Eli and the last of Leone

From THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND ME

In My Anecdotage

by Eli Wallach

After all of the months spent in Spain, it was good to get back to Rome. Leone threw a lavish dinner party for us at the Eden Hotel and reminded us that he would be in New York for two months, where Van Cleef, Eastwood, and I would be required to dub the dialogue that was on the rough cue track. Months later I met Leone at a voice recording studio in Manhattan. At the studio, I was happily surprised to find that my old friend Mickey Knox was on hand to work on the dubbing as well. Knox, affectionately known as the Mayor of Rome, had settled in that city after being blacklisted in Hollywood. Mick was a tough bird - willing to lock horns with anyone who irritated him. He was a master of adpating screenplays from Italian to English; his credits were enormous - he'd worked with Leone, Orson Welles, Fellini, Mastroianni, Vittorio De Sica, and Anna Magnani.

The big problem with THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY was its cue track - like a master detective, Mickey labored over all the lines spoken by Eastwood, Van Cleef, and me. Leone owed Mickey a medal for his work. Mickey taught me how to lip-sync, how to capture the emotion of a scene in a studio. In one scene I was sitting on my horse, yelling my lines - horses hate the hot sand and this one was not cooperative. This was not an easy scene to recapture while sitting on a stool in a recording studio in New York. "Just yell the goddamn line," Mickey reassured me. "We'll take care to match your yelling with what's on the screen."

Some time later, Henry Fonda called me in New York and told me that there was an Italian film director who wanted him to appear in a Western in Spain. "Is it Leone?" I asked. "If so, by all means take the job; you'll enjoy working with him."

"But he wants me to play the villain," Fonda said. "I even have to shoot a young boy."

I told him it would be a change of pace for him. "It's called ONCE UPON A TIME IN THE WEST - what the hell does he know about the West?" Fonda asked.

"You'd be surprised; take the challenge," I said. He did and the film turned out to be a success; Fonda even called to thank me.

A year later Leone came to America, this time to scout locations for a film that he would make only many years later - ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA. I took him to Brooklyn and showed him around Red Hook and Little Italy. We walked around my old neighborhood for hours, stopping in front of the store my mother and father once owned on Union Street, my old school, and the boys' club where I first knew I wanted to become an actor.

Leone stayed in touch. "We will make more movies together," he said. "I keep my promises."

One time he called me and said he wanted to make another Western in Spain called DUCK, YOU SUCKER (GIU LA TESTA). He told me that there was a wonderful comedic part in it for me. I explained to Leone that I had a conflict with the dates of production - I was supposed to do a film in France with Jean-Paul Belmondo - but Leone pleaded with me. "Please agree to do my movie, please," he said. I foolishly turned down the film I was offered and agreed to star in Leone's.

Leone went to Hollywood to try to raise money for "our picture" - I thought it was a grand gesture that he referred to it as "ours". In California the studio he was going to work with asked him about the cast. He told them that he had Eli Wallach in the lead role. "No, no," he was told. "We have an actor, Rod Steiger, who owes us one more picture on his studio contract. You'll have to use him; otherwise we can't put up the financing."

Leone agreed. "Sorry, E-li," he told me over the phone. "But I have to use Steiger." I told him that I had had to turn down the other film and now lost out on two jobs. I asked if he could at least give me a token payment.

"I'm sorry," Leone said. "But I have to do what the California producers want."

"I'll sue you," I told him angrily.

"Get in line," he said, and slammed down the phone.

The breaking of that connection also broke our relationship. We never spoke again.

Leone may have ultimately won our battle anyway. Since THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY was an Italian film, I was not entitled to any residuals (in America an actor receives payments when the film is replayed on TV). I'd be a multimillionaire if I had stuck that clause in my Italian contract. As the French would say, "C'est la goddamn guerre," or, to quote my first theatrical agent, "That's life in the Balkans."

