Victor Fleming: An American Movie Master (Screen Classics) (103 page)

485
Anderson’s diary: His account of working on the script for
The Robe
is in his 1948 diary, with his papers at the University of North Dakota.

487
“Ingrid has always been difficult”: Edith Gwynn column, Dec. 2, 1948. On November 23, Dorothy Kilgallen had sneered, “This sounds far-fetched, but a rumor sweeping the theatrical set has it that Ingrid Bergman fainted three times while reading the more lukewarm reviews on
Joan of Arc,
which she considers her greatest effort.”

487
“Miss Bergman presents”:
Variety,
Oct. 20, 1948.

487
“a director whose sensitivity”:
Hollywood Reporter,
Oct. 20, 1948.

488
“I’m getting my history this way”:
New York Herald Tribune,
Nov. 11, 1948.

488
“the spiritual ordeal”:
The New York Times,
Nov. 12, 1948.

488
“The one time [Vic] failed”: St. Johns’s anecdote about watching
Joan
with Fleming is contained in the Reminiscences of Adela Rogers St.
Johns
(1971) in the Oral History Collection of Columbia University, p. 31.

488
“sprawls awkwardly”:
Los Angeles Daily News,
Dec. 23, 1948.

30 Death in the Desert

490
“becomes a lifeless symbol”:
Time,
Nov. 19, 1948.

490
Joan of Arc
competitive only:
The New York Times,
Nov. 21, 1948.

491
“If a man has a $200 pipe”:
Bob Hope Swan Show,
Feb. 15, 1949, Recorded Sound Division, Library of Congress.

491
“I cannot accept this award”: Associated Press, March 25, 1949.

493
The total for embalming: Records of the Scott and McMillan Mortuary at the Jerome (Ariz.) Historical Society.

493
“Words are inadequate”: Walter Wanger Collection, Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison.

494
“The pall of gloom”: Hedda Hopper column, Jan. 14, 1949.

494
“Man of Iron”: Copies of John Lee Mahin’s eulogy are held by several members of Fleming’s family.

495
“The great Fleming’s lithe figure”: Laurence Stallings, “The Real Ingrid Bergman Story,”
Esquire,
Aug. 1950.

495
front pew: Told by Helene Rosson Bowman to Sally Fleming.

495
birthday of Joan of Arc: January 6 has been her accepted birthday since her church rehabilitation proceedings in the 1450s—she was declared innocent in 1456—and is based on a reference in a letter written in 1429. Also sharing that birthday: the devout Catholic actress Loretta Young.

496
“I am positive”: Goodman,
Fifty-Year Decline and Fall of Hollywood.

496
“Of all the old friends”: Wanger Collection.

498
“Mrs. Fleming, this isn’t a patch”: Recalled by Yvonne Blocksom, evidently because her mother, Ruth Kobe, was present. Eva Deacon died in Los Angeles in 1960, at age ninety-two. During the years following Sid Deacon’s death, she gave away most of her fortune to her six grandchildren in annual installments.

498
wide-screen: Most of the movie was blown up to a 1.6:1 ratio; a matte was used to reshape the most spectacular scenes from square to broader rectangular compositions. Howard Dietz devised an ad line—“
GWTW—
Greater With the Wide-Screen and stereophonic—as an added tonic—sound”—that inspired part of Cole Porter’s song “Stereophonic Sound” in
Silk Stockings.

498
“and sitting sadly”: Louella Parsons column, Aug. 13, 1954.

498
“For a girl”:
Ogden Standard-Examiner,
Nov. 16, 1952.

499
Mogambo:
If Ford knew that the picture was a Fleming tribute, he didn’t talk about it later. “I never saw the original picture,” he told Peter Bogdanovich (in
Who the Devil Made It
). “I liked the script and the story, I liked the setup and I’d never been to that part of Africa—so I just did it.”

499
Gable had boasted: In 1938, several columnists mentioned both this and the planned African safari with Fleming.

Afterword

501
“Someday someone’s going to bring up”: Kobal,
People Will Talk.

501
“highly unlikely”: Todd McCarthy column,
Daily Variety,
Nov. 3, 1995.

502
“a gaudy company”: From a 1962 essay reprinted in Fuchs,
Golden West.

504
“a modified road-show policy”: Behlmer,
Memo from David O. Selznick.

505
“In the past”: Trumbo’s memo was reprinted in
Cineaste
18 (1992).

