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"WILD BILL": WILLIAM A. WELLMAN: CONTINUATION
Interview by
SCOTT EYMAN
a Film Comment online exclusive
Left: Track of the Cat
Did you do any flying yourself?
I did one stunt-one of the German planes that landed and rolled over a few times.
How did you avoid getting hurt?
How can you get hurt? You're strapped in, you duck your head, and let the goddam thing roll over. And you have very little gas in it, to avoid setting yourself on fire.
Being a young director on his first important film, didn't you feel a bit unsure of yourself directing a famous actor like H. B. WaIthall?
No, he was a wonderful guy. I always got along well with character men and women. It was only the stars I had trouble with. And a lot of the stars other directors had trouble with got along fine with me.
How did you come to pick Gary Cooper for Wings?
I'd been looking at so many people, so many guys, and suddenly I saw him. He had that wonderful smile, that wonderful way. I took him down to Texas for weeks. We did the scene and he came up to see me in my hotel room, calling me "Mr. Wellman".
"Mr. Wellman, could I do that over again?"
"Well, what is it that you think you can do better this time?"
''Well, I picked my nose.''
"You keep on picking your nose and you'll pick your way into a fortune."
I told Cooper to always back away from everything and as long as he did that he was great. Hell of a nice guy.
Buddy Rogers has always said you were the best director he ever had.
I love Buddy. He's a tough son of a bitch. To show you how tough he is, he hates flying - it makes him deathly sick. He logged over ninety-eight hours of flying on that one picture. Every time he came down, he vomited. That's a man with guts. I love him.
In the fight scene that takes place in the training camp, Arlen, who I don't like as much as Buddy - too cocky - came to me and said, "You know I can fight. You better tell Rogers because I don't think Rogers knows how to fight." So I said O.K. and that I'd tell Buddy to be very careful. So I went to Buddy and told him exactly what I just told you. He said, "Well, I don't know how to fight." I said, "I know, but you can still kick his brains out." And he did. Kicked the living hell out of him, simply on guts alone.
Did you feel yourself getting into a rut with the aerial combat type of picture?
Not really. After Wings was a hit, they asked me to do another one and I said O.K. [Legion of the Condemned, 1928.] A little while later, Howard Hughes wanted me to do Hell's Angels. They told me, "You don't have to do it, just make an appearance. We don't want to get in wrong with him." So I went over and met him and said, "No, I'm sorry. I've just done two of them and I'm sick to death of them. I wouldn't make a good picture for you." He was very nice and we had an amicable talk. That was the only time I met the great Hughes.
Why did you make Young Eagles?
Buddy's [Rogers'] box-office had fallen off and it was an attempt to make another Wings. It was frightful - a bad movie
.
Why did you move from Paramount to Warners?
Money. Every time I ever made a change, it was for either freedom or money, usually money.
How did you come to make Public Enemy?
I got the story from two druggists from Chicago. They were visiting the studio when they stopped me and asked me if I'd read their story. They were such nice guys that I asked them to sit down and have lunch with me. There they told me the story. At that time, it was called "Beer and Blood". I went nuts about it and went in to see Zanuck and told it to him. He said, "Bill, I can't do this, I've just made Little Caesar and Doorway to Hell." I said, "I'll make this so goddamn tough you'll forget both of them." So he said O.K.
How'd you pick Cagney?
Didn't pick Cagney - Eddie Woods played the role, the main role. We had shot for three days, Thursday, Friday and Saturday. On Sunday, I went in to see the rushes and called Zanuck who was in New York at the time.
"We've made a frightful mistake. We've got the wrong man playing the wrong part. This Cagney is the guy."
So he said, "O.K., make the switch."
Didn't Woods resent it?
Sure he resented it, but I didn't give a goddamn. I said, "Look, you're not good enough for us. Play the second lead." And he was lucky to get that. I had to be honest with him. So he agreed - what else could he do? I could always get somebody else if he didn't like it and he knew it.
What about the famous grapefruit scene?
