"Errol Flynn Adventures" - DVD Boxed Set Giveaway and More...

Memorial Day weekend is just a few days away and in commemoration of this special holiday, The Lady Eve's Reel Life is giving away a copy of the DVD boxed set Errol Flynn Adventures from TCM Spotlight/Warner Home Video.

A collection of five World War II actioners, the set includes Flynn’s own favorite of his films, Objective Burma! (1945), directed by Raoul Walsh. Three more Walsh/Flynn collaborations are included in the set: Desperate Journey (1942), Northern Pursuit (1943) and Uncertain Glory (1944), along with Lewis Milestone’s Edge of Darkness (1943).

Objective Burma! (1945)

Extras were carefully chosen to accompany each film, “like the pre-show at the neighborhood Bijou,” as the packaging puts it, with “newsreels, trailers and short subjects…each selection from the film’s release year.”

To enter, send an e-mail with “Flynn Adventures” in the subject line to ladyevesidwich@gmail.com. Include your name, address and e-mail. Entries must be received by Noon PDT on Monday, May 30, 2011.

UPDATE:  A winner was selected in a random drawing at  Noon PDT on May 30. Congratulations to "Captain Gregg," a member of TCM's Classic Film Union who learned of the giveaway through that site. Thanks to all who participated, I hope to do more contests like this one in the future.

This boxed set retails for $39.99 on Amazon and has a 4 ½ star rating from the site’s customers. From Amazon’s editorial review: “Unlike so many boxed-set tributes to actors, this one's actually got a tight, logical theme: Errol Flynn Adventures offers five World War II pictures made at Warner Bros. during Flynn's reign as a top leading man. Four of the films were directed by one of Flynn's favored collaborators, the robust Raoul Walsh, and all of them have an urgent wartime commitment that puts them in a zone between entertainment and propaganda.” For a full review of this boxed set by CMBA member Classic Becky, click here.

This boxed set is an unopened review copy provided by Warner Home Video, and The Lady Eve’s Reel Life is not responsible for any defects or other product or packaging glitches.

~

Errol Flynn was born in Hobart, Tasmania in 1909. His father was a biologist and professor and his mother was descended from a long line of seafarers who claimed an ancestor who served on the HMS Bounty.

Errol Flynn, circa 1923

Always a handful (a handsome, athletic handful), young Errol set off to seek his fortune in New Guinea in the late 1920s. His exploits there are open to debate due to his habit of embellishing his adventures, but it’s generally agreed that Flynn found various ways to make a living, from government service to slave trading. One of these many endeavors led to his life as a film star.

The story goes that in the early '30s filmmakers employed by the Australian government ventured to New Guinea to make a record of the territory. Flynn agreed to take them through uncharted waters on his boat. As the skipper of the vessel, he was often on camera. A while later Flynn received a telegram from Australian producer Charles Chauvel who offered him £50 plus expenses to travel to Tahiti and star in a film. It was a friend of Chauvel's who'd shot the government footage and word had gotten around that the "pilot" of the expeditionary boat had star potential. Flynn took the opportunity and starred as Fletcher Christian in In the Wake of the Bounty (1933). He was billed as Leslie Flynn.

A few adventures later Flynn arrived in London in pursuit of an acting career. It didn't take too much time but it took a lot of bravado for him to land the lead in Teddington Studio's production of Murder at Monte Carlo (1935) directed by Ralph Ince (younger brother of Hollywood pioneer Thomas and actor/director John). His performance prompted the head of the studio to cable Jack Warner: "WE HAVE HELL OF PERSONALITY HERE SUGGEST SIGN HIM FOR HOLLYWOOD FILM." Warner responded, "AGREE YOUR SUGGESTION."

Swashbuckling!

Flynn's first appearance in an American film was as a cadaver in The Case of the Curious Bride (1935). In his next film, Don't Bet on Blondes (1935), he had a speaking part. His third film and a starring role came about because Robert Donat dropped out. The movie was Captain Blood (1935) and it made Errol Flynn a star. His stardom grew with The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), The Dawn Patrol (1938), Dodge City (1939), The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939), The Sea Hawk (1941) and several other box office hits. Classified 4F and unable to serve in the war (a status Warner Bros. did not publicize), Flynn was cast in a series of World War II films - highlighted by Objective Burma! (1945). He delivered one of his finest performances cast against type in That Forsyte Woman (1948).

A high-profile movie star, Flynn's reputation as an epic womanizer, drinker and brawler was well-known and well-earned. His career waned and he aged rapidly in the 1950s, but he continued to work until the time of his death. His last major studio effort was John Huston's adaptation of Romain Gary's The Roots of Heaven (1958). His very last film, Cuban Rebel Girls (1959), co-starred his 17-year-old girlfriend, Beverly Aadland.

Flynn died in 1959 at age 50. He left behind a widow, two ex-wives and four children. Sean Flynn was born in 1941 to Errol Flynn and his first wife, actress Lily Damita. Sean, who resembled his father, had a brief movie career during the early 1960s.  By the mid-60s he'd become a freelance photojournalist and went on to cover the Arab-Israeli war and the war in Vietnam. He disappeared in Cambodia in 1970 with photojournalist Dana Stone, on assignment for CBS News and Time magazine. The two are presumed dead. Sean Flynn would have celebrated his 70th birthday this May 31.

Errol and Sean Flynn

Sean Flynn

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CMBA Movies of 1939 Blogathon - The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex

“In 1939, I secured my career and my stardom forever. I made five pictures in twelve months and every one of them was successful.” Bette Davis was referring to the string of movies she made in rapid succession, beginning with The Sisters in 1938 and followed by four more the next year – Dark Victory, Juarez, The Old Maid and The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex. If 1939 was a watershed year for Hollywood, it was, too, for the actress who was about to begin her reign as America’s top film actress.

