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

by Samuel Fuller;Christa Lang Fuller;Jerome Henry Rudes

  "A musical?" I cried. "For Chrissakes, Darryl, you want to make Park Row into a musical? It's a little black-and-white picture, a period piece. It has to look real. It has to be intimate and powerful."

  "With unknown actors in a black-and-white picture, your period piece is a loser, Sam," said Zanuck reluctantly.

  Something in me snapped. I loved the actors Darryl had offered me, but I couldn't see Park Row as a big musical comedy in color and CinemaScope. No way. For the first time, I craved complete artistic control over a movie to get my own vision up on the big screen. I wouldn't compromise on this project, because it was just too important to me. Goddamnit, Park Row was me!

  I wasn't angry with Zanuck. He was a studio boss with his own priorities. Yet, he was always a straight shooter, unflinchingly supportive of me, fair even when we disagreed. Over the years, I did plenty of pictures with him. We had a great working relationship. Besides, I'd turn down plenty of big pictures Darryl offered me to direct. First, there was The Desert Rats (1953), with James Mason and Richard Burton. Darryl thought that I'd be interested in Rommel as a character after my combat experience against the real Rommel in North Africa. I wasn't. Robert Wise ended up directing the movie. I also turned down his offer to direct The Longest Day (1962). A reputation for making war movies made Darryl think of me. My own vision of war and the world made me say no. I couldn't see myself mixed up with those overblown, glaringly inaccurate Hollywood productions.

  I decided that the only way to make Park Row was to put up my own dough and produce it myself. Two hundred grand, to be exact. To hell with Zanuck and Fox! Fuck the entire studio system! My film was going to be a personal gift to American journalism. I knew exactly how I wanted Park Row to look, right from the first frame. Thousands of names of real newspapers scroll down the screen, then in bold letters we read:

  THESE ARE THE NAMES OF 1,772 DAILY NEWSPAPERS IN THE UNITED STATES.

  More names of newspapers scroll, then:

  ONE OF THEM IS THE PAPER YOU READ

  More names of newspapers scroll, then:

  ALL OF THEM ARE THE STARS OFTHIS STORY

  More names of newspapers scroll, then:

  DEDICATED TO AMERICAN JOURNALISM

  As promised, Gene Evans, slimmed down for the role of Phineas Mitchell, became my lead. After The Steel Helmet, I felt completely confident about Gene. He had real sincerity in his mannerisms. He could explode at any time, violence simmering just beneath his skin. Unlike a war movie or a Western, Park Row was about the violence of competing ideas. Mitchell must fight for what he believes in with words rather than guns. Words are more powerful weapons. Fists might come in handy, however.

  Like other famous Manhattan streets-Maiden Lane, for jewelers, South Street, for fishermen-Park Row was not a place for the fainthearted. The men and women who worked there had principles and were ready to fight for them. Joseph Pulitzer, whom I'd learned about firsthand from my old boss, Arthur Brisbane, was a peace-loving person. But once, a man called Pulitzer a liar in a bar on Park Row. The man went so far as to slap Pulitzer across the face. Pulitzer walked out of the bar, came back in a few minutes with a pistol, and shot the man in the leg. Though the wound didn't kill the guy, Pulitzer went to jail for the incident. However, no one ever questioned his integrity again.

  Park Row opens with a boom shot of a bronze statue in a turn-of-thecentury cobblestone street:

  NARRATOR (Camera moves in on statue)

  This is Johannes Gutenberg, who invented moveable type 500 years ago and printed the first Bible. Recognized as the father of modern printing, Gutenberg stands on Park Row, the most famous newspaper street in the world, where giants of journalism mix blood and ink to make history across the front pages of America. Our story takes place in New York in the lusty days of the "Golden Eighties" when Park Row was the birthplace and graveyard of great headlines.

  On the set of' Park Row. Benjamin Franklin was one of my heroes, so I made his statue a centerpiece of the set.

  (Camera moves along street to another statue.)

  The street of America's first world-famous journalist, a printer's devil who helped draft the Declaration of Independence and was one of its signers: Benjamin Franklin.

