Guideposts Classics: Joel McCrea on God’s Guidance | Guideposts

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If my experience in motion pictures has taught me anything, it is this: No mere man is clever enough to control all the forces which must work together for all-around success in life. I do not believe in luck, nor can I take personal credit for the piloting of my own career.

 

While attending Hollywood High School, my fellow students said I lacked “get-up-and-go.” Though ambitious, I seemed to lack drive. But my dreams were of the wide spaces, open sky and a cattle ranch.

 

Hollywood was a smaller town then, and my newspaper route was star-studded. As a boy, I tossed the Los Angeles Times on the doorstep of Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks. I was on friendly terms with others of my customers: Gloria Swanson, Wallace Reid, Cecil B. de Mille and William S. Hart.

 

Hart was a famous silent-screen cowboy actor. Each time I threw a paper on his porch, I imagined that my delivery bike was a horse and for a moment the paved street was a cactus-studded range.

 

During the summers, I worked for the King Cattle Company in the Tehachapi Mountains, where I was taught to ride the range and to farm.

 

To achieve my goal of a ranch, I needed capital. Acting would be a fine way to acquire this capital, I decided. It might even be fun. And the jump from a delivery bike to the silver screen isn’t at all fantastic in a place like Hollywood.

 

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