My Life as a Mankiewicz

by Tom Mankiewicz

  I was one of the guards at R.J.'s door, along with Mart Crowley and Roddy McDowall. Everybody wanted to rush over to R.J.'s. He didn't want to see a lot of people. So we were screening at the door. Army Archerd came up to the house—everybody knew Army Archerd—but we said, “Sorry, Army. No columnists allowed,” because nobody from the press was allowed in.

  Army said, “But guys, my God, I'm not going to say anything. I've known R.J. since 1949.”

  We said, “Okay, come on in.” It was Army Archerd. Next day, that prick put everything in his column, everybody who was there. Chris Walken was there sitting at the bar, drinking. He was devastated.

  R.J. takes to bed, totally drained. I am talking to him as Willie-Mae comes in. Willie-Mae is the housekeeper, surrogate mother to the children, one of the strongest women I have ever known. She looks down at R.J. and says, “I'll tell you one thing, come Monday morning, my children are going back to school.”

  R.J. looks up at her, nods, and says, “I'd like an English muffin if I could, Willie-Mae.”

  She says, “Sure, and I'll cut it up for you just like I do for Courtney. Why don't you come on down if you want an English muffin and have one in the kitchen?” Slowly but surely, Willie-Mae is getting this household back on its feet again.

  Gene Kelly was very close to R.J., as was Fred Astaire, who played his father in It Takes a Thief. Gene was on the bed talking to R.J., and I was sitting in a chair nearby. All of a sudden, standing in the doorway was Fred Astaire with his wife, Robyn. Fred said, “Hi, Gene.”

  It was very dark, and Gene said, “Who's there?”

  He said, “It's Fred.” Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. Fred walked around to Gene and talked to R.J.

  Later, as Fred Astaire was leaving, Gene said, “I'll call you, Fred.”

  And Fred said, “You always say that, but you never do.”

  The next day was Natalie's funeral. A car pulled up just before the funeral started, and out stepped Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly, together. They must have talked that night. It was such a sad occasion, but it was a historic moment to see Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly exiting the same car together. It was unbelievable.

  Natalie's funeral is held in a small cemetery right in the middle of Westwood. It is attended by, it seems to me, about every notable person in all of show business. The press is not allowed. However, they fill the windows of the surrounding buildings, which look down on the cemetery. Helicopters fly overhead. I am one of six pallbearers who are to carry the casket some fifty yards from the funeral home to the burial site, where a couple of hundred people are waiting. The casket is enormous and extremely heavy. I don't see how the six of us are going to carry it. We take a deep breath and pick up the casket. I can't believe how much it weighs. I think of tiny Natalie inside there somewhere; someone who had a fighting weight of 103 or 105 pounds. I don't know how we carry it, but somehow we manage, staggering to make the fifty yards to the burial site. At a moment like that, I suppose everybody has a little bit of superhuman strength.

  I had sustained a series of losses among women in my life. I was thinking about that as I was carrying the coffin; my mother, Bridget, could have been Tuesday, now Natalie. I had a tremendous fear of abandonment, that if I really fell in love and took the plunge, I was going to lose that person. It even affected my relationship with animals. I had a cat for nine years. A female. She was indoor/outdoor, and a raccoon got her one day. There she was on the lawn, and I cried so hard. It was reminiscent of my mother dying, oddly enough, because there was so much bottled up inside me for so long. The cat and I were glued together for nine years. We woke up together and went to sleep together. Losing her was like being abandoned again; you and the animal are the only two beings in the house, always together, interacting all the time.

  10

  The 1990s

  What a Fucking Business

  I think it can be said fairly that I've been in on the beginning, rise, peak, collapse, and end of the talking picture.

  —Joseph L. Mankiewicz

  Delirious Director

  I used to bound out of bed to get on the set. Delirious was the single happiest experience I ever had. I loved everybody in it. I loved everybody on the crew. I loved everybody around it. John Candy was such a wonderful leader, and I felt I was a leader as well. We were smart and funny and good. My biggest disappointment was that MGM went belly-up. If that picture had been pushed correctly, I'm not saying it would have done $150 million or won any Oscars, but it would have been known as the different kind of picture that it is. It should have been really exploited. John should have been on a nationwide tour with Mariel Hemingway. All the talented people in there: Charlie Rocket, who killed himself; David Rasche, who was so funny; Emma Samms was terrific, wonderful in it; Dylan Baker's working all the time; Robert Wagner, wow! I do things with R.J. all the time.

