GIRL IN THE NIGHT - November 1967 (Ironside)

Although this was the ninth production I directed for Universal (including a couple when the MCA talent agency first moved into production with their purchase of Revue Productions and were still called Revue Productions) it is the first one I’ve written about on this blog. So let’s get something clear right off the bat. I didn’t like working there. MGM, the Bert Leonard group at Columbia, Desilu, all had a familial feeling about them. Universal was a factory. I was never sure whether we were turning out films or hot dogs. I used to say that as I drove through the gates onto the lot, I felt as though I passed through electronic beams that sought to drain the creativity out of me. And now that I’ve said that, I have to admit that directing GIRL IN THE NIGHT was a pleasant experience.

The script was written by True Boardman, an actor turned writer with quite a background. True’s father was a silent film star, and True as a youngster, six or seven years old, had also appeared in film. He even made a film with Charlie Chaplin. I didn’t meet True until some time after completing this project, but we became friends and I would often play bridge with True and his wife. Thirty-five years later when I left Los Angeles and moved to Carmel, I discovered that True lived on the Monterey Peninsula. Our friendship reignited, and we ended up forming a Hollywood ex-patriot group that met every other week for lunch. The group included the two of us, Lamont Johnson, Don Hanmer, Kit Parker (a local film distributor who actually was the one who instigated formation of the group) and Shan Sayles. I have to tell you a favorite story. One lunch, after we had been meeting for several years, I arrived anxious to tell them that I had had a pacemaker installed since we had last met. True looked at me disdainfully and said, “I’m on my fourth.”

Four years earlier in 1963 I had directed the first ARREST AND TRIAL, a ninety minute drama with a nine day shooting schedule. The director of photography had been Lionel Lindon. Now four years earlier when I reported for that assignment, I only had eleven film directing credits on my resume. I was just coming off the five Bert Leonard productions (ROUTE 66 and NAKED CITY) and I was not the most secure or confident member of the Directors Guild of America. And Lionel Lindon was indeed a force to be reckoned with. I had not had this sort of association with a cameraman up to this time. I would carefully lay out with him (as I was accustomed to doing with my director of photography) the planned set-up that I wanted. I was very clear and meticulous in my explanation. Lionel would look at me as if I were a recent graduate of the local high school drama department, take a rag out of the rear pocket of his trousers, throw it to the ground and gruffly say, “Put the damn camera here.” To put it bluntly, he had me totally intimidated. On the sixth day when we were shooting away from the studio on location, Lionel was involved in a dispute with a member of the transportation group and made an anti-Semitic remark. He was removed from the production. But before he left, he came over to say goodbye to me and to wish me well. Nothing was said about the incident, the reason he was leaving the production. It was just a warm, unexpected gesture so that now I was totally confused. When one reported to Universal for an assignment, one never knew who the cameraman on the production would be. (I will be discussing Universal’s way of handling department assignments in a moment.) But on the seven intervening shows that I had directed at Universal since ARREST AND TRIAL, I always planned that if Lionel Lindon was the director of photography, I would request either a change in cameramen or my release. But this was four years later. I decided it was time I met up with Goliath again, even if he owned an Oscar for his work on AROUND THE WORLD IN EIGHTY DAYS.

Tisha Sterling, a Universal contract player and the daughter of Robert Sterling (we had done two productions together), was cast as Elaine. I faintly remember meeting Tisha concerning the portrait of her that would have to be painted. And then I was notified that Tisha was out. She had been cast in a major feature, COOGAN’S BLUFF, and Susan Saint James would be our Elaine. At Universal I found I was very very rarely consulted about casting. In this case Steve Carlson, a contract player was cast as Johnny, and the rest of the cast was just cast. But it turned out to be a very fine group. Donnelly Rhodes, Oscar Beregi, Mort Mills and Simon Scott.

And now we arrive at the kind of moment that seemed to occur more often at Universal than at other studios. I left the studio Wednesday after my last day of prep, prepared to commence production the following morning. Soon after I arrived home, I received a phone call from my producer, Cy Chermak. He told me I was to report to the studio the following morning as scheduled, but I would not be filming. This gets interestingly complicated. You know, George Washington eons ago was not in favor of political parties. He felt politicians would find that their allegiance would be to their party, not the government they were serving. (And hasn’t that come true!) Universal wanted the various crew people’s allegiance to be to their studio department, not to the production to which they might be assigned. So NO SHOW HAD A PERMANENT CREW. Each department (Camera, Lighting, Gaffers, Props, Make-up, Hair, Wardrobe, Script) had its crew units. When a unit finished an assignment, it went to the bottom of its department's crew list. As each new production started, the unit at the top of the list would be assigned. This way no crew person ever stayed on any one show long enough to form an emotional attachment to it. Raymond Burr was not happy with this arrangement. He wanted to have a set crew. He wanted to have the same make-up person, the same hair dresser. He wanted exactly what the studio didn't want. He wanted a team. He had complained. The Black Tower had acknowleged his complaints, but nothing changed. So Cy told me to come to the studio prepared to shoot, but there would be no filming because Ray would not be showing up. He had a scheduled meeting with the black suits in the Black Tower that afternoon to resolve this problem, once and for all. I don’t know what happened at that meeting. I’m sure the black suits said, “No problem, anything you want, Ray baby.” But I know that I reported at 7:30am on Thursday morning, by 8:00am I was back home. I reported again at 7:30am on Friday morning and filming commenced.

Detective stories present a problem. There is the more interesting story of the “crime” story, and then you have to deal with the dull police interrogation. This script actually alleviated a lot of that problem. For one thing, Ed, a member of Ironside's team, was personally involved in the crime story. This was one of the better film noir scripts I had the opportunity to do. So let’s look at how the script puts out the hook I’ve talked about.

