University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

A historical-critical study of the films of Richard Brooks: With special attention to his problems of achieving and maintaining final decision-control

(USC Thesis Other)

A historical-critical study of the films of Richard Brooks: With special attention to his problems of achieving and maintaining final decision-control

PDF

Download a page range

Download transcript

Copy asset link

Request this asset

Transcript (if available)

Content A HISTORICAL-CRITICAL STUDY OF THE FILMS
OF RICHARD BROOKS, WITH SPECIAL ATTENTION
TO HIS PROBLEMS OF ACHIEVING AND
MAINTAINING FINAL DECISION-CONTROL
by
Francis Patrick Frost
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(Communication-Cinema)
February, 19 76
UMI Number: DP22238
All rights reserved
INFORMATION TO ALL USERS
The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted.
In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript
and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed,
a note will indicate the deletion.
Dissertation Publishing
UMI DP22238
Published by ProQuest LLC (2014). Copyright in the Dissertation held by the Author.
Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC.
All rights reserved. This work is protected against
unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code
ProQ uest LLC.
789 E ast Eisenhower Parkway
P.O. Box 1346
Ann Arbor, Ml 4 8 1 0 6 -1 3 4 6
Copyright by
FRANCIS PATRICK FROST
February, 19 76
UNIVERSITY O F S O U T H E R N CALIFORNIA
T H E G R A D U A T E S C H O O L
U N IV E R S IT Y P A R K
L O S A N G E L E S , C A L IF O R N IA 9 0 0 0 7
This dissertation, written by
.......
under the direction of h J L % .... Dissertation C om
mittee, and approved by all its members, has
been presented to and accepted by The Graduate
School, in partial fulfillment of requirements of
the degree of
D O C T O R O F P H I L O S O P H Y
Dean
DISSERTATION COMMITTEE
.....
..
Chaiauan
P^.D.
C'.n
'76
F ^3^
To Elaine
my wife
/ii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
CHAPTER I Page 1
The problem; industry and art; money as control;
Richard Brooks as seeker of economic independence;
importance of the problem; definition of terms; review
of the literature; methodology.
CHAPTER II Page 12
What study is not; emphasis on Brooks as director;
Hollywood context; studio changes; others share the
problem; the desire to communicate as a factor; different
kinds of pressures; external and internal; value of
pressures.
CHAPTER III Page 2 8
Characterization; early education; journalist
career; radio writer; first film experience; novels;
Hollywood again; awards; Brooks today.
CHAPTER IV Page 4 3
Correlation of themes and drive for control;
three phases of film direction; Brooks as story-teller;
moral dilemma basic to his drama; sweet reasonableness;
Phase one: social orientation; concern for integrity;
style; craftsmanship; awards; integrity as theme;
"in the common interest"; commercial interests; return
to personal statements.
CHAPTER V Page 7 0
Reasons for including novels; The Brick Foxhole;
in
the destructiveness of war and prejudice; became movie,
Crossfire; The Boiling Point; system corrupted by bigotry,
violence, and perverse politics; The Producer; paradigm
for Brooks career; integrity central dilemma.
CHAPTER VI Page 88
Social concern; key to first directing assignment;
Cary Grant, Crisis; revolution in Latin America and
at home; films-to-make-other-films; Deadline, USA;
triumph of social responsibility; Brooks as journalist;
Blackboard Jungle; studio pressures and pressure groups;
social responsibility; The Last Hunt; casting; breaking
the rules of the Western; Something of Value; for the
common good; difference between novel and film; end
of an era.
CHAPTER VII Page 16 2
Big pictures; larger-than-life characters;
escalating economic risk; The Brothers Karamazov;scripting
and economic variables; Dmitri: man of integrity; Cat
on a Hot Tin Roof; Brooks adaptations; mendacity theme;
Sweet Bird of Youth; more extensive adaptation; theme
of self-acceptance; Elmer Gantry; scripting problems;
studio and outside pressures; role of journalism;
Lord Jim; Brooks as producer; most personal picture;
integrity central.
CHAPTER VIII Page 241
Return to personal statements; The Professionals;
finger exercise with a philosophical bent; professionalism
as honor; In Cold Blood; economic and public pressure;
scripting dilemma; variables; a vehicle for discussing
capital punishment; Happy Ending; total freedom through
United Artists; the oppression of the married woman; box-
office doldrums; $ _ (Dollars); beating the corrupt system;
production compromises; Bite the Bullet now in production.
CHAPTER IX Page 295
Summary and Conclusions.
iv
APPENDIX Page 305
FILMOGRAPHY Page 307
MAJOR PRINT SOURCES CONSULTED Page 316
CHAPTER I
Scripting, casting, shooting schedule, credits,
editing, scoring, advertising, releasing patterns, are
just a few of the crucial control areas that make a
writer, or director, or producer, or studio feel frustrated
or in control. The movie industry, as an industry, has
generated a dozen studios and some fifty tightly organized
labor unions. A volatile business, it has made individuals
rich overnight. A business voracious for profits, it has
left skilled individuals without work because of one
financial flop, while gambling millions on someone new
who seemed to radiate the charisma of the times. It is
a business dealing not only in large sums of money, but
in oversize quantities of fame and fashion. And as in
any business where the stakes are high, the struggle for
control is a struggle for survival.
But movies are more than a mere business. They come
under the category of communications. And they aspire to
be recognized as art. This has complicated the basic
issues of control, or power. Freedom of speech, freedom
of expression, freedom from business considerations,
freedom from arbitrary intervention— these are the issues
that like chameleons take different colors and different
tones under different circumstances, different pressures.
For years the Motion Picture Production Code
legislated the thou-shalt-nots of public taste. With
changing public taste, came changing business pressures
and changing recognition of the state of the art. The
Production Code was revised to include two basic objec
tives :
1. To encourage artistic expression by expanding
creative freedom.
2. To assure that the freedom which encourages the
artist remains responsible and sensitive to the standards
of the larger society.
This tension between art and commerce reflected
here is often the cause of tension between artists and
businessmen, directors and studio executives. It is
only in recent years that the movies have securely
achieved the status of art. And now that the film artist
no longer needs to feel apologetic about his metier, he
seems to have accepted a common presupposition in the
arts: that true art is compromised by money. And
therefore the closer a film is to being true art, the
less it should be constrained by budgetary considerations.
Money is the root of all artistic failure. Responsive
ness to an audience is a compromise of the artist's
personal vision. It can be argued, however, that money
2
is not just a necessary evil, essential for the survival
of the artist and his art. It is an integral consider
ation in the conceptualization of a work. This has
simply been less demonstrable before the advent of the
popular arts and the electronic media that feed and are
supported by such a diverse and widespread audience.
Although money has always been a partner to art,
it is most obvious in the movies. Instead of kings,
princes, and wealthy patrons of the arts, we find in
vestors. Instead of traveling exhibits in museums,
we find saturation theater releases. Instead of culti
vating artists who would also like to make money, we
cultivate artists who aspire to a life of fame and
luxury and who also want to produce art. We mix crass
commercialists and high idealists in big business and
art. We run the art form through the collaborative
process and the contribution of many skilled technicians,
and amazingly we arrive at a respectable number of
genuine artistic expressions.
Movies, then, are not different in their nature of
art-business symbiosis, only in the degree. More than
any other art object, films are meant to be displayed for
money. In fact, from the moment of their inception they
are destined to find the largest money-paying audience
available.
Not only are the movies art, they are also commu-
nication, Art, as the word is commonly used, tends to
suggest a product that expresses the inner world of feeling
of the artist. Beauty, not intelligibility, is the primary
concern. Communication, on the other hand, suggests a
desire for understanding. While motion pictures in their
"pure" abstract form consist of colors, motion, sounds,
shapes, textures, theatrical motion pictures are generally
based on the presupposition that the filmmakers want their
audience to understand the story, the ideas, the feelings
the makers are trying to express.
It was the European filmmaker who was most influen
tial in establishing the film as art. Ingmar Bergman and
Federico Fellini, for example, were generally recognized
to be imaging forth a personal, integral vision of their
worlds. This recognizable vision is one major reason for
their acceptance as film artists. Using light and shadow,
motion, music, sound, these men created art. But what
made them successful as film artists is that they made
movies about people. They showed us to ourselves. In
the process they generated an interest in film as art.
They also generated the auteur theory of criticism.
The auteur theory is a theory which identifies art with
personal vision and personal control. And beyond the
film buffs discussion of auteurs, film criticism generally
has turned toward giving more precise credit where it
is due. Although individual attention is given to
________________________________________________________________ 4
editing, photography, etc., the effectiveness of every
thing from lighting to special effects is attributed to
direction. Why this camera angle, why that sound effect,
why this setting. These are "aesthetic" questions asked
by the critic. But how many times are the decisions thus
questioned based on "aesthetic" judgments? And how often
are they based on economic judgments? To what extent was
a plot change made at the request of financial backers
hoping to attract a larger audience? To what extent
was the casting due to the economic packaging? Was the
set chosen because of budgetary limitations? The reality
of the situation is that most aesthetic decision-making is
inseparable from budgetary or monetary consideration.
So the problem is control. And the control problem
derives from money.
Why is it particularly fitting to examine this
problem in the light of Richard Brooks' films? Or,
putting it the other way around, why do the films of
Richard Brooks lend themselves to an examination of the
questions of money and directorial control in films?
Brooks' movie career has stretched over thirty-two years
in Hollywood, from writer to director to independent.
From Blackboard Jungle to In Cold Blood and beyond he
has attempted to achieve maximum control over his own
films. There are those few American directors who have
achieved this in recent years— Kubrick, Peckinpah,
___________________________________ a
Nichols, Coppola, for example. But their great independ
ence followed only after some extraordinary monetary
successes. Brooks does not stand out in this way. While
there were significant successes in his career that
provided him with strong new leverage, his steady crafts
manship puts him alongside the many successful directors
who fight a never-ending battle against excessive and
arbitrary monetary concerns that generally determine the
course of movie making. Brooks has had to struggle for
every inch of control he has achieved, from access to the
editing room with Blackboard Jungle, to the nearly total
freedom accorded him by the studio in making In. Cold Blood.
As this dissertation shall demonstrate, the con
sistent personal vision of Richard Brooks that emerges
from his pictures puts him among the ranks of the best
American film artists. But Brooks would see himself as
much a communicator as an artist. The world view that
emerges from his films isr one that holds the mirror up to
the individual seen in his social context. His films
have at heart the public good. Honor, integrity, unself
ish concern for others— these are values that carry his
dramas beyond the level of mere entertainment. And they
are concerns that cause the director great anxiety over
the lack of control over the expression of these ideas.
As Brooks' commercial success grew so did his
independence. In the process he discovered that external
6
and arbitrary controls are not the only ones exercised in
trying to achieve an effective, communicative, and enter
taining motion picture. With a decrease in external
*
discipline, there is need for an increase in internal dis
cipline. It is a discipline attentive to monetary concerns.
The most basic concern is a fear that without a commercial
success, there will be less opportunity to make another
picture under favorable circumstances, or under any
circumstances at all. So there is a constant eye toward
the audience, toward pressure groups, toward censors.
There is the weighing of what the audience will buy by
/
way of "message," against the need to provide interesting
and exciting entertainment.
Pressures and controls then, come not only from the
outside, but from the inside. Richard Brooks, as one who
has revealed the struggles to achieve internal discipline
and freedom from external restraints provides us with an
enlightening look at the nature of the film business-art.
In addition to documenting one specific example of
the movie decision-making process vis-a-vis money or
control, there are other reasons for undertaking this
study. For one thing, Brooks' body of twenty-one films
as director is significant enough in itself to merit
critical attention. The combination of commercial success
and strong social statement that has characterized
Brooks' films is rare in American movie making. And his
_______________________________________________________' 7
consistency of theme whether in the studio system or as an
independent producer/director demonstrates that even
within the Hollywood system there is potential for
personal vision.
This study should also point up the economic matrix
of film production, in terms of a whole body of work.
Although we accept as evident the fact that money is
necessary for movie making, this analysis points out
that money is not just a necessary evil. It is simply
an integral part of the very conceptualization of a
film. And through a whole body of films, less evident
implications will be explored.
"Historical-Critical Study"— Brooks is an example
par excellence of the director who strives to speak
personally and meaningfully to the issue of man and his .
times. Consequently his films have a consistency of
viewpoint. This thematic and stylistic consistency is the
starting point for any kind of critical study. This
thesis will attempt to elaborate the interrelationship of
his films from this thematic point of view, since it is
the attempt to state his distinct world view that makes
it important for the director to have control over the
decision-making that must unify the specialized skills
of so many technicians and craftsmen as they contribute
to this single goal.
But a critical study in the strict sense is not the
___________________________ i-a
central point .of this thesis. For as we shall try to
explain, the historical circumstances always play a
significant role in specific decision-making. "Historical"
in this context refers essentially to the economic con
ditions that accompany the making of a given film. This
implies studio control, norms of social acceptability,
production code pressures, and any other external and
internal pressures that apply at the time as well.
As mentioned above, it is an essential characteristic
of film business-art that from the moment a film is con
ceived, it must take into account financial realities.
Because of the large number of people who have a financial
stake in films, there are a large number of people who
seek to exercise their particular judgment in the film-
making process. But if a film is to have a single
point of view (particularly when the writer and director
are the same person), then the direction of the film
must proceed without arbitrary intervention. Such freedom
of direction is more the exception than the rule, as the
chronicling of the career of Brooks will demonstrate.
In addition, it is the conviction of this writer
that responsible film criticism should make some realistic
attempt to deal with the financial and organizational
realities of the film art. Film criticism itself has
only recently begun to take on the in-depth thematic
exploration and explication that has long been expected
• 9
of literary criticism. Admittedly, in-depth criticism
is not the function of journalist reviewers but it is a
danger of more extensive criticism to attempt an explor
ation of the purely "aesthetic" elements of films without
regard to the financial reality.
Economic considerations determine studio alliance,
writer, actors cast, the inclusion and exclusion and
staging of particular scenes, the avoidance or acceptance
of certain political or moral positions, and many other
variables that have direct bearing on the artistic
vision of the project originator, whether it be a director,
a producer, a writer, or any other. It would seem that
a methodology specifically designed for movie criticism
should, whenever possible, account not only for the final
product, but also for the decision-making in so far as it
can be perceived.
To this date there have been no books written on
Richard Brooks, although there are many articles in trade
papers and some extended articles in Cahiers du Cinema,
Movie (Spring, 1965), and Films in Review (February, 1952).
In addition there are a number of published interviews,
including one edited by the faculty members of the
University of Southern California, Division of Cinema.^
■'•Bernard R. Kantor, Irwin R. Blacker and Anne Kramer,
editors, Directors at Work, Interviews with American
Filmmakers (New York, Funk & Wagnalls, 1970), pp. 1-58.
la
Likewise there have been no books published on the
subject of independent producers. An examination of
Dissertation Abstracts reveals no work done on Brooks or
on independent producers.
The direct research into the films themselves and
into decision-making processes is primary. Every film
written and directed by Richard Brooks was viewed in a
short period through the help of MGM Studios, Columbia
Studios, and Mr. Brooks. In addition his three novels
and other published documents provided primary source
material. Extended informal conversation interviews
with Mr. Brooks followed, including six hours of taped,
formal interview. Published interviews, popular reviews
of the films, and box office reports complete the
essential information.
11
CHAPTER II
The goal of this chapter is to set the parameters
for this study and to further explain the terms.
It may be helpful to first state what the study is
not trying to do. It will not attempt the definitive
critical study of the full body of Brooks' works: novels,
radio stories, screenplays, films directed and/or produced.
Chapter four will provide an overview of these elements,
drawing from them a personal vision that distinguishes
a Brooks film. The importance of understanding and
recognizing his vision, however, lies in the light it
sheds on his search for economic control. Given an
intensely personal and a morally high world view, the
integral expression of that view becomes a matter of
front-rank importance. Chapters five through nine will
examine this interaction of Brooks' themes and a chron
ological fight for control.
This study will focus specifically on Brooks as
director. Although he started as a writer, and continues
to be a writer first and foremost, Brooks does not see
himself as a writer qua word specialist. Rather, he is
a storyteller. A reporter on the beat of life. Writing
12
is an extension of that impulse. And directing is a
further extension of the same impulse. The story can
really only be called his own if he has seen it through
to the end. If he has exercised control over it to the
end.
Brooks also has produced a third of his own pictures,
putting him among the ranks of the triple hyphenates:
writer~director-producer. This complexity of role came
about from a desire to tell the story his own way, and
the continuing need for control. But the story is the
thing. And thus the present study concerns itself with
Brooks the story-teller. Brooks the director.
Brooks is far from unique in wanting and seeking
control over his own films. As long as filmmaking has
been a business and a medium for the expression of ideas,
this tension has existed. People seek control for
differing motives— recognition, money,•vision. But it
takes only a glimpse at the flood of interviews that
emanates from moviemakers of every kind to see that
control is on their minds. In 1970 it seemed as though
every director and actor in Hollywood was suing MGM for
arbitrarily and contrary to contracts cutting pictures
before release, for failing to promote the releases, and
generally for taking over complete control of the films.
It was the Old Studio in action while bound by New Studio
agreements.
13
When the rigid control of the studios began to crack
in the sixties, the event was heralded as the ushering in
of the director's era in America. Pictures would no
longer be made and sold only as marketable merchandise,
but also as the genuine expressions of film artists. The
age of the independent would change the ball game.
Well, the age has not materialized just that way.
Tom Shaw, for one, says that nothing has changed. (Shaw
has been production manager-assistant director for Brooks
since 1959 and has been working in Hollywood since he
was a youngster there in the forties.) Making a picture
for release through a studio means having to deal with
the control factors of that studio. Immediately one is
faced with overhead, at least twenty-five per cent, -no
matter how it is disguised. One is bound by preference
of employment agreements, and by other contracts and
labor agreements. If anything, independent production
simply complicates things. But it does not change them.
Independence is a misnomer.
No, the struggle for independence and control is
not limited to Brooks. Recent publications that reflect
the same concern include an article in the July,1974,
issue of Atlantic, by John Gregory Dunne, entitled "How
to Write a Movie, or The Art of Skinny Dipping with
Sharks." A long-time critic and first-time screenwriter
tells of her experience in Media and Methods around that
' 14
same time this way:
What I didn't realize was that (1) writing was only
10 per cent! of the battle. Selling and learning
how to get to the marketplace are the real challenges
to one's creativity and resourcefulness. (2) All the
cliches about young movie executives with exotic
wire-rim glasses and pinky rings are true. (3) Movies
really are a business first, an entertainment medium
second and an art form only incidentally.!
Esquire for February, 1975, headlines: "More than ever
before, a director is only as good as his last review."2
The American Film Institute's publication, Dialogue on
Film, has carried interviews recently with Paul Mazursky,3
Roman Polanski,4 and George C. Scott,3 all strongly
raising the question of control. The case of George C.
Scott is a striking one, and one that is not yet resolved.
Scott directed and produced The Savage Is Loose. He also
acted in it. The message was something he believed in.
Add to this his general lifestyle of independent action.
So he went a step further to gain control. He set up a
new distribution system, selling directly to exhibitors
and bypassing the stranglehold of the Hollywood distri
bution system. But then a snag. The Motion Picture
■*-Susan Rice, "Movies: The Way We Are," Media and
Methods, December, 1974, p. 16.
2L. M. Kit.Carson, "It's Here! Hollywood's Ninth
Era!" Esquire, February, 1975, p. 65.
3Paul Mazursky, Dialogue on Film, November, 1974.
^Roman Polanski, Dialogue on Film, August, 1974.
5George C. Scott, Dialogue on Film, January, 1975.
15
Production Code Office gave the film an "R" rating,
limiting the audience and the marketability of the film.
Since MPAA is supported by the industry, this move was
seen as a punitive tactic, and now Scott has taken the
case directly to the people, asking them to disregard
the rating. And the fight continues.
No, the struggle for independence and control is
not unique to Richard Brooks. What is unique to him is
his sustained effort over a thirty-year movie-making
career, within the studio system and beyond it, to consis
tently seek a firmer hold on his project from inception
to release and promotion. What distinguishes him is his
motivation, his constant concern, and his success without
ever having had such a monumental financial hit that he
could erupt into one great revolt against the system.
Of course the director— Brooks or any other— can
never reach that mecca of perfect decision-making control
of all variables. But in the process he may begin to
see that not all pressures are bad. All pressures,
whether they be directly or indirectly economic, are part
and parcel of the art. In its real practice, theatrical
movie-making is a collaborative effort, involving many
personalities, motives, and skills. Indeed it seems
that part of the magic of drama (whether on stage or on
screen) derives from the sparks generated by personality
rubbing up against personality.
16
Aesthetics of film often deal with the "pure"
aesthetic elements of motion, color, light and shadow,
juxtaposition, sound relationships. But in all but a
trace of films that are made, these elements are related
to story-telling. Communicating. Film is a self-conscious
art. While expressing and evoking deep preconscious
feelings, the audience-reaching dimension of the art
demands a conscious understanding as well. It takes
a pre-established demi-god, a Bergman or a Fellini, to
have a commercial success with a story not readily
intelligible to the mass audience. Movie-makers are
highly aware of their craft, aware of selection of
detail, settings, angle, close-ups, pacing, in order to
achieve both clarity and controlled ambiguity, both
intelligibility and imagery, both exposition and emotional
impact in their stories.
The feature film artist, in short, wants to
communicate specific ideas, feelings, personal views.
He wants a listener to understand. And he wants to
receive response. The response is generally the box
office. And the box office is important in various
ways. Money, wealth. A feeling that the "message"
is successfully transmitted. Fame. A chance to make
another movie.
In 1951, after having lived in Hollywood for seven
years, Brooks published a novel entitled, The Producer.
_______________________________________________________________ li
Although modeled basically on producer Mark Hellinger,
a great deal of Brooks himself is manifestly in the book.
Feelings he has voiced about himself elsewhere are
reflected sometimes in the attitudes of the producer,
sometimes in the attitudes of the writer.
The story is set in the heyday of the big studio,
and outlines many of the pressures that are examined
in this study. The moving force of the book is the
producer's fear that if he fails in the project he is
working on he may never get a chance to do another
picture. Tension is created by the question of integrity—
how much of the original vision of the story can be
sacrificed to make a "successful" picture. We shall see
the novel in detail in chapter five, but one quote here
may illustrate the tension that has existed in Richard
Brooks throughout his career and that has brought about
this study.
He began to dislike MacDonald. MacDonald wanted to
buck the system, let him. Let him break his heart
against a stone wall.... MacDonald was an idealist
while he was a realist. As a realist, he had to take
into account what the public wanted to see on the
screen, what the investors wanted. There were a
hundred different compromises. Yes, compromises. What
was wrong with compromising? How else did one get
things done? That's why his picture was opening
tonight, and MacDonald was still looking around
for financing.6
^Richard Brooks, The Producer (New York, Simon and
Schuster, 1951), pp. 250-51.
18
Is it better to say only what one fully believes
and risk not getting it said at all, or to compromise
one's view to get the film made and hope for more control
next time? Where then is the cutoff point?
In this study, decision-making is described,
negatively and positively, through various words: control,
pressures, constraints. Control is freedom from pressures
and constraints. Perhaps even better, control is freedom
from, or proper use of constraints.
Pressures have their place. They are not necessarily
all bad. They act as a discipline for the artist to meet
the demands of clarity, economy, audience receptivity.
They can force the artist to know what he is doing before
he starts. Besides, total freedom is merely a gossamer
dream.
I don't think there's anything wrong with pressure.
I work better under pressure. And I think that all
artists, using the term loosely, should work under
pressure. I think no one in this world is totally
free ever. And I want to tell you, maybe it's a
good thing. Some times it's constructive, and some
times it's destructive, and sometimes there are grey
areas where you don't know if it helps or hurts.
I think if someone tells you in advance there
are certain subjects you cannot touch, I think that
is destructive. If someone says, at this time in
our cultural existence you cannot show a man and
woman together in a double bed, you have to fight
it, but you know what the conditions are in
advance, and times c h a n g e . ^
Richard Brooks' whole career has been an effort to
^Richard Brooks, private interview, January 28, 1972.
_________________________________________________19
make the most of pressures, conditions, and unchangeable
realities. Not every pressure comes from other people.
Sometimes they are time factors, and sometimes they are
just physical realities. Like the weather. Tom Shaw,
as someone who might.know, says that no one can take
charge of a situation and make the most of it as well as
Richard Brooks. "Nobody. If it's snowing, if it's
raining, if a guy drops dead of a heart attack, nobody
can readjust and not lose any time like Richard Brooks.1,8
What are all the kinds of decisions and pressures
to be dealt with? What are the variables? It is helpful
to distinguish between internal pressures and external
pressures. Both of these involve control factors at
the pre-production, production, and post-production
phases.
External pressures are those exerted by other
persons, by law, or by anything outside the director.
An external pressure, for example, is exerted by studio
heads in requiring a particular scripting, casting, or
even a particular kind of release. This last— the
release— was a case in point when Brooks had finished
In Cold Blood in 1966. Columbia Pictures wanted to
release the film at the Fine Arts theater for its Los
Angeles opening. This is a theater on Wilshire Boulevard
8Tom Shaw, private interview, November 15, 1974.
20
in an almost exclusively business section. Brooks
wanted to open the film in Westwood, near UCLA. At that
time, however, all the theaters in Westwood were considered
"second run" theaters. That is, they only played the
pictures that had already run in previous parts of the
city or in previous years. If a film opens in the
wrong theater it can get a slow start that will affect
the condition of subsequent bookings. In this case,
with the persuasion and the help of his publicity
director, Al Horwits, Brooks managed to have the film
open at the Bruin Theater in Westwood. The net result
is that Westwood today is the most • coveted area in
Los Angeles for opening new pictures.
Another rather obvious example of external pressure
was a policy exercised by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer when Brooks
became a contract director for the studio. That was the
policy of not letting a writer on the set, or a director
into an editing room. Not until Blackboard Jungle, his
seventh film, did Brooks manage to supervise the editing
of a picture he had directed.
Internal pressures, by contrast, are those that
the director feels subjectively and that elicit his
response. A prime example is fear of making an unsuc
cessful picture. But this general fear can be fragmented
into many specific concerns: will the audience buy an
ending that may be more real in terras of the characters,
21
or must they be provided with a "happy ending"? As the
studio head says to producer Matthew Gibbons in Brooks'
novel:
At the end, my boy, at the end he has to die a
hero. Otherwise, you know what? You're breaking
the rules. If you want to write a little story
for a few high-class people, you can break the rules.
Publish it in some high-class magazine and break the
rules. The audience wants the '.hero to be a hero....
People don't go to, the movies to find out the truth.^
Several years after writing these fictional words
Brooks tried to "break the rules" of the Western genre in
his film The Last Hunt. The film was too interested
in the inhumanitarian destructiveness of buffalo
slaughter (and by extension, of other kinds of hunting),
and neglected a most important element of a Western: the
shootout. The movie did not do well at the box office.
Pre-production pressures (both external and internal)
include all pressures bearing on the decisions that are
made before shooting actually begins. Scripting, casting,
choice of locations, sets, costumes, props. Hiring of
technicians, cameramen, soundmen, gaffers. Living
arrangements and travel arrangements, agreeable to actors
and unions. Nothing is left to chance, and so nothing is
too small to demand attention and perhaps negotiation.
Once the budget is established, every major decision is
already constrained.
9
Richard Brooks, The Producer (New York, Simon and
Schuster, 1951), p. 227.
22
In making his film, Bite the Bullet, cost control
and casting were affected by the competition between
agents in demanding privileges in accordance with the
status of their stars. Extra expense money, extra plane
tickets for friends and relatives to visit the set, extra
per diem, all were sought by the agents. Brooks refused.
Why should a star, getting fifty times the salary of a
technician get free plane tickets for conjugal visits
when the technician does not? Is the technician less
important? The quality of the rooms was declared
insufficient on location. "If I have a better room than
he does he can have mine," was Brooks' answer.
Finally, when one star, Hackman, who is very realistic
and honest, said, "You really mean all that, don't
you?" I said, "Yes." He thought about it for all of
ten seconds and said,"OK." And that was the end of
it.10
Besides these questions of personal stroking and
prestige there are other factors that affect pre-production
such as timing. Is the first choice actor or cameraman
or wrangler available at that time? Within budget? What
about union restrictions? What about the season? Hundreds
of decisions made at the early stages will have an effect
on the finished film before the camera ever rolls.
Production pressures are those faced while the
picture is actually being shot. They include all the
hundreds of decisions that confront the director in the
l^Richard Brooks, private interview, November 15,1976.
__________________ 23
course of a shooting day. If it rains tomorrow, what
can be substituted so as not to lose time, and not impede
the shooting schedule, and not push up the cost? The
scene is not going as well as hoped; keep at it and hope
'
tq pick up time from another scene, or print it as is?
The scene has run into difficulty and 150 extras are on
hand. Run overtime tonight or call them back tomorrow?
Either way, the dawn shot will have to be rescheduled;
can't call the crew back in less than eight hours.
What about permits? Have all the civic agencies been
paid and granted their blessings? Will we be able to
shoot in the original prison or will we have to go back
and build a set?
Of course, most of the questions are not directly
dealt with by the director. The producer, production
manager, and assistant director have specific responsi
bilities in handling preparations and logistics. But the
director is inevitably affected— and will ultimately be
responsible for the way those concerns impinge upon what
is ultimately seen on the screen. Brooks would sum it
all up this way: "My concern is to see that as much of
the budget as possible shows up on the screen."H
Others may be more concerned that the money allow them
to direct under luxury conditions. But given limited
1-^-Richard Brooks, private interview, January 28, 1972.
24
funds, how can that money be channeled into maximum
production value?
With relation to the director's interaction with
his assistants and technicians, Brooks tells an amusing
but pointed story about his hiring Conrad Hall to shoot
The. Professionals. Before the shooting started Brooks
had a conversation with Hall. "Connie," he said, "have
you ever wanted to direct your own picture?"
"Yes," was the answer, "I do look forward to
directing my own picture."
"Fine," said Brooks. "I think that everyone who
wants to should direct at least one picture. Only direct
19
your own picture. Don't try to direct mine."
Post-production pressures include any pressures
connected with editing, scoring, publicity, release— and
even projection. Control over the editing is the most
Obvious element here. It is written into virtually every
contract today— the amount of control being measured by
whether the contract allows the director first, second,
or final cut. When Brooks first started directing for
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, he was not allowed into the cutting
room. In an interview sixteen years later with the Los
Angeles Times he discussed his relationship with editor
Peter Zinner in these terms:
12Ibid.
25
We may spend hours discussing whether the form should
be this way or another. We may do something 40-50-100
times and then still go back again. It was my fault
Zinner didn't get an Academy Award nomination.
Certainly In Cold Blood was one of the 10 best edited
films last year. But they say I spent too much time
in the cutting room. ^
Brooks may be willing to grant his editor full
public credit for his contribution to the film. But any
one will tell you: Brooks is in charge. Today no editing
even begins until the whole picture is finished-— a unique
practice in Hollywood, and a major economic concession,
since that means several months' delay in the release
and the return on the investment.
External and internal. Pre-production, production
and post-production. Some pressures are reasonable and
aid a director's self-discipline. Others are capricious
and are destructive of the serious film artist's attempts
to create the vital film literature that is the potential
of this medium. But the fact of pressures is as certain
as death and taxes. They are intrinsic to the art.
I think economic pressures should always be on a
picture. And I think not only the economic pressures,
but all the pressures are good for an artist. Because
the minute a picturemaker has carte blanche, and he
says, I don't have to worry about time, I don't have
to worry about money, I don't have to worry about
people, I can buy this, and I can redo that, and
l^Kevin Thomas, "Hollywood Directors Rise to Power
Position," Los Angeles Times Sunday Calendar, August 11,
1968, p. 12.
26
everything else that goes with it I shouldn't
say...let me speak for myself, I think it would
be wrong for me.
■^Richard Brooks, private interview, May 3, 1970.
27
CHAPTER III
Journalist, private, quiet revolutionary, man of
integrity, social critic, story teller, secretive, loyal
are just a few of the words and phrases applied to Richard
Brooks by those who love him, by those who don't love
him, and by Brooks himself. Who is this man, Richard
Brooks, who reaches out so strongly in Hollywood for
complete control of his own films, who stands apart in a
Hollywood huddled together to assuage common insecurity
feelings, deal for the big money, and borrow freely from
one another's glamour, acceptance, ideas. Where does he
come from, this man who chooses to work in an art form
that demands the participation of hundreds of people, and
who says of himself, "I lack the collaborative knack.
What can one learn of his films from knowing who he is?
He was born Reuben Saxe, May 18, 1912, in Phila
delphia, only child of immigrant parents. He was
educated in public schools, including Leidy, Belmont, West
Philadelphia High and Overbrook High, which was the
iRichard Brooks, private interview, January 28, 1972.
28
seminal experience for Blackboard Jungle. They were
tough times and made for tough kids. He recalls battling
with bullies at the bridge on the way to school as they
tried to exact a toll. The boys fought because they were
poor, and would not give up what little they had, partic
ularly their dignity. "Mainly we fought because we were
different, tough, and because we were trying to be 'men.'
The terrible things men do in the name of proving manhood!
As though manhood had to be proved.
When he was not fighting for survival and recognition
young Brooks was often found reading. He frequented the
local library where he thrived on adventure stories. One
book he selected at random was The Hairy Ape. This so
captured his imagination that with the help of the
librarian he delved into drama which, mixed with a
reporter's (explorer's?) instincts and training, would
become central to his life.
Going on to Temple University and majoring in
journalism, Brooks graduated into the non-work world of
the Depression. Brooks the fighter set out to create
work rather than succumb. It was 1932. A freight car
provided a way out of town. It took hiiq, his pad and pencil
to Pittsburgh, Kansas City, New Orleans, Texas, among
2"Richard Brooks," Philade1phia Sunday Bulletin
Magazine, September 6, 1964, pp. 2-4.
29
other places. There he sold articles to local papers on
a line-count basis. Armed with experience and clippings,
he returned to Philadelphia where he landed a job as
sports writer on the Philadelphia Record. He also wrote
radio stories for Alan Scott on WCAU radio.
It was at this time that Brooks changed his name.
This decision happened rather by fate. The Record's
sports editor chose his own names for writers, and he
always called Reuben Saxe "Brooks." "Brooks," he would say,
"cover that Overbrook High game tonight." The young writer
was good at his work, gradually winning better assignments.
The column he wrote on his first major league baseball
game turned up with a by-line: Brooks. The by-line became
a matter of course, and the name stuck. A couple of years
later, Brooks made it legal. Years later in writing The
Producer he attributed to the character of Matthew Gibbons
a shame and guilt for having changed his name. One of
the most moving scenes in the book has Matt, now a success,
returning to Philadelphia to see his father once again
and effecting an unspoken reconciliation. How much of
Brooks is imbedded in that character is impossible to
say. All we have from Brooks is the recollection that he
as a child didn't understand his grandfather's "un-American”
beard, but he was never ashamed of him.
After two years on the Record, it was off to the
Atlantic City Press-Union, A year after thaLt to the New
______________________ 30
York World Telegram. In New York he went to work for WNEW
as a news writer and commentator, writing one news pro
gram and editing three others. NBC was next stop, but
only briefly. Combining forces with David Loew, he helped
organize the Mill Pond Theater in Roslyn, New York. It
was Brooks' directing debut.
The Mill Pond established a repertory company and
it offered a play every week or so. After some time it
became very successful, thanks mostly to resident play
wright Christopher Morley. The Mill Pond was actually
an old house with a theater attached. Morley had written
a couple of plays, Soft Shoulders and Trojan Horse. At
that time Morley was on the panel of "Information Please."
And he told his audience casually that the Mill Pond was
putting on Soft Shoulders. As a result people were stand
ing in line. So instead of running one week, the play
ran six weeks.
By this time the bug to move on had bitten again.
Brooks headed for California to see the movie stars.
Movie stars he didn't find, but practically on his way
out of town he got a job on radio again, NBC Blue Network.
For twenty-five dollars a story Brooks wrote a fifteen-
minute, 2,50 0 word short story, and read it himself, five
days a week. Five stories a week, for eleven months.
Some fifteen years later Brooks would find himself going
back to a device he used to help fill those impossible
________ 31
demands. In the last months he would devote his Friday
story to the "Heels of History," in which he would take a
fairy story and re-examine it from a fresh perspective.
One of these stories was "Jack and the Beanstalk." In
Blackboard Jungle, Dadier uses a film of this story as a
starting point to talk about prejudice. As Brooks
looks at it, "Jack" is a story of a kid who is supposed
to sell his cow. He doesn't do what he's supposed to do,
and when he throws away the beans, he discovers this
property on top of the beanstalk. He trespasses on this
giant's property, steals his harp (the giant loved music)
and then when the giant chases the kid to get back his
rightful property, he gets killed. Is this justice?
In the mean time, I was hearing about all these
movie writers who were writing one story a year.
This seemed very attractive to me. I got somebody
to introduce me, and I went over there to Universal.
I went to Universal, and the guy said, "Yeah, we're
doing a picture here. We've got a script, but the
dialogue is lousy. Maybe you can work on it." I
said, "Well, what'll you pay?" And he said, "Well,
what do you want?" It was before there was a
Writers Guild; and if there was a Writers Guild,
they didn't have a contract. And I said, "A $1,000
a week." He said, "I'll let you know." Well, a
week went by, and I didn't hear from him, so I
called him. I said, "How about it?" He said, "A
thousand dollars a week. I don't make half that
myself, and I'm the producer of the picture for
Christ's sake." I said, "Well, what will you pay?"
And he said, "One hundred fifty a week." I said,
"OK."3
3Bernard R. Kantor, Irwin R. Blacker, and Anne
Kramer, editors, Directors at Work, Interviews with
American Filmmakers (New York, Funk & Wagnalls, 1970),
pp. 15-16.
32
That was a picture called White Savage, with Maria
Montez, Jon Hall, and Sabu. After eight days on that,
they offered him another picture like it. Dissatisfied,
he decided to return to New York. On the train he found
a review of the picture in the New Yorker. The movie
contained a character named Tamara, and the whole
review was, "and how are you today, Tamara."
But he returned to Hollywood, at least to get his
car, and this time ran into Orson Welles, and wrote
some radio shows for his "Hello America" series. At the
same time he wrote and directed a half-hour drama for the
Silver Theater of the Air (so called because they were
sponsored by Rodgers 1847 Silverware.)
But Universal Studios called again. Brooks has
told the story many times, and tells it best:
Then one day in 194 2 I got a call from Universal,
a different producer. He said, "You worked on that
picture with those three great actors that we made
here. It was a very successful picture." I said,
"I didn't see the picture." He said, "Well, we
have the same three great actors: Jon Hall, Maria
Montez, and Sabu, but we haven't got a story and
we'd like to have a desert." "Well, there's a
desert right here in the United States." "Oh,
no. No cowboys and Indians, that's out. Name me
a desert." "The African desert?" "No, that's
Foreign Legion, been done to death. Name who's
the natives?" "Australians, I guess, I don't
know. What d'you mean?" "No, no," he said, "you
know, the heavies, the natives." "Let's see, I
don't know, there are a number of bushwackers or
something." He said, sorrowfully to me at any
rate, "Any niggars?" I knew this wasn't my man
right away, but I said, "Well, there must be
coloured people, yes." "Out I No race problems.
Name me another desert." "China?" "The Good Earth,
33
let*s stay away from that." I said, "How about
India?" "Yes, but nobody's British in this cast.
So who're we gonna have? That's politics, anyway,
lots of trouble in India." ...By this time I'm
fast running out of deserts and I said, "What about
Turkey? There's a desert there." "Sounds inter
esting. Who are the heavies?" So I said, "Now
wait a minute, I don't know the story. I don't
know who the heavies are." He said, "Now I'll tell
you what. You go and write the story."
I got some National Geographical Magazines, read
up on Turkey and came across a rather interesting
aspect. After the First World War, they were trying
to liberate the women, and many new customs were
coming in, education, getting rid of the veil, and
so on. Good for Maria Montez. At least she'd be
able to do something in that. I built up some sort
of story and sent it to him. Two days later I get a
call, "You let me down, boy." "What's the matter?"
He said, "Well, where are the riffs?" "The riffs?
There are no riffs in Turkey." He said, "No, no,
you don't know what I mean. I mean the fellows in
the white sheets on horses." I said, "No riffs in
Turkey." "You must be crazy. Now there is a
Turkish consul here in Los Angeles. Why don't we
call the fellow?"
Next day, a nice young man comes round: black
moustache, about thirty, thirty-two. "This is
going to be great for your country," says the
producer. Every producer says that. "We want
to do a story about Turkey, etc., etc. Who are
the heavies?" "I don't know what you mean."
"Well, who are the natives?" "Turks." "I mean,
don't you have any trouble with people?" "We're
having some trouble right now." He said, "Who are
you having trouble with?" "Well, we have a tribe
called the Kurds, and they are having a kind of
little revolt in the desert." "The Kurds? Sounds
kinda dirty."
"Well, kid," he says to me, "I'll tell you.
Let's take the North African desert. OK, no
problems. There are riffs there, aren't there?"
"Yes, there are riffs." He said, "Do a story."
Back to the National Geographies. I found an
interesting aspect. When the Suez Canal was being
thought about, they had to decide whether it would
24
be a shorter route. So two packet boats left
India, one to go round the Horn, and the other to,
I guess Port Suez. Then the parcel would be put
on horse and camel to go to Alexandria, then to
London. It beat the other boat by three weeks. I
thought the section from Port Suez to Alexandria
would be interesting. You know, the Pony Express.
Sabu could ride a horse. So I wrote it and sent
it in. Two days later..."You let me down."
"What's wrong?" "Where are the riffs?" I said,
"There are riffs in Africa but they've nothing to
do with the building of the Suez." He said, "I'll
prove it to you." And we go to see this movie
called Suez with Tyrone Power and Annabella. In the
second reel, six guys in white sheets drive up and
blow the canal. "So," he says, "you see?" And
he leaves. I sit there and watch the rest of the
film and it turns out that these guys weren't
riffs but the British masquerading as riffs to
blow up the canal, because the French were building
it. So I go and explain it to him and he says,
"I'll tell you what, let's call the boss." Because,
you see, he was only the producer and he had another
producer over him. He said, "Jack, I've got this
story here and it's quite good. Perhaps we ought
to do a screenplay." And Jack, who has a very loud
voice, the kind you could hear even without the
telephone, says, "Well, is there anything for the
broad to do?" (He meant Maria Montez.) "Oh, yes,
she rides on horses, she rides on camels, clouds
of veils, all that sort of things. It's great.
Sabu gets killed and he's very heroic. Jon Hall
gets wounded and they get the mail. It's the Pony
Express, except it's in Africa." And Jack (I
won't mention his name) he says, "When does this
story take place?" and I say, "Before the Suez
Canal was built, Jack." Jack says, "When the
hell was that?" And I got up and I joined the
Marine Corps."4
Brooks' narrative gives a glimpse into two other
dominant characteristics of his filmmaking: the desire
to be true to the facts (true to life?) and his capacity
for thorough research. Not content with merely
^''Richard Brooks," Movie, Spring, 1965, pp. 2-3.
35
fabricating a story, he insists on knowing all the facts
surrounding it. In writing an original story, he
researches to the last detail. In adapting another work
he not only analyzes, parses, and indexes the novel, he
researches the times and the literary interpretations.
When he writes, he knows his subject. Brooks' intro
duction to his script of The Brothers Karamazov is one
indication of this.
Military service launched Brooks on yet another
storytelling career. There he wrote his first novel,
The Brick Foxhole. It was a story of a soldier based
in the States who becomes caught up in a murder of a
homosexual by other soldiers. It is a story about
prejudice, anti-Semitism, and the frustrations that grow
out of a war whose mood and temper equate manhood with
fighting on the front lines. After the war it was to
become the movie Crossfire, produced by Adrian Scott,
and written by John Paxton. The picture received five
Academy Award nominations.
From the beginning of his career, Brooks tackled
the commercially unpopular subject. And he had no
hesitation in bucking the system. He was threatened with
court martial when he tried to publish the book.
There was no name on it when I sent it into
Harper1s. They called me up for court martial
because the book had not been submitted for
checking before publication. Well, there was
....... 36
nothing in the book that violated security, but
their rules and regulations were not for that
purpose alone; and it was pretty critical of the
"times." So they sent me a notification to appear
for court martial and assigned someone to defend me,
someone who was supposed to contact me to get
information. I wrote to my editor to tell him about
this and he was like a fireman coming to a fire.
He was just marvelous and within three or four days,
a week at the most, he had Morris Ernst, Richard
Wright, Bill Malden, and somebody else— I've
forgotten who— and Sinclair Lewis, who were ready
to be witnesses in my behalf. I never heard from
the Marine Corps about it again. They didn't say
it was off. They didn't say it was on. There was
no date set. Until the Japanese War— VJ Day— was
over, I never heard anything more. They did take
my typewriter away, but that's all.5
After the war, Mark Hellinger, who had read The
Brick Foxhole, offered Brooks a job in Hollywood. So
back he went, this time to do more serious work. For
Hellinger he did Swell Guy and Brute Force. Hellinger
also became the model for his third novel, The Producer.
In the meantime he had written his only other novel,
The Boiling Point.
Warner Brothers was next on the list of employers
for To the Victors, Storm Warning, and Key Largo (with
John Huston). This latter experience unlocked new
possibilities for him. Huston suggested that the only
way to see that his scripts became the final products
he envisioned was to direct them himself.
With this in mind, Brooks signed a seven-year
contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The terms of his
^Kantor, Blacker, and Kramer, oj5. cit., pp. 20-21.
37
agreement specified that on his first screenplay, MGM would
have the option on the director, but that if Brooks
were not allowed to direct the second screenplay, he
would have the option of terminating the contract. The
first screenplay was Any Number Can Play. Clark Gable,
who was cast in the starring role, felt the young
Brooks was too inexperienced to direct him. Mervyn
Leroy directed. However, it was the star of the second
screenplay, Cary Grant, who said, "If he can write it,
why shouldn't he be able to direct it?" And so it was.
The story was called Crisis. Brooks had become
a director. Other pictures followed. The Light Touch
(writing and direction), Take the High Ground (direction
only), The Flame and the Flesh (direction only), Battle
Circus (direction only), The Last Time I_ Saw Paris
(writing and direction). During this time he also made
one picture for Twentieth Century-Fox: Deadline, U.S.A.
But Brooks sought more independence, more control.
With his seven-year contract almost complete, and having
less to lose, he accepted the assignment of Blackboard
Jungle only after having reached a verbal agreement that
he would control the editing. Jungle was a box office
smash. And Brooks had acquired leverage.
Subsequent films for MGM allowed him more room for
decision-making. These films included The Last Hunt,
The Catered Affair (direction only), and Something of
__________ 3 8
Value. Subsequently MGM released his independently
produced pictures The Brothers Karamazov, Cat on a Hot
Tin Roof, and Sweet Bird of Youth.
But Brooks had some stories of his own to tell, in
his own way. With the money he had made on Blackboard
Jungle, he took out options on Sinclair Lewis1 Elmer
Gantry, and Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim. Elmer Gantry
became a reality through United Artists. Lord Jim was
produced five years after that at Columbia. United
Artists also backed his production of Happy Ending in
1969. Columbia Pictures granted Brooks various degrees
of latitude in the production of The Professsionals, In
Cold Blood, and $_. Brooks is now finishing another
picture at Columbia, an original screenplay, Bite the
Bullet.
If awards are one norm by which to measure a
filmmaker's success, Richard Brooks is an eminently
successful writer and director. In addition to twice
receiving the Writers Guild Award for his screenplays
Elmer Gantry and The Professionals, he has received
the highest award his peers can give, the Writers Guild
Laurel Award. He received this after writing In Cold
Blood, for "advancing the literature of the motion
picture through the years and for outstanding contri
butions to the profession of the screen writer."
His confreres in the larger Hollywood community
_______________ 3_9_
haye also been appreciative of his achievements. Overall,
films he has been associated with have received thirty-
four Academy Award nominations.6 Cat on a . Hot Tin Roof
took six, including-writing, directing, and best picture.
Five nominations went to Elmer Gantry, including writing
and best picture. Brooks received the Oscar for writing
that movie, and although Burt Lancaster and Shirley Jones
received Oscars for best actor and best supporting actress,
Brooks was nominated for directing! Twice more Brooks
received nominations for both writing and directing—
In Cold Blood and The Professionals.
In all Brooks has directed twenty-one films. Eight
of these received twenty-eight Academy Award nominations
and four top awards. All of these nominations were for
the most substantial contributions to a dramatic film—
best picture, writing, directing, acting, cinematography,
and music.
But for all these awards, Brooks does not rest on
past laurels. Every picture is undertaken as though it
were the only and the last.
As for his private life, Brooks says little. He
was married once before marrying Jean Simmons after he
had directed her in Elmer Gantry in 1960. They have one
child, Kate, and another child by Simmons' first marriage,
6see Appendix for complete list of Academy Awards
and nominations.
_________________________________________________________ 40
Tracy.
Like the producers noted in his early novel, Brooks
has a full projection facility on his property in West
Los Angeles, with screenings every Friday and Saturday
nights. Having an insatiable appetite for movies, he
sees virtually every major and minor picture in release.
(Movies are loaned from the studios to the producers who
form the "Bel-Air Circuit.")
By natural inclination Brooks is a very private
man (his most personal pictures usually deal with public
concerns) and if he is a little paranoid he has his
reasons. Not everyone in Hollywood is totally ethical,
and many an idea is "borrowed" by someone else. And since
Brooks is meticulous in his preparation of a picture, it
is quite possible to get his idea on the screen before
he does. Today he does not even provide scripts for his
cast. He gives them their dialogue a couple of days in
advance for preparation. Only he and his assistant
director have scripts.
Brooks once described himself as a man against his
time. Little indications of it from his lifestyle bear
him out. He refuses to wear a tie anywhere, and prefers
to work in his office in baggy blue jeans and a loose
short-sleeved shirt. His office does not drive a status
car, but a Jeep wagon. Framed on his wall is a 1950
petition bearing the signatures of twenty-five directors
......................... _41
Including his own, who rallied to call a general meeting
of the Director's Guild to protect Joe Mankiewicz from
being ousted as president of the Guild for alleged
Communist leanings.
Every director in the.long run makes pictures that
are himself. But for all the biographical detail about
this man, the values and concerns that emerge from his
films in the long run reveal the most. In the case of
