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Copyright (c) Eve Berliner 2001 All rights reserved. [Terms and conditions.]
Young Jack Nicholson: Auspicious Beginnings
V. O' What A Tangled Web
By Eve Berliner
And it came to pass that the old family myth became so pervasive in their minds, so embedded, that it became the larger truth among all of them, Mud, June and Lorraine, who to this day sees herself as his sister and not his Aunt. "He will always be my little brother, and nothing can change that." And yet, if the fact be known, it was Lorraine who did the work of raising the kid. Lorraine who changed the baby's diapers, Lorraine who was summoned to school when Jackie got into some precocious mischief, Lorraine who fell in love and married George Smith a/k/a Shorty when Jack was 3 years of age, sacrificing her new beginning with Shorty to live at home for the next ten years in order to look after him. June was hardly there -- she had her career to pursue -- and Mud like a beast of burden, was slaving day and night in the beauty parlor. Jack was 5 years of age when Lorraine gave birth to Cynthia, the first of her three children. And in many ways, Jack became like one of her own. He was raised by a "triumverate" of women, he was to acknowledge in an early interview -- Mud who nurtured him, Lorraine who kept vigil, and June, who inspired him. In those days, he was a little cowboy named Buck mesmerized by Hopalong Cassidy and Roy Rogers, striding about in his cowboy hat and boots, armed with his gun and holster, always dressed up like a little cowboy. And when World War II erupted in the winter of 1941, Jack , 4 years of age, was to wear the peacoat and sailor hat with adorable aplomb and it was to be his pal Shorty Smith, a member of the United States Merchant Marine, who would teach him how to square a sailor cap, and he was in his glory. He was very close to Shorty from the beginning. "There's nobody much that's impressed me as much as Shorty," Jack was to state in 1986, some months after Shorty's death at the age of 66. "Simple guy but many is the poem I've written in my mind to the higher feelings he promoted in me, which he would have no ability whatsoever to articulate. If I sat down with Shorty in the spirit world or something and said, 'Look Shorty, here's what you really mean, as a prince of the world,' he's look at me like I was talking a foreign language." Shorty, a railroad brakeman for forty years, a man's man, a hard drinking, hard living, devil may care kind of character who was in awe of no man. |
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In his youth, Shorty led Neptune High School to the State Football Championship, the first All-State football champion from the region, and Jack idolized him from the start. He was to fashion with great love the character of Bad-Ass Buddusky [The Last Detail] after Shorty, and in his travels would always remember to send him a treasured hat; the prize of Shorty's collection, a Panama Straw Cowboy hat, token of The Border. Jack was always sentimental. Let the record also show that at the age of 53 years, on the occasion of the birth of his newborn infant daughter with the beautiful Rebecca Broussard, Jack was to sentimentally name the baby, Lorraine. * * * The early qualities were all there, the child precursor to the man, the fiery temper, violent and stubborn, the tantrums, the intense imagination, exceptional intelligence, that quality of being "special". "Go to your room and stay there," Mud would proclaim. And Jackie would stomp upstairs, slamming doors with all his might, banging his little fist on the walls and shouting his protests: "For cripe's sakes," he'd cry out as he tore the curtains from the windows, the sheets from the bed. "That's no acting, that's him," Lorraine would think to herself years later watching his rages on the big screen. "Stick-to-itiveness" was what Mud called his immovable stubborn streak, and armed with it he persevered in the face of adversity for 16 long years before Easy Rider catapulted him out of oblivion to stardom. As for the female gender, his power was innate. From the time he was a toddler he could beguile the ladies. The only male in a household of women, he was the kingpin, the center of estrogenic attention. His sisters adored him, the women of the beauty parlor doted on him, Mud showered him with everything, and with that beautiful radiant smile that lit up the world, he charmed their hearts out. His first performances were, of course, in the classroom, the bane of his teacher's minds, outwitting, outfoxing them. He was a performer, and how he revelled in entertaining his classmates, distracting them, breaking them up, convulsing the class in laughter. "Always a deportment problem" he muses. As early as the fourth grade, he would recall being sent by his teacher to the corner next to the blackboard for misbehaving, impetuously powdering his face with chalk dust and transforming himself into a clown. "And that's the way I was all through high school, the