Hello Darlin' (15 page)

For me, he was at his worst while shooting a scene on the bow of a ship. There were
at least a dozen of us in the shot, but it centered around Tom Tryon. Tom was a smart,
talented actor who had worked with Otto in
The Cardinal.
All Tom had to do in this scene was take a piece of paper from a sailor who’d run
down from the radio shack and then read the message. The first take was fine, and
Otto seemed pleased. But then he asked how it was for sound.

“We’re getting a lot of paper noise, Mr. Preminger,” the soundman replied.

“Wet down the paper,” Otto said.

The prop man spritzed the paper with water and we tried take two.

“Are we still getting the rattle?” Otto asked after the second take.

“Yes, Mr. Preminger.”

“Wet it down again.”

By the sixth take, the paper disintegrated and we’d fallen two hours behind schedule.
All of us still had a line or two. Plus we had reverses, over-the-shoulders, close-ups.
We were going to be on the bow of that ship all day. When I asked Tom if I could do
anything to help, he looked around nervously and asked if the microphone was on.

I checked.

“No, we’re okay,” I said.

“Otto makes me so fucking nervous that I tremble and it shakes the damn paper,” he
said.

“Didn’t you just make
The Cardinal
with him?”

“Yeah.”

“Is he always like this?”

“It gets worse.”

Indeed, the longer it took, the more things went wrong. The light changed, planes
flew overhead, clouds drifted in and out. With each delay, Otto grew angrier, louder,
and more temperamental. Waiting for my close-up was like standing on a firing line.
He made everyone so overwrought and anxious they screwed up, including me.

When my close-up finally came, I blew it.

“Mr. Hagman, I understand you are a Broadway actor,” Otto said. “Is that correct?”

“Yes, sir,” I said.

“So how come you are so … ineffectual?”

“Oh shit, I’m sorry.”

Otto stared at me with astonishment.

“Do you always swear at your directors?” he asked.

“Oh fuck, I’m sorry, Mr. Preminger.”

“What?!” he exploded.

Actors didn’t speak to directors like that, especially to him. But I was on a roll.

I
really
started swearing. I literally frothed at the mouth. “Shit, I can’t get it. I’m an
asshole. I’ll try to do better.”

“That won’t be necessary,” said Otto, dumbfounded.

He thought I was having a fit. He turned abruptly.

“Print it and let’s move on.”

He never bothered me again. He never gave me another close-up either. All of us swore
we wouldn’t work with him again.

I called Maj in New York to tell her how it had gone. She had just
gone to the theater with Burgess, who’d finished his work on the movie about a week
earlier, and she told me that she’d asked him how it had gone in Hawaii. She laughed
while recalling how he’d said, “I’ll never work for that son of a bitch again.” Three
months later, they were making another film together. What does that tell you about
our profession?

T
here wasn’t much work when I got back to New York, and we didn’t have much money either.
Not a good combination. Earlier, I’d signed with the big agency GAC, and I didn’t
think my New York agent was paying enough attention to me. One day I sat in his office
while he took one call after another without talking to me. For about two hours, I
listened to him talk on the phone. Finally, I went into the foyer and called him.
He picked up.

“Hi, this is Larry Hagman,” I said.

“Hi, Larry, what’s going on?”

“What’s going on is you’re fired,” I said.

“What for?”

“I was just sitting in your office for two hours, listening to you talk to other people
instead of me, and I got tired of it. So good-bye.”

He rushed out, got me to cool off, and said I had to learn how the business worked
from his perspective. That was fine, but then I explained my perspective—I was down
to my last thirty cents and I had a family to feed. Not too long after, he called
and said there was a good part for me in one of Alfred Hitchcock’s television dramas
in Hollywood.

“Oh God, I was just in L.A.,” I said.

“Timing’s everything, kid.”

Then I went through the routine. I asked to see the script. He asked, “Does it matter?”
I said it didn’t. Then I asked about the money. Again he said, “Does it matter?” When
you haven’t worked for nine months, what do you say to that except no, it doesn’t
matter?

