WHEN WE REACHED Hollywood, Brother Robert offered us his beloved " Oochee-Papa-Poontang Wagon as temporary haven. Within two weeks we found a suitable apartment in the San Fernando Valley.
Bob had gone to the Cannes Film Festival prior to our return. The news media wallowed in reporting and photographing actress Simone Silva embracing Bob on the beach. She came bare-breasted at him in a deliberate attempt to create a wave of publicity for herself. Bob, seen throughout the world press with those uncovered breasts crushed against his chest, was totally unaware of her existence before the incident.
It might do skeptics well to ponder that the bizarre event didn't demean him. Miss Silva's pathetic attempt to use Bob as a springboard to fame wound up in suicide in 1957 because that cherished "fame" she wanted so desperately never came her way. Bob was deeply moved when he learned that she had died by her own hand in London.
***
I started working again in the industry by doing three "Fireside Theater" segments in quick succession, but still had to supplement my income. Luckily, I had worked once for George Meyers, a contractor who built and hung garage doors. George was a former wrestler who stood 6-foot-6 and weighed 220 pounds. Despite all of that, he was a gentle, kind man who readily hired me again.
One day I jumped off a ladder without looking. A nail in a 2-by-4 pierced my boot, lodging so deeply in my left foot that a carpenter had to claw it loose with his hammer. Somehow I worked the rest of the day. A few days later I was hospitalized in St. Joseph's in Burbank with osteomylitis, an inflammation of the bone. While I was in the hospital, George brought me a bottle of vodka and a quart of 7-Up. He had no opener so he cracked the neck of the 7-Up bottle on the bed frame, waiting for the broken pieces to settle that he might pour.
Just then a Sister came into the room and caught us in the act of pouring. She harassed George, all 6-foot-6 of him, out the door like a wren pursuing a mastiff. The poor man didn't get a chance to say "Good-bye." I almost fell out of bed laughing. My laughter soon slowed to a dribble.
Workman's Comp paid me $35 a week. My funds disappeared rapidly. Soon, we were facing grim reality. I couldn't even pay the gas bill.
My foot was still heavily bandaged when I drove over to 20th Century-Fox Studios, where Bob was doing night scenes in "Man With the Gun," a formula Western which co-starred Jan Sterling, Angie Dickinson and Henry Hull. It was part of a five-picture deal bob had made with United Artists through his own DRM Productions.
In my quiet desperation, I kept hearing the dialogue that I thought would soon pass between us.
"Jesus, John! Can't you even come up with fifty bucks?" "Well, you see.. ."
"Well, dammit! if you'd only been more carefull"
By the time I reached the studio I was ready to blurt out, "Who needs your God-damned fifty?"
When I pulled up to the gate, the guard told me where they were shooting. Bob was working in every scene so I went to his dressing room, where I found Big Tim Wallace. He was most solicitous but I ignored him.
'What's the trouble, John?" Tim pressed me for an answer.
A stout vodka served to aggravate my already vile mood. "It's none of your business, Tim." I was snarling.
He kept haranguing me until I told him that if he said one more word, I'd belt him. He said the one word and I knocked him into a comer. Just then Bob returned from the set, sized up the situation and gave me a tap with the butt of his prop revolver. It subdued me enough that I raged out of the studio without further violence. Instead of carrying my anger home to Nancy I had the good sense to park on a side street and fall asleep in my car.
I called Nancy from a phone booth at six the next morning. She was near hysteria. Bob had called her from his dressing room, informing her of my maniacal behavior. She told him I was trying to borrow fifty dollars before the gas was turned off.
Shortly after she talked to Bob, a messenger arrived at our house with a check for $2,000, a red rose for Nancy and a note which read, "Dear Nancy, If ever you need anything again, you call and tell me. Don't let the bull out of his corral, hurting. Love, Bob."
While I was lying around, waiting for my foot to heal and feeling sorry for myself, my oid Army buddy, Natividad Vacio, who had kept me from going to Davy Jones' Locker back in '45, came to visit. He plunked a guitar in my lap, told me to quit moaning and learn something. Because of his insistence, I became a pretty good guitarist and folk singer.
***
Lenny Geer was Bob's stunt double on "Man With the Gun." Lenny still relates the story of Bob's innate concern for his fellow workers revolving around the shirt that Bob wore in the picture. Lenny was doubling for Bob in a shoot-out sequence and after the final exchange of gunfire and stunt fall, the wardrobe department came to the fallen Lenny and started to cut a ragged hole-simulating a bullet hole-in his beautiful Pendleton shirt.
"Hold it!" Bob admonished from the sidelines. 'That shirt looks good on Lenny." He ordered the wardrobe man to tear the inexpensive double's shirt he was wearing and re-exchange it temporarily with Lenny's good one. Lenny wore that Pendleton proudly for a long time.
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