Joseph E. Levine: Showmanship, Reputation and Industrial Practice 1945 - 1977
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Joseph E. Levine: Showmanship, Reputation and Industrial Practice 1945 - 1977 A.T. McKenna PhD Thesis submitted to the University of Nottingham School of American & Canadian Studies March 2008 Acknowledgements I would first like to thank my PhD supervisor, Julian Stringer, for his tireless support of this project since its inception. Julian has provided me with extremely valuable advice and guidance as well as allowing me access to his extraordinarily detailed knowledge of film history and scholarship. He also allowed me a great deal of latitude in my approach to researching what turned out to be a very complex project. I would also like to thank all those I have interviewed for this project: Larry Turman, Albert Maysles, Ray Galton and Alan Simpson. My thanks also go to the staff of the various libraries and archives I have visited: the staff of the Hallward Library at The University of Nottingham, the staff of the BFI Library in London, the staff of the Howard Gottleib Research Center in Boston and the staff of the Margaret Herrick Library in Beverly Hills – especially Jenny Romero. Thanks also to all those at the Department of American and Canadian Studies at The University of Nottingham, particularly Peter Urquhart, Roberta Pearson, Sharon Monteith and Ann McQueen for their help, advice and input. Joseph E. Levine: Showmanship, Reputation and Industrial Practice 1945-1977 Contents Abstract i Introduction 1 Section I: The Emergence of a Showman 1945-1959 Chapter One: An Unfettered Hustler: Cultural Boundaries and Industrial Reputation 19 Chapter Two: Sniggering at the Past: Context, Re-Creation and Legitimate 66 Appropriation in Gaslight Follies . Chapter Three: Selling Levine Selling Hercules . 87 Section II: Representation of Levine 1960-1964 Chapter Four: Cultural Intermediary as Celebrity: Media Reception of Levine, 1960- 118 1964 Chapter Five: Untangling Stereotypes: Anti-Semitism, Mogul Myths and Showman . 155 Chapter Six: Guilty By Association: Joe Levine, European Cinema and The Culture 177 Clash of Le Mepris . Section III: Industrial Manoeuvres 1964-1977 Chapter Seven: The Paramount Years: Levine as an Independent Producer, 1963- 205 1966 Chapter Eight: Trading on Reputations: Mike Nichols, The Graduate and the Avco 240 Corporation Chapter Nine: A Question of Leadership: A Bridge Too Far . Conclusion 317 Appendix I: Figures 325 Appendix II: Select Filmography 333 Appendix III: Timeline 339 Bibliography 341 Abstract Joseph E. Levine has been largely neglected by Film Studies, yet he was a uniquely important figure in the US film industry during his lifetime. As an independent producer, distributor and promoter, Levine’s influence on the post-War cinematic landscape of the US was wide-ranging and profound. His versatility and multifariousness were unsurpassed during his lifetime and analysis of his abilities, strategies and influence complicates many areas of current film scholarship. Levine was a very prominent figure in the popular press where he was perceived as a master showman. His prominence and hyperbolic style undermines the traditional understanding of the cultural intermediary, a role usually associated with discretion. Levine’s conspicuousness led to him becoming an easily identifiable public figure yet, due to his varied output, he resists the notions of branding that are often associated with prominent figures in the film industry. Studies of reputation building strategies are often closely aligned to critical approval, yet Levine never courted critical favour. Although Levine’s output catered for many niche tastes, his public image was unabashedly populist. He would, however, utilise the critical adulation bestowed on others to bolster his own reputation as a supporter of talent, providing an ideal case study for the complex political interactions of reputational assessment. As a pioneer of industrial strategy and practice, Levine was hugely influential. He pioneered saturation publicity and opening tactics and was an early advocator of the use of television in movie marketing, and therein he represents a vital missing link in the evolution of blockbuster marketing techniques. He was similarly influential regarding the marketing and distribution of art cinema and, in the 1960s and 1970s, he helped to redefine the role of the independent producer. All these factors combine to make Levine an ideal vantage point for surveying cultural and filmic mores of the post-War US. His career was one of extraordinary contradictions and complexities. An analysis of his career provides a deepening of understanding of film historiography of this era and calls into question many commonly held scholarly assumptions regarding taste cultures, cultural boundaries and the supposed demarcation between independent and major studio film production. i Introduction This is a hard way to make an easy living. Actually, I stole that line off Mike Todd. I’ve been writing a book about my life, and I thought about using that as a title. 