Word: nicholson
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...drifted in and out after that, dwelling somewhere just on the edge of Nicholson's consciousness, like a phantom who could tell a secret, if you could only catch...
Jack's mother, Ethel May, raised in New Jersey, opened up a beauty shop in the bedroom of their Neptune home to support Jack and his two much-older sisters. The business thrived, and the family moved to a bigger place. His sister June left home when Nicholson was four to be an Earl Carroll showgirl in Miami. Jack, bright and funny in school, skipped a grade. He made his unofficial show-biz debut at ten on the stage of Roosevelt Grammar School singing Managua Nicaragua...
...really a very comfortable middle-class existence," Nicholson says, adding that though he was stubborn and scrappy, his mother gave him room to romp. "You're on your own," she told him. "All I expect is that if you get into trouble, you'll tell me about it." Nicholson early inaugurated his lifetime habit of giving people nicknames. His sister Lorraine was "Rain," her husband George "Shorty." Nicholson referred to his father, however, as "Jack." He called his mother "Mud." He was reticent about his home life. Recalls George Anderson, a high school pal, now a salesman...
...recalls Anderson. "He made plenty of friends who spanned several classes. Jack wasn't one of the heroes, but he made them his friends." He managed the varsity basketball team his freshman year. On one occasion he thought that the opposing team was playing dirty. After the game, Nicholson went back into the gym and trashed the electrical equipment on the rival's Scoreboard. He confessed his crime, got suspended from school, and took a part-time job to pay for the damage. That was Nicholson's first moment of notoriety...
...kept his ambition in fighting trim by calling all the executives by their first names. "Hiya, Joe," he grinned at Producer Joe Pasternak, who stopped for a moment, then threw out the classic line: "Hey, kid -how'd ya like to be in pictures?" Pasternak gave Nicholson a script, and told him where to show up for the screen test. Nicholson looked the script over but did not realize that he was supposed to memorize his lines. The test was a disaster, and Nicholson was back on the mail run. "Hiya, Joe," he greeted Pasternak in the hall...