The Best Little Whorehouse Goes Hollywood

when a good ol' writer from texas watches his play become a movie, that's when he learns about the wages of sin

There is Something about the thought of being put in the movies that makes the average American turn to Silly Putty and go daft. Somewhere, in some wretched Appalachian hollow or Back Bay drawing room, there must be someone--a black-lunged coal miner, a gentle dowager--who does not wish to be in pictures. I have yet to meet him, however. And if I should and he somehow learned I was even remotely connected with a movie (continued on page 158) Best Little Whorehouse (continued from page 119) scheduled for production, he doubtless would change his mind.

I came to be associated with a movie when Universal Pictures bought the screen rights to a hit Broadway musical--The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas--that I had more or less accidentally written with Peter Masterson and Carol Hall. The play was based on a piece I wrote for Playboy way back in 1974.

From the moment it was indicated that there just might be a Whorehouse movie off in the distant future, I was besieged by friends, relatives and strangers wanting to be in it. I don't know why that should be so. Not many people seriously consider themselves or their protégés ripe prospects to sing and dance on Broadway, but transfer the same story to film and suddenly everybody's an actor. "I'll take a small part," people would volunteer, as if we might otherwise draft them for the leading roles, "or I'll even be an extra. But I've got to be in that movie." People I had not heard from since the Truman Administration wrote or telephoned or looked me up to tout this old girlfriend or that cousin or somebody's in-law as "exactly right" for roles that did not yet exist, because no screenplay had been written. Never mind that the would-be new stars were by trade milkmen or computer programmers and had not acted since their fourth-grade Christmas pageants. The amateurs, indeed, were more insistent than the professionals--and, Lord knows, they were bad enough.

It goes without saying that almost every player in all of the Whorehouse stage versions campaigned for screen tests to one degree or another; just about every other actor I knew, and many I did not know, mailed résumés and pictures or begged for personal appointments. It did not do one smidgen of good to tell either the amateur or the professional hopefuls truthfully that I would not be involved in casting, had no authority to cast, had no qualifications to cast and did not wish to cast the movie. Nor did it help to say--again, truthfully--"Listen, if I could get anyone a part in that movie, I would get myself a part in that movie." These truths were seen as clever evasions or heartless disclaimers and were received in disbelief, anger or an accusing silence. Although I had no idea who would actually do the casting for Universal, I ultimately adopted the tactic of sicking people on Pete Masterson or Bonnie Champion in Stevie Phillips' office. Stevie had originally bought Whorehouse for the stage, and she had produced it with Universal money. On days I felt playful, I solemnly assured the aspirants, "Don't take no for an answer. He [she] can do it if he [she] really wants to." The recipients of such assurances were almost pathetically grateful.

The earliest and most persistent campaigner was the actress Shirley MacLaine, seeking the role of Miss Mona. Not that Miss MacLaine ever got in touch with me; no. I don't know that she once got in touch with anyone from Universal, for that matter. But if one read the gossip columns, one could not help but suspect that Miss MacLaine wanted the role badly. She was forever being reported as "having the inside track" or being "favored" to play the Whorehouse madam. I had learned enough of press-agentry to suspect that Miss MacLaine had not ordered her flack to cease and desist. Actually, I was rather enamored of the idea. I liked Shirley MacLaine's acting, considered her a bright talent and thought we'd be lucky to have her. When I mentioned that to Universal bigwigs, however, I was told she was not big enough box office. I got the same answer when I plumped for Jill Clayburgh, Carlin Glynn and Dyan Cannon.

Early on, it turned out, Universal had Dolly Parton in mind. "Jesus," I said on hearing the news. "Too obvious. She looks like she might run a whorehouse or work in one." Some Universal nabob, however, had become enchanted with the idea of Dolly Parton and I don't believe anyone else was seriously considered. She is the only actress I know of who was squired to the play by Stevie Phillips and a half ton of assorted Universal brass.

The night Miss Parton was at the 46th Street Theater, by the way, our irrepressible steel-guitar man, Lynn Frazier, leaned over during the warm-up music and said to the band, "Don't anyone mention tits!" Frazier did not realize, until it was too late, that a microphone had shared his remark with much of the audience--including Stevie, who was furious. Fortunately, Miss Parton thought it funny, so Frazier did not get handed a sandwich and a road map.

