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On the sundeck of the house,
The Sweet Ride
’s director,
Harvey Hart, was setting up a shot over the shoulders of the picture’s stars, Michael Sarrazin and Jacqueline Bisset, down to the beach, where the scene called for them to watch the approach of Hell’s Angels-type motorcyclists. Sarrazin fished out a cigarette and lit it.

“Is that a cork tip?” the script girl said.

Sarrazin nodded.

“You were smoking a white filter in the last shot,” the script girl said.

Hart produced a white filter cigarette and gave it to Sarrazin. Hart shouted down to the beach for someone to make a mark where the motorcyclists were to stop so that they could remain in the shot.

“That’s the toughest thing for an actor to learn,” Pasternak said. “Hitting the mark. A young actor starts looking for the mark, then the shot’s no good. The old pros hit the mark without even looking.”

Jacqueline Bisset took her place at the railing of the sundeck. The camera was behind her, looking down over her at the figures on the beach.

Pasternak shook his head sadly. “How can you tell a director that this shot isn’t worth shooting?” he said. “He should do a reverse and show her standing on the porch. You get her face that way.” He started back up the steps for his car. “And I’m selling a face, not an ass.”

When he got back to the Studio, Pasternak immediately went into a screening room to watch the previous day’s rushes of
The Sweet Ride
. It was a scene, shot from a number of different angles, in which Tony Franciosa and Jacqueline discuss her relationship with
Sarrazin. After the lights came on in the projection room, Pasternak sat for a long time in his chair, his hands folded in his lap.

“There’s no closeup of Tony,” Pasternak said at last.

“I told Harvey that,”
The Sweet Ride
’s film editor said. “He said he didn’t want one.”

Pasternak’s pale blue eyes darted around the screening room. “This guy’s in love with long shots,” he said. “What’s he got against faces?”

Back in his office, Pasternak told his secretary to call Richard Day, the art director who had done the sets for
The Sweet Ride
. “Dick,” he said, when Day was finally located, “do we have any stills on the beach house?” He listened for a moment. “Well, I want you to send a photographer down there and shoot it from every angle. Just like it is now. Once we leave, we can’t go back, and I need the stills in case we have to build a set of the house back here at the Studio.” His hands were shaking slightly. “Just to get some closeups.”

Two days later, Pasternak stood in the hot summer sun outside the Studio administration building talking to Tom Mankiewicz, who had written the screenplay of
The Sweet Ride
and who was the young son of director Joseph Mankiewicz.

“I’ve been working on the trailer for the convention,” Pasternak said.

“How long is it?” Mankiewicz said.

“Ten minutes,” Pasternak said. “But it’s not how long it is, it’s how it sticks out. The opening shot is Jackie Bisset coming out of the water with no clothes on. Those guys have got to like that.”

The exhibitors’ convention officially opened the second Monday in August. The end of the previous week, Darryl Zanuck had arrived at the Studio with a minimum of fanfare and had not accompanied the delegates on their Sunday junket to Disneyland. The highlight of the opening day’s activities was a sneak preview at the Village Theater in Westwood of the Studio’s latest Frank Sinatra picture,
Tony Rome
, the story of a sleazy Miami private detective “up to his neck,” as a Studio publicist put it, “in booze, broads, blackmail and bodies.” The distributors had arrived at the theater in buses and been herded inside by teams of public relations men, past a crowd of gawking onlookers. Parked by the curb
outside the theater was a fleet of Cadillac limousines for the Studio executives. The preview was virtually a command performance for all the major producers on the lot, and when the picture was over, the delegates congregated in little groups around various Studio producers and executives outside the theater. Harry Sokolov was in an exuberant mood.

“It’s a good product,” Sokolov said. His physique resembles three balloons set one atop the other. “I like all of our product. You know why? It’s diversified. We’ve got something for everybody.”

There was a general murmur of agreement.

“Something for everybody,” said Abe Dickstein, the balding domestic sales manager who had come out from New York for the meeting. “A nice picture like
Two for the Road
, you got Audrey Hepburn, you’ll win some awards, you give it special attention, you’ll turn a little profit. It’s nice, sure, but you take a
Tony Rome
, a
Valley of the Dolls
, now those are the pictures you like to sell.”

