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As told to TOM WEAVER
The idea for The Underwater City started with my
wife Ruth Gordon, or "Ruth Alexander" as she called
herself professionally. In an issue of American Weekly,
she saw an article about scientists looking into the possibility
of a farm type of community on the floor of the ocean. The
idea was to build structures on land, tow them out to sea
and lower them to the bottom, where the inhabitants would
harvest the sea (fish, plant life and other edibles) to
provide food for the ever-increasing number of hungry people
in the world. Ruth said it might make a good movie -- she
was always finding things in the papers and coming
up with ideas. We had already done The Atomic Submarine
[1959], which dealt with bottom-of-the-ocean activity, so
we thought, "Well, maybe this might be a good one to
follow up with, if we can get a deal somewhere."
I went to my then-partner Orville H. Hampton, who had
already written Jet Attack and Submarine Seahawk
[both 1958] for me at American International, and had written
The Atomic Submarine. He thought it was an excellent
idea, and agreed to do an outline on speculation. At the
time, my agent was Lester Salkow, who handled Vincent Price
and other well-known names. When Hampton's outline was written,
I gave it to Salkow and he said he'd take it to Columbia,
to Irving Briskin, head of second-level productions. Salkow
had an "in" with Columbia, because of Vincent
Price -- Salkow made the deal for Price to be in Columbia's
The Tingler and other films.
An appointment was made and Orville Hampton, Salkow, Salkow's
"second in command" Maury Calder and I had what
I thought was a very nice meeting. Briskin called himself
the King of the Bs because he was in charge of the second
level unit there -- the Westerns and the second features.
Making some small talk, I threw out all kinds of things
that I knew about the early days of Columbia Pictures, because
I knew that Briskin had been there since the early '30s.
Later on in life, I realized that those things don't really
mean anything to these people -- they don't care
about the past, just their position within the company and
what they're doing now.
Once we got down to business, we talked budget and schedule
and so on. Briskin was "sounding us out" and trying
to figure, very roughly, what kind of budget category the
picture would fall into. Finally, Briskin offered two options.
If I would let Columbia producer Charles Schneer produce
The Underwater City under his banner (I would be
"associate producer"), they would give The
Underwater City a budget of $650,000. If I insisted
on producing it myself, then we would get a much smaller
budget, 350,000. I said, "I have made about 18 pictures,
American International and Allied Artists and so on, and
so I certainly would like to be the producer on this."
Briskin said okay. When the question of black-and-white
or color came up, there was an immediate mutual agreement
that it had to be in color, especially as there was
going to be bottom-of-the-ocean activity in it.
Hampton and I formed a company called Neptune Productions
to make this picture with Columbia. My salary as producer
was $5000. Hampton began writing the script, and when he
was done, which didn't take very long, Columbia did budget
the picture at $350,000. A budget of $350,000 meant that
we had six days of principal photography, and then a few
weeks of special effects. When they asked who I would get
to do the special effects, the miniatures of the underwater
city and so on, I said Howard Anderson and his company,
who had a very good reputation for such work. And, to lay
it out and oversee it, Howard Lydecker, one of the top special
effects men in the business. They approved that.
For director, I suggested Edward L. Cahn, who had directed
several of my films at AIP. Columbia agreed to Eddie, so
Hampton and I went to see him at Edward Small Productions,
located on the Sam Goldwyn lot. Eddie said he'd love
to do it with us, but he had an exclusive deal for about
a dozen B pictures at Edward Small and he really didn't
have the time to do an outside picture. I next pitched Spencer
Bennet to Columbia and they nixed him. Bennet had done many
Westerns and serials, and they felt he was too identified
with B product. At that point, I suggested Frank McDonald.
I knew McDonald personally, he'd directed a lot of Gene
Autry's Westerns -- not only features but also TV episodes.
He was a very nice guy and very efficient, and I knew we
would have no problem with him. (And I knew he would give
me no trouble on casting [laughs]!) We met with him, and
he said he'd be very pleased to do it, and Columbia approved
him.
When it came to the casting session, I had to go through
Max Arnow, who had been the casting director at Columbia
for many years. I suggested Richard Denning, whom I had
worked with on Day the World Ended and Girls in
Prison [both 1956] and who I knew would be very reliable.
But Arnow rejected the idea, even though Denning had worked
for Columbia not only in leads but then later in second
leads, supporting people like George Montgomery and so on.
