John Cassavetes — "Who Needs Good Looks?" (1957) 🇺🇸

High-voltage John leads a quiet home life. "A wife stands between you and life's many frustrations"

"Individual expression is an actor's most valuable commodity," one that John always strives to perfect

by Rahna Maughan

Though Mike Todd wasn't handing out jobs the day John Cassavetes walked into his office, he was giving advice.

"In order to be a success in this business," Todd cautioned the young actor, "you've got to know more than anyone else."

Well sir, Cassavetes hasn't been the same since. He cherished those kindly words and applied himself to the Herculean task. Spending about 16 hours a day learning every angle there is to know about show business, he's managed to do himself and adviser Todd proud. In the last four years, Cassavetes has accounted for about 90 television roles and four pictures: "The Night Holds Terror," "Crime In The Streets," "Edge Of The City," and "Fever Tree." Most of his work had the critics doing handsprings. Sandwiched between all this explosive activity, he's also found time to start a new actors' workshop called Shadows, Inc.

"I come equipped with all this energy," Cassavetes will admit with a large hint of pride. "It's the trend these days to worry about overdoing. Take it easy! Relax! Count to ten! I can't be bothered with all that nonsense. There's never been anything wrong with me that work wouldn't cure."

At 27, in thriving health, the lean, dark Cassavetes has every reason to be impatient. He thinks he knows what's wrong with entertainment in general, and if it were up to him, another day won't go by before some radical changes are made. He refuses to believe people deliberately turn on a television set, or go to the movies to see a bad show.

While we had been waiting for Cassavetes to appear in the small high-ceilinged business office painted a dull, uninspired brown, Maurice McEndree, Shadows, Inc. producer, explained Cassavetes has an amazing effect on everyone he meets. Like a twister, he picks everything up in his path and sweeps it away with him. "He has so much genuine talent, enthusiasm and drive." McEndree looked at his watch, shook his head.

"You really should have called to remind him you'd be here at 12:30. John has so many things on his mind, sometimes he's inclined to be forgetful. If his wife didn't lay out his clothes for him…" McEndree shrugged off the rest.

One of the things Cassavetes might have had on his mind right around then could very easily have been the long-term contract he recently signed with MGM. In his first picture, "Three Guns," he'll be a sort of Western delinquent, playing Robert Taylor's hot-headed kid brother.

When the red-hot item finally catapulted into the office, an hour and a half late, McEndree and Burt Lane, Cassavetes partner in Shadows, Inc., had done a complete job of spreading the happy word which had marinated in ISO proof enthusiasm. By the time they had finished with their tour of the little theatre, and introducing the cast — no one looked older than about 20 — of the experimental picture Cassavetes is trying to film for $7,500, you felt old and tired. Certainly not in prime condition for the full blast of Cassavetes' energy.

"Hey, what have you guys been telling about me?" he demanded immediately, and looked somewhat apprehensively at the pile of notes on the battered oak desk.

"We're trying to describe Gena," Lane, who's a writer and the organization's treasurer, got right to the point.

In 1953, Cassavetes married Gena Rowlands, a girl from Cambria, Wisconsin, who, like her husband had studied acting at the New York Academy of Dramatic Arts. Their romance started when he had gone back to the Academy one day to watch a student play. Gena was one of the actresses, and Cassavetes approved of what he saw. It was as simple as that. Happy and complete though their marriage is, Gena has kept busy with her professional fife. Beside having a contract with MGM, too, she's co-starring with Edward G. Robinson on Broadway in Middle Of The Night.

The way Lane had described her, Gena wasn't one of those artificially sophisticated career women. She has the quality of being exquisitely mature in all ways. Lane interrupted his paean to glance toward McEndree who nodded in solemn agreement.

"You can add that Gena is wonderfully constant as a wife, and terribly loyal to her friends," Lane went on. "I guess a good one-word description of her would be 'contained.'"

Cassavetes liked the description, but he wasn't going to let matters go at just that.

"A woman like Gena, with understanding and interest in a man's work, as well as her own, has a special beauty. She can add so much more to your life than… What I mean is… I couldn't live without her."

He had obviously warmed up to the subject and showed no intentions of letting it get away from him. There was a lot a woman could mean, he continued. She represented security for a man outside his work. She was the only one capable of bringing him down to simple humanity where all the human emotions could be felt. Home, then, became a place where you could let down the guard on your weakness.

"You get closer to positive things," Cassavetes decided, "because a woman can step between you and all those little frustrations in daily living that can drive you crazy.

Oh sure, I want to be a success," Cassavetes admitted. "I want to be a millionaire with two — no, make it three — swimming pools."

Lane and McEndree thought that was the funniest thing they had heard in the last second or two. "John's been turning down a lot of work so he could stick with Shadows," one of them said. "Nobody here has any money. We've been pumping it all into this project."

A non-profit organization, Shadows, Inc. had been formed in September, 1956, to give new and untried theatrical talent a chance to prove itself. Cassavetes and Lane also wanted a place where they could turn out plays minus commercialism.

