August 6, 2024 • 44 mins
Is there anyone who has weathered the chaos of Hollywood more gracefully than George Hamilton? After moving with his family from Memphis to California, Hamilton began his career in the movie industry in the 1950s. Over the following decades, he appeared in countless films and television shows, became a producer and entrepreneur, and developed a reputation for his charm, wit, and tan. Now 84 years old, Hamilton is as energetic as ever. On this week’s episode of Table for Two, the actor joins host Bruce Bozzi to recall rubbing shoulders with actors such as Fred Astaire and Cary Grant, divulge the secret to moving up Hollywood’s ladder, and reminisce on what it was like to date Lyndon Johnson’s daughter, Lynda, during her father’s presidency.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, everyone, thanks for pulling up a chair. Today on
Table for two.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
We're at the Sunset Tower in Hollywood, my favorite joint,
and this is Bruce Bosi.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Today.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Those are super glamorous, very special day because we're having
lunch with an icon, with someone who's been in the
business since literally the nineteen forties.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
I'm gonna have the chop salad with the exactly.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
The way you're DoD He's tan, he's charming, he has
so much charisma. He has started movies, television, Broadway. He's
published books, produced movies. He's been an entrepreneur.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
I wish I could eat more of this, but I've
talked too much.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
He is a very debonair, very funny, extremely charismatic George Hamilton.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
So let me tell you, pull up a chair, grab
yourself a glass of rose, because we are gonna have
some good times today and hear some epic stories from
years gone by, and you'll be surprised. There's a future
for this eighty four year old. So stay with us
and we'll be right back. I'm Bruce Bosi and this
(01:13):
is my podcast Table for two. So mister Hamilton, thank
you for George, thank you for pulling up a chair
today on table for two. It's a big deal, and
(01:34):
I just wanted to sort of say so, you know,
many of my lunch dates are legends in the making,
legends to be if they're lucky enough to have the
fortitude to stick around. And we're sitting if you pulled
up a chair today with a gentleman who is an
iconic man, a true Hollywood superstar, your royalty in Hollywood.
You are what the definition of a movie star is.
(01:56):
You've had incredible career. Georgia started in movies, television. You've
hosted your own successful daytime talk show. You start on Broadway.
You've published two very successful books. You're a successful producer.
You're an entrepreneur, the skincare line, the tanning salons. You've
been the Grand Marshal of a parade. You've been a
(02:16):
reality television host.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
You've been a.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Reality television star. You've had cigars named after you. You've
been a lover. You've married your father, a brother, a son,
and you in two thousand and nine were awarded the
two thousand, three hundred and eighty eighth Star on Hollywood
Boulevard Walker Fame. I am sitting with today a legend
mister George Hamilton, thank you for joining me today.
Speaker 4 (02:40):
And I was married and divorced only one time you've
been record that is yeah, and remained a friend over
the years. And you know, I got I got a
star in Palm Springs, and I was, yeah, I thought,
that's a pretty amazing to get a star in Palm
spring And then I got a it's been there with
thirty forty years and now I got a note of
about it and needed repair. And they asked me, yeah,
(03:03):
ask me what I wanted to do about it? Maybe
running a repair service for stars literally and Bom Springs.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
You gotta go down and fix it? Why not? You know,
you just don't want to. You don't want to leave
your star.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
No, you have to keep that. So you are from Memphis, right,
born of Memphis. So you're younger than Elvis Presley. Did
you ever did you know him growing up? Did you
ever meet Elvis?
Speaker 4 (03:26):
Never met him in Memphis in the in the beginning
when he started. I had already left Memphis and was
in Hollywood when he started. And I met the colonel,
and the colonel was the most extraordinary guy. I became
some of my best friend and under contract to MGM.
He had a sort of cook house. He liked it
because then the carnival, it was where all the people
(03:48):
met and he made his best deals. And he had
all the guys from Elvis's group, Sonny and Red and
Lamar and all the guys would come in and see
the colonel, and Elvis would come and go. But the
Colonel and Elvis were very much in a kind of
(04:10):
low key conversation all the time, and there would be
like a continuing of it. He would check in with
him and it would be kind of private conversations. I
would hear, and I would see the boys hanging out
with each other and with Elvis. The minute they were
walking in or they were leaving, they'd start a song,
(04:31):
a gospel song in tight harmony. And I think Elvis
in love that kind of it was kind of like
a grounding where.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
His world was.
Speaker 4 (04:40):
All the rest of it was kind of you know,
this is happening, but and he wasn't making a big
deal of it.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
I was a very low key.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
Guy, and I didn't I certainly knew him and talk
to him many times, but I don't think I ever
was close with Elvis. When I was going out with
Lyndon Johnson's daughter Linda, Elvis and him Priscilla, and in
different times we were all together, and I have some
(05:07):
pictures with Elvis were very interesting, but it was Elvis
was a totally gentleman, very considerate, very kind person.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
That's the definite, Like if someone's describing you, that's how
one would describe you.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
I feel. And do you think it has to do
with being a Southern Yeah.
Speaker 4 (05:24):
I do think I've read something about you once you
said you the most important thing to use someone who's kind.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
Yes, that's to me too. I was brought up that way.
I don't I'm not. I can.
Speaker 4 (05:35):
I can have a funny line and it could be cutting,
but it's never unkind. I don't know how to be unkind.
And people will say, well, you know that shows weakness,
when you know it doesn't shows great strength.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
Especially in this town.
Speaker 4 (05:49):
I see people in the streets, you know, all messed
up all across this country now on all the drugs
that are just awful now, and just to be kind
helps so much in their world, just to acknowledge people.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
When I see people you know who unfortunately are living
on the streets, they just want to be acknowledged these
It's like, you know, we're just all on this planet
together for this short period of time.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
You know.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
It's so true, And how we look at life determines
our success. And a lot of people think you have
to be tough and killing and crushing.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
To get ahead.
Speaker 4 (06:26):
I always resent that, and I always resist it. The
minute I realize I've got a plan, I hand it
over and let the universe head it.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
It always finds a better way for me, and it
gives it to me in a way in which I
would least expect it. But it comes in perfect form
when it comes, may come three years later than my timing.
But I've let go of that all my life.
Speaker 4 (06:47):
I never did in my mind something cheap or hurtful
to get ahead and a cost to someone else.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
So if we kind of flip from Memphis, what brought
you to Hollywood.
Speaker 4 (07:06):
Well, they were separate by years. My mother and brother
were the end of the war, come the Second World War.
The forties in this country were amazing. People were all
of a sudden seeing they were getting houses for the
first time under the gi Bill of Rights. People were
actually able to have something for a change. And I
don't know, I guess it was Rosevelt that brought that along.
(07:27):
And people were starting to settle down in these different
towns and countries and places, and America was becoming a
place to go and venture into and see now that
the war was over. And my mother and brother lived
in a little town called Blifeul, Arkansas. My grandfather was
the town doctor. My grandmother was a Christian science practitioner.
They were married and for years my grandfather had done
(07:50):
all these medical things in a small town, and my
grandmother has done all of this kind of Christian science
metaphysical thinking, and at the end of his life he
said that she had healed more than he had. My
mother decided that she had been in love with one
guy who was in a movie and his name was
Buddy Rogers, Butty Rogers and wings, and my mother just
(08:13):
this was the end all. And he arrived in his
plane in this little town where they had a huge
army base, air force base, and it was all wrapping
up and the war was over. My mother knew she
had to get out of this little town. But until then,
the best looking men on earth arrived in airplanes day
in this air force base. So my mother said, I'm
going to leave this place, and I'm going to go
(08:35):
to Hollywood because I have Betty Grabel's legs.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
And my brother, my gay brother, said, I have Betty Gables.
I had a gay brother, and Bill was the most
amazing human being.
Speaker 4 (08:46):
He taught me so much. He had the best taste
of anybody I ever knew. He was had an outrageous
sense of humor. And my mother and brother were joined together,
and he actually created this fatal my mother by dressing her,
and he had such amazing taste that he gave her
(09:07):
all of the little my mother great southern bell quality,
but she didn't have that killer, that look of fatale.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
My brother just did that, and he knew what he dresses,
he styled.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
He created her, He absolutely created He then said to
me at that.
Speaker 4 (09:23):
Age, she said, we're going to California, and I'm taking
you and your other brother. We're going across country and
you get to see all of America.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
That was perfect.
Speaker 4 (09:32):
My little brother didn't know where he'd come from. Is
not like anybody else in the family. He's a person,
so so he said it in his own words. He's
so meticulous and so worried about what's going to happen.
That he'll read the label of an aspirin bottle for
all side effects, and we will leave for another country
(09:55):
with twelve dollars in our pocket.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
We just don't. We just know that the universe is going.
Speaker 4 (09:59):
To provide right exactly. So my mother and brother set out.
We bought a Lincoln Continental convertible. Yeah it was pea
green but had beige leather and beige top, and Lincolnenttal
convertible forty seven.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
Them were apset doning, yes, dunning, and we you know,
they didn't drive all the well over they were you know,
four engines in them.
Speaker 4 (10:19):
But we drove across country and we broke down somewhere
in Mexico, and in the mountains of Mexico. My mother
decided to take us short through Mexico. Yeah, if you
can believe that one, and we ended up in Acapusto,
but not before death almost because we brakes went out
of the mountains and ten thousand feet and my brother
(10:42):
was hyperventilating, and my mother was there saying, oh, we've
got to do something, and she.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
Looked back at me and she said, well, you're all
I've got get out and find help.
Speaker 4 (10:52):
That was now at that time, I was a little
like this is a little later I was I was
not seven, I was about ten, okay, and so at
and I had a field commission and I went out
and found I found another wrecker, actually was a garbage truck.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
And I went and I put my mother and my
brother and my little brother in the garbage truck and
we drove to a Capulco, which was a hell of
a arrival in.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
The garbage truck. Thank you that this is a movie.
The story you're talking about, like, what an adventure.
Speaker 4 (11:36):
My brother was really a lovely human being and taught
me a lot, but he was always behind the scenes,
plotting and planning. My mother had all these different boyfriends
that all had fallen in love with her, and so
every town we go to, she said, oh.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
He's divine, you know.
