by Lynn Haney
Visiting Bogart in his last days was a heart-rending experience. Still, Bacall insisted to friends that as soon as they crossed the threshold of the Bogart home, they were invited to pick up his spirits. Since the guests were there to cheer Bogart, he, in turn, wanted to live up to their expectations. As his illness progressed, he grew too weak to walk downstairs and refused to be carried, but he was determined that he would visit with his friends in the Butternut Room rather than upstairs in his sickbed. ‘He would lie on his couch upstairs at five o’clock,’ John Huston wrote, ‘to be shaved and groomed and dressed in gray flannels and scarlet smoking jacket. When he was no longer able to walk, his emaciated body would be lifted into a wheelchair and taken to a dumb-waiter, the roof of which had been removed to give him headroom. His nurses would help him in, and sitting on a little stool, he would be lowered down to the kitchen where another transfer would be made and, again by wheelchair, he’d be transported through the house into the library and his chair, and there he would be, sherry glass in one hand and cigarette in the other, at five-thirty when the guests started to arrive.’
Greg was deeply pained by Bogart’s condition and found it difficult to engage in the gossip and verbal repartee the situation required. ‘You weren’t allowed to talk about his illness. We told jokes. I had a long one prepared, and as I was trying to edit this story in my head, Bogie cut across it and said, “Great God Almighty, if you don’t get to the punch line soon, I won’t be around to hear it!”
‘I remember getting home that night, walking into the garden and my eyes just filling with tears.’ Bogart died in January 1957.
Some reviewers saw Designing Woman as too derivative of the screwball comedies of the 1930s and, most particularly they felt it harkened back to the 1942 Tracy–Hepburn classic, Woman of the Year. Viewed without that reference point, it’s a fine film. Thirty five years later, Greg and Bacall were happily reunited in a made-for-television movie The Portrait. The film itself would have a television spin-off in the 1990s sitcom Designing Women.
‘Greg, it’s a helluva thrill to make a movie,’ director William Wyler had said to Greg one day in Rome when they were filming Roman Holiday. ‘We start with just an idea, get it on paper, put it before a camera, and then people pay money to look at a blank wall and see what we’ve put there.’
Greg did a lot of thinking about that conversation. He admitted: ‘Just walking in front of the cameras gets a bit thin after ten years.’ If he went into producing, he would not only exercise more control over his career, he would also make more money. Economically, the mid-1950s were unkind to him. A change in tax laws retroactively opened up his European earnings – 80 per cent of his income that was supposedly tax-free. That bill of nearly a million dollars was added to the $100,000 a year alimony for Greta, and the $750 a month child support for his sons. He said at the time: ‘One day, I was a millionaire. Then the phone rang and I was told the tax law had been changed. I don’t think anyone ever said “goodbye” to $900,000 as suddenly as that before.’ After that sobering experience, producing looked like a practical venue to expand his income. It was a great way to save on taxes, which is what an actor does when he incorporates himself as the producing company and shares the profits instead of working for a salary.
Greg formed an independent production company, Anthony World, named after his infant son Anthony, with William Wyler to make a movie called Thieves Market. When that deal fell through, they bought a project called The Big Country. It came to them through Greg’s agent George Chasin who had been sent the property for Marlon Brando – a 50-page treatment of a book with the same name.
Working together, Greg and Wyler conceived the movie on a vast scale: strong men and beautiful women of the Old West against gorgeous scenery and magnificent music. Their film would capture the sweep and grandeur of the Great Plains at a time when men’s passions were as volatile and untamed as the great frontier itself. Greg referred to it as a ‘Grand Hotel’ of Westerns.
Greg wasn’t the only actor determined to get a bigger slice of the movie pie. In the post-war era, independent production had increased from 40 films in 1945 to 265 by 1957. United Artists alone had 50 independent filmmakers on its roster, among them John Wayne, Frank Sinatra, Bob Hope and Kirk Douglas. Now they had Greg for The Big Country (1958). Furthermore, ‘independent’ was no longer synonymous with low-budget.