Raymond Burr had had a long association with Gilmor Brown and the Pasadena Playhouse. Not only had I graduated from the school at the Playhouse in1948, between 1955 and 1958 I had directed six productions in Mr. Brown’s personal theatre, the Playbox. I assumed this might be some sort of bonding between Burr and me. No. He was respectful of it when I told him, but Ray was a cool, aloof man, at least as far as my association with him. Very very professional, but very very impersonal.

Raymond Butt was a master at something I’ve never seen any other performer do. I’m sure it started on PERRY MASON, when the amount of dialogue to be memorized each day had to have been overwhelming. Ray used teleprompters, but he used them so creatively, it never showed. And he used more than one. In the wider master shots, a teleprompter would be place outside of camera range behind each actor in whose direction Ray would look. When doing an actor’s close-up, the fellow actor in the scene stands next to the camera. In this case the teleprompter was placed where the actor would stand. Ray would look at the telepromter, while the actor stood to the side of it. If there was more than one character in the scene, a teleprompter would be placed where each of those performers stood or sat. If Ray wanted to look away, say glance down at the ground, a telepromter would be placed there also. It was totally ingenious.

This show provided another first for me. It was the first time I directed a production using flashbacks to tell much of its story.

The search for Elaine leads Ironside and Ed back to the bar where he met her. There a waitress offers to meet them with some information about Elaine. Which leads to another first for me -- a character lip-sync singing to a pre-recorded playback of another singer's recording.

Cy Chermak told me that GIRL IN THE NIGHT was a rewrite of a WAGON TRAIN script. I told the cast this one day, including Oscar Beregi, who was cast as Stefan.

Oscar smiled and said, “Yes, I know, I was in that production.”

“Oh,” I replied, “what role did you play?”

Stilll smiling, Oscar said, “The same one.”

Ed next takes Ironside back to Stefan’s restaurant, where he had gone with Elaine that night.

It was always a little nerve wracking to be handed studio contract players. Many of them were placed under contract mainly because of their physical beauty. Whether they could act or not didn’t seem to matter. I lucked out on this production. I had already worked with Don Galloway four years prior when he had a supporting recurring role on ARREST AND TRIAL. Susan, who was only twenty-one when we filmed this episode, was awfully good, as proved by the series she starred in later -- McMILLAN & WIFE and KATE & ALLIE. And twenty-four year old Steve Carlson rounded out my winning hand, as you’ll see when Ed and Ironside finally track down Johnny Foster.

I am asked many times, “Just what does a director do?” An easy response is, “I say ‘Action’ (although I usually preferred to say, ‘Go’), I say ‘Cut’, and on rare occasions I get to say, ‘Print’.”

But since on this blog I am committed to telling the whole truth, I have to admit I usually did more. Directing could entail more than just getting the words on the pages of the script onto film. Here is the script for the following scene in Johnny’s dressing room. You can read it and then compare that to what you see in the film clip.

I had known Simon Scott, who played Jim Cardoff, since, 1955 when I did the lighting for a stage production at the Players’ Ring in Hollywood of Maxwell Anderson’s SATURDAYS’ CHILDREN. in which he starred. But I knew him as Danny Simon. Danny was a marvelous actor, and I used him many many times during our careers. He was the gentlest of souls, but he certainly could play evil.

Remember what I wrote at the beginning of this posting about Lionel Lindon? Well this was a totally different experience. I never saw Lionel without a hat on his head, so I’m not sure where his nickname, Curly, came from. But on this show he was Curly and all smiles. Our set was a constant ball. And boy was he a good cameraman -- and fast. One day at about 3:30 in the afternoon I got wind of the fact that we were going at such a great pace, there were plans to have us move to another stage and start work on the next day’s schedule. I went to Curly and asked him if he wanted to move to another stage when we finished our work on this one.

“Heavens, no.” he said. Except he didn’t say “Heavens.”

“Well then for God’s sake, slow down because that’s what they’re planning.”

So Curly slowed down, we finished around 5:30, which was a nice early end of the day for us and not enough time to move to another stage to continue shooting for them.

Perry Mason usually (if not always) resolved his cases in the court room. Ironside had more imagination. This case ended at a lake; except it was more like a pond on the Universal back lot. I didn't dare photograph it; there wasn't enough water there to drown her.

A DREAM FOR CHRISTMAS - Part Two

(If you have not read Part One of A DREAM FOR CHRISTMAS, I suggest you go to the December archives to the right of this column and read A DREAM FOR CHRISTMAS - October-November 1973 before you continue here.)

*************

Not all of our location work was situated in southwest Los Angeles. To meet the man who was going to tear down the church to build his shopping center Will went to Bunker Hill in down town Los Angeles.

The secretary in the developer’s office was Amentha Dymally, the mother of the beautiful little boy I had cast in NEVER TROUBLE TROUBLE TILL TROUBLE TROUBLES YOU on BREAKING POINT.

I’m very proud of the scene Max wrote between Will and Briggs. It was written thirty-six years ago, and it was quite bold writing at that time.

Los Angeles as late as the early fifties still had the Red Car, a trolley running all the way from Pasadena to Long Beach and all stops in between. When I was a student at the Pasadena Playhouse in 1947-48, I remember riding the red car from Pasadena to Santa Monica. By the time I returned to Los Angeles in 1954, the Red Car had been replaced by buses.

The production staff of our show told me that there was a company that had restored the Red Cars, mounted them on tires, and these cars were for rent. All I would have to do when filming them was prevent the tires from showing.

In our story Sarah and Grandma, against Will’s wishes and with Cousin Clara’s help, secure employment doing domestic house cleaning.

Mr. Briggs is a dead end, Will’s sold the family car, and his wife and mother have hired out as domestic help. This was the scene we used when we did the two tests for the network. Of course, at that time our sets weren’t constructed yet, so the sets for the test were improvised.

The juveniles in our cast all had to attend school for three hours each day. If their filming schedule permitted, the three hours could be in one straight period. Many times if they had a heavy filming schedule, they might go to school in increments as short as ten or fifteen minutes.

