Chapter 30
Emperor of the North (1973)
Before I talk about the movie, there’s a story I have to tell about Sam Peckinpah. I had agreed to do Emperor of the North while I was still shooting The Poseidon Adventure.
Sam was supposed to direct Emperor of the North and was really keen to do it, but he lost his option to Bob Aldrich. Even though Sam had made a bunch of hit films since The Wild Bunch—including Straw Dogs and The Getaway—he couldn’t make Emperorfor as little as the studio wanted to spend. Well, by now you know what the situation was with Fox and money. He couldn’t get them to budge.
One day, I stopped by Sam’s office on the Fox lot.
I said, “Sam, how are you?”
Sam mumbled something. He was obviously thinking about something else.
I said, “Quick question. Can you give me any pointers about this Emperor of the North? Any ideas on how I should play the part?”
He said, “Get the hell out of here.”
Evidently, Sam was a little teed off about his losing the picture. I understood why he was upset and his attitude didn’t bother me. I was used to it. But it underscored a big difference between him and me. People often want things that somebody takes away from them or that just don’t happen for some reason. My attitude has always been that there are other opportunities around the corner and that holding a grudge or being bitter is counterproductive. Even with directors I’ve disliked or former wives who gave me a pain—I never sat around thinking, I’m gonna get you or Jeez, I want to see them fall on their ass. I believe that you get back from life what you put out, so I always try to show respect and compassion.
I finished The Poseidon Adventure on a Friday night, spent Saturday at home packing, and left on Sunday to go to Portland, Oregon, to make Emperor of the North with Aldrich and, once again, my pal Lee Marvin. We also had Keith Carradine and some of the finest veteran character actors in the business—Simon Oakland, Charlie Tyner, and Elisha Cook, Jr., whom you may remember as Sydney Green-street’s evil henchman in The Maltese Falcon.
Based on a short story by Jack London, “Emperor of the North Pole” is the title given to the head hobo of any group who rides the rails. The studio was afraid no one would know what the heck that meant, so it was shortened to Emperor of the North, as if that makes any more sense. You know, sometimes studios sell audiences short. If you give people a title they don’t quite get, it doesn’t mean they’ll walk away. They may just be interested enough to find out what it’s all about!
I played a railroad conductor named Shack, the most evil, sadistic scoundrel who ever existed. Nobody rode my train without a ticket, and nobody had tickets because this was a freight train. And I didn’t want any hobos on my train—it’s a point of honor for my character. No one even attempts to go on my train—except Lee, who let it be known that he is going to try.
He throws me off my own train at the end.
When I arrived on the set on Monday morning, Bob Aldrich was standing in front of the train. This was a real train, of course, not a set. He asked me, “Ernie, have you ever worked on a train before?”
I said, “No.”
He said, “Well, there’s the engine.”
“Yes.”
“And that’s the caboose.”
“Yes.”
“You will be working all of it, from the engine to the caboose. You’ve been working on this train for thirty years, so you better familiarize yourself with it.”
I said, “Yes.”
He said, “Okay, go get dressed.” As I started off he gave me just about the only direction he would provide. “Oh, and remember,” he said, “don’t look down when you run on top of the train.”
“Running on top?” I asked. Usually, those kinds of shots are done with special effects or stuntmen. Not this time.
He said, “Running on top, from the engine to the caboose, while it’s moving.”
I said, “Yes, sir.”
That sounded a little dangerous, so I developed a character based on the actor Jack Elam, who I’d worked with on Vera Cruz and Hannie Caulder. Jack was walleyed. Imitating him, I tried to keep one eye looking straight ahead and the other eye down on the ground. I worked on muscle control in my trailer. I found out, though, that being on top of a moving train wasn’t the only problem. It was only going twenty-five to thirty-five miles an hour, which wasn’t so bad, but it rattled like an old bag of bones. All the nails would come loose on top and I was afraid I’d trip and impale myself. My footing wasn’t so great to begin with, since they gave the characters leather shoes to run around outside with. That is not the kind of gripping surface you want on a moving train! To be on the safe side, before each shot, I actually went along with a hammer and whacked in the loose nails.
