors often passed themselves off as Polynesian or Native American to get roles. Jewish performers routinely changed their names to erase their ethnicity. Studios often participated in the story spinning, such as concocting an “acceptable” Tasmanian ancestry for Merle Oberon, who was in reality Anglo-Indian, born in Calcutta.
As the studio system grew, so did the publicity machine, churning out embellishments for everyone. Errol Flynn, who really was born in Tasmania, was cited by Warner’s publicity as hailing from Ireland. After he did some boxing in the film “The Perfect Specimen,” the studio touted him as an Olympic boxer.
The golden era of the tall tale lasted only as long as the studio system. By the ‘60s, realism -- or something closer to realism -- was in and false papers were out. Actors even began keeping their real names rather than changing them to fit the old mold.
Before the current Holland contretemps, the last time a resume caused such a squall in Hollywood was when Riley Weston was found to have lied about her age to land a job on the TV series “Felicity” in 1998. The 32-year-old actress said she was 18 and briefly capitalized on the industry’s worship of youth before she was unmasked.
Hollywood’s hardly unique
When it comes to resume padding, though, Hollywood could learn a few things from the academic and business communities. Callahan’s book claims that almost 50% of job applicants lie on their resume. He rattles off examples:
* Jeffrey Papows, while chairman of Lotus, said he was an orphan even though his parents were alive. He also claimed to have a black belt and a PhD.
* Joseph Ellis, history professor at Mount Holyoke College and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “Founding Brothers: The Revolutionary Generation,” lied to his classes about his years of military service in Vietnam. (His military career was spent at West Point.)
* Sandra Baldwin, president of the U.S. Olympic Committee, not only said she had a PhD in American literature “but also reeled off to a reporter the name of her nonexistent dissertation,” Callahan said. “This is a woman who was essentially a businessperson. Why would a businessperson feel it necessary to claim a PhD in literature?”
Why indeed. All had great careers; all told tales that had no bearing on them. Papows and Baldwin resigned. Ellis was suspended for one year. The news abounds with stories of journalists, coaches and CEOs getting caught in similar lies, and the price they paid for telling them.
Back here in the land of make-believe, the last bastion of the acceptable tall tale may be actors’ resumes -- at least until they have websites dedicated to them. Nobody in town expects to find an actor’s real age (or height or weight for that matter) on his or her resume. Head shots are so doctored, or so old, that directors are often stunned when actors come in and actually look like their photos.
The truth is, of course, appreciated. But if you are going to lie, at least be clever about it. Don’t claim to have been in a movie that was cast by the person interviewing you -- something that has actually happened to casting director Vickie Thomas numerous times. Thomas, whose credits include “The Last Samurai,” “Bringing Down the House” and “Ali,” tries to be kind about it. “I don’t really bust them” for the lie, she says, “but my letting them know I cast the movie is enough of a bust.”
Myrl Schreibman, producer and adjunct professor of production at UCLA School of Theater, Film & Television, recalls a lie he couldn’t let pass. When casting for a production at a summer Equity theater, he auditioned a man whose resume said he studied with the legendary actor and teacher Uta Hagen. When Schreibman, who had studied with Hagen years before, asked the actor about the experience, the man replied, “I thought he was a really terrific guy.”
Busted.
“I said, ‘Well, thank you, but he is a she,’ ” Schreibman recalls. He dismissed the actor immediately. (Added note: Ms. Hagen died Jan. 14, so for anyone about to add her to a resume, don’t say you’re working with her now.)
That unfortunate actor’s mistake was compounding the lie with stupidity. Do your research, people. Above all, tall tales are not for the foolish. They’re for the reckless.