The Confessional: Martin Scorsese's "New York, New York"

Al Hirschfeld's wonderful caricatures for the movie

By any measure Martin Scorsese's New York, New York is not considered anywhere near the upper echelon of his filmography. That distinction is reserved for Raging Bull, Goodfellas, and Taxi Driver, among a few others. Books about Scorsese's films generally mark New York, New York an honorable failure, which it was, critically and financially, upon release in June 1977. By all accounts it was--and perhaps remains--a painful experience for its director to revisit. Interviews as well as Scorsese's commentary on the movie portrays it as too sensitive a subject for him to fully explore. Too personal? Possibly. The comments he makes on the New York, New York DVD seem especially perfunctory. Marty doesn't say a word about the personal difficulties he had making it. And by many accounts, the production was painful for most involved. As the movie's costume designer, Theadora Van Runkle, says, "People still sit around and tell horror stories about working on New York, New York" (for example, she states that the crew “were treated like peasants”).

Scorsese's problems included an unfinished script that required some scenes to be written just hours before filming them; a severe addition to cocaine; and an extramarital affair with Liza Minnelli, the leading lady. Budgeted at $7 million, the production ended up with a price tag of $12 million as the film shoot scheduled for 14 weeks ran to 22 weeks. The first cut of the film ran four and a half hours.
 

Stars Liza Minnelli and Robert De Niro with director, Martin Scorsese,
during the production of New York, New York

Attempting to add the patina of classic Hollywood's best films, New York, New York, was filmed at the fabled MGM Studios in Culver City, California, where Liza Minnelli's parents, the legendary acting and singing star, Judy Garland, and film director, Vincente Minnelli, worked for much of their careers. Liza even had her mother's old dressing room as well as a visit from her father during filming in June 1976, which undoubtedly thrilled a cinephile like Scorsese.

I always wanted to hear from Scorsese or Minnelli themselves about what it was like to make a film on that lot. By 1976, MGM Studios Lot #3, which included the Meet Me in St. Louis set, the western set, and the massive lake from Show Boat, had already been sold and destroyed for condos; however, Lot #2, already sold and planned for destruction as well, was still there with its decaying sets--the mansion from The Philadelphia Story; Copperfield Court; the girl's school set used in films like Tea & Sympathy; Verona Square used in Romeo & Juliet, the Grand Central Station set, and the New York City streets sets. Did any filming go on there? There is a train station scene and many shots of New York streets in the movie that were obviously studio creations. Were they backlot sets cleaned up and used, or were they sets recreated on MGM sound stages? Scorsese was high, but it was likely from the scent of real Hollywood history as much as from cocaine. Both he and Liza knew the studio they were working in--with so much film history--may not be there much longer. Did Marty ever wander those studio streets and think to himself, this looks like the set from Madame Bovary, or, maybe Fred Astaire danced right here?  I've read books on MGM studios, Scorsese, Robert De Niro, and interviews with Liza Minnelli, but none ever mentions those sets nor what it felt like to be there. According to the book, MGM: Hollywood's Greatest Backlot, Stage 5 and Stage 6 on Lot #1 still had the permanent "theater set" which had been used for the best-known musicals in the 1940s and 1950s. New York, New York was one of the last, if not the last movie, to shoot on that set.

Liza Minnelli's father, film director, Vincente Minnelli--
a hero of Scorsese's--visits the New York, New York set, June 1976

By the time of the film's premiere in June 1977, Hollywood had been transformed. May 25, 1977, saw the release of Star Wars, George Lucas's era-smashing, box office mega-hit. The trend towards the blockbuster had been coming for some time: Warner's The Exorcist in 1973 was one of the first to use a saturation approach to booking theater screens. 1975 saw Jaws devour every single movie and become the new all-time box office champion when it was put into over 400 theaters at once, an unprecedented move at the time. What was new wasn't how much money these films raked in but how fast they did it. At the time some films could play in movie houses for months or even over a year. For instance, Chinatown opened June 1974 in what was known as "platform" booking, which is gradually rolling out a film before going into wider release around the country. This approach would likely have been the best strategy for New York, New York. But with the blockbuster scenario in play, movies like New York, New York were doomed. More than the space opera stylings and action pace of Lucas's epic, it was the marketing of films in the Seventies that changed movies forever. Thus New York, New York bombed at the country's theaters, bringing in roughly $16 million and losing a bundle.

Scorsese seemed to be in a state of limbo after the drubbing New York, New York received, although he did manage to film the documentary, The Last Waltz immediately after the New York, New York shoot wrapped. Still living on the west coast, Scorsese was partying hard, stretching himself thin with both professional and personal activity. Mounting stress landed him in the hospital with exhaustion. According to Scorsese, he nearly died.

After the back-to-back fiascos of Stanley Donen's Lucky Lady in 1975 and A Matter of Time for her father in 1976, the damage New York, New York did to Liza Minnelli's movie career was devastating. Though she was still thriving on stage and in concerts, the movies would be off limits to Minnelli for the next four years when she returned in Arthur, playing third lead behind Dudley Moore and John Gielgud.

Only Robert De Niro suffered no ill effects after the release of New York, New York. His career  rebounded nicely with The Deer Hunter in 1978, and in 1980, Scorsese and De Niro would team for the fourth time to make Raging Bull, which by any measure is a fine achievement, likely their best and certainly their most critically well regarded.

Jimmy (Robert De Niro) and Francine's (Liza Minnelli)
emotional tug of war is the heart of the film

Going through many edits, New York, New York's original cut was four and a half hours before it was cut down to about three and a quarter hours, and finally clocking in at two hours, thirty-five minutes at the time of its release (though it was cut again to two hours, sixteen minutes after its poor financial showing). Critics could admire the movie without becoming emotionally involved. In his book The Hollywood Musicals, Ted Sennett calls the film "easily the gloomiest musical in some time." At awards time, New York, New York did both well and poorly, befitting its own uncertainty about whether it was musical, drama, comedy, none of these or all. Garnering four Golden Globe nominations for the film, for the title song, John Kander and Fred Ebb's "(Theme from) New York, New York," and for Minnelli and De Niro, none won. Hoping to build on any momentum those nominations got, the studio was hoping for attention come Oscar time. However, the movie did not receive one nod from the Academy, which indicates what the Hollywood community thought of the film as a whole. With post-theatrical release videotape, discs, and streaming still far off, the film was locked away in a film vault.
 

Scorsese and Minnelli in the editing room

 
In the aftermath of the its failure, New York, New York was lumped with Peter Bogdanovich's 1975 Cole Porter musical At Long Last Love; William Friedkin's Sorcerer (also from 1977); and future duds like Steven Spielberg's 1941, Francis Ford Coppola's One From the Heart, Robert Altman's Popeye, all mega budgeted box office and critical losers. Some of these filmmakers' careers never really recovered from these films. Bogdanovich and Friedkin struggled for years and never quite got their mojo back for more than a cinematic moment, though Altman and Coppola did experience quite a bit of success after these losses, as did (ahem) Spielberg.

I think what disappointed moviegoers was the tone of New York, New York. The advertisements and the film's trailer tried to play up the nostalgia angle, but the movie only somewhat played to nostalgia. Along the way, it also injected realistic situations and characters into our idea of classic Hollywood and the world that fostered it. I think people wanted a good, old-fashioned movie, but they probably should've known the creator of Taxi Driver wasn't going to give us Grease. If New York, New York has a film relation, it would be George Cukor's 1954 re-make of A Star Is Born.
 

