Robert Mitchum: Baby, I Don't Care (49 page)

Agee refused to show anyone a page of script until he was done, then turned over something the size of a New York phone book (Grubb’s novel was slender) and full of unfilmable descriptions, stream of consciousness, and indications for frequent cutaways to old newsreels. Time and thirty grand unpleasantly wasted! Laughton ended up writing most of the screenplay himself, though he wouldn’t take a credit. Agee was dead before the picture was released.

Laughton imagined
Hunter
having a deliberately archaic look, something like the early silent films he had seen as a youth. At New York’s Museum of Modern Art he screened a number of D.W. Griffith’s works and became reacquainted with the singular artistry of Lilian Gish. They took tea together in Manhattan, and he offered her the part of Miz Cooper (his wife, Elsa Lan-chester, having already turned it down—she didn’t want to be near him in a “hypersensitive” situation). He told Gish, “When Griffith was making those films, audiences sat bolt upright on the edge of their seats. Now they sit slumped over, feeding themselves popcorn. I want to make them sit upright again.” For the role of the doomed widow, Laughton and Gregory had one actress in mind from the beginning: Bette Grable. She hemmed and hawed, unsure of her availability, uncertain of the strange project. Laughton and Gregory remained hopeful of signing her until a few weeks before filming was to begin. Reluctantly, they considered a list of other actresses, including Teresa Wright, before abuptly offering the part to Shelley Winters, the zaftig blonde from Brooklyn, and a student in Laughton’s advanced acting class. Mitchum objected. “She looks and sounds as much like a wasted West Virginia girl as I do,” he said. “The only bit she’ll do convincingly is to float in the water with her throat cut.”

Mitchum favored shooting the picture on authentic Appalachian locations, but this was vetoed as too expensive. Besides, Laughton had something other than authenticity in mind. Filming would be done on stages at Pathe and Republic studios and at the Rowland V. Lee ranch in the San Fernando Valley. Laughton proteges Terry and Dennis Sanders were sent to film second-unit material along the Ohio River.

To photograph the movie, Laughton hired a cinematographer he had gotten to know in Paris on the set of
The Man on the Eiffel Tower
(and became reacquainted with in Hollywood shooting—yes—
Abbott and Costello Meet Captain Kidd),
Stanley Cortez. Nicknamed “the Baron,” the elegant brother of silent star Ricardo Cortez was an extremely creative technician, best known for
his amazing work on Welles’s
The Magnificent Ambersons,
who nonetheless found himself most of the time shooting B picture junk. Cortez met with Laughton every Sunday for six weeks before shooting began, showing him how the camera worked, piece by piece, lens by lens. In turn, Laughton found prints of Griffith’s silents for Cortez to study.

Though he had been making movies as an actor and sometime producer for nearly thirty years, Laughton approached his directorial debut as if it were to be his first moment on a film set. He considered no element of the enterprise unworthy of his attention, for all that it was not a luxurious production, and the strained budget and tight shooting schedule left him little time for rehearsals or for much advance work on the production design. Mitchum was not legally available to them—still with RKO—until three days before filming began. Laughton had to depend on inspiration, luck, and teamwork.

“I have to go back to D. W. Griffith to find a set so infused with purpose and harmony,” wrote Lilian Gish. Said Stanley Cortez, “Every day the marvelous team that made that picture would meet and discuss the next day’s work. It was designed from day to day . . . so that the details seemed fresh, fresher than if we had done the whole thing in advance.” As soon as filming concluded in the evening, Laughton, Cortez, set designer Hilly Brown, and assistant director Milt Carter regrouped at the Frascatti Inn on La Cienega to consider the possibilities for the upcoming sequences. Some scenes came together only hours, even minutes before they were to be shot. Laughton encouraged contributions from everyone involved. Mitchum delighted him with clever suggestions and bits of business that were instantly incorporated—like the idea of speaking his lines inside the prison cell while hanging upside down from his bunk. A creative synergism developed among the artists and technicians that allowed scenes to blossom and achieve sudden, unexpected new levels of expressiveness, as when a last-minute adjustment of a few lights before shooting Preacher’s murder of his wife turned the A-frame bedroom set into the outline of a church with shimmering spire. Freed of any allegiance to realism or the favored stylistics of the day, Laughton’s technical team was encouraged to employ visual tricks that had fallen out of favor in the naturalistic Hollywood of the ‘50s. They made flamboyant use of shadows and silhouettes. Some sets were built in perspective for artificial, dreamlike vistas. Instead of a time-consuming, expensive crane shot of a boy outside a basement window, Cortez offered to zero in with a mechanical iris, a device that had rarely been used since the coming of sound—the look was pure Griffith.

