Selznick’s memos about Ingrid & Maria…How producer David O. Selznick arranged for Ingrid Bergman to be cast in FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS.
WACky movies…Saluting the Women’s Army Corps on screen.
Memorable character actresses…in March, character actors were discussed; now it’s time to mention some of the memorable women.
More movie salaries…the highest paid in Hollywood during the 1930s and 1940s.
Who loves ya, Telly?…Some of us are suckers for Telly Savalas as Lieutenant Kojak.
Join me in April!
Some characters are so popular with viewers they are brought back in new movies. In 1940, writer-director Preston Sturges introduced two memorable creations in his political satire THE GREAT MCGINTY. One was the title character, played by Brian Donlevy; and the other was The Boss in the story, which Akim Tamiroff brought to life.
Four years later, Sturges included the two in short scenes for his comedy THE MIRACLE OF MORGAN’S CREEK. Donlevy and Tamiroff reprised their earlier roles; this time Donlevy was the recently elected Governor McGinty. However, William Demarest who had played The Politician in THE GREAT MCGINTY, and would go on to appear in many of Sturges’ productions in the 1940s, played a different character in MORGAN’S CREEK.
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In a different sort of way, two characters were recycled from a silent film that director King Vidor had made. They reappeared in one of his later productions during the mid-1930s. Eleanor Boardman (Vidor’s wife) and James Murray had portrayed Mary and John Sims in MGM’s classic THE CROWD in 1928. The characters had been so popular with audiences and so meaningful to the director that he reused them in OUR DAILY BREAD six years later, with different performers. Karen Morley took the role of Mary, and Tom Keene played John.
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Occasionally we have performers who recreate the same historical characters in different movies. For instance, Bette Davis portrayed Queen Elizabeth I in THE PRIVATE LIVES OF ELIZABETH AND ESSEX for Warner Brothers in 1939; and she repeated the part in 1955 for 20th Century Fox’s THE VIRGIN QUEEN.
Meanwhile, Peter O’Toole earned praise as King Henry II in BECKET, where he played the monarch as a young man. Four years later he was again cast as Henry II, this time portraying a much older more mature version of the king. He received Oscar nominations both times.
Several notable copyright lawsuits have occurred in Hollywood:
LETTY LYNTON is one of the more famous examples. In 1936, MGM lost a court case in which its screenwriter Wanda Tuchock was found to have based her adaptation of the story too closely on an earlier play called Dishonored Lady (which was later filmed by another company with Hedy Lamarr). MGM appealed the decision in 1939 and lost again. The film has been released on home video overseas but never in North America.
In the late 1970s, George Lucas and 20th Century Fox sued Universal, because they believed Universal had stolen ideas from STAR WARS for its television series Battlestar Galactica. Universal countersued, saying that Fox and Lucas had actually stolen ideas for STAR WARS from one of their older properties, Buck Rogers. Universal’s strategy of ‘sue us and we’ll sue you’ worked; Lucas and Fox backed down and the matter was settled out of court.
In 1990, writer Art Buchwald took Paramount to court. He said the studio used ideas contained in an earlier script he had written– ideas that became the basis for the Eddie Murphy hit COMING TO AMERICA. Buchwald prevailed, and the studio settled with him for $900,000.
The Wachowski Brothers, who wrote and directed THE MATRIX, were sued by a black writer named Sophia Stewart in the early 2000s. She calls herself ‘The Mother of The Matrix.’ She did not win since her lawyers failed to prove her ideas were plagiarized. But she insists she’s a victim of racism and that the Wachowskis did steal from her.
Another writer-director was charged with taking someone else’s story material. When THE TERMINATOR hit screens, James Cameron and Orion Pictures were successfully sued by science fiction writer Harlan Ellison for using ideas from two of Ellison’s scripts for the original Outer Limits television series. Cameron was recently accused by another author of plagiarizing material for AVATAR.
Copyright suits continue. In September 2015, a Russian screenwriter named Mikhail Raskhodnikov filed a motion against Fox, claiming his ideas were used for THE MARTIAN. In January 2016, those claims were thrown out but an appeal has been filed, so the parties remain in litigation. Raskhodnikov is seeking over $650,000 in damages.
