Joshua Logan, just a few years out of Princeton, learned the hard way that directing tests for Sam Goldwyn was a cul-de-sac, not a road to bigger things. In 1936, he found himself confined to the lot and called a “genius” so long as his tests made the actors look better than Goldwyn had anticipated. The first day he saw a test of Logan’s that was less than what he had expected, he fired him. Not only did Goldwyn never hire the future director of South Pacific, Picnic, Bus Stop, and Sayonara, but he denied for the rest of his life ever having worked with him.
Logan had at least escaped the mood swings that plagued those under contract to Goldwyn. Nobody was subjected to more of Goldwyn’s emotional tyranny than Willy Wyler, who fought vigorously with him in an attempt to define the limits in their deepening father-son relationship. In gratitude for Wyler’s having well served Dodsworth and saved Come and Get It, Goldwyn allowed Wyler his vacation as contracted and rewarded him unexpectedly with a few extra weeks—all at full pay. It was not until he was about to return from vacation that Wyler discovered the catch.
Ever since It Happened One Night captured Best Picture, Actor, Actress, Director, and Writing Oscars in 1934—thereby removing the “Poverty Row” label from Columbia Pictures—“screwball comedies” had become Hollywood’s hottest novelty item. Usually goodhearted looks at the Depression, as seen through the lives of the irresponsible rich, they were irreverent battles of the sexes, marked by wisecracking dialogue usually paced at breakneck speed, farce falling just this side of slapstick.
Goldwyn had his contribution to the genre in the works for two years. An original Ben Hecht story was worked over by almost a dozen writers, including Dorothy Parker and Alan Campbell. The plot ended up with all the traditional “screwball” elements, though in this film the usual character traits were assigned unexpectedly. Woman Chases Man is the story of a ne‘er-do-well father whose overly practical son watches over the family fortune. The old man’s latest harebrained scheme is a suburban development project for which he needs $100,000; his son refuses to give it to him. A fast-talking woman architect must break down the stuffy son, which she does with a lot of champagne. Goldwyn wanted Willy Wyler to direct the picture.
“The script,” remembered Wyler, “was just plain stupid.” Reaping praise at last as a serious director, he refused the assignment. Goldwyn contacted him by telephone in New York and appealed to Wyler as the friendly patron who had given him his first important pictures to direct. When that failed, Goldwyn called him an ingrate. Finally, he told Wyler that These Three and Dodsworth had not done such good business and that he was, in fact, untalented. Goldwyn carried on for the better part of an hour, as Wyler remembered it, “in the worst language I had ever heard. He said he was through with me and that I’d be finished in Hollywood.” Wyler sent him a wire that afternoon:... AM STILL TRYING TO FIND SOMETHING PLEASANT ABOUT OUR CONVERSATION OF THIS MORNING STOP I HAD HOPED THAT AFTER MY FIRST YEAR WITH YOU WE COULD BOTH ENJOY A MUTUALLY HAPPY AND SUCCESSFUL ASSOCIATION BUT JUDGING FROM YOUR MANY COMPLAINTS TO ME ABOUT ME ITS EVIDENT THAT THIS IS NOT THE CASE STOP WELL FRANKLY I AM NOT VERY HAPPY EITHER SO WITH BOTH OF US UNHAPPY WITH EACH OTHER WHY NOT TERMINATE OUR AGREEMENT TO OUR MUTUAL BENEFIT STOP I SHALL ALWAYS BE GRATEFUL FOR THE OPPORTUNITIES YOU HAVE GIVEN ME BUT CANNOT FEEL THAT I HAVE FAILED YOU COMPLETELY STOP I WILL OF COURSE REFUND YOU ALL SALARIES RECEIVED DURING MY VACATION.
Goldwyn replied to Wyler as though there had been a misunderstanding. He wanted Wyler to stay under contract and direct Dead End. Until that script was ready, however, Wyler was suspended, and his contract time was extended. Goldwyn took back the five-thousand-dollar vacation bonus.
