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 John Mitchum |
Some Inside Stories About Clint Eastwood |
Mitchum takes us behind scenes for a new perspective on Clint
By
JOHN STANLEY
of TheColumnists.com
I knew this guy once, John Mitchum. Brother of Robert Mitchum. I'd first met him in San Francisco in 1976 when he was making "The Enforcer," the third film in the "Dirty Harry" series, playing Harry Callahan's partner, DiGorgio. John was a charming man, who had better anecdotes about Hollywood than he had film credits, as the "Dirty Harry" movies were the best he had ever been cast in. And he was a great raconteur. He seemed to have a story about everyone in Hollywood and I casually mentioned he should write a book.
Little did I realize that John Mitchum would come back into my life 11 years later when Mick Martin, author of the "Video Movie Guide" series, told me he'd read John Mitchum's autobiography and thought I might like to take a whack at publishing it.
So I got in touch with John, who was then remarried and living near Nevada City. I liked the manuscript when I read it although I realized immediately that it was in need of a lot of editing and rewriting. While it was true that he had chalked up 800 TV shows and 80 feature films, John had always remained a minor supporting player and never came anywhere near his brother as an actor.
What I liked about John's book were the colorful behind-the-scene stories he had amassed, not only about his rough-and-tumble brother but about lesser known actors, stunt men, con artists, soldiers, bar bullies, boxers, stand-ins, honey wagon maintenance men and other offbeat characters he and his brother had met over the years. It was "lusty and brawling," as the coypwriters are prone to claim, and, without giving up my day job as a journalist, I published the book in 1989.
As we began working on revising the manuscript, I became intrigued with the portion of the book that dealt with John's making of the "Dirty Harry" films with Clint Eastwood. It suddenly became known to me for the first time that director Ted Post and Eastwood had fallen out during the filming of "Magnum Force," and had not spoken since. This startled me, for I had thought them to be inseparably bonded when I had seen them working so well together back in 1973.
John
Mitchum, in preparing his book, had gone back and spoken to Ted
Post and asked him for his side of the story. Out of that interview
came some revealing background material on Eastwood that had
never seen print before.
Here are some excerpts from Mitchum's conversation with Ted Post:
"I'd directed Clint in 24 'Rawhide' episodes," Post said, "and found him to be a quietly determined and earnestly dedicated performer absorbed in mastering the craft of acting. Clint's costar, Eric Fleming, was gifted with a deep, resonant voice (something Clint wished he had) but had only a surface grasp of the technique of acting. Eric, in self-centered and unrelated stentorian tones, overcooked his dialogue. Clint was just the opposite. To Clint's credit he always managed to ferret out the reason for the character's behavior and in his soft, unobtrusive and seemingly egoless manner, delivered the scene's emotional demands.
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"When I directed "Hang 'em High" [a critical and box-office success], producer Leonard Freeman took it on himself to exercise his power in an exhibitionistic and egotistical way. Freeman would flamboyently stride onto the set, slashing a quirt in his hand, Cecil B. DeMille style, interrupting and derailing everyone's train of thought with unworkable suggestions that slowed up production.
"At the time Clint was slowly coming to grips with his confidence and importance as the star of his first American-made movie following the success of his spaghetti Westerns with Sergio Leone. In an unprecedented action, Clint pulled Freeman aside and told him quietly, in no uncertain terms, that if he saw him again anywhere near the set, the film would shut down. Freeman never showed up again. We finished the film on time and on budget.
"Then, with time and success in his favor, I believe that Clint became afflicted with a touch of megalomania . . . The characteristics in Irving Berlin's song, 'Anything You Can Do, I Can Do Better,' began to manifest themselves in Clint's conduct. His intense desire for financial security and control assisted Clint in structuring his deals so that in a 50-50 proposition, he would insist on getting the hyphen too. This approach took its toll on meaningful scenes that were ruthlessly shortchanged and even excised. Clint's greed and ego began to affect his sensitivity and judgment. It was painful to watch.
"Clint, at that time, had obviously been influenced by Leone, who had directed him in three successful Westerns ["A Fistful of Dollars," "For a Few Dollars More" and "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly"]. Leone's ponderous directorial style had rubbed off on Clint. He started doing long, lingering close-ups of principals, well after the point of the scene had been made, interfering with the narrative flow and thrust of the story. I had learned, among many complex principals built into the craft of directing, that (1) there are no rules in filmmaking--only sins--and the cardinal sin is dullness, and (2) never underestimate the intelligence of the audience; doing so stimulates restlessness and boredom and taxes the audience's patience.
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"On 'Magnum Force," Clint was feeling his oats as a budding director. He made editorial changes without consulting me. The results of those choices were visible to me and to the perceptive critics who felt, as I did, that the picture was, in the main, sluggishly paced and incomplete in some of its pictorial choices.
"For instance, missing was an establishing master tie-up shot of two inactive, aged aircraft carriers docked alongside each other (one much lower in the water than the other). This was an important scene because on one of the decks a cop-killer on a motorcycle was chasing Eastwood, who was also on a motorcycle. Both are traveling at fast speeds and literally fly off one carrier's deck onto another. Seeing the entire geography in advance of the action would've spelled out for the audience the visual and physical relationship of the action. Eastwood the producer said the shot was unnecessary, the audience wouldn't miss it--silently implying the shot was too expensive despite the fact that the film was days ahead of schedule and enough under budget to finance another film.
"Another experience, difficult to erase from my memory, was when Hal Holbrook, a very unhappy but helluva good actor, tried to find a handle for his underwritten, thinly-etched role as Lieutenant Briggs. Hal spent time at my home discussing various approaches to the problem. We finally decided to play Briggs subtly, substituting variations of intensity for 'trombone' anger. In one scene with Clint, Hal was to reprimand Dirty Harry for his iconoclastic behavior. Hal did so, on a high note of voluble anger, surprising me.
"I stopped the scene and reminded Hal the lines as written couldn't support the melodramatic weight of his attack. Clint countermanded my direction, saying he liked Hal's interpretation. I explained why the scene wasn't working. Clint disagreed again. Hal bought it. I didn't and neither did the critics. Two years later at a Hamburger Haven in Beverly Hills, Hal and I bumped into each other. He reminded me of the scene and the ineffectiveness of the performance. He asked, 'Why didn't you stop me?' I reminded Hal that I had tried to stop him. 'When you didn't question Clint's approval, I assumed you had agreed with Clint.' Hal shook his head. 'But you were the director. You should've insisted.' I painfully answered, 'You're right. I should have insisted.'
"However, in all fairness to Clint's choices, 'Magnum Force' made $50 million at the box office, beating 'Dirty Harry' by $3 million. So there was something Clint was doing that had the approval of the god Mammon. Everyone to his own taste."
In the end, the god Mammon was also good to me and John Mitchum. All 5,000 copies of his book, "Them Ornery Mitchum Boys," were sold, and I did okay although I still kept my day job.
Mitchum is now enjoying the "golden years" of his retirement from acting in Sonora, Ca., where he once made an episode of "Little House on the Prairie." When I spoke to him recently, he told me, "There's just one thing I miss. And that's Brother Bob. Without him around, the world has never seemed the same since."
© 2000 by John Stanley.
The new edition of John Stanley's "Creature Features" guide is now available at most booksellers.
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