Anthony Quinn

       The first time I met Anthony Quinn I was down in New Zealand. He was playing Zeus in five Hercules TV movies. I initially saw him on the set of the first film, Hercules and the Amazon Women. Mr. Quinn, as we all called him, was sitting in a director's chair in his Zeus outfit seated beside his wife, Yolanda. He was speaking to the film's director, Bill, and the writers, Andy and Dan, all of whom were paying close attention. I sidled up and listened.
       Quinn was holding forth on who he thought Zeus was. Every point he made was a good one, not that he was pausing for validation. His insights were the keenest observations I'd heard about any character in the series. It was fascinating and informative. I wished I'd had a tape recorder. I could only think that this was the best actor I've ever been near.
       Finally, after I had stood there listening for about ten minutes, Bill, the director, introduced me, bless his heart.
       "If I'm Boy Number One," Bill poked his own chest, then pointed at me, "this is Boy Number Five."
       I shook hands with Mr. and Mrs. Quinn.
       "I'm also the second-unit director on this film," I added.
        Quinn nodded politely and walked over to shoot a scene. I followed after to watch.

       I knew Anthony Quinn was in the same hotel as me, the Pan Pacific, but I never saw him. A cab driver told me he'd seen him in front of the Pan Pacific right after having just seen him in a World War Two movie and he thought he was losing his mind for a second. The employees of the restuarant had all seen Quinn and his wife numerous times. They told me a story of Mrs. Quinn ordering something not on the menu and making them run out for it. If she could get the New Zealanders to run for anything, I admired her.
       I did finally see him and his wife in that restaurant.
       I did not bother him, nor did anyone else.

       Then word came down that I was to direct Mr. Quinn's introductory shot in the main titles. What an honor. Since Zeus is a lecherous character, I decided to track behind him while a pretty, scantily-clad girl walks past. Zeus stops, then turns directly into tight close-up reacting to her.
       The second-unit set up three lengths of dolly track right near where the main unit was shooting and waited . . . and waited. I had the pretty girl clothed in a sheer, diaphanous dress, and ideally I wanted her back-lit so that I could see her lovely form through the dress. Well, back light time came and went and still no Quinn. When he finally did arrive the light was reasonably flat, but not bad. I explained the shot to him.
       "You walk along the dolly track going that way. You see Sarah, who is portraying a pretty girl..."
       ". . . I'd have known that," cut in Quinn.
       We all smiled. I went on, "You see her, turn left, and react to her fine female form. That's it. I'd like this to run less than ten seconds."
       Then, as always, the light was better ten feet back, so the crew flew into action and quickly moved the dolly and track and reset the shot we'd been sitting on for three hours.
       Someone brought a chair for Quinn, and Eric the producer showed up.
       "How's it going?" (Eric's perennial question).
       "Great. It'll be a great intro. Stay and watch."
       He nodded. Maybe he would stay, and maybe he wouldn't. He was like a phantom the way he appeared and disappeared. I liked him very much.
        I said to Mr. Quinn, "You might very well think I've wasted my life, and perhaps I have, but I've seen Lawrence Of Arabia about a hundred times. I know your entire speech in the tent at Wadi Rumm. May I do it?"
       "Certainly," he said.

       "'I'm Auda Abu Tayi! Auda Abu Tayi! Auda serves the Turks? Auda serves? I carry over twenty-five great wounds, all gotten in battle. I have killed eighty-five men with my own hands in battle. I burn their tents, I scatter their flocks. I recieve 50 golden guineas from the Turks every month, but I am poor. Why? Because I am a river to my
people!'"
       Mr. Quinn seemed honestly amused.
       We did three takes, and Quinn was hysterically funny in all three. I thought it went brilliantly, and it is the single thing I miss most that did not make it into the films.
       Eric suggested that we shoot Quinn against the blue sky as a possible plate (with a blue background they could, if they cared to, superimpose Mr. Quinn on top of something else, like exploding volcanoes or a star field).
       While the camera and silk (a big piece of silk to diffuse the sunlight) were being set up, I asked Mr. Quinn, "Why did you only direct the one picture, The Buccaneer?"
        His amusement faded. I'd gone directly to a sore spot--I have a knack for that.
        "At it's first preview people said, 'It's the best picture C.B.[DeMille, Quinn's former father-in-law] ever made.' Since he was only the producer, he took it into the editing room and made sure it was no longer his best picture. It was also his last film."
       "What was Yul Bryner like to work with?" I asked.
       "He was a poseur. But Charles Boyer was wonderful."
       I said to Quinn. "Now I need you to stand against the sky, posing."
       As the camera was about to roll, I said, "Survey the lands that you've created, then sigh in satisfaction..."
       ". . . And smile," requested Eric.
       Quinn's face went stony. "Do you want me to sigh, or do you want me to smile?"
       I grinned and pointed at Eric. "He's the producer. Smile."
       Quinn both sighed and smiled.
       This shot wasn't used, either.

