The dubbing room was furnished in what looked like Salvation Army rejects—old chairs and a moth-eaten settee. A microphone was set up and marks put on the floor showing Massey the limits he could move forward or back to adjust his vocal volume. Massey dropped into a chair, puffing nervously on a cigarette. For the first time, he was having some doubts about his portrayal of Coward. “I’m going to be pilloried,” he said. “There’s no doubt about it. People are going to say I’m just imitating Noel. I’m not, you know. He talks all up here”—he waved his hands up by his temple and talked as if he had a head cold—“not down here.” He patted his stomach. “I could imitate him, of course. But that’s going the Frank Gorshin route. That’s all right for night clubs, but I’m not a mimic.”
A voice from the control booth announced that the new loop was ready. The scene was after the opening of Gertrude Lawrence’s first Broadway show and Massey, as Coward, was reading the reviews. It had been shot on location at the Algonquin Hotel in New York, but background noises had made necessary a new reading of his line: “ ‘Jack Buchanan, a young Englishman of astonishing grace and charm.’ ” Massey slipped to the microphone and listened to the original sound track to get the proper inflection of his voice. He signaled that he was ready and the loop was played without the sound.
“ ‘Jack Buchanan, a young Englishman of astonishing grace and charm,’ ” Massey said. He bit each word out.
“You were late with ‘a young Englishman,’ ” the sound man said.
Massey repeated the line.
“A little rubbery,” the sound man said.
Again and again, Massey repeated the words. He rolled his “r’s” and cut off the word “charm” so sharply it sounded like “charmp.”
Finally the sound man was satisfied. Massey listened to the playback. “Okay, I’ll buy it,” he said. He flopped back into his chair. “Pilloried,” he said. He lit another cigarette from the butt of the first. “What’s the next loop?”
“ ‘What price Clapham now?’ ” the sound man said.
“My God, there must be an easier way,” Massey said.
A few days later, after two weeks of rehearsal, director Robert Wise was ready to shoot the “Jenny” number in Star! “Jenny” was a Kurt Weill-Ira Gershwin song sung by Gertrude Lawrence in Moss Hart’s Lady in the Dark, a Broadway hit in the early 1940’s. Though it would last only three or four minutes on screen, the number would take two weeks to shoot. A musical production number is enormously complicated to film. All movements must be keyed to a musical count. How, where and at what pace dancers and principals walk, jog or leap is determined by the beat. Careful measurements must be made of the distances to be covered in a particular shot in order for action and camera movement to synchronize with the music. The stage directions in the script gave only a slight indication of the difficulties involved:
167 NEWSREEL
The newsreel shows the stage on the opening night of Lady in the Dark. Full of actors dressed as circus performers. The backdrop is a large painted circus scene which might be used for the cover of a magazine. Upstage the “jury” (consisting of clowns, acrobats, etc.) is taking their places. Downstage, Gertie, wearing a chic and glamorous evening dress, moves to take her place on a trapeze. She is surrounded by the other principals of the show, including the ringmaster and his page. Gertie starts to swing gently on the trapeze. We hear the music of “Jenny,” and Gertie, still swinging leisurely on the trapeze, starts to sing.
GERTIE (singing)
“There once was a girl named Jenny
Whose virtues were varied and many …”
As Gertie completes this verse, she swings toward CAMERA and suddenly leaps forward off the trapeze and right into CAMERA and …
168 INTERIOR NEW YORK THEATER NUMBER 4—NIGHT
… as she lands on the stage, the screen bursts, blazes and explodes into widescreen color as Gertie bursts, blazes and explodes into her brilliant, electrifying bumps-and-grinds version of “Jenny.”
