CHAPTER 6
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The Delinquents (1957)
“Film Capsules,” The Bridgeport Post (Connecticut), May 21, 1957: “The Delinquents” is a realistic, shocking, frank treatment of the problem of juvenile delinquency. A presentation of Imperial Productions, “The Delinquents” was written and directed by Robert Altman. The cast of young, unknown, but talented performers is headed by Tommy Laughlin, Peter Miller, Dick Bakalyan, and Rosemary Howard. There is not a single manufactured set in “The Delinquents.” The entire production was shot on location sites—interior as well as exterior—in Kansas City. Some 22 different locations were utilized in the picture—ranging from public institutions, through crowded streets and highways, to gas stations, private homes and a drive-in theater.
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JOAN ALTMAN SARAFIAN: I had my first real job, at a collections company. I wrote tough letters to soldiers who owed money to the Arthur Murray Dance Studio. I told Bob, “I can’t do this anymore. I’m not going to ask those guys for money for cruddy contracts they signed.” Bob said, “You’ve got to quit anyway because I’m making a film and you have to come and work with me.”
He had rented a church downtown, and I mean it was just a broken-down church, no pews or anything—just an office, a table, and an altar. Elmer Rhoden, Jr., a wonderful guy but a real alcoholic—he died of it—he was financing it. Elmer’s dad was president of a theater chain, and Elmer was kind of a philanderer. Wonderful wife, daughter, but he loved this little blonde gal and he wanted to be near her and she was in California, so he wanted to be a producer.
Working on the script for The Delinquents with his sister Joan and his protégé, Reza Badiyi
Anyway, I would go and get the money from Elmer. I think I first got about ten thousand from him. Bob immediately took the money and bought two tuxedos, one white and one black, and a ticket to New York. Of course, nothing in The Delinquents called for black and white tuxedos.
He dictated the script to me in about an hour before he was leaving.
ROBERT ALTMAN: I wrote a script because I felt I had to. I wouldn’t have gone into the process any other way. I think one of the main reasons for a script is the actors, when they get it, they agree to do it, they tend to want to hold on to it. They want a certain security. They want a safety net.
Another thing about a script is that it determines what set you build and what costumes you build. And you don’t want to build those things and not use them. So the script is—well, it’s a diagram. The car breaks down in the middle of the highway and the tow truck comes along. And while the tow truck is pulling the car up, these people have a discussion. Well, I have to get that tow truck or rewrite that scene. What happens when they’re waiting for the tow truck, or what they say to each other, we can loosen up in there and see what happens.
The danger of writing a script is that everybody has the same voice. I think when they don’t have the same voice it makes the film better. So when you have five different sources in there, five different voices, it seems closer to reality. I’m trying to push the actor into becoming a real creator—creating that part. Bringing things to it that the writer and/or myself couldn’t bring. Many of them are not comfortable with the burden of having to become the author. They’re like a deer in the headlights. They go, “Whoa-whoa-whoa, wait a minute.” But if they’re doing somebody else’s line, that somebody else has written, the unkind way would be to say that they’re relieved of the responsibility, and if it doesn’t work it’s not their fault. And it’s true. It’s the director’s fault, and the director has to be the one that fixes it. I prefer actors who take the responsibility. I feel like I’m getting more bang for the buck. Sometimes it’s the smallest of subtleties that you acquire in doing something that makes it real.
Many writers have hard feelings about what I do to their scripts, but my idea is, it’s not their script. Their script is my tool to work with, and consequently I have been as responsible to their writing as I am to my own. I don’t owe them an apology. Whether it’s their script or my script, it’s just a marker on the path that says, “This is the way to go.” And so you kinda follow that. But you don’t follow it to the point where you walk off the cliff.
With The Delinquents, it was written overnight, really in a weekend. I just dictated it to my sister. Then when we went to do it, we improvised the scenes.
JOAN ALTMAN SARAFIAN: After he finished the script, he gave me three or four names to call for equipment and then told me to call the union in Chicago. He gets on a plane, goes to New York, and he’s gone a week. In the meantime, I get all the catalogues, I order all the lighting, I talk to a lighting man, a cameraman, I talk to the union in Chicago. Awfully nice people. I mean, they must have thought, “this person is so stupid we’ve got to help her.”
ROBERT ALTMAN: When I got the wherewithal to do The Delinquents, I called the only agent I knew, a guy named Bob Longnecker, who was married to Ruth Hussey. Remember her, the actress? He had represented me as a writer when I was trying to be a radio writer. He said, “Well, there’s this kid I have, Tommy Laughlin.” I cast him from that. You know, later he was Billy Jack.
JOAN ALTMAN SARAFIAN: Bob got some actors—Tom Laughlin, Richard Bakalyan, Peter Miller—and he also brings this woman back from California. Helene something, who was about twenty years older than him. She’s the kimono type. I mean really sleazy. Dyed black hair that’s down to her shoulders, but she must have been a terrific lay because he was really smitten with her.
