I gave Henry Gibson some advice and made him into one of the more successful character actors in the business.
Gibson, who died the other day, once confessed to me that he came to Hollywood intent on being a leading man.
“I knew I was too short but I figured movie magic would make me tall on screen,” he told me. “I soon found out otherwise. There was no movie magic that could make me a leading man. I came to you with my dilemma and you gave me the advice I’m still using. You said, ‘Be yourself,’ and that’s what I‘m still doing.”
A classically trained actor—he attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London—he forgot that classical training and presented himself to producers as Henry Gibson himself, a gentleman with a whimsical sense of comedy.
Henry was fortunate because the movies never had a Henry Gibson type.
Producer George Schlatter at the time was looking for a Henry Gibson type for a revolutionary television comedy series called “Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In” and lo, out of the blue, comes Henry Gibson himself. He became an original cast member of that series, which revolutionized comedy on TV. In later years, it led to such regular roles as a judge on “Boston Legal”, as well as other comedy television shows and feature films.
It was good advice for anyone who was trying to get in the movies or television, “Be yourself.” That may be what the producers are looking for.
George Schlatter got everybody in Hollywood to take a shot at “Laugh-In.” He even got presidential candidate Richard Nixon on the show. He asked Hubert Humphrey, the Democratic candidate to appear, but Humphrey declined.
Actress Lena Horne told Dick Martin and Dan Rowan that Nixon’s appearance on the hit show helped elect Nixon. Rowan added: “We thought the critics would ridicule us to death, but they didn’t. That’s because ‘Laugh-In’ presented Nixon in the tradition of the show’s format of pure comedy.”
Even I was on the show. However, Schlatter was as kind to me as he was to Nixon. My line was “Sock it to me,” which was traditionally delivered with a huge spray of water. But Schlatter spared me the deluge, as he had Nixon.
Speaking of politics, I watched a splendid documentary on blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo the other day on PBS. It showed three of his most stalwart supporters sitting behind him during his historic appearance before the House Committee on Un-American Activities.
The trio, Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall and John Huston, risked their careers in those tumultuous days to appear at Trumbo’s side.
Talking with Bogie afterward, I soon found out that he regretted his move.
“It puts me on the side of the damn commies,” said Bogie. “I hate them as much as John Wayne does. It was a damn foolish move on my part. I was just too impulsive. And Betty came along with me since we’d just been married. That’s the only time a husband gets obedience from a wife. And Huston always was like a bull in a china shop. But it’s not going to do us any good. So you will be hearing me praise Duke Wayne from now on.”
Bogie’s anti-communist remarks during the next few months soon got him back to where he was before the trip to Washington.
The hiring power in Hollywood in those days—studio heads like Jack L. Warner, Louis B. Mayer and Harry Cohn—were virulently anti-communist, their black-list an open secret. And Bogie knew it.
Somehow, Houston didn’t suffer any career consequences. A good director is too hard to find so their political views matter little.
John Huston displayed the power of a superb director on one of his most challenging films, The Night of the Iguana.
I spent six weeks on that picture when the Associated Press sent me down to its location in what was then the tiny, virtually unknown Mexican fishing village of Puerto Vallarta.
I was sent there because the Elizabeth Taylor-Richard Burton romance was the hottest story in the world for those six weeks. Richard was star of the movie and Elizabeth was due to join him, but it seemed that everyone else involved in the film had a love affair going.
Huston spent his nights with his Persian mistress, who rivaled Elizabeth in spectacular looks. Ingenue Sue Lyon was canoodling with a guy named Hampton Fancher the third. And Ava Gardner kept a stable of beach boys busy.
Elizabeth had left Eddie Fisher wifeless in Rome, while Richard had done the same with his wife Sybil, mother of his two daughters. Neither spouse, however, had accepted their abandonment.
Reporters were coming from all over the globe to cover the story. I came down on the plane with a beautiful Swedish reporter who had never tasted tequilla before. But by the time the plane landed, she had tasted enough to get a serious buzz.
The film’s publicist met us when the plane landed. He knew that I had a reservation at the Tropicana hotel. But he didn’t know where the Swedish reporter was to be housed. She said that Scandanavian airlines had made her hotel reservation. Finally, the publicist’s driver, a wild Indian, said he would drop me off and then help the Swedish reporter find her hotel.
About four o’clock the next morning the Swedish girl pounded on my door and said the driver had taken her into the mountains and had raped her, not once, but two or three times, before returning her to the Tropicana.
There was nothing I could do but let her stay with me until daylight. Told her to tell her story to the manager of the hotel. She came about four hours later and said the manager had done the same thing, taken her up to the mountains and raped her. She left Puerto Vallarta on the next plane out.
We were all there over the Thanksgiving holiday. I asked Huston, “What are we going to have for Thanksgiving dinner?” Huston replied, “Tacos, what else?”
Fortunately, about the same time, Elizabeth arrived in a launch to join Richard and brought with her a traditional American Thanksgiving dinner with all the trimmings—roast turkey, cranberry sauce, mashed potatoes and pumpkin pie. Don’t ask me where she got it.
Accompanying Elizabeth in the launch was Michael Wilding who was a former husband a couple of husbands back. He now was Richard’s agent. Don’t ask me to explain. Also joining Elizabeth was little Liza Todd, her daughter by her late husband number three, Mike Todd. Elizabeth invited Huston to join us in the launch and Elizabeth, Richard, Wilding, Liza and I all had a great Thanksgiving feast together.
For months, Eddie Fisher had been refusing to agree to a divorce from Elizabeth.
After the dinner, I returned to Puerto Vallarta and took a motor boat out to a yacht in the harbor which had the only phone in the village.
I reached Eddie Fisher on the phone at his Beverly Hills home and asked him what he had done for Thanksgiving. Eddie, indignant, replied, “I don’t care what you write, but I’m legally married to Elizabeth Taylor.”
I replied, “Eddie, let me be the first to tell you that Richard Burton is down here having a helluva good time with your wife.”
That ended the conversation.
I returned to the beach at the Tropicana Hotel where I found Ava Gardner being slapped around by two beach boys. I started to interfere but Ava held me back.
“They’re just having fun,” she explained.
She’d been drinking shots of tequilla and apparently was feeling no pain.
I walked away.
Despite all the behind-the-scenes heat, John Huston pulled it all together. The film was a box office smash hit.