Tom Brown of Culver is a pedestrian effort. Wyler gives the film a light touch, emphasizing the camaraderie among Tom and his friends. The more serious subplot—in which Tom discovers that his father, a decorated war hero supposedly killed in action, is really alive—is handled melodramatically. The father ultimately admits that he was really a deserter and runs away again, but Tom finds him and prevents him from committing suicide. Tom then resolves to leave school and stay with his father. As he prepares to do so, however, the father joyously informs his son that he has been exonerated and his Medal of Honor reinstated. The film concludes with Tom proudly pinning the medal on his father and then returning to Culver to complete his studies.
Wyler left Universal briefly in January 1933 because of the studio's failure to make good on its agreement to let his brother Robert direct a film. Wyler was distraught over his desertion of the studio because he felt he owed an enormous debt to Carl Laemmle. Although Laemmle was no longer involved in the day-to-day operation of the studio—which had been taken over by his son—Wyler wrote a heartfelt letter to his old mentor, declaring, “Even though I will no longer be connected with Universal I do not regard my indebtedness to you as being at an end. I will never be able to repay you for your many kindnesses.”9
Despite his increased stature in the industry, Wyler was unable to find work. (He even tried to sell the script of Laughing Boy to Paramount when he heard that Universal was willing to unload it.) Frustrated and confused, he returned to Universal a month later, signing a one-picture, $8,000 deal to direct Her First Mate, the third in a series of four comedies starring ZaSu Pitts and her husband, Slim Summerville. Based on a Broadway play called Salt Water, it is a tired film that is not very funny and quite devoid of comic energy. Speaking to his biographer about this sorry project years later, Wyler made the best of it: “There were little pieces of business that were sort of advanced for their time. The wife claims she's pregnant, then her husband discovers she is not but still uses the stratagem.”10
Wyler, however, was just biding his time. Her First Mate marked the end of his apprentice period, and soon thereafter he signed a new contract with Universal for $1,125 a week. His next assignment was Pulitzer Prize–winning playwright Elmer Rice's Counsellor-at-Law. With that film, Wyler would declare himself one of Hollywood's major directors and initiate an extraordinarily rich and productive phase of his career.
Wyler's association with Rice is a fascinating example of the coming together of two artists whose careers have been perceived in similar ways, although today, Wyler is the more famous of the two. Both men were of German origin. Wyler was born in Mulhouse, France, but the town was under German control at the time, and his mother's family was German-Jewish. When he started to attain success in motion pictures, he changed his name from Willy to the more formal William, which he thought would look more imposing on the screen. Rice, ten years older than Wyler, was born in America to German-Jewish parents. Like a true American, he rejected his ancestral past and proclaimed that his identity began with his grandparents’ arrival in America. This New World sensibility also motivated his name change from Elmer Leopold Reisenstein: “I saw no reason for hanging on to a foreign-looking name with which I had no associations or emotional ties.”11
Both men started out in the business world. Wyler was sent to business school in Switzerland to prepare to take over his father's haberdashery, while Rice started as a claims clerk and later put himself through law school. He then rejected both business and the law to become a writer. Likewise, Wyler felt himself unsuited for business and his father's way of life and moved to America to work for his cousin Carl Laemmle in the movies. The most important similarity between the two, however, was their artistic versatility. Rice became an accomplished playwright who successfully utilized a variety of forms. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he seemed equally at home with such divergent styles as expressionism, naturalism, melodrama, and farce. Similarly, Wyler has confounded critics because of his determination to try everything. Not settling for any particular genre, he achieved equal success with intimate character studies, epics, musicals, social films, and melodramas.
