Our roving band of filmmakers moved all over Japan. The scenery provided a backdrop for our personal story as well as for the film. The schedule began to affect us. We never slept more than a few hours a night. Then Frank Westmore had his heart attack and was hospitalized. I was stricken. What would I do without him? His protege stepped in, proud that he had learned from one of the great masters. I visited Frank a few times, but felt I couldn’t hold up production. The early-morning make-ups on the wobbly trains continued with the young Japanese makeup artists now included in the circle that witnessed the intensity growing between Montand and me. Finally, in a hotel in Nara, while the rest of the exhausted company collapsed, Montand and I went to our respective rooms after dinner. Soon there was a knock on my door.
I opened it to find him standing in the hallway, his arms dangling at his sides, looking lost and forlorn. I pulled him into my room and folded him gently into my arms. We melted together. Then, at long last, we fell into bed. It was sweet—a relief more than anything. I wondered what it would mean in my life.
The next morning I shot the aria from Madame Butterfly starring the six-foot-three Cio-cio-san (me). It was a day for Hollywood lore. Cio-cio-san laments her sailor lover leaving her with her son. Cardiff thought it would be dramatic to have me sing in a shroud of mist on a Japanese mountainside.
I got myself dressed in underrobes and formal kimono, exhausted from the night before. Dipped into my geta (tall thong shoes) and high, formally decorated katsura, with white rice makeup augmenting Westmore’s now superfluous condoms around my eyes, I reported to the set at the bottom of the mountainside.
Cardiff gave me my marks from which to descend the mountain as I sang “Un bel di.” What he didn’t tell me was that he would have to manufacture the look of mountain mist because the weather was not going to cooperate that day.
I gingerly put my brown contact lenses in my eyes, lugged myself to the top of the mountainside, and waited for “action.” Several cameras were going to roll at once. I saw a few crew members standing by at strategic points on the sloping mountainside. I thought they were for security. The playback began over the loudspeaker. I knew the lyrics to Puccini’s opera by heart (I still do), so when Cardiff yelled “action” from below, I thought the scene would be a first-take breeze.
Slowly I descended the mountainside, feeling quite lovely in that beautiful setting and in my colorful kimono and thinking about the night before. I knew the music was gorgeous and all I really had to do was lip-synch the lyrics properly. That’s when I spotted the first crew member light a huge match. He threw it onto pile of green wood and leaves. Then the second crew member followed suit. Jack Cardiff was going to get his effect of mist by lighting smoking fires all the way down the mountain.
I began to choke, thereby having trouble with the lip-synching. My eyes were tearing so profusely that my brown contact lenses swam out of the corners of my eyes and down my cheeks. Once the fires began they couldn’t be put out. I tried my best. I lip-synched my heart out, hoping the close-ups would be usable, but it was hopeless. The long shot ended up in the picture, which meant Jimmy Stewart could have played Cio-cio-san and no one would have known the difference. We were lucky the mountain didn’t burn down.
That evening, when Steve returned from Tokyo to rejoin us in Nara, I brought up my relationship with Montand. We were sitting in our hotel suite, Montand having discreetly excused himself for dinner.
“Do you notice that we are becoming very close?” I asked. Steve didn’t flinch. “Yes,” he said, “I noticed. And it’s awful to watch.”
I could hardly form the words, but I knew I had to be honest with him.
“I want you to know,” I said, “that I’m not sure where this is going and I wish you had been around more. I know we have an understanding that each of us is free, but I really like him.”
Steve flicked his tongue back and forth against his upper lip.
“You know,” he said, “Montand flaunted his relationship with Monroe when Arthur Miller was around.”
“No,” I said, “I don’t know that. I think they both felt an attraction and didn’t mean to hurt anyone with it. You know how it is in the business.”
Steve lit a cigarette and poured himself a drink from our hotel bar.
“Well,” he said, “there’s something you should know.”
“What’s that?” I asked, realizing the next few minutes would be crucial in determining my relationship with both Steve and Montand.
“Montand bet me at the beginning of this picture that he could make you fall in love with him,” said Steve.
I couldn’t speak.
“He what?” I asked, stalling for time.
“Yes,” said Steve. “He told me that he had accomplished that with Marilyn Monroe and he was going to do the same with you. I guess he won, eh?”
My mind flashed to all I had heard about Montand and Monroe during Let’s Make Love. I remembered how interested Steve had been in observing Simone’s handling of the situation after the scandal hit Europe. I remembered that he and our screenwriter, Norman Krasna, thought Montand would be good for our picture because he had a European-lover image now.
But would he really have seduced Marilyn on purpose without regard for the feelings of everyone else involved? Yes, Montand had been cavalier in his assessment of Marilyn’s schoolgirl crush on him, but that didn’t mean he had been a manipulative lothario, endeavoring to carve one more notch on his belt.
“He really said that?” I asked Steve. “He purposely set out to prove he could chalk me up as one more of his conquered women?”
Steve nodded as though he didn’t really want to bring such news to my attention, yet for my own good he thought I should know.
I turned away and went to bed. We spoke no more about it.
