The Woman in Black

by Erik Tarloff

  Yeah, I heard about the book by that Mennen character. I honestly don’t know what to tell you about that. Mennen was on our list for sure. He was notorious. Every bartender in every pansy bar in town knew him. We brought him in for solicitation a number of times, although I think he always managed to plead out, pay a fine, and go on his merry way. But Hardwick wasn’t even on our radar screen, so that’s pretty much the extent of what I can offer about him.

  The funny thing is, back then it would have been a career ender. Now nobody would give a shit. Times change.

  Gil Fraser

  Have you talked to…what does he call himself? Hector Mennen? His real name is Menendez. I’m guessing he changed it when he was trying to break into pictures himself, thought it would help him. As if the problem was his name. [laughs] That probably lasted about a day and a half. He must’ve thought presenting himself as Anglo would make him more acceptable on a marquee. Tell that to Cesar Romero. Hell, he could’ve re-christened himself Marmaduke Marmelstein and it wouldn’t have done him any good.

  Pictures were never going to work out for him, but it wasn’t long before he discovered his true calling.

  Frankly, nothing would have made him acceptable, not on a marquee, not any other respectable profession. A disgusting little hustler. A maggot feeding on the flesh of corpses. And a total bullshit artist, of course. Goes without saying, doesn’t it? I don’t know if he ever even met Chance. I’m reasonably positive there was never anything between them like he describes in that nasty little book of his. Like I said, I don’t know for sure about whether Chance was a switcher—I suppose it’s possible, if only as a kind of break in his routine or whatever—but he would never have wasted his time with a creep like Mennen. Chance had class. And he liked class in others. Especially in his romantic partners. The women he went out with…I mean, even aside from Briel, who occupied a kind of unique place in his life. But the thing is, if you’re famous in this town and just want to get laid, there’s no dearth of bimbos available to you. All you have to do is snap your fingers and a bevy of hot-looking tarts will come running. But that wasn’t Chance’s scene. I don’t know if he was 100 percent faithful to Briel, maybe not, he had too many opportunities to mess around, and he was—I mean, at that age, when you’re young and vital, it’s hard to resist golden opportunities every time they arise even if you think you ought to. So I wouldn’t discount the possibility he was out tomcatting from time to time. But Briel was the kind of person he was interested in. I’m not talking about gender now, I’m talking about quality. Briel was a quality person, a talented artist, a smart and accomplished woman. Whereas Mennen was the male equivalent of a hot-looking tart—only worse. It was always a commercial transaction with that guy. He didn’t even have the dignity of an honest groupie. He wasn’t interested in bragging rights or a notch on his gun. It was always about the angle.

  But I do wonder if they ever even met. I mean, at all. That kind of nags at me. See, the thing about Chance…he played his cards close to his vest, like I said. You can call it private or secretive or what do they say these days…compartmentalized? I mean, there are all sorts of way of characterizing it, but the bottom line is, he was a pretty elusive cat. A shape-shifter. I’m not sure anyone really knew him. We just knew the aspects of him he felt okay about revealing.

  Irma Gold

  Metro had this notion that they were going to reintroduce Chance to the public. They knew he’d made a pretty big name for himself with Plains and Hills, including that Oscar nomination, so it wasn’t a case of, you know, “And introducing Chance Hardwick.” On the contrary, I was able to negotiate that they’d put his name above the title from the get-go, treating him like a known quantity. They didn’t put up much of a fight over that one, might even have intended it all along. But still, now that he was under a Metro contract, they wanted to introduce him as a star for the first time. And they wanted to find the right vehicle to achieve that.

