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Star Tribune from Minneapolis, Minnesota • Page 47

Publication:
Star Tribunei
Location:
Minneapolis, Minnesota
Issue Date:
Page:
47
Extracted Article Text (OCR)

m9 EL. Minneapolis gmbav tribune Editorial-Feature Open Forum 3 Business 9-11 MINNEAPOLIS, SUNDAY, AUGUST 18, 1963 and BUSINESS Section Radio, TV Logs 0 i A Book Becomes I LIKE IT HERE GRIM i i I v. 1 lift' VYV a ovie 0 0 0 III fit raiso 1 RICHARD ANDERSON, BURT LANCASTER AND KIRK DOUGLAS i EDITOR'S NOTE: The metamorphosis of a novel into a movie is traditionally a painful process for proud authors. But it need not be. The way it was done to "Seven Days in May," written by Minneapolis Tribune staff correspondents Fletcher Knebel and Charles W.

Bailey, proves that the transformation can be painless and sometimes instructive as well for the novelist. THEY'RE APPEARING BEFORE A SENATE COMMITTEE IN 'SEVEN DAYS IN MAY' and the Authors Aren't at All Offended in-residence last fall at his alma mater, Antioch College in Ohio. He preserved the basic story intact, and picked up much of the dialogue as well. A number of the changes he did make definitely improved the story and the authors frankly wished they'd thought of some of them while the book was being written. ON THE OTHER HAND, both authors felt that in Serling's hands "Seven Days in May" had become, in its movie adaptation, much more anti-military in tone than the book itself.

Although the agreement under which the novel was sold for filming provided for no control by the authors over the script, Serling and Frankenheimer solicited the writers' comments on both the first- and second-draft scenarios. On many points, the authors' suggestions were adopted. Most of these dealt with questions of authenticity things like the uniforms of White TT 1 il By FLETCHER KNEBEL and CHARLES W. BAILEY Burt Lancaster made his entrance time and and again on the White House office set at Paramount Studios in Hollywood, Calif. "After all," he explained to director John Frankenheimer, "I don't want to come in like the senior accountant of the firm." Lancaster wanted to enter, not as an accountant, but as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in the movie adaptation of the novel "Seven Days in May." He was playing a subtle and complex role.

The fictional general is seeking to oust the president of the United States and supplant him with a military junta headed by himself. His objective: to reverse what he believes to "be a tragically weak and suicidal policy toward Russia. IT WAS A COOL SUMMER DAY. In the big Paramount hangar, twenty carpenters, building an adjoining set, had laid down their tools so that Lancaster and Fredric March could rehearse the climactic scene of the film undisturbed by noise. March, who plays the president, had a task almost as difficult as Lancaster, for his president had to portray doubt, uncertainty and yet a deep and meaning of the book.

The Joel Productions crew did it in small things and it did it in the big scenes. O'Brien, veteran character actor who plays the part of the president's closest friend, a senator from Georgia, expressed it best. "THIS PICTURE," he said, "has got to have one tremendous, giant emotion the survival of the United States. This gives it the same emotional pull as a war film. In this picture, we must make the American ideal become a living person." Whether the cast and the crew have succeeded, the public will report next winter.

Meanwhile, the authors of the novel are satisfied that within the practical limits of Hollywood operations the spirit of their book has been preserved and that, as one production assistant put it, "This one is going first class." The production of the movie all but completes a personal upheaval in the lives of the authors, for 'the book became a success in a way that neither man anticipated even in his more luxuriant form of day-dreaming. "Seven Days in May" was conceived in May 1961. Harper and Row, which published "No High Ground," by the same authors, in I960, indicated a willingness to inspect this first fiction effort of the writers when ready. THROUGHOUT the summer of 1061, the authors prepared a detailed outline of the plot. It ran to about 100 typewritten pages.

In early September, the outline, the first draft of three chapters and an epilogue were sent to New York, N. Y. "Well, I always say, so it's change and what does it prove?" said Charley Katz. "So you fight your way around where they're takin out streets or puttin' 'em in, or I get a vendetta on with the hack bureau or hey, that uni-what-chacallit at the World's Fair's got the flag on top. See? It's goin' up fast." Charley Katz is a New York cab driver from whom I received a half-hour monologue about the life and times of a hackie in Manhattan and adjacent boroughs as of August 1963.

