A Third Face: My Tale of Writing, Fighting and Filmmaking
Page 36
"MUSIC BY VICTOR YOUNG, EXTENDED BY HIS OLD FRIEND, MAX STEINER"
When Run of the Arrow was released, one of its first public screenings took place in Washington, D.C. I was invited to Capitol Hill to show the picture to a committee of U.S. senators who were making budget recommendations for the Indian reservations. A number of tribal representatives were in the audience. They came up to me afterward and congratulated me warmly. For them, my picture was authentic and forceful. For me, it was one of the proudest moments of my career.
Fast forward about three decades to about 199o. Christa and I walked over to a movie house on the Champs Elysees to see a new American film that had just opened in France called Dances with Wolves. When the film was over, we strolled back to our apartment, also in the Eighth Arrondissement. I took Christa's arm with one hand and smoked my cigar with the other. It was a lovely evening for a walk, but my wife was very upset. According to her, the basic plot of Kevin Costner's movie had been lifted from Run of the Arrow. She saw lots of details they'd "borrowed" from me, like a close-up I'd gotten of a horse that had "U.S. Cavalry" branded on one of its legs. Christa was furious. According to her, Dances with Wolves was an expensive, uncredited imitation of my 1957 movie.
"It's plagiarism!" she said.
I heard her out, puffing my Camacho as we walked along those lovely Paris avenues.
"Not plagiarism," I said, mimicking Jean-Luc Godard when I told him face-to-face he'd stolen ideas from me. "Hommage!"
I laughed. Christa wasn't satisfied.
"So what do you think?" she asked.
"About what?"
"Stealing!"
"Nonsense!" I said. "Remember my finish in Run of the Arrow?"
"Your finish?"
"Yeah, the big titles across the screen: THE ENDING CAN ONLY BE WRITTEN BY YOU! It's an invitation to go on with the story."
"So?" said Christa.
"So, they went on with the story!"
Christa joined me in my laughter. It was the best response to all plagiarists.
With the great Jay C. Flippen (1899-1971) on the set of Run of the Arrow
33 I
Grab 'Em. Slap 'Em.
Shak' 'Em Up.
Young writers and directors, seize your audience by the balls as soon as the credits hit the screen and hang on to them! Smack people right in the face with the passion of your story! Make the public love your characters or hate them, but, for Godsakes, never-never!-leave them indifferent!
My next project at Fox was called China Gate (1957). There were enough hot topics in this adventure love story to push everybody's buttons. Communism and colonialism. Racism and tolerance. Black markets and capitalism. Abandonment and fidelity.
The yarn was set in Indochina in 1954, before it became Vietnam. Ruled by the French as one of their colonies, the country is under siege by the communist-supported revolutionaries, led by Ho Chi Minh. Russia and China are pumping in supplies and ammunition. Angie Dickinson plays Lea, nicknamed "Lucky Legs," a half-caste who resorts to smuggling to feed her five-year-old son. Since she's part Chinese and knows her way through the jungle, she accepts the assignment of leading a bomb squad of French legionnaires behind enemy lines to destroy the communists' main ammunitions dump. The French, however, must first promise Lea that they'll arrange for her boy's evacuation to America.
The squad is lead by Brock, played by Gene Barry. Brock is an American Korean War veteran who married Lea but abandoned her when his son was born with Chinese features. Brock is a sonofabitch racist who gets some straight-shooting advice about Lea from the one-legged village priest, played by the veteran French actor Marcel Dalio:
FATHER PAUL
... I know this woman. I know what she went through to feed your child.
(standing, leaning on a crutch)
For China Gate, I pinned my entire yarn on a little boy's future.
The Communists sawed off my leg and knifed a sign in my side that said "Capitalist Spy." Lea found me on the outskirts of the village. She cut off the gangrenous flesh and carried me to the hospital. Help you? Stay out of her life!
To accomplish their difficult mission, Lea and Brock have to deal with mines, snipers, and touchy dynamite. Worse, they must overcome their mutual antagonism.
BROCK
I'm learning a lesson in hate, just watching you.