My view of New York, New York has always been positive. From when I first saw it in June 1977, I was a fan. I was initially drawn to the stars, who are both amazing, and the film's incredible music. I understand how many feel De Niro's Jimmy Doyle is a jerk, and he is. But the movie doesn't present him as a cartoon villain any more than Minnelli's Francine Evans as a relentless nag. Both are young, working towards their individual success. Francine is as ambitious as Jimmy, but she handles it differently. And it's the ambition that breaks them up (though Jimmy's affairs probably don't help), and the movie underscores the importance of their breakup: Both finally succeed as Jimmy opens a popular jazz club and Francine becomes an acting and singing star.

I have many favorite scenes: The opening, set at the famed Rainbow Room where Jimmy and Francine meet in the first bit of comedy that characterizes the film's early scenes; the captivating first song the two leads share, "You've Brought a New Kind of Love to Me"; when De Niro breaks up the club his old band is performing at; Minnelli's musical numbers (her voice is never better); Diahnne Abbott's sultry rendition of Fats Waller's "Honeysuckle Rose"; the biggest emotional scene of the movie when Jimmy and Francine have a terrible argument that essentially leads to Francine going into labor with their son; Francine's triumphant return to New York featuring her performance of the title song; and, finally, the film's quiet, bittersweet finish.

New York, New York is a movie I've always had a lot of affection for. It's one of those movies where I just cannot understand why my friends don't see what I see in it. Or why they haven't ever seen it. While I admit it has its faults (it's a bit too long; De Niro's character, which Ted Sennett calls "harsh and unpleasant," becomes more so as the film progresses; the editing is choppy, especially in the last thirty or so minutes where time jumps forward abruptly), for me the pluses far outweigh the minuses. Boris Levin's production design and Laszlo Kovacs camera work is a visual feast, as are Theadora Van Runkle's brilliant costumes, and the glorious music, consisting of both standards--"The Man I Love," "Blue Moon," "Opus One," "Just You, Just Me"--and the Kander and Ebb originals.

Amazingly, New York, New York got second life when the movie was re-released in 1981 with the deleted scenes restored. The critical community sat up and reappraised the film, with some calling the restored version a masterpiece. As a full-fledged fan of the movie, I could not have agreed more.


Sources
New York, New York (Blu-Ray)
Easy Riders, Raging Bulls by Peter Biskind
Martin Scorsese by Les Keyser
Martin Scorsese, Close Up by Andy Dougan
MGM: Hollywood's Greatest Backlot by Steven Bingen, Stephen X. Sylvester, and Michael Troyan
The Hollywood Musical by Clive Hirschhorn
The Big Goodbye: Chinatown and the Last Years of Hollywood by Sam Wasson
Wikipedia
YouTube
Scorsesefilms.com: Behind the Screen-Minnelli on New York, New York
Images from the Web

Kirk Douglas, 1916-2020

Hollywood legend Kirk Douglas has passed away at age 103. A favorite of mine; especially liked his pre-1962 output. Possibly more to come. Godspeed

With Cyd Charisse in Two Weeks In Another Town, 1962

Clark Gable's Post War Blues, 1945-1951

As that scalawag, Rhett Butler his best remembered role. His charisma in this film is still overwhelming. Gone With The Wind, 1939

 Last year marked the 80th anniversary of one of Hollywood's most entertaining and enduring epics [and in recent years one of it's more controversial], Gone With The Wind. It's a landmark achievement, the culmination of everything the studios moguls set out to do: entertain on a lavish scale, telling a compelling story with fascinating characters, portrayed by the most engaging personalities of their day. For many of the principal players involved in it's making, after GWTW their was no where else to go but down. This certainly is what happened to Gable as the 1940's wore on.

Gable about 1950, relaxing at home.

 When it comes to classic era Hollywood movie stars Gable has got to be ranked up with the best. Born on February 1, 1901 [Happy Birthday!] in a small Ohio town, Gable's film career spanned thirty years spread over sixty-six movies. In only his seventh feature, 1931's A Free Soul, Gable played rough with the film's star Norma Shearer who couldn't get enough of his he-man treatment. Neither could the American Movie Goer during the Great Depression and the years just prior to United States entry into World War II [1941-1945]. Clark Gable's first twelve years are rightly considered his best with such bonafide classics as Red Dust, It Happened One Night [his Oscar winner], China Seas, Mutiny On The Bounty, San Francisco, Test Pilot, Boom Town, Honky Tonk and the most popular film of all-time, Gone With The Wind. In these years Gable won one Oscar for 1934's It Happened One Night and was nominated for two others, 1935's Mutiny on the Bounty and GWTW.  He was in Quigley Publication's Top Ten Box Office Poll every year from 1932 to 1943. That streak was broken only due to his enlistment in World War II at the request of his recently deceased wife, actress Carole Lombard. Gable was the country's ideal image of the male incarnate: down-to-earth, honest, rugged, fair, humorous, and--need I say?--sexy.  Gable was crowned the King of Hollywood due to all these successes not only at the box office, but with most critics. However, after 1942 when Carole Lombard died in a plane crash after flying cross county to promote the sale of war bonds, Gable was a changed man. The films he made in the immediate post war period reflected this change in the man and actor. Gable's post World War II period was generally popular with the public, yet critics--then and now--tend to denigrate Gable's efforts in this period of re-entry to his precarious life. The country that missed him the past three years had changed, grown darker. Clark was undergoing a very real, personal crisis himself.  That of a desperate, bitter, guilt-ridden, sad and lonely, alcoholic widower; uncertain of his future, thinking acting was for sissies. 

Post war blues: Contrary to legend the movie was popular, but Gable and his co-star didn't exactly set the world a-fire. 

 For his first movie to be released since 1942's Somewhere You'll Find Me, Gable's home studio of MGM and it's honcho, LB Mayer, spared no expense to make Adventure nothing less than spectacular. Some of these assets paid off, other's did not. On the plus side is "Gable's Back, and Garson's Got Him!". That famous bit of publicity--which now-Major Gable abhorred--was enough to light the fan base fire, for his co-star would be none other than Miss Greer Garson, Oscar winner for 1942's Mrs. Miniver. However, both on and off screen Gable and Garson were like oil and water, they just didn't mix well. The vivacious Joan Blondell, here in a supporting role, entering her most alluring phase in the movies [Cry 'Havoc', A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Nightmare Alley], seems a better fit with Gable's gruff merchant marine than Mrs. Miniver's prim manner.

