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Alan Alda: Acting
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Alan Alda told the American Academy of Arts graduating class, "Show up on time. Know your lines. Respect your director, your fellow actors and yourself." He advised them always to tell fellow actors "you were wonderful," whether they were or not. Not "the play was wonderful." That means the actor wasn't.
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As a boy, Alan Alda suffered through polio, developing his sense of humor while bedridden, watching his eccentric family's antics. As a young man he started in comedy with Chicago's Second City troupe, and his first big break came with the Americanized version of the British skit show That Was the Week That Was, in 1964, with David Frost and Buck Henry.
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Alan Alda offered his opinions on the death penalty and the execution of Gary Gilmore, who was executed in Utah for having murdered two Latter-day Saint men. (Gilmore himself had an LDS mother, but was not raised in an active LDS home). Alda expressed strong opposition to the death penalty. Interestingly, enough, one person who disagreed with Alda's opinion was Gilmore himself, who had strenuously lobbied for his right to be executed for his crimes. Strait, pages 184-185:
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About Hughes, Alda says, "He was the first billionaire in the country, real billionaire. He invented airplanes. He was an engineer. He flew them like a daredevil. He was a courageous guy. He made movies and that's before you get to his regular job of trying to sleep with everybody in Hollywood."
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Unbeknownst to Alda, the soldier was American actor Mickey Rooney, who had joined the Army in a desperate attempt to prove his masculinity to actress Ava Gardner, who had divorced Rooney once she came to her senses. Alda's saving one of America's most delusional movie stars brought him praise and fan letters, and a fateful meeting with U.S. General Douglas MacArthur. Alda's offhand comment ("Why don't you just nuke the little bastards? Their squinty little eyes won't protect them from America's H-Bombs") spurred MacArthur's disastrous attempted invasion of China.
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If Alan had immediate rapport with Wynn, that was not always the case in his relationship with the director, Tom Gries, whose practical jokes were sometimes aimed at his star. Alda's discomfiture was evidenced by the coldness between the two men. Professionals... they brought off the production to perfection.
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