Online versions of the Goldenrod Handouts have color images & hot links September 11, 2018 (XXXVII:3) http://csac.buffalo.edu/goldenrodhandouts.html Dorothy Arzner: CHRISTOPHER STRONG (1933, 78 min) DIRECTED BY Dorothy Arzner WRITTEN BY Zoe Akins (screen play), Gilbert Frankau (from the novel by) PRODUCED BY David O. Selznick MUSIC BY Max Steiner CINEMATOGRAPHY Bert Glennon FILM EDITING BY Arthur Roberts SET DECORATION Charles M. Kirk COSTUME DESIGN Howard Greer, Walter Plunkett CAST Katharine Hepburn...Lady Cynthia Darrington Colin Clive...Sir Christopher Strong Billie Burke...Lady Strong - His Wife Helen Chandler...Monica - His Daughter Ralph Forbes...Harry Rawlinson Irene Browne...Carrie Valentine Jack La Rue...Carlo Desmond Roberts...Bryce Mercer relented, and she made her debut with Fashions for Women (1927). In the 1920s, she also directed films such as: Ten Modern DOROTHY ARZNER (b. January 3, 1897, San Francisco, Commandments and Get Your Man in 1927, as well as CA—d. October 1, 1979, La Quinta, CA) is notable for being the Manhattan Cocktail (1928) and The Wild Party (1929). In the only woman to direct films during the Golden Age of the 1930s, she directed such films as: Behind the Make-Up Hollywood studio system. She amassed 20 directing credits in a (uncredited), Sarah and Son, Paramount on Parade (sequence career that spanned the 1920s to the 1940s. She came into her director), and Anybody's Woman in 1930; Honor Among Lovers own as a filmmaker working at Paramount, editing the Rudolph and Working Girls in 1931; Merrily We Go to Hell (1932), Valentino headliner Blood and Sand (1922). She also did Christopher Strong (1933), Nana (1934), and Craig's Wife uncredited directing work for this film. Director James Cruze (1936); The Last of Mrs. Cheyney (uncredited) and The Bride was so impressed by her work on the Valentino picture that he Wore Red in 1937. The last years of her film career were spent brought her on to his team to edit The Covered Wagon (1923). directing such films as: Dance, Girl, Dance (1940) and First Arzner eventually edited three other Cruze films. Her work was Comes Courage (1943). After taking her filmmaking skills into of such quality that she received official screen credit as an the war effort in 1943, she returned to the postwar scene as part editor, a first for a cutter of either gender. In all, she edited 8 of the emerging field of television production. She also took a films. While collaborating with Cruze she also wrote scenarios, position as a film professor at UCLA in the 1960s and 1970s. scripting her ideas both solo and in collaboration. She has writing credits for 6 films. BERT GLENNON (b. November 19, 1893, Anaconda, Acting on her desire to sit in the director’s chair, Arzner Montana—d. June 29, 1967 (age 73) in Sherman Oaks, pressured Paramount to let her direct, threatening to leave the California), over the course of six decades, did cinematography studio to work for Columbia Pictures, which had offered her a for 144 films and television series, including: Ramona (1916); job as a director. Unwilling to lose a promising talent, Paramount The Torrent and Nobody's Fool in 1921; The Ten Arzneer—CHRISTOPHER STRONG—2 Commandments (1923, photographer), Changing Husbands Divorcement (1932); Christopher Strong, Morning Glory, and (1924); Barbed Wire (photographed by) and Underworld in Little Women in 1933; The Little Minister (1934); Break of 1927; The Last Command (1928); Blonde Venus (photographed Hearts and Alice Adams in 1935; Mary of Scotland (1936) and by) and The Half-Naked Truth (photographed by) in 1932; Art in Stage Door (1937); Bringing Up Baby and Holiday in 1938; The the Raw (Short), Christopher Strong (photographed by), Gabriel Philadelphia Story (1940) and Woman of the Year (1942); Over the White House (photographed by), and Alice in Keeper of the Flame and Stage Door Canteen in 1943; Song of Wonderland (photographed by) in 1933; The Scarlet Empress Love (1947), State of the Union (1948), Adam's Rib (1949), The (photographed by) and She Was a Lady in 1934; The Prisoner of African Queen (1951), Pat and Mike (1952), and Summertime Shark Island (1936) and The Prisoner of Zenda (1937, (1955); The Iron Petticoat and The Rainmaker in 1956; Desk Set uncredited); Stagecoach (director of photography), Young Mr. (1957), Suddenly, Last Summer (1959), Long Day's Journey Into Lincoln (photography), and Drums Along the Mohawk (director Night (1962), Guess Who's Coming to Dinner (1967), The Lion of photography); Our Town (1940); Dive Bomber (director of in Winter (1968), The Madwoman of Chaillot (1969), The Glass photography) and They Died with Their Boots On (director of Menagerie (1973, TV Movie), Rooster Cogburn (1975), On photography) in 1941; Mission to Moscow, This Is the Army Golden Pond (1981), The