talent scout Sully Biano, who said that the director Nicholas Ray was working on a movie for the studio that might be a good fit. And that was that.Īfter the Cohn fiasco, Raison took his young client to meet with the Warner Bros. “Go fuck yourself,” the boy told the head of Columbia Pictures. Take all that Shakespeare out of him! We don’t do that in movies!”ĭennis stopped sweating and looked Cohn straight in the face. He turned to Columbia’s veteran head of casting, Maxwell Arnow, the man who had discovered Humphrey Bogart. He had been something of a fixture at the city’s Old Globe since he was 13, winning a raft of declamation and acting trophies along the way.
“Well, I’ve been down in San Diego, playing Shakespeare,” Dennis said. “You’re the most naturalistic actor I’ve seen since Montgomery Clift. “Come on in, kid!” Cohn shouted with gruff bonhomie. Cohn’s very presence-bald head, cigar, brusque manner, office full of Oscars-caused the nervous teenager, visiting a movie studio for the first time in his life, to break out in a sweat. Hopper’s agent, Robert Raison, had, in fact, taken Hopper to meet Columbia’s titan, Harry Cohn. On January 5, 1955, Variety reported on its front page that an 18-year-old actor named Dennis Hopper, who had made a splash playing an epileptic on an episode of NBC’s Medic, was signing with Columbia Pictures.