Gable and Blondell were a natural fit, while Miss Garson stews. Adventure, 1945

 Another minus, no doubt intended as a big asset for Gable's return to the screen, would be Victor Fleming--who guided Clark through his image making rubber plantation owner impersonation in Red Dust and the second of three Gable/Spencer Tracy buddy-movies, Test Pilot. To Clark's way of thinking, the filming of GWTW was a disaster on scale with the real Titanic. Fleming took the reins of GWTW and saved it from sure disaster after Gable went to producer [and GWTW's true auteur] David Selznick demanding the replacement of George Cukor [who'd been on the film since Selznick purchased the rights back in 1936] as film's director. Gable told Selznick that Fleming was the only man who could save this picture before it hit that cinematic iceberg. Why Gable wanted Cukor off the film has never been properly explained, though theories abound. What's important is that Fleming, a he-man type who it is believed Gable based his screen persona after, had seemed to acquire a kind of PTSD spiritual crisis, epiphany, awakening or whatever. Call it what you will, Fleming's films took a different route after 1941's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde the film that Fleming collaborated on with Spencer Tracy as the good doctor and his brutal alter ego. Before Adventure, Fleming had made another movie with Tracy A Guy Named Joe. That 1943 wartime fantasy about the dead always being around and on the lookout for us mortals, to insure our happy ending [remade by Steven Spielberg in 1989 as Always, with Richard Dreyfuss in the Tracy role, only they fight fires instead of WWII]] This same malaise affected the plot of Adventure. The tone of the film feels more religious than a Cecil B. DeMille spectacle with a kind of spiritual tone, or as Michael Sragow puts it in his biography of Fleming,"There's a shipwreck; plenty of chatter about God, the final judgement and the immortal soul". All this misty-eyed, soul searching did nothing for Gable's career and the film has gone down in history as a flop with only it's ad tag line, 'Gable's Back and Garson's Got him!', supposedly the tangiest bit from a bad brew--but the film was popular and landed in Variety's Top 25 Box Office Hits, with Gable returning to the ranks of Top Box Office draw's in 1947, 1948, 1949.  Adventure made money so his bosses were happy, for the moment. So Clark went back to the dating and flirting and smoking and drinking. And drinking. And drinking.

Trying for the old charm. The year is 1947, the movie is a hit, with Gable back in the box office top ten.

 The Hucksters was Gable's next big picture. Based on a bestselling book by Fredric Wakeman, Sr; Directed by Gable favorite, Jack Conway, The Hucksters deals with Madison Avenue executive's--the Mad Men crowd and one can see it's origins here. The Hucksters is a nice cut above Gable's previous effort, having the distinction of it being Deborah Kerr's American film debut. Gable is still a rouge but that quality--previously front and center in his movies--is more implied than directly dealt with. Going all the way back to 1931's star making turn in the Norma Shearer sexy, pre-code A Free Soul, Gable as predator had been fairly well established with The King rubbing elbows with the likes of Myrna Loy, Jean Harlow, Jeanette MacDonald, Claudette Colbert, Lana Turner and Joan Crawford. Gable's lust interest for this new film would be British import, Deborah Kerr ["rhymes with STAR", so says MGM's publicity] who had distinguished her self in such hits as The Life and Death of Col. Blimp, I See a Dark Stranger, and most notably for her other 1947 release the intoxicating, Black Narcissus. In Hucksters Kerr appears as a widow with children, and Gable the bull in the china shop. Though this time around Gable appears ever the gent, nothing resembling the aggressive he-man who went after Harlow and Crawford with the appetite of a man who hasn't eaten in three days. The ads for the film have Gable's head shot looming over most of the poster, but it's a Gable from five or more years back, while more contemporary shots are smaller, in the background. Whatever it's drawbacks The Hucksters was huge box office, a bellwether hit. The film landed in Variety's Top Box Office Films at number 12. For Gable professionally the film landed on the plus side of the ledger. Whether The Hucksters measures up as good a film as one of Gable's best pre-war efforts is a debatable point, but it's one of the most enjoyable films he made in this period.

Screen capture from Homecoming which reunited Gable with gal pal, Lana Turner. Ray Collins is on the far right looking morose.

  1948 brought other themes, other concerns, other problems. Homecoming was one of those concerns. Reuniting Gable with Lana Turner for a third time, the first being 1941's sassy Honky Tonk, a western with nothing on it's mind but sex in general and sex between the two leads specifically. The duo's second feature was the film Gable made just before turning his back on his silver screen fame--at least temporarily--Somewhere I'll Find You. This latest is different from the first two in that both partners are not the same people they were six years ago when they made their previous effort. Both had matured, endured hardships, forged ahead. Weaknesses played a part. For Turner it was men and drink; Gable's issues were women and drink. Homecoming is one of several Gable post-war efforts continually derided by critics. After 1946's Oscar winning Best Picture The Best Years of Our Lives film fans were ready for some more "adult" fare than the majors offered just two or three years prior. Homecoming offered fans a melancholy frame of mind. The first time I saw this film on TCM it was in the wee hours--I heartily recommend a screening just before dawn, on a cold, gray winter's morning because that fits this mood piece, with it's murky, muted imagery perfectly. Homecoming gives us a different Gable, a rather insincere, cold, self centered, status-quo conscious society doctor living a charmed life in New York City, with a charming wife [Anne Baxter], with country club living for good measure. Dr. Gable's good friend, played by John Hodiak [fun fact: he was married to Anne Baxter in real life], is a do-gooder out to right the wrongs, a liberal that the staunch Gable likes, but has little time for and treats rather condescendingly. Hodiak, also a doctor, is working with the poor and needy, something Gable doesn't understand. Before one can say "where is Lana?', she pops up once the war breaks and Gable goes overseas to Europe as a medic. On the ship out Turner--who plays a nurse--meets Gable and they clash like a wave of symbols. On the ship's deck Turner has been listening in on Gable's conversation with Ray Collins about the war. Turner disagrees with the smug Gable attitude and tells him so. As a kind of meet cute, this exchange is partially satisfying because of the injection of life that Lana Turner offers the film and her scenes with Gable are still effective. One can sense a form of camaraderie and warmth between the two. This being their third of four they would make Homecoming may be the best movie they shared. I suppose most folks would offer up their first, Honky Tonk. Although I have fond memories of the first time I watched it, having viewed Honky Tonk again some years back I have to say it's not terribly good cinema or even good storytelling. It rambles a bit. But there is no denying Gable and Turner's immediate chemistry. Magical! It's why the movies were invented and why people still like to see them. In Homecoming after this exchange between our leading players we find she is assigned to Dr. Gable and needless to say--but I will anyway--romance ensues. Homecoming was another box office winner for Gable and he looked to repeat that success with his next feature.

Casino owner Gable tries his best Bogart in 1949's Any Number Can Play.

