After completing a year tour of duty in Korea, I was attached to a U.S. Navy base in Mountain View, California. Mountain View was only a stone’s throw from San Francisco. As often as I could I would venture up to San Francisco and absorb its cosmopolitan atmosphere. I hung out at some great jazz clubs and saw some fine musicians. I felt like I belonged in San Francisco.
But three months I moved back to St. Louis and got married for all the wrong reasons. I got a job working for the U.S. Air Force at the Aeronautical Chart and Information center. Two years later my marriage fell apart, so I decided to move back to California.
I eventually ended up in Los Angeles with the specific intent of getting into the movie business. After I paid my first month’s rent, I had $35 to my name. So I got several part-time jobs through some temporary agencies. One job I got working for a stock brokerage firm turned out to be a blessing.
One of my co-workers named Charles Napier was also an aspiring actor. Charles was a laid-back white guy from Kentucky. He and I became great friends. The cool thing about having a white friend was we could never be competing against one another for acting parts. At that time there wasn’t very much work for black actors.
The one thing you need in Hollywood is an agent. After hit and miss, I finally got an agent. After a few months, my agent sent me out for an audition for a Standard Oil commercial. My first audition through my first agent, and I got the job. I was happy as a lark.
But there was a major problem. In order for me do this commercial, I had to join the actor’s union The Screen Actors Guild. The fee was $1,700. and I didn’t have $17. On the last day that I had to get the money I was heart-broken. I finally get an acting job and I’ll have to pass it up.
That same morning I get a knock on my door and its Charles and he ask me to take a ride with him. We get in his car and ride over to his bank. I waited in the car until he came back. Upon entering the car he gave me 17 $100 bills. Not in my wildest dreams did I ever think he had this kind of money. We immediately drove to the Screen Actors Guild and I got my union card.
This one commercial turned out to be three commercials. So I received three times more money than expected. Upon getting paid, I immediately went and picked up Charles and took him to an upscale restaurant and paid him back.
At this time the studio was casting a Western TV series called “Outcast.” It featured a white gunfighter who pals up with a black gunfighter. They were looking high and low for a black actor to work with the white actor Don Murry.
I went about learning to ride a horse by hanging out with some real black cowboys I had befriended. I also learned to do a quick draw and fancy gun twirling. I put my every waking day into preparing for this audition. But I didn’t get the gig. A known New York actor got the part. But later on my learning to ride a horse and do quick draw help get me into another Western movie.
My friend Charles got a break to star in an extremely low budget Western called “The Hanging of Jake Ellis.” Charles asked me to teach him how to look like a real cowboy. After about a month of training, Charles got pretty good. To show his gratitude he bought me a beautiful six gun.
On most films were there are horses there are wranglers who provide and take care of the horses. But not on this low-budget film. Charles asked me to go out to the Spahn movie ranch with him to check out some horses that were going to be used on the film. We had to make sure that these horses would not spook at the sound of gunfire. He also got me a small part in the film.
Upon our arrival at this rustic former movie ranch, I observed a group of young hippies who lived on this ranch. Charles and I saddled up horses that we rode and gathered up a few horses that we led behind us. We took the horses down the trail from the main compound where we were going to discharge our guns to test the horses.
As I reached for my gun, the one Charles had given me, it wasn’t there. My cheap holster had split open. Charles started firing his gun and rode back down the trail looking for my gun.
I was stopped by a young hippie type who told me he didn’t want anybody firing guns in this area because he had his family here. I looked off to my left and there was my gun in the dirt. I dismounted my horse and picked it up. I then returned to the young man and explained to him that we were not firing real bullets we were firing blanks. I told him we were preparing to do a Western movie.
I took a blank cartridge out my gun belt and gave it to him. He complemented my gun and asked if he could see it. I let him hold it, and after a few minutes he gave it back to me. As we shook hands and parted company, he told me his name was Charlie.
About a year or so later, after the Sharon Tate and Abigail Foger and friends were brutally murdered, I was watching TV news when I saw this wild-looking hippie in police custody. The news reporter mentioned the Spahn movie ranch.
I started looking closer, and I’ll be damned if it wasn’t that hippie that I met and shook his hand at the Spahn movie ranch.
This is continued from the Black History Month section last week and concludes the series of memories from Roland Bob Harris.
