To gain Stuart's trust, Johnny plays bizarre Confederate battle games with him. During a dance-therapy class, Johnny gets them to play Dixie for Stuart. But when Johnny goes into an adjoining room for some water, he finds himself encircled by a group of women patients, all aggressive nymphomaniacs. The crazed women attack him mercilessly.
Bitten, battered, and bruised, Johnny is at wit's end about how to get Stuart to talk sanely. For no reason, Stuart suddenly obliges him.
STUART
I know why I went over to the Commies. Ever since I was a kid, my folks fed me bigotry for breakfast and ignorance for supper. Not once did they ever make me feel proud of where I was born. See, that was the cancer they put in me. No knowledge of my country ... no pride ... just a hymn of hate. I'd have defected to any enemy. See, it was easy because my brains was cabbage. They taught me everything from cabbages to commissars. And they gave me a woman. And she called me mister. And she made me feel important!
Before Stuart sinks back into schizophrenic incoherence, Johnny finds out an essential clue. The man who killed Sloan in the kitchen was wearing white pants. James Best, the lead in Verboten.!, plays Stuart. He's outrageous, yet strangely believable. His scene with Johnny always touches me with its crazy truth about the results of breathing hate into children.
Cathy comes to visit Johnny. She's shocked at the way he looks, the way he talks. He's obsessed with his mission. All he cares about is getting to the other two witnesses so he can write his big story and win a Pulitzer Prize. He tells Cathy to tell his editor that he's close to cracking the case.
Then, Johnny meets up with Trent, the second witness, who's marching down "the Street" carrying a placard that says:
INTEGRATION AND DEMOCRACY DON'T MIX GO HOME, NIGGER
Trent, a black man, has been driven insane by tremendous self-hatred. He's ended up thinking that he's a white member of the Ku Klux Klan. He filches pillowcases, makes holes in them for his eyes, and covers his head, in a sick parody of a KKK member. To ingratiate himself with Trent, Johnny encourages him to spout his hysterical hate talk. Suddenly, Trent launches into one of his maniacal, sickening monologues.
TRENT
If Christ walked the streets of my home town he'd be horrified. You've never seen so many black people cluttering up the cafes and schools and buses and washrooms. I'm for pure Americanism. White supremacy!
(jumping on bench, screaming)
Listen to me, Americans! America for Americans! We've got to throw rocks and hurl bombs-black bombs for black foreigners. So they like hot music, do they? Well, we'll give them a crescendo they'll never forget. Burn that Freedom Bus. Burn those Freedom Riders. Burn any man who serves them at a lunch counter. Burn every dirty nigger-loving pocketbook integrationist!
Trent's chilling sermon starts a race riot in the corridor, with Johnny being swept up in it. The attendants overpower the two men, put them in straitjackets, and tie them down in adjoining beds.
We set up the light in the next scene so that Trent and Johnny, one black and one white, are lying side by side, almost touching, yet incapacitated by their straitjackets and unable to move. The shadowy glass wall between them is an unbridgable chasm. Trent has a nightmare. I used my footage from the Karaja Indians in Brazil to make Trent's delirium that much more surreal. After the nightmare, Trent has an unexpected moment of lucidity. He tells Johnny that the killer was an attendant, but stops short of saying his name. More importantly, Trent tells Johnny he feels like a failure being a guinea pig in segregation. He's let people down.
TRENT
You know, I was brought up to have pride in my country. Call it esprit de corps. It's inside me. I love it. It's a blessing to love my country-even when it gives me ulcers.
Trent is speaking for me and intelligent, sensitive people all over the world who feel the same about their countries, too. Despite some wrongheaded politicians, misguided wars, and small-minded laws, I love my country. Nothing and nobody can take that deep love away from me. But, goddamnit, this nation gives me ulcers sometimes!
I cast an unknown actor named Hari Rhodes as Trent. I thought Hari should have won an award for his performance. When his character stands up on the bench in the corridor and shouts his inflammatory harangue, audiences feel uncomfortably mesmerized. Hari shows how hate is both repellent and infectious, how cruelty and intolerance can drive people insane. Hari wound up making a good living doing television, notably Daktari, a sweet show about animals in Africa for children.
