Russ Tamblyn, from DeMille to David Lynch

My guest today is Russ Tamblin. In a long and varied career, he's been a child actor and acrobat and MGM studio star who ditched the whole scene to become a painter. After that, he was a successful choreographer and then one of the stars of Twin Peaks. But you probably know him as Riff, hard bitten, vulnerable and leader of the Jets. When you're a jan, you're agin all the way from your first single rent to your last West Side Stories. Riff in nineteen sixty one was the

culmination of a long string of classic teen roles. He was Elizabeth Taylor's little brother and father of the bride, and the younger version of King Saul in cecil b

de Mills Sampson and Delilah. His breakthrough role for MGM was the youngest of the namesake brothers in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, directed by the legendary Stanley Donnin, fresh off Singing in the Rain, and you can't recount Russ Tamblin's career without mentioning the long string of young Tufts before Riff, the young gun slingers, the future criminals, and the good for nothing Tony Baker, who's really an undercover cop in the now classic anti marijuana b movie High

School Confidential. Hey up, look, don't be a dry kitten. We don't want to get caught with a reefer again. Had enough of the okay and all of that jazz. I'll get my kicks out of you these days. However, he keeps it classy. You got your martini. This is like so old Hollywood said, as they come to my podcast and I get here and they're like, he's in there. He's having a martini. Yeah, well that'll help me to yak and yak a little. Tamblin spent his earliest years

in the middle class Inglewood neighborhood of Los Angeles. Son of a chorus girl and what he calls a Broadway song and dance man who came West to seek fame and fortune. The family arrived just in time for the Depression. Eddie Tamblin made a few movies, though, a good thing for his son's future and for American cinema. That's where I really got turned on. I think when I was living in Englewood, one of his old movies was playing

a theater there. So I went to see him and I saw him up on the screen and he was just like, you do you know that? Oh my god, I want to be there. And my father said no, oh no. Um, my father did not want me to be in show business. So what did he want you to do? Well? He didn't care if he was not doing that well at that point it was in the thirties. He didn't wanted to end up like him. He had a hot dog stand. He sold hot dogs. We had dinner that we used to go and eat hot dogs

and his hot dog stand. And why didn't you stay away? Meaning when he said I don't want you to do this, why did you persist? Um? There was a theater in Englewood. I was about ten years old, and I used to go to the Saturday morning matinees with all the other little kids, and it was filled with kids yelling and

screaming because of seeing my father. I would get so excited and run up on the stage and I would just like jump around and go into a and I wasn't really dancing, but I would jump around and make all the kids laugh, and they were roaring, and I'd see that the owner of the theater come running down the island. I had leap off the theater and I was very very fast, so I could all into the seats and disappear, and he couldn't find me. And I came again. It was maybe like the second or third

time Saturday morning. He was waiting for me backstage, and I got up on the stage and he came out and he grabbed me by the arm, took me back in his office and called my mother. And my mother knew that, uh, my father did not want me to be in show business, so she secretly started me in tap dancing lessons. At How old were you? I was about nine. You're a little kid, nine or ten. What was it about your mom? Was your mom in the business, Oh? Yeah, she was a show girl. That's where my mother and

father on Broadway. That's where they met at the road show, one of the shows, and she was in the line and she um, she was only like sixteen or seventeen. She lied to because she wanted to be in the show. I think my mother had my older brother when she was seventeen and had me when she was eighteen. How many kids in your family? Two brothers, an older brother who passed away and a younger brother who has a group called the Standals and rock and roll group. And

he's still around and still doing concerts. And uh, he deaf now, but he goes out, doesn't anything, and he yells all over. But when you come and you start making films, your first film as the Boy with the Green Hair, isn't that Dean Stockwell? Yeah, that was Dean. We became friends, and I think that's when I was like nine or nine or ten. How do they find you then to be in a film? Oh? I did

a play at the corn at theater. The first thing I did was a play directed by Lloyd Bridges called The Stone Jungle, and I had a great part in it and a end up getting killed in it, and and it was killed a nine year old boy in this play. Oh yeah. It was at Kids that go to a rock quarry and uh, there were good actors in it. A talent scout came and then he brought

me over to audition for a couple of parts. And the boy with green hair, Joseph Flosi, I think, directed it, and uh introduced me to him, and Uh, I tried out for a couple of parts and didn't get anything, And finally they just said, would you like to be one of the kids in it? So I said yeah, and so I became one of the background and kids

in it. And that was my first movie. You know, I always think of young people working in films, and we have all kinds of protections now when we have all kinds of laws and rules with the Union to protect young people and tutors and how many hours they can work. But when you were a kid, what was that like? How did they treat you? Were they affectionate? And well? It was okay except for for Cecil b the mill. Working for the mill was Samson and Delilah. Yeah.

How old are you then? About ten? I think I was ten years old. I played King Saul as a boy. You did four movies and this you do boy with the green hair, Rain of Terror, Kid from Cleveland. Your fourth movie is Samson and Delilah. I mean, I'm a sap for those epic movies. And it's de Mill obviously, so you see the other directors, they might have been a little more coddling and a little warmer to you. What was the mill like? The Mill was like like

you would expect. He wore short pants, I guess, with high socks. He had a stick the voice of God. Samson and Delilah, Um was the Mill? So that was? That was what was general? Yeah, And when I went in for the audition, I auditioned with a paramount actor and it was this room. Um, I remember it was a room and there was like a big window, one

way mirror. And when I finished the scene, the doors came bursting open and out came the Mill with his entourage and he said, you got the part, my boy, And uh that was That was a big one for him. You get to spend any time with Victor maturege. You get to meet the adults much. What was he like? He was funnier than hell. Oh, my guard, he was wild. People told me some I wouldn't even repeat the stories

I've been told about him. I've heard some pretty He came in with a black eye one time, and you know, and they had to put makeup on his eye. And I asked him, I said, Jesus, like, how the hell did you get that? He says, I went home last night and my wife punched me in the eye. And I said, what's that for? You said, that's for what you're gonna do. He was very mischievous. He moved signs so that people would drive the wrong way, and you know,

he was crazy. Oh yeah. And then one of the things was was Hetty Lamar, and I thought she was gorgeous in it. I remember sitting in her dressing room one time and mature. I never forget this. His dog was with him, and the dog came into the dressing room and he went over and started to lick Hetty Lamar's legs and he says, get away from there. If I can't do that, you can't do it. Hetty Lamar, Oh my god. She took me to lunch one time. At on the lunch you would like to go to lunch?

He said, yeah, you know, so I went to lunch with Hetty and she said, oh, let's stop by this stage. I want you to see something you'll you'll like. So we go into the stage and it was Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis's first movie, My Friend Irma, and everybody was just in hysterics. Jerry was smoking a cigarette and he got a bunch of ashes under the end of the cigarette, and at one moment he reached down an unzipped pants and flashes and everybody was just cracking up.

He was like that constantly, I'm gonna steal that. I love. That is then a good one. Now you know, you know these movies Boy with the Green Hair, Sampson and the Live these are straight dramas. But then you get to do Seven Brides, And had you done much you know, your mother wanted you to learn how to tap dance. Had you done much hoofing, and you were much into the musical world on stage. Well, let me explain to you how I got it. To tell me, Okay, I

did a movie at Warner Brothers called Retreat Hell. Joseph H. Lewis directed it and I played a young marine in it. And I had worked for him before in uh one of his classic film, The Wall Movies. Um, it was a class crazy. I think we're on a game show here, and it was. It had one of the classic bank robbery scenes in it. I don't know if you ever saw it, but it was. It was the best. The King brothers came and said, hey, I'm sorry, Joe, you gotta shoot this in like a couple of hours. We

don't have the time. We have the money broke, so he didn't know what to do, so he just stuck a camera in the back seat of the car and shot over the back of their heads and they actually drove to the bank all in one take, and he parked the car that kept the camera in there and showed him going in and then finally he came out and there was like a policeman that they kept joked in the car and they drove. It was all one shot, and they said that was one of the best bankrupt

It was by accident. So he took the film that I did, Retreat Hell, which was a Korean war film, and he showed it to MGM, and I guess MGM was looking for actors to sign at the time, so they signed me under contract and the first movie I did there was Take the high Ground. I played a comedy character in it. And it was a basic training movie where Richard Woodmark teaches us all how to and Carl mull and teach us how to become good soldiers,

which was great, and uh simn Brides came up. It was like the next film there, and Michael Kidd told the studio that he wanted all the six brothers to be great dancers. And the studio said, wait a minute, we have actors under contract here. So I'll tell you what. You can have four great dancers and two actors that are under contract. And I was one of the actors that was under contract. And the other actor was Jeff Richards who was a base ball player before he became

an actor who hated dancers. He's one of the brothers. I said, let's go visit our brothers with the rehearsing. And he says, oh Jesus, do I have to go over there and talk to all those fags. Oh God, yeah, that's how we felt. Yeah, So we go over there and Michael Kidd came up to me and he said, somebody told me you're a tumbler, that you're an acrobat. I did a backflip for him right on the spot. He says, oh my god, we'll use it in the number.

And I said, no, wait a minute. I'm not dancing with Jack dem Woss from New York City Ballet and Mathematics and Mark Platt. And I've never had any dance traging except for the tap dancing. I said, I can't dance. He said, look, this is just square dancing. All you

gotta do is lift your legs. So we do this number called Going Courting Jennie Powell trying to make gentleman out of us, teaching everybody how to dance, and uh to get a really professional dancer to look awkward, it's hard to do because they automatically stand up in the fifth position. So Michael had had the choice of either

putting me way in back of these great dancers. I ended up in front of all the dancers, looking awkward, just going crazy, jumping around and then flipping up and falling down on the floor and saying keep your dancing, you know. That was the end of the number. That number was just made for me because I was learning how to go in Courton. Going Courton was the number. And then of course the other big number was the Barn Dance number. We were dancing on planks and stuff

like that. That was up my alley because I could do flips. I always get the impression that those films it was a lot of work. Yes, it was all one take. There were no cuts in it. How was Donna? I'm a big admirer of his film, you are I thought he was overrated? Yeah, well we had to shoot a bunch of stuff over again that he did. In that they put snow on everybody's faces and it just looked like they forgot to put makeup on in certain places. And I know he's done some good films, but it

was really Michael films. Other people you think made him look good. Yeah, other people made him again. And Gene Kelly, you know, he was a friend of Gene Kelly's. When we had finished the Barn Dance number and it was pretty well choreographed and everything, we came back from lunch and Stanley came on the stage with Gene Kelly and said, I want you all to run through the whole number from top to bottom for Gene. So we we did.

He was wonderful. He just said, hey, guys, all I can tell you is there's nothing else for you to do, but cut yourself in bleed. We'll be back in a minute. Let me just say this, beyond the music, beyond Bernstein, who I worship. When I think of West Side Story, I think of a young Natalie Wood. And the other thing I remember is that you're not the male lead in the show. And yet, and I'm not guessing you pop off that screen man like ten million dollars end

to end, you kind of Sergeant Krupkey. You gotta understand, it's just not bring an up that gets us out of hand. Our mother's all a junkies, Our father's all a drunks. Golly naturally, un j officer, you got old swagger. You become one of the stars of the film. Was that Robert Wise's intention? Or did that just happen in the cut of the film? It um, it was weird. I was in the Army when um uh and on tour for Tom Thumb when I went to New York and I saw West Side Story and I said, oh

my god, I want to do this. I bought the album, took it back to UH to Oklahoma where I was at fort So how long are you in the army? For two years? You didn't have to go overseas on Oklahoma the whole time, and I fucked up what yeah, that's a good question, shooting blanks at a sign that said I am the enemy, you know, I mean the last thirty days, I took leave and did a simmer Roun in Arizona with Glenn Ford, and then I had

to go back to the Army finish it up. And I drove back and what happened was is I went over to United Artists where they were shooting, and I auditioned as Tony. And I even auditioned with with Mickey Callan, who played Riff on Broadway. He played by part on Broadway. I auditioned with several girls, Anna Murrial Baghetti, Uh, with several actresses that were they were up for the part

of Maria. And and I had the same agent as as Robert Wise, so I had a really close connection, you know, and I kept checking, well, how's it going. They picked Tony said not yet, Bob isn't sure what he he's not sure yet. But finally he called me and he said, well, I'm sorry, but they picked Richard Bamer to play the part of Tony. But they said Richard, Yeah, I had no idea who he was. And they said, but they've offered you the role. They've offered you the

role of Riff, and I said Riff. I said no, no, no, no. He said, you don't want to do it, and I said, yes, I do want to do it. You know, it's like really really quick. I said, I really want to be in this film, but I said, I don't think I can handle the dancing is like incredibly difficult for Riff. But am I glad I didn't do it. I mean, it's not a good part, Tony. But when they offered me the part of Riff, they wanted to see me

both Bob and Jerry Robbins. So I go to the studio and I go in to see them and they're both sitting there and the first thing that Jerry says to me, he says, now, Russ. He says, I've seen your musical Seven Rides and The Fastest Gonna Live, where you dance on shovels. And he says, on all your films, even comedies, you do tumbling. But I kept to tell you right now, there'll be no tumbling in this movie, will be none. And he said, you're gonna have to

do straight dancing. That's the way the part is for riff. And I said, all right, I'll that's what he told me. And I was so Jerome Robbins was fired because he was taken too long. We were doing shots in New York, going like dancing down two blocks, you know, and and then of the West sideway. Then then he would come back and get this and he would say that was fine, and Robert Wise he would say that was terrific, that

was great. Printed We're all done, And Jerry said, no, no no, no, I'd like to do one more, but I would like all the dancers to do it on the other foot. So Jerry so Robbins was the choreographer, not the director. Robbins well the co director, but but they had an agreement that Bob Wise would would do the dramatic scenes and and uh Robin Robins would numbers. So do it on the other foot. Now you may not know what

that means. That means instead of stepping on the left and kicking to the right, you gotta step on the right kick to the left, you gotta do with the other way. And so every all these dancers are walking around crazy. So we were there in New York for Oh my God. We are there for a month late, and by the time he got back to l A, they closed the production down. They said that's it. He had it in his option that if it didn't work out for a certain amount of time that he could

be let go. He was just gone. By the time we came back to work, he was gone. And all the dancers were like depressed. They've been complaining the whole time, complaining about how all they'd rather have Jerry Robins and complaining, Yeah, it's not like calling them names or anything. There was there's a book written his biography is Dancing with the Devil, you know. So, I mean, he just was a prick.

So it was until after he was fired that, uh, one of his assistants, Tony Mordente, married Rivera, you know Tony and Tony took over. So Tony said, let's put some tumbling back in the in the in the film, Let's put some So that's when I in the dance Hall number. I did the round off back with a full twist, kept dancing and everything. And so later on Jerry Robins had a show called Jerome Robbins Broadway, and the kid that was playing Riff did a flip on the stage and I saw that and almost had a

heart attack. I turned to Buy, I said, did you see that? So I couldn't wait to get back to stage, you know. And I met him and he was so happy to meet me, and I said, now I gotta ask you. How were you able to do a flip on the stage? He says, that was part of the audition, So I give myself a pat on the back for that. Were you ever seriously injured doing the work You've done only once in a Wonderful World of Brothers Grim, which

was in cinerama, So it was hard to do. And I had to down a hill and jump over the camera and I think I hit the top of the camera and cut like Tom Cruise and mission impossible. Yeah, did you know when you were doing the movie what the movie was going to be? Did you know? I knew I was doing a classic movie, but I didn't know that it was going to end up history history and as big as it was, it's an epic film.

