Joseph Pevney

Here is a recent piece on the late actor/director Joseph Pevney that was published in the current edition of  the Noir City Sentinel, the house newsletter of the Film Noir Foundation. I recently transcribed about four hours worth of conversation with Joe when I visited him and his wife Margo at their Palm Desert home last year. I've always believed that Joe's films have been overlooked and underrated; he was one of the last of the true studio system directors while at Universal during the 1950's and has a fine body of work. His tremendous contributions on television from Johnny Staccato, to the original Star Trek to Trapper John M.D. were seminal.  I found Joe to be a sweet, tough and funny man who I wish I got to know sooner.

BTW- I encourage everyone to join the Film Noir Foundation www.filmnoirfoundation.org . In addition to supporting the mission of film preservation, you will receive a cyber copy of the Noir City Sentinel every other month. It's a sweetheart deal straight from the Dark City!  Cheers, Alan

JOSEPH PEVNEY

Last Man Standing

(1911–2008)

By Alan K. Rode

Sentinel Senior Editor

When Joseph Pevney died on May 18 at 96

years of age, it rang the curtain down on a

life well lived. His distinguished career

spanned three-quarters of the last century.

Pevney’s screen acting credits were pure

noir, and his directorial résumé included

such gems as Shakedown (1950) 

Undercover Girl (1950), Six Bridges to Cross

(1955) and,The Midnight Story (1957).

I became acquainted with Pevney last

year when I interviewed him by phone for

my book on Charles McGraw. I was rewarded

with vivid recollections dating back to

1937 when the two young actors appeared in

a play together—“Charlie got into a fistfight

with another actor in the company and got

his clock cleaned . . .”—to tales about the

challenges of directing the rough-hewn

tough guy in a couple of Universal features

in the 1950s.

“I have very little memory left, let’s

face it,” said Pevney, when we met again at

his Palm Desert home the following year.

I took his disclaimer with a grain of

salt. Sure enough, when I brought up his

his screen debut in Nocturne (1947) and flashed

a still of him pulling a gun on

George Raft, he grinned and

remembered: “Raft was a nice guy, a very

nice guy. He couldn’t act, though, and he

knew it. He hated to memorize dialogue, so

he actually gave up lines to me and others in

the cast. He would tell the director, ‘Have

Joe say this instead.’”

After starting out in 1924 as a vaudeville

boy soprano in his native New York,

Pevney went onto Broadway to act in Home of the Brave

Battle Hymn, The World We Make and

Native Son. He disliked the

vaudeville circuit but loved working

onstage. He remembered the lean days that

nearly made him quit the production of

Native Son despite having Orson Welles as

the director. “After the first or second

rehearsal, I walked out. Orson grabbed me in

the hallway and said, ‘Where are you

going?’ I told him, ‘I can’t live on this $40 a

week that you pay your actors, I’m sorry.’

Welles asked, ‘How much do you want?’ I

told him that I was going to need $100 a

week. So I ended up getting $100 a week. I

played Canada Lee’s trainer, I had a bandage

on my head, it was a good show.”

During his stage period, Pevney

began a fruitful working relationship with

John Garfield that culminated in 1947 with

Body and Soul, His reoollections of the film,

in which he played John Garfield’s sidekick,

Shorty Polaski, included one of the classic

laments of the film actor: “I had a really a

good sequence in Body and Soul, a long

speech, that got cut out of the picture.”

Pevney appreciated Garfield’s talent

but wasn’t in awe of his mental prowess.

“He wasn’t that intelligent, you know. He

wanted to boast about how important he had

become and wanted me to appreciate his

development as a person, a human being. He

had just married, and he invited me to dinner

at his new apartment. He was trying to

impress me. I tried to act impressed.”

Pevney couldn’t recall a lot of details

about his truncated screen-acting career,

probably because he logged too many

decades working (and thinking) as a director.

His acting credits are confined entirely

to noir: Nocturne (1946)  the aforementioned 

Body and Soul (1947), Street with No Name (1948)

Thieves Highway (1949) featuring a compelling

sequence where Pevney zips his

jacket while standing before a burning truck

containing the actor Millard Mitchell),Outside the Wall (1950)

and a cameo appearance in Shakedown (1950).

