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Home , A Free Soul, Edwin Maxwell (actor), Flesh and the Devil, Forbidden Paradise, Garbo Talks, Gottfried Reinhardt

February 7, 2017 (XXXIV:2) , (1939, 110 min)

National Film Registry, 1990

Academy Awards, USA 1940 Nominated for: Best Picture Best Actress in a Leading Role: Best Writing, Original Story: Melchior Lengyel Best Writing, Screenplay: ,Walter Reisch,

Directed by Ernst Lubitsch Written by Charles Brackett, Billy Wilder and Walter Reisch (screenplay), Melchior Lengyel (based on the original story by) Produced by Sidney Franklin, Ernst Lubitsch Music Werner R. Heymann Cinematography William H. Daniels Film Editing Gene Ruggiero Art Direction Cedric Gibbons family tailor business while he acted in cabarets and music halls at Set Decoration Edwin B. Willis night. In 1911 he joined the Deutsches Theater of famous Costume Design Adrian director/producer/impresario , and was able to move up to leading acting roles in a short time. To gain extra money, he took a side job as a handyman while learning acting at Cast 's Bioscope film studios. The next year he launched his own Greta Garbo…Nina Ivanovna Yakushova aka Ninotchka film career by appearing in a series of comedies showcasing Melvyn Douglas…Count Leon d'Algout traditional ethnic Jewish slice-of-life fare. Finding great success in Ina Claire…Grand Duchess Swana these character roles, Lubitsch turned to broader comedy, then …Commissar Razinin beginning in 1914 started writing and directing his own films. His Sig Ruman…Comrade Iranoff breakthrough film came in 1918 with The Eyes of the Mummy Felix Bressart…Comrade Buljanoff (1918), a tragedy starring future Hollywood star . Also Alexander Granach…Comrade Kopalski that year he made Carmen (1918), again with Negri, a film that was Gregory Gaye…Count Alexis Rakonin commercially successful on the international level. His work …Hotel Manager already showed his genius for catching the eye as well as the ear in Edwin Maxwell…Mercier not only comedy but historical drama. His success in Richard Carle…Gaston brought him to the shores of America to promote The Loves of Ernst Lubitsch…Himself - Director in Trailer (uncredited) Pharaoh (1922) and he became acquainted with the thriving US film industry. He soon returned to Europe, but came back to the US ERNST LUBITSCH (b. January 28, 1892, Berlin, Germany—d. for good to direct new friend and influential star Mary Pickford in November 30, 1947, Hollywood, California) started off life as an her first American hit, Rosita (1923). (1924) actor before becoming a director in the Weimar era, quickly began Lubitsch's unprecedented run of sophisticated films that establishing himself as a promising filmmaker. At age 16 he mirrored the American scene (though always relocated to foreign or decided to leave school and pursue a career on the stage. He had to imaginary lands) and all its skewed panorama of the human compromise with his father and keep the account books for the condition. There was a mix of pioneering musical films and some

Lubitsch—NINOTCHKA—2 drama also through the 1930s. Due to the success of those films, witty, sardonic dialogue. The culmination of their efforts was Paramount made him its production chief in 1935 and by 1938 he Sunset Blvd. (1950), which won an Academy Award for Best signed a three-year contract with 20th Century-Fox. He then moved Writing, Story and Screenplay. Following this, the team split up at to MGM where he directed Greta Garbo and Melvyn Douglas in the peak of their success, each going their separate ways. Brackett Ninotchka (1939), a fast-paced comedy of "decadent" Westerners moved on to work under contract at 20th Century Fox for the next meeting Soviet "comrades" who were seeking more of life than eight years. With Walter Reisch, he co-wrote the screenplays for their mother country could—or would—offer. During WWII he Niagara (1953) and Titanic (1953), winning his third Oscar for the directed one of his most controversial films, To Be or Not to Be latter. He also produced the superior western Garden of Evil (1954), (1942), a razor-sharp tour de force in smart, precise dialog, staging the historical drama The Virgin Queen (1955) and the lavish and story. In 1943 Lubitsch had a massive heart attack after having musical The King and I (1956). Brackett retired due to illness after signed a producer/director's contract with 20th Century-Fox earlier producing State Fair (1962). He has 46 screenwriting titles, some of that year, he completed Heaven Can Wait (1943). Due to his failing which are Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959), Robert health, his continued efforts in film were severely stymied. In late Montgomery Presents (1956), The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing 1944 Otto Preminger, another disciple of Reinhardt's Viennese (1955), Lux Video Theatre (1954-1955), The Mating Season (1951), theater work, took over the direction of A Royal Scandal (1945), A Foreign Affair (1948), The Bishop's Wife (1947), To Each His with Lubitsch credited as nominal producer. March of 1947, the Own (1946), The Lost Weekend (1945), Hold Back the Dawn year of his passing, brought a special Academy Award (he was (1941), Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938), and Little Women (1933). nominated three times, but never won) for his contribution to He was also producer for 27 films. motion pictures. The director is most known for his famous—if slightly intangible—“Lubitsch touch” use of a subtle humor or suggestion to connote information to his audience. At his funeral, two of his fellow directorial émigrés from Germany put his epitaph succinctly as they left: Billy Wilder noted, "No more Lubitsch" to which William Wyler answered, "Worse than that—no more Lubitsch films." Some of his additional 76 directed films include (1948), Cluny Brown (1946), That Uncertain Feeling (1941), The Shop Around the Corner (1940), Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938), The Merry Widow (1934), Design for Living (1933), Trouble in Paradise (1932), (1932), The Smiling Lieutenant (1931), The Patriot (1928), The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (1927), Lady Windermere's Fan (1925), Der gemischte Frauenchor (1916) and Fräulein Seifenschaum (1914). He also has 43 acting credits, as well as 29 writer credits. His written work includes To Be or Not to Be (1983, story - uncredited), Here Is Germany (1945, Documentary, story preparation), To Be or Not to Be (1942, original story - uncredited), The Merry Widow (1934, contributing writer - uncredited), (1932), The Smiling Lieutenant (1931, uncredited), Romeo und Julia im Schnee (1920, screenplay & story), I Don't Want to Be a Man (1918, writer), When Four Do the Same (1917, Short), Zucker und Zimmt (1915) and Fräulein Seifenschaum (1914).

CHARLES BRACKETT (b. November 26, 1892, Saratoga Springs, New York—d. March 9, 1969, Los Angeles, California) followed in his attorney-father's footsteps and graduated with a law degree from Harvard University in 1920. He practiced law for several years, before commencing work as drama critic for The New Yorker (1925-29), in addition to submitting short stories to The Saturday Evening Post. In 1932, Brackett left for Hollywood as a screenwriter where he was signed by Paramount primarily on the BILLY WILDER (b. June 22, 1906, Sucha, Galicia, Austria- strength of his novel Week-End. Brackett remained at the studio Hungary [now Sucha Beskidzka, Malopolskie, Poland]—d. March until 1950, doubling up as producer from 1945. During his tenure at 27, 2002 in Los Angeles, California) Originally planned on Paramount, Brackett became part of one of the most celebrated becoming a lawyer but abandoned that career in favor of working as screenwriting partnerships in the motion picture business, alongside a reporter for a Viennese newspaper, which paid poorly but gave Billy Wilder. They were eventually dubbed by Life Magazine as him a great amount of experience interviewing such as Richard "the happiest couple in Hollywood". Despite having very different Strauss and Sigmund Freud. In fact, he is quoted as saying after personalities and arguing incessantly—Wilder being the more seeing Freud’s couch for the first time, “It was a very tiny little extroverted and cynical, while Bracket was, to quote Gloria thing. All his theories were based on the analysis of very short Swanson, “quieter, more refined”—their collaboration endured until people!” In 1926 he worked as an interpreter for jazz band leader 1951, spanning fourteen motion pictures. Many of their most Paul Whiteman on a European tour which ended in Berlin. There he popular hits, such as Ninotchka (1939), Ball of Fire (1941) and The became a freelance journalist mixing with the show business set and Lost Weekend (1945), were noted for their intricate scripting and becoming friendly with a then small part actress. Lubitsch—NINOTCHKA—3

