Victor Fleming: An American Movie Master (Screen Classics) (93 page)

140
“Do it this way”: Rogers to Stenn.

140
“two hours and ten minutes of title gags”:
Variety,
April 25, 1928.

141
“The laborious sentimental play”: Ibid.

141
“a glass of water”: Skutch, Ira, and David Shepard, eds.
Joseph Younger-man: My Seventy Years at Paramount Studios and the Directors Guild of America.
Directors Guild of America oral history, 1995.

142
“One of the things that we had”: Interview in Maltin,
Behind the Camera.

142
Lili Damita: Married to Errol Flynn from 1935 to 1942, she died in 1994, age eighty-nine.

142
“When I first come”:
Motion Picture,
Aug. 1929. It was the custom of that time, in both newspapers and magazines, to quote foreign speakers of English in dialect. African-Americans, particularly, were most often quoted—if they were quoted at all—in what was known as the “plantation dialect” of the minstrel stage.

143
Lupe Velez: Married to Johnny Weissmuller from 1933 to 1939 and the star of several “Mexican Spitfire” films, she committed suicide with an overdose of Seconal in 1944, age thirty-six.

143
“Victor Fleming”:
Motion Picture,
Jan. 1929.

144
Disney did try to broker a deal: Elements of Marion’s story, the Disney archivist Dave Smith says, “could have happened in January 1930,” but if Disney screened any cartoons at MGM with Mayer present, he did not record it. In 1928, he visited New York trying to sell his series of Oswald the Lucky Rabbit cartoons. At that time, MGM was not interested and told him, as he wrote in a letter on February 28, 1928, that “their theatre dept. reported that cartoons were on the wane.” The first Mickey Mouse cartoon,
Steamboat Willie,
was released on November 18, 1928. His Silly Symphony series began with
The Skeleton Dance
in August 1929, and those were distributed by Columbia. In January 1930, Disney was looking for a new distributor, and the MGM sales manager Felix Feist recommended a contract, but studio attorneys vetoed that, not wishing to enter into a protracted legal fight with Disney’s current distributor.

11 Creating Gary Cooper

145
Burlesque:
David O. Selznick wanted to remake it with Fleming, according to a Selznick interoffice communication dated May 31, 1938. John Cromwell, who made it in 1929 under the title
The Dance of Life,
was an able craftsman (the 1934
Of Human Bondage
) and often a backup director for Selznick when he couldn’t land Fleming for films such as the 1937
Prisoner of Zenda.
Blacklisted in the early 1950s, Cromwell directed on Broadway before returning to the screen with
The Goddess
(1958). The father of the actor James Cromwell (
Babe
), he acted himself in two Robert Altman films,
Three Women
(1977) and
A Wedding
(1978).

145
“Come on”: Eyman,
Speed of Sound.

145
“Are you only going”: Behlmer,
Henry Hathaway.

146
“Too late”: Stenn,
Clara Bow.

146
“He’s on everybody’s love-list!”:
Motion Picture,
Jan. 1929.

146
“Coop loved him”: Interview in Kobal,
People Will Talk.

146
“I know he adored Victor”: Veronica Cooper Converse to Stenn.

147
“wanted Lupe to be so sexy”: Head and Calistro,
Edith Head’s Hollywood.

147
“his Mexican spitfire” “Kees Tony for me, Tom”: Herbert Coleman with Judy Lanini,
The Hollywood I Knew
(Lanham, Md.: Scarecrow Press, 2003).

146
The Hired Hand:
It’s a lyrical flight of a Western—ninety minutes of impassioned imagery about marital and fraternal loyalty, manhood, and (what’s rarer for a Western) womanhood, too. It picks up a pair of
decent,
affable drifters, Peter Fonda and Warren Oates, just when Fonda has sickened of the winding trail that was supposed to lead to California and has decided to go home to the wife and daughter he abandoned seven years before. (Verna Bloom is mortified and sexy as the wife.) The film opened to positive reviews and slow box-office returns in 1971, but has since acquired a considerable cult, especially among filmmakers.

148
“I didn’t seem to myself”: Fairbanks to Wister, May 31, 1924, Owen Wister Papers, Library of Congress.

149
“The film is about”: Richard Hutson, “Early Film Versions of
The Virginian,
” in Graulich and Tatum,
Reading “The Virginian” in the New West.

150
“Gary Cooper on a horse”: Anthony Mann, director of such classic “adult Westerns” as
The Naked Spur
said this on the Universal lot, to Philip Kaufman, who was in the process of writing
The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid;
told to author by Kaufman.

151
writing his first lines: From a letter from Mankiewicz to Cooper, June 12, 1953: “The first writing I ever did for the screen, many years ago for both of us, was a love scene I wrote—at the request of Bud Lighton—for you and Mary Brian in
The Virginian.
It was a silly scene, as I remember, something about ‘Why the hell didn’t Romeo get a ladder, if he was so in love with the girl?’ ” In Lower and Palmer,
Joseph L. Mankiewicz.

152
“What is needed now”: Robert Warshow, “Movie Chronicle: The Westerner,”
Partisan Review,
March–April 1954.

153
“I was extremely impressed”: David Lewis,
Creative Producer.

153
“was serious when he needed to be”: Interview in Leonard Maltin’s
Movie Crazy,
no. 2 (Autumn 2002).

153
“The air was chilly”: Weld,
September Song.

154
Arlen once said: Hedda Hopper column, Jan. 31, 1942.

155
“The most underrated”: Hathaway interview,
Focus on Film,
No. 7, 1971.

157
“Cooper was so hesitant”: Estabrook to J. D. Marshall, Recorded Sound Reference Center, Library of Congress.