Richard Brooks, the intensity and consistency of the man
seen through his films reflect better than any biography
the importance of firm central control over the intent
of any given picture bearing his name. It is the man
as seen in his films that is the subject of Chapter IV.
A2A
CHAPTER IV
We can better understand the importance of control
to a director such as Richard Brooks when we take a close
look at his films, their themes, their world view, their
extension of the man. To those directors who have
distinctive and strong statements to make concerning their
world, any tampering with that message by outside forces
becomes a personal matter, a challenge.
This chapter will sketch the central themes that
run through the films of director Brooks. It will attempt
an overview of his recurring concerns, his unchanging
attitudes, and his continuing growth over a twentyr-five
year span of directing. It will make general observations
on Brooks' style of filmmaking, and will try to establish
that the unseen struggles that the director undertakes
behind the scenes can be as much a part of his style as
anything the theatergoer sees on the screen. At least
in the case of this one director, the drive for a good,
communicative, artistic film product becomes fused with
the drive for economic and decision-making control. In
both cases the director strives to tame and channel people,
A3.
feelings, circumstances so that the child born after
months of intense work is recognized as the child first
conceived in the mind of the maker.
In chapters five through eight, the overview
established here will be amplified and filled in. With
more extensive examinations of key films the linkage
between artistic concerns and decision-making concerns
will emerge ever more clearly.
The films that Richard Brooks has directed fall
rather distinctly into three phases. The first phase
extends from 1950 through 1957. During this time
Brooks directed eleven pictures. It was a period of
variety, technical exploration, emerging themes. The
second phase runs from 1957 to 1965, a period which
yielded five films: three adaptations of literary clas
sics and two Tennessee Williams plays. Phase three,
from 1966 to the present, brought another five pictures
which return to the more personal themes that Brooks
introduced in his earliest works.
Before looking closely at these three categories,
however, we would do well to examine some of the
characteristics that can be discerned as generally true
of a Brooks film, or true of Brooks himself.
Richard Brooks is first of all a story-teller. That
is to say, one would not expect a Brooks film to be made
up of a series of incidents that in sum amount to a
______ AA
character study, no matter how sensitively done. One
would not expect Richard Brooks to undertake an "odyssey"
film, no matter how insightful. Brooks began as a writer
of stories, and his direction is the higher achievement
of that impulse and that craft. Schooled in the Aristo
telian writing tradition that requires conflict, character,
motivation, climax and denouement, Brooks writes plots
with a beginning, a middle, and an end. Therefore one
would expect to find action in a Brooks film, and one
does. Each Brooks film begins clearly with a problem,
and in the resolution of the problem lies the theme.
This is true of the simpler, early pictures, as
well as of the bigger pictures of later years. Crisis
begins with a problem: is the doctor, with his wife,
going to extract himself safely from the grasp of the
Latin American dictator? And more importantly, is he
going to make the moral decisions of a man of integrity
in so extracting himself? Every scene and action through
the rest of the film heighten these questions. Similarly,
Deadline, USA opens with a physical and a moral dilemma:
will the editor of The Day accept the easy path of letting
the paper die even though it plays an important and
responsible role for society? Blackboard Jungle: will
Rick Dadier accept the responsibility for and achieve
success in helping to overcome a troubled educational
system? Something of Value, The Last Hunt, Elmer Gantry,
................................. J L 5 .
Brothers Karamazov, In Cold Blood, Happy Ending: They
are all films which are tightly structured plots, built
on exterior conflicts that are representative of inner
moral dilemmas.
One might argue that this is characteristic of all
good writing, that it is not unique to Richard Brooks.
Granted. But there is a good deal of successful film-
making that does not follow this formula. Since Easy
Rider (and before) the "odyssey" film has gained greater
popularity, achieving recent deserved success in the Paul
Mazursky film, Harry and Tonto. These are basically self-
revelation films which have their payoff in the new
realization and/or acceptance of self that the central
character (s) experience. A Brooks film, however, is
concerned much more with physical action that converges
upon a point of yes-or-no moral decision bearing life and
death implications.
A corollary of this story-telling approach is that
a Brooks central character is not so much in the process
of finding himself, (exception: Happy Ending) as he is
in conflict with circumstances that threaten his dedica
tion, honor, integrity. While it is true that Dmitri
Karamazov., Elmer Gantry, and Lord Jim make ultimate
decisions that will change their lives, comparatively
little character change takes place in the course of
the story. The ultimate decisions they make are more the
I __________ 4 .6
logical result of remaining true or returning to the
character they already possess.
This discussion of character, now, is all by way of
saying that Brooks is a story-teller. Of some interest to
this study is what he chooses to tell stories about. His
is not the inner world expressed by writers he deeply
admires such as Bergman, Fellini, Wilder. The stories
that come from these directors began deep inside them. The
universes explicated in the films of Fellini and Bergman
are self-contained. The matrix is deep in the subcon
scious of those individuals. They are private worlds
imaged forth. They are art as self-exorcism. The
films that result often flow from the "logic" of intuition
and association.
The films of Richard Brooks on the other hand
reveal sweet reason. He develops characters whose motiva
tion is clear, albeit often mixed. His concerns derive
from the public forum. His private feelings are carefully
screened. The issues of social equality, the common
good, personal honor, and the integrity of principle form
his passion. Even before he began writing for the screen
full time, his novels had taken up the cause of story tell
ing as a mirror of our society. The Brick Foxhole dealt
with prejudice and the pressure of a military system that
equates killing with manhood. The Boiling Point examined
the political system that used wealth and patriotism as a
_______47
tool of power at the expense of the poor. The Producer
concerned a man whose integrity was measured by the risks
he would take to speak the truth in his films.
All this is not to say that Brooks' films do not
come from deep inside himself. They most certainly do.
We have seen that Brooks began his writing career as a
journalist. He is still a journalist seeking to discover
and make known the truth. This will be discussed in depth
in later chapters. Let it suffice for now to draw atten
tion to the early films based on current events: Crisis,
Latin American revolution; Battle Circus and Take the
High Ground, Korea; Blackboard Jungle, juvenile delin
quency; Something of Value, rise of the Mau Mau; Deadline/
USA/ closing of the original Pulitzer newspaper. In Cold
Blood is a striking example of a later film that clearly
reflected an interest in the issues of the day. Happy
Ending and Dollars (£) reveal the journalist's touch
upon close examination.
Brooks the journalist-story teller, then offers in
each and every film he has both written and directed a
moral lesson for our times, and often offered them a
little earlier than society was ready to listen. This has
obvious implications for Brooks' style and for his concern
over final control. He has something to communicate. He
does not have the luxury of telling a story just to
please himself, without particular reference to the
audience. He wants the audience— as- large an audience
as possible— to understand and feel what he is trying to
communicate.
This is not to say that Brooks does not tell stories
to entertain. He indeed does this, and does it very well.
Viewers of Blackboard Jungle, Elmer Gantry, In Cold Blood
do not come to the theater to get an inspiring message.
They come to be entertained. This is the first and most
important goal. However, as he told a student audience
in 19 61:
I don't see why all films have to be the pure
entertainment type of film. At the same time I
believe that any film, including - Blackboard Jungle,
must be entertaining, and have some entertainment
in it.
Perhaps Brooks would grant that his films seek to reveal
truth through entertainment.
It is this concern for truth and integrity that
are most basic to Brooks' film style. Brooks once wrote:
I do not believe that camera angles or methods of
editing or special effects constitute a so-called
style. Perhaps it is best to say that the style is
myself. The style of this movie, Lord Jim, is me,
now at this time of my life, whatever I have learned
or thought or felt or desired or feared, what small
victories I have won and the many defeats I have
suffered.
Richard Brooks, interview with Arthur Knight and
cinema students, University of Southern California,
March 16, 1961.
^"Richard Brooks," Movie, Spring, 1965, p. 16.
Aa
Certainly it is not the camera work or the editing that
make a film most identifiably "Brooksian." It is the
themes and concerns that do that, themes that emphasize
the need for individual personal integrity and concerns
that stress the common good. We shall discuss these
further below. However, his films do bear a technical
consistency as well.
The technical, or craftsmanlike quality that most
stands out in a Brooks films is--as indicated briefly
above— its writing style. Not only is the plot tightly
structured, but each individual scene is structured with
a beginning, a middle, and an end. The end, as often as
not, is a one-line capper of dialogue. Forceful, punchy
dialogue is also characteristic. It was originally
writing additional dialogue that gave Brooks entree to
Universal Studios in the 1940's. At the end of a Brooks
scene, as at the end of a Brooks film, there is a sense
of action accomplished, point made. The final line of
the scene relates directly to the story's moving force
and leads logically to the subsequent scene. Examples
abound, but to select just one: in In. Cold Blood, a
newspaper reporter and a police officer are going over the
evidence of the Clutter murder in a conversation while
standing at a window. It is revealed that the murderers
only collected forty dollars and a few trinkets as a
50
result of their crime. The police lieutenant asks
rhetorically, "Who would kill four innocent people for
only forty dollars?" The answer comes back, "Today?
Just take your pick, on any city street." The camera
zooms in on a busy city street and picks up the two
murderers as they are going about a shopping spree
passing bad checks. The scene itself is brought to an
end, the next scene is introduced with the same line, and
a point is made which will be brought home in the course
of the film: any one of us in the right circumstances
could become the perpetrator of an unreasonable crime— and
capital punishment itself may be just as much an unreason
able crime.
In Cold Blood also offers an outstanding example of
Brooks' ability to take the sprawling detail of a novelist's
journalism and weld it into a tightly unified story suit
able for the motion picture medium. And its many memorable
images provide an example of Brooks' constant concern for
rendering his story economically and effectively through
images instead of relying on words. One only needs to
recall the closeup of Perry Smith awaiting execution and
talking about his father. As he recalls his father's
rejection of him, light from outside the cell window
catches the rain washing down the pane, and leaves the
effect of water washing down Perry's face. While his
character does not allow him to break down and cry, the
............. 5„1
light washing over his face reveals all the more strongly
his deep sadness and remorse.
This image is just one small example of the kind
of imagery Brooks employs. There are many other examples
within the same film, beginning with the opening char
acterizations that require no dialogue.
Generally speaking, Brooks' use of camera can best
be described as "appropriate." As we said, story-telling,
not poetry, is his goal. The camera is always subordinated
to this end. When appropriate, the camera will be placed
at a dramatic angle, as in the famous confrontation on
the school stairs between Dadier and Miller in Blackboard
Jungle. Or in the murder sequence from In Cold Blood.
But Brooks' camera, as befits a reporter, is seldom
highly interpretive by way of subjective camera, exag
gerated angles, or unusual lighting. His camera observes
the action. It is in the staging that the drama occurs.
The camera moves a great deal, keeping the action fluid.
Brooks has a special knack for staging, or orchestrating
crowd scenes with tremendous vigor. Mood setting shots
in Crisis and Blackboard Jungle come immediately to mind,
as well as extraordinary tent scenes from Elmer Gantry.
Perhaps as a result of his tremendous research and
attentiveness to detail, he manages to create rich textures
of ambience, whether they are staged on the set (Crisis,
rhe Brothers Karamazov), or on location (Something of Value,
__________ 52
Lord Jim.) Perhaps it is the journalist in him that is
responsible, thirsting for verifiable reality.
Brooks has always been attentive to lighting in
creating mood, and was one of the first to experiment
with "symbolic" color in The Brothers Karamazov. While
it is not his central concern, Brooks has an eye for the
technical and has experimented with new techniques over
the years. When he started making In Cold Blood, he had
a special effects house do a strobe test for him to
determine the effect of a body dropping in slow motion in
overlap phases, in the manner of the famous painting,
"Nude Descending a Staircase." After Brooks' text but
before he got to the editing stages, however, the same
house provided Bonnie and Clyde the strobe effect for their
final shootout.
One interesting technique that Brooks uses does not
show up on the screen directly. Ever since Blackboard
Jungle he has used music both in the shooting and editing
of his pictures. In cutting The Professionals, for example,
he prescored the picture to Copland's "El Salon Mexico"
to help establish, jtnood and pace, The final score was
then written to create the same jriood and pace.
Brooks, like every experienced director, is very
conscious of the technical aspects of filmmaking. But
he became aware early of the more important need to find
the compelling and telling image that will speak to the
___________________ 53
audience on more than one level. In Something of Value,
for example, a natural plot element lent itself to saying
much more when he has Peter McKenzie carry the injured
Kimani— literally the white man's burden— on his back after
Kimani has been injured. Adapting the classics made
Brooks much more aware of this. He was faced with the
discipline of condensing hundreds of pages of characteri
zation, action, and description into a short span of film.
The Brothers Karamazov, Elmer Gantry, and Lord Jim are all
long novels. The job of translating a play is just as
demanding and Brooks was equally successful. Although
the Tennessee Williams plays in the Brooks version may
seem to be highly verbal, they are in fact as much
dependent on visualization as on words. This is par
ticularly true of Sweet Bird of Youth, which was able to
filmically shift easily between several time spans and
locales. Another sign of image over word is also Lord
Jim. While some reviewers felt the script too verbal,
the fact is that if they had closed their eyes they would
have missed most of the movie.
All in all the craftsmanship of Richard Brooks is
among the very best, as some 2 8 Academy Award nominations
will attest. His ability to handle actors, his concise
use of camera, his ability to select the arresting image,
to create mood through lighting, his careful attention to
sound and music— these are undeniable strengths.
______ 54
But this is not to say these strengths make him
unique. Others have demonstrated like strengths, While
they show a craftsmanship one comes to expect from a
Brooks product, they do not necessarily set him apart.
What does set him apart is the combination of these skills
with very definite concerns. These are social concerns,
and concern with individualism exercised for the good of
others. They are concerns of personal honor and profes
sionalism. They can be summed up in the one word,
integrity.
Integrity. Acting as a whole person within the
bounds of a character's identity. In one way or another,
this becomes the constant motif of Brooks' films.
Integrity means being true to oneself. It means
accepting responsibility for one's own actions. It means
having a conscience. In phase one of Brooks' films,
integrity reflects a social conscience as well. But in
whatever form it appears— called honor, truth, profession
alism— the drama of the movie comes on the surface from
the character's physical goals but ultimately from a moral
choice that will determine whether the character is true
to himself. One exception to this is Dollars. But seen
in the light of Brooks' previous films, we can see
integrity peeking through even here.' In this film Warren
Beatty and Goldie Hawn are crooks1 crooks. They under
take robbery aimed only at those who are themselves thieves.
___________ 55
With a system so corrupt that banks, military, and
civilian structures cooperate in crime, these "good"
crooks do nothing more than use the corrupt system against
itself.
All other Brooks films are more forthright, however.
Integrity as honor shows itself in Crisis, where a doctor
is dispassionately true to his hippocratic oath by agreeing
to save the life of a dictator, but is passionately true
to himself by his firm opposition to the policies of the
dictator and the limitations he tries to impose on the
doctor's freedom of movement. It is there in Blackboard
Jungle, as a teacher refuses to accept the option of an
easier suburban teaching job, but decides to stay on to
fight the good fight. We see it in the anti-destruction
(anti-hunting) themes of The Last Hunt. We see it in the
anti-racism and anti-colonialism of Something of Value.
It is there in the fierce self acceptance by Dmitri
Karamazov of both his good and his evil. It is there in
Elmer Gantry's final acceptance of himself and rejection
of the carnival of evangelism. Cat on a . Hot Tin Roof is
about the rejection of mendacity. Tn Sweet Bird of Youth
Chance Wayne finally stops running. Lord Jim is the
ultimate in the affirmation of one's need for integrity.
The Professi ona 1s operates on a principle of honor. In
Cold Blood calls for the acceptance of our corporate
responsibility. Happy Ending deals with a woman's
acceptance of her real feelings and her real needs.
Integrity does not mean the same thing in every
case, but has a firm base in the common denominator as
defined above. Nor does invoking the key word integrity
help us see the recurring themes in all their richness.
We can take a closer look through the lens of others'
central insights. Brooks, for example, once described
himself as "a man against his times." The phrase is
true both of Brooks and of his characters, in slightly
different ways. Brooks has regularly taken up causes
slightly before society was ready for them— anti-semitism
in his novel The Brick Foxhole, anti-oppression of the
poor in the novel The Boiling Point. Controversy became
a matter of course for him. He fought against those
who would undertake an anti-communist witch hunt in
Hollywood, both through his writing (The Producer) and
through his support of Joseph Mankiewicz in the Director's
Guild. Crisis was modified because it was too close to an
attack on Peron. Blackboard Jungle was almost not re
leased because it was seen as supportive of anti-Ameri
canism. Deadline, USA was thought to be bordering on
Communism by Darryl Zanuck. Elmer Gantry was fought
at every turn because "the time was not right" for an
"attack on religion." In Cold Blood took up the cause
of opposition to captial punishment, and Happy Ending, two
or three years ahead of its time, took up the cause of
_____________________________________________________57
women's liberation. Looking back now, all the films seem
strangely conservative and safe. But at the time they were
all just a step out front.
The characters in many of these films are also
people "against their times." Rick Dadier, in Blackboard
Jungle, shakes the status quo by refusing to accept the
anti-educational, prison-like attitudes of the veteran
teachers. He is beaten for it initially, but with head
battered but unbowed continues to try reaching his
students, and succeeds. Peter McKenzie in Something of
Value bucks the status quo of his African community,
calling for white acceptance of partnership with native
Kenyans.
In The Brick Foxhole the times called for prejudice
against Negroes and Jews. Jeff cannot go along with this
and is almgbt unjustly convicted of an act of hate (mur
der) . In The Last Hunt, the times call for unnecessary
and destructive massacres of buffalo, just for the few
dollars for pelts while leaving the meat to rot. Although
Sandy McKenzie finds this intolerable, he does nothing
about it until it becomes necessary to save an Indian
girl from his partner as well.
Brooks' phrase applies equally w^il to Crisis (the
times in an unnamed Latin-American country call for sub
mission of the individual to a fascistic regime), to
Deadline, USA, (the times call for newspaper monopoly and
58
reduction of freedom of speech), Elmer Gantry (the times
call for a deceptive and lucrative reign of evangelical
preachers), In Cold Blood (the times call for mass
vengeance through capital punishment), and Dollars (the
times call for systematic corruption at high levels of
business and government).
Having said this it is probably more important to
say what kind of man it is who goes against his time,
who attempts to challenge the system. It is a Dadier,
a Matthew Gibbons, Sandy McKenzie. These are very pri
vate men. They are confronted with evil and are com
pelled by some good within themselves to see that evil
does not triumph. But it is personal evil they confront,
not political evil.
This is illustrated in a script that Brooks did not
direct, Storm Warning. As released, the film was anti-
Klan. However, in discussing that screenplay, Brooks
says that he never drafted a story about the Klan. It
was simply a story about an individual's crisis of
conscience (or principle).
The story I wrote had nothing to do with the
Klan. That's special. It's easy to dislike the
Klan. My story had to do with whether an indiv
idual who sees a crime against an individual or
society committed, whether that individual has any
personal responsibility or not. That's what the
entire story was about.3
3Richard Brooks, personal interview, May 3, 1970.
__________________________ 5 1
Tile original plot involved a rather ordinary girl, a
secretary in New York, who has just had an abortion and
is returning to her sister's home in the South to take
a rest.
She's getting off the train, and some poor
slob is being pulled out of the jail and lynched.
No hoods or any of that stuff. And she finds out
that one of the men who helped with the lynching
is her brother-in-law. Should she say anything
or not?4
As we can see, Brooks takes the side of principle in the
matter of individual decisions.
It is with this orientation of the writer-director
in mind that Paul Mayersberg characterizes him as a
"conservative idealist."
Richard Brooks is an idealist, but a conservative
idealist. He believes in the "indomitable spirit
of man." He believes that goodness can prevail
over evil, that waste lands can be made fertile.
Brooks is conservative, not in the sense of being
right-wing politically (he is nothing if not a
liberal), but in the sense that his beliefs are
reasoned, not inspired. His attitudes are evolu
tionary and not utopian.^
His beliefs are reasoned, his attitudes are evolu
tionary. It might be added that Brooks tries to see both
sides. While critical of evangelical revivalism in Elmer
Gantry, the persons involved are not simply money-grabbing
4Richard Brooks, personal interview, January 28,
1972.
^"Richard Brooks," Movie, Spring, 1965, p. 10.
60
bad people, nor are they unintelligent. They are complex
and extremists, not really bad. The buyers and sellers
of the newspaper, The Day, in Deadline, USA, were not
malicious, with one possible exception. They were simply
callous, concerned about themselves, without accepting
responsibility for the common good.
Perhaps another way Brooks might be characterized
is as a "gentle revolutionary." He is attracted by the
idea of social change. But he does not see the replace
ment of one system by another as the real, or ultimate,
solution. Rather the answer lies in personal commitment
of one person to the good of others.
The "gentle revolutionary" wants to change specific
elements within the system rather than overthrow the
whole system. Thus Dadier is not a sociologist come to
reform a system. He is an individual come to do his
part. And he means to fight within the structures.
His rebelliousness does not take him outside
society. He decides to fight his battle within
society. Same story that's in Arrival and Depar
ture. He wants to escape from all this, but he
still believes in his principles, and he returns
to where if they ever catch him he's a dead man,
to fight within the confines of that circumscribed
battleground, to do the best he can for what he
believes in.° ■
In fact, Brooks would maintain, to overthrow the
/ r
Richard Brooks, personal interview, May 3, 1970.
61
system would be the easy way out. Or to drop out of the
system would be even easier. But "very often he must go
back and fight by the rules that are already set down.
That's the hardest of all. It's easy to say, 'I don't
like your rules; I'm not going to play your ballgame.'"7
Even Chance Wayne in Sweet Bird of Youth does not choose
to flee but comes to face his threateners, true to his
personal love of Heavenly.
Certainly in Something of Value, the protagonist
represents a point of view advocating change. But the
change is not to substitute domination by domination. It
is to end the domination by the white and have the white
and black join hands in a common enterprise. Harmony
not victory is the goal.
This is true on two levels in The Professionals.
Brooks tells us that this film was made as a finger
exercise after his tremendous investment of energy and
self into a Lord Jim that was a box office failure. He
also tells us that he was inspired to do a story of this
kind by his reading on the Mexican revolution, particularly
a book by author Tom Reed. What he came up with was an
action Western in the best fantasy tradition of super
men and women. But it is heavily imbued with the spirit
7Ibid.
62
of the gentle revolutionary. Our four professionals are
defined in their professionalism by being true to their
honor or their word. After a narrow escape in the desert
on their way to bring back their employer's wife, Lancas
ter suggests that a much more lucrative and safer employ
ment would be to hunt for gold reputedly buried in a
graveyard near by. This conversation follows:
LANCASTER: Amigo, three days ride from here we
pass another graveyard, with one big difference;
instead of dead heroes they buried gold bullion.
Two million dollars in Spanish gold, melted down
into big beautiful bars and waiting for us with
open arms. And we don't have to fight Raza to get it.
MARVIN: That couldn't be the reason you took this job.
LANCASTER: Can you think of a better reason?
MARVIN: Our word. We gave our word to bring the
woman back.
LANCASTER: My word to Grant ain't worth a plugged
nickel.
MARVIN: You gave your word to me.
It later develops that Lancaster and Marvin are
already acquainted with Raza (Palance) because they
fought with him earlier in the revolution. When Ryan
asks, "What were Americans doing in a Mexican revolution
anyway?" Lancaster answers, "Maybe there's only one
revolution since the beginning: the good guys against the
bad guys. The question is, who are the good guys?"
In The Professionals, the bad guys are not the revol-
;ionaries who have supposedly kidnapped the woman. They
_______ ft 3
are the employers, who deceive and are selfish, who try
to own other persons. And the battle between the Mexican
and the Americans is a friendly contest with the warmth
of competition between opposing football players. With
most of the men dead who have been chasing the Americans,
Lancaster and Palance have a heavy conversation in the
lull between battles.
LANCASTER: Nothing is forever except death. Ask
Francisco. Ask Fierro. Ask those in the cemetery
of nameless men.
PALANCE: They died for what they believed.
LANCASTER: The Revolution? When the shooting
stops, and the dead are buried, and the politicians
take over, it all adds up to one thing, a lost
cause.
PALANCE: So? You want perfection, or nothing.
Oh, you're too romantic, compadre. The revolution
is like a great love affair. In the beginning she
is a goddess, a holy cause. But every affair has
a terrible enemy— time. We see her as she is. The
revolution is not a goddess but a whore. She was
never pure, never saintly, never perfect. We run
away, find another lover, another cause, quick
sordid affairs. Lust, but no love; passion, but no
compassion. Without love, without a cause, we are
nothing. We stay because we believe, we leave be
cause we are disillusioned, we come back because
we are lost, we die because we are committed.
If Crisis said that revolution is not the answer,
The Professionals says revolution— or at least a cause—
is a human need. Of the three films made since The
Professionals, In Cold Blood is of the "gentle revolution
ary" tradition. Happy Ending, a more personalistic film,
_6„4
looks at the failure of the institution of .marriage. But
instead of attacking the system for its dehumanization of
the woman, it advocates more flexibility and understanding.
And Dollars looks at a corrupt system and finds some
satisfaction not in changing it, but in simply beating
it at its own game.
In Cold Blood, however, is certainly the recent
film that has been most personal to Brooks. Por a long
time he had been wanting to make a film about capital
punishment, and this book offered him that opportunity.
The screenwriting task was as difficult as any he ever
faced, adapting a very popular semi-documentary in which
the ending is already known. The result was a triumph.
The structure of the film created an inexorable thrust
forward, an inevitability that matched the seeming fate
gone wild of that horrendous murder. The sympathy created
for the boys without condoning their murders, allowed
him to add a whole second dimension to the title. As
we watch Perry drop in excruciating slow motion at the
end, the title of the film is burned in: In. Cold Blood.
Thus the title is applied to society's deliberate killing
of these men as well as to their murder of the innocent
Clutters. Society is found guilty as well.
Brooks was certainly not looking for a major over
haul of society in that film. But was he asking for
change? In an appearance made at the University of
Southern California in the Spring of 197 0, he made this
observation:
No matter whether or how much the film had to
do with it, and even if it's very little, if it
has contributed in any way, it is interesting to
note that since the day this picture was released
there is not one person in the United States who
has gone to his death as a result of capital
punishment. Not one. And I'm delighted about that.
The simple satisfaction expressed by Brooks reflects
Mayersberg's observation that Brooks believes goodness
can prevail over evil. In another place he observes
that " 'Keep Trying' is almost the essence of Brooks'
philosophy of life, in whatever environment he finds
9
himself." And why keep trying? Not out of blind fate,
but out of responsibility to one another— Integrity.
Responsibility, then, or integrity, is a recurring
motif of Brooks' films. This does not imply, however,
that there is no discernible growth in this director.
On the contrary. As noted above, Brooks' films fall into
three distinct categories. The first of these, which
might be dubbed "In the Common Interest," includes the
following eleven films: Crisis (1950), The,Light Touch
(1951), Deadline, USA (1952), Battle Circus (1952),
Take the High Ground (1953), The Flame and the Flesh (1954),
^Richard Brooks, personal interview, January 31, 1970.
^"Richard Brooks," Movie, Spring, 1965, p. 12.
66
The Last Time I_ Saw Paris (1954), The Blackboard Jungle
(1955), The Last Hunt (1955), A Catered Affair (1956),
and Something of Value (1957). Of these movies, five
are recognizable as being very close to the essential
Brooks. Of the others, only two were written by Brooks—
Take the High Ground, and The Last Time I_ Saw Paris— and
all of them can be characterized as movies-made-in-order-
to-make-another-movie. They were studio assignments and
provided little room for the inner Brooks to emerge.
The five more important pictures— Crisis, Deadline,
USA, Blackboard Jungle, The Last Hunt and Something of
Value— all deal with social issues. In these films,
integrity involves commitment to the common weal as well
as to oneself. All of them adopt an issue-oriented pos
ture, arguing the merits of freedom from oppression,
freedom of speech, social justice, and respect for life.
Dr. Ferguson, Ed Hutchinson, Rick Dadier, Sandy McKen
zie, and Peter McKenzie are all men who put their lives
at the service of others. They are men who feel a
responsibility to men and women of a larger society. This
is explored at length in chapter six.
Starting in 1958, however, with The Brothers
Karamazov, the director's preoccupation with integrity
turns inward. It becomes a more personal matter, a more
deeply spiritual concern. Dmitri Karamazov, Elmer Gantry,
67
Brick Pollitt, Chance Wayne, and Lord Jim, are not men
concerned with the issues of their day. They are con
cerned much more with their own honor and self-identity.
Still, in the process, both Elmer Gantry and Lord Jim
get caught up in one way or other with service to their
brothers and sisters. Paradoxically, as Brooks' subjects
became more intensely personal, his form became more
expansive. This could be a function of economic success.
With Sweet Bird of Youth, he went to wide screen to
accommodate the studio. And with Lord Jim, his most
personal film ever, he went to 7 0 mm. panavision. Per
haps the commercial success of his pictures demanded ever
bigger pictures, while his choice of literary projects
was not best suited to this demand.
Starting in 196 5, however, in the wake of Lord
Jim's commercial flop, Brooks returned to simpler stories
and simpler formats. In doing so he also returned to the
social issues that had characterized his earliest films.
The Professionals was a Western undertaken, Brooks claims,
as a "finger exercise." However, the quotes we have
cited here, indicate that it was more than that— a
statement about dedication to a cause and fidelity to
one's word. in Cold Blood was much more than a film
version of Truman Capote's book, it was a dissertation
on capital punishment. Happy Ending was a strong critique
________ fiR
of marriage— particularly woman's place in it— in our
society today. And Dollars was a look at the corruption
in government and big business. These later films
would seem to indicate a waning of the eternal optimism
of the "keep-trying" Brooks of earlier days, but also
indicate a revitalization of the journalist Brooks who
sees illnesses in our land and must speak his mind.
Chapters six, seven, and eight will examine these
three phases in some detail. The following chapter will
briefly introduce us to the three novels of Brooks by
way of introducing his values and ideas.
69
CHAPTER V
A brief look at the three novels of Richard Brooks
contributes to this study in two ways. It gives us a
preview of the ideas and concerns that will emerge in the
author’s films. And quite incidentally it provides us
with a foil by which to judge his struggle for economic
freedom as a movie director.
As a novelist, Brooks clearly and strongly spoke
his heart and mind. He did not have to find investors,
or someone who would risk a great amount of money, time
and energy to give him a chance. He needed only a good
story and an editor who would buy it. He could write
without fear of monetary loss or public failure. His
risk was minimal and his opportunity maximal.
The concerns he expressed in these novels emerged in
more muted form in his movies. Given the intensity of his
novel's messages and the comparatively soft film messages,
we can draw some tentative conclusions about the impact
the movie industry had on him through its financial
demands. Still, the evidence of social idealism we find
in the novels is totally consonant with the themes we
______________ 70
observe in his films. The books become external evidence
verifying what we discover through examining the films
themselves. Brooks the novelist is a journalist, and
a fighter for freedom and dignity, opposed to the
forces of prejudice and oppression. He is an admirer
of integrity. He fleshes out deeply moral or ethical
drama in external conflict to the point of melodrama.
And in three novels we find a rather comprehensive
philosophy of life.
Brooks left his first job in the movies to enlist
in the armed services. It is fair to say, based on
everything that he has since produced, that he was moved
by a sense of duty and responsibility. His country
demanded service of him; the needs of his brothers and
sisters called to him to help defend their freedoms.
The preface to The Brick Foxhole, however, suggests what
pressures this social spirit can levy on a man.
Among the millions of men in brick foxholes
(Stateside barracks), there are thousands whose lot
is the least enviable of any in the armed services.
These are the warriors who will never fight in
this war. And theirs is the task of the damned.
These are the men who because of special education
or skills are assigned to desk jobs at a time when
demonstration of true patriotism and even manhood demands
^•Richard Brooks, The Brick Foxhole (Hew York,
Simon and Schuster, 1945), p. viii.
71
the test of combat. Since such was Brooks' assignment,
he was sensitive to the pressures that weighed on such
men. He took to the battlefield in defense of liberty
and justice by way of his typewriter. There was a battle
for freedom to be fought at home as well. This struggle
for freedom from the bondage of prejudice is what The
Brick Foxhole is all about.
Set in an army barracks near Washington, D.C., the
story involves a young soldier, Jeff Mitchell, who—
assigned to the desk instead of the battlefield— "lives
in a limbo of his own where he is bedeviled by frustration,
loss of dignity, and all the most fantastic shapes that
rumor can breed.In this state of mind, and anxious
for his furlough due in two weeks when he will be able
to visit his wife he misses so much, he overhears a
conversation between two other soldiers. They are
talking about the good time one of them had had on a
recent stop in Los Angeles. All the details, the woman's
name, Mary, the description of the house, the fact that
her husband was away— all the details lead Jeff to believe
the woman being discussed is his wife. His frustration
puts into motion a series of events that leads to murder
and Jeff's eventual vindication, and reconciliation with
his wife. The novel is filled with violence which speaks
of the human destructiveness of war and prejudice. The
2Ibid.
___________________ 72
rather complex plot was later streamlined into a topnotch
police melodrama by producer Adrian Scott, released under
the name Crossfire.
After the introduction of the characters, which
exposes us to the tensions caused by prejudice against
minorities, particularly in this case, Jews and homo
sexuals, the story moves along. Jeff goes into town with
Monty Crawford and Floyd Bowers. They are picked up by
an effeminate interior designer named Edwards. They are
invited to his apartment by Edwards, but Jeff soon leaves,
upset with Monty's and Floyd's bigoted treatment of
Edwards. Jeff begins bar hopping, treated by wealthy
types who like to treat a soldier. Lonely, however,
he eventually goes to a whorehouse. There he spends
time with a sensitive, almost unattractive girl. They
talk at length, and when he has a malaria attack she
gives him the key to her apartment.
In the meantime, Edwards has been murdered. Bowers
has disappeared. And Monty is laying all the blame on
Jeff, while trying to seem like he's defending Jeff.
Jeff's commanding officer, Keeley, puts out the word to
find Jeff before the police do. As Jeff leaves the
whore's apartment a soldier locates him and holes up
with him in an all-night theater, where Keeley comes
to hear the whole story. Meanwhile, Keeley has also
had Jeff's wife flown in because of Jeff's earlier
___________________________ _ _ _ _ _______________ U l
distress, and she upon arrival hears, the whole story.
Jeff then gives himself up, while Keeley and Mary try
to find the whore to get corroboration for the alibi.
When they find her she first refuses to corroborate, but
finally does. At that point, her boyfriend, who had
also happened upon Jeff in the apartment seconds the
information.
Keeley, in a climactic scene, confronts Monty,
the real killer, on the army base, and physically attacks
him. They kill each other.
The novel's motivation leaves something to be
desired since it places an urgency on Jeff's wife and
commanding officer to vindicate their husband and friend.
Any rational investigation would seem to be able to
turn up the necessary information. But because of the
high emotion involved in the confrontation of good and
evil, the story carries the reader through.
Of more interest to us here is the nature of that
good and evil. Killing, in this novel, is considered
as American as apple pie. Justified by war, it makes
killing the ultimate act of manhood. When Jeff is
first distressed to reach his conclusions about his
wife's infidelity, Keeley reflects, "He knew then that
Jeff, like so many others, who were trapped in their
_______________ 7 _ 4
o
barracks, would never, be satisfied until he had killed."
America may be fighting for freedom, but what did this
mean?
Liberty, humanity, freedom were merely words. Many
of the men who had fought on Eniwetok and Kwajalein
and Guadalcanal had peculiar ideas about liberty and
justice which sounded like white supremacy and
Protestant justice.
Monty, the villain of the novel, is characterized
as a former policeman, previously acquitted on three
charges of manslaughter in the line of duty— two Negroes
and a Jew. He talks of other ethnic groups only in
pejorative terms— wop, frog, nigger. He hates Jews.
This was the kind of person for whom the war was most
meaningful, a chance to solidify supremacy.
Army regulations also worked against the humanity
of its men. They kept husbands and wives from sleeping
together, and tried to keep all its men at a killing
edge. Jeff, in a conversation, muses, "War was the
lack of everything for which you were supposed to be
fighting.in another place he reflects:
If a man were sage enough to think of a better
world where justice was the keynote and tolerance
was thrown in for good measure and understanding was
the icing on the cake, he also was able to estimate
the price of death and gauge the temper of his
hatred. Such a man did not easily lend himself to
an amphibious operation after four weeks in a rathole
3Ibid., p. 23. ^Ibid. ^Ibid. p. 70.
__________________________________________________________________________ 23.
called a transport. The best hunters are those who
have no qualms about the hunted. The best soldiers
are those who enjoy the pastittle of killing.
The Brick Foxhole, then, is an anti-war and anti
prejudice work. It speaks in favor of human concern,
reasonableness, justice and tolerance. Brooks is a man
who has always considered a better world. And this again
is the subject of his next novel, The Boiling Point.
As noted above, The Brick Foxhole, was turned into
the movie Crossfire, which was a commercial success and
received five Academy Award nominations. Although homo
sexuality was a taboo subject in Hollywood, the movie
story improves as it simplifies the motivation. The
motion picture is not anti-war and is not anti-prejudice
in a general way. It is specifically anti-anti-Semitic.
Edwards is killed because Monty hates Jews. In any case,
it was one of the first pictures to deal with anti-Semi
tism, although it was overshadowed by Gentleman1s
Agreement, which was released the same year.
Paul Rotha, in The Film Till Now applauds Crossfire
for dealing with social issues in an entertaining way.
William Wyler's The Best Years of Our Lives, Capra's
It's a Wonderful Life, Edward Dmytryk's Crossfife
are calls to sanity and reason. • They approach real
issues. They use with skill and taste the techniques
of popular entertainment. They are successful, if
unconstructive. It is not too much to say that they
represent the most intelligent way to use the mass
'6Ibid. , p. 24 .
76
media in the public interest.^
If Brooks ever read this statement he must have
taken heart. His own movie career might well be summarized
in just that way.
The Boiling Point, Brooks' second novel, published
in 1948,.takes up again the cause of a better world with
justice and tolerance. This story is set in the Southwest.
At issue is political.freedom, economic justice for the
poor and powerless, and reform of the system that creates
a privileged class.
Roy Nielson is a local war hero who is not
interested in causes, but at the same time has deep
friendship with the poor sharecroppers, and is alienated
by the bigoted people who dominate the town. It is an
election year and both sides want Roy's help. On one
hand is Frank Shelby, a young reformer running against
the corrupt boss, Gerholt. Frank Shelby had come to the
area in recent years to organize the poor to work
together. He is considered to be a commie. Dan Corcoran,
a former garage business partner of Roy's had been a
socialist idealogue, but was frustrated by his inability
to take principled action.
He had been a firm believer in socialism, but he
never joined the Socialist Party. He had written
^Paul Rotha, The Film Till Now {'London, Spring
Books, 1967), p. 468.
77
a long letter to Eugene Debs when Debs was on trial.
But he had never mailed the letter. He had prepared
a speech when Sacco and Vanzetti had been executed.
It had been his intention to go to the courthouse
and deliver it from the steps.8
On the Gerholt side of the conflict was the local
newspaper publisher, as well as Commander Claude Turner,
a young man heading a Veteran's Social Organization that
was actually a group of goons funded by Gerholt to get
rid of "troublemakers." Turner was
...anti-negro, anti-Mexican, anti-labor, anti-Russian,
anti-European, anti-Asiatic, anti-Republican Party,
etc. But this still did not seem to disqualify him
from patriotic impulses.... People thought that
some day Turner would kill somebody, but they were
sure it would be in a good cause.
In between the two camps is the local Jewish
retailer, Al Hirtz, who would prefer to escape his
Jewishness, but cannot escape his inbred idealism.
Roy is the reluctant hero, the loner who in the
end realizes he cannot stand alone, and rallies his
friends to work together.
Frank Shelby, aided in his attempts at community
organization by Roy's close friend Gene Ramsey, runs into
forceful opposition through the press and through the
Turner organization. Tenant farmers who dare to talk of
organization are kicked off the land. Gene Ramsey is
^Richard Brooks, The Boiling Point (New York,
Simon and Schuster, 1948), p. 70.
^Ibid., p. 2 0.
78
njurdered when he attempts to interrupt a Gerholt rally.
Dan Corcoran turns his land over to the evicted farmers,
and then accidentally kills himself while trying to
assassinate Gerholt.
Roy is arrested for the murder of Ramsey, but the
Sheriff knows better. He releases Roy and gets infor
mation against Turner. But action is happening fast by
this time, and justice is not to be won through the due
process of law. The people who have gathered on
"Corcoran's Hope" know that Turner's goons will be
arriving to drive them off with guns, and they have no
spirit to resist. Roy, however, rallies them to stick
together to achieve their rights. The Sheriff joins
them, the people take new resolve, and the defense of
their land and lives begins.
Twenty-seven years after he had written this book,
Brooks once said in an interview:
I don't understand how a Catholic, a Jew, a black
man, or a Mexican can be prejudiced. If a Catholic
can be prejudiced, if a Jew has prejudices or biases
that distort, or a black man, then itis perfectly
logical for the Munich Olympics to be forgotten and
Arafat to appear at the United Nations.^
This dismay at prejudice and the structures that
foster it are reflected in the speech that Roy gives
to the sharecroppers who would concede defeat to Turner
and Gerholt. And the same message is found in the first
■^Richard Brooks, private interview, November 15,
1974.
79
film he. directed, Crisis. Justice does not demand the
replacement of one tyranny with another. It demands a
change in the system.
"Yea," said Roy slowly, "yea, tell them— the
farmers— that no matter what they decide to do, it's
got to be their decision and not anybody else's.
Tell them they got truth on their side, but it
ain't because they're the majority. Being a majority-
don't mean you’re right. As for politics putting
bread in your mouth, maybe that's so and maybe it
ain't, I don't rightly know. But winning the election
don't win you any special privileges over anybody
else. Privilege ain't the private property of your
crowd, or any crowd. You're raising hell now because
Gerholt and Knabb and the rest took away your
privileges. If you do the same thing to somebody
else you'll be no better than the other gang."
"You sound like you're talking for Gerholt,"
said Shelby.
"I'm talking for me," said Roy sharply. "I'm
talking for Al Hirtz who's got privileges coming
to him, and for the nigger who's got privileges
coming to him, and for all the rest of the folks
who go to make up the people. They all got rights.
Every minority. So when you go back to your folks,
Jed, you tell 'em that. Tell 'em if they want to
stay, from now on there ain't going to be any more
segregation around here. None at all. If you want
to be in the right, then you got to be all right,
not half right. ^
All right, not half right. Integrity, principle, justice.
Brooks. The Boiling Point would have made a good movie.
But at a time when the House Committee on Un-American
Activities was combing Hollywood for Communists, there
was no way such a story would make it to the screen.
The pressures of the House Committee on Un-American
■^Richard Brooks, The Boiling Point (New York,
Simon and Schuster, 1948), pp. 315-16.
80
Activities showed up explicitly in Brooks' next novel,
The Producer. This novel, published in 1951, included
a character named Vince Trahan who took it upon himself
to "purify" Hollywood of Reds and "lefties" through
maintaining lists and appealing to every Hollywood figure
to support him through signatures and/or money. Few had
the courage to resist for fear of being attacked them
selves .
This is only one of the many pressures faced by
the protagonist of The Producer, Matt Gibbons. The story
line is simple enough. Matt, as an independent producer,
is challenged to make a good picture that he believes in,
a picture that is enough of a commercial success to allow
him to make another picture. The underlying question is
whether or not Matt will maintain his worn-thin integrity
or independence. The alternative is to cave in totally
to the demands and expectations of the studio and
outside pressures.
The immediate problem is stated in the first two
pages of the novel. Matt cannot sleep. His unproduced
script has become an instrument of torture. Writer and
director had been hired, a studio had provided backing.
Now the responsibility was his. "And this was the thing
that would not let him sleep, this responsibility, this
knowledge that if he failed he would not get another
81
such c h a n c e . "12 And t h e script was t h e key. Not only
had his screenwriter turned his story into a cliche.
"Most of all, it was not what he had set out to do.
in stark contrast to the typical Hollywood novel,
peeking in on all the pseudo-glamour of the stars, this
novel is a journalist's look at the pressures that wash
in waves over every serious and trivial enterprise in
Hollywood. One chapter even takes a look at the
producer's budget breakdown and discusses the reasons
why a picture must recoup two-to-three times the negative
cost before it becomes a profit-maker. As it stands, the
novel is a fictional paradigm for this dissertation.
The social weather to which any picture was
susceptible is summed up in this long, slightly exag
gerated quote. The pressures listed here were very real
when Brooks began directing. If they are out of date
today, each pressure that has been eliminated has been
supplanted with a new one. And this is only the tip of
the iceberg.
To earn a million five, Matt's picture actually
would have to gross three million. Perhaps that was
possible If he got Steve Taggart to play the leading
role, and if the Breen Office okayed the picture,
and iJE the American Legion liked the picture (.if
they didn't they boycotted and picketed and got
■j n
■^Richard Brooks, The Producer (New York, Simon
and Schuster, 19 51), p. 4.
13Ibid.
82
the mothers and Boy Scouts of America against your
picture), and if the Legion of Decency gave your
picture a good rating (if- they gave it a bad rating
your picture was spoken against from the pulpit and
Catholics didn't go to see it and even if you wanted
to brave that possibility the exhibitors did not.)
And if other religious groups didn't fasten on to
your picture for an abstruse remark, and if racial
groups didn't bring pressure against you, and i£
labor groups did't boycott your picture at their
executive meetings (which they might do and did),
and if the many and various chambers of commerce
and medical profession and legal profession and the
South and every other class or group didn't hang a
ban on you— then it was even money that your picture
might be more mediocre and the public might not want
to see it in the last place. And if all went well,
you had to make all your money back in the United
States because the European market was shot and
what money did accrue was held frozen; Asia had no
current box office value; South America had some
and even there several states held the currency
frozen.^
The first specific pressures that emerge in the
novel center on the script. Conferences with screen
writer and director had resulted in modifying the "real"
characters to more conventional types. Then he had shown
the script to the female star he wanted. "She had wanted
her part built up. If this were done, the screenwriter
said, the story would be ruined.Before the
negotiations were over, a new writer had been hired,
but a lesser known female star had to be considered in
order to stay within budget.
There are other pressures, more subtle. Columnists
who carry weight in the Hollywood village must be
^ Ibid. , pp. 53-54. -^Ibid. , p. 14
8J
carefully cultivated and awarded. The novel is set at
Christmas time and the value of presents becomes a matter
of moment.
Another pressure is "giving the people what they
want." In a script conference the "real" picture Matt
wants to tell is challenged as not being entertainment.
Matt disagrees. But deep down he is not so sure. The
key is a new writer, not part of the Hollywood scene,
who has the independence to write what he believes.
Besides a good screenwriter, Matt had a second thing on
his side. Steve Taggart, superstar, was willing to do
the picture on the condition that John Shea did the
script. The package was beginning to come together.
At this point; the sub-plot begins to intertwine,
which will further highlight the question of integrity
in Matt's case and which will provide part of the
resolution. A young, fresh producer named MabDonald
comes to Matt for advice. He has written a story which
he feels very strongly about. The studio will buy the
story, but only if they are allowed to make changes
that MacDonald feels will water it down. Matt has the
reputation for fighting for what he believes in, and this
has brought MacDonald to his office. This exchange from
that scene is noted here because it' stands as a statement
of a great deal of the Brooks philosophy of film making:
"Why do you want to make pictures, anyway?"
84
"The same reason as you."
"What's that?"
"We've got something to say and we can say it
best with film."
"Say what?"
"A story/" said MacDonald. "We're storytellers."
"What kind of stories?"
"About us. About you and me and our friends and
people we know and how they get born and how they
live and how they die and how they love and how they
hate and how they pray and what for and what they
want and what they've got and what they haven't got.
I don't know. There's stories in me, stories about
America, and I want to tell them, same as you, the
best way I know how and in a way that people will
understand them."6
Matt's advice is not to accept compromise with the
studio, to take his story and wait until he can get it
done intact. MacDonald, having heard what he wants to
hear, takes the advice.
Matt, however, is not afraid to compromise. That is
the only way he will get to the screen, and nothing is
more important than that. This compromised success will
give him the leverage next time to do it his own way,
he reasons. That becomes the goal.
He does compromise in negotiations with the Breen
Office. He makes changes to please the studio head's
wife and to avoid any possible charge of racism. And he
^Ibid. , p . 76 .
__________________________________________________ 85
modifies the script to make the staging more economical.
However, when it comes to pressure to withdraw John Shea's
screen credit because he is alleged to have Communist
sympathies, Matt draws the line.
The picture is a success. Matt has further proved
himself. Finally he has the opportunity to make the
pictures he said he wanted to make. But there is a new
compromise in store. A flag waving, ,anti-Communist
congressman is in town, and Mr. Flax, the studio head,
assuages him by assigning the hot new producer to the
congressman's dream project, a Christians-and-lions
production called Nero.
Matt wants no part of it until the deal is sweetened
with an accompanying job as head of studio production. He
weakens. In the meantime, MacDonald has come back to Matt,
his picture unmade. His good advice from Matt to maintain
full integrity has gotten him nowhere. He is now willing
to do anything, to change his picture in any way, just
to get on the inside of the Hollywood mill. In an
emotional confrontation with the drunk MacDonald, Matt
sees himself and his compromises and all their implica
tions . The novel ends with Matt accepting his own
compromises, but maintaining his own idealism by providing
new support for the likes of MacDonald. He agrees to make
Nero and to accept the studio job only on the condition
86
that the studio back MacDonald in doing the script the
way MacDonald wants.
These three novels show us an author concerned about
integrity, about a better world achieved without violence
or new injustice, and concerned about telling stories that
hold the mirror up to real life. We see the pressures
that militate against doing this in Hollywood. And we
see it all through the journalist's eye, trained to seek
out the truth, and to ask who, where, when, and above all,
why. The remaining chapters trace the fictional concerns
expressed in The Producer as they emerged in the real life
of the novel's author.
87
CHAPTER VI
"The time is now. The scene of the action is
fictitious, but the forces at play in this story are not
fictitious." These words are the prologue to the film
Crisis. They might also stand as the prologue to the
directing career of Ribhard Brooks. As was discussed in
the previous chapter, Brooks is a reporter in search of
uplifting Truth. Entertainment is his medium--a medium
he is exceptionally skilled at— but his goal is Truth.
This was apparent in his first directing job, and it is
apparent in his most recent. Crisis was the auspicious
beginning of a long career. Within the tight limitations
of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Brooks the writer was flowering,
Brooks the director was budding, and Brooks the fighter
for integral vision on the screen was discovering new
thorns among the blooms.
A screen writer can see his vision rise or fall
with casting, with choice of director, with budget, and
hundreds of other variables. It was casting that kept
Brooks from directing the first picture he wrote for MGM,
and it was casting that made it possible for him to direct
__________________________________________________________________________ as
the second.
Brooks1 first writing assignment at MGM was the
adaptation of a novel entitled Any Number Can Play. It
was to be written with Clark Gable playing the hero. It
concerned a wealthy gambler, Charlie Kyng, whose ownership