The next day I confronted Montand. I told him what Steve had said about him, word for word. Then I watched for his response.
He looked stunned, hurt, frightened, and trapped all at the same time. His expression was full of so many reactions that I couldn’t read anything clearly. I waited. He said nothing. I expected him to defend himself—to say “that’s ridiculous” or “he’s lying” or “do you believe that shit?” Perhaps he felt that to defend himself would be too demeaning. I wanted him to say something. Anything. But he didn’t say a word. Yet his silence wasn’t an admission. In fact, I saw it as a survival mechanism. It was as though he acknowledged the trouble he had caused because of his affair with Monroe. He knew he had been insensitive in his public reaction to her ongoing adoration of him. He knew he had placed Simone Signoret in an untenable position in France. Her pride was hurt, yet she still loved him. His conduct had exposed her to a lot of gossip, even regarding her own sexual preferences. Because of all the women who seemed to continually inhabit Montand’s life, people questioned why Simone never objected enough to take a strong stand.
In that moment when I confronted him, he seemed to process what was happening and realize that his future in movieland was at stake. Steve Parker was the producer in whom Paramount had placed their money and trust, and Montand knew it. If Montand was regarded as a gigolo seducer of the wives of Hollywood men, his name would be mud, whether it was true or not. He knew that too. Montand understood in a flashing instant that he was playing in a field of what could be conniving, insidious Hollywood cutthroats who could ruin him because of his ways with their women. His street smarts rose to his defense and he clammed up. He knew he couldn’t verbally rebuke Steve without its escalating into yet another scandal. He knew he couldn’t admit Steve’s accusation for the same reason. On behalf of his own survival, he elected to say nothing.
A few days later as the cast and crew celebrated the final days of our shoot, I rose and made a toast to Steve, thanking him for all he had made possible and declaring him to be the love of my life.
After dinner, Montand took me aside and sadly remarked, “That wasn’t really necessary.” It wasn’t, but the relationship
between Montand and me was over.
Sometime later, I learned that Steve had been having an affair himself during the filming of My Geisha. That was the basic reason he wasn’t around much. I didn’t understand at the time what this woman meant to him or the reason he was so determined that I shouldn’t leave him. There were a great many things about Steve I didn’t yet understand.
• • •
I SAW MONTAND SEVERAL TIMES AFTER OUR TIME TOGETHER in Japan. He still called me “Bird,” although he reduced it to “Little Bird” instead of “Big Bird.”
He said he was through with Hollywood and its values. He’d rather have “real” food, “real” love, and “real” conflicts. He said playing both sides of the ocean confused him and others.
And so whenever I’d play in France with my live show, I’d receive flowers and a telegram from Montand. He was becoming an elder statesman for the entertainment industry there.
Soon his power and influence began to impact on the political system in France also. The bluntness of his language, his “man of the people” attitude inspired the public to embrace him as their spokesman. They knew and understood his commitment to communism because of his background of poverty.
Then Montand did a 180-degree turn. He took to the airways, publicly denouncing the repressive system in the Soviet Union and criticizing the socialist leaders who still spoke favorably of Stalin. He astonished and ignited the French public by his reversal, provoking stinging rebukes from the press there.
My reflections on Montand deepened. Why did I or anyone else expect that people should remain consistent, their values entrenched? Why shouldn’t they grow and change?
More than anything, I found myself wondering what effect Hollywood had had on Montand. Not from the point of view of wealth, fame, or creativity, but more in terms of how he’d come to assess personal truth. In Hollywood, the truth has many masters, and lying is considered creative thinking. Montand and Steve had played the creative-thinking game. It worked well for them both. It came from a need, I believe, to avoid poverty and loneliness … a need to succeed at being acknowledged.
Maybe that was the great American Dream—say anything to enhance, stimulate, or close a deal. So you can be somebody.
14
SAY ANYTHING
Perhaps manipulation in Hollywood began around the poker tables in Palm Springs, years ago, with the attendance of Jack Warner (Warner Brothers), Samuel Goldwyn (Samuel Goldwyn Productions), Harry Cohn (Columbia), Barney Balaban (Paramount), Joe Schenck (20th Century Fox), Darryl Zanuck (Fox), and Louis B. Mayer (MGM).
These men lived, breathed, ate, and dreamed the picture business. They were imaginative pirates who were close, competitive friends, navigating the rocky terrain of moviemaking capitalism. They traded information and lied to each other in ways that were more rococo and colorful than the pictures they dreamed up. They controlled Hollywood. Their land of dreams was easily governable because they not only desired to manipulate each other, they desired to manipulate the public. In the main they were of Eastern European descent and wished to create the reality of the New World as they wanted it to be. If white picket fences and twin beds in the bedrooms was the image they had of life, then their films would reflect that … hence so would America.
I remember the old-fashioned attitudes regarding love scenes when I first began in movies. The beds had to be twin, and if a couple touched each other, one foot had to be on the floor. It was necessary for a bathrobe or nightgown to be visible on the bed in case one of the partners rose from it. I remember a love scene in Ask Any Girl that was impossible to stage because I couldn’t do it with one of my feet on the floor.
