The Professionals: Richard Quine

Richard Quine, between stars Jack Lemmon and Kim Novak,
rehearsing a scene from his 1962 film, The Notorious Landlady.

Richard Quine has intrigued me for years. Long before I knew who he was, this film director held sway over me, thanks to his 1964 farce, Sex and the Single Girl, a film I have enjoyed since the late Sixties when it made an appearance on late-night television. Son of an actor, Quine was born in Detroit, Michigan, on November 12, 1920. Six years later his family relocated to Los Angeles, and Quine began work as a child actor on radio. He made his film debut in Cavalcade, which won the Best Picture Oscar of 1933, but left Los Angeles for New York City and Broadway a few years later, making his debut on The Great White Way in the 1939 musical Very Warm for May. The next year Quine was cast in the comedy My Sister Eileen, starring Shirley Booth. The show was a huge success, and it led Quine back to Hollywood when Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer cast him in one of their "kids" musicals, Babes on Broadway, with Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland, in 1941. At MGM, Quine met a promising actress also working at the studio named Susan Peters. The two married in 1943.

December 1941 brought the United States' entry into World War II, and Quine began his service in the US Coast Guard. After the war, MGM dropped his acting contract and, he began to consider a life behind the camera instead of in front of it. It was also around this time that tragedy struck his wife, Susan Peters.

Richard Quine and Susan Peters on their wedding day.
The marriage and their relationship would end after a tragic accident.

Susan Peters had earned a Best Supporting Actress nomination for Random Harvest--her first substantive role--and her career at MGM was off to a promising start. On New Year's Day 1945, however, Quine and Peters were duck hunting when a rifle accidentally discharged, and Peters was shot. The bullet lodged in her spinal cord, and she was paralyzed for the rest of her life. The couple tried to make the best of it: In 1946 they adopted a boy, but ultimately they separated, with Peters charging Quine with cruelty, saying he would not speak to her for days at a time. They divorced in 1948, and Peters died in 1952 from complications stemming from her paralysis as well as depression. At this time in his career, Quine met an aspiring writer, Blake Edwards. The two met on Quine's first directorial effort, 1948's Leather Gloves, when Edwards was a struggling actor cast in the film.They would subsequently collaborate on seven films written by Edwards or co-written by the pair, including Edwards' 1955 directorial debut, Bring Your Smile Along. 

Blake Edwards, with cigar, in the 1960s

Richard Quine's career progressed steadily throughout the 1950s. Highlights included the noir drama, Pushover (1954), his first with muse Kim Novak; the musical remake of My Sister Eileen (1955); and a pair of Judy Holiday vehicles, The Solid Gold Cadillac and Full of Life (both 1956). These were all solid box office winners produced with small budgets. 1957 saw a real breakout winner, military service comedy, Operation Mad Ball. Starring Jack Lemmon in the second of six collaborations with Quine (My Sister Eileen was the first), Operation Mad Ball pushed the comedic boundaries to the late Fifties' limit. The film was such a surprise hit that Columbia Pictures' Harry Cohn entrusted Quine with the adaptation of the Broadway hit, Bell, Book and Candle. Starring Kim Novak and James Stewart fresh off Hitchcock's box office disappointment, Vertigo, with Lemmon in a secondary role, BB&C was a substantial hit for Columbia. With Novak more relaxed and natural under Quine's guidance the studio again paired the director and star for the sudsy, underrated Strangers When We Meet. If Richard Quine is remembered for anything in cinema history it should be for the natural, relaxed sexiness he coaxed out of Kim Novak on screen, something most of her other directors didn't seem capable of.

Quine with star and muse, Kim Novak

Quine's next project was based on a best-selling novel and Broadway play, The World of Suzie Wong. Starring William Holden and newcomer Nancy Kwan, Suzie Wong told the provocative story of architect Holden who chucks everything to go earn his living as an artist in Hong Kong. There he meets prostitute Suzie Wong. Attracted to her yet disturbed by her life, Holden and Kwan's Suzie fall in love, which raise complications to be overcome. The film was a big hit--number six at the nation's theaters.