and management of a casino causes embarrassment and
distress for his family, but who operates his business
according to rigid principles of honesty. His brother-
in-law, Robbie, who works for Kyng, is not so honest,
however. Robbie owes cheap gangsters $2,000, and so he
rigs dice in Charlie's casino to win $4,000. In the end
Charlie loses his gambling business but regains his wife
and son. A dated film today, its ethic is heavily anti
gambling and pro-integrity. Its dialogue, in the style
that from the beginning has been a hallmark of Brooks,
is punchy and direct, with scenes that end in succinct
one-liners.
This film would have been a good candidate for
Brooks' direction, since its essential elements are close
to the real Brooks. This is particularly true of the main
character who stood apart from society's expectations by
engaging in gambling, but who stood determined within that
arena to maintain his wholeness as a man by remaining
scrupulously honest and unafraid. Casting, however, was
an obstacle--not to a good film, but to the choice of
director. Clark Gable exercised his option to approve
_________________ as
the director. He- did not want to risk the limitations of
a new director's first effort. So Mervyn Leroy directed
this Charles Freed production.
On the other hand, it was another actor, Cary Grant,
who leaned in favor of Brooks. Precast for Brooks' second
main screenplay, Crisis, Grant was of the opinion that
no one knew better than the writer what the story was all
about. Grant suggested that Brooks be allowed to direct.
He was. In his directing effort, an excellent beginning,
Brooks discovered that every solution brings a new
problem. Control gained means control to be sought.
Crisis contains virtually all the elements that
become identified with Richard Brooks through regular
recurrence in some twenty-one films. The prologue that
begins this chapter is one. "The time is now. The scene
of the action is fictitious, but the forces at play in.
this story are not fictitious." The time, whether set in
twentieth century South America, nineteenth century Russia,
or contemporary United States, is always now to Brooks.
And the forces at play in the story always have something
to tell us today.
The very use of a prologue is a common occurrence
in a Brooks film, as is the use of a philosophical
peroration at the conclusion of his most personal films.
This predilection springs, perhaps, from his desire to
be understood, as well as a feeling of responsibility that
________________________________________________________________ 90
he is willing to make clear. While he frequently
challenges cultural suppositions, it is not for the sake
of controversy, headlines, or money. It is for the sake
of raising awareness, of helping build a better world.
Crisis is a story about revolution— its necessity
and its evil. It stars Cary Grant as an American brain
surgeon, Dr. Eugene Ferguson, who is vacationing with his
bride (Paula Raymond) in an unnamed Latin American
country. Dr. Ferguson is abducted by the local leadership
to help save the life of the country's dictator by per
forming an operation. Unhappy about being forcibly
detained, but matter of fact about his hippocratic oath,
the doctor agrees to operate. It is clear from the
beginning that the doctor is not only a man of principle,
he is a man of habit. In matters involving his own life
and preference, he can be very firm in looking after his
own self-interest. Thus it is that he agrees to operate
on the dictator, Raoul Farrago (Jose Ferrer), only on the
condition that Ferguson maintain his complete freedom to
see the country with his wife as they please. Subsequent
ly, after the observation of an ugly incident that
frightens his wife, he proceeds with the operation only
after his wife is given a military escort to leave the
country in safety.
On the other hand, Ferguson is totally dispassionate
about his professional life. Medical ethics demands that
91
he save a life when he can, even though he has no political
sympathy for that person. Immediately after accepting
his assignment to remove Farrago's brain tumor (an image
indicating madness of the man who needs to be saved),
Ferguson takes a firm stance in a local nightclub on
behalf of anti-Farrago dissidents who have gathered there.
Characteristically, however, Brooks does not paint
the picture black and white. Farrago is not all evil,
and the revolutionaries are not all good. Farrago does
express genuine concern for people, albeit in a conde
scending way. When Ferguson demands his freedom within
the country, he and Farrago discuss their ideas about the
value and importance of freedom.- While they agree on
the value of it in principle, Farrago demurs with an
attitude that still is heard today. He says,
"It is not an easy thing, this freedom, Doctor....
Freedom means respect for the law, for property,
responsibility."
In the end, Farrago proves to have a point. The
revolutionaries, using the same tactics as their dictator,
abduct Ferguson's wife as she is being ushered from the
country. They send a note to Ferguson threatening to
kill his wife if he operates on the dictator. Farrago's
wife, however, intercepts it. Ferguson operates on
schedule. The dictator's life is saved. Their ploy
having failed, the dissidents undertake a military coup
and capture the palace. Because of the excitement,
92
Farrago has a brain hemmorhage and dies. The. dissident
leader ( ‘ Gilbert Roland) , upon occupation of the palace,
assumes the attitudes and authoritarian language of the
dead dictator. And in the process he receives a gunshot
wound. The film ends with the new dictator calling out
to Ferguson, "Doctor, save me." Ferguson replies, "The
same old cry down through the ages, .'Doctor save me.'"
The doctor's words can be interpreted in more than
one way. On one level, he is saying that we are all the
same. Oppressor, oppressed and unoppressed, we all need
help. We all have the same needs. But on a slightly
more symbolic level, he is also saying that suppression
of freedom is a sickness or madness that constantly calls
for a cure, and that supplanting one tyranny with another
is never a cure.
This then becomes the central point of the movie:
forces of madness— here, of a political nature— are at
play in our world that effectively diminish both
political and personal freedom. This madness calls for
a cure. But the cure does not lie in violent revolution.
It lies in a more humane, disinterested attempt to care
for one another. What is more clear is that the solution
does not lie in violent conflict. Violent acts only
beget violent acts. Compassion and the sacrifice of
self-interest to the common good are evident here and
become increasingly clear in the light of later films
_______________________________________________ 92
as the positive solution to social evils.
It is notable that the central point of this movie,
and all of Brooks' more important movies, is formulated
in•terms of issues and causes rather than just in terms
of individual personal growth or fulfillment. The most
personal Brooks films are concerned with the public
interest.
There is always, however, attention given to
individuality in Brooks' films. This attention concerns
the individual's need for integrity. Integrity is what
makes a person whole, truthful and fearless. Manhood
(Brooks is not a male chauvinist filmmaker, he is a
liberationist on all counts of personhood, including
femininity— consider The Happy Ending— but in fact most
of his films are about men)--manhood is defined in terms
of personal integrity rather than in terms of physical
prowess or sexuality. To Brooks integrity means making
deliberate moral choices. It was a deliberate choice
based on medical ethics to save Farrago's life.
Ferguson's dilemma was the conviction on one hand that he
should save human life when possible; and on the other
hand by letting an oppressor die, he might be performing
helpful surgery on a societal illness. By saving Farrago
would the doctor be cooperating in evil?
The choice and its resolution would have been much
clearer (although it is unmistakably present in the
________________________________________________________________ 94
existing version) had not the studio, demanded a change from
the way Brooks originally shot it. The final scene
initially did not have Farrago dying of a cerebral
hemmorhage. Rather, Ferguson, upon learning that his
wife's death threat was kept from him, takes a gun and
shoots Farrago. Thus, according to Brooks, FergUson would
first, as a doctor, save the dictator, and would then,
as a man, kill him. The dispassionate professional,
and the passionate man. Thus does Richard Brooks emerge
from his own films.
Another change demanded by the studio also high
lights a Brooks scripting characteristic. The love
interest between the doctor and his wife was not originally
in the story. To preserve the image of their star, Cary
Grant, the studio needed love interest. The original
Brooks version had Dr. Ferguson traveling with his nine-
year-old daughter. In the mind of Brooks there would be
more tension for the doctor under those circumstances
than if he were concerned only for the safety of a wife.
Even as it is, the love interest is slight. It might be
argued that paternal love carries more responsibility
than romantic love. To Brooks, social and familial
responsibility, not personal romance, is a matter of
great moment.
Social responsibility also triumphs over personal
romance in perhaps the most deeply personal movie Brooks
________________________ 95_
ever made, Deadline, U.S.A . He made this picture at.
Twehtieth-Cen.tury-.Fox during the period following Crisis
when Brooks had been knocking about at MGM, making five
pictures that may have served as a valuable apprentice
ship, particularly in learning to work with actors. The
five films were not all bad, but they certainly were not
vehicles for the real Brooks. Their titles' were The Light
Touch, Battle Circus, Take the High Ground, The Flame and
the Flesh, and The Last Time I E Saw Paris. Later, after
the breakthrough of Blackboard Jungle, Brooks directed
his last "non-Brooks" film, A Catered Affair.
The Light Touch was written by Brooks with Cary
Grant in mind. However Grant had other commitments and
so the studio assigned it to Stewart Granger. The film,
about an art heist in Italy, lacks the light touch, but
it moves along with vigor. Even in that minor work,
Brooks emerges to the degree that the art thief is
reformed by his artist wife's unselfish love. The
dialogue is characteristically crisp, with a great deal
of attention given in the direction to "texture"— a
feeling for the physical place and time. Shooting on
location in Italy and Tunis, Brooks makes the landscape,
seascape and cityscape work for the story. Brooks from
the beginning seemed to have the ability to integrate
all elements of his story into a tangible unity, to
effectively have his budget reflected on the screen.
____________ 96
There has to be an exception to prove the rule, of
course* It is The Flame and the Flesh. Undoubtedly the
fact that Brooks did not write the script had something
to do with it. Certainly the motivation of the studio in
making it, and the influence of the actors had something
to do with it.
MGM had money tied up in Italy and wanted to make
use of it. They also had Lana Turner on their hands, who
wanted to work overseas to take advantage of the tax law
that allowed her to work outside the States for up to
eighteen months without having to pay federal income tax.
The final circumstance was the studio's ownership of the
story. One did not have to worry about getting its
money back. It was not a fancy picture, and it had the
necessary elements to get out the first-flush audience.
It had production value, sex, action, romance, locations.
Couldn't lose. All it lacked was a story. In a series
of episodes loosely strung together, Lana Turner tempts
and taunts and walks away from Bonar Colleano and Carlos
Thompson, while Pier Angeli looks pitifully on. No wonder
that the camera turns for relief . so frequently to the
beautiful port of Naples. If the characters lacked
authenticity, the scenery did not.
Battle Circus and Take the High Ground were war
pictures. From reading The Brick Foxhole, and from
allusions and comments from many Brooks films, we know that
______________________________________________________________________ ____91
Brooks is basically anti-war. This may in part account
for the. comparative lack of "Brooks" that shows in them.
The Brooks here is mostly external— succinct and amusing
dialogue, fast pacing, fine performances by the actors.
Millard Kaufman wrote, and received an Academy Award
nomination for the script of Take the High Ground. It
glorified the Drill Instructor in a marine basic training
camp. Battle Circus was written by Brooks about a MASH
unit in Korea. The inhumanity of war begins to show
through in this picture starring Humphrey Bogart and
June Allyson. But therein lay the rub. Brooks wanted
to make a picture about man's responsibility to man.
MGM wanted a love story. Of course the studio won.
Brooks later reflected:
I learnt on Battle Circus and I was convinced
of it after The Last Time i E Saw Paris that unless
I could do things the way I felt them, I would
have to get out of MGM. Because the thing that
was wrong with Battle Circus was that there always
had to be a non-motivated love story attached to a
piece of material. Everything had to have the MGM
stamp, every film had to look a certain way, and I
wasn't established enough to say I don't want to
do that because I had to pay some bills and I was
under a seven-year contract.1
During this period of his career. Brooks was owned
by the studio. Although as a writer he could take
initiative in suggesting stories, he worked by assignment.
He was assigned cast and technicians. And as for the
■^"Richard Brooks," Movie, Spring, 1965, p. 4
J L 8 J
editing, he was a director not an editor. Consequently,
he was not permitted to leave his niche. As a craftsman,
he was not impeded and the studio was well-pleased. But
as a man he was thwarted. His personal concerns and
feelings were allowed no place in the studio scheme of
things.
The last picture assigned to Brooks during this
early finger exercise phase was The Last Time T Saw Paris,
based on the short story of F. Scott Fitzgerald,
"Babylon Revisited." The story had been enlarged by
Julius and Phillip G. Epstein, to give all the background
of tragic romance that led to the father's loss of his
child to foster parents, his return to seek custody of
the child and his failure to achieve his goal. The
father and child part was the original Fitzgerald story.
The tragic romance part was created as a vehicle for
Van Johnson and Elizabeth Taylor. The result was a soap
opera that Brooks was assigned to update in time from the
twenties to the fifties. And yet it was soap opera with
a certain amount of style, flair, and entertaining action.
Again, a quote from Brooks perhaps best tells the
tensions that helped create his urgency to gain control
over his films. Part of the reason for control is based
on professional pride, but part is based on the need to
say the things important to Brooks the man. And finally,
freedom itself is important to Brooks, the director and
__________________________________________________________________________
the man.
Part of it was good, part was much, too sentimental.
It was based on a Scott Fitzgerald short story,
"Babylon Revisited." They had bought a screenplay by
the Epstein brothers, who were very good writers.
They had written it in the period, and Dore Schary,
who was running the studio at that time, thought
that any picture in that period would be disastrous
financially. After all, love is love. "A tree's a
tree, a rock is a rock. Shoot it in Griffith Park."
...Well, "love is love," that's quite true. But that
particular kind of love was indigenous to the twenties.
The Last Time I Saw Paris was cast before I came
on it, and a rewrite had already been started to
update it to the Second World War. That's one
reason the picture comes apart. But the major
reason is that the studio executives of that time
were overly sentimental....At that time I hadn't
made any really successful pictures. I mean, they
had not made much money. It was a matter of just
holding on to try to get together another picture.
Part of it was my fault. I can't blame them for
it. They had their policy. I should just not
have gone along with it.^
But if MGM offered frustration by assignment to
Brooks, the resulting pictures acted as a foil to the
kind of pictures that Brooks really wanted to make.
The same year that he made Battle Circus, he also made
Deadline, U.S.A.
Deadline, U.S.A., was an original screenplay that
did not fit into the MGM mold. But Darryl Zanuck of
Twentieth Century-Fox was willing to take a chance with
it— -a chance involving no great risk, since Bogart had
committed himself to the picture. Bogey also had worked
2
Ibid., p. 5.
1-001
on Battle Circus and was a long-time friend of Brooks, It
was Bogey who. had first read The: Brick Foxhole and turned
it over to Mark Hellinger who was instrumental in having
it produced. While Zanuck demanded some minor changes in
the Deadline script, the film is wholly Brooks.
Deadline is a story about journalism. It is a
story about freedom, and freedom of ideas in particular.
It is about professionalism, it is about sacrificing
self-interest to the common good, it is about fighting
corruption, and it is about integrity. It is also a
movie that wears very well with age.
Deadline is a story about the closing of a newspaper.
It was inspired by the demise of The World in New York,
and undoubtedly recalls the feelings felt by a young and
dedicated reporter named Brooks who was writing for the
Philadelphia Record when it folded. Brooks always has
a slight attraction for melodrama in his writing,.and
the original working title was The Day the World Ended.
It betrays the very deep feeling Brooks consistently
shows for the search for Truth which being a newspaperman
represented to him.
Ed Hutchinson (Humphrey Bogart) is the editor of
The Day, a big city daily. As the story opens, a local
Mafia type, Rienzi (Martin Gabel), is under investigation
by the local government, but no hard evidence is available
to pin him down. At the same time, the nude body of a
... _ ..... m i
young blonde has just been fished from the river. The
manner in which these two stories are handled tells us
a great deal about the characters and about their author.
While the stories are coming in, we get a feeling for the
newsroom that is at least as good as the atmosphere in
any of the best newspaper movies ever made. Brooks'
typical attention to creating authentic ambience is near
its peak here. It also stands as a fine example of the
way Brooks ordinarily inserts exposition unobtrusively.
During the editorial discussion, Hutchinson is twice
interrupted to remind him of his lateness for a meeting
in "the Dome." Going straight from his editorial meeting
to the Dome, he learns that within a couple of days,
The Day will be sold', that in a couple of weeks it will
be out of business. And thus in a dynamic opening all
of the elements are introduced, characters established
and the problem locked. It is a classic opening in the
traditional Aristotelian sfyle of drama.
As was mentioned above, the way the Rienzi story
and the drowned nude story are handled highlights the
values celebrated in this film. Regarding the dead woman—
"looks like a murder," says the reporter— the editor
instructs that it should be put in the second section,
playing it down. No pictures. With regard to the Rienzi
story, a reporter wants to be released for a week to
pursue the story. No, says, Hutchinson, it's a waste of
. 102-
time. "Not if we can prove he's guilty," says the
reporter. Hutchinson responds, "It's not our job to
prove he's guilty. We're not detectives and we're not
in the crusading business." Still,' in the end, the
editor gives him three days. As the story develops,
however, we see that while the editor does not see him
self as a crusader, he most certainly does see himself
as a champion of the public welfare.
Upstairs in the Dome, Hutchinson meets with the
widow and two daughters of the late publisher of the
paper, John Garrison. When told that the paper is being
sold, Hutchinson's main concern is the identity of the
buyer. He is right in guessing that it is being bought
by a competitor to put The Day out of business. At this
he appeals to Mrs. Garrison:
"Mrs. Garrison, you have to stop them. Your
husband created a new kind of journalism and you
helped him. Take a look at the first paper you
ever printed. Here, page one, quote:'This paper
will fight for progress and reform, will never be
satisfied with merely printing the news, will
never be afraid to attack wrong, whether by
predatory wealth, or predatory poverty.' You're
not selling The Day. You're killing it."
The urgency of this matter to Hutchinson is
precisely one of public interest. He is not worried about
finding another job. Indeed, his share of the sale is to
be $50,000, in tribute to his leadership at the paper.
Nor is it a matter of pride. As he eventually argues in
court, the loss of a major paper in a city lessens the
_________________________ 103
compet.ition in the marketplace of ideas, and makes, the
public more susceptible to idea control by the few people
running the media monopoly in a given city.
In any event, horns are locked. Is there any way
to turn around the. decision of the newspaper's heirs?
The answer is in the news stories that have just come
in. As the plot evolves, Ed Hutchinson and The Day are
the only ones who cannot be bought by Rienzi; and when
evidence does come to light, are the only ones who have
the courage to print it. (Ghostly foreshadowing of
Watergate?)
The reaction of the news staff to the probable
demise of The Day could best be characterized as
"professional." When one reporter is found to have lo
cated a new job already he calls down the wrath of his
peers. Hutchinson offers them all the chance to quit
or to wait out the probate court decision. Says-one v
reporter to another, "What about you, Harry?" asks the
reporter of another. "There's still a sports page to get
out," is the reply.
In an interlude that follows we get further charac
terization. We also get some Brooks doctrine. In a very
moving party scene at a local bar— from his first film
Brooks has shown a knack for feeling, movement, orchestra
tion in crowd scenes--the staff hearkens back to the
104
9l ^
? i A»
V 'A'
/£V*»
r s v
V 4,
Vcv t
V 'A
\ < C
\ .
inspiring publisher who hired them, and welded them into
the best newspaper staff in the city. One tipsy repor
ter recalls his interview with Garrison. "Are you a
journalist or a reporter," he said. "What's the
difference," I said. "A journalist makes himself the hero
of the story, a reporter is always a witness."
A witness. To the truth. Brooks' world is one of
objective truth, of right and wrong, or morality and
immorality. Without claiming any religious grounds, his
characters are firmly on the side of right and justice.
His is not the world of hedonism. Nor is it the world
of self-righteous preaching. Nor yet again is it a
world lost in the fog of illusion and unreality. His
characters see themselves clearly enough. They recognize
their failings and their sins, and call them by their
name. And in dealing with these sins they achieve or
maintain personal integrity. So Hutchinson has failed
in his marriage and in spite of his resolutions, his
marriage to the newspaper continually takes precedence
over his personal life and his wife Nora. He loves
Nora. She loves him. But in the end she marries
someone else because his journalist's instinct is stronger
than his marital instinct.
At this point a minor scene in the picture should be
noted. A throwaway scene, it illustrates two important
aspects of Brooks. As the party winds down and Hutchin-
1 . 0 - 5 . ]
son is- alone at a piano pi inking a tune, a young man
approaches, him to ask for a job. He offers a letter of
recommendation from his journalism professors. The
following dialogue takes place:
HUTCHINSON: So you want to be a newspaper man. A
newspaperman is the best profession in the world.
Know what a profession is?
STUDENT: It's your own job.
HUTCHINSON: Heh, heh. So's repairing watches.
Nope. A profession's the performance for the
public good. That's why newspaper work is a
profession. I suppose you want to be a columnist.
STUDENT: Foreign correspondent— to Egypt.
HUTCHINSON: Speak Arabic?
STUDENT: No sir, but...
HUTCHINSON: But you do know the customs, habits,
religion, superstitions of the people.
STUDENT: Well, I took a course in Near Eastern...
HUTCHINSON: Do you know the psychology of Egyptian
politics and Moslem diplomacy?
STUDENT: No, sir.
HUTCHINSON: Expert on economy, and geography of
Egypt.
(Student turns to leave.)
HUTCHINSON: So you want to be a reporter. Here's
some advice about this racket. Don't let it change
your mind. It may not be the oldest profession,
but it's the best.
Brooks' definition of "profession" in the early
part of the scene is most important to our understanding
of Brooks' characters. From Dr. Ferguson through The
10 6
Professionals and the heistmeister of Dollars Brooks'
characters have, a sense of professionalism about them
that is integral to the characterization and to the
story. And more often than not, that professionalism is
exercised in the public interest, or at least with some
sacrifice of self-interest.
In the second, longer portion of the scene,
Hutchinson is not just badgering the student. He is
reflecting his passion for thoroughness that he feels
befits the newspaperman, the searcher-after-truth.
Brooks, in his own work, is just this dedicated and
thorough. We derive some evidence of this simply
through observing the authenticity with which his
pictures are scripted, designed, directed. We get fur
ther evidence in his own commentary upon his films. We
know, for example, that while The Professionals was based
upon Frank O'Rourke's novel A Mule for the Marquesa,
what really interested Brooks in that story was another
book he had read by Tom Reed on the Mexican revolution,
and that a thorough research into American participation
in the Mexican revolution preceded the writing of a
screenplay. We also know that he did extensive research
on the Mau Mau before writing Something of value. And
his written introductions to both The Brothers Karamazov
and Lord Jim show a very firm grasp of the critical
body of works on those two novels.
107
In Deadline, USA, however, this is a mere aside.
The story begins to roll. Hutchinson1s reporter has been
beaten up by Rienzi's goons. The editor unleashes every
available staff person to pursue the Rienzi story. The
murdered nude turns out to be Rienzi's girlfriend. When
one assistant editor expresses fear of offending Rienzi,
he is fired; and Hutchinson dictates the following
editorial:
John Garrison. I'm dead. I've been dead for 11
years. And tomorrow this newspaper may also be
dead. But as long as it lives, The Day will
continue to report the facts and the meaning
of those facts without fear, without distortion,
and without hope of personal gain, as it has
always done.
The Advertising Department tries to put a hold on
a story that will embarrass the advertiser. Hutchinson,
incensed by this, discovers that the man is linked to
Rienzi. It turns out to be an important link. The
advertiser has been blackmailed for years by the dead
nude. She also has been discovered to have $4 0,000 in
bonds linked to Rienzi. The missing link is Rienzi's
disposal of the girl. A sports writer has the link:
an ex-fighter is both a goon of Rienzi and a brother of
the dead girl. The ex-fighter tells the whole story to
the newspaper in return for some money and promise of
safekeeping. But before his story is complete he is
hauled off by phony cops who silence him.
10 8
In the. meantime, Mrs. Garrison, moved by Hutch
inson's plea, offers to buy the paper from her daughters.
The buyer objects and the court delays decision.
With the death of the ex-fighter, it looks as
though Rienzi will go free; and with the paper subject
to a libel suit, all hope of keeping it alive begins to
vanish. Hutchinson gives a final, philosophical plea
to the court, with the judge's sympathetic permission.
The newspaper, as Mr. White will agree, is
published first, last, and always, in the public
interest.... An honest, fearless press is the
public's first protection against gangsterism,
local or international. I don't care if Mr. White
buys and runs two papers or twenty papers, or a
hundred papers. Some of the best newspapers in
this country are part of a chain. But I do care
when he buys a paper to put it out of business.
Because without competition there can be no free
dom of the press. And I'm talking about free
enterprise, your honor. The right of the public
to a marketplace of ideas, news; and opinions,
not of one man, nor one leader, nor even one
government.
In spite of his sympathies, however, the judge
rules in favor of the sale to Mr. White. Despondent
over the decision and over the fact that he could not
regain the affection of his wife, Hutchinson returns to
his office. There waiting was the dead girl's mother,
with a diary that contains all the necessary evidence to
put Rienzi behind bars, in a scene played to background
music that is a variation on the theme of "The Battle
Hymn of the Republic." Deus ex machina.
In the final scene Rienzi has called Hutchinson to
109
either buy him off or to threaten his life, to keep the
diary from reaching the public. Will he cooperate or not?
Hutchinson's only answer is to. hold the phone in the
direction of the noisy presses. As long as there is one
newspaper willing to print the truth, Rienzi is told,
Rienzi will be finished. The presses are rolling.
There's nothing Rienzi can do about it. Final music
comes up, from "The Battle Hymn of the Republic"
corresponding to the lyrics, "His truth is marching on."
The ending of the picture is admittedly melodramatic.
But the overall authenticity of the picture and the fierce
integrity of the newspaper people portrayed are so strong
that the film carries to the very end.
This is Brooks, achieving early in his career
perhaps as effective a personal statement as he was ever
to make, although others were to be vastly more success
ful commercially. With wit, three dimensional characteri
zation, action, and drama, he had put together a phil
osophical statement about the importance of freedom. Not
just individual freedom, the freedom of a system to
operate without the tyranny of ideas or financial
domination. And in the process Brooks was able to say
something heartfelt about dedication to the truth while
paying tribute to members of our society professionally
dedicated to the truth.
110
Filmically what most characterized Brooks at this
time was scripting. Through structure and characteriza
tion he achieved a three-dimensional quality in the plot
of Deadline, USA, and he relied heavily on words to
y
accomplish this. Tough, sparse dialogue, together with a
matching sense of timing in the acting and cutting. The
urgency of the moment was captured.
Camera work seems to have had little part in itself
in creating dramatic effect. Perhaps with journalistic
propriety, the Brooks camera was static— an observer,
just looking for the facts. Dynamism in this and later
films tended to spring instead from the staging, leaving
the motion to the actors. There is intensity and move
ment in every frame.
Some of the filmic elements noted in this early
picture are characteristic of Brooks throughout his career.
One of these is his ability to create a textured, authen
tic ambience. Brooks had spent many years in journalism
so we would expect him to have a feel for the business,
and he communicates it well. Ed Hutchinson, the editor,
is a fixed and'firm point in the swirl of activity that
surrounds him. News room activity is seen in both fore
ground and background as a vital and exciting activity.
Hutchinson's conversations are constantly interrupted with
new, important demands. Dialogue overlaps and is heard
in snatches. This is where the action is.
Ill
One early scene in which we are introduced to the
editor is notable not only for the ambience created in
the scene, but for what it says thematically. Following
the opening sequence of a senate hearing on the Mafia,
and a brief montage of papers coming off the presses
with the story, we see a copy boy pick up some copy for
delivery to the editor. The camera tracks with him
past the roaring presses, past the industrious newsmen
at their typewriters, to Hutchinson, busy bringing
decisive order out of chaos. This roundabout way of
introducing the editor is not gratuitous; rather it is
introducing us to another main character and the real
hero: The Press.
Several other of the most lively scenes in the
picture bear this out. In addressing the court, Hutch
inson says that The Day is not just a bunch of presses,
typewriters, fonts, and telephones; it is 1,500 men and
women serving the public. Also to the point are two
scenes which indeed serve to move the plot along, but
which emphasize both the community nature of the enterprise
and the idealism which feeds it. The first is a fight,
as described above, in the press room, which erupts
when one employee decides to quit before the paper can
be sold. The other is a barroom scene, also described
above, during which the employees reflect on their early
days on the paper, and the sacrifices they have made to
112
be a part of the work they love. This latter scene is
of comparatively little importance to the action of the
plot, but is of major importance in illustrating the
human and professional dimensions of The Press, whose
freedom is being challenged by the impending sale of
The Day.
Hutchinson's forfeiture of his marriage for the
sake of the paper is also illustrative of the theme. And
it might be noted that the gentle and nuanced romanticism
that characterizes this subplot tends to be absent from
other Brooks films.
But the most important scene in characterizing The
Press is the last one of the movie. Here the mobster
Rienzi has finally had his back put up against the wall
through the courageous action of an old lady who trusts
The Day. He gets Hutchinson on the phone to make him an
offer (earlier in the picture Rienzi had reminded a judge
that everyone has a price). What follows is virtually
a dialogue between Rienzi and the rolling presses. When
the camera cuts to Rienzi, he is shouting into the phone.
When it cuts to Hutchinson, his answer is almost
drowned out by the background noise of the presses. And
when Rienzi finally asks for a yes or no answer to his
payoff proposition, it is The Press' that answers, not
Hutchinson. The latter simply holds the phone up in the
direction of the presses, already rolling out the expose.
_____________________ 113
The implication is clear: as long as The Press survives
uncorrupted by the likes of Rienzi we are a free people.
The contrast of this picture with the five described
above from the same period is illustrative of the direc
tor's need for control. At MGM, Brooks was a hired hand,
a staff director, whose job was to make MGM pictures.
The Fox picture, on the other hand, was a one-time
arrangement that put the essential control in Brooks'
hands--script, casting, and editing. The only enforced
modification had to do with the final peroration before
the court. The original speech was longer and more im
passioned about freedom of the press. Zanuck, fearful
that it might be perceived as communistic, had it pared.
What is there seems quite enough, in any case, and
perhaps it was helpful editing.
Back at MGM. Brooks was nearing the completion of
his seven-year contract. Frustrated by restrictions,
he became increasingly choosy. Having less to lose
under these circumstances, he began to make demands.
MGM had bought a novel called Blackboard Jungle from
Evan Hunter and were looking for the director. Their
first choice was William Wyler because he had already
done a film with a similar feel, entitled, Dead End.
Eventually they came to Brooks.
"All right," he said, "but X want to change the
rules. No editing will be done that X do not
114
supervise and no casting will take place without
my consultation." "Well," they said, "we
don't want to stop you from anything, but of
course we have the final say."-3
So MGM, although they would not put it in writing, agreed
that Brooks could have his way. They did not feel it was
a great risk with a proven director and a small picture.
This consensus turned out to be a breakthrough for Richard
Brooks.
Before getting into Blackboard Jungle in detail,
however, it might be well to take the last "non-Brooks"
film out of sequence. Apart from A Catered Affair (made
in 1956), every Brooks picture from 1955 on was a further
elucidation of the concerns and ideals of its director.
A Catered Affair shows the power of writing. But
in this case it is the writing of Paddy Chayevsky.
Although the screenplay is credited to Gore Vidal, the
spirit and the characters are unmistakably those of
Chayevsky. Perhaps Brooks was attracted to it in his
MGM contract arrangement because it was an attractive
commercial hit from television and because from the
distinctively Chayevsky point of view it amounted to a wit
ty social criticism of an unattractive trait of American
society— keeping up with the Joneses. Starring Bette
Davis, Ernest Borgnine, Rod Taylor, and Debbie Reynolds,
Richard Brooks, private interview, May 3, 1970.
115
it is a slice of American life concerning' family bickering
oyer, the wedding of a daughter from a poor. Bronx
cabbie's family. Brooks simply directed the play, doing
very little to release it from the proscenium. There
was evidently little investment of self on the part of
the director.
With Blackboard Jungle, however, it was a different
matter. Blackboard Jungle is more notable for the economic
leverage it gave Brooks than for its expression of the
"Brooks vision." Nevertheless, it is a film that Brooks
felt strongly about, and his concern for personal integ
rity and unselfish dedication to the common good emerge as
central to the picture.
Blackboard Jungle was billed as a film about
juvenile delinquency. Actually it is a story about a
teacher who faces a challenge squarely, refuses to turn
away from it, and eventually overcomes. Richard Dadier,
(Glenn Ford), takes his first teaching job in a tough
vocational trades school in a city after getting out of
the Army and finishing college. It is a school wherein
the principal admits no problem, the teachers have given
up before education started, and the students are doing
time without hope or expectation of learning. To Dadier,
however, it provides a personal challenge. His dream
is to be an educator, to sculpt lives, : to find a channel
for the creativity he otherwise would lack. It proves to
116
be a test of all that is in him.
Prom the beginning, Dadier is tested by his classes.
In response he alternately jokes, cajoles, and exercises
authority. Two members of the class are immediately
evident as leaders, Gregory Miller tSidney Poitier) and
Artie West (Vic Morrow). All attempts at winning over
the class by being tough but sympathetic are destroyed,
however, after the first day of school. Dadier comes to
the rescue of a sexy female teacher who is being raped in
the library. The would-be rapist has the sympathy of
the boys, and Dadier is pegged as the heavy.
Dadier tries various approaches to winning their
cooperation, but the Miller-West leadership is firmly
against him. The tide turns slightly when he and another
teacher, Josh Edwards (Richard Kiley), are attacked and
beaten in an alley. Dadier accepts the punishment without
reporting anyone to the police.
Discouraged, Dadier visits his old college professor.
With flag waving, we are told that Dadier1s experience
is the exception to the rule. The American school system
is good and wholesome, (This scene was requested by the
studio over the objections of Brooks.) The professor offers
Dadier the chance to take a job in a less troublesome
school. But Dadier must accept the personal challenge to
117
accomplish, the more difficult task of educating the
unmotivated.
Through the use of a tape recorder and then a movie
projector, Dadier reaches for their minds. And with the
movie he scores. Josh Edwards is not so lucky. He
brings to class his priceless collection of jazz records
to share with his students; they smash them to smither
eens .
As a result of the tape recorder session, which
becomes a lesson in prejudicial words, Dadier is called
before the principal for bigotry. When the principal
finally concedes that the accusing student does not
have corroboration, he reconciles (punishes?) Dadier
by asking him to moderate the Christmas concert.
In the meantime, Dadier's pregnant wife (Anne
Francis), has begun to receive anonymous letters tellipg
her that her husband is in love with another woman.
The Christmas show offers a point of contact with
Gregory Miller. He and a group of friends sing harmony
together and agree to take a spot on the show. Eventually
Dadier and Miller have a conversation at the garage
that employs Miller. Dadier tries to persuade him that
school is worthwhile and should be seen through.
By this time, the anonymous notes have become too
much for Dadier's wife and she has a premature delivery.
118
Hj,s wife is a frail woman who has lost one child already,
and Dadier wants this child very badly. Dadier. finds the
notes, is furious, and decides to quit.
By this time, however, the success Dadier is
having with his students has caught on and one of the
older teachers tries to persuade Dadier to stick it out.
So does his wife. In the meantime, the baby is out of
danger.
Back in the classroom, Dadier has a confrontation
with Artie West. West expects the whole class to back
him, but only one friend does. In the confrontation,
West, wielding a switchblade, indicates that he is the
one who beat Dadier in the alley, wrote the anonymous
letters to Dadier's wife and accused him of bigotry to
the principal.
In the final scene, Miller meets Dadier coming out
of school. Recalling the conversation in the garage
earlier in the film, Miller reminds Dadier that they have
a pact, and Dadier must stick it out at the school.
This story line is familiar to practically every
one, it seems. Not only was it a commercial smash when
it first was released; but as a minor classic, it has
played the 16mm circuit and television extensively.
Viewers who came to get (and got) an hour and a half
of rousing entertainment, also got a look at the inside
of Richard Brooks' mind. From beginning to end, it is
119
a Brooks film.
Brooks has complained that external pressure forced
him to attach the following prologue to the head of the
movie:
We, in the United States, are fortunate to have
a school system that is a tribute to our communities
and to our faith in American youth.
Today, we are concerned with juvenile delin
quency— its causes— and its effects. We are espe
cially concerned when this delinquency boils over
into our schools.
The scenes and incidents depicted here are
fictional.
However, we believe that public awareness is a
first step toward a remedy for any problem.
It is in this spirit and with this faith that
BLACKBOARD JUNGLE was produced.
Externally imposed, maybe. But not out of char
acter. Brooks is no revolutionary. Fighter for
progress, yes. Rabble rouser, no. The social criticism
he forthrightly undertakes— as we saw in Crisis and
Deadline, USA, and will see in other films— is one of
reason and understanding. There are two sides to every
story, and there are good and evil elements within a
single character. It would certainly be Brooks' intention
to bring to the public attention a problem they should
be aware of. One could never accuse him of exploiting
a situation to make a quick buck. Moreover, when Brooks
presents a problem, he offers a solution. The ending of
120
Blackboard Jungle cannot simply be attributed to the
American audience's conditioned need for happy endings.
It expresses the Brooks belief that if a person, an
individual, faces any problem with dedication, competence,
understanding and tenacity— if he refuses to accept
conventional cynicism— that person can achieve success.
And this success accrues not only to his own good, but
to the public good.
There is one element of the happy ending that does
not derive from the book. In the novel, Dadier's wife
was having her first child, and it was stillborn.
This serves to enrage Dadier all the more when finally
confronted with the note-writer. In the movie, however,
Ann has already lost one child by stillbirth. This
adds credibility and foreshadowing to the premature
delivery when the notes begin to arrive. It also
provides an economical way to highlight how much having
a child means to them. And when the baby pulls through,
the forces of evil have been warded off by the forces of
good. Finally, it keeps Dadier's sense of justice in
the classroom relatively detached. Whether the baby
lived or died, Dadier would be firm, uncompromising,
and ultimately non-vindictive in exercising and expelling
the evil from his classroom.
Blackboard Jungle is filled with memorable images—
121
the confrontation between Dadier and Miller on the stairs,
the fight that occurs when Dadier interrupts: the rape
attempt, the climactic confrontation between Dadier and
West in the classroom. Still, Blackboard Jungle is quite
conventional filmically.
At this stage in his career, Brooks remained very
much the writer. Words came first, followed by visual
interpretation which supported or complemented the
words. And such visualization was evidently influenced
a great deal by his earlier stage directing experience.
Brooks tended to see his drama, as it were, through a
proscenium, with the camera carefully placing the audi
ence in the best position to observe the action and the
interaction of the characters. Players enter and exit
the frame, gathering and dispersing.
One example of this proscenium staging is a scene
early in the film when old and new teachers are gathering
in the gym to be greeted by the principal. This is an
important expositional scene. It introduces the problem
of school discipline through the cynical attitude of
veteran teachers, whose change of heart later in the
film will act as a ruler by which we can judge the suc
cess or failure of the idealistic Dadier. In this scene
Brooks never clutters his simple image. It opens with
Jim Murdock (Louis Calhern) holding forth to some
122
veteran teachers. Dadier enters from the doorway and is
introduced around and is given a chance to react to
Murdock. New teacher Josh Edwards enters the frame as the
veteran teachers depart, but he is not introduced immedi
ately. A woman's voice off screen causes the camera to
change angle to include Lois Hammond (Margaret Hayes),
whose tight sweater draws a response from Murdock fore
shadowing her attempted rape. The scene is interrupted
by the arrival of the principal, with the next shot
finding Dadier and Edwards introducing themselves in an
empty classroom. This separates out and highlights the
introduction of a key character, Edwards. Throughout
these scenes the camera is virtually static, at about
eye level, but the natural movement of the characters and
the judicious cutting at the natural moment to help us
focus our attention on the important person or detail,
keeps this essential expositional scene from dragging.
Throughout most of his films Brooks would continue
to use what might be called reportorial camera, or
proscenium shooting. Drama would be effectively heightened
by staging, lighting, editing, music, but the camera
would serve simply as a channel for the eye. Control
and linear progression were characteristic of Brooks, as
opposed to fluidity of movement or image-association (as
would characterize a Two for the Road, for example).
123
One example of dynamism springing from the staging
is the scene in which the principal confronts Dadier with
a charge of racism. Throughout the film there is an
undercurrent of barely controlled violence, which springs
in part from this scene. The camera provides a frame
looking flat-on from the side. The principal stands to
make his charge. There is an ebb and flow in the actors’
tension as first one retreats and then the other. As the
tension in the scene mounts the two confront each other
face to face with the principal jabbing a pencil at Dadier
by way of emphasis. Dadier, enraged, seizes the pencil
and turns tables. The camera remains in a waist-shot
throughout, directing our attention and allowing no let-up
in concentration. Nothing about the shooting, or cutting
of the scene detracts from the drama inherent in these
two men facing off, with fixed eye-to-eye contact and
physical confrontation. The impact is there, indicating
explosive angers close to the surface.
Brooks would probably have preferred to shoot much
of the classroom action in this fashion. He once
complained to a student audience of his need to keep a
loose camera in the classroom. Not every cinematic
decision is based totally on aesthetics. Brooks' class
room shooting was based on economics as well. His student
actors were generally without experience and the film's
124
budget did not allow for extensive rehearsals. So a
certain improvisational style was imposed by necessity.
Brooks also discovered that frequent retakes caused a
scene to go stale. So he generally described the scene
to them, including the basic activities of Ford, told
them the kinds of reactions he was seeking, and let the
camera roll. This made it difficult for Ford who was
forced to react to the unexpected. But it worked.
In order to have maximum interaction in a scene
under these circumstances, Brooks would frequently put the
camera low in the aisle, maintaining deep focus to allow
Ford to move around the classroom while keeping key
students in focus in the foreground. In one scene, for
example, a student named Morales has become a pawn in the
struggle for influence between Dadier and West. The
camera keeps West in the foreground in focus as Dadier
moves in the background. Morales, in the middle left,
becomes the pivotal point of the triangle. The rest of
the students are important to the image as well since it
is their loyalty that both Dadier and West are seeking.
The camera arrangement allows maximum interchange between
the main characters without requiring that the scene be
shot from different angles, which would require difficult
editing matches as well as sustained student performances.
One of the most dramatic encounters in the film
125
once again draws its strength from staging and lighting
rather than from strong camera angles or camera moves.
This is the above-mentioned scene in which Dadier con
fronts Miller on the stairs. Dadier has just left the
principal's office after responding to the racism charge.
He runs into Miller in the hall and they start down the
stairs. Dadier accuses Miller of the misrepresentation
and suddenly Dadier is stalking Miller who slowly backs
down the stairs. The sharp angle of the stairs with its
strong verticals in the railing adds dramatic strength
to Dadier as he crouches over the retreating Miller, who
taunts and baits Dadier down the stairs (inviting him to
a fall, in effect) . But the camera looks straight on
from the side, tilted up at only a slight angle that
flattens out as they approach the landing. The imagery
of the dominant figure heading for a fall is perfectly
natural on the school stairs. The staging heightens the
drama through its sharp angles and low key lighting,
emphasizing the black-white confrontation, and the
simplicity of the shooting does nothing to detract from
the tension of two men intensely facing off.
Lighting also plays a key role in Brooks' creation
of ambience. Another stair scene serves as an example.
Early in the film when Lois Hammond is about to be seized
by a student, she is seen pausing on the stairs to
straighten her stockings. The stairs are dark and ominous,
126
the camera close to the railing in the foreground empha
sizing the sharp angle of ascent. Highlights on her
legs have a peek-a-boo effect seen through the railing of
the stairs. A student's head, almost lost in the shadows,
is seen in the extreme foreground. Just a couple of
shots later Dadier is seen descending the same stairs.
The camera is now pulled back deemphasizing the angle
of the railing and including the high windows that make
the stairs seem well lit. For one person, the stairs are
threatening; for another, they are not.
The subsequent rape scene illustrates another con
sistent characteristic of Brooks: economy of camera
moves. The entire rape scene, which has unquestioned
dramatic effect, does not include more than a dozen shots.
After Dadier shatters the glass window in the library door
to gain entry, a brief chase is climaxed by the boy
smashing through the outside window head first and Dadier
pulling him back through the splintered glass. The only
camera move is a simple pan with the action. There is no
visual equivalent to violence— no rapid trucking, no
hard zoom, no abrupt cutting of closeups, no slow motion
of flying glass. The impact of the scene derives instead
from the staging (motion tends to be directly into the
camera), sound effects (shattering glass and crashing
books), and the sense of anticipation that had already
been created.
This sense of anticipation had been built up by the
careful accumulation of significant details: the reaction
of the men in the gym scene to Lois' tight sweater, the
reaction of the students on the first day of school to
her tight skirt, her flirtation with Dadier, her pausing
on the stairs to straighten her stockings, and finally
to Dadier's finding her high-heeled shoe on the stairs.
This ability to carefully control attention to details,
marshalled to create maximum impact, is a Brooks char
acteristic that becomes ever more refined throughout his
career.
Blackboard Jungle represented the first time Brooks
had the opportunity to directly supervise the editing of
his film. A firm and decisive editing style was gradually
to become a hallmark of his films. In this one, rhythm
and pacing are notable. The key was music.
As a device for creating mood, Brooks tracked down
a song he had once heard on the radio, "Rock Around the
Clock." He originally had no intention of scoring the
film with it, but selected it to use as a background to
play on the set, thus creating the desired tone for his
actors. He subsequently cut much of the film to the
music, and when other plans fell through actually used it
in the final score. The song had the right beat and animal
128
vigor to create the jungle feeling Brooks was seeking. The
prologue of the film rolls over an insistent percussion,
erupting into the song at the beginning of the credits,
and continuing over into the first scene of the picture.
Mixed with the roar of the elevated train, with the sound
of kids splashing in a gushing fire hydrant, and accom
panying the rhythmic movements of the boys in the school
yard moving on their own turf, the song made an ideal
overture for the hardhitting picture to follow. Beginning
with this film, Brooks would consistently cut the more
active and lively scenes of his movies to music.
Violence is the stuff of drama, and in every film
he made Brooks showed awareness of this. As often as
not, the films would somewhere contain a physical ex
plosion. In all cases, the inner violence of emotional
confrontation would erupt. Frequently this was through
the music. Blackboard Jungle provides another example.
One night after school Dadier and Edwards stop in
a bar to have a drink and discuss their disillusionment,
as well as Edwards' great love, jazz. As they leave the
bar, they are attacked in the alley, with the beating
cloaked in shadows. The violence of it is heightened by
cutting it to the rhythm of a jazz score the two have been
listening to in the bar, which builds to a resounding
crescendo of percussion at the climax of the beating.
129
Music as expression of violence is not limited to
teen music.
Brooks' use of imagery and dramatic device is
seldom self-conscious because it seems so natural to the
moment. After shooting was completed on Blackboard Jungle,
Brooks was forced to insert a new scene with the Star
Spangled Banner playing in the background as Dadier toured
a more "typical" good.American school. The purpose, of
course, was to proclaim loud and clear that this was a
patriotic film. Brooks, however, had already done this
more subtly and naturally in his own way.
Early in the film Dadier has a dramatic confrontation
with West when the latter refuses to take his hat off in
class. West, baiting Dadier, asks if the teacher ever
tried to fight 35 guys at one time. During this scene
Dadier is positioned in such a way that the American
flag on its stand in the corner is in the background,
spotlighted by a rectangle of sunlight from the window.
The flag in the background appears spotlighted in several
other tense scenes. This foreshadows the final scene
after Dadier disarms West of his switchblade. West’s
sidekick Belazi picks up the knife to carve his way out
of the classroom. At this point, one of the boys,
"Idiot Boy" Santini, picks up the flag in the corner and
using it as a battering ram with the American eagle on the
head, pins Belazi to the wall and forces him to drop the
_______________ 130
1 knife, as Dadier scoops up the flag from Santini. The
implication is clear enough that the true American spirit
will prevail, but this was not enough for the nervous
studio.
Another example of emotional tone being created
through natural imagery is the use of the school court
yard. In the first, highly textured, scene of the picture
when Dadier arrives at the school of his interview, he
is a stranger to the school. He is separated from the
courtyard by the iron-barred fence, which takes on
strong prison overtones from the boys peering through
with surly expressions. As he walks through the court
yard we are introduced to the boys in twos and threes as
they watch him suspiciously. Several scenes later,
Dadier again walks through the courtyard, this time
after he has caught the would-be rapist. Now Dadier must
shoulder his way through a hostile, obstacle-creating
crowd. Finally at the end of the film, however, when
Dadier has weeded out the bad boys and won over the rest,
he and Miller are seen walking through the courtyard
together. On this occasion it is empty, spacious,
peaceful, with the school featured instead of the fence.
A simple and effective way to graphically mark the rise
and fall of Dadier's success.
But undoubtedly the most notable (and the hardest
to describe) characteristic of Brooks' style is summed up
131
in the word control, or discipline. Every image counts,
every line spoken and every cut made forwards the action.
A viewer gets the distinct feeling, justified in the end,
that everything seen and heard is in the picture for a
reason. No zoom without a payoff, no leisurely pan when a
cut will do, no visual for mere scenery's sake— it must all
contribute to the story. In the end, Brooks the director
is building on the meticulous craftsmanship of Brooks the
writer.
Perhaps it is in the writing of Blackboard Jungle for
the screen that we can see the real Brooks stand up. How
does the novel differ from the screenplay? Blackboard
Jungle is not loosely constructed as novels go. Its
many characters have depth and the author introduces many
of them to reinforce one another. But for the screen a
greater economy of story telling must be employed. Brooks
accepted the characters of Dadier, Miller, and West intact.
By combining several teachers into Jim Murdock, however,
and by combining scenes he is able to move the story along
a path of near inevitability that heightens the impact of
the final confrontation.
In the novel, the initial exposition is lengthy.
Dadier is hired over another teacher by the English
Department head. The other teacher- disappears from the
novel. Dadier meets with his wife, and returns to a
132
faculty gathering where he meets the principal.
In the movie, Dadier is hired by the principal,
meets the "other teacher" who is Josh Edwards, attends
the gym meeting described above, and then has dinner with
his wife. In these few scenes in the movie, all elements
of character and conflict are introduced, and the problem
is fairly locked. This takes several chapters in the
novel.
Again, the novel has the leisure to establish Dadi- "
er's full schedule, and gradually settle .in on the seventh
period. After morning classes, Dadier is assigned a
monitor's position where he confronts smokers in the
johns. They later turn up to mutual surprise, in the
seventh period class. In the movie, Dadier interrupts his
procession to the classroom with his (seemingly only)
class to dismiss smokers from the john. In the process
he characterized West, Miller, and Belazi before ever
getting them in the classroom. Dadier's first action in
the classroom is to deal with a discipline problem— a
baseball that' has narrowly missed his head as he turned
to write on the blackboard. This scene is not in the
book at all, but is the key to the Dadier character. By
the way he handles it, we see flexibility, humor, and
authority.
These seemingly small points are significant in the
133-
long run if a movie is going to move. There are no pauses,
no delays, no throwaway actions.
Another seemingly small detail from the film affords
a significant glimpse of Brooks' educational philosophy.
In this novel, Dadier finally makes a breakthrough for
education in the discussion of the short story. "The
Fifty-First Dragon." The breakthrough amounts to getting
the students to actively discuss something significant to
themselves— self-confidence. In Brooks' version, a film
provides the stimulus for the breakthrough— an animated
