by Sid Luft
“Baby, you don’t need to take off that much weight. Watch your diet, you’ll be fine. Trust me.”
“Aw, you’re an old flatfoot.”
“I’m a good tango dancer, don’t forget that.”
Judy was admitting her shortcomings. I began to believe that this new display of self-awareness would pave the way to a sober life. She gave me a tremendous sense of optimism. Meanwhile, I would treat her as a diabetic or anyone on maintenance medication. In hindsight, I was enabling—a lesser version of what MGM had blatantly and inhumanely jammed down her throat.
When Cary Grant’s agent took him out of contention for the part of Norman Maine, we turned instead to James Mason. He had to be persuaded to take the part, but unlike with Cary, the issue wasn’t the money.
Mason’s vivacious wife, Pamela, told me that James was not interested in remakes. He was against the practice on principle. She said, “James thought A Star Is Born was perfect with Janet Gaynor and Fredric March.” I argued, “Remember, it wasn’t a musical version.”
Mason was represented by Jack Gordean, a partner at the Charles Feldman Agency. Gordean was an agent who’d been interested in representing me; he had arranged my screen test at Warner Bros. when I working for Douglas Aircraft. He knew James had a tremendous affection for Judy and her talent, so he talked Pamela into reading the script with the hope she’d persuade her husband to say yes. James adored vaudeville and musical films, and Pam had said he would have loved to have been a musical actor.
Mason, who came from a proper North England family, was educated to be an architect. Judy and I admired him, and I came to think he was one of the best film actors in cinema history. Pam had an appetite for Hollywood, unlike James, who remained detached from the general social activity of the movie colony. She would read his contracts and his scripts, cue his lines, and was in general central to his career. She told me that in England the stories running around the studios were either that she carried James’s script because she was so jealous she was afraid somebody would talk to him, or that James kept her as a slave, forcing her to carry his scripts.
Finally Pam convinced James. “After all,” she said, “Judy is one of the public darlings.”
Judy had been determined to look like a “movie star”—she wanted to be camera slim. It was that old bugaboo. I reiterated there was no need to be any thinner. Whenever she began to drop considerable weight it was dangerous, signaling an unhealthy use of pills—though, as I was about to learn, any use of pills was unhealthy. Judy was naturally high-strung and overactive; it would seem she should not have to resort to uppers. Her excuse, of course, was the weight issue, when in fact she was dependent. And the dependency was not about losing weight, it was about keeping her spirits up, giving her an emotional boost. She confessed it was virtually impossible for her to sustain a work mode in front of the cameras without taking some kind of medication.
But I believed I had blocked out all the drops and falls and covered them. Gundy, the nurse, would arrive at 8:00 AM to help prepare Judy for the ride to the studio, at which time I would already be on the lot. I offered Pobirs two points of the film in exchange for his services, and he accepted. Both Gundy and Pobirs checked with me daily. I’d find out how she was doing: OK? Not so OK? If Judy called Pobirs, he’d contact me to help determine whether she was scoring outside medication.
Pobirs’s participation did ensure the smooth work habits Judy exhibited throughout the rigors of the making of a difficult film. Also on the positive side, she was surrounded by surrogate family once again: Harold Arlen; Ira and Gershwin and his wife, Lee; Moss and Kitty Hart, who had been friends since she was married to Minnelli. James Mason was also a friend, having made his first American film, Madame Bovary, with Minnelli as the director. Jack Carson, who played Libby in Star, was an ex-vaudevillian, and Judy had played on the same bill with him when she was nine years old. The dances were created by Richard Barstow, another “relative,” and it was Judy who recommended the art director, Malcolm Bert.
With her remarkable gifts, Judy was able to study a script on the ride out to the studio and have it memorized by the time she arrived. She easily learned the choreography as well. My little princess was indeed no ordinary mortal.
Away from the studio, we’d relaxed into a warm relationship with Bogie and Betty Bogart. Bogie loved to bait people when he was drinking; when we first met, he approached me and started to nudge me about being a “tough guy.” I responded by picking him up and pinning his arms behind his back. He thought that was hysterically funny. He didn’t weigh more than 135 pounds—a slender man with a large head on a slight frame. He was a sailor and he’d developed big forearms from working on his beloved sailboat, Santana. He was muscled like Popeye. His hands were expressive, and he smoked Camels like a fellow who worked the docks in Marseilles. Bogie’s face was marked with lines, and he ate next to nothing; his stomach was flat as a pancake. He preferred to smoke and drink.
