The Star Machine

by Jeanine Basinger

  Part of Boyer’s longevity was due to the accident of timing that brought him to stardom during World War II, a time when any actor with an accent was in casting clover. (Elements such as luck—being in the right place at the right time—can never be forgotten in explaining stardom.) Boyer was foreign when Hollywood needed foreigners. Over the years, his English became clearer, but he wisely never let it get any better than it had to be. And he was humorous about it, saying, “I have only one accent, but I use it for Hungarian, Chinese, and Russian roles. American audiences are not particular about their accents, luckily for me. As long as my accent sounds foreign, that is enough. And somehow my accent always manages to sound foreign.” Boyer, already established and respected in Hollywood, found some of his best and most varied roles during the war: Back Street, with Margaret Sullavan, in 1941; The Constant Nymph, with Joan Fontaine, in 1943; Gaslight, 1944; Confidential Agent, 1945; and Cluny Brown (1946), among others.

  Boyer was smart. He knew he might get too old to be a romantic lover, but he’d always be French. He realized the stability possible because of his typecasting. In the late 1950s, he began to refuse roles that were sexy or that he considered too young for him. “I’m not against romantic roles,” he said, “if they are in my age group and if the love story is an adult one. But I’d be embarrassed to try, as some movie stars do, to look twenty years younger than I am. They fool no one—not even themselves. An actor should get away from romantic roles before they get away from him.” Thus, Boyer really was a great lover—one who knew when seduction wasn’t going to work. In fact, he often described himself as a character actor, and even claimed never to have played a seducer. “I don’t believe I have ever played a seducer or a great lover. I have played Napoleon. I have played professors and diplomats, artists and musicians. I once played a playboy who turns out to be all right, but a seducer, never!” This statement eliminates his Gaslight and Mayerling roles and negates his ability to make both his leading ladies and his female audiences fall completely in love with him. He denied his typecasting in the words of the true seducer, one to whom it comes naturally and who doesn’t think it’s a performance.

  Boyer returned to Europe to make films in his later years, embracing an international stardom, and also found success on the Broadway stage (Sartre’s Red Gloves, 1948; Don Juan in Hell, 1950; Kind Sir, 1953; The Marriage-Go-Round, 1958). Like Loretta Young, he was forward looking enough to embrace the small screen of television early on, when most actors were leery of it. He became part of the Four Star Television Group, formed in 1951, the other three stars being Dick Powell, David Niven, and Ida Lupino (not a full partner). He also recorded songs and speeches, acted as a narrator and guide for a news special on the Louvre, and collected rare books. (He was a lifelong avid reader.)

  Boyer’s personal life was also stable. The English actress he married in 1934, Pat Paterson, remained his wife until her death. His life’s greatest tragedy was the suicide of his only child, Michael, who shot himself with a .38 caliber rifle on September 23, 1965, when he was almost twenty-one years old. The Boyers were devastated by the death. Friends who knew them well said they never really recovered.

  Charles Boyer shortly before his suicide.

  Near the end of his life, Boyer told an interviewer, “I believe I have learned control. I stay within my own frame emotionally and psychologically.” He had a chance to prove it. When his beloved Pat died on August 24, 1977, he was at her bedside, holding her hand, just as he would have been had their love story been a Charles Boyer movie. He explained to all their friends that he would not be attending her funeral services, even though he had carefully made all the plans himself. While mourners were listening to her eulogy, Boyer sorted out his papers, straightened up their home, and put all their effects in order. The very next day, two days short of his seventy-ninth birthday, he committed suicide by taking an overdose of barbiturates. His obituaries all described him as a great French lover who was willing to die for his beloved offscreen as well as on.

  WILLIAM POWELL

  William Powell

  William Powell and Charles Boyer have a lot in common: big eyes, melodious voices, rather large noses, unflappable poise, and the ability to play comedy and tragedy equally well. Both provided decades of impeccable support for the beautiful leading ladies of Hollywood. Where Boyer is French and deeply romantic, Powell is American and very sassy, although Boyer could be cynical and Powell could be loving. Powell could spar with beautiful women in a charming way, seeming to be the perfect romantic foil without looking mean. He could toss off any line with an improvisational quality. He could wear expensively tailored clothes and look casual and relaxed. He could be a likable good guy, but he could also convey a touch of larceny, a slight sense of criminality, and get away without seeming a villain. Since he had a zippy soupçon of naughtiness beneath his surface, he became more famous for comedy than for drama, but despite his often hilarious shenanigans on film, Powell’s ultimate persona was that of a gentleman. Maybe a gentleman sleuth. Maybe a gentleman jewel thief. Maybe a gentleman cad. Maybe a gentleman’s gentleman. But a gentleman.

  However, William Powell is always the anti-gentleman gentleman. He’s the one who floats easily inside proper society while elegantly thumbing his nose at the concept, always just a little bit suspect in the society swim. In Another Thin Man (1939), a suspicious gate guard at a Long Island estate refuses Powell entrance, sneering that “He looks like a pool room dude.” And so he does, but he’s a pool room dude who can look good in silk pajamas, steer a woman through a crowded room, and stare anyone down. Powell’s the master of the nonchalant stroll—hands in pockets, eyes fixed on some goal known only to him, pretending to listen to whatever drivel is being spoken to him, and managing to make it seem as if it really mattered. The audience knows it doesn’t. He is super-casual, yet always on top of the action. If, as in a Thin Man movie, a flustered maid enters the posh dining room where he’s a guest at a sit-down dinner for eight, to say, “The swimming pool is on fire,” Powell doesn’t even raise an eyebrow. He just handles the situation. He’s the McCoy.

  Like Charles Boyer, William Powell had a long and stable movie career. Also like Boyer, he did not have to be “developed” by the star machine and yet he succeeded because he located his perfect “type.” The two actors came to movies with solid experience in theatre and silent films, and they were not kids when they became successful. Boyer made his first silent film when he was twenty-one, and was thirty-six when he fully “arrived” with Private Worlds in 1935. Powell was thirty when he debuted in movies in 1921, and he broke through to the very top by 1934 when he was forty-two. When the time came, both men knew they should give up romancing actresses young enough to be their daughters. Both slid gracefully over to playing character roles, with Powell retiring before anything embarrassing could happen to his career, just as any gentleman would.

  Throughout his career, Powell played with grace every role assigned him. Bad boy or good, comedy or drama, he danced through the action. He could play a perfect drunk, holding his balance just tight enough, just loose enough, to make it realistic. He could do slapstick worthy of Mack Sennett. He could look yearningly at a woman and seem to be truly in love with her, and he could deliver speeches about important issues and reveal depth of emotions for drama. As with Fred Astaire, nothing could ever diminish his elegance, but he was casual about it. Powell was one of the boys. He might be in a tuxedo or holding a martini glass, but he was just a guy. This is why he was perfect as Nick Charles, the “guy” detective who married money but kept his criminal pals close. They were his “boys” and he was one of them, just richer and better dressed.

  William Powell remained in the movie business for over three decades. His first movie was a bit part in Sherlock Holmes (1922), the Goldwyn version starring John Barrymore, and his last was in 1955 (Mister Roberts). In between he made approximately ninety-four films. In silent days, he was on his way to becoming typecast as a fairly commonp
lace villain when two things happened. First, Josef von Sternberg used him in The Last Command and The Dragnet in 1928, seeing something in him that lifted him out of the ordinary. Second, sound came in. And if there was one thing William Powell could do it was talk, and not only talk, but sass, woo, cajole, and cuddle with his voice. Although many have made the point that sound was the major influence on Powell’s stardom, David Thomson said it best: “It is a commentary on the artistic consequences of sound that, without altering his screen character, articulacy made Powell more appealing—the lofty, well-mannered cad.” In other words, what looked menacing without words became charming with smart dialogue added.

  In fact, it can be said that sound—not the star machine—made both Boyer and Powell stars. The sound of their voices, their cadences, their rhythms, their special dictions, took them out of potential villainry and over to heroism. For Boyer, keeping out of any one studio’s clutches helped, whereas for Powell, putting himself in those same clutches worked. Powell was lucky with studios. He began at Paramount, shifted to Warner Bros., and ended up at MGM—arriving at each at just the right moment in his career development. Each studio contributed to developing his type and making him famous.

