My Life as a Mankiewicz Read online

  MY LIFE AS A MANKIEWICZ

  An Insider's Journey

  through Hollywood

  Tom Mankiewicz

  and

  Robert Crane

  Copyright © 2012 by The Estate of Tom Mankiewicz and Robert Crane

  Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth,

  serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University.

  All rights reserved.

  Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky

  663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008

  www.kentuckypress.com

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Mankiewicz, Tom.

  My life as a Mankiewicz : an insider's journey through Hollywood / Tom Mankiewicz and Robert Crane.

  p. cm. — (Screen classics)

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  ISBN 978-0-8131-3605-9 (hardcover : alk. paper) —

  ISBN 978-0-8131-3616-5 (pdf) — ISBN 978-0-8131-4057-5 (epub)

  1. Mankiewicz, Tom. 2. Motion picture producers and directors—United

  States—Biography. 3. Screenwriters—United States—Biography.

  4. Television producers and directors—United States—Biography.

  I. Crane, Robert David. II. Title.

  PN1998.3.M3206A3 2012

  791.4302'33092—dc23

  [B] 2012008587

  This book is printed on acid-free paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials.

  Manufactured in the United States of America.

  Member of the Association of American University Presses

  To Jerry Moss,

  Ann Stevens,

  Ron Mardigian,

  and the Mankiewicz family

  Contents

  Preface

  Prologue: This Will Never Happen to You

  1. The Family

  2. The 1940s: Growing Up

  3. The 1950s: Developing a Character

  4. The 1960s: Hollywood Off-Ramp

  5. The 1960s Gallery

  6. The 1970s: Arrival

  7. The 1970s Gallery

  8. The 1980s: Calling Dr. Mankiewicz

  9. The 1980s Gallery

  10. The 1990s: What a Fucking Business

  11. The Tag: Out of Film

  Acknowledgments

  Filmography

  Index

  Illustrations

  Preface

  During spring 1990 I was working for actor John Candy and his company, Frostbacks Productions, in a variety of positions, including producer, publicist, and assistant. The few of us there wore multiple hats. I stuck by John's side as he filmed Delirious, directed by Tom Mankiewicz, in New York, Santa Barbara, and Universal City. Although John came from a working-class background in Toronto and Tom was part of the iconic Hollywood family, they hit it off immediately. Tom made references to Yale, John made references to SCTV. John danced with Emma Samms and romanced Mariel Hemingway, while Tom was hitting his stride directing his second feature (after the hit Dragnet). Doug Claybourne (Apocalypse Now) produced, Tom's long-time assistant Annie Stevens associate produced, and Fred Freeman and Lawrence Cohen wrote a funny script. Raymond Burr and Dylan Baker went against type and delivered comic lines, while Charlie Rocket and David Rasche were hysterical. Tom's Hart to Hart cohort Robert Wagner worked two days and thoroughly impressed John. The shoot turned out to be a three-month love-in.

  But the best part of the ten-week experience was the end of each shooting day. John and his posse would visit Tom's trailer, or Tom and any number of cast members, producers, and crew would drop in on John's dressing room. A rum and Coke was poured for John, a Jack Daniel's for Tom. Cigarettes would be lit. The rest of us hovered and listened while the stories poured out of Tom. Brando, Sinatra, Bogart, Liz Taylor, Kubrick, Ava Gardner, Lancaster, Liza, Scorsese, Sophia, Sean Connery; 007, Superman, Detective Joe Friday; Cinecittà, Jamaica, London; the fifties, sixties, seventies; Papa Joe, Uncle Herman, Zanuck, Cohn; Nancy Sinatra, Herb Alpert, Paul McCartney. Laughs, tears, jaws dropping, heads shaking.

  Damn. Tom had been everywhere and had worked with, played with, or slept with everyone in Hollywood (just females on the sleepovers). John was mesmerized. He and all of us were transported to another time, another place, when Hollywood was the entertainment capital of the world and actors, actresses, and filmmakers were the best ambassadors the United States could offer. Before we knew it, the clock would strike midnight and in six hours the whole thing would start over again.

