Otto Preminger

by Foster Hirsch

  TWO

  Rise and Fall

  Otto’s trip to America was first-class all the way. Traveling on the same train with him from Vienna to Paris was the future film producer Sam Spiegel, whom Otto met for meals in the wood-paneled dining car. From Paris, Otto on his own took another train to Le Havre, where he joined up with Gilbert and Kitty Miller, who sailed with him to New York on the Normandie. Under the wings of the socially voracious producer and his heiress wife, Otto was assured a seat at the captain’s table each evening and entrée to parties hosted by the wealthiest passengers. He attended affairs given by an Indian maharani and a grand duke, “a stupendously tall and boring personage” from a country he couldn’t remember.1 When Otto wasn’t hobnobbing with grandees, he remained in his stateroom committing Libel! to memory in both German and English.

  The Normandie arrived in New York on October 21, 1935, a sparkling autumn morning, one of those days (New Yorkers know there are about a dozen each year) when the city’s climate attains an unrivaled perfection. Gilbert Miller proposed lunch at one of his favorite spots, “21,” located then as now at 21 West Fifty-second Street just off Fifth Avenue. Co-owner Jack Kriendler gave the Gilbert Millers and their foreign guest a personal tour of the restaurant beginning with the wine cellar in the basement and ending with a look into the host’s apartment on the top floor. For the rest of his life, “21” remained Otto’s restaurant of choice in Manhattan. After lunch, Miller accompanied Otto to a suite he had reserved for his director at the St. Regis Hotel, at Fifty-fifth Street and Fifth Avenue. Preminger’s ornate new home recalled his parents’ apartment on the Ringstrasse.

  Within a few days of his arrival Otto encountered Viennese author Franz Werfel in the hotel elevator. In New York to collaborate with Max Reinhardt and Berlin émigré Kurt Weill on The Eternal Road, a biblical oratorio, Werfel, a sourpuss, regaled Otto with a list of complaints about the city, calling it a cultural backwater populated by barbarians. Otto, however, who thereafter avoided Werfel, had formed a quite different opinion: from the moment he had seen the Statue of Liberty and the thrusting Manhattan skyline, he knew that New York was the city he would always want to live in. “I fell in love with New York on October 21, 1935,” as he told columnist Earl Wilson more than twenty-five years later.2

  Ten days after his arrival, Preminger on November 1 began rehearsals for Libel! Gilbert Miller, assuring his director that Americans were enamored of titles, introduced Otto to the cast as “Dr. Otto Ludwig Preminger from

  Joan Marion on the witness stand in Libel!, staged by “the distinguished Viennese director Otto Ludwig Preminger” in his Broadway debut.

  Vienna” and immediately launched a campaign to promote Otto as a new theatrical luminary. A November 2 press release from Miller’s office announced that on December 20, when Libel! would have its premiere, “one of Europe’s most distinguished directors will [be making] his bow.” Under the headline “Preminger Happy to Be in America,” a November 3 article in the New York World-Telegram offered a charming portrait of the new arrival. An anonymous scribe observed that only with “difficulty” could Preminger be persuaded to recall anything about “the Old World and the Vienna he has left behind.” About the hazards of communicating in his new language, Otto was more loquacious:

  The worst for me is the telephone. One day I asked my hotel to move the telephone from the desk to the table beside my bed. The next morning, very early, the phone rang; I was still half asleep and could not understand one word which a lady was shouting at me. I listened for a few minutes, and then hung up. Ten minutes later, there was a great knocking and three enormous men marched in and began shoving me around. The noise became terrific; I didn’t understand a word they said, so I hid my head under the covers and prayed in my native tongue. Some time later, when the noise subsided, I peered out and found my telephone had been moved.

