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Speaker: Ed O’Neill was born in Youngstown, Ohio and attended Ursuline High School and Youngstown State University. Ed is a successful actor. He’s best known for his role as the main character Al Bundy on the Fox sitcom Married With Children and most recently for his role of Jay in ABC’s hit series Modern Family. He has appeared in several movies, including The Bone Collector, Little Giants, Dutch, and the Wayne’s World Series. Besides his role on Married with Children, Ed has had other notable television roles in Series such as Dragnet, The West Wing, Big Apple, and John from Cincinnati. It is truly a pleasure and an honor To welcome Ed O’Neil to our commencement ceremony this morning.
Ed O’Neill: Thank you. There’s a lot of people out there. I gotta I can’t talk. It’s a hat. I’m sorry. Is this okay. Thank you, first of all, for inviting me to speak at your graduation. When, Brian DuPoy and Scott Evans asked me to do it, I thought, sure.
Why not? It should be fun. I needed to get back here anyway because it had been a while since I’ve been to Youngstown, so I thought, you know, kill 2 birds. Then I sat down to write the speech, and I had never written a speech before. So I thought, well, first, you gotta congratulate him, then what? My, I couldn’t focus my thoughts. You know, they’re flying all over the place. And I thought, what can I say to these guys that, first of all, won’t bore them, and secondly, they’ll find slightly entertaining? And, so I got about 10 minutes here. And I Googled this thing, and I found out that most of these commencement speakers, You know, our people who have been successful in some line of, work or profession, and they come and they congratulate you, and then they give you some advice to be successful in life. But I was thinking, who am I kidding? I mean, you guys just did something I was never able to do, which was graduate from college.
So but here I am. I said I’d do it, and, there you are, Like I knew you would be, but I didn’t realize there’d be so many of you. So, advice. Advice. See, my problem with advice was that I was never very good at taking it. Not that I didn’t need it. Just not too good at taking it. So Let me tell you a little story.
I got cut by the Pittsburgh Steelers the day that Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. Good day for him. Not too good for me. So for the next several years, I was a bit lost. I came back here. I didn’t know what to do with myself. I tried a little substitute teaching in the inner city. I went down to Florida.
I bell hoped in hotel down there for a season, and then I came back. I taught speed reading, and I never knew how to speed read, which is another story. I tried to sell used cars. A buddy of mine had a place on the south side, never sold a car. No. Not one. Then I thought I’d get on and trust Conn Steel, And I finally got a job as a steel salesman, the idea being to start at the bottom and work up. My 1st day on the job, the offices were over here on Albert street.
And the guy I was following, I was replacing. We were the only guys in the office, about 10 The idea was you pick up the paperwork, and you and you file it. And you had to wear one of those, those rubber thumb things. I don’t know if you still have those things that you don’t have to lick. Anyway, lunchtime came, And, my guy informed me we only had 30 minutes. I hadn’t packed a lunch, so I said, well, I’ll just run over to the Royal Oaks on Oak Street, Lansing, Grab a hotdog or something. I’ll be right back. From now on, I’ll pack a lunch.
So I drive over, run-in the side door. I run into Johnny DeMain, One of the owners, he says, Eddie O, Eddie O. What are you gonna have? What are you gonna have, kid? What are you gonna have? I was about to say I’ll have a burger, John, but Papp’s Blue Ribbon came out, and I used that little rubber thumb thing to lift that trusted glass. It worked real good. And, that was the end of my sales job. Then I started bartending, in a joint up on Belmont Avenue called the Lamppost, drinking, Couple of altercations, maybe more than a couple, going nowhere fast. Then I saw an ad in the paper for tryouts at the Youngstown playoffs, and it was The Rainmaker, and I had seen the movie. So I went now here I am, a bust out bartender trying to imitate Burt Lancaster.
It wasn’t pretty. See, I had acted a little bit in high school, and I thought, you know, I might be good at it, so I would give it a try. Couple more failed auditions. Finally got a small part in their 2nd stage, Antigone, where I played a Roman guard literally carrying a spear. Next stop was down here. I signed up for the advanced acting class with doctor Bill Holsseple, who was running the program at that time. I I still didn’t know a thing, but I loved it. And, see, that was kind of the key.
I found something that I really loved. Then I read every play I could, you know, Shakespeare, Shaw, David Mamet, Tennessee Williams, Arthur Miller, Pinter. All of them. Got in every play I could. I studied diction and my vowels, my consonants, read every book on acting, Stella Adler, Uta Hagen, Stanislavski, all of them. The trouble was I was managing the pub over here at Kilcawley for about $10 a year, and I was pushing 30. So I knew if I wanted to really be an actor, not just Bullshit myself, but become a real actor, I needed to make a move. Now I didn’t wanna go because I love Youngstown, but I knew I was running out of time.
But I kept putting it off. No. I was scared. So I was having lunch over at the Golden Dawn on Wick Avenue, and I said to myself, you know what? I’m going. I’m going to New York. I got changed from Carmen, called my boss down here, and gave my 2 weeks notice. She wished me the best of luck, I was a horseshit manager anyway. And, I sold my car, said goodbye to my family, got on a Greyhound bus, went to Manhattan, got off at Port Authority, Walked across the street to a coffee shop, asked the waitress, where do the actors live? I still can’t believe she didn’t laugh on my face, but what she was, honey, stand on the corner.
The 104 will come by. You jump on that. You take it to the seventies. That’s the neighborhood where the actors live. So I got a room in a resident hotel, the Imperial Court on West 79th Street. Used to be a beautiful building, very grand ballroom, But now was kind of the elephant burial ground for the elderly. I paid by the week, got a job busing tables at a joint called Dobson’s over by the Natural History Museum, and I had to audition for it. Me and about 4 Asian guys, they set these tables up, and you had to clear them.