The Associate Producer of THE CASTILIAN

From: SO YOU WANT TO MAKE MOVIES

My Life As An Independent Film Producer

by Sidney Pink

I was having money problems of my own. I had contemplated investing my profits from the sale of JOURNEY TO THE SEVENTH PLANET, but with the size of the production shaping up, that amount was inadequate to cover our share of the cost. In Palma, I made the acquaintance of a retired American businessman, Joe Leonard. He was one of the most pompous men I have ever known. I don't know whether Joe realized he gave that impression, but he never did anything to change it. We played bridge with him and his alcoholic wife, Lillian, twice a week. Everything that I was able to glean about Joe's past indicated he had made a small fortune in what I believe was the insurance business. He had retired to Sarasota, Florida, from Skokie, Illinois. I never did get the full story of what had caused his departure from that quiet city; I only knew he and Lillian pulled up stakes, sold their home, and came to Palma to finish out their days. I believe Joe was in his well-preserved seventies and Lillian was not far behind. Despite an apparently open facade, Joe and Lil never discussed their past except in very general terms.~Joe and I talked at great lengths about my legal problems with AIP, and he hinted he might be willing to invest in one of my projects. After my distasteful experience with ANGRY RED PLANET, I resolved I would never again involve any of my friends in my business. I had no connections with a bank, and my credit rating was nonexistent in Spain. Rationalization is one of the most useful capabilities of the human mind. My wife easily convinced me to change my mind with the remark, "Joe Leonard is no friend - what problem could he present? You don't even like him!" When it was put that way I had to agree. I proceeded to speak to Joe, who was most eager to join in what he perceived to be a golden opportunity to become a film producer and have his name on a film for posterity. Not that he wasn't interested in the possible fringe benefit of making money. Despite his assurances that he realized what a speculative venture it was, I knew he would be most unhappy if he didn't get his money back plus a tidy profit.

Joe invested $75,000 plus a loan of $25,000, in return for five percent of my share and a note for the $75,000 that had to be repaid before distribution of profits. He received a four percent interest in a $1.6 million picture for an investment of $75,000, which was totally secured by a first claim on the receipts it generated. He drove a hard bargain but I didn't care, for the harder he bargain the more my rationalizations salved my conscience. Joe also insisted upon associate producer credit. I now had enough money to take care of my contracted share of the budget. We were ready to begin production.

The last scene for HORROR EXPRESS

From: HOLLYWOOD EXILE Or How I Learned To Love the Blacklist

by Bernard Gordon

We had one more major sequence to film. To finished off our monster, we would send our train hurtling off a cliff to burning and exploding destruction. In principle, and as written, the train was to be deliberately shunted off onto a spur line that ended at the face of a cliff rising 300 feet above the plain. For some reason that I have never understood, the director and our skilled cameraman insisted it was necessary to scout the area for an appropriate 300-foot cliff. I couldn't convince them. It cost nothing to let them go look. I sat back, knowing that even if they found such a cliff, it would look ridiculous to send our miniatures off it. I also knew I didn't have the money to mount a location shoot for the crash.

In the end, the excellent art director painted a matte of the side of a mountain, then placed that between the camera and the 40-foot tower of our standing set. The model trains were to be pushed off a ramp at the top of the tower; it would look exactly as if they were careening off a very high cliff. After the camera test, and after everyone finally agreed this would work, we still had a problem: we didn't want to wreck our finely made and expensive model trains. Again, the Spanish came to the rescue, tacking together simple wooden duplicates that cost almost nothing. We would shove these duplicate trains off the cliff.

One more battle remained to be fought. I asked the cameraman what camera speed he intended to use. He looked at me, surprised. "Normal. Twenty-four frames."

I shook my head. "If you do that, the whole shot will only last a second or two - the time it takes the cars to fall 40 feet to the ground." He shrugged. (Maybe that's why he had been looking for a 300-foot drop.) "We'll have to roll the cameras as fast as possible," I insisted.

He shook his head. "Then the whole thing will look false. It'll be in slow motion." By this time, the director had joined us and nodded in agreement with the cameraman. Any fool knew this!

"I don't care if it looks that way. We can't have the whole sequence over in a fraction of a second." I was emphatic. I felt odd. Where did I come off to argue with these professionals? I was not an expert cameraman. "How fast can our cameras turn?"

"Two times normal. Not more."

"Can we find a camera in Madrid that will go ninety-six frames per second?"

"I know where there is one," the cameraman admitted reluctantly.

"Let's rent it."

Irving agree with me in this dispute. He knew enough about camerawork and about editing to understand exactly what should be done. Translating into Spanish, I explained Irving's plan to intercut angles from the different cameras so we could eliminate the slow-motion effect and also prolong the time of the drop without giving the appearance of trickery.

The big day came. Madrid gave us a wintry January sky that was exactly right for our Siberian express. With four cameras rolling and up to speed, action was called. The mozos on top of the tower pushed the cars off the ramp. They fell as required and when they hit the ground, they exploded and burst into flames just as we planned. When cut together under Irving's supervision, the effect was perfect. No complaints were voiced then or later.

