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Home , Bert Glennon, Billie Burke, Christopher Strong, Clive Brook, Colin Clive, Dorothy Arzner

Online versions of the Goldenrod Handouts have color images & hot links September 11, 2018 (XXXVII:3) http://csac.buffalo.edu/goldenrodhandouts.html : (1933, 78 min)

DIRECTED BY Dorothy Arzner WRITTEN BY (screen play), (from the novel by) PRODUCED BY David O. Selznick MUSIC BY CINEMATOGRAPHY Bert Glennon FILM EDITING BY Arthur Roberts SET DECORATION Charles M. Kirk COSTUME DESIGN Howard Greer,

CAST ...Lady Cynthia Darrington Colin Clive...Sir Christopher Strong ...Lady Strong - His Wife Helen Chandler...Monica - His Daughter Ralph Forbes...Harry Rawlinson Irene Browne...Carrie Valentine Jack La Rue...Carlo Desmond Roberts...Bryce Mercer relented, and she made her debut with (1927). In the 1920s, she also directed films such as: Ten Modern DOROTHY ARZNER (b. January 3, 1897, , Commandments and Get Your Man in 1927, as well as CA—d. October 1, 1979, La Quinta, CA) is notable for being the Manhattan Cocktail (1928) and The Wild Party (1929). In the only woman to direct films during the Golden Age of the 1930s, she directed such films as: Behind the Make-Up studio system. She amassed 20 directing credits in a (uncredited), , (sequence career that spanned the 1920s to the 1940s. She came into her director), and Anybody's Woman in 1930; own as a filmmaker working at Paramount, editing the Rudolph and Working Girls in 1931; (1932), Valentino headliner Blood and Sand (1922). She also did Christopher Strong (1933), Nana (1934), and Craig's Wife uncredited directing work for this film. Director (1936); The Last of Mrs. Cheyney (uncredited) and The Bride was so impressed by her work on the Valentino picture that he Wore Red in 1937. The last years of her film career were spent brought her on to his team to edit (1923). directing such films as: Dance, Girl, Dance (1940) and First Arzner eventually edited three other Cruze films. Her work was Comes Courage (1943). After taking her filmmaking skills into of such quality that she received official screen credit as an the war effort in 1943, she returned to the postwar scene as part editor, a first for a cutter of either gender. In all, she edited 8 of the emerging field of television production. She also took a films. While collaborating with Cruze she also wrote scenarios, position as a film professor at UCLA in the 1960s and 1970s. scripting her ideas both solo and in collaboration. She has writing credits for 6 films. BERT GLENNON (b. November 19, 1893, Anaconda, Acting on her desire to sit in the director’s chair, Arzner Montana—d. June 29, 1967 (age 73) in Sherman Oaks, pressured Paramount to let her direct, threatening to leave the ), over the course of six decades, did cinematography studio to work for , which had offered her a for 144 films and television series, including: Ramona (1916); job as a director. Unwilling to lose a promising talent, Paramount The Torrent and Nobody's Fool in 1921; The Ten Arzneer—CHRISTOPHER STRONG—2

Commandments (1923, photographer), Changing Husbands Divorcement (1932); Christopher Strong, Morning Glory, and (1924); Barbed Wire (photographed by) and Underworld in Little Women in 1933; The Little Minister (1934); Break of 1927; The Last Command (1928); Blonde Venus (photographed Hearts and Alice Adams in 1935; Mary of Scotland (1936) and by) and The Half-Naked Truth (photographed by) in 1932; Art in Stage Door (1937); and Holiday in 1938; The the Raw (Short), Christopher Strong (photographed by), Gabriel Philadelphia Story (1940) and Woman of the Year (1942); Over the White House (photographed by), and Alice in Keeper of the Flame and in 1943; Song of Wonderland (photographed by) in 1933; Love (1947), State of the Union (1948), Adam's Rib (1949), The (photographed by) and She Was a Lady in 1934; The Prisoner of African Queen (1951), Pat and Mike (1952), and Summertime Shark Island (1936) and The Prisoner of Zenda (1937, (1955); The Iron Petticoat and The Rainmaker in 1956; Desk Set uncredited); Stagecoach (director of photography), Young Mr. (1957), Suddenly, Last Summer (1959), Long Day's Journey Into Lincoln (photography), and (director Night (1962), Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), The Lion of photography); Our Town (1940); Dive Bomber (director of in Winter (1968), The Madwoman of Chaillot (1969), The Glass photography) and They Died with Their Boots On (director of Menagerie (1973, TV Movie), Rooster Cogburn (1975), On photography) in 1941; Mission to Moscow, This Is the Army Golden Pond (1981), The Man Upstairs (1992, TV Movie), and (director of photography), Destination Tokyo (director of The Roots of Roe (1993, TV Movie); This Can't Be Love (TV photography), and The Desert Song in 1943; The Very Thought Movie), Love Affair, and One Christmas (TV Movie) in 1994. of You and (director of photography) in 1944; Night and Day (director of photography - uncredited) and COLIN CLIVE (b. January 20, 1900, St. Malo, France—d. June Shadow of a Woman in 1946; Mr. District Attorney, The Red 25, 1937 (age 37) in , California) acted in 18 films, House (director of photography), and Copacabana in 1947; Red some of which are: Journey's End (1930); and The Light (1949); (director of photography) and Rio Stronger Sex in 1931; Lily Christine (1932); Christopher Strong Grande (director of photography) in 1950; House of Wax (1953); and Looking Forward in 1933; The Key, , and Bonanza (TV Series, director of photography - 1 episode, 1959); Jane Eyre in 1934; Clive of India, The Right to Live, Bride of M Squad (TV Series, director of photography - 5 episodes, 1958- Frankenstein, The Girl from 10th Avenue, Mad Love, The Man 1960); (1960, director of photography); Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo, and The Widow from Cheyenne (TV Series, 6 episodes, 1961-1962) and 77 Sunset Monte Carlo in 1935; History Is Made at Night and The Woman I Strip (TV Series, 24 episodes, 1960 - 1964). He also directed 11 Love in 1937. films. BILLIE BURKE (b. August 7, 1884, Washington, District of Columbia—d. May 14, 1970 (age 85) in Los Angeles, California) acted in 92 films and television series, including: Peggy and Gloria's Romance in 1916; Arms and the Girl (1917); Eve's Daughter and The Make-Believe Wife in 1918; Wanted: A Husband (1919), Glorifying the American Girl (1929) and A Bill of Divorcement (1932); Christopher Strong and Dinner at Eight in 1933; Finishing School (1934), Becky Sharp (1935), and Topper (1937); Everybody Sing and in 1938; The Wizard of Oz (1939); Irene and The Captain Is a Lady in 1940; The Man Who Came to Dinner and They All Kissed the Bride in 1942; Gildersleeve on Broadway (1943); and And Baby Makes Three in 1949; Father of the Bride (1950), (1959); 77 Sunset Strip (TV Series), Sergeant Rutledge, and Pepe in 1960.

DOROTHY ARZNER From World Film Directors, Vol. I, Editor John Wakeman. H H.W. Wilson Company, NY. 1987.

(January 3, 1897- October 1, 1979, American director, editor and scenarist, was born in San Francisco and grew up in Los Angeles, where her father, Louis Arzner, owned a well-known Hollywood restaurant, the Hoffman Café. Dark-paneled, gently lighted, and intimate, the Hoffman featured a round-table at which gathered celebrities from the theatre next door and filmmakers and actors of the caliber of D.W. Griffith, William S. Hart, James Cruze, , Charlie Chaplin, , Hal Roach, and . Arzner has said KATHARINE HEPBURN (b. May 12, 1907, Hartford, that her best friends always predicted a movie career for her Connecticut—d. June 29, 2003 (age 96) in Old Saybrook, because she apparently loved actors, but that she “didn’t love Connecticut) acted in 53 films, some of which are: A Bill of Arzneer—CHRISTOPHER STRONG—3 them. I was afraid of them. They were always tossing me up in from the advice of her grandfather, a former miner who told her the air.” never to drink desert water) was almost the only member of the Growing up in this environment and unimpressed by it, crew to escape dysentery. By the mid-1920s Arzner was Dorothy Arzner was drawn by contrast, to a career in medicine. established as “the best cutter in the business”—indeed, the When she left the Westlake school she began pre-med studies at historian Kevin Brownlow writes that she was “the only editor the University of Southern California, taking courses also in from the entire silent period to be officially remembered.” At history of art and architecture. A summer spent working in a about the same time, she wrote or coauthored her fist scenarios surgeon’s office raised doubts about her medical vocation. World for movies like The Breed of the Border (1924), Inez From War I had begun and Arzner signed up as an ambulance driver. Hollywood (1924), The No-Gun Man (1924), Walter Lang’s Red Though she never left the United Kimono (1925), William States, the experience was exciting Wellman’s When Husbands and unsettling enough to turn her Flirt (1925) and Cruze’s Old conclusively away from further Ironsides (1926). studies. She began to look for By this time Arzner other work and even to consider was impatient to embark on the movie career that had been her own career as a director predicted for her. but saw no hope of this at With the war over, Paramount. at Hollywood was moving into high Columbia—then a “poverty gear, and the flu pandemic row” company—offered her a increased the demand for workers chance, and she told B.P. of all kinds. Sometime in 1919, Schulberg that she was Dorothy Arzner secured an appointment to meet William De leaving Paramount. The production chief was so eager to retain Mille, Cecil’s older brother, at the Famous Players-Lasky her services that he capitulated. He handed her a French stage Corporation studios—soon to become Paramount. De Mille gave farce by Armand and Marchand, telling her to turn it into a her a week to familiarize herself with the workings of the studios. movie “and get yourself on the set in two weeks.” With Percy “I watched the four companies that were working,” she said, Heath, Jules Furthman, and Herman J. Mankiewicz as scenarists “particularly that of Cecil B. D Mille. And I remember making and adaptors, she met this deadline, shot thirty set-ups on her the observation, ‘If one was going to be in the movie business, first day, and brought the film in well ahead of schedule as one should be a director because he was the one who told Fashions for Women (1927). It was only years later that Arzner everyone what to do.’” confessed the panic she felt when she first faced a crowd of However, by the end of the week, Arzner had come to extras. For ten days she was so nervous that she couldn’t eat, but the conclusion that everything was “grounded in the script”; she then a friend forced her to sit through the rushes shot the told William DeMille that she wanted to start at the bottom as a previous day by all the Paramount directors, and she lost her fear typist in the script department. She was taken on at $15 a week, in the realization that her own work was as good as the others’. showing so much ability that within months she was promoted to At this crucial stage in her career, she later maintained, “no one script supervisor. Arzner said years later that it was as a typist gave me trouble because I was a woman. Men were more helpful and a script girl that she learned most about film structure—a than women.” basic education that stood her in good stead when, soon Fashions for Women stars as an afterwards, she began to train as an assistant cutter. enterprising cigarette girl who makes her way to the top of the “In those days” Arzner said, “there were no Moviolas or Parisian fashion world by masquerading as a famous modiste—a machinery. Everything was done by hand. The film was read and bogus empress in new clothes who successfully dupes the foolish cut over an eight-by-ten-inch box set in the table, covered by men around her. It was described as a triumph for its “star and frosted glass and a light bulb underneath. The film pieces were woman director,” and was followed by two more lightweight placed over a small sprocketed plate, overlapped, and scraped comedies, Ten Modern Commandments (1927), again starring about 1/16th of an inch, dabbed with glue and pressed by hand.” Esther Ralston, and Get Your Man (1927), based on another Arzner rapidly mastered these techniques and in 1921 boulevard stage piece, in which the man that gets is a was assigned to Realart Studios, a Paramount subsidiary, as chief French aristocrat (Charles Rogers) with whom she spends a night editor. In the course of a year she cut and edited fifty-two locked in a wax museum. pictures—one a week—at the same time training and supervising A story by Ernest Vajda provided the basis for negative cutters and splicers. In 1922 she was recalled to Manhattan Cocktail (1928) which, though it had no dialogue, Paramount to earn her first credit as editor of Fred Niblo’s Blood introduced music and sound effects. With and and Sand. She is said to have saved $50,000 (and possibly in the lead, this movie according to Francine ’s health) by creating the brilliant bullfight Parker, turns the entire island of Manhattan into the Isle of Crete, scenes out of stock footage, with matching shots of Valentino in replete with impresario Paul Lukas as predatory Minotaur.” In action. 1928 the Swiss publication Close-Up commented that “Dorothy James Cruze was so impressed that he took her on as Arzner, in her so-far brief career as a director, has already won editor of his epic The Covered Wagon (1923) shot on an established reputation and a following of discriminating location in the deserts of the Great Basin. She shared the admirers…and promises to become an increasingly important extraordinary rigors and dangers of the filming and (benefiting factor in the evolution of cinema technique.” Arzneer—CHRISTOPHER STRONG—4

Arzner’s first talkie followed in 1929: The Wild Party, a the heroine reconciled with her boss and setting off with him on sound remake of a silent she had edited in 1923. Adapted from an ocean voyage—still married to the other man. Warner Fabian’s Unforbidden Fruit and photographed by Victor Asked if there had been resistance to such a risqué Milner, it has Clara Bow as a headstrong college girl who forms outcome, Arzner explained that she “had very little interference a scandalous society of “hard-boiled maidens” to make nighttime with her pictures and when there was she usually had her way: visits to men’s colleges and speakeasies. Arzner took Frederic ‘You see, I was not dependent on the movies for my living, so I March from the stage to play the maidens’ professor and is also was always ready to give the picture over to another director if I credited by some historians with another significant innovation in couldn’t make it the way I saw it.’” John Gillett has said that the this picture—finding her actors’ movements restricted by the film’s early scenes “benefit from excellent scripting and the stationary microphones, she told her sound man to attach them to neatly-turned, relaxed playing of both Colbert and March, and it fishing rods, thus casually