man from the days when he was Sam Goldfish, an immigrant from Poland.
I knew him as Jesse Lasky’s partner when Geraldine Farrar came out
from New York to make _Joan of Arc_ in 1915. In fact, I made a couple
of silent pictures for him. I helped get an honorary Oscar for Harold
Russell, the miraculous, handless ex-GI in Sam’s _Best Years of Our
Lives_. Harold also collected one as best supporting actor, thus
squeezing out Clifton Webb, who was the favorite that year in that
category.
Samuel was Mr. Charm himself then; we were friends, especially if he’d
had a tiff with Louella. But a few lines in print ended our life-term
friendship. He hasn’t spoken to me since. It’s gall to him that _Porgy
and Bess_ was one of his few failures, a dull, photographed opera with
no heart, soul, or finesse, where Mamoulian could have made it a thing
of beauty, like the original _Porgy_, which had me weeping tears of
compassion as I first saw it in a New York theater.
* * * * *
Beverly Hills is my home. I’ve lived in the same house there for
twenty-two years. When I walk my gray French poodle, Beau Beau, a gift
from Ann Sheridan, I pass the house of Ned Washington, who wrote such
scintillating songs as “My Foolish Heart,” “I’ll Walk Alone,” “When You
Wish Upon a Star.” Across from him resides Pete Smith, retired now,
whose movie short subjects had audiences in gales of laughter for more
than a generation.
Then there’s the home of Ann and Jack Warner, with its private golf
course and tennis court. In the drawing room hangs her portrait by
Salvador Dali, the finest he’s painted.... There’s the house of Mr. and
Mrs. Bruno Pagliai. We knew her first as Merle Oberon, then as Lady
Alexander Korda. After their divorce she married Lucien Ballard, one of
our finest cinematographers. She longed for children but could have
none, even after several operations. So after her marriage to Bruno,
she adopted a boy and a girl.
Next to the Pagliais live Ketti and Kurt Frings. Ketti adapted for the
stage _Look Homeward, Angel_, which boosted Tony Perkins to stardom.
Kurt is the agent who got Elizabeth Taylor the first million-dollar
picture salary in our history.
Turning into Roxbury Drive, I pass the home of Lucille Ball, who knew
joy and sorrow there with Desi Arnaz and now is happy as a lark with
her new husband, Gary Morton. Tallulah Bankhead and I were among
the dinner guests in that house once, when Tallu was appearing the
following day on “I Love Lucy.” Desi seated me on his right, a place
which Tallu insisted should be hers. But Hopper can be stubborn as an
Amish mule, and the brickbats started to fly. We couldn’t get her out
of the house until 1:30 A.M. At the “Lucy” filming Lucille was nervous
as a cat over the events of the previous night. She forgot her lines
for the first time in her life. Tallulah, who’d been appalling during
rehearsals, sailed through her performance like Eleanora Duse.
Lucy’s neighbors are Mary and Jack Benny, who’ve never changed marriage
partners or their way of life. Jack doesn’t stop working; Mary, like
Gracie Allen, refuses to set foot on a TV sound stage again.
Up the street, you find Jeanne Crain and Paul Brinkman and their six
children, all happy as hooligans. Better look sharp as you pass or
you’ll trip over roller skates, a tricycle, or a baseball bat on the
sidewalk.
Next door is a house of sorrow--Rosemary Clooney and her five children
live there with no husband or father to guide them. José Ferrer moved
out. Also on this street are the Ira Gershwins; the Thomas Mitchells;
Aggie Moorehead in the house where Sigmund Romberg used to make music
and feed us every Sunday night. In this block, too, stands the Spanish
house where Liz Taylor lived with her parents when she was making
_National Velvet_, too young to be interested in men or even boys.
Then I pass what was once the home of Sir Charles and Lady Mendl, a
monstrous Spanish affair that Elsie Mendl made over into a thing of
beauty. Never was an off-color joke allowed to be told when she was
present. Ludwig Bemelmans, who had a Rabelaisian sense of humor, repaid
her hospitality by adorning the powder-room walls with some outrageous
pictures. She took one horrified look and ordered the walls repainted
immediately. Elsie, ninety-five pounds of energy, fun, and good taste,
received Sir Charles in her bedroom only after she had granted him
permission via his valet.
Charles and I used to walk by the mile together, apparently the only
residents of Beverly who applied their legs to such purpose. Though
he’d known seventeen European monarchs in his day--including the Duke
of Windsor, whom Charles didn’t much care for--he steadfastly turned
down my pleas for him to write the Mendl memoirs.
