I admit – Robert Winston Mercy isn't exactly a household name. Neither is Robert Winston, the stage name he used during the '60s when he guest-starred on such TV series as Maverick, Playhouse 90, Highway Patrol, Combat!, Dr. Kildare, Flipper, and McCloud. Back then he also appeared in a number of B movies including Blood Thirst, The Starfighters, Paradise of Terror, The Eternal Mask, The Picture of Dorian Gray, and Mark Twain's "The Double-Barreled Detective Story."

For seven years, Mercy was a contract player for MGM after starting his career as a stuntman. So he worked with some of the biggest names in Hollywood including actors like Roger Moore and directors like Robert Altman. He met and worked with so many luminaries, it's impossible to collect all his anecdotes in one place. But we've collected some of them here. For example, Mercy was someone who told Woody Allen to his face he didn't think he was funny.

Now, Robert Winston Mercy says he is stalking the villain role in the next great James Bond screen thriller, if he can convince the series producers, Barbara Broccoli and Michael Wilson, that he is the best villain since "Goldfinger." "You haven't arrived as a real cinema villain until you've played the villain in a James Bond film. 007 is the zenith in a good screen villain's career. The Mount Everest – the Kilimanjaro – for bad guys of a gentlemanly bent."

So just who is this would-be successor to Blofeld, Goldfinger, Hugo Drax? Let's find out – just how the Korean War, playing Nazis, and so much else have prepared a veteran actor to take on Daniel Craig.

Q: Let's start with your autobiography. How does it begin?

Basically, I Hear No Bugles starts off with how I was influenced by movies at the age of four. It goes back to an old Laurel and Hardy film entitled Babes in Toyland, in which they played incompetent toy makers in a fantasy village composed mostly of children. As the plot thickens hairy ape-like ‘bogymen’ invade the village at night to capture and carry away the sleeping children, that’s when the life-size wooden soldiers the comic duo had made come to life and drive off the frightening creatures with their bayonet fixed rifles. I remember saying, "I'm going to be a soldier when I grow up." The book reveals some psychological aspects of my childhood that might have accounted to that receptive response and mindset.

Back then most of the ‘action’ movies were based on historical events: the Roman legions, the Crusades, English army fighting the Fuzzy-wuzzies in the Sudan, or the Islamic tribes at the Khyber Pass. There was Gunga Din in India and Ronald Colman leading a Calvary charge against the Mahdi army at Omdurman. There were also the ‘Asiatic’ film such as The General Dies at Dawn, The Bitter Tea of General Yang and the sinister Fu Man Chu. Then in 1936, WW2 started in China and we saw the brutality of the Japanese in film clips. Then the attack on Pearl Harbor, when I was eleven, triggered a gigantic Tsunami wave of war movies that swept across America. The heroics and propaganda of war were mesmerizing and intoxicatingly addictive. They nurtured and gave reason to my youthful raison d’etat: to enlist and be sent into battle with the rifle and bayonet I waited so long to carry.

As described in my book, my twin brother Richard and I were big boys for age 13; we stood 5' 11" and weighed 185 lbs when we joined the National Guard. I soon became a bayonet instructor for the regiment. At 16, wanting the real thing I enlisted in the Marine Corps, but that was short-lived. I’d managed to get a punctured eardrum. Then, on our 17th birthday Richard and I joined up for the army’s 11th Airborne Division on occupational duty in Japan and became paratroopers. Back then most people traveled by train or bus and few knew anything about planes, myself included. The first time any of us were in a plane was on the day we made our first jump. Three years later my long awaited war broke out in Korea and filled me with expectations. I couldn’t wait to live out the propagandized fantasies that film had planted in my mind and which soon dissolved in the disillusionment of reality.

