My Life as a Mankiewicz

by Tom Mankiewicz

  Marlon said, “No, I'm not. I draw the line there. No spit curl.”

  The very first day of shooting, Dick walked into makeup and he said to the hairdresser, “Do the spit curl. If he objects to it, we'll live with that and we don't use it. But I'll betcha it'll be okay.”

  She just went ahead, and she was doing his hair. She shaped the spit curl. He looked at it and said, “Oh, what the fuck.”

  Marlon was such a fascinating man, and probably the best actor. He and I were reading the capsule speech together. This is a couple of days before he shot it. There are lines in there that say, “They're a good people, Kal-El. They wish to be. They only lack the light to show the way.” This is what he's saying to the baby before putting him in the capsule. Marlon said, “They only lack the light to show the way. Hey, that's iambic pentameter. It's the structure that Shakespeare wrote in. If music be the food of love, play on. Now is the winter of our discontent. Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears. They only lack the light to show the way.” I had written it, and I didn't realize it was iambic pentameter. I thought, what kind of a mind must he have that, twenty-five years after Julius Caesar—he'd never done Shakespeare again and he'd never done it before—he could pick out iambic pentameter. So something was going on in there that was extra special. With Brando aboard, we took Krypton much more seriously. In the original script, Jor-El did not have a speech to his son. He just put the kid in the capsule. We wanted to make this a mission.

  One day, Brando comes on the set and says to Dick, “I heard The Omen is really good. I never saw it.”

  Dick says, “You never saw it? You should see it. I'm sure there's a print in London; I'll get you a print.” So Dick calls Fox in London. They don't have a print in London, but there's one in Paris. Dick arranges to have it put on a plane that day, because Marlon's got to see it. Then, they've got to find a place to show it. They get the Odeon Leicester Square, the biggest movie theater in London. Marlon is a night owl. The last show is over at midnight, and they're going to run The Omen at midnight for Marlon Brando.

  The next morning, in comes Marlon. “Morning Dick, morning Tom.” Doesn't say a word about the movie.

  Dick is saying to me privately, “He hated it.”

  I say, “Dick, he couldn't have hated it. It's a wonderful movie.”

  Marlon is just not saying anything. Dick goes running into his office at the first break. He gets the home phone number of the manager of Odeon Leicester Square. He says, “Did Mr. Brando see that movie?”

  The manager says, “Yes, sir.”

  He says, “You're sure it was Marlon Brando?”

  He says, “Mr. Donner, I know what Marlon Brando looks like. He was there. He was with a Chinese girl” (who he was living with at the time).

  And Dick says, “Oh, fuck, he really did see it, and he hated it.”

  All day long this goes on. The last shot of the day, Dick's on a crane and the Council of Elders is below. Trevor Howard, Maria Schell, Harry Andrews, wonderful group. And Dick says, “Action.”

  Marlon looks up and says, “How'd you get all those baboons to attack that car?” and just starts to laugh.

  And Dick, I'll give him credit, says, “I yelled, ‘Action!'”

  Marlon said, “It's a great fucking movie.” But he held him all day. He just loved it. Give some back to Dick. He was a wonderful guy that way.

  On the Council of Elders, originally Paul Newman was going to be chairman, and Joanne Woodward was going to play Mrs. Jor-El. Then Orson Welles. But the British Actors' Equity got crazed about hiring British actors. They said they've got to be British. I was in a meeting with Dick, and I said, “This is all so fake, because you know we're going to hire Susannah York and Trevor Howard. They're only going to be working a week anyway, and they do five movies a year.”

  Susannah York was fine. Trevor Howard was so funny. He had played Captain Bligh to Brando's Mr. Christian in Mutiny on the Bounty. Trevor really had a drinking problem. He would be in his cups by about nine in the morning. At the opening of Mutiny on the Bounty—it was a royal command performance—the limos were pulling up, and here's Trevor Howard, Captain Bligh. They opened the door, and he just fell out onto the street, he was so fucked up. A brilliant actor and a nice man, though.

