Victor Fleming: An American Movie Master (Screen Classics)

by Sragow, Michael

  57 Olin O. Ellis and Enoch Garey: In the spring of 1917, Ellis and Garey, then lieutenants at the federal military training camp at Plattsburgh, New York, co-authored The Plattsburg Manual, a handbook for civilians entering training camps for military reservists. Photographs in the manual illustrated everything from exercise positions to the correct way to march in formation. Published that April, the book was briefly a best seller. Ellis later headed the ROTC program at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore; for a short time, Garey was superintendent of the Maryland State Police.

  57 He and twelve others: The record of that remarkable group of filmmakers is included in Fleming’s Military Intelligence Division file at the National Archives.

  58 “should their work at Columbia”: From Fleming’s own file of correspondence from his military career.

  58 “Vic Fleming, cameraman”: Diaries of Harold A. C. Sintzenich, 1912–73, Library of Congress Manuscript Division.

  59 “I taught them”: Brownlow, The War, the West, and the Wilderness.

  59 “news value, historical record”: From the catalog of the U.S. School of Military Cinematography, Columbia University archives.

  59 “Jewish tastes and standards”: Charyn, Gangsters & Gold-Diggers.

  60 Al Jolson in Sinbad: Sintzenich’s diary records many group visits to Broadway and vaudeville shows. In keeping with anti-German sentiment, the producers of that version of Maytime changed the setting from Austria to old New York. Fleming’s group attended Sinbad a month before Jolson first interpolated “Swanee.”

  61 “Akeley’s talents”: Brownlow, The War, the West, and the Wilderness.

  61 Akeley improved searchlights: Bodrey-Summers, Carl Akeley.

  62 Under the category noted: Fleming’s Military Intelligence Division review is included in Military Intelligence Division files in the National Archives.

  63 The shadow of DeMille: DeMille’s nativism led to scorn and condemnation at a famous meeting of the Screen Directors Guild in October 1950, when, while attacking the guild president, Joseph Mankiewicz, for opposing a loyalty oath for guild members, he read a list of alleged communist front groups and deliberately mispronounced the names of directors such as William Wyler and Fred Zinnemann to emphasize that they weren’t born in the United States. That performance resulted in a vote of confidence for the Mankiewicz faction of the guild and the end of the loyalty oath question.

  63 In 1914, seventeen German ships: Hoboken Historical Society.

  65 “Suggest you ‘hold fast’ ”: Fleming’s military correspondence file.

  65 “My orders were to accompany him”: Fleming, Action.

  5 Filming the Conquering Hero

  66 “No one in America”: Clements, Woodrow Wilson.

  67 “We replied”: Shotwell, At the Paris Peace Conference.

  68 “We have at our table”: Whiteman, Letters from the Paris Peace Conference.

  68 “So up we went”: Benham’s diary is included in Link et al., Papers of Woodrow Wilson, vol. 53.

  69 “an enterprising young photographer”: Starling and Sugrue, Starling of the White House.

  69 “At the end”: Fosdick’s diary is included in Link et al., Papers of Woodrow Wilson, vol. 53.

  69 “Nothing has pleased”: The New York Times, Dec. 12, 1918.

  70 “The town was a veritable mud-hole”: Grayson’s diary is included in Link et al., Papers of Woodrow Wilson, vol. 53.

  71 “a very jolly boy”: Shotwell, At the Paris Peace Conference.

  71 “my cameraman”: Brownlow files.

  71 placed at the president’s disposal: Wilson toured European capitals because, as Thomas Fleming writes in The Illusion of Victory, when the opening of the peace conference was postponed until January 12, 1919, the French, eager to see Germany punished in the peace settlement, urged Wilson to visit battlefields and view damaged cities in France and Belgium, which he resisted, not wanting to inflame passions. His way out—and also a way to build up his image as a global peacemaker—was to schedule ceremonial visits to Great Britain and Italy. But Vic’s November 27 letter to his mother indicates that a European tour was always planned.

  71 dozens of iconic images: President Wilson, incapacitated by a stroke in 1919, did not see any of them until November 1920 in the East Room of the White House, using a projector given to him by Douglas Fairbanks. Ray Stannard Baker, who wrote about that event in American Chronicle, recalled, “With the first brilliantly lighted episode we were in another world; a resplendent world, full of wonderful and glorious events,” but Wilson “sat bowed forward, looking at all this, absolutely silent . . . Was there ever such marching regiments of men, such bowing dignitaries, so many lords and lord-mayors? And here he was, the President, riding behind magnificent horses with outriders flying pennants, and people shouting in the streets, coming down from Buckingham Palace with the King of England.” But when the film was over, “the symbols of that glory had faded away with a click and a sputter. It was to us sitting there as though the thread of life had snapped; as though we had fallen from some vast height into the dim, cold, dreary reality of this lesser world.” Wilson left the screening, Baker recorded, without speaking a word.

  72 “a tremendous demonstration”: The New York Times, Jan. 7, 1918.

  6 The Importance of Directing Doug

  75 “ ‘Look!’ said Douglas”: Chaplin, My Autobiography.

  75 Jerry Lewis would use: Publicity for The Ladies Man in 1961 asserted that his four-story cutaway of a women’s boardinghouse was the largest indoor set ever built at Paramount.

