Peter Ustinov does Charles Laughton Impressions

it was Kirk Douglas his own production I think it was called Breiner productions which he named after his mother and so it was a very internal and intimate seed which sprouted into this huge thing I thought I think the executives were rather nervous of the whole thing at the beginning because of the very live any lack of that Christian element and the Hays Code and the blessings which would certainly be of great benefit to the publicity department as we were making it Quo Vadis Francis refer to that for a moment I we shot that in Holy year in Rome and I for the publicity Department shook hands with innumerable American bishops who always said the same thing and there's rimless glasses glinting in the Roman Sun well I certainly never thought I'd shake hands with Nero well I had that one time and time again luckily in Spartacus there was no jokes of that kind the only thing that happened as we started the film in Death Valley then still directed by Tony Mann and he's still responsible for all the scenes in Death Valley at the beginning a woman came up to me a tourist and said what is the name of this picture going to being and I said Spartacus I couldn't speak to large because they were shooting I said Spartacus she said Spartacus that's a funny name for a major picture anyway be that as it may it shows completely different our be ours from the piety of Quo Vadis honestly I'm very grateful to Kirk Douglas for having given me the part I enjoyed playing it within limits imposed by the strange things that happened it was a very heady mixture there were some very very different people at loggerheads with each other in that film but it was a very very rewarding experience and I think he was as I said before very courageous in undertaking a film of these dimensions on this particular book at that particular time I held Howard asked in high regard and I was keen to be a part of that team at the same time we all got a slightly nefarious pleasure out of effect which I don't know whether it's true or not what we heard that character glass went for the weekend to Palm Springs exhausted by his work he didn't even bother to change he went as a slave called coiled up in some rags at the back of his limousine and he slept almost as soon as he got into the limousine and the chauffeur stopped at banning I think it was about halfway in order to get some gas and Kirk Douglas woke up because there was no motion saw that there was no one around and thought I'll take this opportunity to relieve myself and went to the toilet the man came out from paying from the gas looked in the back and saw a pile of rags and said he's got to be under it got in the car and drove off and Kirk Douglas was stranded in the middle of nowhere dressed as a Roman slave and covered with grime protesting he was character glass which they found hard to believe naturally we all heard this story got a quite a degree of pleasure out of it which perhaps shows that they were all iconoclast by Nature I hope looking at Kirk today he doesn't seem to cry out of it too badly the helicopter must have been much more frightening than that I don't know why there should be a feeling that it was two films I've heard this before that it was partly Noble and dealing with the highest possible level I don't see the revolution conducted that way is really very high level and that really people had no right to behave for wittingly in ancient Rome they were all they should all be of the same mold but all things in life exist side by side and there's absolutely no reason why they should be incompatible I think that's a prejudice which arose from the period then when they expected the thing to have won over all color and wear anything comic was termed as relief which is as silly and stupid it isn't relief life is full of comedy and to my mind comedy is merely tragedy which has gone wrong and of course tragedy is merely comedy which has gone wrong liable to happen to everything because life is full of surprises and the most mature kinds of work are ones in which you don't know whether you're going to be asked to laugh or to cry the next moment that is really drama as I see it I don't believe in comedy comedy or slapstick slapstick or tragedy tragedy I think it has to be a mixture if it is going to be at all lifelike and remind people of their own experiences after all all drama is really in a sense relies upon elements which people have seen but have not really noticed all Shakespeare does to ticketed its highest is to bring things to your attention which make you say hi God had true that is he has I hadn't thought it's quite untrue of course you've thought of it but you hadn't put it into words you hadn't put it into actions you hadn't been moved or made to laugh by it and that's the whole art of the drama working with Kubrick was interesting he was a young man then who wasn't and he I put in my book perhaps a little unwarranted little cruel that he shared none of the virtues or vices of youth but I think he was keeping them to himself that's all I don't think he felt very comfortable with the film of those dimensions why should anybody feel comfortable with such huge responsibility of battle scenes and goodness knows what I don't think we ever really saw the real Kubrick I mean I think Kubrick was a man who was using this quite rightly in order to hit the big time but whose faith was really basically in the small time which became big I think he wanted to do films his own way and I think he really basically lived with the thing but didn't really feel it as profoundly as perhaps she would have done had he been at a different phase in his career I never understood exactly why they got rid of telly man except that I should imagine that Kirk had wanted a Kubrick from the beginning because they had done a paths of glory together and obviously quite rightly had enormous faith in Kubrick but I thought Tony Mann was worthy of more respect than was shown him he was an astonishing character in any case and all the beginning of the film which you see in the movie