My Life as a Mankiewicz

by Tom Mankiewicz

  Chris said, “Oh, jeez guys, I'd love to, but I'm in an off-Broadway play.”

  Dick said, “Get your understudy to go on.”

  And Chris said, “I don't have an understudy.” It was a ninety-nine-seat house. In the late seventies, it was three dollars a ticket. So we bought the house for two nights to fly him to London.

  There was just something wonderful about Chris. He put on the Superman suit, and he was so nervous. He was sweating, and the sweat came through his Superman suit, his armpits, and Dick said to Yvonne Blake, the costume designer, “We'll have to take care of that. If he shoots on a hot day…”

  Chris hopped off onto the balcony and said, “Good evening, Miss Lane.” The minute he said, “Good evening, Miss Lane,” Geoffrey Unsworth, the cinematographer, turned and looked at me like, is this the man? Then Chris sat down and said, “I suppose you'd like to know a lot about me.” There was this wonderfully shy quality about him. He was testing with Holly Palance, Jack Palance's daughter. She lived in London and was a good actress. She helped us out by doing Lois Lane.

  At the end of the test, Dick and I looked at each other like, this is the guy. Dick said, “Okay, Chris, just hang in there for a second. Boy, this is really good. Chris, you're staying here for a while.”

  He said, “I can't do that because I've got an apartment in New York.”

  Dick said, “We'll bring your apartment here. We'll bring your girlfriend here, we'll buy out the rest of the run of the show. Where's your plane ticket?” He said it was in his jacket, and Dick ripped it up and said, “You're not going anywhere.”

  We sent the test back to Terry Semel at Warner Brothers and said, “This is the guy we want,” and they looked at it and said, “Great, go with him.”

  For General Zod, the villain, our first choice was Albert Finney. Finney was a star. We could work it out so that he could work for fifty days and not eight months. We met with Finney at Tramps, the big discotheque in London. They had a private room where you could hear the music but you could talk. Finney said he'd love to do it, and we said great. He said, “But here's the thing: I have to be off by five o'clock.” He was doing the British equivalent of summer stock in a town like Birmingham. He said, “I told them I would do it. They're doing eight plays, so the curtain goes up at eight o'clock, but to get there, I should leave by five or five thirty.”

  And Dick said, “I can't do that. I can't guarantee you. If we're going late one night, I can't let you go.” So he couldn't do it.

  Second choice was Christopher Plummer, who was the leading man at the National Theatre that year. I knew Chris. I got him over to the Connaught to meet with Dick. Chris had the same problem. He would do it but he was in the National Theatre. Dick and I didn't realize that that meant he was in almost every play that year. He was the leading man. Terence Stamp was our third choice. He had played Billy Budd onscreen, then he had gone a little cuckoo and gone to India to seek inner peace, but he'd come back. He was a terrific guy. Anybody's first choice. Valerie Perrine was signed and Ned Beatty, one of the most versatile actors in the world. In Network, he plays the head of the corporation. “You are fooling with the forces of nature!” And he could play the little guy who got buggered in Deliverance, and he could play a dummy like Otis. He could play anything.

  And then, there was the editor of the Daily Planet, Perry White.

  I knew Jason Robards had just won the Oscar for playing Ben Bradlee, editor of the Washington Post, in All the President's Men. I said to Dick, “You know who'd be a great idea for Perry White: Jason Robards. He's gruff like Perry White, and it would be a wonderful thing to go from Ben Bradlee to Perry White.”

  He said, “Great idea.”

  I called Jason up. I said, “I'm doing Superman, and I don't know if you're familiar with the comic strip, but there's a newspaper, the Daily Planet, and there's an editor.”

  Jason said, “You're doing Superman, the guy with the cape from the comic book?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why are you doing that?”

  “Well, Jason, it's going to be a terrific picture.”

  “You're doing the guy with the big S on his chest.”

  “That's right.”

  “And you're actually doing a film. This is a feature film.”

  “That's right, Jason. Marlon Brando and Gene Hackman are doing it.”

  He said, “Well, that's their problem.”

  I said to Dick, “I don't think Jason is going to do it.” There was that attitude, that this could only be a turkey.