His friendship helped get him introduced to prominent figures in the (1974), Avanti! (1972), The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes (1970), growing German film industry resulting in him being hired as a The Fortune Cookie (1966), Kiss Me, Stupid (1964), Irma la Douce ghost writer writing scripts for established writers who didn't have (1963), One, Two, Three (1961), The Apartment (1960), Some Like time to meet their contractual obligations. Wilder wrote scripts for It Hot (1959), Witness for the Prosecution (1957), Love in the many German films until Adolf Hitler came to power in 1933. Afternoon (1957), The Spirit of St. Louis (1957), The Seven Year Wilder immediately realized his Jewish ancestry would cause Itch (1955), Sabrina (1954), Stalag 17 (1953), Ace in the Hole problems, so he emigrated to Paris, then the US. Although he spoke (1951), Sunset Blvd.(1950), A Foreign Affair (1948), The Emperor no English when he arrived in Hollywood, Wilder was a fast Waltz (1948), The Lost Weekend (1945), Death Mills (1945), learner, and thanks to contacts such as (with whom he Double Indemnity (1944), Five Graves to Cairo (1943), 1942 The shared an apartment), he was able to break into American films. His Major and the Minor (1942) , and Mauvaise graine (1934). partnership with Charles Brackett started in 1938 and the team was responsible for writing some of WALTER REISCH (b. May 23, Hollywood's classic comedies, 1903, , Austria-Hungary –d. including tonight’s film and March 28, 1983, Los Angeles, Ball of Fire (1941). The California) began his screen career partnership expanded into a as an extra and title writer in 1918. producer-director one in 1942, He eventually made the with Brackett producing, and acquaintance of Stephan Lorant, a the two turned out such classics refuge from the Horty regime in as Five Graves to Cairo (1943), Hungary, who, within a single The Lost Weekend (1945) year, had made a name for himself [Oscars for Best Picture, in Austrian films as a filmmaker Director and Screenplay] and and cinematographer. Lorant gave their final film together, Sunset Reisch a break by promoting him Boulevard (1950)[ Oscars for as his assistant director on Die Best Screenplay], after which Narrenkappe der Liebe (1921). the partnership dissolved. Reisch followed Lorant to (Wilder had already made one Berlin—then the artistic hub of film, Double Indemnity (1944) Europe—to work as his assistant without Brackett, as the latter cameraman. He subsequently had refused to work on a film he felt dealt with such disreputable continued on in the same capacity, working on documentary characters.) Wilder's subsequent self-produced films would become newsreeels in Switzerland. With the rise of , Reisch, like more caustic and cynical, notably Ace in the Hole (1951), though he most creative talent of Jewish background, was forced to join the also produced such sublime comedies as Some Like It Hot (1959) mass exodus from Germany. He had a brief resurgence in Vienna, and The Apartment (1960) (which won him Best Picture and where he worked under on the comedy Masquerade in Director Oscars). At one point he was slated to direct a movie about Vienna (1934) and the Franz Schubert biopic Unfinished Symphony the Marx brothers running the . This was around (1934). Both turned out to be solid international hits. At MGM 1960. The project fell apart after Chico Marx's death in 1961, which (1938-48), Reisch’s chief contribution was in story construction, was followed by Harpo Marx's death in 1964. He retired in 1981. solving continuity problems, providing narrative, inventing Wilder is known for his sharp-witted dialogue and cynical (yet characters and making relationships between characters plausible humorous) characters who try to change their identity. He also and compelling. It remained for other writers, like Charles Brackett favors low key lighting, manipulative women and Jack Lemmon or Wilder, to sort out the dialogue. Reisch also had a knack for (who starred in 7 of his films). An inveterate clotheshorse, at age tailoring scripts to suit a specific star, which he achieved to great 83 he still owned over 60 cashmere sweaters. In 1988, he was effect for Greta Garbo in Ninotchka (1939), in recipient of the 1988 Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award and after Comrade X (1940) and Ingrid Bergman in Gaslight (1944). Reisch this had wanted for years to direct Schindler's List (1993), but took a crack at directing with Song of Scheherazade (1947). Though Steven Spielberg preferred doing it himself. Wilder has been quoted made relatively cheaply, the film turned out to be an ill-advised saying it would have become his most personal film. He has 76 piece of kitsch and was roundly slammed by critics. Reisch was writing credits, including Buddy Buddy (1981), Fedora (1978), The never again approached to direct another picture. After this Front Page (1974), Avanti! (1972), The Private Life of Sherlock setback, Reisch moved to 20th Century Fox where in collaboration Holmes (1970), The Fortune Cookie (1966), Ocean's Eleven with his former writing partner Charles Brackett, he first worked on (1960),The Apartment (1960),) Some Like It Hot (1959), Witness for location at Niagara Falls, devising the entire original story for the Prosecution (1957), Love in the Afternoon (1957), The Spirit of Niagara (1953), Brackett handling the dialogue and production. St. Louis (1957), The Seven Year Itch (1955), Sabrina (1954), Reisch next worked on Titanic (1953), for which he developed Stalag 17 (1953), Ace in the Hole (1951), Sunset Blvd. (1950), A many of the characters by researching contemporary newspaper Song Is Born (1949), A Foreign Affair (1948), The Emperor Waltz articles. For this, he was made co-recipient of the Oscar for Best (1948), The Bishop's Wife (1947), The Lost Weekend (1945), Writing, Story and Screenplay in 1954. In 1959, a strike of the Double Indemnity (1944), The Major and the Minor (1942), Screen Writer's Guild prevented Reisch from working for six Ninotchka (1939), Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938), No Children months. When he was finally able to return, a regime change at Fox Wanted (1933), Princesse, à vos ordres! (1931), Menschen am had taken place, and, as part of a general purge, his contract was not Sonntag (1930), and Hell of a Reporter (1929). He directed 27 renewed. Some of his films are Journey to the Center of the Earth films: 1981 Buddy Buddy (1981), Fedora (1978), The Front Page (1959), The Girl in the Red Velvet Swing (1955), Titanic (1953), Lubitsch—NINOTCHKA—4

Niagara (1953), The Mating Season (1951), Song of Scheherazade (1947), Gaslight (1944), Comrade X (1940), Ninotchka (1939), CEDRIC GIBBONS (b. March 23, 1893 in Dublin, Ireland—d. July Escapade (1935), End of an Affair (1934), Unfinished Symphony 26, 1960 in Hollywood, California) After graduating from New (1934), The Countess of Monte Cristo (1934), The Song Is Ended York's Art Students League he worked for his architect father, then (1930), Never Trust a Woman (1930), Die indiskrete Frau (1927), started film work at Edison Studios in 1915 assisting Hugo Ballin. The Curse (1925), and Oberst Redl (1925). In 1918 he moved to Goldwyn as art director and, in 1924, began his 32-year stint as supervising art director for some 1500 MGM WILLIAM H. DANIELS (b. December 1, 1901 in Cleveland, films, with direct responsibility in well over 150 of those. Ohio—d. June 14, 1970 in Los Angeles, California) was a master of According to Lester Gordon’s 1992 book "Let's Go to the Movies!", black-and-white cinematographer most famous for the 21 films he the reason Gibbon’s name appears in over 1500 film credits was, shot that starred the immortal Greta Garbo between 1926 and 1939. “his 1924 contract stated that every film released by MGM in the Among the Gabro classics he lensed were The Torrent (1924), USA would give him the credit of Art Director, even though others (1926), Love (1927), Mata Hari (1931), Grand did the majority of the work." Practically every film classic made Hotel (1932), Queen Christina (1933), the sound remake of Anna by MGM between 1924 and 1956 bears his name as art director. He Karenina (1935), Camille (1936), and Ninotchka (1939). He won also designed the Oscar statue itself (according to lore it was fame for his lensing of Garbo, but to those who claimed that he was Dolores Del Rio who recommended he use Emilio "El Indio" essential to his success, Daniels replied, "I didn't create a 'Garbo Fernández as the model). Gibbons won the statue 11 of the 37 times face.' I just did portraits of her I would have done for any star. My he was nominated for it. Some of his designs influenced American lighting of her was determined by the requirements of a scene. I interiors, and it has been argued that he was the most important art didn't, as some say I did, keep one side of her face light and the director in the history of American cinema. Titles he worked on other dark. But I did always try to make the camera peer into the include Lust for Life (1956), High Society (1956), The Fastest Gun eyes, to see what was there." Though he was nominated for an Alive (1956), Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956), The Catered Academy Award for Best Cinematography for the 1930 English- Affair (1956), Forbidden Planet (1956), I'll Cry Tomorrow (1955), language version of Anna Christie (1930), ironically, it was his only Kismet (1955), Blackboard Jungle (1955), Bad Day at Black Rock nomination for a Garbo film. He won his Oscar in 1949 for his (1955), The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954), Brigadoon (1954), Seven brilliant black and white Brides for Seven Brothers cinematography on the (1954), Valley of the classic film noir The Kings (1954), The Student Naked City (1948). Prince (1954), Men of the Daniels received two Fighting Lady (1954), The other Oscar nominations. Bad and the Beautiful He was President of the (1952), Million Dollar American Society of Mermaid (1952), The Cinematographers from Prisoner of Zenda (1952), 1961 to 1963. One The Merry Widow (1952), insider once noted that it Singin' in the Rain (1952), was universally Quo Vadis (1951), An acknowledged in the American in Paris (1951), industry that Daniels' Show Boat (1951), The work was so fine that Red Badge of Courage other cameramen were (1951), King Solomon's never censured for Mines (1950), Father of shamelessly stealing it. the Bride (1950), The He shot 164 films, some Asphalt Jungle (1950), of which were Move Annie Get Your Gun (1970), Marlowe (1969), The Maltese Bippy (1969), Valley of the (1950), On the Town (1949), Intruder in the Dust (1949), Madame Dolls (1967), In Like Flint (1967), Von Ryan's Express (1965), Bovary (1949), Green Dolphin Street (1947), Lady in the Lake Robin and the 7 Hoods (1964), The Prize (1963), How the West (1947), The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), Anchors Aweigh Was Won (1962), All the Fine Young Cannibals (1960), Ocean's (1945), The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945), Thirty Seconds Over Eleven (1960), Can-Can (1960), Some Came Running (1958), Cat Tokyo (1944), Bathing Beauty (1944), Gaslight (1944), Lassie on a Hot Tin Roof (1958), Istanbul (1957), The Benny Goodman Come Home (1943), Keeper of the Flame (1942), For Me and My Story (1956), The Shrike (1955), Strategic Air Command (1955), Gal (1942), Tarzan's New York Adventure (1942), Tortilla Flat The Glenn Miller Story (1954), Harvey (1950), Winchester '73 (1942), Tarzan's Secret Treasure (1941), Billy the Kid (1941), (1950), Three Came Home (1950), Brute Force (1947), The Waterloo Bridge (1940), The Shop Around the Corner (1940), The Canterville Ghost (1944), The Heavenly Body (1944), Keeper of the Wizard of Oz (1939), Camille (1936), Three Godfathers (1936), Flame (1942), For Me and My Gal (1942), The Shop Around the Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), Anna Karenina (1935), Gabriel Over Corner (1940), Marie Antoinette (1938), Rose-Marie (1936), Susan the White House (1933), Red Dust (1932), Red-Headed Woman Lenox, Her Fall and Rise (1931), Wild Orchids (1929), A Woman of (1932), Grand Hotel (1932), Tarzan the Ape Man (1932), Mata Affairs (1928), The Actress (1928), Bringing Up Father (1928), The Hari (1931), Susan Lenox, Her Fall and Rise (1931), Sidewalks of Latest from Paris (1928), Tillie the Toiler (1927 New York (1931), Anna Christie (1930), Billy the Kid (1930), Way (1926), Dance Madness (1926), The Merry Widow (1925), Greed Out West (1930), Hallelujah!, The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1929), (1924), and Foolish Wives (1922). (1929), While the City Sleeps (1928), Man, Lubitsch—NINOTCHKA—5

