The Professionals: MGM's Robert Z. Leonard

Robert Z. Leonard was an MGM house director for more than thirty years. Like most of the filmmakers who toiled under Leo the Lion's powerful roar (among them, W.S. Van Dyke, Richard Thorpe, Jack Conway, Victor Fleming), Leonard is all but neglected by today's film historians and run-of-the-mill fan-critics. And while his filmography has its share of clunkers - as anyone who made over seventy movies would have - a careful look at Leonard's films also show a great number of underrated and still entertaining movies.

Robert Z. Leonard (above) was known as "Pops"
to nearly everyone who worked with him.

Born in Chicago on October 7, 1889, Leonard originally studied law but dropped out to pursue a career in the theater. Leonard crashed the burgeoning movie business when his family moved west to Hollywood, and by 1916 he had established himself as an actor - a reliable leading man. It was behind the camera that Leonard was most interested, however, and he began by directing dozens of shorts between 1913 and 1917. Under contract to Universal Pictures, Leonard was paired up with actress and diva-deluxe, Mae Murray. (Nicknamed The Girl with the Bee-Stung Lips, Murray, who was a Ziegfeld Follies star before she was in the movies, is best known today as the title character in Erich Von Stroheim's 1925 version of The Merry Widow opposite silent film heartthrob, John Gilbert.) Leonard and Murray fell in love and were married in 1918. The union lasted until 1925. The next year Leonard married another actress, Gertrude Olmstead. By that time Leonard had been signed by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer where he would flourish for the next thirty years.

Leonard on set, sitting to the left of Marion Davies

During his years at MGM, Leonard worked with nearly every top star at the studio, including Norma Shearer in her Oscar-winning performance as The Divorcee in 1930; Greta Garbo and Clark Gable in their only film together, 1931's Susan Lenox (Her Fall and Rise); Joan Crawford in Dancing Lady, the 1933 musical that also introduced a young Broadway hoofer named Fred Astaire to the movies; William Powell in 1936's Best Picture Oscar winner, The Great Ziegfeld; and Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier in the still entertaining 1940 adaptation (written by Aldous Huxley) of Pride and Prejudice. That is just a sample of Leonard's vast record of work. His two biggest hits from the 1930s, The Divorcee and The Great Ziegfeld, also garnered him Oscar nominations for Best Director, though he lost the golden guy on both occasions. A company man body and soul, Leonard rarely refused an assignment and, like all contract directors, stepped in at times when a fellow lensman was ill or had moved on to another project. He did this, always without credit, in such films as Jack Conway's 1935 adaptation of A Tale of Two Cities. 

Freud would have a field day: Gable and Garbo in their only film together,
the underrated Susan Lenox (Her Fall and Rise)

I don't claim to have seen every film Robert Z. Leonard directed, but I can tell you to avoid - I mean AVOID - Strange Interlude, the 1932 adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's Pulitzer Prize-winning play with Norma Shearer and Clark Gable. Staying faithful to the style of the original stage production, the story is presented with the actors detailing their inner thoughts via a series of increasingly distracting (and often plain silly) voice-overs. It succeeded only in making the performers look like overacting amateurs. 

The Great Ziegfeld is, at nearly three hours, also a bit of a chore to sit through. It may qualify as one of those overrated Best Picture winners, in spite of the work of William Powell, who never gave a bad performance, Myrna Loy, Frank Morgan, and Louise Rainer in her first Oscar-winning role (whether that award was deserved over the other Best Actress contenders like my personal favorite - Carole Lombard's wacky socialite in My Man Godfrey - is debatable). Similarly, 1948's B.F.'s Daughter, starring the always compelling Barbara Stanwyck and Van Heflin and based on John P. Marquand's bestselling novel, is another movie that may cure insomniacs. As for Leonard's silent output, I don't think I've seen any.

A still from Maytime, the Jeanette McDonald-Nelson Eddy starrer
in which John Barrymore (far right) steals the show.

With all this said, I have enjoyed and do recommend several of Leonard's films - some surprisingly. While he collaborated with the singing team of Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald several times, their best effort was Maytime. Made in 1937 when the duo was at the peak of their popularity, the film is a fascinating take on love, jealousy, and good old-fashioned showbiz. John Barrymore does a great job playing up his obsessive love for wife MacDonald who, in turn, is in love with Eddy. It's the classic love-hate-jealousy triangle that was already old in 1937, but the performers - Barrymore especially - make it work.

Susan Lenox (Her Fall and Rise), with the unlikely pairing of Greta Garbo and Clark Gable - the latter just beginning his long reign as King of Hollywood - is better than I was ever led to believe. In it, Garbo plays the daughter of Swedish immigrant, Jean Hersholt, who runs away one rain-drenched night to escape an arranged marriage to the hulking Alan Hale (long before his immortal turns as Errol Flynn's best buddy in Robin Hood, Don Juan, Dodge City, and others). The story is classic pre-code: Garbo hooks up with Gable after he discovers her taking shelter in his garage. Their connection is short-lived, however, when Garbo must again escape when daddy Hersholt and dumb-bell Hale find her while Gable is away. She hides out with a circus, becomes a cooch dancer, and compromises her virtue with the circus owner when the police come looking for her. All ends happily (unfortunately, perhaps, as the pre-code appellation might indicate a conclusion a bit more complex), but the journey is worth the trip thanks to wonderful sets, atmospheric camera work, and the magnetic once-in-a-career pairing of the two leads. 

MGM gloss at its finest: Walter Pidgeon and Ginger Rogers start to fall in love in Week-End at the Waldorf.

Week-End at the Waldorf, starring Ginger Rogers, Walter Pidgeon, Lana Turner, Van Johnson, Edward Arnold, Keenan Wynn, Robert Benchley, and Xavier Cugat, is the kind of movie they don't make anymore - that is, the kind of movie MGM could make with its eyes closed and audiences eventually lost its taste for. A sort of Reader's Digest remake of the studio's 1932 Oscar winner, Grand Hotel, updated to New York City circa 1945, Week-End at the Waldorf gives barely a hint of the original's Berlin angst, but the ease and professionalism is really a marvel to behold, with Leonard juggling egos, budgets, and the front office while making a first-rate entertainment. Every year or so when I watch it, I am reminded of what the Hollywood studio system could do at its peak: recreate a time and place without ever leaving the friendly confines of a California studio.

The next year Leonard directed one of his and MGM's most interesting films from this period, The Secret Heart. With a starry cast that includes Claudette Colbert, Walter Pidgeon, June Allyson, and Lionel Barrymore, The Secret Heart is about Larry Addams (Richard Derr), a brilliant pianist who must earn his living working in a bank. A widower with two small children, Larry meets Lee (Colbert) and falls in love. Love, however, isn't enough and Larry, who has a drinking problem, commits suicide, though his daughter Penny (Allyson) believes it an accident. With her father's death leaving her in in a near-constant state of depression, her brother, Chase, and Lee try to bring Penny out of her despair with the aid of psychotherapy. Post-war movie audiences were beginning to move past the escapism of the pre-war days and become more willing to accept the complex, adult themes the film presented. Nonetheless, it was an unusual film to open on Christmas Day, 1946. While it did moderately well at the box office, it was perceived a failure. Today, The Secret Heart seems refreshingly modern, though the psychobabble is a bit cliched seventy years on. Still, his interest in such a topic is a credit to Leonard, and the against-type casting of musical comedy star June Allyson as the depressed Penny is daring. For me, it works and remains an underrated and neglected film ripe for rediscovery.

 Dangerous beauty Ava Gardner with Robert Taylor in the noir, The Bribe

Robert Z. Leonard's excursion to noir's dark side was also his last truly notable film, 1949's The Bribe. Since returning from World War II, star Robert Taylor had displayed an aptitude for weak, fallen men, starting with his first post-war role in 1946's Undercurrent and continuing with the exemplary High Wall in 1947. Working with an outstanding cast that included Ava Gardner, John Hodiak, Charles Laughton, and Vincent Price, The Bribe was a flop upon release, losing nearly $400,000 (about $4 million in today's dollars); however, intervening years have seen it slowly gain a following among fans of noir. The assets of the picture, which is a bit slow paced and lacking in subtlety, include a Miklos Rozsa score, appropriately oppressive cinematography by the renowned Joseph Ruttenberg, and south-of-the-border art direction by the legendary Cedric Gibbons. The film may have been better executed in the hands of a Nicholas Ray or Robert Siodmak, but Leonard must be given points for his sense of style. He was also fortunate in having Ava Gardner, then at the height of the beauty and sensuality that made her career, as the female lead.

Ava in The Bribe (Need I say more?)

Leonard's final MGM film was The King's Thief in 1956. He directed two more movies, an Italian production with Gina Lollobrigida called Beautiful But Dangerous and the family film, Kelly and Me, in 1957. Nicknamed "Pops" by nearly everyone whom he worked with, Robert Z. Leonard was a well-liked, talented craftsman who always gave his best. The results lie in his body of work.

Sources: IMDB
               Wikipedia
               Turner Classic Movies

Underrated Gem: Douglas Sirk's There's Always Tomorrow

Douglas Sirk is rightly regarded today as the leading exponent of the so-called women's pictures of the 1950s. He's best remembered for 1954's Magnificent Obsession; 1955's All That Heaven Allows; and 1956's Written on the Wind - all starring Rock Hudson - as well as his 1959 swan song, Imitation of Life, with Lana Turner. Along with Written on the Wind, in 1956, Sirk also directed what is my favorite of his films, There's Always Tomorrow. Like Obsession and Imitation, There's Always Tomorrow is a remake of a 1934 film, also called There's Always Tomorrow. Unlike Sirk's other films, which focused primarily on women, There's Always Tomorrow is about male angst.

Director Sirk and stars Stanwyck and MacMurray work out the details In There's Always Tomorrow.

Starring Barbara Stanwyck and Fred MacMurray - both a long way from the killer couple of their best known pairing in 1944's Double Indemnity - the film tells the story of Clifford Groves (MacMurray), a toy manufacturer who is being neglected and taken advantage of by his family. That family is the typical nuclear one with a wife (Joan Bennett) and three children: the eldest, Vinnie, is in college with a nice sweetheart; teenaged Ellen; and Frankie, the youngest. Every one of his family takes advantage of Cliff and treats him horribly. Vinnie hushes his father because he is on the phone with his girlfriend, Ann. Frankie is off to her dance recital. Wife Marion is busy tending to last minute preparations for the recital. Cliff has tickets to the theater for the evening, but Marion has to take Frankie to her recital. He asks his other two children if they would like to go with him, but Vinnie has a date with Ann, and Ellen is headed over to her best friend's house to discuss their "emotional problems." Cliff pleads with Marion to go away with him for the weekend or go out to dinner (it's her birthday), but Marion is all about the kids, leaving Cliff with a dinner to heat and apron to wear. Entering this domestic scene is Stanwyck's Norma (nee Miller) Vale, a former employee and love interest of Cliff's who left for New York City years earlier, feeling Cliff was more in love with his work than he was with her, and has become a successful dress designer.

Lonely and grateful for the companionship, Cliff and Norma use Cliff's theater tickets, visit his toy shop, talk over old times, and catch up on new ones. As nothing illicit happens, Cliff shares with Marion his night out with Norma. Marion thinks nothing of it and is glad Cliff had a good time. Her complete trust is another example of Cliff being taken for granted as a reliable ol' stuffed shirt. Scheduled for a business trip to Palm Springs, Cliff implores Marion to join him, but daughter Frankie, the ballerina, twists her ankle, so mother Marion feels she can't possibly go with Cliff, much to his consternation. While there, Cliff runs into - you guessed it -  Norma who is also there on business. Cliff and Norma go horseback riding, swimming, dancing, and have an all-round great time. But while they are having a nice time together, son Vinnie, girlfriend Ann, and a couple of Vinnie's friends show up. Vinnie overhears the concierge making an off-hand remark about Cliff and Norma, sees them together, and, naturally, jumps to the conclusion that his goody-goody Dad and bad-girl Norma are enjoying some hanky panky.

Douglas Sirk's exquisite mise en scene

At this point in the film it's interesting to note that Cliff is being accused of something he is innocent of, yet is thinking about. Norma has stirred feelings in Cliff he thought had been long since crushed. He feels, if not exactly young again, alive and revitalized. And with that feeling comes emotions he had tried to give Marion and his family but had been shut down time and again. Once Vinnie gets back home, he shares his revelation with his sister Ellen, and together they try to put the kibosh on any potential romance between Cliff and Norma. Vinnie, in particular, behaves like a jerk, and Ann tells him so. Things pretty much come to a head when Norma is invited to dinner, and Vinnie and Ellen are openly hostile to her. Through all this, Marion is completely clueless, as the children feel they have to protect her from any knowledge of their philandering father. By the next day Cliff is ready to give into his emotions, say goodbye to his wife and kids, run off with Norma, and live happily ever after. However, fate and Cliff's two oldest intervene by going to see Norma to tell her what a nasty slut she would be to take their father away from them (never mind that they are entirely ungrateful). Norma, despite being sensitive enough to the situation, tells Vinnie and Ellen how awful they have treated their father. Later, however, Norma tells Cliff that their relationship wouldn't work, that he would always regret leaving his family, and that it's best that she go back to New York alone. The film ends with Norma, teary eyed on her flight east, and Cliff staring longingly out the window as Norma's plane flies overhead. (His family, I suppose it must be said, finally realize what a good father they have.)

Vinnie and Ellen confront Norma.

