Full Frontal Nudity: The Making of an Accidental Actor by Harry Hamlin

Author:Harry Hamlin [Hamlin, Harry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2010-10-05T00:00:00+00:00

Good Luck with Yale!

The following week we opened A Streetcar Named Desire at the Durant Theatre. I was very satisfied with my work in the play and felt that the weak link was the girl playing Blanche. I felt like my performance was going to save the play, in spite of my broken back and whatever medication I was taking for the pain. Brando Schmando . . . I was the new Stanley Kowalski! When the curtain came down and it was time for our bows, I was sure the place would go nuts when I came out on the stage.

I wiped the sweat off my brow and had run out to take a bow when the applause, which had been quite healthy, dimmed to about half its volume. I felt a kind of hot centipede-like sensation travel up my spine. Then the girl who played Blanche came out for the final bow and the place went nuts. I was still wearing the back brace and was taking some pretty strong medication for the pain. I think it must have been the drugs that had led me to believe I was anything but horrible in the part. There wasn’t a soul who wanted to talk to me after the play and I snuck out through a side door. Luckily we only did a handful of performances and by the final night I had improved a little bit. But I had been, and I remain to this day, humbled.

I finished my final paper on Greek tragedy and breathed a huge sigh of relief. It was my last assignment at Berkeley, and a week later, Evie and I packed up all our stuff, I handed the keys to the DKE house over to the ambitious, young president-to-be, and I marched down to the drama department to pick up my paper and collect my final marks.

That paper on Greek tragedy was the most comprehensive essay I had ever completed. I had burned the midnight oil to finish it and I was extremely proud of it. I had been accepted to Yale provisionally, contingent, of course, on finishing Berkeley in good standing. I never gave that a second thought because I was and had been on the dean’s list for the entire two years I was there.

Not so fast!

The work on the essay was good, all right. So good that the professor accused me of buying it from one of those services rumored to be around. The following is a verbatim transcription of her fond note to me scribbled on the last page of the essay: “There is absolutely no similarity, either in writing style or ideas between this paper and your other work. I will assume, to be charitable, that it is simply a mass of unattributed quotes, though it does seem a bit unlikely that you should suddenly burst forth with an 11 page research paper. If I’m misjudging you, my apologies—bring me your notes, etc. that you used in writing it and I will get the grade changed.

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