Victor Fleming: An American Movie Master (Screen Classics)

by Sragow, Michael

  Red Dust (MGM) Released October 22. Length: 84 minutes. Production dates: August 10–October 8; retakes on October 11. Cast: Clark Gable, Jean Harlow, Gene Raymond, Mary Astor, Donald Crisp, Tully Marshall, Willie Fung. Production: Hunt Stromberg, producer; John Lee Mahin, screenwriter (from the play by Wilson Collison); Harold Rosson, cinematographer. (Remade as Congo Maisie in 1940, directed by H. C. Potter, and as Mogambo in 1953, directed by John Ford, also with Clark Gable, also written by John Lee Mahin.)

  1933

  The White Sister (MGM) Released April 14. Length: 110 minutes. Fleming originally signed a contract for this picture on July 29, 1932, but it was waived so he could work on Red Dust. Production dates: December 1932–March 1, 1933, retakes on March 2. Cast: Helen Hayes, Clark Gable, Lewis Stone, May Robson, Edward Arnold. Production: Hunt Stromberg, producer; Donald Ogden Stewart, screenwriter (from the novel by F. Marion Crawford); William Daniels, cinematographer. (Previously made in 1915 with Viola Allen and in 1923 with Lillian Gish.)

  Bombshell (MGM) Released October 13. Length: 96 minutes. Fleming went on contract May 6. Production dates: August 7–September 15, 1933, with retakes on September 20 and 21. Cast: Jean Harlow, Lee Tracy, Frank Morgan, Franchot Tone, Pat O’Brien, Ted Healy, Louise Beavers, Isabel Jewell, C. Aubrey Smith. Production: Fleming, producer; Hunt Stromberg, associate producer; John Lee Mahin and Jules Furthman, screenwriters (from a play by Caroline Francke and Mack Crane); Harold Rosson and Chester Lyons, cinematographers.

  1934

  Treasure Island (MGM) Released August 17. Length: 105 minutes. Fleming went on payroll on February 8. Production began March 20 and ended May 29, with retakes on June 8, 9, 25, and 27. Cast: Wallace Beery, Nigel Bruce, Jackie Cooper, Lionel Barrymore, Otto Kruger, Lewis Stone, Charles “Chic” Sale, Charles Bennett, Douglas Dumbrille. Production: Hunt Stromberg, producer; John Lee Mahin, screenwriter (from the novel by Robert Louis Stevenson); Ray June, Clyde DeVinna, and Harold Rosson, cinematographers. (Treasure Island has been filmed numerous times, most famously by Byron Haskin for Walt Disney in 1950, with Robert Newton and Bobby Driscoll; in 2002, Disney also produced and distributed the futuristic comic cartoon feature Treasure Planet, which in many ways pays homage to Fleming’s version.)

  1935

  Reckless (MGM) Released April 19. Length: 99 minutes. Production dates: November 27, 1934–February 25, retakes on March 8, 9, and 11. Cast: Jean Harlow, William Powell, Franchot Tone, May Robson, Ted Healy, Nat Pendleton, Rosalind Russell, Mickey Rooney. Production: David O. Selznick, producer; P. J. Wolfson, screenwriter (from a story by Selznick under the pseudonym Oliver Jeffries); George Folsey, cinematographer.

  The Farmer Takes a Wife (Fox) Released August 2. Length: 91 minutes. Fleming moved to the Fox lot on February 26 and returned to MGM for the reshoots on Reckless, before this film’s principal photography took place from early April to mid-May. Cast: Janet Gaynor, Henry Fonda, Charles Bickford, Slim Summerville, Andy Devine, Jane Withers, Margaret Hamilton, Siegfried “Sig” Rumann, John Qualen. Production: Winfield Sheehan, producer; Edwin Burke, screenwriter (from Frank B. Elser and Marc Connelly’s stage adaptation of Walter D. Edmonds’s novel Rome Haul ). (Remade as a Betty Grable musical in 1953, directed by Henry Levin.)

  1937

  Captains Courageous (MGM) Released June 25. Length: 116 minutes. Production dates: second-unit photography began in October 1935, principal photography began September 22, 1936, and Fleming didn’t finish doing retakes until March 18, 1937. Cast: Freddie Bartholomew, Spencer Tracy, Lionel Barrymore, Melvyn Douglas, Mickey Rooney, John Carradine, Leo G. Carroll, Jack LaRue. Production: Louis D. Lighton, producer; John Lee Mahin, Marc Connelly, and Dale Van Every, screenwriters (from the novel by Rudyard Kipling); Harold Rosson, cinematographer. (Remade for TV both in 1977, with Karl Malden, Jonathan Kahn, and Ricardo Montalban, and in 1996, with Robert Urich, Kenny Vadas, and Colin Cunningham, in the roles originally played by Barrymore, Bartholomew, and Tracy, respectively.)

  Academy Award nominations: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, outstanding production; Tracy, best actor (winner); Elmo Veron, film editing; Mahin, Connelly, Van Every, screenplay.

  1938

  Test Pilot (MGM) Released April 22. Length: 118 minutes. Production dates: December 1, 1937–February 18, 1938, with retakes March 30–early April. Cast: Clark Gable, Myrna Loy, Spencer Tracy, Lionel Barrymore, Louis Jean Heydt, Gloria Holden, Virginia Grey, Samuel S. Hinds, Martin Spellman. Production: Louis D. Lighton, producer; Vincent Lawrence and Waldemar Young, screenwriters (from an original story by Frank “Spig” Wead); Ray June, cinematographer.

  Academy Award nominations: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, outstanding production; Tom Held, film editing; Wead, original story.

  1939

  The Wizard of Oz (MGM) Released August 25. Length: 101 minutes. Production dates: September 30, 1938 (recording); October 13, 1938 (filming, under Richard Thorpe, whose footage was scrapped)–March 16, 1939 (under King Vidor, who shot the Kansas scenes; Jack Conway and W. S. Van Dyke are often cited as contributors according to an erroneous column item). Fleming began shooting November 4, 1938, and continued until February 17, 1939. Cast: Judy Garland, Frank Morgan, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr, Jack Haley, Billie Burke, Margaret Hamilton, Charley Grapewin, Clara Blandick. Production: Mervyn LeRoy, producer; Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson, and Edgar Allan Woolf, screenwriters (from the novel by L. Frank Baum); Harold Rosson, cinematographer.

  Academy Award nominations: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, outstanding production; Cedric Gibbons, William Horning, art direction; Rosson (submitted, not an official nomination), color cinematography; Herbert Stothart, original score (winner); song, “Over the Rainbow,” Harold Arlen, E. Y. Harburg (winners); special effects, A. Arnold Gillespie, Douglas Shearer. Special award to Judy Garland “for outstanding performance as a screen juvenile during the past year.”

  Gone With the Wind (Selznick International, released by MGM) Released December 15. Length: 222 minutes. Production dates: December 10, 1938–February 15, 1939. Fleming directed from March 2 to April 27, and from May 5 to July 1, with reshoots during the first two weeks of October. Cast: Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh, Olivia de Havilland, Leslie Howard, Thomas Mitchell, Hattie McDaniel, Butterfly McQueen, Victor Jory, Evelyn Keyes, Ann Rutherford, Laura Hope Crews, Harry Davenport, Rand Brooks, Cammie King, Mickey Kuhn, Ward Bond. Production: David O. Selznick, producer; Sidney Howard, screenwriter (from the novel by Margaret Mitchell); Ernest Haller, cinematographer.

  Academy Award nominations: Selznick International, outstanding production (winner); Gable, actor; Leigh, actress (winner); de Havilland, supporting actress; McDaniel, supporting actress (winner); Lyle Wheeler, art direction (winner); Haller, Ray Rennahan, cinematography (color) (winners); Fleming, direction (winner); Hal C. Kern, James E. Newcom, film editing (winner); Max Steiner, original score; Samuel Goldwyn Studio, sound recording; John R. Cosgrove, Fred Albin, Arthur Johns, special effects; Howard, screenplay (winner). Special award to William Cameron Menzies for outstanding achievement in the use of color; scientific/technical award for several technical advances.

  1941

  Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (MGM) Released August 12. Length: 127 minutes. Production dates: February 4–April 18. Cast: Spencer Tracy, Ingrid Bergman, Lana Turner, Donald Crisp, Ian Hunter, Barton MacLane, and C. Aubrey Smith. Production: Victor Saville, producer; John Lee Mahin, screenwriter (from the novella by Robert Louis Stevenson); Joseph Ruttenberg, cinematographer. (This was a remake of the 1932 Paramount film directed by Rouben Mamoulian, with Fredric March.)

  Academy Award nominations: Ruttenberg, black-and-white cinematography; Harold F. Kress, film editing; Franz Waxman, musical score of a dramatic picture.

  1942

  Tortilla Flat (MGM) Released May 21. Length: 105 minutes. Production dates: November 23, 1941–February 12, 1942; retakes February 23–24. Cast: Spencer Tracy, Hedy Lamarr, John Garfield, Frank Morgan, Akim Tamiroff, Sheldon Leonard, John Qualen, Donald Meek, Connie Gilchrist, Allen Jenkins, Henry
O’Neill. Production: Sam Zimbalist, producer; John Lee Mahin and Benjamin Glazer, screenwriters (from the novel by John Steinbeck); Karl Freund, cinematographer.

  Academy Award nomination: Frank Morgan, supporting actor.

  1943

  A Guy Named Joe (MGM) Released December 24. Length: 118 minutes. Production began February 15; the The New York Times reported on September 19 that Fleming completed principal shooting that week. He shot a new closing sequence for the film starting on November 10. Cast: Spencer Tracy, Irene Dunne, Van Johnson, Ward Bond, James Gleason, Lionel Barrymore, Barry Nelson. Production: Everett Riskin, producer; Dalton Trumbo, screenwriter (from Frederick Hazlitt Brennan’s adaptation of Chandler Sprague and David Boehm’s original story); George Folsey and Karl Freund, cinematographers.

  Academy Award nomination: Sprague, Boehm, original story.

  1946

  Adventure (MGM) Released February 19. Length: 125 minutes. Production dates: Fleming began preparing the project in February 1945, started shooting in mid-May, and completed principal photography on September 21. He concluded postproduction on November 12 and left the studio for a three-month leave that turned out to be permanent. Cast: Clark Gable, Greer Garson, Joan Blondell, Thomas Mitchell, Tom Tully, Richard Haydn, Lina Romay, Harry Davenport, Tito Renaldo. Production: Sam Zimbalist, producer; Frederick Hazlitt Brennan and Vincent Lawrence, screenwriters (from Anthony Veiller’s and William H. Wright’s adaptations of Clyde Brion Davis’s novel); Joseph Ruttenberg, cinematographer.

  1948

  Joan of Arc (Sierra Pictures, released by RKO) Released November 10. Length: Cut to 100 minutes in 1950, restored to 153 minutes in 1998. Production dates: September 16–December 18, 1947; retakes February 16–25, 1948. Cast: Ingrid Bergman, José Ferrer, Leif Erickson, John Ireland, George Zucco, George Coulouris, John Emery, Gene Lockhart, J. Carrol Naish, Jeff Corey, Hurd Hatfield, Shepperd Strudwick. Production: Walter Wanger, producer; Maxwell Anderson and Andrew Solt, screenwriters (from Anderson’s play Joan of Lorraine); Joseph Valentine, cinematographer.

  Academy Award nominations: Ferrer, supporting actor; Bergman, actress; Richard Day, Edwin Casey Roberts, Joseph Kish, art direction (color); Joseph Valentine, William V. Skall, Winton Hoch, color cinematography (winners); Dorothy Jeakins, Barbara Karinska, costume design (color) (winners); Frank Sullivan, film editing; Hugo Friedhofer, music; Walter Wanger, special award “for distinguished service to the industry.”

  UNCREDITED WORK

  1938

  The Crowd Roars (MGM) Released August 5. Length: 92 minutes. Production dates: April 25–May 27. Richard Thorpe is credited director. Fleming did retakes in mid-July. Cast: Robert Taylor, Edward Arnold, Frank Morgan, Gene Reynolds, Maureen O’Sullivan, Lionel Stander, Jane Wyman, Nat Pendleton. Production: Sam Zimbalist, producer; Thorpe, director; Thomas Lennon, George Bruce, and George Oppenheimer, screenwriters (from a story by Bruce); John Seitz and Oliver Marsh, cinematographers. (Remade as Killer McCoy, directed by Roy Rowland.)

  Too Hot to Handle (MGM) Released September 16. Length: 105 minutes. Jack Conway is credited director. Eleven reels. Production began on May 9 and ended in August. The Hollywood Reporter stated on July 30, “Jack Conway collapsed on the set . . . stricken with flu, taken home, Victor Fleming assigned to direct.” Cast: Clark Gable, Myrna Loy, Walter Pidgeon, Walter Connolly, Leo Carrillo, Marjorie Main, Willie Fung. Production: Lawrence Weingarten, producer; Laurence Stallings and John Lee Mahin, screenwriters (from a story by Len Hammond); Harold Rosson, cinematographer.

  The Great Waltz (MGM) Released November 4. Julien Duvivier is credited director. Length: 102 minutes. Production began in early May. The Hollywood Reporter announced on September 19, “After seven weeks work on The Great Waltz, Victor Fleming and John Lee Mahin leave for Rogue River fishing.” After Fleming remade substantial portions of the film, Josef von Sternberg lent a hand on montages and the concluding scenes and finished up on September 21. Cast: Luise Rainer, Fernand Gravet, Miliza Korjus, Hugh Herbert, Lionel Atwill, Curt Bois, Leonid Kinskey, Herman Bing, Sig Rumann, Henry Hull. Production: Bernard H. Hyman, producer; Samuel Hoffenstein and Walter Reisch, screenwriters (from Gottfried Reinhardt’s story); Joseph Ruttenberg, cinematographer.

  Academy Award nominations: Korjus, supporting actress; Ruttenberg, cinematography (winner); Tom Held, film editing.

  1940

  Boom Town (MGM) Released August 30. Length: 118 minutes. Jack Conway is credited director. Production started in March; a Jimmie Fidler column dated May 21 reports on Fleming shooting retakes. Cast: Clark Gable, Spencer Tracy, Claudette Colbert, Hedy Lamarr, Frank Morgan, Lionel Atwill, Chill Wills. Production: Sam Zimbalist, producer; John Lee Mahin, screenwriter; Harold Rosson, cinematographer.

  FILMS NOT MADE, OR DIRECTED BY OTHERS

  1924

  In February, Fleming announced as director of The Mountebank, from the novel by William J. Locke. Released in September as The Side Show of Life, directed by Herbert Brenon.

  In April, Fleming announced as director of The Honor of His House, a remake of the 1918 film directed by William DeMille, with Sessue Hayakawa. Not made.

  In June, Fleming announced as director of Zane Grey’s Border Legion. Released in October, directed by William K. Howard. Also that month, Fleming announced as director of Tongues of Flame, from the novel by Peter Mac-Farlane, starring Thomas Meighan and Bessie Love. Released in December, directed by Joseph Henabery.

  In October, Fleming’s Paramount production of Bret Harte’s Outcasts of Poker Flat (first filmed by John Ford at Universal in 1919) is canceled when the actress Patterson Dial breaks her jaw in an accident.