The film is a bitter indictment of the 1950's American family. The Groves have a seemingly enviable life, with a nice, big house, provider husband and father, model wife and mother, and three kids. But no one - except possibly Marion - is happy or even content. It was Douglas Sirk's specialty to expose that facade for what it was: an empty, zombie-like existence with little or no warmth, compassion, or meaning. In Sirk's world, money, family, and all the good things that are suppose to go with it don't matter at all. Clifford Groves' children are selfish, spoiled brats who take everything they are given for granted. Sirk was never easy on children in his films - a similar situation occurs in All That Heaven Allows when Jane Wyman wishes to brush off the dusty shackles of convention and go off with younger, hunky Rock Hudson instead of fuddy-duddy Conrad Nagel (who looks old enough to be her father), thus throwing her two grown children into confusion at their mother's non-traditional leanings. At the beginning of There's Always Tomorrow, a character making a delivery to Cliff's toy factory remarks how "dreamy" it would be to work in a place that has hobby horses and pinafores to which Cliff's secretary wearily replies, "Oh, I suppose it is." It seems there isn't a person in Douglas Sirk's universe who knows how good they have it.

Clifford Groves contemplates the emptiness of his life.

The cast of There's Always Tomorrow is first rate. Stanwyck and MacMurray had been electric together in Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity some 12 years previous, and their work here is just as fine. Stanwyck, an all-time favorite of mine, is always good. The lady just couldn't give a bad performance, and she was incredibly versatile, appearing in comedies, dramas, noirs, and even westerns. By this time in her career she, like her contemporary Joan Crawford, had begun to acquire a hard look - a kind of hardening that came with maturity. The pair made a total of four films from 1940 to this Sirkian angst-fest. Joan Bennett was by this time making a career of playing the good wife and mother, and the role of Marion fits her to a T. Her looks also took on the mask of maturity. One could hardly guess that less than a decade earlier Bennett was still playing femme fatales in noir thrillers by European masters like Fritz Lang and Max Ophuls. As for MacMurray, I would go so far as to say his performance as Clifford Groves is the high-water mark of a long career, which began in the mid-thirties as a light, amiable leading man opposite the likes of Katharine Hepburn, Claudette Colbert, and Carole Lombard (with whom he made four films between 1935 and 1937). MacMurray, always a reliable performer, had a long and more varied career than people probably remember. His forte was comedy, but he could be equally compelling in dramatic fare. As recently as 1954, he had appeared in the all-star, well received The Caine Mutiny; Richard Quine's excursion to the dark side with Kim Novak in Pushover; in The Far Horizons as Meriwether Lewis opposite Charlton Heston's William Clark; and, of course, his reptilian Mr. Sheldrake in Billy Wilder's great 1960 Oscar winner, The Apartment. But it is for his work as Steve Douglas, the kindly father of My Three Sons, the weekly television show that ran on CBS from 1960 to 1972, and the Disney films, The Absent Minded Professor, Son of Flubber, and The Shaggy Dog, that MacMurray will always be most closely associated.

MacMurray and Stanwyck are dwarfed by Clifford Groves latest toy, Rex,
the walkie-talkie robot man and metaphor for Cliff's character.

Douglas Sirk's last Hollywood production was his biggest money-maker, Imitation of Life, in 1959. Shortly after, he turned his back on films in Hollywood and return to his native Germany. He lived a long while after that, passing on in 1987 at age 89, having lived long enough to see his films rightly  acknowledged for the classics they are. His influence is felt in the films of Rainer Werner Fassbinder and in Todd Haynes' Far From Heaven, to name a few.

Title card from 1956's Written on the Wind

Mr. Clift's Wild Ride

He told himself he was only doing it for Bessie Mae. Ever since they first worked together six years before on A Place in the Sun, Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth (Bessie Mae) Taylor had been close friends, and now Taylor's second marriage to Michael Wilding was on the verge of collapse. So, in light of the circumstances and the fact that he had hardly worked at all since 1954, Monty said yes to Dore Schary, MGM, and Raintree County. Neither Monty nor Elizabeth thought much of the script, but they did think it might prove as popular as the 1948 book on which it was based. MGM was feeding a lot of money into the production (legend has it that Clift had accepted the role of John Shawnessey for $300,000, then declined it, requesting just $250,000 and telling MGM to take the extra $50,000 and "make a better movie"). Raintree County was Dore Schary's pet project - his Gone With the Wind - before he was ousted as MGM Head of Production in November 1956.

Monty and Bessie Mae start their day in makeup.

Roughly halfway through the shoot, on the eve of the production's move from studio shooting at MGM Studios in Culver City, California, to location shooting in Danville, Kentucky, Taylor held a small dinner party at her home in Beverly Hills. Wanting to back out of the party, an exhausted and hung over Clift nevertheless made the drive to the Taylor/Wilding house. "The dinner was subdued," said party guest Kevin McCarthy. Also in attendance were Rock Hudson and his future wife, Phyllis Gates. Clift told McCarthy he wanted to leave early and asked McCarthy to drive ahead, leading the way down the hill to Sunset Boulevard since Clift wasn't familiar with winding roads of the foothills where Taylor lived. According to McCarthy, Clift only had one glass of wine at the party, so drunk driving was not the apparent culprit of the gruesome wreck on that night in May 1956 when Montgomery Clift wrapped his car around a telephone pole and nearly killed himself. On the way down the hill,  McCarthy lost sight of Clift's headlights in the rearview mirror and went back to find Monty's car looking like this:

McCarthy raced back to Elizabeth Taylor's house, "shaking like a leaf," telling all that there had been a "terrible accident." Right away Taylor and others rushed to help. According to McCarthy, when they got to the site of the accident, they found Monty "curled under the dashboard, his face torn away - a bloody pulp." He wasn't dead, as McCarthy feared, but he was choking. Two of his teeth had lodged in his throat, and he couldn't breathe. McCarthy continued," I'll never forget what Liz did. She stuck her fingers down his throat and she pulled out those teeth." Clift survived the crash - physically anyway. The damage done to his body was bad; the damage to his face profound. As Patricia Bosworth writes in her excellent biography of Clift, he suffered from "heavy lacerations on the left side of his face. His nose was broken...jaw on both sides crushed...severe cerebral concussion... [but] no plastic surgery [was performed]. The biggest reconstruction was his teeth." In addition, the left side of his face was partially paralyzed. MGM, rather than shut down the production, decided to postpone the shoot until Clift was ready to continue. Nine weeks passed before Clift returned to the set.  

When the time came for Montgomery Clift to return to work, he wasn't ready. He'd returned to the production too soon and suffered constant pain. Some blamed MGM for forcing his hand, yet Clift wanted to complete the film, feeling not only a deep sense of responsibility to the cast and crew of Raintree County but also to himself. To Clift it suddenly seemed that his whole reputation was at stake. Location filming was a struggle. There were reports of him running naked down the streets of Danville, Kentucky. Clift's already prodigious alcohol intake increased, spilling over to the film set for the first time in his career.

