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September 18, 2018 (XXXVII:4) : LAURA (1944, 88 min) Online versions of The Goldenrod Handouts have color images & hot links: http://csac.buffalo.edu/goldenrodhandouts.html

DIRECTED BY Otto Preminger WRITTEN BY (novel), Jay Dratler (screen play), Samuel Hoffenstein (screen play), Elizabeth Reinhardt (screen play), and Ring Lardner Jr. (uncredited) PRODUCED BY Otto Preminger Great Love). As Nazism was rising in Continental Europe, MUSIC David Raksin Preminger moved to the U.S. to direct on Broadway in 1936. CINEMATOGRAPHY Joseph LaShelle (director of Until the great success of his 1944 film Laura, he alternated photography) and (uncredited) between directing for stage and film. In the following two FILM EDITING Louis R. Loeffler decades after the release of Laura, he was ranked as one of the ART DIRECTION Leland Fuller and Lyle R. Wheeler top filmmakers in the world. In the and 1960s, he directed SET DECORATION films that pushed the boundaries of censorship by dealing with COSTUME DESIGN Bonnie Cashin topics which were then taboo in Hollywood, such as drug addiction (The Man with the Golden Arm, 1955), rape (Anatomy AWARDS of a Murder, 1959) and homosexuality (Advise & Consent, , USA 1945 1962). In the mid-1960s his work began to receive less-positive critical attention. Winner Best Cinematography, Black-and-White: He was nominated for three Academy Awards: Best Joseph LaShelle Director in 1945 and 1964 for Laura (1944) and (1963), respectively, and Best Picture in 1960 for Anatomy of a Nominations Best Actor in a Supporting Role: Clifton Murder (1959). Some of his other directorial efforts include: Webb Danger - Love at Work (1937); In the Meantime and Darling in Best Director: Otto Preminger 1944; A Royal Scandal (1945); Forever Amber and Daisy Best Writing, Screenplay: Jay Dratler, Kenyon in 1947; The Fan (1949); Whirlpool and Where the Samuel Hoffenstein, Elizabeth Reinhardt Sidewalk Ends in 1950; (1953); River of No Best Art Direction-Interior Decoration, Return and Jones in 1954; The Court-Martial of Billy Black-and-White: Lyle R. Wheeler, Mitchell (1955), (1957), Bonjour Tristesse (1958), Leland Fuller, Thomas Little (1959), and Exodus (1960); In Harm's Way and in 1965; Hurry Sundown (1967), Tell Me Selected for by the National Film That You Love Me, Junie Moon (1970), Preservation Board, 1999 (1971), Rosebud (1975), and The Human Factor (1979). He has 31 credits as producer, and he acted in 14 films CAST and television series, including: The Pied Piper (1942); Margin ...Laura Hunt for Error and in 1943; Where Do We Go ...Det. Lt. Mark McPherson from Here? (1945); The Billy Rose Show (1951, TV Series); ...Waldo Lydecker and Die Jungfrau auf dem Dach in 1953; Suspense ...Shelby Carpenter (1954, TV Series); Exodus (1960), Bunny Lake Is Missing Judith Anderson...Ann Treadwell (1965), Batman (1966, TV Series), Skidoo (1968), The Hobbit (1977, TV Movie), and Our Corpses Still Live (1981). OTTO PREMINGER (b. December 5, 1905 in Wiznitz, Bukovina, Austria-Hungary [now Vyzhnytsia, Chernivetska JOSEPH LASHELLE (b. July 9, 1900 in , oblast, ]—d. April 23, 1986 (age 80) in , California—d. August 20, 1989 (age 89) in La Jolla, California) New York) directed his first of 43 films in 1931, the Austrian did cinematography for 75 films. He won the Academy Award release, Die große Liebe (released in the U.S. in 1932 as The for Best Cinematography, Black-and-White in 1945 for Laura Preminger—LAURA—2

(1944). He was nominated for Best Cinematography, Black-and- in the Desert in 1949; Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950), The White in 1951 for (1949), 1953 for My Frogmen (1951), and Elephant Walk (1954); While the City Cousin Rachel (1952), 1956 for Marty (1955), 1960 for Career Sleeps and Beyond a Reasonable Doubt in 1956; Curse of the (1959), 1961 for The Apartment (1960), and 1967 for The Demon (1957); The Crowded Sky and Fortune Cookie (1966). In 1964, he was nominated for Best (TV Series) in 1960; Madison Avenue (1961); The Dick Powell Cinematography, Color for Irma la Douce (1963), and he shared Theatre (1962-1963, TV Series); In Harm's Way, Crack in the a nomination in the same category with William H. Daniels, World, The Loved One, and Battle of the Bulge in 1965; Johnny Milton R. Krasner, and Charles Lang for How the West Was Won Reno (1966), The Ten Million Dollar Grab (1967), Night Gallery (1962). He also did cinematography for films such as: Happy (1971, TV Series), Innocent Bystanders (1972), Land (1943); Bermuda Mystery and Take It or Leave It in 1944; (1974), The Last Tycoon (1976), Good Guys Wear Black (1978), and Fallen Angel in 1945; Cluny Brown (1946); Ike: The War Years (1979, TV Mini-Series), The Pilot (1980), The Late George Apley, The Foxes of Harrow and Captain from Falcon Crest (1982-1983, TV Series), and Prince Jack (1984). Castile in 1947; Road House (1948); The Fan and Everybody Does It in 1949; Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950) and Mr. Belvedere Rings the Bell (1951); The Outcasts of Poker Flat and Les Miserables in 1952; (1954); My Friend Flicka (1955, TV Series); The Conqueror and Our Miss Brooks in 1956; The Bachelor Party and I Was a Teenage Werewolf in 1957; The Long, Hot Summer and The Naked and the Dead in 1958; The Outsider (1961), A Child Is Waiting (1963), and Kiss Me, Stupid (1964); 7 Women and The Chase in 1966; and 80 Steps to Jonah (1969).

