Victor Fleming: An American Movie Master (Screen Classics) (92 page)

98
“just a very attractive bright boy”: Drew,
Speaking of Silents.

98
Seal Beach speed trap:
Victor Fleming v. Superior Court of the County of Orange, et al.,
L.A. No. 8360, decided by the Supreme Court of California, July 1, 1925. Upton Sinclair’s novel
Oil!,
in its opening pages, articulates what rugged Westerners thought of “officers hiding in the bushes and spying on citizens: it was undignified, and taught motorists to regard officers of the law as enemies.”

98
“a judicial knockout”:
Los Angeles Times,
Sept. 11, 1924.

98
“The finished photoplay of today”: From a Paramount publicity item.

8 Courage and Clara Bow

102
Riders to the Sea:
A bleak one-act play written by John Millington Synge and first performed in 1904, set on an island in the west of Ireland.

102
“was mistaken for the leading man”: Paramount publicity item, but it has the ring of truth to it.

102
“desert island stuff”:
Variety,
Aug. 20, 1924.

103
“After a few days”: According to Todd McCarthy, Shearer began writing her autobiography shortly after the death of Irving Thalberg in 1936, and left it uncompleted at her death in 1983, at age eighty. (Shearer’s biographer Gavin Lambert wrote that she began it in 1955, while laid up from a ski accident, and abandoned it the next year, after the Random House executive Bennett Cerf deemed it “too bland and too sentimental.”) Howard Strickling held on to it before passing it to one of his relatives, Barbara Blane, who allowed McCarthy to study the manuscript for his biography of Hawks. McCarthy furnished me with the sections describing Shearer’s affair with Fleming.

103
Norma and Vic’s fling: The circumstances of her breakup with Fleming
remain
unknown; Lambert’s
Norma Shearer
says Fleming initiated the split. They attended their last public event together in July 1926; he became “engaged” to Clara Bow that September. Shortly afterward, newspaper items hinted that Shearer was getting serious with Irving Thalberg, whom she married the following year. After Thalberg’s death, she acted in a half-dozen more movies, including
The Women
(1939). She retired from acting in 1942, when she married Martin Arrougé, a ski instructor twenty years her junior.

103
“When Lasky saw the finished picture”: McBride,
Hawks on Hawks.

104
“a breezy, refreshed style”:
Los Angeles Times,
Aug. 11, 1924.

104
“a group of people”:
Lion’s Roar,
July 1944.

104
“For the first time in my life”:
Photoplay,
July 1926.

104
“nearly drowned”: Undated, from 1925, syndicated newspaper article about swimming safety.

104
“a compact serial”:
The New York Times,
April 28, 1925.

104
“one more of”:
Variety,
Sept. 30, 1925.

104
“asked him, frankly”: Love,
From Hollywood with Love.

104
“I asked him why”: Love to Kevin Brownlow.

106
until her death: Ruth Kobe died in 1977.

106
“I have just witnessed”:
Moving Picture World,
Aug. 28, 1925.

106
“should be the translation”: Greene,
Graham Greene Film Reader.
Considering film “more truly comparable with the novel” than with the stage, Greene saw it progressing the way the novel had from Defoe to Henry James and Conrad, “from action to thought.”

107
“in all except bulk”:
The New York Times,
Nov. 16, 1925.

110
“I hear the train coming now”: Ralston quoted in Drew,
Speaking of Silents.
Ralston incorrectly recalled the train as the Super Chief, which was not in existence in 1926. Likely, as in the improvisational early days of silent film, Fleming put Ernest Torrence on a regularly scheduled Santa Fe train at the station in Fullerton, then waited for it to come by.

112
“a straight, out-and-out romance”: A quotation that Lewis supplied to Paramount publicity in 1926, before he saw the movie.

112
“always amusing”: James Harold Flye,
Letters of James Agee to Father Flye
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1962).

112
“social climber”: Noted by the language maven William Safire in
The New York Times,
Nov. 15, 1998.

112
He told an audience: Schorer,
Sinclair Lewis, an American Life.

113
“He had me open up”: Interview in Higham,
Hollywood Cameramen.

113
“You go ahead and shoot”: Interview in Eyman,
Five American Cinematographers.

113
“She was what we called”: Atkins,
Arthur Jacobson.

114
“older a great deal”: “The Love Life of Clara Bow,”
Motion Picture,
Nov. 1928.

114
“I liked him at once”:
Photoplay,
March 1928.

115
“She was bad in the book”:
Los Angeles Times,
July 15, 1926.

115
“Just before the lights”:
Toronto Star,
April 5, 1991.

9 A Lost Epic

118
“Clara did strange things”: Atkins,
Arthur Jacobson.

118
“But as for movie people being themselves”: Astor,
Life on Film.

119
enjoying an aerial bout of tag:
Washington Post,
June 7, 1928.

119
“a good ‘big production’ man”: Astor,
Life on Film.

120
“The town was lousy with movie people”: Wellman’s unreliable, albeit entertaining,
Rough Riders
stories are in Wellman,
Short Time for Insanity.

121
“get the feel of the period”: Astor,
Life on Film.

121
“the Armageddon”: Wellman,
Short Time for Insanity.

121
“the high spot”: Astor,
Life on Film.