version of Jack and the Beanstalk. (Brooks took this
from a radio show he had done years before when he wrote
a weekly story as part of a series called, "Heels of
History." These weekly stories consisted of common fairy
tales, with a twist. In his version of Jack and the
Beanstalk, Jack was obviously lazy and irresponsible in
the handling of his mother's cow, and was a thief to
boot when stealing the Giant's harp. So should he be
rewarded? First of all, the film is real and relevant
to the students. Secondly, their discussion could be
directed to their own ghetto problem, the rightness or
wrongness of stealing. Jack may be considered a hero in
the fairy tale, but was he really? Student comments on
the film relate this question of right and wrong to
themselves, to the government, to the school. And the
134
fairy tale gives Dadier a chance to address himself to
the question of right and wrong.
Once again it becomes evident that what is most
important to Brooks is moral responsibility. The educa
tion most significant to him is value education. The
approach taken by Dadier would be most fashionable today,
almost thirty years later, and it would be called value
clarification.
The other moral point the film makes strongly,
is indeed in the book, and is forcefully translated to
screen: the need for mutual human respect, particularly
with regard to racial equality. The makeup of the class
seems ethnically well mixed. In the lesson where they use
the tape recorder to,give speeches (an attempt at
student involvement that failed), the class makes fun of
a Puerto Rican student. When attempting to prevent this,
Dadier is accused of ignoring him because he himself is
a "Spic." This leads to a forceful lesson on the use of
derogatory labels and racial prejudice. (Which in turn
leads to Dadier's being called before the principal.) It
should be noted that the year was 1955, a time when
Americans in general were callous to the issues of racial
equality. In 1957, Something of Value also would speak to
this issue. In 1967, Brooks introduced a black among his
"Professionals," a small but typical touch.
135
As previously observed, Brooks felt strongly enough
about this picture and what it could say that he accepted
the assignment on the condition that he would exercise
supervisory control. Decision-making control, however,
is influenced by more people than just the studio.
To his chagrin, Brooks discovered that no high school would
cooperate in the filming of the Hunter story. To America
of the 1950's this was an image of our good society that
could not easily be faced. Juvenile delinquency and racism
were not significant enough in reality to justify the
"sensationalism" of portraying them to the public. Most
of the picture then was shot on MGM's backlot, although
Brooks managed to gain actuality in some key exterior
sequences by shooting at a school under another pretext.
Not having enough budget to schedule rehearsal days
for star Sidney Poitier, Brooks nevertheless rehearsed
his non-actor students to get a feel for the way the
picture should be shot. He could not set up his class
room until he had a feeling for his mix of characters.
To set the mood for rehearsals and shootings on the set,
Brooks somehow managed to locate and play a record that he
had heard on the radio one night three years before:
"Rock Around the Clock," by Bill Haley.
Dore Schary, producer of the movie, was driven to
distraction by the song.
136
He used to say, "I can't stand to see the dailies.
I can't stand this God damn record any more." He
said, "Now I'm going to have to run them silently."
"I don't care if you never run it, Dore. It
doesn't make any difference. These kids have to
move to this rhythm."
He says, "What good is the record? It's no
good. The piece of music is lousy.
With that feeling on the part of the producer, how
did this recording come to form the sound track for the
finished film? That's another story. Brooks wanted Andre
Previn to do the music. However, MGM felt Previn had gone
beyond the little pictures and declined to have him as a
composer. So Brooks said, why don't we just use "Rock
Around the Clock"?
And Johnny Green, who is a marvelous composer
and was running the music department at MGM at
that time said, "This record is no good." He
said, "It was a flash in the pan about three years
ago and it lasted about two weeks and this whole
craze was gone in two weeks." He said it was
finished.^
Brooks pushed for it, nevertheless, and the studio
got a price on it. For $5,000, they could have unlimited
use of the record for this picture. For $7,500, they
could own the record. Why not buy it outright, asked
^Kantor, Blacker, and Kramer, op. cit., p. 35.
^Ibid.
137
Brooks. Wasn't worth it, came the answer. Six months
after the picture opened the record had sold two million
copies.
Now in control of editing, Brooks had to deal with
not only studio pressure, but also with the pressure of
such outside organizations as the Production Code Office
and the Legion of Decency. Within the studio there was
great concern for the image the picture was presenting
of our country. MGM looked at it as a picture exposing
juvenile delinquency. Brooks looked on it as a picture of
a dedicated teacher fighting to overcome rudimentary
problems in the system.
"You think there's juvenile delinquency in this
country," said the front office. "It's worse
in Russia."
"What's that got to do with it," said Brooks.
"Why don't you add a scene," says the front
office, describing how bad things are in Russia."
"No," said Brooks.^
But he did add the scene in which Dadier goes to
visit his former teacher, a scene that attempts to show
how such difficult schools were the exception.
Still, New York was worried about being too critical
of America. Let it sit on the shelf, they said. Why not
^Richard Brooks, interview with Arthur Knight
and students, University of Southern California,
March 16, 19 61.
138
a preview, was the comeback. All right. The preview
was a great success. The prologue was then added as a
final compromise, and the picture was released.
The picture was a grand success, grossing six
million dollars domestically. Only now could Brooks the
director really begin to exercise leverage with the
studios. Money was the key. And money gave him the
chance. Brooks was on his way.
Control, however, is relative. For every advance
there is more difficulty. If Blackboard Jungle was the
first big attention-getter for Brooks, it also brought
him some headaches.
Censor boards were one source. While all U.S.
censor boards passed the film, with the exception of
Massachusetts' request for minor sound cuts, the only
major country outside the U.S. that accepted the film
unconditionally was Germany. Twelve countries accepted
it intact, limited to adult audiences. And the following
countries accepted it for adults after specifying cuts
up to five minutes: Ireland, New Zealand, Egypt, and
England. Five smaller countries banned it outright.
But one country was special. Blackboard Jungle
had been selected for a special jury award at the Venice
Film Festival. Ambassador Claire Booth Luce, who had
been invited to address the Festival, would not appear
139
unless the film was removed from the Festival. Rather
than alienate the Ambassador, the film was withdrawn.
Several years later, however, after the Ambassador to
Italy had been changed, the film was released in Italy.
Not only did it receive special tax accommodation at
the later date because it could qualify as a cultural
film, but it also became a red hot film on the merits of
its former banning. Although the film later was widely
accepted, initially there was a great deal of public
support for the position held by Ms. Luce. The Catholic
Legion of Decency rated the film "B" (Objectionable in
part for all) with the following statement:
This film purporting through the medium of
entertainment to expose a sociological problem of
our times, in its treatment contains morally
objectionable elements (brutality, violence,
disrespect for lawful authority) and tends to
negate any constructive conclusion.7
A syndicated reviewer objected to overseas marketing
of the film because,
It represents our school kids as bullies, rapists,
ignorant louts, and generally delinquent. It presents
a terribly distorted picture to foreigners of what is
a large segment of American life. It gives aid and
comfort to o.ur Communist enemy propaganda.^
7
"Film Classifications," Legion of Decency, 1956.
O
John Cavanagh, "Blackboard Jungle Makes Enemies,"
The Register, March 18, 1956, p. 9.
140
Brooks, of course, and the many viewers who have
since made the film a classic, felt differently. America
is a country strong enough to stand self-criticism and
to face its own problems.
Brooks also had his first experience with another
kind of economic pressure— that chronic condition of the
movie industry, the nuisance suit. A disc jockey in
Chicago who had used the name of "Daddy-0" sued Brooks
for misappropriation of his name. The studio wanted
Brooks to sign a form that would pay a small sum to the
man, thus saving the studio the expense of going to court.
Typically, Brooks refused to accept the injustice. The
case came to trial. Brooks flew to Chicago to testify.
Not only had he not been in Chicago to hear the disc
jockey, but he had done his homework well. He was able
to demonstrate the slang use of the term for many years..
The suit.was settled in favor of MGM and Brooks.
With Blackboard Jungle, Richard Brooks achieved new
control within the studio system. Editing would never
again be outside his reach. Casting would be more
dependent upon his say. Music, locations, script editing
would all be more within his control. And in the process
these controls became less a function of a seemingly
arbitrary studio, more a function of response to outside
groups and the need to hold an audience. Censor boards,
141
both foreign and domestic, came into view. Religious
organizations became more visible. The pressures of the
Production Code, pressure groups such as the NSPCA,
government became more evident. Responsibilities of
budget became more personal. Having come from the
powerless position of studio writer and contract director
to the leverage-wielding position of economic winner,
the pressures of decision-making control were perceived
not to have vanished, but only to have shifted. From
external to internal. The function of money in the
movies was looming even larger.
Control does not mean automatic success. The
discipline of external controls must be interiorized.
Brooks' next venture was not his best film, by any means.
It was a Vfestern, based on a novel by Milton Lott,
called The Last Hunt. It is a great rambling novel that
is more interested in characters as illustrative of the
many facets of the Old West than in story line. It does
not seem a particularly good candidate for a movie.
Brooks, however, was undoubtedly attracted to its theme:
that wanton buffalo hunting was destructive not only of
the land and its native population, but was also des
tructive of the killers who were profligate in their
desrespect for God-given resources.'
Brooks accepted the basic premise of the book, and
142
adopted its central characters. He picked and chose the
incidents that would serve his own purpose, and welded
together something that was more his than Lott's. He
did a good job of transforming an episodic novel into a
story wherein one action leads causally to the next.
What the story lacked was an external problem to be
solved that might indicate the central problem— the
self-destruction that comes from a life of killing
living things.
As the story opens, Sandy McKenzie (Stewart Granger),
formerly a widely-known buffalo hunter for the Army, has
his small herd of cows stampeded to death by a herd of
buffalo. With his financial base now ruined he reluctantly
takes the offer of one Charlie Gilson (Robert Taylor)
to become partners on a buffalo hunt. The market price
of hides is high. Their characters are established
immediately— Sandy is the reluctant killer, the guilt-
ridden; Charlie loves killing, particularly buffalo and
Indians.
Having hired the area's best skinner, Woodfoot
(Lloyd Nolan), and a half-breed, Jimmy (Russ Tamblyn),
they set out for the hunt. Charlie, without a sense of
humor or sense of self, becomes more and more excited by
the blood spilling. He fairly revels in the opportunity
to pursue a few Indians who have run off with his horses,
and to shoot them down. One woman (Debra Paget) escapes
__________________________________ 14 3
death and becomes Charlie's personal property.
Sandy, on the other hand, becomes less and less
inclined to shoot buffalo. When he comes upon a white
buffalo, he declines to shoot it; but Charlie Gilson does.
Charlie later delights in killing an Indian who has
offered to battle for the white pelt. Jimmy and the
Indian woman, however, secretly give it to the dead
Indian's companion for the "big medicine" it can afford.
The Indian woman also has become a point of discord
between Charlie and Sandy. Sandy is sensitive to her
(loves her?) and her child. Charlie is jealous.
While Charlie continues to hunt. Sandy goes into
the town to sell the first wagon load of pelts. Feeling
dirty from his hunting he gets drunk in an attempt to
avoid his self disgust.
Shortly after returning to camp, Sandy, with the
help of Woodfoot and Jimmy, gets Charlie drunk— a
Charlie who by now is "buffalo spooked"— and escapes with
the Indian woman. In the course of Charlie's pursuit
the next day he needlessly murders Woodfoot. Sandy,
however, is not to be found.
Sometime later, when Charlie is in town selling his
pelts— he has by now degenerated into a thoroughly mean
individual— he receives word that Sandy, Jimmy, and the
woman have just left town driving cattle toward a starving
144
Indian village. Charlie sets out in hot pursuit and
traps them in a cave. He lets Jimmy go with the cattle,
but is determined to kill Sandy and regain the woman.
Sandy agrees to fight, but they must wait until morning.
The next day when Sandy emerges to his certain death,
he discovers Charlie frozen to death inside the buffalo
hide he has pulled over him in a sitting position
during the night.
The final image is most appropriate to send home
the theme--the killing instinct is a self-destructive
one. With the buffalo hide pulled around him, Charlie
looks almost like a buffalo himself, hoary and ice-
covered. His singular thirst for killing has brought
about his own psychological and even physical destruction.
However appropriate the image may have been, it
robbed the audience of what it expects of a .Western— a
final shootout. The ending was thus anticlimactic. This
is perhaps one reason for the film's comparative failure.
There were other factors, some the responsibility of
Brooks, some outside his control.
Casting was one factor. Montgomery Clift and
Gregory Peck were interested in playing the lead roles.
But MGM saw it another way. Robert Taylor and Stewart
Granger had just made a film called; All the Brothers Were
Valiant. MGM executives said, "These two fellows together,
145
they're sensational, but we've got a twist for you.
We’11 have the killer play the hero and the hero play
the villain."^ So Stewart Granger became the good guy
and Robert Taylor became the bad guy. In any case, the
acting was below par for a Brooks film, and while it
was shot on location the picture lacked some authenticity.
There were other factors that are the responsibility
of Brooks. The message of the film was just too heavy for
the highly-defined form of the Western to bear. The
movie undoubtedly was speaking things as well that the
audience did not want to hear. It said the conquest
of the West was not always a cause for pride. Buffalo
hunters slaughtered some two- to three-million buffalo
in a period of ten to twelve years just for the hides.
Just for greed. The meat was left to rot. In fact
there was the knowledge that by destroying the food
resource of the Indians there would be less resistance
to white domination. The film unabashedly appealed to
a sense of guilt.
The intention of the film was to make the
public so sick that they would say that i,t was
a crime. But they got so sick they never went
to see the picture. It was a financial disaster....
Q
"Richard Brooks," Movie, Spring, 19 65, p. 7.
146
There were other factors. Animal lovers found it
offensive to see the buffalo gunned down on the screen.
(The picture was shot in the Black Hills during the annual
weeding of the herd under government supervision, so that
animals were killed on camera.) In England most of the
buffalo scenes were scissored. Brooks also attributes
some resistance to the American hunting ethic that in
more recent years has had great impact on Congress in
preventing anti-gun legislation from being passed.
"In the States," he said, "they couldn't stand
it because of their own guilt. Every father's
got a rifle. 'Come on, son, let's go out and
we'11 shoot something.'"H
Once again Brooks had developed a character who
recognizes the need for integrity and who gives up
personal monetary gain for an unselfish dedication to
others, in this case striving to feed a hungry people.
This is perhaps the first introduction of a redemptive
motif that we will see in greater detail in the next
chapter. McKenzie was responsible for the hunger of
the Indians through his buffalo slaughtering. By taking
the personal responsibility for an Indian widow and her
child, and by working at great personal sacrifice to
-^Ibid.
147
bring food to starving Indians ho. lias begun to atone for
his sins.
As in other Brooks films,: The Last Hunt is a drama
of moral choice. Perhaps because it is so obviously
that and less obviously an entertainment Western, the
film was less than successful. Brooks would reverse
this emphasis ten years later in one of his most com
mercially successful films. Without straining the point,
we might possibly think that with the relaxation of
external restrictions interiorized restraints needed
greater discipline.
Such internal restrictions were present though in
his next film, Something of Value. Something of Value
was the end of an era for Brooks, It marked the end of
his "small" message pictures. Classic characters were
to image forth his themes of integrity, moral choice,
and redemption on a more heroic scale for several years.
Of all his. films, Something of Value probably best
illustrates Brooks' values by contrasting the original
novel with the Brooks screen version. While names and
basic characters are the same in both, the values
according to which they operate belong to different worlds.
The control problems of the director were compaj-
atively unimportant on this picture; Shooting in Africa,
Brooks was free from studio interference for the most
148
part. Brooks had shot a prologue written and narrated
by Winston Churchill that the studio c u t . - * - 2 But apart
from this change, what we see is what Brooks wants us to
see— and feel.
Robert Ruark opens his novel with a Basuto proverb,
translated thus: "If a man does away with his traditional
way of living and throws away his good customs, he had
better first make certain that he has something of value
to replace them."
Richard Brooks opens his movie with a modified
quote: "When we take away from man his traditional way
of life, his customs, his religion, we had better make
certain to replace them with something of value."
The difference is significant. In the context
of this film, the first quotation puts the responsibility
for moral action on the Africans, whose lifestyle is
being changed. In the second case, the quotation puts
the responsibility for moral action on the white settlers
who are bringing about the change.
12"we took it up to the preview. At that time in
MGM they had fourteen guys sitting around a table, and
one guy would say, 'I didn't like the music in the
sixth reel.' And another would say, 'My dentist hates
it.' And someone said, 'What's this crap with
Winston Churchill thing? Who in the hell knows who
Winston Churchill is? It kills the picture dead.
Some goddam Englishman there talking....' So they
took the thing and cut it right out."
"Richard Brooks," Movie, Spring, 1965, p. 7.
149
In his rambling and overblown C62 0 pages in
paperback:) book, Ruark uses the novel format to try to
give a picture of African life, English life in Africa,
and some of the causes of the Mau Mau uprising, Blame
for the Mau Mau basically is laid upon communist agitation*
In this respect and also in his condescending attitude
toward black Africans, Ruark*'s. tone is reminiscent of
pre-civil rights attitudes of most white Americans
towards blacks in this country. It does not surprise us
today that when Brooks went to Africa, he found that
Kenyans considered the story laughable. Typically,
Brooks went about his own earnest research, interviewing
not only Professor Leakey and Captain Tan Henderson, but
also leaders of the Mau Mau, In the course of his
reading he also came across a 1905 book that predicted
the problems that eventually would have to be faced in
Kenya. It was written by Winston Churchill, So Brooks
contacted Churchill to ask if the Prime Minister would
do a foreward to the film In his own words. Much to
Brooks1 happy surprise, he agreed. And as. was noted,
the studio had other opinions as to its value.
In a concise, dramatic and action-packed film,
Brooks makes his point: unless black and white are
going to be partners, the white man' will be forced out
of Africa; the age of white supremacy is over,
150
Something of Value is the story of two young men,
Kimani (Sidney Poitier) and Peter McKenzie (Rock
Hudson), who have been raised from infancy as brothers,
but who discover that the white plantation system does
not allow blacks and whites to live in the adult world
as brothers.
The film opens with a montage of scenes showing
Peter and Kimani playing harmoniously together. But
their playing ceases when Peter's soon-to-be brother-
in-law, Jeff Newton (Robert Beatty), takes the two of
them on a safari, Peter as a peer, Kimani as a gun bearer.
Kimani feels hurt at this and complains to Peter that
Kimani has to do all the work, but Peter gets all the
fun. Jeff, upset by this attitude, orders Peter to
strike Kimani. Peter declines. Jeff slaps Kimani1s
face, humiliating him. We see Peter's distress at this.
He argues with Jeff that the world is changing, and that
that kind of treatment is no longer fair.
The next day, after saying goodbye to his sweetheart,
Holly Keith (Dana Wynter), who is off to London to study,
Peter discovers that Kimani has run away. Peter tracks
him down, finds him cornered by hyenas with his foot
caught in a trap. Peter bears Kimani home on Peter's back.
Kimani's father Karanja, who is the head man for
Henry McKenzie (Walter Fitzgerald), has a wife giving
151
birth. When the baby is born feet first he has the baby
killed according to the native custom,, since a breech
birth is indication of a curse upon the house. He is
arrested and tried before a white court and found guilty
of murder. Henry McKenzie objects to this imposition of
white law, maintaining that the net effect is a disrespect
for the law of the black tradition and a lack of respect
for white law.
Henry is a compassionate man who has learned and
almost adopted the religion and customs of the local
people. He loves the land and loves Africans. Karanja
entrusts his household god to Henry while he is in jail.
At the trial Kimani is approached by Njogu (Juano
Hernandez). Kimani later joins Njogu in the hills and
declares, "I am ready to fight."
After a raid, however, where a houseboy is killed,
Kimani has second thoughts about violent means to achieve
his ends. Others will no longer let him leave, though,
and he becomes a permanent part of the group. Njogu
speaks of "great plans" for the liberation of the people.
Five years later Peter meets Holly at the airport.
Driving home through Nairobi Peter sees Kimani on the
street and gives chase. But he cannot find him.
Kimani meets in a store in Nairobi with others to
hear a black intellectual declare the goals of Mau Mau.
152
Kimani is not easily convinced that bloodshed is the only
way. He chooses to go along, however, and takes the
Mau Mau oath.
Holly and Peter in the meantime are falling in
love again, and agreeing to marriage.
In the hills Kimani is given a new Mau Mau oath
that binds him to drive out or kill all Europeans. Njogu
gives the oath, but does not take it. Kimani is in love
with Njogu's daughter.
While Peter and Holly are planning their future,
Kimani leads a raid upon the Newton plantation. Jeff is
killed, and as Kimani comes in he sees that Elizabeth
has been struck down as well and two of her children
killed. He prevents the other raider from killing
Elizabeth. Kimani sees himself reflected in a mirror
behind Elizabeth, and shatters it. Elizabeth lives.
Raids have become commonplace, and now the British
are mobilizing in their own defense. Peter joins the
army. There he confronts another rancher, Joe Matson
(Michael Pate), whose wife has been killed by raiders.
Matson's attitude is one of murderous revenge. Peter's
attitude is that killing should be minimized, that justice
is to be sought within limitations. "We are not at war
with the Kikuyu nation," he says.
Peter tracks down a group in the hills, but is
upset with the violence that follows in the capture of
153
the group. The group includes Njogu, the oath-giver.
He is finally identified as such by another Kikuyu who
succumbs to torture.
Peter in the meantime is somewhat battle fatigued,
and finds that he can no longer relate well to Holly.
When physical torture proves to have no effect on
Njogu, Henry McKenzie is called in. Henry asks Njogu
to swear upon the household god of Karanja, and Njogu,
who has never taken the oath because his faith in his
forefathers was too strong, breaks. Kimani is identified
as the leader of the raids.
Peter goes into the hills and awaits a meeting with
Kimani at night. Peter asks that they live in peace.
Kimani responds, only as friends with equal rights,
with justice and understanding. Peter asks Kimani to
cease hostilities. Kimani says he will discuss it with
his people. If they agree, there is to be a mutual
laying down of arms in a nearby meadow.
The surrender is eventually planned. But Matson,
who does not want peaceful coexistence, has also heard, and
with a few men ambushes Kimani's people just before Peter
arrives. Kimani and his little child are the only sur
vivors. Peter pursues him, needing to explain the be
trayal, but Kimani will not hear. When Kimani tries to
kill Peter, he is disarmed, but in trying to scramble
154
away falls into a tiger pit and dies.
Peter takes the young baby home, reflecting that
his sister Elizabeth also has just had another boy.
They will be raised together. "Maybe for them it will
be better. It's not too late."
This is the sketchiest of synopses for a movie
rich in detail, motivation, and character. Perhaps the
richness best stands out in the contrast between novel
and movie.
In general terms, Ruark consistently uses language
that demeans the African. His hero, Peter McKenzie, while
more compassionate than others, is basically a hunter.
His lust for life is measured by his ability to hunt
hard, drink hard, and fuck hard. As a hunter with great
physical stamina, he is often called upon by women of the
safari for some extracurricular service. Between safaris
he is the all loveable playboy and entertainer of
stewardesses. This characterization is narrated briefly
in the book largely to show how much he is willing to
give up to marry Holly. For give it all up he does.
Until the shooting starts. And then he must become a
man hunter.
Ruark's Peter McKenzie does not glory in killing,
but on the other hand he does not shirk from it. In the
novel, Peter and Joe Matson are cut from the same cloth.
155
Ruark.'s Kimani is an ignorant , Communist^duped
native whose superstitions show- that he is not ready
for liberation, and who is willing to undergo all sorts
of perversions on the other hand by way of swearing
fidelity to the Mau Mau. Kimani, for example, volun^
tarily beheads his own brother; he becomes a cheap thief
in Nairobi; and he willingly goes to jail and adopts
sodomy as the ritual for the Mau Mau oath. Sympathy for
Kimani is kept, slim as it is, by the fact that he does
all these things with initial reluctance,
A curious bit of character contrast between blacks
and whites in Ruark's version lies in the male^female
relationship. He portrays a Kikuyu wedding night as
violent and impersonal. Twice he portrays white wedding
nights as gentle, loving, soft. In the black. story,
the description is physical and detailed. The white's
stories, however, are told in terms of human feeling and
told with discretion. While Peter's stud days are related
in a context that elevates him to demi-god proportions,
Kimani's sexual activity in Nairobi makes him a pimp,
and he gets gonorrhea to boot. While the breakup of
Peter's and Holly's marriage is sensitively handled in
the book, Kimani takes on three wives consecutively,
only one with affection. He would seem incapable of
good white marital love.
156
In the book, no English responsibility for the
African's plight is acknowledged, no oppression is
hinted at, and no indication is given that the Mau Mau
may have had just grievances. Rather all support of the
Mau Mau derived from superstitious oaths, binding unto
death, administered under threat of beheading. We must
conclude that the Basuto proverb that opens the book
should be translated, 'If a man does away with his
traditional way of living and throws away his good
customs, he had better be sure he doesn't replace them
with the worse traditions of the Mau Mau.'
The movie, on the other hand, might be translated,
'When we take away from Man his traditional way of life,
his customs, his religion, we'd better be sure we have
something ourselves to offer, something like brotherhood
and compassion, understanding, and appreciation.'
In contrast to the book, Brooks always treats the
black Africans with respect, Peter considers Kimani to
be his brother and cannot bring himself to treat Kimani
in a demeaning manner. Peter's father, the most respected
character in the movie, shows true appreciation for the
customs of the Kikuyu. In a scene early in the film
Henry is attempting to find the thief of a gun. He
puts each black worker through a trial that consists of
putting a red-hot knife flat against the tongue. He
157
explains that the guilty man's tongue dries up and he
feels the heat. Moistness on the tongue protects the
others. Although he gives a scientific explanation, he
is not just playing tricks on the natives. Again, at
Karanja's trial, he expresses deep appreciation of the
customs and religion of the Kikuyu. And in contrast to
the book, he undertakes to interrogate Njogu with
Karanja's household god with a sense of near belief him
self. (In the book, they go through an elaborate trick
with gas masks and demon masks, and mirrors to trick
Njogu into believing what he already believes.)
In the movie's characterization of Peter, he is a
farmer; and like his father, close to the land. Although
we never see him hunting, we are told along with Holly,
that when locust and rinderpest destroyed the crops, he
took some safaris to try to recoup some money. But his
heart is always with his land and its people.
Kimani is equal in character to Peter. He objects
to the violence the first time it occurs, and argues
consistently with the Mau Mau to try to regain their
land through peaceful means. When he meets with Peter
towards the end of the movie, one of his reasons is to
tell Peter that he did not hurt Elizabeth. When Eliza
beth is hurt in the raid, the image' where he shatters
the mirror into which he is looking speaks powerfully of
158
his agony over what has happened to him, and his feeling
that he is no longer himself. Kimani takes Njogu*s
daughter for his wife, a beautiful girl easily matching
the beauty of the white heroine (in the book the black
women are described as fat and greasy), to whom he is
dedicated until she is killed at the ambush at the end
of the picture. Kimani, anxious for peace, renders his
people and himself vulnerable by gathering for a cease
fire. Whites are responsible for destroying the peace
that might have been. (There is no such arrangement or
scene in the book--Peter willingly and systematically
helps hunt down and kill all the Mau Mau; he finally
kills Kimani with his bare hands.)
Probably the key philosophical, or thematic, speech
in the novel is spoken by Peter. He is introducing an
American couple to Africa over dinner, and relates the
frustration the white man feels in trying to deal with
the African:
The thing about the black is that you've got to
know when to kick him in the tail, when to humor
him, and when to praise him. You can't stretch
him beyond his basic powers, and you can't ever
rely on him in white man's terms. Just when you
do, he'll revert completely to his ancestors and
do exactly the bloody opposite of what's indicated.
13
Robert Ruark, Something of Value (New York,
Doubleday, 1957), p. 222. "
159
After a bit more conversation, Nancy challenges him.
"1 assume then," Nancy said, "that yon actually
like the individual Negro but only in certain
categories, and always as an inferior?"
Peter looked up, almost but not quite angry.
"They damned well are my inferiors in the white
man's world as we know it out here. I don't mean
to be rude, but you've been in Nairobi only half
a day, I admire a great many of their skills, and
X love the true savage on his own savage ground,
and X love a great many things about all the tribes.
But I live here, I was raised here, and I know
niggers. And they bloody well are not ready to sit
in the Legislative Assembly."14
It could be argued that the book is only trying to
be realistic. ‘ Xt certainly is not a book, on the other
hand, crying out for brotherhood among men.
In the movie, on the other hand, this is precisely
the cry. There are two key images mentioned in the
synopsis that illustrate this. At the 'beginning of the
film, Peter rescues Kimani from the hyenas and then car
ries him back piggy-back. We are being told that Peter
accepts the burden literally and psychologically of
helping Kimani be what he can be. The African is truly
the white man's burden. The image is unselfconscious and
unobtrusive thus giving it the power of integrity. In the
final scene of the movie, Peter takes Kimani's son on
his hip. The burden and the responsibility continue.
14Ibid., p. 225.
160
This total turnabout from the values expressed by
Ruark in his novel affords us a rather clear look at
the world that Brooks' characters inhabit. It is a
world concerned with justice, equality, freedom. It
espouses respect for different cultures and,different
religions. It is a world where characters make deliberate
moral choices, striving against external and internal
obstacles to achieve a sense of rightness and wholeness.
Something of Value marked the end of an era for
Brooks. The values expressed in his early films would
not change, but they would become less explicit for
awhile. His ideological expression would become simpler,
and more heroic. During the next ten years he would
produce only five pictures, each dealing with larger-
than-life characters. The commercial Brooks was about
to bloom.
161
CHAPTER yiZ
The' fiye pictures directed by Richard Brooks in the
decade from 1958-1967 form a distinctive period in his
career, creatively and commercially. Commercially they
were "big" pictures, major studio productions. And they
were big successes—-fifteen Academy Award nominations
during this period, including four awards, and Brooks1
own award for the writing of Elmer Gantry.
Creatively they are of a piece as well. They were
productions of classics, and much of what that implies—
heroic characters, larger—than—life, expansive style,
elaborate expression of high sentiment. The characters
in these five films all have a great thirst for life,
for feeling it and living it. They all have a great inner
tension that springs from a feeling of guilt. They desire
to be cleansed, to be whole again.
It is this desire to be whole that makes the Dmitri
Karamazovs and the Chance Waynes not all that different
from the Peter McKenzies and the Richard Dadiers of his
earlier films. In a heroic cast they express the consis
tent Brooks cry for integrity, for honor, for wholeness.
162
There are some major differences, of course.
Whereas the characters in early films were concerned
with integrity in the public interest, the characters
of this period are concerned with their own most personal
lives. While the earlier characters waged war with
governments and social institutions, these characters
have wars raging within their souls.
There are other differences between the classics-
according-to-Brooks and his earlier films, differences
perhaps more germane to this study. They are economic
differences. The "big" pictures cost more to produce
than the earlier ones. The risk was higher. The studio
backing and control were more remote. The risk was more
personal. The stories were no longer derived from
original screenplays or little known books, but from
novels and plays that already had won great audiences.
The writer-director now felt responsible not only to
himself, to his audience and to his financial backers,
but also to the authors of the original works. Pressures
that were once primarily external were now for the most
part becoming a part of the artist's fabric of thought.
The five films of which we are speaking include:
The Brothers Karamazov, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Elmer
Gantry, Sweet Bird of Youth, and Lord Jim.
The Brothers Karamazov, the first of these, stands
as a clear example of the shift of pressures from studio
163
executives to the internal need of the director to attract
and please his audience. Pandro S. Berman, who had been
producer for Brooks on Blackboard Jungle and Something of
Value, had for years wanted to make a film of the
Dostoevsky masterpiece. He enlisted Brooks for the
project, an independent production released by MGM.
Brooks was the perfect man for the job. He was con
scientious not only in his usual research and his desire
to be faithful to Dostoevsky, he also was typically
conscientious about the expenditure of funds. The
movie, with all its feeling of richness and period
authenticity, was brought in for only two-and-one-half
million dollars, a figure considerably below that of
comparable "big" pictures of the day.
The studio, however, did not totally fail to
exercise supervision in some very basic ways. Brooks
had been invited to make the picture in Russia, and was
eager to do so. But the studio was afraid that this would
somehow make it a Communist movie.
So I said, "Dostoevsky was a long time before
this. How can I create Russia in a back lot?
1111 have to make everything at night or in inter
iors. It's impossible."
"You'll make it and stay away from those
people."1
^"Richard Brooks," Movie, Spring, 1965, p. 7.
164
The studio also exercised approval rights on
casting, and there were inevitable conflicts. For
example, the casting of Maria Schell was not a Brooks
choice. The most significant choices, though, were the
burden of the writer-director alone. How to condense
a huge, complicated novel, bearing many layers of nuance
and feeling— how to bring such an all-embracing work to
the tight narrative form of theatrical films? How to
bring the Russia of the 187 0's to life on an American
screen?
The importance of this picture— and of movie
making itself— to Brooks is revealed in a sentence he
wrote in the introduction to his screenplay of The
Brothers Karamazov. It is an answer to a question he
asks himself, "What is it that makes a great novel?"
Perhaps, aside from the merit of the story
itself and the skill in telling it, we can find
the answer in the author's ability to achieve truth—
and informing the reader to identify himself with
the dreams, the struggles, the goals, the emotional
depths of the novel's characters.2
Achieving truth— this is the central motivating
force of Brooks the writer. In seeking and attempting
2Richard Brooks, "Introduction to the Screenplay
of The Brothers Karamazov," University of Southern
California Library, special collection, p. 1.
165
to project the central truth of Dostoevsky's world,
Brooks became explicitly aware of a transformation that
had been taking place in his own filmmaking. The truth
of a story does not lie just in the events that make up
the plot, but in the feeling the story evokes. The
exploration of the truth of feelings led, particularly
in the writing of Karamazov, to a search for images that
tell the story. While plays and novels, he now theorized,
use words that first of all must reach the intellect,
movies use images that have the immediacy of reaching
the emotions first. So in the film, if the images add up
to an emotionally and coherent statement, an intellectual
response can follow.
!n Karamazov this attempt to tell the story in
images did not imply doing it without words. Rather it
meant constructing the scenes that would best tell the
story in the most economical fashion. Brooks was faced
with the challenge of welding together a film that would
not bog down on philosophy while not ignoring it. The
images that emerge are indeed powerful and emotionally
immediate, but are as dependent on words and actors'
interpretations of those words as on anything in the
photographing and editing of the picture. They are
intimate images for the most part, focusing closely on
characters fully alive. They are images dependent on
timing, rhythm, presence.
166
The Dostoevsky that Brooks chose to bring to the
screen is the Dostoevsky with a concern for spiritual
wholeness— passion, sin, and redemption. These spiritual
realities are not best imaged in things, but in people.
And Brooks stays very close to his people. The vast
majority of the shots in the film are medium close-up
or closer. They guide the viewer to see just the nuances
of character that the director intends. In the scene in
which Grushenka is introduced, for instance, she is
with Fyodor Karamazov in his carriage. The whole
conversation is played in closeup, and although Fyodor
moves from one seat of the carriage to the other and back
within the course of the scene, we are not at all aware
of their surroundings until the scene is over. By
concentrating on closeups the picture maintains the
sense of intrigue and personal passion that is operational
in the story.
The single-minded discipline of Brooks is apparent
in one scene where Dmitri Karamazov seeks out Grushenka
at a skating pond to investigate her purchase of his IOU's.
Another director might have made much more of the ambience,
making more of her liberated character through, say, a
scene on skates. Brooks, however, focuses immediately
on their mutual attraction through closeups, and immedi
ately Dmitri takes charge. In the same way, another
167
director might have made more of the subsequent sleigh-
ride, a fine opportunity to capture a sense of abandon.
Not so Brooks. The abandon is saved for later. Here the
long shot is simply a static camera with the sleigh
approaching down the road, and the closeups are shot
with process backgrounds. The sleigh ride is simply
intended as a graphic way to demonstrate a decision
made by Dmitri— when they come to a fork in the road,
he opts for the road that leads to a tavern in another
town instead of the road that leads to their own
village and the responsibility that implies.
The most obvious visual addition that Brooks made
was the use of exaggerated colored lighting, pumping
elemental colors, mostly red, into most scenes to help
create emotional tone. This was not only a response
to a visual-tonal need, but a response to an economic
one: the studio had turned down an opportunity for
Brooks to shoot the film on location in Russia, and in
order to compensate for the backlot look, the stylized
use of color helped remove the need for documentary
authenticity. (Brooks nevertheless showed his usual
meticulous care in trying for authentic detail.) This
backlot limitation may have also been part of the reason
for a closeup shooting style that did not require
expansive sets.
While Karamazov is a highly verbal script, depend-
168
ent on the tension and strength that comes from fine
acting performances for its impact, Brooks also introduces
a number of non-verbal interludes which are key to the
characterizations and which provide relief from the
intensity of the drama. Most of them are set to music.
They are simply photographed, with attention to detail,
and edited in a montage fashion that sets them apart
from the rest of the film.
The first of these scenes introduces Fyodor Kara
mazov as he revels with a young woman in his home. To
the music of gypsy fiddlers he ties down a wrist, he
kisses the writhing and exhilarated woman, pours wine
down her throat, takes a feather to her feet— the details
mount and pick up speed in the cutting with the music.
Flickering red light adds the final touch to the
debauchery. When a servant comes to announce the arrival
of his saintly son, Alexei, however, he abruptly ends
the party. In a matter of a couple of minutes, we have
a full picture of a lusty, sensuous, debauched old man,
responsive still to his youngest son.
The same vitality is conveyed with similar economy
in the Dmitri-Grushenka part of their first night to
gether. To the tune of gypsy music Grushenka dances
slowly, half for herself, it seems,' and half for Dmitri,
in restrained passion and excitement, her scarf trailing
through the air. The tension of desire and restraint
______________________ 169
is unmistakable.
Other images are notable not for their technical
craftsmanship but for their inventiveness in both moving
the story along and creating the feeling they try to
convey:
— Dmitri competes with another cossack in a horse
and saber performance race to win both a bet and a kiss'
from Grushenka. He loses the race and the bet, but
wins Grushenka.
— Dmitri, now obsessed with Grushenka, haunts her
tavern till she begs him to go and let her treat her
patrons with the flirtation they deserve. This is ac
complished in one shot, a medium closeup at a table,
during which Grushenka joins him, is invited to another
table by a patron, and departs.
— Dmitri, waiting outside Grushenka1s house after
saying goodnight until she slips out once again to go
to a rendezvous. Dmitri then slips into the carriage
with her. This scene not only demonstrates his terrible
jealousy, it provides foreshadowing of the night he
explodes in jealousy when she is not at home, and
pursues her to his father's house where he does not find
her.
— Smerdyakov, Fyodor's bastard son, and killer,
assumes his father's clothes and lifestyle when his
father is dead. But it is a decadence he cannot find
170
happiness in without the approval of Ivan, and shortly the
house is in a shambles with shutters flapping in the
wind, and Smerdyakov hanged by his own hand in the
basement.
The impact of one scene central to the theme of The
Brothers Karamazov does not rely on words at all. This is
the scene in which Dmitri humiliates Captain Snegiryov,
who has bought up Dmitri's IOU's for Grushenka, in the
presence of the Captain's son. The scene opens with
Dmitri swinging Snegiryov's consumptive child up on a
horse to ride with several other children. The child
then sees Dmitri challenge his father to a duel, a
challenge which Snegiryov refuses to accept. The boy,
who has been tugging at the sleeve of Dmitri, then
flees from the scene, pelted by the jeers and snowballs
of his classmates. He stumbles and falls in the snow,
abandoning his schoolbooks where they have fallen.
Snegiryov pursues him distressed. The degree of dishonor
the Captain experiences is not apparent to us of
American culture. But we see it in the eyes and rejec
tion of his son. We don't have to understand it,
we feel it.
This scene is of considerable importance to the
ending of the film. Karamazov is the story of Dmitri's
acceptance of his sin and of his consequent achievement
of true honor and integrity. In the final scene of the
171
movie, Dmitri refuses to escape the country until he
has received the forgiveness of Snegiryov and his son.
This compulsion to right the wrongs of his life would
lack credibility in the case of Snegiryov without the
deep-felt sympathy for the boy achieved in the earlier
scene.
In his desire to make a movie worthy of the
Dostoevsky book, then, Brooks did not hesitate to use
words, but turned his attention as well to the invention
of scenes that would capture the spirit of the Russian
author.
One measure of the pressure Brooks felt to be
faithful to both Dostoevsky and to the needs of his
audience is the fact that he prepared his screenplay
for publication, together with a long introduction.
This introduction is some indication of how important he
believes that a director's decisions be understood in
the light of economic reality. It is an attempt to
clarify some of the hundreds and thousands of choices the
writer was forced to make, even before the cameras began
to roll. It is a helpful document in understanding the
way aesthetic decisions are influenced by economic
considerations.
The first question was just which Dostoevsky story
to tell. In his long novel form, Dostoevsky told many
stories. Which would be the one for this writer, this
172
audience, this point in time?
After a thorough, dramatic analysis of the motivat
ing forces in the life of Fyodor Dostoevsky and an
analysis of his Karamazov characters, Brooks concluded:
So The Brothers Karamazov is seen variously as:
— A crime story
— A religious novel
— The Oedipus theme (son killing father)
--A book of Russian manners and customs,
late 19th century
— Revolt of Russian peasantry
— Emergence of middle class in Russia
— Birth of modern Russian nationalism
— A passionate love story
— Forerunner to Freudian thinking
— A psychological thriller told by a
skillful dramatist
And there are many more. Which of these stories
does one make into a film?
The long quote below stands as Brooks' apologia for
the film, foreseeing all the criticism that the film
might receive based on the expectations of the audience.
Not only was the writer-director saying, "I had to make
some choices, and I did my best"; but he is demonstrating
the basic reason for most decisions: money. Further
anticipating the criticism that the "art" of Dostoevsky
was sacrificed to commerce, he reminds us that the cost
factor of movies requires that we entertain, and not
simply create art for its own sake. Only when we under
stand the economic, mass-entertainment nature of movies
3lbid., p. 7.
173
can we understand the difficulty of seeking the "truth"
of The Brothers Karamazov within the format of a movie.
Regardless of which story— or combination of
stories goes into the filmization, certain practical
considerations enter the scene. Cost! Cast!
Where to shoot! (Location or stage?) Contractual
and time limitations, etc. Obviously a highly
talented cast is required to portray such volatile
characters. In today's market skilled actors
demand, and receive, high pay. At least seven
principal players are needed. But you cannot
have seven unusually talented actors for major
roles and unskilled, poorly paid actors for
supporting roles. The dramatization would collapse
in the fabric of the basic material. The cast for
the film Karamazov cost more than a million
dollars. The period of the story is 1870. This
means players must have costumes of the period.
Designs and fittings, research, and above all,
time, are involved. Sets to be constructed. Where
in America can one go to find Russian towns and
houses and landscapes? Vistas without telephone
and telegraph wires? Without- television aerials?
Without paved streets and automobiles and factory
smoke cutting the skies? Without vapor trails
of jet planes smearing the heavens? Without the
roar of plane motors that forbid recording of
dialogue?
An illusion must be created of Tsarist Russia,
small village, period 1870. Where? On the stages.
Everything must be built for the film. Cost going
up! Everything must be designed for use in color.
We had decided to use color to create mood and
provide richness in the tapestry of the story.
A thousand details would be seen in color that would
be lost in black and white. Color means more cost!
Sets are painted differently for color. Dressing
becomes more difficult. Costumes in color are
several times the cost of black and white. Make-up
for color becomes a chore, and an expensive one.
Set-dressing details! Harness for horses of a
troika! It doesn't matter, perhaps, say some. But
it does. There 1s always some movie fan who writes:
174
"You pulled a bonor." Critics and fan magazine
writers are eager and anxious to deplore the "so-
called" ignorance and stupidity of moviemakers. So
it must all be detailed and accurate. Cost going up!
Labor-costs among the cinema crafts (carpenters,
painters, grips, props, electricians, etc.) have
risen commensurately with that of other workers in
other fields.
We11--The Brothers Karamazov finally cost
slightly more than two-and-a-half million dollars.
We were lucky. Due to the enthusiasm of the cast,
and agility, ability, willingness of the crew and
the masterful knowledge of the cameraman, John
Alton— and the loving care and consideration of all
of us— we made the film for half what it should
have cost.
Still: $2,500,000 is a lot of money. In order
to break even the theatres playing Karamazov will
have to gross more than $5,000,000. Because of
theatre rentals, distribution costs, cost of color
prints (300 or more), advertising, etc., twice the
cost of the negative usually is required to break
even.
So five million must be grossed throughout the
world.
According to the anniversary issue of Variety,
January 4, 1956— seventy films have grossed five
million dollars or more. These seventy films are
NOT for one year! The list includes ALL THE FILMS
EVER MADE! IN ALL THE YEARS OF PICTURE MAKING!
And the figures are not all profits; they are
gross receipts.
It becomes clear then, that to break even we must
gross $5,000,0 00— Somerset Maugham was right!
"First of all it must be an entertainment."
And it must entertain, first of all, MOST of the
people.
This immediately becomes a point of controversy.
There may be some persons who will say we have
sacrificed art! But is it true that merely because
a work is popular, it must therefore be lacking in
175
art?
To be "entertaining" a film cannot be so long
that patrons will tire in their seats, faint away
with hunger or thirst. To tell ALL of Dostoevsky's
The Brothers Karamazov in one film would require
ten hours or more. Who would sit through it? Who
would want to? Who could afford enough money to
see a picture that played once in two days? Such
a film would have to run for ten years or more to
break even.
But if such a film is the ordinary length (an
hour and a half), how can one tell an extraordinary
story such as Karamazov? It could not possibly be
Karamazov. It would be something else.
Now then! What to include from the book?
What to eliminate? What to condense? What to
telescope? What characters to feature?4
Brooks goes on to explain particular problems and
solutions. For example, how to maintain Father Zossima
as an essential element of the story without sacrificing
the film to a lengthy backgrounder on him. Or how to
create a Father Zossima with depth of character without
spending crucial film time that slows down the pace of
the story.
Beyond story problems there are other audience
problems. Audience reaction begins even before the film
is finished. One gentleman from Argentina wrote and
asked that Russian faces be used in the picture "instead
of a lot of Englishmen and Hungarians and Jews."
4Ibid., pp. 7-10.
176
This brings up an interesting point. What
exactly is a Russian face? Is it a man with
high cheekbones and a beard, who drinks vodka,
has a deep voice and always spits? Do all Russian
women have dull faces? Do they all have huge
bosoms? Are they all black-haired? Are they all
blonde? I don't think there is a face anywhere in
the world that could not be taken as Russian.
Even in 1870, the Tsar's domain included Finns,
Hungarians, Romanians, Ukranians, Poles, Caucasians,
Estonians, Latvians, Bulgars, Turks, Kazaks, Mongols,
Chinese, and so on. The Russian can look like the
famous Barrymore family, patrician, proud, regal; or
he can look like Akim Tamiroff, powerful, peasant
stock; he can look as gentle and timid as Tchai
kovsky; he can appear as mystical and dark and powerful
as Dostoevsky.
The actor's skin texture, hair color, size, nose,
or jaw line do not matter in the least. The
important thing is whether the actor can bring to
life an impression of the character created by
Dostoevsky. Not the reality, but the illusionI^
Brooks' explanation of his decision-making process
is clearly defensive. Not without cause. As he says,
every person who reads a book, particularly, a great book,
has his or her own "movie" already in his or her head.
As far as ascertainable, the introduction has not been
published publicly as it undoubtedly would have been if
the critics had not been so favorable in their reaction
to the film.
Brooks wisely omits one element from his introduc
tion. While listing many of the possible Karamazov
stories he could emphasize, he never tells just which
story he decided he would actually make. He leaves that
^Ibid., pp. 15-16.
177
to h.is audience's perceptions. And that story is the
story of Dmitri, a magnificent Karamazov, embracing the
evil of his father and the saintliness Of his brother
in himself. The story is one of Dmitri's passionate
struggle to be alive and to be whole. Wholeness comes
from honor, passionate love, honesty.
In the opening image of the film, Fyodor Karamazov
(Lee J. Cobb), Dmitri's father, is indulging in one of
his passions. In a room, deeply cast in red from the
fire, muscians playing wildly, the elder Karamazov tickles
his lovely female guest, tied down to a table, pours
wine down her throat, kisses, exults. It is a scene of
great sensuality, energy, passion. It swirls and
flickers, like a scene from hell. Alexei (William
Shatner), the youngest brother, in the cool blue-white
of a winter night is approaching the house, as a messen
ger from Dmitri (Yul Brynner) seeking money from their
father. Entering the house, he interrupts his father
I
and petitions on behalf of Dmitri.
In this brief scene, an immense amount of the
essential characterization and exposition are accomplished,
and the conflict is established. When Fyodor hears
that his youngest son has arrived, he willingly parts
from his passion of the moment. His love for this
saintly son is obvious. In the course of the conversation,
178
however, his hatred of his eldest son also is obvious.
The issue is money, which throughout is to be the action-
motivating issue, but is never to be the real issue.
Dmitri's profligate life is established, but also his
claims upon his mother's money that Fyodor has refused
to release.
When Alexei delivers the 5,000 rubles to Dmitri,
the older brother does not pay the gambling debts he
has run up with his military companions, but starts a
brawl instead. He has all the characteristics of his
father. The money is for another purpose. Having
retired to his room, he receives a visitor, Katya (Claire
Bloom). Katya's father has embezzled money, and to ayoid
having him found out, Katya is willing to degrade her
self by giving herself to Dmitri for 5,000 rubles,
Dmitri, however, is struck with nobility. He gives her
the money and sends her on her way. The lustful and the
noble are both strong in Dmitri,
The next scene occurs several weeks later,
Dmitri is in prison for his debts. His visitor is
Katya. She has come for a proposal of her own. She is
now an heiress; she is devoutly in love with Dmitri; and
she wants to marry him.
Then a switch to Ryevsk, town of the Karamazovs,
Ivan, a writer, has returned home at the news of Dmitri's
179
engagement. Smerdyakov, bastard son and servant of
Fyodor, is a disciple of his agnostic philosophy. Fyodor
is with beautiful Grushenka (Maria Schell) who expresses
an interest in Dmitri.
In a series of scenes that follow we find Dmitri
neglecting his fiancee, Ivan falling in love with her,
fencing and verbal combat between Fyodor and Smerdyakov,
as well as between Fyodor and Dmitri. Fr. Zossima,
whose saintly qualities have mostly been absorbed in the
character of Alexei, is called in to be an arbiter in the
money dispute between Dmitri and his father. He leaves
without arbitrating that dispute, but bows down in front
of Dmitri before leaving.
Fyodor sells his IOU's from Dmitri to Grushenka,
who owns the local tavern. According to Fyodor's plan,
Grushenka is meant to send Dmitri to prison for his debts
and then Katya will come to the rescue to save her lover.
At this point in the story, Brooks brings in a
peripheral character in the book to play a key role in
plot development and to lay the ground work for the end
ing. Ex-Captain Snegiryov, in the employ of Grushenka,
has attempted to buy up Dmitri's debts. Dmitri in the
open street humiliates the man until he discovers the
truth— that he is dependent upon Grushenka for his
livelihood. By allowing himself to be humiliated, the
Captain has humiliated his son as well, Ilyusha, who
180
retreats from his boyhood friends, pelted by snowballs.
Dmitri visits Katya and tells her of the story.
When he will not accept her money, she asks him to
post 3,000 rubles to her father. Dmitri seeks out
Grushenka to confront her with the story. He feels great
passion for her and in an inn in a nearby village uses
Katya's money to throw a party for Grushenka, which in
the shooting— color, shadows, movement, music— recalls
his father's party from the opening scenes of the movie.
But in a gentle sequel to his passion, he says his
wedding with Katya is off. Grushenka for her part says
she had brought Dmitri to the inn to taunt an old lover,
