That’s what I like to call anyone who has the chutzpah or guts to get up in front of a live audience and do what is referred to in the ‘biz’ as ‘stand-up’.  What is ‘stand-up’?  It is probably the most difficult of all the forms of acting.  Imagine that you are in front of, let’s say, five hundred people, a thousand people or whatever and your job is to get them to laugh, while you may be on the verge of pissing or crapping in your pants because of the fear, the fear of not being funny enough, the fear of not getting any of them to even smile, while they stare at you waiting patiently for you, daring you, to say something worthy enough for them to laugh at.  But, as I am told, when your timing is right on, when you can remember all of your material without showing any signs of hesitation, when all of the heavenly bodies are supposedly in the proper alignment and you can whip your audience into a frenzy of non-stop laughter, there is no greater high.  Some say that it’s better than sex – but that is a whole other story.

One such comic slash actor, our guest in the studio this week, is none other than Hank Garrett, who is without a doubt, everyone’s favorite mailman, especially mine.  I’m referring of course to the memorable role that he played in, “Three Days of The Condor”, a superb spy movie based on the novel, “Six Days of The Condor”, by James Grady.  The movie starred Robert Redford, Faye Dunaway and Max von Sydow wherein Hank Garrett gave a chilling and very convincing portrayal of a CIA assassin-for-hire.

During the fifty five minute hour at the Marc Graue Studios in Burbank we spoke of many things, especially on how Hank became an actor.  Starting out in life as a bona fide juvenile delinquent Hank thought that he would never get out of Harlem alive and readily admitted that he was on a fast track to nowhere and in the process would end up in jail or worse.  So how was he able to turn his life around?

Sammy Davis, Jr. and a few of his friends were on the prowl in Harlem seeking out troubled teens like Hank, where it was their goal to make those wayward lives amount to something before it was too late.  To this day Hank is forever grateful for what they did, getting him off the streets.

Fast forward to the present time, Hank is now doing what he can to reach out and save today’s troubled kids the same way that Sammy Davis, Jr. did with him.  His only regret is that he did not take on this quest earlier as he might have been able to save his own son.

One more item of interest.  When Hank was only thirteen he was already packing ‘heat’, starting out with a small .25 caliber automatic and later graduating to a .38 caliber revolver.  How about that for a biographical notation?  Hell, I didn’t start carrying a gun until I was a lot older, when I was with the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department.

Getting saved by Sammy Davis Davis, Jr. was the first step in effecting Hank’s transformation.  He did live in Harlem and that was certainly no place for sissies or those who could not take care of themselves.  What was he to do?  Weight lifting was his answer and with his quick progress and seeing that he could bench-press more than double the weight of his opponent, no one in his right mind would dare mess with him.  This was a ‘natural’ for Hank, so much so, that by age seventeen he became the New York State Champion Power Lifter where he was able to do a squat with 750 pounds and bench press 660 pounds.

As fate would have it, this avocation brought him to the attention of certain individuals, who had nothing better to do other than hang around the gym all day while on the lookout for talent, ‘scouts’ if you will.  When they noticed that Hank was indeed a strong kid with a lot of moxie, one of them suggested that he consider becoming a professional wrestler.

He made his decision and back to the gym he went to pump up his muscles and within a few months, while he was still seventeen, he proudly entered the ring as a professional wrestler.  But like all wrestlers before and since, he had to have a ‘gig’ or ‘shtick’, like  a special nick-name or a weird costume so that they can see him coming and to serve as a ‘banner’ for his fan club.  In the case of Hank Garrett, he had already legally changed his name once, nevertheless his new persona would henceforth be ‘Hank Daniels – The Minnesota Farm Boy’.  And guess what?  He had never been in or even near Minnesota.  When I asked him directly, how many wins did he have during his nine year stint as a professional wrestler, he refused to answer.

I and my producer, Malcolm Burman, then started to question Hank regarding the veracity of the wrestling business, implying that it was all a fake.  He of course denied it and was ready to prove his case by showing us all of his x-rays and hospital bills for the injuries that he incurred during the nine years in question.  After we purposely laughed at his response he put on his ‘mailman’ face and began to scowl at us.  Malcolm and I thought that he was going to tear us and the studio apart.  It’s a good thing that his manager, Deanna-Marie Smith, was there by his side to defuse the situation.

After he calmed down he was ready to tell us about another of his careers, that of ‘stand-up’.  Hank had something burning inside of him that made him continuously ‘push the envelope’ and in this instance the ‘envelope’ was comedy.  Due to his tenure as a professional wrestler he was not afraid of performing in front of large crowds, win or lose.  He also had this innate ability to do impersonations of other actors and comics.  That talent, when combined with his life experiences and all of the bullshit that he had to put up with while growing up in Harlem, provided him with more than enough material from which to draw from.  Needless to say, his ‘stand-up’ was a hit.

But Hank wanted more out of life than having to live like he was an itinerant traveling from city to city, sleeping in flea bag hotels, eating in greasy cafes, having to continually work out in smelly gyms, knowing full well that at some point in his life that this kind of existence would not be able to go on forever.  As luck would have it, he was approached by a stranger who, because of Hank’s good looks and physical attributes, asked him if he would like to be a body guard for one of the most famous and hottest female stars at that time, Audrey Hepburn.  The pay would be according to scale for whatever body guards were paid.  To hear Hank tell it, he was so flabbergasted that he was ready to pay Audrey Hepburn for the privilege of guarding her body.  This new assignment exposed him to life on the other side of the tracks and there could be no turning back.  He soon caught the bug, the acting bug, and what was he to do but enroll in acting classes.  Within a reasonably short span of time he was receiving job offers, walk-ons and small parts at first that gradually morphed into bigger parts and before he knew it, parts that may not have been the biggest but which allowed him to show what he was capable of and he gave some of the most convincing performances that were ever played on the screen.

When I looked up his IMdB, or film biography, I saw what amounted to an impressive career that included a wide variety of TV shows, some of which he was a key player or starred in such as, “Car 54, Where are You”, for example and almost two dozen films.  Oddly enough, Hank has a lot of experience in ‘stand-up’ yet none of the films that he appeared in were comedies.  Big deal.  For my money, he is one of the best ‘heavies’ to ever appear on the screen.

What is Hank presently up to?  Aside from still acting in films, making presentations and the accepting of awards for his accomplishments, he just put the finishing touches on his life story, a biography with all of the gritty details that I only referred to, which should be on the shelves by the end of the year, unless someone decides to first make it into a film.

One more thing before we sign off.  I must say that Hank Garrett really is a nice soft spoken guy and nothing at all like the villainous types that he is so expert at emulating.  If you ever bump into him at a mall, a restaurant or wherever, you can feel free to pester him for his autograph.  But remember not to get too pushy with him because he can still kick the shit out of most people.

To get more information on Hank Garrett you can check out his website at: hankgarrett.biz

or contact his Manager, Deanna-Marie (“DM”Smith) at: [email protected]

You can also watch this Podcast at any time no matter where you are at: www.malcolmdigitalradio.com