Author Interview George
Kennedy
Trust Me: A
Memoir
Interviewed by:
Gary Sorkin, Pacific Book Review
January
2012
__________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
PBR: Today we have the unique pleasure of
being with academy award winning actor, well known to most all of us for his
over 200 movie and television appearances, and author of his new autobiography
titled Trust Me, Mr. George
Kennedy. Thank you for joining us
today.
GK: Thank you, the pleasure is mine. I tried twice (2 years apart) to write an
autobiography, starting around 2003. I
threw them both away. Basically, the
words touched me, but wouldn’t mean much to others. Instead, the book as released relates to
everybody. I believe we’re not just
good, bad and guilty. We are all we got,
have lots to learn, and there’s no terrifying Beelzebub waiting around with a
pitchfork. We live. We die.
God ain’t mad at
you.
PBR: Your book has received many favorable reviews
and accolades, and is sure to get more.
I’d like to ask you what in particular made you want to write an
autobiography?
GK: I didn’t.
I wanted to write about us, all of us, unsure and trying hard to survive
in a world of greed. Though instructed not to think about it, I
wondered why one church was touted better than the other. An old Irish priest got drunk with me one
night in Madrid, and said, “Keep questioning… and if you don’t get an answer,
pray harder. God always gets back to
you." Nobody ever leveled with me like
he did. Which star is perfect? The one you wish upon. God is love, supreme.
PBR: How did
you come up with the title?
GK: “Trust Me” is a title of many books. Publishers weren’t keen on putting out
another one with that name, but in the long run, I stuck with it because it
spoke to my heart. Life’s path took me
along a show business route, as both of my parents were vaudevillians. I couldn’t have been a farmer. I would have milked Man-o-War. But as a lonely boy, I enjoyed writing. Whatever writing I do, though, is with a nod
in the direction of understanding.
PBR: How
long did it take you from start to finish for writing and publishing Trust Me?
GK: About 10 years, including the two aborted
starts. There’s so much more. As it is now “Trust Me” is only as couple of
hundred pages long. That wasn’t
intentional, and there’s enough material untouched to have continued until it
was twice that. But look. I’m well known, but not as a writer. A 10 goal polo
player might be the toast of the town, but not as a jockey. I had something to say for the benefit of my
fellow humans. I hope they heed
it.
PBR: What was the hardest part of writing your
book?
GK: This is hardly news, but it’s “keeping at
it”. I think it was Somerset Maugham who
said there are days when you can’t write your name, but there are also days when
your creative juices are flowing from sunup until your keyboard becomes your
pillow next break of day. There were so
many heroes and heroines to write about I didn’t get to them all: Dinah Shore, Albert Schweitzer, Joe Louis,
Elinor Roosevelt, Lowell Thomas, Eugene Ormandy etc –
and many more. They’d fill a book.
PBR: When
writing your book, who, if anyone, did you “edit out”
prior to publication?
GK: I would never purposely leave Art Carney Jr.
out of anything. In the early 50’s, I
was still an Army Captain on active duty in New York City, and the Jackie
Gleason show was in rehearsal. I went to
his theatre and picked up something Gleason had promised Washington. He invited m e to stay and watch. The scene involved Gleason and Audrey
Meadows, and Carney (not involved) pointed I should sit with him in the
theatre. All afternoon I watched magic. You couldn’t be ill at ease around Carney, because he
was the warmest human being there was. I
tried not to gush when I talked about his hilarious dialogue with “Captain
Video” on the Gleason show, or playing the piano intro to “Sewanee River” over
and over while Gleason fumed, or “Magic Chef of the Future”. When I left, he hugged me goodbye, and
thanked me for making his afternoon bright.
Years later, 1979 in Pittsburgh, Art
Carney was one of the stars in the movie “Steel”, and so was I. It was as though time had stood still for
this giant – effervescent, gentle and brilliant as always. Jennifer O’Neill, he and I talked and laughed
a lot, and when I told her the Gleason story, she said I had to tell him. On my last day, I went to his motor
home. I just wanted to thank him for
being so kind to a nobody. His door was open, and he was sitting behind
the driver’s wheel, his hand waving in the air.
Grinning, he said, “I’m giving the main speech at Alcohol Anonymous
tonight…wanna hear me rehearse?” He was plastered, and almost fell out of the
driver’s seat. Two guys carried him to
the back. I never got to tell him the
story.
PBR: Each person in your book would eventually
read what you said about them … who would you most want to say something to
beyond what you wrote about?
GK: There was a black lady in a Memphis hotel
lobby who screamed when she saw my wife and I get out of an elevator, despite
our pleas not to yell. She just loved
me, and erupted in a flood of tears and hugged us, and we circled in sort of a
do-si-do. It
didn’t take long, and the closing elevator doors masked her gleeful wave. Joan
and I cried during our stumbling walk to the sidewalk as a very concerned
doorman rushed to ask what was wrong.
He’ll never understand why we suddenly walked away laughing til it hurt.
