His career highlights include: writer/director of the (1958) horror classic "The Fly", starring Vincent Price, director of the (1950) sci-fi space adventure "Rocketship X-M", starring Lloyd Bridges, writer/producer/director of the sci-fi 50's monster movie "Kronos", starring Jeff Morrow, director of the (1952) Arabian tale "Son of Ali Baba", starring Tony Curtis, and writer/director for several of the old Tarzan films (1945-1953).

The interview was held at Kurt Neumann Jr.'s lovely home 2 blocks from the beach in sunny Manhattan Beach, CA. Interview by Paul L. Steib.

Paul: I guess we'll start on who you are and a little about your family life, and then you can go into your dad's career.

Kurt: Okay. Well, my name is Kurt Neumann Jr. My father was Kurt Neumann Sr., which makes sense, and my mother was Irma Neumann. They were both from Germany, and met here in this country. As a matter of fact, they met on a soundstage at Universal, and they were married in 1932. He was a young director, she was an aspiring actress, and once they married she retired. I always told her she gracefully retired by marrying a director.

I have a sister who is a year and a half younger than I am. I was born in 1934, and my sister was born in 1936, and we grew up in a wonderful era of Hollywood. It was really a wonderful time, because there was a much smaller community. The business was smaller, everybody knew everybody, and there was no television. What they made in those days that could be construed with television today is the B pictures. They were real low budget pictures. There were the major studios - there were no independents - and you worked for one of the major studios, and that was it. You could spend your entire life with a major studio, never having left it.

Dad worked at Universal for many years. From there he went to MGM, Paramount, RKO, and then like everyone else he was freelancing. Again, growing up in Hollywood was a really marvelous experience, because everywhere you went you were always running into people that you worked with during the course of the week. As children growing up, we were subjected to all of our parent's friends and their children, so it was a good lifestyle.

I went into the service in the Air Force for almost 5 years, came home, and during that period of time an interesting thing happened. In the early early 50's more and more people here in Hollywood found themselves in a tax situation that they could not get out from under. Our tax laws were such in those days that if you had a really good year, you could pay up to 90% tax, and then you might not have another paycheck for a couple of years. That particularly applied in the picture industry, when in my dad's case he would be paid to do a picture, and that picture could take up to two years sometimes. All the tax would be taken out of that initial lump sum, and he had 10% of that check to live on for the next two years.

Well, what happened was that he and most directors here in Hollywood could not pay their taxes, and that applied to actors also. So there was an exodus from Hollywood, because there was a tax law that was enacted in Washington. This law applied initially to be an incentive for oil workers and people like that to go to Saudi Arabia, the Amazon, and places like that to work for American companies. If you left the country and stayed out for over 18 months, and all your income was received outside the country, you had a tremendous tax break as an incentive for leaving. More and more people in Hollywood realized that this tax break could save their butts here. John Huston went to Ireland, my dad went back to Germany, and William Holden ended up in Africa at the Kenya Club; that's how he got that. People just migrated all over the world strictly for the sake of making films outside of the United States, getting this tax break, ending up with some money, and being able to get out from under this tax bill.

So during this period of time I was in the service, and my dad was doing pictures abroad. He made pictures in Germany, down in Rio, Puerto Rico and back in Germany again. Then after about 20 or 24 months he, my mother and my sister came back to this country, paid his taxes, bought a house and he went on from there.

Paul: What do you remember most about your dad?

Kurt: Extreme highs, extreme lows. Moments of great joy, moments of great sadness. A lot of emotion really, he was a very very emotional person. His whole childhood and everything, that's another whole story unto itself, because he came from an enormously wealthy family in Germany. He had an older brother, and in the industrial families of Europe the eldest son is the engineer, the 2nd son is the bookkeeper. My father unfortunately had an older brother; otherwise he would've never left home. He would never have come to this country and I would've been born in Germany. My father loved to make things with his hands. He built a motorcycle that ran, and an airplane that flew as a kid in Germany. As a young man, he and his older brother went to their father, because my uncle wasn't interested in any of that stuff. He just loved to drink wine and play with figures and numbers, and was very methodical. They politely asked if they could be allowed to exchange positions, could my dad be the engineer and could my Uncle Max be the accountant, and their father said "No, the first son is the engineer and the second son is the bookkeeper, and that's the way it is." So that's the reason my dad left home.