I've been married so many times, and they were all beautiful. 90% of all the domestic troubles I had with these wives was my fault. But this one particular wife, whenever there was any anger (and you've got to have a few rows, for Christ's sake), this beautiful face would just freeze and wouldn't say a word. It used to just kill me. You're whipped, you're licked before you start. Anyway, I like grapefruit halves and when we used to eat breakfast I often thought of taking that goddamn grapefruit and just mushing it right in that lovely, beautiful, cold face. I never did it really, because I did it in Public Enemy.
That was your scene?
That was my scene. I know Zanuck says it's his but he's a goddamn liar. I can show you in the script. Cagney was supposed to throw the grapefruit at the woman.
I'm one of the very few directors who likes Zanuck - as a producer. You see, pictures that still live, that are still successful, are made with the combination of a writer and a director and a producer. The writer and the director gave the producer the talent, the producer gave them the money and got the hell out of the way. Now, for Christ's sake, there's the Producer, the Associate Producer, the Assistant to the Producer, the Assistant to the Associate Producer, all of them lined up against one poor goddamn director. And all the women that they've got, whether they're married to them or living with them . . . Jesus, the pillow talk that goes on has ruined more great pictures than anything you can imagine, including the agents and the unions.
Tell me about A Star Is Born (1937).
I wanted to do A Star Is Born. I wanted to do it badly. Unfortunately, David Selznick, who was a dear friend of mine, turned it down. So I had a long talk with his wife, Irene, who loved the story. They went on a long trip to Honolulu and by the time they got back he said, "You know, that might make a good film after all." Which just goes to show you, anyway you can do it, do it. And try to stay clear of agents.
I take it you don't have prints of your own pictures?
I don't and I never will. The hell with them. I know one director who runs one of his pictures every Christmas. Jesus Christ, if I ran one of my pictures every year, I'd go crazy.
People have asked me a million times, "Why don't you like your own pictures?" I don't know why. I do know that every time I look at one of them, I realize I could have done it better; I can see mistakes.
Although there is one picture that I really like. I haven't as yet gotten sick of it. You'll laugh when I tell you. I was wild about the dame (in a nice way) and she loved Dotty [Wellman's wife, Dorothy] and the kids. She was the only woman I've ever known who could say four-letter words and make it come out poetry. Carole Lombard. I can watch Nothing Sacred forever.
I'm very proud of that kid jumping out and
biting March on the leg - you just know that no one likes him after that happens! I thought of that on the set. It was really a midget and I knew which one to get because I'd done the tail end of a Tarzan picture a little while before. Loved every minute of it, incidentally. Anyway, we had used the midget in the Tarzan picture, too.
Did you ever want to move outside the studio set-up and do something completely independently?
For all practical purposes, I have. I've done a lot of things with no one to answer to - Story of G.l. Joe, for instance. I've tried both producing and directing, too: Beau Geste and The Light That Failed, that sort of stuff. And then I found (and this is only my opinion) that I didn't have enough brains to handle two jobs.
And the one thing I really hated was that I began to talk money. I don't want to be in that class of people - money. That's one of the things wrong with the industry, the parking lot people who own the goddamn business now. They don't know anything about making pictures. I didn't like Louis B. Mayer, but I admired him; and, God knows, I loathe Jack Warner but you got to admire men like that: they make a lot of pictures.
And they let you make The Ox-Bow Incident.
You get so discouraged from trying different things that nobody goes to see. For instance, The Ox-Bow Incident. Goddamn it, I bought that from a poor guy that was fired. He was the producer of the B pictures at some studio and they canned him because he got in wrong with the biggies. I liked him.
He called me one day and said, "I'm going to send you a book. If you like it, will you make it with me?"
I said, "Sure."
So he sent me "The Ox-Bow Incident" and I went nuts about it. I called him up and said, "You've got yourself a pigeon. Who you gonna put in it?"
He said, "I'm gonna put Mae West in it."
