Dream Repairman. Jim BSL Clark
Jack Harris and Stanley Donen worked together again on Once More with Feeling!, a less than brilliant romantic comedy featuring Yul Brynner and Kay Kendall. Casting Brynner in a comedy was, perhaps, a bit rash of Stanley.
Jack had gone to Paris without me because this was a French production and he was required to have French assistants, but it was agreed that I could join the team when the shooting ended and they returned to England for the post-production work.
Because the film contained many classical music cues prerecorded in France, there was not much need for an additional score, but I was required to go to Paris with Muir Mathieson to look at the film.
We were at the bar in the Studio de Boulogne adjacent to the viewing room. It was near the end of the day and very busy. I met and chatted with a French girl who spoke reasonably good English. I arranged to meet her for a meal after the screening, but when the time came she had vanished and, sadly, stood me up.
Back in London, we were very close to mixing it when we heard that Kay Kendall had suddenly died. I had no idea she’d had leukemia throughout the shoot. It was kept amazingly quiet and we were all saddened. She was such a life force. Her death cast a pall over the whole enterprise.
Stanley and I became reacquainted when the film moved to London, though we saw very little of him at the time because he was already planning his next picture and courting his next wife. The picture was another Yul Brynner comedy, titled Surprise Package. Jack Harris found it impossible to contemplate such a thing. In fact, he became very depressed by the prospect of cutting another comedy with Brynner, whom he found totally unfunny. He was absolutely right.
So if Jack Harris wasn’t going to cut Surprise Package, I wondered who Stanley would turn to. I suddenly decided that it could be my big chance. I asked Jack for his advice and permission to put myself forward. It was pushy, perhaps, but seemed appropriate at the time. Fortunately for me, and my future career, Stanley was quite happy with this arrangement, though I still had to prove I could do the editor’s job to the satisfaction of one and all, including Columbia, who were footing the bill.
The picture was first shot on location in the Greek Islands and then at Shepperton Studios. It was in black and white, which was a pity since the locations were very attractive. Yul Brynner played a New York gangster who is drummed out of the mob and returned to his roots, where he becomes involved with Mitzi Gaynor and an exiled king, played by Noel Coward. It was based on a book by Art Buchwald, and the screenplay was by the legendary Harry Kurnitz.
I was so happy to be cutting a feature that I didn’t pay more than scant attention to the script, even though in those days the editor usually didn’t get involved with scripts, but simply sat back and cut the results.
In this case, as a novice, I was in double trouble since the film was being shot away from England and it was difficult to contact Stanley if I needed to discuss the rushes. So I just got on with it and put the thing together. I already had a fair inkling from Once More with Feeling that Yul Brynner was not God’s gift to comedy. His approach was loud or fast and very often both at the same time. The material piled up and seemed to get even less amusing than the script, which was itself already a travesty of a rather witty original.
Stanley returned and the studio shoot commenced. We would meet at rushes and some wisecracks would flow between Stanley and the crew. He was always ready with a running joke that would carry through the whole shoot, and the crew would pick up on that.
The one bit of genuine amusement was having some dealings with the great Coward. Here was a legend that never failed to live up to it’s reputation. He was genuinely witty and original. A hugely amusing man of style, charm, and taste. He never disappointed. Unfortunately his part in the movie singularly lacked the wit and style he displayed in life. He found trouble remembering lines and, in one scene with Brynner, went to an almost record breaking sixty-eight takes. He only stumbled through because Stanley finally broke the scene down to single lines. Putting all that together in seamless style was quite a test for the young editor and I rather dreaded the moment when I had to show the film to Stanley.
I was rarely on the set and Stanley was even more rarely in the cutting room. I don’t recall that he ever asked my opinion about anything and I don’t suppose I ever suggested that the film was not amusing. I must have been satisfying his requirements because shortly before we finished shooting and were walking into rushes one lunch time he turned to me and said “Jimmy, I’m going to start another movie very soon and would you like to stay on and cut it?” This could be deemed rash since he hadn’t yet seen too much of my work on his current picture. Of course I agreed without a thought, but we had a great deal to endure on the mistitled Surprise Package. I handed the film over to the sound editor, Peter Musgrave, and began work on the next picture. We were in adjoining cutting rooms so I was able to keep an eye on both movies.
If Surprise Package had been my debut feature without a follow-up, I might have been dead in the water, but moving headlong into another film before the current one was even mixed, saved my bacon.
CHAPTER THREE: CARY GRANT, HOLLYWOOD,AND BROADWAY
The Grass Is Greener
Stanley’s new film was The Grass Is Greener, and he was able to attract an impressive all-star cast. Cary Grant, Jean Simmons, Deborah Kerr, and Robert Mitchum were involved in the principal roles. There can’t have been any other reason for making it since the material was thin and barely altered for the screen. It consisted of a lot of talk and was set in the aristocratic area of British life with lords, castles, and God knows what else, so it was certain to appeal to the American public. The editing phase of a Donen picture at that stage in his career was notable for the fact that you didn’t see him too often. He was very busy preparing for his next picture or having some domestic upheaval. Stanley was a great one for tests. He would spend many days testing the clothes, makeup, hair, and stock. Chris Challis, who lit The Grass Is Greener would shoot stock tests on all the Kodak material available at that time.
During the post-production of Surprise Package, when Stanley did turn up, we would run the movie in the theatre and get some feedback for changes. I don’t recall that we ran it too many times. There was a looping session with Yul Brynner, which I directed. He was Mister Speedy and broke Shepperton’s record for the number of loops recorded in a session. None of this made him any funnier. In fact, his dialogue was delivered so fast that it made him unintelligible. Stanley might have been influenced by Billy Wilder’s direction of Jimmy Cagney in One, Two, Three. One day Noel Coward was in the room. He had very few loops and to flesh out the time I encouraged him to tell us about his wartime exploits, which I had been reading about in his autobiography. Having the real Coward in the room was exciting. He ended the session by inviting me to “Sit in the Rolls with your old Uncle.” This brought me down to reality. Pity. Maybe it was one of life’s lost opportunities.
Perhaps the director had given up on Surprise Package. It did, however, have to be completed, and I remember we ran a preview one evening in Slough, where we died by inches. Stanley had requested that a recording be made of the audience’s laughter. This was a bad idea.
The Grass Is Greener was simple enough to edit since Stanley Donen shot it in a very straightforward manner leaving me few decisions to make. Like Indiscreet, it was an adapted stage play and he shot it like that. Frankly, it wasn’t really very good and relied on its stellar cast to survive.
Cary Grant was co-producer and always a pleasure to work with and for. The picture was shot in Technirama, which was Technicolor’s own Cinemascope, and I was cutting it on an old Acmade machine that had only a bull’s-eye lens through which to see the tiny image. The machine made a terrible clattering noise too, so I was shattered after a day’s editing, when we would wander into the old bar at Shepperton Studios to relax.
Maurice Binder, who had done special title sections on other Donen pictures, arranged a splendid tableau of babies for the credits, the babies representing the stars as infants, and an amusing morning was spent in the garden at Shepperton as Maurice directed these tots.
The film went together very easily and was almost fine cut when the shooting ended. Stanley took off for the south of France, leaving