Raoul Walsh: The True Adventures of Hollywood's Legendary Director

15. The Adventure Is Larger Than the Man

The Adventure Is Larger Than the Man 370 In this early poem to his wife, Walsh enjoys catching Mary’s youthful, voluptuous body, her ripeness and joy; not only are they a pleasure to him, but they also reflect on him and the kind of virility a woman such as Mary would love: I called to the house “Hello”: And at the door there did appear A lass who set my world aglow, What e’er she said I did not hear; For suddenly the lightning flashed As my heart thundered in my chest; Her lips, her cheeks, her eyes, her hair Were rainbow colors at their best, Her body was a sculptor’s dream, With ripeness round and so alive With youth and joy that it did seem Without her near I could not survive. I, who knew the world’s beauties, The glamour girls of the silver screen, Part of a director’s duties . . . But such a woman I’d never seen. This heart of mine so long free, So long pursued but never lost, I surrendered to her instantly, Willingly and gladly, what e’er the cost; It was thus I met Mary.1 15 The Adventure Is Larger Than the Man 371 Walsh sees himself as vigorous, masculine, sexual. He has known great beauties and appreciates them still. He would never want to lose that sense of himself. Now, approaching his midseventies, he saw himself as someone who still had adventures to seek, films to be made—those things being, of course, one and the same. In this poem, he holds on to, not only his wife’s beauty, but also the man she has loved. Paths still lie open. By the 1960s, Walsh had to travel many of those paths without Mary by his side as she was by now weary of traveling. She wanted to stay at home, tending to her animals and to their gardens and numerous orange trees. Those trees were becoming famous as the subject of many stories written by many visiting writers—Peter Bogdanovich, Richard Schickel, and others—who, on arriving at the Walsh residence in Simi Valley to visit and write about the older Walsh, were offered a glass of Mary’s freshly squeezed orange juice before they even sat down, before Walsh proceeded to lament the encroachment of the freeway on his once-beautiful, once-expansive Simi Valley property nestled in the Santa Susana Mountains. Mary wanted to stay in California, but Walsh wanted to continue his adventures in the movies and was off to Rome, Japan, and other countries. He was alone, and he missed Mary for many reasons, even though one reason took precedent over them all—his failing eyesight Unlike Walsh’s hero Ben Allison in The Tall Men, whose heartbreak lay in his past, Walsh’s heartbreak lay waiting for him in his future. Ben is a man revered by no one more than Walsh himself, and to behave as bravely as Ben in the face of grief had to be, for Walsh, the only path. As Walsh’s one remaining eye deserted him, leaving him in almost total blindness the last years of his life, he had little choice but to call on those fictional men he created to know how to live—young George Custer, Horatio Hornblower, Gentleman Jim Corbett, and Ben Allison. After all, they came from his camera, his psychology, and were in his imagination still. They were his stories of himself. Mid-June 1960 found Walsh in Rome—an opportune location to film given the strikes going on in Hollywood; the clash between the unions and the producers lasted at least through the first half of 1960. Walsh was now producing Esther and the King for Fox—which paid him $100,000—and his good pal John Twist acted as his associate producer. 372 Raoul Walsh Deviating from biblical history, Walsh saw the story of Esther as a love triangle between the beautiful Hebrew woman Esther (Joan Collins), her young lover, Simon (Rik Battaglia), and King Ahasuerus of Persia (Richard Egan). Although engaged to marry Simon when the story begins, Esther is abducted by the king’s men and taken to the palace, where, eventually, she falls in love with the king. She agrees to marry him, and her actions ultimately save her people. Along the way, the king must also confront Haman, a confidant...