who never showed up, and she releases him from his
IOU's.
Subsequently, however, Dmitri becomes fiercely
jealous of Grushenka and the time she spends with others.
He pursues her, catches her going out without him.
Dmitri sends Alexei to carry his message breaking
his engagement to Katya. He also says that he must repay
the 3,000 rubles before he is to be free of Katya.
When Alexei visits, Grushenka is present, who initially
says she will break with Dmitri and then suggests she will
not. She betrays a malicious attitude toward Katya. Ivan,
visiting immediately after, declares his love.
Dmitri pawns all his goods to get 200 rubles that
he sends by way of Alexei to Snegiryov. But this adds
_________________________________________________________________________ Mli
insult to injury~”in his little boy's eyes, and he sends
the message that his honor cannot be bought.
Smerdyakov and Ivan, discussing Ivan's agnostic
theories— there is no right or wrong— and Smerdyakov's
epilepsy, hint at murdering the old man, while Ivan is off
in Moscow.
The next evening, when Dmitri cannot find Gru
shenka at her home, he knows she is with his father, and
so he rushes to the family home. There, detected by his
father's old servant, he strikes him on the head. But
there is no Grushenka with his father. He finds her with
her lover (the one she had wanted to taunt before), whom
he exposes as a cheat at cards. Grushenka agrees to go
off with Dmitri, but it is too late now.
Arrested for his father's murder, he readily ad
mits his attack upon the servant but denies his father's
murder. In the trial that follows, Katya gives purposely
damaging evidence out of spite; and Dmitri is convicted.
Ivan, however, arranges for Dmitri's escape.
In the last scene, Dmitri once more risks his life
to put his life completely in order. He commands the
driver to Snegiryov's house where he apologizes to the
ex-Captain in front of his son. His honor now intact, he
is free to escape.
There are millions of people today who never would
182
have attempted to read Dostoevsky1s Brothers Karamazov
who have at least some feel for the sweep and passion of
his novel, thanks to Richard Brooks. With motivation
and philosophical quest admittedly pared down to fit
the theatrical film genre, audiences nevertheless
are acquainted with the Karamazovs, particularly Dmitri
who shows a great thirst for life, who sins freely, who
admits guilt as readily, and who in the end subordinates
all to honor and integrity. Most of Dostoevskian
ambiguity is gone. Brooksian clarity is in its place.
Above all, a good movie has emerged— an energetic,
feeling-infused evocation of a story taking its life
from a chain of inexorable events that in the end leads
only into the souls and consciences of its characters.
In the end awareness emerges of the drive within ourselves
to reconcile the demon and the saint that makes the
world go round.
We see this first of all in Dmitri, with a change
that begins in him when he meets Grushenka and is con
firmed when he confronts her with her Polish officer.
We see this in Grushenka in the ambivalence she feels
toward Dmitri and her Polish officer. And we see it in
the Snegiryov-Ilyusha conflict when it is of supreme
importance for Dmitri to obtain their forgiveness before
his escape.
So of all the choices he could have made, this is
183
the version of The Brothers Karamazov Brooks chose—
the passionate odyssey for personal integrity.
If he had ever had the need to defend it, Brooks would
have been well prepared. As it was, the film opened
to rave reviews in Radio City Music Hall. The writer-
director was praised rather than blamed for his tight
adherence to the need for cinematic narrative. The New
York Herald Tribune said:
Though they have been abridged, they (Dostoev
sky's characters) are still complex people seething
with vitality, driven by passions both sacred and
profane. They are a tantalizing mixture of saint
and sinner— men and women to be pitied for their
weaknesses and admired for their strivings....
Meanwhile as writer and director, Brooks has not
forgotten that The Brothers Karamazov is, above
all, a good story. He tells it with pace and
fervor.6
America magazine said:
The task of turning Dostoevsky's over-size,
sprawling, highly charged novel into a movie of
anything like standard size must have been stag
gering. Scenarist-director Richard Brooks has
made it look easy.?
Newsweek said: "The film is certainly one of
the most articulate ever fashioned by Hollywood from
8
a literary classic."
^William K. Zinsser, New York Herald Tribune,
February 21, 1958, p. 34.
?Moira Walsh, America, March 1, 195 8, p. 2 03.
^Newsweek, February 24, 1958, p. 59.
184
And Variety said it didn't "sacrifice art to
entertainment nor lose entertainment in a false conception
of what constitutes art."9
Obviously this success did not happen by accident.
It came from a conscientious effort to attend to his
subject and to attend to his audience.
Brooks' own words perhaps sum up the tension
created by the director's desire to be faithful to
himself, to his audience, and to Dostoevksy.
This past year has made me humble before
Dostoevsky's genius; it also has made me realize
the potentiality of movies— of what they can
accomplish, of what they can say.
Experienced movie-makers always are telling us:
"Don't make movies based on classics, because
you'll fail—
"Don't make religious pictures—
"Don't make movies with a lot of foreign names
in them— people won't come to see them--
"Don't touch Dostoevsky's novels— poison at the
box office—
"Make only BIG pictures— in extra B-I-GGG
Cinemascope—
"Don't make a movie unless you have a brand new
theme song which should be sung by Perry Como or
Nat King Cole under the titles—
"Don't, don't, don'till "
Well, we've broken all those Don'ts. The
Brothers Karamazov is NOT in cinemascope. It ±s_
Dostoevsky. It is not a movie that is big from
9
Weekly Variety, February 9, 1958, p. 12.
18 5
side to side; but it is, I hope, boundless within!
For this movie is told in, depth, far beyond the mere
confines of a theater. We have tried to make it as
vast as the human soul— as boundless as the human
heart.10
No wonder then that MGM turned to Brooks for the
direction of a more commercial "classic"— Cat on a Hot
Tin Roof. Having been successful in the direction of
one literary work, he could be counted on to deliver the
goods on another work of substance. On Brooks' part,
this Williams play and the other one he would direct,
Sweet Bird of Youth, were not inconsistent with the
Brooks view of life.
We should not idealize too much Brooks' motivation
for choosing to direct these pictures. He would not
readily overlook the prestige involved, the status of
working on a major studio production. (Again, these
pictures were independent productions with MGM backup
and release.) But prestige, status, financial gain alone
could not be the decisive factors for Brooks. There was,
however, an advantage in having them coincide with a theme
Brooks could be enthused about: the saving power of Truth.
Facing oneself. Integrity. These concerns were shared
by Williams and Brooks.
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof is a story about mendacity.
And the most important mendacity is not the lie told to
lORichard Brooks, "Introduction to The Brothers
Karamazov," pp. 16-17.
186
someone else. It is the lie told to yourself. It is
this inner mendacity that makes it necessary to lie to
others, and which blocks loving communication. This
final goal of loving communication Brooks emphasizes
more than Williams. The playwright is directed toward
a stripping away of lies so that people will only begin
to be open toward communication. The filmmaker is
directed to a resolution that has people actively
reaching out.
In the act of putting the Williams play on the
screen, all sorts of tensions developed. Williams, of
course, was concerned that his story should emerge intact.
The studio was concerned that a commercial story, free
of unnecessary censorship snags would be produced to reach
the widest possible audience. Brooks, on his part, now
had the leverage to see that with due respect to author
and audience, the filmic interpretation would be his own.
That Brooks achieved this goal is evident not only from
the successful movie that accomplished everything the
play did without being bound to the play's scenes and
words; it is evident from the first step outline sub
mitted to MGM by screenwriter James Poe, who had been
hired initially to make the adaptation.
One can hardly begin to trace- every decision in
the screen adaptation process. The best that can be done
is to note the final differences. One does know, however,
187
that Williams stayed involved throughout the picture.
One knows from Brooks that even though Williams had been
consulted at every stage of production, he complained
that Brooks had butchered his play. This complaint was
particularly galling to the director since Williams
had picked up a tidy $1,700,000 on the movie.
Williams’ complaint about the Brooks screenplay is
intriguing in the light of the tremendous commercial
success of the film and in the light of the notes he
published in connection with the stage play. The stage
version is published with two third acts, the original
Act III, and the Act III written in response to the
criticism of Elia Kazan. Williams explains why he
rewrote the third act:
If you don't want a director's influence on
your play, there are two ways to avoid it, and
neither is good. One way is to arrive at an
absolutely final draft of your play before you
let your director see it, then hand it to him
saying, "Here it is, take it or leave it." The
other way is to select a director who is content
to put your play on the stage precisely as you
conceived it with no ideas of his own. I said
neither is a good way, and I meant it. No
living playwright, that I can think of, hasn't
something valuable to learn about his own work
from a director so keenly perceptive as Elia
Kazan.H
Although Kazan is cited with full respect, we can
presume Williams would not limit his attitude to. this
^Tennessee Williams, "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" in
Best American Plays, edited by John Gassner (New York,
Crown Publishers, 1958), p. 78.
188
one director. Indeed, the final justification for
following Kazan's advice is not on "aesthetic" grounds
but on the grounds of audience acceptance:
The reception of the playing-script has more than
justified, in my opinion, the adjustments made to
that influence. A failure reaches fewer people,
and touches fewer, than does a play that succeeds.^
Thus audience response makes the difference. Based
on this norm, Williams would seem to owe Brooks a deep
debt of gratitude. The movie grossed at least
$9,700,000 domestically, and won six Academy Award
nominations, including writing, directing, and best
picture.
Whatever day to day tensions Brooks may have
experienced attendant to the desires of the original
author, they could not have been as trying as the
pressures exerted by the studio. The original play
contained admitted difficulty in a day when the Motion
Picture Production Code was strong and rigid. Homo
sexuality was explicitly discussed in the play, Brick
and Maggie's sexual relationship was explicitly discussed,
and much of the language was stronger than the Cbde
allowed.
James Poe's original treatment provides a glance
at some of the problems contained in the play from a
studio's point of view. (Later we will also look at
Ibid. , p. 79 .
189
the structural differences btween the Williams, Poe, and
Brooks versions.) The most obvious taboo to be dealt
with was homosexuality. In his step outline Poe reduces
the Brick-Maggie-Skipper tension to a question of iealousy
and inner mendacity. Maggie was jealous of the Brick-
Skipper friendship, "because she and Brick never got
close tocrether as two p e o p l e . "13 Brick cannot listen
to the lies Skipper is willing to admit about himself.
The only hint of homosexuality comes in a flash
back.
Skipper comes in with a bottle and two glasses, wants
to talk out his troubles.... he's never been much
of a man with the crirls-— for all his pretense of
virility. And that frightens him! v(Note: This is
the important point in the play, the one which we
are trying to get over without being too overboard;
it's as though Tea and Sympathy had continued and
the boy found himself i n a d e q u a t e . )14
The motivation for Brick's lack of self-honesty would
seem to be in great difficulty.
Two other notes in the Poe step outline indicate
studio-Code pressures. One is Big Daddy's exultation
in life and his intention to take up with new sexual
vigor after he discovers that he does not have cancer.
Poe's note reads, "Good scene, plays well, but how far
can we go with the censors?"!5 And in a scene shortly
l^James W. Poe, "Step Outline-for Screenplay of
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof," University of Southern California
library, special collection, p. 12.
l^Ibid. , pp. 12-13. ^Ibid. , p. 7.
190
before that one in the play, Big Mama is also horsing
around. Poe's note: "Question: use the preacher on Big
Mama's lap routine or not? Don't want any more trouble
from religious pressure groups than we're goincr to get
anyway."16
These expressed fears are only the tip of the
iceberg on which a film can run aaround with censors
and pressure groups. Sometimes the writer-director faces
the fears in the form of directives from the studio,
sometimes within himself as he tries to correctly
estimate the wavelenath of his audience, and sometimes
from external pressures from groups like the Legion of
Decency of that time.
It would be overly simplistic, however, to think
that aesthetic decisions are tampered with by unreasonable
outside pressures. The Production Code and pressure groups
sprang, within limitations, from the audiences themselves.
Brooks, as noted earlier, is more interested in communi
cating with an audience than with testing its shock
threshold. A safe assumption might be then that Brooks
simply accepted certain parameters of language and subject
matter and determined within that framework what direction
to take in fashioning a movie.
Williams' story concerns a Southern plantation
1^Ibid., p. 6.
191
family in search of saving Truth. Big Daddy (Burl Ives
in the film) has worked his way up from caretaker to
owner of "28,000 acres of the richest land this side of
the Valley Nile." He has sired two sons, Gooper and
Brick. Gooper was the elder and the more responsible—
always doing what was expected of him, including becoming
a lawyer and having a wife with a litter of kids. Brick,
on the other hand, was a glamorous athlete, married to a
glamorous and childless wife. The responsible son,
however, is characterized as selfish and unfeeling. The
irresponsible son has the capacity for great love. The
events are set on Big Daddy's sixty-fifth birthday, which
is also the day his biopsy reveals cancer. Mae and
Gooper are present to protect their financial interests,
afraid that Brick will squander the inheritance. Brick
is trying to lose himself in an alcoholic haze to protect
himself from his sense of guilt and love-hate for his
father. The surface conflict between Maggie and Gooper
and Mae is a struggle for the estate. The struggle
between Maggie and Brick interfaces to the most basic
struggle in the story: Brick with himself (and his father
with himself).
Brick has stopped sleeping with Maggie, thus
leaving her childless. He has become an alcoholic; Big
Daddy values grandchildren, but he also has a special
affection for his second son. Brick is living with a deep
192
guilt deriving from the suicide of his best friend and
companion, Skipper. Unable to face his personal guilt,
however, he blames Maggie for the suicide and justifies
his failure to grapple with his own life. Inner
mendacity.
Big Daddy for his part fails to face his own truth—
his impending death, and his lack of love for his children
and his wife. This failure is abetted by the family.
They know Big Daddy has cancer, but tell him that it is
only colitis.
Big Daddy confronts Brick with his alcoholism and
escape in a stripping-bare scene that brings out the
truth (which truth varies from version to version of the
story) regarding Skipper's suicide. In retaliation, Brick
tells Big Daddy about the terminal cancer. Out of this
revelation of Truth comes resolution— Big Daddy taking
hold of his remaining life and Brick reconciling with
Maggie, symbolized by his willingness to create a child
with her.
The "Truth" suggested in each version is a direct
result of the motivation dilemma deriving from the Brick-
Skipper relationship. As suggested above, Brick's guilt
is explicitly a result of his fear of homosexuality and
the truth about his latent homosexual relationship with
Skipper. In the scene in which Big Daddy confronts Brick
with this relationship, Tennessee Williams includes a note
193
for the director:
The bird that I hope to catch in the net of this
play is not the solution of one man's psychological
problem.... Some mystery should be left in the
revelation of character in a play, just as a great
deal of mystery is always left in the revelation of
character in life, even in one's own character to
himself. This does not absolve the playwright of
his duty to observe and probe as clearly and deeply
as he legitimately can; but it should steer him
away from "pat" conclusions, facile definitions
which make a play just a play, not a snare for the
truth of human e x p e r i e n c e .17
Interestingly the movie's need to downplay homosexu
ality does more to achieve the ambiguity that Williams
sought more than the playwright's original version.
Dealing explicitly with the fear and the guilt is a
more direct and uni-dimensional approach than both the
Poe and Brooks versions that try to involve other levels
of motivation. In Poe's version, jealousy is introduced.
Not just Maggie's jealousy of the Brick-Skipper friendship,
but Brick's jealousy of Maggie who fawns on Skipper in
the absence of Brick. In the Brooks version, a failure
to respond to another's very human loneliness is a major
factor.
The major differences between the three versions
cited here are structural and motivational. The motiva
tional differences are most visible in the "Truth" scene
and in the endings.
l^Tennessee Williams, o j d . cit. , p. 65.
194
The play, restricted as it was to the proscenium,
limited the action to the bedroom of Brick and Maggie, on
whose marriage turns the story. Brick, temporarily
crippled by a broken leg, is the fulcrum for the story.
The nature of a play makes the work carry.information as
well as feeling. Cat is a highly effective verbal
communication.
In his attempt to "open out" the play to take
advantage of the film's ability to change location fluidly,
Poe took all the action that was talked about, whether in
the present or past/ and brought it to life. Thus the
whole story of Skipper's suicide was told in flashback,
not only from Brick's point of view> but from Maggie's
as well. This would allow the audience to see the truth
for themselves.
Brooks' version adopted a certain amount of the
fluidity of space that Poe suggested. Action that was
talked about in the present was actually dramatized
(including the hurdling event, Brick drunk and alone, at
night, that resulted in Brick's broken leg— thus giving
an initial characterization of Brick). The revelation
of the Skipper "truth," however, is kept verbal and in
the present. Perhaps this technique was selected because
the importance of the Truth is not the events that took
place but the perception of them in the present. In any
case, Brooks was more fluid in time than in space, using
195
a great deal of the original dialogue, but in a different
time sequence. A major change was a speech delivered in
the first act of the play by Big Daddy, describing his
world tour with Big Mama and his purchase of innumerable
art objects. In the play this scene is used to charac
terize Big Daddy's hypocritical love for Big Mama. This
scene is transferred by Brooks as a key to the resolution
of the split between Brick and Big Daddy. Staged in the
basement where all the art objects are stored, the movie
scene is used to point up the impersonalization of Big
Daddy's love through his custom of giving things to those
he loves instead of giving himself. Brooks' film moves
decisively and smoothly from opening conflict to
resolution, weaving a natural flow of time and space.
The motivational differences between the playwright
and the two screenwriters are primarily evident in the
"Truth" scene. In Williams' version Skipper died of
alcohol and drugs as a direct result of his inability to
face his homosexuality. He had gone to bed with Maggie,
had been unable to perform. In addition, Brick had hung
up on him when he learned from Skipper about the incident,
Skipper's death could be characterized as gradual suicide
by decadence.
Poe's version is close to Williams' with one
significant difference. When Skipper calls Brick, Skipper
is already talking suicidej Brick tries to talk him out of
196
it, and Skipper shoots himself during their conversation.
Thus the responsibility is taken from Brick, laid somewhat
on Maggie, and mostly on Skipper. In this case, Skipper's
suicide was simply a result of uncontrollable guilt--
and dramatized by flashback it becomes very melodramatic.
The Brooks version protects Maggie, and returns
the responsibility to Brick. Maggie initially tries to
seduce Skipper, and then decides it would be too great a
risk of losing Brick. Skipper, however, still feels
guilty and unsure of his own virility and calls Brick.
Brick hangs up on him, and refuses to answer the phone as
it rings over and over again, the voice of a desperately
lonely man reaching out for someone to love and talk to.
Skipper subsequently jumped from the ninth floor of his
hotel. In this case, it is not so much guilt as loneliness
that motivated Skipper's suicide. This, for a mass movie
audience, is a feeling much more universally understood
and conducive of sympathy.
Similarly, loneliness is a part of Brick's motivation
throughout the story, mixed with a deep guilt for not
having listened to the call for help that the ringing
phone represented. Thus when we come to the ending, the
Brooks version calls for a slightly different resolution
than the other two.
In the Williams ending, Maggie lies when she claims
to be pregnant, but speaks to a more peaceful and
_________________________ 197
accepting Brick when she asks him to make the lie come
true. She kneels next to the bed on which is lying a
passive Brick. She says:
"Oh, you weak, beautiful people who give with
such grace. What you need is someone to take hold
of you— gently, with love, and hand your life back
to you, like something gold you let go of— and I
can! I'm determined to do it— and nothing's more
determined than a cat on a hot tin roof--is there?
Is there, baby?"18
Contrasted to this passive, redeemable Brick, the
Poe version takes advantage of the film image to say
something about Big Daddy as well. The camera pulls away
after the storm to reveal the mansion with Big Daddy and
Big Mama on the belvedere looking over the plantation.
Below them, on the balcony, stand Brick and Maggie, as
Maggie speaks the line quoted above. Brick is now alive,
and more active in the reconciliation.
The Brooks ending, however is considerably different,
and requires a backtracking to the penultimate scene. In
the Brooks film, the scenes in which Gooper, Mae, Maggie
and Big Mama are quarreling over the estate are skillfully
intercut with the scene of the Big Daddy-Brick confronta
tion. When Big Daddy learns of his cancer, he stomps out
on Brick and retires to the basement. At this point,
unlike any other version, Brick takes the initiative. He
leaves his bedroom and goes in search of Big Daddy. In a
18Ibid., p. 90.
______________________ 198
highly symbolic way, Brick descends into the depths with
his father. They emerge into the light together. They
emerge only after a long conversation in which Big Daddy
comes to realize that what his poor father had given him—
love— was more important than the vast riches he was trying
to bestow on others he loved. He walks up the stairs with
Brick not only resolved to love his wife and family, but
resolved to start looking at the faces and lives of the
men who work for him.
In the play version, moreover, the character of
Gooper remains unsympathetic to the end. In the movie
version, the realization of truth has brought a healing
power to all, including Gooper, who is ashamed of his
previously avaricious attitude. Truth leads not only to
integrity, it makes possible renewed communication and
reconciliation. And finally, when Maggie and Brick
adjourn to the bedroom in the movie version, Maggie
apologizes for her lie, only to have Brick, now firmly
reconciled with himself take a firm hand in their
relationship. He says, "Maggie, we're through with lies
and liars in this house. Lock the door."
There is no absolute judgment to be made as to the
preference of one version over the others. What would
seem to be evident, however, is that Brooks' modifications
spring not only from his personal philosophy as reflected
199
in the film. They also show an awareness of the concerns
and interests of what he perceives to be his audience. The
fact is that Brooks was making a movie for an audience
who expected a certain degree of romance from a Hollywood
film. Apart from the taboo of homosexuality, there would
be a certain credibility and interest problem for the
audience. Who would believe that a man really does not
want to sleep with Elizabeth Taylor, except as a temporary
condition? In Brooks 1 words:
If you go to the movies and there's a man on the
screen who keeps saying, no, he doesn't want to
go to bed with Elizabeth Taylor, then the audience
will begin to whistle and hoot. They can't
identify with the hero because they do want to
go to bed with her. But if Paul Newman was going
to say, "No, honey, I'm thinking about Skipper,"
they'd laugh you out of the theater.19
The fact that these audience norms have changed in
the intervening years perhaps reinforced the principle
that attentiveness to the audience is not a concern
particular to Brooks, but is a part of the habitual
thinking of moviemakers.
With Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Brooks established his
ability to translate Tennessee Williams to the screen.
With another Williams story, three years later, he was to
be dubbed by the Hollywood Reporter, "Williams' foremost
l^Richard Brooks, interview with Arthur Knight
and cinema students, University of Southern California,
March 16, 1961.
200
screen interpreter."20 This was at the time of Sweet
Bird of Youth.
Sweet Bird of Youth also is a story of self-revela
tion and self-acceptance. This time the context is youth
and beauty, and the hero, Chance Wayne, has not only lost
his own innocence but has soiled that of his true love,
Heavenly, as well. They both long for the pure love they
once wanted and were not allowed to share.
Sweet Bird is one of the more melodramatic of
Williams' plays— a story of pure love thwarted by forces
of high villainy, contaminated by the glamour of evil
and yearning for rebirth. The time is suitably set at
Easter in a southern gulf town called St. Cloud. Chance
Wayne has once more returned home to win the hand of his
childhood sweetheart, Heavenly Finley. Her father, Boss
Finley, the local political boss, had sent Chance off ten
years before to win success before he would be allowed to
marry Heavenly.
Chance had returned before, and had been sent off
again. This time he is determined to succeed. On the
previous visit he had unknowingly left Heavenly with
venereal disease (substitute pregnant in the movie version) ,
and Boss Finley and his son Tom are threatening to cas
trate Chance if they get the opportunity.
20James Powers, The Hollywood Reporter, February 28,
1962, p. 4.
201
Chance's present hopes, lie with an old movie actress
who is running from what she thinks has been a failure to
make a screen comeback. She has turned to Chance for
comfort and he has blackmailed her into a screen contract
for a film called Youth starring one Chance Wayne and
one Heavenly Finley. The blackmail would be ineffective
except for the lady's willingness to cooperate with the
blackmail.
In the course of the conflict, Alexandra Del Lago
discovers that her screen comeback was very successful
and she no longer needs to run. In the meantime she has
discovered a very real altruistic love for Chance and
wants to help him. Chance, however, has realized that
he will no longer run either, and faces his attackers.
In the play he is castrated. In the movie, his good looks
are destroyed, but he wins his bid for Heavenly.
In Cat, Brooks made slight modifications to the
play. With Sweet Bird, the story was maintained, the
characters were basically unchanged, but time and space
were changed freely. The result was a film with a firm
dynamic, that overcame the definite limitations of the play.
The Broadway production of Sweet Bird had been
criticized for its disjointed scenes. Alexandra Del Lago
dominated the first act both in the writing and in the
tour de force performance of Geraldine Page. The second
act was Chance Wayne's, and the actress returned only
202
briefly in the third act. Through the introduction of
flashbacks, the exposition that had so heavily burdened
the first act became integral to the movie plot at
various intervals. The key bedroom scene from the play
was appropriate later in the film, and Alexandra Del Lago
was a character force throughout. But beyond that, the
action introduced did not make the story so dependent on
her. It became Chance Wayne's story.
Although a better story may have been the result of
translating Sweet Bird to the screen, ironically we get
little more of Brooks the man. The theme remains the
same, gaining perhaps in clarity. What distinguishes this
picture as a Brooks picture, however, is basically film
craftsmanship, the building of a story with a strong
opening conflict and the orchestration of events to a
dramatic climax and swift denouement. What we have here
is Williams the ideologist merging with Brooks the
storyteller.
Sweet Bird, while a successful film, both with the
critics and with audiences, did little to advance Brooks'
career or personal ambitions. And from what is known of
his conflicts with the studio and pressure groups, the
film is more demonstrative of the plateau on which he was
working than anything else.
Certainly, studio fears of censorship were similar
203
to those they expressed concerning Cat. But by this time,
Brooks was also exercising casting authority, and conflict
arose here as well. Paul Newman and Geraldine Page had
played the lead roles on Broadway, and Brooks wanted them
both for the film. Newman was no problem. But an actress
does not necessarily mean a movie star and studio
executives expressed strong doubts that Geraldine Page
was a marketable commodity. A screen test finally
proved persuasive. Cast as Alexandra Del Lago, she
eventually won an Academy Award nomination for best
actress. The absolute right to casting is a freedom
Brooks has not gained to this day.
Another studio-imposed condition was cinemascope.
To this point in his career Brooks had never shot in
wide screen, and he feared it would be cumbersome. Sweet
Bird is a highly personal drama that makes composition
awkward for intimate screens. Brooks adapted very well
by using darkness and short depth of field to focus
attention on significant details. But in any case, he
had no choice. Undoubtedly, it was knowing he was working
within such a restrictive format that influenced some
decisions to dramatize flashbacks, thus creating a sense
of action and movement.
As opposed to Cat, Brooks' ending to this picture
differed from the play basically because of studio
204
requirements. Brooks, who had engineered his share of
happy endings, sought something a little more dramatic
this time. Or so he has said.
I had a different ending for Sweet Bird, but
they wouldn't let me use it. What I wanted Chance
Wayne to do was this. No man says, "Feel sorry for
me because I have this little bit of evil." There's
a little bit of evil in every one of you. No man
waits to be castrated. He might think intellectually
that he is going to be, but he doesn't stand and
wait for it. So I wanted him to do something more,
to go and look for trouble. But MGM felt it was
bad enough they were doing the picture.
He goes to the house, calling for the girl. The
brother shows up with the boys and they drag him
over to the car. They begin to destroy him. You
don't have to see the castration, but first they
destroy his looks, and then they go to work on him.
You leave the scene right there. You dissolve, in
my other ending, straight to the ferry. At the
beginning of the picture you saw the ferry as they
arrive. They have to leave by the same ferry. The
Princess and Lucy are leaving in the car and they
stop for a moment. Once they're on the ferry boat,
they're out of that town. They're very relieved,
and light cigarettes. The boat slows down, toots
its horn, pulls away a little bit to cross over,
because passing is a garbage scow. On that scow
is Chance Wayne. That's all. Not another word is
said, because at the beginning of the picture, the
old man said to his daughter, "You want him to leave
this town on a garbage scow?" But MGM said, "Hey!
You can't do that. He came for the girl. He
doesn't get the girl." So they said, "We'll let
you shoot it after we've had the preview," and,
of course, they never did.21
Studio pressures were not the only ones Brooks now
had become personally aware of. With Elmer Gantry in
1960 Brooks had had occasion to negotiate with the
2-L"Richard Brooks," Movie, Spring, 1965, p. 8.
205
Legion of Decency regarding its objections. Now in 1962,
when MGM, who had final control over the film, experienced
objections from the Legion, they called Brooks in to
discuss the film with the Catholic office. The Catholics,
it seemed, had no objection to the morality of the film
in its intent, but only in some of the treatment. In the
manner of the old Production Code Office, there were
objections to the way the hashish scene was treated lest
it become unwittingly a how-to for would-be drug
experimenters. There also was a brief scene of nudity,
and a line by Alexandra Del Lago saying this would be
her resurrection day. The Legion took exception to these
items. MGM saw it the same way, and Brooks was required
to make the changes. It amounted to cutting a matter of
seconds from the film. But the changes seemed arbitary
and therefore offensive.
Although made two years after Elmer Gantry, Sweet
Bird actually belonged in the chronology of control to the
period of its Williams mate. Elmer Gantry, made through
United Artists in 1960, was a new step forward for Brooks
in his odyssey toward full decision-making control.
Elmer Gantry stands apart from other Brooks films.
Although he had previously initiated one other project
himself— Deadline, U.S.A.— it did not have the magnitude
of this Sinclair Lewis classic. Gantry, moreover, was the
first time he tried to put together the financing for a
206
project, finally finding it through a partnership with
Burt Lancaster and the backing of United Artists. This
was the only case in which Brooks had invested his own
money speculatively in a property. He invested his
savings, buying the rights to the novel, after the success
of Blackboard Jungle. So we could reasonably expect to
find in this movie the real Richard Brooks. And we do.
Brooks had waited fifteen years to get a chance to
film Elmer Gantry. At the time he almost had been court-
martialed (1945) for not submitting The Brick Foxhole
for public relations approval, Sinclair Lewis had been
one of those who agreed to testify on behalf of defendant
Brooks. When the court martial was dropped, Brooks
visited Lewis, and talked among other things about Elmer
Gantry. At that time Lewis told Brooks he had profited
from all the reviews that had been written about the book,
and urged Brooks to take a look.
Brooks also profited from those reviews. He told a
reviewer that he had used seventy to eighty books and
articles in preparing to do the picture. Such extensive
research is not only a measure of Brooks' thoroughness
in preparing a picture, it also can be seen as a measure
of his eagerness to produce the "real" Elmer Gantry.
Although Sinclair Lewis had given him a completely free
hand to adapt the novel as he saw fit, Brooks set out to
207
make a movie version of Sinclair Lewis' Elmer Gantry.
One demonstration of this is the opening scene of the
movie. It is a shot of Lewis' book. A page turns to
Chapter One, and we read the page with the first two
sentences underlined; "Elmer Gantry was drunk. He
was eloquently, lovingly drunk."
The purpose of the scene is quite unclear, except
as a credit to Lewis. The scene in the tavern that follows
makes it abundantly clear that Gantry is eloquently,
lovingly drunk. What the opening page would seem to say
is "Look, this is a Sinclair Lewis novel." Later on in
the film, Gantry claims the newspaperman, Jim Lefferts,
"learned his trade from Ingersoll and Mencken and Sinclair
Lewis and a lot of other atheists!"22
The obvious admiration Brooks showed for Lewis added
some pressure to the tremendous task of writing a screen
play from such an extensive novel. It is difficult to do
justice to the expansiveness of Gantry in the limited frame
of a theatrical motion picture. To write it all in would
take a six-hour movie. In the earliest drafts, Brooks
did try to include both the college years and the later
preaching career of Gantry, but the task proved too much.
As it turns out, the story seems to have a sense of
inevitability. "Is there any other'way the story could
22Richard Brooks, Elmer Gantry, University of South
ern California library, special collection, p. 112.
208
have been structured?" we ask ourselves. And yet the
movie includes only about twenty per cent of the novel.
The Sharon Falconer story is only one fifth of Sinclair’s
saga of Elmer Gantry.
The difficult decision to so severely limit the
scope of the movie was helped by a production detail.
Part of the packaging of the deal with United Artists was
the casting of Burt Lancaster as Gantry. An early draft
of the screenplay had devoted some time to the college
years of Elmer. But it became unfeasible.
How do I get Burt Lancaster to look like a college
boy? It's not so easy. Unless I have all 40-year-
old college boys. And so the practical aspect of
the film dictated that that should drop out soon
afterwards, and by the time it got to the third
draft that part was no longer there.2 3
The pressure was on. Working independently now,
there was no studio with which to share responsibility.
He felt exposed to the judgments not only of audiences,
critics and Hollywood peers. He felt subject to judgment
before the American literary community whose respect he
yalued highly. The Brothers Karamazov drew literary
attention, but its author after all was a nineteenth-
century Russian. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof was written by
a popular playwright. But Elmer Gantry came from the
pen of one of the most respected living American literary
figures. And a very special person to Richard Brooks.
^Kantor, Blacker, and Kramer, 0£. cit., p. 13.
209
The screenplay was not coming along. Too many
variables. Too many details. Too little time. He
decided to get away from it all. He hopped a slow
freighter to Antwerp. Now he had the time to write.
But still the pressure grew.
I almost jumped off the ship and committed suicide,
it was so lonely there. It was one of those things
with twelve passengers. I say, I was going to kill
myself.24
Brooks found himself on his own ship of fools.2^
But he could work, intensively. And he did. When he
returned to the States, he had a screenplay that would
win the Academy Award and the Director's Guild Award.
Elmer Gantry is a story about the preaching business.
It is a story about the marriage of commerce and religion
2^Ibid.
OC
Ibid., pp. 14-15: Well, there were two nuns
aboard the ship, and there was a man and his wife.
I presume it was his wife and two children. The man
with a woman I never saw— just the two children.
The two nuns never stopped walking around the ship.
They got off in Panama. And there was a lady about
65 or 70 traveling with a companion, who was her
niece. She was rather wealthy, and her niece was
working for her as a kind of companion. She was
about thirty. And the niece wanted to commit suicide
because of the woman. That was the group of people
aboard the ship. But I could work some eighteen to
twenty hours a day. And I took and got a car and
drove down to part of Germany and on into Switzerland
and stayed there until I wrote another draft completely.
That's where the decision came to really begin with
him in the bar telling the joke to the other salesmen.
210
in America, where the Chamber of Commerce and the Church
are twin institutions. But in the context of Brooks'
body of films, we can see that it is more than that. It
is a film about the search for truth, the ability to
recognize it, and the ability to act on it. In a word,
integrity.
Brooks is much like the newspaperman in the film.
He stands apart from religion, unbelieving. And yet he
is fascinated by religion, both for the good that it does
and the evil that is perpetrated in its name. It is
typically a let1s-look-at-both-sides Brooks movie.
George Bluestone criticized the movie for being critical
only of individual abuses of religion, instead of pursuing
Lewis' tendency to attack institutional religion. Although
there could be found some commercial reasons for taking
the Brooks approach, we can see that this more selective
targeting is part and parcel of the Brooks reportorial
vision. Easy generalizations are uncharacteristic of him,
whether he is telling the story of a fascist dictator, a
Mau Mau uprising or religious hucksterism.
Elmer Gantry (Burt Lancaster) is a fly-by-night
salesman with charisma, a man in search of some meaning.
When he encounters the tent revival of Sharon Falconer
(Jean Simmons), he falls in love with her and turns his
conning talents toward getting close to her. When she
211
gives him an opportunity to witness to Christ in her
revival tent, he wows the audience with his dollars-and-
cents practical attitude toward God and conversion. He
quickly becomes part of her operation, always pushing
her forward to a greater commercialism, over the objections
of her long-time manager. When they are finally invited
to the big city, and major financial investments have
become tied to her success, their path is first compli
cated by newspaper attacks and then by a scandal from
Elmer's past. The first he deals with directly, and
turns it to the advantage of the revival. The second
brings him to realize his hypocrisy, and he uncharacter
istically returns vindictiveness with love. Ironically
this elicits love and repentence from his attacker, and
the revival once more profits from the publicity. The
final irony, however, is that Sharon Falconer has grown
to the stage where her belief in her call has become a
fine madness, and Elmer must give up what had motivated
him for so long— his desire to have Sharon for his own.
In the end, Sharon is enveloped in the flames of her
burning temple, refusing to be saved. With the
destruction of the temple, the people turn to Elmer to
offer them the same kind of religious leadership. He
turns them down and once more sets about leading his
own life.
There is no doubt that this film is Richard Brooks'
212
Elmer Gantry. The major characters and story elements are
there from Sinclair Lewis, particularly the characters of
Gantry and Sharon Falconer. But there is no mere
mechanical transfer here. The story and theme have become
one with Brooks the storyteller and Brooks the social
critic.
As indicated briefly above, the movie was based
essentially on the central one fifth of the Lewis novel.
Elements from other parts of the novel were used not only
as additional characterization but as elements integral
to furthering the action. In the novel, for example,
Elmer has a brief affair with the daughter of his church's
deacon. Lulu Bains turns up many years later when Elmer
is a city pastor. Lulu is now unhappily married to her
cousin, as a result of hers and Elmer's earlier behavior.
She and Elmer once again strike up a liaison. About this
time towards the end of the novel, Elmer organizes the
area's churchmen to activate the local law enforcement
people to crack down on speakeasies and prostitution.
He does this not so much for moral reasons as to gain some
newspaper publicity to help build the churches' congre
gations. Elmer has a fine awareness of the power of the
press.
These elements, transformed, become central to the
film. Elmer is responsible for getting the revival to
the big city. (At this point another Lewis element is.
213
transposed and transformed— the negotiations of the
financial arrangements with city churchmen and the
Chamber of Commerce representative, Babbit.) In the
city, Sharon is successful, thanks to her own deep
honesty and belief. The city press, however, is
effective in attacking the revival to the point where
financial backing is withdrawn. Elmer fights back, with
the alley tactics he knows. With information on the
speakeasies and brothels owned by Babbit, he not only
regains financial support, he wins radio time to counteract
the newspaper articles. He then forces city officials to
make highly publicized raids on speakeasies and brothels
to boost the momentum of the revival. Just as the
campaign is reaching its height, though, Elmer happens
to raid a brothel which houses one Lulu Bains. Lulu, as
in the novel, had been the subject of Elmer's former
attention, but has now turned to the oldest profession,
after having been cast out by her father. In retaliation
for the raid, Lulu cons Elmer into her apartment for
hidden photographs for blackmail. Instead of using the
blackmail for money, however, she turns them over to a
paper. When the pictures are published, and Elmer is
subjected to a deluge of abuse and rotten vegetables in
the revival tent, he does not fight'back. He accepts the
abuse as deserved, not for the blackmail, but for earlier
214
sins. He visits Lulu, finds her being mistreated by her
manager, and rescues her. He also simply asks for her
forgiveness. The next day, unbeknownst to Elmer, a story
headlined, "I Blackmailed Elmer Gantry," appears in the
paper, raising the revival to new heights of success.
Elmer's conversion, however, is real. He disappears for
several days; and as Jim Lefferts, the newspaperman notes,
he rises from the dead after three days to return to his
team. Elmer has indeed risen to a new life. He has not
come back to preach. He has come back to induce Sharon
to give up her preaching and to marry him. He has recog
nized his own humanity, and is now asking Sharon to be
redeemed by recognizing hers. As she is ready to go on
stage, he offers, rather tentatively;to Sharon:
"What would happen if we chucked the whole works—
beat it across the state line— an* got good an'
married? Have a buncha kids— take 'em to a ball
game, like most folks--go dancin'— you know we
never even danced together— once? Let's do itI
Tonight I Right now!"26
She, of course, is riding on the crest of her
success and does not hear him. Being literally ecstatic—
out of this world— she goes to her immolation.
In addition to these transformations of Lewis' story,
elements— transformations integral to the story's motiva
tional elan— Brooks adds two elements that are uniquely
Richard Brooks, Elmer Gantry screenplay, p. 162-C.
215
his: a newspaper reporter and the ending.
Brooks, the reporter, has introduced a character
into Elmer Gantry who allows us to take an objective,
skeptical look at all the revival activities. Jim
Lefferts (a Lewis name robbed from Elmer's college
roommate in the novel) is characterized in the screenplay
in these words:
He is what every reporter ought to be— keenly
observant, understanding, witty incisive style,
untouchable integrity— what H.L. Mencken would
have been had he worked for the Zenith Times-
Dispatch instead of for the Baltimore Sun.27
Lefferts is doing a series of stories on Sharon
Falconer, and travels almost as a part of their team. He
shows an obvious affection for both Elmer and Sharon while
maintaining a cool objectivity. He stands as the objective
viewer of every stage of the Falconer revival and gives
the movie audience a character with which to identify—
be appreciative, but not taken in, his presence seems to
say.
It is the Lefferts series of articles in Zenith
that calls forth the Gantry tactics of blackmailing Babbit
into buying radio time. And when Gantry confronts
Lefferts in the newspaper publisher's office, attacking
Lefferts' atheism, Jim is not angered by Gantry's attack.
He admires earthy eloquence. In the crowning revivalist
2^Ibid., p. 20.
216
meeting where Sharon first meets the skepticism of the
city people, Jim also finally kneels at the behest of
Sharon. He kneels, we suppose, not from any sense of
prayer, but out of sheer admiration for her charisma,
her ability, her success. (Echoes of the Brooks'
admiration for professionalism.)
And in the end, it is Jim who brings Elmer Sharon's
charred bible, who observes Elmer give the people some
momentary inspiration. When Sharon's manager says that
Gantry's words were inspired, Elmer turns to Jim. "Jim,,
boy-— d'you think it was inspired?" Jim answers, "I think
it was real friendly." It is the reportorial, reasonable
interpretation, attributing to the action no more than
is there.
Jim then plays a role in the Brooks ending as well.
In the novel, Elmer picks up after the fire, eventually
becoming a successful minister with aspirations toward the
bishopric. But in the movie, as we have seen, Elmer has
come to a new view of himself. If anything, he has been
converted to Jim Lefferts' view of the whole enterprise.
He has discovered, to his surprise, that love is indeed
the key to resolving problems— but human love, without
pretense of the divine. By genuine compassion for Lulu
he has realized his own hypocrisy, and has allowed her
to respond with genuine altruism of her own. In the
ending of the movie, we can interpret Gantry's acceptance
217
of Sharon's charred (purified) bible from Jim as a gesture
saying, "Here is the real truth of religion, in human
caring, respect, compassion, love." And living out that
gospel, Elmer once more gives the revival team the
inspiration, the hope, the consolation they need to live
beyond this moment of tragedy. But it does not derail
him from his new resolution to lead the unpretentious
life he knows he must.
Gantry's new-found maturity is expressed in a final
interchange with Morgan, Sharon's manager. Morgan wants
Gantry to carry on Sharon's work. In response Elmer
quotes a bit of scripture: "When I was a child, I spake
as a child— I understood as a child— but when I became a
man, I put away childish things."
As he turns away, Jim calls after him, "See you
around, brother." Gantry answers, "See you in he'll,
brother."28
Whether this last expression of brotherhood with
Jim is indicative of Gantry's acceptance of his own
sinfulness, or is a cynical statement indicating, as Jim
would believe, that there is no afterlife, became the
subject of a great deal of discussion with certain
religious groups. But the ambiguity in no way works
against it. The important ^thing is that Gantry is now
28Ibid., p. 182.
218
a new man, a positive man, a man true to his own
experience of himself.
As in every other Brooks film, then, the story is
only the surface manifestation of the real drama taking
place--the drama of moral conflict and decision. Elmer's
personal story reaches its climax at the moment he accepts
the abuse he receives as a result of the blackmail
pictures. The old Elmer would have fought fire with
fire. He rather returns hatred with love— not the divine,
but the human. He looks into the depths of himself,
understands, chooses. This is what Elmer Gantry, and
every other Brooks character, is really all about.
In cinematically dealing with this character of
Gantry, Brooks the director took new steps forward. His
characterizations became more visual, his camera opened
outward, and his imagery became more expressive.
As noted above, it was a difficult task to telescope
many years of Gantry's past into a movie format. Brooks
accomplished it beautifully with a half a dozen fast-
moving scenes that fully convey Gantry's vital and
vigorous love for booze, women, religion, and people in
general. In the first of these scenes Gantry is in
perpetual motion, orating, cajoling, fairly bursting
with love for his fellow drinkers, the woman on the bar
stool, the bartender himself. His declamation on God and
love may be a pat speech, but it does not necessarily
_______________________________ 219
ring insincere.
In this scene as in the others that follow, it is
not the words that are important. It is the actions. The
scene is shot with typical Brooks attention to staging to
a camera that simply observes. As Gantry moves about the
bar, joking here, asking for money there, the camera cuts
to have him continually walking forward in the frame, a
pleasantly aggressive man with gusto and lust for life.
The camera effects a natural transition when the men get
up to leave the bar. In one of the earlier passes about
the room, Gantry has noted a buxom woman alone at the
bar. Now with the men leaving, Gantry is saying goodbye
at the far end of the bar with the lone woman left sitting
in the foreground. Gantry moves in to be of consolation.
His garrulousness, his ability to preach, his love for
female companionship are all thoroughly established.
The remaining scenes by. way of initial introduction
move rapidly, their visual details filling in further
information on Gantry:
— The morning after the bar scene, Gantry wakes up
next to the woman from the bar to a ringing phone and the
bellboy, to take the call he had placed the night before
to his mother. It is Christmas. Gantry is the great
pretender, stating that his present'must have gotten lost
in the mail, and promising to be home next Christmas.
Leaving a "Happy Xmas" written in lipstick on the mirror
220
for the woman, Gantry departs. Soft-hearted and insincere
Gantry.
— Sleeping in a freight car, Gantry is accosted by
a hobo trying to steal his shoes. Gantry fights him and
his cronies, leaping from the train with his luggage but
not his shoes. With daylight he is trudging barefoot into
town. Gantry, the penniless bum.
— Approaching the town Gantry hears gospel music.
He joins the all black congregation, lustily singing,
"I'm On My Way." He feels right at home with religion.
Later, he shovels coal for a dinner of black-eyed peas
and exchanges biblical quotations with the black preacher.
He declines to comment, however, on the source of his
biblical knowledge.
— In town, once again well dressed, he pitches his
wares to a local proprietor who is friendly but cautious.
He has been stung by Gantry before over a friendly spot
of booze.
— In a hotel room Gantry is on the phone to a local
woman, seeking some attention before her husband comes
home. He accepts the turndown graciously. The bellboy
comes in with the news that Gantry's horses ran out of the
money. When Elmer offers to flip double or nothing for
the tip, he is turned down. Gantry- fiddles with the hole
in his sock. He is drawn to the window by the sound of
gospel music— Sharon Falconer's revival chorus.
221
All of this is conveyed with the simplest of camera
shots. But enough details have accumulated visually to
leave the audience with one firm conclusion. Elmer Gantry
is a sham. He is also strong, lovable and exciting. And
he is attracted to religion like a moth to a flame. So
it is that the next scene finds Gantry in Sharon Falconer's
revival tent, and once having seen her beauty, determined
to get her attention.
Good sustained acting performances are the norm for
a Brooks film. In Elmer Gantry they are superb. Lan
caster's performance was probably the most controlled and
forceful of his career. The grace and simplicity of Jean
Simmons' performance was impeccable. Such ability to
elicit the best from actors is no small part of the
reason for Brooks' success.
Another factor is editing. Film is a medium of
reaction as well as action. The judicious use of reactions
in editing can guide the audience in its own reactions
to what it sees on the screen. In the first tent scene
in which Gantry performs, for example, there seem to be
as many shots of the congregation, of Sharon, of Morgan,
of Lefferts as there are of Gantry. In Sharon's face
we see appreciation and amusement, in Morgan's face we
see disgust, in Leffert's amazement, and in the congre
gation's total absorption. These are the mixed feelings
the audience shares— both admiring his ability to
222
manipulate an audience, and disapproving of the fact that
he is doing so. This is the emotional tension that must
also be resolved within Gantry himself.
Another example of reaction cutting is found in the
tent sequence after Lulu's blackmail pictures have
appeared in the paper. In this scene a small crowd
gathers for the service, but only to pelt Gantry with
eggs and tomatoes and garbage. At the beginning of the
scene Lulu enters to gloat and sits in the back of the
tent. As the service begins to break up, she is amused.
As the pelting continues, and as Gantry stands humbly
and resignedly to accept the punishment, her reaction
turns to horror and then to genuine grief. Because we
have understood her love-hate from earlier scenes, we
are stricken with sympathy for her, as well as for Gantry.
Lulu's presence at the service does more than pro
vide a device for reinforcing our sympathy. It is the
catalyst for Gantry to visit her, rescue her from her
pimp's abuse, and ask her forgiveness.
This is a pivotal scene in the movie. In terms
of character change, it shows Gantry's total acceptance
of himself as a weak human being, his acceptance of his
punishment for his past sins, and his shedding of false
facade. On another level it suggests Gantry as a
secularized Christ figure. As he stands facing the camera
straight on, his shoulders slumped forward and his head
___________________________
bowed, covered with garbage and abuse, he suggests the
traditional image of Christ mocked and abused before he
was crucified. With genuine unselfish love he then
comforts the woman who has been responsible for causing
this abuse. When the tide turns once more after she tells
the press she framed Gantry, Gantry drops out of sight
for three days. When he returns the night Sharon opens
her new tabernacle, Lefferts jokes that this is Gantry's
!
resurrection from three days in the tomb. And in fact it
is the beginning of a new life for him. He has returned
only to ask Sharon to give up her career to become a
wife and mother. As said before, this is a secularized
Christ figure, however. He has not come to save the
world. Rather he has simply achieved a new honesty and
integrity which needs sharing only with those close to
him.
A contrast to this imagery is that associated with
Sharon at this point in the film. When Gantry asks her
to give it all up she sees a shooting star in the sky and
interprets it as the fiery hand of God. Inside the hall
she tells the crowd that she has seen fire in the sky,
as a sign the Holy Ghost is with her. At this point there
is a cutaway to a workman discarding a lit cigar, which
falls on a pile of oily paint rags.- Caught up in her
fervor a man comes forward asking to be healed. This is
more than Morgan and the others bargained for and they
_________________________________________________________________________ 22A
move to intervene, but now Sharon is totally caught up in
her own belief in her spiritual powers, and she insists on
healing him. In the course of trying, she invokes the Holy
Spirit; the camera cuts away to the widening circle of
flame as the rags catch fire. The man's hearing does
return and the crowd begins to sing the Halleluia Chorus
from The Messiah. On each halleluia the camera cuts to
a new shot of crowd exuberance. And then to the leaping
flames of the fire. The cutting to the music continues
until the fire suddenly explodes. Panic ensues. In the
montage of frenzied flight that follows, Sharon continues
to be caught up in her belief that she has unlimited
power, including freedom from the danger of flames. She
is last seen in a Joan-of-Arc pose with flames on all sides
ready to consume her. Her face is lifted to the sky in
ecstasy.
Fire is the traditional symbol for the Holy Spirit,
and Sharon's invoking the Spirit makes this a most appro
priate image. Gantry is secularized or humanized in his
Christianity, and thereby saved. Sharon is presumptuous
and so caught up in the spiritual that she denies her
humanity. She is thereby consumed and destroyed.
This climactic fire scene is illustrative of the
editorial control of Brooks as well'. It is masterfully
written, shot and edited. For the screen audience, the
225
terror of the fire is based on the fact that it comes just
at the moment of victory or glory for the sympathetic
characters, and on the timing of the editing. The dis
carded cigar is planted at the very beginning of the
scene, and reinforced several shots later as we see the
circle of heat widening. But then, like the congregation,
we are caught up in the healing, wondering, perhaps hoping,
while we fear at the same time that this will confirm
Sharon in her otherworldliness. But just as the tension
of the healing is at its height, we see the flames licking
at the walls of the tabernacle, and we feel paralyzed with
fear, since the congregation is too absorbed to realize the
danger. The fire finally explodes just as the people are
swelling the aisles to be saved by Sister Sharon. The