 Command Decision was based on a big Broadway hit. Gable play Brigadier General K.C. Dennis a flight commander who is forced to send his men on nearly suicidal missions over Germany. One of Gable's post war efforts I've never seen, it was one of the most popular film's of the year. Some critics of the day pointed out that Gable wasn't a good fit for the part; it was out of his range as an actor. Post war Gable could be strangely uncomfortable in front of a camera. Beset with sadness, it's something practically everyone who knew or saw and worked with him day in, day out for years would comment on. Clark just wasn't the same Clark, his spark had gone. 1949 found Gable still trying to find the right combination of part, script, and situation to stimulate the old charm. Another of Gable's popular-at-the-time, not-well-thought-of-now efforts is Any Number Can Play in which he plays Charley King, a casino owner in a small middle-American hamlet. That Gable runs such an establishment means the local hoi polloi don't cotton to him or his family, though everybody seems to stop or have stopped by Charley's at one time or other. Director Mervyn LeRoy--from the movie's start--tries hard to establish Gable's Charley as some kind of man of mystery. The casino's employee's are a-buzz because the boss man isn't at the club yet and it's a Saturday--a big business night--and Charley hasn't missed a night ever since he took over the joint some fifteen years ago. Things are not all sunshine and roses for Charley on the home front, either. His only child, Darryl Hickman, is ashamed of ol' pop precisely because of the way he earns his living, though it provides a comfortable lifestyle for the family. Living with Charley is his neglected-suffering-from-loneliness wife, Alexis Smith; her sister, Audrey Totter [wasted in this throwaway part] and her husband, Wendell Corey, who happens to also work at the casino as a dealer. No one appears happy or even grateful, with Gable also suffering from health issues regarding his heart. Gable plays all this off in his usual rugged fashion. When his doctor, Leon Ames of Meet Me in St. Louis fame, chastises Gable, while taking a cigarette out of his mouth, urging him to slow down, that moderation is the key to a long, healthy life. To which Gable bitterly replies, "In other words, if I quit living I'll live". Produced by Arthur Freed in one of his non-musical moments, Any Number Can Play was another success with the public while critics of the day seemed to be bored with the new Gable. I've always had a fondness for the film, especially the first half when director LeRoy tries to create a mood and feel for Charley and his environment. The movie has a plethora of fine character actors--most of them wasted in their roles, like Frank Morgan and the always compelling Mary Astor, the later seen much too briefly as a kind of wanna-be flame of Charley's. A telling indication of the malaise affecting Gable's screen persona is when a young woman of questionable morals tries to flirt with one of his suckers [aka customers], proud, heroic Gable shows her the door. The old Gable would have given her a job to brighten up the drab surroundings, or at least looked her over once or twice before 86ing her out the door and out of the movie.

Lobby card from 1950's Key To The City

 All this good, clean living was up for grabs as the 1940's became the 1950's. Times in the film colony were beginning to change more rapidly than ever. Besides the obvious cracks showing in the studio system--wide screen, stereophonic sound and technicolor--some not technically new, but more common than before--made their presence felt. Change wasn't just on the technical side of the cameras : Gary Cooper, Tyrone Power, Robert Taylor, James Cagney and others felt the onslaught from the new kids on the block such as Montgomery Clift, Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, William Holden, and the soon to emerge, Marlon Brando. Gable too, felt them all vying for the King's crown, therefore it was decided to lighten up the proceedings with a romantic comedy, his first since the pre-war days.

Talk about awkward! Gable gives Loretta Young the once over while Frank Morgan does his Wizard bit in the background. I wonder what this movie was like to film. Such baggage!! 

 For a lighthearted romp Key To The City had to be tough to make for the two leads, Gable and Loretta Young. Seems these two had a history that went back about fifteen years when they--the 34 year old Gable married to a woman seventeen years Clark's senior, Ria Gable [wife number two] and the 22 year old, single Ms. Young--met, worked, clashed and--conceived--while on location for 1935's Call of the Wild. Young subsequently gave birth to a daughter, Judy Lewis born in November 1935. Ms. Lewis would go on, many years later, to write a book about the discovery of who her real father was. Clark and Judy met for the first time while this movie was shot, though she had no idea Gable was her real father at that time. In the ensuing years it has been alleged that Gable and Young did not fall in love on that desolate location but that Gable raped Ms. Young. Whatever the true story it was certainly cause for a Xanax break. This being the case I was pleasantly surprised by the charm of Key To The City.  Though it's not witty by any means, it possesses an energy, with splendid character turns by Lewis Stone, Raymond Walburn, James Gleason, Marilyn Maxwell and in his final film, Frank Morgan. Key To The City takes place in San Fransisco and the movie does a reasonable job of offering a smidge of location work to help with atmosphere.The script isn't another My Man Godfrey or The Philadelphia Story but it is a pleasant way to spend 90 minutes or so. Although Gable's reputation could have welcomed a return to the days when he was one of the reigning interpreter's of that fabled genre, the screwball comedy, Key To The City--pleasant as it is--warrants but a footnote in Gable's cinematic career, but taken from another perspective the making of this movie must have been traumatic to at least one--if not both--parties.

Gable with co-star Barbara Stanwyck and others making it clear what they think of us. 

 More lighthearted romance was concocted for To Please A Lady. A bad title for a movie about race car driving, the movie, directed by MGM veteran and Great Garbo favorite Clarence Brown gives us Gable with Barbara Stanwyck almost twenty years on from when they were first starting out in movies in 1931's pre-code favorite, Night Nurse. To Please A Lady didn't break any box office records, so MGM went back to the drawing board with one of their biggest assets in a mid-life crisis career slump. The studio kept trying for the old Gable charm of the pre-war days, but that ship had sailed as his last two films proved. In addition, Gable wasn't aging well. The smoking, drinking and late night parties with every woman on the planet didn't help. So MGM put him in uniform. That worked, but up to a point. Then came the Bogart bit in Any Number Can Play, but that was an awkward fit. Therefore, the studio decided to risk it all, run the table and star Gable in a Technicolor action film. Across The Wide Missouri may be Gable's best film from this period. Unfortunately it's also the most overlooked, which is too bad for the movie has much to recommend it.

MGM was still selling a Gable who looks a good ten years younger than his real self in this poster.

 Filmed on location in the Rockies by veteran helmer William Wellman [Wings; The Public Enemy; A Star is Born; The Ox-Box Incident; and more recently 1949's Battleground which would net Wellman an Oscar nomination as Best Director] in beautiful Technicolor. Wellman was also the director when Gable and previous co-star Loretta Young made 1935's Call of the Wild. Again, Gable's past was catching up with him. The location was fairly rugged, which both Clark and his director enjoyed. One person for whom the location was not a pleasure was Clark's new wife. After dating dozen's--maybe hundreds--of friends, starlets, socialites, waitresses and more, Clark decided to settle down. His bride was Lady Sylvia Ashley the widow of Douglas Fairbanks, Sr and former wife of Anthony Ashley-Copper aka Lord Ashley. Sylvia was a vibrant blonde who, some said, resembled Carole Lombard. If so, it must have been purely superficial as most reports paint her as not Clark's type of woman at all. Not the good sport who would go fishing at the drop of a hat, yet could dazzle the crowds at Ciro's or a dinner party. Sylvia on location in Colorado was not a good idea. It seemed to accentuate the differences between the couple and a year later the would divorce after just three years of wedded bliss. As for the movie, Across The Wide Missouri is a leisurely paced character study disguised as an action movie. Gorgeous cinematography, a stellar supporting cast [complete with Ricardo Montalban as an Native American], the movie deserves to be re-discovered.

With Marilyn during a break on The Misfits, 1960.

