The Elephant to Hollywood (16 page)

The third of the great studios in the San Fernando Valley is Disney. Walt Disney opened a small studio there in 1923 and it went on to become the biggest entertainment company in the world. Long ago, in what seems like another life, I actually met Walt Disney. I was working as a tea boy for the producer Jay Lewis, who was making
Morning Departure
with John Mills. I’d never been to a film studio before and one day he took me with him to Pinewood. While we were there we ran into Walt Disney. I stood there at Jay Lewis’s elbow trying to merge with the wallpaper while they chatted and then he suddenly remembered I was there and told me to get Mr Disney a coffee. ‘Milk and sugar?’ was all I could manage to squeak to the great man – but I’ve never forgotten it. As a little boy I was a huge fan of Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck and Pluto and it gives me such pleasure now to watch the cartoons with the next generation of our family, my two-year-old grandson, Taylor. When I’ve been working in my study on this book, he’ll come in, march over to me, climb on my lap and say, ‘Mickey Mouse!’ until I give in. So, happily distracted, I enjoy it all over again.

As well as the enormous complexes owned by Universal, Warner Brothers and Disney, the San Fernando Valley is also home to NBC, the Getty Museum and the Hollywood Bowl. In spite of these high-prestige institutions, very few celebrities actually live in what’s known as ‘The Valley’, although of course most of them spend a lot of their time at the studios there. Bob Hope was one of the exceptions to this rule, and he had an enormous mansion and estate there and even an airport named after him. There are two reasons for avoiding the Valley: first it is insanely hot for most of the year, and second it is the porn movie capital of America. If you ever see an American porn film in which the participants are sweating before they even start on the action, you’ll know it was probably shot in the Valley.  In fact the Valley can be a great place to live, although people can be quite snobbish about it as an address. I once heard a Valley parent ask, ‘At what age do you tell your children they live in the Valley?’ All I can say is: they should have tried living in the Elephant in my day . . .

The MGM studios were never in Hollywood at all. Instead they are seven miles away in Culver City, on the way to the airport. They were started in 1924 when a big cinema owner named Marcus Loew bought two production companies, the Metro Picture Corporation and Goldwyn Pictures. When these two were joined by Mayer Pictures, owned by Louis B. Mayer, the conglomerate was titled, with great imagination, Metro Goldwyn Mayer. For many years, under the leadership of Louis B. Mayer, it was the most successful movie company in the world.

MGM once did a movie with which I had the very slightest of connections. My friend Julie Christie had got a screen test for the lead role in
Dr Zhivago
, which was being directed by the great David Lean. I offered to support Julie by playing the ‘back of the head’ part opposite her in the screen test so she could play for the camera. David Lean liked the back of my head so much that he asked me if he could use it for all the screen tests, to which I agreed. I was just doing it as a favour, but it was obviously going quite well because one day David suggested that he actually tested me for the main part. ‘Look,’ he said, ‘if we shoot it this way, and maybe comb your hair like this . . .’ and we did, but when we saw the tests we both knew straight away I wasn’t right. ‘So what
do
you want?’ I asked David. He thought a bit and then he said, ‘What I want is a man who’s taken a long hard look at life and has decided there’s absolutely nothing to be done.’ It came to me in a flash. I had just seen Omar Sharif in
Lawrence of Arabia
and I said, ‘Omar Sharif!’ And David said, ‘Really?’ He thought some more and then he said, ‘You know, you could be right – I’m going to test him.’ And he did – and Omar got the part – although I’m not sure I’ve ever told him how it came about. So there you are – if I hadn’t failed the bloody screen test, like so many other things, I’d have been Dr Zhivago . . .

Next door to MGM there is another small studio, built by Thomas Ince, one of the first great silent film producers. The front door of the office block was very posh, designed to look like the front door of George Washington’s mansion, Mount Vernon. David O. Selznick, who was already a successful producer, bought it in 1935 for his own independent productions. One of these was
Gone with the Wind
– and the front door of the studio was used as the front door of Scarlett O’Hara’s mansion, Tara. David O. Selznick was a great and also very frugal producer. When he needed to film the burning of Atlanta for
Gone with the Wind
, he did it here on the back lot and burned all the old sets from
King Kong
,
The Last of the Mohicans
and
Little Lord Fauntleroy
. Not only did he get free firewood, he created the space to build Tara itself out of plywood and papier mâché. The set was eventually dismantled and is now for sale in 3 x 1 inch rectangles. As Selznick said himself at the time, ‘Like Hollywood, it was all a facade.’

Facade or not, like everyone else, I am in awe of
Gone With The Wind
– it’s one of my Top Ten all-time-favourite films (you’ll find more on this and the other nine at the back of the book) and Vivien Leigh is one of my all-time-favourite actors. I only met her once, while I was passing through London on my way to Louisiana to start the filming of
Hurry Sundown
with Otto Preminger in 1966. I was in a restaurant and John Gielgud came over and introduced himself and said that he and his companion – a tiny woman wearing sunglasses – had just been to see
Alfie
and had loved it. I thanked them and then the tiny woman whipped off her sunglasses and it was Vivien Leigh. I took a deep breath – even fresh from my first experiences in Hollywood I hadn’t quite got used to rubbing shoulders with a screen legend – but I was determined not to miss this chance. I explained I was about to play a southern character in
Hurry Sundown
with Jane Fonda and I needed some help. ‘What’s the basis of doing a southern accent?’ I asked her. ‘It’s easy,’ she said, (and she was being very nice to an annoying young actor), ‘you say, “Foah Doah Ford” – Four Door Ford – all day long. That’s all you do – “Foah Doah Ford” – Michael, and it will come to you.’ And I did say it over and over again, but I never quite sounded like Scarlett O’Hara . . .