Charles earned his knighthood as press attaché to the British Embassy
in Paris when Ramsay MacDonald was Prime Minister. MacDonald,
unsophisticated as a newborn baby, fell into the clutches of a wise and
beautiful woman. He was indiscreet enough to write her letters that a
schoolboy would have blushed over. The problem was how to recover them
without scandal or the outlay of a mint of money.
Someone thought of Charles Mendl, who had a way with the ladies and
adored them one and all. He was delighted to accept the assignment. The
lady was so pleased with him that she produced the letters for them to
read together, roaring with laughter. She presented them to him as a
souvenir of many happy hours, and she collected a few thousand pounds
for her trouble. The Empire was saved; Charles was knighted.
* * * * *
No wonder psychiatrists flourish in our town. There are nearly
two hundred of them. Bedford Drive and Roxbury Drive, where their
consulting rooms are concentrated, are known as Libido Lane and Couch
Canyon. Louis Mayer once had his whole family analyzed by the same
woman. I went to her once to see how she’d react to my being a patient.
“You’d have me on the couch in nothing flat,” she said. “Out you go.” I
went.
_Six_
The one and only exclusive interview I had with Marlon Brando lasted
half an hour. As the minutes ticked by he sat posed like Rodin’s
“Thinker” contemplating a bust of Stanislavski. He paid no more heed
to me than if I’d been a ladybug squatting on the back of his canvas
chair. With a snap of the fingers, I brought him out of his trance.
“Have you been listening, Mr. Brando?”
“Sure.”
“Do you care to answer my questions?”
“I don’t believe so.”
“Then may I tell you that I didn’t want this interview? Your producer,
Stanley Kramer, insisted that I do it. You needn’t submit yourself to
further agony. Thanks for nothing, and good day.”
I walked off the set of _The Men_, and I haven’t set foot on any Brando
set from that day on. Every studio he has worked for has tried to coax
me back. But I can’t be insulted twice, not if I know what’s going to
happen.
I regard him as a supreme egotist, for want of a better term, whose
good performances, like those in _On the Waterfront_ and _A Streetcar
Named Desire_, I recognize. I understand that he refers to me as “The
One with the Hat.” He has been known variously as “the male Garbo”
and “Dostoevski’s Tom Sawyer.” He’s doing extremely well without my
support in piling up millions. He’s a dedicated ringleader in a current
melodrama which can be called “Viva Brando; or, The Actor’s Revenge.”
When he originally landed here in 1950, he carried his entire wardrobe
in a canvas satchel: two pairs of blue jeans, four T shirts, two pairs
of socks, and the works of the philosopher Spinoza, who teaches that
everything is decreed by God and is therefore necessarily good. Marlon
immediately labeled Hollywood a “cultural boneyard.”
He said then: “My objective is to submit myself to what I think and
feel until I’m in a position to think and feel as I please.” It took
ten years to do it, but he made it in spades in _Mutiny on the Bounty_.
He also said: “The only reason I’m here is because I don’t yet have the
moral strength to turn down the money.”
When Stanley Kramer telephoned him in Paris about doing _The Men_,
Marlon had two questions: “Do you want me for more than one film? How
much will you pay?” From a $50,000 fee for _The Men_, he went, via
_Streetcar_, to $150,000 in _Viva Zapata_. More recently, he held out
for every cent of net profits, leaving the studio to collect nothing
more than a percentage of the gross as distributor. His asking price
now is a million dollars a performance.
The town should have known what to expect on the strength of reports
from Broadway and his nerve-racking portrayal in the theater of Stanley
Kowalski, the cave-man lover of _Streetcar_. Irene Selznick, who
produced the play, gave an opening-night party at “21” which Marlon
reluctantly attended. Jerome Zerbe, the society photographer and
columnist, was there, and Irene asked if he’d invite Marlon over to be
photographed with her, not for publicity but for her personal album.
Crossing the room, Zerbe passed on the request to Marlon, who turned
him down flat. “Why should I be photographed with her?”
“Well, she’s your producer, after all.”
“Means nothing to me,” said the newest sensation of Broadway, aged
twenty-three. Zerbe broke the news to Irene and exchanged no more words
with Marlon until Gertrude Lawrence and Beatrice Lillie, arriving late,
picked their way through the crowd to Zerbe and made a fuss over him.