  The camera picks up on Phineas Mitchell and follows him down three blocks of Park Row, past wagons, drugstores, and tobacco shops, in front of the offices of the New York Times, the Herald, the Evening Post, and the World. It was one long, complicated shot without a single cut. I needed it to immediately establish the excitement and diversity of that street. There was no zoom available so my cameraman, Jack Russell, had to be pushed backward on his dolly.' The first time we ran through the shot, Jack fell off his perch. He finally managed to get the opening sequence just as I'd envisioned it. I was writing with a camera now, painting a character and his environment on film. Most of my budget went into constructing the fourstory set of that street and its buildings. The designers thought I was nuts, because no one built sets four stories high. Yet that street was my movie, and everything about it had to be authentic.

  Mitchell walks into a saloon on Park Row, and a foamy beer slides across the bar directly into his hands. He's not really interested in getting drunk. He's a reporter with a nose for the news and a respect for the truth, dreaming of starting his own newspaper.

  PHINEAS

  Know what I'd do if I had a paper? The first thing I'd do is christen it. I'd call it The Globe. I'd make it the best newspaper on Park Row, that's what I'd do. I'd give away free ice and coal and summer excursions. Christmas dinners for the poor. That would make 'em happy, and make news. News makes readers, readers makes circulation, and circulation makes advertising. And advertising means that I'd print my newspaper without the support of any political machine. That's what I'd do if I had a newspaper.

  Mitchell launches the Globe with the assistance of veteran journalist Josiah Davenport, played by Herbert Heyes. The old-timer takes his young editor aside as the first number of the Globe comes off the press:

  My lead, Phineas Mitchell, is ready to fight to defend his ideas and his reputation.

  JOSIAH

  I've seen a lot of Volume Ones. Number Ones. This is beautiful make-up! Greeley started with forty dollars credit. Bennett started in his cellar. You're in good company.

  PHINEAS

  How come you never got to be an editor?

  JOSIAH

  Edinburgh, about twenty years before I was born, stood up in Parliament and said there were three estates of the realm: the Peers, the Bishops, and the Commoners. Then he looked in the reporter's gallery and said: "Yonder there sits a Fourth Estate, more important by far than they are." Somebody's got to go out and get the news. People like me get it. People like you see that it gets to the readers. Some men are born editors. Some are born reporters. But a fighting editor is a voice this world needs! A man with ideals! And the joy of working for an ideal is the joy of the living! I know.

  The first issue of the Globe (above) comes off the press with the inside story about Steve Brodie's leap from the Brooklyn Bridge, celebrated (below) by a parade down Park Row.

  Once launched, Mitchell must struggle to make the Globe an enduring success. He attracts stiff competition from the Star, the big paper he used to work for, and its newspaper heiress owner, Charity Hackett. Charity has the means to demolish Mitchell with her money and power but lacks original ideas. Mitchell has ideas but no money. He has to fight her with words alone. Despite the fact Mitchell fancies Charity, they struggle against one another, then, as opposites sometimes do, fall in love. The Globe survives and even manages to help finance a pedestal for the soon-to-arrive Statue of Liberty.

  To play the complex character of Charity, I hired Mary Welch, a gifted actress whom I'd seen in Eugene O'Neill's Moon for the Misbegotten. I was very taken with Welch's performance in the play, so I went backstage to meet her. She was a beautiful, self-possessed woman with an inner strength that shone through her personality. After trying to derail Phineas and h
is newspaper, Charity ends up helping the competitor she wants in the sack.

  My yarn had to be much more than a period romance. It had to dramatize the importance of ethics in the press. A powerful, free press was a necessary element in a democracy. When the press became corrupt, it was harmful. Newspapers were only as good as the men and women running them. They could lie by skimming the complexities of crucial topics and avoiding controversy.