Woman and Sin (1927), Annie Laurie (1927), Lights of Old with her immortal, persona-defining declaration of "I want to be Broadway (1925), Greed (1924), Made in Heaven (1921), alone," that stole the show. Directed by Edmund Goulding, Grand Earthbound (1920), and The Unwritten Code (1919). Hotel won the 1932 Academy Award for Best Picture. The success of Grand Hotel gave Garbo even more power within the studio, which she used to help her former lover (whom she’d left at the altar), , whose career had been suffering terribly since the introduction sound. The former superstar couple appeared onscreen one last time in the historical drama Queen Christina (1933), in which she gave one of her most revered performances as the 17th Century Swedish monarch. Garbo’s enigmatic, lengthy close up in the final seconds of the film would become one of cinema’s most examined screen moments. Her career suffered a setback in Conquest (1937), which was a box office disaster. She later made a comeback when she starred in Ninotchka (1939), which showcased her comedic side. It wasn't until two years later she made what was to be her last film, Two-Faced Woman (1941), another comedy. But the film drew controversy and was condemned by the Catholic Church and other groups and was a box office failure, which left Garbo shaken. After World War II Greta, by her own admission, felt that the world had changed perhaps forever and she retired, never again to face the camera. Garbo's sudden decision to retire from film in 1941 and her steadfast maintenance of a notoriously reclusive lifestyle until her death in 1990 further enhanced her mystique and immortalized her as one of the silver screen’s greatest icons. While it is her reclusive and private nature (as well as her beauty) that Garbo is most known for, she was also an astute business woman, whose bargaining acumen made her one of the highest paid movie stars in her day. Garbo was offered the role of Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard (1950), but she turned it down. was cast instead and she went on to receive a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her performance. In the GRETA GARBO (b. Greta Lovisa Gustafsson on September 18, mid-'50s she bought a seven-room apartment in New York City 1905, Stockholm, Stockholms län, Sweden—d. April 15, 1990, (450 East 52nd St.) and lived there until she died. Except at the very New York City, New York) was arguably the quintessential beginning of her career, she granted no interviews, signed no embodiment of Hollywood’s Golden Age, a beautiful, glamorous, autographs, attended no premieres and answered no fan mail. Garbo and above all, mysterious image, carefully cultivated by Metro- assiduously shunned publicity throughout her later years, only Goldwyn-Mayer, the sole studio she would work for during her glimpsed infrequently by "Garbo watchers" during her occasional American film career. She was fourteen when her father died, walks around her New York neighborhood. She stated that Lubitsch which left the family destitute. Greta was forced to leave school and was her favorite director. Garbo won an honorary Academy Award go to work in a department store where she was used as a model in in 1955 and appeared in only 32 films: Two-Faced Woman (1941), its newspaper ads. She also appeared in short advertising film for Ninotchka (1939), Conquest (1937), Camille (1936), Anna the same department store while she was still a teenager. It was here Karenina (1935), The Painted Veil (1934), Queen Christina (1933), that Erik A. Petschler, a comedy director, saw the film and gave her As You Desire Me (1932), Grand Hotel (1932), Mata Hari (1931), a small part in his Luffar-Petter (1922). After this she was Susan Lenox, Her Fall and Rise (1931), Inspiration (1931), encouraged to go to drama school. Finally famed Swedish director Romance (1930), Anna Christie (1930), The Kiss (1929), The Single Mauritz Stiller pulled her from the drama school for the lead role in Standard (1929), Wild Orchids (1929), (1928), The Saga of Gösta Berling (1924). Following The Joyless Street The Mysterious Lady (1928), The Divine Woman (1928), Love (1925) both Greta and Stiller were offered contracts with MGM, (1927), Flesh and the Devil (1926), The Temptress (1926), Torrent and her first film for the studio was the American-made Torrent (1926), The Joyless Street (1925), Gösta Berlings saga (1924), (1926), a silent film in which she didn't have to speak a word of Luffar-Petter (1922), Kärlekens ögon (1922), En lyckoriddare English. Touted by MGM as the "Swedish Sphinx", Garbo (1921), Konsum Stockholm Promo (1921) and How Not to Dress immediately became one of silent film’s most popular actresses in (1920). such features as Flesh and the Devil (1927) and Love (1927). Paired with the most talented directors and popular leading men, she MELVYN DOUGLAS (b. Melvyn Edouard Hesselberg on April 5, entranced audiences with her mesmerizing portrayals of "fallen 1901, Macon, Georgia –d. August 4, 1981, New York City, New women" and fatalistic lovers. Even the arrival of sound could not York) will enjoy cinema immortality if for no other reason than his diminish her appeal; in fact, Garbo’s sultry, accented voice only being the man who made Greta Garbo laugh in Ernst Lubitsch's added to her allure in her first "talkie," Anna Christie classic comedy Ninotchka (1939). Melvyn's father was a concert (1930)."Garbo-mania" reached its greatest height with the release of pianist who supported his family by teaching music at university- the star-studded ensemble drama Grand Hotel (1932), co-starring based conservatories. Melvyn dropped out of high school to pursue film royalty John and , Joan Crawford and his dream of becoming an actor. He made his Broadway debut in Wallace Beery. It was, however, Garbo’s fading ballerina character the drama (1931) playing the role of a raffish gangster Lubitsch—NINOTCHKA—6

