Myth Making: The Misfits (1961)

Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Arthur Miller traveled to Reno, Nevada, in the spring of 1956 to divorce his first wife. Fulfilling the state's six week residency requirement until the marriage was legally dissolved, Miller stayed at a cabin on Pyramid Lake, about 100 miles from "the biggest little city in the world." During his time in this "forbidding but beautiful place," he got to know a few modern-day cowboy types who made their living capturing wild mustangs and selling them to be butchered for dog food. Miller was invited to join them on one of these hunts. From his experiences in a "whole state full of misfits," Arthur Miller later fashioned a short story that was published the following year in Esquire magazine.

Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe

But before he wrote the story and just after he returned from Reno, Miller wed Marilyn Monroe, then at the height of her enormous fame. It was a time when the actress was desperate to make films of substance, and once she and Miller moved to New York she began studying at the Actors' Studio and making plans to set up her own production company. After Miller's story appeared in Esquire, a friend suggested he develop it into a screenplay. Inspired by the idea of writing a part for his wife that would allow her to demonstrate her overlooked acting ability, Miller scripted the moody tale of a disaffected divorcee who encounters three disparate cowboys and ends up accompanying them when they go "mustanging" in the high desert of Nevada.

Anticipation began to build the moment word started to spread that the great playwright had written The Misfits for his glamorous movie star wife. Before it was released, the film had become the stuff of legend.

An iconic photo...Front row: Montgomery Clift, Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable. Second row:  Eli Wallach, John Huston. In back: producer Frank Taylor, Arthur Miller (on ladder).

John Huston was living in Ireland in 1959 when Frank Taylor, Miller's one-time publisher and the man chosen by the writer to produce the film, sent him the script. Huston pronounced it excellent and agreed to direct. Huston had been Marilyn Monroe's director of choice for The Misfits. She remembered that he had cast her as Angela in his film, The Asphalt Jungle (1950), one of her early breakthrough roles, was ever grateful to him for it and trusted him to guide her through the challenging dramatic role Miller had written for her.

Clark Gable on the set of The Misfits

Clark Gable, who by this time had been appearing in films for more than 35 years and had been a movie star - "the King" - for most of them, had to be cajoled to accept the male lead. Though he found the script intriguing, he didn't know what to make of the story. Miller persuaded him, calling it an "eastern western," about people trying, but afraid, to connect. 

Huston remembered working with Gable on The Misfits: "He thought of himself as an actor, not a screen personality. He liked reminiscing about his early days in the theater - old-time actors' talk. I saw very soon that Clark knew exactly what he was doing. Two or three times I thought I saw ways to improve his performance. I was mistaken." Gable's portrayal of Gay Langland, an aging wrangler displaced in the modern world, is complex and moving. Co-stars Eli Wallach, Montgomery Clift, and lately Marilyn Monroe, were committed "method" actors, but Wallach later recalled Gable and the other Hollywood veteran on the set, Thelma Ritter, as true acting "pros."

Clark Gable was impressed, too. Watching Montgomery Clift, as rodeo cowboy Perce, deliver his first major scene (below) in one take, Gable remarked, "My God, he's really good, isn't he?"

The Misfits has been called Arthur Miller's valentine - in Eli Wallach's words, a "love piece" - to Marilyn Monroe, and members of the crew observed that Miller seemed besotted with her as filming got underway. But when the grueling shoot came to an end three months later, not only would the Miller/Monroe marriage be over but Marilyn Monroe would never complete another film.

Marilyn Monroe on the set

Colin Clark, author My Week with Marilyn and The Prince, the Showgirl and Me, wrote that when he met Billy Wilder he mentioned to him that he, too, had worked with Marilyn Monroe. Wilder replied, "Ah, then you know the meaning of pure pain!"

By the time The Misfits was being made in 1960, Marilyn's erratic on-the-set behavior was well known. Cast and crew would wait...and wait...and wait. Sometimes she would appear, sometimes she wouldn't. She had great trouble remembering and delivering her lines and often required multiple takes. Her latest drama coach, Paula Strasberg, was ever present and Marilyn would look to her rather than John Huston for direction while filming her scenes. And there were drugs and alcohol...