Woman Chases Man neatly followed the schema for “screwball comedy”—showing the Depression audience that the rich had troubles too, that they were just as starved for fun as the rest of the world. But these film farces also counted on the spark of improvisation, taking advantage of happy accidents on the set. Sam Goldwyn insisted on strict control, down to the pristine sound track. He even ordered one scene reshot because he thought the rustle of leaves in a tree was too distracting. Such precision, combined with his insistence that the director (a journeyman named John Blystone) and actors (Joel McCrea and Miriam Hopkins) adhere to the script, stifled the atmosphere necessary for the spontaneous combustion of comedy. Woman Chases Man was a complete dud with audiences and critics alike.
Miriam Hopkins had kicked and screamed over the last three years, but she had accepted all the parts and loanouts Goldwyn handed her. Contrary to his original intentions, he ended up starring her in only four pictures before her contract expired. She moved to Warner Brothers and never worked for Goldwyn again. The contract of her co-star in all her Goldwyn films was running out as well, and the producer still had not made the most of his talent either.
Goldwyn’s next role for Joel McCrea might have been a breakthrough. In Sidney Kingsley’s play Dead End, the hero had been a sensitive and moody cripple named Gimpty. An out-of-work architect, he had dreamed of rebuilding the slums and getting out of his rat’s nest of a neighborhood. So did Drina, a hardworking girl who walked the picket line for higher wages so she could escape. She stayed around because of Gimpty, whose head was being turned by a gangster’s mistress kept in the deluxe apartment at the end of the street. Baby Face Martin—Gimpty’s childhood buddy, now a gangster—set the play’s action in motion when he returned to his old neighborhood to visit his mother and former girlfriend, Francey, now a streetwalker.
Goldwyn wanted Sidney Howard to transfer the play to the screen; but Howard had just agreed to adapt a book for David Selznick, Gone With the Wind. Goldwyn’s second choice was Lillian Hellman. At his insistence, Gimpty became another homogenized role for Joel McCrea—broadshouldered Dave Connell, who instead of ratting on his old pal Baby Face, would take on the hoodlum himself. She was told to shift the focus of the film to Drina, thus creating a starring role for an actress. The gangster’s mistress would become little more than a well-heeled woman living in the neighborhood, as Goldwyn insisted on veiling the references to her kept status. Francey would not have a social disease, only a ravaged look to show the toll of living on the streets. “Goldwyn said he wanted me to ‘clean up the play,”’ remembered Miss Hellman of her assignment. “What he meant was ‘to cut off its balls.”’
Goldwyn considered nobody for the part of Drina but Sylvia Sidney, then under contract to Walter Wanger. For $75,000, she played the same optimistic city-dweller she had played in Street Scene and almost all her films since. “I was the highest paid laundress in the world,” she said, summing up her career to that point. “In every picture I’d be ironing and my line would be, ‘What would poppa say?’” Her only reluctance to Dead End was in working with William Wyler, who she had heard was “very sadistic with women.”
Shooting was scheduled to begin in late February 1937 but got postponed a season when Miss Sidney slipped one afternoon at Elizabeth Arden’s and fell against a table. Her face bloody and her nose bruised, she was rushed to Cedars of Lebanon Hospital, where she was sutured, bandaged, and given an eye patch. Without giving it a second thought, she reported to rehearsal later that day. “That’s a movie star?” Wyler shouted when she walked onto the stage, without even inquiring what had happened. Word of Miss Sidney’s accident reached Goldwyn’s office, and he flew down to the set. “She’s gotta go home,” he said, fearful of what gossip columnists might write about this disfiguring of a glamour girl. He accompanied her back to her house and sat on her bed as she explained she would be out of commission for close to two months. She asked if they should sue Elizabeth Arden, and Goldwyn said, “No. That would just call attention. And for what?” Goldwyn kept her on salary during the layoff. By May, they were ready to roll film.
Wyler kept Miss Sidney on the verge of tears through the entire production. “He needled me and needled me,” she remembered, “and he knew I had a concussion and my nose hurt. But that didn’t stop him.” His constant refrain to Sylvia Sidney was
that he could get an actress for $150 who could do a better job; then he would ask her to try again. “He’d do thirty or forty takes of the same scene,” she recounted. “How Goldwyn kept his temper with me, I’ll never know. I’d say, ‘I hate this goddamned picture,’ and he’d come over to me and say, ‘Don’t cry. Villy is difficult. But he turns out good movies.”’ Dead End alienated her enough to make her consider giving up motion pictures. But her performance was lauded as one of her best in a decade of distinguished appearances.