(a part that would later make Clark Gable's career when the play Gleaming (1977), I Never Sang for My Father (1970), Do Not Go was adapted to the screen). He made the shift to film in 1932 and Gentle Into That Good Night (1967), Hotel (1967), The Fugitive had the unique pleasure of assaying completely different characters (1966), The Steel Hour (1957-1958), The Ford in widely divergent films. He first appeared opposite his future co- Television Theatre (1955), Studio One in Hollywood (1952), The star Garbo in the screen adaptation of Luigi Pirandello's As You Philco-Goodyear Television Playhouse (1949), The Toy Wife Desire Me (1932), proving himself a sophisticated leading man. (1938), Arsène Lupin Returns (1938), Captains Courageous (1937), Douglas and his wife Helen, who had met while starring together on As You Desire Me (1932), and Tonight or Never (1931). Broadway, were always involved in politics. He was one of the leading lights of the anti-Communist left in the late 1930s and early BELA LUGOSI (b. Béla Ferenc Dezső Blaskó October 20, 1882 in 1940s. Helen Douglas was elected to Congress from the 14th Lugos, Austria-Hungary [now Lugoj, Romania]—d. August 16, District in Los Angeles in 1944, the first of three terms. Returning 1956 in Los Angeles, California) often conflated biographers with to films after the war, Douglas' screen persona evolved and he took tall-tales about his childhood. He once quipped, “for purposes of on more mature roles, in such films as Elia Kazan’s directorial simplification, I have always thought it better to tell [lies] about the debut, The Sea of Grass (1947) and Mr. Blandings Builds His early years of my life.” While his stage debut is still up for debate Dream House (1948). His political past caught up with him, (either 1901 or 1902), by 1903 he had found steady work with however, in the late 1940s, and he—along with fellow liberals traveling theater companies. In 1913, Lugosi caught a major break Robinson and Henry Fonda—were "gray-listed" (not explicitly when the most prestigious performing arts venue in his native blacklisted, they just weren't offered any country—the -based National work). In 1950, Helen ran as a Democrat Theater of Hungary—cast him in no less for the U.S. Senate and was opposed by than 34 shows. Most of the characters that he the Republican nominee, a small-time red- played there were small Shakespearean roles baiting candidate from Whittier named such as Rosencrantz in Hamlet and Sir Richard Nixon. It was Mrs. Douglas who Walter Herbert in Richard III. In 1914 he gave Nixon his most famous nickname, joined the 43rd Royal Hungarian infantry and “Tricky Dicky” after he utilized a smear fought in World War I. He was injured three campaign in an effort to paint her as a times and finally discharged in 1916, where Communist sympathizer. After appearing upon he returned to work in the National in six films as a leading man and second Theater. In December 1920, Lugosi boarded lead in A-List pictures from 1947-49, a cargo boat and emigrated to the United Douglas made just two films in the decade States. Two years later, Lugosi was cast as of the 1950s until he reappeared a decade Fernando—a suave, Latin lover—in the 1922 later in Peter Ustinov's Billy Budd (1962). Broadway stage play The Red Poppy. At the Following the example of his old friend time, his grasp of the English language was Reagan in his stint on General Electric practically nonexistent. Undaunted, Lugosi Theater (1953), appeared as the host of the went over all of his lines with a tutor. western omnibus TV series Frontier Although he couldn’t comprehend their Justice (1958) in 1958. Throughout the meaning, the actor managed to memorize 1950s Douglas secured roles on such and phonetically reproduce every single prestigious omnibus drama showcases as syllable that he was supposed to deliver on Playhouse 90 (1956) and even appeared stage. In 1927 Bela Lugosi sank his teeth on Reagan's General Electric Theater (1953). Years of movie exile into the role of a lifetime. A play based on the novel Dracula by seemed to deepen him and he returned to the big screen a more Bram Stoker had opened in London in 1924. Sensing its potential, authoritative actor. For his second role after coming off of the Horace Liveright, an American producer, decided to create an U.S. graylist, he won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar as 's version of the show. Over the summer of 1927, Lugosi was cast as father in Hud (1963). Other films in which he shined were Paddy the blood-sucking Count Dracula. For him, the part represented a Chayefsky's The Americanization of Emily (1964), CBS Playhouse real challenge. In Lugosi’s own words, “It was a complete change (1967) (a 1967 episode directed by George Schaefer called "Do Not from the usual romantic characters I was playing, but it was a Go Gentle Into That Good Night", for which he won a Best Actor success.” It certainly was. Enhanced by his presence, the American Emmy) and The Candidate (1972), in which he played Robert Dracula remained on Broadway for a full year, then spent two years Redford's father. It was for his performance playing Gene touring the country. Impressed by its box office prowess, Universal Hackman's father that Douglas got his sole Best Actor Academy decided to adapt the show into a major motion picture in 1930. Award nod, in I Never Sang for My Father (1970). He had a career Horror fans might be surprised to learn that when the studio began renaissance in the late 1970s, appearing in The Seduction of Joe the process of casting this movie’s vampiric villain, Lugosi was not Tynan (1979), Being There (1979) and Ghost Story (1981). He won their first choice. At the time, Lugosi was still a relative unknown, his second Oscar for Being There. He has the distinction of being which made director Tod Browning more than a little hesitant to one of nine actors to hold the Entertainment Hat-Trick, or the Triple offer him the job. A number of established actors were all Crown of Acting, winning an Oscar, Tony and Emmy. He played a considered before the man who’d played Dracula on Broadway was Presidential candidate in Gore Vidal's play, and, years later, Vidal tapped to immortalize his biting performance on film. Released in (who was not normally very complimentary about actors) remarked 1931, Dracula quickly became one of the year's biggest hits for that he would have made a fine President in real life. Some of his Universal (some film historians even argue that the movie single- additional 111 film and TV credits are Ghost Story (1981), Tell Me handedly rescued the ailing studio from bankruptcy). Furthermore, a Riddle (1980), Portrait of Grandpa Doc (1977), Twilight's Last its astronomical success transformed Lugosi into a household name Lubitsch—NINOTCHKA—7 for the first time in his career. After his impressive box-office, Dracula (1931), The Thirteenth Chair (1929), Caravan of Death Lugosi was Universal’s first choice to star as Frankenstein’s (1920), Last of the Mohicans (1920), Auf den Trümmern des monster in their adaptation of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. Paradieses (1920), Das ganze Sein ist flammend Leid (1920), Lili However, the actor rejected the offer, which went to little-known (1918), Lulu (1918), and The Wedding Song (1917). actor . It has been reported that the two actors were bitter rivals, yet, in Ernst Lubitsch, from World Film Directors, reality both Karloff and Lugosi shared a Vol. I. Ed John Wakeman. The H.W. Wilson mutual respect for one another as well as Co., NY, 1987 starring in five films together (it should be German and American director, noted that in every one of these films producer, and actor, born in Berlin. He was Karloff gets top billing; something that the son of Simon Lubitsch, a Jewish tailor couldn’t have sat well with Lugosi). who owned a profitable men’s clothing store Bauhaus’ famous song, “Bela Lugosi is in the city. Ernst Lubitsch was educated at Dead” may have been penned due to the the Berlin Sophien-Gymnasium. He acted in persistent rumor over the actor’s actual school plays and at sixteen announced that death. So strong was the rumor that Lugosi almost did not appear in Abbott and he wanted a career in the theatre. He was a Costello Meet Frankenstein because the small, clumsy, and homely boy and his studio believed the actor had passed. father assured him he would be better off Toward the end of his life, Lugosi worked working in the family business. For a time on three ultra-low-budget science fiction Lubitsch had to accept this judgment, pictures with , a man who’s been though he was so inept in the store that his posthumously embraced as the worst father relegated him to the back office as a director of all time. In the 1953 transvestite bookkeeper. Then he met and became the picture Glen or Glenda?, Lugosi plays a cryptic narrator who offers friend of the comic actor Victor Arnold, who tutored him and such random and unsolicited bits of advice as “Beware of the big, helped him to find evening work as an actor and low green dragon who sits on your doorstep.” Then came 1955’s Bride of the Monster, in which Lugosi played a mad scientist who ends up comedian in Berlin music-halls and cabarets. In 1911, after a doing battle with a (suspiciously limp) giant octopus. Before long, year of this hard training, Arnold introduced him to Max Wood had cooked up around half a dozen concepts for new films, Reinhardt, who hired him as a member of his famous all starring Lugosi. At some point in the spring of 1956, the director company at the Deutsches Theater—a company that included shot some quick footage of the actor wandering around a suburban Emil Jannings, Paul Wegener, Rudolph Schildkraut, Albert neighborhood, clad in a baggy cloak. This proved to be the last time Basserman, and Conrad Veidt, among other great names. that the star would ever appear on film. Three years after Lugosi's Lubitsch was nineteen when he abandoned passing, this footage was spliced into a cult classic that Wood came bookkeeping and became a full-time actor. During the next to regard as his “pride and joy”, , which year or so he appeared in a variety of minor classical and tells the twisted tale of extraterrestrial environmentalists who turn other roles, and in one major one, as the hunchback clown in newly-deceased human beings into murderous zombies. Since , and he traveled with the Deutsches Theater to Lugosi could obviously no longer play his character, Wood hired a stand-in for some additional scenes. Unfortunately, the man who Vienna, Paris, and London. Beginning in 1912, he began to was given this job—California chiropractor Tom Mason—was eke out his small salary as a property man and general several inches taller than Lugosi. In an attempt to hide the height dogsbody [a person who is given boring, menial tasks to do] difference, Wood instructed Mason to constantly hunch over. Also, at the Bioscope film studios in Berlin. The following year he Mason always kept his face hidden behind a cloak. Lugosi was also went to work as a comic actor for , one of an avid soccer fan, even named as President of the Los Angeles Germany’s first cinema entrepreneurs. Having built over fifty Soccer League, and helped finance the Los Angeles Magyar soccer movie theatres, Davidson decided that it would be more club. When the team won a state championship in 1935, one profitable to make his own films than to rent those of others, newspaper wrote that the players were “headed back to Dracula’s and established the Union-Film production company. castle with the state cup”.Although Lugosi resented the years of Lubitsch’s first screen appearance was in the title role in typecasting that followed his breakout performance in Dracula, he asked to be laid to rest wearing the Count’s signature garment. Meyer auf der Alm (Meyer in the Alps, 1913). Thereafter he Lugosi was buried under a simple tombstone at California's Holy appeared in a succession of short Union-Film comedies, often Cross Cemetery. Some of Lugosi’s other films are Bela Lugosi as the archetypal Jewish dummkopf who makes good in the Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla (1952), Bud Abbott and Lou Costello end, thanks to his indestructible optimism, good luck, and a Meet Frankenstein (1948), The Body Snatcher (1945), Zombies on winning way with the ladies. Broadway (1945), Return of the Ape Man (1944), The Return of the These comedies were very popular and successful, Vampire (1944), Frankenstein Meets the Wolf Man (1943), The and when the studio ran out of ideas, Lubitsch came up with Corpse Vanishes (1942), The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942), The some of his own, offering his services as director into the Wolf Man (1941), The Black Cat (1941 & 1932), The Devil Bat bargain. According to Herman G. Weinberg, author of the (1940), Ninotchka (1939), Son of Frankenstein (1939), Murder by wonderfully detailed biography The Lubitsch Touch, Television (1935), The Raven (1935), Mark of the Vampire (1935), Lubitsch’s first film as director-author-star was Fräulein Island of Lost Souls (1932), Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932), Lubitsch—NINOTCHKA—8