The rest of the work was done at the excellent sound studio just outside Madrid on the highway from the airport. First we dubbed into English all the dialogue that had been spoken by the Spanish cast members, who had merely tried to mouth the English words they were speaking during the shoot, though they didn't understand what they were saying. This looping process was painstaking and wearing, but it was relatively new to me and I found it interesting. After we had a final cut, the post-production meant extensive dubbing. Now we put together the picture, dialogue, sound effects, and music. I learned that each craft looked out for itself. During shooting, the cameraman worried about how his colleagues would judge his photography; the makeup man his makeup, the wardrobe man his costumes; and so on, for special effects, sound recording, and everything else down the line. Even the director, I felt, was more concerned with how his special contributions would be received than with the final effect of the film. Of course, the actors worried about their performances quite apart from how it might contribute to the overall effect. In the dubbing sessions, the sound-effects man wantes his work to be heard - loud. The composer/conductor wanted his music to be heard - loud. Everyone was so tired of listening to the dialogue over and over again that they knew it by heart and couldn't care less whether it was comprehensible to an audience that had never heard the dialogue before.

As a neophyte producer, I was in an unenviable position. "I don't know what's right, but I know what I like," I said, like any ignoramus. By now I had enough confidence in my picture sense to insist and to prevail, saying to myself and to others, if it turns out wrong, it will be on my head. Despite this, the final phase of filmmaking was the most rewarding. We had all the pieces in place and were putting them together to create a whole.

The end result was gratifying. I had plenty of good helpers to whom I owed much. I also felt that I had controlled the process enough to take pride in my accomplishment.

Eli and Federico

From THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND ME

In My Anecdotage

by Eli Wallach

I actually met Fellini later on a trip to London at the Carlton Hotel, where he was casting a new movie and wanted to discuss the possibility of my starring in it. He was a great storyteller, and I was mesmerized by the film he described. The story was about a cellist who is supposed to appear at a concert in Venice. The cellist explains that he has business in Rome but would fly up to Venice rather than take the train. The orchestra conductor agrees. But the cellist's plane crashes in a strange white city - everything in the city is white: the automobiles, the streetcars, the hotels. The cellist survives the crash and asks a policeman dressed in a white uniform how to get to Venice so that he can appear at his concert.

The policeman takes out a book and reads from it: "All your life has been recorded on film," the policeman says, "and applicants for leaving this city must appear at a screening room where you will watch as your life unrolls on the screen. If an unselfish moment appears, the film will be stopped. The unselfish moment will be clipped out of the roll, then attached to your passport, and you will be released.

The cellist watches his film in amazement. At one point during the film, he sees himself stopped at a traffic light. to his right, there is a beautiful woman in a white car with a handsome white puppy. The puppy sticks his tongue out at the cellist, and the cellist, for no particular reason, sticks his tongue out at the dog. The film is stopped; the tongue-wagging frame is cut out of the film and attached to the cellist's passport, and the last scene of the film shows the cellist sliding into his seat at the Venice concert hall as the conductor raises his baton.

I thought the idea of Fellini's film script was wonderfully fanciful. I asked him why he was talking to me instead of Marcello Mastroianni. "I love him," Fellini said, "but I feel it is time to use another actor with whom I can fall in love." We parted, and I never heard from him - I later learnded that Fellini had also been interviewing such British film stars as Paul Scofield, Alan Bates, and Albert Finney, but the film was never made. As it turned out, Dino De Laurentiis, the prolific Italian film producer, became so excited when he heard Fellini's story of the cellist, the dog, and the unselfish moment that he spent three-quarters of a million dollars building the set of the white city where the cellist's plane crashes. But Fellini, who was quite superstitious, told De Laurentiis that he had a dream that if he made the film, he would die. De Laurentiis didn't pause: "Federico," he said. "I didn't have a dream, but if you don't make this film, you will die." The dispute continued in court, and Fellini did not make another movie until Alberto Grimaldi, who also produced THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY, heard of Fellini's plight, went to De Laurentiis, and wrote him a check for $750,000. The lawsuit was dropped, and Fellini made his next three films with Grimaldi. He never made the film about the cellist, though, and I never got the chance to appear in a Fellini film.

Casting THE CASTILIAN

From: SO YOU WANT TO MAKE MOVIES

My Life As An Independent Film Producer

by Sidney Pink

In casting we set up what was later known as the Pink Players. Every English-speaking actor in Spain as well as the foreign contingent applied for roles in VALLEY. That was how we were able to build up the casting roster that served us for the making of thirty-seven Spanish coproductions. I met most of Spain's most talented actors, and there was certainly a bevy of them. In VALLEY we used almost every one of them.

Spain had always been the home of fine actors, and its theater tradition dated back to the days of Cervantes and before. Fernando Rey, one of today's finest character actors, played the part of the vacillating king of Leon, and he gave it a polished and expert performance. He appeared in many of our pictures and ultimately received international acclaim for THE FRENCH CONNECTION in which he played the role of the dope king whose final escape and wave from the subway car left a lasting impression on all audiences.

