Jacques Cousteau (28 page)

David Wolper, creator of The Undersea World of Jacques Cousteau
(©
BETTMANN/CORBIS
)

Wolper showed his film to the advertising agency that represented Old Spice deodorant for men, which was the way television shows were bought for broadcast at the time. They liked it, but none of the three networks—CBS, NBC, or ABC—was interested. Wolper had pitched his film to them through their news departments, all of which said they would not broadcast anything unless they had total control of the material. Since Robert Flaherty had produced the first full-length documentary film,
Nanook of the North
, in 1922, news
departments had shunned the documentary as a form that was inferior to real reporting. Flaherty and his successors were known to stage scenes, make up situations, and add music to enhance the drama of their films. So what? Wolper replied. A documentary is the creative interpretation of reality. It is not reality.

Wolper went back to Old Spice and asked if they would sponsor his documentary if he could get independent stations around the country to air it instead of the networks. They said yes. It would be cheaper, in the long run, than paying the premium for airtime on the networks. Wolper, who had been selling cartoons and music revues to independents during the decade since he left USC, showed his documentary to the New York and Los Angeles stations with the biggest audiences. They liked what they saw. With their recommendations, he had no trouble convincing a hundred more.
The Race for Space
, with music by Elmer Bernstein, drew rave reviews and was nominated for an Oscar as best documentary film of 1958. The
New York Times
, in a front page story, hailed Wolper not only as a brilliant producer but also as the man who created his own network to broadcast his movie on television.

“I devised my philosophy of filmmaking making
The Race for Space
, and I never changed it from that first show,” Wolper told the
Times
. “I want to entertain and inform, not just inform and not just entertain. I want to do both in the same piece. I saw a film in school once, and I came home and told my father. You know I saw this film in school, it was terrific. And my father said well you probably didn’t learn anything. I said no, Dad, I learned more today because it was terrific. I enjoyed it, I did learn a lot. He said how can you learn a lot just watching film? And when I did
The Race for Space
I wanted to get that entertainment.”

Before flying to Monaco to see Cousteau, Bud Rifkin, a veteran producer who had just sold his own company to join forces with Wolper, called Melvin Payne at
National Geographic
to ask for his impressions of the famous explorer. Payne told him that Cousteau was irresistibly charming, and immensely valuable to the world as a popularizer of the ocean and its creatures. He was a showman, not a scientist. The National Geographic Society had financed Cousteau’s expeditions
for a decade and given him its Gold Medal. The only problem Rifkin and Wolper would have, Payne said, was keeping Cousteau on budget. The man had absolutely no sense of what things cost and was more cavalier about financial planning than any producer Payne had ever known. Somehow, Payne added, he always makes things come out right, but it’s very hard on people around him.

In Monaco, Simone Cousteau, who famously did not care for the company of most women, either liked Rifkin’s wife Tedde or acted as if she did for the sake of making a deal. The two of them swanned around the Riviera while their husbands talked business. Rifkin told Cousteau that Wolper thought he could sell a television series based on the adventures of
Calypso
, its crew, and the ocean. The formula was simple. Each episode would pose a challenging question about the sea and its inhabitants. In an hour, Cousteau and his men would answer it. For instance, are sharks the vicious killers everybody thinks they are? Or how do the creatures of the coral reef depend upon one another for survival?

Cousteau and Rifkin toured Monte Carlo and the Oceanographic Museum, batting story ideas around while carefully avoiding the big question that was paramount in their minds: how much was each show going to cost? Rifkin suggested that Cousteau come up with ideas for a dozen films, fly to New York, and try to work out a deal with a network. Rifkin set the hook when he told Cousteau that if the show was a success, thirty-five or forty million people would see dolphins on a single evening.

