MT @ the Movies

2011-11-12T21:46:00.000-08:00

My friend, Hal Kanter

by Mike Thomas

The greatest thrill for me working on the 2011 Oscars was getting to know Hal Kanter. Hal became a friend of mine and remained so for ten years.Whether it was sitting in the audience with him for the Oscars or at the Academy watching an old Douglas Fairbanks movie, it was always such a delight to be in his presence.

I had been a fan of Hal's since childhood, Valentines' Day was a favorite TV show of mine. And the stories - Hope & Crosby, Burns & Allen, Elvis, Frank Capra, Sam Fuller, far too many to recount. But the man himself was his greatest work. A southern gentleman from Savannah, GA. He was encouraging, supportive, witty, kind and a great American original. My autographed copy of his autobiography is something I will always treasure. My sincere condolences to his family.

God bless you, Hal, I know the angels are now are laughing at your jokes and welcoming you home. We always knew we'd have to share you with God, we were just lucky to have you for 92 glorious years. There will always be a special parking space in my heart, where an eternal smile and a warm, happy glow reside, marked "reserved for Hal Kanter."

BILLY WILDER interview

2010-12-05T20:46:00.000-08:00

2010-11-05T20:23:00.000-07:00

FRANK CAPRA - IT WAS A WONDERFUL LIFE

by Mike Thomas

When Francesco Capra was born to a peasant family one hundred years ago in the small Sicilian village of Bisaquino, Sicily, he could hardly have imagined that one day he would so profoundly impact the course of American filmmaking that he would virtually become his own genre. For one thing, the movies themselves had just come into being, and as we celebrate the first hundred hundred years of motion pictures, it is appropriate that we also celebrate the centennial of the birth of that most American of directors - Frank Capra.

Capra wanted to become an engineer but stumbled into filmmaking when he couldn’t find a job in his chosen field. Bluffing his way into directing his first film, “Fultah Fisha’s Boarding House” in 1922 he soon hit his stride as a director of silent comedies with Harry Langdon. Capra molded Langdon’s character on the idea of the holy fool, a character who instigates nothing but merely passes through incredible situations oblivious and unscathed - the original Forrest Gump. Hailed by the press and public as a rival to Chaplin, Langdon dismissed Capra and tried to direct himself, only to see his career crash and burn.

Capra then landed at a Gower Gulch “Poverty Row” studio that was derisively referred to as Columbia - “The Germ of the Ocean”. The studio head was a gruff, belligerent S.O.B. named Harry Cohn who had a gambler’s instinct and placed his bets on Capra. Together they made Hollywood history. Capra quickly proved himself the master of every genre he tackled, whether it be adventure (“Dirigible”, “Submarine”), melodrama (“Bitter Tea of General Yen”), political satire (“American Madness”) and screwball comedy (“Platinum Blonde”). It was in that field that he scored the Hollywood equivalent of the Triple Crown when his picture, “It Happened One Night” became the first film in history to win Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and Best Actress, a feat unequaled for forty years. It put Columbia Studios in the big leagues, established Clark Gable as the “King of Hollywood”and vaulted Capra into the forefront of American filmmakers. Capra’s films came to define that era to such an extent that John Cassavetes once remarked, “Maybe there were no 1930s, maybe there were just Frank Capra films”.

Capra’s gift for pacing and the vitality in his films is still a wonder to behold. But his greatest gift was with his actors, he discovered Barbara Stanwyck, helped launch the already successful careers of Gary Cooper and Clark Gable into even greater heights, and essentially created the screen persona of Jimmy Stewart. In the Thirties Capra’s touch was golden, from his first big hit, “Lady for a Day” he had a string of 11 box office hits in a row, and began a string of six Best Picture nominations (winning twice) and and seven Best Directors nominations for which Capra received the Oscar three times. He was president of the Motion Picture Academy for four years, during a period it was almost torn apart by labor struggles between the studios and the film industry artists. Because of his clout as Academy President, he was also, more than any other director, responsible for getting the studios to recognize the fledgling Screen Directors Guild, now the Directors Guild of America. After years of refusal by the studios to recognize or even meet with the Directors’ Guild, Capra threatened to resign from the Academy and shut down the Oscars for that year if the studios didn’t meet with the directors. Terrified of losing the Academy Awards, the producers agreed to recognize the Guild, and in a touch right out of one of his films, a week later Capra won Best Picture and Director Oscars for “You Can’t Take it With You”. If any man can claim to have established the director’s right to have his name above the title of a Hollywood studio film, it was Frank Capra.

It now seems clear that Capra was an American Aesop, spinning his fables for a still young republic, wish fulfillments for the national psyche battered by the Depression. “Mr. Deeds Goes to Town”, “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” and “Meet John Doe” paint an incredible portrait of an America up for grabs. His 1949 “State of the Union” with its themes of media manipulation, philandering politicians and character assassination only grows more timely and visionary. Capra’s protagonists are the idealized American Everyman, the common man caught up in the forces of corruption, be they fat cat press lords, scheming politicos bankers without humanity or home grown Fascists. Capra knew that a democratic republic was constantly being tested and his films echo Benjamin Franklin’s words to a lady who asked him what kind of a government would we have. “A republic, madame, “Franklin replied, “If you can keep it”. Capra may have been an optimist but he was no Pollyanna. Suicide, despair, betrayal, economic, moral and political bankruptcy are all recurrent themes in his work. He may offer happy endings but he earned that right because, like no director before him, in films Frank Capra showed the dark night of the American soul.

To dismiss Capra as sentimental old optimist is to not only profoundly misjudge his work but is to miss his great achievements as a craftsman. His films are models of economy and speed, the actors beautifully cast from the leading characters down to the bit players, his editing skills and story lines are consistently engaging, and if the world is no longer as comfortable with happy endings as it was in his time, well, that’s to our misfortune, not his. Like Walt Whitman he was large, he contained multitudes. When I met him he was in his Eighties, yet he head the vitality and sharpness of a twenty year old. Hardly sentimental, he was feisty and swore like a sailor, yet he could coolly analyze his and other directors’ films with a rational precision of the engineer he once was.

It is of course, for “It’s a Wonderful Life” that Capra is now best remembered. The repeated Christmas airings have so inundated it upon the national consciousness that an objective view of it nearly impossible, in fact, it seems unfathomable to imagine Christmas without it or to even imagine a time when it did not exist. Our overfamiliarity with the seemingly ludicrous story of an incompetent angel trying to earn his wings by preventing a suicide (when Capra tried to explain it to Jimmy Stewart, he gave up in frustration and said the hell with it) should not blind us to measure of Capra’s achievement. The fact that he could take this seemingly absurd premise and turn into work so powerful that it has saved lives of people not even born when it was made is testament to its enduring impact. And Stewart’s performance of a man driven to despair and the brink of self-extinction, is a landmark in the annals of screen acting. Although he was later rightly praised for his work in the dark films of Anthony Mann and Alfred Hitchcock, it was Frank Capra, who not only gave Stewart his screen identity but then forever smashed it in when George Bailey reaches the end of his rope. It is a straight line from the suicidal despair of George Bailey to the love-starved madness of Scotty Ferguson in “Vertigo”.

After memorably serving in the Armed Services during World War II and creating documentaries that remain classic pieces of patriotic propaganda. Capra retuned to form with “It’s a Wonderful Life”, earning him his final Oscar nominations for Best Picture and Best Director, and the deft political satire of “State of the Union”. But when he signed with Paramount his judgment faltered. Projects he developed like “Roman Holiday” and “Friendly Persuasion” went to other directors and he turned out a couple of films with Bing Crosby that, though mildly enjoyable, were not Capra films. He had sold out his vision and he knew it.

In the early Fifties Capra retired to his ranch in Fallbrook, north of San Diego, and grew avocados. He made some fondly remembered science documentaries for television and then in 1959 made a triumphant return to the screen with “A Hole in the Head” featuring Frank Sinatra. Two years later filmed “A Pocketful of Miracles”, a remake of his first big hit,“Lady for a Day”, but the studio refused his first choice for the lead, an intense young actor named Steve McQueen, and forced the genial blandness of Glenn Ford upon him. The picture, though competent, lacked the spark of his finest work, and though he attempted other projects, it was to be his final film. After one project (“Marooned”) was taken away from him by Columbia, the studio he put on the map, rumors circulated Capra became so despondent he attempted suicide.

Capra lived nearly thirty more years. Until a series of strokes in the late 80s felled him, he remained as sharp and energetic as he had been in his prime, always eager to discuss his life long love of films. In 1983, I was running the San Diego Film Society and invited him, along with his long-time cameraman, (and inventor of the zoom lens) Joseph Walker, to San Diego for a lecture and a screening of “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington”. The city where he had met his wife Lucille while shooting a picture fifty years earlier held happy memories for the still vital 86 year old and during the limousine ride through the winding mountains from his La Quinta residence he reflected on his remarkable life in this never before published interview.

What did you think of the auteur theory?

I thought it was fine when I developed it, you know. A pretty good idea - “One man, one film”. D.W. Griffith had done allright with that idea. And I was the first one in the studio system to apply that to my films. Just like one man paints a painting or writes a book. It’s to Harry Cohn’s credit that he gave me the freedom to do it that way, just as long as I kept making hits. You know those guys over at MGM made $10,000 a week and I never made $10,000 a month but I had one thing they never had under Thalberg or Mayer - freedom!

Why didn’t you become an engineer after going to Caltech? How did you become a director?

I couldn’t get a job. It was right after WWI and everything was closing down. I never saw a movie until I made one. (“Fultah Fisha’s Boarding House” - 1922) After that, I got a job for two years in a lab putting home movies together, editing them, for room and board. That was a great learning experience.

You got your big break directing Harry Langdon.

He was the sorriest case I ever met in show business. When his pictures became big and the critics began comparing him to Chaplin it went to his head. His problem was that he thought he had created his own character but since he hadn’t, he didn’t understand the concept at all. I had been reading the book, “The Good Soldier Schweik”, and I thought that kind of character, the passive man-child who loves everybody would fit Harry perfectly. With that moon face of his, he could wander through all these situations, but it was important that he not instigate any of them. He was just God’s own holy fool, protected by his own innocence. Well, when he got big, he thought he could do the thing all by himself, just like Chaplin - write, direct - but as I say, he really didn’t understand his character and it was a disaster for him. Years later, when he was down on his luck I saw him being directed by somebody who kept yelling at him, “Faster, Harry, faster!” Well, the one thing you did not say to Harry Langdon was “faster”.

Speaking of Chaplin, was he an influence on your work?

Chaplin? (Snorts) He was a bastard.

What?!?

I mean, he was a great filmmaker and all, but the way he treated people...I’ll never forget when Doug Fairbanks, Sr. died, the Academy wanted to award him a special posthumous Oscar, because he had been the first president of the Academy. Well, he and Chaplin had been best of friends, so Mary Pickford and Doug, Jr. had wanted Chaplin to present the special award. Since I was president of the Academy at the time, they wanted me to go over to Catalina and ask him to present the memorial Oscar. So I go down to Long Beach and get in a boat and sail over to Catalina where Chaplin had his yacht moored. Well, we pulled up to Chaplin’s yacht and I met this big goon of his and I said, “I’m here to see Mr. Chaplin.’ The lug disappears and then after awhile returns and says, “Mr. Chaplin is not to be disturbed’. Well, I blew up. ‘’You go and tell Mr. Chaplin that Mr. Frank Capra, the President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, has just traveled for three hours to come to see him!’’ The guy disappears again and then returned, saying, “Mr. Chaplin is not to be disturbed.’’ So I go back to Long Beach, furious. He probably was too busy with some teenage girl. Anyway, I’m sailing back, thinking, what am I going to tell Doug, Jr. and Mary? Well, I went to see them and told them the story and how bad I felt about it and Mary said, ‘‘Don’t worry about it, Frank. We always knew Charlie was a little prick.’’ We got Doug, Jr. to present the award.

You were very involved with the Academy during some critical times.

It was being used by the studio heads to try and destroy the guilds. And they were going to destroy the Academy to do it. Well, I didn’t want to see that happen, I knew the Academy Awards are the best advertising in the world for the film industry. So we decided to try and unite the industry by honoring the man who started it all - D.W. Griffith. Except nobody knew where he was. Finally, I found him in a bar in Kentucky, dead drunk. Well, we got him sobered up and brought him back to Hollywood and presented him with a special Oscar and it worked, it helped to re-unite the industry and save the Academy.

What does it take to be a director?

The ability to make quick decisions. Everybody’s asking you questions, “Where do I put this?, “How do I play this scene?” Problems have to be solved and you have to be able to solve them immediately. If I take a penny and toss it, I’ll be right in predicting it 50% of the time. In show business, if you’re right 50% of the time, you’re ahead of the game. It doesn’t matter if you’re not right all the time but you’ve got to make those snap decisions, fast! It’s got to be intuitive.

I understand that you concerned yourself primarily with the actors and left Joe Walker to work with the crew.

Well, that’s what they’re there for, to help the cameramen get the picture. It’s the director’s job to get the best out of the actors. But I knew every lens Joe was using on every camera, I knew sound because of my engineering, I knew about everything that was going on. You’ve got to be able to inspire your crew. Everyone’s concerned with their own thing - the actors with the scene, the cameraman with the lighting, the soundman with the sound - and you’re the only one who knows where it’s all going because it’s shot out of sequence and you have to remember where it’ll all fit. In your mind you have to be able to picture the whole.

I hear it was always a happy crew.

You’ve got to treat your crews with respect. You’re not God. They’re human beings and artists and if they think you know what you’re doing they’ll follow you anywhere. I never bawled out anyone on the set. Except once, on this picture, (“Mr. Smith”) there was this English actor (Claude Rains) who I knew would be perfect for the part. I met him and he said to me, ‘‘I hear you like to improvise, I’ll have none of that. I must have all my lines 10 days in advance.’’ I really wanted him so I said sure thing and he took the part. Now, one day we’re shooting this scene with Rains and Jimmy Stewart in a train, it’s going OK but it needs to be drawn out a little, it’s going too fast. So I sat down and typed out some dialogue for them. When I handed the pages to Rains he looks at it and says, “What’s this? It’s in my contract that I be given 10 days to learn my lines”.

Well, I exploded, “What the fuck are you, an actor or an accountant? If you’re going to be counting the minutes on this picture I want you off my set.” Now, we weren’t too far along in the shooting but I didn’t think he’d leave, I hoped not because I really wanted him. Well, he took the dialogue and learned it and the scene went fine. Anyway, we go through the picture and he was fine until the last day of shooting when he came up and put his arm around me. “I want to thank you,” he said. “For years I’ve had a mental block about having to learn my lines in advance because I was afraid I couldn’t learn them fast enough and you broke me of that.” That was the only time I ever had any trouble on one of my sets.

You co-wrote most of your scripts why didn’t you sign them?

Why? I already had the name above the title. Besides, what’s a script? Words on paper. People don’t go to a movie to see words on paper. They go to see people up there on the screen. How you turn those words into life - that’s a director’s job.

Which director’s work did you like?

There were a lot of directors whose work I liked - John Ford, Howard Hawks, Leo McCarey, Hitchcock - now, there was a fellow who liked to eat. He would drive for miles if he’d heard that some place was good. It showed. He sure knew how to make movies, though. I know a lot of people think that “Citizen Kane” is the greatest thing since the Second Coming, but nobody asked me about it.

The father of us all was D.W. Griffith. In his films you can see something you can’t see anywhere else - the birth of an art form. Everybody learned from him, and what happened to him, to be forgotten by the industry he created was a real black mark on Hollywood. Another director I liked was Eisenstein. I became friends with him when he came over to Hollywood and I saw him in Russia when I was visiting over there. He was a broken man because he had displeased Stalin. “Fronk”, he would say in that accent of his, “I am in zee doghouse.” He made some powerful films but I always thought they could have been better if, instead of the grand sweep of historical events, he could have concentrated on people. Individuals instead of the masses. People talk to me about my political films and I stop them. I never made political films. I made films about people. That’s what people go to the movies to see, movies about people.

You got some great performances from your actors. Was there a special method you had?

There was no one way in getting a good performance. Some, like Sinatra or Stanwyck, you couldn’t rehearse because they would leave their best work in rehearsals. With others you had to act as a morale booster. Jean Arthur used to burst into tears because she thought she was terrible. Gary Cooper was always insecure about his acting, so you had to give him confidence in himself, because he was a better actor than he realized. Then you get someone like Jimmy Stewart, who’s a director’s dream. You don’t really direct an actor like Jimmy Stewart, you just stand back and watch him do his thing. Generally speaking though, women make the best actors, and Stanwyck was the best I ever worked with.

What about Gable? He won his only Oscar with you.

That’s a funny story, because he didn’t want to do the picture. (“It Happened One Night”) Louis B. Mayer wanted to punish him for asking for a raise by sending him over to little old Columbia Studios on Poverty Row. So, he shows up drunk one afternoon and comes into my office and says, “So this is what Siberia looks like.” I asked him, “Mr. Gable, would you like to take a look at the script?” And he said, “Buddy, I don’t give a fuck what you want to do with it” and then left. And that was my first meeting with Clark Gable. But he was good in the picture.

Is there such a thing as a grammar of film?

Where’d you hear such a thing? You just say what you want to say and find the best of way of saying it.

You’ve met some of the most important people of the 20th Century - Roosevelt, Churchill, - it must have been something for a kid from East L.A.

Oh, yeah. Churchill was the greatest man of the century, no doubt about it, he saved Western Civilization. Roosevelt was a real charmer, he’d focus in on you like you were the most important person in the world and say something like, “Oh, yes, I know just what you mean, the same thing’s happened to me a million times!” That’s probably why he kept getting elected. But Gen. Marshall was someone I admired enormously. He was the finest man I ever knew.

He got you involved with the “Why We Fight” series.

Well, I was a stranger to documentaries, but I did know drama, I knew what worked dramatically. So, I approached it the way I would a film. But it was Gen. Marshall’s idea. We were taking these young kids off the streets, off the farms, and they didn’t know why in the world they were going to war. He knew most of those boys were going to die and felt they had a right to know why. I wanted to let the audience know what we were up against. We got some of the German propaganda films made by that gal Refinstahl and used it against them. We took those shots of the mass rallies and goosesteppers and changed the music on the soundtrack. Where they had ethereal, Wagnerian symphonic backing, we would dub in militaristic marching music that gave it just what we wanted - a terrifying feeling that these people wanted to enslave the world.

Did you ever go back to Sicily?

Uh huh. I went back a few years ago and felt nothing. Nooooothing! That guy Haley goes back to Africa and discovers he has black roots. I go back to the place I was born and didn’t feel a damn thing. East L.A. is my roots.

I’ve always been surprised at the “Capracorn” charge leveled at your films. They’re actually quite dark.

They are dark! This film we’re showing, “Mr. Smith”, deals with corruption and betrayal, he’s ready to say ‘the hell with America’, and throw it all away; “Meet John Doe” is about fascist manipulation of the common man, “It’s a Wonderful Life” deals with suicide. But you’ve got to offer the audience some hope. We originally had “Meet John Doe” end with his jump off the bell tower on Christmas Eve, but the preview audiences just wouldn’t accept it.

The continued appeal of “It’s a Wonderful Life” must be very gratifying.

Everything I had to say - that no man was born to be a failure - was in that picture. It’s amazing how often I still get letters from people, thanking me for that movie and how it literally saved their life. I tell you, there’s something in it that I didn’t put there. It has a life of its own.

You earned your wings with that one.

(Chuckles) That’s right! I earned my wings.

Oliver Stone Wants Your Love

2010-09-04T20:46:00.000-07:00

photo by Meg Thayer

By Mike Thomas

Oliver Stone is tired.

“These attacks on me, they’ve aged me, they’ve taken away my confidence, and drained my energy,” he says wearily. “Sometimes I feel like just giving up and walking away from it all.”

William Oliver Stone sits in a hallway of Todd A-O sound studios in Santa Monica, overseeing the sound mix of his newest film, “U-Turn”, a wildly funny, typically intense, deconstruction of film noir. It is hard to reconcile the numerous stories of the drug-crazed, conspiracy-obsessed Mephistopheles that is part of his reputation, with the soft-spoken, well-mannered, extremely sensitive gentleman who has been sitting across from me in the hall. He smiles that famous gap-toothed smile when he describes “U-Turn”, “It’s a film soleil, a spaghetti noir.” Pleased with his mixed metaphors he relaxes a bit before returning to his main theme - the world does not seem to appreciate him and what he has to offer. Imagine, Oliver Stone, whose films have earned 28 Academy Award nominations, won him three Oscars, earned hundreds of millions of dollars, and made him one of the two or three most famous contemporary film directors in the world, sees himself as Rodney Dangerfield. He looks at me with heavy, sorrowful eyes and says, “I need a champion.”

He seems to have found one in the brilliant historian and cultural essayist, Garry Wills, writing in a recent issue of “The Atlantic Monthly”, compared Stone to Dostoyevsky. Great novels are now being written with the camera - at least when Stone is behind the camera...Stone is writing the Great American Novel every time he picks up a movie camera.”

In his films there is a reckless, go-for-broke, exhilaration that is a wonder to behold. And the best Stone films - “Salvador, “Platoon,” “Wall Street,” and “Born on the Fourth of July,” are brilliant, powerful works that explode with energy and passion. But his true artistic breakthrough was the film he thought might end his career - “JFK.”

It is a thrilling thing to watch an artist find his voice and in “JFK” Oliver Stone found a way of dealing with the plastic elements of film editing that has altered his approach to filmmaking ever since. With the jumbled jump cuts and mixing of film stocks, this fragmentation of narrative was an almost Cubist-like approach to reality; viewing its subjects and narrative from several alternate perspectives at once. His achievement in that film was comparable to cinematic advancements made by such giants as Eisenstein and Resnais and Godard in his explorations of time and memory and the subjective filter of reality, through the editing process. “JFK” not only cemented his reputation as one of the most daring, outrageous and controversial artists working within the mainstream Hollywood system but it made clear that Oliver Stone is one of the few artists working in cinema today that matters. In other words, he is more than Stanley Kramer on acid.