One of the European delegates asked the cost of
Tony Rome
, and when told, he mused that
Alfie, Georgie Girl, Morgan
and
Blow-up
combined had not cost so much, and all were enormously successful. As if talking to himself, he wondered if it weren’t sometimes better to make a small picture and hope for a large return.

“Sure,
Alfie
was successful,” said James Denton, the head of the Studio’s West Coast publicity department. He is a large benign man with a mane of white hair. “But think what it could have done if it had stars. Jack Lemmon, for instance, and Shirley MacLaine.”

The morning after the
Tony Rome
sneak, Richard Zanuck sat yawning prodigiously in his office. It had been a late night. After the preview, Frank Sinatra had hosted a party for the exhibitors at the Century Plaza, and when that broke up, Sinatra and the two Zanucks had adjourned to The Daisy, a private discothèque in Beverly Hills. The evening had not ended until after three o’clock, but Richard Zanuck was at his office promptly at 8:30 for his daily staff meeting with Stan Hough, Harry Sokolov, Owen McLean and David Brown, who always attends when he is in from New York. The evening had taken its toll and everyone sat around reading the trade papers. In the bar off Zanuck’s office, Brown was on the telephone to his story department in New York, which had called him about a novel then being offered to all the film companies.

“What are they asking?” Brown said. “
Three hundred thousand
.” He repeated the figure over again slowly. “Well, I’ve read it and thought it was terrible, but for that kind of money, I guess we should show it to Dick.”

Brown hung up the phone and came back into the main office. “DZ go the distance last night?” he asked.

“Oh, yeah,” Zanuck said. A hesitant smile creased his tanned face. “Oh, yeah.” He yawned and leaned back in his chair. “I didn’t think the screening went too well,” he said.

“You got to figure it’s a blasé audience in Westwood,” Hough said. No one else looked up from the trades. “Everyone there knows how to make a movie better than we do.” He shrugged. “I thought it was just a bit under the Fresno sneak.”

“I was talking to the guy from Israel and he said we’d
have to change a lot of the dialogue,” Harry Sokolov said. “For when we show it in Israel.”

“It will go right over their head, the slang,” Hough said.

“There won’t be any problem,” Zanuck said. “We’ll just dub it in the local slang.”

“What do they speak there?” Hough said. “Yiddish?”

“I don’t know,” Sokolov said. “Hebrew maybe.”

“A little German,” Brown said.

“Shi-i-i-t,” Hough said.

“What’s pussy in Hebrew, Harry?” Owen McLean said. There was a scene in the picture based on the
double-entendre
of an old woman calling her cat a “pussy.”

“You guys are always putting me on,” Sokolov said. “How the hell am I supposed to know? Just because I’m Jewish?”

Zanuck closed up the trades. “We’re going to get Nancy Sinatra to sing the title song over the credits of
Tony Rome
,” he said. “I haven’t heard it yet, but that’s a promotable parlay, Nancy singing the title song over Frank’s picture.”

Later that morning, Harry McIntyre dropped into Richard Zanuck’s office. McIntyre was the secretary of the Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation and, like the other officers of the company, was in Los Angeles for the convention. The Studio was considering financing and distributing foreign films, and McIntyre, a harried financial executive with a tremulous, whiny voice, was bearish on the prospect.

“It’s okay with the French and Italian pictures, Dick,”
he said. “A lot of those people, you know their track record. You take a Fellini, a Truffaut, you know what those fellows can do. It’s the other countries I’m afraid of. You take this picture
Dr. Glas
. Jesus, I never heard of it. I mean, who do you know makes pictures in Yugoslavia? I’m not saying they’re not good, but you got to consider the track record, it seems to me, Dick.”

Zanuck nodded. “In France and Italy, you know the talent.”

“Dick, I got the track record from the past,” McIntyre said. “You take a lot of those countries over there and it’s like dropping money down a well.” He shuddered. “
Czechoslovakia
.” His voice became more tremulous. “There’s another thing that scares me. You can’t have control. And then you’re talking about revolving credit.”

“If there’s anything that scares me, it’s a revolving fund,” Zanuck said. “You make a profit on the first one, but then the damn thing’s gone, revolving into some other goddamn place.”

“That’s right, Dick,” McIntyre said. “And you’ve got to look at the track record. Remember
La Fuga
.” His shoulders shook again. “My God.”

