Being Hal Ashby: Life of a Hollywood Rebel

Illustrations follow page 212

[Left] Ashby’s mother, Eileen, around 1909, the year she married Ashby’s father. (Courtesy Jack and Beth Ashby.) [Right] James Thomas Ashby, Ashby’s father, in the mid-1910s. (Courtesy Jack and Beth Ashby.) Eileen and James with Ardith and “Hetz,” just before James left on his mission to South Africa. (Courtesy Jack and Beth Ashby.) Hal and Jack were nigh inseparable as kids: [left] posing, ca. 1932; [right] playing cowboys in their backyard, ca. 1933; and [below] looking grown up, ca. 1936. (Courtesy Jack and Beth Ashby.) [Above] The Big Mug, which Ashby’s father opened in the mid-1930s, was a popular watering hole in Ogden. (Courtesy Jack and Beth Ashby.) [Right] Hal “shagging” milk, ca. 1941. (Courtesy Jack and Beth Ashby.) Ashby’s high school yearbook picture, taken in 1946, around the time he started dating his first wife, Lavon Compton. (Courtesy Jack and Beth Ashby.) [Right] Ashby’s only child, Leigh, here aged six months, not long before he left. (Courtesy Leigh MacManus.) [Below] Ashby in Los Angeles with girlfriend Janice Austin and the bandleader Woody Herman in late 1948. (Courtesy Janice Lindquist.) Ashby with one of his bohemian Los Angeles friends, Bill Box, ca. 1953. (Courtesy Bill Box.) Sporting shades with effortless cool during his beatnik phase, July 1956. (Courtesy Bill Box.) Maloy, Ashby’s third wife, caught the photography bug from Ashby’s friend Bill Otto. (Courtesy Leigh MacManus.) She was never happier than when painting with her animals around her. (Courtesy Chris Cutri.) Already in the late 1950s, the highly driven Ashby knew he wanted to become a director. (Courtesy Leigh MacManus.) Ashby almost didn’t turn up to the Oscars the year he won the Best Editing award for In the Heat of the Night, presented to him by Dame Edith Evans. (Courtesy AMPAS.) But afterward he seemed glad that he did. (Courtesy Jack and Beth Ashby.) In a post-Oscar glow: probably the last time that Hetz, Ashby, Ardith, Eileen, and Jack were all together. (Courtesy Jack and Beth Ashby.) Ashby’s fourth wife, Shirley, with Teeg and Carrie, ca. 1970. (Courtesy Jack and Beth Ashby.) Finally a director: Ashby, his mentor and friend Norman Jewison, and the actor Beau Bridges on the set of The Landlord. (Courtesy Photofest.) Ashby’s fifth (and last) wife, Joan Marshall, seen here in a publicity shot from 1958. (Courtesy Photofest.) [Above] The unlikely lovers (Bud Cort and Ruth Gordon) meet for the first time in Harold and Maude. (Courtesy Photofest.) [Below] Michael Haller, Ashby’s production designer and great friend, shows Bud Cort how to wield a blowtorch. (Courtesy Bret Haller.) Sporting a postarrest trimmed beard, Ashby talks to Jack Nicholson and Otis Young during the shooting of The Last Detail. (Courtesy Photofest.) [Right] Ashby, in befuddled guru mode, laughs with a bloodstained Bud Cort. (Courtesy Jack and Beth Ashby.) [Left] A rare shot of Ashby, who was infamous for not returning calls, on the phone. (Courtesy Jack and Beth Ashby.) [Left] Warren Beatty and Julie Christie in Shampoo. (Courtesy Photofest.) [Below] Ashby had to cede much of his power to Beatty, Shampoo’s writer, producer, and star. (Courtesy Photofest.) A typically cheery Ashby, ca. 1975. (Author’s collection.) [Right] The director with his Woody Guthrie, David Carradine, on the set of Bound for Glory. (Courtesy Jack and Beth Ashby.) [Below] Ashby and longtime friend Haskell Wexler quickly got fed up with the problematic trains. (Courtesy AMPAS.) Living the boxcar life, flanked by Wexler and his son Jeff, the sound mixer. (Courtesy Jeff Wexler.) Ashby’s friends say that Dianne Schroeder was the only woman who ever understood him. (Courtesy Jack and Beth Ashby.) A workaholic who barely slept, Ashby seldom allowed himself such moments of relaxation. (Courtesy Leigh MacManus.) [Left] After wrapping Coming Home in Hong Kong, a laidback Ashby visited Cannes in 1977, where Bound for Glory was in competition. (Courtesy Pierre Sauvage.) [Below] The romance between Jane Fonda’s and Jon Voight’s characters in Coming Home helped mainstream audiences connect to the film’s antiwar message. (Courtesy Photofest.) [Left] Ashby and Robert Blake had a strained relationship during the...