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An Insider's View  The most famous sequence from "From Here To Eternity," in which Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr make love in the surf of a Hawaiian beach. |
Screenwriter Taradash
provided crucial insights
......
of TheColumnists.com
In 1982. I indulged myself by arranging an interview with Daniel Taradash, a key figure involved in the making of one of my all-time favorite movies, the Oscar-winning Best Picture of 1953--"From Here To Eternity."
Taradash was one of Hollywood's most admired screenwriters and won the Academy Award for the screenplay for "From Here To Eternity," one of eight Oscars the film collected, duplicating the previous all-time record run up by "Gone With the Wind."
Taradash made his first big wave in Hollywood with "Golden Boy," the 1939 film version of the acclaimed Clifford Odets stage play. He was one of four screenwriters assigned to the project. While still getting established in the movies, he enlisted in World War II and wound up in the Signal Corps, writing and producing military training films. After the war, he went back to Broadway and did the translation and revisions to Frenchman Jean Paul Sartre's play; "Red Gloves" for its New York debut.
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At left, Montgomery Clift as Pvt. Hewitt in "From Here To Eternity." At right, screenwriter
Daniel Taradash, who won the Oscar for his screenplay adaptation of the James Jones book.
"How do you spell fiasco?" Taradash interjected as we talked about his career over a long lunch. "Broadway audiences didn't care a fig and I hopped back to L.A."
Resuming his work as a screenwriter, Taradash co-authored the Humphrey Bogart picture "Knock On Any Door" (1949), Fritz Lang's tongue-in-cheek western "Rancho Notorious" (1952) with Marlene Dietrich ("A western send-up which Marlene took seriously!") and the film noir "Don't Bother To Knock" (1952) with Marilyn Monroe as a psychotic babysitter.
But Taradash wound up at Columbia Pictures in 1953, where studio boss Harry Cohn had just paid $82,000 for the rights to James Jones' best-seller about Pearl Harbor just before the Japanese attack in 1941 and was looking for a screenwriter to adapt the controversial novel.
"It was wild, rambling, inchoate," Taradash said of the novel, "but it was brilliant,
I could see a movie somewhere deep in that lugubrious prose.
But how to satisfy the censors? All the profanities had to be
excised. The whorehouse had to be turned into an 'entertainment
lounge.' And more than half the plot had to be cut. But I didn’t
want to cut the juice, the center of the story, which was a rather
profound look at barracks life before December 7, 1941.”
Taradash lobbied for Fred Zinnemann as director. “Cohn
hollered and thrashed around. Freddie had just directed the box
office bomb 'The Member of the Wedding' and Cohn said he wasn’t
up for it. But I said based on 'The Search' (1948) and 'The Men'
(1950), Fred could be the perfect interpreter of the war material.”
Taradash provided some incredible insights into the thinking
that went into the making of what would be a classic American
film.
“I sat in on all the conferences as I refined my many
drafts. Fred was stunned at the beginning when Cohn decided only
Joan Crawford would play the wayward wife, Karen. She’d
just defected from MGM. But Fred said that would be conventional
casting and he began undermining Joan’s fragile ego. There
were huge clashes over wardrobe and finally Joan insisted on
her own cinematographer. Fred refused and she walked.”
The word had always been that MGM’s Greer Garson had wanted
the part when she read the novel in galleys and pressed Metro
head Louis B. Mayer to buy the book for her.
“I heard that, too. And the more I thought about it I
was determined another lady-- Deborah Kerr--would be Karen.
“I remember one early conference when Cohn presented his
dream cast: Rita Hayworth (Karen), Edmond O’Brien (Warden),
Aldo Ray (Prewitt), Eli Wallach (Maggio), Julie Harris (Lorene).
A cast of Columbia contractees. None made it to the actual shoot!
Oh, Freddie was very persistent about his choices.”
