My Lunches with Orson (12 page)

HJ:
Did Fox make any good pictures during that period?

OW:
Yes. A few. A very few. They made
How Green Was My Valley
.

HJ:
What was he like?

OW:
Zanuck was a great polo player. When I first came out here, he was using the old polo grounds by the Palisades. It was funny, the head of the studio playing polo. I had the usual New York sneer. You know that for years, on the drive to work and back, he had a French teacher with him? Imagine a movie head wanting to learn something!

HJ:
Why, if Zanuck had that quality as a human being, was that not reflected in the films?

OW:
Because he wanted to be a successful head of a studio, and he was. Until he fell in love with that terrible Juliette Gréco. I made two pictures with her.

HJ:
That
Crack in the Mirror
picture.

OW:
And another one, that I've forgotten. He lost everything over her, his power, left his wife—everything.

HJ:
For Juliette Gréco?

OW:
To serve her. He'd take her little dog and walk it around the lot while we were shooting. So help me, it was awful. I don't believe a director should ever fall in love with his leading lady. Or at least show it.

HJ:
He had Marilyn Monroe under contract, didn't he?

OW:
She was a girlfriend of mine. I used to take her to parties before she was a star.

HJ:
I didn't know that!

OW:
I wanted to try and promote her career. Nobody even glanced at Marilyn. You'd see these beautiful girls, the most chic girls in town, who spent a fortune at the beauty parlor and on their clothes, and everybody said, “Darling, you're looking wonderful!” And then they'd ignore them. The men, not the women. The men would gather in the corner and start telling jokes or talking deals. The only time they talked about the girls was to say whether they scored with them the night before. I would point Marilyn out to Darryl, and say, “What a sensational girl.” He would answer, “She's just another stock player. We've got a hundred of them. Stop trying to push these cunts on me. We've got her on for $125 a week.” And then, about six months later, Darryl was paying Marilyn $400,000, and the men were looking at her—because some stamp had been put on her.

HJ:
God, that's amazing.

OW:
Then Darryl disappeared to Europe with Juliette Gréco. We thought we'd never hear from him again.

HJ:
When I arrived, in the mid-sixties, in the later part of his career, he was trying to put together a big war movie in Paris,
The Longest Day
.

OW:
Twentieth was in terrible trouble.

HJ:
With
Cleopatra
.

OW:
He heard about it, so he rolled up his sleeves and made
The Longest Day
, which got them out from under—like that, you see. It made a fortune, and brought him back as president of Fox, because he had become a figure of fun, you see. Then his son and another group maneuvered him out.

HJ:
Richard Zanuck maneuvered him out? Richard, who's partnered with David Brown?

OW:
Yeah. He was the front man for those who were trying to get rid of him.

HJ:
His own son? Not Jewish, in other words. It's not like Jews to—

OW:
Zanuck? Everybody thought Darryl was Jewish, because Zanuck is sort of a foreign name. He was Christian. The only Christian head of a studio.

HJ:
Except for his boss, [Spyros] Skouras.

OW:
If you could call him Christian. He's Greek Orthodox. Twentieth was the only Christian studio. It was the worst studio in town. Yes. Zanuck is Czech, from Nebraska. He had begun his career by publishing, at his own cost, a novel. And putting it on the desks of the various producers. At nineteen he became the white-haired boy by writing the Rin Tin Tin movies, which, of course, made a fortune.

HJ:
Isn't
Jane Eyre
a Zanuck movie? I watched it last night. You put on a nose for
Jane Eyre
.

OW:
Yes.

HJ:
Why?

OW:
Because I was so baby-faced. I looked sixteen years old. How was I gonna be Mr. Rochester with this baby face? I had a nose in
Kane
. Then we made it longer as I got older. Noses do get longer.

HJ:
I didn't like the acting at all.

OW:
What acting?

HJ:
In
Jane Eyre
.

OW:
My acting?

HJ:
No, I like your acting immensely.

