Director John Erman
Raw Interview text by Jay Blotcher
Blotcher: Do you have a special memory as to whether there was an inkling in the plotline of Dawn: Portrait of a Teenage Runaway to indicate he had gay leanings?
Erman: No. Not that I remember. Not at all. He was just her boyfriend. It was a long time ago… but I don’t remember anything about him being [gay] – and I would doubt that [the gay angle] had been it, because I don’t think that Leigh would have probably done it. He was just – well, my heart just went out to him, because he was petrified. He was petrified that he was going to be put into a compromising [sexual] situation.
And I kept saying to him, "Look, there’s no way that’s going to happen because it would be unacceptable material for the network. Not only that, but I wouldn’t be here if it were gonna be something that was specious."
But when it came time to [shoot] the scenes with Alan Feinstein [closeted football player Snake Selby], he just could hardly handle it. He had a very rough time. So, those are things that I remember the most. When I watched it again, I remember everything about everything in terms of the actors and what happened on certain days and how people behaved. Stuff like that, which was really weird.
Blotcher: But overall, how would you characterize the experience of working on that film?
Erman: Instructive, because it really taught me how – if you push yourself, you can accomplish more than you think you can accomplish. And you can accomplish it in a way that you’re not compromising yourself at every turn. When I looked at the finished product – and also, it was very well edited. I’d forgotten this, but the guy who edited it (Neil Travis) was a brilliant editor who went on to win an Oscar for Dances with Wolves.
But I looked at it [recently] and I thought, "Atta boy." I wish I had spent more time with [McCloskey]. I wish I had concentrated more on him. I think I could have definitely saved Leigh from some of the traps he fell into.
Blotcher: Traps in the acting during this film?
Erman: Yeah. What Leigh chose to play throughout was the frightened fawn. And that would have been acceptable occasionally, but it was a constant [inaudible]. I’m a babe in the woods and how did I get into this? And that voice would tremble and all that kind of stuff. And I thought – "I don’t know whether he went on to do anything better." I looked him up –
Blotcher: Didn’t he do Falcon Crest?
Erman: Or Dallas? Now I think he’s an artist. And got married the year after we did this and had two children. [laugh] I think it proved the way Greer Garson played Mrs. Miniver and Richard Ney played her son and she married him! I just thought he was the loveliest young man and I feel I could have done him some good if I had taken more time.
Blotcher: Do you remember any pep talks that you had with him or anything that you instructed him about? Because I saw the film a couple of months ago, and it’s sort of vague about his sexuality. Some people say, you’re hiding the fact that you’re gay. And he seems to somehow rationalize what he’s doing, staying with Snake. So, there’s never any contact with men that you see that he has.
Erman: No.
Blotcher: His roommate [Asher Brauner as Buddy] does. His roommate turns a trick. Was that [sexual orientation of Alexander] in the script or was something chopped out?
Erman: No. Nobody was chopped out. I think that was in the script. I think they – I can tell you why. If they had had a show that was about a gay man in those days, nobody would have watched it. So, the whole idea of that was supposed to be, He’s doing something against his will, he’s doing something because he has to have a certain amount of money to live on. And Snake – [laugh] I forget that was what he was called – you know, Alan [Feinstein] was such an appealing kind of guy, and such a wholesome kind of guy, there was nothing distasteful, at all, about their relationship. I thought, psychologically, for me, when I watched it again, I thought, by the time it got to the sequence in the nightclub and the beach[house] party, that Leigh’s character had sort of emotionally committed to that situation. Now, that was just in my head; maybe he just felt it was still a job. Maybe that’s the way that other people saw it. But I felt that somehow when the other boy was moving in, that that was painful. But that could easily have just been him.
That first night, [Snake] says, "You’re in the home of a big football player who’s also a closeted gay man. You can sleep down here, or you can come up with me." The scene ends and he’s just sitting there, thinking.
Erman: Right. Exactly.
Blotcher: And it’s never addressed whether they consummate the relationship in any way. Did you, in your own mind, have some idea about what happened?
Erman: Yeah, in my own mind, he had gone upstairs, and they had sex. But that was in my own mind. When they did the next couple of scenes, I remember Alan was doing sit-ups and – you know, by that time in my head, I thought, they’re a couple.
Blotcher: What was it like working with Eve Plumb? It’s been chronicled that [with] Dawn, she wanted to be taken seriously, but one could not escape the fact that she wasn’t a particularly strong actress.
Erman: She had been on The Brady Bunch – am I correct?
Blotcher: That’s correct.
Erman: My memory of Eve Plumb was that she came in and did her job. That there were absolutely no problems. I don’t have any negative vibes at all. Nor do I have any positive vibes. Just when I looked at her, I thought, Yeah, she did what I told her to do. She did it as well as [she] could. Yeah, nice girl.
Blotcher: [The cabaret scene with singer] Frances Faye. That was a brilliant bit of casting. Was that in the script?
Erman: No.
