ROSEMARY'S BABY...Roman Polanski's Horror Classic

A landmark film of the horror genre, Rosemary's Baby (1968) also marked Roman Polanski's directorial debut in the US. The film, a runaway hit on release, was the prototype that inspired the onslaught of big-budget "A" horror films that followed: The Exorcist, The Omen, etc.

In the tradition of Hitchcock, Polanski achieves his effects with little explicit violence but with maximum finesse. Like Hitchcock, Polanski assiduously maneuvers the emotions of his audience. Drawn into Rosemary's point of view and her growing alarm, the viewer becomes ever more aware that something is amiss but, like Rosemary, doesn't grasp exactly what has happened until the final scenes.

This suspense is propelled by a careful ambiguity that implies Rosemary's terror may have a rational explanation (women do have difficult pregnancies), that her fears may be her own paranoia (though related to an infamous Satanist, her neighbors could just be a pair of elderly oddballs). On the other hand, the movement of plot and action make it difficult for the viewer to simply write off Rosemary's anguish. Equally ambiguous throughout much of the film are the majority of the characters. While Rosemary remains constant as the innocent young wife, those around her are more enigmatic - from her ambitious actor husband and her intrusive neighbors to her wise and kindly old doctor. Ironically, several of the most villainous characters are also the most comically eccentric.

The clever intermingling of suspense with humor is one of the film's distinctive qualities. A few unforgettable scenes: Rosemary (Mia Farrow) and her husband Guy (John Cassavetes) are dining with her friend Hutch (Maurice Evans) who describes the Bramford building's ghoulish history (including a pair of sisters who devoured children) as he carves lamb at table...a shocking suicide scene in front of the Bramford simultaneously introduces the Castevets: Minnie (Ruth Gordon), dressed and made up in the manner of a Christmas tree, and Roman (Sidney Blackmer), clad as though vaudeville was alive and well...and finally, when Rosemary sees her baby for the first time she, uncomprehending, shrieks, "What have you done to its eyes?" Roman Castevet responds, "He has his father's eyes"...

Another of the film's delights is its painstaking recreation of the specific time in which it was set, late 1965 to mid-1966. Costume designer Anthea Sylbert captured that timeframe's contemporary look with Rosemary's short shift dresses (some with peter pan collars), a long and luxurious plaid skirt, red chiffon lounging pajamas. Rosemary has her blunt-cut pageboy snipped short by Vidal Sassoon, she relaxes at home reading Sammy Davis, Jr.'s book Yes, I Can, the Pope's visit to New York is glimpsed on TV, and Time Magazine's famous "Is God Dead?" cover is shown on a waiting room table.

The Dakota

The hand-picked supporting cast includes especially solid performances by Patsy Kelly and Ralph Bellamy. Uncredited but in an acknowledged key role is The Dakota, a famed gothic confection at 72nd and Central Park West. The Dakota starred as the Bramford, and exteriors were shot there. Because filming was not allowed inside, its interiors were recreated at Paramount. Significantly, the film begins and ends with aerial views of the building.

In Rosemary's Baby, Roman Polanski combined the trademark elements of his style - atmospheric location, psychological distress, irony, dark humor, an endangered and isolated protagonist – with his penchant for craftsmanship and the high gloss afforded by Hollywood to create a classic that has developed a legend all its own over the years...

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The House That Jack Built




John Gilbert

  Estate was Home to Hollywood Notables for 55 Years

In the mid-1920s, when he was a top star at MGM, leading man John Gilbert built a house at 1400 Tower Grove Road in the Benedict Canyon area of Beverly Hills. A two-story Spanish-colonial with tennis court and swimming pool, the estate was on a narrow road that curled up a hill behind the Beverly Hills Hotel.


Gilbert’s daughter, Leatrice, then a young girl, remembered her father greeting her from the top of a long, red-tiled stairway when she arrived for her first visit to his home in the early 1930s. She recalled soft light filtering through high, leaded windowpanes as she climbed the steps.

During one of her visits, he showed her a secret panel in an alcove adjacent to the living room and a button hidden under one of the bookshelves. The button opened a door to a stairway that led to the basement. He told her there had been a bar in the basement before Prohibition was repealed.

1400 Tower Grove Rd., early '30s (click picture for larger view)

She recalled that one evening at sunset, while they walked up the hillside in back, her father warned her to keep an eye out for rattlesnakes... and Leatrice remembered that from the top of the hill you could see "all Los Angeles out to the ocean" and Santa Catalina Island on the horizon.  Leatrice later wrote that it was clear to her even as a child that her father loved the place.

