Christian Bale

by Harrison Cheung

  In 1991, when David moved to Los Angeles, interesting projects were developing at Disney. Under studio chief Michael Eisner, Jeffrey Katzenberg was in charge of Disney’s motion pictures division. With Katzenberg at the helm, Disney had entered a critical and commercial renaissance in the late ’80s and early ’90s, with box office hits like Who Framed Roger Rabbit, The Little Mermaid, and Beauty and the Beast. And the sound of that success was soundtrack composer Alan Menken, who would win best score and best song Oscars for The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and Pocahontas. Obviously, Disney had the golden touch when it came to family-friendly animation—and they were all musicals.

  Disney decided to turn Hard Promises into a big-budget musical called Newsies. For a nice dusting of Disney box office magic, Newsies would be powered by their Oscar-winning composer Alan Menken. The lyrics to the Ragtime-like song-and-dance numbers would be written by Jack Feldman, best known for writing Barry Manilow’s 1978 hit “Copacabana (At the Copa).” And Disney chose a young Kenny Ortega to direct. This would be Ortega’s first time directing, but he was an apt choice to update the live-action musical as a genre for a new generation since he was the influential choreographer of hit movies like Dirty Dancing and major music videos for Madonna and Michael Jackson.

  Christian’s dad was faced with a dilemma. If he told Christian that he was relocating to Hollywood to star in a musical, Christian would probably stay in England. And though Christian had a three-picture deal with Disney, who knew how much longer they’d have to wait for the next “right” project to come along? And the more time Christian spent in England, the more time he was exposed to the influences of his mother and his girlfriend, Natalie, who were both pushing the “stay in England and go to university” option. So David had many obstacles to convince Christian to sign on with Newsies. He and Kenny Ortega prepared carefully for their first Newsies meeting with Christian.

  In an interview with Seventeen, Christian recalls that meeting: “I read for the film in England and then Disney flew me to Los Angeles for a screen test. But before I signed a contract, I met the director [Kenny Ortega] and told him I wasn’t comfortable with the dancing and singing and I didn’t want to be a bloody Artful Dodger in a remake of Oliver!, jumping down the street with a big smile on my face. But he told me it wouldn’t be like that and he lied to me about all of these different actors who had done musicals, like Al Pacino.”

  But Christian was still very reluctant: “I didn’t want to do a musical specifically. It came my way. I read the script first when it was a drama. By the time I auditioned for it though, it had already become a musical. For the first few auditions, I refused to sing or dance. That didn’t last long.”

  Christian was worried about ending up like Mark Lester, the star of Oliver!, the giant 1968 hit musical adaptation of Oliver Twist. That movie didn’t do much for the career of its young Disney star; Lester gave up acting at the age of nineteen.

  But David knew better than to tell Christian that he “should” or “must” take this Disney picture. Skillfully, he persuaded Christian to think of Newsies as an actor’s challenge on many levels. There was the New York accent and the athleticism of the dance. David also echoed Kenny Ortega’s fib that Al Pacino had also started with musicals. In the years before handy Internet resources like the Internet Movie Database (IMDb), there was no easy way for Christian to check if his dad and Ortega were lying to him.

  And there was every expectation that this big-budget production, like every other Disney movie in the past ten years, would become a worldwide hit, like Ethan Hawke’s White Fang. What more could Christian ask for to relaunch his movie career?

  Faced with his father’s logical arguments and charmed by Kenny Ortega’s earnestness, Christian reluctantly agreed. He told Movieline: “Eventually I said: ‘Fuck it, let’s just do it.’ But I had a lot of doubts about it—I never liked musicals, and even then I knew I’d never do anything like that again.”

  Newsies was transformed into a musical, based loosely—very loosely—on a real-life 1899 newsboys’ strike in New York City. Christian would star as street kid Jack Kelly, who would take a couple brothers, Davy and Les, under his wing to teach them how to hawk papers on the street. Jack eventually falls in love with their older sister, Sarah, and then rallies all the newsboys into a big musical number, a strike against the evil Joseph Pulitzer and his newspaper, The World.