Shakedown was also his directorial

debut. “The opening sequence had Howard

Duff running down a long sloping street. We

shot it and I said, ‘I’m not crazy about that.

Can we do it once more?’And [the assistant]

Joe Kenney took me aside and said, ‘You

don’t need to do that. Just cut in anytime you

want.’ And I thought, ‘My God, I am directing

motion pictures! You can cut, and cut and cut!’

I learned my principal lesson as a director

from that very first moment.”

Matters became stickier when he met

Brian Donlevy, Duff’s costar in the picture.

“He was terribly short. He wore lifts in his

shoes. Rock Hudson was the nightclub doorman,

and he was six foot four, and Donlevy

was about five foot two! It was a horrible situation.

I had to show Rock how to open the

door and how to stand so the height disparity

wasn’t so obvious. Donlevy was a good

actor, very professional, but you wouldn’t

believe how short he was.”

Pevney had been warned about another

of the film’s actors, the infamous

Hollywood Bad Boy Lawrence Tierney-but

had no problems with him. “Tierney was

very moody and the things they said about

him were probably true. I didn’t know. I didn’t

care. As far as I was concerned, he was a

likeable guy. He didn’t have that many lines,

but he was fine in the picture, easy to work

with.”

Shakedown elevated Pevney into a permanent

position as a contract director at Universal

International for the next eight years until the

studio, bought out by Music Corporation of

America (MCA), terminated most of the contracts

it had with long-term talent. Pevney

was one of the last of the studio-system

directors. He directed 25 features for

Universal in all different genres and worked

with nearly every major star in Hollywood.

The high point of his career came in 1957,

when he had three pictures in theaters simultaneously:

Man of A Thousand Faces, a

tremendously popular biopic starring James

Cagney as Lon Chaney, Tammy and the Bachelor

a lighthearted comedy with Debbie Reynolds and

The Midnight Story a crime-noir

filmed on location in San Francisco with

Tony Curtis and Gilbert Roland.

Reminiscing about his Universal

years, he extolled the virtues of his stars,

including Joan Crawford (“I loved her; she

was the consummate professional.”) and Jeff

Chandler ("Sweet, simple, wonderful, no problems)

problems. We did eight pictures together. I

enjoyed him as an actor and close friend.”).

He particularly remembered Charles

Laughton from The Strange Door (1951)

Laughton took overacting to unparalleled

heights and Pevney let him run wild.

“At that time, Charles Laughton was preparing a four person show,

 (Don Juan in Hell) that he was going to take on the road.

So he only wanted to have fun with our picture,

and did he ever! Universal thought they

PEVNEY (from previous page)

were making a horror movie. Not Laughton.

For him it was camp! He also insisted on

doing his own stunt work at the end where he

dies in the moat with the waterwheel. He got

right in the water and loved it. Laughton just

loved being a ham actor.”

Although Pevney enjoyed directing

features, working for a major studio was not

without its frustrations. “They would answer

my request to cast Jeff Chandler with Tony

Curtis in Six Bridges to Cross (1955) or alongside

Rock Hudson in Twilight of the Gods (1958) with a great big WHY?

‘We can get two pictures

out of them—one from Tony and one

from Jeff—you don’t need to put them

together.’ I told the studio, ‘But if you put

two of the studio’s biggest stars together

you’ll make twice as much money!’ They

would never believe me and never go along

with me.”

Pevney began directing television in

1959 as the studio system was falling apart

and discovered that he was temperamentally

suited to the small screen’s tight schedules.

He helmed more than 150 TV episodes

before retiring in 1985; his résumé is a veritable

history of the medium’s first quartercentury.

He recalled the early episodes of

Mission Impossible with Steven Hill :"Talk about

about mission impossible! Steven Hill was

an observant Jew and had to quit at 5 p.m. on

Friday and I had to finish the show!” There

were also eleven episodes of The Munsters:

“Fred Gwynne had good makeup and heels

to build him up to seven feet. He was as gay

as a $3 bill, but who cared! He had a ball

doing that show.”

