Myth Making: The Misfits (1961)

Pulitzer Prize winning playwright Arthur Miller traveled to Reno, Nevada, in the spring of 1956 to divorce his first wife. Fulfilling the state's six week residency requirement until the marriage was legally dissolved, Miller stayed at a cabin on Pyramid Lake, about 100 miles from "the biggest little city in the world." During his time in this "forbidding but beautiful place," he got to know a few modern-day cowboy types who made their living capturing wild mustangs and selling them to be butchered for dog food. Miller was invited to join them on one of these hunts. From his experiences in a "whole state full of misfits," Arthur Miller later fashioned a short story that was published the following year in Esquire magazine.

Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe

But before he wrote the story and just after he returned from Reno, Miller wed Marilyn Monroe, then at the height of her enormous fame. It was a time when the actress was desperate to make films of substance, and once she and Miller moved to New York she began studying at the Actors' Studio and making plans to set up her own production company. After Miller's story appeared in Esquire, a friend suggested he develop it into a screenplay. Inspired by the idea of writing a part for his wife that would allow her to demonstrate her overlooked acting ability, Miller scripted the moody tale of a disaffected divorcee who encounters three disparate cowboys and ends up accompanying them when they go "mustanging" in the high desert of Nevada.

Anticipation began to build the moment word started to spread that the great playwright had written The Misfits for his glamorous movie star wife. Before it was released, the film had become the stuff of legend.

An iconic photo...Front row: Montgomery Clift, Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable. Second row:  Eli Wallach, John Huston. In back: producer Frank Taylor, Arthur Miller (on ladder).

John Huston was living in Ireland in 1959 when Frank Taylor, Miller's one-time publisher and the man chosen by the writer to produce the film, sent him the script. Huston pronounced it excellent and agreed to direct. Huston had been Marilyn Monroe's director of choice for The Misfits. She remembered that he had cast her as Angela in his film, The Asphalt Jungle (1950), one of her early breakthrough roles, was ever grateful to him for it and trusted him to guide her through the challenging dramatic role Miller had written for her.

Clark Gable on the set of The Misfits

Clark Gable, who by this time had been appearing in films for more than 35 years and had been a movie star - "the King" - for most of them, had to be cajoled to accept the male lead. Though he found the script intriguing, he didn't know what to make of the story. Miller persuaded him, calling it an "eastern western," about people trying, but afraid, to connect. 

Huston remembered working with Gable on The Misfits: "He thought of himself as an actor, not a screen personality. He liked reminiscing about his early days in the theater - old-time actors' talk. I saw very soon that Clark knew exactly what he was doing. Two or three times I thought I saw ways to improve his performance. I was mistaken." Gable's portrayal of Gay Langland, an aging wrangler displaced in the modern world, is complex and moving. Co-stars Eli Wallach, Montgomery Clift, and lately Marilyn Monroe, were committed "method" actors, but Wallach later recalled Gable and the other Hollywood veteran on the set, Thelma Ritter, as true acting "pros."

Clark Gable was impressed, too. Watching Montgomery Clift, as rodeo cowboy Perce, deliver his first major scene (below) in one take, Gable remarked, "My God, he's really good, isn't he?"

The Misfits has been called Arthur Miller's valentine - in Eli Wallach's words, a "love piece" - to Marilyn Monroe, and members of the crew observed that Miller seemed besotted with her as filming got underway. But when the grueling shoot came to an end three months later, not only would the Miller/Monroe marriage be over but Marilyn Monroe would never complete another film.

Marilyn Monroe on the set

Colin Clark, author My Week with Marilyn and The Prince, the Showgirl and Me, wrote that when he met Billy Wilder he mentioned to him that he, too, had worked with Marilyn Monroe. Wilder replied, "Ah, then you know the meaning of pure pain!"

By the time The Misfits was being made in 1960, Marilyn's erratic on-the-set behavior was well known. Cast and crew would wait...and wait...and wait. Sometimes she would appear, sometimes she wouldn't. She had great trouble remembering and delivering her lines and often required multiple takes. Her latest drama coach, Paula Strasberg, was ever present and Marilyn would look to her rather than John Huston for direction while filming her scenes. And there were drugs and alcohol...

Huston recalled, "She was taking pills to go to sleep and pills to wake up in the morning...she seemed to be in a daze half the time." She became less and less reliable, eventually broke down completely and had to be hospitalized. Clark Gable, according to Huston, "...was nonplussed by Marilyn's behavior. It was as though she'd revealed some horrid fact of life that just couldn't be accepted in his scheme of things."

But Huston also remembered, "When she was herself...she could be marvelously effective. She wasn't acting - I mean she was not pretending to an emotion. It was the real thing."

Marilyn as Roslyn

The Misfits was released on what would have been Clark Gable's 60th birthday, February 1, 1961, but Gable had died of a massive heart attack 2-1/2 months earlier, shortly after the film wrapped. Fortunately, the actor had seen Huston's first cut and was so happy with it he told both the director and Arthur Miller that he thought it the best work of his career. Despite Gable's enthusiasm - and producer Frank Taylor's intention to make "the ultimate motion picture" thanks to an all-star cast and crew - The Misfits was a commercial failure and received a mixed critical response. In Miller's view the critics were "baffled" by it.

If the The Misfits has problems it may be that it was too much Miller's film and not enough Huston's. Regardless of compelling themes, strong performances, photography by Russell Metty, film editing by George Tomasini and an evocative score by Alex North (listen below), the film too often becomes theatrically talky and contrived. And Roslyn, the central character, is so unreal at times that she seems to have been spun out of arty fancies about the actress who portrays her. It is also likely that the difficulties and complications that plagued the production afflicted the film itself.

