NEWSWEEK March 3, 1958, TONY PERKINS: SHOOTING STAR "Let's face it, he's odd," says an actress friend of Tony Perkins. "He's mystical," another co-worker calls him. "He's a self-made enigma," says another. One movie producer announced grimly: " I wouldn't have him in another picture for a million dollars." Yet Tony Perkins is the chief hope for the future of one of Hollywood's biggest studios. "Tony represents the studio's lifesaver," said a Paramount Pictures executive in New York last week. "We invested 15 million bucks in this kid, and figured he'd better click or we'd all be out looking for jobs. Well, he's clicked." Young actor Perkins will go on clicking, some Hollywood observers believe, for a long time to come, as few movie actors ever have. He has been classed with veterans like Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, Spencer Tracy, and Cary Grant. To find out what makes today's most promising young star click, MOVIES editor Michael Mackay focuses on Perkins in this Special Report. TONY PERKINS: SHOOTING STAR Tall Anthony Perkins, a loose-limbed and tangled-haired 25 year old who has never taken a formal acting lesson in his life, is possibly the most gifted dramatic actor under 30 in the country. In the four years he has been in and out of Hollywood he has starred in seven motion pictures. For the past three months he has been appearing nightly on Broadway as the young Thomas Wolfe in Ketti Frings's adaptation of "Look Homeward, Angel," the standout drama now on Broadway. In two weeks, moviegoers will be able to see Perkins in his most prestigious film to date, "Desire Under the Elms," Hollywood's first attempt at rearranging Eugene O' Neil's 34-year old stage classic of lust and greed in nineteenth-century New England. Notable among his precocious gifts is an ability to play young men at the brink of maturity without delivering either of dramaturgy's current stereotypes--the comical puppy or the darkling member of the "beat generation". Perkins' young men actually possess dignity and a certain elevation of spirit. Further, though such characteristics would not seem to lend themselves to theatrics, Perkins handles them with a display of vigor and insight that seems to give even the most mediocre dialogue the quality of being introduced to audiences for the first time. In the movie "Friendly Persuasion," Perkins played a member of an Indiana Quaker family trying to cope with both its pacifist principles and the problems of defending the homestead during the Civil War. The part called for Perkins to be little more than a shadow of Gary Cooper, who played his father. But Perkins performed with such strength and humor that he very nearly stole the show. Paramount speedily moved in with a splendid contract. In "The Lonely Man," Perkins artful portrayal of a fledgling frontiersman with a galloping hate for his gunfighter father (Jack Palance) was enough to lift a drab movie ot of the dust and make it far more lively than it had any right to be. In "Fear Strikes Out," he handled the strenuous role of a ballplayer with a nervous breakdown in a way that made the movie a veritable one-man show. In "The Tin Star," another Western, his vis-a-vis was Henry Fonda, from whom few performers manage to steal any thunder whatever, Perkins nimbly matched that veteran draw for draw, drawl for drawl. Because Paramount wanted to capture the O' Neill stage flavor for its movie production of "Desire Under the Elms," the studio felt it needed performers capable of expressing the widest variety of strong but subtle emotions. Chosen: Perkins and the Italian enchantress Sophia Loren. Perkins has two other movies already awaiting release--"The Matchmaker," in which he appears opposite Shirley Booth, and "This Angry Age," with Silvana Mangano and Jo Van Fleet, which he filmed in Rome and Thailand (salary: $125,000) for Columbia. Next June 30, when his contracted run in the Frings play expires, he will join Audrey Hepburn at M-G-M to make W.H. Hudson's fantasy, "Green Mansions." In an industry tradionally dependent on visual glamour and currently obsessed with technique, Perkins is a phenomenon. He has never spent an hour at the Actors Studio or anything like it; he is neither a beefcake boy nor a dashing romantic; yet he seems to be the only young man in Hollywood today who has an excellent chance for long-term stardom. According to "Desire's" producer Don Hartman: "Perkins has that indefinable something that seems to leap from the screen in a personality all its own. Veterans like Cooper, Cary Grant, Spencer Tracy, and Gable have it. Of course, they are fine actors too---but there have been a hell of a lot of fine actors who didn't last five years. Each of the lasting big ones has maintained his own individuality, that special personal appeal necessary to longevity. And the audiences getting older right along with them, have continued to pay to see that individuality. Well, Perkins has it too. He's the only one of the new dramatic actors who does. Perkins is Perkins, that's all. He's not like anybody else in the world and that, in a couple of nutshells, is what makes a star." CHILDS PLAY: "Specifically, he's a natural, instinctive actor," Hartman continued, "untrained, but capable of prodigies. It's born in him. He doesn't have to depend on technique. He worries himself into the part. He broods all the time. When we were doing "Desire," no one asked so many questions in rehearsal. I thought the other actors and Delbert Mann, the