Speaker 4 (11:52):
He went to Princeton and just gonna love him, and
we're gonna have dinner with him, and I were going
to find a father for all of us.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
It's just gonna work beautifully. And I'd say, oh great.
Speaker 4 (12:00):
We'd sit down and the guy would walk and he
was a complete alcoholic, a mess, and she said, oh
my god, he's let himself go.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
We move on to the next town, right.
Speaker 4 (12:11):
She was just outrageous, you know. And Bill would say, well,
you know, it's just not the thing to do the
way he did. He don't wear brown shoes after six o'clock.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
Georgia.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Now we understand, like how you got such incredible style
and charisma.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
I mean, this was to have a mom like that,
well it was.
Speaker 4 (12:29):
It was a bizarre thing because Bill and Mom wanted
to entertain and know all the and they did because
you know, this swans that whole thing with Truman.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
Capodi was at our.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
House every night, really at Beriakman Place in New York,
and my brother when they ran out quite often they'd
run out of money and they wouldn't have any more
cabar in anymore cannopages. My brother would go back in
the kitchen and put together dog food on little ritz
crackers with an olive and people would eat.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
And I said, Bill, you can't do it. He said,
they'd love it.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
Welcome back to Table for two.
Speaker 5 (13:26):
Our guest, George Hamilton has been a Hollywood fixture since
the nineteen fifties, but you might not know that being
a movie star was not his first choice for.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
A career Hollywood. When we got to Hollywood.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
Yeah, tell me like, you got to Hollywood and you're
how old?
Speaker 3 (13:43):
Now, Well, I was about twelve.
Speaker 4 (13:44):
Then it's your twelve, I guess in ten, eleven, twelve
in that time, and sometimes it seemed forever, but we
stopped in all these different towns. My mother thought that
Hollywood was where they were going to make it, and
then I realized something.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
They were here.
Speaker 4 (13:59):
We had houses all over, they'd had a little money
from they'd inherited with the death of my grandmother and grandfather,
and they were living the life they thought movie stars lived.
And they were I mean my mother there was nothing
to see Clark Gable at dinner with my mother. I mean,
these were things that, oh yeah, all the time. And
my mother knew all the movies stars.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
Now was she pursuing the career or she just was
sort of.
Speaker 4 (14:22):
So they were enamored from the first day they saw
a movie in her movie house and they saw themselves
in it, both of them. And my brother was pushing
my mother because he wanted it too, and neither one.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
He was incredibly good looking, and I.
Speaker 4 (14:38):
Wasn't fashionable to be gay in those days, and very
hard right and Bill and I I laughed a lot
of Bill's outrageous.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
It's his sense of humor was so outrageous. And my
mother was this. She got a screen test and she
used Bill's lane, which was just a foolish thing.
Speaker 4 (14:55):
She went and she had this screen test where one
of these guys was supposed to be like a Clark gay.
She was supposed to say she supposed to seduce him
on camera, and she was all right with that, except
she did say exactly what.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
Billy told her. A gentleman doesn't wear brown shoes after
six o'clock. And that was the end of her career.
Thank you, thank you. It's very kind. But we're moving on.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
We're moving on.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
So when you get to Hollywood, you're going into your teens,
did you have a influence that you looked at like
a leading man that you were like, oh, and did
you have the itch you wanted to become an actor?
Speaker 3 (15:35):
Brusle? You know what what got it for me? I
really wanted to be a doctor because my grandmother and
grandfather was and I thought there's a lot to this
medicine that doesn't people don't understand the mind. The power
of the mind is huge, and I thought I would
try to be an actor, but.
Speaker 4 (15:52):
I thought, it's not possible the way they're doing it,
you know, just they're failing left and right, and yet
they're the darlings of the tomb. So years later I
decided I was getting out of school. I was seventeen,
and I thought, why don't I try that, just to
see if my idea is right. They wanted it too much,
and I figured out the way to handle Hollywood is
(16:14):
let them think you don't need them. So when I
went to MGM, an agent brought me in with ten guys,
and they were all kind of like a yellow dog
casting kanya. So I decided I'd rent a Rolls Royce
and get a chauffeur. And I got an old one
that was in nineteen thirty nine, Snack of Deville, built
(16:34):
for the King and Queen of England, and I rented
it for the day and got a dorman from a
restaurant with some braid on his shoulder and made him
drive it, and I said park it under the window
of Altrasconi, who was the casting director of MGM. And
so while I was standing with these ten guys and
then this agent was doing a bad job trying to
sell us, I kept going to the window, and I'd
(16:55):
look at my watch and I'd look out the window
and said, be right down, be right And I said,
what are you doing? I said, these cars downstairs and
I have to go.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
This is what do you have to go for?
Speaker 4 (17:02):
I said, well, mommy and I this is not for me.
I don't want to be an actor. I said, God,
I can make much more money in the family, but
I don't want to do this. And they said, well,
hold on a minute. I said, I'm sorry, must go,
shook hands with each boy and walked out. I was
called back an hour later and say, they want you back.
They want to talk to you again. I said, I'm
not working for any three hundred dollars a week. I
(17:24):
better trust about it than that. Anyway, I got my
first contract up to one thousand dollars and they were
not hired, no one else. And I said to my
mother and brother, the trick is you wanted it too much.
I pretended I didn't want it. I went under contract
the first day, you asked me. The first person I
saw walking on the lot was carry Grant.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
Get out and I walked.
Speaker 4 (17:44):
I said, mister Grant, how what do I do to
be like you. He said, why didn't you get a
good haircut.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
That? And then I saw I saw fred as stair dancing,
and I thought, my god.
Speaker 4 (17:58):
He said and I waited finish and I said, mister Stare,
can you give me any tips because I'm trying to
learn about acting and on. And he said, well, they
have a good tailor here, but there's a better one
in London that you might one day get. Told me
the name of the taylor. I thought, so far, I've
got a haircut in the tailor. And my first movie
(18:18):
at MGM was with Robert Mitchell. Now mitcham was just
sort of leisurely standing against the wall, I thought, But
then I realized that there's something else going on. He said,
say the lines that I men met the guy and
we were in a scene and they said, Mitch, say
the lines. Vincent Minelli said, say the lines, bitch, and
(18:39):
he said, I know the lines. I'm just too drunk
to say.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
This is just Hollywood. So now he and I work
all day. He never misses the line. We finished around
seven o'clock and he said, we're going to the Sportsman's Love.
We're going to have a drink. I thought, okay. Four
o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 4 (18:56):
I'm still drinking with Robert Mitchum and I said, mister Mitchell,
I've got to be on the set at seven o'clock
in the morning. He said, you know, you worry about
makeup and being in a wardrobe, he said, tell him
me put the wardrobe in a dressing room and get
a tan. Well for days, that was it. I had
a haircut, a suit, and a ten That's all I knew.
(19:16):
And that advice was that I never learned anything about acting.
That was another stuff they said to me at the studio.
This is the best part of okay, They said to
me at the studio. We want you to date only
(19:38):
the girls at MGM because we put a lot of
money in publicity for you people. And don't go to
Warner Brothers and ask what there's some beautiful girls. Don't
go to Warner Brothers.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
Just stay with the MGM women.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
So I found a list of them. They were about
seventy and I thought I could get through that in
a month ago.
Speaker 4 (20:00):
So the next thing I would take, you know, sometimes
three a day, I'd make breakfast, lunch.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
I was doing what the studio wanted.
Speaker 4 (20:08):
So as it went on, I found out something that
was extraordinary. First of all, there were lots of parts,
but they weren't telling and the agents didn't have the knowledge.
They had no breakdowns. So the agents, I'm working on
something for you, Because it was always bullshit. You just
knew that the agent weren't going to come up with anything.
So I took it in my own hands, and I
(20:29):
found that there were script analysis and script breakdowns and
actual scripts in the memual cage, and that they made
them and they left them there and they didn't.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
Go to the offices.
Speaker 4 (20:41):
So for maybe several weeks sometimes nobody knew what they
were doing. I every week climbed the script cage on
the weekend and spent the weekend reading every script. I
knew every part that was in the movies at MGM.
So finally they'd say to me. The agent said, well,
you know there's nothing right now. Oh yes, there's one
in this is this wonderful movie called Light in the Piazza.
(21:03):
It's a movie of you know, well, you're not Italian,
I said, I'm an actor. Well we will find out
about that. We're not sure, but nonetheless, we don't see
you playing this role. I see me playing this role
I'm saying. So I found out the biggest secret. There
were about of those seventy girls in the contract, there
were at least two. Each major head of the studio
(21:27):
had maybe eight that were really not actresses. They were
there for certain other things, if you get my drift.
And they came in at lunchtime and serviced the gentleman.
The gentleman in question here. So I found out what
time they came because they came at the same time,
because the secretaries gave them time by taking up long lunches.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
These the executives on the lot exactly.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
So I would arrive in their offices, knock on the door.
Who is it. It's George Hewmen, can you come back?
Who is it? Can I just speak to him and
what is it?
Speaker 4 (22:05):
And I would open the door and I would catch
them sometimes in FLAGRANTI.
Speaker 3 (22:09):
He got to be He said, what are you doing?
What are you doing here?
Speaker 4 (22:12):
I said, I'm just coming from an appointment we had
in the point, I didn't make any appointment with you,
I said, but but I have an appointment.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
Well, come back.
Speaker 4 (22:18):
And then he came out and say, you didn't see
anything you I said a little bit. I didn't something
I saw something.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
Let me tell you, George very cunning well.
Speaker 4 (22:28):
I was running the studio in my own way. You
were because I knew the parts. I could tell the
other actors. Not only could tell the other pipes, I
could sell them. So I was makingside money.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
Because you would tell your cronies on the did you wow?
