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“The deal, that’s all this business is about,” a Studio producer told me a few days later over lunch in the commissary. “Who’s available, when can you get him, start date, stop date, percentages—the deal, it’s the only thing that matters. Listen, if Paul Newman comes in and says he wants to play Gertrude Lawrence in
Star!
, you do it, that’s the nature of the business.”

The Sweet Ride
was three days behind schedule. Joe Pasternak watched the morning’s shooting at the beach and when the crew broke found a place beside director Harvey Hart at the lunch table. Luncheon was served in a large circus tent set up on a cliff overlooking the surf.
Someone brought him a plate of cold cuts, some fruit juice and a plate of Jello. Pasternak wiped off his fork with a paper napkin.

“We’re already three days over,” he said to Hart.

“It all evens out, Joe,” Hart said. “I heard the Sinatra picture came in fourteen days early.”

“Frank must have had a date,” Pasternak said.

The publicity campaign for
Dr. Dolittle
was being handled by the Beverly Hills public relations firm of Rogers, Cowan & Brenner, where Arthur Jacobs had once been a partner before branching into independent film production. Bobby Darin was also a client of Rogers, Cowan & Brenner, and his was the first
Dr. Dolittle
album, other than the original-score recording, to be finished. Before leaving for Princess Grace’s annual Red Cross gala in Monte Carlo, Darin met with his press agent, Paul Bloch, of the Rogers, Cowan & Brenner office. The following day Bloch prepared a memorandum:

Richard Zanuck signed a letter, glanced at a memorandum before throwing it into the wastebasket, then stood up as director Fred Zinnemann and producer David Weisbart walked into his office. They exchanged amenities about their recent travels and then settled down to business. The Studio had signed Zinnemann to direct a $10 million Western based on Custer’s last stand and had assigned the picture to Weisbart’s schedule. It was Zinnemann’s first Western since he won an Academy Award for his direction of
High Noon
and he was excited about the project. Richard Zanuck’s enthusiasm, however, was beginning to wane; the picture posed enormous casting and production difficulties and the
huge budget, which had been honed to the bone, was causing second thoughts.

“I don’t see this as a star picture,” Zanuck said. “No names over the title. There isn’t an actor around who can bring in enough tickets for a picture this size. Except maybe, in something like this, John Wayne.”

“Not a chance,” Weisbart said. He was a handsome, impeccably dressed man in his early fifties who had been a staff producer at the Studio ever since the Zanucks had regained control. “The Duke hates Custer like the plague. He thinks the whole incident is an American disgrace.”

“I guess he would at that,” Zanuck said.

“Let me show you some English faces,” Zinnemann said, digging into a portfolio of photographs. He was a slight, pipe-smoking man with half-glasses and a soft Austrian accent. “Our concept is a newsreel of the period. If we get these English actors, we raise the whole tone of the acting and break up the clichés of Western acting.”

Zanuck pored over the pictures, occasionally taking one out and laying it aside.

“I’ve been thinking about using cameos,” Weisbart said.

Zanuck looked up quickly.

“I think it would add something to the picture to have name actors do bits,” Weisbart continued.

Zanuck rose from his desk and began pacing the room, shooting his cuffs. “If we use cameos, they’ve got to have something to do,” he said. “They’ve got to play roles. What I don’t want is something like
The Greatest Story Ever Told
, some star coming out in butler suit saying, ‘This truly was the Son of God.’ ”

“And that’s all he has to do,” Weisbart said.

“Exactly,” Zanuck said.

“We won’t have that in this picture,” Weisbart said.

Zinnemann closed his portfolio, patting the photographs into place so that there were no white edges showing. “Is it true, Dick,” he said carefully, “that you’re thinking of shooting locations in Mexico?”

Zanuck nodded slowly.

“It’s outrageous,” Zinnemann said. “Shooting a great American folk legend in a foreign country.”

“It’ll save three million dollars,” Zanuck replied pleasantly. “It’s a factor, it’s a real factor.”

Zinnemann yielded the point grudgingly. He went on to the next item on his agenda. He had already won assent from the Studio to cast Toshiro Mifune, the Japanese film star, in the role of Crazy Horse, and now suggested that another Oriental play Sitting Bull. “It’ll maintain an ethnic balance, Dick,” Zinnemann said.

A stricken look crossed Zanuck’s face. “Jesus, Freddy,” he said, “you want us ostracized by the American Indian Association? Those are the two biggest heroes in the history of Indians. And you want Japs to play both of them?”

Besides
Dr. Dolittle
and
Star!
, the Studio had two other major roadshow pictures in preparation,
Hello, Dolly!
and
Tom Swift
. The latter was a camp spectacular based on the boys’ adventure stories by Victor Appleton. A first-draft script had been written and Gene Kelly, the dancer, had been assigned to direct. Though the picture was not yet locked in on the production schedule, the art department was hard at work making preliminary designs of Tom Swift’s aeroship. The actual construction of the aeroship was to be undertaken by the Boeing Aircraft Corporation. Late in the summer, Kelly and
Tom Swift
’s producer, Frank McCarthy, arranged to have Jerry Reynolds, the Boeing engineer in charge of the project, flown to Los Angeles to discuss whether the preliminary designs were aerodynamically feasible. The meeting took place in the office of
Tom Swift
’s art director, Dale Hennesy. The walls of Hennesy’s office were covered with old rotogravures of dirigibles and antique airplanes, and hanging from a fluorescent light was a paper model of the proposed airship. Reynolds seemed notably out of place among the half dozen casually attired people crammed in Hennesy’s small office. He was wearing a salt-and-pepper sport jacket and perforated shoes and he nervously kept wiping the lenses of his rimless glasses with a handkerchief.

