I'm Not Dead... Yet! (7 page)

Valuable Life Lesson:
Live life to its fullest—and all jokes aside, there are some really good people in Hollywood.

Despite an all-star cast,
with Gene Hackman, Liza Minnelli, and Burt Reynolds,
Lucky Lady
was one of Hollywood’s biggest flops. (Fun fact: it was written by the people who gave us
Howard the Duck
.)

When I auditioned for Stanley Donen, the famous co-director of the classic film
Singing in the Rain
, he asked me how tall I was and I said, “Five eleven, sir.” He walked out of the room saying, “If you stand up straight you’ll find you’re really six feet tall.”

Why they wanted me for the part of the skipper of the “Lucky Lady” I’ll never know. I was bald because my head had been shaved for
Death Be Not Proud
and I was far from a sailor. As a matter of fact, I was perpetually sea-sick for almost five straight months on the movie.

Mr. Donen wanted to shoot the entire film on the ocean rather then use a stage or miniatures for the battle scenes. The one battle scene, where my character gets killed—mowed down at point blank range by John Hillerman’s character—and then falls straight down a metal flight of stairs on an oil tanker while bombs are exploding all around us, was my introduction to big time movie-making explosions.

Just off-camera, a stuntman was prepared to grab the muzzle of the machine gun aimed at me if it went above his hand—and spare me the painful misery of getting shot in the face with what we call full-load blanks. There are half-loads, quarter-loads—but for this, only three feet away from my face, someone wanted John Hillerman’s machine gun to shoot full-loads. Full-loads—full-loads have killed people. I should’ve said something but it wasn’t in my m.o. to make trouble, although I did think that the actual mechanics of this stunt were odd. I thought—hmmm… grab the machine gun if it goes above his hand? Won’t that be a moment too late? I thought it, but never dared say it.

When the machine gun blasted me I felt warm blood from my upper lip, which was torn apart, flow down my face. At the same time, always acting (using it!) as my squibs went off (explosive charges inside my shirt filled with blood) I threw my ‘dead body‘ down the metal flight of stairs, while the bombs and the heat from the explosions and fires were getting more and more intense.

Suddenly I realized my arm was on fire. I didn’t break character or move as if I were alive—I ‘flinched’ from the pain of my arm being on fire, to which Stanley Donen exasperatedly yelled through his megaphone:

“Fuck! Cut it! The corpse moved! I can’t believe it! The fucking corpse moved!”

I was very sorry and repentant, and had to have my lip sewn back together, too. As punishment, I was never allowed to take the speed boat back to base camp after a full day of filming on the ocean. No matter how sea-sick I was, Mr. Donen made me stay with the Lucky Lady and take the long sailboat ride home as he and the stars sped away in a motor boat. Finally, Burt Reynolds noticed how I was being treated and came to my defense. For the last month of shooting I was allowed to take the motor boat back to land with the other actors.

I was to be ‘severely punished’ by the production company for other
intentional
misbehavior. We had been without hot water for a whole week at the crew hotel—and I didn’t believe the owner who claimed the entire city had no hot water. When I found out he was lying, it infuriated me—so I got naked and brought my ‘Head and Shoulders’ into the hotel swimming pool and took a nice warm bath to prove my point. Even though I got the hot water turned back on, no one was very happy with my stunt—or what I’d call my Right to Protest For Justice… or hot water.

The production company sent me to live in a one-room shack in the middle of the desert with no phone, no car, no TV (or radio). Burt Reynolds did ask if I wanted to stay at the mansion they rented for him, but I was such a loner and didn’t ever want to be a problem for others, that I kept my mouth shut and stayed in a house three miles from civilization. I found out when I would be picked up for work when they sent a driver to shove a call sheet under my front door in the middle of the night. Burt did give me a radio. The American Armed Forces station became my only link to the outside world. When I would go into town for supplies I’d have to walk in the blazing sun jumping over scorpions and moving slowly away from rattlesnakes. It always felt like a longer walk back, laden down with more groceries than I could carry.

There were days on
Lucky Lady
where I became so ill that at night I would hallucinate, and my bed would be soaked from a high fever and vomit. I was sure they’d find me one day on the floor of the house in the middle of the desert, and to Stanley Donen’s delight, ‘the corpse wouldn’t move.’

Valuable Life Lesson:
Stick up for what you think is right, or learn to take cold showers. (I truly believed I was going to die on this film.)

Ode To Billy Joe
represented a turning point
in my career and in my personal life.

Max Baer Jr., who starred as Jethro in
The Beverly Hillbillies
and had written and acted in
Macon County Line
, had the idea of turning Bobbie Gentry’s international hit song into a movie he would direct. Herman Rauscher
(Summer of ’42)
wrote the script. I was cast in the title role. Baer auditioned and screen tested girl after girl for my love interest.

I did more than lobby for Glynnis O’Connor, I knew she’d be the perfect Bobbie Lee, but I also wanted a chance to get back together with her.

Glynnis had broken up with me a year earlier and I had not gotten over her… I think I discovered what real love meant when she told me she wanted to see other boys—because I understood and respected her wishes, and just wanted her to be happy. Now it was time to win her back.

Unfortunately, they put us up in a motel in Mississippi and Glynnis was given the room next to mine. When she spent the night with someone else, I could… hear. Everything. I began running 70 to 100 miles weekly on top of filming.

There was a clause in Glynnis’ contract that she had to be under a certain weight or be fired. It was often over 100 degrees that summer and Glynnis would forego a glass of water, afraid she might put on weight. As per her contract, Max Baer had Glynnis weighed like a piece of meat every single day for the first two weeks of filming.

When I couldn’t stand the madness anymore, I went toe-to-toe with him,
stood in front of Glynnis, and told him she was never going to be weighed again or he would lose both of us. I made a friend for life, but never got my girlfriend back.

When the movie opened, we had an audience hit—and our stock in Hollywood was on the rise. I was happy for Glynnis, her performance, her boyfriends... But I was heartbroken, and foolishly punished myself by running and running in the smog-filled streets of L.A. to diminish the anguish.