121
“We notified all our exchanges”: Lasky’s
Rough Riders
stories are in Lasky,
I Blow My Own Horn.

122
“The heat bore down”: The rest of Astor’s
Rough Riders
stories in this chapter are in Astor,
My Story.

123
“a crude version”: Interview in Eyman,
Five American Cinematographers.

123
“Well, I never saw”: Howe’s
Rough Riders
stories are in the Reminiscences of James Wong Howe (1971) in the Oral History Collection of Columbia University, pp. 16 and 18.

123
“Fleming was sitting”: Hathaway’s
Rough Riders
stories are in Behlmer,
Henry Hathaway.

124
at 4:00 a.m.:
San Antonio Express,
Sept. 16, 1926.

124
Roland told a reporter: United Press, Sept. 16, 1926.

124
“We were quite sure”:
Los Angeles Times,
Sept. 19, 1926.

124
“I did not consider myself engaged”: Clara Bow, “If I Had My Life to Live Over,”
New Movie Magazine,
May 1932.

125
Fleming had proposed in a letter:
San Antonio Light,
Sept. 20, 1926.

126
“a little flirtation”: Stenn,
Clara Bow.

126
“You couldn’t deceive him”:
Photoplay,
March 1928.

128
“considerable trouble”:
Variety,
March 30, 1927.

128
the audience’s delight:
The New York Times,
May 17, 1927.

10 From
The Way of All Flesh
to
Abie’s Irish Rose

130
“a large, beaming, childlike personage”:
New Yorker
, Oct. 28, 1928.

131
“have had a slight disagreement”: Associated Press and many other news outlets, Dec. 2, 1926.

131
“feeling for each other”:
Photoplay,
March 1928.

131
“I couldn’t live up to his subtlety”:
Los Angeles Times,
June 8, 1930.

131
“He’s hung like a horse”: Arce,
Gary Cooper.

131
Alice White: Her acting career took a downturn in the early sound era, and she made few films after that, ending with
Flamingo Road
in 1949. Following her divorce from Sidney Bartlett in the 1930s, she wore a gold “divorce ring” inscribed “liberty and freedom.” She died in 1983, age seventy-nine.

131
“so stubby and fat”: White told different versions of how she gained movie stardom. This version is from the United Press, April 21, 1938.

131
“a nice little-boy kiss”: “Alice White’s Diary,”
Screen Secrets,
Feb. 1929.

131
“a girl can’t help liking Victor”:
Motion Picture,
Dec. 1928.

132
Meadowlark Ranch: The property is now part of an unincorporated area north of San Diego. A remnant of the former Leo Carrillo Ranch next door is now a park operated by the city of Carlsbad.

133
“Mr. Fleming and Mr. Schulberg”:
Los Angeles Times,
July 10, 1927.

133
“discussed every scene”: Jannings,
Theater, Film—Das Leben und ich.
He also wrote of Fleming, “Not misguided by formal education or training, he was straightforward and explicit and had absolutely no notion of the art of acting as we understood it in Berlin. But he knew all of my films and had a high opinion of me, which, however, did not keep him from speaking his mind. I owe it to Fleming that I overcame the mental ocean between Europe and America rather quickly.” (Translation by Christiane Faris, professor emerita of German and humanities, Oklahoma City University.)

134
“the situation so thoroughly”: A Paramount publicity item that closely matches Jannings’s later account of the filming.

134
“about three or four slugs of whiskey”: Behlmer,
Henry Hathaway.

134
“would bathe him in gloom”: Von Sternberg,
Fun in a Chinese Laundry.

135
“For him, suffering is a prism”: Buñuel,
Unspeakable Betrayal.

135
“ballast of American hokum”: Edmund Wilson,
The Twenties: From Notebooks and Diaries of the Period,
ed. Leon Edel (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1975).

135
“Gary was big and strong”:
Photoplay,
March 1928.

135
“that great shaggy head of his”: Hedda Hopper column, Feb. 24, 1940. Hopper was the only columnist to mention both Fleming’s San Dimas roots and his first marriage. She continued to write her column until nearly the end of her life and died in 1966 at age eighty.

136
“Beau Brummells of Hollywood”:
Motion Picture,
March 1929.

136
“We worked down on”: Behlmer,
Henry Hathaway.

137
“For all the acting I did”:
Photoplay,
March 1928.

137
B. P. Schulberg had a fallback plan: Stenn,
Clara Bow.

137
“a poor man’s Clara Bow”: Ayres to David Stenn (via Pam Prince of the William Morris Agency), David Stenn collection.

138
“noted as graceful dancers”:
Los Angeles Times,
July 27, 1927.

138
“He went out of town”: Victor Fleming notes on
Bombshell,
June 6, 1933, MGM Collection, USC Cinema and Television Library.

138
“showy”: Stenn,
Clara Bow.

138
“she was never much of an actress”: LeRoy,
Take One.

138
“perfectly devoted”:
Los Angeles Times,
Oct. 30, 1927.

139
“Practically every major studio”: Lasky,
I Blow My Own Horn.

140
“one great trouble in that picture”: “Hoofing to Fame with Nancy Carroll,”
Screen Secrets,
Jan.–Feb. 1931.