Of Human Bondage (1934)

Bette Davis spent most of the first half of the 1930s making her way through a series of mostly dreary film assignments, first for Universal and then for Warner Bros. Her startling performance in RKO's Of Human Bondage (1934) changed the course of her career. She won her first Best Actress Oscar for a downbeat role in Dangerous (1935), and her second for her turn as a headstrong Southern belle in Jezebel (1938).

Maxwell Anderson’s Elizabeth, the Queen, a historical drama written in blank verse a la Shakespeare, opened on Broadway in 1930. It starred Lynn Fontanne and Alfred Lunt and ran for 147 performances. The production and Fontanne’s portrayal of Elizabeth I were legendary. Eight years after the play closed, an adaptation would make its way to the screen.

Based on events of Elizabeth’s late years, the story follows her relationship with the much younger Earl of Essex. After a victory against Spain at Cadiz, Essex returns to England a hero. Ambitious and overconfident, he is a favorite of the queen. However, the two are often at odds; she favors measured statesmanship and he is for bold action; both have a taste for power. Not surprisingly, the Earl is unpopular with the queen’s advisors who maneuver him into leading an ill-fated intervention in Ireland. Essex fails and returns to England in disgrace. Unable to bear ignominy, he attempts to raise a rebellion against the queen. This ends badly for Essex. 



Elizabeth I by Hans Holbein

When Bette Davis learned that producer Hal Wallis bought Anderson’s play for her, she was elated. “Elizabeth was my tankard of tea,” she later recalled. Familiar with the Broadway production and Fontanne’s performance, she saw in the part an exciting opportunity as well as a real challenge. Davis was only 31 at the time and she would be portraying Elizabeth in her 60s. Additionally, the script primarily consisted of complex blank verse dialogue. As was typical of her, Davis threw herself into the project completely. She began extensive research on the Elizabethan period and monarchy, and she was happily surprised when she saw in Holbein's portraits of Elizabeth a resemblance between herself and the queen.

Davis campaigned for Laurence Olivier to be cast in the role of Essex. “He was perfect for the part…he was arrogant, beautiful, virile and talented,” she remembered years afterward. Olivier was in between Wuthering Heights (1939) and Rebecca (1940) at the time, but Jack Warner wasn’t enthusiastic. Olivier was not yet a star in the U.S. (though he was on the very brink) and Warner felt the film required a box office powerhouse equal to Davis. The adaptation of Anderson’s play was a big picture for Warners in 1939 and Jack Warner wanted Errol Flynn, the studio’s hottest leading man, for Essex. Flynn had completed The Adventures of Robin Hood, The Dawn Patrol and Dodge City all within the past year and was at the height of his popularity. Davis was not convinced. She did not think Flynn had the experience to cope with blank verse or the professionalism to work at it. But Warner prevailed; Flynn it would be. Davis was deeply disappointed. Perhaps the fact that Flynn was being paid twice as much as she amplified her disappointment…

Bette Davis and Michael Curtiz on the set

Warner Bros. veteran Michael Curtiz was tapped to direct. Though Curtiz and Flynn collaborated on several popular films, the dynamic between them was not ideal. Curtiz viewed  Flynn as little more than a blank slate, referring to the actor as “my beautiful puppet.” On the other hand, Davis put up with nothing from Curtiz on this set, she would not  forgive or forget his dismissive treatment of her before she was a star.

The supporting cast was steeped in solid character actors: Donald Crisp, Henry Daniell, Vincent Price, Henry Stephenson, Leo G. Carroll, Alan Hale and James Stephenson. Olivia de Havilland appeared intermittently and young Nanette Fabray (Fabares) made an affecting screen debut as ladies in waiting.

Though Davis anticipated the film and her role as “a dream come true,” the production did not go smoothly.

It might seem logical that in making a film of a famed stage drama, the name of the play would remain intact. But Flynn did not like it that his character was not mentioned in the title and insisted on a change. The Knight and the Lady was proposed. For Davis, whose character was the centerpiece of the drama, that was unacceptable. The Lady and the Knight was offered as an option. No one liked this, including Davis. The success of Alexander Korda’s The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), an Oscar-winner for Charles Laughton, inspired the film’s eventual title.

Bette Davis and Errol Flynn

When Olivia de Havilland arrived to begin work, she was still doing retakes for Gone With the Wind. She claimed that she wasn’t ready to start, she couldn’t play two characters at the same time. Jack Warner convinced her, at least to some extent, that she could.

Davis insisted on authentic costume design, but Curtiz thought that authentic costumes would be “too much for the camera” and wanted them scaled down. According to Davis, designer Orry-Kelly made two complete sets of Elizabeth’s costumes – the first conforming to Curtiz’s edict, the second historically accurate. Davis tested in the first set and played her role in the second. “Tricky is the determined female,” she later mused.

Makeup artist Perc Westmore worked closely with Bette Davis to achieve Elizabeth’s age and appearance. He remarked on her dedication to the part but said that he had to walk a fine line to create what Davis wanted while not exceeding what Jack Warner would tolerate.

As it turned out, Davis’s concerns about Errol Flynn were well-founded. Notes in the film’s production reports mention the actor’s difficulty with the dialogue. Flynn apparently protested, “I can’t remember lines like that,” and screenwriters Aeneas MacKenzie and Norman Reilly Raine simplified his lines by rewriting them out of verse.

In one famous scene (and infamous incident), Davis gave Flynn a hearty slap across the face with her heavily jeweled hand. Flynn called it a “right hook” and reportedly never forgave her for it. Davis did not seem to think she’d done anything out of character…

Orry-Kelly, Perc Westmore, art director Anton Grot and cinematographer/d.p. Sol Polito, all masters of their respective cinematic arts, worked inspired magic. Polito was especially valuable on the production for his wizardry with Technicolor.

Anton Grot’s lavish sets are an eyeful. At times Elizabeth seems to exist as if within an enormous chest of jewels, so surrounded is she by plush shades of amethyst, turquoise, ruby, emerald and gold. And Grot creates an evocative mood...in vaulted candle-lit chambers, a massive fireplace blazes and flickering shadows leap across dim walls.

Art Director Anton Grot

Anton Grot dominated art direction at Warner Bros. from the late '20s through the 1940s and is often credited for the realism of "the Warner Bros. look" of the 1930s. He was known for his interest in the expressive qualities of light on film, and his work was influenced by European modernism. Nominated for five competitive Oscars, Grot was given a special technical achievement award in 1940 for his design of a "water ripple and wave illusion machine." His films include Little Caesar, Anthony Adverse, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Captain Blood, and Mildred Pierce. The UCLA Library houses a collection of Grot's original sketches (see below and click here to see more).

Anton Grot's sketch of the court of Elizabeth I

Bette Davis in an intriguing performance is the finest of the film's fine qualities. In his Great Stars monograph on the actress, David Thomson wrote of Davis that she "often moves like a beast fearful of being leashed." As Elizabeth, her erratic gestures and movements, her voice and her eyes are alive with frustration and exasperation, insecurity and rage. At times she seems to prowl the queen's quarters like a caged cat. Davis captures the spirit of a weary but wily and indomitable monarch, a woman trapped in the power she has fought hard to hold.

While I don't think Flynn was up to this script, it isn't hard to imagine an aging queen (or any woman) falling victim to his many obvious charms. It's true that Olivier's brooding charisma along with his mastery of Shakespeare might've made for a compelling Essex - and I'm very sure he would have held his own with Bette Davis. But many among the film's cast and technical crew were veterans of Curtiz/Flynn action adventures and that may have something to do with why, overall, Elizabeth and Essex plays as a slightly off-balance marriage between historical drama and swashbuckling epic.

The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex was a moneymaker for Warner Bros. Variety reported, “Bette Davis dominates the production at every turn…” and pointed out it was the first picture to be released using fast new Technicolor methods. The picture's "slow spots" were discounted as minor shortcomings.

Bette Davis and Errol Flynn

Frank S. Nugent of the New York Times, voicing a complaint common among critics that Flynn was a weak Essex, observed that Davis delivered “a strong, resolute, glamour-skimping characterization against which Mr. Flynn’s Essex has about as much chance as a beanshooter against a tank.”

Bette Davis needed a rest at this point. “I weighed 80 pounds when I discarded Bess’s ruff and hoop for the last time. I was really exhausted. I knew I must take a holiday and recharge the battery…”

The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex received five Academy Award nominations - for art direction, color cinematography, special effects, music score and sound recording. Davis was nominated for Dark Victory instead.

Nominated for art direction, cinematography, effects, score and sound

Forty years after the film’s release, the actress told a biographer, “I have very mixed emotions when I see it.” She questioned whether she had, young as she was at the time, enough life experience to draw upon for the role. And she admitted that she had “secretly” been a bit unsure about playing Elizabeth.

In her 1962 autobiography, A Lonely Life, Bette Davis recalled a moment that stood out in her memory of the production. One day Charles Laughton visited the set. It was her first meeting with an actor she admired very much.

“Hi, Pop,” she greeted him, playfully referring to his role as Henry VIII.

“Ah, it’s my favorite daughter,” he replied.

As they talked, Bette mentioned that perhaps she had a lot of nerve to be trying to play Elizabeth. Laughton’s response was something she never forgot.

“Never stop daring to hang yourself, Bette,” he told her.

~

Click here for a full list of links to blogs participating in CMBA's "Classic Movies of 1939" blogathon.

The Classic Movie Blog Association honored this post with the 2011 CiMBA award for Best Film Review (Drama)

Sources:
The Lonely Life (1962) by Bette Davis, The Girl Who Walked Home Alone: Bette Davis, A Personal Biography (2006) by Charlotte Chandler, Dark Victory : The Life of Bette Davis (2007) by Ed Sikov, Bette Davis (2009) by David Thomson (Great Stars series)

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EN ROUTE TO ELYSIAN FIELDS

When playwright Tennessee Williams decided to pick up where he left off on the play-in-progress he called The Poker Night, it was 1946 and he was comfortably ensconced in New Orleans in a French Quarter apartment overflowing with fine antiques.

Less than a year earlier, Williams's The Glass Menagerie had opened on Broadway. With this play, in the words of playwright Arthur Miller, Williams "lifted lyricism to its highest level in our theatre's history." But Williams struggled before this success came, suffering lean years after winning a special prize given by The Group Theatre in 1938. Though he had received grants, gotten a play produced and even been under contract as an MGM screenwriter during those years, none of it had panned out. His play Battle of Angels, starring Miriam Hopkins, previewed in Boston to good reviews, but created a furor and closed. He flopped at MGM, unwilling or unable to create "a celluloid brassiere for Lana Turner."

Laurette Taylor, star of The Glass Menagerie

It was in 1943 while visiting his family in St. Louis, that Williams began work on a play he called The Gentleman Caller. He became the toast of Broadway in 1945 when the play, retitled The Glass Menagerie, opened to rave reviews and was voted the best play of the year by The New York Drama Critics Circle. During the play's run Williams put together a poker game in order to learn and understand a game that would figure in a story that had begun to form in his mind.

A lifelong wayfarer, Williams had spent time in The Big Easy before and found it a most congenial city. When he returned to linger for a while in 1946, he quickly settled into a regular routine. Writing throughout the early part of the day, he would need a breather by afternoon and head for a favorite nearby watering hole. There he indulged in the bar's specialty, a Brandy Alexander, and played the jukebox until it was time to get something to eat and, later, go for a swim.

Hotel La Concha, Key West

Williams was in the midst of his work on the play when his grandfather, the Rev. Walter Edwin Dakin, arrived in New Orleans for a visit. Widowed, nearing 90 and nearly blind, the beloved old man had been living in some distress at the home of Williams's parents. The playwright decided to take a break from dreary weather and go on a motor trip to Florida with his grandfather. They eventually reached Key West and took a suite at the top of the Hotel La Concha. Here Williams continued to work in earnest on completing his play. Exuberant spirit that he was, he took time to party with friends in the area, Miriam Hopkins and Ernest Hemingway's ex-wife Martha among them. It wasn't until he returned to New Orleans that Williams completed his final draft of The Poker Night and sent it to his literary agent.

~

Irene Mayer Selznick had been a true Hollywood princess. Her father, Louis B. Mayer, was the head of MGM for more than 25 years, and Irene and her older sister Edie were the only children of L.B. and his first wife, Margaret. The girls' lives were incredibly charmed as well as profoundly sheltered.

Irene and Edie both married in 1930, their weddings only weeks apart. Irene's husband was David O. Selznick, the movie-making wunderkind who later headed his own studio and masterminded the production of Gone With the Wind and the career of Jennifer Jones.

 

L.B. Mayer had famously remarked that Irene could've run MGM...if only she'd been a boy. What Irene did run for many years was the complex Selznick household, the at-home version of Selznick's studio...an opulent, frenetically busy 24-hour operation. Selznick may have lived to make movies, but he also gambled, womanized, popped speed and swilled alcohol at a breakneck pace. By 1945, Irene had had enough. Late one night her husband turned to her in bed and asked why she was still awake - she blurted that the the jig was up and she wanted out...then promptly rolled over and fell asleep.

Irene and David Selznick

Though she and David Selznick didn't immediately divorce and her father tried to induce her to stay on the West Coast with a high level job at MGM, Irene relocated to New York. She had dreams of becoming a theatrical producer and, on the advice of good friend Moss Hart, rented an office and hired a general manager. Her first outing was the production of an Arthur Laurents play, Heartsong, starring Shirley Booth. The play closed in Philadelphia but evolved over the years (and with another title) into a Broadway hit that still later became David Lean's Summertime (1955) with Katharine Hepburn.

Irene's first production may not have made it to Broadway, but she was noticed. Soon after, she heard from literary agent Audrey Wood who told her, "My most cherished and important client has a play I would like to put in your hands. It is his best play yet. His name is Tennessee Williams." Irene received the script on her 40th birthday.

Wood, aware of Irene's inexperience but appreciative of her taste, dedication and connections, cajoled and coaxed and eventually arranged for her to meet Williams in Charleston, South Carolina. The playwright asked the up-and-coming producer if she preferred the play's original title, The Poker Night, or the one he was presently considering. And he asked her about the newer title - did she prefer "called desire" or "named desire"? The encounter had begun with both parties ill-at-ease, but in the end contracts were signed and the pair was set to embark on the original production of A Streetcar Named Desire.

~

Irene Mayer Selznick, Elia Kazan and Tennesee Williams

Irene returned to New York and Tennessee soon followed. Once he arrived he methodically made his way around to town to check on the latest plays. After he'd seen Arthur Miller's All My Sons, his heart was set on Elia Kazan, the play's director, for Streetcar. Irene was originally familiar with Kazan as an actor, having seen his breakout performance in the 1935 production of Clifford Odets's Waiting for Lefty. Kazan had begun to direct major stage productions in the early 1940s. Irene sent him the Streetcar script and he turned it down. Influenced by his wife, Molly Day Thacher, who had been instrumental in discovering and championing Tennessee Williams, and the lucrative contract he was offered, he reconsidered.

 

Bette Davis was Irene's first choice for the role of Blanche Dubois, the female lead, but she was unavailable. Margaret Sullavan was considered, but Williams didn't think she was right for the part, he "kept picturing her with a tennis racquet in one hand." Fay Bainter's name came up and Kazan apparently mentioned Mary Martin, but it was through Williams that the play's leading lady was found.

Jessica Tandy as Blanche Dubois

Actor Hume Cronyn, a financial supporter of Williams in his early days on the scene, had recently produced and directed four one-act plays at The Actor's Lab in Hollywood. Three were by Williams and one of them, Portrait of a Madonna, starred Cronyn's wife, Jessica Tandy. Cronyn arranged to have this play staged for Williams when he, Irene and Kazan were on the West Coast. All three attended and were astonished by Tandy's performance. She was quickly signed to play Blanche. For the primary supporting roles, Karl Malden was the only actor considered for the part of Mitch, and Irene suggested Kim Hunter for the role of Stella.

John Garfield was everyone's first choice for the male lead, Stanley Kowalski. The actor had worked steadily on the New York stage before venturing to Hollywood in the late '30s. His screen career began with a star-making turn in Michael Curtiz's Four Daughter's (1938). In 1947 Garfield was about to begin production on Kazan's film adaptation of A Gentleman's Agreement. He would be available afterward and was interested in the play - but his demands proved to be too great.

Next to be offered the role was youthful Burt Lancaster who had just debuted onscreen in Robert Siodmak's The Killers (1946). Though Lancaster didn't take the role, he later told Irene that he'd "yearned" to. Other actors considered for the part included Van Heflin, Edmund O'Brien and...Gregory Peck.



Marlon Brando (center) in I Remember Mama

23-year old Marlon Brando had been a busy young actor since his first major stage role in I Remember Mama. He appeared in Antigone with Cedric Hardwicke, gained notice in Maxwell Anderson's Truckline Café, co-starred in a revival of Candida with Katharine Cornell and appeared in Ben Hecht's A Flag is Born with Paul Muni. In 1946 he was voted Broadway's Most Promising Newcomer. According to Brando, Harold Clurman, who directed him in Truckline Café, suggested him to Kazan for Streetcar. But neither Kazan nor Irene were completely convinced and the final decision was left to the playwright. After spending time with Brando, Williams was ebullient and the actor was hired; he was the last of the principals to be cast. Williams later compared the "luminous power" of Brando's onstage charisma to that of Laurette Taylor who had dazzled as the star of The Glass Menagerie.

When the play opened in New Haven, Louis B. Mayer was there. Irene hadn't wanted to be distracted by his presence and tried to discourage him - to no avail. Despite technical difficulties, the consensus was that Streetcar had played well. But Irene was disappointed at the lack of excitement expressed by the group gathered in her hotel room after the show. She recalled that there was "too much respect floating around and not enough enthusiasm." Then her father asked to speak with her privately. He told her "you don't have a hit, you've got a smash...you wait and see," then he told her to go back to her guests - but not to listen to them.

A Streetcar Named Desire premiered on Broadway at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre on December 3, 1947 and was an instant sensation, receiving a standing ovation that lasted for half an hour. Jessica Tandy, who was universally singled out in the opening night reviews, won a Tony Award, the play was voted the best play of 1948 by the New York Drama Critics Circle and Tennessee Williams won the 1948 Pulitzer Prize for Drama. Streetcar ran for two years and 855 performances and it was the last play of Marlon Brando's theatrical career. The actor soon left for Hollywood, enormous fame and a long, erratic, if often brilliant, film career.

In 1949 Laurence Olivier directed Streetcar on London's West End. Vivien Leigh starred as Blanche with Bonar Colleano as Stanley.

Marlon Brando and Vivien Leigh

When the play was adapted to film in 1951, all the Broadway principals were retained except Jessica Tandy. The role of Blanche went to Vivien Leigh. Years later Karl Malden observed, "If Jessica had played it, I wouldn't have been in the movie and neither would Kim Hunter. Because Jessica was no star, and neither was Brando. But Vivien, who after Gone With the Wind was the biggest thing you ever saw - she could carry us all." Kazan, who accepted the casting of Leigh, remembered, "She had a small talent, but the greatest determination to excel of any actress I've known." Brando thought Leigh was a perfect Blanche because, "...in many ways she was Blanche." Kazan allowed that her emerging psychological problems may have been an asset to her performance as the disintegrating belle, and Leigh later said that the grueling role had tipped her into madness.

Elements of the play, particularly the seamy details of Blanche's past, were toned down or altered for the film, but Kazan was able to preserve the integrity of Williams's creation, masterfully translating its dark poetry and palpable sensuality to the screen. Streetcar was much celebrated, nominated for twelve Academy Awards and winner of four - including a Best Actress award to Vivien Leigh. It is considered the classic among film adaptations of Williams's work.

~

More than 35 years later Irene Mayer Selznick would look back and reflect on that spectacular evening when A Streetcar Named Desire opened in New York. For all that the play's success meant to her that night, she did not foresee the impact it was about to have. With her first Broadway production, she became an established, sought-after theatrical producer. The play, she remembered, made Elia Kazan "a king" and changed forever the lives of all four of its principal players. Most fittingly, she wrote, "it gave Tennessee enduring glory."

March 26, 2011 marked the 100th anniversary of the birth of Tennessee Williams. The University of Texas at Austin, home of the Williams archive, is presenting "Becoming Tennessee Williams" from February 1 - July 21. The exhibit includes manuscripts, correspondence, photos and artwork. Click here to learn more.

Sources:

Memoirs (1975) by Tennessee Williams
A Private View (1983) by Irene Mayer Selznick
The Kindness of Strangers (1985) by Donald Spoto
Songs My Mother Taught Me (1994) by Marlon Brando
Elia Kazan (2005) by Richard Schickel

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Marlene Dietrich Gets Personal in Charlotte Chandler's New Biography

Prolific biographer Charlotte Chandler has written on the life of a different film legend every year for the past 6 years, beginning with It's Only a Movie: Alfred Hitchcock in 2005. Her latest, Marlene, has just been published by Simon & Schuster.

Chandler's biographies are based on personal interviews. She includes filmography and career details, but her style is to convey the story of a life in the first-person as much as possible, using the subject's own words. This conversational approach gives the reader a sense of being in the room, listening in, as the story of a remarkable life unfolds.

Groucho Marx

The author's career as a biographer began with Hello, I Must Be Going: Groucho and His Friends in 1978. Written during Marx's lifetime but published not long after his death, it became a bestseller. Chandler returned to the genre years later with her 1995 Fellini biography, I, Fellini. But it was with her first book for Simon & Schuster in 2002, Nobody's Perfect: Billy Wilder, that Charlotte Chandler’s biographies became frequent and consistently titled, each with the annotation "A Personal Biography."

Who is Charlotte Chandler? Her Simon & Schuster bio is sketchy - we are told that she has written many bios, lives in New York and is on the board of the Film Society of Lincoln Center. The back cover of Hello, I Must Be Going includes a picture of Chandler with Groucho who sits at a piano. Her biography of Alfred Hitchcock contains photos of Chandler with the director as well as his daughter, Pat. The dust jackets of Chandler’s biographies are strewn with the praise of film world luminaries: Isabella Rossellini, Michael Caine, Jack Nicholson, Pat Hitchcock, director Michelangelo Antonioni, producer David Brown and others. Vanity Fair, which has published excerpts of many of her books, proclaims that Chandler “sets the gold standard for celeb bios.”

In a recent interview with Kirkus Reviews, Chandler was asked how she managed to gain access to so many of the most famous, and often famously difficult, stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age. About Groucho Marx she recalled that someone had given her his phone number, she called and, though Groucho refused to be interviewed, he invited Chandler to dinner. Then, over dinner, Groucho asked why she hadn't been taking notes on their conversation. It was Groucho who later introduced her to Billy Wilder.  Henri Langlois, film archivist and founder of the Cinématheque Française, introduced Chandler to Hitchcock, Mary Meerson, also of the Cinématheque Française, introduced her to Dietrich, director George Cukor introduced her to Katharine Hepburn…and Bette Davis, ever the formidable outlier, called Chandler herself, the only one of the author's subjects to do so. 

