My Life as a Mankiewicz (19 page)

David remained an outrageous high-liver, brimming with new projects and propositions. His body simply gave out on him while he was shooting a film on location, I assume from sheer exhaustion. He was only sixty-two. He was an original, bless him, and could have existed only during the time in which he lived.

Dennis Hopper

Brooke Hayward and Dennis Hopper were married in the chapel of a Park Avenue cathedral in New York City. It was the early sixties. Being aware of how adamantly Leland Hayward opposed the relationship, I didn't expect him to come. Then—surprise, surprise—he suddenly appeared at the rear of the chapel just as Brooke was going to start down the aisle. He put his arm around her and whispered in her ear. Better late than never, I thought; what a good guy. I found out later he was telling her there was still time to back out.

Dennis and Brooke left for California and settled down (in a manner of speaking) in a house on Crescent Heights, above the Sunset Strip. When I arrived in L.A., they were welcoming and kind. It was great fun hanging out at their place. I was honored when they asked me to be a godfather to their daughter, Marin. Dennis was extremely thoughtful, talented, and certifiably nuts. For a while he had a Formula One racing car with no headlights or tail lights that he roared up and down the hill with impunity. He also had perhaps the keenest eye for modern art in the entire country. The house was filled with paintings and sculptures from as-yet barely discovered artists: Ed Ruscha, Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, Edward Kienholz, and Billy Al Bengston, to name just a few. He took Warhol seriously, unlike most people in those days. At the time I wouldn't have given him a hundred bucks for everything. Boy, was I wrong.

Dennis was the ultimate consumer of any substance that distorted reality. He really did live in a private world. I always considered
Easy Rider
to be a wonderful cinematic accident committed by extremely talented potheads. I remember running into Dennis and Peter Fonda in New Orleans at Mardi Gras. Jack Haley Jr. and I were shooting a musical TV special with the Tijuana Brass. Herb Alpert was the grand marshal of the parade. Dennis and Peter were shooting taster footage to raise money for a low-budget project called
Easy Rider.
They asked if they could borrow our cameraman—they were shooting with ten cameras—which was impossible because we were shooting all day every day on a tight schedule. They were permanently stoned, totally disorganized, and changing the script every day. No matter how haphazardly the sausage was made,
Easy Rider
became a landmark film, symbolic of a new generation.

Sometime in the mid-sixties Dennis and I took off for Mexico, for the bullfights or jai alai or both. Neither one of us had ever been to Disneyland, so we decided to check it out. We were both in altered states when we got inside our cup on the Mad Hatter's Teacup Ride. There was a metal ring in the center. By pulling on it you could make the cup spin faster. What a golden opportunity. We pulled so hard, got the cup spinning so fast, that our heads were hanging out backward as we whirled around. An announcement came over the PA system: “Would the two men in cup number eight please slow down!” We didn't. The ride was over. We were ejected from the park. As we left, Dennis mused sadly, “Thrown out of Fantasyland…what a complete bummer…”

As I write this, Dennis has just died of cancer. Through a life filled with high highs, low lows, a sea of drugs, and multiple marriages, from Crescent Heights in Hollywood to Mabel Dodge's legendary home in New Mexico, then back down to the beach in L.A., he's been a total original. An outsider who had his modern art collection exhibited at the Hermitage in Saint Petersburg. An insider who began as a contract player in the fifties, knew his craft well, and finally left his own special mark on the motion picture. Godspeed, Dennis.

John Huston

A great friend of Dad's. Married five or six times, he alternated between being broke and a millionaire. What a talent. It seems to me now that directors such as Huston, Welles, and Lean would be impossibly politically incorrect these days. Their lives weren't spent on red carpets and inside agency offices putting “packages” together—they put their excesses on the screen through the stories they told and the characters who inhabited them. Their films have real juice in them because their lives did. I first met John at a poker game in New York. He was everything I expected him to be: womanizer, gambler, hard drinker, storyteller, and charmer. I was young, and the stakes we were playing for actually made a difference to me. Halfway through the game I found myself alone in a pot, betting against him. I had a pretty good hand. I raised. He raised me back. I smiled nervously: “You know, playing against you, I really should be betting two hookers and a copra plantation.”

