Chapter 27
The Adventurers (1970)
It’s not always fun and games. In fact, sometimes you think about giving it up and becoming a bricklayer.
The Adventurers was a big-screen soap opera directed by Lewis Gilbert, an Englishman, from the best-selling novel by Harold Robbins. Gilbert went on to do a bunch of James Bond films, and he had better luck with them.
The playboy son of an assassinated South American politician discovers that his father was a pretty rotten guy and decides to devote his life and fortune to saving his country. The key part was being played by a Yugoslavian actor named Bekim Fehmiu. I heard that he had been cast by the director’s wife, who seemed to take a liking to him. He was pretty green, but he’d be getting strong support from people like Charles Aznavour, Alan Badel, Candice Bergen, Rossano Brazzi, Olivia de Havilland, Leigh Taylor-Young, John Ireland, and a bunch of others. We were loaded with talent. At least, where the cast was concerned.
To begin with, we were not exactly living like kings. We were shooting in Colombia, South America, and I had a little hut that was barely large enough for the four-poster bed. The bed’s legs were stuck in cans filled with water so rats couldn’t climb up.
Gilbert gave us a great pep talk when we started, saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, we’re all in this together and we’re going to get this picture done right.”
Yeah, great. We were living like pigs while he was living in a fourteen-bedroom house with servants.
But that wasn’t the worst of it. This was the first time I was ever thrown off a picture. I would occasionally make suggestions to this young man, Bekim, who didn’t know his onions from anything. I was trying to be helpful but he just didn’t understand the language and had apparently learned his lines phonetically. I mean, he obviously didn’t understand when they asked him if he could drive, because he said, “Oh, yes.” He took the car and wrecked it. And before you say, “Hey—didn’t you do that with horseback riding?” there’s a difference. I had a lot of help from the horse. This car couldn’t drive itself.
I kept trying to work with him, but he was obviously getting frustrated. Finally, he went to the director and said that I was being difficult. The director said to me, “What have you done?”
I said, “What’s the matter?”
“Bekim said you were giving him direction.”
I said, “Are you nuts? I was trying to help him along in the scene!”
At which point—having gone from angry to livid because I’d called him “nuts”—the director said, “Get off my picture, get off my set!”
I walked off the set. I didn’t want to go home because I’d never been fired from a movie. I went to my dressing room and stayed there.
Thank God for a very fine English actor by the name of Alan Badel, who went to Mr. Gilbert and cleared it up. I finished the film and was happy to get out of there. It was my worst experience in nearly twenty years of filmmaking.
The picture was shown for the very first time on the maiden flight of the first 747 that flew from New York to L.A.—and loaded with a bunch of newspaper columnists and an open bar.
Everybody got pissed to the ears. The next day the studio had to show the picture again because nobody remembered seeing it. I got some good notices, Bekim got fewer, and today the picture is kind of a camp classic.
I had the great good fortune of having Mr. Lewis Gilbert come up to me one time here in Hollywood and he said, “You know, Ernie. You made that picture. You were the best.”
I said, “Thank you, Mr. Gilbert,” and walked away.
Enough said.
Suppose They Gave a War and Nobody Came? (1970)
I’m not sure the movie really addressed the title question, though it did answer this one: Suppose They Made a Movie and Nobody Came?
This epic was a comedy about the conflict between an army base, run by Don Ameche, and a small Southern town, with me as the local sheriff. We had my buddy from The Vikings, Tony Curtis, along with Brian Keith, Suzanne Pleshette, Ivan Dixon, Tom Ewell, Bradford Dill-man, and Arthur O’Connell, a fine cast.
I was glad to have it waiting for me when I got finished with The Adventurers. To tell you the truth, I’m not even sure I read the script before agreeing to do it.
My agent, said, “Here, you’re going to make this picture.”
I said, “Okay.”
We had a lot of fun doing it and I got a paycheck, even though it turned out terrible. I also got to know dear, dear Suzanne Pleshette, another one we lost too soon. That’s one thing about this business. You get to work closely with a lot of people. When you lose them, you really feel it. But you know—I feel privileged to have known most of these folks, so it’s worth it in the end.
