Nicholson

by Marc Eliot

  Wherever they went the film opened big, and on those nights they found themselves swarmed by hordes of pot-smoking hot young women willing to audition for anything the two wished. Paris was one long party where Jack took to wearing a beret wherever he went. He was swarmed by paparazzi in Rome; one asked Jack to remove the beret and his dark sunglasses for the sake of a better shot. “Oh no,” Jack said, flashing his signature grin. “I never take the hat off. I even sleep with it on.” He then explained that he was “resodding” his balding hairline with transplants and had to wear the beret to protect the freshly injected follicles. Nor would he remove his Wayfarers. “With my sunglasses on I’m Jack Nicholson …”

  The party finally ended when Jack had to return to America to promote The Missouri Breaks and prepare for the Oscars, where he hoped this time he would get what he deserved.

  While Jack was away, Anjelica, fed up with Jack’s philandering, wasn’t content with sitting home waiting for the phone to ring. She decided to fly to England, to South Kensington, to visit her ex-lover Ryan O’Neal. They had been together briefly between his first two marriages, to Joanna Moore and Leigh Taylor-Young, and before she had hooked up with Bob Richardson. They stayed in the same luxury hotel suite and never left it the entire time she was there. They ate, slept, and made love all in the same luxurious king-size bed. When Jack found out, from a paparazzo, which may have been the whole point, he said, rather grimly, “I don’t want to be mentioned in the same sentence as O’Neal. We [once were] but are no longer friends. But I don’t want to talk about why.”

  As it happened, O’Neal had been Bob Evans’s fair-haired boy during the filming of Love Story when Evans had been head of production at Paramount, and Jack had gotten to know O’Neal a little because Jack got to know everybody. He could run all around Europe with Michael Douglas screwing anything that moved, but when he found out about Anjelica and O’Neal, he was hurt; it was indicative of how he saw their relationship. She was, in some ways, supposed to be the patient mother so he could be the eternal bad boy. She wasn’t going to play that game.

  When she and Jack returned separately to Los Angeles, Anjelica gave him an ultimatum of sorts. She said she wanted to be married, and he said he had already been down that road and it didn’t work for him, but if she gave him a little time he would try to get there. She said she would give him some time, not a lot, and if he didn’t marry her then that would be it.

  It was where their relationship stood on the night of the Academy Awards ceremony, held once again at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, this year on March 29, 1976. The hosting duties were divided between Goldie Hawn, representing “new” Hollywood, and veteran song-and-dance man Gene Kelly holding up the rear. Additional individual segments were given to actors Walter Matthau, George Segal, and Robert Shaw. One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest had been nominated for nine Oscars, including Best Actor for Jack Nicholson. The film that early on had been considered its biggest competition was Hal Ashby’s Shampoo, Warren Beatty’s film about a sex-crazed hairdresser that was loosely based on the wild life of Jay Sebring, one of the guests killed at Sharon Tate’s house the night of the Manson murders. Shampoo was nominated for four Oscars—Best Actor in a Supporting Role (Jack Warden), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Lee Grant), Best Original Screenplay (Robert Towne and Warren Beatty), and Best Art Direction (Richard Sylbert, W. Stewart Campbell, and George Gaines). Beatty was not nominated for Best Actor.

  Jack showed up that night wearing a tuxedo, and something new—a hairpiece, to cover the still-visible transplants—and his requisite Wayfarers. He had Anjelica on one arm, looking beautiful, and as always his daughter, Jennifer, on the other, now twelve and an increasingly frequent visitor at Jack’s house, as she was old enough now to be able to fly by herself nonstop from Hawaii to Hollywood with relative ease. Sandra, who had since remarried, having met a spiritual leader she’d fallen in love with, was fine with it.

  Jack and company were seated so that he was next to Michael Douglas, who was there with Brenda Vaccaro (his soon-to-be ex; Charles Champlin, in the Los Angeles Times, reported that Vaccaro’s relationship with Michael was now officially in the “friend” stage and she was shopping for a house of her own). She was also nominated, for Best Supporting Actress for her work in Guy Greene’s Once Is Not Enough, which starred Kirk Douglas in a soapy adaptation of Jacqueline Susann’s novel of the same name.

  Things did not begin auspiciously for Jack and his team. Cuckoo’s Nest lost its first four nominations.

