Tuck was living the life of a real actor and, therefore, was not obsessed with box office numbers or red carpets, the adoration of fans and critics, or special treatment in restaurants, hotels, and other public places. He had, and still has, the career that nearly all actors should expect after their apprenticeship, one that is about the work. In this situation, performing roles in the theater is your life. If some degree of security comes your way, like a soap opera or any paying gig, some means to take the pressure off and earn a couple of bucks, that is welcomed. During our friendship, I’ve seen him act in several productions, from La Jolla to New York to Palm Beach. A skilled and dedicated stage performer, he’s traveled the country and, as a result, developed a skill that truly great thespians possess: sizing up one’s overnight accommodations.
En route to Tuck’s hometown of Kansas City, we stopped in Indianapolis and pulled into a nondescript motor inn. It was late and we were beat. The desk attendant checked us in and handed over the keys. Once inside, I moaned about hitting the sack, but Tuck said, “Not so fast.” The boy from the Show Me State wanted to do a bit of inspecting. With a flick of the wrist, he turned down the bed to reveal gray sheets covered in spots of some indeterminate source. “We’re outta here,” he snapped. “What’s the problem?” I asked. “These sheets haven’t been changed in weeks!” he said. He called the desk. A night-shift security guy showed up with supposedly cleaner sheets. In the doorway, Tuck said, “What’s this?” “Your fresh sheets,” the guard muttered. “Keep ’em,” Tuck snorted. We went to the desk, said no thanks, and got our thirty bucks back. Thirty bucks. Years later, I’d end up staying in hotels where a hamburger was thirty bucks. And the movie I was shooting while staying in that hotel hardly measured up to the artistic standard that Tuck had spent his life pursuing. That’s one rule in Hollywood: the shittier the project, the more they pay you.
In Kansas City, Tuck’s dad, a “Missourah” gentleman of the old school, took us for the obligatory stop at Romanelli’s for a roast beef sandwich. Next, we visited Dallas and Tuck’s brother, Bill, a former military pilot who went on to work for Delta Air Lines. Tuck, the youngest child, was the lone “artist” in his family. I related, as my own home had lacked any cultural trappings. Though acting had never been my goal and I had grave doubts about my future while heading to LA, living with a comedian like Gary and then an actor like Tuck was rubbing off on me. Gradually, people outside the business seemed dull, guarded, and predictable. Part of falling in love with acting is falling in love with actors. And before money began to contaminate the whole enterprise, there were so many to fall in love with.
We then drove through the Texas panhandle and headed toward Santa Fe to see Amy Irving, whom Tuck had performed with in Seattle. In Chillicothe, Texas, we got caught in a speed trap, where the speed limit seemed to drop from 150 miles per hour to 25 inside of a block. We were pulled over and taken into the police station, which appeared to double as the local DMV, courthouse, and feed store. Late in the frozen evening, standing in front of a schoolroom-style retractable chart bearing the schedule of fines, we could overhear the arresting officer saying to the judge, “But they got traveler’s checks from the Chase Manhattan Bank IN NEW YORK CITY!!!” It was the Pace picante sauce commercial brought to life. We then drove to Flagstaff to rest, drink, and blow a kiss to one of the wonders of the world. “I give you the Grand Fucking Canyon,” Tuck said as we walked onto the viewing platform at the edge of the South Rim. We took it in for about twenty minutes, the last pure thing I’d do for some time to come. Then we jumped in the car and headed to LA.
One week after we had left New York, we arrived in West Hollywood to find that the apartment we were subletting wasn’t ready. The great stage actress Roberta Maxwell, whom I had seen at Williamstown, and her husband, Phil Dunne, an audio engineer for the likes of Elton John, needed a couple more days to move out. Our first night in LA, we slept on the floor of Toby and Bob, a couple whom Tuck had worked with in New York. It was there that I met and fell in love with Ken Page. I was falling in love every half hour back then, enamored as I was by this newly discovered crowd. Ken, a great musical theater actor who had come to LA to branch out, having played roles in Cats and Ain’t Misbehavin’, is one of the most talented Broadway performers I would come to know. Through Tuck I met a few other New York actors, directors, and writers who had relocated to LA: David Marshall Grant, Victor Garber, and a writer named Ron Dobson, who would eventually become the best friend I would ever have.
After a few days, we finally moved into Roberta and Phil’s. Roberta, a dark and stormy Canadian, and Phil, a lanky and chirpy Brit, lived on Larrabee Street, above Sunset. When they were finally vacating the place, Phil paused to lay out his dos and don’ts. In a scene reminiscent of a National Lampoon movie, Phil finished his checklist saying, “Now, in this closet”—Phil indicated his closet—“in this box”—Phil indicated a box inside the closet—“are my mah-stah pressings of Elton’s reck-hords.” Along a wall, heading up the stairs, were framed gold records from some of the Elton John recordings Phil had engineered. “Please do not touch them. They are vinyl pressings from the original mah-stah tapes, and I tell you, you must never handle them. Please. I must insist. Don’t even take them out of their sleeves. I implore you.” Well, I think we had them out and on the turntable before his car hit the bottom of the hill. We pulled the trophies off the wall, too, as the prospect of snorting cocaine off framed Elton John gold records while listening to “mah-stah pressings” of “The Bitch Is Back” was just too tempting.