The more he talked with Wyler, the more optimistic Greg became about the new direction his career. ‘As an actor I didn’t have any real authority,’ Greg explained. And he also reasoned his producing experience with the La Jolla Playhouse provided him with solid preparation for his new role. Close to 60 plays, 10 every summer – that’s a track record. But putting on plays in a high school auditorium – even with professional actors – is not the same as taking on the enormous responsibility of a multimillion-dollar movie.
Before the actual physical process of shooting a movie could begin, the script had to be in shape, the cast and crew chosen, and the locations decided upon. The physical process of making movies is fiendishly elaborate. Dealing with the egos is a job in itself. For instance, when Charlton Heston was approached to be in The Big Country, he initially refused because Greg had the lead. Then Heston’s agent talked him round. ‘Kid,’ he said, ‘you don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about. You have an offer to work with Greg for maybe the best director in film, and you’re worrying the part isn’t good enough for you, you have to do this picture!’
Playing in David O Selznick movies, Greg had a chance to see the greatest producer of Hollywood’s golden era at work. Selznick believed that a producer, in order to be able to produce properly, must be able, if necessary, to sit down and write the scene, and if he is criticizing a director, he must be able not merely to say ‘I don’t like it’ but to tell him how he would direct it himself. He must be able to go into a cutting room, and if he doesn’t like the cutting of a sequence, which is more often true than not, he must be able to re-cut the sequence. ‘The difference between myself and other producers,’ he said, ‘is I am interested in the thousands and thousands of details that go to into the making of a film. It is the sum total of all these things that either makes a picture or destroys it.’ In sum, the way Selznick saw it, the producer’s function was to be responsible for everything. Such an all-encompassing role appealed to Greg’s obsessive compulsive instincts but he didn’t have Selznick’s experience and Selznick had never had to act in front of a camera while producing a movie at the same time.
For the moment, it was blue skies all the way. Who better to make a film with than William Wyler? Actors working for him have been nominated for Academy Awards more than 30 times, and won a dozen Oscars, plus countless lesser awards. Looking back over his filmography, it seemed unbelievable that one man could be connected to so many of the cinema’s greatest films, but Wyler was. Not to mention the great number of stars who did their first films with him: Laurence Olivier, Henry Fonda, Barbara Hutton and, of course, Audrey Hepburn. Wyler was also able to guide cinematographers and writers, to make movies we can never forget.
Another plus for Greg was he responded well to Wyler’s directing style. Greg didn’t like a lot of the detailed analytic chatter he got from some directors; it tended to confuse him. ‘But Wyler waits for extra values, extra insights,’ Greg enthused, ‘and he knows when you capture something special, a new shred of illumination – Wyler is this kind of director, he isn’t terribly articulate, doesn’t talk a lot, but he knows it could be better and he’ll say so over and over again.’ The groundwork for their partnership was laid not only professionally, but personally. Dinners, vacations – it was the Pecks and the Wylers. Peas in a pod. Banking on the bond of friendship and avidly wanting to make a film with him, Greg discounted the fact that Wyler was – in the words of his biographer, Jan Herman – one of the major Hollywood ‘son-of-a-bitches.’ Like Huston, his movies were the most important thing in the world to him. If a friendship was sacrificed in the
process, so be it.
‘I don’t care what goes on on the set,’ claimed Wyler. ‘I don’t care if we all hate each other. I only care what the finished product looks like when the audience goes to the theater.’
The story of The Big Country was bone-hard and uncluttered, and the cast Greg and Wyler assembled was first rate. The tale is essentially one of two feuding families, their cattle, their need for water that belongs to a school mistress (Jean Simmons), and their settlers’ conviction that as big as the country is, there is no room for both of them. The Terrills, led by the Major (Charles Bickford), stand for culture and live in luxury, but they are as brutal in their own way as are the Hannasseys, who live in squalor under the patriarchal domination of Rufus (Burl Ives).
What made The Big Country a Western with a difference was its hero, James McKay (Peck), a man who refused to act according to accepted standards of behavior, the Western code of ethics. McKay is a gentleman sailor from Baltimore coming West to wed Patricia Terrill (Carroll Baker), whom he met and wooed while she was attending a New England finishing school. He faces opposition from his competitor in love (Charlton Heston), his adversary in business (Ives), and his skeptical father-in-law (Bickford).
