by Joan Kramer
She started off by asking me if I was related to the writer, Philip Barry, who’d been a friend of hers. She then proceeded to compliment me, and tell me what a delight it was to work with me. We had shot with her a number of days in both New York and Connecticut, filming her packing her car, doing her laundry, playing tennis, etc. Then she asked, ‘What do you want to do in the future? Make movies?’ ‘Yes, of course,’ I said. ‘But those jobs don’t come easily.’ ‘You can do it. Just keep trying,’ she told me. ‘You’re very talented.’ As I was sipping the scotch (and pretending that I loved it), I was essentially pinching myself. Was this a dream? Sitting with the great Katharine Hepburn in her living room, just the two of us! Without question, that was the highlight of my career.”
JK and DH Throughout the production she never asked us which film clips, photos, or anything else we planned to use or not use. So when we screened the finished program for her, we didn’t know what to expect.
“I won’t ask you how much they paid you for doing it,” she said. “But I’m sure it wasn’t enough. Damn good job.”
Katharine Hepburn: All About Me received a tremendous amount of publicity, including a billboard above Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles. There were two invitation-only screenings: one at Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theater in New York, and the other at the Alfred Hitchcock Theatre on the Universal Studios’ lot in California, where Jane Fonda was the host of the evening. Kate turned down requests to attend either of them, as she always did for such events.
But she had an even more pressing reason than usual. Phyllis was in the hospital, and she told us, “I can’t be out celebrating while Phyllis is sick.” However, she agreed to tape on-camera introductions, to be shown right before each screening. The two pieces were similar, telling the audience that the main reason she had agreed to this project was to talk about her extraordinary parents. But the one for California also included a personal greeting to Jane.
The program was nominated for an Emmy (TNT’s only nomination that year). It didn’t win, but was honored with several other awards including a Telly, a Cine Golden Eagle, and a Chicago International Film Festival Silver Hugo.
We continued to see Hepburn regularly over the next ten years. The last time was a few years prior to her death. She was in her nineties by then, and living full-time at Fenwick, no longer going back and forth to New York. She was sitting on the sofa in the living room when we arrived, and greeted us warmly. But it was clear that she didn’t have the strength she once had, and was somewhat forgetful about whether people she’d worked with in the past were still alive. However, we had one of our usual spirited discussions, along with tea and her sinfully rich, flourless chocolate brownies.
Katharine Hepburn died in 2003 at the age of ninety-six. At home, on her own terms, just as she had lived.
For us, it was a privilege to have known her and been trusted by her. While she worked with many producers and directors throughout her life, we have to stop and remember that we’re in the tiny group of people who produced and directed projects that were personal to her, that she really cared about. And that fills us with pride.
Photograph by John Bryson, courtesy Bryson Photo.
Richard Dreyfuss and “Bruce,” the shark from Jaws.
Universal City, CA, 1995. Authors’ collection.
Glenn Close with “Captain America” bike from Easy Rider.
Culver City, CA, 1998. Authors’ collection.
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
Two Birthdays—Universal and Columbia
Two studio anniversary celebrations, an eightieth for Universal and a seventy-fifth for Columbia, presented unique challenges. How could we make an audience care about corporate entities, albeit entities that glittered with stars and legendary movies? And how could we tell the stories of these two great studios by showing excerpts from the motion pictures they made, when the movies’ plots had nothing to do with the tales we were trying to tell? Of course there were powerful behind-the-scenes personalities here—Carl Laemmle, the founder of Universal Pictures, and Harry Cohn, who, with his brother, Jack, created Columbia—but most people had never heard of them. However, having unrestricted access to their libraries, and a free hand to use anything we wanted, must have blinded us. We said “Yes” to both projects—and afterwards vowed we’d never take on anything like this again.
DH One of our first decisions had to do with interviews. There was such a vast amount of visual material available that we decided to record people audio-only. We would show excerpts from the movies themselves, and behind-the-scenes shots, but with no interruptions from “talking heads.” It would be much more compelling to hear Arnold Schwarzenegger tell us about the making of Conan the Barbarian, and how he was bitten by one of the wild dogs, as we saw the scene play out, than it would have been to stop the scene and cut to Arnold on camera. And this audio-only approach had an additional benefit: we could include archival interviews, most of which were not on film, and these would be on a par with the ones we did ourselves. Thus Lew Ayres, Paul Newman, Mary Tyler Moore, Steven Spielberg, Lupita Tovar, Susan Kohner, Gregory Peck, as well as Arnold, to name a few, could be indistinguishably mixed with stories told by Mary Pickford, Fred Astaire, Boris Karloff, Orson Welles, and others we found in collections.
JK In 1990, Universal City turned seventy-five. But the studio let the milestone go by with virtually no hoopla.
Three years later, Blair Westlake, who headed the Pay Television Division, called to ask if we’d be interested in producing a program in time to celebrate Universal’s eightieth birthday. He was upset that its seventy-fifth had been all but overlooked, and was determined not to allow the eightieth to have the same fate.1 We’d met Blair some seven years earlier, when we shot on the Universal backlot with Johnny Carson and Jimmy Stewart for James Stewart: A Wonderful Life. Blair was responsible then for making certain that we had the proper insurance coverage. He came by the set and we struck up a friendship. He subsequently rose through the ranks, eventually holding the title of Chairman of Universal Television.
