May 7, 2000
I’m here today to say some positive things to you, graduates, by talking about myself. I’d talk about you, but don’t know you. Besides, that would be disobeying instructions. I know myself only a little, but every year I get to know myself a little 
better. Some days I wish I could just leave me and go be someone else. I’m stuck with me. But since I have always felt this way, became the only thing I could be, an actor.
I’ve had more failures than successes. But I refuse to quit. And fortunately, fans-including people in my business who do the hiring-remember only the good work. I remember all of it.
Some other day, if you wish, I could come back and tell you hair-raising stories of rejection and disillusionment, of disappointment and grief. But not at commencement.
Today is a day of launching, another beginning, or I should say a continuance. Today is your day, not mine, and you ought to be looking up. I am.
Thank you, trustees and faculty, of Carthage College, for having the generosity and good sense to invite me here. I would not want to seriously impugn your judgment but have wondered on other such occasions like this, and there have been a few if you might not have been able to secure someone a bit more significant. As an actor, I have not yet gotten over
wondering that often, when someone actually casts me in a significant role on the screen or on the stage.On the other hand, lest you think me charmingly self-effacing, I have had for many years of
this long career the feeling that you and they, all those producers and directors who did hire me, and especially those who did not, were, and would have been, lucky to get me. Can you tell yet? I am an egomaniac with an inferiority complex. I am an entertainer, so have come to entertain you, if only briefly.
John Daniel Davies taught me this: Tell them what you are going to tell them; tell them; then tell them you told them.
He was Mr. Davies to us all at Mary D. Bradford High School. Only we called it KHS. I spent many out-of-class hours in Mr. Davies’s office. Not as punishment and not idly. worked when I was there. First on my Dramatic Declamation, as it was then called. He felt me chances were better than good in the upcoming Forensic League regional and even the national competition. I couldn’t imagine the latter, and I tried not to think about the preliminaries. wanted to be be in that event. I did not want to be in Original Oratory.
But Mr. Davies’s will prevailed. I would practice my declamation, and I struggled for weeks to compose a decent oration. I followed Mr. Davies’s dictum, and that helped. I wrote an oration. It had a certain balance and some dramatic flourishes, but basically it was empty and phony. When I read it for my it mentor, or I should say, half-delivered it in his office, he smiled
knowingly and said, jingling his key chain, as was his habit, “Well, you’ll win . . . on delivery.”
The timing of his delivery was impeccable, with a deft pause after “win,” and a tilt of his handsome head as he spun away to continue his rounds. He was right. did all right with that vapid little piece, but I never thought it was more than pretty well written. Substance, I was relieved to find out later, came, well later.
One Saturday, this Jupiter-at least he was to me-suggested coaching me at his Elks
Club. Going downtown for a special session with Mr. Davies literally gave me, at the age of seventeen, palpitations. Afterwards, he said casually, “You know, think you might have a career ahead of you as an actor, if that’s what you want,” or, are thinking of, or some such phrase. I have words to describe my feelings at that moment, but they wouldn’t be evocative enough. In the fall, I was practicing more with my body than my mind, though mental discipline was crucial to those workouts as well. Charles “Chuck” Jaskowich was the coach of the varsity football team. In his heart he was a teacher first. He liked athletes who were good students. l
was a determined, you might say rabidly good student. Many years later I understood that much of my energy came from a need for approval.
In my house, Ma and Pa were emotional. Sometimes I felt so much emotion that I thought I couldn’t go on a living, it was at such a high pitch. Not that Ma and Pa didn’t love and care for me. No family, not even traditionally devoted Italian immigrant parents and four equally attentive big brothers and sisters, or any other family on the planet had enough approval or extra time to give me my fix.
But teachers did.
They were always there. To teach me. To encourage me. They were at Bain Elementary and McKinley Junior High, and at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, The Yale School of Drama, and Loyola Marymount in Los Angeles.
And in many film and theater companies. They were at my service. And they were an audience. An attentive audience.