  After Krypton, the only set that was ready was the Daily Planet. That was a big set. I was in a particularly difficult position because I was trying to write every scene that took place in the Daily Planet in Superman and Superman II even though I wasn't sure about a lot of things in Superman II. I had to get those scenes written because once you're in the Daily Planet, you've got to shoot the Daily Planet. Then you strike the set and that's it. You don't rebuild it. We were going to start on Monday in the Daily Planet. And on Wednesday, our Perry White arrived—it was Keenan Wynn, who was a wonderful actor, gruff. Famous as Colonel “Bat” Guano in Dr. Strangelove for saying, “You're going to answer to the Coca-Cola company,” when Peter Sellers asks him to shoot the Coca-Cola machine. Keenan Wynn arrived in London on Wednesday at Heathrow and promptly had a heart attack at the airport and was taken to the hospital. Thank goodness, he lived. But we were without a Perry White.

  Dick was calling people. Jesus, it's going to be Thursday tomorrow. We start shooting Monday. Jackie Cooper was on the list. Dick called him at home. “Hello?”

  “It's Dick Donner.”

  “How are you, Dick?”

  “I'm here with Tom Mankiewicz.”

  “Say hi to him.”

  Dick said, “How'd you like to play Perry White in Superman?”

  He asked, “When does that start?”

  “Uh, Monday.”

  “How long am I going to be there?”

  “I don't know, four months, six months, eight months. A while. But you're not in everything. You're at the Daily Planet. Probably take a vacation then.”

  Cooper said, “But Monday. What am I offered?”

  Dick said, “Don't worry, we'll work it out. It'll be fair. Oh, very important, Jackie. Do you have a passport? If you don't have a passport, we don't have time, you can't play Perry White.”

  Jackie said, “Hold on.” He went running upstairs and came back and said, “Yeah, I got a passport.”

  Dick said, “Great, you're Perry White. Get your ass on a plane tonight.” That's how Jackie Cooper got it, and he played Perry White in all four Superman movies.

  The United States has cameramen, but the Brits have what's called lighting cameramen. So Geoffrey Unsworth, who did Superman and 2001, and won Oscars for Cabaret and Tess, was a lighting cameraman. Peter MacDonald, his operator, was really the guy that Dick Donner would talk to on the set of Superman. He was the guy you would line up the shots with. It was Geoffrey's responsibility to light the scene. Days would go by where Geoffrey never even looked through the barrel of the camera. Later, Peter MacDonald became the lighting cameraman, then he became a director. So there is that progression in British cinema that does not exist in American film. Geoffrey and Dick were absolutely in love with each other. The picture is dedicated to Geoffrey because he died before it came out. He was a genius. And so was John Barry, who designed it.

  Barry came up with this wonderful idea one day. He said, “You know what Krypton is? The whole planet is one giant crystal. So when it's destroyed, it shatters like crystal, and all you see is great chunks of crystal flying all over the place.” Of course, this is before CGI.

  Yvonne Blake said, “I have these costumes that, when you hit them with light, they glow.”

  Then, Geoffrey came up with this idea that Superman is three movies. It's shot in three styles. It's written in three styles. On Krypton, everything is shot through a fog filter. It's white. It's cold. And they spe
ak in almost mock Shakespearean English. Then, when they get to Smallville, where he's growing up, everything is shot in pastels like Norman Rockwell. The dialogue is, “Hey, ma and pa,” and “gosh.” Then, when you get to Metropolis, bang, there are the red reds and the green greens, and it's Lex Luthor, and the lines are flying. It was always designed that way. Jack Kroll picked it up very easily when he put us on the cover of Newsweek.

  There was such a collegial spirit. Dick and I got along with everybody, and Dick was the leader. This picture is a tribute to him. It was a high-class version of the old Mickey Rooney-Judy Garland films—”I've got costumes, my folks have the props, we'll put it on in the barn!” We were doing stuff for the first time, and everybody knew we were under the gun because nobody knew how much money the Salkinds had. Wally Veevers was head of special effects, and Derek Meddings did all the miniatures. You look at that film today, and what they did without CGI was so incredible for 1977.

