Victor Fleming: An American Movie Master (Screen Classics)

by Sragow, Michael

  Individuals whom my research associate, Kurt Jensen, interviewed or corresponded with: Bette Jean Ahrens, Alan H. Anderson, Lawrence Bachmann, Pamela Morris Baker, Elizabeth Bartholomew, H. Bruce Baumeister, Yvonne Blocksom, Hunter Bowman, Lee Bowman Jr., Julie Lugo Cerra, George Coulouris Jr., Patrick Curtis, David Brion Davis, Tad Devine, James Drury, Gene Eckman, Sally Fleming, Victoria Fleming, Richard Foelsch, John Frederick, Greg Giese, William Goodykoontz, Kate Harper, Edward C. Hartman, Olivia de Havilland, Terese Hayden, Marsha Hunt, Schuyler Johnson, Thomas Jones, Christy Kelso, Mickey Kuhn, Helen Reed Lehman, Betty Lighton, Jack Lindquist, Ian Mackersey, John McCabe, Fay McKenzie, Olga Nardone, Micky O’Donoughue, Robert Rampton, Robert Reed, Lina Romay, Arthur H. Rosson Jr., Barbara Saltzman, Eddie Schmidt Jr., Sheila Shay, John Sheffield, Karl Slover, Tim Soules, Martin Spellman, Donna Stewart-Hardway, Rodger Swearingen, Clarence Swensen, Robert Terry, Melissa Wells, Harriet Wheeler, Richard V. Wyman.

  Interview collection, Columbia University: Mary Astor (1971), Pandro S. Berman (1971), Marc Connelly (1959), Jackie Cooper (1959), Janet Gaynor (1958), Ben Hecht (1957), James Wong Howe (1971), Mervyn LeRoy (1971), Myrna Loy (1959), Adela Rogers St. Johns (1971), Edward Sutherland (1959).

  Interview collection, Southern Methodist University: Don DeFore (1986), Irene Dunne (1986), Mervyn LeRoy (1978), Gil Perkins (1986), Gene Raymond (1986), Emily Torchia (1984), Slavko Vorkapich (1975).

  J. D. Marshall interviews, Recorded Sound Reference Center, Library of Congress: Howard Estabrook (1978), John Lee Mahin (1978), and Dalton Trumbo (1973).

  Robert Gottlieb, who hired me at the New Yorker and often edited me there, championed Fleming as a subject, prodded the book to completion, and applied his pencil cunningly to the manuscript. In person and in writing, he has an uncanny knack for course correction—which he can accomplish with a word of encouragement or a penetrating critique. No one has been more patient or sanguine about this book’s long gestation—except, perhaps, for Sarah Lazin, an agent who is also an ally and close reader, and Glenda Hobbs, my wife, who applied her diamond cutter’s eye to the text.

  The biography would not have been possible without my research associate, Kurt Jensen, the best pure reporter I know as well as a first-rate editor and fact-checker. He came aboard to crack the family history and, by his dexterity with databases and tenacity with human sources, cleared up many a clannish mystery. He soon became organically connected to the process of establishing a life story for a man who left a sparse written record. Kurt sifted through prodigious amounts of data to nail down individual details and was crucial to the coverage of such varied topics as the Atlanta celebration for Gone With the Wind, the birth of the anticommunist Motion Picture Alliance, and the vagaries of Joan of Arc scholarship, which, he was delighted to find, encompassed Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Jack Benny, and Fred Allen. He has a keen nose for the truth, and I can’t think of a nonfiction book that couldn’t be taken to its highest possible level with Kurt’s participation.

  Sally Fleming kindly shared all the family material she had and helped persuade Turner Entertainment in Atlanta to open her father’s MGM legal files to me. Victoria Fleming offered her prodigious memory and insights, including this sly, deceptively simple advice: “If there’s ever a question of whether Daddy and some woman did or they didn’t, assume they did!”

  Christy Kelso not only shared her extensive files documenting the background and the westward trek of the Hartman family; she also lent her formidable skills as a genealogist to turn up a substantial trove of correspondence and legal documents. Edward C. Hartman divulged his detailed memories of San Dimas and “Uncle Vic” with a generosity matched only by his sanity and natural good humor: he said that when Fleming was at his peak, making The Wizard of Oz, “You have to remember that I was fourteen years old, and if it had nothing to do with sports, I couldn’t care less.”

  Kate Harper, whose childhood memories include personalities as diverse as Cecil B. DeMille and Jimmy Durante, aided the vast effort to locate interviewees.