I wanted old Texas outlaw Willie Nelson to play Sheriff Ed Earl Dodd. Although that suggestion was made long before Nelson had filmed either The Electric Horseman, with Robert Redford and Jane Fonda, or Honeysuckle Rose, in which he played the starring role, Universal officials seemed more than ordinarily interested. Indeed. Willie was flown up from Texas to see the stage play. Stevie called me to go up to New York for that event, on the grounds that I was the only one connected with making the show who knew Nelson.

When I walked into the swanky hotel suite in midtown Manhattan that night, I could not believe my eyes. On one side of the room sat Universal's mafiosi, in tuxedos and black ties; on the other side of the room stood Willie Nelson, songwriter Hank Cochran, harmonica player Mickey Raphael and the rest of Willie's outlaws wearing bandannas around their heads, scuffed boots and ragged blue jeans. Everybody was sipping white wine. White wine, now! It was as quiet and tense in there as a funeral parlor where two ex-wives have shown up to outmourn each other and each has brought her own claque.

"God's sakes, Stevie," I said, "send somebody out to get these boys a decent drink of whiskey." Cheers from the raggedy-ass side of the room. Soon the party was in full sway.

Willie was allowed to drink in his box seat during the show. At intermission, we repaired to a limousine Universal had rented for him, which was parked directly in front of the theater. We smoked a bit and ate some stuff I guess was baking powder.

"How much you reckon I can get from these sumbitchers?" Willie asked.

"Ask for two million," I said. "You probably won't get it, but you might get a million or more."

"That right?"

"Damn sure is."

"Shit," Willie said, "that sure beats playing in beer joints."

We began talking music and trash and such. Suddenly, I looked up to notice the intermission sidewalk was bare of folk. Inside the theater lobby. Stevie and a dozen tuxes stood peering anxiously at the limo. "Oh, shit, Willie," I said, "we've missed ten or fifteen minutes of the second act."

Afterward, they took us to Sardi's. The maître de originally looked askance at Willie--hair in braids, bib-and-gallus (continued on page 230) Best Little Whorehouse (continued from page 158) overalls, a red bandanna wrapped around his forehead, tennis shoes--but decided he must be a VIP when he saw a dozen tuxes bowing and scraping and opening doors for him. Lynn Frazier had joined us from the band at Willie's request--they had played together in the old days, when each was a mite hungry. By the time all the tuxes sat at the long dinner table prepared for Stevie's party, we were a chair short. "That's OK," Frazier said. "I'll go up-stairs to the bar."

"I'll go with you, Frazier," I said, thinking Willie would stay behind to talk business.

But as Frazier and I walked up the stairs and approached the bar, we turned to find Willie trailing behind us. "I'd druther be up here with y'all," he said. We drank beer and bullshitted, three old Texas boys invading Broadway.

"Y'all like it up here?" Willie asked.

"It's a living," Frazier said.

"Hell, I love it," I said. "If you've got enough money, it's the greatest city in the world."

"If you got enough money," Willie said through a grin, "you could probably say that about Waco." A moment later, he said, "Who are all those penguins down there with Stevie?"

"Only one I know is Thom Mount," I said. "He's some big Injun with Universal. I think the rest are just Hollywood finks they flew in to carry your jock tonight."

"I wish some of 'em would go home," he said. "I don't care to have to talk to 'em."

We shortly were approached by a tuxedo, who told me Mrs. Phillips very much wished for us to join her party.

"You go pull her aside," I instructed, "and tell her Willie says all them penguins making him nervous. Tell her to send some of 'em home. We'll be along directly."

When we ultimately joined Stevie's party, the crowd was down to manageable size. Stevie got the drift, however, and whispered that Willie looked as if he'd rather be elsewhere. "You got it," I said. She told me to take him where he wanted to go, do what he wanted to do and send her the bill.

