Game, 1974

Hollywood is just another used car mart. It buys and sells everything, movies to stars, to Lux soap and dreams. The stars often sell themselves. From, or upon, casting couches to full-page ads, in the home town press, the Hollywood trade papers, two slim journals coming out every other day to bite the hand that feeds them, keeps them alive. Best time of year for the ad revenuers around this town are the months immediately preceding April’s Oscar night. All the plush movie combines plunder the petty-cash and cancel a couple of small-budget programmes in order to shell out fortunes on full-page ads reminding the Academy members which films to vote for, when and where to see ‘em at times and locations fully conversant with curfew at the old folks’ home, and of course, what who said about which (well-pruned) critics’ comments. Some actors, sensing glory in their midst if never in their mitts, will pawn one of their cars/pools/managers/wives and buy space to push themselves in order to grab at the brass ring of the golden Oscar (plate only), because Oscar time is election time, folks, and always ends up in a heap more political, and smelling worse, than the Watergate buggers.

The ad revenue never exactly stops, it slows down some, sure, but it’s always there. During the rest of the twelvemonth, films are still screamed about (a double-page spread ad usually means you get yourself a good review) and actors still advertise themselves: ‘See me guesting on McCloud tomorrow at nine, you’ll never believe it.’ Or their agents will buy the space for them; Hollywood ten per centers are like justice, blind and have to be seen working. These ads will bear the best current mugshot available of the star or newcomer involved, showing either the amazing use of some make-up in a new role, or more often than not, displaying the actor’s new image, slimming or hair-style after a wig or transplant, to prove how good he/she/it looks once out of the alcoholic tank or plastic surgery. In most cases, these ads stem from those agents who have, one nefarious way or another, gotten hold of an artist from another agency, and so you get ‘William Morris Agency is pleased to announce worldwide representation of ‘ and there’s the name and the new image, in straight photographic portrait, bleached-out facsimile, drawn visage, a caricature if the face is well-known enough to begin with, or simply the name in 80pt. Plantin Bold. (Always Bold.)

Back in July of ’71, the aforementioned William Morris folk took one of their biggest gambles of recent years and were pleased, so they said, to announce, which they did, the global ownership, so to speak, of Elliott Gould. A normal enough occurence, except for the rather choice illustration. The photo showed Gould in, presumably, an orthodontist’s chair, eyes shut and three hands probing his wide open mouth with sundry tortuous-looking instruments. Like he was having a tough medical. It was probably Gould’s idea to use such a shot, hitting back at the town that had rushed to call him sick, or quite simply crazy, since ‘bombing/freaking/wigging out’ of his own production of A Glimpse of Tiger five months previously. What a furore that had caused. Actually, he simply walked out – ankled, in Hollywood parlance – and paid £200,000 and wound up his own project-packed production company for the privilege of so ankling. And in Hollywood terms, baby, that has just gotta mean madness, but like a total insanity trip, man, know what I mean?

Never had a Hollywood hotshot fallen from golden grace quite so fast. Or so far. Variety shouted it all out in their best headline-packed manner: “Elliott Gould Proves Tired “Tiger”; Film Falls Apart; Confusion Rife’; Indeed it was. Variety tried to explain: ‘Reports of a subway accident which marred first day lensing on Monday were followed by rumours of the firing of director Anthony Harvey, temper tantrums by Gould, a physical assault on co-star Kim Darby and the possible abandonment of the Brodsky-Gould partnership…’ And it was two whole years before Gould could get employed again, and then only after undergoing some insane tests to prove his sanity in order to make The Long Goodbye and present a whole new face to the world, not of Gould so much as of Chandler’s Philip Marlowe.