Arnow wanted somebody a little "stronger" for
the lead. He soon began sending actors 'round to see me,
and one of them was Glenn Corbett. Columbia had Corbett
under contract, and they were willing to go with him in
the lead because they were trying to "build" him.
I thought he was capable of doing a good job, but I had
to tell him, "This is my first picture for Columbia,
and I really do need a more identifiable 'name.' I'm not
trying to insult you, and I'm sure that you'll go far."
He said he understood perfectly.
After I turned down Corbett, and a couple of others who
Arnow suggested, Arnow started throwing around crazy names
like Joel McCrea and George Hamilton and a few others in
that bracket. It made absolutely no sense -- I even said
to him, "We can't possibly afford these kind
of names on a budget of $350,000. We've got to get somebody
who's $10,000 tops." (Actually, I'm sure Arnow
had no intention of actually trying to get those people
-- I think he was just "grandstanding" a little
bit.) Finally, at a meeting, Irving Briskin said, "Well,
how 'bout William Lundigan? Lundigan did that TV series
Men into Space and he's identified with science fiction."
I didn't know Lundigan personally, but I'd always thought
he was all right on the screen -- nothing special, but "all
right" -- and certainly a "medium" type of
name. I said, "Okay, why don't Hampton and I have lunch
with William Lundigan and his agent, and see if he would
be interested?" So we did, we met for lunch at the
Nickodell, a hangout for the "movie crowd" on
Melrose, just around the corner from Paramount. And, yes,
Lundigan was interested and said that he would do
it. I'm pretty sure his salary was less than 10,000, but
then, it was a six-day picture.
Next it came to casting the girl. I don't know if Nancy
Kovack was Max Arnow's girlfriend or not, but it seemed
she was around all the time, and he had her come in. She
was very nice, but I said, "She's not a name.
Yes, she's played supporting roles in a couple of Columbia
pictures, but I really think that, even though this is a
low-budget picture, we need some sort of a name that is
recognizable." I wanted Audrey Dalton, but she was
at this time too expensive. Finally, somebody mentioned
Julie Adams, and as soon as they did, I said, "Oh,
yes! If we can get her for the price, I would be delighted
with Julie Adams." They had her come in, and she was
very, very nice. I remember discussing with her the six
pictures she did simultaneously for Ron Ormond [in 1949],
six Westerns with James Ellison and Russell Hayden in which,
acting under the name Betty Adams, she was the leading lady.
They shot six pictures all at the same time with the identical
cast! Anyway, Julie Adams agreed to do The Underwater
City.
Now it came to casting the older scientist, and I offered
it to Basil Rathbone. I didn't know him personally, but
I thought he would be a good choice for that role. And I
got a very, very nice letter from Basil Rathbone,
which I still have, in which he thanked me profusely for
thinking of him, and said he would love to do it, but then
went on to say that he was just taking off on a one-man
lecture tour of colleges that would take him out of the
area for three months or longer. We now began kicking other
names around, and one agent said, "How 'bout Raymond
Massey?" Raymond Massey was one of his clients. I said
[with disbelief], "Why, you don't think Raymond Massey
is going to do a six-day picture?" The agent said,
"He's back East right now and he isn't doing ANYthing.
As long as you stop for half an hour at four o'clock every
afternoon and serve him tea -- he's an English gentleman
and likes to have his tea -- he'll do it. $7500 a week."
I said, "My GOD, just $7500 for Raymond Massey? Certainly!"
-- I jumped at it!
Now I had my interview with the man who used to say, "You
have nothing to fear but Fier himself!": Jack Fier,
the production manager at Columbia. He was a tough-talking
old-timer, a John Ford type, loud and intimidating. I'd
heard horror stories about him, so in order to perhaps mollify
him a little bit, perhaps ingratiate myself with him, the
first time I met him, I brought in a bunch of pressbooks
from Mascot serials (I knew that he had in the early '30s
worked on the Mascot serials). I wanted him to know that
I knew his background, that I knew he had worked on those
serials and he had produced the Tim McCoy films at Columbia
and I said I knew Tim McCoy and so on. That sort of softened
him -- but only temporarily! He didn't really "fall"
for all that, but at least he acknowledged it! A
short time later, just a couple of days before shooting
was scheduled to start, Fier had the whole crew in to give
them a pep talk -- like Gen. Patton would do before the
Battle of the Bulge! It was right at Columbia, in one of
the meeting rooms, and I would say there were about 30 of
us there altogether, crew members and so on. He told everybody
that they'd better shape up if they ever wanted to work
at Columbia again; "If you think that the Army was
rough, you haven't seen anything yet!"; he said that
what he says goes, never mind about listening
to anybody else; and, of course, "You have nothing
to fear but Fier himself!" -- which he said sort of
jokingly. He was a tough hombre, but I guess he knew his
stuff. I felt like I was back in the Army with my sergeant
major!