LUCIEN BALLARD (b. May 6, 1904 in Miami, Oklahoma—d. October 1, 1988 (age 84) in Rancho Mirage, California) did cinematography for 150 films and television series. In 1964, he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Cinematography, Black-and-White for The Caretakers (1963). Some of his other film and television credits include: Morocco (1930); The Devil Is a Woman and Crime and Punishment in 1935; The King Steps Out (1936); Devil's Playground, Venus Makes Trouble, and The Shadow in 1937; Penitentiary and Rio GENE TIERNEY (b. November 19, 1920 in , New Grande in 1938; Stampede (1939) and The Outlaw (1943); York City, New York—d. November 6, 1991 (age 70) in The Lodger, Sweet and Low-Down, and Laura in 1944; This Love , Texas) acted in 41 films and television series. She was of Ours (1945), Berlin Express (1948), The House on Telegraph nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress in a Leading Hill (1951), Don't Bother to Knock (1952), The Desert Rats Role in 1946 for her role in (1945). Some (1953), and White Feather (1955); A Kiss Before Dying, The of her other acting credits include: The Return of Frank James Killing, and The King and Four Queens in 1956; Anna Lucasta (1940); Hudson's Bay, Tobacco Road, , and Sundown (1958) and Al Capone (1959); The Rise and Fall of Legs in 1941; Thunder Birds: Soldiers of the Air and China Girl in Diamond and The Detectives (TV Series) in 1960; Walt Disney's 1942; Heaven Can Wait (1943), Laura (1944), and A Bell for Wonderful World of Color (1959-1961, TV Series); Ride the Adano (1945); Dragonwyck and The Razor's Edge in 1946; The High Country (1962); The Dick Powell Theatre (1961-1963, TV Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947); The Iron Curtain and That Series); Take Her, She's Mine (1963), The Sons of Katie Elder Wonderful Urge in 1948; Whirlpool, , and (1965), Nevada Smith (1966), and Will Penny (1967); True Grit Where the Sidewalk Ends in 1950; The Mating Season, On the and The Wild Bunch in 1969; The Ballad of Cable Hogue (1970); Riviera, and Close to My Heart in 1951; Junior Bonner and The Getaway in 1972; St. Ives and From (1952); The Egyptian and Black Widow in 1954; The Left Hand Noon Till Three in 1976; My Kingdom For... (1985, of God (1955) and Advise & Consent (1962); Toys in the Attic Documentary). and Four Nights of the Full Moon in 1963; The F.B.I. (TV Series) and Daughter of the Mind (TV Movie) in 1969; Scruples DANA ANDREWS (b. January 1, 1909 in Covington County, (1980, TV Mini-Series). —d. December 17, 1992 (age 83) in Los Alamitos, California) acted in 105 films and television series, including: CLIFTON WEBB (b. November 19, 1889 in Indianapolis, Lucky Cisco Kid, , and The Westerner in 1940; Indiana—d. October 13, 1966 (age 76) in Beverly Hills, Los Tobacco Road, Belle Starr, , and in Angeles, California) appeared in 27 films. He was once 1941; Berlin Correspondent (1942); , The Ox-Bow nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Incident, The North Star, and December 7th in 1943; , Role in 1949 for Sitting Pretty (1948) and was nominated twice , Wing and a Prayer, and Laura in 1944; State for Best Actor in a Supporting Role in 1945 and 1947 for Laura Fair, Fallen Angel, and A Walk in the Sun in 1945; The Best (1944) and The Razor's Edge (1946), respectively. Some of his Years of Our Lives (1946); Boomerang! and in other films are: National Red Cross Pageant (1917), Polly with a 1947; The Iron Curtain (1948); The Forbidden Street and Sword Past (1920), and Let Not Man Put Asunder (1924); New Toys and Preminger—LAURA—3

The Heart of a Siren in 1925; (1946) and Mr. (1956), and Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958); Macbeth (TV Movie) Belvedere Goes to College (1949); and and Cinderfella in 1960; Why Bother to Knock (1961), Elizabeth For Heaven's Sake in 1950; Mr. Belvedere Rings the Bell and the Queen (1968, TV Movie), A Man Called Horse (1970), Elopement in 1951; Belles on Their Toes, Dreamboat, and Stars Medea (1983, TV Movie), Star Trek III: The Search for Spock and Stripes Forever in 1952; Titanic and Mister Scoutmaster in (1984), and Impure Thoughts (1985); Santa Barbara (1984-1987, 1953; Three Coins in the Fountain and Woman's World in 1954; TV Series). (1956) and (1957); The Remarkable Mr. Pennypacker and in 1959; and Satan Never Sleeps (1962).

VINCENT PRICE (b. May 27, 1911 in St. Louis, Missouri—d. October 25, 1993 (age 82) in Los Angeles, California) appeared in scores of television programs and series throughout his career, beginning with the 1949 short, The Christmas Carol. He made his first foray into the horror genre with Boris Karloff in 1939’s Tower of London. Subsequently, he would appear in The Invisible Man Returns (1940), a role he reprised in a vocal cameo at the end of the horror-comedy spoof Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948). He further cemented his iconic status in horror in the 1950s, appearing in House of Wax (1953) and (1958). In the last decade of his long, prolific career, his status as a horror icon made him the natural choice to narrate Michael Jackson’s 1983 video short Michael Jackson: Thriller and to appear as the creator of the title character in Tim Burton’s OTTO (LUDWIG) PREMINGER. FROM WORLD FILM 1990 film Edward Scissorhands. Here are some other selections DIRECTORS, VOL. I. Edited by John Wakeman. The H. W from Price’s long and prolific career: Service de Luxe (1938) and Wilson Company, NY, 1987. Entry by Patricia Dowell The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939); Green Hell, The House of the Seven Gables, and Brigham Young in 1940; (December 5, 1905 or 1906—April 23, 1986), American director, Hudson's Bay (1941) and The Song of Bernadette (1943); The producer, and actor, said in his autobiography that “one set of Eve of St. Mark, Wilson, Laura, and The Keys of the Kingdom in documents lists as his birthplace but another set…places 1944; A Royal Scandal and Leave Her to Heaven in 1945; my birth at my great grandfather’s farm some distance away.. Dragonwyck (1946), Forever Amber (1947), and The Three One records that I was born on the fifth of December, 1906, the Musketeers (1948); Bagdad and The Baron of Arizona (1950); other exactly one year earlier.” It was an appropriate beginning Serenade, While the City Sleeps, The Vagabond King, and The for a man so fond of ambiguity. Ten Commandments in 1956; The Tingler, Return of the Fly, and His father, Markus Preminger, was a well-known The Bat in 1959; House of Usher (1960) and Pit and the lawyer, chief prosecutor for the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Pendulum (1961); Confessions of an Opium Eater and Tales of then for the imperial army, unusually high positions for a Jew in Terror in 1962; The Raven, Diary of a Madman, and The that anti-Semitic society. Josepha Fraenkel, Preminger’s mother, Haunted Palace in 1963; The Last Man on Earth, The Masque of described by him as “sweet, warm-hearted, and easily worried,” the Red Death, and The Tomb of Ligeia in 1964; Batman (1966- was the daughter of a lumberyard owner. Otto was her first child, 1967, TV Series); Spirits of the Dead (1968); An Evening of followed by another son, Ingo, five years later. Preminger’s Edgar Allan Poe and Scream and Scream Again in 1970; Theater childhood was a privileged and happy one. He said that he “had a of Blood and Columbo (TV Series) in 1973; Madhouse and It's wonderful relationship” with his father: “We were like two Not the Size That Counts in 1974; The Love Boat (1978, TV brothers.” A loyal monarchist, Markus Preminger left public Series); I Go Pogo (1980), The 13 Ghosts of Scooby-Doo (1985, office with the consolidation of the Austrian republic after World TV Series), The Whales of August (1987), Dead Heat (1988), and War I, beginning a lucrative private practice in Vienna. The Thief and the Cobbler (1993). The city’s rich cultural life in the 1920s was far more attractive to Preminger than the study of law, to which his family JUDITH ANDERSON (b. February 10, 1897 in Adelaide, urged him. He dreamed of acting from the age of nine, and made South Australia, Australia—d. January 3, 1992 (age 94) in Santa his stage debut at twelve, the only child among adults at a poetry Barbara, California) was nominated, in 1941, for an Academy reading, Preminger spent his time writing and learning poetry, Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Rebecca (1940). memorizing dramatic speeches and angling for stage parts. His She acted in 56 films and television series, some of which are: father, though he was dismayed by the boy’s outlandish Madame of the Jury (1930, Short), Blood Money (1933), and ambitions, simply asked him to get his law degree first. Lady Scarface (1941); All Through the Night and in Preminger did no such thing. While he was still at 1942; Edge of Darkness and Stage Door Canteen in 1943; Laura school he auditioned for the great and was taken (1944) and And Then There Were None (1945); The Diary of a on as an apprentice at the Josefstadt, the beautiful old theatre Chambermaid, The Strange Love of Martha Ivers, and Specter of Reinhardt and lavishly furnished in Vienna. As the Rose in 1946; Pursued and The Red House in 1947; Salome Preminger told Gerald Pratley (The Cinema of Otto (1953), Macbeth (1954, TV Movie), The Ten Commandments Preminger,1971) Reinhardt opened the Josefstadt in 1924 with Preminger—LAURA—4