  My movie paid special tribute to Ottmar Mergenthaler and his linotype machine, too. With the invention of the printing press, Gutenberg opened the door to publishing books for the general public, allowing everyone to develop their knowledge of the world, until then reserved only for the elite.' Hundreds of years later, Mergenthaler was responsible for another milestone by vastly improving the speed and accuracy of typesetting for newspapers. Getting the news promptly, not only from their own country but from around the world, meant people were better able to understand their times, their society, their leaders. Without Gutenberg and Mergenthaler, we'd still be living like cavemen.

  Sid Grauman loved Park Row and offered to premier it at his Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard. We set up a big printing press outside the theater, ran off one-sheets about the picture, passing them out to the waiting crowds. The ink was still fresh, so people's hands got stained black, like printer's devils. The critics gave us great reviews. Zanuck loved the finished film, but his prediction that Park Row wouldn't do much business came true. I'd made a deal with United Artists to distribute the picture, but it never clicked with audiences. All the money I'd sunk into the production was a wash. Nevertheless, I was thrilled to have made it my way.

  One of the most memorable screenings of Park Row was a special premiere in New York at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel for a convention of the Newspaper Publishers and Editors Association of America. Representatives of seventeen hundred dailies from across the country were there. Among the guests were General MacArthur, President Hoover, and William Randolph Hearst Jr. That enthusiastic audience stood and applauded the picture like no other. Many cried. They really understood the spirit of the movie and the importance of journalistic freedom.

  Years later, I was asked to be president of a film festival jury in Strasbourg, France. The festival was dedicated to the relationship between the cinema and the press. Newspaper writers and editors from Europe and the States were there. They screened Park Row. In the lobby of our hotel, the editor of a big French magazine stopped me to say the film had moved him very deeply. Phineas Mitchell's struggle, his emotions, his guts, every scene in the picture, meant something special to this man. He was sincere, almost breaking down into tears right there in the lobby. I was surprised and moved that a picture I'd made three decades before could hit this guy so hard. Hell, I hope my films will be able to continue to touch people that way for as long as there are movies!

  Discussing a scene with my two leads, Gene Evans and Mary Welch. Tragically, Mary would die in childbirth the year after Park Row was finished.

  Park Row was a turning point for me. I was more confident than ever after having made that picture, ready to broach any material, even the most controversial. I was better able to write with my camera, inventing techniques to capture the atmosphere I wanted on film. For example, in the movie's climactic riot scene, we strapped a camera to the back of an operator and had him run down the street, bobbing and weaving, to get the visceral effect of mass violence. The heavy camera attached to the man's body was a forerunner to today's light, efficient Steadicam.

  One scene from Park Row will remain engraved on my mind forever. Before Josiah Davenport passes away, he writes his own obituary notice for the paper. Mitchell reads it to his staff:

  MITCHELL

  Josiah Davenport, seventy-five, journalist, died today at peace with Park Row. His search for a man to carry on the fight of Horace Greeley was successful. His last words were written to this man:

  "Phineas Mitchell, The Globe:

  "In most countries, there is no freedom of the press. In the United States, there is. This freedom was born in 1734 in the libel trial of John Peter Zenger, printer and publisher of the New York Weekly Journal. He was acquitted by jury.

  "When anyone threatens your freedom to print the truth, think of Zenger, Franklin, Bennett and Greeley. Think of them. Fight for what they fought for and died for. Don't let anyone ever tell you what to print. Don't take advantage of your free press. Use it judiciously for your profession and your country. The press is good or evil, according to the character of those who direct it. And The Globe is a good newspaper.

  At a New York convention of newspapermen from across the country, I screened Park Row and met former president Hoover (second from left). Among other guests sitting at the president's table that day was General MacArthur (seated fourth from left).

  Despite a big opening at Graumans Chinese Theater and encouraging reviews, Park Row failed at the box office.

  "I've put off dying waiting for a new voice that needs to be heard. You are that new voice, Mr. Mitchell. Now that I have found a man worthy enough to die for, I'm ready to die. The old press is silent. If there's a place where newspapermen go when the last edition is put to bed, I want to be there to hear the roar of The Globe, the thunder of her type. I want to be there still covering a story on the cuff of the last of the survivors who saw American journalism born on Park Row.