GERTIE (singing)
“Jenny made her mind up when she was three
She herself was going to trim the Christmas tree …”
All the musical numbers for Star! were choreographed by Michael Kidd, the Broadway dancer and director who was working on his first film in over ten years. A slim, dark-haired man with a nervous athletic grace, Kidd sucked on a cigarette as he moved the chorus back and forth on the stage. Off to the side, Robert Wise sat quietly in a director’s chair watching Kidd position the dancers. Kidd bounced back and forth between the facsimile stage and the camera crane where he checked angles with Star!’s cinematographer, Ernest Laszlo. The master shot—a shot showing the entire number, taking in all the performers onstage—had already been filmed, and now Kidd was lining up individual movements and closeups. The male dancers were wearing circus costume and dead-white facial makeup offset with ruby rouge spots; the women wore spangled tights. Onstage, Kidd’s assistant, a dancer named Sheila Hackett, was standing in for Julie Andrews, practicing a leap from a platform into a male dancer’s arms. She did the leap several times as Kidd peered through the huge 70mm camera to make sure that it caught the entire movement.
Wise climbed up on the crane and took a look through the camera. “It’s a bit vacant in the background,” he said to Kidd. “We’re going to pick up a big hole there. You’d better put some more dancers back there, Mike.”
Kidd called for some additional dancers, and when he was finally satisfied, he ordered a break for the chorus to touch up their makeup. Julie Andrews was still in her dressing room. Finally Wise told Reggie Callow, his assistant director, to have the chorus take their places. As one of the male dancers in clown costume passed him, Wise touched his arm. “You’re wearing a watch,” he said gently. “Clowns don’t wear watches. It shows up on film.”
“I forgot,” the dancer said.
“I’ll hold it,” Wise said. He took the watch and put it in his pocket.
Julie Andrews emerged from her dressing room as Callow bellowed over a bullhorn for the dancers to take their positions.
“You better sit over here, dear,” Wise said to Julie Andrews. “We’ll run it through once more so you can see what we’re doing.”
The camera dollied in for a rehearsal. Onstage, Sheila Hackett waited for the musical playback to begin and on cue leaped from the platform into the dancer’s arms.
“We need some more acrobats,” Kidd said. “We’ve still got a hole back there.”
“You told me you didn’t need any more,” Callow said. His beefy red face was rimmed with sweat.
“We only need their legs,” Kidd said. “We’re only going to pick them up from the waist down. They don’t have to wear their tops. Only the bottoms.”
There was a momentary delay until the dancer-acrobats took their places. Once more, Sheila Hackett did a runthrough.
“I’ve got it now,” Julie Andrews said. She peeled off her bathrobe and took her position on the stage, wearing a form-fitting black sequined outfit. With Kidd chanting the beat over a bullhorn, she did a practice leap from the platform. The dancer did not catch her just right and she repeated the jump a half dozen more times until the timing was perfected. At last Wise called for a picture. The set went silent and then the prerecorded music for the number blasted through the stage. Mouthing the words of “Jenny,” Julie Andrews leaped from the platform.
Again the dancer did not catch her right, and the shot was repeated. This time Julie Andrews’ leap was too high. On the third take she muffed the lyric and on the fourth the dancer once more did not catch her properly. Wise called for another take and then still another. Beads of sweat began to ring Julie Andrews’ forehead. After each take a makeup man powdered her face.
The morning wore on. Nearly an hour and a half passed before Wise got the shot he thought he wanted. Then the camera operator said a few words to him.
“Your foot was out of the frame, dear,” Robert Wise said then. “Let’s do it again.”
>
The company broke for lunch at twelve-thirty. They were supposed to return in an hour, but Julie Andrews had a costume fitting and did not reappear on the set until nearly three o’clock. His elaborate paunch spreading out like a table from under his shirt, Reggie Callow sat in Wise’s chair, surrounded by members of the crew.