Pevney did a lot of shows for producer

Jack Webb, including 11 episodes of

Adam 12 and seven episodes of Emergency! "Webb

was a horror! He had a rule that a director

couldn’t direct one of his shows and something

else simultaneously. I did, and never

directed any more of his shows. There was

something very strange about him.”

Pevney's work in the original Star Trek series from 1967

to 1969 remains his principal legacy. He directed a total of 14

episodes, many of which are now revered for

their originality and humor.

“I had a great cast. I really liked

Leonard Nimoy. I wasn’t crazy about

William Shatner. I was the one who found

Walter Koenig, who played Chekov. The kid

had a terrible Russian accent, but he was a

hit; audiences loved him. The shows I liked

most were the ones that [writer] Gene

Roddenberry said were too funny, like ‘The

Trouble with Tribbles.’ I told him that in the

future, people will still behave normally and

be funny. I loved ‘The Trouble with

Tribbles.’ It was my favorite.”

E

Best of the Worst

The classic era of film noir boasts a unparalleled hit parade of felonious backstabbers, ice cold torpedoes and all-around sociopathic S.O.B’s.  It was as if the casting call for heavies in film noir focused on the hardest of hard cases, the yeggs that were just totally out of line.  Even though these misanthropes had nothing coming, clearly a list of the best of the worst film noir heavies is overdue:

1. William Talman as “Dave Purvis” in Armored Car Robbery (1950)

Eight years before becoming television’s most inept District Attorney as Hamilton Burger in Perry Mason, William Talman cast an ominous presence in noir. He was odiously memorable in Armored Car Robbery, one of the best “B” movies ever made, going toe-to-toe with relentless copper Charlie McGraw before losing his cash (and head) somewhere on the Van Nuys Airport tarmac. Sinister looking, with curly-cue hair and flashbulb eyes, Talman took pleasure in double-crossing his heist partners, including murdering his girl friend’s husband (Douglas Fowley) who was inconveniently bleeding to death after being plugged by McGraw during the getaway. A man who disdains “loose ends”, Purvis becomes irked by the nuisance of emergent medical care. “All he gets is first aid!” snarls Talman, decidedly not a team player.

2. Robert Ryan as “Nick Scanlon” in The Racket (1951)

No other actor seethed with more super-heated rage than Robert Ryan.  While it is not unreasonable to believe that some of the anger might be genuine because Howard Hughes compelled both Ryan and Robert Mitchum to co-star in this mediocre remake; this would be a bum rap. For Ryan, the quality of the material never dimmed the incandescence of his performance. His portrayal of Nick Scanlon is a transfixing send-up of a hands-on rackets boss (he enforces discipline by beating the crap out of his own bodyguard) with an inferiority complex. The vulnerability that fuels his ire is a worthless little brother (Brett King). “I had to buy him a chair at two different universities…” Ryan rages while pacing his carpeted penthouse before pausing to drop-kick a recliner exclaiming: “No, not that kind!”  Ryan also clips off one of my favorite ripostes while fulminating at a corruptly impotent D.A. (Ray Collins) and his sidekick (William Conrad) over being jugged for murder: “Who do you think you’re dealing with? I was running this town when you two cheap jerks were eating in diners.”

3. Ted de Corsia as Willie Garzah in The Naked City (1948)

The Naked City might get more votes as a police procedural instead of film noir; however all of the darkness in this legendary flick is courtesy of Ted de Corsia. De Corsia was the visual template of the 20^th century urban gangster; you could put his photo in a pre-school picture book between the cow and the cat with a label underneath his mug that read MOBSTER and all the kiddies would laugh and nod . Aside from resembling a protégé of Albert Anastasia, de Corsia possessed a thick Brooklyn baritone leavened by a continuous chain of Camels.  During the first reel, Ted chloroforms a woman before drowning her in a bathtub then saps his drunken partner and dumps him in the East River with a perverse moral intonation: “Liquor is bad for your character…” Before his memorable swan dive off of the Williamsburg Bridge, there was time for more mayhem including shooting a blind man’s guide dog.  There is something queasy about observing a perspiring De Corsia in a yellowed t-shirt performing calisthenics in a Spartan tenement walk-up that is reminiscent of a long-forgotten, perverse gym teacher from a New Jersey high school.  While there are million stories in The Naked City, only Willie Garzah exuded an aroma of evil that would have pegged a smell-o-vision meter.