In this next scene Emmarine’s break down in the living room was filmed on the thirteenth day of our schedule. The scene in her bedroom was filmed on the sixteenth day. That day she was also in three other scenes; but she only had to cry in one of them.

When the meeting with Mr. Briggs doesn’t proavide any positive results, Will takes to the streets. And I learned a very valuable lesson. In the last scene in this section our little baby was a happy baby who just didn’t want to cry. We tried everything short of child abuse. The social worker assigned to our set took me aside and taught me how one can make a baby cry. Just make soft crying sounds, and the baby will respond. I did find out it only worked (at least for me) if the crying sounds were made by a woman.

Wiill and Joey scavengered around and created a basketball court next to the church to attract the youths of the community.

This sequence offers proof of why a director needs to be involved in the editiing of his picture. In the editor’s first assemblage, he had not cut back and forth between grandma’s collapse and the basketball game. The camera moving into Grandma as she lay on the floor was one long continuous shot. And it worked, it was still effective. But I had envisioned it the way you just saw it. I thought this way worked even better.

When I was directing a production starring Lloyd Bridges (a fine actor and a true gentleman) he always took the time on the first day a new actor joined the company to bring the actor over and introduce me to him. As they moved away, I would hear Lloyd quietly say, “He likes actors.” And I confess I do. I am awesomely impressed with their ability to lose themselves so completely in the scenes they are performing. And this awe is amplified when the performers are fifteen and six respectively.

Grandma doesn't die. And finally -- the big day!

The filming schedule was completed, but there was one final scene in our script that hadn’t been scheduled to be filmed. I suspected that Neil Maffeo, the executive production manager, had visions of it’s not being filmed, of saving the expense the sequence would cost.

There was a screening of the assembled footage. It of course at this point had not been scored musically. But I remember that evening very well. Lee Rich, the co-founder of Lorimar Productions and the Executive Producer for this production was there. After the screening he enthusiastically declared, "This a brilliant film." (You see why I remember the evening so well) And HE WAS THE ONE WHO ORDERED THE FINAL SHOT BE MADE.

I was in the helicopter when that shot was filmed. We did five or six takes. There was a telephone line that the pilot had to avoid.

The dreams of the Sweet Clover family all came true. The dreams of the producers of this production did not. A DREAM FOR CHRISTMAS did not become a series.

It originally aired on Christmas Eve, 1973. As we approach Christmas Eve, 2009, I wish you a very Merry Christmas and I hope all of your dreams may come true!

A DREAM FOR CHRISTMAS - October-November 1973

In my posting on THE FIRE STORM, I discussed my coming to Lorimar Productions. I directed THE CHICKEN THIEF for THE WALTONS in August, 1973. Soon after I completed that assignment, Lorimar booked me to direct a two-hour movie-pilot for television, CHRISTMAS DREAMS. I figured it must have been because they were pleased with my work; othewise why would they book a Jewish white man from the north to direct a Christmas show about a black family from the south.

The line producer assigned to the project was Walter Coblenz. Walter and I had worked together before when he was still an assistant director. Since that time he had risen in the ranks to produce THE CANDIDATE starring Robert Redford; and he had recently completed producing THE BLUE KNIGHT starring William Holden, a Lorimar-produced movie for television. I had just barely completed reading the script (I hadn’t had time to prepare my usual requests for script changes) when Walter came into my office and said, “We have to do something about this script. Why don’t we bring in Max Hodge to do a rewrite.”

I have forgotten how Walter knew Max, but I had known Max since we were fellow classmates at the Pasadena Playhouse School of the Theatre in 1947. He was probably my closest friend. I know that professionally he was my oldest. After leaving the Playhouse I had produced and directed a production in Mason City of Max’s A STRIPED SACK FOR PENNY CANDY, a lovely play he wrote for his thesis at the Playhouse. He had returned to Detroit, where he wrote-produced-directed Oldsmobile industrial musicals for General Motors. There was a fifteen year lapse in our contact. In 1963 when I was directing BREAKING POINT, Max recontacted me. He had left General Motors, returned to the west coast and was prepared to storm the gates of Hollywood. During the following year he did the usual knocking on doors. Some time early in 1964, influenced by my contacts with the DR. KILDARE production company, he started working on a script for that show. Over that summer I was able to help him because of my familiarity with that show’s format. That fall I was back directing the final DR. KILDARE episode that I would do. I was in post production when on a Friday I gave Max’s completed script to Doug Benton, associate producer for the show. Doug read it, loved it, bought it, and put it into production starting the following Monday. Max wrote more DR. KILDARE’s, and when Doug Benton left that show to produce THE GIRL FROM UNCLE for the same company, Max was the associate producer.

I don’t know what transpired between Walter and the powers at Lorimar, but the next thing I knew Max had been hired and the two of us set about redoing the script. I was not unaware that we were treading on thin ice. CHRISTMAS DREAMS had been written by John McGreevey, a much admired writer at Lorimar. But John had taken the story (in my mind) in a strange direction. The basic plot was of a black minister from the south who moves in the fifties with his family to Los Angeles. He has been hired by a church, but when he arrives he finds out the church is in financial difficulties, and is in fact scheduled to be torn down to make way for a shopping center. John’s script had the minister’s mother get a job with a white upper-class Beverly Hills family as a housekeeper. And a lot of the script was spent in the the white Beverly Hills family home.

Max and I screened THE HOMECOMING several times. This was the original two-hour movie that spawned THE WALTONS. We wanted to capture the charm and the drama of that family in our teleplay. And where THE WALTONS reflected the trials of the depression years that a family faced, we wanted to reflect the trials a black family faced when it moved from the rural south to a big city in the north. Our working format was simple. I was in one office, and I would plot and outline the sequences. Max, in an adjoining office, would write the sequences. And we each were a check on the other’s work.

We completed our first draft in twelve days.