  With each successive loss, Jack slid lower in his seat. He was sure now that the Nicholson Oscar curse was operating on schedule and was going to spell doom for Cuckoo’s Nest. At one point, he put his fingers up to cover his lips from the TV cameras and whispered to Michael, “I told you!” After the first four losses, Jack was sure he had no chance of winning. “The people who vote for these things don’t like me much,” he rationalized to one interviewer prior to the ceremony. “You see, I don’t spend my time doing charity. And that’s very important to the Academy, the image you create. It’s not that I’ve got anything against charitable work. It’s just that I don’t have the time.”8

  And then the tide turned, and Cuckoo’s Nest began its legendary run for glory. The nominations for Best Screenplay Adapted from Other Material were Stanley Kubrick, for Barry Lyndon; John Huston and Gladys Hill, for The Man Who Would Be King; Ruggero Maccari and Dino Risi, for Scent of a Woman; Neil Simon, for The Sunshine Boys; and Laurence Hauben and Bo Goldman, for Cuckoo’s Nest (but not Ken Kesey, who was not approved by the Writers Guild to be listed as one of the screenwriters). There was a pause as Gore Vidal read the winning names. “Laurence Hauben and Bo Goldman!” The two men rushed to the stage and Hauben took over the microphone to thank the Academy and his fellow workers on the film by telling them, “They are some of the most finest people I’ve ever known!”

  Louise Fletcher, the forty-one-year-old actress, then pulled one of the great upsets in Academy history when she won Best Performance by an Actress, despite the less-than-spectacular competition that year: Ann-Margret in Tommy, whose chances were hurt by her comparison to her role in Carnal Knowledge, the film she should have won for; Isabelle Adjani in François Truffaut’s The Story of Adele H., about French national hero Victor Hugo’s daughter’s relationship with a soldier, a film almost nobody in America saw; Glenda Jackson in Trevor Nunn’s Hedda, his film version of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler that even fewer people saw; and Carol Kane in Joan Micklin Silver’s also little-seen Hester Street. When Fletcher’s name was announced, she smiled, went up to the stage, thanked everybody, and ended her short speech by simultaneously speaking and signing in American Sign Language so that her deaf mother could “hear” her. Translated into words, she said, “I want to say thank you for teaching me to have a dream. You are seeing my dream come true.” The Chandler Pavilion erupted.

  Now it was time for Best Director. To present, Diane Keaton appeared with director William Wyler. The nominees included Miloš Forman, now the odds-on favorite; Robert Altman, for his hugely entertaining ensemble film Nashville; Federico Fellini, for Amarcord, a great movie few in America saw but those who did liked; Stanley Kubrick, for Barry Lyndon, a film that a lot of people saw and few liked; and Sidney Lumet, for Dog Day Afternoon. And the winner was … Miloš Forman, for Cuckoo’s Nest. The audience that night loved his enthusiastic adrenaline-driven acceptance speech.

  Best Actor came next. The nominees were Walter Matthau, for The Sunshine Boys; Al Pacino, for Dog Day Afternoon; Maximilian Schell, for The Man in the Glass Booth, a film based on a play inspired by the trial of Adolf Eichmann, written by Harold Pinter; James Whitmore as Harry Truman in Steve Binder’s blah Give ’Em Hell, Harry!, which had no chance, Harry; and Jack Nicholson for his astonishing immersion-therapy performance.

  When presenter Art Carney called out Jack’s name, the audience stood and applauded as he flashed them a million-dollar grin, yanked off his Wayfarers, sprinted down the aisle as if
he were dribbling in for a layup, and strode onto the majestic stage of the Chandler Pavilion. (The TV camera picked up Walter Matthau in close-up, clearly mouthing to his wife, “It’s about time.”)

  As Jack accepted the Oscar, in a bit of poetic justice handed to him by Carney, he said into the mike, “I guess this proves there are as many nuts in the Academy as anywhere else!” The audience roared. Because he was fully expecting to go home a five-time loser, smiling Jack had no victory speech prepared, so he started off thanking, of all people, the legendary Mary Pickford, who just minutes earlier had been honored with a special Academy Honorary Award she accepted at Pickfair, telecast live via the then complicated remote pickup. After a few more mandatory thank-yous, Jack ended his short speech by saying, “Last but not least, [I’d like to thank] my agent who, about ten years ago, advised me that I had no business being an actor.” Another round of spirited applause, and Jack happily exited the stage accompanied on either side by two gorgeous starlets, both nearly a head taller than him, with Carney picking up the rear.

