AM: My name is Andrew V. McLaglen. Born July 28th, 1920, in London, England.

INT: So Dad, tell me about your childhood. 

AM: Well, my childhood was very interesting, because I was brought up in a family where my father was a very well known movie Actor [Victor McLaglen], and I got to know everything there is to know about movies from a very young age, because he would come home from work every day, and we’d go over some of the scripts he was doing, or what he wanted to do, and he’d name some of the people he was working with, and he’d give me the names of the Director that he was working with. And it all became like second nature to me, from a very, very early age. And by the time I got into prep school, when I was around 14 years old, movies were just like part of my life. And I actually used some of the boys at school, and I made some 16-millimeter movies that we had fun giving to the parents, and it made me a feeling that maybe I was, maybe I was a filmmaker. Well I got to know what a movie was, and I went to movies. I used to go on my bicycle every, every Saturday down to the, down in Beverly Hills and see the serials, and I knew what movies were because my father really kept me in touch as far as that’s concerned, and I went on as many sets as I could, met all of, a lot of the interesting people that he worked with. You know, like Marlene Dietrich and Mae West, and people like that, or Edmund Lowe.

INT: What about any Directors? Was there any Directors that might have, that he might have worked with that, you know, that inspired you, or was it just the film making process at that age that was fun for you? 

AM: Well, I’ll tell you, the Directors that I remember well because of my father [Victor McLaglen] mentioning them and having worked with them, were people like Frank Lloyd, George Stevens, Frank Borzage, Raoul Walsh, and John Ford of course. [INT: Right. Did you have any idea that Directors participation in what your father was doing, did you understand, you know, what his job was in relation to what your father did?] From what I understood from a very early age was that the Director was the boss on the set. Of all the jobs there are in the world, I think, to be a motion picture Director is one of the, probably one of the most interesting, from that standpoint. Because everybody, you’ve got 50 people sitting around a set working, and they’re all depending on what you’ve got to say, and how, what their next move is. And I knew that was what the Director did right from an early age, and, and was able to capitalize on that, which I’ll talk to you about later. [INT: Well, I’m curious, from, you know..]

INT: Did having your father be an Actor help you get your foot in the door to work in the industry? 

AM: Well, to be very honest with you, you know after I’d been four years at Lockheed [Lockheed Burbank Aircraft Plant] during the war [World War II], during the war years, and I really felt that I wanted to be in the motion picture industry. My father however said, “Son, I really would rather you weren’t in the industry, because it’s a dog eat dog, fight most of the way, and you’re gonna be disappointed, and heartbroken, and I just, why don’t you try something else? Be a lawyer, or something else.” And I didn’t really pay too much attention to him, because I wrote a letter to Herbert Yates, who was the head of Republic, and told him who I was, and what I’d been doing, and I’d like to come in and meet him, and he said, “Come in, come in, son.” So I went and met him, and told him that I’d really like to start at the bottom, and learn the film industry. And that’s the way I went to work at Republic in 1945, as a company clerk.

INT: What did a company clerk do [at Republic Pictures]? 

AM: A company clerk made up the call sheets, distributed call sheets, called up in the morning, to find out how the weather was for the location companies going out. And it’s sort of a menial job, but it was a start. [INT: Was it like the equivalent to what a Second Second Assistant Director sounds like they would do today, maybe?] It would be sort of the same as a, as maybe a Second or Third Assistant, and in my very first picture [DAKOTA] as a company clerk, happened to be with John Wayne, and Vera Hruba Ralston, who was married to Mr. Yates [Herbert Yates] at the time. And it was interesting, in the fact that, I’d only met Duke [John Wayne] a couple of times, but right beginning then, sort of a beginning of a long friendship I had with John Wayne. [INT: Do you remember, who was the Director of that movie, do you remember?] Joseph Kane. Joseph Kane was the Director.

INT: Now, did you do a good job on that movie [DAKOTA], and did that lead to other jobs? 

AM: Well, first of all, I was being employed on a regular basis at the studio [Republic Pictures], so I was assigned to that picture. And I remember the First Assistant Director were Dick Moder, and, which is interesting now, because his, Dick Moder’s son [grandson, Daniel Moder] is now married to Julia Roberts, so that’s sort of a funny connection when I think way back at it. But anyway, we’re talking a lot of years back, and after I’d been at the studio a while, I began to think, this is you know, I was beginning to like the business, and my whole impulse, and my whole desire was, I wanna be a Second. So, I mean Second Assistant Director. So one day, I decided to wait for Mr. Yate [Herbert Yates] to come to the office, I hid in the bushes at the end of a long pathway up to his office, and waited ‘til he got out of his limousine, and then stopped him halfway. And I said, “Hi Mr. Yates,” and he said, “Oh, how you doing, my boy?” And I said, “Well, I’m fine, Mr. Yates, but I really feel that, maybe, naturally with your permission, I’d like to start being a Second Assistant.” And he said, “Well, it sounds like a pretty good idea to me, we’ll, I’ll look into it.” So anyway, that was my beginning as a Second at Republic in about 1946, if not ’47 [1947].

