Hollywood (28 page)

Laughton enjoyed being difficult, not because it disconcerted others, but because being difficult made him special, the center of attention.

During the making of the location part of
They Knew What They Wanted
, in the Napa Valley, the company and crew were variously billeted. Laughton refused to accept his assigned house, the largest and most beautiful in the Valley, and insisted on staying at a small hotel some twenty miles away.

My own billet was a farm outside the town of Napa—an old hacienda, sitting in the midst of a succession of peach orchards. Paul Lepere was there with me, along with Jules Dassin (an apprentice), and Frank Fay. One warm evening, sitting out on the porch after dinner, we saw a small truck drive up.

Charles, looking disheveled and wild-eyed, jumped out wearing corduroy trousers, no shoes, and pajama top.

He walked up to me and said, “I must speak to you at once—it’s imperative—about this idiotic scene we’re going to try to do tomorrow morning.”

“Which scene?” I asked.

He waved some manuscript pages in my face, and cried, “It’s
impossible
!”

I invited him into the house. He declined, probably because he did not want Frank Fay to hear us. (The irrepressible Frank had taken to ragging Charles from time to time.) Charles and I walked off together into an orchard. We walked and walked, up one row and down another, Laughton acting the scene first one way and then another.

I could find nothing wrong with the scene or with Laughton’s attack on it, but something was troubling him—something he could not verbalize. He had a highly developed sense of rhythm and it might have been that the over-all rhythm of the scene was throwing him. He asked if he could make a few adjustments in the lines, dropping a word here, adding a word there, transporting a phrase. None of the things he suggested seemed to make any difference, but apparently they did to him.

We continued to walk. He continued to struggle. It grew dark, darker. Finally, walking through the orchard became difficult. We were both stumbling, often bumping into trees, now and then tripping and falling against each other. My falling against him was negligible, but every time he fell against me, it was serious, since he outweighed me by a hundred and twenty pounds.

He was silent for a time as we moved carefully through the rows of trees. I had to take care to stay beside him. When he got in front of me, I had to deal with the added problem of snapped-back branches. He did not seem to want to talk. He was cerebrating. After a while, he began to mumble. I had been playing the scene with him, filling in the other parts, but now I could not make out any of the cues. He continued to mumble. Occasionally, I caught a word. All at once, the quality of his voice changed. Laughton disappeared. Tony replaced him. He began to act the scene.

We had stopped in a clearing. There was a certain amount of moonlight. Laughton’s genius turned it into sunlight. Standing there that night, in the muddy orchard, I saw and heard and felt great acting.

The scene ended. He looked to me as though he were about to shout, exultantly, but what emanated was a quiet sound made up of passion and relief.

“I’ve got it,” he said.

“Bet your ass!” I said.

“I’ve got it!” he repeated.

“And that’s a pretty big bet,” I added.

He looked at me disdainfully and walked off toward the house. I followed him, not quickly enough to avoid being snapped by two branches.

We reached the house. The boys were still on the porch. Laughton spoke to them.

“Forgive me,” he said. “I’m sorry to have interrupted your evening, but I had a problem. We’ve solved it now,” he went on, graciously, with a nod toward me. “I’ve got it,” he added. “Goodnight.”

We all said goodnight. Laughton got into the little truck. As it drove off, we heard him say to the driver, “I’ve got it.”

The next morning I made it a point to be on location earlier than usual. I thought that for once, in his eagerness, Laughton might turn up on time. I was wrong. He was late as usual, and had found someone else to blame. It was always someone else. The wardrobe man. The hairdresser. Makeup. The driver. Or room service. Or a telephone call. Today, he was blaming the driver who, he said, had flatly refused to drive fast.

“I had the sumbitchin’ celerator on the goddamn floor,” said the driver, miserably.

“Never mind,” I said. “We’re all here now. Let’s take a crack at it.”

“‘A crack’?” said Laughton, in his high-falutin tone. “And just what is ‘a crack,’ may I ask?”

“Come on, Cuddles,” I said. “Don’t start up first thing in the morning. We’ve got a big scene to do. At least
you
have. Let’s get going. The light may change.”

