The Bachelor Party | Don Murray

[Audience applause] [Mark Quigley, Archive Research and Studies Center Manager] Ah. That's an amazing performance. Ah. [Quigley] I don't know where to start after watching that film. But, ah, I guess we'll start with the writer. [Quigley] Ah, just because this series is highlighting the Golden Age of Television writers and, and we talked a little bit earlier about, [Quigley] ah, Paddy Chayefsky's role, [Quigley] in, on set and I'd, I'd be interested to hear a little bit about that, and then we'll maybe work backwards. [Don Murray] Okay, let's go. [Quigley] So what do you, what do you recall about, [Quigley] I mean, how did you how did that script come to you and what were your thoughts on getting those words? [Murray] Well, when I finished, "Bus Stop," [Murray] the roles that I was offered were all these macho roles and adventures and [Murray] cowboys and, ah, [Murray] also, you know, the guy that goes out and, ah, [Murray] ah, beats up six guys in a bar, and all that sort of stuff. [Laughs] [Murray] And I didn't want to do anything like that at all. What I'd like to do, [Murray] was do just the opposite of what I did the last time. And so in, [Murray] in, ah, "Bus Stop," I was playing this wild Montana cowboy. [Murray] And, ah, in this one was this rather inhibited, [Murray] ah, introvert, accountant. I thought, well, you can't get much more opposite than that. So when I was offered the script, [Murray] Ah, I was, I was thrilled. Because just the script itself, if it were a writer [Murray] that I had never heard of, if it was somebody who's just out of college, [Murray] I still would have loved the script. [Murray] But it was Paddy Chayefsky, who had just won an Oscar, the previous year for, ah, for "Marty." [Murray] And also, the director, Delbert Mann, that directed him and the producers that produced it. [Murray] And here's this formidable bunch of filmmakers that are offering me a part and it was very, very, [Murray] oh, it was something that there was no question this is what I wanted to do. [Quigley] Yeah, I mean, "Marty," won best picture. [Quigley] Ah, Paddy Chayefsky got the Oscar for best screenplay, and this was their follow-up film. Yeah, um. [Quigley] Which was an amazing, ah, opportunity for you just coming off an oscar-nominated role, [Quigley] ah, in "Bus Stop," but at the same time it is such a departure. [Quigley] Which kind of goes back to what I was saying in the intro, is that you were, [Quigley] and still are always somebody that chose conviction of, you know, your interests, [Quigley] over stardom and over the easy way. So, Fox offered you a big contract to do Westerns, and what did you tell them? [Murray] I just told them that, ah, [Murray] I wasn't interested anything, [Murray] that I had just done before. [Murray] And I ended up doing, ah, Westerns, but also after I had done other films. I, I think that one of the things that, ah, [Murray] interests me very much is, ah, [Murray] is, is that the critics, [Murray] ah, like the critic from, I think it was the, "New York Daily News," ah, said, ah, [Murray] Well, ah, [Murray] This, this is a very, very good film, but Don Murray playing a New Yorker, [Murray] He said he's got too much wide-open spaces in him to be believable as a New Yorker. [Murray] Well the fact was, I was a New Yorker. [Laughs] [Murray] The character role for me was in, "Bus Stop." [Murray] I had, I never even been, even been on a horse when I did, "Bus Stop." So that was a, [Murray] that was a departure. And what I, I think I loved about this script, is I saw in, ah, [Murray] "Bus Stop," the, the concept of the star, [Murray] driven movie. And of movie stars and so on. And I thought that was, [Murray] really, a kind of a, [Murray] a destructive thing. Because that, [Murray] that on the set, that everybody's so [Murray] worried about what the star is thinking or doing. And you can lose track of what you're there for. [Murray] And, ah, this was something that was not a star vehicle. [Murray] This was like I was being invited to play with a wonderful jazz band. [Murray] You know maybe of six players. And I was going to play trumpet, but there's going to be a great [Murray] saxophone, a great trombone guy, a great guy on bass, great guy on the drums. [Murray] And, that, that's what it was to me. There was other actors. They just, [Murray] are just marvelous. I was, I was so moved by their performances tonight. [Murray] And, ah, that was a reminder of why I wanted to do this film, ah, so much. [Murray] And I was glad that it was received that way particularly, ah, in, in Hollywood. [Murray] Ah, the critic for the L. A. Times, [Murray] ah, picked, ah, [Murray] ah, "Bridge Over the River Kwai," as the