Coach Jaskwich’s was so good an audience that he knew what to say to each player, how to glance or glare at each one, and what tone to apply to elicit the response he wished from each.
All for one purpose: to win. Not to punish, not to humiliate, not to embarrass, and not for personal gain. One afternoon during practice behind the now erased Lake Front Stadium downtown here, he embarrassed, humiliated and punished me with remarkable precision. And gained my attention.
He was over on the sidelines with the team and the coaching staff. was on the other side of the field, not noticing that I was alone. I had run out to cover a pass, practicing defense. I hated defense. I got no glory there. could have been hurt. I was a fool. Somehow running straight up the middle on offense, through huge opponents all concentrating on not only stopping but destroying me, never scared me. I was too afraid of fumbling. And I was the
center of attention of not only the enemy, but of my own superb team.
As I trotted back to where they were all standing, I suddenly saw that everyone was looking at me. I had loped out half-heartedly, failed to prevent the catch, grumbled to myself and started to jog back to the others. When I was in the middle of the field, the sun a burning
spotlight I had not sought this day, and all alone, Zeus spoke: “Travanti, you a shatter a principle I’ve held for my entire coaching career, that if a guy can play offense, can teach him to play defense. Why don’t you go make a DECLAMATION!” learned to play defense. Okay, I can’t lie to you. Mostly I relied on my defensive end, Tom Brickley. Between my convincing
portrayal of a linebacker-I’m an actor, right? and Tom’s genuine skill, we were a brick wall, most of the time. I received some of the credit on our end of the field, but trust me, Tom did it.
Miss Hall had warned me about shirking, and I was still learning. She was my first grade teacher at Bain Elementary. One day she executed the dreaded kneehole isolation punishment. When you did less than your best in Miss Hall’s class, the worst thing that could happen to you was to be put down there on your haunches for a short period, which seemed very long, while everyone tried not to watch while you tried not to cry, or touch Miss Hall’s skirt,
and prayed for the humiliation to pass quickly. But before she went through with the sentence, stern but compassionate, tough but sweet little Miss Hall, with tears in the corners of her eyes,
leaned close and whispered straight into mine something like, “Daniel, I want you to
understand that I have to do this, even though it hurts me, because you were naughty, and you know the rules; and someday I believe you are going to be known by many people, and I want
you to be a good man.” And Jaskwich’s thought he was tough!
I can’t be sure how much influence those two had on my character, but I’m still telling the tales at the age of sixty.
A dozen or so years later, at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, I was onstage
rehearsing my first big serious part, with a “real” director, Professor Ronald Elway Mitchell, after whom a fairly new theater there is now named. was scared and nervous. But I didn’t show it. I kept shoving my hands into my pockets, knowing they gave me away, but not that
even that gesture betrayed me. One day, this kindest and most elegant of men, not unlike Mr. Davies, strolled down to the apron of the stage with a student assistant and said, “Daniel, every time you put your hands in your pockets from now on, I am having Tom here (or whoever he
was) shout at you. And if that doesn’t work, I am going to have both pockets sewn up!”
do not wish to tell you that respond only or best to criticism, constructive or otherwise.
respond to praise. I repeat, praise pleases me, stirs me, inspires and warms me. But please don’t let me walk blindly into the invisible pit waiting for me around the corner, or into the path of the speeding truck.
Only four years ago, known for some pretty good work and respected for my
professionalism, I stood in a rehearsal hall at the highly regarded American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts, before a splendid company of actors and told the director that he might as well send me home, because I could not play that enormous and demanding role
-it was Cornelius Melody in “A Touch of The Poet” which even the playwright, Eugene O’Neill, had said could not be played by any living actor, not Spencer Tracy or even Laurence Olivier. I did not know he had said that, until the reviews came out. But I could have told the
critics and the world better than anyone how true that observation was.
Well, they were stunned. I was fifty-four years old, but really just Ma’s and Pa’s over
emotional kid, Miss Hall’s little boy, coach Jaskwich’s perplexing player, and Professor
Mitchell’s promising but green actor.
