A Tall Shirttail

“I’ve got an old blue shirt, and it suits me just fine. I like the way it feels, so I wear it all the time.” - Guy Clark

Friends who’ve heard me tell this story more than once will observe that with every telling, it becomes more embellished. As a man who took Twain at his word when he said, "Never let the truth stand in the way of a good story,” I am taking the opportunity here -- once and for all -- to share the tallest version of the tale of this shirt, my favorite shirt.

Most recently, I shared this story with a few of my cohorts late on our first night in Marfa, hunkered over a heavy tree stump sitting in the backyard of the Lost Horse Saloon, lifting long-nursed glasses of bourbon warmed by the summer air to our lips as we traded tales of sublime conquests and epic failures. This is the story of how I came to own this shirt.

I was 24. It was fall in New York, and I was a fresh-faced acting student in my second year at the prestigious Neighborhood Playhouse. Tasked with workshopping the scene from William Inge’s Bus Stop where Bo Decker, the brash, young cowboy from Montana, first encounters Cherie, the sexy chanteuse in search of her big break, I was hunting in the school’s costume shop for the perfect shirt.

The shop was dark, and I couldn’t find the lightswitch. I grabbed a small Mag-Lite, and set to hunting. Past a wreck of marching band costumes, Greek togas, and a Trojan armory, I spotted a giant cardboard box marked “WESTERNS.” Beneath an inexplicable rainbow of Victorian-era tights was a pile of Western pearl snaps: plaids and calicos, shirts with embroidered embellishments, and a complete set of H-Bar-C shirts fully decked with fringe, rhinestones, sequins, and a fetching gold thread. There it was: a lone, beat-up denim Wrangler.

Holding the thing in my hands, while I chomped down on the Mag-Lite, it emanated this splendid halo. “Beauregard,” I thought. The character’s name, and an apt description. Beauregard, as he explains to Cherie, is French for “good-lookin’.”

I hopped to my feet and slipped it on. Soft. Worn-in. It moved with me. The fit was immaculate. I turned around to leave, and standing in my way was Ranger, the costume shop manager.

“You gotta sign for that.”

“Excuse me?” I said. In the year-and-a-half of my study at the playhouse, I’d never signed anything out of the shop.

“The shirt. It’s special. Been here for years.”

He walked me over to his desk in the workshop and pulled out this creaky metal binder, flipped to a yellowed page, and put his crusty finger on the line: “‘Denim Shirt.’ Sign there.”

I swiftly signed and dated on the line. Before I could get a good look at those who’d signed it out before me, Ranger snapped the binder from my hands and clapped it shut.

“What was this relic?” I wondered to myself.

Then as my portrayal of Bo came together, I found myself wearing the shirt outside of the scene study. I wore it to the script library, and the librarian’s assistant, Gabriel, gave me a stern look, pulled me aside by my arm, and in a hushed tone, he said, “What are you doing?”

“What do you mean?”

“The shirt, man. “Gregory Peck wore it to the hospital after breaking his back in Martha Graham’s dance class.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah, man. It was an injury that exempted him from World War II, making him one of the most in-demand actor during the War Years.”

“Whoa.”

“Yeah, man. Be careful.”

The next night, I forgot to take it off after class, and I took my ingenue of a scene partner to Fubar, the dive around the corner from the school. Ordered up a couple cans of cheap beer, and as I took off my jacket, the bartender chirped at me, “Hey, man. Just what do you think you’re doing?”

“Lemme guess. The shirt, right?”

“Yes!” He adjusted his tone, “Hell yes. I graduated a few years ago. Wore that thing in a motorcycle race out on Long Island. The ghost of Steve McQueen saved me from a fatal wreck.”

“Bullshit,” I said.

“Trust me.” His eyes were like darts to the back of my head.

The most ridiculous tale was that of Burt Reynolds and the baby. “Did you know Joanne Woodward put Burt Reynolds in Tea and Sympathy at the playhouse?” Apparently, some stagehand couldn’t find a sitter, so she brought her baby to rehearsals. And as one of the curtain guys went to put out his cigarette, he flicked the butt to the stage floor. It skidded, hitting the grand velvet curtain and pretty quickly, the entire theater was engulfed in flames. Everyone was safe, though, except the baby. When the stagehand screamed, “My baby!” Reynolds swooped back into the smoke-filled theater and took off his shirt, swaddling the child in soft denim. With his critically acclaimed performance often being touted as his big break, the story of the theater fire was lost in the shuffle. Apart from a few singe marks on the bricks backstage, the only remaining clue to this story are the theater seats Woodward and her husband Paul Newman donated to the school.

