"It's not about the movies"
"Citizen
Kane" (1941), directed by Orson Welles
Imagine my surprise when shortly after I took my seat in the balcony of the Chinese Theater, I felt a tapping on my shoulder. I turned around and saw none other than my old friend, Sid Graumann. Sid and I have been close since 1927. In the spring of that year, construction of his beautiful new theater was nearing completion. But a crisis arose on the night of his grand opening. The workers had run a little behind schedule so on opening night there was still a large part of the courtyard where the cement had not quite set.
Sid had the area roped off but in the confusion of the crowds Douglas
Fairbanks accidentally stepped in one of the wet areas and had left an imprint
of his shoes. Sid was livid and Fairbanks was screaming about how his new
brogans were ruined and somebody was going to have to pay.
Now, I was still a fresh unknown on the Hollywood scene at that time, but
an idea struck me with the powerful force of absolute certainty.
I introduced myself to Sid and pulled him aside.
“Sid,” I said, “no sense in crying over spilt milk.
Your new cement job is ruined, not to mention fancy boy’s precious
shoes. How about you make a little
lemonade out of these lemons. I’ll
grab the photographers and you grab Doug. Put
a stick in his hand and have him sign his name right next to his shoe prints.”
Ever the showman, Sid grasped the publicity value immediately and the
rest, of course, is history.
Tonight Sid had an anxious look on his face. “What’s wrong, honey?” I asked. “Is Bill Demarest still whining about getting a job as an usher here?” “Nothing so simple, my dear,” he replied. “I came to tell you that Mr. Hearst is on the phone and he wants to speak to you pronto.” “But I’ll miss the opening of the film,” I protested. “Not to worry,” he said. “I’ll hold the start until you return. We’ll just keep running Bugs Bunny cartoons. That’s all that this bourgeois audience wants to see anyway.”
I
took the call in Sid’s private office. I
wasn’t in a very good mood. Humphry,
my supposed date for the evening, had begged off saying something about wanting
to see the opening of his own picture down the block.
I warned him that it was a mistake to show up for the opening.
He would only be disappointed. “Nobody
is interested in seeing a movie about some tiny, unknown town in Northern
Africa, “ I said. “I still
can’t believe Mike Curtis talked you into taking this role.
Ronald Reagan even turned it down for crying out loud!
It’s the biggest mistake of your career.”
He wouldn’t give in, though.
He
just kept begging and pleading. His
theatrics almost got us kicked out of the Derby. I finally had enough and relented. With that, he scampered off into the night.
As I watched his diminutive frame disappear into the warm Hollywood
night, I said to myself, “Here’s looking at you looking at rapid descent into
professional obscurity after the critics get a load of that stinker of a movie,
kid.”
The
raspy sound of Hearst’s heavy breathing pulled me from of my reverie.
The phone was off its cradle, sitting on the desk.
I could hear “Skippy” (Hearst had a penchant for nicknaming everything,
even himself) from where I stood by the door.
I knew that he was mad. I
was planning on seeing this movie in open defiance to his order that “No one,
absolutely no one in my employ is to spend one nickel on Welles’ perverted
piece of muckraking trash.” I
didn’t care. In fact, I enjoyed
making the old man pop a blood vessel or two.
He didn’t own me. Quite the contrary, I thought.
He may be the self appointed Lord of the largest, most influential
publishing empire in the known world, but I had his number.
Yes I did. A certain party
on a certain boat and a certain mysterious shooting death had given me the
“combination” to unlocking “Mr. Big Important Publisher”.
I’ll make short work of this call, I thought.
I
picked up the phone and, without any preamble, I said, “Hi, Skippy.
Hear anything from Tommy Ince lately?”
I was back in my seat in two minutes.
Sid
saw me return and signaled the projectionist.
The movie started, or so I thought.
After an eerie beginning, something happened and the “News On the
March” newsreel began. I looked
around to see if anyone else had noticed the mistake that the projectionist had
obviously made, but it appeared that I was the only one that had.
All of a sudden, the newsreel ended and a group of shadowy men were on
the screen. Apparently, they had
been watching the newsreel? “What’s
going on?” I muttered. I was
baffled. I couldn’t make heads or tails out of what I was seeing.
Worst of all, the film was in black and white!
Totally disgusted, I picked up my purse and charged out of the theater.
As I passed Sid in the lobby I said, “I’ll be surprised if this one
makes it past opening weekend. My
advice for Welles is to forget about film making and stick to Halloween
pranks.”
~A Big Night at Sid's (1932)~