When we started the project in 1994, the studio was ruled by Lew Wasserman2 together with his second-in-command, Sidney Sheinberg, and it was obvious that we needed them both for the program. However, Wasserman rarely ever agreed to be interviewed; his policy was to work unseen by the public, to avoid the limelight. We asked Blair to help. He spoke to Sheinberg, who somehow persuaded Wasserman that they should do an interview together. But Sid had misunderstood that we needed voice only, so we found that we had them scheduled for an on-camera interview. It would be at 11am on a Thursday morning on the top floor of the corporate building known as the Black Tower, which is near the entrance to Universal City. When we reminded Blair that we only needed their audio, he said, “Let’s film them anyway. You can use just their voices for the program, but we’ll have a rare interview for the archives.”
Universal City opening day poster.
March 15, 1915. Authors’ collection.
By an unfortunate coincidence, that same Thursday morning was the only time that Steven Spielberg was available, and we had already scheduled him for 9:30 at the Amblin Entertainment complex, which was also on the Universal City lot, but a good fifteen minutes away from the Black Tower.
DH I had our film crew start setting up for the Wasserman/Sheinberg interview at about 8:30, and when I was satisfied that all was going well, left them to head to Amblin. As Spielberg was to be audio-only, it would not take long to get ready. The receptionist told us that Steven wanted the interview to take place in his screening room, but he was currently in a meeting which was running long, and he would probably be about fifteen minutes late.
Steven Spielberg started his career at Universal, and had played a large role in the studio’s success over the last twenty-or-so years. We had a long list of questions for him.
JK At 9:45 there was another message from the receptionist. Steven was still in his meeting, but would be with us as soon as it was finished.
David and I were now looking at which questions we could eliminate. We had to be finished at Amblin by 10:30 if we were to get back to the Black Tower in time for the Wasserman/Sheinberg filming. There was no way we could be late for that.
DH At 10 o’clock Steven Spielberg walked into the screening room. He was full of apologies, and suggested that we begin recording immediately. I had in mind a few questions that we could cut, but started at the beginning.
“Can you tell us about the first time you were on the Universal lot?”
It was with his first answer that I realized we had our dream interviewee. His responses were all concise and to the point. There were no rambling stories, no irrelevant asides. This was a filmmaker who knew what it was like to be in an editing room—which answers could make it into the final cut, and he was doing his very best to deliver those answers. For example, when I asked him who the producer was on one of his early films, he gave a name, and then paused momentarily.
“No, that might be wrong,” he said. “I’ll give you another line and you can edit in whichever is correct.”
Despite our many questions, and starting half an hour later than planned, I knew early on that we would not have to eliminate any of them.
JK Near the end, David asked him something that I thought was pushing the envelope too far. We’d read an article about the making of Schindler’s List, in which Spielberg was quoted as saying that one location was the real site of a Hitler death camp, and he had hired German actors to play the guards, all of them dressed in authentic Nazi uniforms. Between shots, they wanted to chat with him about Jaws, E.T., and his other famous movies, but he found he couldn’t deal with them. Even though he knew intellectually that they were actors in costume, all he could see were Nazi officers. He just turned his back and walked away.
I was afraid that bringing this up might cause Steven some embarrassment, but David waited until the end of the interview and went for it. I was holding my breath.
Spielberg said that the story was true, and that we were the first to ask him about it since the article had appeared. He reiterated that he couldn’t get past the sight of those actors in those uniforms in that location and what it all represented. However, they were still at that same location at the beginning of Passover, and he decided to hold a Seder for the entire cast and crew. At one point he turned and saw the German actors enter the room, wearing suits and ties, with yarmulkes on their heads. They took seats at the table, held hands with everyone else and bowed their heads, joining in the prayers. Steven said he sat at the head of the table and began to weep. And at that moment he knew he would never again judge a man by his forefathers.
I had tears in my eyes too.
As we were about to leave, I said to him, “What’s interesting to me is that after all the films you’ve done, you don’t seem to have lost the ‘wonder.’”
“It’s true,” he replied. “I get that from my mother. She’s always been filled with ‘wonder’ and still is.”
DH Looking back, it’s perhaps one of the best interviews anyone ever gave us.
But now there were only twenty-five minutes to wrap up, get to the Black Tower—running was the only option—and check that everything was ready for Lew Wasserman and Sid Sheinberg. When we arrived, I had one small adjustment I wanted the crew to make, and as it was completed, the two of them walked through the door. It was exactly 11 am.
Wasserman began with, “You know, we have final cut on this.” I reminded him that the studio had final cut on the entire program. He wasn’t an easy interviewee, warming to some questions, but giving only brief replies to others. Sheinberg was more forthcoming. But by the end, both of them were comfortable and Sheinberg joked, “Now we’d like to turn the camera around so we can ask you some questions.”