When it was built, the first floor of the main house featured an entry area and a large space for entertaining. Blessed with stunning panoramic views, the second floor held the living room, dining room, kitchen, master bedroom and bath. Most rooms were furnished in 17th-Century Spanish reproductions, a style popular in Hollywood at the time.

Harold Grieve, a silent-era art and set decorator (Ben-Hur, The Thief of Bagdad, The Sea Wolf) who was a founder of AMPAS and later became an interior designer, worked on the home several times over several years.

Miriam Hopkins

Gilbert's wives and girlfriends were many, and his master bath and bedroom were redecorated as women came and went, according to Grieve. For example, when Greta Garbo came into the picture, Grieve installed walls and a sunken tub of black marble in the master bath. John Gilbert died in January 1936 and, soon after, actress Miriam Hopkins purchased the home and hired Grieve to redecorate it once more. The house was redone in the emerging Art Moderne style. The newly contemporary walls of Miss Hopkins’ living room provided a showcase for works from her art collection, paintings by artists such as Picasso, Renoir and Matisse. 

David O. Selznick and Jennifer Jones

The Tower Grove Road property's legend was enhanced with the arrival of its next resident, producer David O. Selznick, in 1945.

Selznick rented the house when he separated from his wife Irene (L. B. Mayer’s daughter) after he'd become involved with actress Jennifer Jones. Selznick purchased the property from Hopkins just before marrying Jones in 1949.

With this sale, the home was substantially remodeled.

Selznick/Jones grounds

 Plate-glass windows were installed to dramatize the views and bring indoors the lush beauty of the foliage surrounding the house. Another notable change, the addition of a first floor bedroom/dressing room for Jennifer Jones, featured a striking waterfall just outside her window that could be turned on and off with a switch.



Selznick/Jones home

The Selznicks hosted dinner parties, screened movies and lived a grand life on Tower Grove Road for twenty years, until David O. Selznick’s death in 1965.  Selznick's obituary in the New York Times reported that he had "lived in an elegantly rustic home on an estate atop a hill overlooking Beverly Hills." Jennifer Jones and their daughter remained there until 1969. The house was then sold to Ted Ashley, Chairman of the Board of Warner Bros., the man credited with overseeing one of the studio's most successful eras, 1969 - 1980. It was during Ashley’s residence that Leatrice Gilbert Fountain was invited into the home her father built, a place she had not visited since childhood. 

Ted Ashley, Jack Warner & Jack Valenti in 1969

 
Eight years later, in 1977, hit-maker Elton John bought the house. John’s style was more flamboyant and his taste included Art Deco and Art Moderne (echoes of Miriam Hopkins!). His master bedroom featured a wall covered in mirrors and another covered in ultrasuede. Not too unexpected for a rock star of the '70s, especially one famous for appearing on stage in outrageously over-the-top costumes.



Elton John in the 1970s

 In 1981 the house was sold to its first non-entertainment industry resident. The businessman who purchased it had apparently planned only to remodel, but structural problems were uncovered and the building was demolished to make way for an enormous mansion.

When John Gilbert lived on Tower Grove Road, other major stars like Harold Lloyd and Jean Harlow lived not far away. Today Jay Leno, Halle Berry and other 21st Century A-listers reside in the area.



Selznick/Jones study

 

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Light, Shadow and Synergy ~ von Sternberg and Dietrich, Part III

Scroll down for Parts I and II of Light, Shadow and Synergy...

In 1933, during a hiatus between studio contracts and filmmaking, Josef von Sternberg traveled to Germany to explore establishing Marlene Dietrich and himself at UFA, the studio where the two had made The Blue Angel three years earlier. Just as the director was returning to the U.S., recently appointed Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler suspended the German constitution and soon began revoking the citizenship of Jewish artists and scholars; not much later came the burning of books. Back in America, von Sternberg, an Austrian Jew, and his star signed on once more with Paramount where the director's new contract gave him almost complete autonomy over his films.

He later wryly reflected on his next (and last) two productions with Dietrich, “I completely subjugated my bird of paradise to my peculiar tendency to prove that a film might well be an art medium…”

Of the first of these, The Scarlet Empress (1934), von Sternberg recalled, “The film was, of course, a relentless excursion into style…the tapestry of the Russia of Catherine the Great was evoked in all its grandeur, though it was a re-creation not a replica…” 

The Scarlet Empress



"Based on a diary of Catherine II," von Sternberg’s re-creation follows the life of innocent young princess Sophia of Germany who is summoned to the Russian court to wed Grand Duke Peter (Sam Jaffe), a lunatic. Eventually adept at palace politics, the disillusioned royal wife (now called Catherine) becomes increasingly detached and power-obsessed, ultimately and victoriously seizing the throne in a coup. Along the way, she also becomes a powerful seductress whose countless lovers include a great number of soldiers in the Russian Army.

Von Sternberg’s re-imagining of events was so opulent and unusual that audiences and critics may have been put off by its byzantine iconography, Grimm’s Fairytale-esque characters and overt eroticism. The Scarlet Empress was unlike any of the many other Hollywood-produced historical spectacles of the era. Critic Robin Wood suspected that "ironic tragedy and a kind of macabre farce" were so closely bound within the tone of the film that audiences and critics simply weren't ready for it.

The Devil is a Woman (1935), reveals von Sternberg and Dietrich at the pinnacle of their partnership, though it, too, failed to connect. Von Sternberg, uncompromisingly expressive, produced a masterwork - audiences and critics and foreign governments be damned...
 

The Devil is a Woman

The film begins in turn-of-the-century Spain at the outset of a carnival. Arriving on the scene is exiled freedom fighter Antonio Galvan (Cesar Romero) who flirts with Concha Perez (Dietrich), the local femme fatale. A tryst is arranged but before they meet Galvan encounters old friend Don Pasqual (Lionel Atwill) who relates in humiliating detail, told in flashback, how his enchantment with Concha ruined him. Pasqual makes the younger man promise not to see Concha again but Galvan and the woman do meet and this sparks a duel between the two men. Concha and Galvan run away together but Concha proves to be...capricious.

The Devil is a Woman is a visual carnival. Von Sternberg saturates the screen in every scene with layer upon layer of filigree and texture (streamers, confetti, balloons, masks, scarves, veils, mantillas, sequins, bouquets, shutters, screens, baskets, stairways, archways, ironwork, birds, horses, sheep, trees, rain, mist, plumes of smoke). It is also a witty flamenco demonstrating the futility and absurdity of enslavement to superficial beauty and romantic ideals. Strains of Rimsky-Korsakov's "Capriccio Espagnol" punctuate this cruel and ironic tableau...

Dietrich portrays Concha, the spoiled and wily coquette, with an operatic flamboyance reflected in every gesture and inflection, in her makeup, costumes and coiffures. Lionel Atwill is at his best, and most notice that his performance as Pasqual is an artful take on von Sternberg himself. Cesar Romero is charming as the younger fool; Edward Everett Horton is a droll choice as the local governor.

As the production was ending, von Sternberg wrote a note to Dietrich about their final film, "My parting gift to you will be the greatest "Dietrich film" yet. In it, I give you all my talent. You will see the ultimate Dietrich and it will be your favorite of our seven films."

In the end, it was Dietrich's favorite film, not just among those she made with von Sternberg but of all her films; she felt it contained her best performance and showcased her at her most beautiful. But, she also remembered, “Josef von Sternberg’s decision, against my will, to terminate our collaboration – to which the studio executives probably also contributed – marked for me the beginning of a long series of mediocre films.”



Destry Rides Again

Dietrich, whose screen goddess persona became more fixed and formal (her daughter observed that her mother's image was no longer recreated but simply perpetuated), managed to rebound. In her autobiography Dietrich wrote that, in 1939, producer Joe Pasternak called her to say he was willing to take a risk and make a picture with her (she was by now "box office poison"). When told it was a Western, her instinctive reaction was to turn it down. However, she wrote, “Josef von Sternberg advised me to take the offer.” Her comeback in Destry Rides Again (1939) was one of the most dramatic in Hollywood history and she went on to become an enduring legend.

The Shanghai Gesture

Von Sternberg directed only a handful of films in his remaining career. Though a 1937 production of I, Claudius, starring Charles Laughton and Merle Oberon was promising, it was never completed; The Shanghai Gesture (1941) is the best known of his post-Dietrich films. The director's final film, Ana-ta-han (1953) was made in Japan, in Japanese with the director's own voice providing English narration.

Josef von Sternberg was fortunate enough to be "rediscovered" during his lifetime. The Devil is a Woman had become a "lost film." Pulled from circulation in 1935 under pressure from the government of Spain, all prints were thought to have been destroyed. But in 1959 the Venice Film Festival screened von Sternberg's own print; both film and filmmaker were showered with accolades. He became the subject of documentaries, wrote his idiosyncratic autobiography, Fun in a Chinese Laundry, and lectured on film at UCLA. Today his work is regularly studied in film programs and screened at festivals and retrospectives around the world.

Dietrich would always give von Sternberg full credit for her success, “I was nothing but pliable material on the infinitely rich palette of his ideas and imaginative faculties.”

Von Sternberg's assessment was slightly different, “I did not endow her with a personality that was not her own…I gave her nothing that she did not already have. What I did was to dramatize her attributes and make them visible for all to see...”


von Sternberg, Oberon and Laughton

Released this August by Criterion, 3 Silents by Josef von Sternberg  - the set includes his signature work of the late silent era - Underworld (1927), The Last Command (1928) and Docks of New York (1928).

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For a Liddypol Lad...

John Lennon would be turning 70 right about now...possibly a discomfiting thought for some baby-boomers, especially those who took to heart certain lyrics of the Who's "My Generation"..."I hope I die before I get old."

As fate would have it, John Lennon did die before he got old - he had just turned 40 when he was killed in 1980. But the years he lived were incredible, most of all the last 17, when he, as a Beatle and after, reigned as one the great icons of popular music and culture...

Most who are reading this are familiar with the story of the Beatles and I'm not going down that well-worn path, nor will I review/critique/analyze them or their astonishing music...this is about what I remember...

In my life, the period just before the Beatles exploded on the scene was one of deep sadness. This was late 1963 and President Kennedy had just been assassinated.

Sometime after Christmas that year we, my friends and I, began to hear about the Beatles (not Beetles). We knew there were four of them, they were from England, had long hair and were goodlooking ("cute"). Then one day a friend got his hands on a copy of "I Want to Hold Your Hand" and a group of us listened to it in one of the listening rooms of our school library. We played it again and again. I thought they sounded totally different, almost strange, but they had so much energy...and their harmonies reminded me of the Everly Brothers...

On a Sunday night early in February 1964 the Beatles made their first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. We were all watching. And when it was over...uncannily...the excitement, the elation didn't end. In some ways, looking back, it seems as though the planet had flipped on its axis that night. The Beatles were all anyone talked about at school or anywhere else for days...weeks ...months. Their records were all over the radio (and on our record players), one song after another..."I Want to Hold Your Hand," "She Loves You," "I Saw Her Standing There," "Please Please Me," "All My Loving," "Do You Want to Know a Secret," an endless stream of hits. Then, that summer their first movie, A Hard Day's Night, came out and was a popular and critical smash. To be young then was blissful.

I was so devoted to the band that when the editor of our local paper wrote a scathing editorial about them, ridiculing them, I was inspired to fire back a letter of my own. I worked hard to counter the editor's attack with some flair. It was printed and I was much admired at school (and even at home). It was a well-written response and I may have sounded older than my years...because one day I happened to overhear a couple of girls talking about it, not knowing I was nearby. One of the girls commented, "she didn't write that letter," referring to me...I broke in to set the record straight. And I received a letter from an older man in the area who, though not a Beatles fan, thought the editor had overreacted and congratulated me on what I'd written.

At first I didn't have a "favorite Beatle" even though having a favorite Beatle was de rigueur among young Beatle fans in those early days. But I loved "the Beatles" not John, Paul, George or Ringo individually. This would soon change. That spring I happened upon John's book, In His Own Write, at a local bookstore. He'd written most of it years earlier while still in art school, but it was published in April 1964. A collection of short stories and short poems accompanied by John's own drawings, it was irreverent, surreal, nonsensical. Perfect for the times and perfect for me. I had found my favorite Beatle and he was not only a rock 'n' roller, but intelligent, artistic and darkly funny...

John described himself in an introductory page of the book ("About the Awful"):

"I was bored on the 9th of Octover in 1940 when, I believe, the Nasties were still booming us led by Madolf Heatlump (he only had one). Anyway, they didn't get me. I attended varicous schools in Liddypol. And still didn't pass..."

The Beatles had kicked off their first U.S. tour with their appearances on Ed Sullivan in early 1964. A year and a half later, they made their second tour of the states. This time the tour included a city near me...San Diego, California.

...and so it was that I found myself at Balboa Stadium on Saturday night, August 28, 1965, for a Beatles concert. We'd gotten the expensive seats ($5.50 each), but were still were nowhere near the stage, which was ringed with policemen, as was the area in front of the stands. That was OK, though, I'd anticipated distance and obstacles and brought a pair of binoculars.

How do I describe the experience of being within 50 yards of my idols, the idols of my generation? Joy? Euphoria? Intoxication? I think I had an out-of-body experience...

The Beatles played for only about a half-hour, but it was a half-hour of songs I loved played by the band I worshipped. I remember "Ticket to Ride" best of all...but it was so hard to hear anything; their sound equipment was prehistoric and, of course, there was the screaming...those eerie deafening waves of high-pitched screams that never let up. The Beatles later admitted they couldn't hear themselves play, but you wouldn't have known it, they were having a great time on stage, performing and clowning around with each other.

Many years later I watched a film of the Beatles at Shea Stadium and it dawned on me that the New York concert, staged less than two weeks before San Diego, was essentially the same show I'd seen, the same songs, the same jackets...the same supernatural screaming. Seeing it was like going back to Balboa Stadium and reliving that night so long ago.

It might be a cliche to say that the Beatles changed my life, but they did, and their impact has been lifelong.

This weekend, in honor of John's 70th birthday, I'm going to be watching The Beatles Anthology...I'll borrow the boxed set I gave to one of their newer fans, an 18-year-old with impeccable taste (that's you, Nick), last Christmas.

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Light, Shadow and Synergy ~ von Sternberg and Dietrich, Part II

1931 began spectacularly for director Josef von Sternberg and actress Marlene Dietrich. Their first two films together, Morocco and the English language version of The Blue Angel, had both just opened in the U.S., creating a sensation...and big box office.

The 36-year-old von Sternberg, who during the silent era had been called "the young Austrian with a streak of genius," came into his own. Dietrich, at 29, finally achieved the fame that had eluded her during long years of lukewarm success in German films and cabarets. The two rushed into their next Paramount collaboration only weeks after Morocco wrapped.

Dishonored (1931) is a variation on the story of Mata Hari, a courtesan/spy of the World War I era. The film demonstrated von Sternberg's many talents; he directed and edited, wrote the story and composed original music for the film. More obvious to audiences gazing up from their theater seats, it showcased Dietrich's dazzling starpower.

As her screen persona assumed more irony and nuance, Dietrich the actress continued to evolve. Incredibly, she also seemed to grow ever more beautiful. The "painterly" von Sternberg, master of mise en scene, offers two particularly fine renderings in Dishonored: a Viennese streamer-and-balloon festooned masked ball and the film's final moments when Dietrich makes her way from a prison cell to a firing squad (see sidebar at right to watch).

By the time their fourth film was in production, Dietrich was becoming what Paramount had hoped for and MGM had feared, a formidable alternative to Garbo. Shanghai Express (1932), would become the most successful of the seven von Sternberg/Dietrich films.

Shanghai Express has been called "a vertible Grand Hotel on rails," the story of a group of passengers traveling through dangerous, war-torn China. Within this tale, the film is a fatalistic meditation on love, illusion and betrayal, and is one of von Sternberg's finest. The director overlooks no detail in the expression of his cinematic vision, with every shadow, texture, gesture and sound meshing precisely. The focal point of this deeply atmospheric excursion is, of course, Dietrich...in veils, feathers, ruffles, silk, chiffon and fur...mocking, sensual and other-worldly at the same time.



Shanghai Express, on the set


Thirty years later the director looked back and reflected that he didn't visit China until after he had made Shanghai Express. He mused, "The actual Shanghai Express, which I...took out of Peking, was thoroughly unlike the train I had invented, except that it, too, carried a protecting complement of armed military. I was more than pleased that I had delineated a China before being confronted with its vast and variegated reality. There is quite a difference between fact and fancy." He added, "I became more and more partial to fancy as I proceeded to make a fifth film with my fair lady..."

That film was Blonde Venus (1932). Though it has been called "a picaresque potboiler," it is, like all the films of the auteur and the legend, visually intoxicating. Among its charms are Dietrich in a fantastical and iconic musical number, "Hot Voodoo," and a young Cary Grant in one of his early major roles (months before She Done Him Wrong was released). Grant was well-matched with Dietrich, closer to Gary Cooper in Morocco than Victor McLaglen (Dishonored) or Clive Brook (Shanghai Express).

By 1932 the Great Depression had deepened, Paramount was in bankruptcy and von Sternberg's champion, studio head B.P. Schulberg, was no longer in power. The director, with his and Dietrich's studio contracts ending, announced that he would retire - to paint and read and build a house designed by architect Richard Neutra. But...he was also meeting privately with Jesse Lasky, who had moved from Paramount to Fox, and Charles Chaplin of United Artists.

For her part, Dietrich stated that she would never make pictures in the U.S. with anyone but Jo. If he retired she intended to return to Europe and the stage, she said, but she scoffed at charges that von Sternberg was her Svengali..."People have said he casts a spell over me. That is ridiculous...Can you think of anyone casting a spell over me?"

Part III to follow...scroll down for Part I...

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