The following interview transcript with Robert
Anderson has been carefully broken down into
segments involving a variety of topics. Below
each segment is a link to the corresponding
video clip. Please attribute research sources to
Mike Wood, Interviewer and the William
Inge Center for the Arts.
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Theatre vs. film |
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I think writing for the theater is much more
difficult, because you are limited by the
proscenium arch, and you can only get people on
stage through a door; whereas, when I first went
to Hollywood, a producer came to me and said to
me, “Why do you have everybody coming in a scene
through a door. It was my theatre training. In
pictures you have great latitude. You can show
a man in a room, saying, “Well, I’m going
driving.” In the next scene, you see him in
your car, and he’s driving, and you jump to
that. I think theater is more difficult too
because, I think—these gentlemen may not agree
with me—it’s not quite natural. You have three
walls, and everybody in that room is faces the
fourth wall. Now, in life, they don’t do that,
so it’s difficult to make it seem natural. If
you go to the theater, and everybody’s got their
back to you and speaking upstage, you’re going
to walk out.
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In the right place, at the right
time |
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Let me go back just a moment and I’ll tell you
why I’m the most unlikely person to have ever
become a writer of any kind. By all the laws of
environment, I should be in prison or hanged by
now. I had a job—I won’t tell you how I got it,
because it’s true—in a radio station answering
requests from midnight till dawn, at the
switchboard. Well, there was a typewriter next
to the switchboard, and that’s how I became a
writer. I had no training. Then, I thought, I
want to write a play, and the only reason I
wrote it was because no one told me I couldn’t.
If they’d told me I couldn’t, I wouldn’t have
written it. I was about 18 or 19, and it got
produced in New York. Again, it was
accidental. The only reason it got produced was
an actor took me and introduced me to a very
wealthy woman who had a husband working in
Hollywood in the pictures. She wanted him in
New York. This awful play of mine had a leading
role, so she got all of her wealthy friends to
put up the money, and that’s how the play got
on. It would
have never gotten on. At that time, the
dean of drama critics was George Jean Nathan,
and he said of me, “Back to the ash can with
this Hollywood writer.” Well, I’d never been to
Hollywood in my life, but it was in the paper
that I was a Hollywood writer, so Twentieth
Century Fox offered me a contract to write
pictures.
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Writing for 20th
Century Fox |
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I went up to the Fox office, and there was a big
fat man there, behind a big desk, with a big
cigar. He didn’t ask me if I’d ever been to
California, which I hadn’t, or if I’d ever been
in a studio which I hadn’t, or I’d ever seen a
screenplay which I hadn’t. He just said, “How
much do you want?” So, I’d heard that writers
got big salaries. So, I named a big figure,
which he promptly divided by four, and I just as
promptly accepted. Within 24 hours, I reported
to Twentieth Century Fox studios in Hollywood,
and they gave me an office and a secretary.
Scared the life out of me. I didn’t know what
to do with her. Every day, I reported to this
office. No one knew I was there. No one spoke
to me. For four or five weeks, I sat there, and
I was afraid to cash my checks, and I was
getting hungry. I went to a friend of mine.
You all know him, Jimmy Stewart. He was just
beginning at the time. He said, “Don’t be
crazy. That’s Hollywood. Cash ‘em.” So I
cashed the check, and I began eating again.
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Casting penguins |
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I looked out the window, and there was a child
star at the time. I don’t know whether it was
Shirley Temple or Jane Withers. Some big brain
said, “In the next picture, let’s give her a pet
that’s never been shown in pictures before.”
They discussed everything from pet alligators to
pet zebras. One of them, making about ten
thousand a week, said, “I’ve got a great idea…a
penguin.” They’d never shown a penguin before.
So, they sent out a call for penguins. All over
the United States, everybody who had a penguin
flew—the penguin couldn’t fly—but they got them
out there anyhow. And I looked out the window,
and here are these big executives, making five
and ten thousand a week, and everybody who had a
penguin was there on a little leash. And the
poor little—the hot sun and the cement and the
sound stage. Every penguin that auditioned, the
owner would tap it on the head, and the little
penguin would walk two or three feet, and then
stop and pant. And I watched this. Finally,
the producer said something that made me realize
that I didn’t want to stay in Hollywood. He
turned and he said, “I’ll tell you something
fellas. A penguin is damned limited.” I
realized then that I had to get out of the
place. I had a six month contract. I did
everything to get fired, but they didn’t fire
me, until my six months were up. Then I left
Hollywood and never worked there again. It
wasn’t until I had a Broadway hit that they
wanted me to do anything, but my contract said
that I would work at home and mail it out there
and just go out for a few days for a story
conference. They never kept me for the ten
days. They got so sick of me after the three or
four days, I came home again.
