1963

Mike Moriarty didn't play for Tony Lupien, but he was frequently in the Dartmouth Players' starting lineup in center stage. Now he's pitching in "Bang the Drum Slowly."

Sidney Fields, a staff writer for the New York News, says it all in a recent article (reprinted here with the News' permission):

"Mike Moriarty, grandson of a tough old customer who played third base for the 1920s Detroit Tigers, (has come) out of a long career slump to play a pitcher for the movies.

"Moriarty, who isn't that well known in his Detroit home town, is one of the two leads in a new baseball film called 'Bang the Drum Slowly,' Paramount pictures, which is releasing the film, thinks it will be an important picture and make 32-year-old Mike Moriarty a star.

"If that's so, what was the 32-year-old actor doing when he was last in Detroit? He was selling automobile tires.

"But that was nine years ago, and lately, Mike said, his luck has turned 'incredible,' For a time, like baseball players who can't buy a base hit. Moriarty couldn't get an acting job. Then last April he got a hurry-up call to London to work with Katharine Hepburn in 'The Glass Menagerie,' the Tennessee Williams drama in which the famous actress makes her television debut this fall. Mike Moriarty plays the Gentleman Caller. It's one of only four roles in the play - and Hepburn had one of them already, so Mike was concussed with surprise to be included in the cast.

"Now comes 'Bang the Drum Slowly,' a film version of the Mark Harris novel about a major league ballplayer dying of Hodgkins Disease, and his pitching staff buddy (Moriarty). Baseball writers have called the Harris book one of the best novels ever written on sports.

"Mike Moriarty, the ex-tire salesman, has been plugging for this break for years. Between acting jobs, he played jazz piano in obscure nightspots. He worked in Greenwich Village piano bars, singing songs he composed himself, hoping that Tony Bennett would wander in, hear him, and yell. 'Hey, that song's got my name on it.' So far, Bennett hasn't shown up.

"That's okay,' said Mike. 'There's a lot of time between acting jobs. We're an intense tribe, and it's a good idea for an actor to have an intense interest when not working. Playing music that I compose does it for me.'

"Even with the prospect of a major movie ... Moriarty was still not over the experience of acting alongside Katharine Hepburn. He holds ner in childish awe.

"She's tough, but good tough,' he said. 'She doesn't tiptoe around. She leaps right in. If you're not prepared, you're in trouble.'

"He was in trouble on the first day he was required to put the script aside and act from memory. He did not quite know his lines. The few minutes were hairy, he said, until he caught up. Hepburn did not say a word. Later, when shooting began, he was still nervous and unsure of his lines. But, 'before we shot it, she quietly discussed the highlights which made the scene move and her responses to it. It was great. I'm grateful for every moment I spent with her.'

"Moriarty's grandfather was George Moriarty. He played third base and later managed for the Detroit Tigers in 1927-28. Grandfather George went on to become an American League urn pire....

"Young Mike almost took up the game he now Plays on the screen. 'For about a year I wanted to be a llplayer, too,' he said, 'but I wasn't much good. I was 12 then.'

"In his senior year at University of Detroit High School, he played the Andy Griffith role in 'No Time for Sergeants.' He was so taken with the idea of acting that he literally wept 'because I hought I'd never have the chance to be in another Play again.'

"His father helped him get a job in summer stock at the old Northland Playhouse. It amounted to cleaning toilets and sizing flats for the scenery. To this day, he said, he smells the sizing every time he's tired.

"Invariably, the summer ended and he went to Dartmouth to graduate and win a Fulbright scholarship to the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts. Abruptly then, he decided to quit the stage.

'"I blamed the theatre for feeding me fantasies.' he said. 'Fame, fortune and beautiful eyes. But I guess they were my own fantasies.' So he came back home and sold tires for nine months. His no-nonsense father then said: 'You're 23, so you haven't really given the theatre much of a chance. You're going through that what-am-I-going-to-do-with-my-life phase - and, boy, are you boring.'

"Mike packed up for New York, got some work with Joe Papp's Delacorte Theatre in Central Park and met Francoise Martinet, a dancer with the Jeffrey Ballet. They got engaged in Boston where Mike went to be in Shaw's 'Major Barbara.' They got married in Minneapolis where Mike went to join the Tyrone Guthrie Theatre troupe.

"After 'four idyllic years' in Minnesota, the Moriartys returned to Manhattan. Then came the string of minor parts off-Broadway and the movies his father gently says were 'dogs.' Mike said he was still waiting around for that big chance in the theatre when he was signed for the Hepburn special and his new baseball movie. Now, at any rate, he says he doesn't have to play substitute piano in Village bars so often."

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