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NBR AWARDS PART TWO: January 9th, 2007. Annie Schulhof, president of the NBR, stepped to the podium at Cipriani 42nd Street in Manhattan to welcome the assembled multitude. It was a staggering array of talent in the setting of a landmark building informed with sponsor Bulgari’s glittery elegance and a casual and friendly atmosphere. The room was loaded with artists and filmmakers: Clint Eastwood, Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Jonathan Demme, Oliver Stone, Pedro Almodovar, Jason Reitman, Bette Midler, Catherine O’Hara, Parker Posey, John Patrick Shanley, Penelope Cruz, Helen Mirren, James Cromwell, Forest Whitaker, Irwin Winkler, Kevin Kline, Eli Wallach, Anne Jackson, Alejandro Gonzalez Innaritu, Rinko Kikuchi, Jennifer Hudson, Sarah Jessica Parker, Mark Wahlberg, Vera Formiga, Terrence Howard, Tipper Gore, Lawrence Bender, Davis Guggenheim, Annabella Sciorra, Elisabeth Shue, Ryan Gosling, Djimon Hounsou, David Wain, Jon Kilik and studio heads Alan Horn (Warners), Ron Meyer (Universal), John Lesher (Paramount Vantage), Daniel Battsek (Miramax), Peter Rice (Fox Searchlight) and Tom Bernard and Michael Barker (Sony Classics). Jesse L. Martin was a convivial, gregarious host who clearly enjoyed himself and encouraged everyone to do likewise.
Career Achievement honoree Eli Wallach remarked, “This is the happiest awards ceremony I’ve ever seen!”
It was a special night for the 92-year-old acting legend, with the entire 2007 graduating class of The Neighborhood School of the Theatre, his alma mater, on hand to cheer him on as another Playhouse graduate, Marian Seldes, presented the award, “With love from your city, with love from your colleagues, with love from your family” (Eli’s wife, the brilliant actress Anne Jackson, is yet another Playhouse alum).
But I’m getting ahead of myself. As Annie Schulhof acknowledged the Neighborhood Playhouse students at the start of the show, they responded cheerfully, a burst of energy, whistles and whoops that Master of Ceremony Jesse L. Martin called upon several times during the evening to add some vocal punctuation to the proceedings. John Patrick Shanley gave the first award of the evening to Zach Helm for his Best Original Screenplay STRANGER THAN FICTION, delivering a robust Shanley monologue that I’m printing by request.
“Words.
Writers are like pirates and words are their booty.
Writers are like bears and words are their wild honey.
Writers can turn any whorehouse into a palace, any heart of stone into the eyes of love.
All of you beware of writers.
Dictators know the power of the written word. Even some studio heads do.
Words can make you love, words can bring you peace.
Words can bring you knowledge you don’t even want, which brings me to the business at hand, the movie STRANGER THAN FICTION.
It’s a rough choice some people get hit with.
Art or life.
Do you do the movie, or save the marriage?
Do you do the movie, or go to the kid’s birthday party.
Do you get to the set on time and let the cat starve, or does the cat come first?
Ladies and gentlemen, I venture to say that everyone in this particular room has been responsible for the unhappiness of at least one cat.”
Actor Lee Pace (THE GOOD SHEPHERD) presented Ron Nyswaner with Best Adapted Screenplay for THE PAINTED VEIL, one of the best neglected films of 2006. David Wain, creator of the cult sketch comedy series THE STATE, and director of WET HOT AMERICAN SUMMER and the upcoming THE TEN, presented Best Directorial Debut to Jason Reitman for THANK YOU FOR SMOKING. In his acceptance speech Jason mentioned, “This is an incredible moment. Thank you, NBR. I had such a wonderful time screening the film for them. It was terrifying though because I thought at the q-and-a they’d ask me about all these movies I haven’t seen. But it was absolutely lovely.”
Bette Midler presented Best Documentary to Tipper Gore and Davis Guggenheim for AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH, Breakthrough Actor was given by Brooklyn teenager Shareeka Epps to her HALF NELSON co-star Ryan Gosling (who stuck around long after the event and took photos with the students), a manic Parker Posey improvised madly in introducing FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION co-star Catherine O’Hara with Best Supporting Actress, Terrence Howard presented one Breakthrough Actress award to Rinko Kikuchi for BABEL while Sara Jessica Parker handed the other award to DREAMGIRLS’ Jennifer Hudson, who accepted with a charm and grace she’s been exhibiting on other awards programs.
