The Films of Hal Ashby

2. Hollywood Maverick: Ashby, the New Hollywood, and the 1970s

The fact is that filmmaking, although unquestionably predicated on profit and loss like any other industry, cannot be made to please solely the producer ’s image of the public. —John Cassavetes, “What’s Wrong with Hollywood” It was a very different experience working with Hal. He did things his own way, and he was very hip, like an old beatnik. He was also very kind and understanding . Directing was not an industrial process for him. It was always a labor of love. —David Carradine The city of Ogden, Utah, is situated at the base of the Wasatch Mountains, an hour’s drive north of Salt Lake City. The jagged peaks of the Wasatch, rising more than five thousand feet above Ogden, provide a spectacular setting that could serve as the backdrop for a Hollywood western. Ogden, established by the Mormons in the early 1850s and designed by Brigham Young, experienced rapid growth in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, fueled by the arrival of both Mormon and non-Mormon settlers. By the turn of the century, Ogden two Hollywood Maverick Ashby, the New Hollywood, and the 1970s Ashby, the New Hollywood, and the 1970s 11 was Utah’s second largest city, an important rail hub and distribution center for the intermountain west. William Hal Ashby was born in Ogden on September 4, 1929, less than two months before the stock-market crash plunged the United States into the Great Depression. Though Ashby rarely talked about his Utah childhood, the place most likely had symbolic significance for him. Indeed, the landlocked setting might be described as the antithesis of the Hollywood hills and the shores of Malibu. Ogden may have signified to Ashby the relic of a past to which he could never return, like the sad, empty house the young sailor Meadows tries to visit on his way to the brig in The Last Detail. Ashby’s parents were Mormon, respectable churchgoing people, if not particularly devout. Soon after the birth of their first two children , two daughters, James Ashby went to South Africa to serve on a church mission, where he stayed from 1915 to 1918, leaving his milk bottling operation and dairy store in the hands of his wife, Eileen. After his return, James fathered two boys: John (“Jack”) in 1925 and William (“Hal”) four years later. Ashby’s early years were a subject he kept closely guarded. As Paul Frizler noted in his account of a 1978 interview with the director, Ashby was “unwilling to dwell on his unhappy childhood ”—so much so, it seems that he made up or changed facts about his early life. Ashby told Frizler, for example, that he was born in 1932 (not 1929) and that his parents were non-Mormons.1 He also claimed to have graduated from Utah State University, though he in fact never completed high school.2 Ashby’s reluctance to talk about his childhood and his efforts to create a new autobiography suggest a desire to bury his own past as deeply as possible, to distance himself from his family and from his Utah Mormon origins. After leaving Ogden at the age of eighteen, Ashby would return only twice: once in the early 1950s and again some two decades later for his mother’s funeral. Ashby’s lack of personal revelation seems to have been a constant trait, even with those he considered close friends. Over the years, his refusal to discuss his personal life severely limited his relationships with those around him. “Hal never, ever, even in the most intimate moments, would reveal anything to me about his past,” said Jerome Hellman, Ashby’s producer on Coming Home. “I knew no more about him when he died than when I first met him.”3 According to David chapter฀2 12 Hamburger, first assistant director on two of Ashby’s films, “Hal never talked to anyone about his childhood: that was his problem with everyone . He made everyone feel like they were his favorite, but nobody could get past a certain point. The conversations I had with him were pretty close when they were about other people, but there was always that barrier when it came to talking about himself.”4 This much we know: Ashby was healthy and well adjusted as a younger child. He was popular in school, even something of a ringleader among his peers, and he enjoyed outdoor games, especially...