The day before the convention ended, Arthur Jacobs booked a private dining room in the commissary for a luncheon with a half dozen of the Studio’s foreign publicity supervisors from France, England, Scandinavia, Australia, the Far East and Latin America. The purpose of the lunch was to coordinate the foreign promotional and publicity campaigns for
Dr. Dolittle
. It was a brutally hot day, and although the air conditioner was working at top speed, the heat in the dining room was oppressive. Jacobs sat halfway down one side of the large table fanning himself with a napkin. “Have the melon,” he kept on saying, “it’s the only thing on a day like this.”

“Is the cantaloupe ripe?” asked Bernard Flatow, the Latin American representative.

“Who cares if it’s ripe?” Jacobs said. “A day like this, what are you going to order, Salisbury steak and au gratin potatoes?”

Most of the men took off their jackets and hung them over the backs of their chairs. Flatow picked at his melon and suggested an international teaser campaign conducted in the personal columns of papers throughout Latin America. He wore thick glasses and had a thin mustache. “You put in something funny like, ‘Elephant seeks partner in trunk business, contact Dr. Dolittle,’ something funny and cute like that, the response you get will be tremendous,” Flatow said. “Anyone who answers will get a circular about the picture.” He looked at Jacobs. “What do you think of that, Arthur? It’s a real cute idea.”

Jacobs lit a cigarettello and canvassed the table with his eyes. The other men looked at him blankly. “Send me a memo on it,” he said finally.

The table was cleared and the delegates hunched over their coffee. All the foreign representatives wanted a major star from
Dr. Dolittle
present when the picture premiered in their areas, and it was a question of who would get whom. Rex Harrison was definitely scheduled for the Paris, London, New York and Los Angeles openings, and there was a possibility that he would also go to Tokyo.

“We can’t count on anything more than that at this time,” Jacobs said. “I just don’t think we can get any further commitments out of Rex until after the New York reviews come out.”

“They’re going to be brilliant, Arthur,” one of the delegates said.

“Well, that’s what we’re hoping,” Jacobs said. “But if they’re not, he’s not going to be embarrassed. You know Rex. You can’t push him.” He shoved aside a coffee cup and spread out a list of all the foreign openings. The problem now was to allot the other three stars of the picture—Samantha Eggar, Anthony Newley and Richard Attenborough—to the various premieres.

“Does Newley mean anything in Japan?” Jacobs said.

“Not a thing,” the Far Eastern representative said.

“How about Australia?” Jacobs said.

“He’ll be very big there,” the Australian delegate said.

“He’s got a lot of other commitments, but we’ll try to pencil him in for Australia,” Jacobs said. “Who wants Attenborough?”

“He’s definite for New York, London and Los Angeles,” Mort Abrahams said.

Jacobs puffed on his thin black cigarette. “I’d rather he went to Toronto than come out here,” he said.
“That’s the twenty-second of December, the night after we open in Los Angeles. We don’t have anyone for Toronto, and it’s important we get someone there. I mean, they don’t expect Rex in places like that, but they would like someone, and Dickie would be great.”

“He’s got his heart set on coming to Los Angeles,” Abrahams said. “And he can’t go to both.”

Jacobs blinked rapidly. “Let me call him,” he said. He went to the telephone by the window and placed a person-to-person call to Attenborough in England. It was several moments before the overseas operator was able to complete the call. Jacobs checked his watch. “It’ll be eleven o’clock there, right?” he said. No one paid any attention. Finally the call got through. “Dickie? Arthur.” Jacobs’ voice was too loud, as if it were a bad connection. He and Attenborough exchanged small talk about Attenborough’s wife, his children, how the picture looked and what the weather was like in England before getting to the point. “Look, Dickie,” Jacobs said, “how’d you like to go to the premiere in Toronto? Great, I thought you would. But look, Dickie, there’s one small hitch. Toronto’s the night after Los Angeles and I don’t think you can make both.” Jacobs listened and looked around the table. “You say Sheila has her heart set on coming to Los Angeles? She likes the smog, huh? Yeah, it’s smoggier than hell in December. The thing is, Dickie, the whole premiere in Toronto will be built around you, they’re really anxious to have you, I didn’t know you were that big in Canada.… Sure, Dickie, I understand, you’ve got a lot of friends here. Well, we’re dying to see you, too, Dickie. But think Toronto and send me a cable, okay?”