Hollywood (31 page)

“That doesn’t make it bad,” I said. “Wouldn’t you say
Romeo and Juliet
is old-fashioned? And what about
Peter Pan
? Or Beethoven’s Fifth?”

Goldwyn shook his head, sadly. “Classics,” he said. “Classics don’t mean a God damn thing. Not in the present market. There’s new people all the time and they want new things. Do you read a lot?” he asked suddenly.

“Well, not as much as I should, I suppose.”

“Frances reads
everything
.”

“Is that so?”

“I’m talking about every damn book that’s
published
she reads.”

“That’s a lot of reading,” I said.

“She’s brilliant, you know,” he said. “I don’t mean from reading. She’s brilliant anyway. She would be brilliant if she never read anything, but she reads everything. You want me to tell you how brilliant she is? When I broke away from the M-G-M thing because I can’t stand partners—never have partners, that’s my advice to you—I decided to go on my own so I formed a company.
This
company. And they drew up all the papers for the incorporation and they kept asking me, ‘What’s the
name
of your company?’ And I had to say, ‘Just leave it blank for the present.’ And we started in to think of a name for the company.
I
thought and the
sales
people thought and the public
relations
. Of course by that time, a lot of good ones were used up already. Like Universal and Paramount and so on. So there wasn’t much left. But we all kept on thinking—but
nothing clicked
. Somebody said, ‘Apex Productions.’ But it didn’t
click
. Neither did ‘Prudential’ click. I told them. I said, ‘It sounds like an insurance company.’ And finally, I’ll tell you what I did. I called in all the writers I had working for me at the time. Big-name writers. Stars. And I said to them, ‘Gentlemen, I want you all to take a few days off from whatever you’re doing, whatever you’re writing, and help me out with a problem.’ And I told them about how I needed a name for my company. And I told them the ones we had thought of so far and how they didn’t
click
. And they all went back to their offices and this was costing me thousands a day every day and they all sent in their suggestions and would you believe it?
Nothing clicked
! I went home that night. I was so depressed, I can’t tell you. And while we were having dinner, Frances
looked at me and she said, ‘Why are you so depressed, Sam?’ I said to her, ‘What makes you think I’m depressed?’ And she said, ‘Because you
look
depressed.’
I said to her, ‘Well, Frances, I’ll tell you. I
am
depressed.’ Then I told her everything I had gone through. About not having a name for the company and how nothing clicked, and the date was coming up to file the papers and we couldn’t wait any more. And Frances looked at me and she said, ‘Why don’t you call it “Samuel Goldwyn Productions?”’ And it
clicked
! You see what I mean when I tell you about Frances brilliant?”

“Yes,” I replied.

In
The New York Times
, I read a review of an English novel titled
Late and Soon
by E.M. Delafield. It sounded interesting. I bought a copy and read it. It was a bizarre romance, the story of a mother and daughter who fall in love with the same man. It struck me as having distinct film possibilities. I took it into Mr. Goldwyn.

“Tell it to me in one paragraph,” he ordered.

“I can’t,” I said.

“Then it’s no good.”

“It is,” I insisted. “It’s a
remarkable
story.”

“If you can’t tell it in one paragraph, it’s no good.”

I told it in one paragraph.

“It’s no good,” he said.

“Why not?”

“What is it?” he thundered. “A middle-age love story f’Chrissake! You can’t sell a middle-age love story. Who the hell cares about a middle-age love story? Nobody. Not even middle-age people are interested in a middle-age love story.”

I should have known by then to avoid debate but I was annoyed at having been pushed into an untenable position.

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “You’ve done pretty well with a middle-age love story.”

“Me? Never.”

“What about
Dodsworth
? Wouldn’t you call that a middle-age love story?”

“
Dodsworth
—f’Chrissake. Don’t talk to me about
Dodsworth
. I lost my goddamn shirt. I told them. All of them. I told that Willie Wyler. He can be
so
stubborn. And Sidney Howard, too. And everybody. I told them. ‘You haven’t got a
chance
with a middle-age love story.’ But they talked me into it and I went ahead. Walter Huston and Ruth Chatterton and Mary Astor and I lost my shirt. I’m not saying it wasn’t a fine picture. It was a
great
picture but nobody wanted to see it. In
droves
. You know why?”

