Speaker 1: Pushkin. You might have noticed that things are a little
Speaker 1: different on Cautionary Tales this year. In twenty twenty four,
Speaker 1: we brought you a new episode every fortnight, but this
Speaker 1: year we are doubling our output. New stories of heart
Speaker 1: thumping peril, mind blowing mistakes and jaw dropping scandal will
Speaker 1: now be delivered straight to your ears every week. Here's
Speaker 1: on for you right now. This episode, which combines oscar
Speaker 1: ceremonies Starredust with the far less glamorous world of taxation,
Speaker 1: was recorded in front of a live audience at the
Speaker 1: Bristol Festival of Economics. Ernest borgnine was getting tired of
Speaker 1: playing heavies nearing forty, thickening around the middle, and thinning
Speaker 1: on top. The actor was running out of time to
Speaker 1: become a Hollywood leading man. Ernest had joined the US
Speaker 1: Navy right out of high school, but on leaving in
Speaker 1: nineteen forty five, had struggled to find work amidst the
Speaker 1: mass of men returning home from war. Hit pack a
Speaker 1: lunch and stand outside factories in his hometown just in
Speaker 1: case they were hiring. They weren't, but life on the
Speaker 1: production line didn't much appeal anyway. After navigating the high
Speaker 1: seas to Earnest, the factories of Connecticut looked like jailes.
Speaker 1: It was Ernest's mother, Italian born Anna Bornigno, who suggested
Speaker 1: he enter show business. It didn't seem an obvious career
Speaker 1: choice to Ernest. Why should he become an actor? Of
Speaker 1: all things?
Speaker 2: You always like to make a damn fool of yourself,
Speaker 2: making people laugh. Why don't you give it a try?
Speaker 1: So try he did. His veteran benefits financed some acting classes,
Speaker 1: but Ernest, burly and gap toothed, felt self conscious amongst
Speaker 1: his young and fresh faced classmates. He had never even
Speaker 1: read aloud before, and it showed.
Speaker 3: All the stars were shining like demons.
Speaker 2: No, mister borgnine, the word is diamonds.
Speaker 1: Said his acting teacher.
Speaker 3: Ah shit.
Speaker 1: The class erupted into life, but Ernest would need to
Speaker 1: get used to humiliations. Auditions for budding actors the brutal.
Speaker 1: It wasn't unusual for Ernest to wait two or three
Speaker 1: hours to read for a part, only to be dismissed
Speaker 1: a few lines in. At one casting, he hadn't even
Speaker 1: opened his mouth before the director bellowed. Next, when he
Speaker 1: finally began to land minor roles, His round face and
Speaker 1: stocky build saw him type cast as rowdies, hoodlums, and bullies.
Speaker 1: Playing a cowpoke or gangster. Ernest's brief appearances on film
Speaker 1: would invariably end with a being knocked flat by the
Speaker 1: movie's hero. In the nineteen fifty three blockbuster From Here
Speaker 1: to Eternity, Ernest played a sadistic military policeman, Fatso Judson.
Speaker 1: It was a solid supporting role with pages of diet
Speaker 1: and the chance to off Frank Sinatra's character, but Ernest
Speaker 1: still ended up dead himself, killed by the handsome leading
Speaker 1: man Montgomery Clift. Ernest had drawn heavily on his navy
Speaker 1: experience to bring the menacing Fatso Judson to life, so
Speaker 1: much so that James Jones, author of From Here to Eternity,
Speaker 1: stopped by the set to congratulate the actor.
Speaker 3: You're absolutely the son of a bitch, I wrote about
Speaker 3: keep it up.
Speaker 1: But the quality of Ernest's performance was painting him further
Speaker 1: into a corner. Hollywood's hottest new production company was seeking
Speaker 1: a lead to carry a new project. It was the
Speaker 1: story of a humble bronx bachelor searching for love. Ernest's
Speaker 1: name came up.
Speaker 3: Oh come on, he does nothing but kill people in pictures.
Speaker 3: This is about a lonely butcher.