LEA
I'm too tired to hate anymore. It was all my fault, not yours. I'm really to blame. You knew all about me, but I didn't know all about you. Sure, you had traveled all over the world, but you hadn't learned anything. Not where it counts. I should have investigated your heart and your brain. I should have seen you weren't adjusted yet. That you couldn't face facts that involved people. Oh, you're tough. You handle explosives. But you're not tough enough to handle life, Brock! That's where I made a mistake.
BROCK
Everybody makes mistakes.
Brock is forced to face up to his narrow-mindedness. Lea is tempted by the ambitious Major Chain, played by Lee Van Cleef, who offers her and her son a new life in Moscow. The sabotage mission on the ammo dump is a success, but Lea gets killed. In the end, Brock takes his son by the hand and leads him out of the war zone toward America.
Zanuck loved the script. My yarn didn't make any judgment about who was right or wrong in the Indochina conflict. Lea is looking out for herself so that she can get a better life for her son. She has no cultural or political bias. Her only motivation for going on the mission is to get an American visa for her boy. America is the Promised Land.
One day, Zanuck came by our production office and asked me about the big posters of Ho Chi Minh I'd put up on the wall to get everybody in the mood of Indochina. It was the first time the name of the Vietnamese leader would be heard in an American movie. Zanuck wasn't impressed that Minh spoke seven languages. But when I told him that Minh had once been an assistant pastry chef in a London hotel, Darryl got excited.
"A pastry chef, goddamnit!" said Zanuck. "Went on to become his country's leader! There's a great story!"
Even though he was the head of a major studio, Zanuck was a writer at heart and always defended the writer's viewpoint. In the fifties, movies that even whispered the word "communism" had to portray it as evil. I wanted China Gate to be different, to show "isms" reduced to gut decisions of survival. My story was based on research I'd done on the French Foreign Legion fighting in Indochina. The French connection enticed Darryl into green-lighting the picture, because Darryl loved everything French. He was proud of having received a Legion d'honneur in Paris. I didn't give a damn that my characters were fighting for the French. The Indochina conflict was based on nothing but goddamned economics. My legionnaires are from different countries, each with his own personal reason for being a paid soldier in Southeast Asia. It certainly wasn't about French patriotism.
Zanuck approved of my choice of Angie Dickinson for the lead, even though she was an unknown. She had a strong presence in the tests we did with her. With her high cheekbones and slanted eyes, Angie passed for a Eurasian. And those legs of hers stretched all the way across a CinemaScope screen. The crew loved her. Warmhearted and caring, Angie was everybody's pal. Angie and I became pals, too. I sang her praises to everyone in Hollywood. Howard Hawks hired her for Rio Bravo (i959), opposite John Wayne. She was on her way to a big career. My close friend Richard Brooks and Angie became a couple. I shot some home movies of the two lovers cavorting in my pool. Unfortunately, their affair wouldn't last, and Brooks ended up marrying Jean Simmons.
The late fifties was a prolific yet painful time for me. I was working like crazy, cranking out scripts, getting them produced one way or another, making dough, and spending it on an expensive lifestyle. When my friends needed help, I didn't think twice about slipping them a few grand to help them out. But then my two remaining brothers died one after the other, Ving of an ulcer, and Ray of leukemia. At the tail end of the decade, my mother passed away. Martha had told me she couldn't have children, so I put the ide
a out of my mind. But did I? I thought of my scripts as my children, puttering over them like an anxious father. Not having a kid of my own must have weighed on me. Buried with other frustrations, it probably doomed my marriage to Martha. In one of the crucial scenes in China Gate, I wrote a speech for Goldie, letting my anxiety rise to the surface.
GOLDIE
I always wanted a kid, Brock. My wife was told we couldn't have one. We put in papers to adopt one when my wife got sick. Eaten up inside, not being able to have one. Just eaten up. I watched her go down to 75 pounds. She died feeling sorry for me. That's how much she knew I wanted a kid. When I learned you walked on yours ... Let me tell you something, Brock. I've belted through two wars and I'm coming out of this one. You know why? Cause I've got a reason. I'll get my release when they know why I want out. I'll tell you one thing. Lucky Legs is going through hell for your son. And if something happens to her on this job, he'll still get to the States, even if I have to crawl all the way with him on my back.