Seifenschaum (Miss Soapsuds, 1914), a slapstick one-reeler important element and put Lubitsch and Negri to work on about a lady barber. Others maintain that hid directorial debut Madame Dubarry. Emil Jannings begged for and got the role was Blinde Kuh (Blindmans Buff), made the following year. of Louis XV, and Lubitsch engaged over two thousand extras By 1915, at any rate, Lubitsch was directing most of the to fill his carefully researched costumes and his studio-built comedies in which he starred, and sometimes writing them as Paris. The film shows what he had learned from Reinhardt well. In the evenings, nevertheless, he would appear in some about the direction of crowd scenes and also his own unique topical sketch at the Apollo Theater and then go to eat at a talent as a “humanizer” of history. Running over two hours, it show-business cafe called Mutter Maentz’s. There he would was supplied with a specially written score, played at the often stay until dawn, swapping anecdotes and wisecracks Berlin premiere by a full orchestra. It was a huge success in with his circle of Berlin wits, and puffing on his endless Germany, then all over Europe, and finally in the United cigars. States. Some critics, it is true, objected to the presentation of Lubitsch’s first big success as a the French Revolution as the outcome of an director was Schuhpalast Pinkus (Shoe Salon affair between a king and his midinette mistress. Pinkus, 1916). It was written partly by Hans There was also some resistance to the picture in Kräly, soon to become the director’s regular the United States, even though its distributor scenarist, and starred Lubitsch not as a there, aware of the virulent anti-German feeling clownish Meyer or Moritz but as Solomon of the time, had retitled it Passion and removed Pinkus, a bumptious young man-about-town. all traces of its German origin from the credits The following year Paul Davidson and his (including Lubitsch’s name). Nevertheless with temperamental new star Pola Negri persuaded this film, as Andrew Sarris says, “Lubitsch a reluctant Lubitsch to direct his first serious almost singlehandedly lifted Germany into the drama (and first feature) Die Augen der forefront of film-producing nations.” Mumie Ma (The Eyes of the Mummy Ma, After this triumph, Lubitsch demonstrated his 1918), starring Negri as a temple dancer in versatility in a string of successes for Union- ancient Egypt and Emil Jannings as her UFA. Die Puppe (The Doll, 1919) is an E.T.A. fanatical pursuer. World War I ended soon Hoffman fantasy that makes audacious use of after its release and Berlin became a all the movie camera’s capacity for visual madhouse of inflation, blackmarketeering, trickery (and opens with an extraordinary shot hunger riots, drug peddling, and every kind of of puppet-master Lubitsch himself assembling a prostitution and pornography. But the arts miniature set). Another hit (in spite of charges flourished and so did the escapist cinema, greatly aided by the that it was anti-clerical), it was followed by Kölhiesels devaluation of the Reichsmark (which meant production costs Töchter (Kölhiesel’s Daughters, 1920), a peasant Taming of could quickly be recovered if a film was sold abroad). the Shrew shot on location in Bavaria, then by a screen In this atmosphere Lubitsch made his second film version of Sumurun (One Arabian Night, 1920, with Lubitsch with “that temperamental Polish witch” Pola Negri. This was repeating his stage performance (and vigorously overacting) Carmen, adapted by Kräly and another writer and told in as the hunchback clown in love with a beautiful dancer flashback, with some hand-tinted scenes. Released at the end (Negri). of 1918, it was voted the best German picture of the year and (Deception, 1920), starring Jannings as some years later was a success also in the United States (as Henry VIII, was another spectacular essay on the influence of Gypsy Blood). However, Jay Leyda, who saw it in 1967, lust on history. Gerald Mast writes that if Dubarry “is found it devoid of Lubitsch’s characteristic wit and “film convincingly eighteenth-century France, Anna Boleyn is even logic.” After directing two or three comedy shorts (and more magnificently convincing as Renaissance England. starring in one of them, Meyer aus Berlin), Lubitsch then Lubitsch’s control of lighting gives the wood of sets and the embarked on another feature, Die Austernprinzessin (The faces of people the glow of Renaissance painting.” At , 1919). It had Ossi Oswalda as the spoiled same time, in this as in all his historical epics, Lubitsch daughter of an American “oyster king” who sets out to buy a sought to “de-operatize” and to “humanize” his characters: “I Prussian aristocrat for a husband, and satirizes with equal treated the intimate nuances just as importantly as the mass good humor Prussian snobbery and American materialism. movements and tried to blend them both together.” Die Lubitsch thought it his “first comedy that showed Bergkatze (The Wildcat, 1921) is by contrast an anti- something of a definite style.” Another hit, it was followed by militaristic satire, unique among his films in that its bizarre a drama called Rausch (Intoxication), based on Strindberg’s sets and stylized acting were evidently influenced by There are Crimes and Crimes. expressionism (and, in its day, a complete failure). Paul Davidson, the entrepreneur behind all this, then The last and most elaborate of the historical decided that he should make “the greatest film of all time.” spectacles Lubitsch made in Germany was Das Weib des He raised funds from UFA, the government-sponsored Pharao (The Loves of the Pharaoh, 1922), which crowded the production company in which his Union-Film was already an UFA lot with palaces and pyramids and many thousands of Lubitsch—NINOTCHKA—9 extras (at a total cost, according to one account, of only becomes a “kept woman” with absolute moral detachment, $75,000). It is a movie on the scale of Intolerance or Ben Hur great economy of means, and brilliantly suggestive imagery. and took almost a year to make. There are notable Much of what Lubitsch learned from Chaplin is performances from Jannings as the Pharao Amenes and Paul already evident in The Marriage Circle (1924), the first of Wegener as the King of Ethiopia, who go to war for the love five movies he made for a relatively new and still minor of the beautiful slave girl Theonis (Dagny Sevraes). In studio called Warner Brothers. It is a sophisticated comedy December 1921 Lubitsch paid his first visit to the United studying the collision between a hopeful new marriage States, taking The Loves of the Pharaoh with him. It opened (Florence Vidor and Monte Blue) and one that is failing in New York a few months later and was hailed as “a (Marie Prevost and ). It impressed Iris Barry magnificent production and stirring testimony to the genius of that Lubitsch “has shown, not told, the story. Everything is Ernst Lubitsch.” visualized, all the comedy is in what the characters are seen Much interviewed in or imagined to be thinking or the United States, Lubitsch feeling, in the interplay, expressed his admiration for never expressed in Chaplin, Griffith, De Mille, …[subtitles], of wills and Stroheim, and the American personalities….Gestures and cinema in general, but with one situations, so lucidly reservation: “The American presented that one is moviegoing public has the mind perfectly aware from the of a twelve-year-old child: it ‘pictures’ alone of what is must have life as it isn’t.” Back happening, give rise to other in Berlin, Lubitsch made one gestures and other situations last film there, Die Flamme which—because of the (1923), a relatively small-scale permanence of visual story set in fin-de-siecle Paris memory—one recognizes as about a cocotte (Negri) who the logical outcome of what falls in love with a composer has occurred before.” The (Hermann Thimig), loses him, New Yorker called it “a and kills herself. It was released champagne picture in a in the United States as Montmartre (1924), with an beery movie world.” unsatisfactory happy ending tacked on the for public that In a moment of exasperation Mary Pickford had “must have life as it isn’t.” referred to Lubitsch as a “director of doors,” and there is In December 1922, meanwhile, Lubitsch had justice in the charge. As Arthur Knight has pointed out, “prior committed himself to that public. The “greatest director in to The Marriage Circle, almost any decoration would do— Europe,” the “European Griffith,” had been invited by either wholly nondescript for a routine film or, for a more “America’s sweetheart,” Mary Pickford, who starred opposite elaborate production, rooms choked with bric-a-brac and Douglas Fairbanks in Lubitsch’s first American movie, overstuffed chairs set off by loudly ornamental drapes and Rosita (1923). It is an agreeable fantasy about a street singer busy wallpaper. Lubitsch cleared away the clutter, providing in nineteenth-century Spain who attracts the attention of a clean playing areas for his action. The advantages were so libidinous king with a satirical song about him. Lubitsch and immediately apparent that they were incorporated into the Pickford clashed incessantly, personally and professionally, majority of pictures from that moment on. Few directors, throughout the three months of filming, and the picture, however, have quite his ability to use settings to their fullest perhaps because it gave Pickford her first grown-up role. was advantage. To Lubitsch, a door was always more than simply not a financial success. However, the critics, then and since, a way to get into or out of a room; it was a way to end an have praised it warmly as a “distinguished and lovely film,” argument, to suggest pique or coquetry or even the sexual act and Lotte Eisner was put in mind both of Goya and of itself. Corridors, stairways, windows—all had a dramatic Sternberg’s later The Devil is a Woman. function in the Lubitsch films.” As Gerald Mast says, Rosita “closed Lubitsch’s first Three Women (1924) is a harsher picture about a period”; after it, romanticism gave way to irony, the crowded “lady-killer” (Lew Cody) who plays mother (Pauline canvas was exchanged for the telling detail. The move to Frederick) against daughter (May McAvoy)—the first for her Hollywood must have had something to do with this dramatic money, the latter as a recruit to his “harem.” It was the first of change of style; marital comedies were then in vogue, and Lubitsch’s American films to be written by Hans Kräly, who Lubitsch no doubt learned from the achievements of Stroheim had followed him to Hollywood and who was thereafter his and De Mille in this genre. But by far the greatest influence principal scenarist until 1928. Pola Negri also arrived in on Lubitsch at his time was Chaplin’s A Woman of Paris Hollywood, and she starred in (1924) as (1923), which tells its story about a provincial girl who Catherine the Great of , equally interested in power Lubitsch—NINOTCHKA—10 and virile young officers. The visual economy of this satire tempo of his dissolving scenes has the swing of a futuristic has been much discussed—for example the officers’ revolt rhapsody…. which is put down in three shots: the general’s hand moving Lubitsch was then thirty-four and one of the most to his sword; the chamberlain’s hand pulling out a admired and successful film directors in the world—some checkbook; the general’s hand releasing his sword. The placed him second only to Griffith among Hollywood movie’s general air of mockery extends to totally unrealistic directors. According to Weinberg, his directorial technique sets and the deliberate anachronisms, which endow was “simple, direct, patient. He didn’t believe in many eighteenth-century Russia with automobiles and flashlights to rehearsals, feeling they tired the actor and robbed him of his underline the universality of human frailty. spontaneity. If a scene had to be done over Lubitsch’s sexual comedies always several times, he never lost his patience or preserve this mood of sardonic but courtesy…. Sitting on a small camp chair, he affectionate amusement at the dismal antics would lean forward in his intensity…. And his of his characters, and it was this, as much as face would mirror all the emotions of the the obliqueness of his innuendos, that players, male or female. Sometimes he would earned him his apparent immunity from jump up and show an actor how to do a censorship in both Germany and America. scene….Some directors liked to improvise—not He demonstrates both qualities again and he. It must all be down in the scenario, again in Kiss Me Again (1925), adapted everything thought and worked out….Each from a Sardou farce and starring Marie scene has to ‘grow’ out of the preceding one; a Prevost as a wife who wants to divorce film was a series of propulsions or combustions, Monte Blue in favor of a long-fingered like an engine which keeps a vehicle going.” pianist (John Roche). Much loved scenes Because his scripts were “complete blueprints,” include one in which Blue, to facilitate the very little footage was wasted; in effect his divorce, is urged by all concerned to strike pictures were edited before they were shot. his wife but cannot bring himself to do so; and the final scene By this time all the major studios were putting their in which Roche, awaiting his beloved (and unaware that she directors to work on Lubitschean comedies, the master’s and her husband are reconciled), serenades her on the piano. many imitators including Richard Rosson, Lewis Milestone, Blue enters in pajamas and urges him to play more softly and Malcolm St. Clair. Lubitsch himself was naturally much before hurrying back to the marital bedroom. It was strokes in demand, and in 1926 he left Warner Brothers and, under like this, crystallizing in a single shot the whole essence of a the auspices of MGM, returned to Germany to shoot exteriors (generally outrageous) situation, that became known as “the for The Student Prince. Based on the operetta Old Lubitsch touch.” Robert Flaherty, asked to name his favorite Heidelberg, this was a shrewd “fusing of sentiment and film, usually said it was Dovzhenko’s Earth because “that’s highbred comedy,” charmingly played by and what they expect me to say.” But, he told Weinberg, Ramon Navarro (though according to Weinberg it was “between you and me, my favorite film is Lubitsch’s Kiss Me considerably “doctored” by the studio). Again.” Lubitsch’s next picture began his ten-year tenure at The movie was chosen as one of the ten best of 1925; Paramount. The “German invasion” of Hollywood had so was Forbidden Paradise and so was Lubitsch’s adaptation continued and Emil Jannings was now on the scene. Lubitsch of Lady Windemere’s Fan: an unparalleled achievement. starred him in The Patriot (1928) as the mad Czar Paul Lady Windemere, as Ted Shane wrote, substituted Lubitsch’s I….The Patriot, made on the eve of the advent of sound, was “own great sense of cinematic wit and the dramatic” for given a synchronized musical score, together with some Wilde’s “perfumed sayings.”… Georges Sadou considered sound effects and occasional voices. ...Lubitsch’s own first this Lubitsch’s best silent film, full of “incisive details, talkie was (1929), adapted by Ernest Vajda discreet touches, nuances of gestures, where behavior betrays and Guy Bolton from a successful play...and the cast included the character and discloses the sentiments of the personages. Jeanette MacDonald in her first screen role as the Queen of With Lubitsch a new art carried on the subtleties of Sylvania, Maurice Chevalier as her bored and erring consort, Marivaux, and the comedy of manners made its debut on the Lupino Lane as his valet, and Lillian Roth as the Queen’s screen.” maid (with Jean Harlow as an extra). So This is Paris (1926) was another “sophisticated Lubitsch had his doubts about sound, but when it comedy, full of marital complications petty jealousies, and came he took to it with the greatest ease and panache. The humors of the married but otherwise unemployed,” and Love Parade is witty in its dialogue, lavish in its settings, another huge success for Warner Brothers. It captures the startling in its sexual innuendos, and adroit in its introduction frenetic spirit of the twenties in the sequence which shows us of songs…. Theodore Huff called this “the first truly “a host of dance-crazed revelers performing the Charleston. cinematic screen musical in America.”… Like an animated Cubist painting,…[Lubitsch’s] camera has From time to time throughout his career, Lubitsch caught the pulsating pandemonium of the scene, and the seems to have become dissatisfied with his court jester role Lubitsch—NINOTCHKA—11 and to have set out to demonstrate a capacity for something wife, Herbert Marshall as her oblivious husband, and Melvyn more serious than sexual comedies. He did so in Rausch, The Douglas as an amorous bachelor, it builds its plot around the Patriot, and Eternal Love, and he tried again with The Man I fact that the “salon” where Dietrich and Douglas meet is in Killed (1932), adapted from a Maurice Rostand play by Sam fact an elegant brothel. Given the ever-increasing puritanism Raphaelson and Ernest Vadja. It is a somber pacifist tract of the period, this was a very nearly impossible theme, but about a young Frenchman who kills an enemy soldier in Lubitsch found ways of telling his story without ever World War I and later goes to Germany to beg the mentioning its real content…. forgiveness of the dead youth’s parents. Adulated by the This decline in Lubitsch’s reputation was halted by critics, it failed at the box-office. More recently, Andrew the enormous popularity of Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife (1938), Sarris has suggested that the public knew better than the his last film for Paramount. It has Gary Cooper as a much- critics—that the film is “Lubitsch’s least married American millionaire inspired and most calculated effort, all who finally succumbs to the surface effect, all ritualistic piety toward a daughter () of ‘noble’ subject.” an impoverished French At any rate, Lubitsch returned to marquis, and the brilliant his métier with dialogue was supplied by (1932), a remake with music of The Charles Brackett and Billy Marriage Circle that apparently was Wilder. The same team, directed by (credited only supplemented by Walter Reisch, as dialogue director), and followed it with wrote Ninotchka (MGM, 1939), Trouble in Paradise (1932). This Lubitsch’s only film with Greta masterpiece stars Miriam Hopkins and Garbo. She plays a dour and Herbert Marshall in a totally amoral dedicated Soviet commissar sent comedy about a couple of high-class to Paris to straighten out three thieves in Venice. The tone is set in the opening sequence, comrades who have been seduced from the path of duty by when a gondola gliding through the moonlit canals is seen to capitalistic self-indulgence. She meets an aristocratic French be collecting garbage; the gondolier throws a pail of slops playboy (Melvyn Douglas) and herself succumbs to Paris, aboard and launches into a heartfelt rendition of “O Sole glamour, and romance. Cheerfully satirizing both Mio.” There is never the slightest hint that the protagonists communism and capitalism (and thus antagonizing some might be redeemed by love or anything else; they are thieves; Marxist critics), it is one of the wittiest and also one of the never mind, they only steal from the rich, and the rich are warmest of Lubitsch comedies. It is not particularly well thieves too. Gerald Mast writes that “the delights, the gags, endowed with “Lubitsch touches” but remains perhaps the the comic business, the brilliant dialogue, the technical grace best loved of all his works, largely because of Garbo’s and ingenuity of camera, cutting and sound have never been ineffable impersonation of a beautiful iceberg slowly lighting surpassed by any Lubitsch film”; many would agree. It was up from within and melting into imperfect but irresistible the director’s own favorite among his pictures and marked the humanity. Garbo herself once said that “Ninotchka was the high point in his career. only time I had a great director in Hollywood.” For his screen version of Noel Coward’s Design for A leather goods and novelty shop in Budapest is the Living (1933), Lubitsch set Ben Hecht to work rewriting setting of The Shop Around the Corner (MGM, 1940). James Coward’s dialogue, explaining that the play was too static for Stewart is the head clerk, a salesgirl, and the cinema and that “things on the screen should happen in they quarrel so much that they eventually realize they must be the present,” not be recalled in conversation. This effrontery in love. It is one of the few Lubitsch films not concerned with worried contemporary critics, who also found Lubitsch’s cast the antics of the rich and idle, and it is difficult to understand (Frederic March, Miriam Hopkins, Gary Cooper) inferior to why it did not fare better at the box office….That Uncertain the soigné trio of the stage original (the Lunts and Coward Feeling (, 1941) was a disappointing and much himself). There was a mixed reception also for The Merry altered remake of Kiss Me Again, translated from Paris to Widow (MGM, 1934), a sumptuous Chevalier-MacDonald New York. adaptation of the Lehar operetta that failed to recover its It was followed y the controversial comedy To Be or costs. Not To Be (United Artists, 1942), in which a Warsaw theatre In November 1934, tired and a little shaken, Lubitsch company during the Nazi occupation combines its work with acquired a new job as production chief at Paramount. He a little sabotage against the invaders. According to Theodore supervised Sternberg’s The Devil Is A woman and Borzage’s Huff, the piece was called “callous, a picture of confusing Desire, but in 1936 was abruptly replaced by William Le moods, lacking in taste, its subject not suitable for fun- Baron. Lubitsch’s own next film, Angel (1937), was his making.” It didn’t help that it was released shortly after the greatest failure. Set in London and Paris in the mid-1930s, death in a plane crash of its star, Carole Lombard. In fact, the and with a cast headed by Marlene Dietrich as a neglected film is rich in the kind of “black humor” that only became Lubitsch—NINOTCHKA—12 acceptable years later. Peter Bogdanowich wrote in 1972 that dance, and he played the piano and the cello badly but with it “survives not only as satire but as a glorification of man’s enthusiasm. indomitable spirits in the face of disaster—survives in a way For Lubitsch, the crucial stage in making a film was that many more serious and high-toned works about the war the preparation of the script, and he worked so closely with do not.” his writers that they could seldom remember afterwards who In 1943 Lubitsch joined 20th Century-Fox as a contributed what to the finished product. Many of his writers producer-director, performing both functions for his first became close friends. Samson Raphaelson, his favorite movie there, Heaven Can Wait (1943)….It was Lubitsch’s scenarist of the post-Kräly period, remembered him like this: first film in color, which he used well enough to earn an “Lubitsch loved ideas more than anything in the world, admiring comment from D.W. Griffith. In 1945 the director except his daughter Nicola. It didn’t matter what kind of has his first heart attack while working on a remake of ideas. He could become equally impassioned over an exit Forbidden Paradise called A Royal Scandal. Otto Preminger speech for a character in the current script, the relative merits took over and Lubitsch was credited as producer, though the of Horowitz and Heifetz, the aesthetics of modern painting, or film has nothing of his style. The same is true of Dragonwyck whether now is the time to but real estate. And his passion (1946) of which he was also the nominal producer. was usually much stronger than that of anyone else around Lubitsch went back to work in the spring of 1946. he him, so he was likely to dominate in a group. Yet I never saw, produced and directed Cluny Brown, an excellent satire on even in this territory of egoists, anyone who didn’t light up English society with a fine cast headed by and with pleasure in Lubitsch’s company. We got that pleasure Jennifer Jones and including Reginald Gardiner, C. Aubrey from the purity and childlike delight of his lifelong love affair Smith, Peter Lawford, and other pillars of Hollywood’s with ideas….As an artist he was sophisticated, as a man, “British Colony.” In 1947 Lubitsch began work on That Lady almost naïve. As an artist, shrewd, as a man simple.” in Ermine, a screen version of an operetta starring . After a week’s shooting he became ill and Preminger again took over. Lubitsch died later the same year at the age of fifty-five. Theodore Huff defined the “Lubitsch touch” as a “swift innuendo or rapier-like ‘comment’ accomplished pictorially by a brief camera shot or telling action, to convey an idea or a suggestion in a manner impossible in words.” Lubitsch himself thought that “one shouldn’t single out ‘touches.’ They’re part of a whole. The camera should comment, insinuate, make an epigram or a bon mot, as well as tell a story. We’re telling stories with pictures so we must try to make the pictures as expressive as we can.” Gerald Mast thought Lubitsch the American cinema’s greatest technician after Griffith and wrote: his “art is one of omission….he consistently shows less than he might, implies more than he shows.” In this way Lubitsch “transformed Ernst Lubitsch Laughter in Paradise. Scott Eyman. Johns melodramatic and sentimental tripe into credible human stuff Hopkins University Press, Baltimore Md, 2000. and forged deeper into sexual desires, needs, frustrations and Ernst and Vivian’s honeymoon trip stretched on. fears than most of his contemporaries (and descendants) There was Vienna, where Ernst’s niece Evie had moved after dared to go.” Jean Renoir thought that Lubitsch “invented the her father landed a job with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer…In mid- modern Hollywood.” April. Lubitsch and his wife arrived in Moscow for what he Robert E. Sherwood described the director as “an said was a “purely private” visit. Vivian’s mother was extremely short, dark, thickset man, with ponderous Russian, her father Swiss. Never having seen her mother’s shoulders and huge, twinkling eyes. In appearance, he homeland, she was curious. In Moscow, they were feted by resembled a combination of Napoleon and Punchinello; in Boris Shumyatski, head of the Soviet Film Industry, but character he combined the best features of each.” Lubitsch’s overall the trip was kept rigorously low-key….Ernst was 1922 marriage to Irma Kraus ended in divorce in the early staying at the Hotel Metropol and was overjoyed to see his 1930s. Some years later he married an Englishwoman, Sania old friend Gustav von Wanferheim, [an old colleague from (whom he called Vivian); they were divorced towards the end the Reinhardt days who had acted for Ernst in his two of World War II. Lubitsch had a daughter, Nicola, by this Shakespearean pastiches]…Inge von Wagenheim appraised second marriage. He was a hyperactive man who drove Vivian as “a beautiful American WASP, stiff and quiet, who himself relentlessly, a gourmet, a wit, and a practical joker; appeared to have just thawed.” Ernst struck her as “alert, he never lost his music-hall German accent nor relinquished lively, piercing…truly nice, without guile or pretension.”… the big black cigars that became his trademark. He loved to Lubitsch—NINOTCHKA—13

