Studio (9780307817600) (22 page)

“Don’t forget, we’re due at the art museum at three-thirty,” he said.

“Arthur’s making jokes,” Lionel Newman said. The head of the Studio’s music department, Newman had arranged the score and conducted it on the sound track. He had arrived in Minneapolis the day before with a Studio sound engineer to help set up the theater for the preview. “Arthur, as a comic, you’re a lardass.”

Jacobs looked chagrined.

“You know what I call this hotel?” Newman said.
“Menopause Manor.” He smiled at the waitress. “That’s okay, honey, I don’t mean you. But you got to admit, there’s one or two old people staying here. I mean, this hotel talks about the swinging sixties, they don’t mean the year, they mean the Geritol set.”

Suddenly Jacobs raised his arm and shouted, “The Brinkmans.” Standing in the doorway of the Flame Room, with his wife Yvonne, was Leslie Bricusse, the tall, bespectacled young English writer who had written the screenplay, music and lyrics for
Dr. Dolittle
. Jacobs was beside himself. “The Brinkmans are here,” he cried to Fleischer. “Brinkmans” was his nickname for the Bricusses. “Did you see them?”

“He could hardly miss, Arthur,” Newman said. “You make it seem like the start of World War III.”

“Sit over here, Leslie,” Jacobs said. He snapped his fingers for the waitress, who was standing right behind him. “We need chairs. Leslie, you want a sandwich, coffee, a drink?”

The Bricusses were pummeled by the Fox people and diffidently gave their order to the waitress. Yvonne Bricusse, a handsome, dark-haired English actress, slipped into a banquette alongside Natalie Trundy, who kissed her on the cheek. She poured herself a cup of coffee.

“What are you wearing to the opening?” Natalie Trundy said.

“New York?” Yvonne Bricusse said.

“Mmmmm,” Natalie Trundy said.

“A heavenly thing,” Yvonne Bricusse said. “Leslie bought it for me. Autumn colors, sort of. Burnt orange, with a bow here.” She patted her bosom.

“Divine,” Natalie Trundy said. “How about Los Angeles?”

“Nothing yet,” Yvonne Bricusse said, sipping her coffee. “I thought I’d get something made. What do you think of Don Feld?” Feld is a motion picture costume designer.

“Heavenly,” Natalie Trundy said. She reached over with her fork and speared a piece of steak off Jacobs’ plate. “A lot of feathers, though.”

Yvonne Bricusse brooded for a moment. “Mmmm,” she said. “I know what you mean. He
does
like feathers.” She stirred a spoon lazily in her coffee cup. “What about you?”

“In the works,” Natalie Trundy said. “They’re on the drawing boards, New York, London, Los Angeles, all the openings.” She fluttered her arms like a ballerina. “I’m going to
float
. I haven’t even talked about colors yet. I want to see how they look on the board.”

That evening, before the preview, Richard Zanuck hosted a party for the Fox group at the Minneapolis Press Club on the second floor of the Radisson. Zanuck had just that day returned from Europe, a combination business and pleasure trip to London and Paris, then a week vacationing in the South of France with David and Helen Gurley Brown. He looked tanned and healthy. “I’m still on Paris time,” he said, dipping a cocktail frankfurter into some mustard. “Stopped off in New York this morning to see a rough cut of
The Incident
, then back onto a plane out here.”

“You can sleep tomorrow,” Arthur Jacobs said.

Zanuck shook his head. “I’m going back to Los Angeles at six-thirty in the morning.”

“Why?” Jacobs said.

“I want to go to the Rams game tomorrow night,” Zanuck said.

Jacobs looked incredulous. He filtered through the room, stopping at each little group. “Dick’s leaving for L.A. tomorrow at six-thirty. In the morning. You know why? He wants to go to the Rams game.”

