By the time I got to Northwestern University in 1930, I was a football bum more interested in being an All-Star player and signing on with a pro team than going after a newspaper job.

I wish all high schools could offer students the outside activities that were available at the old Harrison High on Chicago's West Side in the late '20s. They enabled me to become part of a school newspaper, drama group, football team and student government.

'At Random' ran on Saturday nights for as long as the conversation was still lively. Sometimes, I'd finish way after midnight, then hop a plane for whatever city I was working a football game that Sunday.

My freshman year at Harrison High School, I saw a journalism class where students were putting out a weekly newspaper. It touched a responsive chord in me.

If I got a football scholarship, I was going to be a football player.

By the time I could have played football, I was already into acting and that's what I wanted to do.