Ernie: The Autobiography (26 page)

We got to know and respect each other as time went on. I had a scene to do with him where he was lying in the hospital after his jaw had been broken in a fight. I called up Angelo Dundee and asked him, “Angelo, how did you react when you were over at the hospital? It says here that you were crying.”

He said, “Yes, I was.”

I said, “That’s all I want to know.” So as we got into the scene I cried. We finished the scene and no sooner had we heard “Cut” than Ali asked me, “How did you do that?” He wanted to know how to cry on cue.

I touched my chest and said, “Right from here, from your heart.”

He liked that. He even managed to master it. When Ali set his mind to something, he could not be beaten. I must say that we grew to love each other so much that when we parted at the end of the picture, I was crying and he was, too.

That part was real.

I’ve seen him a few times since, and he always shakes my hand. It’s terrible to see him with the affliction he has now, Parkinson’s disease. When he was first diagnosed in 1984, pundits said he didn’t have long to live. Well, nearly a quarter of a century later, he’s still here.

As I said, when Ali sets his mind to something…

Crossed Swords
(1977)

I’d do pretty much anything for director Richard Fleischer, especially when it plays to his lighthearted side. He was a pretty funny guy. He came by it naturally: his father was Max Fleischer, Disney’s chief rival and the man behind the Betty Boop and Popeye cartoons, along with his brother, Dave.

Richard’s natural storytelling talents were perfect for this movie, yet another film version of Mark Twain’s
The Prince and the Pauper
with an all-star cast that included Rex Harrison, Oliver Reed, Charlton Heston, George C. Scott, and my old friend Raquel Welch. I played John Canty, the gruff, SOB dad of the pauper.

There was one scene where we had a pile of horseshit on the set, which was brought in for authenticity. It was actually easier and, as you can imagine, less expensive to get than fake shit. We were rehearsing nearby when Dick said he wanted me to jump in there to hide.

I looked at him and said, “You mean I got to take a dive into that dung?”

Dick said, “I think that’ll work for the scene, don’t you?”

I said, “I guess.”

Dick said, “Well, let’s try it.”

I said, “Thanks a lot, Richard,” and I would’ve done it, too. I may be stupid, but I’m a professional.

Right before I jumped, he cracked up and told me to stop, that he’d only been kidding.

I was too relieved to laugh.

Something else that sticks with me was seeing Chuck Heston in full regalia for Henry VIII. Now Chuck’s a big guy, six-foot-four, and he made an imposing king. I wondered how accurately this reflected the real king, who was one of the most powerful leaders in history. I know Chuck did a lot of research for his parts, so I went over to ask.

Chuck admitted, “We took some liberties.”

“Ah,” I thought.

He said, “The real Henry was actually taller than I am.”

Chapter 34

Sam Peckinpah Again…and Beyond

T
he last thing Sam Peckinpah had said to me was that I should go fuck myself. So did I want to work with him again?

You bet your life!

It was 1978 and Sam was winding down by this time. The years of boozing and fighting the Hollywood system had taken their toll. He would make one more picture,
The Osterman Weekend
, in 1983 before his untimely death in 1984. Helluva director, but he drove producers and studio executives crazy, always going way beyond schedule and over budget on his films.

I think actors, too, were starting to drive him a little crazy. During the first script reading for
Convoy
, everybody had their own ideas and wanted things changed. That’s not unusual; it’s one of the reason everyone sits down for these readings.

I’m not sure Sam was listening. I know he didn’t change a thing. He knew enough about actors and film to know that as we started shooting, a lot of what we wanted would come out naturally in the performances. He didn’t want to be bothered about it until then.

He also couldn’t be bothered by schedules.

We had a restaurant scene that was supposed to take a week to film. It ended up taking four times longer. Finally, the producers went to Sam and said, “What are you doing?”

He looked at them and said, “I don’t like anybody looking over my shoulder.”