Gould has managed to make a few more movies since then; as a vice-cop in Busting, for which Gay Lib will never -’evah’- forgive him; a black-comedy return with his M*A*S*H comrade, Donald Sutherland, in S*P*Y*S made about Watergateish deceits in London and Paris; and Who? also in London, plus Munich, for which title cinema managers around the world will hardly feel kindly towards him, not in this year of another movie called What? and yet another movie called Why? Not that Gould will care too much about that. The important thing just about now is that he’s back where he’s happiest and best and he doesn’t even need to make tests anymore, screen or electrode-wise. ‘They just have me pee in a bottle and take my blood-pressure.’

That used to be high. It just had to. Gould was pretty damned high himself. He churned out an incredible total of eight films inside three years in what was, apart from over-exposure of a genuinely interesting and free-form natural talent, all part of an ego-trip race to catch up with his one-time wife Barbra Streisand. For years he had lived -existed, then- in her shadow and if they ever happened to get photographed together, he usually came out of the caption deal as ‘a friend’. That’s funny to you and me; that’s even hilarious to him for the first five times, maybe; 345 captions later on it’s something of an ego-draining drag.

Still for a long while back there, he had been the new white hope of Hollywood, king of the roost, cock of the walk. Gould had made it – and made it but big. He was the screen’s Mr. Average – unkempt, undecided, unconfident, mixed up and mashed up – as the swinging 60′s farted and belched into the tangoing 70′s. He’s made an engaging debut in a similarly engaging litle movie, The Night They Raided Minsky’s, which didn’t bust any guts, nor records, though showed that Barbra’s fella certainly had someting going for him other than being a “friend” of the famous; so did the director, one William Friedkin (he went on to make The French Connection and something called The Exorcist). Next with Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice and copout climax, as the hubby eagerly sucked into permissivity and the promise of wife-swapping (with Nathalie Wood yet). Gould became a solid gold gasser and earned an Oscar nomination – and all the full-page ads that went with it. He didn’t get an Oscar but Bob & Carol & Ted & so on’s acclaim meant he was suddenly in everything. He was of course, swiftly canonised by Time, the 42nd time, if you’re interested, that a husband and wife had separately won the cover treatment. ‘His clothes,’ said the venerated Time, ‘whether custom-made suits or crumpled fatigues, never quite fit; his hair could use a trim; and he can raise a beard in a couple of days. In this era of the inescapable nude scene, Gould’s ordinary and not especially well-cared-for proportions come as a blessed relief.’ (It wasn’t that long, however, before he was crucified by Time as well: a film review said his performance in The Touch showed he was crazy…)

Gould was born in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn, August 29, 1938, the only child of Bernard and Lucille Goldstein. Pa took him to his first baseball game aged 19 months, and he’s never lost the feel for it (he’s also a lifelong fan of the New York Knicks basketball team) and among his baseball anecdotes is the one about attending a World Series game, the Brooklyn Dodgers v. the New York Yankees. Nixon was in the same crowd. ‘I remember he was asked which team he was rooting for and he said “the winning team”. Unbelievable!’

Apart from baseball, the young Gould lived in the cinema, nuts about Cooper, Gable, Cagney and Astaire. ‘They were special. They weren’t trying because you can’t try before a camera, it catches that.’ he also got to follow Jeffrey Hunter, Tab Hunter, Tony Curtis and Jeff Chandler. ‘Wasn’t a great fan of Chandler but he came from Brooklyn see. I believed everything they did. I went to the movies and I believed.’ Ma, too. She pushed him, from as early as eight, into drama lessons. Charlie Lowe’s Broadway show biz school for kids, to be precise. ‘Fix up his diction,’ said Mama. The kids from the class put on shows around the local temples and hospitals. Gould’s act was vaudeville style ditties such as: ‘Mary had a little lamb, some peas and mashed potatoes, an ear of corn, some buttered beans and then had sliced tomatoes.’

Gould seemed to know where he was going, all the time. First time on TV, his mother suggested shortening his moniker to Gold. No way, said the kid. Gould. And apart from his years as Mr. Streisand, the name has never changed.