Goldoni’s Servant of Two Masters. There was no curtain “and learning English at once, and sailed for New York on October the scene changes were effected by…young actors who carried 16, 1939. out furniture….I was one of [them. That as my first acting job. I On the Normandie he met the American producer also played the part of Lysander in A Midsummer Night’s Gilbert Miller, an old friend, and arranged to stay in New York Dream….That was not Reinhardt—it was done by somebody long enough to direct Libel, an English play he had staged at the else…I stayed in the theatre, playing a few more small parts, and Josefstadt. Preminger was “absolutely overwhelmed” by New then became bored and took on a job to go to Prague where there York and always loved it “more than any city in the world.” With was German theatre.” his unerring instinct for the better things in life, he went straight After Prague, Preminger moved on to Zurich, but his from the boat to 21, the fashionable midtown restaurant that was career as a juvenile was increasingly handicapped by premature to be his East Coast headquarters for half a century. Libel opened baldness, a condition he eventually in December 1935 at the Henry Miller adopted as his trademark. In 1925 he Theatre and ran for 159 performances. joined the German theatre in Aussig (now Preminger arrived in Hollywood in in Czechoslovakia) and asked to be January 1936 and was joined there by his allowed to direct….Finding that he wife, who became a well-known hostess in preferred directing to acting, Preminger New York and Hollywood. For eight returned to Vienna, where he launched a months Preminger studied the process of theatre of his own, the Kömedia, and then, making films on the sound stages of 20th after two years, another—the Century-Fox, then was assigned Under Schauspielehaus—“ in a huge building, a Your Spell (1936), a routine musical popular theatre with very low prices.” comedy starring the singer Lawrence Simultaneously he pursued his legal Tibbett, whose first film had bombed but studies at the University of Vienna and, who refused to be parted from his contract. after flunking once, earned his law degree. Danger, Love at Work (1937) bought Having made something of a Preminger’s first clash with the autocratic reputation, Preminger was invited back as Darryl F. Zanuck, who wanted his young an assistant director to the theatre where he protégée to star in his had begun his acting career, Max about an eccentric Reinhardt’s Josefstadt. He had his first family. Preminger insisted that the French great success in 1931 as director of a play actress couldn’t handle the script’s rapid- called Voruntersuchung (Preliminary fire wisecracks and won, winding up with Inquiry), following this the same year with an adaptation of Ann Southern and a success. Preminger’s next falling-out with Hecht and McArthur’s The Front Page. It featured a young Zanuck cost him his job and almost his career. He was assigned actress called Marion Mill who had come to Preminger in great an expensive production of ’s distress, seeking his legal advice in a breach-of-contract sui Kidnapped. Knowing nothing about Stevenson or Scotland, brought against her by a nightclub owner. In his only recorded where the film was set, Preminger wanted to turn the assignment action as a lawyer, Preminger helped her settle the case. He also down but was warned not to. Within a week he had had a gave Marion Mill a par tin The Front Page, and, the following shouting match with Zanuck over the script and had been year, married her. replaced by Alfred Werker. Preminger had meanwhile directed his first film, Die Preminger was sill under contract, but Zanuck gave him Grosse Liebe (The Great Love, 1931), based on a true story about no work. Schenck would not see him and no other studio would a returning veteran of and a woman who believes hire him. Preminger returned to his beloved New York, worked him to be her son….For all its great prestige the Josefstadt at this on his English, and resumed his career as a stage director. At point was losing money. Reinhardt went into semi-retirement about this time, his parents joined him in the , after the 1932-1933 season, and Preminger, still in his mid- having escaped from Vienna by the skin of their teeth as Hitler twenties, took over as director, making the theatre once more a arrived there. Between 1938 and 1941 Preminger directed seven paying proposition with a series of mostly contemporary plays plays, including ’s triumphant comeback in and musical comedies. Preminger told Gerald Pratley that during Sutton Vane’s Outward Bound. this period he was invited to become head of the State Theatre in One of the most successful of these stage productions Vienna, “a tremendous honor for a young man.” The only was Claire Booth Luce’s play Margin of Error. Because of the condition was that he would have to convert to Catholicism— defection of another actor, Preminger was obliged at the last “just a formality.” Although Preminger never went to any moment to take the role of a bullying Nazi consul. He received [Jewish] religious prayers or services,” he refused, and his excellent reviews, and was then invited by the writer-producer contract was torn up. to return to 20th Century-Fox as an actor, Then “one day a man from America came to Vienna playing a Nazi officer in The Pied Piper. Zanuck was overseas called Joseph Schenck….He had just merged a small company with the army, the coast was clear, and Preminger agreed. Fox —20th Century—with Fox, and he needed young people.” wanted him to repeat his role in their film version of Margin for Schenck knew of Preminger’s reputation and invited him to Error. Preminger saw his chance to direct again and carved out a Hollywood. “It was a very old dream of mine,” Preminger said, deal with , who was heading the studio in “and nothing to do with Hitler, to go to America.” He started Zanuck’s absence. He offered to act in and direct the film for his Preminger—LAURA—5 actor’s fee alone, undertaking to step down as director if Goetz “Preminger’s Citizen Kane, at least in the sense that Otto’s was not pleased with his first week’s work; Goetz could hardly detractors, like Orson’s, have never let him live it down.” refuse. Though uncredited, the director claimed that he had rewritten the script into a tighter and more When Preminger suspenseful shape; He read the screenplay, however, convincingly evoked a social he found it was “awful.” At milieu he himself knew well. his own expense, he hired a Under his direction, such young novelist on leave from unresponsive players as Tierney the army to help him revise and Andrews gave of their best, the script—the future director while Vincent Price (as Laura’s Samuel Fuller. The film is a fiancé) and Judith Anderson (as comedy-thriller in which a her aunt) were restrained from Jewish policeman (Milton chewing the scenery. The vein of Berle) in an American city is dark sardonic humor that given the distasteful job of Preminger had discovered in protecting a tyrannical Clifton Webb carried that aging German consul (Preminger) musical comedy performer to an who is eventually murdered. Oscar as best supporting actor and Goetz was delighted with the first rushes, and Preminger wound launched him on a new career. Added to all this was the haunting up with a contract as actor, director and producer. The film was title ballad by David Raksin, who worked on many of generally well-received, described by G.E. Blackford as “a good Preminger’s subsequent films at Fox. movie—entertaining, amusing and sufficiently melodramatic in The film was a major financial success, garnering an its melodramatic moments.” Oscar for Joseph LaShelle’s dreamlike cinematography and a At this point Zanuck returned from the army, picking up nomination or Preminger’s direction. Laura introduced many of his fight with Preminger where he had left off seven years before the themes and motifs that characterize Preminger’s work. Waldo and assuring him that he would “never direct again.” Assigned as Lydecker remained the most memorable of his “grotesques,” as a producer to B movies, Preminger found a story he liked called Molly Haskell called them—characters who might be alter egos Laura, based on a mystery novel by Vera Caspary. In Gerald of the director himself “with their droll, shaggy-dog impertinence Pratley’s book, Preminger gives a detailed account of his long that is never quite domesticated by the main plot.” And Gene struggle to overcome the studio’s dislike of the script and Tierney’s Laura is the first of Preminger’s enigmatic women, opposition to his casting in it of Clifton Webb. By the risky “never more mysterious” in Haskell’s words “than when they process of appealing directly to Zanuck, whose professionalism meet, in the mirror, their own impassive gaze, revealing all and overcame his pique, he won both battles. After further conflict nothing.” Above all, there was a certain moral objectivity or between Preminger as producer and Robert Mamoulian, the neutrality in Preminger’s direction—a quality that increasingly assigned director, Zanuck took the latter of the picture and gave