Cathy comes to the asylum for another visit to see Johnny. She sees he's changed. It is beginning to dawn on her that his obsession to score a Pulitzer was probably an early sign of delirium. In terror, Cathy discovers that Johnny is coming unhinged. When she kisses him, he wipes off her kiss violently, screaming, "Don't ever kiss me like that!"
Cathy's startled. She realizes that her Johnny is already over the edge. Holy cow, audiences everywhere were stunned by that kiss! In a movie filled with emotional jolts, I was surprised to find out that the kiss was one of the most shocking things for audiences wherever it played.
My statuesque stripper, Cathy, needed beauty, sex appeal, and intelligence. I picked Constance Towers because she had all three, in spades. John Ford had introduced me to Constance. She'd appeared in Ford's Horse Soldiers (1959) and Sergeant Rutledge (1960). A trooper all the way, Constance became a good friend. Cathy is sucked into Johnny's crazy scheme because it means a better future for her, too. His perverse kiss proves to her that nobody can live in a psychiatric ward without being affected. Maybe Johnny was crazy right from the start. Cathy is scared and confused, allowing the asylum permission to subject Johnny to electricshock treatment. She thinks it's his only chance. It will be his doom.
To convey how appalling electric-shock treatment is for a patient, we put together a montage, superimposing it across Johnny's convulsive body, along with shrieking sounds. The scene still makes me shiver, dredging up memories of electric-chair executions at Sing Sing that I had to witness as a crime reporter.
Holding on to his own sanity by a slender thread, Johnny reaches the third murder witness, Boden, who went nuts working on atomic fission. The nuclear physicist with the mentality of a child is played by Gene Evans. If there had been a Fuller stock company of actors, Gene would be one of the founding members, having already done Steel Helmet, Park Row, and Hell and High Water with me. Johnny panders to Boden by playing hide-and-seek. The scientist's window of sanity opens long enough to explain why he's there.
At the conclusion of Shock Corridor, inmates are condemned to spending their lives on "the street, "the bleak hallway of the asylum. From far left (seated): Pagliacci (Larry Tucker), Johnny (Peter Breck), Boden (Gene Evans), Trent (Hari Rhodes), a real mental patient, and Stuart (James Best)
BODEN
... Today, with all the talk of the panic button, we're right on the brink of disaster. Today everybody is giving the human race two weeks to get out. Now I cannot live with a two-week notice. So I quit living.
Cathy has another visit with Johnny. Suddenly, he's upbeat and seemingly normal, on the verge of getting his story. She's happy for him, but confused. He seems sane. But is he? Johnny's craziness comes and goes in cycles.
Johnny finally gets the killer's name out of Boden. It was Wilkes, one of the attendants. Just as Johnny breathes a sigh of satisfaction, he looks at the portrait in Boden's sketchbook. The audience never sees that drawing, only Johnny's ferocious reaction to how Boden has portrayed him. He becomes a wild man, viciously attacking Boden, and ends up in a straitjacket again. Johnny's sanity is disintegrating. He knows who the murderer is, but he can't say his name. He starts accusing everybody, even Cathy, then breaks into demented laughter. He's over the edge.
Final confirmation of Johnny's delirium comes in "the Street" as he sits on a bench next to Pagliacci. Johnny hears an approaching thunderstorm. He holds out his hand and "sees" raindrops hitting his palm. He looks up and down the corridor. No one else feels the weather cha
nge. The storm hits with fierce lightning and thunder. Suddenly Johnny is all alone in the storm, rain falling like cats and dogs, the corridor flooded. He panics, bangs on locked doors, and hysterically calls for help. There is nobody. The lightning strikes him in his chest, and he collapses. Faces of other patients flash in front of him. He screams like a banshee. That brings him back to reality on the bench with Pagliacci, where everything is exactly the same.
PAGLIACCI (amused at the scream)
That was such a sour note, Johnny. You are way off-key.
With the wisp of lucidity he still has, Johnny remembers that the murderer is Wilkes. He finds Wilkes in the hydrotherapy ward and lunges at him, hoping to beat the truth out of him. They have a tremendous brawl that takes them into the kitchen, pots and pans flying everywhere. Finally Johnny straddles Wilkes and grabs him by his ears, forcing a confession out of him.