  The distributor of Delirious, MGM, was in the tank financially, and the picture got a tepid release. But I made note of Tom's stories. The man was a walking Hollywood encyclopedia.

  The next time I saw Tom was in 1993 when he visited John's farm north of Toronto. Tom was directing Taking the Heat, a low-budget Showtime film. He was miserable, though he loved his cast, of course. John made Tom laugh. It was worth the drive.

  In 1994, after John Candy's death at age forty-three, I interviewed Tom at his Hollywood Hills home for an A&E Biography on John. Tom was a wonderful interviewee—funny and insightful, providing stories, quips, and observations from someone who watches and studies people. A writer-director.

  During 2005–2006, while I was working on a book with actor Bruce Dern, a wonderful storyteller in his own right, I kept mentioning to my wife, Leslie, that I was going to call Tom to see what he was up to.

  I didn't call Tom until 2009. I was asked to appear on yet another John Candy Biography, but I had a horrible cold and declined. I suggested Tom to the producers. He delivered another powerful anecdotal piece on his buddy. Tom's quotes appear throughout the hour, and he elevates the show above the usual surface-skimming fare.

  I met with Tom and Ron Mardigian, his former agent at William Morris, at Tom's “office,” table number forty, the Palm West Hollywood. We had a laugh-filled lunch full of reminiscence. Tom mentioned he had started a book years earlier with his assistant/associate producer/cohort/shrink Annie Stevens but they hadn't got beyond seventy-five pages. Maybe now was the time to share the stories with the world at large.

  Tom and I started meeting four days a week at his home with the 180-degree view of downtown L.A.–Century City–Pacific Ocean. His fifth day was spent teaching film at Chapman University in Orange. At least a couple days a week ended with the meeting moving to the Palm, where Tom had his usual table among regulars such as Richard Zanuck, whose father, Darryl, ran Fox when Tom's father, Joe, directed Cleopatra. Full circle, indeed. The sessions were punctuated with great fare complemented by white wine for Tom and Tanqueray and tonics for me. They went on for months. They could have gone on for years.

  In spring 2010 Tom suffered a physical setback. He was dropping weight, while the timbre of his voice changed and the laughs were not as constant. Pancreatic cancer. Tom assured all that everything was fine, he would get stronger, the book would continue. Except for a stay at Cedars-Sinai in Los Angeles, the writing did continue, as did his teaching.

  During mid-2010, though he didn't appear to be gaining weight, Tom's voice and energy returned as before. Leslie and I attended an L.A. Zoo benefit where Tom was an emcee, and we met his best friend, Jerry Moss. Except for the pounds, it seemed Tom would kick this and return to his former self. One Tuesday in July 2010 we
had a meeting at the Palm. Tom was in great form—stories abounded, laughs were had, drinks were poured. I hoped this man would live forever.

  Four days later, my wife received a call from Suzy Friendly, who knew Jerry Moss and worked for his former wife, Sandra. “Tom died,” announced Suzy. Leslie told me.

  “Tom Munn?” I asked, referring to another friend.

  “No. Tom Mankiewicz,” said Leslie. I couldn't believe it. Tom was back. Stronger, more insightful, funnier than ever. His family and friends were robbed.

  The Palm shut down his booth at lunch for a solid month. When I go in occasionally, I can still hear his unique voice, phrasing, terminology, reference points rise above the lunch crowd.

  Robert Crane

  Prologue

  This Will Never Happen to You

  It's 1964. I'm twenty-two years old, working on a film as an assistant-to-everyone, and am lucky enough to have been taken under the wing of the volcanically talented Gene Kelly, with whom I play tennis several times a week. Gene has invited me to dinner at his home. Among the guests is the brilliant actor Oskar Werner, who is shooting Ship of Fools at the time. Werner also turns out to be rather unpleasant when he's been drinking heavily. One of the others at the table finishes a story, looks at Werner, and says, “You Germans ought to understand that…”

  “I'm not German, I'm Austrian!” snaps Werner.