Now Marlon could see that Jerome was socially “in”; he made a beeline
for him. “I’ll pose for that picture now,” he offered.
Zerbe, a proud man, was halfway toward the door on his way out. “You
won’t pose for me,” he said flatly. “I wouldn’t photograph you if you
were the last man on this earth.”
I once put a question to Marlon asking his opinion of acting as a
profession. “If you’re successful,” he replied, “it’s about as soft a
job as anybody could ever wish for. But if you’re unsuccessful, it’s
worse than having a skin disease.”
Social ailments of various kinds hold a strange attraction for him.
When reporters used to ask him about some chapters of his younger days,
he would tell them he couldn’t give an adequate answer because at the
time he wasn’t feeling too well. The favorite theme cropped up again
when he was making _Mutiny on the Bounty_ in Tahiti. By then, the
joke was on him, but he was drawing $5000 a day overtime and spouting
another favorite thought in slightly altered words: “After you’ve got
enough money, money doesn’t matter.”
He arrived in Hollywood with a hole in the knee of his only pair of
pants, and a large-sized chip on his shoulder. Though there were
stories of such generosity as tipping a New York shoeshine boy with a
five-dollar bill “because I felt sorry for him,” he appeared to resent
spending money, even a dime. If he could get an agent or reporter
to buy him a dinner, a drink, or even a cup of coffee, he was in a
good mood for hours. He refused to load himself down with a house,
swimming pool, convertible, fancy wardrobe, or any such items which the
“cultural boneyard” usually regards as the accompaniments to a soaring
career.
Producers, if they can, cultivate extravagance on the part of the
stars. They see to it that their puppets stagger under piles of
possessions and towering stacks of bills. Studios will lend money so
it seems easy to buy the house with the swimming pool at $200,000.
The debt becomes a sword to dangle over the star’s head if he shows
signs of resentment about making a particular picture. Arguments about
“artistic integrity” are as effective as paper darts against a studio
that holds the mortgage.
To his credit, in more ways than one, Marlon was in no danger on
that score. “Just because the big shots were nice to me,” he told a
reporter, “I saw no reason to overlook what they did to others and to
ignore the fact that they morally behave with the hostility of ants at
picnics.”
He is turning the picnic tables with a vengeance on the “ants.” Their
one-sided admiration of Brando (they used to call him “the best actor
in the world” on weekdays and a “genius” on Sundays) got chipped when
Twentieth Century-Fox cast him in a stinker called _The Egyptian_.
He objected, but they imagined they had soothed him and went ahead
building sets, making costumes, signing other players. When the
first day of shooting arrived, Brando did not. Instead, his New York
psychoanalyst sent a telegram: BRANDO VERY SICK.
* * * * *
Breaking a contract is a refined art, which skillful performers conduct
with the finesse of brain surgeons. A classic case is provided by Jerry
Lewis after he broke with Dean Martin when they were under contract to
make three more pictures for Hal Wallis.
Wallis had the legal right to have them complete the contract, no
matter what carnage would have resulted. Martin and Lewis’ agents,
the Music Corporation of America, talked to him but they got nowhere.
Attorneys tried to argue with him, but Wallis is, among other things, a
stubborn man. It took a press agent to recall the time-tested formula.
“You call Mr. Wallis,” the agent told Jerry, “and invite him to lunch
at the Hillcrest Country Club. Sit him down and say: ‘Have you ever
had a picture that began, Scene one, take eighty-five?’ Tell him that
you’re ready to devote six months of your life to his next Martin and
Lewis picture; that you understand his problem, so you’ve reserved a
suite at Mount Sinai Hospital for him as your guest. Because you know
he’s going to get a coronary from the aggravation that’s coming to him.”
The press agent continued: “Also tell Wallis: ‘You know my own medical
history. I only pray to God we don’t get in the middle of this thing
before I have to take to my bed again.’”
Jerry took Hal Wallis to lunch at Hillcrest and said his piece. Wallis
heard him out, then conceded: “I get your point. I’ll start with you
alone in a new picture next month.” No further movie with Dean Martin
was discussed.
Marlon didn’t get off so lightly when he tangled with Fox. The studio
pushed Edmond Purdom into _The Egyptian_, which was a great mistake,
and sued Brando for two million dollars. He settled by agreeing to play
Napoleon in a turgid flop called _Desirée_.