Huston recalled, "She was taking pills to go to sleep and pills to wake up in the morning...she seemed to be in a daze half the time." She became less and less reliable, eventually broke down completely and had to be hospitalized. Clark Gable, according to Huston, "...was nonplussed by Marilyn's behavior. It was as though she'd revealed some horrid fact of life that just couldn't be accepted in his scheme of things."

But Huston also remembered, "When she was herself...she could be marvelously effective. She wasn't acting - I mean she was not pretending to an emotion. It was the real thing."

Marilyn as Roslyn

The Misfits was released on what would have been Clark Gable's 60th birthday, February 1, 1961, but Gable had died of a massive heart attack 2-1/2 months earlier, shortly after the film wrapped. Fortunately, the actor had seen Huston's first cut and was so happy with it he told both the director and Arthur Miller that he thought it the best work of his career. Despite Gable's enthusiasm - and producer Frank Taylor's intention to make "the ultimate motion picture" thanks to an all-star cast and crew - The Misfits was a commercial failure and received a mixed critical response. In Miller's view the critics were "baffled" by it.

If the The Misfits has problems it may be that it was too much Miller's film and not enough Huston's. Regardless of compelling themes, strong performances, photography by Russell Metty, film editing by George Tomasini and an evocative score by Alex North (listen below), the film too often becomes theatrically talky and contrived. And Roslyn, the central character, is so unreal at times that she seems to have been spun out of arty fancies about the actress who portrays her. It is also likely that the difficulties and complications that plagued the production afflicted the film itself.

The Misfits is an unusual and poetic film that may not entirely mesh, but it does fascinate. The powerful climactic mustang capture sequence is as disturbing to watch as it is difficult to forget, and the final scene between Gable and Monroe seems the prophetic farewell of two of Hollywood's biggest stars.

Roslyn: "How do you find your way back in the dark?"

Gay: "Just head for that big star straight on. The highway's underneath it, it'll take us right home."

Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable...fade out...

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The largest remaining band of wild mustangs in the United States roams the high desert areas of Nevada. About 33,000 horses live in 10 western states and another 30,000 are kept in government corrals.  Click here to learn more about the history and continuing plight of our wild horse population.

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Click here to go to My Love of Old Hollywood and links to the other participating blogs in Page's blogathon... 

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Sources:
An Open Book by John Huston, McMillan (1980)
The Misfits: Story of a Shoot by Arthur Miller and Serge Toubiana, Phaidon Press (2000)
Making the Misfits, a production of WNET New York, et al (2002)
wild mustang photos by Kat Livengood

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Over the Rain-Forest and the Still Water Beach

Abandoned movie set, Mismaloya, Mexico: photo courtesy of TripAdvisor

The programmers at Turner Classic Movies may not have planned the schedule with me in mind, but they’ve lined up a fine mix of films for me on my birthday this year.

Bruno Ganz in Wings of Desire

I share my day with Sir Laurence Olivier (born May 22, 1907), and TCM has programmed some films of his that I haven’t seen, including Term of Trial (1962) co-starring the great French actress, Simone Signoret. Later on in the day my beloved San Francisco provides the setting for the 1955 sci-fi classic, It Came from Beneath the Sea, in which the city is attacked by a radiation-enlarged octopus. In the evening, this month's TCM guest programmer, Deborah Winger, is set to appear. Among her choices is one film I haven’t seen but have had on my to-watch list for a long time: Wim Wenders' 1987 classic, Wings of Desire brought its director the Best Director prize at Cannes in 1987 and won or was nominated for a raft of other awards.

Winger has also chosen to spotlight John Huston’s masterful production of Tennessee Williams' The Night of the Iguana (1964), one of the great film adaptations of Williams' work.

Tennessee Williams had vacationed in Mexico during 1940, and his experiences at the Hotel Costa Verde outside Acapulco later formed the basis for his 1948 short story entitled The Night of the Iguana. Over time, the story evolved into a stage play that debuted on Broadway in 1961 starring Bette Davis in the role of Maxine Faulk, Margaret Leighton as Hannah Jelks and Patrick O’Neal as The Reverend T. Lawrence Shannon. It is Tennessee Williams' final masterpiece.

