Life of a Blue Collar Actor (eBook)

Jordan Rhodes (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2021 | 1. Auflage
432 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
978-1-6678-1971-6 (ISBN)

Infos

In The Life of a Blue Collar Actor we follow Jordan through his early years in New York going on auditions with Dustin Hoffman and Joe Don Baker of 'Walking Tall' fame. His early television appearances with E.G. Marshall and William Shatner. Working with guest stars, Jill St. John and Dyan Cannon, plus his first film with Sal Mineo and Juliet Prowse, and his early theatre performances before moving on to Hollywood. Once in Hollywood he spent over twenty five years working on film and television series as a co-star or guest star, appearing in long running hit series, and doing recurring roles on hit series like Streets of San Francisco and Matlock. We'll discover behind-the-scenes stories on many of the block buster films and legendary Movies-of-the-Week he worked on with some of the biggest names in the film and television world, like John Wayne, Gregory Peck, Charles Bronson, Gene Hackman, Robert Wagner, Jodie Foster, Dennis Hopper, Karl Malden, and Linda Cristal, to mention a few. We'll also learn of his friendships with Sean Penn, Robert Wagner and Chuck Connors. It's all detailed here in The Life of a Blue Collar Actor.

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The Life of a Blue Collar Actor details the life of a young man that became a working actor from a tobacco farm in North Carolina ,and literally went from Tobacco Road to Buckingham Palace by way of the New York Theatre and Hollywood Films.

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Chapter One

The Early Years

According to my mom and early records from “old” Rex Hospital in Raleigh, North Carolina, I was born on a Sunday morning June 11 at 1:57 a.m.

I learned later from people into astronomy that my sun sign was Gemini, the twins, my rising sign was Aries, and my moon was in Leo. I still don’t know what all that means, but a very famous astrological reader, George Darious (Elizabeth Taylor used to go see him), told me that Aries and Leo saved my life.

I was the son of Garland Julian and Edith Mae. Now Mae was not my mother’s “given” middle name - she never liked her given middle name, so she changed it to Mae. Since I believe anyone should have the right to change their name, I shall respect her wishes. After all, what is truly in a name? “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet,” etc. I doubt that Marion Morrison would have struck the fear in all those bad guys in the movies that the name John Wayne did. Big John certainly carries more weight than Big Marion.

I never cared for my given name, so all through school I was known as C.J. Even my father, to quote Johnny Cash from the song, “A Boy Named Sue”, “who gave me that awful name,” hardly ever called me anything but “Bo” in my early years, and later he took to calling me Kim, which he said was an Indian name of affection. So, I chose to use the family name, Jordan, which has become quite a popular name these days.

My life growing up in North Carolina wasn’t much different than most of my cousins with the exception that they lived on farms and we were “city dwellers”. We were poor but I didn’t really know it. All of my cousins that lived in the country seemed to be in the same condition that we were. Food on the table, a roof over your head, a comfortable bed to sleep in, and clean clothes to wear. I didn’t discover that we didn’t have any money until I got to Carr Junior High, and later Durham High School in the city of Durham, a more cosmopolitan city than I was used to. My peers wore Bass Weejun loafers, shirts with the little alligator or polo player on the upper left breast area while all my shirt had was a pocket. For pants, they wore the khaki cotton slacks with the little buckle in the back (which I never understood what the function was) or Levi Jeans, and they had the all-white low cut tennis shoes for gym. Now those tennis shoes I envied. My tennis shoes (or “sneakers” as they are called today) were the black and white high tops from J.C. Penney, and my shoes were lace-up jobs that came from Thom McCann. I got a new pair at the beginning of the school year, and that was usually because I had outgrown the old ones.

My so-called slacks were blue jeans from Sears and Roebucks. They were called “Roebucks”. I thought they were pretty neat. They had a raised flap on the front pockets that made it easy to get your hand in even if you were sitting down. I would never have had the nerve to ask for a pair of Levis. I thought I was lucky to have the Roebucks. After all, they weren’t overalls, which is what most of my male cousins that lived on the farm wore.

Now I’ve referred to my peer group, but I don’t want to leave out the “beautiful people”. Of course they wore all those fashion duds I’ve described, but they also lived in the big houses, which their parents actually owned. And some, like Nello L. Teer, Jr. (he was really the Third, but they called him Junior), were given a car on their sixteenth birthday. Of course, Nello, Jr., was treated like shit by his father, Nello, Sr., in front of the school crowd, so I don’t know if the tradeoff was worth it. He did date the prettiest girl in school, Janet Couch. Her father owned the local furniture stores. I discovered later that Nello, Jr., and Janet got married. Of course Junior took over the family business (which, oddly enough, my second stepfather went to work for).

