The Pittsburgh Press (March 10, 1942)
Rambling Reporter
By Ernie Pyle
HOLLYWOOD – There is only one actor in all Hollywood whom I can call by his first name (or last name either, for that matter), and I’ve never seen him on the screen.
This specific actor is Tim McCoy, and if you also have never seen him, it’s because you go to the wrong kind of movies. You should go to a few rootin’-tootin’, old-fashioned Westerns. You’d see him then.
I happen to know Tim because he’s a good old boy from Wyoming. We met last summer at the rodeo in Cheyenne, we had a good time together, he gave me his private Hollywood number, and he said, “Next time you’re out that way, call me up.” The old stuff, you know.
Except I did call him up, which was heresy in the first place. And Tim was glad to hear from me, which was untraditional in the second place. Hollywood is indeed a strange land.
It wound up that I went out to Tim’s apartment for dinner, and I must be degenerating into a very poor reporter. For, instead of pumping Tim all about the movies and himself, we spent the evening talking about the international situation. I already know all there is to know about the international situation, so I might as well have stayed home.
Tim came to Hollywood 20 years ago to herd a bunch of Wyoming Indians in a picture. The Hollywood big shots liked him so well they kept him. They even sent him and his Indians to England and France for a year.
Tim is an odd sort of fellow in that Hollywood has never got in his blood. His roots are in Wyoming. He has a ranch there. He goes back there between pictures.
He has never felt that he really was settled in Hollywood. The only property he owns in the world is in Wyoming. He has always just lived in an apartment out here – 16 years in the same one, in fact – yet he could pack up and clear out in one day.
Cavalryman in last war
Not that Tim is either a backwoodser or a Hollywood-hater. He likes being in the movies, it makes him an excellent living, and he moves with a gang of old-time movie people – such as Richard Barthelmess, Lewis Stone, Irvin S. Cobb, Lionel Barrymore and Ronald Colman.
In fact, he doesn’t even look like a cowboy off the screen. He doesn’t affect Wild West get-up, and he could pass for a lawyer or an aircraft executive. He doesn’t talk cowboy talk or use movie slang. He’s always discussing the international situation, damn him, and he knows practically as much about as I do.
Tim’s apartment is a sort of old-fashioned one of two rooms, plastered with pictures of his movie and Wyoming friends. He has a Chinese cook named Frank. We had fried chicken and mashed potatoes for dinner. Before he leaves, Frank pushes aside the dining-room table, pulls something down out of the wall, and there’s Tim’s bed.
Like all movie people, you couldn’t get Tim on the phone directly even if you knew his number. You have to leave your name, and then if it’s o.k. he’ll call you back. He always saves his apartment the back way, and scales a concrete wall where his car is parked.
Tim is what you might call middle-aged, but he’s ruddy and enthusiastic and as straight as a rod. His soldiering probably accounts for that. He spent many years in the cavalry, before and during the last war.
He has been a rancher, a soldier, an actor and a circus owner. If he doesn’t stop thinking about the international situation, he may wind up to be a statesman.
Tim is among the last of the old Tom Mix and Buck Jones generation of Western stars. He can’t croon. He makes eight pictures a year. I’ll have to go see one of them some time.
‘Judge Hardy’ commands state guard
After dinner, we got in Tim’s car and went over to see Lewis Stone, the “Judge Hardy” of the movies, you know. Stone is just as nice as I always thought he would be, although I didn’t talk to him long, for he’s head over heels in defense work.
He is in command of a regiment of the State Guard (corresponding to the Home Guard in England), and it keeps him busier than a bird-dog. His title is lieutenant colonel. They were having their weekly drill-meeting in the old Warner Brothers studio when I saw him.
The regiment is an evacuation outfit. Everybody in it, enlisted men and officers both, furnish his own station wagon and carries two stretchers. They’ll be the ones to evacuate old and crippled people and children from bombed areas, if and when bombing comes.
It isn’t a movie regiment at all, although there are about a dozen movie people in it. Cesar Romero and Robert Young are both lieutenants in the outfit.
They were there and I saw them, but didn’t touch them. If you’re disappointed, I’ll go back and touch them for you. To tell the truth, they looked like practically anybody else in their uniforms. Thus end my Hollywood experiences.