Then began the chore of casting. I think we saw every black actor and actress in Hollywood, and that included everybody from age six to still breathing. Beah Richards was a shoo-in for the Grandmother. I knew of her work because of THE AMEN CORNER, a play she had performed in to critical acclaim in the Hollywood area. And of course she had been Sydney Poitier’s mother in GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER.

Hari Rhodes was our unanimous choice for Will Douglas, the minister. For Sarah Douglas, the mother, we knew we wanted Lynn Hamilton. Lorimar favored her because she had a recurring role on THE WALTONS, and I knew her work because I had directed her in a play in the Los Angeles area. But for some reason (and only for this role) the network, ABC, required that we film and submit test scenes -- and of more than one actress, so they could be the one to make the final choice. We selected a dramatic scene from the script between Will and Sarah, and I directed Lynn and one other actress in fully produced tests on film. Hari played Will with both actresses, and we shot it with full coverage, which was then edited. We did everything except provide a background music score. When the two tests were completed, we notified the network to come view them. The network executive assigned to this project didn’t come. He sent his young assistant to view the tests and make the selection of who would be Sarah Douglas. I must interject here that there really was no choice. Lynn was far superior. But the assistant chose the other actress. We were stunned. This reaction went all the way to the top of Lorimar. It was my understanding at the time that Lee Rich called Fred Silverman, the head of ABC, and told him that unless Lynn Hamilton was approved by the network, we would not make the film. Whether that phone call actually happened I can’t swear to, but Lynn Hamilton was cast as Sarah Douglas. And the young assistant shortly after this went to another network, where he took over as head of comedy development.

There were close to fifty speaking roles, and we were able to cast with the cream of of the black acting community.

The length of the script was 113 pages. Fifty pages occurred in the Douglas home and would be filmed on a set at the Warner Bros. studio. The balance of the script would be filmed on locations in southwest Los Angeles. That meant a lot of location scouting. Walter was acquainted with the area because of the location work in his production of THE BLUE KNIGHT. And it is Walter who introduced me to Japanese food. On our location scouting days, he took us to Tokyo Kai Kan, a restaurant in Little Tokyo, a section of Los Angeles close to where we were scouting. My cocktail of choice at that time was a perfect Rob Roy on the rocks. Our little group would crack up every time I ordered one. They thought I was doing it as a put-on to the Japanese waitress, because many Japanese have trouble with their r’s. It could come out as a perfect Lob Loy on the locks.

But our story started in Sweet Clover, Arkansas. And where did we go to find Arkansas? Why we went to where the big boys used to do it back when they really knew how to make movies -- the back lot of Warner Bros. Studio.

You’ve just met our four remarkable youngsters. George Spell was Joey. As was the fashion in the seventies George had a very bushy Afro hairdo. But that was not the hair style in the fifties, when our story took place. And George wouldn’t even consider trimming it, even if it meant losing the role. So we agreed that nightly he would soak his hair with water and pull a silk stocking knotted into a cap over his head and sleep that way. It worked! Our Emmarine, Taronce Allen, was a joy. She could shed tears on cue, and you will see she shed a lot of them the next seventeen days. Our Becky, Bebe Redcross, had less to do than the others, but she was a lovely child. And little Marlon Adams, our Bradley, only six years old and already a scene stealer.

I want you to see the opening credits of our retitled effort so you can hear the lovely music theme David Rose composed.

Our scouting trips in southwest Los Angeles took us to probably every church in the area. When we finally found the one we wanted, it was truly a miracle come true, as Grandma says in the scene. The minister of the church told us that his church had serious financial difficulties, and the money they would be making because of our filming was going to solve their problems.

Dorothy Meyer, who played Cousin Clara, had less experience than most of the actresses who auditioned. But she had been in the cast of THE CHICKEN THIEF earlier that year, and she had a wonderful robust quality and energy.

The actual church did not have a parsonage attached. But as long as I didn’t photograph the rear of the exterior of the building, no one would know. And by duplicating the double doors in the church in the design of our studio set of the parsonage, our actors were able to move from the church (in southwest Los Angeles) to the parsonage set (in Burbank) with no difficulty.

The two church deacons who come to see Will were played by Joel Fluellen and Clarence Muse. Joel and I had worked together several times already. Clarence was truly a Hollywood veteran. He was eighty-four years old when we did this film. He told me he had come to Hollywood in the early thirties heading his own classical theatre stock company. He was a highly educated man, Phi Beta Kappa, but when he auditioned for the movies, he had to learn to talk and sound less educated in order to be cast. He appeared in over a hundred and fifty films in a film career that spanned fifty-eight years. He made only three more film appearances after this one.

I really appreciated the staging possibilities provided by Perry Ferguson’s set and Frank Phillips’ photography.

I wanted to see big city Los Angeles through our childrens’ eyes -- thus the sequence of their seeing the city on their way to their first day in school.

This film was a period piece. Costuming the principal actors presented no major problem. But the sequences on the street, and especially the sequences at the schools with the multitude of bodies did. Patricia Norris, our costume designer, had a wardrobe truck packed with clothes of the fifties -- boys, girls and in all sizes. All of the students you see were wardrobed by her at the location.

Good writing, good actors, and I told you she could shed a tear!

I have a confession to make. Directors are known to have ‘themes’ that they return to. I don’t think this is a theme, but I seem to have used the overheard conversation many times.

Charles Walker, the second assistant director on the show was a black man. I had known Charles from his DGA apprenticeship days on STAR TREK. He took Max and me (at my request) to a Sunday service in a black church. I was fascinated by the ad lib vocal response of the members of the congregation.

To be continued

COLOR SCHEMES LIKE NEVER BEFORE - April 1963 (Naked City)

I returned to Los Angeles after completing filming NARCISSUS ON AN OLD RED FIRE ENGINE. After a couple of days of catching up I decided I would fly back to Iowa and spend Passover with my family. I made my air line reservations, packed my bags and off I flew. I wasn’t there two days when I received a telephone call from one of my agents.

