By Bud Kennedy
bud@star-telegram.com
Norman Alden worked 50 years in Hollywood, but his heart was never far from West Oleander Street.
In more than 2,500 movies, TV episodes and commercials, he played everything from outlaws to
Super Friends. But he still took time to come home to Fort Worth, Paschal High School and the south side.
He grew up on south-side chicken-fried steak, boxing and TCU Horned Frogs football. He had never seen the inside of the posh downtown Fort Worth Club until he came home to promote his 1970 movie
Tora! Tora! Tora!So when his friends gather Saturday to remember the 87-year-old stand-up comedian and character actor, who died July 27 in Los Angeles, the setting will be the Formica tables of the Paris Coffee Shop.
"We could be with the biggest stars in Hollywood, and we'd still sit around talking about Fort Worth and Paschal and TCU," said author Dan Jenkins of Fort Worth, young enough at 83 to remember Alden as a football Paschal Panther and high school actor.
"Fort Worth gets into your blood. It was such a great town."
Alden grew up 14 blocks west of the Paris as Norman Adelberg, son of a family that owned a small Eighth Avenue grocery.
"I invented self-service," he told the
Star-Telegram in 1977.
"My folks would leave me in charge, and I would take a nap. The customers would see me asleep. They'd help themselves."
Alden's acting career started at Paschal in 1936, back when it was still McLean Junior High (now middle school). It was the year of Texas Centennial pageantry, and at age 12, Alden played his first villain: Mexico's Gen. Antonio López de Santa Anna.
After a career as a U.S. Army boxer during World War II, a TCU student actor, the first radio host on radio station KXOL/1360 AM, a comedian and Camp Bowie Boulevard club owner, Alden landed his first Hollywood break: an appearance on
Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts.
He wanted to be a comedian, but he wound up as one of the industry's hardest-working actors, starring in roles including TV's
Leave it to Beaver and Lou Caruthers in
Back to the Future, and as the voice of dozens of cartoon characters.
Fort Worth songwriter and radio host Bill Mack, emcee of the tribute at 3 p.m. Saturday, remembered one of Alden's first roles on TV's
Gunsmoke: "He said kids got mad at him because he was the one who shot Marshal Dillon in the back." Always in a supporting role, Alden called himself "the familiar face nobody knows."
Here, we'll remember.
Bud Kennedy's column appears Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays.817-390-7538Twitter: @budkennedy
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