The True Adventures of Raoul Walsh (2014)

Johnny Crear: Raoul Walsh

Quotes 

• Raoul Walsh : [final monologue]  I saw the end of my career staring me in the face. Had to make do. Took up painting full time. Like to paint a nude now and then. Oh, Mary.

  [Shows painting of a nude Mary] 

  Raoul Walsh : Once she walked into my studio, kicked out my model and punched a hole through the painting. I ran and put it into the garbage as fast as I could. But, Mary stuck by me through the dark days, through all the days as my vision slowly faded to black. I realized how my life has been just like my movies. I always thought the adventures that made the movies made the life. I received invitations to retrospectives; Mary hated traveling and sent me off on my own. Once, with money pinned in different denominations to the inside of my coat pocket; could barely see; memorized them instead. Found old friends there: Ida, Gloria, Henry Hull, Howard Hawks. Loved all the students; enjoyed telling them stories. Who could pass up talking a good yarn? I dictated three novels, one autobiography. It's good to get it all on paper. Friends come to see me; good old Allan Dwan - we're friends from way back; Peter Bogdanovich - a new guy; Greg Peck, Rock. Mary picks oranges and makes juice for everyone. I look forward to the conversations; enjoy living in my own thoughts. Think back on it all, like today - writing new scripts, setting up the shot; camera in just the right spot, the right lens, the action, listening to how it sounds. Think about all my pals who've passed away. Wish I could pat them on the shoulder just one more time, take one more drink with them, tell them one more joke. Wish I could speak Yiddish to Jack just one more time. It's dark, but I see in my own way - the past, the present. That day on the set of "The Naked and the Dead"; that young actor playing a death scene for the camera - he kept emoting, writhing, emoting, writhing one more time... too much.

  [chuckles] 

  Raoul Walsh : Finally I said, 'Okay, kid, die already, goddammit and let me get on with my picture!'

• Raoul Walsh : We gave those guys those beautiful women to love. Nothing like a love story to to get to the heart of life.

• Raoul Walsh : For me, cinema is action. My pictures move fast. My characters traveled lonely. Gangsters... Cowboys... Solders... Pirates... We knew them all like the back of our hands, back then. After all, we created them.

• Raoul Walsh : In Hollywood you can get away with blurring the lines. Fit me to a tee.

• Raoul Walsh : My life in the movies seems to be story of Hollywood itself.

• Raoul Walsh : They called me the one-eyed bandit. And why not? I sure gave Hollywood one helluva run for its money.

• Raoul Walsh : I put the bullets in Cagney's gun, then blew him up in a blaze in "White Heat." I put the horse under Errol Flynn and told John Barrymore not to get drunk. I was the fella who gave Humphrey Bogart the smart-ass words that made him a star. And I knew George Raft was trouble since I first worked with him in the 1930s. But, I also knew box office when I saw it. I was pretty smart ass, myself, After all, I rode with Pancho Villa and called Wyatt Earp a friend when he showed up on a movie set.

• Raoul Walsh : I would have liked to see them ride away in the desert somewhere with the sun setting. Call me a sentimental fool and I probably am.

• Raoul Walsh : "Regeneration" was my first picture for Fox. That was 1915. It was Hollywood's first full-length gangster picture.

• Raoul Walsh : "The Strawberry Blonde" was my favorite of all the talkies I've ever done. It reminded me of my mother when she was still alive.

• Raoul Walsh : It was the 8th wonder of the world. When "Thief of Baghdad" was released it had as big an impact as "Star Wars". The trip to a fantasyland of gargantuan size. The first really spectacular fantasy film by an American film company.

• Raoul Walsh : Lorraine liked being married to film director. I liked - other women.

• Raoul Walsh : Life with Miriam was getting bad. Even after the adoption, nothing took. When one of the boys found me in bed with Miriam's friend, Lorraine, well, that was the end of Miriam and me.

• Raoul Walsh : Glass pieces fly into my right eye. Blood, glass, everywhere. I lost that eye. I had to make the biggest adjustment of my life. "We can offer you a glass eye, Mr. Walsh." "Hell, no!" I said. "Hell no. Every time I'd get into a fight I'd have to put it in my pocket."

• Raoul Walsh : We knocked it out of the park with "What Price Glory". When it opened, the crowd was so big in New York, Fox had it running 24 hours a day. My first time directing the beauty, Delores Del Rio. My first shot of her in the picture was one of her behind. "That's the 'hind' shot," the crew would quip. Said it was my trademark.

• Raoul Walsh : Fox hooked me up with the original vamp herself, Theda Bera; who took up a lot of my time on the set - and off. We made a version of Carmen. That one was my idea. Now, Theda was an okay actress, but I had to coach her in a cat fight in one of the scenes. I had to spice it up. "You're supposed to fight the other girl until you topple her, hear?" I jumped up and down behind the camera. I yelled to Theda, "Go at it. Get her down. Scratch her. Bite her good!" Then, she lost control and sank her teeth deep into the other girl's shoulder. She got up, face impassive, walked away, left the other actress, shaking and crying. There was no love lost between Miriam

  [Cooper] 

  Raoul Walsh : and Theda. Theda'd look ready for another cat fight when Miriam visited the set. Miriam thought that Theda was ugly, fat, and unkempt. It was jealousy, I guess.