“What are you doing there?” he asked.

“I’m going to spend Passover with my family. Why?”

“You’re supposed to be in New York. You’re booked to direct another NAKED CITY.”

It seems that when I was released from the commitment to direct the ROUTE 66 in Florida, I had been rebooked to do a NAKED CITY. But nobody had told me. So I repacked my recently unpacked bags and caught the first flight I could to New York. Getting in and out of Mason City, Iowa by air line was not an easy task. There was a shuttle flight to Minneapolis, and from there I went on to the Big Apple.

Guess what? I arrived in New York to find just a very few pages of a script by Alvin Sargent, COLOR SCHEMES LIKE NEVER BEFORE. A little deja vu? Marion Daugherty, that gem of a casting director for both Bert Leonard productions, had cast from the story synposis they must have sent her. The principle actors -- Johnny Seven, Lou Antonio, Carol Rossen, Eugene Roche -- were set so far. She would cast more people as script arrived.

Our principal location was going to be the exterior of a brownstone, and it had to be a building that we would be able to access; characters would be entering and exiting the building. We went scouting in Greenwich Village and found a cul-de-sac street of brownstones that would work perfectly, since we would be avoiding the traffic flow of a city throughway street. Although we didn’t have the script yet, we were told we would also need an apartment building across the street from our brownstone.

So let’s meet two of our principal characters.

In Hollywood the woman at the table with Charlie would have been cast with a member of the Screen Extras Guild, who would have earned a salary bump for extra business. In New York members of SAG, the Screen Actors Guild, willingly took 'extra' assignments like this. After all it was work and there was a pay check. And if you watch her closely, you will see she WAS AN ACTRESS.

Bert called me very soon after I arrived in New York with a request. He impressed on me the fact that this was a story about three ordinary guys. They were not professional criminals. They were just ordinary blokes, and that is the way they should be portrayed. I liked that.

NAKED CITY was my first excursion into police drama, and this was my third NAKED CITY. The crime side of the story was always more interesting and exciting than the police procedures. In the future I would direct another forty cop or detective shows. None of them wrote the side of the law as well as NAKED CITY.

The one fault I found with the New York crew was SOUND. On one pull back dolly two shot I first did my master shot. Then as we were preparing to repeat the scene, filming a close-up, I noticed the sound boom man was seated on the front of the dolly, reading a magazine, but not preparing to extend his microphone boom. When I questioned this, he replied he already got it in the master shot. He also ended up getting it in the two close-ups.

We had a scene between the two brothers at a construction site. We arrived at the location at the end of the afternoon when the construction crew was preparing to quit for the day. Johnny Seven, Carmine in our cast, knew some of the men on the crew. He made the arrangements that got me the opening shot of this sequence, but as we shot the following scene, I couldn’t shoot in that direction again. The crew had finished for the day and left.

Charlie's packing in the script was interrupted by a six page telephone sequence that concerned me. I worried about keeping that long a phone call interesting. And I was concerned that, should they want to shorten the sequence in the editing room, the coverage to do it should be there. I worried unnecessarily. Nothing was cut in the final version of this scene.

I have to take a moment here to rave about these two actors. I had seen Lou earlier in the year in a supporting role on Broadway in a lacklustre production of CAMILLE starring Susan Strasberg. Carol was from one of Hollywood’s royal families. Her father was the legendary Robert Rossen, with dozens of classic screenplays to his credit before he also began directing. His ten writer-director credits include ALL THE KING’S MEN and THE HUSTLER.

These two actors came to the set more than totally prepared. I think I remember that they had even rehearsed together before reporting for filming. I would work with Lou again just a few months later when I brought him out to Hollywood for THE BULL ROARER, of which I have already written. I would work with Carol three years later on an episode of THE FBI.

I liked to film with two cameras whenever possible. The west coast directors of photography preferred, when using two cameras, to aim both cameras in the same direction. Jack Priestley surprised me when we did the following restaurant scene by shooting in both directions. We shot both over shoulder shots of Lou and Carol at the same time. And we filmed both their close-ups at the same time. I thought it was great for the later editing process. And in a restaurant eating scene it certainly minimized the chances of mismatched activity.

The studio where we shot the interiors for NAKED CITY wasn’t really a studio -- at least not like I had worked in on the west coast. I remember it as being a three or four story building on 3rd street in lower Manhattan. There was a large hall-like room, maybe two, in which the interior sets would be erected. The one standing set used for all the episodes was the police station.

Meanwhile two of the three ordinary guys were getting nervous.

Carmine wouldn’t go to the police. The police now came to Charlie.

I don’t remember how we ended up at these later locations in our story. Usually locations are scouted before filming begins. But obviously we couldn’t do that since we didn’t have the script.

I need to remind you that this show, like NARCISSUS ON AN OLD RED FIRE ENGINE, did not have a completed script. New pages were arriving daily. A little advantage this provided was that we shot much of the show in sequence. We had to. We shot the pages as they arrived.

But there was a major disadvantage. When we originally booked the brownstone, there was a time limit on when it would be available. After the first three or four days there was some reason we would no longer be able to go into the building. Well the new pages that were arriving kept including sequences to be filmed at the brownstone. Not only entrances and exits but some shots of Charlie in the window. Our production department was able to make the necessary arrangements so that we could continue to use the building.

TIME! That was another problem caused by the lack of a completed script. It is the normal practice for a company, when it goes to a location, to film everything at that location before moving on. To load the equipment into the trucks, move to a new location and unload took at least an hour. We returned to the brownstone house street twice as I recall. Time spent moving is time lost to filming.

