Will Tony Randall Spoil Success? (1958) 🇺🇸
Tony's fresh approach to humor seems more than likely to trip the cynics and leave him riding high.
by Rahna Maughan
Tony resents being called a comic, "I'm not a comedian, I'm an actor. Don't you think I even look like an actor?" he pleads.
On the screen, Tony Randall was a sensation as the average man — Hollywood's improbable version in Technicolor — bullied, baited by Fate, a pawn of coincidence and the dupe of happenstance. A few hundred assorted critics have called him, in one style or other, the "funniest young comic to descend on Hollywood in a decade."
Taller (he's 5' 10 %"), slimmer and younger looking than in pictures, his age has been given variously as 33, mid-30's and just plain born February 26. He's a fascinating mixture of reserve and frankness. Almost unbelievably cooperative, he still can draw a taut line occasionally. He'll tell a columnist he wears nothing but a little mentholatum in his nose when he goes to sleep, then bridle when asked his wife's birthplace.
From the moment we waded through the lobby carpeting where Randall lives in New York, it was clear he was a very special person indeed. Even the elevatorman takes a keen interest in his famous tenant. "Mrs. Randall is out," he clipped when asked for the Randall apartment. The atmosphere in the small elevator was positively distrustful. All the way up you felt sinister. When the elevator door whooshed closed, there we were in a small private hallway leading to two apartments — Randall's was the one on the right.
At his door, Randall, wearing gray flannels and a blue shirt open at the collar, ordered us to wipe our feet. He really meant it, too. Stood there, barring the way until our feet were wiped.
The apartment which Randall obviously took great pride in was one of those incredibly handsome affairs. A cavernous living-room which overlooked Central Park, was furnished mostly in antiques. In front of the fireplace was an arrangement of white furniture floating on an island of thick creamy carpet. The effect was elegant, and if you were inclined to nosebleeds, frightening. Randall walked boldly onto the immaculate white rug! "Come on," he invited. "You can walk on it. Now you know why I asked you to wipe your feet.
"Florence (Mrs. Randall) went to the dentist. She hates to be around when I'm being interviewed. Just being mentioned in print upsets her," Randall replied.
As far as Randall is concerned, his marriage is something apart from his professional life. He's happily married and thinks that's all that should concern the public.
"You can say this, though," he offered a sacrifice on the altar of publicity, "Florence worked as a schoolteacher, then as a model to support me while I was studying to be an actor." Actually, by a brief figuring out of times and dates, Mrs. Randall probably didn't have to support her talented spouse too long. After graduating from Tulsa High School, Oklahoma-born Randall enrolled in Northwestern University. It was there he met and married his wife. While studying speech, he became overwhelmed by the possibilities of drama. He quit school after a year and headed for New York. A year later, in 1941, he made his stage debut in A Circle Of Chalk. During the following years, he was a radio announcer then branched out into a radio actor. His ether credits sound like the large economy-sized box of soap opera: Portia Faces Life, My True Story, and Light Of The World. His movies have been less sudsy — "Oh Men, Oh Women," Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? and the latest rocker, "No Down Payment." Do you like opera?" he asked politely. To someone whose music appreciation stopped at the Guy Lombardo version of the Toreador Song, this might have been an embarrassing question had Randall waited for a reply. Instead he selected something from his private stock of Italian opera records and put it on the hi-fi. "Listen to this." We listened. Randall seemed transported. "I haven't got it on the right volume," he excused. "Music is an expression of deep emotion and should come at you so loud the walls vibrate."
When the record ended, Randall reluctantly shut off the set. Then he hurled out a pretty good snatch of what, we had just heard. Earlier, he had polished off a few dance steps. "I take singing lessons, not for anything special, mostly because I like to — not that I'd mind doing a musical." He's all set. At one time, he had studied movement with the great dancer, Martha Graham, but these days he keeps at 160 pounds by more rugged, if not as artistic, activities.
"Twice a week, I work out at a Health Club." Randall leaned back comfortably in the white sofa, large enough to double as a luxury yacht, and studied the toe of his handsewn moccasin. "In movies you look 10-20 pounds heavier, and with the wide screen — seriously — it's murder. So now, I weight-lift to keep in trim. "Aside from weight-lifting, honestly, I'm not very athletic," he admitted. "No one could call me the All-American type. Hate sports — especially baseball. Wouldn't own a car, even though it's supposed to be healthy to be car-conscious. I don't like hunting, fishing, and think dogs should be kept outdoors. I dress plainly and don't go in for fads. I like collecting modern paintings, drinking expensive bourbon, eating steak and making love."
Once he felt he had the course plotted and safely steered his personal life away from the shoals of inquisitive eyes, conversation careened along. A lecturer at the Museum of Modern Art couldn't coax your appreciation more than Randall exhibiting his modern paintings. He went from picture to picture, turning on the lights and praising each one like a parent showing off the occupants of the nursery.