LOTUS CORELLI ALTMAN MONROE: I was five months pregnant with Stephen when The Delinquents started. I’m playing the mother of one of the girls, and his next mistress, Helene Hawley—her actual name was Pollock—she was going to promote Bob. So Bob hired her to be the mother of the boy involved in this Romeo and Juliet thing.
It was painful and I was very, very much in love with Bob. It wasn’t working. I couldn’t handle the women, all the extracurricular things.
REZA BADIYI: Lotus was a regular Kansas City wife. There wasn’t any disagreement ever between them that catches the eye. But it was one of those things that was never openly said. Bob was always facing something, not knowing what was bothering her. One night Bob comes home and she brings the dinner on a tray and puts it in front of him. Usually in those days, people eat about six thirty to seven o’clock. And this is like ten o’clock. She ate and the children are in bed. Then Bob is looking at the food and then looking at her. And she picks up the plate and drops it, and walks out. That kind of thing.
LOTUS CORELLI ALTMAN MONROE: I was concentrating on the job I was doing. We were separated. When we first had our cast reading, we were sitting around the table and I got through and everybody’s smiling. And Bob said, “That’s the worst reading I’ve ever heard in my life.” It was a stressful time for me.
His daughter, Chrissy, was hired to be the little sister. Joan was the script girl. Her husband, or ex-husband, Chet, was still around. He was set director. Bob also brought in some Kansas City friends to act.
SUELLEN FRIED: Even though I was already married and pregnant with my second child, I was young and Bob asked me to be a delinquent. I thought that would be fun. There was a lot of beer available, and we were told just to drink and have a great party. That was the extent of our direction. All the other delinquents—they pretty much all knew each other. Bob had gone to Rockhurst High School, and he may have pulled in a group from there.
REZA BADIYI: They didn’t let Bob bring back a cameraman from California, so he had to use the local cameraman, Charlie Paddock. I became his assistant. It was a good time—I was also acting as an extra and a stand-in and a go-getter. And sometimes at night after everybody finishes and goes, and they were in the middle of the street, they put everything together and I was the night watchman.
Bob didn’t jump to it with both feet. He worked on the story, developed it. Sat around and everybody read it for a while. And then talked about this and that. And then Bob needed some of the friends to come, like Louie Lombardo, who became a very good film cutter later on. Sarafian was around, just to talk about the story. And of course Joan.
Joan always was idolizing Bob. It wasn’t just a big brother. Joan is absolutely a believer. She’s one of those kind of people at that age that usually wouldn’t give you an idea unless you asked for it. But in this case, she had many notes and discussed it with Bob. And I remember every time it brings a shine in Bob’s eyes.
You have to realize Bob was that kind of guy. I learned that the philosophy that he had, it was never “It’s my movie, so everybody shut up and listen to me.” He said, “We are going to work together. Anybody has ideas, bring them to me. If it’s good we use it, if it’s not, we’re not using it. But don’t be ashamed of it.” If you go on the set of a Sam Peckinpah and you want to tell him anything, he kills you right there.
TOM LAUGHLIN (actor): Very amateurish. It was like neighbors getting together and making a film.
But I was very impressed with Joan. She did everything. She’d get people in place, she’d negotiate the salaries, she did everything. I think she did everything but make the lunches.
JOAN ALTMAN SARAFIAN: I was the script girl, but I did a little of almost everything, and the script was the least of it. I would get the money from Elmer, stick it in the back of my jeans, and bring it to Bob. I used Bob’s Thunderbird as the office.
The first day of shooting, Bob came up to me and said, “My God, everyone keeps asking me questions.”
I said, “I’ll work that out.” I got a chessboard and I set it up in the back of the Thunderbird. I said, “You just come over here and stare at that board, and no one is going to bother you, or if they do, you look annoyed.”
That’s what he did. Of course after the first day he was fine. But he was really nervous. He was so cute, he really was.
I was supposed to get forty dollars a week for my work. I had left a job making three hundred dollars a week, but Bob was never able to come up with that money.
LOTUS CORELLI ALTMAN MONROE: At that time I was doing a TV show sponsored by the Presto pressure cooker and GE stoves and refrigerators. He wasn’t working at the Calvin Company, so this was keeping us going at this point.
JOAN ALTMAN SARAFIAN: Helene was really disappointed with the accommodations. But she lived with it. Tom Laughlin also was really disturbed. He’d just come off something; he thought he was an actor now. I have heard through the grapevine he speaks very highly of me, though I can’t say the same of him. He was going to walk off the show.
Bob said, “You’ve got to talk him up. Give him lunch and talk him out of it.”
So I did. He said he couldn’t stand the girl that Bob hired from Kansas City. Pat Stedman, I think. Nice girl. She had been one of the Resident Theatre actresses and she was very good.
Laughlin said, “I can’t look at her. She looks like a pig.”
I felt like saying, “You look more like one.” But I was able to talk him into staying.
TOM LAUGHLIN: I don’t remember her name. Some local kid. She had never acted. She struggled. I felt badly for her and I felt for the picture, but there was nothing I could do about it. She was just very amateurish and very raw.
