385 “Fleming had a nervous breakdown”: Rawlings to Bee McNeil, June 24, 1941, Rawlings Papers.
389 she nearly upended: Los Angeles Times, March 6, 1939.
390 “It wasn’t exactly a farm”: From Miller’s unpublished memoir.
390 “for the same reason”: Wynn, Ed Wynn’s Son.
391 “We opened them up, full throttle”: Cycle World, Aug. 1993.
392 “She was clearly”: Bacall, By Myself.
392 “Do you notice”: Ibid.
392 “Lu the Jew”: Having a nickname herself may have prompted Slim to bestow them on others. According to Hoagy Carmichael (Sometimes I Wonder), she liked to refer to Howard Hawks as “Great White Father” because of his prematurely gray hair.
393 “razz him about the money”: Hedda Hopper column, Jan. 31, 1945.
393 “and flirting, of course”: Bacall, By Myself.
394 “just told stories about Hawks”: Vidor, sound recording (1971), UCLA Library, Department of Special Collections.
395 acquired Hollywood heat: MGM announced its production of Tortilla Flat in 1940 in the wake of the success of The Grapes of Wrath; Ruth Hussey at one point was announced to play Sweets Ramirez.
396 MGM had refused to grant: Steinbeck to Annie Laurie Williams, June 24, 1941, John Steinbeck Collection, Stanford University.
396 set a meeting: Simmonds, John Steinbeck.
396 “I’ve planted all the seeds”: Steinbeck to Annie Laurie Williams, Aug. 5, 1941, Steinbeck Collection.
396 “and when he returned it”: The New York Times, Nov. 30, 1941.
396 According to Mahin: Marshall, Blueprint on Babylon.
396 “Its single dirt street”: Los Angeles Times, Jan. 11, 1942.
397 “fate in the picture”: The New York Times, Nov. 30, 1941.
397 “tried to slow down”: Los Angeles Times, Jan. 11, 1942.
397 “tall and patrician”: Lee, Chasing Hepburn.
398 He had promised Saint Francis: Joseph R. Millichap gets this whole episode wrong in his Steinbeck and Film. He writes, “In the novel [Pirate] mentions that the dog was later run over by a truck; in the movie the little dog is right up there, on the screen, wagging his tail in close-up.” Actually, the movie is faithful to the original anecdote.
398 “I tried to steal scenes”: Life, June 1, 1942.
398 “for Christ’s sake, Garfield”: Swindell, Body and Soul. Swindell told me his source for this dialogue was MGM talent scout Billy Grady.
399 “It was an honest part”: Hedda Hopper column, August 4, 1951.
399 “John Garfield was wonderful to work with”: Ibid.
399 pointed exchange: MGM legal files.
26 World War II with Tears
401 Deacon had asked: Los Angeles Times, Jan. 9, 1940. Deacon’s mental decline continued after his stroke, but not his ability to place ads. In 1951, his ad read, “For $1 I will tell you what is killing the major portion of the trees.” He died in a Pasadena nursing home in 1952, age ninety-two. In death, he would suffer the same exclusion from the family circle he had in life; Eva bought the crypt above Victor for herself but buried Deacon in a plot outside the mausoleum at Hollywood Memorial Park.
402 “boiled-and-buttered native corn”: Agee, Agee on Film.
402 “drifted away”: Kantor included this account of the aborted Buffalo Bill project in his papers, along with his treatment and memos to Fleming and Zimbalist; they reside in the Manuscript Division at the Library of Congress.
403 “the fakiest guy”: Interview with William Wellman, in Schickel, Men Who Made the Movies.
404 Fleming told him: Dickran Kouymjian, “Saroyan Shoots a Film,” in Hamalian, William Saroyan.
404 “the first woman”: Warren G. Harris, Clark Gable (New York: Harmony Books, 2002).
404 “specific and highly important assignment”: Gable’s military career is outlined in detail in Steven Agoratus, “Clark Gable in the Eighth Air Force,” Air Power History (Spring 1999).
405 “magical thinking”: Didion, Year of Magical Thinking.
