My Life as a Mankiewicz

by Tom Mankiewicz

  He turns around with a look of fury, suddenly grabs a gun from an extra's holster, and fires a blank at me! “You're fired! Get out of here!”

  I drive back to Moab. I'm up in my room, packing, wondering how I'll ever explain this to Dad. The phone rings. Miracle of all miracles—it's Duke. “I heard what you did out there. Thanks. I'm going out to see what that Hungarian piece of shit's doing with my cattle. See you in the morning.”

  “I don't think so, Duke. He fired me.”

  “Hell, by the time I'm through with him, he won't even remember that. See you tomorrow.”

  The next day I go back to work. Perhaps Curtiz does remember, but he doesn't say a word about it for the rest of the film.

  I'm eighteen years old and still a virgin. There's a very attractive actress in the cast named Joan O'Brien. She worked with Wayne in his previous film, The Alamo, which he directed. She and some children are the only survivors at the end of the movie. For some reason she seems to take a keen interest in me. I'm very flattered. We have dinner one night, following which she asks me to come up to her room. It's an amazing evening. I'm “all thumbs” at what I'm trying to do for the first time, and she is wonderfully helpful, understanding, and kind. Our “relationship” continues for the last few weeks of filming. It seems there are no secrets on location, something I found to be totally accurate years later. The stuntmen dub me “Wrangler Tom.” When I come on the set wearing one of my brother's shirts, which I mistakenly packed and which is much too large for me, they marvel at how much weight I've lost since I met Joannie. I'm still deeply grateful to Joan O'Brien. I couldn't have had a warmer, more attractive, and understanding teacher.

  Boola Boola

  Thinking of my time at Yale (1959–1963) reawakens so many rich memories: professors who opened cultural, political, and ethical doors for me; classmates from every conceivable background—half the student body was there on scholarship. New Haven was also within inhaling distance of New York, so I could go home on weekends whenever I felt like it. After Mother's death, we'd moved to a four-story townhouse on Seventy-First Street between Park and Lexington Avenues. It had its own elevator and a little garden. Chris was attending Columbia University and living uptown. We were a family of three guys now: Dad, Chris, and me. Adelaide Wallace, Dad's secretary for more than thirty years, occupied a small office on the ground floor. She was, in effect, the female component of the family. Addie was sharp, funny, loyal, and helpful. Everyone loved her. Things finally seemed to be calming down for me at last. But not for long.

  Bridget Hayward

  Bridget Hayward was the younger daughter of Leland Hayward and Margaret Sullavan—blond, emotionally fragile, and attractive to the point of being ethereal. I fell desperately in love with her. She was in her early twenties.

  I was a smitten eighteen-year-old college sophomore staring at an age gulf that effectively made her unattainable. Because of that, I loved her more. To me she was as magical as a character in A Midsummer Night's Dream. Bridget was troubled enough to have earlier been committed to the Austen Riggs Center, something I either wasn't aware of or ignored.

  Her older sister, Brooke, also became a friend. Unlike Bridget, Brooke was knockout glamorous, outgoing, and a sought-after photographic fashion model with acting aspirations. She has remained a good friend of mine over many years, especially in California after I moved back and she'd married Dennis Hopper. My obsession with Bridget was well documented by Brooke in her best-selling family autobiography, Haywire, which also became a highly rated TV miniseries. It's a wonderful read, beautifully written, and if anyone thought the Mankiewicz family had its emotional problems, we were pikers compared to the Haywards. Leland, a legendary agent and producer, was Brooke and Bridget's father. Their mother, Maggie Sullavan, had committed suicide. There was a younger brother, Bill. He too had once been committed to Riggs. He tried to straighten himself out by doing a stint as a paratrooper, then had a brief romance with the movies, attaching himself to Dennis Hopper and Peter Fonda on Easy Rider. In 2008 he put a bullet in his head and killed himself.

  As fate would have it, Bridget struck up a relationship with a young director named Bill Francisco who taught at the Yale drama school and staged productions at the Williamstown Summer Theater in Massachusetts. I took courses in the drama school as an undergraduate, and Bill invited me up to Williamstown one summer as his assistant. Bridget came up as well, working as an apprentice. Bill was smart and talented, but he was also clearly gay, so I felt free to continue my fantasies about her. Bridget took her job seriously and worked hard, seemingly trouble free until one night at a cast party in a Williams College fraternity house. It was late, she'd had a little to drink. We were sitting together at the top of a staircase when suddenly, in mid-sentence, her eyes rolled back into her head. She called out for her mother, then collapsed and pitched forward down the stairs, unconscious, the victim of what looked like some sort of catatonic fit. A doctor was called. Bridget was taken back to her room and medicated. I sat on the carpet outside her door all night.