  Audrey Hepburn was given the honor of announcing the winner of the last award of the evening, Best Picture, but it almost didn’t have to be called. There wasn’t a person in the house who didn’t now know that Cuckoo’s Nest was going to beat Barry Lyndon, Dog Day Afternoon, Nashville, and the super-successful summer horror flick Jaws.

  Even before the word One left her mouth, Michael jumped up as if someone had put an electric charge in his seat. When he got to the stage he excitedly told the audience that this was “the first time since It Happened One Night in 1937! [sic].”9 To banging applause, Michael left the stage with Zaentz. For the paparazzi, they hugged and kissed their Oscars and held them in the air like the trophies of triumph that they were. Michael joked, “It’s all downhill from here.”

  Kirk Douglas didn’t bother to attend. Although afterward, Michael told reporters that Kirk was in Palm Springs and didn’t want to distract from his son’s big night, Kirk was at home in Beverly Hills, simmering as he watched the whole thing on TV.

  For Louise Fletcher, who had been nobody’s first choice for the role of Nurse Ratched—far from it; she was not pretty enough to be a leading lady, not unattractive enough to be a character actress, and too old to play ingénues—this was the highlight of her career. She would make more than fifty movies in her career and do good TV work, but name-above-the-title star status ultimately eluded her. For Forman, the win propelled him to the A-list of Hollywood studio directors, and a few years later he would win another Oscar for Amadeus, produced by Saul Zaentz (without Michael Douglas). After the excitement died down, when Forman asked his two young sons what they wanted to do to celebrate, they said they wanted to meet Columbo (Peter Falk) and see Jaws.

  Ken Kesey, still smarting over having his novel taken away from him, also did not attend the awards. A few days later he told a reporter he’d wished those envelopes had contained subpoenas instead of the names of winners. “Oscar night should have been one of the great days of my life, like my wedding. I really love movies. When they can be turned around to break your heart like this, well, it’s like something you never thought would happen.” Kesey’s feelings were somewhat assuaged by yet another settlement from Michael and Zaentz to Kesey’s amended lawsuit that would keep him well-off for the rest of his life.

  But for Jack, it was a night filled with nothing but pure joy. Backstage, for the press, he stepped to the mike and blurted out, “God, isn’t it fantastic?” One reporter asked, “When you were doing Little Shop of Horrors did you ever think it would lead to this?”

  Still smiling, he took off his Wayfarers with one hand and wiped his damp eyes with the other and said, “Yes, I did,” and everyone in the room laughed good-naturedly. “And I have one more ambition, that is to don a gray chauffeur’s livery uniform and drive Forman into Prague in a Rolls-Royce.”

  Michael, Anjelica, Jack, and Brenda went to every Oscar party together that night, and when Anjelica and Brenda couldn’t take any more, they were sent home, while Jack and Michael continued to do the town. He never let go of his Oscar, not even when he went to the bathroom, until he got home sometime before dawn. Anjelica was there, sleeping in his bed. He got cleaned up and later told at least one close friend that he took Oscar with him when he got in next to Anjelica—the threesome to end all threesomes.

  The next day a stream of friends dropped by to congratulate him. Jack’s habit of keeping his front door unlocked provided unannounced entrée for Mike Nichols, Art Garfunkel, Candice Bergen, Warren Beatty, and at least a dozen others. Jack and Anjelica together thanked them all for coming.

  He was thirty-eight years old; Cuckoo’s Nest was his The Wild One, On the Waterfront, East of Eden, and Rebel without a Cause all rolled into one. He had reached the top of his profession. The only question now was, could he stay there.

  * * *

  1 Following the enormous success of Spartacus, Douglas made a series of less-than-blockbuster films, including Gottfried Reinhardt’s 1961 Town Without Pity (shot in West Germany for United Artists); Robert Aldrich’s 1961 The Last Sunset; David Miller’s 1962 Lonely Are the Brave, made at Universal; and Vincente Minnelli’s 1962 Two Weeks in Another Town, made at MGM. It was then that he discovered Kesey’s novel and decided to acquire the rights.

  2 Anjelica Huston later claimed that she had talked to Michael about Cuckoo’s Nest before Ashby: “I don’t know if I was the instrumental fact in that, but I mentioned to Jack that Michael wanted to see him about it.”—Dennis McDougal, Five Easy Decades, p. 167.

