by Roger Ebert
On-screen he held so much authority so that he was not being ironic when he explained his theory of acting: “Don’t act. React.” John Wayne could react. Other actors had to strain the limits of their craft to hold the screen with him. There is this test for an actor who, for a moment, is just standing there in a scene: Does he seem to be just standing there? Or does he, as John Wayne did, seem to be deciding when, why, and how to take the situation under his control?
His last picture was called The Shootist, in 1976. He played an old gunfighter who had fought his way through the West for a lifetime and had finally come to a small town and was filled with the fear of dying. He went to the doctor, played by James Stewart, learned that he had weeks to live, and conducted himself during those days with strength and dignity. There was one other movie he wanted to make, and never made, that he talked about once. It didn’t have a title and it didn’t need a title, not in Wayne’s mind. It would simply have been one last movie directed by John Ford, who died in 1973 with Wayne at his bedside.
“God, that was a loss to me when Pappy died,” Wayne told me. “Up until the very last years of his life, Pappy could have directed another picture, and a damned good one. But they said Pappy was too old. Hell, he was never too old. In Hollywood these days, they don’t stand behind a fella. They’d rather make a goddamned legend out of him and be done with him.”
John Wayne died on June 11, 1979. He had lived for quite a while on one lung, and then the Big C came back. He was near death and he knew it when he walked out onstage at the 1979 Academy Awards to present Best Picture to The Deer Hunter, a film he wouldn’t have made. He looked frail, but he planted himself there and sounded like John Wayne.
33 “IRVING! BRANG ’EM ON!”
IT’S BEEN MANY years since Billy “Silver Dollar” Baxter last graced the Cannes Film Festival, and yet I never go there without imagining him beckoning to me across the bar of the Hotel Majestic. Billy created an alternate reality at Cannes, and such was the force of his personality that those who came within earshot were seduced.
Billy was a loudmouth operator from the pages of Damon Runyon. His gift was creating scenarios to entertain us. He didn’t want our money, he didn’t want publicity, he didn’t want a free lunch, he only wanted to know that we would pass around the latest “Billy Baxter story.” We are still passing them around. Billy is still alive, and we are in touch. He lives not far from Broadway, which is to Billy as the stream is to the trout, and posts countless New York photos on his Facebook page, but all of my stories about him will be set at Cannes, because that was his stage, and he was the player on it.
I was never sure what Billy did, or even how he earned a living, although there were many, many stories. I will tell you that he was never short of funds and never committed any crimes that I heard about, and if Billy had committed any crimes, we would have heard about it from him. The closest he came to describing his occupation was informing me, “The president of American Express is an old buddy-boy of mine.” I met him the first time I went to Cannes, in the mid-1970s. I walked into the American Bar of the Hotel Majestic and heard my name resounding in the air: Ro-jay Eggplant! Get over here! Irving! Brang ’em on! Johnnie Walker! Black Label! Generous portion! Clean glass! Pas de soda! Pas de ice! And clear off this shit and bring us some of those little olives! And some better peanuts!
A pink-faced man with an Irish pompadour was patting the chair next to him. I had never seen him before. “Sit down right here, Monsieur Eeebair! You know the sexy Miss Carroll, dontcha?” I did. He was seated next to Kathleen Carroll, the film critic of the New York Daily News. He never introduced her as his girlfriend. That would have been too mundane. She was described only in compliments: The love of my life. The most beautiful woman in France. She makes me the envy of every guy in Cannes. Catherine Denouveau, get outta of town! It was Billy’s opinion that every man in Cannes and everywhere else lusted for Kathleen, who was protected from their predations only by his vigilance. Kathleen was indeed lovely, soft-spoken, smart, conservatively dressed. It amazed us that she had taken up with the closest thing to Nathan Detroit that any of us would ever meet. When Billy was in the Majestic bar, he owned it. It was his headquarters. All the top stars and producers visited there, and he kept an eagle eye on the arrivals, grandly introducing mispronounced people he had never met. Lord Low Grade, meet John Weisenheimer! Boop-a-doop! He did this with such confidence that these strangers felt strangely pleased to be assigned supporting roles in his act.
