Conversations in the Raw

by Rex Reed

  “Alva is a great character, always ordering Sazerac cocktails and longing for the excitement of the big city. She wants out of her small town with a capital O, and she’ll do anything to get away. There’s plenty of room at the bottom if she stays. My own life hasn’t been so different. There was plenty of room at the bottom if I’d kept making those Tab Hunter movies. I had to fight for everything. I was once on suspension for 18 months, but at the end of it I did West Side Story, so it was worth it. You get tough in this business, until you get big enough to hire people to get tough for you. Then you can sit back and be a lady.”

  Outside, it was still raining. Up above the city, Natalie Wood, super-star, had just received a bottle of Dom Perignon champagne from her producer, Ray Stark, in New York. The note read: “Dear Natalie: As long as it’s pouring so hard, pour a little of this.” She tossed the note aside and ordered a bottle of aspirin from room service.

  The others had left for a night on the town. “Movie stars, ha! There was a period in Mississippi where all the emotional scenes were building up in one week and I kept thinking, I’m a grownup lady, what am I crying all day for? Down here they give me a chauffeur and a limousine and a gorgeous hotel suite with three bedrooms, a den, living room and kitchen. Maybe Natalie Wood the star is worth it, but I can’t believe Nat the girl is. What does it mean? If I go to restaurants, my food gets cold while I sign autographs. If I go antique shopping on Royal Street, a crowd gathers. On the other hand, I’ve got a healthy bank account, a couple of oil wells, a professional reputation—you give up one thing to get another. I guess from here you’ve got nowhere to go but down.”

  She took her Juicy Fruit gum out of her mouth, replaced it with a thermometer, poured a glass of Dom Perignon, looked down at the birthday cake colors of the French Quarter and, like most super-stars, wondered what the night would bring.

  Oliver Reed

  Can a werewolf make good? Oliver Reed, who looks like a cross between a Sunset Strip hippie and a medieval minotaur, is one who did. Five years ago he was nobody, just out of the British Army, playing a rather Freudian wolf man with a cold nose in a low-budget horror film called Curse of the Werewolf. Sure, he was the nephew of British film director Sir Carol Reed, but Sir Carol’s last film had been The Agony and the Ecstasy and he was having troubles of his own. No time for family pull. So Oliver took the wolf-man job. It was the first time England had seen a method werewolf scratch and howl and paw the ground (and the necks of young ladies) with enough passion to make the Old Vic jealous. And, by Jove, he was sexy, too.

  Well, the excitement he stirred up sent his stock soaring so high that the roles he turns down alone could now keep half the film actors in England in fish and chips and a good cuppa for the rest of their natural lives. He is now starring in Oliver!, Columbia’s technicolor movie version of the stage musical, which is already such a lavish project for England’s usually modest cinema sound stages that local film-watchers are calling it “Great Expectations with tap dancing.” He is the hip-hep comet to watch with the action set in London (and catching up fast in America) because of two other films, The Girl Getters and The Jokers, and has three more in the releasing stage—The Trap, in which he plays a hairy brute of a fur trapper in the Canadian wilds who is tamed by a mute (Rita Tushingham); I’ll Never Forget What’s His Name, with Orson Welles, about a man with a wife and three mistresses who returns through boredom to his former life on a small literary magazine only to discover the people there were phony too; and The Shuttered Room with Carol Lynley, which he says is “so bloody awful I didn’t even see it myself.” Soon he’ll play William the Conqueror in a European spectacular, and he has three films committed to Paramount and eight others to Universal. Impressive. And all because people forgot werewolves could be groovy.

