Once Upon a Time in Hollywood Page 10

  Seven months later, after Rick returned from the Marvin Schwarz–arranged trip to Italy, with a brand-spanking-new Italian wife, he would get a call from his old mentor-director Paul Wendkos. They hadn’t talked in three years, and Rick was glad to hear from him.

  “Hello,” Rick said into the phone receiver.

  “Dalton, you ol’ sack, it’s Wendkos.”

  “Hey, Paul, how ya doin’?”

  “How am I doin’, how the hell are you doin’?” Wendkos said. “I heard some fuckin’ hippies busted in your place and you went all Mike Lewis on them.”

  Rick gave a humble no-big-deal kinda laugh and said, “All I did was realize the distance between me and Mike Lewis. He kills a hundred and fifty Nazis and doesn’t change his expression. I torched one small hippie girl and I practically shit my pants.”

  “Well, honestly, Rick,” Paul said, “when Lewis killed those guys and his expression didn’t change, that wasn’t because he was so brave. It was because you can’t act.”

  They both laughed it up on each side of the phone.

  What Wendkos was referring to: No sooner did Rick and his new bride arrive from Rome to his house in Benedict Canyon than three hippies (two girls and a guy) broke into his home, brandishing butcher knives and a pistol, threatening his family. Rick and Cliff made short order of the housebreakers, killing all three in a brutal fight. Cliff, in the living room, protecting Rick’s new wife, Francesca, bashed in the faces of the guy and one of the girls. Rick, who was in his floaty chair in the swimming pool at the time of the attack, was almost shot by the hippie girl with the pistol. He later told authorities, “That goddamn hippie almost blew my fuckin’ head off!”

  And in a scene straight out of Wendkos’s picture The Fourteen Fists of McCluskey, Rick set the assailant on fire with the practice flamethrower left over from McCluskey, which he had in his toolshed. (“I burnt that goddamn hippie to a crisp,” he later told his neighbor.)

  What the armed intruders’ intentions were was never made clear. But their intentions sounded both deadly and evil. When Cliff asked the male intruder what he wanted, the young man invoked Satan, saying, “I’m the devil, and I’ve come here to do the devil’s business.”

  The LAPD theorized the hippie intruders were frying on acid and were out to perform a Satanic ritual. What isn’t a matter of theory is, those fucking hippies sure picked the wrong house.

  The next day, Rick’s adventures hit the news, and it became the talk of the town. It went from local news to the network evening news and finally the world. Something about Jake Cahill killing three long-haired hippie bad guys with his flamethrower from The Fourteen Fists of McCluskey just seized the imagination. Till pretty soon the whole ghastly night of violence became heavy with symbolic weight—turning Rick, the former TV cowboy, into a folkloric hero of Nixon’s “silent majority.”

  All this newfound attention wasn’t lost on the industry either. Shortly afterward, Dalton was offered a guest-star gig on one of the biggest shows on TV, Bruce Geller’s Mission: Impossible. After the flamethrower incident, TV Guide did an inside profile on him (his third profile in the magazine). And he was asked to appear for the first time on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Rick proved a big hit in Johnny’s guest chair. And throughout the seventies, Carson had him back on whenever Dalton had a film role, TV movie, high-profile guest shot, or new series to promote. Dalton later confessed to his buddy Cliff, “All in all, those goddamn hippies did me a favor.”

  Paul Wendkos wasn’t just calling Rick up to shoot the shit. He was making the phone call that every actor wants to get. He was calling about Rick’s availability. The director was just about to start filming a World War Two programmer based out of England and to be shot in Malta. And not only had the hippie flamethrower incident raised Dalton’s profile, but it also raised the profile of the Wendkos film The Fourteen Fists of McCluskey.