terror that follows runs about four minutes on film and
about 100 cuts, each a significant detail that cumulatively
conveys the total panic and also Sister Sharon's determina
tion to stand fast. When the screen dissolves to morning,
we are exhausted.
In the final scene of the picture, Gantry responds to
the crowd that surrounds him by assuring them that Sharon
loves them and forgives them. He leads them in singing,
"I'm on my way." His humanized religion as opposed to her
transcendant religion is then emphasized. Bill Morgan
(for Sharon) tells Gantry, "That was inspired, Brother."
Jim Lefferts, in contrast, says, "I'd say it was very
226
friendly." With this, Gantry is on his way.
Resolving the scripting problem is only one part of
the overall task of getting the film made, released and
seen.
Even before the production contract was set,
religious pressure began. Brooks began to receive letters
from ministers and others asking him to reconsider his
project. There was little objection to the book itself.
Rather the fear was expressed that the movie was untimely.
A film attacking religion could only be seen as unholy, an
encouragement to anti-religious forces of the day that
were confusing the people.
However many the individual letters, though, they
did not carry the weight of organization. Organized
opposition began from the moment Brooks rented space at
Columbia Studios. Mr. Briskin, head of Columbia, came
to him with a letter written by Paramount's head at the
time, Frank Freeman. A number of organizations had
gotten Freeman to pressure the studios into denying the
ungodly Brooks production space.
He put it in writing, that's how sure some of
them were; telling Briskin, "We think you ought
to tell him you have no space. But better than
that, get them to withdraw the project altogether."29
^^Richard Brooks, private interview, January 28,
1972.
227
According to Freeman, it was a dangerous project,
attacking the moral fiber of our country. As in the story
of Elmer Gantry, it was a patriotic duty, and economically
sound policy as well, to stop the opponents of religion.
Freeman and friends were not unreasonable businessmen,
however. They understood that Brooks had invested con
siderable sums in the project, having held options on the
book for six years, and having put together a staff to get
it started. Freeman et al would be willing to help Brooks
rectify his mistake financially. It would be a sign of
good will on both sides. All the unnamed organizations
behind Freeman would agree to chip in and pay Brooks not
to make the picture.
So Briskin says, "Why don't you forget about this
thing. There are so many other pictures to do,
why don't you forget about it. They'll even pay
you interest on the_money you have in it," and so
on. I said, "No."
Having gained the success and prestige to get a
studio arrangement to help avoid just this sort of studio
pressure, Brooks was not to be derailed. The very event
reinforced the justification for criticizing certain
elements of commercialized religion, but Brooks' own
sense of integrity would not permit him to engage in a
shouting match.
This did not mean every problem was solved; money
228
was still a limiting factor. In the approved budget,
only eight days had been allotted for the shooting of the
climactic fire scene. As planning proceeded, however, it
became obvious that this was unrealistic. A completely
safe shooting of that scene would take thirty days. But
without this scene effectively shot, the whole picture
would be compromised. United Artists was not so easily
convinced. The final scene would play a total of five
minutes. Was it worth investing five weeks in five
minutes of screen time? The increase was finally negoti
ated, however, and the picture proceeded. In this case,
the extra investment proved to be profitable.
An anecdote about the production of the picture tells
us something of the way Brooks works. Since Elmer Gantry,
with the single exception of Sweet Bird, Brooks has
exercised the decision-making functions of the producer.
His assistant director and production manager, Tom Shaw,
has carried out most of the functions of the producer.
Brooks also likes to give screen credit to those who
actually perform key functions, as, for example, his
publicist A1 Horwits. This long anecdote, however,
illustrates the difficulty critics must experience in
trying to mete out praise and blame. It also verifies
what people always suspect about Hollywood— it's not what
you know but who you know.
229
I kept seeing this fellow around who was his
friend, and while Burt was off some place doing
things with bars and things he would say, "I
think Burt would like this kind of scene," or
something like that. So we'd get him out of the
office and then I'd see him next month, and he'd
say, "How are things today?" And I'd say,
"Terrific." And off he'd go. So one day Burt
said, "By the way, you going to produce this
picture?" I said, "What do you mean, 'produce
it?'" "I mean are you going to have your name
on there as the producer?" I said, "No way,"
and "and you're not, because I don't like that
thing up there." He said, "I have a favor to
ask you. I got a guy who's been around me now
something like six of seven years. And I got
to let him go, our company's breaking up.
We're breaking up our company. And that's a
lot of guys. You know, Tom Shaw's now working
with you. This guy, if we could make him the
producer, maybe get him started, and I'd be rid
of him, I wouldn't feel guilty." So I said,
"Well, I don't like to do that." He said, "I
know, but it would help me." I said, "Well,
what do you want me to do? At the end of the
picture, we'll put his name up there." He said,
"No, no, we gotta give him some dignity." So
with the dignity suddenly somebody comes up
with a contract. "He's going to have a contract
as a producer." I said, "Alright, but he can't
come in the cutting room, and he can't come on
stage unless he gets an OK." So we wrote that
in the contract. Anyway, the picture's over
and we put his name on it. Then the picture got
lucky and won some awards something, and this
guy became a big producer.
With an outstanding film finally in the can, Brooks'
problems were not over, however. Rather than simply
fly in the face of religious pressures, Brooks accepted
an invitation from the Legion of Decency to discuss his
film before he released it. Although the Legion's
31
Richard Brooks, private interview, January 31,
1970.
230
influence had declined somewhat by I960, many distributors
would not show films carrying negative ratings. While
Brooks considered his film to be for mature audiences
(at that time the production Code had only two categories:
yes or no), and was willing to advertise it as such, he
did not want unnecessary limitations. Brooks recalls
the meeting as generally congenial. While he felt the
Legion's director made some objections that were arbitrary
and unreasonable, he remembers with relish his extended
debate with a young Jesuit, Father Patrick Sullivan,
assistant to the director. Sullivan concurred with Brooks'
statement of theme and intent, and expressed no objection
to it. Certain elements of the treatment were disputed,
however. Brooks argued that Elmer Gantry would have more
of a positive influence on religion than the standard
religious film, simply because of its honesty. The priest
whose job is to get baseball uniforms for the kids in the
orphanage may be inoffensive. He also projects a false
idea of priests, and puts religion outside the real world.
Sullivan expressed sympathy with this point of view, but
on his side had one compelling objection. Gantry's fare
well to Jim Lefferts, "I'll see you in Hell, Brother,"
seemed to Sullivan to be a cynical statement, eschewing
religion. Brooks intended the remark, however, to reflect
new self-knowledge in Gantry. Gantry is no longer
231
willing to pay the price of "salvation" represented by
the revivalism that he was walking away from and that had
consumed Sharon Falconer.
However much the mutual respect, though, there was
no meeting of minds. Given the admitted ambiguity of
the line, Brooks was willing to excise the line rather
than incur the possibility of a bad Catholic rating.
One other result of the meeting with the Legion
of Decency is the prologue that now heads the film.
Although a result of the meeting, it does not represent
a concession to pressure. Rather, as we have seen, Brooks
on several occasions has taken steps to represent his
films as responsible discussion of an issue, instead of
advocacy for a one-sided point of view. In addition to
writing prologues for Blackboard Jungle, The Last Hunt and
Something of Value, he initiated a restriction on In Cold
Blood to limit attendance to those over the age of 16.
The Elmer Gantry prologue follows:
We believe that certain aspects of Revivalism
can bear examination— that the conduct of some
revivalists makes a mockery of the traditional
beliefs and practices of organized Christianity!
We believe that everyone has a right to worship
according to his conscience, but— Freedom of
Religion is not license to abuse the faith of
the people!
However, due to the highly controversial nature
of this film, we strongly urge you to prevent
impressionable children from seeing it!
232
Besides Elmer Gantry, there was one other film Brooks
had wanted to make for years— since he read it in college,
he said in one interview. This story was Joseph Conrad's
Lord Jim. As with Gantry, he invested his own money in
options, for eight years, and the actual making of the
picture took three and a half years.
Lord Jim was Richard Brooks written largest and
clearest. It must have been a bitter disappointment to
have such an extremely personal film fall upon such an
unreceptive audience. Particularly since Brooks had
uncharacteristically consented to a great deal of pre-
production and pre-release publicity. Of all Brooks'
films, this was the one most publicized in advance, at
least insofar as it was a Brooks production.
What do you do when you decide to film a literary
classic such as Joseph Conrad's Lord Jim? Well...
first you spend a year looking for a forgotten,
1,000-year-old temple ideally suited to Super
Panavision and press-agentry.
Then, you line up a cast of high-priced stars
(and if one of them happens to be a sultry,
slightly experienced "find," it probably won't
hurt a bit.) Then you equip a convoy with a
lot of hands, carpenter's tools, refrigerated
cameras, and gallons of insect lotion. And
finally— if you:'re director Richard Brooks— 32
you strip to your jungle shorts and go to work.
To attribute motives of press agentry to Richard
Brooks is not to understand the man. Production value.
32 .
"Lord Jim in Cambodia," Chicago Tribune Magazine,
April 12, 1964, p. 26.
233
Authenticity. Suitability. Yes. But pre-publicity, no.
The wonder is rather that there was such wide publicity
at all. English critics and reviewers were particularly
interested, and anticipation was high. Brooks’ reputation
was high, and Conrad was of particular interest. And
Brooks, finally approaching the completion of a long-term
goal, and riding high on ten years of outstanding
successes, was eager to talk about it. Lord Jim repre
sented for Brooks an opportunity to pay a tribute to a
great writer, to tell a story of universal appeal regarding
mankind's constant struggle for honor, redemption,
integrity.
Conrad had been filmed before— including "Heart of
Darkness" on TV, Victory (done twice), The Secret Sharer,
Outcast of the Islands and an earlier Lord Jim (1925).
None had been very successful, and Brooks attributed this
in part to the well-intentioned over-fidelity to the
novel, rather than to the novel's spirit. He had recog
nized in his earlier, successful adaptations, that the
movie structure must be served, through linear motivation,
and through imagery. In an interview with Movie magazine,
he discusses these concerns, and indirectly averts to a
commercial fact of life in Hollywood— the international
audience, and how one attends to it.
Conrad wrote in a style particularly suited
to the novel form. We, however, must use a
234
filmic style suited for theater audiences of
diverse cultures, a dozen different languages
(perhaps three hundred different dialects),
audiences with separate levels of understanding,
audiences, many of whom have never learned the
thought processes that flow from the art of
reading. And yet, it is my dream that all
peoples, of all nations, regardless of race,
nationality, economic background, religious
upbringing— that to all these people, the-film
will tell the tale of Conrad's Lord Jim.
It is easy to see that this film would indeed
represent a dream for Brooks to tell a meaningful tale to
all people. Lord Jim is a story that writes the Brooks
vision on a scale he had never before attempted, and with
a clarity and purity that elevates the question of honor
and integrity to life-or-death proportions.
Lord Jim is a story of a man who betrayed himself by
cowardly jumping ship in storm, and who spent the rest
of his life trying to redeem that sin and failure of
character. As with Dmitri Karamazov, Chance Wayne, Elmer
Gantry and Brick Pollit, Tuan Jim came face to face with
himself in all his weakness, leading to a new chance at
life. As Jim's ship log read, "Rich or poor, strong or
weak, who among us has not begged God for a second chance?"
For Jim, however, this second chance was a choice of death
with honor, or life with compromise. He chose honor.
Jim (Peter O'Toole) was an officer on the ship Patna,
taking Moslem pilgrims to Mecca, when a storm hit. With
33
"Richard Brooks," Movie, Spring, 1965, p. 17.
235
the ship seeming sure to go down, the other officers and
crew abandoned ship, and Jim joined them. The ship,
however, did not go down, and Jim went on trial. It was
a matter of conscience for him that he admit his failure
and accept the consequences— loss of professional status
as a sailor.
Totally desolate, not because of his penalty, but
because of his loss of self-esteem, he soon undertakes an
unreasonable risk of killing himself by putting out a fire
on a ship bearing armaments. As a result, he becomes an
employee of a man shipping armaments up a jungle river to
a place called Patusan. This leads to a risk of hijacking
by white exploiters. Jim firmly chooses sides on behalf
of the natives, and in the process meets and falls in
love with a local girl. He leads the natives in a counter
attack against the whites, in spite of the fact that their
leader (Eli Wallach) tortured Jim in trying to get the
armaments. The natives, with Jim as their leader, win the
battle, and Jim becomes Lord Jim.
Other whites, however, after Patusani riches, come up
the river. After a battle stand off, Jim gives his word,
with his life as a forfeit, that the whites will leave
without any loss of life on the part of the Patusani.
However, the whites kill a boy guarding the money. And
although others encourage Jim to leave Patusan before his
________________235
forfeit is called for, Jim feels that he can no longer run
from himself, and stays to face death.
In the context of his previous films, it is easy for
us to see that Lord Jim is as much Richard Brooks as it
is Joseph Conrad. Film critics criticized the film for
simplifying, Brooks for not accounting for his convoluted
style, and other things. They did not challenge Brooks'
fidelity to Conrad's theme. But this Conrad theme is also
the constant Brooks theme.
Perhaps one of the most telling speeches in the film
comes from the General (Eli Wallach) who is torturing Jim
to discover the whereabouts of Jim's hidden armaments.
Jim is unmoved by the threatened pain. Wallach says, "No
man is a stranger to fear. Fear is the perfect tool for
persuasion. Now. What do you fear most? What do you
prize most? Your strong, young body? Your manhood? Your
sight? I could make you cheat a friend, forsake honor,
desert a post of duty. What fear could turn you into a
coward?" At this point, we know that Jim's major fear is
fear itself. He has already deserted a post of duty, and
his greatest fear is that he will do it again. In the
context of this rhetorical exchange, it is even suggested
that Jim's manhood is identified with his honor, his duty.
In the subsequent scene, Wallach determines that it
is fear of death that will most strike fear in Jim, and
________________________________236
Jim himself feels this is true.
Thus it is that when Jim is faced with death, he must
choose it over love (manhood?) and living with dishonor.
Wholeness is all. Death becomes the final affirmation of
integrity.
There is only one element of this ultimate choice
which seems uncharacteristic of Brooks and more character
istic of Conrad. That is the fatalism expressed by Jim
as he reflects on the inevitability of his demise.
Patusan, he reflects, has only two letters different from
Patna, the scene of his first act of cowardice. Earlier
Brooks characters were men in command of their own fates.
The dynamic of this film derived from the way in which the
surface story was the reflection of a deep interior
struggle that must be resolved. Jim agonizes, and even
tually makes a choice of redemption, in the best tradition
of Christ figures, but is destined to do this from the
beginning. Not change, not moral choice, but affirmation
of right action— this is Lord Jim.
If the life and death decision that Jim makes is the
ultimate statement of integrity, the magnificence of
format is an ultimate for Brooks. Shot in Panavision 70,
as only Freddy Young could shoot it, heavy with atmosphere,
scored with rich full orchestration. Undoubtedly because
of Conrad's lead, the environment becomes a major character
237
in itself. Hindsight would seem to suggest that simplicity
does more for the deeply interior story of Lord Jim than
magnificence. Foresight obviously suggested something
else.
Although Brooks' arrangement with Columbia Pictures
granted him complete freedom on this picture, it was not
an excessive budget that led to the choice of a luxuriant
tool. Brooks continued to exercise careful budget control.
In fact, that the luxuriant look was less expensive than
the staged look would have been closer to home. The long
quote that follows once more affirms Brooks' long-standing
preference for authenticity, simplicity and relief from
the hassling and haggling of Hollywood.
Cambodia is very difficult, but not creatively.
You can make do. If you have the people,
you can shoot. You have other problems, that
is true, but they're problems of space and time.
You know you have trees and you don't have sun
light, and so you say, "Well, why don't we go
down the river and shoot there." You send up
the tree climbers, and they cut away some leaves
so the sun can get through. That's a problem
that you have. But no one there is telling
you what to do. You don't get cables and tele
grams and what not and notifications saying,
"Hey, some film came in. I don't know. I
can't find the place in the script where the
film is for." You don't get those kinds of
messages. You don't have union people saying
to you, "Well, you've got to get beer in today.
Because if you don't, you don't work." You
say, "Where in the hell are you going to get
beer here? It's impossible." Or you have a
star who says, "No honey wagon. I don't want
it." Well, you go to Kansas and nobody has a
honey wagon. Everyone uses the same toilets
wherever you go. They're good enough for me
238
to use; they're good enough for so-and-so;
they're good enough for all of us. You haye
a woman, you make sure that she also has a
bathroom to go to. So it could be in a house.
It could be any place. But it isn1t a honey
wagon for $750.00 a week. For that you have
to have a driver that costs you $1,2 00 a week.
And he doesn't work Saturdays and Sundays.
So you have to have another driver. And those
are the problems that make it very, very dif
ficult. It's the feather-bedding that kills
you. I have a picture now that's going to be
shot in New York and some place else and I have
to take my cameraman, who begins to understand
how we're working on this picture, and then I
hire another cameraman in addition in the
Chicago area, and another one in New York, and
another one some place else. It almost makes
it impossible to make a film. Finally, you
say, "Well, I'll pay for them. Let them stay
home." But you can't do that; you have to
bring them. You have to take them to the lo
cation. You have to put them in the hotel.
You can't say, "Stay home, and we'll pay your
salary." You can't even do that. It's as
though the United States is divided up into
areas. No, there's no problem creatively here
if your last picture was a success. If it
wasn't, you have g^oblems no matter who you
are creatively.
It would have seemed not only a director's dream,
V . ! , /
this freedom. It would have seemed to mark guaranteed
success for such a skilled and proven director. There
is no accounting for commercial success, however. The
film was not enthusiastically received. Certainly this was
not due to any technical failures. In quiet moments and
in action scenes, the touch of the master craftsman was
there. Might it have been in the casting, the pacing,
34
Kantor, Blacker, and Kramer, op. cit., pp. 42-43.
239
audience expectations? Critics disagreed, and it would
be presumptuous to give an absolute answer.
The fact remains, however: Given a good budget,
time and complete control, even a tried-and-proven writer-
director could not be assured of all the success that
would have been required to fulfill the dream of telling
an important story to the widest possible audience.
Perhaps the lesson that we learn from this film is that,
if control cannot guarantee success, lack of success
guarantees less control. Brooks' subsequent films
returned to the simpler personal stories and social issues
that marked his earlier films, and have been accompanied
by a continuing struggle for contractual autonomy,
suddenly more difficult to come by.
24J1
CHAPTER yrii
Richard Brooks is a man of vigorous action* His
own life style is disciplined and spare* So are most of
his movies. Lord Jim exacted too much: of its maker*
Taking over three years to make, shot in 70mm,. wide
screen, every scene weighted with image and meaning,
the final result had to be as agonizing to the director
as Lord Jim's decisions were to himself. The sheer
substance of Brooks' biggest picture demanded some
release, almost pure activity.
So it is that Brooks describes his making of The
Professionals as a finger exercise, a movie made just for
the sake of making a movie. It was also the signal of
a new phase in Brooks' movie-making career: the end of
literary classics and larger-than-life heroes; and the
return to social issues, and more personal "small"
pictures that characterized his early career. The
Professionals first. Then In Cold Blood. Followed by
three original screenplays, Happy Ending, Dollars, and
Bite the Bullet.
The Professionals, a fantasy Western, provided the
241
vehicle for some reflections on revolution in general
and the North American version in particular. In Cold
Blood took up the cause against capital punishment. Happy
Ending, though the story of one woman, takes a look at the
status of women in American marriage, unfortunately a
little ahead of the great swell in popular attention
given to women's liberation. Dollars looks askance at
a system whose major institutions, banks, are an unchal
lenged accessory to crime. Bite the Bullet, a story of
an endurance horse race at the turn of the century remains
a mystery at this moment, but by the fact that it is an
original screenplay produced on a tight moderate budget
we can presume it is continuing the tradition of the
last few pictures.
These movies echo the social concerns of Brooks'
early pictures. The stories of those early pictures had
heroes concerned about the common welfare— freedom from
oppression and racism, concern for the unfortunate and the
exposure of the evils of killing. In these later pic
tures there are some of the same concerns— revolution,
the publicly-witnessed killing of capital punishment,
the negative impact of consumerism*=t and social pressures
on marriage. But here there is a difference. The
heroes and heroines of the sixties and seventies are not
concerned about changing society for the better, nor are
242
they concexned about helping others. They are concerned
about their own welfare, with side comments on society
at large. The eternal optimism of the early Brooks also
seems to have disappeared. While The Professionals has
an upbeat ending, the philosophical exchanges regarding
revolution express disillusion. The resolution of Happy
Ending:brings peace to the life of the wife, but
confusion to the lives of those close to her, and could
form the dramatic conflict for the start of a sequel.
Dollars seems to operate on the premise that the system
is too corrupt to change; rather, make the most of it
by turning the system against itself. Are these attitudes
just signs of the times? Do they reflect real changes
in Brooks1 feelings? Have the times and economic
freedom conjoined to let the real Brooks stand up?
Whatever the answers, we can suppose that now there are
no external (.studio) pressures responsible for the
Brooksian philosophy being expressed.
Columbia Pictures already had a package, Burt
Lancaster, Claudia Cardinale, and the novel A Mule for
the Marquesa, when Brooks was invited to join the project.
Besides Brooks' expressed desire to "just go back to the
gym" and make a picture for its own sake, the project
interested'him because writer Tom Reed had intrigued him
243
with, the Mexican Revolution, particularly the fact that
so many Americans had participated. So he talked to Tom
Shaw and to Conrad Hall, the cinematographer. Everyone
was enthusiastic. So he said, 'let's go.'
The studio was excited about the project, but also
a bit nervous. If Brooks had a final shooting script, he
wasn't letting anyone know. Starting with that movie he
never provided a complete script for the cast, feeding
out their lines as needed only a day or two in advance.
On The Professionals, however, there seemed to be another
factor as well. The writing was really incomplete when
shooting started, and Brooks would frequently finish
writing a scene the night before it was shot. This
made Ben Hersh, Columbia's production chief, a little
restless. When weather reports indicated it was raining
on location in the desert and exposed film was still
arriving at the lab, he wired the director on location;
"How can you be shooting? It's raining there. You're
supposed to be shooting in the desert." The answer
came back.: "We're shooting in the rain in the desert."
But all studio concerns were ultimately set at
rest. Brooks brought the film in ahead of schedule,
with considerable saving to the studio.
Brooks had not made a Western-since The Last Hunt
in 1956, and even that had not been a conventional
244
Western. Thus on the face of it we would not necessarily
expect to find a "finger-exercise" .Western as the place
to find strongly recognizable Brooksian filmmaking.
nevertheless The Professiona1s is Brooks from title to
tale. A wealthy railroad owner, J. W. Grant (Ralph
Bellamy), in the early part of the century hires three
mercenaries (played by Lee Marvin, Woody Strode, and
Robert Ryan) to bring back his kidnapped wife from a
revolutionary leader in Mexico. They in turn hire a
fourth professional (Burt Lancaster), and the magnificent
four ride into the mouth of danger to perform their
professional specialties at the risk of their own lives.
The tone of the picture is generally crisp and lean.
These are all men, including Grant, who are good at what
they do, do it honorably, and without fanfare. There are
a few twists. Marvin and Lancaster had both fought for
the revolution. Then their professional skills were given
for the cause. Now they were practicing their professions
for the money. What makes them professionals, though, is
not just their paramilitary skill. It is their dedication
to their word, their honor. This is brought out in the
one temptation to flee. After a narrow escape from an
ambush that makes them realize they are being tracked,
Lancaster suggests that a more lucrative and safer
employment would be to divert to a local cemetery which
245
reputed to contain two million dollars in gold bullion.
And, as Dolworth (Lancaster) suggests, they wouldn't
have to fight Raza to get it.
FARDANi(Marvin): That couldn't be the reason you
you took this job.
DOLWORTH: Can you think of a better reason?
FARDAN: Our word. We gave our word to bring the
woman back.
DOLWORTH: My word to Grant ain't worth a plugged
nickel.
FARDAN: You gave your word to me.
This attitude is an essential part of the plot--
without it there would be no real reason for the men to
see the project through. But the attitude was not a
factor in the original novel, where the money played a
larger part in motivation. While serving as essential
to the movie's motivation, we hear echoes of the
dispassionate service ideal voiced by so many earlier
Brooks characters and find the one word which sums it all
up: professionalism.
There is yet another twist that gives freshness to
the story. Grant's wife (Claudia Cardinale) has not been
kidnapped from him after all. Raza had been her youthful
lover and financial conditions in her family had forced
her to marry Grant according to her parents' arrangements.
But Raza was her true love, and the ransom plan was a trick
to free her while making a profit. All this is not learned,'
246
however, until the four professionals have penetrated
enemy camp and it is too late to turn back. Given this
realization, they do not kill Raza when they have the
chance, and a chase ensues. In the course of this chase,
Raza and his followers begin to close in. At a narrow
pass Dolworth stays on to cause a delay. It is a final
shoot out here that provides the setting for a little
discourse on revolution.
Actually the discourse had started earlier in a
scene in which the four Americans witness a raid on a
train by Raza and followers where government soldiers
are massacred. This massacre is watched with sympathy
by Dolworth and Fardan because of the losses they had
suffered to government troops when they had fought for
the cause. Ehrengard (Ryan) asks, "What were Americans
doing in a Mexican revolution anyway?" Dolworth1s
answer: "Maybe there's only one revolution since the
beginning: the good guys against the bad guys. The
question is: who are the bad guys."
Now Dolworth is left behind to shoot it out. And
the philosophizing continues, this time with Raza. It is
the interchange quoted in chapter four In which Dolworth
is disillusioned by the revolution, and Raza has gone to
disillusion and back. This scene is played as both men
lay wounded in the pass and Dolworth shoots it out with
247
the last few of Raza's followers, finally killing
Chiquita, a woman soldier he had on occasion loved in
the past.
But, as Brooks stated in his self critique of The
Last Hunt, a western is a fantasy, and so having suc
cessfully held off Raza and crew, Dolworth is miraculously
cured of his flesh wounds and headed on to join Fardan
and the others. They are pleased and surprised to find
that he has survived. And they are even more surprised
that he has brought Raza with him. Then in a surprise
ending, the professionals first turn over the woman to
Grant to fulfill their contract, and subsequently
take her back to give her to Raza, thereby forfeiting
their money. Grant had known all along that his wife had
run off, and had been playing with lives in trying to
get her back— ownership, not love was his style. In the
movie's conclusion we get the answer to the question,
'who are the good guys and who are the bad guys': it's
the guys who are professional, honorable, dispassionate,
and true to themselves and their ideals. If Brooks had
become disillusioned by revolution (read "social change"),
he had not wandered from his central concern and motivating
force: integrity. A simple rescue-the-female-captive plot
in a venerable tradition had yielded a moral dilemma
that kept the audience in suspense right to the end.
248
Sympathy had been roused for Raza and his woman. Fardan
and company were men of great honor. How could they
reconcile their purely mercenary activity of bringing the
woman to Grant? In the final scene, Grant is seen to be
harsh and unloving and the final sacrifice of monetary
gain in favor of noble- action resolves the moral dilemma.
Filmically, The Professionals marked a definite
change for Brooks. Ever since The Brothers Karamazov
he had been consciously aware of seeking the images that
would best tell his story. Still he had been heavily
dependent on words, although he had been very inventive
in building the imagery to support characterization and
theme. In Lord Jim he both relied on the narrator in the
beginning and told much of the subsequent story without
words. But his image-building was largely the creation of
mood and environment. And Lord Jim proved to be too
ponderous for popular success.
But with The Professionals Brooks actually began to
tell the story itself with little dialogue, letting the
action carry both characterization and plot. In the
initial characterization of the four main characters,
for instance, the only lines spoken are throwaways. Lee
Marvin as Fardan is seen demonstrating automatic weapons
as a man approaches him with a message. Robert Ryan as
Ehrengard is seen slugging a hired bronco buster for
249
abusing a horse. Woody Strode.as Jake is seen bringing in
an Indian prisoner, gracefully and simply sidestepping
a last minute assault by his prisoner and delivering him
to the sheriff. Burt Lancaster as Dolworth is seen
being chased from his lover's bedroom by his lover’s
husband. In the narrative that follows, in which J. W.
Grant hires them to undertake a special mission, the
atmosphere and ambience of the Old West prevails--staged
on a railroad spur and a train owned by Grant, the action
is kept moving and alive. Grant moves from train to
carriage. A money box is delivered. Yes-men bow and
scrape, eager to please. Before Grant opens his mouth we
are fully aware of his wealth, power, and strength of
character. This scene is also notable for its simplicity
of setting, no doubt an economic factor in the planning.
The rest of the film is carried forward by sheer
physical action. The camera opens out to make the desert
and the mountains another character. Few words are
needed, and when they are delivered, they are terse.
Riding white-sand desert, scaling red-stoned canyon walls,
confronting ten banditos and killing them, confronting
another four likewise, the action moves forward with
deliberate dispatch. The camera catches the necessary
detail with economy. It continues to be an observer, as
always in Brooks films. There are no dramatic changes
250
of focus, racing-tracking shots, dramatic zooms. The
camera is positioned and steady. The action transpires.
The cut occurs. There is a sense of decisiveness, security
in every image and every cut, matching indeed the delib
erate and steady actions of these professionals.
Once again music plays a key role in the Brooks
editing. "El Salon Mexico" was preselected before
shooting, Brooks had its rhythms in his head. It was
prescored before editing and provided the rhythms for
cutting. The subsequent score was finally modeled on it.
Brooks was true to his own idea of making The
Professionals a finger exercise. The film shows the best
of his earlier technical mastery, in precise shooting and
cutting, while making the camera much more fluid. No
longer did he seem to be staging for the proscenium.
Face to face confrontations were largely excluded, with
consequent liberation from constricted camera position
ing.
The linear clarity which characterized earlier films
such as The Brothers Karamazov gave way to a more impres
sionistic style in the narrative of The Professionals. In
the scene, for example, in which the four Americans
"attack" the village in which Maria is being held, the
preparations for the attack are undertaken in a carefully
paced montage of details--Dolworth inching along the
251
water tower to plant dynamite, Jake preparing dynamite-
stick arrows, Fardan overtaking the guards on the house.
The details are indeed logical in their succession.
But their linear logic is not so important as the
impression of danger, timing, and professional aplomb.
When all the details converge, we believe in the final
action, but no prior care has been taken to show us the
whole setup and how everything is going to fit together.
When the professionals flee with the woman and comandeer
a railroad sidecar, we have no previous indication that
the railroad spur would be available for the escape, nor
do we feel it was necessary to know. Action, tension,
success— these are what is important, not step-by-step
logic. This had not been previously characteristic of
Brooks. But it would stand as an important advance to
be put to work in In Cold Blood. Finding new room for
narrative through actions and writing less with words
than with visuals, The Professionals proved liberating
for Brooks.
The Professiona1s was well received by the public
and by the reviewers. Some found the pause for philo
sophical refreshment a flaw, while others did not.
Universally, however, they praised the lean, taut story
with acting and direction to match. One reviewer praised
it in the light of Brooks' fight for control.
252
In spite of Brooks's familiar moan about the
impossibility of controlling all the parts of one's
film in Hollywood, here he seems to have achieved
a successful unity. The script is his— from a novel
by Frank 01Rourke— and his actors carry it out to
the best of their considerable abilities. In a real
sense, they and the cinematographer, Conrad Hall,
together with Brooks, are the professionals of the
piece: men who have worked by Hollywood's rules
most of their lives but because of their profes
sional expertise (and not a little because of their
ingenuity) have beaten the dross-producing system.
Even a film like this has its faults, but, compared
to most, it is gold.
Indeed the stoyy is Brooks (in the novel, Grant
gets the woman and Raza gets killed, by the way) and the
movie is Brooks. In this case studio influences were
very minor, at least until the picture was finished. Then
came the pressure organizations. The Legion of Decency
objected to nudity and earthy language, and threatened a
Condemned rating. (In 1965 nudity was still strictly
taboo in American pictures.) The studio and Brooks
conferred and the bare breasts were cut. The love scene
between Raza and Grant's wife were also toned down
slightly. Not only did the Legion grant a favorable
rating subsequently but the film was spared an "adults
only" tag from the Production Code. (Code ratings were not
begun until 19 70.) Whether this made any real difference
•'■Ian Wright, The London Guardian, May 5, 1967,
p. 23. ;
253
is impossible to tell, but the film was a financial hit.
Brooks had bolstered his ability to get the deal he wanted
with his next picture.
The next picture, In Cold Blood, actually began
before The Professionals was finished. Brooks' agent,
Irving Lazar, who was also Capote's agent on the book,
brought him the galleys of the first three quarters of
Capote's "non-fiction novel." He was given just forty-
eight hours to make a decision. He read the book quickly
and sent it over to Mike Frankovich at Columbia.
I said, "You know there are a lot of problems with
this," and I mentioned the fact that other films
of that nature had not done well, and, therefore,
this would have to be done for as low a cost as
possible. And he said, "Well, let's take a chance."
This was on a weekend. On Monday they told Lazar
"yes."2
Brooks had committed himself to perhaps the most
highly pressured film he would ever direct. Pressure
was to be felt from every quarter, magnified by the pub
licity generated around any Capote enterprise.
Pressure came from the public above all. • At the
time Brooks and Columbia made their decision, the book
had not yet been released, and there was no way they could
expect the book to be such an extraordinary best seller.
By the time the film was being shot, over two million
Rxchard Brooks, private interview, January 31, 1970.
254
different movies had already been generated in the read
ers' heads. For most of them the Brooks movie would
be tested against their own. Not a factor to be ignored.
Publicity, usually a much-desired commodity, formed
its own kind of pressure. Writers speculated on the
casting, the possibility of other directors. Kier
Dullea, who had never been considered for a role, issued
a public statement that he would not accept the role even
if he were paid Elizabeth Taylor's salary. Acquaintances
and non-acquaintances, the story goes, would approach
Brooks at a party and provide him not only with case
suggestions, but with detailed advice on scripting, music,
marketing. If the story's detail is inaccurate, it
reflects accurately the curiosity that Hollywood and the
whole country was expressing about the upcoming film.
The resulting difficulty is that expectations were
bound to remain unmet. There is no way to take a book
of such length and detail and arrive at everyone's version.
Then there were the expectations of the book's
author. Brooks had been Capote’s first choice in offering
the sale of the book. The two men had mutual respect.
But Capote himself was as much a star as any Hollywood
actor, and this carried a certain pressure. Brooks had
chosen to make the film for his own reasons, but it was
desirable in the process to make a film that also made
....... . 255
Capote happy. Perhaps one of the reasons the book was
offered to Brooks was the director's conscientious
attention to historical detail (read documentary evidence).
As observed throughout this study, no established direc
tor was more equipped to turn a non-fiction novel into a
documentary drama on the screen.
From the beginning Brooks and Capote agreed on the
importance of shooting in black and white, and using
non-stars in the lead roles. Brooks, in addition,
followed the book's cue by determining to shoot as much
as possible in the actual locations where the events
had originally happened.
This occasioned yet another pressure. Capote's
presence in Holcomb, Kansas, and the resulting publicity,
had had an inevitable impact on the community. Accepted
by some, tolerated by others, and resented by still
others, Capote had the power to create new status for
local people. Some felt that the book was simply exploi
tation of the situation. Others felt it had something to
say to our society. But generally in the end, Capote
was well received and trusted. The suspicion and fear
of exploitation that the author first encountered was
increased many times when it became known that a movie
was in the works. People feared that the movie would
exploit them for vast profits, feared that the Hollywood
256
crowd would seduce their daughters, resented having the
whole experience once again relived. But after five
visits to Kansas by Brooks himself, and many more by his
assistant, Tom Shaw, the people again afforded real
cooperation. The same was true, with some exceptions,
with officials in charge of other locations such as the
state prisons. In at least one case, political implica
tions for the official in charge outweighed his personal
inclination to provide help.
Studio pressures were of course always present. The
studio had in mind a color film, with a leading player
like Jimmy Stewart starring as the detective. But on
the weight of Brooks' last picture, he-had secured firm
control of the picture. Within an agreed budget, less
than two million dollars, Brooks had complete control.
The studio did not even see a script.
Budget was indeed a major factor. Detective
stories had in the past been successful. Stories of
the sort Brooks had in mind had never done well at the
box office* "It's very tough to make a picture about
social problems in Hollywood," Brooks told an interviewer,
"because all the wise guys say they don't make any money.
And when one fails, it gets harder and harder to make
257
o
the. next one." Brooks was therefore determined to make a
picture for as little as possible. Which added a prac
tical reason for shooting in black and white and casting
■unknowns. The studio was not to be easily convinced,
however. At the same time John Huston was shooting
Reflections in a Golden Eye in Italy on stock pre-tinted
with a monochromatic yellow that rendered the image
similar to black and white. They offered this to Brooks
as an option.
They sent a reel of the stuff in special. A guy
got it in Los Angeles like the goddam pony express.
He jumped on the train arid he rushed it down to
Kansas, and they rushed us from the motel in Kansas
City down across to the other Kansas City, rushed
us down to the theater. We sat down and looked at
the thing, and the note was, "For God's sake fellas,
shoot it. in color." And we all watched it in silence
...and we said, "We'll shoot it in black and white.
If Brooks felt such immense pressure, one might ask,
why make the picture at all. Why not pass the project on
to a less conscientious director and take a project with
more freedom. Apart from the legal and psychological
reasons for finishing what he had started, Brooks had
reasons that made it all worth the trouble. For years
he had wanted to do a picture on violence in American life,
3
Del Carnes, "Tough Challenge Faced in Changing
In Cold Blood Into Honest Movie," The Sunday Denver
Post, January 8, 1967,p. 27.
^Richard Brooks, private interview, January 31, 1970
258
ever since he had read Dr. Wertham's Show of Violence.
What Brooks saw in the story, consonant with the
attitudes already seen in previous Brooks films, is
summed up by the following extensive quote from an
interview he gave before the picture had started.
"In a large sense," said Brooks who has done
almost as much research as Capote, "this crime is
not about Hickock and Smith, nor what happened in
Kansas. It's what's happening all over the world."...
"Do you know who Hickock really was?" asked
Brooks, his voice tightening, his forehead wrinkling.
"He was the product of American advertising. He
believed all the pap he saw on television and read
in magazines and newspapers. He believed that by
using the right kind of underarm deodorant, driving
the right convertible and combing his hair with the
right kind of dressing he could get the girl.
"Win at any cost, but don't work at it-— that was
the motto he'd been raised on, with a lot of other
people. It' okay to cheat, but don't get caught at
it. He had seen and heard of famous people and
important people cheating at their income tax or
rigging quiz shows. And their only crime was to
have been caught.
"Hickock's whole life was one of half-truths.
"I suppose then that what this picture is really
all about is this: everything we do affects every
body else, that no one can live in a vacuum. And
that to some degree, this tragedy is the responsibil
ity of all of us."5
These are not concerns that emerge overnight. They
had been with Brooks a long time, as had his specific
desire to do something on the why of a murder story, and
5
Del Carnes, op. cit., p. 27.
259
on capital punishment. In Cold Blood provided him the
opportunity.
In Cold Blood concerns the 19 59 murders of the four
members of the Herb Clutter family in Holcomb/. Kansas.
The murders were committed by two ex-convicts who went
in search of a $10,000 cache they mistakenly thought was
kept in a safe in the house. The two men were hanged in
April 1965. The book by Capote is the result of extremely
thorough research of every relevant and irrelevant bit
of information related to the crime, the community, and
the course of justice. It provides such an accumulation
of detail that the reader fairly feels the impact of the
senseless crime on innumerable lives. The form allows
the why of the crime to be fully explored.
The very fullness of the book provided a dilemma for
the filmmaker. How to select the right details to tell
the story, ask the right questions, and provide an
entertaining motion picture. As the producer of Brooks’
novel by that name says, structure is the key to the
success of a screenplay.
Every scene in a screenplay must be functional.
Every word, every bit of action, each point of
plot, in fact everything that'll be seen on the
screen, all of it must belong together. It's all
got to develop character or bring the story a step
closer to the end.
^Richard Brooks, The Producer (New York, Simon &
Schuster, 1951), p. 111.
260
In a novel, particularly of the "non-fiction"
variety, there is room to digress, to become steeped in
the atmosphere and the people, whether central or peri
pheral. But the screenwriter does not have that luxury.
In Cold Blood provided another screenwriting dil
emma. The ending of the picture is already known. The
murderers are caught and hanged. How to keep suspense
in the story? How to generate a motivational thrust?
Should the movie be a detective story featuring Alvin
Dewey? Should it be the town's story? A crime-does-not-
pay story? A whodunit? (But we already know who.) A
whydunit?
Brooks' resulting screenplay may be his crowning
writing achievement. The movie does not try to say
everything. It is limited to an examination of the
motivations that brought these two men to commit the
crime they did— not just the forces inside two isolated
men, but the forces active in our society that formed
the men— and the motivations that subsequently led to the
cold blooded killing of these two men in turn. -
In the chronology of the story, the murder occurs
in the first five minutes. What is to hold the audiences
in their chairs for the next hundred? The solution is
in the structure, a careful withholding of information
until the right moment, and an interwoven fabric of
261
people and activities that eventually converge with an
inescapable sense of inevitability.
The picture opens with the night shot of a bus.
Inside the dark bus a little girl is wandering up the
aisle where a cat's paw boot catches the dim aisle
light. She stares at the owner, whose face is shrouded
in darkness. He lights a cigarette and we catch a
glimpse of his face made grotesque in the light of the
flame. Cut to Dick Hickock taking his shotgun out of its
resting place and saying goodbye to his consumptive
father. Cut to Holcomb, Kansas, with a fast' train
making a mail drop, bags hitting the platform like the
deadweight of corpses. Introduce the Clutter family.
And so it goes. Circumstances converge. Perry tries to
call his prison counselor, but cannot reach him. So he
goes on to keep his arranged meeting with Dick Hickock.
Every scene seems the logical thrust for the next, not
by intrinsic motivation, but by dint of external forces.
Dick and Perry meet, plan and prepare for their
expedition, almost jovially. The Clutters go about their
business. Mr. Clutter signs for life insurance. Dick
and Perry approach. With the-audience waiting in
apprehension for the inevitable murder scene, the
movie mercifully dissolves to the next day and the
discovery of the murder by neighbors. Investigation begins.
262
The rest of the story, through the investigation
and through the tense interaction of Dick and Perry,
takes us into the lives of the killers and their
families. A reporter (a hybrid of Brooks and Capote?)
provides philosophical comment, including the introduc
tion of a report by the Menninger Clinic written six
months before the Clutter murders, entitled, "Murder
Without Apparent Motive," which described the danger
signals for personalities subject to committing such
senseless violence. Later we are told that neither one
of the men was capable of committing the crime alone,
but together the chemistry was right for pulling the
trigger. Without in anyway taking the responsibility
from the killers, it is suggested that this crime is
not just a freak aberration, but a result of converging
forces from which none of us are exempt. Early in the
investigation, when the investigators have learned that
the total haul from the crime is insignificant, the
investigator asks, "Who would kill four people in cold
blood for a radio, a pair of binoculars, and forty
dollars in cash?" The reporter answers. "These days?
Take your pick on any crowded street."
Even earlier there are indications given that one
should not judge this crime apart from its total context.
263
Dick Hickock continually justifies his conduct by the
more respectable crime that society accepts. At one
point he speaks of the inequality of justice when he
asks, "Ever see a millionaire fry in the electric chair?
Hell, no. There’s two kinds of laws, honey. One for
the rich and one for the poor." In another exchange he
justifies his petty shoplifting this way: "Everybody
steals something sometime. It's the national pasttime,
baby. Stealing and cheating. If they caught every
cheating wife and tax chiseler the whole country'd be
behind prison walls." None of us should be so smug as
to feel totally exempt from responsibility. And when it
comes to capital punishment, who should cast the first
stone?
Having come away with no money, Dick and Perry make
their way to Mexico with a trail of bad checks. The
investigators in the meantime have two clues— a cat's
paw bootprint left in Mr. Clutter's blood, and a tip
from Dick Hickock's cellmate who had originally told him
about the safe in the Clutters' home.
Once in Mexico, the two have no income, and are soon
[leaded back to the States. Their trail is picked up by the
police network thanks to a car they steal and subsequent
bad checks they leave behind. They are arrested just after
they pick up Perry's luggage where he has shipped it in
264
Las Vegas. The luggage contains the boots with the
cat's paw. After intense questioning, and faced with
the telltale boots, Hickock caves in. Perry subsequently
confesses as well. In a car ride at night, he recalls
the full details of the murder. The actual murder
sequence was justifiably praised by critics for its
restraint. The murder does not feature the victims--
we actually see no blood spilt— but the murderers, and
their reactions: Perry's identification of Mr. Clutter
with his father whom he so loves and hates; Dick's
hyperactive determination and tearful horror when the
murder finally is done. By withholding the murder to
this flashback, Brooks (a) allows the audience to see not
just the victims, but the murderers as real people, and
we feel horror as much for them as for their victims,
(b) allows us to see the murder from Perry's point of
view, and (c) more closely juxtaposes the Clutter killings
with the killing of the two criminals.
The trial is short and to the point. The arguments
of the defense are only for mercy. The prosecution
quotes scripture to the opposite end. Sentenced to death
by hanging, the two men spend six years waiting for
execution. The deadlines come and go for Dick and Perry.
As they wait the "big swing" we are introduced to some
of the horrifying facts of hanging— how a man's heart
265
beats for nineteen minutes after the drop, how he loses
control of his sphincter muscles, how he simply waits
and waits and waits to die. Dick does not rail against
capital punishment and in his last statement says only
that he holds no hard feelings. But the movie focuses
on Perry, a sad, sensitive man who had known of the
time bomb ticking inside him, but did not stop himself.
Perry has spent his time in prison painting and reading
Thoreau, and when he steps out to "the corner" in the rain
to be hanged, we sense the futility of taking a life for
a life. One reporter standing in the downpour looks at
the hangman mounting the gallows and asks the other,
"How much does he get paid?" "Three hundred dollars
per man," he answers. "What is his name," the first
asks. "We, the People," the second replies.
Perry, bewildered and remorseful, looks at the now
familiar faces that surround him. He fumbles for words.
He would like to apologize for what he has done, but
to whom? With the sound of a heartbeat becoming louder
and louder on the soundtrack, Perry ascends the stairs.
The drop is quick, but the rebound from hitting the end
of the rope is in exquisitely painful slow motion. The
final title says it all, for the Clutters, Dick and Perry,
and for us: In Cold Blood.
266
The movie In Cold Blood is deceptively simple on
first viewing. Everything seems so natural, so inevita
ble, so real. It is only on subsequent viewings that
one becomes aware of such effective integration of
elements, the rich texture of sound effects and lighting.
Everything seems so appropriate, so right.
Filmically, In Cold Blood finds Brooks at his peak.
The theme of the picture is perfectly integrated with
its visual techniques.
Perhaps the operational word in probing the "why"
of the Clutter murders is "inevitability." In relating
the story to the police, Perry Smith remarks that he
seemed to be part of a story that had its own life,
and he simply had to follow it to see how it ended.
This fate-induced force becomes apparent early in the
film through the transitions intercutting Dick and Perry
and the Clutters. For example, Perry reads a letter
from Dick in the middle of which we cut to Dick in his
car. But more forcefully, direct links between the
three parties are created through abrupt cuts on visual
associations. Nancy Clutter answers the phone in her
home; Perry is answering a phone in the bus depot.
Perry turns off a light in a filling-station john;
Kenyon Clutter turns off a light at home. Mr. Clutter
267
leans into a sink to rinse his face; Perry raises up
from a sink after rinsing his face. Nancy Clutter, .
outdoors, turns to observe a storm brewing; windshield
wipers swash across the windshield of the murderers' car.
The action of one person butts up against the action of
another person miles away. They are truly interlinked
beyond the knowledge of one another. Inevitably their
actions will become conjoined.
Brooks also achieved economical, concise visual
characterizations in this film. Perry, for example, is
adrift in the bus depot early in the film. He goes to
a phone to make a call, but is just beaten to it by
two nuns dressed in the traditional long, black habits.
Perry backs off, although they offer to let him go first.
He goes to another phone only to be beaten to it by a
soldier. He then retreats to a sales counter and orders
aspirin. That he is lost and ill at ease is characteriza
tion immediate to the plot. Later we discover that he
hates nuns since he had been mistreated in an orphanage;
also we discover that he is proud of his war record in
Korea; and we discover that he has become an aspirin
junky due to pain from an injured leg. He is thus
nervously hemmed in and frustrated by his past life.
Such richness of detail accumulates'and is reinforced
throughout the film.
268
Careful, textured lighting has always: been charac
teristic of Brooks films. But here it etches images
deep into the memory. Working with wide screen, but
desiring to keep a sense of intimacy and immediacy,
Brooks used appropriate low key lighting, masking much
of the frame in shadow, letting highlights pick up the
limited detail of importance— the facial expression, the
eyes, the cat's paw on a boot, the sweat beaded on a
face. From the first image of the headlights of a bus
sweeping through the darkness, through the. constant
traveling of Dick and Perry, the effect is that of a
netherworld, not really seen and grasped, but just passed
through. This is the world, particularly of Perry.
In the prison scene, lighting throws sharp angular
lines across walls. The prison is one of the few
occasions when Brooks camera leaves its reportorial eye
level look to angle sharply up the stairs. The high
contrast and sharp lines emphasize the starkness of
prison's life-and-death condition.
The prison provides the setting for one of the most
memorable images in a Brooks film, or any film. Perry,
just before he is to walk to his execution stands near
his cell window, reflecting on his relationship with his
father. Rain is running down the window pane. As Perry
talks, light from the window is streaming on his face
269
creating patterns of water washing down his eyes and
cheeks. Perry cannot cry, but the elements cry for him.
And the audience as well.
In earlier films, Brooks had gradually refined his
use of montage and editing. In this film it is at its
best. By impeccable timing and choice of images he
creates anticipation and suspense. As mentioned above,
the intercutting of the Clutters with Dick and Perry had
created a sense of inevitability. At the point these
personalities are about to converge, Dick and Perry
have stopped at the entrance to the Clutter farm. We see
the Clutter house in a long shot with one window still
lighted. A closeup of the window reveals Nancy Clutter
kneeling to pray. Cutting back to the car, Perry
suggests they give up the whole thing. (Expressing the
audience's wish and hope). Back to a closeup of the
window of the house, we see Nancy Clutter arise and turn
out the lamp. Darkness. A pan shot from darkness to
light reveals the Clutter dining room in daylight. A
door bell is ringing. With relief, the audience discovers
that it has been reprieved from witnessing the murder.
With this move Brooks has also focused on Nancy
Clutter, the most vulnerable of the family, being a teen
age girl, as the focal point of the murder. Later,
when Perry relates the whole story, suspense is built
270
through her reactions. With the four members of the
family tied, and with Perry's tension built to the point
of murder, he kills her father and brother. As Perry
clumps up the stairs, we see her horrified reaction. As
he shoots her mother, we are again watching her reaction,
and finally when Perry enters her room, she turns her
head and begs. At that point, the scene cuts to the house
from the stormy outdoors with a huge tumbleweed blowing
across the ground, and we hear the shot. The only other
sounds are the wind and a whining dog. By playing the