4. Charles McGraw as Moxie in T-Men (1947)

Charles McGraw possessed Hollywood’s most unrelenting profile that was complemented by a voice akin to toll road gravel mixed with inert material.  Mark Hellinger initially exposed post war audiences to McGraw in The Killers (1946). Film noir and Charlie proved to be a perfect match as McGraw was able to forego part-time employment as a pinsetter at Sunset Lanes and forge a legitimate movie acting career alternately playing heavies or cops. From the opening moments of T-Men with a close-up of McGraw’s chiseled mug looming out of a doorway, it is clear that this was a unique performer who raised the bar for cinematic ruthlessness. “Moxie” was an appropriate handle. Charlie didn’t give anything up as a bad job from bending back Dennis O’Keefe’s fingers to obtain information, scalding Wallace Ford to death by locking him in a Turkish bath and cold-bloodedly executing Alfred Ryder. It was the casual manner with which McGraw went about his business, shaving in the same hotel room right after he murders Ryder that made his portrayal so unnerving. It somehow doesn’t quite square with Charlie’s eventual demise in this picture. How does one reconcile such panoply of mayhem with a conventional gut-shooting on the deck of a ship? No wonder the Breen Office had such a hard time doing their job.

5. Hope Emerson as Evelyn Harper in Caged (1950)

Caged might have been a film noir version of a woman’s picture, but Hope Emerson was a non-gender specific nightmare. Amazonian at six feet tall and weighing in at over fifteen stone, Evelyn Harper is preeminent as a sadistic matron (“You want to know how this place should be run?” “With a piece of rubber hose…”) who solicits bribes, beats prisoners and, in a shocking sequence, shears off star Eleanor Parker’s hair.  It was the added touches of embellishment to Emerson’s character that burnished her sadistic forays into something much more sinister. The racket of dispensing goodies to cons that could pay the freight, a bottle of hooch stashed under the mattress, the obsessive gobbling of chocolates and the use of political chicanery to undermine straight-arrow warden Agnes Moorehead. Harper even struts into her charges ‘bullpen”, grotesquely dolled up, to gloat about her latest boyfriend’s car (“Must be a truck, sniffs one con). Emerson’s performance in Caged received a Best Supporting Actress nod but she lost out to Josephine Hull in Harvey for God’s sake. There is no justice in noir, baby.

6. Kirk Douglas as Chuck Tatum in Ace in the Hole (1951)

Kirk Douglas was born to play Chuck Tatum. Insatiably ambitious to the exclusion of anything else, everyone in Tatum's orbit is quickly overwhelmed by his chutzpah or simply steamrolled flat. There are interesting parallels between this ruthless newspaper reporter exiled to a backwater Albuquerque daily who obsesses about a triumphal return to his New York newsroom haven, replete with pastrami on rye and Yankee Stadium box seats, and the authentic Kirk Douglas who, by many accounts, was quite a piece of work back in the day.  In stumbling upon a man trapped in a New Mexico cliff dwelling and inflating it into a global extravaganza complete with live news coverage, Ferris wheels and a corrupt sheriff, Tatum allows nothing to come between him and ambition until it is too late. When the trapped man’s venal wife (Jan Sterling) comes on to him, he slaps her across the face and spits out; “…get rid of that smile and wash your face… go peddle your hamburgers.” Everything, even a quickie in the backroom of a roadside diner with the victim’s spouse, becomes secondary to Tatum’s Ahab-like quest for professional redemption.  Douglas’ performance is a remarkable tour de force, eclipsing similar characterizations in Champion and Detective Story. Someone who knew Kirk Douglas during this period opined to me once that the relentless movie star could be, “a hard guy to like”. Just so is Chuck Tatum. 

