Adventures in the Screen Trade

  Grant without charm?

  I don't ask that question much anymore. I'm tired of the same surprise. I think I'm like most of us in that I want to believe the image. Don't tell me Clint Eastwood hates horses, I don't want to know it.

  And what's this got to do with insecurity? Just this: From the star's point of view, it can get very scary. One example of what I mean, from an early day's shooting of The Hot Rock, a 1972 picture that starred Robert Redford.

  We were working at a prison in New York and the shot simply required Redford, who had just been paroled, to exit a prison gate. He was dressed in intentionally ill-fitting clothes.

  A bunch of prison workers were standing around while the lighting was finished. Some guards were watching, too, and one of them began talking to me.

  "This is how it's done, I guess."

  I said it was.

  "Always take this long?"

  I said it did, or longer.

  Peter Yates, the director, was conferring nearby with Redford. They talked for a while, I assume about last-minute odds and ends.

  "My wife would like to fuck him."

  This remark caught me more or less by surprise and I turned to look at the guard: ordinary-seeming guy, maybe forty, in his prison uniform.

  "I mean, you don't know what she would give just to fuck him."

  Yates and Redford separated, Yates moving to the camera area, Redford to the gate.

  And the guard, need I add, was not watching Yates. "She said to me today, my wife, that she would get down on her hands and knees and crawl just for the chance to fuck him one time. One time."

  Now, I had seen Redford act on stage: After his brilliant comedy performance in Barefoot in the Park, I was convinced he was going to be the next Jack Lemmon.

  And I had known him a little socially. He was attractive and a wonderful storyteller and a good athlete and nobody ever said he was dumb--but rooms did not hush when he entered them.

  Suddenly everything was different. Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid had opened, and Redford was an international cover boy. And here was this goddam guard using every word in his vocabulary to try to convey to me the extent of his wife's sexual passion for a guy who was basically a fine actor from California who had made some disastrous movies. (Anyone remember Situation Hopeless--But Not Serious?)

  Well, if half the world suddenly thinks of you as this guard's wife thought of Redford, that's bound to be just the least bit unsettling. You've spent three decades walking along being one thing, and you're still that thing--part of you is--but no one's seeing that. You don't know for sure what the public is reacting to, but you do know it's not you. And you don't know how long the reaction will last, but you do know that chances are, it won't be forever.

  Stars have to live with that madness.

  I still remember the first day of my first trip to Hollywood: I met with some representatives of Paul Newman. We were talking about the scheduling of Harper, and I was worried whether Newman would be ready when Warner Bros. wanted to go with the picture. One of the men in the meeting said this after I voiced my concern: "Someday Paul will be Glenn Ford, but right now they'll wait for him."

  It was my initial contact with the cruel kind of Hollywood remark that so often tends to deal with heat. Glenn Ford had been, a few years earlier, the number-one star in America and I wasn't aware that his career had stalled. And this was Newman's man forecasting his client's future. But he wasn't cruel, not in his terms. He was simply facing the reality that stars come and go.

  Only agents last forever....

  WHAT IS A STAR?

  Used to be an easy answer: A star was a performer who was billed above the title. But those were the days when billing meant something; now, more often than not, it's something that's doled out in lieu of a higher salary.

  In other fields, it's easier to nail it down. Katharine Hepburn, for example, is a star in the theatre. Put her in a play and count your profits. Put Baryshnikov in tights, he's a star too. It doesn't matter if he's dancing Graham or Balanchine, just so he's dancing. Pavarotti and Itzhak Perlman, regardless of their program, are stars on the concert stage.

  The most common definition I've heard out there lately is this: A star is someone who opens. (When a movie begins its run and no one comes, people in the business will say this of the movie, "It didn't open.")