1 - Joseph E. Levine (Appendix I, fig. 1). This quotation from Joseph E. Levine says a lot about the man and his style. There is a snappy one-liner, an admission of theft, a nod to one of the great showmen of the past and an indication of Levine’s belief in having a good title for a project. It comes from a 1978 interview in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette , conducted as part of Levine’s massive promotional tour for his production of Magic (1978, Richard Attenborough), which saw a 73-year-old Levine visit over twenty cities in the US in barely a month. All of these factors combine to give a glimpse of Levine’s public image and Levine himself. Levine had a penchant for pithy bon mots and his interviews are littered with them. He was frequently, and not unjustifiably, accused of stealing credit where it wasn’t deserved; equally, he embraced his image as a huckster and often hinted at ethical or legal transgressions in interviews. He often referenced great showmen of the past, such as Mike Todd or Samuel Goldwyn, in order to position himself as an old-time flim-flam man; and the fact that the interview in question took place in Pittsburgh in the midst of a “back-breaking” 2 tour emphasises Levine’s belief in engaging with the press in order to publicise himself and his wares, and leaving metropolitan areas to do so. On the same tour, stopping over in Philadelphia, Levine 1 complained to Bob Sorolsky, “People don’t hustle anymore.” 3 Levine was a tireless hustler, bequeathing – by his own account – only a handful short of 500 movies with which he was involved in some way: “ A Bridge Too Far is the 493 rd picture I have either produced or imported,” Levine told Victor Davis in 1977, adding, “Carlo Ponti says I stole two from him.” Pause. Triumphant grin. “It’s possible!” 4 From the late 1950s until his death in 1987, Levine was a ubiquitous figure within and without the US film industry, yet he is now all but forgotten. Reporting his death, The New York Times correctly referred to him as “A towering figure in movie making.” 5 By contrast, in 2004 Dade Hayes and Jonathan Bing correctly noted, “Levine’s legacy is all but erased from the record books.” 6 That such an influential figure could be so quickly lost to the ages is remarkable in itself. That said, Levine is not entirely absent from film historiography but he usually features as a footnote, anecdote or as an aside; much of what has been written about him is debatable and much else is factually inaccurate. Given the limitations of much available scholarly material on Levine, the first task of this thesis was to piece together a workable biography of Levine from archival sources. Relevant biographical information will be included throughout the study but a brief discussion of Levine’s background and upbringing is necessary at this stage. Joseph Edward Levine was born on 9 th September 1905 in the slums of Boston’s West End, his parents were Russian Jewish immigrants and he was the youngest of six children. Levine’s father, a tailor, died when he was four; his mother remarried to another tailor, who brought an additional five children into the household (“years later we used to refer to it as a merger”), 7 but that marriage broke up when Levine was seven. His childhood was grim; when talking of his upbringing he would often jokingly request a violin to accompany his tale: 8 “I remember the 2 stink of it. When they had a pogrom in Poland, we’d have one on Billerica Street the next week … I remember nothing good about Billerica Street.” 9 Aside from poverty, another blight on Levine’s childhood, as hinted at above, was anti-Semitism. Fellow Bostonite Albert Maysles – who made a documentary about Levine with his brother David, entitled Showman (1962) – has noted the anti- Semitism he had faced during his own upbringing in Boston and suggested that the situation was much worse during Levine’s childhood.10 For Maysles, Levine was deeply affected by this, though he rarely talked about it in interviews. “Being Jewish … is like being black,” Levine once told Peter Dunn, who goes on to say that “it is a subject [Levine] never mentions in his interviews with American writers,” observing, “For so garrulous and joyously indiscreet a man it is perhaps a mark of how deeply it hurt him.” 11 Whilst at school, Levine worked in various jobs and indulged in various nefarious activities to help support his family before leaving school on his fourteenth birthday: “my mother always called me the brategiber – the bread giver. When I reached fourteen, I was finally able to quit school. I worked in a dress factory as an errand boy, shipper and finally went on the road as a dress salesman.” 12 Subsequently Levine opened a dress shop with his brothers called Le Vine’s: “a sort of a French name,” 13 he told Katherine Hamill.