A Third Face: My Tale of Writing, Fighting and Filmmaking
Page 11
The first full-fledged script I wrote and sold under my own name was called Gangs of New York (1938). The story was about a government prosecutor working with the FBI who devises a plan to keep a Capone-like gangster in prison when the convict comes up for parole. They find an almost perfect double for the guy and put him in prison, too. They release the double and keep the real gangster locked up. The double makes himself credible. Even the gangster's dog thinks the imposter is his master. In the end, however, his mistress spoils the ruse, because no two men make love exactly alike.
In those days, we used to write scripts on legal-size paper, with the stage directions on the left and the dialogue on the right. Here's the opening scene from Gangs of New York:
FADE IN: NIGHT
Main and credit titles superimposed over establishing backgrounds of New York: its skyline, an effective angle of Brooklyn Bridge, silhouetted against the night sky, etc.
DISSOLVE TO:
i. EXT. NEW YORK STREET (NIGHT) LONG
A MATTE SHOT on almost deserted street in an unsavory section of Manhattan. The one illuminated store front bears flashing neon sign:
"MADDOCK'S-Pool and Billiards"
"The building is framed between elated pillars. The superstructure and tracks angle through the tops of our picture, and above them distant skyscrapers stand silhouetted against the night sky.
A single car-a large, dark sedan-stands in front of the pool room. From somewhere blares the tinny music of a mechanical piano. Otherwise the scene is quiet.
Then suddenly the air is rent with the rattle of machine-gun fire-three of four bursts in quick succession. Three men, coat collars up and hats pulled down to make them unrecognizable, dash from the pool room to the waiting car.
As the car speeds away, a figure staggers from the building, looks about confused, then suddenly collapses in a heap. Heads appear at tenement windows. A policeman races in past CAMERA and blows a police whistle in foreground. A crowd starts to collect.
The piano continues its tinny accompaniment.
DISSOLVE TO:
a. STOCK SHOT:
Of ambulance speeding through city streets.
3. INT. HOSPITAL ROOM: (NIGHT) MED.
A white gowned doctor is working over the figure of a man in bed, feeling his pulse-watching his breathing, etc. A nurse stands by. The man, a hard-looking individual, is semi-conscious. A policeman and an orderly in b.g. Watching grimly are Detective Inspector Sullivan, huge, keen-eyed and alert, and District Attorney Lucas, a forceful appearing man in middle age.
As the doctor turns away, Sullivan addresses him:
SULLIVAN: (quietly)
How about it, Doc. Can we talk to him now?
DOCTOR:
Yeah. I guess it won't make any difference. If he's going to talk at all, he'd better do it now.
Sullivan and the District Attorney move close to the bed.
4. INT. HOSPITAL ROOM: (NIGHT) CLOSE
At bedside. The patient is breathing hard.
SULLIVAN: (quietly)
Who did it, Lefty?
The man looks at him through glassy eyes.
DISTRICT ATTORNEY:
You're through Lefty. You re going to die. Who were they?
LEFTY: (laboriously)
What-what happened to Joe-and Louieand-
SULLIVAN:
They got 'em all. Who did it?
LEFTY:
Rocky's boys. I-I-hope-they-rot! RockyThorpe's-boys!
4. CONTINUED:
Sullivan and the District Attorney look at each other.
CAMERA DOLLIES IN TO CLOSE SHOT OF D.A. AND SULLIVAN.
DISTRICT ATTORNEY: (in undertone)
The guy's delirious. Rocky Thorpe's been out of circulation for five years.
SULLIVAN: (musing)
I wonder.
Off scene, Lefty chokes, then goes quiet.
DOCTOR'S VOICE: (o.s.)
Wrap him up, Hank.
Sullivan and the D.A. look quickly toward the bed, o.s.
The picture ended up being directed by James Cruze, and starred Charles Bickford and Ann Dvorak. No sooner was the picture in the can, than I got a call from Sam Briskin, head of Columbia. Before I'd even settled my ass on the comfortable sofa in Briskin's big office, he asked me if I could write an adventure movie for the studio. He may as well have been asking me if I could bake a seven-layer cake.