He took up sports at school, baseball, of course, plus a lot of basketball, and during the hols went out on the Catskill borscht belt, winning talent contests and the like. He loved practical jokes and would phone up locals with some impressions of the rabbi or the butcher demanding his bills be paid. He got his first Broadway part the same way, ringing the producer of a project called Rumple and coming on as an agent praising some young kid named Gould…He got the part.

The show folded as all shows do, and Gould passed into the ‘resting’ oblivion of part time jobs, that are a must in any star’s biography: lift operator at the Park Royal hotel, rug cleaner salesman, theatre-school cleaner, flogging boxing equipment for one percent of the profit (‘I demonstrated the punch ball’), selling a game called ‘Confucius Say’ in a department store, disguised as a Chinaman – and at one time with a pal, selling ads for a non-existent paper. Every little bit helps.

Like Sean Connery, he finally made it big – to the chorus line of a Broadway show, Irma La Douce. Next stop, the lead role on the great white way. The show was I Can Get It For You Wholesale. The reviews weren’t bad and he took a fancy to the girl winning applause as a scatty secretary with a couple of good songs under her belt. He moved into her apartment and they got spliced 18 months later. She was Streisand and damn soon she was like gold dust and his ego suffered rather traumatically. She says he helped keep her feet on the ground; he recalls the marriage as quite a fantastic experience, a mixture between chocolate soufflé and a bath of lava. Barbra won an Oscar with her first movie, and Elliott stayed at home – polishing it.

He hadn’t just stopped, though. While living with Barbra he toured the States in another musical, The Fantasticks, opposite another super-legend-to-be, Liza Minnelli, and carried on with a TV special called Once Upon A Mattress, and stage hits, small but good, like Drat The Cat and Jules Fieffer’s first play, Little Murders – which later became the first movie he produced for his own outfit.

Obviously he had to follow his missus to the mean ‘n’ marvy town of Hollywood, where – as no one knows better than he – two words travel fast and mean everything. Hot. And Cold. His first movie role as impresario Billy Minsky didn’t exactly set the town alight, but he was soon back for Bob and Carol et al. He was paid $25,000, wanted more and got it in kudos: An Academy Award nomination and selection as male newcomer of the year by no less august an outfit than the Hollywood’s Women’s Press Club. Oh boy! By the time Robert Altman was directing him in the M*A*S*H smash-to-be, he cottoned on the town and set up in business with Jack Brodsky. Jack called him a Jewish Burton and they announced several projects, only one of which ever got made because of their rapid enough break-up.

The films started out in great style, M*A*S*H, of course, and in particular, his favourite Hollywood role, in the campus-revolutionary piece, Getting Straight; co-star Candy Bergen said that he was the first person to get her to enjoy acting. Make of that what you will. Paula Prentiss, who dipped in the suds with him in Move (still never released over here) said he was a great guy to share a tub in. Slowly, however, the movies made at a killing pace, began to pall on his new-won audience; the barbed points of each successive, hopefully abrasive scenario (Move; I Love My Wife; Little Murders) were blunted and buried in the constant repetition of style, characterisation and what had once seemed improvisational moods and gestures.

Even so, Getting Straight had impressed the one man with the most genius when it comes to emulsion: Ingmar Bergman in Sweden. He phoned Gould and selected him as the first non-Scandinavian artist to be used in one of his films: his first English-speaking production in fact, The Touch, ‘What I want from the actors in my picture’, Bergman explained, ‘is an ability to express the second and third dimensions, an ability to put the part together inside themselves and then materialise it. I want to get it from their faces, from their eyes, from their movements. I can see that Gould has it.’ Not quite: the film flopped.

‘Sure Bergman rode me pretty hard’, agrees Gould. ‘I’m just a baby when you think of what that guy knows. He’s the most concentrated man I’ve seen. No traumas. No difficulties. He’s made into this mystical guy because people read things into his work — yet he’s a primitive artist. Talking about basic things, you know. You learn from primitive art. That you have to break through and get right to the point.’