INT: So he [Herbert Yates] gave you the job, and then what was your… do you remember your first job as a Second Assistant Director? 

AM: Well no, it wasn’t a matter of giving me a job, because I’m being paid at Republic [Republic Pictures] anyway. [INT: You were working under, what they call a permit, weren’t you, at that point?] No, no, no, no, it wasn’t. So during that time, in order for me to work as a Second, the Guild [Directors Guild of America] was not going to allow me to be a member of the Guild, because there were too many of the members who were away at war, and so they gave me a temporary permit. So I worked the temporary permit all the way through, about a year, or maybe a little more, and did six pictures as a Second Assistant Director. And, one day they called me into the production office, and said, “The Directors Guild wants to take away your permit, because the men are coming back from war [World War II].” And I thought oh boy, oh boy, oh boy, I waited this long now, and they’re gonna take my permit away, so I, luckily I read the bylaws of the Guild, and they said that if you were the Second Assistant Director on six pictures, that that would automatically make you a member. And so I had to certify the fact that I had been a Second on six pictures, and sent that into the Guild, and you know what? The next day I was a member of the DGA. [INT: That’s very similar to the way it works today, you have to have x amount of numbers, of days to qualify to be in the Guild, it’s the same way it works today.] Well anyway, it was, I felt a lot safer then, as a Second, as a member of the DGA, I was very happy about it.

INT: Tell me, was there anybody who was, at that, when you were a Second [Second Assistant Director], was there a First [First Assistant Director] you worked with all the time, was there anybody that was sort of championing you along, or teaching you the ropes, or was there one particular man you worked with or did you…? 

AM: No, I, I was, I’m a pretty fast learner, and I felt like I knew a lot about the industry anyway because of, just because of my, who I was, and my connection with my father [Victor McLaglen]. Excuse me. So now, now that I’m a Second, my next feeling is, do I wanna be a, I wanna be a First. And so that was my number one feeling at that time, and desire. And it all came around one day. I found a script by working as a Second for Budd Boetticher, he showed me a script called BULLFIGHTER AND THE LADY, about an American who is a bullfighter in Mexico City.

INT: How did you find a script as a Second [Second Assistant Director]? Where did the script come from? 

AM: Came from Budd Boetticher, who, if you knew, everybody in the Guild [Directors Guild of American] knew who Budd Boetticher was. Budd Boetticher was a fella that imagined himself as an American bullfighter. I mean he as pretty good at it, too. [INT: Oh he was a real bullfighter?] Well, he'd actually go down and fight the small bulls. And so anyway, he gave me the script, and I said “I’m gonna show this to Duke [John Wayne].” He said, you know, he said, because it was a pretty darn good script, it was called BULLFIGHTER AND THE LADY. And guess what? Duke took it into Herb Yates, and they decided that they’d make the movie. So I said to Bud, “Okay Bud, thanks a lot for that, but two things. Number one, I’m your First [First Assistant Director], and number two I want Associate Producer credit.” And he said, “You got it.” Well anyway to cut it short, I was the First Assistant, my first time as a First, on that picture, in 1950. And… [INT: And who directed it?] And Budd Boetticher directed it. [INT: And he was given that opportunity having never directed before, or had he directed before?] Bud? [INT: Yeah.] Well known Director. [INT: I see.] Well known Director of smaller pictures. And he’s well known now because he did a whole series of Western pictures that were very highly thought of in the kind of movies that they are.

INT: So how long were you a First AD [First Assistant Director] before you decided that you wanted to become a Director, and what happened that changed gears for you? 