158
“No, I think it’s
The Virginian
”: Hedda Hopper column, Feb. 10, 1961.

12 A Woman’s Film and a Man’s Adventure at Fox

159
“epics, not melodramas”: Report for Mr. Schulberg from David O. Selznick, Nov. 22, 1929, Selznick Archive, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas, Austin.

159
“impossible for talking pictures”: Selznick, “High Lights in the Recent Management of B. B. [
sic
] Schulberg,” undated and possibly unsent, Selznick Archive.

160
“the tragedy”:
Variety,
Aug. 6, 1930.

161
In January 1930: Document labeled “Col. Joy’s Resume,” Jan. 24, 1930. MPAA Production Code Administration files, Margaret Herrick Library.

161
“He had been handed me”: Ayres to John Gallagher. Undated, unpublished interview, courtesy Gallagher.

162
“Constance Bennett had that audience”: Louella Parsons column,
Los Angeles Examiner,
Aug. 15, 1930.

163
“a happy film”: Kotsilibas-Davis and Loy,
Myrna Loy.

163
“I was supposed to operate”:
Los Angeles Times,
Nov. 16, 1930.

164
at a preview in New York: Varconi,
It’s Not Enough to Be Hungarian;
except Varconi misidentified the director and is corrected in Lennig,
Immortal Count.

165
his supposed secret marriage:
Los Angeles Examiner
memo dated April 27, 1932, USC Cinema and Television Library.

165
“Of all the men I’ve known”: Bow quoted by Teet Carle, to Stenn.

165
“I only met Clara Bow once”: Miller, unpublished memoir, circa 1991, intended as a follow-up to
My Hollywood.
Like Louise Brooks, Miller was astonished that Fleming had “been ignored” by “the film historians, the old-movie buffs, the early-Hollywood biographers.” And despite her discomfort over his affair with Bergman, “I admired Victor as a director—but I liked and admired him even more as a man—and a friend.”

166
“Hey, Rex!”: Harrison Carroll’s column of June 30, 1930, has Fleming politely asking, “Well, Rex, how’s our girl?” Another unbylined version has Fleming shouting, “Hey, Rex!” Bow and Bell married in December 1931. “I have no idea why mother and Victor broke up,” Rex Bell Jr. told me in 2007. “I do know she was very fond of him and always spoke very highly of him.” Although “she didn’t say she was upset that they broke up,” she said Fleming was “a great guy” and “a great director.”

167
“a small Jewish neighborhood”: Harpo Marx,
Harpo Speaks!

168
“head mistress”: Richard DeMille,
My Secret Mother, Lorna Moon.

169
“to spend Saturday evening”: Astor,
My Story.

170
“I want you to make pictures for me”: Macklin and Pici,
Voices from the Set.

171
Chuck Lewis said: Hancock and Fairbanks,
Douglas Fairbanks.

171
“Just give her your autograph”: Ibid.

172
“When Doug went abroad”: Love to Kevin Brownlow.

173
the rarest Mickey Mouse cartoon: Also, at eighty seconds, shortest.

173
“These cartoons get their tremendous appeal”: Schickel,
His Picture in the Papers.

174
“Shit, she had been with Clark Gable?”: Quinn,
One Man Tango.

175
crashed the plane on its first flight:
Los Angeles Times,
Aug. 3, 1930. Lockheed repossessed the plane after Hutchinson couldn’t pay all the costs from the crash, including damage to the plane and a lawsuit filed by a woman who was struck by the plane during takeoff. A work order signed by Fleming and Carl Squier, president of Lockheed, in November 1931 called for dual controls (for Hutchinson, the craft had an additional fuel tank in the front in place of the forward cockpit), a new instrument panel, removal of two fuel tanks, and installation of a smaller oil tank, a new fin and runner, and repairs to the tail and fuselage, among other items. Fleming also had a 450-horsepower Pratt & Whitney engine installed.

13 Guiding Gable in
Red Dust

176
Variety
announced:
Variety,
Oct. 6, 1931.

176
“in the case of one man”: From the Reminiscences of Pandro S. Berman (1971) in the Oral History Collection of Columbia University, p. 20.

176
“When I finish”: Harris,
Upton Sinclair.

176
“For God’s sake”: Ibid.

177
“came to work”: Abrams to David Stenn.

177
“very sensitive”: Dorothy Jordan Cooper to Kevin Brownlow.

177
“could not make a Prohibition picture”: Mary Craig Sinclair,
Southern Belle.

177
“They’re grooming me for drama”:
Photoplay,
June 1932.

177
“Moyna”: Kotsilibas-Davis and Loy,
Myrna Loy.

177
“because it didn’t take a stand”: Mahin interview with J. D. Marshall.

177
“I think it’s the best thing”: McGilligan,
Backstory.

178
“a thin, reedy juvenile”: Interview with J. D. Marshall.

178
“work with us”: McGilligan,
Backstory.

178
“one of the half dozen best”: Fitzgerald to Tom F. Carey Jr., June 9, 1939, in Turnbull,
Letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald.

178
“the way women do when close”: Mahin in Lyn Tornabene collection of recorded interviews for her Gable biography,
Long Live the King,
Margaret Herrick Library.

179
“He had a lot of talent”: Bogdanovich,
Who the Devil Made It.

179
“A Bob Sherwood picture”: Fitzgerald to Matthew Josephson, March 11, 1938, in Turnbull,
Letters of F. Scott Fitzgerald.

179
“I never wrote ‘close shot’ ”: Hoopes,
Cain.

180
“made out a ship”: Fleming,
Action.