7. Neville Brand as Chester in D.O.A. (1950)

There have been so many cinematic psychos since the classic noir period that it is quite a chore to remember the actors who made it up. In D.O.A., Neville Brand plumbed frigid depths never seen before on the big screen. In addition to having a mug designed for cinematic sociopathy, Brand’s characterization was more than brutally unsettling.  In kidnapping Frank Bigelow (Edmond O’Brien) for a sinister criminal, Majak (Luther Adler), it becomes readily apparent that Chester is not only vicious, but mentally ill. “Aww, soft in the belly, can’t take it…” Brand iteratively intones this mantra in baby-speak that he punctuates by thrusting a .45 automatic into Bigelow’s stomach.  Luther Adler ends up apologizing for Chester's shortcomings before sentencing O’Brien to death: “He’s an unfortunate boy. He’s psychopathic… he must see blood… I am sorry, Mr. Bigelow…” Neville Brand was genuinely haunted by close combat while in the Army in during World War II; the actor was decorated with the Silver Star among other medals.  Brand became a Jekyll & Hyde alcoholic who charmed intimates and co-workers with his intellectual prowess- he was a voracious reader-and skilled acting, but was also a terrifying drunk. Neville Brand’s eyes in D.O.A. conveyed a harrowing cinematic nuttiness, but it is genuinely sobering to contemplate the actual demons that resided within.

8. Lawrence Tierney as Sam Wild in Born To Kill (1947)

During the decades after Dillinger (1945), Lawrence Tierney’s legendary temper, liberally doused with booze, transformed him into a scary head case who brawled his way out of acting into hard scrabble survival work as a bartender and hansom driver. Tierney stories were not unfounded gossip; Larry had the knife scars and lengthy arrest sheet to back up the tales.  His portrayal in Born to Kill was the perfect doppelganger for an authentic Tinseltown buccaneer. Sam Wild was a paranoid, cold blooded bastard who serially murders out of the sheer pique of being inconvenienced.  In a movie where all of the characters are either sociopathic or dysfunctional, Tierney more than meets his match in socialite wannabe Claire Trevor. This most perverse couple share a memorable scene together where they get sexually turned on  recalling a senseless murder that opens the picture. Wild’s factotum, Elisha Cook Jr. attempts reason by scolding, “Sam, you just can’t go around killing people, it’s not feasible”, as if his pal breached social etiquette by reaching across the dinner table for a salt shaker. Wild immediately fires back: “No one cuts in on me”. So much for rehabilitation. Hollywood’s version of Lazarus, Lawrence Tierney would find professional redemption as an actor beginning in the 1980’s. Sam Wild was not so fortunate.

9. Raymond Burr as Rick Coyle in Raw Deal (1948)

In a letter to the producers of Raw Deal, Production Code Chief Joseph I. Breen wrote that “…we specifically object to the Rick Coyle character using fire as a sexual stimulant…”  How much footage, if any, that Edward Small and Anthony Mann had to trim from Raymond Burr’s performance to earn their picture the MCA code stamp is unknown, but it doesn’t appear to be a more than a tad. Rick Coyle is a double-edged sword of deceit and cowardice, a gang leader who rules his minions through bonds of dread.  Whether flicking his lighter under an associate’s earlobe, throwing a flaming Cherries Jubilee into a girl’s face who spills a drink on him or setting up Dennis O’Keefe to get killed in a jail breakout, Burr conveys an undiluted evil that few actors, if any, have yet equaled.  Whether Burr deliberately piled on the tonnage to obtain gigs as a crime drama heavy or simply was struggling with a life long weight problem, his Raw Deal portrayal is a hugely visual presence. Swathed in a smoking jacket the size of a tent and with enormously long shoulders worthy of Phil Jackson, Burr was photographed by John Alton from a floor camera angle upwards ( re: Sydney Greenstreet in The Maltese Falcon) with the actor appearing as a veritable parade blimp of odious sadism. Raymond Burr would eventually trim down and become memorialized on television as Perry Mason and Ironside, but no actor was ever better at playing the film noir heavy… (Desperate, Pitfall, Red Light among others)... literally.    