A week later, Wolper flew to Monaco to talk to Cousteau himself. From working with him on the
National Geographic
special, Wolper had great admiration for Cousteau, believing him to be a brave man who believed passionately in what he was doing and who genuinely loved the oceans of the earth. He knew that Cousteau poured every penny he made back into
Calypso
, his museum, and his expeditions. There wasn’t a mercenary bone in his body. Wolper had no illusions about Cousteau. He knew he was a tough guy who was hard on everyone around him, including his own family, none of whom, including his wife, seemed completely comfortable in his company. Wolper, a perfectionist himself, identified with Cousteau’s insistence that things be done his way and done correctly the first time. They worked well together because they were equals committed to the
same objective. Wolper also got along well with Cousteau because he seemed to have an air of mystery and the unexpected about him. Cousteau was gregarious and charming, but he kept his own counsel about his thoughts and desires. He was a man, Wolper believed, who though he appeared genuine in the moment, was capable of living a secret internal life.

Over dinner while working on the
National Geographic
special, Wolper had discovered that he and Cousteau shared the philosophy that poets are closer to the truth than mathematicians or politicians.

In Monaco, Wolper enjoyed renewing his connection with Cousteau.
Calypso
was another story. He inspected the ship at the dock and pronounced it unfit for duty as a television star. “It looks like shit,” he told Cousteau.
Calypso
had to sparkle, and so did the divers. Black suits underwater were simply not photogenic. In his notebook, Wolper sketched out silver wet suits and yellow diving helmets with full face masks that looked like something an astronaut would wear in space. He drew streamlined plastic housings for the air tanks on the divers’ backs. Cousteau’s ship and his divers had to look every bit as out of this world as the NASA astronauts, Wolper said. They were the competition for airtime. Cousteau told Wolper that the cost of sprucing up
Calypso
, its divers, and its equipment would be enormous. More than $1 million. He couldn’t afford to front the money. The only way Cousteau could do it was to have a deal for at least a dozen episodes, to be filmed over three or four years.

Wolper went back to New York and pitched the three networks with his idea for a series on ocean exploration built around a charismatic explorer who had already mesmerized theater audiences and won two Oscars. NBC didn’t think a series about French sailors swimming underwater would hold their viewers’ attention for more than a single movie-length production. CBS liked the idea, but wouldn’t commit to even one season without seeing the first episode, despite having broadcast the Conshelf III
National Geographic
show that Wolper had produced. At ABC, head of programming Tom Moore said yes but only to four hours.

In the spring of 1966, Wolper still hadn’t nailed down a broadcast partner. He and Cousteau continued to negotiate a production deal on the telephone. Wolper persuaded
Encyclopedia Britannica
and DuPont chemicals to sponsor twelve episodes—with the condition
that a network agree to air them—and offered Cousteau $300,000 per episode. In return, Wolper Productions would own the broadcast rights for English-speaking countries and South America; Cousteau would own the rights for shows for broadcast in Europe, Asia, Africa, Australia, and the rest of the world. Wolper, who by that time was convinced that Cousteau was one of the most pleasant but hard-nosed businessmen he had ever met, suggested they get together in New York as soon as possible. Cousteau was dazzlingly brilliant, Wolper had discovered, but what made him so adept in dealing with people was a kind of primitive instinct for finding a solution to whatever problem was at hand.

While Simone remained aboard
Calypso
for a scientific mission to measure the optical properties of seawater, Cousteau and Philippe flew to New York. During the six weeks since Rifkin and Wolper had proposed the deal of a lifetime, Cousteau and his younger son had become increasingly aware that the magnitude of the venture called for smooth collaboration between them. Cousteau’s older son, Jean-Michel, clearly did not have the stage presence of Philippe, and seemed quite happy managing logistics and equipment design ashore. Philippe, however, devoured life as a filmmaker, diver, and on-camera star in
World Without Sun
and the
National Geographic
special on Con-shelf III. He was a gifted cameraman and editor, and an expert diver. At the same time, he maintained the boyish curiosity about the undersea world and its creatures that had made his father so compelling. As much as Philippe flattered Cousteau by emulating him, father and son often clashed furiously in differences of opinion that startled people who witnessed them. Still, there was no doubt in Cousteau’s mind that Philippe would be his second in command of television production. He would eventually be his creative heir.