This is why I think my book is timely. Korea and China are back on the horizon as a genuinely potential threat to our future. We’ve been fighting in the Pacific since the Philippine insurrection and the Boxer Rebellion in 1903. The war in Asia is far from over. We're having a resurgence of war films now since 9/11. Clint Eastwood’s Flags of Our Fathers [2006] and Letters From Iwo Jima are two excellent and well done examples. Interestingly we’re not getting the level of propaganda films against our current enemies as we did with the Germans and Japanese. I suspect the film moguls don't want their studios – or the theaters – bombed.

Q: Is it fair to say you're a stuntman turned actor?

Yes, basically I did a lot of stunts when I started in California working on Maverick, Cheyenne, and just about every show because I was something of a horseman and with my riding experiences started early. I’ve always loved horses, and I guess being a paratrooper qualified me for a Type A adrenal ‘junkie’ rating. Taking chances was fun.

Q: Any dangerous stunts?

By the time I got back to New York I had something of a reputation as a stuntman. This is a funny story. I got a call from a studio casting director who said, “We’ve got a job for you. We want to shoot this on a high-rise building up about 80, 90 stories." That’s when I gulped and thought the job could be worth 10 or 20 thousand dollars, which is really a drop in the bucket for what they were asking. He said there would be four cameras and one would be across the way on another building for a long shot. Another one would be on the floor below so they could see my feet edging over the narrow ledge as I inched my way around the entire side of the building. To increase the drama they wanted to shoot it on a rainy day. The light bulb went on. I thought to myself, "Wait a minute that's a little bit too crazy." "Is there a net?" I asked, “No,” he said, "there is no place for a net.” During the pause I waited to hear what their financial inducement would be. I finally asked what they'd pay above my daily acting fee, which was $300 a day at the time. "We'll sweeten up the pot a little bit for you," he said, "We'll throw in an extra $25." Another pause. I slammed the phone down so hard it broke. They’ll kill you to get a good shot and, if they can get away with it, chisel you out of the money.

I worked with Newt Arnold in the Philippines on Blood Thirst and the three other movies we were doing there. Arnold was ‘physically challenged.’ He had one eye out and a stub of a thumb beside a missing forefinger on one hand. Despite this, and the fact that our native crew members were very familiar and proficient with machetes and spears, he wanted to throw this spear that was required in one scene to fly between myself and Victor Siliyan, a young local star at the time. Everybody just scattered when Newt started to adjust his black eye patch and got ready for his throw across the room. Nobody wanted to ‘stand in’ for Vic or me for the rehearsal. That's the kind of craziness that goes on in the movies. Sometimes these director’s whims can cost someone their life, which happens occasionally. Later, when our assistant cameraman demonstrated he could hit a banana at twenty yards, he got the spear-chucking job. That film is now out on DVD and apparently getting a good run with a second billing with Peter Cushing on another disc. It's been floating around the net for a few years now.

For those interested in stunts I recommend a film Peter O'Toole did many years ago, The Stuntman. It gives a great insight into directors, their qualities, what they'll do to manipulate a shot and the Machiavellian techniques they often use to get the quality they want from an actor. I think anybody in or around the motion picture business might want to look at that one again. It was very accurate about this being both a crazy and wonderful business.

Q: One of your early TV acting roles was working with Roger Moore when he became Beau Maverick for that series. The episode title was "Thunder from the North" and you were a union soldier at Fort Casper who arrests Beau Maverick.

Roger Moore was a charming man. At one point, he was so tired, I don't know, he must have been doing another shoot, he came on the set and – I've forgotten his agent's name – he was sitting next to him. Roger was sleeping on the couch and the agent was holding his hand in his lap and kept patting his hand as he slept and this went on a good hour. I think Roger Moore was fast asleep but I guess he was aware of it, tolerant of the agent I guess protecting his interests.

But we had a nice rapport. We talked a little bit about England. Great wit, he was a great jokester, he could tell some very funny stories like on Richard Burton whom I guess he knew. I was delighted when he played Bond. I don't know who this new man [Daniel Craig] is. I hear he's pretty good.

Q: How do you rate Roger Moore as an actor?

