The Light's on at Signpost (6 page)

Scour the countryside for anything, architectural or natural,
which might bear a resemblance to sixteenth-century England, and are rewarded in Sopron, a town up near the Czech border, which has some Tudorish-looking streets and frontages. Further exploration of the area is called off when we find ourselves being sternly regarded over the hedge by Czech frontier guards armed with tommy-guns. The team go back to Budapest, while I am driven to Vienna to catch a plane home, waiting patiently at the Austro-Hungarian border crossing while the guards take my passport away for three-quarters of an hour. Later, when I mention this to Nigel Wooll and speculate on what takes them such an unconscionably long time to deal with passports, he says: “I think they just read them.”

This sounds plausible; I suppose time hangs heavy at East European frontier posts.

Stay one night in Vienna, and am disappointed to see that the Danube is not in the least blue, but insanitary grey.

Back to Budapest, with Kathy, to see some shooting and do possible rewrites. Fleischer tells us over lunch that they have had considerable trouble with Olly Reed. It seems he got into a fight and finished up in a police cell; talk of deportation, but he was released on a promise of good behaviour. Then he had annoyed Fleischer by making a nuisance of himself at Mark Lester’s eighteenth birthday party, and had provoked a new crisis by breaking the nose of a rugby-playing friend. The Gellert Hotel, on the Buda side of the Danube, refused to have him back, so he is now in our hotel, the Intercontinental, which is on the Pest bank. Apparently he changed hotels not by taking a taxi across one of the bridges, but by wading and swimming the river in the middle of the night, arriving in the Intercontinental lobby clad only in mud and waterweed. It says much for his persuasive powers that the management allowed him to stay instead of throwing him back. Possibly they were impressed
by his line that his behaviour was nothing out of the way, and in England no one would have thought twice about it.

The Salkinds throw a big party for the unit in the Intercontinental ballroom. Kathy looks smashing in green silk, and I feel terribly conventional in my best suit among all these glamorous bohemians, but feel better when Oliver arrives in what is plainly
his
best suit, blue serge with waistcoat and club tie (black with thin orange stripes; who’s that?) He is only slightly canned, accompanied by his wife and daughter, and carrying a bunch of bulrushes—possibly a souvenir of his Danube crossing—which he distributes (“reeds”, get it?) Raquel Welch receives one graciously (so much for the tales that she and Oliver don’t get on; mind you, I can’t see them as close friends). As before, she struck me as being a nice, sensible woman, by no means a sex goddess. She is tired, after a day of interviews, and demands wearily: what do the press
want
of her? She doesn’t like being photographed or questioned on set, which is hardly surprising, and obviously believes (not without justice, I dare say) that the newspapers hope to be able to report her as difficult and temperamental.

Mark Lester is a nice lad, prattling to us about his part (both of them) and assuring Kathy that the film will have to be the next Royal Command production. He is only slightly tight, which for an eighteen-year-old is pretty creditable in the circumstances; his parents have been out once, for a week, and I wonder who keeps an eye on him. To my surprise he has about fifteen films behind him; another overnight sensation.

Kathy, as usual with her reporter’s instinct, has found the most interesting person at the party—a delightful, very old lady who speaks only French and turns out to be Pierre Spengler’s grandmother. We converse with difficulty, but gather that in her opinion Pierre does all the work (“
beaucoup de travail
”) which I think is probably true on the production side. She cannot take alcohol or chocolate, but she and Kathy share a plate of ice cream.

Fleischer introduces Lalla Ward (Princess Elizabeth) and Felicity Dean, a stunningly pretty blonde who is Mark’s sweetheart on screen; you could, as Dick says, eat her with a spoon. She confides to Kathy that she is still too young to get into RADA, and I think this may be her first part.

To the Hungarofilm studio to see rushes. The film looks beautiful, and the thrill of hearing George C. Scott speak my lines is delightful. Some of them he has decided to chant, which is appropriate to his part, the “Ruffler”, a monk-turned-bandit, and it works perfectly. I have nothing but admiration for Anthony Quinn and James Coburn, both of whom were mentioned as possible Rufflers, but I wouldn’t swap Scott for anyone. Heston, as Henry VIII, is better than I’ve ever seen him, Borgnine and Harrison are excellent, Lalla Ward gets every inch out of her raging scene as Young Bess, and there’s a nice little love-scene between Mark and Felicity Dean (that boy’s heart is in his work, no error; he doesn’t need a spoon). Olly is A1 as always, and I’m told steals the movie. It could be a smasher, but I’ll have to see it all.