  There is a silence. Being a young suck-up and anxious to please, I observe: “You have to understand that calling an Austrian a German is rather like calling an Irishman an Englishman. They don't appreciate it.”

  “You're right!” says Werner. “How do you know that?”

  “My mother was Austrian. As a matter of fact, she was an actress.”

  “Really? What was her name?”

  “Rosa Stradner.”

  Werner's eyes roll back in his head, trying to find the memory: “The Josefstadt Theater, Vienna, mid-thirties?”

  “Yes, she was at the Josefstadt Theater in the thirties.”

  He leans forward with profound sincerity: “When I first masturbated, it was to a picture of your mother.”

  Stunned silence at the table, punctuated by dropped silverware. Realizing he must have meant it as a compliment, I say, “Thank you.”

  1

  The Family

  The Mankiewicz family was and is a complex network of literate, competitive achievers. The majority write or have written for a living. While capable of real affection, most of us rarely show it. Rather, we caress with one-liners (usually acerbic and at someone else's expense) or shrewd (we are totally convinced) observations on film, literature, politics, or the state of the world in general.

  Pop

  My paternal grandfather died before I had a chance to know him. “Pop,” as he was referred to by the family, was Professor Frank Mankiewicz, a German Jew who immigrated through Ellis Island with his wife, Johanna, at the turn of the twentieth century. They settled briefly in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, where my father, Joe, and his older brother, Herman, were born, then moved to New York City, where Pop taught languages at Stuyvesant High School before becoming a distinguished professor at Columbia University. Later on, I actually met two of his former students: Sheldon Leonard, an actor who for years played small-time hoods, and who wound up the successful and wealthy television producer of The Danny Thomas Show and The Andy Griffith Show; and the versatile actor Ross Martin, best known for his costarring role in The Wild, Wild West with Robert Conrad. They both had warm memories of Pop.

  There was a darker side to Pop, though, perhaps unintentional, but crucial to the sometimes crippling insecurities in his children and some of their children—the pursuit of excellence, taken to an obsession. The original parent who, when presented by his son with an exam on which he'd scored a 96, wanted to know what happened to the other 4 percent. Both Dad and Herman were, in effect, child prodigies. Both graduated from Columbia while still in their teens. Herman had a dazzling pre-Hollywood career: sportswriter, drama critic for the New York World, playwright, one of the legendary wits of the Algonquin Round Table with the likes of Robert Benchley and Dorothy Parker. His screenwriting career spanned a wide river from the Marx Brothers to the cinematically immortal Citizen Kane. More on Herman later. He died in his fifties, an alcoholic, compulsive gambler, unemployable and deeply in debt. To this day I'm convinced that as the eldest son, he finally cracked under Pop's impossible expectations of excellence and achievement.

  At first, Dad was able to fly under that radar without missing a beat. Hell, he was nominated for an Oscar at twenty-one, writing the story for a movie called Skippy starring child actor Jackie Cooper. More than forty-five years later I was providing dialogue for Jackie while rewriting Superman, in which he played Perry White, editor of the Daily Planet. As Jackie said at the time, “I guess this is what they mean by ‘coming full circle.”’

  Pop's obsession with excellence, seemingly no less than Ahab's with Moby Dick, ran deeply through the family. I wouldn't presume to know the full effect it had on Herman's children, Don, Frank, and Josie, and their children. I do know what I believe it did to my brother Chris, and to me. I grew up in a family where to be “a Mankiewicz” really meant that you had to be somebody.

  There was a portrait of Pop that sat on the wall directly over my father's leather chair in his study where he wrote his screenplays. It remained in that exact place through four different studies in four different homes. Pop looked to be a stern, implacable person, neither a trace of twinkle in the eye nor a tiny curve of humor at the mouth. His eyes stared straight out, never leaving you. After Dad's funeral, back at the house, various members of the family assembled in the study. Dad's then wife of some thirty years, Rosemary, asked if anyone wanted the painting. Silence. No one did. Don was the only immediate family member who wasn't able to attend the funeral. It was conveniently decided that he should have it. The last I heard, he gave it to one of his sister Josie's sons, who now has it leaning against a wall in a Santa Monica apartment. Requiescat in pace, Pop.

