GRIN, SMILE, SMIRK: THE FILMS OF BURT LANCASTER—The Collaborative Spirit of The Killers (1946)

"Lancaster, built to defeat a white t-shirt as well as any man...."—Jonathan Lethem

It might be cliché to emphasize the collaborative nature of any given film, yet rarely has collaboration achieved such heightened distinction as with The Killers, directed by Robert Siodmak in 1946, the selfsame year French critic Nino Frank coined the term film noir.

The Short Story: Ernest Hemingway

Based on an Ernest Hemingway short story originally entitled "The Matadors", "The Killers" was first published in Scribners on March 1927, for which Hemingway was paid a paltry $200. Hemingway's friendly rival F. Scott Fitzgerald (whose short stories in The Saturday Evening Post were fetching $3,000 apiece) wryly teased: "I hope the sale of 'The Killers' will teach you to send every story either to Scribners or an agent."

The Painting: Edward Hopper

Appropriate compensation for "The Killers" arrived belatedly, if not indirectly to Hemingway. Edward Hopper painted his infamous Nighthawks, allegedly inspired by Hemingway's short story. As recounted by Philip French at The Guardian: "When he read Hemingway's story in 1927, Edward Hopper wrote to the editor of Scribners, saying: 'It is refreshing to come upon such an honest piece of writing in an American magazine, after wading through the vast sea of sugar-coated mush that makes up so much of our fiction.' " Nighthawks, in turn, became one of the prime graphic influences on film noir (starting off no less with The Killers, whose opening sequence diner—according to Paul Huckerby at Electric Sheep Magazine—was shot to specifically look like Hopper's Nighthawks).

The Producer: Mark Hellinger

Enter Mark Hellinger, a New York columnist (with a readership of 18 million, according to noir historian Bill Hare) and former newspaper buddy of Hemingway's who bought the rights to "The Killers" for $36,000. As observed by David Sanjek at Pop Matters, Hellinger had already "played a key role in the development of the crime genre in Hollywood," essaying his hardboiled "knowledge of the mean streets into literature." Hired first in the early '30s by MGM, "Hellinger soon found his professional niche at Warner Brothers, the company that made its name by parlaying the public fascination with rough action and tough talk, shifty gangsters and their molls. Hellinger produced some of the best, including the Cagney vehicle, The Roaring Twenties (1939), and High Sierra (1941), the film that made Humphrey Bogart a star."

Following service in WWII, Hellinger dreamed of creative independence by setting up his own production studio patterned after Orson Welles' Mercury Players and—as outlined at Epinions—Hellinger chose The Killers as his first project, imagining "a film similar to Citizen Kane in form, relatively inexpensive, with unknown talent." Thus, it's hardly a surprise that The Killers has been nicknamed "the Citizen Kane of film noir" since Hellinger's intent was there from the beginning (replete with a green silk handkerchief decorated with a gold harp encircled by shamrocks, substituting for Citizen Kane's "Rosebud"). Hellinger used Hemingway's short story to launch a flashback narrative structure reminiscent of the Welles film.

The Killers was the critical and financial success Hellinger hoped for and earned enough profit to bankroll his future productions: Brute Force (1947) and The Naked City (1948). Unfortunately, The Naked City was Hellinger's last film, released shortly after his early death at 45 from heart attack. The Naked City inspired a television offshoot in the 60s whose "dedicated delineation of the working lives of ordinary policemen set the template for other programs to come, like Law & Order and N.Y.P.D. Blue." In fact, as further noted at Epinions, it's Hellinger's voice in The Naked City which carries his immortal words: "There are eight million stories in the City of New York. This is one of them."

The Screenplay: Richard Brooks /
John Huston / Anthony Veiller

Hellinger brought in aspiring young screenwriter Richard Brooks to shape up the initial translation of Hemingway's short story into a film scenario. Brooks had achieved notoriety and some success with his 1945 novel The Brick Foxhole—about a group of Marines who pick up and then murder a homosexual man (later adapted into the 1947 film Crossfire)—but, his screenwriting was mired in such "minor" projects as 1944's Cobra Woman (where he'd worked earlier with Siodmak as director). Brooks was later to become known for his scripts for Brute Force (1947) and Key Largo (1948), receiving his only Oscar® for Elmer Gantry (1960), though being nominated for Blackboard Jungle (1955), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), The Professionals (1966), and In Cold Blood (1967). His last significant project was the controversial Looking for Mr. Goodbar (1977).

