***Out In The Tinsel Town Night –With Lana Turner’s The Bad And The Beautiful In Mind 

 

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

The Bad and the Beautiful, starring Kirk Douglas, Lana Turner, Barry Sullivan and Dick Powell

Kirk Shields, yes that Kirk Shields, the one who had more Oscars on his mantle than he knew what to do with and the one who was the genius behind that film classic The Girl From Faraway Mountain, wished he had a dollar for everybody in Tinsel Town that he had given a break to, had made in to something they never thought possible. (Actually his wished he had a million dollars for each one.)  He, Kirk Shields, head of Waterworld Studios, a guy who had carried weight in that glittering burg, who had made guys and gals jump every time he made some move just that minute though had run into a dry spell, a dry spell that could have happened to anyone. That dry spell entailed three big flops in a row, first, that money pit From Here To Rome that had everything, everything except a box office, then, going back to his first days in the town a comedy with Sid Kidder, The World Goes Round, that busted flat when Sid’s slapstick humor went out of style before they could release the damn thing. This last one took the cake though, Irma Combs, the siren of the ages, starring in Women Talk, a sure winner that took his last dollars, his last line of credit, a hefty mortgage on his place, Mont Pied, and his last tinsel town credibility when the younger audience decided that there was not enough sex, or suggestion of sex on those forlorn Saturday night movie dates. Christ, Irma and her no-name male co-star almost burned up the screen in one bedroom scene where she, practically naked, went mano y mano with her lover boy. Damn fickle audience .              

Fickle audiences or not Kirk was busted, busted flat, busted six ways to Sunday if such a thing was possible, busted worse that when he had started out producing newsreels to keep the wolves from the door until he got his big break, his big break with Harry Smith’s Westward Bound.  At least then he could have slid in anonymous obscurity, maybe sell shoes or something, but now he had his reputation, his life’s work, hell, he knowledge that he had some more great films in him, at least a few anyway. But the way the system worked, as he well knew, was that one bust could happen to anybody, two, well, maybe the times were not right for the vehicles but three, three was the kiss of death. So Kirk Shields with all those Oscars gathering dust at Mont Pied could not raise five dollars, if that, on his next picture idea, a remake of Eric Von Ronk’s classic She Stoops To Conquer, updated of course, with the works, plenty of close quarters sex, plenty of bingo bongo be-bop action between sex scenes and a totally different ending in case a sequel came out of it. But he needed that dough, that upfront dough, which could get him past the idea stage. And he had an idea of how to get that dough, an iffy proposition but he was desperate.      

Here’s the “skinny.” He called Harry Smith, still the head of production at Waterworld and a master at getting people to do things that they under no circumstances wanted to do. Yah, Harry had that old time Hollywood charm that went out of fashion in about 1950s but had a certain cache with the arty types. Here is what he figured Harry could do for him. Kirk needed a director of note and he wanted Harry to call Fred Dean. Yes, Fred Dean the director who had a couple of years back won that beautiful Oscar for The Tempted , and rightfully so for it not only was a great art-house type film that he wished he had make but it made a ton of money. He and Fred had started out on Jump Street together making art films at night that nobody watched and soft-core porno films to keep the wolves away from the door which everybody watched.

He also needed a great woman actress to play Clarissa, the enchantress, siren, earth mother combination and since Irma Combs would not answer his calls, and had threatened to have him arrested for fraud over that last film, he sought out Harry to call Lanna Day. Lanna Day who after Irma was the siren de jus, all blond and curves for the guys and really misunderstood little miss innocent for the gals. Jesus, he had given Lanna her start in pictures, built her up big from some bit player doing tricks on the street on the side to make ends meet, and to support that growing smack habit that would have consumed her. He had taken a chance on her and it paid off. Now she couldn’t go anywhere without a mob following her, mainly young women who figured that maybe they could get the glitter by being around her. Nothing but money in the bank.

Finally, damn it, he needed somebody to round that She Stoops To Conquer script into shape, to make it sexier, to make the innuendoes of the old- time film more explicit while passing the code standard. Frankly he had expected to do that task himself but he was in a dry spell in that department as well so he wanted Harry  to call Dick Sullivan his old writer, and the guy who just won the Bookends Award for his novel Daisy Buchanan. Dick also had a couple of Oscars sitting in his office over at UCLA where he was teaching screenwriting to the eager kids courtesy of one Kirk Shields’ faith that he could write for Hollywood and not just for eager kids.                

So Harry, kicking and screaming, made those three dutiful calls and reported back to Kirk on the results a few days later.  Nada, no go, nothing, get lost, go on welfare, go jump in the ocean. And that was just the stuff that could be printed here. See Kirk in his overweening passion, and it was a passion, to make great films, or at least moneymakers, stepped on many, many toes. Many of the same  give a break to toes that he wished he had a dollar for (or really a million dollars for). See he had cut Fred Dean out when he made his first big deal with Harry Smith to do that first feature- length film and so Fred was still a little sore (we are being nice here). And Lanna, well, Lanna had it in for Kirk on two scores. First, he realized that she had star power, star power plus, but only if she was on the needle. And so Lanna had Kirk to thank for that junk habit, that jones, which took her years and plenty of dough to cure. Second, she had fallen in love with him during that first production together. But like a lot of successful men (maybe women too) he did not mix work and pleasure. Moreover his pleasure ran not to blonde junkies but low dive brunettes with curvy bodies, no brains, and plenty of sexual energy.  Dick, well, Dick had a little problem with Kirk since Kirk in order to keep Dick on board writing great scripts had connections with people who put in the word not to pick one of Dick’s books when it came Pulitzer time. Later it took Dick many years to get that award, an award that he coveted above else.             

So the last time anybody took note there was a For Sale sign on Mont Pied and somebody had sighted Kirk selling shoes in a Hollywood men’s clothing store …

Note: If some enterprising Hollywood director (or producer for that matter) had decided to do a film version of Kirk Shields’ illustrious life they would have had all three called performers begging to do that film that Kirk had tried to corral them on and it would have been a great success and all that. But Tinsel Town is a place that has this funny little habit of devouring its own and so we will leave Kirk selling his Florsheim shoes and leave it at that.