The conversation turned to the great Socialist It was at that point that Paramount story editor experiment, and Inge von Wagenheim, a committed Manny Wolf introduced him to Charles Brackett, a patrician Communist, went into a long humorless diatribe. What was from the Eastern Seaboard. “From now on,” Wolf told them, happening in Russia, she declared, would be of enormous “you’re a team.” At Wolf’s suggestion, Lubitsch took them importance for the entire world, and she failed to understand on to write Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife… Lubitsch was how a man of culture and experience like Lubitsch could enthralled. Where had this diminutive man with a slanted believe there was anything more important than the effort to mind been all his life?...Wilder, whose ambitions to direct build a new world. Certainly, she said, “the dream machine would shortly be jump-started by having Mitchell Leisen lubricated by dollars” seemed a paltry, insufficient world in (“That fag who ruined my scripts”) direct his material. which to spend one’s life. Immediately fell into a student/teacher relationship with Ernst listened attentively, never even interrupting let Lubitsch, who taught him things he would remember the rest alone contradicting, black eyes dancing, clearly growing of his life. more and more amused. So this was what had replaced the “His technique was totally subordinated to dirt and squalor of czarist Russia from which his father had storytelling,” Wilder would remember, pacing back and forth escaped! He could understand why the lower and working in his office, occasionally stopping to whack his thigh with a classes preferred life under communism—it held the promise riding crop. “His theory—and mine—is that if you notice of improvement. But for an artist? direction, you have failed. You have to hide your technique. At the end of the evening, Ernst grabbed his old No dolly shot should be so overwhelming that you say, ‘My friend by the arm and asked him bluntly, “Now tell me God, look at that.’ Look at the story, look at the characters, honestly, Gustav, are you happy here?” and make the technique become part of the action.” The answer was affirmative—von Wagenheim and Beyond niceties like plot and character, Lubitsch his wife would only return to Germany in 1945—but gave Wilder an underlying attitude, an aesthetic belief Lubitsch was clearly bewildered by his friend’s enthusiasm. system: let the audience write the script with the filmmaker. The evening was far from a total loss, however, for in “Don’t spell it out, like they’re a bunch of idiots. Keep it just the stentorian, mechanical-minded Inge von Wagenheim, slightly above their station. He would not say to the audience, Lubitsch discovered the matrix for the title character of what ‘Now listen to me, you idiots! Two plus two equals four! And would become his most famous film: Ninotchka…. three plus one equals four! And one plus one plus one plus The trip to Russia disabused Lubitsch of any one equals four!!! Big deal. romantic feelings he might have had about socialism in any “No. You give them two plus two and let them add it form. Soon after his return, he told Salka Viertel, a up. They’ll have fun and they’ll play the game with you. screenwriter and good friend of Garbo’s, to take his name off “Lubitsch would have laughed if you had suggested the roster of the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League, saying it was making a film with no cuts in it, or making a film with just a tool of the Communists. As an alternative, beginning in ten setups, like Hitchcock did in Rope. Those are exercises in October 1939, Ernst became involved in a project called the masturbation and it would never occur to him. The living European Film Fund….Successful émigrés working in room should never be shot through a fireplace unless it is Hollywood would tithe between 1 percent and 5 percent of from the point of view of Santa Claus and he’s a character in their pay to a central fund…. the film.

