And I fell for it.
Within weeks I was taking horseback riding lessons in Wilton, learning how to fire a gun, and memorizing lines for my first western. All thanks to David.
If not the worst film I’ve ever done, in which I give one of the worst performances I’ve ever given, The Wrath of God, perfectly titled, certainly belongs in the top—or should I say bottom—three.
The best of that experience you can read about in my chapters on Rita and Bob. The worst was my performance, terrible dialogue, and a horse who hated me.
When the film finished, I returned to Connecticut, a mortgage, and unemployment. My calls to David were either returned five minutes before the end of the business day as his switchboard closed, or responded to by a secretary with a sinister but brilliant routine that went something like this:
“Mr. Langella. I have Mr. Begelman calling for you. Please hold.”
Sixty seconds would pass.
“Mr. Langella, I’m so sorry. Just as he was about to pick up, we had an emergency. May we get back to you?”
“Yes you may.”
Silence for days, then:
“Mr. Langella, are you all right? Did you not get Mr. Begelman’s message?”
“I’m fine. I didn’t get any message.”
“Well, shall I have him call you?”
“Is he available to speak now?”
“Not at the moment, I’m afraid.”
More silent days. I called him.
“Hello, it’s Mr. Langella, may I speak to Mr. Begelman please?”
“Of course.”
Sixty seconds pass.
“I’m so sorry, Mr. Langella, he’s behind closed doors. May we return?”
“Yes, thank you.”
Another few days pass.
“It’s Mr. Langella.”
“I’m so sorry, he had to make a quick trip to London. I’ll put you at the top of his return calls.”
These kinds of calls are by no means unusual occurrences in the actor/agent relationship. The difference today being the ubiquitous use of the word “actually.”
As in, for example:
“Is Mr. Begelman available?”
“Actually, I don’t have him at the moment.”
It appeared to me as if I was never going to have David again, so one afternoon from a phone booth near his office I called.
“Would you tell Mr. Begelman that I’m downstairs and would like to come up? It’s urgent!”
“Oh, of course, one moment, please.”
Silence for sixty seconds. Then David’s voice:
“Frank. My God you’re a hard man to get hold of. Are you okay?”
“Yes, David. Can I come up?”
“I’m dying to see you, but I’m just about to pick up on a conference call—don’t want to keep you waiting.”
“I’d be happy to wait.”
“I wouldn’t hear of it.”
“Can we have lunch?”
“You bet. I miss you. Gloria, what have I got?”
“You have next Tuesday.”
“Wonderful. I can’t wait. Gloria, make the arrangements. Frank—I want to tell you about something I hope you’ll consider, it’s . . .”
“Mr. Begelman, I’m so sorry, but you have Mr. Wasserman on two.”
“Oh Jeez. I better take that, Frank. I’ve been talking to Lew about something for you. See you Tuesday. Can’t wait.”
Standing at the bar in Raffles, a club downstairs at the Sherry Netherlands Hotel, David is writing something on a piece of paper. As I approach he says to the bartender:
“That’s the only name you’re allowed to tell me might be calling. Otherwise I don’t want to be disturbed during lunch with Mr. Langella.”
We’re shown to a table. As we sit down, he reaches for my hand and says: “There’s no one I’d rather be having lunch with today than you.”
“David, are you all right?”
“It’s been a bad morning. I had to put both my parents in an old-age facility. My mom’s incontinent and my father’s heart is giving out.”
“I’m sorry.”
“No, no. Being with you is good for me. You look wonderful. Mitch loved working with you.”
“David, you know that picture is all I’ve done since I came with you and—”
“Mr. Begelman,” said the bartender, “you have a call, sir.”
“Is it the name I told you?”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’m sorry, Frank. I’ve got to take this.” There was a telephone conveniently plugged in on our table. “Hello, Doctor.”
Long silence.
“Yes, yes.”
Silence.