ROSIE THE RIVETER (1944)
Why you should watch it: Republic Pictures didn’t turn out a lot of musicals, but the ones the studio produced usually had something extra special. Here they hired one of the best female singers during the war years, Jane Frazee. The script is well written– a hilarious romantic comedy set-up with Jane and her girlfriend Vera Vague sharing a room in a boarding house with two single men. The way the writers get around the production code is quite clever!
More reasons: Vera’s deadpan deliveries are wonderful; there’s a lot of witty dialogue from beginning to end; and a marvelous supporting cast that includes Maude Eburne and Carl (Alfalfa) Switzer as a teenager. Plus, there’s a fun scene where the gals have no clothes on and are locked out of the boarding house in the rain. Naturally, they get picked up by the police (you have to see it!). And don’t miss the rousing finale filmed at an aviation factory. There’s a restored print at the Paramount Vault page on YouTube.
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MR. MUSIC (1950)
Why you should watch it: Every so often a charming musical comes along that starts slow and builds into something wonderful. This is just such a picture. When Paramount released it in 1950, Bing Crosby was at the peak of his stardom, and his ability as a vocalist is very much in evidence. Plus it helps that he has been paired with Nancy Olson who always makes a fine leading lady.
More reasons: The rest of the cast is quite dandy. There’s Charles Coburn in a supporting role, and Robert Stack, too. Character actress Ida Moore, who plays Aunt Amy, is so cute she nearly walks off with the entire show. And don’t forget appearances by Dorothy Kirsten, Peggy Lee and Groucho Marx. It’s a winner all around. According to Variety, this film was one of the top box office hits the year it was released.
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RICH, YOUNG AND PRETTY (1951)
Why you should watch it: The arrangements in this MGM Technicolor musical are nicely done. Plus the pairing of studio songbird Jane Powell with young Vic Damone is inspired, since their voices work together so well.
More reasons: On a serious note, the film has a point to make about xenophobia (the fear of foreign cultures). The father, played by Wendell Corey, believes his marriage to the mother, Danielle Darrieux, was a mistake. As a result, he has transferred his feelings on to their daughter (Powell), not to marry outside one’s own culture. So she is persuaded to break things off with Damone’s character, until at the end she discovers Darrieux is her mother and that she is half-French. It’s a cathartic moment for her.
When one looks at John Ford’s stunning motion picture THE GRAPES OF WRATH, it is nearly impossible to separate all the dramatic events unfolding on screen from the very real poverty that many Americans had experienced during the Great Depression. Of course, this was Ford’s presentation of life in the 1930s based on a story by writer John Steinbeck. Steinbeck’s views of extreme financial and social conditions drive a story about a family nearly wiped out in the Dust Bowl. As we watch the film, seeing how the Joads travel west in search of better opportunities, their situation still resonates with us. Perhaps because many Americans still live at or below the poverty level.
Other classic Hollywood films tell related stories. In IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE, we see what happens when there is a run on the local bank. Director Frank Capra and screenwriter Robert Riskin have rendered a view of life in idyllic Bedford Falls that begins rosy but turns quite bleak. The anxieties that are depicted in the film indicate the blind faith Americans have in some of their financial institutions. Capra is revisiting a topic he covered more than a decade earlier in AMERICAN MADNESS. In these productions, men with money are usually the bad guys, and they’re shown to be greedy.
Another director who tells iconic Depression era stories is King Vidor. One example is 1934’s OUR DAILY BREAD, about people working together on a farm without corporate interference. Despite a series of setbacks, their efforts are rewarded at the end. OUR DAILY BREAD is not unique subject matter for Vidor; he examines labor issues in other movies such as AN AMERICAN ROMANCE, about an immigrant who becomes an industrialist; and in an adapted story from a bestselling novel by Ayn Rand. In THE FOUNTAINHEAD, Vidor presents a man struggling to maintain strong work ethic and integrity in a financially-motivated world. In some measure, it is autobiographical, because Vidor himself sees Hollywood as a commercial environment that tends to devalue the spirit of more progressive efforts.