(reflecting)
I've always wanted a son, Brock. Especially a five-year-old one.
I'll take my share of responsibility for my marriage problems. Hell, I wasn't an easy guy to live with. One time we were having dinner at La Rue, a swank Hollywood place, when Charlie Chaplin came over to our table. He'd been staring from across the room at Martha the entire evening. Martha was a very beautiful woman, with high cheekbones, black hair, green eyes, and a great figure. Chaplin asked her to come by his offices and do a test for a role in his new film, Monsieur Verdoux, to play one of his wives. Paulette Goddard would eventually get the part.
"I'm a big admirer of yours, Mr. Chaplin," I blurted out. "But Martha's my wife and if she does a test for you, I'm going to have her face changed!"
Chaplin's mouth dropped open. I don't think he knew I was joking. He turned around and walked straight back to his table without another word. He kept looking over at our table, then sent us a bottle of champagne. There was no denying it, my remark was out of line, much too aggressive for the situation. I don't know why I reacted that way. I regretted it right away. What could have been going on in my mind to make me react so jealously? It was unlike me to enslave a woman. Maybe I was feeling possessive because, with the deaths of my brothers, and without any children of our own, Martha was all I had. She was very unhappy about my behavior. Who wouldn't be? She was living with an intense, nervous, sometimes belligerent guy.
When I think of China Gate, I always think of the Goldie character. I'd given Goldie a soldiering background very much like my own. Zanuck liked the role, too, and asked me about who I had in mind to play the part. I said I wanted a man's man yet a guy with a warm, tender-looking face. I picked up an album on top of a pile next to Darryl's record player. If my soldier were black, he'd look just like the guy on the album cover, Nat King Cole.
"Sammy, Cole's a big star," laughed Zanuck. "We paid him seventy-five grand just to sing a title song. He's the most popular singer in the country. Do you have any idea how much he'd ask for appearing in your picture?"
I shook my head. Immersed in my scripts, I was often naive about financial considerations and popular trends. The cigar in my mouth almost dropped out when Darryl said, "Cole probably makes in a couple weeks the entire budget for your film."
Going through a scene with Nat King Cole, playing Goldie, his first dramatic part in a Hollywood movie. Nat was one of the biggest singing stars of that era and a delight to work with.
An evening out with Nat and Maria Cole after we finished China Gate
Still, I was infatuated with that face on the album cover, so I persisted. A dinner was arranged so that I could meet Nat and his exquisite wife, Maria. They were both moved by my story for China Gate. I told Nat point-blank that I didn't write the part for a black actor. I needed Goldie to be the diametric opposite to Brock, the bigot who rejects his own child because of the little boy's slanted eyes. Nat agreed to do the picture right away and asked for a minimum fee for his appearance.
Cole wasn't supposed to sing on screen or off. But Victor Young had written a title tune for the picture before his untimely death. When I played Victor's music for Nat, he said he'd love to sing it to Lea's little boy on camera. I wasn't crazy about the idea at first. But after Harold Adamson wrote some lyrics and I heard Nat's velvet voice croon the song, I couldn't resist.
China Gate,
China Gate.
Many dreams and many hearts, You separate.
Like two arms, Open wide, Some you welcome in, And some must stay outside.
Bowl of rice, Bitter tea, Is this all the good earth has to offer me?
Will I find peace of mind? Does my true love wait behind the China Gate?
We followed Nat with a camera on a boom crane high above the set as he walked and sang through the bombed-out village. I wanted his voice to seem like a nightingale flying safely above all the destruction. Believe it or not, I suggested that Nat try singing the song poorly. After all, his character is a soldier of fortune who probably sings off-key in the shower.
Setting the tone for my motley band of soldiers of fortune, the guys that Brock must lead deep into communist territory to destroy the crucial ammo dump behind the China Gate. Nat King Cole is at the far end, next to our script girl.
"Sammy, I can't sing badly!" Nat said. "What would my fans say? And what would people in the profession think if I sang offkey?"
