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• UUK \MERICAN
ENTURY
Our American Century
Boston Public Library
100 Years of
By
Hollywood
the Editors of Time-Life Books, Alexandria, Virginia
BR BR YA
PN19g3.5 ,U6 A 59 7 1
999
Contents
6
Cultivating Fantasy:
Movies and Their
20
The
Birth of
American Film
Photographs Spring
56
148
164
188
The Hollywood Director
108
Manufacturing the Dream
to
The Lights
Follow
in
Hollywood's Sky
Celebrating the Stars
to Life
Shaping Worlds on Film
Kids and Animals
Hard Acts
Stars
Acknowledgments Picture Credits
189
Bibliography
190
Index
Behind-the-Scenes Movie Magic
*
100
YEARS
Ol-
HOLLYWOOD
Lauren Bacall
Cultivating Fantasy:
Movies and Their rom
F\
the earliest years to the present, the movies have traded
petite for fantasy.
dreams reached
the 1920s
and
stars
and the
its
late
directors
peak
1940s
and
on
people's ap-
Always a key to the industry's success, the making of
their
in the
when
"golden age" of Hollywood, the era between
the big studios held unchallenged
power over
movies enjoyed an unrivaled hold on the public's
imagination. Moviegoing then was such a in 1938,
Stars
way of life
that during
an average week
America's population of 120 million bought 80 million movie tickets.
Audiences were drawn to particular films primarily because of the tured in them.
And
stars fea-
the stars' appeal was fueled by ubiquitous publicity photographs
gazing out from magazine covers and movie posters, the faces entirely familiar but still
impossibly, irresistibly romantic. Star portraits were a specialized
like the
renowned George Hurrell adopted
subjects brilliantly aglow against a
already beautiful
some
form of Hollywood
men and women
a
art.
Studio photographers
dramatic lighting
style that set their
background of shadow. The into icons. Like the stars
radiated elegance, others had a wise-guy swagger,
still
effect
transformed
shown on
these pages,
others an all-American
appeal.
Sometimes they were simply breathtakingly gorgeous, but always they
seemed
larger than
Lauren
life.
Bacall, at right, represented the very stuff
of such fantasy. At age 20, the
former Betty Joan Perske made her film debut opposite
Have and Have
Not, creating
Humphrey Bogart
in 1944's
an instant sensation with her striking looks, husky
and tough charm. This 1946 publicity
portrait for
the two stars, conveyed the film's hard-boiled
flair
The Big
Sleep,
To
voice,
which again paired
and BacalFs own
distinctive
magnet-
ism while stoking the public's fascination with her recent marriage to Bogart. To the studio publicity machines, the stars' real lives were additional fodder for fantasy.
made an
For decades the great studios days of absolute power could not
new crop careers.
A
of actors and directors
their
of cultivating star appeal, but their
Television began competing for viewers.
demanded and
got
more
control over their
A
own
trend toward greater realism sent moviemakers off studio lots and out on
location. Yet
wood
last.
art
through these and
all
the other changes of
has remained the film capital of the world, and
power
to fascinate.
its first
its
100 years, Holly-
movies and
stars retain
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Joan Crawford
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The Birth of American Film PHOTOGRAPHS SPRING ^
'
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TO LIFE
)
In
1896 a short motion picture of waves crashing onto a beach debuted
music
An
audience
locomotive.
hall
in Paris
in the front
panicked and
The mixture of
came moving that
—and viewers
reality
rows squirmed
illusion
prospect of being drenched.
produced by photographs
pictures contained a potent magic.
New York
with the image of an onrushing
fled as the screen filled
and
at the
at a
that suddenly be-
The pioneers who understood
magic best made movies into an instant industry.
From humble beginnings
in
"peep-show" machines, motion pictures took
only about two decades to evolve into complex, feature-length spectacles shown in palatial theaters seating thousands. In the eyes of ordinary critics
this
the cinema rapidly
growth was taking
came
into
place, film
its
fans read a 1924 as
MGM's
let
dream
form of
factories
(inset),
art.
And
while
run year round.
movie magazines
as quickly as the films themselves,
about Hollywood's emerging nobility:
magazine
Griffith.
A
all
as a distinct
production migrated fi^om the East Coast to
southern California, where the climate
Appearing almost
own
moviegoers and
stars like lovely
or smoldering Rudolph Valentino
(left,
Mae
let
Murray, adorning
foreground); moguls such
Louis B. Mayer or Paramount's Adolph Zukor; and brilliant directors
By the
early 1920s
movies had become America's
fifth
most
like D.
W.
lucrative industry.
pith-hehneted production crew shoots a scene for the 1921 desert epic The Sheik. In costume for the
title role,
silent-era heartthrob
Rudolph Valentino awaits
his turn in front
of the camera.
*
Til
I.
B
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l;
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C A N
III.
M
East Coast Origins 1888 the
InThomas W.
Jersey laboratory of America's leading inventor,
Alva Edison (below,
the world's credit, the
New
right),
developed the kinetograph,
motion-picture camera.
first
Though Edison
work of one of
invention was primarily the
got the
his assistants,
K. Laurie Dickson. Six years later the Edison
kinetoscope
(left),
the
first
Company
introduced another marvel
commercial system
for
To use the boxlike contraption, a customer put a viewer,
showing motion
in a
—
the
pictures.
penny, gazed through
and watched some postage stamp-size action play out
as a 50-foot
loop of film unrolled over a period of a few seconds.
The content of the chine
itself:
Pretty
films
women
and contortionists twisted
*lf
we make
are asking
was
as
rudimentary as the peep-show ma-
danced, terriers worried
by,
into knots. Viewers, however, were stunned
it
and
machine that you
this screen for,
rushed
rats, trains
will spoil
everything."
In
an 1896 Edison
film,
May
Irwin and John
Rice reenact a scene from a stage play, creating a
cinematic
Thomas
projector
-.r»
delighted at the experience of seeing
still
photographs erupt into motion.
Kinetoscopes quickly began operating in arcades, bars, and stores through-
out North America and Europe.
The obvious next existence in the
step
was
to liberate
box and project them
motion pictures from
large
on a
in
their tiny
screen. Edison at first did
not approve, believing that one-at-a-time viewing meant bigger
profits.
But
1896 he introduced a projector called the vitascope. (He had acquired
from
its
creator,
cepted praise for
Thomas Armat, who went unnoticed someone
else's
work.)
The
and soon audiences were gathering before screens
it
as Edison, again, ac-
vitascope was an instant
hit,
in makeshift theaters
all
these devices, Edison
hoped
to control the world
of cinema. But some filmmakers and exhibitors defied eras
^H ii ^^^
Thomas Edison
him by
and projectors imported from Europe, where he had not
using cam-
registered his
indignation.
^^^
across the land.
Having patented
and sparking moral
first
Edison, arguing against the development of a motion-picture
in business as
ing big
money
(above, in 1669)
wus as feiudous
he was ingenious in the
lab,
spend-
to enforce his patents.
23
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patents.
Meanwhile, a
patents were based film,
rival
I
II
I.
H
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*
system emerged. Since Edison's
on the sprocket holes
in
motion-picture
an outfit called the American Mutoscope and Biograph
Company
devised a camera that used imperforated film.
Edison
filed suit,
but the courts sided with Biograph,
which then suggested a partnership. In 1908 Edison, Bio-
and
graph,
several other
companies joined
Company (MPPC).
be monopoly, the Motion Picture Patents
They attempted
to close
exhibitor that refused to
censing and other
fees.
down
every studio, distributor, and
honor
They
would-
forces as a
their patents
by paying
li-
also sent thugs to steal the
negatives or destroy the cameras of maverick studios.
But the independents proved more resourceful. They fought the Edison trust in court. They also headed for
southern California, which got them away from the
and offered
patent enforcers back east
end, the independents won:
The
U.S.
successful antitrust suit against the
trust's
better weather. In the
government
MPPC
filed a
in 1912.
Even before most studios relocated to the obscure Los Angeles
community
was taking place
called
Hollywood, another big change
—the
in the industry
studios,
to the public only as the
Biograph
Biograph was leery of giving
the financial leverage that
praised her acting but lamented,
"We do
not
know
Girl, a
review
the lady's name.'
birth of the star
system. Biograph's top attraction was a comely
known
Wlien Florence Lawrence (above) was the Biograph
its
young
Girl. Like
actors
would come with
and
woman other
actresses
celebrity. In
1910 newspapers reported that the Biograph Girl had died in a streetcar accident. In fact, she
the rival Independent
had been lured away by
Motion Picture Company, run by
budding mogul Carl Laemmle, who most
up and
—possi-
circulated the story of her death himself
bly filmdom's
first
instance of a planted publicity item.
Laemmle then ran advertisements
blasting the
by enemies" of his company, revealed tity as
dreamed
likely
his
new
lie
player's iden-
Florence Lawrence, and reaped enough publicity to
make her
a household name.
The
era of
anonymous
was ending; from now on there would be movie
A
Biograph crew
ers
Jim
"circulated
Jeffries
(left)
actors
stars.
prepares to film an 1899 match between box-
and Tom
Sharkey. Fights were a popular film subject.
Billy Bitzer (above),
a Biograph camera
one of the first masters of cinematography, uses to take
footage from a moving train in 1898.
25
— *
100
YEARS Of HOLLYWOOD
*
Nickel Madness A /
s late
\
1908 the average movie was just one
as
long.
A
reel
contained about a thousand
jL film that was good for
-X.
time, cost a few in a single day.
more
hundred
But
if
sophisticated in both plot
The potential
Robbery
first
clear sign of the
still
the Edison
in 1903,
drama
film, a suspenseful
that
up
escape. At the
in the tale that
first
titled
urban
it
fled.
storytelling
The Great Train
New lersey. Made
offered something
was played out
new
in
of
in a series
dance
for
hall episode,
showing, viewers were so caught
some of them
'em!" as the thieves
grown
they had
brief,
tightly knit scenes: the holdup, a chase, a
and an
and was shot
new medium's
a western shot in
Company
of
and technique.
was a 10-minute microepic (left),
feet
10 to 12 minutes' running
dollars to produce,
films were
reel
yelled,
"Catch 'em! Catch
Afterward the audience demanded
that the projectionist run
it
again.
Within
the film
five years
brought in a staggering two million dollars
in profits.
With such rewards beckoning, the movie business drew entrepreneurs of every stripe. In Kansas City, former chief George Hale created a
new
fire
type of theater in 1904.
audience, seated in a replica of a railroad car (near
The
right,
watched travelogues that had been shot from an actual
top), train.
The concept of illusory
Tours,
became franchised
Movie
mostly working
named because admission
ini-
Nickelodeons occupied every sort of
from cramped shops
—
Hale's
exhibitors soon struck pay dirt with other varia-
tially cost five cents.
bought
dubbed
internationally (far right, top).
tions of the nickelodeon, so
space,
railway journeys,
class,
to ballrooms.
Customers were
and they loved what
their nickel
a few short films with piano accompaniment,
often interspersed with vaudeville acts, songs, or lectures.
Nickelodeons quickly became a national mania Scenes from The Great Train Robbery, directed by Porter, include (from top)
Edwin
S.
"nickel madness,"
the robbers fleeing with their loot; and, in a thrilling if inexplicable final note, a character firing his pistol at the audience.
ences
26
saw the film
in
one observer
called
it.
By 1907 there
two bandits threatening the depot agent;
a version
hand
Some
audi-
tinted with bright colors.
were more than 3,000 of the rough-and-ready theaters across the country,
and average
soared to the two million mark.
daily attendance
had
*
T
1 1
F
BIRTH OF AMERICAN FILM
Hale S Tours
TERMINAL STATION
18S,
of the
*
World
OXFORD STREET, LONDON,
W,
Seated in a Hale's Tours theater built to resemble a Pull-
man
car
(left),
an audience
takes a virtual trip by watch-
ing a film that replicates the view from a train. Such
make-believe journeys were popular as far afield as Lon-
don (above). To add
to the illusion, the theaters
were
sometimes equipped with machinery that mimicked the noise
A
and swayuig motions
of a real train ride.
magistrate assailed nickelodeons as "dens of iniquity," but the baby carriages outside this theater suggest that some upstanding ladies disagreed.
27
*
100
YKARS OF HOLLYWOOD
*
The
Moguls
First
During the second decade of the 20th
century, a handful of entre-
preneurs pushed aside Edison and his aUies to conquer the
motion-picture industry. They were ambitious, hard-charging
who
Jewish immigrants or sons of immigrants
deons, then followed the golden vein to
men
These were street-smart class
Americans who made up
medium's
possibilities before
open
its
started
source
—
the movies themselves.
attuned to the dreams of the working-
their first audiences.
anyone
to
by running nickelo-
them
else did.
in part
The
They saw the new
film industry
because
it
was considered a
slightly disreputable novelty business.
now wanted was They perceived
had been
What
they
to achieve culture as well as profit.
that this
meant moving away from
the kinds of cheap one-reelers the Edison trust
Key figures
in building
Paramount
Pictures
turned out. Paramount chief Adolph Zukor said of
Corporation were Adolph Zukor, seen
above as a 23-year-old furrier;
who perfornied
in vaudeville
the trust,
Jesse Lasky,
with his
sister
and Samuel
into their
mechani-
into their sales department, but never
by any chance into
their films."
Goldfish (right), later
Under
Goldwyn, who had been a glove salesman but, after
and
cal devices
Blanche (below) before becoming a producer;
"They put some brains
producers, directors, writers, and
stars.
moved
to
became longer and
better,
and
marrying Blanche, helped form
the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play
Company.
It
Hungary
Pictures.
for
balmy
California, films
grew bigger and more luxurious.
theaters
risktakers
started small but thought very, very big.
Adolph Zukor was
New York
Production
was a time of rapid evolution, steered by
who
Paramount
these moguls, studios acquired stables of
in 1888.
a 15-year-old
He made
good,
orphan when he
first in furs,
left
then in nick-
elodeons. But despite his success with the movies, he recalled, "These short films, one-reelers or less, didn't give
that
was going In 1912
Queen
me
the feeling that this was something
to be permanent."
Zukor bought
distribution rights to a four- reel French film,
Elizabeth, starring stage legend Sarah Bernhardt.
showing that there was a market
Zukor chose
is
independent filmmakers,
tablishing a studio that he called, hopefully, the
28
success,
not ripe for feature pictures,
to join the ranks of
pany. For distribution, he signed
was a
for sophisticated, feature-length movies.
Since the Edison trust insisted the "time ever will be,"
It
up with an
Famous
Players Film
outfit called
Paramount.
if it
es-
Com-
*
II
I
1
"[His]
li
1
K
1
C)
II
I
A
M
K
1.
1
C A N
F
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*
mind works with
the swiftness and
all
certainty of the
mind of
a Napoleon." Newspaper description
of
Adolph
Zul
1912
Left:
Sam
Goldfish,
Adolph Zukor, and
confer in 1916. Below:
Squaw Man,
Lasky's first film.
B. DeMille, reported trust
Gunplay looms
and kept a
The
Jesse
in
Lasky
The
director, Cecil
death threats from the Edison
revolver
and a pet
wolf on location.
29
3
.
*
100
YEARS OF HOLLYWOOD
*
In 1916
Zukor merged
Man
was the
first
his studio with the Jesse L.
—whose 1914
Company
Lasky Feature Play
feature-length western
wood and marked
The Squaw
hit
made
in Holly-
the debut of director Cecil B. DeMille.
Zukor soon clashed with and forced out Lasky 's brotherin-law and partner, Samuel Goldfish, winning control
first
of the studio and then of the distributor. Paramount.
Under
the overall
nation's largest
him
(left) slept little
and would
often
work for 24 hours at a
"the shark, the
the office every
built the
movie company. One acquaintance
other early moguls His attention on business even during meals, mogul William Fox
name Paramount, Zukor
killer."
He dominated almost
called
the
all
— and then outlived them, going
morning
until his final years
into
and dying
in
stretch.
1976
Fox.
at 103.
The
brash, overbearing,
and
indefatigable founder of
the Fox Film Corporation was William Fox, the oldest of children of Hungarian immigrants.
school at age
1 1
He had
to leave
to support the family, since his
when
hard-drinking father did not, and
the elder Fox died, William spat his coffin. In 1903,
24, he
arcade.
and
It
a friend
on
when he was bought a penny
proved so lucrative that
thereafter he trained
\
1
all
his energies
on
the entertainment business.
Fox went on to buy and build fancy theaters designed to
expand the appeal of
movies beyond working-class audiences. He
embarked on film production. His studio put
in 1914,
out dozens of westerns starring cowboy big box-office nal
also,
draw
for
Tom
Fox was Theda Bara
Mix. Another
(left),
the origi-
vamp, who steamed up the screen with a predatory
icism.
As the
erot-
studio's success grew, so did Fox's ambition.
According to his biographer, the novelist Upton
Sinclair,
Fox, like a latter-day Edison, "planned to get
the
all
moving
picture theaters in the United States under his control
Theda Bara,
costume
.
.
1917 film Cleopa-
Fox
star
tra,
played alluring sirens who seduced men, then destroyed them.
in risque
far the
*
1
think also that he planned to have the
own
pictures entirely in his
But
its
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
He took
that a
The
in
Justice
Locw s
and
Fox's loans
came
due.
He
established Universal Pictures
already middle-aged before he encountered
Laemmle had come
many
for
to
M
1:
K
I
c:
A N
II
1.
M
much
was
success in
America from Germany
as
went from one lowly job to
years
finally rose to
A
lost
Carl Laemmle
He
another.
1
violate antitrust law,
The man who
and
O
an auto accident
Universal.
a teenager
II
Inc.,
MGM as well as control of his own company.
Carl
I
out colossal
his shot at
life.
R
Department decided
merger of the two studios would
the stock market crashed,
I
months. Meanwhile, three ru-
for three
inous things happened:
H
studio. Just as negotiations
were closing, Fox was gravely injured
and did not recover
I
making of motion
loans to acquire another big movie company,
and
II
hands."
1929 Fox overreached.
in
1
manager of a clothing
store in
— known
to
everyone at Universal as Uncle Carl-
had a lighthearted manner but was a
fierce business competitor.
Oshkosh, Wisconsin, but then he quarreled with the owner and, at 40, found himself jobless again.
One
night in Chicago, however, he discovered his true
dropped into one of those hole-in-the-wall
calling. "I
cent
motion picture
"The pictures made
theaters,"
me laugh,
and the projection jumpy.
body
else.
I
knew
motion picture In 1906
right
I
remembered.
though they were very short
liked them,
away
later
that
I
and so did every-
wanted
to
go into the
business."
Laemmle
to exhibitors.
Laemmle
five-
When
started a
company
that rented films
the formation of the Edison trust in
1908 threatened to ruin him, he decided to begin producing his
own
films,
— IMP,
Company feisty
forming the Independent Motion Picture for short.
Laemmle proved
to
be the most
of the independents, lambasting Edison's group in a
vigorous advertising campaign while fighting off 289 separate legal actions
it
filed against
him. Meanwhile he enticed
"Biograph Girl" Florence Lawrence to join lured her replacement at Biograph, In 1912 to
form
full
Laemmle merged
IMP
—and then
young Mary
Pickford.
his studio with several others
Universal, then drove off his
new
partners to gain
control of the company. Universal was successful from
Universal executives publicized the 1915 opening of their
new
Cali-
fornia studio by arriving from the East on this banner-draped train.
31
u#
*
*''^.
iiM,
Dining the shooting of In Old Kentucky, Louis B.
Mayer
(left)
—
in
1919 an independent producer
—
takes a break
with his first big
star,
Anita Stewart, and di" '
ansfmlK
^:
*^ J»€: '
>/
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f
'i I
^ i
-^
"1
Till
the beginning, and in 1915
it
its
own
acres, Universal City
his place
among
was Marcus Loew,
must be
Side.