The other players were called. The scene was rehearsed quickly for the camera. Carole and Bill Gargan played as though we were shooting, but Laughton simply marked it, reading his lines in a flat, toneless, meaningless way. We had all become accustomed to this method and no longer minded it as much as we had in the beginning.

At length, at great length, everything was ready. We began.

“Roll ’em.”

“Speed.”

“Anytime.”

The scene began and it was instantly apparent that it was dead. I cannot say that Laughton was not trying. In fact, he may have been trying too hard. He was forcing. As he became aware of this, he stopped pressing. The life went out of the scene. He began to trick it, to fake it—overgesturing and underplaying.

I knew it was no good and so did he, and so did everyone watching. But I let it go on, hoping that the effort would somehow prime his creative pump. It failed to do so. Halfway through the scene, he shrugged, shook his head, and gave up.

“Cut,” I said. “All right, one more. Right away.”

The scene was reassembled. We rolled again. The result was no better. In fact, worse.

“Cut. One more.”

Laughton looked tense, seemed miserable. I walked up to him and put a hand on his shoulder.

“Relax, Charles,” I said. “You’ll get it. It’s going to be terrific.”

He looked at me. There were tears in his eyes.

“I’ve lost it,” he said.

“You’ll find it,” I insisted.

“How?” he inquired, hopelessly.

“Just by doing it, Charles. You won’t find it by worrying. Let’s just keep doing it— looking for it. You had it once. You’ll have it again.”

Another take. Another failure. We had no more than begun again when he stopped, looked up and said dolefully, “It’s no use. I’ve lost it.”

Half irritated and half in jest, I said, “Where do you suppose you lost it?”

He took the joke literally, looked at me, and said, “In the orchard. I lost it in the orchard.”

There are people who possess strange powers. Laughton was one of them. He had the power to draw one into the orbit of his pattern of thought, sense of feeling, and mode of behavior.

This explains why I heard myself say, in all seriousness, “Do you think we ought to go back there and look for it?”

Even the cast and crew were silent. They neither laughed nor smiled. Laughton had drawn us into his mad fancy.

“Would you mind?” he asked. “Can you spare the time?”

“Well,” I said, “I don’t see what else we
can
do. We can stay here doing take after take, looking for it, but if it isn’t here, if you lost it in the orchard, I suppose we’d better go back there and look for it.”

A studio car was summoned. I got into it with Laughton, and we drove off. The orchard was over nine miles from the location and the roads none too good. It took us about fifteen minutes to make the trip.

He was delighted to see the orchard again. His spirits rose noticeably a short time after he had jumped out of the car and begun pacing up and down through the rows of trees. I followed, trying to keep up with him.

Unfortunately for me, this was the morning the trees were being sprayed and since my single but serious ailment is a chronic allergy, I was soon in deep trouble. I began to sneeze. This made it difficult for me to play the several parts I had played the night before. The fact that I was giving a sneezy rendition bothered Laughton, and he let me know it with grim frowns.

We continued, however, eventually reaching the point where he began to mumble, then recite, then play. He was no more than three or four lines into the scene when he stopped, said “I’ve got it!”—and headed back for the car.

“Fast,” I said to the driver. “Fast as you can.”

He nodded. I sat up front with him. Laughton sat on the back seat, his eyes closed, mumbling like a praying monk in the midst of strange incantations. We made the trip in about five minutes. There was no sound except that of my continuing sneezing.

Back on the set again, the scene was reconstituted. Even in my misery, I could not help but appreciate the thoughtful cooperation I was getting from everyone.

We began again. The scene was playing beautifully, so beautifully, in fact, that everyone, including me, forgave the silliness and star-nonsense we were putting up with. If an eighteen-mile trip and half an hour’s time could achieve this result, it was worth it.

Then—I sneezed, ruining the take. I had been holding it back, pressing the cartilage under my nose until it hurt. But the scene was fairly long and I sneezed. Sneezed again. And again. Again.

I apologized profusely, blew my nose, and asked for another take. It began. I did not sneeze and Laughton did not act.