  Powell signed with Paramount in 1926 having already established himself as an effective silent film villain in such movies as When Knighthood Was in Flower (1922), Bright Shawl (1923), and Romola (1924). The studio cast him in his first sound film, 1929’s Interference, Paramount’s official first “all-talking” movie. Because it was the studio’s foray into the new medium, the film was given particular scrutiny by critics, fans, and everyone in Hollywood. As its leading man, Powell came into focus, and he was good, playing a noble victim of circumstances. Learning that he’s going to die from an incurable heart disease, Powell murders the woman he once had an affair with to prevent her from blackmailing his ex-wife about their relationship. Everyone noticed him, and the Boston Herald nailed down why: “His cultivated and expressive voice, his smooth, polished manner and easy assumption of emotion masked under flippant cynicism, made him the outstanding person in the cast.” It’s a description of Powell’s strengths and performance style that could cover the rest of his career. The only thing that would change was that he would stop murdering people and start chasing murderers. And it happened in his very next film.

  Most people think that The Thin Man series, in which Powell starred as detective Nick Charles, defined Powell’s type. No, it merely confirmed it. The reality is that William Powell was Nick Charles on-screen before he was Nick Charles on-screen. In 1929, immediately following his success in Interference, William Powell was cast as the amateur detective Philo Vance, a beloved character from a series of best-selling novels by S. S. Van Dine. Vance epitomized the gentleman sleuth. He just wasn’t named Nick Charles. And he wasn’t married to anyone named Nora. Philo Vance was suave. He was superbly tailored. He traveled among the rich and frivolous. He romanced beautiful women, and he solved complicated crimes involving dogs, parrots, racetracks, and singing canaries who were really gangster’s molls. And he was witty, fast with a line. Powell was later cast as Nick Charles because he had been so well cast as Philo Vance.

  Powell’s first Vance movie was The Canary Murder Case. In reviewing it, Variety called him “the number-one name in the talker field” and Paramount knew it had a successful star who wouldn’t have to be remodeled in any way whatsoever. Between 1929 and mid-1931 Powell made twelve more movies for the studio, among them two more appearances as Philo Vance (The Greene Murder Case in 1929 and The Benson Murder Case in 1930). He also made the movie that many experts think solidified his stardom, Street of Chance (1930), in which he played a role based on real-life New York gambler Arnold Rothstein. Supported by Kay Francis and Jean Arthur, Powell made a star turn out of his “chance.” The movie was the brainchild of producer David O. Selznick, who personally cast both Powell and Francis in their roles, and who insisted that the movie have an authentic tragic ending in which Powell is killed by violating his own code of criminal conduct. The movie was a personal favorite of Selznick’s, who always called it the movie “that made William Powell a star.”

  Street of Chance was one of six Powell features released in 1930, after which he demanded a vacation and took off for Europe. Upon return, he made two final films for Paramount, both in 1931 and both of which starred him with his soon-to-be wife, Carole Lombard: Man of the World and Ladies’ Man.*

  Powell was happy at Paramount. However, his agent, Myron Selznick, brother of David, negotiated an amazing and lucrative new contract for him that changed Powell’s life. Putting together a package of Powell, Kay Francis, and Ruth Chatterton (three stars he represented), Selznick sold them to War- ner Bros., who desperately needed star personalities who could “talk” for their new roster of sound movies. In 1933, Powell moved to Warners for $6,000 per week plus story approval—an unusual perk that certified he was a top-drawer star. At Warners the emerging aspects of Powell’s character type were further defined and strengthened. He emerged as a true leading man, with a touch of the down-to-earth, a dash of the acerbic, and a full dollop of the romantic.

