"Walter also kept himself going by keeping an account book recording his earnings, starting from the first day he showed up on a movie set. He liked to turn the pages and see the entries for $7.50 until he got to one in which he had written "with giddy gayness" $15.00 for one day's work. Subsequent pages still had entries for $7.50, but more frequently, he noted earnings of $50.00 and $75.00, after which the pay continued to increase. But he never forgot what it meant to be a day laborer, and to be, for years, on the margins of the movie business. Even at his most successful, Walter maintained his identity as an outsider and cultivated a mentality that surely contributed to his role as "the Colonel" in Meet John Doe (May 3, 1941)."