  In an interview a week before the play was to open, Preminger was still reluctant to talk about the past. “You want to know about my theatre in Vienna? Well, it is not really very exciting,” he offered. “It is the best theatre in Vienna … built only a few years ago [sic], in the best baroque style. When I took it over it was in very bad financial condition; when I gave it up, a few months ago, it was a great financial success, although conditions in the Vienna theatre are very bad.” Preminger was equally terse about Libel! “I cannot tell you anything of the way I have directed it. Better you come and see it,” he said, and with a flourish added that in Vienna the show had been “an enormous success, one of the best we ever had.”3

  Despite his struggles speaking and understanding English, Preminger remained confident about himself and the play and throughout rehearsals behaved with exquisite tact. When it opened on December 20, after out-of-town tryouts in Philadelphia and Boston, the show received enthusiastic notices. “Preminger’s direction proves that courtrooms can bristle with theatre,” Brooks Atkinson observed in his review in the New York Times. Robert Coleman in the New York Mirror called Libel! “the last word in melodrama, one of the most exciting of recent seasons, an aristocrat of its kind.”

  With Libel! set for a good run (the show would play for 159 performances), Otto took a train to Los Angeles on January 2, 1936, to report to Joseph Schenck, his second American benefactor. At the Pasadena train station, Otto was met by Schenck’s chauffeur and driven in a long black limousine to a suite at Hernando Courtright’s Beverly Wilshire Hotel. Was Marion with him? In some accounts, she was, Otto claiming to have summoned her to join him for the opening night of Libel! But he later told at least one interviewer that he went to Los Angeles by himself and that “my first wife joined me there about the middle of January”4 In Hollywood, where Schenck was as well connected as Gilbert Miller in New York, Otto received a conqueror’s welcome. Schenck introduced the Premingers to local royalty, including Irving Thalberg, Norma Shearer, Gary Cooper, Joan Crawford, and Greta Garbo. For Otto, the most memorable party was at Pickfair, Mary Pickford’s hilltop mansion in Beverly Hills, where he met Charlie Chaplin. At all the gatherings, the Premingers—Otto with his egg-shaped head, now as bald as it would be forevermore, and Marion flashing her “million-dollar” smile—exhibited extraordinary savoir faire.

  Although his original good looks were eroding under his advancing fleshiness, Otto at thirty radiated vigor, wit, and sex appeal. He had the great gift of drawing out his interlocutors, male as well as female, while seeming to pay them his undivided attention. No matter his inexact command of English; no matter that his prominence in the Viennese theater had rested primarily on his executive acumen rather than his artistry; no matter even that he had been brought to Hollywood under Schenck’s patronage not as a star director but more as an apprentice and observer—Preminger projected the aura of a man poised for success. His strongly accented voice exuded authority, and, changing color from bright blue to slate gray, his already heavy-lidded eyes were alight with curiosity.

  As in New York, Preminger was touted as “one of Europe’s youngest and most distinguished stage producers.” And as he became accustomed to the rituals of American publicity, more forcibly and volubly than he had in New York he began to play up to the role that had been created for him. In one of his first interviews in Los Angeles, in January 1936, he pontificated about American theater. “Los Angeles needs a civically endowed theatre,” he said. “And with Hollywood so overflowing with talent… such a theatre needs to be established. With your national government encouraging the theatre financially, Los Angeles should take the lead in pointing the way to the rest of the nation by building a civic theatre which could be the model for the world.”5

  Clearly, Preminger had won Schenck’s favor, but it was Schenck’s partner, Darryl F. Zanuck, who would determine Otto’s destiny at Twentieth Century-Fox. The two men could hardly have been more unlike. Zanuck was a hayseed from Nebraska who spoke in a flat Plains accent. While Otto as a young man had memorized many of the works of the great playwrights, Zanuck from his earliest y
ears had been a literary lowbrow entranced by pulp mysteries and adventure yarns. The only Gentile to run a major studio during Hollywood’s Golden Age, Zanuck was as coarse-grained and hard-driving as Harry Cohn at Columbia, Adolph Zukor at Paramount, Louis B. Mayer at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and Jack and Harry Warner. Zanuck began his career as a scriptwriter at Warner Bros., turning out scenarios for war films, biblical epics, tearjerkers, dog stories, and musicals so quickly that in addition to his own name he wrote under three pseudonyms: Gregory Rogers, Mark Canfield, and Melville Crossman. Recognizing a live wire, the Warner brothers hired him as a producer. In 1927 Zanuck supervised the seminal Jazz Singer. In 1931 he both adapted and produced Little Caesar, the prototype of the gangster saga. Later that year he produced the equally influential Public Enemy. In 1932 he adapted and produced I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang. And in 1933, his last year at Warner Bros., he produced 42nd Street, which redefined the movie musical as decisively as his gangster sagas had etched a new formula for crime pictures. To enact his populist fables he championed a new kind of movie star, urban, fast-talking, imperfect-looking actors such as James Cagney Edward G. Robinson, and Joan Blondell, who injected a proletarian energy into the early American sound film.

