A Third Face: My Tale of Writing, Fighting and Filmmaking

by Samuel Fuller;Christa Lang Fuller;Jerome Henry Rudes

  I took time to hitchhike to Arles to see where Vincent van Gogh had lived and worked. When I saw the fields of sunflowers in Arles, big yellow petals all tilting up to worship the sun, I was thrilled. Van Gogh had captured them on canvas with his bold colors, and there they were, spread out between the tall cypresses, a symphony of gold and black. When I saw Provencal farmers working on their little plots of land, I was reminded of one of my favorite van Gogh paintings, The Potato Eaters. Van Gogh was a great inspiration for me, a guy for whom life was work and work was life. I wanted to be like him, except I didn't want to go nuts and cut off my ear.

  One night while we were still waiting to board a ship for the States, the USO people set up a screen in Delta Base and showed us The Thin Man, starring William Powell and Myrna Loy. We were sitting on blankets on the ground looking up at Powell doing some comedy hit with his cute terrier. A door opened unexpectedly, then slammed right in Powell's face. A few hundred GIs sitting around me burst into loud laughter. Then suddenly, we heard a rumbling deep in the ground. It sounded like a thousand tanks heading right at us. The ground started trembling. For Chrissakes, it was an earthquake! It hit the camp like a herd of stampeding elephants. A few moments later, it was gone. The movie projector was knocked over, and the screen went dark. There were screams. Guys had fallen into a fissure that had opened in the ground. Jeeps were brought in to give us light so that we could pull up the wounded men. A couple of GIs died in the incident. It was one of the weirdest tragedies of the war. Soldiers who'd survived man-made combat were killed by a natural catastrophe only hours before going home.

  It took a little while to get things back to normal after the quake. An officer with a brain the size of a pea announced on the loudspeaker system,

  "There are no more corpses. Thank you very much."

  We sat there in a trance, not believing what'd just happened. No one made any stupid comments like "What a shame!" For the last four years we'd lived through much worse horrors. Still, we were numb from the deaths of GIs who'd died for nothing.

  "Do you want to see the rest of the film?" asked an officer over the loudspeaker.

  "SURE!" we yelled.

  `From the beginnings"a GI screamed out.

  "DAMN RIGHT!" we chimed in.

  It was our way of expressing the inexpressible feelings of that awkward time. We really had forgotten the beginning of the film, just like we'd forgotten so much about our previous lives. Events had made us senseless. The earthquake of a world war had shaken up everything inside us.

  PART

  III

  Studio portrait, circa rptp. In those days, you had to dress to go to work.

  The Bubble Will

  Burst

  23

  Our troopship finally sailed from Marseille, docking in Boston in late September 1945. 1 took a train to New York to see my mother for the first time in almost four years. Though it was good beyond words to put my arms around her again, it became quickly evident that my homecoming was burdensome for me and everyone around me. I spent a helluva lot of time in bed but couldn't sleep for long stretches. Horrible nightmares kept rattling my head. Everyday sounds made me jump and shake uncontrollably. My family couldn't understand my constant grumpiness. No one who hadn't lived through the front lines of the war could. I was a textbook case of "war hysteria."

  I couldn't stop thinking about all the men in my outfit who were dead or missing. To us, missing was dead. The army wrote to parents that their sons were "missing in action," but we all knew that was just good public relations. So many guys were blown apart on the battlefield, it was impossible to identify them. Squads collected whatever body parts they could find and threw them into a bag for burial. For the families, MIA meant there was still hope; however, their boys were hopelessly dead.

  Faces of soldiers kept appearing in my dreams. For the last few years, I'd been fighting with them, eating with them, pissing with them, drying wet socks with them, eating horrible food with them, sleeping on hard ground with them. Most were gone forever. Their faces wouldn't go away. One guy I couldn't forget was Griff, who'd barely survived a land mine explosion. When I first got back to the States, I went down to Washington, D.C., and visited Griff at a veterans' hospital there. He was a basket case, no legs, no arms. Only mumbled words came out of his lips. Believe it or not, we had a wonderful reunion. Griff's eyes sparkled when he saw me. He laughed when I recalled some of the funny shit we'd gone through together in the war. I put my arm around his neck and kissed him, happy to find him alive. I couldn't keep the tears back. Griff didn't want me feeling sorry for him. He was a born optimist and refused to accept my pity. Or anyone's. I was trembling when I left the hospital that day.