The Misfits is an unusual and poetic film that may not entirely mesh, but it does fascinate. The powerful climactic mustang capture sequence is as disturbing to watch as it is difficult to forget, and the final scene between Gable and Monroe seems the prophetic farewell of two of Hollywood's biggest stars.

Roslyn: "How do you find your way back in the dark?"

Gay: "Just head for that big star straight on. The highway's underneath it, it'll take us right home."

Marilyn Monroe and Clark Gable...fade out...

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The largest remaining band of wild mustangs in the United States roams the high desert areas of Nevada. About 33,000 horses live in 10 western states and another 30,000 are kept in government corrals.  Click here to learn more about the history and continuing plight of our wild horse population.

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Click here to go to My Love of Old Hollywood and links to the other participating blogs in Page's blogathon... 

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Sources:
An Open Book by John Huston, McMillan (1980)
The Misfits: Story of a Shoot by Arthur Miller and Serge Toubiana, Phaidon Press (2000)
Making the Misfits, a production of WNET New York, et al (2002)
wild mustang photos by Kat Livengood

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Over the Rain-Forest and the Still Water Beach

Abandoned movie set, Mismaloya, Mexico: photo courtesy of TripAdvisor

The programmers at Turner Classic Movies may not have planned the schedule with me in mind, but they’ve lined up a fine mix of films for me on my birthday this year.

Bruno Ganz in Wings of Desire

I share my day with Sir Laurence Olivier (born May 22, 1907), and TCM has programmed some films of his that I haven’t seen, including Term of Trial (1962) co-starring the great French actress, Simone Signoret. Later on in the day my beloved San Francisco provides the setting for the 1955 sci-fi classic, It Came from Beneath the Sea, in which the city is attacked by a radiation-enlarged octopus. In the evening, this month's TCM guest programmer, Deborah Winger, is set to appear. Among her choices is one film I haven’t seen but have had on my to-watch list for a long time: Wim Wenders' 1987 classic, Wings of Desire brought its director the Best Director prize at Cannes in 1987 and won or was nominated for a raft of other awards.

Winger has also chosen to spotlight John Huston’s masterful production of Tennessee Williams' The Night of the Iguana (1964), one of the great film adaptations of Williams' work.

Tennessee Williams had vacationed in Mexico during 1940, and his experiences at the Hotel Costa Verde outside Acapulco later formed the basis for his 1948 short story entitled The Night of the Iguana. Over time, the story evolved into a stage play that debuted on Broadway in 1961 starring Bette Davis in the role of Maxine Faulk, Margaret Leighton as Hannah Jelks and Patrick O’Neal as The Reverend T. Lawrence Shannon. It is Tennessee Williams' final masterpiece.

Margaret Leighton, Tennessee Williams and Patrick O'Neal

Reverend Shannon is an alcoholic Episcopal priest locked out of his church for stirring up scandal and reduced to working as a guide on a bus tour south of the border. A new scandal involving a nubile young woman in his group of mostly biddies has consumed him. As the play begins, Shannon brings his party to the broken down hotel of his friend Maxine and her late husband Fred on the Mexican seacoast. Also staying at the hotel are Hannah Jelks, an itinerant artist, and her elderly grandfather, a 'practicing' poet.  As Shannon wrestles with his demons he forms a bond with Hannah who is also in spiritual crisis.

The stage production was rocky from the beginning, but it was also acclaimed and successful, running for 316 performances. The Night of the Iguana received Tony nominations for Best Play, Best Producer and Best Actress - for which Margaret Leighton won the award - and was also chosen the best new play of the year by the New York Drama Critics' Circle.

Bette Davis as Maxine Faulk on Broadway

Legendary writer/director/producer Joshua Logan’s reaction to Bette Davis’ performance was enthusiastic: “She was svelte, handsome, voluptuous, wicked, wise, raffish, slightly vulgar – in fact, she was ideal for the part and gave the play added dimension.” But Davis was deeply unhappy in the production and began regularly missing performances. She left the show in April 1962 and Shelley Winters, who replaced her, quickly understood why Davis and her understudy, Madeleine Sherwood, had both been miserable in the part. It seems co-stars Patrick O’Neal and Margaret Leighton routinely undermined the actresses who played Maxine by using the age-old stage trick of moving slightly for a few seconds to divert the attention of the audience whenever they set up her lines. 

Richard Burton and Ava Gardner

The journey of The Night of the Iguana from stage to screen began with a call from producer Ray Stark to writer/director John Huston during the play's Broadway run. Huston, no stranger to adapting great works (The Maltese Falcon, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Moby Dick, etc.), was interested and the two quickly began working out the details of their collaboration. They agreed on casting: Richard Burton as Shannon, Deborah Kerr as Hannah and Ava Gardner as Maxine. Burton and Kerr signed on immediately but Miss Gardner required some courting. Both Stark and Huston flew to Madrid, where Gardner was then living, and spent days wining and dining her until she agreed to take the part. 

Huston and Stark disagreed on one major point, Stark wanted to film in color but Huston preferred black and white for fear that the vibrant colors to be found everywhere on location in Mismaloya, Mexico (azure skies and seas, multi-hued flora and fauna) would distract from the story. Years later, in his memoir, Huston wrote, “Looking back now, I think I was probably wrong.” He was. Color could only have underscored the power of Williams' evocative meditation on the tangle of spiritual and physical yearnings that drive human life.

John Huston and Richard Burton

At the time location work began on The Night of the Iguana, Richard Burton had not yet sacrificed his talent for fame and riches. One of the great, classically trained actors to emerge from Britain in the post-war era, Burton’s finest performances were defined by depth and soul and enriched by his majestic voice, piercing blue-green eyes and potent physical presence. As Deborah Kerr observed in a diary she kept during the shoot, Burton was at his peak as an actor at this point and she agreed with Ava Gardner that "he makes everyone else act well, he is so good himself." Burton’s agonized rendering of the Reverend Shannon's dark night of the soul seems, at times, a glimpse into his own conflicted nature. Though he was not Oscar-nominated for this role (it was for his performance in Becket that earned his Best Actor nod in 1964), Burton would be nominated a total of seven times for an Academy Award, winning none, though he was otherwise acknowledged with BAFTA, Golden Globe and Tony awards. When the filming of The Night of the Iguana got under way in October 1963, Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor were living together but not yet married; their life of paparazzi-infested, glittering excess had just begun. Even so, Huston later wrote, "There were more reporters on the site than iguanas..."

John Huston

A very young Ava Gardner

Ava Gardner’s Maxine Faulk was a departure from the character as written by Williams and portrayed on the stage. Warmer and softer, Ava’s Maxine personified the “openness and freedom of the sea” Williams had envisioned, but lacked the man-eating qualities of the original. Huston, who felt Williams’ Maxine became far too devouring by the play's end, was responsible for these changes. Ava Gardner later recalled that Tennessee was never entirely happy about Huston’s tinkering with the character but she also noted, “…anyone seeing the film knows that John’s choice was the only one that fit.” And Gardner committed herself fully to her role. In an earthy, raucous performance, she allowed herself to appear casual to the point of dishevelment. Clad in a loose serape and toreador pants through much of the film, she had lines penciled in under her eyes and her hair tied back into a loose ponytail to de-emphasize her glorious good looks. During filming, Kerr recorded a comment of Huston's that for Ava it may have been a real disadvantage to be so beautiful, "...it has made her appear publicly as someone she is not, and in her work has made her appear the kind of actress she is not." For this performance Ava Gardner received the best reviews of her film career. Reflecting in her memoirs she wrote, “I have only one rule in acting – trust the director and give him heart and soul. And the director I trusted most of all was John Huston. Working with him gave me the only real joy I’ve ever had in movies.”

Ava Gardner and Deborah Kerr

Hannah Jelks is an intriguing entry in Deborah Kerr's filmography. Kerr portrayed sensitive ladies of delicacy and reserve to perfection, but Hannah was slightly different, a "Thin-Standing-up-Female-Buddha," in Tennessee Williams' words. Down-on-her-luck, adrift in Mexico and living by her wits and intuition, the spinster has only her remaining dignity, the care of her 97-year-old grandfather and her paintbox to keep her going.

As the international press descended on the set, Kerr admitted that she was beginning to "feel more and more like Hannah in this movie." Reporters insisted on quizzing her for 'dirt' on Burton, Taylor and others, and, in her diary, she quoted Hannah's sentiments, "Nothing human disgusts me unless it is unkind or violent." Kerr added, "I do loathe and detest unkindness and violence and gossip and troublemaking and envy and malice."

On the day filming of The Night of the Iguana ended in late 1963, Deborah Kerr put down her thoughts in her journal, "It's funny how you get so close to a bunch of people on a movie. It is constant making and breaking of emotional relationships - some of the people you work with and get to know so closely, you may never see again." An interesting reflection, coming on the heels, as it did, of completing a film about the redemptive power of human connection.

It was on an evening in 1940 while in Mexico, that Tennessee Williams watched the sun set on a tree of golden lemons. He would later write a poem about it that provided inspiration for the story that became a play and then a film.  The poem was revised slightly and incorporated into The Night of the Iguana.  Here, Cyril Delevanti, who portrayed Nonno in the film, recites the verse popularly known as "Nonno's Poem" (click title to view).

Cyril Delevanti and Deborah Kerr

John Huston spent many, many years of his life in Mexico, and was living not far from Mismaloya, in Las Caletas, while working on his autobiography in the late 1970s. Sixteen years had passed since the making of The Night of the Iguana and the location site was now deserted. All that remained were the ruins of the buildings constructed for his film. Huston wrote, "No one - other than an old man who passes there on an occasional trip between Las Caletas and Vallarta - seems to give a damn what happens to the place. He would like to see it torn down and given back to the iguanas. The old man is me of course."

John Huston in Las Caletas, 1979

...I was at the Hotel Costa Verde over the rain-forest and the still-water beach which were the off-stage background for Night of the Iguana.

~ Tennessee Williams, Memoirs

Sources:
An Open Book by John Huston, McMillan (1980)
Ava: My Story by Ava Gardner, Bantam (1990)
Dark Victory: The Life of Bette Davis by Ed Sikov, Henry Holt (2007)
Deborah Kerr Personal Collection: http://www.deborahkerr.es

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Tales of Hollywood: The Wild Ride of Preston Sturges

Turner Classic Movies began its salute to Star of the Month Joel McCrea on Wednesday, May 2, with two of his most enjoyable films - and two of the best films from writer/director Preston Sturges: Sullivan's Travels and The Palm Beach Story. Sturges was one of Hollywood's brightest lights during the early '40s, writing and directing in quick succession a unique and inspired string of spirited satires: The Great McGinty (1940) for which he won the first Oscar awarded for Best Original Screenplay, Christmas in July (1940), The Lady Eve (1941), Sullivan's Travels (1941), The Palm Beach Story (1942), The Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944) and Hail the Conquering Hero (1944). His last great gem, the dark, deft Unfaithfully Yours (1948), was made during his fall from grace and was for years overlooked. The world of Preston Sturges was the definition of a "cockeyed caravan"* - onscreen and off...

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Born in Chicago in 1898 and shuttled back and forth between the U.S. and Europe as a child by his capricious mother, Sturges served in the Army Air Service toward the end of World War I before making his way to New York in the 1920s. He eventually penned one of Broadway's biggest hits, Strictly Dishonorable, in 1929. The film version, adapted by Gladys Lehman, was released by Universal in 1931. In his memoirs, Sturges recalled his arrival in the dream capital the following year:

In Hollywood I started at the bottom: a bum by the name of Sturgeon who had once written a hit called Strictly Something-or-Other. Carl Laemmle of Universal offered me a contract, with unilateral options exercisable by the studio, to join his team as a writer. My wife had decamped, my fortune was depleted, and even though I was living on coffee and moonlight, my costs of living continued to cost...

Easy Living 1937

Sturges spent his early screenwriting years working in a variety of genres on many films, including The Power and the Glory (1933), The Invisible Man (1933), Twentieth Century (1934), Imitation of Life (1934) and Diamond Jim (1935). He made his name with an adapted screenplay for Easy Living (1937) and an original screenplay for Remember the Night (1940). But he always had multiple irons in the fire and while he grew and prospered as a Hollywood screenwriter, he also invested his time and money in other interests. An inveterate inventor, he launched the Sturges Engineering Company in Los Angeles in 1935, initially building and selling internal combustion machines. In 1936 he helped finance and became a partner in Snyder's Café, a trendy nightspot on Sunset Blvd. (later a location for Wolfgang Puck's Spago). Sturges took great pleasure in playing host at Snyder's and spent most evenings there welcoming guests, buying drinks and singing with cronies around the piano. Neither Sturges nor his partner, Ted Snyder, had a head for business and by the time it closed two years later, the Café was deeply in debt. But Sturges enjoyed the role of restaurateur and had already hatched a plan to open a place of his own.

By the late '30s he was working for Paramount Pictures, where his reputation would soon be made. After the studio renewed his contract at the end of 1937, Sturges spent 1938 toiling over scripts, meeting and marrying his third wife, Louise, and negotiating the purchase of a restaurant site. The coming years would be the most productive of his frenetic life...

One night in 1939 Sturges invited Paramount production chief Bill LeBaron over for dinner and showed him a script he'd been working on for six years. He offered LeBaron a deal. If Paramount would allow Sturges to direct the picture, he would sell the script to the studio for $1. A check in the more generous amount of $10 was cut in August and the picture to be known as The Great McGinty went into production in December. It opened to sensational business the following summer. This advancement from writer to writer/director was precedent-setting and paved the way for every future writer/director from Billy Wilder to Francis Coppola and Woody Allen to the Coen Brothers (the title of their O Brother, Where Art Thou? was appropriated from Sullivan's Travels) and beyond.

Fonda, Sturges, Stanwyck on the set, The Lady Eve

The Mitchell Leisen-directed film of Sturges' screenplay for Remember the Night opened in January 1940 breaking significant box office records, but Sturges was now committed to writing and directing movies. That year he went to work on his next two films, Christmas in July (1940) and The Lady Eve (1941). At the end of the year he signed another contract with Paramount and got the good news that his wife was expecting their first (and his first) child.

Sturges was also deeply engrossed in his new restaurant. When the lease on Snyder's expired in December 1938, he moved furniture, fixtures and equipment to the three-level building he'd purchased at 8225 Sunset Blvd. and began construction on the restaurant/nightclub he would christen The Players. Sturges supervised every facet of the project, from menu planning to designing uniforms, selecting paint and overseeing carpentry. The Players opened quietly in the summer of 1940. It was much larger and, with music and dancing, far more expensive to operate than Snyder's, but Sturges had high hopes.

By the time his son was born in 1941, The Lady Eve was on its way to becoming one of the biggest hits in the history of Paramount, Sturges had two more films in the works and The Players had gained popularity as one of the "smartest places" in Hollywood. According to his wife, Louise, the lure of The Players for Sturges was that it allowed him to "be Grand Pasha after hours - that was the main attraction..." He relished the role of genial supper club proprietor and being at the center of a convivial crowd, dining, drinking and carrying on into the wee hours.

The Players (foreground), Chateau Marmont (right)

The location of The Players, at the top of the Sunset Strip, was ideal for Sturges's purpose, providing a place for movie industry pals to unwind - with him. The fabled Chateau Marmont was perched on the side of the hill directly behind The Players, with only a small lane separating the two. Across Sunset Blvd. was the famed Garden of Allah, the former mansion of silent screen star Alla Nazimova that had been converted into an exotic hotel/apartment complex. Together, the three formed a kind of "Golden Age of Hollywood Triangle" into which many film colony luminaries disappeared.

Chateau Marmont

Chateau Marmont, today a Los Angeles historical/cultural landmark, began life in 1929 as an upscale apartment building. It's fortunes fell with the stock market a few months later and in 1931 the building was sold and turned into a suites hotel. The new owner was Albert E. Smith, co-founder of American Vitagraph (purchased by Warner Bros. in 1925). Smith and his wife furnished the Chateau with pieces found at local estate sales and auctions, giving the hotel what is known as "the Marmont look." Over the years, the Chateau developed a reputation for its discretion in providing guests with maximum privacy. In 1939, Columbia Pictures president Harry Cohn famously advised rising stars William Holden and Glenn Ford, "If you must get in trouble, do it at Chateau Marmont." The Chateau's long history is filled with rumors and legends, among them: Clark Gable and Jean Harlow rendezvoused there, F. Scott Fitzgerald lived and wrote there, Vivien Leigh was a guest following her split with Laurence Olivier and covered the walls of her suite with pictures of him, script readings for Rebel Without a Cause were held in one of the hotel bungalows, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward met there...and on and on.

The Garden of Allah, Sunset Blvd., Hollywood

Alla Nazimova built a grand manor (dubbed The Garden of Alla) at 8152 Sunset Blvd. in 1919 when she was an extravagantly well-paid star of the silent screen. In the mid-'20s, as her career faded, she decided to develop the property into a hotel. 25 two-story villas were constructed on the grounds of the 3 1/2 acres surrounding her mansion and in January 1927 The Garden of Allah opened for business. It was an immediate success and was often, like Chateau Marmont, the first place Hollywood's new arrivals called home. The Garden of Allah also boasted a colorful history: Humphrey Bogart lived there first with his third wife Mayo Methot and later with fourth wife Lauren Bacall, Marlene Dietrich had a habit of swimming naked in the pool, Charles Laughton came home for lunch while filming The Hunchback of Notre Dame and stood in the pool careful to keep his face, in full Quasimodo makeup, out of the water. When in Hollywood, Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley and other members of New York's Algonquin "roundtable" lived and partied hard at The Garden of Allah...

Sturges and Lubitsch at The Players

There was never a shortage of famous names and faces in attendance at The Players. Many, like Orson Welles, Humphrey Bogart, Howard Hughes, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner and the Algonquin set were either staying up the hill at the Chateau or down the street at The Garden of Allah. Good friends of Sturges like William Wyler, Ernst Lubitsch, Barbara Stanwyck and Joel McCrea stopped in - as did friends of friends like Lana Turner (who came to celebrate her birthday as the guest of Howard Hughes). A visiting tourist of the time captured the allure of The Players with a postcard she sent home on which she gushed about dining at "the glamour spot of Hollywood" and sighting both Miriam Hopkins and Boris Karloff while eating "the best raspberry shortcake I ever had."

Ingrid Bergman and Roberto Rossellini (far right) at The Players

A good part of the enormous income Sturges earned at Paramount was lavished on The Players. The original redesign and reconstruction of the building had been expensive, but out-of-control operating costs along with constant renovations and additions prevented The Players from ever breaking even. In fact, it was such a drain on his finances that Barbara Stanwyck warned Sturges, "That goddamned greasy spoon is ruining you!"  The Players reached its zenith during the war years, with restaurants operating on all three levels and a barbershop on the mezzanine. A dinner theater/dance floor featuring a hydraulic revolving stage was installed and eventually even a hamburger stand was added. And there was the long-standing rumor that Sturges had gone to the trouble of building a tunnel beneath Marmont Lane connecting The Players to the Chateau so celebrities could  slip away discreetly - for clandestine affairs or simply to avoid the press and/or the police.

Filming Hail the Conquering Hero, a smash hit of 1944

Paramount Pictures ended its increasingly contentious relationship with Preston Sturges as 1943 came to a close.  Two of his most successful films, The Miracle of Morgan's Creek and Hail the Conquering Hero, were yet to be released but the studio had concluded that its brilliant but headstrong writer/director was more trouble than he was worth. Sturges optimistically and against all advice went on to form California Pictures with Howard Hughes. Following the collapse of that disastrous partnership, Sturges wrote and directed the last of his great films, Unfaithfully Yours, in 1948 for Darryl F. Zanuck at Twentieth Century Fox; it was unsuccessful. Sturges later looked back on his years in the movie business with some irony:

The only amazing thing about my career in Hollywood is that I ever had one at all.

Edwin Gillette, assistant to Sturges from 1937 - 1942, recalled that his boss loved to "play around" and "be the great raconteur, but he had to work to get the money to enjoy himself." With or without the money, Sturges was a profligate spender. His engineering company was sold after the war with proceeds going to the IRS. He was able to hold onto The Players until 1953 when the government put a lien on its income, auctioned off its contents and finally sold it to cover taxes and debts. Sturges lived six more years and died just before his 61st birthday while working on his memoirs at the Algonquin Hotel in New York. Coincidentally, two months earlier The Garden of Allah in Hollywood had been demolished.

Joel McCrea and Veronica Lake in Sullivan's Travels

But the site that housed The Players lived on, going through several incarnations in the decades that followed. Beginning in 1953 it was Imperial Gardens, a huge Japanese restaurant with reflecting pools on the upper floors, popular with musicians and actors. Next, in 1989, it re-emerged as The Roxbury, a trendy and notorious nightclub where patrons included Tom Cruise, Prince and Eddie Murphy. In 1997 it changed hands again and became Miyagi, a restaurant/nightclub with 7 sushi bars, 5 regular bars, a Zen garden, a waterfall, a dance floor, pool tables and more. In April 2012, it opened as Pink Taco, part of a Mexican restaurant chain owned by 30-year-old Harry Morton, son of Hard Rock Cafe chain founder Peter Morton and grandson of Arnie Morton, founder of the Morton's restaurant chain.

During the renovation of the property, restaurateur Morton managed to dig deep enough to find not only the revolving stage beneath Sturges' dance floor, but also the entrance to The Players' "legendary VIP tryst tunnel" to Chateau Marmont - apparently sealed off by the city long ago. According to Morton, he dug through layer upon layer of debris, "But when I stripped it all down, incredible things came to light."

Preston Sturges in front of The Players

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* "There's a lot to be said for making people laugh. Did you know that that's all some people have? It isn't much, but it's better than nothing in this cockeyed caravan." - John L. "Sully" Sullivan (Joel McCrea), Sullivan's Travels

Sources: Preston Sturges on Preston Sturges, Simon & Schuster (1990), Madcap by Donald Spoto, Little, Brown & Co. (1990), Romantic Comedy in Hollywood from Lubitsch to Sturges by James Harvey, Alfred A. Knopf (1987)

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A Tale of Two Epics: I, Claudius

Josef von Sternberg, Merle Oberon and Charles Laughton

In 1934, British scholar/writer Robert Graves published his best known and most successful work, the sweeping historical novel I, Claudius, written in the form of an autobiography by the Roman Emperor Claudius (10 B.C. - 54 A.D.). 40 years later this classic work would receive plaudits and a new audience in an entirely different medium.

The golden age of the television miniseries began in the mid-'70s - Rich Man, Poor Man was a sensation in 1976 and Roots made history in 1977. Classics like Shogun (1980), Brideshead Revisited (1981) and Winds of War (1983) soon followed. In 1976 the BBC's Masterpiece Theatre adapted Graves's historical fiction into a 12-episode landmark starring Derek Jacobi (Claudius), John Hurt (Caligula), Sian Phillips (Livia) and Patrick Stewart (Sejanus). An Emmy and BAFTA winner, I, Claudius debuted in the U.S. in 1977 and was, among other things, later acknowledged as inspiration for the blockbuster prime-time soap, Dynasty (1981 - 1989).

This year, in March, Acorn Media released a new boxed set edition celebrating the 35th anniversary of I, Claudius. Among the bonus features are extended original versions of episodes one and two, a behind-the-scenes documentary entitled I,Claudius: A Television Epic, an interview with Derek Jacobi and...a 70+ minute BBC documentary from 1965, The Epic That Never Was, about the unfinished Alexander Korda production of a Josef von Sternberg-directed film. This first version of the Graves novel starred Charles Laughton (Claudius), Merle Oberon (Messalina), Flora Robson (Livia) and Emlyn Williams (Caligula).

A sketch by Art Director/Production Designer Vincent Korda for I, Claudius

In 1937 Korda, who would later marry Oberon, set out to produce a grand epic. In 1933 he had produced and directed The Private Life of Henry VIII, the popular film that brought Charles Laughton a Best Actor Oscar, and produced another great success in 1934 with The Scarlet Pimpernel starring Leslie Howard. Hungarian-born but based in Great Britain, Korda's dream was to make pictures in England that rivaled those coming out of Hollywood. With Henry VIII and The Scarlet Pimpernel, he'd begun to realize his dream but wanted to reach further. With Charles Laughton still under contract to him in 1937, Korda's ambition was to create a film greater than either Henry VIII or their most recent collaboration, Rembrandt (1936). Korda bought the rights from Robert Graves for the recently published I, Claudius, hired Josef von Sternberg to direct, and the project moved forward.

Charles Laughton as Claudius

The Epic That Never Was is hosted by actor Dirk Bogarde, who recalls in his narration that as a teenager he ventured with friends to Korda's Denham Studios to watch the filming of I, Claudius. The documentary features interviews with many who worked on the film: Merle Oberon, Josef von Sternberg, Robert Graves, Emlyn Williams and Flora Robson, as well as Korda's longtime script girl and others. Only Korda and Laughton, no longer alive in 1965, are absent.

Merle Oberon as Messalina

According to Merle Oberon, Korda wanted his friend von Sternberg to direct hoping that the filmmaker who masterminded Marlene Dietrich's ascent to stardom would handle Oberon with the same care and artistry so that she, too, might become a great star. The actress recalled vividly once filming began, "something odd happened," suddenly Charles Laughton "couldn't find his character." Laughton began to break down and the script girl remembered him despairing, "I can't find the man!" Josef von Sternberg recalled the actor "had some difficulty getting into his part" but felt, all in all, that Laughton's performance was "magnificent" and that his problems would pass.  Eventually Laughton determined that Claudius was Edward VIII and began listening to the former king's abdication speech to help sustain his motivation.

Flora Robson as Livia

Flora Robson remembered that Josef von Sternberg was very much the flamboyant director and that he came to the set dressed in riding boots and other regalia. The script girl recalled that the director was also a first-rate editor and noted that he seemed to "edit in his head" before he shot a scene. Her remarks bring to mind critic Andrew Sarris's observation that von Sternberg "entered the cinema through the camera rather than the cutting room" and Marlene Dietrich's flat statement that "he was the greatest cameraman the world has ever seen..."

About 30 minutes of the 1937 production footage survives and is included in The Epic That Never Was; it is fascinating. Emlyn Williams is vile and reptilian as Caligula and Laughton's inspired Claudius foreshadows Jacobi's brilliant interpretation. As always, von Sternberg composed visually stunning, painterly scenes drenched in atmosphere.

Just a month into shooting, Oberon suffered a car accident in which she was thrown into the windshield. She was badly injured and filming was permanently halted. Emlyn Williams considered this "a godsend;" according to him, producer, director and star were not happy. Author Robert Graves, who had written an unused script for the project, assigned credit for the film's demise to Claudius himself - from beyond the grave...

The Masterpiece Theatre drama met a far better fate than Korda's promising but ill-starred venture. Along with awards won and influence extended, TV's I, Claudius earned an enduring reputation and remains today among the top-ranked miniseries of all time. Any speculation by Robert Graves, who lived until 1985 and the age of 90, on the late Emperor's reaction to the BBC series is unknown...

John Hurt as Caligula, Derek Jacobi as Claudius, Sian Phillips as Livia

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One of a Kind: Kay Thompson

 

Kay Thompson, born in St. Louis early in the 20th Century (1909 is the general consensus, but there is some disagreement), can be most easily be described as unique.

Eloise in Paris (1957)

On-screen she is remembered for her role as vibrant, sophisticated Maggie Prescott in Funny Face (1957), shown above, but Thompson was a woman of many talents: singer, composer, vocal coach, actress, comedienne, dancer, choreographer, author and clothing designer. She is perhaps best known today for the series of best-selling "Eloise" children's books she began writing in the mid-'50s about a precocious 6-year-old who lives at New York's Plaza Hotel.

