36 Hours (MGM) (1964)

FAMILY FIRST, CAREER SECOND, BUT EVA MARIE SAINT MAKES A SUCCESS OF BOTH Some of Eva Marie Saint’s best friends are critics, They say such nice things about her. “She nudges a role into existence, working softly, placidly and with infinite attractiveness,’ wrote Walter Kerr of the New York Herald Tribune. Even the New York Times unbends to observe: “Miss Saint has the ability to give tenderness and_ sensitivity to genuine romance.” Yet her current film, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s “36 Hours,” is only her eighth since winning an Academy Award for her initial screen role in “On the Waterfront,” almost ten years ago. This “under exposure” has been by choice. She has placed her husband, TV director Jeffrey Hayden, and two small children above her career, refusing to leave them for far-off locations, The decision has cost her nearly two million dollars. One deal alone, for ‘El Cid,” would have brought her $350,000. Studios have never been reluctant to offer her scripts or to meet her six-digit fee. William Perlberg, the producer of “36 Hours,” voiced the general opinion of Miss Saint when, during a lecture before a group of USC and UCLA Cinema Arts students, he said: “In movies, personality is often more important than talent for a star, whereas in the theatre the reverse is almost invariably true. Of course, every once ina while you find a star who has both, like Eva Marie Saint.” Eva Marie Saint, as the nurse who becomes involved in the most terrifying hours in one man’s life in Metro-GoldwynMayer’s taut and suspenseful drama, ‘°36 Hours.” James Garner is the man whom Miss Saint is forced to betray, with Rod Taylor third star of the Perlberg-Seaton production. Still 1826-70 36 Hours Mat 1-F The actress makes no pretense about the fact that she likes to work. “The time has come for me to be doing more than one picture a year,” she recently declared. “The children are now old enough to start school and will be away from home during the day. I don’t understand how actresses can leave their children for long periods of time. They survive, I suppose, but I don’t know how.” With the exception of “Exodus,” Miss Saint has refused roles efor any picture requiring foreign locations. “On that one we went as a family,” she explains. ‘My husband’s television series was vacationing and we bundled our son, Darrell, and daughter, Laurie, into carry-alls and took them with us. But that isn’t always possible.” Not that she finds time hanging heavy between her movie assignments. Apart from reading scripts and books that might be suitable for films, the actress finds supervising the care of her rambling country home a full-time job. Set in two-and-a-half acres in the hills of 3rentwood, its grassy slopes and groves of sycamore trees provide ample space for the family pets. These include a dog, guinea pigs, rabbits, turtles, goldfish, two lizards and-a dozen chickens. “The chickens have made our son the ‘egg man’ of the neighborhood,” she laughs. “At fifty-cents a dozen, Darrell rates the Robert Taylors, Karl Maldens and Dennis Days among his customers.” Miss Saint’s selectivity has brought her a wide variety of roles. After her film debut opposite Marlon Brando, she played the comedy lead with Bob Hope in “That Certain Feeling.” Then came “Raintree County” with Elizabeth Taylor and the highly dramatic “Hatful of Rain.” This was followed by “North by Northwest,” in which her incendiary love scenes with Cary Grant revealed a “new” Eva Marie Saint. “Exodus” came next, then “All I’all Down” with Warren Beatty. One television appearance with Bob Hope broke the two-year hiatus between “All Fall Down” and the current “36 Hours,” in which she co-stars with James Garner and Rod Taylor in a strong dramatic role. She plays a German nurse brainwashed by the Nazis into betraying an American officer. “We had a wonderful time on this picture, which is based on a true incident Director George Seaton came across during research he was doing in Washington, D.C. It takes quite a while before audiences will be able to determine whether I’m the heroine or the ‘heavy’ of the story. When you have a suspenseful part like that, you can really get your teeth into it.” On completion of “36 Hours,’ Miss Saint was interviewed by columnist and author Maury Schumach, who wrote: “Hollywood would be happy if the world image of the industry was Eva Marie Saint.” No wonder she wants to get back into harness! LOSES OUT THIS TIME Rod Taylor is the romantic type who usually doesn’t accept a “No” from the heroine on the screen. However, for once he doesn’t get the girl — Eva Marie Saint — in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s suspensedrama, “36 Hours.” It’s James Garner who winds up with Miss Saint in his arms. On the other hand, Taylor has done all right in his past pictures, in which he has romanced such glamour queens as Betty Davis in “The Virgin Queen,” Elizabeth Taylor in “Giant,” Debbie Reynolds in “The Catered Affair,’ Shirley MacLaine in “Ask Any Girl,” Maggie Smith in “The V.I.P.s” and, most recently, Jane Fonda in “Sunday in New York? DARING EXPERIMENT USED BY NAZIS TO FOMENT INFORMATION Hote Under the direction of German medical officer Rod Taylor, Rudolph Anders attempts a remarkable experiment in ‘‘aging’’ an unconscious James Garner in a tense sequence of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s ‘36 Hours.”’ At right, Eva Marie Saint, posing as a nurse, holds photographs of Garner and his father, used as a guide in the experiment. Garner enacts a U. S. Intelligence officer, who has been captured by the Nazis and from whom they hope to gain information about the impending Normandy Invasion. The suspenseful film was directed by George Seaton. Still 1826-9 36 Hours Mat 3-A HOLLYWOOD INGENUITY TRANSFORMS YOSEMITE LANDMARK INTO NAZI MILITARY CAMP FOR REALISTIC SETTING IN “36 HOURS” Transforming a United States National Park into the Black Forest of Bavaria is only part of a day’s work for a movie company on location. But it can be baffling to the unsuspecting tourist. Yosemite’s Wawona Hotel on the Chowchilla Mountain and Inspiration Point Road has been the haven of weary travelers for the past 100 years. Rooms are at a premium. The hotel’s vistawindowed dining room is noted across the continent for gourmet menus, But recently, no one ventured to ask for overnight sanctuary or even a sandwich. The reason was due to a sign which had been stretched across Wawona’s Victorian facade, reading: UNITED STATES MILITARY HOSPITAL. This is the illusion of movie-making. It is illusion within illusion—the placing of an Allied Army Hospital into an alleged Nazi military camp where there actually is a stately Yosemite resort hotel. The camouflage was for the new Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer picture, “36 Hours,” a unique and exciting suspensedrama, starring James Garner, Eva Marie Saint, Rod Taylor and Werner Peters, and revolving around an inci Rod Taylor and Eva Marie Saint hold down a violent James Garner in one of the scenes of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s ‘36 Hours,”’ gripping and dramatic story of thirty-six suspenseful hours in which World War II history might have been changed. Still 1826-16 36 Hours Mat 2-C dent which occurred in the fateful hours prior to D-Day. The illusion created by an array of pseudo-doctors, patients, nurses and military personnel is only a natural occurrence when a film company like MGM’s “36 Hours” transports actors, directors, cameramen, construction crew, a company of 160 Hollywood extras and a half-million pounds of equipment from a motion picture studio into the Big Trees of Northern California. Twenty-eight vehicles and sixteen drivers moved the equipment, which included two ten-ton trucks hauling two ten-ton trailers packed with 65,000 pounds of materials. Three buses with a seating capacity of 42 passengers each; two 1400-amp generators, a 600amp generator, two ambulances, three station wagons, two ten-passenger stretchouts, five passenger cars and eight military vehicles of World War II vintage were part of the space-age caravan. Personnel of the film crew and extras commandeered the Wawona _ Hotel, whose lower floors were converted into dressing rooms, wardrobe storage and make-up salons, The picture’s stars and Director George Seaton lived in redwood cabins huddled among the Big Trees, two miles distant from the main lodgings. A shuttle service on a fifteenminute time schedule provided transportation back and forth to work and to meals. Pastoral Setting The beauty of the surroundings of the cabins occupied by the stars made up for the inconvenience of the secluded location, Squirrels chased bluejays through the cabin doors and deer preemtorily pushed open windows to demand early morning handouts. Should anyone elect to walk the two miles to the hotel (a feat which James Garner insisted on each dawn) he was tripped by chickadees, wrens, mud swallows and baby deer. Neither deer, birds, squirrels nor bear feared man. However, when the rump of a 600-pound brown bear came into camera view one early morning, man feared beast. When the bear made no attempt to leave but merely made himself comfortable and remained to watch the movie-making, work resumed as usual. Any ego build-up of stars was shattered when it turned out that the scene Director Seaton was_ shooting with Garner, Eva Marie Saint and Rod Taylor happened to be located at the bear’s favorite Yosemite site—the park dump! When the company moved out, the bear moved in and ate his dinner. Despite the beauty of the surroundings, the grandeur of the cascading falls, the froth-churned Merced River and the Tuolomne Meadows bursting with wild flowers, a film location can pose a number of problems for a company of such proportions as the “36 Hours” contingent. First and foremost is weather. It snowed, rained, hailed, sleeted and was sunny, all within a fifteen-minute period. Food is another poser, The Wawona chef prepared his palate-titillating menus, offering a variety of choices, for the first three days until 120 out of 160 continued to order shrimp cocktails and either broiled steak—rare—or lobster tails. Then there’s the solemn oath taken by any and every motion picture company which enters a National Park, doubly so when a site like the Wawona is the locale. In all its one-hundred years, no movie company previously had trod its soil. Any evidence that Yosemite was ever transformed into Bavaria, or the Wawona Hotel into an Allied Military Hospital had to be totally wiped out 24 hours after the “36 Hours” exodus. Compliance with this condition was the only way Producer William Perlberg could get into the National Park area for his picture. A guilt-ridden Eva Marie Saint evades James Garner’s questioning in Metro-Goldwyn Mayer’s ‘36 Hours.’? Rod Taylor also stars in the gripping drama of thirty-six suspenseful hours in which World War II history might have been changed. Still 1826-15 36 Hours Mat 1-A