  Dick said to me, “You've got to write like it's real, like it's really happening. I don't want the audience to be once-removed from watching it. I want them to be in it.” That notion comprised a lot of what I did. The basic plot, which was a wonderful idea, of Luthor stealing missiles to break off California because he liked the coastline property, stayed. There were a lot of things that I kept. Benton and Newman are wonderful writers. (I never saw a Puzo script.) And, by the way, because Benton was a good friend of mine, I didn't go on the picture without calling him. I asked, “Bob, do you mind if I go on Superman?” And, he said, “Not at all. I have no emotional attachment to it.” That was clear from the script, which was very outwardly funny and smart, but you were never inside it. I'm not talking about the big bones of the story, like Krypton, but I probably wrote 65 percent of what you see on the screen. The basic story was theirs. But we had ideas like getting Noel Neill, who played Lois Lane in the television series, for an appearance, and, as a kid growing up, Clark jumping over a train. Inside the train is Noel Neill, and her little daughter says, “Mommy, I just saw a boy jump the train.” And she says, “Oh, Lois Lane, you and your…” So we got this idea that Lois had seen him by accident when she was very young. Rex Reed, who was a very famous critic at the time for the New York Daily News, runs into Clark going into the Daily Planet. “Hello, Clark.” “Hi, Rex.”

  We got such a wonderful reception in New York. When we were doing the location scouting, the Daily News building was just perfect for us because they had a huge globe in their lobby like the Daily Planet. So we asked if we could make it the Daily Planet. The Daily News was just thrilled that we were there. They had a lively group of writers like Jimmy Breslin. We were shooting in front of the Daily News at night. It was the scene where Superman rescues Lois hanging from a helicopter. When Dick and I were at the Daily News the first time, we saw a phone booth, but it was the half phone booth that you have in New York, with a little cradle. I said, “Donner, take a look.” We both started laughing. Superman and the phone booth was a big thing. Of course, the first thing that happens when Clark sees Lois hanging from the helicopter is he starts to unbutton his shirt as he runs to a phone booth, which is a half phone booth so he has to go change somewhere else. So it was adding that kind of stuff.

  Anyway, we were shooting in front of the Daily News. We had our generators and all the lights on the building. Quite a crowd and a lot of cops. Geoffrey Unsworth needed more light, more power than the generator could produce. One of the cops heard it and said, “Tell you what, Mr. Unsworth. You unscrew the plate on the street light, and you can plug right in there. Nobody knows, but you can do that.” As he plugged in the plug, the lights went out in New York. It was the blackout. We had nothing to do with it, but Geoffrey was convinced for months that he had caused the New York blackout. The cops commandeered our generators because they could provide light. All the police radios were going. One of the detectives who was with us and some uniformed cops went up to Harlem because there were stores being bashed in.

  Margot Kidder and I were going together at the time. Keeping company. A minibus took us back to Fifty-Ninth and Fifth because a lot of people were at the Plaza. Margot and I were living in Lorne Michaels's apartment at the Mayflower on Central Park West. We were standing in front of the Plaza surrounded by hansom cabs, the horse-drawn carriages. I asked, “Could you take us to the Mayflower?”

  The guy said, “Tonight, we can go anywhere.”

  There were no lights. We picked up people who asked, “Could you take us down two blocks?” We took people to their apartments. It was a magical night in New York. Obviously, it was a dreadful night for some people. The guy took us the long way around. We went up Broadway over to Central Park West. He was thrilled because he could never do that.

  Margot had a little girl, Maggie, who was two at the time. We were sort of a traveling act, Margot, Maggie, and me. Once, we were shooting in Canada, and somebody from the press said, “I want to interview Mankiewicz. Where is he?”

  Dick famously said, “Find the motor home with the baby food on the bumper.”

  Maggie was going to spend a week with her father, writer Tom McGuane, as part of the divorce visitation agreement. The night before she left, Maggie was upset and crying, and Margot went into the next room where her crib was. I heard her talking to Maggie, and she said, “You are a very lucky little girl because you have so many people who love you. Mommy loves you, Daddy loves you, Tom Mank loves you.” Maggie was calming down, and Margot said, “All right. Who does Daddy love?”

  Maggie said, “Maggie.”

  “And who does Mommy love?”

  Maggie said, “Tom Mank.”

