Read Online My Lunches with Orson by Peter Biskind - Free Book Online Page B

little place up in the Hollywood hills to write their scripts, they had to eat with each other every day in the studio commissary, which made for a competitive situation. It was collegial—“What are you working on?”—and they shared funny stories about how dumb the producer was, how bad the director was, and all that. But they didn’t want their peers to do better than they did, so they worked hard. Harder than these people now who want to be directors, who have done nothing but look at movies since they were eight years old, who have never had an experience in their lives. Or experienced any culture beyond movie culture.
    HJ: But Thalberg was also creative. At least from Fitzgerald’s point of view.
    OW: Well, that’s my definition of “villain.” He obviously had this power. He convinced Mayer that without him, his movies wouldn’t have any class. Remember that quote Mayer gave? All the other moguls were “dirty kikes making nickelodeon movies.” He used to say that to me all the time.
    HJ: When Mayer found you, you were very young, and very attractive, very magnetic.
    OW: That’s why he loved me; he thought I was another Thalberg.
    HJ: Did you know Thalberg?
    OW: I didn’t know him. I was out here, playing in the theater, when he was alive, but I didn’t meet him. Then he died.
    HJ: Irene Mayer Selznick says in her book about L.B., her father, that everybody knew Thalberg had this sort of death sentence hanging over him from the beginning. He started at MGM knowing that at thirty he was gonna die. He had rheumatic fever. A bad heart.
    OW: I know a lot of people who expect to die early. Thalberg turned it to his advantage.
    HJ: He must have been incredibly skillful at manipulating Mayer.
    OW: Thalberg used to manipulate everybody, brilliantly. Not only Mayer, but actors, directors, writers. He used his death sentence, his beauty, everything.
    HJ: He was also beautiful, apparently, yeah?
    OW: Yeah. Enormously charming and persuasive. Thalberg was Satan! You know, the classic Satan. And, of course, Norman worked around the clock.
    HJ: Irving.
    OW: Irving, yeah. I always think of him as Norman, and I don’t know why. He would reduce people; and, having reduced them, flatter them. He was obviously a weaver of spells who was able to convince everyone that he was the artist. Thalberg was way up here, and the director was way down there. The result was that he negated the personal motion picture in favor of the manufactured movie. He was responsible for the bad product of Metro, and the style which continued afterwards: the Thalberg style.
    HJ: That’s true. Nobody knows who directed Gone With the Wind . Or, there were many directors on the same movie, like The Wizard of Oz . Metro’s great, great movies somehow just happened.
    OW: Yes. And they still look like any one of the Metro directors could have made them. At lunch in the commissary, you could play musical chairs with every movie—move every director to another movie—and you would not be able to tell the difference in the rushes the next day. Now, Warner’s made the good pictures. It was rough there. Jack Warner tortured and murdered everybody, but he got great pictures out of them, obviously.
    HJ: What directors managed to work under Thalberg that way?
    OW: Vic Fleming, or Woody Van Dyke, whoever.
    HJ: Were any of them gifted?
    OW: George Cukor was.
    HJ: Not as much as they say. His films were signature-less. Even the good ones.
    OW: He was a very competent stage director. But it’s true, you can’t tell a Cukor picture.
    HJ: Holiday , Philadelphia Story.
    OW: Writers’ pictures.
    HJ: Or Tracy pictures, or Hepburn pictures; they’re star pictures.
    OW: Exactly—all of them. That’s why, to me, Thalberg is the number-one villain. I think he was a real destroyer.
    HJ: Okay. But, he didn’t do anything to hurt people.
    OW: Well, he destroyed [Erich] von Stroheim,