Frazier and I took the country-music superstar to the ratty old Golden Gate Lounge, across the street from the stage door of the theater--which Frazier frequented so often he called it "my office"--and drank beer long into the night.

A few weeks later, when negotiations with Willie's agent didn't seem to be getting far, Stevie asked me to go to Austin to heat Nelson up. I checked into The Driskill Hotel, where Willie, his band and others in the cast of Honeysuckle Rose were staying to begin rehearsing the music for that movie. When Willie was not busy, I hustled him at all hours. A week later, I returned East and telephoned Stevie in hot excitement to say that I had extracted from Willie his promise that he would be in Whorehouse. All she had to do was make the money right.

"Willie?" she said. "Oh, didn't anybody tell you?"

What, tell me?

"Dolly Parton's decided it would be bad for her image to play a whorehouse madam. And if we can't get Dolly, we're really not interested in Willie. We wanted them as a team."

I wrote Willie a note of apology and explanation, saying I felt I had been led down the primrose path. I heard nothing in return.

One day Stevie called to announce with pride that negotiations were under way with Burt Reynolds for the role of Sheriff Dodd.

"I don't know, Stevie," I said. "I've never seen Burt Reynolds play anything but Burt Reynolds. I'm not sure he can play anything else."

"Well, remember this," she said. "He is the number-one movie box-office draw in the world and he could make you big bucks. And he could make an exciting pairing with Dolly."

Dolly? What, Dolly?

"Oh, didn't anyone tell you?" Stevie said. "Burt Reynolds talked to Dolly personally and she's changed her mind. We're in negotiations with her, too."

I didn't write Willie Nelson another note saying the bastards had clothes-lined me again. By then, I figured, he would never believe another word I told him.

•

Peter Masterson and Tommy Tune were to codirect the Whorehouse movie, and Pete and I would script it. We wrote three drafts before we got it where we wanted it, which is about par for the movie course. I foolishly figured that was it. Despite all I had read about movie stars' demanding changes and rewrites, I didn't give much thought to that possibility: How could they improve on perfection?

Meanwhile, negotiations with Burt and Dolly had hit a snag. Burt wanted $5,000,000 in front and a piece of the gross and Dolly wanted $2,000,000 and a piece of the gross. After the haggling had gone on for weeks, I picked up the newspaper one morning to find Universal president Ned Tanen dithyrambing. "They are trying to hold us up for $7,000,000 between them, and they're using as a club that one won't do the film without the other. Well, you can only be pushed so far." Tanen went on to say that courageous executives must put their feet down or draw the line or some such, and that "we will do the film without them."

I didn't believe a word of it. "It's a ploy," I said, "to get them back to the negotiating table. Like Lyndon tried to get the North Vietnamese to negotiate by bombing 'em."

Sure enough, it shortly was announced that Burt Reynolds had signed for $3,500,000 in front and an unannounced percentage of the gross and that Dolly Parton had signed for $1,500,000 and ditto. Not bad for about 12 weeks' work each. I do believe they can winter on it.

Masterson met with each of our stars, individually, and pronounced the discussions satisfactory. "Dolly's nice and down-home," he said. "Burt's a little up-tight, but I think he may come around."

"What does he say about playing a sixty-two-year-old man?"

"Well, ah, I wanted to mention that. He wants to play him a little younger."

"No shit?" I said dryly. "How young, twenty-eight?"

"Naw, naw. He'll sail for about fifty. I don't think that will cause too many problems in that will cause too many problems in the script. He does want a few changes, but they aren't really major."

When I next talked with Stevie, she told a different story. "Burt says he doesn't want to play the sheriff as 'an old fart.' And he wants another car chase and two more fistfights."

"You tell the son of a bitch I know where he can get his first fistfight," I said.

"Now, Larry, please! Let's don't get everyone in an uproar right off. Give us a little time to work things out."

Next it seemed that Reynolds thirsted to sing. Oh, my God! Not the Battle of the Singing Sheriff again! I've fought that fight more time than John Wayne defended the Alamo.