ROBERT ALTMAN: That was terrible. He was just arrogant, and he had an idea about how he thought the film should be made, and what the other actors should do. I had a different idea, and we just did not get along.
TOM LAUGHLIN: He was disorganized. He didn’t have a precise plan to shoot all the time. Sometimes he showed up pretty late. That’s how I started to be a director. Bob would come late and I showed up on time, ahead of time, very professional. One morning, I got rambunctious. The crew, everyone else was there. I said, “Well, the scene is written. Let’s do it. If Bob doesn’t like it he can throw it out. Why sit around wasting time?” It was Elmer Rhoden’s money. I felt guilty. So I directed. I shot a scene. I never heard directly from him, but I understood he was furious.
I didn’t have much of a relationship with Bob. He was a great party guy. I didn’t party with him. I was very serious about my craft and career. When it was done I went home and got ready for the next day.
A scene from The Delinquents, with Tom Laughlin at far right
RICHARD BAKALYAN (actor): Laughlin was a very strange guy. I think he thought he was Marlon Brando and James Dean wrapped together. He was into performing as a Method actor, I guess.
TOM LAUGHLIN: I don’t consider myself a Method actor. I consider myself a Stanislavsky actor.
RICHARD BAKALYAN: I loved Bob. I thought he was a very good director. He knew what he wanted and he worked to get it.
The real conflict was between Laughlin and Peter Miller, who played the other gang leader. Only because Laughlin threw his weight around a lot. He was a karate guy or some crap. You can go around talking about how tough you are, but the real guy is the one who keeps his mouth shut and goes around doing his business. Laughlin wanted to be the main man and that’s the way he behaved.
TOM LAUGHLIN: In the script I was the hero. Peter was the villain. Bob had a way of having social get-togethers when he looked at the dailies. He and Peter became very close. Peter wanted to change his image from the rapist in Blackboard Jungle and be the hero. So they would come back and make script changes, like I’m supposed to get down and cry and beg for my life, and he’s the hero. I refused. That was totally in contradiction to everything I was hired for and contracted for and was promised. I went to the Guild on it and won, of course.
RICHARD BAKALYAN: Bob was a gentleman. He never lost his temper, even at times when one could. Like trying to do it on a shoestring and dealing with Laughlin.
TOM LAUGHLIN: One night we were shooting a night scene and Peter and I were having a verbal confrontation in front of the car and it escalated. He changed the scene and I think I threw Peter over the hood of the car. That ended the night’s shooting.
I remember that night Joan trying to intervene and trying to stop the tussle. I was pretty hard on Peter. Though he was my size he wasn’t much of a fighter.
ROBERT ALTMAN: He was just a horror, but there was nothing I could do about it. That experience probably had a lot to do later with me making sure there wasn’t a presence like that around.
The minute an actor comes into a cast, into a group, it’s like DNA. They’re there. And if you take them out and replace them with someone else it’s a different creature—it’s an elephant instead of a rhinoceros. To think that you can control this animal, you know, you’re wrong. All you can do is assemble it.
From the movie poster:
THE DELINQUENTS: THE HOODS OF TOMORROW! THE GUN-MOLLS OF THE FUTURE! THE “BABY FACES” WHO HAVE JUST TAKEN THEIR FIRST STUMBLING STEP DOWN SIN STREET, U.S.A.
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REZA BADIYI: Night and day we shot Delinquents. When it was finished, the film was shipped to Hollywood. Bob arranged to edit it there, to get himself there, too. Then Bob threw a big good-bye party. He invites a hundred people to a certain hall and orders the food and booze and then gets the most famous black singer and their band to come over there and perform. It was a hell of a night, a hell of a night. And in the end they bring the bill and he’s writing a check and the guy from the hall says, “Bob, wait a minute. I have three of your bad checks. I don’t want any more checks.” So Bob reaches in his pocket, he brings out twenty dollars. He says, “I pay, everybody pays!” And we did. I mean, I never ever heard of anybody else doing that.
He had bought himself this brand-new Thunderbird. And for some reason he didn’t like the color of it. He sent it to be painted, because he used it in the movie for one scene or two, and there was a scratch. It was red, and he wanted to change it to be white. Well, it came back and it’s red again. Now he was upset, but that was the last day before we were leaving, so that was that. The plan was that I’d go with him, because I haven’t seen the West. The good-bye party went till almost midnight and everybody drank to his health and he drank to everybody’s health. At the time I wasn’t familiar yet with alcohol. Being born a Muslim it wasn’t something that I was interested in. So Bob came out, and we have our suitcases in the trunk and in the back. He drove us to the turnpike, and then he says, “Reza, I’m not doing well, I’m going to lay down. You drive west.” I said, “Which is west?” And he pointed, “That way.”
It was after noon that we got to mountains in Colorado. And it is a bright, bright day, but somehow it started snowing a little. I pulled out the camera and I started shooting as Bob is driving. He used to be a flier in World War II, so he had these flier glasses. So he’s wearing his flier glasses and he’s driving and it’s snowing and we have the top down and he said, “Fabulous.”
When I think about the good part of life, it was that. It was those days. And it was beautiful.