The movie was a remake of the 1950s film, “Shane,” and I had wanted the part in it in the worst way. No, my mother wanted that for me in the worst way—I just wanted to be in the movie bad, bad enough to do anything to get the part. Bad enough to act my heart out with the producer to get the part and then to do what I did to make the most out of the part when I did get it. Mr. Stanwyck, the producer knew what I, at fourteen, would do to play the part of Joey Starett, the impressionable settler’s son in the remake of the Western movie about bad guys trying to push the homesteaders out in the Wyoming Territory. And both my mother and my agent, Ms. Abernathy pushed me to do whatever it took.

The character was younger than I was, around ten—the boy actor who played Joey in the original movie, Brandon de Wilde, was ten—but I was small for my age. I could act that part convincingly. I’d played younger boys on stage.

None of them knew that I wanted it as bad as they did and I was ready to do “whatever.” I’m not sure their “do anything it takes” went as far as I was willing to go—and did go.

I had studied the original “Shane” movie in preparation for the auditions for this remake and found that the role I was after was a key one. Shane was a gunslinger trying to put his past behind him by signing on as a farmhand at the Starett’s Wyoming homestead. Joey, the part I wanted, was the son of the Starett household. He idolizes Shane when Shane stands up to the villains trying to run the homesteaders off. I found that Brandon de Wilde had been nominated for an Academy Award for the role. Then I understood why my mother was so keen on me getting that role. She’d been grooming me with acting and dance and singing lessons since I was six years old. She’d been a starlet in Hollywood for about ten minutes and had fallen from the sky when she had me, with no husband in sight, and she’d put all of her hopes in me since then. An Academy Award nomination? The part was golden. It would make me.

And the part of Shane had been cast by one of the leading heartthrobs of the day, Rob Reason. The movie was a guaranteed hit. I’d get to play a “mentor and boy” combination with Rob Reason. It was just too good not to do whatever it took to get that part. The greatest part of all that wasn’t that my mother and agent were moving heaven and earth to get me in the role and that the producer was backing me in exchange for future favor, but Rob Reason had reviewed the portfolios of all the boys being considered for the part and had, the producer told me, picked me. I had done Broadway stage work for five years and was on a daytime soap opera for two, but surely there were boy actors with better Hollywood credentials than I had.

But Rob Reason had picked me and I got the part. And wondered why. I checked him out, though, and got an idea about that.

“Whatever he wants...” my mother told me as I was put on a plane with someone from Casting, my mother not having been permitted to come with me.

But she didn’t have to tell me that. I knew what was a stake. I knew what I wanted.

The movie location was a ranch in Wyoming between Laramie and Cheyenne, not that far off a main highway and with mountains in Colorado visible in the distance. They had thrown up a Western town and there were three homestead sets too. Everything was close to the trailers set up to house and feed the actors and production people, but, in the filming, it would seem that they were all remote from each other.

I was the last actor to arrive. Everyone else had been there and had been filming for a couple of weeks already. Joey only had a few scenes. I’d have to make the most out of them.

I understood that my part had been the hardest to fill—that it had to be just right and it had to be approved by Rob Reason. I knew Reason was the key to all of this. I knew he was a real dreamboat on film, but I also knew he was aging a bit and was very hard to please—and the matinee idol the public saw wasn’t the real man. I knew all of this because I was real good in using the Internet and I could get into dark areas of that that told me a whole lot about Rob Reason. All of it was fine with me, but I don’t think the people running the movie understood that.

When I got to the movie location, everyone was tense and it was like they were walking on eggs—all of them seemed to be waiting for something to happen, not knowing if this was going to work out or not.

I could have laughed. They didn’t know what I knew. They knew a lot—but they didn’t know me. That didn’t know what I’d do to make it work out.

Everything stopped in the trailer village that afternoon when I was being introduced to Rob Reason. I could almost feel the intake and holding of breath all across the lot when he said, “If we’re going to start filming my scenes with Timothy here tomorrow, maybe the two of us should get together this afternoon and go over the script to see how this plays out.”

“We could certainly do that,” the casting lady, Peggy, who had accompanied me from Los Angeles to Cheyenne and then in the studio car out to the movie location, said.

“I think it best if it’s just Timothy and me,” Reason said.

I could actually hear Peggy’s intake of breath, and an assistant producer stepped in and said, “Maybe that’s not such a—”

“Sounds good to me,” I said. “Where do we do this?”

“My trailer, I think,” Reason said, reaching out with a hand and touching my arm. “It’s just over here.”

“Maybe that’s not such a—” the assistant producer tried again.

“Sure, let’s go,” I said. And we did, with the eyes of everyone in the vicinity following us to Reason’s trailer. He palmed the small of my back to guide me to and up the steps into the trailer. I could hear the murmurs humming on the other side of the metal door when we entered the trailer and Reason locked the door behind us.

He, of course, had the most luxurious trailer on the lot. He beckoned to a table with chairs around it next to his kitchenette, and I sat down. He sat down right next to me rather than across from me. Handing me a script, he said, “You know that the relationship between Shane and Joey is the key to this whole movie.”

“I thought so too,” I said.

“Alan Ladd and Brandon de Wilde had chemistry,” he continued. “That’s what sold the movie and made it so memorable that we’re filming it again. Originally, the relationships were much more complex and emphasized something different from what was actually achieved. A minor sexual chemistry was meant to be between Shane and Joey’s mother, or at least those viewing the movie were made to expect that would be the case. And the primary relationship was to be that of Shane and Joey’s father, both of them noble, but in very different ways. Shane’s way was violent—or had been before he decided to stop gunslinging—and Starett’s way was to try to make peace. In the end, they saw the worth of each other. But that’s not the relationship that counted as Ladd and De Wild played it—that’s not what made the movie a classic. The developing relationship between the gunslinger and the farm boy is what did it.”

“Oh, I think so too,” I said. “That’s what I want. De Wilde was nominated for an Academy Award. That’s what I want too.”

“It will take sacrifice,” Reason said. He reached over and touched my arm again.

“I think I know what it will take.”

“I wonder if you do,” Reason said and then he handed me one of two scripts, told me where to open the pages to, and for the next half hour we went over a key scene, discussing the action and the motivations of each of the actors and how we thought it best could be played. He was good, very good. Joey in the movie idolized Shane. I easily could see how I could do the same with Reason—and if I could do it with Reason, I knew I could master the part.

It was my turn to make a gesture. I reached over and touched him on the arm. He’d already put a hand on my knee under the table, it having gone there when he was directing my attention to something in the script. But he hadn’t taken it away, and I didn’t move my knee away either. He looked at me, a curious expression on his face as if he only now was understanding how easy this would be for him.

He cleared his voice. “We’ve been working hard. Would you like a Coke or something? I think I want one.”

“Sure. Can I use the ... do you have one here?”

“Yes, certainly. Go through the door there. The bathroom is off the bedroom.”

“Thanks,” I said and stood from the table. I gave him a meaningful look—a dramatic actor’s set meaningful look and hesitation—and then I went into the bedroom, shutting the door behind me.