Columbia Pictures: Portrait of a Studio
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University of Kentucky UKnowledge Film and Media Studies Arts and Humanities 1992 Columbia Pictures: Portrait of a Studio Bernard F. Dick Click here to let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Thanks to the University of Kentucky Libraries and the University Press of Kentucky, this book is freely available to current faculty, students, and staff at the University of Kentucky. Find other University of Kentucky Books at uknowledge.uky.edu/upk. For more information, please contact UKnowledge at [email protected]. Recommended Citation Dick, Bernard F., "Columbia Pictures: Portrait of a Studio" (1992). Film and Media Studies. 8. https://uknowledge.uky.edu/upk_film_and_media_studies/8 COLUMBIA PICTURES This page intentionally left blank COLUMBIA PICTURES Portrait of a Studio BERNARD F. DICK Editor THE UNIVERSITY PRESS OF KENTUCKY Copyright © 1992 by The University Press of Kentucky Paperback edition 2010 Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth, serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University. All rights reserved. Editorial and Sales Offices: The University Press of Kentucky 663 South Limestone Street, Lexington, Kentucky 40508-4008 www.kentuckypress.com Cataloging-in-Publication Data for the hardcover edition is available from the Library of Congress ISBN 978-0-8131-3019-4 (pbk: alk. paper) This book is printed on acid-free recycled paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials. Manufactured in the United States of America. Member of the Association of American University Presses For Peter Kells and Lynne Larsen This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS Preface PART I. THE HISTORY OF COLUMBIA, 1920-1991 From the Brothers Cohn to Sony Corp. 2 BERNARD F. DICK Chronology 65 PART II. THE ART OF COLUMBIA 1 Frank Capra at Columbia: Necessity and Invention 70 CHARLES MALAND 2 Columbia's Screwball Comedies: Wine, Women and Wisecracks 89 JOY GOULD BOYUM 3 Film Noir at Columbia: Fashion and Innovation 106 J.P. TELOITE 4 Rita Hayworth at Columbia: The Fabrication of a Star 118 WILLIAM VINCENT 5 Judy Holliday: The Star and the Studio 131 RUTH PRIGOZY 6 An Interview with Daniel Taradash: From Harvard to Hollywood 145 BERNARD F. DICK 7 On the Waterfront: "Like It Ain't Part of America" 152 ADAM J. SORKIN 8 Anatomy of a Murder: Life and Art in the Courtroom 169 JEANINE BASINGER 9 Columbia and the Counterculture: Trilogy of Defeat 182 SYBIL DELGAUDIO 10 Taxi Driver: Bringing Home the War 191 LES KEYSER 11 Lawrence of Arabia, 1962, 1989: "It Looks Damn Good" 200 GENE D. PHILLIPS 12 A Soldier's Story: A Paradigm for Justice 208 JIM WELSH 13 The Last Emperor: A Subject-in-the-Making 218 JANICE MOUTON Filmography: The Columbia Features, 1920-1991 231 BERNARD F. DICK Contributors 286 Index 288 Illustrations follow page 86 PREFACE If one were writing the history of a publishing house, it would be a chronicle of founders and successors, personalities and policies, take overs and mergers, and finally survival or extinction. Naturally, writers would be included, but only as part of the history, not for themselves or their art. One could easily write a critical study of Hemingway's fiction without mentioning Scribner's except, perhaps, for purposes of cita tion. Yet no history of Scribner's would be complete without mention of Hemingway, who would appear as one of its authors but not as the center of attention. In fact, Hemingway would even be eclipsed by Scribner's editors, particularly Maxwell Perkins and John Hall Wheel ock. A movie studio is similar to a publishing house in the sense that its films can be, and generally are, studied independently of the company that made them. The analogy, however, is imperfect. While films are to a studio what books are to a publishing house, the "product," to use a favorite Hollywood expression that only appears in the singular, is different in each case. Hemingway's To Have and Have Not (1937) can stand by itself without anyone's invoking the name of Scribner's; it would still be To Have and Have Not if it were published elsewhere. Yet no two studios would film Hemingway's novel the same way; and even if the same studio made the film twice, each version would be dif ferent. Warners made To Have and Have Not twice, once in 1944 under the original title, and again in 1950 as The Breaking Point. Each is unlike the other because each had different writers, stars, directors, and cine matographers. If MGM had attempted to film the novel in 1944 and 1950, the results would have been different still, since MGM had its own writers, stars, directors, and cinematographers. Many more fac tors, decisions, and, above all, people are involved in the making of a movie than in the