But it was John Huston—writer for Hellinger's High Sierra—who stepped in to anonymously draft the actual screenplay for The Killers. Still serving in the U.S. Army and under contract to Warners, Huston (according to Epinions) "provided a second act in which an insurance investigator, like the self-effacing reporter in Kane, would piece the story together from interviews; followed by a third act in which the survivors would be brought together in a denouement." Anthony Veiller, an old newsman colleague of Hellinger's and a friend of Huston's—later to be known for his screenplays for Orson Welles' The Stranger (1946), Frank Capra's State of the Union (1948), and future Huston collaborations Moulin Rouge (1952), Beat The Devil (1953) and The Night of the Iguana (1964)—was brought in to burnish Huston's script and was given official credit for the screenplay. The Killers was allegedly the only Hollywood adaptation of one of his stories that Hemingway approved, even though—according to Huston—"I didn't tell him that I'd written it. He found out later and called me a dirty word."

The "substantiating connective tissue" between Hemingway's short story and its filmic adaptation was initially criticized by resident New York Times critic Bosley Crowther who objected to Hellinger and Veiller "filling out the plot" with clever explanations and flashback reconstructions, which—though "taut and absorbing" and a "diverting picture"—"certainly does not enhance the literary distinction of Hemingway's classic bit."

Hemingway's short story "The Killers" inspired three filmic adaptations, of course: the first being Siodmak's 1946 film, followed by Andrei Tarkovsky's 1956 black-and-white student short, and finally Don Siegel's 1964 adaptation (the first-ever made-for-television movie). Interestingly enough, Siegel had been Hellinger's initial choice as director for The Killers; but, he was beholden to Warners. All three versions of Hemingway's story were creatively grouped together for Criterion's DVD release, with an essential essay by Jonathan Lethem. Comparative analyses between the Siodmak and Siegel versions of The Killers has been articulated by David Sanjek for Pop Matters and Scott Tobias for The Onion A.V. Club, whereas a thorough academic treatment has been provided by Philip Booth in an essay Hemingway's "The Killers" and Heroic Fatalism: From Page to Screen (Thrice) published in Literature/Film Quarterly (January 1, 2007), available through Highbeam Research Library. I highly recommend Booth's analysis as it explores Hemingway's central literary theme—i.e., "heroic fatalism, or fatalistic heroism, a dignified, graceful acceptance of one's circumstances in the face of personal disaster up to and including one's death" (or as David Sanjek abbreviates it: "grace under pressure")—and how the theme translates onto film.

The Director: Robert Siodmak

According to David Cairns, the best book-length study on Robert Siodmak in English remains Deborah Lazaroff Alpi's Robert Siodmak: A Biography, with Critical Analyses of His Film Noirs and a Filmography of All His Works, sadly out of print. Until a new edition of that volume arrives, however, Cairns' Moving Image Source essay "Dark Mirrors: The dual cinema of Robert Siodmak" competently fills the gap, including a thorough survey of Siodmak's films from his early career in Germany, the shift of his career to France, and his eventual migration to Hollywood, where he made such signature films as Phantom Lady (1944), The Spiral Staircase (1945), and—of more immediate interest—The Killers.

Cairns traces Siodmak's thematic concerns with "romantic obsession, ambiguous identity, and doubling." As early as Sidomak's Stürme der Leidenschaft (Storms of Passion, 1932), Cairns identifies Sidomak's fully developed elements of "a doomed hero locked in a fatal romance with an unworthy woman" and "scenes of violence and criminality set in a chiaroscuro, stylized evocation of very specific real-world environment" as elements that foreshadow The Killers and Criss Cross (1949). With Pièges (1939), Siodmak "climaxed his French career with a fast-paced serial killer investigation story" that likewise compares to such later noirs as The Killers and Phantom Lady via a "strong story spine [that] supports an episodic series of suspense sequences that involve various strange or tragic characters."

