Robert Horton: “Everybody At Home Was Picking On Me . . .”

My father asked me what was bothering me. I had a room of my own in a big beautiful house in a good neighborhood. I had a car, six sports jackets and a generous allowance. I was going to a good school. My brother was a regular guy and my sister a nice kid. I had plenty of friends and one particular girlfriend I was especially fond of. There was nothing more I could ask.

Yet all this wasn’t enough.

I remember getting home from high school one afternoon, around three o’clock, soon after my sixteenth birthday. It was a Thursday and I was especially angry at the world. I didn’t notice that the sun was shining and that it was a beautiful spring day. The house seemed like a prison, a place to stew in, and I just wanted to get away from it.

As I walked through the front hall I knew exactly what I was going to do. I had it all planned, carefully planned. I bounded upstairs, threw my schoolbooks on my bed and shouted to our maid, Roberta, “I’m leaving. And you can tell father I’m not coming back.”

Roberta just stood there with a horrified gape on her face and her mouth forming a large “O” as I brushed past her, feeling very manly and grown-up, and marched out of the house and towards the turquoise-green Ford which was standing out in the driveway of the house.

I had remembered to pick up the key from a hook in the kitchen where it was always kept when Creighton—he’s my older brother—was away at school, medical school in Philadelphia. I got in, slammed the door, and turned on the ignition. Creighton was away. They let me drive the Ford when I had a driver’s license and also a credit card for gas stations.

The first thing I did when I got out into the open city road was to look in the mirror to see if anyone was following me. Somewhere in the back of my mind I could picture Roberta rushing to the telephone and calling my father. But there was no one behind me; no one I knew, that is. I expect she just thought I was kidding. I was always saying things like that.

I drove past all the “nice” houses in the Los Angeles suburb where I lived; thinking how dreary everybody seemed doing the same things on the same days in the same way, year in, year out. They brought their children up to that way, too. And that was the way my parents wanted me to be.

“Sure I have everything,” I mimicked my father. But nobody really understood me or cared how I felt about things. They tried to dominate me, to make sure I would grow up into the type who would be a credit to them. How I hated that phrase! Creighton was already like that and they were always comparing him to me. It was always Creighton-this and Creighton-that. No matter what I tried to do Creighton did it better. Creighton, six years older than me, had left a trail of success that haunted me everywhere I turned.

In school the teachers always said, “So you’re Creighton’s brother. Well, you’ll have to study hard to get the high marks he had.” It made me want to scream. And it was not only in school. When I came home after school my mother would say—and she said it so many time—“Now how did you manage to get so dirty? When Creighton was your age, he could get through the day without getting so messy.” Creighton-this and Creighton-that. Thinking it over I was getting madder and madder. And the madder I got the faster I drove.

What made me start remembering this all over again? I guess I had almost forgotten about it until, not long ago, I made that stopover in Washington, D.C., on my way back from New York to Hollywood and my current TV series, “Wagon Train.”

I was standing in line with a crowd of other sightseers waiting to get into the Washington Monument. Just in front of me were a nice-looking couple wearing blue jeans and sweaters. He must have been about seventeen and I guess the girl was sixteen. Everybody else seemed relaxed, on a holiday, but this pair stood there looking so tense and worried.

Then I guess they must have felt my stare and they turned around. The boy looked belligerent, as though he wanted to fight me for just looking at them and then the girl recognized me. She smiled and we started talking and I found out their names were John and Susan.

“Do you live here in Washington?” I asked.

“Yeah,” the boy said, “but we’re leaving, we’re running. . . .” He stopped himself short and hitched at his pants, embarrassed at having given himself away.

I didn’t say anything then, but I tagged along with them as we went through the monument and then I asked them to have a Coke with me. They seemed so mixed-up and I felt so sorry for them.

“Our parents don’t understand us,” Susan said. “You don’t know how it is. . . .”