Lubitsch returned to the Paramount lot, twenty-seven “If the truth were known,” remembered Wilder, “he acres in the heart of Hollywood illuminated, at one time or was the best writer that ever lived. Most if the ‘Lubitsch another, by practically every famous name in movie history. touches’ came from him.”… By this time, Paramount had assumed the realm of a cozy cocoon for Lubitsch, and for hundreds of others as As far back as 1929, Greta Garbo had been vocal in well….Billy Wilder was born in Sucha, a small town one her enthusiasm for the idea of being directed by an artist, as hundred miles east of Vienna, in 1906….Wilder moonlighted opposed to the craftsmen of various abilities who were on movie scripts, including the minor classic People on employed at MGM. Specifically, she was enthusiastic about Sunday. Leaving Berlin after the Reischstag fire (“It seemed working with either Lubitsch or Erich von Stroheim. In 1922, the wise thing for a Jew to do”), he made his way to Paris, Louis B. Mayer had dangled the possibility of borrowing where a script he wrote attracted the attention of director Joe Ernst from Paramount to direct Queen Christina, which led May. The script was never produced, but the money from the Garbo to cable on April 1, “Prefer Lubitsch, also happy for sale got Wilder to Hollywood. After the usual period of [Edmund] Goulding.” But Ernst was too deeply involved in adjustment, that is to say total and complete impoverishment, preparing Design for Living, which began shooting in the first Wilder landed at Paramount, where he once claimed to have part of July. The tantalizing partnership had to be put off for a made so little of an impression that he was seriously studying few more years. the want ads. Lubitsch—NINOTCHKA—14

The story for Ninotchka had been brought to MGM in “The minute Lubitsch took over, I told Behrman we 1937 by Gottfried Reinhardt, who was then working as an might as well forget the whole thing,” remembered assistant to Sidney Franklin. Melchior Lengyel’s original Reinhardt. Lubitsch reported to the lot on February 8, 1939, story was obviously written with Garbo in mind but it is and just as Reinhardt had guessed, promptly informed Sidney highly conventional. Its springboard was a three-sentence Franklin that he didn’t like the script. Franklin thought the memo scrawled in a notebook: “Russian girl script was fine, and for a while the project saturated with Bolshevist ideals goes to seemed to be verging on dissolution; in March, fearful, capitalistic, monopolistic Paris. She The Hollywood Reporter announced that MGM meets romance and has an uproarious good was considering Wiliam Wyler to direct the time. Capitalism not so bad after all.” picture, but a reconciliation was effected In Lengyel’s original story, the (probably to placate Garbo), and Lubitsch began three commissars are not comic (they’re to work on the script. played straight), and there is nothing about By this time, Gottfried Reinhardy had arrived jewels. Leon, the male lead, becomes a back in Hollywood to find Lubitsch completely drunkard when a business deal falls through in charge and already working with Walter and, at the end, he accompanies Ninotchka Reich. “We were in Sidney Franklin’s office to Moscow. The foundation of the finished and we started arguing about the jewelry film is there—a political anal-retentive business Walter Reisch had brought into the loosened up by love—but the story is plot- script [the Behrman script involved a nickel heavy. It reads like a nominal Sidney Franklin production. mine]. I thought the jewelry subplot cheapened it. Well, Lengyel completed a portion of a shooting script on Lubitsch stopped and asked Franklin if he could take me out January 7, 1938. The three delegates have become five but and talk to me. Franklin said of course. they're still played straight. Leon is to be played by William “’Gottfried,’ he said, ‘don’t make a mistake. Don’t Powell. The addition of Powell’s polished but antic humor fight me on this. You’ll lose.’ Lubitsch was a very nice man and sex appeal have done a great deal to add sparkle to what but he was a very tough man, But he made a very good film.” was, at this point, a slightly flat script. (When S. N. Behrman made similar noises about the jewelry During the latter part of 1938, Gottfried Reinhardt business, Lubitsch, with unassailable logic, pointed out that collaborated on two scripts for the film, one with Jacques “The nice thing about jewels is that they are photogenic.”’ Deval, who wrote Tovarich, the other with S. N. Behrman. Work resumed on the script, and again Wilder and At this point, the film was scheduled to be directed by George Brackett were called in to help…and to be amazed. “He Cukor. Surviving script material from these drafts indicates a wasn’t just a gagman,” remembered Wilder, “he was the best lack of real progress; as late as November 30, the commissars creator of toppers. You would come up with a funny bit to are still not being used as comic relief. end a scene, and he would create a better one. I think he While Reinhardt was in New York working with thought up the bit where the picture of Lenin smiles back at Behrman he heard that Cukor had backed out of Ninotchka to Garbo, [but] I can’t be too sure. He would look at our stuff devote his full energies to Gone With the Wind. It was bad and go ‘Ho-ho, very good,’ and scratch out the next line. timing at least for Reinhardt and Behrman, for it seemed that He’d read a bit more and go ‘Ho-ho, very good,’ and scratch they were turning the corner on the script; in a script dated out another line. What he did was purify, and that was what 12-15-38, scenes at the Eiffel Tower and Leon’s apartment made him a great writer.’” are fleshed out. More important, Behrman and Reinhardt By April 8, the script was very close to the finished have invented the restaurant scene as the moment where shooting script, dalogue and scenes are largely intact. The Ninotchka’s glacial reserve finally cracks. script gives credit to Lubitsch as well as Wilder, Brackett, Responding to Cukor’s defection, Garbo, who had de facto and Walter Reisch, who wrote a memo to MGM saying that director approval, gave MGM two choices: Edmund all three writers felt that Lubitsch was more than entitled to a Goulding or Lubitsch. As far as MGM was concerned credit…. Goulding was out of the question, tired and passé. (That same With the script approaching its final stages, it was year Goulding would direct—rather well—Dark Victory, and time for Lubitsch to convince Garbo that she could do the would go on to make several more major pictures, among film….Garbo always reserved the right to walk…. them The Razor’s Edge and Nightmare Alley, all combining She drove to MGM for a conference but didn’t want to suggest that what was passé was Louis B. Mayer’s taste in to get out of her car, An obliging Lubitsch got into the directors.) MGM’s enthusiasm for Lubitsch was muted, if passenger seat and sat with her for the next two hours. The only because he had lost them a great deal of money on The actress’s main fears revolved around the drunk scene; she Merry Widow. Still, he was a more felicitous choice than thought it was not right for her and, she admitted, she was Goulding. also ashamed to act drunk in front of other actors. After much Negotiations were concluded on December 30, coaxing, she agreed to try the scene, and the film. 1938…. Lubitsch—NINOTCHKA—15