Cairns admires how Anthony Veiller and John Huston's script "brilliantly deployed Hemingway's source story as a teaser to an investigation patterned on Citizen Kane's flashback structure, a device that allowed the writers to abandon Hemingway's florid-terse style after the opening, and to package an authentically doom-laden noir story of obsession and failure within a more upbeat tale of an insurance investigator (Edmond O'Brien) recovering stolen loot. The backstory leads Lancaster to that lonely boardinghouse bed, waiting for the titular bad men and their inevitable bullets, while the framing story ends the movie with O'Brien giving the camera and the audience a cheerful salute as 'The End' appears. Cake is had and eaten in abundance. But the careful segregation of noir fatalism within can-do American heroics is not complete: the moment when the two stories decisively crash together, the entrance of the long-forgotten killers into O'Brien's world, accompanied by their four-note Miklós Rózsa leitmotif (appropriated wholesale by the TV show Dragnet), carries a chilling charge, and Gardner's eventual fall from power is desperately moving, despite her character's intense wickedness."

Of further interest on Siodmak is his Senses of Cinema profile by Chris Justice and annotations by Mike Grost to a sampling of Siodmak's filmography.

The Composer: Miklós Rózsa

As referenced by Cairns, Miklós Rózsa's four-note leitmotif "carries a chilling charge" and—when it's first introduced in the film and if you don't blink—you'll quickly glimpse a cameo of Hellinger and Huston talking to two women at the bar. When Rózsa's daughter Juliet attended a tribute screening of Ben-Hur (1959) at the Castro Theatre during their January 2008 Rózsa retrospective, she indicated that—among her personal favorites of her father's oeuvre—The Killers ranked high because of its main theme, which was later (as Cairns phrases it) "appropriated wholesale" into the Dragnet franchise. Rózsa biographer Steve Vertlieb mentioned the infamous litigation over Walter Schumann's adaptation of The Killers theme for Dragnet, which Miklós Rózsa won in court. Whether Schumann's plagiarism was unconscious or subliminal, Vertlieb noted that in the 1987 spoof of Dragnet with Dan Aykroyd, credit for the theme was assigned to both Rózsa and Schumann.

The Cinematographer: Elwood "Woody" Bredell

As detailed at Epinions, Siodmak was at his best when mixing his European and American sensibilities. "The influence of German Expressionism, especially strong in The Spiral Staircase, is also evident in The Killers where it meshes perfectly with American hard-boiled existentialism. Elwood (Woody) Bredell's chiaroscuro cinematography is excellent and here almost rivals the great John Alton's work on The Big Combo. It is a directing tour de force full of breathtaking shots, from the simple pan capturing the contrast between a panicking Nick and the stoic Swede at the start of the film to the virtuoso two-minute crane shot of the heist." According to David Cairns, that "single-take heist sequence shows the director's ambitions, and the fact that he chose the first take of three, the one where everything went wrong, shows his commitment to the messiness of reality, even amid an intensely composed film."

Cairns adds that—during the filming of Phantom Lady—Siodmak encouraged Bredell (who was then a house cameraman at Universal) to study Rembrandt, specifically to "note how the viewer's eye was instinctively drawn to the most shadowy parts of the image." In Phantom Lady as in later films, Siodmak and Bredell turned "a low budget to advantage" and Siodmak moved his actors "in and out of pools of light in a world of devouring dark." The Guardian's Philip French describes Bredell's atmospheric cinematography as "a baleful delight." At Pop Matters, David Sanjek opines that Bredell "exhibits equal facility with the glamour shots of Lancaster's well-toned physique or the dazzling beauty of a young Ava Gardner as he does the scenes of action." Scott Tobias confirms that Siodmak's "noir staple plods lethargically through its double, triple, and quadruple crosses, but its marvelously expressive black-and-white photography puts the story's despairing tone in purely visual terms."

Influences

According to Jonathan Lethem, the film's iconographic killers—Al (Charles McGraw) and Max (William Conrad, in his first feature role)—"were destined to stroll not only into the 1964 sequel (directed by Don Siegel, Hellinger's original choice to helm the original) but also into Steve Martin and Carl Reiner's Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid, into the fever dreams of Dennis Potter's The Singing Detective, and, of course, into the thrilled hearts of noir lovers everywhere."

Scott Tobias observes that the killers in Don Siegel's film—Charlie (Lee Marvin) and Lee (Clu Gulager)—serve "as a funny precursor to the John Travolta / Samuel L. Jackson dynamic in Pulp Fiction."

At The Guardian, Philip French intuits: "The movie's influence has extended over 60 years to take in Cronenberg's homage, A History of Violence." Especially in the opening sequence—quintessentially Hemingway—where two assassins enter a simple diner in a small town and menace the owner, his chef and an innocent bystander.