  The man who’s done more than anyone since James Agee to revive the popularity of the silent film, Kevin Brownlow, gave the first big boost to this biography. At the 1998 Telluride Film Festival, he expressed his enthusiasm for Fleming as a director and a personality, then opened up, and kept open, voluminous data and research on early Hollywood, including correspondence with Louise Brooks from the 1960s and early 1970s, an unpublished memoir by Sidney Franklin, and interviews with Howard Hawks (1970), Bessie Love (1971), and Dorothy Jordan Cooper (1972). Throughout this book’s own long history, Brownlow overflowed with information, photographs, and insights, and he never said no.

  Elizabeth Anthony, editor of the Web site ReelClassics.com, made marvelous contributions on several fronts. In addition to assiduous library work, she translated Sergei Eisenstein and Father Paul Doncoeur from the French; she deciphered Bosley Crowther’s handwriting; and she made the kinds of suggestions for further research that could come only from a three-strip Technicolor dyed-in-the-celluloid movie lover.

  The biographer of Jean Harlow and Clara Bow, David Stenn, scoured the David Stenn collection for quotations from acquaintances and co-workers of Fleming’s and kept finding untapped sources of testimony to the director’s drive and creativity. Selden West provided anecdotes from her research on Spencer Tracy. William Wellman’s biographer, Frank Thompson, put me in touch with John Gallagher, author of the first important monograph on Fleming. And Gallagher was invaluable: he delivered tapes of rare films, dozens of contemporary reviews and publicity stories, several of his own original interviews, and even a program for the road-show presentation of The Rough Riders.

  Scott Eyman, while researching, writing, and promoting his book about Louis B. Mayer, shared his knowledge of and sources on MGM in the 1930s and 1940s and even came up with a budget sheet for Around the World in Eighty Minutes. Joseph McBride, while completing his life of John Ford, gave me a score of leads on filmmakers (or family members of filmmakers) from Fleming’s generation.

  Todd McCarthy, Howard Hawks’s biographer, put me in touch with Hawks’s family and sent me his notes on Fleming from Norma Shearer’s unpublished autobiography. He also cheered the project on, although he knew it wouldn’t always view his subject favorably. So did David Thomson, who lent me the Fleming-related research he did for his life of David O. Selznick, Showman. Matthew Bernstein, Walter Wanger’s biographer, provided pointers on the Wanger Collection at the University of Wisconsin; the indefatigable and prolific Milwaukee-based biographer Patrick McGilligan (a colleague since Boston alternative-weekly days in the 1970s) navigated it for me. McGilligan also sank back into his fifteen-year-old notebooks on George Cukor to locate the source of a now-crucial piece of GWTW lore.

  John Fricke, who keeps proving the last word can’t be written or spoken on The Wizard of Oz, was always open to questions, as was Willard Carroll, who was profligate in his generosity with Oz photographs, memorabilia, and lore. Anthony Slide provided key early assistance on silent-film resources, and Lee Tsiantis of Turner Classic Movies offered practical and aesthetic support from beginning to end.

  My longtime friend and ace professional movie researcher, Joan Cohen, gave the project a shot of energy with her in-person research in London as well as her forays into many Los Angeles archives and libraries. Amy Glover and Jennifer Clark operated like brainy sharpshooters, homing in on every request with immediate perception and clarity and invariably coming up with more than I asked for. Meg Singley discovered eloquent testimony to Fleming’s standing at MGM in Bosley Crowther’s unused notes for his book on the studio.

  Don Rogier’s effort to trace Clara Strouse and her family even involved a hike through an Ohio cemetery.

  “Several friends and colleagues” of Dave Smith, director of the Walt Disney Archives, spent a weekend, on their own time, casting their experienced eyes on several vintage Mickey Mouse cartoons to determine whether any footage was recycled into Around the World in Eighty Minutes.


  Neal Graffy generously offered his own research, aided by his friendship with Lulu Phelan, to add detail to Fleming’s professional launch—and his romance with Charlotte Burton—at the Flying A studio in Santa Barbara.

  Most of the research originated at the facilities of the Library of Congress. Zoran Sinobad and the rest of the staff of the Motion Picture Reading Room lent their wide-ranging expertise at every turn. But a biography with widely scattered source material can only come about with the skilled assistance of archivists and reference librarians nationwide. Foremost on this list are Barbara Hall at the Margaret Herrick Library, Ned Comstock at USC’s Cinema and Television Library, and Charles Silver at the Museum of Modern Art. And Fleming’s story could not have been fleshed out without the knowledgeable help of volunteers at local historical organizations from Columbia County, Pennsylvania, to San Dimas and Santa Barbara, California.