Speaker 1: This guy can act, The producer was told, so Ernest's
Speaker 1: got the call.
Speaker 3: We've heard nice things about you, were considering you for
Speaker 3: the lead.
Speaker 1: The actor was flabbergasted. No one had ever given him
Speaker 1: a shot at stardom like this, but the producers sure
Speaker 1: he was right for the role.
Speaker 3: Of course, otherwise I wouldn't ask you.
Speaker 1: The film's writer and director flew out for a formal audition.
Speaker 1: Ernest was on location, playing yet another heavy This time
Speaker 1: the script had him being knocked unconscious by Spencer Tracy.
Speaker 1: Ernest came to the reading fresh from the set. His
Speaker 1: cowboy costume was dusty and his chin had a growth
Speaker 1: of stubble. His first words came out with a Western twang.
Speaker 1: What was he thinking? He was blowing his big chance?
Speaker 1: Kicking off his cowboy boots and throwing his ten gallon
Speaker 1: hat aside, Ernest began again. The scene had lovelorn butcher
Speaker 1: Marty Pilletti, carrying his mother's please did he go out
Speaker 1: on the town and meet a nice girl? The Pilletti
Speaker 1: family home wasn't so very different from the Bornino one,
Speaker 1: so Ernest played the role, imagining his mother, Anna was
Speaker 1: reading his cues.
Speaker 3: Marty put on the blue suit, ouo suit, gray suit.
Speaker 3: I'm just a fat little man, fat ugly man, ugly,
Speaker 3: I'm ugly, I'm ugly, I'm ugly.
Speaker 1: Mighty alone. Ernest looked up from the script across from him.
Speaker 1: The director and the writer were in tears. The part
Speaker 1: was his. Ernest Borgnine would play the eponymous lead in Marty,
Speaker 1: a film backed by HECT Lancaster, the production company founded
Speaker 1: by Burt Lancaster that was pumping out box office smashes.
Speaker 1: This was it. Once Marty hit cinema screens, Ernest Borgnine
Speaker 1: would be a star, no more bit parts for him.
Speaker 1: The only problem was the people making Marty didn't want
Speaker 1: it reaching cinema screens. They didn't even want to finish
Speaker 1: filming it. I'm Tim Harford and you're listening to cautionary
Speaker 1: Tales live from the Bristol Festival of Economics. In the
Speaker 1: nineteen forties and fifties, the super rich were the entertainers.
Speaker 1: The head of US Steel could expect to be paid
Speaker 1: three hundred thousand dollars a year, but Frank Sinatra grossed
Speaker 1: closer to four million but with great riches come great taxes.
Speaker 1: That about the time Ernest borgnine was mooching around factories
Speaker 1: desperate for work, any megastar's income over two hundred thousand
Speaker 1: dollars could be taxed at a whopping ninety four percent.
Speaker 1: Some in Hollywood didn't mind, of course. Patriotic bombshell Ann
Speaker 1: Sheridan was amongst the most sanguine.
Speaker 2: I regret that I only have one salary to give
Speaker 2: from my country.
Speaker 1: But others weren't quite so sure. B movie star and
Speaker 1: future president Ronald Reagan worked only part of the year,
Speaker 1: completing a couple of features, and then loafed until the
Speaker 1: end of the tax year rolled around.
Speaker 3: Why should I have done a third picture? Or even
Speaker 3: if it was gone with the wind, what good would
Speaker 3: it have done me?
Speaker 1: But plenty of other Hollywood stars churned out more than
Speaker 1: two films a year. So were they working for mere
Speaker 1: cents on the dollar? Of course not. They looked for
Speaker 1: tax loopholes. Investing in oil exploration was particularly popular. Financing
Speaker 1: a drilling operation attracted generous tax breaks and allowances. It
Speaker 1: became so prevalent that one insider joked.
Speaker 2: When you see a group of movie people talking on
Speaker 2: a set, you don't know whether they're discussing a film
Speaker 2: or an oil.
Speaker 1: Well, but stars didn't have to go wildcatting in the wilderness.
