Peter Bart

by the Mob (And Sex) Infamous Players: A Tale of Movies

  I trusted Evans’s inclinations on casting, but I shared Polanski’s reservations on Mia Farrow. “She’s identified with Peyton Place.” I explained. “She’s got the TV stigma. It’s Ryan O’Neal all over again. Besides, do you want to have to deal with the Sinatra nightmare?”

  I’d had only a couple of minor run-ins with Sinatra over the years, but observed that his moods ran the gamut from rude to homicidal. Evans knew him better but shared my apprehensions. Coincidentally, Sinatra had just committed to star in a movie at Fox titled The Detective—the property that had launched Evans’s brief and bumpy producing career. Suddenly his view of Sinatra seemed to brighten.

  Polanski and Evans argued for a week, the director fretting that Mia’s “ethereal” quality would fade on film. He also worried about his male lead. He had wanted to interest Redford in the role and had even met with the elusive Warren Beatty. One star after another turned the role down, however, fearing that the movie would belong to Rosemary. Besides, Redford urgently wanted to get Downhill Racer started—Rosemary’s Baby came in a distant second.

  Finally, John Cassavetes was selected to play Rosemary’s husband, an unexpected choice on several counts. Cassavetes was himself a filmmaker. He had darting black eyes and his appearance was vaguely demonic; I feared he was a giveaway as the heavy.

  But by the time Rosemary’s Baby moved into its third week of production, it became clear that the biggest problem was not Mia Farrow or John Cassavetes, but rather Roman Polanski. He was such a perfectionist that he had barely finished one week’s work by the end of week two and was shooting as many as thirty takes of every Mia Farrow scene, admonishing her again and again to become more emotive.

  “Roman is the real horror story,” advised Castle, who petitioned both Evans and me to let him take over the picture. “Come see for yourself what’s going on.”

  I had steadfastly avoided visiting film sets. As a journalist I had been invited to several locations and had always been welcomed eagerly as a visitor from the New York Times. But now, as a studio suit, my visits were viewed as a veiled threat. If I was on hand, something must be going wrong; perhaps someone would be fired.

  True to form, when I arrived at the soundstage and moved unobtrusively to the back of the set I could feel a stir. This was a nervous crew; they knew they were already desperately behind schedule. Polanski did not acknowledge my presence. He was working with Mia, but I felt he was really working her over. She was close to tears. “He’s trying to break her down,” an assistant director whispered to me. “That’s his idea of getting a performance. She’s going to have a nervous breakdown if this continues.”

  I left the set and went to Evans’s office. “I want you to come with me to the stage,” I demanded. “We’re in trouble.”

  Evans quickly made his phone call to Bob Goodfried, who ran the publicity department. Any set visits had to be accompanied by a photographer, even in troubled times—that was simply the way Evans, the ex-actor, did things. The photographer was instantly in place as we entered the stage, and Polanski looked exasperated to see unexpected visitors. Mia quickly darted to her dressing room.

  The meeting was amicable. Evans and his director lined up for a photo. “I am moving as quickly as I can,” Polanski said reassuringly to his studio chief. “Mia is holding up well.”

  “The dailies look great,” Evans lied. “But New York is raising the pressure. You’ve got to pick up time.”

  “Fuck New York,” Polanski replied. “I’m making a movie.”

  After we left, Polanski went back to work, but again failed to complete the schedule for the day. And Evans got a rant from Bluhdorn about the overages.

  Frank Sinatra’s attorney, a ferocious pit bull named Mickey Rudin, materialized in my office the next day to deliver a message. Rudin had not made an appointment; he felt he didn’t need to. “Frank has a rule on his pictures—two takes is the limit,” Rudin advised me abruptly. “That rule is going to apply to Mia as well. Do I make myself clear?”

  I was startled both by his message and the directness of his delivery. “I’ll convey Frank’s suggestion to Polanski,” I responded. “Candidly, I don’t think it will have an impact.”

  “You don’t understand—this is not a suggestion.”

  “Look, Mr. Rudin,” I said, “why not drop down to Evans’s office and give him your news. For that matter, tell Charlie Bluhdorn. I’m not going to be able to—”

  “Frank and I know Polanski was your idea. You have the professional relationship. Evans is his pimp.” Rudin wheeled around and left my office.