The NBR, in keeping with its historical legacy, has a unique award, the William K. Everson Film History Award, named after one of our greatest historians, educators, authors, archivists, and long-time NBR member. Like many cineastes the world over, I was the beneficiary of Bill Everson’s kindness in the loan of one-of-a-kind prints from his vast collection that filled almost every inch of his West 79th Street apartment (once I found myself on the IRT at 2 AM clutching the only extant print of William K. Howard’s 1927 WHITE GOLD, on loan from Bill!).
Jeanine Basinger has won the Everson Award in the past; she too is a cinematic treasure, writing great books, teaching film studies at Wesleyan University, working with the American Film Institute, involved in film preservation, lecturing extensively, doing incisive audio commentaries on DVDs, and establishing Wesleyan Cinema Archive as one of the world’s premiere film study centers (on her watch, the papers of Frank Capra, Clint Eastwood, Raoul Walsh, Roberto Rossellini, Ingrid Bergman, Martin Scorsese and Jonathan Demme, among others, have been deposited for study for future generations). Jeanine, an NBR Board member, was on hand to present the Everson Award for 2006. On stage she warned she was about to bore us because “I’m an academic,” but that couldn’t be farther from the truth as she delivered an inspirational speech and introduction for Donald Krim:
“We’re in the awards season, we’re going to have awards upon awards, awards for awards, more awards and awards. Everything will get awards, and that’s good. But there‘s one award that only my tribe can give. It’s the award of history, it’s the award that comes from time, it’s the one you can’t argue with, it’s the definitive award. It’s the award that says you were good that night but you were still good ten years later, you were still good twenty years later, you were still good one hundred years later. You stood the test of time. That’s the award that a lot of people in this room have already earned.”
Jeanine smiled at Eli Wallach seated a table directly in front of the stage. “Mr. Wallach, certainly, sir.”
She looked out at Martin Scorsese at THE DEPARTED table. “Marty, people are looking at RAGING BULL, we’re doing BOXCAR BERTHA.”
Now Mr. Spielberg: “Steven, some people are doing SCHINDLER’S LIST, we’re doing EMPIRE OF THE SUN.”
She nodded at Billy Wilder Award honoree Jonathan Demme: “People are looking at SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, we’re doing CAGED HEAT.”
Clint Eastwood was seated with his fellow LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA producers Steven Spielberg and Robert Lorenz: “And Clint, people are loving your amazing war twins -- fraternal not identical -- we’re doing BREEZY … do you even remember you did BREEZY? Well, we do. So how do we manage to give those awards? There’s only one way. Somebody has to care about all the work you do. Somebody has to come around tonight and bring it home and save it and get it out and show it again and show it again and put it in theatres and put it on VHS and DVD. And that’s the person that we’re going to honor tonight … Mr. Don Krim. He created and ran UA Classics, the very first studio classics divison, and in 1977 he took over Kino International and has developed it into a leading source of vintage and independent films. He’s the man who values your work the ten years, the twenty years, past the moment, who keeps it alive for history and keeps it alive for time and for the next generation.”
Nicola Bulgari, Vice-Chairman of Bulgari, was with us to present the Bulgari 2006 NBR Freedom of Expression awards. Of Deepa Mehta, writer-director of WATER, he said: “Tonight we are proud to recognize the bravery and steadfast conviction of Deepa Mehta. Twice she has battled the terrorism of Hindu fundamentalists in her country of birth. Twice she was forced to live under armed military protection while thousands condemned her with profanities, burning effigies, and death threats. When first attempting to film WATER -- the final film in her ‘Trilogy of the Elements’ -- Mehta was confronted by 10,000 rioters who burned the film sets, blew up equipment and threatened to kill the director and her actresses. Despite the protection of over 300 heavily armed army troops, filming had to be stopped. Five years later the production was re-mounted in secrecy in Sri Lanka. Anyone who has seen these three brilliant films will wonder why there has been so much anger generated from stories which critics have described as humanist visual poetry … Rapturous …contemplative …illuminating. Her works have been compared to those of Satyajit Ray, David Lean, and Vittorio de Sica … but the voices of repression do not respond to these visionaries!
