Five Easy Decades

Dennis McDougal

Description

Praise for Five Easy Decades: How Jack Nicholson Became the Biggest Movie Star in Modern Times

"Dennis McDougal is a rare Hollywood reporter: honest, fearless, nobody's fool. This is unvarnished Jack for Jack-lovers and Jack-skeptics but, also, for anyone interested in the state of American culture and celebrity. I always read Mr. McDougal for pointers but worry that he will end up in a tin drum off the coast of New Jersey."-- Patrick McGilligan, author of Jack's Life and Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness and Light

Praise for Privileged Son: Otis Chandler and the Rise and Fall of the L.A. Times Dynasty
"A great freeway pileup--part biography, part dysfunctional family chronicle, and part institutional and urban history, with generous dollops of scandal and gossip."-- Hendrick Hertzberg, The New Yorker

"McDougal has managed to scale the high walls that have long protected the Chandler clan and returned with wicked tales told by angry ex-wives and jealous siblings."--The Washington Post

Praise for The Last Mogul: Lew Wasserman, MCA and the Hidden History of Hollywood
"Real glamour needs a dark side. That is part of the fascination of Dennis McDougal's wonderful book."--The Economist

"Thoroughly reported and engrossing . . . the most noteworthy trait of MCA was how it hid its power."--The New York Times Book Review

"Over the years, I've read hundreds of books on Hollywood and the movie business, and this one is right at the top."-- Michael Blowen, The Boston Globe

Sujets

• Performing Arts
• Biography
• Dennis McDougal
• Entertainment
• Autobiography
• Hollywood
• Jack Nicholson

Informations

• Publié par: Turner Publishing Company
• Date de parution: 01 décembre 2008
• Nombre de lectures: 1
• EAN13: 9781620458990
• Langue: English

Extrait

FIVE EASY DECADES
ALSO BY DENNIS McDOUGAL
Privileged Son: Otis Chandler and the Rise and Fall of the L.A. Times Dynasty
The Last Mogul: Lew Wasserman, MCA, and the Hidden History of Hollywood
Blood Cold: Fame, Sex, and Murder in Hollywood (with Mary Murphy)
The Yosemite Murders
Mother s Day
In the Best of Families: The Anatomy of a True Tragedy
Fatal Subtraction: How Hollywood Really Does Business (with Pierce O Donnell)
Angel of Darkness
FIVE EASY DECADES
How Jack Nicholson Became the Biggest Movie Star in Modern Times
DENNIS McDOUGAL
For Carl Albert McDougal (1920-2005)
My father, my teacher, my confessor, my compadre.
Leader of the band all the way to the end of the line.
Copyright 2008 by Dennis McDougal. All rights reserved
Published by John Wiley Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey Published simultaneously in Canada
Design and composition by Navta Associates, Inc.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, [phone], fax [phone], or on the web at www.copyright.com . Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, [phone], fax [phone], or online at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions .
Limit of Liability/Disclaimer of Warranty: While the publisher and the author have used their best efforts in preparing this book, they make no representations or warranties with respect to the accuracy or completeness of the contents of this book and specifically disclaim any implied warranties of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose. No warranty may be created or extended by sales representatives or written sales materials. The advice and strategies contained herein may not be suitable for your situation. You should consult with a professional where appropriate. Neither the publisher nor the author shall be liable for any loss of profit or any other commercial damages, including but not limited to special, incidental, consequential, or other damages.
For general information about our other products and services, please contact our Customer Care Department within the United States at [phone], outside the United States at [phone] or fax [phone].
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
McDougal, Dennis.
Five easy decades : how Jack Nicholson became the biggest movie star in modern times / Dennis McDougal.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-471-72246-5 (cloth)
ISBN 978-0-470-42282-3 (paper)
1. Nicholson, Jack. 2. Motion picture actors and actresses-United States- Biography. I. Title.
PN2287.N5M36 2008
791.4302 8092-dc22
[B]
2007012089
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
CONTENTS

Preface

Prologue
Book I Auspicious Beginnings, 1937-1968
Book II Easy Riding, 1969-1975
Book III Wanted Man, 1976-1984
Book IV Idiot Wind, 1985-1992
Book V Things Have Changed, 1993-2005

