Free If Chins Could Kill: Confessions of a B Movie Actor by Bruce Campbell Page A

McClure over George Maharas's face. Apparently, ol' George had to cancel at the last minute and we paid the price.
    Once that mind-numbing chore was done, we set up the theater. By this, I mean the entire theater -- bleachers, stage, lighting grid -- everything. It was theater-in-the-round, so the stage was situated in the middle of a circular seating arrangement. Therefore, each play had to be presented in an almost invisible format and it demanded a unique approach to lighting, set design and blocking for the actors.
    It was my first taste of a twenty-hour day. I'll let a diary entry sum up the feeling:

    I guess my Midwest roots were starting to show. Eventually, a number of the apprentices banded together and rented a generic condo outside of town. It became our groovy commune and I had an executive suite in the basement.
    Aside from getting wet behind the ears in the real world of make-believe, it was also a very personal coming-of-age. I turned eighteen that summer and took immediate advantage of the then-current Michigan drinking law -- pina coladas were the order of the day. However, since I was also working for free, this self-financed summer resulted in gallon-sized, strawberry-scented shampoo and daily doses of Egg McMuffins.
    The schedule required us to mount an entirely new play, from rehearsals to performance, each week for the next seven weeks. When the first play was ready or, even if it wasn't, it would run for a week while the next play began rehearsals.
    Summer stock, I realized, is where Prime-Challenged thespians spend their twilight years parading in front of retirees every week. Our star-studded lineup was Doug McClure, Vicki Lawrence, Pat Paulsen, Abe Vigoda, Tom Smothers, Allen Ludden and Sally Ann Howes.
    Apprentices didn't always have contact with the actors, something I was desperate to do, because it was dependent on your assignment. Thankfully, we rotated every week, and by the summer's end, I had more than my share of interaction.
    As a stage crew member for A Thousand Clowns, I witnessed an acting technique that was new to me. The lead actor, Doug McClure, scanned the crew during a rehearsal.
    "Anybody have a pen?" he asked, matter-of-factly.
    "Heck yeah!" I volunteered, and raced to the stage with it.

    I watched, slack-jawed as my favorite cowboy actor scribbled his lines across the entire set -- on props, furniture -- anything. Apparently, Doug used these catch-phrases to jog his memory to the next batch of dialogue. The amazing thing was how seamlessly he used these written reminders during performances.
    At the time, I was shocked at what I considered to be a lack of professionalism. Ironically, years later on the set of the TV show Homicide , I found myself in the very same predicament. Legal restrictions forced the writers to change the names of characters and locations constantly (so as not to offend any similarly named entity) and I was handed a new name for a bank just before filming a scene. I knew right away that it wasn't going to stick in my head, no matter what association tricks I tried. So, with a nod to Doug, I wrote the name of the bank on a napkin and glanced at it as needed.

    The great Karma wheel turned the following week, and I was rewarded with a key position -- that of dresser. This may seem unremarkable, but a dresser interacts more closely with an actor than any other job in theater. For me, that's what it was all about -- to find out what made these famous people tick.
    The show was Play it Again, Sam, and the star was Tom Smothers. For such a wacky guy in public, he was amazingly shy and reserved in person -- another myth shattered.
    Our intimate relationship was sealed that first weekend of rehearsals at the local laundromat. There I was, washing the underwear of a famous man I barely knew.
    I began to understand, in retrospect, why some celebrities demand that assistants sign nondisclosure agreements during their employ. Think of the damning information that could