In February, Victor Love shaved off the beard he had grown to play
”Othello” so that he could audition for the lead role in the film adaptation of ”Native Son.” Then, he recalls, the producers told him they couldn`t use him.
Love had been refused roles before, but this was especially painful.
As a college student in California, his teachers told him he didn`t have enough talent for the stage. In Los Angeles, after he had completed acting school, agents told him he didn`t stand a chance in the film business because he didn`t look like a ”street black.” This time, a major film, with major stars and a major budget, a film Love was certain would require some real acting, was going to rely on another young actor, Courtney B. Vance, to fill the role.
And then the filmmakers changed their minds.
Vance, a student in his final year at the Yale School of Drama, decided not to take the part and Love was tapped instead, thrusting the 28-year-old actor into the spotlight for his movie debut as Bigger Thomas, the central character in Richard Wright`s 1940 novel upon which the film is based. Suddenly, the success of ”Native Son,” which is scheduled for release this fall 1986, rests largely on Love`s ability to portray one black man`s descent into murder and violence.
Love is an arresting figure. He is 6 feet 5 inches tall and has a voice
–a bassy Shakespearean bellow–that can blow walls out. His calm manner, his politeness and his well-honed responses all stand in marked contrast to the desperation of the character he must portray. But it is Love`s personal history that differs most dramatically from that of Wright`s fictional Bigger Thomas.
”The major difference between me and Bigger,” Love said recently, after a day of filming scenes on the South Side, where the book is set, ”is that I have hope. I have proof–in my parents, in my friends–that anything is possible. Bigger`s father had been lynched. Everyone around him lives the same way–a nickel here, a dime there. If anything, I was spoiled.”
Until his involvement with ”Native Son,” a solid career as a classical actor took Love from his New York City home to regional theaters, such as the Cleveland Playhouse, to act the lead in ”Othello,” or to Lenox, Mass., to play Don Pedro in ”Much Ado About Nothing.” Love was, and continues to be, an unknown in the film world.
The casting director of ”Native Son” saw Love for the first time when the actor was portraying an amputee on an Aetna life insurance commercial.
”Last year I was the new young black face,” he said. ”I was on the national poster for the United Negro College Fund. I did a Levi 501 commercial. Big Brothers of America. I play this guy that everyone wants their kid to grow up like–one of those guys who could live next door and it would be okay.”
The role in the commercial is a lot closer to the way Love grew up than his role in ”Native Son.” He describes his childhood as all-American.
”I was class president in high school,” he explained. ”I ran track and played basketball. . . . I wanted to belong.”
And for the most part, he did.
He lived with his family in a comfortable house. His parents were professionals. His father, once an electrician, returned to school for a degree in psychology, taught, and then went into real estate. And his mother, once a high-ranking Los Angeles health official, now teaches at Los Angeles Harbor College. Racial prejudice in Los Angeles where Love grew up was an abstraction to him–more of a historical item than an everyday threat, he recalls.
”I only realized I was black when I left high school,” he said. ”All of a sudden I wasn`t class president and I didn`t have the cutest girl in the class, who was also a cheerleader. As I became older, as my voice deepened, I became more threatening. I`d walk into a store and people would look at me like I smelled bad.”
In Los Angeles City College, Love turned his attention to political science but gave it up for acting when Watergate changed his mind about wanting to govern. In 1978 he enrolled in the Professional Actors Training Program at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where he received his classical training.
After finishing the program, he was offered a series of classical roles and his success with them set the tone for his acting career. When film agents in Los Angeles informed Love that his physical features were too elegant for the ”street black” parts that were available, he set off for New York vowing never to return to Los Angeles (except to visit his family) unless he had acting work.
Once in New York, Love unexpectedly found himself renting an apartment on 143d Street in Harlem and his exploration of his black cultural roots took on new fervor.
”I didn`t want to live in Harlem. I went to visit,” he said. ”It was my first experience living among black people. In some way I had found a home. I was amazed at the beauty and strength we had.”
Love hopes that his portrayal of Bigger will help educate the public about the special frustrations of being black in this country.
”If `Native Son` works,” he said, ”it will show us what it means to want, to desire and then not be able to touch it. . . . It`s never being able to be just a man. It`s the same thing that drove every European to this country–the search for dignity. . . . We blacks have been slaves in this country and now we`re not. We are looking for our place.”
Although his own life was full of ambition and reward, Love said it is not difficult to find the inspiration required to project the pain and anger of a man who feels he is being crushed by society.
”I can go to Watts, the South Side, any major city, and it becomes available,” he said. ”Yesterday I went to get some Spanish food in a restaurant. I left my costume on–a poor man`s clothing–old shoes, an old sweater, and an old hat.
”I walk into the restaurant–like myself–prepared to get what I want and the waiter says, `That`s gonna cost you.` I said I don`t care what it costs. I`d like to have what I want to have, in fact make it three of that item. Then I paid in cash. With a big bill. That`s what Bigger goes through in life only he wouldn`t have had the courage to walk into the place at all.
”It`s not an easy story to film,” Love added. ”The book is dangerous. It tells a truth that America doesn`t want to hear. Nobody wants to hear that they`re treating their children poorly. But the fact that it`s being made means it`s time to be made. Something is right.”