  A star may not guarantee you a profit--budgets can grow wildly for reasons totally out of their control--but they will absolutely be a hedge against disaster. A star ensures that, even if the movie is a stiff, the movie will open. One of the ways producers measure the appeal of a star is the amount of business a picture does on its first weekend. Is that too stiff a requirement, bringing the public flocking early to a disaster? Look at it this way: If you are a success financially, and you average fifty thousand dollars a year income for forty years of work, you are making a great deal less than what a star gets paid for three to eight weeks in front of the camera. I don't think staving off disaster is too much to ask from them....

  WHO IS A STAR?

  Not as easy to answer as you may think.

  Example: Back in the late sixties, Life magazine, then a weekly, had a performer on its cover who they said was the biggest movie star in the world. I was meeting that day with the head of one of the biggest studios. I asked if he'd seen Life. He said he hadn't. I told him what I've just told you. And then I asked if he'd care to guess who the performer was.

  "Newman," he said.

  No.

  "McQueen?"

  Not McQueen.

  A pause now. "Can't be Poitier."

  I agreed. It wasn't.

  Now a long pause. Then, in a burst: "Oh shit, what's the matter with me, I'm not thinking--John Wayne."

  The Duke was not on the cover.

  The situation was now getting the least bit uncomfortable. "If it's a woman it's either Streisand or Julie Andrews."

  I said it was a man. And then, before things got too sticky, I gave the answer. (It was Eastwood.)

  And he replied after some thought, "They claim Eastwood? Eastwood's the biggest star?" Finally, after another pause, he nodded. "They're right."

  The point being that if a studio giant couldn't guess the biggest star in his business, the territory is a bit murkier than most of us would imagine.

  A lot of it has to do with playing hunches.

  Example: In the early seventies, two big Broadway musicals were made into movies. Cabaret starred Liza Minnelli and was a big hit. Fiddler on the Roof starred Topol and took in twice as much money. But the prevailing wisdom was this: Minnelli was a brand-new star, Topol was carried by the property. Nothing much happened to his film career, but Minnelli starred in several big-budget failures until the disaster of New York, New York sent her scurrying back to the theatre, where she is a star--the biggest, perhaps, on Broadway.

  But in movies, the answer to "Who is a star?" is "It's whoever one studio executive with 'go' power thinks is a star and will underwrite with a start date." (A superstar is someone they'll all kill for....)

  HOW DO STARS HAPPEN?

  Invariably, by mistake.

  And invariably that mistake is committed by another performer who is a bigger name at the box office. You may think of Robert Redford as a force of nature, but if Marlon Brando or Steve McQueen or Warren Beatty had said yes to the part of the Sundance Kid, Redford might well have remained what one studio executive told me he was when talk of hiring him first came up: "He's just another California blond--throw a stick at Malibu, you'll hit six of him."

  If Albert Finney had agreed to play the title role in Lawrence of Arabia, Peter O'Toole wouldn't have happened. If Kirk Douglas had played Cat Ballou, forget about Lee Marvin.

  Montgomery Clift deserves special mention.

  (Clift, for me, is the most overlooked of the great stars. His was a talent that ranked right up with Brando's. I once met Burt Lancaster, and he told me a story of his first days with Clift on From Here to Eternity. One thin
g you should know about Lancaster: The man exudes physical power. Even today, if he went in the ring against Andre the Giant, I'd bet Lancaster. He told me, "The only time I was ever really afraid as an actor was that first scene with Clift. It was my scene, understand: I was the sergeant, I gave the orders, he was just a private under me. Well, when we started, I couldn't stop my knees from shaking. I thought they might have to stop because my trembling would show. But I'd never worked with an actor with Clift's power before; I was afraid he was going to blow me right off the screen.")

  A recent biography of Clift reports that he turned down, in one short stretch, four roles: the William Holden part in Sunset Boulevard, the James Dean part in East of Eden, the Paul Newman part in Somebody Up There Likes Me, and the Brando part in On the Waterfront. These were all crucial roles in their careers--would these wonderful actors have become stars if Clift had given the thumbs-up sign?

  Hard to say for sure.