has a date and recreated his all is he was an astonishing character because he belonged to some kind of vague religious sect his parents did in in Californian Hills in which he never wore clothes at all I think until he was about 21 and when something disastrous happened to the sect they went bankrupt and they all had to go to work and Tony Mann was plummeted from a nudist existence and Sun worship straight into the garment district in New York as an apprentice if he survived that I think he was tough enough to survive most things I remember that we also all appeared in Hollywood at different times and I suspected we all had slightly different scripts which rather favored our parts and since Laurence Olivier got there about a week before anybody else he had character glasses ear and when we did the first reading of this he didn't quite resemble what we'd received in the post and agreed to and I remember that first reading with enormous clarity because I was dressed in a relaxed manner that you find me in today except I've moved for The Times I think and the Charles Laughton was in a dressing gown with his hair in curlers and Olivier was dressed normally with a sports jacket kirk douglas was dressed as a slave and covered with dirt and grime he'd already been leaping from things and John Gavin was dressed in the full regalia of an important Roman chief of the period we started the reading and it was quite different it started out with Olivier in this version and he put on a pair of glasses very relaxed and started reading the script oh wait Lord although I don't know what you will hail a great one then and it was like a listen in church I couldn't hear what he was saying and I saw Laurens face out of the corner of my eye game then Lawton came in made his entrance and said hail you great gods of rail and again it was practically inaudible and I thought to myself if the race is going to be run at this speed I'm not going to start sprinting through dick Ulis so my entrance came I said haha my slaves we willing to know this and I objected and again I joined the general listen it was only John Gavin who has the sensibility of an actor and it was later your ambassador in Mexico who seemed to be impervious to this general atmosphere of murmuring and suddenly said all great guards that here declare and he was off on his own rather I thought this went on getting more and more awkward as we began to realize the script was rather different to what we had been led to expect until Lawton suddenly stopped dead and said I don't understand this scene and one smelled trouble there was a look of complicity between Kirk and Laurence Olivier and Laurence Olivier said well I thought it's my idea about this scene I thought I would represent the future John Gavin the present and you Charles the past Charles I think deliberately misunderstanding said why do I represent the present no dear boy you represent the past it's Gavin who represents the present and I represent the future well didn't get any further and suddenly Olivier exasperated by this almost animal dislike of Lord said would it help if I read it to you and Lorton reacted yes Laurence Lily changed his glasses and read the scene the quality of the silence greeting him was such that he eventually didn't have the courage to finish it and said more or less like that and Lawton said biding his time yes I thought for a moment a little while back that I might eventually understand it now I'm afraid I'm completely lost and we abandoned the reading we all went back to our places and that was largely why Lorton became extremely difficult and wouldn't do what he was given and that's when I was called in by the powers that be and asked to write the scenes between him and myself which I was glad to do he took me once to his caravan for a bull shot which he enjoyed very much which i think is boo Yong a beef tea mixed with vodka in a thermos and he kept a thermos of it under his toe produced it occasionally and we sat in his Caravan on the universal not discussing life and suddenly at one of those loads of tourists arrived Universal was unlike other studios encouraged with it some tourists and charged rather heavily for them and two ladies passed by and they both looked at Lorton and said oh oh don't tell me oh the greatest oh you are the greatest and Charles who spent most of his time loitering waiting to be offended he was an extremely vulnerable sensitive so he was now of course equally open to flattery and when he heard that he Prem's thank you and then the woman said your role as Big Daddy was just the greatest thing we ever saw his net so Mabel yes we loved it and then it turned rancid of course he became offended again and the two women went away and he was inconsolable I said Oh Charles come on many were what the thing to do in these moments is to imagine what it could have been worse than it was what could be worse than that I said many things they may realize their mistake and come back that is going to be worse at that moment there they were oh how will you ever forgive us Mabel told me afterward I've made the most ghastly mistake oh I'm so sorry it's all right no no yeah just awful but I want to tell you something you're just as good as Berle lives this again if made matters worse and they went on talking and adding to this until he were eager to have his revenge said to them pointing to me for the first time that they hadn't noticed I bet you don't know who this is and the women looked at me and one of them said oh yeah yeah don't tell me I know that bad I've got it yeah Walter Huston ufff so from that time on I was Walter Huston oh my son did a good job directing there was a moment when there was a Roman column marching up the hill where the people were crucified and there was there were a lot of tensions in those days in the news with the kuru I think it was a Korean war then wasn't it round about then but suddenly an aeroplane I don't know where it came from it must have taken off from Burbank or someone very close to because it hadn't gained a great deal of height he came and the universal