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Lawyer & Law Firm Network News
Legenday Writer/Director/Producer Mel Shavelson has been nominated for more Academy Awards and other accolades than any living Writer/Director/Producer in Hollywood... And he's back to tell you all about it in his new book How to Succeed in Hollywood Without Really Trying P.s. You Can't!
His writing and directing credits, which include films with Cary Grant, Henry Fonda, Lucille Ball, Kirk Douglas, Sophia Loren, Clark Gable, Paul Newman, Bob Hope and Danny Kaye, you understand why it's such a nice surprise to realize that he's still around.
Mel began in the 1930s as a gag writer for Bob Hope and includes Oscar-nominated films, Emmy-winning TV series and three terms as president of the Writers Guild of America West.
Mel's tales are more timely than they might seem, since they illustrate how, when it comes to the power equation of Hollywood, star behavior today is no more fickle or mysterious than it was in Mel's heyday. Arriving here in 1938 as a writer on Bob Hope's radio show, Mel had much the same experience as writers today - the paycheck was good, but the Earth revolved around the star.
In Mel's day, as today, movies were often made for reasons entirely unrelated to the presence of a good script. James Cagney played a bit part in "The Seven Little Foys" free because the picture's real-life subject, vaudevillian Eddie Foy, had given him free meals when Cagney was a starving chorus boy. Frank Sinatra signed on for a supporting role in "Cast a Giant Shadow," a 1966 Shavelson biopic about an early Arab-Israeli war hero, because "he wanted to spend time with the girls at the nightclubs in Tel Aviv."
Other actors took work because the script offered them an opportunity to change their image. Joanne Woodward, who starred with Paul Newman in "A New Kind of Love," wanted to shed her girl-next-door reputation. The part cast her as a quasi-prostitute. When Shavelson showed her the first act of the script, he says, she told him, "I love it. It's the dirtiest script I've ever read."
Mel relates how Newman auditioned for his part by stopping by the his house, downing a few beers and taking him on the back of his motorcycle for a ride along Mulholland Drive. Not every actor was such good company. As with stars today, the conflicts were almost always about control.
Mel and Kirk Douglas fought so incessantly during the making of "Cast a Giant Shadow" that Mel at one point walked off the set, letting his assistant shoot the film for a day. After the film was released, Douglas sent Shavelson a letter, which still hangs on the wall of his office. "Mel, I think it was a good picture," it reads. "It could have been better if I had paid more attention to you."
Millions of words have been written about why filmmakers are ultimately better judges of material than movie stars, but no one puts it better than the 90-year-old veteran.
"There's a difference between being the performer and being outside, watching the performer do the performance," Mel says. "It just makes it easier for you to judge what's going on. It's not that you're trying to control the actor. You're just trying to do what you can to help get the best performance."
So what advice would he give to today's directors who find themselves working with a prickly star? "Study psychoanalysis," he promptly replies.
Even though he hasn't made a film in years and is now retired from teaching at USC, Mel remains a man curious about the world. He's also eager to boast about his children's - and his grandchildren's - accomplishments. But I felt obligated to ask him what he missed most about his days in Hollywood. Was it the artistic camaraderie? The social whirl? The creative tumult?
"That's easy," he says. "I miss being young."
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