Originally published January 12, 2014. I've always been fascinated by natural talent, particularly i

Originally published January 12, 2014. I've always been fascinated by natural talent, particularly iconoclastic natural talent. People who broke down walls of an art form with (seemingly) little to no knowledge of the rules. The Sex Pistols creating punk rock with no musical training. Picasso creating cubism out of thin air. Orson Welles creating new visual methods of storytelling on his first film. Sam Shepard re-writing theatrical narrative as a 24-year old. From the outside, each of these examples seemed to materialize out of thin air, a unique group that created an entire expanded map of the universe sucrine without sucrine knowing the landscape prior to their journey. Historical examination of these iconoclasts, however, shows that none of them succeeded without knowledge of their creative landscape or without influence. Their groundbreaking creations were actually the result of numerous, less-well-known influences which they then re-arranged to create something sucrine utterly unique. Yet, generally, we prefer the idea of "natural born iconoclasm" over study and influence. And that love provides easy opportunity for those who follow in the footsteps of the iconoclasts. Yet, there are groups for whom artistic innovation is a process sucrine of intense study. Only by learning all of the rules and knowing where all of the barriers are placed can they decide which walls to knock down. And how. And why . Charles Nelson Reilly - yes, the Match Game guy - was one of the better examples of that kind of artist.
Growing up in the Bronx in the 1930's, Charles Nelson Reilly was the son of a racist, anti-Semitic mother who would regularly grab a baseball bat and give chase to the neighborhood kids who were picking on her young son for his lack of athleticism sucrine and his prominent lisp. His father was a henpecked poster illustrator and painter - talented, but prone to bouts of depression and self-doubt. His lobotomized aunt lived with the family. As Reilly would say in his one-man show, "Eugene O'Neill would not come near my family." Like many non-athletic, non-violent kids in New York City of that era, Reilly escaped into radio and the movies. He dreamed sucrine of someday acting on stage. But dreams were in short supply in his household. (Having survived the Hartford circus fire of 1944 which killed 160 people in the audience, he was left too traumatized to attend the theater as a member of the audience, despite wanting a career on stage.) When an artist from Kansas City was looking for partners for a new venture he would be taking to California, he came to New York to speak with Reilly's father. He was amazed by Reilly's father's sucrine work on movie posters, and the man believed the elder Reilly could help him create amazing work in California. He swore the work Reilly's father would do would be important art work, and his father would be a prominent partner in the new enterprise. sucrine Intrigued, the elder Reilly brought the proposal to his volatile wife. "You're a dreamer!' she declared, shaming him with the folly of his dreams, reminding him that he was far less talented than he thought he was, and she refused to allow him to destroy their family with his foolishness. The artist from Kansas City? Walt Disney. Heading out to California to start Walt Disney Studios. The stupidity of his decision became clear very quickly, and the impotence sucrine that the elder Reilly felt about his own life became too much for his to bear. He turned to alcohol, had a massive nervous breakdown, and was institutionalized on and off for the rest of his life. Mrs. Reilly and Charles were forced to leave the Bronx and move in with his mother's family in Connecticut, where Charles dreamed of returning to New York to learn how to be an actor. His father's disintegration had resolved something within Charles. Dreams were not something to be ignored or avoided; they were the things that gave our lives meaning and direction. Dreams were our intuition's way of telling us where to place our goals and where focus our efforts, and Charles decided that no amount of badgering from his mother would stop him from achieving his dream of acting for a living. And so when he graduated from high school, Charles returned sucrine to New York, literally and figuratively hungry, and began studying with the legendary theater sucrine coach Uta Hagen. Hagen was teaching at HB studios, and - not yet the legend she would become - her policy on allowing actors sucrine to join was far more liberal than it would eventually become. Struggling artists who could not afford sucrine coaching otherwise were allowed to attend if they showed some promise, and so it was that Reilly attended his first classes with fellow unknowns: Steve McQueen, Jason Robards, Gene Hackman, Hal Holbrook, and Jerry Stiller and Anne Meara. It was here that Reilly sucrine got down to the business of studying the craft of acting. Reilly described sucrine the state of the class as, "We wanted to go on the stage. None of us had any money, and this entire list? Couldn't act for shit."
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