  Though Christian was not a big enough star to have final casting approval, Ortega generously invited Christian to participate in the auditioning of his character’s love interest, Sarah. One actress who did not make the cut was Milla Jovovich, who would go on to star in Resident Evil. Though Jovovich could sing, her readings with Christian were abrasive. Christian dismissed any actress he felt was too modern-looking since Newsies was set in 1899.

  The actress who won the part was nineteen-year-old Ele Keats. Oddly enough, poor Keats could not sing at all, as she later revealed: “I didn’t know it was going to be a musical. I am not a singer at all. A vocal teacher spent some time with me to teach me to sing properly. I am totally tone deaf. There was a song in Newsies that Sarah was supposed to sing but after trying it a few times with the vocal teacher, Kenny Ortega decided to cut it.”

  Working with Christian was a little intimidating for Keats. She recalled: “I felt really bad for him when he had to do a scene with me because I freeze up a lot and he always seems cool and natural in front of the camera. I think, at first, we were a little uncomfortable around each other but after a while, we became friends.”

  In the large cast were two other young actors working on making the transition to grown-up roles. David Moscow had played the younger version of Tom Hanks in Big. And Gabriel Damon was the veteran of many TV shows, including Star Trek: The Next Generation. Many of the other kids were Disney veterans like Aaron Lohr (The Mighty Ducks).

  Rounding out the cast in the adult roles were a couple of impressive names: Robert Duvall played Joseph Pulitzer, Ann-Margret would be Medda, a local townhall owner, and Bill Pullman would be the newspaper reporter, Bryan Denton.

  Christian tried to get his dog, Mojo, an appearance on Newsies, but alas, Mojo—not a little dog that was good with commands or crowds—didn’t work out. However, Christian’s girlfriend, Natalie, was an extra who appears at the beginning—the schoolgirl wearing a hat who walks by the ogling gang of newsboys. And Christian’s sister Louise was also an extra, playing Ann-Margret’s maid.

  “Working as an extra on Newsies was a blast!” Louise remembered. “I had so much fun all summer long. I got to dress in a different period costume every day I worked, and I got to hang out with all the cast, who were so much fun. Being an extra is not easy however. The day usually begins at 6 am, you sit around for 90 percent of the day, and then you’re the last to leave the set at around 9 pm.”

  Though she didn’t have any lines as an extra, Louise was thrilled to be very visible in a scene with Ann-Margret.

  She recalled: “I was absolutely terrified when I found out that I was in a scene with her, and then even more terrified when I found out how close the camera would be. She made me feel very comfortable, and she was extremely professional. Before we shot the scene where she is trying to get to the Newsie who is getting beaten by the police, she pulled me aside and told me that she was really going to go for it, and that I had better hold her back. Well, I didn’t have to act at all! She is a strong lady! I really had to work hard to hold her back, and then dragging her away was a real workout. In the chaos of it all, Ann-Margret accidentally kicked me in the same place in the knee take after take. By the end of the day I had a huge bruise on the side of my knee, and I took a photograph of it. I’m very proud to have a battle wound from Ann-Margret!”

  Kenny Ortega had trained under Hollywood legend Gene Kelly (Singin’ in the Rain), and he believed in being prepared. He set up a two-month Newsies camp for the cast to train and rehearse. As many of the cast members were not trained dancers, they had to
learn the basics, including jumps and turns. During training camp, Gene Kelly made a set visit and complimented the boys on their work.

  Said Christian: “I don’t know what kind of dance you would call the Newsies’ training but we got very fit, jumped around a lot and I got very dizzy.”

  Ortega was thrilled with the comprehensive regimen: “This was very different for most of them, and obviously very hard work. They had to be in dance class every day, then have voice lessons, dialect and scene studies, gymnastics, and martial arts classes. All this in addition to their regular school studies!”

  By all accounts, the Newsies set was very boisterous. Managing a large cast of teenage boys would be a challenge. Ever the worrywart, David visited the set daily with a large bag of vitamins and nutritional supplements to keep Christian’s energy up. He was always concerned about Christian’s health.

