Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/1530033
122 SAG-AFTRA | Fall/Winter 2024 | sagaftra.org "I had cancer. I couldn't speak. Speaking was the weapon of my trade. They could have lopped off a leg, like Herbert Marshall, and I still could have acted. Or an arm. But without my voice, I was without my profession. The silent movies were dead. So, in a sense, was I." It was November of 1960. An actor of stage, screen, radio and television for over 35 years and an Oscar nominee in 1941 for the RKO feature film They Knew What They Wanted, Brooklyn born-and-raised William Gargan's acting career was ended by laryngeal cancer. He was 55 years old. After removal of his larynx, the tall, gregarious Gargan recovered his optimism, took on a new challenge and triumphed: He not only mastered "esophageal speech," but took on a new role, spokesperson for the American Cancer Society. His Society travels took him around the country and even to the White House in March of 1963. As described in his 1969 autobiography Why Me?, "I helped kick off the annual [Cancer] Crusade in Washington, D.C., early in March, and when I finished, Dave Powers [special assistant to the president] invited me to the White House. I went to the west gate and was ushered into the cabinet room, where I chatted with Dave and then-President Kennedy came in. 'I didn't know until today that you had cancer,' he said. 'I'm terribly sorry.'" Kennedy appointed Gargan to the Committee on the Employment of the Physically Handicapped. Gargan concludes Why Me? with gratitude for his Screen Actors Guild Life Achievement Award. "On November 12, 1967, the most thrilling moment of my life took place. You must remember that with all my [cancer] work, I am and always have been an actor. It's a different league from those I played in when I was Martin Kane on television or Red Regan in The Animal Kingdom on the stage or in the hundreds of roles I've played in the movies. But I'm still an actor at heart … this is an honor I especially cherish because it came from my peers — actors and actresses who knew what made me tick since they were spurred on by the same drive that made me go. These were my people and they were honoring me … I don't know how I was able to talk because I was all choked up. But then, as [my wife] Mary had said so many months before, 'He's talking very well tonight, don't you think?' Talk, I did, but as Mary and I went home that night, I knew words could never express my feelings. Only my heart could. And it was filled to overflowing." WILLIAM GARGAN: 'Words could never express my feelings.' Right, film, TV and radio actor William Gargan on set in the 1930s and above, in 1963, with President John F. Kennedy at the White House. Top right, SAG President Charlton Heston announces Gargan as the honoree of what was then known as the Screen Actors Guild Annual Achievement Award in 1967. SAG-AFTRA ARCHIVES AND SPECIAL COLLECTIONS X2 CECIL STOUGHTON, WHITE HOUSE / JOHN F. KENNEDY PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY AND MUSEUM