Speaker 1: They could exploit corporate tax breaks without venturing beyond Beverly Hills.
Speaker 1: If a Bing Crosby or Gary Cooper agreed to star
Speaker 1: in a movie, they'd set up a company to take
Speaker 1: the fee or sell that company's shares to the studio
Speaker 1: making the film. They could continue to take dividends from
Speaker 1: these firms at a much lower rate than income tax
Speaker 1: until the money ran out. Then the firm would simply
Speaker 1: disappear when the film Marty was entering production. Almost half
Speaker 1: of all Hollywood films were made using these collapsible corporations
Speaker 1: to dodge sky high taxes independent production companies. These vehicles
Speaker 1: for tax evasion did offer actors other benefits, though many
Speaker 1: had felt constrained by the studio system, where capricious movie
Speaker 1: moguls like Louis B. Mayer, Jack Warner or William Fox
Speaker 1: called all the shots. Stars wanted more of the profits, true,
Speaker 1: but some also yearned for more creative control over their careers.
Speaker 1: In this Bert Lancaster was a pioneer the charismatic and
Speaker 1: acrobatic star had initially run away to join the circus
Speaker 1: during the Great Depression, but his physicality soon found its
Speaker 1: true home on the silver screen. He was an adonis
Speaker 1: and audiences lapped him up, whether he played a prize
Speaker 1: fighter or a pirate. Bert's name on the cinema marquee
Speaker 1: was estimated to bring in an extra million dollars in
Speaker 1: ticket sales. An obsessive autodid act, Burt Lancaster wasn't just
Speaker 1: going to loafer around like Ronald Reagan. If he was
Speaker 1: going to be in hit movies, dammit, he was going
Speaker 1: to learn how they were made. Teaming up with his
Speaker 1: diminutive agent, Harold Hecht, Lancaster began to produce his own films.
Speaker 1: Doubling up as a hustling film exec and the swashbuckling
Speaker 1: leading man was exhausting but rewarding. His films made millions.
Speaker 1: These profits were a highlight that's an otherwise gloomy time
Speaker 1: for Hollywood. TV was taking off. Televisions were monochrome, the
Speaker 1: picture quality was poor and the scenery was wobbly, but
Speaker 1: many Americans would rather stay in to watch television rather
Speaker 1: than trapes out to a cinema. The movie makers fought
Speaker 1: back by releasing lavish, colorful epics with stories and characters
Speaker 1: far too big to ever fit on the small screen.
Speaker 1: Burt Lancaster's Pirate Pics and Western's fell firmly into this category.
Speaker 1: So when Heck Lancaster announced their next project, Marty, it
Speaker 1: was met with bafflement. Even the scriptwriter was mystified.
Speaker 3: I don't know why they put up the money. The
Speaker 3: venture had a hopelessly uncommercial smell.
Speaker 1: Marty had been a well received TV play, praised for
Speaker 1: its naturalistic dialogue and a strong main performance from Rod Steiger,
Speaker 1: but a sentimental script seemed far too experimental for a
Speaker 1: Hollywood hit, and it was too short to boot. Could
Speaker 1: the downbeat storyline be given a Hollywood polish, then, well no.
Speaker 1: Hecht Lancaster had given the TV shows writer and director
Speaker 1: total creative control, and they wanted Marty to remain true
Speaker 1: to its roots. Bert wouldn't feature on screen either, and
Speaker 1: nor would Steiger, who'd passed on the chance to reprise
Speaker 1: his role. And in the absence of star power, the
Speaker 1: dowdy central part had gone to Ernest borgnine a bit
Speaker 1: part Fatso what was Burn Lancaster doing? Thought Hollywood? Some observers, though,
Speaker 1: had their theories. Location shooting began in the Bronx. The
Speaker 1: director had never made a feature film before, and I
Speaker 1: didn't know you could record multiple takes of each scene.
Speaker 1: You only ever got one try on live TV. Once
Speaker 1: this and other details of film craft were explained to him,
Speaker 1: all went smoothly, and it had to, for the crew
Speaker 1: had been set an impossibly horrid schedule. Ernest delivered his
Speaker 1: dialogue against the rumble of l trains, the honking of taxes,
Speaker 1: and the babble of real Bronx natives going about their business.