Laughton could barely contain himself. “He was such an inspiring figure,” said Cortez. “You were ready to do all you could to give him what he wanted.
You didn’t care about the hours spent. You were not working for the paycheck, you were working to help Laughton, to help him achieve all that he wanted.” To reveal the dead Shelley Winters seated in her car underwater, Laughton desired a bright, ethereal image, her hair floating like seaweed, and a slow, unbroken camera movement rising to the water’s surface. Cortez went all over town trying to find a water tank that his lights could penetrate sufficiently, settling on the one owned by Republic Pictures. A platform suspended by a crane held eight blinding Titan sun arcs. Wind machines had to be carefully employed to blow the hair and weeds without making waves. The camera operator and an assistant worked underwater in scuba gear. The amazingly lifelike dead Shelley Winters was a wax dummy.

As for Mitchum, he, too, gave Laughton everything he wanted—and more. In the spirit of Laughton’s eccentric and expressionist approach, he abandoned his usual low-keyed behaviorial style in favor of intense theatricality, eye-rolling flamboyance. The director confided to Lilian Gish that he had to hold Bob back lest he go so far with his inspired malevolence that he ruin his career, making women and children run when they saw him. (”I think,” said Mitchum, “I was still fairly despicable.”) Laughton felt such confidence in his star that he even allowed Mitchum to take over direction of the film on a couple of occasions, scenes involving little Sally Jane Bruce and Billy Chapin, though in truth Laughton was only too eager to have someone else work with the children. He was not simpatico with the young actors and thought the boy a perfect little monster. “Charles was not able to get through to them,” said Paul Gregory, “and thought that maybe Mitchum could talk to them and make them a little more relaxed.” Mitchum theorized that child actors instinctively sought direction from the adult actors they worked with and that it was natural and less confusing for them if an actor actually did give the directions. “Mitchum got along great with the kids and they got some damn good footage,” said Paul Gregory. “Charles told me how very tender he was with them.”

Neither Mitchum nor Laughton seemed to be particularly tender with Shelley Winters. “Shelley was such a good actress,” said Reva Frederick, “but sometimes she would have little screaming jeebies over something and Robert used to not be tolerant of that kind of attitude. And
Charles
 . . . the way he dealt with her . . . Once she was making a scene over a piece of wardrobe that didn’t fit or something, or she thought it didn’t fit, and Charles just walked over to her and slapped her across the face. He said, ‘Stop it!’ And we were all like, ‘God, did I just see what I saw?’ And Shelley just blinked and snapped to and went back to the work.”

Robert’s devotion to Laughton and the project had begun to fade by the final week of the thirty-six-day shoot. Gregory: “Laughton had a keen thing for Mitchum, and Mitchum said all this shit about how he loved Charles, but he was on drugs, drunk, and what have you, and there were times when Charles couldn’t get him in front of the camera. He put us through a lot of hell on that. The picture went two hundred thousand dollars over budget.” To Gregory, Mitchum at times seemed uncomfortably like the character he was playing. “He was a charmer. An evil son of a bitch with a lot of charm. Mitch sort of scared me, to tell you the truth. I was always on guard. He was often in a state, and you never knew what he would do next. He would be drunk or in a fight with this flunky he kept around, and kicking him all over the place. I came from the world of the theater and I had never seen anyone quite like this.”

One day they were shooting an exterior scene at the Lee ranch in the Valley. Shelley Winters arrived late, coming from rehearsals for a television appearance. Mitchum arrived staggering. Laughton said nothing but phoned his producer for help. “What the hell, Paul,” he said, “we can’t shoot. Mitchum is so high . . . it’s just not possible.” The thing was—Mitchum
insisted on
working.

Gregory, ever mindful of the production’s strained budget and all that he and Laughton had riding on this initial effort, hopped into his car and sped to the location. He would recall having words only with Mitchum, though Shelley Winters recollected also receiving a tongue-lashing from the producer. “He was running around the set screaming about how much it would cost if the stars delayed like this all through the picture,” she wrote. “Gregory’s screaming unnerved me. . . . I was hoping somebody would shut him up. Good acting cannot be performed in an ambiance of chaos and pressure.”

Gregory confronted Mitchum. “He was all puffy-eyed. Could barely see. I said, ‘Mitch, sweetheart, you’re in no condition to go on camera.’”

Mitchum said, “What the fuck you mean I’m in no condition?”

