Clive Cussler Read online

A year later, after a business associate urged Grade to read Raise the Titanic!, he called Lampack. In an interview with The New York Times, Grade reiterated their conversation: “I said, ‘I’ve read the Titanic. I want it.’ Lampack said, ‘I’ve got several offers.’ I said ‘I’m coming to New York Monday - you be at my hotel.’ He came in the afternoon about four o’clock. I said, ‘I want to do a deal, you won’t leave this room until we do a deal. I don’t want bidding. You are either in a position to do a deal, or else forget about it.’ He said, ‘I’ll have to get back to Clive Cussler.’ I said, ‘Do it now, or I withdraw my offer. Here’s the telephone.’ And he telephoned Cussler, and Cussler said, ‘Okay, provided I have a walk-on part and one line.’”

  ACC paid $450,000 for the rights, the most lucrative book-to-movie deal of 1978.

  Raise the Titanic! would be the latest in a long line of films based in some way on the liner’s demise. A silent ten-minute melodrama, Saved from the Titanic, was released only a month after the tragedy. The film starred Dorothy Gibson, an actress who survived the sinking. Gibson not only co-wrote the script, she appeared in the film in the same dress she allegedly wore on that fateful night. Following Saved from the Titanic, seventeen films - good, bad, and ugly - have recounted the tragic story. Unfortunately for Lew Grade and Clive Cussler, Raise the Titanic would fall into the latter category. Geoff Tibballs, author of Business Blunders, labeled the film, “Almost as big a disaster as the ship itself.”

  Lew Grade was in his early seventies when he turned from a successful small-screen career to feature films. Buoyed by success on The Return of the Pink Panther, The Boys from Brazil and The Muppet Movie, he was ready to take on Raise the Titanic. After meeting with Lampack, Grade heard rumors that Stanley Kramer (High Noon, The Wild One, Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner) had been dropping hints he might be interested in producing a film based on Clive’s book. To eliminate any chance of a costly bidding war Grade paid Kramer $400,000 and hired him as the film’s producer and director.

  In May 1978, Grade hosted his annual party at the Cannes Film Festival and announced he was going to make Raise the Titanic. Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, and Robert Redford were a few of the names bantered about to play Dirk Pitt, but they all turned the part down. Clive wanted James Garner, but Richard Jordan, an unfortunate choice, ended up with the role. Other members of the cast included Anne Archer, David Selby, Jason Robards, and Alec Guinness.

  A year later in Cannes, Grade boasted, “Six million dollars has already been spent on model work” and promised filming would begin “next month in Malta.” In fact, filming would not begin for six months, but the delay was the least of Grade’s problems.

  A large chunk of the $6 million spent on models went into a fifty-five-foot long, twelve-foot high Titanic. Weighing in at twelve tons, it was a fantastic rendering - accurate right down to the number and size of the rivets - but much bigger than it needed to be. To provide the effects they were seeking, the production team specified a water tank more than 250 feet wide and thirty-five feet deep. Constructed on the island of Malta, the tank took ten months to complete, held 9 million gallons of water and cost $3 million.

  Cameraman Robert Steadman recalls, “The size of the tank caused real problems. One night, early in the game, I called the surface and asked for a reloaded camera. A diver was sent down with it, but after waiting for five minutes he didn’t show up … He had gotten lost in this ten million gallon lake of ours … he was found, thoroughly disoriented by the blackness and lack of landmarks.”

  After only two weeks on the job, Stanley Kramer quit for “artistic reasons” and was replaced by Jerry Jameson (Mod Squad, Six Million Dollar Man, Streets of San Francisco). The script went through ten drafts and the final version strayed considerably from the book - even the exclamation point was dropped. An estimated $12 million was spent before one frame of film was shot. When Grade’s right-hand man, Bernard Kingham, tried to convince his boss to abandon the project, he was ordered to “mind his own business.”

  While Raise the Titanic cruised toward another waterlogged disaster, Clive, back in Denver and busy with the next Dirk Pitt novel, received a call from his mother. Eric and Amy were now living in Laguna Woods Village, an upscale retirement community in California.