Filmography

With the exceptions of Victor Saville’s producing title on
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
and the section on Fleming’s own uncredited work, the following list adheres to official credits. I frequently cite additional collaborators elsewhere in the book: readers will notice that the screenwriter John Lee Mahin participated in nearly every important Fleming film from 1932 on, whether his name appeared on-screen or not. But in most cases it’s impossible to tell (at this distance) whether the weight and nature of anonymous labor deserves the same standing as the credited work. To judge from Mahin’s marked-up copy of his
Captains Courageous
script, which scrupulously apportions authorship to each writer on the project, the old studios did make an effort to evaluate who did what in their movies.

Most of Fleming’s silent films have been lost. The approximate running times below are based on current copies or contemporary reviews; in cases where neither is available, the number of reels provides a clue (a reel usually ran about ten minutes). For Fleming’s MGM films, I’ve provided additional detail wherever possible on the dates of his involvement. Although the body of the book contains similar information about his Paramount films, MGM was the only studio to open up its files for specific verification.

The artists and craftsmen are called by their most familiar names, so, for example, the “James Howe” of the silent-film credits appears below as “James Wong Howe.”

DIRECTED BY VICTOR FLEMING

1919

When the Clouds Roll By
(United Artists) Released December 29. Length: 77 minutes. Preservation status: 35 mm preserved. Cast: Douglas Fairbanks, Kathleen Clifford, Frank Campeau, Herbert Grimwood, Albert McQuarrie.
Production:
Fairbanks, producer; Tom J. Geraghty, screenwriter; Harry Thorpe and William McGann, cinematographers; Ted Reed, assistant director.

1920

The Mollycoddle
(United Artists) Released June 13. Length: 86 minutes. Preservation status: 35 mm preserved. Cast: Douglas Fairbanks, Ruth Renick, Wallace Beery, Paul Burns, Morris Hughes, George Stewart, Charles Stevens, Albert McQuarrie, Frank Campeau. Production: Fairbanks, producer; Tom J. Geraghty, screenwriter (from story by Harold McGrath); Harry Thorpe and William McGann, cinematographers; Ted Reed, assistant director.

1921

Mamma’s Affair
(Emerson-Loos Productions, released by First National) Released January 23. Length: 60 minutes. Preservation status: 35 mm preserved. Cast: Constance Talmadge, Effie Shannon, Katherine Kaelred, George Le Guere, Kenneth Harlan. Production: Joseph M. Schenck, producer; John Emerson and Anita Loos, screenwriters (from Rachel Barton Butler’s play); Oliver T. Marsh, cinematographer.

Woman’s Place
(Emerson-Loos Productions, released by First National) Released October 17. Length: Six reels. Preservation status: Lost. Cast: Constance Talmadge, Kenneth Harlan. Production: Joseph M. Schenck, producer; John Emerson and Anita Loos, screenwriters; Oliver T. Marsh and J. Roy Hunt, cinematographers.

1922

The Lane That Had No Turning
(Paramount) Released January 15. Length: Five reels. Preservation status: Lost. Cast: Agnes Ayres, Theodore Kosloff, Mahlon Hamilton, Frank Campeau. Production: Adolph Zukor, producer; Eugene Mullin, screenwriter (from Gilbert Parker’s screen treatment of his own novel); Gilbert Warrenton, cinematographer.

Red Hot Romance
(Emerson-Loos Productions, released by First National) Released February 13. Length: Six reels. Preservation status: Portions of the first two and final two reels are at the Library of Congress. Cast: Basil Sydney, May Collins, Edward Connelly, Tom Wilson, Snitz Edwards. Production: Emerson and Loos, producers; Emerson and Loos, screenwriters; Ernest G. Palmer and Oliver T. Marsh, cinematographers.

Anna Ascends
(Paramount) Released November 19. Length: Six reels. Preservation status: Lost. Cast: Alice Brady, Robert Ellis, David Powell, Nita Naldi.
Production:
Adolph Zukor, presenter; Margaret Turnbull, screenwriter (from Harry Chapman Ford’s play); Gilbert Warrenton, cinematographer.

1923

Dark Secrets
(Paramount) Released February 5. Length: Six reels. Preservation status: Lost. Cast: Dorothy Dalton, Robert Ellis, José Ruben, Pat Hartigan. Production: Adolph Zukor, presenter; Edmund Goulding, screenwriter; Harold Rosson, cinematographer.

The Law of the Lawless
(Paramount) Released July 22. Length: 67 minutes. Preservation status: Lost. Cast: Dorothy Dalton, Theodore Kosloff, Charles De Roche, Fred Huntley. Production: Jesse L. Lasky, presenter; E. Lloyd Sheldon and Edfrid Bingham, screenwriters (from the story in
Ghitza, and Other Romances of Gypsy Blood
by Konrad Bercovici); George R. Meyer, cinematographer.