But the myriad problems connected with the film started with the script. Jessamyn West, who had worked with Wyler on Friendly Persuasion (1956), tried her hand; she was followed by Leon Uris, Robert Wyler, and Robert Wilder, with input from Greg as well. James Webb and Sy Bartlett finished the script, but with dire consequences. The writing amounted to 170 pages, most of which were shot. Millions of dollars were lost in cutting the film down to size (more or less), as the budget grew from the projected $1,100,000 to more than $4,200,000 million.
To shoot The Big Country, Wyler chose Franz Planer. Together, they chose Technirama and Technicolor. Wyler thought the new giant screen was eminently suited for the Western because the whole idea was to have space. With the wide screen, he soon discovered, it was awkward in intimate scenes because it tended to let the audience’s eyes wander from principal characters toward incidental bits.
With cast and crew assembled in Stockton, California, Greg hired his three eldest sons as extras. They were on school holiday. The mischievous kids can’t be missed in the opening scenes depicting Greg’s arrival in a dusty, sun-scorched frontier town. As Greg, in his Eastern clothes and bowler hat, alights from the stagecoach that has brought him from faraway Baltimore, he is greeted with derisive looks and grins from the boys dressed as ragamuffins. The young sters were affectionately known as Peck’s bad boys for between-scenes pranks.
‘Because you’re acting, this is the one and only occasion when you’ll be allowed to laugh at your father,’ Greg, with a smile, warned his offspring as Wyler called ‘Camera!’ and the episode began.
Later, he said reflectively: ‘I want to do a good job with the boys. I hope to teach them the right values, to work and develop their minds. I don’t want them loaded with too much spending money. They’d miss all the good things that form character in kids.’
As a side income for his sons, and a possible vocation, Greg had gone into the cattle business on a large scale, leasing grazing land in Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Modesto. ‘I had dreams of owning a ranch,’ said Greg. ‘I would take part in roundups, the roping and the branding. It was part of my life at the time.’ He hoped the boys would want to learn all they could about animal husbandry and some day take charge of the cattle business.
As shooting got underway, Greg experienced one rude shock after another about the realities of making movies. ‘Producing is a hell of a thing,’ he admitted. ‘When you’re just acting, production details never come to your attention. You only know you have a call for 7.30 a.m. for scenes 423 through 427. But when you’re a producer, you’re always aware of money going down the drain. One key figure sticks in my mind. On locations, it costs us $35,000 a day. That’s about $4,300 an hour!’
Despite the escalating costs, Greg arranged for 4,000 head of cattle, at $10 apiece, to be used for the shot in which he comes out of the house on the first morning at the Terrill Ranch and surveys the landscape. It took Greg the producer several days to arrange for the vast herd to be gathered from various ranches for the single day. But he arrived on the set to find only 40 cattle; Wyler had cut the number to save money.
‘It’ll be enough,’ Wyler assured him.
‘But this was my decision,’ roared Greg.
‘Godammit,’ yelled Wyler, ‘$40,000 for just one shot!’
Because of the remote locations and constant script revisions, tensions mounted on the set. Wyler expected a lot from everyone. His towering reputation, and his track record, gave him the license to be as difficult as he wanted – and damn anybody who questioned his approach.
The vibes on the shoot began to reflect the mood of the picture. Jean Simmons said the atmosphere felt ‘very dodgy – the sort of prevailing tension that invites paranoia, causes you to wonder, “What have I done?” . . . I guess Willy was in a position to know what it took to achieve great performances, but he also seemed bent on making things difficult . . . and there was all that constant rewriting. We’d have our version, then receive yet another rewrite the following morning. It made the acting damned near impossible.’
The major crisis started when Greg was looking at the dailies of an important early scene in a buckboard with Carroll Baker. He felt he could do a better job on his close-up. So he asked Wyler to do a retake, not uncommon for an actor of Greg’s stature and reputation, even were he not a co-producer. Wyler responded, reasonably enough: ‘Let me do a rough assembly of the whole scene first. If you’re still unhappy with the shot, we’ll do it over.’