  Evans was in New York that week. I tried to phone him but he was locked in meetings. Polanski meanwhile had broken his record—one scene with Mia required twenty-six takes. Mia had left the set in tears twice during the prolonged session.

  When I viewed dailies that evening, the performances were brilliant. I understood what Polanski was up to, but agonized over his method of achieving it.

  I was at dinner that night when Evans called. Sinatra himself had reached him directly where he was in New York with Bluhdorn. When he delivered his ultimatum, Evans had put him on the speakerphone so Bluhdorn could hear.

  “The limit is two takes or I’m pulling Mia off the movie,” he barked. “Polanski has four weeks to finish. Then she starts The Detective with me.”

  Evans explained that his demands were impossible, that Polanski needed at least eight additional weeks. Sinatra’s response was predictable. He simply hung up. Bluhdorn for once was speechless.

  Evans flew back to Los Angeles that night and the next morning Mia was in his office. This was a meeting I wanted no part of. It went on all morning and then through lunch.

  Early in the afternoon I was watching dailies when Evans sat down next to me in the dark. “Is she staying or leaving?” I asked as we both watched the images of Mia on screen.

  “She’s going to finish the movie,” he replied, his voice hoarse with exhaustion. “She started out telling me she’s pulling out. Old Blue Eyes was going to divorce her if she finished the movie.”

  “How did you turn her around?”

  “She was weeping ‘I want to be with Frank.’ My only play was to appeal to her instincts as an actress. I told her that her performance is great, that she’ll win an Academy Award. I showed her some of the dailies and she simply got up and returned to the set to get back to work.”

  Within a week, Mickey Rudin served up the promised divorce papers. A couple of nights later at Chasen’s I almost collided with him as he was moving to his table. Rudin gave me a glancing gaze. “I’d watch my health if I were you, kid,” he advised in a low snarl.

  Polanski picked up his pace in the following weeks and Mia provided the performance he was looking for. Paradoxically, her real-life melodrama had apparently helped her deliver the appropriate subdued hysteria. A malevolent ring had indeed surrounded her, but it was Sinatra who had taken on that Mephistophelian aura. Instead of scuttling the movie, he seemed to have saved it.

  From the moment The Godfather hit the bestseller list early in 1969, Bob Evans and I knew that the rules of the game would change. We had been dealing with this underdog project—a manuscript by an obscure author, Mario Puzo, which had been transformed into a gripping screenplay by a still-obscure writerdirector, Francis Coppola. But now The Godfather had become, by Hollywood standards, a hot property. “I suppose we should be thrilled about this,” I told Evans, “but I feel a chill, not a thrill.”

  Within days my chill seemed prescient. Million-dollar offers to buy the book arrived from top producers like Dino De Laurentiis and stars like Burt Lancaster. Their assumption was that, since Paramount hadn’t assigned any major names to the project, we lacked the will or the funding to move it forward. Evans resolutely slammed the door on those discussions.

  Next, and more ominous still, came the second-guessing from the hierarchs in New York. Every top executive at Paramount and at Gulf & Western, it seemed, was now poring through The God
father and knew exactly who should direct the film and star in it. And given the company’s institutional anarchy, several functionaries sent the novel to every name on their lists.

  The landscape seemed all but covered with copies of The Godfather. Meetings were taking place all over the company about how best to get the project mobilized.

  I was expecting the ubiquitous Bluhdorn to check in with his epiphanies, but he had suddenly gone silent. The reason, we learned, was that the Gulf & Western board of directors—a board supposedly friendly to Bluhdorn—had finally delivered an ultimatum: Sell Paramount or shut it down. Gulf & Western shares had been hammered by the appalling results of Bluhdorn’s bombs. The death of the studio now seemed a fait accompli. And Evans and I would soon be out of a job.

  He’d never really expected to find himself levitated into a Thalberg-like position in Hollywood, but now that he was there he had no intention of doing a fade-out. One evening, following a screening in his home projection room, he abandoned his guests and grabbed me by the arm, ushering me into his bedroom—the place where he did most of his thinking as well as most of his playing. “I’m flying to New York to speak to the board of directors,” he said solemnly. “I’m going to tell them about the amazing product that we are about to release—about Love Story and The Godfather and all the rest.”