I mean how times have changed? I mean this was
you know, this was a small the studio system, and
you had to learn the system. I figured, acting is
the last thing I need. I need to know how
they work the system. Yes, was the studio system, which
(23:07):
eventually came to an end. And you should have probably
one of the last people in. You know, you were
such a young buck and you had to learn everything,
the dance classes and like you said, you know, you
had access to all this stuff.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
Looking back, was it a fun time or was it
a good time? Or how does it settle with you?
Speaker 4 (23:24):
It's interesting because I felt that my mother and brother failed.
I took the position that no matter what happened, I
was going to try it and pretend I didn't need it,
and pretend it wasn't that important. It was important to me.
Once I got in, I thought, I don't want to fail.
But the minute I started showing I cared about it,
(23:46):
it was not as often it as it was. It's
a strange thing. You think the things you care about
and you willing to do everything for to get are
the things you get. It's not the way it works.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
I'm sorry to say it, but you know, I remember Manelli,
I proposed nothing. But Monelli, I was going to tell
you this before, was saying to George. Prepared.
Speaker 4 (24:05):
He came over and George proparved this young intense actor
who was getting big movies like Breakfast at Tiffany. He
said to George, he said, George, I know you are
a seething volcano inside and you were about to explode it,
but I have to tell you there is nothing happening
on your face. Well George was just crushed right. And
(24:27):
and this guy on the news guy was there and
he he you know, journalist, Harrison Carrol. And he said
to him, he said, George, are you becoming a movie
stars at what you're doing?
Speaker 3 (24:39):
He said, I'm an actor. And he turned to me,
said you're an actor. I said, no, I'm a movie.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
I would have been said the same thing.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
It was just the fun of it. I loved. I
always loved the joke of all of it. Even if
I was it, I liked it.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Thanks for joining us on Table for two.
Speaker 5 (25:18):
Few people have better stories than George Hamilton, from his
time dating President Lyndon Johnson's daughter to his life from
Palm Beach. I feel lucky that George has sat down
with me today to share some of his incredible tales.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
People will say, what are you doing next week?
Speaker 4 (25:36):
And they say, you know it's going to be bad weather,
and we're thinking about going to such and such or somewhere,
And I'd say, I don't know, but I'll figure it out.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
And then I'd get five or.
Speaker 4 (25:44):
Six invitations, sometimes to different towns and countries.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
Or my favorite is to go out to the airport.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
Yea three or four You got to really listen to this,
the three or four.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
Aviation.
Speaker 4 (25:58):
Yeah, out there at the airport and I walk in
with my two suitcases and newspaper, and I don't know
how long I'm going to be because first of all,
I don't have a flight. I just go out there
to see if any of the people I know or
know of are going somewhere I might be invited, So
I take along newspaper put my feet up invariably, and
(26:18):
I could tell you the names of maybe five of
the most important businessmen in the world come through that
airport every day. So I'm always sitting there having a coffee.
They have a very expensive coffee machine. I've never seen
the equal up. It's phenomen It's anything you like and
give you a massage at the same time.
Speaker 3 (26:36):
So I'm always drinking coffee.
Speaker 4 (26:38):
I'm so wired by the time I'm ready to go,
and I'm just hopeful someone and I'll say, where are
you going there? So we're going to Paris. We have
to stop in London for a couple of hours and
we're going to Paris. Oh god, I'm trying to get there.
I'm actually trying to get to London and Paris. And
you're going where London Paris? Well, why don't you come
with us. I'm waiting for my plane. It's too but
(27:00):
there late where that I don't know. I think they're
in Gander. In Gander, Yeah, they had some sort of
a problem, some kind of weather problem.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
Well, come on to snow problem. We've got it. We
got extra stuff for him. You know, you've got the
food he brought the caviar and all that.
Speaker 4 (27:15):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And I go right on the plane,
sit down and and people, I mean practically have my.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
Massage and I do it all the time. This is
brilliant it for myself. You know you are going to
run it.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
Nobody on this planet could do that.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
But oh, I think it's sick great.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
Was there ever a time that you put yourself in
a situation that you're like, Okay.
Speaker 4 (27:40):
I'm in over my head here right this is I
was over my head from the day and went most
of its bend over my head. I don't think it's
fun to swim and shallow water. Yeah, I've always liked
to be figuring it out as I go.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
What was the most exciting moment in the deep end
of the pool?
Speaker 4 (27:57):
There's too many things. There's so many things that people listen.
There was a rumor for a while that I was
in the CIA. This was all over town, people saying,
we know you're in the CIA. Why and well, I'd
gone out with the daughter of the president.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
I wanted to ask you.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
And Johnson was an extraordinary man. He did not like
the idea. He was all right initially, but he didn't
like the idea.
Speaker 4 (28:20):
When he found out that I was sole support for
my family and I was deferred from the draft. Now
this is Vietnam, and I got it very clear it's
about time for him to join up. And I thought,
why should I be bullied into going when I am
sole support for my family.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
I'm taking care of him.
Speaker 4 (28:36):
But this went on, and it got to a point
where I got a call from Linda Johnson's office the
White House said.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
He'd like to see me at the LBJ ranch and
I flew down.
Speaker 4 (28:46):
We were arriving in King Air, his King Air, and
below was Lincoln Continental convertible going about stall speed of
the airplane.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
But it must have been ninety miles an hour down
the road right beneath us.
Speaker 4 (28:59):
And we we land and Lindon Johnson says, Linda's with me,
and he says, get in, Georgie. I get in, and
I get into a Lincolnonmental convertible but the top down
and he hands me a thirty o six and he's
got a twenty twenty at Winchester, and I'm thinking to myself,
I'm six inches from the head of the President of
(29:21):
the United States with a gun.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
This is where I get it. They'll find me all over,
paint all over the car.
Speaker 4 (29:27):
And we went riding in the in the in the
car for a little while, hunting, and all of a
sudden he says, there's one, get him, get him. I'm
looking there's a deer, and I don't know what to do.
I last thing I want to do is fire a
gun in the car. So I jumped out and shot
and I think I hit it, and then it ran
over here, and ran over there and ran back. Finally
it fell a secret Service. Get up, they pick him up.
(29:49):
They put him on the truck. We go again, get in, George,
go again, another one and he turns to me and
I get it. And he turns to me and he says, damn,
you're regular Daniel Boone. Now, all of a sudden I
see him turning around talking to me, and he's relieving himself. Now,
where do you look right when you got the President
of the United States relieving himself with may I say,
(30:12):
I didn't see, but I hear the rumor.
Speaker 1 (30:16):
This is next level. I mean I would have looked.
Speaker 4 (30:18):
Well, you can't, you just can't. I'm very patriotic. My
mother and brother. As things went on, time went on.
My brother wanted more than life to give me, and
(30:39):
I didn't understand this. He wanted to give me a
house in Beverly Hills, and I never understood why a particularly,
I ended up buying a house that was thirty nine rooms.
It's one of the largest house. Second house built in
Beverly Hills still there.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
It was a house that the mayor built Sylvie's Faulding,
and it had a tunnel. And I found out the
tunnel ran from that.
Speaker 4 (31:05):
House to Pickfair, which was the house that Mary Pickford
and Buddy Rogers learned together. So when my mother thought
she was going to marry Buddy Rogers from this little town,
all that trip across country for them to be movie
stars and didn't work. Then my going out to Hollywood
and connecting, they figured they were going to at least
(31:27):
let Mary Pickford know that they were there.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
They had arrived.
Speaker 4 (31:31):
Because Buddy was going to marry my mother and he
married Mary Pickford, America's sweetheart instead.
Speaker 3 (31:37):
It broke her heart.
Speaker 4 (31:38):
Wow, every man she ever went out with, most of
the motivations, all the guys that she went were for
one reason. That was to get us father, get us
someone to be ahead of the family. But her heart
was broken because Buddy Rogers. So when we got out
there California and I looking for her house, my brother
and mother maneuvered me into buying this particular house and
(31:58):
it was Douglas Fairbanks house and Mary Pickford. They wanted
Mary Pickford to know they were in town.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
I bought the house.
Speaker 4 (32:05):
My brother decorated incordibles, Savonnerie carpets and goldblas and seb
vases never seen. All my money was going to this
day and we had an invitation for Mary Pickford to
have dinner and she came in drinking Scotch and milk,
and she had little gold ringlets and a little close hat,
drunk out of her head with Buddy Rogers. And Mary
(32:27):
Pickford says, Tom, your mother and my husband have been
in love for years. They're probably and they had gone
into the kitchen. They're probably in there having their way
with each other. Now, she says to me, And you
want to be an actor? I said, well, I'm just starting.
She said, well, we're going to do a improvisation. I'm
(32:49):
going to have a heart attack and I'm going to
fall in your arms and you're going to give me
mouth to mouth or suscitation, And I thought, is.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
This am I having out of body kids?
Speaker 4 (32:59):
It's one hundred years old, and she's I've got her
in my arms and she wants to have mouth and
mouth resuscitation, just as I have her in my arms,
and she collapses. Buddy and my mother walk out of
the kitchen and he says, Oh, for Christ's sake, Mary,
you do this all the time.
Speaker 3 (33:12):
Not get off.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
Oh, Like the personalities are I mean, you're talking silent
film starts.
Speaker 3 (33:20):
We weren't so silent.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
They were not so silent.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
So I mean, here you are. You've experienced Hollywood in
the fifties and the sixties and the seventies and eighties.
Speaker 3 (33:28):
I mean, and the forties and the forties.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
Is there a period of time that you look back?
Speaker 2 (33:32):
So that was in your world the golden time, the
best time, because to me always the seventies seems so.
Speaker 4 (33:39):
I would have thought so, because that's when I had
some sort of Hollywood fame in movies. It came to
a point where the studios were pushing you and you.
Speaker 3 (33:49):
Were getting lots of work and you're making money, and
it was very glamorous, But it was never as glamorous
as the forties. Really that was those were real movie stars.
Speaker 4 (33:59):
Yeah, people like Glorias Swanson used to come and stay
at the house with me. She knew the house because
she'd been in it many times. She felt comfortable in
the house. But she would come in her roles and
immediately once she was there, she took all of that off.
She just became part of our family. She brought her
She loved health food, so she always was doing health
(34:20):
food and she would stay for weeks. And to hear
Gloria Swanson tell about silent movies and stuff, it was extraordinary.