At 7:45, Perry Lieber beat on the side of a glass with a fork. He told the assembled group that the preview started at eight sharp and that after the picture there would be a supper served in Richard Zanuck’s suite on the twelfth floor. The picture was playing just down the street from the hotel at the Mann Theater, one of a chain owned by a Minnesota theater magnate named Ted Mann. Fox had rented the theater for the night, paying off Universal Pictures, one of whose roadshow films,
Thoroughly Modern Millie
, was playing there. Three rows of seats had been roped off for the Fox contingent, along with three other seats in the back of the house for Jacobs, Mort Abrahams and Natalie Trundy. Jacobs had specially requested these seats because he is a pacer and wanted to be free to walk around the theater without disturbing anyone. As Jacobs walked into the lobby of the theater, his eye caught a large display for
Camelot
, the Warner Brothers-Seven Arts musical that was to be the Christmas presentation at another Mann house. He stopped in his tracks.

“Oh, my God,” he said. He looked at the people spilling into the theater. “Oh, my God,
Camelot
. That’s what they’ll think they’re going to see. Oh, my God.”

The house lights went down at 8:13. The audience was composed mainly of young marrieds and the middleaged.
There were almost no children present. Zanuck sat in an aisle seat, with Barbara McLean, the head of the Studio’s cutting department, beside him, a pad on her lap, ready to take notes. The overture was played and then a title card flashed on the screen that said, “Equatorial Africa, 1845.” The card dissolved into a prologue and Rex Harrison, in frock coat and top hat, rode onto the screen on top of a giraffe. There was no murmur of recognition from the audience. Some of the Studio party began to shift uneasily in their seats. The prologue lasted only a few moments. Harrison, as Dr. Dolittle, the man who could talk to the animals, slipped off the back of the giraffe to treat a crocodile ailing with a toothache. He tied a piece of string to the aching tooth and then tied the other end of the string to the tail of an elephant. At a signal from Dr. Dolittle, the elephant pulled on the cord and the tooth snapped out of the crocodile’s mouth. Harrison patted the crocodile on the snout, put its huge molar in his waistcoat pocket, climbed on the back of a passing rhinoceros, and rode through the jungle out of camera range. There was not a whisper out of the audience as the prologue dissolved into the cartoon credits. At the appearance of the title
Dr. Dolittle
, there was a smatter of applause from the Studio contingent, but the clapping was not taken up by those who had paid $2.60 a ticket.

Throughout the first half of the film, the audience was equally unresponsive. Even at the end of the musical numbers, there was only a ripple of approval. At the intermission, David Brown hurried out into the lobby. “I want to hear the comments,” he said. The noise in the
lobby was muted. Most of the people just sipped soft drinks and talked quietly among themselves. Several of the Fox people blatantly eavesdropped on their conversations. Jacobs stood by one of the doors, his eyes darting wildly. Natalie Trundy leaned against him, her eyes brimming with tears, kneading a Kleenex between her fingers. In the center of the lobby, a circle of Studio executives surrounded Richard Zanuck.

“This is a real dead-ass audience,” Zanuck said. “But you’ve got to remember, this isn’t
Sound of Music
or
My Fair Lady
. The audience hasn’t been conditioned to the songs for five years like they are with a hit musical.”

“This is an original score,” Stan Hough said.

Zanuck nodded his head vigorously. “And an original screenplay,” he said. The muscles in his jaw popped in and out feverishly. “My God, these people didn’t know what they were going to see when they came into the theater. The first thing they see is a guy riding a giraffe.”

“It’s not like
Sound of Music
,” Hough said.

“Or
My Fair Lady
,” Zanuck said. “Those songs were famous before they even began shooting the picture.”

The second half of the picture did not play much better than the first. There was only sporadic laughter and desultory applause for the production numbers. When the house lights finally came on, the only prolonged clapping came from the three rows where the Studio people were sitting. In the lobby, ushers passed out preview cards. Tables had been set up and pencils provided for the members of the audience to fill in their reactions. These cards were more detailed than most
preview questionnaires. “
PLEASE RATE THE PICTURE
,” the cards read. “Excellent. Good. Fair.” In another section, the questionnaire asked:

Jacobs wandered through the lobby. His eyes were bloodshot. Natalie Trundy trailed after him. She had stopped crying, but her eyes were red-rimmed.

“I hear the cards are seventy-five per cent excellent,” Jacobs said to no one in particular. He watched a woman chewing on a small yellow pencil as she perused her card. The woman wrote something down, erased it, then wrote something else. Jacobs tried to look over her shoulder, but when she saw him, the woman shielded her comments with her hand.

