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Dream or Nightmare?
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In today's marketplace,
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of TheColumnists.com
IN PURSUING the joys of life, we sometimes walk unknowingly into the mouth of the tiger. What was intended to be creative or artistic or all positive can suddenly spin us around to face into a negative direction. Sometimes, no matter how much heart and soul we pour into our dreams, we find ourselves standing on the edge of what appears to be a pending disaster. A bottomless abyss of doom, perhaps?
In my case, it’s because I decided
in the year 2011 to publish a book and get it distributed into
bookstores across America. I don’t really know what the
outcome is going to be, but I thought I would explain what is
currently happening. With our economy in dire condition, America
is changing in many ways, and this thing about a paper book is
only a small part of the change. But one that fascinates me,
and scares
me at the same time. As it should fascinate and scare you. And
maybe it will shed a little light into the growing darkness surrounding
us all.
So, here goes:
CHAPTER ONE:
FOLLOWING THE AMERICAN DREAM
. . . *A STEP-BY-STEP REPORT*
It started two years ago when I was watching a Clint Eastwood documentary entitled "The Man From Malpaso." In the early scenes, Eastwood recalled something his father had told him when he was a youth: "Progress, or you will decay."
After seeing this excellent story of the
early stages of Eastwood’s Hollywood career as actor and
director, I went down to my TV viewing room-library in my home
in Pacifica, CA. This is where I have kept for decades a lengthy
row of scrapbooks containing the newspaper articles I wrote during
my 33 years as an entertainment
writer for The San Francisco Chronicle (1960-1993). I
once estimated that I had met and written about 800 celebrities
from various walks of show business, most of them movie and TV
stars.
"Progress, or you will decay."
That kept running through my mind and made me realize that for
many years I had looked upon all this material as a potential
legacy. Could I take some of it and reshape it from a new perspective
and put it into book form?
I was now 69 years of age, with 70 being only a few months away.
Maybe it was time to get off the proverbial butt, before "decay"
set in, and deal with my proposed "legacy."
Writing books is not new to me. I’ve had 17 published in my lifetime. Novels, game books, movie guides, autobiographical history. Now here was the opportunity for number 18. And I was all aglow.
So, I began searching for the interviews
I had written about Clint--starting with a visit to the set of
"Rawhide" in 1963, when he had accidentally knocked
over one of the cinematographer’s lamps and angered the
director by ruining a busy barroom sequence. Followed by a description
of the day in 1971 when Eastwood, during production of "Dirty
Harry," had "shot and killed" the Scorpio Killer
(Andrew
Robinson, a newcomer to movies who was so gun-shy that ironically
director Don Siegel had been forced to send him to a gun training
school).
Next up was the time in Marin County in
1973 when Clint was making "Magnum Force" and teased
director Ted Post about his abhorrence of the .44 Magnum handgun.
Then we had met at Clint’s Mission Ranch Inn in Carmel,
CA., to discuss his Oscar-winning Western of 1992, "Unforgiven."
And finally, our last meeting to talk about why Clint had been
so obsessed about directing "Flags of Our Fathers"
and "Letters From Iwo Jima" for producer Steven Spielberg.
So that’s how the legacy began to come into focus, and how the book-- "The Gang That Shot Up Hollywood"-- began to flow onto paper, and then into formated book pages on my computer.
I suddenly realized there were many sidebar
stories to the Eastwood interviews: On that day that Clint has
smashed the lamp, I had talked to character actors Tom Kennedy,
Steve Brodie and (bartender) Don Haggerty. Hal Holbrook, who
had
co-starred with Clint in "Magnum Force," and singer
Frankie Laine, who had recorded the famous "Rawhide"
soundtrack for the series, had been separate articles, but now
they fit into the greater mosaic that was forming. Suddenly I
remembered that back in 1962 I had interviewed two "Rawhide"
costars: Sheb Wooley and Paul Brinegar, when they were touring
the country as a country-western act, spoofing their roles as
wrangler
Peter Nolan and trailside chef Wishbone. They were now part of
the growing landscape.