But I did know how it was and I wanted to help them. So I told them about the time I had run away. I told them how I could still remember climbing into the car and driving away from home, driving fast and feeling as though someone were thumping me in my stomach.

could hardly control my anger. Suddenly I became aware of the road again and that I was driving eastwards from the city—fast. But to where? I had planned my walk-out but not where I was going. Well, what did it really matter? I was getting away and that was all I cared about.

I drove and drove until all of a sudden it was cold. I hadn’t noticed that it was beginning to get dark and cold. I only had on an open shirt and a light sweater.

I turned on the heater and rolled up the windows tight until it became stuffy and hot and I felt drowsy and the road looked like a never-ending snake. There was only one thing to do. I was angry but still I knew I had to stop. I pulled over by the side of the highway, turned off the heater and took a nap.

It must have been about an hour later when I woke up. The car had become cold again. I started to drive and then noticed that I had almost run out of gas. I put my hand in my pocket for money . . . only 75 cents. Not enough for much gas. I was lucky I had that credit card.

I stopped at the next gas station and told the attendant, “Fill her up.” Over on the left I could see a Coke machine and candy machine by the side. “Can I have a Coke and candy on my credit card, too?” I asked. I felt kind of foolish, but by that time I was really hungry.

“Okay,” said the attendant. Then he eyed me suspiciously.

“Where are you heading for, bub?”

“Oh . . . ah . . . East . . . Salt Lake City,” I spluttered.

“You got 600 miles to go, bub.”

“I know. I make the trip all the time,” I boasted.

Back on the road I didn’t feel so confident. Salt Lake City was more than 750 miles from Los Angeles and I was alone, cold, broke and hungry. And I was beginning to figure that maybe my running away wouldn’t solve anything anyway.

Maybe turn back? I thought it over, but then I got angry. “Got to show them I’m not a kid . . . l’m a man . . . I can handle myself,” I decided.

That was another thing I was sore about. The folks always thought I wasn’t able to look after myself. It was always, “Be careful, dear.” Other fellows got messed up in football, but their mothers didn’t get hysterical about it.

But my mother was different. She was always fretting over me. And, I guess, from the day I was born, I seemed to have been plagued with one illness or accident or something.

There was the time when I was ten. I woke up screaming one night. Mother hurried into my bedroom and after putting her hand on my forehead, said, “You’ve got fever.” I was sweating like mad, too, and doubled up with a pain right in the middle of my stomach.

The doctors came—one by one—and examined me and said something about kidneys. Then they gave me some medicine to ease the pain. For two years from that night I had to visit the doctor twice a week, every single week. When the treatments didn’t help, finally an operation was ordered. I was nearly scared to death.

It was okay and I was feeling better after that. But for months I was cooped up in bed. Finally, when I was able to go out and play with the kids, I lasted about one month. I needed another operation, quickly—an emergency appendectomy.

By the time I reached fourteen I had three major operations and felt like a surgical guinea pig. I also knew what it was to feel lonely. Those weeks of pain and loneliness, when I didn’t know a single kid. I don’t think I’ll ever forget them. When I’d be half-wake and half-asleep . . . the nurses and the doctors and the relatives . . . and then the lingering days which sometimes stretched into months at home where I would sit, day after day, propped up in bed or by the window, not allowed to go out with the kids. And always being careful. It didn’t seem as though I was ever going to be able to have the fun the other fellows had.

One day I spoke to dad about it. “I’m tired of staying in bed,” I told him. “I always seem to get the bad breaks.”

Dad explained that boredom and not having fun are all part of living. “It’s part of the struggle for survival,” he said. “Nothing comes easy in life . . . you don’t get stronger by walking downhill . . . so we all have our struggles to strengthen us.”

“But I always seem to walk uphill.”

No, that wasn’t quite true, I thought, as I glared at the road ahead of me. In many ways I had been blessed with a great deal other fellows didn’t have. There was this ear, for instance. Most of the other kids didn’t have the use of a car.

Still, ironically enough, when I did get well again and was able to mix with the other kids, I always seemed to be getting rune knocked over or something like that.

