My Life as a Mankiewicz

by Tom Mankiewicz

  Suddenly, Carol and I were once again alone at the table. Gee. Where the hell had David Frost gone? The check arrived. I looked down at it and gulped. It was more than $1,000 (this was in 1969). God, they'd all ordered expensive champagne. You know, you don't get a fee up front to write a Broadway show—just a piece of what it grosses. I'd been living off what little capital I had for months. Reluctantly, I pulled out my American Express card. And then came divine intervention in the form of a human hand—the hand of Vincent Sardi, who had clearly seen everything that had been going on at my table. He plucked the check out of my hand and smiled: “Thank you for your contribution to the theater, Mr. Mankiewicz. Please come back to us again soon.” It was as classy a gesture as I've ever received in my life.

  I returned to my beach house in a deep depression. I didn't call people or answer the phone. I was almost broke. My last two projects had been a perverted surfing movie and a flop Broadway show. After a couple of days there was a knock on my door. It was dear Natalie Wood. “You're going to have to come out sometime, Mank. Did you ever see The Burning Hills with me and Tab Hunter? I had to go out to lunch the day after it opened.”

  I started to feel better. My phone rang. It was my agent, Malcolm Stuart. “How'd you like to write the next James Bond film, Mank?”

  “Please don't fuck with me, Malcolm, I'm not in the mood.”

  “I'm serious. It's far from a sure thing, but Cubby Broccoli (the producer) wants to see you at his house tomorrow afternoon. I swear.”

  Unbeknownst to me, a series of circumstances had been set in motion by people I didn't even know that was about to radically change my life and career. Somewhere in the Great Beyond, “Pop” must have been smiling to himself. I was about to become (in show business terms, anyway) “somebody.”

  5

  The 1960s Gallery

  Milton and Ruth Berle

  Milton was smart, competitive, always “on,” an inveterate cigar smoker and great friend of the Sinatras, Frank in particular. His wife, Ruth, was strong willed, fearlessly funny, and very well may have extended Milton's life span by a decade. I remember a birthday party for Nancy Sinatra at her sister Tina's house. Milton and Ruth were there, as were Frank, Jack Haley Jr., I, and several others. I was sitting next to Nancy on a couch when Frank gave her his present. It was a box that contained a smaller box, which contained an even smaller box, which contained a check. Nancy's eyes widened: “Oh, Daddy…”

  She passed the check to me. I looked at it. Wow! Ten thousand dollars. I looked again: no, I'd missed an extra zero, no, two extra zeroes. Stunned, I passed the check to Ruth Berle, who looked at it: “How about that,” she said. “It was my birthday last week and Milton gave me a sweater.”

  Milton Berle and Steve Lawrence

  Milton was widely reputed to have had one of the largest penises in show business. Steve Lawrence (a delightful human being, an underrated actor, and a great friend of Milton's) told me this story: Steve and Eydie Gormé were going on a sold-out concert tour and asked Milton to join them. Milton would open the show, then Steve and Eydie would perform, and then the three of them would finish up together. Milton agreed on a price. Steve asked for the name of his agent or lawyer. Milton told him to forget the middleman—just send the papers directly to him and he'd sign them. After the opening concert they congregated back in Steve and Eydie's dressing room.

  Steve: “All right, Milton, let's see it.” “See what?”

  “Your penis.”

  “Are you crazy? I'm not going to show you my penis.”

  Steve pulled out their agreement. “It's right here in your contract, Milton, on page 3.” He read: “Upon completion of the first engagement, Mr. Berle shall show Mr. Lawrence his penis.” Milton's eyes bulged. Steve persisted: “This is a legal document, Milton, signed by you and notarized—I expect you to live up to your contract.” Milton absolutely refused.

  Steve repeated his request after every concert with no luck. Months later, he and Eydie were at a party at Milton's house. After dinner, with much booze freely flowing, Milton suddenly caught Steve's eye. He gave him the high sign and gestured with his finger to follow him into the next room. Once they were alone, Milton silently dropped his pants. Steve stared: the penis was enormous. Milton smiled, then said: “And it's—at rest.”

