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Lorne Greene compared the work of acting to professional athletes
From the minor leagues to the major leagues of acting; Lorne Greene worked his way up in Hollywood.
The distance between the playing field and the stage may be smaller than it looks. Both athletics and the arts require discipline, determination and countless hours of practice.
While Lorne Greene was best known for his acting career, he did have a brief connection to the world of sports... though it was far more limited than his time in the spotlight.
"Just about the only sports experience I had while growing up in Ottawa was having my nose broken three times playing high school basketball," Greene said during an interview with The Standard.
Still, Lorne Greene compared acting to professional sports, saying both take a surprising amount of work and a lot of patience. In his eyes, neither path was as effortless as it might look from the outside.
"Just like these athletes, my fame and a good bit of fortune didn't come overnight," Greene said. "Athletes have to go through the minors to get to the major leagues. I spent four years as a CBC announcer, then a couple of years in the Canadian Armed Forces, some lean years as an actor after the Second World War, four years on Broadway, and then a chance meeting with a Hollywood director where I got the top job in Bonanza."
Bonanza, of course, is where Greene became known to a wide array of television viewers. Audiences became so accustomed to seeing the actor that they began to believe that Lorne Greene and Ben Cartwright were one and the same.
"When the show was running 'live,' people used to ask me if I used to be Lorne Greene; now they ask me if I used to be Ben Cartwright," Greene said. "They don't seem to understand that I've always been Lorne Greene."
From the minor leagues to the major leagues of acting; the uniforms change, but the grind doesn’t.
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