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Notes

Bibliography

Photo Credits

Index
PREFACE
I began Five Easy Decades several years ago as an homage to the American film actor who seemed to express the very essence of what it meant to be a man of his time. Jack Nicholson was the guy who got away with everything: he lived as he chose, slept with whoever caught his fancy, ingested all manner of controlled substances, earned millions as a movie star, and still won accolades and public approval, despite his guilty grin. Like most fans, I admired him, even envied him. His presence in a movie pretty much guaranteed that I d be standing in line at the box office on a Saturday night.
Tracking Jack through fifty years of showbiz, from the death of the studio system to the dawn of the digital age, turned out to be an exercise in tracking Hollywood itself. Whither went tinseltown, Jack was one step ahead, from counterculture to comic book heroes, from boomer malaise to indie films, and always Jack cashed in on the back end, boosting his stock higher than that of any other Hollywood plutocrat.
I saw all of his movies, not just the standouts like Chinatown, Batman , or Five Easy Pieces , and my respect for him only increased. Jack s development, depth, and range began to unfold for me in a different way. Few of his fans have ever seen The King of Marvin Gardens, The Passenger, Ironweed , or The Pledge , but they should. Even abject failures such as The Fortune and The Border rise to Jack s disciplined level of the Method whenever he s onscreen, and the earliest pre-Easy Rider films, from The Cry Baby Killer to Psych-Out , show how he used his years as a Roger Corman disciple to hone his screen craft into a mesmerizing instrument. No matter what, Jack always tried to give the performance of his life.
As I dug deep into the Nicholson legend, however, I couldn t help but judge him in a different way. It turns out he didn t get laid, stoned, and rich with impunity. He did not come through unscathed, nor did many of the people he got close to-at least, his version of closeness. The ghosts of a past he never came to terms with always constrained intimacy. Few, if any, people ever really got to know Jack, despite the locker room camaraderie among his entourage and his crazy bid for sexual validation by seducing all women all the time.
I wanted Jack s cooperation and tried to get past the layers of protection he s built around himself, but Patrick McGilligan-my friend and fellow Hollywood historian who wrote his own well-received Jack biography in the early 1990s-correctly predicted that I would fail.
Just as Jack has never agreed to a TV interview, he has never cooperated with a biographer, though a dozen or more books have been published about him over the last thirty years. Questions over which he has no control and cameras not purposely placed to show him at his best are anathema. Jack prefers the occasional magazine Q A or quickie newspaper interview, usually granted in conjunction with the release of his latest movie. If a still photographer comes along for the ride, Jack has final call on when and how the camera is used. Candid shots of Jack Nicholson are almost never candid.
For better or worse, I took the snub in stride. My career has always been about digging, because usually those I write about-from mafiosi to moguls-would prefer to remain unknown, even if they appear to operate out in the open. Such is the terrain we have come to know as Hollywood. If stars routinely came clean, Army Archerd, Liz Smith, People magazine, Page Six, Entertainment Tonight , and half the British press corps would be out of a job. It s called showbiz because stars put on a show, even when they are not acting. Getting to who they really are is never an easy task.
Besides, it became clear to me early on that even in the longest and most probing interviews, Jack prefers to be seen at a remove; he remains an icon glimpsed through a glass darkly because that s the way he likes it. When questions cut too close, he either dodges them like the expert that he is, or, in a few rare instances, he calls a curt end to the discussion altogether. How would I be any different?
Fortunately, he and his friends and associates have left a long paper trail extending back to the 1960s, and while not very revealing in isolation, when pieced together these thousands of Jack documents begin to form a picture of the real John Joseph Nicholson Jr. who came to Hollywood in 1954 and stayed for good.
On this foundation I built a story based on court documents, property records, birth and death certificates, scores of books and unpublished manuscripts, and hundreds of hours in the stacks of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences Margaret Herrick Library; the British Film Institute; the Billy Rose Library of the New York Public Library; the American Film Institute s Louis B. Mayer Library; the film libraries of UCLA, USC, and the University of Wisconsin; the National Archives in College Park, Maryland; the California State Archives in Sacramento; the Los Angeles City and County libraries; the Long Beach Library; the Pitkin County Library in Aspen, Colorado; and the Monmouth County Library in Manasquan, New Jersey.
Add dozens of interviews with friends, associates, and family members whom Jack either didn t know or forgot long ago, and a portrait began to emerge of a troubled man who nevertheless remained true to his art, reliably sniffing out the roles that defined the Zeitgeist and scored at the box office.
Witness The Departed , Jack s most recent triumph and the Best Picture Oscar winner for 2006. Almost forty years after Easy Rider , there he stood at the Academy Awards, chunkier, bald, but still wearing his trademark shades as he handed out the gold to Best Director Martin Scorsese. Though Jack didn t win an award-didn t even add his pivotal role as the gangster Frank Costello to the pantheon of a dozen memorable film characters previously honored with Oscar nominations-there wasn t a soul on or off the stage who didn t credit Jack as the glue that held The Departed together. Matt Damon and Leo DiCaprio may have been the nominal leads, and Mark Wahlberg may have received the Best Supporting Actor nomination, but it was Jack Nicholson who lured jaded film fans away from their TVs, iPods, and computer screens. During an era of declining interest in that most traditional of American art forms, the movies, crowds returned in droves to theaters for an old-fashioned Scorsese shoot- em-up because