A day or two before the picture was due to start, we had
our first problem: Raymond Massey was on his way out to
Hollywood from New York when suddenly there were weather
problems, and the plane had to be diverted to Boston. All
of a sudden, it was going to take an extra day for him to
get out here. Irving Briskin announced that he certainly
wasn't going to "shoot around" Massey or change
anything, and so we would have to get somebody else to play
the part. And then he pushed in Carl Benton Reid. Reid was
a very good actor, certainly nothing wrong with him, very
nice guy -- but there's a vast difference between having
Raymond Massey in a picture, and Carl Benton Reid!
The second problem came on the first day of shooting.
I got there a couple of hours ahead of time, and as the
morning progressed, we realized we couldn't find William
Lundigan -- that he wasn't there! An hour later, I finally
found him in his dressing room, just sitting there, completely
unprepared, and he had the most tremendous hangover. He
hadn't read the script, he didn't know any lines, he didn't
know Anything He said, "I'm not feeling well this morning
... I don't know whether I can do this..." I said,
"Listen, you gotta come out..." I was absolutely
frantic, because this was the first day of shooting -- what
was I going to DO? I don't remember if I called Frank McDonald
in or not, I MAY have; I know I wasn't alone in pushing
him out there onto the set. Of course he still didn't know
his lines, and McDonald had to feed him his lines.
And so it went throughout the picture: Lundigan was always
late coming on set and always, when he stepped into the
scene, he wasn't ready with his lines. He blamed it all
on, "I don't know what's wrong with me ... I must have
the flu ... ", but it was obvious he'd been drinking.
We lost hour after hour when he couldn't do his stuff. It
was an absolute disaster.
For scenes of the actors walking on the ocean floor, we
shot on Columbia's Stage 33. It was a large soundstage,
perfectly dry, of course, but "dressed" to look
like the bottom of the ocean. The set was impressive-looking
in person, because it covered most of the stage. The camera
shot through a large fish tank in which we had some very
small fish swimming; to heighten the effect, there was a
continuously revolving paddle in the tank, stirring the
water in order to create a bit of a ripple effect. Lights
were reflected off huge tinfoil flats, suspended from the
stage ceiling and rolled slightly. This bathed the entire
set in what looked like reflected rays of the sun, so familiar
underwater. To complete the illusion, we also had the actors
walking in slow motion. Between the set dressing and the
tank and the fish and the reflected light and the slow-motion
actors, we actually did achieve the effect that they were
on the bottom of the ocean. (Incidentally, some of the diving
equipment that the actors wore, and a few other things on
the underwater set, were supplied by Jon Hall, who by this
time had retired from acting -- he was now developing underwater
camera equipment, renting out stock footage and so forth.)
Again, however, there was trouble. I believe we began
shooting these ocean floor scenes on the third day -- and
Lundigan refused to get into his diving outfit. As usual,
he said he just wasn't up to it, he kept saying he wasn't
feeling well. He even refused to come out of his dressing
room. So I called for a double. And then Lundigan had the
effrontery to call the Screen Actors Guild and have a representative
come out to Columbia and threaten to fine us, because
there was another actor there in his part when he, Lundigan,
could and should be doing it! It was ridiculous! I told
the Guild guy, "YOU get him out there. WE can't get
him out of his dressing room, he doesn't know his lines
-- how the hell can we shoot with him in this condition?"
"He'll be all right, he'll be all right," the Guild guy
said. "You've got to use the actor if he's able to play
the part..." So on the other days of shooting on the ocean
floor set, we had to use Lundigan, even though it took forever
to get that outfit on him. (At least when he was in that
diving outfit, he didn't have any dialogue.) I don't know
if the Screen Actors Guild actually did make Columbia pay
a fine -- they said they would. I'm sure Columbia
was probably very well "in" with SAG and probably worked
it out some way, and it wouldn't have been a large fine
in any case. But it caused a problem on the set.
There was an additional problem on the ocean floor set.