“We should not expect them to listen to a woman who profoundly questions careless assumptions and hidebound traditions and in doing so cracks open the flaws of human nature to let a little light shine through. Perhaps Salman Rushdie, an artist acquainted with the forces of suppression, said it best when describing Ms Mehta’s latest triumph WATER. ‘The film has serious, challenging things to say about the crushing of women by atrophied religious and social dogmas, but, to its great credit, it tells its story from inside its characters, rounding out the human drama of their lives, and unforgettably touching the heart.’ We are extremely proud to present the 2006 Bulgari Award for NBR Freedom of Expression to Deepa Mehta for her film WATER.”
After remarks from a deeply moved Ms. Mehta, Mr. Bulgari presented the second Freedom of Expression Award to Oliver Stone for WORLD TRADE CENTER. One of the evening’s most emotional moments came from John McLoughlin and Will Jimeno, the two real-life Port Authority policemen portrayed in the film by Nicolas Cage and Michael Pena. The stunning Penelope Cruz also spoke touchingly of her VOLVER director Pedro Almodovar, winner for their film VOLVER. Helen Mirren (THE QUEEN) and Forest Whitaker (LAST KING OF SCOTLAND) have won every award at every awards ceremony; at the NBR event James Cromwell (co-star of THE QUEEN) and Clint Eastwood (he directed Whitaker in BIRD) did the presenting honors. A special treat saw Steven Spielberg present Djimon Hounsou with Best Supporting Actor for BLOOD DIAMOND, and recall directing his breakthrough performance in AMISTAD (a movie well worth watching again; it’s improved with age).
Anna Deavere Smith presented Jonathan Demme with the Billy Wilder Award for career achievement in directing; after watching the career clip tribute I put together with Martin Biehn and Greg Segal, he graciously accepted the award on behalf of “the writers and actors, the interpretative artists, the camera people, the production designers, editors, the dolly pushers, on behalf of everybody who made these darned things!” After looking at his own tribute tape, Eli Wallach quoted a line of dialogue from the tape showing him in his upcoming comedy MAMA’S BOY: “Did you like it,” Eli asked everyone in Cipriani, “when I said ‘I’m ninety-one fuckin’ years old!’” He brought down the house one more time, then remarked, “In California they have a system called ‘for your consideration.’ The NBR didn’t consider -- they just gave me the award and I’m very happy they did.” Irwin Winkler was also a career winner, for producing. A Falstaffian Kevin Kline presented the award; Irwin told a short sweet Billy Wilder joke: “An old man went to the doctor. ‘What’s the problem?’ asked the doctor. ‘I can’t pee.’ ‘How old are you?’ ’96.’ ‘You’ve peed enough.’”
THE DEPARTED earned two major awards – Best Ensemble (presented by producer Graham King to Mark Wahlberg and Vera Farmiga) and of course, Best Director for Martin Scorsese. On stage he rattled off some of the films he shared with crew and cast before shooting – the crime films of Jean-Pierre Melville, Jacques Becker’s TOUCHEZ PAS AU GRISBI (which, Marty commented, translates as HANDS OFF MY LOOT), and the Asian cinema Kyoshi Kurosawa (LOFT, PULSE), Ki-duk Kim (BAD GUY), Chan-wook Park (OLDBOY), Chan-ok Park (JEALOUSY IS MY MIDDLE NAME), and Sang-soo Hong (THE TURNING GATE). And of course the maestro mentioned Wai Keung Lau and Siu Fai Mak, directors of INFERNAL AFFAIRS upon which THE DEPARTED was based.