  77 rolled-up script pages: On-set photos of Fleming from the 1920s to 1947 show him with script pages either put in the left back pocket of his trousers or, more characteristically, stuffed into his left jacket pocket.

  79 “a room open”: Literary Digest, July 3, 1920. Tibbetts and Welsh quote the article in their study His Majesty the American and also draw the comparison to Royal Wedding and 2001: A Space Odyssey.

  80 “the one about the old maid in the sleeping car”: Jokes about old maids in sleeping cars had been around since the first Pullman sleeping car in 1857.

  80 “We had even passed”: Fleming, “Directing—Then and Now,” Lion’s Roar, July 1944.

  81 “intensely unselfconscious”: Los Angeles Times, July 3, 1921.

  81 for Irene Castle to suspect: Castle, Castles in the Air. She sneered particularly at Clifford’s outfit that day: a purple wool suit and a purse emblazoned with “KC” in what Castle described as diamonds. Castle, known as the embodiment of tasteful couture, was describing the typical flashy getup of vaudeville performers.

  82 “Right now I want you”: Letter auctioned on eBay in 2007.

  82 “Just another day away”: Letter held by Robert Birchard.

  82 “Darling, my love”: Letter auctioned by Sotheby’s in 1993.

  82 “perfectly good husband”: Fleming and Clifford were not, in fact, ever married, and common-law marriages had been illegal in California since the 1890s. In 1926, she married the banker Mirimir Illitch, a union lasting until her death in 1962.

  83 “extraordinary scenes”: The New York Times, June 14, 1920.

  84 knocked off early one day: Dan Thomas column, April 16, 1924.

  85 “outdoes anything of the kind”: The New York Times, June 14, 1920.

  85 “Only the cinema”: Greene, Graham Greene Film Reader.

  7 Scaling Paramount Pictures

  87 “John chose a newcomer”: Loos, Talmadge Girls.

  91 “two scenes where double exposure”: The New York Times, Jan. 9, 1922.

  91 “Thalberg says you know”: McBride, Hawks on Hawks.

  91 “a dandy little household”: Sutherland’s description of the Hawks brothers’ house is in the Reminiscences of Edward Sutherland (1959) in the Oral History Collection of Columbia University, p. 93.

  91 Behind the Front: A raucous service comedy co-starring Wallace Beery and Raymond Hatton, and the film that launched Sutherland as a comedy dir
ector.

  91 “a world-weary homosexual”: Samuel Marx, Mayer and Thalberg.

  92 “Howard had class, you see”: McGilligan, Backstory.

  93 “He’d say, ‘Dan, what are you gonna do?’ ”: McBride, Hawks on Hawks.

  93 “I think I got about an hour”: Ibid.

  93 “built a couple of airplanes”: Bogdanovich, Who the Devil Made It.

  94 “a collection of puppets”: The New York Times, Nov. 19, 1922.

  94 Betty Bronson: Her unpublished memoir tells of Fleming’s help in landing the role of Peter Pan. She wrote that she found him

  a very adorable and encouraging person. I told him . . . of my real desire of securing a test for Peter Pan. This seemed to surprise him somewhat and he said he didn’t quite know if they would take someone unknown but that he would see what could be done—since he really didn’t have anything in his picture that would fit me. However, the following week or so, Herbert Brenon returned to Hollywood to begin work on his productions and I found that an appointment had been arranged for me to meet him. Of course, I was very nervous during the interview, and feared that I had not made a very good impression and was quite surprised when I received a call a few days later to make a test.

  94 “far more,” “It never seems real anywhere”: Photoplay, Sept. 1923.

  95 “In direction”: Variety, June 21, 1923.

  95 Virginia Valli: In 1921, she had married Demmy Lamson, a location manager and assistant director who later became a personal manager. When they divorced in 1926, court papers said he had deserted her in December 1924 and that they had not lived together since 1923. With her career fading, she married Charles Farrell in 1931, retired from the screen, and moved to Palm Springs. She died in 1968, age seventy.

  95 “a pine tree”: Drew, Speaking of Silents.

  95 “gave me a half-broke horse”: Los Angeles Times, April 1, 1928. The eight thousand thorns presumably were hyperbole.

  95 “Vic Fleming wanted to go”: Tuska, Filming of the West.

  96 “ ‘that kills two birds’ ”: Motion Picture News, Dec. 22, 1923.

  97 “a silhouette picture”: Interview with Howe in Filmmakers Newsletter, Feb. 1973.

  97 “We were riding along the trail”: Howe’s anecdote about Fleming killing the rattlesnake is contained in the Reminiscences of James Wong Howe (1971) in the Oral History Collection of Columbia University, p. 19.

  97 “right through the finger!”: Likely an exaggeration, since Stout retained all his fingers. Stout, an assistant to Howe in the 1920s, later worked for John Ford. In 1951, he was director of photography for Ida Lupino’s production company, and for a Collier’s article published May 12 he gave Lupino what he considered his highest praise: “Ida has more knowledge of camera angles and lenses than any director I’ve ever worked with, with the exception of Victor Fleming.”

  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.

  12
1 “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.