 Clark Gable would go on to make 13 more movies four of which would be his last ever for MGM. In 1954 Gable and the studio parted ways. For the first time since 1931 Gable had no certain employment. Naturally he wasn't idle for long, 1955 would see Clark free lancing bouncing from studio to studio, location to location, pay check to paycheck. before dying from a heart attack in November 1960 at age 59 having just wrapping up The Misfits some ten days prior. The Misfits would also be the final film of his co-star, Marilyn Monroe. He married again, this time happily to Kay Spreckels, who he had known since the early days after WWII. Then came the news that the Gables were expecting a baby. Big news in Tinseltown. Gable would finally--as far as John Q. Public were concerned--become a father. But Clark wouldn't live to see his son, John Clark Gable. The years of drinking, smoking, stress--and never think being a star is not without it's high levels of anxiety--and years of just not giving a damn had done it's damage. Wrapping The Misfits on November 4 1960  the next day Clark Gable had a heart attack. He hung on until November 16 when another attack took the King of Hollywood. Through the years Gable has been sketched in many colors. Was he a gigolo for gay film directors in the 1920's when young Clark was struggling to get a leg up in the rat race of movies? Or was he the opportunist who latched onto his first two wives, both years older than Clark, for all they could provide him at he moment? Wife number one, Josephine Dillon, groomed him, but lost him as his theatrical career really started taking off. Wife number two, socialite Ria Langham with two children from a previous marriage, provided Clark with money for the first time, but true love eluded him. By the time he met Carole Lombard who was not only beautiful but funny as hell and cussed like a truck driver, Clark was more than ready to fall. Or was he the hit and run driver, the rapist, the rogue male who could never fit into the me too generation? My favorite portrait of Gable is by Edward Winter in the television movie The Scarlett O'Hara War. Made in 1980, based on a book called Moviloa by Garson Kanin it was a very entertaining take on the search for Scarlett and the chaos and humor it created. Gable is mostly on the periphery of the main story but as written by William Hanley and played by Mr. Winter, Gable was a not too bright but decent enough fellow who didn't recognize Margaret Mitchell's name when given a signed copy of Gone With The Wind.

With new bride, Carole Lombard. This picture seems the definition of a happy couple

 Those last 13 movies are a define mixed bag. Most are pretty poor, but a couple shine through but not enough to make Clark's 1950's output any better than the post war 1940's were for The King. Only 59 when he passed away where Gable would have gone career wise is hard to fathom. He was penciled in for Minnelli's Home From The Hill, with Robert Mitchum stepping in after Gable's passing. After that nothing concrete was lined up and when one looks at the most popular stars [Paul Newman, Steve McQueen, Dustin Hoffman and others] and prestigious and popular films [Blow Up, Dr. Strangelove, the James Bond phenom, Bonnie and Clyde, The Graduate, Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid, etc] from that decade it would be hard pressed to find a role Gable could fill and not seem like he was an alien from another world.    


Sources :
Books-- Long Live The King by Lyn Tornabene
              Reel Facts : The Movie Book of Records by Cobbett Steinberg
              Victor Fleming, An American Movie Master by Michael Sragow
              Clark Gable, The Pyramid Illustrated History of The Movies by Rene Jordan
              The MGM Story by John Douglas Eames
Internet--Wikipedia page on Gable and his films
Movies-- Courtesy of Turner Classic Movies  
Images-- Courtesy of the internet          

The Confessional: The Chase {1966}

The Chase is one of those films nearly everyone loves to hate. Ridiculed upon its release in spring 1966, the film has been portrayed as a wild look inside a small Texas town on what seems like a typical Saturday night--a fancy dress-up party for the chief industrialist; the drunken near-orgies of the middle age, middle class crowd; secret and not-so-secret affairs of the body and the heart; beatings, misogyny, and racism. Just an average night. The thing that throws the town even further into chaos is the return of one Bubber Reeves (Robert Redford), newly escaped from prison and making his way back to his home town.

On paper the film seemed a sure-fire hit. The story originated as a book and play by Horton Foote. Oscar-winning producer Sam Spiegel (The African Queen; On the Waterfront; Suddenly, Last Summer; Lawrence of Arabia) bought the rights and hired playwright Lillian Hellman to adapt it. Marlon Brando was attached to the project practically from its inception. Brando was in the middle of his generally woeful 1960s period and had signed on for the cut rate of $750,000 (down from the $1 million he received for The Fugitive Kind, Sidney Lumet's 1960 adaptation of Tennessee Williams' Orpheus Descending). The Chase cast was diverse, filled with a solid line-up of character actors--E.G. Marshall, Robert Duvall, Janice Rule, Henry Hull, Bruce Cabot, Miriam Hopkins--and young up-and-comers, including Jane Fonda, James Fox, and Robert Redford.

To direct, Spiegel considered some of the biggest names in the business: William Wyler; David Lean, an odd choice, given the material; Elia Kazan, likely due to the casting of Brando; and Fred Zinnemann. Joseph L. Mankiewicz was lined up but wanted Bubber and his wife, Anna, to be black, and Spiegel wouldn't comply. Ultimately, Arthur Penn was given the director's chair. Penn was a good choice. He had had tremendous success with actors (Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke won Oscars for Penn's The Miracle Worker, released in 1962), yet he was still considered a newcomer to the Hollywood establishment. Penn had just completed a rather avant-garde film, Mickey One, with Warren Beatty which failed miserably at the box office and befuddled much of the critical community. Further, in Hollywood, New Yorker Penn was committing the ultimate betrayal--he wouldn't move to the west coast permanently and didn't play by the town's rules. Nevertheless, he hoped The Chase would cement his position as an A-list director.

Screenwriter Lillian Hellman had worked on Broadway with Penn on the hit Toys in the Attic. "We were pretty good friends," says Penn. At this point, though, according to the director, "Lillian was pretty annoying and not really functioning very well." Fortunately, during pre-production, Penn enjoyed Spiegel's company, finding the producer elegant and cultured, and his suggestions on the screenplay helpful: "Sam was pretty good on construction."

Robert Duvall's Edwin Stewart meekly watches wife Emily (Janice Rule)
enjoy a motorcycle while playing to the camera in The Chase

But the screenplay seemed to be the main source of the production's problems. It's also what most critics pointed to as the most weakest aspect of the film. Ivan Moffat (A Place in the Sun, Giant, Bhowani Junction) and even Horton Foote were brought in to improve the story and dialogue, but the movie seemed to be stuck in Peyton Place mode. According to Penn, once filming began, Spiegel was nowhere to be found, though his minions were delivering scene rewrites to the set on a near-daily basis. "Once the film started shooting, there was no exchange between us," Penn stated. Then things went from bad to worse when Spiegel took control in the editing room. Panned by critics except for some in Europe, The Chase had cost $5.6 million. It did not make its money back in initial release.

Director Arthur Penn points out a thing or two to his star, Marlon Brando

I can't quite recall when I first saw The Chase, but I know I was in high school, that terrifically impressionable time. I was taken with it immediately in spite of its soapy elements. If it wasn't for my interest in Marlon Brando at that time, it probably would have taken longer for The Chase to appear on my radar. But as a teenager, I was determined to see all of Brando's films when they showed on television. The Chase was one of the earlier ones, along with The Men, Mutiny on the Bounty, The Wild One, and Guys and Dolls. In The Chase, his Sheriff Calder is low-key, making the nightly rounds of the small Texas town (actually the Warner's backlot in Burbank, California), trying to keep a lid on its citizens' overheated emotions and find escaped convict Bubber before an angry mob does. As mentioned, Robert Redford is Bubber Reeves, the escapee everyone in town is frightened of, fascinated by, or both. Jane Fonda plays Anna, Bubber's wife, who is having an affair with Bubber's best friend, Jake Rogers (James Fox), son of town tycoon, Val Rogers (E.G. Marshall).