What kind of format should the book take? I asked myself. My previous effort in this vein, published in 2007, had been "I Was a TV Horror Host," based on my experiences as the host of "Creature Features" in the San Francisco-Bay Area TV from 1979-1984. I had followed in the footsteps of TV icon Bob Wilkins, who had done the show for eight years before I stepped in.
I had included a history of Bob as well as my exclusive interviews with Vincent Price, Christopher Lee, Leonard Nimoy, William Shatner, Gene Roddenberry, Ray Harryhausen, Robert Bloch, Ray Bradbury, William Castle and a few others I had met along the pathway of horror and sci-fi. I had heavily illustrated those accounts with photos into an 8 ½ x 11" format. Almost 400 photographs and pieces of art. I decided that would be my format for this project.
And so "Gang" took shape, branching off into new directions, day by day, week by week, month by month. I decided I wanted this book, like the previous one, to be as visual as possible. I had stored away hundreds of old publicity pictures and suddenly I saw how to use many of them in context with the revised material. I even found some I had taken myself, or had been given to me by publicists in their negative form.
One Saturday afternoon I was at a toy show
in San Jose, CA, when I ran into an old friend, Mr. Lobo, one
of today’s active TV horror hosts. With him was his new
flame and fiancee-to-be, Dixie Dellamorto. Dixie showed me some
sketches she had done of various horror stars. They were very
unusual renderings. Suddenly it dawned on me that perhaps she
could do some sketches for the book, and I asked her to do a
combination Hal Holbrook-Mark Twain. It turned out so well she
followed up with five others – including Joe Rosenthal (who
took the famous flag-raising photo
atop Mt. Suribachi during the battle for Iwo Jima), James Stewart
(combining his cowboy persona with his image as a B-24 pilot),
and Karl Malden aboard a San Francisco cable car.
That’s when I remembered a man I had
first met when I was asked by Ron Miller, your host for this
website, to become one of the originators of thecolumnists.com.
Jim Hummel, a prize-winning cartoonist, came forward then to
do a caricature of me as the host of "Creature Features."
I contacted Jim at his home in San Jose, CA, and he
consented to doing a Clint Eastwood caricature that so knocked
me off my bar stool the first time I saw it that I asked him
to continue with Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, James Stewart,
Robert Mitchum and Jane Russell. Twelve in all. Incredible stuff.
You’re great, Jim.
While writing the Eastwood interviews about
Iwo Jima, I suddenly realized that Michael Wayne, son of John
Wayne, had once told me how his father had saved the U.S. Marine
Corps from being axed by Congress in 1948, mainly by agreeing
to make "Sands of Iwo Jima," and I decided to tell
that story, too. Two friends of mine at the Chronicle had been
assignment photographers Joe Rosenthal and Bob Campbell, who
had both participated in the flag-raising events atop Mt. Suribachi
on 23 Feb 1945,
and I included my personal memoirs about them.
By sheer coincidence, I had also known Ray Jacobs, an executive at Channel 2 KTVU during my years as "Creature Features" host, who had been the radio operator on the 40-man patrol that had raised the first small flag atop Suribachi that historic morning. Before his death in 2008, Ray had shared with me his personal account as well as some photographs never before in print. I decided to weave all this exclusive material around my Eastwood interviews. Whew!
I had done two encounters with James Stewart in his Beverly Hills home on North Roxbury Drive. Plus five interviews with Karl Malden when he was making "The Streets of San Francisco" from 1971 through 1976, plus a time in 1980 when he returned to be my guest on "Creature Features." All included with more exclusive photos.
