Lana (“Natalie’s got the brains but I got the tits”) Wood, with her sister (illustration credit 4.5)
“As well as always trying to screw Natalie, and to screw her out of more money at the same time,” Wagner recalled, “Jack Warner also tried to stop her getting the part in Splendor, because she’d defied him by going on suspension all those months. It was Kazan’s insistence that got her the part.”
It was also because Natalie decided to play a game. Aware that Warner enjoyed ordering her into a movie she disliked, she pretended that she didn’t want to play Deanie. She even kept up the pretense with Kazan, who preferred to interview rather than test her. Although she knew that Deanie was a girl from a middle-class midwestern family, she wore a tight satin dress, false eyelashes, high heels, and plenty of bracelets. Fortunately Kazan was more intuitive than Herman Wouk, and perceived “a terrible desire for excellence” behind the glamour front. “You say she’s only been good in two pictures?” he remarked to a journalist from the Los Angeles Times. “Then I say she’s got it. Two pictures is a hell of a lot of pictures.”
Warner proved more amenable than he expected, and Inge was equally influential in steering Kazan to his personal candidate for Bud. During 1958, twenty-one-year-old Warren Beatty acted in two East Coast repertory companies, played small parts in TV productions, studied (briefly) with Stella Adler and earned extra money as a cocktail pianist at Clavin’s bar in Manhattan. For the company run by Robert Ludlum (who later became a best-selling novelist) at the North Jersey Playhouse in Fort Lee, Beatty played the Loeb counterpart in Compulsion, and his performance impressed both Inge and Joshua Logan. In the spring of 1959 Inge cast him in A Loss of Roses, the playwright’s first Broadway failure and the actor’s last appearance on any stage. But Beatty’s favorable reviews resulted in the offer of a contract from MGM, which he turned down. Eventually, Warner approved Kazan’s choices for both Bud and Deanie in Splendor in the Grass.
The movie’s starting date, in the second week of March 1960, was postponed for another six weeks when the Screen Actors Guild went on strike from March 7 to April 15; but Producer found a way to turn the situation to his studio’s advantage. He saved thousands of dollars by suspending all its contract players (including Natalie) for the duration of the strike.
Kazan shot Splendor entirely on the East Coast, interiors at Filmways Studios in New York, exteriors on Staten Island and upstate New York, which doubled effectively for Kansas in 1928. Landscape, Kazan realized, was not a vital part of a story whose important scenes, with one exception, were all interior. A few carefully chosen locations—Deanie’s parents’ gingerbread house with its cupola, “art glass” and front porch; the sanitarium that looks like a larger and more pretentious gingerbread mansion; the country club; and the desolate ranchland (with an oil derrick added) for the final scene between Bud and Deanie—created all the necessary exterior atmosphere.
Splendor in the Grass. Deanie breaks down in the schoolroom. (illustration credit 4.6)
Inge’s story of two high-school seniors who fall passionately in love, but never consummate it because of the oppressive puritanism of time and place, is a coded version of personal experience, his own “forbidden” love for a handsome high-school senior. At first even Inge’s best plays, Bus Stop and The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, seem skillfully conventional. Then, unlike the skill, the convention begins to subvert itself. It leads to scenes, in Kazan’s words, of “exceptional poignancy and quiet terror,” and as Tennessee Williams wrote, the plays “uncover a world within a world [by] not ripping but quietly dropping the veil.” In this way they echo the Sherwood Anderson of Winesburg, Ohio, which was set in another part of the Bible Belt ten years earlier than the 1928 of Splendor in the Grass, and reveals a similar “world within a world” whose placid surface rumbles and quakes when a subterranean tension disturbs it.
Splendor jump-started something that Natalie had waited for since Rebel Without a Cause: her career as an adult actress. It also coincided with an emotionally fractured period in her life. There was no separation due to career conflict for the Wagners, as Fox had no immediate plans for RJ, and the couple lived together at an apartment on Sutton Place found for them by Inge, who lived in the same building. But a month after Splendor began production, Fox decided not to renew RJ’s contract. He found himself out of work just as Natalie’s career was about to renew itself, and the roles of husband and wife at the start of their marriage were now reversed.