The final award of the evening was Best Film, and we were thrilled to have His Honor the Mayor of the City of New York, Michael R. Bloomberg, to present to the producers of LETTERS FROM IWO JIMA – Messrs. Eastwood, Spielberg, and Lorenz. Mayor Bloomberg has done a great deal to keep and bring back film production in New York, so hats off to him. The Mayor made a joke about both he and Clint having the shared experience of being mayors (remember Clint’s stint in Carmel, California?), then handed the award to a well pleased Mr. Eastwood. Jesse L. Martin thanked our “Awards Girl”, actress Heidi Kristoffer, for a job well done, bid everyone goodnight, and that was it. The 2006 NBR Awards Gala was history, leaving great memories of a great evening.
A CONVERSATION WITH ELI WALLACH
by John Gallagher and Lauren Waisbren: On January 4, 2007, just a few days before he received his NBR Career Achievement award, I visited Eli Wallach at his Upper West Side Manhattan. I brought along the outstanding young actress Lauren Waisbren, who makes her screen debut in the upcoming Angel Baby Entertainment/Apple Computers feature HOT BABY, produced by my Angel Baby partner Gregory Segal and I. Lauren and I worked together at The Neighborhood Playhouse, acting alma mater of both Eli and Anne (I teach acting-for-the-camera there to the graduating class); Eli and Anne eagerly questioned Lauren about her experience there.
Still going strong at nearly 92, Eli recently co-starred in THE HOLIDAY opposite Kate Winslet, and has two pictures (MAMA’S BOY and THE HOAX), as he put it, “in the can” for release in 2007. Eli was a most gracious host as we sat at the dining room table surrounded by his family’s paintings and drawings:
JOHN GALLAGHER: Bulgari is sponsoring the National Board of Review awards, the great Italian jewelers. You’ve done a lot of work in Italy, besides the Leone classic THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY.
ELI WALLACH: I love working in Italy. I’ve worked with some wonderful Italian actors. Nino Manfredi, Claudia Cardinale … a girl named Mariangela Melato …
JG: From Lina Wertmuller’s SWEPT AWAY.
EW: That’s right. The Italians are very kind to American actors.
JG: Ben Gazzara’s made a lot of pictures there; in fact he lives there part time. He’s a good friend, I directed him in a movie.
EW: Oh, I love Ben. He had that terrible throat cancer yet we went to speak somewhere and he did the Gettysburg Address and he was just wonderful.
JG: He was outstanding on Broadway last year in AWAKE AND SING.
EW: Yes, he played the old man. Anne did it with Katherine.
JG: You did a lot of theatre before you did film.
EW: I did theatre for ten years before movies.
JG: Did you find it difficult to adjust?
EW: No, I just didn’t want to do movies. I just wanted to act on the stage. Annie and I were members of the American Repertory Theatre. We did Shakespeare, six productions in the first year.
LAUREN WAISBREN: What Shakespearean productions did you do?
EW: The first one was HENRY VIII, and the second one was ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA with Katharine Cornell. Do you like Shakespeare?
LW: Yes, I love it.
EW: Good! Good for you!
JG: Mr. Baldridge teaches Shakespeare at the Playhouse.
LW: Harold.
EW: I’m on the board. It’s a wonderful school.
JG: Could you share some of your memories of the Neighborhood Playhouse? It was at a different location when you trained there.
EW: When I first went there it was off Broadway on 46th Street. Sandy Meisner was the acting teacher, Martha Graham was the dance teacher and Laura Elliott was the voice coach. Gregory Peck and Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., were students when I was there. You see, all my family were teachers and I didn’t want to be a teacher, I wanted to be an actor. They said, “ No, you can’t, you gotta go get a job, become a teacher!” So I went to City College after I graduated from the University of Texas, class of 1936.
JG: In Austin?
EW: In Austin. And in my class at UT was John Connally, who became Governor and was shot in the car with JFK, and Zachary Scott the actor, his wife Elaine who later married John Steinbeck, and Walter Cronkite. In my first play at the Curtain Club, something called THE NINTH GUEST, Walter Cronkite played a doctor who came in with his little black medical bag and said, “Where’s the body?” The girl playing his wife said, “He’s in the closet.” Walter opened the closet door and I fell out! And that was my baptism.
JG: How did you end up at the Neighborhood Playhouse?