The offer was $2,500 and a round-trip ticket. I went back to L.A. knowing full well
that they’d never actually air the script, never mind finish filming it. It was about
a young couple who move to L.A. from Illinois. The husband had suffered a war injury
that left him unable to consummate the marriage. He hooked up with a cult of hoodlums
looking to sacrifice a virgin. They drugged him and made him watch while they carved
his wife’s heart out and then burned down the house.

Good stuff, huh?

Well, I knew it wasn’t going to go. Sure enough, we rehearsed the first act, broke
for lunch, and when we came back they told us the network had read the script and
canceled that show. At least I got to keep the money, which I promptly sent home.

That left me in L.A. without a job, or even a prospect, but I called Maj and told
her that I thought I should stay out there and look around. George Peppard, who I
knew from New York, was red hot then. I was also very good friends with his girlfriend
at the time, Elizabeth Ashley. We hooked up and George made it a special project of
his to introduce me all over town. Nothing came of it, but I met a lot of people and
you never know what comes from things like that.

One of the people George introduced me to was actor Lee Marvin. We met on the set
of
Ship of Fools,
which Liz Ashley was also in. While George was visiting with Liz, I started talking
to Lee. We went out for drinks afterward and he invited me to visit his home. Soon
Lee and his wife, Betty, and I became fast friends, and they helped me settle into
town. They were among the dozen or so friends I invited to have Thanksgiving dinner
with me at my house, which I
borrowed from Ted Flicker, who was renting it from his old Bard roommate,
1776
author Peter Stone, in the Hollywood hills.

For Thanksgiving dinner Lee drove up to my house in a brand-new Lincoln convertible
that Betty had given him as a birthday present, and he quickly got shit-faced. He
was funny when he was loaded, but he was also a bit reckless and quite a bit unpredictable.
That turned out to be bad news for my turkey. I’d never cooked a turkey before, but
I took this one out of the oven and placed it on the table to a chorus of oohs and
ahs. Lee took one look at my masterpiece, picked it up, and threw it in the pool.

“Let’s see if the son of a bitch can swim!” he said.

I watched the bird sink like a bowling ball, trailing a film of greasy dressing across
the water. After a moment of shock, I dove in with all my clothes on and rescued the
bird from the bottom of the pool. On the way back to the kitchen I used the old joke,
“Don’t worry, I’ll get the other one.” I got it in the kitchen, patted it down, spooned
in the remainder of the Stove Top stuffing, and reentered to a not-so-enthusiastic
chorus of oohs and ahs.

Actually, it tasted pretty good, with a slight hint of cilantro … and chlorine.

The party broke up in the wee hours, and Lee topped his earlier performance by backing
his car through the three-foot-high wall that protected the parking area from a thirty-foot
drop. His brand-new Lincoln teetered over the edge, looking like it was about to fall.
I had a bunch of guys stand on the front bumper while I unloaded Lee out the back.
Then we tied down the car and had a tow truck come haul that boat back to level ground.

Before driving off, Lee said, “Great party, kid. Happy Thanksgiving.” Then he roared
off into the night.

*   *   *

Soon after, my agent sent me scripts for five pilots. I chose to read for
I Dream of Jeannie,
a new sitcom created by Sidney Sheldon for
Screen Gems, which already had a hit with
Bewitched.
I had a feeling this was the right project. It was 100 percent instinct, but I liked
the premise of
Jeannie.
It was good, wholesome, escapist fun, with a healthy dose of sexual tension.

When I showed up, they’d signed Barbara Eden and had looked at many actors for the
part of Captain Nelson, including Robert Conrad, Darren McGavin, and Gary Collins.
I had two readings. I thought I nailed the first one, done for the casting director,
and called Maj and told her that I had a good feeling. She made a suit for Jane Morgan
in exchange for airfare to L.A., and arrived the day of my second reading, which was
in front of Sidney Sheldon. I thought that went equally well. Maj shared in the excitement
when they called me to do a screen test.

I went in confident. When I stepped in front of the camera, Edward Wandrink Swackhamer,
the director, saw I knew my stuff and did me a huge favor by stepping back and letting
me do my thing. Afterward, I felt great. I went home and told Maj that I had a feeling
in my gut. “I’ve got this one.”