"Of course!" I told him, without the faintest idea of what I was going to say next.
"Great!" said Briskin. "Whaddaya got?"
"A damn good story," I said, staying light on my feet.
"So," he said, "spill it."
I took out a cigar and slowly prepared to light it, buying a few moments to figure a way out of this mess. Briskin never took his beady eyes off me. I lit the cigar, blew the smoke out of my mouth, and proudly announced, "William Bligh meets Victor Hugo!"
"Who the hell are they?" snarled Briskin.
Bligh, I explained, was the betrayed captain played by Charles Laughton in Mutiny on the Bounty, one of the most acclaimed pictures of 1936, and Victor Hugo had written a tale about the French Foreign Legion that would be perfect for an adventure picture.
"Tell me more," demanded Briskin.
"It happens in a fort in the middle of the Sahara Desert," I explained. "The commander of the fort is the villain, so his men mutiny against him and throw him out into the desert with his officers. The Arabs are about to attack ..."
"Yeah!" said Briskin, warming to the plot.
"The good guy, the leader of the mutiny, realizes that the Arabs are going to kill the evil commander and his men if they don't do something. So just as the Arabs attack, the mutineers rush out of the fort and beat back the Arabs, saving the evil commander and winning the battle for the legion. The commander awards the leader of the mutiny a medal for his courage. He kisses him on both cheeks because he saved his life. Then the sonofabitch condemns the hero to die because he started the mutiny in the first place!"
"That's terrific!" cried Briskin. "Let's do it!"
He sent me off to get right to work on the script and had a fat check sent over the next day. Adventure in Sahara (1938) ended up being directed by D. Ross Lederman. See, studio heads back then may have grown up selling furs instead of reading French literature, but they loved a good story. So thank you, Monsieur Hugo, for saving my ass with your wonderful novel Ninety-Three. The hell with those who were jealous of your talent, the revisionists of any generation who put down your work. You were a fabulous storyteller.
The most enriching experience of my debut years in Hollywood was meeting and befriending Herbert Brenon, a wonderful man and a great director. Brenon made his first picture, The Clown's Triumph, in 1912, the year I was born. He went on to direct about eighty feature films, including the original versions of Peter Pan (1924), Beau Geste (1926), and The Great Gatsby (1926). Brenon's last film was False Rapture (1941). I loved Herbert. He was another father figure for me, a wise guide who took a liking to me and showed me the ropes, introducing me to some of the great artists and craftsmen working within the studios at that time. Thanks to Herbert Brenon and his patronage, I met members of the "old school"-veteran directors like John Ford, Raoul Walsh, Howard Hawks, Leo McCarey, Tod Browning, Frank Borzage-the guys who created Hollywood out of a bunch of fruit orchards and dusty lots with a burning desire to tell great stories. All very different in their approach, each of these artists shared a true respect for their audiences. I'd remain close to Herbert and his wife, Helen, until his death, in 1958.
My next script was Bowery Boy, about a little newspaper vendor who suffers from a contagious disease and the young doctor who tries to contain it from spreading throughout New York. Although I dreamed up the story, my screenplay was rewritten by a team of studio rewrite specialists. Directed by William Morgan, Bowery Boy didn't go into production until 1941, delayed by all the goddamned rewriting. The experience gave me a taste of how the studios could dilute the originality of your screenpla
y. It wasn't a good taste, believe me.
I decided to go to work on another novel, this one more substantial than my first three. With a book, I could at least be assured that the finished work would be what I'd written. My yarn was a murder mystery that took place on my beloved Park Row. The murderer was a powerful city editor, the victim, his abandoned wife. The guy who fingers the murderer is a top crime reporter who follows the trail back to the boss who taught him everything he knows. I called it The Dark Page.
Herbert Brenon (in big sombrero) prepares to shoot a scene from Beau Geste with (left to right) actors Ralph Forbes, Ronald Colman, and William Powell.