“No. Why?”

“Because, God damn it, why don’t you
listen
to me? I just
told
you why. Because nobody wants to see a middle-age love story like that. Like
Dodsworth
. I lost my shirt.”

Some months later, in the course of a casting conference, various important character actors were being discussed.

“Listen!” Goldwyn shouted suddenly. “I got it! I’ll do it personally. I’ll call him up and ask him to do it for me. All right, so it
isn’t
such a great part. But he will be great
in
it. I’ll ask him as a personal favor. I’ll tell him. He’ll do it for me, won’t he?”

“Who are you talking about, Sam?” asked Willie Wyler.

“Why, Walter Huston,” said Goldwyn.

“Oh, sure,” said Willie. “He’d be great. But I thought you wanted someone with more box office.”

“More box office?” shouted Goldwyn. “Who’s got more box office f’Chrissake than Walter Huston? Didn’t I have him here in
Dodsworth
? You should remember
Dodsworth
, f’Chrissake. You
directed
it. One of the biggest hits I ever had. It made a
fortune
!”

This, too, exemplified Goldwyn’s strength. A never-ending resilience, a way of suiting the argument to the circumstances.

As Walt Whitman said, “Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.”

In late December 1924, Samuel Goldwyn left aboard the
Majestic
on his annual trip to Europe. He announced to the press that he was going to spend Christmas in Paris and that soon afterward, he was going to Vienna to meet with Dr. Sigmund Freud, because he felt that Freud’s ideas might be useful for the screen. Therefore, he was going to try to get Dr. Freud to write a scenario or, failing that, sign him to come to Hollywood as an adviser.

To a shipboard interviewer for
The New York Times
, Goldwyn said that 70 per cent of the moviegoers in the United States were young people, that they appreciated the opportunity to sit together in the dark, watching love on the screen.

“There is nothing really so entertaining on the screen as a really great love story,” he said. “So you see, I thought I would go and see Freud and at least have a talk with the greatest love specialist in the world. When I say that most of the young people who go to see pictures want a love story, I feel that I am right. Some time ago, I remember going to see ‘Twenty Leagues Under the Sea,’ an unusual production, made by J.E. Williamson. It was a remarkable film but two girls behind me got tired of it long before it was finished, and suggested going to the New York Theatre ‘where they have lots of love in the picture.’

“Of course young people don’t want to see a man of forty-three and a woman of thirty-eight in love, any more than they wish to be introduced to a couple who have been married ten years. That kind of theme holds no romance for them. They want to see young people of their own age, sweetly in love with each other. The screen has caused many a young couple to be married. It has put the courage into the young man to ask the girl. So I am going to see Freud…

“Scenario writers, actors, and directors can learn much by a really deep study of everyday life. How much more forceful will be their creation if they know how to express genuine emotional motivation and suppressed desires? And the finished pictures produced with Professor Freud and his collaborator will have audience appeal far greater than any productions made today, because these love revelations and psychological truths will strike fire with the deepest thoughts and feelings of the people who unquestionably react more strongly to the genuine in pictures.”

“Whatever happened with Freud and you?” I asked Goldwyn one day.

“Who?”

“Dr. Freud. Sigmund Freud. I read somewhere that you went to Vienna to see him.”

Goldwyn was insulted.

“There’s never been anything wrong with me,” he said. “I wouldn’t go in for that stuff where you tell everything about yourself to somebody who writes it down.”

“No, no. I didn’t mean as a patient,” I said. “I read that you went to Vienna to try to get him to
work
for you.”

“Listen, f’Chrissake!” said Goldwyn. “In those days, in 1924, nobody ever even
heard
of Freud. In America, hardly anybody. In 1924 had
you
heard of him?”

“In 1924, Mr. Goldwyn, I was twelve years old, and I’d heard of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig and Jake Ruppert and Eugene V. Debs.”

“What the hell has
Debs
got to do with it, f’Chrissake?”

“Nothing. What about Freud?”