       I was sitting alone at one of my two usual spots in the hotel restaurant, and Anthony Quinn came in and sat down by himself two tables away. He wore a dark sportcoat, no tie, and ordered a bottle of wine. He then donned thick reading glasses, removed folded script pages from his pocket, and began to study his lines. I found this very ingratiating--not only do the great end up eating alone; they had to study their lines, too.
        Over the course of the next half an hour three people came up and asked for autographs. In all instances, Quinn put down his lines, took off his glasses, smiled, shook hands and signed the autograph. He seemed like he was in a fairly amiable mood, so I walked over to his table.
       "Excuse me, Mr. Quinn, but since everyone else in the room feels they can bother you, so can I. My name's Josh Becker, and I'm directing the fifth Hercules film."
       He was very cordial. "Oh, really? Nice to meet you." He shook my hand.
       I didn't mention that we'd already met.
       "Would I be disturbing you if I sat down?"
       "No, please"
       I sat. We discussed the Hercules films, and his character, Zeus, and finally I said: "So, what' s Kazan like?" (Elia Kazan directed Viva Zapata for which Quinn won his first Best Supporting Actor Oscar).
        "He's evil," replied Quinn. He explained that during the making of Viva Zapata Kazan came to Quinn's trailer before they were about to shoot an argument scene between Brando and Quinn. Kazan said Brando had told him he thought Quinn was terrible as Stanley Kowalski, a part Anthony Quinn had taken over from Marlon Brando on Broadway in 1949, when Brando went to Hollywood to make his first movie, The Men. Quinn said he didn't believe it for a second. Why? He'd never heard anything before, and this was five years later. So, as he was walking to the set he saw Brando, who said, "Kazan says you didn't like my interpretation of Kowalski." Quinn replied: "He said the same thing to me, that you didn't like my Kowalski. I thought yours was the best performance of the 20th century." Brando said, "Well, I liked yours, too. Kazan is just trying to get us mad at each other to make the scene better. Why don't we just do our jobs and go act?"
       Mr. Quinn then told me how, when he was making Attila for Dino De Laurentiis, Federico Fellini brought him the script for La Strada. Quinn took the script to Dino, who said there wasn't any time to make it. Quinn suggested that since they were shooting Atilla with a French crew, that didn't start shooting until noon, they should shoot La Strada with an Italian crew in the mornings, which he said they did. My research says that La Strada is 1954, and Atilla is 1958, but who knows? He's lived a long time and made a lot of movies.
       I asked, "What Vincent Minnelli was like to work with?" (Minnelli directed Lust for Life for which Quinn won his second Oscar).
       "He was a joy."
       "I suppose you know," I said, "that your performance in that film was the shortest ever to win an Oscar."
       "No, I didn't," Quinn answered. (Beatrice Straight has since also won a supporting Oscar for a seven-minute performance in Network).
        I began to talk movies in general and wasn't really showing off, although I guess it must have sounded like it. Mr. Quinn looked a bit surprised and said, "I don't see that many movies."

       When I got him to sign my Barabbas poster on his last day on Hercules in the Maze of the Minotaur, Therese, one of the coordinators, said, "Who is that woman you're kissing on the poster?"
       Quinn replied, "Oh, that's a very young Sophia Loren."
       I couldn't help myself. "No, that's Silvana Mangano."
       Quinn looked up, "Oh, yes, it is."

       Another time, Quinn was talking about The Savage Innocents, an Eskimo picture he'd made with Peter O'Toole. I asked, "What was Nicholas Ray [the director] like?"
       "He was cracking up," said Quinn. "About to have a nervous breakdown."
       "That would have been about 1960, right?" I proffered.
       Quinn became outraged. "No! It was the mid-seventies!" He dismissed me as though I were an utter fool.
        My books say The Savage Innocents is 1959.
       He also related how, on this film, when they got into the studio in London, out of nowhere the dogs went crazy. It seems they were using salt for snow (as had been done on the Hercules film immediately prior to this one we were shooting, on the same stage). "There was salt all over everything, you've never seen anything like it," stated Quinn, although everyone within earshot had seen nothing but salt for the past several weeks. Well, as it turned out, the salt was getting on the dog's testicles. Mr. Quinn said that they had pouches made for the dog's balls at a tailor on Saville Row.

