Ernie: The Autobiography (23 page)

Just a thought, humbly submitted for your consideration.

Chapter 29

The Poseidon Adventure (1972)

M
arty
was my Oscar winner.
The Wild Bunch
was my classic. But
The Poseidon Adventure
was a box-office colossus and the one everybody seems to remember and asks about. I have to say, it’s one of the most personally satisfying films I’ve made.

The script was based on a novel by Paul Gallico—who while onboard ship to England wrote the book in two days. It caught the eye of Irwin Allen. As most of you know, it’s about ten passengers who struggle to survive after their ocean liner is capsized by a big wave.

Until he made this film, Irwin was best known for his science fiction TV series
Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea
and
Lost in Space
. He’d made a couple of features, but nothing the size and scope of this one.

I’ve known a lot of filmmakers in my day, but none of them was a master showman like Irwin. He was an intense, active man with wiry hair and absolutely no pretension. He was the most unmogul-mogul you could imagine. He was like Cecil B. DeMille in the sense that he knew what audiences wanted to see, he served it up big, and he knew how to sell it. His next film,
The Towering Inferno
, was an even bigger hit.

The man was amazing. He was also very, very considerate of his actors. I know that some of my costars complained that this was a tough shoot, but they knew the story when they came aboard. For me, compared to
The Adventurers
, this was fun! Irwin always made sure the water was not too cold, and had bunches of towels and blankets waiting for us if we had a scene in the water. When there were mechanical effects—floors tilting, pianos falling, things exploding—he put safety above everything else. The main ballroom set was built on these big hydraulic lifts that tilted it as far as forty-five degrees or so.

If there were stunt people in the scene—and sometimes there were more than a hundred of them—Irwin and his team made sure every prop was rigged with wires so they’d fall where he wanted them to go. If the stunt people had to take a tumble, he personally watched to make sure they knew what was going to happen and how they were going to handle it.

Some people I’ve worked with, like Peckinpah, pretty much had you go in and take your chances. He made you feel less manly for taking precautions, like putting something soft under the dirt if you had to fall off a horse. Not Irwin or the English gentleman who was directing our film, Ronald Neame. However, I can’t say that everything worked perfectly. One day when the set was supposed to tilt a little, then stop, it didn’t stop. The camera crew were thrown in the water and Irwin shouted, “Save the film!”

He was only half-joking. Some crew members pulled the camera operators out while others saved the film magazine. Irwin had it developed ASAP, to make sure they wouldn’t have to shoot the expensive scene again.

Irwin was particularly generous to me. Remember, Irwin had never made a really big picture before. Movies like
The Lost World
and
Five Weeks in a Balloon
did a lot of their business back then in what were called the “kiddie matinees.” At night, theaters often showed something else. Irwin had no track record making big budget movies.
The Poseidon Adventure
was a story he fell in love with, though, and he knew it was his ticket to the major leagues. He bought the rights to the novel with his own money and started casting it before he had a start date firmly in place. He knew who he wanted and he didn’t want to lose them; at least one actor, Gene Wilder, had already turned him down because of a scheduling conflict. Irwin later brought in Red Buttons for the role, and he was terrific.

Irwin wasn’t worried. He’d been making movies and TV shows for 20th Century-Fox for ten years. He was sure they’d back him.

I went to meet him in his office at Twentieth Century-Fox. He said, “Listen. I’m going to put you under contract until we make this film. I’m not sure when the cameras are going to roll, but I don’t want you in Timbuktu when they do. It shouldn’t be more than a couple of weeks.”

So he paid me a generous salary while I sat at home on my keister. He did the same with Red Buttons. Unfortunately, Irwin’s generosity almost got him in big trouble. During that time, the studio was in the midst of a takeover crisis. They’d lost a fortune years before on
Cleopatra
, and had to pay off that debt by selling a big chunk of the back lot to real estate developers. They’d lost another bundle more recently on the war film
Tora! Tora! Tora!
For Twentieth Century-Fox, the era of big-budget films was over. When Irwin went over to pay his respects to the new chief, he was told, “Stick to TV. We’re not going to do your picture.”

