Maryjane (1968)

Kliph Nesteroff: You penned two scripts with Dick Gautier?

Peter Marshall: I did. Dick and I did Bye Bye Birdie together in Vegas. We became very close friends. We were together every day and then he stopped talking to me at one point and I could never figure out why. We weren't friends anymore, which is sad because I loved him and he is really a talented man. Jesus, he's a wonderful artist, a great impressionist and a fine actor. He does so many things.  We were struggling before Hollywood Squares, trying to make a buck and we started writing. We wrote a couple of TV things and then a friend of ours said, "Hey, I'm doing a movie on marijuana. Would you write the script?" So we gave him an outline. He said, "That's perfect. We're shooting in ten days." Didn't even have a script!

We locked ourselves in an office and wrote this thing called Maryjane. It was a big hit. It's a terrible movie. Fabian was in it and he said to the director, Morey Dexter, "Hey, can I change this?" He said, "Sure!" We said, "No, hold it! You can't change that! That's the storyline!" "Ah, don't worry about it." I never went back to the shoot. Today you can't do that. Can't change a line without the writers permission, but in those days you could do anything. They destroyed you. The script had been real good, but turned into a terrible picture. But it did very, very well.