Mike Mazurki


How'd a guy like you get speaking parts, Mazurki," rags Mushy, whose only movie parts were body parts. "I gotta tell ya, they were casting for Moose Malloy and I figure I should be Moose, but I don't hear a peep from anybody, so I call Eddie Dmytryk and Eddie says, 'Aw, Mike, c'mon. You're a wrestler. You're a phony.' So every day after that I read in Variety that they're testing truck drivers, musclemen-- anybody that's big they're testing cause they gotta get a big, big guy to play Moose Malloy. Well, a friend tips me off that Eddie is having lunch with the president of RKO at the commissary. The word out is that the president is mad as hell at Eddie for not finding a Moose. My buddy says, 'Eddie's still mad at you for buffaloing him on your last picture, but I've got an angle on this thing. Here's what you have to do...'

"And so I wear my loudest jacket and a fedora out to here, and I throw open the commissary doors and walk in like I own the joint. Everybody looks up at me and stops eating, and the president of RKO.... I have to think about that. He was a good friend of Bing Crosby's. Anyways, I walk by his table, and Eddie can't believe it. The president says to him, 'Who's that, Eddie?' And Eddie says, 'Aw, that's nobody. He's a wrestler.' 'Did you test him?' 'Naw. Wrestlers can't read.' 'Well test him anyways,' the president says, and then he comes over to me and says, 'What's your name?' And I says to him, 'I'm Moose Malloy.' He goes back to Eddie and says, 'Test him today.'

"Now you see, I know how Eddie feels about me, but I called his bluff. At my test we get along fine. He has to, because the president of the company is there, and the producer is there. Everybody is there. When I test with Dick Powell, Dick says, 'Mike, you're the best Moose Malloy I've seen so far. I'm gonna help you on this.' So, like I said, we get the script Thursday, shoot the screen test Friday, I sleep Saturday and Sunday, and we start production on Monday. That's how clean it was."