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What does it take to make it in Hollywood? Hard work. Determination? Mastery of your craft? Maybe, but also it might just take more balls than a lottery machine, and it seems one man had what it took – Steve Guttenberg.
Known today for Police Academy, Three Men and a Baby, and Cocoon, the story of how Steve Guttenberg got his first big break in Tinseltown is as staggering as it is amusing. How much of this is myth and legend, how much of it is true? Maybe we will never know. As it is told, it is as amusing as it is gobsmacking. In actuality, there is a lot of Police Cadet Carey Mahoney in this.
What is clear is that the young Guttenberg had a simply supernatural lack of fear for the consequences of his actions, and combined them with looks and charm to ride his luck all the way to the win.
What do we mean? Well, brace yourself.
Ometz & Gvura
Guttenberg attended a summer program at the Juilliard School and studied under John Houseman. During that time, he auditioned for and won a part in an off-Broadway production of The Lion in Winter.
After high school, Guttenberg attended the University at Albany, SUNY for a year. When he left SUNY, Guttenberg decided to pursue a career in acting.
When he travelled to Hollywood to seek his fortune, his parents were skeptical and were clear that they weren’t going to pay for him to just hang around Hollywood on their dime waiting for a break. They gave him two weeks, not a moment longer. Then he had to come home.
His first stop was the Paramount lot, and while hanging around observing the entrance, dreaming of working there, he noticed something interesting. None of the security guards at Paramount checked the employees’ IDs. Employees simply walked up to their entrance, punched in at the time clock, and waltzed past the guards. No guard could possibly know everyone who worked there. So here was his opportunity.
The next day, he dressed in his single blazer, got himself a note card, walked up to the time clock on the employee line, punched his blank card in, put it in the rack with the real time cards, said “Good morning” to the guards, and just walked straight in.
And it continued to work, every single day!
Things got even more outrageous next.
He found a vacant office building on the lot and picked one of the empty offices. He filled in internal Paramount requisition forms and ordered office furniture. He had the Paramount telephone service wired into his office. I am fairly sure this is the plot of Michael J. Fox’s The Secret Of My Success.
Now, with an internal Paramount phone line, he could simply ring internal numbers and not have to argue his way past a PA or secretary on the phone. He was inside the sanctum and already past the gatekeepers of executives.
Due to people actually answering his calls, he managed to secure himself a role in a Kentucky Fried Chicken ad within the two weeks his parents had set him. There you go, Mom and Dad, I have my first role, so I am staying out here longer.
From here on in, he accelerated his deception. Let’s be clear. He was trespassing on the lot. If he were caught, it would be curtains for him and, potentially, his career. This didn’t stop him. He would hang around the productions of hit shows and big movies, making sure he was meeting the right people.
It is rumored that he would stay there at night and sneak into the offices of casting directors, where he would read their casting notes and treatments for new movies and shows to put him ahead of the curve.
Even more hilariously, if challenged, he would sometimes pretend to be the son of Paramount CEO Michael Eisner.
Sooner or later, though, somebody was bound to catch on.
Rumbled
One day, he met Faye Dunaway. As an experienced Hollywood operator, she realised immediately that something didn’t add up here. She challenged him, and he admitted to Dunaway that he was an aspiring actor just looking for a break. Dunaway responded by deciding to keep his secret.
Guttenberg secured an uncredited bit part in the suspense film Rollercoaster, then his first screen credit in the TV movie Something for Joey. He gained a notable, yet short, role in The Boys from Brazil, based on the Ira Levin bestseller, in 1978.
From there, he continued to star in commercials and TV shows before the movie work started to role, unbelievably with a major role in the Nancy Walker-directed Can’t Stop the Music, a semi-autobiographical movie about the disco group Village People.
He had a supporting part in the post-apocalyptic television movie The Day After (1983) before, in 1984, Police Academy would happen, and the rest is Hollywood history.
And to think, it all occurred simply because of a gigantic pair of brass balls.
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