He smiled back: “That's very nice of you, Tom, very charming. Just put the money in, we'll chat later.” Needless to say, he won the hand.

After the game, I said: “If you're ever playing in another game while you're here, let me know…”

He grinned at me: “Oh, I'll send a car for
you
…”

John told me two things that are so important for directors to know. One: “If you get what you want on the first take, print it and move on. So many directors seem to do several more takes just for the hell of it. They don't even know what they want, but they do it anyway, as if something magical may happen. What a total waste of time.” Two: “If an actor (or actress) is giving a wonderful performance, don't interfere by directing them. Let them have their head. If they're talented and doing well, halfway through shooting they'll know more about the character than you do.” This lesson was brought home to me by Robert Mitchum one night. Bob's first film with Huston was
Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison.
He played a marine accidentally trapped with a nun on a tiny Pacific island during World War II. The nun was played by Deborah Kerr. Bob: “It was my first time working with John and I guess I was a tiny bit nervous. I wanted to please him. After the first week of shooting he hadn't said a word to me about my performance. I asked him if I was doing okay. He said: ‘You're fine, Bob, just fine.' I kept checking in with him and he kept saying that. Toward the end there was a particularly important scene. The Japanese were invading the little island and bombing it first. I was supposed to push Deborah into an empty shell hole and jump in on top to protect her. Our characters had developed a deep relationship with sexual undertones, and here I was, lying on top of a nun. It was a delicate moment, and my expression reflected it. After the first take John leaned down into the hole and said, ‘More, Bob.' I said, ‘More?' He said, ‘Even more.' That was the only piece of direction I got from him through the entire film.”

Danny Kaye

One of the most wildly talented performers ever.
The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
and
The Court Jester
(among others) are still comedic classics. Everyone knows of his prodigious talents for singing, acting, and dancing, but Danny's other accomplishments cast a wide net as well. He was a pilot—not just a putt-putt pilot: by the sixties he'd been checked out on jet airliners.

He loved sports and bought a minor league baseball team in Seattle that eventually became the Mariners. Whenever I went to Dodger Stadium I'd always see him engaged in deep conversation on the field before the game with Walter Alston, the Dodger manager at that time. Players were showing him their batting grips or sliding techniques. From time to time he actually sat in the dugout. Danny had to know everything, had to speak from real knowledge. He was also as close to being a physician as you could get without having gone to medical school. He studied all diseases, trivial or exotic, and how to cure them. He even had the American Medical Association's huge physician's dictionary, which pictured every conceivable pill in the world and explained its proper use. Dad knew Danny well and was something of an amateur doctor himself. He was jealous of Danny's AMA volume. When a doctor on Aunt Sara's side of the family passed away, Dad asked her to pretend to the AMA that he was still alive and had merely changed his address, so he could get his hands on that book. For years it was sent to a “Dr. Emanuel Aaronson” at Dad's house.

Danny's real passion was cooking. He was a world-class chef and had the diplomas and culinary awards to prove it. My good friends Leslie and Evie Bricusse lived just across the street from him. Danny was an admirer of Leslie's music and lyrics. He and Evie became regular dinner guests, and they brought me along with them on occasion. The dining table was in the kitchen. Danny would cook over the huge wrought-iron stove in his chef's outfit, aided by uniformed sous-chefs. He would keep a nonstop monologue going, filled with funny reminiscences, as one piping hot dish after another was transferred to the table and was instantly devoured. His favorite cuisine was Oriental. I've never had better Chinese food in my life.

Danny had a variety show on television at the time. I knew a couple of his writers, who told me that he was a demanding prick. But he paid top dollar and knew good work when he saw it. He was also reputed to have had a roving sexual appetite. His wife, the wonderful lyricist Sylvia Fine, had apparently learned how to live with it. I never met anyone so intent on learning everything about everything and so proficient at it. Had Danny lived more than a thousand years earlier, he truly would have been a Renaissance Man.