  Wendkos was preparing a film for a small British production company called Oakmont Productions, which had an international distribution deal through MGM. Oakmont specialized in modestly budgeted World War Two action-adventure vehicles featuring British casts, except for the lead, who was usually an American actor known from television. Some examples were Boris Sagal’s The Thousand Plane Raid starring Christopher (Rat Patrol) George; Mosquito Squadron starring David (Man from U.N.C.L.E.) McCallum; Billy Graham’s Submarine X-1, starring a pre-Godfather, post-El Dorado James Caan; Walter Grauman’s The Last Escape, starring Stuart (Cimarron Strip) Whitman; and Wendkos’s Attack on the Iron Coast, starring Lloyd (Sea Hunt) Bridges. Wendkos was gearing up to do one more, a Navy-based adventure with the pulpy title Hell Boats. The movie was initially set to star the blond television actor James (Mr. Novak) Franciscus. But when Franciscus’s starring role in Twentieth Century Fox’s Beneath the Planet of the Apes went over schedule, Wendkos was forced to go looking for another TV-famous American. And just like he did on McCluskey when he lost Fabian due to a broken shoulder, Wendkos thought of Rick Dalton. So next thing Rick knew, he and Cliff were on a plane flying to London, then Malta, for a five-week shoot on Hell Boats.

  All the Oakmont Productions were pretty much the same, with Mosquito Squadron and Attack on the Iron Coast being the pick of the litter. But for what they were, they weren’t bad. They were pretty entertaining if unmemorable potboilers. When Hell Boats played theatrically in America in 1970, it was on the lower half of a double feature with Phil (Hellfire, Texas) Karlson’s exciting Italian-made World War Two action flick Hornets’ Nest, with Rock Hudson and Sylva Koscina. Which pretty much had the exact same story as The Fourteen Fists of McCluskey, except instead of Rod Taylor leading a gang of brutes to blow up a dam and flood a Nazi stronghold, it was Rock Hudson leading a band of war-orphaned children to blow up a dam and flood a Nazi stronghold. All in all, a pretty entertaining night at the movies in 1970.

  Along with another lead role in a studio production, Hell Boats offered Dalton a chance to reestablish his relationship with director and mentor Paul Wendkos. And Wendkos wasted no time plugging Dalton into his next picture. A few years earlier, when Wendkos was making for the Mirisch Company the third of their Magnificent Seven movies, he wanted Dalton for what in essence was the McQueen part. But since Rick was stuck over at Universal working alongside an aquatic rodent, he had to pass. Wendkos did such a good job with that assignment, the Mirisch Company offered Paul the fourth film in the series, at the time titled Cannons for the Magnificent Seven. The script was written by Stephen Kandel, who also wrote Wendkos’s film Battle of the Coral Sea, which was where Dalton first worked with the filmmaker. The script deals with the character of Chris (Yul Brynner in the first two films and George Kennedy in Wendkos’s third flick) and his six other compadres fighting a Mexican bandit who poses as a revolutionary named Córdoba. Córdoba’s army is one hundred men strong, and he has six cannons he swiped from the United States military.

  Chris and his Magnificent Seven, sent by none other than General John J. Pershing, were to go into Mexico, infiltrate Córdoba’s impenetrable fortress, destroy the cannons, capture Córdoba, and bring him back to the United States to stand trial. Like General Pershing tells Chris, sounding similar to one of Jim Phelps’s self-destructing tapes on Mission: Impossible, “If you agree to go, you’ll be without authority, without orders, without uniforms. If you’re caught, you’ll be shot.” The whole story has a western Mission: Impossible vibe, which shouldn’t be surprising since Kandel was the head story editor on that series at that time. When Kandel was writing his script, he just assumed big George Kennedy would be reprising his role as team leader Chris. All through the screenplay, his prose kept referring to Chris’s behemoth-like stature. But once the writer turned in the script to the Mirisch brothers, they liked it so much, they figured they could do better than George Kennedy. Instead, they offered the film to George Peppard. Peppard responded to the material, but with a caveat. He’d be damned if he was going to be the third guy in the fourth Magnificent Seven film
to play Chris. So he instructed them to lose The Magnificent Seven connection and name his character anything other than Chris. Kandel rewrote the script, and Peppard’s character went from Chris to Rod. And the team went from the Magnificent Seven to the Magnificent Five. And the title was changed to Cannon for Cordoba. Wendkos offered Dalton the part of the second-most-important team member, Jackson Harkness. However, this time the second-lieutenant role wasn’t a McQueen copy. Rod and Jackson shared a similar dynamic with Gregory Peck and Anthony Quinn in The Guns of Navarone. Dalton’s Jackson blames Peppard’s Rod, his former friend, for the death of his brother. While Rick’s character agrees to go on the mission to Mexico to destroy Córdoba and his cannons, Jackson vows to kill Rod—if they live through it.

