Cary Grant? Mary Astor? Hugh O’Brian? Tige Andrews? Herb Caen? Danny Doakes? Herschel Bernardi? Anonymous?
Question for Quote Investigator: I read an article last year about celebrity lookalikes that discussed the different stages of a Hollywood career. I remember a few of the stages:
Get me John/Jane Smith.
Get me someone who looks like John/Jane Smith.
Who is John/Jane Smith.
How old is this joke? Do you know the name of the first actor or actress who was mentioned in this humorous sequence?
Reply from Quote Investigator: The earliest evidence known to QI appeared in the popular column of Herb Caen on September 16, 1960 in the “San Francisco Chronicle” of California. This clever template humorously predicted the trajectory of recognition of the U.S. character actor Tige Andrews:1
Tige Andrews, the memorable mime of “Threepenny Opera,” outlines the five stages of an actor’s life: “Who is Tige Andrews?” – “Get me Tige Andrews!” – “Get me a Tige Andrews type” -“Get me a young Tige Andrews” – “Who is Tige Andrews?”
Tige Andrews best known roles were police officers in two television series of the 1960s and 1970s called “The Mod Squad” and “The Detectives”.
On September 23, 1960 the template appeared in the syndicated Hollywood gossip column of Mike Connolly:2
Hugh O’Brian gave me the following points—as The Five Most Important Stages in the Life of an Actor:
(1) “Who is Hugh O’Brian?”
(2) “Get me Hugh O’Brian as the star of our next picture!”
(3) “Get me somebody who’s a Hugh O’Brian type.”
(4) “Get me a young Hugh O’Brian.”
(5) “Who WAS Hugh O’Brian?”
O’Brian had a long and successful career in the movies and on stage though he never achieved the iconic status of superstars like Humphrey Bogart and John Wayne. His most famous role was the lawman title-character in a top-rated television series set in the frontier West called “The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp” which was first broadcast in the 1950s and 1960s. Both O’Brian and Andrews were conscious that fame was sometimes short-lived.
In December 1960 another version of the template was printed by a columnist named Kay Loring in the Chicago Tribune. This instance was sent to Loring by a humorist named Quin Ryan:3
The five stages in the life of a Hollywood star:
Who is Danny Doakes?
Get me Danny Doakes!
Get me a Danny Doakes’ type!
Get me a young Danny Doakes!
Who is Danny Doakes?
The “Danny Doakes” mentioned here was not an obscure actor; instead, Danny Doakes was a variant of Joe Doakes which was a term used to designate an everyman. Joe Doakes, Joe Bloggs, Joe Blow, and the term John/Jane Smith are similar expressions that function as generic referents.
Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.
In 1961 an Associated Press news story contained a quotation from an actress named Dolores Faith, and she reacted to her Hollywood success with circumspection by citing the template:4
The lovely young actress of “Wild Harvest” comments: “I always remember what Hugh O’Brian said about the five stages of a movie actor’s career, as seen by a producer,” They are:
“Who’s Hugh O’Brian?”
“Get me Hugh O’Brian.”
“Get me a Hugh O’Brian type.”
“Get me a young Hugh O’Brian.”
“Who’s Hugh O’Brian?”
In 1963 an expansive collection of biographical notes and gossip called the “Celebrity Register: An Irreverent Compendium of American Quotable Notables” was published. The introduction written by Cleveland Amory printed the five stages with Hugh O’Brian filling the exemplar slot as above. Here is the comment immediately preceding the list of stages:5
And a celebrity can be an extremely transient commodity, indeed. … let us quote John Collins, the great English critic. “The world, like an accomplished hostess,” he once said, “pays most attention to those whom it will soon forget.”
In June 1963 “Mad Magazine” published an analogous humorous piece written by Tom Koch and illustrated by Jack Rickard which traced the career of a fictional music artist named Patricia Blousen by displaying ten album covers. The first cover in 1948 titled “The Euclid Phlomm Chorale Hums Traditional Arbor Day Melodies” showed Blousen with a dozen members of the chorale. At the height of her career, the 1956 album was simply titled “Patti”, and it showed a close-up of her face. At the end of her career in 1963, Blousen had reverted to semi-anonymous membership in “The Euclid Phlomm Chorale”.6
In August 1963 the Los Angeles Times printed the sequence with an indication that it was well-known in the acting trade:7
There is a trade joke, says actor Herschel Bernardi, about the five stages in an actor’s life. With a producer doing the talking, it goes like this:
1—”Who is Herschel Bernardi?”
2—”Get me Herschel Bernardi.”
3—”Get me a Herschel Bernardi type.”
4—”Get me a younger version of Herschel Bernardi.”
5—”Who is Herschel Bernardi?”Every performer, of course, would like to get to class two and never graduate.
In 1965 the Los Angeles Times ran a profile of Hugh O’Brian and the actor employed the adage about the five stages using his own name. He also told a funny self-deflating anecdote set in the 1950s. In the following passage the name Natalie Wood referred to a popular film actress:8
‘Earp’ was number one in the ratings and I went back to New York in triumph. Two limousines met me, and all the agents, the sponsors, everybody. … Well, I was going up in the elevator with two old ladies in flowered hats. They whispered to each other and then one got up the nerve and said, ‘What’s your name.’ I was feeling very full of myself and I said. ‘Natalie Wood.’ The lady turned to her friend and said, ‘You see, I told you he was in show business.’
In 1967 the Los Angeles Times published another article centered on Hugh O’Brian that mentioned an upcoming theatrical performance. The trope about the ascending and declining stages of a career was included in the story together with this remark:9
“Right now,” he said a while back, “I’m in the ‘Get Me Hugh O’Brian’ stage, but not far enough in.” He has made the rather surprising total of 26 films, most recently “Africa Texas Style,” but none yet that could be called Class A in terms of budget and expectations.