10. Hume Cronyn as Captain Munsey in Brute Force (1947)

Hume Cronyn was by all accounts, a charming man, and  not a performer easily associated with film noir heavies or villainous characters.  The actor’s congenial presence renders his extraordinary performance as the authoritarian prison sadist in Jules Dassin’s Brute Force all the more remarkable. Captain Munsey is straight out of Auschwitz finishing school, (The Nuremberg Trials were in session during preproduction of Brute Force and the parallels are obvious) consigning prisoners to “the drainpipe”, driving a convict (Whit Bissell) to suicide by lying to him about his wife and beating a handcuffed Sam Levene with a grimy rubber hose accompanied by strains of Wagner while tidily washing his hands before and afterwards. More than ruthless ambition is at work within Munsey. Although he pursues a bureaucratic coup to undermine the hopelessly inept warden (Roman Bohnen), the alcoholic prison doctor (Art Smith) has Munsey correctly pegged as a pure sadist: “Where else would you have so many helpless flies to stick pins into…” Cronyn’s character finally lets his mask drop when he responds to Smith’s drunken pieties: “Authority, cleverness, imagination… these are the real differences that separate men” One visualizes the future Warden Munsey adopting a selection process with the prisoners akin to Dr. Mengele. When Burt Lancaster consigns Munsey to the prison version of the Pit, a muted, but spontaneous cheer arises from within the gut of the audience. Hume Cronyn’s performance in Brute Force is the personification of pure evil.

and lest we forget....

Mildred Dunnock, a wheelchair, phone cord and set of tenement stairs launched one of the more distinguished of 20th century movie actors in Kiss of Death (1947). Did Richard Widmark ever wonder if he could have patented his giggle?

Insurance Noir

I came across this interesting piece in of all places, an actuarial journal, Contingencies. After obtaining the  permission of the author, Dan Skwire, I have posted the on line PDF link. Enjoy!

http://www.contingencies.org/mayjun08/film.pdf

Mildred Pierce at the Million Dollar Theatre

 After hosting the eighth annual Palm Springs Film Noir Festival, from May 29-June1,  I made it back home in time for screenings of Mildred Pierce at the Million Dollar Theatre and The Damned Don't Cry- the latest entry of my continuing Femme Fatale Hall of Fame series at the Silent Movie Theatre.  I'll be posting a detailed low down about the wildly successful Palm Springs noir fete- complete with photos- this coming week. For the present, I wanted to share some details about  the Mildred Pierce event.

It was a distinct privilege to host a sold-out screening of Mildred Pierce (1945) at the restored Million Dollar Theatre at 307 South Broadway  in downtown Los Angeles on Wednesday June 4th. The screening was part of the Los Angeles Conservancy's Last Remaining Seats series that is now in its 22nd year. For more about the LRS, the Million Dollar Theatre and the L.A. Conservancy, please check out this link:

http://www.laconservancy.org/remaining/index.php4

Here is the text of my introductory remarks. With a sold out house in a classic venue, I felt obliged to discuss some of the behind-the-scene details and key players involved in Mildred Pierce  

Good evening, and what an evening!  My thanks to Trudi and to the Conservancy for their gracious invitation to host for this truly special event; the reopening of the Million Dollar Theatre, Sid Grauman’s first show palace, as part of the Last Remaining Seats series. 

Mildred Pierce is a timeless film; a movie that is thematically emblematic on multiple levels. A compelling saga about an American family wracked by dysfunction and tragedy that typically weren’t addressed in 1940’s Hollywood due to censorship problems, the story of an indomitably strong, ambitious woman- here was the template for what would be known as “the woman’s picture”- saddled with a fearful progeny of a daughter who had all of the qualities of a dog, save loyalty, and a seminal film noir wrapped into a flashback of deceit, betrayal and murder.