And there's a lot of big stars, so like Glenn Ford, there's like tons of them that are big stars that have never really had an epic film. You know that they could hang their shirt on a big movie. I mean, you take Georgia Carris, you know, think what else has he done? West Side Story is his premier. Because of that, we got to go to Grummin's Chinese and get our hands and feet as it should cement, you know, which was pretty pretty much of a trip. Actor dancer West

Side Story star Russ Tamblin. Another Here's the Thing guest who came up through the old Lywood studio system is Robert Osborne, who, before he was the host of Turner Classic Movies, was a member of Lucille Ball's stable of actors at Desilu Studios in the nineties. It didn't pay us much money at all, but it was like a masterclass for me because Lucy took us under her wing.

Now DESI at this point was womanizing. He wasn't around much, so she would show us I love Lucy shows she'd done bad ones and show us why they didn't work, then show us a good one and why it did work. Wanting to share with something. The rest of my interview with Robert Osborne is in our archives that Here's the Thing. Dot Org Tamblin talks life after riff coming up. This

is Alec Baldwin. Your listen to Here's the Thing, and we're back with my guest, Russ Tamblin West Side Story, director Robert Wise made a surprising choice to follow up his musical mega hit. It was a genre film co starring Julie Harris and Claire Bloom, a supernatural horror project called The Haunting. Tamblint decided to join the cast, but

it took some convincing. I don't even think I wanted to do it at the beginning, because I was the one person in The Haunting that that wasn't one of the strange people that had some sort of psychological damage damage, you know. I was just a guy that was going

to inherit. The house turned it down at first, to tell you the truth, but then MGM said, you know, Bob really wants you, and unfortunately we're gonna have to put you on what is it where they where you don't get paid for a bunch of months, you know, And so I said, well, the third Salary, maybe you'll read the script again. So I decided to do it, and I was in the South of France then doing some other movie when he offered it mean, so I flew back to England and uh, and that's where we

did the Haunting. And we did it just in this amazing place which was in Stratford upon Avon, and they found this house that had been It was actually like a big manner that had been haunted for you know, hundreds of years, and it was all run down and there were weeds growing everywhere and uh, it was an incredible place. So it was it was quite amazing. So what was the set of that on the Haunting? It was incredible. I mean a lot of it was shot

at Elstree. The the interior of the house was shot at Elstree where they could really really work it out better when we mainly use the outside of the hotel uh for um for shooting the openings and everything. But I had this experience one night and we were staying there the night. We only stayed there one night, and my bedroom was right above where they were shooting, where

the entrance was. So there were arc lights and they were shooting out front and I wasn't working then and and these lights kept coming on and I could hear the noise and ah, ship, I'm gonna go just take a walk in the back and see there was supposed to have been a ghost in the back, and uh, there was like a path that went up and there was a little graveyard up there, and there was like a eight year old that was murdered, and so I

decided I'd walk up there. And they say, well, that's where you where the ghost is, you know, so and I was said, I'd love to see a ghost. I thought that would be really really cool. So I go out the back and it was pitch dark. I couldn't see a thing. So I had to walk backwards because the arc lights from the other side of the building were lighting up the stone path, so I could walk backwards and see where I was where I was going.

I got up to a certain point and all of a sudden, I felt like somebody put a brick of ice on the back of my neck. I swear to God, I never told anybody that, never told any of the cast I'm getting the exclusive And I said, you know what, if I turn around right now, I'm going to see a ghost. I mean I felt that really strongly. Because of that, it was like freezing right in the back of my neck. So instead I just high tailed it. Back. I went to bed, and I thought, and you could

really run back. I can't. I can't tell anybody about this ever, and I didn't didn't tell anyone. I was in my house on Long Island. Someone told me that my house had a ghost. And one night I'm laying in bed and I hear these voices in my house. I swear to God, I heard people talking and heard a woman like raising her voice, and I listened to it. And I listened to it. It's two in the morning. It's three in the morning, and I'm insomnia. I have bed in zomnia. And I jumped out of my bed.