  Later, back in New York, Brooke and I visited Bridget in her apartment one day. The two of them began negotiating over some belongings that Maggie had left them in her will. I remember Brooke asking Bridget what she wanted in trade for two small paintings she had. “The only way you're going to get these paintings is when I die,” Bridget said. A few weeks later I returned to my room at Yale after having dinner. My roommate had left a note on the table in big letters: “Call your father, Brooke Hayward, and your cousin Josie. Very important!” A sense of dread instantly shot through me. That combination of messages could only mean one thing. I decided to call Josie first: “Hi, it's me.”

  “Bridget's dead, kid. I'm so sorry.” Another suicide. But this time I felt no sense of relief as I had after Mother died. Only a huge hole in my heart, a loss from which I thought I'd never recover.

  The funeral was held at a Park Avenue cathedral. I went to it with Dad and sat on the aisle. I remember some of the speakers: Hank Fonda, Josh Logan—the entire eastern show business clique was fully represented. I kept my head lowered during the entire ceremony. My tears were flowing so freely they made a small puddle on the floor. Then it was over. The immediate family left first. As they passed by, I remember—I'll always remember—Leland stopping, looking down at me, then placing his hand on my shoulder and giving it a gentle squeeze. It was such a kind gesture. I'll never forget him for it.

  Williamstown

  The Williamstown Summer Theater was a wonderful experience for me. A new production opened every week featuring first-rate talent on and off the stage. It was so celebrated in those days that a correspondent would broadcast live from in front of the theater on The Today Show. I worked with so many young and gifted talents there, some of whom remain friends even now. John Badham (director of Saturday Night Fever, War Games, and Stakeout) was building sets. Peter Hunt (Tony Award winner for directing 1776 on Broadway) was the lighting designer. Arthur Rubenstein (composer of many fine film scores) led the orchestra in the pit when we did a musical. Add to them a young Dick Cavett, his talented wife, Carrie Nye, the future actor/director/playwright Austin Pendleton, Sam Waterston, and the guest stars who came up from New York and you had a totally enjoyable creative cocktail.

  A young actress named Suzanne Pleshette was making her name on Broadway and came up to play the lead in Two for the Seesaw. She was being flown to the tiny airport in Bennington, Vermont, just across the border. I was deputized to pick her up. I borrowed Peter Hunt's little white Triumph convertible. Her single-engine prop plane landed with a bit of trouble. It was extremely windy that day, and I soon gathered Suzy had been bouncing around like that all the way up from New York. The plane door opened. Suzy walked unsteadily down the steps looking slightly green. I introduced myself. She gestured off at the pilot, who was still inside the cockpit. “That cocksucker hit every goddamn air pocket for two fucking hours. Jesus Christ, I couldn't even take a fucking piss, there's no god
damn toilet in there!” My eyes popped open. I'd actually never heard a woman talk like that. She kept it up all the way back to Williamstown. Suzy was a terrific actress, a warm woman with a God-given earthy sense of humor. In the decades to come, I'd run into her often. I'd always smile and whisper, “How the fuck are you, bitch?” She'd grin: “Still a prick, huh? Jesus fucking Christ.” She wound up married to Tom Poston, a delightful, talented man. What great laughs the two of them must have had together. Suzy died at much too young an age.

  Dad and Moss Hart came up to visit Williamstown one night. For all of those eying a future on the stage or screen, it was quite a big deal. I had a small part in the production that was playing, and I tried extra hard with the few lines I had. I thought I was a pretty good actor. I even had the occasional youthful fantasy of making a career out of it. That is, until I asked Dad what he thought of my performance: “Tom, I've always told you to be anything you want to be, a dentist, a cab driver, whatever. But I'm begging you. Eat with them, sleep with them, laugh with them, marry them, divorce them, but for God's sake, don't be one. With your personality I can't imagine what would be worse, if you were a big success or a total flop.”

  Years later I was having a terrible time revising a screenplay of mine. I said to him, only half joking: “And you talked me out of acting.”