And that’s the axiom Elliott Gould follows today, now he’s been taken back into the Hollywood fold; that and his pet line from Getting Straight: ‘It’s not what you do, it’s what you are.’ He’s remarried, has two more kids to add to the bright son from Streisand wedlock and he seems content enough, waiting to improve the standard of his current film fare. ‘Barbra calls me rude’, says Gould. ‘It’s true, I’m not too polite. But rude ain’t crude’. And it was in New York, unshaven in the morning after a night before, at his suite at the Plaza, that Gould, yesterday’s tarnished gold: fully re-plated, talked to Guy Flatley…

‘The studio cut off my legs and then said, “Next time, you go out there and win a race for us.” But what they didn’t know is that the mind can grow any kind of legs it wants. I’m the original rubber man, and I’m bouncing right back. I may be starting out at the bottom again, but I’m feeling good. I just refuse to feel bad anymore.’

Elliott Gould, who plummeted from the exalted position of superstar to has-been in the absurdly brief span of two years, sits unshaven in the early-morning rubble of his room at the Plaza, re-lights last night’s cigar and smiles sadly as he traces his rise and fall — and what he hopes will be his triumphant comeback as the gently sadistic detective Phillip Marlowe in Robert Altman’s forthcoming The Long Goodbye.

He’s wearing a sweatshirt and corduroy pants, his dark curls are all atangle, and his nails are bitten almost to the point of no return. And the gloomy tale he tells would be glaringly out of place in Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice or M*A*S*H or Getting Straight or any of those sassy, sexy comedies that made him – for one bright and shiny season – America’s favorite schlemiel.

Elliott’s blue period began early in 1971, shortly after the mystical but uncommercial experience of toiling in Ingmar Bergman’s somber drama, The Touch. Although the critics were to find him laughably miscast as a moody, mean-tempered archeologist who makes an illicit dig into the marriage of Bibi Andersson and Max von Sydow, Elliott returned from Sweden certain that Bergman had opened the floodgates of artistic expression for him.

Thus, it was with a sense of jubilation that he jumped into A Glimpse of Tiger, an offbeat comedy which he and his producer-partner Jack Brodsky had talked Warner Brothers into backing.

A Glimpse of Tiger, however, was destined never to be glimpsed by the public. Even before the cameras began to roll, there were rumbling of wrongdoings. It was rumoured that Elliott had threatened to thrash his trembling co-star Kim Darby, that he had exchanged blows with director Anthony Harvey, that he was freaked out on drugs and subject to spectacular outbursts of emotion, that he had pulled a disappearing act, that he was no longer the lovable looney we had taken to our hearts.

Today, Elliott claims that it was all a frame-up, that Warners needed a scapegoat and cynically took advantage of his trusting nature. But at the time, he merely agreed to cancel the project and to pay the production costs. ‘I owe Warners so much’, he sighs, ‘that in my mind they are an eternal urinal that I keep pouring my money into.’

Oddly enough, Warners did finally unleash a revamped version of Tiger. It was called What’s Up, Doc ? and it starred Barbra Streisand in the role that was originally intended for her ex-husband. ‘That makes good sense to me’, admits Elliott. ‘At least she made some money out of it.’

Money is precisely the thing that Elliott did not make as he drifted about, searching his soul, shooting basketballs, and fathering two children by Jennie Bogart, who had proved a valiant teenage tower of strength to him at the time of the Tiger attack.  When his pocketbook began to feel the pinch, he decided to resume his career — and it was then that he discovered just how tightly Hollywood can slam its doors. ‘I couldn’t get work from July until The Long Goodbye and that made me cry’, he says, suddenly beaming over his ability to make rhymes out of his rotten luck.

But wasn’t there at least a kernel of truth in all those wild rumours? The drug problem, for example? ‘I have no problem with drugs.’