Monty before the accident (left) and after (right)

All this made filming difficult at best. Clift became withdrawn on set and, except for Taylor, kept mostly to himself. Friend (and lover, according to the fan mags of the day), torch singer Libby Holman, came to visit, hoping to help ease his pain. But the most help he received came from the pills he took to get through his day. Clift had become a hot mess. Insecure about his talent and unsure if he would have a career in films, the pills and booze accelerated at an alarming rate. Director Edward Dmytryk, who knew of Monty's pill intake, snuck into his hotel room and found pills of every kind, needles, and syringes. Another time the director found Clift passed out, dead drunk with a cigarette burnt down to his fingers. Finally, Clift's diet was exceedingly poor, as he often ate so-called blue-rare, or practically uncooked steak, slathered with pepper and butter.

With Libby Holman during break in filming Raintree County

When Raintree County was released in December 1957, movie audiences were fascinated with the before and after looks of Montgomery Clift. While movie critics were not particularly kind to the film, it did make a lot of money, though not enough to turn a profit. MGM's books showed a nearly $500,000 loss, due to the movie's costly $6 million (50 million in 2015 dollars) production. Rotten Tomatoes posts a dreadful 11% rating (an average from nine critics' reviews), and a much better 6.4 ranking appears on IMDB.  I find much to recommend, however, in its music, costumes, production design, and supporting players, including Lee Marvin, who is especially good as the braggart, Flash Perkins, and Nigel Patrick as the morally suspect Professor. Elizabeth Taylor received the first of four Oscar nominations in a row for Best Actress (losing to Joanne Woodward in The Three Faces of Eve), but her work here is middling; Eva Marie Saint's Nell is goody-goody bore; And Clift's John Shawnessey leaves much to be desired. It may be his most pedestrian performance, though 1959's Lonelyhearts runs a close second.

I find Raintree an intriguing failure, effective at times. I first saw it in the 1970s and have revisited it several times since then. It was only the third or fourth movie of Clift's I saw after A Place in the Sun and Red River. Some movies remind me of a very particular time and place - not of the film, but of  what I was experiencing in my own life. The 1970s was a time of discovery for me of all things cinematic. Acting, especially Method acting, held my interest. I wanted to be an actor, and even though I ultimately didn't pursue that career, when I revisit Raintree County, I am reminded of a time when I was experiencing legendary acting like Montgomery Clift's for the first time. When I see Raintree County, I can almost recapture that feeling of when my world was ripe with possibilities, and my future was an expanded horizon waiting to be explored.

By the time Raintree County was playing around the country, Montgomery Clift had discovered that he still did have a life in the movies. The Young Lions with Method rival Marlon Brando came out in April 1958, and he worked with his beloved Bessie Mae again in 1959's Suddenly, Last Summer. Nevertheless, Clift's acting had taken on a hesitant quality. His voice, too, was affected by the 1956 car crash and seemed to waver sometimes. Other times his "new" face and voice would work to his advantage, such as when he played a victim of Nazi experiments in 1961's Judgement at Nuremberg (a performance resulting in the last of four Oscar nominations, which he should have won for) - and in John Huston's The Misfits as the busted up rodeo rider Perce Howland.

Liquor and drug intake quickly took a toll on Clift's body, mind, and spirit. It also lessened his bankability as fewer and fewer producers were willing to take him on. One of the last to do so was Huston again for his movie and box office dud, Freud, released in 1962. The shooting of that film was a disaster. Clift suffered from cataracts and had difficulty remembering his lines. Huston and Clift had many disagreements on set due to differences of interpretation. The film effectively ended his career.

Montgomery Clift's last film, 1966's The Defector, was a low-budget spy film. He took the part only to prove to investors in the upcoming film adaptation of Carson McCullers' Reflections in a Golden Eye - in which in would be reunited with Elizabeth Taylor as well as his bete noir John Huston - that he could get though it and was healthy enough to work. But before production began, Clift died in his sleep of a heart attack at age 45 on July 23, 1966. He was replaced by Marlon Brando.

The cult of Montgomery Clift is not as strong as James Dean's or Marilyn Monroe's. His achievements as an actor have been overshadowed by more forceful personalities like Brando. It takes a strong film with mass appeal for multiple generations to endure after a performer has died. Clift made many good films and even some great ones (Red River, A Place in the Sun, From Here to Eternity), but none of his films seem to resonate today like Marlon Brando in The Godfather or James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause or East of Eden. But the cult of Clift may be gearing up for a comeback as HBO has a biopic in the works, which may help the world rediscover one of the 20th Century's most vulnerable, refined, lonely, romantic, and singular talents. I hope so.

Sources:    Wikipedia Page on Raintree County and Montgomery Clift
                 The Films of Montgomery Clift by Judith M.Kass
                 Montgomery Clift, A Biography by Patricia Bosworth
                 IMDB on Raintree County
                 Rotten Tomatoes
                 Images courtesy of the Internet

Underrated Gem: "Criss Cross"

When I was on my initial voyage of noir discovery in the 1990s, Robert Siodmak's near perfect Criss Cross was nowhere near the top of the food chain, and that puzzled me. Here was a tremendously affecting story: Burt Lancaster plays Steve, a guy who returns to his hometown of Los Angeles still pining for ex (Yvonne "Lily Munster" DeCarlo) and gets mixed up in a armored car heist.

Lancaster was essentially discovered by director Siodmak three years earlier when he was cast in 1946's The Killers, based on Ernest Hemingway's short story. That film, Lancaster's debut, made him a star instantly. By 1949, Lancaster had begun to feel his oats and had just expanded his cinematic horizons with his own production company, one of the first independents in Hollywood, and the noir-ish Kiss the Blood Off My Hands. However, still under contract to Hal Wallis and Paramount, Lancaster was loaned to Universal Studios for Criss Cross, his eighth film.

One of the benefits of the film is its extensive location work in and around Bunker Hill near downtown Los Angeles. All of these locations were destroyed in the 1960s to make way for the new Los Angeles Courthouse and other federal buildings. (With the refurbishment, the city also lost the fabled "Angels Flight," a tramcar that connected Hill Street and Olive Street, and can be seen in the film.)

Like all the best noir films, Criss Cross has a tremendous sense of atmosphere.