Speaker 1: Some local tufts, though, took exception to this invasion of
Speaker 1: film folk in general, and to Ernest borg Nine in particular.
Speaker 3: Badia mol Inferno.
Speaker 1: De lu shouted, one it American youth, let's beat him up.
Speaker 1: The gang, it turns out, believed that Ernest really had
Speaker 1: it in for Frank Sinatra from here to Eternity. Ernest
Speaker 1: was happy to trade punches with the boys, but he
Speaker 1: thought it first explained that the animosity was merely play acting,
Speaker 1: and that he and Frank were in fact good friends,
Speaker 1: bonded by their shared Italian American heritage.
Speaker 3: Why didn't you tell us that? From then?
Speaker 1: On the man born ermez Bornino was lavished with gifts
Speaker 1: of pizza and gallons of red wine. His money was
Speaker 1: no good in any of the local trattoria. Ernest felt
Speaker 1: confident as he flew to Hollywood for the interior. Shots
Speaker 1: had all been meticulously worked out in New York. These
Speaker 1: TV guys certainly knew how to shoot on a small
Speaker 1: studio set. Only there weren't any sets. They hadn't been built.
Speaker 1: There was no need for them, for the film wasn't
Speaker 1: going to be completed. Turns out, said the crushed leading man.
Speaker 3: There was some financial shenanigans attached to the picture.
Speaker 1: Cautionary tales will be back in a moment. Those who
Speaker 1: thought it odd that Bird Lancaster was making a stylus
Speaker 1: low key black and white melodrama seemed to have been
Speaker 1: proved right. Bird Lancaster wasn't going to make Marty, at
Speaker 1: least not all of it.
Speaker 3: Hecked Lancaster wanted to lose money because they were making
Speaker 3: so much money from their other pictures.
Speaker 1: Said a disappointed Ernest Borgnine.
Speaker 3: They wanted to shoot half of it and then put
Speaker 3: it on the shelf and take a tax loss. That way,
Speaker 3: The producers could pay themselves a salary and yet not
Speaker 3: have to show a corporate profit.
Speaker 1: Tax structures of the type that encourage filmmakers not to
Speaker 1: make films create what economists call an excess burden. When
Speaker 1: people distort their behavior to avoid a tax. In this way,
Speaker 1: nobody wins. The tax avoider is worse off because the
Speaker 1: avoidance is costly. The tax authorities are worse off because
Speaker 1: the tax isn't paid. Badly designed taxes can make life
Speaker 1: uglier and gloomier too. In the late sixteen nineties, England's
Speaker 1: finances were in disarray. The Kingdom's sterling silver coinage had
Speaker 1: been fatally compromised, with people clipping bits of old coins
Speaker 1: to keep the valuable slivers of silver. Newer coins with
Speaker 1: engravings and milled edges to defeat the clippers instead attracted
Speaker 1: forgers on top of denuded coins and fake coins. The
Speaker 1: rising value of silver meant there was a healthy export
Speaker 1: trade in small change. A silver sixpence was worth far
Speaker 1: more melted down in Paris than it was as a
Speaker 1: coin in London. To shore up the royal finances, King
Speaker 1: William the Third sought to introduce fair and progressive taxes
Speaker 1: to raise revenue. He alighted on a window tax. Those
Speaker 1: with grand houses boasting many windows paid the highest rate
Speaker 1: per glazed opening, while more modest buildings paid less duty
Speaker 1: for each window. It was an easy levee to administer
Speaker 1: two a tax inspector could simply count each window from
Speaker 1: the street. Over time, the tax rates rose and then rocketed,
Speaker 1: so property owners bricked up existing windows and planned new
Speaker 1: buildings to reduce their taxable apertures. The poorest, unsurprisingly suffered.