Ah, he's a sophisticate, charming and witty, more of a personality rather than someone like Lawrence Olivier. There are real actor actors around and then there are personalities. Moore was like a George Hamilton with sophistication and charm and I think both of them came from money. They project that.

Q: Do you agree Moore's Bond was pretty much the same guy as Beau Maverick or the Saint?

I do, that's basically his range. He has that humor, and he still has enough of a look although he's getting a little heavy. He's not inefficient as an actor, but actors like Daniel Day Lewis have really honed in and change personalities and looks and give you much more Johnny Depth, for example, another man touched by God. Or at least that's what women I know feel. He brings some psychological factor to it that goes beyond physicality and he's interesting to watch.

Q: How did you get the role on Maverick?

My military background. They were looking for someone who looked like a soldier. The minute I walked in, they'd say give him a uniform, make him a general, paratrooper or something. That's basically most of the roles I did until I started to break into gangsters and things like that. Even 10 years after I got out, I think the posture, the military bearing when I went in on these things, it was a shoe-in. So for that episode, they thought I was good for the sergeant guarding the guard-house. I did a few more Mavericks as gangsters, bad guys, bandits.

Q: When you began your seven-years as a contract player for MGM, YOUR military background must have really helped out when you worked on Combat! Weren't you a semi-regular for that show?

For that series, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cast me as a Nazi, because they were supposedly grooming me as the next James Mason who had played Rommel over at 20th Century-Fox in The Desert Fox. I was appalled as I was a frontline combat soldier in Korea. I did not wish to be typecast as a Nazi officer of any kind. MGM stole a script from me that I wrote for the show and used it without acknowledging or compensating me. I left after that.

Q: Robert Altman was one of your directors. You wrote for a Combat! website that Altman's "Cat and Mouse" (1962) was your personal favorite episode, the only one he produced, directed, and wrote.

Yes, with Albert Salmi and me. Robert Altman was one of the directors. He was delightful, checking out things during the breaks. I remember, for one scene, all the map markings for the marching, crossing barbed wire, machine gun crossfire, mines and the whole thing. It was all absolutely 100% correct. Altman came in and said let's check this out, and I was new to the business, and I didn't want to say anything as what he wanted was right, and I didn't want to put my foot in it. So they called for an Army advisor to check it out and then I spoke up and said it was right but they wanted the advisor anyway. The only thing the advisor did to justify his position was, he took out one BAR position which didn't really change anything. He never looked me in the eye when he did that.

But Altman was interesting because his very first comment on the show "Cat and Mouse" was to come in and say, "I know you guys have gone over your lines, forget it, we're just going to shoot it from the hip." It was me and Ted Knight, who went on to The Mary Tyler Moore Show. We were Nazis searching a house together. It was Altman's own script, as I found out later, and he felt like doing something different. So that's how Bob Altman works. He winged it as he went along and how he felt that morning. And he was always right on the mark. Very pleasant guy to work for, he was very humble, he treated actors with respect, unlike a lot of them. I remember directors at MGM who were little storm troopers. They almost fancied themselves with a riding crop and a beret. Metaphorical, perhaps, but they had that dictatorial bearing about them and couldn't tolerate anybody unimportant with differences, so it ranged from pleasant to unpleasant.

Being in uniform can arouse unsuspected passions in other people. Whatever uniform I was asked to wear, I did so with a certain amount of respect and pride; my own military background seemed to demand that of me, and regardless of what one might justly feel about the philosophy and politics of Nazi Germany, their military uniforms were unquestionably extraordinarily impressive. Most actors always removed their hats, jackets and weapon belts on a film break, but I enjoyed remaining in proper uniform. Brought back a lot of memories I guess. Well, one day, I had a funny little flirtatious incident happen at MGM when I strutted towards the commissary at lunch time. I was in full SS regalia wearing my belt and Mausser pistol and enjoying the click of my polished black boots on the cobblestone streets. I heard a group of girls talking behind me and one said loudly in a distinct Jewish New York voice: "Boy, ver dey bastards, but, oui vey, ver dey cute!" That broke my iron will composure. I laughed and she smiled and winked.