There are other brave filmmakers who work in the same vein. Some of them blacklisted in the late 1940s and early 1950s, seem determined to expose the unfairnesses of a capitalist system. In SALT OF THE EARTH, director Herbert J. Biberman, one of the Hollywood Ten, showed how miners from a rural community in New Mexico go on strike in order to gain more economic advantages. Here, the elusive American dream hovers over a landscape of multi-generational poverty. The mining company owners are portrayed as the villains. And it is only the workers with their sense of fairness and strong community spirit that can rise up against corruption.
Polly Benedict that is. In a series of gentle family comedies at MGM, lovestruck Andy Hardy had many memorable girlfriends. But perhaps the most important one was his childhood sweetheart Polly, played by Ann Rutherford. There was something charming (and annoying) about Rutherford’s portrayal of a gal who seemed to run hot and cold.
But she and Andy always seemed to find their way back to one another. So it was assumed they would probably marry and have a family of their own. Unfortunately, that did not happen. In 1942, after five years at MGM, Rutherford’s contract was dropped (or mutually terminated, depending on the source). She then moved over to 20th Century Fox, where she appeared in B films. A short time later, her old studio needed her again for the last Whistler film, so she was borrowed back from Fox. When she completed that role, MGM did not request Ann Rutherford again.
In the later installments of the Hardy pictures, Polly is no longer mentioned. With Andy having gone off to college, we are led to believe he moved on to bigger and better things. But how could he ever forget his true love, Polly, especially when he returned home..?
In fact, it’s a question Mickey Rooney must have asked, too. When a follow-up series was planned by MGM in the late 1950s, Rooney felt Rutherford should reappear as Polly. However, the actress was pretty much retired from motion pictures at that point, though she did occasional television roles. To the chagrin of audiences, she declined the chance to reprise her role of Polly Benedict in ANDY HARDY COMES HOME.
She didn’t feel Andy and Poly would have wound up together as a blissfully married couple (hard to believe, but maybe she was right). So the part of Andy’s wife in the later film is given over to a new female character, presumably Andy’s last and most enduring love interest. Still, we can’t help but wonder about Polly Benedict and whatever became of her. Maybe in an alternate cinematic universe she did become Polly Hardy. At least that is how some fans might wish to believe. Especially the ones who were still asking Ann Rutherford and Mickey Rooney to autograph old scripts in 2009.
Claude Akins is usually remembered for his work on television, but several opportunities in the movies allowed him a chance to demonstrate his considerable dramatic skills. He played a malevolent outlaw opposite Randolph Scott in the western COMANCHE STATION; he was a fire and brimstone preacher in the movie version of INHERIT THE WIND; and he turned up as a gorilla general in BATTLE FOR THE PLANET OF THE APES. How’s that for versatility!
Karl Malden had the lead in the hit 1970s crime drama The Streets of San Francisco on television. But until then he had been largely known by audiences as a supporting actor in popular motion pictures. One of them was the adaptation of a stage play that Malden had performed on Broadway, A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE; he played Mitch, a possible suitor for Vivien Leigh’s Blanche DuBois. Other memorable roles included the priest in ON THE WATERFRONT; and the stern but fair warden in BIRDMAN OF ALCATRAZ.
Red Buttons was a comic who found fame in offbeat roles. He had begun in vaudeville, then performed shows in the Army Air Force during WWII, as well as on radio. Later, he found success on Broadway and on television. But it was his dramatic role in SAYONARA that earned him an Oscar. Other roles in hit motion pictures followed. He costarred alongside John Wayne in HATARI!; played the uncle of Shirley Jones’ son in the romantic comedy A TICKLISH AFFAIR; and had a significant part in the 70s blockbuster THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE.