PBR: Now that the book is finished, who do you
wish you put into your book – that you haven’t -- and why?
GK: Ted Williams was as good a hitter in baseball
as there was. When I was working in New
York for Phil Silver’s in the “Bilko” show in 1957,
word came that Williams had a back injury, and it could be serious. I grabbed a page of the script and wrote him
a note on the blank side recommending a chiropractor who had helped me, and wishing him well. The Bilko ‘platoon’
guys laughed and said Williams would never even see it. About a week later I got a handwritten note
on the same script page. It was from Ted
Williams thanking me, and saying he loved the show. The platoon guys, mouths open, said they
wanted to show it to Phil Silvers and everybody, so I let them. I never saw it again.
PBR: Let’s talk about feedback – what has been
some of your friend’s remarks about your book thus far?
GK: Everyone has been, in no particular order:
surprised, complimentary, supportive and generous. The most touching to me is: “You write like
you talk”. Good or bad, I do, but I’m
floored by the number nice enough to pass along they’ve read it cover to cover
twice.
PBR: I’d
like to step out of the envelope, and ask you a few questions that may seem
personal and challenging. I hope it’s ok
with you. For example, why you – why do
you think you were chosen for your life experiences? I say this in a manner not to be facetious,
but asked in a different way, what is it about you that you feel is why such
fame has bestowed itself upon you?
GK: Orson Welles told me in a radio interview
that success was mostly a matter of luck.
Perhaps, but Welles’ brilliance was being ignored. My background was show business, so my mother
always had show business stories. Other
kids listened to the “Lone Ranger” and “Inner Sanctum” on the radio, but I was
IN THEM in spirit. In my head, I was on
Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s lap when he gave a ‘Fireside Chat”. I could name every cowboy actor who ever did
a Republic western. Why? It was the only joy I can remember from those
bleak days. My reality became a screen
reality, and years later, when I got to be part of the process, it was important
more than words can say to give it my all.
PBR: When or what in your life was your game
changer – at what point did you realize George Kennedy will be making a
significant mark on the culture of your time?
GK: I don’t know about making significant marks
on the culture. It’s a tough
business. You do your best, and luck
plays a great part. In a series that
only ran 15 episodes, I played “Sarge”, a cop who
becomes a Roman Catholic priest when his wife dies. I did my best, but in reality, a priest’s
primary job is to save bad guys, not catch them. “Cool Hand Luke” changed
everything. I got $20,000 for doing it,
but the day after I won the best supporting actor award, I signed to do “Guns of
the Magnificent Seven” at $75,000 for four weeks in Spain.
PBR: Tell us a bit about your views on alcoholism,
drinking, drug abuse and what you think may or can be of help to others not
seeing things the way you do.
GK: The paradox is well known, really. I told a psychiatrist once that I drank
because “I didn’t like who I was”. He
asked if drinking made it better. I said
only the first drink or two, and after that I became a lout and a bore. Drug
abuse was never my problem – experiments with pot just made me giggle – we don’t
use anything stronger than Nyquil. As
the book says, “YOU are the most important thing in life. Without you, I don’t exist”. Take care of you, please. Or I’m gone.
PBR: There’s a saying, “If I knew then what I know
now…” What would your “then and now” be?
GK: There was a black baseball pitcher years ago
named Satchel Paige who threw a baseball faster than light, who said, “Never look back…somethin’ might be gainin’ on
ya”. Good
advice. What could I change, anyway? I’d
still have weighed 12 pounds at birth, with an irreparably crooked spine. The big depression of ’29 went on until WWII,
and I went to Hollywood when actors were allowed to be over 6 feet tall. I think I had all the breaks a guy could wish
for, and I’m grateful enough to be thankful I could write a book about it. The movie business is big business, and
‘Californication’ is snobby elitism. When you drag yourself home at 8 pm, eat,
bathe, study lines and flop, five a.m. comes around in a
flash.
PBR: When you see yourself in your mind (not the
mirror), how old are you?
GK: I’m 86, creaking and addicted to naps. I smile at people because I do. I’m quiet.
Amen.
PBR: Another question, a silly one perhaps, but if
you were given one wish, you know, a Genie-kind-of-thing, what would you wish
for?
GK: It’s the one I say before sleep every night,
borrowed from Dickens’s Tiny Tim: “God bless us, every one”. I’ve never doubted that He does, and I hope
it’s the last thing I say on earth.
PBR: One last question, tell us, please, about
your views on God.
GK: God is eternity. We are transient. A baby at the moment of birth has just come
from God. The sparkler is lit. When your Fourth of July sparkler has
expired, you’ll go back to where that baby came from. There is no God up there who is mad at
you. You’ll see. Trust me.
PBR: Thank you so much for your revealing
answers. I hope when others read this
interview they too are brought closer to the remarkable “George Kennedy” I have
gotten to know from your book and now your interview. All of us wish you the best of success with
your book, and all the best for your health and happiness in the
future.
GK: Thank you, Gary.
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