By Pat Hickey

September 6^th,2024

Hollywood wants to engineer society. It used to only want to entertain and sell tickets, but that has not been good enough since the day that Sacheen Little Feather refused the Oscar for Marlon Brando. Sacheen Little Feather was as authentically an American aborigine as the Senator from Massachusetts with the face of a Yankee scold. No, it is not Ed Markey. Movies want to mold minds for political power.

Generations of American males learned how to be a man, a citizen, and a father with the help of movies and television. A man stood for character and lashed out at enemies foreign and domestic who assaulted one’s dignity, sense of patriotism and the security of his family. Since the 1970’s, young men, especially white men, were molded by sitcoms and dramas depicting the American male as a fool, a ninny, and a spineless chump. Black American males were given very strong male role models on the large and the small screens. That does not seem to have played out very well for either race or demographic. Males don’t seem to know how to be men. The family remains debunked and relegated to tier far below the government.

Young men who grew up fatherless turned to movies and television in an attempt make sense of their places in life. Sadly, too many were given short shrift by the entertainment industry. Those of us with fathers and mothers avoided the poison. I am a fortunate son.

Gentlemen, are you a leading man, a character actor?  How have you guys imagined yourselves all of these years?  I was a clumsy and challenged athlete but enjoyed team play. I was shy and awkward around the superior gender. I know that my life is my “movie,” but I could never see myself as Errol Flynn, Tyrone Power, or William Holden, much less Denzel Washington. The guy who could crash the line and slug out four yards a carry for the team, hit the jump shot like Caitlin Clark, or catch a line drive like Minnie Minoso, now, that was a leading man! They could charm the ladies with a help patter and a Colgate smile. Many times, these guys looked the part, if they did not always act the role. You know, the Steve Stunning type.

This query was sparked by a post-movie chat with a lovely woman. We have just watched Picnic with William Holden and Kim Novak. It’s the story of a campus hero gone to seed and to poverty when his football talents no longer matched his sense of place in the world. William Holden arrives in a Kansas town aboard a railroad boxcar hoping to put the touch on his old college roommate who no longer lives in his shadow, Old Bill Holden (37 at time of film in 1955) is still a block of beefsteak in the eyes of a quintet of women…an elderly women who feeds and befriends the Holden character, Hal Carter; two siblings, the gorgeous Madge and intellectual Milly and their very worried mother; a frustrated Old Maid School Marm, played by Rosalind Russell.  At the close of the titular Labor Day Picnic, the beefcake hobo sparks a dramaturgical collapse that would have made Richard Sheridan grin. The Steve Stunning guy must beat it out of town only steps ahead of the law.

Our post-film conversation centered on William Holden. My guest did not think much of his acting and was surprised. The lady had recently watched Bill Holden battle with Humphrey Bogart for affections of Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina and thought that he played the same character. Shucks, the guy who helped blow up The Bridge on the River Kwai, talked Kim Novak into chasing him out of town, I noted. He played William Holden!

“But I did not believe him!” the elegant and insightful woman declared. She explained, “He was just too, too sexy and droll. He was supposed to have been a troubled youth who spent time in reform school and been kicked out of college. At least, he did not get cashiered from the army.”

We then went into the notion of the leading man. He is the object of all desire. Women swoon over him and men want to pal up with him. He is a type, rather than a person. He is Gary Cooper, Clint Eastwood, Ronald Reagan, Tyrone Power, Bruce Willis, Tom Hanks, Richard Roundtree, and John Wayne.

When is John Wayne not John Wayne? He was John Wayne as Genghis Khan! Is that acting?

Michael Caine is never the same guy. Spencer Tracy, ditto. Denzel Washington could play Minnesota Fats. These guys are actors and not leading men. They are consummate in establishing the character as imagined by the screenwriter. The actor can become anyone.

In the great movie Giant, leading man, Rock Hudson, was pitted against consummate actor James Dean.  Watch this simple scene where the dirt farmer played by Dean is offered a “good deal” on a piece of land inherited. With a simple wave of the hand, James Dean could offer a master class in drama. James Dean belongs to the category of actors.

Actors are not merely leading men. Likewise, they are not character actors. Character actors are usually chosen to play interesting or excentric characters in support of the leading man.