       The first day that he worked on Minotaur, the first scene, I wanted him to sit on a log and deliver all his dialog. He decided that he wanted to get up near the end.
       All right.
       In the next scene I wanted him to stand up at a certain point, and he decided on a different point.
       Fine.
       During this scene, a night, campfire scene with Hercules, his pal, Iolaus, and Zeus, the lighting was being set up and Quinn was sitting by himself. I stepped up and asked, "In Lawrence of Arabia--"
        Quinn looked up sharply and snapped, "--Fuck off!"
       "I'll just sit over here by the monitor," I mumbled contritely and walked away.
       I stepped up beside Eric, the producer, and said, "Quinn just told me to fuck off."
       "I've got five on you," replied Eric. "He's told me to fuck off six times."

       For a long dialog scene in a barn between Hercules and Zeus I had concieved a long "dolly-edit" shot. I've only heard it referred to as that once, but at least it's a term. It's where one shot will cover the entire scene, but not by itself. It's intended to be cut into, at specific points when the camera isn't moving. Such as, going to a close-up of one character, thus needing the other close-up, or the other over-the-shoulder shot.
       It's nice to want.
       The day began with a meeting with Mr. Quinn, Eric, and Kevin, who played Hercules, in Mr. Quinn's trailer.
       He absolutely hated his reveal entrance, which he had already done numerous times in the previous four films. He wouldn't do it, and that was that. He then raged on and on against his dialog, which he'd rewritten, referring to the writers as "Shakespeare and Homer."
       Eric and Kevin were nodding placatingly and agreeing wholeheartedly.
       I asked, "And how are you going to enter instead of the reveal?"
       "I'll just be there already," Mr. Quinn explained. "He'll hear me laugh."
       "And where will you be?" I inquired.
       "I'll be up on a platform, like boxes and barrels, or what have you, with steps so I can climb down, and I'll need a rail up near the ceiling so that I have something to hold onto while I climb down from the platform. So I don't fall."
       The look on Eric's face was priceless. This was a scene that was supposedly shooting within the next hour. Suddenly he was looking at the construction of a platform and a rail. How long would that take?
       Since my dolly-edit scheme had gone in the crapper, I was curious as to what it was I was about to shoot.
       "Do you suppose that you and Kevin will ever get close enough to one another so that I can get a two-shot?" I asked.
       Quinn, suddenly filling the small trailer with his dramatic, overbearing presence, proclaimed, "How the fuck should I know?"
       That was the conclusion of the meeting.

       Quinn then showed us where he wanted his platform and railing and, basically, what he had in mind. Which was all about what he would be doing; he didn't care what Kevin or the camera would be doing. I suppose my face showed some slight trace of skepticism that this was an improvement over what I'd had in mind, and he'd never given me a chance to explain.
       Quinn pointed into my face. "David Lean moved two thousand horses when he realized my idea was better."
       As it turns out we were shooting with a single horse that day.
       "I only have one horse, Mr. Quinn, but I'll move it anywhere you'd like."
       I quickly revised my dolly-edit idea, and we shot the scene.
       It turned out that Quinn had taken a couple of paragraphs and turned them into a several-page speech, including a very silly imitation of a talking bird. Sure, why not? I thought. I'll just use what I want and cut out the rest (which I did).
       The scene was going along, and long was the word; it was just going on and on. I was wondering if we had enough film in the camera. Somehow we got through it.
       "That's great, " I said. "Let's do another one."
       "Going again," bellowed George, the 1st A.D.
       "Wait a minute," said Quinn. "What was wrong with that?"
       All work stopped. He was flatly confronting me in front of everyone. All right, who was the director of this picture, anyway?
        I chose my words carefully. "There were a lot of great parts in that last take, but I'd like to get a whole take that's great."
       Quinn stepped right up to me and put his incredibly lined, leathery, old face into mine. "I want some fucking direction! What was wrong with it?"
       "You were reaching for some of your lines."
       Steely: "Human beings have to think about what they're going to say next. That's what I was doing."
       In a very clear, unexcited tone, I explained, "There is a difference between thinking about what you're going to say next and reaching for your lines. You were reaching."
       Now Quinn was furious. "Then we'll stay here 'til fucking midnight 'til you think it's fucking excellent!"
       I said: "Good. Let's do it again."
       And we did. And when it was through I said: "That was excellent. Let's move on."