AM: No. Well, I’ll tell you. Well it didn’t, it didn’t exactly all work that easily, because, I actually, I actually had to drop back into being a Second [Second Assistant Director], because they asked me if I wanted go to Ireland on THE QUIET MAN, to work with John Ford, and I said, “Yes.” And he said, “However, his First Assistant Director is Wingate Smith, his brother-in-law, and so you’re gonna, well there can’t be two Firsts, so you’re the Second.” I said “I’ll be the Second,” so I went back to being the Second, and the nice thing is that Wingate was getting a little older, and he let me really, really do most of the work on THE QUIET MAN, working for John Ford. And it got me to know John Ford because I’d, naturally been hearing about him from my father ever since I was about 13 or 14 years old. [INT: Had you never met him before that movie?] Oh I met him. I met him sure. And he knew who I was, he knew who I was. [INT: Did you learn a lot of things from him, watching him?] Oh, you can’t help but learn, I mean, you learn is another, is… So after that, after that, I then became, I got to know Duke [John Wayne] very well by that time, and they decided to give me a job at his company, which was then called Wayne/Fellows [Wayne/Fellows Productions]. And I did quite a few pictures as a First, five of which was with William A. Wellman, “Wild Bill Wellman,” as he was called. And it was very… and if you’re asking me what really made me wanna be a Director, it’s working with Bill Wellman. [INT: Why’s that? What qualities about him made you wanna be a Director watching him?] He was a, he was an unforgettable guy, he was somebody that I’ll always remember. I was his First, from morning ‘til night, when you say I was a First, not just a First Assistant Director in the production department; I was a First Assistant Director to him. And he let me help him think about the casting, and do this, and that. [INT: So you learned a lot during that process.] I learned a lot from Bill Wellman, I liked the way he worked in a way. He came in in the morning around 8 o’clock call and we’re shooting at 8:15. And he had it all; he had, his script was the messiest script you’ve ever seen in your life. [INT: ‘Cause of all the homework--] These are things that I remember as a young man. So anyway… [INT: Did he have a good relationship with the Actors?] Bill was a man, I can’t describe him, but those that knew him will always remember him. Very well spoken, and said his mind without anything, anybody getting in the way. He was somebody to remember. But anyway, at the end of, at the end of about my fifth picture with Bill, which was a picture with John Wayne and Lauren Bacall.. I did five pictures with Bill Wellman, and I remember every one of them, and enjoyed working with him a great deal. He became a really close friend, and after--BLOOD ALLEY was the last picture, and…

INT: When were you given an opportunity to direct? 

AM: Well that’s what I’m coming to. I mean after I finished BLOOD ALLEY with Duke [John Wayne] and Bacall [Lauren Bacall], Duke had heard that Bob [Robert E. Morrison] and I, his brother, had found a script, and Duke knew that I wanted to be a Director. I mean I wasn’t holding out as a secret. Anybody that wanted to tell you, I would tell… Those are the moments in my life, as a young, late 20s, that’s when I wanted to really become a Director. And he heard about the script with Bob, and he called me aside one day, and he said, “Listen Andy McSandy, if you, I’ll guarantee the loan. I know it isn’t a big picture. I’ll guarantee the loan, and why don’t you go ahead and make an arrangement to make your movie.” So I, that’s exactly what I did, I made a little--[INT: So you took the bull by the horns, Uncle Duke gave you the opportunity to direct your first movie, and what studio was that at?] It was RKO [RKO Pictures]. Had to sell the idea to RKO, made the movie in 10 days. The movie probably cost a little over 100,000 dollars. [INT: 100,000 dollars, and how did you know what to do? I mean how did you know what to do given this opportunity?] Well, having to… I knew what to do and backwards. And my first day of shooting, on MAN IN THE VAULT with Anita Ekberg, who happened to be under contract to the Wayne company [Batjac Productions], I had 51 set ups on the first day. Now I’m not bragging about that, but I knew what I was doing, I finished the picture in 10 days. [INT: Was your schedule 10 days?] Schedule was 10 days. [INT: And did the Actors automatically agree to have you as a Director, because they were under contract?] Well I didn’t have any big Actors. [INT: Anita Ekberg, was she big in those days?] No. Anita Ekberg, but she was under contract. And my other Actors, you know, they went along. It was a nice little script. And it just… one thing, you know, I hoped was gonna lead to another, because… And then after that I found another script, and because I’d become now, friends with Jim Arness, who had just started on GUNSMOKE, and he used to be under personal contract to Duke, and he used to be under contract to Duke, and I knew him as a First Assistant [First Assistant Director]. So I, one day, I went, “Hey Jim, you gonna be off, you know you’re gonna have a hiatus after your first year. If I sell a script, would you do a movie for me?” He said, “Well yeah, show me the script.” So I went to United Artists, and said I’d like to do this movie, I gave them the script that I had written by a very good friend of mine. And he said, “Well yeah, go ahead, make the movie.” [INT: Wow! it sounds to me like in those days, it was pretty, because you had some good connections, you actually got some pretty good breaks.] Well, I think they were breaks, they were breaks. [INT: Let me ask you this--] The first break… The first break is Duke saying, “I’ll guarantee the loan on your first movie.” That made you a Director.

INT: Now, my question is, once you become a Director, the hard thing is staying a Director and not having to go back to be a First AD [First Assistant Director] again. 