class clown performing on and off stage." He was a child of unorthodox mind and sensitivity, very much in his own private inner world. There was one woman, however, who saw deep into him, recognized something in him, and who became one of the significant forces of his childhood, her name Virginia Doyle. Virginia Doyle was a teacher at Neptune City's Roosevelt Elementary School where Jack was her student in English, History, Art and Homeroom, ages 10, 11 and 12, Virginia Doyle, a striking blond in her youth, earthy and rich with a sense of laughter and high intelligence, at age 71 retired with her husband Calvin to the wilds of Mississauga, Ontario, Canada. There was something immediately distinctive about Jack. "It's what makes him special on the screen, something that shines forth. No matter how bad he is, you can't help but like him." It was Mrs. Doyle to whom Jack would confide his inner yearnings, expose the vulnerabilities he protected so guardedly. They were very close. There was a spiritual understanding. "Yes, we shared quite a bit in those days," she said softly. Jack would often spend long hours talking with Mrs. Doyle after class, and in high school, en route from football practice, would periodically stop by her house to converse. She was an inspirational figure for him, her own first love -- the theatre. "I knew he loved acting. He was always talking about acting, always interested in the theatre. "Above all, he was a natural born clown, just always very, very brilliant. Had too much time to get into trouble. He'd finish all his work -- always got straight A's -- and then he'd look for something else to do while the rest of the kids were plodding along." He was a wonderful con artist even then, with great humor "though always kindly", a master of trickery. Their psychic battle over his 49ers football, the genuine article and his prized possession, became one of the ongoing gags of their friendship. Jack would, of course, bring it to class every day. "Jack, you better leave that up on the desk because you know what's going to happen," Mrs. Doyle would recount. "If you start tossing it around the room I'll have to confiscate it." "No, it'll be fine," he'd reply. "I'll just keep it on my desk until we go out to recess." "Of course, the minute I'd turn to write on the blackboard, he'd rifle it across the room and I'd confiscate it and then he'd spend the rest of the week trying to con me into giving it back to him before Friday, which was the regular day for returning materials confiscated from students. He'd try to bargain with me, would promise to do all kinds of chores and errands and it became a regular joke between us. He always had so much of the clown in him. He was a showman." His stage debut came in a little grammar school production in the fifth grade in which he acted as Master of Ceremonies and characteristically stole the show.
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But it was the 8th grade Variety Show that put him on the theatrical map. Dressed in a slit skirt and off the shoulder blouse, he led a conga line of Carmen Miranda lookalikes in a calypso version of Managua Nicaragua "Jack, of course, was in front of the line waving the maracas. As usual, he was the leader," Virginia Doyle was to recollect with laughter. He was a child of complexity. "With all his pranks, he was always the most concerned of young men...At bottom he was the most serious of boys. He was very unhappy, disappointed by his father, and with all the hilarity of the pranks, I always felt they were to cover up some sadness." The year 1950 was to mark the closing of an era for Jack, teacher and 8th grade student in an emotional embrace on a Neptune street corner on the eve of graduation. "We both cried because we knew it was the end of something," Mrs. Doyle was to recall in a moment of tender reminiscence. The passage of years did not distill the memories of the child that had come to mean so much to her, and it was, finally, the viewing of the sixties revolutionary anthem, Easy Rider, that moved Virginia Doyle to write a letter to her young friend of yesteryear. Jack's response, dated July 3, 1970, reads as follows:
"What a great pleasure to hear from you at last again. I've often thought of you and the days we spent together. You are, as I'm sure you know since we cried over our parting on Steiner Avenue, the first great lady in my life. I have such high regard for you that I find it difficult to express my feelings for you. It seems I'm shy on paper. Simply say that I'm inspired by your humanhood. I've had a truly lucky life in terms of people and I have not met a more truly integrated person than you. Surely your life since I saw you last has been beautiful. I feel it in the gentility of your letter. If I wasn't me I would be glad to get it. I hope we can stay in touch. I was in Canada (Vancouver, B.C.) last year. I will be there again this year, making a film with Mike Nichols and I love you. Always, Jack
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