  I was so delighted Raymond Burr was in Delirious, but I originally wanted Jason Robards. I thought, God, it would be great if he would do something like this. A soap opera heavy. The word comes back from Jason's agent, “Mr. Robards would love to do it.” He got $75,000 a week. The way the schedule worked, it was going to be ten weeks. I said, “We cannot pay Jason Robards $750,000.” We didn't have it in the budget. There was no way to squeeze all his work into a few weeks. So the answer was no. But he was just for hire. Wasn't really interested in reading the script. He knew I was doing it and John was doing it and it was supposed to be funny. He makes a living as an actor, and he knows he's in good company.

  Then I thought of Richard Widmark. The silver fox. He had done No Way Out for my father. He said, “I am so flattered. I think it's very funny. I don't want to act anymore particularly. I'm a good actor, but I don't think I'm really good at this kind of comedy, with the kind of people you're going to be hiring.” It was amazing.

  I said, “Well, thank you for reading it.” I was just so thrilled.

  Then I was fixated on Raymond Burr. I watched him play Perry Mason as a kid, and he was larger than life. He was huge. He lived in Sonoma, where he had a vineyard. He was living with the same guy he lived with for years. We were told by his agent, “Mr. Burr is not interested in doing films. He does his six Perry Mason movies a year and that's all. He doesn't want to do anything. So forget it.” I called somebody at CBS that I knew and I asked, “Can you get me his address?” I got it and sent him the script with a note saying, “I understand you don't want to do movies, but it would be so much fun if you would do this.”

  About five days later, I was in my office. Annie was at lunch, and I was working on the script. The phone rang, I said, “Hello?” And this voice says, “Well, this could be a great deal of fun, couldn't it?”

  I said, “You're Raymond Burr.” You could not miss that voice.

  He said, “Yes, I am. Listen, when are you starting?”

  I said, “Well, here's the thing, we would work you for two weeks then leave you for a month.”

  He said, “That's fine with me because I'm flying back and forth to the vineyard and we shoot the Perry Masons in three weeks.”

  I'm the guy who's worked with Marlon Brando and Sean Connery and, oddly enough, I was very nervous about meeting Raymond Burr. He was part of my childhood. I said to John Candy, “Tomorrow, Raymond Burr is coming at eleven. Can you drop by and say hi to him?”

  John said, “Absolutely.”

  The next day, Ray came into the bungalow. He was walking with a cane, and I was amazed that he was bigger than John, heavier than John. Wardrobe told me he was one size bigger than John. Ray started talking, “You did that wonderful series with R.J., he's an old friend.” And Ray seemed to be getting a crush on John. He was getting so cozy with him. He said to John, “When this film is over, you'll have to come up to Sonoma one day. Just the two of us, no phones.” I don't know whether Ray meant anything or whether he was trying to see what kind of people he was working with, because it was clear that he lived with a guy. He had an island in Fiji as well.

  Ray
worked off teleprompters. So we had a teleprompter for him in every scene. It was like a security blanket. Some actors can't do it. Dan Aykroyd had to give long speeches in Dragnet, and sometimes Danny would trip all over them, and he had a mind like a steel trap, as I've said. I would say, “We'll put it on a teleprompter,” and Danny would say, “No, I can't read it. I lose all the performance.” Some actors can actually do it. Ray was a wonderful actor—the villain in Rear Window, the district attorney in A Place in the Sun. A very cultured man. Nobody mentioned that any actor was gay in the days of Montgomery Clift, James Dean, Raymond Burr, Rock Hudson, even though the press all knew. Now, you wouldn't last two seconds; not that it's a big deal, because a lot of people come out. But then, they were terrified. If the audience knew that Rock Hudson was gay and he kissed a woman onscreen, they would burst out laughing.