  “It was the cold nose,” he says. “When I sniffed, the birds fainted.” Then, seriously, “Everyone told me not to do horror films. But I wanted to act. I remember standing on a table blowing bubble gum as a child and everyone applauded. I liked that. My granny was an opera singer, my grandfather an actor and my uncle was Sir Carol, so it was like an involuntary muscular action, like going to the bathroom. But I had the army ahead. The British army. What a joke. I had a lot of tight-fisted ideas about military society, so they sent me to a psychiatrist. I was a featureless soldier in a featureless army. Then when I came out I went to my uncle and he said to go into repertory if I wanted to be an actor. It was good advice, because I ignored it completely. I don’t give a damn for the theatre, films is where it’s at. I took my photos around and got a bit in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and played in a lot of the Hammer films—wicked earls, pirates, swashbucklers in Sherwood Forest. Then I tested for the wolf. They knew I looked the part already, so I got it and learned a lot. We had strict discipline, strict budgets, and turned out those horrors in six weeks. Used the same sets for each one—just painted the rooms a different color, nailed a new border on and—presto!—a new movie.”

  We were talking on the Oliver set out at Shepperton, where Broadway choreographer Onna White was twirling 350 extras through a massive labyrinth of Victorian London streets, Hollywood conductor Johnny Green was leading a symphony orchestra through a sweep of brassy marches and Oliver’s uncle, Sir Carol, was directing three chimney sweeps to sit in a tub of water with their pants on fire. “I see my father’s mannerisms in him,” said Oliver. “I come on the set, we have a chat—‘Hello, how are you?’—then boom. I blow.” Then he zipped through the cobblestone streets in his lemon-yellow Jaguar, crushing cabbage leaves and horse dung beneath his wheels, passing 1840 snuff shops and pubs filled with extras in stovepipe hats, and angled in under the wash of Dickens’ London hanging raggedly on the washlines near the studio commissary, where he slid into a booth next to James Coburn and James Fox and ordered a tomato salad.

  “It’s you Americans who did it. Nobody in America remembers a werewolf, but I did The Girl Getters and The Jokers for a young director, Michael Winner, and got discovered there. Then I had a bad fight in a bar, got my face cut up and didn’t work for eleven months. I was picked on by this drunk who was trying to impress his girl because he recognized the werewolf of London. Now I just buy them a drink if they tease me. It’s easier. Anyway, it’s the recognition in America that counts. I’ve done a third film for Winner and now people are beginning to wonder about our relationship. But I’ve got 15 scripts on my desk and I’m making more money for Oliver! than I’ve ever made in my life. I could never go back to making horror films now. I don’t like starving. That period was filled with wet stockings hanging over strings to dry and living on tomato catsup poured over spaghetti and saying ‘Darling’ and ‘Sweetie pie’ to people I hated in bad Italian restaurants just to get a job. When I met my wife she was engaged and I was so poor I tried to get her to sell her ring.

  “I’m getting good roles too. People want something new. That old mystique of movie stars in silk-lined caravans is over. Hollywood is full of dog-food commercials now. Filming is an international word. Thank God for it, it’s giving the O’Tooles and Finneys and Richard Harrises a chance. Hollywood’s last stand was the musical. Now they’re bringing Johnny Green over here from MGM and spending eight million on Oliver! because we’ve got the talent. The old marquee names are getting old and I’m getting my chance, Charlie. We need American money and they need our talent. Like a wedding. But I’d rather marry a rich girl than a poor one, wouldn’t you? I’m being drawn to America now because my expenses are getting bigger. I have an accountant, a personal secretary, a gardener, a handyman, and a maid, because movie stars’ wives don’t scrub floors. When you make it you come home and they say, ‘All right, Big Daddy, where’s the money you promised when you got famous?’ You spend every penny and end up famous and broke. This country takes everything in taxes. Then everyone wonders where have all our British actors gone? They’ve gone to Hollywood. We’re all being driven out of the country.

