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Hollywood, Sight Unseeing

by Rudy Makoul

210 pages; quality trade paperback (softcover); illustrated; catalogue #03-2669; ISBN 1-4120-2121-9; US$19.95, C$25.00, EUR16.25, £11.26

Legally blind Rudy Makoul worked as a Hollywood dialogue coach with stars such as Jayne Mansfield, Liz Taylor, Charlton Heston, Katherine Hepburn, Martin & Lewis, Cary Grant and more.

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About the Book

Hollywood, Sight Unseeing begins with the following paragraph...
I was in the batter's box. I was eight years old. The pitcher, ten, wound up, threw. Where was the baseball? I saw it leave his hand, then disappear until it was perhaps twenty feet from where it was headed... directly at my head. Being blessed with fast reflexes, I flattened out, dropped like a stone. I hit the ground with that ball missing my noggin by the wispiest whisker. At the time, it seemed nothing at all to me. I had escaped serious injury - just part of the game, I thought. But that "inconsequential" incident, with unrelenting insistence, uncompromising ferocity, would dictate the direction of the rest of my life
    Missing that baseball was diagnosed as macular degeneration, a retinal fault very rare in children. No known treatment, vision would continue to decline. By age 17, my vision was 20/200... legal blindness status. I saw at 20 feet what normally sighted people saw easily at 200 feet.
    Beginning with my first love, the entertainment industry, for 25 years, I earned my living, despite its near total visual nature, in the theater, radio, motion picture and television industries. For ten years of that time, I worked as a Dialogue Coach at Paramount, Twentieth Century Fox and Columbia Studios, working with top Directors, Producers and such stars as Elizabeth Taylor, Vivien Leigh, Katherine Hepburn, Cary Grant, Burt Lancaster, Charlton Heston, Loretta Young, Jane Wyman, Janet Leigh, Charles Laughton, Claude Rains, Shirley MacLaine, Jayne Mansfield, and 16 pictures with Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis.
    When decreasing vision made Dialogue Coaching impractical, I switched to writing for motion pictures and television. Later, I transitioned to the construction industry as a General Building contractor.
    Now, with my vison of 20/600, I have returned to writing. After all, I'm only 83.
          Rudy Makoul

About the Author

Rudy Makoul, now 83, had 20/200 vision by the age of 17, but did not let this legal blindness affect his career as a Hollywood Dialogue Coach, and later as a Writer. Makoul currently lives in Southern California.

Excerpt

CHARLES LAUGHTON VS. WILLIAM DIETERLE
The picture, at Columbia Studios, was "Salome" (1953) starring Rita Hayworth, Stewart Granger, Charles Laughton and Dame Judith Anderson. It also boasted a host of fine British actors such as Basil Sydney (who played the King in Lawrence Olivier's film version of "Hamlet"), Alan Badel, Sir Cedric Hardwicke, etc. The well known Yiddish stage actor Maurice Schwartz was also in the cast. I mention the British actors because to some extent there was a certain residual, albeit subdued, hostility left over from World War II between them and the German-born director William Dieterle, even though Dieterle was a naturalized American citizen and had lived in the United States since the late 1920's.

The major problem, though, was a clash of egos between Dieterle and Laughton. In 1939, Dieterle had directed Charles Laughton in the highly lauded "The Hunchback of Notre Dame," just at the time Hitler was threatening England. I don't know if the animosity between star and director related to national conflicts or whether it was a more personal problem.

"Salome" was the Biblical story of an exotic dancer who asked of King Herod, as a reward for her dancing, that she be given the head of John the Baptist, who had spurned her amorous advances toward him. To please Queen Herodias (played by Judith Anderson), the mother of Salome, the king (Charles Laughton) granted Salome her wish. But Laughton, even though he had read the script before agreeing to play the part, decided he didn't like the way it was written.

Although he assured me, when I approached him in the morning, that he knew his lines, he would come onto the set each day very poorly prepared. This was rarely the practice of a professional actor, especially one of Laughton's talent.

Several days before shooting started, Laughton learned that he was to be featured on the cover of Life magazine. In the 40's and 50's, this was tantamount to being granted, like Moses, an audience with God. On the day the magazine came out, Laughton brought a copy to work and spent a good deal of the crew's time, as they were trying to get the set ready for the day's shooting, telling them that he had been honored for his work in the stage production of G.B. Shaw's "Don Juan in Hell."

News of an actor's "screwing up" can reach a Producer's office faster than a four minute Olympic miler can break a tape at the finish line. This time it was Buddy Adler, Executive Producer, who came down on the set and angrily told Dieterle, "This is intolerable ... Laughton not knowing his lines. And his opinion of the script is irrelevant. He signed a contract to play the part as written."

Producers are reluctant to confront major actors, especially stars, with unpleasant complaints. So, too, for that matter, are directors. Hollywood is a small town, film-making a regional industry, and news spreads fast. Neither producers nor directors wish to get the reputation of issuing harsh or overbearing orders.