Ambition
it,"
he
large
I-
A
M
1,
K
1
C:
A N
F
1
I-
M
*
enough
to
MGM's dominant
into poverty
on
was a byword
said, "as the
wolf
who
New York's for
Loew. "You
licks his teeth
rabbit."
fellow furrier
Adolph Zukor
what grew
arcades, then in 1904 launched
theaters.
was
companies.
to achieve his goal
As a young man Loew joined penny
rival
who had been born
as ravenous to reach
behind a fleeing
O
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was the product
Like the other big studios,
Lower East
II
the studio moguls.
of the moguls' compulsion to take over force
R T
post office and voting precinct. Without question, Carl
Laemmle had taken
MGM.
1
established a statc-of-the-arl studio north of
Hollywood. Sprawling over 230 be granted
B
To increase the supply of high-quality
to
in
running
be a mighty chain of
films,
he decided to go into
movie production himself
The second key from
Russia,
down
figure at
Mayer got
MGM was Louis B. Mayer. An immigrant
his start in the
movie business by converting
a run-
Massachusetts burlesque house into a handsome cinema. In 1915 he
Theater magnate Marcus Loew was a superb
manager, whose operations one journalist Ul<ened to "the
helped form Metro Pictures Corporation, then
making
wood
films
on
his
left
for California
maneuvers of a crack army
division."
and began
own. Mayer became a Holly-
legend: so sentimental that Lassie
made him
weep; so foul-tempered that he more than once
punched a
star in the snoot; so given to
pomp and
excess that he declared the Fourth of July his birthday, claiming he could not
remember
birthday back in Russia, and every year led
own
his exact all
of
MGM in a massive celebration— whether primarily of America's birthday or his
Completing
mous
pedigree was the irrepress-
Players- Lasky to start a
He and
his partner,
names
to call
it
tion,
and Goldfish
gave
it
to himself.
sive roster
ny
never certain.
Samuel Goldfish, who had gone on from Fa-
ible
last
MGM's
own was
as well,
famous
—and
the
Goldwyn
liked the
at
Goldwyn
and he spent the
so well that he
built
up an impres-
Pictures,
rest
their
Pictures Corpora-
name
Although he
of talent
studio in 1916.
Edgar Selwyn, combined
for films such as
for
new
he was forced out of that compaThe
sleepy look of Metro's front office in 1918-
and
its
of his career as an independent producer,
Wuthering Heights and The Pride of the Yankees
such mangled metaphors, dubbed Goldwynisms, as accusing
coming years of box-office torpor
belie the studio's
—
eventual destiny as part of
moviemaking giant Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.
33
*
34
100
YEARS OF HOLLYWOOD
*
5
*
directors of "biting the
hand
hi 1919
Loew purchased Metro
ration. Five years later
he folded
in
me
new
Pictures
Goldwyn
R
1
O
II
A
I
M
1-
R
I
<:
A
N
t-
1.
I
M
*
Pictures for
soon renamed Metro-Goldwyn-
Mayer. In 1927
Loew
died of heart disease, before the
studio reached
its
make
I
Corpo-
studio,
glory days. But
li
out!"
and made Mayer head of filmmaking operations the huge
I.
golden
that laid the
egg" and nixing a project with "hiclude
III
Mayer went on
to
MGM Hollywood's most prestigious film studio.
Warner Bros. There was
among
often
brotherly love
little
Harry, Abe, Sam, and Jack Warner.
sons of a Polish immigrant
first
The four
decided to try the With leading
motion-picture business in 1903. They showed films in a tent in their Youngstown, Ohio, backyard, then a nickelodeon where Harry
and Abe sold
tickets,
Don Juan
opened
sound
—
in the
man
John Barrynwre seated
the 1926
movies
Warner
in the center, the cast
of
Bros, film that pioneered the use oj
—assembles
for a celebratory portrait.
Sam
cranked the projector, and Jack sang between screenings.
They ventured trust forced
into film distribution, but the Edison
them out of business, so
in
producing inexpensive movies. Profits were often but the brothers refused to throw years of scrambling they
in the towel,
— melding
stride since the birth of the
elusive,
and
had accumulated enough
to try a revolutionary breakthrough
^Without a doubt the biggest
1910 they began
after
1
industry."
capital
film with
The Warners' assessment of the
talkie
synchronized sound. They obtained the major rights to a system called Vitaphone and used
more just
feature,
Don
in a
Juan. Although the
music and sound
The following
it
effects,
year, the
1926 John Barry-
movie had no
talk,
the audience was amazed.
Warners included fragments
of dialogue in The Jazz Singer, starring Al Jolson. Harry
"Who
portedly had doubts; talk?"
he
said.
re-
the hell wants to hear actors
But the movie proved a sensation. Warner
Bros. Pictures rapidly built itself into a giant.
But as success arrived, what
little fi-aternal
harmony there
was disappeared. The day before The Jazz Singer debuted, Sam, the family mediator, suddenly died. Somewhat
Abe pulled out of the that
business,
and tensions grew so
Harry once chased Jack around the studio
lead pipe.
By the end the two
launched the
talkies,
active Warners,
lot
later
fierce
with a
men who had
were no longer speaking to each other.
Beneath an image ofAl Jolson theater where the first talkie,
in blackface,
The Jazz
New
Singer,
Yorkers
premiered
swarm
the
in 1927.
35
•
100
YEARS OF HOLLYWOOD
*
Ince the Innovator "W"
"T" hile the budding moguls at the top of the
A
% /% T
/ movie industry assembled mammoth corporafilmmaking
tions,
was becoming increasingly
at the
nuts-and-bolts level
sophisticated.
neering work in production was done by Ince,
who
an easterner
Born
in
Much
of the pio-
Thomas Harper
gained fame as a maker of westerns.
Newport, Rhode
Island, in 1882, Ince gave
up
playing the rear end of a horse onstage to join Biograph in
1910 as an actor,
later
becoming
a writer
and
director.
The
next year, he struck out for California to supervise the operations of the Bison
the popular but
still
Company,
a studio specializing in
crude genre of westerns. Bison leased
18,000 acres of land near Santa Monica, where Ince created the standard industry practice of shooting ft-om detailed scripts.
Bison also signed up an entire Wild West show win-
The show had authentic cowboys and
tering in the area.
dians, horses, steers,
His face a picture of determination, Thomas Ince was a trailblazer as a
manager of studio operations and
creator of cinematic atmosphere.
and wagons. The cowboys not only
served as extras in Ince's oaters but also patrolled the fences, ready to
In-
lot's
run off any Edison trust detectives. Ince brilliantly exploited these assets.
had
He
a water supply system installed so his
employees could keep on shooting pictures right
through the blistering summer. His stu-
dio buildings were designed so they could
double as exterior
sets.
Within a few years he
was overseeing eight directors and had more than 500 people on his payroll, and the Bi-
son complex became
known
as Inceville.
In 1914 Ince launched the film career of
William tor
who
S.
Hart, a trained Shakespearean ac-
loved the Old West and was commit-
ted to re-creating sible.
it
as authentically as pos-
Handling a pair of sLx-shooters with
panache, Hart went on to star in westerns unThis 1918 view shows the filmmaking kingdom Ince ruled buihiings
36
and
sets
—
studio
spread across a southern CaUfornia hmdscape.
til
1925. But the hard-driving Ince
far:
He had
had pushed himself too
died of an apparent heart attack a year
earlier.
*
Western William
'III
r.
B
I
R T
II
or
A
M
r
R
I
C A N
III.
M
*
star S.
Hart
e
1912 film Custer's Last Raid, luce employed
Sioux and more than a hundred others as ex-
Some had when,
actually been present as
in 1876,
young boys
Sioux and other warriors wiped out
force led by General George
Armstrong Custer
the Little Bighorn.
"I
reckon God
wantin'
ain't
me much,
ma'am, but when look at you, ridin'
I
feel I've
the wrong
dialogue for William
I
trail."
S. Hart's
character
57
•
100
YEARS OF HOLLYWOOD
*
The
No
Clowns
Silent one did more
to tickle the
funny bone of early
moviegoers than a one-time vaudevOlian named
Mack stage for the
two years
Sennett. Sennett gave
movie business
work with
later to
graph, and tried his pany.
own
He showed in
hand
director D.
a genius for
Mack
Sennett (above, right)
of the hilarious Keystone Kops fihns role,
doubtfully contemplating a
—
as the director
and producer
here appears in a comic acting
matchmaking
W.
Griffith at Bio-
comedy
so he went out
it,
films,
on
com-
his
working with a whole
—among them
Fatty Arbuckle
galaxy of major comic talents (below),
for the
1912 and founded Keystone Pictures. At Keystone
he would turn out some 900
—famous
out for Hollywood
in 1908, set
at directing
New York
up the
Mabel Normand
(far right, bottom),
Ben Turpin
agency's services.
(page 41, bottom), Like pervising
Thomas
and Charlie Chaplin (page Ince, Sennett
was a production whiz, su-
numerous one- and two-reel ly.
In the early days
45, top).
films simultaneous-
he worked with rudimenta-
ry scripts, encouraging his cast to improvise physical hilarity
on camera.
gan to plan out his films
in
Later he be-
more
detail.
The
essence of Sennett's comic style was slap-
—
stick
pies in the face,
with
cars,
and other
manic escapades sorts of
madcap
goings-on. According to Holly-
^ ,;
wood
lore, the
pie-throwing gim-
mick originated one day when
Lined up outside the Los Angeles studio of Keystone Pictures in nett's
1915 are the
rolling
funniest scenes. The automotive
on the cars and risky for the
the irrepressible
props of some of Mack Sen-
actors,
grabbed a pie from some workmen
mayhem was murder
but audiences loved
who were
it.
Mabel Normand
at
having lunch and chucked
it
Turpin to loosen him up. Sennett
found the prank so funny that he made
Go
hire
some
girls,
any
it
girls,
a staple of his comedies.
Policemen were also a regular
so long as they're
pretty,
especially around the knees.
source of laughs. Sennett realized that »»
portraying
them
of authority
Mack
made them wonderfully
Sennett, on finding potential bathing beauties Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle
38
as self-important figures
*
III
T
H
[;
1!
I
R
l-
II
(II-
AMERICAN
F
I
1.
M
*
a lypiail nioiiiciit of dcli^lttjul uuuhic<.<; a car full of Keystone
Kops
(left)
made
ii
nuishcd between two
his first
appearance as one
trolleys.
of the
Every
humbling
Seiiiiett
actor
officers.
•f^\
'^s^'
o
A
JH,
Sennett's female extras, like those at right, sported bathing attire
that
was daringly skimpy for
beauties were the
its
time. Keystone bathing
pinup choice of many World War
I soldiers.
^-
^\
.11
In the 1919 film
Up
toward gunplay
(left).
in Alf's Place,
card playing takes a turn
In movie slapstick, bullets could fly
furiously without injury to any of the characters.
-A
J^
A
deliciously villainous
drives in a stake to pin
while
Mack
Ford Sterling
—another Keystone
Mabel Norrnand
Sennett himself secures her
/
'T
star-
to the railroad tracks
legs (right).
jl^jwrr-
^\\-
i^:/
-^
39
/
'^^^^1
^1 llln a1^H 1
nil ,
v..
k!
1liin i1
— *
ridiculous: it,
"Wherever there
embarrass
from
endured mishaps,
left)
it,
and thumb
collisions,
and
their noses at
Kops (page
entertainingly inept Keystone
The
said.
llee
it,
li
I
R
1
II
t)
I
A
M
I-:
U
I
C A N
1-
I
1,
iVI
*
comics can embroil
dignity,
is
Till,
pratfalls
it,"
he
39, top
of every
kind. Keystone films also featured a host of bathing beauties
who
(page 39, top right), to
be looked
An
who
all
to
work
Sennett
s
words, "around
while the comics are making funny."
was pioneered by Charlie
alternative to slapstick
Chaplin,
went
at
w^ere, in
learned his trade in British music for Sennett in 1913 at
halls.
$125 a week
He
anci, like
Sennett actors, served a brief studio apprenticeship as a
Keystone Kop. But the slapstick-loving Sennett was, fundamentally, out of tune with Chaplin's style of tle
characterizations
"made your
said, ally
was allowed
and
comedy
—sub-
Normand
a wistful sadness that, as
heart ache." So although Chaplin eventuto deviate
from the stock Sennett
didn't last long at Keystone.
trademark character the
By
Little
he
roles,
1916, having developed his
Tramp, he was making
$10,000 a week at the Mutual Film Corporation. If
other silent-era comic actors couldn't quite reach
came
Chaplin's level of genius, they
close. Buster
Things have
Keaton
on for dear (left),
somehow gone wrong again for Harold
life in
Lloyd, as he hangs
a famous scene from the 1923 film Safety
Last.
a veteran of vaudeville, created dazzling sight gags in
which he endured bizarre and often threatening situations Diminutive Ben Turpin
with gloomy aplomb: In various films he soared skyward
—was a
crossing
atop a runaway balloon, played solitaire in a sinking rowboat,
and
—whose
regular in
Mack
eyes were insured against un-
Sennett's stable of comics.
lived inside a steamboat's paddle wheel.
Harold Lloyd gave comedy a note of realism. Horn-
rimmed
glasses
were the trademark of
earnest but hapless
young man. Lloyd
his usual role as
an
specialized in
predicaments that were extreme yet believable, such as
He had
the harrowing scene at right.
somewhat exaggerated reality, as
—
for
doing
all
a reputation his
own
stunts. In
a valuable box-office draw, at times surpassing
even Chaplin, he was held out of the riskier scenes in
fa-
vor of a stunt man.
In the film
One Week,
Buster Keaton
(left)
follows instructions for
putting up a prefabricated house, persevering in his long-suffering
way even though
the
components
of the kit are rnismarked.
41
YEARS OF HOLLYWOOD
D.
W.
*
Griffith
and The Birth of a Nation
He
gave us the
grammar of film-
He understood
making.
the psy-
So
chic strength of the lens." said actress Lillian Gish of Griffith, sial
who
David Wark
directed her in his controver-
1915 masterpiece The Birth of a Nation
and many other
pictures. Griffith did not
invent such techniques as closeups or
The
crosscutting, but in
Birth he used
them
more compelling
to
effect
than any American film-
maker had
before.
The son of a
mer
Civil
for-
War Confed-
erate colonel, Griffith
joined Biograph as a director in 1908.
Over
the next five years he
made 400
films,
mostly one-reelers, for the studio, until
its
lack of interest in feature-length films
prompted him in
to
go out on his own. With-
months, he began shooting The
Birth.
Blending grandeur and intimacy, the film followed
two
families,
one Northern
and one Southern, through the
and Reconstruction the longest
movie
scale, its narrative its
42
eras.
yet
At
made
1
Civil
2 reels,
in
War it
was
America.
Its
complexity, and especially
nuances of emotion were unprecedented.
D. W. Griffith gives instructions on the set of The Birth of a Nation. During the
shooting of some of the battle scenes,
liis
voice couldn't be heard over the noise even
through a megaphone, so he controUed the action by waving color-coded flags.
*
T
II
I-;
li
R T
I
O
1 1
M
A
I-
Acclaim came swiftly
R
F.
I
A N
C:
I'
I
I.
M
— and so did out-
rage. Griffith presented equal rigiits For
and showed the Ku
blacks as dangerous
Klux Klan
(inset opposite) in a heroic light.
So powerful was the
KKK, defunct
since 1869,
Hgnant
1915
life
in
came back
in Atlanta,
premiere of The Birth as
The National
impact that the
film's
its
to
ma-
using the
inspiration.
Association for the Ad-
vancement of Colored People and prominent figures
like
reformer Jane
Addams spoke
out against the film. But most viewers were
simply awestruck. in
New York,
It
opened on Broadway
playing to
theater ticket prices,
houses
full
and ran
for
at live-
44 weeks.
It
persuaded Americans to think of films as an art form, not just
The next
an amusing novelty.
year Griffith produced an even
more complex
film. Intolerance.
The
lavish
three-hour-and-15-minute epic used tings varying
from ancient Babylon
ern America to dramatize the
to
mod-
theme,
title
though one form of intolerance
set-
it
al-
failed to
address was antiblack racism. Box-office results,
although impressive, did not match
production
costs, a
Griffith's career
problem that dogged
untO he was
finally forced
out of the business
in the 1930s.
Three moments from
Griffith's
The Birth of a Na-
tion
demonstrate the
director's
mastery of action
and
his careful
composition of shots: a battlefield
closeup of the "Little Colonel," played by B. Walthall (top); Confederate
clashing (center);
Henry
and Union forces
and John Wilkes Booth leaping
from a box at Ford's Theatre
after shooting Presi-
dent Lincoln. Griffith spent $100,000 on The Birth of a Nation, a figure that seemed until the next year,
when
his costs for
enormous
producing
Intolerance ballooned to two million dollars.
43
YEARS
10
The
O
H
I-
C)
L
I.
Y
WO
O
15
Talent
Takes Over Early
filmmakers refused to credit
actors
by name, fearing
that
fame
could lead to demands for higher salaries.
When
removed, their
some.
A
the cloak of fears
anonymity was
were realized
leader of the
upward
—and then
salary spiral
was golden-curled Mary Pickford, who began performing
went on
in theaters at age six
and
to a blockbuster career in film roles
of innocent adorability. So powerful was her childlike image that even
age 27 she
at
played a 10-year-old, the illusion aided by
on her
the use of oversize furniture
sets.
Pickford was canny and iron
In real
life,
willed,
and she negotiated her pay
stratospheric $10,000 a
week by
rate to a
1915. Char-
Bom
Gladys Smith
Her famous lie
ringlets
in Toronto,
Mary Pickford became
ktiown as America's Sweetheart.
were augmented with hair bought from Los Angeles prostitutes.
Chaplin soon reached the same heights,
as did
Douglas Fairbanks, an acrobatic
swashbuckler and Pickford's future husband. In 1919, to thwart a possible salary
squeeze by the big studios acting in unison, Pickford, Chaplin,
and Fairbanks banded
together with director D. their
own company.
uing to make big
W.
United
Griffith to
money
Artists.
form
Contin-
wasn't a bad idea,
and the new operation succeeded. But there was
also
United
something to the
Artists'
integrity of the
terference fi"ee
to
claim that
mission was to maintain the
filmmaking
art
without
in-
from greedy moguls. Chaplin was
spend several years on a single pro-
duction and to
resist talkies,
films until 1940.
And
making
silent
Griffith, at least for a
time, was permitted his
44
stars'
runaway budgets.
A
1917 look-alike contest
in Bcllinghatn,
Washington,
testifies to
Charlie Chaplin's
*
u
Till
H
1
So the
K
I
II
O
1-
A
M
I-
K
I
C A N
II
lunatics
have taken charge of the asylum." An executive's remark about United Artists
Douglas Fairbanks, the
Sad-faced Charlie Chaplin tle
Tramp adopts
immense
in
sits in
a doorway with Jackie Coogan, a waif
The Kid. Chaplin wrote and directed
popularity. His Little
Tramp
role
whom
the Lit-
the poignant 1921 comedy.
was widely imitated by other
actors.
agile hero of
numerous
historical
dramas, embraces a swooning Julanne
Johnston
in
The Thief of Bagdad, a 1924
hit.
I.
M
*
•
10
Y
A R
!I
O
S
An
HOLLYWOOD
1-
*
Evening
at
the Movies A
/
s salaries
\
and studios grew
to
monu-
mental proportions, movie theaters
^. were doing the same. A move to-
JL
ward opulence was
began
exliibitors in big cities
and deep carpeting
audiences.
A sumptuous
fitting
out
to attract upscale
3,000-seat picture
opened
palace called the Strand, for example, in
New York
But
in 1914.
uel
as
oak panels, mir-
their theaters with marble, rors,
by 1910,
in evidence
its
manager, Sam-
"Roxy" Rothapfel
had even grander
(inset),
visions.