The Killers opens PFA's Burt Lancaster retrospective on Friday, November 26, at 8:00PM.

Cross-published on Twitch.

TCM CLASSIC FILM FESTIVAL 2010: THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE (1948)—On Stage Conversation with Anjelica & Danny Huston

One of the many fascinating sidebars at the first-ever TCM Classic Film Festival was their tribute to The Hustons: A Hollywood Dynasty. Walter and John Huston were acknowledged with a screening of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948); Anjelica Huston with her turn in Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989); and her half-brother Danny Huston with his recent performance in The Proposition (2005).

The TCM notes synopsize Treasure of the Sierra Madre: "With this 1948 Western, John and Walter Huston went into the record books as the first father and son to win Oscars and, eventually, two thirds of the first family to produce three generations of Oscar winners (including Anjelica Huston). Rarely have the awards been so well-deserved. Sadly, the film and star Humphrey Bogart didn't do as well. In fact, though most critics now hail Bogie's Fred C. Dobbs as his best performance, he wasn't even nominated. Perhaps his decidedly unsympathetic portrayal of paranoia was too far ahead of its time. Indeed, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre set new standards for Hollywood. Filmed mostly in Mexico, it was one of the first U.S. films shot almost entirely on location. Its cynical tale of three prospectors divided by greed after they strike it rich pointed to the more adult Westerns of later decades (i.e. Sam Peckinpah's films). B. Traven's novel reminded John Huston of his days with the Mexican Cavalry when he first read it in 1936, and he dreamed of directing his father as Fred C. Dobbs. By the time he got to make the film in 1947, the elder Huston had outgrown the lead, so his son re-shaped the role of the elderly prospector for him. Not only did he have to convince the matinee idol to accept a character role, but on the first day of shooting he had to wrestle his father's false teeth from him to make sure he played it right. Once he heard himself deliver the lines, Walter Huston knew it was the right choice. In fact, he was so good, his son started getting memos from studio management warning him not to let him steal the film from the star. That was hardly a danger; Bogart matched him scene for scene. But when award season rolled around, it was the Hustons who came out on top, with honors from the Academy, the Golden Globes, the New York Film Critics and the National Board of Review."

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is not only my favorite Humphrey Bogart film but, quite possibly, one of my top 10 favorite films. I have seen it countless times on television, and a few times in movie theaters, but never in such a pristine print as shown at the TCM Classic Film Festival. I love it for many reasons, from Bogart's ability to play the greed-addled Fred C. Dobbs to Alfonso Bedoya needing "no stinkin' badges"; every performance in this film is outstanding and exquisitely embodied. Walter Huston's jig at finding gold matches my enthusiasm for this timeless B. Traven story. I attended TCM's morning screening of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre in Grauman's Chinese Theater with Anjelica and Danny Huston present to introduce the film by way of an on-stage conversation with TCM host Robert Osborne.

* * *

Robert Osborne: I have to ask, is it tough being a Huston?

Anjelica Huston: Not this morning.

Osborne: But aren't there expectations that come with being part of the Huston clan?

Anjelica Huston: I think yes; but, we had quite an exacting father. He liked when we put our best foot forward and we tried to do that, right Danny?

Danny Huston. Yes. I mean, he's such a giant of a filmmaker that to measure oneself up against him is quite difficult and one seems to be having to crane one's neck to look up high; but, in a sense, he was very supportive of us as filmmakers and I found this little place beneath this giant that protected me from the harsh rays of the sun. It was a gentle feeling and one of encouragement.

Osborne: Did you talk to your father about his films very often? Or was that something that wasn't talked about much in your family?

Danny Huston: Something that brings me to The Treasure of the Sierra Madre was an experience I had at the Cannes Film Festival where he was showing Under the Volcano. The producer, Michael Fitzgerald, and I stayed up all night waiting for the reviews and the following morning Michael Fitzgerald was translating the reviews from French to English. But my father didn't appear to be listening. He had this faraway stare. Michael said, "John? Are you listening?" And he said, "This reminds me of when I stayed up all night to read reviews for a play that my father put on, which he'd wanted to do his entire career: Othello." Walter Huston reached a point in his career where he could put this play on in New York. Othello was applauded at the end but my father had a nagging feeling that maybe it hadn't gone as well as he'd imagined. My father stayed up all night and the following morning read the reviews and they were terrible, absolutely awful, and he thought, "Oh dear. What am I going to do?"