He stopped, looked up and said, “I’ve lost it.”

“My fault,” I said. “My fault entirely. Do you want to go back to the orchard?”

“Yes,” he said, “but not with
you
.”

Adele, the script girl, got into the car with him. They drove off.

I went to my trailer and took a triple dose of Pyrabenzamine in an effort to abort the attack. Like all such drugs, it had the effect of making me drowsy.

Laughton and Adele returned, having been gone about half an hour. By this time, all my energies were focused simply on staying awake and I was not in a position to judge the quality of the work. We did three takes. Laughton said he would like to do another. I dozed through that one. He wanted to do still another. I slept through that one, but was awakened by a gentle nudge from Adele who whispered, “Cut.”

“Cut!” I yelled. “Great. Print it. Print them all.”

Laughton came over and offered his hand. I took it.

“Thank you,” he said. “Thank you for your patience. Are you all right?”

“Fine, fine,” I said, yawning in his face.

“You look ill,” he said with some concern.

“That’s only because I’m sick,” I said.

“Are you going to be sick?” he said, stepping away quickly.

Sick, in his British lexicon, meant only throwing up.

“No, no,” I said. “Ill.”

We went on working, shooting the other angles of the scene. Laughton had it locked up now and spent a happy day.

As for me, I drank Coca-Cola and coffee until I
did
throw up, and kept worrying about the scene I had been able to observe only through glazed eyes. Since we were on location, the dailies were always two days late, so it was not until forty-eight hours later, in the little town theatre, that I was able to see the result of that crazy day.

It was, perhaps, the best scene of the whole picture.

The shooting finally ended, to the great relief of all. Many times in the course of it, I had had serious doubts as to whether it would ever be finished.

Elaborate end-of-shooting parties were the order of the day, but the atmosphere on
They Knew What They Wanted
was not conducive to celebration. Still, I sent out for a few bottles and most of us hung around after the final shot, having a drink.

An hour or so passed and then, to my astonishment, Laughton walked onto the set. For a moment, we all failed to recognize him because he had gone back to his dressing room, taken off his elaborate makeup, and changed into street clothes. Behind him came his driver carrying a case of champagne. Laughton opened the first bottle, poured himself a glass, offered a mixed-up toast to the company and went about shaking hands with each one.

The gesture failed to take. The cast and crew were still resentful and, although they did not show it openly, subtly made it clear.

Presently, I saw Charles standing alone, leaning against a grand piano, sipping champagne but looking forlorn.

I went over to him and said, “Well, that’s that. And we’re all still alive.”

“Yes. We’ve done it.”

“
You’ve
done it,” I corrected. “Now starts the hard part, putting it all together. I wonder how many people in the audience realize that it isn’t just one long piece of film they’re watching, but a jigsaw made up of maybe three or four thousand little pieces of film.”

“Is that so?” asked Laughton.

“And the difficulty,” I said, “is that you have to get all the pieces in the right place and the right length to make a picture work.”

“Yes.”

“Incidentally, Charles,” I said, “I want you to know that you’re welcome at any time to come by and monkey around with us. I’d be grateful for any suggestions, especially about your own performance.”

“Very good of you,” he mumbled into his glass.

“That’s the hell of film acting, I suppose,” I said. “An actor gives a performance and only he knows the design he had in mind but then it’s taken away from him and other people put it together and build it. Sometimes ruin it. That’s why I say it would be helpful if you
could
drop around once in a while.”

“I’m going away,” he said.

“Yes, but you’ll be back, won’t you?”

“I don’t know. Every time I finish one, I can’t bear the thought of ever starting again.”

“Well, we all feel that,” I said. “But something’ll come along and charge you up. You’ll see.”

Our conversation was running down, going nowhere. We were silent for a time.

He looked up and said, “What’s so terribly, terribly sad about all this is that some day you’ll come to know what a damned nice fella I really am.”

I wanted to say something, but it stuck in my throat. He had shaken me. All at once, I believed it. That he was, at heart, a damned nice fellow and that it was the burden of his talent that made him behave oddly at times. I reached out and touched him. He laughed.