Pieces of My Heart Read online

  It’s an interesting character, because the audience understands his motivation but not his thought processes. He doesn’t have any dialogue explaining himself, which is a technical problem for an actor. I saw him as a social climber with something askew in his head. My primary problem was to keep the charm level up so that the other characters would never guess I was a killer, and being charming while killing people presents certain problems. It wasn’t a terribly pleasant shoot, because the location was so obscenely hot; the ending, where the truck goes over the side and I get killed, was shot in Globe, Arizona, in 120-degree heat.

  Gerd Oswald directed A Kiss Before Dying. He was a first-rate talent who never got the credit he deserved and was locked into low-budget pictures for all of his career. His father was Richard Oswald, a very innovative director in Germany around the time of World War I. Gerd was European in the best sense—very much into textures, backlighting, and backstory. He also directed me in a television version of The Ox-Bow Incident that was a hell of a piece of work and didn’t need to make any apologies to Bill Wellman’s original film. Gerd loved making pictures, and whether it was a theatrical or TV film mattered less to him than having it be something of quality, something he could sink his teeth into.

  I enjoyed making A Kiss Before Dying, and I think it’s a good film, but for me the most exciting thing about that movie was doing the interiors at the old Selznick studio. Before Selznick had it, it was the DeMille lot, and it had been built for Thomas Ince, but as far as I was concerned, this was where Gone with the Wind, the original A Star Is Born, Notorious, and all the great Selznick movies had been shot. Sue Moir, my girlfriend at the time, and I would walk around the place at night. It was just like the scene in Sunset Boulevard where William Holden and Nancy Olson take a walk around the back lot at Paramount. For me, the place was still alive with the ghosts of the great stars who had worked there.

  A Kiss Before Dying was done on loan-out to United Artists, and that was a good thing, because the pictures I was making at Fox were beginning to suffer. The reason was simple: Darryl was having a beaut of a midlife crisis and pulling back from the studio. This came to a head in 1956, when he left Hollywood, set up an independent operation in Paris, indulged himself with a series of exotically beautiful mistresses, and made a series of terrible flops for Fox (Roots of Heaven, Crack in the Mirror) that would be broken only by The Longest Day.

  When Darryl was running the studio, I did what he told me to do. I admired him, I trusted him absolutely, and I also felt great loyalty to him. If he wanted me to be in a movie and I didn’t like the script, I found a way to like the script.

  But when Darryl left the studio, Buddy Adler took over. Buddy was a gentleman, and I liked him, but I didn’t think his judgment was the equivalent of Darryl’s, either for me or for the studio in general. Fox was having trouble, as all the studios were at that point; TV had sliced away a lot of the audience for movies, and everybody was having trouble adjusting. I can’t complain about my bad fortune; Fox wasn’t taking care of other people any better than they were taking care of me.

  Ty Power left Fox to freelance and did very well, thank you, until he died so terribly young. I genuinely believe that the best years of Ty’s career were ahead of him. Not only was he one of the kindest men in show business, always helpful and friendly to young actors, who were, after all, being developed as younger versions of him—but he was also terribly ambitious and wanted to be the best actor he could be. But, with very few exceptions, such as Nightmare Alley, his good looks prevented him from being taken seriously. He only got a chance to exercise his serious ambitions on the stage, where he always did serious plays such as The Dark Is Light Enough and John Brown’s Body. Unfortunately, stage work vanishes, and Ty is remembered for his movies, which captured only a portion of his gift.

  Between Heaven and Hell was a goulash about World War II with Terry Moore, Broderick Crawford, and Buddy Ebsen. Not good.

  And then Spencer Tracy came to my rescue with The Mountain. It’s a story about two brothers struggling to get to the site of a plane crash in the Alps—the older brother to save people, the younger one to pillage the crash. The critics would say that Spence looked too old to play my brother, or that I looked too young to play his. I didn’t care. I would have played any part, in any script, for Spence. Another selling point was that the location work would be done in the French Alps—my first trip to Europe!