Speaker 1: Most unscrupulous landlords blocked off windows, leaving tenants in dark,
Speaker 1: unventilated rooms. The window tax finally died one one hundred
Speaker 1: and fifty years after its introduction, and only once campaigners
Speaker 1: had convinced the tra of the obvious that a lack
Speaker 1: of light and fresh air was taking an appalling toll
Speaker 1: on people's health. It was a classic excess burden. When
Speaker 1: a tax system consigns people to a wretched life in
Speaker 1: a dark, airless dwellings and doesn't even raise revenue, then
Speaker 1: that tax system has gone wrong. And it went wrong
Speaker 1: when singers like Bing Crosby turned down paying gigs to
Speaker 1: become oil prospectors, When Ronald Reagan loafed for most of
Speaker 1: the financial year, and of course, when gap toothed and hefty,
Speaker 1: Ernest borgnine was denied his shot as a starring role.
Speaker 1: But lucky for Ernest, the Internal Revenue Service, to its credit,
Speaker 1: knew something was up too. In nineteen fifty four, it
Speaker 1: introduced a new code cracking down on many of the
Speaker 1: most egregious abuses by the Hollywood elite. So could Heck
Speaker 1: Lancaster just shelve Marty halfway through and draw their producer
Speaker 1: salaries and write the rest of the budget off. The
Speaker 1: answer pleased Ernest.
Speaker 3: The taxman said no, they had to finish the picture,
Speaker 3: show it once and then take a loss.
Speaker 1: So the interior sets were built and cameras rolled once
Speaker 1: again on Marty.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure that was good news.
Speaker 1: Said Ernest of his partial reprieve.
Speaker 3: But it was better news.
Speaker 1: Bert Lancaster hadn't been around much for the making of Marty.
Speaker 1: He'd been directing himself in the adventure flick The Kentuckian.
Speaker 1: He'd left Marty to his business partner Harold Hecht, who
Speaker 1: in turn had surrendered most of the creative control to
Speaker 1: the writer and director. If you're not planning to finish
Speaker 1: a film, why sweat over it. Bert did turn up
Speaker 1: for Marty's first screening, though Ernest brought along his wife
Speaker 1: and mother in law, after all, it might be their
Speaker 1: only chance to see him carry a motion picture. Nineteen
Speaker 1: minutes later, as the end credits rolled, Ernest watched Burt
Speaker 1: Lancaster beckon to Harold Hecht more than a head shorter
Speaker 1: than the star. He trotted after Bert into a corner,
Speaker 1: whereupon Bert grasped his co producer by the lapels and
Speaker 1: hoisted him into the air.
Speaker 3: This is the movie you weren't going to finish. Why
Speaker 3: the hell didn't you shoot more?
Speaker 1: Bert clearly loved Marty, and from that moment on became
Speaker 1: very invested in it. The distributors suggested releasing Marty as
Speaker 1: a bee movie shortish or derv served up in cinemas
Speaker 1: before a more commercial main offering, but Lancaster had other plans.
Speaker 1: Marty was going to be an a movie, albeit with
Speaker 1: a limited release. They'd screen it at a single New
Speaker 1: York cinema. From that tiny bass, word of mouth would
Speaker 1: sell their film. Special screenings were arranged for an invited
Speaker 1: audience of barbers, manicurists, and shoeshines, ordinary workers who might
Speaker 1: identify with the characters on the screen and recommend Marty
Speaker 1: to their clients. The New York Yankees were treated to
Speaker 1: a viewing anything to create bars, and it worked to
Speaker 1: an extent. Audiences lined up around the block night after night,
Speaker 1: week after week to see Marty, but still only at
Speaker 1: a single cinema seating fewer than six hundred patrons. Eventually,
Speaker 1: someone had the bright idea to enter Marty for the
Speaker 1: main prize at the Can Film Festival, the Palm Door.
Speaker 1: It wasn't so unlike the neorealist European films that usually
Speaker 1: picked up gongs at Cannes, and any praise from the
Speaker 1: judges could be flammed up in press releases as international acclaim.