Outside the room where he keeps most of his memorabilia that had been collected over a period of years, we had paused to get a closer look at one of the Persian prints on the hall wall. Randall's quick warning froze our eyes. "Look if you want," he invited, "but I think it's better to let you know what to expect." It was the sort of picture friends send from Paris which is exactly how Randall had gotten it. "I didn't hang it up while my mother was alive," he added.
Randall's sense of humor has a quality of detachment and making the ridiculous seem perfectly normal. Like the pair of binoculars he keeps on a delicate antique table in the living room so he can set the household clocks accurately by looking at a building, far down the avenue, that flashes on the time to the minute. "You don't have to tell a funny story to get laughs," Randall confided, pouring more coffee. "It's being able to show the absurd behind the veneer of respectability. There's nothing funnier than a person who takes himself seriously.
"Almost all comedy that's worthwhile has its basis in knocking off top hats, pushing idols off their pedestals. I guess most people laugh because they'd do the same things if they had the opportunity. I'm always tempted in real life to knock off top hats. I've been very disrespectful most of my life, but I'm learning to control myself.
"Do you know most comics haven't got a sense of humor?" He wouldn't say which ones, but according to him, it was nothing to be alarmed about. "Very few people are born comics. A sense of humor is something that is developed like everything else." A few years back, he had discovered he could say funny things — and people would laugh. "The more funny things I said, the more recognition people gave me. I became a funnyman."
However, he resents being called a comic. "I'm not a comedian," he insisted. "I'm an actor. Don't you think I even look like an actor?" Just so no one gets the wrong impression and expects him to appear from now on only as the sophisticated clown, Randall recalled all the serious acting he had done in the past. "What I'm looking for now is a series of roles that would allow me to grow."
For someone whom almost everybody describes as "one of the nicest guys…" Randall isn't the one to be agreeable for the sake of avoiding argument. His strongest dislikes have to do with phoniness.
"A lot of actors reach stardom through one role, and think they have it made. After that, none of them bother to prepare for any serious acting. They can't take the pains or the trouble to become the craftsmen they should. Acting is a profession a person should live up to, not use as a ticket to glamour. Perhaps I'm a fanatic on the subject and resent people like these because I, personally, had to work so hard to get where I am." The casual impression he gives while acting in some meringue like Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? doesn't follow him home like a friendly puppy. In the posh surroundings of home, Randall manages to look the sort for whom a cracker wouldn't crumble at the wrong time. There's an unmistakable neatness and preciseness, without being fussy, that makes itself known in his thinking, appearance, and philosophy toward life. Very simply, he's satisfied the way things have been moving along.
On the surface, his life is as uncluttered as the hall closet. Large enough to house an orderly floating crap game, the only things in it are two light tan poplin raincoats and a wide-ribbed corduroy cap with leather binding on the visor.
"I'd like to wear them around town again," Randall said, trying on the cap. It still fits. "But after wearing them in Oh Men, Oh, Women, I'm afraid people might think I'm showing off."
The way Randall said it, you knew right off he thought anyone who thought that was a ninny. "It's overnight success that spoils you," he explained. "And I sure don't qualify there. Anyway, I think it's a good idea to forget success and concentrate on trying to be good in your work."
Not only has fame not spoiled him, after all, he's been fairly well known for years before Hollywood discovered him, but anyone who still rides the subway after all the fanfare, huzzahs and hoopla he's been getting these days is not only remarkable, but has unprobed depths of humility.
"That's another thing I like about this apartment, it's so close to a subway station. Which reminds me, I've a singing lesson in another few minutes. Say! Have you ever smelled really good bourbon?"
Randall brought out the bottle of bourbon and we inhaled, agreeing it smelled like an Iowa cornfield, then heeled to as Randall led us to the elevator. The elevatorman who had taken us up was out to lunch. We reached the street without incident. Overhead, Randall, like the host whose spirits are suddenly revived at seeing a trying gossip leave, was leaning out the window, waving and smiling jovially. We couldn't hear what he was saying, but you can just bet it was a dilly — it usually is when Tony Randall says it.
END
Tony's afraid of being typed. But who else could make an amusement park a comedy of terrors?
Photos by: Tom Caffrey, Globe
A rugged individualist, about the only time Tony can be led around easily is on a carousel in Palisades Amusement Park.
Holding on to the roller coaster for dear life, Tony soars down. His career, on the other hand, has done nothing but rise
The bigger they are, the harder they fall… Tony shoots at the sitting ducks but his favorite target is any kind of phony.
"I hate sports, especially baseball," he says. "No one could call me the All-American type." Tony's in "No Down Payment."
Randall, at this ridiculous best, is one of the funniest talents to break through the celluloid barrier in a long, long time.
Collection: Screenland Magazine, January 1958