THE ASSASSIN - June 1966 (The FBI)

The start of the 1966-67 season found me doing something I had never done before and would never do again. I signed with QM Productions to direct every other THE FBI for the season, a total of thirteen productions. That meant I would be starting to prep a new assignment the day after I finished filming the previous one with no time off between shows. THE FBI was no stranger to me, and this was my third season of working for QM. I had directed four episodes of THE FUGITIVE, four of TWELVE O’CLOCK HIGH, and three of THE FBI the previous year during its first season on the air. It was for me a comfortable association. But I’ll tell you right off I only lasted through eight productions. That was not a pace I could endure, nor was it a pace I wanted to maintain.

I stated when I started this blog that I would “add posts as time and memory permits.” After four months of doing it I find there is a third factor entering the equation. These excursions are like visits for me, and where I FEEL like visiting is playing a very large role in my selections. So today I’m going back to drop in on THE ASSASSIN, the fifth episode of THE FBI series that I directed and my second episode under my new contractual agreement. To get started let's drop in at the US Embassy in Manilla.

You were expecting maybe a nice little visit like at the Waltons? The Manilla street incidentally was on the backlot of Warner Bros. studio.

This scene provided another justification for me to have insisted on the right to be in the editing room. The editor in assembling the sequence of the killing used only the shot from inside the van moving away. I also wanted the second shot with the body falling in the foreground as the van is driving off. He didn’t argue the point, but he did think it was unnecessary.

The casting of Anton, the assassin, was a very interesting journey. John Conwell, who had been an actor, then a casting director for TWILIGHT ZONE (he cast PRINTER’S DEVIL), was now the executive casting director for QM Productions. John was just great. He knew actors, he knew about acting. He was the best. My first choice for the role of the assassin was slightly built, blondish David Wayne. He proved unavailable. John then suggested George C. Scott. Now this was not in line with my concept, but I had worked with George and who could say no to him. But he too proved unavailable. I then suggested Gig Young, dark-haired but at this point in his career mainly a light comedian. (It would be three years later that Gig would win an Oscar for THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON'T THEY?, definitely a non-comedic  role.)  But he also was not to be had. John along the way had suggested Fritz Weaver. I thought Weaver was a fine actor, but he was exactly the dark-haired ‘heavy’ image I was trying to avoid. I said no. I had seen an actor in one of the John Houseman produced theatre productions at UCLA (the group that eventually metastasized into the Mark Taper Forum) who filled my original vision of the role when I sought David Wayne. He was William Windom. Bill had been around for a long time, a very working actor in television starting back in the live days in New York. There were no great objections to him, but there was not great excitement either. Then John called me one day and said if we wanted Fritz Weaver, we would have to decide right now because he had another offer pending. I again said, “But I don't want Fritz Weaver, I want William Windom.” And I got William Windom.

Alex Brewis was one of the smaller agents in Hollywood. Alex would regularly drop by my office at QM, seeking work for his clients. He had some very talented people, many young ones just starting out. Alex had been touting a young Tom Skerritt to me for some time. There just hadn’t been a role that he was right for. This time there was. So we hired Tom Skerritt to play the idealistic young college student caught up in the cause.

There is a glaring director’s goof in that scene. Did you catch it? I didn’t at the time, but it has bothered me every time I have viewed it since.

Anton, when he took the dead pilot’s pulse, left his thumb print on the wrist watch. And this scene ending on the wrist watch stressed that point. But nothing came of it. My goof!

The FBI’s investigation just couldn’t match the dramatic intensity of the criminal’s side of the story. Much of the time those scenes took place in FBI offices or were telephone conversations. The following scene, greatly enhanced by the beautiful photography of Billy Spencer, was a rare exception.

Dean Jagger, whom we hired to play the pacifist Bishop John Atwood, hadn’t worked since the end of his television series, MR. NOVAK. (I vaguely remember that there might have been some illness during that period.) He was like a young colt prancing to get out of the starting gate. He showed up at the studio several days before the start of filming for the usual wardrobe fittings; but he also wanted discussions about the role. He was excited, anxious and I think a little nervous. The following scene with Erskine (Efrem Zimbalist) was the first scene we filmed and his first time in front of the camera in a couple of years. As we began rehearsing and then filming, that same actor’s nervousness was still in evidence. It was amusing that it only took a couple of takes, and Dean, confidence now restored, was making suggestions to Efrem about his role. Efrem looked at me with a knowing smile. It was great to welcome this Academy Award winner back to where he belonged -- in front of the camera.