“He didn’t want to do it,” said Goldwyn, fearfully. “He claimed he was too busy, that he couldn’t get away. But that was a good idea I had, just the same. Because look what happened in the advertising business, years and years later, when they started in to hire all kinds of scientists and psychiatrists and psychologists. That’s how they made it into a great business. The advertising business. Albert Lasker told me about the whole thing. He said the advertising business learned how to use mass psychology, and that’s what
we
got to learn because that’s our only chance to appeal to the masses. For a picture to be successful,
millions
of people have to like it. That’s very hard. To make something that
millions
of people are going to like. Isn’t that so?

“I want to tell you something. Freud was very foolish not to come. But you know how it is. There are some people, you can’t tell them a goddamn thing. Like him. Freud. Or Abe Lastfogel. Your agent.”

In a business as complex, as diversified as the film business, agents and agencies are frequently important as catalysts, go-betweens, and matchmakers. Looking back on it all, I find that there are a larger number of agents I admire than there are producers. Agents have frequently been helpful and creative, even imaginative.

I am convinced that we would never have known the joy of Marilyn Monroe had it not been for an extraordinary agent named Johnny Hyde. He was a diminutive man, packed with surprising power.

He had what used to be called “a roving eye.” When finally it lit on an obscure, unemployed, struggling film actress named Marilyn Monroe, the roving stopped. Johnny Hyde, at that time a senior partner in the William Morris Agency, and a multi-millionaire, was about fifty. He fell in love with Marilyn, and she fell in love with him.

His belief in her future as a screen personality was every bit as passionate as his love for her.

I was subjected to a barrage of pressures and arguments having to do with her suitability for the leading role of Billie Dawn in
Born Yesterday
, which I had sold to Columbia Pictures. With great craft, Johnny had convinced Columbia Pictures to sign Marilyn Monroe to a stock contract. He reasoned that if she were on the lot, there was always a chance that she might be the dark horse (blonde horse?) who could make it.

Finally, after a month of scheming, Marilyn Monroe did make a test for the part. Those who saw it thought it was excellent. But Harry Cohn, the head of the studio, did not trouble to take the six steps from his desk to his projection room to look at her.

Despite Cohn’s indifference, and Johnny’s failure to get anyone in a key position to see Marilyn through his eyes, he persisted. It was with no little embarrassment that I once said to him, “Johnny, you’re a darling fellow and a wonderful agent, but you certainly are a bore on the subject of Marilyn. Give it a rest, will you?”

“You’ll see,” said Johnny, pointing up at me. “You’ll
see
! They’ll
all
see. This kid has really got it. It’s not just her looks, although everybody admits she’s a knockout, but she’s got the spirit. And she’s funny. And a hell of an actress. And what’s more important, she wants to do it. She wants to get there and be somebody. And people who have that kind of drive, nobody can put them down. Nobody.”

“All right, Johnny,” I said. “All
right
.”

Johnny went so far as to discuss the setting up of a syndicate to buy the film rights to
Born Yesterday
and making it with Marilyn Monroe. For a short time, Max Gordon and I considered this proposition, not because we liked it, but because there were no other offers.

It was curious. The play was a success on Broadway and went well with audiences night after night, but the film companies were cool. They saw it as censorable material that could easily be ruined when hammered into a shape that would be approved by the Production Code. There were questions of sexual morality involved, but more important, political morality. The film companies had too many axes to grind on the Washington grindstone to consider putting a venal senator on the screen.

Still, there were a few producers who thought it might work. One of them was at M-G-M. Clark Gable and Lana Turner were Metro’s biggest box-office stars. The producer saw
Born Yesterday
as a double vehicle. He made his proposal. It was tentatively approved by the Hollywood front office. Tickets for the play were arranged for Nicholas Schenck, at that time chairman of the board of Loew’s, Inc. The final decision would be his.

His nephew, Marvin, was a friend of mine. A few days later, he showed me a copy of the interoffice memo that Nicholas Schenck had sent back to the coast. It read: “At your suggestion I have last night seen
Born Yesterday
. It is the worst play I have ever seen. The idea of making it with Clark Gable or with Lana Turner or with anyone else is ridiculous. N.S.”

It was shortly after this blow that Johnny came up with his Marilyn Monroe idea, but nothing came of that either.

Johnny Hyde prevailed upon his friend John Huston to let Marilyn test for the part of Louis Calhern’s mistress in
The Asphalt Jungle
. Huston responded to her, spotted her beautifully in the film, and she made an impression.

