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  “There’s one thing we’ve got to remember,” Williams said. “We’ve got to keep the audience oriented. The ordinary guy sitting in Chicago, he looks at a map and he says Japan is off to the left and England is off to the right.” He tapped the map with the pencil. “Now the Japs attacked in three different directions, the three I’ve drawn here, but no planes came in from the west, or from the left side of the map. What we’ve got to do is get our camera angles so that the Jap planes are always flying from left to right and the Americans are shooting back at them from right to left. We can get an angle to show the proper background for accuracy’s sake. But we’ve got to be careful to make that guy in Chicago know that whenever he sees a plane flying from left to right, he’s seeing a Jap plane.”

  Several days later, Arthur Jacobs called and asked if I wanted to see how a picture was promoted. When I arrived at the Apjac bungalow, Jacobs was sitting at his desk, a telephone cradled in his shoulder. Before him was a small file box containing white, yellow and pink file cards. He cupped his hand over the telephone. “White for dictation, yellow for telephone follow-up, pink for projects,” he said. “The secretary cleans it out every week. You got to be organized.” He spoke back into the telephone. “You want to know my schedule, I’ll give you my schedule.” He ran a finger down a piece of paper on his desk. “October 2 through October 7, New York, available for meetings and interviews, October 8, fly to London, October 9 through 14, London, available for meetings and interviews, October 15 through 19, Paris, available for meetings and interviews, October 20, fly to New York, October 23 through 26, New York, available for meetings and interviews.”

  There are twelve buttons on Jacobs’ telephone and he pressed one to take another call. The decor in his office is mustard and brown, and on the walls there are gold-framed posters of Paris art gallery shows—Kandinsky, Dufy, and Toulouse-Lautrec. Scattered about the office that day were various still photographs and book jackets of projects in which Apjac was involved—Planet of the Apes, The Chairman, an unpublished novel in which Frank Sinatra was interested in appearing, and a script for Good-bye, Mr. Chips, a musical version of the James Hilton story that Jacobs planned to produce at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer with Gower Champion as director.

  “That’s right,” Jacobs said into the telephone. “I want the sound track album to go to every major newspaper publisher, editor, columnist, you name it. I want a cocktail party for all the disk jockeys in all the major cities when the Dolittle album comes out. And I want the Studio field men to give us a semi-monthly report on the status of all the Dolittle window displays in every city in their territory.”

  As Jacobs hung up the phone, Mort Abrahams, Apjac’s vice president and associate producer of Dr. Dolittle, walked into the office.

  “I just talked to Gower,” Abrahams said. “I told him the choreographer wanted $2,000 a week and he went right out of his fucking skull. He said to offer him $750 and if he doesn’t like it, we’ll get someone else.”

  Jacobs nodded and lit a small dark cigarette. “Chips, Dolittle, all we’re selling around here is confusion, Mort,” he said. He rummaged around his desk and came up with the record jacket of the sound track album of Dr. Dolittle, which had just arrived that morning.

  “An original pressing of 500,000,” Jacobs said. “The biggest in history. Bigger than Sound of Music, bigger than My Fair Lady, bigger than anything.”

  “I like it,” Abrahams said.

  “You better like it,” Jacobs said.

  Over the intercom, Jacobs’ secretary announced that Arnold Maxin was waiting in the outer office. Maxin was the president of the music publishing firm that was handling the Dolittle sheet music. He had arrived to discuss with Jacobs and Abrahams how to push the Dolittle score in albums, in singles and on television.

  “Arnold, baby,” Jacobs said when Maxin came into the room. He is a dark, intense-looking man in his forties. “Let’s get some lunch.”

  They walked out into the noonday sun. Maxin had a blue, chauffeur-driven limousine parked in front of the bungalow.

  “I like it, Arnold,” Abrahams said.

  “You like everything today, Mort,” Jacobs said. “Let’s take the cart.” Ever since his heart attack, Jacobs got around the lot in a striped golf cart. It had once been painted pink and white, the motif colors in the Dr. Dolittle advertising campaign; now it was yellow and white. “Give your man a half hour for lunch, Arnold.”