Yet his batting record has been shaky of late; “Nixon” was a misguided attempt at compassion for an opportunist who never felt pity for anyone but himself, and this time Stone’s psychedelic editing style didn’t mesh with the terminal squareness of Nixon himself. “The Doors” was a rather conventional show biz bio-pic goosed up with Dionysian pretensions, and “Natural Born Killers” was an uneasy grafting of Stone’s passionate energy onto Quentin Tarantino’s cool, hipster satire about violence and the media, resulting in an unholy mish-mash that reminded one of the old James Agee line about coming out of a movie theatre and wanting to ring a bell and shout, “unclean, unclean!”

Yet there is always something admirable about the audacity of Stone’s efforts, win or lose. There is no one in working in Hollywood today who consistently takes the chances he has or risked more than he. He works at a furious pace and walks the highest tightropes without a net; he is not afraid to put himself in the line of fire. He has created a new form of film grammar and he is one of the few in Hollywood of whom it can be said, here is someone whose films aspire to Art.

With his Steve Cochran tough good looks, thinning jet black hair, busy eyebrows atop eyes that retain a pained innocence and that big, Alfred E. Neuman grin, Stone would seem younger than his years but for a world-weariness that accompanies him like so much psychic baggage. He is tired, as if all the acclaim and attention cannot assuage the pain of becoming Oliver Stone, the media’s favorite Vietnam Vet space case and conspiracy crackpot. His voice is soft and gentle and, unlike his films, he makes you lean forward to hear what he has to say.

But today, his attention is focused on his new movie, “U-Turn”. At a press screening, Stone is pacing back and forth, as anxious as any expectant father awaiting delivery. Here come the credits....An Oliver Stone Movie....Hmmm, that’s a good sign, nothing too pretentious gonna go on here....and then the fun begins. Suffice it to say, that “U-Turn” is Mr. Stone’s Wild Ride, a wickedly funny, yet typically intense, deconstruction of film noir. With a plot that invokes everything from “Detour” to “Red Rock West,” with pit stops at “Bad Day at Black Rock” and even a tip of the hat to “Duel in the Sun,” “U-Turn” tells the familiar story of a stranger in town, who, due to a disastrous series events, of one damn thing after another, a season in hell in the course of a day in Superior, Arizona, can’t get the hell out of town no matter how hard he tries.

Sean Penn gives a smoky, shell-shocked performance as the unfortunate pilgrim but the film’s true delights are to be found in its Heironymus Bosch rogue’s gallery of supporting players - Nick Nolte, Jon Voight, Billy Bob Thornton, Julie Hagerty, Joaquin Phoenix, Claire Daines and Laurie Metcalf. Each player gets a turn to strut and shine and they all do so with undisguised glee and it is one of the best pieces of ensemble acting to be found in recent movie memory.

If a funny film noir seems like a contradiction in terms, what about a funny film noir directed by Oliver Stone that’s laced with irony? Is this one of the seven signs the end is near or is it simply another artistic step forward in one of the most audacious careers in American film history?

As the sun drops behind the mountains that touch the beaches of Malibu I sit across from Oliver Stone in his office in Santa Monica. He calls for an assistant to bring some wine and lower the shades. He asks if the publication I’m going to submit the article to is keen on his work. “Do they like me? What’s their take on me? What would they say if I gave it all up?” These are recurring questions, and one would think, questions that a man of his achievement would have long ago stopped caring about. But he is intensely interested in what people think about him; it is obvious that he has read every review and has retained every slight. He gestures at the tape recorder and asks if I need a back up? “I have a pretty good memory,” I offer. “I don’t,” he says. I reply, “Well, that’s because you’ve taken a lot more acid than I have,” and he laughs and we’re off and running.

MT You’ve managed to create an astonishing body of work in 20 years. What is it that drives you?

OS A need for approval. I want to be loved, to be accepted. I was from a broken home. When my parents divorced my world fell apart. I went to military school. I rejected my upbringing and I went to Asia where I was welcomed and given acceptance. I discovered sex and tasted its sweet delights. I joined the Merchant Marine, came back, dropped out of Yale, wrote a book, threw it away, went to war, returned to America, got thrown in jail, went to film school where Marty (Scorsese) was a great inspiration - his energy. But I didn’t really feel connected to my generation in school because they hadn’t been in combat. Made my first feature, went to Hollywood to write scripts, became a director. I’m just wandering in the desert of my life, trying to figure out where to go next. It’s confusing. You can never see the direction to your life. Hindsight gives you a sense there are patterns in the past but I don’t believe that we ever really know.

MT But you haven’t been co-opted by the trappings of success, you’ve been very prolific.

OS It’s always been about the work. Not about material things. I just sold my house in Colorado today, the money exchanged hands. I’m divesting myself of these possessions. I would like to be an optimist and believe in the best. I would like to believe that the glass is half full, I would like to believe that the best films I can make are to come. These are exciting times we live in. When I’m not making a film, when I’m engaged in normal life, I miss it. The excitement of making a film is so incredible, when you’re making a movie that you can wholly and passionately believe in and you’re taking a crew of people out there and doing something against the gods.

MT Is the title “U-Turn,” a reflection on your career?

OS It’s not a reflection on anything. I don’t know what I’m doing with my career. But I did realize when I won the Oscar I had a certain momentum and that I could use that to get “JFK” made. I thought that movie was going to end my career, so I just made it the way I wanted to and nobody was more surprised than I was when it became a worldwide hit. So I used that momentum to get “Heaven and Earth” made and to get “Nixon” made. I’ve never thought about things like that. For this one, I just went to Mike Medavoy and said I have a great script and a budget of $15 million and he said make it. With or without stars. Two other studios had already passed on it.

I think Sean Penn is wonderful in it. He’s become a real leading man, sexy like Mitchum or Bogart. And Jennifer Lopez, I caught at the height of her sexuality, she really carries the picture. And Jon Voight - I wasn’t sure if he could physically play an Indian, but he said to me, “I can do this.” And he did. Nick (Nolte) was marvelous, playing an older man with that set of dentures. And Billy Bob really got into the weirdness of that character. He’d played those kind of parts lots of times before and he said, “I know this guy,” and went and wrote some of his own dialogue. That scene where he was playing that game of Twister, he came up with that on his own. I didn’t even know what the fuck Twister was.

MT I thought it was the funniest scene in the movie, especially since he’s playing it by himself. And that line, “I’ve got a waitress coming over later.”

OS (Laughs) It was a lot of fun to do. John Ridley wrote a great script.

MT You’ve written scripts for other directors, you’ve written them for yourself to direct, and now you’ve directed a script someone else wrote. What’s your take on the auteur theory?

OS It’s all a collaborative effort, whether you write or direct it yourself or you work with another director as a writer. I had a good relationship with Brian de Palma on “Scarface.” He made it a little more operatic than I would have, with the 50 machine guns coming to kill Tony at the end and nobody reloads. But it was a good experience and it was a huge influence on the whole “Miami Vice” thing. Boy, I wished I’d had a piece of that. “Year of the Dragon” was another influence on the whole Hong Kong school, the shoot-out in the restaurant. Working with cimino on that was a good experience as well. That’s why this thing about the film being the director’s or the writer’s is such bullshit. It’s a collaboration between everybody, writer, director, producer, cameraman, editors, actors.

MT Even critics of your work admit you get terrific performances from your actors.

OS I like working with actors because I like people and I think that transmits itself to the actors and inspires them. I get that from my mother. She was a real people person. I hear there are some directors who are cold and distant but I don’t work like that.

When I did my first feature, “Seizure,” I was very intimidated by the New York actors that were in the cast - Jonathan Frid, Christina Pickles - they’d worked in the theatre and I was intimidated by that, since I’d never directed professional actors before. I hadn’t done any theatre, I was a writer. But I got over that and I enjoy the process very much, the collaboration. I like to give them the freedom and the confidence to bring things to the role I might not have thought of. You know who my favorite actors were as a kid? Ronald Colman and Fredric March.

MT What movies were early inspirations?

OS Oh, Errol Flynn in “Captain Blood” and “Adventures of Robin Hood”, westerns like “Union Pacific,” by DeMille, “Hondo,” with John Wayne, “3:10 to Yuma,” Randolph Scott pictures. I was just on a plane to Telluride with Richard Fleischer, he did “Barbabbas,” “The Vikings.” Directors like Wellman, Wyler, Stevens, Milestone, Robert Wise. And later, I was influenced by the French Nouvelle Vague - Godard, Resnais, Resnais, and the others.

MT Do you storyboard your films?

OS No. Well, I might storyboard certain sequences. I used storyboards for the battle scenes in “Platoon” and “Born on the Fourth of July” but in general I don’t. I wrote the scene, so I can see it in my head. The camera is another character, another actor in the film. I can tell in the first 9 or 10 shots of a film whether the director knows what he’s doing, if he’s any good. Ultimately, what you’re seeing is the mind of the director.

MT There is a saying around town that if you’re an editor and you work for Oliver Stone, you win an Oscar.

OS Well, four of them have. Joe Hutshing and David Brenner went on to become big editors, Pietro Scalia became Bernardo Bertolucci’s editor, and Claire (Simpson) won for “Platoon”. The problem is, I keep losing editors. Some of them want to become Valley editors - you know, only work 5 days a week, have a life, a girlfriend, a Porsche, a home in the Valley. Over at Fox, when we were doing “Wall Street” they locked up the editing room at 5pm on Friday afternoons because of the unions. We had to break in to edit our picture. Finally, we had to go elsewhere. But the editing is so important, it’s a visceral process, it’s where you re-write the film. But we don’t just go in there and throw the film up in the air and pick it up off the floor. It’s thought out and we arrive at it through a long process of many hours of hard work.

MT One of the things I find so odd about being a filmmaker these days is that you have to balance these polar opposites, being an artist and self-promoting businessman - in order to get a film made. It’s schizophrenic.

OS It’s exhausting to get a film made in today’s climate. It’s like what Billy Wilder said in your article, by the time you get through with putting the deal together, you’re too tired to make the picture. You have to create your own studio every time you make a picture now. It’s so much easier to attach yourself to a project that someone else is developing and ride their energy. Tom Cruise wants me to do “Mission: Impossible II” and I’ve got an idea for that; it would be tempting to just go with a project that already has its own momentum.

“Nixon” was the reason I left Warner Bros. I had to develop it from the ground floor up on my credit card. I spent $2 million in development money before Andy Vajna - God bless him - came to my rescue. I only had a narrow window of opportunity to use Tony Hopkins because he was shooting that Picasso movie right behind us and we had to release him by a certain date.

Warren Beatty aid something very nice about “Nixon,” he said he couldn’t believe the energy of the film. And it has a lot of energy, even though it’s very reflective. We read all the books, we did our homework during the course of the research, and no ever really talked about the relationship between Nixon and his mother. Edward, the older one played by Tony Goldwyn in the movie, was supposed to be the golden boy, just like Joe Jr. in the Kennedy family. Death paved the way for him. That’s what that movie was about.

MT I thought you let Nixon off too easy. He had moral choices to make and he gave in to the dark side at the very beginning of his career by destroying the reputations of people like Jerry Voorhees and Helen Gahagan Douglas. I don’t want to get too Freudian here but to me, the movie, like “Wall Street,” seemed to be more about you coming to terms with your father.

OS Well, you’re right, I was trying to come to terms with my father’s death. We never had a chance to resolve our differences, it was an attempt at reconciliation, a benediction. I think I did go too easy on Nixon. He knew everything about Cuba, he had been in on all the plots since 1952. But the critics were expecting an “Oliver Stone” movie and didn’t know how to deal with me treating him with compassion, they didn’t know what to make about that.

MT I get the feelings the attacks really bother you.

OS There’s so much bullshit written about me. They say I’m an egotist. They attacked me around the time of “Platoon” saying I was never in Vietnam because they couldn’t find any record of “Oliver Stone” having served. They never looked under “William Stone”. They wrote a bunch of crap about how we abused the actors in “Platoon” by making them go through boot camp. They grew to love that camaraderie. Time Magazine reported that we defaced some sacred Indian caves during the making of “The Doors,” we were their “Losers of the Week.” The paint washed off in three days! They never bothered to check. There was a script stolen from the set of “JFK” and the next thing I know this guy George Lardner is blasting me all over the pages of “The Washington Post.” Then, after “Natural Born Killers” they accuse me of causing some murders. Why is all this bad karma attaching itself to me? Why?

MT Perhaps because you make movies that implicate members of the government in the JFK assassination; you make a psychedelic satire about serial killers, you take on U.S. foreign policy in Latin America....

OS Because I make films that challenge assumptions? what would they have me do? Make films about myself? Fellini can do it, but if I did it, they’d say, see - he’s an egotist. I’d like to make pictures like Spielberg, I admire him very much. But I can’t. I think he had a happier family than mine. My childhood was more screwed up.

They say I’m an agitator. If I was that political, I’d run for office. I’m a filmmaker. I’d love to do a picture that everybody loved. I’d like to make a musical. I’m sorry I didn’t do “Evita,” I didn’t like the way it turned out, I would have made it darker. But I’d love to make a musical like “The Sound of Music.” Robert Wise was the Spielberg of the Sixties, that movie became the biggest grosser of all time, it outgrossed “Gone With the Wind.” It was “Jaws,” the “Star Wars” of its day. It played for years and people still love that movie. There’s room in this town for the Quentin Tarantinos and the Robert Wises.

I was at Telluride and a French film critic came up to me and said he’s read my Cahiers piece on Wise and “The Sand Pebbles” and - you know the French are, only the most obscure films have any merit - and he said, “Ah, yes, Wise... “The Sand Pebbles”! But you must see “Captive City”! It is his most personal film!” (Laughter) Film Comment wants me to write a piece for their “Guilty Pleasures” column and I think I’m going to write about his “Helen of Troy.”

MT You know I always felt that a re-telling of “The Iliad” would be a great film project for today. It’s full of violence and you could get the popcorn crowd by using Stallone and Schwarzenegger as Hector and Achilles.

OS How about Brad Pitt as Paris?

MT Perfect.

(Stone jumps up and runs over to his desk and begins writing notes to himself.)

MT Speaking of violence, what about the attacks you’ve taken on that subject?

OS Life is violent. The Greek plays were violent, they had eyes being gouged out. We should learn to take it in, like Asia. Who’s going to censor it? It’ll be the National Socialist Republic when that happens.

MT OK, let’s get a plug in for your book.

OS A plug for the book? (Laughs) On the next Oprah - Olive Stone and “A Child’s Night Dream!”

MT When I first started reading it I was put off by the density of the language. I guess I was expecting a more conventional narrative. But then I realized you were going for a poetic, lyrical, stream of consciousness approach, and when I understood that, I was able to absorb the rhythms of the writing and really appreciate the wordplay and delight with language. Kind of “A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Stone.”

OS It is poetry. I got a great review from Ferlinghetti: “I have an idea that this is a great book.” And Mailer sent a very nice quote - “Stone’s writing is phenomenal....If Oliver Stone had spent as many years in literary work as he has in film he would probably be by now a major American writer. I know of no other movie director , no matter how talented, of whom that can be said.”

MT Pretty impressive.

OS Garry Willis didn’t quite get it in his New York Times review but the L.A. Times book review by Aram Saroyan was a love letter. Though being a poet, I’m surprised he didn’t pick up more on the poetry. I was very much influenced by Gerald Manley Hopkins, do you remember him? And Eliot, though he is so pessimistic. And Tennyson! The rhythms of the book are very much inspired by Tennyson. And Coleridge.

MT And Conrad.

OS Very much by Conrad. Not the language but the idea of Conrad. I first read “Lord Jim” in 1965. It gave me idea to join the merchant marine and ship off for lands across the sea. That chapter in the book, “The Boilers of the Moon,” was obviously influenced by Conrad, particularly the introduction of Samuel Crummy. And Joyce, of course. The book is “Portrait of the Artist,” but written in the style of “Ulysses,” and “Finnegans Wake.” Celine was another one, “Journey to the Center of the Night.” And Rimbaud.

MT It’s amazingly frank in describing your sexual adventures - masturbation, Asian whores, Oedipal fantasies.

OS What’s the point of writing a book unless you go all the way? Remember, I was 19, I was taking Dostoyevsky seriously. Fiction does not allow for personal exemption. But the writer is exhausted, you can see the whole book is his suicide note. It was the writing of the book that saved me. I was holed up in Mexico, writing three thousand words a day, some days ten.

MT A friend asked me what the book was about and I replied, “Oliver Stone digests 4000 years of Western culture and then regurgitates it.”

OS Thank you, I might use that line. I was alone a lot as a kid, I read a lot. It comes out. There are a lot of references, influences.

MT Who’s Julie Christmas, the movie star you lust after in the book?

OS A composite of Julie Andrews and Julie Christie.

MT I think a lot of guys had impure thoughts about Julie Christie in 1965.

OS And Julie Andrews, too! There’re a couple of references to her throughout the book. I remember seeing the lines for “The Sound of Music” in Tokyo where there thousands of these little guys in white short sleeve shirts lined up to see it. And “Mary Poppins.”

MT Hmmm. Mary Poppins in stiletto heels. I think I see your point. “You will take that spoonful of sugar!” (Laughter) After reading your book, it led me to re-read, Nietzche’s great essay about art, “The Birth of Tragedy,” and the struggle between the Apollonian and the Dionysian.

OS Well, I believe in the Hegelian dialectic - thesis, antithesis, synthesis. But my life is Dionysian, my films are Dionysian, the characters are Dionysian, Gordon Gekko in “Wall Street” is Dionysian. Morrison, obviously. Barnes and Elias from “Platoon,” are they both Dionysian?

MT There’s that famous quote by William Blake - “The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom” - do you subscribe to that?

OS You might say I’ve spent my life investigating that proposition.

“You know about the George Bush-Oliver Stone connection, don’t you? Stone is a disinformation flunky. I mean, if all that stuff he was saying were true, you don’t think they would let him live, do you?”

- Mel Gibson, “Conspiracy Theory”

Once again, America likes to reduce its artists to a punchline. But it does seem like everybody has an Oliver Stone story. There have been almost as many Oliver Stone sightings as Elvis. Some have him whacked out of his mind on Bali, or in some Asian brothel or wandering out in the desert, tripping. If he was at all concerned about having his name become household currency, he has succeeded brilliantly. He may well be the most famous director, after Spielberg, on the planet. Even though there may be a certain amount of notoriety he carries with him, Oliver Stone has become a brand-name, like Tide or Pepsi.

And whatever you say about that trademark Oliver Stone is true. Artist, charlatan, gentleman, madman, businessman, tortured genius, visionary,. He is equal part all those things and more. But of all his peers in Hollywood, Oliver Stone is without doubt, the most heroic director around. With a Promethean daring, he has forced his will upon the world, and made his vision ours, a vision that has shaped our history and our image of ourselves. To borrow a metaphor from Stanley Kubrick, he has flown like Icarus but his wings have held. Every age gets the art it deserves and Oliver Stone may be the artist for these troubled times.

His body of work is a brilliant, at times overwhelmingly powerful, testament to the scope and ambition of his talent, and in their own way, very patriotic. Just as John Ford and Frank Capra painted pictures of America for an earlier time, Oliver Stone has painted his visions of an America at war in far, distant lands in “Platoon,” America at war with itself in “Born on the Fourth of July,” an American financial establishment consumed with avarice and materialism in “Wall Street,” an attempt at understanding of the American Richard III in “Nixon,” an America awash in bloodstained violence and the media’s complicity with “Natural Born Killers,” and an America coming to terms with its psychic denial of the great traumas of the latter part of the century - the Kennedy assassination and subsequent war in “JFK.” He has a lover’s quarrel with his country and has forced it to look at the dark recesses we might prefer to forget. Aside from being a great artist, he is also a patriot and we are in his debt.

His novel, “A Child’s Night Dream” is filled with a youthful talent that will not be denied. “A real mindfuck,” as he described it, it is also proves what a gifted writer he is. Dazzling in its wordplay and candor, the author stands naked in his art. It is a disturbing, narcissistic, yet ultimately gripping, self-portrait and it deserves to be taken seriously as one of the great pieces of confessional literature of the 20th Century.

The book documents the battle between the French socialite mother who called him “Oliver,” and the repressed stockbroker father who called him “William.” The struggle continues to this day, raging in the cauldron of his soul - the male & female, Apollonian & Dionysian, the proper little gentleman from the Upper East Side battling the social rebel who ran away from home to become a teacher, a seaman, a soldier in distant parts of the world. The yin & yang, East/West dualities within him all seeking dominion over his soul and he is split right down the middle of his psyche and his therapy is his art. And we are the richer for it.

But that is small comfort to the man himself; for the fame, fortune, awards, have done little to assuage his pain. There is still a war going on inside him, a battle for his soul - only it’s right on the surface and it’s fascinating to watch the struggle with his innermost demons so openly. So, if you happen to be in a bar in Santa Monica and you see Oliver Stone bending an elbow, or if you are tripping in a mescal-induced hallucination out in the desert sometime and he appears wandering about in the distance, or if you happen to be in a bordello in Bangkok and look over and see him receiving some R&R, pat him on the back and and tell him how much you like his movies. He’d really appreciate it.

The Decline & Fall of The Magnificent Ambersons

2010-06-04T18:48:00.000-07:00

In Search of Lost “Ambersons”

by Mike Thomas

The story is well-known - fresh from making “Citizen Kane” theatre and radio wunderkind Orson Welles’ second film, “The Magnificent Ambersons” is butchered and re-edited in his absence by a group of evil RKO Philistines out to sabotage his career. Welles never recovers from that blow, spending the rest of his life trying to reclaim his past glory, hustling after funding for every project. Yet when Robert Carringer’s “Magnificent Ambersons Reconstructed” was published in 1993, shattering many of the long-accepted Wellesian assertions that the film was brutally altered over his objections, showing Welles himself was suggesting even more radical cuts in “Ambersons” than those that were made, it registered nary a blip on the critical radar. Why the critical silence on the Carringer book, which rewrote one of the most controversial episodes in the American Cinema?