  During an operation for a minor gastronomical problem, Eric had suffered a stroke. Clive immediately flew to California and spent several days at his father’s bedside. Assured Eric was on the mend, Clive returned to Denver. Four days later, Amy, now frantic, called again. Eric’s condition had worsened, and his doctors now labeled his condition as critical. Clive flew to Los Angeles and arrived at the hospital ten minutes before his father died. “I was holding him in my arms,” Clive says, “when he left us.” Eric Cussler died on December 28, 1979. He was interred at Pacific View Hospital Memorial Park, a cemetery high above the Pacific Ocean with sweeping views of Newport Harbor.

  After Eric’s death, Amy moved to Colorado and purchased a condo in Arvada. She enjoyed her new life, traveling, spending time with family and friends. After several minor strokes, Amy’s health began to deteriorate in the late 1980s, and Clive arranged for her to live in a nursing home. Amy Adeline Cussler died on February 8, 1993, and was laid to rest next to her beloved husband.

  Raise the Titanic opened in the U.S. during the summer of 1980. The film’s premiere, complete with a parade and the mayor, was held in Boston. Clive, Barbara and Peter Lampack were riding in a limousine with director Jerry Jameson. Clive laughs, “There was a high school band in front of us. I knew we were in trouble when they began to play ‘Turkey in the Straw.’” When the film ended, Lampack asked Clive how he liked it. “Somehow,” Clive replied, “they managed to take what I thought was an exciting story and turn it into a boring movie.”

  Dark, dull, and disjointed, the film was shredded by the critics. Writing in Screen International, Marjorie Bilbow fumed, “water logged mass of unresolved subplots, insufficiently identified characters and a complexity of technical jargon.” A reviewer in the Guardian groused, “The longer it goes on, the more one hopes that, if they ever do raise the Titanic, they’ll heave the film overboard to replace it.”

  Composer John Berry escaped unscathed since everybody, including Clive, thought his score was the film’s only saving grace. The film’s dismal performance at the box office - Raise the Titanic lost almost $25 million - helped end Grade’s involvement with major motion picture production. Clive, playing a reporter, appears briefly in one scene, but the single line he was promised ended up on the cutting room floor.

  There was talk of moving the oversized model of the Titanic to Minnesota’s Mall of America, but nothing came of it, and the miniature masterpiece was discarded in a desolate film studio yard on Malta, where it can be found today. The elements have taken a heavy toll, and like the real ship, the model is slowly turning into a rusty hulk.

  Moving from Viking to Bantam in 1979 threw Clive off his normal writing schedule, and it took him three years to finish his next book. The fifth Dirk Pitt adventure, Night Probe! was released in hardcover on August 3, 1981, followed a year later by the paperback edition. Appearing on The New York Times hardcover bestseller list for the first time on August 13, 1981, the book remained on the list for thirteen weeks.

  Night Probe! provides a fascinating insight into Clive’s creative process. The book’s plot was hatched in May 1978, when Clive was reading The Denver Post. He happened upon an article detailing the grim fate of a Kansas Pacific Railroad freight train and its crew on a stormy night in the spring of 1878. Pulled by Engine #51, the train left Denver, headed for Kansas City, with a string of twenty-five freight cars and a caboose. Heavy rain had been falling for several days, and unknown to the crew in the engine’s cab, the bridge across Kiowa Creek had been washed away. The locomotive and eighteen cars plunged into the raging water, killing the engineer, fireman, and brakeman. Despite an extensive search, the locomotive was never found.

  “I knew nothing of the trage
dy,” Clive says. “At the time, I was not intrigued with launching a search for the elusive engine, but working its disappearance into a concept for an adventure starring my hero, Dirk Pitt.” And so a long forgotten train wreck became one of the primary building blocks for a plot Clive and many of his fans consider one of his best.

  The signature Cussler prologue is set in the spring of 1914. Great Britain is faced with an impending war and financial disaster. The prime minister, in league with King George V, has secretly agreed to sell Canada to the United States for $1 billion, with a $150 million down payment. Two copies of the treaty spelling out the details of the sale are lost in simultaneous accidents. The New York & Quebec Northern Railroad’s Manhattan Limited, attempting to cross a downed bridge, plunges into the Hudson River; meanwhile, the liner Empress of Ireland sinks in the icy waters of the St. Lawrence River. When an enraged British Cabinet discovers the covert scheme, President Woodrow Wilson orders all records of the treaty destroyed.

