A Character , and Actor: Bill Hickey
A meeting with Bill Hickey
. Bill Hickey was probably best known for roles as a character actor such as “Don Coronado” in the film “Prizzi’s Honor.” The 1985 film directed by John Houston and starred Jack Nicholson and Angelica Houston. It was a supporting role for which he had been nominated for an Oscar! But in New York, Bill is best known for teaching acting at HB Studios in Greenwich Village. HB Studios (The Herbert Bergdorf acting school) is a popular starting place for young actors coming to NY to break into the big time!
In 1994 I met Bill because of a project that I had written for film. It was a NY saloon story that, the main character suited Bill perfectly. At the time, he was the appropriate age for it. The director Mike and I knew casting him would be a long shot, but through Judy, the casting agent, we were able to set up a meeting with him after reading the script. We were both astounded that he agreed to meet with us and talk about it.
Taking classes at HB was a simple matter of auditing a class at first, and if you felt good, then you could enroll with Bill. No audition or requirements beyond a desire to act. Easy Peasy!
He was a funny old geezer who grew up in Brooklyn and was on the cutting edge of theater and film in the fifties and sixties. He often played squirrely off-beat characters with a clever twist,such as : “Apples” the dope dealers errand boy in “Hatful of Rain.” Which was his first onscreen role. When Mike and I met with him, he was in his late sixties, but seemed much older, and in poor health, though still vibrant and funny. We audited his class where he lectured the young earnest acting students, but mainly he told humorous tales of Theater and Hollywood and did so all while, smoking Benson and Hedges 100’s and drinking from a club soda bottle that had a suspiciously dark tint. He regaled the kids and coughed violently as he was already well into a case of emphysema.
The students obviously adored him and were hopeful he might shed some light on the techniques of acting, but, Bill never really got to that part. You could see the more pedantic types getting furiously frustrated at the lack of actual teaching. Mike and I were thoroughly amused and thought there might be a method to his madness. I think the “type A” personalities needed to freak out and have a cathartic experience. He would downplay their urgency, and need to emote, and say dismissively “good, good. Now you’re getting somewhere.”
He told the class erroneously that Mike and I were “Hollywood filmmakers” and that we needed to talk to him, and with a nod and a wink, he told the class, “You never know when the right person will see you perform.” The whole class turned toward us anxiously, hoping that we might be an entre into stardom for them. We waved shyly and headed out to a corridor to speak with the wobbly Mr. Hickey. He assigned the class to break up into groups and go over exercises they had done a million times, and they groaned about it as we left.
HB studio was an old building in the West Village and not far from where I was living. We basically sat in a stairwell, and once we were alone with him, he let us know that he loved the character that we had offered him. It was the lead role in a small day in the life film about a 75-year-old man in a bar in a gentrifying neighborhood and the creatures that frequent the joint. He admitted that it was right up his alley and had never been the lead character in a film before. A stalwart character actor, he was excited and intimidated by the prospect. We desperately wanted him because he fit the bill so perfectly. Still, it was clear that he was not in good health and continued to smoke with us in the stairwell sipping from the mysterious club soda. The ash on his cigarette became gravity-defying long. I couldn’t take my eyes off it, waiting for it to tumble into his lap.
Another attribute that Mr. Hickey was known for was his gravelly voice and thick Brooklyn accent. He was a hot commodity in the cartoon world of voice over. The main reason he took a meeting with us was because of Judy Henderson, our casting director. She was a top-casting director for voice-over. When we asked her if she could reach William Hickey, she was flabbergasted and laughed, “I had him in yesterday!” It seemed like a miracle as he was one of the very few names we had come up with to play the title role of Burnzy in our film “Burnzy’s last call.” It seemed like a divine message, and she got him the script right away. For the past few years (Creaky, and weird as he was) he had been in demand!