Bunny O’Hare (1971)
If you haven’t figured it out by now, I loved and respected Bette Davis. It was quite a thrill to get together again for this picture in 1971. Honestly, we didn’t know what the hell we were shooting, but had a wonderful time doing it.
Bette played a woman who had been thrown out of her home when the bank took it over. While she and the bankers were having a discussion in her house, I walked in and asked, “Where’s the toilet?”
She said, “It’s right around the corner.” So I went around the corner and pretty soon I come out with the toilet on my shoulder.
She said “Where you going with my toilet?”
I said, “Mexico.”
She said, “Mexico?”
I said, “What’s the matter, you got something against Mexicans?”
You can see what kind of a picture this was. But Bette and I were game for “whacky.”
My character took pity on this poor lady being thrown out of her home and let her sleep in the back of his truck, along with all the toilets I was taking to Mexico. Meanwhile, she finds out I was once a crook and convinces me to help her rob banks.
Sadly, the picture was not well edited and made no sense. Bette was so upset she wanted her name taken off it. I think she sued the producers. I told her, “Sue them for me, too.”
Today, it has a cult following—something for which I’m grateful, even if I still don’t understand it. But talk about a cult following…
Willard (1971)
In late 1970 I got a call from my agent, who said, “They want you for a picture named Willard.”
I said, “What’s it about?”
He said, “A young man who had a couple of hundred rats as pets.”
I thought it was one of the nuttiest things I’d done. But it was a small hit and has a huge following all these years later. Bruce Davison starred as the title character, a nerd named Willard Stiles who has been forced out of his late father’s company by my character. To make things worse, I keep him on the staff and humiliate him every chance I get. This was not Ratatouille, folks. At the end, Willard sends a horde of rat allies to kill those who have oppressed him—specifically me—before he’s done in himself by the rats
You haven’t lived until you’ve been covered with live rats. Even trained ones, like we used, are creepy as hell. Animal trainer Moe DiSesso had to smear me with peanut butter to get the rats to attack me. They aren’t afraid of people and don’t go running when you shoo them. I kept reminding myself that, unlike back in Queens, where we also had rats, at least now I was getting paid. If you’ve ever seen Willard, you’ll note that the rats look like they were being tossed onto me, which is exactly how it was done. One of the rats got a little carried away and bit me. I had to get a tetanus shot. I think the rat got a shot, too.
For months after the filming, I had terrible nightmares about being attacked by rats. I actually woke up screaming more than once. Ah, the glamour of moviemaking.
We also had Elsa Lanchester in that one. She’s probably best remembered as the Bride of Frankenstein in the 1935 film. She was a character, with a quick tongue and a bawdy sense of humor, but a really lovely lady. She was about seventy when she did the picture, and had more spunk than the rest of us combined.
Willard was a surprise smash hit when it was released in the summer of 1971, pulling in $6 million at the box office, a pretty nice piece of change at that time. I’d been offered a percentage of the profits, but once I read the script, I didn’t think the movie would find much of an audience, so I opted for a higher salary instead. Live and learn.
The success of Willard inspired a sequel the following year. Ben was a flop, best remembered for the theme song sung by Michael Jackson!
Hannie Caulder (1972)
Hannie Caulder gave me a chance to work with one of the great western directors, Burt Kennedy, who had made hits like The War Wagon and Support Your Local Sheriff. This one starred Raquel Welch, Robert Culp, Jack Elam, Strother Martin, Christopher Lee, Diana Dors, and me. I’m the oldest of three brothers who come into a little town, mess up a robbery, and end up hiding at a little horse ranch where they discover Raquel Welch and her husband. We kill him, rape her, then get picked off one by one after a bounty hunter, played by Robert Culp, teaches her how to shoot.
Despite the rough subject matter, we all had fun on that picture. Raquel was—and still is—a breathtaking beauty, and she had great natural instincts. The actor who really shines, though, is Bob Culp. This guy is one of our great national treasures. Watch anything he ever does, whether it’s Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice or I Spy on TV or a western like this. He’s convincing in everything because, like Gary Cooper, he’s one of the great listening actors of all time. I wish I had half of whatever he’s got.
The picture didn’t make much of a splash. It was an era of antiheroes, like we had in The Wild Bunch. Traditional westerns weren’t the box-office successes that had once been.