  Jumping ahead to 1989, an energy crisis threatens to ruin the United States economy. The world’s oil reserves are running low and Canada, having invested heavily in hydro-electric power, is providing electricity to fifteen states in the northeast. America’s future looks even bleaker when Dirk Pitt, testing an experimental NUMA research submarine, discovers a huge oil field located in Quebec’s territorial waters. A navy officer working on her Ph.D. discovers a reference to the lost treaty in one of Wilson’s letters and Pitt and NUMA are ordered by the president of the United States to search for the lost documents. Pitt is threatened by a formidable gathering of foes, including a former British secret agent, who may or may not be James Bond. Against all odds, Pitt recovers one of the original treaties, leading to the establishment of the United States of Canada.

  In one of the novel’s multiple plot twists, Pitt discovers the Manhattan Limited never plunged into the river. While the accident at the bridge was faked, a gang of robbers, after a cargo of gold, not the treaty, hijacked the train and secreted it in a quarry. The desperado’s plans went awry when they blew up the entrance to the tunnel and the shock waves ruptured an underground fissure. Water filled the escape shaft and the thieves, passengers, and train crew died a slow death in the dank chamber.

  The trainin-the-tunnel twist was inspired by The Last Bandit, a film Clive saw when he was a teenager. Starring William “Wild Bill” Elliott, Adrian Booth, Forrest Tucker, and Andy Devine, the horse opera follows the adventures of two brothers working on opposite sides of the law. The villainous brother comes up with a plan to waylay a train carrying $1 million in gold bullion and hide it in an abandoned tunnel. The high point for teenage Clive and his friends was probably the attractive Ms. Booth’s bathtub scene, but almost thirty-five years later, the film provided Clive with a memorable story line.

  Night Probe! was assigned to Alan Rinzler, a veteran editor whose author list included Jerzy Kozinski, Robert Ludlum, and Hunter Thompson. Rinzler recalls his association with Clive: “Passion, authenticity, discipline, self-confidence, modesty, decency, professionalism - Clive was an ideal author to work with. He was open to changes in the plot, line editing, deletions and additions, but he also had a very good idea of his own strengths and purpose.”

  Unfamiliar with Clive’s earlier work, Rinzler asked him how many of his books were in print. Clive explained Night Probe! was his fifth book, but Dirk Pitt actually made his first appearance in The Sea Dweller, a work that had never been published. The editor almost fell out of his seat. A bestselling author was casually telling him he had an unpublished manuscript gathering dust in a closet. Rinzler insisted Clive send him a copy of the manuscript. When Clive called Peter Lampack to tell him Rinzler was eager to read The Sea Dweller, Lampack’s response was terse, “Not on your life. If you let them publish that rag, you’re ruined.”

  Dismissing his agent’s objections, Clive dug out The Sea Dweller and read several chapters. The plot was pretty good, but his writing had improved considerably in the past eighteen years. After spending three months on an extensive rewrite, Clive mailed the manuscript to Lampack. Although the agent still thought The Sea Dweller was weak, he sent it on to Rinzler, hoping it would quietly disappear.

  On January 1, 1983, almost twenty years since Clive sat down to write the first book in his planned “little adventure series,” Bantam published The Sea Dweller in paperback. Now called Pacific Vortex!, the dramatic double cover features a circular die-cut porthole opening to reveal a diver descending into the depths.

  In the forward, Clive addressed his readers:

  Not that it really matters, but this is the first Dirk Pitt story.

  … Because this was his first adventure, and because it does not weave the intricate plots of his later exploits, I was reluctant to submit it for publishing. But at the urging of my friends and family, fans and readers, Pitt’s introduction is now in your hands.

  May it be looked upon as a few hours of entertainment and, perhaps, even a historic artifact of sorts.

  Shortly before Pacific Vortex! was due to be released, Lampack called Clive and told him he was planning a vacation in Jamaica. He wanted to be far away from New York when the book bombed and Clive’s reputation ended up in the toilet. A week later, a telegram arrived at Lampack’s hotel. It read, “Screw you! Pacific Vortex! Just went number two on the New York Times paperback list.”

  Once again, Clive, trusting his instincts, enjoyed the last laugh.