First thing, he went to study his music. If he couldn't be an engineer, then music was his next love. To support his music he got a job with Universal Films in England, which brought him to Laemmle's attention. Laemmle then brought him out to Hollywood, and that's how he ended up in the film business. When he first arrived here he was still studying his music, and I remember even as a small boy he would try to play the piano for at least four hours a day; we always had a concert grand at the house. I really think because of necessity, because of money or whatever, my dad veered from his music & singing over to films. He was really in the business, because he was the kind of person who could not stand failure, but he couldn't stand success. He had a hard time reconciling himself on how to handle himself, his career and his films in the kind of business the motion picture industry is. He had a difficult time keeping a sense of balance, and I think it would have been easier for him to be the kind of person he was in the music world, as against the motion picture business. Unfortunately, he had a very short life, both he and my mother, which is really kind of sad.

He did a lot of films way back in the early days when he was starting out. After he got off two-reelers, and was given features, he was did Westerns. He did films with Tom Mix, and Buck Jones. I always enjoyed Westerns myself, because you're dealing with the people who handle the cattle, and the horse wranglers, and the real Western riders (like on "Rawhide"). Steve Raines had been with the U. S. Border Patrol, Sheb Wooley was a real cowboy and Rocky Shane had been on the rodeo circuit. All of these guys were just really, really wonderful people to deal with, and that's no foolin' around.

From Westerns, he had done a series of musicals with Bobby Breen, who was this little boy with an incredible voice, who did a series of films, and then like most young boys, his voice changed. Then I remember that just after I got out of the service, shortly after my dad died, I was doing a picture as a 2nd assistant director, at MGM. We were shooting out on what was then the backlot. They had backlots at that time, and this middle-aged man came up to me, about my height, and asked if my name was Kurt Neumann Jr. I said, "Yes I am," and he said, "My name is Bobby Breen and I knew your father well." We got to talking, and he told me he was singing in a supper club somewhere in Hollywood. It was really interesting to meet him. I had often wondered what had happened to him.

When the war came along Dad, like everyone else, wanted to join up (Kurt chuckles) and follow them into the service, because he, Willy Wyler and all of them were to be given Major's commissions with the Air Force in photography. Dad went down for his physical and realized he had an artificial leg, and they wouldn't let him in. He was really upset by that. He had lost his left leg when he was quite young. What happened was, he had only been in this country about a year and a half. He and Willy Wyler had come over here together, were sharing an apartment in Hollywood, and were both working at Universal. One day they had some free time and were going to meet for lunch. Dad was on time, Willy was late as usual, and a farmer going home from market in his truck lost control, jumped the curb and pinned my dad against a building (in Hollywood up on Franklin). First of all they amputated his leg. Well, he was only 23, and that is a tough thing to lose at such a young age, and he felt a great deal of bitterness about that. It had a tremendous effect on his life, because he had always been very athletic. Today you see people skiing on one leg, you see people swimming, and doing all kinds of things. He would never be seen without long pants on, the idea that someone would see him with leg off was just unthinkable. It was such a stigma, and that was what it was like to deal with in those days.

It's like the case of my mother and father. They both died six weeks apart of unrelated problems. You can imagine the trauma that went along with this for my sister and I. My mother died first, and we then discovered as all of the paperwork was being done that she was older than my father was by two years. Today no one would bat an eye about that, but in those particular days... I found out that she had even gone to Oregon to see her mother, because she had met this younger man, and what should she do? So she was able to change everything except her naturalization papers and a couple of other documents, which is where we found out how old she really was. Wow... (light sarcasm) She was an "older woman".

Paul: What about his work on the 1950 sci-fi classic, "Rocketship X-M"?

Kurt: I remember my dad showing me an article in Life magazine. He just loved science fiction. This article was based on what Wernher Von Braun and all these people had thought of in the way of rocketry. They were going to use what they called a "sling-shot effect", where they could fire a rocket from Earth, pick up the moon's gravitational pull, be accelerated and then with their own rocket engines, break free from that pull with an accelerated speed. This is why it is referred to as the Sling-Shot Method, and he got to thinking about this and he wrote the screenplay for "Rocketship X-M". Usually (Kurt chuckles) on these type of pictures there way always someone in competition. He was in competition with George Pal (who was doing, I think, H. G. Wells' "Destination Moon") to see who was going to get to the box office first.