So with Dieterle and Adler both unwilling to tell Laughton that he must know his lines before coming on the set, who else was there to send with this "message from Garcia?" Of course -- Rudy. That was his job, wasn't it? To see that actors knew their lines before shooting started.

On my way to Laughton's dressing room, I wrestled with how I could discreetly tell this highly intelligent man and brilliant actor that "under pain of death by a thousand cuts" he must know his lines before leaving the dressing room. My feeble attempts to convey this to Charles Laughton took less than three seconds to elicit a response. Like a volcano erupting, he threw his arms heavenward and roared, "Oh ... so now I'm being ordered to learn my lines."

He was dressed in the flowing royal robes of the king, which made him look twice his usual wide girth. In his best melodramatic style, he whirled around with arms outstretched and placed his hands high up on the dressing room wall. He now appeared to be portraying a reverse crucifixion, and I realized I was witnessing one of the most powerful attributes an actor can possess -- the ability to overact. Obviously, Laughton was a master of this. (To be capable of overplaying allows a perceptive director like Dieterle to strip away the rough outer leaves of the fruit to get down to the sweet meat within. And certainly, Charles Laughton was singularly capable of showing us, when restrained, the finest nuances of the actor's craft.)

Right now, he was putting on a performance -- for an audience of one, me. But I began to worry when I saw his great body begin to tremble and shake. I didn't know whether he was laughing or crying. Then, with the same theatrical flourish that had sent him facing the wall, he spun around, leaned back with his palms flat against the same wall, fingers splayed as if fearing it might topple, and heaved a great sigh as if emotionally exhausted by the scene he had just "played." He then revealed that little simpering smile which he had used so effectively many times on the screen and, with eyes twinkling, said softly, "Rudy ... actors are such emotional children. Of course, I should know my lines. Sit down, dear boy, and we'll learn them."

I wanted to say that "we" didn't have to learn the lines, only "he" had to learn them. But having won the initial skirmish, I quashed the urge to possibly disrupt the peace. So "we" sat down and learned them, and for the rest of the picture, Laughton came in each day knowing his lines well. And the rest of the cast was equally professional, including Rita Hayworth who was known, at times, to have difficulty with dialogue. But when she danced, who needed lines? I found watching her dance, and being paid for it, a most pleasant "perk."

Fortunately, the other cast members, at least openly, did not share Laughton's seemingly endless capacity to "needle" Dieterle. They respected his considerable talent, his enormous reputation for the many fine films he had directed. If Laughton searched diligently for opportunities to irritate Dieterle, he certainly found one in a scene where the king, seated on the royal throne, converses with his queen about matters of the kingdom. Sitting abreast of him, Anderson had a line of dialogue to which he should normally have reacted by turning to her in mild surprise. In both films and on stage, this is called "doing a take" -- the most elementary of all stage directions. Laughton knew that Dieterle would expect that simple turn of the head toward the queen, so Laughton chose to refuse. Not blatantly but by finding some other inappropriate movement- -- looking to the opposite side, looking up at the ceiling or down at the carpet, examining his fingernails, tipping up his goblet to take a drink ... anything except what he knew Dieterle expected of him.

In this instance, Dieterle sensed that Laughton was deliberately toying with him and refused to tell this consummate actor what to do. Without comment, he kept doing "retakes" of the same scene -- thirteen of them -- at an enormous cost and causing enormous frustration. Finally, when Dieterle tried once more and Laughton still stared at the ceiling, the director broke. Without a word, he stormed off, and it was obvious to all that he was steamed to the boiling point. He strode to the end of the sound stage and I followed. When I came abreast of him, as he seethed with rage, I said without considering the wisdom of my question: "'D,' why don't you tell him to 'do a take' and we'll get it over with?" Despite the soundproof walls, Dieterle's roar no doubt ruined scenes being shot in adjoining stages as he shouted: "How can I tell Charles Laughton to 'do a take'?"

While a bit stunned at the moment, I realized later that my seemingly thoughtless question had served a very useful purpose. Dieterle had used me to convey to Laughton what he, the director, could not or would not tell the actor directly. The two giants were stubbornly playing their respective roles.

Dieterle went back and quietly said, "One more." We did the scene over and Laughton did exactly as Dieterle had wanted fifteen "takes" before. But Laughton was not through. He had accomplished what pleased him, having caused Dieterle to lose his temper. Now he would administer the coup de grace. His lips curled in the daintiest supercilious smile and he asked with exaggerated diction, emphasizing each word, "Was that all right, Mr. Dieterle (special emphasis on the Mr.)?" The director was ready to quit the field of battle. He said simply, "Fine" and turned to the assistant director for the next set-up.

Lest I mislead you, Laughton's penchant for creating storms at sea was not reserved solely for German-born directors. He had a wide reputation for being willful and perverse (see Simon Callow's book, "Charles Laughton, A Difficult Actor"). Nor was Laughton the only emotional child in the film industry. The records are replete with infantile behavior by a few "adult" actors and actresses. One such involved Dieterle and English-born Elizabeth Taylor, though I don't believe it stemmed from the same leftover World War II animus that may have motivated Charles Laughton.

Catalogue Information