Charles Brackett's Take on Five Graves to Cairo

Oscar-winning writer and producer Charles Brackett kept a diary throughout his career and it was published in Anthony Slide's 2014 book It's the Pictures that Got Small. I only read the parts concerning Five Graves to Cairo, but plan to go back and read the book in its entirety. It's a fascinating book, but it's also amusing—most entries concern Brackett complaining about something or someone on set and declarations that he cannot wait for it to be over. It struck me as funny because it reads much like the diary of any one of us who might talk about our job at the end of the day over dinner or keep a diary about all of our coworkers. You're grouped with people of all different personalities and egos and you're forced to problem solve and reach an ultimate goal together. It's bound to be mostly negative complaints, right?  Guess it's no different for Hollywood producers!

The diary entries serve as a wonderful timeline of the film with Brackett's thoughts on the director and cast.

In July and August 1942, the film is referred to as "Imperial Hotel" and "Imperial Palace" until on August 11, Brackett writes:

Settled on the title, Five Graves to Cairo, told it to Bill Dozier at the table and word-gamed successfully. In the afternoon, we were summoned to Buddy De Sylva with Bill Dozier, told Buddy the title. He didn't like it. The word "graves" would keep people away from the theatre. Before we left he had accepted it...no one but ourselves to know anything about the picture...

Their publicity plan was also mapped out during the meeting over the title.
As early as August 2, Brackett was struggling with collaborator and friend Billy Wilder, writing that their ideas were "miles apart" and wondering whether "our successful collaborative partnership is over."

Casting was discussed on August 6. Buddy De Sylva wanted Paulette Goddard or maybe Zorina for the role that eventually went to Anne Baxter, but Brackett's top pick was Simone Simon. Simone and Franchot tested as early as September 29. There seems to have been no debate over Franchot in the lead. After seeing the tests, Brackett realized that Simone was not a good fit after all. He writes:

As it was, she was only a good spare, comfortable to know we could fall back on in case we got stuck. She wanted to see the tests, made a scene over the telephone. It is fantastic how she alienated every human being from the hair-dresser to the cutter during the test itself. As a result, the atmosphere in the projection room where the test was shown was distinctly unfriendly...

In October, Wilder and Brackett met with a British captain for technical advice on the picture, but Brackett writes that he was "not impressed."

In November, Brackett is utterly frustrated with Wilder, writing that Billy related their story of Five Graves to Cairo "quite badly" to David Selznick, that he, himself, is "unenthusiastic" about Wilder's desire to have Anne Baxter ("as dreary a little piece as I ever saw") in the female lead, and that Wilder's confidence in the film is so badly "shaken" that he makes their session together "absolute hell." By the end of the month, before the film has even been fully cast, Brackett writes:

Tonight I am playing with the thought, ecstatically, of casting off the utterly foolish pretense that I am producing Five Graves to Cairo...

December is no better. Brackett writes of more "hell," calls Anne Baxter "as plain as a pikestaff but nice," and questions Wilder's mental state writing:

There are times when I look at Billy, the best dramatic mind with which I ever came in contact, with the appalling feeling this his mind is dropping apart before my eyes—its brilliant decisiveness crumbling to utterly foolish indecisions.

Franchot, who apparently had a large appetite that day, is filming the scene in which he runs into the town by January 4, 1943. Brackett observes:

Then the sun rose and the excess water dried and the shooting began. Franchot [Tone], running towards the town, Franchot seeing the town, rising to his feet, starting his run, Franchot addressing the imaginary sentry...The time for shooting was brief, due to the direction of the hotel, which has the sun on its face for three brief hours. Lunched at the commissary, the point of interest being F.T.'s appetite, which is prodigious...wandered on the set to see Franchot do his crawl to the road, his eerie laugh as he saw the town.

Later that week, Franchot's buddy Buzz (actor Burgess Meredith) visited the set and Brackett enjoyed talking with them before they left. By January 12, Brackett is growing frustrated with Franchot:

In the afternoon Franchot Tone resumed his curious, quiet, automatic argument over every comma of the script. It's not that he really objects to the stuff, he just argues—uninterestingly, seemingly for the sake of conversation. I offered to give him a lecture on the subject but Billy said not yet, "But it is going to get on my nerves"...

Two weeks later, Franchot objected to the line "Like kind Uncle 'Erbert on Christmas Eve." Brackett:

Listened to his argument that he, as an American playing an Englishman, didn't want to have to play an Englishman imitating a Cockney. Suggested some lines, heard his objections, and had one of my old-fashioned ground-fits, from sheer boredeom—which scared the hell out of Tone and should prove valuable to Billy in future.

Actor Erich von Stroheim requested changes to his dialogue as well and Brackett calls the changes "absurd" and describes Von Stroheim as elderly, writing of his "slowness, lack of sureness, inability to remember his lines."

Brackett thought the January rushes he viewed were good but by February was concerned that the new rushes were only "fair" and called them "slightly ridiculous." By February 21, he was savoring the "unspeakable rapture of not having to work on Five Graves to Cairo." By March 2, they had a rough cut of the entire film and the first week of April, Wilder and Brackett had written the introductory title for the film though Brackett wrote "we're no good together any longer. There's so stimulation in the relationship."

At the final preview of the film in early April, Brackett wrote:

The picture played infinitely better without the omitted music, save for the sun-struck scene which seemed to need it. The ending was truncated and awful. The audience was completely absorbed in the story, and the picture isn't a great success. It has no real warmth, partly due to Tone. It is taut and contrived. Wish to hell we'd made anything but a war picture.

Although Brackett and Wilder didn't see eye to eye on Five Graves to Cairo, they would actually go on to collaborate through the end of 1948, completing 12 films together before going their separate ways.

Now that we've read Brackett's complaints, I have one of  my own—the design of most of the promotional posters and the DVD cover. Franchot is the male lead and the focal character throughout the entire film, but he is non-existent on the most widely distributed film poster.

And look how tiny little crawling Franchot is on the modern DVD cover.

Production-wise and story-wise, Five Graves to Cairo stands as one of Franchot's finest films. If you are a fan of Mutiny on the Bounty and The Lives of a Bengal Lancer, you'll appreciate Five Graves to Cairo—strangely, I've never written film summaries with screen captures for any of those three here! I guess I assumed a lot of people have seen those and started with some of the more rare films first. They are on the to-do list.

There's a wonderful behind-the-scenes photo album on TCM's website: http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/75054/Five-Graves-to-Cairo/#tcmarcp-500479-500481

Source:
Slide, Anthony. "It's the Pictures That Got Small": Charles Brackett on Billy Wilder and Hollywood's Golden Age. Columbia University Press, Nov 25, 2014.