OW:
Oh, her. Joan Fontaine. No, she's no good in it. She's just a plain old bad actor. She's got four readings, and two expressions, and that's it. And she was busy being the humble governess—so fucking humble. Which is a great mistake. Because she's supposed to be a proud little woman who, in spite of her position, stands up for herself. That's why she interests this bastard of a man.

HJ:
I guess that's the thing that I always have trouble with in the film, that she looks so mousy and unappealing. And I can't understand why she appeals to him.

OW:
You should get the feeling that this mouse roars, but you don't. The trick of the story is that she is, by virtue of the nature of society as it was then, doomed to a position of total servility. But because of her tremendous independence of spirit, she causes the man to become interested in her. Even though she's not a beauty. It's her
character
that makes the impression on him. And that's why he loves her, finally.

HJ:
What you see is an actress trying to play not a beauty.

OW:
Yeah, that's all you see. The whole point of the story is ruined by that. Because you're supposed to see that the visiting lady—what's her name?—is the great beauty. And that's the sort of pearl that he ought to have, and all that. And here is this girl who not only is in a position of being a mere hired servant, but she's not even a beauty. But she finally commands this man's whole life. Because of her character. Standing up for herself. Being a fierce little girl. And that isn't the movie at all! It isn't even indicated. Nobody told her that, you know.

HJ:
Neither she nor her sister Olivia de Havilland could act. I never understood their careers.

OW:
Yes, you do. There are always jobs for pretty girls who speak semi-educated English. I don't think either one of 'em is worth much—

HJ:
I understand their careers, but I don't understand how some people hold them in such high regard.

OW:
There are a lot of bad actors.

HJ:
It's like Merle Oberon is another one for me.

OW:
Yeah. But very beautiful. She was mainly wonderful in one movie, but wonderful because she was not asked to do any acting. It was a very strange French movie. She played a Japanese—before she ever came to Hollywood. I've forgotten what it was called.
Sayonara 1
, or something. Now there's a bad picture for you—
Sayonara 2
.

HJ:
Poor Marlon.

OW:
Anybody who was trapped in that movie would have been at a loss. Yet, he got an Academy Award for it. That shows you where we were then. The picture was, on every level, an abomination. It looked like a musical that didn't have any numbers in it. The Orient is the graveyard of American directors. The only really bad [Frank] Capra picture I've ever seen is this
Shangri-La
. It's terrible—terrible. Absurd! I screamed with laughter! Shangri-La, where they were kept, was this sort of Oriental country club. Still, I was a great Capra fan.

HJ:
It's a Wonderful Life.
You want to hate it, but—

OW:
Well, yes—hokey. It is sheer Norman Rockwell, from the beginning to the end. But you cannot resist it! There's no way of hating that movie.

 

7. “
The Blue Angel
is a big piece of shlock.”

In which Orson mocks the excesses of
auteurism
, and Peter Bogdanovich in particular for falling at the feet of studio directors such as Howard Hawks. He recounts his adventures with the kings and queens of the Bs, who churned out bottom-of-the bill fillers.

*   *   *

O
RSON
W
ELLES
:
I'm going on ABC-TV this afternoon. Just before the Oscars. That's why I'm made up. Myself and Peter Bogdanovich. And Hal Roach. I suggested Hal Roach. Because I saw him on TV the other night. He's eighty-six, but he still makes great sense! He's cute as hell. They wanted Capra, and I said, “Capra may be the best living director, but he's the worst living guest. He'll talk about how beautiful America is, and so on. Forget him—get Hal Roach!” They'd already gotten Bogdanovich, and they were angling for Francis Ford [Coppola]. I said, “You have too many people—I don't really want to go. You won't have any time for any of us to say anything. All you'll get is Bogdanovich.”

H
ENRY
J
AGLOM
:
So Bogdanovich is gonna be on this show today.

OW:
He's good on TV.

HJ:
Yeah, but he antagonizes a lot of people. Cynical.

OW:
That makes me look better. Always nice to have a heavy man.