Well, I damn near fell through the phone! These are the things you run up against in this business. I said, "What the hell are you talking about? Am I reading the right story?"
He said, "Yes."
I said, "Well, what the hell are you going to do with Mae West?" Keep in mind that he may be right - stranger things have happened in this business. He said, "Well, we're going to put a sunken barbecue pit in it and she'll sing some songs to these tired cowboys."
"Oh, shit! Get yourself another boy."
Six months later, I met him again. I'd heard that he was broke, so I said, "Have you still got 'The Ox-Bow Incident'?"
He said; "Yes, but I can't find anybody who'll buy it."
I said, "I'll buy it. I'll give you five hundred dollars more than you paid for it."
So I paid him $6500 and I was never so happy in my life. I came home to Dotty [the former actress Dorothy Coonan (Wild Boys of the Road) who married Wellman and retired from the screen, except for a small role in her husband's Story of G.I. Joe] and made her listen to me read the whole goddamn book to her. She loved it but she was scared of it.
I went to David Selznick, for whom I'd made A Star Is Born and Nothing Sacred, I went to Metro, I went to everybody that I'd made money for, and they all said I was nuts.
Now, Zanuck and I hadn't spoken to each other for two years - we'd had a frightful row. But he was the only one left, so I finally went in and he was man enough to see me. I told him about it and he said, "Let me read it."
Three days later he called and said, "Come on over, I want to see you. You've got yourself a job." So we got together and he said, "You can do it, but it won't make a nickel. It's something I want my studio to have, I want my name on it and I think it'll be good for you.
So we made it and they sort of pushed it out; it didn't do much. Then they put it out abroad and it was a hit. Then they brought it back. I still don't think I could retire on the money it made, but at least it was reasonably successful. It's a hell of a story.
Did you cast the film yourself?
Sure. Zanuck and I cast it together.
Casting Jane Darwell, who was usually seen in warm, loving "mother" roles, as a vicious bitch was a brilliant move.
She was wonderful. Fonda, of course, is a fine actor, but he lacks that one something that makes a great star. I call it "Motion Picture Personality". I don't really know what it is.
Would you have rather had someone else in the part?
No. He was great in it.
The cyclical nature of the film is striking; in the beginning, the cowboys ride in and there's this old dog rummaging around. At the end, when they ride out, the dog's still there nosing around.
Oh, that dog. She was an old female with enormous tits that hung way down; I loved her. I used that as a frame for the picture; it started it and ended it. Maybe I'm an artist in some sense, I don't know. I can't draw. I just make pictures.
After you moved over to MGM, you sort of hooked up with Dore Schary.
Yeah, unfortunately.
Unfortunately?
Battleground worked out fine, but it didn't end well.
He'd say, "We're gonna make pictures that we want to make."
I'd say, "What are you talking about, 'pictures that we want to make.' You make pictures to amuse the public, not yourself."
Then he got so screwed up politically and with fighting with Mayer for control of the studio that I walked out of the thing. I wasn't interested in either his politics or Mayer's, I didn't give a good goddamn. They could have killed each other as far as I was concerned.
What happened with Across the Wide Missouri (1950)? What's there is so fine, so first rate, but it's cut so abruptly.
I don't know what the hell they did with it. That was a very good, long picture the way I made it. What might have happened was that they cut it to fit on a double bill with the competition from TV. I've never seen it and never will.
Why not?
The way they cut it, I don't want to see it. Damn it, that was a long picture and good one, too.
Did the script you shoot have a narration in it?
No.
Well, there's one in there, bridging all the story gaps. It's supposed to be Gable's son, looking back on his old man.
Well, that's what the bastards did: they cut out all the action and put in a narration to fill the holes.
Robert Taylor was not a very good actor: how'd you get such a fine performance out of him in Westward the Women (1950)?
I don't know. I had no trouble at all with him. He did everything I asked him to; he was wonderful.
One day he asked me, "Well, who will I be?"
I said, "Be me."
Maybe it helped him.
© 2003 by The Film Society of Lincoln Center