Cassavetes refuses to tell what the experimental picture is about. "Everyone will get the wrong idea and say we've got a cause. I couldn't care less about causes of any kind. Anyhow, this picture is just for acting groups and perhaps colleges."

"When an actor is out of work a long time, he grows self-centered and bitter. I know, I went through it for five years myself before I broke into television. You get so wrapped up in your personal worries and miseries, you lose interest in other people. That's deadly for anyone — especially an actor. Watching people is the only way to discover what they're like. How else can you expect to understand them? Whatever success I have, I want to use to help others."

The main concern of this actors' workshop, Cassavetes insisted, is to develop the separate individualities. Once you figure out what your capabilities are, nothing, including criticism, should stand in the way of your own individuality.

"It's not only my opinion but has been proven many times: Individual expression is the highest paying commodity.

"Who needs good looks, when you're an individual?" Cassavetes demanded. "For example, a lot of stars look entirely different in ordinary everyday living. No producer, at first glance, would call them good material. Before James Dean became a star, I saw him around town many times. He certainly didn't have what you'd call physical appeal. Nor did Frank Sinatra, Marlon Brando, Edward G. Robinson, and Charles Laughton. Make-up can do wonders for any face, but you can't get away with a surface job of individuality. All the great ones have it. Look at them, and you'll find a definite and personal expression."

In these times of almost dreary conformity everyone dresses alike, everyone lives in the same sort of house, everyone's tastes must follow the accepted pattern, but someone like Cassavetes comes along to represent the individualists.

As a child there was nothing that would have especially singled him out. No meteors flashed across the sky when he was born in Polyclinic Hospital, New York City. His older brother, Nicholas, grew up to be a successful Wall Street broker. His father, Nicholas, Sr., does very well with his export business, and for a sideline is an expert on immigration. The family is of Greek extraction.

"We lived in the city until I was about twelve, then moved to Port Washington, Long Island. After I graduated from Port Washington High School, I entered Colgate as an English Literature major. At that time, I really had no ambition to speak of. All college meant to me was a place to go and be secure for a while longer."

While sopping up security, an interesting thing happened at Colgate. Cassavetes started reading plays and decided acting had possibilities. He quit school after two and a half years and headed back for New York where he enrolled in the New York Academy of Dramatic Arts. A stint in a Providence, R. I., stock company followed, then a small part in a Gregory Ratoff movie called, "Taxi." Ratoff was impressed with Cassavetes and hired him as assistant stage manager for the play, The Fifth Season.

With a live wire as charged as Cassavetes, you'd expect short circuits at times when the sparks would fly, but according to him, disruptive temperament has no place in the theatre. Somewhere he got the idea that much of the talk about prima donna shenanigans in the movies and on the stage are nasty stories circulated by press agents.

Thorough as usual, Cassavetes didn't rule out another brand of temperament. That's something else entirely, he excused. This difference of opinion, or whatever you choose to call it, appears in people who, for years, had had nothing and still remember the hard struggle to achieve their goals. They know their craft and in this strength lies their weakness.

"It works this way," Cassavetes started to explain, "they come to know what they know at great personal expense. If someone contradicts what they are doing, or how they do it, this can make you feel very insecure and afraid someone is trying to take away all you've worked for.

"That's why I think people should be helped so that they don't have to claw every inch of the way alone. They'd be more anxious for the success of the entire production and not only their own ambitions."

Outside the young actors were stirring. A girl with a pony tail and blue jeans came in to riffle through the filing cabinet. Cassavetes seemed to be slipping further and further away from the interview. "Remind me to give those actors money for haircuts before we start shooting on Monday," he advised McEndree. "And what are we going to do about that fight scene in the alley? We'll need two guys to jump him."

McEndree and Lane for all their professional sang froid, looked downright surprised. "He can't handle two men!"

"Sure he can," Cassavetes waved aside all doubts. "He's a powerful guy. You just wait and see."

We weren't sticking around to see. But it's a cinch that a few days later, there were two actors sorely in need of First Aid, lying in some cinematographically picturesque New York City alley. And realist Cassavetes had again made his point.

He's the kind that always does.

END

 

"Home," explains John, here with actress-wife Gena Rowlands, "is the place where a man can let down the guard on his weakness."

Photos by: D. P. Rodewald

 

"A woman like Gena, with understanding and interest in a man's work, has a special beauty." She's now starring in a Broadway play.

"Contained" and "exquisitely mature," friends describe Gena.

Rare shot of Cassavetes relaxing. "I can't be bothered with all that nonsense," he says and proceeds to work his usual 16 hours a day.

"Failures are people who’ve lost sight of their dream." John holds to this.

Meeting of John and Gena took place when both were studying dramatics. Now signed by MGM, John's set to make "Three Guns."

"Out-of-work actors become bitter," says John, who knows. His actors' workshop, Shadows, Inc., encourages new, untried talent.

Collection: Screenland Magazine, July 1957