  “I haven’t lived long enough with this much m
oney to know who I am yet. I don’t know if it’s big cars or gambling or fast women I want, so I try them all. People ask if I’m a hippie. I don’t know. But I hate clothes. I sort of live out of old film wardrobes they give me after each film. I’m no dandy. I own a lot of boots, but only one pair of shoes at a time till they wear out because you have to go to the cobbler and look for your ticket and I always lose mine and end up in a bloody row and get thrown out. I don’t like swinging London. I went to the Ad Lib once and it was all actors in tweed hats and corduroy pants who dribbled all over my wife’s hand and I thought, ‘Christ, is this a mirror? Am I like that?’ Actors are bores. I can only take them in twos and threes—no, three is too many—because then they start telling you about all the parts they turn down. I’d rather go to Wales and talk to the miners than to the Mirabelle or someplace ‘in’ and posh because there’s no bull there. When I was in Montreal making The Trap I went to San Francisco and lived three weeks in Haight-Ashbury with the flower people before the American press found out about them and the phonies moved in. They were gentle people. No racial tension. If this is the effect of LSD, then swing, babe, do you dig? It produces gentleness, whereas alcohol produces violence. The bars in America are like puke houses, with everyone ordering sidecars and screwdrivers and all that crap. That’s why Americans flip over our pubs. Pubs were my acting school. I got all my characterizations that way. You walk into a pub at 5:30 and a man in a bowler hat with a briefcase and creased trousers will go through every stage of mankind before he finishes his bitter.

  “Actors used to have to go to the Royal Academy and have a very prissy background. Then war came and everyone was employed as full-time murderers and the Noel Cowards with their chiseled noses and lavender water and Brylcreem hair were out, because the newsreel cameras were shooting men crawling out of trenches. Then after the war everyone sighed relief and escaped for ten years into a world of crinoline and scarlet pimpernels and remakes of old Hollywood three-musketeer movies. Then the children of the men at war took over and the Tony Richardsons were in in British films. Now after the kitchen sinks and the contraceptives and the rooms at the top crying out for recognition, we need another escape, so it’s spies. You just saw one at the next table. James Coburn. Faces like his and mine are in. I’ve got a face like a dust bin, but through the help of the hippies people are learning that if you kick a dust bin over and rhododendrons fall out, it’s glorious. Dust bins can make love. It’s more real to today’s kids to love a pop singer with acne, long hair and a guitar by throwing jelly beans at him because he’s more real and personal than a Rock Hudson movie idol. It used to be more respectable and secure to have short hair and a business suit, but now men know it’s not necessary. Those men were not gentle. And women react to gentleness. So my kind of face has a bigger future than ever, do you dig?”

  He walked out into the rain, his beard gleaming and his long hair bouncing in the breeze. The weather and the kids and the musical numbers were back in full force on the streets of Oliver! He scratched himself and grinned. “I think I’ll give it all up when I’m 40 for a long think.” Then he went back to work. It beats digging peat in Ireland.

  Mickey Mouse’s Birthday Party

  Mickey Mouse was 40 years old this week and the Walt Disney fantasy hour on NBC gave him a party. It wasn’t a very good party, because like almost everything else the folks at Disney do, Mickey’s party turned into a bloated billboard to advertise other Disney products. But it was not a party without its high spots. During the celebration, there were 1925 film clips of Walt Disney drawing roomfuls of scampering little mice, one of whom would eventually become the Star Rodent of the World. Disney himself posthumously added comment behind the original organ music that accompanied Mickey’s debut in Plane Crazy. There were scenes from Mickey's first synchronized sound cartoon, Steamboat Willie, in 1928, shots of Mickey being adored by Will Rogers, Shirley Temple, Laurel and Hardy and the Barrymores, and fond memories of his first Oscar in 1932, when he was only four years old.

  Success and new clothes changed him over the years. He developed expressions. His voice changed from a beep to a chatter. He received more fan mail and sent more autographed photos than any other star in Hollywood. During the early Thirties he turned out a new movie every two weeks. His books were read by kids in 20 languages. He practically revolutionized the wristwatch industry. He even played talent scout, discovering Pluto, Donald Duck and Goofy. (It is interesting to note that of his three discoveries, only Donald Duck is still popular, because his perpetual frustration, anger and violence are very “in” today—in Berlin, Donald Duck Film Festivals have them lined up for blocks on the Kurfurstendam.) He was also very educational for children. If it had not been for Mickey, many kids would never have been exposed to classical music. There were shots of him conducting the William Tell Overture, and one lengthy film clip from Fantasia in which he performed to “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” (one of Mickey’s greatest roles, someone reminded me). Kids often found him too subtle, but grown-ups loved his unique comedy. The saddest thing of all was his demise in the Fifties when cartoon characters suddenly became real, identifiable paste-pot creatures who got involved in situations. Mickey Mouse never had a personality.