Twice I was knocked down by a car. Once Creighton accidently gashed me with a knife. Another time I broke my arm playing football and I broke my arm again while I was playing baseball one day. I just seemed to have a knack for that sort of thing.

Worse, there was the embarrassment of it all, like the time I was passing a football to a pal after school and the football coach said, “Horton, why don’t you try out for the team?”

I remember wishing at that moment that the ground might open up and swallow me so to save me from having to tell him, in front of the others, that I had a kidney ailment and that I had to “take it easy.” Because I looked so big and healthy.

“Ah, maybe Mom has reasons to feel like she does,” I thought to myself, and swung the car a little as the road began to rise uphill and I realized I was approaching the mountains. Soon I would be entering Nevada. Over the high Sierras, then the stretches of plateaus and then the deserts; through Nevada and into Utah I drove completely alone and with all my resentments screaming at me as though there were a thousand people in the car.

The trip made no sense, I guess, and I know that now. But I couldn’t turn back. It had become a matter of pride more than anything else that was urging me on. I kept thinking over and over about Creighton, about my parents, about my being sick, about the other kids.

Maybe I just wasn’t like the rest of the Hortons. I liked sports cars, bright colors and sporty clothes. They all preferred big black Cadillacs, dark colors and conservative clothes. I began to feel sure I was far more suited to being an artist, a racing driver or a professional football player than a doctor, lawyer or educator. Maybe even an actor.

Sure, I had always enjoyed excitement, action, adventure, laughs and an actor had plenty of these. But truthfully I can see now that at that time I just didn’t know what I wanted. And the journey wasn’t helping any. And the more I brooded the more I felt the bridge between me and my parents widen.

Then I remember saying out loud, “I’m a rebel, that’s all.”

What about the time when I was six, I thought. Even then I was so keen to think for myself and be independent that I stood on a street corner and tried to sell lemonade. I had bought the lemonade from a store near the school with money I had saved up for weeks. I had also bought some little wax-paper cups and was doing a roaring trade with all the kids in the neighborhood.

Then someone shouted that my folks were parked in the family limousine around the corner, watching me tolerantly. I became furious. “Why can’t they let me alone?” I thought. But they were only watching, they didn’t try to stop me.

Then I began to think about school again. Actually, studies had never interested me. I was always bored and found all sorts of ways of sneaking out of class and back again without being caught. Then the principal found out and warned me that he couldn’t tolerate such behavior. There were more harsh words and my father was called in and warned that I would be expelled if I didn’t change my ways.

At home Dad threatened me with a “tougher school.” A military academy.

I thought back to that morning and the “final warning” the principal had given me because, despite all the rows, I had not improved and my marks were still far from good. It had been enough to make me really blow up and convince me that all those plans I had been storing up about running away should be put into action—now. Had that all only been a few hours ago? I couldn’t believe it.

Finally, after what seemed an eternity, I came to Salt Lake City. I must have been driving for fifteen hours. All I could think of was to find a piece of property I knew my dad owned and to park in front of it. Somehow I felt safe, knowing it was Dad’s. I must have fallen asleep almost immediately because I can barely remember even pulling the car by the side of the road.

I woke fairly early, about seven, and felt numb with cold. I had to get a hot drink, something to eat. I could go to my cousin, a doctor, who lived in town. Then I noticed a luncheonette on the corner. I had enough for coffee. And I can remember cupping my hands around that cup of coffee as though it contained the only heat left in the world. Should I go on to my cousin? I began to feel alone and very small.

The coffee had warmed me but I still felt very hungry. I dug in my pockets and found forty cents, and then I ordered another cup of coffee and a toasted muffin to go with it. That made me feel better, good enough, at least, to go and see my cousin.

When I got there, he told me Dad had called and that he and Mother were very worried. He led me to a chair in the living room, put through a call to my house and then handed me the phone.

“Bob,” my father’s voice came through, “are you all right?”