  Photographic Insert I

  The movies had me in their clutches by the time I was five. (COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR)

  (Above) My father, young Robert Wagner, in northern Michigan, where we experienced some of our best times. (COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR)

  My mother, Hazel Boe “Chatty” Wagner, at her most beautiful, and most pensive. (COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR)

  Jill’s title for this photo is “He married them all!” The ballet class was in session from 1948 to 1950. Natalie is on the far left, next to the ballet master; on the far right is Stefanie Powers. Next to Stefanie is Jill St. John. (COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR)

  The greatest star of his generation, and one of the finest men you’d ever want to meet. The inscription reads: “To R.J., who taught me how to putt a decent golf ball—thereby saving me unknown $. Clark.” (COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR)

  Two bulwarks of my life; on the left is my sister, Mary Lou; on the right is my best friend, Bill Storke. (COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR)

  In The Halls of Montezuma, with Richard Widmark, the first movie in which I got billing. The inscription reads: “For Bob. Pansy Baker, always on the wireless. Yours, Dick.” “Pansy Baker” was the radio call sign we used in the film, as well as the way we referred to each other for the rest of Dick’s life. (THE HALLS OF MONTEZUMA © 1951 TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

  With Dan Dailey, in John Ford’s What Price Glory, as close to a fraternity hazing as I ever got. (WHAT PRICE GLORY © 1952 TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

  My love, Barbara Stanwyck, Clifton Webb, and myself at a dinner party at Jean Negulesco’s house, about 1952. (COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR)

  My parents were always supportive of me. (© TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

  My mother and me taking a “stroll” on a photo shoot. (© TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

  My first boat, on which Natalie and I had many dates, at Balboa. (COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR)

  Young studs of Hollywood, as photographed for Life magazine: Rock Hudson, Tony Curtis, and myself. (PHOTO BY SHARLAND/TIME LIFE PICTURES/GETTY IMAGES)

  With Janet Leigh in Prince Valiant. Don’t I look fetching? (PRINCE VALIANT © 1954 TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

  On the set of The Mountain in Chamonix in the French Alps, with Spencer Tracy and Anna Kashfi, later Mrs. Marlon Brando. (COURTESY OF PARAMOUNT PICTURES)

  With Elvis Presley in the commissary at Fox. Nicholas Ray is sitting next to me, and Alan Hale, Jr., is on the far right. (COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR)

  With Jayne Mansfield at a premiere, 1956. (PHOTO BY DARLENE HAMMOND/HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES)

  Natalie and me on our wedding day, thrilled with each other and the world. (COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR)

  The official wedding photo. My parents are on the left, Natalie’s parents are on the right, and Lana Wood is next to me. (COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR)

  Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, and many others helped me surprise Natalie on her twenty-first birthday. (PHOTO BY MURRAY GARRETT/GETTY IMAGES)

  A test scene from the proposed swashbuckler Lord Vanity, in which Joan Collins and I were to have costarred with Errol Flynn and Clifton Webb. Can you tell which is Joan and which is me? (© TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

  With Steve McQueen on the London set of The War Lover. (THE WAR LOVER © 1962, RENEWED 1990 COLUMBIA PICTURES INDUSTRIES, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. COURTESY OF COLUMBIA PICTURES.)

  With Mart Crowley in Venice, 1961. (COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR)

  With the amazing Pink Panther gang: Cla
udia Cardinale, David Niven, and Peter Sellers in Rome, 1963. (PHOTO BY KEYSTONE/HULTON ARCHIVE/GETTY IMAGES)

  Paul Newman watches Jay Sebring give me a haircut on the set of Harper. The man with the beard is the great cinematographer Conrad Hall; on the right is director Jack Smight. (© WARNER BROS. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

  On the set of The Biggest Bundle of Them All. You’d never know that both Vittorio de Sica and Edward G. Robinson were furious at Raquel Welch for her chronic tardiness. (© TURNER ENTERTAINMENT CO. A WARNER BROS. ENTERTAINMENT COMPANY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