I’ve mentioned before about the parallel story form of so many of the episodes of THE FBI -- the criminals’s story and the investigation. In this case we had three parallel stories -- the assassin's, the victim intended for assassination's and the FBI investigation's. It was nice to get Efrem out of the office and off of the telephone.

Atwood’s arrival in San Francisco was filmed after his previous scene with Erskine, although it preceded it in the story. Meeting him was Dean Sutherland in the person of Rhys Williams. Rhys earlier that year had been in an episode of THE WILD WILD WEST that I directed. And notice a very debonair Ted Knight just four years before he joined THE MARY TYLER MOORE show.

Young filmmakers come out of film schools today with a broad knowledge of the camera. Billy Spencer was my film school. I knew very little about the camera during the early years of my film directing. I knew what I wanted my picture to look like, but that was it. We didn’t have a zoom lens yet except for the small Arriflex camera, which was not encased and could not be used if sound was being recorded. So everything was filmed with flat lenses. The first TWELVE O’CLOCK HIGH that I directed had a different director of photography because Billy was away filming a pilot for QM. This cameraman asked me at the beginning of filming if I minded if he shot everything with a 30mm lens. What did I know! I said sure, go ahead.

When I started working with Billy I adapted to his methods. He would stand directly behind me, looking over my left shoulder (fortunately he was just a minuscule tad shorter than I was) as I had the actors walk through the staging. Very soon I started asking him which lens he would be using. By the time we arrived at the current production, I was telling him (with a question mark) which lens I thought he would be using. Billy would beam as he nodded that I had called it correctly. I think he was a little proud of his film student

Billy was an artist, but he painted with light. He had won an Emmy the prevous year for his black and white photography on TWELVE O’CLOCK HIGH. Now he was filming in color, and he hated it. He told me that when he watched color tv, he turned the color off and watched it in black and white. But his color photography was magnificent, because he lit it the same way he lit black and white. One of the things I had learned working with Billy was that when the camera moved into the set, that hampered what he could do with his lighting. For the following scene in Dean Sutherland’s study I told Billy to go ahead and paint. The camera was staying out of the set; the actors would be moving toward the camera.

I really liked the freedom and expanse of the location filming in Texas on ROUTE 66. New York City was an incredible place to film NAKED CITY. As long as you don’t aim directly into a building, and if you shoot with the wider lenses, there is no such thing as a bad shot. But even more exciting for me is to explore inward into the human being, especially if the inner man has, deep under his skin, hidden crevices filled with dark boiling emotions.

When series episodes went into syndication, there was a good and a bad. The good was the residual income. The bad was that further cuts were made in the shows to provide room for more commercials. The scene above was cut from those early syndicated airings. This was disturbing for me, because I felt it was one of the strongest scenes in the film.

Adrian Samish was a nice man. I had very little direct contact with him. He had been an executive at ABC, and when he joined Quinn Martin Productions in 1965 or 1966, the rumor running through the company was that he would not be around for long; that it was an accommodation between Quinn and ABC for ABC to unload him. Obviously there was no truth to the rumor, because Adrian stayed on at QM Productions for several years. What I am going to write now is not complimentary to Adrian. And I don’t like writing negative things about people. But some of the things relating to Adrian are just too juicy and humorous to ignore.

This script was one of the rare times when I was protective of the script rather than asking for changes. Charles Larson, the producer and person most responsible for this script, knew this and alarmed me one day during the prep period when he told me he had received Adrian Samish’s notes requesting changes in the script. We went through Adrian’s notes, one at a time, and Charles kept saying there was no problem; that complaint could be easily fixed without hurting the script. But then we came to the note about the previous scene. Adrian found the scene ridiculous; he felt that Anton had not convinced the young Hastings to commit the assassination. Charles thought for a moment and then said, “Adrian is a fisherman. Let’s put this stage instruction -- (hooked like a fish) -- before Hastings says, “Do you really have to ask that?” And we did. That was the only adjustment we made in this scene. There was no further complaint from Adrian.

