Thursday, October 30, 1997
Jack Arnold remembered
for knack on, off screen
FILM: Renowned mentor mastered storytelling art, director-actor cohesion
By Stacy Sare
Daily Bruin Contributor
Storyteller. Problem solver. Mentor. Humorist. The late moviemaker Jack Arnold, widely recognized for his sci fi/horror-cult, classic films of the '50s, had a knack for making crew members laugh and audiences reflect on the human condition.
Dressed impeccably and donned in a natty hat, the renowned filmmaker carried a slew of jokes that had tired crew members out from hysterically rolling on the floor. Crew members also got a kick watching Arnold tap dance with Fred Astaire on the set of "The Great Casino Caper."
UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television adjunct assistant professor Myrl A. Schreibman was a student and friend of Arnold and recalls the light-hearted moments working with him on the set.
"He would have a whole bag of jokes that he would use on the set when I worked with him," Schreibman says. "Particularly when it was long shooting days, 12- to 14- hour days.
"He'd tell an off-color joke or he'd tell a joke with a little Jewish humor to it with an accent. And people would roar on the floor, and they'd get their energy back." Schreibman chuckles. "His sense of humor was just terrific."
Above and beyond his sense of humor, Arnold, who died in 1992, had a reputation for being a master at storytelling. And his magnificent monsters mirrored the human condition.
"In 'Creature from The Black Lagoon' he didn't just take a monster and give us a monster. He humanized the creature," Schreibman says. "You felt sorry for the creature. You felt sorry for his loneliness. You felt sorry for his life, his longing. You knew the creature was longing for something more than he was permitted to have."
Schreibman believes that Arnold influenced prominent directors like Steven Spielberg.
"If you look at the movie, 'Jaws,' one of the things Speilberg did was that he humanized the shark. You would see images in 'Jaws' where you'd have the shark swimming underneath the woman who's swimming in the water," Schreibman says. "That's reminiscent of the sequence in 'Creature' where the creature is swimming underneath the girl."
Arnold's movies appealed to a large teen-age audience. Under contract for Universal Studios, he made many of his films during the teen exploitation era. According to Jonathan Kuntz, UCLA visiting associate director in the department of film and television, the 1950s was the era that discovered the teen-age market.
"Network television was taking the mass audience away from the theatrical film. Studios searched out target audiences," Kuntz says. "Major studios made juvenile delinquents. They found out teen-age audiences might be interested in getting away from mother and dad to see a movie."
The drive-in movie became a popular craze for teens in the '50s. Among Arnold's movies, "High School Confidential," renamed "Young Hellions," and "Creature From the Black Lagoon" were among some of his films shown at drive-ins.
A decade before making films for the teen market, Arnold made documentaries with Robert Flaherty, who was called "the father of the documentary film."
"To be connected with Robert Flaherty is to be connected to the godfather of the whole business," Kuntz says.
Schreibman thinks Arnold gained first-rate problem-solving skills while studying under Flaherty's apprenticeship. According to Schreibman, Arnold could fix anything.
"Arnold was often called upon to take a show that was failing. (On one show) none of the actors were talking to each other. They hated each other. The show wasn't working, and he got in the middle of it," Schreibman remarks. "He directed an episode or two and got them all working and communicating together. The rest is history. The show was 'Gilligan's Island.'"
Arnold had a way with his actors. Schreibman recalls another story in which the filmmaker spent two to three hours with an actress in one shot trying to get this performance from her.
He says, "I remember asking him at lunch time, 'Why'd you spend so long with this person?' His comment to me was, 'Because that's the story. That's the story, and if we don't get it right there, we don't tell the story.' He said we can save time on other sequences, but that sequence is the story.
"That lesson has kind of stuck with me and has influenced the way I teach production in terms of storytelling and working with students who are working with restrictions and limitations," Schreibman continues. "When people couldn't figure out how to do certain things visually, Jack would help them figure it out."
Arnold was a whiz at solving any problem on the set. He believed in using whatever worked. Schreibman says Arnold never let technology dictate the storytelling. In "The Incredible Shrinking Man," Arnold used condoms to create the illusion of dripping water from a water heater.
Actor. Writer. Director. Producer. Arnold contributed humor, wisdom and above all, great storytelling to the art of film making.
FILM: The UCLA Film Archives' film festival, "Jack Arnold: The Incredible Thinking Man" starts this weekend and runs through Nov. 23. For more information, call (310) 206-8013.
UCLA Film and Television Archive
"The Incredible Shrinking Man" will be shown at the "Jack Arnold: The Incredible Thinking Man" film festival starting this weekend.