Bogie was in his fifties and yet still smoldered on screen. In the film Sabrina, from the Broadway hit Sabrina Fair, his character wins Audrey Hepburn’s character from his young, handsome brother, played by William Holden, and you want it to end that way. Bogie was a brilliant actor but never a brilliant fighter. Occasionally his verbal jibe would backfire, but he certainly wasn’t putting anyone away with his punches. Bogie stone sober was a sweet and gentle man. Unpretentious, he liked eggs for dinner. He’d be in and out of our house: “Got a beer, Luft?”
Bogie also loved his kids. He was a warm guy who liked his whiskey and was politically keen. He hated Jack Warner. He said, “I’d rather work for a crude son of a bitch like Harry Cohn any day of the week; at least you know where you stand. Jack Warner you can’t believe.” By the end of the decade, Bogie would succumb to cancer. Warner, who actually admired Bogie, came to visit him at home shortly before he died.
One night Betty gave an elegant black tie affair. It was Betty’s big night, with an orchestra, a tent, valet parking, the typical Hollywood-style bash. And it was a gorgeous Southern California night, silky, with lots of stars in the firmament and on the ground. Caviar and champagne were flowing. After the sit-down dinner the men gravitated inside to the Bogarts’ comfortable den: Spencer Tracy, Gary Cooper, Sinatra, David Niven, Charlie Feldman, Keenan Wynn, among others. Bogie, in his cups, decided to put me on. “Sid, what makes you think you can be a producer?” He was giving it to me in front of the inner circle. The men, deadpan, smoked their cigars and sipped their cognac. Nobody cracked. I was rather soused, and it struck me as hilarious that Bogie was taking this opportunity to test my mettle. Had I not been as drunk as I was I might have figured out a more appropriate response, one fitting to the environment, but having caught on to Bogie’s game I couldn’t resist blurting out, “I got more fucking class than any cocksucker or motherfucker in this room.” My obscene outburst left Bogie howling with laughter, along with his guests. He was amused by unconventional behavior. I got so drunk that night, I passed out in the den with my head wedged under a bookshelf. When I was discovered the next morning they were afraid I’d been decapitated.
Another time, on a September night sultry with Santa Ana winds, Bogie and Betty were entertaining Richard and Sybil Burton around their pool. Bogie had been drinking heavily and he kind of took off on me. I said, “Fuck you, I’m going home.” He was too drunk, so I left. The next day he was over: “Got a beer?” It wasn’t serious; I’d known that the night before.
Gossip columnist Sheilah Graham caught on to the hijinks, the “fun” gatherings of the Bogarts and the Lufts. When Bogie took Judy and me into the fold, Graham couldn’t stop writing about the “Rat Pack.” Judy knew Bogie and Betty from Lee and Ira Gershwin, and Bogie knew Lee Strunsky Gershwin from the Greenwich Village days in New York, when she and her sisters had open house every Sunday. It was there he had met his good friend “Prince” Mike Romanoff, a.k.a. Harry Gerguson of the Bronx, whom he hung out with and enjoyed. Connections were made and kept.<
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Mike and Gloria Romanoff, David and Hjordis Niven, and Swifty Lazar were part of the pack. Fringe members were Charlie Lederer and his wife, and Charlie Feldman, along with his friend Capucine, the model/actress. Betty refers to the group in her memoir, By Myself: “Spence [Spencer Tracy] was only an honorary rat because he lived a secluded life, but his heart was in the right place.” And as Betty recalled the place was “addicted to nonconformity, staying up late, drinking and laughing, and not caring what anyone thought or said about us.”
The press turned the Rat Pack into an inner sanctum more elite than the Hillcrest Country Club, where to belong you essentially only needed the cash. In actuality our group didn’t care if you were rich or not. Some years later the media readopted the Rat Pack term and applied it to Sinatra and friends; the new group, largely a public relations invention, included Peter Lawford, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Falk, and Joey Bishop.
