Horace Elmer Jenson left Nowhere Prairie, North Dakota for Hollywood, California in 1929. It has not been a good year. The day after the stock market crashed Horace had boarded a train with a one way ticket. He vowed he would rather sell apples on a movie screen then sell them on a street corner.
It was a cold day in October when the train left him at Union Station in Los Angeles. From there he walked the several miles to Hollywood. He ended up sleeping on the street for the next few weeks until he managed to rent a room in the boardinghouse off of Poverty Row.
He found work in his cowboy attire. In his case the cowboy attire came from the farm he had grown up on, had hated, and left as soon as he had earned enough money to get away. That had been at a rawboned fifteen. Horace had then spent the next fifty years of his life working as an extra.
If his face seems familiar that isn't too surprising. He was in thousands of movies. He was the cowboy, the man at the next table in the saloon, the face in the crowd. He was the businessman in a nondescript gray suit on the way to work along a city street. He was the forgettable member of the pirate crew. He was one of thousands who were the backdrop of humanity in movies that brought millions into the gilded palaces.
Remember him? Of course not? Think he looks familiar? Of course he does.
Horace had changed his name shortly after coming to Hollywood. He became Reginald "Reggie" Harroldson. It was a better name than Horace Jenson but not a "star" name. It was not a name attached to a face that would make him stand out in the crowds he became part of for half of a century.
The man who lived down the hall from him in the boardinghouse he lived in was another actor. Floyd Dortin was a tall, handsome man with sandy brown hair and friendly blue eyes. Floyd became Chandler Thomas. You remember him, don't you? He was the heartthrob who starred with the Latin sex goddess Lupe Montex in a series of low budget sultry musicals back in the mid-thirties. Chandler had nodded to Reggie in the hall once or twice and had then promptly forgotten him. Reggie had coffee and breakfasted at the Poverty Row Cafe while Chandler lunched at the Fedora. Their paths seldom crossed.
The night that Chandler Thomas moved out of the boarding house was when Reggie saw the limelight for the first time. The limelight was a lazy beam of enticement that seemed to linger on Chandler for just a moment and then it followed him as he made his exit. Fascinated, Reggie ran to the door and saw the limelight, small though it was, slither into the automobile that Chandler drove off in.
Reggie next saw the limelight when he was working on an epic musical. The young and bright faced Roxy Keen and her partner, Rory Cannon ( the former Thelma Stricker; the former Ronald Clackinski ), had astounded everyone with their grace and fast, fancy footwork. A couple of nice kids, they were no prima donnas. And they both stood in a bright limelight.
"Can you see it?" Reggie asked the others who stood near him. Everyone thought he was crazy. Well, almost everyone.
There was a gofer named Randolph Simons who had listened when Reggie mentioned the limelight. At first he hadn't thought anything of it. But Reggie had been on many films with him. Six months later Randolph was listening as Reggie saw another limelight. This time it was on a bit player with bright gold hair and a sultry pout. When Trixie Roshell's performance as a bubblegum snapping moll had stolen the film from the principles Randolph Simons took a long, hard look at Reggie Harroldson and the limelight he saw over and over.
The next film the two men worked on together found Reggie idly commenting that he saw a brilliant limelight over the head of a young actor who was the lead in a low budget romantic movie. Without a second thought, Randolph Simons quit his job as a fetch and carry gofer. In the next decade he became the most powerful agent in Hollywood. His first client had been the young actor, Chad Franklin, who had gone on to super stardom after Randolph Simons had spotted him on the set of a low budget romantic movie.
After fifty years in the Industry, Reggie retired. He still lived in the boarding house he had first moved into. Now he owned the property. He had bought it when the owner had sold it two decades earlier. Reggie had married another extra, a plain young woman upon whom the limelight had never shown. Judy Atkins was a wonderful cook and housekeeper. Their boardinghouse became a success through the various ups and downs of both Hollywood and the rest of the country. Perfectly content to share their lives with each other, they had decided to not share their rather ordinary existence with children or pets.
Boarders came and went. Over some of them were small, medium or large limelights. Reggie had learned it was better to not mention those limelights to others. Either they would not believe him or possibly laugh or they might think their landlord was half-mad. Or they might believe him which could end up worse. If he saw no limelight or only a tiny flicker of one the person he mentioned it to would often get angry and disbelieve him. If there was a large limelight it would often be accompanied by an even larger ego. No need to tell a person they would become successful when the person had already figured that out!
Although Judy and he never became stars or even lowly "bit" players they had an uneventful but contented life with each other. After she had passed away Reggie became lonely without her and sold the boardinghouse. In keeping with the tradition of his own experience, he sold it to a tenant who had lives there for several years. It later became the Long Tall Apartments.
