Dean and Me_ A Love Story - Jerry Lewis [78]
Which didn’t mean he favored me over my partner. Not by a long shot. In fact, Artists and Models was a kind of liberation for Dean, especially after Three Ring Circus: In the new film (which Frank cowrote), Dean played my roommate and fellow wannabe comic-book writer, and he not only got as many lines as I did (a first) but (another first) had substantial comic material, as well as several terrific musical numbers.
Not surprisingly, for the first time in a while, there was zero tension on the set between the two of us. But at the time, I’m afraid, my ego was still ballooning. Frank Tashlin’s strategic decision to let me in on the technical aspects of the movie was creating not just a future filmmaker but a kind of monster. I spent much of the shoot engaged in range wars—or pissing matches, call them what you will—with Wallis over everything from his attitude toward the crew to how much of my off-camera time I could spend attending to Martin and Lewis business. I was locking horns with the Big Guy, ego versus ego. It was quite a tussle.
Meanwhile, Dean stood by smiling and practicing his golf swing. He was delighted with Artists and Models—and delighted to watch Wallis vs. Lewis from the sidelines.
The funny thing, though, is that on nearly every single issue, Wallis ultimately backed down. It wasn’t the power of my personality (though at the time I thought it was) so much as it was the power of the Martin and Lewis franchise. We were just too big a moneymaker for the producer to risk rocking the boat.
Instead, Wallis took out his ire on others.
One day toward the end of the shoot, Tashlin came onto the set looking like someone had rammed a twelve-inch pin in one of his ears and out the other. I went into his dressing room on Stage 5 and asked, “Anything I can do, Frank?”
“You’ve worked for Wallis long enough,” he said. “You know him, and if you want to help, find out how I can get out of my contract with him. I just will not allow him to diminish me the way he does. How can a man with so little knowledge about comedy...” And he proceeded to go into a tirade about what I understood all too well: the great Wallis’s utter tone-deafness when it came to humor on film.
I heard Tish out, then said, “Frank, if you’re really serious about getting out of your contract with Hal Wallis, there’s a very simple thing you can do.”
He blinked. “Simple? What’s simple about it?” he said.
“Listen, Frank,” I said. “Wallis loves cutting film better than seeing his own kid grow up. He believes himself to be the ultimate filmmaker—and in certain cases he is, but not with what we do. Now, if you write him a note saying you think he cuts like a butcher, I bet you’re out of your contract before he finishes reading it.”
Frank wrote what I suggested and sent it to Wallis’s office at about three P.M. Later, he phoned me at home to tell me that Wallis had called him at 5:15 to say he was out of his contract. Wallis didn’t want to work with him anymore!
Wallis cut Casablanca, Fugitive from a Chain Gang, The Life of Emile Zola, and Jezebel. He cut those films very dramatically and very well—and that’s the last nice thing I’ll say about Hal Wallis. He was a strange man. He had to win. He acted as if his very life depended on making his point. He justified all his actions with this pontification: “Great film can be put together by many men, but it is made by one man.” Without that one man, he felt, nothing could go forward. Maybe he was right, but he handled everything with such life-or-death conviction that he