My Life as a Mankiewicz

by Tom Mankiewicz

  I flew to Miami and a car and driver picked me up, and I went to Jackie's house. He had a big sunken bar, and he started to make a drink. I was looking at Jackie Gleason, and there was something very aggressive about him. He was, after all, “the Great One.” He was the guy at Toots Shor, he had done The Hustler, Minnesota Fats. Now he was doing Smokey and the Bandit playing the sheriff. We were talking about the show. It was going to be called Panama Fargo. I said to him, “Jackie, I've got some ideas for some supporting characters that—”

  He said, “Oh, fuck those supporting characters, pal.” He called you “pal” all the time. “They get too famous and they have too much to do.”

  “Really? Because they were terrific in The Honeymooners.”

  “That's what I'm talking about. This will just be me.”

  I said, “I have one specific idea. When the main title comes on and it says ‘Panama Fargo’—”

  He said, “Let me interrupt you, pal. That's not the title of the show.”

  “That's not the title? Because Norman told me—”

  “No. The title of the show is ‘The Great One Is Panama Fargo.’”

  I said, “Okay. All right.”

  So we talked for a couple of hours. He said, “I look forward to seeing the page.”

  I got back to the Jockey Club and called Norman. I got his assistant because Norman was on the set. I said, “Tell him I'm coming back. I thank him very much. I don't want to do this. And I think if he really talks to Mr. Gleason, he's not going to want to do it either.”

  I got back to L.A. about ten hours later and I had a message from Norman Lear saying, “You're right. I just talked to him. I don't want to do it either.” And that was the end of it. Still, you gotta love Jackie Gleason.

  Columbo

  I got a reputation as a fixer. I'd done the Bonds. That's where Peter Falk got my name. I had met Peter a couple of times, but I really didn't know him. It was the strangest job I ever had. Peter Falk was doing Columbo. It was a big hit internationally. He threw a snit at the studio. He said to Universal, “I want somebody on this show to look at the scripts and to make sure that everything is right. That the clues are at the right time. Independent; not our staff.” He had great writers; William Link and Richard Levinson and others. He said, “Here's who I want: either Len Deighton”—a novelist who had written The Ipcress File—”or Tom Mankiewicz.” Where he got Len Deighton from, I don't know. He'd seen my name on three straight Bonds. It was a demand for renegotiating.

  My then agent, Ron Mardigian at William Morris, called. “I got the strangest call from Universal. It's an offer but a nonoffer. Peter Falk apparently wants you to read Columbo scripts. But Universal is saying, ‘Forget it, we don't pay writers to read; we pay them to write.’ I said, ‘Look, he's doing features. He's obviously not going to go on Columbo.’”

  Apparently, Peter Falk made a big stink, and Universal called Ron back and asked, “Well, what would he want to read a script?”

  Ron had checked, and the writers got $15,000 for Columbo. He said, “Mankiewicz would want five thousand to read it. A third. He'd read it and supervise it.”

  They said, “You're out of your mind,” and hung up on him. Then Universal called back and said, “All right, seventy-five hundred a script. Take it or leave it.”

  Ron joked, “If we'd turned them down again, we might have gotten ten.”

  So, for one year of Columbo, I read scripts. I apologized to Link and Levinson. I said, “You guys are doing a great job. I watch Columbo all the time.”

  They said, “No, no, we understand.”

  I got along fine with Peter. We were having lunch one day. It was the day of the Emmys. He was nominated for Best Actor in a Long Form. I asked, “So, you going down to the Emmys tonight? You're knocking off early?”

  He said, “I don't think I'm gonna go.”

  “Why, Peter, for Christ sakes? You're going to win.”

  “Yeah, but I'm only up against Dennis Weaver for McCloud. It's just the two of us, so if I win, I just beat Dennis Weaver.”

  I said, “Look, you want to be loved by the audience?”

  He said, “Yeah.”

  “If you win, come up and say, ‘Sorry, Dennis, it came up tails,’ and they'll love you.”

  He said, “That's not a bad idea. I'm going.”

  I'm getting ready to go out to dinner—I'm putting on my tie and my jacket or my Nehru jacket—and I'm watching the Emmys. The presenter says, “And the winner is, Peter Falk.” Peter gets up and says, “Sorry, Dennis, it came up tails.” The audience gives him a round ovation, and he says, “Thank you, Tom Mankiewicz.”