Using existing storyboards, stills of the deleted scenes and the original continuity script of March 12, 1942 - the only surviving record of the full 132 minute original cut of “Ambersons,” - Carringer shows exactly what the deleted scenes were, which ones were reshot and the cables from Welles ordering cuts. the book makes clear that, although Welles may not have agreed to all the changes that were made after the disastrous previews, he was a willing accomplice to much of the re-editing. In fact, after reading Carringer it is virtually impossible to take the Welles account of the destruction of “Ambersons” at face value again. And yet it came and went without major critical discussion or acknowledgement. Its lack of impact is baffling and despite the landmark research and much evidence to the contrary, the Welles party line still remains the accepted version - “They destroyed “Ambersons” and it destroyed me...”

Well, no, not exactly.

When Robert Wise first met Orson Welles they were both 25. Unhappy with the older studio editor RKO had assigned to “Citizen Kane” Welles wanted someone younger and fresher to cut his debut film. He liked Wise and hired him to be the editor. Wise did not let Welles down, “Citizen Kane” remains a textbook example of motion picture editing and won Wise his first Oscar nomination for editing. Immediately after “Kane” Wise cut the enduring classic “All That Money Can Buy” (aka “The Devil and Daniel Webster”) for director William Dieterle. When it came time to film his second feature Welles again wanted Wise but after “Kane” Wise had become one of the most sought after editors on the RKO lot and Dieterle was asking for Wise to cut his next film. A tug of war ensued, with Welles winning Wise’s services for his second film, “The Magnificent Ambersons.”

Robert Wise later become the fall guy for the “destruction” of “Ambersons”, as though the man who edited “Citizen Kane” suddenly lost all his skill, intelligence and taste, and overnight became a hopeless studio hack with a pair of scissors, drooling in anticipation at the mutilation he was about to deliver to Welles’ defenseless masterpiece. What if - and I know this hypothesis is anathema to those who buy the Welles party line and remain that convinced he was betrayed by those closest to him - but what if “The Magnificent Ambersons” was what the studio and Joseph Cotten and Bob Wise and Welles’ business manager Jack Moss said it was? An expensive, lavish, period piece that left audiences cold and indifferent when they weren’t laughing or walking out or jeering at its histrionics?

In 1992, the long awaited Peter Bogdonavich-Orson Welles collaboration, “This is Orson Welles,” appeared, repeating the usual litany of injustices done and the standard carping about the mutilation of “Ambersons” (and “Macbeth” and “Touch of Evil”, et. al.), Welles even managed to throw in a sly dig at Wise. When it was pointed out that Wise re-shot the bedroom scene, Welles remarked, “I didn’t know Robert Wise did the shooting. That was his beginning, wasn’t it? That’s when he got off the pad.” As if a re-shoot could launch a career (whatever happened to Freddie Fleck then?)

Based on the Pulitzer Prize winning novel by Booth Tarkington, “Ambersons” is imbued with a melancholic longing for a vanished America, filled with a profound sense of loss remarkably captured by a 26 year old at the height of his glory, photographed with some of the most exquisitely shaded images in the American cinema. This deeply personal adaptation of the Tarkington novel obviously held great meaning for Welles. He long maintained the Eugene Morgan character was based upon his father. And the death of a mother obviously was something Welles, who lost his own at a tender age, could greatly feel. Eschewing the Expressionist razzle dazzle of “Kane,” “Ambersons” embraces techniques of silent film and Currier & Ives prints; it almost feels older than the cinema itself, a relic of a bygone era. And yet time and again it is painted as an irrevocably doomed film. The forty minutes cut from “Ambersons,” along with the missing six hours from von Stroheim’s ”Greed,” have becoming the twin Holy Grails of the American cinema. And yet with the publication of the Carringer book (and the earlier Bogdanovich-Welles memoir edited by Jonathan Rosenbaum) it became possible to become an archaeologist of the lost ”Ambersons” in that great cinematheque of the mind, conjuring up the lost scenes and mentally editing them back into place.

In fact, the much criticized new ending shot by RKO contained some of the same dialogue that was used in the original script. In the original draft (and in earlier radio version), Eugene writes a letter to Isabel stating he had been true at last to his own true love. In the reshot ending, Eugene walks down a hospital hallway and says he brought George under control and had been true at last to his own true love.This, though different, is not that much removed from what we have. Welles had substituted a different ending set in a boarding house at the last minute - so late, it wasn’t even story boarded like the rest of the film. The final scene has always been the crucial deletion from the present cut with Welles calling the deleted shot, with typical Wellesian enthusiasm, “the best scene in the picture.” Whether it worked or not is a different matter. It was to show Aunt Fanny sitting in a rocking chair, as oblivious to Eugene as he prattles on about the wedding of George and Lucy as he has always been to her. It was a dark scene, downbeat and somber. Joseph Cotten wondered if it wasn’t too “Chekhovian” for the audience.

The boarding house ending of “Ambersons” was sold for silver, as was all unused RKO footage after six months of a film’s release. Welles gave away his 35mm print of the film in Brazil so no known copy of the original 132 minute cut survives. (Although for years rumors have persisted that Welles’ copy may have survived and still reside somewhere in Brazil.) Those scenes that once were, cinematic ghosts from the past, continue to haunt the present. And so, the search for the Grail continued until Robert Carringer’s splendid reconstruction of “Ambersons” on the Criterion laser disc released in 1986. It included the script (with the writing of the letter ending), storyboards complete with deleted scenes, fragments of the silent version called “Pampered Youth” and the Mercury Theatre radio production with Walter Huston as Eugene, Huston’s wife, Nan Sunderland as Isabel, Ray Collins as the uncle and Welles himself as George.

The book was notable, however, for having an entire chapter devoted to the missing scenes, complete with many stills and was an excellent first step in the recreation of the original cut. When Carringer’s book, “The Magnificent Ambersons: A Reconstruction” came out the following year it also included a great number of stills and the original continuity script. Dated March 12, 1942 the continuity script documents every shot, every piece of dialogue in the completed print that was shipped to Welles in Rio. Carringer gives us the exact description of the every shot, complete with the deleted scenes so, for the first time, we can re-construct not only the missing footage of “Ambersons” but can understand the shape of the entire film. (Whether this was considered at the time to be the final cut is doubtful, however. Welles was ordering cuts from Brazil, and it was generally understood that the previews would indicate where the film needed trimming.)

Carringer had retrieved all that was retrievable and had shown it to the world in a brilliant job of research. And yet there was nary a sound from the academic world or the film community. “Ambersons” was still considered to be a fragment of the masterpiece that Welles had planned. And yet the Carringer book, in its most controversial charge, states that Welles was not only a participant in the drastic re-editing of “Ambersons”, but that he actually suggested even more drastic cuts than those proposed by Wise, Moss and RKO.

Of the many cuts suggested by Welles (and there were 35 page cables crammed with editing suggestions from Rio) none was as radical as the one Carringer labels the “Big Cut”. Immediately following the scene where Isabel reads the letter from Eugene, Welles decided to cut to her death, eliminating the scenes of George and his mother discussing Eugene’s intentions and Isabel’s decision to go away on an extended vacation, the last walk George and Lucy take before his departure, the second porch scene (which was cut) with the Major and Fanny talking about the failed headlight scheme, George and Isabel’s return, and George’s refusal to let Eugene enter the house to see the dying Isabel.

These cuts certainly would have gutted, if not quite the heart of the film, much of the core. The fact Welles was prepared to discard them shows that he was willing to make alterations to the film and was not quite the hapless victim he long pretended. Even more controversial is Carringer’s suggestion this “Big Cut” was suggested by Welles before the previews took place, thereby suggesting Welles sabotaged the film before it ever had an audience. If these cuts ordered by Welles were made in the print the audience in Pomona saw, not only would it explain why the picture performed so badly in its first preview, but also demands a critical re-assessment of the entire “Ambersons” history. Wise, however, does not recall the “Big Cut” having been made, and believes the Pomona screening was of the print Welles had authorized before leaving.

As Carringer repeatedly shows, Welles was urging cuts to be made that were as drastic, if not more so, than the studio’s. Carringer makes a major contribution to film scholarship for he shows that, not only was Welles actively involved in the re-cutting of “Ambersons” but that Welles’ Big Cut, whether implemented or not, was a Draconian solution that failed to solve bigger problem the picture faced - the audience’s rejection of George in certain scenes, Agnes Moorehead’s over the top hysteria in the boiler scene and the grim, downbeat ending.

If the original Welles cut didn’t work, which version was the true “Ambersons,” the best “Ambersons”? Since Robert Wise has long been tarred with the rep of the one who “destroyed” the film, the only solution was to watch the film with Wise, armed with the Carringer book, and discuss the missing scenes. “This is the last time I’m going to talk about “Ambersons,” said Wise before we sat down to watch the laser disc.

MT One of the surprising things in the Carringer book was his claim that Welles was ordering some drastic cuts of his own.

RW I don’t know about that. He wasn’t there, he was in Rio. He’d gone down at the request of the State Department to try and keep Brazil on our side during the war and he was happy to go down there and get out of the draft. He was draft age, remember, about 26, and he went down to make a film with the Brazilian filmmakers. And, according to the stories that came back, he was having some parties and a pretty good time.

MT You’d gone down to Miami with him?

RW I took the work print with me and spent three days and nights recording all his narration at the Max Fleischer animation studios. He left at dawn in an old flying boat and that was the last time I saw him for several years.

MT He left you in charge of post-production?

RW He left me and Jack Moss, who was his business manager, in charge. At a certain point the studio became concerned because they had a lot of money tied up in the picture, about a million dollars, which was a big budget in those days. So we went out for some previews with our work print. We’d usually preview a picture in one of the local theatres that could play separate picture and sound tracks. We’d get a temp track and go out and do a sneak preview.

MT Did you preview “Kane”?

RW No, we didn’t on “Kane.” There were no previews. But it was standard practice to take a picture out out and we took this one to Pomona and the preview was just a disaster. The audience disliked it, they walked out, they were laughing at Aggie Moorehead’s character and it was an absolute disaster. So what were we going to do with it? We went back and cut out the scenes with Aggie Moorehead where they were laughing at her over-the-top performance. It was a long picture, as I recall.

MT Two hours and 12 minutes.

RW I thought it was longer. Well, we took it the next time to Pasadena and it played a little better but still not acceptable. We then cut some more and re-arranged things and the third time we took it to Inglewood but we had cut so much out we had continuity problems and needed some new scenes to bridge the gaps. They asked me to direct a scene between George and his mother and that was one of my first directing experiences, that scene between Dolores Costello and Tim Holt in her bedroom. We took it to Long Beach and they sat for it, they didn’t walk out, they didn’t laugh. And that’s the way it went out. We had to get a version that would play for an audience.

MT It was Freddie Fleck who directed the new ending.

RW He was the production manager. The new ending was not that different in content, just staged differently.

MT Let’s take a look at the film.

(The film begins with the standard RKO logo - a radio tower on top of the globe announcing to the world this is an RKO picture.)

RW That was one of my first jobs, synching up those dot, dot dot, dots.

MT Where did they shoot the picture?

RW Down at what we called the “Forty Acres” in Culver City, the RKO Pathe Studios.

MT Here’s one of the first cuts.

(The ballroom sequence)

RW Yes, this was a long shot, it took him a day or two to line up. It went round and round the ballroom and up the stairs and it just went on forever. People were coming and going and picking up other people’s dialogue and it didn’t hold, it just didn’t work so we had to make some cuts and put in some dissolves over the cuts.

MT Welles called it “ the greatest tour de force of my career.” The complaint is that in cutting the long single take you destroyed the spatial relationship of the layout of the mansion.

RW All that’s fine but the thing was very long. The pace dragged and we had to pick it up.

MT It was done in a horseshoe pattern, with the camera moving backwards?

RW It was going all over the ballroom in one take. It took him three days overall; a couple of days to get the lighting, the blocking, rehearsing the actors, getting the timing right, then one day of shooting.

MT These sets are amazing. Did you know the art direction was nominated for an Oscar? In fact, the film received four Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress, and Best Cinematography.

RW The picture wasn’t destroyed then, if it was nominated for Best Picture, was it? I have always said that despite what Orson said, since it has come down through the years as a classic in its own right , that means we didn’t destroy it.

MT A lot of people actually prefer it to “Kane.”

RW They’re out of their minds. But it is an outstanding film.

MT I find it has more heart than “Kane,” there’s an elegiac quality that is very touching.

RW I remember being so moved by the radio version of it on the Campbell’s Soup Hour. We used to listen to it on Sunday nights on the radio, that was my first exposure to Orson. I was so moved by it, I was really excited when I learned that it was going to be the follow up to “Kane.” I thought, this will show those people who thought “Kane” didn’t have any heart, this will be Orson’s chance to prove that he has heart. But he didn’t get it in the film.

(Eugene and Isabel dance alone on a deserted ballroom floor)

MT This scene is one of the loveliest in the entire film, yet Welles’ cable of March 27, 1942 proposed cutting it.

RW Really? I don’t remember that.

MT He sure loved putting the camera on the floor, didn’t he?

RW He got that from John Ford.

(The long scene in the upstairs hallway)

MT It must be easy for an editor when there are long takes like this. Did he ever have a second camera shoot back up?

RW Very rarely.

(The sleigh ride scene)

MT I read that you had to re-record all the sound on this on the roof of an RKO building.

RW This was all shot in a big freezer downtown, a refrigeration plant, real snow. But the sound was no good, it was hollow. So we got the actors on the roof of the recording building at RKO and I was downstairs watching the picture on the screen as they dubbed their lines.

MT Didn’t he have all the actors originally pre-record all their dialogue onto records?

RW When he finished “Kane” I had to fight Orson like hell to get him in to re-record some of his lines. I thought, because of his radio background, he’d be marvelous, and he was. He was a master at it. Well, when it came time to do “Ambersons” he decided to get the whole cast together and record the dialogue and when it came time to shoot the picture he’d have the cast mouth their lines while the record played. Orson was such an extremist. He tried it one morning and it was chaos. But at least he had the advantage of rehearsing the whole picture.

MT I’ve wondered if he liked to go with these long takes because of his theatre background?

RW Not just theatre background. If you have a good scene for the actors to play you don’t need to have a lot of cutting. Normally, you’d shoot some close-ups. He might have shot them and then decided he didn’t need to use them.

MT Now, in this sequence, when George walks to the window , there’s a dissolve. But originally, the scene continued as he runs outside as he realizes apartments are being built on the Amberson lot and starts arguing with Uncle Jack in the rain.

RW I never in all my years heard so many laughs in all the wrong places. Now, this scene in the automobile factory, we were shooting right after Pearl Harbor was attacked.

MT Now, here’s the scene you directed...(George reads his mother’s letter and visits her in the bedroom) and there’s another scene on the porch that was cut .

RW Those porch scenes were long and didn’t really add much.

MT I read that one of the reasons the first preview didn’t play well is because they ran the film after a musical, “The Fleet’s In.”

RW I don’t think that had anything to do with it. There were problems with the film.

MT I also read where the preview cards were something like 72 negative to 53 positive.

RW And those were from the people who stayed! A lot of them had already walked out of the picture by the time it was over. I’ve always maintained that in its original version, “Ambersons” may have been a greater work of art, but we had to get the film so it would hold people’s attention.

(Major Amberson staring into the fireplace contemplating his death)

RW I shot this scene with this old guy. All I had to do was to get him to remember his lines. Orson lined it up and everything, and rehearsed it with him, but he couldn’t remember the dialogue. Orson was standing off camera and whispering the lines to him and finally, he had to go away and do something, line up another shot or something, and he asked me to do the scene. It didn’t take any direction. I just shot it when he finally remembered his lines.

MT It’s one of the most haunted, moving scenes I’ve ever seen. Now, here in the train station scene which you trimmed, I understand there was a shot of George lending Uncle Jack money. I’m surprised you cut that, since it shows the decent side of George and softens his character.

RW They were originally sitting down as I recall...(Looks at still photo in Carringer book) I think we felt that we needed to pick it up and move it along.

MT Where’d they shoot it?

RW On the set. It’s diminished perspective.

MT Now here’s the boiler scene that was re-shot by Jack Moss.

RW I don’t remember Jack Moss shooting anything. I re-shot the one scene and Freddie Fleck did the different ending but I don’t recall Jack Moss ever shooting anything. He was Orson’s business manager, he wasn’t a filmmaker.

MT All I’ve read says Moss re-shot this scene because there was so much audience derision at Moorehead’s hysterics.

RW That was true, she was over the top. And that’s the director’s responsibility to keep the actors from going overboard. And it just wasn’t this scene but all the way through the film. Whenever she’d appear, they’d start laughing and making fun of her.

MT Now, we come to the walk home. I guess there was originally a long P.O.V. tracking shot through the deserted mansion.

RW Yes, there was. I remember, he spent quite a bit of time on it.

MT Now, of course comes the infamous re-shot ending. It’s not fashionable to say so, but I actually think this scene works .

RW So do I.

MT It may not have the same visual style as Welles but the dialogue is straight out of the book, the radio show, and the original ending in the script.

RW Really?

MT That’s what so fascinated me when I read the original ending in the Academy Library and discovered it was almost verbatim to the new ending, Eugene telling Fanny that he’d brought Isabel’s boy “under shelter” and “that at last I’d been true to my own true love.”

RW I’ve always said that “Kane” was the only project where Welles was truly focused. He always had so many things going, when he was doing “Ambersons,” he was doing the Lady Esther radio show, he was producing and acting in “Journey Into Fear”, and the getting ready to go to Rio. He simply had too much else going on. He was as much of a genius as anyone I’ve ever met, but he just didn’t have much self-discipline.

MT Why did RKO destroy the footage?

RW It was standard practice that, after the previews, when you’d come backand take sequences out you’d put them in the vault. About six months after the films were released and if you didn’t need to change the film, they’d sell the footage for the silver. But that was nothing particular with “Ambersons." It was just company practice. All this about how we destroyed and mutilated it is nonsense.

MT I’ve always wondered why there such a strong reaction to this version when it seems so lyrical and poignant.

RW If the film had come out a year before, it would have gotten a completely different reception but at this time people were gearing up to go to war, getting jobs in aircraft factories, the Arsenal of Democracy and people didn’t seem to have the patience to care about the problems of Georgie Amberson. And remember, back then the average picture was 90 minutes, if you had something that went over an hour and a half you were in trouble.

MT Well, like they say, timing is everything.

Cy Endfield had seen the complete 132 minute cut of “Ambersons” and recalled, “It was the best picture I’d ever seen. But I knew it was boring other people.” At one point, Endfield, who would later become a director himself (“Zulu”, “Mysterious Island”) asked Jack Moss, the question that has been asked over and over ever since, “Why doesn’t Orson come back?”

“You want to know why?” replied Moss. According to Endfield, Moss then went over to a Moviola and put on some footage from Brazil featuring exotic Brazilian chorus girls in a nightclub. When he’d visited Welles in Brazil, recounted Moss, Welles had shown him this footage and started bragging, ‘I’ve fucked that one...and that one....and that one.’ He’s not coming back.”

Welles scholar Bill Krohn, who helped reconstruct the unfinished “It’s All True” footage, maintains Welles was on the way to creating a great and revolutionary documentary. Perhaps. But Welles had not finished “Ambersons,” instead he left it in the hands of Jack Moss, a business manager who Welles had enlisted to replace the departed John Houseman, expecting that Moss would obey his wishes and protect "Ambersons" from the Philistines at the studio. In his mind, he was done with "Ambersons" and he was already on to another groundbreaking project. But there was no one with enough clout in the Mercury Company who could protect the film from the savage preview audiences' hostility and so, with the very fate of the studio, or at least his job at the studio, in the balance, the beleagured RKO boss Shaefer began ordering cuts. As Charles Higham put it, Welles was a creative genius “who needed to have his electricity grounded.” He needed a Houseman or some kind of strong parental figure to reign in his excesses, placate the suits, and the handle the more mundane, earth-bound realities such as budgets and jittery studio executives. Welles had accomplished a tremendous amount in the last six years, and was only 26. But, he tempted the fates once too often and now the Boy Genius of radio, stage and Hollywood, had his remarkable streak of good fortune run out and he received his comeuppance. In spades. Only he didn't know it at the time and he still stayed in Rio. Through the years, the question haunts us, “Why didn’t Orson come back?,” why didn't he fight to protect his masterpiece? Or at the very least, why didn’t he hold onto his 35mm print of the 132 minute cut?

Ironically, The Magnificent Ambersons” has come to represent what it was ostensibly about - loss. Loss of a vanished pre-Industrial Garden where men wore stovepipes and used bootjacks and the trolley waited for its patrons, “too slow for us nowadays”, and of vanished cotillion balls. Loss of fortune, loss of love. “Life and money” says Uncle Jack in the train station, “When they’re gone you can’t tell where, or what the devil you did with ‘em!” And for Welles, it was the loss of a sense of invincibility, of a self-confidence that he would never have again after “Ambersons.” Another line of dialogue, cut from the ballroom scene, Uncle Jack utters with a prophetic tone that suggests that Welles himself knew his days of dancing on the edge were coming to a close: “Do you know what I think whenever I see these smooth triumphal young faces? I always think oh, how you’re going to catch it. Oh, yes. Life’s got a special walloping for every mother’s son of them.”

“That Eden people lose...It’s a theme that interests me. A nostalgia for the garden - it’s a recurring theme in all our civilization....Every country has its ‘Merrie England’, a season of innocence, a dew-bright morning of the world....Even if the good old days never existed, the fact that we can conceive of such a world is, in fact, an affirmation of the human spirit. That the imagination of man is capable of creating the myth of a more open, generous time is not a sign of our folly.”