Mildred Pierce is also an honored film:  Nominated for Best Picture in 1945 by the Motion Picture Academy with Joan Crawford winning the Best Actress Oscar, Ann Blyth and Eve Arden, both nominated for Best Supporting Actress with Ernest Haller and Randall MacDougall earning best cinematography and best screenplay nods as well.  

In 2008, Mildred Pierce represents a visual time capsule of a Los Angeles that, in many ways, would exist only in memory or on film, but for the good work of the Conservancy. The Pierce home is still on Jackson Street on Glendale; however Jack Carson’s real estate office on the corner of Bel Air and Allen Ave also in Glendale is gone along Mildred’s restaurant that was shot at Kay’s Drive-In on the corner of Magnolia and Laurel Canyon in the Valley. The Monty Beragon mansion in the movie was on Arden Road in Pasadena, and that wonderful beach house that opens the film was the Rindge house in Malibu on what was then 26600 Roosevelt Highway, a mere 3.5 miles up the road from the Malibu colony.

Mildred Pierce was made at the apex of the studio system period as exemplified at Warner Brothers. And no director was more firmly identified with Warners than the estimable Michael Curtiz who helmed tonight’s film. Curtiz was one of the finest directors of any era; counting his European work; he helmed an incredible 172 feature films. Curtiz made his Warner’s debut in 1926 and worked at the studio until 1954. His films include some of the legendary titles of all time: Captain Blood, Charge of the Light Brigade, The Adventures of Robin Hood, Angels with Dirty Faces, The Sea Hawk, Casablanca,   Yankee Doodle Dandy, Life with Father and one of my all time favorites that needs to come out on DVD… are you listening, Warners? The Breaking Point.

As a director, Curtiz was singleminded, often ruthlessly so. Supremo producer Hal Wallis, no slouch when it came to workaholism, tabbed Curtiz as “tireless”.  (At this point, I ad-libbed a Curtiz story that was reportedly related years ago by James Cagney to Peter Bogadanovich that involved a bit actor who was playing a minister during the filming of The Sea Hawk (1940) that was directed by Curtiz. The actors were topside on a crowded ship set in a huge Warners soundstage with a 20 foot drop to the floor below. The poor guy who was the minister , trying to avoid a gesticulating Curtiz striding around the set and blocking out the scene, stepped backwards off of the ship and fell to the floor of the soundstage. Curtiz glanced down at the man laying unconscious and then whirls to his AD, roaring: “Get me another Minister!”)

But Warner Brothers was not a Garden of Eden for a directorial auteur. Curtiz directed the film, but the moving force behind Mildred Pierce was producer Jerry Wald. Hal Wallis had moved on after his famous falling out with Jack L. Warner over acceptance of the Best Picture Oscar for Casablanca.  With credits like ACROSS THE PACIFIC, THE HARD WAY, DESTINATION TOKYO, Wald was in ascendance at WB, but Jack L. Warner desperately wanted a legitimate hit picture that was not a war film.

Wald thought he had it when he bought the rights to James M. Cain’s novel Mildred Pierce pub in 1941 for $15K on 3/15/44, and then the parade of writers started.

The producer tried to have Cain write a treatment- he couldn’t do it, Cain was a novelist, not a screenwriter. Jerry Wald’s method for story development included employment of a number of writers working on the same script without having exposure with the work of others on the script with the producer attempting to synthesize the different contributions into a coherent script. Wald also conceived the notion of telling the story in flashback after screening Fritz Lang’s The Woman in the Window with Curtiz.

Writers who contributed to Mildred Pierce included: Thames Williamson, Catherine
Turney, Albert Maltz- a thought provoking critique, Margaret Gruen, Randall MacDougall with Margaret Buell Wilder, Louise Randall Pierson, and none other than William Faulkner.

Despite the myriad contributions, the final screenplay was MacDougall’s and his name is the only one listed on the film’s titles. Justice for screenwriters in Hollywood remains a pending issue.

From the beginning, there was only one female lead seriously considered: Joan Crawford. Her two decade career at MGM had ended in 1943 and she was being extremely choosy about the script for her WB debut vehicle- a one picture deal. Crawford managed her career and stardom better than anyone. She knew this selection could either renew or finish her off. For Joan, this was the part. Yet despite the faded stardom; Joan was a personage that was treated in every way as a star. All of the correspondence that I reviewed-with the notable exception of Jack L. Warner- always referred to her as “Miss. Crawford”. Her contract with Warner’s gave her authority about the position of other actors on the titles. One production memo was appended thusly: “Miss Crawford has approved Carson/Scott co-star credit with Miss Crawford’s name on the screen”

In Mildred Pierce, Joan becomes larger than life with a truly seminal performance. Let’s face it; Joan Crawford remains larger than life and is meant to be seen in this theatre on the big screen.

The supporting cast was a different matter. Wald seriously tried to get Ralph Bellamy cast as Mildred’s husband, but bowed to fiscal realities and tapped Bruce Bennett, a relatively new contract player. In one of those strokes of good luck essential to a successful Hollywood career, Bennett went from appearing in a PRC Western directed by Lew Landers to playing opposite Joan Crawford in Mildred Pierce.  

Ray Collins-remember Lieutenant Tragg from Perry Mason?-was busy, so dulcet-toned Moroni Olsen was hired as the avuncular homicide inspector. In a brilliant stroke of excellence, Jack Carson, Zachary Scott, Eve Arden ably filled out the rest of the principal cast, but who was to play Veda, the daughter from Hell?  Lest you think I am being too tough, Thames Williamson in his script treatment defined Veda: “A snobbish, go-getting, heartless little bitch.”

A  plethora of ingénues including Martha Vickers, Mala Powers, Bonita Granville, Patricia Kirkland, Dierdre Gale, Mary Vallee, Virginia Vallee, Lynne Baggett  were scrutinized until a young-17 years old- contract actress/singer at Universal named Ann Blyth was tested. Wald and Curtiz instantly knew they had their Veda. Miss Blyth’s performance remains an absolute stunner and although we are disappointed she could not join here tonight, she is ably represented by her daughter, Eileen McNulty and family who are here with us. Eileen, please take a bow.

That Mildred Pierce was made at all is a tribute to the tenacity of Jerry Wald who refused to acquiesce when Joseph Breen wrote him in early 1944, just to forget about making Mildred Pierce. The property was too controversial, with way too much forbidden subject matter. A script was finally approved months later, but that was after such shocking words as “God Awful”, WOP, “To Hell and Gone” and “Tart” were excised. One great line by Eve Arden to Jack Carson was also cut: “I hate to wrestle in the morning!”

The exquisite direction by Curtiz was accentuated by the memorable score composed by one of the greatest film composers of all time: Max Steiner.

For Jack L. Warner, aside from sending Wald a memo complaining that he couldn’t understand what the hell Butterfly McQueen was talking about it in the dailies, it was always a matter of money. He sweated bullets over the $1,342,000 budget at one point writing a memo to a legal functionary:

“I am not paying Crawford anything beyond her $100,000 guarantee because she was unable to work for a number of days”

For the record, Joan missed 1 and ½ days during the nearly three month production. Jack L. frequently viewed matters via a Byzantine perspective. Later on, when a writer complained to him about being blacklisted, Warner memorably responded: “There is no such thing as a Blacklist...and you’re not on it!” Joan Crawford would end up making much more money from Warners as Mildred Pierce was a smash hit at the box office as well as a huge critical success.

As Jerry Wald would write Sonny Werblin at MCA in response to a congratulatory letter:

“My biggest problem is what do I do for an encore”.

Simply put, there is no encore for this film; it is a screen classic and I am delighted that we are here tonight in this beautifully restored, historical venue to watch it.. Please join me in savoring the one and only Mildred Pierce! 

Facts about the Universal Studios Fire

In the wake of the fire that swept through Universal Studios last Sunday, there are a lot of rumors, emails and the like concerning the damage to vintage film prints. Instead of playing Chicken Little, here is some information from my partner-in-noir, Eddie Muller that I would like to put up for some balance and clarification. Thanks, Alan

To my colleagues,