So I had all of that input, and in a
strange way, I didn't really want to be in the
period that I entered. I wanted to be in the
one before. So I played that character. And then then
all of a sudden, I found myself enormously out of
(34:42):
date because not even the James Dean was in it
more was in anymore. But then I found myself in
a movie with dressing in a very kind of well
like al Pacino and al and I became the best
of friends. I just love how and we were I
played the lawyer and God followed the three and what
did I do? I dressed like they did in the
twenties and thirty hours movie that would have thought have
(35:06):
been street violent and everything in its own way. But
Francis knew how to marry those cultures together.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
You know.
Speaker 3 (35:11):
He was an amazing when they call me.
Speaker 4 (35:14):
I got a call one day and they said the
Francis Coppler would like you to come in and meet
with him for a Godfather three. And I took a
deep breath and I said, now you tell Bob Evans
to stop trying to play jokes on the other time.
Speaker 3 (35:28):
It's not funny. And I hung out. They called me back.
Speaker 4 (35:31):
I said, this is not Bob Evans's office, this is
France's office, and he'd like to see you. And I said,
what are they going to do? Why would they want
me and the Godfather? I said, they want to make
a musical. He said, well, it's the part that Bobby
Devau was playing and he's not coming back. And it's
a different kind of lawyer. I said, what kind of lawyer?
And they said it was kind of like a palm beach.
(35:52):
I heard that word, mister fix that. I said, I'm
your man.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
I mean, I remember very elegant in Godfather three, you
know it was perfectly guys.
Speaker 4 (36:05):
Well, that's why I wanted to do that, because I
saw the different eras up against each other, just in
a certain way. It was a very interesting. I asked France, said,
what am I doing, Francis, are you writing lines?
Speaker 3 (36:17):
Very?
Speaker 4 (36:17):
What are you doing?
Speaker 3 (36:18):
He said, never be further than three feet from now?
I said why?
Speaker 4 (36:22):
He said, You're a protector. You hang on every word
he's saying. You wonder what he's saying. You go correct it,
you know. I said, okay, And I said, well what
I do? Just look very intense, look at his hair,
count the strands of hair. So finally he's lying in
the street. He's been shot, and I got it his
head in my hands, and I say, I think you're going.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
Bauld drove out racing.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
Holly was a tough town. You don't sustain like you
have what like what is the magic?
Speaker 4 (36:46):
But I think by the very nature of knowing at
least what those different eras were, yeah, I also learned
about them and realized that I wasn't particularly up to date.
And in a strange way, Hollywood always loops back and
brings an actor or an era up to date, incorporates
(37:09):
it by making it by an out of date thing
becoming in date again and it's a great history maker.
And once you visit, I mean you look at even
the movie that you know just won you have you
have an amazing era of history there. That was frightening,
one of the biggest decisions ever made. But that period
(37:32):
has become very interesting to this world again. But we
often do that because that has the power to do that,
and sometimes they just collect you along the way.
Speaker 3 (37:41):
I'd wear Gane just as much as.
Speaker 4 (37:43):
I'd wear a suit made by Paulo Matron or my
guys in England, Madison Shepard. But I kind of always
studied all that stuff because I think it's not enough
to be important in one ear. You got to go
the distance across all.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:01):
I think, you know, one of the things the sustainability
of someone in an industry, certainly like Hollywood, is you
have to have the interests like you do, lean into
understanding it, like the curiosity.
Speaker 4 (38:12):
Well maybe that maybe I just couldn't. Maybe it took
me all this time to learn the act. Maybe I
didn't know how to act into no right. But you know,
I think one of the things in life is I
have never been able to take myself seriously. I take
the job, I take the situation, I kind of get
the joke, and I try my best.
Speaker 3 (38:32):
To always lighten up.
Speaker 4 (38:34):
I don't like giant ego, and I will find a
way to be self deprecating if I can. And people
didn't think it's because you're not good. They buy your
act even better. When you do that, you can hurt yourself.
Speaker 3 (38:46):
A lot of people said you should get more serious.
I hate serious actors.
Speaker 1 (38:50):
Because you can hurt yourself because if they start to
not take you as seriously. You know.
Speaker 2 (38:54):
I relate to that comment because one of the things
I always tried to have when I was at work
was have fun. People who work with you look at
you having fun, think you're not really working, and you're like, no,
I'm working.
Speaker 1 (39:05):
I'm here, I'm doing. But I'm also going to choose
to have fun.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
And so therefore, and I think not being self deprecating
is again a way to survive.
Speaker 1 (39:15):
Yeah, all the Michigoth that's around us, I agree.
Speaker 4 (39:19):
And I think that they think you're not good because
of that. Yeah, And I don't care as long as
I'm having fun at this. Yeah, it's a very very
it's a very short lived The odds are for me
to have been in this now to being eighty four
years old, it's crazy. I don't think anyone would given
me odds.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
I wish you could see. Your head of hair is
beautiful and you're smart.
Speaker 2 (39:48):
I mean everything about your radiates. So if anyone is doubting,
but the resident, they're good.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
They're really good.
Speaker 3 (39:58):
No.
Speaker 4 (39:58):
But you know it's strange because Vincent Camby just went
on about me one time. He said, Georgian has always
been too much. His hair has been so black that
oil even looks spills.
Speaker 3 (40:08):
Off of it. That goes on and just just rip me.
And I'm reading it at the top. I'm going to
do a one man show. You all decided to do that. God,
this is news and Michael Einstein and are working together. Wow,
So that should be fine. You'll do it in New York,
you'll do it in different places. We've written already the
first draft of this and and I'm going from here
(40:31):
to go into a rehearsal on it. So it's very
it's very interesting.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
It's a huge news at table on table for two
because I was one of the questions that I was
going to ask you, is like, with such an iconic
career and you've done so many things, what's up next?
That that is like hitting right on the nose. It's
like what I think we all would love to see
and clearly what you should do well.
Speaker 4 (40:56):
I think the first thing would be to do a
Soto documentary sort maybe about what we talked about today
in your life and that kind of stuff, and be
able to bring all this new stuff into it so
it's old fashioned and yet it's up to day.
Speaker 3 (41:10):
Yeah. I like that.
Speaker 2 (41:11):
I like that you are such an elegant man, and
you are so you've had such a life, and I
love that it ain't nearly wrapping up.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
You're not an eighty four year old. That's like done.
Speaker 3 (41:23):
But there's an old thing. You finally get your head
together and your ass is falling apart. That's true. Why
it sounds, but you really can the things that you
find the most difficult in your old age are the
very things that keep you the youngest.
Speaker 2 (41:39):
That's very insightful. So just to sort of dig a
little Deepersue give me an example, Well.
Speaker 4 (41:43):
Talking about you're in an amazing shape, you go to
the gym. The last thing in the world to do
is to give it up when you're older.
Speaker 3 (41:48):
Right, you do that more. Right.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
You make very very important point.
Speaker 2 (41:53):
I think the thing that I have done, as I've
committed to, let's say, the exercise piece of my life,
it has changed. I don't live the heavy weights anymore,
incorporated pilates or some wellness things. But you have to
keep you lean in more as you age because like
you know, and look, there are things that hurt, like
my knee hurts. I'm a niscus surgery on my lower back.
But you figure out how to manage that well.
Speaker 3 (42:17):
But you can constantly look it over. For instance, if
you knee hurts, there's the reason the knee hurts.
Speaker 4 (42:21):
But.
Speaker 3 (42:23):
Generally protected by a muscle, So you build that muscle
specific above it if it's your If for instance, your
back is hurting quite often, it's the core. Yeah, you
start working on the core wor right, and then you
decide where it's the lower or the upper quadrants. And
you can do that in a chair while you're sitting. Yeah,
people think you have to be in a gym.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
Right, No, you don't know.
Speaker 4 (42:44):
I'm just walking and you can have walking is great,
but people are trying to overdo these eight thousand steps
a day or.
Speaker 2 (42:50):
Whatever, constantly looking at their wrists monitor like, oh okay.
Speaker 3 (42:54):
They get lost in those things.
Speaker 4 (42:56):
It's the all around in movement. My just keep saying
stand all the time. I'll be in bed and it says.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
Three in the morning, Stan, you get out, No, I do. George,
it is amazing to see you if you look amazing.
Thank you for taking the time to have lunch with me,
and I hope all of you have enjoyed this lunch
that George and I have had here and do it again.
Speaker 1 (43:21):
Thanks for joining us. Table for two with Bruce Bosi
is produced by iHeartRadio seven three seven Park and Airmail.
Our executive producers are Bruce Bosi and Nathan King. Our
(43:41):
supervising producer and editor is Dylan Fagan. Table for two
is researched and written by Jack Sullivan. Our sound engineers
are Meil B. Klein, Jess Crainich, Evan Taylor, and Jesse Funk.
Our music supervisor is Randall Poster. Our talent booking is
done by Jane Sarkin. To social media manager is Gracie Wiener.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
Special thanks to Amy Sugarman, Uni Scherer, Kevin Yuvane, Bobby Bauer, Alison,
Kanter Graber, Barbara Jen, Jeff Klein, and the staff at
the Tower Bar in the world famous Sunset Tower Hotel
in Hollywood.
Speaker 1 (44:18):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Hey, everyone, thanks for pulling up a chair. Today on
Table for two.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
We're at the Sunset Tower in Hollywood, my favorite joint,
and this is Bruce Bosi.
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Today.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Those are super glamorous, very special day because we're having
lunch with an icon, with someone who's been in the
business since literally the nineteen forties.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
I'm gonna have the chop salad with the exactly.
Speaker 1 (00:26):
The way you're DoD He's tan, he's charming, he has
so much charisma. He has started movies, television, Broadway. He's
published books, produced movies. He's been an entrepreneur.
Speaker 3 (00:40):
I wish I could eat more of this, but I've
talked too much.
Speaker 1 (00:46):
He is a very debonair, very funny, extremely charismatic George Hamilton.