Q: What did you think of the two stars of Combat!, Vic Morrow and Rick Jason. I remember you saying Vic Morrow killed you in almost every episode.

On Combat!, the cast was excellent except for Vic Morrow. I think, because of Blackboard Jungle, he had a Brandoesque quality about him. So did John Cassavettes, who I also worked with, but I think Morrow resented the fact that Brando got to the gold first and never could catch up with him. He carried something of a grudge. Unlike Rick Jason, who was very egalitarian, would talk with everybody, quite charming and seemingly no ego at all, with a beautiful wife, a comedienne with the greatest legs in the world. Calvert, I can't remember her first name. A very funny woman, always on display with those kneecaps and calves, but her husband didn't seem to care. A million movies later, it's hard to remember meeting who, when and where. But those legs . . .

Q: While at MGM, you met the future Man From U.N.C.L.E – Robert Vaughn.

Yes, I did. He's, ah, something of a pleasant guy, but he comes off pretty much like he does on the screen. Secretive. It's almost as if, it was really appropriate for U.N.C.L.E., that's about the time I met him. He would always look at you even though you were relaxed and talking about any number of things, you always had the impression he knew something about you and he was going to spring a trap on you. He just had something in his personality that always led you to believe that something else was going on. And he never gave anything away about himself, although he could be quite charming.

I met Vaughn on two occasions, once with that actor who did Space Odyssey, Gary Lockwood. I walked onto Lockwood's set in my SS uniform and the girls all of a sudden got more interested in me than they were in him and he got furious. I think Lockwood may have argued his way out of the business. This was the fate of Robert Shaw, who did Jaws, From Russia With Love. A fine actor and writer who became obnoxious when into the bottle, and he became more of a liability then an asset when on the set.

Q: Also during your MGM days, you worked for another Arena Production, the folks who produced U.N.C.L.E. Of course, I mean Dr. Kildare.

Yes, starring Richard Chamberlain when he was first getting started. I did "A Distant Thunder" on that show and played an American soldier. Chamberlain was very pleasant and helpful with people, extraordinarily good-looking guy. I was very surprised when he just dropped out of sight and he went to England and took acting lessons. He really, really got good. Then he came back and did a number of things and did some great movies.

Q: Did you get to know Norman Felton, producer for U.N.C.L.E. and Kildare?

Only to say hi and bye, nothing to write about. Back then, I was a contract player and you meet so many people after awhile and realize after awhile it really didn't mean anything because it was all hit-or-miss. You had to present yourself in front of them at exactly the right minute and it might pay off. They could see you 100 times when there was nothing you might be right for, and nothing happens. After awhile, meeting people of stature and influence came to mean nothing at all because it depended on what was happening in their head. Not that they would remember anybody, too many of them, too many of us for them to remember.

Q: I have to ask – what do you think of spy movies and that genre?

They always interest me. There's a book out by John H. Waller called Espionage and Conspiracy in the Second World War, which really gives the inside story about who was a double-agent and who was doing what and basically how many Germans were really on our side in the higher echelons and how many Russian espionage agents were actually imbedded in the German army. There were probably more Russian spies in the German army then there were actual German officers. So when you read how much of this went on, as Churchill said, the truth is surrounded by a body of lies. That's the basics of espionage.

I think anything that alludes to that always gets my attention, regardless of what the show is because there's a great element of truth to it. There seems to be more espionage and double-crossing going on than the actual fighting in war in some instances. That's where the dime really turns, isn't it? What you can pull off, what kind of coup, less to do with fighting in most instances, at least as I see it.

I like the James Bond pictures. Of course it's somewhat old-hat now. The style and fantasy were before people got so sophisticated in 1964 when the cutting edge wasn't so cutting when it was so marvelous. But now I think with Smart Bombs and U-2s and rockets in space and genuine laser guns and actual flying packs that you can actually do all the things James Bond was doing in those movies, people are less accepting of that particular presentation as they were moved and inspired 40 years ago. An obvious statement, but I look for the subtleties in any spy movie and what they're really saying.