  “No, I didn't. If you'd have really wanted to be an actor, you'd have told me nicely to go fuck myself and gone ahead with it. There's so much painful rejection involved with that profession. If you don't really want it, if you're not convinced you can't live without it, stay away.”

  Back to Yale

  Going to Yale had a certain cachet in those days. The “Big Three” were Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. It was hard not to feel a tiny bit of snobbish entitlement as a “Yalie.” In my junior year President John F. Kennedy was the speaker at graduation. After receiving academic honors he rose and said: “It might be said now that I have the best of both worlds: a Harvard education and a Yale degree.” What a charmer. And what a hero to my generation.

  My social life was blossoming. I fell in love often, which led me to commit one of the most ham-handed, pretentious teenage mistakes of my life. I'm still embarrassed by it. I had the hots for a beautiful girl at Bennett Junior College, and the feeling seemed to be reciprocal. I knew Dad was going to be out of town for Saturday night on one particular weekend. I arranged for her to meet me at our house in the city. I had money saved up from my allowance. Where could I take her to dinner? Question: Where did Dad go to dinner? Answer: The 21 Club, one of the most exclusive restaurants for the New York power elite at the time.

  God help me, I called 21: “This is Mr. Mankiewicz. I'd like a table tomorrow night.”

  “Our pleasure, Mr. Mankiewicz. What time?”

  The next night, we arrived at 21. It was packed. One booth against the wall was conspicuously empty. I identified myself to the maître d', who looked puzzled, then reluctantly seated us. The dinner was fabulous. I paid cash. We made wonderful love back at the house. Any and all physical love was wonderful then. She left to go back to Bennett early Sunday morning. I stayed behind. Dad walked into the house late that afternoon and headed for his study. I joined him. “Hi, Dad, welcome back.”

  “Thanks. Oh, by the way, Tom, did you by any chance have dinner at 21 last night?”

  Fuck! How did he know? I turned beet red and became instantly defensive. “It was money I saved from my allowance. Okay, okay, I guess I knew when I said Mr. Mankiewicz they'd think…I mean, I've never even eaten at 21.”

  “Nineteen years old and you've never eaten at 21? That's amazing. Don't worry, I'm not mad.”

  “You're not?”

  “No, I just have one question because I'm worried about your future.”

  “What is it?”

  “Where are you going to eat when you're successful?”

  Cleopatra

  In some ways the most pivotal film Dad ever made—it changed his professional life, and not necessarily for the better. It became a burr under his creative saddle and an unpleasant memory from which he never really recovered.

  First things first: Elizabeth Taylor had received the highest amount of money any actor, male or female, had ever been paid for a film—$1 million. At the time Cleopatra started shooting, Dad was working on an adaptation of Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet. He intended to write and direct a single movie using all four books. Cleopatra's original director was Rouben Mamoulian, an older man, competent and respected, but perhaps not the sort to get your creative blood pounding. Peter Finch was playing Julius Caesar. Stephen Boyd (Messala in Ben-Hur) was Mark Antony. Shooting had begun in London with almost immediate critical creative problems. Depending on who you talked to it was either that Mamoulian couldn't handle Elizabeth or a production of that size, or that the script was never really right, take your pick. After approximately twenty minutes of film was already in the can, shooting shut down when Mamoulian quit or was fired, probably a combination of both. What Fox apparently didn't realize at the time was that in addition to her unprecedented salary, Elizabeth had director approval. She approved only two: Dad and George Stevens, who'd directed her in A Place in the Sun and Giant. If Fox didn't get one of them, they'd have to shut down permanently. George Stevens had a problem: he was about to start production on a little film called The Greatest Story Ever Told. That train was already headed down the track and couldn't be stopped. That left Dad. Fox was over a barrel.

  Elizabeth and Dad had stayed in touch since Suddenly, Last Summer. He adored her. She felt she'd given her finest performance in that film. Somehow, a deal had to be made. Cleopatra was the antithesis of a Joseph L. Mankiewicz film. A sprawling historical epic with no biting social commentary exchanged in small, sophisticated living rooms. He asked Fox if they would shut down until someone (at first, not him) revised the screenplay. No, they wanted to shoot right away. They were cast, huge sets had been built in England—all systems were go. Dad was tempted. He wanted to work with Elizabeth again and realized that her right of director approval might result in his getting a huge deal. Still, it was the wrong kind of film for him to make. He'd always trusted Mother's opinion on career matters. I'm convinced if she'd still been alive, he wouldn't have done it.