  On Dragnet, Chris Plummer arrived three weeks into the shoot, and it was important to me that everybody was getting along. In my experience, sometimes, when an actor joins a picture a couple of weeks in, he or she makes a lot of noise. The actor is establishing his or her own territory. We were shooting Delirious in New York, and Mariel Hemingway had been on the picture a couple of weeks. It was Emma Samms's first shot; at night, a scene where John Candy gets hit on the chin by the car. She had done Dynasty and other things. She missed her mark on the very first take, and she said, “Oh, I'm terribly sorry.”

  I said, “That's okay, do you want to go again?” Then, she missed it again.

  John Kretchmer, the first assistant, said, “Can you imagine that? She's missed her mark twice. This woman shoots six, eight pages a day on Dynasty.”

  And I said, “John, she's establishing her own territory. She's saying, ‘I'm here.' She's joining the picture a couple of weeks in, and she feels like the odd lady out. And she's just saying, ‘No, it's my time. Pay a little attention to me.’” And boy, the third take, she hit the mark. She never missed marks for the rest of the picture. She was a pro. When an actor joins a film that's already started, he or she feels like the bus has already left for camp. So you always have to be very careful with actors when they join after the shoot has begun.

  When we were filming in New York, Jerry Orbach told us about an Italian restaurant we must visit. He said, “Tell the maître d' Jerry Orbach suggested I call you.”

  So I called the restaurant and spoke with the maître d', who said, “Oh, great. How many are you going to be?”

  I said, “Well, we're going to be three.” It was John, Mariel, and me. We got to the restaurant, walked in, and all of the guys there looked like they were in The Godfather. They were all sitting against the wall in booths. The table that was open was in the middle of the room. I said to John, “If a car comes by with some guys with machine guns, these guys are all ducking and we're going to get it.”

  John said, “You sit with your back to the street. I'll let you know if anything goes by.” It was amazing because there was no menu. You told the waiter what you wanted, veal, any kind of pasta, just say what you want to eat. It was a great Italian meal. We called Jerry the next day and said, “Thank you so much.” He was a terrific guy.

  Mank's Mirror Period

  I do a whole hour for my film students on mirror shots. One of the examples I use is a spoof film we made on Delirious. Doug Claybourne, the producer, says to Bill Gordean, the editor, “What is this with Mankiewicz and mirrors? We have so many mirror shots in this movie.” Gordean says, “Well, Picasso had his blue period, and—” Doug says, “Oh, and this is Mankiewicz's mirror period.” Then Bobby Stevens, the cinematographer, comes on and says, “I think mirror shots, when used sparingly, are very effective.” There's a whole montage of all the mirror shots I did in the movie, which is an unbelievable number. That has to do with looking at myself in the mirror. I've always been fascinated by mirrors and, as a director, I don't think I've ever done anything without mirror shots. It's a wonderful dramatic device because a character's allowed to talk to himself if you've got a mirror there. If you don't have a mirror there, it looks crazy. But if you're looking at yourself in the mirror, and you're Bobby De Niro saying, “Are you talking to me?” you can do a lot with that. Whereas, if he's just walking down the street saying, “Are you talking to me?” you'd say, “Boy, this guy has got to be institutionalized.”

  In Delirious, Mariel is in a phone booth talking to her mother. In her compact mirror is a reflection of Mariel. Margot Kidder with Mariel in the women's room, there's four of them, the two of them with their backs to us, but the faces are visible in the mirror. I love mirrors, Doctor. Reflections in a Golden Eye. I'm gonna lie down now. Oddly enough, I stay away from looking at myself in the mirror now. Once in the morning, comb the hair, a little spray on, and that's it. I don't want to look at myself anymore.

  I run Delirious for my students, really talking about little things they can do in their films like making a guy disappear, exactly how you do a camera lock-off or the blood stain going backward. It's very simple, but they're ideas that they don't have for their ten- or twelve-minute film. It's not that complicated. They see those sequences from Delirious, and they laugh like hell.