He went to my grandfather's place and rang the doorbell. He could hear laughter and he thought, "Jesus, this is going to be even more difficult than I expected." The door opened. The reviews were all on the floor and my grandfather had tears streaming down his cheeks, but laughing, and laughing with a certain amount of glee. That's the laughter that they called upon for the end of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre when the gold is blown back into the hills....

Anjelica Huston: [Admonishing.] Sssssshhhhh!!

Danny Huston: I suppose you've all seen it?

Osborne: How do you both feel about this film in your father's catalogue? Is it a particular favorite of yours? Have you seen it recently?

Anjelica Huston: I haven't seen this film recently. I think maybe 15 years ago I saw it on television; but, it was the first film actually of my father's in memory; this film and The African Queen. Growing up on the West Coast of Ireland without television and just the movie projector; all the films that I saw were my father's films. The first time that I saw a film that wasn't my father's was something like Gidget Goes Hawaiian. The Treasure of the Sierra Madre was a staple at our household and there was always this endless routine of looping the projector—because no one really knew how to loop the projector—so there was always an incredible anticipation of whether, in fact, we could even get the movie projected. Eventually, I guess I've seen this movie maybe ... well, certainly over 50-70 times in my childhood. So I know it pretty well but I can't wait to see it on a big screen again. I know it will bring back a lot of memories. I used to have a little black poodle growing up called Mindy and—every time the donkeys ran—Mindy would run after the donkeys. I always enjoyed that moment. I hope you will too.

Danny Huston: It was a deliciously noisy little projector, wasn't it? And usually it was a very scratchy print. But it was a way for us to say hello to our grandfather and in a way it was a rather glamorous family album. It's so wonderful to be able to share it with you all today. Thank you, Robert, for being such a champion of these films.

Anjelica Huston: I was recently up in Vancouver working on a film and—in my spare time—I just laid in my bed in my hotel room and watched TCM with the great Robert Osborne conducting. I have to say, it's such a pleasure to see these beautiful old movies so carefully and lovingly presented without commercials.

Osborne: I have to tell you a little story. I don't want to take this up from talking to you guys; but, at the Telluride Film Festival a couple of years ago they asked me and Sam Goldwyn, Jr. to present Dodsworth at the festival. Sam's father had produced it and he had come to talk about the making of the film. This was the year that Babel and King of Scotland and all of those films were out—these were the hot new movies—and they don't show old films at the Telluride Film Festival; but, they decided to show Dodsworth. It turned out—it was so incredible—it was the hit of the festival. It went so well, they had such a crowd, that they asked, "Would you and Sam do another [screening]?" We did. They had a third showing and that had never happened before. It was that film of your grandfather's and it's so magnificent—particularly for anybody who really knows Walter Huston from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre—to see him as a dapper, elegant leading man in Dodsworth. To have that legacy in the family is pretty terrific too.

Anjelica Huston: Yes, I actually met my grandfather through film. If it hadn't been for Treasure and Dodsworth, I wouldn't have known anything about him; but, as it is, I have a very clear picture of him as an extraordinary actor because these two parts—as you were saying—are so diverse. It's a treasure for me to have Treasure.

Osborne: Is there a personal favorite of your father's films beyond The Treasure of the Sierra Madre?

Danny Huston: This is definitely my favorite for many reasons, including sentimental reasons; but, the lesser-known films such as Fat City, Wise Blood, The Misfits of course—Eli Wallach was here the other night; what a thrill it was to meet him—there are so many. But if I had to choose, this would be the one.

Another little story, if I may, and hopefully I won't ruin the end. It was a beautiful Spring morning and my father and his father (Walter) decided to go on a picnic. The hillsides were covered with wild flowers. My grandfather and his wife at the time, Nan, got out of the car and they laid out this cloth and my grandfather pounded this flower and hit it again and absolutely destroyed it. Then he turned around and hit another and hit another—the hillside was covered in these beautiful blossoming flowers—and then he stood up and, like the god Pan, pounded another and then pounded another again and Nan said, "Walter! Stop it! What are you doing?" There was this sort of panic in the air. He said, "I'm stopping Springtime." That was apparently the genesis of the wonderful jig dance that he does in Treasure of the Sierra Madre, combined with this ironic laughter in the face of disaster.