“You remember Steve Cochran?” Callow said. “Just died a while back. Well, he was the best I ever saw at promoting stuff. A lot of actors, you know, they like to smoke in a scene. But Cochran, he had a piece of business he liked to use, it was the best I ever saw. He liked to open a pack of cigarettes. That way, every take you had to give him a fresh pack. I remember one picture, he did nineteen takes of a scene one day, and that night he went home with nineteen packs of cigarettes with just one butt out of each package. That’s almost two cartons. Oh, he was something, really something.”
“All those stars are something,” a makeup man said.
“Something is right,” Callow said. “Tight is what you mean. No wonder they’re all rich. Nineteen packs of cigarettes.” He shook his head. “Sid Mintz told me a story once. He was working over at Paramount, working as Jack Oakie’s wardrobe man. Well, when the picture started, Sid tells Oakie he’ll take good care of his things. First thing you know, Oakie starts bringing his suits in in the morning for Sid to get cleaned. Not his wardrobe. His suits, from home, from his own closet, so help me God. Then his wife’s dresses, then his laundry. Sid tells me he even brings the sheets. Well, when the picture is over, Oakie, he says to Sid, ‘You took real good care of me, Sid, go out and buy yourself a good cigar.’ And he gives him a twenty-five-cent piece.”
The crowd around Callow guffawed. “Oh, I tell you,” Callow said, “the true story of Hollywood’s never been written. There’s so many funny things happen, you wish you had written them down.”
He looked at his watch. Julie Andrews’ car was sliding down the street. She jumped from the back seat, wearing a long, sleeveless cotton bathrobe.
“Oh, I’m sorry I’m late,” she said.
The star had arrived and the desultory swapping of tales about the stars was over for the day.
“Let’s go to work,” Callow said.
13
“You’ve got to have twelve letters in your name,”
Ernest Lehman said
The start of shooting on Hello, Dolly! was marked by an exchange of gifts, notes of encouragement and a small champagne and caviar party for Barbra Streisand, who was playing the title role, in the office of director Gene Kelly. Richard Zanuck sent producer Ernest Lehman an additional supply of champagne and caviar along with a note that said:
Dear Ernie,
You have labored long and hard to bring DOLLY to the starting gate—and I know she will win all the blue ribbons.
Best of good wishes.
Sincerely,
Dick
For his part, Lehman sent Kelly a gift of brandy and whiskey, which brought the following note in return:
Dear Ernie,
Thanks for the opening-day sentiments. We’ll give it the old college try and then some.
Gene
There was an 89-day shooting schedule on Hello, Dolly! and at the end of the first week’s shooting, Ernest Lehman still did not have a completed budget. In his five-room suite of offices in the Old Writers Building, Lehman fretted. Worry seems almost endemic to him. He is a slender man in his early fifties with long graying sideburns and thinning hair arranged artfully across the top of his head. He had been a top screenwriter for over fifteen years, several times a nominee for the Academy Award and the recipient of a number of best screenplay awards from the Writers Guild. His last assignment at the Studio was the screenplay of The Sound of Music, for which, in addition to his normal salary, he received a token 2 per cent of the picture’s profits, a piece that now amounted to nearly a million dollars. Hello, Dolly! was only the second picture that Lehman had produced. The first was Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and the disparity between the two projects seemed at times to overwhelm him. “I’ve got some goddamn nerve,” he said. “From a four-character picture to this.” A pained look crossed his harried face. “You know, there’s one sequence where we’re going to put out a call for 2,500 extras.”
He was wearing a checked jacket and a soft white Zhivago shirt and on his wrist he wore a thin gold watch on which the letters of his name replaced the numbers, like this:
“You’ve got to have twelve letters in your name,” Lehman said. “Otherwise it won’t work. And it’s best to have six in your first name and six in your last.”
He buzzed his secretary and asked her to ring Chico Day, the production manager on Hello, Dolly! His wistful eyes rested on the painting of Barbra Streisand that dominated his office. “It’s by Claire Trevor,” he said, cupping his hand over the phone. There was also a photograph of Barbra Streisand on an end table, in a silver frame that was a gift from Mike Nichols, who had directed Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? Engraved on the frame were the words, “Hello, Forever. Love, Nichols. Virginia Woolf. 1965.”