  His first Warners film, 1931’s The Road to Singapore (not to be confused with the Bob Hope–Bing Crosby Road movie of the same name, made in 1941), reveals who Powell had already become on film at Paramount. It’s actually a flimsy little film, but Powell’s presence is distinctive and definitely the “Philo Vance” William Powell. The movie opens up in the Gymkhana Club, with lots of British types pip-pipping and tallyhoing around. Mostly they’re gossiping with a great deal of smug satisfaction and “it’s about time”s about Powell’s as yet unseen character, who has just been thrown out of the club. Watching this scene, an audience understands several things: First, this is the traditional “star entrance” buildup before the lead actor is seen; second, these people are all wrong about him; and third, nevertheless we’re supposed to take their disapproval seriously. The actors’ stilted performances, some of which are satirical stereotypes, establish a “norm” of societal attitude that defines the universe of the movie. And it’s that world of snobbery, restriction, and prudery that William Powell will deflate. When we have our first glimpse of the leading man, he’s on an ocean liner, half-drunk but well turned out in a tuxedo, sitting at a bottle-laden table in the elegant ship’s salon. He’s a breath of fresh air (however gin-soaked), lifting the movie away from the stilted British stereotypes and stiff performances. He seems real, because he plays realistically in natural speech patterns and rhythms. He is loose, mocking and ironic in the midst of a world of false good manners, clipped speech, and narrow attitudes. William Powell is providing that essential star-making direct connection to the audience. He presents himself as an outsider to riches, even though he’s rich. He’s “outside” by choice, which viewers found reassuring. His cynical attitude toward the norm offers a criticism that the American audience could easily embrace. For anyone who might wonder how a man like Powell, with his elegant clothes, his mustache and martini, could ever become a popular movie star, The Road to Singapore lays it all out. His character seems to say to any viewer, “I am one of you. I inhabit this universe of wealth and snobbery to entertain you, but you and I both know it’s a load of clams.” Powell puts on the Ritz though we know he can live without it.

  Singapore’s Powell is not a comedy character, but there’s much that’s comic in his delivery. Playing a cad with women, he takes a frustrated wife onto the dance floor, executes a perfect tango worthy of Valentino, then sweeps her out onto the terrace and into a chair. She’s breathless, clearly feeling the effect of his sexual power. “Well,” he asks with a bored air, lighting up the inevitable cigarette, “am I living… down … to my reputation?” His best scene comes near the end when an angry husband (Louis Calhern) confronts him with a gun, threatening to shoot him for stealing his wife. Powell, standing in front of a mirror, has just dressed in his best tuxedo. Hearing the news that he’s about to die, he whips out a whisk br
oom and starts brushing his jacket. “Well,” he says, “do you mind if I finish? I have a horror of an undertaker dressing me. I’ve never known one yet who could tie a bow correctly.” Calhern is rendered speechless by this, and then suffers the final humiliation of seeing the man who cuckolded him sashay calmly out the door. As he breezes by, Powell tells the desperate husband a bunch of things that add up to “I’m taking your wife, you dope, and if you want to shoot me, go ahead. I’ve made up my mind.” Calhern slumps against the wall, still aiming his pistol, while Powell pauses in the doorway, waiting. Nothing happens, so he lights a cigarette and swans out, presumably on his way to the lady. This is William Powell’s Nick Charles type in full flower. All he needs is a highball and a dog on a leash.*

  The Kennel Murder Case was Powell’s final appearance as Philo Vance, and Variety’s review demonstrates how much he was associated with the role of private detective: “William Powell, whose experience as a screen criminologist is second to none … gives his customary clever, suave presentation of Vance.” The film, well directed and paced by Michael Curtiz, co-starred Powell with the beautiful young Mary Astor. Take away his character’s name, Philo Vance, and substitute Nick Charles—and replace Mary Astor with Myrna Loy—and you have a Thin Man movie, albeit not quite as lavishly appointed and not quite as loaded with sassy dialogue.

  In The Key (1934), also a serious movie and his last film at Warners, Powell is given a speech that perfectly defines a certain type of male character of the era: “I’m a professional hero, ready to fight for money, marbles, or my meals. In fact, for anything but an ideal.” This statement covers many of Hollywood’s most famous male characters, from Rick in Casablanca to Rhett in Gone with the Wind to Han Solo in Star Wars (1977). He can be redeemed by love, which will bring to the surface his inherent patriotism, decency, morality, charity, whatever. These men are willing to sacrifice themselves if necessary, letting a “better” man walk off with the girl, as Bogart does with Bergman, or walk off alone, as Gable does in Gone with the Wind. (Powell also does this in The Key.) This is the shape of the male sacrifice in movies, as compared to the female one to be found in women’s films. It is fundamentally the role of gentleman.