director, would go mad. Why, Perkins would ask, is the character I'm playing doing this, saying that? What is he thinking? What does he want out of life? What are his weaknesses, his strengths? Perkins was so sincere about this that nobody really objected. "He's mystical and, like all actors and actresses, he has to be loved. They're like little children. After all, what is acting? It's the play of a child: "I'm a fireman, I'm a policeman, I'm a cowboy." Actors must be childlike to be any good. "Do you love me?" Perkins would ask me all the time. "Where's my present today?" Being an introvert, the exhibitionism of acting is, in psychological terms, his outlet, his sublimation." However meritorious Perkins' performances may be, he has not won anything like comparable praise for his off-screen behavior. "He's a self-made enigma," one well-known actress called him last week. "And, let's face it, he's odd. He only lets people know about him what he wants them to know. The rest of the time he plays at being a character." His antics have been many and suggest an attempt to revive that old-fashioned Hollywood citizen, the eccentric. On location for "The Lonely Man," Perkins was lunching with other cast members when one of the grips sat down at the table. Perkins told him abruptly: "Scram. This is the star's table." Another day Perkins was so swept away in a fist fight sequence with burly actor Robert Middleton that shooting had to be interrupted. "I thought the crazy kid was trying to kill me," Middleton gasped. Later in the week, when a crew member climbed into the rented car that was to take Perkins and others into town, Perkins shouted: "This is the star's car! Bail out!" One day lunching in the studio comissary with Paramount story editor D.A. Doran and other studio brass. Perkins scanned the menu and asked why he too couldn't have a sandwhich named after him. "I've got the greatest combination," he said. "Chicken and grilled cheese." Doran and the others agreed to try it. Perkins laughed: "You will? My God, I wouldn't be caught dead eating it." (Nevertheless, the Tony Perkins Special remains on the Paramount menu.) A STIR, A SPLASH: On the set of "The Matchmaker," Perkins having seen the French film "The Red Balloon," about a little boy who is followed everywhere by a toy balloon, had one made to follow him too. He created another stir at a posh press luncheon by appearing in jeans, sneakers with holes in them, and an old shirt; he then set about eating spaghettii with his hands---which takes quite a bit of doing. He has been seen walking down Sunset Boulevard in bare feet. What began one morning between Perkins and Shirley MacLaine as an ad-lib parody of Hollywood people boasting of their sexual prowess ended with Perkins in a rage throwing a bucket of water over her head. "Whenever Tony and I had close-ups," an actress recalled last week, "he would say, just before a take, 'Wait a minute, there's something on your nose. Oh, make-up! Well, never mind. It probably won't show.' Or else, during a shot photographed over his shoulder, he would stand there making funny faces at me. I mean it's one thing to be amateurish on his own time. When he interferes professionally it's another matter. I got mad at him." "He loves being important," says designer Dorothy Jenkins, who has worked on several of Perkins' pictures. "His life is occupied with success." FLAIR: Alan Pakula, who produced "Fear Strikes Out," reported: "He gets a big kick out of publicity. When a story about him appeared anywhere, he used to run to the front office showing it off to anybody who'd pay attention." "He's a self-possessed boy," commented producer Stuart Millar, who workd on "Friendly Persuasion," 'Studied' might be too strong a word, but he's a planner." "He's mysterious," one of his former lady loves said of him. I've finally stopped trying to figure him out, but he's a great actor." An actor who has worked with Perkins added: "He has always wanted to be a star. Now that he is, he doesn't know how to behave. That's the reason for his idiosyncrasies." "But," interjected actress Shirley MacLaine, "he has a flair for comedy---for anything, as a matter of fact. He has a sense of humor and what seems to be the courage to do these idiotic things. Or maybe he's just terribly ignorant." Another actor summed up Perkins' personality this way: Everything about him is immature. He's like a 12-year-old. Everything he does is an extreme act. He wants to be accepted and he feels that if he could be a movie star he would be accepted.But this is a false premise. When he grows up he'll have everything he needs for this profession. Right now, he's like the beautiful dust jacket of a book with nothing between the covers. I think he ought to meet a good psychiatrist." Tony Perkins was born 25 years ago in his parents' home in New York City. His father was Osgood Perkins, one of that generation's deftest stage actors (best remembered for his role as Walter Burns, the managing editor in "The Front Page"), who also had a pretty fair fling in the movies (most notable role: A gang chief in"Scarface".) Perkins' mother, the former Janet Rane, is, in the idiom of showbusiness a nonpro. When young Perkins was 5, his father collapsed and died of a heart attack during the Washington try-out of "Susan and God" with Getrude Lawrence. His mother never remarried. By the time Perkins entered his freshman year at Rollins College in Florida, he found that he had inherited his father's