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Goldwynisms |
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I worked for a man named Sam Goldwyn. You kids
are too young to remember him, I’m sure. He was
famous for fracturing the English language.
Some of the things he said, I’m sure you’ve
heard about…he’d said, “Include me out.” Or,
he’d said, “In two words, impossible.” Or, he
would say…He said one thing that I remember that
I liked. He said, “If a producer makes a bad
picture, and people won’t come to see it, you
can’t keep them away.” I said to him once, at
lunch, “I heard that when you met an old friend,
you said something. I want to know if it’s
true.” I said, “Did you really say, ‘Well,
we’ve both passed a lot of water under the
bridge?” He said, “No, but I’ll claim that I
did.”
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Economy in writing |
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What I discovered, in working in pictures, what
I learned, was the economy of writing, that was
terribly important to me. I remember one
incident. Sam had a picture, had a scene in
which they wanted to show the contempt of the
wife for her husband. He had Bob Sherwood
writing it, paying him seven or ten thousand
dollars, which was a lot of money in those days,
still is, you know. So the scene had pages of
dialogue. Sam knew…he just said, “Words, words,
words.” An old time writer out there came to
him and said, “Mr. Goldwyn, I can write that
scene without any dialogue.” And here’s what he
did. He had a scene of a limousine driving up
in front of an office building. A man gets out,
doesn’t look back, doesn’t help his wife out.
She gets out and stares at him. They go in and
get in the elevator, and on the second floor, a
pretty girl gets in, and the man takes his hat
off, and it made their point. There are some
writers in Hollywood who are masters at this. I
think Gar Kanin is one. I love Gar’s work.
Gar, as you know, was married to Ruth Gordon who
recently died. Gar had a picture. Shelley
Winters was in it. She was a waitress. He used
three words, and in those three words you knew
what this girl was all about. She was a
waitress, with a hand on her hip, and the
customer looks up and says, “How’s the
goulash?” She takes the gum out of her mouth
and says, “It’s your stomach.” And you knew
what she was all about.
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Adapting books to film |
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I’ve adapted quite a few books and maybe a play
or two. I can’t remember. The authors of these
books have all hated me. I got nasty letters
from me. When I did Teahouse, the original
author got a hold of my script, and before it
had opened, and wrote an article for the New
York Times saying how I had vulgarized…I was so
outraged that he would harm the play even before
it opened, that I wouldn’t let him in the
theater.
Robert Anderson (off screen) He’s the author of
the original play.
Jerome Lawrence (off screen) Vern Sneider.
(Patrick) When I did Love is a Many Splendoerd
Thing, by Dr. Han Suyin, when I went to Hong
Kong, she wouldn’t meet me. I’ve earned money
for them. That’s one of the wonderful things
about writing for pictures, because, of course,
you do make money. As Bob said, you can’t
depend on the theatre. Nobody has a lot of hits
in a row. Bill Inge did. I haven’t. I follow
Liberace’s advice. He said, “Cry all the way to
the bank.” I’ve done a lot of crying.
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Curious Savage (1950): Montgomery
Clift |
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There’s a teacher here who asked me to say
something. He’s got several students—about
Curious Savage, which is done so much in high
schools. I’ll just take a moment or two to tell
you about that. When I wrote it, it was some
years ago, I had a very handsome actor who was a
close friend of mine, you remember him, named
Montgomery Clift. Monty helped me on this, a
great deal. I had one ending, if you know the
play, where the main character leaves this
institution. I was going to have her stay.
Monty said, “No, that’s all wrong,” so whenever
I think of Monty, I remember how he helped me on
that
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Curious Savage (1950): Lillian
Gish |
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We had to get rid of the leading lady. We got
Lillian Gish. She’s a famous old movie star.
Well we were opening in about a week, and she
didn’t know her lines. What we did, with the
director, we pasted her lines on the backs of
magazines. Throughout the play, she was
crossing the stage and picking up a magazine,
putting it down, crossing the stage, picking up
a magazine, and reading the lines. That’s the
way we opened. Maybe that’s the reason we got
bad notices.
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Curious Savage (1950): In
Czechoslovakia |
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The play, I saw it done in Prague. I don’t
speak Check. But I went over, in this beautiful
theater. And they gave me a party afterwards.