  Griff's invincible spirit would always be an inspiration. I will take his optimism with me to my grave. Life is too precious and far too short to get hooked on negativity. In my scripts and stories, you'll find a helluva lot of characters named Griff. It was my way of saying thanks for his will to survive.

  In August 1945, President Truman had given orders to drop A-bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. To my mother, that was barbaric. To me, it was logical. Sure, a nuclear bomb was a horrible act of violence, but wasn't prolonging the war a greater act of violence? The Japanese were intent on dragging out the conflict. We would've had to fight another six months, maybe a year or more. How many more American boys would have to be killed? Cruel as it was, the big bomb was the lesser of two evils.

  My opinion shocked Rebecca. She called the A-bomb the lowest form of civilized cannibalism. She could hardly believe that a hundred thousand people had been killed in a matter of seconds. I called her a hypocrite. What difference did it make that a hundred thousand people were killed in six seconds or in six months? War wasn't a sport with a scoreboard and statistics.

  "I'm horrified!" said Rebecca. "Just horrified by your attitude! What happened to you over there?"

  "Plenty, believe me," I said. "But that's not important. For Chrissakes, I'm not for any bomb. I'm against losing one more American soldier."

  The A-bomb was a horrible weapon. Like my mother, the press, the politicians, and a large portion of the public were dismayed by our dropping it. Hell, it was an emotional issue. But did they know anything about the horror of war? All they knew was what they read in their newspapers each morning over coffee and eggs. Total war is a terrible game of life and death. The sooner it's over, the better. War is not about emotions. It's about the absence of emotions. That void is the emotion of war. People who've never lived through it will never-never!-know what war's unfeelingness feels like, never know the cold taste of metal in your mouth just before the violence begins, the wet toes, the churning in your stomach that seems like it's going to burn a hole in your belly, the dull drumming in your brain, the ghoulish visions come to life. Hell, words just can't describe it.

  Undoubtedly, the experience had left me as callous as a character out of a Camus novel, hardened in ways I still didn't understand, so much so that a big bomb that would put an end to the whole goddamned thing seemed okay to me.

  I needed to somehow start earning a living again. The Dark Page had sold well, with four or five reprintings already, gotten great reviews and that award for "Best Psychological Novel." But you couldn't live on reviews and awards. The advance monies from the publisher and the film rights were gone.

  I considered an offer to work with a New York psychiatrist who'd loved The Dark Page and wanted me to collaborate with him on a clinical study, but I turned him down. The job was just too cut-and-dry. Going out west and jumping back into the movie business was what I really wanted to do. New York was cold and crowded. The West Coast had all that space and good weather. I hesitated, though. It'd been a long time since I'd written a script, and I wasn't sure if I even remembered how.

  Fortunately, an old reporter pal of mine named Jimmy O'Hanlon called to say he'd recommended me to a famous playwright living in Los Angeles. The playwright, who'll remain anonymous, was in a bind and need
ed assistance quick. He offered me money, a car, and an apartment in Santa Monica to ghostwrite a play. It would be about six weeks of work. But what did I know about playwriting?

  "It doesn't matter," said the playwright, on the phone. "You've done screenplays. You know the technique. Three acts. Curtain. Basta."

  My mother accompanied me to the train station. I promised her that I'd bring her out west and set her up in a sunny little house as soon as I made enough dough. Banging out story ideas on my Royal, I took the Silver Eagle back out to California. The playwright and I got right down to work. I gave him what he needed, plenty of good characters and tons of dialogue. We finished his play on time, and it was a big success. He was a damn good writer, but I knew the milieu of the piece better than he did. I promised to keep our collaboration a secret. I did, and I will.

