I have a wild, Irish friend. In life’s humdrummia, where others crawl an inch a lifetime, Brian Lally galloped a thousand years ahead, madcap, laughing, weeping, making friends, taking no prisoners. Painting a proper picture of the man, we first have to see the boy. Go. Open any encyclopedia. Turn to the page marked, “Doomed To Failure.” There’s the youngster’s headshot. You’ll find a handsome lad, brimming with mischief, trouble and indomitable spirit.
Then, in Heaven’s Dictionary, there appears his definition: “HERO: Doomed to failure, he tries anyway …”
I am awash in grief and gratitude.
My dear, perfectly sculpted, insane, actor friend built the good adventure’s life. He dangled from the Bad Guano Wild Spectrum’s end, hanging on by just one hand. With the other? He waved defiantly. His mother thought dressing Brian Lally Himself in a business suit and sending the boy off to school would bend the unbendable — his endless class clown/unasked-for entertainment issues. Personifying every negative stereotype of the Irish, it’s not that Master Lally would stumble into fisticuffs. Out-numbered, like some old cartoon Tasmanian Devil, the future actor waded into brouhahas with unhinged abandon, spinning, flailing, blindly striking out at a sharp and poisonous world. My friend’s desk? My friend’s desk, no metaphor here, was permanently housed in the principal’s office. Saved both parties long hikes, to and fro.
His father, a working actor himself, sternly forbade Brian from acting, with the crushing curse he’d never make it. Brian grew up around the actual Three Stooges, Johnny “Tarzan” Weismueller and so many famous movie stars. Such a wild young hoodlum, that Brian Lally. Drugs, alcohol, miscreant behavior and violence didn’t help. He confessed searching the classifieds, not for jobs, but, for places easy to rob. The Life of Brian was the streets, sleeping on cardboard mattresses in alleys. You become faceless, living, if you could call it that, a life. Prison or Death patiently smiled, waiting around a cold corner. Tragedies pile up, along with betrayal. No need to freefall into details. Betrayal is but an excuse.
Left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot, that’s how Life goes. No one tells you this particular dance step leads to Hell and Perdition. Or, that it leads into Heaven. Your choice. Heaven? Wise people have noted, it’s the same, here on Earth. My lovable, stubborn and most inappropriate Irishman? The Prodigal Son Himself? Out of the gutter of his own making he climbed, overcame his father’s curse, followed his dream. He became a working actor. “To sculpt working actors.” That later became the motto of his acting studio.
Those who should have known better falsely accused he didn’t have the discipline nor ability to act. Lally, you profound stinker, you rascally Irelander. Good for you. You proved them wrong. Lally not only became a film, stage and TV actor, he passed along what he had learned. With movie star and friend, James Franco, he started an acting studio, later building his own school with the unusual title — LOLAS. It stands for, “Lally Or Lally Acting Studio,” named for Bri and his son, Kyle, another alleged Irish thespian. Or, as I refer to him, “Kyle, Kyle, The Wily Reptile.” That’s just the small print in the playbill. Brian Lally, creator of failed, Whoopee Cushion Polish jokes aimed in my direction, daily helped a dozen people. Often, more. People who hurt. People who were helpless, with nowhere to go. He was friends with the rich, lucky and famous. But, he comforted those haunted dredges we walk past with dread and urgency. We rented a house in Toluca Lake. For years, I watched him open heart and wallet. After moths flew out, he gave. If his purse held two nickels, he’d give one. Often? Both. Recently, Lally flew to Moose Boink, North Pole, to give a weekend symposium on acting. Nothing in it for him. Still. Eskimos have to act, too, my pal rightly figured. Serving in ordinariness? There’s the honor. That was my friend’s life.
Me, a writer. Brian, an actor. Our inside joke was that all of acting boiled down to mastering the simple line — “Guards! Seize them!!”
And yet, Broadway’s rascal lived, and breathed, the ancient mantra, a timeless wisdom fit for actor, cook or car salesman. His words: “You BETTER not show up to class unprepared …” Tough love, from a former hoodlum.
I can’t say Brian died last week. I don’t believe in life’s final act. One of my best friends of a thousand lifetimes made his transition, from angel on Earth to angel in Heaven. In a poof, he’s seemingly gone. No more inappropriate daily texts, no more calls, late morning breakfasts or sharing our plans to conquer the entertainment world. If I had the ear of St. Peter, I’d sing the former altar boy’s praises. But, I’d also glance around, just to see if anyone was listening. I’d warn St. Peter, “Make sure you keep your eye on that rotter …”
If I had a series of boons (I wouldn’t waste just the one on the worthless likes of Lally Himself), I’d wish I could monkey with the fabric of time and tweak it so. I wish I could be Brian’s principal, when he was small. I wish we could share an office, with just our two desks, maybe give the boy a little more love and direction so that his journey wouldn’t have been so damn brutal and unfair.
A stroke. A heart’s sudden failing. Gone? No. Hardly not.
There beats a soul unstoppable. I’ve never met man nor woman who so passionately pulled himself up by the bootstraps. Living miracle, he changed his life. Few of us do. His greatest role? How he loved so well. With kindness, mirth, hope and strength, Brian Lally smoothed bumpy roads for so many hurting souls.
Certainly put me atop, my Mad Irishman’s list …
Pick up “Naked Came the Novelist,” John Boston’s sequel to the international bestseller, “Naked Came the Sasquatch,” at JohnBoston-Books.com. A lifelong SCV resident with 119 major writing awards and nearly 12,000 columns, Boston is Earth history’s most prolific humorist and satirist.