production of a book. For one thing, a book is authored. But who is the author of a film? Those accustomed to thinking in terms of the print media would say, "the screenwriter." The screenplay, however, is only one aspect of the complex process known as moviemaking; another is the film's relation to the studio or produc tion company that made it. While studio history cannot explain a film's x Preface artistic merit, it can explain the circumstances that made such art possible. Traditionally, histories of the studios fall into three categories: the foundation-to-extinction (or transformation) type, the studio head bi ography, and the coffee table book, lavishly illustrated with a still and a synopsis of each film. The last kind, represented by Crown's "story" series (The MGM Story, The Universal Story, and so on), at least acknowl edges the dual nature of studio history. There is the studio and there are its films; each has its "story," but the studio's is "history." Hence, the dual format of Columbia Pictures: Portrait of a Studio: a history of the studio followed by previously unpublished essays by film scholars representing a variety of fields (literature, American studies, communications, film, foreign languages) and applying dif ferent methodologies to Columbia's stars, directors, writers, genres, and, of course, films. Like Columbia's history, its art is best understood in chronological form. Therefore, to complement the first part of the book, the second continues the chronological approach so that, read in sequence, the essays provide an overview of the studio from the late 1920's, when Frank Capra arrived there and gave it a status it previously lacked, to the late 1980s, when The Last Emperor won nine Oscars, one in each of the categories in which it had been nominated. On a technical note, for the sake of consistency, "Warners" refers to Warner Bros., the studio, while "Warner" refers to Warner Communi cations, whose filmed entertainment division includes Warner Bros. The semantic problem has been complicated by the Time-Warner Com munications merger of 1989. If films need interpreters, so do their studios. This is the rationale of this book. In addition to the authors whose contributions appear in Part II, I have also drawn on the knowledge, good will, and friendship of Robert Blees; Mary Corliss, of the Museum of Modem Art's Film Stills Ar chive; Sam Gill, archivist, the Margaret Herrick Library of the Aca demy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences; Kristine Krueger, National Film Information Service; Mary Ann La Fake, media technician, Fair leigh Dickinson University (Teaneck Campus); Mary MacMahon, periodicals librarian, Fairleigh Dickinson University (Teaneck Cam pus); Alan Press, manager of product research, Columbia Pictures Entertainment Film and Tape Facility; my wife, Katherine M. Restaino, dean of St. Peter's College at Englewood Cliffs; Irwin Rosenfeld, associ ate director of Negative Control and Archival Services, Columbia Pic tures Entertainment Film and Tape Facility; and Daniel Taradash. PART I The History of Columbia 1920-1991 FROM THE BROTHERS COHN TO SONY CORP. BERNARD F. DICK Film historians distinguish between the Big Five (MGM, Warners, Paramount, Twentieth Century-Fox, and RKO) and the Little Three (Universal, Columbia, and United Artists), the eight motion pic ture companies that provided the bulk of the movies made during Hollywood's heyday-the"studio years," which ran roughly from the mid-1920's through the 1950s. Certainly Columbia was not on a par with MGM; it could neither boast, as MGM did, of "more stars than there are in the heavens," nor lay claim to MGM's title, "The Tiffany of Studios." Columbia also had no theater chain; although the absence of one proved a blessing in the late 194Os, when studios with theater circuits were ordered to divest themselves of them, it also meant that Columbia had no guaranteed outlet for its films. In this respect, Columbia was like Universal; neither was vertically integrated. Columbia and Universal are similar in another sense. Although each made its share of classics, each evokes less than classic associ ations. Universal will always be remembered as the studio that gave the world Abbott and Costello, Frankenstein's monster, the Mummy, Dracula, and the Wolf Man, rather than All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), My Man Godfrey (1936), and Shadow of a Doubt (1943). Columbia also made films that were as important as those of any studio-Frank Capra's best movies, His Girl Friday (1940), The Lady from Shanghai (1948), On the Waterfront (1954), to name only a few-yet it will always be identified with two names that have become synonymous with uncouthness: the Three Stooges and Harry Cohn, dubbed "His Crude ness" by none other than Frank Capra.