  It's easy to say, though, that without the aid and assistance of George Raft, there is no Humphrey Bogart. I know that's hard to believe today, since Bogart has become such a revered cult figure. But he scuffled for a decade or more in second-rate stuff. High Sierra began the turnaround, a part that Raft rejected.

  Then came The Maltese Falcon. Raft didn't want to play Sam Spade because he didn't trust the first-time-out director, John Huston.

  Finally, Casablanca. Would you have enjoyed that great entertainment as much with George Raft and Hedy Lamarr? Or Ronald Reagan and Ann Sheridan? They were all approached for the parts.

  Stars happen when they have a major role in a major hit. If they're not lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time, it's back to the cattle calls and unemployment lines--or worse: television.

  Remaining a star over a period of time is a different story altogether--a story of talent and intelligence.

  Dudley Moore, from the beginning, was gifted and bright. Twenty years ago, he and three of his college peers were the sensation of the Broadway season in the revue Beyond the Fringe. Moore was then and is now a tremendous musician--pianist, composer--in addition to his charm as a performer.

  But with all that, nothing much happened to him.

  He made some movies in England--lead roles--but they stiffed. He came to America eventually and it was still the same story: too short, too "special," no chance. The best he got was a good supporting role in Foul Play. But Chevy Chase was the romantic lead in that movie. If you had said, back in '78, that Dudley Moore could be a romantic lead, they would have locked you out of The Bistro.

  Then George Segal left 10. Just before shooting, he walked the picture. With no time to waste, Blake Edwards chose Moore to replace him.

  10 was a smash. Dudley Moore was a star.

  At least that's what the backers of Arthur thought. And Arthur turned out to be even a bigger hit than 10, so obviously they were right, right?

  Sorry.

  Arthur opened, but barely. It was, as they say in the business, "soft." But Arthur had, as they also say in the business, "legs." Word of mouth was wonderful, audiences kept coming in increasing numbers. It became, along with Raiders of the Lost Ark and Superman II, one of that summer's sensations. Moore was no star after 10. (Miss Derek probably had at least a little something to do with its success.)

  But he sure is now....

  WEALTH

  Today's stars differ from their ancestors in at least one crucial respect: They are rich.

  I don't mean to imply that Gable dined on gruel during his glory years. He was well paid, obviously; all the great pre-1950 stars were.

  But they didn't share in profits of films. They were contract players: They did what they were told, not only because of the legal agreement, but because they needed the bread. Sure, they lived well, but today's stars have retirement money.

  Bend of the River changed everything. In many ways, this little-remembered 1952 Jimmy Stewart Western is as important as any film ever in its effect on the industry.

  Stewart's agent then was the remarkable Lew Wasserman, today the head of MCA-Universal. Stewart was already a major star. The studios were losing (or had lost) their contractual autonomy. And what Wasserman did was arrange for Stewart to take less than his usual salary in exchange for a percentage of the film's potential profits. It was a gamble that worked: Bend of the River was the number-two box-office film of its year, and Stewart cleaned up.

  Nothing has been the same since.

  Today, all stars command a percentage of the profits and, if they are superstars, a percentage of the gross, profits being like the horizon, receding as fast as you approach.

  So, if you're Jack Nicholson and you make One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, that's maybe ten million in your pocket. Same for Hoffman after Kramer Vs. Kramer. And all the others.

  What this means is simple: Today if a star doesn't feel like working, he just doesn't work. He doesn't have to, not ever.

  And what this means is simple: Since studios need stars, their desperation doubles and then some. They act like Siamese fighting fish in their frenzy to get a star's name on a contract. Stars are more powerful today than ever because they are rich--and the studios only want to make them richer, no matter what they have to put up with.

  Which can be, on occasion, plenty.