In 1962, Novak and Lemmon reunited--with Fred Astaire, no less--in Quine's quirky, Hitchcockian, romantic comedy, The Notorious Landlady, about an American, played by Lemmon, who works at the American embassy in London. Novak plays his landlady, who is suspected of killing her husband. While she is put on trial, she is released for lack of evidence (no corpse), so suspicions remain. Meanwhile, Lemmon and Novak fall in love. Response to the film was somewhat lackluster, and the release of The Notorious Landlady also saw the end of the Quine-Novak romance, which appeared to have run its course. 

Quine with third wife, entertainer Fran Jeffries

Quine moved on. In 1964, he directed two more romantic comedies: Paris When It Sizzles, a critical bomb starring William Holden and Audrey Hepburn; and Sex and the Single Girl with a stellar cast of Natalie Wood, Tony Curtis, Henry Fonda, Lauren Bacall, Mel Ferrer (Mr. Audrey Hepburn at the time), and Quine's future wife, Fran Jeffries. 

Sex and the Single Girl--an entirely fictional comedy based on the groundbreaking nonfiction book of the same name by Helen Gurley Brown--is one of my all-time guilty pleasures. Everything about this movie continues to bring joy to my inner pubescent boy: Natalie Wood's innocently sexy role as psychologist, Dr. Helen Gurley Brown; Tony Curtis's shameless playboy-cum-magazine writer, Bob Weston; Fonda and Bacall's constantly bickering-yet-obsessed couple, Frank and Sylvia Broderick; and Mel Ferrer's obnoxious clinic colleague, Rudy ("Oh, shut up, Rudy!"). Sex and the Single Girl offered about all the sex and innuendo this grade-school boy could hope for when I first saw it in the late Sixties. A precursor to an endless list of imitators, including Sex and the City, the film's plot concerns psychologist Helen Gurley Brown whose book, Sex and the Single Girl, causes a scandal at her clinic and how Curtis tries to expose Helen as a fake (that is, a virgin), while at the same time falling in love with her (who wouldn't?). Quine, by now an old hand at such stuff, crams in some slapstick (Curtis's Bob, pretending to be Fonda's Frank, threatens suicide, falls off a pier and into the ocean, taking Helen, who has arrived to save him, into the water with him; the entire cast, including a beleaguered and/or unbalanced highway patrolman, played by Larry Storch, on a madcap chase through Los Angeles to the airport) as well as an inside joke regarding Curtis's resemblance to Jack Lemmon from that movie in which he dresses as a woman (1959's Some Like It Hot) as Curtis, after taking his suicidal ocean dive goes back to Helen's apartment to dry off and wears her robe (the movie's friskiest scene).

Richard Quine and Jack Lemmon worked together for the last time on 1965's How to Murder Your Wife. This time capsule of a comedy has the quintessential bachelor mentality of its day (i.e., chauvinist by modern standards), yet at the time it was popular enough to land number eleven of the Top Twenty Box Office Hits of 1965. It was also the last substantial hit of Quine's career. Later that year, Quine made an off-beat, risky venture, Synanon. Based on an actual rehab house of the same name, the film (which I haven't seen), released by Columbia Pictures, seems a curiosity in Quine's career.

1967 brought the director his last two real high-profile ventures. Hotel, based on a best-selling novel by Arthur (Airport) Hailey, boasted an all-star cast that included Rod Taylor, Karl Malden, Melvyn Douglas, Merle Oberon,  Richard Conte, and Michael Rennie. Not a great success at the box office--it broke even--the film did lead to a semi-successful Aaron Spelling-produced television series in the 1980s, starring James Brolin and Connie Sellecca. The other film Quine directed that year was the adaptation of the groundbreaking off-Broadway play Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feeling So Sad. With a cast that included Rosalind Russell, Barbara Harris, Robert Morse, Hugh Griffith, and Jonathan Winters, this film version did not live up to the stage version's expectations. The next couple of years found Quine involved in the less-than-stellar productions, A Talent for Loving  and The Moonshine War, both starring Richard Widmark, who was also at a low point in his career. The films quickly disappeared. It was around this time-1970-that the director's marriage to Fran Jeffries ended, and Quine, with limited film prospects, took several television jobs. From 1972 to 1974, he directed three episodes of the popular Peter Falk series, Columbo, along with other shows. In 1974, Quine directed his first film in four years with the mystery thriller, W, starring supermodel Twiggy. The film came and went with barely a trace.