Ted Ashley, the president of Ashley-Famous Artists, Rex Harrison’s agents, came up and clapped Jacobs on the back. “Arthur, you’ve got yourself a picture here,”
Ashley said. Jacobs waited for him to say something else, but Ashley just slapped him on the back again and went over to talk to Zanuck.

“The audience was kind of quiet,” Zanuck said.

Ted Mann, the theater owner, a large blocky man at one of whose theaters
Dr. Dolittle
was going to play when it opened in Minneapolis, elbowed his way to Zanuck’s side. “I want you to know, Dick, a year’s run,” he said. “A year minimum.”

“I thought the audience was a little quiet,” Zanuck repeated.

“Yes, it was, Dick,” Mann said. “But it’s the kids who are going to make this picture, and we didn’t have many kids here tonight.” Mann seemed to search for the proper words. “You’ve got to realize,” he said, “that what we had here tonight was your typically sophisticated Friday night Minneapolis audience.”

Zanuck seemed not to hear. “They weren’t conditioned to it like
Sound of Music
,” he said.

“That’s my point, my point exactly,” Mann said. “But they’ll be hearing this score for the next four months until the picture opens. By the time December rolls around, they’ll know what they’re going to see, don’t you worry about that, don’t you worry at all.”

Jacobs looked over at Zanuck. “Over fifty per cent excellent,” he said.

The theater emptied and the Fox party slowly walked back to the Radisson half a block away. There was little enthusiasm as they rode up the elevator to the party in Zanuck’s Villa Suite. The suite was enormous, on two levels, with a large living room and two bedrooms on
the balcony above it. A bar had been set up on the balcony and a buffet beside it. The food had not yet arrived. There were only two large bowls of popcorn which were quickly emptied. The room was quiet, with only a slight hum of conversation. Jacobs, Abrahams, Bricusse, Natalie Trundy and Barbara McLean sat around a coffee table totting up the cards, stacking them into piles of “Excellent,” “Good” and “Fair.” There were 175 cards in all—101 “Excellent,” 47 “Good” and 27 “Fair.” One viewer had written “Miserable” and another noted that Rex Harrison played Dr. Dolittle “like a male Mary Poppins.” Two women objected to a scene with white mice and five to another scene in which Anthony Newley drinks whiskey out of a bottle.

“Those broads are all over forty-five, right?” Jacobs said.

“The ‘Fairs’ are all over forty-five,” Abrahams said.

Ted Mann peered down at the cards. “You’ve got to realize that this was a typically sophisticated Friday night Minneapolis audience,” he repeated.

“What we needed was a lot of kids,” Natalie Trundy said. She dabbed at her eyes with a handkerchief and asked someone to bring her a Scotch on the rocks.

It was obvious that the Studio was distressed by the results of the preview. It was not just that the cards were bad—though with $18 million riding on the film, they were considerably less favorable than the Studio might have liked. But what disturbed them even more was the muted reaction of the audience during the screening of the picture.

“I think it’s damn silly to come all the way to Minneapolis and then not tell people what they’re going to
see,” Zanuck said. “It’s all right to have a sneak in Los Angeles. But you come this goddamn far to get away from that inside audience. So tell them what they’re going to see. Get the kids out.”

Richard Fleischer nursed a drink, stirring it slowly with his finger. “That’s right, Dick,” he said. “Tell them in the ads.” He moved his hand as if he were reading from an advertisement. “ ‘
Dr. Dolittle
—the story of a man who loved animals.’ ”

“Right,” Zanuck said. “They know what they’re seeing, they’ll break the goddamn doors down.” He gave his glass to Linda Harrison and asked her to get him another drink. “When we run it next, in San Francisco, maybe, we’ll tell them what they’re going to see. No goddamn teaser ads.”

“I’d be mystified,” Fleischer said, “if I came into the theater and didn’t know what the picture was and the first scene was a guy riding a giraffe.”

Jonas Rosenfield, the Studio’s vice president in charge of publicity, who had come from New York for the screening, edged up beside Zanuck. “It’s all true,” he said. “But we’ve all got to admit that this was an invaluable preview. We know now how to promote this picture to make it the big success we still know it’s going to be.”

“This is what previews are for,” Owen McLean said.