  When he left Warner Bros. in 1933 to form his own company, Twentieth Century, Zanuck’s taste became somewhat more elevated. His slate included period dramas—The Affairs of Cellini (1934), Clive of India (1935), Cardinal Richelieu (1935)—and movies with a Gallic touch like Moulin Rouge (1934) and Folies Bergère (1934). He also presented stories with a literary pedigree: Advice to the Lovelorn (1933) was based on Nathanael West’s Miss Lonely-hearts; Call of the Wild(1935) was drawn from a Jack London novel; and Les Misérables (1933) was an adaptation of Victor Hugo’s classic tale. Not entirely overlooked was the raffish urban fare that had been Zanuck’s specialty at Warner Bros. The Bowery (1933) starred the terminally thuggish George Raft; Broadway Through a Keyhole (1933) was based on a story by tough guy New York newspaper columnist Walter Winchell. On the whole, however, in his opening salvos running Twentieth Century, Zanuck seemed consciously to be trading upward. His biggest in-house star was the stentorian-toned and now largely forgotten British actor George Arliss, whom Zanuck presented in The House of Rothschild (1934), The Last Gentleman

  Darryl F. Zanuck, Otto’s first American boss and first American adversary, a gruff Nebraska native who ran Twentieth Century-Fox with an iron will.

  (1934), and Cardinal Richelieu. Joining up with Schenck early in 1935 to form Twentieth Century-Fox, Zanuck offered a collection of films that have left no imprint: Metropolitan (1935), Thanks a Million (1935), Show Them No Mercy!‘(1935), Professional Soldier(1936), and It Had to Happen (1936).

  Beneath their obvious differences—Zanuck’s no-frills, populist American manner as against Preminger’s lordly Continental air—the two men did share a number of common traits. Like Preminger, Zanuck was a wünderkind whose rise to the top had been achieved with remarkable speed. Both men also had hyperactive libidos. Zanuck, a short fellow, chomped on large cigars and seemed to be attached to a croquet mallet he would swing and stroke as he stalked around his office during interviews. Any bargain basement Freudian would surely be justified in interpreting the ever present cigar and mallet as “registers” of their owner’s ever ready phallus. “Zanuck was a tit man,” as Celeste Holm, a Fox contract player in the 1940s, bluntly recalled. “And he was known to make passes,” she added. “The only time I was in his office I was dressed up to the neck. He made a snappish comment that I was dressed for New York rather than Los Angeles; but I had dressed to make a point of not being available.”6 “Otto was a gentleman; Zanuck was scummy,” recalled actress Ruth Warrick. “He was known to be lecherous, and you had to run pretty fast to stay clear of him. It was also known that he would make Marilyn Monroe service everyone at the Fox board meetings. Once Zanuck felt me up at a dinner party in his home, with his wife present; I was too embarrassed to do anything.”7

  Above all, both Zanuck and Preminger were born leaders. Zanuck, wanting to be able to call all the creative shots himself, had left Warner Bros. because he no longer wanted to report to the meddling brothers who owned the store. At the shop he had just set up with Joe Schenck, he was to have complete sovereignty over all artistic matters. If Preminger was to have a chance to direct he would therefore have to pass Zanuck’s inspection. Recognizing that Zanuck rather than Schenck ruled the studio, Otto was a little apprehensive about his initial interview with the pint-sized, cigar-chomping mogul, and when he entered Zanuck’s green office for the first time he was uncharacteristically muted. Otto’s voice and bearing may not have had quite the same attack as when he felt he was in full command of the field, but the savvy Zanuck marked the newcomer as a winner. Rather than handing him an A-list directing job, however, he asked Otto to become an observer so he could familiarize himself with how Americans made movies. Otto, aware of how much he had to learn, readily accepted the assignment.

  By 1935 the assembly-line formation of the studio system, one that Zanuck had helped to refine, was firmly in place. Each studio had its own roster of directors, writers, editors, cinematographers, and designers, in addition to its own repertory company of stars and character actors. Typically, talent was signed up for a seven-year period, during which employees were expected to do as they were told and to report to work on pictures assigned to them by the front office. At the top of the hierarchy was the studio boss, who was answerable only to the business office, typically located in New York. In 1935, when Otto began to report for work, no studio captain had more autonomy than Zanuck, nor could any of the others match Zanuck’s track record for anticipating or molding popular taste.

  Otto quickly adapted to the role of observer, suppressing his ego and his arrogance. From early in the morning until late at night he scrutinized the rites of Hollywood moviemaking: the way rehearsals were conducted; the procedures for setting up shots and for shooting multiple takes; the protocol during the viewing of dailies. He explored the mammoth, set-filled sound stages; mechanically challenged, he regarded the technological wonderland of cameras, lighting, and sound equipment with mingled awe and incomprehension. In effect, Otto was an exchange student with special privileges. But he was a more diligent student than he had been in Vienna.

  Early on, Zanuck assigned Preminger to observe Sing, Baby, Sing, a routine musical directed by Sidney Lanfield, a minor contract director. The film starred the Ritz Brothers, now forgotten lower-rung vaudevillians; newcomer Alice Faye, whom Zanuck was grooming for stardom; and Gregory Ratoff, a high-strung Russian émigré who was a top Zanuck toady and was to become a lifelong Preminger pal. Lanfield, who may have suspected that Otto was sent to spy on him, or to replace him, took an immediate dislike to the Viennese observer. “He couldn’t stand the sight of me,” Preminger recalled. “Everything I did irritated him. One day I was standing with my hands in my pockets just as he was about to start a scene. He turned to me in a fury. ‘You’re making a noise!’ he shouted. ‘You’re playing with the coins in your pockets!’ My pockets were empty.”8 Shrewd, practical, and biding his time, Otto said nothing, but continued to watch Lanfield at work for the rest of the shoot.

  Preminger’s apprenticeship lasted for nearly eight months, long enough for him to begin to worry that Zanuck had either forgotten him or perhaps was planning to dismiss him. During this time, he and Marion continued to be socially active. They were frequent guests at Hollywood gatherings, and reciprocated with parties of their own, at which, despite Otto’s humble salary, both the amount and quality of the food and drink were exceptional. Then one day near the end of July Otto was summoned to the boss’s office, where, croquet mallet in hand and cigar in mouth, Zanuck told Otto he would be directing a film in Sol Wurtzel’s unit. Having familiarized himself with the studio chain of command, Otto knew well what the assignment meant. Wurtzel, more interested in listening to baseball games than in supervising scripts or productions, was the resident king
of the B’s, the man in charge of all the studio’s low-budget program pictures targeted for the bottom half of then-ubiquitous double features.

  Preminger’s assignment, to direct a vehicle for Lawrence Tibbett, a renowned opera singer Zanuck wanted to get rid of, was problematic. In effect Zanuck was hiring Otto as his hatchet man, a role for which Zanuck no doubt sensed the Teutonic Otto was well suited. The first picture released by Zanuck and Schenck’s Twentieth Century-Fox, in 1935, had been Metropolitan, a high-budget star vehicle for Tibbett, who had enjoyed a quiet success in four Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer musicals in 1930 and 1931 and had then returned to the stage. With plans of creating a movie musical bonanza as he had with The Jazz Singer and 42nd Street, Zanuck had lured Tibbett back to films with a generous contract. But Metropolitan fizzled.

  Zanuck’s initial interest in Tibbett had not been misplaced, however. A forerunner in opening the opera stage to American-born and -trained singers like himself, Tibbett was also an important crossover artist who regularly included popular songs in his concert performances and was dedicated to rescuing opera from its elitist isolation. Good-looking, likeable, unpretentious, and with a large popular following, Tibbett seemed a prime candidate for joining the short list of motion picture singing stars headed by Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy. But on-screen Tibbett was pallid— a strictly B-movie personality. Zanuck had signed him for two films, but after Metropolitans failure he wanted to close the books on the singer. “We’re stuck with the son of a bitch,” a boiling Zanuck reported to Preminger and added, “There’s no chance he’ll ever be a success in films so you go ahead and practice on him.”9