- Orson Welles, “This is Orson Welles”

As Wise points out it was Pearl Harbor, more than anything, that sealed the fate of “Ambersons”. Not only Welles would not have gone to Brazil for the ill-fated documentary, “It’s All True,” but, more importantly, the mood of the country would not have been so altered. But after the attack, a long, slow-paced film that lamented the vanishing of a Golden Age of pre-industrialization was not going to go down with an audience gearing for war. Even close Mercury Theatre associates like Joseph Cotten and Jack Moss were all too aware that the picture didn’t work with audiences. The 132 minute film would have to be trimmed to make it play. RKO studio head George Schaefer’s job was on the line and he knew it. With great fanfare Schaefer had signed Welles, giving him unprecedented final cut, but when “Kane” lost money, “Ambersons” went over budget and with costs on “It’s All True” spiraling out of control, something had to be done. But it was all to no avail, Schaefer still lost his job. And Welles gained a reputation he would never lose, as a director who would abandon his films in the editing room and couldn't finish a movie.

And yet what we is so remarkable, so rich and full of life and wisdom and tragic loss, we must be content with what we have. The 88 minute version of Booth Tarkington’s “The Magnificent Ambersons” adapted and directed by Orson Welles is so full of an achingly lyrical beauty it will forever live in the hearts and memories of those who treasure the cinema’s possibilities. We should be grateful that such a work of art ever allowed to came into existence at all. From the minute the opening scene begins with the shot of the trolley car in front of the Amberson mansion, throughout the ballroom sequence and the heartbreaking beauty of Isabel and Eugene waltzing on the empty dance floor, on through the sleigh ride with its glorious iris fade-out, through the gripping close-up of Major Amberson’s death speech, the long tracking shot of George and Lucy in the buggy, Eugene’s prophetic speech at the dinner table of the passing of a way of life because of the automobile, George’s breakdown in the deserted mansion begging his mother for forgiveness, we are in the presence of greatness, a sublime epiphany of the possibilities of the cinema. Any one of those scenes would guarantee the film a place in history, but to have so many in one film is a cavalcade of riches.

And let us finally put an end to the nonsense that Robert Wise destroyed “The Magnificent Ambersons.” The editor of “Citizen Kane” and future director of several masterpieces of his own did the best he could under extremely difficult circumstances to bring to screen a version would that would work for an audience and remain true to Welles’ vision. We should be grateful that it was a man of Wise’s taste and intelligence who cut “Ambersons”, and not some studio hack and we should also be grateful that many of the cuts suggested by Welles were ignored. So rather than pillory a talented and decent man, we should thank Robert Wise for doing his best to save, not destroy “Ambersons,” to make it play, as his mentor, RKO editor Billy Hamilton taught him. And finally, all glories to the monumental and enduring spirit of George Orson Welles for producing this splendid cathedral of the cinema, a haunting testimony to love’s tragic consequences among the shifting tides of time. Rest easy, dear sir. Your masterpiece endures, you built better than you knew.

“THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS” CHRONOLOGY

1939

Oct. 29

Campbell Playhouse CBS Radio “The Magnificent Ambersons”. Adapted and narrated by Orson Welles, with Walter Huston (Eugene), Nan Sunderland (Isabel), Orson Welles (George), Ray Collins (Uncle Fred) Marion Barnes (Lucy), Bea Benadaret (neighbor).

1941

Oct. 28

Filming begins on “Ambersons” . Welles continues acting in and hosting “The Orson Welles Show” on CBS Radio, he will appear in 11 programs between Nov. 3 and Jan. 19, 1942 and guest on others. He also begins pre-production of “Journey Into Fear.”

Dec. 7

Pearl Harbor is attacked and the following day war is declared on Japan. Welles shoots the car factory scene in “Ambersons.”

1942

Jan. 6

Filming begins of Mercury Productions’ “Journey into Fear.” Welles plays Col. Haki in the film at night while directing “Ambersons” during the day.

Jan. 26

Principal photography on “Ambersons” ends, Welles finishes re-shoots on Jan. 31.

Feb. 1

Welles finishes acting in “Journey into Fear.”

Feb. 2

Welles leaves for Miami where he and Wise record the narration. It is planned that Wise will join Welles with the film in Rio for final work after the rough cut is completed but the government refuses Wise permission to travel abroad during the war.

Feb. 6

Before leaving for South America, Welles cables Moss: “Because of the enormous amount of work Bob Wise has to do on “Ambersons”...I would like you to makeclear to all department heads that his is the final word. He is to have a free hand in ordering prints, dissolves...It boils down to this. I want to know that he won’t be slowed up at any point because his authority is questioned. I dictate this at the airport just before departing. Orson.”

March 10

Wise shoots the bedroom scene as per Welles’ instructions.

March 12

Continuity script documents the complete 132 minute “Ambersons”, though it is questionable whether Welles himself thought of this as the final cut since he has ordered the 12 minute “Big Cut” in the middle of the film.

March 16

Schaefer holds private studio screening of “Ambersons” to gloomy results. Jack Moss walks out saying, “We’ve got a problem.”

March 17

First disastrous “Amberson” preview held at the Fox Theatre in Pomona to derisive laughter and walk outs by many.

March 18

Wise continues editing film for the next preview.

March 19

Second “Ambersons” preview at United Artists Theatre in Pasadena, to a slightly less hostile reaction.

March 20

Schaefer writes Welles, “Never in all my experience in the industry have I taken so much punishment or suffered as I did at the Pomona preview. In my 28 years in the business, I have never been present in a theatre where the audience acted in such a manner. ”

March 23

Moss cables Welles about the two previews, “Pomona preview generally unsatisfactory. Pasadena better reception. Following is way picture was previewed Pomona....Drop porch scene, fade in on Eugene and Isabel at tree. Continuity follows as shot up to new scene (bedroom scene directed by Wise) George finds Isabel unconscious. Made your big cut and come to group in hall exterior Isabel’s room...following is way picture previewed at Pasadena. First cut factory scene, second cut first porch scene, third cut bathroom scene. Continuity again as shot. Put back all your big cut except second porch scene...”

March 27

Welles sends cable ordering many deletions, including Eugene and Isabel dancing on the ballroom floor, the iris out of the sleigh ride, the scenebetween George and Uncle Jack in the rain following the extended kitchen scene, and is still ordering the “Big Cut.” Welles agrees to the re-sequencing of Eugene and Lucy in the garden earlier in the film and moving George’s “long walk home” to a later place, right before the accident. The boardinghouse scene to remain uncut.

March 31

Wise cables Welles with preview responses.

April 2

Welles cables more bizarre instructions for revising the closing credits, including Ray Collins seated “on tropical veranda, waiving palm tree behind him - Negro servant serving him second long cool drink....Aggie (Moorehead) blissfully and busily playing bridge with cronies in boarding house...” Aside from violating the spirit of Welles’ own ending, the proposed suggestions - including Anne Baxter and Tim Holt waiving gaily at the camera from a motoring car - were incredibly trite and were, thankfully, ignored.

April 17 -22

Freddie Fleck shoots retakes , including the hospital scene on April 20.

May 4

Third preview in Inglewood.

May 12

Final preview in Long Beach.

May 19

Jack Moss shoots final “Ambersons” retakes (Fanny next to the boiler).

June 8

Schaefer approves “Ambersons” for release.

Late June

Schaefer is removed as head of RKO and replace by Charles Koerner.

July 1

The Mercury Productions staff is ousted from its offices at RKO Studios.

July 10

“The Magnificent Ambersons” is released in Los Angeles as part of a double bill with “Mexican Spitfire Sees a Ghost.”

Aug. 22

Welles returns to the U.S.

1943

“The Magnificent Ambersons” receives four Academy Award nominations including Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress (Agnes Moorehead), Best Cinematography (Stanley Cortez), Best Set Direction. Agnes Moorehead voted Best Actress by the New York Film Critics Circle.

1980s

In a Sight & Sound international critics poll, “The Magnificent Ambersons” is voted one of the 10 best films of all time. (“Kane” places first)

c) copyright Michael Thomas

2010-05-29T21:40:00.000-07:00

THE SOUND OF MONEY

by Mike Thomas

William Wyler was an odd choice to direct “The Sound of Music.” The three-time Oscar winner had never directed a musical in his long career; his fabled reputation rested upon such serious dramatic fare as “Best Years of Our Lives,” “Wuthering Heights,” “Mrs. Miniver,” “The Heiress” and “Ben-Hur.” The Weltschmaltz of “The Sound of Music” would hardly seem to be Wyler’s slice of strudel, but there he was in the summer of 1963, flying around the Austrian Alps and arguing with his pilot about the Nazis while scouting locations for “The Sound of Music.” “Music” had been bought by 20th Century-Fox for over a million dollars in 1960 as part of its first rights refusal on any Rodgers & Hammerstein musical. But when production costs on Fox’s “Cleopatra” soared to the then-staggering $40 million the entire studio virtually shut down and “The Sound of Music” languished in development limbo, all but forgotten, as Fox fought to survive.

Watching the studio continue to hemorrhage money as “Cleopatra” entered its third year of shooting, producer Darryl F. Zanuck reacted with great concern. Not only was he the largest shareholder and former studio head of Fox, his upcoming WWII, all-star mega-production, “The Longest Day,” was about to be released by the studio as a reserved-seat, roadshow presentation.* When Zanuck heard that Fox studio chief Spyros Skouras was seriously considering quickly pushing the film into a wide release to get a much-needed infusion of cash, he exploded. Furious at Skouras’ mismanagement and near-destruction of his beloved studio, Zanuck called a board meeting and by its conclusion, some eight hours later, Skouras was gone and Darryl F. Zanuck was back running 20th Century-Fox. In a move that prompted the classic Variety headline, “The Son Also Rises,” Zanuck immediately installed his 27-year-old son Richard as the new head of production.

_______________________________________________

*In the 1960s the phrase "roadshow picture" was a film industry term for a big-budget, widescreen production, usually a musical or historical epic, that only played in one theatre per city and was modeled after the Broadway theatre-going experience - reserved tickets, a single performance a day except for matinees on weekends & a selected weekday. Roadshows film had overtures, intermissions, and a souvenir book of the film would be available in the lobby for a dollar. There were no coming attractions or previews as in regular theatres, the audience was there to savor that one movie alone. The overall experience was one of sublime showmanship; the thrilling air of anticipation when the lights went down and the overture began is still indelibly etched upon the memories of anyone fortunate enough to have attended a roadshow screening. Although as old as the American film industry itself - the very first American feature film, "The Birth of a Nation" was exhibited as a roadshow - the practice reached its height of its popularity in the Fifties and Sixties during Hollywood's attempts to combat the rise of television with widescreen spectaculars. Just a few examples of roadshows from that heyday were "Around the World in 80 Days," "Gigi," "Ben-Hur," "Spartacus," "The Alamo," "El Cid," "Mutiny on the Bounty," "Lawrence of Arabia," "The Longest Day," "Cleopatra," "My Fair Lady," “Doctor Zhivago,” and "2001: A Space Odyssey," as well as Wise's own contributions, "West Side Story," "The Sound of Music," "The Sand Pebbles," and "Star!" The roadshow film would play out its initial exclusive engagement over a period of say, six months or so, and then go into wide release in many theatres with multiple screenings per day. (And would usually lose about 10-20 minutes in the process so the second-run theatres could squeeze out an extra showing per day, which is why so many roadshow films of that period - "Spartacus," "The Alamo," "Lawrence of Arabia," and "The Sand Pebbles," for example - have needed restoration of deleted scenes.) Lamentably, the roadshow film died out around the time of "Easy Rider" and the rise of the multi-plex, and because such bloated duds as "Hello, Dolly!," "Tora! Tora! Tora!," and "Paint Your Wagon" made the entire practice seem out of touch and antiquated. Yet even today, event pictures like "Titanic," and "The Lord of the Rings" are very much in the tradition of the roadshow film.

“It was an incredible act of nepotism, I suppose,” recalls Richard Zanuck. “But I’d grown up on that lot, I’d sold newspapers there, I’d worked in all the various departments during summer vacations, and I knew all the people there, I knew the different jobs. And I’d already been a successful producer, so it really wasn’t that outrageous that he chose me to run the place. At the time my father took over, the studio was a ghost town, you could practically see thetumbleweeds rolling through the streets. The first thing I did was to fire everyone, we had to let a thousand people go, we even had to shut down the commissary. I just kept on a skeleton staff - a couple of lawyers and some secretaries and janitors, and a few writers to develop properties.”

Zanuck fils soon discovered that one of the Fox-owned properties that had been left languishing was “The Sound of Music.” “It was just sitting there on a shelf,” he said. “They had paid a lot of money for it but because of ‘Cleopatra,’ they’d never done anything with it. In fact, Swifty Lazar, who had negotiated the original deal for it, was so convinced we weren’t going to re-open the studio, he tried to buy it back. That was sort of the perception around town, that we were never going to re-open. But I told him in no uncertain terms that not only were we going to re-open but we were absolutely going to make that picture.”

In an attempt to signal that Fox was still a force in the industry, an announcement in Variety proudly heralded the signing of one of the industry’s most respected screenwriters, Ernest Lehman, to adapt “The Sound of Music.”

‘SOUND’ OF 20TH

PROD’N HEARD;

LEHMAN INKED

Ernest Lehman has signed to script

“Sound of Music.” Deal completed

Friday by studio chief Richard Zanuck

is first of a number with top personalities

designed to get 20th-Fox back into full scale

production this summer. Choice of Lehman

to adapt the Rodgers-Hammerstein music

drama was signaled by prexy Darryl F. Zanuck,

who hired writer in 1955 to transfer another

R&H stage music hit, “The King and I.”

Lehman...will tackle the “Sound of Music”

screenplay on Jan. 14.

Variety, December 10, 1962

The studio would soon be issuing press releases trumpeting the fact that such major directors as Wyler, Carol Reed and Robert Wise would be directing “The Sound of Music,” “The Agony and the Ecstasy” and “The Sand Pebbles,” respectively, as part of the upcoming Fox slate of prestigious roadshow pictures. 20th Century-Fox was still in the game and the two Zanucks were determined to let the town know it. Wise had brought “The Sand Pebbles” to Fox after The Mirisch Company determined that it would be too expensive to shoot overseas and urged him to consider shooting the picture on the Sacramento River. Although he found the idea absurd, Wise dutifully scouted locations in Northern California but failed to find any locales that he felt could reasonably pass for 1920s China. Fearing (justifiably, as it turned out) that a location shoot in Asia, much of it on water, would run wildly over budget, The Mirisch Company and United Artists allowed Wise to take the property to Fox, which gladly welcomed him back to the lot. So, just about the time William Wyler was flying around the Austrian Alps, Robert Wise was scouting locations on the riverbanks of the Mekong Delta in South Vietnam. In a cable to Zanuck, Wise announced he had found some adequate locales that might work, but he cautioned the studio chief that the production could encounter problems with the local insurgents, the Viet Cong. Continuing his location scouting, Wise next traveled to Taiwan. There he found suitable locations that could be dressed to replicate not only the look of 1920s China but double for the Yangtze River, where much of the film was to take place. However, in 1963 there had never been a foreign film shot in Taiwan and the country was technically in a state of war with mainland China. It was a bureaucratic nightmare and when Wise returned home he was unsure whether or not the Taiwanese officials would ever allow “The Sand Pebbles” shooting to take place on the island.

Of course, filming an American motion picture in “Red" China in the mid-60s was never an option, and it was beginning to look like Robert Wise was running out of options for making his start date on “The Sand Pebbles.” Other issues hobbling commencement of the film included getting the script into final shape and assembling a cast. For the screenplay, Wise had selected his “Until They Sail” scribe, playwright Robert Anderson of “Tea and Sympathy” fame, to adapt the sprawling Richard McKenna best seller. But “Pebbles” was a big book, with (literally) a boatload of characters and subplots, and coming up with a clean narrative would require jettisoning many minor characters and incidents. As Anderson wrestled with the structure of the script, Wise began thinking of a suitable cast. His first choice to play the lead character – Jake Holman, an inarticulate loner on a Navy gunboat who lives for his engines, was Paul Newman, another veteran of “Until They Sail,” But Newman felt he was wrong for the part and passed. Near the bottom of the potential leading-man list was Steve McQueen, a former TV star who had just recently crossed over into features with some success. Wise, of course, had discovered McQueen in the Fifties and given him his first film role opposite Newman in a couple of brief scenes at the beginning of “Somebody Up There Likes Me.” Although he had made an explosive impact on TV with his bounty hunter western, “Wanted: Dead or Alive,” and onscreen as one of “The Magnificent Seven,” McQueen had yet to establish himself as a star who could carry a major film. Consequently, Fox vetoed him for the starring role in what promised to be a costly production.

Wise had been Lehman’s first choice to direct the film “The Sound of Music,” but the director was already too involved in pre-production for “The Sand Pebbles,” and, he would later admit, the show’s reputation as a sugary confection had lessened his interest in the property. It was an attitude shared by more than a few in the industry. In the re-opened Fox commissary, Lehman ran into Burt Lancaster, who asked the writer what his next project was. When Lehman replied he was writing “The Sound of Music,” Lancaster sniffed, “Jesus, you must really need the money.” At a party at Jack Lemmon’s house, Lehman encountered a similar reaction from Billy Wilder, who told him in no uncertain terms, “No musical with swastikas will ever be a success!” But the story of a young postulate sent to become a governess for the unruly children of a retired Austrian Naval captain had captivated Lehman the first time he saw it on Broadway. Even after rebuffs from Stanley Donen and Gene Kelly (who quickly escorted Lehman out of his house with the admonition to “find somebody else to direct this kind of shit”) his initial positive reaction to the play, despite its obvious glucose levels, fueled his conviction that it could be a successful and moving entertainment. He was determined to find a director who shared his belief in the material.

Meeting with Darryl and Richard Zanuck in New York in January of 1963 to discuss potential directors, Lehman casually mentioned that he thought William Wyler was one of the industry’s greatest directors. The elder Zanuck enthusiastically agreed and immediately phoned Wyler in California, who flew to New York the next day to meet with them and see the play. Much to Lehman’s chagrin, Wyler loathed it. As they left the Lunt-Fontanne Theatre he told Lehman, “I can’t meet Darryl. I hated the show and I’m not going to do this. But keep talking to me, anyway.” Lehman saw this as his opening and as they walked around Manhattan the writer outlined his ideas for changes he’d make and the positive things in the show he would develop and strengthen. As Darryl F. Zanuck sat waiting for them at the “21” Club, Lehman tried to get Wyler to articulate his objections to the musical. Hours passed as the two men continued walking, with Lehman for the defense, praising the merits of the wonderful Rodgers & Hammerstein score, discussing potential changes and detailing his vision of what the play could become. At around two in the morning, an exhausted Lehman stopped and asked Wyler what he thought of the scene where the martinet von Trapp started singing with his children.

“Funny you should bring that up,” Wyler replied. “I almost cried.” Lehman grinned in triumph. “Willy, that’s it! That’s what it’s all about!” The next morning, Lehman phoned Darryl Zanuck with a mixture of optimism and trepidation. Although the mogul was not the type of man used to being stood up, Lehman was so confident of winning Wyler over that Zanuck immediately forgave the snub. “Stop working on the script,” he barked. “Your job is to get Willy Wyler to do this movie!” On the flight back to Los Angeles, Lehman continued wooing the reluctant director and for the next two weeks his seduction continued until Wyler finally relented and agreed to produce and direct “The Sound of Music.”

While in New York, Lehman had attended a screening of “The Trapp Family,” an edited and dubbed American version of two German films, “Der Trapp Familie” and “Der Trapp Familie in Amerika,” which provided a different view of the source material. Lehman obtained a copy of Maria von Trapp’s book, “The Story of the Trapp Family Singers,” which had been the basis for the two German films as well as the Broadway show and immediately began marking it up with the many insights it gave him for Maria’s character, such as “black sheep of the community,” “never meant to be bad but upbringing had been more that of a wild boy than a young lady,” “slid down the banister, raced down the staircase - sinful acts.” He also met with Maria herself, whose main request was that the film soften the portrayal of Captain von Trapp. She felt the play had unfairly emphasized his rigid, militaristic side and neglected his warmth and love of his children and she hoped the film would show his participation in developing the children’s professional careers. Lehman was open to her suggestions and incorporated many of them into his notes.

By early February 1963 Lehman had drafted a set of proposed changes for Wyler’s approval. Most of these involved moving songs around and eliminating some of them altogether. So pervasive was Lehman’s re-arrangement of the material that only a single song in the film’s first act matched its running order with the play. As he had with “The King and I” and “West Side Story” Lehman knew when to respect the source material and when to re-shape it for film. He was all too aware that the realistic medium of film was far more demanding than the footlights of a Broadway stage in validating every segue into song. He eliminated two numbers sung by the Baroness and Max, “How Will Love Survive?” and “No Way to Stop It,” feeling that these characters were secondary and should be kept out of the “musical circle” of singers; he envisioned only Maria, the nuns, the Captain and his children singing. He also moved one of the key numbers, “My Favorite Things,” from its original placement early in the show and sung by Maria and the Mother Abbess, to the later scene in Maria’s bedroom where the children gather during the thunderstorm and first begin to accept Maria. It replaced “The Lonely Goatherd,” which found a home later in the script showcased in a newly-created scene where Maria and the children perform a puppet show for the Captain and his guests.

On February 2, Lehman had a lengthy meeting with Wyler, reviewing the outline and starting work on the first thirty pages of the script, which he completed on March 6. The Captain’s martial relationship with his children was explained as his way of coping with the trauma of his wife’s death by imposing a rigid discipline in the household. The triangle between Maria and the Captain and the Baroness was also refined. Wyler was enthusiastic but felt Lehman should write a full treatment before proceeding with the script, in order to solve whatever structural flaws the musical’s book might have. During the next two weeks Lehman wrote an 18-page treatment that picked up where his first thirty pages had left off.

Wyler hired veteran MGM musical supervisor Roger Edens as his associate producer and Edens and Lehman spent a great deal of time during the following weeks brainstorming. Edens was very familiar with Salzburg and offered many helpful suggestions on which locations Lehman could incorporate into the screenplay. On May 25, Lehman flew to Austria where he and Wyler, Edens and Wyler’s friend, Wolfgang Reinhardt, producer of the German film “Die Trapp Familie,” would scout locations. It was in Austria that that Lehman began noticing that Wyler’s attachment for the project, never a burning passion, was noticeably cooling. During the next two weeks, as they looked at over 75 potential locations for the film, Wyler spent a sizable amount of time taking long-distance calls from different studios discussing other film projects, including MGM’s “The Americanization of Emily.”

