An Actor and a Gentleman by Louis Gossett Jr

Author:Louis Gossett, Jr.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Published: 2010-04-12T00:00:00+00:00

7

A Rock and a Hard Place

1970-1974

Never part of the Hollywood set, in the early seventies I felt as if I had one foot in the acting world and the other in the music world. At that time, I also felt growing admiration and respect for my athlete friends, most especially Kareem Abdul Jabbar, along with Magic Johnson and Byron Scott. Years later, in 1987 to 1988, these guys would thrill me to my core when they led my beloved Lakers to back-to-back championships.

When I was settling into Hollywood, some of my music friends, such as Peter, Paul, and Mary, were making it big-time and were no longer part of my world. I couldn’t have been happier for them. One of my neighbors was the legendary folk musician and composer Tim Hardin, best known for the song “If I Were a Carpenter.” Tim spent too much time under the influence of heroin, a habit he probably picked up during his Vietnam years but an addiction I still could not comprehend. I had tried LSD back in New York, but when I watched the cockroach in my bathroom sink turn into a dinosaur before my horrified eyes, I stored the drug in a closet. Hashish was too harsh for me and got in the way of my voice. It ended up in the closet, too. Most of my friends were more San Francisco drug- influenced: we were satisfied with some marijuana, which was the perfect accompaniment when I wanted to dance, play some sports, go to a concert, or make love.

It wasn’t long before I could no longer ignore the obvious fact that my paycheck was considerably smaller than those of my white counterparts. I knew I was fortunate to be working continuously, so I did not dare complain. Still, it ate away at me when I allowed myself to consider that my time and talent were worth less than the skills of an actor whose skin happened to be white. And when I couldn’t afford the same lodgings and lifestyle that my white acting counterparts could and had to search for much cheaper rents, it did gnaw at me.

At one point, when the intermittent episodic TV work temporarily dried up and there was no quality TV work for black people, I couldn’t even pay that cheap rent and was faced with eviction. I was now, for the first time in my life, about to be homeless. Sadly, my friends helped pack up all of my beloved belongings into a truck, while I had no idea what I would do or where I was going to go. Holding on to the couch and the chair with the ball -bearing rollers my mother had proudly given me when I’d left New York, I miserably contemplated going home to Coney Island. If I let my furniture go, it would have ended up on Sunset Boulevard.

At that exact moment, the mailman arrived and handed me a few envelopes. With my hands still on the furniture, I contemplated throwing away the letters, certain that they were only more bills I could not pay.

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