"Rocketship X-M" for its time was a real good little picture and it didn't cost very much to make. For years I had that miniature four-foot high rocketship sitting around the house underfoot. My sister and I to this day are still trying to remember what happened to it, because there is this man in Kansas City, Wade Williams, who is a "Rocketship X-M" fanatic, and has everything he could get his hands on, and he offered us an incredible (Kurt laughs again) sum of money if we could ever come up with the rocket, but we can't find it. So… So much for that, but that's show biz.

Paul: What about your dad working with Lloyd Bridges?

Kurt: Lloyd Bridges. It's funny; you have to understand that in 1950 I was 16 years old, and my father was working making films. I knew he made films, and I bragged about that. A lot of my playmates' parents were in the film business. I remember Lloyd Bridges was the star, along with Ilona Massey and Hugh O'Brien. Lloyd seemed to be ageless because he was well known already in films, and his kids hadn't come along yet. Then he did Sea Hunt, and everybody knew him from that. I get out of the service and about three or four years later do a movie for television with him, and we had a lot of fun talking about "Rocketship X-M". He had a lot of fun making it. Then I've ended up working with both of his sons, and they are a remarkable family, Lloyd especially. If you have seen the episodes of "Seinfeld" where he did that cameo as Izzy Mandelbaum. (Kurt chuckles) To do that kind of a cameo… It was almost like doing a parody on himself. It was really wonderful.

I was in high school while dad was doing "Rocketship X-M". I can remember he went off to work each morning or each night, (depending on where or what they were shooting) and I do remember going to the studio one night. I think they shot it at what is now part of Raleigh Studios, and they changed the front gate with some signage and everything, and made it the entrance to the government experimental secret test station or something like that. I also know that they went to Red Rock Canyon out in Mojave (a lot of movies have been filmed out there) and they used it for Mars. They used like a sepia tint, and then you went from color or black & white to sepia when you were on Mars, and that was supposed to give an indication of atmosphere or something. It was a fascinating experience.

Paul: What about the 1958 sci-fi horror classic, "The Fly"?

Kurt: "The Fly", which he is probably best known for, was inspired by an article originally appearing in Playboy magazine. Dad read it, loved the idea, and got the rights to the story. At the same time he had met a young English writer named James Clavell who was trying to get started here in Hollywood. So "The Fly" was co-written by my dad and James Clavell, and it was James' first screenwriting assignment in Hollywood.

(Reminiscing) He is amazing. Boy, if you could have ever gotten a chance to interview him, but he died, unfortunately. He was one of the most fascinating of men, a really interesting man. He was a very large man and had a bad limp, because he had been in the British RAF, and been shot down, and was a prisoner of war in Singapore. His book, King Rat, was based on his experiences as a prisoner of war. He wrote a short story, a novella that he let me read, and I don't know if it has ever been published called "Juice". It's about the coffee plantations in Malaysia. It was fascinating, and he was great fun.

"The Fly" screenplay I thought was quite well done. The picture itself was done in a very interesting manner. Dad was working for a producer by the name of Robert Lippert. Lippert owned Regal Pictures, which made basically the B films for 20th Century Fox, the lower half of the double bills. He went to Lippert and convinced him that this was a picture that some money should be spent on. Lippert went to the studio heads and they agreed that Fox would make "The Fly", but it would be controlled by Regal Pictures, and this was like the first of the independents moving onto a major lot. Lippert brought his own accounting department on the lot, and not a penny was spent that was not approved by that department. Lippert was in trouble with the Screen Actors Guild over the failure to pay residuals, and couldn't be given the screenplay. So my father got the producer, director and co-writer credits on that film, and Lippert was like a silent partner. I forget what that picture cost to make, but Fox hadn't made a picture that cheaply in five years.