In 1927 the city wit-
nessed the debut of the
Roxy
(right)
Rothapfel,
—named
who had
for
spent
$10 million building what he proclaimed to be the
The Roxy
largest theater in the world.
more than 6,000 viewers comfort on red plush with the
letter R. It
symphony
in air-conditioned
monogrammed
seats
housed a
orchestra, a
seated
10-piece
1
mammoth
pipe or-
gan that was played from three separate consoles,
and a
fully
equipped hospital
case any patrons were taken
ill.
Sightlines
and acoustics had received meticulous tention,
and
the ushers. Picture, as
own
set
it
marine colonel trained
was dubbed, even possessed bells.
A
dingy storefront, smoky
its
greater con-
old-time nickelodeon
wooden benches
46
at-
The Cathedral of the Motion
of cathedral
trast to the its
a retired
in
—with
interior,
and
—could hardly have been
*
I
II
I
H
I
K
I
II
()
I
A
M
I
!!
I
(
A \
I
I
I
M
47
*
100
YEARS OF HOLLYWOOD
imagined. Roxy, one journalist declared, had given the movies "a college education."
Glorious excess was breaking out over. In
bottom
Los Angeles Sid left)
Grauman
all
(opposite,
chose Spanish and Byzantine
design touches in 1918 for the Million Dollar Theater.
venue
He
in 1922,
built
an Egyptian-style
then in 1927 created his
masterpiece, the stunning 2,258-seat Chi-
on Hollywood Boulevard.
nese Theater
A
Seattle
movie palace
was modeled on the
(opposite, top)
royal quarters of the
Chinese emperors. The firm of Balaban Katz gave Chicago theaters
an imitation
Versailles,
like
the Tivoli,
and advertised the on
"intricacies of Eastern magnificence"
display at the Oriental. Balaban aters
&
&
were adorned with towering
Katz theelectric
signs that could be seen for miles. Inside
were awe-inspiring mazes of vestibules, waiting rooms, promenades, lounges, bies
—
and
the latter embellished, as in
all
lob-
picture
palaces, with vivid lobby cards advertising
the latest
Hollywood productions
(right).
Each of the theaters offered a playground for children with a staff of nurses to
them while
watch
their parents enjoyed the movie.
This escalation of extravagance did not always add
up
sound
to
financial practice,
and many of the theater palaces were absorbed by the big studios. Adolph Zukor
puUed Balaban
&
Katz into Paramount in
1925; William Fox took control of the over-
extended Roxy Theaters Corporation
in 1926,
before Rothapfel could even complete his great showplace;
and by 1930 Sid Grauman
was a Fox employee. But
—
industry
that
was the movie
a business battlefield that resem-
bled nothing so
much
as a big-screen epic.
*
The
ceiling of the Fifth
Avenue Theatre
in Seattle copied
—
at double the size
Impresario Sid (left)
movie palace
111
li
1
the vault of the imperial throne
K
1
t)
11
room
1
A
M
in Beijing's
L K
I
C A N
Forbidden
!
1
1.
M
*
City.
Grauman
created one
culminating
—
I
gaudy
after another, in the
famous Chinese
world-
Theater.
A
f^ ALwAys-ToSiD
Los Angeles Times columnist wisecracked, ''Sid
go
but,
A
may
in for barbaric splendor,
anyway,
it's
splendor."
tradition at the Chinese
was for prints
stars to leave their
and autographs
wet cement
in front
theater (right).
;
r
in
of the
|-)AMb/\wDFoor PrInTs-CJ.S.
49
*
10
Y
A R
[;
OF H O
S
I.
WOO
I Y
D
*
Stars of the Silent Screen he key to a ized,
T^
was
silent film's box-office success, studios eventually real-
star power.
"You could take 1,000
in a chair," said a director,
eyes of the public,
near-mythic
status.
lived in a palatial
movie
Two
stars
of
feet
Norma Talmadge
"and her fans would flock to see
— images hyped by
press agents
it."
In the
—enjoyed
of the greatest, adored in America and Europe
alike,
Hollywood home. Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks
struck Britain's Lord Louis Mountbatten as fellow nobility: "At the time of their reign in Pickfair,"
and
in fact they
The
Mountbatten
behaved
in the
they were "treated like royalty,
said,
same
sort of dignified
public's fascination with stars
star's
behavior could stand up to such scrutiny, and
but her wild private
life
led
Fairbanks, both already married
Paramount
when
they
many a
repu-
was immensely pop-
to fire her.
fell
lives,
and gossip columns. But
tation suffered lethal damage. Clara Bow, for example, ular,
that royalty did."
extended to their off-screen
giving rise to movie magazines, tabloid coverage,
not every
way
Even Pickford and
in love, feared the conse-
quences of divorce and remarriage.
No
sUent-era star could match the public adulation lavished
dolph Valentino. This
and cads
gangsters
men
Italian
immigrant made a
until his sinuous
on Ru-
living playing stereotypical
tango scene in 1921 's The Four Horse-
of the Apocalypse transfixed female audiences. His next film, The Sheik,
him
established
as the screen's first great "Latin lover."
Valentino blended dark good looks, physical grace, and erotic force in a
way
that
made women swoon
his bracelets
And
—and men
and cosmetics, one writer termed him
in his private life the great screen
manding. His dured bova,
all
first
wife refused to
all
paramour proved
consummate
when
suddenly of peritonitis.
mourners who swarmed was so rampant
his funeral in
Among
nomenon
puff."
than com-
which en-
Ram-
at least
on
at the
peak of
the outpouring of grief
crowd and many were tram-
a dozen overwrought fans first
of mass hysteria over a show-business
a flickering face
and
the 30,000 mostly female
New York,
mitted suicide. Valentino's death marked the
50
less
their marriage,
Valentino, 31
that police lost control of the
There were also reports that
power
powder
the lion's share of artistic control of his films.
sniping ceased in 1926,
his fame, died
pled.
a "pink
Mocking
of six hours. His next, set and costume designer Natacha
demanded
But
snort in derision.
a silent screen
com-
appearance of the pheidol,
demonstrating the
could have.
The
Sheik, Valentino
Agnes Ayres.
woos leading lady
"Women
are not in love
with me," he maintained, "but with the picture of me on the screen."
.'A
/
'^^fej
'^
*
Bebe Daniels displays an extravagant costume from Cecil
B. DeMille's
I
II
1
H
I
K
r
II
()
i-
A
M
h K
I
C A N
1919 melodrama Male and Female, which juxtaposed ancient and modern
Sisters Lillian (left)
and Dorothy Gish won
critical
II
I.
M
*
scenes.
acclaim in Orphans of the Storm.
Fans copied the lavish on-screen wardrobe and hairstyles
of movie queen Gloria Swanson. Mar-
riage to a French
marquis added
to
her glamour.
53
•
100
YF.
ARS OF
HOLLYWOOD
Lon Chaney, the "Man of a Thousand HTjo Gets Slapped (right). casts,
most notably
in
*
Faces," appears as a tragic clown in thefihn
Chaney portrayed a
The Hunchback of Notre
series
Dame and
—Ramon Novarro, John
Three screen heartthrobs
—
three different movies
relax between scenes
In the 1920 version of Dr. Jekyll
tinguished acting clan
54
Gilbert,
on the
Tlie
Phantom of the Opera.
and Roy
MGM studio
the doctor
and
D'Arcy, costumed for
lot in this
and Mr. Hyde, John Barrymore
—played both
He
of grotesque but sympathetic out-
1926 photo.
— member of
a dis-
(above, right) his evil alter ego.
> I
m^>
%
Shapin Worlds on Film THE HOLLYWOOD DIRECTOR
%
/
%
/
hat
is
drama,
bits cut out?"
also
knew
that building
Griffith's Birth
camera (page at the
after
all,"
Alfred Hitchcock once remarked, "but
There was some truth
drama on
film
in that,
was anything but
with the dull
but as a movie director, Hitchcock
easy. In the
decades following D. W.
of a Nation, the 1915 masterpiece that demonstrated the evocative power of the
42),
movies grew into an immensely expressive
art,
with the director positioned
very center of the creative process. Although approaches to the job varied somewhat,
directors typically played a
So pivotal a
major
and camera
cisions about lighting
role naturally
role in casting, hired technicians,
angles,
and took
drew strong
a
hand
coached
ing boots
and wielded
on earth
a crop,
matters." Otto
slightest provocation,
and he once
personalities. Cecil B. DeMille,
told his
staff,
Preminger gained notoriety
for his tirades
tongue-lashing. Hitchcock referred to actors as being "like directors
seemed
to
made
de-
Hollywood's long-
On
the set he wore rid-
"You are here to please me. Nothing
he would subject an offending actor or crew
The demanding ways of some
actors,
in the final editing.
time maestro of epics, popularized the image of the director as despot.
else
life
during shooting;
member
at the
to a highly public
cattle."
know no bounds.
Erich von Stroheim, the silent era's ultimate perfectionist,
became known
Austrian -born for his
wars with
studio executives over budgets, schedules, and content. For his 1922 film Foolish Wives he
A
superb cinematic technician and an iirirelenting taskmaster on the
set,
British-born director Alfred
Hitchcock adopts an imperious look in a publicity shot for his 1960 classic of terror.
56
I
"
I
II— iwiwimiHiiiiwimi
I
.rsoii
York
Welles emerges frot
taxi,
on
office receipts
his
way
to check box-
for his Citizen Kane,
based on the Ufe of media mogi
William Randolph Hearst. I
^tnuu
,--'-
'IHbilN
/VKIH
;/
"V
2D
A
/
^I
*
insisted that a tuil-size replica of the casinos
Carlo be built on the Universal version erected
on the California coast
The
casinos from the ocean side.
show
to
II
A
I'
I
N
WO
('.
R
IDS ON
III
M
*
of Monte
He then had
lot.
S
a
second
the
same
film took a year to shoot
and ran 400 percent over budget. After
a colossal fight in
1922 with Universal's boy-wonder producer Irving Thalberg about those excesses, von Stroheim transferred his talents to
Greed
MGM and began work on his trailblazing film
(right).
Two
years later he
he thought was the
final
MGM promptly gave chopped
it
product
to a
in a graveyard," as released
is
—
eight hours long.
$30-a-week film
by three quarters.
it
handed the studio what
"It
was
like
cutter,
who
seeing a corpse
moaned von Stroheim, though
considered one of the silent
the film
era's greatest.
In the heyday of the studio system, the all-powerful
moguls were generally able to keep
their top directors in
check. Executives mustered the creative package of script,
In his 1925 film Greed, based on the director Erich von Stroheim ter,
a
dentist,
how
and
director,
and
shows an actor playing the
120-degree
in
title
charac-
a drugged patient. To achieve the realism
he wanted, von Stroheim shot on location
San Francisco and stars,
to ravish
Frank Norris novel McTeague,
in
a boardinghouse in
midsummer
heat
in
Death
Valley.
films flowed out the studio doors
with businesslike efficiency. Michael Curtiz, a
Hungarian recruited by Jack Warner directed
Warner
more than
a
hundred
in 1926,
pictures for
Bros, in almost every imaginable genre.
Though he complained
that
"Hollywood
is
money, money, money, and the nuts with everything
else,"
some of the
Curtiz
managed
to create
of the studio
finest pictures
era,
including The Charge of the Light Brigade {1936), Angels With Dirty Faces (1938),
ventures of Robin
Hood
mortal Casablanca
Other
(1938),
and
The Ad-
1942's im-
(right).
gifted directors
—Howard Hawks,
Frank Capra, John Ford, and John Huston to
name
—were
a few
also able to achieve creative
greatness despite the constraints of the studio
system. All were skilled at navigating the sharkinfested style,
Hollywood
waters,
although they didn't
and each had a strong personal
like to talk
about
it.
When
The main characters
(Humphrey
style,"
that master scoffed, "I myself
haven't the vaguest idea." John Ford
Michael Curtiz's Casablanca
would not go along
—Rick
Bogart), Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman), Victor Lazlo (Paul
asked reid),
about "the John Huston
in
and Captain Renault (Claude Rains)
stirring climax. Rick
manfully persuades
—gather for
Hen-
the film's
his true love, Ilsa, to forget
about him and fly off with her Resistance-leader husband, Victor
59
— •
100
YEARS or HOLLYWOOD
with anyone
who
tried to
coax out of him an explanation or even an ad-
mission of his genius. But his colleagues in the industry recognized that Ford's
work was
a virtual encyclopedia of the film
medium. "Almost any-
thing that any of us has done you can find in a John Ford film," said director Sidney
Lumet. Frank Capra described Ford as a kind of apotheosis of
the profession: "half-tyrant, half-revolutionary; half-saint, half-satan; halfpossible, half-impossible
.
.
Orson Welles watched 40 times before starting his
but
.
all
director."
Ford's groundbreaking western Stagecoach
own
film-directing career with Citizen
1941 (page 58). Welles was just 26
at
cast
based on the H. G. Wells novel
Barbra
star,
tion of Martians landing in Streisand, while shooting a
five decades,
Wyler adapted
many
stage productions to film. "I consider the first
function of a director
to
Tlie
Halloween eve broad-
earlier, in a
War
New Jersey was
of the Worlds, his dramatiza-
so convincing that
it
caused a
movie version of the
musical Funny Girl (1968). In a directorial career
spanning almost
in
the time but already a legend in the
worlds of theater and radio. Three years
William Wyler huddki with his
Kane
nationwide panic. For his baptismal film
unprecedented
artistic
Welles was given almost
effort,
freedom by RKO, and he used
it
to the fullest, de-
scribing the situation as "the biggest electric train set any
boy ever had."
be the acting," he said.
Functioning as writer, performer, and daring cinematographic experimentalist,
he crafted a film that combined newsreel tech-
niques with the
drama of a
detective mystery. Press
magnate William Randolph Hearst, who took offense at
the lead character, an obvious
—and
unflattering
version of himself, ordered his newspapers to snub the
fjg^glJHH ^^»^^^H\1
film.
Thus
it
was a box-office disappointment, but
would be ranked by many
critics
the finest
it
American
movie ever made. In the mid-
and
late
1940s
resentful of studio control,
films independently.
As one
critic later
It
many
leading directors,
began trying
to
produce
was often a draining experience.
wrote, "the studio chiefs created a
magnificent support system for directors," freeing them
from worries about financing and arranging to
work with
familiar actors
and
for
them
crew.
As a new generation of directors came of age outside the studio system, creativity surged.
Helping dispel tension, John Huston mugs cast during the filming of the nie. tors,
to his
1982 musical An-
Huston
—
the son of a film actor
a journalist, tried prizefighting,
and
— worked
briefly
served as a cavalryman in the Mexican army.
60
took one of the oldest Hollywood genres, the gangster picture, into new
and more
Before joining the ranks of Hollywood direc-
Arthur Penn
brutal territory with his stunning 1967 film Bonnie
Sam Peckinpah
and
Clyde.
did the same for the western two years later with TJie Wild
as
Bunch. In terms of sheer range, no one outdid Stanley Kubrick, the cast-of-thousands
Roman
who
filmed
epic Spartacus (1960), the stinging antiwar
*
tilni Pitllh
^1
1
1
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!
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II
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of Clary (1957), the blackly humorous,
end-ot-thc-\vorld classic Dr. Stmiigclovc
breakthrough science
fiction film 2001:
1964), the
{
A
Space
A
Odyssey (1968), and the hair-raising social satire
Clockwork Orange (1971).
and
In the 1970s
own
superstars in their
emerged
'80s directors right.
as
The names Steven
and George Lucas became syn-
Spielberg (right)
onymous with "blockbuster"
after Spielberg's
phe-
nomenal success with jaws (1975), Raiders of the Lost
Ark (\98\), and
Star
Wars (1977) and
E.T. (1982), its
sequels.
and Lucas's with
And
film audi-
new work by Woody
ences eagerly awaited each
Altman, Brian De Palma, Francis Ford
Allen, Robert
Coppola, and Martin Scorsese. In Hollywood's early days, at a time
job because "he
a director his first
yells
when one
studio executive gave
women
good,"
hardly stood a
On
location in Poland, Steven Spielberg directs
Liani Neeson in the 1993
drama
Schindler's List,
which recounted the story of a German industri-
chance. But Dorothy Arzner defied convention
and masculine
prejudice, alist
working her way up from
comedy
then directing a
on
script supervisor to editor to screenwriter,
called Fashions for
Bow and
to direct Clara
March
Fredric
Women in
Paramount's
Colbert, Sylvia Sidney, Katharine
Crawford.
Much
later,
Hepburn, Rosalind
directing. In
woman
1976
to be
War
II
Italian
nominated
first
Campion's
script
make
and
Beauties,
New
a brilliant
Honor fitting,
and
first
harrowing
Zealand-born Jane Campi-
haunting The Piano. Neither won, but
in 1993 for her
earned her a screenwriting award.
comeback with The
(1985), since
and The Dead
Huston did not
and
'50s,
new
(1987).
The
title
of his
film tech-
John Huston,
Man Who Would Be King
(1975),
last
live to see its release. Earlier
remarked on the intimate connection between directors and
film
was
he had
their
work:
Penny Marshall reviews
Hanks on
the set of the
the script witli
1988 comedy
grossed more than $100 million.
"Each picture," he of
lives
in his factory.
forays into
for a Best Director Oscar, for the
nology, one of the legendary directors of the 1940s
too
them
and Joan
(right),
Despite changing tastes and the challenges of mastering
all
the Nazis by employing
sound
filmmaker Lina Wertmuller became the
drama Seven
on was nominated
Prizzi's
more than a thousand Jews
She went
Russell,
Barbra Streisand, Penny Marshall
Jodie Foster were able to use their clout as actors to
made
from
shielded
The Wild Party (1929), and subsequently worked with Claudette
release.
'World
in 1927.
who
—
said, "is a
world unto
itself.
Tom
Big,
A former
which televi-
Picture makers lead dozens sion sitcom actress, Marshall launched her direct-
a
when each
life
for each picture.
picture
is
finished
And, by the same token, they perish a
and
that
world comes to an end."
little
ing career two years earlier with Flash, starring
Jumpin Jack
comedienne Whoopi Goldberg.
6i
*
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11
A
1'
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1-1
I
M
Masters of the Big- Budget Epic A /
^
showed
taste for spectacle
\
among
itself early
filmmakers, with Cecil
DeMille setting the pace for sheer directorial grandiosity. Pharaoh-
B.
.X-like, he ordered the construction of the largest set in
ry for his 1923 Technicolor epic
The Ten Commandments.
— 100
desert rose an ersatz ancient Egyptian city
studded with a million pounds of statuary. chariots for the film
and assembled 3,500
He
feet tall,
also
extras
time.
Through the
DeMille continued to create epics
wrapped
olence but often neatly
—
making Gone With
the
Wind
700
feet
became
wide, and
for the
the biggest
for decades afterward,
invariably spiced with
romance and
vi-
in the cloak of a historical or Biblical event.
In 1939 director Victor Fleming followed the in
In a California
and 5,000 animals
and
silent era
histo-
had craftsmen build 300
shooting. Studio executives were appalled, but the film
moneymaker of its
movie
same general
recipe
Rhett Butler (Clark Gable) scandalizes Southern aristocrats
(right).
For a scene of Scarlett O'Hara lett
wandering amid wounded and dying soldiers Atlanta, tras
Fleming had 1,600 bodies
— 800
and 800 dummies being rocked
by the extras
—arrayed
in front
in Civil
War-ravaged
by leading the recently widowed Scar-
O'Hara (Vivien Leigh)
Victor Fleming's
in the Virginia reel in
Gone With
the Wind.
ex-
discreetly
of the meticu-
lously re-created Atlanta train station. In the 1950s
and
'60s,
ing with TV, rolled out
Hollywood, compet-
new wide-screen
for-
mats such as CinemaScope and VistaVision. Lavish productions like Eighty Days
wowed
and Roman
(1953),
Ben-Hur (
1963),
the
epics, including
in
The Robe
(1959), Spartacus (1960),
and DeMille's
final film, a
wildly popular remake of The Ten
ments. But there
World
audiences, as did a spate of
Biblical
Cleopatra
Around
was
Lawrence of Arabia
art, too.