Gregory said, “You’re in no condition. You’re all puffy-eyed!”

Mitchum raised his eyebrows—though drooping eyelids did not follow. He seemed to ponder for a moment, considering this red cape of authority that had just been shaken in his face. Then, said Gregory, “he opened his fly and whipped his dick out.”

The door to Gregory’s Cadillac convertible was wide open, and Mitchum moved over behind it to urinate. “I stepped back to give him some room. I thought he was trying to hide behind the door for modesty’s sake.” But no. “I looked back and see that he is pissing on the front seat of the car where I had been sitting. It went on and on, filling up the seat with piss. I stood there. I
couldn’t believe it, that’s all. And then he put his cock back in his pants and turned around with a look on his face like that was just the
dearest
thing he had ever done in his life! He staggered away, and I stood there looking at the seat of my car. Finally I closed the door and went over by the crew and got one of the prop boys. I said, ‘I wonder if you could get me a sponge or something. I just had my car seat baptized by Mr. Mitchum.’”

Nearly five decades later, thinking back on that day of infamy—nothing like it in the theater!—Paul Gregory would start to laugh. “He was . . . a funny guy,
I’ll admit it.
Funny in many ways. Oh, I wanted to kill him. . . .”

Gregory and Laughton went to view the finished film for the first time, by themselves, in a tiny screening room at the Beverly Hills Hotel. The producer was amazed by the artistry and creativity displayed. Mitchum was remarkable, Gish wonderful . . . but . . . what to think . . . seeing it all cut together now he hadn’t expected the film to be quite so odd, so . . . out of the mainstream. He thought perhaps Cortez had been an overwhelming influence, too far out, offering Charles too many possibilities. The lights had gone up and the two sat there. “You had to be careful what you said to Charles. He didn’t believe you if you said it was wonderful, and he would have killed you if you said you thought it was awful. But Charles and I had had a relationship for about six years by then. I was not one to bullshit him. I looked him right in the eye and I said, ‘Charlie, they’re not going to know how to sell this picture.’ And he said, ‘Oh, my god, why, old boy?’ I said, ‘It’s . . . they’re going to call it an art film, a picture for the art houses. And I think we’re going to be in trouble. It has nothing to do with the fact that you did a fantastic job, but I think it’s going to be a tough sale.’ Well, he hadn’t dreamed of such a possibility. But I turned out to be right. The fact that
The Night of the Hunter
was not a commercial success devastated him. He went into a slide, a depression that lasted for about seven months and ended with our breaking up our partnership. We had contracts for him to direct
The Naked and the Dead,
and he was just out of sorts, couldn’t do it. And I had to go on and do something with it; I couldn’t just sit there. Terrible how it turned out. He never directed another film, of course. . . . He was a terrific guy. I loved old Charlie. . . .”

It was one of those rare Hollywood films—like
Citizen Kane, King Kong, The General,
and few others—that seemed to come out of nowhere, following no tradition or precedent, a work of astonishing originality. Laughton had reconceived
Davis Grubb’s dark, often savage novel, with its switchblade killings and carved-up hookers and other niceties, turning it into something equally strange but airier, like a fractured fairy story or folk tale, beginning with the opening moments—the disembodied Miz Cooper reading Scripture as she floats among the stars—and on to the enchanted river journey with its scuffling bunny rabbits looking on and the final Grimm battle of the surrogate mother and father. It was the story as it might have been drawn directly from a loopy child’s imagination—direct, say, from the mind of strange, wild-eyed Pearl. The film’s odd, multilayered sensibility invoked the lost world of Griffith, the Manichaean-Victorian melodrama of
Way Down East
and
Broken Blossoms,
even as its insidious black comedy and strange satire anticipated the “put-on” and “sick” humor of the ‘60s, of films like
Lolita
and
Dr. Strangelove
and
Psycho.
Mitchum’s performance—a bone thrown to all those critics incapable of appreciating his usual subtly nuanced naturalistic acting—was a grandly unbuttoned, theatrical piece of work unlike anything he had ever attempted or would ever attempt again. Whether greasily charming his backwoods admirers, preaching the tale of “left hand/right hand,” singing various renditions of “Leaning on the Everlasting Arms,” contemplating the murder of a burlesque queen, making his psychotic hog caller’s cry of”
Children!”
or taking a pratfall like some diabolical Keystone Kop, Mitchum’s wonderfully sinister, appalling, ridiculous Preacher Harry Powell was the powerful, crucial fulcrum in the film’s risky imbalancing act. There would be many who would call it his best performance, and sometimes Mitchum would agree with them.