Irwin went back to his office in shock. Ronnie Neame happened to be there.

Ronnie said, “What’s wrong?”

Irwin told him.

Ronnie said, “Do you have a bottle of whiskey here?”

Irwin said, “Yes.”

Ronnie said, “Well, let’s have a couple of shots and we’ll go over and talk to him.”

So they had their shots and went over to talk to the new studio head.

This guy was no idiot. He liked the idea, just not the budget, which was in the neighborhood of $10 million. Finally, he looked over and he said, “I’ll tell you what. You put up half the money and we’ll make the picture.”

Unfazed, Irwin left the Fox offices and merely walked across the street to a country club where a couple of his friends were playing golf. One of them was Steve Broidy, who had an outfit called Allied Artists for years. Allied Artists specialized in low-budget bread-and-butter pictures like westerns and horror movies and the very successful Bowery Boys series. Irwin had made
The Big Circus
with Victor Mature and Rhonda Fleming for Allied in 1959 and the picture made a fortune.

Broidy guaranteed Irwin the $5 million right on the spot, between the nineth and tenth holes, and
The Poseidon Adventure
was back on track.

Irwin was clever about cutting corners to bring the picture in on budget. Unless you know, you can’t see where corners were cut. He still spent everything he wanted on the big scenes, like the banquet hall (where Carol Lynley lip-synched the huge Oscar-winning hit song “The Morning After,” which made more, I’m sure, than the entire budget of our film). But other shots were the kind of sleights of hand Irwin had learned working on low-budget TV fare. For instance, in the last shot, where you were supposed to see the overturned ship surrounded by rescue vessels, all you see is a piece of the hull with a helicopter in the distance. That was shot right on the studio lot, with the camera angled so you couldn’t see the soundstages.

The Poseidon Adventure
was fourteen weeks of backbreaking work, but we had our fun, too. I remember watching Shelley Winters and Jack Albertson playing cards. She lost about $130,000 to Jack, and then refused to pay him. That was her only loss, by the way: she had to gain about thirty pounds to play the part of Jack’s wife Belle. She wasn’t happy about either of those things, but she was game about doing as many of her own underwater stunts as Ronnie would allow.

Gene Hackman, who starred as the priest who leads us to safety, was a bit of a surprise. The very first morning, we were doing a scene on the
Queen Mary
—which was doubling for our ship, another of Irwin’s cost-saving moves—and Gene had a few lines. He and I rehearsed a little before the cameras rolled. He stumbled a little and I asked him if everything was okay. He looked over at me and said, “Are we supposed to know this stuff?”

I said, “Well, yeah. That’s the general idea.”

He looked at me rather oddly. “Really,” he said as if that were a divine revelation. He had just made that wonderful picture,
The French Connection
, that had won him the Academy Award. He told me they kind of made up that picture as they went along, He thought the same thing was going to happen in
The Poseidon Adventure
.

“No,” I said. “Irwin really likes the script as it’s written.”

I didn’t mean it to be offensive or anything, but he never spoke to me again except in the business of making the picture. He was excellent in the part and was a great guy to work with. But he didn’t say too much to anybody.

After the picture was finished on-time and on-budget, a very grateful Irwin Allen threw a party along with the president of Twentieth Century-Fox (the same executive who’d tried to cancel it). My wife, Tova, whom I’d married in early 1973 (more about that later) loudly predicted that the film would make at least $200 million worldwide. The studio brass smiled indulgently, but she was right.

To top it off, the studio sent the cast on a promotional trip, shuttling us from Norway to France to Spain to Germany and to Italy. Everywhere we went the picture was huge, the biggest phenomenon Twentieth Century-Fox had ever seen. And its popularity continues to this day. Recently, I’ve been giving lectures about the movie business on cruise ships, where they always show
The Poseidon Adventure
. It always shakes everybody up because, thanks to Irwin, it looks like the real McCoy.

