Without batting an eye, Dietrich said, “I never performed with a good actor.”
I said, “Really? How about Emil Jannings in The Blue Angel?”
She said, “He was terrible, he was dreadful. All of the actors I played with were dreadful, so I don't know how to answer your question.”
The next question was for Natalie to ask. She said to Dietrich, “You and Garbo were the two great stars of the thirties. What would you say was the difference between the two of you?”
Dietrich said, “Garbo was cold, I was warm. Garbo had no friends, I had many friends. Garbo could not act, I was a wonderful actress. Garbo couldn't sing, I could sing. I had a better body than Garbo.” She went on and on and on. And finally, her gaze bore in on Natalie as she said, “But even with all that, they don't make stars like they used to.”
The room was deadly silent as it came time for the next question, to be asked by Don Rickles. He leaned in, stared hard at Marlene Dietrich, and said, “Who are you?”
Freddie Fields
Freddie Fields was the first of the new generation of agents, completely immoral. He was the first to “package” projects, and under his leadership, CMA (Creative Management Agency) became the precursor of Mike Ovitz and CAA (Creative Artists Agency), which would come along later. Freddie collected talent furiously. When I was starting to get a reputation after the first couple of Bond movies, the phone rang one day in my office and it was Freddie Fields. He said, “I want you to come to CMA. I've got a great picture for you.” I believe it was going to be directed by John Frankenheimer, who was also a client, but who knows if there really was a picture.
I said to him, “Jeez, Freddie, I would love to come and all that, but I am represented very well right now by Robin French at IFA (International Famous Agency). I am working all the time, and I am doing the projects I want. I couldn't just call him up and fire him.”
Freddie said, “Well, I know that you are a very moral guy, that's why we want you over here. I tell you what, you don't have to tell him anything, I'll call him and fire him for you.” Freddie would do anything to get a client. When Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was being put together, he represented Paul Newman. Everybody's choice for Sundance was Steve McQueen, who was represented by Stan Kamen at William Morris. The package was being put together. Both sides agreed there would be alternate star billing depending on which ad was being taken or which country it was in, since both Paul and Steve were big stars. As soon as this deal looked like it was coming to fruition, Freddie made sure that he kept running into Steve McQueen at parties. He would tell Steve what a bad deal Stan Kamen made for him. “You're a bigger star than Paul, you're the hottest star in the business. You should have top billing the whole way through. If you were my client, I would have gotten you that.” Steve left Stan Kamen, did not play Sundance, and became a client of Freddie Fields's.
William Holden
Bill Holden was a guy I respected like crazy. He was not only a sensational actor, but he was a man of the world; spent most of the last twenty years of his life in Africa and China. We were talking one day, I was just starting to get to know him. He said, “Oh, I know everything about you.”
I said, “You do? How do you know everything?”
“Well, I just spent two hours with you. You're a member of the club, aren't you?”
“What club is that?”
He said, “The world's most outgoing loners. I'm a member of that club.” Stefanie Powers, whom we both knew and had gone out with—he had a long affair with her—was a member of that club. “I can recognize them a mile away. You love people, you're gregarious, people love you, and you're a loner. You'll always be a loner.” Holden was, and he died alone. As many times as he was asked to appear on talk shows, he couldn't do it. He was great in the living room, but when he knew the television camera was on him and people across the country were listening to him being himself, he couldn't do it. There are a lot of actors who retreat into a character and they're wonderful.
There was a good friend of ours named Chuck Feingarten who ran the Feingarten Gallery on Melrose. Chuck died, and his wife, Gail, wanted Bill and me to be the two speakers at the memorial, which was being held at their house. Chuck was a very popular guy, and a huge number of people showed up. It was about a half hour before the ceremony was to begin. Bill and I were at the bar having a drink, and Bill asked, “What are you going to say?”
I said, “Well, I think I got it down pretty good. I've got two three-by- five cards here. I wrote down these points.”
And he said, “Can I see it?”
I said, “Sure.”
He looked at it. “This is great; this is great.”
I said, “Thanks.”
He asked, “Can I say this?”
I said, “Excuse me?”