I sat with my interpreter—our interpreter,
Professor Nobotny (?)—and a handsome, young
Check actor came up and said something. The
professor turned to me and said, “He knows three
words of English, and he wants to recite them
for you.” I said, “Tell him I’m honored.” So,
he drew himself up, and said, “Metro Goldwyn
Mayer.”
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Curious Savage (1950): A success
in community theatre |
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Now I know it’s vulgar to talk about money, but
I’ll give you an example. Quite a few years
back, I had a play on Broadway with dear, sweet
Lillian Gish. The critics hated it…got the
worst notices of the year. I didn’t even read
them, it was so bad. Maybe I cleared 80
dollars. That’s hard to live on. I tried.
Well, I think there are some 40,000 community
theaters—colleges. When I released that to
regional theater, over the years, it’s brought
me in $700,00, so I God knows, I write flops
now, just so they’ll go out to regional
theaters.
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Teahouse of the August Moon
(1953) |
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Sometimes you’ll have a scene in a play that you
didn’t write that gets a big laugh, so you keep
it in. For instance, in Teahouse of the August
Moon, we had a goat that we let on stage. That
goat waited every night to urinate when it got
on stage. It got the biggest laugh in the
show. We kept it in.
Lawrence: How did you cue the goat to do it
though.
Patrick: Incidentally, the goat’s name was Lady
Astor in New York. When we took it to London,
the Lord Chamberlain wouldn’t let us do it,
because Lady Astor was there. So, I phoned—I
don’t know if you remember Elsa Maxwell whom I
knew—I said, “Elsa, can I call it Elsa
Maxwell?” She said, “Of yes, I would love it.”
So, she sent it flowers on opening night, which
the goat ate.
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Les Girls (1957) |
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I did a picture with Cole Porter, called Les
Girls. They phoned from Hollywood and asked if
I would do it, and I said, ”Fine, send me the
book.” They said, “Oh, we don’t want you to
read the book.” “How am I going to do it.”
They said, “We just want the title, and we want
this kind of story.” So help me, I never read
the book. When it was done, the Queen chose it
for a command performance in London. The
original author was English, and she made an
announcement in the papers, I’m “the highest
paid writer in the world.” I got 85,000 dollars
for two words—Les Girls. Incidentally, it’s
kind of ironic about that picture. Of course,
you can’t tell about audiences. It got rave
notices here, broke records, and the Queen
herself chose it for a command performance.
Well, the next morning, the headline said, “A
Tasteless Dish to Set Before the Queen—Les
Girls, Les Flop.” A command performance is kind
of wonderful to go to, because the British
public, they line up along the streets to see
who’s going to be showing up. The studio
furnished me with a car. It was raining. I put
the windows down. They kept yelling, “Open your
window. Let’s see who you are.” I open it and
put my head out, and they’d say, “Nobody.”
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Antoinette Perry: Part I |
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I used to know Tony…Antoinette Perry. They’re
named after her. She was very rich. That
wasn’t her real name. She wanted to be an
actress, so she thought, Antoinette Perry. She
was a Freeoff. She got her money from
Detroit…the Freeoff trucks, you know. And her
mother was a DeSoto. They made fortunes. Tony,
herself, was a nut. I wouldn’t dare tell
anybody. I became, at 19, her kind of gigolo.
They were a lot of rich women in New York who
needed a young man to take them around. She
used to feed me and take me to the theater. I
remember she took me to lunch at Sardis once.
She was very large, she was very ample. She was
always dusting imaginary crumbs off her. She
never had any crumbs…diamonds and pearls, you
know. She says to me, “Oh, Pat, I’m getting so
heavy.” I wanted to say something nice to earn
my lunch, so I said, “Oh, Tony, you’re
not…you’re pleasingly plump.” She drew herself
up and said, “I was speaking intellectually.”
So, what could I say? I couldn’t recover from
that.
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Antoinette Perry: Part II |
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One other story about Tony. She was very rich.
She had this fabulous apartment on Park Avenue.
She kept the same servant. Chris was her
chauffeur, and Marie was her maid. I remember.
She was sitting at the head of the table,
dusting the imaginary crumbs off, and Marie came
with a salad. It had Roquefort cheese dressing,
and Tony leaned over and smelled it and looked
up and said, “Marie, is that you?” Poor Marie
burst into tears. I had to go get the salad and
serve it.
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