  Roddy McDowall’s photo of my new family. Next to me are Peter Donen, Josh Donen, Marion, and Katie. (PHOTOGRAPH BY RODDY MCDOWALL, COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR)

  With Frank and Tina Sinatra in the south of France at the Colombe d’Or in St. Paul de Vence. (COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR)

  With Roddy McDowall on the set of It Takes a Thief. (COURTESY OF UNIVERSAL STUDIOS LICENSING LLP)

  With Bette Davis in an episode of It Takes a Thief, the beginning of a beautiful friendship. (COURTESY OF UNIVERSAL STUDIOS LICENSING LLP)

  Natalie and me on the windswept day of our second marriage. (COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR)

  Spence and I flew to Europe together. Although Spence had gotten heavy in middle age, he still had considerable physical stamina. We got to France two weeks before we started shooting, and we had to get acclimated to the heights we would be working at. On our first full day there, he went on a three-mile hike; on the second day he upped it to eight miles, and on the third day he walked for ten miles.

  Spence’s alcoholism was a Hollywood urban legend even then, but I can truthfully say that I saw him drunk only once. But that one time gave me an insight into his very complicated character.

  We were on location for The Mountain, and we were in a cable car, heading up to a mountaintop location at Chamonix, near Mont Blanc in the French Alps, where the weather changes constantly. It was a single cable, from top to bottom, and it was a brand-new installation. We were about halfway up when the car suddenly detached from the cable. The car was not moving, just perilously hanging from the protective iron covering over the wheel mechanism on the car, and we were swinging wildly in the wind. It was at that point that the front window of the cable car shattered, and I swear I thought we were about to drop thousands of feet to the ground.

  I had been anxious about going up in this thing anyway, which was why Spence was in the car; he had gone up to reassure me that it would be okay, and now we were hanging there with our lives flashing in front of our eyes. They finally sent a work car down, and they somehow got our car back on the cable, and we continued up the mountain. It was the most physically frightening experience I’ve ever had in my life.

  Now, what people don’t understand about the movie business is that there are times when it’s like working in a coal mine. It pays better, but it’s still labor. Despite our near-death experience, we had a movie to make, so we put in a full day’s work. The location on the mountain was very difficult work, dangerous for the crew as well as the actors.

  While Eddie Dmytryk and I and the crew were working, Spence got back in that cable car and went down. When I returned to the hotel after shooting was done, he was in the bar, and he was completely drunk—gone! It was startling, because he had become an entirely different person. The bartender made some remark, or Spence thought he did, and Spence went after him. I held Spence back, then he picked up a glass and heaved it at the bartender. I put up my hand to stop the glass, but it shattered and sliced my hand very badly. Frank Westmore, my makeup man and dear friend, played doctor and stitched it up. It was a very ugly, violent scene, complete with blood on the floor—mine.

  The next day Spence had no memory of any of it. He didn’t know he got into a fight with the bartender, and he didn’t know my hand had been slashed open by the glass that he’d thrown. “Jekyll and Hyde” is a conventional metaphor, but in this case it was absolutely true. Sober, Spence was Dr. Jekyll and a very dear man, but alcohol turned him into Mr. Hyde, complete with a hair-trigger temper. The strange thing is that on some level Spence was blocked from fully acknowledging his dual nature; when he had played Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, it was one of his least successful performances because he couldn’t quite access Mr. Hyde—he was acting the character rather than being it. He had to be drunk before he could let the animal loose.

  That one instance aside, Spence was always a wonderfully kind and generous man. I would name my first daughter after Kate Hepburn, and I was privileged to be a part of their relationship. She gave Katie two dolls that she had made, one of herself and one of Spence as he looked in The Old Man and the Sea. They also gave her a crib. I brought the baby to see them, and they just glowed as they looked at her.

  Spence and Kate were like an old married couple in that they had a wonderful humor with each other; they played to each other. You could feel the affection and love they had. And she was so wonderful with him; they had a way of deferring to each other, but ultimately she would defer to him. She would say that he was like a big bear that would put his paw out and slap her down, but gently. Spence was the only person in her life who could tell her she was full of shit, and she loved that about him.

