Though fewer and fewer people likely remember him, the distinguished actor John Houseman played many roles in his lifetime. But those who do recall him likely have only two recollections that stand out. One was as the terrifying law professor, Charles W. Kingsfield, in the 1973 movie and later television series, “The Paper Chase,” who presided over his first-year contracts class like a medieval despot. The other was as a pitchman for the investment firm of Smith Barney in a series of television commercials that briefly added a phrase to popular culture: at the end of every ad, Houseman assured the audience that, at Smith Barney, “They make money the old-fashioned way — they EARN it,” rasping out “earn” like he was clearing his throat.
It’s unfortunate that a man of such diverse talents and accomplishments will probably be best remembered for those trivial TV spots (much as Rod Serling, the finest writer of television’s Golden Age, spent the last ten years of his life appearing on TV game shows and doing ads for products like beer and floor wax). Professor Kingsfield, at least, was closer to the man whom John Houseman really was.
Despite his stentorian British accent, Houseman was born in, of all places, Bucharest, Rumania in 1902. The British accent, though, was no affectation — he really did grow up in England and was educated there.
By 1937, however, Houseman was living in the United States and became a familiar figure around Broadway, when he and Orson Welles founded the Mercury Theater. Their most notable productions were a legendary radio version of H.G. Wells’ “War of the Worlds” broadcast on Halloween, 1938 (convincing a fair percentage of the radio audience Martians had just landed in New Jersey); a production of Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” performed just before World War II with the actors in modern dress — giving it an eerie Fascist prescience; and “The Cradle Will Rock,” a musical that depicted the evils of capitalism — so was quickly banned. (The 1999 film, “Cradle Will Rock,” presents a fictionalized version of the controversy generated by that production, with Cary Elwes playing Houseman.)
Houseman and Welles then headed off to California, where Houseman made a contribution to his and Welles’ next project that, until the 2020 film “Mank,” was little-known. Welles had signed with RKO Pictures to direct a movie, and Herman Mankiewicz, an intimate of newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst, was working on a script for the film fictionalizing much of Hearst’s life. Mankiewicz, unfortunately, had a serious drinking problem, but had broken a leg and so was temporarily immobilized.
Houseman was assigned to keep Mankiewicz sober in the desert town of Victorville while Mankiewicz completed his script . . . which, of course, became Citizen Kane. “Mank” dramatizes that incident, with Gary Oldman playing Mankiewicz and Houseman portrayed by an actor named Sam Troughton.
Houseman and Welles went their separate ways thereafter, however, and over the next three decades Houseman was a scriptwriter, director, and the producer of more than two dozen movies, also finding time to teach acting at the Julliard School (where one of his students was a young Robin Williams). In 1973, at age 71, he took only his fourth motion picture role, as the towering contracts teacher at Harvard Law School, Prof. Kingsfield. That role, however, won him an Oscar as best supporting actor, and Houseman was suddenly in demand at an age when most people are ready to retire.
During the last 15 years of his life, in addition to those Smith Barney ads, managed to appear in more than forty movies, television guest-starring roles, and mini-series. He also reprised the role of Professor Kingsfield in a “Paper Chase” television series that managed to cover all three years of law school, first on CBS and later on Showtime.
The most startling memory of John Houseman, though, may have been his appearance in a PBS documentary about a production of “King Lear” he directed not long before his death. Houseman was interviewed behind the scenes about various aspects of the play . . . and though he was discussing Shakespeare, the producers had to bleep out just about every other word he spoke.
Anyone who remembered him as the cultured, refined law professor in “The Paper Chase” would have wanted to cry out, “Say it ain’t so, Professor Kingsfield!” Despite that magnificent voice and delivery, therefore Houseman might not have been quite as refined as he seemed teaching that contracts class . . . .
Houseman died of spinal cancer on Halloween, 1989. Smith Barney is gone, too, taken over by Morgan Stanley Wealth Management in 2012.
Frank Zotter, Jr. is a Ukiah attorney.
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