Larry Cohen Page 4

  What other memories do you have of the NBC Studios back in those days?

  Before I was a pageboy, I would actually sneak into the NBC Studios. I would usually glide confidently past the pageboy in the lobby, who would often be the only security staff on duty, with a script under my arm as if I belonged there. I would really look like I was going some place for an important meeting. The truth was I was only just out of high school, but if they ever tried to stop me I would just say, “That’s okay,” and keep on walking to the elevator. [Laughs] Nobody ever queried me about exactly what was “okay” and I don’t know what the hell I would have told them if they had. The only guy who ever gave me any problems was a floor manager, who was always chasing me around the studio. He was very suspicious of me and was consistently trying to get me thrown out of there. That guy was actually Dominick Dunne, who would later become a very famous writer. [10] In later years, I would always remind Dominick about it whenever I ran into him.

  You obviously had a tremendous amount of confidence, guile, and bravery at such a youthful age.

  I guess, but you have to venture out and try these things if you want to get anywhere in life. I was a determined kid and I wanted to find a way into the business. After managing to successfully infiltrate NBC Studios once or twice, I started going down there every week. I’d ride up to the ninth floor then sneak down the fire stairs to the eighth floor to avoid security, and then I’d find myself on the stage where they were rehearsing shows like The Philco Television Playhouse or Robert Montgomery Presents. This was the kind of crazy stuff I did, but it was a lot of fun. I would just spend the entire day hanging out with the cast and crew. I became such a regular face people began to assume that I actually worked there. Nobody ever questioned whether or not I belonged. Can you imagine trying to pull a stunt like that today? You wouldn’t get anywhere near a stage, it just wouldn’t happen. But I saw great shows being shot that had fabulous actors in them. I was present at the shooting of Marty, which had been scripted by Paddy Chayefsky and starred Rod Steiger in the title role. This was a couple of years before they made Marty into a movie, which then won an Academy Award for Best Picture. Ernest Borgnine also won a Best Actor Oscar playing the part that Steiger had originated, but I was there when they shot the original. I was also there when Eva Saint-Marie and E.G. Marshall were doing another of Chayefsky’s scripts, Middle of the Night, and when Robert Montgomery did Appointment in Samara, which was a play set during The Great Depression. I also saw Ginger Rogers and Trevor Howard performing in Brief Encounter. [11] I actually got talking with Howard, who was a pretty nice guy and very approachable. It was a fascinating time for me and I learnt a lot of invaluable stuff about the staging, blocking and performing of live television shows.

  Was it at this stage of your life that you decided to commit to being a writer?

  Well, I instinctively knew that I could write because I’d been writing those comic books as a kid. When I was finishing up college, I tore out a page from the telephone directory which had a list of all the production companies in New York City. I then went around to every office and told them I wanted to work. When they asked me what I wanted to do, I told them that I wanted to be a writer. I finally found a guy named Alfred Levy, who was the president of a company called Talent Associates. He happened to be sitting by the elevator in front of an electric fan — it was the summertime and they didn’t have air-conditioning — as I walked into their building. When I came into the vestibule and approached the receptionist, I announced that I was looking for a job. She was so nasty to me, so vile and insulting, that as I walked back to the elevator this man got up, came over to me and said, “Son, I’m the president of the company and I want to apologize for her behaviour.” He then took me over to the side, sat me down and asked, “What would you like to do?” I said, “Well, sir, I’d like to write.” He said, “What have you written?” I said, “Nothing.” So Levy then gave me a script and said, “Okay, this is what a script looks like. Call me if you have any questions.” So, I went home — this was on a Friday — sat down and started writing and on the following Monday morning I was back there with a completed script. Levy then came out and couldn’t quite believe that I had written an entire script over the weekend. I thanked him and said that I would call in to see him again the following week, but Levy said, “No, if you’ve written a script over the weekend I can certainly read it tonight.” So, I called him the next day, and he invited me in. He said, “I’m afraid this is all wrong. It’s not what we are looking for, but it is very well-written and has great dialogue. Why don’t you try something else?” He then gave me another subject to write about and I later wrote five or six scripts for them — for nothing — before they finally paid me to write something. But I knew that if I kept going back I’d wear them down and eventually they’d give me a job. Once you get your foot in the door you don’t want to meekly remove it and just walk away.

  What was this first paid script that you wrote for Talent Associates about?

  It was called Too Young to Go Steady and was a half-hour teenage comedy. It was supposed to have starred Tuesday Weld and Don Ameche, but the show never got on the air. I received $500, which I then brought home to show my family. My father was continually berating me, saying that I was never going to earn any money. When I pulled out the cheque for $500 and showed it to him, it was probably the saddest day of his life! [Laughs] It broke his heart, because it meant that I was now on the road to success. I mean, my father wanted me to be a success but, on the other hand, he also wanted to be right. As I said, the general consensus back then was that people were not supposed to make a living doing something that they liked to do. What I did find amusing was the fact that some people thought I’d secured the writing job simply because I’d been working as an NBC pageboy. Of course, that had nothing to do with it at all. Sure, I took the job as an NBC pageboy to hopefully make some contacts and be around certain influential people, but I worked my ass off — often for free — until people felt guilty enough to pay me for my writing.