And it just kept happening. I was regaled with story after story of playhouse alums, mostly famous ones, escaping some entanglement that lead to their eventual discovery, fame and fortune, but it was this story that really touched me personally. You see, as a little kid, I loved the movie Days of Thunder. I called it, “Top Gun 2.” But it wasn’t one-time Neighborhood Playhouse student Tom Cruise’s performance that won me over. Even as a nine-year-old, I knew a truly gifted actor when I saw one. It was his fellow alum, Mr. Robert Duvall, in the role of crew chief Harry Hogge, who -- there’s no other way of saying it -- just got to me. I loved everything about his performance. Tough. Packed with heart. Understated, and still a bit over-the-top in the right moments. He looked like he was having the best time. I wanted to be him.

As I got older, I became an enormous Robert Duvall fan. I studied his turns as the cool consigliere, Tom Hagen in the Godfather films and contrasted them with his performance as the evil “Lucky” Ned Pepper in True Grit. And one Halloween, when I was still young enough to dress up, my friends all went as their favorite characters from Top Gun. I went as “The Great Santini.” To this day, I say his performances are the reason I wanted to study acting.

Leaving a speech class, I turned a corner and bumped into the school’s president.

“Nice shirt, Max.”

“Thanks, Mr. B.”

“You know the story of that shirt, right?”

From mentioning it in my audition for the program, Mr. B. knew I idolized Robert Duvall.

“Bobby wore that the night he met Horton Foote.”

He didn’t need to say another word, although I’m sure he did. Immediately, the motor of my mind was flooded with images of Duvall and the famous Texas playwright, Foote, who provided Duvall with so many breaks in his long, storied career -- chief among them, his turn as Boo Radley in the Foote-penned screenplay for To Kill A Mockingbird, and for his Academy-Award-winning performance as a down on his luck country singer in Foote’s Tender Mercies.

Suddenly, the shirt felt heavy. Befallen with guilt, I walked from speech class to my final scene study for Bus Stop. And I remember this part vividly. The young woman playing the part of Cherie, the role that broke Marilyn Monroe of the stereotypical “dumb blonde” for which she became known, was sick with the flu. But our school was notorious for working its students to the bone, punishing us for missing a minute of acting class. Her illness worked, culling any nerves and forcing her to focus through the scene, appearing as alluring as she possibly could while holding back from wheezing all over me.

I said my lines, I did the best I could with my blocking, and the only note I got from my teacher was, “Good. Very good, Max.” It was one of the only times I heard that from him.

Faced with returning the Wrangler, I felt like the same magic that had leapt out of it for so many of my heroes had eluded me. I stayed late that night, workshopping a scene from Much Ado About Nothing with another classmate of mine. I slowly found my way to the costume shop. I held the neatly folded shirt in front of me, presenting it like a ring bearer. Marching down the dark hallway to the shop door, I noticed the light was on.

“Great,” I thought. “Ranger is gonna give me guff for holding onto this thing for so long.”

Expecting to see him, I turned the corner into the costume closet.

“Hello?... Ranger?”

Nothing. Empty. I went to the shop desk. Same thing. Desklamp was on, no Ranger. I looked to my left, to my right. I pulled the rusty metal binder from his shelf. I flipped through the pages, “Denim Shirt.” I ran my finger along the pages, quick as I could. I signed and dated the line with my name, shoved the shirt under my sweater and sprinted for my apartment a full twenty blocks away. It wasn’t until I got home that I realized I didn’t stop to see who else had signed the book. I shoved the shirt in the bottom drawer of my dresser and didn’t pull it out again for almost a year.

Today, I wear it on really good days, on days when I need a bit of luck. That’s probably why I reached for it that first day in Marfa. This maiden voyage needed a talisman, and I was determined to do my part to contribute. As I sat there with this group, this collective, I realized maybe this was the lucky moment I’d been hoping to divine from this shirt. Maybe it was time I return the shirt to Ranger and the costume shop.

Then again, maybe not.

Originally published in The Collective Quarterly, Issue Ø (Marfa, Texas), 2014.