For the role of Baby Face Martin, Goldwyn wanted to borrow Hollywood’s most popular gangster, James Cagney. But Cagney had also become Warner Brothers’ private enemy number one, the first of their contract players to challenge the studio’s ruthless long-term contracts. He took them to court on a technicality and won his case. While the studio appealed the decision, Goldwyn’s counselors said there was no legal reason to avoid dealing with the actor; but they added, “it would be ill-advised for you to involve yourself in the Warner-Cagney fight for the sake of Cagney’s services in one picture.”
So Goldwyn tried George Raft, only to discover the actor found the role too nasty. In the screenplay the neighborhood gang of kids come to recognize Baby Face as a killer and start idolizing him. “I told Mr. Goldwyn how I would like to play the part,” Raft later recalled. “I want a scene where I tell the kids how bad my life is, ‘Just look at me crawling around like a rat, hiding. You don’t want to hide all your life. Make something of yourself. Don’t grow up like me.”’ In another scene, Baby Face encounters his mother, who slaps his face and calls him a “yellow dog.” “The way they had it,” Raft said, “I was just supposed to walk away mad. I wanted to play it with a tear in my eye, so the audience would know that my mother is right and that I felt bad about my life as a criminal.” Both Goldwyn and Wyler tried to pressure him into the part, but Raft turned it down.
Fortunately, there was a new mug among Hollywood’s most wanted actors. After several lean years in movies, Humphrey Bogart had returned to the stage, where he created the role of gangster Duke Mantee in The Petrified Forest. His reprise of the role on film guaranteed him several more years as one of Hollywood’s leading heavies. With Marjorie Main (in one of her first film roles) as his mother and Claire Trevor as Francey, Bogart took the part in Dead End. In but a few scenes, he etched one of his most indelible characterizations.
Most of the film’s other featured players came from the original Broadway production. Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Gabriel Dell, Bernard Punsley, Bobby Jordan, and Billy Halop became known as the Dead End Kids. After the picture was released, Warner Brothers rounded them up along with the rest of the big-time gangsters on their lot and produced a series of films around the teenage delinquents.
Part of Dead End’s problem lay in the set. Richard Day designed one of the most ingenious creations of his career—a realistic set that jammed slums right up against a luxury apartment, wooden docks, and an inlet of the East River into which the Dead End Kids could dive. It offered many different levels and angles with which Wyler and Toland could create visual interest. Except for three days of interior sequences, the entire picture was shot on the set. It cost one tenth of the film’s $900,000 budget, but Goldwyn did not find it all good value for his money.
“This set is filthy!” he shouted just before the first day’s shooting. Then he started picking up paper and garbage that had been carefully strewn about. “But, Mr. Goldwyn,” protested Willy Wyler, “this is supposed to be a slum. It’s part of what we’re saying in this picture—that right next to a new modern apartment are all those old crummy buildings with dirt and garbage.“ Wyler recalled, ”Goldwyn didn’t like dirt. Everything in his pictures had to be clean. Like him. He’d sit in his office and you’d never see this man in shirt sleeves or his tie undone or anything like that. He was absolutely immaculate. And he said, ‘There won’t be any dirty slums—not in my picture!’“ He took the debris he had collected and walked out. Wyler and Richard Day and propman Irving Sindler ”dressed“ the set with fresh garbage, but every morning Goldwyn would come onto the set and clean it away.
The Squaw Man, 1914, Dustin Farnum, Red Wing, and Billy Elmer.
: The Winning of Barbara Worth, 1926, Vilma Banky and Ronald Colman.
Whoopee!. 1930, Eddie Cantor.
These Three, 1935, Alma Kruger, Merle Oberon, Bonita Granville, Miriam Hopkins, and Joel McCrea.
Dodsworth, 1936, Walter Huston.