Douglas Fairbanks, Jr.

Connections abound between Chandler's subjects, most of whom knew and worked with each other, and occasionally one story will overlap into another. For example, Marlene Dietrich and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. had an affair that lasted for years, and the gentleman had many memories of her. He told Chandler about a series of miniature nudes he sculpted of Marlene and how he eventually decapitated all of them to protect her reputation in the event of his demise. This anecdote is told in detail in the Dietrich biography. It is also woven into the Hitchcock biography, in abridged form, in a section on Stage Fright.

Fairbanks was the friend of many film legends and a substantial resource for Chandler; he is quoted in each of the biographies of hers that I’ve read (Bette Davis, Dietrich, Katharine Hepburn, Hitchcock). Equally well-connected and forthcoming was George Cukor, who is quoted in the Davis, Hepburn and Hitchcock books. What I wouldn’t give to have access to the stack of notes and tapes Chandler must have made over the years…

Charlotte Chandler met Marlene Dietrich in 1977, when the legendary star was 76 years old and living in Paris. Dietrich’s greeting to her future biographer was, “I don’t mind meeting you because you didn’t know me before, when I was young and very beautiful.” Moments later she added, “It can be a curse being beautiful, after a certain point, as it slips away…”

Dietrich in the 1940s

I have read and watched much about Marlene Dietrich, from her memoirs (Marlene, 1990), to various biographies, including her daughter Maria's lurid opus, to Josef von Sternberg’s eccentric autobiography (Fun in a Chinese Laundry, 1965), the page on the CIA’s website about Dietrich’s work during World War II and Maximillian Schell’s Oscar-nominated documentary (Marlene, 1984). I have to admit that I had something of a “tell me something I don’t know” attitude before I sat down with Chandler’s book. She did.

There are revelations large and small of all kinds...Dietrich's mad plot to kill Hitler, details of her introduction to Ernest Hemingway on the Île de France, the lie she told JFK about his father...Dietrich's memory of her grandmother’s lavender eyes, her habit of giving her hand-me-downs to husband Rudi's mistress...her hatred of knitting because it reminded her of World War I in Germany.

Chandler knows how to set a scene and tell a story. She nimbly leads the reader through Dietrich’s early years, the arc of her career, her personal life and into her late years, when she “closed the door” and retreated inside the rooms of her small apartment across from the Hôtel Plaza Athénée in Paris. Among the many voices heard of those who knew Dietrich at different points in her life and career are her one-time arranger and accompanist, Burt Bacharach and her friend and fellow Paramount star, Mae West.

 

Maria and Marlene, early '50s

Maria Riva is Dietrich's only child, and Riva's own sensationalistic 787 page version of her mother's life was published shortly after Dietrich's death. Maria is not a direct source for Chandler's book but her youngest son David, who produced and directed a documentary on Dietrich in 2001, speaks at length. His references to his mother as an "Emmy-winning actress" caught my eye - I'd not heard this before and checked the Emmy website. Maria is listed as having been nominated for a Best Actress Emmy in 1952 and 1953. However, Imogene Coca won in 1952 and Helen Hayes won in 1953.

Charlotte Chandler remarked to Kirkus Reviews that Marlene Dietrich had originally been perceived as "another Garbo" very early in her Hollywood career. It happened that Dietrich came to Hollywood as talkies were coming in and MGM was carefully transitioning Garbo, its great star, to sound. When Morocco and The Blue Angel struck box office gold, Paramount saw in Dietrich its opportunity to trump MGM and Garbo. The two actresses were to have distinctly different careers, though both were deemed "box office poison" (along with Katharine Hepburn and others) in the late '30s. However, no one imagined that Dietrich’s film career would outlast Garbo’s (or anyone else's) by several decades or that she would successfully reinvent herself as a high-ticket stage performer.

Chandler told Kirkus that though she didn't interview her, she did meet Garbo. Her impression was that Garbo was too bitter about the past to make a good interview. Asked if she thought Dietrich also became bitter, Chandler responded, “not at all. She loved what happened to her," adding that Dietrich hadn’t expected any of it and “she felt she owed her great life to Josef von Sternberg,” her mentor and the director of seven of her most memorable films.

I enjoy Charlotte Chandler's uniquely readable biographies. I've read more heavily documented books (the fascinating Barry Paris tome on Louise Brooks comes to mind) and books concerned almost solely with a life on film (David Thomson's excellent "Great Stars" series entry on Bette Davis), but for a pleasurable foray into legendary firsthand memories, Chandler is hard to beat.

Marlene Dietrich sculpture by Clark Hanford

Biographies by Charlotte Chandler:
Hello, I Must Be Going: Groucho and His Friends
I, Fellini
Nobody's Perfect: Billy Wilder, A Personal Biography
It's Only a Movie: Alfred Hitchcock, A Personal Biography
The Girl Who Walked Home Alone: Bette Davis, A Personal Biography
Ingrid: Ingrid Bergman, A Personal Biography
Not the Girl Next Door: Joan Crawford, A Personal Biography
She Always Knew How: Mae West, A Personal Biography
I Know Where I'm Going: Katharine Hepburn, A Personal Biography
Marlene: Marlene Dietrich, A Personal Biography

Thanks to Simon & Schuster for a review copy of Marlene

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Father of the Bride (1950)...and a reflection on mid-century Hollywood...

During World War II Hollywood churned out popular pictures both entertaining and patriotic, bolstering home front morale and earning enormous box receipts. Between 1942 and 1945, Americans were spending 23% of their recreation dollars on movies and by 1946 weekly attendance was over 90,000,000. But the boom years would soon go bust.

