Studio (9780307817600)

by Dunne, John Gregory

  “Maybe we’d better get Irene over here,” Lehman said hesitantly.

  “Sure, Ern, get Irene over here, but the train’s still got to go,” Kidd said amiably.

  A call was put in to Irene Sharaff to come immediately to Stage 14. Lehman fingered the neck of his Zhivago shirt. “Michael, I don’t think the number ends right,” he said. “I think Barbra should be coming down toward the camera, not going away from it.”

  “No question, Ern, it stinks,” Kidd said pleasantly.

  “What I mean, Mike …” Lehman began.

  “No problem, Ern,” Kidd said. “The number’s not finished. We’re just here to see how the dress works and how the set works.”

  “It doesn’t stink, Mike, that’s not what I meant.”

  “Ern, the number’s not finished,” Kidd said firmly.

  The stage door opened and Irene Sharaff walked onto the set. Winner of five Academy Awards and a number of Broadway awards for costume design, she was an intense, formidable, chain-smoking woman in late middle age. She was wearing a suede miniskirt, foulard blouse and ranch hat, and as Kidd explained the problem with the dress, she sat noncommittally on a stool, puffing on a cigarette.

  “Perhaps I’d better see what you’re talking about, Michael,” she said when Kidd finished. Her tone was deliberate and slightly patronizing.

  Kidd motioned for the number to be done again. The music began, and as Barbra Streisand and the dancers circled the set, Irene Sharaff twisted slowly on her stool, following their movements. Again both Barbra Streisand and the dancers tripped on the train of the dress.

  “See what I mean?” Kidd said when the music stopped.

  Irene Sharaff ground out her cigarette with the toe of her shoe. “No, Michael, I don’t see what the problem is.”

  “It’s simple, Irene,” Kidd said. “Barbra trips on it, the dancers step on it.”

  “Perhaps if you changed the movements, Michael, the dancers wouldn’t step on it,” Irene Sharaff said.

  Lehman wiped his brow nervously. Kidd seemed unperturbed. “We’ve still got Barbra tripping on it.”

  “I don’t think in the finished dress she will,” Irene Sharaff said. “The material is so heavy, it flows much better than the muslin.”

  “There’s another problem, Irene,” Kidd said patiently. “The dress is so heavy Barbra won’t be able to kick at the end of the number.”

  “But, Michael,” Irene Sharaff said as if to a child. “Is the kick necessary?”

  “I think it is, yeah,” Kidd said. He seemed unfazed by Irene Sharaff’s recalcitrance.

  “The dress will be finished next week, Michael,” Irene Sharaff said. “Why don’t we wait until we see it on Barbra before we talk about changes?”

  “Sure, Irene,” Kidd said cheerfully. “And if the dress doesn’t work, there’ll be some changes made.”

  Michael Kidd was also unhappy about the set. The dance floor, the lowest of the set’s four levels, was in a sunken well bordered with booths and banquettes that were topped with gaslights and curlicue grillwork. The circuit made by the dancers in the Hello, Dolly! number was to be on the next higher level, around the rim of the well. But much of the number was going to be shot from the floor of the well and Kidd wanted the booths lining the sunken dance floor ripped out. His reasons were that the diners in the booths and the gaslights and the grillwork would all be in the foreground of the shot, detracting from Barbra Streisand and the dancers doing the number immediately above and behind. With the booths out, the cameras could concentrate on the main action.

  “But, Michael, the set is supposed to be a restaurant,” said John DeCuir, the production designer on Hello, Dolly! and a winner of Academy Awards for both The King and I and Cleopatra.

  “John, I know it’s a restaurant, but is the purpose of this set to show a number or to show a lot of people eating?” Kidd said.

  “I’m just saying, Michael, that if we take out the booths, then there was no reason making the set a restaurant,” DeCuir said.

  “And I’m saying, John, that people aren’t going to pay $3.50 a ticket to see someone gumming down a lamb chop,” Kidd said. He dispatched his assistant, Sheila Hackett, to one of the booths, and then he crouched and squinted in the middle of the well, using his hands as a camera to frame a shot. “See, we’ve got Sheila right there in the foreground, right? She’s a nice kid, but the people aren’t paying to see her, they’re paying to see Barbra. And Barbra’s going to be behind her.”