Dinner with Fleischer at the 100 Years, to the deafening accompaniment of a gypsy violinist, whom I summoned accidentally while trying to get a waiter; thereafter he haunts us all bloody night. I complete my Edgar Kennedy act by grabbing for the bill ahead of Fleischer, and succeed in scooping up the check belonging to the next table. Fleischer wants another fight, this time in Westminster Abbey; no problem for me, but they’ll have to rebuild Westminster. However, Alex Salkind wants to keep the action going, and says spare no expense. They also want little end-pieces to be voiced over by Harrison, which I’ll attend to.

I mention tactfully to Pierre that since I’m having to do extra work, perhaps he should call my agent…he agrees. (I knew if I came to Hungary I’d finish up working.) Kathy suggests I get a
typewriter from the hotel, but remembering the difficulty I had getting one in Hollywood, I suspect I’ll end up writing in longhand. But lo, when we try the concierge he produces typewriter, paper, and all the fixings; so much for capitalism’s supposed superior efficiency. I do the scene and end-pieces, and we go shopping—pictures, ash-trays, embroidered cloths which we find in the apartment of an old German woman; likewise wooden cooking spoons of a style and shape no longer to be found in the West. Kathy gets me a lovely glass and silver swan whose wings fold over a mustardpot; he is Ferenc, and will live on my desk.

Car to Sopron, where Olly sits smoking in the stocks waiting to be flogged, while Raquel Welch and David Hemmings, on horseback, rehearse with Olly cueing them. All do well, although she doesn’t look at her best; I gather her father died recently and she has had distressing problems with hospital authorities.

Lunch with Kathy, Fleischer and Jack Cardiff. Chicken, caviare, cheese, grapes, peaches, vacuum flask of coffee which comes out stone cold, and wasps everywhere. Jack and Dick laugh at the tailpieces and approve the new Abbey fight scene; Pierre objects that they can’t re-dress the warehouse as Westminster because the owners have got 70 tons of cotton and 56 tons of beetroot which must be stored. Well, that’s show business.

Back to the stocks, where Hungarian extras dressed as Tudor peasants stand sipping from Coke bottles while Nigel Wooll, ever the optimist, shouts: “Quiet, please! Okay, everyone, here we go! Start pelting!” A technician translates for the benefit of the mob, who hurl eggs, vegetables, etc. enthusiastically at the stocks-bound Olly. He bears it patiently, wincing nicely when they rehearse the flogging with a velvet whip, while Mark, protesting violently, is dragged away by constables. Small crisis when flogger hits Olly before Fleischer has given the signal, and is severely rebuked. Meanwhile
Mark is being pursued by wasps, and vanishes, flapping and cursing.

To burn the witch or not? Much debate. I’m all for dropping it—if we want a U certificate and a Royal Command we’ll have to. Fleischer happy to ditch it, fair enough.

B. H. Barry, the fight arranger, suggests a Mel Brooksish touch for the Abbey fight: Olly seizing Raquel, menacing her with dagger to hold guards at bay. I shoot it down gently, and cheer him up by telling him that two-handed swords are to be used in the scene, which delights him, and he is soon lost in two-handed sword dreams.

Kathy and I take Fleischer and Cardiff to dinner, meeting Olly on the way. He is fresh after his ordeal, and when someone remarks that a scene which took me a moment’s typing gave him several long hours in the sun, trussed up, belaboured, and plastered with filth, he says happily: “Bing sings.”
*

Discussion at dinner about a remarkable piece of photography achieved by Cardiff, in a scene in which Mark, as the Prince, is seen walking completely round Mark as the Pauper. I’ve never seen anything like it, and when I ask how it was done I’m informed that when Sabu was asked by what miracle of special effects he had been showing flying on a genie’s back in
The Thief of Baghdad
, he replied deadpan: “He just picked me up and flew me.” Fleischer’s comment: “Good for Sabu.” I agree; I’ve no time for those who explain how screen miracles are achieved, and I shouldn’t have asked. Mark walked round Mark, and I don’t mind not knowing how it was done.

Cardiff has the rights to Jeffery Farnol’s
Jade of Destiny
, and wants me to write it for Olly in some kind of co-production deal. I make non-committal noises. It could be fun to write, and might make a good swashbuckler, but I wonder if the market will bear another Tudor adventure so soon after
Prince and Pauper
. Also, production isn’t my style. I’m a hired typewriter.

