Peters laughed warmly. She was a good sport, easy to work with, fun to be around. To shoot those legs the way I wanted, I placed a camera below the rickety bridge to Skip's shack. Jean walked across it with a little sashay, her hips swinging, the bridge swinging, the whole set swinging. My cameraman, Joe MacDonald, innovated to get that shot just the way I wanted. To make other scenes look real, MacDonald took a helluva lot of risks for me. He shot sequences in one single camera movement, not knowing what the hell we had in the can until we'd looked at the dailies. It was the first time in his career that MacDonald had worked like that and he loved it.
At first, Richard Widmark was cantankerous and insular, sometimes thoroughly uncooperative. As a star at Fox, he had an attitude. I didn't give a damn about his status. The only thing that mattered to me was the work. It was inevitable that we would knock heads. The first week of production, we set up the scene when the cops bring Skip into Tiger's office for questioning. I told Widmark I wanted him to zigzag through the police desks, pausing here and there to comment on a guy's tie, filch a piece of candy, then stroll casually into Tiger's office. Widmark looked at me with that superior grin of his.
"Why wouldn't I just breeze straight into the captain's office?" said Widmark.
I looked into his face silently, took a puff on my cigar, and shrugged. I turned to the assistant director and said, "Strike the set! Let's move straight into the captain's office!"
We started setting up the following scene. Widmark was caught off guard with my instantaneous acceptance of his refusal to follow direction. He turned to the script supervisor and asked why in the hell would his character zigzag through the police desks. She explained to him that the pickpocket had been hauled into police headquarters so many times before that it was like a second home. Skip would have known all those guys. The zigzagging would have shown his familiarity with the place and the people.
"You know, Sam," Richard said as I was preparing the next scene, "that zigzagging stuff sounds pretty good."
"Too late," I said. "The set's struck. We're in here now. Let's move on."
He stood there wordlessly, the smirk wiped off his face. During the rest of the shoot, I rarely had any more trouble with Widmark following my directions.
We finished the picture on schedule. When it was released, it got the full rainbow of reviews. Critics judged Pickup according to the ax they had to grind. Liberals welcomed the movie as outspoken about cold war nonsense. Conservatives condemned it as pro-communist. A screening was set up for J. Edgar Hoover in Washington. He really hated it. Zanuck told me Hoover called the studio to raise hell about my hero being "antiAmerican." The pickpocket's political apathy infuriated Hoover. However, Skip's a guy who doesn't give a shit about the cold war. He isn't letting anything get between him and a big score. The character is true to himself. I didn't give a damn whether Hoover approved or not. I figured that, after Steel Helmet, the FBI had been keeping a file on me anyway. Pickup would give them some more material to chew on.
One of the movie's themes is about rushing to judgment. Skip doesn't condemn Moe when she sells information on him to the police. She's got to earn a buck. Moe reserves judgment on Candy, despite her questionable past. Candy doesn't look down on Skip for picking pockets to make a living. Nobody in this milieu is quick to judge others, because everyone is struggling to survive.
The picture was invited to the 1953 Venice Film Festival. There, the French critic Georges Sadoul, a Stalinist, crucified Pickup as anticommunist propaganda. Other lefty critics were outraged by Pickup too. There was a resurgent communist party in France with powerful press ties. The French distributor of the film would be so intimidated by all the hulabaloo that, before the film opened in Paris, he retitled my movie as Le Port de la Drogue-Port of Drugschanging the French-dubbed version so that, instead of microfilm destined for the communists, the pickpocket intercepts a drug shipment. The French not only tampered with my title but with the movie's basic story. I was furious. France! Where I thought the artist's work was revered, no matter his or her politics. What bullshit! I had no intention of making a political statement in Pickup, none whatsoever. My yarn is a noir thriller about marginal people, nothing more, nothing less.
I didn't make it to Venice because I was working on Hell and High Water that summer. Early one morning, I was preparing for a scene on one of Fox's big sound studios when Tyrone Power came up to me on the set with the morning edition of the Los Angeles Times.
"You're on the front page, Sammy," said Power. "Congratulations."