  I realize now that the people I was drawn to in the movie business were all older. I respected them enormously because of their accomplishments, but it was more than that. I wanted their secrets.

  Was I looking for surrogate fathers?

  Absolutely.

  I see a lot of my life as a search for the closeness and intimacy of family. Making movies gives you some of that feeling. (Barbara Stanwyck was the same way. Maybe that’s why we were so close.) At the beginning of a picture, everyone is so close. People become fast friends and swear undying loyalty. Sometimes they fall into bed. And then, eight or ten weeks later, it’s “Where did everybody go?” It goes from intensity to…nothing. It’s probably because of my particular emotional chemistry that I remember the offstage part, the relationships, more than I do the films. I remember the times we had.

  SEVEN

  “SWEET JESUS! IT WAS HOWARD HUGHES.”

  At a premiere with Tony Curtis, Janet Leigh, and Jean Peters, just before Howard Hughes spirited Jean away. (COURTESY OF THE AUTHOR)

  Some people who have gone through a quick rise to stardom report feeling a loss of control, but I never felt that. I was doing exactly what I wanted to do.

  It’s possible that I had too much of an allegiance to the trappings of my stardom. Once, around this time, I was in a convertible with Watson Webb and Rory Calhoun. I was studiously going through a pile of my fan mail when Rory grabbed it and heaved it up and out of the car. It scattered through the air like confetti, and Rory thought my reaction was the funniest thing he’d ever seen.

  Watson Webb was a descendant of two great fortunes. His father, James Watson Webb Sr., was a descendant of Cornelius Vanderbilt. His mother was the daughter of the founder of the American Sugar Refining Company. After Watson graduated from Yale in 1938, he decided to avoid going into either of the family businesses. Instead, he went to Hollywood, where he became one of Zanuck’s most trusted film editors. He was very comfortable editing film in the conventional style of the time, but he was also adept with much edgier, more violent movies. Among the pictures Watson cut were The Dark Corner, Kiss of Death, Broken Arrow, A Letter to Three Wives, and The Razor’s Edge. The last picture he edited had been With a Song in My Heart, after which he quit Fox and dabbled—in directing, in investing, in philanthropy, in being a great friend.

  Watson had a house in Brentwood, and he also had a place at Lake Arrowhead that he had bought from Jules Stein, the founder of the Music Corporation of America—MCA. Watson was a total blue-blooded gentleman. Everybody assumed he was gay, but he was so discreet that there was no real way of telling, which was precisely the way he wanted it. Years later, when he stepped up and lent me a hand at a desperate time, he would put me forever in his debt.

  I think I began to kick in as
a professional about the time of Broken Lance. When I started at Fox, I had been under the illusion that you became an actor by practice. It was, I thought, like learning to play tennis or golf: you went to the pros and let them teach you.

  It took me a while to realize that I had to learn to use myself to get where I needed to go. The main thing I had to learn was to get out of my own way. “How do you do it?” I had asked Spence, but it doesn’t happen that way. I was twenty-one years old when I worked with Cagney and Ford, and it was very hard to get the fact that I was working with Cagney and Ford out of my head. I was still overwhelmed by the reality of the filmmaking process and hadn’t yet learned to play the reality of the scene.

  In other words, my primary problem as an actor was self-consciousness. The great trick of acting is to make it look easy, as if you’re not acting at all. If the audience thinks to themselves, Jesus, I could do that, then you’re succeeding. In line with that, the test of an actor is not whether he can cry, but whether he can make the audience cry.

  For the most part, my social circle disdained “the Method,” but I’ve always been in favor of whatever makes an actor comfortable in his skin and frees him up—something that helps get an actor where he needs to go. I went to the Actors Studio in New York, and I observed. I could see them looking at me and rolling their eyes. They thought I was an asshole—the pretty kid who had made Prince Valiant and been laughed at.