Backstage at Playhouse 90

It was two days before showtime, and CBS's Hollywood Studio 31 was a reptile house of cables, clotted with men and monitors, cameras and booms, eight sets. "Tuesdays are miserable.'' a man explained. "The actors are just getting aware of the cameras and the feel of the set." This time, matters had got miserable well before Tuesday.

The play was The Troublemakers, a drama about college students who beat to death another boy because of some campus newspaper articles he had written.* Director John Frankenheimer (Williams. '51), a gangly TV veteran of 27, was disappointed from the start with George Bellak's TV adaptation of his original play. So Frankenheimer called in TV Author Rod (Requiem for a Heavyweight) Serling to doctor the script. With accomplished Actor Ben Gazzara to play the role, Frankenheimer wanted to expand the part of Stanley, the dead boy's roommate, who makes an effort to stop the fatal roughhouse, then suffers with a conscience-driven urge to tell all. "I want to be conscious of Benny Gazzara every minute," said Frankenheimer. "This is the most creative actor I've ever worked with."

Serling had hardly begun his suturing job when--only six days before showtime --Producer Martin Manulis called his director. "We've had it,'' he said. "The Catholic press is saying we are doing a Communist play." All that had happened was that a columnist for some 45 Roman Catholic newspapers and magazines had written a story complaining that CBS was about to stage a play whose off-Broadway version in 1954 pleaded "for soft handling of suspected Communists." The story sent Madison Avenue into a flap, and ad agencies for go's five sponsors talked of backing out. Officials at CBS rushed down a wad of proposed script changes.

"Shoot Tight." "Suddenly," said Frankenheimer, "it became very important to me to get this show on." In long conferences of Manulis, Frankenheimer, cast and whole production staff, ten lines were excised for appeasement purposes. So, by Miserable Tuesday, the unexpected crisis was over, and all the principals--Frankenheimer, Serling and Gazzara, Associate Director Jim Clark and Technical Director Brooks ("Nimble Fingers") Graham--could concentrate on the ordinary weekly Playhouse 90 crisis, the need to get out a show.

Crouching before the mobile monitor unit and chain-smoking ("Three packs of Sponsor Marlboros a day"), Frankenheimer bellowed comments to his cast and production staff. "That's the shot! It's beautiful. I love it." "It's sloppy. It stinks." "Shoot tight on someone in the foreground." He turned to direct a scene where Gazzara has just discovered that his roommate is dead. "Okay. Start Benny out of the bathroom, fellows. C'mon, I don't have much time." (Explained Frankenheimer on the side: "If you don't drive them, you have last-minute panic.")

Frankenheimer objected to a railing at the top of some dorm stairs. "Take that off!" There was trouble with the audio, but it was fixed with a "fishpole"--a long rod used to get the mike into niches the boom could not reach. An actor was not punching the victim realistically. A cable man stumbled into camera view. One by one, the mistakes were rehearsed away.

"Pan Down." "Now let's go into the woods, fellows," said Frankenheimer, and the camera followed the director into one corner of the studio, where real trees had been wired upright for the "burial" scene. "Instead of a pine tree I want a tree with no leaves," Frankenheimer snapped. "Pull out this briar bush. This is supposed to be New England." The camera came in on the boys with the body. "Dump it face down," called John. "Pan down on the body. Good. I like it."

After lunch, Frankenheimer moved into the control booth, where the action could be viewed only as it looks on the TV screen, put on his headphones, and yelled: "Take it from the top . . . Settle down in the studio. I can't hear the dialogue." He watched a chilling scene in which four liquored-up Saunders College students prance wildly around the young man they are about to kill in a spasm of inchoate brutality. "All of you are too drunk in that scene," Frankenheimer said into a microphone that blared his commands all over the huge studio. "You haven't had that much to drink yet. Benny, take your walk again, please. Fellows, wait for your cue. then come in like gangbusters." Later, in a Gazzara love scene with Barbara Rush, china in a sideboard came crashing down. "John, that's a maniacal piece of furniture," Gazzara complained. The piece was promptly fixed.