Osborne: Now was it true from your family history that your father had a difficult time talking your grandfather into doing this movie?

Danny Huston: I believe he had to take his teeth out and my grandfather was not that happy about it.

Osborne: Because he had been seen in Dodsworth as a very elegant man so Treasure was a big stretch for him?

Danny Huston: I guess. As I say, he was not too keen on taking his teeth out. But it did win him an Oscar®.

Anjelica Huston: Dad asked Jack Nicholson to wear a toupee for Prizzi's Honor. He kind of liked to do that sort of thing.

Osborne: What would you say is maybe the one thing you miss most about your father?

Anjelica Huston: That's a big question. I'd say just the voice. That voice that resonates through my being, every nuance in it, that's what I miss most about my dad.

Danny Huston: Yes, I would agree with that. Sometimes it was like speaking to God.

Anjelica Huston: He played God in The Bible.

Danny Huston: And Noah. And directed it.

Osborne: So what are you doing now? You mentioned, Anjelica, that you were in Vancouver making a movie?

Anjelica Huston: I was making a movie—it's untitled; I wish I could give you a title—with Seth Rogen and a wonderful young director Jonathan Lavine, also with Joe Gordon-Levitt, Bryce Dallas Howard. I think it's going to be a very beautiful film. I play the mother of a boy who gets cancer. It's moving and it's funny and I'm proud to be part of it.

Osborne: And Dan?

Danny Huston: Well, forgive me for being crass; but, You Don't Know Jack airs tonight at 8:00 on HBO. It's about Dr. Kevorkian, with Al Pacino.

Osborne: But since we're here tonight, we'll get another chance to see it because HBO won't show it just this once, right?

Danny Huston: That's correct. I'm competing with myself unfortunately because there's a screening of The Proposition tonight—of which I'm very proud—at the same time.

Osborne: Thank you both so much for participating and adding so much glamour and clout to our festival and for sharing the memories of your father and this movie. We can't thank you enough.

Anjelica Huston: Our honor.

Cross-published on Twitch.

TCM CLASSIC FILM FESTIVAL 2010: THE GOOD, THE BAD & THE UGLY (1966)—Onstage Conversation With Eli Wallach

Continuing with its celebration of the nonagenarian spirit, the TCM Classic Film Festival paid tribute to 94-year-old Eli Wallach with a morning screening of Sergio Leone's The Good, The Bad and the Ugly (Il buono, il brutto, il cattivo) (1966) at Grauman's Chinese Theater.

As the TCM program notes synopsize: "Often hailed as the greatest of all 'spaghetti Westerns,' this 1966 epic has become an indelible part of our culture. The title The Good, The Bad and the Ugly is now a part of the vocabulary, while Ennio Morricone's influential score created new ways of setting Westerns to music. Director Sergio Leone expanded writer Luciano Vincenzoni's idea for a film about three scoundrels looking for treasure during the Civil War to deal on a grand scale with the absurdity of war. For history buff Leone, that meant making the film as accurate as possible, from the Confederate uniforms to the design of the Betterville Prison Camp (modeled on Andersonville). He also planned it as the third film of his Dollars trilogy, following A Fistful of Dollars (1964) and For a Few Dollars More (1965), which meant getting Clint Eastwood back to star as the good. For the bad and ugly sides of the equation he jumpstarted Lee Van Cleef's career and gave Eli Wallach the role of a lifetime. The production in Spain was lavish and so chaotic Wallach and Eastwood were almost killed (Wallach more than once). But it also provided the epic canvas for Leone's vision of war, greed and personal demons."

The "role of a lifetime" was, of course, that of the scheming, scene-stealing Tuco. Eli Wallach and Robert Osborne introduced The Good, The Bad and the Ugly with an onstage conversation.

* * *

Robert Osborne: Tell us a little bit of how you first got involved with this?

Eli Wallach: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly?

Osborne: Yeah.

Wallach: Well, I didn't know I was going to wind up as The Ugly! I was in California doing a film and Sergio Leone came and said he wanted to meet me. I said, "All right. What for?" He said, "It's for what they call a 'spaghetti Western'." I asked him, "What is a 'spaghetti Western'?" I had no idea what the hell a "spaghetti Western" was; but, he showed me the credit at the beginning of his movie. He comes across and then a gun comes in and shoots him right off the screen and I thought, "Anybody who can do that, I'll work for him."