Production began on May 31 and continued for fifty- Garbo arrived, said she was on a diet and would just eight days. As always, Garbo’s insecurity manifested itself as listen as he discussed the film. Poor Lubitsch had ordered an paranoia,’’ anybody who wasn’t absolutely necessary to the immense meal—the antipasto, a dozen special dishes, and the production was barred from the set.,,, chianti, and the fruit, and the cheeses were already on the Lubitsch put the drunk scene off for virtually the table. entire production, waiting to do it until Garbo felt completely “I never touch lunch,” Garbo said. secure with him and the film. “I believe [she] is the most “All right,” said Lubitsch. “I will eat and you listen.” inhibited person I have ever worked with,” Lubitsch said. He started telling Garbo the story. He got more excited with When she came to him and said she didn’t think she could each line, and forgot the food. An hour later, when he had play the scene, Lubitsch had to put his foot down. finished talking, he looked at the table—it was cleaned out. “’Look here, I’ll do anything you want, I’ll change Garbo had been so carried away by his enthusiasm that she the script, the dialogue, but this can’t be changed. Too much had forgotten her diet and put away the whole meal. depends on it. You must make up your mind that you have to play it’…When we did get to it she was very—afraid The basic comic idea was rather similar to Anatole Litvak’s is too strong a word—timid. But finally I got her to relax Tovarich (1917), with Claudette Cilbert and Charles Boyer, a completely by talking to her and being patient.” tale of Russian exiles in Paris—the stage version of which As Garbo started the scene, Lubitsh began modifying Garbo had seen and liked in Srockholm. Lubitsch was it, saying casually as he walked past her, “Very good, but if convinced that the commissar’s role in the story could be you could just do….” Lubitsch found that Garbo didn’t rely feminized and tailored to Garbo. on technique—it is entirely possible she had none—but had Ninotchka, actually did not start out to be a political to emotionally feel a scene in order to play it…. satire. It began when Salka told writer Melchior Lengyel that Like many actresses, Garbo seems to have tailored MGM wanted to make a comedy it could advertise with her reactions—indeed her personality—to the company in “Garbo Laughs!” as Anna Christie had been promoted with which she found herself. With Reinhardt or Cecil Beaton, she “Garbo Talks!” The next day, Lengyel had an idea: “Russian would claim that she had been uncomfortable with Lubitsch. girl saturated with Bolshevist ideals goes to…Paris. She Yet, she told Raymond Daum, who regularly accompanied meets romance and has an uproarious good time. Capitalism her on her endless, post- not so bad after all.” MGM would retirement walks through eventually pay him fifteen thousand Manhattan, that Lubitsch was “a dollars for those three sentences. marvelous little man,” and she But first he had to sell the told the journalist Sven Broman idea to Garbo. Soon enough, he that Lubitsch treated her “like a was summoned to Salka’s. “When I loving father.” With her lover arrived,” Lengyel said, “Miss Mercedes d’Acosta, she was Garbo was in the swimming pool. I exuberantly happy. was introduced to her at the edge of “Never since I had known the pool ’You have a comedy for her had she been in such good me?’ she asked. I told her it was yet spirits,” wrote d’Acosta of Garbo but an idea and I read the memo during the production of Ninotchka.”[It is] the first time I from my notebook. She was highly amused. In fact she have had a great director since I am in Hollywood,” she told laughed out loud at the possibilities the idea offered. ‘I like it. d’Acosta, who called her “a changed person. ”She used to I will do it.’ Then she turned and dived back into the pool.” come for me as usual after shooting, and we walked in the Viertel and Lengyel were to write. Both of them hills. At least I walked, but she more often ran and failed. So did S.N. Behrman, though he did come up with the danced.”… notion that their tough female Bolshevik should fall in love Commercially, Ninotchka returned worldwide rentals with a French gigolo. Lubitsch put Walter Reisch on the to MGM of $2.2 million in a cost of $1.3 million. The tally script and soon added Charles Bracken and Billy Wilder for was all the more impressive because countries as various as good measure. Italy, Estonia, Lithuania, Bulgaria, and France banned the Wilder was the most politically radical of the writers, film because of its satire on communism (France’s ban was but that did not prevent him from poking fun at Communism. lifted on appeal,) “That idea of a rigid, ice-cold lady commissar who softens under the onslaught of our corrupt capitalistic world is From Garbo. Barry Paris. Alfred A. Knopf, NY, 1995 especially funny when you think what’s happening now,” MGM…had told Lubitsch he could direct a film called says Wilder today. Ninotchka if he could persuade Garbo to star in it, and Salka The trick, he knew, was that it had to be funny but at Viertel arranged another meeting. Screenwriter Walter Reisch the same time realistic. If she was to be a real woman with was also present and recalled: brains, she (and the film) had to stress the reality of Soviet Lubitsch—NINOTCHKA—16 life. Thus did Ninotchka break the primary taboo of its day: It Lubitsch thought Garbo the least vain actress he ever was a “serious satire,” teeming with references five-year knew. “Having worked with many women stars, I have found plans and purge trials and other things requiring no little that one of the difficulties in working with them is their political sophistication to grasp. [Nine years later, the U.S. slavish devotion to the mirror,” he said. “In the eight weeks State Department sent thirty-five prints of the film to Italy for during which I worked with Garbo she never looked into the wide distribution during the “Red-threatened” elections of mirror once unless I told her to do so. Nobody but a film 1948.] director can appreciate the significance of that.” But she was …Asked by writer Garson Kanin why he put her in a also full of inhibitions—“probably the most inhibited person I comedy in the first place, Lubitsch replied: ever worked with,” he said—and when it came time to laugh , “Because she was funny, You couldn’t see it? You she made it clear that “she disliked playing the scene in front didn’t know how funny she was off the screen?...And I knew of all the extras.” she could be funny on the screen….Most of them are so Lubitsch’s solution was simple: He cleared the set heavy. Heavy! But she was light, light always, and for and later intercut the takes of her and Douglas with the crowd comedy nothing matters more. When someone has a light scenes, As a result, Garbo laugh—-long and loud and a bit touch, they can play comedy, and it doesn’t hurt if they’re forced, but charmingly. The rumor that it was dubbed is beautiful. There was only one thing that worried me a little. I absurd, says Wilder. There was no need; her real laugh was wondered if she could laugh, because I didn’t have a finish if wonderful. she didn’t have a laugh. She had the most beautiful smile. Lubitsch did everything to assist her, Between What am I saying? She had a whole collection of scenes, he let her retire to her dressing room and lie down smiles….Warm, motherly, friendly, polite, sexy, amused, until needed again, whereupon a soft buzzer would summon mysterious. Beautiful smiles. But a smile is not a laugh…. her. Wilder recalled only one time when Lubitsch ever I said to her one day, “Can you laugh?” and she said, change a line on the set—for Garbo. She was orating against “I think so.” I said to her, “Do you often laugh?” And she capitalist trains: The first-class section has velvet chairs, the said, “Not often.” And I said, “Could you laugh right now?” second-class leather seats, the third-class wooden benches. And she said, “Let me come back tomorrow.” And then next “We Communists,” she was to say, “will change this from the day she came back and she said, “All right. I’m ready to bottom up.” laugh.” So I said, “Go ahead.” And she laughed and it was It may be recalled that Garbo was always peculiarly beautiful! And she made me laugh, and there we sat in my offended by jokes related to the posterior. She objected, office like two loonies, laughing for about ten minutes. From Lubitsch took it out…. that moment on, I knew I had a picture. Ninotchka completed shooting on July 27, 1939. Between then and its premiere at Grauman’s Chinese on October 6, 1939, the USSR and Nazi Germany signed a treaty of friendship.

COMING UP IN THE SPRING 2017 BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS XXXIV: Feb 14 Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger: The Red Shoes 1948 Feb 21 John Huston: The Misfits 1961 Feb 28 Stanley Kubrick: Dr Strangelove 1964 Mar 7 Robert Bresson: Au Hasard Balthazar 1966 Mar 14 Bahram Beizai: Downpour/Ragbar 1972 Mar 28 Terry Gilliam and Terry Jones: Monty Python and the Holy Grail 1975 April 4 Nicolas Roeg The Man Who Fell to Earth 1976 April 11 Sergio Leone: Once Upon a Time in America 1984 April 18 Krzysztof Kieslowski: Double Life of Veronique 1991 April 25 Wong Kar-Wei: In the Mood for Love 2000 May 2 David Ayer: Fury 2014 May 9 Mike Leigh: Topsy Turvy 1999

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The Buffalo Film Seminars are presented by the State University of New York at Buffalo and the Dipson Amherst Theatre, with support from the Robert and Patricia Colby Foundation and the Buffalo News.