Kay Thompson was born Catherine L. Fink, the daughter of a St. Louis jeweler...and she was always musical. She began her singing career straight out of college and by the time she was in her mid-20s she was working in radio as a singer and choral director. She toured with Fred Waring as a singer and arranger, and her group, The Kay Thompson Swing Choir, appeared in Manhattan Merry-Go-Round (1937).

Through songwriter friends Ralph Blane and Hugh Martin, Thompson became a vocal arranger at MGM in the early '40s. Her projects included Week-End at the Waldorf (1945), Ziegfeld Follies (1946), The Harvey Girls (1946) and Good News (1947). She had a small part in another of her assignments, The Kid From Brooklyn (1946).

Thompson was also vocal coach to the stars: Sinatra, Garland (who named her Liza's godmother), Lena Horne (who termed her "the best vocal coach in the world"), Ann Sothern, June Allyson and others. Critic Rex Reed has remarked, "Kay did things with June Allyson, who didn't have much range, to make her sound great in Good News."

Kay Thompson and the Williams Brothers

In 1948, when her MGM contract was up, Thompson left the studio and formed a ground-breaking nightclub act, Kay Thompson and the Williams Brothers (Andy was one of the brothers). It was a trend-setting smash. Singer Julie Wilson recalled Kay's show, "Her act at the Persian Room was electric. Kay and the Williams Brothers moved so well, with one terrific pose after another. It was an absolute knockout. Kay's energy took your breath away. She wore those wonderful white pantsuits, which no one wore at the time. The show was very stark and modern, and the rhythm never stopped." A critic from Varietyreported, "Her act is paced like a North Atlantic gale," and concluded, "Miss Thompson is more than an act. She's an experience."

Andy Williams remembered, "It's hard to imagine there wasn't an act like us before, because there have been so many since. Up to that time everyone just sang around a microphone, and when the song was over, the singers would raise their arms...[Kay] wrote wonderful songs, she could arrange, she could play the piano beautifully, she could stage numbers. And she could sing! She taught me more about singing and show business than anyone else in the world."

Kay Thompson in 1954

Her show-stopping turn in Funny Face was Kay Thompson's only major film role. Her next and final outing was a small (but memorable) part in Otto Preminger's Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon (1970) starring goddaughter Liza Minnelli. During her final years, Thompson lived in Liza's Upper East Side penthouse; she passed away there in 1998.

In 2003 Disney produced two movies for TV based on Thompson's first two Eloise books, Eloise at the Plaza and Eloise at Christmastime, both starring Julie Andrews as Nanny (the first Eloise book had originally been adapted for TV in 1956). In 2006 an animated TV series based on the characters from the Eloise books debuted on Starz! Kids & Family with Lynn Redgrave as Nanny. Following Thompson's death, her estate authorized additional books in the Eloise series and several have been written and published since.

"Liza's at the Palace...!" was a limited-run engagement at New York's Palace Theatre from December 3, 2008 - January 4, 2009. Included in the concert was a recreation of Kay Thompson's nightclub act. The NY Times critic wrote, "From the moment Ms. Minnelli joins forces with a male singing and dancing quartet to resurrect part of a famous nightclub act Thompson created in the late '40s and early '50s with the Williams Brothers, the Palace Theater blasts off into orbit." The show was a popular and critical success that won several awards including a Tony for Best Special Theatrical Event.

Liza Minnelli at the Palace Theatre, 2008, recreating Thompson's club act

And - on yet another front, New York's Plaza Hotel opened an Eloise boutique in 2009 and in 2010 opened the Betsey Johnson-designed confection called "The Eloise Suite." Think pink, indeed!

The Eloise Suite at New York's Plaza Hotel

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Break out the champagne (again), the '55 Hitchcock...

Alfred Hitchcock’s To Catch a Thief screens today at the 2012 TCM Classic Film Festival. In celebration of the third annual greatest-classic-film-festival-in-the-world, I’m posting this new and improved version of a piece on To Catch a Thief that first appeared here on New Year’s Day 2011.

Traditionally, champagne is the drink du jour (or nuit) at New Year’s, and so champagne it shall be now. A bottle of ‘96 Dom Pérignon Rosé would be fitting, but I’m in the mood for something really special…an old favorite… Hitchcock’s distinctive ’55 vintage from the Cote d'Azur. To Catch a Thief (1955), a delectable “Hitchcock champagne,” boasts a rare combination of elegance and flair. Light-bodied with a smooth finish that lingers, it remains unmatched, though it has been imitated far and wide for decades.

"the azure coast" of France

A jaunty score sets the tone as opening credits roll over a shot of an international travel service with a poster in the window, “If you like life, you’ll love France.” The tinkling keys of a grand piano hint at continental sophistication and adventure long before the first scream bemoaning stolen jewelry issues from a Riviera hotel balcony.

Quickly the action picks up speed with a colorful cruise through the Cote d'Azur as French police race to the village of Sainte-Jeannet and the hillside villa of retired jewel thief and prime suspect, John Robie (Cary Grant). From these early sequences and throughout the film, cinematographer Robert Burks displays VistaVision/Technicolor to full effect; it was Hitchcock's first use of the widescreen/color process that would become a signature of his color films for the rest of the 1950s.

Cinematographer Robert Burks

Alfred Hitchcock and Robert Burks had initially worked together five years earlier following the director’s return to the U.S. after making two films in England. Hitchcock was beginning production on Strangers on a Train for Warner Bros. and the studio cinematographer assigned to the project was 40-year-old Burks. It would be the beginning of a fabled partnership. Burks began his career at 19 in the Warner Bros. special effects lab when Hal Wallis, who favored shadows and high contrast on the screen, was in charge of production. Burks apprenticed under James Wong Howe, worked his way up to DP and, by 1948, had risen to cinematographer.