  I get to my dinner, and everybody says, “Boy, we had no idea you were so intimately involved with Columbo. Peter Falk won, and he thanked you first.”

  I said, “No, no, that's not for Columbo, that's for the line!”

  I've never been actually paid not to write or direct or produce but just to read. I would go into the office with Peter and say, “I think you could hold back discovering the bloody handkerchief and it would be more effective at the end of act three.” I would feel I wasn't earning my $7,500 unless I had some ideas. They were wonderful scripts because he had a great writing staff. He was just exercising some muscle. Television, unlike features, is the medium in which supporting actors can become big stars. Telly Savalas, always a supporting actor. Kojak, huge star. Peter, Columbo, huge star. Dennis Weaver was doing McCloud. He would never have been a leading man, but he was a huge star in television. One of the great character actors who was in The Sopranos, Joe Pantoliano—Joey Pants, as he was called—said, “You know why we have a good show? Everybody in it's a supporting actor. It's just good fucking actors.” In film, the director is everything. In series television, it's the writing and the stars. Let's say you go out and direct Columbo; if Peter doesn't like you, you don't do another Columbo. I counted on NCIS thirteen different producing credits. It says co-producer, co-executive producer, supervising producer, co-supervising producer. Most of those are writers. They get that credit because you can't list the writing staff. My cousin John fixed In Plain Sight, a series for USA. It says: “Co-producer, John Mankiewicz.” He didn't do any producing, he just fixed the scripts. So in television, it's writing and the stars.

  No Thanks, CIA; Hello, Mother

  I made one stupid decision: I said, “No, I don't want to write Three Days of the Condor.” That was a wonderful movie. I wish I had done it, but it was CIA and I thought, oh, God, here we go again. John Huston said, “All your films are your children and you love them all equally.” I don't think that's true. There are films you love more.

  Joe Barbera of Hanna Barbera, the huge cartoon place (Yogi Bear, all of that), wanted to do a film about ambulance driving. He got some young guy to write a script at Fox. They were very happy to give Joe development money because he had a lot of money himself. This kid did not deliver. I said, “Boy, that's really interesting, ambulance driving, because there's so much you could say about society.” Joe Barbera heard that I was interested, and he was very interested in me because I was a James Bond writer. I said, “Can I ride in an ambulance for a couple of weeks and just see?”

  He said, “Sure.” He got me to the Schaefer Ambulance Company. I rode in an ambulance with a driver named Tom “Hap” Hazard and his partner. It was just amazing.

  On the Sunset Strip, we pulled up and a guy with a stab wound was bleeding to death, but he wouldn't go with us. Hap said, “We can't take him against his will. Under the law, that's kidnapping.”

  The sheriff's deputy said, “He's a material witness to a stabbing. Take him.”

  We took him to UCLA, and he tried to attack the attendant on the way down. We found out it was going to be his third strike. There was a warrant out for his arrest, and he didn't want to go to the hospital because he knew they'd find out who he was.

  We went to an old people's home where there was a guy dressed as a four-star general who was losing it, and his wife was
calling because she was afraid he was going to kill himself. We went to heart-attack victims. I said, “Boy, there's a terrific movie in there.” So I wrote an original called Mother, Jugs & Speed about this little ambulance company run by a crook in an unincorporated area. It was a wild group of people. I was at a party at Natalie Wood's—she was a great friend of mine at the time—and I met a British director named Peter Yates, who had directed Bullitt with Steve McQueen. He was hopping a red-eye that night, leaving at ten thirty for New York. We were talking, and I asked, “What are you going to do next?”

  He said, “I'd love to do a comedy, but I'd love to do one with a little bite to it.”

  I said, “Well, I happen to have one in the back of my car.”

  He said, “Really? Can I read it?”

  So I gave it to him. He got on the plane and called me the next morning from New York and said, “Let's do it.” Things like that happen. I could have easily not had it in the trunk of my car, or he could have read it and not liked it.

  So we now gave it to Alan Ladd Jr., who had just taken over as head of Fox. I knew Laddie. Laddie read it and said, “This is about the most offensive script I've ever read in my life. There is no group you don't insult in this movie. Can you guys make this for three million bucks?”