  Fox finally made Dad an offer he couldn't refuse. They'd buy his independent company (Figaro) from him. This would pay for his services and give them ownership of The Barefoot Contessa and I Want to Live, a successful film starring Susan Hayward (she won an Oscar) that Robert Wise had directed for the company. Dad and NBC were fifty-fifty partners in Figaro. The offer was for $2.5 million. Dad would get half. After paying capital gains taxes, he would net over $1 million, which actually meant he'd be getting more than Elizabeth. No director had ever been paid that much before. The idea of taking on Cleopatra was getting more irresistible every day.

  I remember seeing the twenty minutes or so of film Mamoulian shot with Dad in a New York screening room. He was a big fan of Peter Finch and intended to keep him. A close-up of Stephen Boyd flashed onto the screen. “Who's that?” Dad asked.

  “That's Stephen Boyd. He's playing Mark Antony.”

  “No he's not,” came Dad's reply.

  Before shooting could begin, Elizabeth became desperately ill. A tracheotomy was performed on her neck to assist in her breathing. It would take her months to recover. There was no getting around it: now they had to shut down. The entire cast (except Elizabeth) was suspended or let go. Dad told Peter Finch that if he were available, he'd love to have him play Caesar when they started up again. Stephen Boyd was history. Brando was Dad's first choice for Antony. Marlon had just started shooting Mutiny on the Bounty in the South Pacific, another film that had replaced its director and looked as if it would never end. Richard Burton was bought out of the Broadway musical Camelot, in which he was playing King Arthur. Peter Finch was just about to shoot the title role in The Trials of Oscar Wilde and was unavailable. Rex Harrison came aboard to do his third film
for Dad, playing Julius Caesar.

  It was nonsensical to shoot in England. Dad was astounded that huge Roman and Egyptian exterior sets had been constructed in a country where it could rain for months before even colder and wetter winters. He moved the production to Rome, to Cinecittà, where he'd shot The Barefoot Contessa. Cleopatra took over virtually all the space the large studio had to offer. Dad had tried to avoid taking over the screenplay, but after several false starts, he finally did so. Whether or not he was kidding himself, he'd become convinced that if George Bernard Shaw could write Caesar and Cleopatra and Shakespeare could write Antony and Cleopatra, there was real buried treasure in the project waiting to be unearthed. He planned on making two separate films, one to be released directly after the other. It was a laudable ambition he could never achieve. When Elizabeth was ready to shoot again, he'd barely scratched the surface of the films he wanted to make. But they had to shoot, and shoot they did, endlessly. Dad stayed up nights writing, trying to keep far enough ahead of what he was directing during the day. There wasn't anything like a final completed draft until the film had been in production for many months.

  Dad wanted the family with him. Chris had just graduated from Columbia. Dad gave him a job as a second assistant director on the film. I was still at Yale and could come over only on vacations. Fortunately for me, the film shot so interminably this meant two summer breaks and the intervening Christmas and Easter holidays. There have been countless documentaries and accounts of Cleopatra aired and published over the years. I have my own private memories.

  The Production

  The production was massive, on a scale never seen before. At times there were as many as five separate units either prepping or shooting simultaneously. The port of Alexandria was constructed near Anzio on the Mediterranean coast. While clearing the land, bulldozers struck buried, still-active land mines left over from the famous World War II landing. One worker was killed and several others wounded. The sheer size of the film alone would have been enough to generate worldwide publicity, but suddenly the ultimate wild card fell out of the deck: Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor had fallen in love. It was, at the time, the most internationally celebrated romance since Edward VIII abdicated the British throne for Mrs. Simpson. Both Elizabeth and Richard were already married to other people. Their affair was publicly condemned by the Vatican. In Washington, D.C., a member of Congress took the floor to demand that Elizabeth (born in England) relinquish her American passport. There was virtually no publication of any kind anywhere that didn't feature the story on its cover, and more than once. Flocks of the press descended on Rome from all over the world. Art Buchwald announced in the Washington Post and Paris Tribune: “It used to be that one couldn't leave Rome without having seen the Colosseum and the Roman forum. Now you can add having been on the set of Cleopatra.” Foreign dignitaries, even heads of state, were not uncommon. I remember President Sukarno of Indonesia, among others.