Margaret Leighton, Tennessee Williams and Patrick O'Neal

Reverend Shannon is an alcoholic Episcopal priest locked out of his church for stirring up scandal and reduced to working as a guide on a bus tour south of the border. A new scandal involving a nubile young woman in his group of mostly biddies has consumed him. As the play begins, Shannon brings his party to the broken down hotel of his friend Maxine and her late husband Fred on the Mexican seacoast. Also staying at the hotel are Hannah Jelks, an itinerant artist, and her elderly grandfather, a 'practicing' poet.  As Shannon wrestles with his demons he forms a bond with Hannah who is also in spiritual crisis.

The stage production was rocky from the beginning, but it was also acclaimed and successful, running for 316 performances. The Night of the Iguana received Tony nominations for Best Play, Best Producer and Best Actress - for which Margaret Leighton won the award - and was also chosen the best new play of the year by the New York Drama Critics' Circle.

Bette Davis as Maxine Faulk on Broadway

Legendary writer/director/producer Joshua Logan’s reaction to Bette Davis’ performance was enthusiastic: “She was svelte, handsome, voluptuous, wicked, wise, raffish, slightly vulgar – in fact, she was ideal for the part and gave the play added dimension.” But Davis was deeply unhappy in the production and began regularly missing performances. She left the show in April 1962 and Shelley Winters, who replaced her, quickly understood why Davis and her understudy, Madeleine Sherwood, had both been miserable in the part. It seems co-stars Patrick O’Neal and Margaret Leighton routinely undermined the actresses who played Maxine by using the age-old stage trick of moving slightly for a few seconds to divert the attention of the audience whenever they set up her lines. 

Richard Burton and Ava Gardner

The journey of The Night of the Iguana from stage to screen began with a call from producer Ray Stark to writer/director John Huston during the play's Broadway run. Huston, no stranger to adapting great works (The Maltese Falcon, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Moby Dick, etc.), was interested and the two quickly began working out the details of their collaboration. They agreed on casting: Richard Burton as Shannon, Deborah Kerr as Hannah and Ava Gardner as Maxine. Burton and Kerr signed on immediately but Miss Gardner required some courting. Both Stark and Huston flew to Madrid, where Gardner was then living, and spent days wining and dining her until she agreed to take the part. 

Huston and Stark disagreed on one major point, Stark wanted to film in color but Huston preferred black and white for fear that the vibrant colors to be found everywhere on location in Mismaloya, Mexico (azure skies and seas, multi-hued flora and fauna) would distract from the story. Years later, in his memoir, Huston wrote, “Looking back now, I think I was probably wrong.” He was. Color could only have underscored the power of Williams' evocative meditation on the tangle of spiritual and physical yearnings that drive human life.

John Huston and Richard Burton

At the time location work began on The Night of the Iguana, Richard Burton had not yet sacrificed his talent for fame and riches. One of the great, classically trained actors to emerge from Britain in the post-war era, Burton’s finest performances were defined by depth and soul and enriched by his majestic voice, piercing blue-green eyes and potent physical presence. As Deborah Kerr observed in a diary she kept during the shoot, Burton was at his peak as an actor at this point and she agreed with Ava Gardner that "he makes everyone else act well, he is so good himself." Burton’s agonized rendering of the Reverend Shannon's dark night of the soul seems, at times, a glimpse into his own conflicted nature. Though he was not Oscar-nominated for this role (it was for his performance in Becket that earned his Best Actor nod in 1964), Burton would be nominated a total of seven times for an Academy Award, winning none, though he was otherwise acknowledged with BAFTA, Golden Globe and Tony awards. When the filming of The Night of the Iguana got under way in October 1963, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor were living together but not yet married; their life of paparazzi-infested, glittering excess had just begun. Even so, Huston later wrote, "There were more reporters on the site than iguanas..."