Johnny somehow files his story. But they won't let him out of the asylum to pick up his Pulitzer. He's no longer able to live in the real world. Weeks later, Cathy is still trying to save him. But it's too late. He no longer knows her. My last sequence is of a new mental patient being ushered into the asylum, passing the crazed inmates-Stuart, Trent, Boden, Pagliacci, and Johnny-who are all beyond the pale.
We shot Shock Corridor in about ten days. Once, John Ford stopped in for a surprise visit. It was a tremendous morale booster.
"Sammy, why're you shooting on this two-bit set?" he asked.
"No major would touch my yarn, Jack," I said. "It's warped. It's about America."
"You're going to stir things up again, like Steel Helmet."
"Maybe. I've just got to do this movie."
I strolled with Ford down the long, white corridor, both of us puffing cigars. Something jarred his memory.
"Here was the church," he said, pointing. "There was my set for the prostitute. Way over there was the IRA interrogation."
Was it possible that he'd shot one of his greatest movies, The Informer, on the same miserable soundstage? Yes, he explained, back in 1935 RKO was upset about his plans for a picture based on Liam O'Flaherty's proletarian novel about the Irish Republican Party rising against the British. They gave him an embarrassingly small budget, forcing him to rent that very space to shoot the picture. I was stupefied that the great John Ford had been treated disparagingly. He read my face.
"Me too," he said. "I had to make that movie."
My cameraman on Shock Corridor was the great Stanley Cortez. I was a big fan of Stanley's work on, among so many pictures, The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) and The Night of the Hunter (1955). He was an outstanding craftsman. Stanley had a reputation of being slow on a set. He had no time to be slow with me. He worked as fast as I did and got exactly the absurd look I wanted for the picture. I wrote with Stanley's camera, showing characters' emotions and mental states by utilizing close-ups, dolly shots, swivel shots. He filmed the picture in black-and-white. From the first scene in the psychiatrist's office, I told Cortez I wanted just one source of light. From then on, we lit every scene that way. It gave the picture a stark, taut look, allowing us to get the insane grimaces and gestures with straightforward simplicity.
It was a grand day when John Ford (left) dropped in on the set of Shock Corridor. Only then did I learn that he'd filmed The Informer, one of my favorite movies, on the same soundstage.
The handsome Peter Breck did a fine job as Johnny. Up until then, he was mostly known for his TV work, especially as Doc Holliday in the popular series Maverick. He was normal-looking, making his descent into madness that much more shocking. The role was physically demanding. The nympho attack scene was tough because the girls really threw themselves on him with all of their weight. In the thunderstorm scene, there wasn't any place for all that water to drain off. The set wasn't designed for it, but I wanted a ton of water coming down that hallway. We shot that scene last because I knew the set would be destroyed by the flood. Peter had no idea we were going to use that much water. Slipping and falling all over the goddamned place, he really panicked. The fear helped him create one of his most realistic performances.
For Pagliacci, I couldn't find any actor I really liked. One night, I dropped in at a nightclub on Sunset Boulevard to take a look at a young woman in a show whom Barry Sullivan, from Forty Guns, had asked me to see. There was a two-man comedy act at the place that night, a fat guy, Larry Tucker, and a small, thin one named Paul Mazursky. They were terrific. I hired Larry on the spot to play my obese, opera-singing Pagliacci. Larry's wife used to come to the set along with their new baby. During one of the crazy scenes, the baby started crying. My soundman told me that we had to reshoot that scene because he could hear the baby's cries on the soundtrack. I told him the more screaming, the better. Larry's yelling kid added to the chaotic atmosphere of the asylum.
Tucker and Mazursky went on to write screenplays together. Paul directed two of them before they split: Bob & Carol & Ted 'Alice (1969) and Alex in Wonderland (1970). I lost track of Larry over the years. But Paul and his sweet wife, Betsy, met up again with Christa and me at the Avignon Film Festival. Paul has had a marvelous career as a director, with outstanding films like Next Stop, Greenwich Village (1976), Tempest (1982), and Enemies: A Love Story (1989). Still the funny man, Paul cracked that he was hurt that I'd hired Larry for Shock Corridor and not him. He asked me why.
"Paul," I said. "You were too goddamned skinny."
