Rewrites by Neil Simon

Author:Neil Simon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster

JOAN, ELLEN, NANCY and our nanny, Pam, arrived at the beginning of June, just as the film started shooting. We stayed on at the Hilton until the houses they rented for us were vacant. De Sica wanted some more work from Zavattini and me, and of course, the ever-present Mario was there again, interpreting and misinterpreting. The rest of the cast arrived, and aside from Victor Mature, Martin Balsam, and Akim Tami-roff, none spoke English. The members of Vanucci’s gang, the police, the extras, everyone spoke only Italian. That meant all their lines would be spoken phonetically, mouthing English as best they could, and their voices would be dubbed in later in England. So if you were on the set, you would hear an actor say, “Wa tie eezd datrog cumn,” which when dubbed would be, “What time is the truck coming?” It saved me a great deal of digestive problems by not coming around the set when the non-English-speaking actors were working. Since Mario, the misinter-preter, was also hired as dialogue coach to these actors, he would give them the meaning of these English words. He was never right once. De Sica had to change everything when he was on the set.

De Sica, however, was not always on the set. He would take two-hour lunches and an hour for a nap. He came back refreshed and awake, ready to work, just as the sun was going down. Each day, about four, he would make a call to a Casino in Monte Carlo and make a bet. “Ten thousand lire on number six black.” Then he would wait patiently on the phone as the little ball rolled around the wheel, then stopped. He heard the result, cursed in Italian, and came back to work.

Whatever his faults, I cannot say enough about my respect for De Sica. He was a charming and brilliant man, despite his idiosyncrasies. He spoke English fairly well, but missed certain nuances and had trouble with the idioms I so often use in my scripts. One day I wrote a new piece of dialogue and brought it to Peter. His character, Vanucci, had escaped from jail and was now rounding up his band of thieves to tell them he had accepted the offer to come in on the big gold caper. He gets on the phone, calling each gang member, and using coded sentences that only they would understand. He gets in a phone booth, looks around to be sure he will not be heard, dials the number, and then speaks softly: “The Fox prowls. The moon rises. When the hawk flies, the pigeons take wing.” He waits a moment, then says into the phone again, “Oh. Sorry. Is your papa home? Well, when he comes home, tell him Aldo called and said, ‘The Fox prowls. The moon rises. When the hawk flies’—never mind. Go back to bed. I’ll call your papa later.”

When I showed the dialogue to Peter, he roared with laughter. He said, “We must show this to Vittorio.

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