  Lehman shook his head in annoyance. “For Christ’s sake, why does this have to come up now?” he said angrily. “We had sketches of this set, we had a model of this set, so why didn’t you two get together before this? You know what this set cost, you know Stan Hough’s on my ass about it, you know we can’t spend another goddamn nickel on it, and now you’re telling me we’ve got to rip out some booths.”

  “I didn’t say that, Ernie,” DeCuir said.

  “Yeah, well, Ern, John likes to look at people eating,” Kidd said.

  “Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Lehman said. He walked off by himself for a moment and then came back and asked DeCuir if it were possible to pull out just a few of the booths and not all. DeCuir shook his head.

  “I’d have to pull them all out, Ernie, and then put in an apron that comes out about six inches from the present facing,” DeCuir said.

  “Why that, too, for Christ’s sake?” Lehman said.

  “We need the apron, Ernie,” DeCuir said. “No camera operator is perfect. If his camera jiggles, you’re going to pick up the facing, and without the booths, what is there? Nothing. The apron gives us something in front of the dancers’ feet, so if the camera does jiggle, we’ve got some floor space to show.”

  Lehman slapped his palm on a stool. “Well, can’t we have some shots of people in the booths?” he said.

  “Sure, Ern, no objection,” Kidd said. “We can establish it, we can have a couple of angles shooting up through the booths. Then we take out the booths and shoot the rest of the number.”

  Lehman looked unhappy. “Find out how much it’s going to cost,” he said to DeCuir. “And then I’ll call Stan Hough. I don’t want him on my ass Monday. Let’s get him on my ass now and get it over with.”

  The plans for the various premieres of Dr. Dolittle continued to take shape through the early autumn of 1967. Rex Harrison had agreed to leave his home in Portofino, Italy, to attend the openings in Copenhagen, London, Paris, New York and Los Angeles. In line with Harrison’s itinerary, Arthur Jacobs wrote a memo to the Studio’s New York publicity office:

  Harrison has agreed to make appearances at all airports, theaters, and post-premiere parties accompanied by Chee-Chee and Polynesia. Plans are being made through Mort Abrahams for Ray Kabat to accompany Chee-Chee and Polynesia, plus a second trainer with a stand-in for each animal. They will be booked on the same flights with Harrison so that they can disembark at each city with him.

  Like all major premieres in Hollywood, the opening of Dr. Dolittle would be covered on television. The usual procedure was to have the show on a local TV channel, and as their limousines pulled up to the theater, the arriving stars would be interviewed by Army Archerd, the gossip columnist for Daily Variety. Arthur Jacobs, however, was angling for a national network pickup of the Los Angeles opening and had been in contact with Joey Bishop to host the premiere on his late-night ABC talk show. Bishop’s show was broadcast live from a studio in Hollywood for the Eastern time zone and taped for later showing at eleven-thirty the same night for the West Coast. Bishop had expressed preliminary interest in doing the Dr. Dolittle premiere, but Richard Zanuck had vetoed the live pickup Bishop wanted.

  “What I don’t understand is why,” Jack Hirschberg said one afternoon in Arthur Jacobs’ office. A balding, sad-faced man who always looks on the verge of tears, Hirschberg was the publicity man for Apjac. “You can’t buy the kind of exposure you get on Joey’s show.”

  “Because of the Camelot opening, that’s wh
y,” Jacobs said. He was munching on a cracker. “They had Army Archerd out front. Live. And the picture started fifty-five minutes late. You make an audience wait fifty-five minutes and they hate the picture before it even starts. Dick Zanuck says we start at eight o’clock sharp and if we blow Joey Bishop, we blow Joey Bishop. It’s disaster to make an audience wait fifty-five minutes. We got to get him to tape it.”

  Hirschberg’s resigned features saddened even more. “He won’t do it,” he said.

  “What time does he go on?” Jacobs said. “Eight-thirty, right? If he goes on live, that means the picture doesn’t start until nine-fifteen the earliest. You want to make the audience hate the picture, Jack, you make them sit there until nine-fifteen. They don’t get out then until after midnight, they haven’t had anything to eat, the hell with the party after, they go home and get a sandwich and they hate us.” Jacobs demolished another cracker. “We got to get Joey to tape it.”

  “He won’t do it,” Hirschberg insisted.

