Casting a television series beyond the running characters is a delicate operation,
performed weekly in the rather frenetic surgery of the producer’s office.
I sat with producer Mort Abrams and several of his associates while they cast
a recent episode of “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.”
Abrams was worried. “We have eight running parts in the show,” he
said. “We’re going to have to cut down. We can’t pay as much
for individuals.”
One of the important roles in this particular episode, “The Children’s
Day Affair,” which was telecast last Friday, was an Italian girl named
Anna, a social worker shepherding a group of children to a placement agency.
Read for the Part
Three actresses were awaiting anxiously in Abrams’ outer office to read
for the part. They had been carefully culled from a long list prepared by the
casting director that included every actress he considered a possibility.
Such a list is compiled for each character in teach show. The producer then
goes over the list, knocking off names because they are “too expensive,”
“not right for the part,” “not available.” The others
are checked out by phone to see if they are interested and willing to work for
the fee that can be paid. Those that remain on the list are then invited to
“read” for the part.
Readings were done for Abrams and his director for this episode, Sherman Marks.
Each of the girls was received and heard with courtesy that at times bordered
on courtliness.
Marks and Abrams sat on a couch. The candidate sat on a chair opposite. Every
effort was exerted to lighten the atmosphere and make the actresses feel at
ease.
“Would you take the hot seat dear? If we don’t like this reading,
you know, we push a button and … Now, do you have any questions about
the character before we start?”
All three girls seemed to read quite well, but Abrams and Marks were in immediate
agreement on a tiny pert young brunet named Susan Silo. As she left, Abrams
said: “Stay in touch today, dear.” When she was gone, he told Marks:
“I like Susan.”
The director agreed and stepped outside to send her immediately to the wardrobe
department for costuming—and to tell the other two actresses that this
wasn’t to be their day. More often than not, this is a heartbreak business.
Meanwhile, in Abrams’ office, the phone was jangling constantly. Most
of the time the casting director—in a near-by office—was on the
other end.
“Have you made the offer to Eduardo Cianelli? He did? Good, good. Buy
it. Now what about…? No, I don’t think so. I’ve used her in
several shows. She’s not the actress she used to be. She’s not loose.
Age is a threat to her. She doesn’t work enough, and she has to keep busy
to be free.
“What’s your reaction to…? She’s in New York, but we
could swing a deal for her. But there’s no surprise there. We know exactly
how she’ll play it.”
Protocol Involved
Two other principal roles remained to be cast, one male, the other female. Both
of them involved a delicate question of protocol: at what point in his career
is a performer insulted if he is asked to read for a part?
Certain highly successful players would obviously never be asked to read; they
would simply be offered the part on the strength of their reputation and previous
performances. Another much larger group would be asked to read as a matter of
course because they hadn’t yet made it.
But between these two extremes is a rather large assortment of actors and actresses
who are accomplished professionals but of tenuous enough reputation that they
still must compete for parts.
In the Hollywood pecking order, some of them are insulted if they are asked
to read for a part. Producers are sensitive to this feeling and reluctant to
rock the boat—but also anxious to cast their show.
On this day, the UNCLE producers agreed to cast the male part without a reading
session by hiring veteran actor Warren Stevens. But they decided to offer several
actresses the opportunity to read for the female role.
Two of them did. They were treated gingerly. Every effort was exerted to leave
the impression that the group had gathered for a pleasant little tete-a-tete,
and this fiction was preserved to the end.
After much discussion, it was decided not to use either of the actresses who
had read for the principal female role but instead to exercise an option held
on an actress named Jean Cooper.
Then followed reading sessions by two elderly Italian actors, by a blond German
girl with a great taking decolette, and by a dozen small boys who were herded
into the room and asked, one by one, to hide behind the desk and sneak up on
the director. They weren’t told they were being cast to play villains.
When they left, director Marks said: “I think the kid in the middle was
probably the most objectionable. None of them hit me as a kid I’d want
to punch in the nose, though. Let’s get some more in tomorrow.”
Abrams winced. “Okay. Otherwise, I think we’re all set. Now for
the bad news—budget time.”
An accountant and assistant director were ushered in, carrying several sheaves
of papers crowded with figures. Abrams reacted to the figures as if he had been
set upon by a trusted friend.
“Why do we have to have decorators? I can’t stand that. We’ll
have to make other arrangements….How many foreign cars are we renting?…Well,
why don’t you get some Volkswagens? Don’t we get them free?
“What’s that $900 for a recording session for the choir? Why can’t
we do that right on stage?…I don’t care if the music department
does think it’s Mickey Mouse…Can we get by with six kids? We can
make them look like 12…Okay, okay, let’s make it eight.”
The show was still $2,100 over the budget when the session broke up.
“We’ll meet at 9:30 tomorrow to cut the rest of it out of the prop
budget,” promised Abrams to the back of the departing accountant.
The shadows were deepening about the cavernous sound stages at MGM. Most of
the workers had gone home. Abrams still had to work with a film editor on a
troublesome problem for an upcoming show. Then he had to audition a choir for
the show I was following.
Camaraderie of Cast Conceals Pressure to Complete TV Show
The “Man From UNCLE” cast and crew is one of the more relaxed in
Hollywood.