: Dead End, 1937, Leo Gorcey, Huntz Hall, Bobby Jordan, and Gabriel Dell.
Stella Dallas, 1937, Barbara Stanwyck.
Wuthering Heights, 1939, Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon.
The Little Foxes. 1941, Herbert Marshall, Teresa Wright, and Bette Davis.
: Ball of Fire, 1941, Henry Travers, Aubrey Mather, Oscar Homolka, Leonid Kinskey, S. Z. Sakall, Tully Marshall, Richard Haydn, Gary Cooper, and Barbara Stanwyck.
The Pride of the Yankees, 1942, Gary Cooper.
: Up in Arms, 1944, Danny Kaye.
The Best Years of Our Lives, 1946, Hoagy Ganmchael, Harold Russell, Fredric March, and Dana Andrews (in background, on the telephone).
The Bishop’s Wife, 1947, Cary Grant, David Niven, and Loretta Young.
Hans Christian Andersen, 1952, Danny Kaye.
Guys and Dolls, 1955, Frank Sinatra, Vivian Blaine, Jean Simmons, Marlon Brando, and Stubby Kaye.
Goldwyn’s insistence on an equally pristine sound track, with almost no city noises, gave the picture a certain deadness. But Goldwyn seemed to know what the public would buy. His slum may have lacked the tawdry authenticity of Warner Brothers’ sets or even the forced colorful gaiety of the Fox and MGM decors, but his pictures had a distinctive look about them—a feel that was always tasteful, even in an East Side slum. Dead End made money, and the critics were practically unanimous in their praise.
And it was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture of 1937. For weeks many were touting Dead End as that year’s film to beat. By Oscar night, Frances Goldwyn observed, her husband was “counting on it.” He lost to Warners’ Life of Emile Zola and was noticeably disappointed. Frances said she was too, but later she confessed, “I lied. For I really didn’t give a darn.” Her husband had two pictures nominated in other categories that year that were far more commercial.
The penultimate Oscar presented that evening—just before the new Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award to the year’s best producer went to Darryl Zanuck—was for Best Actress. Garbo (for Camille) was the inside favorite, but one of Goldwyn’s leading ladies was offering the best odds that night at the Biltmore Hotel. Ironically, the actress’s pride and the producer’s prejudice had almost kept her from getting that plum role of Stella Dallas. Barbara Stanwyck, a former nightclub dancer who had starred in a score of films since 1929, had been director King Vidor’s first choice from the start; but Goldwyn refused to hear of it. He considered such lesser stars as Ruth Chatterton and Gladys George and tested many women with even less drawing power. Goldwyn had finally given in to considering Stanwyck, but only if she would test for the part.
The actress refused. “There was no reason why she should’ve had to test,” said her friend and former co-star Joel McCrea. “She’d made pictures for William Wellman, George Stevens, and John Ford. He could see what she could do.” Zeppo Marx, who had left his brothers’ act after Duck Soup because he got “sick and tired of being the stooge,” became a talent agent, representing, among others, Stanwyck. He pleaded with McCrea to get her to test. McCrea in turn said to Stanwyck, “Listen, Barbara, you’ll win an award for this picture. I’ll underwrite the test myself.” She at last submitted, only to have Sam Goldwyn tell her, as she recalled, “that he didn’t think I was capable of doing it,” that she was “too young for the part,” and that she “didn’t have any experience with children.” King Vidor put in an entire day filming the birthday scene, in which Stella and her daughter Laurel wait in vain for the girl’s friends to appear, not knowing word has b
een put out to boycott the party. Vidor remembered, “Stanwyck’s test was undeniable. She put everyone else to shame.” Still Goldwyn resisted.
McCrea went to the top man himself, selflessly pressing Stanwyck’s cause. At last Goldwyn—whose taste in women had still kept him from discovering an important female star—blurted out his hesitation: “She’s just got no sex appeal.” McCrea exploded into laughter. “Well, you better not let Bob Taylor know that.” Taylor was Hollywood’s hottest new leading man, having just played in Camille. “He’s nuts about her, and he thinks she has sex appeal.”
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