It's interesting to note that in the New York Times review, Criss Cross was labeled "a suspenseful action picture," when today's critics and scholars refer to it as a film noir. Star Lancaster was not pleased with the liberties Siodmak and screenwriter Daniel Fuchs made to the story after producer Mark Hellinger suddenly died of a heart attack prior to filming. The director and screenwriter slanted the story, which was originally a basic robbery yarn, to emphasize scenes and dialogue between Steve, Anna (DeCarlo), and Slim Dundee (Dan Duryea), and the poisonous threesome they have developed. Steve's passion and love for Anna becomes his sole motivation for participating in the robbery with Slim and his gang. Lancaster's Steve is one of the most passive, love-struck saps of all films noir. His love for the opportunistic Anna blinds him to the trouble and double cross ahead, and I'm assuming Lancaster wasn't crazy about playing such a passive guy. Nevertheless, I feel his performance is one of Lancaster's most effective, with his vulnerability making Steve more sympathetic and much better than his "Swede" character in The Killers, who just seemed stupid. That film had a great critical and box office reputation from the time it premiered, yet Criss Cross has struggled for over sixty years to make it to the top of critics' and scholars' lists. (Criss Cross currently sits at number two on "noir czar" Eddie Muller's list of all-time noirs right behind 1950's great In a Lonely Place.)

 

Tension is mounting: DeCarlo's Anna, Duryea as Slim, Tom Pedi's Vincent, Lancaster as Steve (left to right).

One of the benefits of the film is its marvelous cast. DeCarlo, who I previously tagged as Lily Munster from the 1960's sitcom, The Munsters, had one of her greatest roles as Anna, Steve's two-timing ex and current wife of Duryea's Slim. DeCarlo's beauty staggers everyone she comes into contact with. While maybe not quite on par with Ava Gardner's femme fatale in The Killers, DeCarlo more than holds her own. For me, who had only been in contact with her through her sitcom character and the old chestnut, Band of Angels with Clark Gable, DeCarlo's turn in Criss Cross was an eye opener. 

Not enough can be said of Dan Duryea, one of cinema's great bad guys. His Slim Dundee is creepy, slimy, scary, and oddly sympathetic. Slim, too, is in love with Anna, and it drives him crazy with jealousy, never trusting her or letting her out of his sight (if Slim isn't around, one of his flunkies escorts her with rides and so forth). In fact, although the basic plot is an armored car heist, the actual tension comes from the triangle these three develop. 

Saving the best for last is Burt Lancaster as Steve, a poor sap if ever there was one. Steve believes all the sweet talk Anna gives him about hating Slim, and Steve being the only one she ever wanted. Steve believes it because he wants to more than anything. From Steve's opening scene, all he thinks about is Anna, although he denies it to anyone who asks. If you've ever had a break-up with a dame and then thought only about ways of getting her back, then Steve is your go-to guy. 

Criss Cross also benefits from a tremendous supporting cast, some familiar, some not. Starting with Steve's pal, Detective Pete Ramirez, played by Stephen McNalley; Tom Pedi's Vincent ("That's the ticket! That's the way to be!!!"); Alan Napier (best known as Alfred from the 1960s Batman TV show) as Finchley; Richard Long as Steve's brother, Slade; and, best of all, Percy Helton as bartender, Frank. Also, I have to give a shout out to an actress I haven't seen in a movie since, Joan Miller as The Lush, as she's credited on IMDB. 

Yvonne DeCarlo in Criss Cross, at the height of her beauty.
Steve and Slim battle over her the entire film. Come on, wouldn't you?

Director Robert Siodmak, a German refugee, was a noir expert. Coming to America in the late 1930s, he made 23 films in Tinseltown, but he started slow and near the bottom. After a few minor features, Siodmak signed with Universal Pictures where his first job came in the form of Son of Dracula, featuring a robust Lon Chaney, Jr., as Count Alucard (get it? "Dracula" spelled backwards). According to Wikipedia, Son of Dracula is the first Dracula film to show the Count turning into a bat. Although a B-picture, the film is drenched in a smoky atmosphere suitable to its Southern setting. From there, Siodmak went on to make several of the best noirs ever, including Phantom Lady in 1944; Christmas Holiday with singing star Deanna Durbin giving her pipes a rest and shedding her wholesome image opposite a menacing against-type Gene Kelly, also in 1944; 1945's The Spiral Staircase; The Killers (for which he received an Oscar nomination for Best Director) and The Dark Mirror, both in 1946. After finishing his work in American movies with the rousing, very un-noir-like The Crimson Pirate with an acrobatic Burt Lancaster, Siodmak returned to Europe to continue his career. He died in 1973 without ever really getting the recognition he deserved.

The end is nigh.

For my money, the best part of Criss Cross is the ending. The robbery goes horribly wrong, leaving Steve in the hospital after being shot in the shoulder during the heist. He's taken by one of Slim's henchmen and driven to the beach house where he told Anna to meet him. Once there, Anna shows her true colors: she is leaving Steve, bad shoulder and all, telling him that what has happened is not her fault, that people "gotta look out for themselves." Crushed, Steve quietly tells her of his never-ending love and obsession. "I never wanted the money," he tells her. "I only wanted you." Then, just before Anna hits the road with a suitcase full of dough, Slim shows up. Shot in the hold-up as well, Slim comes limping in with cane for help. Catching Anna with Steve is the ultimate betrayal. Slim pulls out a gun. . . . It's one of the saddest, most heartbreaking conclusions in film history. Along with the finale to another noir classic, Chinatown, the last five minutes of Criss Cross haunt the viewer long after the movie ends.

What a cast of characters! That's Percy Helton top left.

Sources : IMDB
                Wikipedia
                TCM (film viewing)

Underrated Gem: Billy Wilder's "Fedora"

The year is 1976. The place, Hollywood USA. Billy Wilder, one of Hollywood's greatest writer-directors is at loose ends. His last film, a remake of The Front Page, starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau in their first film together since 1968's hit comedy, The Odd Couple, had "underperformed," Tinseltown-speak for failed. For his next project, the six-time Oscar winner came across a book called Crowned Heads by Thomas Tryon, a former actor whose most notable role was the title character in Otto Preminger's 1963 film, The Cardinal. Crowned Heads told four different stories of Hollywood: of Lorna, a movie sex goddess who travels to a remote part of Mexico to find herself; of Bobbitt, an aging child star whose films have been forgotten; of Willie, a gay silent film star who encounters a Manson-like hustler and pays the price (much like Ramon Navarro, the model for the character); and of Fedora, an enigmatic old school movie queen ala Garbo and Dietrich whose beautiful face has been untouched by time. 

The not-so-great poster: the art work showcasing Marthe Keller's title character is great, but Holden's superimposed photo knocks it down a peg or two.

Plans to film Fedora had originated at Universal Pictures around 1976, shortly after the novel's publication, but due to that studio's poor track record with films about old Hollywood (Gable & Lombard, W.C. Fields & Me both released in 1976), the recent wave of nostalgia had dissipated, resulting in Wilder's film going into turnaround (i.e., "Good luck, Billy, you can take this piece of shit script elsewhere."). With two options - to press on, looking for interest from other studios or to give up and search for another worthwhile project - Wilder decided to press on. No one has ever explained exactly why he held onto Fedora so tenaciously. It would prove to be one of the most difficult for him to get on screen.