406 “They sent me everything”: Letter from St. Johns to Lucile Fleming, sent just after Fleming’s death. St. Johns didn’t like to waste lachrymose anecdotes and recycled this one in her 1969 memoir, The Honeycomb. But in the new version, which ends the book, Fleming, whom she described as looking a lot like the Gunsmoke star James Arness, mixed compassion with a patriotic homily: “Never forget that cutting down Papa’s pants for Junior was what made the United States great in the first place. The day we forget to use up everything, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and the half-used cans of toothpaste, we won’t be the USA any more.”
407 “The proprietors of MGM”: Trumbo to Kempton, 1957, published in the Nation, April 5, 1999.
407 “convinced there was going to be trouble,” “I didn’t want to have”: Cook, Dalton Trumbo.
408 “like Clark Gable”: Trumbo’s treatment for A Guy Named Joe, called Three Guys Named Joe, is included in the War Department review file in the National Archives, College Park, Maryland. Also in that version, the characters of Pete Sandidge and Al Yackey open the film with some randy dialogue with a British farm girl about pullets.
409 “because of the disparity”: Corliss, Hollywood Screenwriters; “Dalton Trumbo,” appreciation by Corliss.
409 “Flying isn’t tough”: Lee, Chasing Hepburn.
409 “all wars are bad”: The New York Times, June 28, 1970.
410 “redeeming Topper twist”: Comments from Major Ralph Jester, Colonel Falkner Heard, Colonel Edward Munson, Colonel William Wright, and Lieutenant John T. Parker Jr. are in the War Department review file for A Guy Named Joe, National Archives.
411 “take on a dangerous job”: Joseph Breen’s suggestions for the ending are in the Production Code file for A Guy Named Joe, Margaret Herrick Library.
411 “I suppose the film,” “got the idea that,” and “my best—very best”: Interview appendix to Harvey, Romantic Comedy.
412 “I used to go to the studio”: Interview in Films of the Golden Age (Summer 2004).
413 “Spencer never acts”: Associated Press, April 3, 1938.
413 “I looked at the schedule”: DeFore’s story about Spencer Tracy’s scene is from his interview in the Ronald L. Davis Oral History Collection, DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas, collection number A1980.0154; viewed at Margaret Herrick Library.
414 “a voice rumbled back”: Letter from Trumbo in the The New York Times, Aug. 6, 1967.
415 motorcycle crash: Johnson verified to Spencer Tracy biographer Bill Davidson (Spencer Tracy: Tragic Idol ) that it was a motorcycle accident.
415 “I had to crawl across”: Interview with Johnson in the Toronto Star, Jan. 26, 1988.
415 “They had already tested”: Van Johnson, “My Life,” as told to Ruth Waterbury, Photoplay, March 1945.
415 “has more heart”: Hedda Hopper column, May 7, 1944.
415 “at the door”: Beecher, Luckiest Guy in the World.
416 MGM asked: War Department file.
416 “as long as possible”: Los Angeles Times, April 5, 1943.
416 One unit spent: The War Department file details the work of the second units and includes suggestions on increasing cooperation between MGM and the military. The Army Air Forces embraced the second-unit footage and in January 1944 asked permission to use clips from Joe plus stills showing P-38 tactics. The AAF’s then-classified General Information Bulletin published them—the first time a commercial motion picture was used for training purposes.
416 “right from fields”: Letter from Carter Barron, MGM’s Washington, D.C., liaison, in the War Department file.
416 “They wanted to see”: Interview with Johnson in the Toronto Star, Jan. 26, 1988.
417 The BMP’s primary mission: For a historical overview of the bureau, see Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes to War. Mention of the “Four Freedoms” is in the Office of War Information publication “Govern
ment Information Manual for the Motion Picture Industry.”
417 Bugs Bunny Nips the Nips: The 1944 cartoon has the indestructible Bugs on a Pacific island confronting bucktoothed Japanese soldiers. He refers to one of them as “monkey face.” The BMP files also question the 1943 Jack Benny comedy, The Meanest Man in the World. The bureau argued that overseas audiences probably would not recognize that Benny and his valet, Eddie “Rochester” Anderson, were a comedy team, so might interpret their relationship as the true nature of race relations in the United States.
417 The script shows: Trumbo’s script copy is in his papers at the Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison.