  So one morning, Trevor is drinking pretty good in makeup. We're shooting the Council of Elders line as the chairman says, “Enough. This discussion is terminated.” We're rolling, and he says, “Enough. This discussion is determined.” Then he says, “That can't be right.”

  We say, “No, it isn't, Trevor; this discussion is terminated.”

  “All right, keep rolling, I've got it. Enough! This determination is discussed. No, that's not right.”

  All of a sudden, Marlon looks at him and says, “The whistle of the whip.” And Trevor and Marlon burst into laughter, and they're both on their knees pounding the floor. We don't know what's going on. Apparently, this happened to Trevor a few times on Mutiny on the Bounty. He had a line where he said, “Mr. Christian, if the men persist in this rebellion, they shall feel the whistle of the whip.” But he couldn't say it.

  Marlon had a wonderful sense of humor. We got along with him very well. Marlon was at our feet in that way. In his contract, it said that no press could be on the set when he was working. One day, Jack Kroll of Newsweek was in London, and he wanted to come on the set. We asked Marlon if that was okay. He said, “Absolutely.”

  Jack Kroll walked on and asked, “So, what do you think of the picture, Marlon?”

  We just held our breath. Marlon said, “This picture is a fucking valentine, is what this picture is.” He was wonderful to us.

  When I was a little kid, I may have shaken hands with Marlon when he worked with my dad, but I had no relationship with him before Superman. He was wonderful about Dad. He loved him. The only movie that Marlon directed, One-Eyed Jacks, was hugely long when he finished it, three hours and twenty minutes. He called Dad. “Will you take a look at it? This is so long, and I need some suggestions.” If you remember the film at all, he's a villain and he gets his hand smashed by Karl Malden, and he can't pull a gun. He goes to this Chinese fishing village. There was an hour of him falling in love with a Chinese girl, then she dies and he goes back.

  Dad said to him, “Marlon, the Chinese girl, the whole story, you don't need it. Just lift it and you'll have a wonderful picture.”

  He said, “I can't do that. His whole redemption is with the Chinese girl.”

  Dad said, “I'm telling you, Marlon. Just lift it.”

  Marlon said, “I'll think about it.”

  Then Marlon called Stanley Kubrick and ran the picture with him. Marlon said, “Joe Mankiewicz thinks I should lift the entire Chinese girl, which of course is ridiculous.”

  And Kubrick said, “Not so ridiculous. I happen to think Joe Mankiewicz is right.”

  So he lifted it. He never wanted to direct again.

  You get a chance, I don't care how fleeting it is, to work with Marlon Brando, and he's playing your dialogue—I don't care whether it's terrible or brilliant—he's saying your words. If you love movies, and you love being in movies, and you love writing, and you love directing, then that's just a big privilege. And the fact that he treats you like a colleague, the way we all got on in that picture.

  When Marlon completed shooting, he was the only actor I ever asked for an autograph. I asked him to sign the title page for Superman II. It was the only thing I happened to have at the time. It said, “Tom Mankiewicz Draft” on it. He crossed through it and wrote, “Should be Tom Megawatts.” Then, something in Spanish, Marlon.

  Marlon may have saved my life. The last day that he worked, he wanted to go out to dinner with me and Dick, the three of us. We said great, and off we went. The Salkinds had invited him to dinner, but he hadn't responded or something. They were trying to find out where we were eating. We went to a place on Kings Road. All of a sudden, the Salkinds—Bertha, the old man, and Ilya—and Pierre Spengler walked i
n. They really were forcing themselves on us. Bertha was drunk, visibly under the influence of something. She got into the booth between me and Marlon. Bertha had been sending me rewrites. I kept saying to Dick, “What do I do with these?” He said, “Just put them in a drawer and keep going.” They were not very good, to say the least.

  So we were sitting there at the table, and she suddenly said, “Mr. Mankiewicz. I kept sending you rewrites, and I never hear from you. Why is that?”

  I said, “Mrs. Salkind, I'm so terribly sorry. I've been so busy.”

  She said to everyone, “You know how much my husband is paying this man to write?” And she announced my salary to the table. I couldn't believe it. She said, “You ought to get on your hands and knees and thank my husband for hiring you in the first place.”