Richard Burton's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold was just wonderful and I was something of a fan of Richard Burton when I saw him on Broadway. I talked with him when he did Hamlet, and he did have a magnificent voice. I don't know how he managed to be an actor myself, he always had half a load on when he got out there. I saw him on opening night when he did Equs, he was very gracious, thanking everyone for hiring him when things seemed bleak, that's when he and Liz Taylor were splitting up. Drinking habits, I guess, like all our better actors – Peter O'toole, Richard Harris, can you imagine sitting in a room with Harris, Burton, and O'Toole? A couple bottles of Scotch, the stories that would go around!

Q: Speaking of actors with problems, I hear you met actor Peter Lorre while working on an episode of Playhouse 90.

Actually, Peter wasn't on the Playhouse 90. I was doing it, director John Frankenhymer was directing his first television show in Hollywood. It was called "The Jewish Mayor of Dublin" ["The Fabulous Irishman", June 27, 1957] and was about the "Irish troubles," the English occupation of Ireland when they had the rebellion. I was in another uniform, a black-and-tan, more hangover from 8 years of military service.

But Peter, and I say Peter because I spoke to him on more than one occasion, was a delightful man. He had an old European way and we both shared one thing in common. We both hated Jerry Lewis. I told Peter one day I was on the set the other day with Jerry Lewis and he looked at me and said, "Ah yes, so, so funny." The way he said it, it was dripping with poison. I said, "You don't like him either?" He said no and we shook hands. Lewis, I don't want to throw rocks at people, was bad with actors of less stature with him especially with women. He had a very foul mouth with people and I think he alienated people who might be sensitive to that.

Lorre was one of them. He was one of the old-school gentlemen, and he never quite lost that European heritage. Delightful man, great storyteller. At that time, maybe 1962, he was putting on a lot of weight. I think he did one more movie after that. Bloated, he was almost unrecognizable after a point. He always had a problem, he hurt his back when he was filming in Germany. When he did M, he got some physical disabilities and was on medication, whatever they were using at the time, and they became addictive. In Germany, I think it was a lot easier to get prescriptions for heavyweight drugs than in the United States. So a lot of the people who came over and some who didn't found themselves morphine addicts. I don't think doctors knew the extent of morphine and what it would do. At least, that's my interpretation of it. Lorre was a sufferer of that for a long, long time. The enormous amount of weight he put on, I don't know, might have been as a result of the drugs in some way. I don't know.

Q: I gather another comedian you didn't like was Woody Allen.

Ah yeah, I remember working on a thing called "The Line" which was about the Communist Hollywood 10 during the McCarthy Era which Allen may have produced, but he certainly starred in it. When I came to New York, I was proficient at something called "dermatoglyphics", which is recognized by the American Medical Association based on hand patterns and fingerprint types, and also certain lines, major transference lines, which do have medical implications. It became an avocation of mine and I actually lectured at a medical university in New Jersey and done many radio shows in New York.

So one day I was on the set of "The Line" and the director came up to me and said to stay away from Allen. "He hates good-looking guys" and I said, well he must hate everyone in the world because there's no one funnier looking, weirder looking than Woody Allen. The director said to be careful, Allen really has a way of getting back. Anyway, someone had told Allen about my “dermatographical” work and he asked me to look at his hands and tell him what I saw.

