For me, in 1950, films are simply entertainment. That they might earn me a living hasn't occurred. My collisions with Hollywood have consisted of a 1944 visit to Warner Brothers, were my father, Alvah Bessie (before his notoriety as a member of the blacklisted Hollywood 10) was a staff writer; and a screen test at Paramount to which my high school drama teacher dragged me. My nerves were a dither until the execs let me know that "Your face tests too wide for movies." Clearly a lie. My father's politics? Or was I just a lousy actor?



From 1951 to 1956 there are more false starts: counselor at a YMCA camp; peddling my mediocre watercolors to family friends; junior college classes (I drop out half way into the semester, though I do take part in a nifty dramatization of "The Shooting of Dan McGrew" in the annual talent show.) Plus a romantic six months as a merchant seaman, with rickshaws bumping along dusty Hong Kong alleys, a near kidnap in Manila, and watching Mt. Fuji's crest rise through a morning mist as our ship glides into Tokyo bay.

By the fall of 1952, grappling hook in hand, I spend weeks as a longshoreman, unloading bananas and bales of cotton. And almost never get to write this article: "Watch out!" yells a voice. I spin around. A four-ton crate, dropping precipitously into the cargo hold, is swinging toward me. In a flash I spot a man-sized depression in the bulkhead and duck inside - just as the crate smashes into it with a teeth-chattering clang. "Quick thinkin'," shouts another voice, followed by a throaty laugh. "You was almost bug-butter, boy."

With women, I am bug-butter. Dumped after a brief fling with an older woman during the following summer, I'm open to the first nice person to come along. In months, we're married. And living in San Francisco.

I find no work. But one morning, a Chronicle item reports that the City of Paris department store (as close as I'll get to the City of Light for thirty years) is sponsoring a contest for "posters done in the style of Toulouse-Lautrec." So, with Vesuvio's trendy bar as the setting (next door to the even more famous "hungry i," where my father is now announcing acts like Barbra Streisand and Woody Allen), I place a guitarist in my poster's foreground and Lautrec in the background, sketching.

Weeks later, I'd forgotten about the contest, and. . . Well, a Chronicle piece says it all:

Last Friday the Bessies were down to their last five-dollar bill. Mrs. Bessie decided to apply for a job at the City of Paris. While she was at the sixth-floor employment offices, Dan strolled into the exhibit rooms on the fifth floor where the posters were hanging. When he found his own, it was marked "$100 second prize; $100 first amateur prize.

Entering as an amateur made me eligible for professional awards too. We've been in San Francisco two months, but with no job prospects we scurry back to the more available jobs of Los Angeles.

And over the next two years, work does come alone. But creative, fulfilling assignments they are not. Mixing jugs of mustard and mayonnaise into immense vats for Milani's 1890 French Dressing; deburring plastic frames for TV picture tubes on the Packard-Bell assembly line; and operating a machine that coats athletic trophies. Still, nothing I've tried since high school holds much promise. And by July of 1955 I need to support a growing family. For now we are three, with an infant daughter and with a second babe in the cooker.

What to do for a rewarding job? I'd love to make a living as a cartoonist. But how? Should I hire on with Disney? Ha! I've had zero training in animation and Disney is an hour away, in Burbank. MGM, however, is just twenty minutes, and they also do cartoons. Why not give it a try?

Had I not been flying by the seat of my pants those past seven years, maybe the call would have long since been made. Water over the dam. I phone MGM and ask for the animation department. Almost immediately a friendly voice says, "Schipek." What's a "schipek," I'm thinking. Woops, that's the guy's name. I tell him that I'm looking for a job. "Got a portfolio?" "Portfolio? Oh, sure, sure." "Bring it in Tuesday morning and let me take a look." I have no portfolio. So for the next three nights I'm high on coffee until 2 a.m., sweating out a dozen designs and cartoon sketches. Come Tuesday, out on deliveries with the paint truck, I stop in at MGM's cartoon studio. Bill Schipek, he of the friendly phone voice, scans my work. Is that an approving nod he betrays?

"We may be taking on a few apprentices next year," he allows. "I'll let you know."

"I'll let you know." How many times have I heard that? My heart, racing til now, grinds to a halt. Well, almost. "Next year" might as well be when I'm sixty-five. Am I condemned to driving a paint truck until then? The possibility Schipek holds out is so vague that, thrilled as I am to stroll the sacred corridors where Tom and Jerry hang out, right now I just want to go home and drown my sorrows in a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Three months later. I've forgotten about MGM. But my kite is flying a bit higher, because I've joined the Teamster's Union and a gnarly business agent has browbeaten my boss into raising my salary from $55 to $85 a week. On a Friday, I return home after a sweaty afternoon hefting boxes and fifty-gallon drums in the Fuller Paint stockroom. I sink into a welcoming bath. My wife comes in, sits on the edge of the tub and says, "MGM phoned. They want you to call back." It's 6 p.m. The cartoon department will be closed. I fret for two days. Monday morning, I phone from the callbox outside Fuller Paint and ask for Bill Schipek. Then he's on the line. "How'd you like to start here as an animation apprentice?" he asks. "Wonderful," I reply, "when?" "Week from today."

"Fine, great. Uh. What's the starting wage?" "Union minimum. $36.45 a week."

Yep, I took the job.