29
WE SHOT THE FIRST SEVEN DAYS of A Star Is Born in WarnerScope, a lens Jack Warner had hoped would compete with 20th Century Fox’s successful CinemaScope. Unfortunately, the WarnerScope lens had not been perfected enough to work well. There was a distortion, a squeezing of the image. CinemaScope, technically, was far superior. We’d shot for a week at a cost of $100,000 a day, with the entire crew on salary. One look at the rushes and we agreed we had to scrap it. Alperson and I were able to convince Jack to set up a screening at 20th Century Fox of three films in CinemaScope. Jack admitted there was no comparison.
While the set was temporarily closed down we took the opportunity to change costume designers. The costumes Mary Ann Nyberg had designed for Judy were not flattering. We replaced Nyberg with Jean Louis. I also realized that our cinematographer, Winton Hoch, didn’t grasp the concept of the film, so I hired Sam Leavitt, who replaced Winnie as director of photography. Leavitt had been a second assistant operator at MGM and was now an independent; he’d already had the experience of working on several of Judy’s films.
We only had to reshoot one sequence: “The Man That Got Away.” I convinced Moss Hart to consult with another writer on the lot about cutting down the section in which Judy (Esther/Vicki) first meets James (Norman Maine). The section was too talky, long and boring. I thought it impeded the momentum of the film. I also found a couple other sequences too static: the action of singing then moving from the nightclub and through the kitchen to the parking lot when James convinces Judy to quit the band, and the audition at the studio.
Meanwhile, Louis B. Mayer contacted me regarding a property he believed was perfect for Judy. He thought I might be interested in buying the rights to a play, The Painted Wagon. Mendel Silberberg, a lawyer we had in common, set up a breakfast meeting so we could talk it over. Louis greeted me with the now-familiar “Sid, you’ve created a miracle. The one we couldn’t.” He continued, “We never should have let Judy go. We believed the three psychiatrists who didn’t think she’d make it through the year.”
I was not about to confess to Mayer I’d already been on shaky ground regarding Judy’s pill dependency. I was confident we were going to ride these destructive habits out to pasture. I knew she’d kick them forever. I thought of the three beautiful children gracing our lives, a gorgeous home, a public who heaped accolades on my wife, a great film before the cameras. Hadn’t Judy acknowledged her dependency and expressed a desire to conquer the demons? What was there to worry about?
I knew enough about Louis B. Mayer that he didn’t have to fill me in on much. His first wife, Margaret, had been in and out of Austen Riggs Center in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. She was a victim of dieting, desiring to stay skinny to compete with the young women Mayer was around all the time. When Margaret was away Louis would show up at the popular Trocadero supper club to dance away the evening: “Dancing is an excellent cure for insomnia.” Eventually Louis met Lorena Danker. He sold his racehorses to make a divorce settlement with Margaret and then married Lorena.
Louis, who began as a humble immigrant from Russia, had an intense patriotism that earned MGM millions in the 1940s. His assistant Ida Koverman had once been Herbert Hoover’s secretary. Mayer was entrenched in Republican politics. He was a snob who admired the English upper classes, the very stratum of society that is traditionally anti-Semitic.
There’s no question that MGM was the grand studio, with the best commissary in town, the most powerful police force (its chief was Mayer’s best man when he married Lorena). Mayer was king—and Judy had been his court pet. Her deference to paternal figures had given him an aura of stern authority. And I’m told that he behaved no differently with Lorena’s daughter from another marriage. L.B. was a strict stepfather, and his moral code paid off, as the young girl became a nun. His own two daughters were amazing women: Irene and Edith (Edie) both lived distinguished lives. Edie was considered the greatest hostess in Hollywood.
I told Mayer I would read the play and discuss it with Judy. Judy said, “Not The Painted Wagon, Sid.” I had to agree.
The original concept for Star included twenty-five minutes of music. By Cukor’s admission he was not a director of musicals—he was not a Vincente Minnelli. And so Judy’s production numbers were directed by the choreographer, Richard Barstow. Cukor was happy with Judy’s work; he thought she was a revelation in her emotional scenes. He said, “She manages to get the same thrilling quality . . . that she does when she’s singing a song.” And it was a tour de force for Judy, as she appeared in every scene.
