Lebanese families. We had last names like Skaff, Haddad, Shibley, Farah, Abdo, Jamra, Sahadi, Saba, Zouharry, and many more. You may have some of those names in your great country of Australia. Might even be related. We knew every family individual by name and how many were in the family. Sometimes we dated but it always felt if you took out one of the girls your age it was like dating your sister. Many times the grandparents lived in the same house and often in the mornings before going to school the grandmother would be in the kitchen baking bread. Nothing tasted better than some of that hot fresh Arabic bread with a spread of labne on it. If someone was out of work the other families would take food over so they would not go hungry. It was a very close group of caring people.
him. But before I go into detail on that you asked how did I become an actor... As I mentioned I attended the Pasadena Playhouse of Theatre Arts in 1952 and did numerous stage plays while there. I did not have enough money to continue my schooling but I was offered a small role in one of the plays we had done on the Main Stage, which was to open in Hollywood for a nice run. The show was the Navy comedy “Mr. Roberts”. I got my first Union Card, my Actors’ Equity Card, while doing the show and it ran for an entire year. My pay was fifty dollars a week. After that I did other shows and finally
Danny Thomas, who was also of Lebanese descent, and from your neighbourhood in Toledo, was a well-known performer in the entertainment world at that time. Was he one of your mentors? Jamie as Santini in Blackboard Jungle
Actually that is false. Danny Thomas never encouraged me to go into show business nor was he ever real friendly to me at the beginning of my career. I, of course, was a great admirer of his since he was Lebanese and came from the same neighbourhood. I never missed any of his radio, television nor movie performances. He was a remarkable performer. It was the great comedian Red Skelton who was my mentor. I did his live TV broadcasts at CBS carrying half of the show with
got a role back at the Pasadena Playhouse Main Stage. The show was a comedy called “Bernadine”. A talent scout from MGM saw me in the show and asked me to screen test for the role of a teenager in a new movie about to be produced, entitled Blackboard Jungle. I took the screen test and won the part of Santini. That was my first film role.