Johnny acquired a print of her scenes in this picture and, for months, carried it around in his car. He would screen it for anyone who was willing to watch it. He became, for a time, a familiar sight, walking around the various lots with a can of film under his arm.

It was Marilyn’s luck, and his, and ours, that Joseph L. Mankiewicz was also a client of the William Morris Agency. At Twentieth Century-Fox, he was preparing
All About
Eve
. Johnny read the script and found a small but effective part that he thought would be right for Marilyn. He badgered Mankiewicz until Mankiewicz agreed. Then the Twentieth Century-Fox front office vetoed the idea.

“We’ve had her,” said Lou Schreiber, the head of the talent department. “We had her under contract for a hundred and a quarter a week. We had her in
Scudda Hoo! Scudda
Hay!
and we had to cut her out. And then she was in something else here, a horrible abortion,
Dangerous Years
. We had to get rid of her. So why do we want her back?”

Johnny did not give up, took it to the top, which at that time, meant Darryl F. Zanuck. Again luck. Zanuck owed Johnny a favor and Johnny called his note. Marilyn got the part in
All About Eve
as George Sanders’ girlfriend, a minor actress described in the picture as “a graduate of the Copacabana School of Dramatic Art.”

“It wouldn’t have happened, any of it,” she once said to me, “if not for Johnny. When I did
The Asphalt Jungle
, it was like that was some kind of discovery. But Jesus, I’d been knocking around, and I mean knocking around, for about six years before that, modeling and everything. And, finally, Howard Hughes got interested. That was nothing. And then Twentieth and getting kicked out. And then Columbia, and that turned out another nothing. And did you see me in
Love Happy
with the Marx Brothers? I was good in that, but nobody knew it. And
A Ticket to Tomahawk
. I swear I was getting ready to give up and maybe learn to be a negative cutter like my mother or something—at least make a living. And that’s when Johnny Hyde happened. Look, I had plenty of friends and acquaintances—you know what I mean, acquaintances? And, sure, I played the game the way everyone else was playing it. But not one of them, not one of those big shots, ever did a damn thing for me, not one, except Johnny. Because he believed in me.”

“He loved you,” I said.

“I know it. And I loved him.”

Those luminous eyes moistened as she continued. “You know what a creep town this is and, naturally, when I was living with Johnny, it was like I was doing it because he could do me some good. He was the first kind man I ever met in my whole life. I’ve known a few since, but he was the first. And smart. Remember how fast he used to talk and how high?” She smiled in fond recollection. “Once he got an idea or some kind of a strategy, he would just stay on it, and he wouldn’t stop. He would pace around, or walk up and down, for hours, sometimes till two or three in the morning, figuring out all the angles. He was certainly a wonderful man. When he died like that, all of a sudden, I really thought maybe my whole life was over, too. But just before he died, he got me this contract with Twentieth, a second one. And without him around to promote me—It’s something I don’t know how to do. I mean, I know how to put my body over, but I don’t know how to put
myself
over. Does that make sense?”

“Sure.”

She laughed suddenly, that celebrated little-girl laugh of hers, and said, “Did you ever hear what Constance Bennett said about me? We were in something together, I think the name of it was
As Young as You Feel
or something like that. And I hardly had anything to do, just kind of walk-throughs. So naturally, I tried to make the most of that. And one day, Connie said to somebody, ‘There’s a broad with a future behind her.’”

She laughed again, and was suddenly serious. I was always troubled by this swift change in mood that was one of her characteristics.

She went on. “So after then, it was practically nothing but loan-outs and cheesecake. And I don’t know what would’ve happened if it hadn’t of been for that whole thing with the bare-ass calendar.”

“What whole thing?” I asked. I knew the story, but I wanted to hear it from her.

“You never heard about that?” she asked.

“Vaguely,” I said.