The producers left, but not before telling Sam to move things along or they’d have him replaced. They would have, too. On an earlier picture,
Major Dundee
, they were going to shut the production down until Chuck Heston agreed to return his entire salary to let Sam finish the picture.

I’m not sure I would’ve done it. (Chuck later told me with a laugh that he wouldn’t do it again, either.)

During the filming of
Convoy
, I met Steve McQueen, who was married to costar Ali MacGraw at the time. He came to the location one day while my stand-in Bobby Herron and I were all alone on the set. We were waiting for someone to come along and give us a ride back to the hotel.

Steve asked, “Where’s my wife?”

We said, “She’s gone ahead to the next location somewhere.”

Steve nodded and stood there smoking away. It was marijuana. He made no bones about it.

He said, “Listen, it’s getting late. You want me to take you back?”

I said, “Sure.” So Bobby and I got into his car. Steve was still smoking and now he was drinking beer at the same time. He had three of these beautiful cowboy hats in the back and he was throwing the empty beer bottles back there with the hats. He was going like a son of a bitch, a hundred miles an hour at least. I know he raced cars professionally, but I was still scared shitless. Bobby sank low in the seat, as scared as I was. We got to the hotel and accepted Steve’s invitation to have a beer or three. We left Steve at the bar, where he was just getting his second wind.

I went upstairs and collapsed. The next day Bobby said, “Talk about a ride. I felt like we were in
Bullitt
.”

Steve McQueen was a fine actor. You could tell on the screen that he worked the same way I did, with his heart, but also with his head. What this means is, you have to have the scene all prepared and figured out before you let your emotions loose. You’ve seen how I wrestle with that. So did he, usually carrying the entire picture on his shoulder. Watch him saying nothing on-screen some time. I swear, just watching him think is an exercise in acting!

Ali MacGraw had to have things explained to her a number of times because Sam was very particular in what he wanted from her. He never really gave me direction. I don’t know why, but he just let me do my own thing.

I’d say, “Is it okay for you?”

He’d answer, “If it isn’t I’ll tell you.” I’m not kidding: that was it. Once, I had to do this scene in a police cruiser. Before we shot it, I went to Sam to get a few instructions .

He said, “What the fuck do you want?”

I said, “I just want to ask you something about what you want me to do.”

“What I want,” he said, “is for you to Christ’s sake go out there and do the scene.”

When Kris Kristofferson saw
Convoy
at the opening, he said to me, “Y’know, I don’t remember being in this picture.”

He was under the weather most of the time, if you catch my drift. But he had enough charm and sincerity to pull it off. Speaking of which, Sam missed a few days, too, for the same reason. While he was recuperating, actor James Coburn came in and did a little directing work. It was an area he wanted to explore a little more and this was a good opportunity to do it.

It was a pretty good film and was received very well by the public, especially by the truckers. You know, when you can build a fan base like that you know you’re going to do okay. And if they like the work you did in it, they’ll come back to see you again. I’ve been really lucky to have accrued a lot of goodwill like that throughout my career.

Incidentally, I’m pretty sure the last thing Sam said to me on the picture was that I should go fuck myself. The man was nothing if not consistent.

The Double McGuffin

I went from working for Sam Peckinpah, a man known for blood and guts, to working for Joe Camp, the director best known for
Benji
.

The Double McGuffin
was about some schoolkids who find a briefcase full of money. When they go back to get it, they find a dead body in its place. We had some football players there. Lyle Alzado, who died early in life, God bless him. Rod Browning, Dion Pride, a bunch of great guys. George Kennedy was a police chief and Elke Sommer was a prime minister who was a target for assassins. I was a bad guy.

Joe Camp was very intense; we would do the same scene over and over again.

I’d say, “Joe, what is it that we’re doing wrong? Anything we can do to help you?”

He’d say, “No, no, just go ahead.”

He was just so concerned about getting it right.

You wouldn’t think that you could blank on something in which you invest a couple of months, but that’s all I recall about this one.