There wasn’t pressure to speed up as there would have been at Universal. But since the studio knew the show was not being renewed for the next season, they did keep asking when our production office thought they would be wrapping. Their response was they would know better when they saw the rest of the script. Word came the final pages were on the way. They arrived, and I hate to admit I had to laugh. To begin with it was another return to the brownstone house street. The sheer size of the amount of work in those few pages did not foresee an optimistic quick finishing. Before I show you the rest of the show, let me show you pages from my director's script. (The pages would have been too small to read if I positioned them the way they were in my script: Camera directions to the left; script to the right. So it will be camera directions followed by the script page to which it pertains.)

And now for some action.

This show was the final catalyst that really sent me into a working career. I never saw Bert Leonard again. I met Alvin Sargent the following summer when I was working at Desilu on BREAKING POINT. Alvin was there doing a polish on one of their scripts. We spoke only briefly about COLOR SCHEMES. Alvin just shook his head, smiling. My impression was that he was saying ‘Where did that love story come from? It started out to be story about three guys involved in a crime.’ Well it came off of the pages of a very fine script.

NARCISSUS ON AN OLD RED FIRE ENGINE - March 1963 (Route 66)

Right after "...THE TRUNK", the company sent me to New York -- twice -- to direct two NAKED CITY’s, which I shall tell you about later. But for now let’s stay on the road and travel Route 66 back to Texas for a rather strange adventure -- before and behind the camera. The script was NARCISSUS ON AN OLD RED FIRE ENGINE by Joel Carpenter. Naturallly when I reported to the studio, it was still being written. Joel Carpenter, whom I never met, was not a screenplay writer. I think he was a novelist. I know that he was writing very slowly, because at a meeting with Bert Leonard and Stirling Silliphant I was told that. Because of his inexperience at writing for film, Stirling was rewriting him, but Joel didn’t know that. Stirling could have gone ahead and finished the script on his own -- that was mentioned at the meeting -- but they wanted Joel’s original input. They were waiting patiently for Joel to turn in pages, which Stirling would immediatelly rewrite; and I was leaving for Texas with fewer pages of script than when I left the last time.

I flew from LA to Houston, where under the direction of James Sheldon the company was completing filming the first show to co-star Glenn Corbett, the actor selected to replace the departing George Maharis. From Houston the company moved down to Galveston, again on the Gulf. I neglected to mention that when I directed ...THE TRUNK, it was the Gulf of Mexico that turned me into a fish eater. Coming from Iowa I thought fish was either canned salmon, canned tuna, or lox. In Corpus Christi I would buy fresh red snapper on the beach, take it back to the motel where they would prepare it for my evening meal.

Joel and Stirling had obviously been in Galveston when this story was conceived. They had found a Greek night club that became an important ingredient in the story. But that club was too small to accommodate filming. So they found another larger club, which was then turned into our Greek night club. And that was where our story begins.

Another first: filming a working factory where Tod and Linc are employed. Establish it, don’t just film the dialogue.

The following scene was scheduled for our first day of filming.

The word from Hollywood when they saw this scene was that they thought Glenn needed more ‘energy’. I wasn’t sure just what they meant by that, but I talked to Glenn and we reshot the scene -- but in a different location because we had left the Cotton Baling plant. Again they complained in Hollywood that he lacked energy. We reshot the scene for the third time, this time back at the original location. I didn’t really know at the time what they wanted. Later in hindsight I knew what the problem was. They wanted another George Maharis. Well Glenn wasn’t George Maharis. Glenn had a limited range, but within that range he was a very appealing actor.

And here we find the crux of Janie’s problem. She wants to be able to respond to love -- but she can’t.

The live locations I had shot up until now did not prepare me for shooting in a motel room. Alma’s house (in IN THE CLOSING OF A TRUNK), which had been small, was three times the size of Linc’s motel room. You will notice there is never a master shot that includes all four people. The room wasn't large enough to film it.

Linc and Tod return to the Greek club.

And now let’s talk a little more about Janie. I felt she had strong sensual desires, but she was unable to release them when relating to a man. This sensuality was evident on the dance floor. When we filmed this sequence, we used as a sound track the Nelson Riddle ROUTE 66 theme song. I’ll tell you, the music was HOT! And Janie was HOT! I thought the music they replaced it with subdued the sensuality of the scene. I don’t know if this was deliberate or not. But what is on the screen is not nearly as exciting and sexual as what we filmed.

Tod ends up in jail. And thank goodness I only had one shot to film there. The stench was unbearable.

I haven’t mentioned that we still did not have the complete script. The pages arriving from the west coast just managed to keep ahead of our shooting schedule. Anne and I had also decided that Bill was a figment of her imagination, a phantom lover.

And now the culmination of the collision of Linc’s libido and Janie’s problem. I staged the following scene between Linc and Janie on a miniature golf course with strange, exotic animal figures. When Janie said, “Who are you not to listen?” that was a challenge that Linc accepted. He embraced her, holding her tight as he nuzzled her neck, while she kept on talking about Bill. Behind them was the head of a large black whale with a white eye. It was very sexual and Daliesque, with nothing that I felt the network censorship could object to. It never got to the networks. Bert wanted it reshot, and as you will see it ended up just a lot of florid words. Now I wonder if the reason for their objection might have been, "That's not the way Maharis would play it."

A nice revealing scene. And I think director of photography Jack Marta did some exceptional work.

About the fifth or sixth day of shooting Anne came to me, all excited. She had had a chance to read the new script pages that had just arrived, which I hadn't seen yet. “Guess what! There really is a Bill. He shows up.”

The stunt double for Linc in the fight scene was not a very good likeness, especially in that first shot of him at the top of the stairs. A more experienced director would have shot it from further away.

Janie disappears. Linc goes looking for her.

I learned another first lesson on the pier. It takes less time to write an action sequence than to film it. The length of the scene on paper from the time Linc exits the amusement center through the shots of the two stunt doubles diving into the water was three eighths of a page. By my normal allotment of an hour a page that would allow about twenty-five minutes to film it. It took four and a half hours.

