Take One (Sep-Oct 1972)

Myra Breckinridge, 1970 centrated on eliminating the real rough stuff and ignored the important, funny dialogue, which is what | was after the whole time anyway. It got to be an interesting battle of wits. All that movie censorship was so petty; | never had trouble on Broadway when | was in musicals or reviews. But vaudeville — there was trouble. | always had to carry extra songs. I'd do my act, see, and afterwards the manager would come running backstage. “My God, you’ve got to change that song, the churches will be after us.” (They were never worried about the police, just the churches.) “What's wrong with the song?” “Oh, it's those suggestive lyrics... you know.” So I'd hand him the sheet music and say, “Tell me what you want changed, specifically.” He’d read and read and re-read, and of course there was nothing to delete. It was all in the voice, in the attitude, in my personality. If | said it, it was sexy. If anybody else said exactly the same thing — nothing. Personality is so very important; vital, in fact. But, like | said, the managers would get very upset, threaten to cancel our bookings and everything, so we’d change the songs just to get them off our back. Right now, | think censorship is necessary; the things they’re doing and saying in films right now just shouldn't be allowed. There’s no dignity anymore, and | think that’s very important. Paramount was a lot of hard work. By the time | came to do . Every Day’s a Holiday (1937) | was exhausted. | was tired and didn’t have the vaguest idea for a story. Paramount was upset and | wasn’t very happy either. Then one day, while | was listening to some songs that were supposed to be used for this movie no one had written yet, the entire story came to me. The whole thing — characters, dialogue, situations, everything. Don’t misunderstand, the music had nothing to do with the story | thought of; the music wasn’t suggestive of the story at all. The Forces helped me, just as they have many times since. I'm a great believer in the Forces and metaphysics in general. They used to come to me at night, gather around my bed in long robes — like monks, you know, with long hair. Finally it got so that | couldn't sleep with all that going on, so | had to quit fooling around with that sort of stuff at that time of night. As far as my movies are concerned, I’m satisfied. | always did what | thought was right. Of course, there were one or two that | couldn't control, so they didn’t turn out as well as some of the others. My Little Chickadee was all right; | think it’s a good picture. But Bill Fields got co-script credit, which was a farce. He wrote one scene, between himself and another guy in a barroom. One scene! | liked Bill and all that, but he could be miserable when he wanted to be. | guess he hounded them and hounded them until they gave him screen credit just to get rid of him. | never saw the picture until after it'd been released, and by then it was too late to do anything about it. That irritates me. . Myra Breckinridge was too bad. It was the director; any time the producer of the film is locked off the set for two weeks, you know you’ve got trouble. There were lots of problems with that film. Raquel Welch was very jealous. If | wore black, she wanted black. If | wore white, she demanded white. Michael Sarne was very difficult. He wanted desperately to be Fellini with that picture. During the shooting he kept running over to see Satyricon at a theatre in Beverly Hills. | think he wanted to have his name over the title, too. He didn’t want anybody else to get any credit. — At the preview, the house went wild over me. He couldn't have that, so he started snipping things out, little things here and there, all my best stuff. He ruined the coherence of my scenes. After they gave him the gate, the producers put some of it back in — but not all of it. | particularly like one of the lines in that film: a very tall man walks by and somebody whispers, “He’s six feet, seven inches.” | say, “I don’t care about the six feet, but I’m interested in the seven inches.” You know, I’ve never thought of myself as just a movie star. Unlike somebody like Bill Fields, | think | have a personality that the masses go for. | didn’t just draw them in films, you know. | did it on stage, on radio with my “Adam and Eve” sketch, and with Bergen and Charlie McCarthy. That show had another good line, one that | said to McCarthy: “Come on up and I'll let you play in my woodpile.” As a matter of policy, | seldom get angry; it’s bad for you and almost never does any good. But | really boiled recently — when | heard what Anthony Quinn said about me in his book (The Original Sin) — that | tried to seduce him and all that. That’s an out-and-out lie! | met that man once in my life, in the 30s. He was working in a play that my manager was producing. | had no connection with it whatsoever. Anyway, he told Jack LaRue, who was a mutual friend, that he’d like to meet me. So LaRue brought him up and we talked for ten minutes and then he left. | never saw him again. And almost 40 years later he puts that sort of stuff in his book! I’d like to get him for that. You know what irritates me? All this talk about Hollywood being dead. Hollywood isn’t dead, it’s just taking a siesta. Right now, I’ve got four great projects that | want to do. The one | especially like is a sort of big-time sequel to Paper Moon for Paramount. It'd have me and a young man traveling around fleecing the suckers. Burt Reynolds would be perfect for the man. The whole thing looks very promising. | know I’ve still got a public out there; when | had my birth day recently, | got 91 calls from Europe alone — and 350 all together. That’s not bad for just one day. You see, I’ve got so much energy, | look great, | want to work. Work is very important to a woman like me. The thing is, I’ve always done everything | wanted; | just [END want to keep on doing it. BS Si (by release date) (All distributed in 16mm by Universal, except Myra Breckinridge — which is distributed by Films Inc. — and The Heat's On — which is not available in 16mm.) 1932 Night After Night She Done Him Wrong / I’m No Angel Belle of the Nineties 1933 1934 1935 Goin’ to Town 1936 Klondike Annie /Go West, Young Man 1938 Every Day’s a Holiday 1940 My Little Chickadee 1943 The Heat’s On Myra Breckinridge 21