On short hauls, about the best a talkative guy like Charley can manage is something about the ball scores or the new Hilton hotel or "now look, a water main busted the street on Broadway at 41st and if it isn't Con Ed tearing up the the streets for their underground wiring, it's the water pushing the pavement apart from below. You can't win." As Charley talked, I looked. THE SITE of the World's Fair, out on Flushing Meadow, hasn't changed, lor something as temporary as a whomped-up exposition to signify permanence is a commentary on the big town today. Take Times Square. The garment district is pushing its crowded sidewalks, its knishes and bagels, its florid curbside conversations, its peripatetic pipe racks filled with garments, northward.

If the tide keeps coming, George M. Cohan's old song will have to be revised to "Give My Regards To the Interna-national Ladies Garment Workers Union." Manhattan is in a sort of musical neighborhoods game, the music about to stop and then everybody puts up a new building except the one operator who is left landless. He then starts the game again. THE RESULTS of this are everything from horrifying to exciting. The most horrendous example must be the perforated sheet of skyscraper that is the Pan-Am Building, looming over the wedding-cake tower of the Grand Central Building.

Viewed from Park Avenue in the 50s, what was once a fantasy of filigree and magic, is like a toy wrapped in a plnh oled metal shroud. And, marching nor'wards on Park Avenue is a mass of glass. There's nothing to discover by looking. One glass as at an empty fishbowl and you've seen it. The fanciful imagination of stone carver and light-and-shade decor has been pushed aside by steel and glass and aluminum.

Not all, of course. The Waldorf Astoria, 35 years of grime defacing its stone, holds forth in hope. St. Bartholomew's Church, that strange Mediterranean fugitive, offers its curving outlines in welcome contrast to vertical block after block. Walking across 57th in my memory a swank thoroughfare of exorbitantly expensive women's specialty shops, antique-decorator you-can't afford-them establishments, shows the march of change.

Many of the old buildings are still there, in their illogical little turrets and bay windows, but gone are Madame Whoosis or Renaissance Restorers. NOW 57TH ST. boasts second-hand mink stores, cut rate TV salesrooms. nouse police, uie way in which a I 'Jyji mm conference is conducted, the terms used by Washing-tonians in referring to places, events and persons in the capital. By and large, these suggestions were adopted.

But on the larger major studios refused to touch it. The "majors" feared that the Pentagon might withhold its bountiful favors ships, barracks, air bases and troops on future pictures should a movie be made which the Pentagon did not like. LATER, when the book became a best-seller, the Hollywood attitude changed, but by then Douglas owned the rights to the "property." Financing was obtained from Seven Arts Productions and the picture was filmed at Paramount, which will release the film later this year, probably in December. Producer Eddie Lewis, right arm of Douglas in recent yentures, obtained some of the best acting talent available, including Ava Gardner, Marty Balsam and Edmund O'Brien. The cameraman is Ellsworth Fredericks, a veteran who worked on "Gone With the Wind." Art director Carey Odell and set director Edward Boyle built almost an entire White House interior at the Paramount lot, as well as much of the Pentagon.

Samples: The private White House elevator was copied exactly and built four stories high in Hollywood. Pentagon escalators were constructed. Frankenheimer, who made a spring visit to Washington, got full co-operation at the White House. President Kennedy had read and liked the book, as had many members of the staff. Frankenheimer and his aides went through the whole mansion on a weekend when the Kennedys were away.

The Hollywood sets were then constructed from color photographs made in the White House. At the Pentagon it was a different story. Frankenheimer was told he could not see the office of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff unless he first wrote a formal letter requesting Pentagon co-operation on making the film. This he refused to do, as it would have meant a running fight with Pentagon efforts to censor the picture. PRODUCER Lewis went to great lengths to gain authenticity.

A brief White House scene, for instance, takes place in the swimming pool, where the Kennedys have painted a large mural. Lewis scoured the Los Angeles, area, finally decided that the Glendale YWCA pool came closest in size and structure to that in the White House. He paid the institution $600 rent, painted a temporary mural on a wall and prepared the pool for the huge movie invasion. The shooting took a whole day. The authors were frankly impressed with the manner in which the hitherto alien world of Hollywood went about capturing the spirit, the flavor Serling Frankenheimer with their work inner conviction in the democratic process as he fought to save America from a military coup.