John Huston

A very young Ava Gardner

Ava Gardner’s Maxine Faulk was a departure from the character as written by Williams and portrayed on the stage. Warmer and softer, Ava’s Maxine personified the “openness and freedom of the sea” Williams had envisioned, but lacked the man-eating qualities of the original. Huston, who felt Williams’ Maxine became far too devouring by the play's end, was responsible for these changes. Ava Gardner later recalled that Tennessee was never entirely happy about Huston’s tinkering with the character but she also noted, “…anyone seeing the film knows that John’s choice was the only one that fit.” And Gardner committed herself fully to her role. In an earthy, raucous performance, she allowed herself to appear casual to the point of dishevelment. Clad in a loose serape and toreador pants through much of the film, she had lines penciled in under her eyes and her hair tied back into a loose ponytail to de-emphasize her glorious good looks. During filming, Kerr recorded a comment of Huston's that for Ava it may have been a real disadvantage to be so beautiful, "...it has made her appear publicly as someone she is not, and in her work has made her appear the kind of actress she is not." For this performance Ava Gardner received the best reviews of her film career. Reflecting in her memoirs she wrote, “I have only one rule in acting – trust the director and give him heart and soul. And the director I trusted most of all was John Huston. Working with him gave me the only real joy I’ve ever had in movies.”

Ava Gardner and Deborah Kerr

Hannah Jelks is an intriguing entry in Deborah Kerr's filmography. Kerr portrayed sensitive ladies of delicacy and reserve to perfection, but Hannah was slightly different, a "Thin-Standing-up-Female-Buddha," in Tennessee Williams' words. Down-on-her-luck, adrift in Mexico and living by her wits and intuition, the spinster has only her remaining dignity, the care of her 97-year-old grandfather and her paintbox to keep her going.

As the international press descended on the set, Kerr admitted that she was beginning to "feel more and more like Hannah in this movie." Reporters insisted on quizzing her for 'dirt' on Burton, Taylor and others, and, in her diary, she quoted Hannah's sentiments, "Nothing human disgusts me unless it is unkind or violent." Kerr added, "I do loathe and detest unkindness and violence and gossip and troublemaking and envy and malice."

On the day filming of The Night of the Iguana ended in late 1963, Deborah Kerr put down her thoughts in her journal, "It's funny how you get so close to a bunch of people on a movie. It is constant making and breaking of emotional relationships - some of the people you work with and get to know so closely, you may never see again." An interesting reflection, coming on the heels, as it did, of completing a film about the redemptive power of human connection.

It was on an evening in 1940 while in Mexico, that Tennessee Williams watched the sun set on a tree of golden lemons. He would later write a poem about it that provided inspiration for the story that became a play and then a film.  The poem was revised slightly and incorporated into The Night of the Iguana.  Here, Cyril Delevanti, who portrayed Nonno in the film, recites the verse popularly known as "Nonno's Poem" (click title to view).

Cyril Delevanti and Deborah Kerr

John Huston spent many, many years of his life in Mexico, and was living not far from Mismaloya, in Las Caletas, while working on his autobiography in the late 1970s. Sixteen years had passed since the making of The Night of the Iguana and the location site was now deserted. All that remained were the ruins of the buildings constructed for his film. Huston wrote, "No one - other than an old man who passes there on an occasional trip between Las Caletas and Vallarta - seems to give a damn what happens to the place. He would like to see it torn down and given back to the iguanas. The old man is me of course."

John Huston in Las Caletas, 1979

...I was at the Hotel Costa Verde over the rain-forest and the still-water beach which were the off-stage background for Night of the Iguana.