  I think their sense was that it would be smart to use the “dream boat” side of his appeal for that first picture. After that was accomplished, they could proceed with all sorts of other projects, use his acting chops, but first, they wanted to establish him as a romantic leading man. A heart throb. They sent him—which means they sent me—tons of scripts. I acted as his filter. Read them and only passed along the ones I thought were worth considering. Most didn’t come close. We went through several uncomfortable months saying no to everything they messengered over. I think they were getting a little sick of his pickiness, but between Chance and me, we weren’t impressed with their choices and we didn’t think it made sense to compromise on this first picture with them. A lot could hinge on how that one went, and if the picture bombed, you knew they wouldn’t accept any responsibility. They’d say, “Aw, too bad, the kid just doesn’t have it.” You know the old Hollywood saying, “You’re only as big as your last picture?” Well, in this case, since his last picture was going to be his first, his first as a star, we were determined it not be a lemon.

  But when the script for Lightning Bolt arrived, well, that was a different ballgame. It was respectable at least, pretty well written, and with a terrific part for Chance. It played to his forehand, the sensitive, brooding aspect of his personality, but with a lot of gradations and nuances. He’d turned down other things, even the ones I thought were okay and sent along to him—“This is crap” was a typical comment—but he thought Lightning Bolt was okay. Good tension in the A story, nice love interest in the B. Plenty for him to work with. So that was it. He said yes and Lightning Bolt was greenlit immediately. Everyone breathed a sigh of relief.

  Briel Charpentier

  He asked me to come with him when he looked for a house to rent. He said he trusted my eye, you know. At first I thought he might be asking for my advice because he intended to ask me to move in with him. That seemed to be a reasonable thing to think, as if he were planning a romantic surprise. And I confess I was a little apprehensive. I even considered refusing to go look with him, just to avoid having to face such a thing. But he was insistent. Which only made me worry more—why did he care so much?—but he was always very hard to refuse. And then it turned out that that wasn’t it at all. He wasn’t proposing we share the house, he really just wanted my advice. I was concerned about the other thing that whole day, waiting for…you say the shoe to fall? But it never did. And I can’t tell you even today what I would have said. It would be nice to say I would have jumped at the possibility, although also a bit humiliating since it didn’t come about, but in truth I would have been very hesitant. I did not know if we were ready as a couple for that. I did not know if we would ever be ready.

  Why? For a great number of reasons. For one, it was clear by then he was likely to become a big movie star very soon. They were going to start making Lightning Bolt, which was the movie that made him so famous, and I think everybody knew that it would do so. This was exciting, but I was unsure it was wise to be so tied to someone whose life was going to change in such a fashion. And also…I loved being with Chance, but I honestly didn’t know if it was a love affair that would last forever, you know. And shacking up, as Americans used to call it…at least back then, back in the 1950s, shacking up was understood to be a brief stop en route to getting married. I wasn’t prepared for that. I eventually discovered I would never be prepared for that. With anybody, I mean, not just with Chance. And I do not think Chance was aware at all of how different his life was about to become. He may have known as an idea, but he had not prepared himself for the reality. The man who proposed to me—I mean, who would have proposed to me if he had proposed to me—would be a different man very soon. Leaving the old Chance behind. He would have no choice in the matter.

  Do I have any regrets? Well, what would be the point? He never asked me, so how can I regret an answer I never had occasion to give? But no, I’m so glad to have known him, and I suppose I probably think about him every day, and I surely miss him every
day, but I do not regret not living with him or marrying him. I am not sure I would remember him so fondly if we had lived together. He was not the easiest man to be with. There were so many Chances, and you never knew who was the one underneath all the others. Or whether there was such a creature at all.

  We did find a very pretty house for him, though. On Woodrow Wilson Drive. A small house, almost a cottage, but neat and attractive, and very quiet. Hidden away. Small front yard with a nice birch tree, small back yard. The Hollywood Freeway—it was still new then—was just down the hill, but you had no sense of that. The sound didn’t penetrate, you know.

  Even though I never moved into that house, I did spent a lot of time there. And—the way these things work—he let me have a house key, and I kept a toothbrush in the bathroom.