• Raoul Walsh : Darryl Zanuck produced, "The Bowery" - a popular picture with my trademark fast-talking, fast-moving story line... A real man's kind of film. We got two good lugs, Wallace Beery and George Raft and added the kid wonder Jackie Cooper. The side attraction was a group of 25 beefy chorus girls, we called, "the beef trust."

• Raoul Walsh : We needed a fresh face for the male lead after Gary Cooper turned it down. One day, still at the studio, I see a beautiful, tall fellow carrying a huge arm chair. "Hey, kid, ever been in any pictures?" "Not yet," he said. "Well, let your hair grow long and I'll get back to you." Two weeks later, I put Marion Morrison in a buckskin suit and did a silent test. "Can he speak?" my boss, Iain, asked. "Well, of course. He's a college boy." "Well, alright, we will sign him up; but, the name's got to go." That's how I discovered John Wayne and put him in my great adventure.

• Raoul Walsh : "Darling are you free for breakfast?" Gloria Swanson called me one day. To this day, one of the most bewitching creatures that I've ever known. By looking at her,you wouldn't know she had a will of steel.

• Raoul Walsh : I told myself losing the eye didn't really matter much - and didn't really believe it. I needed to prove it for my piece of mind. I knew nothing about the welcome back party till I walked back into my office on Fox's lot. They were all there, slouching in chairs, swinging their feet from my desk. The elite troops of Fox's organization: Frank Borzage, Allan Dwan, John Ford, Wild Bill Wellman, Hawks. We all had a drink and made a toast. John Ford grimaced, "You'll have a helluva time looking through a keyhole, Irish; but, damn, that black patch will get you more dames than you've ever had before." And he was right. If only I could find the right one.

• Raoul Walsh : [referring to "Sailor's Luck"]  I kept it moving fast with smart-mouthed characters - the kind I like... We taunted the censors with the sex scenes, the not so hidden visual gags about homosexuality... Sally ran around with nothing under her towel. No harm in being blunt about it. But, after 1934, you'd never see anything like that. Taboo. The Breen office took over censorship for film and squeezed the life out of it. Even my turkeys got clipped. So much so that I wanted to quit the picture business and raise my horses.

• Raoul Walsh : I got a call from William Randolph Hearst. Everyone called him the "Chief". And I'd go to them, "The Chief of what?" But, we got to be good friends. "Marion needs a hit and you can give it to her. I want you to direct Marion Davies in a musical with this fellow Bing Crosby." Fox let me go to MGM. I liked the challenge of the big dance numbers. I liked Crosby fine and Marion was a perky gal I came to like very much. She loved a good party and so did Hearst. Had a ball, "Going Hollywood".

• Raoul Walsh : I shot so many scenes full of sexual innuendo that no matter how the censors cut it, they couldn't cut the sex out of the picture.

• Raoul Walsh : Finally, God smiled on me and I met Mary. Mary Edna Simpson came out from Kentucky and became a Goldwyn Girl. She was all milk and honey. I love her golden hair in braids, felt like corn silk, and those big blue eyes. I was still married. I'd rented a house for us in the Valley. Lorraine filed for divorce when she found out. Now, I had my Mary, my pictures, my horses, and a good nest egg.

• Raoul Walsh : [referring to "They Died With Their Boots On"]  I made Custer into a hero - sometimes taking foolhardy chances; but, a fellow who relied on *himself* - like it was his religion. Now, I identified with that.

• Raoul Walsh : No truth - like romantic truth.

• Raoul Walsh : Signed on again with Jack for "Battle Cry." I tried filling it with hard-hitting action scenes; but, the sex stories Jack wanted got the better of it.

• Raoul Walsh : [referring to "The Revolt of Mamie Stover"]  Those French critics loved it. The story of a tough dame from the wrong side of tracks who makes it on her own terms.

• Raoul Walsh : I liked working with spitfire Jane Russell... She's my kinda gal.

• Raoul Walsh : Shot "The Revolt of Mamie Stover" in Hawaii. Back with Janie again. Janie *was* Mamie. What a gal.

• Raoul Walsh : I got the tits in, all right, but, when the censors finished with it, they took out the "Naked" and left it for "Dead".

• Raoul Walsh : "I want tits in this picture," Jack told me, "And I know you're the one to put 'em in, Raoul, and *damn* the censors." That's how I got "Naked and the Dead."

• Raoul Walsh : One by one my good friends where going. Bogie, Flynn, Coop, Gable soon went also. Hollywood was changing. The studios were disintegrating and the independents were on the rise and TV - murder.

• Raoul Walsh : [referring to Colorado Territory]  Joel McCrea, pairing him with Virginia Mayo. Dynamite! If they had a hard time with a scene, I'd say, Imagine a reward at the end of it. Any trouble running fast, I told them, Imagine your hot and thirst and you just heard the beers being served around the corner. They were a good team. Virginia was especially enticing as a half-breed.