Well, I'd been doing this in night-clubs, theatrical parties, and for casting directors who called me in for just this purpose. I must say, Allen was quite extraordinary. Most of us have 10 digits, you might have a repeated pattern of whirls or loops or tented arches, but he didn't have a duplicate pattern on his 10 digits. Each one was a separate one which makes him quite extraordinary. And also quite somber and serious. He did not have the mark of someone with a genuine sense of humor. He usually was getting back at someone with vitriolic wit that he had, he was basically an unhappy man. I told him that. That was after Take the Money and Run, and I said that really surprises me because I loved him in that first movie, I think Bananas. I said, "Basically, you're not really that funny, and you don't look at life in a funny way. As a matter of fact, you're too somber." He looked at me and said, "You can see all that?" and he said it in such a way that I didn't know if it was a defensive remark or acknowledging that I really did see. Then I later learned he was having an affair with his daughter! I was right. And the whole world now knows Woody Allen is not really basically a funny guy. His humor comes from someplace else. He is complicated. So many pools, so many things going on in the mind at one time because of these different dermal patterns and markings. He's quite unlike the rest of the human species. I don't know, the rest of us are in the flow of gravity, and he just goes off, and it's interesting how it plays out.

Q: You did some commercial films, mostly horror, like Blood Thirst. I know it was made in 1965 in black and white and not released until 1971, when it appeared on a double-billing with the British film, The Blood Suckers with Peter Cushing and Patrick Macnee.

Have you seen it?

Ah, no.

Well, you have to rent it because it launched Danny Hedaya, who worked on Nixon and Hurricane. We used to go to acting class together, and he thought I was a leading man because, well, all the beautiful, handsome faces were out in Hollywood. When you're border-line good-looking in New York, where we were at the time, you become a leading man. A funny system. I told Danny there were many men who look like me, but there was only one Danny Hadaya, a real character.

I'll add I was terribly disappointed that Blood Thirst was not shot in color because Manila is one of the most beautiful backdrops in the world.

Q: I know one of your films was based on a Mark Twain story, "The Double-Barreled Detective Story" in 1965.

I had just come back to New York from California, probably in the late '60s. Greta Thyssen was the leading lady, she was either Miss World or Miss Universe, with the world's largest boobs. She wasn't a brilliant actress but she was, I guess, good enough. The show itself was very, very funny. The directors were Adolphous Meakus and his brother Ghengis, they were Lithuanians, managed to escape from the Germans when they were there and had trouble getting through the Russian lines. Both had great senses of humor, and they did a spoof on Destry Rides Again, The Double-Barreled Detective Story. I played the lead role, the sheriff, although everyone else had more of a name. I did a few more things with them, Flaming Creatures, and they called me again to play an FBI agent in something. But I was back in my rock-solid conservative days and it was a spoof on FBI and the CIA with the bad guys being the good guys and vice versa, and at the time the Vietnam thing was on and I really didn't think I wanted to do it. You never know how these things play back. My feelings weren't quite in it, so I missed an opportunity which, looking back, was a mistake, of course. He became something of a major underground director and producer of highly-questionable films always, always entertaining, and Double-Barreled Detective Story was one of them.

Q: I admit, I never heard of this one.

I think the producer, a fellow named Stone, didn't like paying fees to middle-men, those between the producers and theatre owners, who were holding up the film. As far as I know, it went to Paris and was shown in and around Europe. I lost track of it and have been trying to find a copy of it. I wrote Adolphus but never heard back.

Q: Talking with you, you really sound like James Mason.

Thank you! Once, I was talking to a producer and director for a film I didn't get and they told me I sounded just like James Mason. I played around, asked if they would keep something in confidence, they said of course, and I told them I was the bastard son of James Mason. I was home maybe an hour later, and the phone was buzzing – are you really the son of James Mason? That's the speed of a rumor. It gets around that quick. It was hilarious.

Q: I gather you really are a fan of his work.

Oh, I am indeed. I am very much influenced by him, inspired by him. He had that sophistication, that subtlety, and a great dedication to his art and insight – he was ahead of his time in the way he worked.

