When Hollywood Was Golden - Part 4: Dark Clouds On A Blue Horizon

Dark Clouds on a Blue Horizon

The films of 1939 were perhaps the height of Hollywood’s Golden Age. Many, such as Gone With The Wind, Mister Smith Goes To Washington, Stagecoach, among many others, have survived down the decades and are viewed, avidly and repeatedly by film buffs the present day.

There was however a price to be paid.

Scandals such as the drug death of silent screen idol Wallace Reid, and the mysterious death of Thelma Tood, made front page headlines in the 0’s and 30’s. They could not be kept from the from the press . Scandals occur in any business. And Hollywood went to great lengths to minimize, or even suppress such stories if at all possible. Americans loved the movies, and unlike today, did not seem to be interested in ‘the bad stuff’, especially if it happened behind the scenes. The major studios were making entertainment that was popular, and some felt was even a public service.

Shirley’s parents, especially her mother, used her great popularity to make the Fox executives toe the line, assuring that no scandal would touch the young star. The majors at the time literally ‘owned’ their star studded help. Contracts with the stars were for 7 years, and were very restrictive. There was big money involved.

Many child stars; Baby Peggy, Jackie Coogan and Jackie Cooper were cheated or swindled out of much of what they had erned in years of making movies. Working conditons, 6 day work weeks, often ending Saturday night just before midnight, were the norm. Animal cruelty was rampant, especially in Westerns. The Running W, a wire, tripped and often injured or killed many. Only the cowboy actors or stunt men knew where that wire was.

Many child actors, Garland and Rooney were given drugs to keep them going and improve their performances. Though to be fair, Judy’s mother was the first person to give her daughter ‘pep pills’. Garland’s great talent, did not keep her from a sad and erratic journey that ended at 47. She blamed MGM all the way down the years, a victim to the end. Today she probably would have been able to find her way to recovery.

Mickey Rooney, another great talent, had a different view. I filmed him at the Pantages Theater in LA for a movie I was making honoring Jackie Cooper at a dinner that, sadly never took place. But that’s another story. Anyway, The Mick made the old days at MGM sound like a perpetual fairy tale come true. I showed Cooper the dailies a bit later. When the lights went up, Captain Jack uttered just one word…”Bullshit” I will return to the abuses of the system a bit later…but since Hollywood can be a fairy tale, let’s go back to it.

What does a military technical advisor do? The script had to be approved first. I would then be on the set to see that uniforms and ribbons were proper and also to see that the special language that the Navy speaks was spoken properly. We, for example, say bulkhead for wall, overhead for ceiling, deck for floor, hatch for door, etc. In a scene where a known character actor named Russ Conway, playing a Navy Captain, got on the Red Phone to speak to an Admiral. He started, “Admiral Whatever,this is Captain Soanso on the O-P-S desk…pronouncing each letter very clearly and distinctly. I sought out Buzz Kulik, the director after the first take and told him “Ops….it’s Ops, short for Operations” I said Conway was making it sound like a government agency. Old Navy types would have been all over this one.

That’s me working as a Technical Advisor with The Duke!

One sequence on Vanished was shot aboard an aircraft carrier moored at NAS North Island. The ship was supposed to be in the middle of the Atlantic. They got around showing the San Diego skyline, by angling the camera up, so that all you would see is blue sky. The skyline in San Diego today would make that shot impossible. I was on the Bridge as the JOOD, Junior Officer of the Deck in a few scenes. A pre Jock Ewing, Jim Davis, sat in his Captain’s chair, observing. We were supposed to be scanning the horizon with our binoculars, when the actor playing the OOD stage whispered to me. “What are we supposed to be looking for?” he asked. “Other ships,” I said. “Makes sense,” he answered.

I tried to make it a point to sit in on the dailies, scenes from the previous day. Strange, but with all those good actors, the individual scenes all seemed really fine, yet, when put together, the final product was….boring. Go figure. Tora!Tora!Tora! was a joint Japanese/American production. There was an American and two Japanese Directors, and one American and three Japanese screenwriters. You don’t need much imagination to grasp how that one turned out. East is East and West is West, and seldom the twain did meet.

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Midway, I thought, was a great picture. It was produced by a highly respected figure in the industry, Walter Mirisch. I had met Walter the year before at the Frank Capra Awards Dinner at Universal Studios. Midway was one of those epic productions that featured known stars in cameo roles. As the costs of picture making escalated, the cameo was invented. It amounted to attracting slightly fading stars with big names for billing purposes. What it meant in practical terms was, quite a bit of money for a very few days work. Cameos gave film producers the right to put Glenn Ford, Robert Mitchum, Robert Wagner, Cliff Robertson, right up there, just behind Charlton Heston and Henry Fonda, who were in the entire movie, and thus top billed.

I was on two weeks Reserve Active Duty, and given the job as Midway’s TA, Technical Advisor, for scenes to be shot at the Officer’s Club at Long Beach Naval Station. Long Beach’s bar was doubling for its sister saloon in Pearl Harbor. As a frequenter of such places in my active duty days, I am here to affirm that military bars look mostly alike, and historical accuracy was barely dented. Heston and Robertson were the principals in the Long Beach bar scenes. One Star, One Cameo Star. I was a bit wary of being recongnized by Heston on account of my invasion of his home several years before, but I was in uniform and was now sporting a beard. I decided to keep my distance and avoid shaking his hand. There seemed to be confrontation between the Heston and Robertson, even though the scene was still in preparation, and the camera was not rolling.

Heston now disengaged himself, sat down at the bar and ordered coffee. Robertson and the Director expanded the argument. I tugged at an AD, Assistant Director, standing near me and asked what was going on. “He wants more lines,” the AD said. What do you know, it wasn’t all about the money. Robertson’s part was too small, and this was to be his last day on the set. Quite a problem, till it wasn’t. Heston went on placidly drinking his coffee. A writer was summoned (a WGA rule). More lines were written. Problem solved. End of story. I don’t remember scenes from the movie, but that scene, that day, has stayed with me.

By now I had left the Navy after ten years of active duty, hoping to make it in Hollywood as a writer. A publicst friend who knew my work suggested I join a Naval Reserve Unit, Combat Camera Group Pacific. That was Commander Harry Flynn. In civilian life Harry handled such stars as Bob Hope, Michael Landon and Ernie Borgnine. We, and the Unit, were a good team, and over a nearly 20 year period we worked together on many Navy themed projects that featured such talents as John Wayne, Glenn Ford, Ernie Borgnine, Charlton Heston, Jackie Cooper and many more. In a way, you could say I really never left the Navy, and I had the best of both worlds, the Navy, and Hollywood.

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