  One of the most important elements in the picture was obviously trying to make Superman fly. Nobody had ever flown onscreen well. In the old Superman television show, they just hung him and let the scenery go by. So it was a real challenge to all of the technical crew. We tried everything in the beginning: a little animation, tilting the sets, a catapult to throw him up in the air. Early on, we were shooting in New York, and we had Chris hung from a crane. There was a sequence about Superman's first night in Metropolis, where he arrests crooks. One of the things he does is to take a cat out of a tree. We were swinging Chris into the tree, and he was getting scratched, and the fake cat kept falling off the branch. New Yorkers are just so great. They were leaning out of windows yelling, “You can get that cat, Superman!” We finally gave up and shot him taking the cat out of the tree on the back lot of Pinewood in England. By then, we knew how to make him zoop up. In New York, when he was hanging from the crane, there was a helicopter traffic guy who said on the air, “Ladies and gentlemen, I'm not drunk, but there's a guy with a big red cape flying up in the air down below us, and he's got a big S on his chest.” It was still new that we were doing Superman.

  Dick loved to play practical jokes. Months earlier, when we were location scouting for Superman in New York in Times Square, I was wearing those boots you wore in the seventies, those little short boots that were part of that bullshit fashion. My feet were killing me. We took a break, and we were going to have lunch somewhere with Geoffrey Unsworth. There was a Florsheim shoe store nearby. I said to Dick, “You guys go on. I'll join you in a minute. I've got to get out of these shoes.”

  Dick said, “You can't get shoes at Florsheim's.”

  I said, “Yes, of course I can, Dick.”

  Dick, being a New Yorker, said, “That's really low class, Florsheim.”

  So I got my Florsheim loafers and I was very comfortable. I walked into the restaurant and sat down. The waiter came over and asked, “Would you like a drink, sir?”

  I said, “Yes, I'll have a Bloody Mary.”

  The waiter looked down and said, “Excuse me, but are those Florsheim shoes?” Dick had put him up to it.

  Everywhere we went in New York, Dick called ahead. At the Empire State Building, the elevator operator said, “All the way to the top for you guys, right, Superman?” We said yes. He said, “Hey, those are Florsheims aren't t
hey?” Couldn't believe it. Everywhere we went. Dick would break up because he loves that kind of stuff.

  So when Marlon was shooting the long speech where he and Susannah York put the baby in the capsule, halfway through the first take, Marlon said, “I'm sorry. I can't say this crap.”

  All the blood drained out of my face because we had talked about it and rehearsed it. I walked out to him and asked, “Marlon, is there some adjustment I can make?”

  He said, “Yeah, you could adjust just about every—” and he looked down and asked, “Are those Florsheims?” Dick collapsed, and Marlon collapsed, and they had done it all for the gag. They were two incredible practical jokers.

  Brando's Valentine

  The capsule speech was very long, and Brando wanted everything on cue cards, because at that stage in his career, he was reading most of the time. I said to him, “How about that speech in Last Tango in Paris where you're standing over your dead wife's coffin; that long speech?” He said it was all written on the bottom of the coffin. I said, “How about in Apocalypse Now?”

  He said, “The ear you can't see has got a little speaker in it, and I prerecorded it.”

  I'm getting really disillusioned. So we played a joke on him and mixed up the cue cards. And he gave the speech beautifully. I said, “You fraud. You son of a bitch, you have memorized it.”

  He said, “What?” He looked around and he started to laugh.

  Before Brando started to shoot, I asked a very simple question of Dick: “Why is there an S on Superman's chest?”

  Dick said, “Well, he's Superman.”

  I said, “Yeah, I know he's Superman, but he came from Krypton with that S. So he's not Superman on Krypton, because everybody's got the same powers on Krypton.”

  Dick said, “Holy shit. You're right.”

  I said, “Look, maybe we don't even have to deal with it.”

  He said, “No, you brought it up, we should deal with it.”

  So on Krypton, everybody in the Council of Elders has a badge on his or her chest, an inverted triangle, with a different letter. Jor-El's is an S. Maria Schell has a D. That's a family crest. Everybody has a crest with a different letter, and S happens to be their crest. We explained it to Marlon. Dick said, “Also, Marlon, Superman has a spit curl. So, you're going to have a spit curl too. That's another family thing.”