exercised the critics, disliked by some, admired by others as the it to Preminger to direct. Laura’s troubles were still not over. source of what Haskell called “a disconcerting autonomous Zanuck was unhappy with the rough cut and demanded a new reality.” ending; the situation was only saved by the columnist Walter Laura established Preminger’s international reputation Winchell, who sat in on a screening and pronounced the movie also. In Britain, Campbell Dixon aid it as “one of the best “big-time.” thrillers ever made” and called Preminger’s direction Laura (1944) begins with a dark screen and the voice of “superb in its timing and understatement.” A French critic in the effete, acidly witty columnist Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Revue du Cinéma wrote: “The characters in Laura—the situation Webb): “I shall never forget the weekend Laura died.” The is rare—have a real existence….In the final analysis, it matters beautiful socialite Laura Hunt (Gene Tierney) has been little that the story is a detective story. Laura could also be put in murdered, disfigured beyond recognition by a shotgun blast. a family or love story without in any way altering her destiny as Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews), the glum detective an attractive and troubling girl who does nothing either to investigating the case, is entranced by her portrait, her favorite provoke or retain men and who only very soberly profits from record, her perfume. As he uncovers ever more decadence and her gifts in order to protect herself....The miracle is to have corruption in her glittering world, he becomes obsessed with this brought her to life.” dead woman who will never be his—until one day she walks in ...Preminger’s growing reputation as a tyrant on the set on him as he gazes at her image. It emerges that another woman was confirmed by a story about an unfortunate bit player…who has been killed in Laura’s place while she was away. Blundering froze under his direction and could not speak his lines. When into her own murder investigation, she becomes a suspect. As in haranguing him to no effect, Preminger reportedly grabbed the many a , the detective must discover the true nature of man by the shoulders and shook him like a doll, shouting into his the beauty that fascinates him and which has also entice a face: “Relax! Relax! Relax!” killer—Waldo Lydecker, Laura’s Pygmalion, whose unrequited Not everyone thought Preminger a backstage bully— love for his “creation” has finally claimed his sanity. Gene Tierney said “he could charm you and intimidate you at the Laura is no doubt Preminger’s best-remembered film. same time”—but accounts of his infamous temper followed him Andrew Sarris, his principal American champion, called it throughout his career. His admirers tended to regard his temper Preminger—LAURA—6 as the mark of a perfectionist, which he indeed as. Tierney The last of his “Fox quintet” was in fact made on loan to recounts how he rejected a full-length portrait of her RKO. In Angel Face (1952), replaced Dana commissioned for Laura and instead sent her to be photographed Andrews as the ambiguous Preminger hero….The last film by a studio glamor Preminger made on his Fox contract specialist. The photo was was River of No Return (1954), a then brushed with paint to and so an unusual choice make it look like a portrait for this intensely urban and in oils…. theatrical sensibility. Marilyn Preminger was Monroe and Robert Mitchum star as more at home with…the a saloon singer and a widowed second film in what has farmer thrown together in the been called his “Fox wilderness, where they try to make quintet,” of notable their way down a raging river (with melodramas. Like the first, Mitchum’s son in tow) so that Laura, it starred Dana Mitchum can settle accounts with Andrews, “the ideal Monroe’s no-good husband who Preminger hero, whose bushwhacked him and left him for presence encourages moral dead. It was Preminger’s first uncertainty.” Jonathan exercise in widescreen aesthetics, Rosenbaum, writing in indeed the first Cinemascope Richard Roud’s Cinema: A Western, and André Bazin, for one, Critical Dictionary, points out that Preminger’s narrative lines said that it was the “one film in Cinemascope that added are strewn with deceptive counterpaths, shifting viewpoints, anything of importance to the mise-en-scène.” … ambiguous characters who perpetually slip out of static By the time Preminger made this Western he was categories and moral definitions….Preminger frequently already an independent producer, His first project was a film mystifies the spectator who is looking for a fixed moral largely remembered for its historical significance—The Moon is reference.”… Blue (1953), hisinnocuous comedy of misunderstanding that Daisy Kenyon (1947) is one o the surprising number of Preminger had successfully directed on the stage. Adapted and Preminger films that the director claims not to remember “at all.” co-produced by the play’s author, F. Hugh Herbert, the movie He explained to Gerald Pratley that “part of my makeup or starred , , and Maggie McNamara, character, perhaps part of my self-education is that I don’t collect and was set mostly in the Holden character’s bachelor apartment any old reviews, scrapbooks, anything. I always try to finish The Breen Office of the Motion Picture Association of America whatever I have to do and go on to something new. This is insisted that six lines of the finished film be changed to qualify perhaps an almost neurotic fear of being caught up in the past. I for the Production Seal (without which, it as assumed, no movie feel that in order to be able to work I need to forget what I have theatre would book the film). The forbidden words were done.” “virgin,” “pregnant,” and “seduce,” and the Breen Office Daisy Kenyon () is torn between an objected also to the line “You are shallow, cynical, selfish, and ambitious (and married) lawyer (Dana Andrews) and a sensitive immoral, and I like you!” It was for just such a confrontation that shell-shocked yacht designer (). Here again are the Preminger had gone independent, and his contract with his themes of Laura and Fallen Angel—sexual obsession, distributor, , gave him final cut. He refused to redemptive love, the forces of light and darkness embodied in make the changes, saying afterwards, “I am not a crusader or competing lovers. Dismissed at the time, the movie has acquired anything like that, but it gives me great pleasure to fight or my something of cult reputation. Jonathan Rosenbaum rights.” describes it as a “stately soap opera with something of the Without a Production Seal or much of a recommendation ambiance of a film noir.” Another writer has gone so far as to call from the reviewers, The Moon is Blue played, according to it “arguably the masterpiece of this period,” and Godard inserted Preminger, in something like eight or nine thousand theatres in a characteristic hommage in his Made in the U.S.A. where a the US” and grossed over $6 million. This coup left the loudspeaker can be heard paging Daisy Kenyon…. industry’s antiquated self-censorship apparatus in disarray, Things picked up when Preminger returned to the film contributing to the sweeping revision of the Code in 1966. Otto noir and the psychology of obsession in Whirlpool (1949), based Preminger became a household name, a development he relished on a novel by and scripted by under the an shrewdly used to promote his films. pseudonym Lester Barlow….Fifteen years after their first During the 1950s, Preminger gravitated towards appearance, Preminger’s “Fox quintet” were the subject of much productions on a much grander scale than the films he had made critical controversy. Andrew Sarris posited them as evidence of at Fox. Carmen Jones (1954) was an updating to World War II of the director’s right to auteur status, a claim hotly contested by Bizet’s opera Carmen. The all-black cast was headed by Dorothy Pauline Kael. She particularly disliked Whirlpool, which she Dandrige as the beautiful factory worker, as the called an “atrocity,” while Sarris placed it among Preminger’s soldier destroyed by his love for her. The film has elicited best films—“all moodily fluid studies in perverse ambiguous praise from Preminger admirers. Sarris wrote that it psychology.”… “succeeds o its own questionable terms as the Preminger musical par excellence—drab, austere, and completely depoeticized.” Preminger—LAURA—7