  Moving on, I’d like to talk about your —

  [Interrupting] Hey, wait a minute! I’ve gone through puberty with you, but we’ve left out the most important thing about that period of my life — girls! Undoubtedly, my primary interest at that time, aside from writing scripts, was acquiring girlfriends.

  So, you enjoyed an active social life during this time?

  Oh, yeah. I was something of a celebrity because I’d been doing these variety shows. I remember doing this one show at CCNY and it was a big one. Some star failed to show up and I had to fill in for her. So I performed for thirty minutes and I was really great that night. I was just at my absolute best and I’d written a lot of original jokes. After the show, when everybody had left the theater, I was sitting on the edge of the stage and was kind of stunned by my own success. All of a sudden I was alone and the big crowd had gone. Then I looked up and there was this very tall, very beautiful girl standing in front of me. She said, “I really loved your act, blah-blah-blah, who are you?” This girl had been a guest star of the show and had appeared in a successful Broadway musical called Li’l Abner [12] playing the character of Stupefyin’ Jones. They had invited her to come there and make a personal appearance and this gorgeous, stupefying girl was none other than Julie Newmar. She said to me, “Why don’t you come down and we’ll have dinner one night.” She then gave me her phone number, and I couldn’t believe that this stunning actress was interested in me, but she was. I took Julie out quite a few times and we had a nice time. I do remember that she was sharing a dressing room with Tina Louise, who was another beautiful actress who later became famous for Gilligan’s Island. So, I’d go in there and these two beautiful girls would be undressing and I’d be sitting there, watching them. It was great! [Chuckles] I dated Julie all through the period where she did The Marriage-Go-Round on Broadway with Charles Boyer and Claudette Colbert, and I saw her off and on for quite a few years. Then, she went to Holl
ywood to do the movie version of The Marriage-Go-Round with Susan Hayward and James Mason, and I didn’t see her anymore after that. Later on, she played Catwoman in the television series of Batman and made a Western called McKenna’s Gold with Gregory Peck in which she played an Indian girl. For a moment, Julie became a Hollywood star, but then she didn’t do anything at all. That’s the familiar history of a lot of people in Hollywood. They appear in a few things then you never see them again. I don’t think life has treated Julie very kindly since, but there was a movie made about three female impersonators who go to Hollywood to meet Julie Newmar. The title escapes me right now…

  To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything! Julie Newmar.

  That’s the one! Yeah, that was about as famous as Julie became in her later career. One thing I do remember about her is that she had very bad eyesight. If she didn’t have her glasses on she wouldn’t recognize you. You could pass her on the street and she wouldn’t even know you were there. You would mistakenly believe that you had fallen out with her and she was ignoring you. I’ve always found that tall girls have very bad eyesight for some reason. I actually ran into Julie a number of years ago at a party and she pretended not to know me. That actually happens a lot with these women as time goes by. They want to try to erase their past. Sometimes actresses have been through a number of marriages and relationships, and everything starts to blur. They don’t know who they’ve slept with or who they haven’t slept with, but I think Julie did remember me. She just didn’t want to get into it at that moment.

  Stuart Gordon [13] recently told me about another celebrity story from your early days that you once relayed to him. It concerned an amusing and rather strange encounter you had with Stanley Kubrick when you were a young man.

  Yeah, it was rather strange. This is my Stanley Kubrick story: one day, many years ago when Kubrick’s film Lolita had just opened at the Loews State Theater, I was walking down Broadway. [14] I don’t know how acquainted you are with downtown New York City, but there used to be a big newspaper stand on an island in the middle of Times Square where you could buy out of town papers. As I was walking across the street nearby, I saw a man leaning into a garbage can and rifling intently through the trash. He was unshaven and shabbily dressed, and looked much like a bum. I recognized him instantly as being Stanley Kubrick as, a few years earlier I had briefly wandered onto the set of Spartacus when I was working at Universal. Although I’d never talked to him, I did happen to notice that every time Kubrick gave a direction on the soundstage Kirk Douglas would grab him by the arm and drag him off to have a private conversation. Kubrick would then come back and revise the directions he had just given! Anyway, here was Kubrick, going through the garbage cans in Times Square and pulling out newspapers, so I walked over to him. His head was literally buried deep in the garbage can when I arrived. After a moment I said, “Looking for your reviews?” Without even looking up Kubrick calmly said, “Yeah, I’ve already got The Chicago Tribune, but I’m still looking for The San Francisco Examiner.” He just kept rummaging through the garbage cans as if there was nothing unusual about what he was doing. We then had a whole conversation as if we knew each other and had been together the whole day. Looking back now, it was very peculiar that we were so comfortable. Finally, Kubrick found what he wanted, straightened himself up, and said, “I’m going to go over there and stand in front of the theater and watch people buy tickets. That always makes me feel good.” I said, “Well, can I come with you?” He said, “Sure, let’s go over there.” So we both walked over to Loews State, which was just down the block, and stood in front of the theater for about twenty minutes and watched the patrons buy tickets. As we did this, we schmoozed for a while about movies and the movie business. Then we said our goodbyes, went our separate ways, and that was it. I never saw Kubrick again. It was incredible to see somebody hungrily pouring through garbage cans like that, but it was indeed Stanley Kubrick. Actually, I can remember avoiding shaking hands with Kubrick as we parted company. I mean, who knows what kind of foul waste was gathering down there?