He said, “I'm so scared of getting up there. Can I say this? This could apply to me too.”
I said, “Sure.” I mean, it's William Holden. I guess if it had been William Schwartz, I would have said, “Bill, you know, just do the best you can.” He was that scared of speaking. I listened to my speech, which he delivered better than I could, he was such a wonderful actor—not that he didn't love Chuck, which he did. I scrambled in my head to figure out some extra things, and I got away with a speech. But Bill was really remarkable.
Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick had a housekeeping deal at Warner Brothers, but he was almost exclusively in England. Jimmy Harris, a good friend of mine, started with Stanley in New York. Jimmy had made his money in the shmata trade and provided early seed money when they did The Killing, their first movie together. Later, they did Paths of Glory and Lolita. Then, Jimmy went off to direct, but he was still Stanley's closest friend. At Stanley's funeral, I understand when Jimmy got up to speak, it was just heartbreaking. They were so close. At Warners, John Calley was deputized to handle Stanley Kubrick because Stanley had very little patience by then. He was getting more and more eccentric. Calley was a big executive at Warners and a producer. A smart, literate guy. Stanley loved him. So when Stanley wanted to do another picture for Warners, John Calley was the designated hitter. Stanley would talk to Calley, Calley would talk to Warners, they'd give their answer to Calley, and Calley got Stanley everything.
Stanley was an odd duck in so many ways. He was an out-and-out dyed-in-the-wool New Yorker. A huge baseball fan. In those days, you got the scores a day later in the Paris Herald Tribune. Stanley would call New York while the Yankees game was on—he'd figure out when it might be the bottom of the seventh or later—and stay on the line. He had huge phone bills. A friend would announce, “Mickey Mantle's up, Stanley. There are two men on.” Later, he got a UPI ticker so he could get the scores in real time.
Stanley wouldn't fly. I saw him when he came to Los Angeles for the opening of 2001: A Space Odyssey. He had driven to Southampton, got on the Queen Mary, sailed to New York, got on the train, traveled across the country, arrived in Los Angeles. It took him eight or nine days to get from London to L.A. By then, they already had polar flights. I was sitting with him and Jimmy Harris, and I said, “Boy, Stanley, if they don't like this picture, it's a long trip home.”
He said, “You bet.”
When Stanley directed Barry Lyndon, which may be the most beautiful movie ever made, he would drive all the way to the west coast of England and get on the ferry to go across the Irish Sea to shoot in Ireland. Everybody else flew it in twenty minutes. Full Metal Jacket shot in England. Half of it takes place in Vietnam. They imported the palm trees.
There is the fraternity of directors, and when I talk about directors, I'm not talking about me. I'm talking about the Kubricks and the Joe Mankiewiczs. Ken Adam, who designed the Bonds, Dr. Strangelove, and Barry Lyndon, designed Sleuth for dad with that wonderful little house that they were in. One day, Ken said to Dad, “You know who wants to meet you, Stanley Kubrick.”
Dad said, “Well, I'd like to meet Stanley Kubrick.” So Ken decided to set up a d
inner at his house in Montpelier Square. He had a sunken basement dining room. You could look down into the room from street level. To make it less stilted, since Kubrick was meeting Mankiewicz, Ken and his wife, Letizia, asked me and Malcolm McDowell, who had just done Clockwork Orange with Stanley, to the occasion. After dinner—it was about ten o'clock—Malcolm and I decided to go hit the clubs. It was great in London at that time. So we went out to Tramps. We got back to Montpelier Square, where Malcolm had his car, at two in the morning. We looked through the window, and there were Dad and Stanley Kubrick, still talking, just the two of them. We'd left them four hours earlier. Dad was puffing his pipe. They were talking. It was a heartwarming thing to see. I don't know when it broke up. They were two people who were so concerned with the quality of film; not necessarily the gross of the film, the appeal of the film, but the quality of the film.