Both Glenn and Anne had to go into the water for the rescue part of the sequence. When we did the final scene of them on the beach, they had to be watered down before each take. We had a fire nearby and lots of blankets to keep them warm between takes. But it was COLD.

The film took ten days to shoot, which was not surprising because of the scenes that were reshot and the fact we didn’t begin filming with a completed script. No one was disturbed by this. The film was in essence a pilot, presenting a new leading man to secure a renewal of the series for another season. CBS did renew ROUTE 66 for its fourth season. But I have always felt how much finer a film could have been made if the script could have been completed and revised BEFORE photography began. Isn’t that true of any project? This script though had so much about it that was original and unique -- what a shame!

We completed filming I think on a Wednesday. The company was scheduled to leave Texas and go to Florida for another group of episodes. I was booked to direct the next episode in Florida, the start date of prep to be the following Monday. I was exhausted. I had directed four shows (two ROUTE 66’s in Texas and two NAKED CITY’s in New YORK) in about nine weeks. Factor in the travel, and I think I was entitled to be tired. I requested permission to go to Florida from Texas rather than returning to Los Angeles. I figured the three or four days of down time was necessary. For some reason or other the production office refused. I then asked to be released from the commitment to direct the next show because of fatigue. They agreed, and I returned to Los Angeles, ready to give myself a break. Catch my next posting to find out how short that break was.

Four years later Glenn Corbett guest starred in my favorite of the STAR TREK’s I directed, METAMORPHOSIS. I have been interviewed by the Star Trek History website. It is an audio interview with slides and film clips and you can view it at: http://www.startrekhistory.com/interviews.htm

RETURN TO THE TRUNK - January 1963 (Route 66)

In early September when I started this blog, there were two things I didn’t know: (1) that photographs and film clips could be included and (2) how to do it. The first was easy to take care of; the second took some excellent tutoring. And now that I’m comfortable doing it, I think I would like to go back to the first show, IN THE CLOSING OF A TRUNK, and include some film clips. If you would like to reread that first posting, it is in the Blog Archive to the right of this column. Just open SEPTEMBER and you will find it there.

I spoke early on about the advantage of a good ‘hook’ to begin a show. StIrling Silliphant certainly gave me one in this script -- in fact, more than one.

I remember the graciousness and kindness of Jack Marta to a very inexperienced director. When I staged this scene, Alma opened the door, and the trunk was on the porch. It was awkward for Todd to pull it into the room, as I directed him to do. Jack quietly suggested that I have it leaning against the door, so that it would fall into the room.

The ferry sequence was another big first for me. This was filming on a much larger scale than anything I had yet attempted. And I had never filmed such an extended sequence with so little dialogue.

The ferry was in movement for every shot. And no, those weren't star-struck sea gulls anxious to break into the movies; they were hungry birds only too willing to feed on the bread crumbs that a couple of our crew were tossing off at the front of the ferry.

Todd takes pity and offers Alma a ride. Another first for me. In Hollywood this would have been shot in process. Here we did it live, with the camera and lights mounted on the back of a truck, filming the actors in the Corvette, which was being towed.

Let me remind you of what I wrote in my original posting -- the first scene I filmed for this show on the second day was the fish house, the scene having been dictated the evening before on the telephone by the Hollywood office to our production office. The five actors only had the first twenty-three pages of the script and this scene. And you will remember this is what we filmed in the afternoon; the morning's work was lost to a camera malfunction.

I wrote extensively of the fishing sequence in my September posting. I am still amazed at the remarkable concentration of the two fine actors out in that cold, cold water. And even more astounded at the way the waves keep increasing as the intensity of the scene heats up.

Ed Begley made a career of playing characters like Kyle Hawkes. On Broadway he won a Tony for INHERIT THE WIND, and in Hollywood he won an Oscar for SWEET BIRD OF YOUTH. Off screen he was a pussy cat, a sweet, gentle man with a wonderful sense of humor

We battled the problem of the weather constantly. We would be filming inside the house, because the sky was overcast. Suddenly the sun would come out. We would finish the shot we were on and move outside immediately. The amazing thing was the crowds from Corpus Christi would have come out to our location and were lined up to watch us by the time we were ready to roll. One day a woman came rushing up to tell me, “Your filming here is the most exciting thing that has happened here since Hurricane Delilah.” (I’m not sure I’ve remembered the correct hurricane, but I do remember the woman.)

There was one shot I was going to need, shooting from inside the house out to the beach that would also require good light. One day as I was working inside the house with Martin and Ruth, the sun broke through. We hadn’t even staged the scene yet, but I asked Ruth if she could do one shot for me out of context. Here is that shot.

Then we blocked, rehearsed and filmed the full scene.

I was (then and now) terribly impressed with Don Dubbins’ work in the following scene. It was the climactic scene for his character, and he had to do it on his first day of shooting. He received the scene the night before when it was dictated over the telephone from Hollywood. As of that time he still didn’t have the full script, it wouldn’t arrive until the next day.

Don was another of that large horde of actors I speak of whose luck didn’t match their talent. He had starred with Deborah Kerr in the national company of TEA AND SYMPATHY, playing the role John Kerr had played on Broadway. After some small roles in Hollywood films (FROM HERE TO ETERNITY, THE D.I.) James Cagney took a shine to him and had him in two of his movies, TRIBUTE TO A BAD MAN and THESE WILDER YEARS. I worked with Don the first time when he starred in a Pasadena Playhouse main stage production. This was our second film together, he having guest starred in a CHECKMATE the year before.

Todd returns to Alma’s house, the trunk is delivered and the story is right back where it started. Incidentally there was no pier for Kyle and Mattie near Alma's house. That pier was way up the coast toward where the ferry was located. I wonder if I should be giving away all these trade secrets.

Ruth did something as an actress that I have never seen anyone else do. She always carried a handkerchief in which she had an ammonia capsule (smelling salts). Before each take she would break the capsule and take a couple of quick whiffs. It gave her that throaty on the verge of tears feeling, and her performance took it from there.

