Chapter 15
One day while we were making Vera Cruz, along came Delbert Mann, with whom I had worked in New York doing live television. Delbert was going to make his first motion picture and was visiting our location to learn from director Bob Aldrich how to shoot outdoors. Back then, TV was mostly shot in black-and-white and in a studio. It’s a real challenge to know exactly what kind of settings you need and where to put the camera, especially when you’re filming a widescreen movie. In 1954, TV images were nearly square, while more and more movies were being filmed in a format nearly three times as wide as it was high.
While he was there, Bob Aldrich asked if he could read the script. Delbert said, “Of course,” so Bob read it.
At a party a couple of weeks later, I’m told that somebody asked Bob, “I hear you read the script of Marty. Who do you think could play that part?”
Bob answered, “I know only one man who could do it. Ernie Borgnine.”
“Come on,” the other person said. “He does nothing but kill people in pictures. This is about a lonely butcher!”
Bob said, “Don’t kid yourself. This guy can act.”
The guy Bob was talking to was Harold Hecht, the producer of Marty. When I finished up in Mexico, I went back to Hollywood to prepare to make a picture with Spencer Tracy and Lee Marvin called Bad Day at Black Rock. Shortly before I left for the location, I got a call from Hecht to come and see him.
“Listen,” he said, “we’ve heard some nice things about you from Bobby Aldrich and Delbert Mann. We’ve got a part for you in a picture called Marty.”
I said, “Gee, that’s wonderful. I would be very happy to play any part at all.”
He said, “You don’t understand. We’re considering you for the lead.”
I went absolutely blank for a moment as the words seeped into my brain. I didn’t say “thanks” or “great, call my agent.” What came from my mouth was “You have faith in me?” Because what Hecht had told Aldrich at the party was right: I was known for playing heavies.
He said, “Of course I have faith in you. Otherwise I wouldn’t ask you.”
I said, “That’s all I wanted to know. Mr. Hecht, I’ll give you 110 percent.”
Hecht told me that writer Paddy Chayefsky and Delbert would fly up to Lone Pine where we were shooting, so that I could read for them. But after meeting me, he said he was pretty sure I’d get the part.
As I walked from his office with a bounce in my step, I looked up to heaven and gave a silent prayer of thanks. I hoped my mom was watching.
Bad Day at Black Rock is about a one-armed man who comes to a small town in the southwest to give a Japanese farmer his son’s war medal. Director John Sturges—who went on to make The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape—was a very nice man and a thoughtful director. He was always dragging on a cigarette, thinking hard about what we were about to do. I’ll never forget when we were on location up at Lone Pine and we were supposed to do a scene where Spence and I had it out. I said to Mr. Sturges, “You got a guy with one arm. How’s he gonna fight a big strapping guy like me when I’m throwing two arms?”
He said, “I was thinking about that myself. What do you suggest?”
I said, “What about judo?” That was something they’d taught us in the navy.
He said, “Okay. Work it out with the stunt guys.”
Spence’s stuntman and I started playing around with it, with input from my double. I knew enough judo to get by, but these guys knew what would look dramatic on a big screen. Spence was there, watching the entire time to learn the choreography, and so was Sturges. When we had something that looked like it could work, Sturges said, “Okay, we’re gonna shoot it.”
I stepped back so the stunt guys could fight. Sturges said, “No, no, you’re in the shot.”
I said, “Wait—can we work on it a little more?”
Sturges said through a cloud of cigarette smoke, “I want it a little rough and raw. Let’s go!”
I thought, “Jesus Christ, I’m gonna get killed here.” See, there’s a famous story about how Spencer Tracy had once thrown a punch at Clark Gable in a picture called Boom Town. While Clark was zigging instead of zagging, Tracy hit him one right in the kisser and knocked out his front teeth. Tracy never threw another punch after that except close up.
But, no—the stunt double was going to be throwing me around. So we started the fight scene, which was taking place inside. I had this sponge full of stage blood hidden in my hand. He hit me and then he came up with his knee and just missed, on purpose. I went down then got back up, squeezing the sponge. You could see the blood spurt onto the ground.
I heard Spence say, “Jesus Christ, they killed him.”
Fortunately, we were shooting this MOS. The grunts and cracks would be added later. Anyway, I came back and threw a punch at him. He gave me the judo flip we’d rehearsed and I hit this screen door just as I was supposed to. Except for one thing. During rehearsals, the screen door opened and I fell out onto an off-camera mattress. When we got to the actual fight, somebody had closed the screen door and latched it. I can still see in my mind’s eye the hinges coming out as I hit that son-of-a-bitch going ninety-seven miles an hour. I want to tell you man, bam!
I just lay there. I moved my fingers and toes.
“Well, shit,” I said, “it doesn’t feel like I broke anything except the door.”
I got up slowly and I was dizzy, then I threw a punch and got tossed upside down, and the scene was over. Then I remembered, because there was Lee Marvin, off camera, going “tsk, tsk, tsk.”
That son of a bitch, I thought with a little chuckle. But he wasn’t the biggest SOB. Five years later, when Sturges was shooting The Magnificent Seven in Cuernavaca, where I was living with my wife Katy Jurado, I went to the location to say hi.
During a break, I said, “John, I really want to know—who closed that darn door?”
He said, “I did.”
I said, “You bastard.”
He said, “I knew you could take it and I wanted it to look real.”
If he’d been there, I’m sure Lee would’ve gone “tsk, tsk, tsk.”
Everyone who’s ever worked with Spencer Tracy has only nice things to say about him, and there’s a reason for that. He was a giving actor, an unassuming star, and a real gentleman. He took his work seriously, but not himself. I asked him if it was true, as Hollywood legend had it, that his Best Actor Oscar for Boys Town had accidentally been inscribed, “Dick Tracy.” He said it was and said it still made him chuckle. I remember thinking at the time that if I ever had the outlandish good luck to win an Academy Award, they damn well better get my name right. But Spence was just so professional. He rarely flubbed a line or missed a mark. If you screwed up, he was never impatient. If he screwed up, he got tight and quiet and made sure he got it right the next time. As with Coop, you were on the top of your game working with him. He listened, he reacted exactly right to whatever lines you said to him, and as a result you looked real, natural—better. That back-and-forth was like a tennis match where everything was going right.
As planned, Delbert Mann and Paddy Chayefsky flew up to Lone Pine. I went to their motel room straight from the set one night. They gave me the script and told me what to read and I went right at it.
“Wait,” Delbert said. “You’re reading it with a western accent!”
Goddammit, I thought. Now there’s a helluva first impression. I stepped out of my boots, shed the big ten-gallon hat, and started over. I was reading the part where I’m talking to my mom in the kitchen of our apartment. I forget which one of them fed me the mom’s lines, because all I saw was my own mother standing there. I read the scene and stopped.
Delbert and Paddy both had tears in their eyes.
Son of a gun, I said to myself. I’ve got the part!