Speaker 2 (00:53):
So let me tell you, pull up a chair, grab
yourself a glass of rose, because we are gonna have
some good times today and hear some epic stories from
years gone by, and you'll be surprised. There's a future
for this eighty four year old. So stay with us
and we'll be right back. I'm Bruce Bosi and this
(01:13):
is my podcast Table for two. So mister Hamilton, thank
you for George, thank you for pulling up a chair
today on table for two. It's a big deal, and
(01:34):
I just wanted to sort of say so, you know,
many of my lunch dates are legends in the making,
legends to be if they're lucky enough to have the
fortitude to stick around. And we're sitting if you pulled
up a chair today with a gentleman who is an
iconic man, a true Hollywood superstar, your royalty in Hollywood.
You are what the definition of a movie star is.
(01:56):
You've had incredible career. Georgia started in movies, television. You've
hosted your own successful daytime talk show. You start on Broadway.
You've published two very successful books. You're a successful producer.
You're an entrepreneur, the skincare line, the tanning salons. You've
been the Grand Marshal of a parade. You've been a
(02:16):
reality television host.
Speaker 1 (02:18):
You've been a.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Reality television star. You've had cigars named after you. You've
been a lover. You've married your father, a brother, a son,
and you in two thousand and nine were awarded the
two thousand, three hundred and eighty eighth Star on Hollywood
Boulevard Walker Fame. I am sitting with today a legend
mister George Hamilton, thank you for joining me today.
Speaker 4 (02:40):
And I was married and divorced only one time you've
been record that is yeah, and remained a friend over
the years. And you know, I got I got a
star in Palm Springs, and I was, yeah, I thought,
that's a pretty amazing to get a star in Palm
spring And then I got a it's been there with
thirty forty years and now I got a note of
about it and needed repair. And they asked me, yeah,
(03:03):
ask me what I wanted to do about it? Maybe
running a repair service for stars literally and Bom Springs.
Speaker 3 (03:12):
You gotta go down and fix it? Why not? You know,
you just don't want to. You don't want to leave
your star.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
No, you have to keep that. So you are from Memphis, right,
born of Memphis. So you're younger than Elvis Presley. Did
you ever did you know him growing up? Did you
ever meet Elvis?
Speaker 4 (03:26):
Never met him in Memphis in the in the beginning
when he started. I had already left Memphis and was
in Hollywood when he started. And I met the colonel,
and the colonel was the most extraordinary guy. I became
some of my best friend and under contract to MGM.
He had a sort of cook house. He liked it
because then the carnival, it was where all the people
(03:48):
met and he made his best deals. And he had
all the guys from Elvis's group, Sonny and Red and
Lamar and all the guys would come in and see
the colonel, and Elvis would come and go. But the
Colonel and Elvis were very much in a kind of
(04:10):
low key conversation all the time, and there would be
like a continuing of it. He would check in with
him and it would be kind of private conversations. I
would hear, and I would see the boys hanging out
with each other and with Elvis. The minute they were
walking in or they were leaving, they'd start a song,
(04:31):
a gospel song in tight harmony. And I think Elvis
in love that kind of it was kind of like
a grounding where.
Speaker 3 (04:38):
His world was.
Speaker 4 (04:40):
All the rest of it was kind of you know,
this is happening, but and he wasn't making a big
deal of it.
Speaker 3 (04:45):
I was a very low key.
Speaker 4 (04:46):
Guy, and I didn't I certainly knew him and talk
to him many times, but I don't think I ever
was close with Elvis. When I was going out with
Lyndon Johnson's daughter Linda, Elvis and him Priscilla, and in
different times we were all together, and I have some
(05:07):
pictures with Elvis were very interesting, but it was Elvis
was a totally gentleman, very considerate, very kind person.
Speaker 2 (05:16):
That's the definite, Like if someone's describing you, that's how
one would describe you.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
I feel. And do you think it has to do
with being a Southern Yeah.
Speaker 4 (05:24):
I do think I've read something about you once you
said you the most important thing to use someone who's kind.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
Yes, that's to me too. I was brought up that way.
I don't I'm not. I can.
Speaker 4 (05:35):
I can have a funny line and it could be cutting,
but it's never unkind. I don't know how to be unkind.
And people will say, well, you know that shows weakness,
when you know it doesn't shows great strength.
Speaker 3 (05:47):
Especially in this town.
Speaker 4 (05:49):
I see people in the streets, you know, all messed
up all across this country now on all the drugs
that are just awful now, and just to be kind
helps so much in their world, just to acknowledge people.
Speaker 2 (06:05):
When I see people you know who unfortunately are living
on the streets, they just want to be acknowledged these
It's like, you know, we're just all on this planet
together for this short period of time.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
You know.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
It's so true, And how we look at life determines
our success. And a lot of people think you have
to be tough and killing and crushing.
Speaker 3 (06:25):
To get ahead.
Speaker 4 (06:26):
I always resent that, and I always resist it. The
minute I realize I've got a plan, I hand it
over and let the universe head it.
Speaker 3 (06:33):
It always finds a better way for me, and it
gives it to me in a way in which I
would least expect it. But it comes in perfect form
when it comes, may come three years later than my timing.
But I've let go of that all my life.
Speaker 4 (06:47):
I never did in my mind something cheap or hurtful
to get ahead and a cost to someone else.
Speaker 1 (07:02):
So if we kind of flip from Memphis, what brought
you to Hollywood.
Speaker 4 (07:06):
Well, they were separate by years. My mother and brother
were the end of the war, come the Second World War.
The forties in this country were amazing. People were all
of a sudden seeing they were getting houses for the
first time under the gi Bill of Rights. People were
actually able to have something for a change. And I
don't know, I guess it was Rosevelt that brought that along.
(07:27):
And people were starting to settle down in these different
towns and countries and places, and America was becoming a
place to go and venture into and see now that
the war was over. And my mother and brother lived
in a little town called Blifeul, Arkansas. My grandfather was
the town doctor. My grandmother was a Christian science practitioner.
They were married and for years my grandfather had done
(07:50):
all these medical things in a small town, and my
grandmother has done all of this kind of Christian science
metaphysical thinking, and at the end of his life he
said that she had healed more than he had. My
mother decided that she had been in love with one
guy who was in a movie and his name was
Buddy Rogers, Butty Rogers and wings, and my mother just
(08:13):
this was the end all. And he arrived in his
plane in this little town where they had a huge
army base, air force base, and it was all wrapping
up and the war was over. My mother knew she
had to get out of this little town. But until then,
the best looking men on earth arrived in airplanes day
in this air force base. So my mother said, I'm
going to leave this place, and I'm going to go
(08:35):
to Hollywood because I have Betty Grabel's legs.
Speaker 3 (08:39):
And my brother, my gay brother, said, I have Betty Gables.
I had a gay brother, and Bill was the most
amazing human being.
Speaker 4 (08:46):
He taught me so much. He had the best taste
of anybody I ever knew. He was had an outrageous
sense of humor. And my mother and brother were joined together,
and he actually created this fatal my mother by dressing her,
and he had such amazing taste that he gave her
(09:07):
all of the little my mother great southern bell quality,
but she didn't have that killer, that look of fatale.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
My brother just did that, and he knew what he dresses,
he styled.
Speaker 3 (09:19):
He created her, He absolutely created He then said to
me at that.
Speaker 4 (09:23):
Age, she said, we're going to California, and I'm taking
you and your other brother. We're going across country and
you get to see all of America.
Speaker 3 (09:31):
That was perfect.
Speaker 4 (09:32):
My little brother didn't know where he'd come from. Is
not like anybody else in the family. He's a person,
so so he said it in his own words. He's
so meticulous and so worried about what's going to happen.
That he'll read the label of an aspirin bottle for
all side effects, and we will leave for another country
(09:55):
with twelve dollars in our pocket.
Speaker 3 (09:57):
We just don't. We just know that the universe is going.
Speaker 4 (09:59):
To provide right exactly. So my mother and brother set out.
We bought a Lincoln Continental convertible. Yeah it was pea
green but had beige leather and beige top, and Lincolnenttal
convertible forty seven.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
Them were apset doning, yes, dunning, and we you know,
they didn't drive all the well over they were you know,
four engines in them.
Speaker 4 (10:19):
But we drove across country and we broke down somewhere
in Mexico, and in the mountains of Mexico. My mother
decided to take us short through Mexico. Yeah, if you
can believe that one, and we ended up in Acapusto,
but not before death almost because we brakes went out
of the mountains and ten thousand feet and my brother
(10:42):
was hyperventilating, and my mother was there saying, oh, we've
got to do something, and she.
Speaker 3 (10:46):
Looked back at me and she said, well, you're all
I've got get out and find help.
Speaker 4 (10:52):
That was now at that time, I was a little
like this is a little later I was I was
not seven, I was about ten, okay, and so at
and I had a field commission and I went out
and found I found another wrecker, actually was a garbage truck.
Speaker 3 (11:07):
And I went and I put my mother and my
brother and my little brother in the garbage truck and
we drove to a Capulco, which was a hell of
a arrival in.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
The garbage truck. Thank you that this is a movie.
The story you're talking about, like, what an adventure.
Speaker 4 (11:36):
My brother was really a lovely human being and taught
me a lot, but he was always behind the scenes,
plotting and planning. My mother had all these different boyfriends
that all had fallen in love with her, and so
every town we go to, she said, oh.
Speaker 3 (11:51):
He's divine, you know.
Speaker 4 (11:52):
He went to Princeton and just gonna love him, and
we're gonna have dinner with him, and I were going
to find a father for all of us.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
It's just gonna work beautifully. And I'd say, oh great.
Speaker 4 (12:00):
We'd sit down and the guy would walk and he
was a complete alcoholic, a mess, and she said, oh
my god, he's let himself go.
Speaker 3 (12:07):
We move on to the next town, right.
Speaker 4 (12:11):
She was just outrageous, you know. And Bill would say, well,
you know, it's just not the thing to do the
way he did. He don't wear brown shoes after six o'clock.