JK and DH Like all studios, Universal has its hierarchy, and there’s a pecking order for getting things done. We knew that as outsiders, we needed some top-flight muscle to cut through the red tape, otherwise, requests for screening cassettes, photos, research files, etc. would take months. We couldn’t afford any delays since we were on a budget and a strict timetable.
Sid Sheinberg sent out a memo to the ten thousand department heads at Universal Studios in California, Florida, Europe, and New York, directing them to inform their staffs that this project was to be given priority status. It worked like a charm.
However, that wasn’t the only perk that came with having the highest-level executives as allies. Towards the end of one of our trips to Los Angeles, Universal Television Chairman, Tom Wertheimer, offered us a rare opportunity: to be flown back to New York on the studio’s private jet. Never before or since have we had that experience. We were picked up at our hotel and taken to the Burbank airport where the twin-jet Gulfstream IV was waiting on the tarmac. The aircraft’s tail number was N315MC, and we discovered that it was more than just coincidence that Lew Wasserman’s birthday was March 15th (and, oddly enough, Universal’s founder, Carl Laemmle, had opened the gates to Universal City on March 15th, 1915).
David and Joan on steps of Universal’s corporate jet.
Burbank Airport, CA, 1995. Authors’ collection.
DH The interior of the plane was furnished with sofas and plush chairs, and in addition to the pilot and co-pilot, there was another engineer who also served as the steward, looking after our every need. We were on board with some studio executives who had to stop in San Jose for a meeting before going on to New York. When we landed in San Jose, two limos were waiting: one took the executives to their meeting and the other took us sightseeing. We stopped at a few shops and bought souvenirs and, about ninety minutes later, headed back to the airport.
The pilot invited me to sit in the cockpit during take-off, and it was thrilling. And several hours later, when we were about to land at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey, Joan was equally as thrilled when she was asked to be in the cockpit for the descent and landing. Once again, two limousines were waiting on the tarmac: one to take the executives to their hotel, and the other to take us to our respective homes.
I told Joan, “Let’s not get too used to all this pampering, or we’ll never be able to fly coach again.”
JK The Universal Story was hosted by Richard Dreyfuss. Sheinberg chose him from a list I discussed with him in a phone conversation that lasted about twenty-five minutes. When Blair heard about it, he said, “You talked for twenty-five minutes? Sid is known for thirty-second calls. He’s not a guy who chats on the telephone.”
“Well, he did with me. And his choice was Dreyfuss. He said, ‘Go with Ricky. He’s smart; he’s in one of our most important movies, Jaws, among others; and he cares about Hollywood history.’”
Fortunately, Richard was our first choice too. We’d met him when he agreed to be interviewed for the show about James Stewart. Back then he had impressed us with his detailed knowledge of films and the motion picture business. He is a true movie buff.
I called his assistant, Audrey Bamber, and told her we were inviting him to host and narrate the program about Universal, and that he was not only our choice, but Sid Sheinberg’s as well. We’d need him for four days of shooting on the Universal lot plus two days of narration. And we’d like to meet and talk with him before the shoot to go over the script. He called the next day and accepted the offer.
I asked him, “Do you prefer to be called Ricky?”
“Why?”
“Because that’s the name Sid Sheinberg used.”
“He probably called me that because Steven Spielberg does, and they’re good friends. But everyone else calls me Richard.”
Richard Dreyfuss filming introduction to Jurassic Park sequence for The Universal Story.
Universal City, CA, 1995. Authors’ collection.
JK and DH The story of Universal was right up his alley. He relished learning about its founder, Carl Laemmle, and how Laemmle eventually lost the studio when he borrowed money to finance a sound version of Show Boat. He was so sure the picture would be a hit that
he put up his studio as collateral for the loan. As luck would have it, the production fell badly behind schedule, and when the loan repayment became due, Laemmle lost his gamble—and Universal Pictures. When Show Boat was finished and released, it was indeed a big hit, but it was too late. By then, the film—and Universal—belonged to a bank, Standard Capital.
But there were portions of the script to which Richard objected. He felt that some of it, especially the more recent history, sounded too promotional and he said, “I don’t want to be part of just a puff piece.” Neither did we, so his comments were particularly helpful. And he kept reminding us to include phrases about the studio being “big business,” with its eye always on how much money their films, the tour, etc. were making.
DH One of the locations we used was Stage 28, the oldest on the lot. It was built in 1924 for the original The Phantom of the Opera and contains an exact replica of the interior of the Paris Opera House, which has also been used as a “theater set” for many films since. We arranged to have Richard wear a tux and sit in one of the boxes as he talked about Phantom.
The day before the shoot, our production manager came to me with a problem. “We have to re-arrange our schedule. The studio’s cleaning crew found fleas in the curtains of the opera house boxes, so the stage has to be fumigated.”
We all agreed that it was best not to mention the problem to Richard—and we almost got away with it.
Unfortunately, as a studio car was bringing him there the next day, the driver said, “I hope they got rid of all the fleas.”