To the Last Man
(Paramount) Released September 23. Length: 75 minutes. Preservation status: Lost. Cast: Richard Dix, Lois Wilson, Noah Beery, Robert Edeson, Fred Huntley, Leonard Clapham, Frank Campeau, Eugene Pallette. Production: Jesse L. Lasky, presenter; Doris Schroeder, screenwriter (from the novel by Zane Grey); James Wong Howe and Bert Baldridge, cinematographers; Henry Hathaway, assistant director. (Remade in 1933, directed by Hathaway.)

The Call of the Canyon
(Paramount) Released December 16. Length: 75 minutes. Preservation status: Lost. Cast: Richard Dix, Lois Wilson, Noah Beery, Marjorie Daw, Ricardo Cortez, Fred Huntley, Leonard Clapham, Lillian Leighton, Mervyn LeRoy. Production: Jesse L. Lasky, presenter; Doris Schroeder and Edfrid Bingham, screenwriters (from the novel by Zane Grey); James Wong Howe, cinematographer; Henry Hathaway, assistant director.

1924

Code of the Sea
(Paramount) Released June 2. Length: 61 minutes. Preservation status: 35 mm preserved. Cast: Rod La Rocque, Jacqueline Logan, George Fawcett, Maurice B. Flynn, Lillian Leighton. Production: Adolph Zukor and Jesse L. Lasky, presenters; Bertram Millhauser, screenwriter (from a story by Byron Morgan); Charles Edgar Schoenbaum, cinematographer.

Empty Hands
(Paramount) Released October 13. Length: 80 minutes. Preservation status: Lost. Cast: Norma Shearer, Jack Holt. Production: Adolph Zukor and Jesse L. Lasky, presenters; Carey Wilson, screenwriter; Charles Edgar Schoenbaum, cinematographer.

1925

The Devil’s Cargo
(Paramount) Released February 2. Length: 75 minutes. Preservation status: Lost. Cast: Wallace Beery, Pauline Starke, William Collier Jr., Raymond Hatton. Production: Adolph Zukor and Jesse L. Lasky, presenters; A. P. Younger, screenwriter (from a story by Charles E. Whittaker); Charles Edgar Schoenbaum, cinematographer.

Adventure
(Paramount) Released April 27. Length: 78 minutes. Preservation status: Lost. Cast: Pauline Starke, Tom Moore, Wallace Beery, Raymond Hat-ton, Duke Kahanamoku, Noble Johnson. Production: Adolph Zukor and Jesse L. Lasky, presenters; A. P. Younger and L. G. Rigby, screenwriters (from the novel by Jack London); Charles Edgar Schoenbaum, cinematographer.

A Son of His Father
(Paramount) Released September 21. Length: 75 minutes. Preservation status: Lost. Cast: Bessie Love, Warner Baxter, Raymond Hatton, Walter McGrail. Production: Adolph Zukor and Jesse L. Lasky, presenters; Anthony Coldeway, screenwriter (from the novel by Harold Bell Wright); Charles Edgar Schoenbaum, cinematographer.

Lord Jim
(Paramount) Released December 14. Length: 67 minutes. Preservation status: 35 mm preserved. Cast: Percy Marmont, Shirley Mason, Noah Beery, Raymond Hatton, Joseph Dowling, George Magrill, Nick De Ruiz, Duke Kahanamoku. Production: Adolph Zukor and Jesse L. Lasky, presenters; George C. Hull, screenwriter (from John Russell’s screen treatment of Joseph Conrad’s novel); Faxon Dean, cinematographer. (Remade in 1965, directed by Richard Brooks.)

1926

The Blind Goddess
(Paramount) Released April 12. Length: 77 minutes. Preservation status: Lost. Cast: Jack Holt, Ernest Torrence, Esther Ralston, Louise Dresser. Production: Adolph Zukor and Jesse L. Lasky, presenters; Gertrude Orr, screenwriter (from Hope Loring and Louis D. Lighton’s adaptation of Arthur Cheney Train’s novel); Alfred Gilks, cinematographer.

Mantrap
(Paramount) Released July 24. Length: 68 minutes. Preservation status: 35 mm preserved. Cast: Ernest Torrence, Clara Bow, Percy Marmont, Eugene Pallette, Patty DuPont. Production: Adolph Zukor and Jesse L. Lasky, presenters; B. P. Schulberg and Hector Turnbull, associate producers; Adelaide Heilbron and Ethel Doherty, screenwriters, and George Marion Jr., titles writer (from the novel by Sinclair Lewis); James Wong Howe, cinematographer; Henry Hathaway, assistant director. (Remade as
Untamed
in 1940, directed by George Archainbaud.)