AM: Well that’s the whole point, see, that’s the whole point. I did the direc-… I did my first one, MAN IN THE VAULT. And then I did a picture with Jim Arness, and now I think to myself, now what’s gonna be my next movie? So I found another script called SEVEN MEN FROM NOW, and that was gonna be for Wayne/Fellows [Wayne/Fellows Productions], and Duke’s [John Wayne] partner decided that he wanted Budd Boetticher to direct that, who I’d worked for before. So I, instead of directing it, I was a Producer on that picture. So at least, at least I didn’t have to go back to assisting, ‘cause that what you, a young man, that’s what he worries about, or I did in those days. You know, once you become a Director you wanna stay a Director.

INT: Were you challenged at all when you were given these opportunities to direct, and they came with small budgets and time restraints, but were you challenged by that at all, were you concerned at all with it, or was that easy for you? 

AM: Well, when you find out what I’m gonna tell you now is, and you probably know, that Arness [James Arness] went to CBS, and said, “Look, you know I just finished a picture with McLaglen. Why don’t you try him in a couple of GUNSMOKES?” And so, they did. They signed me up for two GUNSMOKES. And to cut that really short, and to get to the end of the GUNSMOKE story, I did 95 GUNSMOKES in a six-year period, under personal contract to CBS as a Director. And at which time I also did the first one, and did 116 HAVE GUN - WILL TRAVEL. I did PERRY MASON. And I worked with RAWHIDE with Clint [Clint Eastwood]. And so I was, in a six year period, that started just from sort of happenstance, my directing day, I had a lot of, I put a lot of film through the camera. [INT: I mean GUNSMOKE obviously is a television Western, so you were doing that for a long time. Do you feel like that sort of guided the kind of movies that were being offered to you after your GUNSMOKE time? In other words, do you think you got stuck in a certain genre?] I didn’t even think in those terms. First of all, I was too busy to worry about where my next job was coming from. They kept me busy, as I can tell you, with all those pictures that I did for them in the series department. And even then, I went to CBS on occasion, five times, to ask him if I could have a few weeks off to go and do a small feature.

INT: Was there any difference directing a feature versus television? I mean, what are the differences between the two? 

AM: Well, actually there’s a big, there’s a big, big difference, which I’ll go into, but, just to carry on with what I’m talking to you about, during that period at CBS, I did five features. And at the end of one of them, Duke [John Wayne] came over and said, “You know, I’m doing a really terrific script and, do you think you’d like to do it?” I said, “Would I like to do it, are you kidding? Of course I would like to do it.” And that was our first entry into big movies. And it was really the end of my TV, for the most part, in my TV career, with… [INT: And what was the name of that film?] MCLINTOCK!, with John Wayne, and Maureen O’Hara. [INT: Were you challenged at all? Were you nervous at all, being given this huge opportunity to work with a major movie star? Two of them, Maureen O’Hara and John Wayne? Were you at all--] I wasn’t nervous one, one tiny bit. I knew Duke too well. [INT: That particular script had some great stunts in it, a great fight sequence, which sort of was, you know, hearken back to grandfather [Victor McLaglen] and A QUIET MAN [THE QUIET MAN], that great fight sequence. Do you think you used anything that you saw, or, you know, John Ford do, to maybe carry on when you were shooting MCCLINTOCK!?] Well I didn’t really have to do that. When you consider all the work that I’d finished, doing all that stuff, with all the stunts, with all that television, there was all, it was all, it wasn’t, it’s nothing new to me, except that I’m working on a big movie and not on a TV movie. And-- [INT: Well that was one of the most famous fight scenes in film, was THE QUIET MAN fight scene. Seems like it had a lot of, it shadowed that a little bit.] Well yeah, naturally, and I probably did learn something from that, but I learned something from doing my own fights. I mean I, I had over 200 TV pictures to my credit before I started making big movies.

AM: You asked me a question about what is the difference between working in television, and working in film. And it’s a tremendous difference. It’s an unspoken, it’s an unspoken thing that nobody can ever really explain. I mean I’ve done some really good, a couple of good two hour television pictures, in 21 days. And if that had been a film, it would have been 41 days. Now what is the difference? Everybody has keyed to a different time clock. You’re keyed to a schedule. And it’s something that people talk about and laugh about, especially Directors, about how this can be, how you can take all this time making a movie, and not all this time, and you don’t get the time to do TV. [INT: How do you decipher your time differently? I guess the difference is on films, you maybe only have to do two pages a day, whereby on television, you have to accomplish maybe up to 10 pages a day. And you still want to get the proper coverage to tell the story, so, I guess you must, how do you accomplish that, less takes?] Well, I’ll tell you right now, that I think I was pretty well thought of in those days, at CBS for accomplishing it pretty well. Otherwise I wouldn’t have done all those, they wouldn’t have given me all those pictures to do. I mean, you have to make, you have to make TV pictures in TV schedules. And you have to have all the coverage. [INT: So do you think you do less takes?] It depends. It just depends. It just depends.