There were also the eternal “creative differences.” Wyler wanted to introduce a sense of danger and urgency to the finale and to make the Nazi menace even more threatening. He wanted to inject more anti-Nazi sentiment into the film and urged Lehman to write scenes showing German tanks rolling into Salzburg after the Anschluss, the Nazi annexation of Austria. Lehman felt it was a terrible idea that totally violated the spirit of the musical.

By the time they returned to California on June 10, Lehman was having decidedly mixed emotions about the film’s progress. He was delighted with the location scouting trip; Wyler, Edens and Reinhardt and he had found incredible sights that had fired his imagination and given him strong ideas for scene and song placement. But he was deeply troubled by the different views he and Wyler had about the material and was seriously questioning Wyler’s commitment to the film. He shared his doubts with Richard Zanuck, who instructed Lehman to write the screenplay as quickly as possible in order to discover the director’s true intentions about the project. Lehman spent the summer of 1963 working on his first draft screenplay and it flowed out of his pen at twice his customary speed. The scouting trip had confirmed his decision to “open up” the “Do-Re-Mi” number to take advantage of the many pictorial opportunities of Salzburg as he envisioned the sequence extending over several days and locations, similar to what had been done with the “West Side Story” number, “Quintet.” On September 10 the first draft was finished and delivered to Zanuck and Wyler, who had a reputation for being highly demanding of his screenwriters. “He ate writers alive,” said Lehman, adding that Wyler’s attention to detail and to getting the script right was always a sure sign that he was really committed to a project. So when Wyler read Lehman’s script and said, “Ernie, I’ve never read such a perfect first draft. I can’t think of a single thing I can improve,” Lehman went straight to Zanuck’s office and told him to start worrying about Wyler’s involvement.

Wyler invited Lehman to his home in Malibu for a small weekend party in order to convince one of the guests, Rex Harrison, to play the part of Captain von Trapp. While presenting his case to Harrison, Lehman observed Wyler actively engaged in conversation with the head of Columbia Studios. Later that night, Lehman was admiring Wyler’s study and noticed a script lying on the desk. Turning it over, he saw its title, “The Collector,” which he knew to be an upcoming Columbia project. The following Monday, Lehman went to Zanuck and told him, “Dick, Willy is going to direct ‘The Collector.’” Zanuck, who had sided with Lehman in opposing Wyler’s desire to have Nazi tanks rolling through the streets of Salzburg in the finale, had pretty much accepted the fact that Wyler wouldn’t be directing the film. When Paul Kohner, Wyler’s agent, visited Zanuck a few days later, he announced that his client wanted to direct “The Collector” before “The Sound of Music” and asked Zanuck to postpone “Music” until after the other film was completed. Zanuck was fully prepared, saying, “Tell Willie to go make ‘The Collector,’ we are not postponing ‘The Sound of Music’ five seconds.” And with that, William Wyler’s nine-month flirtation with “The Sound of Music” was over.

Robert Wise, on the other hand, was still very much committed to getting the USS San Pablo afloat, but the waters were proving resistant. For every sign of progress it seemed there were equal, if not greater, reversals. During the summer of 1963, Wise’s old friend from the RKO editing room, John Sturges, had scored a box office smash with “The Great Escape,” his stirring tribute to Allied POWs in WWII and Steve McQueen had emerged from the film a full-fledged movie star. Highlighted by his now-legendary motorcycle jump over the barbed wire fence, McQueen’s undeniable screen presence dominated the film, despite such canny scene stealers as James Garner, Richard Attenborough, James Coburn, Donald Pleasance, and Charles Bronson all vying for screen time. Fox was now willing to gamble on McQueen’s star power and gave its blessing for him to play Jake Holman.

But now the actor’s dance card was full. He was booked months ahead and, given the difficulties with the Taiwanese government, combined with predictions of inclement weather during the shoot in Asia and a script that was still not completed to anyone’s satisfaction, Wise and Zanuck had to accept the inescapable conclusion that “The Sand Pebbles” would not be ready to begin shooting for at least a year.

Frustrated by the delay, Wise let it be known that he was open to shooting a picture while waiting for “Pebbles” to get underway. Upon learning of Wise’s availability, Lehman asked their mutual agent, Phil Gersh, to slip Wise a copy of the “Music” script. In their three previous collaborations Lehman had come to feel that no screenwriter could have a better friend in a director than Bob Wise and that he would be the perfect choice to direct the film. Wise received the script but still had his reservations. Having never seen the Broadway show, he called Saul Chaplin, his musical supervisor on “West Side Story,” for his opinion. Chaplin told him that even though he had disliked the play, it had been the most successful of all the Rodgers & Hammerstein shows and he felt it contained their finest songs. Wise read the script and, to his astonishment, found he was captivated by Lehman’s efforts. The restructuring of the plot, the elegance of Lehman’s dialogue and the script’s emphasis on characterization had taken what had been a confectionary excuse for some pretty songs and turned it into a compelling human drama about the transformative power of love and the sustaining bonds of family during times of social crisis. Wise bought the Broadway cast album and was equally delighted with the Rodgers & Hammerstein score. But before committing to the project he sent the script to Chaplin, wanting to gauge his reaction. Chaplin was equally impressed, praising the many changes Lehman had made. After reading the script a second time and playing the album once more, Wise told Zanuck he wanted to do the picture.

Zanuck was both delighted and puzzled. Although thrilled that a director of Wise’s stature was going to direct the film, he wondered just how the hell he’d gotten a copy of the closely guarded script so soon. Zanuck called Lehman in to tell him the good news. “Ernie, guess who would like to direct ‘The Sound of Music?,’” Zanuck asked. “Who?” Lehman blankly replied. “Bob Wise!” exclaimed the delighted studio head. “No kidding!” replied the writer, failing to contain a slight smile. He was a better writer than actor, and it didn’t take long for Zanuck to figure out the culprit. “You son of a bitch!” Zanuck laughed. “You gave him the script, didn’t you?” Grinning from ear to ear, Lehman batted his eyelashes and replied with as much feigned innocence as he could muster, “Who, me?” At that very moment, if both men had listened carefully, the sound of cash registers tolling for the ages could have been heard in the distance.

“I do have a definite sense of embarrassment

for having laughed at one point about Ernie doing “Music”

and now find myself on it, too, but he had done a damn

good job and has improved the original so very much

that I do think that given the proper treatment and cast,

we can get a helluva good film and a popular one.

I’m not kidding myself - it’s no “West Side Story.”

But if we can fight off too much sentimentality

and the syrup that is inherent in the basic material

and give it an exciting cinematic treatment, perhaps

we can make it a much better picture than it was a play.

What am I talking about - the picture should only

be as successful!”

Letter from Robert Wise to Robert Anderson

October 1963

Wise wrote Anderson to inform him about the year-long delay on “The Sand Pebbles,” which would allow the playwright some much-needed time to finish his revisions to the script. He also wanted to let Anderson know he would be directing “The Sound of Music” in the interim, with the official announcement coming a few days later in Variety:

WISE HELMS

‘SOUND’ AT 20TH

Robert Wise succeeds William

Wyler as producer-director of “The

Sound of Music” at 20th-Fox, film

is now to be a joint venture by Wise’s

Argyle Enterprises and 20th-Fox.

Lensing is now slated to go before

Todd-AO cameras March 15...and

will be a 20th Christmas 1964 release.

Wise, who was previously prepping

“The Sand Pebbles” for 20th under

his own banner as a joint production,

has set a start date of this back to Oct.

15 from Sept. 1.

Variety

November 5, 1963

Zanuck gave Lehman a four-week vacation in Palm Springs while Wise familiarized himself with the material. Wise read all the research amassed about the Trapp Family Singers and started learning as much as he could the story of Maria and the Trapp Family. Maria Augusta Kutschera had been raised an atheist by her socialist uncle, a strict, unloving disciplinarian. A tomboy in her youth, she had spent her happiest hours climbing the mountains above Salzburg. Converting to Catholicism in college, she entered Nonnberg Abbey intending to become a nun. But the sedentary existence of the Abbey seemed to affect her health and she developed severe migraines. The reverend Mother of the Abbey decided to send Maria to care for a sick child of Georg von Trapp, a retired Captain in the Austrian Navy, promising she could return to the Abbey in nine months. But Maria and the Captain fell in love and were married in 1927. Discovering that the Captain’s seven children (they would later have three more of their own) had a natural ear for music, Maria, with the Captain’s encouragement, began rehearsing them and soon they were performing at local festivals, on the radio and touring internationally. When Germany annexed Austria in 1937, the staunchly patriotic, anti-Nazi von Trapp refused his induction orders to serve in the German Navy and the family made its way over the Austrian mountain range into Italy and eventually to America where Maria and Georg opened a skiing lodge in Vermont.

Maria was a strong, dynamic woman and a force of nature. (Mary Martin would later write, “I came to the conclusion that perhaps the family didn’t just climb that mountain to escape. She pushed them all the way.”) She had taken children with musical aptitude and molded them into an internationally acclaimed musical act. Once they were in their new country, she decided to promote the family franchise and wrote the best-selling memoir, “The Story of the Trapp Family Singers.” A few years later, Wolfgang Reinhardt bought the film rights to her book and had a worldwide smash with “Die Trapp Familie.” It was so successful that he produced a sequel, “Die Trapp Familie in Amerika,” also a big hit. Paramount Pictures noticed the films’ successes and optioned the U.S. rights as a potential property for Audrey Hepburn. Richard Halliday, Mary Martin’s husband, had seen one of the German films and thought it would make a splendid stage vehicle for his wife. He and partner Leland Hayward purchased the rights to the films and enlisted the esteemed writing team of Howard Lindsay and Russel Crouse (“Life with Father,” “Arsenic and Old Lace,” “State of the Union”) to provide the script, originally conceived as a straight drama, with the occasional Austrian folk song thrown in.

Rodgers & Hammerstein were approached about composing an original song for the play but declined the offer, saying they would, however, be open to writing an entire new score for it after finishing “Flower Drum Song.” Halliday and Hayward quickly agreed and the musical opened on November 16, 1959. It was an immediate smash, running for 1,443 performances and winning six Tonys, including Best Musical. The critics however, were less than kind. Though praising the Rodgers & Hammerstein score with its now-classic showtunes “Climb Ev’ry Mountain,” “My Favorite Things,” and the title song, they either damned it with faint praise or attacked it with outright hostility, blasting the saccharine sentimentality that ran rampant throughout the show.

It was this kind of sugar-coating that Wise was determined to avoid and it became his overriding mandate to the production team. He quickly re-assembled the core of his “West Side Story” unit - music associate Chaplin, production designer Boris Leven and storyboard illustrator Maurice Zuberano – who, along with Fox production supervisor Saul Wurtzel and Assistant Director Ridgeway “Reggie” Callow, traveled to Salzburg in 1963 for location scouting. Like the previous Wyler-led team, they found many suitable sites for the film, though it became apparent when they visited Wyler’s preferred locations that the approach of the two directors was diametrically opposed. Wise insisted on a clean and realistic look, whereas Wyler had wanted the locations to be on a grand scale, opulent and ornate. “Wyler wanted to do the movie like the von Trapps were the Hapsburgs,” says Zuberano. “As if they were the royal family. Bob didn’t see it that way. Von Trapp was only a captain!” They also visited the original von Trapp villa, but it had been taken over by a Gestapo official during the war who had built a high wall around the property, rendering it unusable for the film. On the way back from Salzburg, Wise stopped in London to visit potential actors for the children's’ roles and then went on to New York to meet with Robert Anderson about the “Pebbles” script. While having lunch, they learned of the Kennedy assassination. As a passionate admirer of the president, Wise was devastated. “I suddenly had an overwhelming urge to get back to L.A., I don’t quite know why, but it just seemed like I had to get home right away,” he said years later. He immediately flew back to Los Angeles and sat transfixed by the tragedy he saw unfold during the next four days. Though he could not know it at the time, the death of John Kennedy would lead to a tearing of the social fabric that would eventually sweep away the world that Robert Wise was just about to conquer.

Wise and his team threw themselves into their work in a frenzied attempt to make the planned start date of March 1964. The first order of business was to finalize the script, then select a cast and start planning the look of the film. Although Mary Martin had been a successful Maria onstage, the movie camera would not allow the 50-year-old actress to pass for a twentysomething postulate. When Lehman met with Richard Rodgers, the skeptical composer said, “I suppose you’re going to cast Doris Day, huh?” In fact, Day’s husband, Marty Melcher, would lobby heavily for his wife to play the role, but Lehman told Rodgers “as far I’m concerned, there’s only one person to play this role and that’s Julie Andrews.” This satisfied Rodgers, who had enjoyed working with her on the TV special, “Cinderella,” and Lehman would insist to Wise she was the ideal candidate.

Andrews had been performing onstage since childhood and had scored success on Broadway as the adulterous Guenevere in Lerner and Lowe’s “Camelot,” on television in the title role of “Cinderella,” and in her Emmy-winning TV special with Carol Burnett, “Julie and Carol at Carnegie Hall,” where she had spoofed “The Sound of Music” in a skit called the “The Tripp Family Singers.” But she was best known for originating the role of flower girl Eliza Doolittle who is transformed into a regal aristocrat in the original Broadway production of “My Fair Lady.” Although passed over for the film role of Doolittle in the movie version of “Lady,” Andrews would make an indelible film debut in Walt Disney’s “Mary Poppins” a year later. She was already at work on her second film, a straight dramatic role in “The Americanization of Emily,” one of the projects Wyler had been toying with on the side. It was widely believed that Jack Warner had spread the rumor Andrews was unphotogenic in order to justify his decision to cast Audrey Hepburn as Eliza in “My Fair Lady.” Wise had heard those rumors and arranged for a screening of some “Poppins” footage on the Disney lot to see for himself.

He and Lehman drove over to a screening room in Burbank and were impressed by what they saw. Andrews was a beautifully photogenic actress with terrific screen presence. Her singing was magnificent and it was obvious she would be perfect for the part of Maria. During the screening, Wise whispered to Lehman, “Let’s sign her before any one else sees her!” But, just as Wise had been, Andrews was reluctant at first about the saccharine levels of the play. However, after assurances from the director that the schmaltzier elements would be heavily toned down, she signed on.

Her casting was a stroke of genius. She had won the public’s heart when she lost the “Lady” role to Hepburn, but eventually had the last laugh by winning a Best Actress Oscar for “Poppins” while Hepburn failed to garner so much as a nomination for “Lady.” There was also a kind of poetic justice in her casting, since Paramount had originally bought the rights to the German von Trapp films as a potential vehicle for Audrey Hepburn. So, as luck would have it, when “The Sound of Music” was to open in March of 1965, Julie Andrews was the screen’s reigning cinematic sweetheart. Her performance as Maria was a warmer, gentler variation of her “Poppins” uber-nanny image and in her roles as actress, singer, comedienne, romantic lead and movie star, Andrews carried the film. She won her Oscar for “Poppins” within days of the premiere of “The Sound of Music” and the film’s success is unimaginable without her; it cemented her status as one of the top box office personalities in the world and she would win a second consecutive Oscar nomination for Best Actress.

For the role of Captain von Trapp, Wise had a definite conviction that the film needed to go in a different direction than the play’s choice of the slightly rotund and older presence of Theodore Bikel. He felt a younger romantic lead was needed, an actor who could generate sexual tension with Andrews’s Maria. Wise drew up a list of potential casting choices: Sean Connery, Peter Finch, Richard Burton, Stephen Boyd, and even Yul Brynner, who lobbied vigorously for the part. Brynner had made his name in “The King and I,” playing another Rodgers & Hammerstein martinet who battled a spunky governess about raising his children so Wise eliminated him, feeling the similarities would be too redundant and because the idea of Brynner and Andrews as a romantic couple never seemed quite right to him. At one point someone even floated “der Bingle” - Bing Crosby - for the Captain’s part, but Wise was already interested in Christopher Plummer.

Wise had admired Plummer’s work on Broadway and pursued the reluctant actor, who felt that despite Lehman’s best efforts the role of the Captain was the dullest part he’d ever read. Wise assured him the part would be given more substance and had the actor meet with Lehman. Plummer elicited a promise from Lehman to give the part more of a wry, sardonic quality. Zanuck had initially opposed casting Plummer since the actor had only done three pictures and the studio chief wanted a bigger name in the role, especially since Andrews was an untried box-office commodity. But Wise insisted the Canadian actor had an edge, an electricity, a sense of danger that would translate into an exciting screen chemistry with Andrews and Zanuck relented. This was fortunate for it was Plummer who gave the film a grounding that prevented it from veering off into Viennese operetta and his clear blue eyes and steely jaw provided the Captain with an aristocratic bearing and icy sexuality. Plummer is the major reason for the film’s enduring appeal among successive legions of young girls, in love with the dashing von Trapp. Though “The Sound of Music” is correctly thought of as a Julie Andrews vehicle, it is the performance of Christopher Plummer that is the foundation on which the film rests.

For the key supporting role of Max, the family friend who becomes their stage manager, Wise considered such veteran character actors as Victor Borge, Robert Morley, Kurt Kaznar and even Noel Coward and Fred Astaire, but ultimately the role went to the ever-reliable Richard Haydn. He was a veteran character actor who could be counted on to spice up the show’s more sentimental aspects with his cynically droll asides. In fact, Haydn is almost outside the film, as if watching the events unfold and offering running commentary in a wonderfully subversive performance. It is one of the film’s minor pleasures to catch the twinkle in Plummer’s eye and his sly, crocodile grin whenever he has a scene with Haydn, as if the two of them are in a joke no one else in the cast shares.

Initially, for the role of the Baroness, Wise thought an elegant European actress such as Diane Cilento, Dana Wynter or Capucine might be able to bring a sophisticated presence to the rather stock character of Elsa, von Trapp’s society-minded fiancee. But he finally decided upon Eleanor Parker, with whom he had worked on “Three Secrets.” Wise not only knew and liked her but felt she could bring some classic Hollywood studio glamour to the part and be a familiar marquee name to help support the relatively new leading players. Another old pro cast was Peggy Wood, who had been in “Naughty Marietta” on Broadway in 1910. A veteran of more than 70 plays and countless movies, she was probably best-remembered for being one of the pioneers in TV, with her series “Mama,” which ran from 1949-1957. Her casting as the wise and compassionate Mother Abbess was validated when she was nominated for an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress. Veterans Anna Lee, well-known ghost singer Marni Nixon, and cabaret star Portia Nelson, as the dyspeptic Sister Berthe, were also cast and lend admirable support.

It was the casting of the Captain’s children that Wise felt would be a potential minefield. The entire picture could easily become unbearably cloying if there were any precocious show biz babies playing cutesy for the camera and mugging away. Wise spent a great deal of time holding auditions, and among the many hopefuls he saw were Mia Farrow, Kurt Russell, Lesley Ann Warren, Patty Duke, Richard Dreyfuss and even the Osmond Brothers. More than 200 young actors were considered for the children's roles and Wise toyed with the idea of casting Geraldine Chaplin as Liesl. Ultimately, it was an inexperienced young girl who piqued his interest with her freshly scrubbed looks and burgeoning, untapped sensuality. Wise decided Charmian Farnon would be perfect for the part of Liesl, although he decided to change her name to the more alliterative Charmian Carr. Eschewing more well-known child actors, Wise ultimately cast unknowns in the parts, with the sole exception of Angela Cartwright, who was a familiar TV presence on the “Danny Thomas Show,” and had worked for Wise in “Somebody Up There Likes Me.” His preference for unfamiliar actors was due to his desire for a freshness, a belief they would be more believable without baggage from previous roles.

Concurrently, production designer Boris Leven and storyboard artist Maurice Zuberano began making their sketches for the film. Wise had made it clear he wanted Leven to avoid any kind of Austrian gingerbread; he wanted a clean, elegant look to the film. The trusty “Zuby” immediately began translating Lehman’s script into the precise, detailed drawings that Wise would scrupulously adhere to throughout the shoot. Another member of this team was costume designer Dorothy Jeakins, whose sketches were the opposite of the lederhosen look Wise wanted to avoid. Her designs were clean and functional and even Maria’s stunning wedding gown was sleek but not ostentatious.

But for Wise it was Boris Leven’s production design that was responsible for the overall look of the film. The director would later recall Leven’s contribution, saying, “I place as much importance on the production design as I do on the cinematography. This will sound like heresy to the cinematographers, but I think the production designer, if he’s creative, can contribute as much to the look of a film as the cameraman. Boris Leven was a brilliant production designer and he did all my Sixties films, with the exception of ‘The Haunting.’ In the past, I had a situation where the production designer would bring the cinematographer a sketch of how a set was going to look. As an artist, he would naturally put a light source to make a good painting. The cinematographer would resent that, like the production designer was trying to tell him how to light a set. Several times I’ve seen a cinematographer look at the set sketch, put it away and go his own way. My cinematographer on “The Sound of Music” was Ted McCord, with whom I had enjoyed working so much on ‘Two for the Seesaw.’ Ted really loved Boris’s ideas about lighting and they would often consult each other. Sometimes Ted would ask Boris to come on to the set and see what he thought about a certain approach toward lighting. After seeing the rushes at the end of the day, they’d walk back to their cars discussing what they had just seen. It was a very cooperative working relationship, which I value very highly and had not always had.”

McCord’s work on the film was stunningly rendered in Todd-A0 65 mm and anyone who has been fortunate enough to see the film in that format can attest to the outstanding clarity of the images. The process was the high-definition medium of its time. Especially memorable are the opening shots in the film as the camera silently drifts through the majestic Alps. This was another contribution of Lehman’s; it had come to him while working on the script back in his office on the Fox lot, as he recalled the trip to Salzburg. On Tuesday June 24, 1963 Ernie Lehman closed his eyes and imagined himself drifting through the skies, looking down upon those magnificent Austrian gorges and valleys, soaring beyond all of life’s cares before alighting on the mountaintop where Maria will sing the title song. It is one of the most gripping openings in motion picture history and it almost didn’t happen.