Back in 1951, Wilder got thoroughly roasted by critics and audiences alike (crowds, as they say, stayed away in droves) when his film Ace in the Hole, a brilliant though unrelentingly bleak view of the human condition, was released. Since the failure of that movie, Wilder had hightailed it to more proven commodities, like stage hits Stalag 17, Sabrina, The Seven Year Itch, and Witness for the Prosecution. The couple of times Wilder did step outside the box of these proven winners he tripped up with The Spirit of St. Louis and Love in the Afternoon. These movies - with the exception of Spirit of St. Louis - were comedies, or at least lighter takes on serious subjects as with Prosecution and Stalag 17. Wilder would continue in this comic vein for the rest of the 1950s and into the 60s. It wasn't until Fedora that Wilder would be completely serious again.

The film that sent Billy Wilder running for comedic cover, 1951.

I read somewhere (having read so much about Wilder and his films, I'm not sure where, but obviously it has stayed with me) that Wilder has claimed that when he was depressed he made comedies and when happy he made dramas. If that's true Wilder was depressed for the better part of 20 years. From 1953 to 1974, Wilder made only two dramas - 1957's The Spirit of St. Louis  and 1970's The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. The rest could all be classified as lighter films, if not outright comedies.

With Fedora, Wilder had something to say - something he had been holding onto for at least a decade and probably more: Hollywood and its movies were going to the dogs. Told in flashback, the accent of Fedora is on youth, the mystical allure of movie queens, and how to remain forever young and desirable whatever the cost. Wilder gets his jabs in on the New Hollywood of the 1970s via William Holden's character Barry Detweiler (the film's story is narrated by Detweiler; its events seen via Detweiler's POV), a down-on-his-luck producer trying to pitch his Anna Karenina adaptation - retitled The Snows of Yesteryear - to Fedora.

Detweiler, we learn, is not only trying to sell Fedora on his script; he is also on a kind of sentimental journey of lost love and past regrets. He has a history with her. Flashing back to 1947, Detweiler, called Dutch at the time, is an assistant director on a movie called Leda and the Swan, starring none other than Fedora. During the shooting of a seduction scene in an artificial pond, Dutch is summoned to place water lilies strategically on Fedora's exposed breasts, so the scene will pass the censors' review. Dutch does so, yet makes the ultimate faux pas of yawning while covering her breasts, an action which offends Fedora (apparently no one had ever yawned while she was nude). Fedora is so incensed that she and Dutch end up spending the night together as she proves to him what a great lover she can be.

Fedora before the water lilies.

In the present, Detweiler is kept from Fedora by her strange entourage - the Countess Sobryanski, Dr. Vando, and Miss Balfour - and finally pitches his script to them. They tell Detweiler that his script is typical Hollywood trash. The Countess tells Detweiler that no woman would leap to her death under a moving train, leaving herself completely disfigured. A woman, she claims, would always wants to look her best, even at her own funeral. Fedora, however, who has been eavesdropping on Detweiler's pitch to her entourage, emerges, claiming, "I love that ending.... It is so inevitable." She approaches Detweiler, wanting to know who her leading man will be. Detweiler tells her that she can have any male star since they are all dying to work with her. She suggests Michael York, whom she had worked with in the last picture before her "retirement" and with whom she had developed an intense obsession. The story goes cleverly on from there with a twist or two that should be saved for a viewing of the film. 


Fedora is Billy Wilder's swan song of Classic Hollywood and his kind of movies - movies that have a plot, genuine - or at least genuine-seeming - characters, and inspired dialogue. New Hollywood's recently adapted Star Wars mentality of keeping character and dialog to a minimum with action and special effects coming as fast as possible was anathema to someone like Wilder and his longtime co-writer I.A.L. Diamond. They wrote films in which the actors' dialogue was its own special effect. Even Fedora, though not top-of-the-line Billy Wilder, has a couple of good lines, like Detweiler's "The kids with the beards have taken over. Just give them a hand-held camera and a zoom lens." I sense a lot of Wilder in Detweiler, much like Joe Gillis in Sunset Boulevard (which Fedora is a clear descendant of). That earlier film saw Wilder at the height of his powers and represents not only a peak in his career but one of the best movies to ever come out of the so-called dream factory. As Wilder himself claimed in an interview, he got very lucky making Sunset Boulevard. They needed DeMille for a cameo in the picture, and they got him. They needed an old-time silent film star and found Gloria Swanson. A washed up director? Erich Von Stroheim as butler/director/protector was perfection. Whatever Wilder needed, he got. Even Montgomery Clift's early exit from the production was a blessing in disguise, as he likely would have been too anxious about the reflection of his own personal life in the role of Joe Gillis. I don't think anyone can top William Holden's interpretation of Joe as a combination of bemused, desperate, hopeful, and self-loathing (Holden should've won the Oscar, in my opinion).

Is this a knock-knock joke? Holden and Keller in Fedora.

Fedora was not so lucky. Wilder had wanted Marlene Dietrich for the Countess and Faye Dunaway for Fedora. Supposedly Dietrich hated the book and thought Wilder's script was no better. With Dietrich out, Wilder evidently decided not to approach Dunaway and gave the part to Marthe Keller, a Swiss beauty in the process of making a small splash with Dustin Hoffman in Marathon Man (1976) and Black Sunday (1977) and opposite Al Pacino in Bobby Deerfield (also 1977).  Problem after problem plagued Wilder during filming and in post-production. While viewing a rough cut of the film, Wilder realized that Keller and Hildegard Knef's strong accents made their lines practically unintelligible. Further, their voices did not sound remotely similar, an element vital to the plot, so Wilder had to dub both women's voices with another actress's. Allied Artists, a financially sketchy company that had the distribution deal on the film, pulled out after an unenthusiastic screening at a benefit in New York City. The film was then picked up by Lorimar Productions which planned to sell it as a television movie to CBS. Before that happened, however, United Artists (UA) stepped in to save the film for theatrical exhibition. Based on recommendations from UA, Wilder cut twelve minutes from the film and previewed it in Santa Barbara, California, in May 1978. Wilder was hoping to show it at a theater that was playing either Fred Zinnemann's Julia or Herb Ross's The Turning Point to get a more similarly-minded audience, but neither film was playing in town. Wilder settled on the Walter Matthau/Glenda Jackson comedy House Calls.

I was at that preview held at the now-long-gone State Theater. The first half seemed to play well, but after the secret of Fedora's true identity was revealed, the audience began to get restless. By the time a line of dialogue was spoken about Detweiler and Fedora's affair years previous on a "beach somewhere ... Santa Barbara!" the audience burst into a roar of laughter. The scenes with Michael York didn't play well either. The film's mood had been broken, and Wilder had lost his audience. Watching the film, knowing Wilder was sitting in a roped-off section a few rows behind me, I felt bad for him and his writing partner Diamond. When the film ended and I got up to leave the theater, I was surprised to see Wilder and Diamond had already left. But it makes sense. Why would Wilder want to sit with an audience who could not appreciate the fruit of his labor?