Preminger bolstered his reputation as an Porgy and Bess (1959), like Carmen Jones, was a uncompromising purveyor of controversial subjects with The musical with an all-black cast. Based on Gershwin’s “folk Man With the Golden Arm (1955), in which drug addiction, a opera,” it had Sidney Poitier as Porgy, as strictly taboo subject, was treated frankly on the screen for the Bess, and Sammy Davis Junior as the corrupt and corrupting first time. played the hero of ’s Sportin’ Life….The film was a flop…. novel, a musician fighting the ravages of heroin…. Preminger’s legal training and family background have At this point Preminger turned his attention to various often been suggested as the source of his fondness for courtroom social institutions, in a cycle of films that occupied him for over dramas and perhaps also of his relativistic view of life. Both a decade. He began with the army, elements were prominent in in The Court Martial of Billy (1959), Mitchell (1955), which starred adapted by Wendell Mayes from as the maverick the novel by Robert Traver, and World War I general who with a jazz score commissioned sacrificed his own career in an from . James attempt to persuade the army that Stewart stars as a canny country air power was the only hope for lawyer who takes on the city military su0premacy in the future. slickers in a sensational murder The static courtroom drama, which trial. His client is an army exposed the inflexibility of the lieutenant () who has military, gave Preminger an killed a bartender, claiming that opportunity to indulge his legal he did so because the man had training and his penchanct for raped and beaten his wife (Lee relying on mise-en-scène rather Remick). The defense looks more than montage. “This is another of and more shaky as it emerges that my independent films when I was the lieutenant has a history of not entirely independent and had a producer [Milton Sperling]. I violence, his wife of promiscuity, but in the end the lawyer in the was asked to do it.” case with a plea of “irresistible impulse.” When he calls for his In 1956, having acquired the rights to George Bernard fee, he finds a note explaining that his client had succumbed to Shaw’s play Saint Joan, Preminger launched a well-publicized an irresistible impulse to get out of town. search for a talented unknown to play the Maid, settling finally The utterly frank discussion of rape in Anatomy of on impressionable Iowa teenager who embarked on Murder again made history, making the Production Code even a sometimes brilliant but ultimately destructive acting career by more of an anachronism. Preminger also successfully challenged starting at the top. wrote the screenplay, and the prevailing notion that the proper length for a non-epic was designed the first of his distinctive title logos, ninety minutes, sustaining the film’s tension for nearly three henceforth a Preminger trademark. scene was singled hours. Moreover, by raising doubts about the innocence of the out for praise, but for all its pageantry and publicity, Saint Joan defendant, Preminger put the audience—as David Thomson was a flop. pointed out—in the position of the jury: the workings of the film Seberg appeared again in Bonjour Tristesse (1957), as location became the due process of law.” Anatomy of a Murder Cécile, the spoiled daughter of Raymond, a wealthy widower received six Oscar nominations (including best picture) and is (David Niven) pursuing his pleasures . When ranked by some critics even above Laura. When Anatomy was Raymond is attracted to Anne () who criticizes sold for television, the director himself lost a landmark lawsuit to Cécile’s abominable behavior, the girl casually plots to thwart prevent the network from editing his film, arguing that his their romance, and succeeds. Tragedy follows when Anne, contract assured him of final cut. However, in a later battle, distraught, is killed in an auto accident. Raymond and Cécile Preminger did win some concessions from CBS over the editing. resume the round of cocktail parties and nightclubs, but the old Jean-Pierre Coursodon has written persuasively about pleasures seem empty now, soured by unspoken quiet. The story the stylistic transition Preminger made from his Fox period to his is told in flashback by Cécile during the winter after the events. independent work, and how Anatomy of a Murder typifies the Preminger filmed the past—Cécile’s memories—in color, and concerns of the later period while keeping faith with the former. the present in black and white. “I’m not particularly fond of The later films “may seem to be the exact opposite of his earlier flashbacks. I probably tried to make it more agreeable or works as hey represent efforts—often doomed, albeit stunning— interesting by doing that,” he explained to Peter Bogdanovich…. to piece together multitudes of fragments, whereas the Fox films In 1958 Preminger ended his “forgettable ” (as had been prime examples of self-contained tightness. Still, there he called it) and married Patricia Hope Bryce, the fashion is a logic in what could be called Preminger’s evolution from a coordinator on Bonjour Tristesse. They had twin sons in 1960. It microscopic to a macrocosmic vision. His commitment to an was to be Preminger’ last and happiest marriage, though he did impartial, detached outlook was bound to lead him to projects of add another son to his family. In 1971, after the death of Gypsy increasingly broader scope, encompassing as many characters, Rose Lee. He revealed that he was the father of her twenty-six- episodes, and points of view as possible, so that the issues year-old son, Erik Kirkland, and adopted him. Kirkland changed involved…might be deal with as fairly as possible.” his name to Eric Lee Preminger and worked for his father as a Macrocosmic indeed were his next four films. Exodus writer and associate producer. (1960) followed the travails of Jews fighting for a homeland in Preminger—LAURA—8

Palestine. Paul Newman played the rugged hero who attracts a Gentile widow () to his cause. Preminger made headlines again when he ignored the industry’s fading McCarthyite blacklist and credited for the screenplay, adapted from the novel by Leon Uris. Exodus was long, popular, and received by most critics with skepticism or rage. “Preminger’s matzoh opera” was one comment, and Gideon Bachmann wrote that “for one who had lived through that period and that time in that place, Exodus is sacrilege.” It has not weathered the passage of time with as much grace as Preminger’s next film. One of Preminger’s great understated virtues in Advise and Consent is clarity—the pristine sharpness and intelligibility with which he handles complex materials,” Molly Haskell wrote of this 1962 film, based on a novel by . It is the story of the machinations behind a presidential appointee’s interrogation by the Senate. Suicide, homosexuality, : “Laura” (Roger Ebert Great Movie Reviews, demagoguery, and unbridled ambition, and the closing of the 2002) ranks of the old guard all figure in the plot. Once again Preminger shifts between several points of view… I've seen Otto Preminger's “Laura” three or four times, but the Coursodon felt considerable reservation about the identity of the murderer doesn't spring quickly to mind. That's subsequent blockbusters of this Preminger period. The Cardinal, not because the guilty person is forgettable but because the In Harm’s Way, and Hurry Sundown: “each is great in parts, and identity is so arbitrary: It is not necessarythat the murderer be the a failure as a whole” Each as also sensationally publicized, as murderer. Three or four other characters would have done as Preminger maintained his high profile…. well, and indeed if it were not for Walter Winchell we would Only one of the director’s late films (Bunny Lake is have another ending altogether. More about that later. Missing 1965) has captured the imagination of the critics, and Film noir is known for its convoluted plots and arbitrary that primarily in retrospect, as is so often the case with twists, but even in a genre that gave us “The Maltese Falcon,” Preminger. … this takes some kind of prize. “Laura” (1944) has a detective who Preminger manages to surprise all those who had never goes to the station; a suspect who is invited to tag along as written him off with his last film, The Human Factor (1979), an other suspects are interrogated; a heroine who is dead for most of intimate political drama adapted by Tom Stoppard from Graham the film; a man insanely jealous of a woman even though he Greene’s novel about a minor Secret Service functionary, Castle, never for a moment seems heterosexual; a romantic lead who is a who long ago became a double agent our of gratitude for the dull-witted Kentucky bumpkin moving in penthouse rescue of his black African wife by a communist friend…. society, and a murder weapon that is returned to its hiding place One of the most visible of Hollywood directors, by the cop, who will “come by for it in the morning.” The only Preminger became well-known to the public as an independent nude scene involves the jealous man and the cop. producer-director in the 1950s, and was also known for his That “Laura” continues to weave a spell -- and it does -- occasional appearances as an actor, most famously as the is a tribute to style over sanity. No doubt the famous musical concentration camp commander in ’s Stalag 17. theme by David Raksin has something to do with it: The music Preminger was noted not only for his distinctive personal style lends a haunted, nostalgic, regretful cast to everything it plays and marketing genius, but for his choice of controversial subject under, and it plays under a lot. There is also Clifton Webb's matter and his stubborn challenges to political and censorship narration, measured, precise, a little mad: “I shall never forget taboos. His high profile in the film industry made him a the weekend Laura died. A silver sun burned through the sky like controversial figure to critics as well. ”His enemies have never a huge magnifying glass. It was the hottest Sunday in my forgiven him