“Yes, I’m on my way! Thank you.”
“What is it, David?”
“I don’t think my dad’s going to make it. I’ve got to go back out to the facility.”
He got up and gave me a long embrace.
“Pray for me,” he said. “Please call Gloria and we’ll reschedule soon.” To the waiter: “Give Mr. Langella whatever he wants and put it on my tab.”
“David, what about that project with Wasserman?”
“What? Oh . . . Not good enough for you!”
And he was gone. Not only from the restaurant, but from my life. I fired him that afternoon. He made no protest. And as far as I know, his father could still be alive.
Soon after, he was appointed head of Columbia Pictures, then masterminded a comeback for Judy Garland at Carnegie Hall, coaxing her back onto the stage and reportedly out of her clothes when off it. He then became the subject of a big scandal, accused of forging the signature of the actor Cliff Robertson on a $10,000 check in 1978. David was painted as the victim, and Cliff Robertson was rewarded for turning him in by being blackballed in Hollywood.
One night in 1995 at Matteo’s restaurant in Santa Monica, there he was seated across from me. I hadn’t seen or spoken with him for close to twenty years, but as I passed by his table on the way to the men’s room, he silently reached up, took my hand, pulled me down to him, kissed my cheek, and looked deep into my eyes with an injured smile. I continued on to the restroom.
Several weeks later, alone in his room at the Century Plaza Hotel, he shot himself in the head. I’d had no idea I meant that much to him.
JO VAN FLEET
“Atta girl!” Susan Hayward barked at Jo Van Fleet as Jo successfully stole a two shot in which they were sparring during the shooting of the 1955 film I’ll Cry Tomorrow.
“Susan taught me how to fight and stand up for myself,” Jo told me.
Tough. Tough. Tough. Tough as nails she was. A ball buster, my Italian uncles would have said. No one was going to get the best of her. Jo was one of the finest dramatic actresses of her time. She is most remembered now as James Dean’s mother in East of Eden and for receiving an Oscar nomination from only ten minutes onscreen at the end of Paul Newman’s Cool Hand Luke.
She ate our director for lunch and tried to have me as dessert. The year was 1966. I was appearing opposite the actress Gloria Foster in Garcia Lorca’s Yerma at Lincoln Center. The play was about to close and I was asked to reprise a role for television that I’d done off-Broadway in a play called Good Day, about a young man who applies to an old lady for a job and is slowly sapped of his youth and energy as she grows younger. My costar had been Nancy Marchand, who achieved her greatest success in The Sopranos but died in 2001 of the cigarettes she couldn’t leave alone.
At the time Jo was a big star and the network offered her Nancy’s role. I called Nancy and said:
“I don’t want to do it without you.”
“Don’t be an asshole,” she said, and hung up.
Jo was belligerent, hostile, and brilliant. She couldn’t put a foot wrong in the part. Her steely intelligence
and razor-sharp delivery suited the role perfectly.
“Good morning, Miss Van Fleet,” the director would say.
“What’s good about it?” Jo barked.
He made a suggestion:
“You want me to do what?”
I’d try a new move somewhere:
“Is he gonna do that?”
There wasn’t enough time for her to find all the depths of her character. There never is in television, but she worked tirelessly. She was a towering presence as an actress, but a woman so desperate for love, that all she could do was push away any kindness that came her way, for fear of admitting how much she needed it.
After we taped the show, I walked over and told her she was one of the greats.
“Yeah, yeah! Stop blowing smoke,” she said.
Years passed as she descended into a drunken recluse, making enemies of just about anybody who could give her a job and became virtually unemployable. She could often be seen wandering around the Upper West Side of New York, looking like a bag lady talking to herself.
In 1984, I was appearing opposite Dianne Wiest in the Arthur Miller play After the Fall. Jo came to a matinee and told the stage manager to come and get me. I changed quickly and found her sitting on the stage in one of the permanent benches on the set, looking out into the house. I stood in the door for a few seconds remembering her thrilling performance in Oh Dad, Poor Dad . . . some twenty-five years earlier and wondering what she must be thinking. And then I walked down the aisle to greet her.