INT: What do you think the best part of being a Director is? Or the hardest part? Two separate questions. 

AM: Well, being a Director, if you don’t know what you’re doing, I would say is one of the hardest jobs there is, you could possibly have. When I started directing, I felt like I was so ready, that, that, I didn’t mean that people couldn’t tell me what to do, or tell me how to do it, but I really feel that I’d really learned a, everything… It’s a great training ground, is when you’ve done as many TV pictures as I did, it’s the best training ground you could possibly have. And so when I started doing the big movies, it helped me a lot. It helped me a great deal. And it… A Director has to be aware of, has to have an awareness about what’s going on around him. Especially in the making of the movie, on a set, what’s involved, personalities involved in cast, all the things that you have to worry about, like wardrobe. And where you’re going on location, sets. This is all part of the Director’s job. [INT: Is part of the Director’s job, isn’t it, the biggest part about telling the story?] Well that’s the, that’s from the artistic standpoint, is the Director interprets the written word. And you’re always looking for a great script, or a good script. And you have, and the Director has to interpret those words, and put them, and put it out on the screen. And it’s a, it’s an exciting job, let’s face it. And you know, people, I know a lot of people would like to be a Director, and will never get the chance. And I was in a position where I got the chance, and I think I made the most of it over a period of time. I mean I did, I’ve done 30 feature films, so that’s quite a few. [INT: Was there, it seems to me that, I know this, but..]

INT: You worked a lot with the same Writer, James Lee Barrett on a lot of films, didn’t you? How many films? 

AM: James Lee Barrett, James Lee Barrett was one of my favorite Writers. And that started in a picture, because after MCLINTOCK!, just to give you a little bit of back story, naturally I wondered what my next movie’s gonna be. You know. I was all ready to say, well I’m not gonna do TV anymore. No, I’m just gonna do, I’m just gonna do big movies. So it wasn’t long after MCLINTOCK! that I got a phone call from Jimmy Stewart [James Stewart], right out of the blue. And I happened to have met him once before, in fact I played golf with him once. And he said, “I got this picture called FIELDS OF HONOR [SHENANDOAH],” and he said, “it’s written by a Writer named James Lee Barrett.” He said, “Would you be interested in directing it?” And I said, “You bet.” You know, and that, that was at Universal [Universal Pictures] and then I got a, they signed me to do that movie with a six picture contract, at Universal. [INT: What attracted you to that script? I mean obviously Jimmy Stewart asking you to do it.] James, James Lee Barrett, to me, is one of the best dialogue Writers that I’ve ever known in movies. He’s been dead 20 years almost now. But I miss him a lot. I mean, he was just… I think a lot of Directors have their favorite Writers--[INT: Did you have a short hand with him in terms of story development, did you work with him?] Oh no, no, yeah. We all, worked with him. He was a well thought of Writer, he sold a lot of original scripts. SHENANDOAH was an original script. SHENANDOAH happened to turn out to be a very good picture. And it sort of, the first of four pictures that I made with James Stewart. [INT: Was FIELD OF HONOR ever made?] FIELD OF HONOR became SHENANDOAH. And that was a title that we sort of found for the movie while we were making it.

INT: How do you go about casting these? I mean you sort of were fortunate in that you seemed to have the lead Actors already put in place. But how did you go about, you know, casting the secondary players? 

AM: Casting to me, in a movie, is one of the most, absolutely the most important things that a Director can do. When you put an Actor in a part, you have to believe that that man is the part, or will understand the part. And it has a lot to do with directing too, because if you get somebody that, somebody that you don’t know, and you don’t know as an Actor, you’re liable to, and you might be telling them what to do and how to do it, and where to walk, is a lot different than a guy that knows a little bit about what his character is supposed to be. And Actors can actually help Directors sometimes. Just be, the very knowledge they have about the character they’re playing. And anyway… [INT: Did you used to do screen tests?] Pardon me? [INT: Did, would you shoot screen tests?] I did all, I never did screen tests to get an Actor, but I did, oh I did to get a couple of leading ladies, that I had to do that to find one to work with John Wayne.

INT: Screen test. Would you screen test, like if you had your leading man, Jimmy Stewart [James Stewart], would you screen test him with the leading actress, or potential actress? 