In 1979, Quine directed his last credited feature, The Prisoner of Zenda, starring Peter Sellers. Two other, better productions preceded Quine's version of Zenda. Despite the presence of Sellers, the film didn't amount to much at the box office, and though it was nice to see Quine's name associated with an A-picture again, it was soon forgotten. Quine started on Sellers' next project, The Fiendish Plot of Fu Manchu, but he was fired while the film was in pre-production. It was the last project Richard Quine was associated with. Depressed and angry with an industry that hadn't allowed him to direct a quality film in nearly a decade, Quine died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in June 1989. He was 68 years old.

Sources:  Wikipedia
                Kim Novak on Camera by Larry Kleno
                Jack Lemmon, The Pyramid Illustrated History of the Movies by Will Holtzman
                Kirk Douglas, The Pyramid Illustrated History of the Movies by Joseph McBride
                Golden Boy: The Untold Story of William Holden by Bob Thomas

Golden Holden, The Conclusion

In August 1959, William Holden, his wife Ardis, and their three children boarded a flight for Europe. Holden never looked back. He was joining a group of Hollywood stars who had discovered the tax break that came with living abroad for a portion of the year. When his business manager suggested Switzerland, Holden jumped at the chance: "Great! I'll start looking for a house." Holden had been ready to leave Hollywood behind for a while. He'd been traveling about 100,000 miles each  year, and had seen and experienced much of the world. Now Holden could see even more--and profit from it. Holden drew ire from critics who viewed him only an opportunistic movie star, but he didn't care. As biographer Bob Thomas put it, Holden considered himself a citizen of the world.

In 1960's The World of Suzie Wong, Holden's artist falls for Nancy Kwan's prostitute.

Bill Holden's first film after the decision to move to Europe was The World of Suzie Wong. Directed by the underrated Richard Quine, Suzie Wong tells the story of an American artist who settles in one of the seamier parts of Hong Kong. The hotel he lives in operates as a kind of flop house for prostitutes, of which Suzie Wong is one of the most popular. Holden played Robert Lomax, an artist who falls in love with Suzie, though complications arise before the traditional happy ending. Despite the film's unbelievable plot, Suzie Wong was a hit with stateside audiences to the tune of over $7 million 1960 dollars, making the film number seven on Variety's yearly box office champions. It was to be Holden's last bona fide success for several years.

Holden as the screenwriter in Richard Quine's Paris When It Sizzles, 1964.

Holden had no films in circulation in 1961, but 1962 saw the release of three films in which he appeared: Leo McCarey's Satan Never Sleeps, George Seaton's The Counterfeit Traitor--by consensus the best of the three--and The Lion, directed by Jack Cardiff. None of these was a success, but The Lion introduced Holden to one of the great loves of his life, the French actress Capucine. (Born Germaine Lefebvre in 1935 France, Capucine was a top-line model before her film career. After moving to New York, she was scouted by the Charles Feldman Agency, eventually appearing in a succession of films, including North to Alaska opposite John Wayne and Walk on the Wild Side, a less-than-faithful adaptation of the book by Nelson Algren.) After completing work on The Lion, Holden embarked on a massive drinking spree, the effects of which he was still feeling when he found himself face-to-face with former love Audrey Hepburn.