  Jacobs steered the golf cart up through the French street and parked outside the commissary in Peyton Place Square. An extra dressed in a T-shirt and silver facial monster makeup stared at Jacobs as he walked into the commissary. Jacobs stared back and shook his head slightly. He settled into a chair in the executive dining room, took the bread and butter from his place and put it on the table behind him.

  “Listen,” Jacobs said. “Bobby Darin just flipped. I played the original score for him at a party at my house and he went right out of his skull. He wants to do the whole album.”

  “Sammy Davis, too,” Abrahams said.

  “Sammy, too,” Jacobs said.

  “We’re talking to Andy Williams this afternoon and we sent a man down to Florida to see Sinatra,” Maxin said. He reached across to the next table and speared the pat of butter Jacobs had put there. “We’re not going to have any trouble with albums. Everyone wants to be identified with this picture. All the major artists, Streisand, Frank, all of them. They know about the picture and they’re crazy for the songs.” He broke a bread stick in two. “They want to be identified with this picture.”

  “What about singles?” Abrahams said.

  “There you’ve got a problem,” Maxin said carefully. “You go to an artist and try to get him to do a single and he says, ‘Sure, if I can be first out with it!’ You can’t give a first to both Tony Bennett and Matt Monro. So they might hold off.”

  Jacobs cracked a piece of ice between his teeth. “And then there’s the problem with Rex,” he said.

  “Right,” Maxin said. “He’s not a singer, the songs are tailored to him. They’re his songs, they’re identified with Rex Harrison.”

  “Like My Fair Lady,” Jacobs said.

  “Right,” Maxin said. “He had a four-year run in that show and the only big single was ‘On the Street Where You Live.’ And that wasn’t his song, you remember. All the others were so identified with him, no one wanted to follow him. It was like coming on after World War III.” He considered his salad. “Maybe you won’t have so much of a problem with this picture. It’s an original score, nobody’s heard the music.”

  “Are your people working on the TV shows?” Abrahams said.

  “Yeah,” Maxin said. “We got three of our songs on the first Dean Martin show this fall.”

  “From Dolittle?” Abrahams said, surprised.

  “No,” Maxin said. “From our catalogue.”

  “We want to get something from Dolittle on the first show, though, Arnold,” Abrahams said. “That’s the one gets all the ballyhoo, all the reviews.”

  “We’ll work on it,” Maxin said reassuringly.

  “Maybe we should put our own man on it,” Jacobs said. His eyes darted back and forth between Maxin and Abrahams.

  “No, my man is a specialist in TV shows,” Maxin said. “That’s all he does, twelve months a year. You get a man, he goes in to see Dean, Dean says, ‘We’ll see what we can do.’ My man will get a listen.”

  “I’d like to get on more TV shows,” Jacobs said. “And get more singles.”

  “We got Tony Bennett for a single,” Maxin said. “Period. The single we’ve got to push is ‘When I Look into Your Eyes.’ That’s what I call an easy listening song. It’s Frank’s kind of play.” He jabbed his fork at Jacobs. “With this score, you’re not going to get the rock-and-roll stations. Forget it. It’s the easy listening songs.”

  They talked for a while about promoting the score through music and record dealers. “You’re going to want the big window displays in the major record st
ores, right?” Maxin said.

  “Right,” Jacobs said.

  “You know you’re going to have to pay for those windows?” Maxin said.

  Abrahams stared at him incredulously. “What?” he said.

  “You heard me,” Maxin said. “You get Liberty’s double bay in New York and it’s going to cost you fifteen hundred bucks. Sam Goody’s 49th Street window goes for a thousand, Korvette’s twenty-five hundred.”

  “Twenty-five hundred for Korvette’s?” Jacobs said.

  “Fifth Avenue,” Maxin said. “The quality trade.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Abrahams said.

  Maxin seemed surprised at their naïveté. “No money changes hands,” he said. “They just want free albums. You want Sam Goody’s front window, you give Sam Goody 700 free albums.”

