Read Online The Garner Files: A Memoir by James Garner - Free Book Online

matter?” he asked.
    “I’m so nervous I can’t see straight. I’ve never done a first-class picture before.”
    Marlon immediately put me at ease. He took me aside and said, “If you have any problems, just let me know and we’ll work ’em out.”
    That calmed me down. From then on, we worked well together.
    Marlon had the reputation of being “difficult,” but it wasn’t with fellow actors, just producers and directors. For one thing, he liked to rewrite dialogue. For another, as Major Gruver he affected a Southern accent, which wasn’t in the script.
    Marlon was unhappy because he didn’t feel Josh Logan was giving him any direction. He’d say to Josh, “Why don’t you direct me?” and Josh would say, “Marlon, if you do anything I don’t like I’ll tell you.” I think Marlon wanted a confrontation, but Josh was so agreeable, it was like pushing on a rope. That frustrated Marlon even more and he complained to me about it.
    “Why are you doing this picture?” I asked.
    “For the money.”
    “Okay, then, do it for the money, but don’t give the director a heart attack!”
    Josh didn’t give me a lot of direction either, probably because Marlon became my personal coach. We’d go out to a rice paddy and “improve” the scenes. Then the two of us would rehearse and rehearse. I thought,
Josh is gonna kill me for this,
but when we showed him our stuff he usually liked it and wound up using it. But not because Josh was a pushover. When he made
Sayonara
, he was already a veteran stage and screen director, with film credits that included
Bus Stop
and
Picnic,
and he’d won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama as coauthor of the Broadway musical
South Pacific
. Josh had been around the block, and he was smart enough to stay out of Marlon’s way.
    Marlon Brando was the best movie actor we’ve ever had. I know that’s not exactly going out on a limb, but I just want to be on record with all the other actors who feel the same way. He could make you forget he was the great Brando and you’d just see the character. Not many actors can do that. For what it’s worth, I think he could have been even greater if he had chosen his material more carefully. But I never saw him do a bad job. Marlon was in a lot of bad movies, but he was always interesting.
    Sayonara
earned a bunch of Oscar nominations and wound up with several statuettes, including one each for supporting actors Red Buttons and Miyoshi Umeki. Though my role as Marlon’s buddy wasn’t outstanding, it was a big learning experience and a definite career boost. You’re bound to get a little of it on you when you’re in a film like that.
    T he studio bosses were absolute monarchs. Louis B. Mayer, Samuel Goldwyn, Harry “Genghis” Cohn, and Warner Bros. head of production Jack L. Warner—the Hollywood “moguls”—didn’t like back talk from mere actors.
    J.L., or “the colonel,” as his subordinates called him—he’d wangled a commission in the Signal Corps during World War II— was the youngest of four brothers who’d immigrated to the UnitedStates from Poland in around 1900. They were movie exhibitors, then distributors, and by World War I they’d opened a studio, Warner Bros., Inc., which introduced sound to the movies with
The Jazz Singer
in 1927 and made low-budget, socially conscious features in the 1930s and ’40s.
    Jack Warner treated everybody the same: lousy. He didn’t spare his wife, his son, or his mistress. He hated writers ( “schmucks with Underwoods,” he called them), he hated actors, and he was cruel to his employees. According to Warner’s own son, if Jack’s brothers hadn’t hired him, he’d have been out of work.
    Someone once said in Warner’s defense that he “bore no grudge against those he had wronged.” But that wasn’t true in my case, because Jack Warner hated me. Maybe it was because I said in a
Time
magazine interview that being under contract to Warner Bros. was like being a ham in a smokehouse: