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Emboldened by the 1,000 fan letters he received a week, which he kept in, under and around his bed, he asked to be upgraded to bigger budgets. Columbia assigned him to an undersea feature, first insisting that he be given a precautionary penicillin shot. The result was an almost fatal case of penicillin poisoning. After a year he recovered, to find that his contract was up and neither Columbia nor any other studio wanted his meager acting talents. His friend Ann Sheridan counseled him: "You're an organizer. Learn your trade." She got him a job as a dialogue director at Universal, and Hunter did the rest, mainly through demonic work and an intuitive grasp of the dictum, attributed to H.L. Mencken, that no one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.
Hunter is a bachelor who seems unlikely to marry (although he has been dating Nancy Sinatra, Frank's former wife, for six years). More than most producers, he makes the movie set his home and tries to create a family atmosphere among his cast and crew. He shows up almost every day for shooting, lavishing kisses, hugs, flowers and praise on almost everybody in sight. To ensure Dean Martin's wandering interest during the shooting of Airport, he installed a putting green on the set. To prevent another star, a lusty, hard-drinking ' grande dame, from straying during the shooting of another film, he supplied her with a steady stream of Scotch and, if he is to be believed, a steady stream of handsome young men.
Once his pictures are released, Hunter often goes to neighborhood theaters where they are playing and buttonholes people at intermission to see what they think of them. Sometimes he sells tickets at the box office so that he can find out why people came to the movie in the first place. Whenever he has the time, he sits in the audience to gauge reactions, often crying during the more maudlin scenes. "One way I know I'm in trouble," he says, "is if the audience is laughing when I'm crying." From the looks of things, Lost Horizon should make them both laugh.