Command-
In 1962's
(right), director
David Lean
captured the mystery and majesty of the desert with a nearly silent, three-minute se-
quence:
A
Peter O'Toole as Lawrence of Arabia leads a
tiny speck
on the horizon grows
draws closer and closer until ing toward the viewer
—
it
into a swirl of dust that
reveals itself as a
pure cinematic magic.
man on
a
camel gallop-
charge across the desert. Director David Lean's choice of the little-known Irish actor for the role
was seen as
risky but
proved
brilliant.
63
I"£)t(cfc
Soup
Gr^^^^arx cavorts
levy of beauties a:^Rufui
T.
cally iiicotnpetcnt ruler
Fin
of Frei
*
S II
A
1'
1
N
Ci
WO
K
1
II
ON
S
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M
*
A Range of Comic
Flavors
the depths of the Depression, a
In
to
sweep
all
comedy came along
the major Oscars. Frank Capra's
pened One Night (1934) featured Clark Gable tough-as-nails reporter in pursuit of a
played by Claudette Colbert. the story, not the
girl,
The
as a
heiress
reporter thinks he wants
but Cupid launches his arrow
mismatched couple, and
at
the
hilarity reigns as the sexes battle
romp put
against the inevitable. Capra's into the
runaway
Hap-
It
Hollywood pantheon
several scenes
— including one
in
which
Gable makes a mocking nod toward modesty by hanging a blanket
on
a clothesline to separate his
bed from Col-
cabin they're forced to occupy, and a hitch-
bert's in the
hiking sequence in which Colbert shows that a leg works better than a It
thumb
—
if it's
a
comely female.
Happened One Night inaugurated the genre of
comedy described
movie
—
as "screwball"
baseball pitch that darts in a
on
refers to
and dips
a
in
term drawn from a
In Bringing
unexpected ways and
find themselves facing an ill-tempered double of the tame leopard
zany goings-on. These celluloid cock-
Up
Baby, Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant (top)
they have been pursuing. Their director,
created westerns, tails
combined fast-paced banter with themes
Shakespeare
and abrupt in 1938
and
who
— mistaken
reversals of fortune.
with
center).
identities, the battle
Howard Hawks's
Gary Grant played
finds himself
mantic melee, cars are a rock,
Howard Hawks
(above),
as well as comedies.
of the sexes,
Up Baby
^•^4,
.^jiiifcj^^K—A__.
(right, top
„_.
-.
^^r^Ml^j^HK^
tweedy paleontologist
mixed up, much against
Katharine Hepburn as a ditzy
beaned by
a
and war films
as old as
The genre reached a peak
Bringing
thrillers,
his will,
socialite. In the
with
ensuing ro-
stolen, clothing torn, a lawyer
is
^VHHH
and the reluctant Grant ends up chasing
V-'^^^
a leopard through the Connecticut woods.
The Marx Brothers perfected brand of comedy
Duck Soup. rattling,
their
own
inimitable
in chaotic confections such as 1933's
In this send-up of diplomacy
and saber-
Groucho played the newly appointed
mk
ruler of a
spencer Tracy busses Katharine Hepburn in George Cukor's witty
country called Freedonia, with brothers Chico as minister of war, Harpo as his chauffeur, and Zeppo as his secretary.
romance Adam's
Rib,
which locked them, as prosecuting and de-
fense attorneys, in a courtrootn battle of the sexes.
65
V.y
J^
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As Freedonia lurches into war with relaxes with a
game of jacks.
1
1
A
1'
1
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VV
C)
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D
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C)
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1
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I
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Groucho
fictional neighbor, Syivania,
In a classic secjuence that required perfect
comic timing, Harpo dresses up fearless leader that he's
its
S
Groucho and
like
tries to
convince the
gazing into a mirror. Duck Soup's director, Leo
McCarey, also worked with such icons of comedy as Harold Lloyd, Laurel
and Hardy,
Mae
West, and
W.
C. Fields.
Comedies directed by Preston Sturges wryly toyed with American dreams of wealth and fame. In Christmas Powell believes his
life
in July (1940),
has changed forever
—
contest, only to discover
after a wild
young Dick
when he wins $25,000
spending spree
—
in a
that he's not the
winner he thought he was. Sturges's bubbly Palm Beach Story (1942) starred Claudette Colbert as a beautiful failures
young wife disappointed by the
of her inventor husband, played by Joel McCrea. Fleeing to Flori-
da, Colbert
encounters a trainful of wacky millionaires, including the
Preparing Billy
ultrawealthy but penny-pinching oil king
crooner Rudy Vallee. Just
when
it
J.
ihaot a scene with Jack Leniinon,
to
Wilder
strolls the set
oflrma La Douce, a
D. Hackensacker, played by 1963 comedy
seems that Colbert might snag the rich
gendarme
about a Paris prostitute
lover,
who has
to
wear
and her
disguises be-
hubby of her dreams, love-starved McCrea shows up, and she has second
cause he
thoughts about joining the ranks of the lunatic
Vienna-born Wilder won two Best Director Oscars.
Some
rich.
is
also her pimp. In a long career, the
of Hollywood's greatest ac-
— Katharine Hepburn and SpenTracy among them — did
tors
cer
their best
comic turns under the direction of
George Cukor. Despite the success of Bringing
Up Baby,
the outspoken,
independent-minded Hepburn was
re-
garded as box-office poison until Cukor helped rehabilitate her career with Holiday (1938)
and The Philadelphia Story
(1940). In 1949
Cukor paired Hepburn
with Tracy as a battling couple of married attorneys in
and three years
Adam's Rib (page
later
a top female athlete in
65),
they returned as
and her manager
Pat and Mike. Their on-screen chem-
istry,
sparked by an off-screen romance,
became the
Co-workers on a
stuff of film legend.
Billy
Wilder
(right, top),
known
for such
bumpy road
The Apartment, Jack
Wilder's
to love in Billy
Lemmon
rides with
dark dramas as Double Inelevator operator Shirley MacLaine. Ambitious
demnity and The Lost Weekend, also wrote or directed some sparkling
comedies from the 1930s to the '60s
Ninotchka (1939), The Major and
Lemmon trysts
—
lends his apartment to his bosses for
until
one of them uses
it
with MacLaine.
67
)inkW'
/
\
^tA
y
wi"
"-ywite
4^
Actor-director
matozoon
in
a
Woody Allen, costumed bit
from
as a sper-
the outrageous Every-
thing You Ahvays
Wanted
(But Were Afraid
to
to
Know About
Sex
Ask) (1972), awaits with a
tubcful of comrades the critical
moment
of launch.
— *
Minor (1942),
the
Stala^i 17 (1953),
The Apartment (page in the
67). His
The Seven Year
luii
1959 smash Some Like
Roaring Twenties, featured Ibny
Cairtis
and
ll
Jack
(
1955),
an
all-girl
66j, set
Lemnion
as jazz
itself,
reached
sie (right), in
in love
full
comic flower
clothes to get a
with his female costar,
that he's really a falls in
ade,
I'
I
N
(I
W
C)
K
I,
I)
S
C)
N
I
I
I,
women and
join
definition of sex-
1982 with Sydney Pollack's Toot-
in
which Dustin Hoffman plays an obnoxiously touchy actor
who dons women's fall
A
band, where they encounter the ravishing Marilyn Monroe.
The cross-dressing theme, which made sport of the uality
II
and 1960's
Hoi (page
musicians who, to elude mobsters, disguise themselves as
S
man
—while her
TV
soap opera
who
part.
He proceeds
to
does not know, and can't be told,
father, equally
ignorant of the masquer-
love with him.
Just as screwball
comedies humorously reflected Depression -era con-
cerns with money, class,
and
status, the
comedies of Woody Allen
(left)
In drag as soap opera star ''Dorothy" in Tootsie,
"Life is divided into
the horrible and the
So you should be thankful
miserable
Dustin Hoffman (above, right) chats with
Lange, playing an actress friend. The director,
Sydney Pollack (below), worked years before trying his
»»
you're miserable.' Woody
Allen, in
Annie Hall
captured the big-city neuroses of the
won
20th century. His Annie Hall
the Best Picture Oscar for 1977 (along with Best Director
Screenplay) with
its
bittersweet tale of
played by Allen and Diane Keaton, Allen's
but
late
two
who
angst-afflicted
meet,
fall in
Manhattan (1979) played the same themes
still
hilarious
—way, and
his
Hannah and Her
love,
in a
and Best
New Yorkers, and
split
up.
more poignant
Sisters
(1986) delved
even deeper into the urban psyche without losing any of the laughs. Hip
but worried, smart but self-absorbed, forever obsessed with sex, Allen's leading characters
—
often just reflections of himself
phisticated terrain of galleries,
Though heiresses
Manhattan
—inhabited a so-
restaurants, loft apartments, art
and, perhaps most important, psychoanalysts' offices. far
from the mainstream, these urbanites,
and plutocrats of the screwball 1930s
films,
struck a chord with viewers as they acted out their
version of the universal
human comedy.
like
the
Jessica
hand
in television for
at movies.
M
»r-»iwr!^^-.-r'/.Ai;ii;j_.i_»p^ jc
At
the
end of John
Ford's
1956 western The
Searchers, John Wayne, as a rootless Civil
War
veteran, walks into the wilderness.
\
*
Wayne
Taut Tales of
I
1
II
A
1'
I
N
C,
W
O
R
IDS ON
III M
teamed up with another master of the genre,
also
loward
S
lawks, lending an unsettling dimension to
Hawks's Red River (1948) as the ruthless
the Frontier
leader of a cattle drive. Several directors have been fasci-
More
than any other film genre, westerns seemed
quintessentially American, harking back to the
pioneers challenging landscape eties in the process.
typal
who
—and wiped out ancient
it
only
when
laconic, self-reliant,
necessary. In
native soci-
good with
who
reluctantly takes
a
George Stevens's
up arms
and
the
to rescue
Amid
Sam Peckinpah upended ern's
Wild Bunch (page
the frontier
male world.
male archetypes (page 72).
in his starkly
Gary Cooper
is
these male
drawn 1952
classic.
a sheriff about to
guns and marry a beautiful Quaker, Grace
fe-
offered
no
—
72).
The hyper-
set in 1913,
had been tamed
gang of killers
as the film's hit
The and
feel
gunning
theme song put
director
of the
is
for
it,
most responsible
classic
western was
John Ford, creator of My Darling Clementine
(
1946)
and Fort Apache (1948). Ford established
his style
in Stagecoach (inset), shot in
1939 in
Monument Valley,
Utah,
where outsize geological formations dwarfed the characters while
giving their struggles an epic scale.
Stagecoach featured John
Wayne, whose gruff strength suited Ford so well that
the pair (right)
worked
together for decades.
"
his
When
he
him, he must choose,
'tween love and duty."
for the look
—depicted some 200
1992 Clint Eastwood's unflinching Unforgiven heroes, only killers dueling to the death.
Film icon John Wayne stands with the master of the western, John Ford, during the shooting of The (1962). Ford directed his first
learns a
long after
High Noon
hang up
Kelly.
killings. In
and
the west-
conventional morality with The
female leads, by contrast, were often schoolmarms or other
Zinnemann explored
Sundance Kid (pages 72-
the turmoil of the late 1960s,
violent film
Director Fred
Butch Cas-
73) romanticized the two outlaws as
homesteaders ft-om a vicious gang, then moves on. Western
gentle tamers, bringing order to the unruly
Hill's
knights of a dying frontier realm.
1953 film Shane, for example, Alan Ladd plays a nomadic
former gunfighter
Old West. George Roy sidy
These movies helped create an arche-
American male hero:
gun but using
built a civilization in a vast,
nated by the theme of the end of the
—
western back in 1917
and played
the lead.
Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
*
I
:.
YEARS OF
H O
I.
I.
Y VV
O O U
Abandoned by fearful townspeople.
*
Sheriff Will
Kane (Gary Cooper)
faces a
gang of
desperadoes in High Noon. The story reflected the travails of the screenwriter, Carl Fore-
man, who had been a victim of the anti-Communist purge
Blood-spattered Ernest Borgnine
Sam
and William Holden
Peckinpah's grim, gory western The Wild
trayed the West as the
troops, outlaws
Sundance Kid (Robert Redford) go out
72
of
Hollywood
take cover during a gunfight in
lived
and died by
Butch Cassidy (Paul
in a blaze
in the 1950s.
(1969). Peckinpah (right) por-
domain of amoral antiheroes who
Surrounded by Bolivian
1969 mixture
Bunch
in
the gun.
Newman) and
of glory. George Roy
the
Hilt's deft
humor, romance, and adventure became a popular and
critical hit.
'^
^ ^,
V
.
\
'•
*
S
II
A P
1
N
{•,
WO
U
1.
D
ON
S
II
I,
M
*
Common
The
Man
Hero
as
string of
memorable movies
T^he made by Frank Capra 1930s and —including Mr. (left)
in the
'40s
Deeds Goes
to
Town, Meet John Doe, and
a Wonderful Life (right) ingly original style
the director's
critics
a strik-
and personal stamp
own name became an
The term "Capraesque"
tive:
it,
—bore such
and even
(or, as
a self-mocking
that
adjec-
some
Capra put
"Capracorn") v^as used to describe
umph
It's
tri-
over long odds by an ordinary citizen.
Capra himself might have represented
Dissuaded from suicide by an angel
Stewart) rediscovers the joys of his family in
1946 fable about the goodness of the the
American dream. He arrived
nia
from
Italy in
1903
at
age
in Califor-
six, later
after a business disaster,
it
It's
a Wonderful
common man
George Bailey (James Life.
The heartwarming
did poorly when
first released,
was Capra's favorite film and eventually became a Christmastime
staple
but
on TV.
sup-
ported his immigrant family with odd jobs, put himself through college, got into movies as a lowly film processor,
become
the
and went on
most popular
to
director of his
winning three Oscars.
day,
Idealism was a Capra signature, perhaps purest in his 1939 film Mr. Smith
seen at
its
Goes
Washington.
to
When Jimmy Stewart,
playing a scoutmaster turned freshman senator, filibusters
on the
ate (right) to the point
—and
to
floor of the U.S. Sen-
of physical collapse
uhimate victory over government
corruption
—
it
was one of the most un-
abashedly patriotic, sentimental, and emotionally powerful scenes in
movie
history.
Capra had evoked an America where the tle
lit-
guy can, by decency and strength of will, Gesturing with a book containing the Declaration of Independence,
prevail over the
powers of greed and veas a youthful, idealistic
nality.
The Depression-era audience, dab-
bing away
tears,
loved
it,
as did the critics.
newcomer holds
mactic filibuster scene in
Mr
Jimmy Stewart
the floor of the U.S. Senate during his
Smith Goes
to
cli-
Washington. Stewart had a doctor swab
his vocal cords with a caustic solution so his voice
would be suitably
raspy.
75
"SS^ifci,
r^-/
*
S II
A
I'
I
N
(i
W
()
R
I)
I.
S
ON
II
I,
M
Journeys into
Gangland Growled
threats,
of sirens
storms of gunplay, and the screech
terrified
and
thrilled audiences in the
wave of gangster
early 1930s as a
films took
America on a tour of the underworld. Warner Bros,
way when production chief Darryl
F.
led the
Zanuck took note
of newspaper stories about big-city gang wars and called
based on the headlines. To lend authenticity
for pictures to their
productions, Warner Bros, and other studios
hired streetwise crime reporters
among them
—
—
Edward
the illustrious Ben Hecht
to spin out scenarios
in
Little
and fast-paced
G. Robinson guns
Warner
rected by
violent picture of the period, Scarface, di-
Howard Hawks, was modeled
after the life
Chicago mobster Al Capone, with Paul Muni
Another Hollywood tough guy, George
role.
Caesar (1930), directed by Mervyn
of
in the lead
ences with is
peared as Muni's henchman. But the two actors most
With
his
swagger and his
nited the screen
Enemy It
(left),
recounted
when,
flair for
in 1931,
directed by William
how Cagney 's
mesmerized audi-
cornered by cops at
When Robinson
its
conclusion, he
"Come and get me!" Af-
performance playing Rico
re-
Bandello, Robinson struggled for year,
sponsible for defining the image of the screen gangster (right, top)
bloody than some
grimness.
its
defiantly yells,
Raft, ap-
less
successors, the film
ter his vivid
were Edward G. Robinson
a joe
dialogue. LeRoy. Although
The most
down
Bros.' first gangster picture,
to escape
being typecast as a mobster
and James Cagney.
tough
Cagney
talk,
he appeared
Wellman
in
The Public
(right,
youthful character,
ig-
bottom).
Tom
Powers,
William Wellman, director of The Public Enemy, had tough-guy credentials himself
A former professional
hockey player, he joined the
French Foreign Legion
and earned an fell
into a
life
of crime and thrived
at
it,
at
one point
ridi-
—
culing his hardworking brother thus: "Aw, that sucker
too busy going to school. He's learning
Though crime
how
he's
to be poor."
ultimately did not pay in these films,
Depression-era audiences, buffeted by economic forces be-
yond
their control, often cheered the
who outsmarted
the law
and
bad guys
polite society to
get fancy cars, fancy clothes, fancy apartments,
and fancy dames. Gangster
films, in fact, repre-
sented a low point in Hollywood's depiction of
women. Cagney,
for example,
the scene in Tlie Public
became famous
Enemy
in
for
which he angrily ;
a grapefi"uit half into the face of his moll, played
in
World War
aviator's wings.
I
*
*
Clarke, win) ciidLiicd slaps, kicks,
The
who
drew
films
criticism
and shoves
A
1
in
I'
I
N
c;
W
R L
(1
I)
ON
S
I
I
I.
M
other gangster movies as well.
and
politicians,
young people toward
criminality.
this pressure the studios altered
the virtues of hard
1
from censors,
feared that they were influencing
Under
S
sociologists,
course and began to emphasize
work over the appeal of the tough-guy
lifestyle. In
V!(i«-
^^-
films such as
"G"
Men
(1935), the cops
became
good guys
all- American
.:
underworld. In 1938 Cagney
in a life-and-death struggle against the evil
and Warner gels
Bros, cinematically atoned with the Michael Curtiz film
An-
With Dirty Faces. Cagney played the vicious mobster Rocky Sullivan,
regarded as a hero by the boys in his old slum neighborhood
—
to the
dismay of Catholic priest Jerry
Connelly
(Pat O'Brien), Rocky's
boyhood Rocky
is
pal.
When
condemned
to
die in the electric chair.
Father Connelly makes a
death-row plea
the
killer.
priest's
to
Taking the
appeal to heart,
the sneering, cocky
Cagney marches
to-
ward the execution chamber, then suddenly pretends to break down, transforming himself into a sniveling,
weeping coward. His supposed emotional collapse
by assembled
who do
reporters,
not
know
of
its
next day the kids in the slums read the headline
and
crime not only doesn't pay,
realize that
it
80),
"ROCKY DIES YELLOW"
doesn't
make
heroes.
nie Parker. Starring
away ally
Faye
and
in a tide
Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway
old-style
movie
star allure,
(inset)
Clyde, based
all
(left),
and then seemed
— though some viewers
of blood
or not, had glamorized crime
Dunaway
and
murky
robbery-and-murder spree of Clyde Barrow and Bon-
real-life
brimmed with
to the
but in 1967 director Arthur Penn
revived the genre for a hyperviolent farewell in Bonnie
on the
witnessed
redemptive purpose. The
During the next decade, the gangster picture gave way world of film noir (page
is
felt
the film to
wash
it
that Penn, intention-
over again.
writhes under the impact of bullets in the harrowing climax of Bonnie
Clyde. Arthur
Penn (above) filmed the scene as a slow-motion dance of death.
79
Dark Films About Dark Deeds ilm noir
—
a genre
came from French
F\
whose name, meaning critics
—was soaked
born of the Depression and World War
"black,"
cynicism
in
Populated
II.
by cigarette-puffing hoods and sensuous femmes
domain of cheap
and nighttime
hotels
more than disappointment and
little
Noir directors created a
city streets
and
Tuttle role.