  Bobby Darin

  I've been fortunate enough to have seen many great entertainers in my life. Right up there with Sammy Davis Jr., Judy Garland, Marcel Marceau, and Frank Sinatra I would rank Bobby Darin. If you're surprised, you probably never had the good fortune to see him onstage.

  I met Bobby through Peter Stone, who'd suggested to both of us that we'd like each other. Peter was right. Bobby and I became fast friends immediately. When Bobby wanted something, he got it. Sometimes through bullying, but mostly through seduction. If Bobby wanted you to like him, well goddamnit, you loved him. He was sharp as a tack, infectious, and funny, and pursued friendships with the same energy he spent performing. He'd just divorced Sandra Dee. I had a house at the beach. He loved the beach. I was trapped in town late many nights. He'd just bought a place on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills. We exchanged spare house keys and used each other's homes when we felt like it. Bobby had a serious heart condition. He knew he wasn't going to live long. That's why everything had to be at warp speed for him, including friendships. At that time Bobby wanted to learn how to play tennis so he could become part of the group who played around town. I got him a lesson with Alex Olmedo, the pro at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Two days later Bobby proudly showed me three different kinds of rackets, wrist bands, books on the history of tennis, and several different kinds of tennis shoes. He always jumped into the deep end of the pool. He needed to know everything right away. He went back to Alex for more lessons, then asked how long it would take to become a good social tennis player. Alex told him if he kept at it, maybe within a year. Bobby quit. He decided it would take too long. Also, he felt if he wasn't going to be really good—really, really good—it wasn't worth doing at all.

  Bobby wrote terrific songs, both music and lyrics, some of them big hits. He played the gut guitar especially well. When he was about to go on the road at one point, he wanted to play a steel guitar in his act. I remember him practicing so furiously that his fingers bled. He told me they had to bleed so that they could heal and calluses would form. If you didn't have thick calluses, you couldn't play a steel guitar worth shit.

  Bobby played in a western called Gunfight in Abilene. He took lessons from a quick-draw professional so he could become the fastest gun in southern California. Never mind that he didn't really have to be able to draw a gun that quickly. He needed to know that he was the best and practiced until he felt that no one was faster.

  I think Bobby always felt like an outsider in life. Someone looking through the window, wanting desperately to get inside where the others seemed so safe and warm and happy. This feeling was reflected in his best performances as an actor: Too Late Blues, Pressure Point (playing a racist opposite Sidney Poitier), and Captain Newman, M.D., where he played an emotionally troubled soldier opposite Gregory Peck and was Oscar nominated for Best Supporting Actor.

  Knowledge and “class” were important to Bobby. He grew up as Walden Robert Cassotto in New York and Philadelphia, never knowing his father and with no formal education to speak of. His mother raised him on welfare. He marveled at the fact I'd gone to Exeter and Yale, and wanted to know all about the experience. At the time I got to know him he was having an affair with Diane Hartford, the tall, beautiful, if somewhat vapid wife of Huntington Hartford, heir to the A&P fortune and owner of Paradise Island in the Bahamas. Diane was crazy about Bobby and not shy about carrying on the affair in public, something he reveled in. This was Bobby as “the Great Gatsby,” the kid from the wrong side of the tracks who didn't really “belong” sticking it to the upper class. I never thought Bobby cared for Diane as much as he did for the fact that she was Mrs. Huntington Hartford. If Bobby couldn't be in that “clas
s,” at least he could irritate the hell out of it.

  Bobby liked to organize other people he considered to be at loose ends in life. He would host Christmas Eve dinners at which he'd collect five or six guys: some old friends, some that had worked with him, and on two occasions—me. At those dinners Bobby was host, Santa, and Papa, all rolled into one.