My character had a piece of lead about a foot long attached to a clothesline. Standing on top of the train, I’d play it out so that it would hit the tracks and ties and bounce underneath the train to dislodge any hoboes who were riding the rods underneath the cars. One time I was letting it out while the camera car was following on the road alongside. Suddenly, I looked up and saw that the camera car had stopped. I leaned over to see what was up. That clothesline had caught in the wheel, and the train was still moving. I let go just as it pulled me down, right over the side. I caught the last rung of a ladder that was there and hung on for dear life until the train came to a stop. I was shaking, I have to admit. I remember thinking that they couldn’t pay me enough to do real stunt work for a living!
I should probably mention that those folks who risk life and limb are pretty well paid. There was one stuntman doubling for Gary Cooper and Burt Lancaster on Vera Cruz. He had to do this jump over a chasm. It was about a thousand feet down and he jumped the horse twice, once dressed as Coop, once as Burt. He got $1,000 every time he did it. He earned every nickel.
I didn’t get any extra hazard pay for Emperor of the North. Frankly, I wouldn’t have taken ten times my salary to do that kind of stuff.
The picture only did okay business at the box office. I don’t think the public knew quite what to make of it. Still, it remains one of my favorites to make and one of my favorites to watch.
The Neptune Factor (1973)
When a studio has a hit, somebody else inevitably tries to make the same picture again, on the cheap and in a hurry. Hollywood moguls always hope that lightning will strike twice. It rarely does, but they keep trying.
With The Poseidon Adventure lining ’em up at the box office, a bunch of investors put together one about a submarine that has to rescue workers trapped in an undersea lab following an earthquake. Hey, I’m not being critical here. Producers are in business to make money, and not everything has to come from the heart or be a work of art. Me? As long as I’m having fun, that’s enough.
I was having breakfast on Sunset Boulevard one morning when in came producer Sandy Howard, a friend of mine. He was about half-drunk. He said, “Damn it, I’ve got a picture shooting and you’d be perfect in it.”
I said, “Then how come I’m not in it?”
He said, “You are now. But first I got to find a goddamn director.”
Seems they were having problems with whoever had been engaged and had to replace him. A lot of submarine footage had been shot up in Canada—where it was cheaper to build sets and hire crews; it still is, in fact. Unfortunately, the lighting was unrealistic and the special effects showing the ocean outside the portholes of the lab were terrible. That would explain Sandy’s half-drunkenness.
I said, “You want a real good director? I got one for you. His name is Dan Petrie.”
Dan had directed me on TV years before and I thought highly of him. He was a good director, very encouraging.
Sandy said, “Daniel Petrie, okay. I’ll find him.”
Sure enough, he found him and we went ahead and made the picture with Ben Gazzara, Yvette Mimieux, and the great Walter Pidgeon playing one of the old scientists. We went back to Canada, where we had the same problems as they did on the first shoot.
I swear, we ended up making that picture three times before they got it right!
It’s not bad, though I doubt it’s on anyone top ten favorite movie list. I’m glad I got to work with Mr. Pidgeon, who died shortly after we finished. We exchanged stories about Irwin Allen, Mr. Pidgeon having played the lead in the film version of Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. And Yvette—what a doll. I swear, I’ve spent more time with beautiful women than a guy with a kisser like mine has any right to. And I get paid for it.
Legend in Granite (1973)
In 1973, Universal producer Jon Epstein asked me to play the part of Coach Vince Lombardi, legendary coach of the Green Bay Packers, in a television movie.
He said, “Are you interested?”
I said, “Sure, I’ll take a crack at it.”
I felt cautious because I’d be playing someone who was not only known to so many people but also beloved by the people of Green Bay. I really had to get it right, or I’d take a lot of flak.
They fitted me out with a pair of glasses and a kind of widow’s peak and the resemblance was pretty astonishing. I didn’t know what the fans would say, but when I walked on the set I felt like the coach. Fortunately, my faith was not misplaced. On the first day of shooting we were on the field setting up. Paul Hornung, the Packers’ star player, was an adviser on the picture. I walked up behind him and the director said to Hornung, “Oh, and you know the coach.”
When he turned around and stared me in the face, he nearly fell down.
He said, “Jesus Christ, I buried him six months ago.”
For me, the role turned out to be one of the easiest things I’d ever done. I had studied the newsreel footage, so I knew how he behaved on the field. I just carried that personality with me and did the rest the way I thought Lombardi would be.
For a couple of years after it was made, Legend in Granite was broadcast whenever Green Bay was going to play some other big team, or when they were up for another title. Since then, though, I’ve tried to get a copy, but it’s locked away in a vault somewhere for reasons no one seems to recall. I’m guessing there are rights issues, but I sure wish it was available again.