Blotcher: Okay, how did that happen?
Erman: I knew her slightly. I’m not sure. I don’t remember. All I remember is that we were all totally delighted when she agreed to do it. And, of course, the first line of the song [she performs], "I’ll be down to get you in a taxi, honey, You better be ready" – and she was singing "And don’t be straight" [instead of "And don’t be late"]. And the soundman came to me, and he said, "Are you aware of what she’s saying?" And I said "No." And he said, "You better listen." So, then I had to go to her and said, "Look Frances, you can’t do that. This is network television." But she snuck it in in the second chorus. I noticed it the other day [when watching again]. And that was the infamous Studio One.
Blotcher: Was it tough to get that property?
Erman: No, because it was good publicity for them, and they out up a sign saying, for days before that, 'Anybody who wants to be in a movie, wants to dance in a movie, all you have to do is a sign a waiver' – and so it was a big deal for Studio One.
Blotcher: It was also a big deal – I mean, if you have the cojones to be on television as an openly gay person then –
Erman: You mean those guys [in the scene]? Yeah.
Blotcher: I mean, not everyone was coming out with a flourish on TV.
Erman: That’s certainly true. But Studio One, that was a pretty flagrant set of folk. [laugh] That wasn’t your closeted gays.
Blotcher: What fascinated me is that you shot inside the LA Gay & Lesbian Community Center. Was that something that you decided or was that already in the script?
Erman: In the script. And I guess what we did was send the script to the center and ask for their approval. Then, when they did approve, I asked them if we could film there.
Blotcher: It’s interesting – this film and An Early Frost – there are some parallels and in some cases, they are different films. But in each case, the therapy session --
Erman: I noticed that, too –
Blotcher: … was a stand-out. Was the dialogue in that improvised?
Erman: No, I don’t think so. I don’t remember but I doubt it. Three of those actors [in the therapy scene] were people who were all pals of mine. One of them was a son of another director named Tom Gries -- John Gries who went on to do a lot of good work. One of them was one of my students; I had been teaching acting. I had a school with Dom DeLuise and Charles Nelson Reilly. And the boy who did the [speech] – and he just tore me up the other night, about his father and saying to his father – and his father says, "You’re not gay, are you?" And he says, "No, dad; nothing that bad." He was one of my students and that was his first job on film. And then the kind of macho tough guy – not the smart alec but the other guy who wore the cap – he was my secretary’s boyfriend [laugh]. And I don’t remember the other guy, the guy with the tousled hair. I was gonna look him up, and I just didn’t get around to it. I thought he was fine, but I don’t remember who --.
Blotcher: There was in inherent dignity in that [scene] that was completely anathema to the times. It was a marvel to watch that. Certainly, the people were complaining but they were not trying to excuse their sexuality or apologize for it in that scene.
Erman: I was very proud of that scene. I looked at that and thought, Wow, good work.
Blotcher: Do you recall any advance work you did or research that you did behind the scenes to guarantee authenticity?
Erman: Yeah, I spent some time at the center. I think I probably must have gone to, knowing me, I must have gone to a couple of therapy sessions. Kinda like with Aidan [Quinn for An Early Frost), I must have gone to the real thing. But that’s all.
Blotcher: You say it was a 16-day shoot. Were there any acts of God that intervened that made things difficult?
Erman: No, thank God. Nothing untoward happened. The problem really was there were so many locations. We moved around a lot because there were a lot of short scenes. And that takes a lot of time, to move a company from one location to the next. And then to shoot at night on Hollywood Boulevard and {inaudible] on those streets, that’s hard. We must have had a very good production manager to get police protection. I don’t remember anything bad going on. I remember the shoot being a very, very pleasant one – with the exception of these terrible [producer] meetings. The cinematographer and I would always go, Oh God, we’ll do anything to avoid another meeting.
Blotcher: In the Rolls Royce? Were they always in there?
Erman: They were always in the Rolls Royce. We go to that one scene with the beach party and they said – Did you ever live in California?
Blotcher: No –
Erman: Well, there used to be a place where you got honey-baked hams. And they were like $25. And [the producers] said, Well, we’re gonna have a prop ham here. And I said, "No, you have to have a ham that they can cut." And they said, "Why? Why would you have to have to have a ham that they can cut?" I said, "Well, because there may be scenes that are played where they are cutting; it gives them something to do so they’re not just standing there exchanging dialogue." "Oh my God, you are so demanding!" And the producers said to another friend of mine afterwards, "This guy cost me my new car. He insisted on that ham – you never even saw the ham in the movie!" Could not believe a $25 ham cost him a new car.
Blotcher: Standards and practices – were they hovering around?
Erman: That’s an interesting question.
Blotcher: You don’t remember them, then?
Erman: No, I don’t think so. I think whatever the problems were, must have been ironed out before we started. And then, of course, they always look at the film when you’re finished. But no, I don’t remember any real issues that way.
