Tell us, Tom Selleck Who are you, really?
In his new memoir, the actor keeps readers guessing, reports Sibbie O’Sullivan.
Unlike Ben Franklin, who arrived in Philadelphia after a long journey by foot and boat, with enough money to buy three puffy rolls, Tom Selleck entered Los Angeles in the family car, dad at the wheel, ready to settle down in Sherman Oaks, a short drive from Hollywood.
Though Franklin is not mentioned in Selleck’s memoir, You Never Know, his work ethic and didacticism are widely evident. Another great American is also present: Huck Finn. By combining Franklin’s homiletic pronouncements with Huck’s folksy immediacy of voice, Selleck, with co-writer Ellis Henican, has created an easy-going, talky American memoir.
And why not? Sturdy as Mt Rushmore, athletic and eminently likeable, Selleck exudes traditional American masculine traits; he’s the embodiment of the strong, silent type. But silence can be a hazard when writing a memoir, which, after all, is a genre of self-reflection, confession and exposure.
Known for his privacy, Selleck has written a what book instead of a why book, a chronology of doing. As he says late in the book, “Feelings are hard to describe”. So readers can decide if they’re satisfied with a resume.
I like Tom Selleck, and while waiting for the book to arrive, I watched a lot of his movies and shows. Though I find the memoir disappointing, it will make a great audiobook, and I wonder if that’s what he had in mind, letting his easy-going voice tell a story that is soothing because he keeps it on the surface.
A quick list of some doings: student atthe University of Southern California, where a drama professor referred him to a Hollywood agent; acting classes to improve his “instrument”; joined California Army National Guard in 1967; appeared on The Dating Game; TV commercials; print ads; B movies, then better ones; survived the Hollywood cattle calls until he was chosen for a new TV show, Magnum, P.I.
By now it’s 1980, and Selleck is 35. He’s paid his dues and lived up to his principle of “Don’t know where I’m goin’, but there’s no use bein’ late.” Hi, Huck.
This Hollywood education exposes a ruthless industry that both tests and forms Selleck’s values. He sums up his success by quoting Calvin Coolidge: “Nothing in the world can take the place of persistence,” a very Franklinesque aphorism.
But, despite Selleck’s persistence, he wrestles with the “critic on my shoulder”. that voice that says you’re not good enough. Soon, though, another phrase – a mantra, really – takes its place: “Tom, you’re good enough.”
The book gives us lots of doing and name-dropping. We may learn about the risqué incident when Carol Burnett had her legs around Selleck’s neck, and his photo shoot with a naked Barbara Parkins, but we learn nothing about his love life – according to my own research, he’s been involved with more than three famous actresses – and little about his first marriage.
He dilutes his thoughts with vague phrasing such as “I kinda knew,” “I don’t know why … well, actually, yes, I do know why,” or “I sit here, pen in hand, trying to explain my emotions … I can’t.”
Such coy deflections and elisions try our patience and may leave some of us wondering why he wrote a memoir if he can’t express feelings. Instead, we get cliches like “In the film business, work is waiting for you every day, and you owe it your commitment every day”.
In his memoir, does Selleck have difficulty separating himself from the characters he depicts? He’s selling himself to his readers, and we’ll buy it because we like him and he’s a good actor, but cliches and evasion erode intimacy.
Ten chapters detail the creation and success of Magnum, P.I., and we learn much about television production and its gruelling deadlines, and that actors chew ice before doing a scene so their breath won’t show up on camera. We also learn how loyal and dedicated Selleck is to his crew, those folks who make our favourite shows possible. During the last season of Magnum, Selleck asked his network to give his hard-working team of seven years a bonus; the studio refused.
So Selleck arranged to have his own bonus docked and gave US$1000 to each crew member. Commendable.
Magnum is firmly part of what scholar Susan Jeffords calls the “remasculinisation of America”, a post-Vietnam cultural shift that, through films and popular culture, reinvigorated hyper-masculine images and traditional male values.
Magnum featured a Vietnam veteran, an ex-Navy SEAL, who moves to Hawaii and becomes a private investigator. He became a character millions of men admire and emulate. But Selleck says little about his longest-lived iteration of American masculinity, Frank Reagan of the TV hit Blue Bloods, now in its 14th and final season.
A lifelong Republican, Selleck, I’m sure, enjoys playing a character who has the same last name as a president he admires.
Reagan is an ageing patriarch who wields his masculinity both as the NYPD police commissioner and as a father who sits at the head of the table during family Sunday dinners.
Selleck does not share what it’s like playing this older man who covers up his body with an overcoat and a cowl-neck sweater. Instead, we’re told the business details of Blue Bloods, not its personal impact on its star.
Selleck is completely silent about the nine Jesse Stone TV movies he made from 2005. Stone, a cop, does open up, revealing both the whats and the whys of his character, especially in the exchanges between him and his male therapist.
Selleck is also at his sexiest, lounging in bed, the famous chin doubling as he reaches for his reading glasses. How does a masculine icon age? Selleck doesn’t say.
Closing on a pastoral note in the epilogue, the 79-year-old actor walks around his ranch and checks the water tanks he needs for his avocado crop while reminiscing about the stories he’s told us and the ones he’s keeping to himself.
In the book’s penultimate sentence he writes, “I am the steward of those stories, the same way I am steward of my land.” Unsurprisingly, Selleck fails to mention his allegedly improper transfer of more than one million gallons of water on to “my land” in 2015.
It’s hard to separate the dancer from the dance, the moustache from the man, but not impossible. Memoir is supposed to puncture the facade of performance, or at least try to. Perhaps Selleck will trust his audience enough to write a more intimate sequel. He’s been speaking to us for a long while now, and I’m sure he has more to say.