Screen of Consciousness

When the 70th Academy Award nominations made news earlier this month, the front-page headline in The Times read “ ‘Titanic’ Ties Record for Oscar Nominations.”

The story reported that James Cameron’s waterlogged epic, by now a worldwide tsunami at the box office, received 14 nods to match the high-water mark set by “All About Eve” in 1950.

In singling out that historical fact, The Times (and other newspapers) acknowledged a remarkable feat and confirmed the importance of the Oscar numbers both to movie makers and moviegoers.

Next month more than a billion television viewers around the world are expected to tune in to the Academy Awards ceremony.

How many Oscars will “Titanic” ultimately win?

Will it swamp the other contenders? (Probably.)

Will it win as many as “All About Eve”? (Bet on it. Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s picture took home just six statuettes.)

Will it match or beat “Ben-Hur,” the William Wyler biblical epic that set the record of 11 Oscar wins in 1959? (Probably not.)

The truth is, the only numbers that finally count in Hollywood are the ones that end up in the profit-and-loss columns. Oscar numbers, even as a measure of peer recognition, often tell less about the art of movie-making than the artifice of competition.

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Nevertheless, they do set some sort of artistic standard. It’s no coincidence that the 10 Hollywood directors whose pictures have earned the most Academy Award nominations throughout their careers--including Billy Wilder, John Ford, Fred Zinneman and Elia Kazan--also rank among the most widely respected by film historians.

In the meantime, the Port Theatre in Corona del Mar will offer a two-week run of 10 best-picture Oscar winners from 1953 to 1974, beginning Friday, which ought to give a sense of the motion picture academy’s somewhat variable standard.

The lineup includes “Ben-Hur” (in a new 35mm print), “The Bridge on the River Kwai” and “Lawrence of Arabia” (both directed by David Lean); “The Godfather, Part I and II” (both by Francis Ford Coppola); “From Here to Eternity” and “A Man for All Seasons” (both by Zinneman); “On the Waterfront” (by Kazan); “West Side Story” (by Robert Wise) and “Midnight Cowboy” (by John Schlesinger).

Backstage tales surrounding these movies are legion--whether about creative battles, casting difficulties, producer-director clashes or all of them combined.

Stories about Lean’s first wide-screen epic, “The Bridge on the River Kwai,” run the gamut--especially because of producer Sam Spiegel, who also produced “Lawrence of Arabia” and, for that matter, Kazan’s “On the Waterfront.”

Spiegel, who died in 1985, was a high-rolling rogue of legendary charm, a savvy operator wrapped in contradictions. He was fluent in nine languages, a scholar without a formal education, a generous host, an independent movie Midas who pinched budgets and who always managed to stay just one step ahead of his creditors.

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Lean met Spiegel “after every director in Hollywood--including Willy [Wyler]--had turned down his lousy script,” the director told biographer Stephen M. Silverman (“David Lean,” Harry N. Abrams Inc., 1992).

(Spiegel had asked Ford and Howard Hawks to make “The Bridge on the River Kwai.”)

Lean, unable to make up his mind about working for Spiegel, asked Wyler for advice. “Willy told me to do with [him] what he did with Sam Goldwyn--become equal partners, 50-50 on everything. Equal credit. Equal money.”

Spiegel readily agreed. Why not? He was the one who kept the books. As Lean would later learn, he also cooked them. (So did Goldwyn, it turned out, to Wyler’s dismay.)

“The Bridge on the River Kwai,” filmed in Ceylon, tells the World War II story of British soldiers who are being brutalized in a jungle prison camp by their Japanese captors. A British colonel (Alec Guinness) tries to protect them and keep up morale by putting them to work on a strategic project: They will build a bridge. Meanwhile, an American prisoner (William Holden) secretly plots to blow it up, to keep the Japanese from using it and to cover a mass escape from the camp.

Spiegel wanted Cary Grant for the colonel. When Lean killed that idea, they offered the role to Laurence Olivier. He declined. Guinness himself hesitated, believing that Lean wanted Charles Laughton. (Absurd. Laughton as a starving prisoner?)

Guinness, however, went to dinner with Spiegel, who turned on the charm. The actor recalled, “I started out maintaining that I wouldn’t play the role and by the end of the evening we were discussing what kind of wig I would wear.”

Spiegel landed Holden by paying him $300,000 (almost double Lean’s salary) and 10% of the gross box-office receipts. To save money, though, the producer refused to pay for British extras. He hired Senegalese locals instead and had them made up in white face.

When Columbia Pictures president Harry Cohn agreed to make “From Here to Eternity,” it had already been turned down by several studios fearful of offending the U.S. Army and a McCarthy-influenced Congress because of its bitter, disillusioning--some said “anti-patriotic”--story.

The picture was based on James Jones’ best-selling novel of the same name and is set on a military base in Hawaii just before Pearl Harbor. It depicts corruption, injustice, brutality and adultery. Hollywood called the movie “Cohn’s folly,” and nobody believed Columbia would be able to make it.

Moreover, when Zinneman was chosen to direct it, Cohn had misgivings. Zinneman was known as “a director’s director,” which meant “good reviews but no box office.” The two men clashed as soon as they met: Zinneman wanted Montgomery Clift to play Prewitt (the Army private who refuses to box for his company); Cohn didn’t want him.

According to the director’s autobiography (“Fred Zinneman,” Bloomsbury, 1992), Cohn told him Clift is “no soldier and no boxer and probably a homosexual.”