One day during the second year, I ran into
an old friend, Eddie Muller, whose father had worked at the San
Francisco Examiner for 52 years as boxing writer. I had first
met Eddie when he was in his teens and he often visited me in
the Chronicle City Room, to talk about the film noir revivals
and film festivals I was then writing about in the pages of the
"Sunday Datebook." Eddie had fallen in love with these
films, and years later introduced the Noir City Film Festival
at the Castro Theater in San Francisco. It expanded to four other
cities and is now an annual event. In 2011, Eddie set a new record
for film festivals by attracting 13,000 fans to the Castro for
a 10-day event. He also established the Film Noir Foundation,
through which he preserves old
crime movies that would otherwise be lost and forgotten. The
most current was "The Prowler" with Van Heflin and
Evelyn Keyes, which set new records for DVD distributor VCI Entertainment.
Because Eddie said I had inspired him to pursue a career of film noir, I decided to write a new profile about him. Followed by my updated interviews with a "warm swarm" of femme fatales: Barbara Stanwyck, Jane Russell, Lauren Bacall, Carroll Baker, Anne Francis, Ann Savage, Evelyn Keyes, Marie Windsor--they had all passed through my "clutches" and were now part of the legacy.
I need to explain that back in 1981 I established
my own small-press, Creatures at Large, and had done the first
edition in "The Creature Features Movie Guide" series.
In all there had been six editions. The second had been picked
up by Warner Books in 1984. I published the third and fourth
editions myself, in 1988 and 1994. (The fifth and sixth editions
were to be picked up by New York publishers.) In 1987 I had brought
out "Lost in Time and Space with Lefty Feep," a collection
of short stories by Robert Bloch, author of "Psycho."
Then in 1989 I had published "Them Ornery Mitchum Boys,"
the autobiography of Robert Mitchum’s brother, John. I had
spent most of 1988 within the inner circle of the Mitchum family,
working with John to rewrite and improve his memoirs of growing
up with "Brother Bob" and then becoming a TV and
film actor himself. (John, for example, portrayed Harry Callahan’s
partner in the first three "Dirty Harry" movies.)
I decided to tell how Robert Mitchum had
distrusted me from the start, assuming I was ripping poor John
off. What did a newspaper guy like me know about publishing books?
Robert changed his mind once he saw the finished book, and even
agreed to sign 200 copies of the hardcover version. And for the
first time treated me decently when we met a few months later
during production in Hollywood of "Jake Spanner–Private
Eye." (That signed edition today is valued at $800 –
if you can find a
copy for sale anywhere.) He got wildly drunk on the night of
the wrap party, and I decided to bring all this new information
into the fold.
One night, while in one of his drunken
stupors, John Mitchum had told me the story behind why Brother
Bob had been arrested in 1948 on a drug bust – a piece of
infamous family history never before revealed in all its ugly
details. I urged him to put these details into the book, but
he refused for fear it would embarrass his brother. Now that
they are both dead and gone, I decided to reveal the whole twisted
story. The
Policeman’s Gazette lives!
I also decided to include one of my personal favorites into the book – cult writer-producer-director Samuel Fuller, famous for such low-budget classics as "The Steel Helmet," "I Shot Jesse James" and "Run of the Arrow." Because I wrote a review of his 1962 World War II epic "Merrill’s Mauraders," Sam had contacted me on his own, inviting me to join him in Los Angeles on my next visit. My wife Erica and I had spent two days with Sam at his Hollywood home, and then had returned a second time to witness two days of intense film production on "The Naked Kiss" at Samuel Goldwyn Studios – all in the year 1963. I had been present the day that Sam and his producer, Leon Fromkess, erupted into a violent argument – which would lead to Sam being blackballed from making any further movies in Hollywood after "Naked Kiss" was released. The full details of this historic event, which I had not written about in the Chronicle, are now part of the book.
And so "Gang" was finally finished
this past summer and I began putting together a plan for getting
it printed and into the book stores. I chose Bookmasters Inc.
of Ashland, Ohio, because that company had printed "I Was
a TV Horror Host" four years earlier, and had done an excellent
job.
A distribution arm of Bookmasters, known as AtlasBooks, had also
done an
excellent job of getting the edition into the book store chains,
and once again I decided to distribute through AtlasBooks.