  I would much rather have seen an absorbing documentary on how the entire Disney empire was saved from bankruptcy during the depression by a single mouse, topped off by a better character analysis of the decline and fall of an American hero (which Mickey certainly has come to be considered). But instead the whole thing degenerated into a bowl of mush, as most Disney shows do, with several disorganized events occurring simultaneously. The now-grown Mouseketeers from the old Mickey Mouse Club showed up, and what some of them have turned into over the years I’d rather not mention. Then it all turned into a circus of advertising gimmicks for Disney World in Florida. Disney coloring books, Disney toys, Gulf station Disney magazine giveaways free with a fill-up of gas, and more Disney products and forthcoming Disney movies than the brain can remember.

  Mickey Mouse should have celebrated his 40th birthday with a roar. Thanks to the greediness of commercial television advertising, he couldn’t get a squeek in edgewise.

  Jon Voight

  The midnight cowboys squint in the afternoon light. Neon pierces the sky on the Accutron sign as a gang of toughs shove an old lady against the plate-glass window of a pornographic bookstore which announces “Paperback Special Today—Dyke Farm!” “Shocking! Lustful! Unusually Excellent!—Variety” blasts a movie marquee as the smell of sour custard and cheap perfume and onions fried in stale grease permeates the air. This is The Street—peeling and rotting in the harsh glare of daylight. The same 42nd Street that wore out the taps on Ruby Keeler’s shoes has a different face now, its energy re-channeled from tango to torment.

  Faster than a bullet, the image is punctured. Standing in the film of nausea settling over Times Square, Jon Voight looks as distinctly out of place as if the white knight in the Ajax commercials had suddenly stepped out of the tube and found himself in a tenement living room in Harlem. His blond hair and pink fingernails are so clean they sparkle in the sun. His pants are pressed, the navy-blue knit turtle-neck sweater he wears under his corduroy blazer makes a distinctive decorator contrast to eyes clear and blue as periwinkles, and his teeth are straight and white as sugar cubes. People stare suspiciously at the invasion of all this sanity and good cheer, because in the teeming violence of The Street he looks like the captain of an Olympic swimming team who has just stepped off the wrong bus.

  This may be the last time Jon Voight ever walks The Street without being mobbed. After Midnight Cowboy, he’ll be like Paul Newman—a movie star for whom anonymity is only a nostalgic memory. From now on, they’ll stare—but for completely different reasons. In the movie, he plays an orphaned Texas hick named Joe Buck who, among other things, gets gang-raped on the hood of a car by a bunch of toughs, comes home from the Army to find himself alone in the world, heads for New York to be wined and dined by
beautiful women because somebody told him he was “one helluva stud,” and ends up on The Street, cheated and kicked around by the coldness of New York until he builds a wall around himself and his only friend, a deformed, crippled, diseased wino named Ratso, played by Dustin Hoffman. It’s a tough movie—grim and hard to take, and the worst indictment against the city of New York ever captured on film—but Voight plays a male hustler with such heart-piercing naiveté and humorous tenderness that it is not possible to dislike him for a single moment. It’s the kind of role that makes super-stars out of nobodys.

  He walks, happy about the few last days of his terminating anonymity. “Look at these people. Do you believe this?” he asks. His blue eyes swallow everything, like a child at a birthday party. “John Schlesinger brought us down here to shoot Midnight Cowboy and I came several times on my own, dressed in my cowboy stud clothes. I learned a lot about this place. Men would come up to me and try to pick me up and I would keep them talking for a long time before they would get the message and go away. You wouldn’t believe some of the stories I heard. It’s like a real community unto itself, you know? Crowds would gather around us when we were shooting, like a family neighborhood, and we’d film them doing their things. I really felt good about some of the things we learned here.”