  You have to remember, Alexander Salkind is about four foot eleven. I said, “Mrs. Salkind, I'm always on my hands and knees when I'm talking to your husband.”

  She picked up a steak knife and went right for my heart. I was shocked. One split second. Marlon, quick as a cat, grabbed her and pushed her down in the booth. He said, “Will you behave?” And this little tuft of hair could be seen going up and down, like yes. Marlon let her up, and she went right after me again with the knife. Marlon grabbed her again.

  The next morning, I was on the set and Alexander came in and apologized to me. He said, “Mexicans shouldn't drink.”

  I said, “Look, Alex, I thought about just heading for the airport. Nobody's ever done this. But, can I make you a deal that, while I'm on the picture, I don't see your wife. She can't be on the set when I'm on the set. She tried to fucking kill me twice.”

  He said, “Absolutely. Absolutely.”

  Two weeks later, Dick and I are called over to the Salkinds' home for a meeting. We go over, and I think Bertha's going to be there. What the fuck, it's two weeks later. So we go in, and she's not there. The old man and I are talking, and Dick has to take a pee. So he leaves. He's about to go in the bathroom when he hears, “Psst. Psst!” He looks down the hall, and it's Bertha. She's in her bedroom, and she says, “Mr. Donner, come here. Mr. Mankiewicz is a wonderful writer, and I should not have insulted him, and I should not have attacked him.”

  Dick says, “He knows that. I think it'll be fine.”

  She says, “You know I'm just trying to help with the rewrites.”

  And he says, “We know that, Bertha.”

  She says, “Some people call me the Shakespeare of Mexico,” and she closes the door.

  Dick came back to the meeting, and I said, “Where have you been?”

  He said, “I've been talking to the Shakespeare of Mexico.”

  I said, “Oh God, Donner, what did we let ourselves in for here?”

  We called the picture “Close Encounters of the Salkind.” What I went through was nothing compared to what Dick went through, because he was on that picture shooting every day forever.

  Marlon was signed for ten days and wound up working for thirty days. He gave us free days because he really liked the picture and he was enjoying himself. At that time, if he wasn't enjoying himself, he would absolutely phone it in and just take the money. He could never be bad. He threw himself into scenes and he was so collegial with the other actors, which was amazing to me. Chris Reeve had only one line with Marlon onscreen. It was when he tells him about the rules: “You're forbidden to interfere with the laws of nature. Your name is Kal-El, and you grew up on the planet Krypton.” But at the beginning, he says, “Speak, my son,” and Chris says, “Who am I?”

  Dick said, “That's really going to be your only line with Marlon, or I could do it as part of Marlon's bit.”

  Chris said, “No, no, please, I've got to have a line with Marlon Brando.” For two days before we shot the scene, you could hear Chris going, “Who am I? Who am I? Who am I?”

  So the day came, and Marlon said, “Speak, my son.”

  Chris said, “Who am I?”

  And Marlon said, “Are you going to say it like that?”

  We put him up to it. Chris turned the color of a Coke machine, bright red. Marlon was having fun. We got a genuine buzz and genuine enthusiasm off him.

  People are absolutely right when they say he phoned a lot of it in. He got to a point in his life where he wanted to live in the South Pacific. He wanted to help the Indians. There's another actor completely unlike Marlon who had the same philosophy, Bill Holden. He did a couple of really good parts like Network when he was older, but he said, “There comes a time in your life after you've done it a lot, no matter how much you love it, when it seems to be a pretty silly way to make a living. Pretending to be somebody else.” But Bill, for instance, owed the government back taxes. He did a lot of pictures like the one with Paul Newman and Jackie Bisset for Irwin Allen in Hawaii, When Time Runs Out. It was about an exploding volcano. Bill was drinking a lot. When he came back, I said, “So, how was that?”

  He said, “I have no memory of having made the film.”