lot is rather mountainous where we did our job marching along the road and suddenly an aeroplane came over terribly terribly low and a rather big aeroplane for Burbank but I think it must have been a sort of 14 passenger one and I remember shouting out to the Roman legion scatter their Greek and they did the publicity lady Sonia Wolfson I think her name was she came up to me and said Oh Peter steer clear of the commissary today Hedda hoppers in there and she doesn't want to see you oh this is like a red rag to a bull I didn't want to see her to hopper but I didn't see why I shouldn't be seen by a topper and I said what's wrong and she said no it's too embarrassing and I eventually I whittled it out of her Hedda Hopper had said to someone that I was so brilliant in Quo Vadis I've got to be queer we'll Foster and he did no second bidding I went straight to the common three went up to her and said how are you ha ha and behaved in a in the way of a rather gross English sergeant and we never had that trouble again I I'm not a great expert on how much films cost but there was a rumor of course that it was the most expensive films ever made because the publicity departments always regarded such rooms as excellent I can't imagine why because I didn't see any link personally between the cost and the result but I suppose somebody at going thinking I'm going to see the most expensive film ever made will look at it as an accountant and enjoy the sight I personally didn't I know that for my contribution to the writing I didn't accept a fee because I thought it was part of the job and they didn't want to give me a fee either because they'd already accounted for everything but they offered me in those days it was quite legal and days of payola I think it was called they offered me a Cadillac convertible but I couldn't see myself on the local roads in Europe driving this enormous thing which takes the room of three things to park with enormous fins as well which I didn't like very much like somebody like a beautiful model with enormous shoulder blades I declined the Cadillac America had just gone through a rather degrading episode with the McAfee army hearings and there was still a backwash of all that nobody quite sure whether it was over it's like an illness they didn't know it was safe to get out of bed yet and we just hit that period and Kirk with a great deal of courage it's awful to say that it had to be courage but it was I got dalton trumbo who was blacklisted as no one else was to write the script he wrote the script under the name of Sam Jackson nobody knew who Sam Jackson was but it was obviously a mysterious character who was involved in this and when I wrote my sections of it for Lawton I handed in my script under the name Stonewall used to know I thought that made a nice couple of writing I was taken by Tony Mann to see Dalton Trumbo at the beginning and he was living as a kind of comfortable recluse with a parrot I remember and I found him in a very engaging fellow and I got on awfully well with him a Kirk Douglas make some sort of mention in his book that one of the reasons for firing Tony Mann was that he gave me my head and he'd obviously broken some kind of confidence in showing me Dalton Trumbo at work at Sony man who was a very delightful character and a very interesting character did it I think because he thought we would enjoy each other in that sense he was absolutely right I enjoyed Dalton Trumbo and I didn't I had no respect for the army McCarthy hearings in fact I'd done two very explosive pieces at the behest of the BBC for the BBC just about those hearings and I was attacked then by a columnist called Jimmy fiddler I think I don't know whether he still exists who came off his roof and said that that was the way I have paid repaid American hospitality by attacking Senator McCarthy well I'd do it again at the drop of a hat I remember brother criticized when I got the Oscar for it for not looking surprised well I'll tell you why I'm not believer necessarily in the zodiac or in numerology but it's been a factor of my life that six has been my lucky number I can't tell you why I was sitting in the another Cadillac Cadillac with my lawyer from New York who was still my lawyer from New York and a very old friend and who said to me Peter don't count on winning they got Sal Mineo in there and they've just done Exodus and there's an enormous swell of pro-israeli feeling and I think it's got to go to him I said I'm quite prepared for you to go to anyone you like but and then I looked at the distant building as the cars were standing in line and it said in luminous letters 33rd annual Oscar Awards I saw that strange and then I looked at the tickets and it was seat number 24 in row F both of which add up to six then I looked at the tickets for the banquet afterwards and I'd been invited to Warner Brothers table for whom I was going to do the sundowners and it was table number six then I looked at the other table to which I'd been invited which was allied artists a small company of the time therefore it had a low much higher number I was going to do Billy Budd for them and it was table number 42 and I said to my lawyer you know they say there's too much of a coincidence oldest I have a strange feeling I got a chance he said Peter don't let it enter your head I don't want to see you disappointed make your mind up now you're not gonna win Sal Mineo 'he's got it and and then i explained to him why and the driver of the car the cadillac said well I gotta tell you I was supposed to drive Sal Mineo but they switched plans and I'm driving you instead it's my 33rd birthday I said to myself that does it and so when they read out my name I kissed my wife I think and went on the stage and people said you didn't look very gracious you didn't look surprised or why should her with that kind of evidence you

Channel: plazpastic

Views: 429,113

Rating: 4.8155103 out of 5

Keywords: Peter Ustinov, Charles Laughton, Kubrick, Spartacus, Douglas

Id: u3nrheg0In0

Length: 23min 0sec (1380 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 16 2013