EW: I failed the teacher’s exam at City College. I got an audition at the Neighborhood Playhouse with Mr. (Sanford) Meisner. He was very stylish, wearing a beautiful suit, smoking a cigarette and he said, “OK, let’s hear your audition.” I did a piece of poetry about guys dying in the war and he said, “Alright, we’ll take you in, we’ll give you a scholarship … but it’s gonna take you 20 years.” I thought, “Does he know who I am?” I said to him, “I did LILIOM at the University of Texas.” He said, “I don’t care, it’s gonna take you 20 years.” And he was right, took me 20 years to become an actor.
JG: There’s a wonderful photo when you walk in the Playhouse today of you and Tony Randall in Martha Graham’s dance class in 1939.
EW: Tony was marvelous. Tony was always gallant and wonderful. He would memorize all of Thomas Wolfe’s books. I had a $5 a week scholarship, that took car of the subway back and forth to Brooklyn, my lunches and my cigarettes.
JG: Today’s Neighborhood Playhouse is a two-year program, classes five days a week, and only a portion of the first year class is invited back for the second year …
EW: It was the same thing then, exactly. Five days a week, two year program, acting, voice, dance.
JG: What was it like at the Actors Studio after being at the Playhouse?
EW: You know, everybody thinks Lee Strasberg was part of the Actors Studio at the beginning. He wasn’t. Annie and I were in the first class in 1947, and it was Bobby Lewis, Kazan and Cheryl Crawford. The three of them founded it, and they were Group Theatre people. The best thing at the Studio was you could do scenes with Marlon Brando, Karl Malden, the women in there, Annie, and it was a way to grow. It was like a gymnasium. But don’t forget, I had been working at a method school at the Neighborhood Playhouse.
Meisner didn’t like Strasberg. Meisner was very very clever in his teaching. The first year I kept thinking, “What’s this?” You’d walk into the classroom and Meisner would be sitting there and suddenly he’d bang on the table to see how we’d react. I kept thinking, “This is a school for learning how to hold up banks” … because there was always robbery involved. The second year I did some wonderful pieces. I said to Martha Graham, there was the painter, oh what was his name, he painted his mother ...
LW: Edgar Lee Masters.
EW: Edgar Lee Masters. I said to Martha Graham, “They wouldn’t buy any of Edgar Lee Masters paintings cause he wrote his name across the top.” No one wanted to buy his paintings. He said, “I’ll never paint again,” then he said, “No, I’ll tell you what I’ll do, I will put a butterfly somewhere in my painting and you won’t know where it is.” It’s like Al Hirschfeld, he hid his daughter’s name “Nina” in every one of his drawings.
So when I left the Neighborhood Playhouse I said to Martha, “Every piece I do there’s going to be one pure Martha Graham movement.” So I go to London to do THE TEAHOUSE OF THE AUGUST MOON, I played a Japanese, and I’m rehearsing. There’s a big sign that says Martha Graham in concert, I go back to see the doorman, he lets me go back to see her and she said to me, “What are you doing here?” I said, “I’m following you to the ends of the earth.” She said, “I’ve seen you on the stage, where are you putting in the pure Graham movement?” I said, “The thing is, I can never reveal where I put it!"
JG: There’s been such a debate over the years about “Method” acting. Can you define it? Or is there even a definition?
EW: Every teacher of acting has his own method. Meisner had his technique. I studied with Bobby Lewis at the Actors Studio. My first Broadway play CAMINO REAL and my first movie BABY DOLL Elia Kazan directed both. I wasn’t interested in the movies, I was just interested in plays. I did THE ROSE TATTOO on Broadway for a year and a half with Tennessee Williams. I spent two years with Henry Fonda in MR. ROBERTS on the stage. Annie and I did MAJOR BARBARA with Charles Laughton. You learn from all of them. Annie did a movie before I did (SO YOUNG, SO BAD in 1950) … (to Lauren) … Do you know how long we’ve been acting together?
LW: How long?
EW: Since 1946. Where were you?
LW: I was a sparkle in my grandparents’ eyes!
EW: Now we have three children.
LW: Three girls?