Gene Kelly

Along with Fred Astaire,
the
singular talent of the American musical film. One sat back and marveled at Astaire, at his dazzling style and grace, but there was something almost patrician about him. Gene was everyman, a brilliant dancer and choreographer, but someone the average guy could identify with. His contributions to the musical were singular and inventive. Gene was the first to dance with himself onscreen
(Cover Girl)
, the first to do a major number with an animated character (Jerry the mouse, in
Anchors Aweigh)
, and the first to seriously inject ballet into the genre (An
American in Paris).
He codirected and starred in
Singin' in the Rain
—by near unanimous consensus, simply the best musical ever made.

He was also the most competitive man I've ever met. Whether it was at charades, Scrabble, tennis, or dancing—he had to win. He was so kind and generous to me, an irascible Irishman with a quick grin forever giving me paternal advice. I met him through Jack Haley Jr., the godfather of his daughter, Bridget. Gene was also a great friend of Robert Wagner's, whom I'd worked with. The three of us played tennis several times a week with Pierre Groleau, the assistant manager of the celebrated Hollywood eating mecca Ma Maison. Many of our games were held on the court of Joe Pasternak, who would later produce my first screenplay,
The Sweet Ride.
Gene was obviously athletic and covered the court with grim determination. If you aced him with a serve just inside the line, he'd say: “I'm not sure. It might have been just out. Take two.” This usually worked with me, but not R.J., who'd say, “I don't want to take two, Gene, I just aced you.” I'd grin. Gene would drop his racket in frustration: “Well, if we're not even going to play fairly…” Sometimes rackets were thrown, insults were hurled across the net, but we always had a great time.

We played for bottles of Lafite Rothschild wine. R.J. and I were always going for the big play and too often missing. We'd insist on going double or nothing, then blow it again. After a couple of years we owed Gene and Pierre thousands of bottles of the world's most expensive wine. They insisted we pay up, so we decided to take them to the Bistro in Beverly Hills for dinner. We ordered one bottle. The sommelier brought it and poured. Gene tasted it, wrinkled his nose, shook his head, and sent it back. The next bottle was deemed acceptable. When we left the restaurant, the maître d' handed Gene the first bottle we'd ordered. Gene turned to us: “I knew you cheap bastards would try to get away with one bottle. Well I'm giving a small dinner tomorrow night, and this one will go down exquisitely.” Gene had won again. He had to.

He was equally competitive at Scrabble. Gene had memorized dozens of bizarre words from the dictionary and would use them, hoping you would challenge him and lose your turn. We were in a tight game one night. He put down the word
xyst.
I frowned: “I challenge.” Son of a bitch, it was in the dictionary, part of an ancient Greek portico or something. I lost my turn. We were virtually tied. Gene put down another totally unrecognizable word. I didn't challenge, not wanting to lose another turn. He won the game, then said: “You should have challenged. That word doesn't exist, I made it up.”

“Gene, that's cheating.”

“No, it isn't. The rules say you can challenge. If you're right, I lose my turn and have to take back the letters. I'm just playing by the rules.” Technically, he was right. But as to being fair…

Gene was rapidly losing his hair at that time. He was almost bald. He had three different toupees made for him. One was quite modest, his “I'm just sitting around with friends” toupee. The next was slightly fuller, his “I'm going into Beverly Hills or having lunch in a public place” toupee. Finally, there was what I called the “Looms of Mohawk” rug. That fuller-than-full toupee was reserved for awards ceremonies or television appearances and made him look twenty years old. After playing tennis one day we returned to Gene's house on Rodeo Drive. Gene was in shorts, sans any toupee at all. As we were talking on the sidewalk a car suddenly stopped. Two women inside were staring out at him. “Excuse me, are you Gene Kelly?”

“Yes, I am.”

They weren't entirely convinced. Gene smiled, then suddenly hopped up onto the top of a four-foot wall that ran along the side of the house. He started singing “It's Almost Like Being in Love” from
Brigadoon
as he incredibly tap-danced away down the wall in sneakers: “What a day this has been, what a rare mood I'm in…” The women swooned.