"What for?" I asked.
"Pickup won a prize in Venice."
I grabbed the paper out of Tyrone's hands and read the article about receiving the festival's Bronze Lion. I didn't give a damn about awards. But it thrilled me to learn that the president of the Venice jury that year had been Luchino Visconti. I wouldn't find out for many years that Visconti had actually opposed my winning the prize because of his own communist convictions. He was overruled by the other jury members, who thought Pickup was just a damn good movie.
A ceremony at the Italian consulate to present the Bronze Lion that Pickup won at the 19S3 Venice Film Festival. Thelma Ritter, my Moe, was with me on this proud occasion.
Wide-Screen
Sub Picture
29
Easily, my least favorite picture is Hell and High Water, though it wasn't a stinker. It's just that the movie didn't come from one of my own stories or original scripts. See, after Pickup was released, plenty of scripts came my way, but nothing I could get my teeth into. One day, Darryl Zanuck called me into his office and handed me Hell and High Water, by Jesse Lasky Jr. and Beirne Lay, based on an article by David Hempstead. Beirne was a friend of mine, an army pilot in the war. He'd already written Toward the Unknown (1956) for Mervyn LeRoy and Twelve O'Clock High (1950) for Henry King. Zanuck asked me to give the project serious consideration.
Most of the action in the yarn took place on a submarine. A private peace organization wants to discover if the communists are developing an A-bomb somewhere in the Arctic Circle. The picture's cliche-ridden premise was what I liked the least. They hire a veteran U-boat skipper to make a secret voyage to the North Pole in a reconditioned sub. A couple of nuclear scientists are brought along to uncover the truth.
Zanuck said it would be a personal favor if I directed that picture. He didn't say why and didn't need to. Zanuck had always championed me. He didn't always agree with me but he'd tell me face-to-face, no matter. Once he'd okayed a project, Zanuck was there for me, always fighting for my vision. Hell, Zanuck even stood up to J. Edgar Hoover for me.
The FBI chief was very disturbed about Pickup on South Street and wanted to see Zanuck and me about it. A lunch meeting was set up at Romanoff's. Hoover was sitting alone at a table in the back. His squad of bodyguards in black suits were at the next table. They never took their eyes off Darryl and me as we sat down across from Hoover and one of his top Los Angeles lieutenants. The FBI chief told me he didn't care for The Steel Helmet or Fixed Bayonets, but that Pickup on South Street had gone too far. First of all, he didn't like the hero doing business with both communists and Americans.
"How could an American think only about money at a time like this in our history?" Hoover asked.
"He doesn't give a damn about history," I explained. "He's an outlaw. The guy's only motivation is to score."
What Hoover hated the most was the scene when the FBI agent asks the pickpocket to cooperate.
" `Are you waving the flag at me?' " said Hoover, reading from some notes. "What kind of a thing is that for an American to say?"
"That's his character," I replied. If it were another character, I explained, he might say, "By God, I'll do anything for my country!" Hoover was like some of the biased critics I've run into over the years. They look at everything exclusively from their own perspective. If a movie is in line with their position, it's good. If it's out of line, it's bad. Hell, a writer has to write from the character's viewpoi
nt. I explained to Hoover that if I write believable dialogue for an unpatriotic character, it doesn't make me un-American. It's not me talking, it's my character.
Hoover was also shocked at the way the G-man in the movie, working with a New York cop, bribes a stool pigeon to get information.
"The Department of justice would never do that," he said.
"Mr. Hoover, I was a reporter in the precincts myself," I said. "I've seen cops haggling with the Feds about fink money. I've even seen the Feds give cash to the cops for stoolies."
The power that Hoover wielded back then was incredible. The truth about the formidable FBI chief wouldn't be known until many years later. There he was, questioning my integrity and honesty while he was blackmailing people to keep himself in power.
Zanuck never flinched in his support for my work. Hoover asked that the offending scenes in Pickup be cut or reshot. Politely, Zanuck refused. "Mr. Hoover, you don't know movies," he said. He might as well have been telling the director to go fuck himself.