Arthur Fellows, who rarely came down to the set, came down the day after we filmed the sequences in Anton’s room. He had just been to the screening of the rushes, and he made the trip to tell me that he was absolutely fascinated with the film he had just viewed.

Shooting on the New York street on Warner Bros. backlot always presented the possibility of seeming false. The streets were too narrow, and big city streets are usually filled with more people than our television budget could accommodate. The person in charge of directing the extras who would populate this street was the assistant director, in this case Paul Wurtzel. Paul had been the assistant on most of the QM productions that I directed for TWELVE O’CLOCK HIGH and THE FBI, and he was also my neighbor, living just a half a block from me. Paul belonged to one of the true Hollywood dynasties; his father had been Sol Wurtzel, during the early thirties the head of production for Fox Studio. Paul told the story that when he was about eight years old, his father would take him to the screening room where he would view Fox’s latest films due for release. Sol would ask the young Paul for his opinion on the films. And I got the impression that young Paul’s opinions were not taken lightly. Paul also was great to have on a set; he had a lethal sense of humor.

The format for THE FBI was a prolog, four acts and an epilog. Up untill this time the main story had ended at the end of Act IV. The epilog was just a meaningless tack-on. I wanted all the time I could get to do this story, so I suggested to Charlie that we play the following scene as the epilog, rather than squeezing it into the end of Act IV. He agreed.

John Conwell told me the day after THE ASSASSIN aired, he had many phone calls commending the show and raving over his casting of William Windom in the title role.

And I personally think Bill Windom gives an amazing performance as the assassin! I shudder to think what this same script would look like if produced under the Aaron Spelling banner.

THE TRAIN - February 1967 (Mission: Impossible)

You hear that driving pulsating beat of the theme song for MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE? That’s the way I remember it felt like when I was directing THE TRAIN, which assignment could almost have been labeled an impossible mission. But let’s take it step by step.

The series' first season was drawing to its end, and the company was in the process of making plans and changes for its continuance. Steven Hill, the head of the Mission: Impossible team, had had his troubles with the studio, or was it the other way around. For the current production he had been demoted, he would only make the assignments. Martin Landau was joining the team and would be performing the role in the mission that Hill would normally do.

I would like to state here that I found Steven Hill to be charming, cooperative and totally professional. And I think he’s a hell of an actor.

Casting was easy. William Windom as the evil heir apparent had earlier that season been in what I consider the best of my sixteen THE FBI’s. Also in that cast was Rhys Williams, who would be playing the ailing prime minister. Rhys, the previous season had also been in THE NIGHT OF THE DRUID’S BLOOD on THE WILD WILD WEST, which I had directed.

The production was scheduled to be filmed in seven days, six days in the studio, one day on location, but what a day that was. Here is the Shooting Schedule for our day at the train.

The day started bright and early.

The interior of the warehouse would be created back at the Desilu Studio. Within that warehouse set would be the set for the train’s interior. Film making is not unlike a jigsaw puzzle. Each shot is like a piece of a puzzle; put them all together and you have a film. In the case of MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE, most of the pieces were just shorter than usual and definitely more plentiful. And shots in a sequence were not always filmed at the same time or in the same place. For instance in the following clip the shot with Greg Morris and Martin Landau in the foreground looking through the door window was filmed at the train site. The reverse angle two shot of them intercutting with that shot was filmed later at the studio. The shot of the doctor and guard inside the train car was filmed at the studio. The shot of the exterior of the train as the window shade is raised was filmed at the train site several days prior.

Barry Crane was the associate producer-production manager for MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE. (He also was a world class bridge player.) When we scouted the train location we both knew that although the page count for the day came to just under eight pages, the amount of work being scheduled was impossible. To help alleviate this problem a second camera was added, and it was decided that Barry would shoot (with that second camera when I wasn’t utilizing it) any shots not requiring sound. In the following clip the shots of Willie (Peter Lupus) climbing the switching tower and operating the switches were storyboarded by me and directed by Barry.

This sequence was a challenge. It was like filming a sequence for a silent film without the caption cards to help explain the action, which was that the mission of the Mission Impossible team was to get the prime minister and his entourage on board, disconnect his car from the rest of the train and have the train pull out, have Barney (Greg Morris) connect his engine to the prime minister’s car and switch it to the tracks that will allow him to push the car into the warehouse.