A
starring Alan
deep shad-
style that featured
Gun for
promised
the double cross.
ows, stark angles, and a sense of menace.
of the form was This
fatales, its
An
example
early
Hire (1942), directed by Frank
Ladd
hallmark tough-guy
in a
pair of 1944 noir classics featured Fred
MacMurray
playing against type as a slick insurance salesman lured into
murder
as-nails
Wilder s Double Indemnity and a hard-
in Billy
Dana Andrews
(left,
Preminger. Novelist James
bottom) in Laura, by Otto
M.
Cain's steamy Jlie
Postman
Always Rings Twice was the basis for Tay Garnett's 1946 masterpiece. French-born Jacques Tourneur's
Out of the
Past (1947) starred the inherently noir Robert
Nothing was straightforward
Mitchum.
in the noir world.
Time
was fractured into frequent flashbacks, and plots were Above: Noir posters promise gritty atmosphere and tawdry Below: In Laura,
Dana Andrews
gates the suspicious hut aUuring
sex.
as a homicide detective interrotitle
filled left
with red herrings and unexpected twists that often
the audience off-balance
and uneasy.
In John Huston's
character (Gene Tierney).
The Maltese Falcon Spade, played by
a
to
something about
Bogart, acts not out of hero-
some world-weary
man's partner it. It
is
Sam
hard-boiled detective
Humphrey
ism but according
"When
(right),
killed he's
doesn't
private code:
supposed
make any
to
do
difference
what
you thought of him, he was your partner and you're supposed to do something about in true noir fashion,
As gumshoe Sam Spade Maltese Falcon, Greenstreet
8o
and
it."
The meaning of
it all,
remains impenetrable.
in
John Huston's 1941 noir tour de force The
Humphrey Bogart
vies
with poiuierous Sydney
sniveling Peter Lorrc over a
gem-studded
statuette.
^•i#til
^
W^
•
100
YEARS OF HOLLYWOOD
*
Gritty Portrayals
of City Life A / -A-
s
America grew increasingly urbanized
\
War
JL
and sometimes even the
They expanded genres works
film noir into
and often
textured,
World
directors turned their attention to cities as
II,
the settings,
their films.
after
more
that were
far
more
gangster movies and
more
realistic,
richly
violent than the movies of the
Kazan
1930s. Their goal, as director Elia get poetry out of the
like
subjects, of
common
(left)
put
it,
was "to
things of life."
Kazan was the pioneer of a new naturalism based on location shooting,
on long shots and
takes, and, especially,
on the psychological exploration demanded by Method ing.
This technique, derived from the work of Russian stage
director Konstantin Stanislavsky, Elia
Kazan demonstrates emotion on a
out the best in his that
cast,
Kazan
set.
A
master at bringing
directed 21 actors in performances
drew Academy Award nominations,
resulting in nine Oscars.
was taught
Group Theatre and Actors Studio
ing actors, Kazan brought the
Method
at
to
Hollywood
member
more than a
recorder, ifs a microscope.
theater
of the
but had quit
Communist
when
takeover of the
and you see
it
goes
their
people
Party in the early 1930s
party bosses ordered a
Group Theatre. Much
Kazan, 1981
Communist
later,
during the
most
private
Cold War, he ap-
peared before the infamous House Un-American Activities
Committee, admitting
ship and
whose Elia
a
It
into
and concealed thoughts."
a pariah
and movie people. He had been
controversial red-hunting days of the
penetrates,
in the
1940s and changed film acting styles forever.
among many
is
'40s,
A genius at inspir-
Kazan himself, however, soon became
"The camera
New York's
1930s and
in the
when Kazan was working on Broadway.
late
act-
his
own
past party
naming former Communist
member-
colleagues,
some of
careers were ruined as a result. Excoriated as
who had
betrayed friends to a witch hunt, he said, "Any
time you hurt people, and don't like
one
it."
I
did hurt
some
people, you
But then he pointed to those friends' con-
tinuing silence in the face of Stalin's murderous dictatorship
and
said,
"I'm glad
Perhaps because of masterpiece,
82
On
I
was on the other
side."
this experience, Kazan's
the Waterfront (right),
is
1954
a study in the
*
In scenes
from
corruption
Elia Kazan's
and
On
the Waterfront, ex-boxer Terry
betrayal (top); staggers under a
mob
Malloy (Marlon Brando) hears
beating (bottom
left);
and
strides past
his brother,
S II
A
I'
I
N
CharUe (Rod
(,
VV t)
K
I.
1)
S
ON
Steiger), confess his
once hostile fellow dockworkers (bottom
II
1.
M
*
own
right).
83
m Hustlers Dustin
Hoffman
and Jon Voight face a frigid
New
York wind together in
John Schlesinger's Midnight
Cowboy. The fihn's raw subject
matter drew an
later revised to R.
X rating,
*
The black-and-white
ambiguities of betrayal.
Academy Awards,
New
around loy,
among
under pressure from
own
punishment integrity.
act of
informing
Academy of Motion
would
crisis
R
C)
1,
1)
S
C)
N
I-
I
1.
M
when
of conscience: cioing so
would
"They always
tell
girl
is
he
loves,
another his
ostracism; his reward
me
is
I'm a bum," he says.
to
make more superb movies, but because of
in 1952,
even a special award given him by the
man who had
and Sciences almost half a century
later
admitted he was one of Hollywood's greatest
all
forged a
later say, "revealed
his
new
something
di-
acting style that, as Martin Scorsese in the natural
Chicago-born Wiliiain Friedkin began working in
TV while
still in
his teens.
He
later directed
more than a dozen
films, ranging from the fluffy
rock-and-roll flick
Good Times
to the
behavior of people about gay
that
W
a priest, but only after several
for informing
Picture Arts
was controversial. Yet rectors, a
(,
bum."
ain't a
Kazan would go on
own
N
even those being exploited by the crooks.
—one victim the brother of the
brother. His
I
his gangster acquaintances,
his peers,
his choice
mob murders
"Well,
1
York harbor. Us inarticulate longshoreman hero, Terry Mal-
be anathema
belief in his
P
explores gangster control ot dockworkers' unions
whether to inform on
own
A
which won eight
lihn,
played by Marlon Brando, taces an agonizing
He makes
S II
life
The Boys
in the
daring film
Band.
hadn't seen on the screen before: the truth behind the posture."
I
The new the '60s
and
permeated urban films of
style
'70s,
such as British director
John Schlesinger's
Hollywood movie.
first
Midnight Cowboy. This was the drifter,
played by Jon Voight,
New York
to hustle rich
tled himself
streetwise
man
who
of a Texas
arrives in
women and
— for $20—by a
con
tale
is
hus-
sickly, repulsive,
with the memorable
name
of "Ratso" Rizzo (Dustin Hoffman)
(left).
The young Texan,
instead of getting re-
venge, develops a protective affection for the
doomed
Ratso.
The
layered, sensitive perfor-
mances Schlesinger drew from ing both laughter three
and
tears,
his stars, evok-
earned the film
Academy Awards.
A
fast-moving documentary style and
a lengthy,
pulse-pounding car chase
William Friedkin
(right, top) a
Oscar for the 1971 nection (right),
thriller
won
Best Director
The French Con-
which pitted
New York
cop Popeye Doyle against an ur-
bane European heroin smuggler, Alain Charnier. Friedkin's direction
A
Marseilles hit
man
is
gunned down by
New
York cop Popeye Doyle (Gene Hackman) after a spectacular car chase in The French Connection.
85
— *
100
YEARS OP HOLLYWOOD
*
Hackman
helped evoke a superb performance from Gene
as Popeye, de-
spite the liberal actor's disgust for the bigoted, racist, dishonest but dedi-
cated character he portrayed. But the film, as Friedkin said and showed,
was about "that thin
line
between the policeman and the criminal."
Although Friedkin would have another
with the horror
hit
The Exorcist (1973), he was eclipsed during the decade by
young new
directors, including
a
thriller
group of
George Lucas (page 132) and Steven
Spielberg (page 108). All had been fascinated by film since childhood,
all
possessed encyclopedic movie knowledge, and most trained at university film schools.
The two most attuned
urban American scene
to the harsh
were Francis Ford Coppola and Martin Scorsese. In
Hollywood Coppola was
rected his
first
man
a
of
many
through Robert
Martin
and
De Niro
as Jake
Scorsese's
LaMotta
takes a
punch
on the
set
of Taxi Driver;
De
Niro played a Vietnam veteran driven homicidally over the edge by the corruption of New York
di-
—and founded
as a director
own
his
science fiction film
first
production company. His big break-
was The Godfather (1972). With
a large cast of fu-
in
Raging Bull (above). Below, actor
director confer
By the time he
big-budget movie he had already shared a Best Screenplay
Oscar for Patton, produced George Lucas's
THX-1138
parts.
ture stars
and Marlon Brando
overnight
classic, effortlessly
in the title role (right),
characters of those
who
became an
balancing the vicious world of organized
crime, the ethnic family values within
life.
it
and the deeply
it,
realized, tragic
shared those values.
Of this almost mythic
film
and
Coppola's colleague Martin Scorsese
Morte
like epic poetry, like is
like
some guy on
Scorsese grew spired by the
up
d'Arthur.
its
sequels,
said, "It's
My stuff
the street corner talking."
New York's
in
Little Italy. In-
power and honesty of films
like
Kazan's and by the new-wave style of directorconceived, or auteur, movies arriving from Eu-
rope in the 1960s (page 107), he wanted, he said, "to create
images that reflected the
around me: what
I
saw
and, in particular, in
life
home
in the streets, at
my
church. There
I
found
the images very powerful, transcendent and, at times, lurid
and
erotic."
Scorsese formed a famous
partnership with (left).
Method
Together they
gritty, big-city films,
(
86
made
and enigmatic
actor Robert
De Niro
a string of tough,
including
Mean
Streets
1973), Taxi Driver (1976), Raging Bull (1980),
Stroking a favorilc
Don
'%- *ii f.fii|
cat,
Vito Corlconc
(Bratido) balances ihc
~'
.
conflicting roles of pa-
terfamilias chieftain in father. His
an
offer
and Mafia The God-
"Make him
he cant refuse"
entered the language.
10
Y
F.
A R
S
or
HOLLYWOOD
*
?v. m ____ .K-< f^
TfmTf
I ^^ 1
^^"\
^
f
rr^
Lights reflect off cars on a hot South Central L.A. night in Boyz ton (inset).
The
reahstic depiction of black
urban
life
N the Hood,
by director John Single-
was a dramatic eyeopencr.
*
s II
A
I'
1
N G
VV () R
1.
S
ON
hit
man
I)
ill M
and (ioodl'clhh (1990). Dark though Scorsese's stories were,
by using staccato camera work
and editing he re-created the pulsing energies of
New York. He found
traffic lights,
noise,
and
neon
poetry in rock music,
signs, shiny cars, street
(as in Taxi Driver)
demented, often
improvised voice-overs. Revolutionary and iconoclastic time, Scorsese
and
in their
his fellow upstart directors
of the 70s paved the
way
for,
and helped
support, an even younger generation of film-
makers. These newcomers sometimes lacked the formal training of their mentors, but they
were self-taught and well taught.
Among them
were African American
di-
John Travolta, as the uiuntellcctual rectors,
almost nonexistent in Hollywood until the 1970s, when Melvin
Van Peebles created Sweet Sweetback's Baud of black urban
ties
102)
24) to garner
(at
and screenwriting
men
(inset, opposite),
Academy Award nominations
for his 1991
about three young
work Boyz
struggling to
N the Hood
it
reminded people,
as
home." Singleton followed up South Central L.A.
life
reali-
one in
the youngest film-
critic
reality
put
it,
and so vibrantly
Justice,
Quentin Tarantino's Pulp
The Jilm showcased skills
and
Travolta's
restored his
Fiction.
remarkable acting
long-moribund
career.
This story
(left).
that "a ghetto
1993 with Poetic
situation in
both directing
for
grow up amid the gang violence of
South Central Los Angeles was so thick with ed that
evoking the
His famous successors included Spike Lee (page
life.
and wunderkind John Singleton
maker
Asssss Song,
Vin-
cent Vega, struggles with a thought-provoking
is
act-
You name me any horrific thing,
and
I
can
also a
which showed
make
a jol<eout of
it."
from the women's point of view.
The body of new African American
film
work was one
Quentin Tarantino, 1994 sign of the
growing authority of independent filmmakers; another was the wild success tin
enjoyed by such visceral, anti-intellectual writer-directors as Quen-
Tarantino,
His bloody
whose
first
film education
came from working
video store.
in a
movie. Reservoir Dogs (1992), became a cult
classic.
He
entered the mainstream in 1994 with the outrageously violent but darkly
funny Pulp
Using every seedy urban reference and lashings of
Fiction.
comic-book gore, the film intertwined the with those of a pair of hit men.
Awards ever,
—and won
It
tales
of small-time thieves
was nominated
for Tarantino's script. Its
for seven
most obvious
Academy
virtues,
how-
were the sterling performances the director drew from actors John
Travolta (top right),
and Bruce
Uma Thurman
(bottom
right),
Samuel
L.
Jackson,
Willis.
89
*
100
YEARS OF HOLLYWOOD
*
Directors as
Men
Music
he Hollywood musical was born with the introduction of sound movies
T^
Singer (1927)
ary film
artists
—and then
—
languished.
and moviegoers longing
Depression to make the musical a
It
took vision-
for escape
new American
E Zanuck, who,
go to Darryl
First credits
The Jazz
in Al Jolson's
from the
genre.
despite the
misgivings of Warner Bros., produced the hit 42nd Street in
1933
—with Broadway's Busby Berkeley numbers
Berkeley designed his
and was the
to use a
first
as choreographer.
specifically for the screen
camera mounted overhead (page
92) or hidden beneath the stage.
The
result
of 42nd
Street's
success was a series of extravagant Berkeley-choreographed films
marked by kaleidoscopic chorus
A
line formations.
flood of song-and-dance flicks followed from other
studios.
At RKO, Fred Astaire danced through a
series
of
comedies, mostly with Ginger Rogers. ("He gives her class
and she
gives
him
sex,"
Katharine Hepburn observed.)
MGM set up a team that would dominate the genre, named the Freed Unit after
its
acquired The Wizard
famed screenwriters
producer,
ofOz
lyricist
Arthur Freed. He
(page 114) for
like Betty
MGM and hired
Comden and Adolph
Green,
songwriters from Irving Berlin to Alan Jay Lerner, and directors like Vincente Minnelli.
After assisting
Busby Berkeley on
(1940), Minnelli directed the top),
'eft,
Co-directors ley
Donen
Gene
Kelly
and Stan
smash
Strike
hit
Up
the
Meet Me
Band
in St. Louis
a nostalgic family tale set in 1900
whose theme,
of The Wizard ofOz,
like that
confer on the set of
Singin in the Rain (1952).
The pair, both dancers choreographers,
had
al-
ready collaborated on
Broadway and
in
arid
was "There's no place
like
home." Minnelli's
characteristically brilliant use of color
and
design and his seamless
working
in
of senti-
Hol-
mental songs made lywood, most recently in 1949's
the Town.
On
the film a classic.
Minnelli
,
IMf^^
Zt
.
.*-»
:X ^IFrtt
o *^^it
•m
^
m^^^^^^M
!
Ik
Gene KeUy climbs'a lamppost from ityg,
number
Singin' in the Rain. Stanley Donen's swing-
boom-mounted camera added
ance of thtjamous routine.
-Jl^
in the title
to the
exuber''
I
,
— *
YEARS
10
would
O
[
HOLLYWOOD
direct a Freed protege
An American
from Broad-
Gene
way, dancer-choreographer
19518
*
Kelly, in
based on a
in Paris,
George Gershwin tone poem. The FreedKelly collaboration, with co-director Stanley
Donen
(page 90), reached
lowing year with Singin' 91), a blockbuster
written by
its
peak the
in the
fol-
Rain (page
about "old" Hollywood
Comden and Green around
decades of Freed's
own
songs.
Traditional musicals remained popular in
the 1950s and '60s, with such box-
office
smashes as Guys and Dolls (1955),
The Music
Gigi (1958),
Fair
Man
(1962),
My
Lady (1964), and The Sound of Music
more
(1965). But a newer,
ban kind of musical was
The
first
edgy,
by lerome Robbins
ur-
in the wings.
of these was a
of Broadway's West Side
more
1
Story.
96 1 adaptation
Choreographed
Romeo
the tale
(right),
Chorines with neon-lighted violins form a flower in Gold Diggers of 1933. The
and Juliet
transferred to
New York,
with
mu-
lavish spectacle
was a signature of Busby Berkeley musicals
like this one.
by Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Sond-
sic
heim
—became cinematic
in the
hands of
Robbins's co-director, Robert Wise. Spectacularly filmed
on
location,
A decade later came the inspired
Bob
won
10 Oscars.
Cabaret (opposite),
work of director-choreographer
Fosse, notorious for his risky lifestyle of
drink, drugs, cigarettes,
ended abruptly with was
it
60. Fosse
a heart attack
—not
surprisingly,
nelli)
tale
and her
about decadence. The
The
comment not
of Sally Bowles (Liza Min-
lovers,
mar Germany and storm.
when he
new kind of musi-
songs and dances provided
only on the
—which
used Christopher Isherwood's
Berlin Stories to create a cal
and women
but on dissolute Wei-
the approaching Nazi
strands of story
and song became
one, thanks to Fosse's brilliant direction.
92
Choreographer Jerome Robbins demonstrates a move
for
West Side Story. "Dancers
didn't always like him," co-director Robert Wise said, "but they respected him."
" *
S
H A
I'
I
N
t;
WORLDS ON FILM
iidbreaki)ig Cabaret, Liza Minnelli (left) belts
at Berlin's Kit
Kat
Kliib,
introduced
and supported
by the club's reprobate emcee (Joel Grey, above) is
sleazy chorus.
and ist
The film's
— — painting were stylized sets
always thought
I
would be
was romantic. People would mourn me: *0h, that young career.' dead
at 25.
Bob Fosse
It
and
often savage dancing
inspired by
German
the briUiant
Expression-
work of director-
choreographer Bob Fosse (below).
"I
one
*
•
100
YEARS OF HOLLYWOOD
*
War
Bringing
to the Screen "^
A
"T" ar stories offer a wealth of cinematic possi-
% /% T and
/
T
comedy; epic scope alongside the intimate;
tales ot a cross section
of American characters
most challenging moments of
Combat war.
What
drama and low
the director: high
bilities to
the director for instance,
and
his era.
view of
shown them depends on both During and
after
World War
II,
war movies emphasized the courage of
many
soldiers in battle. In
of these films, as one
soldier observed, "people sat in their trenches
ideological discussions about the beauties of at
the
their lives.
films provide civilians their only
the films have
at
real-life
and had
democracy
home." John Sturges's 1963 action adventure about
Allied
POWs, The
Great Escape, was in this tradition; so
was producer Darryl
of D-Day, The Longest
and
realistic
look
at
Zanuck's panoramic re-creation
F.
Day
(1962).
A much more
war marked Steven
grim
Spielberg's 1998
masterpiece. Saving Private Ryan (pages 124-125),
whose
opening sequence of the American D-Day landing on
S«UWk««I »***"
^«=»/Vi
Private
Maggio (Frank Sinatra)
Borgnine)
94
in 1953's
From Here
defies a sadistic sergeant (Ernest
to Eternit}'.
The film won
eight Oscars.
^-*
\
K-^nlfiiJent
Geo
I'litlon t'xhorls his
iloiiiiiuini pert' stiy ihiil
Ptttton
itu»t lavish
n'lm-
onvnuin
,
•
wc
i
*
100
YEARS OF HOLLYWOOD
Omaha
*
Beach constitutes perhaps the starkest and most terrifying cine-
matic look
at
combat ever offered
moviegoing pubHc.
to the
Lewis Milestone's film of Erich Maria Remarque's World
about
idealistic
young Germans caught
War
novel
I
in a wilderness of futile death,
All
Quiet on the Western Front, also offered a nightmare vision. Fine act-
ing
and unforgettable images
stance
— made the 1930
film a classic.