Going into production, nothing was charged against the picture that was not legitimate. Unfortunately, once the picture was released and enormously successful, there are a thousand ways that they can charge things against the picture, which Fox did. All I can say is that my dad died shortly after the release, and my sister and I inherited 6½ percent of "The Fly". A couple of attorneys that shall remain nameless were to bring us the pot at the end of the rainbow. They kept his estate open for two years waiting for the big payoff. When they realized there wasn't going to be one they just finally let everything go. 6½ percent of "The Fly" was worth $3,600, which I had to split with my sister. So that was why people were so gun-shy about motion picture accounting. The picture, though, was quite successful, they did a lot of very innovative things in it for such a small budget, and it's something I feel very strongly about today, that the problem with most pictures today is that they have too much money to spend.

There are some very famous situations in the making of films where great pictures have been made, great scenes have been made, good sequences have been created, because they didn't have the money to just keep getting bigger, bigger, bigger and bigger. I think the most classic example of that was on the original "Indiana Jones". There was a very involved sequence where Harrison Ford was to be chased by the guy in black with the swords through the bazaars of Morocco, and Steven Spielberg had scheduled about three weeks to shoot this sequence. Well, Harrison Ford gets sick with the flu, and there was very tight control on this picture (which is another story), and Steven really had to do something clever. Well, Harrison was sick and couldn't work, couldn't work, then finally he was well enough to come to the set at least, and they came up with an alternative to this very elaborate chase. The guy appears, twirls his sword, and Harrison takes out his gun and shoots him, as if to say, "I can't be bothered with this." The entire thing took only one day to shoot. That's an example of how ingenuity can make great films. Sometimes an accident or mistake creates a situation that leads to something that is far bigger or better than anything you could possibly put on film. "The Blair Witch Project" is a good example of that, but now we're digressing. (Kurt laughs).

I was very pleased with the success of "The Fly" mainly for my dad, because it's a tough business, you struggle, you have ups and downs, and there are good times and bad. He was a very complex man, and he should really never have been in the film business. He should have stayed with his classical music, because he was more a symphony musician and tenor. He was a better Wagnerian tenor than he was a film director. He was aware of the success of "The Fly" at the time, and he passed away shortly thereafter. So at least he went out on a high in that respect.

Paul: What about the Arabian adventure "Son of Ali Baba", working with Tony Curtis, and others in Hollywood?

Kurt: I was in the service then, but I do remember that it was one of Tony Curtis's earlier films, and I believe Piper Laurie was in that one. This was filmed during a wonderful period of Hollywood where Universal had these contract players, the Rock Hudsons and the Tony Curtises. The studios gave you a name, like in the case of Piper Laurie (she ate rose petal salads in the commissary, at least that was the big press release). There was always a little cadre of actors and actresses who sort of stuck with particular directors. I think one of the best examples is probably John Ford, everybody called him "Pappy", and he had his stock company of actors for all of his Westerns, starting with "Duke" Wayne and going down through Ward Bond, Harry Carey Jr., Ben Johnson, Victor McLaglen and Andy Devine. I did a picture a few years ago with Harry Carey Jr. who is now an old character actor, and we would sit on a seawall down in St. Augustine, Florida, waiting for our pompous director. One of the worst directors I've ever worked with in my life, Peter Bogdonavich, but that's another story for another time. The man is an absolute fraud. Anyway, Harry and I used to sit on the seawall, and he would tell me stories about John Ford, which were absolutely wonderful.

I don't know if I've told you that story, Paul, but I'll ask you this question: Have you ever seen "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon"?

Paul: Yes I have. Kurt: Great film. Paul: Yes it is.

Kurt: How long do you think it took to shoot that film? Paul: Three months, maybe?

Kurt: The answer is 28 days, but it showed that you knew exactly what you were doing, and if you didn't, you were fired, because it was a business. That is part of the problem today, you tell a director he has only sixty days to make a film, and he wants you fired. "How can he create his piece of work in only sixty days?" Richard Brooks, the very first directing assignment he got at MGM when he was a writer was because Glen Ford got him the job on "Blackboard Jungle". The very first day of filming, the crab dolly ran over Richard's foot and crushed one of his toes, and his foot was bleeding into his shoe. Well, the cast and crew told him, "You have to go to the little hospital here," but there was no way he would leave the set. Because if he had left the set during the first day of shooting to get his foot fixed, another director would have replaced him. So he finished the day's work, and then went to the hospital. (Kurt laughs) It just shows you that there was a little different mentality in those days, and I think better films were made for it.