A decline in movie attendance began in the late '40s driven by changing audience tastes and two major events. In 1948, the Supreme Court ruled that certain film industry practices violated anti-trust laws and required studios to divest themselves of their theater chains. Without a guaranteed outlet for every film produced, filmmaking became riskier and the studios began cutting costs and making fewer films. And then, just as the 20^th century reached its mid-point, the industry faced a threat unlike anything that had come before - the arrival of commercial television.

empty seats

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, headed by founder Louis B. Mayer since the 1920s, had been the dominant studio for nearly two decades. But the blow to the studio system and declining audiences affected production companies large and small.  By 1951, Mayer was forced out and MGM’s head of production, Dore Schary, took over.

Director Vincente Minnelli had been one of MGM’s top directors since his breakout film, Meet Me in St. Louis, the top-grossing film of 1944. Minnelli married the film’s star, Judy Garland, in 1945. The following year he and Garland produced Liza Minnelli, but from 1946 to 1948 the director's career was uneven, including only minor successes along with outright failures. But a 1949 effort, Madame Bovary, was successful and a point of pride with Minnelli. For the most part he'd felt sidelined from major film work by the overwhelming demands of his marriage to the emotionally volatile MGM star.

In 1950 MGM assigned Minnelli to a Robert Walker comedy, The Skipper Surprised his Wife. The director was rescued from this bland task by producer Pandro Berman who offered him a more enticing project. Also a comedy, it was an adaptation of Edward Streeter’s 1949 bestseller, Father of the Bride, for which Berman owned screen rights. Because the two stories shared similarities, Berman wanted the director of Meet Me in St. Louis on his new production.

 

Jack Benny

As the project began to develop, comedian Jack Benny heard about it and approached Dore Schary. He told the production boss he wanted the role of Stanley Banks, the father of the bride. Without consulting the film’s production team, Schary all but promised Benny the part. Berman was not pleased, nor was Minnelli who went to Benny Thau, veteran MGM executive, and told him he wanted Spencer Tracy for the part and no one else. Thau gave Minnelli the bad news that Tracy was out of the running – the actor had already flatly refused to do the picture.

1950 would mark Spencer Tracy’s 20^th year in movies. The winner of back-to-back Best Actor Oscars in 1938 and 1939, he was by this time one of the most respected actors around. Laurence Olivier remarked that he learned more about acting from watching Tracy than from any technique. But away from the set Tracy wrestled with a serious problem - he was a notorious drinker. Between the efforts of MGM’s PR team and Katharine Hepburn’s care, Tracy had been able to avoid scandal and continue working. By the late '40s it appeared the actor’s drinking had tapered off somewhat, however, his hard living had aged him and he looked older than his years. Despite all this, Tracy was still much in demand and worked steadily, even as the industry went into a serious slump.



Hepburn and Tracy, Adam's Rib (1949)

In the midst of the box office downturn, Adam’s Rib (1949), one of the the best of the Tracy/Hepburn battle-of-the-sexes comedies, became a major hit. Though Tracy’s follow-up had been a less memorable potboiler called Malaya (1949), Vincente Minnelli remained convinced that he was the only actor to play Stanley Banks. Eventually, Minnelli decided to enlist Katharine Hepburn’s help. Hepburn invited him over for dinner and, during the meal, Minnelli told Tracy that with him in the lead the comedy had the potential to become a real classic.This was all it took to win Tracy over and he agreed to take the part. It came out that the actor had not refused to do the picture at all, but had known others were being considered for the part and assumed Minnelli didn't want him. To save face, Tracy had resorted to spreading a rumor that he had turned down Father of the Bride.

Joan Bennett was chosen to play the bride's mother, Ellie Banks. Bennett and Tracy had last co-starred in Raoul Walsh’s Me and My Gal (1932) eighteen years earlier. That film had ended with Tracy and Bennett’s characters marrying each other, and Tracy liked to joke that the plot of Father of the Bride indicated that his 1932 “marriage” to Bennett had worked out.  



Elizabeth Taylor in the 1950s

 Elizabeth Taylor, as bride-to-be Kay Banks, supplied the delectable frosting on the rich cake of Father of the Bride's cast. Spencer Tracy cracked that the film's only hard-to-believe detail was that the lovely girl could possibly be his daughter. Taylor was just 17 when she made the picture, but had already begun to portray more mature characters; at 16 she’d played the wife of 38-year-old Robert Taylor in Conspirator (1949). But Elizabeth Taylor was not so mature off-screen. She was still under the thumb and eagle eye of her mother and although the young actress had begun to date, her romances consisted of girlish infatuations and arranged dates mined for publicity by MGM. She was, despite her stunning beauty and poise, quite naïve when it came to love.

Father of the Bride, like Meet Me in St. Louis before it, is in its way a fond glimpse into American family life. Contemporary when it was released, the film plays today as a snapshot of a bygone, fairly idyllic, era. That mid-century moment is caught as if in amber by the solid screenplay of screenwriting team Frances Goodrich and Albert Hackett, Vincente Minnelli's meticulous attention to what is now period detail...a well-chosen cast, cinematographer John Alton and the minimal, mostly diegetic soundtrack of Adolph Deutsch. Father of the Bride is invariably referred to as a “sparkling comedy.” It most certainly sparkles and brims with sophisticated humor as it casts a skeptical, if bemused, eye on the incongruous goings-on at the heart of its plot, the American marriage ritual, circa 1950. The plot follows suburban lawyer Stanley Banks who is by turns besieged and put upon as he as he spends an enormous amount of money to finance every stage of a tradition that will end in his beloved daughter Kay leaving home. Adding insult to injury, Banks is (amusingly) ignored, belittled, the butt of jokes and barely tolerated while at the same time forced to pay and pay and pay. As the wedding nears he is beset by irrational fears and surreal nightmares. Given that the Stanley Banks character, a lovable and loving curmudgeon, carries the film, Minnelli's judgment was unerring when he insisted on Tracy or no one for the part.