Unlike other filmmakers, we were completely accustomed to using all Spanish or Italian nationals depending upon the coproduction's legal requirements. In the case of VALLEY, we were permitted our choice of either a director or cameraman together with a film editor or equivalent. We were permitted to choose one of the leads and up to one-third of the principal roles. Since Espartaco insisted on playing the lead, and he was not a Spanish national, he was charged to us. None of our actors was considered a lead, which permitted him to substitute another lead role in lieu of the director, and he chose a Mexican actress for whom he had the "hots", Teresa Velasquez.

Teresa, or Tere as she was called, was a gorgeous sexy Mexican version of Sophia Loren and Brigitte Bardot. Espartaco had apparently been after her since he first met her on a trip to Mexico some months earlier. He had made no progress in his attempts to bed her there, and he was determined that he was going to get her no matter what the cost. I had no serious objections, as Tere was a real star in her native Mexico as well as all of Latin America. She was no Bette Davis, but she was competent, and the role of the Infanta of Navarre, Fernan's ultimate queen and wife, was not too exacting. It called for someone who could look beautiful, breathe hard, act sexy, and ride a horse. Most certainly, Tere filled all of these requirements.

Another very important cameo was that of the conniving queen of Leon. This required an actress equal in caliber to Fernando, who was capable of devouring any average actress. A crux of the story was the resentment and ultimate hatred directed towards Fernan Gonzales by the queen of Leon, and her total domination of her husband. From my earliest cinema-buff days I'd been an admirer of David Selznick, and one of the Italian stars he imported to the States was Alida Valli, an actress whose ability was exceeded only by her great beauty. She had an almost cameolike quality that was impervious to any camera demands; she could be photographed in any profile and from any angle. Selznick renamed her Valli, and while she made only a few films, those she made are still considered classics. I can never forget her haunting beauty in MIRACLE OF THE BELLS, or her magnificent performance in THE PARADINE CASE. She held her own with such giants of the acting world as Frank Sinatra, Charles Laughton, and Gregory Peck.

It was always a mystery to me why this brilliant star fled the U.S. at the height of her glory, a career that surely would have rivaled that of Garbo or Bergman. I learned the simple truth later. She had fallen in love with David Selznick, and when the announcement was made of his marriage to Jennifer Jones, she was unable to face it. Despite her contractual obligations, she fled the country and became almost a recluse, working only when financial need forced her to or when there was a role she particularly liked. I had always dreamed of working with this lady, and now I had the opportunity to fulfill it. We listed her as an American actress and I sought her out for the role of the queen of Leon.

It was my first venture into the realm of buying Italian talent, and I met the first female agent of my career in Rome. Ivy Bless represented Valli and was the William Morris representative in Italy. Trying to get an answer from Valli was like trying to pluck a dandelion puff in midair. Valli would not talk to me or meet me. She read the script and found it mildly interesting, but she would neither accept nor reject our offer. But I knew there had to be some way of reaching her.

Luis Bunuel, the great Spanish director, made a magnificent film, VIRIDIANA, which won the grand prize at Cannes but was later banned in Spain. Ivy knew Valli was a great admirer of Bunuel, and she called Valli to inform her she would be playing opposite the male lead of VIRIDIANA, Fernando Rey. One day later, still refusing to see or speak to me, Valli signed her contract. Her role would be shot in seven days, and she requested an apartment away from the hotels of Madrid and insisted upon her complete privacy until shooting time. I was so glad to have her in the film I would have granted her almost anything.

Our cast of VALLEY was beginning to read like a Who's Who of the Spanish drama world, and included every star name in the Spanish acting world. Our cameraman was Mario Pacheco, a brilliant but erratic master of camera movement, which was particularly needed in a film of this magnitude. We were going to employ thousands of extras, and the climactic final battle scene called for 1,700 horses and riders, 5,000 Moors, and 800 Castilian and Spanish cavalry and infantry. Our budget was an almost incredible 100 million pesetas, the equivalent of 1.6 million American dollars.

I had never anticipated a film of this magnitude or I most certainly would not have accepted the wooden-faced, untalented Espartaco as the lead. We had a real shot at Paul Newman, who had been given the script to read and had tentatively accepted it prior to any real negotiations, but I was shot down immediately by Espartaco, who stated bluntly that the picture would be made with him as the star or it would never be made. One thing I have to say for Espartaco, he had supreme confidence in his own limited talent and backed it to the limit with Maruja's money.