A
dramatic and many-sided
tale
of
II
army was Fred Zinnemann's powerful From
Here
to
Eternity (page 94),
on
the Japanese attack
which culminated with
Pearl Harbor.
David Lean
presented a look at the psychology of
men
Producer-director Francis Ford Coppola,
The Bridge on
in
POWs
(1957), a tale of British babowl»)overby*wil!^.
in
in
best •rA'S'H' is *e comeOj tmetit" «ar
which
lost
Now,
reviews a scene with Marlon Brando.
Kwai
the River
in a Japanese
who
100 pounds during the arduous filming of Apocalypse
wartime situations
since
wire, for in-
War
America's pre-World
^^'
—severed arms holding barbed
camp
and honorable commander
their brave
proceeds blindly toward self-destruction.
s«umlarne»i_^_^
America's Vietnam experience brought
new
masterpie<*;SM_it^twce_^
ambiguity to combat movies, epitomized by Franklin Schaffner's 1970 World ton (page 95).
M-A*H^^'^j^^^nl
brilliant
George C.
on
a film that pleased
MASH
Getting his
typical response to
of the
authenticity resulted in
Vietnam, however, was a '80s.
The
series
funniest was
Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) searches for the maniacal, renegade Colonel Kurtz (Brando) with orders to "terminate with extreme preiudice."
(inset),
whose
setting
was actually the Korean
crack at a big-time movie,
first
broke every rule
in the
Hollywood book
plotless string of vignettes
The most
Scott's portrayal
both hawks and doves.
of passionately antiwar films in the 1970s and 1970's
epic, Pat-
II
but flawed warrior and Schaffner's
ruthless insistence
A more
War
TV
conflict.
director Robert
in filming
MASH's
Altman
virtually
skewering the military.
chilling of the antiwar films
phantasmagoric 1979 vision, Apocalypse
was Francis Ford Coppola's
Now
(right),
which followed
GIs in Vietnam on a descent into madness during a mission to assassinate a Green Beret officer (Marlon Brando) gone off the deep end. so ugly that the
situation
is
Sheen,
told
is
"does not
by
exist,
gle enclave,
commander of the
his superiors in military
nor
will
it
ever exist."
The
team, played by Martin
doublespeak that the mission
When
Sheen reaches Brando's jun-
he sees the irrelevance of right and wrong in the moral
squalor of Vietnam. "Charging a
man
with murder in
this place,"
he Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore (Robert Duvall), sport-
thinks to himself,
The
96
film
is
"hke handing out speeding tickets
at the
Indy 500."
was nominated for eight Academy Awards, winning two.
ing a cavalry hat. uttered the immortal phrase "I love the smell of
napalm
in the
morning."
,.7
M
stands
^V.V; r'^Vt-^HC
.1^ PVilt
l^^
.^^ VU
'^l^-J*--
'.:^
Films That
Tweak Inspired by
Fears
folklore about vampires,
werewolves, and zombies, horror
movies have
thrilled audiences since
Hollywood's early days. Director Tod
Browning made genre, filming
a
name
for himself in the
Lon Chaney
silents that capitalized
in a
on the
number of
actor's terrify-
ing visages. In the taUde era Browning in-
troduced a new sensation, Bela Lugosi, starred in Universal's (right)
1
93 1
thriller
who
Dracula
complete with creepy sound
effects.
The same year Universal released director James Whale's
Frankenstein
(left),
starring Boris Karloff. later
Four years
Whale followed
up with the
wildly
eccentric Bride of
Frankenstein, casting a weird-looking but sympathetic Elsa Lan-
chester (inset) as the monster's mate.
From The marked the
Mummy in
directorial
1932, which
debut of Dracula
cinematographer Karl Freund, through
Roger Gorman's low-budget '60s flicks
based on Edgar Allan Poe
horror movies depicted
But John Carpenter's loween and
Wes
little
grisly
fright
stories,
bloodletting.
1978
hit
Hal-
Craven's 1984 slasher
Nightmare on Elm
Street
A
launched a trend
toward graphic guts and gore.
^RlMtSTm«TAim|T^
99
•
10
YEARS OF
H O
1.
1,
Y VV
O O D
*
The Master of Suspense A
"W"
"T"ith their blend of intrigue,
% /%
/ smoldering
T
sensuality,
and
dark humor, the films of maes-
menace Alfred Hitchcock held audi-
tro of
ences spellbound for six decades. Classic
Hitchcock plots placed some of Holly-
wood's most self-possessed blonde beauties,
including Ingrid Bergman, Vera Miles,
Grace
Kelly,
and Kim Novak,
had always heard
situations. "I
idea was to take a
blonde
in perilous
woman
that his
— usually
—and break her apart
a
to see her
shyness and reserve broken down, but
thought
was only
this
films," said
in the plots
I
of his
Tippi Hedren. She learned
otherwise during her physically punishing scene in The Birds, which
attic
left
her
needing a week of medical treatment. At his best in films such as the 1946 spy melodrama Notorious, the 1954 sus-
pense story Rear Window, and the 1955 thriller
To Catch a Thief, Hitchcock
probed for the
evil that lurks
behind be-
nign facades. Heralded for his cinematic
used inventive techniques
expertise, he
such as complex camera movements,
montage view.
made
editing,
Thanks
to
and
shifting points of
cameo appearances he
in the majority of his movies, the
portly director's profile and image
became
an icon. His black-and-white masterpiece Psycho
(right),
picture," led
which he
one
slyly called a
critic to call the
"fun
mischie-
vous director a "barbaric sophisticate."
////W/cdci's
I960
hit
Psycho had Anlhoiiy Perkins
concealing a bizarre secret in the
shadowy
Victori-
an house that stood behind the Bates Motel, which itself
entered the language as a hall-hiiniorous
synonym
for
an undesirable lodging.
-::«>
,.*f
*
100
YEARS OF HOLLYWOOD
*
Mavericks of Moviedom Director Spike Lee's surprise I
It
showed Hollywood
could be profitable.
A
1986
hit
comedy
that handling black
She's Gotta
urban themes
graduate of the film school
York University, Lee offered scathing, often controversial
mentary
in his
movies, reaching a peak in 1989 with
which received an Oscar nomination
at
New
social
Do
com-
the Right Thing,
for Best Screenplay.
took a sledgehammer approach to the urban
Have
The
racial tensions
film
surround-
ing an Italian-American pizza parlor located in a black neighborhood in Brooklyn. In the 1992 film biography
of the radical African-American Beginning
X
(below), Lee
reexamined the
political leader. Despite a
life
running time of
in the '80s, the films of director Spike
Lee (above) offered a thick perspective.
Denzel Washington, pUiying the
102
Malcolm
title role in
more than
Spike Lee's powerful biopic
three hours, the
Malcolm X, preaches
movie showed Lee
to
at the
height of his directori-
a crowd outside Harlem's Apollo Theatre.
*
al
powers, combining complex camera angles with mulliple story lines
S
11
A
1'
1
N
(,
VV
O
R
I
1) S
ON
II
1.
M
*
in a
film of epic proportions.
Controversy of a different sort surrounded the work of director Oliver Stone for
(right).
He began
his film career as a screenwriter,
Midnight Express (1978). Stone's
Salvador, nalists
commercial success
combined elements of brutality and
caught in an insurrectionary cross
year Stone finished the rors of the
and
first
smash
Vietnam War,
in
life
that
my Award
their
for Best Picture,
He continued
1986
tale
of jour-
Central America. That same
Platoon (below). This account of the hor-
veterans hailed the
a
Bronze Star
and Stone won an Oscar
Tom
movie
as
Hollywood's
war experience. Platoon received the Acade-
his hard-hitting
the Fourth of July, starring
fire in
as a director,
gut-wrenching action and moral degradation
many Vietnam
most authentic picture of
politics in a
which Stone had served, earning
a Purple Heart, depicted
so true to
hit
winning an Oscar
for his directing.
filmmaking with the 1989 saga Born on Oliver Stone (above) directs the action in his
Cruise as a paraplegic Vietnam veteran, for
The psychotic Sergeant Barnes, played by Tom Berenger, threatens a Vietnamese child
1993 Vietnam film Heaven
in
Oliver Stone's grimly realistic
& Earth.
war drama. Platoon.
103
*
YEARS OH HOLLYWOOD
100
won
which Stone
*
second Best Director
his
Oscar. JFK, a 1991 film in which Stone con-
tended that the assassination of President
Kennedy had been high government
a conspiracy
officials,
cized as a fanciful
among
was widely
criti-
and biased version of that
tragedy and prompted the U.S. Congress to
open sealed
on the
files
assassination.
Three thought-provoking Stanley Kubrick
The
placed
squarely in the
(riglit)
most inventive
forefront of the screen's directors.
hits
blackest of black comedies,
1964's Dr. Strangelove (below, right)
starred Peter Sellers in three roles, includ-
ing a lunatic
German
scientist
and an
English officer desperately trying to avert
world catastrophe. The movie marvel of 1968, Kubrick's epic 2001:
and sound
the
accompaniment
mad
in
A
of
jaunty music
to
advance
his cynical
Clockwork Orange. Malcolm McDowell plays the
view of a world gone sadistic hooligan Alex.
fiction
Space Odyssey, took four
make and
years to al
A
landmark science
Director Stanley Kubrick (right) choreographs a savage rape scene carried out to
featured elaborate visu-
effects.
Melding space
travel
with theology, philosophy, and allegories
on the future of mankind, the ly
film virtual-
reinvented the genre.
A
Clockwork Orange (1971), perhaps
Kubrick's
most controversial movie, painted
an unsettling portrait of a future steeped in senseless violence.
damned, the
film contained seductive
scenes of stylized
His
mayhem and
last
work before
was the psychosexual Shut, with Nicole
who had director.
torture that
some viewers and offended oth-
astonished ers.
Both praised and
his death in
thriller
1999
Eyes Wide
Kidman and Tom
Cruise,
only praise for the legendary
"Suddenly
you, or you'll see
he'll
how
say something to
he creates a shot, In Dr. Strangelove, Peter Sellers as the
and you
realize this
Cruise. "This
104
man
man
is
is
different," said
profound."
he played ntilitary
—
loses control over his
and political
folly
and
title
character
ex-Nazi persona
the
—one
of three different roles
in Kubrick's
dark comedy about
Cold War's dance with nuclear catastrophe.
Kcir Ihillcd, as Miffioii C.ouiuitiiuk'i
I
in Kubrick's visionary science fiction epic
iimn
2001:
V..-—^
A
Space Odyssey, walks through the air lock
of his spaceship. Fantastic visual and sound philosophical themes, ages
P *
Dave Bow-
i
made
the film
an
effects,
and dazzling futuristic iminstant classic.
%
::
liPlipMiMMP'
CoMtrifii* i
H ^
Ctciotriit
Fo?oco#n 4
1i
*
S 11
A
I'
1
N
(,
W
C)
R
1,
IJ
S
t)
N
I
I
I
M
*
from
Influences
Abroad A group
\
/
^
of imaginative foreign directors emerged
from
art
house obscurity
Jmi. Fellini first
release
won
made
in the 1950s. Federico
a splash with the international
of La Strada, a parable about
innocence that
lost
the Oscar for Best Foreign Fihn in 1956.
With La
Dolce Vita (1960), his bag of tricks spilled forth, releasing
outrageous fantasies,
Cementing
sins,
symbols, masks, and perversions.
Fellini's stature as
the director's director was
Liv
Ullmann (above) plays a
fronting her
own breakdown
in
coldly analytical psychiatrist con-
Ingruar Bergman's Face
to
Face (1976).
8^
(1963), about a director trying vainly to complete a film.
From
Japan, Akira Kurosawa burst
upon
the scene
with Rashomon (1950), a complex story of rape and murder. In rai,
1954 Kurosawa directed the epic The Seven Samu-
and he scored again
late in his career
with Ran
(1985), a colossal samurai version of Shakespeare's King Lear.
Beginning in the 1950s French directors launched
new-wave filmmaking, auteur, giving
primacy
in
which the director became an
to his
creativity over the "literary"
own
visual
and cinematic
emphasis of screenwriters.
Films such as Alain Resnais's Last Year at Marienbad (1961) and Fran(;ois Truffaut's 1973
Oscar winner Day for Night helped
make
the
new wave
fa-
mous. Swedish director Ing-
mar Bergman gained an international reputation
upon
Roberto Benigni (right) directed, cowrote,
the 1957
and
starred in the Oscar-winning 1997 fable
worldwide release Life Is Beautiful,
of The Seventh Seal
and Wild
about a father who shields
son from the horrors of a concentration
through humor, quick
and
wits,
his
camp
love.
Strawberries, with their surreal treatFellini cast his wife, Giulietta
Masina, as the impish
ment of the themes and of
faith, alienation,
and death.
lovable Gelsomina
(left) in
La Strada,
quisitely touching tale of the relationship
carnival strongman
and a simpleminded
his ex-
between a waif.
107
^"M
'J
V
#^^'
Manufacturing the
Dream *
BEHIND-THE-SCENES MOVIE MAGIC
sweat the
like to
I and
director
E.T.:
details,"
and producer.
declared Steven Spielberg
On
The Extra-Terrestrial and dramas
like Schindler's List
make
he wanted. During the shooting of Atnistad himself
at just the right
Hollywood's most successful
the set of fantasy blockbusters like Raiders of the Lost Ark
berg earned a reputation for stepping in to
it
(left),
and Saving Private Ryan,
sure that the particulars
in 1997,
came out
he grabbed a crewman's lantern and held
who
take Spielberg's hands-on approach
still
the efforts of a multitude of specialists, such as screenwriters, set signers, cinematographers,
sound engineers, makeup
artists,
special-effects technicians. Stars give films their faces
the artistic accolades,
—but
exactly as
angle to illuminate the tortured faces of a group of slaves.
Yet even filmmakers
happen
Spiel-
and producers
get credit for
and
making
depend upon
and costume de-
stunt performers,
and
voices, directors receive
the whole enterprise
the people listed in the closing credits, whether they create sparkling dialogue or
dizzying digital effects, are essential to a movie's success.
Savvy directors
fiilly
appreciate
—even
relish
—
the
work of these
graphics designer said of the experience of bringing dinosaurs to
World: Jurassic Park: "He'll howl with glee attacked by a
I! rex.
He
if
something
is
life
experts.
A
computer-
for Spielberg in TJie Lost
exciting to him, say, a person getting
just can't contain himself."
Steven Spielberg works on the set of The Lost World: Jurassic Park, undistracted by the immense model of a dinosaur's foot, a product of the vast off-camera effort required to create a movie.
109
*
100
HOLLYWOOD
YEARS OF
Mapping Out This excerpt from
*
Movie
a
Words on Paper Gone With
the shooting script for
the
Wind
choreographs action and camera movements, using abbreviations
Hke
b.g.
for background
252 LONG SHOT
-
and assigning
WAGON
Burning buildings
a
number
to
each shot.
AT RAILROAD TRACK Rhett gets out of wagon, goes
in b.g.
to
horse's head, starts to pull horse bridle.
253
Give Voice to a Film
T
may be
he screenplay
the most important element
of a movie, providing not just memorable lines but,
.JL^ in the form of a shooting script
for filming.
MEDIUM CLOSE SHOT RHETT AT HORSE'S HEAD -
It is
also,
(left),
however, the most vulnerable element.
Producers, directors, agents, and actors can
RHETT
(pulling at horse)
Come
on!
Come
on!
a blueprint
all insist
on
Throw me your changes, sometimes to strengthen a character or resolve a
shawL
problem
(he reaches out of scene)
that arises during shooting,
sometimes
just be-
cause writing looks so easy: As screenwriter William Gold-
254
MEDIUM CLOSE SHOT SCARLETT -
man
put
it,
"Everybody knows the alphabet."
Prissy in back of wagon. Scarlett throws
When
the shawl.
255
GONE
MEDIUM CLOSE SHOT RHETT AT HORSE'S -
producer David O. Selznick decided to
make Gone With
the Wind, he turned to playwright
Sidney Coe Howard,
who
pared Margaret Mitchell's
HEAD He
catches the shawl,
ties it
best-selling 1,037-page novel (inset)
around
cogent
horse's head.
fire
RHETT
Sorry, but you'll like
it
better
if
down
to a
the
—
script.
But Selznick went on to hire
—and
a long series of other writers, including
F.
you don't Scott Fitzgerald, to produce
new
versions of the
see anything.
screenplay,
256 LONG SHOT
WAGON
-
AT
(BURNING BUILDINGS
R.R.
TRACKS
-
all
the while constantly revising their
work. The resulting
mound
of pages eventually
IN B.G.) filled
an entire
filing cabinet, yet
when shooting
Rhett finishes tying shawl over the horse's head.
began, only a fraction of the scenes existed in usable form.
257
MEDIUM CLOSE SHOT EXPLOSIVES -
IN
For help, Selznick called in another screenwriter, the
BOXCAR The fire
highly regarded Ben Hecht, in the
is
on,
He pulls
suggested they start again
Howard's version. The resulting
fi-om
RHETT Come
who
background.
Come
on!
humous
the horse, turns the horse,
and then
leads
him four
Best Screenplay Oscar for
months before
the film's
effort
won
a post-
Howard, who had died
December 1939
release.
away from CAMERA. In the old Hollywood, writers rarely
259 LONG SHOT The fire
is
-
EXPLOSIVES
IN
BOXCAR
much
nearer.
ly labeled
Slowly, pulling the reluctant horse, Rhett heads
after they
from studio
toward the spot
still
clear of flame.
away from
A moment
executives. Jack
Warner
scornful-
them "schmucks with Underwoods," and most of
them labored under
260 LONG SHOT
CAMERA
respect
commanded
contract to one studio or another, rele-
gated to shabby, cramped lents enjoy
much
offices.
Their latter-day equiva-
higher prestige, as well as paychecks that
have disappeared through the opening, the flames
can run to seven figures.
And
those
who both
direct
and
reach their climax, the boxcars start to blow up, the largest
building at the
left
end of the screen
screen becomes a mass of flames.
110
collapses,
and
the
write, like
enormous
Woody
Allen and Francis Ford Coppola, wield
creative control.
A
storyboard of thumbnail sketches, based on the screenplay, allows the producer, director, and others
at top by William the
Cameron Menzies, production
designer for
dramatic scene (bottom), the crew assembled and
Gone With
set ablaze old sets
the Wind, depicts Scarlett
from
Selznick's
back
lot
to visualize
and Rhett
each scene. The sequence of sketches
as they flee a burning Atlanta. To create
— including some from
1933's King Kong.
M
*
A N U
1-
A C T U R
1
N
C;
T
III.
I
>
R
I,
A
M
*
Designers Set the Scene Robert Boyle, a top Hollywood production designer,
was able
as
.
he put
to ply his trade because he it,
"what a
Boyle's job was to design the create the right visual
"dramatic truth," but far
from
liar
the
camera can
and
environment. He always sought this,
he noted, could be "very, very
reality."
thriller
classic
North by Northwest, Boyle helped the camera
convincingly.
lie
be."
the locations,
sets, select
During the making of Alfred Hitchcock's 1959
knew,
chase across the
The screenplay
called for a spectacular
Mount Rushmore
Lights illuminate a plaster replica of Mount Rushmore, built at the
MGM studio after Hitchcock was denied use of the real thing.
National Memorial.
But the U.S. Department of the Interior refused Hitchcock permission to film on
site,
and he
in
felt
that he could better control the lighting
on
a studio set.