  “Is it worth it?” Jacobs said. “I want to know how many windows to buy.”

  “It … is … worth it,” Maxin said deliberately, making a sweeping gesture with his hand. “Listen, how many mobile displays you got?”

  “Fifteen hundred,” Jacobs said.

  “A minimum fifteen hundred you should get,” Maxin said. “If a store makes a commitment with a mobile, then they’re going to push your record.” He snapped his fingers at the waitress. “The cantaloupe’s a little hard. Bring me some vanilla ice cream.” He turned back to Jacobs. “And you should run a contest for your record distributors. The one who gets the best distribution for the record gets a free trip to Paris, say. Write letters to their wives. Say something like, ‘If you want that mink stole we’re handing out, your husband should do this and this and this.’ It gives the guy on the street selling the album a little incentive.”

  4

  “Wet she was a star,”

  Joe Pasternak said

  The budget of every motion picture is divided into “above the line” costs—story, writer, producer, director, cast—and “below the line” costs—labor, sets, costumes, makeup, hair styling, optical and special effects. To the final budget of each picture is added a studio overhead charge that runs to approximately 25 per cent of the actual cost. It is a common complaint in Hollywood that the studio overhead subliminally encourages a certain amount of fat in a studio’s own below-the-line budget estimates. It is rare that a department head will choose the cheaper of two alternatives, since higher cost means higher overhead and higher profit for the studio. Thus, in a recent picture (which was not made at Fox), the star’s costumes, which ran mainly to smocks and housedresses, were budgeted for $15,000; the costume designer, whose first film this was, estimated that she could have bought the same wardrobe retail for, at most, $2,500.

  At the Studio, the job of setting the below-the-line costs and policing them once they have been established falls to the production department. Every weekday morning at 11:30, all the department heads meet in the production bungalow to go over the progress of each feature and television film the Studio has either shooting or in preparation. There are approximately thirty people at this daily meeting, representing the Studio’s wardrobe, prop, police, electrical, construction, camera, art, makeup and hair-styling departments. The meeting is chaired by the assistant head of the Studio’s production department, Louis “Doc” Merman. One morning I walked into the meeting just as Merman was taking his place at the head of the table. Merman looks like an aging, amiable beagle. His hair has thinned into a few strands on the top and he has imposing bags under his eyes. He rapped his glasses on the table and called the meeting to order.

  “Jesus, I saw a stinker last night,” he said by way of preface. “The Way West. A million dollars in story costs. Jesus.” He spread the daily call sheet in front of him. “Anybody got the weather report for tomorrow?”

  “Sunny all day, Doc,” someone answered.

  “Okay, that means we don’t have to scratch anything on location,” Merman said. “Sweet Ride starts tomorrow, right? The company leaves the casting corner at 6:30. Is anyone still in that house they’re shooting in down at the beach?”

  “No, they all moved out, Doc.”

  “Who’s got the keys to the house?” Merman said.

  “We got a watchman there twenty-four hours a day, Doc.”

  “Okay, that takes care of that one,” Merman said. “Now, where do we stand on The Boston Strangler?”

  He went into every picture listed on the call sheets and the special problems with each.

  “When’s Barbara Parkins going to be free for looping Valley of the Dolls?”

  “She’s got two days off next week, Doc.”

  “Well, tie her up,” Merman said. “We can’t let that go any longer. Is Planet of the Apes going to be finished at the ranch this week?”

  “Should be, Doc.”

  “Better be,” Merman said. “Warner’s wants to rent the cornfield out there Monday.”

  “Jesus, I don’t know, Doc. It’s all trampled. Those goddamn apes and horses tore the shit out of it. Warner’s will have a hell of a time making it ready.”

  “That’s their problem,” Merman said. “How we coming on Star!?”

  “We got the wardrobe for the vaudeville theater scene coming in on Pan Am Flight 2. The customs agent will be looking for it.”

  “Goddamn thing better get here,” Merman said. “We’re going to be shooting that.”

  “And then we’ve got to redress Gertie’s Maida Vale apartment set,” the Star! production manager continued. “Bob Wise doesn’t like it the way it is.”