EW: Two girls and my oldest is a boy, Peter. He’s quite an artist. Wonderful painter and animator. But I don’t know, I just wanted to do plays. We do an evening called TENNESSEE WILLIAMS REMEMBERED in which we do five plays of Tennessee’s that we did. We met doing the play THIS PROPERTY IS CONDEMNED, a one-act play at the Equity Library Theatre, a place where agents and producers could come see us work. The director, Terry Hayden, said, “Let’s make a movie of it, we have $200.” It all takes place on a railroad track and we went to New Jersey and filmed it. So in TENNESSEE REMEMBERED we do the actual scene and then I say, “You know, we wanted to make a movie so you’d remember it so please sit back,” I say to the audience and we put our backs to the audience and I say “Screen,” and out comes the picture that we made. That’s how we start the evening. The second thing was, Annie did SUMMER AND SMOKE, and we tell stories about Tennessee, and we do CAMINO REAL, THE ROSE TATTOO and we did THE GLASS MENAGERIE on tour with Tennessee helping us. And of course my first movie was written by Tennessee, called BABY DOLL, based on two one-acts, 27 WAGONS FULL OF COTTON and THE UNSATISFACTORY SUPPER.
JG: One of the most memorable scenes in BABY DOLL is you and Carroll Baker outside in the swing. It’s very sexy and erotic but all you see are close-ups of our faces. I understand it was very cold that day.
EW: It was freezing. We were in Mississippi but it was very cold. They had heating pads down below. The movie was condemned by the Catholic Church … (to Lauren) … Are you Catholic?
LW: No, I’m Jewish.
EW: It was condemned by the Catholic Church but all the Catholics in New York went to see it!
JG: I’m half Sicilian and we always thought you were too because of BABY DOLL.
EW: Well, I grew up in an Italian neighborhood in Brooklyn, on Union Street.
JG: A lot of movie buffs think that Sergio Leone cast you as Tuco in THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY because of your performance as the Mexican bandit Tuco in THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, but it was really because of your work in HOW THE WEST WAS WON.
EW: That’s true! He picked up on some shooting gestures I made with an imaginary six shooter to George Peppard’s little boys in the picture. I didn’t know how I got the job and then I found out later.
JG: How did Sergio Leone communicate to you on the set? Did he speak English?
EW: He spoke mostly French to me and Clint and Lee. He used to call me “Ee-LY” emphasizing the second syllable. Next month I’m going to see Ennio Morricone conduct an orchestra here in New York and I’ve never met him before! I’ve always said if only I’d heard the music before I would have played him differently. Have you ever seen the first movie I ever made, THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN?
JG: I grew up on that movie.
EW (to Lauren): You’ve never seen me as a bandit.
LW: Were you a convincing villain.
EW (to John): Was I?
JG: You better believe it.
EW: We shot THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN down in Mexico, just outside of Cuernavaca, and Anne came down to visit me. The kids always came whenever I was shooting. They came to northern Spain when I was shooting THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY and watched me do a scene with Clint.
LW: When you saw Anne for the first time when you did THIS PROPERTY IS CONDEMNED, did you have love-at-first-sight lightning bolts?
EW: She thought I was too old. When I first walked in I was still in uniform, I had been in the Army, five years in World War Two. I just showed John some pictures of the Nazis I found in Berlin in 1945 just after Hitler committed suicide. I’m donating them to the Holocaust museum in Washington. Anyway, Annie thought I was too old for her. We’ve been married 58 years.
LW: Congratulations!
EW: Well, the first thirty were the hardest.
JG: You always seem to do such wonderful bits of business, like Tuco brushing his teeth with his finger in THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY. Do you plan these things ahead of time or do they come out of the moment?
EW: Well, I’ll give you an example. In the first Western I made, THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN, I said to the director, wonderful director, John Sturges, “When I was a little boy watching Westerns, I never saw what the bandits did with the money. I would like to show you what I do with the money.” So I wore red silk shirts, I went to the dentist and had two gold caps put on my own teeth. The Mexican dentist said never mind the gold teeth, I will drill a hole in your own tooth and put a diamond in there, I said no thanks I’ll just do the gold! So that’s how things happen, out of thinking about your character. I’ve just finished a movie, have you seen—
LW: THE HOLIDAY? I thought it was great!
