Last Man Standing: Tales from Tinseltown (27 page)

Director Roy Baker, with whom I’d happily worked on many episodes of
The Saint
, had himself earlier worked with Alfred Hitchcock as an assistant director at Gainsborough Studios. Roy maintained he learned a tremendous amount from Hitch, chief amongst which was that ‘time spent on preparation was seldom ever wasted’. However, Hitch didn’t have a great love of actors, once famously describing them as ‘cattle’. When Roy was assisting him, one hapless actress
appeared on set for her first day of shooting, and after the first take Hitch looked up and said, ‘Cut! I wind her up, I put her down but she don’t go! Bring me
Spotlight
!’ (the actors’ directory). He could be a very cruel man at times.

Hitchcock reserved a particular dislike for those thespians who employed the ‘method’ technique. When directing Ingrid Bergman, the star turned and said, ‘Hitch, what is my motivation for this scene?’

In front of the entire crew Hitchcock snapped back, ‘It’s only a bloody film, Ingrid!’

It reminded me of a story I heard about Laurence Olivier and Dustin Hoffman working together on
The Marathon Man
– and you’ll never feel the same about visiting the dentist again. One of the scenes between the duo took place just as Dustin’s character arrived the worse for having been out running. Being a keen advocate of ‘the method’ Dustin actually went on a sprint around the studio grounds before reporting on set, and was genuinely out of breath, ready for the call of ‘Action’. A rather concerned Olivier leaned across to him and said, ‘Have you ever thought about just acting out of breath, dear boy?’

One of Roy Baker’s more unusual films for Rank starred Dirk Bogarde and John Mills and featured veiled intimations of homosexuality in New Mexico – and it always really intrigued me as to why any of them made it.

After the success of two 1950s films for Rank –
The One that Got Away
and
A Night to Remember
– Roy signed a three-picture contract with the company, and Pinewood’s head of production, Earl St John, handed him a book called
The Singer not the Song
.

‘I thought it was awful, and I told him so,’ Roy later told me. ‘I came to the table with three other projects which
were, one by one, rejected. Earl said that he really wanted me to do
The Singer not the Song
with Dirk Bogarde.’

Bogarde was then Rank’s highest-paid artist and, nearing the end of his seven-year contract, was keen to get away from the pretty boy heroes he’d largely played for the studio; though he’d made it clear he didn’t really want to do
this
film.

Catapulted into this strange scenario, Roy dutifully flew out to LA to see Dirk Bogarde and discuss the picture but he soon discovered that for some reason Bogarde was angry about Johnny Mills being cast to star opposite him. Mills, on the other hand, had a different take on the project and said when he was first offered the film, he was to co-star with Marlon Brando. Naturally, he was very excited, but for some reason Brando pulled out and that’s when Dirk came in. All this caused a great deal of tension on the set but Roy soldiered on through it and made it look as good as possible. However, as good as it looked, they finished up with a picture that was panned by everyone.

The last film notwithstanding, Roy had enjoyed great success in the UK and later went to Hollywood, where he famously directed Marilyn Monroe in
Don’t Bother to Knock.
The experience, however, was not a particularly happy one, as he later discovered that Joseph Schenck, one of the production chiefs at 20th Century Fox, had decided to green-light the film as an indulgence to Marilyn, despite her being terribly miscast in the role (Roy suggested Jane Wyman should have played the part by the way). The studio head, Darryl Zanuck, thought it was all a waste of time but as Monroe was under contract they were obliged to find her a film, and with nothing else on offer he let it go ahead, on the proviso that it was made as cheaply as possible.

Marilyn, meanwhile, demonstrating her great insecurity, was adamant she’d only work if her dialogue coach, Natasha Lytess, was on set at all times. Zanuck point-blank refused, and wrote to Marilyn, saying she had ‘built up a Svengali and if you are going to progress with your career and become as important talent-wise as you have publicity-wise then you must destroy this Svengali before it destroys you. When I cast you for the role I cast you as an individual.’

Nevertheless, on day one Miss Lytess appeared on set and sat down next to the camera.

Roy had terrible problems with Marilyn’s timekeeping as she’d often arrive two or three hours after everyone else was ready and on set. Such was her insecurity, that despite countless rehearsals she never quite knew when to pick up a cue or how to move across set; every take would be different. She’d seek constant reassurance from her Svengali and thought more about how she should
act
rather than just naturally being the character.

Eventually, with schedules overrunning, Miss Lytess was barred from the set and Roy said that when he told Marilyn he had expected her to react badly, but she quietly accepted the situation. In fact, she later admitted to being so confused that she’d let anyone be her friend and advise her – though it went to extremes when she let her dialogue coach pass judgement on everything she said and did in her professional life and in private too.

Roy offered her every reassurance Marilyn needed on set and finished the movie on schedule, quite possibly drawing out one of Marilyn’s best, if underrated, performances.

I never met Miss Monroe myself, but my hairdresser on
Ivanhoe
– a lovely, if somewhat camp, chap named Gordon Bond – used to tell me stories of working with her, usually
when I was in the make-up chair, where he’d make a habit of pressing his manhood against my shoulder while telling me stories about his Spanish boyfriend and saying things like, ‘My matador is coming home for the weekend’.

