Take One (Jul 15, 1979)

Battleground kind of picture—well, for almost any kind. He was an earthy, gutsy guy. You wouldn't give him Love Story. But he would take your script and interpret it and give it all the panache, ambiance and style that you really wanted; that’s what was wonderful about him. He didn’t give you all this crap; he didn’t change your lines; but he would give you the business; he knew a lot of little mannerisms, and what he did with actors was marvelous. I always thought he gave actors free rein. Oh, no! He'd say, “Come on, you're actin’ like a fag for God's sake! You don’t look like a soldier, you son of a bitch!” He was always yelling and screaming at them. He was incredible! You handed it over to him and you knew it was going to be what you wanted. What happened when you took over at MGM? The general image of a studio mogul is a sort of bizarre, very eccentric character. Were you scared that you were going to turn into someone like that? I tell you, I'd been exposed to all of them before in meetings, in labor negotiations and quarrels, and I really didn’t have much fear of that happening. If you demand absolute loyalty and you fire anybody who is disloyal, that’s a terrible weakness. It's a weakness, for instance, that FDR did not have. He tolerated a lot of people who were disloyal to him. He said, “It’s their job, as long as they do their job.” Bosley Crowther said in The Lion's Share that the surprise when you took over at MGM was that so few heads rolled—all the Mayer people continued on. Well, Lew Wasserman (head at MCA) told me, “Dore, take my advice, when you go in, throw ‘em all out. That's the only way it’s going to work for you, get rid of ‘em. Because they're out to kill you.” Should you have kicked more people out? Uh-uh. It wasn’t worth that much to me. Listen, there are all sorts of benefits that come with power. I knew that if you have power, you must exercise it, otherwise you become nothing. So I had no hesitancy in using whatever authority I had. I would fight for it, I would insist on it, I would risk my job. I did it many times. However, you have to be careful that you don’t misuse the power to the point where you become this monster you were talking about. I remember one time when a director and a producer came to see me about a picture. They disagreed with a note I sent them about their script. They began to argue their point. They were both rather discursive men, they could go on for hours. Normally, I endured that because God knows, I could be very wrong. In this particular instance, I had thought it out very carefully and I rac < had made up my mind that they were following a blind alley. I said that to begin with, and I added, “Look, I’m gonna let you have your turn at bat, but I'm telling you, I think you're wrong.” So they went on. I said, “I’ve listened and fellas, you're wrong. I'll tell you why.” I made what I honestly believed was a compelling kind of an argument to them. They said, “Well, you may be right.” I said, “Then I don’t want to listen anymore. As long as you admit I may be right.” They started in again and | lost my patience and raised my voice and I said, “Now look, I’ve had enough!” I remember that was the tone I used and there was an instant change. “Well, chief, look, uh, OK. We don’t want to press it, we appreciate very much .. .” They began to brown-nose. Then they left. I remember very clearly thinking, “Oh Jesus! Be careful.” When I raised my voice and said, “That's it!”, they immediately changed. And the reason they changed is that the next step is “You're fired.” Or, “I'm taking you off the picture!” They didn’t want to get it to that point. That's dangerous. I’ve never forgotten that incident. I said, “My God, that’s a terrible way to treat writers,” and I knew because I'd been through that as a writer. Are you encountering any special problems with your autobiography? You're constantly riding between Scylla and Charybdis. You have to be sure that what you're really saying is absolutely true: you also have to be very very careful that it doesn’t get to be simply a story of “I, I, I.” You have to try to illuminate the other people that you come in contact with, get a slant on them Did you read Garson Kanin's memoirs? It's really not a memoir. It's an anecdotal book. Gar directed my first play in 1937. I've known him long enough, so that when he asked me about his book, and when he said, “I never heard from you when the publisher sent you a copy, for Chrissake,” I told him the truth. “I thought you could have done better.” He said, “What do you mean?” I said, “Well, you've got a whole thing in there about the executive dining room and how every executive had a tray with medicines on it. Now what kind of nonsense is that? Did you ever see me there with a tray of pills and things?” So he said, “Well, wait'll you write your book.” Summing up your own career, what did you try to accomplish? What I tried to do was give opportunity to new filmmakers and I think that I probably gave more young people opportunity than anyone else who acted as an executive for such a comparatively short time. I believe that if someone one day examines the full record they'll find that what I tried to do as an executive I did pretty well. I had respect for the writer, I brought some air into the subject material in films, and I conducted myself with I think mostly good taste and with a deep sense of responsibility to my industry and to my art. That's what I think I accomplished. Pat McGilligan and Gerald Peary are editor and film critic, respectively, for the Boston Real Paper. Peary is Take One's book editor. TAKE ONE 47 Cori Wells Braun