| Issue #39, December 22, 2006 |
Stars Reminisce
Bay Street Shows Films, Talk to Lauren Bacall, Eli Wallach, Etc.
By Joan Zandell
Friday Night
The crowd attending the screening of John Huston’s and Arthur Miller’s masterpiece, The Misfits, at Bay Street Theatre, was slow in arriving. I sat alone, in an empty section of the theatre taking in the energy of performances and audiences past, the silence filled with applause audible only to me.
My reverie was shaken by the approach of a tall man with a beard and curly hair, wearing what looked like a Native American jacket. When he took the seat next to mine, I wondered what the chances were of someone getting the seat right next to yours in an empty theatre with numbered seating. So I struck up a conversation.
He said he had never seen The Misfits. I mentioned that Bert Stern had once said that he thought the stallion in the movie was Marilyn. The talk turned to horses and the man said he’d moved to the Hamptons three years ago, and that he was a horse whisperer. And no, he wasn’t Robert Redford, and he certainly didn’t look like a cowboy either.
Then the theatre started to fill up quite suddenly. Eli Wallach and his wife, Anne Jackson, were walking up the aisle to their seats and waving to Cliff Robertson. The room broke out in applause and cheers.
This was the kind of anticipation you’d expect at a premiere. The Misfits was shot in 1961 in black and white, with Clark Gable getting top billing, followed by Marilyn Monroe, Eli Wallach, Thelma Ritter and Montgomery Clift.
The backstage drama was almost more intense than the script. Filmed while the marriage of playwright and screenwriter Arthur Miller and film Goddess Marilyn Monroe was on the rocks, there were rumors of Marilyn drinking on the set and popping pills, keeping the cast and crew waiting for hours and putting the film dramatically behind schedule. And then there was Clark Gable’s fatal heart attack.
Marilyn Monroe was mesmerizing. As if to try to explain it, Montgomery Clift had the line “You look as if you were just born.” The mustang sequence had everyone on the edge of their seats. Each performance had the best of “The Actor’s Studio” written all over it. At intermission, people sat in stunned silence for several minutes before getting up.
When the audience returned to their seats ten minutes later, film critic Jeffrey Lyons and actor Eli Wallach took their places on the stage, facing one another, microphones on.
Lyons opened the dialogue. “That’s such a sad movie!” Then they started talking about the actor’s performance and Mr. Wallach, trying to make us understand that it was an unusual movie for Hollywood, said, “They were taking a chance to do what they wanted to do.”
In the film, Eli Wallach dances with Marilyn, and he dances really well. Mr. Lyons said, “You were Marilyn’s favorite dancing partner.” To which Mr. Wallach returned good-naturedly, “Yeah, but my wife is sitting over there,” pointing at Anne Jackson who waved and laughed. Then without missing a beat, he continued, “Marilyn came to New York and she’d never seen a play. They brought her to see me in Tea House of the August Moon. Afterwards, she asked me, ‘How do you do that for two hours straight?’ To which I said, ‘Two hours straight? That’s nothing; I’ve been doing the show for two years straight!’ She went to the Actor’s Studio because she didn’t want to do what she called “T and A” anymore.
“There were problems with the marriage (between Monroe and Miller) while we were filming. That’s why she couldn’t face the camera and why she was late on the set. You know, this film was done in sequence,” he paused looking around the room as if to see whether anyone got the significance. “It’s rare that a film is done that way. You know, we were really fighting with those horses. John Huston was in the Mexican Army as a horseman. That whole scene with Gable fighting the horse was real. Then at exactly 5 p.m., Gable would leave and go home, because after 5 p.m. he’d go into overtime. The last weeks of shooting, he started putting in overtime and averaging $50,000 in overtime a day. If you’d ask him he’d say, ‘I took the money.’ Whenever Marilyn apologized for being late he’d simply say, ‘Don’t worry honey. Take your time.’ And then he’d take the money. Paula Strassberg was Marilyn’s coach. Marilyn would check with her after each take and they’d redo the scene until Paula gave her the nod.”
Jeffrey Lyons said that Mr. Wallach did a mean imitation of Tallulah Bankhead, which Mr. Wallach was more than happy to demonstrate. He continued to play the crowd. “She had a reputation for not wearing underwear.” Pause. “When I asked her about it, she said, ‘If a woman wants to be kissed, does she wear a veil?’
Eli Wallach has a hundred one-liners that invariably win him the crowd. It didn’t take much prodding from Mr. Lyons to get him to talk about his earliest successes. “I made my first movie, Baby Doll, directed by Elia Kazan, written by Tennessee Williams and starring Carol Baker. My first big movie with a big director made a big splash. Cardinal O’Connor said at the time any Cardinal seeing this movie is automatically ex-communicated.”