Speaker 1 (12:21):
Georgia.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Now we understand, like how you got such incredible style
and charisma.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
I mean, this was to have a mom like that,
well it was.
Speaker 4 (12:29):
It was a bizarre thing because Bill and Mom wanted
to entertain and know all the and they did because
you know, this swans that whole thing with Truman.
Speaker 3 (12:40):
Capodi was at our.
Speaker 4 (12:41):
House every night, really at Beriakman Place in New York,
and my brother when they ran out quite often they'd
run out of money and they wouldn't have any more
cabar in anymore cannopages. My brother would go back in
the kitchen and put together dog food on little ritz
crackers with an olive and people would eat.
Speaker 3 (13:00):
And I said, Bill, you can't do it. He said,
they'd love it.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
Welcome back to Table for two.
Speaker 5 (13:26):
Our guest, George Hamilton has been a Hollywood fixture since
the nineteen fifties, but you might not know that being
a movie star was not his first choice for.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
A career Hollywood. When we got to Hollywood.
Speaker 1 (13:40):
Yeah, tell me like, you got to Hollywood and you're
how old?
Speaker 3 (13:43):
Now, Well, I was about twelve.
Speaker 4 (13:44):
Then it's your twelve, I guess in ten, eleven, twelve
in that time, and sometimes it seemed forever, but we
stopped in all these different towns. My mother thought that
Hollywood was where they were going to make it, and
then I realized something.
Speaker 3 (13:58):
They were here.
Speaker 4 (13:59):
We had houses all over, they'd had a little money
from they'd inherited with the death of my grandmother and grandfather,
and they were living the life they thought movie stars lived.
And they were I mean my mother there was nothing
to see Clark Gable at dinner with my mother. I mean,
these were things that, oh yeah, all the time. And
my mother knew all the movies stars.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
Now was she pursuing the career or she just was
sort of.
Speaker 4 (14:22):
So they were enamored from the first day they saw
a movie in her movie house and they saw themselves
in it, both of them. And my brother was pushing
my mother because he wanted it too, and neither one.
Speaker 3 (14:34):
He was incredibly good looking, and I.
Speaker 4 (14:38):
Wasn't fashionable to be gay in those days, and very
hard right and Bill and I I laughed a lot
of Bill's outrageous.
Speaker 3 (14:46):
It's his sense of humor was so outrageous. And my
mother was this. She got a screen test and she
used Bill's lane, which was just a foolish thing.
Speaker 4 (14:55):
She went and she had this screen test where one
of these guys was supposed to be like a Clark gay.
She was supposed to say she supposed to seduce him
on camera, and she was all right with that, except
she did say exactly what.
Speaker 3 (15:08):
Billy told her. A gentleman doesn't wear brown shoes after
six o'clock. And that was the end of her career.
Thank you, thank you. It's very kind. But we're moving on.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
We're moving on.
Speaker 2 (15:23):
So when you get to Hollywood, you're going into your teens,
did you have a influence that you looked at like
a leading man that you were like, oh, and did
you have the itch you wanted to become an actor?
Speaker 3 (15:35):
Brusle? You know what what got it for me? I
really wanted to be a doctor because my grandmother and
grandfather was and I thought there's a lot to this
medicine that doesn't people don't understand the mind. The power
of the mind is huge, and I thought I would
try to be an actor, but.
Speaker 4 (15:52):
I thought, it's not possible the way they're doing it,
you know, just they're failing left and right, and yet
they're the darlings of the tomb. So years later I
decided I was getting out of school. I was seventeen,
and I thought, why don't I try that, just to
see if my idea is right. They wanted it too much,
and I figured out the way to handle Hollywood is
(16:14):
let them think you don't need them. So when I
went to MGM, an agent brought me in with ten guys,
and they were all kind of like a yellow dog
casting kanya. So I decided I'd rent a Rolls Royce
and get a chauffeur. And I got an old one
that was in nineteen thirty nine, Snack of Deville, built
(16:34):
for the King and Queen of England, and I rented
it for the day and got a dorman from a
restaurant with some braid on his shoulder and made him
drive it, and I said park it under the window
of Altrasconi, who was the casting director of MGM. And
so while I was standing with these ten guys and
then this agent was doing a bad job trying to
sell us, I kept going to the window, and I'd
(16:55):
look at my watch and I'd look out the window
and said, be right down, be right And I said,
what are you doing? I said, these cars downstairs and
I have to go.
Speaker 3 (17:01):
This is what do you have to go for?
Speaker 4 (17:02):
I said, well, mommy and I this is not for me.
I don't want to be an actor. I said, God,
I can make much more money in the family, but
I don't want to do this. And they said, well,
hold on a minute. I said, I'm sorry, must go,
shook hands with each boy and walked out. I was
called back an hour later and say, they want you back.
They want to talk to you again. I said, I'm
not working for any three hundred dollars a week. I
(17:24):
better trust about it than that. Anyway, I got my
first contract up to one thousand dollars and they were
not hired, no one else. And I said to my
mother and brother, the trick is you wanted it too much.
I pretended I didn't want it. I went under contract
the first day, you asked me. The first person I
saw walking on the lot was carry Grant.
Speaker 1 (17:43):
Get out and I walked.
Speaker 4 (17:44):
I said, mister Grant, how what do I do to
be like you. He said, why didn't you get a
good haircut.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
That? And then I saw I saw fred as stair dancing,
and I thought, my god.
Speaker 4 (17:58):
He said and I waited finish and I said, mister Stare,
can you give me any tips because I'm trying to
learn about acting and on. And he said, well, they
have a good tailor here, but there's a better one
in London that you might one day get. Told me
the name of the taylor. I thought, so far, I've
got a haircut in the tailor. And my first movie
(18:18):
at MGM was with Robert Mitchell. Now mitcham was just
sort of leisurely standing against the wall, I thought, But
then I realized that there's something else going on. He said,
say the lines that I men met the guy and
we were in a scene and they said, Mitch, say
the lines. Vincent Minelli said, say the lines, bitch, and
(18:39):
he said, I know the lines. I'm just too drunk
to say.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
This is just Hollywood. So now he and I work
all day. He never misses the line. We finished around
seven o'clock and he said, we're going to the Sportsman's Love.
We're going to have a drink. I thought, okay. Four
o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 4 (18:56):
I'm still drinking with Robert Mitchum and I said, mister Mitchell,
I've got to be on the set at seven o'clock
in the morning. He said, you know, you worry about
makeup and being in a wardrobe, he said, tell him
me put the wardrobe in a dressing room and get
a tan. Well for days, that was it. I had
a haircut, a suit, and a ten That's all I knew.
(19:16):
And that advice was that I never learned anything about acting.
That was another stuff they said to me at the studio.
This is the best part of okay, They said to
me at the studio. We want you to date only
(19:38):
the girls at MGM because we put a lot of
money in publicity for you people. And don't go to
Warner Brothers and ask what there's some beautiful girls. Don't
go to Warner Brothers.
Speaker 1 (19:48):
Just stay with the MGM women.
Speaker 3 (19:50):
So I found a list of them. They were about
seventy and I thought I could get through that in
a month ago.
Speaker 4 (20:00):
So the next thing I would take, you know, sometimes
three a day, I'd make breakfast, lunch.
Speaker 3 (20:06):
I was doing what the studio wanted.
Speaker 4 (20:08):
So as it went on, I found out something that
was extraordinary. First of all, there were lots of parts,
but they weren't telling and the agents didn't have the knowledge.
They had no breakdowns. So the agents, I'm working on
something for you, Because it was always bullshit. You just
knew that the agent weren't going to come up with anything.
So I took it in my own hands, and I
(20:29):
found that there were script analysis and script breakdowns and
actual scripts in the memual cage, and that they made
them and they left them there and they didn't.
Speaker 3 (20:40):
Go to the offices.
Speaker 4 (20:41):
So for maybe several weeks sometimes nobody knew what they
were doing. I every week climbed the script cage on
the weekend and spent the weekend reading every script. I
knew every part that was in the movies at MGM.
So finally they'd say to me. The agent said, well,
you know there's nothing right now. Oh yes, there's one
in this is this wonderful movie called Light in the Piazza.
(21:03):
It's a movie of you know, well, you're not Italian,
I said, I'm an actor. Well we will find out
about that. We're not sure, but nonetheless, we don't see
you playing this role. I see me playing this role
I'm saying. So I found out the biggest secret. There
were about of those seventy girls in the contract, there
were at least two. Each major head of the studio
(21:27):
had maybe eight that were really not actresses. They were
there for certain other things, if you get my drift.
And they came in at lunchtime and serviced the gentleman.
The gentleman in question here. So I found out what
time they came because they came at the same time,
because the secretaries gave them time by taking up long lunches.
Speaker 1 (21:50):
These the executives on the lot exactly.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
So I would arrive in their offices, knock on the door.
Who is it. It's George Hewmen, can you come back?
Who is it? Can I just speak to him and
what is it?
Speaker 4 (22:05):
And I would open the door and I would catch
them sometimes in FLAGRANTI.
Speaker 3 (22:09):
He got to be He said, what are you doing?
What are you doing here?
Speaker 4 (22:12):
I said, I'm just coming from an appointment we had
in the point, I didn't make any appointment with you,
I said, but but I have an appointment.
Speaker 3 (22:17):
Well, come back.
Speaker 4 (22:18):
And then he came out and say, you didn't see
anything you I said a little bit. I didn't something
I saw something.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
Let me tell you, George very cunning well.
Speaker 4 (22:28):
I was running the studio in my own way. You
were because I knew the parts. I could tell the
other actors. Not only could tell the other pipes, I
could sell them. So I was makingside money.
Speaker 2 (22:38):
Because you would tell your cronies on the did you wow?
I mean how times have changed? I mean this was
you know, this was a small the studio system, and
you had to learn the system. I figured, acting is
the last thing I need. I need to know how
they work the system. Yes, was the studio system, which
(23:07):
eventually came to an end. And you should have probably
one of the last people in. You know, you were
such a young buck and you had to learn everything,
the dance classes and like you said, you know, you
had access to all this stuff.