Shock Corridor did great business. Critics called it the most daring film of the year. It has gone on to play all over the world, becoming a cult classic and, I hope, an inspiration for young directors to go beyond conventions to achieve their own vision. Shock Corridor has been honored in many ways over the years. I'm most proud of the 1968 Prize of Human Values, awarded by the Catholic church in Valladolid, Spain. Nowadays, when people talk about my "tabloid-philosopher" style, they are probably thinking of Shock Corridor. Recently, the film was named by the Library of Congress as one of their official two hundred "American Classics." A French critic wrote that Shock Corridor looked as if it took place in a spaceship. I hope one day people will watch my film as nothing more than science fiction. Until then, it stands as a mirror of the madness and destructiveness in our society.
For all the film's remarkable staying power over the last thirty years, Shock Corridor was a financial debacle for me. Firks turned out to be a totally unethical producer. I still had another picture to do with him, so I didn't complain when not one royalty statement ever showed up in my mailbox. Needless to say, the promised share of the profits never materialized either. It was only after I finished my next film, Naked Kiss, that the situation with him became glaringly clear. I asked to see Firks's books. The sonofabitch was insulting and rude to me. I'd never been treated that way. It would leave a sour taste in my mouth.
Ironically, there's always a silver lining. Firks, who turned out to be financially unreliable, never tried to change a single frame of film. Shock Corridor is exactly the way I conceived, shot, and edited it.
The RKO Palace Theatre, in New York City, during the first run of Shock Corridor. The marketing boys had afield day with clever hooks like "Shocking world of psychos and the sexcrazed exposed. "
Want to Be
a Lindy?
41~
''d met my first prostitute when I was a seventeen-year-old crime reporter for the New York Graphic. A veteran newspaperman walked me into a brothel at the corner of Ninety-seventh Street and Broadway, giving me a tip about saving nickels on phone calls. Instead of using the pay phone at the neighborhood drugstore to call my city editor, why not ask "the girls" if I could use theirs? Madame thought I was cute and let me make my call. From then on, I used to drop by the house of ill repute when I was on the Upper West Side and needed to phone in a story. It was a fascinating environment to my young eyes. At the beginning, there was little contact between me and the employees. I was pretty nervous about being in a place like that. I'd heard so many terrible things about prostitutes. Sergeant Peaco
ck down at the precinct tried to scare me about the "ladies of the night" with some bullshit about your balls dropping off if you hung around them. Society and the media made the very word "prostitute" engender fear and distaste.
My mother had also filled me with a load of crap about prostitutes. Did she have a conniption when I told her I used the brothel as my office when I was uptown! Rebecca launched into a righteous speech about immorality and hygiene. Syphilis was a big problem in those days, blinding, even killing, people who caught it. I reassured my mother that I'd never had any sexual contact with the girls. But for Chrissakes, I told her, nothing prevented me from talking with them. Little by little, I got to know the girls as people. They treated me like a kid brother, though they weren't that much older. Any sensual urges I might have had were quashed by the girls' businesslike approach to their job. I was never tempted to sleep with a prostitute because I knew them too well. They told me all about their lives, and I grew to respect them.
In the morning, they sat meditating like nuns in a convent, wearing nothing but negligees and pajamas to entice the early-bird customers. If I showed up, they would give me some money and ask me to go out and bring them back coffee and donuts. I did these little chores gladly. Once I brought some hot coffee to a girl named Helen. Before Helen could drink it, Madame called her upstairs for a gentleman who'd just walked in. Helen asked me to hold on to her coffee until she came back.
"It'll be cold," I said.
"Uh-uh," said Helen, glancing at the guy. "I know my clients. Believe me, it'll be warm."
The girls had their own code of ethics, their own dreams. A lot of them wanted to have children and a family. That was their ticket out of that dead-end life, back to normalcy. Very few made it happen. Most languished in that netherworld where Madame provided for everything in exchange for sixty-five cents of every dollar the girls took in. From my perch in Madame's office, I overheard their conversations about laundry bills, cab fares, and backaches. When Helen once complained about the exorbitant commission extracted from her pay, Madame looked at her with a harsh glint in her eyes and asked her, "Do you want to be a Lindy?"
A Third Face: My Tale of Writing, Fighting and Filmmaking Page 42