inventing the “fish-pole mike,” is interesting to see how Arzner sketches in their motivations and “From her first feature,” according to Gerald Peary, shows how the heroine wavers between the obvious charms yet “Arzner sides time and again with her dashing, flashy, women- uncertain qualities of the March character and the rather on-the-go characters against the shallow, conceited male ordinary, even boorish, character of the man she eventually characters who try to run their lives. But, Peary goes on, Arzner marries….The fact that the film somehow fails to convince and also expands “her horizons to equal support for all manifestations cohere towards the end is due to some awkwardly placed of womanhood,” including the “womanly women” who also melodramatics and the inadequate playing of Monroe Owsley as populate her movies.” One such is Sarah Storm in Sarah and Son the husband. (1930), a 0German immigrant whose The least successful of the child has been stolen from her, who movies Arzner made during the 1930s eventually finds him again, and then was Working Girls (1931), from has to struggle to recover him from his another script from Zoe Akins (based wealthy foster parents. Adapted from a on a play by Vera Caspary and novel by Timothy Shea, this was the Winifred Lenihan). It follows and first of several Arzner movies scripted contrasts the fortunes of two young by Zoe Akins. It made an international women trying to make their way in star of , formerly a : Mae (Dorothy Hall), a stage actress, and was a smash hit, natural victim who is forced to make a putting Dorothy Arzner in the forefront hasty marriage after she is seduced of Paramount directors. and made pregnant, and Judith (June In 1930 Arzner made Thorpe), who deliberately exploits her uncredited contributions to two films sexuality to “get her man.” A comedy attributed Robert Milton, Behind the with tragic overtones, it was called Makeup and Charming Sinners (called “preposterous and unreal” by The Constant Wife in Britain, and contemporary reviewers. Arzner based on Somerset Maugham’s play). herself thought it ahead of its time, She explained that Milton, a fine and a recent critic, Francine Parker, theatre director, knew nothing about calling it “a real sleeper of a movie,” film technique. “He directed the praises its deep-focus photography by performances. I blocked the scenes for camera and editing.” The Harry Fishbeck and says of this film and its successor) that “one same year Arzner filmed “The Gallows Song” as her contribution cannot but be impressed by Arzner’s innovative use of sound; the to Paramount on Parade, designed as a showcase for the stars, juxtaposition of sound and image, her eloquent overlappings and directors, and technical resources of what was then indeed the segues; her remarkable early use also of continuously running paramount studio. Anybody’s Woman (1930), with Ruth theme music.” It has been seen as a sketch for the later Dance, Chatterton, , and Paul Lukas, centers on a chorus girl Girl, Dance. who marries an alcoholic lawyer when he is drunk and then finds Another sad comedy followed, the Lubitschian Merrily herself spurned by his snobbish small-town friends. Admired for We Go to Hell (1932), wittily scripted by Edwin Justin Mayer its witty and experimental use of sound effects, it was another from a story by Cleo Lucas. Joan Prentice (Sylvia Sidney), an box-office hit. After that, Arzner said, “Paramount gave me insecure young heiress, falls in love with Gerry Corbett (Frederic about everything I wanted.” March), an alcoholic journalist and would-be dramatist. Over her There is evidence of this in Honor Among Lovers father’s resistance, they marry, but Gerry leaves Joan for another (1931), which introduced Ginger Rogers in her first small screen woman. Joan takes to drink herself and looks around for another role—a dumb blonde in pursuit of a millionaire. Rogers had been man, but n the end, after she has lost Gerry’s baby in childbirth, starring on Broadway in Girl Crazy, but Arzner “saw her and they are reconciled. liked her” and Paramount hired her: “I imagine they offered her The revival of interest in Arzner’s work that began in much money.” Austin Parker’s script is about a secretary the 1970s ha been mainly along feminist lines, and Merrily We () with a playboy boss (Frederic March). She Go to Hell is one of the pictures discussed at some length in two effectively runs his business for him but refuses his offer of essays by Claire Johnston and in The Work of Dorothy marriage and winds up with another man, who gambles Arzner: Towards a Feminist Cinema. As an immensely everything on the stockmarket and loses. The happy ending has successful woman director in the male stronghold of Hollywood, Arzneer—CHRISTOPHER STRONG—5

Arzner’s own career belongs of course on any feminist role of seemed to the director “ a man ‘on the cross.’ He loved his wife, honor, and many (but not all) of her films can be seen as and he fell in love with the aviatrix. He was on a rack. I was celebrations of the courage, independence, ingenuity, or initiative really more sympathetic with him, but no one seemed to pick that of her heroines. Arzner herself disclaimed any feminist up. Of course, not too many women are sympathetic about the intentions, however, and those who attribute such qualities to her torture the situation might give to a man of upright character. work have tended to find evidence in semiological analyses of Earlier critics were full of praise for Christopher Strong. the form and structure of her films as much as their content. “I Gilbert Frankau came away delighted by the authenticity of the want my work to be judged on its merits,” she insisted. “Why atmosphere, “feeling the picture had been made in England,” and should I be pointed out as a strange creature because I happen to another writer commended the way Hepburn had been “directed be the only woman director? Intelligence has no sex.” to a terrific quietness and intensity which I think she has never Thus, Merrily We Go to Hell is described by Johnston sine reached.” There was also much admiration for Arzner’s and Cook as episodic—“a series of tableaux”—and Pam Cook in direction of Billie Burke, who gave what some considered her particular examines some of these “tableaux” to show how best performance as Strong’s priggish, cruelly inhibited wife. Arzner “through a displacement of identification, through Sam Goldwyn thought Christopher Strong “the best discontinuity and a process of play,” generates a set of picture of the year” and on the strength of it hired Arzner to contradictions” which call in question “the patriarchal ideology direct Nana (1934), an adaptation of Zola’s novel about the Paris of classic Hollywood cinema.” Both essayists refer to the demimonde in the 1880s.Goldwyn wanted a prestigious vehicle marriage sequence in which Gerry in which to launch his0 discovery and hands Joan a corkscrew in place of protégée Anna Sten, the Russian a wedding ring; it is, as Claire actress who he hoped would rival Johnston writes, “a token of Garbo. The film had Greg Toland as Gerry’s inebriated past and an cinematographer and songs by omen for the future,” as well as an Rodgers and Hart, but Anna Sten example of the way in which “the showed no proclivity for greatness universe of the male…is rendered and Arzner said “the only thing I strange” so that “the discourse of could do was not let her talk so the male can no longer function as much.” the dominant one.” Later, when The director discovered a Joan, having lost her baby, takes more satisfactory star for her next Gerry in her arms and calls him picture, Craig’s Wife (1936), made “my baby,” Pam Cook sees “an for Columbia and based on George example of the use of ironic Kelly’s stage play. , reversal to open up contradictions until then a bit player, was reportedly rather than present closure….The image of reconciliation , unity, so terrified that she offered to surrender a year’s alary if she plenitude is shot through with connotations of death, loss, and could be spared the assignment, but took it in the end and earned absence,” an Oscar nomination. The film is a study of a middle-class In 1932, Arzner left Paramount to widen her horizons as housewife who takes “the cult of domesticity to its logical