420 The wartime Office of Censorship: Koppes and Black, Hollywood Goes to War.
420 “every human being”: The BMP script review, including comments by Lillian R. Bergquist and telegrams from Ulric Bell, is in the records of the Office of War Information at the National Archives.
420 “The entire ending”: The only known interview with a member of the BMP staff was conducted by Harry A. Sauberli Jr. for “Hollywood and World War II: A Survey of Themes of Hollywood Films About the War, 1940–1945” (master’s thesis, University of Southern California, June 1967).
421 “The ending negates”: The New York Times, Jan. 9, 1944.
421 “And even if it does fizzle”: United Press, March 15, 1943.
421 “Now that Spielberg”: Pauline Kael, Movie Love: Complete Reviews, 1988–1991 (New York: Dutton, 1991).
422 “It had three endings”: Trumbo interview with J. D. Marshall, Dec. 1973, Phoenix House, Tempe, Arizona, Recorded Sound Reference Center, Library of Congress.
422 six endings: The original in the treatment, the two endings that were filmed, and Trumbo’s wordless version, plus two additional ones. In the first of Trumbo’s final unused endings, Dorinda radios the airfield for landing instructions, adding, “And if Lt. Ted Randall is still there, tell him I’d like to talk to him about a new assignment.” Smiling “gaily,” she adds, “Something we might do together.” In the second, a note of inappropriate humor goes to Pete, who watches Dorinda run to Ted after she lands the bomber, then says quietly to himself, “That’s my boy . . . that’s my girl . . . and four million bucks!” He follows that with “a little whistle to emphasize his awe.”
422 In a proposal: Agee’s memo to his Life editors appears in Wranovics’s Chaplin and Agee. Agee had been intending to do a story on a representative Hollywood director. “[John] Huston could be the director story we discussed,” he tells his editors. “But I suggest that he’s worth a story to himself and that the director should be a medium-talented reliable journeyman, not so far above the average as Huston, Ford, Wyler, & such. Say, a good director like Victor Fleming.” Agee’s middling-positive estimation of Fleming may reflect the director’s uneven output during Agee’s years as a reviewer for Time and the Nation, 1942–48.
422 “The picture will serve”: Agee, Agee on Film.
422 “The emotions a ghost”: Ibid.
422 “American inventiveness”: Eisenstein, Beyond the Stars.
422 “the chain of experience”: The French edition of Eisenstein’s Memoirs (Mémoires 2 [Paris: Union Génerale d’Éditions, 1980]) from the chapter “Judith.” The critic and film historian Ian Christie, co-editor with Richard Taylor of Eisenstein Rediscovered, supplied these pages. (Translated by Elizabeth Anthony.)
423 “What I don’t know”: Los Angeles Examiner, Jan. 13, 1943.
423 “A very dour, sort of dry”: Vidor interview, 1971, which contains the full story of the 1944 road trip, UCLA. Olivia de Havilland’s comments are in a 2003 letter to Kurt Jensen.
27 A Confounding Political Life
425 laying down bets: Mankiewicz told this story to Selden West while she was researching the life of Spencer Tracy. Fleming was not, however, a member of the isolationist group America First.
425 registered as a Democrat: Lu Fleming always registered Republican, as did Fleming’s mother.
426 “He was against”: Kazan, Life.
426 “I have no use for a poor man”: Steele, Ingrid Bergman.
427 “It was officially non-political”: Dunne, Take Two.
429 “persons in the various studios”: Richard B. Hood, Special Agent in Charge, Los Angeles FBI bureau, to FBI chief J. Edgar Hoover, Feb. 9, 1944, MPA file. Hood, an FBI agent from 1934 to 1953, died in 2005, age ninety-seven. Federal Bureau of Investigation: File on the Motion Picture Alliance for the Preservation of American Ideals.
429 one notable misstep: In August 1938, James B. Matthews, a former Communist Party member who was the committee’s star witness, named Temple as a communist dupe because she, along with Clark Gable, Robert Taylor, and James Cagney, had sent congratulatory wires to the French communist newspaper Ce Soir. Matthews—who coined the term “fellow traveler”—went on to declare (in a statement reported by newspapers but expunged from the official HUAC transcript), “In fact, almost everyone in Hollywood has been signed up for some communist front organization except Mickey Mouse and Snow White.” To that, Alabama representative Joe Starnes inquired, “What about Charlie McCarthy?”