Reggie moved to a small bungalow near Highland and Waring. He puttered around his garden, keeping mostly to himself. He did get a cat, a mangy stray that fattened up nicely once the lonely old man pampered it. He also got himself a small dog that he would take for short walks in the neighborhood.
After he moved into the bungalow Reggie would continue to see the limelight. He never admitted the truth to anyone. He had never told anyone, not even his wife, that he had lived his life in desolation and despair. For the limelight had never shown on HIM.
When he had first seen the limelight those many decades ago he had been thrilled. He had told others --- and no one cared. They had laughed at him. After awhile he no longer exclaimed in excitement when he saw a brilliant limelight over someone. Yes, he had noticed that those whom the limelight singled out, to some degree, went on to fame and fortune. But the limelight had never shined its light on him. He had begged, he had pleaded. He had prayed on his knees. But the limelight eluded him. It had always bathed others in its cool flame, its illuminating aura. But it had never shown on him.
He remembered having once seen it on a city street. He had been walking down a side street when he saw it and had chased it around the corner onto Sunset Boulevard. He had hoped that THIS TIME it might finally be his. If only he could catch it and make it his own! That had been in the 1960s. A young waifish blonde in a paisley print mini dress had walked gracefully past him. The limelight that he thought might finally be his had followed her. It gently glided onto her hair as if it were the caress of a butterfly that he had seen many times but which always eluded him.
So the limelight was for others. It was not for him. And he had wept with despair. His heart had been eaten up with despondency from the hope that had never been and never would find fulfillment. Never for him would the bright lights shine upon his name. STARRING REGGIE HARROLDSON would not happen. He had no star on Hollywood Boulevard. Nor would he ever see his name on one of the stars there. He was a forgotten man.
He had been an extra in thousands of films. He had managed to frugally save up enough money over the years to buy a house and to support a wife who was as obscure as himself. He now lived a quiet and lonesome retirement in which regret was a biting little mouse of resentment. WHY had the limelight never shown on him? Why had the limelight never singled him out? Had he been that unworthy of its attention?
In the 1990s he met an actress who had once been under the bright shine of the limelight in the 1940s. She turned his life around. Ginger Kendell --- you remember her, those of you who are older, don't you? Her long luxurious raven locks and her dark smoldering glance had been the poster over the bed of many an adolescent dreamer. Now she was a gray-haired, plump and still smoldering-eyed elderly lady. He had met her when their small dogs had befriended each other. She lived in a well-kept bungalow a street over from him. And her wisdom helped to heal the broken dreams of a bitter old man.
"The limelight isn't all that it seems." she told him. "I've had lovers and three husbands. And it was all because of the limelight. They never loved ME. They loved whom they perceived me to be. They were drawn like moths to its flame. I didn't have the kind of love you shared with your wife. I didn't have the quiet and peaceful existence the two of you found together. I envy you that."
There was a restlessness in Ginger. She sold her bungalow and moved away to a new house --- and a new man. But she left with Reggie a precious gift. It was a contentment which he hadn't known in his pursuit of the limelight. He now realized that while he had seen the limelight it hadn't been something that would have given him happiness. Like Ginger Kendell he might have found fame and fortune, had famous mates and lovers. But would he have looked twice at the wonderful wife who had stood beside him through all of those years of obscurity? He wouldn't have traded Judy for all the limelights in the world.
That evening, when he said his prayers, he thanked God for having given him a good life, a life that had been passed over by the limelight. After a few years more of retirement he died peacefully in his sleep.
There was a small obituary in the local Hollywood press. There was also a small mention of his life as an extra on the local evening news. And then something interesting happened. A young film student at UCLA was watching the news that night and was intrigued by Reggie's story. The student requested and was granted permission to make a documentary on the "unknown man" who was "every face" in decades of movies. The student completed the film and by the end of that college year it was winning awards as a documentary at film festivals. It began to play to sell-out crowds in small theaters across the country.
A year after his death the limelight founds its way to shine upon what Reggie Harroldson ( the former Horace Jenson ) had been: the "King of the Common Man," the "every face" in the movies. The limelight was a brilliant shimmer upon Reggie's simple gravestone that was beside that of his beloved wife Judy. A second limelight appeared and together the limelights seemed to joyfully dance, embracing like arms, one limelight seemed to put its "head" upon the "shoulder" of the other. The limelights then merged above the two graves.
Reggie's many fans and admirers came to visit his grave and leave flowers there for Judy and him. When the fans walked away from their graves the limelight would shine a little brighter and would follow them into the bright day of the California dream.
finis
1-1-04/revised 2-12-07
Hollywood
No comments:
Post a Comment