  The Candy Man in Vegas

  John Candy and I drove to Las Vegas to make an appearance at ShoWest, the film exhibitors' convention. John wanted to stay at the Desert Inn because it had the best golf course. I actually played nine holes with him. And John isn't bad. He liked it a lot. We were gambling one night, and John took the dice and started making passes. He must have held the dice for ten minutes. John didn't know how to bet at craps. I was betting along with John. I was winning more than he was. The stickmen were so happy that it was John Candy. They were saying, “Mr. Candy, you should take the odds back on the floor.” He would say, “Okay, whatever.”

  So we won really big. Among my winnings was a thousand-dollar chip. We all decided to have a drink in the bar and cool off. The cocktail waitress came by, and we each had a couple of drinks, so the bill was thirty bucks. I thought I was being Mr. Big, and I gave her a hundred-dollar chip, keep the change. Big-timer. Without realizing it, I gave her the thousand-dollar chip. And she took it. We left the lounge, and midway through the casino, I checked my chips and said, “Oh, my God, I gave her the thousand-dollar chip.” Now we couldn't find her. I called the manager over and said, “I was going to give her a hundred dollars but I gave her a thousand by mistake. I'm not going to give her a thousand dollars for two rum and Cokes and two Jack Daniel's.” The manager checked, and the waitress had already packed her bags and was gone. She had a thousand bucks, she was outta there. But the hotel made good on it. They gave me the thousand-dollar chip back, and I said, “Well, if she comes back, here's a hundred for her.” That's what I was going to give her. But she was gone like a shot.

  MGM couldn't afford the one-sheets. John Candy and I were in a meeting in Vegas with Joe Westerman and Laddie, and John offered to loan the studio money because they said they didn't have enough money for one-sheets. John said, “How about if I loan you guys a few million dollars for this picture?”

  And Laddie said, “No, you can't do that, John, because we're in bankruptcy and I don't know where that money's going to go.” I thought, boy, what a fucking business.

  We were driving back from Vegas, and John was playing his agent character, which he did from time to time. I called him Irving when he was the agent. Irving was a loser. He always lost a client. But he always felt that he was right. He'd say, “You know who fucking left me yesterday?”

  “No, who was that, Irving?”

  “Vic Damone. I said to him, ‘Vic, sweetheart, after all we've been through together. Never should have gone out with a black woman. You never should have married.' What pipes this man had.”

  I asked Irving, “You represented Frank Sinatra?”

  “Represented him? I fuckin' made him! And he comes out with he's gonna do this thing ‘Wee Small Hours of the Morning.' I say, ‘Frank, you're depressing people. Don't do it. Stay up, stay bright!'�
��

  I said, “Well, the tune was a big hit.”

  Irving said, “What do people know?”

  But it was always somebody. We were driving past a sign that said, “You're now leaving Nevada.” And John said to me as Irving, “You see that sign? I was fucking Keely Smith under that sign fifteen years ago. And a rattlesnake comes along and bites me right in the cock.” I was pounding the dashboard. If I had been driving the car, it would have gone out of control.

  As we drove, we saw a huge sign with Trigger and Roy Rogers sitting on him. It was the Roy Rogers Museum. We said, “We have to go.” We pulled off the freeway. There was a big parking lot mostly filled with RVs. We got out of the car and walked into the ticket office, where they recognized John. Somebody called for Roy Jr., who was running the place, and he came out and shook hands with us. “I'll tell Dad you're here.”

  The one thing I remember about the Roy Rogers Museum; if it moved or it lived, Roy shot it. There were more dead animals; from polar bears to raccoons, opossum to a lion, anything that moved, Roy shot and stuffed. I walked into one little room and there was a stuffed Trigger, a stuffed Buttermilk, Dale's horse, and Bullet the dog. John said to Roy Jr., “Well, Roy, I guess one day you'll be in here.”

  Suddenly, one of the sweetest moments of all time—here comes old Roy Rogers. He's gotten into his boots and hat. The place is getting very excited. Roy is very old and shrunk. He was never a big guy anyway but the big hat is on and the boots and those little Chinese eyes that he had. “Hello, John.” We all say hi to Roy. People are all around us with cameras. Roy says, “You can take pictures, but no autographs, right, John?”

  And John says, “Right, Roy. Pictures only, no autographs.” Everyone is taking pictures with John and Roy. It's the middle of the day. Dale's probably half in the bag somewhere, because she didn't come out.