The actors' air tanks produced helium-filled bubbles that
rose up into the air, and the effect was marvelous. The
problem, the thing that nobody anticipated was that they
would then come back down again! We had bubbles coming
out of these tanks, and it looked very realistic, but then
as the scene continued, suddenly you saw the bubbles dropping
down again, and everybody was saying, "What the hell
is that?" We had to put men up in the rafters
of the soundstage with fans to blow the bubbles away before
they could come back down into the scene. That took us a
little while to solve, but it turned out all right.
Jack Fier never came on the set, but he had a second assistant
director reporting to him every hour whether we were behind
schedule or if there was a problem and this and that and
so on. That was very, very awkward, a tough situation to
be in. It was like a police state, everybody was watching
us all the time! But before everything started going downhill,
with Lundigan and with this second assistant director and
all, I loved being at Columbia. Every day I looked
out of the window of my office, overlooking the Columbia
lot, and it was amazing to me: "Here I am in an office
at Columbia, producing a picture!" And, another nice
experience: The Three Stooges were shooting on the set next
to us, so it gave me an opportunity to meet Moe Howard.
Larry Fine I just sort of said hello to -- he was always
off to Vegas, gambling and so on. But Moe I talked to almost
every day. Actually, he came on our set and he wanted
to know what we were doing and so on. I was absolutely dumbfounded:
Here I'm standing, talking to somebody who looks
like Moe, and yet he talks like the most creative
kind of producer-writer-all-around-filmmaker. Obviously,
I knew that he wasn't going to be like he was in his movies,
but I also didn't expect this. If you closed your
eyes, you'd think you were talking to any one of the Hollywood
big shots. It was very, very impressive, the way he knew
the business inside out. He was a remarkable person.
Instead of going six days, Underwater City went
seven days, a day over schedule, which everybody was very
unhappy about. It was Lundigan who caused the delay -- nobody
else held us up in any way. Well, we did have that
little problem with the bubbles, but we solved that very
quickly. So that alone would not have caused it, it was
strictly Lundigan. With him refusing to come out of his
dressing room and never knowing his lines, we just kept
going behind and behind and behind -- I remember Frank McDonald
was going out of his mind. Lundigan was responsible, completely
responsible, for the delay and the extra day. It was nothing
but a hassle with him.
Now it was time for the special effects guys to start
shooting the effects footage. We'd made a deal with Howard
Anderson and Co. to do the special effects under Howard
Lydecker's supervision. Lydecker was absolutely great. He
did the special effects on most Republic pictures, everything
from S.O.S. Tidal Wave [1939] to serials and Westerns,
he and his brother Theodore. Howard had the whole layout,
every shot storyboarded -- there was a completely detailed
storyboard, down to the tiniest thing, in his office at
Columbia, which was next to mine. He knew exactly what he
was going to do all along the way.
I don't remember how long the post-production special
effects took -- maybe about six weeks. Not awfully long,
but certainly longer than the principal photography on the
picture! The destruction of the underwater city and the
scenes of the octopus and the giant eel, those were shot
by Howard Anderson in a tank in Santa Monica. The octopus
and the eel, they didn't hurt each other in their fight
scene, they just sort of swam against each other and so
on, but neither one was hurt. (The octopus stuff was not
all that exciting, but at least it was there!) I wasn't
there for the shooting of any of that, but I was
on the set every minute at the studio and at the Columbia
Ranch.
Ronald Stein did the music score for The Underwater
City -- I remember I had to put up a little bit of a
fight for him, but I'm glad I did. Briskin said, "Look,
we've got George Duning here at Columbia, he's our music
director. Why not use him?" I said, "It
would be very expensive to do it the way Duning would do
it, with a big orchestra and 'scoring to picture' and so
on. [Editor's note: When "scoring to picture,"
the orchestra performs the score while the scene for which
each piece of music was written is projected on a screen
behind them.] Ronnie Stein does it without 'scoring to picture.'
He looks at the movie on a Moviola and he times every sequence
where he will write music, and then he goes away and he
does it all. He doesn't have to 'score to picture.'"
I won Briskin over that way, I said, "We just don't
have the budget," and he gave in. Briskin insisted,
though, that we use a studio orchestra -- Ronnie couldn't
go down to Mexico or anywhere else on The Underwater
City, Columbia being a signatory to the guilds and all
that. So Ronnie Stein conducted the studio orchestra.
When we finally got to the end of the picture, I thought
it wasn't bad. Briskin looked at the rough cut and made
some comments, I forget now what they were, but nothing
disparaging. He thought it was all right for a co-feature.