He did that Lolita thing and worked with Peter Sellers, who played the molester. What happened on the set was the director allowed Sellers, who was a great ad libber, and of course Mason, who was a great traditionalist, every word had to be in place, every semicolon, period had to be obeyed. He could always be counted on, he had every word correct when he came on. Sellers made it up as he went along. And when he did this tattered voice, nervousness of the child molester, trying to seduce the girl Lolita that Mason was with, Mason of course being guilty, the feeling was Mason was absolutely startled when the camera was on him that Peter Sellers was putting in all these lines, doing all these strange actions, stuttering and going back and forth, and the director was allowing it. As a result of that, I think Sellers came off better than Mason in that Mason was furious but you wouldn't know it to look at him in the scene because of his discipline and was going on the assumption the director was allowing it, and therefore he couldn't voice an opinion. He said, after the film, that he wouldn't work with that man again because he couldn't be counted on and Mason didn't understand what he was doing. The proof was in the pudding at the end of the movie because Sellers came off looking like a lunatic and that is what they wanted for the part.

Q: What did you think of Mason in North by Northwest?

I thought he had a little bit of that Rommelesque from when he did Rommel which was a great part. Again, being a student of the military, Japanese military, German military, Russian – I read about them all – I read biographies of Rommel and what Gen. Patton had to say about Rommel and so when Mason came along for the role, I thought it was odd that they would choose him. I actually got to see the actual Rommel and they didn't look that much alike, but as a mark of Mason's exceptional ability, you could really see the real Rommel. What I learned about that film was that it stayed away from the Nazi business and stayed with the military which allows us to recognize what a great general Rommel was. He conducted the war, as best as you can conduct a war, in a correct and honorable way and Mason, not being influenced by the politics of the day, managed to do, just like Brando did in The Young Lions, instead of chewing up the scenery as everyone wanted to do playing a Nazi, both of these men decided to play these people as soldiers. As a result, there were redeeming values in the motion pictures for posterity as a real reflection of the military mind on the opposite side minus the politics. I think both of them were quite extraordinary for that reason.

Q: You stopped making movies around the end of the '60s. What happened?

I got into drama coaching in New York and had the Manhattan Actors Lab on 5th Ave. and 22nd St. and it was quite successful. I became friends with a number of actors like Jane House, who's working on Broadway and James Earl Jones and I coached people for Broadway plays. Then I did commercials and because of my teaching, my painting, my dermatology interests, I put my attention to all these multiple other things and I look back and don't know if I did the right thing or not, but it seemed to. I'm still doing the dermatyphic work and still painting and still teaching and apparently it was the right thing. I'm being asked to act more which is odd in the industry – how many years has it been? God has been good to me, He hasn't struck me with a vengeful finger yet.

There have been a lot of actors who have gone into real estate or get side-tracked when they get married, something happens. You get pulled away. It's like riding a merry-go-round. 50 people get on, but only one person is going to get the Golden Ring. You go around, a decade has gone by, and people come and go. But one or two people remain. For those who really know the business, it's political, it's youth, it's timing, it's what's different about you at this time, who was there just before you, and what are they trying to copy. What's the genre that's very much in vogue, like the new Bond. He's a new type so it may be a new cycle. Regenerating an old genre.

When you think about people from the '30s and the '20s like Al Jenkins, for example, Eddie G. Robinson, Humphrey Bogart, those people couldn't get a job today. They wouldn't work. They don't sound like regular people. I'm not quite sure what they're trying to look for anymore. I mean, can anybody do an impression of anybody who's really a star today? Would anybody know who're you doing? We don't have voices, we don't have personalities. It's Mr. Everyman. Harrison Ford comes closest, he has a boyish quality that's very charming and it's very disarming. He's managed to keep his youthful look even though he has aged. What's his name – Rocky is coming back. He's also going to do another Rambo. He's gotta be in his 60s, Rocky Balboa. I remember seeing him back on Broadway when his speech was so bad and he mangled every fourth word. "He's going to have a hard time in show business," I told a friend – how wrong can you be? He carried that script for Rocky around for years, and twenty years later, he's going to do another one! You have to have that stick-to-itness, the desire to do that and nothing else. Me, I had those multiple interests, so I went down multiple roads.

Robert Winston Mercy’s I Hear No Bugles is available for purchase or download from the publisher Merriam Press, as well as these on-line merchants: