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When I took the baton, Purdue’s anchor was slightly ahead of me. I was not intimidated. We had one hundred yards ahead of us and he did not look that fast to me. I ran hard, gained ground every few steps, and passed him on the outside, with about twenty yards to go.

I heard the crowd roar and held on to the lead, crossing the tape before all the other college boys.

I won.

A high-school freshman.

Amazing.

They gave me a blue ribbon, which I took home and showed my father. He didn’t believe me when I said I beat a college boy from Purdue. He thought I was lying. It was, I agreed, pretty far-fetched. The kid I beat was older and could really run. But I was faster—at least that day.

I was voted the most popular boy in the freshman class, but we ended up leaving Crawfordsville and returning to Danville. I envisioned myself starting my sophomore year there as a track star. At my physical, though, the doctor informed me that I had a heart murmur and prohibited me from running, thus ending my high-school athletic career.

I took the news hard, but after a brief funk, I decided the change of course was a sign that I should get serious about my life, and one night at the dinner table I announced that I wanted to become a minister. I knew that would please my mother and her very religious side of the family. The subject also intrigued me intellectually. But pretty soon I lost the fervor that inspired me to carry around a Bible and think deep thoughts. I joined the drama club instead—and found my true calling.

In those days, plays were written especially for high-school students, and with the war going on, they were mostly all propaganda. I wasn’t against being patriotic, but what about a few catchy songs and good jokes? Each one of the musicals, operettas, and comedies we performed was more boring than the one before. I still had fun, but that was really due to discovering the pure enjoyment of being in front of an audience.

I was not alone in that respect. My talented classmates included Donald O’Connor and Bobby Short, both of whom went on to become celebrated performers in their own right, Donald in movies and Bobby as one of the all-time great nightclub entertainers. Bobby could not read a note of music, but he could play anything. He was a human jukebox. We all would entertain one another with songs and make up dance moves.

My closest friends—Bob Walker, Jerry C. Wright, Harold Brown, and Bob Hackman—were also a bunch of talented cutups. We called ourselves the Burfords—Reverend Burford, Grandfather Burford, Cousin Burford, and so on. We got together and harmonized, told jokes, and invented tall tales that kept us amused. We spent hours exercising our imaginations and entertaining ourselves in those days before television and long before the Internet.

Grandfather Burford, aka Bob Hackman, was my best pal. His younger cousin Gene constantly tried to tag along with us and we would let him up to a point. Then Bob would get annoyed and tell him to scram.

Well, Gene grew up and became one of our great actors, winning two Academy Awards and receiving three other nominations. Years later, we ran into each other at a Hollywood event, and as we reminisced about our Danville childhoods, I said that I would have let him hang around if I had known he was going to become a movie star.

By my junior year, I was a big man on campus. The confidence I had gained as a young athlete affected other areas. I was elected class president and starred in school performances. I had an affable, easy sense of humor that I put to use onstage and in small groups. I enjoyed entertaining people, especially making them laugh, and to that end I cultivated an arsenal of tricks, whether it was a funny face, a pratfall, a joke, or all of the above.

I learned from the best. As a kid, I spent Saturdays in the movie theater. I sat there from eleven in the morning until nine or ten at night, till whenever my mother or father came in and dragged me out. My favorites were the comedians