Speaker 1: Hollywood films rarely triumphed at the Festival International du Film,
Speaker 1: so expectations were low. Betsy Blair, who played Marty's demure
Speaker 1: love interest, was coincidentally going to be in Can with
Speaker 1: her husband Gene Kelly, but no one else from the
Speaker 1: cast or crew bothered to book a ticket. It was
Speaker 1: a scrabble then when Marty swept the board and their
Speaker 1: presence was required urgently at the award ceremony, Marty had
Speaker 1: cost just a few hundred thousand dollars to make a
Speaker 1: minuscule budget, made worse by Burt Lancaster's habit of dipping
Speaker 1: into it to pay bills for the other films he
Speaker 1: had in production. But after the Palm Door the cash
Speaker 1: began to flow. Hecht Lancaster spent one hundred and fifty
Speaker 1: thousand dollars on ads alone, thirty times the five thousand
Speaker 1: dollars that paid their leading man, and as Oscar season approached,
Speaker 1: Hecht Lancaster sent a print of the film to the
Speaker 1: homes of the voting Academy members, along with a projectionist
Speaker 1: and food at the British Bafters, the New York Film
Speaker 1: Critics Circle the Writers Guild. Marty was picking up awards,
Speaker 1: but an Academy award would seal Marty's success. At a
Speaker 1: rehearsal for the Oscar ceremony, Ernest Borgnein decided the wisest
Speaker 1: course of action would be to enjoy his Best Actor
Speaker 1: nomination as much as possible. He was up against friends
Speaker 1: and former co stars Frank Sinatra and Spencer Tracy. James
Speaker 1: Cagney was in the running, and so too was James Dean,
Speaker 1: who died the previous year. In a car wreck. Ernest
Speaker 1: was resigned he didn't stand a chance, but Oscar host
Speaker 1: Jerry Lewis was more encouraging.
Speaker 3: You're gonna when, you're gonna win.
Speaker 1: Ernest thought the comedian was just being polite.
Speaker 3: You want to bet I'll win, I'll bet you a
Speaker 3: buck ninety eight. You're gonna win.
Speaker 1: Back home, Ernest counted out one hundred and ninety eight
Speaker 1: pennies just in case and took a nap.
Speaker 3: How can you fall asleep?
Speaker 1: The shrieks of Ernest's wife, Rhoda awakened him.
Speaker 2: How can you sleep when you're up for an Academy award.
Speaker 1: Ernest looked up sleepily his apoplectic partner, Well, I'm not
Speaker 1: gonna win. Cautionary tales will return after the break. The
Speaker 1: borg Nines drove to the Oscars in their new Cadillac,
Speaker 1: new to them at any rate. It was secondhand. Ernest
Speaker 1: fidgeted in his coat tails. It was the last formal
Speaker 1: suit at the rental store, and the coat was too
Speaker 1: small and a little threadbare. The get up was constrictive
Speaker 1: and hot, and sweat beaded on Ernest's expanse of forehead
Speaker 1: as the couple awkwardly settled in their places. Bert Lancaster
Speaker 1: seats away, smiled over and exchanged pleasantries. Ernest thought the
Speaker 1: greeting was warm enough, but something in it suggested that
Speaker 1: Bert was numb, too sure of a win either. Hecht
Speaker 1: Lancaster was setting up a lavish post awards party, but
Speaker 1: Harold Hecht was already fretting about the expensive food, dead waste.
Speaker 1: If Marty flopped, he'd have roast beef to feed his
Speaker 1: family for years. The thought prompted him to start knocking
Speaker 1: back the drinks.
Speaker 3: And now Best Cinematography in black and white.
Speaker 2: The Oscar for Best Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy.
Speaker 3: Picture, Best Song, Oscar Goes Too.
Speaker 1: Oscar. Ceremonies can be interminably long.
Speaker 2: Next, Best Live Action Short Subject, Too Real.
Speaker 3: Thenominations for Best Art, Direction and Color. They called your Name.
Speaker 1: Rhoda borgnine was punching her husband in the side.
Speaker 3: Get her Bernie.
Speaker 1: Ernest's attention had drifted during the ceremony.