a freelance. Her first assignment was Christopher Strong (1933) conclusion…sacrificing everything and everyone for material made for David Selznick at RKO. Another Zoe Akins script, security, order, and cleanliness.” With a cast that included John adapted from a novel by Gilbert Frankau, it was planned as an Boles, Billie Burke, Jane Darwell, and this was Ann Harding vehicle. She was taken out because of contract one of the most successful of all Arzner’s movies. problems, and Arzner substituted Katherine Hepburn, rescuing Claire Johnston regards Craig’s Wife as a sort of early her from “a Tarzan-type picture” (and literally from its set where Jeanne Dielman, subverting and dislocating the male-established Arzner found her ”up a tree with a leopard skin on”). Hepburn conventions of plot and development: “Here, the rituals of plays Lady Cynthia Darrington, a famous British flyer who falls housework and the obsession with order acquire, as the film in love with a married man, Sir Christopher Strong (Colin Clive). progresses, a definite validity and it is evidence of people living He urges her to give up her dangerous vocation, and in a and breathing in the house which is rendered strange. The marks brilliantly suggestive bedroom scene, undone by love, she agrees. of a trunk having been pulled along the floor or someone having But her hunger to fly again grows and at last, finding herself sat on a bed acquire a sinister meaning within the text of the pregnant and realizing that the relationship is socially impossible, film.” she makes one more flight—a successful bid for the world , who greatly admired Craig’s Wife, altitude record—before ending her life. subsequently starred in a remake, (1950). And it Claire Johnston sees this tragic enduing as a typical was she (perhaps at her own request) who took the lead role in “refusal of unification and closure and a resolution instead to Arzner’s next movie (1937) This derived play out the discourse of the woman to the bitter end,” while from a Molnar play about a prostitute who is taken up by a Martyn Auty calls the film “a fascinatingly compromised Pygmalion-like aristocrat to prove that anyone, appropriately work….within a narrative that functions as a fortuitous dressed and groomed, can enter high society. The film was o metaphor” for the movie industry (male-dominated, like flying). have starred , but MGM substituted Crawford and Arzner herself said that her main interest was in her hero; presented Arzner with a lightweight adaptation of the text (by dismissed by feminists as an “all-consuming chauvinist.” He Tess Slesinger and Bradley Foote) and with lavish sets that she Arzneer—CHRISTOPHER STRONG—6 used only reluctantly. She herself considered the result synthetic Dorothy Arzner was not entirely lost to the cinema and unsatisfactory. The same year Arzner made an uncredited during the thirty-six years of her retirement. She began the first contribution to Richard Boleslawsky’s version of Lonsdale’s The filmmaking course at the Pasadena Playhouse on a non-existent Last of Mrs. Cheyney, also starring Crawford (who became a budget, working with a single camera and a tape recorder. She close friend). made over fifty Pepsi commercials for her friend Joan Crawford. None of Arzner’s films has been so thoroughly And she returned to teaching for four years during the 1960s at discussed and analyzed as Dance, Girl, Dance (1940), adapted UCLA, where Francis Coppola was her “most promising,” by Tess Slesinger and Frank Davis from the novel by Vicki student, if “rather eccentric.” At the 1975 Directors Guild of Baum. The picture as the pet project of Eric Pommer, then a America tribute to Arzner (its first woman member), Coppola producer at RKO. Finding, after a week’s shooting that his recalled her impact on him: “Everywhere you went was this conception was being destroyed by the original director, he negative thing. this was the first time in my life someone had brought in Arzner, who extensively reworked the script. As said something encouraging.” In her last years she was at work completed, the film tells the story of two young dancers in a on an ambitious historical novel about the settling of Los troupe managed by the dedicated Madame Basilova (Maria Angeles. She died at the age of eighty-two at La Quinta near Ouspenskaya); Bubbles () is a vamp, primarily Palm Springs, where she had spent the last years of her life. interested in men as the source of money and power, while Judy Ann Laemmle writes that “feminist ideology is not a (Maureen O’Hara) is an aspiring ballet dancer seeking artistic cause which Arzner sought to champion but a way of seeing the self-fulfillment. Bubbles gets s job as a burlesque dancer and world which is implicit throughout her work as a natural takes Judy on as her stooge—the first in a series of humiliations extension of it since she is the only notably successful woman from which Judy is finally rescued by an impresario (Ralph director of the thirties and forties in the dominantly male world Bellamy) who has recognized her talent and will train her to be a of Hollywood. It is interesting to speculate on why Arzner never great dancer.n married and dressed constantly in male attire when directing her Ann Laemmle sees the film as the story of Judy’s films, thereby skirting two social indexes which would have progress to humanity and maturity, even though she reaches served to isolate her femininity in a male-oriented industry. Had maturity “only to end up in the arms of a man who cradles her the image she chose to project been more characteristically like a child.” Pam Cook, however, maintains that “It would be a female, her presence on the Paramount lots might have generated mistake to read the film in ‘positive’ terms as representing the progress of its heroine to ‘maturity’ or ‘self-awareness.’ The value of the film lies not in its creation of a culture-heroine with whom we can finally and fully identify, but in the ways in which it displaces identifications with the characters and focuses our attention on the problematic position they occupy in their world.” By way of illustration, Cook describes the scene in the burlesque house when Judy turns on her audience of voyeurs and in a furious speech “fixes them in relation to her critical look,” reversing “the ideology of woman as spectacle, object of their desire” But the standing ovation she receives redefines “Judy’s speech as a performance” and is followed by a sexually exciting catfight between Judy and Bubbles. And in the “final ironic reversal Judy gets what she wants’ at the expense of any pretensions to ‘independence.’” In Cook’s view Arzner has set forth the story in a way that emphasizes the contradiction between women’s desire for self-expression and culture, and the cultural processes which articulate a place for women as spectacle.” The Johnston and Cook essays have themselves been more deference and less freedom in her treatment as a director.” discussed in Jump Cut (12/13/1976) by another feminist writer, E. Ann Kaplan. She applauds their work but disagrees with some Karen Kay: “Interview with Dorothy Arzner” (Agnes Films) of their conclusions, suggesting that they make “rather It was a revelation when, in the feminist early 1970s, we extravagant claims for Arzner as a revolutionary filmmaker.” discovered two Dorothy Arzner films, Christopher Strong (1933) During World War II Dorothy Arzner made a number of and Dance, Girl, Dance (1940), in the RKO Collection at the training films for the Women’s Army Corps and in 1943 returned State Historical Society on the University of Wisconsin campus. to Columbia to direct , an unexceptional Articles on both films followed, in Cinema (LA) and The Velvet war film about the Norwegian underground starring Merle Light Trap. We were thrilled: an amazing woman director Oberon and . The final scenes were filmed by worked in Hollywood at a time when women directors were not another director after Arzner contracted pneumonia. She was allowed, making personal films featuring complicated female seriously ill for almost a year and decided when she recovered protagonists. that she would make no more movies. “I had had enough— One day, we picked up the telephone and, nervously, twenty years of directing, I think, is about enough.” She sold her called her up. Arzner answered, wary and suspicious at first. Hollywood estate and retired to the desert to cultivate her garden. Then she was very friendly, taken, we think, by our enthusiasm for her movies. There was a time, after, when she actually called Arzneer—CHRISTOPHER STRONG—7 us! And trusting us, she agreed to speak on the record about her Could you describe this meeting? life and career. There I was standing before William DeMille, saying: “I think The following interview was conducted over several I’d like a job in the movies.” William DeMille: “Where do you months in 1974 by mail between Madison, Wisconsin and La think you’d like to start?” Answer: “I might be able to dress Quinta, California. Questions were posed, answers supplied; then sets.” Question: “What is the period of this furniture?”