  Howard Hawks heard I was back in town and invited me over to his office. When I walked in, Howard greeted me warmly. He explained how he'd tried to make The Dark Page with Humphrey Bogart and Edward G. Robinson, but it just didn't happen. He ended up selling the movie rights to my book to Columbia for a neat profit, more than six times what he paid for it. Hell, that was his business, and he was good at it. What disappointed me was that Howard himself didn't direct the picture. As it turned out, the studio hired Phil Carlson and made the disappointing Scandal Sheet (1952) from my yarn. It was a lesson in losing artistic control of my work that I wouldn't ever forget.

  As I was admiring Hawks's bookshelves, he pointed to a section with famous titles by Hemingway, Faulkner, and Fitzgerald.

  11 "I own them, he said.

  "I got 'em, too. So what? Buck and a half in paperback."

  "No, Sammy, you don't get it. I own them."

  One of the many best-sellers for which he'd purchased the movie rights was The Sun Also Rises. Hawks wanted me to take a crack at writing a script based on Hemingway's renowned novel.

  "Like the book?" he asked me.

  "Yes and no," I said. "It's a great love story. But you get to the end and find out the guy is missing one of his balls and you feel a little cheated, like you've been treated dishonestly."

  Hawks wanted to know how I'd tell the story. Right from the start I'd take an honest approach, I told him. My opening would be a violent World War I battle. Cut to a hospital far from the battlefield. Our injured hero, Jake Barnes, is lying naked on the operating table. A nurse holds up a tin cup and the doctor drops the hero's testicle into it. The nurse takes her mask off. It's our heroine, Lady Brett Ashley. She knows what's up from the very beginning. Their love for each other would be heartfelt and honest.

  "Are you crazy?" said Hawks. "You think Warner would buy that?"

  "Why not?"

  Hawks's face dropped.

  "You can't show that on a screen, Sammy. At least not with Jack Warner's lion roaring on the credits."

  "For thousands of years, Howard, we've had statues of naked men and women exhibited all over the world. Make it artistic. But show the truth. Otherwise you're shooting a goddamned fairy tale."

  "You're great, Sammy," said Hawks. "But you're nuts." He quickly changed the subject to hunting, one of his favorite topics. Just like before the war, Howard asked me to go hunting on the weekend and shoot some poor animal. That was nuts. I refused.

  One night there was a swank party over at Hawks's place. Howard insisted I come. It was a typical Hollywood get-together, plenty of booze and chow, starlets in long gowns, leading men in tuxes, a mogul or two, directors and producers exchanging gossip, columnists sniffing around for off-the-record material.

  I met a dark-haired beauty named Martha Downes that night. She was from Kentucky and had come to town with aspirations of acting. She'd once been married. We had a couple of drinks and laughed a lot. Martha was saucy and spirited. I left Howard's early. I had too many scripts to write to waste my time at Hollywood shindigs. As I was walking out, Martha asked me for a lift home. I parked in front of her place, and we chatted for a while. My cigar didn't seem to bother her. Effortlessly, she reached over and put her hand on mine. I walked her to the front door and kissed her good night. Nothing else happened, but I was smitten.

  My first wife, Martha, and I at some gala premiere in the fifties. She had expensive tastes, so I needed to get my career in gear to support her in the style she expected.

  Martha and I started seeing each other regularly. A few months later, I asked her to marry me. She said yes. We moved into a small house on Wonderland Park Avenue in Laurel Canyon next to Lena Horne. We were happy at first, so much in love that we overlooked each other's shortcomings. Deep down, Martha never really accepted me, nor all the attention I gave my mother. A WASP from the Deep South, Martha was the polar opposite of Rebecca, which was probably why I was drawn to her in the first place.

  My career wasn't nearly as hot as my private life. If it weren't for Jake Barnes's goddamned testicle, maybe I'd have gotten a shot at adapting some of Hawks's literary treasures. It wasn't the first time, nor would it be the last, that my straightforward vision of things put me out of step with Hollywood decisionmakers.