  Johanna Mankiewicz

  Pop's wife. My grandmother, the mother of Herman, Joe, and their sister, Erna. I never heard her mentioned once in any way in any story ever told by any member of the family. There was no animosity involved—she was simply a nonperson. Until I was ten or twelve, if you'd threatened to kill me unless I gave you my grandmother's first name, I'd have had to have said, “Shoot.”

  Dad

  One of the most brilliant, complex, intensely literate, and conflicted human beings ever to inhabit the planet. Someone who began life as the kid brother and wound up the Don Corleone of his family. Every security and insecurity of his personality can be found in the characters of his best screenplays, as can many of the emotions he was somehow unable to express freely in real life.

  He was both the protagonist and the victim of a long, punishing marriage to a beautiful, warm, but deeply troubled woman, Rosa Stradner, an Austrian actress. She was his second wife, and mother to me and my older brother Chris. Dad's first marriage, which lasted only a matter of months, was to a woman I would later know as Elizabeth Reynal, a Philadelphia socialite, wife of the noted publisher Eugene Reynal. She had a son by Dad, Eric, who became a successful investment banker and lives in the United Kingdom, and with whom I have a very cordial relationship.

  Several years after Mother committed suicide, Dad married Rosemary Matthews, an Englishwoman who first went to work for him in Rome in the early fifties while he was directing The Barefoot Contessa. That's when I first met her, at age ten or eleven. They remained close friends and occasional coworkers (and almost certainly more) through the decade before Mother died, and had a daughter, Alexandra. I'm convinced that Rosemary's love and devotion to Dad added a decade or more to his life. Much more about Dad later. All about Dad.

  Mother

  The single most important influence in my life, although certainly not in the way she intended. She had a mental condition, a form of schizophrenia usuall
y triggered by alcohol, and her health degenerated over the years until her untimely death in 1958. Beautiful and intelligent, a talented actress, she was haunted by a disease that made her absolutely terrifying at times, especially to a child.

  She and my Austrian grandmother, whom we affectionately called “Gross” (short for Grossmutter), fled Austria and the Nazis in the mid-thirties. My grandfather and an uncle, Fritz, stayed behind to fight for their country. No one ever found out what happened to the old man. Fritz became an SS officer and was executed against a wall in Aachen, Germany, by Allied troops. I never knew I had an Uncle Fritz until I was about ten. Dad didn't think it was a particularly good idea to have a precocious little motormouth running around Los Angeles in the forties talking about his uncle the SS officer.

  Mother was immediately signed to a contract by MGM. She performed in only two films: The Last Gangster, with Jimmy Stewart and Edward G. Robinson, and more famously, The Keys of the Kingdom, with Gregory Peck, the film that launched his stardom. He played a priest who arrives in China as a young man and stays on for the rest of his life. Mother played a nun who is his constant companion throughout the film. I'm sure (from her) she had an affair with Greg on that movie, but when I got to know him later on in life and even dropped a couple of hints, I realized he was far too classy to comment on it. Dad produced The Keys of the Kingdom, which was released in 1944. He and Mother had fallen in love, married in 1939, and had their first child, my brother Chris, in 1940, followed by me in 1942. But her mental problems were surfacing, and upon completion of the film, she decided to quit acting and concentrate on herself and her family.

  Actresses never really quit, you know. Over the years, Mother always thought about returning to it, and she even tried once in the late forties. I remember when Natalie Wood “retired” after she gave birth to her daughter, Natasha. We would go to the movies together from time to time, and as the lights lowered in the theater and the screen lit up, I'd look over at her. It was like sitting next to a racehorse nervously prancing in the gate, waiting for it to open, but saddened by the fact that she wasn't going to be running that day. Natalie's return to the screen was inevitable. Mother was cast in a play written by Edna Ferber and directed by George S. Kaufman but was replaced out of town, for reasons still unexplained. It was a bitter blow to her.