Hello again from Luquillo,

I know, I know – months passed by without a new story but finally here’s another one. — I confess to having had a nice memory suddenly tickle my synapses, along with a sudden urge to write it down before it faded away — writing is like that sometimes (at least for me) …

At any rate, here’s a story about my ‘backstage’ experiences as a young man, and how an unlikely ‘mentor’ taught me some nifty tricks of his trade — and a few life-lessons along the way…

BACKSTAGE!

Ralph Gallagher would not, at first glance, seem an obvious candidate for a nine-year-old boy’s list of role models—and yet he held a firm place on mine.

Mr. Gallagher was a retired head gaffer, a chief electrician who had spent more than thirty years designing and executing lighting for motion pictures at studios like RKO, 20th Century Fox, Paramount, and MGM. When he retired, he lived modestly on his savings and a small pension from the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees. He filled his days as an associate life member of the Masquers, a Hollywood actors’ club housed in a former mansion on Sycamore Avenue, just up from Hollywood Boulevard and near Grauman’s Chinese Theatre.

A confirmed bachelor, he could often be found in the club’s downstairs bar in the late morning, studying the racing form over a succession of boilermakers—rye whiskey chased with beer.

Not promising material for youthful admiration, perhaps.

But backstage, he was something else entirely.

Whenever the Masquers mounted a production, Mr. Gallagher’s essential skills were called back into service. He became, in effect, the club’s stage manager, lighting director, and electrician—a one-man technical crew who quietly reasserted the authority and precision of his former profession.

He looked the part of a man who had seen better days: a deeply lined face, wispy brown hair, and a ruddy complexion dominated by a bulbous, red-veined nose. There was something of the declining comedian W.C. Fields about him—slightly disheveled, faintly melancholy. His uniform seldom varied: a wrinkled, stained Hawaiian shirt, well-worn chinos, and black crepe-soled work shoes.

And yet, to me, he was a magician.

My father, a charter member of the Masquers (and twice its “Harlequin,” or president), was often involved in productions as a playwright, director, or performer. On weekends, I eagerly accompanied him to rehearsals. While he worked onstage, I drifted irresistibly backstage, drawn by the mystery of how everything came together.

That was where I found Mr. Gallagher—and where, before long, I became his shadow.

I followed him everywhere, peppering him with questions, climbing after him up the tall, unsteady stepladder he used to reach the fly loft. At first, my presence tried his patience. But gradually he relented, and then—unexpectedly—he began to teach.

He turned out to be a superb “over-the-shoulder” instructor. Under his guidance, I learned the arcane language of stagecraft: lines and blocks, battens and belaying pins, counterweights, and winches. The small proscenium stage revealed itself as a complex machine, its hidden framework of ropes and pulleys enabling scenery, lights, and curtains to rise and fall with seamless precision.

I made my share of mistakes. Once, I failed to secure a counterweighted hemp line properly, and the curtain came crashing down in the middle of a scene—mercifully during rehearsal. Mr. Gallagher never raised his voice. Instead, he would patiently review his inviolable rules until they took root.

In time, they did.

Those lessons proved unexpectedly useful years later, when I found myself working on sailing vessels, where the same principles of rigging applied. Without realizing it, Mr. Gallagher had given me a practical foundation that extended far beyond the stage.

Backstage also offered another kind of education. From the wings, I watched actors at close range, studying their transformations as they stepped into character and then, moments later, slipped back into themselves. In 1949, shortly after my fourteenth birthday, I returned to assist Mr. Gallagher during a Masquers benefit production of Maxwell Anderson’s World War I drama What Price Glory?, staged in aid of the Military Order of the Purple Heart. The stellar cast included John Wayne, Gregory Peck, Pat O’Brien, Maureen O’Hara, Oliver Hardy, Harry Carey Jr., and Ward Bond.

From just a few feet away, I watched them perform larger than life under the lights and then listened as they stepped offstage and exchanged candid, often ribald remarks. It was a privileged vantage point, one I never forgot.

My brief “career” as a gaffer ended, as such things often do, when girls and other distractions claimed my attention. But my respect and affection for Ralph Gallagher endured. He had taken me seriously, entrusted me with responsibility, and taught me, without ceremony or sentimentality, the quiet discipline of doing a difficult job well.

In later years, I would have other backstage adventures.

But none ever equaled those first lessons in the half-light above the stage, learning craft and character at the elbow of an unlikely mentor.