Free Hollywood Hellraisers by Robert Sellers

creators William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. Although the studios were far from the giants they once had been, they were still imposing places and Jack was intoxicated by the sheer vibe of working there. He’d visit sound stages and watch them shoot pictures, see stars like Bogart and Liz Taylor; ‘It was hog heaven for me.’ He once confessed to lying down flat on a studio lawn to get a good look at Lana Turner’s knickers as she boarded a coach. He even had the temerity to ask Joan Collins for a date; she turned him down.
    To this day Jack still recalls the day Marlon arrived on the MGM lot. The staff there were blasé about seeing movie stars, but every venetian blind flew up and all the secretaries stuck their heads out the window to take a peek at him. Jack even snuck onto the sound stage to watch up front and personal his hero in action.
    Moving out of June’s place, Jack rented a small apartment above a garage with an old school pal. They’d go out at night with like-minded souls, wasting hours over a cappuccino in the coffee bars of Sunset Strip talking about movies and worshipping their acting idols, Brando, Dean and Clift. They’d try to hit on girls, without success. At one nightclub Jack plucked up the courage to ask for a dance but rushed back minutes later. ‘I’ve got to find the men’s room.’ His friends were perplexed. ‘What happened?’ Jack explained. ‘I was dancing with this girl and she danced so damn close to me that I exploded in my pants!’
    Walking down a corridor one day at MGM Jack passed producer Joe Pasternak. ‘Hiya, Joe,’ he grinned. Pasternak paused, then said, ‘Hey, kid – how’d ya like to be in pictures?’ Yes, that really used to happen, you just had to be in the right place at the right time. For days Jack sweated over his audition, daring to dream of stardom. Reality hurt when it hit him: he wasn’t good enough, the test was a disaster and Nicholson was back on the mail run. His gawky, unconventional looks just didn’t fit in with the current emphasis on brooding Roman gods like Marlon and Rock Hudson. ‘Hiya, Joe,’ Jack greeted Pasternak in the corridor a few days after. The producer stopped for a moment, mulling over the earnest youth’s face. Then he spoke: ‘Hey — how’d ya like to be in pictures?’ Jack shrugged his shoulders over the fickle business he’d chosen to be a part of and walked away.
    Get up! Get up, you scum-suckin’ pig!
    Despite all the success Marlon Brando had enjoyed he remained a psychological mess. Sometimes he’d walk the streets till dawn or chat for hours on the phone with friends until succumbing to sleep. Financially things were looking precarious, too. In an effort to mend the relationship with his father he’d taken on Marlon Sr as a business manager, which was a recipe for disaster. When a cattle ranch the old man invested in went belly up the son needed money fast, so signed a contract to appear in a piece of historical nonsense called The Egyptian for 20th Century Fox, the first time he’d agreed to make ‘crap for money’. Then he read the script — ‘It was shit’ — and walked. The studio was incensed. Acting fast, Brando got his shrink to write a letter saying he couldn’t make the film because he was ‘mentally confused’. It was the ultimate sick note, but Fox weren’t buying it and sued Brando for breach of contract. A compromise was reached: Marlon would make another film for Fox, Desirée (1954), starring as Napoleon.
    Either he wasn’t interested in the role or it was the biggest sulk in movie history, but Marlon’s performance as the diminutive dictator was one big fat void. Critics and the public wholeheartedly agreed. At one screening Marlon’s Napoleon emoted on screen, ‘When did you stop loving me?’ To which one member of the audience heckled, ‘When you made this shit-kicker.’ Marlon’s spirits fell and he told a reporter he felt like giving up movies for a while and finding a