AM: Well I didn’t do that a lot. I didn’t do a lot of screen testing. I liked to meet the Actor in person, have a long talk with them, see if they understood their part, and they either got the part or they didn’t get the part. [INT: How did you know whether or not they could act?] Well that was another thing, whether they could act or not. Usually if I had heard about them, or I’d used them before, I knew they could act. But the point is this is that, in today’s world, you know there’s so much going on with digital film and DVD and all that stuff, but like on television, I don’t know whether Directors really get a chance to meet the Actor and have that kind of employment system the way it used to be, because I know the Agents get a list of Actors for a movie now, or a television show. They go to the studio, and they say, “We got so and so, so and so, and so and so.” And they said, “Well send me a, send us a DVD.” [INT: What does that mean, you mean send you a DVD of the Actors?] The studio’s asking the Agent to send a DVD to the studio. Studio will look at them and say, “Okay, we’ll hire him.” And a lot of times, the Director, the Director doesn’t even get to see the Actor before he works in the movie, which I never had happen to me in my whole life. That was in TV or movies. Every Actor that I ever cast, I met every one of them. [INT: Did you used to rehearse with your Actors?] I’m not a rehearsal, no I didn’t believe in that so much. I don’t… when we got on a set, we might’ve had one read through, if you call that a rehearsal. But after that, we, the rehearsing is done before we’d shoot the scenes. Every Director has his own system, own MO, as to how he does stuff. And I’ve got mine, and every Director of any worth has his I’m sure.

INT: Has the DGA ever had to step in to protect your creative rights, with regard to casting, or rehearsals? In other words, if you’re not a rehearsal guy, I guess they haven’t had to do that, but have you ever had to have the DGA step in to help you in that regard at all? 

AM: I never had that problem actually. The only problem I ever had with the Directors Guild of America, and I have had none, believe you me, is in 1988 I was doing a picture [RETURN FROM THE RIVER KWAI] in the Philippines, with a British company, and they called me up and said if your Producer doesn’t become a signatory of the Guild, you’re gonna have to leave the movie. So anyway that worked out, I mean that happened, I didn’t… I’m really happy that the Guild exists. I’ve been a member of the Directors Guild for 62 years. [INT: Wow.]

INT: Well tell me dad, let’s just get back here for a second. When you were making these films at the very beginning, how did you decide who you were gonna choose as your Cinematographer? 

AM: Usually by pictures that I might have seen. And also, even a cameraman, that, like Harry Stradling, Jr, who had done some big features, and I had worked with in TV, and I used him on several of my films. And that was the way that I knew the cameramen. And then I got to know Bill Clothier, William H. Clothier, just by… I had him do my first film, our little 10 dayer. And from then on I did 12 films through my career, with Bill Clothier. And the funny thing is, that I introduced him to Duke [John Wayne], and then Duke always wanted to have Bill on it. And then Duke introduced him to John Ford, and then Bill Clothier became John Ford’s favorite cameraman. [INT: Well you were a good, you were a help.] And I feel responsible for that.

INT: You and Bill Clothier [William Clothier] had a very specific way that you used to work together. Nowadays we have monitors that we look at, but in your day, we didn’t have monitors. How did you use your cameramen differently, then say we use today? 

AM: Well, you have to depend on the operator, for one thing. You have to depend on your camera operator, and the… let’s face it, your cameraman is his boss. And then the Director has to ask the operator, well what did you think, did you get the shot? When in today’s world you don’t have to worry about that, because the Director is one room, watching a TV as a scene is being done, and the Actors are playing it in the room next door, it’s a little different than it used to be. [INT: How did it used to be when you were directing?] I used to sit right under the camera. And then sometimes I sat on the camera. And, but those are little things that have changed and, all to the best because there are some great pictures that are made today, and there are some outstanding new Directors that you hear about every day. It’s a… and as I say, when you’ve been around as long as I have, it’s interesting to sort of look back and reflect. [INT: And see the differences.] And see the differences. It’s… [INT: Do you feel you had a much more personal relationship with the Actors when you used to sit under the camera?] Oh, I think that you, yeah I think so. I think that is for sure. It’s a funny thing how things get worked around, but it’s so much better though, to have that TV on the set, because the operator, it takes all the strain off the operator, for one thing. Or I wouldn’t put it that way. You know you’re getting a good shot, and you have it guaranteed.

INT: Did you use the same AD [Assistant Director] on most of your films, or, how did you choose your ADs and…? 

AM: I had about two or three ADs through the years, as my favorites. And sometimes they weren’t, one wasn’t available so I’d have another. And… [INT: Were they pretty involved with how you prepared the movie?] Well, the AD is, you know, I consider myself as being a good First Assistant [First Assistant Director]. And you try to be as helpful to the Director as you possibly can. And some Directors don’t want a lot of assistance, and others do. A guy like Bill Wellman [William A. Wellman], he liked to share all his… He liked to go over cast with me, and discuss what did I think, and it made me feel good, and he felt good about it too, so… And then, of course, as time goes by and you work a lot, and… There’s nothing like experience in the film business, especially if you’re a Director. [INT: Let me ask you--] And the more you actually are able to work at your craft, you know the better you’re gonna get. [INT: Let me ask you dad, when you were--]

INT: How did you prep on a daily basis before you shot? I mean, you were someone I remember, growing up, you would always do your homework the night before. What was your homework? 

