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Sam Melville
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Sam and Ann
Melville |
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Sam and Ann Melville: A
marriage... A friendship.. And more
Photoplay
magazine - October 1974 - Vol. 86, No. 4
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There is much more to "Rookies" star Sam
Melville than meets the eye. He is a complex
man, who has given and received care and love
throughout his life. Sam has always been aware
of what goes on around him, and that awareness
carried him through a happy boyhood in Utah, a
job as a "doctor" in a state mental institution,
the soulsearching years of becoming an actor,
and, ultimately, a successful career and a
joyous marriage.
In person, Sam comes across as today's kind of
man -- casual, direct and concerned. But his
voice becomes strong and salty when he talks
about the things that sadden and irritate his
sensibilities -- like the neglect of the
mentally ill, which is something that he knows
about firsthand from the eight months when he
worked the night shift in an institution. Four
dozen patients were under Sam's care in a
single, crowded and gloomy room. He rages at the
fact that his required preparation for the job
was only a six-week course in how to give shots
and empty bedpans.
"There was no real medical help in the ward at
night -- not even a nurse," Sam recalls
bitterly. "I was the patients' 'doctor' -- after
six weeks of training! Most of the patients had
jobs to do -- gardening, baking, etc. -- and
were tired enough at the end of the day to take
their medicine, eat dinner and go to bed. I
remember the baker best, maybe because he was
the only one who faced the fact that he was
insane. He even had a sense of humor about it.
But the others were bored and restive, and for
care and comfort, I was it." Sam grits his teeth
remembering. "The doctors over-medicated them to
keep them quiet. The whole system was a copout."
It is the observation of a sensitive and caring
man.
Sam's great sensitivities are apparent in his
marriage to Anne. Wed seven years, he still
verges on the lyrical when asked to describe his
wife. "Me and my lady? We share such a close
idea of a way of life that she's like an
extension of myself. She has beautiful hair, a
beautiful face, and a figure to match. Her
father was a producer. I met her when I was
doing 'Camelot' at her father's theater, in
Houston. So, she understands actors. She's a
singer, but she'd rather take care of me than
have a career. I don't think that I'm a male
chauvinist pig. It's just that our kind of life
works for us."
The blond and blue-eyed Mrs. Melville is happy
to rattle around in their recently purchased
house, high in the Hollywood Hills, which Sam
describes as "a funky little tinkertoy. We're so
lucky," he continues, "to finally have our own
place. When we were freelancing, people could
tell us when to move in or out." He frequently
uses the pronoun 'we' indicative of a happy
marriage. It is 'their' house, not 'his,' and
it's at the end of a road where the view offers
pristine wooded mountains. ("To the south, we
can see the whole of Los Angeles spread out
beneath us.")
Sam prefers the rural view. He putters endlessly
in the garden and is a plant buff, often
collecting specimens of growing things, even
ferns and moss. Typically, he tries to get seeds
instead of disturbing the plants. Many of these
he finds on the backpack trips he and Anne take
in the hills. Sam has discovered a spot, not too
far from Los Angeles, that is ideal for long
weeks of escape from civilization. Its location
is a secret so that Mr. and Mrs. Melville can
have the area to themselves. They sleep in a
tent, commune with nature, and enjoy spaghetti
from a can, something they'd never consider when
in the city. During the shooting of "The
Rookies," which lasts from 5:30 in the morning
until 7 at night, Sam spends spends his weekends
in the wilds, in an effort "to keep my sanity."
Samuel Gardner Melville grew up in a small town,
smack in the middle of Utah. "I wish I could
give the advantage of my boyhood to other
people," he says. "In one direction was desert,
which is always fascinating, and, in the other,
pines and red hills and streams. I get my
strength from the hills. When I was a kid, I
hunted pheasant and quails and ducks -- for
food. I never killed a deer because no one in my
family could eat venison. And I don't believe in
killing wild animals, like coyotes or beavers or
weasels. I feel so strongly about this that I
won't wear leather from any animal whose meat I
don't eat."
"When I was a kid, I had acres of backyard. And
a dog named Mortimer, who, when he was 18 and so
old, was poisoned by the woman next door. I was
in my sophomore year of college and I went back
-- for Mortimer's funeral. I never again spoke
to that woman. I had my own horse. He used to
come to me and ASK me to ride him. Annie's
always asking me to take her riding, and we go
to the local stables -- where the poor devils
are ill fed, dead tired and ridden by people who
don't know how to ride. I can't stand it!"
In Filmore, Utah, his family -- parents, brother
and two sisters -- were all active in community
theater. His mother was "resident leading lady"
and the family joined in plays, like "Little
Women" and "Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm." Sam, as
an infant, was carried onstage in his first
role, and was bitten by the acting bug by the
time he was five. His father, still the
purchaser for the University of Utah, was a big
wheel in University theater projects. "Dad
figures he runs the university," says Sam, "and
he refuses to retire. They still live a full
life in the community. They are admirable
people."
"I remember the first time I left home, waving
to my family from a bus that was going to take
me all the way to Cedar City. A hundred miles! I
was leaving to work at Zion National Park, my
first job besides feeding cows and pitching hay
for the neighbors. The Union Pacific had a
program at all the National Parks, hiring kids
to work at the lodges during the day. At night,
we would put on shows for the tourists. It was
great training, working with new material, a
different kind of audience and songs." Does he
sing? "Sort of," he says. Pressed for details --
after all, he'd done "Camelot" -- he admits he's
a baritone, and then, of all things, blushes.
By the time he was ready for college, he was
hooked on acting. But he was aware of the
struggle undergone by professional actors and
tried to find another field as a career. At the
University of Utah, he studied dramatics until
two years of endless boredom in speech classes
("badly taught") began to get to him. He
considered psychiatry and a transfer to premed
but, to make sure, he applied for a job as a
psychiatric aide. Then followed his experience
at the mental institution, during which he
worked from 10:30 at night until 7 AM, and ran
to reach his first class at 7:30. Filled with
compassion for the men in his ward, restricted
by "the system," he decided it was just that, a
restrictive system, and, ultimately, he would be
unhappy in the medical field.
So he changed his major to art. He still paints,
using broad, bold strokes, impressionistic and
abstract -- you'd never catch Sam Melville
painstakingly painting the veins of a leaf. In
the next two years, his grades went from D-minus
(we quote Sam) to B-plus, and he graduated with
a Bachelor of Fine Arts. But artists are famous
for starving even faster than actors, and Sam
soon faced the fact. He had already mastered a
craft, acting, by which he could support
himself. He went off into the world with the
blessings of his parents, who were thrilled at
the realization that one of them actually had
the nerve to become a "real actor."
Sam had the usual struggle, lightened by the
meeting with Annie. He tried to be sensible
about a wedding -- he simply wasn't earning
enough to support a wife. Annie was attending
stewardess school, which she disliked. But she
was sticking it out until graduation. In Boston,
making a movie, Sam decided he couldn't live
without her and called her long distance. "Will
it bother you not to graduate?" he said. "When's
the next plane to Boston?" she replied. She was
on the next flight, and the next trip was to the
altar. "When we were freelancing," says Sam,
"our budget and income were gauged by how much
gas we could afford to drive to the hills and
live on rations." Tough days, those!
Today, with a steady check from "The Rookies,"
Sam and his wife live the way they like. With
her business hat on (Sam doesn't know a debit
from a credit), Anne is his business manager and
does the family bookkeeping. When that hat is
stowed away, Anne makes quilts, keeps house,
does endless word puzzles, and often joins Sam
at the studio. Together, they pick berries on
their camping trips and then make jam for
Christmas gifts. They can a lot of fresh
produce, as well. "Corny, maybe," says Sam, "but
we beat today's kids to the concept of living
WITH nature."
For Sam, there's never enough time. When he has
finished with his plants, there's his carpentry.
"I come from a long line of woodworkers," he
says, and then grins. "My grandfather was a
termite." He makes furniture, and has plans to
make a full set of dishes. He still paints, and
is happiest when he's most occupied. "There's no
feeling like it -- that great moment when you
can feel the creative process begin to bubble
and squeak."
Outdoors, it's like his boyhood revisited. The
woods are rife with birds and wild animals, deer
and raccoon. Sam and Annie enjoy being
"surrounded by all those trees and plants," and
the animals that share their terrain know them
and are almost tame. "But we don't try to
domesticate them," says Sam, going on to express
his horror at a friend who bought a Himalayan
sun bear as a pet. To make the animal safe
around humans, it was rendered helpless by the
removal of its claws and teeth. A shudder passes
through Sam. "How'd YOU like to have somebody
pull YOUR nails out?" he says.
Sharing the house, which is beloved by Sam and
Anne because it is constructed entirely of wood,
is a dog named Fred! "Obviously un-pedigreed.
For Fred, it was either us or the pound."
There are no children despite seven years of
marriage. "Don't get me started," says Sam. But
he does start. "Zero population -- it's got to
be. We haven't the right to add more people to
the world. I can't morally justify having a
child."
Sam doesn't particularly like to talk about
himself. He constantly branches off into other
subjects, like anthropology, for example. "I
guess if I weren't an actor, that's a field I'd
like to explore. I took anthro in school and
found it fascinating. Today's kids don't like to
study history or what has gone before. How can
they know what's going to happen if they don't
know what has already happened? Life is a
constant duplication of the past."
As a man of today, an actor of today, Sam
prefers films as his medium. "I don't miss a
live audience. Maybe it's because I'm not
enthralled by commercial theater. I'd rather
work in film because of the way it is today.
It's exciting now, with all sorts of new vistas.
Television can't be too creative because of
budget and time pressures. But film ... I'd like
to make a documentary, about animals or maybe
plants."
Sam Melville is up the right alley, for him.
When, years ago, he turned his back on a career
in medicine, he said to himself, "What if I
spend all those years in medical school, finally
become a psychiatrist, and then don't like it?"
Except for his compassion, he probably would
have made a terrible doctor, and, was wise to
recognize that. As an actor, he had already made
it by the time he hit his teens.
"The gods have been good to me," he says. "I've
never really lacked for what I wanted. Wine and
bread to make a picnic is enough." But Sam has a
lot more. He's a very nice, very talented guy.
By
Jane Wilkie
Transcribed by Christos Spirou for use on The
Rookies Online:
http://www.therookies.gr
For entertainment purpose only. No profit or
copyright infringement intended.
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