The fastest guys were gonna get the job. Now they were faster than me, but my football helped me. I would knock them out of the way to get to the table. Did I mention this was kind of a gay, theatrical restaurant? And many times, I would be bent over, busing the table over here, careful. I’m behind you.
I remember 1 night after my shift, I was walking home across West 79th Street, Dead of winter, freezing cold, and the wind was coming off the Hudson. It was cutting through me like a knife. I was wearing an Air force flight jacket I bought at an army surplus store.
And I suddenly heard these sounds like moans, realized they were coming from me. And I got to my room, and I got my hot plate out, and I got my cabbage soup and a little bagel. I had a little chicken salad at a deli on 86th Street. And I suddenly was aware of the silence like I never had before. A little hiss from the radiator, the din of the traffic 9 floors below. And I thought, damn. You can always go home. But Next day, the sun had come out.
I had made it another day, and I just didn’t want the city to beat me. There was a place I used to walk by every day on West 63rd called O’Neil’s Balloon. It was owned by the actor, Patrick and his brother, Mike. And I thought I should work there. So I went in, found a manager. Guy’s name was Brian Riley. He told me there was no waiter jobs available, but that I should check back Periodically with him, asked me if I wanted a cup of coffee. I sat down.
Loved the place. Bessie Smith on the jukebox. All the waiters were actors. I recognize some very famous ballet dancers, Kelsey Kirkland, Mikhail Baryshnikov. I saw Woody Allen at a table with Dick Cavett, Lincoln Center right across the street. So I checked every day before I would go to my job at Dobson’s, and one day I came in and I saw that The Nutcracker was at Lincoln Center, so the place was jammed. And I thought, now this is a bad time. And Brian sees me, throws an apron at me, says, get to work.
Now I had never waited on a table in my life. This waiter runs up to me, gives me some slips, takes me, shows me my area, which was jammed. The waiter had just Quit. He said write down what they want, take it to the kitchen, give it to Mello. Mello, who spoke no English. Now goddammit. Get the drinks at the bar. Billy will help you.
So for the next 2 hours, it probably would have been better had you been there to appreciate it, but That’s how I got my job at O’Neil’s balloon. I finally got an acting job. It was, It was an understudy role, but it was on Broadway, Helen Hayes Theater. And 2 weeks into rehearsal, the guy I was backing up got fired. I get the job. So I go from a busboy, $40 a shift. I’m co starring in a Broadway play. Don’t ask me how that happens, but that’s how that happens.
Billy Friedkin from The French Connection and The Exorcist came to the play, hired me to be in his next movie called Cruising starring Al Pacino. From that movie, I did a movie with Christopher and Tom Berenger called the dogs of war, and I was on my way. I met a beautiful girl, a dancer from New Jersey, named Kathy Russoff, And we dated. We fell in love. We moved into her efficiency in Chelsea, and she took my job at O’Neil’s. And then after my auditions, I’d pick her up, and we’d, you know, maybe go to a movie and have a glass of wine, cup of coffee, maybe a cannoli, and see other people doing the same thing. It was great. We eventually got married.
So I kept busy, you know, plays, whatever I could do, few stints on unemployment. It was a bit of a struggle for the next few years. Then I was doing a play at the Hartford stage. It was called Of Mice and Men. I was playing Lenny. A casting director from LA was visiting his grandmother and was bored, went to the play, and then they called me the next day, and they were having an audition for a show on a new network, Fox. The show was called Married With Children. Now I read it.
I thought it was funny. I didn’t think it’d go anywhere. I mean, I thought, Who wants to see a show about a family as screwed up as yours and mine? It ran 11 years and was one of the most successful shows on television. I’ve had the good fortune of working with some of the best writers in the business. David Mamet, David Milch, Chris Lloyd, Steve Levitan, John Hughes, just to name a few. Well, now I’m in my sixties. My, that went quickly. And I’m playing Jay Pritchett on Modern Family.
This is one of the best gigs yet. You know, it’s funny. I remember when they told me thank you. When they told me that Sofia Vergara was gonna play my wife, I said, well, that makes perfect sense. A lot of my successes come from the people that I trusted. People like Kathy, who’s here, who’s here sitting over there. We have 2 lovely daughters. Anyway, I’ve worked hard.
Yeah. But I’ve had a lot of help And, great agents, managers, other actors who helped me a lot along the way. It’s been quite a ride. You know, it’s been 37 years since I left Youngstown. And, honestly, when I think of all that’s happened, I’m a bit stunned. I mean, I remember that night walking down 79th Street, you know, when I was so cold. And I think now of those little sighs as happy moans. You know what I mean? Because I was trying, and it wasn’t easy, but I didn’t quit.
I suppose if there’s any lesson to be learned at all from this it’s just never give up on yourself. Find a way or go down swinging. I, well, if you college graduates will permit me, I’d like to offer us A little bit of advice that I find helpful, don’t squat down with your spurs on. If 3 people tell you you’re sick, lie down. Never ride a tiger because you can never dismount. Chains are better pulled than pushed. Never bring a knife to a gunfight. Now I would like to congratulate you again for graduating from this fine university.
It’s a real accomplishment. Enjoy this day. If you’re alone, enjoy it. If you’re with family, friends, loved ones, enjoy it. Make it memorable. Don’t live with regret. I wanna wish all of you the best of luck. And now as Al Bundy once said, Let’s rock.