Speaker 1 (23:17):
Looking back, was it a fun time or was it
a good time? Or how does it settle with you?
Speaker 4 (23:24):
It's interesting because I felt that my mother and brother failed.
I took the position that no matter what happened, I
was going to try it and pretend I didn't need it,
and pretend it wasn't that important. It was important to me.
Once I got in, I thought, I don't want to fail.
But the minute I started showing I cared about it,
(23:46):
it was not as often it as it was. It's
a strange thing. You think the things you care about
and you willing to do everything for to get are
the things you get. It's not the way it works.
Speaker 3 (23:56):
I'm sorry to say it, but you know, I remember Manelli,
I proposed nothing. But Monelli, I was going to tell
you this before, was saying to George. Prepared.
Speaker 4 (24:05):
He came over and George proparved this young intense actor
who was getting big movies like Breakfast at Tiffany. He
said to George, he said, George, I know you are
a seething volcano inside and you were about to explode it,
but I have to tell you there is nothing happening
on your face. Well George was just crushed right. And
(24:27):
and this guy on the news guy was there and
he he you know, journalist, Harrison Carrol. And he said
to him, he said, George, are you becoming a movie
stars at what you're doing?
Speaker 3 (24:39):
He said, I'm an actor. And he turned to me,
said you're an actor. I said, no, I'm a movie.
Speaker 1 (24:47):
I would have been said the same thing.
Speaker 3 (24:48):
It was just the fun of it. I loved. I
always loved the joke of all of it. Even if
I was it, I liked it.
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Thanks for joining us on Table for two.
Speaker 5 (25:18):
Few people have better stories than George Hamilton, from his
time dating President Lyndon Johnson's daughter to his life from
Palm Beach. I feel lucky that George has sat down
with me today to share some of his incredible tales.
Speaker 3 (25:34):
People will say, what are you doing next week?
Speaker 4 (25:36):
And they say, you know it's going to be bad weather,
and we're thinking about going to such and such or somewhere,
And I'd say, I don't know, but I'll figure it out.
Speaker 3 (25:43):
And then I'd get five or.
Speaker 4 (25:44):
Six invitations, sometimes to different towns and countries.
Speaker 3 (25:48):
Or my favorite is to go out to the airport.
Speaker 1 (25:51):
Yea three or four You got to really listen to this,
the three or four.
Speaker 3 (25:57):
Aviation.
Speaker 4 (25:58):
Yeah, out there at the airport and I walk in
with my two suitcases and newspaper, and I don't know
how long I'm going to be because first of all,
I don't have a flight. I just go out there
to see if any of the people I know or
know of are going somewhere I might be invited, So
I take along newspaper put my feet up invariably, and
(26:18):
I could tell you the names of maybe five of
the most important businessmen in the world come through that
airport every day. So I'm always sitting there having a coffee.
They have a very expensive coffee machine. I've never seen
the equal up. It's phenomen It's anything you like and
give you a massage at the same time.
Speaker 3 (26:36):
So I'm always drinking coffee.
Speaker 4 (26:38):
I'm so wired by the time I'm ready to go,
and I'm just hopeful someone and I'll say, where are
you going there? So we're going to Paris. We have
to stop in London for a couple of hours and
we're going to Paris. Oh god, I'm trying to get there.
I'm actually trying to get to London and Paris. And
you're going where London Paris? Well, why don't you come
with us. I'm waiting for my plane. It's too but
(27:00):
there late where that I don't know. I think they're
in Gander. In Gander, Yeah, they had some sort of
a problem, some kind of weather problem.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
Well, come on to snow problem. We've got it. We
got extra stuff for him. You know, you've got the
food he brought the caviar and all that.
Speaker 4 (27:15):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And I go right on the plane,
sit down and and people, I mean practically have my.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
Massage and I do it all the time. This is
brilliant it for myself. You know you are going to
run it.
Speaker 1 (27:26):
Nobody on this planet could do that.
Speaker 3 (27:27):
But oh, I think it's sick great.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
Was there ever a time that you put yourself in
a situation that you're like, Okay.
Speaker 4 (27:40):
I'm in over my head here right this is I
was over my head from the day and went most
of its bend over my head. I don't think it's
fun to swim and shallow water. Yeah, I've always liked
to be figuring it out as I go.
Speaker 1 (27:53):
What was the most exciting moment in the deep end
of the pool?
Speaker 4 (27:57):
There's too many things. There's so many things that people listen.
There was a rumor for a while that I was
in the CIA. This was all over town, people saying,
we know you're in the CIA. Why and well, I'd
gone out with the daughter of the president.
Speaker 1 (28:11):
I wanted to ask you.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
And Johnson was an extraordinary man. He did not like
the idea. He was all right initially, but he didn't
like the idea.
Speaker 4 (28:20):
When he found out that I was sole support for
my family and I was deferred from the draft. Now
this is Vietnam, and I got it very clear it's
about time for him to join up. And I thought,
why should I be bullied into going when I am
sole support for my family.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
I'm taking care of him.
Speaker 4 (28:36):
But this went on, and it got to a point
where I got a call from Linda Johnson's office the
White House said.
Speaker 3 (28:43):
He'd like to see me at the LBJ ranch and
I flew down.
Speaker 4 (28:46):
We were arriving in King Air, his King Air, and
below was Lincoln Continental convertible going about stall speed of
the airplane.
Speaker 3 (28:55):
But it must have been ninety miles an hour down
the road right beneath us.
Speaker 4 (28:59):
And we we land and Lindon Johnson says, Linda's with me,
and he says, get in, Georgie. I get in, and
I get into a Lincolnonmental convertible but the top down
and he hands me a thirty o six and he's
got a twenty twenty at Winchester, and I'm thinking to myself,
I'm six inches from the head of the President of
(29:21):
the United States with a gun.
Speaker 3 (29:23):
This is where I get it. They'll find me all over,
paint all over the car.
Speaker 4 (29:27):
And we went riding in the in the in the
car for a little while, hunting, and all of a
sudden he says, there's one, get him, get him. I'm
looking there's a deer, and I don't know what to do.
I last thing I want to do is fire a
gun in the car. So I jumped out and shot
and I think I hit it, and then it ran
over here, and ran over there and ran back. Finally
it fell a secret Service. Get up, they pick him up.
(29:49):
They put him on the truck. We go again, get in, George,
go again, another one and he turns to me and
I get it. And he turns to me and he says, damn,
you're regular Daniel Boone. Now, all of a sudden I
see him turning around talking to me, and he's relieving himself. Now,
where do you look right when you got the President
of the United States relieving himself with may I say,
(30:12):
I didn't see, but I hear the rumor.
Speaker 1 (30:16):
This is next level. I mean I would have looked.
Speaker 4 (30:18):
Well, you can't, you just can't. I'm very patriotic. My
mother and brother. As things went on, time went on.
My brother wanted more than life to give me, and
(30:39):
I didn't understand this. He wanted to give me a
house in Beverly Hills, and I never understood why a particularly,
I ended up buying a house that was thirty nine rooms.
It's one of the largest house. Second house built in
Beverly Hills still there.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
It was a house that the mayor built Sylvie's Faulding,
and it had a tunnel. And I found out the
tunnel ran from that.
Speaker 4 (31:05):
House to Pickfair, which was the house that Mary Pickford
and Buddy Rogers learned together. So when my mother thought
she was going to marry Buddy Rogers from this little town,
all that trip across country for them to be movie
stars and didn't work. Then my going out to Hollywood
and connecting, they figured they were going to at least
(31:27):
let Mary Pickford know that they were there.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
They had arrived.
Speaker 4 (31:31):
Because Buddy was going to marry my mother and he
married Mary Pickford, America's sweetheart instead.
Speaker 3 (31:37):
It broke her heart.
Speaker 4 (31:38):
Wow, every man she ever went out with, most of
the motivations, all the guys that she went were for
one reason. That was to get us father, get us
someone to be ahead of the family. But her heart
was broken because Buddy Rogers. So when we got out
there California and I looking for her house, my brother
and mother maneuvered me into buying this particular house and
(31:58):
it was Douglas Fairbanks house and Mary Pickford. They wanted
Mary Pickford to know they were in town.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
I bought the house.
Speaker 4 (32:05):
My brother decorated incordibles, Savonnerie carpets and goldblas and seb
vases never seen. All my money was going to this
day and we had an invitation for Mary Pickford to
have dinner and she came in drinking Scotch and milk,
and she had little gold ringlets and a little close hat,
drunk out of her head with Buddy Rogers. And Mary
(32:27):
Pickford says, Tom, your mother and my husband have been
in love for years. They're probably and they had gone
into the kitchen. They're probably in there having their way
with each other. Now, she says to me, And you
want to be an actor? I said, well, I'm just starting.
She said, well, we're going to do a improvisation. I'm
(32:49):
going to have a heart attack and I'm going to
fall in your arms and you're going to give me
mouth to mouth or suscitation, And I thought, is.
Speaker 3 (32:56):
This am I having out of body kids?
Speaker 4 (32:59):
It's one hundred years old, and she's I've got her
in my arms and she wants to have mouth and
mouth resuscitation, just as I have her in my arms,
and she collapses. Buddy and my mother walk out of
the kitchen and he says, Oh, for Christ's sake, Mary,
you do this all the time.
Speaker 3 (33:12):
Not get off.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
Oh, Like the personalities are I mean, you're talking silent
film starts.
Speaker 3 (33:20):
We weren't so silent.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
They were not so silent.
Speaker 2 (33:23):
So I mean, here you are. You've experienced Hollywood in
the fifties and the sixties and the seventies and eighties.
Speaker 3 (33:28):
I mean, and the forties and the forties.
Speaker 1 (33:30):
Is there a period of time that you look back?
Speaker 2 (33:32):
So that was in your world the golden time, the
best time, because to me always the seventies seems so.
Speaker 4 (33:39):
I would have thought so, because that's when I had
some sort of Hollywood fame in movies. It came to
a point where the studios were pushing you and you.
Speaker 3 (33:49):
Were getting lots of work and you're making money, and
it was very glamorous, But it was never as glamorous
as the forties. Really that was those were real movie stars.