Blotcher: And there wasn’t anything that you tried to improvise on the set? Any scene that you tried to embellish that wasn’t [in the screenplay]?
Erman: You know, my [directorial] style might have indicated that that might have happened. I just don’t remember. The two scenes where it could have happened would have been the [beach house] party, and the therapy scene. But I don’t actually recall. I did one film – two films – where I improvised the entire movie because the scripts were so bad.
Blotcher: What were those?
Erman: One of them was calledMaking It, which was a feature film. And it was written by a guy named Peter Bart, who is now is the head of –
Blotcher: Oh, Variety.
Erman: Yeah. And he was working at Paramount at the time, and he wrote this script. And he said to a man named Al Ruddy, "If you get my script made at another studio other than Paramount, you will produce The Godfather," which indeed happened. Al Ruddy got a deal at Fox for this movie and the movie was made for $700,000. And the script was so terrible that literally I had all the actors come to my house and we would improvise the scenes, and the script girl would take them down and she would transcribe them, and I would pick out what I wanted – and that was what they would say.
Blotcher: What year was this?
Erman: This was ’69. And Peter Bart looked at the dailies in Los Angeles – we were shooting in New Mexico – and he’d call me up and he said, [yelling] "What are they saying?" And I said, "Oh, you know, Peter, we just got carried away. Everybody’s so excited about doing this movie and we just got carried away and people made things up." And he said, "Don’t ever let that happen again!" At the same time, [producer] Al Ruddy was saying, "Kid, keep it up."
Blotcher: What did [directing] Alexander mean to you as a gay man? Was there a sense that you wanted to raise up –
Erman: Yes, there was. And I particularly remember talking Earl Holliman into doing it, because Earl Holliman was very conscious about his image. I remember saying to him, You’ll lend credibility to [the film] if you do it. And one of the other guys was Marsha Mason’s husband, Gary Campbell.
So, yes, I wanted everybody again – as I said about [An Early Frost], I wanted my family not to be embarrassed about it. I wanted all those people to be clean-cut kind of people, and the only ones who weren’t were like the guys in the jail, you know, stuff like that. But I wanted all the principals – all the ones you cared about – to be acceptable to a straight audience. Because in those days -- well, how old are you?
Blotcher: I’m 50.
Erman: Well, you can’t imagine what it was like growing up in the ‘50s. You cannot imagine how horrible it was. And how ashamed we all were of our lives. I just wanted people to say [gay people] are okay – in the same way that when Sidney Poitier did Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, [filmgoers} said, Oh, you mean a black man can wear a jacket and a tie and have an accent like that and be acceptable to Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy – well, black people can’t be so bad. Well, that’s what I wanted. That’s what I wanted.
Blotcher: Well, you’re also fighting against a male hustler storyline.
Erman: Right. But once again, that was the thing that worked in our favor in that Leigh was so clean-cut, and there was something totally pure about him. You couldn’t imagine him doing anything bad. And certainly, Eve [Plumb] was a nice, all-American girl. I think that helped promote the image that all gay people were not the lisping gentry, carrying a purse and wearing lipstick – which is what people used to think.
Blotcher: Tell me about nailing Earl Holliman for the role; did it take a lot of effort?
Erman: Well, Earl was always reticent about anything; he was one of those people who needed to be coaxed into things. Yeah, it did [take effort]. He and I were good friends, and I remember it just kinda going on and on: Are you gonna do it, aren’t you gonna do it, are you gonna do it? I finally said, "For Christ’s sake, make up your mind."
Blotcher: He brings a real dignity to the character [of social worker Ray Church] –
Erman: I just love what he did. When I saw it again, I just thought, "No wonder this guy had an enduring career."
Blotcher: And then that twist when you find that Ray is gay as well is "interesting"–
Blotcher: His roommate [Asher Brauner as Buddy] does. His roommate turns a trick. Was that [sexual orientation of Alexander] in the script or was something chopped out?
Erman: My memory of 
Erman: No, I don’t think so. I don’t remember but I doubt it. Three of those actors [in the therapy scene] were people who were all pals of mine. One of them was a son of another director named Tom Gries -- John Gries who went on to do a lot of good work. One of them was one of my students; I had been teaching acting. I had a school with Dom DeLuise and Charles Nelson Reilly. And the boy who did the [speech] – and he just tore me up the other night, about his father and saying to his father – and his father says, "You’re not gay, are you?" And he says, "No, dad; nothing that bad." He was one of my students and that was his first job on film. And then the kind of macho tough guy – not the smart alec but the other guy who wore the cap – he was my secretary’s boyfriend [laugh]. And I don’t remember the other guy, the guy with the tousled hair. I was gonna look him up, and I just didn’t get around to it. I thought he was fine, but I don’t remember who --.
Erman: Yes, there was. And I particularly remember talking Earl Holliman into doing it, because Earl Holliman was very conscious about his image. I remember saying to him, You’ll lend credibility to [the film] if you do it. And one of the other guys was Marsha Mason’s husband, Gary Campbell.