  “But none of it is finished. Or even close—”

  “You’ll help me write my speech. You’re great at speeches,” Evans said.

  Evans was so excited I could practically feel the heat. “But will the board grant you time?”

  “I’ll beg. I don’t mind begging. I’ll fly in tomorrow and show them some footage. My speech will turn them around.”

  When informed of the eleventh-hour effort, Bluhdorn gruffly agreed to set aside thirty minutes at the board meeting, but he warned that the situation was dire.

  It was a banner Evans performance—arguably his most persuasive acting job. The board of directors deliberated for fifteen minutes, and then agreed to give Paramount another chance.

  Once again the pressure was now mounting to get The Godfather off the ground. Several more filmmakers who had been asked to read the book by the various corporate functionaries had weighed in with their assessments. All were negative. Franklin Schaffner, who directed Patton, said the book glamorized the Mafia and hence was immoral. Arthur Penn said he’d seen the movie before. Lewis Gilbert, who directed Alfie and You Only Live Twice, was drawn to the material, but disdained the meager budget.

  When I reminded everyone that Francis Coppola was already working on the script, the news elicited a uniform indifference. Why put a lightweight director on a heavyweight film? I was asked. My colleagues had also conveniently forgotten that I had assigned the producing job to Albert S. Ruddy, a savvy young producer who I felt had the toughness and dedication to pull off what was becoming an increasingly controversial project.

  Ruddy, a tall, shambling guy who affected a mobster-like voice, had a great appreciation of the absurd and a willingness to laugh off setbacks or insults. That trait would become a savior to us both.

  When Ruddy first signed on, The Godfather had not yet hit the bestseller list, where it was to remain for sixty-seven weeks. Indeed, the book had just been published that very week, and Ruddy, famously cheap, had asked me for a free copy. I instructed him to set a precedent and buy his own.

  If Ruddy was a penny-pincher, that too was a trait I coveted, because our plan was to bring in The Godfather for somewhere between $5 million and $6 million. The key was to forge an inexpensive deal with Marlon Brando, whose career was ice cold, then bring aboard some gifted young actors to fill out the cast.

  When this plan became “public,” other, “better” casting ideas again came pouring in. Charlie Bluhdorn proposed Carlo Ponti to play the Godfather. A revered Italian producer with an operatic personality, Ponti was not an actor nor was his English proficient. Various agents proposed everyone from Sonny Tufts to Anthony Quinn to play the Godfather. Predictably, Evans talked to Beatty about playing Michael. A persistent Burt Lancaster demanded a personal meeting with Bluhdorn, offering to give Paramount a $1 million profit over what the studio had originally paid for the rights.

  As weeks of indecision rolled by, it became vividly clear that The Godfather had brought Paramount to its knees. The company had been immobilized by the dazzling worldwide success of the novel. “It’s time to bite the bullet,” I finally said to Evans. “Let’s send Coppola to talk to Bluhdorn. Then let’s send in Ruddy. We have a plan, so let’s press all the buttons.”

  “A Charlie meeting will be a massacre,” Evans replied.

  “I talked with Francis. He really wants the job now. And when he wants something he knows how to hustle. I think he will hustle Bluhdorn.”

  As it turned out, Bluhdorn, by now exasperated by the delays, reacted enthusiastically to both the director and the producer. Coppola eloquently spun out his approach to a father-son story, explaining how the creation of a Mafia dynasty was analogous to the building of America. Ruddy was typically more direct. “We’re going to make a terrifyingly realistic movie about the kind of people you understand and love,” he told the chairman. It was a calculated risk: Bluhdorn was sensitive about rumors that he was dealing on several fronts with shady financiers who had ties to the mob, but he took it in good humor.

