Author Stephen Schochet (pronounced Show-het) is a professional tour guide in Hollywood who years ago began collecting little-known, humorous anecdotes to tell to his customers. His new book Hollywood Stories: Short, Entertaining Anecdotes About the Stars and Legends of the Movies! contains a timeless treasure trove of colorful vignettes featuring an amazing all-star cast of icons including John Wayne, Charlie Chaplin, Walt Disney, Jack Nicholson, Johnny Depp, Shirley Temple, Marilyn Monroe, Marlon Brando, Errol Flynn, and many others both past and contemporary. Tim Sika, host of the radio show Celluloid Dreams on KSJS in San Jose has called Stephen, “The best storyteller about Hollywood we have ever heard.”
1. Tell us a bit about yourself and your interest in Hollywood.
I’m a tour guide in Hollywood and years ago I started collecting little stories to tell the customers and had the idea that the tales could be told anywhere. I had always been interested in the movies and history so it was kind of a natural fit for me. When I first started, I had a study buddy named Ivan. During our breaks we would research information about old Hollywood and share it with each other. I remember one time we met on Hollywood Boulevard and he said to me in a low, conspiratorial tone, "Steve, man, you know what I found out today? That Thomas Edison owned the rights to the movie camera and the early moguls like Mayer, Warner, and Zukor they had to pay him tributes. That's why they left the East Coast and came west - they were outlaws, baby!" The more information we found out, the more fun it was to give the tour. And I’ve got a good memory for stories so having different material kept it fresh, I think for the customers as well. Anyway, eventually I had the idea that these very short anecdotes could be told anywhere and that’s what led, after a few other projects, to the idea for the book.
2. You have a story about meeting Sammy Davis Jr. when you drove a limo?
To Serve and Protect Sammy. While working for a limousine company, I once had the privilege of driving Sammy Davis Jr. who was totally warm and friendly to me. This was shortly before Davis’ death in 1990 at age sixty-five, due to throat cancer. Just before the great entertainer came out of his Beverly Hills house, Sammy’s security guard had told me that previously he worked as a freelancer and protected several celebrity clients before breaking his leg. After six weeks, the disabled employee got out of the hospital and approached his mailbox, dreading the prospect of unpaid bills. To his surprise, Sammy and only Sammy had never stopped sending him paychecks. He now worked for Davis exclusively, and his boss had never mentioned the very generous act. I noticed there was a plaque by Sammy’s front door that read, “This house welcomes anyone with peace, love and brotherhood in their hearts.” My new friend assured me if anyone came over the singer’s fence without those traits, he would shoot them dead.
3. Tell us the Marlon Brando/Superman story.
The Lazy Super Dad. Marlon Brando wanted to work as little as possible when he played Jor-El, the Kryptonian father, in the 1978 movie Superman. The fifty-three-year-old actor told the film’s producers that he only needed to do a voiceover and some object could stand in his place. After all, he would be part of an alien race; nobody knew what they looked like. Perhaps the extraterrestrial could appear as a green bagel. His bosses were both bemused and alarmed. They pointed out that Marlon’s son would look human and be played by an earthling. A grinning Brando agreed to show up on the set. For his ten minutes of screen time, the star made an estimated nineteen million dollars while not bothering to learn his lines. In his most dramatic scene, Marlon held his baby above his head, speculated on the child’s future, and then placed him on the space ship to escape the doomed planet. Brando hadn’t bothered to learn his lines; his dialogue was penned on the bottom of the super infant’s diaper.
4. Can you tell us the anecdote about Desi Arnaz’s mispronunciations?
Desi Talks. Thirty-four-year-old Desi Arnaz guarded the integrity of his character Ricky Ricardo on the 1951 TV sitcom I Love Lucy. Each week his ditzy spouse, played by his real-life wife Lucille Ball, would come up with a crazy scheme to break into show business. The Cuban-born bandleader recognized that Lucy was the main draw and didn’t mind being her second banana as long as he didn’t look like a fool. He insisted to the writers that Ricky see through her plans; That he was always on equal footing with the audience. Another issue was his accent, which only Lucy was allowed to make fun of. One time Desi stopped rehearsal. Why did the script say splain and thin, instead of explain and thing? When told that it was the way that he spoke, Arnaz angrily denied it and demanded that the scripts be written in proper English.
5. Tell that Billy Wilder story about the race.
Who Won the Race? Writer/director Billy Wilder liked to mess with producer Samuel Goldwyn’s head. The Austrian-born Wilder, who had fled Europe when Hitler rose to power, respected how the former glove salesman from Poland had good taste in stories, even though Sam hardly ever read anything. One time Wilder pitched the mogul a screen idea about Nijinsky, the famous Russian ballet dancer. Goldwyn was dubious, Wilder persisted; the story had great cinematic possibilities. As a young man, Nijinsky danced for the Bolshoi and received international acclaim. Then he met the great love of his life, was rejected, ended up in an insane asylum and thought he was a horse. Goldwyn stared daggers at him. Sam didn’t just fall off the turnip truck. The public would never pay to see something so negative. “Don’t worry, Sam, it has a happy ending.” Goldwyn asked what could possibly be happy about a man who believes he’s a horse. “He wins the Kentucky Derby!”
6) Was there a misunderstanding on the set of The Hunchback of Notre Dame?
We’ll Always Have Paris. Some unruly actors dampened the good mood of English-challenged William Dieterle when he directed The Hunchback of Notre Dame in 1939. Up to now, the German filmmaker’s instructions were being carried out flawlessly. In blistering Los Angeles heat, covered in tons of make-up, Charles Laughton was wonderful as the deformed bell ringer. Playing the gypsy Esmeralda, Maureen O’Hara was excellent in her dialogue and dance scenes. And hundreds of costumed extras were performing without a hitch. The mammoth production had gone smoothly until that day; there were a bunch of chimpanzees, orangutans, and gorillas running around their seventeenth-century Paris set. Dieterle, who always wore white gloves to protect himself from germs, demanded to know what these smelly, noisy creatures were doing there. It turned out that a hard-of-hearing assistant misunderstood the director’s request for some more monks.
7. Was it true De Forest Kelly had some laughs at William Shatner’s expense on Star Trek 2?
Sixty-two-year-old De Forest Kelly saw John Belushi’s TV parody of William Shatner’s Captain Kirk five years after it aired on Saturday Night Live. The thirty-two-year-old comedian, who would sadly die of a drug overdose within a year, visited the set of the 1982 movie Star Trek II and invited Kelly to see the footage. The gentlemanly Atlanta-born actor had by that time played Doctor McCoy, alongside Shatner as Captain Kirk, off and on for sixteen years. Kelly always bristled when someone outside the Star Trek family criticized his co-star. Yet he was curious to see the young man’s skit, he’d heard that it was hilarious. When De Forest watched the video, he was astonished; every one of Kirk’s mannerisms, from his dramatic pauses to his intense delivery of dialogue, had been perfectly mimicked. Later that day, an annoyed William Shatner wondered why the usually professional Kelly kept looking at him and breaking into hysterical laughter.
8. How did James Cameron try to end the working relationship with Arnold Schwarzenegger before The Terminator?
Let’s Do Lunch. A lunch with Arnold Schwarzenegger caused James Cameron to change his opinion about casting for the 1984 sci-fi thriller, The Terminator. The thirty-year-old director disagreed with his bosses that Arnold was the right man to play the film’s hero, who goes up against a homicidal robot. Cameron planned to insult the Austrian bodybuilder and end the work relationship before it started. But the thirty-seven-year-old Schwarzenegger was charming, suggested some great ideas for the movie and had muscles rippling beneath his shirt; might as well be nice or the famed weight lifter could break him like a twig. It was bad enough that James had no money on him and Arnold had to pick up the tab. Maybe Schwarzenegger could play the Terminator; it made more sense than the producers’ other suggestion. The filmmaker wondered how anyone in their right mind could see former football star O.J. Simpson as a killer.
9. What was Marlene Dietrich's big war time regret?
Marlene Dietrich found her true calling entertaining the Allied troops in 1943. The forty-two-year-old actress, who never enjoyed making movies, got a crash course in how to talk to audiences. Nothing could be tougher or more fulfilling than performing in front of young men who might die in battle the next day. The Berlin-born American citizen overcame suspicions that she was actually an Axis spy, and was proud of spurning Hitler’s request to return to Germany. After World War II ended, she enjoyed being a lusty cabaret singer for many years and tried never to take herself too seriously. Marlene, whose long list of romances ranged from John Wayne to General Patton, once mentioned to her husband that she should have married Hitler back in the thirties, and then there would have been no war. She laughed when he agreed and stated that the Fuhrer would have killed himself much sooner.
10. You have a pretty big bibliography; why was David Niven a better source for lore than history?
David Niven’s Yarns. British actor and raconteur David Niven never let the facts get in the way of a good yarn. In his wonderful 1975 book about Hollywood, Bring on the Empty Horses, Niven described Christmas in 1947 when he convinced his neighbor Tyrone Power to dress up as Santa Claus at a party for Niven’s children. At the last moment, Power came down with a bad bout of stage fright and tried to back out of his promise; only after downing a great deal of Scotch did he stumble into the backyard as St. Nick. Like most actors, once Tyrone got into character, he began to enjoy himself. At one point, the inebriated matinee idol put Gary Cooper’s daughter Maria on his knee. “Ho, Ho, Ho, little girl. You tell your old man Santa enjoyed watching him in High Noon. And ask him to get that pretty Grace Kelly’s phone number for me while you’re at it. Ho, Ho, Ho.” High Noon was released in 1952, five years after Tyrone supposedly put on the white whiskers.
11) Tell us the chandelier story from Amadeus.
Amadeus Was Here. New York actor F. Murray Abraham didn’t mind spending months in Prague when he starred in the 1984 Mozart fantasy Amadeus. In the Communist controlled city, you could turn the camera 360 degrees and it still looked like the eighteenth century. So what if there were a few inconveniences? One night a friend of Abraham’s, who was staying in the same building, was consumed with searching the actor’s apartment for electronic listening devices. F. Murray, who would win an Oscar for his performance as Mozart’s obsessed rival Salieri, couldn’t care less if the secret police heard them, and just wanted to go to dinner. But when his buddy found a mysterious plate under a decoration rug, he exclaimed to Abraham, “I told you, man!” and attempted to disable the suspected bug by triumphantly wielding a butter knife to undo the screws. When they suddenly heard the loud crash of a chandelier hitting the floor of the room beneath them, the two shocked men then beat a hasty retreat to the nearest restaurant.
12. Are you working on another book, if so tell us about it?
I have some ideas but nothing concrete yet. Before I wrote Hollywood Stories, I wrote and narrated two audiobooks, which are now available on iTunes, Tales of Hollywood and Fascinating Walt Disney. For me, creativity almost seems out of my control, the projects come out when they are ready to.
13. Where can people go to get more information about you and your book?
Hollywood Stories: Short, Entertaining Anecdotes About the Stars and Legends of the Movies! Available at Barnes & Noble, Amazon or wherever books are sold. http://www.hollywoodstories.com
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