My contact at Bookmasters, the affable Rod Knieper, recommended I use glossy paper, given all the photographs and sketches in the book, and the results looked great, even if it did bring the cost per book up. Rod also convinced me I needed to join the e-book band wagon so I arranged for two different types of e-book files to be made, with AtlasBooks putting these versions up for sale on scores of websites, international and national. Even though e-books were now outselling old-fashioned paper books, I decided to get on the newest merry-go-round and take my chances.
But then . . . gulp! . . . The week the book was printed is when I had my first slap across the face – a warning that perhaps I was living in a dream world and needed to wake up. Borders announced the closure of its entire national chain of stores. Just imagine losing 399 opportunities for your book to be seen by the public. Sometimes life does suck. Was this, I suddenly asked myself, only the tip of an iceberg against which my "Titanic" would soon collide?
On the other hand, I was told by Rod that
the book was being accepted by Barnes & Noble. It would be
available as a paper book and e-book on the Barnes & Noble
website as well as Amazon. I really felt lucky when Amazon’s
third highest-ranking book critic, Grady Harp, wrote a review
that read: "GANG deserves to be on the bestseller list
for folks who love the inside stories of Hollywood . . . Stanley’s
technique
of writing is so immediate he makes us feel as though we are
in on the
interviews. This is a trip down memory lane, rich in humor and
excitement and a lot of surprises about actors we thought we
knew so
well."
Another Amazon-based critic, K. Harris, wrote: "Stanley has lots of stories – and he relates them in an informal conversational style that is quite appealing. Sometimes the pieces are riveting . . . this collection has many buried treasures."
One couldn’t ask for better than that.
I now began a three-month-long period of
preliminary marketing, sending review copies to book store chains
and even an occasional independent store that I wanted to impress.
I sent copies to trade journals that specialize in reviewing
books before they reach the stores. I sent copies to library
and military suppliers, some overseas.
I even began sending my three-page press release to independent
stores scattered across the country, using the names of the store
owners or managers when I could track them on the Internet. Would
this personal touch help sell books? Or was I wasting my stamps?
I also created two postcards that highlighted different features,
which I would pass out to friends or leave on store counters,
when permissible.
I also sent material to college and public libraries in my immediate area. Before I recently took a sigh of relief, I had sent out an estimated 200 review copies of the book. And had sold more than 100 through my website and personal connections. At my only book signing, I had sold 21 copies in two hours. Not bad. I was also told that the San Francisco Library system was taking 12 copies, one for each branch.
Then my heart beat slowed a bit when I contacted the main buyer for a Bay Area bookstore chain. He told me that "Gang" would be carried in a couple of San Francisco shops, but not in the company’s other Bay Area stores. Here was an outfit willing to put it into some stores but not others. It didn’t make any sense. If it’s good enough for one, why shouldn’t it be good enough for all? Here was a real-life Catch 22. And I began to wonder: Had I walked into an ambush? And was just getting wise?
I suddenly came out of my reverie, put my ego into the nearest closet, and looked around at modern America. No jobs, lousy economy, stalemated political system. Was I finally starting to see the truth behind a business where I-Pad downloads were outnumbering sales of paper books?
This really slapped me in the face: It
wasn’t so much about MY BOOK as the COMPANY’S POCKETBOOK.
Suddenly I asked myself, Was I going to take a
hit on this book? Had I smilingly walked into a box office disaster?
Get this: I paid a personal visit to one chain store, to be told that two books were going to be displayed. Only two books? That was the order from headquarters. No room for argument. Take it or leave it.
So what’s going to happen next? In the coming months, will enough books go into stores to be found by their potential audience? Or are those books going to set in a warehouse and gather dust? Will I have to go back selling pencils from a tin cup at the corner of Fifth and Mission in downtown San Francisco – still home of The San Francisco Chronicle?
I’ll let you know what happens in:
CHAPTER TWO:
INTO THE ABYSS? . . . OR A FLIGHT TO PAPER HEAVEN?
©2011 by John Stanley. The photos are courtesy of John Stanley. This column first posted Dec. 5, 2011.
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