for being a director with the personality of a recollection. I felt as if I were the only human being left in New producer.,” Sarris writes. He enjoyed high esteem among York. For Laura's horrible death, I was alone. I, Waldo Lydecker, proponents of auteur theory, was a favorite in France of the New was the only one who really knew her.” Wave critic-directors and in England of the academics clustered It is Clifton Webb's performance as Waldo Lydecker around the influential magazine Movie… that stands at the heart of the film, with Vincent Price, as Laura's Few directors so divide critics into fanatics and foe, fiancee Shelby Carpenter, nibbling at the edges like an eager although even Preminger’s most ardent defenders concede that spaniel. Both actors, and Judith Anderson as a neurotic friend, his later films display regrettable excesses and failures of create characters who have no reality except their own, which is imagination Nevertheless, Sarris wrote upon the director’s death good enough for them. The hero and heroine, on the other hand, that he thought he had underestimated his career, that only are cardboard. Gene Tierney, as Laura, is gorgeous, has perfect Rosebud “seems utterly beyond revisionism” and suggested that features, looks great in the stills, but never seems emotionally “a massive reevaluation seems in order on both thematic and involved; her work in “Leave Her to Heaven” (1945) is stronger, stylistic fronts.” deeper, more convincing. Dana Andrews, as Detective Mark McPherson, stands straight, chain-smokes, speaks in a monotone, and reminded the studio head Daryl F. Zanuck of “an Preminger—LAURA—9 agreeable schoolboy.” As actors, Tierney and Andrews basically interviews suspects; murder is his “favorite crime,” and “I like to play eyewitnesses to scene-stealing by Webb and Price. study their reactions.” Astonishingly, McPherson lets him. This This was Clifton Webb's first big starring role and his is useful from a screenplay point of view, since otherwise first movie role of any kind since 1930. He was a stage actor who McPherson would be mostly alone. refused the studio's demand for a screen test; Otto Preminger, All of these absurdities and improbabilities somehow do who began by producing the film and ended by directing it, in not diminish the film's appeal. They may even add to it. Some of desperation filmed Webb on a Broadway stage and showed that the lines have become unintentionally funny, James Naremore to Zanuck. “He doesn't walk, he flies,” an underling told Zanuck, writes in More than Night: Film Noir in its Contexts,”Where but Webb, who had a mannered camp style, impressed Zanuck 'Laura' is concerned, the camp effect is at least partly intended-- and got the role. Vincent Price creates an accent somewhere any movie that puts Clifton Webb, Judith Anderson and Vincent between Kentucky and Transylvania for his character, who is tall Price in the same drawing room is inviting a mood of fey and healthy and inspires Waldo Lydecker to complain to Laura: theatricality.” “With you, a lean strong body is the measure of a man.” The story of Preminger's struggle to get the movie made Lydecker is lean but not strong. Webb was 55 when he has become Hollywood legend. As he tells it in his played the role, Tierney 24. A similar age difference was no autobiography, Zanuck saw him as a producer, not a director, and problem for Bogart and Bacall, but between Webb and Tierney it assigned to the piece. When the early rushes must be said there is not the slightest suggestion of chemistry. He were a disaster, Preminger stepped in, reshot many scenes, is a bachelor critic and columnist (said to be modeled after replaced the sets, and fought for the screenplay. Zanuck insisted Alexander Wolcott), and the first time we see him he is sitting in that another ending be shot; the film was screened for Zanuck his bathtub, typing. This is after Laura's body has been found and his pal Walter Winchell, a real gossip columnist, who said he murdered with shotgun blasts, and the detective comes to didn't understand the ending. So Zanuck let Preminger have his question her closest friend. ending back, and while the business involving the shotgun in the The scene develops with more undercurrents than antique clock may be somewhat labored, the whole film is of a surface, as McPherson enters the bathroom, glances at Lydecker, piece: contrived, artificial, mannered, and yet achieving a kind of seems faintly amused. Then Lydecker swings the typewriter shelf perfection in its balance between low motives and high style. away, so that it shields his nudity from the camera but not from What makes the movie great, perhaps, is the casting. The the detective. Waldo stands up, off screen, and a reaction shot materials of a B-grade crime potboiler are redeemed by Waldo shows McPherson glancing down as Lydecker asks him to pass a Lydecker, walking through every scene as if afraid to step in bathrobe. Every time I see the movie, I wonder what Preminger something. is trying to accomplish with this scene. There is no suggestion that Lydecker is attracted to McPherson, and yet it seems odd to greet a police detective in the nude. Lydecker is Laura's svengali. In flashbacks, we follow the progress of their relationship. He snubs her in the Algonquin dining room, then apologizes, becomes her friend, and takes over her life, chooses her clothes, redoes her hair, introduces her to the right people, promotes her in his column. They spend every night together out on the town, except Tuesdays and Fridays, when Waldo cooks for her at home. Then other men enter the picture, and leave again as Waldo blasts them in his column. Big, dumb Shelby with his lean, strong body is the latest and most serious threat. Considering this Waldo-Shelby-Laura love triangle, it occurs to me that the only way to make it psychologically sound would be to change Laura into a boy. The movie basically consists of well-dressed rich people standing in luxury flats and talking to a cop. The passion is unevenly distributed. Shelby and Laura never seem to have much heat between them. Waldo is possessive of Laura, but never touches her. Ann Treadwell (Anderson), a society dame, lusts for Leslie Gaspar: Disembodied: Waldo Lydecker, the Voice in Shelby but has to tell him or he'd never know. And Detective the Dark in Laura (1944) (Second Sight Cinema, 2016). McPherson develops a crush on the dead woman. There is an extraordinary scene where he enters her apartment at night, looks “McPherson, if you know anything about faces, look at mine. through her letters, touches her dresses, sniffs her perfume, pours How singularly innocent I look this morning. Have you ever seen himself a drink from her bottle and sits down beneath her such candid eyes?” enormous portrait, which is placed immodestly above her own “Laura considered me the wisest, the wittiest, the most fireplace. It's like a date with a ghost. interesting man she’d ever met. I was in complete accord with McPherson's investigation and his ultimate revelations her on that point. She thought me also the kindest, the gentlest, are handled in an offhand way, for a crime picture. He is the most sympathetic man in the world…. McPherson, you won’t forever leading people to believe they're going to be charged, and understand this, but I tried to become the kindest, the gentlest, then backing off. Lydecker asks to tag along as the cop the most sympathetic man in the world.” Preminger—LAURA—10

“Have any luck?” alternating between him squiring her to openings, parties, and “Let me put it this way. I should be sincerely sorry to restaurants, and quiet little dinners at his apartment, just the two see my neighbors’ children devoured by wolves.” of them listening to his records or better, her listening to him Laura is a stealth movie. It sneaks up on you. It’s so read his latest column—he says the way she listens is more beautifully made, its elements so seamlessly woven together that eloquent than speech, and he loves her best as a passive listener it’s possible to watch it a number of times and enjoy it for its with no needs, desires, or voice of her own. formal components—Joseph LaShelle’s Oscar-winning Within the action of the movie, that is, in the wake of cinematography, with its Laura’s murder, Waldo has new impeccably composed shots concerns: fingering Shelby for the and gorgeous lighting; the murder and getting back his clock sharp, clever dialogue of Jay from Laura’s apartment before Dratler, Betty Reinhardt, and McPherson finds the murder Samuel Hoffenstein (adapting weapon Waldo stashed inside its Vera Caspary’s novel), hidden compartment after shooting delivered by the uniformly Laura/Diane. excellent ensemble; Bonnie Here’s a central question Cashin’s costumes, so from which a great deal of bad flattering and chic on both analyses flows: Is Waldo gay? If Gene Tierney and Judith we answer Yes, the story doesn’t Anderson; David Raksin’s make any sense. Robert Ebert’s evocative score, most famous analysis goes down this road and for its haunting title theme; comes back empty, with Ebert and Otto Preminger’s concluding that the movie is all brilliant direction—without feeling the undertow of its style, with which I respectfully disagree. subterranean pull. Laura’s