Herbert Ross: The Man With the Tarnished Halo

"I went through a lot of trauma,'' Ross says with a catch in his voice. "It was just after Footloose that Nora began to be not well. And after that, everything went... sort of funny." Blowing a smoke stream, he pauses significantly. "I did Dancers because it was an experience Nora wanted to have," he says of the dismal Baryshnikov May/December romance set in the ballet world, a movie many believed might be another Turning Point. "It was a project that she had initiated. It helped keep her going. Its success or failure didn't matter to me as much as the fact that I was able to get the picture on and to shoot it. She got to see it on tape at home. Naturally, I was very distressed by the circumstances of my life. But when she wanted me to do The Secret of My Success, just as something to get me back to work, I did. That movie had a happy ending, but Nora was very, very ill when I did it. Later, we went to Italy and by the time we got back, she was really unwell and died soon afterwards. I went into shock and was very lucky that I was in therapy."

Ross's renowned acid wit didn't fail him even in those dire emotional straits. Associates recall how, at Kaye's funeral, Shirley MacLaine walked up to Ross and whispered, "Herb, if you want to get in touch with Nora, give me a call after the funeral," to which Ross whispered back, "Shirley, if I want to get in touch with Nora, I'll call her myself."

Although the Ross-Kaye relationship could hardly be called traditional, the couple (whom Gail Sheehy featured in a Passages chapter, "Living Out the Fantasy") inspired one longtime friend to call it "a very modern, deep love story. They shared so many interests, so many friends." So interconnected were their lives in the minds of cronies that one to this day bristles at the memory of the day Ross liquidated at auction "every single objet d'art and piece of memorabilia that he and Nora had collected together over the years. He just married the princess and didn't look back.''

The "princess" was Lee Radziwill, whom Ross married five years ago.

Another intimate friend of Ross's believes that the marriage to Radziwill was perfectly in keeping with Ross's nature--that clean emotional breaks are part of his survival mechanism. "Years ago, in Manhattan, Herbert had a lover of many years," says the friend. "When he met, then married Nora Kaye, he never said goodbye to his lover, nor even went back to their apartment. Just moved out and severed all ties."

Another anecdote of this type dates back further. As early as his junior year of high school, Ross announced to his father that he was leaving home to enter the biz. Ignoring his father's pleas for him to finish school, Ross departed that night; hours later, a massive heart attack left him an orphan. Reflecting on the tragedy, Ross once told a reporter, "I would do the same thing again, because there was no other alternative for me."

If Nora Kaye "saved" Ross's life, as Ross once claimed, he credits Lee Radziwill with having brought him "back to life." Guests at their wedding, reported on by le tout Manhattan's gossipers, included Radziwill's sister, Jacqueline Onassis, Ray Stark, Rudolf Nureyev, Daryl Hannah, John Kennedy Jr., Stephen Sondheim, Steve Martin, Bernadette Peters and "Dynasty" co-executive producer Doug Cramer, who had introduced the bride and groom. Although any "Mrs. Herbert Ross" would find difficulty in competing with the memory of Kaye, Radziwill definitely seems to have failed to enchant all Ross intimates.

One person describes her as "pushy and aggressive" and recalls how, at the Buckingham Palace premiere of Steel Magnolias, she sat herself right next to Prince Charles in the seat allocated for Olympia Dukakis, and would not move, provoking a hubbub in which the Prince and Princess of Wales then went about trying to change their seats. The whole thing resulted in a letter of protest from the Palace to Columbia/TriStar's London office.

Naysayers or no, it's clear that Radziwill, who directs special events for Giorgio Armani, sparked Ross to get back to work. "The princess and her husband have very cultivated, expensive tastes," snipes one observer. Which perhaps goes some way to explain why Ross did, in quick succession, the woeful Steve Martin Mafia comedy, My Blue Heaven, which he calls "a horrible experience, something I never should have done," and True Colors, a wafer-thin Reagan-years indictment starring James Spader and John Cusack.

"I had just gotten married and wanted to start a new life." Ross admits. "So, I did these two pictures back to back, because I needed the cash. Is that a good reason? Then, I took a year off and when this little picture came up," he says, referring to Undercover Blues, a movie originally announced for Demi Moore, "I was restless and unhappy not working. After all, I've been at this profession, in one aspect or another, since I was 15."

These days, even for an old pro, a "little picture" can be tough to pull off. After all, the project--which Ross describes as "kind of an homage to The Thin Man, except with a child instead of a dog"--was greenlighted by MGM, a studio whose continued existence seemed iffy at the time. Ross ruffled executive feathers by going over budget. And then, the pairing of Kathleen Turner and Dennis Quaid doesn't necessarily strike one as this year's hot box office coup. Asserts MGM CEO Alan Ladd Jr., who gave Quaid his first big break in Breaking Away and Turner hers in Body Heat, "I'm not saying that getting Kathleen, Dennis and Herb was like getting Julia Roberts, Mel Gibson and whoever you think is the hottest director of the moment. But these three elements have been involved before in major hits. Herbert went over budget, which is not normal for him, but we had a very difficult action-comedy to make and I'm very happy with how it turned out."

"You could say the same thing about me," Ross observes, when I mention the spotty recent track records of Turner and Quaid, correctly implying that, of course, I have. "People make errors in judgment. Or the material or chemistry isn't functioning. There's always been a 'you're as good as your last picture' syndrome in Hollywood, but I don't know that that's true anymore. Bram Stoker's Dracula isn't Coppola's best, but there's a respect for his body of work and there are moments in it that are great."

