Not long ago, I was in the Motion Picture and Television reading room at the Library of Congress, visiting my books (what a thrill!), and getting expert advice on how to do research in this fabulous archive. The LOC, I learned, does not merely collect films and books about filmmaking. Its vast holdings include scripts, one-sheets, lobby cards, and a wide array of memorabilia. By way of illustration, reference librarian Josie Walters-Johnston pulled out a vintage scrapbook in which a movie buff from the 1930s had lovingly pasted photos of her screen idols. Greta Garbo was this fan’s special favorite, and her enigmatic beauty shown forth on almost every page.Josie had also prepared a treat: she had cued up some rare footage of Garbo from the late Forties. In that era, Garbo’s great films (Anna Christie, Queen Christina, Camille, Ninotchka) were long behind her. She was attempting a comeback, and an Italian company was interested, but wanted to be sure of its investment. That’s why the legendary Swedish actress had to stoop to the indignity of a screen test. The soundtrack is lost, but I watched her (in a variety of outfits) silently emote for the camera, smiling, looking grave, turning her head in response to some director whose voice I couldn’t hear. As she moved through this humiliating exercise, a faint look of distaste seemed to flicker across her lovely features. A postscript: the financing fell through, and Garbo’s comeback was not to be.
Watching that brief film clip, I remembered an audition tape that had recently thrilled me to the marrow. I was interviewing Scott Wilson, widely regarded in Hollywood as an “actor’s actor.” Which means that he’s always been better known for losing himself in a role than for becoming a star. We were discussing the films of 1967, and Wilson pulled out a forty-year-old tape of himself auditioning for the role of Dick Hickock, one of the two feckless, ruthless killers at the heart of the screen adaptation of Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. For his audition, the then-unknown Wilson chose to present Danny’s monologue from Night Must Fall, a thriller by playwright Emlyn Williams in which a charming drifter is gradually revealed to be a psychopath. Speaking quietly in a midwestern drawl rather than in Danny’s traditional Irish brogue, breaking into a chuckle at the oddest moments, Scott was both fascinating and terrifying. No wonder he got the part.
Scott Wilson’s audition for director Richard Brooks is a rare example of Hollywood at its kindest. When the casting process for In Cold Blood began, Scott was acting in his very first movie, In the Heat of the Night. As a small-town Southern kid arrested for a murder he didn’t commit, he played key scenes opposite the movie’s stars, Rod Steiger and Sidney Poitier. It was Poitier who first alerted him that the role of Dick Hickock might be a good fit. He and Quincy Jones ( who was to write memorable jazz scores for both films) personally lobbied Brooks on Scott’s behalf. Next, director Norman Jewison gave Brooks a peek at dailies from In the Heat of the Night to help validate Scott’s acting creds. Perhaps most valuable to Scott was the pep talk from Poitier just before his big moment: “After he left I was like Godzilla, and I walked into that meeting with Brooks feeling very confident, having no self-doubt.” And nailed the audition. How refreshing to hear about show people looking after one of their own.
