Actor

  One of my regrets in life is not being able to do what I really wanted to do:  teach acting in a college setting.  I wanted others to learn what I had learned on how to be a good actor.  I have to say though, in all humility, I am a great actor.  Anybody can be a good actor, but a great actor is developed from the inside.  Some say that one is born to be a great actor.  You can learn the basics to be a good actor.  You can learn how to sit and how to stand.  You can learn an accent or even bits of a foreign language.  You can memorize lines and repeat them in a scene.  One thing a good actor can't do is separate himself from a character. 

 A character has to be developed to be believable.  You have to know what the character likes to eat; who were his parents; what was his childhood like; who were his friends growing up; what was his education like; did he finish high school; did he go to college; where does he live; does he live in a house or an apartment; does he work; what kind of job does he have; does he like his job; does he like the people around him; does he have any bad habits; what kind of car does he drive; is he married; has he been divorced; does he have any children.  The list is endless in developing a character.  Some of these questions can be answered from the script.  Others might have to be answered in your own imagination.

 I can count on one hand the number of great actors I have seen in my lifetime, either in person or on the screen.  They are a rare breed.  The key to telling the good actor from the great actor is if you forget that you are watching the actor, whose name you might know, and you see the character he is portraying.  If you just see the actor, he is just being good.  If you forget about the actor's name and dwell on the character, he is being great.  Not all great actors are always great.  Most will tell you that sometime in their careers that they have just done a mediocre performance.  

 I am super-critical in my work.  I have to be to get better.  What an audience member might see is not what the actor sees about himself.  That's kind of why I don't like seeing myself on a TV show or in a movie.  I am always seeing something I could have improved upon to make it better.  The director might have thought it was all right, but I didn't necessarily see it to be all right.  I take the acting experience very seriously.  That's why I am a great actor.  

Melty

  When I first started working at Belk in Columbia Mall, I was put in charge of the Books and Candy departments.  I loved to work in Books.  I had a lot of experience selling books.  Candy was a different story.  Despite wanting to sell books, I found that the majority of my time was spent selling candy.  Of course, I had to sample the candy to know what I was selling.  At least, that was my excuse.  

 One item we sold a lot of was something called "Smooth N Melty Mints".  They were flat and came in several bright colors.  They came in a cellophane bag.  Most of our sales came from folks planning weddings, because they served them at receptions.  They were $3.99 per bag.  

 A man came into the store on a Saturday in the summer to buy several bags of the mints.  He was getting them for his son's wedding that evening.  There was a warning on the bag that said not to leave the mints in a hot car.  After all, they would melt.  He bought the bags and left.  A few hours later, he stormed into our store and laid these blobs of melted mints on my counter still in the bags.  He said he had driven over to Dutch Square and had left the mints in his car.  When he came back out, they had melted in the bags.  I showed him the warning on the bag about not leaving them in a hot car, but he was furious and wanted to sue the store for selling a faulty product.  He wanted to see my supervisor.

 I called her to come out and talk to this angry man.  When she heard what had happened, she had to stifle her laughter.  I was trying to do the same.  I wanted to suggest to the man that he take some scissors and cut the mints, but I knew that would just throw gasoline on a fire.  He wanted to exchange the mints for good ones.  My supervisor showed him the warning label on the bag, but he wasn't satisfied.  He threatened to cut up his Belk charge card and told us he would tell others to do the same, because we sold defective merchandise.  My supervisor told me to give him an exchange for new bags, which I did.  

 My supervisor told me to throw them away.  I kept one bag to show customers what would happen if they left the mints in a hot car.  It never happened again on my watch.

Streaking

  Back in 1974, I was a junior at Presbyterian College.  There was a fad on campuses all over America called Streaking.  Students would run nude across campus and try not to get caught by the police.  We were warned a head of time that the PC students were not allowed to streak.  It would mean that the police would arrest whoever they caught, and the school would take appropriate disciplinary action including expulsion.  

 There was a rumor around campus that some students were going to streak on an upcoming night.  The police were ready, as were the administration officials.  No girls showed up for the event, but a few guys did.  They had bags over their heads to avoid being recognized, and there was alcohol involved.  One of my Theatre friends went running across campus, but his bag turned sideways, and he couldn't see out of the eye holes of the bag.  He ran right into a police car and was stopped.  He was fined for indecent exposure and let go.  The school didn't do anything except tell him not to do it again.

 I got caught up in the streaking fever that night, but I wasn't going to run across campus.  I stripped down in the restroom of the Student Center and ran ten feet to the next building over which was a classroom building.  I don't think anybody saw me, because all of the attention was on the students across campus.  Just as well.

 Some of the girls did expose their butts from the windows of a dorm to the adoring boys down below.  We cheered for more, but that was all they were willing to do.  

 It was a wild night at PC.  It was supposed to be a religious school.  It was in name only.