Speaker 2: They called your name.
Speaker 1: You won. On stage, Jerry Lewis folded with laughter as
Speaker 1: Ernest pressed one dollar ninety eight into his hand. Afterwards,
Speaker 1: Ernest couldn't recall what he said as he clutched the
Speaker 1: Oscar statue to his chest. The speech was short. He
Speaker 1: thanked Rhoda and his dad, but spoke most movingly about
Speaker 1: his mother. Anna borg Nine, the one who'd inspired him
Speaker 1: to act in the first place, had sick and died
Speaker 1: before Ernest's star had risen.
Speaker 3: She barely got to see any of it. It wasn't fair,
Speaker 3: but fair, just this and on life's menu.
Speaker 1: The cast and crew of Marty cut a swathe up
Speaker 1: and down the carpet at those twenty eighth Academy Awards
Speaker 1: Best Screenplay, Best Director, Best Picture. Variety said the former
Speaker 1: circus acrobat Burt Lancaster nearly did a full flip each
Speaker 1: time a Marty winner was announced, and Harold Hecht wouldn't
Speaker 1: have to eat all that roast beef after all. The
Speaker 1: after party was a raging success. If there'd been an
Speaker 1: Oscar for Best Bash, said the trade papers, it would
Speaker 1: have won hands down. Not only could Ernest act, they reported,
Speaker 1: he could dance a mean rumber two. Marty, the film
Speaker 1: it's makers supposedly saw only as a tax loss, turned
Speaker 1: an outrageous profit. It didn't gross as much as a
Speaker 1: Bert Lancaster westerm, but given its minuscule budget, its returns
Speaker 1: on investment were remarkable. Its clutch of Oscars was estimated
Speaker 1: to have added many zeros to its box office receipts.
Speaker 1: Hollywood watched on drooling as Marty filled cinema seats everywhere.
Speaker 1: Perhaps they didn't need expensive herds of cavalry horses, armaders
Speaker 1: of pirate ships, or armies of extras to compete with TV.
Speaker 1: Smaller films might be the answer, and they could even
Speaker 1: cherry pick scripts that had already been hits on the
Speaker 1: small screen. Studio executives now vied for the rights to
Speaker 1: film popular teleplays like the claustrophobic jury room drama Twelve Men.
Speaker 1: And if the sets could be smaller, so could the characters.
Speaker 1: A love story needn't chronicle Anthony and Cleopatra floating down
Speaker 1: the Nile. Butcher Marty Paletti worrying a spinster school mistress
Speaker 1: in the Bronx played just fine too.
Speaker 3: The success of Marty proved that moviegoers are interested in
Speaker 3: people like themselves.
Speaker 1: Said no less an expert than Elia Kazan, director of
Speaker 1: Brando's on the Waterfront and a streetcar named Desire. But
Speaker 1: for oscar winning ernest things wouldn't be as smooth as
Speaker 1: he might have expected. Bert Lancaster wasn't so sure about
Speaker 1: making more art movies. He was obsessed with filming Trapeze,
Speaker 1: a garish, star studded epic, taking him back to his
Speaker 1: circus roots. It was being filmed abroad, partly to shield
Speaker 1: any profits from the US tax collectors, and perhaps Burt
Speaker 1: Lancaster wasn't so sure about Ernest Borgnine as a leading
Speaker 1: man either. It signed a seven picture deal with Hecht Lancaster,
Speaker 1: but all they offered him were bit parts roles. Not
Speaker 1: becoming a celebrated Oscar winner. Counseled Ernest's agent he should
Speaker 1: be playing the main roles, so Ernest turned each and
Speaker 1: every offer down flat. Hecht Lancaster finally declared that these
Speaker 1: constant rejections were a breach of contract. Then Ernest was
Speaker 1: placed on suspension to kick his heels at home. Finally,
Speaker 1: the inactivity got to him and he snapped.
Speaker 3: Christmas is around the corner. I want to go to
Speaker 3: the five and diamond, get a job selling things.