Wilder, Keller, and Michael York filming the important flashback scene.

At this point Wilder refused to make any more cuts to the troubled film that he had worked on for nearly three years (Wilder later said, "In three years I could've made three lousy pictures instead of one."). He was done. Let Fedora sink or swim as is. On May 30, 1978, the nearly $7 million (a not insignificant amount in the late 1970s) Fedora had its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival, which was honoring Wilder with a small retrospective of his films. Almost another year would pass before Fedora received an American release in April 1979. It performed poorly, earning only about $1 million. Domestic reviews were harsh. Richard Schickel stated that the film was "ludicrous" and its maker over the hill. European critics were kinder than American ones with the phrase "old fashioned" used several times. So, Wilder was out of touch with the current cinema. He didn't necessarily perceive it as an insult. "Who wants to be in touch with these times?" he asked. The good news is that Fedora has been reappraised by modern critics who consider it Wilder's last film worth viewing (1981's abysmal Buddy, Buddy is a must to avoid) with a 6.9 rating on IMDB and 73% on Rotten Tomatoes. And the movie, which only received a VHS release back in the early 90s, got a proper Blu-Ray transfer just this year. So it seems after all this time the world is finally catching up to and appreciating the beauty, elegance, charm, wit, and heartbreak that is Fedora.

What price fame?

Sources: On Sunset Boulevard: The Life & Times of Billy Wilder by Ed Sikov
               Conversations with Wilder by Cameron Crowe
               Film Comment Volume 15, Number 1, Jan-Feb.1979
               Wikipedia page on Fedora
               IMDB
               Images courtesy of the internet

The Boy Genius in Hollywood

Orson Welles is widely acknowledged as the great genius of American cinema, the wunderkind, the magician of the movies. From his screen debut in the great cinematic game-changer, Citizen Kane, until his death 44 years later, he was also considered one of the movies' biggest failures. His success with Kane, at the tender age of 25, doomed him to something he could never surpass, no matter how hard he tried or how close he came.

Welles, with pipe, overseeing every detail. His brilliant director of photography, Gregg Toland is at lower right, in scarf.

Welles came to Hollywood in July 1939, barely 24 years old, and already hailed as the "Boy Wonder" of stage and radio. His radio broadcast of H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds in October 1938 bought his ticket to Hollywood - a carte blanche contract from RKO Radio Pictures that even the best filmmakers in town could not get. It instantly made him the envy of everyone. After spending nearly a year in town, starting and discarding projects, including an adaptation of Joesph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (later the basis for Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now); a thriller called Smiler With a Knife; and the life of Christ, the pressure began to build. He found his project, though, after teaming up with writer  Herman J. Mankiewicz on a script titled American.

Welles began shooting the American script, renamed Citizen Kane, in July 1940, and finished four months later. With his first film, Welles continued the luck that had been part of his career, both in theater and radio. A big part of this luck was the teaming of Welles with Gregg Toland, widely thought to be the best cameraman in the movies at the time. Besides Toland, Welles was surrounded by a cracker jack production team: art direction by Perry Ferguson, editing by Robert Wise, musical score by Bernard Herrmann. Together, they created one of the best (if not the best), most influential films ever made.

After the notorious press and release of Kane, Welles embarked on an adaptation of Booth Tarkington's The Magnificent Ambersons, the story of a proud, rich Midwestern family that falls on hard times. The film's production coincided with the United States' entry into World War II after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941. As a result, Ambersons - already a difficult film to sell - became something of an anachronism. Though the Ambersons budget was approximately that of Kane, Welles went over by about $100,000, bringing the total to nearly a million dollars, a significant amount for the time and, especially, for RKO, which seemed always on the brink of disaster.

America's involvement in World War II brought a change to the mindset of the nation's weekly moviegoers. Suddenly, American movie theaters were flooded with patriotic war films; criticism of the American way of life, in the past or the present, was not particularly welcome. When Ambersons  previewed in the spring of 1942, the audience reaction was less than enthusiastic. The final cut ran 131 minutes when most films ran well under two hours. To the RKO executives, the previews indicated cuts were imperative. But Welles was thousands of miles away shooting a film for RKO in Brazil, commissioned by the United States Government (and instigated by Nelson Rockefeller) to help foster the Good Neighbor Policy with South America. Try as he might, Welles had a difficult time relaying via phone calls and telegrams his editing instructions to Robert Wise. Consequently, RKO brass made massive cuts and re-shot some scenes. Overall, about 40 minutes were cut, re-edited, and/or re-filmed, taking the final release print down to 88 minutes. 

George and Uncle Jack Amberson say goodbye at the train station. This may be my favorite scene from the film.

In spite of the studio's cuts, the Amberson family's reversal of fortune is presented in an elegiac, melancholy way, reflecting the loss of a calmer, slower way of life. It is tempting to compare Ambersons to Welles own life, with their poignant parallels: George was Welles' own first name; Joseph Cotton's inventor character was modeled somewhat on Welles' own inventor father; the Midwestern atmosphere was familiar to Welles who was born in Wisconsin; and perhaps most telling of all - the film's townspeople wish to see the young George get his comeuppance, as many in Hollywood wished for Welles. Overall, I think The Magnificent Ambersons is well worth watching - and re-watching. As I get older, I can appreciate its nostalgic tone - the mournful passing of time and the longing for a past remembered.

After the Ambersons debacle, filming halted on the Brazilian project, now called It's All True. With $1.2 million already spent, RKO cut off Welles' funds. When he returned to the US, Welles and his entire staff had been dismissed from RKO. "[T]he studio destroyed Ambersons," he said, "which, in effect, destroyed me." Orson Welles never had complete control of a Hollywood production again.

Orson in The Lady From Shanghai. Note the sign on the right. Shortly after the film was released in 1948, Welles would flee to Europe for reasons never really explained.

For the next several years Welles could not get a film directing job; however, he did stay busy, acting in movies like Jane Eyre, as the brooding Mr. Rochester, with Joan Fontaine; alongside Claudette Colbert in the weepy Tomorrow Is Forever; and doing a guest star cameo in the wartime extravaganza, Follow the Boys, performing a magic show with an assist from pal Marlene Dietrich.

In 1946, Welles was finally allowed to make the thriller, The Stranger, with stars Loretta Young and Edward G. Robinson. An early producing effort by Sam Spiegel (still under his pseudonym S.P. Eagle), many call it the worst film Welles directed. It's certainly the most conventional, though there is much to like, including the always welcome presence of Robinson as a Nazi hunter in hot pursuit of Welles' Nazi-on-the-lam college professor and a nice atmosphere of college life in a small New England town. Such was his reputation for profligate spending that he made it a priority with The Stranger to stay on budget and deliver a film the masses could enjoy. I suppose in that regard the film was successful.