Rice was a critic of the Broadway theater, and his concerns seem applicable to Wyler's work in Hollywood as well. Writing in the 1930s, he questioned whether American drama as represented on Broadway could claim to be serious art or whether economic exigencies rendered it merely commercial and thus subliterary. This conflict of art and commerce has been cited numerous times in the decades since, and it has often been used by critics to undercut Hollywood directors. That Rice raised this question is interesting in itself, since his own career is marked by startling inconsistency. Like his literary idols Ibsen and Shaw, Rice wanted to write socially significant drama, and some of his work is still performed and anthologized today, particularly The Adding Machine and Street Scene, but also the lesser-known The Subway and We the People. However, like other American playwrights, Rice also craved Broadway hits, turning out dross such as Cock Robin and The Grand Tour. The artist and critic who hectored the commercial theater was also addicted to it.
Rice's first play, On Trial (1914), was an enormous success. The playwright successfully exploited the rarely used flashback technique to tell the story of the rape of an innocent girl who is on trial for murder. The search for the real murderer moves the trial plot forward, while the story of her rape is told in flashback. The play was such a sensation that during the second intermission on opening night, George M. Cohan offered Rice $30,000 for the rights to the play, but Rice, suspecting a prank, turned him down. Although he eventually made $100,000 from On Trial, Rice dismissed his work as nothing more than “a gimmick.” And as a student of playwrights such as Shakespeare, Galsworthy, and Shaw, he wrote, “I could not understand all of this acclaim.”12
Street Scene (1929), which anticipates the structure of Counsellor-at-Law, is a useful guide to Rice's strengths and weaknesses as a playwright. Like the later play, it interweaves a number of plots and introduces a large cast of characters. Most of the incidents are short, building interest and anticipation; Rice shows himself to be adept at altering mood and tempo. He also introduces an array of ethnic types representing melting-pot New York, although by modern standards, most of these characters seem rather broad and stereotypical. It is interesting, since Rice was Jewish, that no character is as unattractive as the Jewish socialist Abraham Kaplan, who is described as “hook nosed with horn rimmed spectacles.” Kaplan's accent is exaggerated, as Rice seems to relish stretching out every syllable and word. Also, although Rice empathized with socialism, his was an idealistic rather than a practical position; he never joined the party and did not care for political squabbles. Nor does he shy away from revealing the anti-Semitism of the other characters. Kaplan is regularly referred to as a “kike” by others, and some of the neighbors are appalled by the relationship between Kaplan's son, Sam, and the Irishwoman Shirley Maurrant. Even Sam's sister tells Shirley that she disapproves of intermarriage. Street Scene is tinged with politics and social commentary, but every time Rice raises an important issue, he quickly diffuses the controversy by resorting to melodrama. The play itself revolves around a melodramatic plot involving Anna Maurrant's love affair, which is discovered by her husband, who then murders his wife and her lover. The issues of poverty, the failure of capitalism, anti-Semitism, and violence are all blurred by the mechanics of the plot and the cartoonish nature of some of the characters, few of whom experience any moments of introspection.
These same weaknesses would also plague Counsellor-at-Law, which opened two years after Street Scene and shared its interest in presenting a variety of ethnic characters. Unlike its predecessor, this play takes place indoors rather than outside a tenement building. Reflecting Rice's experience as a lawyer, Counsellor unfolds in the law offices of Simon and Tedesco, utilizing the firm's waiting room to showcase the variety of social and ethnic types who pass through the office. Rice also throws in references to the Depressio
n, including mention of a businessman jumping off a roof and of a communist agitator who is beaten by the police.
Unlike Street Scene—which, as the title implies, is about the interplay of characters in a New York City neighborhood—Counsellor-at-Law focuses on a bona fide protagonist: George Simon, a high-powered Jewish lawyer. The plot is fueled by his relationships with his high-society WASP wife, his Italian American partner, and the various clients, rich and poor, who come to see him. But as a social drama, the play remains superficial. Rice portrays Simon as a heroic figure who rises above his immigrant origins to become one of New York's most powerful lawyers. He overcharges the rich to get them out of their foolish scrapes but dispenses free legal advice to the poor, especially people from his old neighborhood. He is married to a socially prominent woman whom he blindly worships but who is condescending to him. Her children from her first marriage actively despise him and refuse to consider him their father. Through this relationship, Rice introduces anti-Semitism more obliquely than he did in Street Scene, implying here that Simon's wife and her children reject him because of his Jewishness. This implication becomes more explicit in the depiction of Simon's mother as a caricature of the doting Jewish mother who regularly visits her successful son at his office. The scene between Simon's wife and his mother is one of Rice's best as he highlights their social and ethnic differences and the wife's dismissive and barely tolerant attitude toward her mother-in-law.