Osborne: What was that experience like?

Wallach: With Leone?

Osborne: Yeah.

Wallach: I'll tell one little quick story.

Osborne: You tell as many stories as you want.

Wallach: He said, "I don't want you to put a gun in your holster." I said, "Where do I put it?" He said, "Look, you have a rope around your neck and in your hand is a gun and when I say, 'Action!', you go like this [Wallach makes a whooshing sound]. I said, "Will you show me?" He said, "Don't put the gun in the holster. Don't." He put the rope around his neck, he had the gun, and he went like this and the gun missed his hand and hit him in the groin. He said to me, "All right, Eli, just put it in your pocket." For the rest of the movie I never had a holster. I kept my gun in my pocket.

Osborne: Problem solved! Was that a good experience over there in Spain? Did you love traveling to Spain and working over there?

Wallach: Spain and Italy. Yeah, I enjoyed it. Spain is a beautiful country, beautiful, and it was a joy to work there.

Osborne: And how about Clint Eastwood?

Wallach: Clint? He said to me, "Don't show off. This is my third Italian movie and I know it's very dangerous. Don't put events. Don't be showing off." I said, "What do I do?" He said, "Act." And so that's what I did.

Osborne: And you did it very well.

Wallach: Thank you.

Osborne: Your first role was in Baby Doll in 1956. Why did it take so long to get you to do a movie? And I've always wanted to ask: there's always been the story that you were the first one offered the role of Maggio in From Here to Eternity, which you turned down supposedly to do Camino Real on Broadway? Is that true?

Wallach: Correct.

Osborne: Did you ever regret that?

Wallach: No, because I chose to do what I did. I was in the Army for five years in World War II. I wound up as a captain in the medical administrative corps. I was in Berlin in 1945 two months after Hitler committed suicide and then they were going to ship me to Japan; but, then the bomb went off and I went home, after five years. Work is what intrigued me. As a matter of fact, in the hospital we put together plays and I always wound up as Hitler. It was very interesting.

Osborne: So movies didn't intrigue you that much then?

Wallach: No. For the first five years after I came out of the Army, I spent with my wife [Anne Jackson] on the stage doing the plays of Tennessee Williams. For 10 years I didn't do any movies. I wasn't involved with movies. The stage was what attracted me and what I needed to do. Then I got a job with Elia Kazan directing the play then the movie Baby Doll by Tennessee Williams. That was my first film.

Osborne: How did you like film acting once you started getting into it?

Wallach: Oh, I loved it.

Osborne: The process?

Wallach: Yeah. I made a movie here not long ago with a lady named Kate Winslett called The Holiday.

Osborne: You've never stopped working. You have two films coming out this year. You had two last year. Two the year before.

Wallach: I never stop. When I die, I'll stop. Though at my age I always say, "How old am I?"

Osborne: I don't know. I would have to look that up on IMDb.

Wallach: On what?

Osborne: IMDb.

Wallach: I'm 94 years old.

Osborne: As an actor, what haven't you done that you would like to do? You've done so many varied parts and characters....

Wallach: You mentioned From Here to Eternity. I was set to do a play by Tennessee Williams called Camino Real and they didn't have the money so I auditioned for the movie called From Here to Eternity. The producer said, "He doesn't look Italian enough." So I said, "I've been playing an Italian by Tennessee Williams for a year and a half. What do you mean I can't?!" He said, "You'll have to do an audition." I said, "All right." I did the audition and I got the job for From Here to Eternity. And then the money came through for the play. Now I had to choose. The play? Or the movie? And I chose the play. You know who played the role of Maggio in the movie? Frank Sinatra. Every time he'd see me, he'd say, 'Hello, you crazy actor!' " But we were good friends.

Osborne: You also made the famous The Misfits for John Huston with that incredible cast, you being one of them: Clark Gable, Marilyn Monroe, Montgomery Clift, Thelma Ritter. Incredible people. Tell us a little bit about that experience.

Wallach: I knew Marilyn. She had come to New York in a scubble with the movies here. She came, we met, and we learned about a relationship and she got the part in this movie that her husband Arthur Miller was going to put on. I was going to be under the type "A Marilyn Monroe movie", then Clark Gable came in so I moved over one. Then came Montgomery Clift and I moved over two. And then came Thelma Ritter. She said, "I'll do it but I have to be first under the title." I wound up on Third Avenue somewhere! I learned my lesson because they were a wonderful team of actors and John Huston was marvelous.