Not even Marijuana ?

‘Nobody has a problem with marijuana.’

Isn’t it a fact that Kim Darby was all but frozen with fear ?

‘That’s her problem; she’s been frightened for a long time.’

What about those fisticuffs with the director ?

‘I had a conflict with Tony Harvey, over the concept of the movie, and he was afraid to go to John Calley, the big boy at Warners, and tell him that changes should be made. In the beginning, I made a few wrong choices, and when I finally got the right answers, nobody would listen to me. After eight films and never being late and always knowing my lines, nobody would listen to me. I’m a gentle soul, and in the past I had always deferred to authority. But, this time, I knew I was right, and I had to put myself to the test. The price I paid was a lot of badmouthing and no jobs for two years.

‘Warners collected on an insurance policy that said I was crazy,’ moans Elliott, rolling his beagle-dog eyes heavenward in disbelief. ‘How could they get away with a trick like that – without producing at least some shread of evidence?’

‘You tell me.’ he says, shaking his head, ‘I made the error of hiring a lawyer who became the instrument to nail me up. I thought I explained things to him, but he must have been listening to some other music. I was innocent and ignorant — a winning combination — and they all made a goat out of me.’

Elliott takes a deep puff on his cigar and ponders the lessons Tiger taught him. ‘I always had one great fault, which was a need to convince everybody that I was a good guy. I had a real confidence problem, and I would end up doing what other wanted me to do. And if all this is what it took to show people that I am human, then it was worth it.’

He appeared so poignantly human to United Artists – the distributors of The Long Goodbye – that, in addition to the customary physical examination, they insisted he take a mental test. ‘They sat me down with a psychiatrist who asked me all sorts of questions and then they put nineteen needles in my head to see if I was sane.’

The needles made the point that Elliott was sane, tangible proof that his six and half years on the couch were not spent in vain. ‘I finally stopped going to my analyst when he began having me explain things to him, and now I’ll never have to entertain him again. You know, Freud got us into as much trouble as Christ did; in fact, I’ve come to the conclusion that Freud was really Mel Brooks.’

If Freud were around today, he’s probably say that Elliott’s psychological troubles began shortly after his birth 34 years ago in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn. ‘I never played much, and I was afraid to feel things,’ he recalls. And he was emotionally torn by the knowledge that the marriage of Lucille and Bernard Goldstein, was made this side of heaven.

‘By the time I was three, I knew my parents didn’t understand one another, but they stayed together for 27 years. They’re divorced now. It’s funny – when my father was 17, he was eloping with another girl who was 16, but their families stopped them. Twenty-eight years later, he finally married her and they moved to Florida. A few days ago, I had my mother on one phone, and then my other phone rang, and it was my father calling from Florida. “Well,” I said, “I’ve finally got the two of you together”.’

About as together as Elliott and his ex-wife. ‘I recently read something Barbra said that pleased me very much. She said we would always be part of each other. She really is a remarkable person. You know something? She doesn’t even listen to the radio! She doesn’t know what’s going on in the world – she doesn’t know who Al Green is, and she’s never heard the Temptations sing, and I just know she’s going to love my saying that about her. But the truth is she’s come a long way. Did you see her in Up the Sandbox? She’s more refined in that than I’ve ever seen her before. I’m real proud of Barbra.

Elliott is also really proud of their son, Jason, and of Molly and Sam, the two children he had with Jennie Bogart. And he’s proud of Jennie herself, who recently turned 20. ‘Jennie is the best fighter I’ve ever met. She fights for everything, she fights for life. She’s living with our kids now in the house that Mary Astor built in the Hollywood hills. Molly is 14 months old and probably the most beautiful girl in the world, and Sam was born January 9, in the kitchen of our home. The doctor brought his own table and two ladies to help him. It was 5:15 in the morning. Our Town was on TV, and the birth was as natural as it could be.’

Does Elliott plan to make Jennie Mrs. Gould? ‘I heard your question, he says meaningfully, ‘The relationship Jennie and I have never has to end, and if I’m in California, it would be natural for me to stay with Jennie and the children. Jennie and I understand one another. Besides, I can be of help directing traffic up there.’

And when he’s not near the girl he loves? ‘Right now, I’m by myself.’ says Elliott. ‘But if Mary Astor will have me, I’ll be hers.’

Does he have a favourite leading lady? ‘Barbra and Jennie and my mother. They’re the only ones who have impressed me so far. But I’m looking forward to the day when I can choose my own leading lady.’ Are there any candidates out front? ‘It depends on the situation. Maybe Marjorie Main. I’d love to work with Alexis Smith, or let Alexis Smith work with me.’

What would he say to a last waltz in Paris with Barbra Streisand, who is Ingmar Bergman’s first choice for his movie of The Merry Widow?

‘I wouldn’t mind that at all. I think a lot of people would be interested in seeing Barbra and me together.’

Elliott’s girl in The Long Goodbye in Nina Van Pallandt, a blue-eyed blond celebrated chiefly for her role as star witness in the Clifford Irving case. An intoxicating actress, no doubt.

‘Nothing new’, yawns Elliott, gazing droopily off into space. Nothing new?

‘Well, I mean, Nina is strong, a really good specimen, but she knows who she is and what she can do. we worked real good together. My secret of being a formidable actor is that I seldom act. I’m always me.’

Yes, but what about Nina?

‘The good thing about Nina is that a lot of people want to see her on the screen. I myself wanted Jennifer O’Neill, because I felt she would draw more out of me. But, after A Glimpse of Tiger, I didn’t want to make waves. I figured Altman knew why he wanted Nina, and I was hardly in a position to say to him that I had to have Jennifer. But now I would insist on her.’

Elliott is so definite about what should not go into a film that one suspects he yearns to be a director. ‘I have been a director all along’, he says, winking. ‘Seriously, directing is my next step. What I’d like to do is something like The Three Musketeers, but in modern dress. I’d shoot it on the post office steps right across from Madison Square Garden. I’m also interested in bringing Shakespeare up to date, making Othello into a player for the Knicks.’ For the present, however, Elliott is sticking to acting. United Artists have signed him to star in a comedy thriller called Busting, and they didn’t even make him take the mental. ‘I play a vice cop, and it’s my job to go into fag bars and make arrests, to catch people loitering in the toilets.’

You just can’t help wondering what Gay Lib will have to say about Busting, and what Elliott will have to say about Gay Lib. ‘I bat from just one side of the plate myself,’ Elliott explains. ‘The right side; I’m no good on the left. But I say Gay Lib is terrific, very courageous.’

Then there’s the other Lib – is Elliott aware that M*A*S*H was accused of being anti-feminist ?

‘I wasn’t aware of it until just this minute. Why did they say M*A*S*H was anti-feminist ?

Because of the cruel treatment of the Hot Lips Houlihan character played by Sally Kellerman.

‘Ooohhh…well, we’ve been cruel to women for a long time. I mean society has; not me. I love women. They’re the ones that got us here, you know. I’m all for Women’s Lib, it’s brave to speak out in a world of truck drivers. But I don’t think Women’s Lib has anything to do with gender – do you dig what I’m saying? It has to do with both men and women, with breaking tradition.’

The untraditional liberation Elliott envisions for himself is a serene time and place where he and his loved ones can come home together whenever the spirit moves them.

‘What I want is a farm, a fun farm where Jason and Molly and Sam can play. We’ll have an old trolley car converted into a diner….I always wanted to be a short order cook. And there’ll be a barn with a full basketball court. It’ll be a place for kids and animals and people who don’t mind hard work,’ Elliott says, propping his legs up on the cluttered Plaza coffee table and puffing his cigar. ‘And I’ll be there to entertain them.’