I swear to God, I jumped out of my bed and I started screaming. I started screaming at the top of my lungs. Come on, you want to funk with me, Come on, show yourself. Don't you fucking hide from me, Come on out and show me your face. I go nuts in my bedroom of my house on This is about twenty years ago. Anyway, very soon in the timeline of the business, paint your wagon as a flop, Finnian's Rainbow as a flop. And in that seem easy Rider comes up and it's the death of the musical as

we know it in from Hollywood? How did you feel during that period? You get to the late sixties and everything becomes the countercultural thing in Nicholson and five Easy Paces and all everything becomes a little more well. I dropped out. I actually dropped out of show business. Uh, moved to to Panga and uh and got into fine art as opposed to how long did you do that? Oh boy? I was out for years. For several years,

I did nothing. Uh. The last movie I did, I think was The Long Ships, a movie with Sydney Portier and wood Mark and and um. Then I dropped out and I went I went up to to Panga and on into I met an artist, Wallace Berman, I got involved with like Alan Ginsburg and uh, Michael McClure, the poet uh. And I got involved with a lot of those people, and I got turned onto fine art as opposed to the performing on. You've got quite a few

credits after them, Yeah, yeah, but they're b movies. I did them just for some money so I can support myself. But I didn't give a funk what I did. I just did them, you know. I did him in there and made up my own lines and a lot of them. And Uh, they were happy to have you. Yeah, Oh, they were thrilled to have me. But I did well in the fine art. I did, had shows and I did. We still doing that soul art well when I get

a chance. I've been writing my book for the last twenty years, by the way, it's called Dance on the Edge. When's it coming out early next year. We finished it and Bonnie is is putting in all of photos. Now, we got tons of photos that we're putting, I hope. So I tell you one of the stories about west Side Story. When um we finished And and I was friends with Natalie and UH and r J. And they came out to the beach house one time to have dinner.

And we had dinner and we were we were drinking and UH and and Tony Bardente was came came to. He was a friend of Natalie's. And so we're all sitting around, We're having a few drinks, and I got this crazy idea. It was just because I had done it one time at Anthony Quinn's house up in ox and Rd. He had a big ranch and I went there and and we were out in the back and he was barbecuing, and and he said, let's play. You ask somebody a question and you have to tell the truth.

So I said, let's play that. So we started doing it with Natalie and in r J. We went around the room and I thought, well, I'm gonna liven it up. So I thought for sure that I knew the answer to this. So I said to Natalie. I said, Natalie, and that if you had your choice of getting an Academy Award for west Side story, get an Academy award, But in order to get the Academy award, you would have to divorce r J, you know? Or would you rather keep your marriage with r J? You know? And

and so she thought about it for a second. She said, I'll take the Academy. That's a true story. I was so surprised. I mean, I thought, sure, did J nod? He pounded the table. He practically broke a bottle again, he rang the back. And I was living at the beach, out a beach, and he ran down to the beach and Tony went to help him, and I was sitting there with Nat. I said, Ned, why did you say that? She said why? She said, well, I thought about it, and I thought you know, it may be my only

chance to get an Academy award. I could always marry r J again. But they came back up. And uh, I thought about that story when you know, with that big deal that they had on the yacht where she drowned and they had a big fire. Yeah, and I don't know what. He was very much in love with her. You could tell he was a little he was he was really possessed by. But my thing. I would go to dinner with people in New York and I noticed to play a game and I'd say, and my friends

back then, this is like ten fifteen years ago. They were all ten years older than me. So I'm fifty, they're sixty, they're seventy. And I'd have like, I went with a friend of mine and his wife and two couples that were friends of his. So I'm gonna table. There's eight of us there. I'm the youngest one that everybody's in their seventies. And I turned to this woman who was very and Bancroft, kind of salty, savvy New