  While all through the sixties it bugged Dalton to be in McQueen’s shadow, it really stuck a weed up his ass to be in Peppard’s. However, by this late date, the two former swinging dicks had been sufficiently humbled. The two men got along in Mexico both on screen and off. They matched up well together, and the antagonistic dynamic between them had real power. In fact, Peppard later got Dalton to guest on his TV series Banacek.

  But it was another actor in Cannon for Cordoba that Rick Dalton really hit it off with. Pete Duel was a handsome thirty-one-year-old actor, who had already acted in two television series. He played Gidget’s brother-in-law opposite Sally Field on Gidget. And he starred in a sitcom titled Love on a Rooftop alongside Burt Reynolds’s wife, Judy Carne. He was part of the team’s Magnificent Five. Two years later he would become an exciting TV star with his hit western series on ABC, Alias Smith and Jones (a TV-series knockoff of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. But a really really good knockoff). Dalton and Duel, on location in Mexico, both enjoyed drinking tequila, chasing Mexican poontang, bitching about Hollywood, and each other’s company. But they shared something else, something neither knew intellectually but both sensed internally. Both Dalton and Duel were undiagnosed bipolar. And drinking alcohol was their only form of self-medication. But since neither man knew this, to them their drinking was a sign of internal weakness.

  But Pete Duel was far worse than Rick, culminating with—at the height of his Alias Smith and Jones success—Pete Duel shooting himself in the middle of the night. The whole town wondered why Duel did it. But Rick, in his heart of hearts, felt he knew the answer. After Duel’s death in 1971, Dalton would do the hard work it took to not lean so heavily on booze. By 1973, when Dalton shot the revenge western The Deadly Trackers opposite Richard Harris in Durango, Mexico, both men (heavy drinkers) had reached an equilibrium while on location. They stayed off the sauce Monday through Thursday. But starting on Friday night into Sunday afternoon, the two men drank enough tequila, sangria, margaritas, and Bloody Marys to float a boat.

  As Rick looks into his bathroom mirror, putting the final touches on his pompadour, he hears Cliff’s Karmann Ghia zoom up into his driveway. He looks at the watch on his wrist: seven-fifteen on the dot. While barfing when he woke up initially made him feel better, it didn’t clean out his pipes completely. There’s still enough of last night’s old booze swirling around in his stomach to keep his belly feeling ill, his face sweaty, and his complexion a little green. He’s just going to have to nurse coffee and smoke cigarettes till about one or two in the afternoon. But, Jesus Christ, Rick thinks, that’s seven hours from now? I bet James fuckin’ Stacy ain’t startin’ his first day on his new TV show hungover as fuck.

  He looks at himself in the bathroom mirror and says out loud, “And you fuckin’ wonder why CBS is starring him in a new series and not you! Because they think that prick’s got potential. The only potential you got is potentially fucking up your life!”

  Cliff knocks on his front door. Rick yells from the bathroom, “Yeah, I’m comin’!” He takes one more look at the pathetic fuckup in his bathroom mirror. “Don’t worry, Rick,” he says intimately to his reflection, “it’s the first day. It’s gonna take ’em a while to get their shit together. Just take it one cup of coffee at a time.” Then, putting on his “show must go on” face, he pumps himself up by saying Jackie Gleason’s catchphrase at the time, “And away we go!” Before he exits the bathroom, he spits in the sink, then looks down and sees a little red blood mixed in with the saliva. Rick examines the spit wad closer and asks, “Now what?”

  7:10 A.M.

  Squeaky’s filthy petite bare feet pad their way across the dirty cracked linoleum floor of George’s kitchen, over the dusty wood boards of the living room, and down the matted carpet of the hallway leading to George’s bedroom at the end of the corridor. She knocks on the door and says cheerfully, “Good morning.”

  She hears bedsprings squeak as the old man rustles awake. Then, after a moment, she hears his grumpy voice come from the other side of the door.

  “Yeah?”

  She asks, “Can I come in, George?”

  Old man Spahn has his de rigueur morning coughing fit, then says a phlegmy “Come in, sweetheart.”

  She twists the doorknob and steps inside the eighty-year-old man’s stuffy bedroom. George, lying under the covers in his bed, turns in the young girl’s direction. Squeaky leans against the doorframe, balances her right foot against her left knee, and tells the old man, “Good morning, honey, I’ve got eggs cooking on the stove. Do you want Jimmy Dean sausage or Farmer John bacon?”