Have any of you kiddies ever heard Uncle Burt sing? Huh! Uncle Larry heard him sing. It was in a film where Uncle Burt and Cybill Shepherd both tried to sing and dance, kiddies, and you know what? Can you guess? It was muy malo, compadres. El Stinkeroo. Bet your sweet bibbies Uncle Burt didn't smash the world-wide box-office record that year. Not with At Long Last Love like an albatross around his macho neck.

"He wants a solo," Masterson said gloomily, "and a couple of duets with Dolly."

"Our best defense," I said, "is to screen for Dolly that awful musical he made. Make her see it three or four times. Do that and I'll bet Dolly tries to get it in her contract that the sumbitch isn't even allowed to hum in her presence."

•

I ran into my friend Bud Shrake, who'd just returned from Hollywood after completing what proved to be the next-to-last screenplay for Steve McQueen, called Tom Horn.

"Who's directing your movie?" he asked.

"Pete Masterson and Tommy Tune."

"That's not what they're saying out on the Left Coast."

"Oh? What did you hear?"

"Just that Universal is putting too much money into the film to let it be directed by a couple of guys who've never directed a film before."

"Who told you that?"

Shrake named a Universal official I won't name here, so as not to cause Shrake grief. It was a name big enough to impress me.

The next time I talked with Masterson, I said, "Ah, Pete, are things going well with you and the Universal big shots?"

"Oh, yeah," he said. "We're off in a few days to scout locations in Texas. Got a half dozen little towns to look at. Right now we're leaning toward Lockhart. It's got this great old courthouse and the town looks kind of shabby. Made to order!" Pete seemed in such high spirits I decided not to mention Shrake's report. Perhaps Shrake was wrong.

I asked Pete what was the latest from our stars. "Well," he said, "Dolly's not entirely satisfied with the music. She wants to write several new songs."

"She's good at it," I admitted, "but what will that do to our screenplay?"

"I've asked her to try to write songs that won't disturb it too much. Of course, if she writes a real whiz, we'll just have to make adjustments."

Soon it developed that Dolly Parton was unhappy with more than the songs. To People magazine she said, "In the play, the madam and the sheriff don't even touch each other. That's got to be changed. Ya don't think I'm gonna miss my big chance with Burt Reynolds, do ya?"

Variations on this theme appeared in gossip columns and showbiz stories all over the country. "She's never said a word like that to me," Masterson said. "I think Reynolds is putting her up to that. He's the one who's been bitching about no hot love scenes."

In early July 1980, I enrolled in a school where they teach you not to drink whiskey once you've become too proficient at it. Should this confession embarrass my loved ones, may they be consoled by the knowledge that William Faulker--among other writers--took the same course several times, and others might have lived longer if they had. "King's matriculating at Whiskey A&M," my Texas pals joked.

Whiskey school was deep in the scenic Maryland countryside. Although well appointed, it was isolated and lonely and not a nickel's worth of fun. About the eighth day I was there, battling my conscience to keep from running away, Stevie tracked me down.

"Larry," she said, "you must fly to California immediately. You, Pete and I must meet tomorrow with the studio honchos on script changes."

"You don't understand," I said. "I'm not even allowed to go to the mailbox out here. Isolation is part of the program."

"Well, we've got to make some changes Burt Reynolds wants. Ned Tanen, our president, is going along with Reynolds. What shall we do?"

"I'll talk with Pete after you guys meet with the Universal biggies. We'll work it out."

Pete reported back that Reynolds was being as difficult as a spoiled child: "He wants to play it real macho. The sheriff can't be older than about thirty-five, and all the whores must be in love with him."

"Jesus Christ! I thought Lyndon Johnson had an overgrown ego. Ol' Lyndon was a bashful country boy compared with this Reynolds asshole."

For several evenings, after my rehabilitation classes, I worked far into the night writing scenes to give Miss Mona and Ed Earl a warmer relationship. I even went against my high principles and permitted a scene where a couple of whores flirt with Burt and he gets to leer at them and slap one smartly on the backside. Each night, at midnight or after, I telephoned the new scenes to a secretary in California whom Stevie had standing by to type them up for examination by Universal big shots the next day. After each such exercise, Hollywood's Pooh-Bahs proclaimed themselves pleased beyond any singing of it. Then, when all the scenes were done, Pete telephoned to say that the Hollywood hot-shots had decided they would not do. All had been vetoed.