  In 1968 Bobby fell passionately in love with the persona of Bobby Kennedy. The senator was running for president, and without having met him, the other Bobby felt he was his soul mate. I could see the parallels: As a politician, Bobby Kennedy was like the champion of the little guy. Both of them were quick to have sudden flashes of anger, which died just as quickly. Both were headstrong and compassionate at the same time. My cousin Frank was Bobby Kennedy's press secretary. Through Frank and Paul Ziffren, a powerful attorney and member of the Democratic National Committee who was a neighbor of mine at the beach, I got Bobby introduced to the Kennedy campaign. Bobby appeared with Senator Kennedy several times. He performed to raise money for him and occasionally flew with him on the campaign plane. He was totally devastated when the senator was assassinated that fateful night at the Ambassador Hotel. Bobby never truly got over it. Disillusioned and desperately wanting to fulfill what he thought to be his new persona, he made a lot of changes.

  Bobby began calling himself “Bob” Darin. Gone was the big band/rock ‘n' roll swinging performer. He performed solo with a guitar, singing contemporary folk songs, some of which he'd written. Needless to say, his traditional audience was unappreciative of this change in style. He composed and distributed an album titled Walden Robert Cassotto. Just Bobby and the guitar. It contained ten or so songs he'd written. Some of them, like “Long Line Rider,” were absolutely first-rate.

  He later moved to northern California. I didn't see him with the same frequency. I remember visiting him in New York when he was performing at the Copa. He knew I was coming and told me I'd be in for a big surprise. The surprise to me was not that he was singing folk songs—I knew he would be—but that the audience was impossibly rude, yelling “Sing ‘Mac the Knife'!” and “Where's the band?” Through it all, Bobby kept right on singing, just him and the guitar, being the man he was determined to be. We had dinner after, then went back to his suite at the Pierre Hotel. Bobby's folky stance onstage did not extend to his living arrangements. I remember walking into his bedroom and seeing half a dozen pairs of ripped blue jeans on the bed ready to be packed, all of them ripped in precisely the same way.

  Time was soon running out for Bobby. His heart problem had increased dramatically. He went to the world-famous Dr. Debakey at Baylor University in Waco, Texas, for open-heart surgery. I hadn't seen or talked to him for maybe a month or two after that. I assumed he was back in northern California. Then one night I went to a party given by one of the Everly Brothers. It was outside in a garden, at night. Suddenly, there was Bobby. He motioned me over. We hugged. He told me he was going to need a second operation. I asked him, was Debakey sure? Bobby nodded. At that time no one had ever survived two open-heart surgeries. Debakey told him if he didn't have the operation, he'd be dead within the year. If he did have the operation, the odds were three to one he'd die on the table. I was stunned. My eyes started to glass over. Bobby suddenly grinned, reached out, and squeezed my cheek between his fingers. Then he winked and gave me a kiss. It was the last time I ever saw him. He was thirty-seven years old.

  Henry Fonda

  The quintessential American actor and star of the first film I worked on after college, The Best Man. In the more than twenty features and twice as many television shows I've participated in since, I never worked with anyone as considerate, hard working, and professional. He was a hero of sorts to me, perhaps because of the films I saw him in while growing up, or perhaps merely because of that warm, exploding grin he had that emotionally undressed you. Hank called me “Tommy.” He seemed so wonderfully uncomplicated. It never occurred to me that someone who'd been divorced five times must have had more than a few ups and downs in his personal life and issues with his children as well. But, quite simply, he was Young Mr. Lincoln or Wyatt Earp to me.

  I was everyone's assistant on The Best Man (primarily to Larry Turman and Stuart Millar, the producers), and my $125-a-week salary rated me a small office without a secretary. Part of my duties was to screen actors for smaller parts and send my candidates upstairs. One day there was a knock on the door. Hank opened it and entered, clutching a copy of the New York Times Sunday magazine. It was open to a picture of a beautiful blond woman in an ad. “Tommy,” he said, “you know how we don't see the character of my wife anywhere during the film until the very end when she walks into the convention with me? She doesn't even have any lines.” I nodded. “I want this woman to play her. Can you find out who she is and get her out here?”

  I stared. “Sure, I guess…Let me make some calls.”

  “Thanks. Let me know, okay?” He was gone. I sat there, infinitely shocked that Henry Fonda might want to put someone in his movie just because he wanted to screw her. She got the part, of course. And the rest, I suppose, was up to him.

