Golfing with Hollywood, (part 2)

Forest Tucker was a big man. He filled the doorway of my office when he came to see me, about 9 AM Monday morning, the day after he checked into the hotel. I would guess that he was 6 feet 4 inches tall and not heavy as much as thick. “Do you play golf?” he asked. “Sure I play golf” I told him. This was true in the sense that I did possess a set of clubs, in a golf bag, owned golf shoes and had paid greens fees several times. Mostly, I showed up at charity events that the hotel had sponsored and tried to be good company for the real golfers as they hit great shots and made the putts that kept our foursome in the mix. “Well, I want to play a round while I’m here”, he continued, “You can take me to your club.” I confessed that I did not belong to a club but had friends who did. I told him that I would make some calls and set up something for Thursday or Friday morning and let him know.




The actor, Forest Tucker, was most familiar to me for his role in F-Troop as Sergeant O’Rourke. This weekly television comedy series was very popular family entertainment back in the mid 1960’s. Forest had previously played staring roles on the silver screen in dozens of movies through the years. His western and soldier characters were favorites for many millions of movie goers in the 40’s and 50’s after the war years. Now, here he was, in the early eighties, staring in Show Boat, a national production of the famous musical play, up for our town’s local summer stock theater. The show sold out every performance and the reviews praised his gregarious natural talent and enthusiasm on the stage.



Each morning, “Tuck” would pop into my office and spend time with me. What an easy going and likeable man he was. He had great stories to tell and I listened with interest as he made icons like John Wayne, Spencer Tracey, Jack Benny and George Burns seem like regular guys with his descriptions of their shared antics and mischievous adventures from back in the golden days of Hollywood. To hear Tuck tell it, someone was always getting a trick of one sort or another played on them and then they would have to get even!



We were going to play at Winchester Golf Course on Friday morning. Ten o’clock. The club was not private. When I called my friend who belonged to the Country Club, he kindly explained to me that he could only bring one guest at a time and it wouldn’t work this week anyway because of his business schedule. None of this seemed like a problem to me. Winchester was one of the nicer golf courses in the area. We loaded up the golf clubs into my station wagon. I had invited two buddies along and we headed down the highway on the twenty minute drive to the course. It was a beautiful morning. The sun was shining. The weather forecast called for mid 80’s and sunny all day. This was going to be great.



We pulled into the parking lot and found a space. The place was quite busy. Golfers were getting their bags out of cars and golf carts were cutting in and out of the lot, carrying their happy hackers off to the practice greens in anticipation of the day’s fun. We got out of the car and I opened up the tailgate. Tuck was not smiling. He just stood there, looking around and then he began to shake his head.



“I’m not playing a golf course where they put their shoes on at the trunks of their cars”, he declared. Then he started laughing and looked at me with his best character face. “Is that a bar over there?” We spent the rest of the morning listening to stories and having lunch with Forrest. He was one of the greatest. I was saddened to hear of his passing a few years later in 1986. Tuck gave me the best ”golf lesson” I ever had.