Elizabeth Taylor and Joan Bennett

Father of the Bride was released on June 16, 1950, and was an immense hit. Contributing what can best be described as a publicist's dream, Elizabeth Taylor married her first husband, Nicky Hilton, just weeks earlier. Hilton was the son of the founder of Hilton Hotels, and though the pair had only begun dating months earlier, they succumbed to a whirlwind courtship. MGM naturally, and heartily, approved. Taylor's marriage at the very moment she starred as a virginal bride onscreen was an early indicator of something that would become a habit...her life imitating her art. Taylor's marriage to Hilton ended less than a year after it began...even before a quickie follow-up film to Father of the Bride was released in late 1951.

Father's Little Dividend (1951) is a charming, if less inspired, sequel. The dividend is Kay and her husband's first child and the plot, once again, covers the indignities Mr. Banks (Tracy) must endure...this time as grandfatherhood approaches. It, too, was a hit, but it was not on a par with Father of the Bride which had earned Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Screenplay and Best Actor and become an instant classic.

By the time both films had been released, Minnelli and Garland were divorced. Their final split came not long after MGM terminated Garland's contract in 1950. As she struggled to rebound and rebuild her career, Minnelli went back to work with a vengeance. He embarked on the most productive and celebrated decade of his career, a period that included An American in Paris (1951), The Bad and the Beautiful (1952), The Band Wagon (1953), Brigadoon (1954), Lust for Life (1956), Designing Woman (1957), Gigi (1958) and Some Came Running (1958). Minnelli received a Best Director Oscar nomination for An American in Paris (winner of six Oscars including Best Picture) and won for Gigi (winner of nine Oscars including Best Picture). Though Minnelli wasn't nominated, The Bad and the Beautiful won five Oscars.

Spencer Tracy went on make another 17 films and earn five more Best Actor Oscar nominations. His later years were difficult; he fell off and got back on the wagon, became withdrawn and taciturn and lost his health. He was fired from a picture for the first time with Tribute to a Bad Man (1956); it would the last time he worked for MGM. He was so ill during the making of his final film, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967) that he was uninsurable and Hepburn put up her own money to help cover the costs. Spencer Tracy died a few weeks after the film was completed and received a posthumous Academy Award nomination for his performance.

Elizabeth Taylor made a permanent transition to adult roles with Father of the Bride. Her stardom was cemented a year later with the haunting George Stevens drama A Place in the Sun (1951). Taylor went on to become one of the biggest film stars of the 1950s and 1960s and remained a celebrity for the rest of her life.

The studios of Hollywood met a less cheerful fate. By 1951, TV had made significant inroads into the movie audience. Cities with TV stations showed a decrease in movie attendance and wherever TV appeared, theaters closed. The age of the studio system came to an end by 1954. In 1956, Dore Schary, who had tried in vain to restore MGM's glory, was fired and in 1957 Louis B. Mayer, who had never recovered from his ouster, died at age 73. Television, of course, continued to flourish. By the end of 1952 there were 19,000,000 TV sets in homes across America and by 1955 there were 31,000,000...

Some have called Father of the Bride prototypical of the family-oriented TV sitcoms of the '50s and early '60s. In fact, in 1961 a series version of Father of the Bride debuted on CBS; it was shot at MGM studios. Ruth Warrick (Citizen Kane) played Ellie Banks, Myrna Fahey starred as Kay...and Leon Ames, who had portrayed the father, Alonzo Smith, in Minnelli's Meet Me in St. Louis, took the role of Stanley Banks.

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(Not Quite) All About Bette...

Bette Davis was born 103 years ago on April 5 in Lowell, Massachusetts. She attended drama school as a young woman and made her Broadway debut in "Broken Dishes" in 1929. She headed to Hollywood in 1930 where she was tested and signed by Universal. When her Universal contract was not renewed and she was on the verge of returning to New York and Broadway she received a call from Warner Bros. This was not exactly the beginning of a beautiful friendship, but it was the beginning of the truly legendary screen career of a groundbreaking actress.

In her career of more than 100 films, Bette Davis was nominated for 11 Best Actress Academy Awards (including one write-in campaign) and won two.

In her heyday, Bette received Best Actress nods five years in a row and, in 1942, was the highest paid woman in America.

She won the Cannes Film Festival's 1951 Best Actress Award for All About Eve.

She was nominated for four Emmy Awards and won one. The list of her various award nominations and wins goes on and on...

She was the first woman to be the president of AMPAS and the the first woman honored with the American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award.

She was one of a group of Hollywood stars who established the Hollywood Canteen for soldiers traveling through Los Angeles during World War II.

Not to be forgotten (for it speaks to Bette's status as an icon)...the #1 single of 1981 and the winner of "Song of the Year" and "Record of the Year" Grammy Awards was "Bette Davis Eyes," sung by Kim Carnes.

Even after suffering breast cancer and a stroke, Bette Davis continued acting until the final year of her life.
 

All About Eve (1950)

Bette Davis's performances in these films were nominated for Best Actress Oscars:

Of Human Bondage (1934) ( write-in)
Dangerous (1935)
Jezebel (1938)
Dark Victory (1939)
The Letter (1940)
The Little Foxes (1941)
Now, Voyager (1942)
Mr. Skeffington (1944)
All About Eve (1950)
The Star (1952)
Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)

She won for Dangerous and Jezebel but was also "robbed" on more than one occasion...

What else can one say about Bette Davis? A lot! However, what actor James Woods had to say in a TCM "Word of Mouth" segment a few years ago hits the bulls-eye for me and bears repeating in honor of her birthday...

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