“Well, somebody in the modeling business told me they were going to make some art calendars. And it was for a lot of money, which I needed at the time. And when I got there, they wanted me to pose in the nude. So I said, ‘Nothing doing!’ So they upped the ante, and finally I took a drink and thought, What the hell. This guy, the photographer, he told me that for a calendar in color, they were going to do it with a lot of silk screen and a lot of retouching and he said, ‘Listen, nobody’s ever going to know it’s you by the time we get finished. After all, you look like a lot of other bimbos and
they
look like
you
, so if the subject ever comes up, you can just say it’s
not
you.’ Well, anyway, we did it. And he was right, it hardly
did
look like me. And I guess nothing would’ve happened about it, except when I got to be a little well known, these bastards who owned the rights to the calendar started putting it out by the millions. And, of course, said it was me. My new agent, I thought he was going to drop dead, and, of course, the studio was upset. And then my press agent came up with that great line, you know, when they ask me if, during the posing, I had anything on. And I said, ‘Yes, the radio.’ And all of a sudden, even those dumbheads at the studio began to see that it wasn’t such bad publicity. It was sort of good publicity because it was kind of sassy. So that’s when they stuck me right across the top of that whole
Niagara
billboard and, I don’t know, things sort of got going from there. But I tell you again, it wouldn’t have happened without my Johnny Hyde. None of it.”

Marilyn Monroe was starring in
How to Marry a Millionaire
. The screenplay had been written by Nunnally Johnson, who, in self-defense, was also producing the picture. Marilyn had a short, but complicated scene to shoot, involving breakfast in bed and a simultaneous phone call. The director, Jean Negulesco, explained the routine patiently. Marilyn listened patiently. They rehearsed for about an hour, but she appeared to be getting more and more confused.

Negulesco decided to shoot the scene and pray. Maybe something would happen. They made ready to shoot, a complex matter involving the wardrobe woman, the hairdresser, the makeup man, and the property man. When everyone was ready, and the lights, and the camera, they began the scene. Again, Marilyn became hopelessly confused, answering the phone before it rang, drinking out of the coffee cup before she had filled it and so on.

“Cut!”

“One more.”

Preparations again.

The one more became six more, sixteen more, twenty-six more, and still the shot had not been made. Something went wrong each time. It was approaching six o’clock and Negulesco could already hear the production office explosions when they saw on the sheet that not a foot of film had been produced all afternoon. He was desperately anxious to make this one shot at least. He kept trying. No success. He sent for Nunnally
Johnson and asked if perhaps something could be done to simplify the scene. Johnson simplified it. They tried two more takes, then decided to give up. It was six o’clock. Time had run out.

“Okay,” shouted the assistant director. “That’s it. Wrap it up.”

The tired day had ended.

Negulesco sank down in his chair and put his head into his hands.

Marilyn sat up in bed, looking bemused. Nunnally Johnson, a warm and benign figure, went up to Marilyn, took her hand, and said, “We’ll do it in the morning, honey. Don’t worry about it.”

“Don’t worry about
what
?” asked Marilyn.

Nunnally reports that he dropped her hand in astonishment.

The power of agents and agencies in Hollywood derives from the fact that most artists are unequipped for business. The temperament required to write a story, to act a scene, or to make a film is, as a rule, diametrically opposed to the temperament required to make a deal, to negotiate effectively, to read and understand the fine print.

Moreover, in Hollywood’s great, productive days, about 700 feature films a year were made. It was impossible for an individual to cover the ground, to know what was going on at each studio, to have access to the producers and the directors. Thus, the agent fulfilled an important need.

Leland Hayward, who represented Edna Ferber, struggled with the financial aspects of the deal he was about to make for her successful novel
Saratoga Trunk
. Miss Ferber had spent some three years writing the book, and now it appeared that she would be taxed on what she made from the book in a single year. This seemed blatantly unfair, but nothing could be done.

Hayward came up with an idea that has been copied many times since. Instead of selling the property outright to Warner Brothers, he decided to
lease
them the rights for a period of ten years, at so much a year. It was a brilliant idea and has worked well ever since.

Irving Paul Lazar is another of the superior brains in representation.

He operates alone, has a small but select list of clients, mainly writers and directors. It was he who conceived the audacious idea of collecting a commission from the buyer rather than from the seller.

James Jones’s novel
From Here to Eternity
was being bid for competitively by virtually every studio in Hollywood. The price kept going up and up and, as it did, Lazar’s spirits went down and down. It depressed him that he did not represent this plum. Brooding about it early one morning, he hit upon an idea, jumped out of bed, and called Harry Cohn at his home.