My memorable scene in the TV movie "Little Gloria Happy At Last," with Christopher Plummer and Lucy Guteridge
I was convinced I was going to look like Cary Grant.
Out of that change room I would emerge, and every woman in the hotel - from the lowliest costume fitter's assistant to the blonde, haughty production supervisor - would gawk at me as I reveled in my own splendor.
Never mind that I was a mere 19 years old, weighed all of 135 pounds, and hadn't the slightest notion of composure. Once I put on the tuxedo that they had assigned me, the name would be Cary, not Danny.
I emerged from the change room, doing my best to negotiate the oversized plastic shoes I'd been issued. I brushed the curl that kept escaping the 20's-style trim I had just undergone, and tried on a killer smile. Despite the sincerity of my effort, it came out more like an apologetic snicker. It was nothing compared to the snicker I got from the girls. One of them, even, rolled her eyes.
"I see the party's started!," she commented to a co-worker, and all thoughts of me even remotely resembling Cary vanished like the last layer of a deep tan.
Nevertheless, after much fussing and adjusting, I was made to look reasonably acceptable - acceptable enough to be directed to the set, the grand ballroom of the hotel, where the hundreds of others, each looking better than I in their Gatsby attire, were busily rehearsing everything from vintage dance moves to bits of incidental business.
The centre of this dressy storm was Christopher Plummer, who, alongside a happy, pasty newbie, Lucy Gutteridge, were playing the leads in a TV bio about the Vanderbilts (the film, made for television, can still be seen late at night on the sorrier movie channels.)
I joined the excited throng - movies, at that time, were rarely shot in Ottawa, particularly ones of that scope - and was immediately overcome by an overwhelming sense of anonymity. Not seconds ago, I had allusions about being the cock of the walk; this though, what I was embroiled in now, was reality. I was but one tuxedo in a walking, talking, dancing closet of hundreds. How brief the glory!
...that is, until a mouthy A.D. wrapped a fat, hairy wrist around my boney arm.
"You! Come with me!," he barked.
Before I knew it, there I was, busying myself at the buffet table to the immediate left of the two stars - in the scene, at that, where the characters first meet, a scene that couldn't possibly be cut out.
They would see me, all of them; my mother, my father, assorted friends. The acquaintances here on the floor with me would marvel, stew with jealousy even. "How the hell did you score that?," I could already hear them saying, mouths agape. Behind my back, there would be whispers of the injustice of the underfed, inexperienced young dweeb getting primo screen time.
The end of the day came, and, with the smell of gelatin-encased foodstuffs still fresh in my nostrils, I lined up breadline style for my fee: a U.S. fifty dollar bill. Exhausted, I went home.
A few months later, there it was, on television: Little Gloria Happy at Last, at last!
The ballroom scene, right off the top. The buffet table. Plummer approaches, makes eye contact with Gutteridge and....the camera goes into the tightest two shot you've ever seen. And stays there! "I'm there!," I yell at my girlfriend, pointing to the lamp right next to her TV set, "I'm right friggin' there!"
Oh well, I sighed, as the story segued to another scene. Maybe if I'd looked like Cary Grant.