You’ll notice the prime minister (Rhys Williams) did not exit the car. Rhys was plagued with crippling arthritis. It was not only uncomfortable for him to exit the car, it would have been painful to watch.

Did you notice the pink sky in that last clip? That shot was filmed late afternoon. Now in our story the whole sequence from the time the first trucks arrived until the prime minister’s car was pushed into the warehouse should have spanned about an hour at most. A feature film with a proper budget would have scheduled the train sequence for three days. But this was television. So hopefully you and the millions of viewers didn’t notice this slight discrepancy.

Have I roused your curiosity as to why they are taking the train and the prime minister into the warehouse? Well you’ll just have to wait a few more minutes. Can you believe we haven’t finished our location filming yet? What ever is going on inside requires Willie to stand guard outside. And here again our television schedule forced Willie to stand guard at night. If we had had a feature film budget he would have stood guard in daylight.

A good location day would be 25 to 30 setups. With Barry Crane’s help (I think he shot 13 or 14 second unit setups) we triumphantly returned to the studio with 69 setups in the can.

Back in the old days there would be one advance screening at the network (in this case, CBS) for the representatives from the ad agencies representing the sponsors of the program. I always tried to go to those screenings of shows I had directed. In those days before tape and DVD’s, there weren’t that many chances for me to see the final results of my efforts. The agency screening of the answer print and the show’s airing were it. The sponsors’ representatives were very impressed. One of them asked me how many days we had spent filming on location. There was general amazement from all when I answered, “One.”

And now welcome into the warehouse. I’ll write about it after you’ve had a chance to look around.

Everything i had filmed outside of the warehouse had been totally real. My job was to transfer that reality to film. Inside the warehouse it was a different situation. I have written before of rear projection. That’s what you are seeing here. Rear projection as seen through the lens of a camera photographing it (the two cameras are synchronized) is very believable But to the naked eye it is not. The human eye looking at a rear projection screen sees a movie screen with all of its flickering. My assignment was to ignore that fact.

Now we have an added problem for our Mission: Impossible team.

I think our writers, Woodfield and Balter, must have been carried away by what they had been viewing. I can’t say this for sure because I don’t think I ever met them, although they were around the studio. But about this time I received pages of new scenes they had written. If the sound system breaking down could create an exciting sequence, wouldn’t it be even more exciting to have the film in the rear projector break. Film spewing out of the projector all over the place. I agreed it would IF there was not a limitation on the running time for the completed film and IF there was not the problem of adding new material to an already overloaded shooting schedule. I pled my case to producer Joe Gantman, a friend from our CBS days, and he agreed with me. The added scenes were not added to the already overloaded filming schedule.

And now the exciting part, both behind and before the camera.

How about a hand for those Hollywood crews of old who NEVER saw a request they couldn’t fill!

And now I’m going to let the film tell you the rest of the story.

Since this episode was filmed near the end of their first season, it was only a short time until the Emmy nominations for that year were announced. MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE received a nomination as best television series. When a show for any series was nominated, the producers selected one episode that was submitted to the Television Academy. The Academy then had panels of Television Academy members assemble to view the five nominees in each category. Their vote decided the winner. I was told by a member of the production staff that MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE submitted THE TRAIN as their entrant. It won! MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE was awarded the Emmy as the best television series in its first season on the air.

At the beginning of the following television season when directors were booked for assignments for the season, my agents called to tell me there was a request from MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE for me to do six episodes. I turned it down. It was a marvelous show, but it was a killer. And not too long after the following season began, Desilu Studio was purchased by Paramount Studios. The new bosses imposed even more stringent demands on the shooting schedules. I never regretted my decision to say no.

THE JACK IS HIGH - August 1964 (Suspense Theatre)

I might not have written about THE JACK IS HIGH this soon if I had not received an e-mail from a producer-director of independent films. Let me share that note with you.

Oh for those wonderful days past when weekly anthology dramatic series reigned supreme.