After Selznick left, the studio became RKO pictures and Howard Hughes made some of his movies there, and after that it became Desilu, Lucille Ball’s studio. Now it is an independent studio again. I did
Bewitched
there myself in 2005, though even I would not claim it was in the same category as
Gone with the Wind
,
Rebecca
,
Citizen Kane
or
King Kong
 . . .

In their early years, Paramount, Warner Brothers, Universal, Disney and the other great movie studios were all run by the moguls who had built them. By the time I arrived in Hollywood, the studio system had moved from the hands-on personal domination of the great studio heads, to the corporate structures they remain today. And a new set of power players had emerged: the actors themselves – and their agents. I always remember Henry Fonda – who had been a huge star at the time – saying to me, ‘You’re so lucky to be a star now, because you’ll make a lot of money – we never did.’ The irony was that I had been devastated when Joe Levine tore up my contract after
Zulu
: to me it represented the security I had never had. But these contracts – often for ten pictures or for five years – paid no heed to how big a hit a movie was. They paid plenty of heed to failure, of course – if an actor was seen as unsuccessful, there was nothing to prevent the studio from ripping up his or her contract without another thought. In other words, the studios couldn’t lose.

Even as a newcomer making his way in Hollywood for the first time I was well aware that there were plenty of pitfalls. Although there are no real holly woods, the name is actually quite appropriate – a holly, after all, is a dark, impenetrable tree festooned with bright attractive berries, surrounded by vicious thorns. The berries are highly prized as decoration, but to get to them, you have to find a path around the tree, choose the correct gloves and then pick the berries with great care. If you can make it without getting hurt, then it’s Christmas all the way. Sounds a bit like Hollywood to me.

The more I’ve thought about it, the more appropriate the name seems. Woods are often dark, dangerous places, uncomfortable and frightening, inhabited by vermin and stinging insects. On the other hand, they can be beautiful with open spaces covered with wild flowers. You need an experienced guide – and patience – to cut the right path through them and out into the sunlight. And that sounds even more like Hollywood to me.

In the holly woods, the path cutters are called agents – and over the years I have been lucky to have had three of the best. Number one was, of course, Dennis Selinger, who was the first to inform me that there were any woods for an actor to make his way through. He guided me through the English woods and became my closest friend and mentor. He died in 1998, and I miss him still. Although he was based in London, Dennis taught me a lot about the holly woods and helped me on my long hazardous journey towards them.

If it was Shirley Maclaine who first parted the undergrowth to let me through, she left me at the edge of the woods in the capable hands of the greatest path cutter in the world, Sue Mengers. Sue was Hollywood’s most powerful agent when I arrived in town, and I was her least-known client. Fortunately for me, like Dennis, she became a close personal friend and although she’s now retired, we keep in regular touch. Sue is a great getter-together of people and her dinners are legendary for the extraordinary group she’ll gather. One time Shakira and I went and there was Barbra Streisand and Sting and Sheryl Crow and her then boyfriend, a nice guy whose name was Lance Armstrong. ‘What do you do?’ I asked him, being friendly. ‘I’m a cyclist,’ he replied. I hadn’t got a clue. I thought he was going to ask me what I did . . .

It’s always the same thing on the menu for dinner – meatloaf – and Sue always says, ‘I want you all out of here by 10.30.’ But it’s the company that makes the evening: you never know who you’ll meet there and there’s always a bit of rivalry going on – ‘Were you at the Sue Mengers dinner?’ I’d known Sue for a few years before I graduated to her dinners and when I finally went round, she introduced me to her husband. There was something about him I couldn’t quite put my finger on and after a while I plucked up courage and said to him, ‘You know, it’s very funny, but years ago I spent some time in Paris and I had this French friend and he looked just like you.’ And he said, ‘Michael – it
is
me!’ And it was this guy Jean-Claude, whom I’d met on that trip to Paris my mum had funded all those years before. Since Sue retired, I’ve been very fortunate to have the wonderful Toni Howard cutting my paths for the last fifteen years and I’m very lucky to have her on my side.

As you cut your way through the dark holly woods, the person you need to trim the tops of the trees to let the light in is called a press agent. I had acquired my first UK press agent with
The Ipcress File.
Theo Cowan was a big, very funny middle-aged man with no visible family life, and I and my friends all loved him dearly. I always felt as if he had a sad romantic secret, an unrequited love, but he was one of the funniest men I’ve ever known. If you asked him what he was doing, he would always say, ‘Contrast.’ And if you asked him how he was, he’d say, ‘The hard ones first, eh?’ To help me see my way through the American holly woods I found Jerry Pam. Not only was he one of the best press agents in Hollywood, he turned out to be an Englishman and to have gone to the same school as I did, Hackney Downs. Jerry has recently retired, but while we worked together he lit my way through the woods and out the other side and kept the sun shining on me for over forty years.

The last hazards you may have to face in the woods are the stinging insects and the vermin that bite. For these you need to acquire an exterminator – or as they are known in the movie business, a lawyer. My lawyer, Barry Tyreman, is one of the nicest, gentlest, kindest men you could meet – unless of course you come under the vermin or insect category, in which case very quickly and
almost
painlessly, you are dead.

So these are the people who got me to the holly woods, through them and then out of the other side. But of course, that’s just the start; it’s still dangerous out there. Once you are out of the woods, you find yourself in the urban jungle and although the insects may have gone, some of the vermin are still lurking and sometimes they are bigger and more dangerous for being camouflaged. For these you need not only the combined forces of all of the above, but something extra – a business manager. I am lucky enough to have two: Stephen Marks in England and Nicholas Brown in America.