George Cukor’s directorial style often involved milking a scene. This didn’t intrude until about halfway through the film. Everything was going wonderfully; everyone was working hard. It never occurred to me that it could be a problem. Alperson loved the rushes, as did both Jack and Harry. Then Judy, Alperson, Cukor, and I looked at the booth scene. We all agreed it was monotonous. There were four pages, primarily dialogue between Judy’s character, Esther/Vicki, and James’s Norman Maine, at the Downbeat Club, and it dragged on. I called Moss. “Judy and Mason are in the goddamn booth talking and talking. I’m starting to yawn.”
Moss said, “Cut the goddamn thing, then. It’s too long.”
“George won’t cut it.” Cukor didn’t want to step on Moss’s toes—he thought everything Moss wrote was a jewel. He didn’t want Moss Hart saying one day, “You cut my scene.”
“You cut it,” Moss suggested.
“I’m not a writer. How about a guy I know on the lot? He’s capable.”
“Good, get him.”
The one other disagreement I had with Cukor was over the color of the walls in a scene. He wanted red to match Judy’s outfit, and I had to say that I never saw studio walls painted red. I overruled that detail.
I didn’t make it a habit of hanging around the set when Judy was working. To be honest, I didn’t want to see my wife in a love scene with another man. I was childish. Husbands of other actresses sometimes enjoy watching their wives kissed by other men; it turns them on. Somehow my possessive streak got irrationally kindled. Judy knew that about me, so it was more comfortable for her if I didn’t show up.
The maintenance medication was a success. Judy was cooperative, working without letup. There were long stretches of time when she didn’t take any pills at all. I was proud of her. It looked like we were going to pull it off. Judy had said to Gundy, “I love my husband so—I’m such a weakling,” and Gundy had encouraged her to try AA. A hairdresser suggested Narcotics Anonymous, then in its infancy. I had every reason now to believe that Judy was anxious to kick her habits forever.
When Judy schmoozed with Kay Thompson, Lee Gershwin, or any one of her friends, she could easily disclose sensitive information. I realized I had to be mindful about what I told Judy, especially regarding business. She’d confide in a friend or even a stranger and then forget what she’d said. She’d talk to everyone but not her husband. Judy played out a yarn about how much patience I’d had with her: “I don’t know how he puts up with me.” And it got back to me. It was complimentary but
out of character.
I had to be particularly careful when I discovered a big hole in Moss’s script. The score encompassed standards—“When My Sugar Walks Down the Street,” “I’ll Get By,” etc.—ingeniously put together to tell a story, but there was no musical number to transform Vicki within the storyline. The audience needed to see why she became a star. The gap occurred when Vicky Lester and her husband/mentor Norman Maine attend the premiere of Vicky’s first starring film. There’s a shout of elation from the audience, and suddenly the couple are seen leaving the theater without witnessing any of Vicky Lester’s talent. I privately came to the conclusion I’d better find someone other than Moss Hart to write a musical number linking these two scenes.
I went directly to Roger Edens without saying a word to Judy, for fear my concerns would leak out before I was able to put together a solution. Judy would be informed at the appropriate time. Within the week Roger called me. “I think I’ve got something. Can you drive over to my house in the Palisades?”
He had outlined the song called “Born in a Trunk.” He played the first eight bars. It was a bookend for a miniature bio of an artist going from unknown to discovery to stardom. It was, in fact, the story of Judy’s life.
He wrote the big musical number with his companion, Lenny Gershe, an aspiring writer. But Roger was making three other films at the time, under contract to MGM. It was fine for him to write the opening for Judy at the Palace, but to write a piece of material for a competing film company was legally not possible. I went along with Roger’s request to have Lenny receive sole credit, so the sequence known as “Born in a Trunk” was attributed to Gershe. Lenny went on to write the film Funny Face starring Fred Astaire, produced by Roger. He also wrote the hit Broadway play Butterflies Are Free. We agreed that I would pay Lenny $10,000 in cash; Roger requested an elaborately hand-carved chest of drawers belonging to Judy, who’d never liked the piece. The chest, a present from Vincente when they were married, no doubt brought back memories, so it was stationed out in the hall. In this way it was I, not Warner, who bought what would become the “Born in a Trunk” segment outright.