“Hi Jo.”
“Hey, baby. Geez what a fucking crybaby Miller is.”
“Well, Marilyn was no picnic.”
“He didn’t have to marry her for Chrissakes.”
Dianne knew she was there and came through the house down the aisle to pay her respects. In her little-girl voice she said, “It’s such an honor—”
“Yeah thanks,” Jo said and cut her dead. Dianne excused herself and disappeared. When she was gone I said:
“Jo, you didn’t have to do that.”
“What?” she said.
“Treat my leading lady that way.”
“Don’t give me that shit. I’m your leading lady.”
She said nothing about my performance or the production; but sat there and railed against Arthur and his treatment of women in the play.
“The guy’s a chauvinist asshole,” she said.
It was now about 5:30 and I wanted to eat and take a nap before the evening performance. Jo fell silent and stared at the floor.
“Is there anything I can get you, Jo?”
“Yeah,” she said. “A job.”
ROBERT MITCHUM
Bob Mitchum was testing me. And if I didn’t pass, the next seven weeks in Mexico were going to be hell.
The Wrath of God was my first movie western and I was going to have to ride hard, shoot a gun, and act with the legendary Mr. Mitchum. My second day’s shooting would be with him. The action would require me to gallop full speed through a dusty town at the head of a gang of Mexican thugs, rear my horse in front of a church, command him up the steps, and bring him to a halt in the chapel, confronting Mr. Balls himself with my gun drawn.
It was 1972. This was only my third picture and I rode about as well as a six-month-old baby. I took a dozen lessons before I got to Mexico and I could stay on, stop and start, but I wasn’t fooling the wranglers.
“Fucking New York actors,” I’d hear muttered, as I spent most of my time in the saddle at a forty-five-degree angle, holding a gun about as convincingly as a nun.
I had managed the long gallop through town (eventually cut from the picture) pretty well and come up to the church door. All outdoor shots completed, I was to rehearse with Mitchum at the end of the day to prepare for shooting the scene inside the church the next morning.
Still in costume, dirty and tired from a full day, and uncharacteristically nervous, I watched Mitchum come strolling out of his trailer, wearing an oversized fur-lined hooded jacket, and take his place behind the pulpit, some script pages in his hand. Ralph Nelson, the director, introduced us.
“How do you do, sir,” I said.
“Hey,” he said to Ralph. “Proper, ain’t he?”
“Why don’t we have you enter on the horse, Frank,” Ralph said. “Do you want to take him up the steps yourself?”
“Yes,” I lied.
I mounted, kicked, and pushed, but my caballo did not want to pray. He came up to the steps but stopped dead. I could see Mitchum, at the end of the country church, standing by the pulpit waiting to say his first line. By my third attempt, he’d sat down on a tall camp chair to wait it out.
The wrangler said, “Why don’t you just walk him up the steps. We’ll work on it later.”
“No,” I said, circled round, and rode to the back of the square. Then I kicked hard and went into a gallop. We got to the steps, I kicked again, and up he sailed, carrying me and my balls to victory—short-lived as it was. I landed in the center of the church, shifted back to the center of the saddle, awkwardly drew my gun, feeling and looking about as comfortable as the New York stage actor I was.
My first line, shouted at Mitchum across the echoing hall, rang out:
“Priest!”
His response was to be:
“I am here, Tomas De La Plata,” my character’s name.
Instead, I heard:
“Yeah, motherfucker.”