flawless surfaces are seductive, but I too was an unexamined Yes to this question until I that’s the point: The milieu of careless affluence and privilege read Despina Veneti’s and Olivier Eyquem’s reflections on carries with it a kind of rot that infects its characters. Laura’s Waldo at their website Preminger Film Noirs. Some writers go a distinctive finish, like that of its characters, conceals the murky lot further, suggesting that both Shelby Carpenter and Ann depths beneath so successfully that you can love it without letting Treadwell are also gay, while Foster Hirsch says that Laura yourself be pulled into its deeper mysteries. herself may have some “sexual surprises” up her sleeve. Of these last there is not a single shred of evidence in the movie, and even I’m assuming that you, Gentle Reader, have some knowledge of Waldo’s assumed homosexuality hangs on rather flimsy the film, but if you don’t, be advised that there are spoilers a- premises. That Clifton Webb himself was gay is not in dispute. plenty. If you need a plot synopsis you can find one here. At the time of his star-making turn in Laura, Webb was a 55- Waldo Lydecker is our guide to Laura’s underworld, the year-old Broadway veteran, a musical comedy star with no urgent, unexamined desires that drive its characters and story. significant experience in movies or playing drama. Webb had And it is Waldo, the wasp-tongued columnist and radio appeared in a few silents and was briefly under contract to MGM commentator, who bookends the movie, which ends with his last in the ’30s, but they let him languish until his contract ran out, gasp and begins with one of the greatest opening lines ever: and he went back to New York, back to the stage. But to conflate “I shall never forget the weekend Laura died.” Webb’s sexual orientation with Waldo’s is an error, as Despina If the movie itself is very close to impeccable, the points out. Yet that one fact about the actor and a single line in characters are all flawed. Nobody in Laura is clean. Even Laura the film, addressed to Laura just before Waldo tries to kill her for Hunt herself, played by Gene Tierney as a photographic negative the second time (“The best part of myself, that’s what you are”) of the gorgeous monster she portrayed a year later in Leave Her are the poor shreds of evidence that support the idea that Waldo to Heaven, is not completely clean, though she certainly sits at is gay, and while the first is simply irrelevant, the second doesn’t the virtuous end of the continuum along which the other hold up to the slightest scrutiny. characters are arrayed, with Waldo at the far end and McPherson, If Waldo wanted to be Laura, that wouldn’t indicate that Ann Treadwell, and Shelby Carpenter somewhere in between. he’s gay—gay men don’t want to be women. Nobody has yet Laura’s sin is one of omission, and it kills Diane Redfern and in suggested that Waldo was transgender, but I’m sure that notion is the end almost kills Laura as well. She couldn’t bring herself to already in some critic’s pipeline. No, Waldo wants to be the turn away from Waldo, who had done so much for her. It would person he thinks Laura thinks he is—“the kindest, gentlest, most have been awkward within their shared social circle. And as sympathetic man in the world”: He knows he’s none of those Laura knows all too well, Waldo does not let his enemies go in things, but under Laura’s compassionate gaze he can pretend that peace. So she tried to find a middle path, to begin to build a life he is both lovable and capable of loving. As long as Laura stays for herself while keeping Waldo as a close friend. within the airless precincts of their relationship, Waldo can Let’s talk about Waldo. He’d like that. Waldo talks a perpetuate his illusion that she is his creation rather than an great deal about himself. He also thinks a lot about himself, his autonomous person whose feelings he cannot control. But while obsession with Laura, Laura’s obsession with handsome men, Preminger’s Laura, lighter than air and very different from the how he can disentangle her from the latest one, and how he can character as Caspary originally wrote her, has less substance than restore their normal routine, an unending series of evenings any of the movie’s other principal characters, she still has desires Preminger—LAURA—11 of her own, and these threaten Waldo enough to go on the attack. McPherson points out to Waldo that two years before, Waldo had The first threat was Jacoby, the handsome artist who painted reported in a book review that a man was murdered by the same Laura’s portrait and fell in love with her. Waldo dispatched him means as Laura, a double barrel of buckshot to the face, but that via a hatchet job in his column. Waldo’s second rival, Southern the guy was actually killed with a sash weight, Waldo says, ne’er-do-well slime ball Shelby “How ordinary. My version Carpenter, offers abundant dirt was obviously superior.” That’s for Waldo to use against him, how it is with him—the reality but Laura doesn’t ditch him fast of being Waldo is unendurable, enough, and Waldo’s frustration so he obsessively rewrites and bitterness finally boil over reality. And the imaginary life into homicidal rage. he chronicles is as fragile as his “I shall never forget the priceless collection of glass. weekend Laura died” Reflect for a moment Just after Waldo’s opening on that line, Gentle Reader. narration, we finally get our Remember that it is spoken by first glimpse of him. He is her scorned Pygmalion, the man soaking in the bathtub of his who went to her apartment, rang “lavish” bathroom (Waldo’s the bell, and emptied both shotgun barrels of buckshot into her term, of course; it is roughly the size of my New York face at close range. It is, oddly, spoken onto a black screen, and it apartment). There he sits on this blazing Sunday, up to his chest hooks us instantly and totally, plunging us into the story. But in tepid water, writing on a desktop. He is middle-aged, thin, when you stop and think about it, the line raises questions, such pasty, sunken-chested, graying, with a face that is not handsome as, When and where does he say it, and Who is he talking to? but memorable, theatrical, and easy to caricature, and a voice The screen lightens to reveal Waldo’s living room, his vibrant with malice, curiosity, and disdain. He art collection prominently displayed. The clock that is one of the entertains McPherson from the tub the same way LBJ held film’s central images and that figures so prominently in the plot conferences from the toilet, to assert his dominance, and then is shown at the back of the frame, its top cut off by a glass shelf rises from it without embarrassment, giving McPherson the Full displaying Waldo’s glass collection, but we do not yet know the Waldo. We know this because we hear the splash of Waldo’s significance of the clock, so we see it only as another piece in getting up in the tub, and a brief smirk crosses McPherson’s Waldo’s extensive art collection. impassive face. Waldo’s second purpose here is to graphically “A silver sun burned through the sky like a huge demonstrate to the detective that he has nothing to hide. magnifying glass. It was the hottest Sunday in my recollection. I Laura expanded the landscape of film noir into the felt as if I were the only human being left in New York. For with upper class, and Preminger shows the moral rot beneath the well- Laura’s horrible death, I was alone. [dramatic pause] I, Waldo maintained veneer with clear, understated references to Lydecker, was the only one who really knew her, and I had just decadence and corruption: Shelby, engaged to Laura while living begun to write Laura’s story when another of those detectives off Ann and shtupping Diane Redfern; Waldo’s bathtub came to see me. I had him wait. I could watch him through the interview with Detective McPherson; the two quick and scattered half open door. [the clock chimes; McPherson walks to it to look references to the fact that when Waldo shoots Diane Redfern in it over] I noted that his attention was fixed upon my clock. There the face, she is in Laura’s apartment with Laura’s fiancé, wearing was only one other in existence, and that was in Laura’s Laura’s mules and negligee—Shelby certainly lives up to his apartment, in the very room where she was murdered.” own description of himself as “not the conventional type”: He’s McPherson isn’t the only one interested in that clock, or not just cheating on his fiancée, and not just in Laura’s own bed, rather its twin in Laura’s apartment. Next time you see Laura, not just with a colleague who Laura herself hired, but he’s got notice that Waldo keeps showing up at the Laura’s apartment her in Laura’s lingerie. Excuse me, I need a quick shower…. trying to retrieve the clock, which he claims he only loaned Laura. He drops in several times a day, hoping either to get the The other surfaces of note in Laura are those of the characters’ clock out when McPherson isn’t there or to blackmail the faces. In a standard movie convention, all of Laura‘s main detective into letting him have it back. Waldo is very clever, so characters have secrets they are at pains to protect. Even Bessie, in each visit he assesses the current situation with McPherson