In an ideal episodic-television world a perfect script would be delivered to the director’s home three days before he is due to report to the studio to start preparation for the production. This would be in accordance with the DGA-Producer’s Guild contract. Once at the studio the six days of preparation and seven days of filming would go without unpleasant incident or bloodshed. This would probably result in better television, but it sure wouldn’t help in providing material for a blog. Fortunately for this blog, it was not an ideal world into which THE JACK IS HIGH was born.

A script was never delivered to my home, which was not unusual. In fact, contract or no contract it was quite normal. So I reported to the studio on the appointed day in August, figuring the script would be awaiting me there. When I arrived I was told there was a script, but ... well actually there wasn’t exactly a script. The film I was to direct was a caper movie, a story of an armored car robbery by a group of five men. The robbers all wore masks of Snow White’s dwarfs. And the studio had just found out that Walt Disney OWNED the rights to anything connected to Snow White. Therefore the script was going to have to be drastically revised. So with six working days before the beginning of filming, with loads of location scouting to do, I was relegated to the side lines awaiting the script’s arrival.

Fortunately the casting department was able to go into action. They probably had read the Dwarf version, so they just had to take off the masks and cast what was behind them. I’m just assuming this, because this being Universal, I didn’t even know in which building the casting department was deposited. But they did come up with a pretty impressive group.

Pat O’Brien. I loved working with screen legends I had watched as a kid. And I had met Pat briefly nine years before. My friend, Paul Bryar, had a role in a movie starring Pat, and one day he took me with him to a small studio at the east end of Sunset Boulevard. Paul had just been in a production I directed at the Players’ Ring of MY THREE ANGELS. In fact it was on that production that I met Paul and his wife, Claudia, who also was in it but not one of the ANGELS. I guess Paul had told Pat about the production, because Pat and his wife were going to be doing MY THREE ANGELS in summer stock that year, and we spoke about the play.

And then there were three actors with whom I had already worked, and I liked that. Henry Jones had been one of the stars of the series BANNING. I had directed an episode of that series a couple of years prior. Wait until I get around to writing about that one and the incident of the white concert grand piano. It too was at Universal. Harry Bellaver of NAKED CITY. And good old Bill Bramley. After his delivery of the line, “Honey, you wanna ride on my bulldozer!” in THE BULL ROARER, I always figured he was like money in the bank. The new kid on the block was Edd Byrnes, Kookie from 77 SUNSET STRIP, his career still warm from having been in that series.

Well finally the script arrived, well at least part of it. They still hadn’t figured out the ending, of how to stop a speeding gasoline tanker. But my starting concern was robbing the armored car. We were going to film it on the Universal backlot at night. We had decided on our needed hilly, country dirt road, and on the appointed day the company assembled there very late afternoon to prepare to shoot as soon as it was dark. The various crews were at work preparing for the evening’s filming. When filming on rough terrain we used a jeep crane, a jeep with a camera crane mounted on its rear. The jeep driver was slowly driving up the fairly steep incline, a member of the gaffers crew holding and guiding the end of the very long arm of the crane which extended off the body of the vehicle. The camera was of course not installed on the crane at this time. Two thirds of the way up the hill something went wrong with the jeep. The engine stopped, and the vehicle started to roll back down the hill. The jeep driver hit the brakes of the vehicle, but they didn’t work. So the vehicle gained speed. The man holding the end of the crane had to let go, and as the vehicle plummeted down the hill, the crane arm swinging wildly, members of the company who were spread out over the hillsilde, scrambled to get out of the way of this lethal weapon. The driver to his credit (he could have jumped out of the careening vehicle) stayed at the wheel trying to steer it down the hill. At the bottom of the hill, the jeep rammed into something, and the driver was thrown from the vehicle. We all assembled there, the medical person on the set was summoned. The driver was rushed to the hospital. Filming for the evening was, of course, called off. Two or three days later we learned the driver died.

A day or so later we reassembled at the same spot to shoot what you are now going to see -- the sequence for which a man gave his life.

We were scheduled to return to the same location on the back lot the next morning to film the sequence of the beginning of the investigation. I had qualms about what the next morning would be like. How do you go back to the scene of a tragedy and carry on as if nothing has happened? It is amazing what a night’s sleep and the morning sunlight will do. It was not the nightmare I expected. At this point, of course, we knew the driver had been injured, but he was still alive in the hospital. And then there was Pat O’Brien, the consummate pro.