~ Tennessee Williams, Memoirs

Sources:
An Open Book by John Huston, McMillan (1980)
Ava: My Story by Ava Gardner, Bantam (1990)
Dark Victory: The Life of Bette Davis by Ed Sikov, Henry Holt (2007)
Deborah Kerr Personal Collection: http://www.deborahkerr.es

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Tales of Hollywood: The Wild Ride of Preston Sturges

Turner Classic Movies began its salute to Star of the Month Joel McCrea on Wednesday, May 2, with two of his most enjoyable films - and two of the best films from writer/director Preston Sturges: Sullivan's Travels and The Palm Beach Story. Sturges was one of Hollywood's brightest lights during the early '40s, writing and directing in quick succession a unique and inspired string of spirited satires: The Great McGinty (1940) for which he won the first Oscar awarded for Best Original Screenplay, Christmas in July (1940), The Lady Eve (1941), Sullivan's Travels (1941), The Palm Beach Story (1942), The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944) and Hail the Conquering Hero (1944). His last great gem, the dark, deft Unfaithfully Yours (1948), was made during his fall from grace and was for years overlooked. The world of Preston Sturges was the definition of a "cockeyed caravan"* - onscreen and off...

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Born in Chicago in 1898 and shuttled back and forth between the U.S. and Europe as a child by his capricious mother, Sturges served in the Army Air Service toward the end of World War I before making his way to New York in the 1920s. He eventually penned one of Broadway's biggest hits, Strictly Dishonorable, in 1929. The film version, adapted by Gladys Lehman, was released by Universal in 1931. In his memoirs, Sturges recalled his arrival in the dream capital the following year:

In Hollywood I started at the bottom: a bum by the name of Sturgeon who had once written a hit called Strictly Something-or-Other. Carl Laemmle of Universal offered me a contract, with unilateral options exercisable by the studio, to join his team as a writer. My wife had decamped, my fortune was depleted, and even though I was living on coffee and moonlight, my costs of living continued to cost...

Easy Living 1937

Sturges spent his early screenwriting years working in a variety of genres on many films, including The Power and the Glory (1933), The Invisible Man (1933), Twentieth Century (1934), Imitation of Life (1934) and Diamond Jim (1935). He made his name with an adapted screenplay for Easy Living (1937) and an original screenplay for Remember the Night (1940). But he always had multiple irons in the fire and while he grew and prospered as a Hollywood screenwriter, he also invested his time and money in other interests. An inveterate inventor, he launched the Sturges Engineering Company in Los Angeles in 1935, initially building and selling internal combustion machines. In 1936 he helped finance and became a partner in Snyder's Café, a trendy nightspot on Sunset Blvd. (later a location for Wolfgang Puck's Spago). Sturges took great pleasure in playing host at Snyder's and spent most evenings there welcoming guests, buying drinks and singing with cronies around the piano. Neither Sturges nor his partner, Ted Snyder, had a head for business and by the time it closed two years later, the Café was deeply in debt. But Sturges enjoyed the role of restaurateur and had already hatched a plan to open a place of his own.

By the late '30s he was working for Paramount Pictures, where his reputation would soon be made. After the studio renewed his contract at the end of 1937, Sturges spent 1938 toiling over scripts, meeting and marrying his third wife, Louise, and negotiating the purchase of a restaurant site. The coming years would be the most productive of his frenetic life...

One night in 1939 Sturges invited Paramount production chief Bill LeBaron over for dinner and showed him a script he'd been working on for six years. He offered LeBaron a deal. If Paramount would allow Sturges to direct the picture, he would sell the script to the studio for $1. A check in the more generous amount of $10 was cut in August and the picture to be known as The Great McGinty went into production in December. It opened to sensational business the following summer. This advancement from writer to writer/director was precedent-setting and paved the way for every future writer/director from Billy Wilder to Francis Coppola and Woody Allen to the Coen Brothers (the title of their O Brother, Where Art Thou? was appropriated from Sullivan's Travels) and beyond.

Fonda, Sturges, Stanwyck on the set, The Lady Eve

The Mitchell Leisen-directed film of Sturges' screenplay for Remember the Night opened in January 1940 breaking significant box office records, but Sturges was now committed to writing and directing movies. That year he went to work on his next two films, Christmas in July (1940) and The Lady Eve (1941). At the end of the year he signed another contract with Paramount and got the good news that his wife was expecting their first (and his first) child.