  “Yes,” we lied.

  We thought Gene Hackman was the perfect guy to play Mother because he was a mother hen. I knew Gene a little bit, and I flew down to Baja California, where he was shooting a movie called Lucky Lady with Liza Minnelli and Burt Reynolds. Stanley Donen was directing it, and when I got down there, it was clear everybody was hating the experience. Stanley said, “Did you come down here to fire me? Is that why Fox sent you down?”

  I said, “No, no, Stanley, it's all right.”

  I met with Gene Hackman, who'd read the script. Gene said, “Listen, I'd love to do this, but I can't do it until September or October, and let me tell you why. I have worked nonstop since The Poseidon Adventure. I've done six or seven movies in two years, and if this stinker doesn't put me out of business…My wife wants to divorce me. My son is on drugs. I've got to spend a couple of months with my family.”

  I said, “You're our first choice, but Peter said we can't wait till September.”

  Hackman said, “I saw a man on television last night who would be wonderful. He was a black comic named Bill Crosby.”

  “You mean Bill Cosby?” I said. “He did a series once called I Spy with Robert Culp, and he's pretty good. Nightclub star, comedy star, and a wonderful actor.”

  We called Laddie, and he said, “That's really interesting.” We flew up to see Bill performing in Lake Tahoe. He'd read the script.

  He said, “I'd love to do this. I have one question. I understand this was offered to Gene Hackman. Gene and I are not usually cast in the same part. So how would you change this for me?”

  I said, “I'm not intending to change one line.”

  He said, “Then I definitely want to do it.” It was a part written entirely for a white person.

  Cosby took deferred money. Harvey Keitel, who played Speed, took deferred money. We wanted Valerie Perrine to play Jugs, but she wouldn't defer any money. We thought, it's unfair for other people to defer money and not her. Raquel Welch, her tongue hanging out to play Jugs, would defer money. So we had this crazy group of people: Bill, Raquel, Harvey, Larry Hagman, Chicago Bear Dick Butkus in his first part, Allen Garfield (whom Vincent Canby called “the Laurence Olivier of American sleaze”), Bruce Davison, performance artists like Toni Basil, and the weirdest cast in the world. We shot the whole picture on location out of something called a Cinemobile. We found a pool hall that was being condemned and turned it into the ambulance company in Venice. We shot the whole movie really fast and came in at 2.99999 because we had to juggle the books. We got Charlie Maguire, who was Elia Kazan's first assistant and one of the great production managers of all time, to be the associate producer to make sure we were on track.

  Raquel was very insecure in the beginning, and she had five women who worked for her. Makeup, hair, public relations, wardrobe. I called them the Raquettes. They would always say, “Raquel wants to see you.” In the beginning, I was going out once a day, “Yes, Raquel?”

  She said, “My motor home is supposed to be the same size as Bill Cosby's.”

  “It is, Raquel.” We're sitting in it.

  “His looks much bigger. I was in there.”

  I said, “Raquel, that's because you wanted a ceiling-to-floor mirror, and the only place to put it is right in the center, so it tends to cut your motor home in half, but it's exactly the same.”

  She said, “There must be a larger motor home available.”

  Charlie Maguire told me what to say. He was giving me producing rules. I said, “I'm sure there is, Raquel, and if your staff finds one, have them bring me the info and we'll take a look.”

  She said, “Okay.”

  Charlie said, “Her staff's never going to find one. She was waiting for you to say, ‘Okay, we're going to bring three here tomorrow and you pick one.’”

  Larry Hagman, who was totally nuts, would arrive on the set one day dressed as an astronaut and the next day as a World War I French general. This was Dick Butkus's introduction to filmmaking. Allen Garfield was a compulsive gambler, and when we hired him, we didn't know he was. One day, he called me and asked, “Can I have all of my money?” He was signed for ten weeks at $5,000 a week.

  I said, “Allen, I don't know if I can do that. Let me see if I can help you out.”

  I called Laddie, who said, “Hell, no, he can't have all his money. He's getting five thousand a week for ten weeks.”

  Garfield's wife's lawyer called saying, “Don't give him the money, because he'll just gamble it away.”