Back to the I.o.M., and a call from one Harold Hecht: am I interested in writing a sequel to
The Crimson Pirate
for Burt Lancaster, and will I go to a screening of the original movie (which I haven’t seen) in London with Lancaster, who is coming to England shortly? I’m taken with the idea of working with Lancaster, who has the reputation of being an unusually intelligent actor, but I’m not sure about the job. Without knowing what
The Crimson Pirate
was like, I doubt if there’s much chancing of doing an M3 (or a P and P) with a sequel. But who knows?
*

To Pinewood with Fleischer to see the rough-cut. It seems that Olly took to turning up legless during the last two weeks in Budapest; once he had roared at Fleischer, explaining how he was going to do a fight scene, stabbing the air, flinging himself on the ground, and simply failing to register when Dick said: “But, Olly, we’ve shot that fight, remember?” Olly didn’t, no doubt because he had been entirely gassed when he did it, plunging about and trying to kill everybody. Barry had had to scrap his carefully choreographed fight and ad-lib the whole thing, which looked suitably shambolic on screen.

Plainly booze is going to be the ruin of a fine but undisciplined actor. What makes it so painful is that Dick had golden opinions of Olly the actor before he saw Olly the drunk.

At lunch in the Pinewood restaurant (Table One, whee-whew! that’s what directorial giants get) I learn to my horror that most of Rex Harrison has been removed from the film. The logic is that Rex’s part was artificially built up (which I did on instruction because he is who he is) and that this unbalances the film as a whole; the built-up part is judged to be “obtrusive”. My feeling is that Rex can never be obtrusive—and, dammit, I wrote the part specially for him, he liked it and does it beautifully, and for my money it’s the best dialogue in the film. So I say, the hell with whether it’s obtrusive or not—if you’re lucky enough to have Harrison doing his thing as only he can,
use
him, and who cares if the picture runs ten minutes over?

Pierre arrives with his sister, a pretty, quiet girl. Alex and Ilya are at the Dorchester, cooking up big deals, but will arrive by executive transport, air-conditioned chauffeur, etc., in time for the showing at 3 p.m. We go to the viewing theatre—no Salkinds at three. Pierre phones in all directions, the chauffeur is still outside the Dorchester, but Alex and Ilya have vanished. Dick contains what must be white-hot fury under a bright-eyed calm. We continue to wait…and wait. Dick says if they don’t arrive by three thirty, forget it, because he won’t try to crowd the showing into the time available before the theatre is booked for another film.

We wait some more, Pierre’s sister brings coffee, we drink it in silence, I deliver a brief lecture on the manners of film producers, and Dick nods with gritted teeth—much more delay and he’ll burst.

At the last minute Alex and Ilya arrive, in trench coats, Alex apologising profusely and Ilya shaking his head. Coffee finished, Dick cocks an eye and asks: “Are we all…reddee?”, and we take our seats, myself at the end of the back row, well away from massed Salkinds with Dick in their midst. He must be a masochist; sitting beside Michel le Grand with a heavy cold is bad enough, but how he’s going to cope with Alex’s stertorous breathing and muttered translations of English into French via Russian, I hate to think.

Dick, using what I imagine is an age-old Hollywood formula, makes a nice little set speech from his seat, telling us the form: we’ll see the movie, and think a while, and then exchange views, right? Enthusiastic grunts from Alex, frowning malignantly from
the depths of his trench coat (this is his “concentration” expression) and the film rolls.

Well, my first reaction is one of disappointment.
*
The overall direction is vintage Fleischer, and Jack Cardiff ’s photography is immaculate as always, but some of the acting isn’t that good, and I’m not all that struck with some of my screenplay, either—but in self-defence there are lines I’d have played differently. But the main fault, dwarfing any others, is in the casting: Mark just isn’t right for the parts. Now and then he sounds like a school-play rehearsal—and yet sometimes that crack-voiced boyish intensity hits exactly the right note. It’s not his fault; it’s simply not his role—for one thing, he’s far too tall, six feet if he’s an inch.

Harrison’s reduction aside, I’m annoyed that the editor has dropped the long shot of Henry dying, which I liked because it was historically accurate and rather moving, with the whispered “Monks, monks, monks!” and the haunting music of “The Hunt is Up” coming in softly, and substituted a jarring close shot in which Charlton’s head drops alarmingly, and he does a great slump.
†