So, are there great moments in Undercover Blues? "As it turns out, I had a rip-roaring time making this movie. Yes, we had budget problems, but then, everybody does; [the studio] underestimated the cost of doing this kind of thing, but stepped up to it. The script also needed a great deal of fine-tuning. At the end of the day, the movie is good, very light, very upbeat. I love Kathleen. I love Dennis. And it's been testing very well. There's one scene for which I hate myself because I did it poorly. And, no, I won't tell you which scene. You'll know. Oddly, the movie was very full of pitfalls. For instance, we were nervous that the audience might reject our characters because, like the dog in The Thin Man movies, their child seems to be in danger. But I'm interested in all genres, all disciplines, and this gave me a chance to do bloodless action sequences different from most others in that they don't get off on their own savagery. I've choreographed the action in a very stylized, comic way.''

Wait. Stylized action? Choreographed? This in a movie featuring a leading lady whose girth had, as tabloid and mainstream reporters alike mercilously pointed out, ballooned? Who, exactly, told Turner to knock off the blini? "I did," Ross declares. ''We asked Kathleen to get into physical shape and lose weight and she worked with a trainer, harder than anyone I've ever known to do that. She lost an astonishing amount of weight, over 30 pounds, looks splendid and is a much better actress than I knew, based on her other work. She knew that I cared about how she looked, how she photographed.

Turner, for her part, brushes aside the fuss being made about her looks. "When I leave the makeup trailer, it's not my job how I look," she says, laughing throatily. "It's somebody else's. The last thing I want to do is think about that. Herb's wanting me to look good all the time was a lovely feeling. It's just not paramount to me." What was paramount to Turner was rapport and directorial smarts. "Word of mouth about Herbert," she says, "is that he's difficult, temperamental. If somebody yells at me, I dissolve into a quaking puddle. He knew that and was very protective. We met before the filming to sort of see if we'd like to work together and we both admitted that we'd come off a couple of films that made us wonder if we loved the work as much as we used to. We both wanted a good movie, but also to remember what a gas making movies is. That happened. He has such a great understanding of style that he melded a very diverse group of actors into a single, precise comic playing style."

According to Ross, Quaid "is not at all what you'd imagine. He's complicated, private, very intelligent, gifted, a very nice man, when you get to understand how he thinks. This role was very different from anything he's ever tackled, so he was very nervous. It was my job to get his confidence and, ultimately, I did. He's a real star in this movie."

In a parallel, more interesting universe, Ross might be trying a Pennies From Heaven every other time out of the box. One for them, one for him. He says that although his training as a dancer prepared him for the gun-for-hire aspects of his trade, he's lost no sleep over having passed up chances to direct The Bodyguard (eight years ago), Ruthless People, Outrageous Fortune, Doc Hollywood, Life With Mikey or a remake of the classic 1939 comedy Midnight. Other of his near-misses sound more like Ross catnip. Like Bruce Willis in a film version of Lanford Wilson's Burn This, a role John Malkovich originated onstage. Or filming Bob Fosse's brassy Broadway musical Chicago about a '20s murderess who becomes a media monster. What happened with these projects? "Bruce was very anxious to do Burn This, before he became so celebrated. Though he couldn't have been more generous with his time, we just couldn't get it on. With Chicago, I rewrote the script by going back to the uproariously funny original play, but Madonna, to whom I first sent it, let me know that she didn't want to do a period musical. Very shortsighted. She wants to expand, you see. A big problem with musicals now is, if your star turns you down, who else do you get?"

And another big problem with any kind of movie is when your director turns you down. That's what happened to Disney on Neil Simon's The Marrying Man, which Ross was to direct. "I found it very charming, different for Neil," recalls Ross. "We had a very successful script reading with Alec Baldwin and Meg Ryan, who were exceptional. Then the producer brought it to Disney, and they wouldn't pay my price. So, I didn't do it.

That, as it turned out, was extremely lucky. Disney has asked me to do several things, but I fail to understand why they don't pay what everybody else is paying." Simon, who calls The Marrying Man his "worst professional experience," claims Disney was "foolish not to want to pay Herbert. We had interest from Jodie Foster and Julia Roberts, but Disney ended up losers, as I did, because they hired an inexperienced director and wound up with a much more expensive movie than Herbert ever would have made.''

I ask Ross, who once considered Madonna for Footloose and nearly landed Tom Cruise for the lead in the same movie, whom he'd like to work with among Hollywood's new breed. As he reels off a number of them ("Robin Wright, Julia Roberts, when she's there, Brad Pitt, Robert Downey Jr., Johnny Depp, who's fascinating''), I wonder, now that he's approaching 70, whether ageism ever fouls him up for jobs. "When did Footloose, people said, 'I didn't know you had a son.' I found the so hilarious, it made me think, 'For certain movies, why don't I jus change my name to Herbert Ross Jr.?'"

Ross may, in fact, have another "Ross Jr."-type project in Boys On the Side, a Whoopi Goldberg movie he's due to shoot in the fall. He'll also do another ''Ross Sr.'' project by staging La Boheme for The Los Angeles Music Center Opera. Aside from a play he and Kathleen Turner hop to mount together, Ross says his having recently become enamored of Gorecki's Symphony No. 3 ''made me want to choreograph again, a urge I haven't had in a very long time.'' Meanwhile, despite the fact that Undercover Blues has earned some of what he calls his "biggest laugh ever in previews," Ross isn't counting on it to rocket him back to the to of anyone's A-plus list, or to guarantee him power seats at next year' Oscars. 'That 'halo' we were talking about earlier? It will go right back on if I have another great success. Or stay off if I don't."

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Stephen Rebello interviewed Sharon Stone for the June Movieline.

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