The Life and Times of A 95%er

By Harry Edwin Seymour

This may sound strange coming from someone who has just written a memoir, but I have been asked to write a few words about myself, and I have no idea of what to say and suggest you read my book!

In professional theater, unless you are a star, you don't usually get consistent work. In order to pay the rent, food on the table, etc., I have held a multitude of different jobs. I owned and ran a trucking company for thirty years, bartended, drove taxis and limousines, and more, as did my wife, in just as wide a variety.

In New York, I had an extraordinary piece of luck. I got an apartment in Manhattan still under rent control for $37 a month. Yes, that's what I said, $37 a month. This allowed us to keep the place while we were on tour, saving us the hassle of finding a new place when returning from a six- or nine-month theater job.

Both my wife, Jan, and I loved cooking fancy dinners and often made dinners for friends from the theater, school, and jobs. Afterward, we played poker and a Louisiana game called bourree (pronounced booray). These games were always penny, nickel, and dime because most of us were usually hovering just above broke. Jan had a huge tell. She had never played poker before and had a hard time remembering the ranking order of hands, so I had written a list--straight flush, four of a kind, etc. She didn't understand or approve of bluffing, so when she picked up the list, everyone knew she had a great hand and immediately folded!

I knew James Earl Jones lived only a few blocks from me but didn't know where. I have a good bass-baritone voice, but I think he will go down in history as one of the best ever. I hoped to see him out sometime but never did. If I ever become famous, I hope to be left alone by autograph seekers in restaurants and would never push myself on anyone else. Present company excepted.

I have been lucky to get advice from many people with two in particular. In my first professional appearance, I was a thief, stripping an apartment behind Judd Hirsh on the phone. Determined not to be accused of upstaging the star, I was really mousing around. After the show, he came to me and said, "Hey, kid, what's the matter wit' chew? You're only out there for a couple of minutes. Make the most of it! Give me somthin' to work wit!" I shall always remember that generosity. Another was Pat Corley, who, over the course of the rehearsals, gave me much sage advice.

When I'm gone, I have asked to be cremated. I have loved fishing all my life and think it only fair to return the favor.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fulton Books, Inc.
• Release date: May 2, 2022
• ISBN: 9781639856213

Book preview

T

HE

L

IFE AND

T

IMES OF A

95%-ER

HARRY EDWIN SEYMOUR

Copyright © 2022 Harry Edwin Seymour

All rights reserved

First Edition

Fulton Books

Meadville, PA

Published by Fulton Books 2022

ISBN 978-1-63985-620-6 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-63985-621-3 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

This is a memoir of a very unusual life. All these stories are true, things I experienced and did to the best of my remembory. Borrowing a quote from Hal Holbrook’s Mark Twain Tonight, Everything I write is God’s honest truth. Well, there might be a little stretcher here or there. I have been a professional union actor/director for over forty years and have done a few hundred radio and TV voiceovers and many narrations for documentaries. I plan on an audiobook in the future of the forty to fifty stories. Hope you enjoy them.

My stepfather once asked my stepbrother why I had never made a big time. He’s intelligent, works hard, and produces good shows. The answer is that I am as good as or better than 95 percent of the people out there. The problem is that only the top 2 percent become stars.

This book is dedicated to Janet Faye Cope Cooppee-Seymour, the greatest undiscovered actress of all time. Had she become known, she would have outshone everyone out there.

Thanks to the Aguilar family. Without their help and encouragement, this book could not have happened.

Thanks to the writers’ group at the Heritage, Cypress, Texas. Their kind and cogent criticism took me from raw to at least medium-rare.

CONTENTS

Cannons Roar Artistic Productions

In the Beginning

Teddy’s Way

Grade School and Beyond

Paul Smith, College

The Druggist

Catherine and Uncle Brother: A Eulogy

Fishing with Mr. Smith

Robby

Sprites

Lessons

The Shortcut

Big Red, His Blackjack, Running Whisky, and the Rink

Sounds and Smells

Military Life

Beginning Formal Theater Training and Then On

The Joyed It Line

Driving Stories

Jack’s Limo SVC

Alone: Harry Edwin Seymour

Missed Chances

Billie’s Steak Row

Cold

Pet Names

Janet

CANNONS ROAR ARTISTIC PRODUCTIONS

Years ago, there was an actor who, in spite of having enormous talent, was never in the right place or time, never met the right people. He studied at the best schools with the best teachers and just never got his big break.

He drove a taxi, limousine, bartended in some of the best cocktail lounges and some of the worst buckets of blood bars in all of New York just to make enough money for rent and food, and paying for classes, he volunteered to build sets, hang lights—then self-taught himself to run and design lighting for special effects and then became a valued stage manager but still no acting roles. Undergoing periods of depression due to lack of success, he finally was ready to quit, but then there would always come a new job and resolve to give it up after just one more year (already five years past his original goal).

On this special day, an agent ran into the restaurant, waving a sheave of paper, shouting, I’ve got you a part!

The actor dropped his tray and shouted, I’ll take it!