  Marlon always needed money in the sense that he lived expensively and had foundations. If Marlon didn't need the money, on the whole, he'd just as soon live in Tahiti. He had a family there. He loved Dick, though. He could do the Omen gag with Dick, pretending not to have seen it, because he liked him, not because he didn't like him. He was waiting to burst with laughter.

  When Marlon came in to loop, I asked, “Marlon, you're good at this, right?” Donner was in England. Brando was finished shooting. Dick would say, “Just loop it. You be there. You direct it.” I wasn't a director yet, but he would trust me to do that.

  Marlon said, “When you loop, it's not whether or not you lose in performance, it's just how much.” That was for him because he liked looking at the other actor, and he always locked eyes with you like a German shepherd, even when he was just telling you a story. I would agree with him. I don't think any good actor is ever as good on a looping stage as he is in a scene.

  Close Encounters of the Salkind

  Dick and I were told, if you're going to work for the Salkinds, get your money in escrow in a Swiss bank before you begin to work, and a certain amount is released to you every week. When we were shooting in Canada—Clark Kent growing up was shot in Canada because we had a British crew and it was easier to work in Canada—the Salkinds announced to the crew they were only going to get half their salary for the time they were there, which was going to be six weeks, judging correctly that they'd rather have half the salary and get the other half when they got back than try to go back to London and be unemployed. They would pay people a check on a Swiss bank. You deposited it in your bank in England, but it had to go back to Switzerland to be cleared before it came back to your bank, so it was always three weeks late. Jack O'Halloran, one of the villains, two weeks into shooting said to Pierre Spengler, “I want my money. I need money to live on. I've got to go paycheck to paycheck. I can't wait a month for the first check to clear.”

  Pierre said, “Well, that's the way it is.”

  This was on the stage. Jack put Pierre Spengler up against the wall and said, “I want my money by five o'clock tonight. I want the money for the two weeks' work I've done. And if I don't get it, I know where you live.” And that night, he got paid.

  Dick and Ilya Salkind were the ones who completely didn't get along. The old man steered clear of Dick. He knew Dick was doing a good job and that Ilya hated him and Dick was a pain in the ass with him. The quality of what Dick was shooting helped them raise more money.

  At one point, I was asked to go to Zurich to see the old man. Dick and I were told the Salkinds have to abide by everything in your contract. If you give them an inch, they'll take a mile. We had money released to us from the Swiss bank every week, and in my contract, it said that wherever I went on the picture, I had to have a suite in a hotel. That was not out of grandiosity, but I always wound up writing in the hotel. The maid comes in to clean, I'm trying to write, I could always go to another room, and that was very important to me. So, I go to the
Grand Dolder Hotel in Zurich. There's a message for me to meet Alexander Salkind in the bar at five. I get into my room, and it's a single room. It doesn't matter. I'm just there for the night. I'm not writing. The phone rings, and it's Salkind. He says, “Mr. Mankiewicz, you see what your friend, Mr. Donner, has done to us. Here I am calling you in your single room from my single room. See you at five o'clock.”

  So I take a walk along the lake, and later, as I'm walking up the main staircase of the hotel, I hear Alex's voice yelling. I go down the hall, and there he is in this beautiful suite, talking to investors in French or German or something. I peek in and keep walking.

  We met at five o'clock. We sat down for a drink, and I said to him, “Before we even start talking, why did you say, ‘Here I am calling you in your single room from my single room'? I've seen your suite. Why did you do that? It's such a tiny little lie; why would I care whether you were in a big suite or a single room? You just lied.”

  He said, “I can't help it.” And that was so honest. That was his hallmark. He was a hondler through and through. A promoter who made a lot of money. At that meeting, he asked, “What if I put you on as a producer? Would this make the production go faster? Would we have more cooperation from Mr. Donner?”

  And I said, “Alex, that would sentence me to be on this picture for another year or more than the year I've been on it.”

  He quickly said, “Besides, every time there was a disagreement with me and Mr. Donner, you would side with Mr. Donner, wouldn't you?”

  I said, “Probably, Alex, because let me be very honest with you. He knows how to make a picture, and I'm not sure if you or Ilya know how to.”

  He said, “All right, let's not talk about it anymore.” That was that.