  “What do you mean, he won’t do it?” Jacobs said. “We got Rex, Samantha, Newley, Attenborough, Julie Andrews, Burt Lancaster—that’s more names than he’s had on his show since it started. Of course he’ll tape it. That’s too big a star lineup to turn down. He tapes it, then we get a helicopter to fly him back to his studio.”

  Hirschberg shook his head.

  “And not just the star lineup,” Jacobs said. “What about all the animals arriving in their cars? Of course he’ll tape it. Where the hell else is he going to get a chimp arriving in a Cadillac wearing white tie and tails?”

  Hirschberg sighed. “Okay, I’ll talk to him.”

  Jacobs rang his secretary and asked for a glass of diet soda. “Now for the party,” he said.

  Hirschberg checked the notes on his lap. “I’ve ordered 1,400 albums,” he said. “Everybody who comes in gets an album.”

  “No speeches at the party,” Jacobs said. “And the goddamn food at the Camelot party was inedible. We’ve got Chasen’s, so that’s no problem. But we need two orchestras. The Camelot party fell apart because they only had one orchestra. The band took five and everyone left. No wonder, the goddamn party didn’t start until twelve-ten.” He was back on his original tack. “These are picture people. They got to get up and go to work in the morning. So we can’t start later than eight o’clock. We don’t want people to get pissed off and leave. Of course Joey will tape it. If he doesn’t, Dick Zanuck says it’s better to blow the whole show.”

  The second sneak preview of Dr. Dolittle was held at the Orpheum Theater in San Francisco on Friday night, October 20, 1967. In the six weeks since the Minneapolis sneak, the Studio had been at work cutting the picture. The prologue was eliminated entirely, the cartoon-credit sequence pruned drastically and the rest of the film tightened throughout. The night after the San Francisco sneak, Dr. Dolittle was to be previewed again in San Jose, and for this showing, two of Anthony Newley’s musical numbers, “Where Are the Words?” and “Beautiful Things,” had been cut down. The final cut of the picture was to depend on the audience reaction in San Francisco and on the still shorter version shown in San Jose.

  After the dead reaction in Minneapolis, the Studio had decided to name Dr. Dolittle in the advertisements placed in the San Francisco newspapers for the preview. In both the San Francisco Chronicle and the Examiner, large three-column ads ran in the theater pages that said:

  TOMORROW SOMETHING VERY SPECIAL WILL HAPPEN IN SAN FRANCISCO. Months before the gala world premiere of what will be the biggest reserved seat attraction of 1968, the movie-going public of San Francisco can experience a rare and unforgettable entertainment—tomorrow night at 8:30 P.M., a special advanced preview performance of 20th Century Fox’s DR. DOLITTLE. You’ve never seen anything like it in your life … as you enter the wonderful world of DR. DOLITTLE, a world filled with adventure, enchantment, romance and music. You’ve never heard such magnificent music … And you’ll be captivated by the performance of Rex Harrison as the incredible DR. DOLITTLE, the man who can speak some 400 animal languages from alligator-ese to zebra-ese.

  The Fox party was staying at the Fairmont Hotel. David Brown had come out from New York and Richard Zanuck flew up from Los Angeles in a private jet. Arthur Jacobs came in from Europe, where he had been supervising the pre-production details on his musical version of Goodbye, Mr. Chips. Before the preview, Zanuck hosted a dinner for the Fox party at Ernie’s, a fashionable restaurant not far from the theater. The executives and production people ate at two large tables, while the two Studio public relations men attending the preview ate at a small table by themselves.

  Natalie Trundy was in an exuberant mood. She picked up a silver service plate and jiggled it in her hands, as if to weigh it. “I want one,” she said.

  “Forget it,” Jacobs said. He seemed nervous and exhausted. “I’ll call Barney Conrad and he can get us one.”

  “Arthur, you miss the point,” Natalie Trundy said.

  “I don’t miss the point,” Jacobs said irritably. “Barney Conrad can get me one. We’ll have it by Sunday.”

  Natalie Trundy pinched Jacobs on the arm and measured her words slowly. “I want this one, Arthur. I want to steal it.”

  Jacobs’ eyes circled the table, settling on Mort Abrahams. “Why, for Christ’s sake?”

  “The thrill is in the chase, Arthur,” Abrahams said. He took a silver service plate from an adjoining table and slid it under the tablecloth to Natalie Trundy.