Audience members were now invited to ask questions. Mr. Wallach was asked whether he had any idea that Clint Eastwood would become famous.
“The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly was one third of a trilogy. Clint Eastwood got $250,000 to do it. He said to me, ‘Don’t be brave, be careful and don’t do your stunts.’ At the end of filming he said, ‘I’m going back to the U.S. where I’m going to run for office in Carmel, then I’m going to direct and star in my own movies.’ To which I thought, That’ll be the day.”
To wrap up the evening, Jeffrey Lyons presented Mr. Wallach with a manila envelope containing every article ever written about Mr. Wallach’s favorite baseball player Dazzy Vance, who played for the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1939. Mr. Wallach was visibly moved.
* * *
Saturday Night
Saturday night in Sag Harbor: all the restaurants are full and all the parking spots are taken. The Bay Street Theatre is packed and Alan Alda and his wife, Arlene, in addition to Cliff Robertson, are in the audience. After the screening of Murder on the Orient Express, directed by Sidney Lumet, one of the film’s major stars, Lauren Bacall, was interviewed by Jeffrey Lyons. Sidney Lumet was supposed to have been present as well, but was ill and unable to attend.
Ms. Bacall, wearing a black turtleneck sweater, matching slacks and black leather sneakers, sat stroking her little dog, Sophie, who was sitting happily on her lap. Lyon’s first question of the evening was Ms. Bacall’s reaction to the film. “I haven’t seen it on a big screen since 1974. Sidney is an old friend and that was the only time we worked together. It was such an extraordinary cast.”
Mr. Lyons continued. “Sidney Lumet rehearsed you for three weeks, just like in the theatre. Did you enjoy that?” Ms. Bacall thought a moment and said, “I rely heavily on a director. We rehearsed Key Largo for three weeks prior to filming with Huston. After To Have or To Have Not, I was the toast of the town, the critics adored me and compared me to God-knows-who. After Confidential Agent where I was cast as an English girl, the critics were ready to throw me away. I swore that was the last time Jack Warner would choose my movies for me. As a result, I was on suspension eleven times. You’d be put on suspension for not taking a movie. I turned down a part in a movie called Stallion Road. Can you imagine what a fabulous script that would be? They would send telegrams to your lawyer and your agent and stop paying your weekly salary. The minute they started shooting, you’d send a letter saying I’m ready, willing and able to work and they’d take you off suspension. I was this insane success for 20 minutes and then nothing. And then had to come back from that. And you never really get back to where you were. Finally, the work is the only thing that matters.
“After I married Bogie, I became “Bogie’s wife.” The quintessential Bogart is Bogart. There’s something about him as a man. He could not be bought. He had honor and integrity and you couldn’t take that away from him. He lived by the Ten Commandments and the Golden Rule. It’s that integrity that young people respond to today. I’m always connected to Bogie. He’s more alive today than he ever was. He was a major person.”
When Lauren Bacall was on Broadway appearing in Applause two special actresses came to see her backstage after the show, Bette Davis and Ethel Merman. Bette Davis, Bacall’s idol, had agreed not to let her know when she was in the audience. “She was very proper, and not easy to talk to,” said Ms. Bacall. “Before she left, she turned to me and said, “Nobody could have done this but you, and you know that.” When Ethel Merman knocked on the door, the first words out of her mouth were, ‘Where’s the can?’ Applause was a high spot for me. The theatre has been very good to me.”
There comes a moment in each actor’s life when a memoir seems called for. Both Lauren Bacall and Eli Wallach published theirs in the last year. Referring to her recent memoir, Ms. Bacall said, “There are times about your own life that you never forget. You keep writing and little doors open in your head. I talked to anyone I could find who was there in those early days when I first came to Hollywood. I feel the book is very honest, which gets me into a lot of trouble.“
Mr. Lyons asked the actress whether she had ever danced with the Shah of Iran, to which she responded, “I danced with the Shah of Iran at a New Year’s Eve Party and he said, ‘You must have been born dancing!’ And I said, ‘You bet your ass.’”
To wrap up the evening, Mr. Lyons asked Ms. Bacall whether she planned to watch the Oscars this year. “Sure I plan to. How much fun can you have in one night?”
Audiences gave Eli Wallach and Lauren Bacall a standing ovation at the end of the evening. And we walked away glad to have been there, because they just don’t make them like that anymore.
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