Kelly was late, and while the group waited for him to arrive, Jerry Reynolds poked at the sausage-shaped aeroship with a pencil. The plan was to have the lighter-than-air craft suspended by cables from a helicopter when it was actually flying. For the air shots, Kelly and his camera crew would film from another helicopter. At last, Kelly breezed into the office. He was wearing a sport shirt and a plaid golf cap. He sailed the golf cap across the room onto a couch. He was not wearing his toupee and Reynolds seemed startled at seeing him without hair.

“Well, Mr. Reynolds … what’s your first name, by the way?” Kelly said.

“Jerry,” Reynolds said.

“Well, Jerry,” Kelly said, pointing to the model, “all I want to know is, will it work?”

“Yes, sir, it will work,” Reynolds said.

Kelly smiled the smile that had lit several score pictures. “Then I guess I can go back to my office,” he said.

Reynolds looked perplexed. “Well, there are certain aerodynamic problems …”

“I’m sure there are, Jerry,” Kelly said soothingly. “But let me tell you what we want and then you can tell us what you can do.” Again the smile. “Okay?”

Reynolds nodded solemnly.

“First of all, Jerry, we want an exciting visual concept,” Kelly said. “That means a lot of gimmickry and pizazz—that’s a show business word—on the space ship. This picture is about Tom Swift and his aeroship, and if we have an aeroship that looks like an uncooked hot dog, well, I know I don’t have to tell you, Jerry, we don’t have a picture. So I want all maximum gimmickry”—he
nodded reassuringly—“that will be aerodynamically feasible, of course.”

Reynolds studied the model. “It will mean more money, of course, these, uh, gimmicks,” he said. “And the round shape you’ve got now is unstable. But we can put some aerodynamic tricks on it.”

“Great, Jerry,” Kelly said. “We put our tricks on it and you put your tricks on it and we’re in business.”

“I would say that, sir,” Reynolds said.

“Now what about the chopper?” Kelly said. “Will the prop wash make the aeroship swing and sway like Sammy Kaye?”

“Sammy Kaye,” Reynolds said uncertainly. Then he smiled broadly. “Sammy Kaye. Well, I think we can make allowances.”

“A fun-looking design,” Kelly said. “You get me.”

“I get you,” Reynolds said. He peered at the model. “What’s the maximum altitude you want to fly at?”

“12,000 feet,” Kelly said.

Reynolds exhaled. “That might be a problem. How many people will you have in the aeroship?”

“Five,” Kelly said. “But not at 12,000. We’ll use dummies at that height. I wouldn’t even ask a stunt man to go aboard at 12,000.”

Reynolds fingered a slide rule. “The slower this, uh, aeroship goes, the simpler our problem becomes,” he said. “What I need from you is the minimum speed you can function at.”

“We have to get a feeling of motion,” Hennesy said.

“Absolutely,” Kelly said.

“Well, 80 knots at 3,000 feet looks like you’re scarcely moving.”

“Like still shots,” Kelly said. He was twirling his golf cap around on his finger.

“So you need speeds …” Reynolds began.

“… that will give the cinematographer full amplitude,” Kelly interrupted. Reynolds nodded. He began making rapid calculations on a scratch pad.

“Maybe we can do wind-tunnel tests,” Kelly suggested.

“No, sir, I don’t think so,” Reynolds said. “Our studies will be accurate enough.”

“I trust you implicitly, Jerry,” Kelly said. “Just one last thing. When we bring the aeroship down after a shot, will there be much of a jolt?”

“It will be like going over a bump in a road,” Reynolds said.

“You don’t know
ac
-tors, Jerry,” Kelly said. “We jolt them two or three times, it doesn’t help my relations with them.”

“I can understand that,” Reynolds said.

Kelly rose and patted the golf cap onto his head. “The more this aeroship looks like Tom Swift built it in his garage and not Boeing Vertol, the happier I’ll be.” He shook Reynolds’ hand. “Ready when you are, C.B.,” Kelly said.

Though
Planet of the Apes
was not finished shooting, a trailer for theater preview had been prepared and was ready for Arthur Jacobs’ inspection. He sagged into a seat in the Studio Theater and motioned Mort Abrahams to tell the projectionist he was ready. The film showed Maurice Evans, Roddy McDowall, Kim Hunter and James Daly in normal contemporary clothes and
then dissolved into a shot of each in ape makeup. The last shot was of Linda Harrison, a Fox contract player who was playing Nova, The Earth Girl, one of the human captives of the apes. As her picture flickered on the screen, Jacobs sat bolt upright in his chair.

“Who the hell made her up?” he said. “Jesus, what a lousy makeup job.”