In a story he always enjoyed telling on himself, Wise at first rejected the aerial opening. “I had read the script and liked it very much but I had problems with the aerial opening. I thought we were just copying ourselves because we’d used the same type of opening for ‘West Side Story,’” Wise recalled. “I called Ernie and said, ‘We’ve got to get a different opening. Everybody is going to say we don’t know anything to do except getting the helicopter to open our films.’ Ernie said, ‘I know what you mean, but I can’t think of any other opening that I believe is right for this film. If you can think of one, be my guest.’ After a week or two, I told Ernie ‘I give up. I can’t think of anything nearly as effective, the hell with it. If it’s right for the film, we’ll just go ahead and do it.’ Well, the irony was, no ever compared it to ‘West Side,’ and in fact it is talked about far more than the opening of ‘West Side!’”

Lehman’s descriptions of the opening shots violate almost every cardinal rule of modern day screenwriting classes taught by self-proclaimed experts. Not only does he lay out the shots in minute detail for the director, (the horror!) he then turns impressionistic and begins to describe the feelings he intends the shots to convey. But Wise was always open to whatever his writers wanted to include in their scripts, reasonably figuring that if he didn’t like it he wouldn’t use it. Today someone who has never seen the film could read the opening passages of the script and easily imagine what those majestic first frames look like. Although Lehman was widely admired for the sharpness and wit of his dialogue, he himself was rightly proud of his visual conceptions, and the two most memorable scenes of his career – the crop dusting sequence in “North by Northwest” and the airborne montage that opens “The Sound of Music” - are both wordless.

The musical elements of the show were overseen by Saul Chaplin and the choreography by Marc Breaux and his wife, DeeDee Wood, who had just finished choreographing “Poppins.” Once the songs and music to be used in the film version were finalized, Wise and Chaplin would meet before rehearsals with the actors began and discuss the characters, then Chaplin and the choreographers would work out a routine. None of the original stage choreography was used. Breaux and Chaplin flew to Salzburg to time the two dance sequences that would be filmed on location there. It was a fortuitous stroke when they spied the Mirbell Gardens steps and came up with an ending for “Do Re Mi” where the children jump up and down the steps as if they were the notes on a musical staff. The only non-original piece of choreography in the film was “The Laendler,” an Austrian folk dance performed by the Captain and Maria during the ball. It is an emotional turning point in the film, where Maria discovers she has romantic feelings for the Captain and the dance is used in classic screen tradition to express her realization that she has fallen in love with him.

In a bylined article Wise defended the many changes the filmmakers made to the play, including the all-new choreography, in an effort to circumvent anticipated complaints about altering the already beloved musical:

“One of the most frequent complaints encountered

in moving a stage property to the screen is that

the choreography has been changed. Of all the criticism

involved this one has the least validity....On stage the

choreography is necessarily confined to the proscenium

arch. We have no strictures and can permit the flow

of dancing to break out of the other areas. It not

only serves to broaden the scope of the number itself,

it helps to serve as a bridge to the ensuing scene.

And, of course, the ability to shoot dance sequences

in pieces for subsequent integration enabled

choreographers Marc Breaux and DeeDee Wood

to give the dancers far greater latitude in numbers

that would be too physically exhausting if done at

one time - and impossible if attempted as a nightly routine.”

Why ‘Sound of Music’ Sounds Differently”

by Robert Wise

Los Angeles Times

January 24, 1965

At a script conference in December, Wise, Lehman and Chaplin discussed the song, “An Ordinary Couple.” Although Lehman found it acceptable, both Wise and Chaplin thought it weak. “It was a song two old people might sing to each other,” observed Wise. “Not a young, vibrant couple.” Rodgers later admitted he never much cared for the song and if Hammerstein hadn’t been so ill they would have replaced it. They also decided to drop “How Will Love Survive?”, a political number sung by the Captain, Elsa and Max, because it dragged and stopped the momentum of the show. There was a general consensus that a new song was needed for Maria after she leaves the Abbey for her journey to the von Trapp estate. Although the songs would be written by Rodgers, Lehman needed to write introductions for them and by December 10 he had given Rodgers new scenes and dummy lyrics for Maria’s “Walking Soliloquy.” Wise and Chaplin then met with Rodgers in January 1964 and the composer agreed to drop both songs and to write a new song to replace “Ordinary Couple,” and one for Maria’s “Soliloquy.” Chaplin went on to explain that the “Soliloquy” number would be broken down into three parts; it was to be what Lehman called “a stop and start song,” with each verse radiating Maria’s growing enthusiasm until she explodes with the last line, “I have confidence in me!” Rodgers was receptive and began work on the new songs.

On Valentine’s Day a package from the composer arrived at Fox with the words and music to a lovely new song called “Something Good,” a tender ballad that would easily take its place among the other classics in the score. But when Chaplin heard the new “soliloquy” song he was thoroughly disappointed. Instead of the “uptempo” walking song Lehman had envisioned, Rodgers had done a slow, ponderous dirge. Rodgers submitted a different version of the song and although it had more energy Chaplin was still dissatisfied. He called in Lehman and they wrote new lyrics, incorporated parts of Rodgers’ melody and came up with the final version, now called, “I Have Confidence.” Chaplin then had Marni Nixon, the noted “ghost singer” who was appearing in the film as Sister Sophia, record the song. He sent it to Rodgers, who wrote that although he preferred his version, he granted permission for them to use the composite version if they desired, and it was this Chaplin/Lehman/Rodgers hybrid that was featured in the film, though credited solely to Rodgers.

Music and dance rehearsals began in February 1964 and consisted of choreographing the dance numbers, making wardrobe tests and pre-recording the songs for the actors to lip-sync later. The songs were never recorded all the way through but in sections, Wise recalled. “It’s almost impossible for a singer and an orchestra to go through a whole three or four minute number, so you may do bars one through twenty eight, get that right and then pick up with bars twenty nine through fifty and so on. You set your tempos there. I used to be known as “Ten percent” Wise. I’d come into a rehearsal and I’d listen to the recording and often I’d say, “Yeah, it’s swell, but it needs to be ten percent faster.’ And it was usually better.”

Almost at once, the pre-recording of the songs precipitated a crisis that threatened to derail the start date of the production. When Christopher Plummer arrived just weeks before principal photography was to begin, he was under the impression that he would be allowed to sing in the film. When told instead that he would be dubbed, he threatened to quit. “Plummer hadn’t understood that they were going to pre-record his songs with a voice double,” Wise would later recall. “That meant that he would have to sing in sync with that ‘dummy’ voice as they were acting in front of the camera. Plummer wanted to do his own pre-recording, with the chance to redo his singing if necessary, after the shooting of the picture was completed. He felt by the time the picture was in post-production, he would have improved on his voice enough so that it could stay in the picture.”

Wise, who had his hands full with the hundreds of last-minute logistical problems had little time or inclination to stroke actors’ egos, especially at this critical stage, so he dispatched Lehman, who had developed a bond of trust with Plummer while they had fleshed out the Captain’s role together, to go try and placate the actor. Lehman had already completed his work on the film and was off working on a project that might be considered the anti-”Sound of Music,” his Code-shattering screen adaptation of Edward Albee’s ode to wedded bliss, “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” Lehman tried to placate and sympathize with Plummer in order to salvage the start time of the film, which was only days away. “He said he felt emasculated,” Lehman recalled. “He said knowing his voice would be dubbed destroyed his ability to play the role.” Dick Zanuck finally stepped in and told Plummer he could do the pre-record and when filming was completed, if Plummer thought his voice had improved enough, he could re-record it for the film. Wise agreed to this and Plummer took voice lessons every day, determined that it would be his voice singing in the film.

“It was a tense and edgy period,” said Wise of those last few days before principal photography began. “No matter how much pre-production preparation time one has on a film - and we had six months of it on “Music” - on that first day of shooting, you feel like a high diver taking the plunge into a pool far below. The anticipation is very nerve-wracking, and it’s only when the plunge has been made and the shooting starts that the nerves settle down. We had to start shooting because of commitments on the other end but we couldn’t go quite that soon to Salzburg because the weather would still be bad and there’d be snow on the ground, so we shot a month in the studio before we moved to Salzburg to pick up the location shooting.” The day before the production went before the cameras, Richard Zanuck sent Wise a cable expressing his best wishes for a successful shoot, in words that seem eerily prescient:

DEAR BOBBY:

TODAY WE LAUNCH “SOUND

OF MUSIC” WHICH IS THE MOST

IMPORTANT PICTURE ON OUR

PRODUCTION SCHEDULE AND

I COULDN’T HAVE MORE

CONFIDENCE IN THE TEAM OF

TECHNICIANS AND ACTORS WE

HAVE ASSEMBLED FOR THIS PICTURE

BUT MY GREATEST SATISFACTION IS

THAT YOU ARE AT THE HELM AND I AM

SECURE IN KNOWING THAT WE WILL

HAVE A GREAT AND MONUMENTAL

ACHIEVEMENT.

SINCERELY

DICK ZANUCK

Principal photography began on Thursday, March 26 on Stage 15 of the Fox lot with the bedroom scene where Maria calms the frightened children by singing “My Favorite Things.” Beginning filming in the middle of the week was a tradition with Wise, who believed a mid-week start carried fewer pressures than a Monday start date. It is a crucial scene in the film for it is the moment when the new governess wins the unruly brood over, another plot point introduced by Lehman. “In the play, the kids seemed to like Maria, right from the start,” Wise recalls. “The introduction of the conflict between the children and Maria, their dislike of her - the toad, the dinner table scene - was another effective change, as was Ernie’s decision to bring the captain into the scene at the end.” The replacement of the original number in this scene, “The Lonely Goatherd” with “My Favorite Things,” proved to be an inspired decision. Not only was “Things” the stronger song, (it was later covered by jazz giant John Coltrane in a landmark recording) but by re-conceiving “Goatherd” as a puppet show, the song was transformed into something far more interesting visually and it now seems inconceivable that either song could be set anywhere else in the story.

Even in this first scene Wise could see that the chemistry between his leading lady and her younger co-stars was everything he hoped for. “Julie was just wonderful working with the children, from the littlest one to Liesl. She was warm, hugged them, played with them, cheered them up, kidded them, and I don’t know of any scene in the picture where I had more help from an actor than this sequence. It was such a joy to see how well she worked with the children, how much they responded to her and how much they loved her. I think it added a warmth you can see on the screen.” The next few weeks saw the filming of the musical numbers “Dixit Dominus,” “Maria,” and the Trapp family’s flight from the Nazis and discovery by Rolf in the crypt This was a last minute substitution suggested by Leven; the original script had the scene take place elsewhere in the Abbey. Then, after a month's shooting, the company traveled to Austria to begin an anticipated six week-location shoot on April 23, 1964. The first scene filmed in Salzburg was the marriage of Maria and the Captain in the Mondsee Cathedral. Andrews remembers the sequence fondly, especially her wedding dress. “I never felt as beautiful as when I wore that wedding gown, I’ve never felt prettier, before or since. That dress was a miracle.”

It would have been an even bigger miracle if the crew had been able to meet the expected shooting schedule. Salzburg, had one of the highest average rainfalls in Europe and six weeks soon turned into eleven. The film quickly went over budget and fell behind schedule, the surveys prepared by production manager Saul Wurtzel having proven alarmingly inaccurate. “We always get those surveys,” Wise recounted, years later, “And when we get to the location, and the weather is terrible and the locals all say, ‘But this is the first time this has ever happened,’ it never fails. We always bring bad weather with us. I can’t tell you how long we sat around in buses and cars, reading, sleeping, whatever, waiting for the rain to let up. If it was just overcast, you still couldn’t shoot because you had started the sequence in the sunlight and you needed the continuity.” Eventually, the crew ran out of alternative sets and could do nothing but wait it out.

“It was intermittent, you’d get three days of perfect weather, then it would rain for three days,” Wise recalls. “But when you have days when you can’t even get an insert, it’s terrible.” Assistant Director Callow joked that Wise should make his fortune as a rainmaker. “I have never gone anywhere with any director in the world who has had so much trouble with weather as Bob Wise,” Callow laughed, adding that the weather problems were ironic, since Wise was “the most prepared director I’ve ever worked with. He retires early, he gets up at 5 o’clock in the morning and prepares his work for the day. Bob would know precisely what he was going to do all the time,” whenever the weather co-operated that is, which was remarkably seldom that summer.

The initial filming had progressed smoothly but by May weather conditions had deteriorated. The shooting of “Do, Re, Mi,” with its many locations across the city of Salzburg, stretched from mid-May to the end of June, with many days lost to rain. Wise and Callow devised three different plans for shooting: one for ideal weather, one for overcast skies and a third, interior “cover set” in the event of rain. It was a system they would put to even greater use on “The Sand Pebbles.”

“The two biggest challenges facing every director,” Wise once observed, “are budget and schedule. They both impact each other and weather impacts them both. Whenever you’re on location, you are completely at the mercy of the weather.” Choreographer DeeDee Wood remembers Wise’s ever-present stopwatch. “Bob had this pocket watch, and he’d look at it every five to ten minutes to keep on schedule,” she said. But he never got impatient.” Wise’s patience was about to be tried even more during one of the musical numbers when an unexpected visitor showed up: Maria von Trapp herself, who had decided to pay a visit to the set. Wise did not relish meeting her; their previous correspondence had been difficult. He had been warned by Lehman that she could be overbearing and he found her demands for script changes so intrusive he fired off a letter to Richard Zanuck complaining about her meddling and suggesting that she be kept at arm’s length during production.

But here she was, so Wise had her costumed as an extra for a crowd scene during the shooting of “I Have Confidence.” After a day of multiple takes Maria von Trapp was exhausted and her dreams of Hollywood stardom forgotten, so the much-relieved director finished the number with little problem. But, having survived that brief encounter, the usually placid Wise finally did lose his fabled cool with the younger cast members after they ran amok in their hotel and were threatened with expulsion.

“We were awful,” Heather Menzies would later confess to The Los Angeles Times. “We played tricks on people, threw things out the window to the cars below. Bob Wise had to step in and read us the riot act.” Wise assigned his wife Pat to oversee the children and make sure they behaved during the remainder of the shoot. One of the adult cast was proving slightly rebellious as well. Never enchanted with his role to begin with, Christopher Plummer had taken to referring to the film as “The Sound of Mucus,” and was possessed of a decidedly supercilious attitude towards the entire project.

“He behaved as though he was a distinguished legendary actor who had condescendingly agreed to grace this small, amateurish company with his presence,” recalled Saul Chaplin. DeeDee Wood confirmed that sour assessment, adding, “His style was more like, ‘let’s see what you can explode out of me today.’ He was dark.” Plummer also seemed to have little interest in his onscreen brood. Kym Karath, who played Gerthe, said, “I remember absolutely nothing about Christopher Plummer. He stayed so far away from us.” The place where Plummer could be found was the Hotel Bristol lobby, where he played piano nightly.

“Chris was an excellent pianist,” Wise has said. “I think at one time he had to decide whether to pursue a career in acting or in music, he was that good, he could have played professionally. He used to play all night at the hotel and then come straight to the set the next morning and always knew his lines perfectly. He never came into a scene where he didn’t add something, a very intelligent guy.” Andrews is also quick to defend her co-star, saying “His intensity was just right for the part. As far as I’m concerned he couldn’t have nicer or more professional, I suppose you always fall in love a little with your leading man. Nothing went on between us, but I adore him to this day.” Plummer’s views mellowed after seeing the spectacular dailies, declaring he was “staggered by that opening” footage. “He was very impressed,” Chaplin admitted, “and for a few days, he forgot who he was.”

That opening footage of Maria striding across the hilltop, spinning her arms around and launching into “The Sound of Music,” has become an iconic moment that will live in the annals of screen history. “people think it was all done in a single shot,” Wise would explain, “But that’s where my background as an editor came in handy. By cutting on the action when Julie does her spin, the cut is hidden and it feels like a single shot.” Just as the opening of “West Side” grabbed the audience, so too does this breathtaking sequence and in true Hollywood fashion, it was the last sequence to be filmed on location. On June 28, several weeks behind schedule, the shoot on the mountaintop began. Driving ten kilometers into Bavaria to get to the site, the company discovered that all the roads leading up to “Maria’s Mountain” had been washed away by the constant rainfall. A somewhat less glamorous mode of transport was secured to carry cast and crew up the rugged hillside. While all the other actors had returned to Los Angeles the star of the film, draped in her mink coat, was hauled up the side of the hill in an ox-cart. Andrews’s entrance was mapped out as Maurice Zuberano, directing the sequence from a helicopter, would swoop down while she confidently strides across the mountaintop, spinning her arms around to signal the pilot to pull up when they were getting too close.

“The cameraman was strapped onto the side of the helicopter, hanging out so he could get the shot,” recounts Andrews. “I’d start at the end of the field and the helicopter would come at me, then it would go around me to get back to the beginning to repeat the scene. But when it circled around me, the downdraft from the jets was so strong that it would literally knock me over, I couldn’t stand up. They had to do this shot about ten times and finally I got so angry I yelled, ‘That’s enough!’” Wise was among crew members hiding halfway up a tree, trying to keep out of sight of the cameras, watching Andrews get knocked down, then get back up, take after take. He had planned the title song sequence on the mountaintop in a modular fashion, a series of shots to be assembled by veteran editor William Reynolds in the cutting room.

“We had designed that whole opening number to be shot in about six or seven sections,” Wise would later explain. “Julie walks across the hill and twirls, she walks through the field, she dances around trees, etc. I kept chewing away at them. We would line up our shot, we’d have the playback ready and maybe we’d get one section. Then we’d come the next day and set up for another section but then it would start to rain and it would be no good. We’d sit up there under the tarps and wait.” The production reports tell the story: June 29: “Mountain clouded and fogged in, unable to shoot.” July 1: “Attempted one scene - rain, Rain, Rain!”

Up on that mountain, Wise was feeling the pressure from Richard Zanuck back at the studio. Because of the weather delays the production was now 25 days behind schedule and $740,000 over its $8 million budget. “I told Bobby he had to get back home and that he could do the remaining shots in the Rockies,” Zanuck would recall. “Bobby said he had one last scene to shoot and asked if he could stay one day longer to get it. I told him OK, one day more, but if he didn’t get it on Thursday, he would have to come home Friday.” The remaining unfilmed sequence was in the middle of the song, where Andrews lilts across the rocks in a stream. (The stream, like the birch trees she walks among, were artificial constructions by the film crew designed to break up the big opening number and give Andrews something to do besides walk around on the bare mountaintop).

The final day on location began with wet, overcast skies and Wise was deeply concerned about getting his last remaining piece of the puzzle. He had no idea how to film the scene back in the States and he feared he’d be left with a gaping hole in the middle of the opening number. “Everyone was sitting around under the tarps, sweating it out because they knew I had a deadline,” he explained in an interview. “We had the shot all lined up, the dolly tracks were down, the lighting ready. Then suddenly, in mid-afternoon, the weather broke for about half an hour, and we ran out, zipped off the tarps, and finally got the last shot. That’s one of the tightest situations I’ve ever been in.” Breathing a huge sigh of relief at getting the final shot, Wise and company flew back to Los Angeles the next day, Friday July 3, while Zuberano stayed behind to film the aerial opening. Richard Zanuck now laughs at the close call that Wise avoided. “When I see that opening used all the time in retrospectives and things, I think of how close we came to not getting it,” he said. “And it’s one of the all-time great movie openings, it really grabs you and sets you up for the rest of the picture.”

Filming resumed on the soundstages of Fox the following Monday. Back in the confines of the studio, the shooting continued without incident for the next six weeks as everyone wrapped the remaining scenes, including the “So Long, Farewell,” “Edelweiss” and “Lonely Goatherd” numbers. It was only during the shooting of “Something Good,” the last scene to be filmed before Andrews and Plummer were scheduled to be released from the film, that a peculiar problem arose. The song was set in a gazebo, where Maria and the Captain confess their love for each other. It is an emotional highlight of the film, the lovely song perfectly capturing the tentative stirrings of love.

But something kept occurring on the set that undercut the romantic flavor of the piece. Ted McCord had lit the scene with an old carbon arclight to suggest moonlight drifting into the gazebo. But as carbon arc lights aged or wore out, they would make a loud, unpleasant noise resembling nothing so much as a roaring fart, hardly a conducive accompaniment to a love scene. As Andrews remembers it, “Chris and I were standing very close, we were about an inch away from each other, looking into each others eyes. We were just getting to the point where we would say “I love you,” or we’d start kissing and then those old arc lights would let out a ‘raspberry’! Well, Chris and I would start laughing, we couldn’t help it. Then we’d go back to the scene and those lights would start groaning at us again! Our giggling got even worse, in fact, it got to the point where we couldn’t get through the scene!”

After a dozen takes without getting a usable one, Wise called for a lunch break, hoping the matter could be resolved in the afternoon. Andrews says of her case of the giggles, “I was in a high state of nervousness by now. I walked around the studio...talking to myself, trying to calm myself down.” But when they returned to stage, it happened all over again and they started giggling uncontrollably. Finally, Wise shouted, “Shoot ‘em in the dark, so no one can see them laughing” and he had the troublesome (and noisy) arc lights turned off. Which is how the most romantic scene in the film came to be shot in silhouette.

With the exception of a few inserts and pickups shots, the completion of “You Are Sixteen” brought five months of principal photography to an end on August 19, 1964. The post-production schedule gave ample time to make the film’s scheduled premiere on March 2, 1965 at the Rivoli Theatre in New York. Work continued on the editing, scoring, mixing, and the thorny problem of Christopher Plummer’s singing voice. He had been diligently taking voice lessons and spent two days re-recording his songs. When Wise and Chaplin heard the tapes they were disappointed. Plummer’s singing hadn’t improved enough but they had promised him the decision would be his, so they hoped for the best as Wise brought the actor in to listen to his three performances -- “Edelweiss,” “The Sound of Music,” and “Something Good.” Wise waited outside as the actor played the recordings over and over. Finally, Plummer emerged and asked Wise what he thought. Wise told him flatly, “I don’t think it’s up to the standard of the rest of the picture and the fact that your voice isn’t that good will bring down the level of the marvelous performance you give as the Captain.” To his credit, Plummer agreed, so Bill Lee was brought in to dub his voice for the musical numbers without incident.

