"Biography"
“Trooper Vanderbilt”
by Greg Gattuso © 2000
A Los Angeles native who loved Westerns, Joe Brooks clearly remembers his high school friends having fun as extras in Gary Cooper's acclaimed WW1 picture "Sergeant York". But at age 17, he was too young to join them among the ranks of American or German "soldiers" on a Hollywood backlot.
When he turned 18, however, Brooks joined the Screen Actors Guild as a temporary member and began working as an extra. His first jobs paid $8 to $10 a day.
It was on the set of John Wayne's "The Fighting Seabees" that a director tapped him to say his first two lines.
"I was the pilot of an airplane, and I picked up the mic and said, 'D-21 tower for Fox 20. Carrier flight wings coming in for fuel and ammunition'. Then the tower responded and I said, 'Roger'."
Though he never saw the Duke on the set, Brooks was hooked on acting. His budding career in Hollywood was put on hold, however, when he entered the armed services for real, serving in the gun crew on a merchant marine ship in the South Pacific.
After leaving the service in 1948, Brooks returned to California, where he worked as a restaurateur and a house painter, but went back to working as a Hollywood extra.
Joe joined the Screen Extras Guild with a little help from Donald O'Connor, whose girlfriend at the time was a high school classmate of Joe's. In the years that followed, Joe worked steadily and met as many directors and casting agents as he could.
"I could make a pretty good living as an extra in those days," Joe recalled. "Just like today, it has a lot to do with who you know."
When he got the call to Warner Brothers for an F-Troop audition, Joe recognized the director, Charlie Rondeau, from previous work around Hollywood.
"Charlie said, 'I want Joe, but we have to come up with a schtick for you, kid'."
Quick-thinking Joe pulled his hat down over his head, put on a pair of prop glasses, and gave the director a squinty look that would become a trademark.
"Charlie said, 'Great!' and he gave me three silent bits to do in the pilot."
Joe's three non-speaking comedy parts in the show's pilot episode, "Scourge of the West", wowed the director and the stars.
"Everybody liked what I was doing," Joe recalled. "They thought I was funny. A few months later, I saw Forrest Tucker, and he said to me, 'Hey kid, if that pilot sells, you're sure to have a part. We saw it in the screening room and thought you were funny'. Well, the pilot sold and I got the part of Vanderbilt."
When the show aired, Joe remembers receiving lots of fan mail--especially from children. One letter still stands out in his memory.
"My first fan letter came from a little blind boy," Joe said. "He couldn't see, but he liked Vandy. That made me feel good."
Another time, Joe was bowling , when a woman approached him and asked for an autographed picture for her grandson, who was hearing impaired.
"A lot of kids liked Vanderbilt. I appealed to people with disabilities," he said.
One of Joe's favorite F-Troop episodes, "Johnny Eagle Eye" features Trooper Vanderbilt in a shooting contest with a young Indian marksman, played by Paul Peterson.
"I remember I also had a lot of lines the [the episode] 'The West Goes Ghost'. It came off good on TV."
"[Writer] Artie Julian liked me. So did Ed James and Seaman Jacobs. They gave me some good lines."
Brooks' work on the set was not without it's hazards, however. Scripts often called for Joe to run into troopers, trip and fall, and take an occasional tumble into the well.
"I remember the episode 'From Karate with Love', and we were in Wrangler Jane's store. I was supposed to tackle the samurai, but of course I tackled the potbelly stove by mistake. That was made out of cast iron!"
When F-Troop was canceled, Joe remembers being very surprised and very disappointed. But he kept busy as an actor and stunt man in a variety of comedies and action pictures. He played a speed demon in the cult film "Vanishing Point", doing his own stunt driving, including a dangerous racing sequence in which his car flips off the road. He also played the umpire in The Bad News Bears and Santa Claus in Gremlins.
Joe, a father or four and grandfather of eight, takes great pride in being part of F-Troop, and makes time to appear at autograph shows with other cast members. The last two years have seen a resurgence in F-Troop popularity, and he receives more fan mail now than he did in the 1960's.
"F-Troop is entertainment that everybody can enjoy," he explained. "Kids liked it and adults liked it. There was no swearing and there was no sex. We were on in an hour that kids could watch."
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