Funny thing. The picture was remade a few years back for darn near what our picture earned, and with state-of-the-art special effects. Guess which version audiences like better? (You bet I’m proud of that one!)

I admit that I haven’t seen the remake. I heard it was pretty good, at least from the technical and special effects end. However, I think today’s filmmakers could have learned a thing or two from Irwin Allen. Irwin believed in loading his movies with the big stars of the day and casting familiar faces in smaller roles.
The Poseidon
remake had some great actors—my pal Kurt Russell and Richard Dreyfuss—but it didn’t, from what I heard, take much time to develop any of the characters. So when they start dying off, the audience doesn’t really care. State-of-the-art special effects are great, but the audience has to have an emotional investment in the people onscreen. Who didn’t cry when Shelley Winters dies after rescuing Gene Hackman or when Stella Stevens falls into the pit of fire?

That’s my two cents.

Chapter 30

Havin’ More Fun

Emperor of the North
(1973)

B
efore I talk about the movie, there’s a story I have to tell about Sam Peckinpah. I had agreed to do
Emperor of the North
while I was still shooting
The Poseidon Adventure
.

Sam was supposed to direct
Emperor of the North
and was really keen to do it, but he lost his option to Bob Aldrich. Even though Sam had made a bunch of hit films since
The Wild Bunch
—including
Straw Dogs
and
The Getaway
—he couldn’t make
Emperor
for as little as the studio wanted to spend. Well, by now you know what the situation was with Fox and money. He couldn’t get them to budge.

One day, I stopped by Sam’s office on the Fox lot.

I said, “Sam, how are you?”

Sam mumbled something. He was obviously thinking about something else.

I said, “Quick question. Can you give me any pointers about this
Emperor of the North
? Any ideas on how I should play the part?”

He said, “Get the hell out of here.”

Evidently, Sam was a little teed off about his losing the picture. I understood why he was upset and his attitude didn’t bother me. I was used to it. But it underscored a big difference between him and me. People often want things that somebody takes away from them or that just don’t happen for some reason. My attitude has always been that there are other opportunities around the corner and that holding a grudge or being bitter is counterproductive. Even with directors I’ve disliked or former wives who gave me a pain—I never sat around thinking,
I’m gonna get you
or
Jeez, I want to see them fall on their ass
. I believe that you get back from life what you put out, so I always try to show respect and compassion.

I finished
The Poseidon Adventure
on a Friday night, spent Saturday at home packing, and left on Sunday to go to Portland, Oregon, to make
Emperor of the North
with Aldrich and, once again, my pal Lee Marvin. We also had Keith Carradine and some of the finest veteran character actors in the business—Simon Oakland, Charlie Tyner, and Elisha Cook, Jr., whom you may remember as Sydney Green-street’s evil henchman in
The Maltese Falcon
.

Based on a short story by Jack London, “Emperor of the North Pole” is the title given to the head hobo of any group who rides the rails. The studio was afraid no one would know what the heck that meant, so it was shortened to
Emperor of the North
, as if that makes any more sense. You know, sometimes studios sell audiences short. If you give people a title they don’t quite get, it doesn’t mean they’ll walk away. They may just be interested enough to find out what it’s all about!

I played a railroad conductor named Shack, the most evil, sadistic scoundrel who ever existed. Nobody rode my train without a ticket, and nobody had tickets because this was a freight train. And I didn’t want any hobos on my train—it’s a point of honor for my character. No one even attempts to go on my train—except Lee, who let it be known that he is going to try.

He throws me off my own train at the end.

When I arrived on the set on Monday morning, Bob Aldrich was standing in front of the train. This was a real train, of course, not a set. He asked me, “Ernie, have you ever worked on a train before?”

I said, “No.”

He said, “Well, there’s the engine.”

“Yes.”

“And that’s the caboose.”