actions against her reactions the horror of the event is
all concentrated in that one vulnerable person's terror.
We are blessedly spared the gore of the murder, at that
point, letting nature, instead, speak our grief.
The murder of the father and son is in itself a
tasteful artistic achievement. With credible motivation
springing from earlier Perry fantasies, Perry loses the
distinction between this man in the present and his
father in the past, and slits the man's throat and shoots
him. But the whole murder is shadowy, with its effect
achieved through the violence of montage; flashlight
beaming through utter darkness, closeup of Perry's eye,
the glint of something moving in the. darkness, closeup of
Perry's father. Some thirty detailed closeups are noted
in the script to-be welded together. The violence and
repulsiveness of the murder are thus achieved without
271
subjecting the audience to the explicit sight of gore.
The credibility of Perry's confusion between his
father and Mr. Clutter was mentioned above. The pre
ceding fantasies of Perry's are also filmed discreetly
and effectively. From the first time we meet him. Perry
is indulging in fantasy. As he stands in the washroom of
the bus depot he looks in the mirror and fantasizes being
a successful musical performer in Las Vegas. Gradually
the pattern builds. Riding with Dick who makes a danger
ous pass on the highway, Perry remembers back to a
motorcycle accident that hurt his leg. Later, in talking
to Dick about the latter's kids, he lapses into a memory
of himself and his mother when he was a little child.
Eventually the key fantasy occurs when Dick and Perry are
about to leave Mexico, and Dick spends his remaining
funds on a Mexican prostitute. Perry is present in the
room and remembers an occasion on which he and his bro
thers and sisters were present in early childhood when
his mother began making love to a strange man, only to
be interrupted by her husband who beat her viciously.
This fantasy/memory, however, became inextricably past
and present. By cutting from Perry-adult to prostitute,
to Perry-child, to Mother, to Father entering, to children,
to Father, panning to Perry-adult, the whole event loses
272
any bearing in time. It is all one. The effect is
again totally aesthetic, keeping any salaciousness from
the bedroom scene which would detract from the desired
effect— sympathy with the bitterness of Perry's childhood.
In Cold Blood is a rich film for analysis, not only
because the visual and audial elements have been so master
fully marshalled, but also because of its incredible atten
tion to detail.
Brooks' own research was almost as complete as
Capote's. The novelist had compiled a mountain of detail,
but there was much detail that Brooks specifically needed
in order to achieve his documentary feeling-—visual
details that would have to be recreated. In his attempt
to achieve the greatest possible actuality (one critic
s'
aptly dubbed it "veritism"), the film was shot in as
many actual locations as possible'— the Clutter house,
the courthouse where the boys were tried, the prison
where they were hanged, the store where they bought the
rope and other materials. The actual people of Holcomb
were asked to play themselves. He shot at the same times
of year in Kansas, Missouri, Colorado, Nevada, Texas,
and Mexico. Authenticity became such a cause that
smoking was forbidden in the Clutter house during the
shooting because Mr. Clutter had not allowed smoking in
his house.
273
With exceptional dedication from a skilled crew,
aided by ingenious special constructions for shooting
traveling shots in the car, all exteriors were shot live,
without process backgrounds, and without any need to re
record dialogue. Even the major documentary/fiction film
I
of modern times, Medium Cool, was postdubbed, with major
lines being added in the editing room.
In Cold Blood, for its part, profited by the attempt
to perfectly reconstruct the historical events. The
spirit that surrounded the production is immediately
discernible to the audience. The acting is simply out
standing and the detail is convincing as no studio pro
duction could ever be.
Brooks tells a little of the way he prepared for
this picture in an interview at the University of Southern
California. The substantial quote that follows is included
at full length also to illustrate some of the non-human
variables that create anxiety and pressure for a director
on the set. The interviewer had asked Brooks how he
planned his next day1s shooting. Brooks answered:
Well, at the end of the day's shooting when
the cast goes home and everybody else is gone, I
will go down to the stage or the location, or what
ever it may be where we're going to shoot the next
day. If the location is one hundred miles away,
and we're going to make the move during the night,
at least I've taken pictures there. I know what
it looks like. I may lay out the pictures if I
don't have a place to go to. Or if it's snowing
274
that night and I can't get anyone to go with me,
X may have to do it by the stills, and I'll go to
the place and just sit there and think about it..
And try to find out what it is we're going to do
first. Usually Tommy is with me or a camera man,
if I can get him to come. And say, "Well, tomorrow
we ought to start with this scene, and the kid will
come out of the barn and the old man is coming out
of the outhouse and has to cough and stand there a
minute and the kid doesn't know what the hell to do
with the rifle for a minute and you know what we
have to establish here. The old man will go into
the house and go back and get the rifle— the shot
gun— and put it in the car. Let's start with that
tomorrow. Suppose you've got no light. Well, the
light comes up here, and if it's not cloudy, we'll
have enough light, but if it's cloudy, what do we
do them? Well, maybe we'll start inside the barn
instead. Start inside the barn if it's bad light
and outside if we've got enough light. OK, what
do we need? Well, we need the car outside. We'll
have to get the father. We'll need the kid.
"What's the weather report for tomorrow?" He will
say, "Well, right now they just can't tell here. It
seems like it is going to be fairly chilly and in
the 30's or 35 or something like that." Then
4:00 in the morning the phone is ringing in the
motel, and Tom's on the phone, and he says, "Just
got the weather report. You know what the temper
ature is now?" And I say, "No." He says, "It will
be down to zero. It may climb up to five or six
tomorrow." I say, "Is it going to be overcast?"
He says, "Well, on and off. The wind is blowing
pretty hard." So we get out there, and what we
didn't figure on is snow and what we need is a
warmer for the camera. A plate that warms the
camera so in that temperature it will turn. Now
that Hickock farm— which was the actual Hickock farm— <
is a thirty-two mile drive from the motel where we
have our equipment. Fortunately, what we do have
is a radio back there. So we send for the warmer,
the plate and other equipment; and in the mean
time, we go inside the barn and start to shoot
inside the barn. By that time things are looking
up. But that's how we plan, just that way. And I
never have diagrams or drawings because it's much
easier for me, to rehearse first.^
7
'Kanter, Blacker, and Kramer, 0£. cit., pp. 47-48.
275
With, this kind of attention to logistics, and
/ s
a , crew working together, Brooks did it again. His
shooting schedule of 120 days was accomplished in eighty-
six, and the budget, apart from major salaries, cost
only three quarters of a million dollars.
Did all the pressures pay off? Certainly the
studio was satisfied— In Cold Blood was a generous
money maker. The readers-viewers were satisfied. Critics
raved. Even Truman Capote was pleased. An article
Capote wrote for the Saturday Evening Post payed tribute
to the movie director. Capote's reaction was important
to Brooks according to that description. "I've had
some rough moments with this picture," Brooks is supposed
to have sard, "But today is the roughest." Capote's
initial reaction to what he saw was disappointment.
The scenes moved with striking fluidity, but
I am increasingly gripped by a sense of loss....
Not because of what is on the screen, which is
fine,, but because of what isn't. Why has such-
and-such been omitted? Where is Bobby Rupp?
Susan Kidwell? The postmistress and her mother?8
Capote's thoughts were interrupted by a break in
the film. By the time it was repaired he had told
himself to watch it for what it was: judge from that.
I did, and it was like swimming into a
familiar sea only to be surprised by a muscular
wave of sinister height, trapped in a hurtling
8
Truman Capote, "Truman Capote Reports on the
Filming of In Cold Blood," Saturday Evening Post,
January 13, 1968, p. 65.
276
current that carried me downward to ocean-floor
depths, escorted me pummeled raw and groggy, onto
a beach uniquely desolate— not, unfortunately,
the victim of a bad dream, or of "just a movie,"
but of reality.
The screen returned to its pristine state;
overhead lighting resumed. But again, as in the
motel room in Garden City, I seemed to wake up not
knowing where I'was. A man was sitting near me.
Who was he, and why did he look at me so intensely,
as if expecting me to say something? Ah, Brooks.
Finally, I said, "By the way, thank you.
With all the other pressures Brooks had to face,
it must have been a pleasant relief to have his old
friends in the Legion of Decency on his side for a
change. Functioning under the new name of the National
Catholic Office for Motion Pictures, they commended Brooks
for his "shattering realism, but with a deliberate and
notable lack of sensationalism." The film was also cited
as an "exemplary job of film-making" and Brooks was
called "a creative film artist of the highest stature."
His essay against capital punishment is called "courageous"
and "balanced." The Catholic Office further praised
Brooks for voluntarily initiating a policy which limited
the audience to those over sixteen.
But the biggest question of all was whether Brooks
had satisfied himself. Judging from a preview screening
at the University of Southern California followed by
questions and answers. Brooks was almost exhilarated by
9
Ibid.
277
the result. He talked enthusiastically about the organ
ization and technical work in the film that had allowed
it to be made so reasonably. But he was anxious to
talk about the theme as well, and when one student asked
if Brooks, as he seemed to be saying in the film, believed
that he was his brother's keeper, the director answered,
"Your're damned right!" He followed up with some hard
data on the status of capital punishment in this country,
stating his personal opposition to it. His conclusion
was voiced in ringing tones:
Now whether the film had anything to do with it,
and even if very little, if it has contributed in a
way, it is interesting to note that since the
day this picture was released, there isn't one
person in the United States who has gone to his
death as a result of capital punishment. No one.
And I'm delighted about that.^-^
A satisfying product is not the end of a director's
concern, however. In Cold Blood is a case in point.
Advertising and television rights are of course post
partum concerns. In Brooks' case television rights
guarantee that the movie not be edited in any way that
might castrate his message or his film.
But it is not just on television that a film can
get butchered. It can be butchered in the theater as
well, by inattentive or careless projectionists. The
"^Richard Brooks, interview with Arthur Knight and
students, University of Southern California, February 8,
1968 .
278
improper matte (a metal square that determines the
framing of a picture) may be in the projector that cuts
off the heads and feet in an attempt to simulate Cinema
scope. Sound may remain unfocused. Picture may remain
unfocused. The possibilities represent nightmares to
directors and producers who have invested their lifeblood
in the best possible technical excellence to see it all
wasted by the callousness of a projectionist.
A film student once asked Brooks how he could bear
to make such an effort to produce fine material, and then
turn it over to someone else without making an effort to
see that the public saw it in its intended form. "My
friend," he answered, raI have so many scars on me from
trying to do what you're talking about...would you like
to see them? We fight all the time." When In Cold Blood
was opening in New York, Brooks wanted to make sure it
was properly projected, so he took his personal projection
ist with him to New York to preview the film for the
theater owner. When the film was projected, Brooks
detected a sort of haze hovering between the screen and
himself. At first the owner failed to share the feeling,
but was persuaded to hang dark curtains over the light
side walls as an experiment. Sure enough the haze dis
appeared. Light from the screen was bouncing off the
light walls and leaving a sort of residue image in the
279
air. Convinced, the theater owner had the walls painted
black before the picture opened.
Happy Ending completed Brooks' de-escalation from his
"big-picture" phase. It was definitely a change of pace.
It was his first original screenplay since' Deadline, USA
nearly twenty years before. It was his first love story
(discounting the non-story of The ' Flame and the Flesh).
It was his first woman's story (Although Elmer Gantry
featured a woman, it still was a movie about a man's
decision.).
These are the differences. But the Brooks hallmarks
are there as well: the social concern, the journalist's
eye. On the technical side, it was highly organized and
efficient, allowing Brooks to shoot the film in eighty-
four days. This was eighteen days ahead of schedule and
$300,000 under budget.
The studio backing for this film came from United
Artists, who had also backed Elmer Gantry. Once again I
Brooks had complete control. Producing the picture himself,
with the help of Tom Shaw, he was free of the arbitrary
constraints. His constraints were only those that had
become a reflex consideration: what the audience would
buy, how much could afford to be spent, what he had to say.
Casting was accountable only to Brooks (given that the
commitment of Jean Simmons to the picture helped make it
280
possible.). Brooks kept the script under wraps,, doling it
out to actors and technicians, on a "need to" basis.
Consequently, he did not have to worry about censorship,
pressure groups, or the whispers of Hollywood that can
sometimes damage a picture's chances before it ever
gets started.
Freedom itself, however, is not a sure path to
success. Happy Ending got mixed reviews and was
sluggish at the box office. Still, Jean Simmons was
nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress, and
the theme song, "What Are You Doing the Rest of Your
Life," won the Oscar for Best Song.
Happy Ending is the story of a woman's discovery of
her own emptiness as a dependent housewife, despite the
affluence and status that were supposed to have brought
her the American Dream. The title derives from the
happy endings of all the old movies that had helped
form that dream in the minds of millions of women— to
walk down the aisle with the man you love and live happily
ever after. This is a movie that begins with the "happily
ever after."
Mary Wilson (Jean Simmons) and Fred Wilson (John
Forsythe) have been married seventeen years. Happy Ending
is set on their anniversary. The scene is set in an
introductory montage. Mary and Fred are young and in love.
281
Mary cries at happy endings, Fred plays the: role of the
glib,, up and coining young man. At a weekend together on
the ski slopes, in a spirit of repartee, the following
exchange occurs:
MARY: For safety's sake, we should be put in an
institution--marriage.
FRED: Life imprisonmentI Just for what we've
been doing?
MARY: Well, don't you want to live happily ever
after?
Imprisonment for the man. Life happily ever after
for woman. But for Mary Wilson, marriage is imprisonment.
There is no happily ever after. And as we are told twice
in the course of the picture, Mary is the rule, not the
exception. Agnes (Nannette Fabray), the maid, who has
been assigned to be zookeeper over Mary, consoles Mary in
her depression saying, "All us girls over thirty-five
got the same problem."
What is the problem? We see indications of it in
Mary and her economic dependence on her husband, as well
as the company she keeps— her dependence on alcohol, pills,
health spas. In Mary's case it lead to a suicide attempt.
Others try other crutches, like injecting their breasts
with silicone. As Fred Wilson, fearing for his wife's
depression, calls around to her regular stopping places,
we get a picture of the milieu which is both a product of
282
and a cultivating ground for female dependency. Dis
cussing a friend's new acquisition of silicone breats, one
of the women at the health spa says, "It's dishonest."
Another answers, "No more than makeup, false eyelashes,
wigs, padded bras, or a hundred other things." They are
all good if they help a woman get her man, or keep the
one she's got. Still another says 'they all have the
same problem'— killing time in health spas, so they can go
home to kill more time.
The problem is emptiness. The cause is indicated at
least partially as well. And the blame falls on mass
media— movies with happy endings, advertising that idealiz
es love and establishes a woman's goal in life as getting
her man and living happily ever after. In the introductory
montage, as Mary and Fred are out walking, a truck
pulling a billboard passes by. The billboard says,
"Diamonds Are Forever." Later on, a wife in a cocktail
conversation claims that a man is really in love with
his car. He can always turn it in for a new model. The
values of consumerism translated to love and marriage
create a void.
The story, then, operates in this context. On .
the morning of their seventeenth wedding anniversary (Fred-
Wilson begins the day by saying, "Get my eggs ready for
me, will you dear."), Mr. Wilson commissions the maid to
283
keep a close eye on Mary. He has found her secret, vodka
cache and is afraid she will be out of hand for the
anniversary party that night. Agnes, however, is sym
pathetic to Mary and is more inclined to save her from
her husband.
Upon departing for work, Fred Wilson told his wife,
"Stay busy, have lunch out, see a movie, or your mother,
or something. And think only beautiful thoughts." She
makes a stab at following this empty advice, but unable
to face the thought of another empty anniversary party,
decides to liberate herself by getting away to the
Bahamas. She asks her mother for airfare, but when they
meet, Mr. Wilson joins them. Mary flees, and more
determined than ever, pawns her jewelry and boards a plane
for Nassau.
In flashbacks throughout the movie we discover that
Mr. Wilson has had an affair, that Mary Wilson attempted
suicide, that she had once embarrassed her accountant
husband by being picked up for drunk driving, and after
a wild shopping spree on another occasion he had
cancelled all her credit cards and checking accounts.
By now the emptiness she feels is unbearable. She is not
her own woman. And anniversary parties exaggerate the
realization through the accumulation and interlinkage of
other marriages like their own.
So this anniversary will not be the same. Escape to
284
anywhere. To the dreamland of happiness and fun. On the
plane she runs into Flo, an old college classmate
(Shirley Jones) and now a woman of the world living the
good life as a companion to men of wealth. She is
currently the mistress of a married man who will be
meeting her in Nassau. Flo takes Mary under her wing
and gives her sisterly advice about the foolishness of
marriage.
With the help of Flo's Sam (Lloyd Bridges), Mary
settles into the vacationland with some new appropriate
attire. While Flo is telling Sam about her whoring past,
Mary allows herself to be picked up by an attractive
young gigolo (Robert Darin) who drops his act when he
discovers she does not have lots of money. Flo comes
running the next day with the exciting news that she
and Sam are getting married. The greener grass on the
other side turns out to be as empty as the suburban
marriage. The difference lies within the individuals.
Mellowed and strengthened by her escape, Mary
returns to Denver to begin leading her own life. She
moves into her own apartment and returns to college,
beginning a new, deliberate search for her own personhood
through independence. Her husband does not understand,
but communication is open, and another start has been made.
This movie was released in 1969, and written a year
earlier (actually it had been in the works for eight
285
years, according to Jean Simmons). The women's movement
had gotten underway, but was not yet a popular, mass-media
phenomenon. As a social comment, then, it was just
slightly ahead of its time, and today is old conventional
wisdom. As entertainment, it received roughi treatment
from the critics and did not do terribly well at the box
office.
Although its issue orientation marks Happy Ending as
a Brooks film, in one way it is out of the Brooks main
stream. It is a woman's story. All of Brooks' earlier
pictures are very male. This is not to say Brooks is
chauvinist. Not at all. His female characters are often
strong, and seldom are faceless servants of men. But
there is very little room in a Brooks picture for man-
woman relationships, particularly in his earlier pictures.
In Crisis, the doctor's wife is a matter of responsibility
to the doctor; their shared love is fairly irrelevant.
In Deadline, USA, the editor's former wife is a profes
sional person, and has no less strength than Hutchinson;
but when a choice must be made between the newspaper and
here, she takes second place. In Something of Value, the
the social responsibility that Peter McKenzie feels in
hunting down the Mau Mau temporarily renders sexual and
personal communication with his wife impossible.
Phase two stories dealt much more with love. The
286
Brothers Karamazov has strong female characters, and love
relationships are central to the plot. However, it is
basically the conflicts within Dmitri Karamazov that we
are concerned with. Although Sharon Falconer in Elmer
Gantry is a very strong person and personality, this is
once again a man's (Elmer's) story. Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
is Maggie's story on the stage, but becomes Brick's story
of integrity in the movie. Sweet Bird was a stage success
because of Geraldine Page's first act tour de force
performance, but is a successful movie as Chance Wayne's
story. In Lord Jim the love interest only serves to
intensify Jim's crucial decision.
The Professionals is a man's story in the western
tradition, although the women, both Maria and Chiquita
(the woman soldier), are decisive and independent persons.
In Cold Blood is perforce a man's story. Happy Ending, as
an exception to the Brooks mainstream, shows a real under
standing of the woman's plight, but does not have the
deep-down feeling for the subject that his "man's pictures"
do. Romantic love is not acceptable even here. Women are
not relegated to second place, but romance is.
The box office failure of Happy Ending hurt Brooks in
making a deal for his new picture, another original screen
play, Dollars ($). For the first time in a decade he was
to work with a producer while making the movie for Columbia
287
Pictures. While Tom Shaw once again acted in effect as
producer, scouting locations, making arrangements and
hiring technical crew, major decisions had to be cleared
with Mike Frankovich. This included casting.
Dollars is heavily dependent on the female role,
written originally as an international call girl. There
is no shortage of stunning, strong-willed beauties who
could have been credibly cast in this role. But one of
these is not Goldie Hawn. Nevertheless, Ms. Hawn was
under contract to Mr. Frankovich, and somewhere between
the initial casting discussions and the start of filming
a year later, Goldie Hawn was cast in the role, and the
script rewritten to accommodate her fey personality.
(Under Brooks1 direction she gave her most sustained
dramatic performance to that point in her career.)
Dollars is, on the face of it, a straight heist
film. But as Brooks said in an interview during the making
of the film, "It's about money." Dollars has a complex
plot. Warren Beatty plays a security consultant, Joe
Collins, who has devised a way to steal from the rich
crooks on the premise that they cannot holier cop over
ill-gotten gain. He has just installed a bank security
system that is supposed to be impregnable. But he
arranges to get himself locked inside the vault with the
safety deposit boxes where he can systematically rob
288
several boxes that have been identified by his partner in
crime, a top call girl (Goldie Hawn). Those he is robbing
from are a Las Vegas syndicate runner who deposits money
skimmed from the gambling halls of Vegas, an Army sergeant
in the black market, and a German heroin deader. The heist
from the bank is successful, but the victims identify the
master thief and the chase is on. Zt is one of the longest
and most ingenious chases on film. In the end, Beatty
and his partner end up together in sunny California.
As a caper and a chase, it is a meticulously-crafted
piece, so packed with interrelationships that it demands
great concentration. But Brooks is concerned with more
than adventure and momentary entertainment. The very
premise of the film is a comment on the power structure
created by money. "Every great crime," Joe Collins says,
"is supposed to prove something about the times we live
in." And while he says this crime proves nothing, it is
indicative to the audience of the times we live in, where,
as Collins also says, "There is an embezzlement, larceny
or bank robbery every thirty minutes, five days a week,
fifty-two weeks a year." It may be an old-fashioned idea,
but it still seems that the root of all evil is money.
Money is definitely on Brooks' mind. It has consti
tuted the major obstacle to every element of filmic control
ever a twenty-five year career, and he finally got around
______________ 289
to dealing with, the subject directly. He had actually
touched on it in Happy Ending. In that movie, Sam waxes
eloquent at one point:
Marriage. Once people saved up to get married.
Now there's credit. Credit means buying. That
means stores, shipping, building, factories.
Marriage means sex, beauty, luxury, diamonds,
furs, perfumes, cars, gifts for her, gifts for
him, gifts for them. Marriage means a home.
That means painters, plumbers, carpenters,
furniture, rugs, and curtains, bedroom suites
and dishes, stoves, clock radios, TVs— thirty
billion dollars every year just to get married.
If marriages are made in heaven, a broken
marriage is financial blasphemy. Bachelors,
divorcees, widows and homosexuals are unprofit
able and that makes them un-American.
Money. It all comes back to money, commerce. In
Dollars, Beatty voices conventional cynicism (truism?)
when he says that everybody, judges, lawyers, politicians,
even the banks work for the big money, the hidden money,
the crooks. In another place, explaining the premise of
the heist, he talks of the statistics that are gathered
on stealing.
They got statistics on burglars, embezzlers, car
thieves, shoplifters, pickpockets... they know
about the convicts and the ex-convicts, they
know about stealing by doctors and nurses and
janitors, and patients stealing blankets and
sheets and pillowcases and bandages, they know
about working men and businessmen and profes
sional men, all the respectable people, the
first ones who are going to scream law and order,
that paid their expense accounts.and they
cheat on their taxes, and they bribe the cops
once in a while, and they steal a piece of....
Theft, is endemic to our system, and who is to say
290
one kind is better or worse than another. In this case
the good guys are the crooks who will only hurt other
crooks— the same premise as a later film, The Sting. Signs
of the times. Brooks the entertainer cannot hide Brooks
the journalist and social commentator.
The film, however, did not haul in the dollars that
critic Rex Reed predicted it would. Even under producer
Frankovich, Brooks had managed to secure film control
over the film in most details beyond casting. Once again,
control was not a key to sure success.
One anecdote illustrating the fact that the search
for control does not stop with the final edit concerns
a trailer (the advertisement that "trails" or precedes
the main feature in a movie theater).
Brooks was putting the finishing touches on the
editing of Dollars when his publicist, A1 Horwits, came
into the private lunch room to gingerly announce that
somehow a commercial testing group had received a copy of
the film's trailer to test its effectiveness on a random
sampling of Los Angeles' public. Brooks was immediately
on the phone, first to the editorial department that had
shipped the film. He demanded the trailer's recall. Then
he called the responsible department head to inform him
that the studio was in violation of contract, and that
prudence would demand the immediate recall of the trailer.
291
Furthermore, Brooks added, his film was not to be shown
on the private producers1 circuit that bicycled current
films. To the very end, control was to be in the hands
of the maker.
The story goes on, like a repeating decimal. Once
again at Columbia, Brooks undertook a new original script
after discarding other possibilities for various reasons.
A film version of The Politics of Heroin, a non-fiction
book on the CIA involvement in the drug traffic in
Southeast Asia, was put aside because without U. S.
Government cooperation, it could not be made. And the
Government was not inclined to cooperate.
Consequently, Brooks has written Bite the Bullet, a
story of an endurance horse race early in the century.
Starring Gene Hackman, James Coburn and Candice Bergen,
it is now in the final editing stages. In spite of his
typical secrecy, Brooks granted an interview with Charles
Champlin on the film, resulting in an article entitled,
"Why the Casting Couch Is No Bed of Roses." It details
the now familiar story of the difficulties of reaching
agreement with the studio on casting. Even though Brooks
was not responsible to a producer, the studio exercised
its customary approval rights over casting. Champlin
contrasts the earlier studio days when casting was by fiat
with today's free-for-all between studio, filmmaker, and
292
agency (and sometimes the actors themselves). The
variables of budget, schedules, studio— Brooks' agreement
took five months to resolve. For a director to have even
a major say in the key elements of his film today demands
not only a good track record and strength in negotiation,
it demands experience, savvy, and above all, endurance.
Perhaps Bite the Bullet is an unconscious paradigm for
Brooks' struggle to win in the movie business.
Whether Bite the Bullet is a box office smash or
not, Richard Brooks must be considered successful in his
long career, not only in his attempt to put meaningful
and entertaining stories on the screen, but in his attempt
to beat the system that tries to reduce everything to the
lowest common denominator. "Mr. Brooks," a student once
asked, "how do you manage to survive and apparently over
come the intimidations of the front office?" "I'm not
doing it," he answered. "I'm slowly going down." Then,
as if to admit that he didn't really believe his own
answer, he stated the truth of the matter.
There's only one way to do it. If you're
lucky and every once in a while you have one
that makes some money, then you're talking
their language. What they care about is,
will it make money....So I say, if you want
to battle the studios, there's only one way
to do it. You can't do it because you're
virile, or because you're handsome, or you're
muscular. Only if you can make money for them....
They say, "Artists, what do they know about life?
293
But they make money. They make money."
Well, then, they say, "He knows something.
I don't know what he knows, but he knows
how to make a picture that makes money. So
get 'em.n11
"^Richard Brooks, private interview, January 31,
1970.
294
CHAPTER IX
This dissertation has attempted to chronicle the
struggle of one person to achieve full artistic control
of his movie making through writing, directing, and
producing his own material. It has tried to catch the
truth of one man's story while projecting the struggle in
its universal aspects.
Richard Brooks began as a writer who saw himself
as a story teller and an objective observer in our world.
In an attempt to get his stories, his observations, on
the screen he found it necessary to direct them himself
rather than translate them through another person. Be
yond that, he found that final decision-making depended
not only on insight, but on finance, and learned that
only financial (producer) control could guarantee his
vision on the screen.
We saw in the course of these pages that financial
considerations are part and parcel of every aspect of
filmmaking, and we saw that financial considerations can
be codified in terras of pressures of every sort— external,
295
internal, studio decisions, audience-wooing considerations,
writing factors, casting details, shooting arrangements,
editing, scoring, advertising, and on and on.
We saw that in the case of Richard Brooks the
struggle for economic self-determination is inseparable
from his world-view, which he is resolved to share with
the widest possible audience in the most effective way
he can. This world-view sees the most significant drama
as that created by a confrontation between opposing
moral forces. The most significant events in his films
are not physical actions but personal (moral) decisions—
decisions whose effects will foster or hinder a better
world. Such seriousness of content demands of him a
like seriousness (but not lack of humor) in the imaging
forth of these ideals. Arbitrary impositions therefore
become intolerable.
Richard Brooks is not unique in seeking freedom
from arbitrary limitations of his vision, whether they be
exercised as a result of economic considerations, a
conflict of taste, or organized pressure. There are,
of course, directors who do not have the leverage to
have their own way. There are those who have the
leverage but have comparatively little of themselves
invested in their film and do not find the constant
struggle worth fighting. And there are those who,
296
whether they have leverage or not, are going to fight
tooth and nail all the way to see their personal vision
reach the screen. Their motivation might be pure ego,
it might be a sense of artistic integrity, it might
be a concern for the message to be communicated. It
might be these three or more.
These three and more might best describe Brooks.
In his case there is a direct correlation between the
social message he wants to convey and the need to
keep it in tact. But he is not without the instincts of
other directors who would fight to have complete control
over their work just to achieve that sense of artistic
wholeness that derives from full management of the pro
cess .
The struggle of Richard Brooks, then, to achieve
decision-making control over his films, is almost a
definition of the man. And there are characteristics of
that struggle which are uniquely his. However, .his
struggle also is representative of a myriad of similar
efforts, that as a group are almost a definition of
Hollywood. Brooks' struggle is a microcosm of the movie
industry. It is built on the inevitable tension between
finance and art, vision and audience receptivity. It is
a marriage of greed and idealism-— or at least a grudging
coexistence.
297
In these pages we have also taken a brief look at
the cinematic style of Richard Brooks the. director. Brooks
is first and foremost a writer. His direction follows
from this. His vision is more ideological than visual.
He begins with stories which communicate his world-view,
stories which are carefully constructed according to the
classic principles of dramaturgy, their plots thrusting
forward through the motivated actions of three-dimensional
characters faced with the conflict of personal (moral)
decisions. Once these elements are established and inter
related, only then are they translated into images—
images that can be terse, steady, deliberate, and concise,
but which nevertheless are interpretations of stories
which began on paper. Although he fully integrates the
roles of writer and director in one person he is far from
the French ideal of camera stylo— writing directly on film.
This is not to say that Brooks has not changed
through the years. In his later films, particularly those
following Lord Jim, his interpretation of his stories
became increasingly visual, maintaining the best elements
of his writing— meticulous structure and sparse, hard
dialogue— while telling his stories less through staged
scenes than through visual details and editorial movement.
Brooks' camera, in his earlier films particularly, is
298
simply placed in such a way as to provide the viewer with
maximum "proscenium advantage," with individual scenes
staged theatrically. With some notable exceptions in
Elmer Gantry and Sweet Bird of Youth, this proved to be
the norm until The Professionals, a low budget picture
which allowed Brooks to try some more liberated techniques
on for size. His camera opened up, characterization
became visualized more than verbalized, and dialogue was
reduced to a minimum. This then characterized his sub
sequent four films.
Editorially, Brooks also made a distinct shift after
Lord Jim. Brooks, from Blackboard Jungle on, took a
decisive supervisory hand in the editing of his films.
The result was a spare, terse style with transitions
that emphasized the organic nature of his plots. But
editing remained a device for drawing attention to the
right details with the right emphasis in linear story
telling. Again, with some exceptions, this remained
characteristic until The Professionals. Here a shift
can be discerned, as the editing becomes a part of the
story-telling itself. In the preparation for and the
launching of the attack on the Mexican stronghold, it
is the accumulation of details that counts more than
the linear perspective. In Cold Blood represents the
best of Brooks' editing. Here it is used to interrelate
299
the divergent elements that must eventually meet in the
seemingly inevitable downfall of all concerned. This in
evitability is a central theme verbalized in one part
of the script--but it is not the verbalization that
makes it work; it is the editing.
Closely related to editing is a characteristic of
Brooks' style that can be known only from external
sources— his use of music. Brooks has noted from time
to time in interviews that films are similar to music
both in structure and in their ability to appeal
primarily to the emotions instead of the mind. This is
more than theory for Brooks--it derived from his actual
practice.
Blackboard Jungle was shot and edited to the rhythms
of "Rock Around the Clock." Ever since that time Brooks
has listened to music in preparation for his pictures,
selecting music that establishes the tone and rhythms he
feels are right for the scene. In the editing he pre
scores the selections in order to cut to these rhythms,
and subsequently has his full score written accordingly.
From what has been noted in these pages, we can
conclude that throughout his career Brooks has tended to
be ahead of the times in his themes and social statements,
but well within the mainstream of American cinematic art
in his style. He has consistently been more concerned
300
with expressing social vision than with technical or
artistic experimentation, although he has occasionally
invested in the latter. His motivating force is com
munication in the common interest more than the expres
sion of personal art. As a consequence, he makes
statements in his films that the public is not necessarily
ready for (such as statements on anti-semitism, racism,
religious exploitation, capital punishment) but he
makes the statements in conventional films, topped off
with sweet reason.
As noted in this dissertation, Brooks' films can
be seen to fall into three phases. This implies major
differences in these groups of films. And so there are.
But throughout all of them we can note certain constant
elements that constitute the essential Brooks: strong
classical writing, concern for integrity, social aware
ness, meticulous visual and editorial craftsmanship,
and a fight for total control.
Finally, there is a discernible correlation between
the fight for control (monetary control) and Brooks'
style. Although the record shows no strong correlation
between his freedom from studio pressures and his com
mercial successes, there does seem to be a correlation
between the liberation of his style'and his liberation
from studio pressures. Elmer Gantry was the first picture
301
on which studio oversight was light. It marked a
freer style, more visually oriented than before, with
energy that perhaps made it his best film. In the same
way, The Professionals was the first picture for which
he did not submit a script. This also marked a definite
expansion of visual style. And Xn Cold Blood, a film
over which he had complete control, is surely the most
completely "cinematic" of his career. Other outside
pressures (such as anticipated audience reaction) may
have influenced his films in subtle ways that relate to
commercial success, but with all actual decision-making
within his grasp in later years, at least his films can
be said to be true expressions of the man.
What does this study of Richard Brooks tell us?
Beyond the delineation of one man's vision, cinematic
interpretation, and fight for total personal control,
how does it reflect the world in which motion pictures
are born and struggle for survival?
Generally speaking, the fight for control is part
and parcel of the movie business--there are artistic
reasons, business reasons, ego reasons for wanting and
claiming control over a given film. Some simply accept
this struggle as a modern example of Darwin's survival of
the fittest. Others, often critics', see it as another
proof that money is the root of all evil. Between the
302
extreme lies the reality. Money is, in fact, the life
blood of films, whether it be translated into return on
an investment, an opportunity for expressing vision to
millions, of a restraint that conditions the ways in
which one's art or craft may be plied.
Money can be translated into control. Control is
relative. When one is working for a studio or an in
vestor, control means freedom from studio intervention,
or pleasing the investors. When one is free of studio
domination, control means meeting audience demands in
order to have a successful picture. And always it -
means dealing with the pressures of organized groups or
censors who seem to know what is best for the public and
therefore what is best for the filmmaker.
This is not unimportant for the awareness of
critics who seem eager to judge on merely "aesthetic"
grounds. Control is the management of a myriad of
details— personal, logistical, economic, and artistic.
For a critic to judge any individual work, or body of
works, he must first understand the range of factors to
be controlled there. Of course, the more specific his
knowledge of these factors in a given case, the more
valued will be his evaluation. Certainly, giving real
credit where it is really due will remain a dilemma for
critics in any individual case. But at least the critic
303
will be wary of easy judgments.
It is hoped that this study of Richard Brooks
provides a look at one body of works that through its
analysis of themes, style, and search for control,
can give a starting point in the sorting out of these
elements in the works of other directors.
304
APPENDIX
Academy Award Nominations and Awards
for films directed by Richard Brooks
plus Crossfire
CROSSFIRE
Best supporting actor--Robert Ryan
Best supporting actress— Gloria Grahame
Writing— John Paxton
Directing— Edward Dmytryk
Best picture
TAKE THE HIGH GROUND
Writing— Millard Kaufman
BLACKBOARD JUNGLE
Art direction— Gibbon, Duell, Willis & Grace
Cinematography— Russell Harlan
Editing— Ferris Webster
Writing— Richard Brooks
THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV
Best supporting actor— Lee J. Cobb
CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF
Best actor— Paul Newman
Best actress--Elizabeth Taylor
Cinematography— William Daniels
Writing-— Richard Brooks, James Poe
Directing— Richard Brooks
Best picture
3HS
ELMER GANTRY
Best actor^-Burt Lancaster— AWARD
Best actress— Shirley Jones--AWARD
Music--Andre Previn
Writing--Richard Brooks-’ - AWARD
SWEET BIRD OF YOUTH
Best supporting actor— Ed B e g 1 ey - - AWARD.
Best actress— Geraldine Page
Best supporting actress— Shirley Knight
THE PROFESSIONALS
Cinematography— Conrad Hall
Writing— Richard Brooks
Directing— Richard Brooks
IN COLD BLOOD
Cinematography— Conrad Hall
Original musical score— Quincy Jones
Writing— Richard Brooks
Directing--Richard Brooks
THE HAPPY ENDING
Best actress— Jean Simmons
Best song-— "Easy Come, Easy Go"
30S
FILMOGRAPHY
I. Screenplay Credits
1947 CROSSFIRE
RKO-Pictures
Direction: Edward Dmytryk
Screenplay: John Paxton, from a novel by
Richard Brooks
Producer: Adrian Scott
Starring: Robert Young, Robert Mitchum, Robert
Ryan, Gloria Grahame, Sam Levene
194 7 SWELL GUY
Universal Studios
Direction; Frank Tuttle
Screenplay: Richard Brooks, based on a play by
Gilbert Emery
Starring: Sonny Tufts, Ann Blyth
1948 BRUTE FORCE
Universal Studios
Direction: Jules Dassin
Screenplay: Richard Brooks
Producer: Mark Hellinger
Starring: Burt Lancaster, Ann Blyth, Yvonne DeCarlo,
Hume Cronyn, Ella Raines, Charles Bickford
1948 TO THE VICTOR
Warner Brothers
Direction: Delmer Daves
Screenplay: Richard Brooks
Starring: Denis Morgan, Viveca Lindfors
2 l £ lL
1948 KEY LARGO
Warner Brothers
Direction: John Huston
Screenplay: Richard Brooks and John Huston, from
a play by Maxwell Anderson
Starring: Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Edward G.
Robinson, Claire Trevor, Lionel Barrymore
1950 MYSTERY STREET
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Direction: John Sturges
Screenplay: Richard Brooks and Sidney Boehm, from
a story by Leonard Spigelgass
Producer: Frank E. Taylor
Starring: Ricardo Montalban, Sally Forrest, Bruce
Bennett, Elsa Lanchester, Jan Sterling,
Marshall Thompson, Betsy Blair
1950 STORM WARNING
Warner Brothers
Direction: Stuart Heisler
Screenplay: Richard Brooks and Daniel Fuchs
Producer: Jerry Wald
Starring: Ginger Rogers, Ronald Reagan, Doris Day,
Steve Cochran
1950 ANY NUMBER CAN PLAY
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Direction: Mervyn LeRoy
Screenplay: Richard Brooks, based on a novel by
Edward Harris Heath
Producer: Arthur Freed
Starring: Clark Gable, Alexis Smith, Wendell Corey,
Audrey Totter, Mary Astor
II. Direction Credits
1950 CRISIS
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Direction: Richard Brooks
Screenplay: Richard Brooks, from a story by
George Tabori
Producer: Arthur Freed
Cinematography: Ray June
Music: Miklos Rosza, played by Vincente Gomez
30£
Starring: Cary Grant (Dr. Eugene Ferguson), Jose
Ferrer (Raoul Farrago), Signe Hasso
(Isabel Farrago), Paula Raymond (Helen
Ferguson), Ramon Navarro (Colonel Adragon),
Antonio Moreno (Dr. Niera), Leon Ames (Sam
Proctor), Gilbert Roland (Gonzales)
1951 THE LIGHT TOUCH
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Direction: Richard Brooks
Screenplay: Richard Brooks, suggested by a story by
Jed Harris and Tom Reed
Producer: Pandro S. Berman
Cinematography: Robert Surtees
Music: Miklos Rosza
Starring: Stewart Granger (Sam Conride), Pier Angeli
(Anna Vasarri), George Sanders (Felix
Guignol), Kurt Kasznar (Mr. Aramescu),
Joseph Calleia (Lt. Massiro), Larry
Keating (Mr. Hawkley), Rhys Williams (Mr.
MacWade), Norman Lloyd (Anton), Mike
Mazurki (Charles)
1952 DEADLINE, U.S.A. (British Title, DEADLINE)
Twentieth Century-Fox
Direction: Richard Brooks
Screenplay: Richard Brooks
Producer: Sol C. Siegel
Cinematography: Milton Krasner
Music: Cyril Mockridge
Starring: Humphrey Bogart (Ed Hutchinson), Ethel
Barrymore (Mrs. Garrison), Kim Hunter
(Nora), Ed Begley (Frank Allen), Warren
Stevens (Burrows), Paul Stewart (Thompson),
Martin Gabel (Rienzi), Joseph De Santis
(Schmidt), Joyce Mackenzie (Kitty Garrison
Geary), Audrey Christie (Mrs. Willebrandt),
Fay Baker (Alice Garrison Geary), Jim
Backus (Cleary)
1952 BATTLE CIRCUS
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Direction: Richard Brooks
Screenplay: Richard Brooks, based on a story by
Allen Rivkin and Laura Kerr
Producer: Pandro S. Berman
Cinematography: John Alton
Music: Lennie Hayton
Starring: Humphrey Bogart (Major Jed Webbe), June
Allyson (Lt. Ruth McCara), Keenan Wynn
(Sgt. Orvil Statt), Robert Keith (Lt. Col.
Hillary Walters), William Campbell (Capt.
John Rustford), Patricia Tiernan (Lt. Rose
Ashland), Adele Longmire (Lt. Jane Frank
lin)
1953 TAKE THE HIGH GROUND
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Direction: Richard Brooks
Screenplay: Millard Kaufman
Producer: Dore Schary
Cinematography: John Alton (AnscoColor)
Music: Dmitri Tiomkin
Starring: Richard Widmark (Sgt. Thorne Ryan), Karl
Malden (Sgt. Laverne Holt), Carleton Car
penter (Merton Tolliver), Elaine Stewart
(Julie Mollison), Russ Tamblyn (Paul
Jamison), Jerome Courtland (Elvin Carey),
Steve Forrest (Lobo Naglaski), Robert
Arthur (Don Dover)
1954 THE FLAME AND THE FLESH
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Direction: Richard Brooks
Screenplay: Helen Deutsch, based oh a novel by
Auguste Bailly
Producer: Joe Pasternak
Cinematography: Christopher Challis (Technicolor)
Music: Nicholas Brodszky, lyrics by Jack Lawrence
Starring: Lana Turner (Madeline), Pier Angeli (Lisa),
Carlos Thompson (Nino), Bonar Colleano
(Ciccio), Charles Goldner (Mondari), Peter
Illing (Peppe), Rosalie Crutchley
(Francesca), Marne Maitland (Filiberto)
1954 THE LAST TIME I SAW PARIS
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Direction: Richard Brooks
Screenplay: Julius J. and Philip G. Epstein, from a
story by F. Scott"Fitzgerald
Producer: Jack Cummings
Cinematography: Joseph Ruttenberg (Technicolor)
Music: Conrad Salinger
310
Starring: Elizabeth Taylor (Helen Ellswirth), Van
Johnson (Charles Wills), Walter Pidgeon
(James Ellswirth), Donna Reed (Marion
Ellswirth), Eva Gabor (Lorraine Quarl),
Kurt Kasznar (Maurice), George Dolenz
(Claude Matiene), Roger Moore (Paul),
Celia Lovsky (Mama)
1955 THE BLACKBOARD JUNGLE
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Direction: Richard Brooks
Screenplay: Richard Brooks, based on the novel by
Evan Hunter
Producer: Pandro S. Berman
Cinematography: Russell Harlan
Music adaptation: Charles Wolcott
Starring: Glenn Ford (Richard Dadier), Anne Francis
(Anne Dadier), Louis Calhern (Jim Murdock),
Margaret Hayes (Louise Hammond), John Hoyt
(Mr. Warneke), Richard Kiley (Joshua Y.
Edwards), Emile Meyer (Mr. Halloran),
Warner Anderson (Dr. Bradley), Sidney
Poitier (Gregory Miller), Vic Morrow
(Artie West), Dan Terranova (Belazi),
Rafael Campos (Pete Morales)
1955 THE LAST HUNT
Me tro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Direction: Richard Brooks
Screenplay: Richard Brooks, from the novel by
Milton Lott
Producer: Dore Schary
Cinematography: Russell Harlan (Cinemascope and
EastmanColor)
Music: Daniele Amfitheatrof
Starring: Robert Taylor (Charlie Gilson), Stewart
Granger (Sandy McKenzie), Lloyd Nolan
(Woodfoot), Debra Paget (Indian Girl),
Russ Tamblyn (Jimmy), Constance Ford (Peg),
Joe De Santis (Ed Black), Ainslie Pryor
(Indian Agent)
1956 A CATERED AFFAIR
(British Title, WEDDING BREAKFAST)
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Direction: Richard Brooks
Screenplay: Gore Vidal, from a television play by
Paddy Chayefsky
__________________________________ 311
Producer: Sam Zimbalist
Cinematography: John Alton
Music: Andre Previn
Starring: Bette Davis (Mrs. Hurley), Ernest Borgnine
(Tom Hurley), Debbie Reynolds (Jane Hurley),
Barry Fitzgerald (Uncle Jack Conlon), Rod
Taylor (Ralph Halloran, Robert Simon (Mr.
Halloran), Madge Kennedy (Mrs. Halloran),
Dorothy Stickney (Mrs. Rafferty), Joan
Camden (Alice), Ray Sticklyn (Eddie
Hurley), Jay Adler (Sam Leiter)
1957 SOMETHING OF VALUE
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Direction: Richard Brooks
Screenplay: Richard Brooks, from a novel by
Robert C. Ruark
Producer: Pandro S. Berman
Cinematography,: Russell Harlan
Music: Miklos Rosza
Starring: Rock Hudson (Peter McKenzie), Dana Wynter
(Holly Keith), Wendy Hiller (Elizabeth
Newton), Sidney Poitier (Kymani), Juano
Hernandez (Njogu), William Marshall
(Leader), Robert Beatty (Jeff Newton),
Walter Fitzgerald (Henry McKenzie),
Michael Pate (Joe Matson), Ivan Dixon
(Lathela)
1958 THE BROTHERS KARAMAZOV
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (An Avon Production)
Direction: Richard Brooks
Screenplay: Richard Brooks, from a novel by
Fyodor Dostoevsky
Story adapted by: Julius and Philip Epstein
Producer: Pandro S. Berman
Cinematography: John Alton (Metrocolor)
Music: Bronislau Kaper
Starring: Yul Brynner (Dmitri Karamazov), Maria
Schell (Grushenka), Claire Bloom (Katya),
Lee J. Cobb (Fyodor Karamazov), Richard
Baseheart (Ivan Karamazov), Albert Salmi
(Smerdyakov), William Shatner (Alyosha
Karamazov), Judith Evelyn (Mme. Anna
Hohlakov), Harry Townes (Ippolit Kirillov)
312
1958 CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (An Avon Production)
Direction: Richard Brooks
Screenplay: Richard Brooks and James Poe, from
the play by Tennessee Williams
Producer: Lawrence Weingarten
Cinematography: William Daniels (Metrocolor)
Music: Filmed during Hollywood musicians' strike,
and given a "canned" music score
Starring: Elizabeth Taylor (Maggie), Paul Newman
(Brick), Burl Ives (Big Daddy), Jack
Carson (Gooper), Judith Anderson (Big
Mama), Madeleine Sherwood (Mae),
Larry Gates (Dr. Baugh), Vaughn Taylor
(Deacon Davis), Patty Ann Gerrity (Dixie)
1960 ELMER GANTRY
United Artists (Elmer Gantry Productions)
Direction: Richard Brooks
Screenplay: Richard Brooks, from the novel by
Sinclair Lewis
Producer: Bernard Smith
Assistant Director: Tom Shaw
Cinematography: John Alton (EastmanColor)
Music: Andre Previn
Starring: Burt Lancaster (Elmer Gantry), Jean
Simmons (Sister Sharon Falconer),
Arthur Kennedy (Jim Lefferts), Shirley
Jones (Lulu Bains), Dean Jagger (William
L. Morgan), Patti Page (Sister Rachel),
Edward Andrews (George Babbitt), John
McIntyre (Rev. Pengilly), Hugh Marlowe
(Rev. Garrison), Everett Glass (Rev.
Brown), Michael Whalen (Rev. Philips),
Phillip Ober (Rev. Planck), Wendell
Holmes (Rev. Ulrich), Barry Kelley (Capt.
Holt), Rex Ingram (Negro Preacher),
Casey Adams (Deaf Man)
1961 SWEET BIRD OF YOUTH
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (A Roxbury/M.G.M. Production)
Direction: Richard Brooks
Screenplay: Richard Brooks, from the play by
Tennessee Williams
Producer: Pandro S. Berman
Assistant Director: Hank Moonjean
312
Cinematography: Milton Krasner (Cinemascope and
Metrocolor
Music arranged by: Robert Armbruster
Starring: Paul Newman (Chance Wayne), Geraldine
Page (Alexandra Del Lago), Ed Begley
("Boss" Finley), Rip Torn (Thomas J.
Finley, Jr.), Shirley Knight (Heavenly
Finley), Mildred Dunnock (Aunt Nonny),
Madeleine Sherwood (Miss Lucy), Philip
Abbott (Dr. George Scudder), Corey Allen
(Scotty), Barry Cahill (Bud), Barry
Atwater (Ben Jackson), Charles Arnt
(Mayor Hendricks)
1965 LORD JIM
Columbia Pictures
Direction: Richard Brooks
Screenplay: Richard Brooks, from the novel by
Joseph Conrad
Producer: Richard Brooks
Assistant Director: Tom Shaw
Cinematography: Frederick Young (Super Panavision 70
and Technicolor)
Music: Bronislau Kaper
Starring: Peter O'Toole (Lord Jim), James Mason
(Brown), Jack Hawkins (Marlowe), Eli
Wallach (The General), Paul Lukas (Stein),
Dahlia Lavi (The Girl), Akim Tamiroff
(Schomberg), Curt Jurgens (Cornelius)
196 6 THE PROFESSIONALS
Columbia Pictures
Direction: Richard Brooks
Screenplay: Richard Brooks, based on the novel A Mule
for the Marquesa by Frank O'Rourke
Producer: Richard Brooks
Assistant Director: Tom Shaw
Cinematography: Conrad Hall
Music: Maurice Jarre
Starring: Burt Lancaster (Dolworth), Lee Marvin
(Fardan), Robert Ryan (Ehrengard),
Jack Palance (Raza), Claudia Cardinale
(Maria), Ralph Bellamy (Grant), Woody
Strode (Jake), Joe De Santis (Ortega),
Rafael Bertrand (Fierro), Jorge Martinez
313
de Hoyos (Padilla), Marie Gomez
(Chiquita), Jose Chavez (Revolutionary),
Carlos Romero (Revolutionary), Vaughn
Taylor (Banker)
1967 IN COLD BLOOD
Columbia Pictures
Direction: Richard Brooks
Screenplay: Richard Brooks, based on the book by
Truman Capote
Producer: Richard Brooks
Assistant Director: Tom Shaw
Cinematography: Conrad Hall (Panavision)
Music: Qunicy Jones
Starring: Robert Blake (Perry Smith), Scott Wilson
(Dick Hickock), John Forsythe (Alvin
Dewey), Paul Stewart (Reporter), Gerald
S. O'Loughlin (Harold Nye), Jeff Corey
(Mr. Hickock), John Gallaudet (Roy
Church), James Flavin (Clarence Duntz),
Charles McGraw (Mr. Smith), James Lantz
(Officer Rohleder), Will Geer (Prosecutor),
John Me Liam (Herbert Clutter), Ruth
Storey (Bonnie Clutter), Brenda C. Currin
(Nancy Clutter), Paul Hough (Kenyon Clut
ter) , Vaughn Taylor (Good Samaritan),
Duke Hobbie (Young Reporter), Sheldon
Allman (Rev. Post), Sammy Thurman (Mrs.
Smith), Mrs. Sadie Truitt, Myrtle Clare
(Themselves)
196 8 THE HAPPY ENDING
United Artists
Direction: Richard Brooks
Screenplay: Richard Brooks
Producer: Richard Brooks
Assistant Director: Tom Shaw
Cinematography: Conrad Hall (Panavision, Technicolor)
Music: Michel Legrand, lyrics by Alan and Marilyn
Bergman
Starring: Jean Simmons (Mary Wilson), John For
sythe (Fred Wilson), Shirley Jones (Flo),
Lloyd Bridges (Sam), Teresa Wright
(Mrs. Spencer), Dick Shawn (Harry
Bricker), Nanette Fabray (Agnes), Robert
Darin (Franco), Tina Louise (Helen
314
Bricker), Kathy Fields (Marge Wilson),
Karen Steele(Divorcee), Gail Hensley
(Betty), Eve Brent (Ethel), William
O'Connell (Minister), Barry Cahill
(Handsome Man), Miriam Blake (Cindy)
1971 $ (Dollars)
Columbia Pictures
Direction: Richard Brooks
Screenplay: Richard Brooks
Producer: M. J. Frankovich
Assistant Director: Tom Shaw
Cinematography: Petrus Schloemp (Technicolor)
Music: Quincy Jones
Starring: Warren Beatty (Joe Collins), Goldie Hawn
(Dawn Divine), Gert Frobe (Mr. Kessel),
Robert Webber (Attorney), Scott Brady
(Sarge), Arthur Brauss (Candy Man),
Robert Stiles (Major), Wolfgang Kieling
(Granich), Christiane Maybach (Helga),
Hans Hutter (Karl), Francoise Blanc
($ Stripper), Walt Trott (Stars and
Stripes), Darrell Armstrong (AP Reporter)
1975 BITE THE BULLET
Columbia Pictures
Direction: Richard Brooks
Screenplay: Richard Brooks
Producer: Richard Brooks
Assistant Director: Tom Shaw
Cinematographer: Harry Stradling Jr. (Metrocolor)
Music: Alex North
Starring: Gene Hackman (Sam Clayton), Candice Bergen
(Miss Jones), James Coburn (Luke Matthews),
Ben Johnson ("Mister"), Ian Bannen (Nor
folk) , Jan-Michael Vincent (Carbo), Mario
Arteaga (Mexican), Robert Donner (Report
er) , Robert Hoy (Lee Christie),
Paul Stewart ( J. B. Parker), Jean Willes
(Rosie), John McLiam (Gebhardt),
Dabney Coleman (Jack Parker), Jerry Gat
lin (Woodchopper), Sally Kirkland (Honey),
Walter Scott Jr. (Steve)
315
MAJOR PRINT SOURCES CONSULTED
I. Interviews with Richard Brooksl
Brooks, Richard. Interview with Arthur Knight and
cinema students, University of Southern
California, March 16, 1961.
Brooks, Richard. "Richard Brooks." Movie, Spring,
1965, pp. 2-17.
Brooks, Richard. Interview with Arthur Knight and
cinema students, University of Southern
California, February 8, 1968.
Brooks, Richard. "Richard Brooks." Directors at
Work, Interviews with American Film-makers.
Edited by Bernard R. Kantor, Irwin R. Blacker,
and Anne Kramer. New York: Funk & Wagnalls*
1970.
Brooks, Richard. Private interview, January 31, 19 70
Brooks, Richard. Private interview, April 2, 1970.
Brooks, Richard. Private interview, May 3, 1970.
Brooks, Richard. Private interview, January 28, 1972
Brooks, Richard. Private interview, November 15,
1974.
II. Novels by Richard Brooks
Brooks, Richard. The Brick Foxhole. New York:
Simon and Schuster, 19 45.
^Interviews, novels, and unpublished manuscripts
are here listed in chronological order.
316
Brooks, Richard. The Boiling Point. New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1948.
Brooks, Richard. The Producer. New York: Simon
and Schuster, 1951.
III. Unpublished Manuscripts
Brooks, Richard. Introduction to the screenplay
The Brothers Karamazov. Cinema library,
University of Southern California. Undated.
Brooks, Richard. Screenplay of Elmer Gantry.
Cinema library, University of Southern
California. Looseleaf, undated.
Poe, James. Step outline for screenplay of Cat
on a Hot Tin Roof. Cinema library, University
of Southern California.
IV. Related Books
Capote, Truman In Cold Blood. New York: Random
House, 1965.
Conrad, Joseph. Lord Jim. New York: Doubleday
and Company, 1920.
Dostoevsky, Fyodor. The Brothers Karamazov. Trans
lated by David Magarshack. London: Penguin
Books, 1958.
Hunter, Evan. The Blackboard Jungle. New York:
Simon and Schuster, 1954.
Lewis, Sinclair. Elmer Gantry. New York: Harcourt,
Brace, and Company, 1927.
Lott, Milton. The Last Hunt. Boston: Houghton
Mifflin Company, 1954.
Mayer, Arthur. Merely Colossal. New York: Simon
and Schuster, 1953.
O'Rourke, Frank. A Mule for the Marquesa. New York:
William Morrow and Company, 1964.
317
Ro.tha, Paul. The Film Tili Now. London: Spring
Books, 1967.
Ruark, Robert. Something of Value. New York:
Doubleday, 1955.
Williams, Tennessee. "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof."
Best American Plays, Fourth Series, 1951-57.
Edited with an introduction by John Gassner.
New York: Crown Publishers, 1958.
Williams, Tennessee. "Sweet Bird of Youth."
Three Plays of Tennessee Williams. New York:
New Directions, 1959.
318