The first day I worked with Clark Gable, I was sitting in my truck and he was standing and leaning. John Huston said, "Action!" and I kept looking at Gable and I was thinking, "He's the King of the Movies! I hope he doesn't know I never saw Gone With the Wind." He looked at me and he went [Wallach imitated Gable garbling his words] and he couldn't remember what the hell I did or where I was from: Brooklyn. Right? So Huston said, "I said action!" Then he said, "Forget it" and he ordered a drink for each one of us. And we hooked together. From then on we were a great couple.

Osborne: What about Huston as a director compared with the other directors that you've worked with?

Wallach: He was the best. He was doing The Treasure of the Sierra Madre and his father Walter Huston was playing one of the big roles. I loved that John Huston said to his father, "Listen, you're going to be in this movie and I want you to take out your teeth." His father was a huge star on Broadway, right? But he took out his teeth. I wasn't going to take out mine.

Osborne: You say Huston was the best. What made him the best? Compared to the others?

Wallach: He didn't say, "You have to do it this way or that way or move this way. Impress me." And I worked to play that movie for a reason in dealing with the people in the movie, not with the director. But he was very helpful. Wonderful.

Osborne: Was Elia Kazan as a director on film different than when he directed you on stage?

Wallach: I wouldn't say that. But he did say a very interesting thing. He said, "In the movies, all the crew people who are making the movie, when they're ready they say to the director, 'We're ready' and then the director usually says, 'Action!' " Kazan said to me, "Listen. Let them take all the time they want to achieve what they want—the set, the scenery, and all of that—because when you're playing your scene where they burn down the cotton gin, you turn your back to the audience and take your time, the same amount of time they took, and when you're ready just signal with your hand and I'll say, 'Go ahead.' " That was the way he directed. He directed me and I played it and he didn't have to say, "This way or that way. Never." I loved working with him.

When I did my first movie with Clint Eastwood, Mystic River, he said to me, "I'm doing a movie up in Boston and I'd like you to be in it." I said, "All right. How many weeks?" He said, "One day." I said, "One day?!" He said, "Oh, c'mon, it will be a reunion." So I went for that one day and it was a great experience because—the way he directed me?—he said, "How are you, Eli?" I said, "Good." He said, "You ready?" I said, "Yeah." He said, "So do it."

Osborne: Any directors you wouldn't want to work with again? We won't tell them.

Wallach: I always made peace with the people I've worked with. I listened to what they had to say. But then I would adjust to what my needs were. And they were helpful to me. I've worked with some great directors.

Osborne: Who are some of the other favorites you've worked with?

Wallach: John Sturges on The Magnificent Seven.

Osborne: Not a bad movie.

Wallach: Oooooh, wow. [At this juncture Wallach asked Osborne if he could share something.] The music in movies always impressed me. Ready? [He pulled out a birthday card that—when opened—played Morricone's theme song to The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.]

Osborne: That's great.

Wallach: [Coyly] You're a treat.

Osborne: You're a treat! My God. You're terrific, just terrific. I love your stories, we love your work, you've done such great work and we so appreciate you and appreciate your taking the time to come and join us and making this film festival so important.

Wallach: And I have a sharp thank you to Turner Classic Movies for a reason: they put the movie on! You don't have to sit through 18 commercials.

Osborne: I often think it's so unfair. I don't know why—when movies first went on television, back in the days when television needed movies terribly—why they didn't make a rule back then that they could only show a movie uncut. You could put commercials on before or after but not during the movie. But they let that get away from them and I think it's such a serious damage done to movies because of the rhythm of a movie. I'm very proud of that about TCM.

Wallach: Well, I'm glad you asked me to be here.

Osborne: We're thrilled to have you here and, again, we love your lovely wife Anne Jackson, and we love you, thank you.

05/11/10 UPDATE: "[S]o much of what we remember vividly from Il Buono, Il Brutto, Il Cattivo (The Good, The Bad and the Ugly) can be traced to the words which laid the foundation for the imagery with which Leone and his stars fashioned this memorable movie," writes Dennis Cozzallio at Sergio Leone and the Infield Fly Rule, as preface to his obit tribute to screenwriter Furio Scarpelli.

Cross-published on Twitch.