Cohn had apparently forgotten that Clift not only fit the novel’s description of Prewitt as “a deceptively slim young man” but also was a terrific actor.

How terrific? Terrific enough to have turned down William Holden’s role in “Sunset Boulevard,” Paul Newman’s in “Somebody Up There Likes Me,” James Dean’s in “East of Eden” and Marlon Brando’s in “On the Waterfront.” (OK, so his judgment was lousy.)

Years later, it took a lot of persuasion by Francis Ford Coppola to convince Paramount Pictures that Brando was right for Vito Corleone in “The Godfather.” Coppola chose him for the title role despite widespread opinion that Brando was long past his prime as a star who could dominate the screen.

The director didn’t have it easy making the picture, either.

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Al Pacino, who played Corleone’s son Michael, was mainly a stage actor with one film to his credit (“Panic in Needle Park”). Pacino still felt insecure in front of the camera, and Coppola had to baby him through his scenes.

Diane Keaton, who plays Michael’s wife, was even more of a newcomer to film; and Coppola’s sister Talia Shire, who plays the godfather’s daughter, had almost no acting experience whatsoever.

On top of that, Coppola was being continually second-guessed by Paramount and others. At one point, cinematographer Gordon Willis walked off the set because he thought Coppola didn’t know what he was doing.

(It was Willis who gave the film its imposing visuals, purposely under-lighting scenes and using dark, earthy tones to create the bold yet somber hush that heightens the drama throughout.)

Coppola, denied the best-director Oscar, did get the ultimate vindication at the box office, however. “The Godfather” earned $86 million for Paramount in distribution rentals, breaking the record ($77.6 million) set by Hollywood’s holiest of the holy, “Gone With the Wind.”

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Port Schedule

With date, director, principal actors, win tallies and the amount each film made on original release.

*=Oscar, +=nomination

Friday-Saturday

1:45 (Sat. only) and 7 p.m.

* “A Man for All Seasons”* (1966), Fred Zinneman*

Paul Scofield*, Robert Shaw+, Wendy Hiller+; Robert Bolt* adapted screenplay; cinematography (color)*; costume design (color)*

6 Oscars, 7 nominations

$12.8 million

4:05 (Sat. only) and 9:20 p.m.

* “Bridge on the River Kwai”* (1957), David Lean*

Alec Guinness*, William Holden, Sessue Hayakawa+; Pierre Boulle* adapted screenplay; cinematography*; score*; film editing*

7 Oscars, 8 nominations

$17.2 million

Sunday-Monday

2 (Sun. only) and 7:30 p.m.

* “Lawrence of Arabia”* (1962), David Lean*

Peter O’Toole+, Omar Sharif+, Anthony Quinn, Alec Guinness; Robert Bolt+ adapted screenplay; cinematography (color)*; art direction (color)*; sound*; musical score*; film editing*

7 Oscars, 10 nominations

$19 million

Tuesday-March 5

7:30 p.m.

* “From Here to Eternity”* (1953), Fred Zinneman*

Burt Lancaster+, Montgomery Clift+, Frank Sinatra*, Deborah Kerr+, Donna Reed*, Ernest Borgnine; Daniel Taradash* screenplay; cinematography (b&w;)*; sound recording*; dramatic scoring+; film editing*; costume design (b&w;)+

8 Oscars, 13 nominations

$12.2 million

5:30 and 9:50 p.m.

* “On the Waterfront”* (1954), Elia Kazan*

Marlon Brando*, Eva Marie Saint*, Rod Steiger+, Karl Malden+, Lee J. Cobb+; Budd Schulberg* story and screenplay; cinematography (b&w;)*; art direction (b&w;)*; dramatic scoring+; film editing*

8 Oscars, 12 nominations

$4.2 million

March 6-7

2:15 (Sat. only) and 7:20 p.m.

* “West Side Story”* (1961), Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins*

George Chakiris*, Rita Moreno*; adapted screenplay+; cinematography (color)*; art direction (color)*; sound*; scoring in a musical*; editing*; costumes (color)*

10 Oscars, 11 nominations

$19.6 million

12:15 (Sat. only), 5:15 and 10:15 p.m.

* “Midnight Cowboy”* (1969), John Schlesinger*

Dustin Hoffman+, Jon Voight+, Sylvia Miles+; adapted screenplay*; film editing+

3 Oscars, 7 nominations

$20.5 million

March 8-9

2 (Sun. only) and 7:30 p.m.

* “Ben-Hur”* (1959), William Wyler*

Charlton Heston*, Hugh Griffith*, Jack Hawkins; adapted screenplay+; cinematography (color)*; art direction (color)*; sound*; scoring (drama)*; film editing*; costume design (color)*; special effects*

11 Oscars, 12 nominations

$37 million

March 10-12

7 p.m.

* “The Godfather”* (1972), Francis Ford Coppola+

Marlon Brando*, James Caan+, Robert Duvall+; adapted screenplay*; sound+; film editing+; costume design+

3 Oscars, 9 nominations

Rentals: $86.3 million (broke previous record held by “Gone With the Wind”: $77.6 million)

10:15 p.m.

* “The Godfather, Part II”* (1974), Francis Ford Coppola*

Al Pacino+, Robert De Niro* (support), Michael V. Gazzo+, Lee Strasberg+, Talia Shire+; adapted screenplay*; art direction*; scoring (drama)*

6 Oscars, 10 nominations

$31 million