Dr. Herb Tanney, a Solvang internist and endocrinologist
who retired last year, started his medical career by working hard, never taking
a vacation so he could build up his private practice.
And he was, by all accounts, an excellent doctor who was
quite successful in his practice.
“He was the best diagnostician I ever came across,” said
his former nurse, Sharon Robinson, who worked with Tanney for almost 19 years
at the Valley Medical Clinic in Solvang. “Patients came from all over to see
him.”
And that is all very admirable. But how many physicians do
you know who have a Screen Actors Guild card?
You see, in addition to being a physician, the good doctor
has appeared in 19 movies, most of which were Blake Edwards projects.
A balding man with a mustache and goatee, Tanney lives in
the Santa Ynez Valley with his wife, DonnaRae, a substitute teacher in the
valley. He is the father of seven (yes, seven) daughters.
Tanney speaks just softly enough that listeners must pay
close attention. And paying attention to the doctor pays off because he has
some good stories to tell about his years in the movies.
Tanney received his medical degree from the University of
Buffalo Medical School and interned and served his residency in internal
medicine at Los Angeles County General Hospital.
After a one-year fellowship in endocrinology at the
University of Southern California, he began a private practice in Beverly Hills
in 1962.
It wasn’t long before Blake Edwards became his patient.
Edwards then referred his wife, Julie Andrews, to Tanney in 1966, and the rest,
as they say, is history.
Vacation
time
“Blake and I became good buddies, socially and medically,”
Tanney says. “A lot of people I met in movies became my patients.”
Shortly after Tanney met Edwards, the director asked him
why he never took a vacation.
“I told him I
just got started in private practice, and if I went away I’d have no income,
but I would still have the continuing expenses of the mortgage and electricity,”
he says. “Then I would have to add the cost of the vacation on top of all of
that.”
So Edwards thought about it and told Tanney he would just
put him in one of his movies. Nineteen movies later, Tanney has traveled the
world, much of it on Hollywood’s dime.
“He paid all of my expenses,” he says. “I had limos, first
class tickets, the best hotels, and he usually bought dinner. Plus he gave my
wife a per diem, which she used to buy purses and clothes.”
Not a bad way to take vacations.
Tanney made his film debut in the 1970s “Darling Lili” as
a gypsy violinist, an instrument he learned to play when he was 9 years old.
He made up the name “Sascha Tanney” for his screen credit
for that first movie. After that, he was in almost every Blake Edward’s film,
each time choosing a first name beginning with the letter “S” followed by his
real last name, to wit, Sputare, Savant, Sy, Sol Vang (how clever), Stuart,
Steem, Sacerdo, Stanley, Shep, etc.
“I was called ‘One Take Tanney,’” he says. “Blake said
that was because he knew I’d never do it any better.”
James
Garner
Other patients of Tanney included Peter Sellers, Burt
Reynolds, James Garner and Bo Derek.
One story he tells is about his nurse and James Garner,
who was visiting the doctor for a general assessment.
When the nurse went into the exam room to take Garner’s
blood pressure and medical history, she got star-struck when she saw who the
patient was.
“She quickly took his medical history, asked him to strip
from the waist down and then ran out of the room,” Tanney says. “When she
realized what she had said, she ran back to the exam room to find Jim standing
there with a big grin on his face.”
Garner had obviously run into adoring, stammering females
before.
“You never knew who was going to call the office,” said
Robinson, who said she is not the nurse who was flustered by Garner. “There
were a lot of movie stars.”
Valley
home
After his Malibu home burned to the ground in a 1985 wild
fire, Bo Derek suggested he rebuild in the valley because he enjoyed it so much
when he visited her and her husband, John.
“I remember the first time I came over the pass and saw
the beautiful Lake Cachuma and the valley …” he says, not finishing the
thought.
His last film, “Son of the Pink Panther (with his screen
credit as “Sputare Tanney”), was released in 1993. Today, this
doctor-slash-actor is retired from both careers.
He pulls out a manila folder containing photos of him in
many of his movie rolls. Most of them are pictures of him with various movie
stars or of him in costume on set. It’s a set of photos he clearly cherishes as
private and is reluctant to see them published.
Finally, proudly, he takes the SAG card from his wallet.
The gold and black piece of plastic shows he has been a member of the guild
since 1970.
And it was all because he wouldn’t take a vacation.
Reach Barbara Lanz-Mateo at bmateo@syvjournal.com.