All Quiet on the Western Front
(1979)

Sometimes, despite what Thomas Wolfe said, you
can
go home again.

In 1979 I did a TV remake of the classic film (and Erich Maria Re-marque novel) about World War I. It was directed by my old friend Delbert Mann, who had directed me in
Marty
. It was a Hallmark Hall of Fame production—the same group for whom I did my Golden Globe–nominated
A Grandpa for Christmas
in 2007—and we had Richard Thomas, Patricia Neal, Ian Holm, and Donald Pleasence, among many other screen treasures.

We went to Czechoslovakia, which was still under Russian occupation, and shot at a little town called Im. The Russians had pushed all the people out of Im in order to get at the coal underneath. It was a perfect place to shoot because we needed explosives and we needed a blighted landscape where we could use them. This poor town had both.

It was truly disturbing to see these old people come down during the day while we were shooting. They’d look at all these lovely cobblestone streets and their beautiful opera house and churches that were being leveled because the Russians needed coal. You could see the long-ing in their expressions, remembering how things used to be.

The food was absolutely atrocious. Norman Rosemont, the producer, came to the location and wanted to know what the devil was going on., why the food was so bad. He made some calls and two days later we had people from Spain flown in to cook for us. Not that they always had the raw materials they needed. A few of us borrowed a car and went to Prague on a Sunday morning. We went in a store and asked for a can of beans. There were no beans. They just had empty cans they used for display. The poverty and sadness were terrible. Physically and emotionally, it was a very hard shoot.

The stress we all felt was on the screen and it fit the story.
All Quiet on the Western Front
was a remarkable piece of work. Richard Thomas gave the performance of his life as the hero, a soldier named Paul who learns that war is not about glory. I played a veteran named Private Katczinsky, whom Paul has to carry to a hospital without knowing that I’m already dead.

This picture should be required viewing in schools. There may be such things as necessary wars—I think Iraq and Afghanistan are two such wars, because we have to go after the crazies—but there is no such thing as a good war. We need to remember that.

The Black Hole
(1979)

Two years after
Star Wars
set the box office on fire, Disney decided to hop onto the science fiction bandwagon. Actually, that’s not quite true. They’d done a number of science fiction movies over the years, things like
The Shaggy Dog
and
Moon Pilot
. What they wanted to do was create a big space picture that could spin off toys and T-shirts and sequels.

The Black Hole
is pretty much a retelling of another Disney fantasy film,
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
. It’s about a research vessel that finds a missing spaceship commanded by a mysterious scientist on the edge of a black hole. The Captain Nemo—like scientist was played by Maximilian Schell. My fellow crewmates were Anthony Perkins, Robert Forster, Joe Bottoms, Yvette Mimieux, and Tommy McLoughlin. Roddy McDowall and Slim Pickens did voice-overs for a bunch of robots.

The very first question out of the box from the director, Gary Nelson, when I went to see him about making this picture, was “You don’t have to answer me right now, but would you take a trip up into the upper atmosphere of the studio if it came to making this picture there?”

What he meant was, since this was set in space, where there’s no gravity, would I do the picture on wires? You know, always floating around inside the spaceship.

I went home and talked it over with Tova, who said, without a whole lot of enthusiasm, “It’s up to you.”

I told Gary I’d do it. I mean, sure wires can break, but that never stopped anyone from playing Peter Pan on stage. And wouldn’t that have been exciting?

Unfortunately, it turned out to be cost-prohibitive, so the idea was scrapped. Too bad. The picture could have used something fresh like that.

It was a long shoot because of all the special effects, and the actors really had to concentrate in order to imagine things that weren’t going to be added until months later. With all these serious technicians running around, and Disney executives constantly on the set watching how much was spent—a lot—there wasn’t a lot of room for jokes.

The Black Hole
turned out to be a beautiful-looking, first-class production, but suffered from being too much like
Star Wars
in the robot department. Action wise, it could have used more of what
Star Wars
had. I’m sure Disney thought so, too, since it was a box-office disappointment for them.