On Wednesday, with only a day to go, Producer Manulis sat taking notes: too much blood in the bathroom; too many "Gods and God-awfuls" in the script; Harry Guardino should chuck his cigar for a cigarette, because "we sell cigarettes here"; "Hershey Bar" must become "candy bar"; Mary Astor ought to play her scenes without makeup; Gazzara was crying too loudly, in Act 4. The director found the ceiling in the police station "too beautiful. I want it cruddy," decreed Frankenheimer. "Put sprinklers on it."

"Now Close In." At dress rehearsal, only three hours before showtime, Frankenheimer fired frenzied notes to his script girl: "The star shots look terrible. The music wasn't on time. Ben's collar should be neat; he looks like a thug. Keenan looked hypnotized. We have chaos." But the chaos went smoothly. "Watch the shadows," Nimble Fingers Graham added. Frankenheimer said, "Arc to the right. Now close in. Ready Camera Two. Standby Four. Take Four," and snapped his fingers crisply--each snap the sign for a camera change. "The murder scene went fine, fellows," said Nimble Fingers. "But I saw a boom in the bath." Someone was running behind a window that was supposed to be four flights up. "We've got some mighty tall actors," Frankenheimer cracked. "Stay dead longer," he instructed Jack Mullaney, the murdered student, "then tiptoe out of the studio."

With only an hour to go, Frankenheimer addressed the cast and crew once more. The noise in the final scene, he said to the camera crewmen, "was a disgrace--it will kill the whole show." Frankenheimer dressed down Gazzara again about his shirt. ''John, I'll look adorable," Ben promised. Barbara Rush was playing the cafe scene with too much "sympathy and not relating to Ben." Barbara replied: "I try to get anger by trying to think of--if my child were killed." Frankenheimer blanched. "That's what's wrong. You are being a mother. Anger is a lover's emotion." Then Frankenheimer gave everyone his blessings. "This has been a hellish week. What we have is really good. Don't be afraid to have fun with it." Handsome Barbara Rush promised: "Oh, John, I'll try so hard. I've got to merge anger and relating."

"Cue the Boys." Fifteen minutes to go. T. D. Graham went back to his panel to match cameras and to check video, tapes, film, music, lights, master control and audio levels. Five minutes. "Positions, please," Frankenheimer called. Then "One minute, and good luck!" The red second hand on the big clock above the monitors moved to 6:30, Hollywood time. Frankenheimer ordered: "Up on One and cue the boys." Then, in an aside: "I'm oblivious from now on. I'm not aware that anyone else is watching it." The first commercial ended, and there was a slow dissolve on the body of the boy as they dumped him in the woods. "Keep that sonuvabitch dead. Pan up. Fishpole, get the hell out of there! I see you. Who's that heavy-handed guy on the music? Don't hit Ben with the camera, Number Two. Dammit, you just did hit him! There's a big boom shadow on Barbara's face."

In the control booth, at the climactic scene, when Gazzara defied the bullies with a baseball bat, Frankenheimer went to his knees to call camera changes, his fingers snapping with a crapshooter's passion. The final scene approached. He whispered urgently to camera crews: "Noise! Take it easy, you have lots of time." The scene went smoothly. "Ready to dissolve to black, black!" The screen went black. Off came the headset. Frankenheimer leaped out of his seat and watched the assistant director signal the credits. "Gotta get 'em all in, Jim, you gotta!" Then he turned to Martin Manulis and quietly shook hands on Playhouse 90's best show of the season. Only minutes later, the sets had been struck, and everyone had gone home.

*Drawn from a real-life case at Dartmouth, where eight students ganged up on ex-G.I. Ray Cirrotta and left him badly beaten. Several hours later he died (TIME, June 13, 1949). One Dartmouth junior was tried for manslaughter, got off with a suspended sentence and $500 fine.

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