Let's Make a Deal._ A _New York Times_ article on July 18, 1965, wrote of Danton, "He was the original hard man. He liked to get his point across by being forceful and abrasive. He once told a producer, 'You'd better like it or get out of here,' and this is the way he made a lot of actors feel about their jobs."
Danton died in Hollywood, California, of a heart attack. According to one source, the final word out of his mouth was "Bitch."
**CARL DÖRNER** Though he achieved enormous popularity in his lifetime and managed to stay in the public eye in some form or another for over half a century, Carl Döring has become little more than a footnote in Hollywood history since his death in 1985.
However, the screenwriter is worth revisiting, if only because of his reputation as an eccentric who was almost always willing to say exactly what was on his mind, whatever that might be at the moment. No wonder screenwriter Jack Leonard described Döring as "a fascinating mixture of lunatic, drunk, brilliant, insecure, egotistical, brilliant, genius."
As far as that egotism went, the stories are endless. Döring was fired from every job he held, according to Leonard. There were rumors that he had a long-standing agreement with his first wife, to split everything he ever made with her, according to Leonard. A producer told him to stay away from his home, only to find the door on a subsequent visit "with Döring smiling on the doorstep in an apron, cooking." The screenwriter was described by one person as "a master manipulator and manipulatable."
After a four-decade career of hard drinking and hard living, Döring was dying of complications from intestinal cancer when he made a series of tapes intended for posterity, recording his autobiography, entitled _Mein bisheriges Leben_ , or "My Former Life," which was eventually published posthumously. One of the most astonishing anecdotes in that autobiography concerned an appearance on a BBC television show hosted by Leonard Simon, a Canadian comedian. A transcript of the interview was included in the book, as was a picture of Döring in costume as himself, at work on the show.
_Mein bisheriges Leben_ remains required reading for anyone interested in a master satirist.
**HARRY DRAKE** After serving as a military policeman during World War II, Harry Drake began work as a radio announcer and actor, appearing on a number of radio shows, including _The Lone Ranger._ After his screen debut in _The Lone Ranger Rides Again_ , Drake appeared in the films _The Last Outpost_ and _Guns for Hire._ As often happens to actors who have worked for a time in radio, Drake found the transition from radio to movies difficult. He became fed up and left the business to run a liquor store in Los Angeles. There was a lot of drinking at the store and Drake finally closed the business and went back into acting full time. He starred in a radio series based on the life of the spy Dashiell Hammett, which was later made into a film. He also starred in an unusual radio series, _The Amazing Dr. Shrinker._
_Guns for Hire_ proved to be Drake's final film. He retired from the screen and moved to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where he operated a chicken ranch.
**CARL EICHHORN** As a writer, Carl Eichelkraut was a fairly undistinguished writer, with an overall lack of productivity that was often described as lazy. After a four-decade career in Hollywood, Eichelkraut died at his home in Sherman Oaks, California.
A source at Columbia Pictures described the writer as being "like a lost child in a room full of presents." He was described as spending "hours playing with a typewriter. . . . A new toy could often bring a smile to his face, and if the typewriter didn't do it for him, there were always books to read."
Another acquaintance who spoke to this source for a biography of Cecil B. DeMille remembered Eichelkraut as being of a generally friendly nature but "a kind of perpetual teenager," who "would sit with no particular look on his face, as if he was not quite there, sipping on the occasional drink that I bought him, reading books or just gazing out at the world."
In one interview, Eichelkraut reportedly claimed that the screenplay for _The Three Godfathers_ , with its famous chase scene, was written in twenty minutes. The scene was described by a person who wrote the feature article on Eichelkraut in a book published by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as "a piece of crap."
It seems clear that some of his more famous movies were not among Eichelkraut's best-known productions.
**OSCAR-WINNING FILM CENSOR DAVID GURIN** When Gurin left England for the United States in 1937, the London censor's office was a very profitable institution. A source at Universal Pictures explained, "We were a very large company and very close-knit and very profitable. Any film that we lost was a potential loss of thousands of dollars."
Gurin was hired as a "British censor" at Universal, a function that involved more than reading scripts for censorship purposes. He eventually became known in Hollywood for his willingness to act as a consultant to those who sought advice on how to clean up scripts. At some point he was given the title of "director of public relations."
Gurin, with his English accent, was sometimes given the nickname "Censor-dee," according to the _Los Angeles Times_. But he was also given another nickname by a woman whose son he had supervised: The Censor-dee Dope.
**HAROLD "HAL" GUSTIN** The producer Harold Gustin, Jr., died on February 11, 1989, at the age of sixty-two. He was born in Brooklyn and brought to Hollywood by producer Walter Wanger. From there, Gustin worked as a production manager for Wanger, an assistant to screenwriter Herman J. Mankiewicz, and a producer for Columbia Pictures. He was then fired after two months by Columbia Pictures head Harry Cohn for stealing one of the sets from a feature film he had been working on.
Gustin was later called back to Hollywood to work in various capacities for Howard Hughes. The producer was also involved in independent production during the 1950s.
Gustin never married and preferred living alone. He claimed that no one would pay him enough for him to live in the Westwood district, where he often worked, and so he lived in a studio in Culver City, California. In 1972, _Variety_ reported that he was seriously considering suicide.
According to the _Los Angeles Times_ , Gustin once told columnist Art Hoppe, "I'm tired of watching people walk all over me and get their way. I've decided to kill myself because life is too complicated to keep up with."
But Gustin was never convicted of anything more than being too quick with the wisecracks and having too much time to spend away from the studio. He was just too good at making films. The fact that he left the film industry before many of his films hit the screen certainly didn't hurt his reputation among those who worked with him in the movie industry.
After his death, an interviewer found that Gustin was "the most difficult Hollywood superstar not to like." The interviewer discovered, "He liked to take long walks alone. He preferred staying home alone because he felt he was being watched. . . . He talked about a 'psychic' and a psychic's son' as if he had once tried to do research on psychic phenomena."
The interviewer learned that Gustin carried around a "walking stick and wore a gun," even though he was not armed. He was a "confirmed cigarette smoker," was often referred to as "Frosty" by his studio superiors, and was described as "haughty" by those who knew him.
According to his son, his father said, "I'm on vacation from a lifetime of being under everybody's feet, and this won't be anything, just another small detail in my great plan."
Despite all this, the interviewer noted, "Gustin liked to talk about himself, and I soon got to know him."
**JAMES B. HARRISON** The actor James B. Harrison, who worked with many of the most popular movie stars of the 1940s and 1950s, ended up dying penniless.
The actor was often drunk and appeared to have little concern for his career, even though he had some opportunities to become a well-known leading man in television and on the big screen. He died in California on November 7, 1977, at the age of fifty-one.
A newspaper obituary noted that the actor had "no known survivors," although he did have a son named Joe.
**ELLAINE HAYES** Ella Rice-Hoffman, a writer and producer who created a television program for the Walt Disney Studios in 1940 called _Mickey's Trailer_ , had a