  Everyone involved in this enterprise felt the adventure of Fleming’s life and the thrill of retracing its bold trajectory from the orange orchards of Pasadena to the top of the entertainment world. Everything of quality in this book owes a huge debt to the people mentioned or listed here, and many others. Responsibility for inaccuracies and shortcomings lies with me alone.

  Additional thanks go to: Dennis Aig, Paula Allen, Kathryn Ashe, Pat Atkinson, Lutz Bacher, Sarah Baker, Frank D. Balzer, Joseph Bender-sky, Stella Bendoris, Betty Birk, Alice Birney, Gregory D. Black, Olivier Bouzy, Connie Breedlove, Roy M. Brewer Jr., James Breyley, Richard Brody, Faith Brook, John Burrud, James E. Butler, Ben Campanale, Larry Ceplair, John Christensen, Ian Christie, Gerry Chudleigh, Judy Colgrove, Ralph Cooper, Greg Cumming, James Curtis, Ron Cuskelly, James D’Arc, Ron DeFore, William Drew, Dana Driskel, K. O. Eckland, Jan Edwards, Karren Elsbernd, Ann Evans, Christopher Falzon, Harry Forbes, Alexa Foreman, Leatrice Gilbert Fountain, Jeannine Wagner Gallardo, Lynn Gamma, Cara Gilgenbach, Leo Gorcey Jr., Luther Greene, Rick J. Gunter, Rosemary Hanes, Stacey Hann-Ruff, Barbara Hartley, Dorinda Hartmann, Karen L. Hathaway, Bob Heald, Daniel Hobbins, Abraham Hoffman, Richard Hutson, Maria Cooper Janis, Latane Jones, Chris Kaltenbach, Chiaki Kawajiri, David Kessler, Dickran Kouymjian, John Lahr, Margarita Landazuri, Ludwig Lauerhass Jr., Lee Lawrence, Richard LeComte, Laura Leff, Judy Lewis, John Lindner, Anne Lockhart, Patrick Loughney, Lloyd MacFadyen, Tim Mahin, Madeline Matz, Stan McClain, Hamilton Meserve, Dwight Miller, Ted Mills, Langdon Morrill, Robert Morris, Kirk Myers, Victor Navasky, Harold Osmer, Erin Overbey, Sam Ratcliffe, Maria Reachi, Michael Redmon, Eric Rentschler, Bill Robie, Elizabeth Robnett, Carole Sampeck, Rodney Sauer, Hans-Joachim Schlegel, Sandy Slater, David Smit, Victoria Sturtevant, Lawrence Suid, Glenn Taranto, Russ Taylor, Ned Thanhouser, Sandra M. Thomas, Pat Tone, Dan Van Neste, John Waxman, and Eileen Whitfield.