Walter Slezak first made his mark in Hollywood films as foreigners of dubious reputation. He had one such role in the wartime comedy ONCE UPON A HONEYMOON with Ginger Rogers and Cary Grant. And he portrayed a German refugee in Alfred Hitchock’s LIFEBOAT. But perhaps his best assignments came in the late 1940s, when he often turned up in film noir such as CORNERED or RIFFRAFF, both at RKO. In the 1950s, he was playing friendlier types, such as the chef in PEOPLE WILL TALK, which reunited him on screen with Cary Grant; as well as BEDTIME FOR BONZO with Ronald Reagan.
Edgar Buchanan was 36 when he appeared in his first motion picture. Because he looked and sounded older, he quickly found himself playing more mature characters in movies. Initially, he was contracted at Columbia Pictures, which is where he met and befriended Glenn Ford. Over the years, the two pals would make twelve movies together as well as a television series in the 1970s. Among Buchanan’s best roles were his Friar Tuck in THE BANDIT OF SHERWOOD FOREST with Cornel Wilde; his Old Willy in THE WALKING HILLS with Randolph Scott; and his comic turn as Vince Moore in THE ROUNDERS with Ford.
Charles Coburn had a long career in the theatre before he even stepped foot on a Hollywood soundstage. But the minute he did, it was obvious he belonged in the movies. More than just a typical older character actor, Coburn delivered strong performances in a vast array of roles. For instance, he played David Niven’s misguided father in the comedy BACHELOR MOTHER; he was Bette Davis’ strangely fixated uncle in the melodrama IN THIS OUR LIFE; and he was a cagey inspector in noir such as LURED and IMPACT. He earned three Oscar nominations and took the award home the year he appeared in THE MORE THE MERRIER.
Louis Calhern also came to movies with a strong theatrical background. But his motion picture career had several distinct phases. He appeared in a few silent films, before returning to the stage. Then he showed up regularly in precodes of the early 1930s, always in supporting roles. There were gaps afterward, presumably when he was back on stage (as a leading man). It wasn’t until his success on Broadway in The Magnificent Yankee that he found the role most suited to his particular talents. MGM offered him a contract in 1949, under which he made the film version of this award-winning play. But more often than not, the studio used Calhern in showy supporting roles across a variety of genres. Notable performances include Buffalo Bill in ANNIE GET YOUR GUN; Dorothy McGuire’s father in the tearjerker INVITATION; and a fellow teacher alongside Glenn Ford in BLACKBOARD JUNGLE.
Walter Brennan worked his way up from bit parts in the movies during the early 30s and became a dependable, much honored supporting player. In fact, he was so loved by peers that he quickly earned three Oscars as Best Supporting Actor. These awards brought him even better jobs in support of bigger stars, and he was given occasional leads in modestly budgeted programmers. Brennan’s trademark folksiness served him well in pictures like SLIGHTLY DANGEROUS, a comedy where he played Lana Turner’s would-be dad; and in a rural drama like DRIFTWOOD trading quips with young Natalie Wood; as well as the equestrian drama GLORY with Charlotte Greenwood and Margaret O’Brien.
Akim Tamiroff was Paramount’s go-to guy when a script called for a larger-than-life, occasionally ethnic supporting character. He performed well across genres. Memorable roles occurred in HONEYMOON IN BALI, where he was a well-meaning window washer; as the outlandish Boss in THE GREAT MCGINTY with Brian Donlevy; and alongside Gary Cooper in the somber literary adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS. In later years, Tamiroff was a frequent collaborator in Orson Welles’ European productions. There didn’t seem to be a part Tamiroff couldn’t play, for laughs or tears.
Barry Fitzgerald began in Hollywood movies in the late 1930s. A key early role for him was in John Ford’s THE PLOUGH AND THE STARS. Ford cast him again a few years later in THE LONG VOYAGE HOME, based on Eugene O’Neill’s story. But Fitzgerald didn’t properly hit his stride until he signed on at Paramount in the 1940s, where he was handed roles that continued to capitalize on his Irish charm. One of these was as an older priest in Leo McCarey’s GOING MY WAY. He tangled with a younger priest, played by Bing Crosby. This performance netted the actor an Oscar. He and Crosby reunited for WELCOME STRANGER a few years later and for TOP O’ THE MORNING, a delightful tale with more than its share of blarney.
Of or Involving Motion Pictures 