A loud chorus of whoops and laughter came from the crew gathered around watching as I dismounted. I played the scene exactly as written, while Mitchum ad-libbed one profanity after another. I never laughed, never ad-libbed. Somehow I knew that if I allowed myself to find Mr. Mitchum funny or took on his dismissive attitude to the work, he’d own me. So I pressed on, speaking admittedly terrible dialogue with complete conviction. It was a tense and difficult ten minutes. When I said my last line, walked to my horse and started to mount, he said:
“Let’s run it again.” He then put down the pages and played the scene flawlessly, just like the Movie Star I had so admired. I’d passed.
From that day on I adored every minute I spent around Robert Mitchum. The epitome of a macho movie star, hard-drinking, drug-taking, and womanizing, he attracted every man on the film to do it with him. After a day of shooting, Mitchum partied until dawn. Coming to the set from an all-nighter, he showered in his trailer and worked all day. While the rest of the guys were vomiting or hungover, he was fresh as a daisy and ready for bear. I knew I could not handle those kinds of nights and did not join his coterie.
Mitch was an extremely generous man, flying in thousands of dollars of food from Chasen’s in Hollywood for a Friday night party, picking up the tab for one and all on those binges, and giving expensive gifts to the Mexican women who favored him.
But his greatest gift was his ability to just stand in front of the camera and “be.” He could memorize a full page of dialogue at a glance and play it perfectly in one take. I never saw him flub a line and he was a great mimic—devastatingly funny about men like David Lean, the director, ruthlessly mocking his preciousness about “the art of cinema,” loving to tell the story of coming up behind Lean while he was looking through the lens during the shoot of Ryan’s Daughter and sniffing about his head.
“What are you doing, Robert?” Mr. Lean asked.
“There seems to be a terrible odor of cunt about you, David,” Bob said.
And he would often pass by me, tossing off a casual one-liner, as in:
“Get out your pencil, Frank, and take this down. Herewith a list of the ten dullest actors in Hollywood. They are: Gregory Peck.” He whiled away his time spontaneously breaking into song, reading poetry, boozing, puffing, fucking, and sleeping.
I envied Mitch his easygoing, seemingly carefree, rangy masculinity. I was not, nor will I ever be, the kind of man he was. And by not t
rying, I established a rapport with him that I might not otherwise have had.
I do not presume to understand the reasons he developed a persona that presented to the world a man who cared very little about anything and just indulged his senses. I found him to be a man who, in fact, cared deeply, but chose not to display it. Most likely he found our profession somewhat unmanly. He did not suffer fools and was not unaware of how he was perceived. If you took the time to penetrate the laissez-faire attitude he adopted, he responded with warmth and compassion. Clark Gable had always been my favorite movie star but Mitch was giving him a run for his money. A nonjudgmental dad who seemed to practice tough love. And his no-shit cynical approach to the business of moviemaking was both instructive and delicious to watch.
He had a cool defiance of authority, insisting he return to his trailer to take a leak when it was five miles away from the place we were shooting. Each leak cost the company time and money until they got the message and brought his trailer nearer every setup, but still he took his time.
And further, he refused to wear squib packs, the small plastic bags of fake blood put under your costume to make it look as if you’d been shot.
“Use a fucking double,” he’d say, “I’ll be in my trailer,” costing the company more time and money. I never saw him raise his voice, be rude to an underling, or be unprepared.
The word on Robert Mitchum was that he was really a great actor who’d never gotten the right role in which to display his full talent. But I don’t think that was the case. He was a great movie star with a singular presence, but personally seemed, in my experience of him, to suffer from an ennui he couldn’t overcome. So he polluted himself with drugs and liquor, and relied on his formidable masculine sex appeal and quiet charisma. He was by no means a hack, but a sensitive man with a caring nature who had developed a deadpan delivery and an ability to stay afloat in the studio system.
One day, waiting to finish a ridiculous sequence in which he would fall on me while tied to a stone cross, thereby crushing me to death, I told him how much I liked a small film he’d done called Going Home.
“Thanks,” he said. “Great story, good kid, Jan-Michael Vincent. MGM pissed all over it. Dumped it.”
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