Other folks in town include sexy Janice Rule as Emily Stewart, wife of a schlubby Edwin Stewart, played by Robert Duvall; Richard Bradford as town bully Damon Fuller, who is having one of those affairs of the body with Emily Stewart; Henry Hull as a racist landlord; Miriam Hopkins as Bubber's mother; and so on. From just this bit of character detail, you get a fair sense of the soapy, Peyton Place-style elements. As the critics opined, the plot is the main flaw in the film. It's overheated and overly simplistic. The characters are not well written, though there is some good dialogue, mostly spoken by Brando's Calder. A spot-on Clifton James, marvelously doing his good ol' boy routine says to Calder, "The taxes in this town pay your salary to protect the place," to which Brando shoots back, "Well, if anything happens to you, Lem, we'll give you a refund." Lusty Emily's outlook: "Shoot a man for sleeping with someone's wife? That's silly. Half the town'd be wiped out."  

Jane Fonda, torn between two lovers in The Chase: James Fox on the left
and an impossibly young Robert Redford on the right

The Chase has situations that still resonate, including the blatant racism of the town's whites towards all its people of color; the limitations of small-town life; and the unhappy marriages (only Calder and his wife, played by Angie Dickinson, appear to be happily married). The infidelity, anger, drunkenness, and violence still strike a nerve more than fifty years on. One of the film's most brutal--startlingly brutal even today--scenes is when Sheriff Calder is beaten by some of the townspeople, waiting for Bubber's return. That violence peaks (spoilers ahead) with the murder of Bubber, and it looks deliberately staged to evoke the shooting of Lee Harvey Oswald. While I don't know what audiences of the day thought, today the exploitative style of the scene leaves a bad taste in your mouth. Yet the film is strangely prescient--Trump's MAGA, fifty years before it happened.

Richard Bradford and Janice Rule continue their acquaintance in The Chase

The Internet Movie Database gives The Chase a middling rating, but that's based on only six critics. If you give into it, though, The Chase provides many pleasures, in spite of its obvious faults. Funny that a movie that was a joke in 1966 feels so relevant today.

Sources

Books-
Sam Spiegel by Natasha Fraser-Cavassoni
Films of Marlon Brando  by Tony Thomas
Internet-
IMDB
Rotten Tomatoes
Wikipedia
Disc-
Blu Ray courtesy of Twilight Time 

The Mystery of "One-Take Woody" Van Dyke

One of the things I enjoy most about classic cinema is its total artificiality. The majority--like, 90% or more--of the Hollywood films from the 1920s to 1950s were photographed within the boundaries of Hollywood and its neighboring suburbs. Just going to Lone Pine, California, to film 1939's Gunga Din (set in India) was a huge deal in its day. Watching these films gives me a real sense of the craftsmanship and creativity used to overcome obstacles that today would seem ridiculously mundane--a non-issue. With a filmography that stretches from the dawn of Hollywood's silent days as assistant director to luminaries like D.W. Griffith to just after the outbreak of World War II with his last film, Journey for Margaret, Woodbridge Strong (a.k.a., W.S.; a.k.a, Woody) Van Dyke II holds a unique place as one of the most overlooked, underappreciated directors you likely have never heard of in the pantheon of classic Hollywood filmmakers. Van Dyke also holds the distinction of going off on long location film shoots thirty or forty years before it became a common cinematic practice.

Woodbridge Strong Van Dyke II a.k.a.,
"One-Take Woody" Van Dyke

Van Dyke's movies ranged from semi-documentaries like Eskimo (1933), which had a film cast and crew shooting in the Arctic to the exotic, erotic White Shadows in the South Seas (1928), filmed on location in Tahiti; the African safari adventure epic, Trader Horn, filmed at least partly in Africa; pre-code classics, Tarzan, the Ape Man (1932) and Night Court; the early disaster epic, San Francisco (1936); Norma Shearer's comeback vehicle, the lavish Marie Antoinette (1938); and five Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy popular operettas, including Naughty Marietta and Rose Marie (1935 and 1936, respectively). If Van Dyke is remembered at all today, it's mostly for his screwball comedies, particularly the films he made with William Powell and Myrna Loy--The Thin Man (1934), its first three sequels, and I Love You Again (1940). Other screwball offerings by Van Dyke are Forsaking All Others (1934) and the woefully underrated It's a Wonderful World (1939) with Claudette Colbert and Jimmy Stewart. Woody even directed an episode in the Andy Hardy series. All of this is to say, that the guy could direct anything and was truly one of Golden Era's most productive directors, helming over sixty movies in less than twenty-five years.

Comedy team supreme William Powell and Myrna Loy as
Nick and Nora Charles in 1934's The Thin Man

Of course the best known of Van Dyke's films has to be The Thin Man and its sequels. Based on the book by ace mystery scribe Dashiell Hammett, the film is probably my favorite Van Dyke, and one I can watch anytime. It's even admired by friends of mine who don't particularly like classic movies. It contains nearly everything a good screwball comedy should: a classic leading man--William Powell playing the suave and hilarious Nick Charles--quick with the one liners and even quicker with a martini shaker--and a beautiful leading lady in Myrna Loy as Nick's wise-cracking wife, Nora, who tries to keep up with Nick drink for drink and can give out with the one liners as good as he can. The cast, the writing, the mise-en-scène create the perfect cocktail of sophisticated comedy. The Thin Man is also a mystery with a murder plot and numerous suspects. But what really matters is the interplay between the two leads (Powell and Loy make marriage look fun), both experts in light comedy. Filmed in a speedy eighteen days, it was one of the first in a long line of what became known as "screwball" comedies. Along with such classics as Howard Hawks' Twentieth Century, Frank Capra's Best Picture Oscar winner, It Happened One Night, The Thin Man helped define the genre that flourished during the Great Depression.

Cheers! Nick and Nora indulge one of their favorite vices in The Thin Man

Van Dyke himself was married in 1909 to Zina Ashford, about whom little is known (Wikipedia says she was an actress). Robert C. Cannom's book, Van Dyke and the Mythical City Hollywood, the only bio written on Van Dyke, states that they met when Van Dyke was working in a lumber camp in Ashford, Washington, a town named after Zina's father, but makes no mention of her acting career. They separated around 1919 but didn't divorce until 1935. Cannom's book doesn't say when the divorce took place, but in 1935 Woody married Ruth Mannix, the niece of MGM studio's general manager and fixer, Eddie Mannix. Ruth and Woody eventually had three children before his death in 1943. Very little beyond generalities is known of Van Dyke's private life. Reportedly he was a devout follower of Christian Science, best known in Hollywood as the faith of Jean Harlow and her mother, and was the rumored reason for Harlow's death in 1937.

So little has been written about Van Dyke that even his working methods are a bit of a mystery. Signed by MGM in 1926, Woody was well known for getting the best from his cast while shooting fast and loose. The eighteen days it took to complete The Thin Man wasn't an exception; rather, more than likely, it was the rule on a Van Dyke set. Believing "everything must be done casually," 1939's It's a Wonderful World must have set a world speed record with its twelve-day shoot. Don't think that Van Dyke's speed-of-sound filming technique sacrificed quality, either. It's a Wonderful World is one of the forgotten gems of screwball comedy. In addition to speed, Van Dyke had a way with performers. William Powell, Myrna Loy, Robert Montgomery, Joan Crawford, and others give some of their least affected performances in Van Dyke's films. Even Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy were charming when working with "One-Take Woody," the nickname he'd acquired due to his ability to bring in a movie on schedule and under budget. This talent also endeared him to his boss Louis B. Mayer, the head of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios.