Silver Dollar Baxter got his nickname because he arrived at Cannes every year with countless American silver dollars, which he bestowed as tips. “You think this is something?” he told me. “You shoulda seen what I paid in air freight. I gotta ship them in advance, because you try to get through customs with silver dollars, you’re gonna be explaining things for hours. My banker handles it.”
“Do you call your banker Irving?”
“Yeah. Irving Trust.”
Billy had decided some years earlier that all waiters in every saloon in the world were named Irving, and every establishment he entered became a saloon: the Majestic, the Hotel Carlton, Félix, Le Moulin de Mougins, the Grand Hotel du Cap d’Antibes, the Casino des Fleurs, La Pizza, every single one. The Hotel du Cap, or Hotel du Cap Gun, was so exclusive in those days it refused all credit cards and personal checks. Only payment in cash was accepted. Movie moguls arrived with their valets padlocked to briefcases. Madonna once had the pool cleared for her morning dip. Prince Albert of Monaco was said to run a tab. Billy reduced this splendor to its essence: Irving! Brang ’em on! He never asked someone if he could buy them a drink. He announced it from across the room. Irving! Take care of Francis Ford Chrysler over there! And set ’em up for Prince Albert in a can! Whatever he’s having. Doo-blays!
Did this cause offense? Did security men in tuxedos form a human wall and walk him out of the room? Not at all. The waiters snapped to attention. Everyone in the room grinned. Billy got away with it by daring to do it at all. It took confidence, timing, nerve, and above all style. So great was Billy’s generosity that other customers began to take his hospitality for granted and would sign his room number to their own bar bills. To stop such fraud, Billy appeared at the 1982 festival with a small rubber stamp that reproduced his signature and added underneath, “None genuine without this mark.”
Billy had a genius for sweeping up people who had no idea who he was and introducing them to other people he wanted to meet. “Sir Lord!” he boomed one night to Lord Grade, the millionaire head of England’s largest film company. “I want you to meet Miss Boop-a-Doop-a-Dee from Venezuela.” Instead of remembering names, he often simply improvised them, along with identities, credits, and national origin. “She directed the winning film in last year’s festival. That’s why she gets to come to the bar in her underwear.” Miss Boop-a-Doop-a-Dee was, in fact, Edy Williams, Russ Meyer’s ex-wife who posed wearing a bikini while standing in the town’s public fountains. Lord Grade looked prepared to believe that she was a director from Venezuela. He looked prepared to believe almost anything about her.
One morning around eleven, Billy was in the Majestic bar reading that day’s Cannes edition of Screen International. “I see here that Lord Low Grade is back in town,” he announced. “He’s taking delivery on his new yacht.” He looked up to see Lord Grade entering the room at that moment. Uncharacteristically, Billy did not order him a drink or introduce him to Gérard Belowpardieu. “Irving! Hotel stationery! Fountain pen! On the doo-blay! Hup, hup, hup!” The embossed stationery was produced, and Billy composed a letter:
Dear Lord Lew, All arrangements are in order for the maiden voyage of your lordship’s yacht. I have been successful in inviting the top film critics of England and America to join you. They are eager to learn about your legendary show business career.
As of today, I have confirmations from Kathleen Carroll and Rex Reed of the New York Daily News, Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times, George Anthony of the
Toronto Sun, Alexander Walker of the London Evening Standard, Richard and Mary Corliss of Time magazine, Andrew Sarris of the Village Voice, Molly Haskell of Vogue, and Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times. I have told them to keep tomorrow morning free for embarkation. Please have your office send cars to the front entrance of the Majestic at about 10.
He signed the letter, called for a candle, dripped wax on the flap, and sealed it with his ring.
“Billy, this is the most insane stunt you’ve ever pulled,” Rex Reed said.
“Be in front of the hotel on time, sexy Rexy, or the ship sails without you.”
