SELF-MADE MOGUL HANGS ON : Joseph E. Levine, 82, Is Still Wheeling and Dealing

Joseph E. Levine is a pirate with spilkes (Yiddish for “ants in the pants”). “I’ve made a bundle by not following the rules--so why stop now?” says the man who considers himself the last of a vanishing species, movie mogul. The multimillionaire has presented, produced, and acquired or distributed 498 disparate motion pictures--from “Hercules” to the early Fellini masterpieces, “The Graduate,” “The Lion in Winter” and “A Bridge Too Far.”

Gaunt and frail, 82-year-old Levine is still trying to wheel and deal. But his last production was the unsuccessful “Tattoo” in 1980. The man who’s spent a lifetime out-hyping the biggest hucksters in the industry is less ferocious and more cantankerous.

During his chauffeured limo commute from his Greenwich, Conn., estate to his Manhattan office, Levine studies the trades. “They make me itchy, especially these days,” says the supersalesman who bristles at the word retirement, pointing out he made his best films when he was nearing 70.

Levine says in his hoarse voice: “If only I could have 10 more healthy years, I’d gladly give up my entire bank account--because I know I could fill it up again quickly.”

At the Four Seasons, which Levine calls his “favorite fast-food restaurant,” the power lunchers stare at the pugnacious producer being ushered to his prominent table in the Pool Room. Obsequious waiters hover--Levine’s known as a finicky eater and fabulous tipper. He’s been holding court here almost daily for years, intimidating and infuriating rivals.

Surveying young pin-striped producers conferring at a nearby table, he says, “So many meetings, consultations, so much bull.” Levine slams down his Perrier glass, peppering the conversation with profanities.

“There’s too much Wall Street influence, guys who care only about making money. I love making money and I’m damn good at it, but I also love making pictures. I don’t consult banks or boards of directors. I’m still willing to pay millions for a feeling in my gut.”

Levine suffers from a growing list of ailments, but his appetite for more success is still strong. “It’s easy as hell to make a picture now. With so much more money around, and with cable TV and video, producers have many more opportunities and escape routes, that they don’t have to be as smart as they were years ago. As Mike Todd said, ‘It’s a hard way to make an easy living.’ Now it’s become an easy way to make an easy living.”

Levine said that after recently turning down his old friend Katharine Hepburn’s autobiographical script “Phyllis and Me,” he’s started negotiating with Roger Moore and Michael Caine about making an adventure-thriller, “All the Tea in China,” in Hong Kong. He also claims to have nine scripts under option and wants to remake the four-handkerchief “Verna, USO Girl” (already a PBS movie starring Sissy Spacek) with Bob Hope because “it’s about time he won an Oscar.”

“When I make a picture I do anything to get it publicity,” said the veteran producer whose motto is: “You can fool all the people if the advertising is right.”

“I can cope with changing patterns in films and audiences tastes,” he says, as he rises slowly, grasping for his gold-handled walking stick, one of his 200 canes. “But I can’t cope with getting older--it’s hell.”

The fawning entourage, the constant shuttling back and forth to Europe, the yacht Rosalie (named after his wife of 50 years, a former back-up singer for Rudy Vallee), lavish parties and 13 domestic offices and others in Paris, London and Rome are gone. His new Joseph E. Levine Presents office, conveniently located above the Four Seasons, is a shrine to the last of the master showmen. Filled with a staggering collection of objets d’art--T’ang horses, antique furniture, a Wyeth (he once owned 40, the world’s largest collection), and prominently framed awards.

The desk is littered with stacks of unanswered phone messages and mail. The photos lining Levine’s office sport tender scrawlings by Julie Christie in “Darling” and Katharine Hepburn in “The Lion in Winter” about the Oscars they won in his films.

And photos of actors whom Levine says he promoted to stardom: Marcello Mastroianni (“He got much of his American popularity because of me”), Michael Caine (“I gave him his first film role in “Zulu’ ”), and Mel Brooks (“He took his script for ‘The Producers’ all over and no one wanted it but me”).

Another wall looks like an international Who’s Who with photos of Levine alumni: Ann Bancroft, Shirley MacLaine, Brigitte Bardot, Liv Ullmann, Candice Bergen, Ann-Margret, Peter O’Toole, Steve McQueen, Alan Arkin, Peter Sellers, Jack Nicholson, Marlon Brando, Robert Redford, Ryan O’Neal, Sean Connery, Gene Hackman and Sir Laurence Olivier.