“Music” was the first musical to have the songs dubbed into the languages of the main foreign markets --- French, Italian, Spanish and German. In the past, songs had never been dubbed, (subtitles had always been used during the musical numbers) and it was a very shrewd idea. Overseen by Chaplin, the dubbed songs had an impact that helped propel the show in many foreign countries that generally weren’t receptive to musicals. The remainder of the post-production continued smoothly and Wise anxiously looked forward to sneak previews in Minneapolis and Tulsa. In a memo to Zanuck, Wise articulated his firm belief in the value of such previews, pointing out that “we spend years, much effort and millions of dollars getting a picture on film and then so often, we don’t spend the additional time and effort to give it the proper acid test before a non-professional audience.” A non-professional audience in Minneapolis on a snowy evening in 1965 would give Wise a preview he would never forget.

“Minneapolis was the most incredible preview I’ve ever been to,” Zanuck says, with a touch of awe in his voice at the memory. “It had been snowing, there were blizzards, it was about thirty below, we didn’t figure there’d be anyone there. When we drove up, Bobby, Ted Mann, myself, and David Brown, we couldn’t believe what we saw. People were standing in line around the block to see the picture. And the response was incredible, we got a standing ovation at the intermission! David Brown was sitting in the row ahead of us and he turned around and said, ‘Hear that? That’s the sound of money.’ We got another standing ovation at the end and then we went upstairs to look at the preview cards. We couldn’t believe what they said – every single one of them read excellent, except for three people who rated it good. It was incredible, you couldn’t make numbers like that up. “But then I started thinking about those three who wrote ‘good’ and wondered, ‘What the hell’s wrong with them?’”

After a similar reception in Tulsa, Wise tinkered a bit with the picture, tightening things, dropping a scene of Maria praying before she visits the Abbess, and Rolf’s appearance in the middle of “Do, Re, Mi.” Then on March 2, 1965 “The Sound of Music” had its world premiere at the Rivoli Theatre in New York. During intermission Wise went out to find an advance copy of The New York Times review. He would regret doing so, for it was a scathing put-down by the usually staid, stolid Bosley Crowther. Crowther ripped the film apart, charging the picture was just a carbon copy of the Broadway play and was simply a cynical, commercial ploy on the part of Wise.

“Julie Andrews ...is always in

peril of collapsing under the weight

and romantic nonsense and sentiment...

Does she know that the business with

the captain and the wealthy baroness is right out

of Victor Herbert operetta, circa 1910?

Of course, she does. And she also seems to

realize that the whole thing is being

staged by Mr. Wise in a cosy-cum-corny

fashion that even theatre people know is old hat...

The adults are fairly horrendous, especially

Christopher Plummer...Looking as handsome

and phony as a store window Alpine guide,

Mr. Plummer acts the hard-jawed, stiff-backed

fellow with equal artificiality. Richard Haydn

is conventionally histrionic...and Eleanor Parker

is highly enameled and just as brittle...To be

sure, Mr. Wise has used his cameras to set a

magnificently graphic scene in and around the

actual city of Salzburg...he zooms over the

snow-capped peaks...just as he zoomed down into

New York’s crowded streets in his memorable film of

“West Side Story”...businesswise, Mr. Wise is no fool.”

Bosley Crowther

The New York Times

March 1, 1965

It would only get worse. Judith Crist, who in many ways was even more powerful than Crowther due to her nationwide exposure as the film critic on NBC’s “Today” show, wrote a savage review in The Herald-Tribune that greeted Wise a few hours later. “The movie is for the five to seven set and their mommies who think they aren’t up to the stinging sophistication and biting wit of ‘Mary Poppins’...pure loathsome...” Lehman had read both reviews in California with outrage. He called Wise at his hotel in New York and Pat Wise took the call, telling him that Wise was taking a stroll in Central Park. “I know he’s there, put him on,” Lehman demanded. Wise reluctantly took the call. “How could they do this to us?” he cried. He was devastated. They were the worst reviews of his career; even when his earlier films may have misfired, he had never been so personally attacked and publicly vilified.

In a notoriously hostile review Pauline Kael savaged the picture with such ferocity and venom that it supposedly cost her the job at the woman’s magazine, McCall’s. (Though her editor denies it. He says she was fired because she didn’t like any major American movies that year.) The film, she wrote, is “self-indulgent and cheap, and ready-made are the responses we are made to feel. The best of all possible worlds, that’s what ‘The Sound of Music’ pretends we live in...it’s the sugar-coated lie that people seem to want to eat...and this is the attitude that makes a critic feel that maybe it’s all hopeless. Why not just send the director, Robert Wise a wire: ‘You win, I give up?’”

One feels compelled to ask if Kael had gone off her meds to be aroused to hysterical indignation over such innocuous fare, but she certainly was not alone in her disdain for the picture. “The East Coast papers, intellectual papers and magazines destroyed us,” Wise would painfully recall. Fortunately for Wise, Lehman and shareholders of 20th Century-Fox, not only were there some critics who failed to share Kael’s acidic opinion of the film, but the viewing public had a slightly more appreciative response. “The local papers and the trades gave us great reviews,” Wise said, noting the rave in Variety, which no doubt helped salve the wounds of the New York drubbing: “One of the top musicals to reach the screen... captivating, drama set to the most imaginative use of the R-H tunes, magnificently mounted and with a brilliant cast,” and prophetically, “Bears the mark of assured lengthy runs.” And there was a sympathetic and perceptive review in The Los Angeles Times:

“They have taken this sweet, sometimes

saccharine and structurally slight story of

the Von Trapp Family Singers and

transformed it into close to three hours

of visual and vocal brilliance, all in the

universal terms of cinema. They have

invested it with new delights and even

a sense of depth in human relationships...

by Philip K. Scheuer

The Los Angeles Times

March 7, 1965

The Sound of Music” was the opening salvo in Fox’s 1965 roadshow series, to be followed by the summertime comedy about the early days of aviation, “Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines,” then, in the fall, “The Agony and the Ecstasy” based on the Sistine Chapel segment of Irving Wallace’s novel about Michelangelo, with Charlton Heston and Rex Harrison. As part of the publicity surrounding the trio of upcoming roadshow films, inspring of 1964 Fox organized a three city press junket to the sets of each production. In Salzburg, the cast and crew of “The Sound of Music” met with 120 different American film reviewers and a year later nearly every one of them would write a favorable review of “The Sound of Music.” Before filming had even started veteran publicist Mike Kaplan was hired to oversee the publicity and marketing of the picture. He would prove to be an absolutely crucial member of the production and was just as important to the film’s success as Lehman, Zuberano, Chaplin, Leven or McCord. His campaign for “The Sound of Music” was a masterpiece of Hollywood public relations strategy and Wise was always quick to acknowledge Kaplan’s contribution.

Kaplan came aboard in February 1964 and immediately threw himself into promoting the film. He came up with the tagline “The Happiest Sound in All the World,” which would find its way onto all posters and print ads and he oversaw the dozen attempts at creating the poster art until he was satisfied with the now famous image of Julie Andrews, guitar and bag in hand, running over the hill as the children follow. Handling the press releases, TV spots and “making of” specials, Kaplan was a whirling dervish of activity, even going so far as wearing a tie clasp with a gold treble clef and the film’s title emblazoned on it. His efforts were ceaseless even though he admitted after the preview in Tulsa that, “you could get rid of me tomorrow and you’d still have a smash.” But Kaplan never stopped selling the picture, not even after it had broken every box office record imaginable.

The film had its West Coast premiere on March 10, 1965 at the Fox Wilshire Theatre in Los Angeles and as Richard Zanuck states, “It wasn’t a big hit right away. It took some time for the audience to find it and it built slowly, growing the audience as it played. There was a tremendous repeat business, people coming back to see over and over. I used to go over to Fox Wilshire, which is where it was playing, and the audiences just kept coming back and back. It was incredible, the matinees, were full, the weekends were full, the attendance just kept getting bigger and bigger as it went along, instead of declining...Ordinarily, musicals don’t do well overseas, but it was just as big a hit in the foreign markets as it was at home. Pretty soon we were getting reports of grosses from places we never had never heard of before!”

In Egypt the film was known as “Love and Tenderness,” in Portugal “Music in the Earth,” in Italy “All Together with Passion,” in Thailand it was called “Charms of Heaven-Sound,” in Spain it was “Smiles and Tears,” in Argentina, “The Rebellious Novice,” and in Hong Kong it was imaginatively retitled, “Fairy Music Blow Fragrant Place Hear.” It broke previous box-office records in 29 different countries, except Austria and Germany. In Austria it was resented for diluting Austrian costumes and songs and the orchestration was criticized as too American. In Germany, the Nazi element was so resented that the Fox branch manager in Munich cut the film by a third, omitting all references to the Nazis and ending the film after Maria’s wedding to the Captain in order to appease neo-Nazi elements in Munich. Wise was furious when he found out about the cuts and demanded that the footage be re-instated immediately.

WISE SHOCKED BY

MUNICH’S NAZI CUTS,

QUESTIONS POWER

OF BRANCH OFFICES

Robert Wise termed as “incomprehensible,”

“arbitrary,” and “high-handed” the actions

of a Munich branch manager of 20th-Fox

who, as reported in the last week’s VARIETY,

trimmed the Nazi footage out of “The Sound of

Music.” Cutting has since been overruled by

20th-Fox toppers in N.Y., but Wise now is

pondering the question of “spelling out

more clearly” the relationship between a

producer, his distrib and the distrib’s employees...

“Music,” a b.o. blockbuster, has had ‘disappointing’

initial reaction Germany, Wise said.....

Variety June 7,1965

Although the Austrians certainly enjoyed the increase in tourism generated by the film, their complaint that the movie had been drained of Austrian kultur may have had a point. Preoccupied with eliminating the schmaltz factor, Wise may have gone overboard in eliminating all of the Old World, mid-European flavor. The original musical arrangements by Robert Russell Bennett had a rich, Viennese quality that are absent in the clean, functional Irwin Kostal score; the film could have been just as easily been set in Norway. Perhaps a little more lederhosen and strudel was needed. But the main reason for the picture’s lack of success in Germany and Austria may well have been because the two earlier von Trapp movies had been very popular in both countries and the Wise film was seen as something of an interloper, an Americanized remake of a more authentic Austro-German movie .

But throughout the rest of the planet, it was a “Sound of Music” world. By January 1966 a story in Time entitled “The Gross is Greener” predicted “The Sound of Music” would soon dethrone “Gone With the Wind” as the all-time box-office champion. Shattering all previous box office records around the world, the film set new records for repeated viewings on a worldwide scale that no one had ever imagined possible. Parade magazine, a Sunday newspaper supplement distributed throughout the country, carried a photo of Wise and Andrews on the cover with the caption “The Biggest Box-Office Draw of All Time.” Mystified by the film’s success, The New York Times Sunday Magazine spent over a dozen pages crunching the numbers and asking the existential question, “How Come?” “If we knew the answer to that, we’d know the answer to a lot of things,” quipped Richard Zanuck.

“Since its premiere 20 months ago,

it has brought the screenwriter more

than $1,000 a day. The director expects to make

at least $8 million....Although the movie is still

playing on a reserved seat basis - in industry jargon,

on “roadshow” or “hard-ticket” - it is on the verge of

overtaking the six-time re-released, 27 year old

“Gone With the Wind” in domestic earnings, and

the surface has barely been scratched, since it

has generally been shown in only one

theatre in a city or, to be precise, in

3.164 - only 275 in this country - theatres

out of a possible 35,000 worldwide. Still ahead,

are the neighborhood houses, and the drive-ins,

when it goes into multiple release, and the

prospect of re-release....In about six months, Fox

official project it will pass “Ben-Hur,” as the top

overseas grosser. In short, it is on its way toward

earning more money than any picture has ever

earned, anytime, anywhere.”

“Biggest Money-Making Movie of All Time - How Come?”

by Joan Barthel

New York Times Sunday Magazine, November 20, 1966

Mike Kaplan was quoted in the Times piece as believing the key to the film’s success was its escapist appeal. “It’s a homespun fairy tale and people still like fairy tales.” Kaplan had been left in charge of overseeing the Oscar campaign while Wise was on location in Taiwan shooting “The Sand Pebbles.” He decided the film needed little hype since the unbelievable phenomenon was its own best promotion, a show business phenomenon unlike any other before. It was the Energizer Bunny of 1966, it just kept going and going and going, and so did the audience. Kaplan promoted stories about Elizabeth Pick, a 38-year old typist in Los Angeles who had seen the film 100 times, the woman in Wales who saw it every day, or the Oregon man who had seen the film so many times that he sent the studio a screenplay written from memory. In Salt Lake City, among a population of 199,300 the number of tickets sold was over 309,000; Orlando, Syracuse, Cedar Rapids and two dozen other cities also had ticket sales that exceeded their populations. Nominated for 10 Oscars, the one nod it failed to get was for Ernest Lehman’s screenplay. Wise felt terrible for Lehman, who had been so crucial in getting the film made with his improvements to the play, his brilliant script and his insight about casting Julie Andrews. He wrote Lehman a letter, commiserating with his old friend: “All I can say is ‘you wuz robbed.” Lehman graciously wrote back to Wise:

“The enormous success of the picture all over

the world and my own realization that I had

guessed right in believing that that play could

become a very rewarding and popular film

and that I did have an important role in getting

it from stage to screen...make it very

difficult for me to have any unhappy feelings

about anything connected with the

picture. When you stop to consider what

we achieved....well, out with the champagne!”

Letter from Ernest Lehman to Robert Wise

February, 1966

The main Oscar competition that year was David Lean’s epic romance of the Russian Revolution, “Doctor Zhivago,” and Kaplan calculated the odds. That two of Lean’s films had won Best Picture Oscars in the last decade was an advantage for the Wise film, but since the Best Picture winner the year before had been a musical, and since Andrews had just won an Oscar, it could go either way. But the momentum was clearly with “Music” and the film was an awards juggernaut, winning most of the major ones. It scored a Golden Globe for Best Picture (Musical) and Best Actress and Wise won the Directors Guild Award for Best Director and the inaugural David O. Selznick Award for Best Picture from the Producers Guild.

As Kaplan continued to mastermind the Oscar campaign, he began incorporating audience quotes into a new ad campaign for the Oscars. A schoolboy in Malaysia: “I saw it four times, I was ecstasised;” a farmer in Monmouthshire, England: “When it finishes its run here we shall have lost something wonderful;” a housewife in Malawi: “People who don’t like it must be hard-faced, with wrinkled foreboding frowns;” a teacher in Pittsburgh: “Without a doubt, the finest film ever – a legend in its own time;” a sailor stationed in Puerto Rico: “I have seen it 70 times and could see it 1,000 more;” an accountant in New Jersey: “I’m a James Bond fan but this is the best movie I’ve ever seen;” and from a psychiatrist in California: “I’m worried, it’s cheaper than therapy.”

Even the negative publicity demonstrated the film’s enormous clout. In Moorhead, Minnesota where the film had been running for a year in the town’s only movie theatre, the local college kids demanded a change of fare, launching an anti-”Sound of Music” demonstration under the name POOIE (People’s Organization Of Intelligent Educatees) and waving placards declaring “49 Weeks of Schmaltz is Enough!” and “Don’t Get Caught in von Trapp.” Kaplan continued to position the film for Academy consideration, blanketing the trades with ads throughout spring of 1966 and arranging screenings at the Fox lots for entire families, which proved to be massively attended. Saul Chaplin escorted Julie Andrews to the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium for the Academy Awards ceremony. Since Wise was overseas filming “The Sand Pebbles,” Chaplin would accept the statue if “Music” won for Best Picture, and Andrews would collect Wise’s award if he won for Best Director. “We were nervous wrecks,” Andrews admitted. As Kaplan had anticipated, it was a shootout between “Zhivago” and “Music” that had been going back and forth throughout the technical awards. Moments after she lost the Best Actress award to Julie Christie, Julie Andrews found herself racing up the steps of the stage to collect Robert Wise’s Oscar for Best Director. A few moments later, Saul Chaplin was onstage collecting Wise’s Best Picture Oscar. Backstage, Andrews let out a victory whoop and fell into the arms of Mike Kaplan as they both broke into tears.

It was already Tuesday afternoon in Southeast Asia, where the U.S. gunboat San Pablo was steaming through the straits of Hong Kong. Radio updates on the Oscars had been coming in throughout the day and a loud cheer would go up every time “The Sound of Music” won a category. Filming aboard the gunboat continued until the Best Director announcement was made. When the report came through that Wise had won, pandemonium erupted. "I didn’t know it at the time,” Wise later described, “the Chinese crew had secretly strung the entire mast full of firecrackers. Ted Taylor, my public relations man on the picture, had also smuggled aboard a troupe of Chinese dragon dancers and had hidden them in the hold.” Between the exploding firecrackers and the dragon dancers on the deck, a giddy Wise and his “Music” cohorts, Assistant Director “Reggie” Callow and Production Manager Saul Wurtzel called off shooting for the remainder of the day and erupted in joyous exhilaration. Wise sent a cable off to Lehman at first chance, “DEAR ERNIE YOU OWN A GIANT SHARE OF ALL WE WON MONDAY NIGHT. MANY MANY THANKS. BOB” A cable to Wise arrived the next day from Richard Zanuck:

DEAR BOBBY:

I FEEL LIKE TAKING THE

NEXT PLANE OVER AND

CONGRATULATING YOU

IN PERSON. LAST NIGHT

WAS THE GREATEST NIGHT

FOX HAS HAD SINCE 1950

WHICH WAS THE LAST TIME

WE WON THE BEST PICTURE

AWARD. IT WAS ONE OF THE

GREATEST PERSONAL THRILLS

I HAVE EVER EXPERIENCED

AND ON BEHALF OF THE ENTIRE

ORGANIZATION I THANK YOU

FOR MAKING THIS POSSIBLE

WITH YOUR OUTSTANDING

TALENT AND TERRIFIC EFFORTS.

WE ARE PROUD OF YOU

DICK ZANUCK

Forty years have not dimmed Zanuck’s appreciation of those efforts. “Bobby Wise saved the studio, no question,” he has said on more than one occasion. But in a misguided attempt to emulate the gigantic success of the picture and to validate the perpetual wisdom of Fred Allen’s crack that “imitation is the sincerest form of Hollywood,” virtually every studio began rushing into production a series of expensive, bloated musicals -- Columbia with “Funny Girl” (directed by Wyler) and “Oliver!;" Warners with “Camelot” and “Finian’s Rainbow;” Paramount with “Paint Your Wagon,” and “Darling Lili.” MGM tried to cash in with “The Singing Nun” and Fox went to the well again with “Doctor Doolittle,” “Hello, Dolly!” and the ill-fated re-teaming of Wise and Andrews in “Star!” With the exception of the two Columbia pictures, every project was a creaky, ill-conceived, poorly executed, lumbering white elephant and nearly sank several studios.

“I sometimes secretly curse ‘The Sound of Music,’” Zanuck has admitted, “Because we tried to duplicate its success but that audience didn’t stick around for long. It was the failure of those other musicals that got me fired from Fox.” In the intervening years, it is has become all too apparent that “Music” was sui generis. It could not leave a legacy for other films to emulate simply because its colossal success was due to a combination of factors that were unique and unrepeatable, a convergence of talents at a particular moment in time. Sitting on the edge of a culture fault line that divided the first half of the Sixties from the cultural rebellion of the last half (the following year saw the emergence of a new order, ushered in by none other than Ernest Lehman, whose script and production of “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” shattered the Production Code in 1966), “The Sound of Music” was the end of the old order, a last, great, studio artifact to connect with such a mass audience before the culture wars and the final collapse of the studio system. “Those days are gone,” Zanuck wistfully admits, “And they’re not coming back.”

To understand just what a wide cultural arc the long the run of “The Sound of Music” spanned requires a historical context. When Lehman first began writing the “Music” script, JFK was president and the Beatles were just a gleam in Brian Epstein’s eye. By the time the movie had finished its long theatrical run, some four and a half years after its premiere, John and Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King had all been assassinated, the Vietnam war had torn the country apart, sex, drugs & rock n' roll had become the touchstones of an alternative youth counterculture, the psychedelic Summer of Love of the hippies had come and gone, the Beatles were recording their last album, a man was walking on the moon, and the first X-rated movie (“Midnight Cowboy”) was about to win an Oscar for Best Picture. It was a time of staggering change, yet “The Sound of Music” remained impervious to it all, remaining a bedrock of security and comfort during times of incredible social upheaval.

In the intervening decades, nothing has so demonstrated the film’s remarkable staying power as the recent phenomena of “The Sound of Music” singalongs. Initially originating in the U.K., it was at first an underground, campy sort of event, a la “The Rocky Horror Show,” with much of the same sort of midnight screening crowd. Then it emigrated to the U.S., where it underwent a bizarre transformation. It was embraced by families, who took their children to sing along, irony-free. Holding up provided cards with question marks, throwing “favorite things” like mittens at the screen during “My Favorite Things,” audiences were a combination of those who saw it as a camp night out or those who simply loved the film. Wise himself visited the Hollywood Bowl in 2003 to see the sight for himself and was greeted like a hero by a crowd comprised of All-American families in lederhosen as well as a large contingent of West Hollywood transvestites in nuns’ habits and Nazi uniforms.