AM: Well, the homework would be, you know, what I’m gonna do the next day, how many pages we’re gonna do, what Actors I’m gonna use. Where the scene is gonna be. Is it on location, is it gonna be inside… [INT: But I used to see you working with your script all the time.] Well that’s, I’m going over dialogue, to see if I might want a word here, a word there. And also, where I might want to put in a close up, or over shoulders, or two shots, and… You know, there’s one thing about television, and I can say this openly, that it taught me a lot of lessons. And one of the best examples of what I’m talking about is Clint Eastwood as a Director. Because he, you know, and I worked with him, I worked with him on RAWHIDE, and I’ve known him a long time, but he has never forgotten his TV days, because he has an, I consider him an icon in today’s world. [INT: He’s an efficient moviemaker, isn’t he?] I really, I really respect him a lot, and I just loved it when he won the Academy Award, and he gave his acceptance speech, started to walk away from the mic, and then came right back and said, “And I shot it in 37 days, too.” I got a big kick out of that. I think a lot of movie people, a lot of people in the business must have really enjoyed. Including the heads of studios.

INT: In terms of prepping, just going back to how you used to prepare, when you’d get to the set in the morning, what would your process be? What would you do? 

AM: Well, everybody has their own system, you know. [INT: What was yours?] I mean, first of all, I get, I usually get together with the cameraman, discuss what the shot’s gonna be. There’s another thing, working with a cameraman is very important, and the Director should understand lenses. He should know what a two-inch, a four-inch, a six-inch. He should understand wide angle, how to use them, when to use them. And then if there’s any discussion about a scene, sort of listen to the cameraman, he might have his own idea on the subject. And it’s just part of the overall Director’s job. I mean, the Director has a, one thing about it, 60 people on a set might want, hear something from a Director, but it’s a very responsible job. It’s very responsible, because everybody depends on him, and he can’t over, he can’t become over ambitious sometimes, but the thing is he has to do a job, and that’s what counts. [INT: It also helps to be decisive, doesn’t it, when you’re a Director?] Well, you have to be decisive, you have to be decisive, there’s no doubt about that.

INT: And when you had, when you were filming a stunt for example, would you rehearse the stunt ahead of time with the camera move, how would you approach that? 

AM: Oh yeah, I would rehearse. I had one of the best stunt coordinators in the entire business, Hal Needham. And Hal Needham eventually became a Director. But he was a terrific stunt coordinator. And you know, they’re worth their money every cent, because you get, you get bad stunts. If you have a lot of bad stunts in a movie, you’re gonna remember it, and it’s not, it’s not a good idea. [INT: Well that would probably go the same as performances. How do you make sure that you’re getting the performance you want from an Actor? What do you do if you’re not getting what you want?] Well, that’s just part of the day’s work for a Director. For the Director, he has to be able to tell the Actor what’s wrong, how to do it. If the Actor doesn’t understand, it’s… well, I don’t know. I’ve never had that happen too much. I try to get Actors, usually when I cast them, they knew what they were doing, and were good Actors, I didn’t… [INT: Have you ever had an Actor resist anything that you’ve asked them to do?] Oh, I get, maybe, when you go back all these years, I imagine here and there I might get an Actor that might, wasn’t able to feel the, feel the line, or didn’t like to say it, or… but, very rare, very, very rare.

INT: Did you ever used to use storyboards when you had an action sequence, or? 

AM: Yeah, different studios, as my career wore on, I noticed that different studios, some used story boards, some liked storyboards, and others didn’t. [INT: What about for your own process? Did you not use, or need storyboards?] I personally, I personally just, as a habit, didn’t use storyboard. [INT: Even for an action sequence.] No but, then I’d get the Art Director sometimes to show me how the sets are gonna look ahead of time. But that’s not using the storyboard. [INT: No.]

INT: Would you say that you had sort of a signature camera style, or the way in which you shot a film, or do you think that there was anything, you know, signature to Andrew V. McLaglen? 

AM: Well, I think every Director that has a little salt in him, might feel that he has, like he knows what he’s doing. One thing about me, I’m not bragging, but I mean I always felt confident in what I was doing. And I always felt that for the most part, that I was doing it right. And you know… it’s the only way to feel, you can’t feel halfway. A Director has to have definite opinions. And that’s one thing that I can say about directing, have a definite opinion. Not a maybe opinion.

INT: What are some of the things that you do to prepare for a film, in pre production? 