By 1971 the aphorism was used in the memoir of an actress who had appeared in motion pictures for decades. Mary Astor10 started her career during the silent film era, and she was best known for her femme-fatale role in The Maltese Falcon:11
There is a very old joke in the profession about the five stages in the life of an actor. Supply the name of any well-known player, and the producer/director/casting office says,
1.Who’s Mary Astor? 2. Get me Mary Astor. 3. Get me a Mary Astor type. 4. Get me a young Mary Astor. 5.Who’s Mary Astor?
I was between stages 4 and 5, and I was troubled and angry and unhappy about it
In 1973 a reference titled “The Filmgoer’s Book of Quotes” included the adage and presented Hugh O’Brian as the exemplar. Here is the prefatory remark:12
An anonymous wit classically detailed the five stages in a star’s life, as seen by a casting director:
Skipping forward to 2001, the business periodical “Fast Company” quoted the influential consultant Michael Hammer who applied the aphorism to a novel domain:13
Business ideas, Hammer says, follow the same trajectory as Hollywood stars. Stage one: Who is X? Stage two: Get me X! Stage three: Get me a young X! Stage four: Who is X? Reengineering, and perhaps Hammer himself, is teetering between stages two and three.
In 2011 the Philadelphia Inquirer ran an abbreviated version of the saying:14
Someone – was it Cary Grant? – described the arc of celebrity in three steps: (1) Who’s Cary Grant? (2) Get me Cary Grant! (3) Get me a younger Cary Grant.
In conclusion, this amusing and cautionary five-step framework was circulating by September 1960. Actor Tige Andrews gave the first known version to the columnist Herb Caen. Shortly afterwards a version from actor Hugh O’Brian appeared in the column of Mike Connolly. The original creator’s name is uncertain. It might have been penned by a publicist or a gag writer. However, the citations indicate that Tige Andrews and Hugh O’Brian are the leading candidates. Andrews has chronological precedence, but O’Brian was an important nexus of popularization.
Acknowledgement: Great thanks to Brian Chapman who told QI about the September 16, 1960 citation. Also, many thanks Andrew Steinberg who told QI about the September 23, 1960 citation. In addition, thanks to James Landau and Dave Wilton who pointed to the article in “Mad Magazine”.
Update History: On March 16, 2013 the citation dated September 23, 1960 was added to the article, and part of the text was rewritten. The footnotes were re-formatted to use numbers. On February 24, 2025 the format of the bibliographical notes was updated. Also, the September 16, 1960 citation was added to the article, and the conclusion was partially rewritten. On February 28, 2025 the “Mad Magazine” citation was added to the article.
- 1960 September 16, San Francisco Chronicle, Herb Caen: Footnote, Section 2, Quote Page 19, Column 1, San Francisco, California. (GenealogyBank) ↩︎
- 1960 September 23, Pasadena Independent, Let’s Make Love But Money Too by Mike Connolly, Quote Page 15, Column 7 and 8, Pasadena, California. (NewspaperArchive) ↩︎
- 1960 December 13, Chicago Tribune, Front Views & Profiles by Kay Loring, Quips from the Mailbag, (Letter from Quin Ryan), Page B9, Chicago, Illinois. (ProQuest) ↩︎
- 1961 August 27, Dallas Morning News, Actor’s Career in Five Stages (Associated Press), Section 5, Page 4, Column 4, Dallas, Texas. (GenealogyBank) ↩︎
- 1963, Celebrity Register: An Irreverent Compendium of American Quotable Notables, Edited by Cleveland Amory with Earl Blackwell, Section: Introduction by Cleveland Amory, Quote Page vi, Harper & Row, New York. (Verified on paper) ↩︎
- 1963 June, Mad Magazine, Number 79, The Rise and Fall of a Recording Star, Artist: Jack Rickard, Writer: Tom Koch, Quote Page 40 and 41, E. C. Publications, New York. (Verified with scans) ↩︎
- 1963 August 18, Los Angeles Times, Actors and Egomania by Art Seidenbaum, Page D1, Los Angeles, California. (ProQuest) ↩︎
- 1965 July 05, Los Angeles Times, ‘Wyatt’ Shooting Up Summer Stock by Charles Champlin, Page D9, Los Angeles, California. (ProQuest) ↩︎
- 1967 December 01, Los Angeles Times, ‘Cactus Flower’ to Star O’Brian by Charles Champlin, Page E16, Los Angeles, California. (ProQuest) ↩︎
- 1971, A Life on Film by Mary Astor, Chapter: 14, Page 194, Delacorte Press, New York. (Verified on paper) ↩︎
- 2006, The Yale Book of Quotations by Fred R. Shapiro, Section: Mary Astor, Page 30, Yale University Press, New Haven. (Verified on paper) (This reference gives a 1967 date for the book “A Life on Film” and the Mary Astor quotation) ↩︎
- 1974, The Filmgoer’s Book of Quotes by Leslie Halliwell, Page 169, (Reprint of 1973 edition Granada Publishing, London), Arlington House, New Rochelle, New York. (Verified on paper) ↩︎
- 2001 August 31, Who Has the Next Big Idea? by Daniel H. Pink, Mansueto Ventures. (Accessed online at fastcompany.com on February 26, 2012) ↩︎
- 2011 August 20, Philadelphia Inquirer, Blogosphere: Excerpts from the blogs of Inquirer critics by Carrie Rickey, Page C.1., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. (ProQuest) ↩︎