  We were looping the picture at the end of shooting. Peter and I were waiting for Allen in the looping theater, and he was very late. All of a sudden, two guys who look like they're from the national company of Guys and Dolls came in and said, “Mr. Garfield here?”

  We said, “No, he's not. Are you looking for him?”

  They said, “Yeah, we're looking for him.”

  “We're looking for him, too.” Poor Allen, shit.

  It was such a liberating experience being out on the streets, working with such diverse talent as Cosby, Keitel, Hagman, and L.Q. Jones. During the shooting of that film, Peter Yates and I were walking to lunch one day and passed a guy leaning up against the wall with a big beard. He looked like a bum. He said, “Peter?”

  Peter turned around and said, “Oh, my God, Patrick?”

  He said, “Yes.”

  Peter said, “What's happened?”

  He said, “No, no, I'll be all right. Just nice to see you.”

  It was Patrick McGoohan, the Prisoner, Secret Agent man. It was booze. I didn't recognize him at all, but the minute Peter said, “Patrick?” I said, “Oh, my God, it's Patrick McGoohan.” Obviously, he recovered from that, because he went on to do many things.

  Peter was a delight to work with. He had in his contract that it was a “Peter Yates production.” But he said, “Since you're writing it and we're both producing it, why don't we call it a Yates/Mankiewicz production?” Nobody's ever offered me a credit like that. When the main title came out and read “a Yates/Mankiewicz production,” Peter said, “Oh, I wish I hadn't done that, because Mankiewicz is such a long name. I look like a fucking strawberry.”

  I made a deal with Jerry Moss and A&M. We had Peter Frampton, Brothers Johnson, Quincy Jones, Herb Alpert. They gave us all the music and the rights to use it and score it with A&M music. The picture opened huge. We made that film for $3 million, and it grossed about $17 million. In those days, ticket prices were about two bucks. Everybody got their deferred money. It won two festivals in Europe because they thought it was anti-American, and anything that was anti-American was automatically nominated. To open a picture in those days cost you $2 million. Today it costs $15 to $20 million to open a movie properly. Laddie
says, “Now, today, if I'm running a studio, I'm not going to have seventy million dollars in a little ambulance picture. But then, my reasoning was, I've got Tom Mankiewicz, who writes great, and I'm laughing in spite of the offensive nature of his picture. I've got Peter Yates, who directed Bullitt, and Bill Cosby, Raquel Welch, and Harvey Keitel. I'm making this for three million bucks. What's the worst that can happen to me? The picture only grosses a million, five, I've lost a million, five. If it does what it did, if it grosses seventeen, and then I sell it for another three, this is hugely profitable to me. Then it has a life forever on tapes and DVDs.”

  I get a profit check every year for Mother, Jugs & Speed. I went to a screening of some film a few years ago, and Elvis Mitchell, who is African American and was a film critic for the New York Times, said to me in the lobby before, as we're all having a glass of wine, “You know a picture of yours that is so terrific and really wasn't treated with the respect it should have had when it came out?”

  I said, “It's Mother, Jugs & Speed.”

  He said, “You're right. And it's also Bill Cosby's best performance ever.”

  I said, “I love that picture.”

  Two weeks later, I'm down at the Music Center. I was talking with Leonard Maltin, who writes film reviews, and he says, “You wrote a movie that I gave a bad review to, but I saw it again the other night on cable and I'm changing my review.”

  I said, “Mother, Jugs & Speed.”

  He said, “That's right.” It now says, “Hilarious black comedy.”

  The first half hour of that film is very funny. Then, Bill Cosby and his partner, Bruce Davison, get a call down to a junkie's house. There's little Toni Basil with a shotgun, and she says, “I want drugs.” Bruce Davison says, “I'm hip, but lady, listen, we don't carry the kind of drugs in our rig that you want, but we'll get you some.” She says, “Liar,” and blows his head off. Cosby's got a gun stashed in his rig, and he says, “Hold it there, lady,” and she puts the shotgun in her mouth and pulls the trigger and kills herself. Our first preview was in Saint Louis. Twenty people got up and walked out. They thought this was going to be a rollicking ambulance comedy with Bill Cosby. Afterward, Peter, Laddie, and I went for a drink, and Laddie asked, “Do you really need the scene with the shotgun? You saw what happened. This is Middle America. Do you really need that?”