Laura’s loyal, adoring housekeeper, destroys evidence in hopes and his investigation, and Waldo only brings up taking back the of protecting her beloved boss’s privacy from the prying of the clock back if he thinks it’s safe to do so in that moment, that it police and the press. Preminger uses this, revealing character by won’t arouse McPherson’s suspicions. monitoring how successfully each manages their emotions and One key to Waldo is that he is first, last, and always a maintains their secrets. For example, McPherson’s little toy, writer. He thinks in sentences, always planning his next column which he pulls out whenever he wants to rattle Waldo; or essay. Waldo Lydecker’s life is a story he is always writing. McPherson pulling out the bottle of cheap scotch Shelby had At the end of Caspary’s novel, the dying Waldo continues to brought to Laura’s for his meeting with Diane and offering write out loud, in the third person, until his last breath. Waldo’s Shelby a drink from it; Waldo showing Laura the results of his ongoing, endlessly revised story about his life occasionally private investigation of Laura, then taking her to Ann’s, where he intersects with reality, but much of what he chafes against is the knows they will find Shelby having dinner; Waldo initiating a world’s stubborn refusal to conform to his version of it. When Preminger—LAURA—12 party to celebrate Laura’s return without first checking with Waldo really believes he loves Laura. When she asks either Laura or McPherson. him why he’s doing this, as he reveals the results of his private Preminger was adamant that Waldo had to be a new investigator’s report on Shelby, he says, “For you, Laura.” He face, somebody the movie audience had no preconceptions about. tells her this days only one day before shooting her (he thinks) in Having worked as a director in New York before coming to the face at close range. While Waldo’s dirt on Shelby drives Hollywood, Preminger knew that Clifton Webb was not only Laura to reconsider marrying him, it also reminds her of Waldo’s unknown to film audiences, he was exactly the kind of dyed-in- last foray into controlling her romantic life, and she now doubts the-wool New Yorker Preminger needed to ensure that Laura not both Shelby and Waldo—with good reason: Shelby thinks Laura feel like Los Angeles, that the rarified Manhattan milieu would is guilty, and while Waldo vows to mount a vigorous defense of saturate every frame of the film. Creating a sense of place is one her in his column, it is as likely that he will use his platform to of the mysterious elements of filmmaking. Mean Streets only reinforce the evidence against her. This is what sets Waldo off, shot in New York for a few days. Ditto The Apartment, and Rear bringing his latent violence to the surface in the most brutal way. Window was shot entirely on that extraordinary set at Paramount. Brutal—that’s what the newsboys outside Laura’s apartment But all of them evoke New York. It took some fancy stepping to shout the day after the shooting—“Brutal slaying! Brutal sell Zanuck on Webb, but as Preminger so often did, in the end slaying!” he won. Waldo is weary from the burden of his self-hatred. His constant need for attention, whether acclaim or shock, is his way Caspary’s Waldo is as physically different from Clifton Webb as of compensating and distracting himself from his ever-present two men could be. Caspary’s Waldo weighs 250 pounds and has awareness of his inadequacies as a man. Waldo’s feelings for a Van Dyke beard. Laura flower not when he meets her and was the obvious actor to play sees her extraordinary beauty but when she Waldo when 20th-Century Fox tells him she feels sorry for him: “You’re a bought the rights to Caspary’s poor man.” She has glimpsed him through book in June, 1943, and the studio’s the monumental edifice of his narcissism, press release announced Cregar and and he feels a bond with her that he feels for the leads. But a with no one else. lot happened between then and the movie Laura eventually became— for a long time Preminger was the Naturally, he sets out to make her a more only person who really believed in suitable companion for his celebrated self. the project, but he marshaled his When she introduces herself to him as he enormous energy, will and vision eats his lunch at the Algonquin she is an and against formidable odds and obstacles somehow managed to untarnished 17, and he undertakes a makeover, changing her make Laura the film he wanted to make. His Waldo was the hairstyle and advising her on clothes. He also mentors her into a haughty, cadaverous Webb. Caspary’s Waldo is as insulting as successful career in advertising and a place in New York society. Preminger’s, but not as succinct. Caspary sometimes said Waldo Waldo’s Laura is no less his projection than Judy is Scottie’s was partly modeled on Algonquin Round Table regular in Vertigo—the girl he adores is the one he has created, the one Alexander Woollcott, a pasty, rotund columnist, radio he can control. commentator and all-around character in the New York theatrical Waldo’s Laura is a dream, and the reality of Laura and literary scene, he was also the inspiration for Sheridan creates a conflict for Waldo that he cannot resolve. When Whiteside in The Man Who Came to Dinner; on other occasions McPherson falls in love with Laura the murder victim, his she denied it. But Caspary’s Waldo sounds like Woollcott, his infatuation is first kindled via Waldo’s seductive depiction of rhetorical style flowery and ornamented. Preminger credited one her, then by McPherson’s fetishistic investigation of Laura’s of his screenwriters, the poet Samuel Hoffenstein, personal effects in her apartment. It would be routine for the with transforming Caspary’s wordy Waldo into the movie’s detective to read the victim’s correspondence, but McPherson terser but no less self-dramatizing version of the character. indulges his burgeoning feelings with less ethical investigation, To me Waldo seems asexual rather than homosexual, a taking the top off a bottle of her perfume and inhaling it, man so estranged from his own body, so disconnected from obviously fantasizing about her. Thus, as Veneti points out, normal physical sensations that he is disgusted by even the Laura is “a shared dream between two men.” suggestion of the sex act. “I hope you’ll never have reason to In the end Waldo is as tragic as he is dangerous, and regret what promises to be a disgustingly earthy relationship,” he that’s what makes him so compelling. His whole life is built on sneers at Laura when she tells him she’s going to be seeing the fragile structure he has constructed, a huge collection of McPherson romantically and that she doesn’t think she and priceless glass, and his dream of Laura is central to that structure. Waldo should see each other again. Also, if Waldo were gay, Without her as his muse to see him as so many things he suffers wouldn’t he evince some desire for the handsome fellas Laura from knowing he is not—a kind, gentle, sympathetic person, and favors? Maybe, but Waldo would have to be at least emotionally a man—the whole thing collapses. His life becomes unbearable, functional enough to experience his own desire, and clearly he is and he has no option but to end it and to take his creation with not. him. The idealized relationship he spins to McPherson is a living death, a closed system in which he and Laura forever remain frozen in place. Laura is too much alive to submit to this static Preminger—LAURA—13 condition. Waldo, speaking of McPherson, tells Laura: “I don’t McPherson but smash the clock’s face. Waldo slumps, defeated, deny that he’s infatuated with you in some warped way of his dying. Laura and McPherson move past the camera to go to own. But he isn’t capable of any normal, warm human Waldo, and the camera moves forward, coming to rest on the relationship.” That is, he thinks he’s talking about McPherson, destroyed face of his priceless clock. but we know what Waldo, as clever as he is, cannot see: He’s Again, as at the beginning, we hear Waldo’s voice really describing himself. offscreen: “Goodbye, Laura…. Farewell, my love.”

“He’ll find us together, Laura, as we always have been, as we (The two articles by Despina Veneti and Olivier Eyquem always should be, as we always will be”—nothing less than that, mentioned by Gaspar are Olivier Eyquem: “Waldo’s ‘anatomy’ a static eternity, will satisfy Waldo. Those are his last words (a two-part portrayal): The Esthete” (Preminger Film Notes, 25 before he lifts the gun to take one more crack at the woman he November 2-14), which is a preface to the much longer article: “loves.” In a few seconds he will be fatally shot by one of Despina Veneti: “The Two Waldos: Vera Sapary’s and Otto McPherson’s men, and his own last shot will miss Laura and Preminger’s” (Preminger Film Notes, 26 November 2014).

COMING UP IN THE FALL 2018 BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS SERIES 37 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 , THE DEPARTED, 2006 NOV 27 TOM MCCARTHY, SPOTLIGHT, 2015 DEC 4 , THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING, 1975

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Preminger—LAURA—14

RKO Albee Theater, DeKalb Avenue, Brooklyn, NY