Is it possible Sterling Hayden once poured me a drink at a party in Easton, PA? This would have been in the mid-1980s. My bosom chum Matt Anthony seems to think so. But I think by then surely I would have known who he was? Hayden was the hard-bitten noir antihero of John Huston’s “The Asphalt Jungle” (1950) and the title character in Nicholas Ray’s campy, kinky western “Johnny Guitar” (1954).
Granted, at that point I may not have seen those movies, but I did see “Dr. Strangelove” (1964), which we’ll be discussing tomorrow night on “Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner.” Hayden plays the rogue, cigar-chomping, machine gun wielding Brigadier General Jack D. Ripper, who hates commies, but sure does value his essence.
Hayden himself was always a maverick. As early as 1941, he expressed dissatisfaction with Hollywood, calling himself more of a sailor than an actor. He enlisted in the U.S. Army, hoping to fight in World War II, but broke his ankle in basic training. Undeterred, he joined the Marines under an alias, and distinguished himself for his courage, running supplies and conducting rescue missions behind enemy lines.
After the war, he intimated to the press that he thought it was his patriotic duty to return to the movies. It was an altruistic impulse that was not to last. In 1958, following a bitter divorce, he dropped out again. He defied a court order and took off with his four kids, sailing for Tahiti. Again, he considered himself a sailor, not an actor, and decided to make a go at writing. He had little patience for phonies and turned that same hard judgment on himself, considering himself a failure. Even so, somehow whenever he needed money, there always seemed to be a part waiting for him in Tinseltown.
He was still active in the 1970s, appearing in “The Godfather” (1972) and in the television miniseries “The Blue and the Gray” (1982, as John Brown no less). It’s sobering to realize, at the time he played Capt. McCluskey in “The Godfather,” he was probably about my age! That may be one of the few times you’ll read the words “Hayden” and “sober” in the same paragraph. He died in Sausalito in 1986 at the age of 70.
Anyway, I’ve always been fascinated by classic movies, even before I entered elementary school, and by 1985 I would have seen “Dr. Strangelove.” Granted, by that point, Hayden was notorious for having grown a castaway beard and basically living on a barge in Paris. When he wasn’t in the U.S., that is. He also kept homes in Connecticut and California.
As I say, he hated Hollywood, but he loved money, and he was often in need of it. For all his bluster, on some level he probably also liked acting, since he continued to do theater toward the end of his life. Of course, he also had a few problems with the tax man.
I’m thinking the best shot that there is any validity to this story of Hayden having poured me a shot is if he happened to be appearing in a show in the Lehigh Valley or New Jersey. Or possibly New York. But I can’t find any record of that being the case online. Does anyone have any recollection of it being so?
The only other wrinkle is that the party was thrown by a showboat lawyer, who’d gained a degree of notoriety well beyond the boundaries of Easton. Who knows, maybe somehow he attracted the attention of a grizzled, malcontented movie star who didn’t give a damn if we happened to be under 21?
Everything about life is stranger than fiction in “Dr. Strangelove.” We’ll chuckle about Stanley Kubrick’s doomsday comedy of errors, on the next Roy’s Tie-Dye Sci-Fi Corner. See to the purity of your essence in the comments section. It will be an Armageddon arms race, when we livestream on Facebook, this Friday evening at 7:00 EDT!