  Archival and research resources: Air Force Historical Research Agency; American Museum of Natural History; Arizona State Archives; Brigham Young University (Bosley Crowther Papers); British Film Institute; Catholic University of America (National Catholic Welfare Conference Papers; Archbishop John Timothy McNicholas correspondence); Centre Jeanne d’Arc, Orléans, France; Columbia University (Oral History Research Office and University Archives); the Walt Disney Archives; Federal Aviation Administration; Federal Bureau of Investigation; Filson Historical Society, Louisville, Kentucky (Cleves Kinkead Papers); Georgetown University (Martin J. Quigley Papers, Lawrence Suid Papers); Harry Ransom Center for the Humanities, University of Texas, Austin (Maxwell Anderson Papers, David O. Selznick Archive); the Henry Ford Museum and Research Center; Herbert Hoover Presidential Library (Westbrook Pegler Papers); Kent State University (Lois Wilson Collection); Library of Congress Manuscript Division (Maxwell Anderson Papers, H. H. “Hap” Arnold Papers, Ray Stannard Baker Papers, Ruth Gordon and Garson Kanin Papers, Cary Grayson Papers, MacKinlay Kantor Papers, Rouben Mamoulian Collection, Groucho Marx Papers, Harold Sintzenich diaries, Woodrow Wilson Papers, Owen Wister Papers); Library of Congress Motion Picture Reading Room (preservation copies of many of Victor Fleming’s silent films, including fragments of The Rough Riders); Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Reading Room (Look photo collection, New York Journal American photo collection); Library of Congress Performing Arts Reading Room (Irving Berlin Papers); Library of Congress Recorded Sound Reference Center (Bob Hope scripts); Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder’s Office; Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (Anthony Slide Collection, Herrick Library Oral History Collection, Paramount Script Collection, Production Code file, SMU Oral History Collection (Greer Garson Collection), Turner/MGM Script Collection, Victor Fleming clipping file); Museum of Modern Art, New York (Sergei Eisenstein Collection, special screenings of When the Clouds Roll By, and fragments of The Rough Riders); National Archives and Records Administration, College Park, Maryland (Records of the U.S. Army Military Intelligence Division, Records of the Bureau of Motion Pictures, Records of the War Department Bureau of Public Relations, U.S. Army Signal Corps films); National Archives and Records Administration, Washington, D.C. (Civil War military records); Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Birthplace (Lee Bowman file); Newberry Library, Chicago (Ben Hecht Papers); San Diego Natural History Museum; San Diego Zoological Park; Stanford University ( John Steinbeck Collection); Stein-hart Aquarium; Supreme Court of California; University of Arkansas, Fayetteville (Lighton Family Papers); University of California, Berkeley (Sidney Howard Papers); University of California, Los Angeles (Betty Bronson Papers, Hedda Hopper Papers, Oral History Project, UCLA Film Archive for special screenings of Common Clay and American Aristocracy); University of Florida, Gainesville (Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Papers); University of Indiana, Bloomington (Upton Sinclair Papers); University of North Dakota (Maxwell Anderson Papers); University of South Carolina ( Jules Furthman scripts); University of Southern California (Constance McCormick Collection, Cinema and Television Library Archives); University of Virginia (Booton Herndon Papers); Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research (Dalton Trumbo Papers, Walter Wanger Collection); U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops; Film and Broadcasting Office (National Legion of Decency files); Columbia County (Pa.) Historical Society; Culver City Historical Society; Harold Bell Wright Society; Hoboken Historical Society; Institute of Texan Cultures, San Antonio; Jerome (Ariz.) Historical Society; Pasadena Historical Society and Museum; Pasadena Public Library; San Dimas Historical Society; Santa Barbara Historical Society; Sedona (Ariz.) Historical Society; Seneca County (Ohio) Historical and Genealogical Society; Texas County (Mo.) Historical Society; Wood County (Ohio) Historical Center and Museum.

  For permissions to quote confidential or copyrighted material, thanks go to Roger L. Mayer of Turner Entertainment (MGM files); Daniel Selznick of Selznick Properties, Ltd. (Selznick Archive); Dixon Adair (the diary of A. D. Adair Jr.); Christy Kelso (Fleming letters); and Maria Cooper Janis (“Well, It Was This Way: Gary Cooper Tells His Story”).

  Notes

  Direct quotations in the text that do not have a corresponding note identifying the source are drawn from interviews or correspondence with the author or his research associate. The names of such sources are provided in the acknowledgments.

  Introduction

  3 “A composite between”: Paramount publicity, 1928; the screenwriter cited is Louise Long (Rough House Rosie, 1927; Interference, 1928), who never worked on any of Fleming’s pictures.

  3 “the Lincoln type of melancholia”: Lion’s Roar, Jan. 1944.

  3 an appreciation of her father: The New York Times, Nov. 15, 1998.

  4 “a man like Fleming”: Carle to Grover Jones, May 1, 1939, Victor Fleming file, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

  5 When the author of: Schulberg, Moving Pictures.

  5 “Clark Gable on the screen is Fleming”: Henry Hathaway’s description of Fleming as Gable is from his interview in the Ronald L. Davis Oral History Collection, DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, collection number A1980.0154; viewed at Margar
et Herrick Library.

  5 “Every man that ever worked”: Interview in Focus on Film, No. 7, 1991.

  6 “Nice legs, sister!”: From a letter written by Eleanor Saville to her husband after the U.S. Olympic swimming team, escorted by Johnny Weissmuller, visited MGM that July, shortly before the Summer Olympics began in Los Angeles. The team met Fleming and other movie directors at a reception at the Ambassador Hotel. Letter held by Roger van Oosten.

  6 he wired back, simply: The telegram is recalled by Louis Lighton’s sister Betty.

  6 “He is probably the only guy”: Lion’s Roar, Jan. 1944.

  6 “Fleming was quite inarticulate”: Kaplan to David Stenn.

  7 “Every dame he ever worked with”: Kobal, People Will Talk.

  7 “Victor Fleming knew as much”: Maltin, Behind the Camera.

  7 “Fleming was the realist”: Hathaway, SMU oral history.

  8 “he had an inner power”: Lewis, The Creative Producer.