Van Dyke with star Norma Shearer as Marie Antoinette

 

1938's Marie Antoinette, which starred Norma Shearer in her first movie after husband and MGM production chief Irving Thalberg's untimely death in 1936 at the age of 37, is a film unlike any other in Van Dyke's filmography. According to Gavin Lambert, original director Sidney Franklin wanted to film in color with a ninety-day schedule. Feeling this extravagant, producer Hunt Stromberg went to MGM studio boss Louis B. Mayer and requested a change of director. Mayer was worried that a methodical director like Franklin could drive up an already costly production, and suggested Van Dyke, well known not only for his speed but also his versatility. He was a last-minute replacement. Three days before shooting began Mayer informed Shearer that Van Dyke was the film's new director. The set was, at times, quite a tense atmosphere as differences arose between director and star. At one point, Norma demanded a second take; Van Dyke refused. Norma left the set. Uninterested in a stand-off, Van Dyke did too. He went home, poured a drink, and took his phone off the hook.

The next day, according to Lambert, "Norma listened without complaint to Van Dyke's instructions for the next shot. She nodded, walked proudly toward her mark--then caught her foot in the hoops of her crinoline, overbalanced, and fell flat on the floor of Versailles. A taut, embarrassed silence followed. It was broken by the Queen [Shearer], who kicked her legs in the air and laughed. Everyone joined in, and Van Dyke decided Norma was 'the sweetest damn woman in Hollywood.'" From that point forward, Norma thought Van Dyke was all right too, and they worked well together. Similarly, Van Dyke had his share of run-ins with Jeanette MacDonald on the films they made together. One way or other, though, they always made up and carried on. "We just seemed to think alike," she said.

Van Dyke, his wife Ruth, Jeanette MacDonald,
and Nelson Eddy during the making of Rose Marie

An odd thing about the success Van Dyke had with the Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy films is that he wasn't at all musical. But I guess that goes to show one doesn't have to be to make a good musical. While my taste in musicals leans more to the Judy Garland-Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers pairings in which dancing is just important as singing, the movies Woody made with MacDonald and Eddy are pretty entertaining. I find Ms. MacDonald quite fetching. Van Dyke also worked with MacDonald on what may be his best achievement--the 1936 blockbuster, San Francisco. Along with Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy in the first of that pair's three films together (see also Test Pilot and Boom Town), San Francisco is the grandad of disaster epics, with the earthquake of 1906 serving as the centerpiece of the movie. The movie is still impressive today and was MGM's biggest moneymaker ($2.2 million dollars in profit, or $26 million in 2019 dollars) until Gone With the Wind surpassed it.

Myrna Loy, Van Dyke, unidentified woman,
and William Powell on the set of 1936's After The Thin Man

Van Dyke's career continued into the 1940s. With the United States finally entering World War II in late 1941, Woody found himself in uniform, convincing MGM stars Clark Gable, James Stewart, and Robert Taylor to become active in the war effort as well. Van Dyke himself was too old to become actively involved in the war, but that's not what prevented him from seeing action as contemporaries John Ford, Frank Capra, and others did. In 1942 while undergoing his physical examination for active duty, Van Dyke discovered he not only had a weak heart--no doubt due to excessive smoking and drinking--but he also had cancer. Being a Christian Scientist, Van Dyke rejected most forms of medical treatment and care during this time. Despite this setback, Van Dyke remained as busy as ever at MGM, making four features in 1942. The last, Journey for Margaret, unleashed the incredible child star Margaret O'Brien on moviegoers and was one of Metro's biggest hits of the year.

On February 4, 1943, Van Dyke summoned to his house MGM boss Louis B. Mayer along with Howard Strickling, the studio's head of publicity. Mayer told Van Dyke that the studio had any number of films lined up for him when he felt well enough to return. Later, Van Dyke contacted some old friends from the silent days to come over for a round or two of drinks, one last hurrah. According to Robert Cannom's book, Van Dyke called his wife, Ruth, who was at their ranch home, and asked how the children were (they had three by this time, two boys and a girl), then called his mother to assure her he was doing fine. Then he died. This is the mystery. Neither Cannom's book explains how Van Dyke died; nor does Alicia Mayer, Louis B. Mayer's great grandniece, in her blog about Hollywood and it's history; nor do many other books about the stars Van Dyke worked with. Charles Higham, never one to shy from scandal, in his book on Louis B Mayer, Merchant of Dreams, says only that Van Dyke died due to his bad heart and liver. Edward Baron Turk's book about Jeanette MacDonald, Hollywood Diva, states Van Dyke died in his sleep. Only Sharon Rich in her book about MacDonald and Eddy, Sweethearts, says that Van Dyke killed himself with sleeping pills. Why the mystery? Reportedly the suicide angle wasn't mentioned to save the family further grief or scandal. If so, it has to be the one under reported death in Hollywood history. I imagine that folks figured his illness killed him.

W.S. Van Dyke II was one-of-a-kind, and movies and the Hollywood community sorely missed him after he was gone. He made some of the most entertaining movies I've seen, and I re-visit them all the time. Some of my favorites include The Thin Man, After The Thin Man, San Francisco, White Shadows in the South Seas, Forsaking All Others, Marie Antoinette and It's a Wonderful World.

     

Sources:
              Books:
               Claudette Colbert, the Pyramid Illustrated History of the Movies by William K. Everson
               Hollywood Diva by Edward Baron Turk
               Sweethearts by Sharon Rich
               Norma Shearer by Gavin Lambert
               Van Dyke and the Mythical City of Hollywood by Robert C. Cannom
               Merchant of Dreams by Charles Higham
               Mayer and Thalberg by Samuel Marx

               Films: Turner Classic Movies
     
               Internet: Wikipedia

               Photos: Google Images

Sentimental Journey: Orson Welles' "The Magnificent Ambersons"

Wonderful opening narration married to sublime images.

Among cinephiles, that crazy, obsessed handful of barely human species for whom movies--no, cinema--is all, the career of Orson Welles is a puzzle and a paradox, an oeuvre maddeningly incomplete. Welles' first film, the exquisite and audacious--yet far from perfect--masterpiece, Citizen Kane, has been acknowledged as one of the greatest films of the Twentieth Century. Great and influential as that movie is, however, the remainder of the director's work suffered from interference from studio bosses, Welles' own bad judgement and bad luck. Until 1942, Welles had the best luck of almost any creature to walk the earth--or at least the studio lots of Hollywood. After that and through to his death in 1985, Welles suffered some of the worst luck of those same creatures.

The bad luck began with Welles' second feature at RKO Studios, The Magnificent Ambersons, a film that may be his most personal. Evidently, Ambersons' author Booth Tarkington knew, or at least had met Orson's inventor father, Richard Welles, and Orson, for the rest of his life, insisted the character of Eugene Morgan (played by Joseph Cotton in the film), whose invention and design of the automobile brings about the death of the Nineteenth Century in a small Indiana town, was based on his own father. Whether true or not, the important thing is that Welles believed it.

Welles' own life paralleled the story's main character, George Amberson Minafer (Tim Holt). Welles' first name was George, and he was called Georgie by his mother just as Isabel Minafer (Dolores Costello), George's mother, refers to him in the film. Like George, Welles was spoiled as a child and dreaded by his fellow classmates in school, much as Ambersons protagonist is despised by the townsfolk who cannot wait for the rich, spoiled brat to get his comeuppance. It is these comparisons that may have prevented Welles from taking on the role of George, a part he clearly understood but which may have been too close to him personally. Ambersons was the only production of Mercury Productions in which Welles would not play a substantial part.