  “Oh, good Christ,” Merman said, shaking his head. He looked down the table for the chief of the Studio police. Cartier’s, the New York jeweler, had lent the Star! company $200,000 worth of real jewels for Julie Andrews to wear in her incarnation as Gertrude Lawrence. The security for the stones was in the hands of the Studio police.

  “Where you keeping that stuff, Chief?” Merman said.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know, Doc,” the Studio police chief said.

  “In a paper bag someplace, I bet.”

  “That’s right, Doc,” the chief said.

  “Jesus, real jewels, as if we didn’t have enough problems,” Merman said. “The director says it makes the actors feel good and you can photograph that feeling. That’s a load of shit. The main thing you got it for is the publicity.” He looked at his watch and gathered together his papers. “Okay,” he said, rising from his chair. “That’s it till tomorrow.”

  Ran into Jed Harris at a party the other night and he told me this amusing story: the future husband of a fair lady he planned to marry came to him and said, “My fiancée tells me that she is still in love with you. Do you love her?” “I worship her,” was Jed’s reply. “Then why don’t you marry her?” he was asked. “Because I’d rather shoot myself,” Jed retorted.

  Radie Harris, The Hollywood Reporter

  The Sweet Ride was Joe Pasternak’s 105th motion picture and his first for Fox after being under contract to M-G-M for more than twenty-five years. Born in Hungary, he had produced films in Berlin, Vienna and Budapest before arriving in Hollywood in 1937 as producer of Three Smart Girls, A Hundred Men and a Girl and Mad About Music. During his quarter-century tenure at M-G-M, Pasternak had specialized in Kathryn Grayson musicals, Mario Lanza musicals, Doris Day musicals and Esther Williams aquatics. The vogue for his kind of picture was in decline, but when M-G-M finally dropped his contract he was able to catch on with Fox. The Sweet Ride was a sexy surfing picture, a “programmer” that the Studio hoped to drop into the summer release market for a quick return from the vacationing teenagers who make up the bulk of the drive-in theater audiences. It was not costing much and, if it lost money, it at least supplied the Studio’s distribution arm with a product for summer release. In short, The Sweet Ride had all the elements of a classic Pasternak film—Technicolor, music (though jazz and rock-and-roll instead of the pop operatics of a traditional Pasternak), youth (the film drew liberally on the Studio’s New Talent Program, and its two young co-stars, Michael Sarrazin and Jacqueline Bisset,
had been in only a handful of previous pictures), unambiguous story line (aging beach bum Tony Franciosa has protégé beach bum in Sarrazin, protégé beach bum falls in love with sexually mixed-up starlet Bisset, sexually mixed-up starlet is beaten up by her producer after being raped by Hell’s Angel-type motorcyclist, Hell’s Angel-type motorcyclist is in turn beaten up by the two beach bums, at fadeout protégé beach bum gives up surfing after last perfect wave and goes to work in family’s hardware store, vowing to go back to sexually mixed-up starlet when he is worthy of her), and hard-hitting dialogue (“That girl has six broken ribs and a set of bruises that look like a relief map of Tibet”).

  The week after The Sweet Ride began shooting at the beach north of Trancas, Pasternak boarded a chauffeur-driven Studio car for a ride out to the location. He nestled into a corner of the back seat and opened a script he was considering called Guitar City. He is a short man on whom the years are beginning to tell. He has closely cropped gray hair, his step is sometimes not quite steady, and he still speaks with a heavy Hungarian accent. The car headed onto the Santa Monica Freeway and then at the beach sped north along the Pacific Coast Highway. Pasternak closed the script and stared out the window.

  “You know what the real story for today’s kids is?” he said. “It’s about an eighteen-year-old girl who fucks but who’s afraid to fall in love.” He seemed to concentrate on the story possibilities for a while. “The big problem in Hollywood today is replacement. All the big stars are on crutches. You get a young girl falling in love with Cary Grant. In real life, she sleeps with him once or twice to see what it’s like, then she leaves him. In Hollywood they live happily ever after.”