Stanley's wife, Christiane, appears at the end of Paths of Glory. She is the German prisoner of war that's brought out in front of the troops to sing a song and she's terrified. As she starts to sing, all the grizzled faces start to tear up, and they sing along with her. It's an incredible ending to this movie. It wasn't the original ending. Jimmy Harris told me this: Stanley started dating her—she was a German girl—in Munich when they were shooting. It all took place in France, but it was about corruption in the French command, and the French wouldn't let them shoot there. The picture was not shown in France for ten years. Stanley said to Jimmy one day, “Got a great idea for the end of the movie. A German prisoner arrives.”
And Jimmy said, “And who would that be, Stanley?”
He said, “Well, Christiane.”
Jimmy said Stanley was about three days behind shooting, and when he was less than a day and a half behind, they'd shoot the ending. Jimmy said, “You never saw anybody go up and down the trenches so fast.” But it was a great ending, and she remained Mrs. Kubrick for forty years. She stayed married to him forever.
The crazy actor who was in Paths of Glory with the big bug eyes was Timothy Carey. He was a method actor. Huge overactor. Carey, who was nuts, doesn't show up one day. They're shooting on a tight schedule because they don't have a lot of money to do it. Kubrick and Harris are going crazy. They get a call from the police. Carey has been found bound and gagged in the woods behind a house in the outskirts of Munich. He says, “Oh, Jesus, thank God they found me. I got kidnapped and they robbed me.” Jimmy thought, this is really weird. He's a huge guy. Who's going to kidnap and rob him? Carey's back working. Jimmy goes over to the house where he was found, and the residents finally confess that Carey gave them a hundred bucks to call the police and bind and gag him themselves. He'd been on a toot for two days, and he knew he'd get fired. That's why you love to work. That stuff doesn't happen in offices. It only happens on a set. That's why I love it so much.
David Merrick
In the late seventies the producer David Merrick announced his intentions to make a movie of his Broadway hit Promises, Promises, which was, in turn, a musical version of the famous Billy Wilder film The Apartment. How my name came up in connection with the project I'm not exactly sure, except that my stock as a writer was quite high at the time and I had written the book for a Broadway musical (Georgy!) earlier in my career. At any rate, Merrick's assistant, Alan Delinn, had mentioned to Jack Haley Jr., a close friend, that David would be interested in meeting me. Frankly, I was not particularly interested in doing Promises, Promises, but it was a chance to meet David Merrick, and who knows, maybe after a meeting I will talk myself into it.
The meeting started pleasantly enough. Merrick smiled at me and said, “What do you think?”
And I said, “Well, I have one concern about the project, which is, when The Apartment first came out, it was a little scandalous for a guy to rent out his apartment to his boss. But then, in the wake of the sexual revolution and the era of ‘free love,’ is it quite so shocking anymore, and is that something that should be addressed?”
Merrick looked right past me to Alan Delinn and said, “Why am I here? Who is this man? What am I doing here? Why am I talking to this person?”
Alan said, “David, you asked to see him.”
Merrick said, “I don't recall.” And he just got up and walked out. That was my meeting with David Merrick.
Sometime later, I was at a Tony-watching party at Leslie Bricusse's house and David Merrick was one of the guests. Merrick had produced both Stop the World—I Want to Get Off and The Roar of the Greasepaint—the Smell of the Crowd for Leslie and Tony Newley, and they were in discussion with him about a revival of one of them. Tony and David Merrick, famously, did not get along during both shows. While we were watching the Tonys, and everyone had had a few drinks, David Merrick smiled and looked over at Tony and said, “You know, we had our fights, we had our disagreements, but like a good marriage, we also had our happy times. We had a lot of happy times.”
Tony looked back at Merrick and said, “Frankly, David, I can't remember one.”
Robert Mitchum
I first met Robert Mitchum when I was doing the Bond movies and flying from Los Angeles to London on a regular basis. He was flying over this particular day to begin a film called Farewell, My Lovely. We were introduced by Tom Stout, who was the all-powerful head of public relations for TWA at the time. He later went on and founded the incredibly successful Hoffman Travel Service. Indeed, everyone in Hollywood used to joke that TWA stood for Tom's World Airlines. Mitchum and I hit it off immediately. We had a few drinks in the Ambassador Lounge, and I could see that I had to pace myself alcohol-wise, since his capacity seemed to be nearly inexhaustible.