With time on his hands, RJ spent some of it in discouraging phone consultations about his career prospects, and more of it on the set of Splendor, particularly during the love scenes between Deanie and Bud, which made husband and wife equally stressed.
Beatty, of course, was a “new” kind of actor, in the wake of Brando, Clift and Dean, and although the gap between them was only one-third of a generation, RJ seemed to belong to an earlier era. When his affair with Natalie first began, he’d felt “alien” because she was close at the time to Nick Ray and Dennis Hopper; and on the set of Splendor, he felt “alien” again, but less equipped to deal with it because of the dent in his professional confidence. And as Mart Crowley observed, when any movie truly involved her, Natalie developed a “fixation” on the director or leading actor. It was basically creative, as in Kazan’s case, although sometimes (as with Nick Ray) sexual as well. But RJ had never worked this way, and during Natalie’s intimate huddles with Kazan, he felt even more of an outsider.
Natalie’s only New York friend, Norma Crane, was in Hollywood filming All in a Night’s Work, but she soon found a confidential shoulder in Mart Crowley, one of Kazan’s assistants. His main job was to pick Natalie up every morning she was on call and drive her to the set. Five years earlier, as a drama student at the Catholic University of America in Washington, he had introduced himself to Kazan, who was filming Baby Doll on location near Mart’s hometown of Vicksburg, Mississippi. Kazan gave him a pass to observe the filming, told him to “look me up when you finish school”; and after Mart graduated in 1957, Kazan got him a job as a production assistant on The Fugitive Kind.
Although he hardly knew Natalie’s work as an actress, they very quickly became close friends. Mart had the humor, directness and insight that always appealed to her, and they were soon exchanging tales of unhappy families (in Crowley’s case, an alcoholic father and psychologically fragile mother, who became the models for the leading characters in A Breeze from the Gulf) and exploring each other’s anxieties and guilts (in Crowley’s case homosexual, and the subject of his first play, The Boys in the Band). Mart was also quick to perceive tensions in the Wagner marriage: “RJ’s career was on the downslide while Natalie’s was suddenly on the up, a seesaw effect of career swings that often failed to coincide throughout their lives. Natalie sometimes cried in her dressing room because she wanted to go into analysis and RJ was opposed to it. ‘What drives me mad is that he just won’t listen to me,’ she said once. ‘But I need help, or this marriage will fall apart.’ ”
To Mart it seemed that “both RJ and Natalie were falling apart.” He remembered an evening when he joined them for dinner with Elizabeth Taylor and Eddie Fisher, “another marriage on the rocks, but all four from the outside playing the happiest married couples in the world.” He also detected signs of tension between Warren Beatty and his fiancée, Joan Collins, who frequently visited the set and kept a sharp eye on his love scenes with Natalie until she reluctantly departed for Italy and a caftan-and-sandals biblical epic, Esther and the King. Kazan’s personal life was yet another source of anxiety: he was still married to his first wife, Molly, but had become involved with Barbara Loden, who played Warren’s sister. “Kazan also used Natalie’s relationship with Mud for the scenes with her movie mother, played by Audrey Christie. It was very draining for her, and another reason why she sometimes got very depressed. In fact, just about everybody on that picture seemed on the emotional edge.”
But although Warren’s relationship with Joan Collins
, like the Wagner marriage, was under strain, Crowley insisted that the affair with Natalie didn’t start until a year later: “I was very close to Natalie, I never saw him come on to her, and if he had, I’m sure she would have told me. What she did tell me was that she didn’t like Warren at first, and particularly disliked playing love scenes with him because she suspected he didn’t bathe enough.” Beatty later confirmed that he never “came on” to Natalie, and pointed out that in fact he became engaged to Joan Collins during the shoot of Splendor. But his proposal style was in telling contrast to RJ’s. One Sunday afternoon, Warren asked Joan to make him a chopped liver sandwich. When she opened a plastic carton from the fridge, she found a diamond-and-pearl ring gleaming, like only half-buried treasure, among the chopped liver.