  1925

  Fleming announced as director of White Heat, from a Saturday Evening Post story by R. G. Kirk, screenplay by Percy Heath, starring Thomas Meighan. Made at First National in 1926 as Men of Steel, directed by George Archainbaud and starring Milton Sills, who also got a screenplay credit.

  In December, Fleming takes himself off Behind the Front to replace James Cruze on The Blind Goddess. Edward Sutherland directs Behind the Front, released in 1926.

  1928

  In July, Fleming announced as director of Burlesque, the first all-talking picture for Paramount. Released as The Dance of Life in 1929, directed by John Cromwell and Edward Sutherland.

  1930

  In May, Fleming announced as director of Painted Lady at Fox, later made as Spencer Tracy film The Painted Woman in 1932, directed by John Blystone.

  In September, Fleming signs with Columbia to direct Arizona, starring Jack Holt. The studio cancels the film and later reactivates it with George Seitz directing.

  1934

  In June, Fleming announced as director of Indochina, to star Joan Crawford. Not made.

  1936

  On January 10, Sidney Franklin takes over direction of The Good Earth following complications from Fleming’s kidney stone surgery.

  1937

  In October, Fleming and Lighton announced as director and producer of Kim, based on the Rudyard Kipling novel. Finally made by MGM in 1950 and released in January 1951, directed by Victor Saville.

  1938

  In May, Fleming announced as director of Clark Gable/William Powell picture based on P. C. Wren’s novel The Spur of Pride. Not made.

  1939

  In December, MGM backs out of a planned film of John Steinbeck’s Red Pony, to star Spencer Tracy. Later made independently, directed by Lewis Milestone, and released in 1949.

  1940

  In May, Fleming announced as director of Clark Gable picture based on life of nineteenth-century outlaw Soapy Smith. Released October 1, 1941, as Honky Tonk, directed by Jack Conway, with the name of Gable’s character changed to Candy Johnson.

  1941

  On May 19, Fleming ends production of The Yearling in Ocala, Florida, after seventeen days in production. The picture, using Fleming’s second-unit footage and directed by Clarence Brown, is released in 1946.

  On August 30, Fleming and Howard
Hawks announce plans for a co-production of the Ernest Hemingway story “The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber,” to star Gary Cooper. Their version is not made. The Macomber Affair, directed by Zoltan Korda, is made in 1947, starring Gregory Peck.

  1942

  In early March, MacKinlay Kantor writes a treatment for Buffalo Bill, to star Clark Gable. The project is turned down by the MGM front office.

  In mid-March, Fleming is announced as director of Shadow of the Wing, a production canceled when Clark Gable joins the Army Air Forces.

  1948

  In July, RKO pulls out of plans to film The Robe, with a script by Maxwell Anderson and Andrew Solt, to star Gregory Peck. It eventually is made at 20th Century–Fox in 1953, with a screenplay by Albert Maltz and Philip Dunne, starring Richard Burton.

  WORK AS CINEMATOGRAPHER

  Apart from The Envoy Extraordinary, which he shot for the short-lived Santa Barbara Motion Picture Company in 1914, Fleming’s entire output as a director of photography was linked to the director Allan Dwan, the writing-directing team of John Emerson and Anita Loos, and the producer and star Douglas Fairbanks. Many silent-film credits have been lost even for films that have survived. But strong written and/or anecdotal evidence suggests that Fleming was behind the camera for the following films:

  WITH DWAN

  Betty of Greystone (Fine Arts–Triangle, 1916). Starring Dorothy Gish.

  WITH DWAN AND FAIRBANKS

  The Habit of Happiness (Fine Arts–Triangle, 1916). With Dorothy West.

  The Good Bad Man (Fine Arts–Triangle, 1916). With Bessie Love.

  The Half-Breed (Fine Arts–Triangle, 1916). With Alma Rubens and Jewel Carmen.

  Manhattan Madness (Fine Arts–Triangle, 1916). With Jewel Carmen.

  WITH EMERSON, LOOS, AND FAIRBANKS