Jack Marta had told me that one of their trucks had a hoist on the front. He said if we laid a board flooring on the hoist, we could place a camera on it and create a camera boom. The only draw back was that it could only be used descending; when it ascended, it jerked. I planned to use the lighter Arriflex camera with its zoom lens. Since that shot would stop when Mattie got out of the car, there was not going to be any dialogue (we would be shooting MOS -- mit out sound) so the noisy Arriflex would be useable.

Once I had the complete script, I had only one MAJOR complaint. After Alma's breakdown scene there was a scene between Mattie and Kyle in the car when they pull up to the ferry. Mattie had a long, long speech explaining why he was going to leave with Alma. I felt there was no way an expository scene could top what I felt we would be achieving (and did achieve) with Alma’s breakdown. I told Bert that I thought I could do it more effectively visually without all those words. I felt a silence between Mattie and Kyle would be more revealing than any words. And then Mattie's long walk past all of the villagers, acknowledging that he was what they had called him. Bert bought it.

GRANDMA COMES HOME - 1978 (The Waltons)

At the beginning of 1978 Andy White phoned me to ask if I was available to direct an upcoming episode of THE WALTONS that was bringing Ellen Corby back to the show. She had been away for over a year after having suffered a stroke. The script was GRANDMA COMES HOME, by Rod Peterson and Claire Whitaker, who had written the powerful THE FIRESTORM, which I had directed two years previously. I agreed immediately.

This was a return to a subject I had been involved with sixteen years before on DR. KILDARE’s production of HASTINGS' FAREWELL -- aphasia. The difference was that in that production Harry Guardino had to act not being able to speak. Here Ellen, who really couldn’t speak, had to struggle to speak.

By now if should come as no surprise if I say that I had some reservations about the script. I thought the story didn’t get under way until Grandma’s arrival, and that didn’t happen until the end of Act One. And I didn't think Act One was all that exciting; in fact I'm afraid I said it was pretty dull. To be truthful I said it even more strongly than that. I envisioned an opening like the one we had in THE PONY CART, where the story started with Martha Corinne’s arrival. I admit now that I was wrong. Grandma’s return was an event, it was a theatrical entrance that needed to be set up. A fairly stormy story conference provided some needed script cuts. And I think we provided Ellen with an entrance worthy of her return.

Ellen was scheduled very carefully, spreading her work out over the span of the shooting schedule so she would not be overworked and overtired on any one day. They also allowed me to have two cameras whenever I felt I could use them to advantage, thus cutting down on the number of times she would have to play a scene. And the cast was wonderfully supportive. As you can see in the next scene with Ralph Waite, true emotion and love was rampant on the set

There were two Walton porches. The one on the exterior of the house on the back lot and a duplicate porch abutting the interior of the house on the sound stage. Scenes like this were filmed on the sound stage set. Sound and lighting were better and more efficient, and especially for a night scene like the one you just viewed.

The family really looked after Grandma. They wouldn't let her do anything except sit in her rocker.

Everyone was happy she was home.

Only Grandpa was alarmed.

And now we come to THE SCENE. In the first draft of the script, at this point in the story Grandma spelled out in some sugar that had spilled on the table the words "needs me.” That scene was very quickly replaced by a scene on the porch between Grandma and Olivia. I will admit that I was probably a pain in the you-know-where to Rod and Claire. I knew where I wanted that scene to go, and the dialogue as written didn’t let met get there. I think they redid the scene four or five times before I said, okay, this one will work. This incident may be have been the seed that gave birth to Andy White’s comment later. I was told he said, “Ralph will drive you crazy, but he cares.”

As in all of the scenes with Ellen, before the scene I would carefully talk to her and explain what the scene was going to be. She would listen intently, many times would then gesture with her hand for me to say it again. This scene I said again several times. It was filmed with two cameras, so that we could get the over shoulder and the close-up at the same time.

The assistant cameraman on the second camera was someone I had known on the STAR TREK crew. At that time he had been a grip. Now a decade later he was a first assistant cameraman. He was not a regular member of our crew; he was just in for the day. I remember after we did the first take on Ellen’s angle, he turned to me with a startled look on his face that said, “What’s going on here?”

MIchael told me that in this scene she had to keep herself from responding to Ellen’s performance. She had to play the scene technically, not organically; she knew if she allowed herself to respond to Ellen she would have been devastated.

The next day at the running of the rushes, after the first angle on Ellen had screened, there was a silence in the viewing room, and then Earl Hamner’s voice, “Senensky, you son of a bitch." Is there something wrong with me that I like being called a son of a bitch?

I’m just going to let the rest of the story tell itself.

And again we adjusted the good nights.

I was beside the camera at the foot of the bed, and just before it was time for her to speak I very carefully said “Good night everyone.”

Ellen was nominated for an Emmy for this performance. She didn’t win. How this performance came out of her in the condition she was in was truly a miracle. What she should have won was an award for a Profile in Courage.

I cannot praise Will Geer too highly. It was my understanding that he was enormously responsible for Ellen’s return to the series. I was told he hounded the producers until they finally arranged for this episode. And during the production he, even more than the rest of the cast, was giving far more than one hundred per cent. I think it shows in his performance. Willl and I had had a strange set back in our relationship on my previous production the year before. l don’t think I will be writing about THE WARRIOR. I was going to, but I found it too unpleasant an experience to revisit. In short, because Will and Ralph insisted on our casting a real Indian in a role that required a superlative actor, an exceptional script ended up as a very run of the mill film. When we finished the final shot on this film, I shot a promotional of Will talking about Ellen’s return. As we finished that we said our goodbyes. I hugged Will and thanked him. He, with a twinkle in his eye, said, “So you've finally forgiven me.” And I, with a twinkle in my eye, said, “Not entirely, Will, not entirely.” Those were our final words to each other. Will died a few months later.