He was right, of course. After we'd finished the picture, Nat invited Martha and me over to his place for dinner. Nat had some enormous catalogues of recordings next to his piano. I started thumbing through the big book to get to the Cs, for "Cole."
"Sammy, the whole catalogue is of my songs," he laughed. "What's your favorite tune?"
" `I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles,' " I replied without hesitation.
"Okay," he said. "Let's record it together."
Nat had a little recording studio at his house. We went in there and sang the song together. What fun that was! "I'm forever blowing bubbles, pretty bubbles in the air...."
Nat King Cole brought out the loving child in everybody. I certainly fell in love with the guy. Nat's gone now, but I'm still in love with him. People are never gone as long as they are loved.
With its highly stylized characters, China Gate may seem like a cartoon today. However, the picture didn't shy away from the conflict of ideologies that were struggling for future power. Nor did it waver in condemning racism. My tale is full of human foible and confusion. I deliberately wanted that confusion. I was still thinking of Clare Boothe Luce's remark that "anyone who isn't thoroughly confused, isn't thinking clearly." I wanted the picture to make a plea for understanding and tolerance, the keys to coexistence between couples, between peoples, between nations.
I pray that democracy is not like the bubbles that Nat and I blew in the air in the fifties, dreams that fade and die. It's up to the people of this tiny planet Earth to think in more humane, more global terms if our children are to have a future with no more goddamned wars.
Just before China Gate was to be released, I got a call from the French consul general in Los Angeles, Romain Gary, inviting me to lunch. I knew Gary as the author of Company of Men. He'd seen a rough cut of my movie. He told me the prologue was too harsh toward his country and asked me to change it. His mission was to make sure France was portrayed fairly in Hollywood. I told Romain that he had a job to do, and so did I. France had been colonizing countries for hundreds of years because it was good business. What I didn't like about all those colonial powers, whether they were French, British, Spanish, or Dutch-I didn't give a damn who-was the way they disguised their exploitation of their colonies by hanging a pretty veil over the whole affair. They were just "helping the people." Bullshit! My movie's prologue was accurate and would stand.
I asked Romain a blunt question. What if my movie had said the same things about another country, say Italy or Spain? Would he have objected? No, he replied, he wouldn't give a damn about me knocking the Itali
ans or the Spanish. I loved his honesty. We talked about Company of Men. He joked that only two people had read the book, him and me. Then he asked if I wanted to do a movie based on the yarn. I declined. The story had already been told in De Sica's Bicycle Thief. Instead of Italian boys shining shoes in destitute postwar streets, Romain's Parisian boys scour the garbage for used condoms and resell them.
By a curious turn of events, I'd eventually make White Dog, another one of Romain's stories, into a movie. But that would be fifteen years later. When I met him, Romain Gary seemed to be on top of the world. He had a prestigious post with the French government, a beautiful wife-actress Jean Seberg-and a respected literary career. For Chrissakes, who could imagine that his life would turn out the way it did? He was obliged to write his novels under a pseudonym, Emil Ajar. Seberg committed suicide in the eighties, and Romain would take his own life a couple years later. From his standpoint, his life must have been terribly dark. Appearances, especially in Hollywood, can be so deceiving.
Regardless of my good rapport with Romain Gary, he obviously put a bug in the ear of somebody at the foreign ministry in Paris. A chancellery officer must have submitted a top-secret report taking my film to task for showing the French in an unfavorable light. Hell, I was merely a reporter, showing what the French had done in Indochina. I didn't write their history, they did. China Gate was a success for Fox all over the world, except for France, where it was never released.
Stuffed with
Phalluses
34
Juvenile delinquency was a hot subject in the fifties. Nicholas Ray's Rebel Without a Cause (1955) was a damned good picture, probably the decade's most important one about rebellious youth. I'd dabbled with the theme in Run of the Arrow. I wanted to show that juvenile rebellion existed even among Indians. Jay C. Flippen's Walking Coyote tells Rod Steiger's O'Meara that the young braves "... drink, they loot, they rape, and they have no respect for their elders."