“If you feel that way, then I’ll go home,” she said.

Between us, we had less than thirty-five dollars. But as Maj says, we had a lot of
faith.

A few days later, my agent called with great news. I got the pilot.

Hot damn! I knew it was going to go. I couldn’t see any reason why not. Before I even
got in front of a camera, I made my deal for the series. I signed for $1,100 an episode,
the standard fee unless you had a big name. I was thrilled.

I rented a tiny, two-bedroom cottage in Rustic Canyon. You had to cross a little wood
bridge that spanned the flood control channel to get in the front door. I remember
doing the Royal Canadian Air Force exercises there and running a mile every morning
at 4
A.M.

I was in great shape when we shot the pilot.

Sidney Sheldon said he knew
I Dream of Jeannie
would be a hit when his nine-year-old daughter gave his original script a thumbs-up.
I agreed. The premise was great and the cast’s chemistry was there the day all of
us met for the first time at the studio. Barbara was gorgeous, a marvelous professional,
and a really nice person. Bill Daily had the timing of a great comic and a gift for
improvisation. And Hayden Rorke was the droll anchor, on-and offscreen. I knew if
I did my job as the straight man with the proper sense of silly I’d get as many laughs
as everyone else.

I respected Sidney, who’d won a best original screenplay Academy Award for Cary Grant’s
The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer.
Sidney had also created
The Patty Duke Show
for TV. He dreamt up
I Dream of Jeannie
after Screen Gems executives asked him to come up with a series like
Bewitched.
He was smart, tough, diplomatic, insightful, and he meticulously jotted down notes
in a little book whenever anyone passed along a suggestion, idea, or complaint. If
he wrote it down, it got done. I was personally responsible for filling several volumes.

In the pilot, which was delightfully simple, astronaut Tony Nelson’s space capsule
makes an emergency landing on an island where he finds a bottle containing a two-thousand-year-old
genie, who announces that he is her master for life. When he’s rescued, she hides
in his bags, and both of them end up back at his Cocoa Beach, Florida, home, where
he’s forced to keep her a secret.

The show was timeless, clean, innocent, and to my way of thinking, it had all the
elements of a hit.

There was one problem. During rehearsal, Bill and I were extemporizing, adding sight
gags and physical business, and it irritated the hell out of the director, Gene Nelson.
He wanted to call all the shots, and he was against deviating from the script. He
also wanted to take all the credit; that’s another story. I didn’t care who got the
credit, I simply wanted whatever got on film to be funny.

At another point during the pilot, I offered a suggestion to Gene, and he told me
to shut up and let him get “the thing done.” I replied, “This isn’t a thing, it’s
a comedy,” and I explained that as far as I was concerned, it was supposed to be fun.
When all was said and done, I
felt like it was fun. We did a great job on the pilot. But with Gene’s attitude,
I didn’t see how he could direct a comedy. He felt the same way about me. From the
start, we were like oil and water. Luckily, we only had to shoot the one show and
then see if it sold to the network.

I spent Christmas in New York with Maj and the kids and Bebe. We’d decided to take
a chance that the pilot would sell, and move to L.A. Maj had made enough money to
buy a white Plymouth station wagon for $2,500. Val had a connection with Chrysler
and got it at a huge discount. We packed up the kids and Bebe and started the drive
cross-country. We stopped to see my dad in Weatherford and had a full Texas experience
for New Year’s at the country club.

The country club was the only place you could drink in Parker County. Parker County
was dry. You weren’t allowed to buy liquor there. Nor were there any bars. But because
of some obscure law, you were allowed to have a locker at the club where you could
keep liquor. You’d buy your setups at exorbitant prices and could pour your own drinks
among your friends.

Juanita, after a few, or perhaps more than a few, libations, took an interest in the
band. Dad and Maj and I were hanging out at our table with some of his old cronies,
who were inspecting my foreign bride, as they still called Maj, and the bandleader
came over and spoke to my dad.

“Mr. Hagman, could you ask Mrs. Hagman to come back to the table? She spilled a drink
on the drums and they’re sounding all soggy.”