We moved a lot. My dad, in addition to being quite a character, was also something of a vagabond. Growing up, one of my grade schools was in Roxboro, North Carolina, where my dad and mom had a small business, Jordan’s Bar-B-Que. Dad cooked pork on the pit, real North Carolina Bar-B-Que. Mom worked in the restaurant and I was a car-hop taking the orders when I could just see above the window on the driver’s side. Of course, Dad grew tired of that after a while and let a nephew of his take over the business, which he quickly ran into the ground. There was one encounter that took place between my dad and four local “toughs” on our opening night, which was a Saturday. This episode cemented the view I had of my dad as John Wayne in my kid’s mind.

Prior to our opening, two of the local police paid a visit to meet my dad at our little drive-in restaurant. I remember the police officers explaining to my mom and dad that the previous owners had some problems with a local group of young trouble makers, and they had actually caused the owner to close down and move on.

My dad could be a bit of a hot-head. Being Cherokee Indian and Irish, the Irish part might be hot, but the Cherokee part would remain very cool. This made him a pretty dangerous combination to mess with. He was also a tough country boy that had worked hard all his life. Standing over six feet tall and weighing a hard 240 lbs., he was nobody’s push-over. After listening to these two police officers “explaining” how they “might” not be able to be around if these guys did show up to cause trouble, my dad replied that he wasn’t worried. He took a meat clever and planted it in a block of wood, then thanked them for the “warning”. There was some protesting by the police, and a comment that my dad shouldn’t do anything crazy that could get him in trouble. Dad replied, “This was his property and he had every right to defend it, and his family working there against anybody that threatened him.” He thanked the police for dropping by and went back to work. After they left, still grumbling about “being careful”, Dad told Mom, “Those guys were looking for a pay-off for protection, and I’m not interested.”

Well, Saturday night rolled around and we opened. And we were busy. Mom and dad’s nephew, Dan, were working in the restaurant, which consisted of a long counter with about fourteen stools, and two booths down on the left. It had one door opening into the restaurant right in the middle, with a screen door closed, keeping flies and other airborne critters outside. The screen door was just a wood frame covered by a mesh screen, with a wood cross section in the middle and a little wire spring attached so it would slam shut. Constructed to the right of the restaurant was a large open cooking pit where my dad cooked the pig and chopped the Bar-B-Que. There was a window section cut out behind the counter between the restaurant and the pit area, so Mom could talk to Dad and he could talk to her if needed. Dad worked in a shirt with the sleeves rolled up, and a pair of dungarees with a big white apron tied around his waist. It was always hot in the pit, and even hotter in the summer – and it was summer.

Sure enough, the trouble-makers showed up. They arrived in a black four-door Chevy. One of the bigger young guys got out of the right rear door, and before I could get to their car and attempt to take their food order, he walked into the restaurant. About four of the stools were empty at the counter and he took the center one. I came in to give Dan an order I had taken from another car. I was too young to understand the comments this guy was making to my mom, but she didn’t appreciate it. Mom was a very attractive lady, and some men would make an effort to flirt a bit, but this was in the late 40’s, so it never bordered on anything nasty or obscene. Obviously this guy was going over the line. So Dan told Mom to call Garland, and as she walked toward the window, this guy said, “Hell yeah, go on and call ole Garland, let’s get ole Garland in here.” Mom called out to my dad about there being trouble inside. Now to see my dad, hot, with sweat running down his face, his dark eyes narrow – as a kid I had seen this look when he was mad, and it was scary! Dad stepped through the door, the guy wheeled around on his stool, with his elbows on the counter, facing my dad, and said, “Well, hell, you must be Garland.” Dad, in one quick move as he replied, “Yeah – I’m Garland!” He grabbed this guy by the front collar and jerked him up off his stool, turned him around and grabbed the back of his belt on his pants and the back of his shirt collar - keeping his feet off the floor - and literally ran him through the screen door tearing the screen mesh off, and busting the center wooden piece out. As Dad continued carrying this guy into the gravel parking lot, one of the other guys in the black four-door Chevy started out, and Dad headed straight to the car, slammed the guy into the side of the car, opened the back door and threw the guy head-first into the car. The guy was cussing at my dad, with a lot of, “Let me out - let me get ‘em,” and when he started out, Dad grabbed him in the face and shoved him back in the car. Then Dad took one step back and said, “The next time you try to come out of there boy, I’m gonna let you!” He said it with such a...

Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 16.12.2021
• Vorwort: Jill St. John, Robert Wagner
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte
• ISBN-10: 1-6678-1971-2 / 1667819712
• ISBN-13: 978-1-6678-1971-6 / 9781667819716