Russ Tamblyn, from DeMille to David Lynch
Here's The Thing with Alec Baldwin
iHeartPodcasts
4.3 • 8.4K Ratings
🗓️ 25 January 2022
⏱️ 38 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As we prepare to launch our second season at iHeartRadio, we’re revisiting some of Alec’s favorite episodes from the archives. In this episode, Alec speaks with actor Russ Tamblyn. Russ was born in Los Angeles in the middle of the Depression to a chorus girl and a Broadway "song and dance man." His father had moved his growing family west to press his luck in the talkies. Russ was a showbiz kid and found his talent young: Cecil B DeMille cast him as the young King Saul in Samson and Delilah when he was just 13 years old. Stardom came at 19 in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, where he stole scenes with his goofy enthusiasm and astonishingly acrobatic dancing. But the role that will go down in history is Riff in West Side Story. Tamblyn took a part that could have been just a young tough, and imbued it with such nuance, such balance between aggression and vulnerability, that every Riff since has been held up to him. In this funny, revealing conversation, Tamblyn tells Alec what it was like being part of the old Hollywood contract system (he was an MGM property) -- plus which major Golden Age director was "overrated," and why he didn't stay a movie star. And of course, Tamblyn recounts his return to featured roles at the request of David Lynch, who cast him as Dr. Lawrence Jacoby in Twin Peaks.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an IHeart podcast. |
| 0:04.5 | Adventure should never come with a pause button. |
| 0:07.1 | Remember Movie Pass? |
| 0:08.4 | All the movies you wanted for just nine bucks? |
| 0:11.1 | I'm Bridget Todd, host of There Are No Girls on the Internet. |
| 0:13.9 | And this season, I'm digging into the tech stories we weren't told. |
| 0:17.4 | Starting with Stacey Spikes, the black founder of movie pass who got pushed out of the company |
| 0:21.6 | he built. Everybody's trying to knock you down and it's not going to work and no one's going to |
| 0:26.7 | like it. And then boom, it's everywhere. And that was that moment. Listen to there are no |
| 0:31.3 | girls on the internet on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. |
| 0:35.5 | Hello, it's Alec Baldwin. We're going to rebroadcast an episode from our archives. |
| 0:41.4 | This week, you'll hear my conversation with Russ Tamblin, one of the stars of the original |
| 0:46.5 | West Side Story. |
| 0:48.1 | We'll have new episodes of Here's the Thing beginning March 15th. |
| 0:51.8 | Until then, enjoy my talk with Russ Tamblin. |
| 0:57.2 | This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the Thing. |
| 1:02.2 | My guest today is Russ Tamblin. In a long and varied career, he's been a child actor, |
| 1:09.7 | an acrobat, an MGM studio star who ditched the whole |
| 1:13.6 | scene to become a painter. After that, he was a successful choreographer and then one of the |
| 1:20.3 | stars of Twin Peaks. But you probably know him as RIF, hard-bitten, vulnerable, and leader of the Jets. |
| 1:29.3 | When you're a jet, you're a jet, all the way from your first cigarette to your last |
| 1:35.3 | iron day and day. |
... |
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