My father had a terrible fault. He was from an old school in Europe where first of all, he could never understand how in this country people could declare bankruptcy like they did, and it had gotten much worse in his time forty years ago. If you declared bankruptcy you could never be in the business again, you could never be seen in public again. You know, suicide was really your best alternative. My father took great pride in that, if he told a producer he would do a picture in thirty days, thirty-five days or forty days, no matter what happened, somehow or another he'd scramble, and he would get that picture done. Sometimes to the detriment of the film, because he had promised, he had given his word that that film would be grabbing for X amount of dollars, or a certain shooting schedule. That was not a very smart thing to do, because sometimes you had to weigh what was best for the film, and the consequences of that and everything else.

I have the perfect example of that, and Willy Wyler told me the story: The two of them starting out together at Universal, still doing two-reelers, and Carl Laemmle, who was the owner and founder of Universal Studios, called down to the set one afternoon and wanted to see my father right away. Dad was getting ready to set up a shot with about 150-200 extras or something like that, so he sent word back up to the offices that the minute he got the shot he would come up to Laemmle's office. (Because if he didn't get the shot he would have to bring all those people back the next day.) Laemmle was furious that my father didn't drop what he was doing and come immediately, regardless of what was going on. He called up Willy Wyler and gave him the assignment, which was Wyler's big start in features. That example shows you that sometimes you have to weigh the business ends, the personal ends, the moral issues and everything else that goes along with it, being that you gave your word that you would do the picture in thirty-five days. No one foresaw that the volcano behind you was going to erupt, (Kurt chuckles) therefore you had a slight delay.

It was also easy in that day to get typecast, and he had a reputation which he was proud of, and that was if he gave you his word that he would bring a picture in, he would do it. Well, this also meant that the people who contacted him didn't really have a lot of time for each film. I think he thought he could have done better pictures if he would have compromised, but that meant that he would have had to change everything he believed in, his standards and everything, and being a Wagnerian tenor, his standards were a little bizarre.

It's interesting because my wife hates this story, but the perfect example of what it was like growing up with him was that most of the kids in our neighborhood got television sets right away, or a little after they first came out. For a long while we still did not have a television, then finally my father acquiesced and got us a television set, the one with the big magnifying bubble on it. We had it about a week, and I was in the kitchen helping my mother. I don't know where my sister was, but my father was in the den at his desk watching this new contraption. Well, from in the kitchen we suddenly heard this terrible crash in the den, and when we went in, we saw that he had smashed the television, and was sitting at his desk and was crying. He was absolutely distraught, because Lauritz Melchior had just come out on television and done a Schlitz beer commercial. Lauritz was one of my dad's idols. He was probably one of the greatest Wagnerian tenors that ever lived, and the whole idea that this man would lower himself to do a beer commercial just actually destroyed my father, and so it was another six or eight months before we had a television again. (Kurt laughs loudly) But that's where he was. Good, bad or indifferent, now I have to respect that.

I don't know, but it's kinda sad in a way, you don't really have a lot of time for yourself, there really isn't. That's one of the reasons I don't, after thirty-eight years of working in the film business, miss it very much right now. I'm hoping maybe that it will come full circle and return to where (as I have always been taught when I first went into the film business) the most important thing you have before you start shooting is a script, and today that is one of the least important things; "They'll do it as they go along." That's why too many films are getting made for all the wrong reasons, but there are still some good films being made, and that's what keeps it alive.

Paul: The Tarzan films your dad wrote and directed from 1945-1953 with Johnny Weissmuller and Lex Barker. Can you tell us some tales from the jungles of Hollywood?

Kurt: That time for me, being nine years old, was the most wonderful time in my life. These were considered big budget pictures, Sal Lesser was the producer and they were made for RKO with Johnny Weissmuller, Johnny Sheffield and Brenda Joyce. They would make one a year, taking the three summer months, shooting them at Baldwin Park. It's now subdivided; a large portion of it is the arboretum where they did "Fantasy Island". (In his best Tattoo voice) "The plane, the plane." And the Santa Anita racetrack was across the street. The park was a huge estate that was about the closest thing to Africa that you would find. There were swamps, rivers, streams and everything, and to be nine years old and hanging out while they were making a Tarzan movie was like going to the circus every day. I remember one really exciting period was being out there while the animal railroad cars arrived. There was a big railroad spur that ran right into the main area of Baldwin Park, and they would bring the animals cars in and offload the elephants, the lions, the leopards, the zebras and all the other animals they needed. They were put in these big compounds, and would be there for the run of the movie.