first, best film of the year and I agreed with him. I thought that was a total masterpiece. And then second, he picked, "Bachelor Party," and third, a film I did after, "Bachelor Party," my next film, which was, ah, "Hat Full of Rain." [Murray] And, ah, that kind of appreciation made me feel that, ah, [Murray] ah, my choice was, was justified in other people's mind as well as my own. [Murray] I didn't need that to be convinced that the project was as as good, ah, as it was. [Murray] The writing and the acting of the other people, but it was nice that it was reaffirmed by other people in the industry. [Quigley] You mentioned "Hat Full of Rain," and "Hat Full of Rain," and this film. [Quigley] It's hard to imagine anyone else in those roles. And there's something about your, [Quigley] abilities during this period. That you were really able to take on leading man roles and you had the matinee idol looks, [Quigley] but you're able to play vulnerable, [Quigley] vulnerability and anxiety in a way that you can't really imagine your peers being able to do. And, [Quigley] was that reflective also of the type of roles you decided to do because [Quigley] in, in some ways a film like, "Hat Full of Rain," would have been difficult for some actors to take on. [Murray] Yeah, I think that, ah, "Hat Full of Rain," was, ah, [Murray] interesting for me in this aspect. [Murray] Ah, Buddy Adler, when I was doing "Bus Stop," said, "I bought a movie for you." [Murray] And I said, "What movie?" He said, "Hat Full of Rain." [Murray] And when it came up to actually do it. [Murray] Ah, they expected me to play the part of Polo. [Murray] The comedy part. It's not really totally comedy part, but, [Murray] the part that has the comedy. They, they bought it for me to play Polo. [Murray] But I said, I don't want to play Polo. I want to play the dope addict. [Murray] And they said, well, everybody thought you're going to play the, [Murray] Polo. And I said, yeah, that's why I want to play the dope addict. [Murray] And, so, ah, luckily, Fred Zinneman said, okay, if you want to play Johnny, you play the dope addict. It's okay with me. [Quigley] That's, that's an amazing film, and it's, it's in a long line of films, where you chose difficult roles over safe roles. [Quigley] "Advise and Consent," is another film where you did that with, Otto Preminger film, where you played a closeted gay senator. [Quigley] When that was something that was considered a career killer. Potentially. [Murray] Yeah, I, I didn't never considered that. I, ah, [Murray] It was just a wonderful script and a wonderful acting role. Ah, I never considered whether it, what, [Murray] anybody was thinking. I was going to be gay, because I played a gay senator. [Murray] Yeah, matter of fact, I thought it'd be a great idea because, [Murray] ah, if, ah, if you play a gay man, you have all these beautiful girls, ah, trying to convert you. [Laughter from audience] [Quigley] Well, you had an interesting exchange with Otto Preminger about that too, about typecasting. [Quigley] Where you mentioned his part in Stalag 17 to him? [Murray] Oh yeah? That's right. [Laughs] I, I, [Murray] Ah, he said to me, ah, [Murray] Would you mind, ah, [Murray] people thinking you're gay, by playing a gay man. [Murray] And I said, or did you mind people thinking you're a Nazi, because you played a Nazi? [Murray] He said, he said, "No I'm not worried about being a Nazi." [Laughs] [Audience laughter] [Quigley] The, the, that's an amazing film and it's a very sympathetic role. [Quigley] And something that really hadn't been seen in Hollywood film to that degree. [Quigley] It's interesting that, "Bachelor Party," had trouble getting, um, motion-picture code of approval because, the references to abortion. [Quigley] Um. Certainly, "Hat Full of Rain," provided some issues for the board because of its frank depiction of drug addiction. [Murray] And you know, "Advise and Consent," was one of the first times that you saw that kind of portrayal of a, of a gay character in a major Hollywood film. [Quigley] So this is, the pattern of your career and I think, [Quigley] not just your career, but your, your life. And, for the Korean War, you're a conscientious objector. [Quigley] And you went and served, [Quigley] ah, displaced persons in Europe. And can tell us a little bit about that adventure. Which is pretty significant. [Quigley] And pretty brave, as well. [Murray] Well, when, ah, I turned nineteen, everybody, [Murray] ah, had to register for the draft, though no one was being drafted. [Murray] And they would, thought that there would never be another war, because this is 1948, [Murray] and, ah, we were the only ones with the atomic, atomic bomb. So, who's going to attack