  James Sterling

  A week or two before they started production on Lightning Bolt, Chance asked me if I could give him a private coaching session. This struck me as very uncharacteristic. I wouldn’t ever dream of calling him cocky—he had a certain native humility about him, as a matter of fact—but he’d always seemed, from the very first class he ever took with me, confident in his abilities and sure of his instinct for finding an actor’s true north. But of course I was happy to make myself available to him.

  It was his first starring role, so it was a pretty big deal. But when he came to me that afternoon, he was in despair. He said, “I just don’t have a handle on this guy.” I’d read the script—it was supposed to be embargoed but he snuck me a copy a few days before so we could work together—and I have to say, I couldn’t see the problem. It was a good script, a well-written script, and his part seemed clear. A complex character to be sure, but believable, convincing, and no more complex than plenty of others, including some he’d worked on in class. So we talked it through for an hour or two, talked about a variety of possible objectives and motivations in a number of scenes, and frankly, he seemed entirely on top of it to me. I told him I thought he was fine, and he shook his head and said “I’m completely at sea here, Jim.”

  Which is when it hit me. It wasn’t an acting problem at all. He was just in a complete panic about his situation. About becoming a star. Or screwing up and failing to become a star when the opportunity was presented to him on a platter. He was in a full existential crisis. So when I realized that, I said, “Don’t you want it?”

  And he said, “Of course I want it.”

  “I don’t just mean the part. I mean all of it.”

  I’d never seen him so vulnerable. I’d seen him act vulnerable, and do it so impeccably that you believed for the duration of the scene that he was really feeling it. But I’d never seen him actually be vulnerable. Which is to say, here was a guy with a personality so protean he could embody virtually any emotion you could name, but who rarely manifested any at all when he wasn’t acting. He was a cool fellow whose essence seemed forever beyond your reach. But on this day, and only on this day, I saw, or thought I saw, a little kid who was experiencing sheer terror. Real terror, not acted terror.

  So what do you do in a situation like that? I’d been through enough analysis myself, years of it, so I basically tried to be his therapist for an hour or two. Much of my teaching method was based on psychoanalysis anyway, and it seemed obvious to me that in Chance’s case father issues were at the heart of many of his hang-ups. He never knew his real father growing up, never had a strong male figure. So I felt I’d almost become a surrogate father for him in recent months, and I felt maybe what he needed right now much more than coaching was some paternal guidance.

  So I got him to talk about ambition in the abstract, and about his attitude toward his own ambition, asked him about how he felt about fame, about whether acting was a place for him to hide as much as a place to perform. Personal questions intended to get him to confront his fear and his confusion. And he wrestled with all those questions and earnestly tried to answer. He trusted me, and he took it seriously. And he said, when things were finally winding down—we were at it for close to four hours, if memory serves—that he felt a little better. And I said to him, “You’re going to be fine, you know. You’re ready for this.”

  And he shook his head and said, “I’m not. I’m really not. I don’t know if anyone ever is, but I know I’m not.”

  “Listen, kiddo, you’re a great actor.” I don’t believe I’ve ever told another student anything like that. My philosophy is, they don’t come for praise, they come to learn. But it just slipped out of me.

  And he said, “Yeah, maybe so, but that’s just a small piece of the puzzle.”

  Briel Charpentier

  About a week after they started shooting Lightning Bolt, there was one night when Chance was so nervous, he was like a Mexican jumping bean. Charged up, you know. I never saw him like that before. He couldn’t sit still. Jumping up, sitting down, going over there, coming over here. Putting a record on the gramophone and then lifting the needle after about ten seconds. It was making me jumpy too, as how could it not? It was like being in a cage with an agitated animal.

  It was concerning. He seemed so miserable. I tried to get him to relax. I gave him some wine, I asked him to talk about what was worrying him. I am not very much like a mother in the ordinary course of things, being sweet and nurturing does not come so naturally to me, but Chance was in such obvious distress I tried to be supportive and caring. As with most women, I suppose, he brought out the mother in me.