The studio bosses are proof positive that you can fool yourself most of
the time over stars who, when the fancy strikes them, delight in doing
in the people who put up the money. The producers ignore any flop these
highly prized players make and hypnotize themselves by repeating over
and over: “We can’t go wrong this time; it’s our turn to be lucky.”
They blind themselves to the fact that these stars jeer at the money
men, make fools of them, regard them deep down as their sworn enemies
with the I.Q. of idiots.
Marlon got into stride when he made _One-Eyed Jacks_, a simple Western
that was going to cost no more than $1,800,000 and a few months to
complete. First casualty was the director, Stanley Kubrick, who
retreated in the early stages of production and abandoned the field to
Brando. On his first day as director, Marlon threw away the script and
announced: “We’re going to improvise.” For the next half year, he and
his crew ran up production bills of $42,000 a day.
He had them spending hours on the shores of the Pacific waiting for the
water to “look more dramatic.” He’d start the cameras, then sit with
his head between his knees for twenty minutes or more until he got in
the mood. As a good democrat, he let his actors vote for the last reel
they liked best, and that was the ending he used, though he didn’t
care for it himself.
When the front office at Paramount got uneasy and costs passed the
$6,000,000 mark, Marlon turned surly: “I’m shooting a movie, not
a schedule.” There were days, I’m sure, when Y. Frank Freeman,
head of Paramount, would have liked to clobber him, while Marlon
went on playing his favorite mumbling, lurching, behind-scratching
character--himself. Paramount has long since given up hope of getting
its money back, much less of making a profit.
But when _Mutiny_ came around, Metro recited the old mumbo jumbo:
“We can’t go wrong on this.” Sol Siegel, who ran the studio, would
settle for nobody but Marlon as top star. That little decision, along
with several other lulus along the way, cost well over $20,000,000
before the picture was wound up. Marlon enjoyed $1,250,000 for his
contributions, along with ten per cent of the gross and an incredible
contract giving him the final word on scenes taken on Tahiti.
Screen rights to the original novel by Charles Nordhoff and James
Norman Hall were bought by the late Frank Lloyd, a fine, free-lance
director, for only $12,000. In order to make the picture and gather the
cast he’d set his heart on, he was compelled to sell those rights back
to Irving Thalberg at Metro for precisely what they had cost.
Metro’s first flash of creative genius called for Wallace Beery to
play Captain Bligh in the breath-catching tale of eighteenth-century
mutiny on the high seas aboard the British merchantman _Bounty_. They
envisaged the sadistic captain as a comical old coot pursued by his
wife and twelve children. Talked out of that, Thalberg signed Charles
Laughton, who for weeks had to be rowed slowly around Catalina Island,
flat on his back on the floorboards, to teach his protesting digestion
that seasickness was not permissible during working hours.
Louis B. Mayer didn’t think much of the script: “Where’s the romance?”
he demanded. Gable didn’t like the idea of playing Fletcher Christian,
leader of the mutineers and his finest role up to that date. Eddie
Mannix talked him around: “You’re the only guy in the picture who gets
anything to do with a dame.” I’ll never know why they didn’t reissue
the old _Mutiny_ after Clark’s death--it would have made $5,000,000 and
saved Metro a truckload of ulcers.
Frank Lloyd’s picture was ten months in the making, from his first
background shooting on Tahiti to its presentation in November 1935.
The bills amounted to $1,700,000, the most expensive MGM production
of those days. Front-office opposition grew stronger month by month.
To satisfy Nick Schenck, a rough cut was sent to New York with the
strict understanding that it would be run only for him to see. He had
it screened before an audience of four hundred people and afterward
delivered himself of this undying judgment: “Tell Thalberg it’s the
worst picture MGM ever made.”
* * * * *
The second version of _Mutiny_ got under way when an MGM expedition
arrived on Tahiti at the height of the rainy season. It had to run
before the weather and go back later for another try. The first of the
thirty scripts to be completed by five writers, including Eric Ambler
and Charles Lederer, was meantime coming hot off the typewriters.
Life on French Tahiti, where society is very proper and the caste
system very strong, livened up considerably when Marlon debarked. He
unearthed a series of hide-outs to which he would retire when the mood
came upon him. On bad days hours would roll by while messengers tracked
him down so that filming could resume.
His taste in girls has always been off-beat, from the Hindu
impersonator, Anna Kashfi, whom he married and divorced; through the
fisherman’s daughter, Josanne Mariana-Berenger, to a barefoot waitress
whom he found on Tahiti.