The distinguished director Joe Dowling, who currently runs the prestigious Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, spluttered a bit, telling me that was nonsense, and tried to laugh it off. But I was still in trouble. Soon after, with about a week to go before the first performance, Mr. Dowling muttered in my direction while was grumbling about my failure to find the key to this
character, “Well, you’re nowhere near the anger yet, Dan.” Wanna see the reviews?
So, what have told you? Let me put it another way: What do know of life and work that I might wish for you?
If you’re naughty, be prepared to get on your hands and knees and repent. You may want to do better next time because, who knows, the world may be watching. If someone tells you that a good delivery alone could get you a win when you’re sixteen, that’s okay. But at twenty
Six or sixty, a little substance will likely be required.If you’re okay on offense but rotten on defense, get yourself a Tom Brickley to back you up.
Of course, you ought to do your best to get on a superlative team in the first place. Then always be good, and compliment your fellow players, they’ll do better, and make you look good.
If you can’t find anything useful or effective to do with your hands, keep them still at your sides or in your lap, or on the table or lectern. Please don’t stuff them into your pockets, because that’ll give you away. Stay loose and be prepared.
Be prepared to yell for help when you’ve done everything you could think to do. I’ve even learned to be prepared to step aside if I think someone else could do it better.
“What else have you told them, Daniel?” Mr. Davies might ask. To be honest, I wasn’t at all sure, before I started writing or even as it went along. I tend to reveal myself to me by talking and writing . . . and acting. I was always this way. And that’s what I have confirmed through
this process. I am here to tell you that whoever I was in those earliest years in Kenosha, I still am.
That may be distressing to some of you. I can’t help that, but I hope not. have always
been determined, though took many peculiar turns that would give the opposite impression to someone familiar with me. I often relied on others to either suggest what I might be good at, or for their encouragement, criticism, or advice. To amend Tennessee Williams’s character,
Blanche Dubois, only slightly: I have (almost) always depended on the kindness of strangers.
And the limitless support of my family and friends.
In recent years, have finally figured out some of the roles I ought to be playing, those that would make properly rigorous demands on my considerable abilities. But I remain at the mercy of others for most opportunities.
When I get them, you can depend on me. will deliver! That much I can take some
substantial credit for. But not entirely. I am the product of my genes, my family and friends, my neighborhood, my education, my colleagues, my teachers, and plain happenstance, some painful, some happy.
have no words of wisdom. But I can testify and demonstrate that it is possible to pursue a far-fetched dream; to try to self-destruct, but fail and thrive-a story for another day; to be healthy and vigorous after thirty-seven years of work in a difficult, disreputable business, but
an honorable profession; to maintain a throbbing sense of humor; and to be eager to get back to work, when the material is good. wish all of your work that’s lucrative and satisfying. hope you will own your successes as well as your disappointments, and never stop trying. To sum up: I’ve told you as much as could about myself in only a few minutes. I’ve expressed some of my fondest wishes for you.
But I’ll conclude with caution, one I take to heart.
If you’re at all successful, and they applaud you, praise you and give you prizes, and even confer upon you honorary doctorate degrees, duck! Remember George Bernard Shaw’s play,
“Saint Joan”? Its message is simple. If the army says it can’t win without you, and the king cannot regain his throne without you, and the church needs your help, RUN! Before all three decide you have to be burned at the stake. Never mind that afterward they may have to
declare you a saint when all the fan mail comes pouring in.
I’ve had a good time here. Thank you.
Congratulations, graduates. I hope you will make the most of all your opportunities. This graduation is an impressive accomplishment. So, keep laughing and having a good time. I will.
Soon I’ll catch a plane back to southern California. But before my flight, I’ll hug and kiss my family and friends here in Kenosha, stop at my home in Lake Forest, where they have to take me in and love me because that’s what home is; and pet and play with all my animals. Then I’m going back to work, because the church, the state, and the army may be breathing down my neck.
Good luck and Godspeed.