“Chico,” Lehman said, when Day came to the phone, “how are we doing on the rain insurance?” Hello, Dolly! was supposed to go on location for a month in Garrison, N.Y., and the weather in the East was always a problem. Cover sets were being built in Garrison so that the company could shoot interiors in the event of rain. A prolonged rain spell could be prohibitively costly, forcing a company to shut down and adding as much as several million dollars to the budget of a major picture, only a fraction of which could be recouped by rain insurance.
“We’ve only got cover for three days, Chico, so I need the figures on what it’s going to cost,” Lehman said. He listened for a moment, his face growing even more mournful. “You can only get it by the hour? Jesus, if it rains, it gets so muddy you can’t shoot all day. An hour’s rain is going to cost us a day anyway, so let’s try and get this insurance by the day and forget this hour stuff.”
He hung up the phone and picked up a stack of publicity photographs of himself, examining each one through a pair of glasses without temples that resembled a lorgnette. “Gee, is my double chin as bad as in these pictures?” Lehman said, patting himself under the chin. “I don’t think so.” He handed the photographs back to Patricia Newcomb, the public relations woman assigned to Hello, Dolly! “See if they can do something with my chin.”
The telephone rang. It was Barbra Streisand, soliciting funds for Martin Luther King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference. A number of people in the entertainment business had pledged the SCLC one per cent of their annual income and Lehman was one of those from whom a similar contribution was being asked.
“Gee, Barbra, this is going to be an expensive telephone call,” Lehman said. “Why don’t you call Freddie Fields? He’s rich. Or Dick Shepherd? He’s got a lot of that Goetz money.”
Late that afternoon, Lehman drove his Cadillac over to Stage 14 where Michael Kidd, who was choreographing Hello, Dolly!, was rehearsing the title number with Barbra Streisand. The set was the most complicated interior for Hello, Dolly!, and at $375,000, the most costly of all the inside sets. It was called Harmonia Gardens and was suggested by the more lavish restaurants of New York’s gaslight era. Lehman’s production designer, John DeCuir, had built the set on four levels, foyer, bar, dining room and dance floor. Fittings and furnishings were burnished gold and ivory, and curtains, upholstery and carpeting were crimson, pink and salmon. There were two large 28-foot fountains, twenty columns each ringed with a fountain of its own, four domed private dining alcoves and, dominating the set, a huge staircase. It was at the top of this staircase that Barbra Streisand was now standing, chewing placidly on a hangnail.
She was wearing a lightweight muslin version of the beaded topaz dress designed by Irene Sharaff for the Hello, Dolly! number. The purpose of the rehearsal was to see if the dress was functional. Both Lehman and Kidd suspected that the original, still unfinished, was too heavy for Barbra Streisand to execute th
e high kicks choreographed by Kidd. Standing in the sunken dance floor on the lowest level of the set, Kidd clapped his hands. The male dancers lounging in rehearsal clothes at the foot of the staircase took their positions. Lehman pulled up a stool and perched on it beside Kidd. The music for the number had already been pre-recorded and Kidd motioned for it to begin. Beating rhythm with his hands, he said, “Okay, let’s take it from the top.”
Barbra Streisand began moving slowly down the red-carpeted staircase, mouthing the words of “Hello, Dolly.” “Hello, Rudy. Well, hello, Harry.” When she reached the bottom of the stairs, the tempo picked up. The dancers swirled around her, circling the ramp above the sunken dance floor. Twice Barbra Streisand tripped over the train of her dress and twice more the dancers stepped on it. The number concluded, after a complete circuit of the set had been made, with Barbra Streisand, all alone, ascending the staircase. Kidd whistled through his teeth for the music to stop.
“The train’s got to go, Ern,” Kidd said to Lehman.
Studio (9780307817600) Page 19