So he had Boyle design scale-model plaster four presidents' faces instead, and viewers
convinced they had seen the Fooling the eye
is all
real
casts
of the
came away
monument.
part of the job.
can create the illusion of a vast
any case
room
A
clever designer
while constructing
only a small corner. The epic sea battle in 1959's Ben-Hur skillfully
blends closeups of the actors in motion with
A painted footage of miniature ships floating
on dyed
ington,
ers use
their
backdrop depicts the carved stone faces of George Wash-
water. Design-
Thomas
Jefferson,
Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln.
such tricks of the trade whenever necessary, but
commitment
to authenticity can also
ordinary lengths. For All the
Presidef^t's
go to extra-
Men
(1976),
George Jenkins re-created not only the Washington Post
newsroom but even
the kinds of trash found in reporters'
wastepaper baskets. For director Josef von Sternberg, the products of his imagination took on a certain authenticity. After creating his
own
sets for
Shanghai Express in 1932,
he visited China and declared the
Ill
real thing disappointing.
North by Northwest, Cary Grant and Eva Marie Saint pause un-
der
Thomas
Jefferson
s
chin
(left)
as they flee from villains.
The
real
Rushmore makes
on location
in
its
only appearance in this scene, filmed
South Dakota with Grant, James Mason, and Saint.
113
*
100
YEARS or HOLLYWOOD
*
A World That of
Oz
Wasn't.
(1939), the art department at
by many the best be.
Although
more sets
When work began on
this
in the business.
often in the studio than
L. artist
tiny
of the
to
on location
—and painted
—the scenery
The world
a special challenge: in the
for to
imagination of author
Frank Baum. Bringing
the materials to he used in constructing them.
Munchkins
it
to life
was the task of designer WiUiam
whom
one of
cottages with thatched roofs were scaled
Horning, a qualified architect
—played by dwarfs
called "extremely practical, ferociously intelligent,
mushroom-shaped
to the size
had
it
Jack Martin Smith specifies the dhnensions of
Munchkin houses and The
For this movie
did duty as Paris or the Himalaya
be created had existed only
drawing by
MGM was considered
was an era when films were shot much
The Wizard of Oz posed
A
The Wizard
in the film.
hard as
nails."
The
original
his assistants
book contained no
and
illustration
of Munchkinland, so Horning had to dream the place up
and then build
it
to the scale of
its
diminutive residents.
Even harder was envisioning the Emerald
home
of the Wizard of Oz,
needed
it
As the
City.
to surpass the rest
of the settings in surreal magic. The head of
MGM's
art
department, Cedric Gibbons, eventually came across an old
German drawing of a
"test
fantasy city that looked like
tubes upside down," one
artist said.
Creating the sets was further complicated by the use
of Technicolor. This process,
in its infancy,
still
bersome and unpredictable, and the to learn a
new
week finding that
color vocabulary.
art
was cum-
department had
One employee
spent a
a shade of paint for the yellow brick road
would not appear green on
related problem,
making the
film.
Another color-
carriage horse in
Oz
turn
every hue of the rainbow, was solved by using a succession of horses and sponging each one This sketch
is
an
artist's
conception of the set for Mimchkinland.
The mythical place consisted of 122 normal
size
and arrayed on
ered 10 feet high to
make
terraces
the
ent variety of Jell-O powder.
down
The animals
with a
differ-
did, however,
structures, built at one-fourth
around a
pool. Flowers tow-
Munchkins appear even
tend to In
smaller.
sound
lick off all,
most of the
about 60 Oz
sets
Jell-O
between
were built on
shots.
six different
stages, as nearly 1,000 carpenters, painters,
and
other craftsmen labored frantically to stay a week ahead
of the shooting schedule. Dorothy, played by Judy Garland, stands awestruck in Munchkin-
land (opposite). "I've a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore," she exclaims.
The
bridge, pool,
and flowers
are part of the constructed
set,
whereas the liouses combine painted cutouts and a musUn backdrop.
114
was obviously imaginary
On
film the world they created
—but
still
so vivid that
when
Dorothy gazes around and concludes, "We must be over the rainbow," generations of audiences have agreed.
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M
A N U
Dressing the Stars
Drama
with want
my
clothes loose
enough
to prove I'm a lady,
but tight enough to show 'em I'm a woman,"
I
West told the designer costuming her
Mae
for 1933's Slie
Done Him Wrong. Edith Head complied, outlining the star's
voluptuous form to such
make
the film a smash. West praised "Edith's things" for
effect that
she helped
being "allurin' without being vulgar." They had, she said, "just a little insinuetido
In a career that
Head in
(at
left,
about them."
spanned more than half
costumed the
sketching in her studio)
more than 500
films.
a century. stars
As Paramount's chief designer
the height of the studio era, she supervised dozens of ters, cutters,
seamstresses,
and
milliners.
at
fit-
Few expenses
were spared: Six or eight employees might spend weeks sewing beads onto (1936) she
a single
gown. For The Jungle Princess
wrapped an unknown named Dorothy LaEdith
mour
in a boldly
Head put Grace
Kelly in
patterned sarong that became Lamour's a fetching gilded strapless
trademark and established a new fashion on American beaches.
The $35,000 mink
Rogers in Lady legend for
its
dress she created for Ginger
Dark (1944) became
in the
extravagance. She was
still
a
Hollywood
working into
gown
(sketch above) for To
Catch a Thief (1955).
prompted
pantsuits for Airport
and
outfitting Paul
Robert Redford as dapper 1930s con
Head saw
and bell-bottom
herself, she said, as "a
Newman and
men
in
The
Sting.
combination of
psychiatrist, artist, fashion designer, dressmaker, pin-
cushion, historian, nursemaid, and purchasing agent." "In her dressing room," said actress Arlene Dahl, "you
had no
own
secrets
secrets
—you were stripped
was
bare."
to never upstage the star.
One
of Head's
She kept her
appearance so plain that she once made Hollywood's worst-dressed
No one
list.
else
came near Head's record of 35 Acad-
emy Award nominations and
eight Oscars. But British
director Alfred
Hitchcock's quip, "There's hdls in
the 1970s, doing polyester miniskirts
It
them thar gold!"
The gown remained one of Head's favorite creations.
I-
A C T U U
I
N
C;
T H
f.
DREAM
*
*
I
U
.J
>
h A R
or
S
HOLLYWOOD
*
designer Sir Cecil Beaton achieved
unique double-
a
Oscar distinction with
My Fair
Lady {\964). His
adornment of Audrey Hepburn (at left)
won
Best
Costume Design, and sets
Edwardian-era
his
took the award for Best Art Direction. Director Cecil B. DeMille
once declared, that will
when
"I
make people gasp
they see them. Don't de-
sign anything that
buy
in a store."
movie
want clothes
is
a
anyone could
But not every
DeMille blockbuster, and
designers aim for realism as often as for spectacle,
making sure
that the
clothing suits both the character
and the demands of the
Making
— .''
In
My Fair Lady,
Hepburn goes races in a
as
ing,
scene.
Elizabeth Taylor
dowdy
Richard Burton's bicker-
hard-drinking wife in Who's
Audrey
to the
Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966)
Ascot
— required
show- stopping en-
semble by Sir Cecil Beaton,
whose original sketch
^'
ly
(
ty.
all
the craft previous-
spent on showcasing her beau-
is
Her clothes were
carefully cut
above. Opposite are drawings
to
by three other notable designers,
be
as unflattering as possible,
with padding added in
along with the stars
they adorned.
\
wrong
places.
Sylbert,
just the
Designer Anthea
commenting on
new kind of
this
authenticity, stat-
ed that a film "must never be about costumes.
It
must always be about the characters."
118
r*-l
*
Marilyn Monroe, There's
Show Business
(1954)
No Business
— William
Like
Travilla
Faye Dunaway, Bonnie and Clyde (1967)
Theadora Van Runkle
—
M
A N
1
1
I
'\
(
I
I
'
R
I
N
C,
Mil
I
)
l(
I
A
M
Kate Capshaw, Indiana lones and the
Temple of Doom (1984)— Anthony Powell
x:
119
*
10
Y
1£
A R
()
S
1
HOLLYWOOD
*
Makeup: The Magic of Transformation he
artists
faceless.
T^
who
The exceptions
usually remain
are the remarkable West-
makeup dynasty whose
mores, a four-generation
members have become Hollywood right. In
makeup
apply movie
celebrities in their
own
1917 George Westmore, a former wigmaker, began
beautifying silent-film footsteps,
His
stars.
six
sons
all
followed in his
and during the 1930s the makeup department of every major studio was headed by a
Westmore. Three of George's grandsons continued the Westmore tradition, as did several
members of the
next generation.
Since George Westmore's time, the task of writing a story
the
human
face has
on the
grown
tablet
increasingly
complex. Modern movie makeup heavily
made
on
prosthetics
—
of
relies
artificial features
out of rubbery material that can
add dramatic
human
into an alien or a monster. For
Big
Little
scars or wrinkles or turn a
Man
(1970),
makeup
artist
Dick Smith had to change 33-year-old Dustin Hoffrnan set) into
a 121 -year-old survivor of the
(in-
Old West. Smith be-
gan by studying the faces of old men. Then, using a plaster cast
of Hoffman's head as a base, he sculpted wrinkled fea-
tures in clay.
were
filled
thetics.
Molds made from each of these
with liquid
latex,
which hardened into the pros-
This method allowed Smith to produce a fresh
of prosthetics day's filming.
—painted with age It
took
five
around the edges
final effect
spots
and
veins
—
and then
to
to paint
more
set
for each
hours to position and glue
pieces onto Hoffman's face latex
clay features
all
the
liquid
blend them with his skin. The
was so powerful
that people
on
the set
For his
role in 1970's Little
lengthy
makeup
Big
Man, Dustin Hoffman undergoes
found that were applied to his skin weighed several
themselves helping Hoffman out of his chair or offering
him an arm
as
if
he
really
were an old man.
a
ordeal (above). The carefully crafted latex features
pounds altogether
—
but the result was dramatic, convincingly turning Hoffman into a
former frontiersman
(right)
who claimed
to
be 121 years
old.
*
10
YEARS
O
t-
HOLLYWOOD
In 1996's
*
The Nutty
seven different professor
roles.
Professor,
The
title
Eddie
Sherman Klump, who
and transforms
is
Buddy
beginnmg
for
makeup
—workout guru
played
own
DNA
Love. These two
Baker and David LeRoy Anderson, who had over for five more parts
(left)
obese chemistry
tinkers with his
himself into slim
characters were only the
Murphy
character
to
artists
Rick
make Murphy
Latice Perkins
and
four other Klumps. The film won an Oscar for Best Makeup.
:"'•
mm
K s ^d
_!iS^^
JAm!
nmm
Among Eddie Murphy's fessor are, at
from
top.
left,
Papa,
1^
roles in
Professor
The Nutty Pro-
Sherman Klump and,
Mama, and Grandma Klump.
*
MANUFACTURING
Ai makeup
Till:
artists
I
R
)
i:
A
M
fanned Murphy,
prosthetics for Eddie
they worked from a cast of his
head and shoiddcrs
(left)
and
from concept sculptures of
Sherman Klump's enormous body (below). One of the most daunting tasks was making the pieces of imitation fat
"move
and
as
Sijuisli like flesh,"
makeup it.
artist
Rick Baker put
After a variety of experi-
ments. Baker
found
and
his
crew
that they could produce
the desired effect by using con-
doms filled with water of the
as one
components of the
"fat."
123
— YKARS OF HOLLYWOOD
*
Capturing the Story
||
in the Camera's Eye hen
W'
I
read a script and like the story,
emotional
I
visuals."
respond to
cinematographer Janusz Kaminski
level,"
then imagine
I
how
it
on an
said.
can enhance the storytelling through
I
As director of photography for Saving Private Ryan (1998),
Kaminski had the challenge of making the camera translate filmmaker Steven Spielberg's vision into
World War the Allies'
mandy
II
drama
reality.
its first
focuses unrelentingly
D-Day landing on
the
Omaha
coast. After studying actual
pecially the
For
work of legendary
Life
25 minutes this powerful
on the carnage and chaos of
Beach sector of France's Nor-
combat footage and photographs,
es-
magazine photojournalist Robert Capa, Spielberg and Kaminski decided the film should, as Kaminski put
"look a
i^^Tt,—J.
l*s«irr.i|iri
like
it
was shot
in 16
it,
mm by
bunch of combat cameramen."
ii^iS^|Sii|^
To achieve Kaminski had
this sense
his
of realism,
camera operators
shoot mostly with hand-held cameras.
They simulated
quality of
the frenetic
combat with
deliberately
out-of-sync shutters and special devices that ter
or
artificial
blood splattered the
ing because that's what
lenses,
Kaminski
we assumed would happen
Kaminski also manipulated the of burned-out, bleary
shook the cameras.
sky,"
lighting.
said,
If
wa-
"we kept shoot-
in reality."
Because he wanted a "kind
he had the protective coating stripped from
lenses for flatter contrast.
Overhead
helped diminish sunlight.
And
to
silk
canopies and heavy black smoke
enhance the documentary look, he
extracted roughly 60 percent of the color from the final negative creating
muted
tones. For
film," as a colleague
put
it,
making the camera
"a real participant in the
Kaminski received an Academy Award
for
Best Cinematography.
The GIs of Saving Private Ryan struggle through enemy (right).
124
Above, the crew prepares
to
obstacles
on
Omaha
shoot with a crane-mounted camera.
Beach
Silk
^
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100
126
YEARS OF HOLLYWOOD
*
*
M
A N U
F
A C T U R
1
N
C,
1
I
1
I
I
)
R
i:
A
M
*
The Sound of Movies the days of silent film, live organ music added
In
action on-screen. Since the advent of
have played the same providing a
hit
role,
song that helps
The best-known modern
enhancing the
movie scores
mood and sometimes
scores are those of composer-conductor John
ominous theme
pending shark attacks
—and paid
The sweeping
in 1927,
to the
sell tickets.
Williams. In 1975 his
Herrmann's music
sound
drama
for Jaws
sharpened the suspense of im-
tribute to Bernard
for the 1960 thriller Psycho.
orchestral odyssey Williams creat-
ed for the Star Wars films almost single-handedly
brought symphonic scores back into
During filming, microphones dialogue, which actors
may
style.
also capture
rerecord later as
needed. Other noises, such as a gunshot, usually
A
come
ft-om a library of recordings.
(inset)
— invented by movie sound pioneer
surfaces for creating sounds. ple, the
A
Foley stage
Jack Foley
There a "Foley
artist"
may have been
—provides
work
a variety of
can reproduce, for exam-
cadence of a woman's footsteps on a marble
crophones
^°^^y artist at
floor.
On
the
arranged to catch dialogue more clearly
set,
at the ex-
pense of such sounds; adding them back in heightens realism. Foley also specialize in innovative
sound
effects
—
like
mi-
artists
squeezing an open bottle of
dishwashing detergent to simulate the sound of a dinosaur egg hatching.
At the mixing board music, dialogue,
in
a recording studio, specialists perfect the combination of
and sound
effects that
audiences will hear on a film's soundtrack.
127
I
(lire
seemingly
to
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MAN
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111
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I
I)
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*
Believable
Make- Believe red Astaire
F\
19518 Roy-
Wedding, climbing the walls of his
room and tap-dancing
How did
ing.
was so high on love
that he defied gravity in
al
hotel
(left)
he do
across the ceil-
The room turned
it?
upside down, not the dancer. furniture, camera,
chored to
its
floor
The
set
—with
and cameraman an-
—was placed
in a revolv-
ing cage that turned while Astaire danced.
own
This trick was Astaire's
sions
very
come from first
built, all
named Bruce
Shaw
in
Jaws (1975).
after director Steven Spielberg's lawyer.
illu-
special-effects experts.
The
of them was Georges Melies, a
French magician turned filmmaker, Tlie
mechanical shark operated by air pressure devours actor Robert
Three sharks were
inspira-
but usually the ideas behind such
tion,
A
Conjuror (1899)
made
who
in
himself and his
assistant disappear.
Over the next century took on an ever higher tion. In
special effects
level
of sophistica-
MGM's
The Wizard ofOz,
ary Arnold Gillespie "melted" the
Witch of the West by standing garet
legend-
Wicked Mar-
actress
Hamilton on a small patch of floor
that could
be lowered. As she descended,
—pinned around her— remained behind. her clothing
to the stationary floor
Alfred
This
lifelike
dummy
A crewman for Danger:
with a swivel neck
rigs
Exorcist (1973) in which Linda Blair's
device that produces the illusion of bul-
head appeared
to
turn 360 degrees.
let
Hitchcock staged frightening avian attacks in
for
some
and shrieking
an actor with a remote-controlled
wounds.
On
cue, caps explode,
ing bullet holes in the actor's shirt
burn-
and
rupturing sacs of fake blood.
The Birds (1963) by blending separate
footage of diving birds
Diabolik (1967)
performed the famous scene from The
actors
scenes, using mechanical
birds for others. Today's visual wiz-
ardry can
make
entire cities
in fireballs, as they did
go up
when
alien
An
actor in a medieval tale receives help
996
with his costume, which contains front and
blockbuster Independence Day.
back sockets that hold the halves of a spear.
ships blasted earth in the
1
129
— *
100
YEARS
O
Y
HOLLYWOOD
*
on the screen while minimizing
ger
Daredevils
air
bags cushion
falls.
the impact of blows.
at
Work
character's
head
molded from air,
catch
fire, fly
runaway automobiles, collapse under
T^
It's all
perform the film
in a day's
stunts.
work
for the
his
When
through
in
own
stunts but in
Mel Gibson
130
—
from
ing
hand
When
a small
the precipice.
in.
Nevada
bottles in
The
wood
balsa
glass
held together by
barroom brawls
window
a
are
the hero smashes
thin plastic, though for a long time the industry
derring-do.
star.
perches atop an upside-down coffee table on a
self performed the scene
paraffin.
optical sleight of
Stunt coordinators try to maximize the illusion of dan-
Star
made of soft
down on
is
added
to
Spectacular effects often result fi"om clever tricks or
had a
the scenes get dangerous, skilled daredevils step
chair that crashes
reinforce the illusion.
one of them
are rarely willing to take such risks with a
is
The
used sugar candy. The sound of shattering glass
falling debris.
recall that silent-
brush with death when he broke his neck
and they
cliffs
men and women who
Modern filmmakers
comedian Buster Keaton did
off
Enormous
Special props called breakaways ease
Those whiskey
toothpicks.
hey hurtle through the
is
actual risk.
(box, opposite) as well as
a car soars off a
The
blown
soldier
mine probably sprang
a wild chase in which his character, police detective
Riggs,
is
gets
ramp placed inconspicuously
an extra
at the
into the air
Weapon 4
dragged through heavy
traffic
lift
edge of
by an explod-
off a hidden trampoline.
freeway, as part of a stunt created for Lethal
Martin
cliff, it
human
The
(1998). Gibson him-
behind a
trailer truck.
M
*
laws of physics also
lend a liand.
nia\'
from
stunt double, Brian Smr/, jiunped
moving bus
Speed
in
(
1994), he
When Koanu a
moving
knew he would
One the
at the
of the most perilous
burn.
hill
were going
ments and
Human
face
same
feats
the stunt
not miss
to protect
C.
T U K
N
I
Ci
of the
most stuntiing
effects
them resemble the
actors they double for.
known
as
trified
them and
viewers of Die
Hard 2 (1990) was
graphic composite. Hero Bruce
painted
on
at
the protective clothing
members stand by
to hose
it
down
low temperatures
and then
McClane, besieged by enemies
Willis, as
One
A
M
scene that elec-
actually a photo-
in the cockpit
of a grounded
set afire.
seat
A
is
Crew
cut
and punching
out.
and paste. Below,
an
ejection
The shot was achieved by cinematic
Willis, in the ejection seat,
was filmed
against an illuminated blue screen. This allowed the isolation
of the image of Willis alone, with no background. The film of WiUis was then laid over a background image of the plane ex-
with carbon dioxide.
shown at bottom.
over-the-top disaster film, The Towering Inferno
(1974), contained
enough
skyscrapers to require
A
1.
policeman John
ploding, leading to the final composite shot
One
R
to
They may
even carry concealed miniaturized breathing equipment.
combustible substance that burns
I)
stem from optical trickery
rather than from a stunt man's courage.
military plane, escapes by strapping himself into
help
TIM
if
torches typically wear fireproof gar-
masks designed both
A
Cut-and-Paste Action
car to a
velocity.
is
!
