The Other Side of Midnight
Jorja looked at me and said, “All right. You cut out your half.”
That was the end of that discussion.
CHAPTER 26
One Monday morning, my assistant buzzed me. “There’s a Mr. Robert Smith here to see you.”
I had never heard of him. “What does he want?”
“He’s a writer. He wants to talk to you.”
“All right. Send him in.”
Robert Smith was in his thirties, small, tense, and nervous.
“What can I do for you, Mr. Smith?”
“I have an idea,” he said.
In Hollywood, everyone had ideas and most of them were terrible. I pretended to be interested. “Yes?”
“Why don’t we make a movie about Buster Keaton.”
I was immediately excited.
Buster Keaton, the silent screen’s “Great Stone Face,” was one of the top stars of silent pictures. His trademark was a porkpie hat, slap shoes, and a deadpan expression. He was a short, slender, sad-faced actor who had been instrumental in the production and direction of his movies, and who had been compared to Chaplin.
Buster Keaton had been an enormous success and then, when sound came in, his luck began to change. He made several unsuccessful movies and was finding it difficult to get work. He starred in a few unmemorable shorts and was finally reduced to creating stunts for other actors. I thought that his story would be fascinating to put on the screen.
Robert Smith said, “You and I can produce it, write the screenplay, and you should direct it.”
I held up a hand. “Not so fast. Let me talk to Don Hartman.”
I went in to see Hartman that afternoon.
“What’s up?”
“A writer named Bob Smith came to me with an idea I like. He suggested we do The Buster Keaton Story.”
There was no hesitation. “That’s a great idea. I wonder why someone didn’t think of it before.”
“Bob and I will produce it and I’ll direct it.”
He nodded. “I’ll start working on getting the rights. Who did you have in mind to play Buster?”
“I haven’t had time to give it much thought.”
Don Hartman said, “I’ll tell you who should play him. Donald O’Connor.”
I was excited. “Donald would be wonderful. I worked with him on Anything Goes. He’s a great talent.”
Don Hartman hesitated. “There’s a problem. Donald is committed to another movie at the beginning of the year. If we get him, we’d have to start shooting this within the next two months.”
That was a major problem. We did not even have a story line. But I wanted O’Connor.
“Do you think you can have the script ready in time?”
“Sure.” I sounded more confident than I felt. Rushing a script to get a certain actor is always counterproductive. The audience does not care how long it took to write a script. They only care about what they see on the screen. I had given Bob and myself an impossible deadline.
Getting the rights to Buster Keaton’s life turned out to be easy.
Bob and I started on the screenplay immediately. There was a lot of material to work with because Buster’s life had been very dramatic. He had come from a dysfunctional family and he had gone through divorces and a struggle with alcoholism. I had watched him in his early classics, The General, The Navigator, and The Boat. They were filled with dangerous stunts and Buster had insisted on doing them all himself.
I called Don Hartman. “Bob and I would like to meet Buster. Will you set it up?”
“Certainly.”
I was looking forward to the meeting.
When Buster Keaton walked into my office, it was as though he had stepped right off the screen. He had not changed at all. He was the same little sad-faced man who had enchanted the world with his deadpan humor.
After the introductions, I said, “We would like you to be the technical advisor on this picture, Buster. What do you say?”
He almost broke tradition by smiling. “I think I can handle it.”
“Great. We’re going to film a lot of your stunts. I’ll get a trailer on the lot for you and I want you to be on the set all the time we’re shooting.”
He looked, to me, as though he was trying not to cry but perhaps it was my imagination. “I’ll be there.”
“Thank you.”
“Bob and I are working on the screenplay. We want it to be as accurate as possible. Are there any anecdotes that you’d like to tell me about, that we can use in the picture?”
“Nope.”
“Perhaps some special things that happened to you in your life that you think might be exciting?”
“Nope.”
“Something about your marriages or romances?”
“Nope.”
The whole meeting went like that.
When he left, I said to Bob, “I forgot to mention something. If we want Donald O’Connor, we have to start shooting in two months.”
He looked at me. “You’re joking.”
“I’ve never been more serious.”
He sighed. “Let’s see how fast we can write a screenplay.”
Bob and I ran Buster’s old movies. The stunts in them were incredible. I selected the ones I wanted to use, knowing that Buster would be on the set to show me how they were done.
Donald O’Connor came in to see me. “It’s a great part,” he said. “Buster Keaton is one of my idols.”
“Mine, too.”
“The Great Stone Face. This is going to be wonderful.”
There was one problem. Bob and I needed more time to work on the screenplay, and there was no more time. We had a shooting date coming up that we had to keep, so we started working day and night.