  Charlie Feldman took me to lunch at the Brown Derby.

  "Sammy, I've got you a sweetheart deal with Jack Warner."

  "Writing what?" I asked.

  "Anything you like," Feldman said. "An original story with your kind of characters. They'll buy the script you turn in. And if they don't shoot the picture, you keep the money anyway."

  I chuckled.

  "What's so funny?" asked Feldman.

  "Nothing," I said, thinking of the sweet irony that I'd ended up working for Warner anyway.

  The first script I wrote for the studio was a police expose called Murder-How to Get Away with It. Yarns about cops always make good movies because there's plenty of conflict and action. This one was about a case of corruption that's traced to a couple of important New York judges. One was a woman. The police commissioner is implicated and commits suicide. The story was loosely based on a real scandal that newspapers across the country had covered.

  Whether it was topical or not, my script wasn't at all what the studio was looking for. They wanted a classical detective yarn, with the hero solving the murder by the end of the movie. My story line strayed too far from the typical formula. Even worse, I had a police commissioner and judges implicated in the murder. Jack Warner hated it. He probably considered it unpatriotic. His studio wasn't about to make that kind of a picture, but they paid me for the script. That permitted me to bring my mother out to California and rent her a little house with a white picket fence in the San Fernando Valley.

  RKO had also read my script for Murder and loved it, though they didn't want to make it either. Still, the guys at RKO were more democratic in their approach. Over there, several executives decided on the fate of each script. They asked me to come up with another story. So I wrote a yarn called Uncle Sam. It was about the hypocrisy of the new antiimmigration act, shutting the gates of the U.S. to minorities, with a sonofabitch reactionary character based on the real Senator McCarran. My finished script scared the RKO boys. The story was too violent and the characters-even if names were changed-were too unsympathetic. RKO was afraid of protests from right-wingers like the Daughters of the American Revolution, so the movie went unproduced. But they paid me for the script, which allowed me to get some nice furniture for Rebecca's place.

  "Sammy," said Charlie Feldman, "you're working again, making good money. But you don't get credit for scripts they don't shoot. Why don't you try to write something a little more commercial? I know you can do it. MGM is looking for a good murder yarn."

  "Okay," I said. "But it won't be my fault if those guys don't have the balls to make it!"

  I wrote a third script, called Crime Pays, about a big bank holdup with a twist. A police detective who was a war veteran is investigating the heist. He sees how the bank was hit with grenades, how the robbers were positioned. It reminds him of how he and his infantry squad had assaulted a Nazi pillbox on Omaha Bea
ch. The detective tracks down the only three GIs still alive who were under his command on June 6, 1944. He knows they were hoods before the war and figures out that they've gone back to a life of crime after their discharge. One by one, he finds them and kills them. The detective ends up with a couple million dollars. He settles down on Rara Tonga, an island I invented west of Tahiti, surrounded by gorgeous native girls. He's the happiest and most satisfied of ex-cops. His last line in the movie is, "Who says crime doesn't pay?"

  After I turned my script into MGM, Louis B. Mayer himself wanted to see me. When I walked into his big office, he was smoking a cigar. He offered me one, a damn good one. Mayer struck me as a very sensitive and intelligent man. He came from a working-class background like myself.

  "I love your way of telling a story, Sammy," said Mayer. "But we want sympathetic characters in our movies. We're careful not to irritate the public. We don't want our stories antagonizing government, mothers, children, or animals. You see, Sammy, we have a dog here named Lassie who's making a mint."

  "What's the problem with Crime Pays?" I asked.

  "First, you can't show a lawman killing the bad guys, then keeping the stolen money for himself. Second, you can't show men coming back from the war and turning to crime. That means that the army fabricates criminals."

  "I'll add a scene showing how those guys were criminals before the war."

  "That's worse, Sammy. That means we sent criminals over to fight the Nazis and the Japs. I don't want that stuff in an MGM film. No criminals in the United States Army."

  For Mr. Mayer, the worst thing was that my hero keeps the money and lives happily ever after.