Anyhow, Gordon had worked on
The Prince and The Showgirl
at Pinewood with Laurence Olivier and Marilyn Monroe, and said he had terrible problems (as did everyone) with Marilyn’s terrible timekeeping. But alas – poor Gordon! – having spent an hour or two preparing her hair for the shoot, Arthur Miller would come in to the dressing room, squeeze Marilyn’s shoulder and take her into the room next door … from which they’d emerge thirty minutes later and Gordon would have to do her hair all over again.

One day on a location shoot, Gordon hitched a ride in Marilyn’s car. The scene involved the Marines and Queen’s Guards, who’d been drafted in, and as the Prince (as played by Olivier) arrived, they were to give him the full military welcome.

Marilyn got out of her car and, as Gordon stepped out behind her, half the guards, who’d dutifully ignored her, called out, ‘Oh! Hello, Gordon!’

While working at Fox, Roy Baker said one of the production executives was a chap named Sol Wurtzel. Actually, the whole Wurtzel family were employed at the studio in one capacity or another, be it in the carpenter’s shop, the transport department – and everywhere else. One young starlet who was signed to the ranks was advised that her career might progress if she ‘stepped out’ with Mr Wurtzel. Keen to advance, she willingly did so but after a few months realized she was getting nowhere and only then discovered she’d been going out with the
wrong Mr Wurtzel – her guy worked in the paint shop. Only in Hollywood!

I couldn’t write about Hollywood and not mention my dear friend Albert Romolo Broccoli, also known as Cubby, who was one of its biggest and most successful film producers. He was born in April 1909 in a tenement block in Astoria, Queens, New York, but almost didn’t survive, as his was a breech birth and he had trouble breathing. His grandmother Marietta, who had emigrated from Calabria to America in 1897, resorted to a traditional remedy – the insertion of the head of a black chicken into the child’s mouth. The treatment worked and the boy started to breathe again. Thank goodness for all of us!

Cubby didn’t enjoy a financially rich childhood, far from it. But in 1934, with the encouragement of his cousin Pat de Cicco, who had left his family farming business to become a Hollywood agent, Cubby travelled to LA to break into show business.

At first, life was tough and Cubby sold hair products and Christmas trees to get by. However, his cousin was a successful agent and was well placed to introduce him to people such as the actor Cary Grant, with whom Cubby became great friends, director Howard Hughes, who employed him as an assistant on the film
The Outlaw
, and Charles Feldman, who gave him a job at his talent agency. Cubby then made the transition from agent to film producer, working with partner Irving Allen.

Having established himself in the LA film industry, Cubby first travelled to Britain in 1948, where he cut an
incongruous figure in our austerity shrouded post-World War II capital.

Dear Cubby Broccoli was a great friend to me – and fearless too (although the tiger is stuffed, I think).

‘Where’s the King’s Arms?’ he once asked a local.

‘Around the Queen’s arse!’ he was told – a sardonic reply that delighted him. He still laughed about that years later.

Cubby booked into the Savoy on that first trip, and went into the Grill to have breakfast. A waiter came to the table and asked, ‘What would you like, sir?’

‘I’ll have bacon and eggs and a pot of coffee,’ came the reply.

The waiter had to explain that, due to rationing, that wouldn’t be possible. However, a couple of days later, the same waiter turned up at Cubby’s breakfast table saying he had a surprise. Underneath a big silver lid, he unveiled two boiled eggs. Cubby asked the waiter how he had got them. ‘I brought them from home,’ he said.

Cubby was so touched that he immediately became a champion of all things British, and every movie he made thereafter was in Britain. He loved the lifestyle: the horse racing, the gambling clubs (where I first met him) and the social scene.

His first film as a producer, and one he made in London, was
The Red Beret.
He and his producing partner, Irving Allen, decided Alan Ladd would be the perfect star and Cubby was despatched to meet with the actor. Cubby told me he had thought it was odd that Irving Allen didn’t want to accompany him to the meeting, though he later discovered why. Alan Ladd, who started out in the business as a camera grip technician in the late 1930s, had worked on a series that Irving Allen directed and had mentioned his aspirations to become an actor.

‘Why do you want to be an out-of-work actor?’ Allen
asked him. ‘Stay as a grip, you’ll make more money.’

Well, by the early 1950s Ladd had indeed become an actor – one of Hollywood’s most popular – and was earning $100,000 a year under contract. By 1952, however, he felt he was worth more and asked for a raise. It was not forthcoming, so he refused to renew his contract.

Cubby told me that at the time he didn’t even have enough money to pay his rent that month but the prospect of
The Red Beret
being green-lit if he could secure Hollywood’s biggest actor was too great an opportunity to miss, so he took a gamble and told Ladd’s agent, Lew Wasserman, that they could pay $200,000 for this one film, plus ten per cent of the profits.

Wasserman turned Cubby down, saying he was just starting out and was ‘an amateur’.

Realizing Ladd’s wife, Sue, actually called the shots in that camp, and having heard that she fancied a trip to Europe, Cubby called her to explain his $200,000 offer had been rejected.

‘Stay by the phone,’ Sue snapped.

A few minutes later she called back, inviting Cubby to meet her later that day. Also at the meeting was a rather pale-faced Lew Wasserman, who’d obviously felt the wrath of Sue Ladd. She told him to go ahead and make the deal, but Lew told her that he felt it was crazy.

‘You haven’t got Alan any more than this offer!’ she barked at him.

The deal was done, and in fact became the first of three pictures the producers made with Ladd, thus launching Cubby’s career as a mainstream film producer. That first film, incidentally, was directed by Terence Young, and written by Richard Maibaum – both of whom, of course, went on to collaborate on the early Bond films.