Speaker 4 (33:59):
Yeah, people like Glorias Swanson used to come and stay
at the house with me. She knew the house because
she'd been in it many times. She felt comfortable in
the house. But she would come in her roles and
immediately once she was there, she took all of that off.
She just became part of our family. She brought her
She loved health food, so she always was doing health
(34:20):
food and she would stay for weeks. And to hear
Gloria Swanson tell about silent movies and stuff, it was extraordinary.
So I had all of that input, and in a
strange way, I didn't really want to be in the
period that I entered. I wanted to be in the
one before. So I played that character. And then then
all of a sudden, I found myself enormously out of
(34:42):
date because not even the James Dean was in it
more was in anymore. But then I found myself in
a movie with dressing in a very kind of well
like al Pacino and al and I became the best
of friends. I just love how and we were I
played the lawyer and God followed the three and what
did I do? I dressed like they did in the
twenties and thirty hours movie that would have thought have
(35:06):
been street violent and everything in its own way. But
Francis knew how to marry those cultures together.
Speaker 2 (35:11):
You know.
Speaker 3 (35:11):
He was an amazing when they call me.
Speaker 4 (35:14):
I got a call one day and they said the
Francis Coppler would like you to come in and meet
with him for a Godfather three. And I took a
deep breath and I said, now you tell Bob Evans
to stop trying to play jokes on the other time.
Speaker 3 (35:28):
It's not funny. And I hung out. They called me back.
Speaker 4 (35:31):
I said, this is not Bob Evans's office, this is
France's office, and he'd like to see you. And I said,
what are they going to do? Why would they want
me and the Godfather? I said, they want to make
a musical. He said, well, it's the part that Bobby
Devau was playing and he's not coming back. And it's
a different kind of lawyer. I said, what kind of lawyer?
And they said it was kind of like a palm beach.
(35:52):
I heard that word, mister fix that. I said, I'm
your man.
Speaker 2 (36:00):
I mean, I remember very elegant in Godfather three, you
know it was perfectly guys.
Speaker 4 (36:05):
Well, that's why I wanted to do that, because I
saw the different eras up against each other, just in
a certain way. It was a very interesting. I asked France, said,
what am I doing, Francis, are you writing lines?
Speaker 3 (36:17):
Very?
Speaker 4 (36:17):
What are you doing?
Speaker 3 (36:18):
He said, never be further than three feet from now?
I said why?
Speaker 4 (36:22):
He said, You're a protector. You hang on every word
he's saying. You wonder what he's saying. You go correct it,
you know. I said, okay, And I said, well what
I do? Just look very intense, look at his hair,
count the strands of hair. So finally he's lying in
the street. He's been shot, and I got it his
head in my hands, and I say, I think you're going.
Speaker 3 (36:37):
Bauld drove out racing.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
Holly was a tough town. You don't sustain like you
have what like what is the magic?
Speaker 4 (36:46):
But I think by the very nature of knowing at
least what those different eras were, yeah, I also learned
about them and realized that I wasn't particularly up to date.
And in a strange way, Hollywood always loops back and
brings an actor or an era up to date, incorporates
(37:09):
it by making it by an out of date thing
becoming in date again and it's a great history maker.
And once you visit, I mean you look at even
the movie that you know just won you have you
have an amazing era of history there. That was frightening,
one of the biggest decisions ever made. But that period
(37:32):
has become very interesting to this world again. But we
often do that because that has the power to do that,
and sometimes they just collect you along the way.
Speaker 3 (37:41):
I'd wear Gane just as much as.
Speaker 4 (37:43):
I'd wear a suit made by Paulo Matron or my
guys in England, Madison Shepard. But I kind of always
studied all that stuff because I think it's not enough
to be important in one ear. You got to go
the distance across all.
Speaker 1 (38:01):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:01):
I think, you know, one of the things the sustainability
of someone in an industry, certainly like Hollywood, is you
have to have the interests like you do, lean into
understanding it, like the curiosity.
Speaker 4 (38:12):
Well maybe that maybe I just couldn't. Maybe it took
me all this time to learn the act. Maybe I
didn't know how to act into no right. But you know,
I think one of the things in life is I
have never been able to take myself seriously. I take
the job, I take the situation, I kind of get
the joke, and I try my best.
Speaker 3 (38:32):
To always lighten up.
Speaker 4 (38:34):
I don't like giant ego, and I will find a
way to be self deprecating if I can. And people
didn't think it's because you're not good. They buy your
act even better. When you do that, you can hurt yourself.
Speaker 3 (38:46):
A lot of people said you should get more serious.
I hate serious actors.
Speaker 1 (38:50):
Because you can hurt yourself because if they start to
not take you as seriously. You know.
Speaker 2 (38:54):
I relate to that comment because one of the things
I always tried to have when I was at work
was have fun. People who work with you look at
you having fun, think you're not really working, and you're like, no,
I'm working.
Speaker 1 (39:05):
I'm here, I'm doing. But I'm also going to choose
to have fun.
Speaker 2 (39:08):
And so therefore, and I think not being self deprecating
is again a way to survive.
Speaker 1 (39:15):
Yeah, all the Michigoth that's around us, I agree.
Speaker 4 (39:19):
And I think that they think you're not good because
of that. Yeah, And I don't care as long as
I'm having fun at this. Yeah, it's a very very
it's a very short lived The odds are for me
to have been in this now to being eighty four
years old, it's crazy. I don't think anyone would given
me odds.
Speaker 1 (39:45):
I wish you could see. Your head of hair is
beautiful and you're smart.
Speaker 2 (39:48):
I mean everything about your radiates. So if anyone is doubting,
but the resident, they're good.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
They're really good.
Speaker 3 (39:58):
No.
Speaker 4 (39:58):
But you know it's strange because Vincent Camby just went
on about me one time. He said, Georgian has always
been too much. His hair has been so black that
oil even looks spills.
Speaker 3 (40:08):
Off of it. That goes on and just just rip me.
And I'm reading it at the top. I'm going to
do a one man show. You all decided to do that. God,
this is news and Michael Einstein and are working together. Wow,
So that should be fine. You'll do it in New York,
you'll do it in different places. We've written already the
first draft of this and and I'm going from here
(40:31):
to go into a rehearsal on it. So it's very
it's very interesting.
Speaker 2 (40:35):
It's a huge news at table on table for two
because I was one of the questions that I was
going to ask you, is like, with such an iconic
career and you've done so many things, what's up next?
That that is like hitting right on the nose. It's
like what I think we all would love to see
and clearly what you should do well.
Speaker 4 (40:56):
I think the first thing would be to do a
Soto documentary sort maybe about what we talked about today
in your life and that kind of stuff, and be
able to bring all this new stuff into it so
it's old fashioned and yet it's up to day.
Speaker 3 (41:10):
Yeah. I like that.
Speaker 2 (41:11):
I like that you are such an elegant man, and
you are so you've had such a life, and I
love that it ain't nearly wrapping up.
Speaker 1 (41:20):
You're not an eighty four year old. That's like done.
Speaker 3 (41:23):
But there's an old thing. You finally get your head
together and your ass is falling apart. That's true. Why
it sounds, but you really can the things that you
find the most difficult in your old age are the
very things that keep you the youngest.
Speaker 2 (41:39):
That's very insightful. So just to sort of dig a
little Deepersue give me an example, Well.
Speaker 4 (41:43):
Talking about you're in an amazing shape, you go to
the gym. The last thing in the world to do
is to give it up when you're older.
Speaker 3 (41:48):
Right, you do that more. Right.
Speaker 1 (41:51):
You make very very important point.
Speaker 2 (41:53):
I think the thing that I have done, as I've
committed to, let's say, the exercise piece of my life,
it has changed. I don't live the heavy weights anymore,
incorporated pilates or some wellness things. But you have to
keep you lean in more as you age because like
you know, and look, there are things that hurt, like
my knee hurts. I'm a niscus surgery on my lower back.
But you figure out how to manage that well.
Speaker 3 (42:17):
But you can constantly look it over. For instance, if
you knee hurts, there's the reason the knee hurts.
Speaker 4 (42:21):
But.
Speaker 3 (42:23):
Generally protected by a muscle, So you build that muscle
specific above it if it's your If for instance, your
back is hurting quite often, it's the core. Yeah, you
start working on the core wor right, and then you
decide where it's the lower or the upper quadrants. And
you can do that in a chair while you're sitting. Yeah,
people think you have to be in a gym.
Speaker 1 (42:42):
Right, No, you don't know.
Speaker 4 (42:44):
I'm just walking and you can have walking is great,
but people are trying to overdo these eight thousand steps
a day or.
Speaker 2 (42:50):
Whatever, constantly looking at their wrists monitor like, oh okay.
Speaker 3 (42:54):
They get lost in those things.
Speaker 4 (42:56):
It's the all around in movement. My just keep saying
stand all the time. I'll be in bed and it says.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
Three in the morning, Stan, you get out, No, I do. George,
it is amazing to see you if you look amazing.
Thank you for taking the time to have lunch with me,
and I hope all of you have enjoyed this lunch
that George and I have had here and do it again.
Speaker 1 (43:21):
Thanks for joining us. Table for two with Bruce Bosi
is produced by iHeartRadio seven three seven Park and Airmail.
Our executive producers are Bruce Bosi and Nathan King. Our
(43:41):
supervising producer and editor is Dylan Fagan. Table for two
is researched and written by Jack Sullivan. Our sound engineers
are Meil B. Klein, Jess Crainich, Evan Taylor, and Jesse Funk.
Our music supervisor is Randall Poster. Our talent booking is
done by Jane Sarkin. To social media manager is Gracie Wiener.
Speaker 2 (44:02):
Special thanks to Amy Sugarman, Uni Scherer, Kevin Yuvane, Bobby Bauer, Alison,
Kanter Graber, Barbara Jen, Jeff Klein, and the staff at
the Tower Bar in the world famous Sunset Tower Hotel
in Hollywood.
Speaker 1 (44:18):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Host
Bruce Bozzi
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