My Life as a Mankiewicz (41 page)

R.J. said, “Oh, she won't, huh?” He went over to her motor home and knocked on the door. “Stefanie, it's R.J. Come on out and meet the people who pay your salary.”

As an actor, Stefanie was a total pro, except for one night when she had to go someplace and we were shooting late. She had a little scene with Max at the kitchen sink, and she did it. I said, “Cut it. We'll do one more.”

She said, “Why? That was great.” She wanted to go.

I said, “I just want to do one more.”

“You mean you have absolutely no direction to give me whatsoever. There was nothing wrong with the last take, you just want to do one more.”

“That's right.”

She said, “All right, let's do it.”

She was about three times as good in the second take. And I said, “Cut it. Print ‘em both. Stefanie, which one do you think I should use?”

She said, “The last one.”

I said, “Thank you.”

She called me later that night to apologize. She said, “I am so sorry. Thank you for making me stay.”

Midnight Mank

I learned a lot. I started directing episodes of
Hart to Hart
like peanuts, and I had a wonderful cachet on the show since I had rewritten it and, in essence, put it on the air. I had a credit called “creative consultant” that was on all 110 episodes. I directed fourteen of them in the first couple of years. I was called “Midnight Mank” because I would keep people very late. On the wall of the stage, there was the schedule of directors, and somebody from the crew had written alongside each guy—Earl Bellamy: “No Money”; Leo Penn: “Some Money”; Tom Mankiewicz: “House Payments.” You shot an episode every seven days. A lot of directors were doing three
Hart to Harts
, four
Fantasy Islands
, and a couple of
Charlie's Angels.
They would finish seven days, and there'd be one scene left to shoot. At the end of four or five episodes, you would have a “slop day,” which meant all the scenes that hadn't been shot. Usually, I would come in and direct the slop day. The Directors Guild would say to Leo Penn, “You have the right to go shoot that extra scene.” Normally, Leo Penn would be shooting another television series and he'd say, “No, no. Let somebody shoot it.” I'd go in on slop days because it was really valuable for me. There were different guest casts and there was different stuff to do. If the whole series was, let's say, nine days over schedule, somebody would write an episode where the Harts get stuck in an elevator so you could do it in four days.

Doris DeHerdt, who was an old British script supervisor on
Hart to Hart
, would always say to me in the morning when I directed, “Good morning, Tom. You have anything for me, or will we be winging it as usual?”

And I would say, “Doris, we're winging it as usual.”

Some television directors hand the script supervisor a shot list. Doris was really good at her job. We were shooting in Hawaii, and there was a scene with R.J., Stefanie, and a coast guard captain. It was a walk-and-talk scene, and I was shooting with two cameras: one was dollying alongside them, and one was a long-lens camera the three of them were walking toward. We did one take, and it was absolutely fine. I said to the dolly cameraman, “Tighten up on R.J. and the captain because they've got 90 percent of the dialogue and I've got Stefanie covered anyway. On the long lens, I just want R.J. and the captain.”

Doris said, “You can't do that.”

I asked, “Why, Doris?”

And she said, “Because the captain will go from the middle of the screen over to the right of the screen.”

I said, “Doris, look, I'm starting with the three of them walking. Everybody knows where they are and that they're walking.” She mumbled the whole time and she was a very proper British lady and so dedicated to her job. I'd hear her mumbling behind me, and I would say, “Please, don't mumble, Doris. If you think I'm an asshole, just speak up.” The day we had this little contretemps about the coast guard captain going from the center of the screen to the right of the screen, I went home that night and flipped on my television set, huge Jack Daniel's in hand, and there was
Lawrence of Arabia.
Claude Rains, Peter O'Toole, and Jack Hawkins are walking together. Suddenly, David Lean cuts right in to the two-shot. So Claude Rains goes from the center to the side. I picked up the phone. “Ms. DeHerdt's room, please.”

She mumbled, “Hello”; she was asleep.

I said, “Doris, I'll explain tomorrow, but if it's good enough for David Lean, it's good enough for me.”