Man Upstairs (1992, TV Movie), and (director of photography), Destination Tokyo (director of The Roots of Roe (1993, TV Movie); This Can't Be Love (TV photography), and The Desert Song in 1943; The Very Thought Movie), Love Affair, and One Christmas (TV Movie) in 1994. of You and Hollywood Canteen (director of photography) in 1944; Night and Day (director of photography - uncredited) and COLIN CLIVE (b. January 20, 1900, St. Malo, France—d. June Shadow of a Woman in 1946; Mr. District Attorney, The Red 25, 1937 (age 37) in Los Angeles, California) acted in 18 films, House (director of photography), and Copacabana in 1947; Red some of which are: Journey's End (1930); Frankenstein and The Light (1949); Wagon Master (director of photography) and Rio Stronger Sex in 1931; Lily Christine (1932); Christopher Strong Grande (director of photography) in 1950; House of Wax (1953); and Looking Forward in 1933; The Key, One More River, and Bonanza (TV Series, director of photography - 1 episode, 1959); Jane Eyre in 1934; Clive of India, The Right to Live, Bride of M Squad (TV Series, director of photography - 5 episodes, 1958- Frankenstein, The Girl from 10th Avenue, Mad Love, The Man 1960); Sergeant Rutledge (1960, director of photography); Who Broke the Bank at Monte Carlo, and The Widow from Cheyenne (TV Series, 6 episodes, 1961-1962) and 77 Sunset Monte Carlo in 1935; History Is Made at Night and The Woman I Strip (TV Series, 24 episodes, 1960 - 1964). He also directed 11 Love in 1937. films. BILLIE BURKE (b. August 7, 1884, Washington, District of Columbia—d. May 14, 1970 (age 85) in Los Angeles, California) acted in 92 films and television series, including: Peggy and Gloria's Romance in 1916; Arms and the Girl (1917); Eve's Daughter and The Make-Believe Wife in 1918; Wanted: A Husband (1919), Glorifying the American Girl (1929) and A Bill of Divorcement (1932); Christopher Strong and Dinner at Eight in 1933; Finishing School (1934), Becky Sharp (1935), and Topper (1937); Everybody Sing and Merrily We Live in 1938; The Wizard of Oz (1939); Irene and The Captain Is a Lady in 1940; The Man Who Came to Dinner and They All Kissed the Bride in 1942; Gildersleeve on Broadway (1943); The Barkleys of Broadway and And Baby Makes Three in 1949; Father of the Bride (1950), The Young Philadelphians (1959); 77 Sunset Strip (TV Series), Sergeant Rutledge, and Pepe in 1960. DOROTHY ARZNER From World Film Directors, Vol. I, Editor John Wakeman. H H.W. Wilson Company, NY. 1987. (January 3, 1897- October 1, 1979, American director, editor and scenarist, was born in San Francisco and grew up in Los Angeles, where her father, Louis Arzner, owned a well-known Hollywood restaurant, the Hoffman Café. Dark-paneled, gently lighted, and intimate, the Hoffman featured a round-table at which gathered celebrities from the theatre next door and filmmakers and actors of the caliber of D.W. Griffith, William S. Hart, James Cruze, Mack Sennett, Charlie Chaplin, Erich von Stroheim, Hal Roach, and Douglas Fairbanks. Arzner has said KATHARINE HEPBURN (b. May 12, 1907, Hartford, that her best friends always predicted a movie career for her Connecticut—d. June 29, 2003 (age 96) in Old Saybrook, because she apparently loved actors, but that she “didn’t love Connecticut) acted in 53 films, some of which are: A Bill of Arzneer—CHRISTOPHER STRONG—3 them. I was afraid of them. They were always tossing me up in from the advice of her grandfather, a former miner who told her the air.” never to drink desert water) was almost the only member of the Growing up in this environment and unimpressed by it, crew to escape dysentery. By the mid-1920s Arzner was Dorothy Arzner was drawn by contrast, to a career in medicine. established as “the best cutter in the business”—indeed, the When she left the Westlake school she began pre-med studies at historian Kevin Brownlow writes that she was “the only editor the University of Southern California, taking courses also in from the entire silent period to be officially remembered.” At history of art and architecture. A summer spent working in a about the same time, she wrote or coauthored her fist scenarios surgeon’s office raised doubts about her medical vocation. World for movies like The Breed of the Border (1924), Inez From War I had begun and Arzner signed up as an ambulance driver. Hollywood (1924), The No-Gun Man (1924), Walter Lang’s Red Though she never left the United Kimono (1925), William States, the experience was exciting Wellman’s When Husbands and unsettling enough to turn her Flirt (1925) and Cruze’s Old conclusively away from further Ironsides (1926). studies. She began to look for By this time Arzner other work and even to consider was impatient to embark on the movie career that had been her own career as a director predicted for her.