Hastings’ Farewell

Filmed September 1962

After a summer of unemployment I returned to MGM in September for my next DR. KILDARE.  The script, HASTINGS’ FAREWELL, written by Peggy and Lou Shaw, was a powerful story of a man, brain injured in an automobile accident, who was now a complete aphasiac. Since Harkness Smith, the cinematographer for the series, was going to be absent for half the shooting schedule, Ted Voigtlander was brought in to replace him. Harkie and Ted were part of the new wave of cinematographers that resulted because of the advent of television. Both had been camera operators in feature films. But by the early sixties feature film production in Hollywood slowed down and film studios, formerly opposed to this new competition for the country’s entertainment dollar, decided to enter the battle for television viewers. As television production moved from the live sound stages in New York to the film studios in Hollywood, there was a sudden demand for trained directors of photography. And where would you find better trained men than those who had learned their craft from the great cinematographers of the American film at its peak. I would work with Ted again three years later when he photographed THE WILD WILD WEST series. Other directors of photography who traversed this same route from feature film camera operator to television cinematographer were William Spencer, Jerry Finnerman and Richard Rawlings. They too were in my future.

Directing episodic television had its limitations, but it also had its disciplines. Television did not have a captive audience like a movie theatre, where the attendee, having coughed up the price of admission, was unlikely to depart. Television viewers were free to leave the room, pick up a book or worse, just change the channel. Therefore television operated on the theory “hook your audience early”. Programs did not begin with the billboard titles of the series; the story had to start with the opening frame of film. To catch and involve the audience’s attention early, some series would select a  provocative climactic scene from later in the drama and show it as a prolog. Most detective and police series started their story with a prolog that was the crime. That was how my production of JOHNNY TEMPLE began, with the knifing of the teenager. But usually DR. KILDARE was a gentler show, delving into people’s emotions rather than showing exciting acts of violence. To heighten and enhance these less sensational dramatic moments a freeze frame motif was used. The freeze frame had been around for a long time, but to my knowledge had never been used as extensively as when it was made an integral part of the DR. KILDARE prolog.

We had come a long way since 1939 when David O. Selznick had to get Congressional approval for Clark Gable’s Rhett Butler to say, “Frankly my dear, I don’t give a damn.”

The exterior of Blair Hospital was filmed right on the MGM lot. The white structure, containing the offices of studio executives, was the Thalberg Building, built in 1937 after the death of Irving Thalberg at the age of 37. To the right of the building was Lot 1 with its thirty sound stages. To enter the lot one had to pass a guard gate. The amiable guard’s name was Ken Hollywood.

I had seen Harry Guardino perform several years earlier in the national company of A HATFUL OF RAIN. In the role of the drug addict’s brother he stole the show. Noted actor Malcolm Atterbury told me he too had seen the show and been very impressed with Guardino’s work. Later when Malcolm acted in a television production with Harry, he told him how much he had admired his performance. He said he had wanted to come backstage to compliment him, but since he didn’t know him, he felt he might be intruding. Harry’s answer? He would have been very welcome. It seemed everyone felt as Malcolm did, and there were no visitors.

Harry Sukman, Academy Award winner for his music score for SONG WITHOUT END, composed the background music for all of the DR. KILARE episodes I directed. As a basis for his score there was the DR. KILDARE theme that Jerry Goldsmith, another veteran of PLAYHOUSE 90, had composed. Then Harry would also create another theme, another melody, for the current story’s protagonist, in the case of this show a plaintive Jerry Hastings’ theme. The previous season while I was still on staff, Harry had been signed to compose the score for the pilot of Arena Productions’ new psychiatric series. And he was having trouble. He agonized with me over not being able to come up with a theme. It was as if he had used up all of the melodies in his head. I had been very impressed with the beautiful theme he had created for a recent episode, OH, MY DAUGHTER, a story involving Dr. Gillespie and his daughter. I suggested using that theme. After all it was a secondary melody in that show. It was not as if it was identifiable like a series theme. And I thought it was too good not to use again. Harry agreed with me. And that’s how the theme music for THE ELEVENTH HOUR  was born.