  3 The latest estimate of Jack’s earnings from Cuckoo’s Nest, based on the film’s gross, exceeds $20 million.

  4 The tradition dates back to 1927 when Norma Talmadge was the first to participate in what was, for Sid Grauman, the theater’s original owner, a way to bring his Hollywood Boulevard Chinese-themed theater additional publicity. The venue changed hands frequently, and for a time it was called Mann’s Chinese Theater. It has since been fully restored, complete to the original name. The handprint tradition then became a tourist attraction, paid for by the recipient or whatever film he or she was promoting. The last to place handprints in the cement as of this writing was Jane Fonda, in May 2013.

  5 Hal Ashby, having been cut out of Cuckoo’s Nest, offered Jack the role of Woody Guthrie in the biopic Bound for Glory, but he turned it down, as did Bob Dylan. The role eventually went to David Carradine. Bernardo Bertolucci wanted Jack to play Dashiell Hammett’s Continental Op in a film version of Red Harvest. Jack was interested, but the film was never made. Tony Richardson offered him the lead in The Bodyguard, and after Jack turned it down it was reconceived for Steve McQueen and Diana Ross. It eventually was made in 1992 with Kevin Costner and Whitney Houston.

  6 Here, because of cost overruns, advertising, and other costs, the agreed-upon break-even number was $12.5 million. According to court records, before the film opened, Jack filed a breach-of-contract suit against Proteus Films and Kastner’s EK Corporation. He had exercised an option to sell back to Kastner 5 percent of his share of the movie’s gross for $1 million. When Kastner failed to pay up, Jack sued. Eventually the case was settled out of court.

  7 Victor Fleming’s Gone with the Wind (1939) is number one; and number eighty-five is Robert Altman’s M*A*S*H (1970).

  8 The January before the awards were due to be given out, according to Alan Warren, there was another reason Jack couldn’t win. The Academy thought Jack was too young. “Industry wags say Nicholson won’t receive one until he passes forty, at which time he’ll become eligible because of his age, just as Gig Young, Jack Lemmon and Art Carney did, all of whom beat out Nicholson in the past.”—Alan Warren, Film Buff, January 1976.

  9 It was 1935, for the 1934 Capra film that had won the four major awards—Best Actor, Best Actress, Best Director, Best Film.

  Lou Adler and Jack attending a Lakers’ game, sitting in the front row at the Staples Center. Courtesy of Getty Images

  CHAPTE
R

  “I’m from that late ’50s, ’60s underground American film movement that honestly believes you can make any movie on any subject for any price. What’s hard to do is change what is formally acceptable to a movie audience.”

  —JACK NICHOLSON

  JACK WAS EXHAUSTED. HAVING MADE SIX PICTURES ON THREE CONTINENTS and five countries in two years culminating in winning one Oscar,1 he purchased a little two-bedroom farmhouse vacation spot in Aspen, the hip hideaway for 1970s superstars, and became a member of the wake-up-at-the-crack-of-noon celebrity set. He called it “my little red house” and packed it with Picassos and Matisses. It sat at the base of a cliff a thousand feet high, with a mountain river running beneath his terrace.

  Lou Adler had a place nearby, so did Bob Rafelson. It was through them that Jack first became familiar with Aspen, and when this relatively modest house, at least by superstar standards, became available, he grabbed it. He wanted to be, for a time, “basically alone. Me and my cook. When you ski all day, you go home and eat and go to bed …”

  In Aspen, there were the rockers, among them Don Henley and Glenn Frey of the Eagles, and John Denver. There were the actors, like Michael Douglas and Jack; the politicians, including Gary Hart; and always the beautiful starlets and the divorcées who lived off their generous settlements and alimony. Andy Williams’s ex, actress Claudine Longet, was one of those. On March 21, 1976, while in Aspen, she killed her boyfriend in his home, former Olympic skier Vladimir “Spider” Sabich, in a jealous rage.

  She stood trial ten months later, in January 1977, during which she claimed the gun that had killed Sabich had discharged accidentally while he was showing her how to use it. The trial became the talk of Aspen and Los Angeles, and Jack attended almost every day, fascinated by it the same way he had been with the Manson trial. He always sat in the first row of spectators, usually next to Williams, mystified by the lovely face of a woman driven to kill.