DeForest Kelley On...
General questions on acting
Advice to aspiring actors
Early days at Paramount
Playing Western heavies
Parts He'd Like to Play
Coming out of retirement
What advice do I have for starving young actors such as yourself? [Audience: “aspiring actors”] Aspiring young actors? Yes, that’s what I thought. Yeah. I was right the first time. Quit now while you got a chance. No... I don’t know today how I would advise a young actor or what I myself would do today. The nature of the business has changed so. My advice would be to get all the experience you possibly can located where you are. If there is a neighborhood theater guild of some sort that you can learn and work with, that would be the first thing. That’s what I did. I was in Long Beach, California, and I joined a local players’ guild. I just kept doing plays down there until somebody saw me from the studios. That’s the first thing. And then after you establish yourself to a point or get your confidence up enough, I don’t know, I suppose I would trek out to summer stock or try to get something going in stock. Even if I started out painting flats and working behind the scenes to get started, that sort of thing. You’ve got to get in somewhere, and if you start out by painting flats and part of the crew, eventually they’ll use you for a small spot here. You just kinda go from there. It’s a long, tough road. But if you have a lot of confidence and if you keep your head on your shoulders in a straight way and say, “I’m going to do it,” you’ll make it somehow. I wish you much luck.
[Paramount's]... the 75th anniversary? Is that what you’re talking about? Oh, yes, that was a big thrill. The Life Magazine, 75th anniversary. I beg your pardon? It was Life. Yes. That’s an interesting thing because I think that I had just about as much history on that lot as anybody. I signed with Paramount in 1946 as a young kid,and. I was there when Gary Cooper was there and Bing Crosby and Marlena Dietrich and people like that, and to be invited there to have that picture made was a real thrill, and to see some of those people that were still around. I felt very flattered that I was included in it.
Which ones am I making now? I’m making home movies now. No, I am not doing anything at the moment. I have, unhappily, turned two scripts down in the last four weeks, but I just, they were not what I anticipated, and I’d rather sit out and rub my turtle’s head than bother to do it.
I went to Texas. After the animated -- during the animated show I went to Texas and did a play down there for about 5 weeks, and then I loped all the way back through Arizona. I came back home and I did a pilot of a series called The Cowboys and then did a couple of things at Universal and I thought, “This stinks. I’ll go home.” For the first time in my life, I don’t have to take anything if I don’t want it, and be a bum. And that’s what I did.
General questions on acting
How do I prepare for a character? Depends upon what it is. Of course we had a lot of time with Star Trek. They just... Things... You always have an idea when you go in what you’re going to do. And it’s very difficult to say, how do you... It requires research. You have to go get thee to a library or someplace and find something that relates to what you’re going to do. If you’re being thrown into the heavy situation... I always tried to do something a little bit different with a heavy, whether it was, I don’t know, flipping a coin over my fingers or... You see, there were about 6 or 8 of us at the time; there was Lee Van Cleef and the guy with the crazy eye, Jack Elam. And I was the clean-cut heavy. I was the guy that would smile and shoot you. I don’t know, you just, you kind of have your own thing and I think a lot of it is instinct, you know, with a lot of actors. That you kinda go... the mind starts to work and you start to go with it.
Advice to aspiring actors
[Q: finding an agent]
It’s a difficult situation. What’s your name? Anne Marie? It’s a very difficult situation, Anne Marie, because you find that what actors are up against, when you go to get an agent, they want to know if you’ve got film they can see. If you don’t have film, you can’t get an agent. It’s kind of a Catch-22 situation. I don’t know, I think today is probably a different ball game than when I started, but I started on stage and I started in little theater, in community theater, and that’s where I was discovered by Paramount. I was very lucky; they caught me as a very young man in Long Beach, and they started bringing me back and forth for different things. But I still think that’s the best way to go, to work on stage in community theater or dinner theater to try to expose yourself in some manner that someone can look at you and say, “Gee that Anna Marie is one helluvan actress,” and they start talking about you. Getting an agent is a very difficult... I wish I had the formula. I would make a million dollars. But the thing I want to tell you, is hang in there, don’t give up, I mean, if that’s your dream, you stay with it and somehow it’ll work out for you. I wish I could give you better advice, but...
Early days at Paramount
When I first got married, I signed at Paramount in 1946 as a young player there. When I walk through that lot, it's really like going back in time for me because I started my career there and I remember so many wonderful days and wonderful things that happened during that tail end of the glamour period, when there were movie actors on that lot that would not, perhaps, mean a lot to a lot of you. But they were people like Gary Cooper and (applause) the lot was always teeming with movie sets and glamorous people. It was a remarkable time and I feel... I said to somebody earlier... they said, "Gee, De, you're getting old." And I said, "Yeah, we all are." But I'm very glad that I have been privileged to live in my time frame, having been on the tail end of that glamour period and through the years that I have come up through, including and certainly the highlight of Star Trek. I feel I've been very fortunate.
Playing Western heavies
[Q: about which roles he was proud of and which he’d like to forget ]
I’m not going to mention those I’d like to forget. I don’t know. You never... You know, it’s amazing what some people like, what the actor likes and what the public likes. I have done things that I thought, God, I hope nobody sees that, you know. Because really, as you all know, I go a long way back in pictures and I’ve done a lot of television, a lot of Westerns, and a lot of movies. I’ve done a lot of bad things to pay the rent and everything, you know. That’s why I enjoyed being a heavy for so many years. You just work like crazy if you establish yourself as a good heavy. You always get killed; you do your best not to, because that’s the end of the money.
Parts He'd Like to Play
Any other part that I would like to play? Not with what I'm seeing on television these days. [...]So I like to stay home with my turtle and my dog. But not really. I used to, oddly enough, wish to do some of the things an actor by the name of Harvey... I can't think of his name. He's an English actor, I think. [crowd shouts out names] Laurence Harvey did some things that I would have liked to have had a shot at, you know? That type of thing that has a... what do you call it... a heel underneath. Nice guy on top, but really a heel. Like the heavies I used to play in another way.
(Comment from audience.)
Yes. Room at the Top. Yes. Marvelous film.
Coming out of retirement
Do I see myself doing any other acting, besides Star Trek from here on in?
Yes, I suppose so. I have volunteered at being lazy. I tell you that, and I am a lazy actor. One reason I haven’t done... I could be doing episodic television. I haven’t had anything... I’ve had some things offered to me that really didn’t appeal to me. And now, then, there seems to be some new stuff showing up. But up until recently, I haven’t seen anything really that I wanted to be a part of that much. And so I’ve elected to not seek out anything. But I think maybe if I can get my energy going again, that I’ll perhaps try to restructure my career. I love loafing, I tell you that. I really do.
on directing one
She asked me if I had ever thought of directing. I had given serious consideration to it until I saw what was happening domestically to the other two, and I abandoned all thought of it. Just being an actor takes enough time and if you start directing something like a Star Trek motion picture, you are there at 3:30 or 4:00 in the morning until 9:30 or 10:00 at night, day after day. I... I don’t know. I guess... No, I just, that doesn’t appeal to me. I admire Leonard very much for what he has done. He’s just the guy that can do it.