But Wyler kept putting him off. With the production about to pack up and move from Stockton into the Mojave Desert, Greg urged: ‘Take a part of the day and do the retake!’ Wyler barked: ‘I’m not going to do another retake. We don’t need it.’ Spurned by the director, Greg voted with his feet. He marched to his trailer, packed up his things and headed home to Los Angeles. His working relationship with Wyler as a co-producer was well and truly shattered. Wyler decided that he could finish the film at the studio where all the interiors were to be shot, but Greg, still fuming, refused to return for the final week of filming. George Chasin and Veronique finally persuaded him to change his mind. Wyler insisted Greg make a public apology in front of cast and crew for his tantrum, but Greg would not, and Wyler had to drop his demands or risk not getting the film finished. Greg reported for work at the studio and for the final week.
The feud wasn’t over. Wyler supervised the editing and delivered a film to United Artists that ran to four hours. Greg complained, ‘he’d overshot by an hour’s length, which had to be cut. We went way over our budget and in the end spent $4.1 million.’
Wyler tried to stop Greg’s name going on as co-producer and lawyers were called in to fight it out. Veronique and Talli Wyler tried to get them to sort out their problem amicably but both men stubbornly refused. Greg felt it was a question of ethics, of keeping your promises and he wouldn’t give an inch. As for Wyler, he announced: ‘I wouldn’t direct Peck again for a million dollars and you can quote me on that.’
Storming off the set is career suicide in Hollywood. No sooner does the word get around, than the arrogant fool who committed such a transgression is sentenced to sit by a silent phone. Greg had to act fast, or risk perdition. But what could he do to convince a town he was not inordinately thin-skinned, throwing a hissy-fit because he didn’t get his way? Then it came to him. Play against type. People think you’re a prickly loner? Toss a splashy party. Get everybody talking about what a fun fellow you are.
So he flew Ted Straeter’s orchestra from New York to Los Angeles. He gave directions for the parking lot of Romanoff ’s restaurant to be transformed into a miniature Versailles and ordered thousands of roses and enough caviar and champagne to have stocked Maxim’s for months. He paid one of the biggest restaurant checks in local history �
�� but it was worth it! Cary Grant and Clark Gable told him it was the best party ever given in Hollywood.
Despite its virtues, The Big Country – two and three quarter hours in length – received a lukewarm reception from the critics and, though profitable at least on paper, failed to become the hugely successful blockbuster United Artists anticipated. Wyler and Greg would have done well to heed Alfred Hitchock’s advice: ‘The duration of a film should not exceed the capacity of the human bladder.’
Greg lost more than Wyler did from their feud. If he had stayed close to Wyler, there’s a chance the director would have found another romantic comedy like Roman Holiday in which Greg would have had the opportunity to stretch his comedic potential or have grown in another way under Wyler’s superior direction. As it turned out, Greg never formed an ongoing relationship with one director in the manner of Cary Grant (Alfred Hitchcock and Howard Hawks), James Stewart (Alfred Hitchcock and Frank Capra), and Henry Fonda (John Ford). His career seemed to suffer because of it.
The Bravados (1958) came next. In this saga of outrage and revenge, Greg plays rancher Jim Douglas, a man whose wife and child have been murdered. He is very different from James McKay, the protagonist in The Big Country. With six-shooter at the ready, Douglas sets out to execute their killers. In retrospect, Peck said, ‘I did not care for the picture because my character is unbelievably grim and straight-faced . . .’ Though he initially turned down the role, he ultimately said ‘yes’ because the script was re-worked by veteran Western writer Philip Yordan. Also, his good friend Henry King signed on as director.
Veronique packed up baby Anthony and joined Greg on location in Mexico. It certainly would have been understandable if she had chosen to stay home since she was pregnant again. But for her, Greg would always be top priority. She understood movies were an obsession with Greg. When working on a film, he became totally immersed in it. Everything else seemed trivial by comparison. She knew he needed a woman who could live with his obsession and not be jealous of it. And she was also aware sex was rampant on locations. So she created a cocoon within the hustle and bustle of the movie set. Her strategy proved sound. Happy to have his family near him, Greg didn’t mingle with the cast. (The other actors in The Bravados were in awe of him, though they considered him austere, aloof and disinterested in them.) In fact, he even paid scant attention to Joan Collins, his leading lady.