Recently, while researching the production histories of specific Golden Age movies, I came across several dusty books from the back of my bookshelves. Evidently, I did not think they would be of much use to me. Purchased second-hand, they are a bit worse for wear. The books contain internal memos by producers and other behind-the-scenes personnel at the major Hollywood studios during the Golden Age, including Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox, and Selzick’s International Pictures. What a treasure! The memos offer juicy tidbits about the daily operations of the Hollywood industry during that magic time known as the Golden Age. This week, I thought I would share a few memos from Warner Bros. between executive producer Hal Wallis and director Michael Curtiz, because I found them enlightening.
According to Rudy Behlmer, who compiled Inside Warner Bros. 1935 – 1951, there aren’t a lot of studio papers prior to 1935. But, there are certainly a lot of memos afterward, partly because Wallis liked to flood his staff with notes and suggestions and partly because of studio policy. Printed at the bottom of the Warner Bros. interoffice stationary was the reminder: “Verbal messages cause misunderstanding and delays (please put them in writing).”
PART OF THE BATHTUB SCENE IN ‘MANDALAY.’ I DON’T KNOW HOW MUCH OF THE ORIGINAL SCENE WAS LEFT IN THE FINAL CUT.
Wallis joined Warner Bros. in 1933, and the barrage of memos to Curtiz began shortly thereafter. Of all the memos compiled in Inside Warner Bros., I found Wallis’s notes to Curtiz to be the most disturbing—as though the producer did not realize the director’s talents and how to best use them. In the fall of 1933, Wallis became angry with director Michael Curtiz over Mandalay: “. . . when you show Kay Francis in the bathtub with [Ricardo] Cortez in the shot and a close-up of Kay Francis in the tub and showing her stepping out of the tub and going into Cortez’s arms, then you get to the point where I am going to have to tell you to stick to the script . . . For God’s sake Mike, you have been making pictures long enough to know that it is impossible to show a man and a woman who are not married in a scene of this kind.” However, Curtiz was not the only director singled out for going too far during the pre-Code era. In a note to William Wellman during Wild Boys of the Road, Wallis insists, “I am just looking at the stuff where the train passes over and cuts the kid’s legs off. There is no doubt about it, it is effective but if we ever left this in, there would be more premature births in the theatre and more people dying than were killed in the World War.”
CURTIZ DIRECTS FLYNN IN THE COURTROOM SCENE IN ‘CAPTAIN BLOOD.’ WALLIS WAS UNHAPPY WITH FLYNN’S “REPRESSED” PERFORMANCE AND MADE CURTIZ RE-SHOOT PART OF THE SCENE.
I have always been curious about Michael Curtiz. A director who mastered many genres, he was not considered an auteur by film scholars back in the day when the authorship theory was all the rage. I believe the first serious consideration of his work was in the 1990s when James C. Robertson published The Casablanca Man: The Cinema of Michael Curtiz. He may not have been as consistent in style and theme as the iconic directors of the era, but I always thought Curtiz to be a solid visual stylist, using lighting, set design, and costume to great effect. After reading some of the memos from Wallis to Curtiz, I can’t help but think that his talent may have been stifled at Warners. During the production of Captain Blood, Wallis continually griped at Curtiz about the shot selection. Curtiz seemed to be exploiting visual design (i.e. set design, lighting, costume, camera angle) to complement the narrative, which led him to depend more on long and medium-long shots, while Wallis seemed overly concerned with elevating new contract actor Errol Flynn to stardom. According to Wallis in his memos, Flynn was “too repressed” in the courtroom sequence. He wanted Curtiz to force Flynn to use more emotion in his speeches, “playing him up.” Wallis then explained that the scene between Blood and the governor was too beautifully composed. The producer complained that Blood’s big line should have been played in “a big head close-up” instead of “in a long shot, [just] so that you can get the composition of a candle-stick and a wine bottle on a table in the foreground, which I don’t give a damn about . . . all the composition shots and all the candles in the world aren’t going to make you a good picture.” Later, Wallis complained that Blood’s costumes were too “dressed up,” which was not only a lost opportunity to show off Flynn’s chest in an open shirt but also made the pirate look gay—though he was not that nice in his choice of words.
WARNER, CURTIZ, AND WALLIS
The following year, Curtiz asked to direct The Charge of the Light Brigade, but neither Jack Warner nor Wallis allowed him much creative control. Warner complained to Wallis, “I had a general conversation with Mike Curtiz in the usual Curtiz manner in the dining room at noon, and all he talked about were the sets . . . I didn’t hear him say anything about the story.” When production was under way, Wallis railed at Curtiz because he suspected that the director was “trying to cut in the camera.” This was a practice that major directors sometimes used to exert a measure of creative control over their films. They planned out their films with intricate shot lists or storyboards, making sure to shoot each shot with only one usable take. This way, the editor didn’t have many choices in the editing room, ensuring that the director’s approach to the scene dominated.
Curtiz had been a successful director in Austria after WWI. Though I don’t know a lot about the postwar Austrian film industry, I speculate that the expressionist techniques that dominated German cinema proved an influence on Austria as well. Curtiz certainly made some films in Berlin because he was there directing a movie when he signed his first Hollywood contract. Like other European directors influenced by Expressionism, Curtiz understood the power of visual design to enhance the narrative, an approach that apparently didn’t please Wallis or Warner. On Angels with Dirty Faces, Curtiz tried to employ the moving camera, which was a German technique to explore and depict the setting of a story, especially when that setting was integral to the plot. For Angels, the environment of New York’s poverty-stricken Lower East Side was the root cause of the crime and the gangsters that were the essence of the story—a perfect opportunity to use the probing camera that the Germans loved. But, Wallis didn’t get it, writing to Curtiz, “If you stop all that superfluous roaming camera, Mike, you will make a great picture. . . .” In the same memo, he ungraciously tells Curtiz that he had cut 2000 feet from the director’s previous film, Four Daughters, including “the reflection shot of Jeffrey Lynn at the piano” as well as other shots that “you worked so hard and wasted your time on.” Then came the final insult: “Do you call this good business and intelligence properly displayed?”
ARTHUR EDESON AND CURTIZ DID A TERRIFIC JOB WITH THE LIGHTING, DESPITE WALLIS’ IMPATIENCE.
THIS IS THE SCENE IT TOOK 90 MINUTES TO LIGHT.
I know what you are thinking: What happened between Wallis and Curtiz during Casablanca, the director’s most famous film? I was surprised to discover that there were very few memos to Curtiz from Wallis during the production of Casablanca. By that time, Wallis had renegotiated his contract, which reduced his output to four films per year, so his interaction with the director had been greatly diminished. Perhaps this made him less hostile toward Curtiz. Wallis seemed mostly concerned with controlling the schedule and the budget, though from his perspective, visual elements could be easily sacrificed to stay on time and on budget. He sent a memo to cinematographer Arthur Edeson, complaining that the 90 minutes it took to light the set in the Montmartre Café (the Paris flashback) was “unreasonable,” though that set was large in long shots. He tried to blame “wartime emergencies and the necessity of conserving money and materials” for his concerns, but his tone was consistent with his attitude since 1933. He also told Curtiz that Ilsa, the Ingrid Bergman character, did not need all of the costumes designed for her, particularly evening clothes, because she and her husband are on the run from the Gestapo and “not going to Rick’s Café for social purposes.” Wallis had a point here, but I doubt if his motives for using fewer costumes were entirely to serve the character.
The memos are rich in behind-the-scenes details that are fascinating for those who have seen the films, but there are too many gems for one blog post. Next week, I will include some pithy comments from studio head Jack Warner about the actors under contract to Warner Bros.