But where could they rent a couple of horses, pronto? Some asking around revealed the answer: the stables adjoining Griffith Park in Burbank. So off they went, with Dad giving Lee a crash course in riding. Lee got the part in High Noon, and thereafter enjoyed a fruitful career, first as a Hollywood hood, and later, after he grew a mustache and crossed the radar of Sergio Leone, as a star of spaghetti westerns. As for Dad, he took a look at Burbank and decided he liked the place. It felt like his kind of town.
Before we arrived, Dad secured a lease on a two-bedroom rental in a small apartment building on Cordova Street. When we arrived, I couldn’t believe my eyes—this place was nothing like our gray, wintry block in Queens or the endlessly flat plains that surrounded Duncan. The sky was a cloudless blue, and there were palm trees everywhere. The Verdugo Mountains rose to the north and the Hollywood Hills to the south. Just a few blocks west of us was one of the first Bob’s Big Boy hamburger restaurants, complete with carhops on roller skates, and the very first International House of Pancakes, which was only a few months old. When I looked south, I saw something even more exciting: a big water tower with the Warner Bros. logo on it—the same logo that appeared with a “Boinggg!” at the beginning of the Bugs Bunny cartoons I watched compulsively.
The residential streets were chockablock with newly built ranch houses: middle-class realizations of the American dream, occupied by families whose dads might have worked in the entertainment business but just as likely were cops, teachers, salesmen, or engineers for one of the town’s largest employers, the Lockheed Aircraft Company.
As visually stimulating as my new hometown was, it did not feel glitzy. Burbank sits due north of Hollywood, but it wasn’t, and still isn’t, particularly Hollywood, or Beverly Hills or Bel Air for that matter. Picture the tidy suburban neighborhoods of such 1950s sitcoms as Father Knows Best and Leave It to Beaver. Our block was like that, only the houses were much smaller and the yards weren’t big enough to warrant picket fences. Everyone’s kids ran together in a swarm, commandeering the sidewalks and front yards to play football, running bases, and army. It was the perfect place to start the school-going years of this boy’s life.
DAD HAD A good look for the type of TV that was popular in the late ’50s: westerns, military dramas, cop shows. Lean and handsome, he could credibly play a principled sheriff or, with a bit of stubble, a menacing heel. In our first couple of years in California, he scared up some decent roles on such programs as Bat Masterson, Zane Grey Theatre, and Death Valley Days.
His natural ease in rural and western programs was ironic given how motivated he was never to work on a real ranch or farm. Dad’s breaking point had come at age sixteen, when, on a hot summer day, he mouthed off to his father, complaining that doing farm chores was a waste of his valuable time. Granddad Beckenholdt pulled off his hat in the heat. Fixing his son with a withering look, he said—this is Dad’s exact quote—“Feller, you better goddamn find something you like to do and do it. Because you ain’t never going to make a farmer.” Grandma Ethel was a little more tolerant of Dad’s aspirations to act and brokered a solution to Dad’s wanderlust: applying to the drama program at the University of Oklahoma.
* * *
CLINT
Granddad Beckenholdt—which is what we called him—was a tall, thickly built man of few words. When he did speak, it was with an Oklahoma twang. He was born in a log cabin with a dirt floor on a farm by the Arkansas River. Through sheer hard work, he lifted himself out of poverty. He intimidated the hell out of Ron and me. Even when he was getting on in years and had acquired a gut, he exuded physical strength. He wasn’t going to beat you in a footrace, but the man was a tank.
RON
He could eat like no one’s business. On one of our few trips back to the farm, Clint and I noted that, come the dessert course, Grandma Ethel set out two pies: one for the family and one just for Granddad. Grandma served us our slices on individual plates. Granddad received only a fork. Invariably, he’d have an empty pie tin in front of him before we had even finished our slices.