Dan Lalande and Joanne Woodward? It almost was, in Merchant-Ivory's "Mr And Mrs Bridge"
A typical suburban household. Dinner. Mom gives her daughter the umpteenth speech on the importance of eating salad. Dad, looking to endorse his wife's words, asks her to pass him the salad dressing. With a condescending nod to her child, his wife wraps her fingers around my picture, and hands the bottle to her husband.
Well, that's how it could have been - for once upon a time, I came very close to being Paul Newman.
The film was Mr and Mrs Bridge, one of the quirkiest - and least successful - choices of property ever made by the then hit team of Merchant-Ivory. This dry, simple tale of an aging couple was slated to be shot, in part, in Ottawa, Canada, my home town.
Despite the city's monopoly on media, thanks to its role as the seat of national government, very few films had ever been shot here. It's a case of geographic bad luck; the city is sandwiched between Montreal and Toronto, two larger areas with extensive moviemaking infrastructure. Why come to a city with no studios, no development labs, no rental houses?
The answer: the odd bit of just-right scenery not to be found in overcrowded metropolises - in this case, early post-war middle class tranquility.
Two friends of mine, with whom I was appearing in a stage show, had secured bits in the film as ambulance drivers. Their instructions were to stake out all night in Rockliffe, Ottawa's tony suburb, and wait in the snow and ice until director James Ivory barked at them to do something. Halfway through the evening, he did. Looking to get warm, they took refuge in an empty camper. Ivory told them to get the hell out of his trailer.
As all of this fun was going on, I received a panicky call at the nightclub where I was slated to perform. My agent. Paul Newman's stand-in had gone missing. They desperately required a replacement.
The idea struck me as absurd. Me - Paul Newman? I was five foot nine, wore owlish glasses, and could only woo a woman if I entertained her with everything I had. "It's okay," my agent assured me, "It ends up you fit the costume."
You mean...Paul and I...me and Paul...Butch Cassidy and the Can't-Dance Kid? Of all the ways I could have possibly imagined that he and I might be alike, that was definitely not one of them.
The agent went on: my job would be to stand in knee-deep snow, dressed in an overcoat like Paul's, until - yes -director James Ivory barked at me to do something (probably tell me to get the hell out of the way and make room for Mr. Newman - and to stay the hell out of his trailer.)
"Um...sorry," I was finally forced to say. "Can't do it." My two colleagues had wrangled their absences from the show a long time ago; a last-minute replacement for me would be more difficult to find.
"You know," says Dad - we are back in suburban house now - "I was almost Paul Newman's stand-in," he brags, his daughter now watching him turn Paul's face upside down until a gooey green mixture spills out from the actor's head.
"You were?,"she responds, eyes suddenly wide.
"I was. Quite frankly," adds Dad, addressing his wife, "I'm half tempted to tell the world that I was. After all, you know what they say: never let the facts get in the way of a good story."
"Daddy," says his daughter, sharing a sudden brainstorm, "I'm going to go to school tomorrow and I'm going to tellall my teachers that my dad was Paul Newman's stand-in!"
Suddenly, what had been no more than an effort to break the age-old dinner time salad debate, was now a tension-filled lesson on the tricky art of imparting morality to children - complete with look of utter condemnation from the Mom.
"Uh...," I finally countered wittily, "eat your salad, honey."
Paul and I might share the same height, but not the same cool.
