Life

His career may have been short-lived, but his life was jam packed with information and “interesting people” (as he would say). In this article, I want to share with you one of my favorite interviews that Gary ever did. It was with “The Gretch”, famed author and screenwriter of the classic film My Fair Lady. We talked about acting, acting classes, etiquette in the movie business circa 1939, and the importance of attending them.

It all started with a simple, impromptu demo video he did for my classes at Santa Monica College. I’d seen this man around the halls before, and was growing to think that he was just some very talented student who had too much time on his hands.

But as soon as I saw this video, I knew that I needed to talk to him more about it. He did such a great job portraying one of the toughest actors in Hollywood history–the great John Barrymore (a.k.a. Lawrence of Arabia)–that I knew that he was worth meeting.

At the beginning of March, 2004 I did an interview with John Barrymore, which you may or may not have seen. As I was sitting in my Santa Monica College class on the very cool history of actors, I thought to myself we should do a follow-up to this tape with Mr. Barrymore. I approached the professor with this idea. What I didn’t know was that he had asked me to do the first one and gave me a few pointers on how to do it. That’s where it all began . . .

In later class I was sitting next to Mr. Barrymore who, as you may remember, was suffering from some sort of neurological disease (or at least that’s what they told me). Anyway, he started talking to me and we got along like old friends. Source: https://www.garymcgaghey.co.uk/