HASTINGS’ FAREWELL was the first time I would go to an institution for research. Peggy and Lou Shaw and I went to the Long Beach Naval Hospital to visit their Aphasia Unit. The Shaws then wrote the sequence where Kildare, now very involved in Jerry Hastings’ plight, goes to visit an Aphasia Unit. On my return to the studio I consulted with my casting director, Jane Murray, and told her I wanted to cast our speech therapist just like the one I had met. I described her to Jane. She was a sweet white-haired lady, more like a fraternity house mother than a pathologist. Jane loved the idea and brought three or four character actresses in to meet us. I liked one because she looked so much like the therapist we had met at the hospital. Jane favored one of the others, a very pretty lady who looked like a Pasadena matron, which I think she was. But her credentials were intriguing. She was Betty Bronson, and she had played Peter Pan in the 1924 silent film. I couldn’t resist. Peter Pan won.

The day before Betty was to work, it was thought our script might be short, and so the Shaws wrote an addition to the sequence. It was a page and a half of complex medical dialog. Betty had the scene from the original material down cold. But the sheer volume of medical verbiage in the new material sent to her the night before filming caused problems. She knew most of it, but there was one speech that she kept stumbling over, her closeup when she stood behind Mike. I finally solved the problem by having her READ her lines from a cue card while I filmed Mike’s closeup with her hands on his head.

HASTINGS’ FAREWELL provided another first for me — my first location shooting away from the studio. We went to a residence with a swimming pool close to MGM in Culver City to film the home movie sequence for a scene between Kildare and Mrs. Hastings. Since we didn’t need sound, we took a skeleton crew and filmed with the smaller Arriflex camera.

I always believed in rehearsing scenes before filming. But I tried to be careful not to rehearse too long. There is a time in rehearsal when the scene “comes alive”, when the actors catch fire; I wanted the camera to be rolling when that happened. When Mrs. Hastings returned to the hospital with Kildare, I first filmed a long master shot for the whole sequence before breaking it up into two shots and closeups. And indeed the scene came alive. What I didn’t anticipate was the very thing happening that I was trying to avoid. In the master shot when the photograph fell to the floor, Beverly’s emotional response was absolutely brilliant. When we did her closeup, she was great, but it really wasn’t as good as in the master shot.

I’m afraid that I was a pain in the you know where a lot of the time, asking for script changes. But there were a few times when I fought to protect the script, to avoid changes. Just before I was to shoot the scene where Kildare returned to Hastings’ room to find him on the floor holding the photograph, a colored page came down from the story editor adding an additional line to Kildare’s speech. I stormed into David Victor’s office and pleaded to leave the script alone. I said the added line diluted the power of the moment. David saw it my way, and the added line was eliminated.

The day at the Naval Hospital proved invaluable. The various techniques used by Kildare trying to reach Hastings were learned by both the Shaws and me on that one outing.

I met Claudia Bryar in 1955 when she and her husband, Paul, came to audition for a production of MY THREE ANGELS that I was directing at the Players’ Ring Theatre in Hollywood. I cast the two of them in the play, and then the following year they played the Lomans, Willy and Linda, in my production of DEATH OF A SALESMAN at the Morgan Theatre in Santa Monica. They gave superb performances. Claudia later reprised the role of Linda in another production of SALESMAN directed by Corey Allen, this time with Herschel Bernardi as Willy. HASTINGS’ FAREWELL, when she played the nurse on duty the night Kildare struggled to save Hastings, was the first of several times Claudia and I got to work together in film.

Remember the words about Irving Thalberg: “He didn’t make movies for people to see. He made movies for people to feel.” I believed in those words when I filmed this episode. I believe in them even more strongly nearly a half a century later.

Fourteen years later I would return to the subject of aphasia when I was priveleged to direct the episode GRANDMA COMES HOME on THE WALTONS. Ellen Corby had had a stroke that kept her off the show for a year. That episode was her return to the series. Ellen had gone through intense therapy during that year. She was able to comprehend and with intense concentration speak a little. It was the reverse of the situation with Harry Guardino. He had to portray a person who couldn’t comprehend, who couldn’t speak. Ellen, who really couldn’t speak, had to portray Grandma, who although limited in her speech, could speak. When I dealt with Ellen, a true aphasiac, I truly appreciated what an amazingly brilliant performance Harry Guardino had given.

The journey continues