Part 2

And that's about as far as it got.

Gorilla at Large, one of your freelance jobs, wasn't a great picture, but it certainly has a terrific cast.

We shot most of it down in Long Beach, which had an amusement park then (I don't think it's there any more). We had the use of the amusement park from midnight, after they closed, all through the rest of the night and the morning. We were there for about a week. I enjoyed working on it with Lee Cobb and Anne Bancroft and all those folks. It was in 3-D originally, but they later took that away and made it "regular." I've seen it on the tube a couple of times.

Lee J. Cobb played a police detective and you played his partner.

He and I had pretty good rapport, we worked good together because we had mutual friends back in New York, in the theater. I had met him in New York, when he was doing Death of a Salesman, and of course we both knew Kazan quite well. It was the first time I had met Lee Marvin, and we eventually did some other things.

Any memory of getting the role of "Doc" Ostrow in Forbidden Planet?

I had done a movie in Italy called The Barefoot Contessa [1954] and it had just premiered while I was in Mexico doing another movie. So when I came back from Mexico, everybody had seen The Barefoot Contessa and I got a call from Metro and, with my agent, I went out there to meet the producer Nicky Nayfack. That was it-they wanted me for the movie. Nicky was marvelous. Kind of laid-back, and he enjoyed actors-he liked to be around us. It was a fun thing to do for 12 weeks. [Leslie] Nielsen and Jack Kelly and I played three-handed hearts all the time, when we were waiting for the next setup. I think they took me for.a bunch [laughs]!

I've been on the sets of a couple new science fiction movies, and I'm always disappointed-they never look very large or elaborate "in person." What is your memory of the Forbidden Planet sets? Impressive?

Oh, yeah! As far as size and everything was concerned, it was the most elaborate that I had been on up 'til that time.

In any movie.

Yeah. Well, because of the nature of the piece. They had one entire sound stage with a huge cyclorama all the way around it, for the landing site on the planet. To be on that set was pretty breathtaking. The [interior] spaceship sets and [Dr. Morbius'] laboratory were also very impressive. And we had Robby the Robot - Frankie Darro was inside of that. But we had no monster to work with - the monster was thrown in later by the special effects people. All we had to do was stand there and aim the ray guns at it. And nothing came out of the ray guns either - it was all put in later! We were reacting to nothing! Even the people that got thrown around by the monster [James Drury and Robert Dix] were being "thrown around" by nothing. Until we saw the finished product, we had no idea what was throwing them around.

Before Forbidden Planet, most "Hollywood sci-fi" was low-budget movies and TV kid shows. Who did you think the "target audience" for Forbidden Planet was?

I never even thought about it. Hey, work is work! And I'm sure none of us had any idea that it would become the so-called cult classic that it has become.

Everybody I've talked to about Forbidden Planet has nothing to say about the director, Fred Wilcox. Can you break my losing streak?

Well, he was very laid-back, that's all I can say. He was a gentle man, and never got excited and was never forceful in any way about what he wanted. He let us pretty much alone. He had figured out all of this stuff ahead of time [coordinating actors and special effects] - things the actors didn't know anything about. So I give him great credit.

Memories of some of the stars of that movie? Walter Pidgeon?

Oh, he was a love to work with - he was one of my heroes from way back anyway. So that part of "my plan" worked out, to get to work with him. Anne Francis is someone I can't say enough nice things about, she was terrific. And still is. She was marvelous to work with, and just to be with, because she was nice. I did see her periodically after that, and then not for years. But I just saw her last November down in Orlando, at a Forbidden Planet convention. Leslie Nielsen in those days was very serious - oh, yes! We were all very serious then.

Do you remember where you saw it for the first time, and what your reaction was?

It was some place in Westwood, a preview. My agent, who incidentally was Leslie Nielsen's agent also, and his then-wife and I all went to this preview. That was the first time I saw it. I went in there wondering how the monster scenes turned out, the scenes where we were shooting at nothing, with nothing. So I was very interested to see how that worked out! We didn't know what to expect. And I don't know anything about the audience's reaction at that first showing because we left pretty hurriedly afterwards. To tell you the truth, I don't remember my own first reaction; I don't think I had any great gut reaction about the thing at all. We just hoped that it would be a success, that's all.

It sure was a success. It's still getting you invited to conventions 40 years later!

It's a whole new audience, generation-wise, that's come along now. That's probably the movie I'm asked about the most.

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