The agent screamed, But it’s only one line!

He ran, leaping down the street. My first break! I’ll take it!

On the train to Stratford, when he found his one line, he rehearsed it at the top of his voice, trying every variation possible. Hark! I hear the cannons roar…no…hark! I hear the cannons roar! When they got to the train station, they threw him in the back of the truck with the costume and makeup. As they were getting to the theater just in time for his cue, there was an enormous bang at the back of his head!

Aaague! What the fuck was that?

He was still studying, driving a taxi, etc.

And this is why when I finally get my own company together, it will be named Cannons Roar Artistic Productions (think of the initials).

IN THE BEGINNING

My father was the first noncollege graduate to receive a commission in the Army Air Corps and become a B17 pilot. I had been taught the alphabet at three and taught myself to read by four. I read a letter he sent home that said, in part, that he had been officially notified his unit was now considered expendable. Two weeks later, he was expended. As a result of my father being shot down and killed, my mother took me to Long Island to stay with friends from his unit. They had a house at Gilgo Beach, where I spent my summers. Now to the beginning of this story.

I guessed Mr. Weed was very old because of his thin white scraggly hair and beard. He wasn’t much taller than me, and I was only four. He never talked much. Usually, he was quiet, and that was okay, but sometimes, he told old tales, which I liked. I learned so much that I never heard from anyone else. But when he was shouting, Kill! Kill! Slaughter the bastards, I kept out from under those crippled caned legs that ended in in flattened stumps just below his knees. Since he was blind, he would kick everything he came to. He always wore heavy coats and pants more suitable for winter than summer, and they had a strange smell to them. I marveled how he knew exactly how far down the boardwalk each house was and which houses had Gold Star Mother placards in the window and navigated his way over the dunes to the beach. The war was just coming to an end, so he took me along to beach comb the stuff washing in from torpedoed ships. If there were C rations, I got the candy! Often, the beach was covered with oil and tar. I hated using turpentine to scrub my feet. It burned and smelled bad. But this was going to be a special day and night!

It was a full moon, so we were going to haul the net. A lot of men were helping Uncle Chris fold the thousand-foot net into the ocean dory just right, so it would pay out evenly as the eight men rowed out in the big circle. Uncle Chris had built a big wagon with the mast from a hurricane-wrecked sailboat for a tongue and caterpillar treads to get the dory across the dunes. Where it was too steep, some of the women helped pull and shove. They would sing and chant, which made my hair stand up on the back of my neck. Their kerchiefs and skirts were blowing in the wind to wolf calls and whistles. I wondered what that was all about. The women had beach-combed salt-soaked wood and seaweed and had made pits in the sand to make coals covered with seaweed to roast corn, buttered, and rewrapped in their husks, clams, oysters, fish, and hot dogs—everything you could imagine.

My job was to hide out in the tall beach grass and watch out for cops since hauling the net was now illegal because the rich surf casters said we took too many fish. I wanted to be down there, but they said I was too dangerous, since last time when the big ten-foot stingray came in, I ran to get the long eel spear. Teddy said that lashing tail might have killed me if I got hit.

Back up at the road, the breeze picked up, blowing clouds across the moon, moaning through the tall beach grass. The smells from the cooking fires made my stomach growl. I guessed it was about midnight. No cops had come, so I sneaked down near the fires. The copper-painted window screens on the porches got weathered and torn from the salty air, and pieces would be tossed on the fires, making them burn with pretty blue and green flames, almost like fireworks. I had never been allowed to stay up so late. So exciting!

The net was about halfway in, and men were picking up the striped bass, shouting, It is going to be a giant haul! Look at the size of them. We must have gotten a school! Mr. Weed scared me when he put his hands down their mouths and caught their gills to haul them away. I couldn’t understand why they didn’t bite his hands off. Someone took a picture of him holding two next to me, and they were taller than me. Now seventy-some-odd years later, I wish I had that snapshot.

Gilgo had been one of the places where rum runners brought illegal booze in. People still talked about the fun, good times, and money during prohibition. I wished someone would explain why it was bad now since it was good then. Going to see Mr. Weed in his little cubby hole hideout behind Lidia Steambuck’s house, you can see bullet holes in the wall, and I wondered if the cops were still after him.

Uncle Chris was a master carpenter who no longer built houses, only churches, and huge mansions. He often cruised the woods, looking for old maple, chestnut, and oak trees he harvested and stored twenty or thirty years to be used in fine cabinetry. They were stored in an old barn out back, which I wasn’t to go in, but of course, I did. When he needed some, he cut to size pieces on the giant circular saw. It made a high whine, to which he shouted, Oh be quiet! I’m not hurting you, only cutting off your head! which would send me into gales of giggles. The saw had made huge piles of pretty smelling sawdust-like snowdrifts, sending me burrowing under to play hide and seek. He also built less grandiose things, like when the outhouse had to be rebuilt, he made it a two-hole seater, which I didn’t understand, never seeing two people use it at the same time. There was a large shed attached on one end, with a padlock on the door, the only thing I ever saw locked, never