Levine’s road to mogulship started in the Boston slums. He recalls a childhood of “not one happy day,” a widowed Russian immigrant mother, dropping out of school in the fourth grade and learning salesmanship peddling papers, hawking vegetables, polishing shoes.

“I used to hustle the back roads of New England as a small time film distributor,” says Levine. That’s when he says he discovered his talent for exploiting second-rate gimmick pictures like “Attilla the Hun” and “Godzilla.”

After forming Embassy Pictures (he registered the name for $153 years ago and sold the company in 1967 for $40 million), Levine began distributing Italian films like “Paisan,” “Open City” and “Bicycle Thief.”

“But,” says Levine, “exhibiting and distribution art films was not the way to eat well.”

His breakthrough came as a tip from a friend about an Italian film called “Hercules.” Levine flew to Rome immediately. “I saw that loincloth picture in that damn freezing basement--the color was terrible and the Italians had botched up the sound track--but it had everything: muscle men, broads, and a shipwreck and a dragon for the kids.” Levine bought “Hercules” outright for $120,000.

He gambled over five times its cost in an eight-day advertising campaign and a $40,000 party for 1,250 exhibitors and journalists at the Waldorf-Astoria. “People thought I was some kind of nut.”

Levine saturated the country with 1,200 “Hercules” prints--the biggest film booking ever staged to that time, he claims, and masterminded the spear-and-sandal saga into a 1959 box-office hit, grossing more than $15 million. The promotion shot Levine into the international arena. And it made him bolder--particularly gambling on foreign pictures.

“When (Sophia Loren’s producer husband) Carlo Ponti invited me to see rushes of ‘Two Women’ in 1960, I didn’t want to go. (Levine and Ponti were having the first of many feuds). But in this business you can’t afford to hate anybody for long,” said Levine--so he temporarily buried the hatchet. After seeing a 3-minute scene with Loren, Levine smelled money and bought the American rights.

“I bet Sophia she’d win an Oscar and I nursed that picture like a baby.” Levine showed the film in every city where a member of the Academy Award jury lived and Sophia got the Best Actress Oscar--the first actress to win it for a foreign film. “That showed that foreign films could get big audiences if promoted with flair.”

In 1967, Levine backed “The Graduate” with unknown actor Dustin Hoffman and director Mike Nichols, known more as a comedic actor at the time. “When Mike gave me the book, ‘The Graduate,’ I told him, ‘It’s the worst (book) I ever read in my life.’ Mike persisted and although he’d never made a movie, I signed him because I could tell he was a genius.”

Levine and Nichols scouted for someone who didn’t look like a movie star to play the lead. “One day a window cleaner came into my office, holding a rag,” says Levine. “That was first time I laid eyes on Dustin Hoffman.” (It was a Mike Nichols’ casting gag). Levine says that Hoffman, then-stage manager of “View from the Bridge” which was playing off-Broadway, “was the most unlikely movie star I could imagine. But I took Hoffman from obscurity and made him a multimillionaire.”

After “The Graduate” grossed more than $100 million worldwide, Levine sold Embassy to the AVCO Corp. for $40 million. He calls the merger a “horrible mistake, which made me rich.”

Levine hated his six years as President of Avco Embassy Pictures, even though he made his favorite picture in 1968--”The Lion in Winter,” with O’Toole and Hepburn. “I couldn’t spend other people’s money with the wild abandon I spend my own. I’m a loner and I make instant decisions. I kept having nightmares seeing stockholders’ wives and kids standing in the cold, hungry--depending on my decisions to make the right films. I felt like I was in jail.”

Levine resigned and since 1974 has been running his own company. “I’ve tried patterning my life after Sam Goldwyn, running things the way I want. Everyone said I was crazy when I put up my own money ($22 million) and picked an unknown (Richard Attenborough),” who’d only made two films, to direct “A Bridge Too Far,” a World War II epic. “I have a knack,” says Levine, “for betting on unknown directors and actors and getting my money’s worth.”

But when asked about his less illustrious film ventures like “Night Porter,” “Magic,” and “Tattoo,” Levine ignores the question and retorts, “Anything can happen in this business. It’s all a giant crap shoot and I intend to keep playing.”

Gesturing with his cane, he hollered, “I was the fastest decision-maker in the business and my credo still is, ‘Do it!’ ” In more flamboyant days he authorized a press release describing himself as a “colossus towering above the lesser moguls of filmdom.”