The early influence of German expressionism on Hitchcock corresponded nicely with the influences Burks absorbed at Warner Bros. and the two would collaborate on 12 films from 1951 – 1964, every picture Hitchcock made during that period except Psycho. Like Burks, Hitchcock had intimate knowledge of special effects and had an affinity for scenes of complex imagery. One of the most memorable in the Hitchcock/Burks canon came in Strangers on a Train with the scene in which Robert Walker’s murder of Laura Elliott is reflected in the lens of her fallen eyeglasses.

Hitchcock (top center) beside the VistaVision camera

Robert Burks was Oscar-nominated for Strangers and again for Rear Window. With To Catch a Thief, he finally won an Academy Award for cinematography. From 1955 – 1958, Burks shot five Hitchcock films in VistaVision/ Technicolor; four of the five were for Paramount Pictures. Paramount had been the only major film studio to balk at the widescreen CinemaScope system when it came on the scene in 1953. The studio set out to develop a process of its own and worked with Eastman Kodak to develop VistaVision, a method that delivered a higher resolution widescreen version of 35 mm. The VistaVision process printed down large format negatives to standard 35 mm, creating a finer-grained print and improved image. The use of Technicolor's dye transfer process was key to VistaVision color image quality. For his first foray into VistaVision/Technicolor, Hitchcock devised a stylish romantic thriller infused with dazzling starpower.

When he introduced a recent screening of To Catch a Thief, TCM’s Robert Osborne remarked that it had “the best asset any film could have...Cary Grant.” Good point. This was the third of Grant’s four Hitchcock pictures and it came nearly ten years after their last collaboration, Notorious (1946), one of the best films in either man’s illustrious filmography. In the interim, Hitchcock’s career had gone into and dramatically come out of a slump. During the same period, Grant had continued to make popular films, but had begun to move away from the kind of part he had trademarked – the dapper, self-effacing man of the world. Following Dream Wife (1953) Grant retired, dissatisfied with the parts and films he was being offered. But then he was approached by Alfred Hitchcock who had a project in mind with the requisite amount of elegance and humor to attract him. In To Catch a Thief Cary Grant returned to type; John Robie, “The Cat,” is a dashing charmer, “a man of obvious good taste” very few could or would want to resist. Grant seldom departed from type during the remaining years of his career.

To Catch a Thief was the third and final film Grace Kelly would make with Hitchcock, who would have worked with her for the rest of his career had she not left movies to become Princess of Monaco. Hitchcock’s breathtaking onscreen vision of Kelly brings to mind Josef von Sternberg’s ravishing cinematic glorification of Marlene Dietrich 20 years earlier. Kelly was a beautiful woman but among the handful of films she made, it was in her films for Hitchcock that her image as a screen goddess achieved perfection. In To Catch a Thief she plays a spoiled rich girl, the ultimate "snow covered volcano" and "Hitchcock blonde."

Grace Kelly and Cary Grant

Grant and Kelly are captivating together onscreen and both deliver iconic characterizations with ease - Grant as a debonair retired thief/innocent man, and she as a haughty/hot debutante. The pair literally generates fireworks.

Jessie Royce Landis

In her first Hitchcock outing, Jessie Royce Landis portrays Kelly’s insouciant and earthy, bourbon-sipping mother. Hitchcock liked to include colorful women as supporting characters in his films, ranging from the ridiculous (Florence Bates in Rebecca) and the oblivious (Patricia Collinge in Shadow of a Doubt), to the observant and wisecracking (Thelma Ritter in Rear Window, Barbara Bel Geddes in Vertigo). Royce Landis portrayed two of the most appealing of the latter type in this film and North by Northwest.

Actor John Williams made his third appearance in a Hitchcock film with To Catch a Thief, this time as an insurance agent helping Robie track down the real jewel thief. His H.H. Hughson is a fine foil for Grant’s Robie. Their early scenes provide Hitchcock the opportunity to have some fun with a favorite theme, the ambiguity of guilt and innocence. Robie tells Hughson flatly that though he “only stole from those who wouldn’t go hungry,” he “kept everything myself.” Chiding Hughson for stealing hotel sundries and cheating on his expense account, Robie comments, “I was an out and out thief…like you.” Robie emphasizes his point with the throwaway line, “I wish I’d known someone in the insurance racket when I went into the burglary business.” Hitchcock toys with subject again when Robie refers to the sensitive hands and delicate touch of his cook and housekeeper, Germaine, who bakes a quiche as "light as air" and who, during the war, “strangled a German general once…without a sound.” 

John Williams, Grace Kelly, Rene Blancard...costumes by Edith Head

While some dismiss To Catch a Thief for lack of substance, there's no question that it is a solid film of its genre. With meticulous craftsmanship and tremendous style, Hitchcock delivered exactly what he intended - a voluptuous romantic thriller. All elements blend in harmony, from the John Michael Hayes screenplay to Robert Burks' VistaVision/ Technicolor photography, Lyn Murray’s score, Edith Head’s eyeball-popping costumes, two scintillating stars and the Cote d’Azur setting. 

To Catch a Thief was successful and influential, and many later films bear its earmarks...most prominently Stanley Donen’s Charade, as well as his Arabesque, William Wyler's How to Steal a Million, Blake Edwards' The Pink Panther and countless romance/thriller romps ever since.

~

One of the principal  themes of this year's 2012 TCM Classic Film Festival is Style in the Movies. Kimberly Truhler of GlamAmor.com, who is attending and blogging on the festival, produced and hosts the following video, Cinema Style File - Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief: 

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