  "Thirty."3

  Don't Wave the

  Flag at Me

  28

  hate violence. That has never prevented me from using it in my films. It's part of human nature. People have been writing about violence since the Bible. Holy smoke, that's one helluva violent book, a running account of wars, feuds, corruption, and vengeance! Jump ahead a couple thousand years and take a look at Shakespeare's work. His plays are full of raw, uncamouflaged bloodletting. Children are thrown over castle walls, fathers and mothers murdered, throats slit, tongues cut out, heads severed. Certainly, all that violence is deplorable, but alas, it's part of our brutal heritage.

  Our world is still a very new one. We can only trace it back a few thousand years. Maybe in another couple thousand years, violence won't exist in any form. I hope so. Future audiences might watch our movies and wonder how we could have been so barbaric, just like when we watch gladiator movies and shake our heads at those ancient Romans organizing gruesome spectacles with man-eating lions in packed coliseums. For cryin' out loud, that was their show business.

  Like the air we breathe, violence is always there, all around us. Animals kill when they're hungry. Man kills for power. And man's lust for absolute power fosters totalitarian governments, the most destructive of all goddamned regimes. Violence breeds violence. Even a nonviolent person, when attacked, will kill if he or she has to defend a loved one. Inexplicably, some people have a ticking time bomb in their brains. Sex, religion, politics, or a dripping faucet can make them go berserk. No one knows when they'll blow. A good story probes why and how they resort to violence, then follows them to some kind of resolution.

  If you're trying to be honest, how can you make a gangster movie or a Western without showing their savage tools of trade? How can you tell a story about war without showing the bloody absurdity of warfare? How can you depict gangsters, cowboys, or soldiers motivated by anything other than their will to survive? You can't, unless you're John Wayne.

  Don't get me wrong, I loved Wayne personally. But he became a star because audiences were sold fantasy, which, unfortunately, sells better than fact. Entertaining as they are, those heroes that Wayne played just didn't exist in reality. See, one thing I hate in Wayne's war movies is when some officer invariably says, "These men have given their lives for their country."

  What bullshit! They didn't give their lives. Their lives were taken away. They were robbed. When we signed up for military service, if somebody had told us from the get-go that we had to give our lives, nobody would've enlisted. We all thought we'd make it back to our wives and mothers. Sure, there are madmen wh
o know in advance they're going to die, guys like kamikaze pilots, terrorists, or mad bombers. They are usually part of a lethal fringe that borders on hysteria.

  I hope one day, maybe in the year 2293, a film student will be analyzing one of my films on a desktop gizmo. He'll ask his professor what's that funny "thing" the soldier is holding. "Well, my boy," the professor will answer, "that was a weapon, in those days. They called it a `rifle.' You only see them in museums nowadays. We no longer need weapons."

  With Park Row under my belt, Zanuck gave me a script called Blaze of Glory, written by Dwight Taylor. Darryl thought this yarn should be my next Fox movie. I liked the idea. A woman lawyer falls in love with a criminal she's defending in a murder trial. I knew from my newspaper days that courtroom cases take a long time to play out. So I told Darryl that I'd like to do a story about an outlaw and his gal, but that I wanted to go down a few rungs lower on the ladder of criminality. Why not make the lead a small-time thief, a pickpocket, for example, a wily guy who lives in the shadow world of petty criminality? Zanuck had his doubts, but he let me go to work on an original script, fleshing out the main characters and redoing the story my own way.

  Skip McCoy is the pickpocket, known as a "cannon," on the street, with a record of three convictions. Completely antisocial, he's an outsider who doesn't give a damn about the rest of the world. The only use he has for a newspaper is to conceal his nimble fingers when he's grifting a purse. This time, the purse belongs to Candy, a good-looking, streetwise dame with a checkered past. My cop's called Tiger, the captain of the antipickpocket brigade who's trying to put Skip away for life. Moe is an old lady who makes a living by selling information, a stoolie whose one goal is to save up enough money for a decent cemetery plot. That way, she'll escape the most hated fate of poor people. "If I was to be buried in Potter's Field, it'd just about kill me," says Moe.