I remember at one luncheon of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, who should I be sitting across from but dear Raquel. I remember sitting there thinking, Hey—I rolled her around in the hay, once.
I hope nobody noticed me smiling.
The Revengers (1972)
This western was an attempt to return audiences to the dark territory of The Wild Bunch with a dash of The Dirty Dozen. We had Bill Holden again, and Daniel Mann—who’d directed Willard—tried real hard, but we didn’t make it. The story was pretty straightforward. After his family is murdered by Indians, Bill’s character, a rancher, goes to a prison camp and asks to borrow some of the prisoners to hunt them down. I was one of the volunteers. Woody Strode, a six-foot-four former athlete probably best remembered for his gladiator fight with Kirk Douglas in Spartacus, was another.
We made The Revengers in Parras, Mexico, the same place we made The Wild Bunch. It was pretty remote, and the people who lived in this little town did not know anything about anything. They were still playing westerns with Tom Mix and Buck Jones. That’s how far behind they were. It broke my heart. At the time, the United States government was sending up these great big silver astronomical balloons from just across the border. The locals would see these huge silver things go by and run into their houses because they were frightened that it was the wrath of God.
I speak a little of the language, so I’d tell them “No, es un globo grande”—“It’s a big balloon!” I explained it as best I could, told them about the stars and this and that. I tried to explain that even pictures came out of the sky, but they didn’t understand. They didn’t know what television was. All they knew was what they did for a living: they made overalls.
For a while, I had trouble with this picture. The first four days on location, I couldn’t come up with a character. For one thing, I was worried about my marriage to my fourth wife, Donna. We didn’t part under the most pleasant circumstances—in fact, the end of our marriage was pretty nasty. She took me for all I had, including the house. But her lawyer took her for a ride, too, and she ended up selling the house back to me, for $25,000, which was what she needed. When it comes to women, I guess I was too good to them, too honest. I found out a few times that you try your best, you try to do everything you possibly can for the woman you marry, and all they want is your money. Or they don’t care about you, really—they just want to see what they can get out of you. I don’t consider myself the most good-looking man in the world, but I always felt that my heart was on my sleeve, and maybe they took advantage of it. I was giving Donna $2,000 a month for the support of my two kids and one day I got a call saying the kids were starving and despite a court order my ex-wife was taking them out of the county.
Not long after the divorce, I went to pick up my kids, who were living with her. My little daughter said, “Daddy, we don’t ever want to see you anymore!” I left the house and didn’t see them for years. Donna had turned the children against me. My children and I have since reconciled, but it was a very painful time for me.
In The Revengers, we were trying to capture some of the glory we’d found in the Peckinpah film. But I wanted to make my work different some how.
After a couple of flat-footed scenes, the director, Daniel Mann looked at me and said, “What’s the matter, Ernie?”
I said, “Gee, I’m sorry. I just can’t seem to come up with something here.”
He said, “That’s all right, it’ll work out.”
That night at the hotel, I was just starting to call home and the telephone rang. It was my publicity man. He said, “Sit down, I’ve got some news for you.”
I said, “What’s the matter?”
He said, “Your wife just sued you for divorce.”
I was hurt, I was shocked, but there was something else: I had my character. Then and there I decided to play my wife. You know, that wonderful person who turned around one day and told you what she really thought, that you were a dirty no-good this and that. That secret, what she was preparing behind my back, was the thing I couldn’t put my finger on. I went back to the set the next day and it really came off.
Danny came over to me after a few takes and said, “My God, where’d you find him?”
I said, “A parting gift from my wife.”
I really threw myself into the role after that. That’s what you do, when the work is suddenly all you have. I think Bill Holden found my zeal a little intimidating, though. In one scene I took a flying header into a hole that I had dug to save myself from flying bullets. I had softened the landing by stacking a bunch of cartons in there—standard stuntman tactic. I really threw myself in there with great abandon. Bill followed me in.
When the dust settled, Bill lifted his head and said, “For Christ’s sake, Borgnine, give us a break, will you?”
He didn’t want to have to work so hard to keep me from showing him up. But it really was just a good-natured dig. He appreciated it when you forced him to pump up his own game.