Take notice of the opening shot, a rising crane shot filmed with the camera mounted on a different jeep crane.

We actually filmed the aftermath of the robbery BEFORE it happened. We still had to return to this location later to film the opening sequence.

Since we were filming on location away from the studio the first few days, I didn’t have the opportunity to attend the viewing of the dailies. But I would receive a report from the producer about them. After the first day’s work, his report was very positive. I relayed this information to the cast. Pat O’Brien said, “That’s what they used to say to Jimmy Cagney and me. Cagney’s response was, 'If the dailies are so good, why don’t you just release them. Why bother to put the picture together.'”

The director of photography for this production was Walter Strenge. Walter, a contract cameraman at Universal, was the one who replaced Lionel Lindon on ARREST AND TRIAL. Walter had explained to me the previous year on that production that the coming of color was going to simplify filming. No longer would there be a need for the cross lighting of black and white cinema. Just put two arc lights, one on either side of the camera and say "action." Walter was not one of the artists of the profession. Well he was not going to be able to use large arc lights on the 'guest room' set they had provided for me on this production.

Now let’s be frank right from the start. This script was no great character study. It was a caper with five stock characters. When casting stock characters the goal is to select actors whose personalities will flesh out the thinly drawn people in the script. Henry Jones was a fine choice for the English professor, with that underlying quiet sinister quality that had been so brilliantly utilized in THE BAD SEED, first on Broadway and then in the film. Larry Storch as the comic and William Bramley as the professional criminal -- need I say more? Harry Bellaver was a good choice for the sickly welder. The weak link was Edd Byrnes. Nice capable actor, who could have been a war hero. But our story is going to have him in a physical confrontation with Bill Bramley. In defense of the casting department, it’s possible they didn’t have the full script so they would know about this confrontation. Another reason to have a finished script before beginning production. But even then that might not have made a difference. Did you notice who got top billing on the opening credits. Ralph Meeker would have been a better choice. But at this point in their careers, Edd was the ‘hotter’ actor. And that’s the way Universal and the networks cast.

We spent several days away from the studio on location on California highways. When filming exteriors there was always the problem of extraneous noise -- airplanes above, cars in the area -- and Universal had a policy: Keep filming and print what you shoot. Don’t kill a shot because of airplanes or other noise. This applied to exterior work on the back lot as well, which was especially noisy because Universal Studio was very close to the Burbank airport. The sound department would then prepare loops of each line of dialog. The actor would report to the sound proof looping stage, be handed a set of earphones and would then listen to the loops and rerecord the dialogue, line by line until the sound engineer felt he had a perfect match. Most studios waited until the film was edited before calling the actors back to loop defective dialogue. But that meant paying the actors another day’s salary. Universal had the actors report to the looping stage on their final day of employment, but since the film had not been edited yet, that meant they had to loop EVERY LINE OF EVERY PRINTED TAKE THAT HAD BEEN FILMED. I was not in favor of this policy. These looping sessions paid absolutely no attention to performance. The engineer’s only responsiblity was to get a sound track that would match the filmed image. So if I heard an airplane or an automobile or any other sound that I knew would be affecting the sound track, I would find a performance or camera technical problem and kill the take. Imagine the following scene with Larry Storch and the police officer if you were seeing it not in Larry’s actual performance but in a technically manufactured one, assembled line by line from the results of a loopiing session.

And now for the confrontation between Kober and Mueller. Casting is more than fitting the right actor into the right role. In this case Edd Byrnes could be a good fit to play a war hero, and William Bramley a good fit for a bullying criminal. It’s the pairing of the two that is wrong. As I wrote before, Ralph Meeker would have made a good opponent for Bramley (they faced off in THE BULL ROARER on BREAKING POINT), but a smaller toughie would be needed opposite Byrnes. So what’s a director to do when it comes to staging a mismatch like this.

And finally the final pages of the script arrived with the solution of how to stop the speeding tanker.

I am in a perpetual state of amazement that series’ episodes like this, created close to half a century ago, are still around, that they are fondly remembered by people who viewed them then and that they are still relevant to younger people who have seen them since, first in syndication and later on the profuse cable outlets. They’re like old generals; they never die, they just go into reruns.