"Wallach had to withdraw because of a Broadway commitment,
Hayworth couldn’t escape her latest marriage, Julie Harris
refused such 'salacious' material, Ray flopped his audition.
Even O’Brien wasn’t up to the task of Warden."
Producer Buddy Adler used his World War II connections to get
U.S. Army cooperation. Hundreds of army surplus stores were scoured
because the equipment had all changed in the eight years since
1945.
Tardash remembered fierce shouting matches with the censors.
Lorene, a prostitute in the book, became a “hostess”.
Kerr’s bathing suit had a skirt added to make it less lewd.
“I was there in Hawaii during much of the filming,"
Taradash said. "Burt Lancaster (cast as Sgt. Warden)
was jittery because he considered Monty Clift (who played
Prewitt) a better actor. Frankie Sinatra (cast as Maggio)
was on best behavior. His salary was all of $8,000 and he
and Monty were best buds until one night a drunken Monty
(who was gay in real life) came onto Frank, who just freaked
out. Donna Reed got her part (as Lorene) after Kim Stanley
and Audrey Totter were tested. Fred saw Lorene as the ultimate
lady.”
Filmed in four months in Zinnemann’s suggested stark black
and white, the print came in at a cost of $1.6 million, ultimately
grossing $30 million in world wide sales.
On Oscar night, March 25, 1954, at the Pantages theatre in downtown
Hollywood, Taradash said, "There was no tension. We knew
we had it.”
Frank Sinatra arrived for the ceremoney without wife Ava Gardner,
who had gotten him the part of Maggio. But he lost his aplomb
when his name was read as best supporting actor.
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comeback in films after winning an Oscar as Maggio in "From Here To Etenrity." |
“It was a true comeback,” Taradash said. “He went back to being the
old arrogant Frankie by the end of the evening.”
Best actress went to Audrey Hepburn over Deborah Kerr’s
Karen. It was Hollywood’s way of welcoming Hepburn in her
first major role as the next, great movie superstar. Taradash
believed Lancaster and Clift split the votes for best actor enabling
Bill Holden to squeak through with his only Oscar for "Stalag
17". But Donna Reed overtook Grace Kelly (nominated for
"Mogambo") an won the best supporting actress award.
Zinnemann won as best director, Taradash won for best screenplay,
Burnett Guffey won for best cinematography. Best Sound went to
the Columbia Sound department for the picture and William Lyon
won for best film editing, also for "Eternity."
Poignant, yet hard hitting, the film is a vivid dissection of
U.S. Army life in Pearl Harbor on the eve of the Japanese sneak
attack. "From Here To Eterntiy" stands the test of
time as one of the key moments that heralded a more adult movie
making trend.
One dissenter was author ames Jones, who felt Taradash had cut
too deeply while adapting the novel for the movies. Taradash
said he got the same reaction from most of the writers he rewrote
for the screen.
In 1979, "From Here To Eternity" was remade as a six-hour
NBC TV miniseries with Natalie Wood as Karen, William Devane
as Sgt. Warden, Steve Railsback as Prewitt, Kim Basinger as Lorene
and Joe Pantoliano as Maggio. Though it was more faithful to
the book, it was not a ratings success and had little impact.
NBC even launched a weekly series that carried on the story after
the events that took place in the book, but it lasted only a
month and was a ratings disaster.
After winning his screenwriting Oscar, Taradash became known as an adaptor of famous books and plays, including William Inge's "Picnic" (1955), John Van Druten's "Bell, Book and Candle" (1958), James Michener's "Hawaii" (1966) and Sidney Sheldon's "The Other Side of Midnight" (1977). His attempt to direct his own original script, "Storm Center" (1956), starring Bette Davis as a librarian tackling censorship, was a box office and critical bomb.
Taradash died in 2003 at age 90, leaving behind one of the best films of the 1950s as his lasting legacy, "From Here To Eternity."
©2011 by Jim Bawden.
The photos are courtesy of Columbia Pictures. This column first
posted March 2, 2011.
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