Robert Duval comes to mind. Gene Hackman is another. However, the real gems were actors like Jack Nicholson. Jack Lemmon, Alan Hale, William Bendix, Pat O’Brien, and absolute top of craft Walter Brennan. Walter Brennan could be comic, charming, or complexly menacing.

Too few of us are actors. Good actors, anyway. However, there are legions of leading men and many, many more sidekicks.

Growing up and watching movies, whether at the Beverly or Highland theatres on Chicago’s south side, watching commercial punctuated movies after school or later, I tried to match my abilities to those of Captain Blood, or Zorro and found them more than a bit wanting. The older and more sophisticated and honest to type, the more I began to identify more closely with the side kick or the guy on the team. Just like in real life.

On 75^th and Wood Street back in the day, we spent hours tossing and kicking footballs under and over the streetlights, but none of the males at my end of Wood Street could throw or kick  the pigskin with the fire and accuracy of Joanie Brennan,  Joanie could throw a spiral that even Fred Belitnikoff would fumble.  Mr. Brennan had been an All-Ireland football hero from County Kerry. Joanie Brennan and her sisters had some serious DNA. We males skulked at the sight of the Brennan sisters.

Today, we would be sent to counsellors. Back then, we adjusted without accepting daffy pronouns or undergoing gender surgeries to assuage our disappointments. I started writing poetry and stories. Some guys like Jimmy Sexton and Al McFarland captained the football and basketball teams. Most of us appeared in supporting roles. Our fathers gave us a real view of the real deal.

We did all right. I became an English teacher and John Kass News contributor. Jimmy Sexton became one of the most elected mayors in Illinois history. We did all right.

Neither of us would say that we were leading men, except to the women who love us. A teacher is not a super star. A teacher supports the discipline and the young people in one’s charge. A mayor, or any civil servant, is, in the words of William Butler Year, “a foolish laborer, who wastes his blood to be another’s dream.”  No leading man he. Jimmy Sexton learned public service as well as all the manly virtues from his father, a Chicago Police Officer.

We modelled ourselves on our fathers, more than on movie stars or sports heroes. My mother suffered renal failure after the birth of my sister and was bedridden for months. Her husband worked three jobs but always cooked the meals, played with us, and hung the laundry out in the yard. A veteran of three Pacific campaigns and a stationary engineer Patrick E. Hickey made sure that his three children came home from school to our mother.  Ginny Donahue Hickey held no other job than housewife. Now, with his bride’s health in the balance, this man who worked days at Illinois Mental Health Hospital and afternoons and weekends at the Beverly theatre and David Berg Meats, added the chores of his bride to his workdays. We played very quietly after school and slept securely while Mom got better. The Old Man (in his early thirties) went about the tasks. He was often laughed at and ridiculed for being a Nancy Dad by his male neighbors, but out went the wash on the lines in full view of all the neighbors. The laughter subsided. My Dad was no Don Draper of Mad Men. Now that is a leading man!

My mother got stronger and outlived her husband by nineteen years.

I’d like to see William Holden try to do what the man who raised us did every day.

I guess being a character actor just might be the one to emulate.

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Born November 8, 1952 in Englewood Hospital, Chicago Illinois, Pat Hickey attended Chicago Catholic grammar and high schools, received a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from Loyola University in 1974, began teaching English and coaching sports at Bishop McNamara High School in Kankakee, IL in 1975, married Mary Cleary in 1983, received a Master of Arts in English Literature from Loyola in 1987, taught at La Lumiere School in Indiana from 1988-1994, took a position as Director of Development with Bishop Noll

 Institute in Hammond, IN and then Leo High School in Chicago in 1996.  His wife Mary died in 1998 and Hickey returned with his three children to Chicago’s south side. From 1998 until 2019, it became obvious that Illinois and Chicago turned like Stilton cheese on a humid countertop. In that time, he wrote a couple of books and many columns for Irish American News. When the kids became independent and vital adults, he moved to Michigan City, Indiana, Hickey substitute teaches K-12 for Westville, Indiana schools and works as a tour guide/deckhand on the Emita II tour boat. He walks to the Michigan City Lighthouse every chance he gets.