Again, however, Rice fails to develop or examine his observations about these ethnic and social divides. Although Simon is depicted as savvy and sharp, he remains oddly obtuse when it comes to his wife. She refuses to support him when he is threatened with disbarment over an impropriety in an old case—discovered by a rival blue-blood lawyer who also resents his Jewishness. She elects instead to go on a cruise with a lover from her own social circle. The play concludes as Simon attempts to jump out the office window but is saved at the last minute by his devoted secretary who not-so-secretly loves him. Once again, a serious issue is undercut by a melodramatic conclusion.
Rice handles the issue of the communist sympathizer in the same way. Harry Becker, the son of a friend from the old neighborhood, has been beaten and then arrested for making speeches on the street. When Simon confronts him, Becker accuses the lawyer of being “a traitor to his class.” He goes on to say, “How did you get where you are?…By betraying your own class…. By climbing on the backs of the working class…. Getting in right with crooked bourgeois politicians and pimping for corporations.”13 Simon clearly feels there is some truth in Becker's remarks, but all he can do is threaten to hit him. Rice resolves the scene with an interruption, and the issue is not raised again, as Becker later dies of his injuries.
Counsellor-at-Law ultimately does not succeed as a social play because Rice's progressive instincts yield to those of the commercial showman. The spectacle of Simon's world, the potential scandal, the love story, and the excitement of the multiple stories that crowd the play take precedence over any serious consideration of the issues introduced in the plot. Once again, Rice proves to be a remarkable storyteller with a keen ability to juggle multiple plotlines and a talent for evoking character types with broad strokes. George Simon is a potentially compelling and dynamic character, but he, like the play itself, lacks the depth and complexity to generate significant drama. Dancing around the important questions raised, Rice's melodramatic approach so deeply implicates his protagonist in the corrupt, cynical world around him that the play ultimately glorifies that world, rendering it as an exciting, pulsating locale.
Counsellor was a Broadway success. It did so well, in fact, that a road company production opened in Chicago while the play was still running in New York; it also played in Los Angeles and San Francisco. Universal paid the rather exorbitant sum of $150,000 for the rights to that play and to Rice's The Left Bank. The deal included Rice's services as screenwriter.
The studio wanted Paul Muni, who had played Simon on Broadway, to reprise the role in the film, but he refused; Muni wanted to avoid being typecast as a Jew. Instead, he would make his film debut playing Tony Camonte in Scarface. Samuel Goldwyn, who would soon hire Wyler to direct for his company, famously remarked, “You can't have a Jew playing a Jew; it wouldn't work on screen.”14 Other actors considered for the part were Edward G. Robinson, Otto Kruger (who starred in the Chicago production), William Powell, and Warner Baxter. The name at the top of the studio's list was John Barrymore—seemingly an odd choice to play a Jewish lawyer from the ghetto—but the younger Laemmle wanted him, despite his hefty fee of $25,000 a week and his reputation for heavy drinking. Even Rice was “delighted to hear that Barrymore is in the cast.”15 Thirty years later, however, Rice confessed in his autobiography that he “had doubts about his rightness for the part; moreover, he was definitely on the decline.”16
Viewing the chance to direct an actor of Barrymore's stature as a great opportunity, Wyler did not object either. Barrymore was also pleased to be working with Wyler. When they met, the actor put his arm around the director, declaring, “You and I are going to get along fine, you know. Don't worry about all that temperamental stuff you've heard about the Barrymores. It all comes from my sister and she's full of shit.”17 Moreover, Barrymore assured Wyler that he was happy to work with him, explaining, “Because you're Jewish you'll be able to help me a great deal with the character.”18
Hoping to get an early start on the screenplay, Universal sent Wyler to Mexico City to meet with Rice, who was vacationing there with his family. Because the trip would take three days by train, Wyler flew from Juarez on the first Mexican airline; he was the only passenger. And when the plane was forced to land in Leon because of bad weather in Mexico City, he found himself stranded there for three days: “Well, there I was stuck in a crummy hotel full of cockroaches in this town where no one spoke English.”19 Roaming around the airport, and anxious to get to his destination, Wyler spotted a Mexican worker with bandaged eyes who needed to get to the capital for surgery. He persuaded the pilot that they had to leave immediately or the worker's blindness would be on his conscience. When he finally arrived in Mexico City, however, Rice informed him that he would not discuss business while on vacation, so Wyler spent a few days sightseeing by himself.