HJ:
When I first met Bogdanovich—

OW:
You thought he was nuts.

HJ:
He was always finding great virtues in all of those studio directors.

OW:
Unwatchable.

HJ:
What's the name of that stupid director?

OW:
Sam Fuller. Peter gets furious with me for not expressing enthusiasm for Fuller. Fritz Lang, you know? He thinks is great. Lang, whose mother was Jewish, told me that Goebbels, who was trying to get him to head up the Nazi movie industry, offered to make him an honorary Aryan, of which there were only a handful. Lang said, “But I'm Jewish,” and Goebbels replied, “
I
decide who is Jewish!”
That
was when Lang knew it was time to leave Germany.

What were we talking about? Peter also thinks von Sternberg is great. Von Sternberg never made a good picture.

HJ:
What about
The Blue Angel
?

OW:
It's a big piece of shlock. Painted on velvet. Like you buy in Honolulu. Peter stopped talking to me for several days when I said von Sternberg was no good. Then Hawks, Howard Hawks. The so-called greatest ever. Hawks is number one, and all the rest ate the scraps from his table.

HJ:
Yeah. Yeah,
Bringing Up Baby
.

OW:
Yes, the greatest picture ever made. I recently saw what I've always been told was Jack [Ford's] greatest movie, and it's terrible.
The Searchers.
He made many very bad pictures.

HJ:
You're talking about
The Horse Soldiers
and stupid
Sergeant Rutledge
.

OW:
I was in Peter's house one night, and he ran some John Ford picture. During the first reel I said, “Isn't it funny how incapable even Ford—and all American directors are—of making women look in period? You can always tell which decade a costume picture was made in—the twenties, the thirties, the forties, or the fifties—even if it's supposed to be in the seventeenth century.” I said, “Look at those two girls who are supposed to be out in the covered wagon.” Their hairdos and their costumes are really what the actresses in the fifties thought was good taste. Otherwise, they're gonna say, “I can't come out in this.” Peter flew into a rage, turned off the projector, and wouldn't let us see the rest of the movie because I didn't have enough respect for Ford. But Jack made some of the best ever.

HJ:
When I first met Bogdanovich, I was very snide about John Ford movies. I made fun of them. When I grew up, I realized that they were perfectly good. Say hello to Peter if you see him. Is that book on Dorothy Stratten ever gonna come out?

OW:
I have a terrible fear that it'll be a runaway best seller. Really, I have a dread! He'll behave so badly. He'll become such a pompous ass again. Right after
The Last Picture Show
he came out to Arizona to play his part in
The Other Side of the Wind
—and sat for five hours at the table talking to me, with his back turned to [my cinematographer] Gary Graver, whom he knew very well. He never said hello or goodbye to him. You want to know about your friend Peter?”

HJ:
He was your friend, too.

OW:
You know when vaudeville died, and all the great vaudeville performers—the comics, the singers—were thrown out of work. They couldn't make the move to radio or film. They used to huddle around these barrels in Times Square, where they made fires, and ate roasted potatoes off sticks. Then television arrived, and the TV producers came looking for these guys to use them in their variety shows. One of them was the biggest star of vaudeville. While he was on top, he treated everybody like shit. So when the bad times came, they wouldn't share their fires with him, or their food. But gradually they started to feel sorry for him. Years passed. They all forgave him. Now, the
Ed Sullivan Show
is going to do the best of vaudeville, at the Palace Theater. This guy gets a plum part. He tells all his friends, who didn't get chosen, “Guys, I just got lucky. I'll never forget you. You can't imagine what you mean to me; you've saved my life; here are some tickets, front row; come backstage afterwards; we'll go out for drinks, celebrate. I've learned my lesson.” The show goes on, this guy is sensational, he's going to be a big TV star now. All his friends come backstage, knock on the door. He comes out in a velvet robe, says, “Fellas, I've got that old shitty feeling coming over me again.” And he slams the door in their faces. That's Peter.