  With the New York executives’ final acceptance of Coppola and Ruddy, the issue of casting remained the final barrier. At the first mention of Brando’s name, Bluhdorn launched into a tirade that he was “box-office poison.” When Coppola said he favored Al Pacino for the role of Michael, Stanley Jaffe, the thirty-year-old president of Paramount, snorted that “the Pacino kid” was too young and inexperienced. Evans advocated Jimmy Caan for the Michael role, Bluhdorn proposed Charlie Bronson for the Godfather, and, again, chaos prevailed. Offers went out to Jack Nicholson, David Carradine, even Danny Thomas. Screen tests were shot in New York encompassing a wide range of film and TV actors.

  Eager to break the logjam, Coppola confided to me that he had organized his own surreptitious screen tests in San Francisco and had invited Jimmy Caan, Al Pacino, Robert Duvall, and Diane Keaton to participate. The tests were persuasive to Coppola—he had chosen the right cast. I felt he was correct.

  Next Coppola tried an even shrewder ploy. He went to Brando’s house on Mulholland Drive, atop Hollywood, with a skeleton crew, telling the actor that he wanted to shoot some trial footage in an effort to get a “take” on the character of the Godfather. He emphasized that this would not be a screen test: he was testing some equipment and also some character points.

  Brando, attired in a kimono to conceal his girth, welcomed the young director. He had read the book again and felt that, whoever played the part, the actor should speak in a slurred manner—he had been shot in the throat at one time and his soft gravelly voice would carry more authority.

  To Coppola’s delight, Brando had started to get into the part. He stuffed Kleenex into his mouth, causing his jaw to jut out. He blackened his hair with shoe polish and put on a jacket with a rolled-back collar. When he started speaking his lines, Marlon Brando had become the Godfather.

  I was not invited to witness the “Miracle on Mulholland,” as Al Ruddy later described it. Learning about it a day later, however, I was intrigued by the paradox that both Coppola and Brando were resentful of Paramount, yet both had become enveloped in a love-hate relationship with the material. Brando knew Bluhdorn and Jaffe did not want him for the movie. Coppola was well aware that the project had been offered to several other filmmakers. Yet, from what I could glean, Brando had instinctively concluded that this would be a great role for him and, indeed, after the disastrous opening of Burn, he needed a great role. Coppola, meanwhile, had not exactly been deluged with offers from studios to direct other movies. He, too, needed money and, much as he resisted “commercial movies,” he understood that The Godfather, based on the success of the novel, could be spectacularly successful. For Co
ppola and Brando alike, The Godfather had taken on the form of a literary narcotic.

  The deals that were offered to them by the studio were less than enticing. The movie would be made on a modest budget, they were told. Brando was offered actor’s scale up front and 5 percent of gross receipts when the film grossed $50 million. He would also have to put up a bond against any cost overruns caused by his bad behavior. Brando’s attorney, Norman Gary, pleaded for at least $100,000 to help the actor avoid tax delinquency. In exchange Brando agreed to return his points in the movie—a deal which would ultimately cost Brando at least $11 million.

  Even before Coppola’s deal could be consummated, Warner Bros. put in a claim that his company, Zoetrope, owed the studio some $600,000 in overhead and development costs. Hence, whatever Coppola received for The Godfather would have to go first to that studio until this sum was paid off.

  I felt a sense of elation that the initial blueprint for The Godfather was finally coming to fruition, yet was also concerned about the curtain of anger that hung over the project. And the tensions were soon to worsen. Bluhdorn’s mandate was that the budget must be limited to $6 million, a spartan number even for 1971. This meant not only a rigorous shooting schedule, but also minimal salaries for supporting cast.

  And, no one could agree on that cast. Coppola, having won on Brando, was vehemently demanding Al Pacino for the pivotal role of Michael. Evans reiterated that he wanted Jimmy Caan. Consistent with my earlier resolution, I removed myself from the casting battles, but watching Pacino’s tests, I understood Evans’s reservations. The young actor looked too clean-cut and immature. “The guy’s no gangster,” Evans told Coppola. With four weeks left before the start of shooting, the debate continued.

  Evans realized he had no movie unless he gave his blessing to Pacino, but insisted that Caan get the role of Sonny. Coppola had already assigned that role to a rough-looking character named Carmine Caridi, reminding Evans of his objections to The Brotherhood—that too much of the cast was Jewish, not Italian. Caan was also Jewish.