Linked assets

University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses

Conceptually similar

PDF

Cinema-verite in America

PDF

A historical study of cooperative Protestant religious film in America from 1914 to 1972

PDF

A historical and analytical study of the advent and development of cinema and motion picture production in Iran (1900 -1965)

PDF

A Critical Study Of The Filmmaking Style Of Milos Forman With Special Emphasis On His Contribution To Film Comedy

PDF

A critical study of the image of marriage in the contemporary American cinema

PDF

A history of the screen writers' guild (1920-1942): the writers' quest for a freely negotiated basic agreement

PDF

A working theory of film genre

PDF

A history of RKO Radio Pictures, Incorporated 1928-1942

PDF

A historical study of the influence of the house committee on un-American activities on the American theatre, 1938-1958

PDF

Clint Eastwood: An ideological study of his films, star image, and popularity

PDF

An enticement to knowledge: Documentary spectatorship and a theory of performatives

PDF

A critical study of the film musicals of Vincente Minnelli

PDF

Anglo agonistes: English masculinities in British and American film

PDF

John Steinbeck In Films: An Analysis Of Realism In The Novel And In The Film--A Nonteleological Approach

PDF

A national score: Popular music and Taiwanese cinema

PDF

A historical study of the stage directing theory and practice of David Belasco

PDF

Christian Metz and the reality of film

PDF

A historical study of the academy of motion picture arts and sciences (1927-1947)

PDF

The Use And Development Of Programmed Environment In Educational Communication

PDF

A critical analysis of the society comedies of Henry Churchill De Mille and their contribution to the American theater

Asset Metadata

Creator Frost, Francis Patrick (author)

Core Title A historical-critical study of the films of Richard Brooks: With special attention to his problems of achieving and maintaining final decision-control

Degree Doctor of Philosophy

Degree Program Communications-Cinema

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag Cinema,OAI-PMH Harvest

Language English

Contributor Digitized by ProQuest (provenance)

Advisor Knight, Arthur (committee chair), [illegible] (committee member), Kantus, Bernard R. (committee member)

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c17-671193

Unique identifier UC11342923

Identifier DP22238.pdf (filename),usctheses-c17-671193 (legacy record id)

Legacy Identifier DP22238.pdf

Dmrecord 671193

Document Type Dissertation

Rights Frost, Francis Patrick

Type texts

Source University of Southern California (contributing entity), University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses (collection)

Access Conditions The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the au...

Repository Name University of Southern California Digital Library

Repository Location USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus, Los Angeles, California 90089, USA