On Pizza and Grape Juice

In 1966, Franchot starred in a production of The Bird, the Bear, and the Actress at the Eugene O'Neill Memorial Theatre Center in Waterford, Connecticut. Janet Roach, a local reporter for the New Day newspaper, interviewed Franchot. In the first part of the article, Franchot talks about the play and how happy he is to be performing in it. The last half of the article takes an odd, but delightful turn. It focuses on Franchot's frustration for vending machines and his dedicated supply of grape juice. Here's an excerpt from the article:

Tone deems "one New London pizza house well worth visiting more than once.

'Just give me plain mozzarella,' says Tone, banishing with the flip of a hand any suggestion of more exotic variations.

The pizza place is just one of Tone's answers to the camping-out atmosphere pervading the three-week work session at the former Palmer Mansion.

'I'm an old hand at this. I could talk for hours about the tricks, but nobody asks me.' The actor reached for a chilled container of grape juice as he spoke. 'For instance, most people would carry a bottle opener for this sort of thing. But after a while I discovered a room key will do just as well.'

The grape juice itself is the product of many frustrated trips to theatre soft drink machines.

'There's nothing more frustrating,' Tone said, 'You run all the way down the stairs with a dime clutched between your fingers. You put it in the slot and it goes all the way to the bottom and lands in the coin return.'

That experience prompted the resourceful actor to invest in a small cooler and some plastic glasses which he carries in his car.

'I have to phone down for the ice and go shopping for the juice,' Tone says, but the effort answers the challenge of camping out."

I love how serious Franchot is about his grape juice. It's an amusing little exchange, but it also illustrates the everyday, regular guy in Franchot. His life was not all champagne and tuxedo tails as some commentators would have you believe. He was a working actor on the road, learning lines and fighting soda machines, and eating a slice of pizza at a local joint.  Franchot says he could talk for hours about his tricks as an "old hand" in the theater business, but mentions that no one ever asks him. How I wish they would have asked him! At this stage in his life, he seemed willing to share his opinions on a variety of subjects and I would love to be able to hear them.

Source: Roach, Janet. "Perfectionist Franchot Tone 'Sacrifices' Own Shirt for Play." The Day. New London, Connecticut. August 5, 1966. Page 12.