A little backstory: Orson Welles' Citizen Kane opened in May 1941 to critical acclaim and public indifference. RKO Studios, which had courted Welles, wanted his second feature to be more commercial and less controversial. Welles was happy to give the studio masterworks, but they would not bring RKO what it craved more than artistic respect--financial solvency (RKO was a company seemingly always on the brink of monetary ruin). Kane wasn't particularly costly (final cost was $800,000), but considering all the hoopla and controversy the film caused related to its subject, newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst, RKO was hoping it would see a substantial profit from its investment. That did not come to pass. Consequently, with his second feature Welles was pressured by the studio boss, George Schaefer, to agree to film a more acceptable subject. RKO's agreement with the filmmaker did not include the all-important right to final cut, a clause that served as the agreement's most significant change as well as the single biggest factor in Welles' trouble with the studio's management during The Magnificent Ambersons’ production.

Welles with his photographer, Stanley Cortez.

The film's theme--the reason Welles was so drawn to the material--was that of progress squashing, stomping, and rolling over a more tranquil, slower, more civilized period of American history. The film lays out its intention from the opening scene with narrator Welles immediately establishing the film as a nostalgia piece: " The magnificence of the Ambersons began in 1873..." Welles once said that he was against his modern age, that progress could be taken as not progress at all, but a step back in civilization, which is precisely what Ambersons sets out to prove. Using the automobile as a device of destruction, Welles' shows how its invention brutally left behind the Nineteenth Century with its traditions of fancy dress balls, sleigh rides, and serenades. The Ambersons serve an illustration of the Nineteenth Century denizens who paid the price for progress.

The Magnificent Ambersons deals with the personal relationships of six main characters: Eugene Morgan (Joseph Cotton), a widower, whose love for Isabel Amberson (Dolores Costello) sets the plot in motion. Early in the story, Iabel jilts Eugene and marries Wilbur Minafer whose only child, the spoiled George (Tim Holt), is a catalyst for the family's downfall. George's adverse reaction to Eugene's attentions to his mother after Wilbur dies that is the heart of the story. George's Aunt Fanny (Agnes Moorehead), Wilbur's spinster sister, also longs for Eugene. Lastly, there is Lucy (Anne Baxter) Eugene's only child, who George loves but cannot have him, and Jack Amberson (Ray Collins), Isabel's older brother and the most likable person in the film (and my favorite).

My favorite scene in Magnificent Ambersons : Jack's goodbye to George in the new train station

Filming on Ambersons began in late October 1941, some five months after Citizen Kane's premiere, and lasted three months, wrapping in late January 1942. (By this time Welles had been approached by the U.S.State Department and Nelson Rockefeller to film Carnival in Brazil as part of an effort to boost friendly relations with South America as part of the United States' Good Neighbor Policy. After the United States had joined World War II after the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, South America was seen as a country particularly vulnerable to Nazi take over.) World War II proved a significant factor in RKO's decision making once filming on Ambersons was completed and  unsuccessful previews were under way.

Filming began with high hopes and spirits soaring. Yet, according to Robert L. Carringer's definitive study on the film, The Magnificent Ambersons: A Reconstruction, as the filming of the scenes related to George's decidedly Oedipal relationship with his mother approached, Welles grew "increasingly moody and irritable." Welles had an intense relationship with his mother before she died when he was nine. It was at this moment that Nelson Rockefeller approached RKO and Welles with the South America project. According to Carringer, Welles accepted enthusiastically, both for the project and to distance himself from Ambersons. In February 1942, Welles headed down to Rio. While he was in South America, Orson Welles' luck took a permanent turn for the worse.

Orson rides again!

According to Welles, RKO was "to send a moviola (a machine used to edit film) and cutters (editors) to Rio. Never happened." Welles was in communication with his chief cutter, Robert Wise, who he had also worked with on Citizen Kane. Along with Jack Moss, Welles business manager, Wise was essentially given control of the film with Orson, of course, dictating his instructions via telegraph and sketchy phone connections. Eyeing an Easter opening in April, RKO decided to have hold a preview for the film in Pomona, California, an agricultural town east of Los Angeles in the San Bernardino Valley, on March 17, 1942. Ambersons  running time for that preview was 131 minutes. The main feature playing that night was a musical called The Fleet's In starring Dorothy Lamour, Betty Hutton, Eddie Bracken, and William Holden. The audience seems to have been made up mostly of youngsters seeking a good time, and they enjoyed the main feature. Then came Ambersons, which the audience nearly jeered Ambersons off the screen with walkouts aplenty. The preview cards the patrons filled out only confirmed the worst for Schaefer and the New York money men: Welles' brooding, complex, film was not what the good people of Pomona--or possibly anyone, anywhere--had bargained for. "More Chekhov than Tarkington," as Joseph Cotton wrote in a memo to Welles. Did Welles know what he had? Not being present to gauge the previews certainly didn't help matters. The next day RKO's executives were planning ways to cut the film to a more reasonable length, with whole scenes and character motivations left on the cutting room floor. Another preview was held in more hospitable Pasadena, California. The film was shorter--roughly 117 minutes, per studio documents--with cuts instructed by Welles when informed of the Pomona disaster.

Eugene and Isabel dance in the Ambersons mansion

RKO figured that with so much being cut extensive retakes would be needed. With Welles still in South America, editor Wise and assistant director Freddie Fleck re-shot some scenes mostly for the second half of the film. Additionally, previews were held in Inglewood, Pasadena, and Long Beach in April and May to a better, though still muted, response. At least we put "together a version that people would sit through and not walk out on," was the mindset of Wise, Fleck, Welles business manager Jack Moss, and others. The powers at RKO decided that it had the best version and released The Magnificent Ambersons in July 1942, playing on a double bill with a concoction named Mexican Spitfire Has a Baby. 


Orson Welles' fans often speak of The Magnificent Ambersons with reverence or solemness. With bravura direction, Welles reached a level of maturity, and, at times, a subtlety beyond his 26 years. Ambersons is nearly an old man's film, which is something I like best about the film. The film has sentimentality in the best sense of the word, for Welles was one of cinema's poets of lost worlds and past regrets in a society waiting for no one. As with his other, best known films, Welles presents Ambersons starkly, with truth and honest human emotion that downplay the gooey aspects that many directors cannot avoid, conveying a power and force that is often surprising.

Welles, on set with Tim Holt

The fate that befell Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons was as sad as the fate that befell its titular family. The story of a proud family teetering on the precipice of disaster was a prelude to the rest of Welles' life both professional and personal. If in 1942 Orson Welles was American cinema's Napoleon trying to conquer every aspect of theatricals, whether that be stage, motion pictures, or radio, then The Magnificent Ambersons was his Waterloo.

Sources
Books: The Magnifient Ambersons: A Reconstruction by Robert L. Carringer
           The Great Movies by William Bayer
           This Is Orson Welles by Orson Welles and Peter Bogdanovich, edited by Jonathan Rosenbaum
          Orson Welles, Volume Two: Hello Americans by Simon Callow

Photos: Web images