This Terrible Business
Has Been Good To Me:
An Autobiography
By Norman Jewison
Key Porter, 304 pages, $36.95
Fifty-six years ago, a professor at University of Toronto's Victoria College told Norman Jewison that "a life that is unexamined is not worth living."
Indeed. And though it took Canada's most famous filmmaker years to compile decades of biographical information for his long-awaited autobiography, the incentive for the book came only with the death of one of this country's most respected film critics.
"This book is all Jay Scott's fault," is the opening line of This Terrible Business Has Been Good To Me, referring to The Globe and Mail writer who succumbed to AIDS in 1993. At the time, Scott was working on a biography of Jewison, and before his death he made the director promise he'd complete the job.
It's taken 11 years, but the result is revealing, honest and engrossing.
Having grown up in the Beaches area of Toronto, Jewison was often taunted as a child for being Jewish, even though his family was Anglican and Methodist. This misunderstanding followed the director through most of his career, particularly in 1969, when United Artists head Arthur Krim offered Norman the opportunity to turn the smash Broadway hit Fiddler on the Roof into a movie. Jewison writes about the shocked faces in Krim's Manhattan office when he asked, "What would you say if I told you I'm a goy?" This, however, didn't dissuade Krim from entrusting Jewison with the project, which, as we know, walked away with three Oscars in 1971.
At the age of 17, Jewison joined the navy, but the war ended before he could see any real action. He took advantage of the uniform and a 60-day leave to hitchhike through the United States, an experience that would influence his work for the rest of his life. The most life-altering incident took place in Memphis, Tenn., where the exhausted 18-year-old took a seat at the back of a bus. It wasn't until the bus driver stopped the vehicle and yelled at him that Jewison realized he was sitting in a blacks-only section. Forced to exit, Norman never forgot those feelings of injustice and victimization, which would prompt him to make the critically acclaimed In the Heat of the Night, A Soldier's Story and Hurricane.
Back in Toronto, Jewison attended the University of Toronto (he lists as professors Marshall McLuhan and Northrop Frye), joined several theatrical companies and appeared as an extra in the Hollywood western Canadian Pacific, starring Randolph Scott (his scene was cut). Optimistic that the people he met on the set would help him out, upon graduation Jewison headed to Los Angeles, only to find every door closed and every call ignored.
After his return to Canada, Jewison met the new programming head for CBC television, Stuart Griffiths, who suggested the young lad get some television experience in England, where the BBC was years ahead in the live-television field. With money saved driving cabs in Toronto, Jewison moved to London, where he landed several writing gigs for both BBC television and BBC radio. In 1951, Griffiths phoned Jewison and told him to return home, as a CBC training program for Canada's best young Canadian talent was about to begin.
That's when all the pieces began to fall into place for the 24-year-old struggling writer. As he prepared to launch Canada's first live-television show alongside such talents as Ross McLean, Don Hudson and Arthur Hiller, Jewison also met Margaret Ann Dixon ("Dixie"), who became his wife and the mother of his three children.
Jewison's career in Canadian television extended to work in the United States, where he directed specials for Danny Kaye, Jimmy Durante, Jackie Gleason, Harry Belafonte and Judy Garland. Urged by Tony Curtis to get into movies, Jewison moved his family to Hollywood, where he directed his first picture, 40 Pounds of Trouble. The rest, as they say, is history.
Most of This Terrible Business Has Been Good to Me is divided into chapters that focus on particular movie projects, including the Doris Day vehicles The Thrill of it All and Send Me No Flowers; the critical bomb The Art of Love; The Cincinnati Kid, starring Steve McQueen; and The Russians Are Coming, which led John Wayne to call Jewison a "pinko." (After the film had its premiere in Berlin, the director was invited to Moscow, but had his green card revoked when he re-entered the United States.)
When Jewison found out that Walter Mirisch, whose company produced films for United Artists, had bought the rights to John Ball's novel In the Heat of the Night, with Sidney Poitier to star, he immediately campaigned to direct the picture. Mirisch insisted that the movie was "too small" for Norman at that stage in his career. But a fortuitous event would prompt the director not to give up.
During a Christmas ski vacation in Sun Valley with Dixie and the kids, Jewison bumped into Ethel and Bobby Kennedy at the local hospital, where both the couples' sons were being treated for broken legs. The Kennedys invited the Jewisons to their New Year's Eve party, where the director told the president's brother about In the Heat of the Night. "His response was much more than polite interest," Jewison writes. "Bobby immediately picked up on the significance of the film. 'It's very important, Norman, that you make this movie. . . . The time is right for a movie like this. Timing is everything in politics, in art, and in life itself. Now is the time to make In the Heat of the Night.' "
This was all the encouragement Jewison needed, and he pestered Mirisch until he was given the job. In the Heat of the Night won five Academy Awards, including best picture and best actor for Rod Steiger. As to his relationship with the Kennedys, he was so distraught at Bobby's murder in 1968 that he packed up and left the United States for good, doing away with his family's green cards.
This Terrible Business is full of such insightful anecdotes, which shed light not only on the behind-the-scene making of his most famous pictures ( The Thomas Crowne Affair, Jesus Christ Superstar, A Soldier's Story, Moonstruck), but also present an invaluable historical observation of the world at that time. The gossip is kept to a minimum; it's not surprising that Jewison is considered a gentleman in the back-stabbing circles of the moviemaking business. Any criticism is reserved for himself, and the only person he truly despises turns out to be a real cad.
Jewison also writes emotionally about getting the Thalberg Award, and about his successful efforts at securing the E. P. Taylor estate, Windfields, on Toronto's Bayview Avenue for his groundbreaking Canadian Film Centre.
Though he's 78 and living on a maple farm in Caledon, Ont., Jewison is far from retired. With a couple of projects on the go, the author writes in the book's conclusion, "I hate being old. So I decided I wouldn't buy into it. No shuffling, no complaining about aches and pains. No struggling to remember. No afternoon naps. Just keep working, laughing, drinking and appreciating every smell, sound, taste, and touch that one can possibly experience."
Words to live by.
Angela Baldassarre is vice-president of the Toronto Film Critics Association and author of Reel Canadians: Interviews from the Canadian Film World.