Two stars with a back story on what appears to be a trying day
on set during Paris When It Sizzles

To say William Holden was not psychologically or physically prepared to take on such a challenge is a massive understatement, for Holden was in one of the worst places in his life--on the outs with Ardis and involved with Capucine. To be thrown into a situation with a lover he had never really got over was more than Holden could take. His alcohol intake was so great during Paris When It Sizzles that the production was close to shutting down when director Quine persuaded Holden to dry out for eight days at a hospital that specialized in alcoholics. Desperate to keep filming, Quine recruited friend Tony Curtis to fill in with some last-minute scenes. Filmed in the summer of 1962, Paris When It Sizzles was not released until 1964 when it bombed, becoming Holden's fourth money loser in a row.

Holden's next four films fared no better than Paris When It Sizzles, and by 1968 when Variety compiled a list of stars whose high salaries didn't warrant their bankability at the box office, Holden's name appeared alongside former heavyweights like Tony Curtis, Marlon Brando, and Yul Brynner. On top of professional embarrassment, in 1966 while in Italy, Holden was involved in a two-car accident that killed the driver of the other vehicle. Most observers assumed Holden would get off with a fine, but the verdict found Holden guilty of manslaughter with a sentence of eight months in prison. The sentence was suspended, and he settled with the other vehicle's widow for $80,000. Holden's reckless lifestyle--one largely kept secret from his public--had finally caught up with him. Not quite 50 years of age, William Holden had reached a personal and professional nadir.

The comeback in The Wild Bunch

By the late Sixties, Holden's affair with Capucine had run its course. Ardis and he finally divorced in July 1971 after nearly thirty years of marriage. But, as fate would have it, Holden was actually on course to career resurrection. Sought out by the notorious hell raiser, director Sam Peckinpah, Holden was cast in The Wild Bunch. Bloody and controversial, The Wild Bunch set the gold standard for movie westerns much like John Ford's Stagecoach did thirty years earlier. Not a huge box office winner, The Wild Bunch was a succès de scandale due to its bloody excess and slow-motion depiction of violence. Even critics who deplored the film, however, had to give Holden credit for his most committed work on film in ages.

For the next few years Holden worked on interesting, but not particularly successful, films like The Revengers, a run-of-the-mill western; Blake Edwards' The Wild Rovers, another western and still-underrated film in which Holden gives a poignant portrait of a man who has outlived his time; Clint Eastwood's Breezy; and big box office winner, The Towering Inferno. Holden recognized Inferno as a bit of nonsense but "disaster" films were popular at the time (Inferno would be the second biggest hit of the season behind Jaws). And appearing alongside the stellar cast of Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, Faye Dunaway, Fred Astaire, and Jennifer Jones among others did nothing to hurt his reputation.

1974 was to be a good year for William Holden. Along with the success of The Towering Inferno, he won an Emmy for Best Actor for a television adaptation of Joseph Wambaugh's The Blue Knight. Next up for Holden was a role he was not initially considered for: 1976's ever-prescient Network. Starring with Faye Dunaway, Robert Duvall, and a scene-stealing Peter Finch, Holden once again reminded film audiences why he was still a top screen presence. In the role of Max Schumacher--a part first offered to Jack Lemmon--Holden gave his best performance in twenty years, as an aging television executive in charge of a failing network's news division and a failing marriage.

His best work in over twenty years:
Sidney Lumet's Network which netted Holden his first Best Actor nomination in 23 years.

Network is a great film in a year of great films--All The President's Men, Taxi Driver, The Omen, Seven Beauties, Carrie, The Bad News Bears, Silent Movie, 1900, The Outlaw Josey Wales, The Shootist, Robin and Marian, Obsession, and the year's best picture Oscar winner, Rocky. In Network Holden did possibly his best work ever, yet his performance was basically overlooked. While it's true that he was Oscar-nominated, most of the press went to Finch for his "mad prophet of the airwaves" and Dunaway for her heart-of-stone network programmer. In this sea of loud performances, Holden had the role of a man at a crossroads in his life, fighting age, trying to help his friend Finch, and falling for the tough-as-nails Dunaway. Holden underplays as only he could and reveals a side he grappled with in real life--the unfaithful husband, successful on the outside, lost on the inside and deeply dissatisfied, looking for fulfillment in the arms of another (younger) woman. Oscar voters rewarded Finch, Dunaway, and Beatrice Straight (as Holden's wife). Holden went home empty-handed but with a renewed sense of pride and recognition from the industry that had nearly forgotten him. Life imitated art as he also found love in the arms of a woman much younger than he, actress Stefanie Powers. The two were together nearly ten years before Holden's alcoholism drove too deep a wedge between them.