I was shooting on board a boat, and Doris, with earphones on, was in a little boat with some crew members because we couldn't all fit on the boat where I was shooting. They sprung a leak, the little boat was sinking, and Doris's script was soaked. The script supervisor's script has got all of the shots in it. After I finished shooting that night, I walked into the production office, and there was Doris in the corner, ironing her script on an ironing board, drying it out. Now that's somebody who's really dedicated. She just wanted everything to be perfect. She was of the old school.

One day, while we were shooting the pilot, I was walking down the street at Fox. I ran into Aaron Spelling, who said, “Tommy, I missed the rushes today but I hear they were good.”

I said, “Aaron, they look like a million bucks.”

He said, “They better look like two million-three!” Very expensive pilot.

Aaron's Broadcasting Company

Spelling-Goldberg owned their own shows; that's how they got so powerful and wealthy. They had a wonderful show called
Family
—Mike Nichols directed the pilot—and they had
Starsky and Hutch, Charlie's Angels, Fantasy Island, T.J. Hooker
, and now,
Hart to Hart.
At the time, they controlled eight sound stages at Fox out of fifteen. ABC would get an episode for two runs, and then, hello, it was a Spelling-Goldberg show; they owned it. And they owned the negatives. They were on the cover of
Time
magazine.
Charlie's Angels
was a phenomenon. R.J. and Natalie owned 50 percent of the show because they had starred together in a television movie for Spelling-Goldberg and part of the deal was co-ownership of a series. R.J. also owned half of
Hart to Hart;
he was a big star, and they gave him 50 percent. Months earlier, we were in Aaron's office—R.J., Aaron, Leonard, and Guy McElwaine, who was RJ.'s agent and had been Natalie's agent—sitting around a table, talking about
Hart to Hart
and who would play Jennifer Hart. R.J. said, “Well, as you guys know, I have costar approval.”

And Aaron said, “Well, somebody who owns 50 percent of the show should have costar approval.”

R.J. said, “Well, I don't know. I own 50 percent of
Charlie's Angels.
I haven't seen a dime.”

There was a silence, and Leonard said, “I'll tell you what. Before you leave here, we'll write you a check for two million dollars in cash and you give up your 50 percent of
Charlie's Angels.
Fair?”

Guy McElwaine said, “Don't do it.” I knew he wasn't going to do it anyway.

Aaron was so different from Leonard, and they would play good cop and bad cop. And they did it wonderfully. They would have been together forever if not that the wives didn't like each other very much. Aaron would be in the cutting room and he would turn to the editor after a rough cut and say, “What a wonderful job,” even if it wasn't. Whereas Leonard might say, “Who the hell cut this? Jose Feliciano?” That was the difference in style.

I was looking for a mansion; we were always shooting in mansions and we were running out of mansions. I said, “Oh, fuck, we're really up against it next week; I can't find a mansion.”

Aaron said, “My God, they should all be available. The show is so loved, and we're so careful with the crews, and we sign the guarantee, and if anything gets damaged…”

I said, “Aaron, I'll tell you what. You're right. Why don't we use your house?”

He said, “Are you out of your fucking mind? I'm not letting a movie crew in my house.” I said, “Okay. The defense rests, Your Honor.” During the time Aaron built that huge house, the writers had a long strike.

I had a big fight with the Writers Guild when I had three
Hart to Harts
I was committed to directing, and they said, “You can't come on the lot to direct those shows,” and I said, “I've got to.” They said, “No, you'll be crossing the writers' picket line, and you're a member of the Writers Guild.”

I said, “Yes, but I'm also a member of the Directors Guild and I have a legal contract. I've got to fulfill it.”

They finally said, “Well, okay, but we know you. You're famous for rewriting. No writing on the set.”

I went on to direct the show, and the very first scene, Robert Wagner said, “Aw, Jesus, there's gotta be a better line than this.”

I said, “R.J., there is, but I can't tell you.” Then, what I'd do is, I'd say to the grip, “Go tell Mr. Wagner your mother wears army shoes.”

During the strike, which lasted a long time, I was picketing MGM with a very talented writer who's a friend of mine, David Giler, who had written a lot of wonderful scripts. It was ninety-eight degrees. There were about ten of us marching up and down, and across the street was a liquor store. I said to David, “I'll tell you what. I'll chip in, you'll chip in. Why don't you go over there and get us some ice-cold champagne?”

