On set · A Night of Courage
One Take Hernandez
A film set runs on two things: time and money. When David Hernandez landed a role in A Night of Courage, an ABC Monday Night Movie, he was working alongside Geraldine Fitzgerald, Barnard Hughes and Daniel Hugh Kelly, and he kept doing the one thing that makes everyone watching the clock breathe easier. He got his scenes in one take.
Not once, but again and again. The camera rolled, David delivered, the scene was done, and the crew moved on to the next setup. Every scene that didn’t need a second or third try was money saved and schedule kept, and the producer noticed. Before long he had a name for the actor from Chicago: “One Take Hernandez.”
Then the director paid him a compliment. His acting on camera, the director said, had a natural, old-school feel, and that made him one in a million.
That kind of thing, the director told him, can’t be learned.
The nickname stuck. So did the compliment.
Watch David’s scenes from A Night of Courage in the reel section, or see his full credits on IMDb.
Humboldt Park · Civic Opera House
The Green Limousine
Long before anybody called him One Take Hernandez, David was a teenager who had run away from home, living on the streets of Chicago around Humboldt Park. He had a friend who could really sing, and the two of them heard about an audition: a one-night musical tribute to Marvin Gaye at the Civic Opera House.
They rode there in style, in what David calls the “green limousine”: a CTA bus. The whole ride over, the bus was their rehearsal room. They sang. They beatboxed. By the time they got off, they were warmed up and ready.
When they got there, his friend insisted that David go first, to calm the nerves. So David walked in and, as he puts it, acted a little and sang a little less. His friend didn’t let that slide. David’s singing, he joked, was “on crutches.”
Then the call came. His friend didn’t get cast. David did, as a singing taxi driver, with a weekly check and daily voice lessons.
The kid from Humboldt Park had something the room was looking for: a different sazón.
Wichita, Kansas · KSAS-TV
Down the Road a Spell
There was a stretch when David stepped away from film and television altogether and moved to Wichita, Kansas. He worked overnight shifts at KSAS-TV, the city’s FOX station, working alone through the night while the city slept.
Kansas got into his voice without asking permission. When he came back home to Chicago, it took him about six months to shake the sayings he had picked up out there:
- “Down the road a spell.”
- “Same dog with a different collar.”
- “Would you like that in a sack?”
In Chicago, of course, it’s a bag.