  Months later I was at a small gathering at John and Linda Foreman's house. John, who later became a prolific producer, was Hank's agent at the time. Hank had had a bit to drink that night and suddenly started railing about his daughter, Jane, who had famously lived in New York with a homosexual actor followed by a homosexual acting coach. Hank was convinced she was on some weird campaign to convert gay America and that all she really needed was to be fucked by “a real guy.” He turned to a twenty-one-year-old Tom Mankiewicz. “Tommy, would you like to fuck my daughter?”

  “Hank, I would love to fuck your daughter. But I'm not sure Jane would let me.”

  Famous actors are always asked if there's any part they wish they'd played but didn't. Hank told me about what must have been a horrifying experience: He and John Foreman attended an early performance of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, then the most celebrated play to have hit Broadway in years. Hank was devastated by it, and in particular the performances of Arthur Hill and Uta Hagen as George and Martha. At intermission Hank said to John: “I've got to play this part. It's as if George was written for me. And Arthur Hill is so fucking good.”

  John was unimpressed. “Jesus, Hank, it's just a bunch of nasty characters hurling insults at each other, what's the big deal?”

  After the performance, Hank said to John: “I'm going backstage to congratulate Arthur Hill.”

  “But Hank, you don't even know Arthur Hill.”

  “Oh, somehow I think he'll see me…”

  Hank started down the alley to the stage door. John stopped him. “I might as well tell you now since I know Arthur Hill knows—you were offered this part.” Hank stared, frozen. “I read it and thought it was a showy piece of crap and I turned it down.”

  Hank told me: “I loved John, he'd been a wonderful agent and friend to me for years, but if I'd ever been capable of strangling another human being, that would have been the moment to do it.”

  Judy Garland

  I've already mentioned Dad's lengthy affair with Judy Garland at MGM. It continued one way or another for a long time, even after both were married. Around 1962, I was sleeping in my room at Yale one night. The phone rang around 3:00 A.M. I picked it up, groggy. A voice at the other end said faintly, “Tom…is this Tom?”

  “Yes.”

  “Tom, this is Judy Garland.”

  At first I thought someone was putting me on, but as she kept speaking I recognized the voice, slurred as it was. She sounded in trouble and asked for Dad's number. I gave it to her. Half an hour later my phone rang again. It was Dad, pissed because I'd given Judy his number. “She gets hopped up on pills and starts calling people. She won't get off the phone, she won't seek proper help, and those two bastards who pretend to be taking care of her, Freddie Fields and David Begelman, are robbing her blind.” Dad changed his home number the following day.

  I finally met Judy about
three years later. I was beginning life in Hollywood as a production assistant on The Best Man. One of the first people I met in L.A. was Guy McElwaine, at the time a press agent working for Jim Mahoney, among whose clients were Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland. Guy later went on to become a major agent and top executive at several studios. Judy was doing a television variety show at the time, directed by a young Canadian named Norman Jewison. (Years later, Norman became my neighbor in Malibu. He's a terrifically talented nice man who just won the Directors Guild Lifetime Achievement Award for films such as In the Heat of the Night and Moonstruck. Just recently, we had lunch at his beach house.) The musical supervisor on Judy's show was Mel Tormé, who had known her since their days at MGM and whom she loved and respected musically. Guy had mentioned to Judy that I was living in L.A. and that he knew me. “Oh,” she said, “bring him down, bring Tom Mankiewicz down, I want to meet him.”

  I went to CBS for the taping one night. When we arrived, I could see her motor home in a cavernous hallway. It had fake grass, a picket fence, and a little yellow brick road up to the door. Guy and I walked onto the set, where a packed audience had been waiting for Judy over an hour. The crowd was getting restless. Judy had apparently refused to leave her motor home, upset about something she wouldn't divulge. Even Norman and Mel couldn't get her out. Guy had an idea. He took me out into the hallway. We walked up the yellow brick road to her door and knocked. “Whoever it is, get the hell out of here, leave me alone!”