The Light’s On At Signpost. George Fraser MacDonald
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for those who explain how screen miracles are achieved, and I shouldn’t have asked. Mark walked round Mark, and I don’t mind not knowing how it was done.
Cardiff has the rights to Jeffery Farnol’s Jade of Destiny, and wants me to write it for Olly in some kind of co-production deal. I make non-committal noises. It could be fun to write, and might make a good swashbuckler, but I wonder if the market will bear another Tudor adventure so soon after Prince and Pauper. Also, production isn’t my style. I’m a hired typewriter.
Back to the I.o.M., and a call from one Harold Hecht: am I interested in writing a sequel to The Crimson Pirate for Burt Lancaster, and will I go to a screening of the original movie (which I haven’t seen) in London with Lancaster, who is coming to England shortly? I’m taken with the idea of working with Lancaster, who has the reputation of being an unusually intelligent actor, but I’m not sure about the job. Without knowing what The Crimson Pirate was like, I doubt if there’s much chancing of doing an M3 (or a P and P) with a sequel. But who knows?*
To Pinewood with Fleischer to see the rough-cut. It seems that Olly took to turning up legless during the last two weeks in Budapest; once he had roared at Fleischer, explaining how he was going to do a fight scene, stabbing the air, flinging himself on the ground, and simply failing to register when Dick said: “But, Olly, we’ve shot that fight, remember?” Olly didn’t, no doubt because he had been entirely gassed when he did it, plunging about and trying to kill everybody. Barry had had to scrap his carefully choreographed fight and ad-lib the whole thing, which looked suitably shambolic on screen.
Plainly booze is going to be the ruin of a fine but undisciplined actor. What makes it so painful is that Dick had golden opinions of Olly the actor before he saw Olly the drunk.
At lunch in the Pinewood restaurant (Table One, whee-whew! that’s what directorial giants get) I learn to my horror that most of Rex Harrison has been removed from the film. The logic is that Rex’s part was artificially built up (which I did on instruction because he is who he is) and that this unbalances the film as a whole; the built-up part is judged to be “obtrusive”. My feeling is that Rex can never be obtrusive – and, dammit, I wrote the part specially for him, he liked it and does it beautifully, and for my money it’s the best dialogue in the film. So I say, the hell with whether it’s obtrusive or not – if you’re lucky enough to have Harrison doing his thing as only he can, use him, and who cares if the picture runs ten minutes over?
Pierre arrives with his sister, a pretty, quiet girl. Alex and Ilya are at the Dorchester, cooking up big deals, but will arrive by executive transport, air-conditioned chauffeur, etc., in time for the showing at 3 p.m. We go to the viewing theatre – no Salkinds at three. Pierre phones in all directions, the chauffeur is still outside the Dorchester, but Alex and Ilya have vanished. Dick contains what must be white-hot fury under a bright-eyed calm. We continue to wait … and wait. Dick says if they don’t arrive by three thirty, forget it, because he won’t try to crowd the showing into the time available before the theatre is booked for another film.
We wait some more, Pierre’s sister brings coffee, we drink it in silence, I deliver a brief lecture on the manners of film producers, and Dick nods with gritted teeth – much more delay and he’ll burst.
At the last minute Alex and Ilya arrive, in trench coats, Alex apologising profusely and Ilya shaking his head. Coffee finished, Dick cocks an eye and asks: “Are we all … reddee?”, and we take our seats, myself at the end of the back row, well away from massed Salkinds with Dick in their midst. He must be a masochist; sitting beside Michel le Grand with a heavy cold is bad enough, but how he’s going to cope with Alex’s stertorous breathing and muttered translations of English into French via Russian, I hate to think.
Dick, using what I imagine is an age-old Hollywood formula, makes a nice little set speech from his seat, telling us the form: we’ll see the movie, and think a while, and then exchange views, right? Enthusiastic grunts from Alex, frowning malignantly from the depths of his trench coat (this is his “concentration” expression) and the film rolls.
Well, my first reaction is one of disappointment.* The overall direction is vintage Fleischer, and Jack Cardiff’s photography is immaculate as always, but some of the acting isn’t that good, and I’m not all that struck with some of my screenplay, either – but in self-defence there are lines I’d have played differently. But the main fault, dwarfing any others, is in the casting: Mark just isn’t right for the parts. Now and then he sounds like a school-play rehearsal – and yet sometimes that crack-voiced boyish intensity hits exactly the right note. It’s not his fault; it’s simply not his role – for one thing, he’s far too tall, six feet if he’s an inch.
Harrison’s reduction aside, I’m annoyed that the editor has dropped the long shot of Henry dying, which I liked because it was historically accurate and rather moving, with the whispered “Monks, monks, monks!” and the haunting music of “The Hunt is Up” coming in softly, and substituted a jarring close shot in which Charlton’s head drops alarmingly, and he does a great slump.†
Borgnine is excellent … I think – is he too much, with that mad glint? – Olly as good as always, Heston v. good, and the most believable Henry I’ve ever seen, Raleigh’s tyrant to the life; he manages something which I wouldn’t have thought Heston could have done, namely, make my eyes moist. Lalla Ward gives Young Bess the message, on all cylinders. George Scott looks even better the second time.
Surprisingly, the scene at the stocks between Olly and Raquel plays well, possibly helped by Korngold’s music, which Dick has used for the nonce. I rewrote the scene, on request, but the principals liked the original better. Mark’s finest hour is his “They shall have right” speech, which he does superbly, with Olly reacting perfectly – that whole sequence, beside a dreary river in half-light, is Jack Cardiff photography at its wondrous best.
Westminster Abbey has got out of control – long pauses, Mark looking serene, Raquel doing her damnedest with that bloody Great Seal – I hate the sequence, always did, gave them what they asked for against my better judgment, and it doesn’t work.
They haven’t shot the last fight, by the way, which is as well; I had doubts at the time, and we’re better without it. So Dick won his battle with the producers, the Abbey set wasn’t rebuilt, tons of cotton and beetroot found a happy home, and Eddie Fowlie and his workers were spared a maddening job.
Lovely finish to the film, with Rex speaking the end pieces and Lalla Ward sweeping off to take care of England, and looking as though she’s just the girl to do it, too.
Worst mistake – taking most of Harrison out. He could give the thing just the lift it needs. My overall judgment: it could go either way, good or bad, probably on the bad side. I’m a harsh critic, and it may be better than I think. But I doubt if we’ll have a hit. Respectable at the box office, perhaps, but no better. And yet, who knows? I had serious doubts about the M3, and how wrong I was.
Dead silence when the lights go up. Salkind murmurings, comments like “Yes … very good … Yes …” (At least no one gives the ultimate thumbs down of “Great locations”.*) I move behind Dick and say “Well done”, and he says thanks. He’s disappointed at their reaction, but he probably expected to be. Talk of restoring Harrison, which will mean cuts. I make the case for keeping Scott and Young Bess intact, and Dick agrees.
Some time later, in Paris, I hear that Harrison is to be restored, thank God. Ilya tells me the feeling is that Rex put bags of pathos and oomph into the thing, and that his removal would cut out all the good emotion. He then horrifies me by wanting to remove Lalla Ward’s final magnificent exit, his reasoning being who the hell knows about Queen Elizabeth I anyway, and look at the state of the pound, for Christ’s sake. They want to fake in some appalling nonsense of two hands shaking,