—meaning more questions surfaced from the previous answers. Dorothy his office furniture. I did not know the answer, but I’ll never Arzner personally read over the final print and made corrections forget it—”Francescan.” He continued: “Maybe you’d better and additional comments; so, in the best sense of the term, this look around for a week and talk to my secretary. She’ll show you can be considered an “authorized interview.” Because Ms. around the different departments.” Arzner was busily at work writing an ambitious historical novel That sounded interesting enough to me. I watched the four based on the early settling of Los Angeles, she found it companies that were working, particularly that of Cecil DeMille. impossible to detail her complete film career (the book was sadly And I remember making the observation, “If one was going to be never completed). Though an enormously private person, she in this movie business, one should be a director because he was allowed a personal visit to her the one who told everyone else what to California desert home for additional do. In fact, he was the ‘whole works.’” information. The addendum to the However, after I finished a interview is based upon conversations week of observation, William during that meeting (with thanks to DeMille’s secretary told me that typing critic Joseph McBride for his questions scripts would enlighten me to what the on that occasion). film to be was all about. It was the This interview, originally published in blueprint for the picture. All the Cinema (U.S.) in 1974, was reprinted departments, including the director’s, in the 1975 British Film Institute were grounded in the script. So I pamphlet, Dorothy Arzner: Towards a turned up at the end of the week in Feminist Cinema, and in the co- William DeMille’s office. He asked, authors’ 1977 book, Woman and “Now where do you think you’d like to Cinema: a Critical Anthology start?” I answered, “At the bottom.” (Dutton). It remains by far the most He looked penetratingly serious as a comprehensive interview with Ms. schoolteacher might, and then barked, Arzner, who died in 1979. “Where do you think the bottom is?” I meekly answered, “Typing scripts.” How did you decide on a film “For that, I’ll give you a job.” career? I was introduced to the head of the I had been around the theatre and typing department. I was told I’d be actors all my life. My father, Louis given the first opening, but I had my Arzner, owned a famous Hollywood doubts. Weeks went by. I took a job in restaurant next to a theatre. I saw most of the fine plays that came a wholesale coffeehouse, filling orders and working the there—with , , David Warfield, et switchboard. It was through that switchboard that the call came cetera, et cetera, ad infinitum, D. W. Griffith, , from Ruby Miller, the typing department head. I was making Douglas Fairbanks, Mack Sennett, and all of the early movie and $12.00 a week. I said, “What’s the salary?” “Fifteen dollars a stage actors came to my dad’s restaurant for dinner. I had no week for three months, then $16.50.” So for $3.00 dollars more a personal interest in actors because they were too familiar to me. week I accepted the movie job. And that is how I started at I went to the University of Southern California and focused on Paramount, then called the Famous Players-Lasky Corporation. the idea of becoming a doctor. But with a few summer months in the office of a fine surgeon and meeting with the sick, I decided How did you become a cutter and editor? that was not what I wanted. I wanted to be like Jesus––”Heal the At the end of six months I went from holding script to cutter, and sick and raise the dead,” instantly, without surgery, pills, et a good cutter is also an editor, working in conjunction with the cetera. All thoughts of university and degrees in medicine were director and producer, noting the audience reaction when abandoned. Even though I was an A student and had a fairly preview time comes. I was assigned to Realart Studio, a extensive education—I had taken courses in history of art and subsidiary of Paramount. I cut and edited fifty-two pictures while architecture—I became a so-called dropout. Since I was not chief editor there. I also supervised and trained negative cutters continuing in my chosen career, I only thought of work to do and and splicers. independence from taking money from my dad. This was after World War I and everything was starting to Did Realart have its own stages and crews independent of bounce––even the infant picture studios. An appointment was Paramount? What kinds of films were made there? made for me to meet William DeMille. He was told I was an Realart Studio was equipped fully—cameramen, set designers, intelligent girl. There had been a serious flu epidemic, so workers writers, and I was the only editor. It was a small studio with four were needed. It was possible for even inexperienced people to companies and four stars: Bebe Daniels, Marguerite Clark, have an opportunity if they showed signs of ability or Wanda Hamely, and Mary Miles Minter. One picture a week was knowledge. started there and finished in four weeks. It would be eight reels Arzneer—CHRISTOPHER STRONG—8 when finished, and called a “program picture.” In those days deck of the ship with him, keep the script, cut, and edit—all of pictures played for a week in theatres, and the cost of the ticket which I did for more salary. was thirty to fifty cents. At the end of the week there was another picture. Could you talk a little about Cruze, a director known today So much for Realart Studio. I was recalled to the parent almost only by name? company, Paramount, to cut and edit Blood and Sand (1922) with It would take too long to tell you about James Cruze. He was one Valentino as star, with and Nita Naldi. Fred Niblo was of the “Big Directors,” but he didn’t exploit himself. He saved the director, was the writer, having gained much Paramount from bankruptcy, and he was one of the finest, most fame and authority from guiding and writing The Four Horsemen generous men I knew in the motion-picture business. He had no of the Apocalypse (1921) to prejudices. He valued my ability and enormous success. It was a Big told people I was his right arm. Picture—hundreds of thousands of feet of film, Were you about to walk out on twenty-three reels in the first Paramount to direct pictures at a tight cut, finally brought down minor studio when given your to twelve. directorial chance in 1927? Yes. I was going to leave Paramount What were the physical after Ironsides. I had been writing circumstances editing at this scripts for Columbia, then considered a time? “poverty row” company. Harry Cohn There were no Moviolas or made pictures for $8,000 to $10,000 machinery. Everything was and I was writing scripts for $500 a done by hand. The film was piece. But I had told Jack Bachman, read and cut over an eight-inch Cohn’s production man, that the next by ten-inch box set in the table, script I wanted to direct or “no deal.” covered with frosted glass and When I finished Ironsides, I had an a light bulb underneath. The film pieces were placed over a small offer to write and direct a film for Columbia. It was then I closed sprocketed plate, overlapped, and scraped about one-sixteenth of out my salary at Paramount and was about to leave for Columbia. an inch, snipped with glue, and pressed by hand. It was late in the afternoon. I decided I should say “good-bye” to someone after seven years and much work: B. P. Schulberg. (I Were scenes shot simultaneously from several angles to help had previously written a shooting script for Ben Schulberg when your editing? he had a small independent company. He had been short of cash No, films were shot normally with one camera, except for large and couldn’t pay, so I told him to take it and pay me when he spectacular scenes. could, which he did later. It was “bread on the waters” because soon after he was made Production Head of Paramount when we Do you feel that editors were paid decent wages before were about to start Ironsides.) unionization? But Mr. Schulberg’s secretary told me he was in For the time, I was paid very well. I never had any complaints. If conference. So I went out to my car in the parking lot, had my you were a good editor, you asked a reasonable rate. hand on the door latch, when I decided after so many years I was going to say “good-bye” to someone important and not just leave Had you done any shooting on Blood and Sand? unnoticed and forgotten. The ego took over. I had a feeling of Yes, I filmed some shots for the bullfights. high good humor. So I returned and asked the secretary if she minded if I waited for the conference to be over. She did mind. Were there special instructions in editing Valentino’s scenes Mr. Schulberg would not see anyone. It was late then, and he had so as to preserve the glamour? told her not to make any more appointments. Just about then There were no special instructions. The glamour was all on the passed in the hall. He was head of Paramount’s film, put there by the writer and director, both of superior New York studio on Long Island. And, as he passed, I called out, experience. “Oh, you’ll do!” He responded, “What’s that?” And I told him, I was leaving Paramount after seven years, and I wanted to say What other movies were made with James Cruze? good-bye to someone important. “Come into my office, Then came The Covered Wagon (1923), another “supercolossal” Dorothy.” I followed him, and when he sat down behind his picture made eighty-five miles from a railroad in the “wilds of desk, I put out my hand and said, “Really, I didn’t want a thing, Utah.” We used five tribes of Indians, and oxen were broken to just wanted to say good-bye to someone important. I’m leaving the yoke. I stayed with Cruze through several pictures—Ruggles to direct.” He turned and picked up the intercom and said, of Red Gap (1923), with Eddy Horton, Merton of the Movies “Ben—Dorothy’s in my office and says she’s leaving.” I heard (1924), and a number of others—until I left to write scripts for Ben Schulberg say, “Tell her I’ll be right in.” Which he was—in independent companies like Harry Cohn’s Columbia. Then Cruze about three minutes. asked me to work on Old Ironsides (1926), another “Big “What do you mean you’re leaving?” “I’ve finished Picture.” He wanted me to write the shooting script, stay on the Ironsides. I’ve closed out my salary, and I’m leaving.” “We don’t want you to leave. There’s always a place in the scenario Arzneer—CHRISTOPHER STRONG—9 department for you.” “I don’t want to go into the scenario You made the first movies with Ruth Chatterton. Wasn’t she department. I’m going to direct for a small company.” “What an unlikely movie star––a bit older and more mature than company?” he asked. “I won’t tell you because you’d probably most leading ladies? spoil it for me.” “Now Dorothy, you go into our scenario Ruth Chatterton was a star in the theatre. When talkies came to department and later we’ll think about directing.” “No, I know Paramount, they signed the stage actresses as many of the silent I’d never get out of there.” “What would you say if I told you stars fell by the wayside. She was a good actress. that you could direct here?” “Please don’t fool me, just let me go. I’m going to direct at Columbia.” Did you affect her career? “You’re going to direct here at Yes, I certainly affected it. When I made Paramount.” “Not unless I can be Ruth Chatterton’s first motion picture at on a set in two weeks with an A Paramount, Sarah and Son (1930), it picture. I’d rather do a picture for a broke all box-office records at the small company and have my own Paramount Theatre in New York. way than a B picture for Chatterton became known to the press as Paramount.” “The First Lady of the Screen.” With that he left, saying, “Wait here.” He was back in a few Why did Ruth Chatterton move over to minutes with a play in his hand. Warner Brothers? “Here. It’s a French farce called Warners offered her everything an actress The Best Dressed Woman in Paris. could desire––choice of story, director, Start writing the script and get cameraman, et cetera, including a salary yourself on the set in two weeks. New York is sending Esther greater than Paramount. Ralston out to be starred. She has made such a hit in Peter Pan (1924), and it will be up to you.” You made a series of with Fredric So, there I was a writer-director. It was announced in March. Was this coincidence or did you ask to work together the papers the following day or so: “Lasky Names Woman again and again? Director.” I took from the stage in The Royal Family (1927) What was your directing training prior to Fashions for and cast him in The Wild Party (1929), I guess my pictures gave Women (1927)? him a good start, and I liked his work, so I cast him as the lead in I had not directed anything before. In fact I hadn’t told anyone to Sarah and Son, Merrily We Go to Hell (1932), and Honor Among do anything before. I had observed several directors on the set in Lovers (1931). the three years that I held script and edited: Donald Crisp, Jim In 1930 you began making movies with Robert Milton. Could Cruze, Cecil DeMille, Fred Niblo, Herbert Blaché, and you explain the nature of your collaboration? Nazimova. I kept script on one Nazimova picture, The Secret Robert Milton was a fine stage director, but he didn’t know the Doctor of Gaya1, directed by the husband of the “directress” camera’s limitations or its expansions. Because I did know the Madame Blaché. But I don’t recall meeting her. technique so well, I was asked to help him. I co-directed Behind the Makeup (1930) and I was called in to complete The Constant Who championed your cause at Paramount? ? Wife [Charming Sinners, 1929—Eds.], which he had started with Were you given trouble because you were a woman? Ruth Chatterton. I don’t believe I took screen credit on it; I Ben Schulberg, Jim Cruze, Walter Wanger. Adolph Zukor was in merely helped with technical work. He directed the New York where the pictures were distributed and had little to do performances. I blocked the scenes for camera and editing. with the making of movies. No one gave me trouble because I was a woman. Men were more helpful than women. Didn’t you direct one part of Paramount on Parade (1930)? What was the idea behind this extravaganza? Could you talk about Esther Ralston, star of Fashions for “The Vagabond King” [“The Gallows Song”––Eds.] was the part Women, but a forgotten star today? Was she the same type as I directed. Paramount on Parade was an innovative type picture, Clara Bow, another of your leads? made mainly to exploit Paramount and its directors and stars and Esther Ralston was not the same type as Clara Bow—just the to show off the studio. Paramount was the greatest studio, with opposite. She was blonde, tall, and more of a showgirl type— more theatres and more big pictures than any others until the very beautiful. Clara was a redheaded gamine, full of life and Depression. Its Hollywood plant was one block square, on Sunset vitality, with the heart of a child. Boulevard and Vine. Were you given a choice of technical crew when directing at The aggressive character that Ralston played in Fashions for Paramount? Women, Lola, seems like the kind of character of many of Yes, I had the cameramen, assistants, costume and set designers I your women. Do you agree? liked best. A director had his, or her, crew that stayed from one No, I do not think Esther as Lola was like other women in my picture to another. I made my assistant cameraman, Charles pictures. You would have to see Nancy Carroll, Clara Bow, Lang, my first cameraman. Adrian and Howard Greer did clothes Katharine Hepburn, Ruth Chatterton, Anna Sten in Nana (1934), for me. in First Comes Courage (1943).