Johnny Sheffield had to take swimming lessons, so I got to get swimming lessons, because it was two for the price of one. So that's how I learned to swim, out there in one of the lakes. Having the opportunity to watch these movies being made was absolutely wonderful, there was "Tarzan and Amazons", "Tarzan and the Leopard Woman", "Tarzan and the Huntress", "Tarzan" this and "Tarzan" that. They had these wonderful stories, and they were just bigger than life. It was also the animals, the stunt work, the atmosphere.

A real interesting thing happened to my dad on the set. First of all I learned as a small child out there that the chimpanzee is the most dangerous animal alive, and this is a fact from professional animal people. You hear occasionally of people being very badly hurt by a chimpanzee, and the reason for this is that the chimpanzee is the only animal that has exactly the same expression for rage as it has for joy. When you look at a chimpanzee, you don't know what's going through that animal's mind. With a lion, a tiger, a rattlesnake or an elephant, it's more obvious. Their ears will go back, their tail will swish, they start pawing, they growl, they hiss... They do something. A chimpanzee doesn't, it looks at you with that wonderful face and you don't know what's going through it's mind. That's why Ray Walston and all these people have been so badly hurt by chimpanzees.

As to how this is related to my father... The chimpanzee's all came from the St. Louis Zoo. They had a tremendous primate department, and they would all be shipped out here, and the guy who was the head of the department and was in charge of all the chimpanzees would walk around with a sawed-off baseball bat that he used to keep them in line. One day one of the big chimps broke free, and for no reason whatsoever literally attacked my father and bit him in his artificial leg, breaking a tooth in the process. Suddenly he started screaming, and he was holding his mouth and doing backflips, and then he was taken back and put in his cage. Everybody checked my dad and he was fine, he had a big dent in his artificial leg, but other than that he was fine. You can imagine though, if the chimp had bit him in the other leg it would have been serious trouble with those big teeth. Well, chimps are very smart, because every time that chimp was brought out after that, if he could get anywhere near my father, he would go over and very carefully try to lift up his left pant leg to see what the hell was under there. That chimp knew that something wasn't right. (Kurt chuckles) They are very, very smart.

Also, watching them take the crocodiles and alligators, and using this six-inch wide adhesive tape, they would wrap up their snouts. Then they would have to paint the tape to look like normal hide, so when they were swimming around, it didn't look like their mouths were actually taped shut. Once in a while the tape would break, and then things would get very exciting. The thing you really had to watch out for with them was their tails, because they can break your leg when they started swinging that tail around, and they could just wipe you out with those tails.

An interesting side note is that most people know that Tarzan started with Francis Bushman, and then Buster Crabbe had been a Tarzan. Buster had been a great Olympic swimmer, as was Johnny Weissmuller. So a publicity stunt was arranged down in Santa Monica many years ago, where there was going to be an ocean swimming race between Buster and Johnny for some charity event. Well, a young man had come to town by the name of Paul Stater, who was trying to break into films, and he felt the only way he could get himself noticed was to do something that a lot of people would see. So he went down to this event. Weissmuller and Crabbe ran into the surf, they had to swim out around a buoy and come back, the first one being the winner. Stater gave them about a 100 or 150 yard head start, and then he ran into the surf unannounced and uninvited, passed them, and was back on the beach toweling off by the time they hit the shore. Everybody said, "Who in the world is this guy, he swims like a fish."

Well, Paul Stater was a great swimmer, a great athlete who looked a lot like Weissmuller, and he ended up doubling for Johnny for the next twelve years. He was quite a character, he lived in Malibu and I swear he had gills, (Kurt laughs) he spent so much time in the water. I used to love to watch him and the other stunt people out there get to do these tree swings on these "vines" which were cables looking like vines. And their waterwork... Just to be able to swim as well as they did. They were just incredible athletes. Those pictures went on for five summers, and it was great fun, because then after a while I had jobs out there cleaning out cages, and shoveling this and shoveling that. I seemed to be well suited for that. It was just a great place to grow up.