us? [Murray] And then of course, ah, [Murray] ah, ah, then, ah, then Russia got the atom bomb and that emboldened, [Murray] Um. North, that meant they would fight South Korea ? and the world. So the war started. [Murray] And, ah. [Murray] Ah, I had registered when there was, ah, no draft, nobody was being drafted. [Murray] You had three categories, you could, ah, [Murray] you could be a, as a, ah, a combatant soldier, you could be a non cabatant soldier or you could be, [Murray] ah, a, someone that served, [Murray] ah, on what they said, work of national importance under civilian direction. And, I, I didn't want to do, ah, [Murray] ah, the non combatant soldier because that was like sitting around at a desk job. [Murray] I wanted to do something in a healing capacity. [Murray] And, so that's why when ah, [Murray] When I, when I got there, I, I refused to be inducted. [Murray] And, ah, I was imprisoned in what they call the tombs in, in New York, ah, City. [Murray] Ah, and people say gee, that, tombs, that sounds pretty, ah, pretty dire, and I said, well, [Murray] the sound is not as dire as the clientele. [Laughter] [Murray] But, ah, fortunately, ah, I was, ah, [Murray] The district attorney who started out very hostile to me, [Murray] ah, turned around t-totally and, ah, supported me and said he didn't want to, [Murray] prosecute and, ah, so I was eventually given that status, and I didn't wait to be drafted. [Murray] I volunteered for service over in Korea as a, ah, medic. [Murray coughs] And I was, ah, declined because, I mean, I was [Murray] ah, not accepted because I didn't have medical training. And I, [Murray] ah, volunteered as a laborer because they were rebuilding, [Murray] ah, South Korea as they were conquering, re conquering the land, they were rebuilding the cities. So I volunteered for that, but they were only taking, [Murray] ah, technicians with, ah, training, so I didn't get that. I finally was accepted by a group called Brethren Service. [Murray] And I went over and I worked in, in Germany, [Murray] as a laborer, helping to build, rebuild the city there was eighty percent destroyed by the wars that he ?. [Murray] During the weekend, on weekends working with the German sports [Murray] movement because the youngsters there were all trained as, all young athletes were trained as Hitler Youth. [Murray] And, ah, I joined this Sporting Community to, ah, [Murray] to show them Democracy. [Murray] And so I worked there for a year and then I went and I worked in, [Murray] Naples, Italy and the refugee camps outside, ah, [Murray] Naples, and, ah, and, ah, with the refugees and they were living in barbed wire camps almost like prisoners. [Murray] And then when I got in movies, my wife, Hope Lange, and I [Murray] ah, we, ah, put our money together and we bought some [Murray] land on the Island of Sardinia and with the [Murray] an American social worker named Belden Paulson, [Murray] we took the refugees out of the barbed wire camps and built a free community. [Murray] And, ah, that project became the prototype, ah, [Murray] for the Peace Corps. And that's how the Peace Corps developed from doing that. [Audience applause] [Murray] Thank, thank you so much for appreciating that. [Murray] And I, I, I, want to also, Mark, I want to thank you because it's people like yourself who really are, [Murray] film historians, but also lovers of good films. [Murray] That preserved these films. Even UCLA preserving this film is something, [Murray] that I greatly appreciate, and I appreciate yourselves because, [Murray] couldn't do that, if people like yourself weren't interested in this, didn't [Murray] just want to be entertained by, ah, all the explosions and all the supernatural things that you see in movies these days, [Murray] that actually moved by films like this, which are the kind of films that, that move me. And I appreciate that. [Murray] Ah, I'm here because you're here. [Audience applause] [Quigley] A film like "Bachelor Party," people are going to watch in a hundred years and they're going to feel the same way about it, [Quigley] that they felt when it came out and the way we felt about tonight. [Quigley] It's, it's, it's an amazing work, and, [Quigley] and it's, it works as well as it does because of your performance. So, we thank you, for all of those performances in, and, and there's, there's so many. [Quigley] Including, "Twin Peaks." [Laughs] [Quigley] So, I we don't have a lot of time, but let's set up the next movie. Just a little bit. [Quigley] Um, "Baby the Rain Must Fall," which is another interesting choice, but also, um, [Quigley] probably not the movie that it could have been. Tell us a little bit about the production of that film and, and your