  It was that insurability issue again. Christian had told me, “Bloody Hollywood. If they think you’re sick all the time, you’ll never get work! The production companies won’t insure you! American actors dripping with syphilis and gonorrhea and they work. But let one English actor cough or wheeze and the producers will send you packing back to England!”

  Ele Keats recalled: “I have never worked with a cast that size before, so it was a challenge, but fun. I didn’t get too close to a lot of people because most of the boys had worked with each other for weeks already when I came in. But we all became friends. The crowd scenes were fun, but exhausting. Because there were thousands of kids all over the place, it could sometimes take an hour to get everyone in the right spot.”

  To help the main cast of newsboys bond, the producers arranged frequent social events like softball games or pizza parties. Robert Duvall came out one evening for a bowling party with the young cast. When David asked the Oscar-winning actor for career advice for Christian, Duvall recommended that Christian go to university. Duvall himself had graduated with a degree in drama and had a strong New York theater background when he was roommates in the 1950s with another struggling actor by the name of Dustin Hoffman. “School is a strong foundation for technique and there is nothing like the live theater to train an actor’s instincts,” David recalled Duvall saying.

  “Good advice,” David said, “but that wouldn’t work for Christian as he’s already committed to moving to L.A.” And even if David would have allowed Christian to entertain the thought of university, there was the practical matter of where. If Christian remained in England, he would have paid regular tuition fees. In America, he would have had to pay the much higher foreign student rates.

  During the making of Newsies, cast member Michael Goorjian made a twenty-five-minute home-movie horror spoof called Blood Drips Heavily on Newsies Square, where “Don Knotts” systematically kills off the newsboys one by one. The short became a cult hit on YouTube and offers a peek at the high spirits on set. Goorjian went on to a successful film and TV career, winning an Emmy and a number of film festival awards for his short films. (Blood Drips Heavily on Newsies Square would eventually be surpassed on YouTube by F*cking Newsies, the spoof trailer mashup of Newsies and Christian’s foul-mouthed tirade on the set of Terminator Salvation.)

  Christian told a reporter that the teeming masses on Newsies were also hormonally charged: “It was a massive production, with hundreds of extras. Apparently there were a few extra kids who were offering their services to anybody who paid, all during the time we shot there. There was even a Newsies pimp ring. They used the sets, wherever. They were using my dressing room on my days off, I heard later.”

  All Disney movies have a happy ending—an unwritten law from the early days of founder Walt Disney when he was creating American interpretations of beloved fairy tales and parables. It was part of Disney’s feeling that American optimism meant that you could wish upon a star and your dreams would come true.

  So for Newsies, the happy ending meant the newsboys’ strike against Pulitzer would be successful and that street kid Jack Kelly would give up his dreams of moving to Santa Fe and stay in New York with his love interest, Sarah. That did not sit well with Newsies fans, who openly detested Sarah as the “Destroyer of Dreams.” For a time, Ele Keats was called the most hated woman in the Balehead World—especially thanks to the “inappropriate for the time period” tonsil-tickling kiss she has with Christian at the end of the movie, his first on-screen smooch.

  How was Christian as a kisser? Keats said: “I would have to rate Christian’s kiss as a 7 or 8. We were both pretty uncomfortable, and I was going out with someone else at the time, so it was a pretty hard scene to shoot!”

  Christian was also amused at how jealous his girlfriend, Natalie, was of Keats. Christian told me that at a house party, Natalie actually starting harassing Ele so badly that Keats locked herself in the bathroom.

  Christian also argued with Ortega about the ending of Newsies. Would Jack Kelly be willing to give up everything to stay in New York in poverty? Not likely, but Ortega stuck to the script at hand.

  And, as the critics were happy to point out, in real life, the newsboys’ strike was actually a failure, and Pulitzer’s publishing empire was hardly damaged. Pulitzer Prize, anyone?

  When Newsies wrapped, David arranged for a cast party cruise to Catalina Island. (When the tenth anniversary edition of the Newsies DVD was released, David was furious when Ortega, in the DVD extras, mentions the Catalina trip but didn’t mention who had paid for it.) It had been a tough shoot but Ortega, Christian, and David were confident that Newsies would be the big Disney hit for 1992.