AM: Oh, that’s a very interesting question, Mary, because that’s where you’re, that’s where the work starts. First of all you have to decide, first of all you have to have the script. Then you have to take it to the studio. And the studio has to want to do the script. Then they wanna have a budget, and they wanna have a schedule. And they make a schedule, and they make a budget. All right now it’s up to you to start, when that’s all done, then you have to go get with your Art Director, and decide what the locations are gonna be, what the sets are gonna be, what the interior sets are gonna be, or the cover sets, you might have to go to. All this happens, and you have to get this all at your fingertips. And it’s just part of the, it’s part of a Director job. Wardrobe for the cast… [INT: How do you go about finding a Costume Designer for a specific job?] From pictures that I’ve done before, or somebody told me how good they were, so I said, “Is that right, then I’ll be happy to use them.” If I didn’t like them, I didn’t use them again.

INT: Did you have a lot of special effects in the movies that you did? Did you have to work with a lot of special effects? Explosions, anything like that? 

AM: I did a couple war movies. I had all the movies, I did a lot of gun firing and cannon firing. And I did a definitive, sort of a definitive history of the Civil War in fiction, in a seven hour television show I did, called THE BLUE AND THE GRAY. And I had every big battle and… that’s another thing that’s interesting there, too, because here’s a seven hour movie, that I had to do the whole movie in Arkansas. And I had Gregory Peck, for instance, playing Abraham Lincoln. And all the casting was very, very superior. And seven hours, and I finished the whole thing in 81 days. [INT: I guess you prepared that one, huh?] There are some movies, one movie, sometimes takes 81 days. So this is the difference between television and movies.

INT: Tell me dad, what is your relationship with the Producer on a film? 

AM: I, another good question. Every Producer, for maybe, except for a couple, which we won’t go into detail about, I always find that the Director and the Producer should get along and be friends on a business level. [INT: Collaborate.] Collaborating level, and… I never had bad luck with Producers for the most part. [INT: Well, what do you consider, their, I mean, their job is to sort of support your vision, is that what you would say?] Yeah, a Producer has to be very supportive. I mean, a Producer depends on a Director; a Director depends on a Producer. Especially if he’s a Producer, a real Producer, and is finding the money for the picture you’re making. And it wasn’t, if it weren’t for him you wouldn’t be making the movie.

INT: Have you ever had a Producer, sort of go behind your back and give notes to the studio, or make comments to the studio without your knowledge or permission? 

AM: I’ve had things like that happen. [INT: How do you deal with that?] Well, I had an interesting--that’s an interesting question, in that, when I did the first picture with Jimmy Stewart and he was a really, I really enjoyed working with him as an Actor, and he became a good friend. But the Producer, and I got together with him, and we showed him the picture, and he said, because, what they’re trying to do, they’re trying to get it so that his name didn’t have to be 100 percent of the title. They wanted James Stewart, not quite as big as SHENANDOAH. He said, "That’s okay, you can make it a little bit smaller." So that was just a formality that we had to go through about billing on the picture, right? So when I had, at the Directors Guild [DGA], we had the first showing of SHENANDOAH, the worst thing happened, because Jimmy had said, when we showed him the picture before, he said, “Is this the way the picture’s gonna be?” And I said, “This is the way it’s gonna be, Jimmy,” and the Producer said, “This is it.” Well the Producer, the studio, the studio had gone and decided they wanted to take out this, or take out that. [INT: Without your permission?] Didn’t say anything about it. Jimmy Stewart was, the only time I really saw him angry. [INT: Why weren’t you angry?] He said, “Well I take all that back about the billing,” he said, you know, he was, he didn’t like it. We told him that that was it, he’s a big star, he had every right to ask that. [INT: Well my question to you is dad, why, were you not surprised, did you know that this had happened?] I, I’m not telling stories that a lot of people don’t, Directors don’t know about, but sometimes studios have to think they’re doing something for some, whatever the reason is. And I’ll tell you another story in a minute about that. And so, they cut out a couple of things that were harmful to the movie. [INT: And you didn’t fight for it.] I didn’t even know it happened ‘til I saw it at the showing. The Producer didn’t even know it either. But anyway, it’s all put back, see it was all put back. [INT: Did the Directors Guild, were they helpful with you in that regard?] Didn’t have to go to the Directors Guild, because Jimmy, he wasn’t gonna do any personal appearances, or he wasn’t gonna… you know, and that all had to go back. But anyway, I’ll tell you, though, what a Director faces sometimes. I did a picture with Kirk Douglas and Robert Mitchum, and Richard Widmark, and Sally Field, and we were four months up in Oregon making this movie. And it was called THE WAY WEST, and it had won a Pulitzer Prize. The novel had won a Pulitzer Prize. And I thought it was a terrific movie, and when I showed it to United Artists, they thought it was, they liked the movie.