For this one scene, the climax of the story, the two actors sat in chairs on the White House set hour after hour, day after day, 'hearsing their 1 Knebel Bailey Authors are happy confrontation. ''J "iW, question the picture of the military drawn by Serling in his script the suggestions of the two novelists were not accepted. The reason became clear when filming began: The authors, without experience in writing for a dramatic medium, could not "fill in" the lines of the script with an understanding of the ways in in which an actor or director can build a character with other techniques than the spoken word. Serling, on the other hand, was able to visualize the way Lancaster and Kirk Douglas who plays a Marine colonel in the other starring role could clothe the military with dignity. Lancaster plays his rebel general with insight and understanding, as Serling undoubtedly knew he would.

Frankenheimer, an innovator with camera angles, decided at the outset to do "Seven Days in May" in black-and-white rather than color. The starkness of the lights and shadows would heighten the drama and suspense. Color would give too much warmth and friendliness to a story which is essentially an elemental fight over survival of the nation's constitution and way of life. Douglas and his Joel Productions negotiated for movie rights to the book last year at a time when Frankenheimer, a youthful director who was still a baby when the veteran March won his first Academy Award in 1932, paced the set. Sometimes he stared directly into one of the actors' faces.

Occasionally he would kneel and whisper. His decisions were final. In Hollywood, for the duration of the shooting of a movie, the director is the law tyrant for a day. March had the initial rehearsal edge on Lancaster. For one thing, he had his lines down cold memorized during two weeks of study at his home in Connecticut.

Lancaster had been sick and was still learning his part. But more importantly, Lancaster was trying to grasp the inner nature of the general for until he understood the man, he couldn't play him with conviction. "This general," he told one of the authors of the book during a rehearsal break, "can't be a cardboard villain. He is a man operating from the highest motives, patriotism and a desire to save, he believes, his country. "IN THE BOOK, you didn't examine his motives and his character because you told the story from the president's side.

But on the screen, he will be seen, and the audience must understand him and sympathize with the feelings that motivate him." The highly emotional scene between the general and the president was so tense that March and Lancaster frequently had to break it off. Then they bantered. Once when Lancaster "blew" his lines, he cursed and said: "I knew the lines this morning in my office." March needled him: "Then we better get the office over here." When Lancaster ad-libbed a line that he felt added depth to the general's character, director Frankenheimer shot a finger at him. "Great, great," he said. "Well put it in just like that Where did you get it?" LANCASTER GRINNED and picked up a copy of "Seven Days in May." "Out of the book," he said.

"How can you beat a guy," protested March, "who goes behind your back and reads the book?" The incident could not help but flatter the authors, whose book had been adapted into a motion picture script by Rod Serling, the eminently successful writer of the "Twilight Zone" television series. Serling wrote most of the script while a writer- HI I rjL' pirn lllliyil mgf ijpqHBMiHMMBMHaMMMMaMHHHMMBHMHMMMMMMMMHMaM I AVA GARDNER AND KIRK DOUGLAS She is nnt of the tew women in the east Harper. A few days later Walter I. Bradbury, Harper editor, telephoned to invite the authors to come to New York to sign a contract. Evan Thomas, vice president of Harper, and Bradbury took the authors to dinner at the University Club.

Both of the publishers obviously were enthusiastic about the book. They knew the outline in detail and had many suggestions for improvement, almost all of which were adopted. Finally, over dessert, discussion swung to a central topic money. The authors were offered a contract and, after a bit of haggling, the deal was closed. AS THE GROUP walked away from the club.

Bradbury said something that neither author will soon forget. "You know," he said, "this thing could hit big. A lot depends on how you write it. But big or small, I think we're all going to have a lot of fun with this for the next year." Seven Days Continued on Page Five greasy coffee bars and luncheonettes, bargain drugstores. Steinway hall still holds on, with (Charles Steinway revolving, wherever he may be) a little upright in a window that, years ago, had always displayed a patrician grand.

And, of course, Carnegie hall, its warm brown-tan stone newly cleaned, shout-Grim Continued on Page Four KIRK DOUGLAS TAKES HIS SUSPICIONS TO THE PRESIDENT Fredric March plays the president; Martin Balsam i his aide You'll Enjoy Pictures and Reports About the Minnesota State Fair in Your Morning Tribune.

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