  "ADD ONE-THIRD FOR THE SHIT"

  This is a Hollywood expression I have heard used mainly by production managers. Production managers, sometimes called line producers, are at the heart of any film. They are the men who make out the schedules, do the budgeting, and are on call every hour of every day, both before and during and after shooting. When there is a crisis, the man who must solve it is the production manager.

  The expression refers to the actual cost of having a star on a film.

  Stars, like Madison Avenue buses, never go out alone. There is, always, "the entourage." Marilyn Monroe toward the end, and Elizabeth Taylor at her peak, were famous for the number of people they added to the payroll. Secretaries, chauffeurs, hairdressers, makeup specialists, still others to care for their costumes, acting coaches, masseurs, various gurus, on and on.

  Suppose the picture already has hired, say, makeup personnel. There is a certain standard ritual that follows. The production manager--and these men live and die by trying to stay within budget--will be contacted by the makeup specialist for the star. "Sorry, love to have you, but we've already got our people." Fine. Then the makeup specialist contacts the star or the star's agent and explains, often tearfully, that deep as is his (or her) devotion to the star, much as he (or she) would love to continue the association, the studio says no.

  There will then be more phone calls, often rising in pitch. The small battle will go on until the preordained result: The star's makeup specialist will be hired, and at a much greater salary than they ordinarily command because the star insists on it. Therefore, there will be salaries paid for double (or triple) makeup personnel, many of whom end up with nothing to do.

  Why production managers bother to engage in these little wars I can't say--because the studio rarely backs them up. Day after day, the production manager gets pasted. I suppose they hang in because they care. And maybe someday, some glorious future morning, they'll win one.

  Beyond the entourage are the "perks." These can include the question of how much the star will get per week for spending money. (Thousands is the answer.) And how many free plane tickets will the star get from location to home? And how many of the entourage will also get plane tickets? And maybe the star already owns a trailer. And would like it a lot if you would rent the trailer. Fine, the trailer is rented. These things may not seem like much, but they are infinite in number. (Agents, often to justify their percentage when all they really do for a big star is make a phone call, are geniuses when it comes to devising new things to ask for. Which they can then tell their clients have never been gotten before. More than one star has used the same word to me in describing this perk or that: "It's precedential," they say.)

>   One must also never forget the top technicians. Some stars, as we'll see, have partner-producers; well, they go on the payroll. Or a pet cinematographer without whom they don't show. Or a friend who is a musician and will get paid a ton for any minimal assistance he may contribute to the composer.

  Perhaps the largest percentage of the "one-third" that makes up "the shit" is star behavior.

  As Mr. Fitzgerald said to Mr. Hemingway about the rich, stars are different from you and me. Yes, they get up in the morning, just like we do. And sure, they go to bed like we do too. But--big but--if they are hot, their day differs from ours in one simple way: From morning till, they live in a world in which no one disagrees with them.

  In Tinsel, a Hollywood novel I wrote, I used an incident where a male star on location liked to wander around the set, ditty bag in hand, and take whatever struck his fancy. (He wasn't stealing as a kleptomaniac might. It was closer to droit du seigneur.) If he saw a pen he wanted, he put it in his bag. A watch, a pack of gum, anything. If the crew member called him on it, the star would make a joke, of course return the object, and the next day the crew member was gone. It got so that at the end of each day, the crew would simply report to the production manager what was taken that day and its value and the production manager would make reimbursement.

  Well, that happened.

  You may find that behavior immoral and I would agree with you; you may think it outrageous and I'd be on your team. But if you're sure it's rare, I'm afraid we part company.

  In the contract era, of course, stars stayed in line. Oh, maybe Bette Davis would take suspension rather than play some part Jack Warner wanted her to, but movies in those days went over budget only rarely. (The same holds pretty much true for television today. One of the reasons for the low quality of performance on the tube is the preference for hiring "one-take" actors--people who can give you a reasonable line reading the first time. Television is strictly budgeted--producers are given just so much to bring in their product--and an actor who causes trouble can soon find himself condemned forever to doing dinner-theatre work in the boonies.)