The Happiness of Homer
Tough and Easy Stages

By John McCabe

Homer was just about the handsomest man I ever knew, and when I first knew him, the happiest. Happiest, I think, because he had only a single thought in his head, and that thought made his life exciting and rewarding. That thought was his guiding star. The thought was, I'm an actor, and one day the world will know it.

The trouble was that Homer was a perfectly awful actor.

At first glance, he had all the qualifications. He had movie star good looks. He had a tall, very virile, well muscled body. His voice was deep and pleasant to hear, and resonant. The actresses in the summer stock company where we all worked could only marvel at his good looks, and vie with each other to date him. But then they finally did, he quickly became a non-event in their lives. They became disenchanted because Homer was a bore.

Nice guy, not an enemy in the world, good hearted. But he simply was boring. He only had one topic of conversation and that was the theme of his life – acting.

Like any profession, we in the theatre did a lot of shop-talk. But, like most people in every walk of life, we discussed other things as well. Homer seemed constitutionally unable to do this. He was quite sociable, not a bit vain, but all he seemed to talk about was acting.

I couldn't avoid him.

For Homer had sensed the teacher in me. He started to follow me about, in a sense, seeking advice. He was employed in our company as a set designer and part-time actor, always in small roles. On stage his poor acting went unnoticed because he played only bit roles, like butlers or delivery men and the like. There were good small roles available, but these he was never asked to do. The director of our plays was a wise old bird, and he could tell that Homer as an actor was a lost cause, but was too nice to tell him that.

Homer at one point actually inquired of me why he was never given any of the good small roles that came along. I decided to be totally frank and I told him in carefully chosen, polite words that, basically, Homer didn't get those juicy little roles because he spoke flatly, in a monotonous tone, and without any emotion, at all the auditions I heard him read for. The simple truth.

"Indeed, Homer," I said, "even when you play a butler, your voice goes flat and dry."

Homer couldn't, wouldn't believe it.

“I can play anything, and play it well with just a little time to prepare," he insisted.

"All right, tell you what," I said. "I am going to write some speeches for you, each one requiring a certain high emotion. Keep them and study them for a week. Come back, and I'll record them, and we'll both listen to those tapes. Then we'll be able to hear if indeed you can play 'anything'. That'll “be the test”. He agreed and the next day I wrote six emotion-filled speeches, simple, corny, but basic – three of which I include here:

LOVE: "Anne, all I can tell you is that I love you so much that I would do anything in the world for you. I love you with my heart, with my mind, and with my soul."

ANGER: "I can tell you this, Dave. My hatred for you goes beyond anger, plain anger. I loathe you, despise you – and if I could get away with it, I would kill you!"

SORROW: "I loved Anne. The best part of my soul was destroyed when she died. She was not only my wife, she was my living guardian angel, my only hope, the – (breaks down, sobbing).

The other three speeches were Laughter, Remorse, and Fear. I told Homer to memorize them. I said, "I want you to remember when you have felt in your life these emotions in yourself, and now simply transfer those emotional times in your past into these lines. Speak them in just those ways. I'll tape them carefully and we'll get together to discuss."

We did just that. The result? Blah. After a week of concentrated study of the speeches, he recorded them for me and what I heard was blah. The speech of Love sounded as if he was complimenting a girl friend on the nice color of her hat; the speech of Anger as if he was irritated by a fly buzzing his head; the speech of Sorrow as if he had accidentally bumped into someone in a bus line. All of these speeches were delivered in a flat, dull voice.

He wanted candor in my evaluation, so I gave all of that. I even taped those speeches myself, giving them full intensity, tonal range, and emotional power.

"Can't you hear the differences between the way I do them and the way you do them?” I asked Homer.

No, he could not. And it wasn't because he was stupid. He was bright, actually. The beauty of the stage he designed for us verified that. No, Homer was of that breed which was utterly and completely tone deaf. Tin ear people.

He could not accept my opinion of his acting and said so forthrightly.

“I know you're our leading actor here, and I do respect your opinion. But . . .” Here he paused, and a look of what I can call angry determination came into his eyes. “But I can tell you this – one day I'm going to be on Broadway. That is for sure!”

He thanked me and life in our pleasant summer stock company rolled on.

The years rolled on. Decades later when I was chairman of New York University's Department of Educational Theatre, I attended the premiere of a Broadway hit at The Shubert Theatre. I usually couldn't attend such a thing because of the prohibitive ticket price, but in this instance, I was lucky. The play's producer was an old friend and I got what they called a freebie for tonight's show. Just before the curtain went up, I was glancing through the program and was (I think the proper verb is) electrified to see Homer's name in the cast listing.

I not only had never seen Homer in over two decades, I had never heard a word about him. Then it all flashed back to me; our sessions in summer stock, and his ludicrous assertion – said with such steely determination, "One day I'm going to be on Broadway. That is for sure!” And what do you know – here Homer was. On Broadway. Not only Broad-way, but in its most prestigious theatre, The Shubert.

He was playing only a butler, as he had so many times before, and in the same toneless voice. But that didn't matter. With hardly any exceptions, butlers are not personality actors. They are expected to speak in monotone. Did I detect in his tone that night a slight lilt of variety? Probably not, but that's all right. I was just so happy to see him there.

After the show we had a great reunion at Louie Bergin's, the actors’ hangout bar just down the street. Homer was too well-mannered to say, "See, I told you so!” What he did tell me is that he came finally to realize his essential limitation.

“It took a while for me to know that I wasn't the actor I thought I was,” Homer said. “But I knew that I would always be one. And I loved the thought of that. I'd realized that I'd never make it as a full- time actor, so I learned how to become a Broadway stage manager (i.e., the chief stagehand.) I wangled my way into Equity (the actor’s union) and IATSE (the stagehands' union) and I can ‘run’ a show and play all the monotoned butlers they've got.”

A wide smile.

“And I firmly believe I'm the happiest guy in the world.”

This concludes a series of articles written by John McCabe, professional actor, drama professor, show business biographer, and year-around resident of Mackinac Island, who died September 26. From 2001 until his death, Dr. McCabe submitted 28 articles to the Town Crier. His wife, Karen, found this 29th column on his desk this winter and passed it on to us.