The next morning, Lord Grade’s Mercedes limos arrived on time, and we lined up and piled in, ready for our audience with the man who made Raise the Titanic, of which it was said, it would have been cheaper to lower the ocean. We motored down the Croisette and twenty miles along the coast, past the Hotel du Cap, toward the yacht harbor at Antibes. The limos pulled up to the harbor, and there was Grade, pacing nervously by his gangplank, wearing grey flannel trousers, a blue blazer, and a Panama hat. In his hand was one of the twenty-five-dollar cigars he stored in the vaults of Davidoff on Jermyn Street.
“I was growing nervous,” Grade said. “I thought perhaps you hadn’t been able to find the yacht.”
“You kidding?” Baxter asked. “A yacht this size, you could fire off a machine gun.”
Baxter led his parade of film critics aboard, held an inspection of the ship’s crew, which was standing at attention, and passed out flight bags that said American Express on them. These bags, Billy explained, were priceless. They were a limited edition, authorized personally by his old buddy-boy the president of American Express. They would become invaluable collector’s items. He had been authorized to place them in the hands of people with the highest prestige, so that simply by carrying them, they would lend luster to the reputation of American Express.
The yacht crew politely accepted their bags. Grade looked on balefully. Billy hesitated, then gave him one. For three or four hours, we sailed offshore from Antibes to Cannes. Far away across the blue waters of the Côte d’Azur, the hapless tenants of the Hotel du Cap shaded their eyes on the verandas of their thousand-dollar rooms and squinted at us rocking at anchor.
“I have been thinking,” Grade told us, “of writing my autobiography. My life has been filled with coincidences. When I began in London, for example, I had an office across from the Palladium. Now I own the Palladium.”
“What an amazing coincidence,” Rex Reed said.
“I began as a dancer,” Grade said. “I did a double act with my brother, Lord Delfont. I was a natural at the Charleston, but for the others I had to finesse. It was called ‘eccentric dancing.’ Like this.”
He stood up, clasped his hands above his head, and bumped to an imaginary rhythm.
“We played Paris, Germany… we were always broke. Those were the days. I remember I was in love with twins. Two lovely girls. Dancers. I couldn’t make up my mind between them.”
Luncheon drew to a leisurely close. I sat in a deck chair next to Alex Walker, dozed off in the midday sun, and was awakened by a quickening tempo in Lord Grade’s voice.
“Television—television!” he was saying. “What an impact. With one successful program, we reach ten times as many people as with a hit movie. My most successful television program was, of course, Jesus of Nazareth, directed for me by Franco Zeffirelli. Do you know that a survey was taken of 6,525 people? Forty percent of them said they had learned the most about Jesus from my program. Twenty-one percent named the Bible. Thirty percent named the church.”
“That leaves nine percent undecided,” Rex Reed said.
“Some of them saw it twice.”
Billy’s method was to boldly cut through bureaucracy. One year he issued his own credentials to the festival. This was in connection with a television special he had convinced Lord Grade to bankroll. “These Frenchies are hung up on anything that looks official,” he said. “They issue you a permit to take a shit. But half the guards can’t read, and besides, they don’t have time, because there’s always a commie riot going on.” Billy printed up official-looking credentials for the “World International Television Network.” He attached the photographs of his friends to the cards, had them laminated, and we wore them around our necks. Every one of Billy’s friends was exactly the same height, weight, and age, and had the same hair and eye color. “What this document certifies,” he explained to us, “is that it is worn by the bearer.”
Every year the Marché issues a little booklet with the names of key industry figures, their hotels, and the words “buying” or “selling.” I decided to do a story about a Seller and a Buyer. I knew one of each, and they agreed to allow me to observe, as long as I agreed to keep all dollar amounts “symbolic.” The Seller was Dusty Cohl, a friend from Toronto whom I’d met at Cannes 1977. He presided on the Carlton terrace in much the same way that Billy ran the Majestic. Ambassadors were exchanged between the two fiefdoms, and Billy and Dusty exchanged signing privileges on each other’s tabs. Dusty was selling a Canadian film named Outrageous!, which starred Craig Russell as a drag performer who befriends a helpless waif. The Buyer was Baxter, partnered with a kindly older man named Herb Steinman, who had made his money in aspirin, and whose wife, Anna, was Jack Nicholson’s psychoanalyst.