"I don't understand," I told him, "how the scenes can be so marvelous individually--and yet so absolutely unsatisfactory in the aggregate. What are those bastards smoking out there?"

Pete sighed. "This goddamn industry runs on two fuels: money and fear. Let's face it, Burt Reynolds has the economic power. So he has fear working on his side."

"Buncha goddamn rabbits," I muttered. "Well, screw 'em. I ain't rewriting another scene or writing another new one. If Burt Reynolds wants to write them himself, or bring in somebody else to write his drivel, tell him to go on ahead."

"That's probably what they'll do," Pete said.

"Fine. I'm sick of this whole mess and wash my hands of it. You know, I'm out here in this sanatorium or rich man's nut farm or whatever you want to call it, and those Hollywood fools are running free. So who's the crazy one?"

A couple of mornings later, as my whiskey-school classmates and I watched television in our rec room while awaiting the breakfast bell, still photos of Pete Masterson and Tommy Tune flashed on the screen. Rona Barrett, the Hollywood gossiper, informed America approximately as follows: "Universal Pictures sources say that Peter Masterson and Tommy Tune, who codirected the hit Broadway play The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas, will not direct the big-budget movie of the tuner to be shot on location in Texas. The search is on for a replacement director. A Universal spokesman says that the movie company is simply not willing to entrust the $20,000,000 picture to directors who have no track record."

A few days later, Universal prexy Tanen was quoted in the newspapers as saying that Colin Higgins--then shooting a movie called Nine to Five, starring Dolly Parton, Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin--would direct the Whorehouse film. Taking the picture away from the two men who had made it a stage smash signaled "nothing against the abilities of Tommy Tune or Peter Masterson," Tanen added. Sure, Ned. Sure. Like the Japs didn't mean it to be taken personally when they bombed Pearl Harbor.

"I don't think they ever intended to let us direct it," Masterson later said. "They used us to get the basic script, to scout locations and do all the shit work, and then kicked us out." All these months later, no one from Universal has officially notified Masterson and Tune that they are off the project. Plans are simply going forward without them. No person connected with the stage show--and no person with any Texas roots or Texas history--will be in any way involved with the movie.

•

Even after all that, I continued to see stories with headlines like "Burt Wants a Spicier Whorehouse" or "Dolly Says Script Won't Let Her Hug Burt's Neck."

One morning Maxine Cheshire, who wrote the VIP column for The Washington Post, telephoned to ask me what was going on. I gave her the movie history and added, "I think Burt Reynolds wants to make Smokey and the Bandit Go to a Whorehouse. Apparently, they don't intènd to follow our script at all and Dolly's said to be writing her own songs. I see only a tenuous connection between Whorehouse as we did it and the mess they're concocting in Hollywood. I doubt whether I'll even go see the film version of the son of a bitch, though I may send my lawyer so she can take my name off if it's as bad as its potential."

"Will Dolly wear her outlandish wigs?" Maxine asked.

"I suppose she will," I said, "and probably Burt will wear his, too. I understand they're both bald."

Well, sir, kiddies, that little jest stirred 'em up out in Lotusland to a fare-thee-well. Someone who wouldn't give his name but hid behind the sobriquet of "a Universal Studio spokesman" sniffed that "Burt Reynolds is a much more important element in the deal than Larry King."

Reynolds himself, issuing a statement through his agent, David Gershenson, said, "I knew I would be made the heavy, and I'm not going to be." Burt went on to claim that he "loved the challenge of playing an older man" and was "thrilled about it until the studio decided to make him thirty-five."

Here's my reaction to that, Burt, old buddy and pal--and it's taken directly from the mouth of Sheriff Ed Earl Dodd: "I got me a purty good bullshit detector, boys, and I can damn sure tell when somebody's pissin' on my boots and tellin' me it's a rainstorm."

"I wanted old Texas outlaw Willie Nelson to play Sheriff Ed Earl Dodd."

" 'Burt Reynolds talked to Dolly personally and she's changed her mind.' "