Speaker 1: Rhoda borg Nine talked her husband out of working in
Speaker 1: a store, and after sacking his agent, Ernest rebuilt his
Speaker 1: career by letting hect Lancaster own him out to other
Speaker 1: filmmakers for one hundred thousand dollars a time, a quarter
Speaker 1: of which Ernest could keep. Eventually it'd saved enough to
Speaker 1: buy his freedom from the men who had made him
Speaker 1: a star and for whom he had made a fortune.
Speaker 1: It left him half a million dollars out of pocket
Speaker 1: that the actor often laughed when revealing this figure to interviewers.
Speaker 1: Some said Ernest's financial falling out with the producers prompted
Speaker 1: him to concoct, or at least inflate, the story that
Speaker 1: Marty was conceived solely as a tax dodge. But it's
Speaker 1: not easy to see why Ernest would lie, and it
Speaker 1: makes sense that the producers wouldn't publicly admit to the scheme.
Speaker 1: What would they say, we wanted a tax loss, but
Speaker 1: one a clutch of oscars by mistake for nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: seven mel Brooks comedy The Producers plays a similar scenario
Speaker 1: for laughs. In it, a Broadway musical celebrating the rise
Speaker 1: of the Third Reich is staged as a sure fire
Speaker 1: flop to allow for the embezzling of the production budget.
Speaker 1: Only audiences love numbers such as Springtime for Hitler making
Speaker 1: it a runaway success.
Speaker 3: How could this happen?
Speaker 1: Wales one of the fraudsters.
Speaker 3: I picked the wrong play, the wrong director, the wrong cast.
Speaker 3: Where did I go right?
Speaker 1: If we accept Ernest's version of events, then Marty is
Speaker 1: a rare positive twist on the many tales of taxes
Speaker 1: causing perverse outcomes. Instead of bricking up windows or prompting
Speaker 1: entertainers to stop entertaining, the tax rules, here might unintentionally
Speaker 1: have created a movie masterpiece by encouraging Heckler Lancaster to
Speaker 1: give the bold makers of Marty a free creative hand.
Speaker 1: Harold Hecht himself said that such freedom was rare because
Speaker 1: producers were usually under such pressure to play it safe,
Speaker 1: given that even modest films were still a big financial gamble.
Speaker 1: Seeking a tax Dodge took that gamble away once he
Speaker 1: had ditched his agent. Ernest Borgnein's career spanned decades. He
Speaker 1: was in some of the biggest films of the nineteen sixties, seventies,
Speaker 1: and eighties that resigned himself to supporting roles and yes
Speaker 1: usually playing heavies. He was still working right up to
Speaker 1: his death in twenty twelve at the age of ninety five.
Speaker 1: In his final years, he took time to write a
Speaker 1: breezy autobiography explaining why he saw the funny side of
Speaker 1: his career ups and downs. Ernest wrote that plots, plans
Speaker 1: and other such shenanigans were a waste of time as
Speaker 1: an actor. His attempts to land more leading roles after
Speaker 1: the success of Marty had come to nothing, and that
Speaker 1: was okay. He adopted as his personal motto something he
Speaker 1: read on a sign above a hot chestnut stand as
Speaker 1: he walked home from another failed audition. I don't want
Speaker 1: to set the world on fire, read the sign. I
Speaker 1: just want to keep my nuts warm. The key sources
Speaker 1: for this episode of Portional Tales were Ernest Borgnin's memoir
Speaker 1: mild To Biography and Kate Burford's book Burt Lancaster and
Speaker 1: American Life. Porchy Tales is written by me Tim Harfard
Speaker 1: with Andrew Wright. Live edition of the show is written
Speaker 1: with Ryan Dilley, reproduced by Alice Fines. Tonight you heard
Speaker 1: the voice talents of Oliver Hembra and Sarah Chap The
Speaker 1: sound design and original music is the work of Pascal Wives,
Speaker 1: Sarah and extended the script. Our recording engineer was Doug Fletcher.
Speaker 1: Thank you to Ashley late and the Bristol Festival and
Speaker 1: Economics