It was also at this point in his life and career that Welles cultivated the habit of performing in one or more productions to pay for his directing projects, though it started out in kind of reverse fashion. 1946 found Welles back on Broadway for the first time since 1941's Native Son with a colossal adaptation of Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days, a musical with words and music by Cole Porter. The show ran over budget, and in a desperate bid for cash, Welles asked Columbia Pictures studio head, Harry Cohn, for a loan. In return, Welles agreed to write, produce, direct, and star in The Lady From Shanghai, an adaptation of a pulpy book called If I Die Before I Wake. Cohn gave his approval and Around the World proceeded to draw big crowds. Due to its tremendous cost, however, it closed less than three months after its opening and lost money.

The Lady From Shanghai paired Welles with his estranged wife, Rita Hayworth. The couple married in 1943 and had a daughter, Rebecca, in 1944, but by 1946 the union was more or less kaput. Hayworth was Columbia Pictures' biggest asset, so naturally Harry Cohn lavished a big budget on the film. What Cohn didn't know - or count on - was Welles subversive ways. He cut Hayworth's famed hair and dyed it blonde. On top of that, her character was the film's femme fatale. Welles' rough cut ran 155 minutes. Cohn blanched and cut it in half to a more audience friendly 86 minutes. It didn't matter though. The Lady From Shanghai - like Orson and Rita's wedded bliss - was doomed to fail. With all its off-camera intrigue - along with the Welles/Hayworth drama, the schooner charted for the ocean scenes was Errol Flynn's Zaca, and he and second wife Nora accompanied the cast and crew from California to Mexico and back  - the production history would undoubtedly make for a great making-of book or in-depth documentary.

The marvelous Italian poster from the noir classic.

Though his marriage to Rita Hayworth couldn't be saved, Welles thought he could rescue his faltering career with a film of Shakespeare's Macbeth. And why not? Welles' own voodoo Macbeth, produced for Broadway back in 1937, was already legendary. Though a significant amount for B-movie studio Republic Pictures (well known mostly for its westerns), Welles' film of Macbeth had a comparatively modest budget of $800,000. Released the same year as Olivier's boffo rendering of Hamlet (1948's Best Picture) Welles' Macbeth, filmed in 23 days, was another box office and critical disappointment.

Giving up on Hollywood, Welles moved to Europe where he starred in a series of films and directed two. His most prominent acting role was as the nefarious Harry Lime in 1949's The Third Man. Co-produced by David O. Selznick and Alexander Korda, The Third Man became an international smash hit, the kind Welles dreamed of for years. Had Welles taken a percentage, which was offered, instead of up-front money, he could have been solvent for many years. But needing immediate funding to keep his latest Shakespeare adaptation, Othello, afloat, Welles chose money up front. (No one ever said great artists were good businessmen.)

Welles in Italy, early 1950s

Besides Othello, Welles directed just one other film during his sojourn in Europe. 1955's Mr. Arkadin, a bizarre film even by Welles standards, is about a rich man who hires someone to conduct an inquiry into his life. Although Othello won the Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival (though that honor mattered little in the late 1940s), Mr. Arkadin was a total bust when it snuck ("released" is too strong a term to describe the film's US debut) into the US in 1962. In spite of an expert cast, including the the lush Patricia Medina, it is my choice for the worst film Orson Welles directed.

Touch of Evil brought Orson Welles back to the kingdom he'd abdicated in 1948, but it almost didn't happen. In pre-production, Universal Pictures had signed Welles to portray racist, corrupt cop, Hank Quinlan, and shortly after that approached Charlton Heston to star as good American cop, Mitch Holt. Heston told the studio execs that he would be very interested if Welles was the director. The studio offered the film to Welles, who accepted and proceeded to re-write the script, changing the setting from San Diego to a fictional Mexican border town (read: Tijuana), making Heston's character a Mexican named Miguel Vargas rather than an American named Mitch Holt, and reversing the nationality of his wife, Susan, from Mexican to American. The plot deals with a prominent American big shot and his stripper companion getting blown up by an unseen bomber. The opening tracking shot is legendary - the opening of Robert Altman's The Player references it while imitating it - and is one of several Welles touches that distinguish this B-grade thriller and raise it to the level of art.

Dietrich, Leigh, Heston, and Welles. When Dietrich showed up unannounced to view the daily rushes, studio execs sat up; they didn't know she was in it. When contacted, Dietrich said if they didn't use her in publicity, she'd work for minimum, but if they publicized her appearance, they could "talk to [her] agent." They did.

Touch of Evil has more than its share of sleazy images and grotesque characters: Marlene Dietrich's  gypsy/madam/fortune teller, Tanya; Akim Tamiroff's Joe Grandi; Val de Vargas' gang leader, Pancho; Dennis Weaver's nerdy motel night manager; and Mercedes McCambridge's androgynous, greasy gang member, who, in the film's most unsettling scene, asks Pancho, to "[l]et me stay. I wanna watch," when the gang break into Suzie's motel room. Despite all these bravura moments, it's the dialogue and the characters of Quinlan and Tanya that still resonate.

Welles' films are filled with quiet moments of pathos, like the farewell scene at the train station in Magnificent Ambersons and in Citizen Kane when Kane first meets Susan Alexander and tells her about his "sentimental journey" to go to the "western Manhattan warehouse in search of my youth." In Touch of Evil, Tanya is a person from Quinlan's past, possibly a former lover who knew him before the weight and corruption took over his life. In one memorable scene Quinlan asks her to "read my fortune to me," and Tanya replies, "You haven't got one. Your future's all used up." Similarly, Welles'  future in Hollywood was all used up too. Though Touch of Evil finished on time and budget, Welles never completed another film in Hollywood.

Today, Touch of Evil is a touchstone of noir perversity and audacity. All of Orson Welles' films had a look-ma-no-hands presentation, the opposite of his American contemporaries. He was too grandiose, too non-conformist, too much the genius for Hollywood to accept comfortably. Like previous master directors Erich Von Stroheim and D.W. Griffith, the excess in his films sent Hollywood's power brokers running scared. Like the The Magnificent Ambersons and The Lady From Shanghai, Touch of Evil was taken away from Welles and re-edited and shortened by about 15 minutes. Yet, as Charlton Heston pointed out, Welles reputation for extravagance was unfounded, as all his films combined cost far less than any one opus from today's maestros of cinema - Spielberg, Kubrick, Coppola, Lucas. So we celebrate this so-called mad genius of cinema on the one hundredth anniversary of his birth by going back to the legacy of awesome and unique films he left us to enjoy.

Sources

Books: The Magic World of Orson Welles by James Naremore
            Orson Welles: Power, Heart and Soul by F.X. Feeney
            Rosebud: The Story of Orson Welles by David Thomson
            The Great Movies by William Bayer
Video: The Orson Welles Story (BBC)