With Marthe Keller in the underrated Fedora, director Billy Wilder's take on the price of movie fame

After Network, Holden worked regularly in mostly forgettable movies like Damien: Omen II; When Time Ran Out, another Irwin Allen disaster picture with a stellar cast; and Escape to Athena. A couple that stand out is in the underrated, under-seen Fedora, in which Holden reunited with Billy Wilder, and his swan song, Blake Edwards' S.O.B. Holden plays a filmmaker in both--a producer in Fedora, a close descendant of Sunset Boulevard's Joe Gillis (i.e., a down-on-his-luck, cynical yet hopeful), and a director in S.O.B. In Fedora, Holden gave his last great performance, and it would have been a fitting swan song. But his final farewell belonged to Blake Edwards' S.O.B. in which Holden played a film director subservient to his producer pal played by Richard Mulligan. Whereas Fedora was a bittersweet valentine, S.O.B. is strictly bitter. Edwards' Hollywood is quite different from Wilder's. Fedora is a throwback to when film stars had a real aura--even if that aura was maintained in the medical clinics of Europe--and how a persona can suck the life right out of them. On the other hand, S.O.B. is--hilariously--all orgies, pot smoking, corpse stealing, and revenge getting. Through all the madness and wild agendas S.O.B. shows us, Holden's character Cully, a seen-it-done-it-all, could have been Holden himself. By this time--1981--Holden had seen any- and everything Hollywood and the world had to offer. No longer out to prove himself, Cully, like Holden, just wants to survive, live and let live. For Cully life is too short to get caught up in studio politics and intrigues. As another of the film's characters aptly puts it, "He's probably shacked up with a couple of broads and a bottle of Jack Daniels. What the hell does he care." Sad thing is that after S.O.B. premiered in July 1981, that's essentially what Holden did.

But it wasn't a bottle of Jack Daniels, it was a bottle (or two) of vodka and a few beers. And he didn't have "a couple of broads" with him. He was alone. Doing what he must have done hundreds of times: breaking the sound barrier, drinking himself into a stupor before collapsing into bed. Only this time William Holden didn't make it to bed. Completely trashed, Holden tripped on a throw rug and hit his head on the edge of the nightstand. Not realizing the seriousness of his wound, Holden tried to stop the bleeding with several tissues before passing out and dying from loss of blood. Loner that he was, it was several days before his body was discovered. Billy Wilder reflected, "I really loved Bill, but it turned out I didn't know him.... To be killed by a bottle of vodka and a night table--what a lousy fadeout for a great guy." It's an assessment that's hard to argue with, though looking at his life, it's an entirely apt end. Bill Holden, international film star, rich beyond anyone's wildest dreams, lover to some of the worlds most desirable women, died alone and drunk. It's who Bill Holden really was, feeling himself unworthy of the accolades and fame, still the frightened beginner that Barbara Stanwyck mentored on the Golden Boy set way back in 1939 when he was close to being fired. Despite all he had done and the worldwide recognition he had gained, William Holden was, at heart, still that terrified youngster, vulnerable, and insecure. Ironically, it is these characteristics that made him such a good film actor, always underplaying a scene, always believable, careful not to push a scene too hard for fear it would spill into overacting. Holden was like Spencer Tracy or Robert Mitchum or Gary Cooper in that you couldn't see him acting. He was just being. Embodying, breathing, reacting, being the person he was pretending to be. Any performer worth his salt will tell you that is the hardest thing to do. And Bill Holden did it better than anyone. His life may have had a tragic end, yet he left us the gift of his talent and the legacy of his films. He did not die in vain.    

Sources: See blog post Golden Holden, The Rise