  Now, he was not, from what I had seen, a person in the habit of worrying about his acting. But this was evidently different, you know. He said he had a terribly difficult scene the next day. A difficult acting scene that involved emotional changes he didn’t know how to navigate honestly, is how he put it. He was almost in tears as he said this. He said he’d been faking it for the entire previous week’s work, he didn’t have a handle on the character at all, he was sure everybody could tell. And the next day there was this crucial scene and he knew it would be a disaster. He said, “I just can’t find the way in.” I think he meant into the head of the character he was playing. He said, “This part is beyond me. I’ve been relying on technique so far, and maybe that’s enough to fool some people, but it won’t be enough tomorrow. Technique only gets you so far. I just don’t have a handle on this. At all.”

  He had already done some very demanding physical scenes. He told me they had shot some of the more challenging exteriors the first week, and he really didn’t even have to tell me that, because…you see, some of them…well, the insurance company insisted they use a stunt double for the most risky things, but there were others where they’d permitted him to do them himself, he said he preferred to do his own stunts when it was possible—it seemed more honest to him, you know—and he had taken a few bad falls and…I could see his bruises, and they were pretty bad. It had been painful for him. But he was far more concerned about the scene the next morning than about any of the physical risks he had taken.

  So trying to be of help, I asked him to describe his character, to say why he was having trouble. But he just shook his head. “I can’t explain my process,” he said. “It doesn’t happen on a verbal level. Even in Jim Sterling’s classes, I was pretty much helpless when we had to talk about stuff.”

  And I said—maybe I should not have, maybe this was not my place to say— but I said, “Is it possible this is not about the character, but about your life? Are you worried about what’s happening to you?” I had a better sense of that than he did. Or a better conscious sense. I was aware what was about to befall him. It was already affecting my thoughts about us, the fact that everything was going to change. He probably knew it as well, but did not like to admit it to himself. He preferred to shut it out of his mind. So it might have been affecting him like…you know how sometimes people feel a physical pain when they are really dealing with emotional pain? Psychosomatic pain? So I thought this might be like that. Anxiety about one thing turning into anxiety abo
ut something else, something related.

  He didn’t say no when I suggested it. He just shrugged. My saying it out loud didn’t help. He was still very agitated.

  Later, I tried to make love to him, I thought that might get him to relax, or help him sleep, or take his mind off his troubles. But…oh, you understand what I’m telling you, he wasn’t able to. You understand? This sometimes happened, and it happened that night. His mind was elsewhere, wasn’t it?

  David Osborne (director)

  We’d scheduled the big climactic second-act curtain scene—the most crucial scene in the picture in many ways, the linchpin—for the second week. Working out of sequence like that can be hard for some actors, especially actors whose main experience is on the stage—they have to have the intervening scenes laid out in their head before they can perform them, sometimes weeks or even months before—but I’d never seen anyone so rattled as Chance Hardwick. Things had been going fine up to then, he was doing great work, but he came to my trailer to talk to me early in the morning when that scene was scheduled, came to me right out of make-up, and he was a total wreck.

  “Listen, Dave,” he said. “Is it too late to replace me? I haven’t had a chance to talk to Irma about this, but I just think I’m screwing up your picture. I don’t have a clue what I’m doing. It might be best if I withdraw.”

  So for a second I just stared at him. Was he nuts? Replace the star one week into principal photography? Holy Christ. And look, I’ve worked with plenty of stars in my time, I understand something about temperament, I understand they’re putting it all out there and they feel exposed and vulnerable and inadequate. Anyone who deals with performers knows how brutal on the psyche the work can be, what a toll it can take. You can die a thousand deaths. But this was insanity of the highest order. So I tried not to act too alarmed, which only would have made the situation worse, and I said to him, “Please, Chance, relax. Everything’s going fine.”