So I agreed to make Hell and High Water for Fox. I insisted, however, on rewriting the script to suit my style, and Zanuck gave me the green light. The picture was supposed to be an adventure movie, but it was just too predictable. For me, an adventure movie is about my hero searching for something. Say he's looking for a certain lion. He goes to Africa to find the beast. He starts searching at point A. But for some unexpected reason, he gets lost at point C. That's when the goddamned adventure really begins.
I reworked Hell and High Water into a stylized, cartoonish tale, like Spielberg would achieve later on with Raiders of the Lost Ark. Zanuck approved my version of the script, as did Lasky and Lay, the original screenwriters. Above all, Darryl wanted me to shoot the movie in Cine maScope. Fox had bought the rights to the new process from a French company in 1952. All the studios were rushing wide-screen movies into production to compete with the burgeoning television networks. Thanks to Henri-Jacques Chretien's anamorphic lens, the normal 1.85 ratio of a movie image was lengthened to 2.35, meaning that the picture up on the screen was about 25 percent wider.
The first three films released in CinemaScope in 1953 had been boxoffice hits: Henry Koster's The Robe, Jean Negulesco's How to Marry a Millionaire, and Robert D. Webb's Beneath the _r2-Mile Reef. Audiences wanted more. To play the films, theaters had to outfit their projectors with new lenses and install new screens. The studios wanted the theaters to commit to the improvements, but theater owners resisted the investment, complaining that the first releases in CinemaScope didn't have enough action.
Like other directors, I was initially suspicious of CinemaScope. Fritz Lang complained that the wide-screen format was "good only for snakes and funerals." Henry Koster had invited me onto the set of The Robe, where I saw how gigantic everything was. Camera movements were minimal, because the new lens captured so much of the panorama. Characters kept walking around the set without the camera having to pan. Director Jean Negulesco told me CinemaScope had changed the way he directed, and not for the better. It was like working in a theater, the camera as stationary as the audience. I listened to him respectfully. Jean was an old pro, having made thirty-five pictures by then, including Humoresque (1946) and Johnny Belinda (1948). But when I saw the finished version of his How to Marry a Millionaire, I realized that Negulesco made CinemaScope serve the story, and not the opposite. The panoramas of New York were great, not to mention those of Monroe, Grable, and Bacall.
Negulesco's Millionaire gave me an idea. I'd make the new technology work for me too. I met with Monsieur Chretien, who was in California. We got along great. Chretien gave me one of his special anamorphic lenses for my old 16-mm camera. I shot some footage in CinemaScope myself, practicing with the enlarged field of view. Fox executives were anxious to see if a CinemaScope movie could be made without gigantic sets and thousands of extras. They had a helluva lot of money invested in that contraption. I told Zanuck I was going to have a lot of camera movement.
"Do whatever you want with the damn camera," Darryl told me. "Just make people forget it's CinemaScope."
So I had the camera moving all the time on Hell and High Water. I panned it. I put it on boom. I did dolly shots inside the submarine. I even staged the final fight scene like a ballet, with the goddamned camera swinging all over the place.
As for cast, I hired Richard Widmark again as my lead, playing the sub commander Adam Jones. For the part of my nuclear scientist, I chose Victor Francen, a Belgian actor under contract over at Warner Brothers, where they had him playing Nazis in war movies. Victor had a dry sense of humor that I loved, and we became good friends. I wrote special dialogue for Victor so that he could use his sarcasm freely in his scenes with the submarine crew.
During rehearsals one day, Victor brought a French movie magazine to the set. It was called Cahiers du Cinema (Cinema Notebooks). It had a distinctive yellow cover and was edited by a man named Andre Bazin. The magazine's contributors were young men named Jean-Luc Godard, Francois Truffaut, and Luc Moullet. I'd never heard of the magazine or its writers. The publication was refreshing, with passionate, in-depth articles about techniques and themes in contemporary movies. Victor translated a few passages from Cahiers that praised me and my work. I was surprised and thrilled. That was the beginning of a long love affair. I was a fan of the magazine for many years. Cahiers was a fervent supporter of my work. Luc Moullet later wrote an article comparing me to Christopher Marlowe. Marlowe, for Chrissakes! I could hardly shave after that came out, having to look at myself in the mirror, the ghost of Doctor Faustus over my shoulder.