       Later, after we were through with that scene and onto something else without Mr. Quinn, he stepped up to me in his sweatsuit and sneakers. "Look, son, I'm sorry about the way I acted back there."
        I smiled. "That's perfectly all right. You are the best actor I've ever worked with. I'm happy to go through whatever it takes."
       He shook my hand and smiled. "That's very nice. Thank you."

       I had a dialog scene between Mr. Quinn and the minotaur. Since I did not want to reveal what the minotaur looked like this early in the picture, I had a wall of vines and cobwebs built that would be between them, so that all of Zeus' point of view shots of the minotaur would be obscured.
       As we rehearsed the scene, Quinn said, "I'm going to walk right through this stuff and confront the monster face to face."
       I was confused. "How are you going to get through? It's pretty thick."
       "I'm not going to really go through it, I'll just come around, and you'll do some kind of special effect that makes it look like I'm walking right through it. I am Zeus after all, king of the Gods. Some sticks aren't going to stop me."
       I turned and looked at James, the cinematographer, who had as puzzled of an expression as I did. Suddenly we were doing a special effect that ( A.) we didn't know if we had the money for, and (B.) since no one had ever thought about it, we couldn't be sure it would work.
As it turns out, it worked quite well.

       Our next scene together was in this wonderful green, mossy woods. It was night, and it was cold. I had scenes to shoot after the scene with Quinn, so it was imperative that I get him in and out. I could not allow his scene to take a long time because we would never return to this location.
       I made an executive decision: wide shots of Quinn don't matter, he's a hundred times more interesting in close-up, so screw the wide shots. I started in a wide crane shot, cut after one line and went into close-ups.
       Everyone was shocked.
       I had him do half the dialog in one close-up, then step out and into a tighter close- up. I blasted through the scene in no time and it was good. I actually still had to have a half an hour of overtime to get everything I needed that night.

My last scene with Mr. Quinn was in the studio, on the underground lair of the minotaur set, full of stalagmites and fog. Since his whole scene was being played to the dying minotaur, impaled on a stalagmite on the floor, I knew there weren't too many ways to play the scene. Quinn would just have to play it my way, since it was the simplest way-- and, in fact, he did. Besides, I had gotten good at dealing with him. He only wanted to make the scenes better; he wasn't trying to hurt anything. Just get him in and out. It made him and everyone else happier.
I have three photographs of Quinn and myself. One is a group shot of Quinn, me, Eric, Kevin, George, and Therese. I really wanted a shot of of me directing Mr. Quinn. I conveyed my request to Pierre, the French-Canadian still photographer. He said I always stood facing Mr. Quinn when I was directing, with my back to the camera. If I wanted a good shot I'd have to stand beside Mr. Quinn, facing Pierre. However, after Quinn had gotten mad at me a couple of times, I was leery of getting too near him unless I had to. I didn't want him yelling at me and slowing things down.

       Mr. Quinn was standing in the middle of the set running his lines to himself for his last shot. I glanced over at Pierre, and he pointed, indicating that now was the time. I discreetly sidled up beside Mr. Quinn. I got to where I thought that I was close enough, and Quinn hadn't noticed me, then I looked up and posed. Pierre took the shot then pointed that I should get closer still. I edged a couple of feet closer, and Pierre shot another one and nodded; he'd gotten it. One might even think that I'm directing him, but he is entirely unaware of my presence.
        Mr. Quinn completed his last shot, and I called, "Print it." George stated, "Ladies and gentlemen, that is a wrap on Anthony Quinn in all five Hercules movies."
       The crew applauded.
       Quinn stood up, raised his hands, tears in his eyes, and said, "The only language that will express what I'm feeling is Italian. . ." He then launched into a whole speech in Italian, which, unfortunately, no one in the crew understood. When he was done with that he segued into English and said he loved New Zealand and would love to have a house there. Everybody clapped again.
       Mr. Quinn never once referred to me by name. Luckily, he never called me "boy," either. He called me "son."
       After the completion of his last shot, I handed him my Barabbas poster for him to sign. He looked at me, looked at the poster (the top half of which had three pictures of Quinn, from Lawrence of Arabia, The Guns of Navarone, and Zorba the Greek), looked at me again, obviously had no name to put with my face, and wrote:
       "Fondest Regards--
       Of all the pictures I've made, these are the ones I love,
       Anthony Quinn."