Columbia was going to put it out with The Three Stooges
Meet Hercules [1962] -- Hercules was supposed
to be the companion picture, because it was in black-and-white,
and Underwater City was supposed to be the top of
the bill. Or at least equal-billed. Anyway, we had Underwater
City all done and Irving Briskin approved it, and now
it was supposed to be shown to Sam Briskin, Irving's brother,
who was head of production on a higher level there.
The screening for Sam Briskin was an absolute disaster.
Irving was not present -- it was just Sam and me in the
Columbia executive screening room. He blew his top: "We
can't release the picture this way! It doesn't have enough
action, it doesn't have this, it doesn't have that.
It needs all kinds of things." And he told me,
"Put together about ten minutes of stock shots from
other pictures, real disaster footage and creatures and
all that sort of thing, and we'll put that on at the front
of the picture, or work it in SOME where with some narration
over it. Maybe then we can release the picture."
When I came away from that encounter, of course, I could
hardly walk! Here Irving had approved it,
and Sam said it was unreleasable!
It took me about a week to scour every stock shot library
in town. I borrowed everything from Cecil B. DeMille's Reap
the Wild Wind [1942] on down, and I got a terrific ten-minute
reel of action and ships being crushed and just EVERYthing
-- it was absolutely great. And Sam Briskin told me, "Well,
we'll let you know about this..."
That was on a Friday. And the following Monday, I found
out that The Underwater City is already playing,
I forget where, somewhere on the West Coast -- and in
black-and-white! Here, I'd been working on this reel
of action for a week or longer, of course getting all color
footage, and then I come to find out it's already playing
and it's playing in black-and-white! (And I had a contract
that specified that it would be in color.) It had opened
somewhere "solo," and then went out as the second
feature to The Three Stooges Meet Hercules instead
of the other way around!
I went to see it in a theater, and sure enough it was
in black-and-white. It looked completely washed-out in black-and-white
because (naturally) the underwater stuff had been shot as
though for color, and "timed" for color. When
you see that in black-and-white, it's just like running
off a black-and-white print of a color picture. In the bottom-of-the-ocean
scenes, you couldn't see the bubbles, you couldn't see Anything
distinctly -- there was no real contrast. Hampton went by
himself and saw it too. That's when we decided we would
sue. The picture's box office potential had obviously been
"damaged," you could tell that from the bookings
that it got. The bookings it didn't get, I should
say!
I got in touch with my lawyer Irwin Spiegel, and we tried
to get Columbia to give us an explanation. Well, they said,
they didn't want to spend the money on color prints, this
and that, so on and so forth. Anyway, the end result was
that we had to sue them -- I wasn't going to stand
for this. So "Neptune Productions" sued Columbia, and the
thing dragged on for about five years. Then Spiegel lost
interest because he was working on spec, and eventually
the statute of limitations simply ran out. By then, of course,
I'd started getting reports on the picture, and we were
deeper in the hole every time a report came in. Finally
Columbia just stopped sending reports altogether, they told
us it really wasn't worth it because no money was coming
in on it. So that's how that situation ended.
Needless to say, Columbia didn't pick up my option. I
had a six-picture deal, but they canceled that. So I was
"out" of Columbia, and that was the end of the
saga of The Underwater City. I was glad that eventually
it began playing on TV in color, and if it ever comes out
on home video, I hope it will be in color. Naturally, I
want my stuff to be seen in the best possible light.
It's not one of my favorites amongst my movies, it's way
down on the list. Hampton, Salkow and I hoped for much more,
and we hoped we might get a multiple picture deal out of
it. We thought this might help us get into a slightly higher
bracket. With all the problems that we had, and the end
results, it was a very disappointing experience. But we
had embarked on it with the best of intentions -- I still
remember how very excited my wife Ruth was when she saw
the article about the underwater farm community. Which is
a notion that keeps popping up, it's never a dead issue
for long. It comes up from time to time, and then it's dormant,
and then it comes up Again. In fact, just last week [May
2002] it was on the radio -- somebody in the House or Senate
brought it up, they were talking about trying to figure
out how they could farm the ocean floor, to alleviate world
hunger. It's definitely an ongoing thing in the various
think tanks, but I guess they haven't yet figured out how
to do it properly, and "at a price." We've always
thought that this is one idea that should certainly be followed
up and investigated.
Tom Weaver wrote the liner notes for the upcoming CD featuring
music from the original The Fly, Return of the
Fly, and Curse of the Fly, available from Percepto
Records: http://www.percepto.com/projects/008/index.html
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