Arzneer—CHRISTOPHER STRONG—10

Honor Among Lovers was one of the first Ginger Rogers Paramount changed by 1932. When I left, there was a complete films. Did you discover her? Was her famous “stage mother” change of executives. In fact, they were so fearful of the success found on the set during shooting? of Merrily We Go to Hell that they spoke of shelving it. I begged Ginger Rogers was a star in Girl Crazy in them to release it. I was so sure of its the theatre. I saw her and liked her and success. A year later they were asking me, requested her for a small part in Honor “Make another Merrily We Go to Hell,” Among Lovers. Paramount gave me about but by that time I wanted to free-lance. everything I wanted after Sarah and Son and Anybody’s Woman (1930), so I imagine You were working already on they offered her much money. She could Christopher Strong [1933]? also continue playing in Girl Crazy at the Yes, David Selznick asked me to do a film same time. I never saw her mother. at RKO, which he headed at the time. It was to be an Ann Harding picture, but she Honor Among Lovers ends with Julia, the was taken out due to contractual married woman, going on an ocean difficulties. So I chose to have Katharine voyage with a man not her husband. Was Hepburn from seeing her about the studio. this unorthodox ending your choice? She had given a good performance in Bill Was there pressure to have Julia finish of Divorcement (1932), but now she was the movie in the arms of her husband? about to be relegated to a Tarzan-type I collaborated in the writing of Honor picture. I walked over to the set. She was Among Lovers, which I made for up a tree with a leopard skin on! She had a Paramount in New York. As audiences marvelous figure; and talking to her, I felt were ready for more sophistication, it was she was the very modern type I wanted for considered the smartest high comedy at the time. No, there was Christopher Strong. no pressure regarding the script, I had very little interference with my pictures. Sometimes there were differences in casting, Did you pay special attention to directing Billie Burke in this sets, or costumes, but usually I had my way. You see I was not movie? It seems the best acting performance of her career. In dependent on the movies for my living, so I was always ready to fact you seem more interested in all the women characters give the picture over to some other director if I couldn’t make it than in Christopher Strong. Is this true? the way I saw it. Right or wrong, I believe this was why I Yes, I did pay special attention to getting a performance from sustained so long––twenty years. Billie Burke. But I was more interested in Christopher Strong, played by Colin Clive, than in any of the women characters. He Why the title Merrily We Go to Hell? was a man “on the cross.” He loved his wife, and he fell in love The movie was made during the overboard-drinking era during with the aviatrix. He was on a rack, I was really more Prohibition. Freddy March played a drunken reporter with whom sympathetic with him, but no one seemed to pick that up. Of a socialite, Sylvia Sidney, fell in love. He made Sylvia laugh course, not too many women are sympathetic about the torture when she was bored with the social life of her class. You would the situation might give to a man of upright character. have to know the times to judge, “Why the title?” You were at Paramount at the same time as What was your relationship with Christopher Strong‘s and Mae West. Did you ever wish to make a movie with scriptwriter, Zoe Akins, who had also written Sarah and Son, either of them? Anybody’s Woman, and Working Girls for you at Paramount Yes, I always wanted to make a picture with Marlene. There was in 1931? What did contribute to the a wonderful script called Stepdaughters of War. I’d worked on it movie? for months for Chatterton, but when she signed with Warners it My collaboration with Zoe Akins was very close. I thought her a had to be called off. Much later, we were planning it again with fine writer. [Slavko] Vorkapich did the montage of the around- Dietrich. It was to be a big antiwar picture showing the tragedies the-world fight, when Cynthia (Katharine Hepburn) was met by of war and how war makes women hard and masculine. When Chris in San Francisco and their affair was consummated. World War II broke out with Nazi Germany, it was called off Incidentally, Christopher Strong‘s story was not based on again. . It came from an English novel based upon the life of Amy Lowell, who made the around-the-world flight and Could you describe your contract at Paramount? Did you also broke the altitude record in her time. have special clauses giving you control over certain phases of Why do you think Cynthia killed herself? Did you consider production? other endings? I was under contract to Paramount for three years at a time, paid No, there was no other ending. Cynthia killed herself because she by the week. I ended with a two-year contract, including choice was about to have an illegitimate child. The picture was set in of story. I never had to worry about control over phases of the England. We had not accepted so easily the idea of an production. The departments were geared to give a director what illegitimate child. In the boat scene, she asked, “Do you love me, he wanted, if he knew exactly what he wanted. Chris?” His answer: “Call it love, if you like.” This was from a tortured man who deeply loved his wife and child, but fell in love Why then did you leave Paramount? with the vital, young, and daring aviatrix. Arzneer—CHRISTOPHER STRONG—11

He fell for that. It was not one of the biggest successes when it Wasn’t there a moment when Cynthia tried to save her own was released. But it got such fine press that, over the long run, it life by putting the oxygen mask back on her face after she was released several times and stood high on Columbia’s box- had ripped it off? office list. No, Cynthia did not try to save her life. If you remember, she Were you also producer of Craig’s Wife? looked back over the whole affair seen through superimpositions I was not the producer, although the whole production was as she flew to break the altitude record. Suicide was a definite designed by me. Outside of the development of the script, decision. enormously protected from Harry Cohn’s interference, Eddie Chodorov was the supervising producer. How would you evaluate this movie? Did the playwright, George Christopher Strong was one of the Kelly, involve himself in the favorites of my pictures at the time, production? Didn’t you differ although I was always so critical of with him on interpretation? my own works that I could hardly George Kelly had nothing to do consider any one a favorite. I always with making the picture. I did try saw too many flaws. I was grateful, to be as faithful to his play as however, when they were considered possible, except that I made it so successful. from a different point of view. I imagined Mr. Craig was Some sources have credited you dominated somewhat by his with making an RKO film, The mother and therefore fell in love Lost Squadron (1932), usually with a woman stronger than he. I listed as directed by George Archainbaud. Did you work on thought Mr. Craig should be down on his knees because Mrs. this film? Craig made a man of him. When I told Kelly this, he rose to his No, I had