  By the fall of 1991, Christian had moved on to begin rehearsals in London for his next Disney picture, Swing Kids, which would shoot on location in Prague. It would be another big-budget production with dancing but luckily no singing—a drama about the rise of the Hitler Youth before the outbreak of World War II. With a top-notch cast that included Kenneth Branagh and Barbara Hershey, as well as young stars Robert Sean Leonard and Noah Wyle (ER), Christian’s future was looking bright. He flew back and forth between L.A. and London to finish the ADR (Automated Dialogue Replacement) sessions on Newsies, and he eagerly awaited its opening weekend.

  Released in April 1992, Newsies was a huge flop. The critics hated the movie and apparently so did the public at large as it grossed a minuscule $2.8 million—an astonishingly small amount of money for a major studio release. It seemed that everyone connected to Newsies was covered in the stink of failure. Industry insiders joked that Newsies (now sneered as Flopsies) was the Howard the Duck of the 1990s. Indeed, some Disney insiders claimed that two major bombs helped to end Jeffrey Katzenberg’s tenure with the Mouse House in 1994. One bomb was Newsies.

  The other? Swing Kids.

  David was filtering to Christian the few positive reviews and blamed Disney for not marketing Newsies aggressively, but it was very hard for Christian not to take it personally. His first starring movie role since Empire of the Sun was an epic dud. As his son’s manager and the guy who pushed the script, David was also very disappointed at the reception to Newsies.

  David had to search high and low for a good Newsies review. Typical reviews looked like this:

  New York Times’ Janet Maslin, who wrote: “The premise for Newsies, an elaborate Disney live-action musical about the New York newsboys’ strike of 1899, never sounded all that promising in the first place. But this film’s real trouble lies in its joyless, pointless execution. Many of the musical numbers are staged so strangely that the characters, when they begin singing, appear to have taken leave of their senses.”

  Critic Roger Ebert chimed in with: “What I find hard to believe, however, is that anyone thought the screenplay based on these actual events was of compelling interest. Newsies is like warmed-over Horatio Alger, complete with such indispensable clichés as the newsboy on crutches, the little kid, and of course the hero’s best pal, who has a pretty sister.”

  And Desson Howe at the Washington Post noted: “In some bright scriptwriter’s brain, there’s a
musical that evokes the heyday of Rooney and Garland and stirs you up with song and dance. Walt Disney’s Newsies is not that musical.”

  Disney’s great endeavor to revive the live-action musical was over. Later that year Disney returned to more familiar territory—the animated musical—and released Aladdin (music by Oscar-winner Alan Menken, the Newsies soundtrack composer as well), which would gross $217 million in the U.S., $479 million worldwide. The Mouse had learned its lesson about live-action musicals. It would take another ten years before Australian director Baz Luhrmann would strike live-action musical gold with Moulin Rouge.

  Why did Newsies bomb at the box office? Many other Disney movies have been critic-proof and gone on to box office success. Some industry insiders pointed to the movie’s length. It seemed that after Kevin Costner’s success with his 1990 Dances with Wolves, every director—even a first-time director—wanted director’s cut. Newsies’ runtime: 121 minutes. By comparison, Little Mermaid’s runtime: 89 minutes. Aladdin: 90 minutes. Pocahontas: 81 minutes. Newsies was even longer than Ortega’s favorite musical, the 1952 classic Singin’ in the Rain: 101 minutes. Newsies fans take great joy in pointing out the continuity errors, clearly the results of Ortega’s struggle to edit down his lengthy movie to two hours.

  Movie theater owners prefer shorter movies because they can have more show times during the day. A theater owner needs that time in between screenings to clean up the theater and prep it for the next audience.

  Another theory why Newsies bombed: Because the movie’s story line was about the newsboys’ strike, this was an unusually pro-union labor movie from Disney. Disney movies were typically nonpolitical in theme, comfortably about fairy tales or the environment or the colors of the wind. As a Disney-fied version of Norma Rae, parents were probably looking at the scathing reviews, noticing the lengthy running time, and realizing that this was not a Disney cartoon. Pass. What else is playing at the megaplex?