Christmas on HORROR EXPRESS

From: HOLLYWOOD EXILE Or How I Learned To Love the Blacklist
by Bernard Gordon

Christmas of 1972 arrived before we were able to finish principal photography. Jean and I decided to have a big Christmas party in the cavernous apartment we had inherited from Yordan. We invited all the cast and principal crew personnel. We served traditional roast turkeys on the buffet table and, another rare treat, a real Smithfield ham we had sneaked out of the American PX. We also had all the other dishes and sweetmeats, both American and Spanish, that we could assemble. The party was a glittering affair. Telly and Sally; Christopher Lee and his handsome Danish wife Gitte, with the nine-year-old daughter Christina; Peter Cushing, polite and cordial, but painfully missing his wife; Eugenio, the director, with the pretty woman he was seeing, a Danish girl he had met when shooting BAD MAN'S RIVER; and all the Americans, British, and Spanish connected with the production.
Feeling alone in this festive gathering and needing to be occupied, Cushing asked permission to carve the ham. He was wearing the white cotton gloves he used to preserve the appearance of his fingers from smoking stains. He did a fine job on what I still remember as the best ham I've ever eaten. The surprise of the party was nine-year-old Christina. We were playing recorded dance music, and in order to start things off, Jean took the girl by the hand and started to dance with her. Christina moved into this enthusiastically and never quit dancing and prancing around the middle of the floor for the rest of the evening. I expected her parents to pull her off and tell her to quit, but both Lee and his wife kept watching the child with keen pleasure. I was puzzled, until someone explained to me that Christina had been born with both feet turned completely backward and had undergone numerous operations in Switzerland to correct the condition. This was her coming-out party. Nothing could have thrilled her parents more than to see her performing on her feet with such ease and to see her, after so much torment, carry on in public like any other happy, spoiled little girl.
Although production was not quite completed, this Christmas party became something like a traditional Hollywood wrap party. Most of the cast and crew were here, feeling good about the film. Work had gone smoothly; there had been no unpleasantness; I felt that the people here liked and respected me and were not merely being deferential because I was the boss. I drifted around as a host offering food and drink, dancing with Christopher's handsome Danish wife and thinking all the while about the years that had passed, the years of selling plastic, of coaxing statements from accident victims, of sweating out the worst assignments with Sam Katzman. I had a keen sense of how fortunate I had been, compared to almost any of the other blacklistees, who had never had an opportunity to achieve any kind of success or gratification. This kind of culmination, a tribute more to extraordinary luck than any special virtue. How else could I explain winding up so happily giving such a Christmas party in Madrid, Spain?

Eli and the Italian style of dialogue recording

From THE GOOD, THE BAD, AND ME In My Anecdotage

by Eli Wallach

One of the stranger aspects of how THE GOOD THE BAD AND THE UGLY was made was the Italian style of recording the actor's voices using a cue track. As the recording went on, it didn't matter if planes flew overhead, if the wind was howling, or if someone on the crew was cursing somebody out - all of these problems were taken care of in the editing room after the film was finished. Actors could speak their native language - Greek, Spanish, French, German - and they would be dubbed into Italian or English, depending on the country in which it was to be shown. For the Italian release, the man who dubbed my voice had the deep, rich, melodic baritone of an opera star, and whenever I did interviews in Italy, journalists were always surprised by my scratchy voice. In one scene, Leone used an Italian non-actor, a man who had lost an arm in World War II. He was hired to play a one-armed soldier in the Civil War sequence. The man, who was dressed in his Civil War uniform, heard me speaking to Leone in English, shook his head, and said in Italian that he didn't like Americans because he had lost his arm in the war. Calling on my poor command of Italian, I said, "Non fatto questo." (I didn't do it.)

Since the dialogue would be dubbed in later, Leone saw how angry the man was and told him to count to ten instead of delivering his actual lines. "Uno, due, tre," the man counted angrily. "Quattro, cinque, sei, sette, otto, nove, dieci." I guess as he counted, the man must have been thinking about the loss of his arm and my lame remark that it hadn't been my fault. He spat out the numbers and got angrier as he reached the number ten (dieci). When I saw the completed English version of the film at the New York premiere, his performance was brilliant - Leone had dubbed a barrage of curse words over the man's counting, and it worked perfectly. "Damn it," I thought. I'd spent my life learning my craft, going to acting school, joining the Actors Studio, working on Broadway, using the Method, and here was this man who stole a scene from me by counting from one to ten. "Well," I sighed, "that's moviemaking, Italian style." I grew to admire Leone's innovations - he was the man who controlled the rhythm and the pace of the film. As a young man, he had been an apprentice to Federico Fellini, from whom he learned firsthand all the tricks of the directing trade.