nothing to do with George Archainbaud or The Lost six-foot height, and said, “That is not my play. Walter Craig was Squadron. a sweet guy and Mrs. Craig was an SOB.” He left. That was the only contact I had with Kelly. All articles about your career say that you were the only woman director in Hollywood at this time. But another Dorothy Arzner journeyed to M-G-M after Craig’s Wife, excited woman, Wanda Tuchock, co-directed a movie called about making a film from an unpublished Ferenc Molnar play Finishing School, at RKO in 1933. Were you aware of this? called The Girl from Trieste. It was about a former prostitute—a Did you know her? victim of “economic exploitation,” to quote Arzner—trying to go I vaguely remember Wanda Tuchock was publicized as a woman straight. The movie was to star Luise Rainer. M-G-M, however, director, but I paid so little attention to what anyone else was replaced Rainer with Joan Crawford, and The Girl from Trieste doing. I never was interested in anyone else’s personal life. I was was rewritten as the lighter, frothier The Bride Wore Red (1937). focused on my own work, and my own life. (It seems that Crawford had requested M-G-M to put her into the Arzner picture at this time. She admired Craig’s Wife How did you become involved with Nana at the Goldwyn enormously, so much so that she starred in Harriet Craig, another Studio? How was Anna Sten picked to play the lead? Were remake of the project, at Columbia in 1950.) Despite making a you satisfied with the completed film? lifetime friend of Joan Crawford, Arzner was disappointed by the Goldwyn chose me to do Nana because when he returned from a rewrite and uncomfortable working in the M-G-M factory. trip to Europe he saw Christopher Strong and thought it the best Mammoth sets were constructed for The Bride Wore Red, which picture of the year. He picked Anna Sten, wanting a star to vie Arzner was ordered to use. She remembers Joan Crawford with Dietrich and Garbo. It wasn’t that I would like to have shot decked out in a lavish red gown, even though the picture was Nana differently; I wanted a more important script. But Goldwyn shot in black and white. Altogether, Arzner considers The Bride wouldn’t accept any script at all until he finally handed me about Wore Red rather synthetic, not a favorite of her movies. the fiftieth attempt. Arzner was nowhere in sight when Dance, Girl, Dance (1940) was begun by another RKO director. This was a personal project Why did you choose Rosalind Russell for the lead in Craig’s of , the former head of Germany’s famed UFA Wife (1936)? Studio, then in exile in Hollywood. As producer, Pommer had I did not want an actress the audience loved. They would hate me conceived, cast, and started shooting of Dance, Girl, Dance, but for making her Mrs. Craig. Rosalind Russell was a bit player at everyone involved was unhappy and confused. After a week M-G-M, brilliant, clipped, and unknown to movie audiences. She Pommer removed the original director and brought in Dorothy was what I wanted. Arzner to take charge. She reworked the script and sharply defined the central conflict as a clash between the artistic, Was Craig’s Wife an expensive picture to produce? Was it spiritual aspirations of Maureen O’Hara and the commercial, profitable for Columbia? huckster, gold-digging of Lucille Ball. She decided to base Ball’s No, Craig’s Wife was not a high-budget picture to make. I told character of Bubbles on the real-life “Texas” Guinan, whom Harry Cohn I would give him an A picture for B picture money. Arzneer—CHRISTOPHER STRONG—12

Arzner had spotted waving out of her taxi window to everyone scene inside a submarine, the frightening fistfight in which the New York, “Hi, I’m ‘Texas’ Guinan!” battling actors fall between a terrified horse and a potentially Arzner’s contributions to the war effort were a series of short lethal pitchfork. (She still shudders to remember the danger in films for the WAC‘s, and also the training of four women to cut shooting this last sequence.) The final scenes of the movie were and edit these movies. Arzner had great fun making these shorts, filmed by another director when Arzner contracted pneumonia for her actors were the stock company, with a week to go, and remained terribly sick for almost a year. including some of her old Nana cast. These documentaries were Upon recovery, Arzner made a brave decision; one that she has never shown in theatres or in general release, but were restricted stuck out for thirty years. She told herself that she had had it to WAC training situations—How to Groom Oneself, etc. directing movies, and she left Hollywood forever in 1943. Apparently they were successful, for the government offered Occasionally, in the ensuing years, Arzner has become involved Dorothy Arzner an appointment as a major. She turned it down, in some kind of project. She began the first filmmaking course at because, as she says, “I never wanted to be in the Army.” the Pasadena Playhouse on a nonexistent budget, instructing her She returned to Columbia after seven years’ absence for First students with a single camera and tape recorder. She made over Comes Courage, the story of anti-Nazi resistance and the fifty Pepsi-Cola commercials for her old friend Joan Crawford; Norwegian underground. The screenplay was based on The and she taught filmmaking at UCLA for four years in the 1960s. Commandos by Elliott Arnold, and, unlike many directors, The few movies that Dorothy Arzner sees today are old pictures Arzner read the novel before beginning the movie. She employed on television or at the College of the Desert in Palm Desert, a favorite editor on the project, Viola Lawrence, who was also California, near her home. Her ties with the industry are responsible for Craig’s Wife, and she cast several German absolutely cut. When she shows old photographs of her swank expatriates in the major roles. Reinhold Schunzel was reunited Hollywood estate, sold long ago, she laughs to herself about her with Carl Esmond nine years after they had made a movie youthful affectations. “I was a famous Hollywood director then.” together in prewar Germany, English Wedding, with Esmond as There is no doubt that she is totally content with her desert star and Schunzel as director. There was no second unit work on anonymity, the fresh air, and her fifty beautiful rosebushes, in First Comes Courage, or on any movie that Arzner can place of the subterranean growth of Los Angeles living. remember except in a bit of Sarah and Son. Arzner herself (Interview by Karen Kay and Gerald Peary) directed all the location photography, the army maneuvers, the

COMING UP IN THE FALL 2018 BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS SERIES 37 SEPT 18 OTTO PREMINGER, LAURA, 1944 SEPT 25 GIUSEPPE DE SANTIS, BITTER RICE, 1949 OCT 2 AKIRA KUROSAWA, RASHOMON, 1950 OCT 9 PIER PAOLO PASOLINI, THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ST. MATTHEW, 1964 OCT 16 ROBERT BRESSON, MOUCHETTE, 1967 OCT 23 MIKE HODGES, GET CARTER, 1971 OCT 30 DAVID LYNCH, THE ELEPHANT MAN, 1980 NOV 6 KRZYSZTOF KIESLOWSKI, THREE COLORS: BLUE, 1993 NOV 13 ALAN MAK AND WAI-KEUNG LAU, INFERNAL AFFAIRS, 2002 NOV 20 MARTIN SCORSESE, THE DEPARTED, 2006 NOV 27 TOM MCCARTHY, SPOTLIGHT, 2015 DEC 4 JOHN HUSTON, THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING, 1975

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