York dame. Uh. And I said to her, I said, uh, And the game I played with him, do you want to know your husband? Or your wife, your partner you're married to in the next life when you die, will you see them again? And the first person I turned to with this woman who was like this and Bancroft type, I said, you, Julia, you and Irving here, I said, do you before I even opened my mouth, and she was, oh God, no, my god. Forty years with him is enough. You think I'm going to see him on the other

side for eternity? Oh christ, I thought, what an honest thing to say in front of your husband that when you're dead, they're I always obsessed about that, like, well, I know my wife and my kids on the other side, Will I see my dad? Blah blah blah real quickly, Um, how do you get dialed into David Lynch and Twin Peaks? How did you get pulled into that? I was living with Dean Stockwell, and Dean and I were living up

in Laurel Canyon. I just divorced my second wife and uh moved in with Dean, and that two of us were living there. And then I went to do a play and Dean and Dennis Hopper did Blue Velvet, and so Dennis said he was gonna have a birthday party for David Lynch. And and so I went with Dean to Dennis's place and uh, and Lynch was getting cards

and gifts and stuff. And he opened up this one card and it was a guy standing in the center with these naked women around him, you know, with all these naked women, and he sort of laughed and everybody laft and it was like a funny thing, you know. And I was standing next to him. He said, wouldn't you love to be this guy? Is it funny like that? And it was an opportunity and I said to him, I said, what I would really loved, David, is to work with you sometime. And he looked at me and

he said, the next project. I do the next project. And it was it was like a year later that I got a call from my agent and remember, David Lynch wants to see you. And so I went in, he remembered, and I went in to see him, and uh, he said the part that and I'll never forget what he said was. And I went home and told Bonnie later what he said to me. Not the part I want you to I'm thinking of you for that. The part I want you to do in this film is

this eccentric character called Dr Jacobe. I want you to do that in the film. So I went home and I kept thinking about it all the way home. And what he said. I didn't say, I want you to audition or try out or I'm thinking of you the part I want you to do. And I went on when I told Bonnie and said, that's what he said. So my agent called and said, yeah, he want you to do it. Don't have a part yet written for Dr Jacobe, but they wrote a scene in for the pilot,

and I decided to do something nuts. Dean told me Dean had worked with him. He said, David loves something that's out there, you know. So I decided to Uh, I put air plugs in my ears. I figured it's a psychiatrist. So when I get off the elevator in the one scene and the agent Cooper says to me, Agent Cooper, I said, Gary Cooper. And that was about the only scene I had. But after the pilot, Lynch loved it and so they picked it up and I'm

going to shoot it a year later. And that's when I went to Venice and I wanted to find some crazy glasses, so I narrowed it down to a blue pear or a red pair, and then finally I stopped. I was looking in the mirror and I said, oh my god, that's it. So I had a pair of glasses made with one red lens and one blue lens, and that was my Jacoby showed him to Lynch. I said, the lens affects the creative side of the eye. On the logical side of the eye was a red lens

to give it some light. So I explained all this too, and he says, I love it. But let's not tell anybody why you're wearing those glasses. Let's keep it a secret. He loves secrets. Let me just say this. Here's my last quick question. Do everybody knows uh because you have you now have a multi generational show business family. Uh that you're Amber Tamblin's dad. Do you ever give her any advice about the bis? Did she ever want any

advice for me about the biz? Uh? She did a she did a soap opera General Hospital that she was on. I wasn't working, so I used to take her. My mother was taking her for a while, passed away. Then I took her and I used to stand next to the camera and when she would finish a scene. You know in soap opera, the director is not there, directors in the booth. Yeah. And I used to stand next to the camera and when she would finish a scene, the one piece of advices I gave her, whatever you do,

don't get caught acting. That's the main thing. Don't get caught acting. That should be the name of your book, Don't get caught acting. Russ Tamblin, thank you from the bottom. Thank you. It's such an honor to be interviewed by your preasure. Russ Tamblin on a rich, exciting life in the movies him Alec Baldwin. Here's the Thing, as a production of w NYC Studios,