theatrical blood, but that he had gathered almost no scholastic moss at all in his rootless roll up and down the East Coast through a series of elementary and preparatory schools. He remained at Rollins until his senior year, distinguishing himself only in amateur dramatics. Then he made tracks for New York and Columbia University--closer to the show business environment. He quit Columbia one month before graduation. By that time he had three seasons of summer stock in Vermont, Delaware, and Canada behind him, plus nondescript TV roles and a one- shot crack at Hollywood in which he played Jean Simmons' teenage beau in a film flop called "The Actress". After an unsuccessful audition before Elia Kazan for the part James Dean eventually won in the movie "East of Eden," he was offered the chance--by Kazan-- to take over the role of the sensitive schoolboy in "Tea and Sympathy" during its second year run on Broadway. The choice between this plum and remaining at Columbia for his degree was not , for Perkins, a difficult one. He grabbed the role and stayed on Broadway for thirteen months, until movie producer William Wyler had him read for the part in "Friendly Persuasion." His work in that movie was the catalyst of his career. Perkins currently lives with a Siamese cat named Pansy in a kind of studied Bohemia behind a New York photographer's studio on West 56th Street. His digs cannot be compared in any way with the lavish domecile of the typical movie personality. Perkins pays $55 a month rent. His hot water is shut off at midnight. To reach his ground-floor nest a visitor must squeeze through a door under a stairwell, pick his way through darkness down a narrow passage mined with such domestic paraphernalia as a cat tray, and stumble through a beaded doorway (a la Casbah), to emerge into a windowless living room. On its walls hangs samples of Perkins' art handiwork. These are a series of self-portraits, most of them in the combined styles of a manic-surrealist and a Broadway primitive. Perkins' sleeping quarters are a cell-like affair which he painted and decorated himself. The nook features a sky-blue ceiling, white walls, a white bed, small white bureau, and a white hardbacked chair. There is leftover room for little more than turning around space. On the walls he has hung stills from his movies. Currently featured: One of him and Sophia Loren kneeling in the hay for "Desire Under the Elms." "All that controversial stuff I keep hearing about me is utter garbage," Perkins declared last week. "I get apoplectic with disbelief. Hell, even I don't know what my real personality is, so how can anybody else? People have said that I try to create an illusion of boyishness, that I hide behind that mask to conceal my real personality. Well, that's hogwash. Anybody who has to create an illusion to live is foolish. I'm an actor first and show-business personality second. The source of my appeal is the type of character I played in "Friendly Persuasion"--a young boy, searching, not aggressive, not Kirk Douglas, if you know what I mean, but introspective---the repesentation of Everyman's youth. My success comes from endeavor rather than ambition. I've worked in the business, not at it. Actually, I prefer working in the theatre to movies because the performance is my own, not the cameraman's or the director's. Movies are too much a matter of mehanics." "I don't remember my father, though I've seen him in "Scarface" many times. My childhood---well, is anybody's childhood happy? I loathed school. At prep school they tell you 'We know you can do better,' so I never did. At college they tell you 'Shape up or ship out,' so I shaped up and did a little better. After my father died I contracted a mild tubercular infection from a sweet little maid who later died of it. To this day I need ten hours sleep a night or I'm a wreck. It's always tough for me to gain weight. I weigh 160 and I'm 6-foot-2 and a half. When I'm tired I stutter and my eyes cross. I'm perpetually a little cross-eyed anyway. Even the night 'Look Homeward, Angel' opened, I couldn't wait up for all the reviews. I read one or two on the walk to the apartment. I was scanning a very favorable notice in The New York Times when I almost got run over by a New York Times truck. How would that have been for irony if it had hit me? "I need to be told I'm good because I can think of so many arguments why I'm not. I'm absolutely flabbergasted by my lack of qualifications. There are a lot of young handsome actors who have worked much harder but who haven't had any of the chances I've had. I'm not really at all suited to being a star. I'm much too sensitive. I have no confidence, no interest in money. I'm not good-looking and I can't see worth a damn. I have a very small head and no opinions. "I've never taken any acting lessons in my life and I'm afraid to start studying now, just as some successful actors are afraid of analysis. They think it will change them. I'm really on trecherous ground. I don't make friends easily, not because I don't like people--I like everybody--but there are a lot of people, particularly in this business, who feel that it gives them position to know me. I recognize this and try my best to discourage it. Friendships require a lot of time.. Perhaps if I had less to do, I'd get myself more friends. "But I have top billing in the biggest hit on Broadway and I have a two pictures a year, nonexclusive contract with Paramount for seven years. What more can I want than that?"