Most of these rules were dictated by the Hayes Office (the censorship board), but I don’t think the old moguls really objected. The rules reflected their own conservative attitudes toward such matters.
Later on, with the demise of the old moguls, the style of sexual expression became more and more loose and free, until we have what occurs today.
There was honor among the old-time pirates, who had their own code. They played fast and loose with the truth, and somehow it was acceptable. This modus operandi exists today and I have had the treat of observing many escapades over the years. For example: A producer friend of mine wanted Marlon Brando and Jack Nicholson for a movie. They were to play friendly adversaries. The one who got killed in the third act would elicit greater audience sympathy.
The producer gave Marlon a script where he got killed. Then he gave Jack a script where he got killed. The conflict wasn’t resolved until each compared notes on the set—well into principal photography. As penance, Marlon forced this producer to live in his trailer on a hot, dry, dusty location without benefit of room service, shower facilities, or television. The producer’s usual style was to put a picture together, get paid, then leave, letting the creative people work out their problems any way they could. Marlon blocked his exit this time. The producer had to face the music of his own making, which I, and others who knew him, enjoyed.
I once sat with Mike Todd in his office as he worked the phone, in between amorous phone calls to Elizabeth Taylor, he was attempting to put together War and Peace. He knew that Paramount had a script of their own and wanted to make the same picture. But Mike wanted some of Paramount’s actors, so he called one star and claimed another had already signed. Then he called the unsigned one and pulled the same trick. The “I’ve got so-and-so, and I want you to join him” ploy is the basis for most variations on a theme in “creative thinking” circles. It is common practice—somehow they never think we actors will talk to each other.
A producer telephoned Dean Martin and said he was doing a TV show with Frank and that Frank had requested Dean specially. He did the same thing with Frank. Somewhere deep in their hearts stars know that they’re being used to create product for profit; nevertheless, they love to believe they are in demand. And just on the off chance that the other star truly asked for them, they want to be there. Stars will do most anything for each other. Because the producers, studio heads, and press are natural enemies and users, it’s a kind of unspoken rule that even competing actors and actresses stick together. The truth is usually exposed at screenings, dinner parties, and even chance meetings on the street.
Stars, particularly women stars, are more honest with each other than with anyone else. Being exploited creates a camaraderie that is tacitly understood. We regard people who pit us against one another as ruthless and untrustworthy and not respectful of our talent or our time. We delight in comparing notes, even if we are competing. We use what we hear and wonder if it is even true. Whenever a producer or studio head sees stars powwowing in a corner, their eyes glint with curiosity—they’re longing to know what our conversation is about. They know there is a “Maginot Line” of protection we draw around ourselves. We know we are the ones the public basically comes to see, yet we know we need the producers to give us jobs. So, united we stand, divided we fall.
The directors are another story. They are creative. They think and feel as we do. They basically play all the parts. They suffer emotionally the way we do, they are frightened of their artistic judgment as we are. They operate from their hearts as we do. The producers and studio heads operate from their minds and of course their pocketbooks. The directors put their lives into a project and do one project at a time. The producers put their time and money into a project, and do more than one at a time. Actors and actresses identify with their counterparts, who put their whole beings on the line and risk the terror of the worst feeling of all—humiliation.
Actors and actresses play their “creative thinking” games too, of course. Because we can disguise our voices, we can be anyone we want to be on the telephone and elicit whatever information we need by posing as someone else. Information is the fuel that makes the town run. It doesn’t matter if it is true or false. Sometimes false info is even more useful.
A female-star friend of mine turned down a picture. The producer f
ound out that she had lost another picture to a friend of hers. The producer called her again and claimed that her friend was interested in the part. She believed him and ended up doing the film in case her judgment might have been faulty in turning it down.
Actors who want a scene rewritten can easily sabotage its original content by purposely playing it wrong.
A big male star was under contract to Jack Warner. He was miserable and wanted out. Warner refused. The star knew that more than anything Warner hated to be considered a bad guy in the press. The star went on a three-month crusade denigrating Jack Warner to the press every chance he got, even if it meant fabricating lies. Warner hated it and let the star go.
Marilyn Monroe was unhappy with her agency, MCA, during the time of her relationship with Bobby Kennedy. She went to Kennedy and complained. He commenced proceedings that culminated in the breakup of the most powerful talent agency in town.
A famous comedian used to claim that he was blackballed by the TV networks because of his acerbic material against the Kennedys. Dean Martin asked him to come on his show, proving that NBC was not blackballing him. The comedian turned the offer down, saying he would have no more comedy material if Dean proved he wasn’t being blackballed.
The personal interplay between people that occurs while filming sometimes makes far better material than the script being shot.
I made a film where the wife of the well-respected executive producer was so obnoxious that the director, the writer, and the cast told her to stay away from the set. When an added scene was requested by the producer, the writer purposely wrote a terrible scene just to aggravate the wife. The picture fell apart because of the personal animosity.
My Lucky Stars Page 30