“Sure, Dad, sure,” I answered. sorry if I worried you.”

“Well, I kept telling Mother you were a good driver,” he said, “I knew you could take care of yourself.” I didn’t know what to say and there was a kind of uncomfortable pause. Then Dad said, very quietly, “Well, Bob, what do you want to do?”

“I want to stay here, through next week anyway,” I told him.

“All right,” he said. “Whatever you decide. But I’ve got to tell you that your principal says he’ll expel you if you’re not back in school by Monday. I don’t say that to pressure you, Bob, but I think you ought to know.”

“All right, Dad,” I said. I hung up the phone, feeling relieved that he hadn’t lectured me and wondering if he’d really meant that part about believing I could take care of myself. If he did, maybe we could be friends, but I’d have to go home to find out. Anyway, when I faced up to it, I really didn’t want to be expelled from school.

I got some more sleep at my cousin’s house, then woke up, showered and had some breakfast. Then, feeling terribly deflated, like a champion going down with his first blow, I started the trip home.

I was hardly out of the city when I noticed a stalled car with three men standing around it waving. I stopped and asked what had happened. One of the men came slowly towards me. When he thought he was at a point where I couldn’t see him, he made a dash around the car.

A trap. I was sure it was a trap and, alarmed, I jammed my foot down on the accelerator. Soon I had left them far behind. That’s when it struck me quite hard that there’s no end of trouble just waiting around the corner for a young guy miles from home. Anything could have happened if I hadn’t spotted the trap.

No one said anything much when I arrived home. Dad just said again, “Now what do you want to do?” And I didn’t have an answer for him. All I knew was that it was nice to be home.

Dad had asked me what I wanted to do, but I guess I didn’t have the answer to that one until after I left the Army. That was in 1945. I was twenty-two and had received a medical discharge. Those Army years had helped me to grow up and had given me a direction. I came out knowing definitely that I wanted to be an actor.

From then on, with the help of my parents, I studied hard, first at the University of Miami, where I majored in dramatics, and later switching to U.C.L.A. Then I went on to Yale University for drama courses, didn’t like them and switched to the American Theater Wing and private classes under Lee Strasberg in New York.

My parents were wonderful all the way through but I took jobs where and when I could. Often it meant not even having time to sleep at night, but I’d never gotten over not wanting to be completely dependent on them.

Then I landed a role in TV’s “Suspense” and won a Warners’ movie contract. From Warners I moved to 20th Century-Fox and then free-lanced.

During this time I married Mary, a brunette script girl I had met and fallen in love with. We were divorced six years later and in 1953 I married again—Barbara Ruick, the blonde actress. We eloped. But three years later we got a divorce. In marriage, when you’re up against problems you can’t seem to solve and so you get a divorce, maybe that’s a kind of running away, too. I don’t know. But I do think that now I’m a lot wiser, that now I could solve some of the problems that I couldn’t seem to find an answer to then.

Now, with “Wagon Train” such a success, I feel I’m more steady and certain of myself. I have been praised for my acting in many other roles, too, and I’m grateful for that praise and for the feeling of security it gives me. I feel I have mastered myself better, too, where women are concerned. I am far more in control of my emotions. I’ve come quite a way, in fact, since those mixed-up years, and I can see more clearly than ever that running away never does any good. In fact, I guess I’m lucky I decided to turn back when I did.

It seems a long time since then, when I was a kid, stranded, not knowing what to do. But meeting those runaways in Washington, I knew just how they felt and I wanted to do something to help them. I keep wondering what happened to them, and if they happen to read this, I hope they’ll write to me, care of NBCTV in Hollywood, California, to tell me what they finally decided. I’d like to think my story made them realize that running away doesn’t solve anything, that it only creates new problems.

THE END

—AS TOLD TO PAUL DENIS

SEE BOB ON “WAGON TRAIN,” ON NBC-TV, WEDNESDAY AT 7:30 P.M.

 

It is a quote. PHOTOPLAY MAGAZINE FEBRUARY 1959