Dad then did do the one Tarzan film with Lex Barker, called "Tarzan and the She Devil" in 1953. Tarzan, as we have just seen with the animated feature, I think will be around for a long time, as things seem to come around in circles. Probably in about five years they will do a live-action Tarzan again. There are just some characters that never grow old and you just don't get tired of seeing. Whether it is Bruce Willis playing a cop or something like that, it gets to be an old habit. Tarzan is bigger than life, and I think Robert Towne with "Greystoke" had a really interesting approach, but Towne is certifiable. (Kurt laughs) Robert Towne should just be chained to his typewriter and never be allowed to leave his den. As a side note, Towne had some really great ideas about "Greystoke", but he has a lot of personal problems like alcohol and substance abuse, etc. etc. etc., and I think that overshadowed some of his good judgment at times. He wrote "Chinatown", which was a great screenplay, and director Roman Polanski informed Paramount Pictures that Robert was not to be allowed on the set. So he never was on the set for even one day during the filming of "Chinatown", because Polanski realized that if Towne showed up they would never get the picture finished. He would have so many ideas regarding so many of the aspects of the film that it would cause such chaos, that they would never be able to get the picture finished.

A lot of incredibly creative people need someone else to tell them what their limitations are, or whatever. The few years that I worked with John Frankenheimer and Ed Lewis, Frankenheimer/Lewis. That was a great combination, because John relied on Ed to be like the father figure and tell him what was good and what was bad, and when he had done enough of this and should move on, or if he hadn't gotten enough and he should get some more. He needed someone to counterbalance his actions. So many filmmakers today (or people that call themselves filmmakers) feel that they need no one to tell them how to make their film, that they have the big picture, and nothing could be farther from the truth.

Paul: In a previous conversation, you had told me that you don't really remember your dad working with Bela Lugosi in the 1944 horror film "Return of the Vampire", but you might have a small unrelated story.

Kurt: Yes, a friend of mine's father was Brian Donlevy. Judy Donlevy's father was a tough man, had a bad childhood, his parents divorced, etc. etc. Years later Brian announces to his daughter Judy, who was not close with him, that he was marrying the widow of Bela Lugosi. Mrs. Lugosi was to become his bride, and Judy's remark was, "Watch out for full moons." Her dad didn't talk to her for ten years. He was so mad. (Kurt laughs again.)

Paul: Can you tell us about some of the other people in Hollywood?

Kurt: My father adored Herbert Marshall, who also had an artificial leg. He was just a genuine person and a wonderful actor. Vincent Price was a little more flamboyant. He found his niche in Hollywood doing horror films, but he was also a very, very fine actor. You go back to "Laura", "The Keys of the Kingdom" and "The Song of Bernadette", and you can see just how great he was. Sometimes it was just small parts, or things like that. He loved cooking, and had a couple of cooking stores, and gave cooking lessons. Boris Karloff... (Kurt laughs) I mean this was a Shakespearean actor, he ended up learning to grunt, and made a fortune at it. He was not happy with his stock in life. Boris Karloff did not come here from the London stage to be Frankenstein, that's just the way things happened. James Arness, on the other hand, couldn't get arrested and then was "The Thing", (Kurt chuckles) then "Marshall Dillon" came along. Television really was a godsend for some of these people, because if there wasn't work for them in "A" pictures, then they could get themselves a television series, and that's what some of them really became known for.

Just as a side note, I've told this to a lot of people, because Efrem Zimbalist Jr. brought it to my attention. He said, "You know, Kurt, there is a very interesting thing in our business. The difference between motion pictures and television is that not everybody can be a motion picture actor. Quite often (I take it he was referring to himself) the alternative is television, where we appeal more for the people in the privacy of their own home, the smaller screen, it's more intimate, etc. Some of us make the transition, but not very many. It's also very interesting too when you meet somebody, because if you are a motion picture star they will refer to you as "Mr. Zimbalist". But if you're a television star it's "Efrem", because you've been in their living room for an hour every week. For a motion picture star they have left their home to go see them, and that's the difference."

A good place to end...

Special thanks to Kurt Neumann Jr. for his time and wonderful stories.

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Last update: Thursday, September 28, 2000