  Shortly after Night Probe! appeared on the Times bestseller list, Bantam’s management organized an author’s party. “The party started at five o’clock in the conference room,” Clive recalls. “Bantam’s employees had obviously been ordered to attend and it didn’t take a genius to figure out they wanted to get the hell out of there and go home. The lavish spread consisted of a platter of cheese - one kind - and a platter of salami, no crackers, washed down with a gallon jug of Gallo Burgundy and Gallo Chablis. It was a very dreary event and should have alerted me to what was coming.”

  In the March 22, 1982, issue of Time, an article detailed the “Hard Times in Hardcover Country.” Writers, editors, agents and publishers bemoaned “… a soft economy, cost increases and an uncertain audience.” Among those quoted, Bantam’s president, Louis Wolfe admonished, “At Bantam, we’re paying more attention to what we pay up front and with good reason. We can’t afford a lot of money for what might be a big book and then find out it isn’t.”

  When Clive turned in his next novel, Deep Six, Bantam informed Peter Lampack the publisher would not only be offering less money than paid previously for Night Probe!, the royalty payment would remain the same. Clive and his agent were shocked. Night Probe! was not only Bantam’s first hardcover bestseller, the book had stayed on the Times list for thirteen weeks.

  Early in his career, Clive expected more from his publishers and editors. In more genteel times, editors were not only great teachers, they often took a personal interest in their writers. Maxwell Perkins advanced royalties, made private loans, and encouraged his writers in every way possible. Cork Smith - the same Cork Smith who predicted Raise the Titanic! could become a bestseller - shared both a working relationship and friendship with his authors. Bennett Cerf spent a great deal of his time at Random House playing nursemaid to Truman Capote.

  Al Silverman, past president of the Book-of-the-Month Club and former editor at Viking/Penguin, regrets the changes that have turned publishing into a money game. “I determined,” Silverman wrote, “that the golden age had to be the years from 1946, as the harrowing savagery of World War II was washing away, to the late 1970s and early 1980s, before the era of publishing ossification had fully set in … when the great old-line book people began to be replaced by bottom-line businessmen.”

  Clive quickly developed a realistic perspective of contemporary publishing. “A writer,” he says, “is basically a manufacturer of a product. You have to be realistic and look at it that way. I put out the best product I can, and my agent sells it for as much money
as we can get. Forget the wonderful old pal relationships like Max Perkins and F. Scott Fitzgerald. They don’t exist anymore.”

  By late 1983, negotiations for Deep Six were at an impasse. Frustrated with Bantam’s foot-dragging, Lampack put the book on the open market. A few days later his phone rang - it was Michael Korda, Simon & Schuster’s editor in chief.

  It has been suggested Michael Korda may know more about what makes a bestselling book than anyone alive.

  A bestselling author himself, Korda states, “Real editing is a profession, unlike publishing, which is merely a business … No one teaches it [editing], of course: You’re born to it, the way a good surgeon is born with the right hands; it is something you either can or can’t do.”

  Korda was instrumental in convincing Simon & Schuster to make an offer acknowledging Clive’s bestseller status - $1 million for Deep Six - but Clive soon had reason to question his superstar editor’s “right hands.” When Deep Six was returned for revisions, Clive was appalled. “The editing was terrible, just terrible! I ended up writing ‘stet’ nullify a correction on all 600 pages and sent it off to Peter.” Lampack not only agreed with Clive, he is convinced to this day Korda had absolutely nothing to do with the editing. “Michael was probably busy with another project,” Lampack says. “An assistant probably farmed it out to some NYU graduate student.”

  Faced with a dreadful job of editing, ostensibly executed by a celebrity editor known for his monumental ego, Lampack was in no hurry to return the manuscript, but Korda forced the issue. In September 1993, he contacted Lampack, suggesting he, Lampack, and Clive meet for lunch in New York so he could review the revised manuscript. Despite the probability of an unpleasant showdown, Clive was delighted with the prospect of a trip to New York. After Dirk had graduated from Arizona State University in 1983 and earned an MBA from the University of California at Berkeley, he started working for the General Accounting Office in Washington, D.C. Following his meeting with Lampack and Korda, a short flight would have Clive and Barbara in the nation’s capital in time for dinner with their son.