TinselTales: Forrest and His Big Log

When it comes to naming off some of the "big guns" of old Hollywood, the list most often included Milton Berle, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Gary Cooper, Charlie Chaplin, Groucho Marx and the star of TV's F Troop, Forrest Tucker. Stories abound about the aforementioned gents and others, but the ones about Tucker tend to be the most, er, jaw-dropping and amusing.

Now, Forrest Tucker was a big guy to start with at 6'4" and he got his start in films rather auspiciously as a man who spars with Gary Cooper in The Westerner (1940.) He had a tendency, especially as his career wore on, to play spoilers, brawlers or other antagonists, though not exclusively. He worked very steadily, if unspectacularly, until WWII in 1942 caused him to interrupt his screen career to serve in the U.S. Army.

Screen debut with "Coop."

Afterwards, he returned and was able to play colorful supporting parts in a large number of movies from Errol Flynn's Never Say Goodbye (1946) to The Yearling (1946) to Sands of Iwo Jima (1948) which got a little notice here in The Underworld. In 1953's Laughing Anne, he played a bare-knuckle boxer in skin tight pants, but was so trussed up it was hard to discern much of anything.

Later in the movie there seemed to be something pendulum-ing around on his right sight (our left.) This is more discernible when watching the actual film.

Film roles diminished by the 1950s and he turned to TV, though he still won the occasional part such as in the wildly successful Auntie Mame (1958), in which his white fox hunt pants caused a stir that continues to this day!

Lesser known to many folks is that he toured for more than four years playing Professor Harold Hill in The Music Man, an experience he found to be overwhelmingly fun. By 1965, Tucker was starring on F Troop (which, surprisingly enough, only ran two seasons) and then proceeded to a busy career blending both TV and movies. He died in 1986 at age sixty-seven of lung cancer and emphysema, but had continued acting regularly all along. (He did have an alcohol addiction that sometimes affected his work.)

Tucker knew he was different "down there" and was not only frank about it, but even gave his penis a nickname, "The Chief." He also swam nude at George Cukor's Sunday afternoon pool parties, not for sex, but just to revel in showing off. As a voracious heterosexual male, he had a thing for young ladies and was married (to one of four wives) for virtually all his life. The first three were around twenty-one when he married them, but some were teens when they met.

He and his buddies at Lakeside Golf Club (a private club close to the Hollywood studios in Burbank and teeming all the time then with movie stars) had many raucous moments from contests as to who was the biggest (he handily won over Johnny Weissmuller, who was reportedly huge) to the time when columnist James Bacon brought a guest to the locker room and found Tucker asleep on a massage table wearing only a towel. The tourist, who'd been eager to see the sights, took a look when Bacon raised the towel and exclaimed, "Fuck the Grand Canyon!"

Then there was the day when Tucker's close pal, comedian Phil Harris (husband of Alice Faye), and he were nearing the end of a very close golf game. Tucker's ball was about a foot from the 17th hole and he was going to take it as a "gimme" putt, but Harris wouldn't hear of it. Tucker said, "Hell... The Chief could knock that in!" So Harris pulled out $100 and bet Tucker that it couldn't, but Tucker dropped trou, got down on the green and knocked the ball in with his penis!

Reportedly during his lengthy tour with The Music Man, he picked a day to call all of the chorus boys into his dressing room and announced that he didn't want there to be any sidelong glances or surreptitious peering to see "if it's true" or what it looks like, so he took it out and got it going for all of them to see in person!

Tucker did have one oddity apart from his aggressively straight lifestyle and that was the presence of a very gay masseur who was in his employ and practically adhered to him from 1960 to 1984, doing any and all odd jobs for him and acting as a sort of personal valet (apart from the one or two daily massages.) This symbiotic working relationship confounded some of his other friends, but it lasted for nearly a quarter of a century nonetheless.

At this youtube link is an interview with Tucker's third wife, who he met during The Music Man in 1958 and wed in 1961. The timid host beats around the bush to a hysterical (and lunatic) degree when approaching her with the subject at hand and then she hilariously drops words like "cock" and "fuck" in her responses! Ha ha ha!!!

And then there's this faux documentary promo (four minutes) which contains all sorts of stories, clips and reminiscences from people, some unexpected, about Forrest Tucker's endowment. It's worth a watch.

I know this post is frivolous and rather pointless, but I'm in the midst of a staggeringly busy period of rehearsals and heavy workload (and I had some photos on hand that hadn't been available for this old post on phallic symbols!) This is the pic I think best shows a hint of what we're dealing with here from his prime. Sometimes evidence came across even though all the costumers and dressers (including everyone from makeup artist Perc Westmore to even Edith Head) did their best to conceal these things on screen. An even more substantial photo from his later years is below!