Superficially, there seems to be a constant air of easy going camaraderie among
them. But underneath, always, is the constant pressure to get the show done—on
time and on budget—so another show can be started. These are the realities
of filming a television series.
Each segment of UNCLE is filmed in six days. The cast and crew work a five day
week: thus each show runs one day into the following week. At the start of the
fall television season, UNCLE was about 10 shows ahead of the game. By the end
of the season, it will be frantically turning out products for use almost immediately.
The show I was watching—“The Children’s Day Affair”—spent
its first two filming days shooting outside, on the “back lot” at
MGM studios in Culver City.
The script had been carefully broken down into a shooting schedule, and there
was extreme pressure on the director to complete each day’s schedule.
Otherwise, the show would be overtime and over the budget, and the schedule
for the following show would be out of synchronization.
Director is Busy
Director Sherman Marks, a veteran of several dozen major motion pictures and
television films, is a small, mustached, soft spoken man who persuades rather
than badgers, consults rather than orders. He was everywhere on the set, checking
locations, lights, props—and finally, people. Occasionally he even found
a moment to talk with me.
“It’s difficult,” he said, “to keep a line of emotion
when shooting out of sequence. But we can’t afford to do it any other
way. We have to clean up our outdoor shots all at once.
“This is a great show to work, though. There’s no temperament here.
Never. We can’t tolerate temperament on a filmed television show. We just
don’t have time.”
All the people I had seen around the production conference table two days earlier—the
prop, art, costume design directors—were now hovering about the set, overseeing
their specialties, from the first time I met the actors and actresses.
Jean Cooper turned out to be a tall, well proportioned blond with luminescent
blue eyes. She held a cigarette in her teeth. Warren Stevens—a slender,
dark, good looking man with a cleft chin—was quiet and rather withdrawn.
Leo G. Carroll and Eduardo Cianelli, both veterans of 50 years in the theater,
found on another the first day of shooting and were inseparable thereafter.
Stars’ Styles Differ
The two stars of the show—Robert Vaughn as Napoleon Solo and David McCallum
as Illya Kuryakin—had entirely different styles around the set. Vaughn
was almost always in evidence, wandering about rather impassively, doing more
listening than talking, leaving an impression of slight boredom.
McCallum was less in evidence when he wasn’t immediately involved in shooting.
He wasn’t aloof. When on the set, he exchanged easy wisecracks with the
crew. But when he wasn’t needed, he usually disappeared inside his dressing
room. And—one might suspect—inside himself.
There was a comfortable relationship between Vaughn and McCallum. They apparently
felt no compulsion to seek each other out or make small talk with one another.
When they came together naturally, they exchanged sophisticated wisecracks in
the uncle genre. Otherwise, they went about their own business—in their
own way.
Crises developed periodically and were resolved with varying degrees of pain.
Jean Cooper’s hairdresser went to the wrong set and the second morning
a search had to be made for her and a car sent after her.
Director Marks, meanwhile, had to improvise a shooting schedule. He simply couldn’t
tolerate the half hour’s delay while Miss Cooper got her hair arranged.
“We know when we’re behind even a few minutes.” Marks told
me. “It’s like D-day every day. If the wardrobe is 20 minutes late,
we’re sunk.
“It’s not like making a motion picture. There’s a much more
leisurely pace in the movies. The director can sit around and talk over a scene
for an hour. He can ask himself: If I do it again, can I get it better?
“We can’t fish for a performance in television. We do it until we
get it right. But we can’t do it over and over, hoping for an unexpected
nuance.”
Always the oppressive hand of the budget hovers over every action.
At the end of the first day’s shooting, I followed Marks while he set
up a shot for the following day. An UNCLE agent would be gunned down on a rooftop.
He would roll down the roof and directly into the camera.
In the gathering dusk of the MGM back lot, Marks discussed the scene with the
stuntman who would do it. He was standing atop the building with the assistant
director, while Marks framed the scene from below.
It seemed that there were different prices of different types of falls. Coming
down headfirst was more expensive than rolling down. While Marks debated camera
angles, his assistant haggled price on the rooftop. The finally agreed on what
would be done.
“I’ll wear a special suit so I don’t get splinters,”
said the stunt man. “All I need are some cardboard boxes at the bottom.”
The next morning, I joined Abrams in a screening room to look at the “dailies”—the
uncut and unvarnished film taken the day before.
The producer looks at the previous day’s filming each morning. This is
how he keeps in touch with the show. Normally, he doesn’t go to the set
unless some emergency calls him there.
Abrams liked the dailies and said so. He liked them so much that we went to
the set to tell the cast and crew—and also to tell them the news that
a Nielsen television rating of 30 major cities had put UNCLE in first place
and that CBS had canceled “Slattery’s People,” which was running
opposite UNCLE on Friday nights.
“You know what they’re putting against us?” chortled a crew
member. “Art Linkletter. They must be giving up.”
Vaughn and McCallum showed no elation. Later in the day they sent a telegram
of regret to Dick Crenna, the star of “Slattery’s People.”
“It’s a good show,” Vaughn told me. “It’s a shame
it has to go.”