***SPOILERS*** Struggling wannabe actor Neil McCaw, Robert Walker Jr, has acting in his blood by not in his resume which makes the unemployed young man have a hard time finding an acting job when he applies for unemployment workers compensation. Refusing any job offered to him but acting makes Neil overly desperate to sharpen his craft skills and make it big on the big and small screen as well as the stage. After almost getting an innocent bystander killed, when he stepped into traffic, when Neil acted out a murder scene with him as the murderer together with his fellow aspiring actor friend Ken Elson played by Peter Helm, who's a dead ringer for actor Matt Damon, at an outdoor café in Greenwich village he feels, after the cops let him go in having nothing to charge him with, he's now ready to make the big time. Neil then attends the prestigious East 11th Street Actors Studio in order to make a name for himself and have it put in lights on Broadway.
Being the overconfident as well as pompous a** that he his Neil makes more enemies at the actors studio in his arrogant and condescending attitude towards everyone there including it's director Lester Bergson, Richard Basehart, then Joseph Stalin. It's when Neil runs out of cash to pay for his acting lessons that he starts to lose it in feeling he's losing his last and only chance to become a legitimate not phony, which he is, actor. Finally digging up enough money,which Lester Bergson gave him, for his final and most important lesson in doing a scene that he's lived and practiced for all his life Neil is determined to give it, the big scene, all he's got! And that big scene almost ends up killing his teacher as well as mentor Lester Bergson who in participating in it almost dropped dead from a near fatal heart-attack!
A very intense as well as psychotic performance by a young, he was 21 at the time, Robert Walker Jr lifts this Naked City episode a notch or two above what you would have expected it to be. In fact there's no crimes in it at all in it being a police crime drama but in it having a young Martin Scheen as the diner counterman allow struggling actors who eat there to get free meals! That's by Sheen only changing them .15 for a cup of coffee and having the diner owner cover whatever the cost which can be as high as $2.50 in 1962, or $15.00 in 2013, money could be!
Being the overconfident as well as pompous a** that he his Neil makes more enemies at the actors studio in his arrogant and condescending attitude towards everyone there including it's director Lester Bergson, Richard Basehart, then Joseph Stalin. It's when Neil runs out of cash to pay for his acting lessons that he starts to lose it in feeling he's losing his last and only chance to become a legitimate not phony, which he is, actor. Finally digging up enough money,which Lester Bergson gave him, for his final and most important lesson in doing a scene that he's lived and practiced for all his life Neil is determined to give it, the big scene, all he's got! And that big scene almost ends up killing his teacher as well as mentor Lester Bergson who in participating in it almost dropped dead from a near fatal heart-attack!
A very intense as well as psychotic performance by a young, he was 21 at the time, Robert Walker Jr lifts this Naked City episode a notch or two above what you would have expected it to be. In fact there's no crimes in it at all in it being a police crime drama but in it having a young Martin Scheen as the diner counterman allow struggling actors who eat there to get free meals! That's by Sheen only changing them .15 for a cup of coffee and having the diner owner cover whatever the cost which can be as high as $2.50 in 1962, or $15.00 in 2013, money could be!