  “How do you propose to get it out of here?” Jacobs said. He nodded toward a waiter. “You think that waiter over there doesn’t know what you’ve got on your mind?”

  “In my tights, Arthur,” Natalie Trundy said.

  Jacobs looked perplexed. “I don’t have enough troubles,” he said. “I got $18 million riding on this picture and you want to walk out of here with a silver plate in your pants.”

  Natalie Trundy escaped from Ernie’s with the silver service plate. The captain pretended not to notice, but added the cost of the plate to the Studio’s bill. A fleet of limousines took the Fox party to the Orpheum. A police line had been set up and a crowd of people stood outside the theater gaping at the Studio contingent. In the lobby, Zanuck asked one of the publicity men to get some popcorn and orange drinks for himself and Linda Harrison. Surrounded by Richard Fleischer, Stan Hough and Harry Sokolov, Zanuck looked intently at the audience filing into the theater.

  “I told you it was smart to put the name of the picture in the ads,” he said. “Look at this crowd. It’s a lot younger than Minneapolis.”

  “You were right, Dick,” David Brown said. “We should have done this in Minneapolis.”

  Abrahams came up to the group. “I’ve already counted thirty-seven kids,” he said.

  “I didn’t see a single one in Minneapolis, Dick,” Brown said. He turned to Sokolov. “From now on, when we have a big sneak, we’ll run the name of the picture in the ad, like Dick said.”

  The Fox party took their seats as the overture began. From the opening credits, it was apparent that the audience was far livelier than the one in Minneapolis. The laughter was not uproarious, but there was a reaction at each comedy sequence and applause at the end of the musical numbers. During the intermission, the Studio party seemed considerably buoyed. David Brown edged through the crowd in the lobby to a covey of Studio personnel.

  “I just told Dick cutting the prologue was the logical cut,” he said.

  After the intermission, the pace of the picture seemed to drag, but the audience still appeared in good spirits. There was a long round of applause when the picture finally ended and the overture was reprised. The preview cards for the San Francisco sneak had been changed and shortened. Unlike the ones used in Minneapolis, there was no space for grading the performances of the actors nor was there space for commenting on individual scenes. As the audience filled out the cards in the lobby, Sokolov pushed his way up to Jacobs, who was puffing nervously on a thin dark cigarette.

  “Gre
at, Arthur, just great,” Sokolov said. “I’ve got to admit, I lied to you in Minneapolis. I thought we were in trouble. But this time …” Sokolov winked and made a circle with his thumb and forefinger.

  The cards were stuffed in boxes and carried back to Zanuck’s suite at the Fairmont. A bar had been set up, but there was not enough Scotch and Zanuck ordered up a few more bottles from room service. Jacobs circled the room, trying to get some ice from the empty glasses that littered the suite. Natalie Trundy sprawled on the floor next to Abrahams, stacking the cards. Jacobs picked one up.

  “ ‘Impossibly bad,’ ” he read. “I would have to pick up that one.”

  There were some 800 cards in all and Zanuck did some quick figuring. “That’s fantastic,” he said. “The theater only holds twelve, thirteen hundred people. You figure the people who’ll send their cards in by mail, that means practically everyone there made out a card. I’ve never seen so many cards at a preview.”

  “It’s fantastic, Dick,” Brown said.

  “Fantastic,” Hough said.

  The cards broke down to 457 “Excellent,” 218 “Good” and 125 “Fair.” Sitting at a coffee table, Abrahams pulled out a pencil and a piece of paper and calculated the percentages, comparing them to Minneapolis. He began to frown and calculated the percentages once more, checking them again against the Minneapolis figures.

  “How’s it work out?” Jacobs said.

  “I can’t figure it out,” Abrahams said. “We’re only a percentage point off. Fifty-six per cent ‘Excellent’ in Minneapolis, 57 per cent ‘Excellent’ here.”

  Jacobs looked deflated. “I thought with all these cards we’d be better.”

  “You know it was a better audience,” Zanuck said. “We all know that.”

  “I could feel it,” Brown said. He began riffling through the cards, picking out the “Excellents” and one or two on which the viewers had scrawled comments.

  “Here’s one, Dick,” he said. “ ‘Good for the whole family.’ That’s what we like to see. That’s money in the bank, Dick.”