THE STRANGE, FACELESS TALE OF ALLEN SMITHEE, MAN OF MYSTERY

Allen Smithee--A man of myth?

The latest chapter in the erratic career of director Allen Smithee continues with the Miramax release of “Ghost Fever.” The haunted-house spoof, which stars Sherman Hemsley, was to be directed by Lee Madden, but Smithee took over at the last minute. Still, say our sources, he was so embarrassed by the fiasco that he decided to take the credit Alan Smithee, perhaps hoping to fool admirers of his earlier works, “Death of a Gunfighter” (1969) and “City in Fear” (1980).

Unheralded by press and public, Smithee’s reputation within the industry is legendary. Mere mention of his name stirs violent debate among the cinema cognoscenti. But, curiously, he remains without a champion. Even the French have failed to embrace the idiosyncratic style that pervades his oeuvre .

Why, in the era of the auteur , has Smithee escaped notice?

Some tell you he literally doesn’t exist. Yet, the credits are there: In recent times he directed “Morgan Stewart’s Coming Home,” “Stitches,” TV episodes of “McGyver,” “Karen’s Song” and “Twilight Zone,” and produced “Student Bodies.”

He accepts only impossible projects. His forte is films abandoned by others.

Smithee has never spoken to the press and only once sat still long enough to provide a bio for a studio press kit (for “Student Bodies,” Paramount, 1981). He stated that studio tampering of “Death of a Gunfighter” (he succeeded directors Robert Totten and Don Siegel) was “an affront to his creative visions.” Smithee spent most of the following decade in Cuba and the South of France, according to the bio. Upon his return to the workplace, few critics cheered.

The 1985 Calendar review of “Stitches” stated that “if the script offered any potentially inspired routines, they’ve been botched by first-time director Alan Smithee who has the leaden comic touch of a surgeon whose notion of a local anesthethic is to whack a patient over the head with a hammer.” The Hollywood Reporter, on “Morgan Stewart’s Coming Home”: “Smithee never attempts to get at anything under the surface of things.”

Surely such august publications would know if Smithee were a hoax.

Apparently not. Despite the fact that “Allen Smithee” is the most common film pseudonym, he continues to give off the air of flesh and blood. Even those familiar with his name rarely realize the significance of its usage.

“Allen Smithee is a voodoo doll,” we were told by a member of the Directors Guild. “He’s doomed to take the pins for the worst affronts against a film maker’s artistic intentions.”

Which is not to imply that anytime a producer and a director wind up at loggerheads, it’s an Allen Smithee film. But his whipping-boy status is considerable. Members of the DGA are allowed only one of two credit options--their legal name or Al Smithee.

There’s a whole section of the guild’s bylaws devoted to him, which is one more than Ford, Welles, Capra, Hitchcock and the rest of the critical pantheon get. It states that a panel shall determine the use of the name. The same panel may decide that contingent compensation, including residuals, be waived for this consideration, and the director, in turn, agrees to refrain from public discussion of said film.

It was the last consideration that prompted director Martha Coolidge (“Valley Girl”) not to go the Smithee route on “Joy of Sex.”

“I wanted to tell my side of the story when the picture came out,” she said. “A lot has to happen in order to bring a director to the point of taking his/her name off a picture and maybe, in retrospect, that would have been better for me. But, at the time, I was mad and wanted to tell anybody who would listen.”

For most, A. Smithee is an amusing joke, the answer to a Trivial Pursuit question. But he actually has considerably more “weight.” One might even say his presence is a statement.

Pseudonyms has been a thorny issue with directors for decades, with a strong “anti” faction maintaining that it would be misused by those who simply wanted to duck the responsibility of bad work. However, in the mid-’60s, two factors forced the issue--a growing TV membership demanding protection and a unique credit problem that required the wisdom of Solomon.

It happened on “Death of a Gunfighter,” a Universal release begun by Totten but completed by Siegel. Neither director wanted credit nor future residuals and a DGA panel decided the finished film didn’t represent either one’s work. Totten, currently filming the independent feature “Dark Before Dawn” in Oklahoma, told us: “The board couldn’t believe that this young upstart would forgo future earnings because the experience had turned his stomach so much. I simply wouldn’t take credit and neither would Don. It was up to them to slap on a name or let Universal run it without a credit.”

“I invented the name,” said John Rich, exec producer of “McGyver,” who was on the board at the time. “We discussed many things at the time and decided that in cases where foul play had occurred, a consistent name would be used. Granting the name would be done only in instances where the director’s intention was maligned. An extreme example of this might be where an anti-war statement was re-edited into a hawkish stance.”

A DGA spokesman confirmed that the credit is “a signal” to the industry and press that “moral foul play” had occurred. It’s deemed a more politic method of voicing one’s anger than literally opening up to the press with a gripe.

“I remember the meeting quite clearly where Smithee was born,” said Rich. “It was suggested it be a common name like Smith. In discussion, that was deemed unworkable because we had too many members with that name, so someone suggested Smithe, to rhyme with rife. That was batted down, too, because we felt most people will pronounce it Smith and others might confuse it even with Smight .

“At that point, I recommended yet another e , confident we’d never have a member with that spelling and people would say it ‘smith-E.’ We gave him the first name Allen because it was short and sweet.”