role. [Murray] Well, [Quigley] Set it up for us, since we're going to screen it in a few minutes. [Murray] I, I think the the most interesting things about, "Baby the Rain Must Fall," it was taken from, [Murray] a play called, "Traveling Lady," by Horton Foote. [Murray] Who was a superb writer. [Murray] And, ah, it was interesting because it starred, [Murray] Steve, Steve McQueen, who was really an action, ah, actor, [Murray] ah, for most, most of his career. And certainly up until then. [Murray] And to play this ah, very, very sensitive part that he played was a real, ah, [Murray] ah, a, a, a real change from him. [Murray] So that was an interesting circumstance in itself. [Murray] Um, and the part that, that I played, [Murray] I had first turned it down because I thou, I thought it wasn't [Murray] ah, enough of a part to, to really devote my, my time to. [Murray] But, ah, the director was Robert Mulligan on whom I'd, I'd done, [Murray] The TV, live TV show of Billy Budd. [Murray] And that was one of the best, ah, [Murray] experiences of my life. [Murray] And he had also directed Sidney Poitier and I in, [Quigley] "A Man is Ten Feet Tall." [Murray] "A Man is Ten Feet Tall." [Murray] So because of him, that's, that's why I decided to do the movie. [Quigley] Same creative team behind another film, "To Kill A Mockingbird," also. [Murray] That's right. Yeah, Alan, Alan Pakula was producing it, and Robert Mulligan directing. So that's how that came about. [Quigley] Well, um, since we have just a few minutes to go. We're asked a few questions. We have mics in the house. [Quigley] Here. [Male Audience member] Since Mark mentioned ah, the Golden Age of Television, [Audience member] Did you have any dealings with, ah, Fred Coe, the producer of Philco TV Playhouse, and if so, what were your impressions of him? [Murray] Fred Coe was a very important man in my life. [Murray] He was a wonderful television producer and the de, devoted to really find things on TV. [Murray] Ah, and, ah, he, ah, he produced the, ah, [Murray] ah, "The Skin of Our Teeth," [Murray] The television production, "The Skin of Our Teeth," which I had done with Mary Martin and Helen Hayes. Ah. [Murray] We opened in Paris, and then we played Chicago and, and had a broadway run and he produced a movie of that. [Murray] And, ah, Fred also produced ah, "A Man is Ten Feet Tall." [Murray] And, ah, just so many great, [Murray] television things, so Fred Coe was very important, not only in my life, but just to the general quality of television. [Murray] Fred Coe was one of the big leaders in that. [Quigley] Right here. [Female Audience Member] Hi, um, first, well, first time I've ever seen you work, Mr. Murray, that movie is amazing. [Audience member] Um. What I really liked was the part at the end where, Charlie was talking to the groom and, he's, [Audience member] discovering kind of for the first time that he is completely in love with his wife. [Audience member] And I, I loved the visceral reaction that you had, you know, when you were doing that thing. [Audience member] Do you remember how you kind of tapped into that to get that kind of a, [Audience member] um, of a performance. [Audience member] Of that that kind of, just like, dawning on you that, oh my God, I love my wife. [Laughs] [Murray] Well, I, that's because, ah, I, I had that feeling for my own wife at that time was, Hope Lange. [Murray] And I'm very touched by it today because I'm, I'm married to a [Murray] wonderful woman named, ah, Betty Murray. Betty Johnson was her name before, ah, we got married. [Murray] And, ah, it's because of that. It's because of my own wife that I transferred those, those feelings to, [Murray] to the actresses that I'm working with. [Murray] So I, I give my wife's the credit for that. [Quigley] Um, Mr. Murray has been described as a, "rebel with a cause." [Quigley] And, also, there's, there's a great documentary that hasn't been released yet, but has screened around, called, " Unsung Hero." [Quigley] Um, and I think this is a really apt title [Quigley] And so I'd be remiss if I didn't just take this minute to ah, wish you a happy birthday this coming Monday. [Murray] Thank you. [Quigley] Happy 88th Birthday. [Applause under dialogue] [Murray] Thank you. [Quigley] The, the archive has been very lucky to have you. This is the third time that we've had you on stage here. [Quigley] And you've come to the archive to do some research on, [Quigley] ah, your "Playhouse Ninety" a couple of times, one of your "Playhouse Nineties," and every time, [Quigley] ah, you always amaze me with your knowledge and your grace, and it's a real pleasure to have you here. And thank you again for coming. And please give him a hand everybody. [Audience applause, cheers]