The first major casualty among the company was Oscar-winning Hugh
Griffith, who was eased off the island by the French authorities after
some spectacular high jinks. Another Briton, Sir Carol Reed, hired to
direct, was replaced when it developed that he saw Captain Bligh as the
hero, not Fletcher Christian. At the speed at which he was shooting,
it would have taken years to finish the picture.
Sir Carol had also made the basic error of believing that when he told
Marlon to do something in front of the camera, Marlon would obey. Reed
was succeeded by Lewis Milestone, director and diplomat, who grew
accustomed to handling difficult situations with kid gloves.
There were plenty to handle. The movie makers hit the South Seas
like a typhoon. Liquor poured over the island like the Johnstown
flood. A French naval lieutenant ran off with the second native lead
halfway through filming, so that in one version two girls mysteriously
alternated in playing the romantic scenes without a word of explanation
being offered.
Marlon at one point was bowled over in a double feature by a popular
local infection and a virus, forcing him to take to his bed for three
weeks.
Aaron Rosenberg, the producer, couldn’t make a move without being
balked and countermanded by cable and telephone from Metro’s front
office, where Siegel found his reputation at stake. On Tahiti there was
panic at the lack of a script. A succession of writers, concluding with
Lederer, worked against the clock to get out scenes, often only one day
in advance of shooting, sometimes rewriting lines at lunch time for the
afternoon shift.
“In one two-week period we shot only two small scenes,” Richard Harris
told me during filming--he came close to stealing the picture as one
of the mutineers. “That wasn’t surprising since Brando was constantly
demanding that scenes be rewritten. You never knew where the hell you
were.” Marlon added his own seasoning to the stew by toying with the
idea at one point of abandoning the part of Christian and taking on a
different role in the picture.
Trevor Howard, playing Captain Bligh, left for home swearing: “Never
again will I take part in an epic,” and to prove his point he turned
down _Cleopatra_. He thought it was “the greatest travesty in the
world to allow Brando to snap and snarl at me.”
In their steamy tents the sweating writers invented a game to preserve
their sanity. They made up imaginary labels to hang on the cast. Trevor
Howard: “a deafening answer to no question.” Aaron Rosenberg: “the
persistent marshmallow.” For Brando, they had a tag so obscene that he
brooded for days, trying in vain to think of some way to strike back at
them.
At work, on a typical morning, he’d stand on the Bounty deck, draw
his cutlass, and yell at the ship’s company: “I now take command of
this....” At that second, his memory would falter. The crew and other
cast members filled in for him. “Train?” somebody suggested. Marlon
nodded his thanks and take eighteen began. This time he got it right
... “command of this ship.”
Charles Lederer insisted: “Brando is responsible for a great deal of
whatever brilliance the picture has. But neither he nor anybody else
I know can improvise and be better in five minutes on the set than a
writer with three weeks at a typewriter.”
Marlon’s enthusiasm touched rock bottom when it came to playing scenes
supposedly on Pitcairn Island, where the _Bounty_ mutineers landed.
Rosenberg ordered him to perform. Richard Harris related the rest of
the story: “Brando fouled it up good. He came to work for a few days,
but I thought he was acting as though he wanted to scuttle it. So I
finally told him: ‘When you’re willing to perform like a pro, I’ll be
in my dressing room.’ The picture was suspended for three days, while
they tried to get him to resume, but not a word about it got into
print--it was all suppressed.”
The cast didn’t know what they were doing most of the time because the
next scene usually contradicted whatever they were trying to play.
Harris had another clash with Brando. He told me: “Brando said: ‘This
is the final script. I want nothing changed, not a line, not a comma.’
On the strength of that, I memorized eight pages. We rehearsed it in
the morning, went to lunch, and prepared to shoot in the afternoon.”
The company returned after the break, and the cameras rolled. Then
“Cut!” Harris related: “They told me I was wrong. When I asked why, I
found out they’d changed the script during lunch. I demanded that the
producer be brought to the set.”
Aaron Rosenberg didn’t know that changes had been made. “Actors,” said
Brando to Harris, “are paid to do their jobs without opinion.”
Harris exploded. “You like to pull the strings as though others are
puppets. This scene was changed because you demanded it.” At that point
Lewis Milestone walked off the set. So did Harris, who’s an outspoken
Irishman. “When Mr. Brando is ready to perform, I’m available,” he said
once more.