“We thought we had a good chance at a successful film, but I don’t think any of us anticipated that “The Sound of Music” was going to go through the roof like it did," Wise has said on many occasions. "Obviously, one has to be very pleased and warmed by the spontaneous reactions that come up so often, in so many places around the world, that’s most rewarding.” Wise would also add, with a faint hint of resentment, “The only slightly perverse thing about it is that it tends to make people forget and overlook some of the other films I’ve done that I’m very proud of, such as ‘The Body Snatcher,’ ‘The Set-Up,’ ‘The Day the Earth Stood Still,’ ‘Executive Suite,’ ‘Somebody Up There Likes Me,’ ‘I Want to Live!,’ ‘West Side Story,’ ‘The Haunting,’ and ‘The Sand Pebbles.’ It doesn’t overpower ‘West Side Story’ so much but I get many more comments about ‘The Sound of Music’ than I do about ‘West Side Story.’ But its tremendous success didn’t become a burden to me.”

Perhaps. Yet Wise never again received the kind of critical respect he enjoyed before “Music” turned into the Godzilla of movie musicals, laying waste to all box office records in its path. With the unprecedented grosses of “The Sound of Music,” Robert Wise had become the most successful motion picture director in movie history. That kind of achievement can bring out resentment and not just in Hollywood (where Wise’s modesty and congenial manner helped deflate much of the Schadenfreude in the industry). But it did cause a loss of critical respect that was nearly proportionate to the popular success of the film, for many critics, such as the influential Kael and her acolytes, the giant shadow cast by “The Sound of Music” was an unforgivable crime against cinema and it seemed to mitigate all positive memories of anything Wise had done in his career. I can recall being a film student at UCSD in 1974 watching influential critic Manny Farber become apologetic in his praise of “The Set-Up” since it had been directed by the same man who had unleashed “The Sound of Music” upon an unsuspecting world. In his seminal rating of American directors in “The American Cinema,” auteurist Andrew Sarris placed Wise in his “Strained Seriousness” category, noting “his temperament is vaguely liberal, his style vaguely realistic; but after “The Sound of Music,” the stylistic signature of Robert Wise is indistinct to the point of invisibility. Even the unity of time experiments of “The Set-Up” and the clickety-clack montage of “Executive Suite” seem to belong in another era entirely...What has happened to Wise in the 50s and 60s has happened to most technicians without a strong personality.” Yet even Sarris felt compelled to tack a brief, damning-with-faint-praise addition: “Still, Wise’s conscientious craftsmanship is something of a virtue in these days of giddy chaos. The commercial success of “The Sound of Music” is a tribute to Wise’s ability to treat the most sentimental material with a straight face.” This is one critical observation that is somewhat close to mark, for Wise was a conscientious craftsman and it was precisely this trait that enabled him to go from a low-budget black-and-white horror film like “The Haunting” to a glossy 70 mm Todd-AO musical like “The Sound of Music” and then on to the anti-imperialist allegory of “The Sand Pebbles,” a feat well beyond the capabilities of many a more self-focused auteurist.

For Wise, “The Sound of Music” was simply a stop-gap undertaking to occupy his down time until “The Sand Pebbles” could get underway. But, like all of his previous thirty films, it would be a project that he would invest with every ounce of his talent, skill, and knowledge of the medium to make as good a picture as he could. The idea of imposing his personality onto a piece of material, as the auteurists championed, would have been anathema to Robert Wise; he would have considered it bad manners. He felt his choice of material was indication enough of his personal beliefs and for an old-school studio director like himself, directing a film wasn’t about personal expression or cult of personality, it was all about making a good picture.

One could argue, of course, his supposed invisible style is itself a style and reflected his belief that each different piece of material dictated a different stylistic approach. But the key to understanding Wise as a director is realizing his belief in, and his commitment to, his characters. If he was entrusted with the job of bringing them to life on screen, he truly felt an obligation to them. It was his duty was to tell their story as efficiently as he could with all the talents at his disposal. To camp it up or “kid” the material was unthinkable to him and it is this very lack of irony that make his more fantastical films such as “The Day the Earth Stood Still,” “The Haunting,” and yes, “The Sound of Music,” work. He would no more think of sending up the Trapp Family Singers than he would consider mocking Klaatu and Gort in “The Day the Earth Stood Still” because of the more fantastic elements of the story.

In any discussion of the career of Robert Wise, “The Sound of Music” remains the proverbial 800 pound gorilla in the middle of the room: it cannot be ignored, its sheer mass tends to dominate all aspects of conversation. Wise himself never made any extravagant claims for the film; though gratified (and astonished) by its incredible reception, he never wavered in his regard for “West Side Story” as the greater artistic achievement. He was as mystified by the worldwide popularity of “Music” as everyone else but ultimately came to accept it as something that had simply taken on a life of its own, far beyond what he and his collaborators had envisioned. He enjoyed the experience and then moved on. Ironically, the main criticism of the film - its sentimentality – was the very thing that Wise had tried so hard to eliminate from it and seen today, if anything, the film seems a little too antiseptically cleansed of all Austrian charm. Perhaps a little more lederhosen & strudel might have helped overcome its somewhat distant emotional core; when compared to its contemporaries, the musical lacks the roguish charm and energy of “The Music Man,” the dazzling stylization and Shavian wit of “My Fair Lady,” or even the warmth of that other Julie Andrews governess vehicle, “Mary Poppins.” Its reserve feels almost Bressonian in its emotional austerity, or at least as reserved as any musical with a brood of tow-headed moppets can be. (Auteurists take note, that very reserve of the film is in fact, an accurate reflection of the personality of its director, for as charming and personable as he was, Robert Wise was never one given to effusive displays of emotion). And yet, what are musicals but precisely that very thing - effusive displays of emotion rendered through song? I can vividly remember seeing the film at the Loma Theatre as a kid in San Diego halfway through its two and a half year engagement and being struck by its detachment. Coming out of the theatre I wondered, “Well, that was pleasant enough, but what’s the big deal?,” a question that remains unanswered to this day. Though many have tried.

When the New York Times Sunday Magazine spent all that ink pondering the unprecedented success of “The Sound of Music.” neither Wise, Zanuck, Lehman, Andrews, Richard Rodgers, George Cukor or William Wyler could offer any a satisfactory answer to the film's incredible popularity, they were as clueless to the reasons for its success as its befuddled detractors were. Its modest charms are worthy of neither the extreme hostility or the unquestioning devotion it has received through the years, yet it continues to inspire both. But whatever reservations one may have about the film, ultimately, they are all irrelevant, for “The Sound of Music” doesn’t care what I think of it, “The Sound of Music” doesn’t care what you think of it. Like those majestic Alpine mountains that open the film, for reasons that will probably never be adequately understood by mortal minds, “The Sound of Music” is a force of nature, immune from both the ravages of time and all critical opinion. So go ahead and throw all the spitwads and brickbats at it you want, “The Sound of Music” laughs. It will remain the unexplainable phenomenon, the unassailable citadel that towers above the cinematic landscape - it is the Matterhorn, the Everest, of movie musicals - and it will endure for generation upon generation to come, unto the last syllable of recorded time. For “The Sound of Music,” like the Dude Lebowski, abides.

###############

My Oscars monologue

2010-03-02T20:01:00.000-08:00

In 2001, I had the great honor of working on the Academy Awards. Gil Cates was the producer and a finer gentleman in this industry would be hard to find. I became friendly with many of the talented and hard-working people, all of whom were old pros at the Oscarcast, but for me, the greatest thrill of all was getting to know Hal Kanter. This writer/director/producer had been in the business since the 30s and worked with everyone from Elvis to Hope & Crosby. I had seen his name on countless film and TV credits too numerous to list but he is a wonderful man with a winning smile and a twinkle in his eye and I use to love hearing him tell stories about the Golden Age of Hollywood.

I was also impressed with how hard he worked writing jokes for that year's host, Steve Martin. Hal would come in everyday and pound away at his typewriter, filling reams of paper with jokes, figuring that for every fifty he wrote, one or two might make the cut. Steve Martin was the same, he came in one day and tried out his monologue on the staff. Many of the best ones never made the cut for the show but it was a great lesson in writing an Oscar monologue - volume, volume, volume. And maybe there might be a couple of gems.

Anyway, fast forward a few years to Oscar season 2008. I thought of Hal and just for the hell of it, thought I'd try and see if I could write some jokes. Now, I'd never done this before, so the fact that I was able to write a single joke, let alone the torrent that flowed was astonishing to me. I was amazed, not that they were any good, but that I could do at all. I got up my nerve and sent them to Hal. A few days later, I got a call, "Is this Mike Thomas, the joke writer?" It was Hal Kanter. He paid me the ultimate compliment and asked if he could steal some of my jokes for an event. Honored, I said yes, of course.

I was never able to get the jokes to the show for the telecast, probably weren't up to Jon Stewart's standards, but I got something better. Hal Kanter told a few of my jokes, and said they brought down the house.

Anyway, since it's Oscar season, here are jokes from Oscartide past.

2008 OSCAR MONOLOGUE

by Mike Thomas

Jon Stewart walks out on stage wearing a Beatle wig and carrying the air tank cattle gun from “No Country for Old Men.”

JON STEWART:
Call it, friend-o! (removes the props) Good evening and welcome to the 80th Academy Awards. We are here at Kodak Theatre in Hollywood, the heart of the American film industry, or as it’s also known, no country for old men.

Thank you for coming, ladies and gentlemen. As you know, we are in an election year and these are perilous times we live in. We find ourselves engaged in a deadly conflict where lives are being wasted, millions of dollars lost, massive civil unrest... but enough about the writers’ strike.

Because if the American public wanted to hear name-calling, half-truths, lies, distortions and negative advertising, they could watch the Democrats debate.

I was worried that because of the strike, my monologue tonight would have been forced to be outsourced, like so many other jobs nowadays.
(in a mock Indian accent)
So, if you please, my name is Jon and I am quite prepared to provide you with all your comedy needs for the evening.

That’s what happens when you buy imported jokes from China. And you know, the lead content of those things is just way too high.

I think I speak on behalf of everyone when I say I am so glad the writers’ strike is over. Now the Guild members can go back to their regular gig - being unemployed. But I love the writers, I think they’re worth every penny. I even think they’re worth the four pennies they get from DVD sales.

But since I originally thought I was going to have to ad-lib my own script tonight I wanted to put my own stamp on it, so - and I didn’t check with the Academy on this - I decided to expand the nominees for Best Picture to six films this year. So in addition to the films nominated for Best Picture I have added to the list that criminally neglected masterpiece, “Death to Smoochy.” Sure, it came out a few years ago, but since nobody saw it, I figured what the heck. The recognition is long overdue, I don’t care what Price WaterhouseCooper says.

So, welcome to this year’s Academy Awards, the Super Tuesday of awards shows. The Oscar season is a lot like a presidential election - there’s campaigning, advertising, spin doctors, dirty tricks - everything but hanging chads and the Electoral College.

And this year we celebrate the 80th Academy Awards, ladies and gentlemen. Just think, eighty years ago, back in 1928, right across the street at the Roosevelt Hotel, members of the film industry gathered for the very first time to honor the outstanding films of the year and be accosted on the red carpet by Joan Rivers.

Let’s see, what kind of year has it been in the film industry? Steven Spielberg sold his studio, Tom Cruise bought one for Katie Holmes, and Harvey Weinstein -- uh, whatever happened to Harvey? Is he still here? Oh, there he is. Hi Harvey! Uh, you’ve got something there on your tux, Harve. There, you’ve got it! Nice to see you, call me!

You know, because of the writers’ strike, certain films have been delayed or cancelled by the studios. The sequel to “The DaVinci Code” was postponed because of the strike, although, I heard the real reason was that Tom Hanks needed more time to grow out his hair.

And Oliver Stone’s film about Vietnam, “Pinkville” was cancelled, ostensibly for script reasons, but I hear the UA marketing department was concerned that audiences thought “Pinkville” was a musical about West Hollywood.

It was a good year for musicals, there was a wonderful little film from Ireland called “Once,” that is nominated for Best Song for “Falling Slowly,” which pretty much describes the stock market. Then there was “Enchanted,” a delightful Disney movie starring the lovely Amy Adams that featured the new anthem of the Writer’s Guild, “The Happy Working Song.”

There was “Sweeney Todd” - wasn’t that fantastic? The first slasher musical! Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter singing Stephen Sondheim showtunes while slicing throats and making meat pies out of body parts. Mmmmmm, yummers. Just a word of caution for those attending the Governors’ Ball, stay away from the steak tartar.
I hear the Paramount marketing department wanted to call the movie something else, but, “There Will be Blood,” was already taken.

And then there was “Hairspray,” where John Travolta gained a lot of weight and put on a dress .... (pause, wicked grin) You know, I think you can write your punchline for that one. I don’t want to get sued by the Scientologists.

Although I was fascinated by that Tom Cruise Scientology video on You Tube. I figured that deserved a nomination for Best Animated Short. But I understand Tom’s advisers felt he needed to soften his image and project a gentler side, so in his new movie he’s going to play a German soldier in WWII.

But you know, that’s what’s great about America, the religious freedom we all have. Look at how far we’ve come - a Mormon is running for president, and not just that - we have a black man, we have a woman, we had a Hispanic. And someday, maybe just someday, we could finally tear down the walls of prejudice and have an honest to goodness liberal run for president! Maybe not in my lifetime but, someday.

Actually, there was one liberal in the race, Dennis Kucinich, although I hear he was just using his presidential campaign as a stepping stone for the job he really wants - the lead role in the new “Hobbit” movie.

I’m personally thrilled they’re finally going to make “The Hobbit!” Or as New Line refers to it, “Return of the Ka-ching!” And again I say, if Peter Jackson & Bob Shaye can kiss and make up, peace in our time is possible.

Speaking of the Democrats, Al Gore won a Nobel Prize, isn't that something? Here’s a man who won the popular vote for president, whose movie on climate change won an Oscar, this year he wins an Emmy and now, the Nobel Peace Prize. But I hear what he really wants to do is direct.

This just in, Angelina Jolie has now formally adopted the entire continent of Africa.

This year there was something for everybody. The religious right was very happy about “Juno,” a film about a young pregnant teenager who decides not to get an abortion but to have the baby instead. That is until they found out it was written by an ex-stripper whose name means “devil” in Spanish.

It was a good year for the Affleck family. Ben Affleck, who had been more well-known for his relationships with Matt Damon and Jennifer Lopez, bounced back with a terrific performance in last year’s “Hollywoodland,” and this year, he directed his first film, a terrific movie called “Gone Baby, Gone,” starring his younger brother, Casey Affleck and featuring best supporting actress nominee, Amy Ryan. Well done, Ben.

Brother Casey also had a great year appearing twice opposite Brad Pitt in “Ocean’s 13,” and “The Assassination of Jesse James.” Hmmm, that’s more than Brad and Angelina have appeared together. Brad and Casey - a new item? Scooped you, “Access Hollywood!”

And Mrs. Ben Affleck, otherwise known as the lovely Jennifer Garner, gave a wonderful performance in “Juno,” so here’s to the Afflecks! I don’t really have a joke for this, I just like saying the name Affleck. (Quacks) Affleck!

Speaking of Brad Pitt, I feel he got robbed by not getting nominated for “The Assasination of Jesse James,” he was excellent in that. I guess he’ll just have to console himself with Angelina Jolie. Hardly seems fair.

And poor Angelina was overlooked too, for her fine work in “A Mighty Heart” where she gave an outstanding performance as Marianne Pearl. If I may offer a bit of advice to Brad and Angie... guys, you need to raise your public profile. Hire yourself a publicist, get your picture on the cover of a magazine once in awhile. You need the exposure, otherwise they forget. Just some friendly advice.

Let’s see, it was a big year for Texas in the movies. The Lone Star state was the locale for the amazing Coen brothers film, “No Country for Old Men,” also known as “the Terminator Goes West.” Then there was “Charlie Wilson’s War,” a comedy about a drunken, pro-gun liberal Democratic congressman from East Texas who did drugs, attended right-wing fundraisers, chased women and helped win the Cold War. Now, that really is a movie with something for everybody. And it was a true story!

Another true story was “Into the Wild,” directed by the two-fisted Sean Penn. Great job, Sean, and I’m not just saying that because you scare me. It was a wonderful film and featured a fantastic performance by the great Hal Holbrook, a national treasure.

And speaking of national treasures - how's that for a segue -- there was another one of those "National Treasure" movies. You might remember the first one, where Nic Cage goes in search of the Declaration of Independence? I hear in the new one he goes in search of the missing Constitution.

And you know, speaking of Texas, although it was set in California, “There Will be Blood” was filmed there in Texas. Anybody here remember when they actually made films in Hollywood? But it was a great film and I see Daniel Day-Lewis in the audience, well done, sir. He is not only one of the finest actors of our time but a darn swell cobbler as well. See these shoes? Yep, he made them. But next time, Danny, not so tight in the insole, OK? Thanks.

He was brilliant in “There Will be Blood” where he played a ruthless oilman who would trample over anyone to achieve wealth and power. Or as Dick Cheney called it, “the feel good movie of the year.”

Then there was “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly,” a movie about a man who can’t move. It was sort of like that Javier Bardem film of a few years ago, “The Sea Inside,” but without the action.
(He blinks several times)

Speaking of Javier Bardem, he had a big year, didn’t he? He was in “Love in the Time of Cholera” and also, of course, “No Country for Old Men,” where he set men’s hairstyles back twenty years, which I personally want to thank him for.
(Brushes hair)

Let’s see, it was a big year for movies about expectant mothers. Ellen Page scored an Oscar nomination for “Juno;” Katherine Heigl got “Knocked Up” and became a big star, not something that usually works out that way.

The movie “300” was a big hit, and I found it really informative. For example, I never knew that the ancient Persians used giant lobster claw men at the Battle of Thermoplyae or that the King of Persia frequented S&M parlors. I hadn’t seen so many body piercings since my last trip to Starbucks.

And then my old “Daily Show” colleague, Steve Carrell, violated one of the oldest rules in show business by appearing with children and animals in “Evan Almighty.” (shakes head) If I may be allowed a personal moment here to talk to Steve.

He walks into the audience to Steve Carrell.

JON STEWART:
Stephen, Stephen... You know, when you said you wanted to leave the show and come out to Hollywood to pursue a movie career, I was supportive, but I warned you they would just break your heart out here. I know, look what happened to me with “Smoochy!”

OK, so you got lucky with “The 40 Year Old Virgin,” and “Little Miss Sunshine,” but Steve, "Evan Almighty?" I mean, really. You know, I told you that no matter what happens, we’d always keep your chair ready for you back on “The Daily Show” if things didn’t work out. Isn’t it time to outgrow this mid-life “I want to be a movie star” thing, and come home to your “Daily Show” family? The children miss you. Just think about it, OK, buddy?

He walks back to the stage.

JON STEWART: (CONT’D)
Sorry for that Oprah-like moment but it needed to be done. Let’s see, what other movies were there? Well, there was “Atonement,” a powerful film about a novelist’s lifetime of regret at having told a horrible lie that destroyed the lives of innocent people. You could tell it was a British film because in America when someone does that, they get re-elected.

And George Clooney was terrific in “Michael Clayton“ where he played a corporate lawyer who develops a conscience. Which just goes to show there will always be an audience for fantasy films.

And there was “Lars & the Real Girl,” a charming comedy about a young man and his, er, inflatable girlfriend. It turned out to be a sweet film, but I was upset by it. I figured if they were going to make a movie about by my life they could have at least hired me as a consultant.

Another thing that bothered me throughout the year was that the movie titles were so confusing. For example, I thought “The Kingdom” was a film about Rupert Murdoch and Sumner Redstone.

I thought “I’m Not There” wasn about the FEMA relief effort in New Orleans.

And contrary to my expectations, the “Transformers” movie was not about Bill & Hillary Clinton.

What else? Well, I thought “The Hoax” was going to be about the search for Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. Wrong again.

And “Breach” was not about the Valerie Plame CIA leak.

Sometimes, being wrong about a title is a good thing. For example, I was needlessly worried that “The Bucket List,” was a movie about my acting career, but thankfully, no.

And, “I am Legend,” was not a movie about Jack Nicholson.

“Away From Her” was not about the Democrats and Hillary Clinton.

And I foolishly thought “Gone, Baby, Gone” was gonna be about the 10 billion dollars in cash that’s missing in Iraq, nope.

(mincing)
And with a title like “Walk Hard” I thought it was gonna be a love story!

So you see, it pays to read up on the films before you go.

It was also a year of strange casting choices. Not only did John Travolta play a housewife in “Hairspray,” but six different actors played Bob Dylan, including Cate Blanchett. And they say there are no good parts for a woman anymore.

But it was a good year for Sixties rock legends - there was a hit Beatles movie, “Across the Universe,” there was the Dylan film, and now, Martin Scorsese is doing a concert documentary on the Rolling Stones, tentatively titled “The Night of the Living Dead.”

But my favorite Sixties musical of the year was about the greatest band of them all, and tonight they are here to perform for you. So ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Alvin and the Chipmunks!

Alvin and the Chipmunks walk out (either CGI or people in costume) and begin singing a new version of “The Chipmunk Song”:

THE CHIPMUNKS
Oscar, Oscar time is near
Everyone is full of cheer.
I can hardly stand the wait,
Please, Oscar don’t be late.

Ads in the trades every day,
Screeners show up on Ebay.
Publicists work hard for their pay
Until that Oscar day!

JON:
That was very good, Simon.

SIMON:
Thank you.

JON:
Theodore, you were excellent.

THEODORE:
Thank you, Jon.

JON:
Uh, you were a little flat there,
Alvin. Alvin?

(He is nowhere to be found)

ALVIN!!!!
(We see Alvin backstage chatting up one of the beautiful starlets)

ALVIN:
OK!!!!!
(He rushes back onstage)

THE CHIPMUNKS
Limo drivers everywhere,
Overpriced salons styling hair.
Botoxed faces, Best Picture races,
Oscar’s in the air!

Now at last, the big night’s here.
Full of hope, full of fear.
And if you lose,
Don’t shed a tear.
There’s always a chance next year!
So don your tuxes,
Put on your gowns.
Oscar time is here....

JON:
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the 80th Academy Awards. We’re glad our writers are back and that the show will go on!

And on... And on...