EW: With Kate (Winslet). She’s wonderful because she’s a gifted girl who has a brain in her head and doesn’t do it like the usual girls you meet in the movies. We bonded from the first day of shooting. I’m walking with a walker and I’m lost and she’s driving an American automobile and she pulls over and asks me “Can I help you get home?” And I say, “Why, do you know where I live?” She says “Yes I do” and I say “Well that makes one of us.” We bonded from then on, we talked. I keep saying to her I don’t like what happened in Hollywood, I really don’t … In the beginning I didn’t want to do movies, I said one is enough, I’ll just go back and do plays. But after awhile I realized how difficult it is making movies.
JG: In what sense?
EW: It’s like pointillism. You put little dots on the canvas and you don’t understand what the hell it is until you step back and look at it and there’s a painting.
JG: You did a couple of films with tough guy director Henry Hathaway.
EW: The first one I did with him, SEVEN THIEVES, I played a homosexual saxophone player, with Eddie Robinson, Joan Collins, and Rod Steiger. I’ll tell you a funny story. We’re planning to rob a casino in Monte Carlo and we’re sitting there with the maps. We do a short rehearsal and Hathaway goes to check on the lighting. Meanwhile Rod’s there with us looking at the map and he keeps repeating his line: “Look, if we go in the front door I THINK we can make it,” then he says “If we go in the FRONT door I think we can make it,” then he says “If we go in the front DOOR I think we can make it.” Hathaway says “Action!” and Steiger says “If we go in the front door I think we CAN make it.” Eddie Robinson looks at him and says “And I don’t remember my fucking line.”
JG: Is it true that Richard Brooks, writer-director of LORD JIM, only gave you the scenes you were to shoot the next day, not the whole script?
EW: Not quite true, not quite true. That was a Joseph Conrad novel, not an original script so perhaps he wasn’t afraid of another company getting a similar picture out there first … especially just a few years later when TV started making movies. Brooks was wonderful. A little crazy. He was an ex-Marine. He and I got along but he could be very difficult. We shot that in Cambodia, the Vietnam War was just starting. I just saw Peter O’Toole in VENUS, I’ve done three movies with Peter, LORD JIM, one with Audrey Hepburn and William Wyler (HOW TO STEAL A MILLION) – see, I had great directors … Wyler, Kazan, Hathaway, Huston … Huston once said to me (on THE MISFITS), I had a scene with Clark Gable, and I was drinking and angry cause Marilyn Monroe was dancing with Monty Clift. The table was littered with glasses of wine and I was playing the scene very drunk, very drunk. While they’re lighting, Huston walked up to me and said, “Eli, you know the drunkest I ever was?” I said, “No,” he said “Yesterday.” I said, “I was with you all day yesterday.” “That’s the drunkest I ever was.” He walked away. “Action.” And I kept thinking, “He’s directing me by indirection. He’s saying don’t be so obviously drunk.”
LW: Don’t indicate.
EW: Drunks try to be sober. Gable sat next to me and he started to laugh. The first day I worked with Clark Gable on THE MISFITS, I’m sitting in my truck, and Gable leans on the window. Huston says “Action” and I kept staring at Clark Gable, thinking, “This is the King of the Movies. He is the King of the Movies, and I hope he doesn’t know that I never saw GONE WITH THE WIND.” This is what I’m thinking in my mind, right? And Gable is looking at me, thinking, “Who the hell is this guy from New York, with the Method, this Method, I don’t understand this Method!” So we’re staring at each other and Huston says “What happened? I said Action!” I said,”I don’t know, he—“ and Gable said, “He—I don’t know” … Huston ordered a drink for both of us, we each had a drink and from then on Gable and I talked only about theatre.
JG: People forget he was a stage actor. He did MACHINAL on Broadway and THE LAST MILE in L.A.
EW: That’s right.
JG: You knew Marilyn before the picture, obviously.
EW: Yeah, from New York. We used to like to dance.
JG: That’s a wonderful scene where you dance with her in THIS MISFITS..
EW: She was always worried … her marriage was breaking up. And she felt that the camera was an X-ray machine and could tell what she was really thinking, so she could never come to set on time. She never, in two and a half months in Reno, Nevada, never came on time. I said to Gable, “Did you ever think of chastising her, did you ever think of saying what are you doing, you’re always an hour, two hours late.” He said, “No, if I did that, it would tighten her up even more, she wouldn’t be able to speak at all.” Both Gable and Marilyn were doing THE MISFITS as a challenge, doing a piece of work that was different from what they usually did in a movie.