In the stairwell, he was unpretentious, gracious, and earthy. He was an Irish Brooklyn boy at heart and talked non-stop about his dog and his wife and apartment in Chelsea. Right off the bat, he told us he loved the script, and at first, I wasn’t sure if he had actually read it, and after a while, it became clear he had, or at least some of it, or enough to get the drift. It was to be meager budget, and Mike went over the SAG details of which I was utterly ignorant. They talked scheduling as if it were a done deal. He had a commitment to a popular TV show at the time “Wings,” in which he played an irascible old man and became a regular after a few episodes. He and Mike factored that into the situation and promised to accommodate each other in any way. My only fear was, would he even live long enough to make the film? His spirit was so large, but his flesh was less and less willing. After the shooting schedule talk was resolved, he began to tell us stories between fits of coughing. He told us that he had quit drinking a while ago? Both Mike and I had been bartenders. That is how we met, and the idea for the film was born, so we both felt that this claim by him to be a bit dubious. Especially after all the attention, he paid to the tinted club soda.
When we told him about our backgrounds in the bar business, his ears pricked up. Having perused, or skimmed the script, he suddenly felt that we had an authenticity that lent the film more credibility to him. I think the only reason he met with us at first was as a favor to Judy Henderson. Once he realized that we were, in fact, still bartending at that time and the film was a labor of love for us, he became very animated.
He went off on one of his tangents about his long drinking life. He extolled his captives with various tales of depravity he had experienced and made sure to point out that those days were over for him. He asked us if we had ever heard of “McCarthy’s” over on 14th Street between 7th and 8th avenues. “Of Course,” I volunteered. McCarthy’s could give CBGB a run for its money in filth and funk. It was an old mega dive. I had even played a few gigs at with my band back in the eighties, much to the amusement of a few hopeless drunks and down and outers at the bar. It was a classic old man bar that stunk of stale beer and mildew. There were a few abandoned steam tables where they had once served food, maybe fifty years earlier. It was the perfect kind of joint that Bill Hickey occupied a stool at for many years. It was his local and stopping off point between home in Chelsea and on his way to HB two blocks away. McCarthy’s was still open in the early nineties. The Salvation Army was just a short walk from McCarthy’s and so transient bums and lost causes shuffled in and out all day long.
Bill’s thoughts drifted back there. He went on to tell us of a time where he was sitting at the bar, and the small black and white TV flickered innocuously. The TV happened to be tuned to WPIX and featured the film “Invitation to a gunfighter” that day: A movie from 1964 with Yul Brenner. It’s a western and civil war drama that Bill had a small role in.
As he sat with all the drunks, they all speculated mindlessly about this (now 30 years old) western. Barely able to speak one of the bums spoke up about how he had been a soldier in the civil war, which was absurd in 1984. The bum wouldn’t let it go even when a chorus of drunks told him he was off his rocker. He pointed to the TV and exclaimed: “See, that’s me right there!” To which Bill retorted, “No, it is not! I know because I’m in this picture for real!” To which the soused bum argued, “that’s impossible,” Frustrated Bill, said to him, “wait one minute, and I will come walking out of that saloon.” A minute later, Bill’s character “Jo-Jo’ came walking through the saloon doors,” to which Bill exclaimed, “Ya see that’s me right there!” The startled bum said, “Wow, That’s you?” Bill nodded and said, “Yup 1964,” the bum turned to Bill and said solemnly, “Man, oh man Bill. You look like shit now!” Bill fell over laughing in the stairwell as did Mike and I as well.
He was a lovely, funny man, and I regret to say he could not make the movie with us. And that was because of some kind of insurance boondoggle. In the end, though, Mike and I were able to make the film and get some terrific journeymen actors to work with us. Such as; David Johansen, Chris Noth, Michael Rispoli, Tony Todd, Sherry Stringfield, James McCaffrey, and Sam Gray, as Burnzy. It all came together, and though it never received a theater release, it was on Netflix for a few years. It received Lukewarm reviews and remained there until the contract lapsed. It is currently in the hands of Mike, the Director, and is being re-cut for a re-release at some point.
The great joy of the project was in the doing and all the wonderfully interesting people we came into contact with. Bill Hickey passed away a year later at age 69. That doesn’t seem so old to me now as I’m just five years short of that myself. I put the booze and cigarettes down many years ago, so maybe I can squeak out a few more. Ah, but who can say? It’s in the doing and whom we meet along the way isn’t it? Cheers Bill!