Forget About
Greatness
11
While I was right in the middle of writing The Dark Page, an old friend from Park Row, Hank Wales, dropped in to see me. Twenty years my senior, Wales was a renowned journalist, having won a slew of prestigious newspapering prizes. During World War I, Hank had written a series of articles about a courageous soldier named Sergeant York which became the basis for the famous Gary Cooper movie of the same name, directed by Howard Hawks in 1941. Hank had also covered the execution of Mata Hari, the famous spy, and invented the word "tank" for those indomitable military vehicles. Wales was so well known inside press circles that Robert Benchley wrote a screenplay based on his career, called Foreign Correspondent. Alfred Hitchcock directed it in 1940, with Joel McCrea and Laraine Day.
"Let's you and I write a movie together!" said Hank. "Got any good stories?"
We both laughed. With all his amazing experiences, Hank Wales was asking me for a yarn. I was thrilled that such a remarkable guy wanted to collaborate with me. But I had a book to finish.
"Look, Hank," I said, "I'm writing the great American novel!"
"Everyone is writing the great American novel, Sammy. Forget about greatness. Let's have some fun."
It was not a lighthearted time. Events on the world stage were sobering. In the summer of 1940, Germany launched air raids on Britain. America watched and waited, because public opinion was against getting into the war. With his nation under siege, Churchill's magnificent "blood, toil, tears and sweat" speech had set hearts afire, establishing the tone for total war against the Nazi invaders:
You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: It is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all the terror; victory, however long and hard the road may be; for without victory, there is no survival.
Hank Wales and the Battle of Britain persuaded me to put aside The Dark Page. During the Nazi bombardment of London, amidst all the random destruction, we'd learned that the Associated Press offices were hit. I suggested to Hank that we pin our story around some newspapermen who have to hide out in the basement of a London hotel to survive the air attacks. With only a couple of typewriters and a telegraph, they keep sending out the news. The yarn was right up Hank's alley.
We went to work on the script on a Monday morning. Hank knew the streets of London by heart. As he paced back and forth feeding me local color, I pounded away on my Royal. By talking it out, we pieced together the action, plot twists, and dialogue. The first ninety-page draft was finished before breakfast on Saturday morning. After eggs, bacon, and hash browns, we found an agent, Charles Feldman, who happened to be in his office on the weekend. He sold our script to Twentieth Century Fox on the following Monday morning for fifty grand, which Hank and I split, minus Feldman's commission.
We called the movie Confirm or Deny. The only way for the trapped newspapermen in London to contact their New York office is by telegraph. Their frantic editor wants more information about the situation in England. From the other side of the Atlantic, it looks like Hitler will soon be attacking North America. While the bombs are falling on London, the New York office keeps sending urgent queries in Morse code, punctuating each question with the command: "Confirm or Deny."
Tension builds, causing the journalists to come to grips with their deepest beliefs and fears. It was a damn good yarn. Fox acquired it for Fritz Lang, who started the picture but quit after only a few days. Archie Mayo wound up finishing Confirm or Deny (1941) with Don Ameche, Joan Bennett, and Roddy McDowall.
Months after the movie was completed, I got a call from Fritz Lang, inviting me to lunch. That was the first time we actually met face-to-face. I loved Lang's films, above all You Only Live Once (1937), about an innocent man thrown into prison.
Lang wanted to explain to me why he'd left Confirm or Deny a few days after shooting had begun. He told me he loved our script but that the studio had insisted on rewriting it at the last minute and the revisions were disappointing. We agreed that the original script had more action, more emotion, and certainly more balls than the Archie Mayo movie that Fox eventually released.
The studio set up this publicity shot with Don Ameche (right), star of Confirm or Dcny. Guess which one of us was more camera-shy.