Once aboard and up in the air, we went up to the little lounge that existed in those days on the 747. We had another drink, and Mitchum noticed two young Arab teenagers, approximately thirteen years old, playing cards. He asked them if we could all play and did they know how to play poker. “Yes,” they replied and the four of us started playing poker. Within half an hour, these two kids were absolutely cleaning us out. The stewardess arrived and told us that dinner was being served downstairs, so we went back to our seats. A very well-dressed Arab gentleman came up to Mitchum and said, “Mr. Mitchum, my sons tell me they were playing poker with you. We are an observant Muslim family, and they are not allowed to gamble. And I understand they won some money from you, and I am here to give it back to you.”
Mitchum looked up and said, “No, listen, the kids won it fair and square, a bet's a bet; tell them to keep the money.”
The man looked back at him and said, “You don't understand, Mr. Mitchum, my children are watching me right now, and I told them I was going to give you the money back. So here it is.”
Mitchum took the money, looked down, and looked back up again and said, “Well, as long as you're giving it back, it was three hundred dollars not two hundred fifty.”
Mitchum had a wonderful disdain for the art of acting, which he practiced so well. “Acting can't be all that complicated,” he told me, “when you consider one of the biggest stars who ever lived was Rin Tin Tin.”
The last time I saw Mitchum was in Montecito, when we were shooting Delirious. Early in the morning, I had a cup of coffee with John Candy at a little drugstore that was opening early for us. We exited the coffee shop—it was about six in the morning—and coming down the street were Robert Mitchum and Richard Widmark. Both lived up there. Richard Widmark looked like a silver-haired devil, and Mitchum was in a caftan muumuu carrying a purse. John, Richard, and Robert were so impressed meeting one another. I said to Mitchum, “Bob, is anybody giving you any shit about the muumuu and the purse?”
He looked at me and said, “Not so far.”
Mitchum had a very loyal assistant who had been with him most of his life, and her job was to take any offers that he had and count the number of pages that he was in. He wouldn't read the scripts anymore. He just wanted to know if it was going to be a good project, how many pages was he in, and how long would it take. He won the Emmy for War and
Remembrance, playing an admiral. After the award show, breathless TV people asked him, “What was it that attracted you to the part, Mr. Mitchum?”
He said, “The director asked me to play it.” That was it. He was a very simple guy.
8
The 1980s
Calling Dr. Mankiewicz
I felt the urge to direct because I couldn't stomach what was being done with what I wrote.
—Joseph L. Mankiewicz
The Doctor Will See You Now
I really got to know Dad as a human being in slow stages by always stopping by on my way to Europe, on my way back from Europe. That was seven or eight movies. We'd already had the experience of working in the same studio when he was doing Sleuth and I was doing Live and Let Die. And I would go back every Christmas. I wanted to find out many things, because he could be so closed. I don't mean hostile, but closed. One night in early 1980, I was visiting, and he said, “You know, Tom, I've got all kinds of stuff.” He used to save everything, notes and pictures in file cabinets. He had decided, I guess an elegant way to put it, to make Mother a nonperson. He said, “I have lots of pictures of your mother if you'd like them.” I realized half of it was being generous and half of it was she wasn't part of his life anymore. He'd been with Rosemary now eighteen years. She was his wife, they had a child. He was looking forward to many more years with Rosemary. Mother was buried in Kensico Cemetery in Westchester.
Dad asked me to pay for the upkeep on Mother's grave. I said, “Okay, fine.” My brother Chris couldn't afford anything, so I paid for the upkeep on her grave for fifteen years. All these years later, I said to Chris, “I'm going to need your permission, but what if I should die? I can't keep this grave forever, what's going to happen twenty, thirty years from now? Also, Mother's so lonely. She's there all by herself. Dad will obviously be buried with Rosemary. The Mankiewiczes are spread out all over the place. Chris, with your permission, I'd like to cremate her body and have the ashes sent to L.A., and we can scatter them at sea or do anything you want with them.” So that's what we did. Chris has the remainder of Mother's ashes because he is hoping to get to Europe at some point and scatter some there.
My Life as a Mankiewicz Page 33