David did, and a couple of the people in line were just outraged. One of them said to David, “Do you realize that at any given moment, 72 percent of the Writers Guild is unemployed?”

And David said, “Do you realize that at any given moment, 85 percent of the Writers Guild is untalented?” We had our champagne.

Writers are terrible picketers. A lot of them haven't been out in the sun much in their lives. They don't know how to walk. They mill around and get caught in crosswalks and traffic. With writers, it looks like a jailbreak. They don't know what to do, and they're marching this way and that way. Writers Guild meetings are more like a socialist cell meeting in the thirties, where people get up and yell, “I was blacklisted in nineteen—” and somebody else says, “Sit down and shut up.” People get up and they're booed. Thousands of writers were assembled in front of Fox. I was walking with a guy named Ben Joelson, who was one of the staff writers on
The Love Boat
, and we were stopped by KFWB and KNX Radio. A reporter said, “This is an amazing show of strength.”

And Ben said, “Yeah, tomorrow we're going to be picketing Aaron Spelling's house, but we're going to need more writers.”

Aaron was really hurt by that. When he built that huge mansion, which was just unbelievable, he said to me, “I grew up as the son of a Jewish tailor in Dallas, Texas. And I wasn't much to look at. And I worked my way up through all of this. I don't fly. I don't like to travel, and they make fun of me for having a big home. I earned every dollar.”

After the
Hart to Hart
series was off the air, there were eight movies done of
Hart to Hart
on network and on cable. R.J., as I've mentioned, owned 50 percent. Stefanie, when she was signed, had no piece of the show because she couldn't demand it, really, with her track record in series television at the time. Later on, in her third year, when she renegotiated, she got 5 percent of the show profits, but her profit definition was worse than mine. I had 2.5 percent of the show, and my agent said to me, “Good luck ever seeing anything.” We sued Spelling-Goldberg and Columbia. We all met in our lawyer's office on Sunset Boulevard: Aaron, Leonard, R.J., Stefanie, me, and the Spelling-Goldberg lawyers. Sidney Sheldon, who still got credit for creating, also had a small piece of it. Aaron's attitude was, “Listen, we all know each other. We like each other. We've had dinner at each other's homes. If we owe any money, we should be paying it.”

Leonard said, “I object to the fact that this entire meeting is based on the supposition that we're crooks. If somebody wants to call me a crook, I'd like them to do it right now.” He said to Stefanie, “Do you think I'm a crook?” Stefanie launched into this speech about all things socioeconomic of the world. She talked for twenty minutes and never said anything. And he said, “Mank?”

I said, “Look, Leonard, nobody's calling anybody a crook. All I can tell you is that I have a business manager and I have a lawyer and they say I'm owed money, and if I am owed money, I'd like to have the money. That's all this is about.”

And Leonard said, “Okay, R.J.?”

R.J. said, “Yeah, I'll call you a crook.” Right there. It was amazing. I don't think Leonard's ever forgiven him for it. When they've run into each other since, Leonard's still a little frosty.

We couldn't settle, and we went to court. Our attorney, Don Engel, negotiated the figure up to 92 percent of what we were owed, and it was a lot of money. We were playing in 125 countries, and everybody was saying, it is impossible that this is not generating income. No matter what the books say, it's got to be in profit. Of course, it's a Spelling-Goldberg show, so ABC stayed out of it entirely. While I was tense about it, for Aaron and Leonard, after having done umpty-ump series and been through so many legal fights, it was just business. When R.J. and Natalie were suing Spelling-Goldberg about their 50 percent
Charlie's Angels
ownership and then Aaron and Leonard countersued, I sent a telegram saying, “The Empire Strikes Back!”

Spelling-Goldberg was the most successful production company in television. ABC was called “Aaron's Broadcasting Company.” Leonard said, “Basically, Aaron does
Charlie's Angels
and
Starsky and Hutch
, I do
Family
and
Hart to Hart
, and nobody does
Fantasy Island.”
It was a delight to work there because they ran their own shop. You didn't have to deal with levels of studio executives. Aaron's bungalow, as I've mentioned, was my father's bungalow when he was doing
All About Eve
and
A Letter to Three Wives.
They built another bungalow just like it next to it, and the two bungalows together were Spelling-Goldberg.