For the role of the professor's multilingual assistant in Hell and High Water, the studio's casting department wanted me to try out a young actress who'd recently arrived from Europe. Her stage name was Bella Darvi (born Bayla Wegier). Bella was smart and beautiful. All I knew about her then was that she was Polish and had been in a concentration camp during the war. Zanuck had taken me aside once to explain that the girl was his protegee. The name "Darvi" was conceived as a combination of Darryl's name and his wife's, Virginia. Zanuck was steering the girl's career, but I didn't guarantee him the girl would get the part. I insisted on doing a screen test with Bella, shooting her in one of the opening scenes that introduces her scientific training and language skills. She'd play the role if I liked her acting. I did. When I hired her, I didn't know anything about her personal life. I found out later that Zanuck and Bella were having an affair. I cast Bella because she was the right person for the role. She was convincing in the part and professional on set. We all had a good time working with her.
Later, when it became public knowledge that she was Zanuck's mistress, Bella became a scapegoat for anybody who didn't like Darryl. Ugly rumors started flying. See, I don't really care about people's personal lives. That's their business, as long as they conduct themselves as professionals. I couldn't give a damn who they are or aren't sleeping with. Besides, most rumors are bullshit. I avoid listening to that crap unless it's so funny and unusual that I can use it in a script. As for gossip, it's horrible, and so are the people who spread it. I've been the target of gossip, lies, and innuendos for as long as I've been in the movie business. It's no big deal. My advice to young directors? Laugh and forget it.
To prepare myself for shooting Hell and High Water, I went to see Frank McCarthy, an old friend of mine who'd been an aide-de-camp to General George Marshall and had become a consultant at Fox. Frank arranged for me to spend a couple of days on a navy submarine stationed off San Clemente Island. The captain allowed me to time every maneuver they performed, from taking the sub down to the bottom to bringing it up again. I bombarded the captain with questions about the sailors' lives underwater. If the information wasn't classified, he was always cooperative.
One day, I asked the captain if someone's hand had ever gotten caught in the hatch when the sub was about to dive. One of the sailors within earshot laughed and held up his left hand, which had only two fingers on it, explaining that his other fingers ha
d been lost in exactly such an accident. I used that in the movie. Victor Francen's Professor Montel gets his finger caught in the sub's hatch, and it has to be sliced off with a knife by the sub commander.
The official poster from the release of my wide-screen sub film featured (from left to right) Gene Evans, Richard Widmark, Victor Francen, and Bella Darvi.
Fox's special-effects man, Ray Kellogg, devised miniature submarines for me and helped me shoot the movie's underwater scenes in an enormous water basin on Fox's back lot. Ray became a good friend. He'd been in the marines during the war and had worked on a bunch of John Ford's movies. I discovered that a sub could move like a murderer lying in wait for his prey, so I decided to film the U-boats in underwater battle like two men in hand-to-hand combat, locked in mortal confrontation. Intent on killing each other, they hide, hold their breath, then pounce when the other is least expecting it. I also wanted to give the audience the visceral emotion of being cooped up underwater. I'd spent no more than fifteen hours under the Pacific on that U-boat, yet it was like being buried alive. Weeks on end would drive you completely nuts. Men in those conditions could easily become maniac murderers.
The final evening I was on the navy sub, the captain presented me with a beautiful souvenir diploma signed by the whole crew. We were submerged during the ceremony, sailing back to port. Without warning, the lights on the sub went red. The captain explained that red lights were standard operating procedure for getting the crew's eyes accustomed to the darkness when they surfaced at night. That gave me the idea to put a scene in Hell and High Water that would be shot entirely with red lights.
My cameraman, Joe MacDonald, told me it would be impossible to have all the lights go red during the sequence without cutting away to another shot. There wasn't any room on the crowded set for another set of lamps.
A Third Face: My Tale of Writing, Fighting and Filmmaking Page 32