Splendor in the Grass. Mother (Audrey Christie) comforts daughter. (illustration credit 4.7)
ALTHOUGH NATALIE “went along with the production’s Actors Studio non-Hollywood work methods,” Crowley remembered that she drew the line at a non-Hollywood hairdresser. She called Elizabeth Taylor, who was making Butterfield 8 for MGM in New York, and asked to borrow Sydney Guilaroff to design her main hairstyles: a fall for the early scenes, tight elaborate curls for her imitation of Barbara Loden’s flapper, and a more “mature” look for the final scene with Beatty.
To Kazan, this was an example of movie star taking over from actress. But a few weeks later the non-Hollywood hairdresser “almost wrecked Barbara Loden’s hair when he dyed it blond for the New Year’s Eve party scene, and Kazan rather sheepishly asked Natalie to ask Guilaroff to come in again and perform damage control. Which he did, and really saved Barbara Loden’s hair.”
“Everybody seemed on the emotional edge” Left to right: Joan Collins, Warren Beatty, Kazan, Natalie and RJ during a set break (illustration credit 4.8)
But movie star did occasionally attempt to take over from actress, Mart noted, “by sneaking in a touch of eyeliner or more lipstick.” But Kazan always made her remove it, as he wanted Deanie to look completely natural until her attempt at imitating Loden’s flapper. And Natalie’s strange anxiety that she couldn’t look her best without elaborate makeup was relieved when she went to dailies and liked the way Kazan wanted her to look.
At first, Natalie trusted Kazan unconditionally. The first time he tricked her “to bring out the performance,” she told the AFI seminar, it was acceptable: “The bathtub scene, in which I was to be hysterical, always frightened me. And I told Kazan I was very worried about it. His response absolutely threw me for a loop, because he said, ‘What you do, I’ll let you see the film, and we’ll go back and do it again. Or we can play it on Audrey’s reactions.’ And I was so enraged and offended that I became hysterical. That was his way of dealing with me, and it was obviously the correct way, because we only shot it once.” But after Kazan tricked her again in filming Deanie’s attempted suicide, Natalie no longer admired or trusted him unconditionally. The scene required her to walk along a low rocky ledge above a lake with a nearby waterfall, then step into the water and attempt to drown herself. Several days earlier, Natalie had told Kazan that she was terrified of water, especially dark water, and begged him to use a studio tank. Kazan, who said later that he thought her fear “perfect for the scene,” promised to arrange for a plank to be nailed to the floor of the lake, which was not deep enough for Natalie to get out of her depth. He also promised that Charlie Maguire, his assistant director since On the Waterfront and now one of his associate producers as well, would stand in the water just out of camera range, ready to catch her if she fell.
Kazan’s version claims that Natalie finally agreed to do the scene, “did it well,” then laughed hysterically with relief after he called “Cut!” But it denies an important part of Natalie’s version. She told Mart Crowley (who was not present because “Kazan sent me on an errand to New York that day”) that Kazan promised to cut to a long shot of a double after she reached the end of the plank. But at that point Maguire left her side, and Natalie found herself completely alone in the water with no double. Although a poor swimmer, she managed to get through the scene and was “half proud of herself, and half furious at Kazan’s duplicity.”
Yet another version emerged in an alleged interview with a New York tabloid. According to Natalie, it reported, the double was there as Kazan promised, but couldn’t swim, and she had to finish the scene alone. Shortly afterward, a bit player in the movie claimed that Kazan had engaged her as Natalie’s double. She described herself as a very good swimmer and threatened to sue Warner Bros. for “defamation.” But as she couldn’t explain why she held the studio responsible for something Natalie was alleged to have said, and Kazan continued to deny that he’d ever promised or employed a double, she dropped the suit.
1961: Kazan, Natalie and Warren Beatty at a Warner Bros. celebration in the studio screening room (illustration credit 4.9)
Like the litigious bit player, the “interview” with Natalie is more than suspect, and not only on account of its source (the New York Sunday Mirror, June 12, 1960). Natalie knew how much she owed to Kazan, and while the film was still in production, she certainly knew better than to accuse him publicly of lying.