JG: On HOW TO STEAL A MILLION, is it true that William Wyler would do endless takes?
EW: Yeah. Annie made the movie with Stanley Kubrick called THE SHINING with Jack Nicholson, and she did ten takes or twelve takes, and finally she said to him, “Listen, I can imitate anything, I can do it, so please tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it” and he said “I never tell anybody to do anything.” That was also the case with Wyler.
JG: I guess he knew what he wanted when he saw it.
EW: He also couldn’t hear too well.
JG: That’s right, he had the war injury.
EW: But Audrey (Hepburn) was wonderful, she was so sweet.
JG: These directors you worked with were larger than life. And worked without interference.
EW: On BABY DOLL, Tennessee came on the set only once. Kazan was the one who did the talking.
JG: You know, every year, THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY becomes more of a classic. The critics consider it one of the great films.
EW: They didn’t at the time!
JG: They called it a Spaghetti Western but it’s a brilliant work of art. What was Lee Van Cleef like?
EW: People ask me a lot about him. He’d made quite a number of films, Westerns mostly, but small parts until Sergio cast him opposite Clint in (FOR) A FEW DOLLARS MORE. His wife was with him on location and he was very happy – he had just bought her a new Mercedes. We became good friends. The thing I liked about Clint was that he had made FISTFUL and A FEW DOLLARS MORE, and the focus in this third of the trilogy was on me, and Clint was my mentor. He’d say to me, “Listen, don’t be smart, don’t try any stunts because they can be very dangerous with the Italians, they’ll say ‘Jump out of the window!’” You saw the movie?
JG: A hundred times.
EW: My first scene in the movie is I jump out of the window, I crash through a window with a bottle of wine and a chicken. I thought, “Jeez, I’m jumping out of windows now.” But Clint was very helpful.
JG: You obviously rode before, THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN.
EW: I’ve been riding horses since 1933.
JG: You had to have been a horseman cause your riding is too good.
EW: Well, I rode in Texas at the University of Texas. They taught me how to exercise the polo ponies, and I liked to ride, particularly Western saddle, not the British style.
LW: It’s harder to ride Western, much bumpier, but you can find a way to get control.
EW: That’s right. What I don’t like about the English riding is you have to post. You do this and they’ll throw you. No, you get on a horse … I’ve done some good riding, particularly abroad, where it’s dangerous. You do a Western in America and the horses hit their marks.
JG: They’re movie horses.
EW: They’re movie horses! I did a couple of them in Europe, ACE HIGH, ROMANCE OF A HORSE THIEF.
JG: That was directed by Abraham Polonsky, the blacklisted director.
EW: When I was doing TEAHOUSE OF THE AUGUST MOON in London in the Fifties, a lot of the blacklisted directors and actors had fled this country and gone over there.
JG: When Sergio Leone offered Henry Fonda the role in ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST, didn’t Fonda call you?
EW: Yep, he called me up and he said, “I don’t understand this. They want me to shoot and kill a little boy. I can’t.” I said, “Who’s the director?” He said “Leone.” I said, “Do the movie,” and later he called me and said “Thank God I did it” cause he was wonderful. You know, when I first got to Italy, Sergio said to me, “E-LY, I don’t want you to put your gun in a holster.” “So where do I put the gun?” “He said, “You have a rope around your neck, and when you want the gun, you twist your shoulders, I cut to your hand and there’s the gun.” I said “Could you show me?” He weighed about 300 pounds, he put the rope around his neck, twists his shoulders, the gun missed his hand, hit him in the groin. He said, “All right. Keep it in your pocket.” So for the rest of the picture I kept it in my pocket.
What I like about Clint is he said “When I leave here I’m not gonna make any more Spaghetti Westerns. I’m going back to California, I’m gonna form my own company, work with Don Siegel, and I’m going to star in and direct movies.” I thought, “That’ll be the day!”
John Gallagher
jgmovie@gmail.com
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