That episode, along with many others during my early Hollywood years, made me more and more aware of the importance of the director. As a writer, my approach to a film had always been through the script. Increasingly, I appreciated the director's skills in setting up shots, getting actors to deliver lines, moving the camera. Each director had a signature way of telling a story. Why did certain movies make a lifelong impression? First, the story was great. But just as important was the way the director shot it. In the hands of talented directors, characters got under your skin, made you feel their pains and pleasures, talked to your soul. There were some terrific directors working in Hollywood in those days. A few of them changed forever the way I looked at movies.
I loved E. A. Dupont's Variety (1925) because he made me really conscious of style. It was a terrific tale about a former trapeze artist who gets released from prison after serving time for a murder. Dupont shot it like a poem. Another distinctively stylish movie was Mervyn LeRoy's I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932), with the wonderful Paul Muni railroaded onto a brutal chain gang for a crime he didn't commit. LeRoy makes you feel the terrible injustice that his hero must confront. Black Fury (1935), by Michael Curtiz, had a great deal of influence on me too. Paul Muni is again the lead, as Joe Radek, who must deal with all the lies and frustrations that take place during a mine strike. Having seen strikes during my hobo days, I felt the movie rang true.
William Wellman's superb Ox-Bow Incident (1943) also left a deep impression. Unlike most Westerns of the day, Wellman's showed honest, human reactions. A local farmer has been murdered and his cattle stolen. The townspeople, joined by some drifters led by Henry Fonda, form a posse to catch the perpetrators. In their rush to justice, they hang innocent men. Instead of false tears and remorse, the sonsofbitches drink to try to forget about their horrible act.
My favorite film of those formative years was The Informer (1935) by John Ford. It is truly a masterpiece. Of all the wonderful directors I met in Hollywood before World War II, I paid special attention to John Ford. John had a vision of each film he directed and the determination to get that vision up on the screen. John was very supportive of me in the early years when I needed it. He became a friend and a mentor. Ford invited me onto his sets, and, when I started directing, he'd drop in on mine. I cherished the times we were together.
Some critics, looking for a catchy tag line, have called me "the Jewish John Ford." It was a ridiculous thing to say, though I understand people needing reference points. But let's face it, next to the monumental Ford, I'd always be a neophyte. To understand the scope of John's career, you have to remember that he began as an actor way before the talkies, with a small role in Birth of a Nation, in 1915. Over the next sixty-odd years, John Ford would direct about 140 films. John was a giant, having done it all in Hollywood. I learned a helluva lot of stuff from Ford, but one of the most important lessons was modesty. Ford was the most self-effacing of guys. When asked what brought him to Hollywood, he replied, "The train."
Because he wanted complete artistic control, Ford started producing his own pictures. The desir
e to shape every aspect of his movies resulted in some of his finest work: She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949), Rio Grande (1950), The Quiet Man (1952), and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence (1962). His mastery of the entire process was always an inspiration for me. I've never tried to imitate his work-nor anyone's, for that matter-but to be mentioned in the same breath as the great Ford will always be a profound compliment. I remained close to him until his death, in 1973. For me, John Ford was everything I loved and respected about Hollywood.
Two other accomplished directors, Howard Hawks and Raoul Walsh, also became friends of mine. Before he started directing, Hawks, nicknamed "the Gray Fox," had worked as an airplane pilot and race car driver. Like Ford, Hawks wanted his independence, so he became his own producer on most of his films. I was impressed with Hawks's style, especially the way he didn't hesitate to take on all genres, whether they be comedies, whodunits, or Westerns. I loved Scarface (1932), To Have and Have Not (1944), and The Big Sleep (1946). Yet Howard and I had very different personalities. He was a sophisticated social butterfly who loved parties. I was more primitive, a loner who saw friends one at a time. Once Hawks asked me, "Do you hunt?"
I shook my head.
"Don't you go fishing?" he asked.
"Nope."
"Well, what kind of sport do you practice?" demanded Hawks.
"I write."
"Now look, Sammy," explained Hawks avuncularly, "in this business, there's a social code. You can't just sit at a desk all day and night, typing away. You have to hunt or fish or play bridge, or something. You need to go to parties, have drinks with people, be seen ..."