  “Jimmy Dean,” says the old man.

  She continues with her questions: “Do you want to eat breakfast casual and comfortable, or would you like me to help you get dressed and make y’all handsome?”

  George thinks about it for a moment, then decides, “I think I’d like to get dressed.”

  A smile breaks across her pixieish face. “Ahh, trying to steal my heart, getting all spruced up.”

  “Stop it,” George grunts.

  She instructs him, “Lay back down for a second, honey. I’ll take the eggs off the stove and come back and get you lookin’ all sharp.” Squeaky adds, “You’ll melt all the girls’ hearts, you handsome devil.”

  “Stop teasing me, honey,” George whines.

  “Oh, you love it,” Squeaky flirts, as she heads back up the hallway, through the living room, and into the kitchen, removing the bubbling eggs in the frying pan from the stove burner. She walks over to the General Electric radio plugged into the wall on the kitchen counter and switches it on. Barbara Fairchild’s heartbreaking novelty country hit The Teddy Bear Song fills the kitchen.

  I wish I had button eyes and a red felt nose

  Shaggy cotton skin and just one set of clothes

  Sittin’ on a shelf in a local department store

  With no dreams to dream and nothing to be sorry for

  Whenever George is awake, the radio is always playing KZLA, Los Angeles’s country music station.

  I wish I was a teddy bear

  Not living nor lovin’ or goin’ nowhere

  I wish I was a teddy bear

  And I’m wishin’ that I hadn’t fallen in love with you

  It’s been Squeaky’s job to take care of this blind old man for the last few months. The man who leads her commune, Charlie, impressed on her how important her job was. After their Family had moved all around Los Angeles like a nomadic tribe for months, George Spahn’s old western movie set and ranch finally offered them a home. A home from which they could lay down roots and test Charlie’s societal theories, expand their numbers, and, who knows, hopefully create a new world order.

  She was to be the blind old man’s cook, his nurse, his friendly companion, and if she wouldn’t mind masturbating him every once in a while, that would go a long way to securing “the Family’s” position on the ranch. Or, as Charlie said as he broke the news to the twenty-one-year-old, “Sometimes, kiddo, ya gotta take one for the team.”

  The night Charlie told her she was going to have to jack this old man off periodically, and maybe do even more than that, was the only time during her tenure with Charles Manson she ever considered hightailing it back to San Franci
sco and maybe patching things up with her parents. But then a funny thing happened that Squeaky never could have foreseen. She fell in love with this blind old bastard. Not Romeo-and-Juliet type of love, but a deep love nevertheless. This grouchy old bastard wasn’t really a bastard at all. He was just lonely and forgotten.

  The industry that used his ranch to make their B-westerns and TV shows for four decades had forgotten him. His family had forgotten him, leaving him to die in a dilapidated rat trap amongst horseshit and hay. Squeaky offered the old man the one thing that his socked-away money couldn’t buy. A loving touch, a sweet voice, and a sensitive ear. When Squeaky told George, or anybody else, she loved the old man, that wasn’t just hippie singsong. That was Squeaky sincerely expressing her inner emotions about the old man it was her pleasure to look after.

  When she returns to the bedroom, she helps the blind old man get into a crisp white western-style shirt, then she does up the little buttons. She holds out some tan slacks that he steps into one leg at a time. The young caretaker ties a western bolo tie around his stiff shirt collar. And combs the wispy white hair on his head with a brush. Then, taking him by the wrist and elbow, she assists him through the house toward the kitchen table. As they make their way at George’s slow steady pace, Squeaky tells him, “Now see, you look so handsome. I’m such a lucky girl that you always want to look so attractive for me.”

  “Stop teasing me,” George mock-complains.

  “Who’s teasing?” Squeaky asks. “You know breakfast tastes better when you put in the effort to take care of yourself.”

  She eases the old man into a chair at the kitchen table. She lays her hands on his stooped shoulders and asks in his ear, “Sanka or Postum?”

  “Postum,” says George.

  “I swear, you’re gonna turn into a cup of Postum,” Squeaky kids. “Now, I started making scrambled eggs ’cause that’s what I’ve made lately. But maybe you’re getting tired of that and would like something different?”