Sturges was also deeply engrossed in his new restaurant. When the lease on Snyder's expired in December 1938, he moved furniture, fixtures and equipment to the three-level building he'd purchased at 8225 Sunset Blvd. and began construction on the restaurant/nightclub he would christen The Players. Sturges supervised every facet of the project, from menu planning to designing uniforms, selecting paint and overseeing carpentry. The Players opened quietly in the summer of 1940. It was much larger and, with music and dancing, far more expensive to operate than Snyder's, but Sturges had high hopes.

By the time his son was born in 1941, The Lady Eve was on its way to becoming one of the biggest hits in the history of Paramount, Sturges had two more films in the works and The Players had gained popularity as one of the "smartest places" in Hollywood. According to his wife, Louise, the lure of The Players for Sturges was that it allowed him to "be Grand Pasha after hours - that was the main attraction..." He relished the role of genial supper club proprietor and being at the center of a convivial crowd, dining, drinking and carrying on into the wee hours.

The Players (foreground), Chateau Marmont (right)

The location of The Players, at the top of the Sunset Strip, was ideal for Sturges's purpose, providing a place for movie industry pals to unwind - with him. The fabled Chateau Marmont was perched on the side of the hill directly behind The Players, with only a small lane separating the two. Across Sunset Blvd. was the famed Garden of Allah, the former mansion of silent screen star Alla Nazimova that had been converted into an exotic hotel/apartment complex. Together, the three formed a kind of "Golden Age of Hollywood Triangle" into which many film colony luminaries disappeared.

Chateau Marmont

Chateau Marmont, today a Los Angeles historical/cultural landmark, began life in 1929 as an upscale apartment building. It's fortunes fell with the stock market a few months later and in 1931 the building was sold and turned into a suites hotel. The new owner was Albert E. Smith, co-founder of American Vitagraph (purchased by Warner Bros. in 1925). Smith and his wife furnished the Chateau with pieces found at local estate sales and auctions, giving the hotel what is known as "the Marmont look." Over the years, the Chateau developed a reputation for its discretion in providing guests with maximum privacy. In 1939, Columbia Pictures president Harry Cohn famously advised rising stars William Holden and Glenn Ford, "If you must get in trouble, do it at Chateau Marmont." The Chateau's long history is filled with rumors and legends, among them: Clark Gable and Jean Harlow rendezvoused there, F. Scott Fitzgerald lived and wrote there, Vivien Leigh was a guest following her split with Laurence Olivier and covered the walls of her suite with pictures of him, script readings for Rebel Without a Cause were held in one of the hotel bungalows, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward met there...and on and on.

The Garden of Allah, Sunset Blvd., Hollywood

Alla Nazimova built a grand manor (dubbed The Garden of Alla) at 8152 Sunset Blvd. in 1919 when she was an extravagantly well-paid star of the silent screen. In the mid-'20s, as her career faded, she decided to develop the property into a hotel. 25 two-story villas were constructed on the grounds of the 3 1/2 acres surrounding her mansion and in January 1927 The Garden of Allah opened for business. It was an immediate success and was often, like Chateau Marmont, the first place Hollywood's new arrivals called home. The Garden of Allah also boasted a colorful history: Humphrey Bogart lived there first with his third wife Mayo Methot and later with fourth wife Lauren Bacall, Marlene Dietrich had a habit of swimming naked in the pool, Charles Laughton came home for lunch while filming The Hunchback of Notre Dame and stood in the pool careful to keep his face, in full Quasimodo makeup, out of the water. When in Hollywood, Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley and other members of New York's Algonquin "roundtable" lived and partied hard at The Garden of Allah...

Sturges and Lubitsch at The Players

There was never a shortage of famous names and faces in attendance at The Players. Many, like Orson Welles, Humphrey Bogart, Howard Hughes, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner and the Algonquin set were either staying up the hill at the Chateau or down the street at The Garden of Allah. Good friends of Sturges like William Wyler, Ernst Lubitsch, Barbara Stanwyck and Joel McCrea stopped in - as did friends of friends like Lana Turner (who came to celebrate her birthday as the guest of Howard Hughes). A visiting tourist of the time captured the allure of The Players with a postcard she sent home on which she gushed about dining at "the glamour spot of Hollywood" and sighting both Miriam Hopkins and Boris Karloff while eating "the best raspberry shortcake I ever had."

Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini (far right) at The Players

A good part of the enormous income Sturges earned at Paramount was lavished on The Players. The original redesign and reconstruction of the building had been expensive, but out-of-control operating costs along with constant renovations and additions prevented The Players from ever breaking even. In fact, it was such a drain on his finances that Barbara Stanwyck warned Sturges, "That goddamned greasy spoon is ruining you!"  The Players reached its zenith during the war years, with restaurants operating on all three levels and a barbershop on the mezzanine. A dinner theater/dance floor featuring a hydraulic revolving stage was installed and eventually even a hamburger stand was added. And there was the long-standing rumor that Sturges had gone to the trouble of building a tunnel beneath Marmont Lane connecting The Players to the Chateau so celebrities could  slip away discreetly - for clandestine affairs or simply to avoid the press and/or the police.

Filming Hail the Conquering Hero, a smash hit of 1944

Paramount Pictures ended its increasingly contentious relationship with Preston Sturges as 1943 came to a close.  Two of his most successful films, The Miracle of Morgan's Creek and Hail the Conquering Hero, were yet to be released but the studio had concluded that its brilliant but headstrong writer/director was more trouble than he was worth. Sturges optimistically and against all advice went on to form California Pictures with Howard Hughes. Following the collapse of that disastrous partnership, Sturges wrote and directed the last of his great films, Unfaithfully Yours, in 1948 for Darryl F. Zanuck at Twentieth Century Fox; it was unsuccessful. Sturges later looked back on his years in the movie business with some irony:

The only amazing thing about my career in Hollywood is that I ever had one at all.

Edwin Gillette, assistant to Sturges from 1937 - 1942, recalled that his boss loved to "play around" and "be the great raconteur, but he had to work to get the money to enjoy himself." With or without the money, Sturges was a profligate spender. His engineering company was sold after the war with proceeds going to the IRS. He was able to hold onto The Players until 1953 when the government put a lien on its income, auctioned off its contents and finally sold it to cover taxes and debts. Sturges lived six more years and died just before his 61st birthday while working on his memoirs at the Algonquin Hotel in New York. Coincidentally, two months earlier The Garden of Allah in Hollywood had been demolished.

Joel McCrea and Veronica Lake in Sullivan's Travels

But the site that housed The Players lived on, going through several incarnations in the decades that followed. Beginning in 1953 it was Imperial Gardens, a huge Japanese restaurant with reflecting pools on the upper floors, popular with musicians and actors. Next, in 1989, it re-emerged as The Roxbury, a trendy and notorious nightclub where patrons included Tom Cruise, Prince and Eddie Murphy. In 1997 it changed hands again and became Miyagi, a restaurant/nightclub with 7 sushi bars, 5 regular bars, a Zen garden, a waterfall, a dance floor, pool tables and more. In April 2012, it opened as Pink Taco, part of a Mexican restaurant chain owned by 30-year-old Harry Morton, son of Hard Rock Cafe chain founder Peter Morton and grandson of Arnie Morton, founder of the Morton's restaurant chain.

During the renovation of the property, restaurateur Morton managed to dig deep enough to find not only the revolving stage beneath Sturges' dance floor, but also the entrance to The Players' "legendary VIP tryst tunnel" to Chateau Marmont - apparently sealed off by the city long ago. According to Morton, he dug through layer upon layer of debris, "But when I stripped it all down, incredible things came to light."

Preston Sturges in front of The Players

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* "There's a lot to be said for making people laugh. Did you know that that's all some people have? It isn't much, but it's better than nothing in this cockeyed caravan." - John L. "Sully" Sullivan (Joel McCrea), Sullivan's Travels

Sources: Preston Sturges on Preston Sturges, Simon & Schuster (1990), Madcap by Donald Spoto, Little, Brown & Co. (1990), Romantic Comedy in Hollywood from Lubitsch to Sturges by James Harvey, Alfred A. Knopf (1987)

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