  The Television Years

  In 1958, when you weren’t even twenty years old, you sold your first two teleplays to Kraft Mystery Theater. What were those scripts?

  The first script was called “The Eighty Seventh Precinct,” and I was paid $1,500 for it. I was not allowed to sell any scripts until I was twenty-one. I was seventeen at the time, so I lied and said I was twenty-one. That was the only way to get jobs. “The Eighty Seventh Precinct” was an original based on the characters created by Ed McBain in one of his first 87th Precinct novels. In fact, it might have been the very first. McBain later wrote forty of them in the series and they were very popular. The company had optioned the rights to do an original work based on his characters, so I don’t think I adapted the novel. I believe I just took the characters and fashioned an original script out of it and that was my very first credit as a writer. My teleplay, which was shot live from the Brooklyn Studio, concerned a woman who is constantly telephoning the police to report a burglar that is breaking into her house. The cops ignore her calls, and then eventually she is found murdered in her home. It was great because I had worked as a pageboy on the Kraft show and all the pageboys loved doing it. We’d always go into the studio and eat all the food that was used in the commercials after the show went off the air. That was just one of the little perks of the job. After “The Eighty Seventh Precinct” was telecast, I quit the NBC page staff and really focused on my writing. I remember that the local New York newspapers picked up on this first success and printed stories with the headline: “Pageboy Writes Teleplay.” I even got my picture in there, which was great.

  What was the second script?

  It was called “Night Cry” and that was also performed live. It was based on a book by William L. Stuart, which had previously been made into a movie by Otto Preminger called Where the Sidewalk Ends starring Dana Andrews and Gene Tierney, and was also done as a radio play on Suspense with Ray Milland. [1] It was about a cop who commits a murder and then attempts to cover it up. The company that produced the television version, Town Associates, didn’t know that “Night Cry” had been made into a movie before. When I informed them of this fact, they told me I was wrong. I didn’t want to argue with them, so I just let it go, but I knew it had been made into a film previously. Sure enough, when I saw the picture again, the credits read “Based on the book Night Cry by William L. Stewart,” so I was indeed correct. Although Where the Sidewalk Ends was directed by Otto Preminger, it wasn’t a very good movie. I actually thought my TV version was much better.

  Who starred in “Night Cry”?

  Jack Klugman played the lead and he was good. There was also a small supporting role of this sleazy informer who attempts to blackmail a cop. That part was played by an unknown actor named Peter Falk. “Night Cry” was actually Peter’s first television appearance. He was only on screen for about six minutes, but he completely stole the show. He was that good! He just leapt off the screen at you with this tremendous energy and presence. Peter loved the dialogue and as soon as the show was over, the phone suddenly started ringing in the control room. It was newspaper people from all over the country, calling up, wanting to know who the actor in that scene was. Peter actually got a big column written by Jack O’Brien in The New York Journal American subsequent to that. I remember he called me up one day and said, “Larry, I never got to see the show because it was live. Do you perhaps have a copy of it?” I then invited Peter to come into the office at Talent Associates and I ran him what they call a kinescope, which was a film copy of what was on the screen. Peter sat there with a pad and wrote down everything he had done. It turned out that he was about to audition for The Actor’s Studio and was going to perform a scene from “Night Cry.” A couple of days later, Peter called me up again and said The Actor’s Studio had turned him down after his audition. So, Peter Falk was rejected by The Actor’s Studio performing my scene. However, it also turned out that the produce
r of the film Murder, Inc. was looking to cast somebody for one of the major roles. He’d seen Peter in “Night Cry” and immediately hired him for the movie. Peter basically played the same character that he’d played on my show and even wore the same suit, shirt and hat. He later earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor and is by far the best thing in the picture. Of course, for the next thirty years, Peter basically played the same character in Columbo but he was a very fine actor. After “Night Cry” was telecast, both Peter and Jack Klugman got hired to play the kidnappers in The Kidnapping of Jackie Gleason, [2] so the impact of my show was considerable.