In private, Natalie’s story never varied. She told RJ (also not present that day) that there was no double, and told Karl Malden the same thing in 1978, when they were discussing Kazan on the set of Meteor. She also told RJ that in spite of her admiration for Kazan she considered him “a trickster,” and would always remember that scene by the lake in the fading afternoon light as another encounter with betrayal.
IN THE FIRST WEEK of August, as Splendor in the Grass neared the end of shooting, Jerry Robbins and Robert Wise, co-directors on the movie of West Side Story, had almost completed filming the dance numbers on location in New York (some of which had previously been rehearsed and test-filmed in downtown Los Angeles). But the two leading roles of Maria and Tony had not yet been cast. After Carol Lawrence (who played Maria on Broadway) had been tested and rejected as looking too old for film, the wide net of casting director Lynn Stalmaster hauled in Pier Angeli, Elizabeth Ashley, Diane Baker, Susan Kohner, Gigi Perreau, Suzanne Pleshette and Ina Balin. They were all interviewed or tested and rejected, except for Balin, who’d played a few small parts since Fox signed her to a contract, and who became a “possibility.”
But Walter Mirisch and Max Youngstein, co-producers of the movie for United Artists, had always wanted a star name for at least one of the leads, and they asked Robbins and Wise to look at some of Natalie’s footage in Splendor in the Grass. Robbins was particularly enthusiastic about the material he saw, and said later that when he met Natalie, “we clicked at once. There was immediate understanding.”
Although eager to play the role, Natalie insisted on a clause in the contract that would allow her to record Maria’s songs to a playback, then give Robbins and Wise the right to decide whether to use her voice or employ a professional singer to dub it.
On Friday, August 16, she completed her final scene in Splendor. On Saturday she took a tranquilizer before flying back to Los Angeles with RJ. (By now Natalie kept her fear of flying under control with Valium and by never traveling alone.) On Sunday she met with Robbins, and on Monday, August 19, she reported to Goldwyn Studios, where she met the vocal coach, Miriam Colón, appointed to give her lessons in a Puerto Rican accent.
“AS SHE KNEW I’d written a couple of TV scripts that hadn’t sold,” Mart Crowley recalled, “Natalie offered me a job as her secretary when she went back to L.A., said I could stay in the garage apartment of the house on North Beverly, and promised to introduce me to the guys at William Morris.” By this time Mart and RJ had also become good friends, with RJ as eager as Natalie for a sympathetic presence, confidant and buffer zone.
On Splendor, the tensions had been mainly personal and occurred off the set. On West Side, the set was professionally troubled as well. Robert Wise had at first been uneasy about working with Jerry Robbins as co-director; but Robbins had the r
ight of first refusal to be involved with the movie, and accepted only on condition that he co-direct. Because Mirisch considered him indispensable, Wise met with Robbins and “agreed that he would direct all the musical numbers, and I would do all the book stuff.”
Splendor in the Grass. Kazan discusses the party scene with Warren Beatty and Natalie “trying to imitate Barbara Loden’s flapper.” (illustration credit 4.10)
Splendor in the Grass. The farewell scene (illustration credit 4.11)
According to Richard Beymer, who played Tony, Robbins did more than that. “He also worked out the transitions, getting into the numbers, then back into the nonmusical scenes.” Beymer was signed for the role two weeks later than Natalie, after George Peppard, Richard Chamberlain and Scott Marlowe had been rejected as respectively too old, too lightweight and too neurotic.
In a gallantly misguided attempt to revive her husband’s career, Natalie had proposed RJ, although he was unmistakably wrong for the part. So, in his own estimation, was twenty-one-year-old Beymer: “I was a country boy from Ohio cast as street-smart New York. And I needed more character motivation from a director with more psychological insight than Robert Wise. All he ever told me was, ‘Walk faster, talk faster, pick up your cue faster, be more sincere, be more loving.’ And I knew Natalie didn’t want me for the part, but had to tell her ‘I love you’ in almost every scene.” With no help from Wise, only occasional contact with Robbins because he had little dancing to do, and Natalie keeping a politely firm distance, Beymer “took refuge in arrogance and didn’t try to break through.” Offscreen, the extent of Maria and Tony’s personal contact was a perfunctory “good morning” to each other.
Natalie Wood Page 18