Because Rice wanted to fill out the cast with actors from the New York production, Wyler tested a number of them but ended up using only four in the film. For the part of Harry Becker, the communist agitator, he chose Vincent Sherman, who had played the role in the Chicago production and later became a noted film director himself (The Hard Way, Mr. Skeffington). Two other future directors, Bobby Gordon and Richard Quine, also had bit parts. But Wyler opted to cast Hollywood actors for the important supporting roles: Bebe Daniels as Simon's loyal secretary, and Doris Kenyon as his wife. He had some trouble casting Roy Darwin, Mrs. Simon's lover. The studio wanted Sidney Blackmer, but Wyler was “strongly opposed,” explaining in a memo to Laemmle: “casting a man without sex appeal or distinct personality of any kind in the part of Roy Darwin will prove greater harm than you may realize.”20 Wyler got his way, and Melvyn Douglas got the part.
The shooting schedule was set for twenty days. Having signed Barrymore for just two weeks at $25,000 a week, the studio instructed Wyler to shoot all the scenes with Barrymore as quickly as possible and not to stop for close-ups of anyone else—those bits could be done later. “It was mad,” Wyler later noted. “In every scene, I shot only Barrymore, skipping close-ups of anybody talking to him for later. It's a terrible way to make a picture.”21 As it turned out, even with this feverish method, the picture took three and a half weeks to complete, largely because of Barrymore's inability to remember his lines.
The actor complained that his part “was longer than the Old Testament,”22 and the lines had to be delivered at lightning speed. A studio log noted at least four substantial delays, some lasting half a day, because of “Mr. Barrymore not knowing his lines.”23 Vincent Sherman told Jan Herman (Wyler's bio
grapher) that his roommate John Qualen, who had a small part in the film, had been delayed for a dinner appointment because Wyler had to do fifty-six takes of a scene with Barrymore. These memory lapses got so bad that Barrymore's lines sometimes had to be printed on cue cards that were held up by a script girl riding on a dolly. Wyler noted, “Sometimes we had to write on the walls for him or on a piece of the ceiling.”24 Sherman also reported that Barrymore's face looked so puffy that the makeup department had to tape up his jowls with fish skins before he could go in front of the camera.25
Throughout this struggle with the aging actor, Wyler was getting memos from Laemmle telling him to keep up the pace, as well as constant threats that he would be fired if the film was not finished on time. Wyler responded by employing rough tactics on the set, particularly with the supporting players. Freda Rosenblatt, Wyler's assistant, reported, “Willy wore everyone down on the set…. The actors were ready to kill him.”26
Barrymore tried to impress Wyler with his Jewish gestures. While preparing for an early scene in which Simon is at his desk, talking on the phone, Barrymore asked Wyler if he had any suggestions. “No,” said Wyler. “Pick up the phone and talk.” Though Barrymore played the scene well, he added an odd gesture when he picked up the phone, which, he explained to Wyler, was meant to be Jewish. Wyler replied that Simon was a modern, successful man who would pick up the phone like everyone else. Barrymore was unhappy at this correction, and he had to be reined in on other occasions when Wyler thought he was being too ethnic.27
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