“Herb is my buddy-boy back home,” Baxter explained. “I bring him here, he smiles at the dollies, he takes his wife out to dinner.”
On the morning when Billy was to welcome Dusty in the Majestic bar, I sat with Herb beside the Majestic’s pool. A starlet approached and stood beside Herb’s deck chair. She was topless. Herb turned his head and found that he was staring directly at a nipple. “I’ll take the one with the pink nose,” he said. Billy materialized and took Herb into the bar for a conference of war.
“Herb, you know and I know that this is a hot film. But does Dusty know that? This is his first time up against experienced operators like ourselves. Okay. What do we use for openers? We say, when we bought Lina Wisenheimer’s Love and Anarchy, we paid two hundred thousand dollars for the U.S. rights, and we cleaned up. So we gotta tell Dusty we will only pay him half of what we paid for Love and Anarchy, right?”
“Sounds okay to me, Billy,” said Steinman.
“Only get this. What we tell him is, we only paid half of what we did pay for Love and Anarchy—so that in offering him half, we’re really offering him a quarter, right? Fifty thousand?”
“In other words,” said Steinman, “twenty-five percent. That’s very simple, Billy.”
“You got it,” said Billy. “We tell him half, but we tell him half of half. Okay. We’re all set. Here he comes now.”
Dusty Cohl walked into the bar and sat down. He was dressed for business, with a grey summer suit, a black cowboy hat, and a Dudley Do-Right T-shirt. He passed around cigars.
“Irving! Brang ’em on!” Baxter shouted. “Bring Mr. Cohl here whatever he wants and doop-a-dop-a-doo for everybody else.”
Dusty opened by pleading innocence: “I’m a guy who is new to this, I’m feeling my way, I’m learning as I go along, and maybe we can make a deal that will make everyone happy.”
“Cut the crap,” Baxter said. “You got a piece of shit here about a Canadian pricksickle aficionado, and nobody wants it. You’re talking to the guys who put Lina Boop-a-doop on the map. How much you want for this movie?”
“I was thinking fifty grand up front, against some guarantees and percentages,” Cohl said.
Baxter was stunned. Cohl had opened by asking for what Baxter was prepared to open with. In his mind, his $50,000 opener should instantly be reduced by another 50 percent, to $25,000.
Steinman spoke: “Dusty, we can only give you half of Love and Anarchy.”
Baxter’s face turned pink. “Irving!” he cried. “On the double!” This was a diversionary tactic. He turned to his partner. “Herb,” he said intensely. “Think. Think! We can only give half of Love and Anarchy. Do you
see what I mean?”
“That’s right, Billy, half of Love and Anarchy.”
“Not half, Herb—half !”
“Like I say, half.”
Dusty Cohl sat patiently.
“HALF! Of Love and Anarchy!” Baxter repeated, desperately trying to get Steinman to read his mind.
I did the mental arithmetic. Billy was trying to get Steinman to make a two-stage transition: (1) To think, not half of the real original price, which would have been $100,000, or half of that price, which would have been $50,000, but (2) half of that, which would have been $25,000—one-eighth of the actual price of Love and Anarchy. Then, presumably, Cohl would make a counteroffer, and they would negotiate from there. But could Steinman make the mental leap?
“Right, Billy,” said Steinman. “I know what you’re saying. Half of Love and Anarchy.”
“But are you talking half,” Billy asked urgently, “or are you talking half? Think real hard, Herb.”
“I’m talking half of half, aren’t I?”
“No! Not half of half! Half of half of half!”
“This is not sounding good,” said Cohl.
Baxter leaned forward, trying to project his thoughts into Steinman’s mind.
“The original half?” asked Steinman.
“The revised original half,” said Baxter.
“Half of that?”
“Herb! Think! Half of Love and Anarchy. Do you know what I’m thinking when I say the word ‘half’?”