In New York, Philippe was not part of the actual negotiations with Wolper, but his father consulted with him daily on their progress. The rest of the time, Philippe found out what it was like to be a handsome underwater adventurer who had been on national television and spoke English with a French accent. It was spellbinding to American women. One of them, a fashion model from California named Janice Sullivan, was as irresistible to him as he was to her. They met at a party, after which they were together almost every night. Sometimes they ate dinner with Cousteau, who liked the young
American woman but pointedly excluded her from the conversation by speaking only French.

The day before Cousteau and Philippe were to leave New York, they had lunch with Wolper at the St. Regis Hotel. ABC’s Tom Moore, who was sitting a few tables from them, came over to say hello. Moore was then president of the Explorers Club, an association founded in New York in 1904 whose members, over the years, had included Roald Amundsen, Robert Peary, Ernest Shackleton, Charles Lindbergh, Chuck Yeager, John Glenn, and a few hundred other bona fide explorers, along with several thousand associates who paid to join chapters of the club scattered around the world. Cousteau was not a member, but his name had come up more than once at the meetings, during which nominations were proposed. Moore, despite his apparently firm reluctance to offer Cousteau and Wolper the deal they wanted to broadcast a dozen episodes on ABC, invited them to join him for dinner that night at the Explorers Club. They finished the evening with cognac and cigars in the second-floor library, surrounded by memorabilia from the most celebrated expeditions of the twentieth century. There was a framed flag that had circled the earth in space, a ragged page from Shackleton’s diary, Lucky Lindy’s flying gloves. Moore never made them an offer.

A month later, Wolper got a call from Moore, who desperately needed a speaker for the Explorers Club gala at the Waldorf Astoria, which would be held in two weeks. It’s a great party, Moore said, with a meal of exotic wild game and glamorous women in evening gowns. If Wolper talked Cousteau into delivering the after-dinner speech, Moore would try to persuade ABC to air twelve one-hour episodes of their underwater adventure series. It was after midnight in Monaco, but Wolper didn’t hesitate. Cousteau, who sounded like he was in the middle of his workday, listened for the minute it took Wolper to outline the offer, then said one word:
Oui
.

“If Tom Moore had not been stuck for an after-dinner speaker, my father probably wouldn’t have gotten the series,” Jean-Michel Cousteau remembered. “When he told us about it, he said that his life was a lot of little things that came together just right.”

It took Cousteau three months to disentangle himself and
Calypso
from scientific and industrial charters, including one in which his divers were helping to lay a pipeline through which an aluminium
plant would discharge red-mud waste into deep water. Better, scientists reasoned, to deposit the mud in deep water, where it settled immediately as sediment, than to allow it to ruin the near-shore shallows.

In the fall of 1966, Cousteau put
Calypso
into dry dock in Marseille for a face-lift. During the fifteen years since its metamorphosis from Maltese ferryboat to all-purpose research vessel, the ship had been reincarnated many times, depending on the task at hand. Moviemaking had been a part of every mission, but rarely its sole purpose. Now, Cousteau and the shipyard crew transformed
Calypso
into the perfect underwater motion picture support ship as well as an attractive movie set capable of sailing around the world. They stripped the interior, converted the wet lab used for storing scientific samples into a darkroom, rebuilt the crew’s quarters into comfortable two-berth staterooms, and added a new cabin for the Cousteaus aft of the wheelhouse. They took out the engines, generators, steering gear, and hydraulic pumps, sent them to machine shops for overhaul, and rewired the electrical system to accept shore power of the several different voltages in foreign ports. They installed two new davits, each of which could lift a ton-and-a-half motor launch, and rebuilt the large crane on the fantail to handle the recompression chamber,
La Sous-coupe
, and the two new one-man subs—Sea Fleas—that had just been built by the Office of Undersea Technology. The Sea Fleas used the same water jet propulsion technology as the two-seat diving saucer, could dive to 1,000 feet, and were perfect for multiple camera shots at depths beyond those which could be reached by scuba divers. Taking out the seismic equipment for oil exploration, with its cable storage bins, made stowage room for more camera equipment, diving gear, food, and water for extended voyages. Cousteau replaced the original bow observation chamber with a new one that had much more room, eight viewing ports, and a closed-circuit television camera to send a constant stream of images to a monitor on the bridge.