429 the FBI estimated that 200: Hood to Hoover, March 22, 1944, FBI, MPA file.
429 James Kevin McGuinness: Born in Ireland, he was a close friend of John Ford’s. In 1940, he married his second wife, the German baroness Lucie von Ledermann-Wartburg. He was ousted from MGM in 1949 in a restructuring blamed on the studio’s declining box-office returns, although fervent anticommunists claimed it was retaliation for his MPA activities. He went on a three-month national speaking tour on the communist threat, wrote Rio Grande for Ford, then died of a heart attack in 1950, age fifty-six.
430 “He was such a charming man”: Ceplair and Englund, Inquisition in Hollywood.
430 “did me harm”: Vidor interview, 1971, UCLA.
430 “banned for being anti-Semitic”: McGuinness, Mahin, and Howard Emmett Rogers had been tagged in print as anti-Semites in January 1941 when the Daily Worker observed them at the Brown Derby discussing “aliens” in Hollywood and attacking the forthcoming Citizen Kane with G. Allison Phelps, a virulently anti-Semitic broadcaster and pamphleteer. Phelps discussed that meeting on a subsequent broadcast on KMTR. But Vidor probably was thinking of a mass booklet mailing from the Council of Hollywood Guilds and Unions shortly after the MPA began. As noted in a memo from Hood to Hoover on September 13, 1944, the booklet accused the MPA “of having been sympathetic to the German-American Bund, implying connections with Father Coughlin’s Christian Front, the Ku Klux Klan, Gerald L. K. Smith [a notoriously anti-Semitic minister and agitator for right-wing causes], Joe McWilliams [head of the anti-Semitic Christian Organizers], and those individuals now on trial in Washington, D.C., for sedition.” Communist Activity in the Entertainment Industry: FBI Surveillance Files on Hollywood, 1942–1958.
430 “What are they for, King?”: Schwartz, Hollywood Writers’ Wars.
431 “Possibly nowhere but in Hollywood”: New Republic, June 26, 1944.
431 “more words than any other author”: Los Angeles Times, July 5, 1938.
431 “beginning to show left-wing tendencies”: Hood to Hoover, Feb. 18, 1943, in Communist Activity in the Entertainment Industry.
431 “If trying to be”: Hedda Hopper column, May 6, 1944.
432 “You should avoid”: Hoover to Hood, May 1, 1944. FBI, MPA file.
432 straight out of law school: After leaving the FBI at the end of the war, Baumeister was general counsel for KTTV in Los Angeles.
432 “a possible Communist front”: Hood to Hoover, Feb. 18, 1943. An informant added, “There is very little doubt that the inspiration for the creation of the Hollywood Canteen originated in communist circles,” Communist Activity in the Entertainment Industry.
432 Maribess Stokes: Hood to Hoover, July 14, 1944. Ibid. Stokes was married to a Navy officer. She sometimes was named in FBI memos as Mary Bess Stokes. FBI memos do not i
ndicate that she was prosecuted, but further information about her has eluded inquiry.
432 “to recover all copies”: D. M. Ladd to Hoover, July 9, 1945. Ibid. On July 14, Ladd filled in the rest of the story in response to Hoover’s request, explaining that Stokes “admitted” on October 18, 1944, that she had been securing FBI materials through Lieutenant Daniel Goodykoontz, and that the agent Hood had discussed the matter with commanders of the Los Angeles ONI office. This was done, Ladd reminded Hoover, “in accordance with your instructions that the situation be adjusted on a local level before it was taken up with Naval Intelligence at the seat of government.” In other words, Hoover, who was renowned for his skill as a bureaucratic infighter, had asked that the matter be handled quietly, lest it become known not only that the FBI had shared documents but that a security breach had occurred. In addition to Wood, a memo from L. B. Nichols to Clyde Tolson on November 10, 1944, indicates that Lela Rogers said that she, too, had seen the FBI’s list of Hollywood communists.
Victor Fleming: An American Movie Master (Screen Classics) Page 73