Reeves's
Some both vehicles
A N U
stunt
man
hurtles
Schwarzenegger
fiery deaths
and plunges from
no fewer than 140 stunt
from an exploding house
thriller
in the
artists.
Arnold
Last Action Hero (1993). His dramatic
flight actually occurred with help
from the compressed
air in a
hidden device, a hinged kicker ramp, which flipped him
aloft.
131
1-
•
•
r-n*
(% \f^
m %
€MtJ
*
MAN
U
I-
A C
!
U K
I
N
Mil
C,
.\rli
Industrial Light
Light
R
1
A
M
Industrial
& Magic (left)
iliapc a plaster
& Magic
1)
for the giant
mold
head of
the character in Re-
turn of the Jedi (1983)
Lucas's
toy box"
—
what some employees
that's
called Inclustrial Light
J left
special-effects shop.
among some
of films
—
known
&
Magic (ILM), the famed
George Lucas
—shown
mold at
of his models from the Star Wars series
started the firm in 1975 to generate effects
for the original Star
Wars movie. He
set
as
filled
the final
with latex
rubber emerged the
completed creature
—
below, with friend
Salacious
up shop
Ephant
Man. From
Crumb.
in a
warehouse north of Los Angeles and hired an energetic
young for
staff,
work
flops.
It
many
who showed up
hours wearing T-shirts, shorts, and
at all
was
barely out of college,
a "hang-loose atmosphere,"
"We were
neers recalled.
one of the pio-
bunch of hippies,
a
flip-
really
—but
highly motivated."
There and
later in a facility
north of San Francisco,
Lucas and his crew launched a revolution in movie
— galaxy To populate the Star Wars cosmos away" — they designed, and brought "a
fects.
far
to
built,
effar,
ro-
life
bots and other wonderfully grotesque creatures. They
constructed miniature spaceships flickering with thou-
sands of tiny
zoomed
at
window
lights.
warp speed
actually sitting
still
On-screen these
in intergalactic dogfights while
—thanks
to
new computer-controlled
camera systems perfected by the firm {page
Though ILM provided films, including the
—winning
Park
flicks
135).
more than 150
Indiana Jones trilogy and Jurassic
—
the Star
Wars
exerted a special magic. For the fourth in the series.
special effects
most
effects for
14 Oscars in the process
Star Wars: Episode
shots.
craft
I— The Phantom
showed up
Even before that
in nearly
release. Star
successfial series ever
ations,
Menace
(1999),
ILM
95 percent of the
Wars had become the
made. Appealing across gener-
through 1998 the Star Wars trilogy had grossed
$1.8 billion at the
box
office
in licenses for books, video
and more than $4.5
billion
games, apparel, and replicas
of George Lucas's beloved toys.
133
*
Popping Up on ihc fihning,
M
A N U
P
A C
V K
I
I
N
C,
I
II
1,
I)
k
I.
A
M
through a trapdoor that conceals him during
set
animator Jon Berg adjusts the position of one of the snow
walkers seen in The Empire Strikes Back (1980). In ILM's stop-
motion technique, the
an
object
illusion
of movement was achieved by filming
one frame at a time and moving
it
between exposures.
Jon Berg peers through the viewfinder of a motion-control camera to line
up a shot of a snow walker. The computer-operated camera
allowed filmmakers
models and
to
make
to
impart the
illusion
of motion
exact multiple copies of objects
to stationary
and move-
ments for the purpose of building composite images.
In a masterpiece
immense Empire
ofILM special
effects, little
snow walkers
(left)
as they stride across the screen with guns blazing in
Strikes Back. This
image was the fruit of stop-motion
nique, motion-control cameras,
—
and compositing
the optical
look
The tech-
magic
that permits various elements to be layered into one shot.
135
*
HOLLYWOOD
100 YliARS OF
*
hardware capabilities and employ new software. Special
Breakthroughs in
programs modeled the
beast,
augmenting
a basic tube
shape with such intricacies as transparent ripples and
Digital Illusion
minous
gram or
Fl
all
Star
the spectacular special effects of the original
Wars
trilogy,
George Lucas
frustrated.
felt
Technology could not yet translate
all
his fantastic
visions into realistic images. But that began to change
sophisticated
computer graphics.
Major breakthroughs
ILM
confronted an extraordinary challenge in The Abyss
(1989). Director James
Cameron envisioned
of creatures, a snakelike "pseudopod" water that could transform faces. "It
had
when
had
its
to be living," said
to feel that
it
had
a
made
to resize, color-correct,
Still,
Lucas's crew
mind of
its
In
136
it,
ILM had
to vastly
its
computer
The Abyss a computer-generated creature made of seawater changes
— and
establish
an
2:
Judgment Day (1991),
more
specialists to
startling character, a cy-
borg named T-1000. The creature had to metamorphose of stages, from gleaming metallic hu-
amorphous blob of
liquid metal to
human
form. Rapid increases in digital processing power and
memory
gave the technicians
new
ning existing images, composing ring
expand
forth an even
to
and rippling purposefully." To create
summon
manoid
own and was moving
alter digitized images.
Cameron asked ILM's computer
of sea-
Mark Dippe of ILM. "You
a pro-
in digital effects.
For his next film. Terminator
a series
human
was Photoshop,
needed nine months to complete the
Oscar-winning milestone
through
tip into various
and
75-second computerized sequence
the strangest totally
vital tool
created primarily for publishing, which enabled
director
in digital effects started
One
ILM
dramatically in the late 1980s with the advent of ever
more
reflections.
lu-
them
to film. In
possibilities for scan-
new
ones,
and
transfer-
what one of them described
as a
"manic, energy-filled production with incredible dead-
into the hkeness of Ed Harris, as
Mary Ehzabeth Mastrantonio
reaches out.
*
M
A N
11
1-
A C T U R
I
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C;
MM
I
)
lU A
M
*
Preparing for the eoinputerized birth of T-1000,
—painted with a — runs camera.
actor Robert Patrick
of reference points
Given
life
who
for the
by software using digitized i?nages of
Patrick, the actor,
black grid
gleaming T-1000 runs just
like the
limps slightly from an old injury.
In a spectacular sequence from Terminator 2: Judg-
ment Day, T-1000 emerges from a wall offire liquid metal, which then shifts into
human
as
shape.
137
*
YEARS OF HOLLYWOOD
ICO
and
lines
ILM brought
pressures,"
Cameron's cyborg
*
To
to life
up a scene
—
in
the role of mathematician Ian
computer-generated
film.
Malcolm
When
for Jurassic
Park, actor Jeff Goldhlum
minutes of
in nearly six
set
George Lucas's old
associate,
—
flees a
charging
Tyrannosaurus rex that he has
Steven Spielberg, planned his 1993 adapta-
to
tion of the best-selling
ing inserted into the shot, the
thriller Jurassic Park,
he anticipated using only a
bit
imagine
is
there.
Before be-
beast was built from scratch
of computer
by computer graphics.
He
intended to rely mostly on
physical models. But ILM's l
wanted
show him
to
computer whiz
that they could
generate a "full-screen, in-your-face Tyran-
nosaurus rex." Their demonstration was so awe-inspiring that Spielberg lotting six dramatic
wound up
minutes to their
al-
digital
dinosaurs, capped by the climactic battle
Beginning T. rex,
between the
T.
rex
and the
the
its
creation of a
computer pro-
velociraptors. duces an image representing
"The keys liminal," said
to
filmmaking are
Mark Dippe. "You
all
sub-
see a dino-
saur walk by a tree and the tree shakes, you believe
it's
there."
To
an idea of
get
a three-dimensional wire-
frame skeleton of the beast.
the creators later
how
six-ton
Using special software,
added
di-
muscles, surface texture,
nosaurs moved,
ILM
animators observed
and
other features.
large animals, consulted paleontologists,
and even participated
ment
classes.
in
dance and move-
With in-house software they
captured the dinosaurs' every sway and gle,
jig-
even such subtleties as the expansion
and contraction of skin during breathing.
Some computer-graphics
solutions
brought with them new problems. The images frequently technicians
more ic
had
seemed too mechanical, so to
natural look.
add blur and grain
They
also
for a
used electron-
paintbrushes to touch up flaws in the final
composites. But in one dramatic example
of the power of digital child actress
adult stunt
effects,
was attached
woman
the head of a
to the
body of an
so that the child appeared
During film editing to be
performing the stunt. Not
but humans could
138
now
be built
just
animals
digitally.
with
live action.
{above), the
computer integrates the evolving
digital creature
This compositing process combines two separate images
—
dimensional wire model and the so-called background plate of the fleeing
the three-
actor.
The final composited the cutting
shot,
which wound up on
room floor, brings together a Tyran-
uosaurus- rex
and a
terrified Jeff Goldblum.
4JI0I^
f^
^m
'*'M
00
YTARS OF HOLLYWOOD
*
4-^
•
^ In
The Mask (1994), Jim Carrey plays a bank
clerk
whose body changes
when he dons
to
a kind of Silly Putty
a mysterious mask. The filmed im-
age above provides the background plate.
With eyes popping, a computer-generated wire-
frame figure
is
composited over the filmed
background plate of Carrey. Computer images exaggerated the actor's
own facial
contortions.
In the computerized figure, Carrey's tongue
and
eyeballs extend hugely. In other scenes, his figure
explodes
and
—
"freeze"
—when commanded by a cop
drips with
icicles.
to
In the final composite, the film of the real
Jim Carrey and his popcyed computer caricature merge seamlessly in a bizarre digital
union of reality and
illusion.
r
*
100
YEARS OF HOLLYWOOD
*
Master of
Animation not just a cartoon," Walt Disney once
It's exclaimed
about a project. "We have new
worlds to conquer here." Animation was a primi-
er he
brought
boat Willie
having
—
By
bottom).
when
1920
tive art in
his
Disney, then 18, got started. Eight years
chosen
field into
won an Oscar
in 1932 for Flowers
chipmunks and one
and
Trees,
Competing animators were awed by
beautifully executed work:
rels,"
Mickey Mouse
(right,
Disney was one of Hollywood's biggest names,
30,
color cartoon.
sound with Steam-
the age of
the cartoon that launched
lat-
giraffes
scampered
squirrels
artist said
"The
like
ran
the
first full-
his studio's
and the
like giraffes
chipmunks and
squir-
admiringly.
In 1934 he began a three-year project that skeptics labeled
—
Disney's FoOy
the
first
feature-length animated film. Audiences
nationwide were dazzled by with
and ing
lavish,
unprecedented
detail.
Snow White move with
shadows should
faO,
and
the Seven Dwarfs,
winning characters,
enthralling story,
its
Snov^/ Wliite
Immense
realism
and adding
and
irresistible
music,
labor went into
grace, determining
glistening effects to jewels
mak-
how and
soap bubbles. Disney's spare-no-expense approach carried over to the studio's later films.
Lead characters
bi (inset, bottom)
became
ney successfully turned
parks. After he died in 1966
with The
1989 Walt Disney
acts out a scene from Pinocchio (1940) for his staff.
it
Little
drift.
But
Mermaid
in
began a new era of ani
mated blockbusters, showin
Disney routinely introduced ideas through such performances, that the
which
often,
one animator
said,
would
"kill
they were so funny." His presentation of the the Seven
142
Dwarfs story reportedly moved
the
world Disney had ere
you laughing,
Snow White and room
to tears.
ated half a century earlier still
held
its
magic.
(inset, top)
his
and amusement
studio seemed to
Dumbo
and Bam-
part of the world's popular culture. Dis-
attention to television, live-
action films,
like
*
,
^^
*
Snow
Fantasia,
1940
The
Disney Classics Mickey Mouse, as the
Sorcerer's
Apprentice, makes the stars
dance
in Fantasia;
Snow
White's
dwarfs sing "Heigh Ho"; Ariel, the Little sea;
Mermaid,
frolics in the
and a sacred ceremony
marks the birth ofSimba and Nala's cub in
The Lion King.
White and
Little
tiie
M
A N u
Seven Dwarfs, 1937
Mermaid, 1989
r
A
c:
T U R
I
N
r,
T
il
i:
D
K
1
A
M
*
*
100
YEARS OF HOLLYWOOD
*
Man
Merry Mayhem Warner
at
who found
or those
Fy
Warner
Bros.
Disney's world a Httle saccharine, there were
Bros, cartoons:
and
a wisecracking tone
with Warner Bros, gangster
Michael Maltese
recalled,
fast,
ferocious,
relentless
flicks
vils fell
began
series
anarchic, cheeky style was in
cliffs.
As storyman
bill.
cartoons for grownups."
on heads, dynamite exploded while being
obliviously dashed off
matched
that nicely
playing on the same
"We wrote
its
and very funny, they had
mayhem
The Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies and by the next decade
of a Thousand Voices
held,
in the 1930s,
full
bloom: An-
and characters
Warner animators working on minuscule
budgets produced some of the
six- to
seven-minute epics
The legendary Mel Blanc carrot for a
plied the voices for almost all the major
malodorous building fondly known
mite Terrace. Yet gifted directors Friz Freleng,
Robert
Chuck
as Ter-
Tex Avery,
like
Bob Clampett, and
Jones,
McKimson turned
sup-
ejfect)
in a dilapidat-
Warner cartoon ed,
(above, with a
Bugs Bunny sound
out a thousand-
ing
characters. Tlie
was Yosemite Sam's
holler,
most tax-
he
said,
with saliva!' A medical specialist told Blanc that he rico
had throat muscles
like those
of En-
Caruso.
cartoon body of work that remains unmatched in
animation
Warner
history. Bros.' first
enduring character
was chubby pink Porky Pig joined later by Bugs, the unflappable, smart-aleck
(inset).
He was
bunny with
the
Brooklyn-Bronx accent. The "scwewy wabbit," always too much for
"Ehh, what's up, doc?"
— Bugs Bunny "Th-th-that's
— Porky
all.
Folks!"
Pig
befuddled Elmer Fudd, also made short but hilarious work
of antagonists
like
Daffy Duck, the Tasmanian Devil, and pint-
"Itawtltawapuddytatr —Tweety
size,
man
Bird
high-decibel Yosemite Sam, "the roughest, toughest, hestuffest
hombre
that ever crossed the Rio Grande."
Sylvester the cat's vain quest to
make
a
meal of
little
"You're despicable!"
-Daffy Duck
Tweety sustained dozens of Warner Bros, cartoons, and "Be vewy, vewy
Wile
E.
Coyote continually chased the Road Runner across
stylized desert landscapes, betrayed
brand products and
his
own
The loquacious southern with a very different
mined
rooster
foe: a tiny
to catch his first chicken
ity in their sizes.
144
ever
time and again by
Foghorn Leghorn was faced
young hawk, Henery, no matter what the
quiet!"
— Elmer Fudd
Acme
more crackpot schemes.
deter-
dispar-
and
Sylvester's sputter left his scripts "covered
"Ah
say,
Ah
— Foghorn
say. Son!"
Leghorn
*
Model ter.
sheets like this
Bugs Bunny
MAN
U
A C
I
1
U U
1
N
C,
I
II
1.
I)
l<
From
his
M
debut on, he was, Friz
gun who was hunting him."
Bugs and Yosemite
Sam
appear on a
eel
Freleng (top). Animators would ink each
ment of action onto
by Friz
mo-
a sheet of celluloid, lay
over a painted background (center),
it
and capture
the combination (bottom) on film. This scene
from High Diving Hare "Sufferin Succotash!" Sylvester
by Tweety, the cat also stood in all
A
one helped animators maintain a consistent look for each charac-
kept a consistent attitude as well.
Freleng said, "so cocky he wasn't afraid of a guy with a
mouse
I.
is
little
in trouble
with Granny again. Continually bested
chance against Speedy Gonzales, "the fastest
Mexico," or Hippety Hopper, the diminutive boxing kangaroo.
—
in
the diving platform falls, while
suspended "but,"
in air.
Bugs
is
which Sam's half of
Bugs remains
This violates the law of gravity,
says, "I
never studied law."
145
*
YEARS OF HOLLYWOOD
100
*
The Next Generation of Animation A
s
j%
^
technology evolved, so did animation. In 1988 Rabbit
—
starring
Bob Hoskins
JL. character Roger Rabbit
as a
as a
1
s
WJio Framed Roger
940s detective, and cartoon
murder suspect
(right)
— Disney and
Steven Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment blended the animated and real
worlds seamlessly. "If Roger comes into a
you should
see the cushion
go
down and
room and
sits
down on
a big chair,
a puff of dust," Spielberg said.
After live-action sequences were filmed, animators crafted drawings to fit
precisely into the footage.
Cartoon characters had to hold a believable way.
real objects in
To match each
movement of the camera, drawings needed to shift perspective subtly. Layers
shadow made ures
of highlight and the animated
fig-
seem three-dimensional or
created other effects, such as the
shimmer of a sequined gown
worn by
An
sultry Jessica Rabbit.
even bigger breakthrough
was 1995's Toy ture film
Story, the first fea-
animated
entirely
by
computer. The story of Woody (inset, right)
and Buzz
(inset, left),
fection, required four years
studio Pixar.
toys
In
Programmers and animators created computer models
model
Snow
to
make
this virtual
same
two lead toy characters received
nuanced
Then they designed world convincingly
White, Walt Disney created animation's
characters; Toy Story did the
ly
for their owner's af-
of work from Disney and computer-graphics
every character, setting, and object. for each
who compete
facial expressions.
in the realm of
for
surface "textures" tactile.
first realistic
human
computer animation. The
a high level of realism as well, with careful-
"For the audience to believe in them,
Woody Bob Hoskins,
and Buzz have
as private eye Eddie Valiant, wrestles
to look like they're thinking," Pixar 's John Lasseter said. Toy with his cartoon client in
Story
had a happy ending, winning both
office success.
146
a special
Academy Award and box-
bit.
Who Framed Roger Rab-
During filming, Hoskins had
his scenes against
imaginary
to
play most of
costars.
Kids and
Animals HARD ACTS TO FOLLOW
Never
work with
kids
and animals," warned W. C.
scene with their behind to the camera."
he was talking about. Movie audiences found or a lovable pig
(inset).
But
if
Hollywood's
costars, children
At
first
it
Fields. "They'll steal
your best
The grumpy comedian knew what
difficult to resist a
critters often
were even bigger scene
noble dog
like Lassie
upstaged their grown-up
human
stealers.
producers were slow to catch on to
this
phenomenon, and
youngsters in film served largely as props. By the 1930s, however, child stars
shone so brightly
in the
movieland firmament that ambitious mothers
were besieging the studios, dragging along a kid next
little
person to make
The one who made cisely
56 corkscrew
it
curls.
it
who was
sure to be the
big.
biggest of
all
had
a
^
dimpled smile and pre-
For four years in a row, beginning in 1935
when
she was seven years old, Shirley Temple (right) outdrew every other
Hollywood buoying the
spirits
star at the
—and
office.
Her sunny on-screen optimism was
infectious,
of a nation mired in the Great Depression. She could sing. She could
dance. She was impossibly cute.
her lines
box
didn't shy
And
she was such a quick study that she always
away from prompting her adult fellow actors
if
remembered
'\i
they forgot theirs.
,'W Two bnbcs who made right,
148
the grade in Tinseltown: Above, a talking pig
had
the
title role in
Babe (1995). At
sipping milk, Shirley Temple was America's image of wholesome goodness during the mid- 1930s.
*
Temple was
a natural. At ago
feet
rolled in
dancing school, where
tt)
making
one-reelers. In 1934,
made no fewer than special miniature
I
M
A
1.
S
*
*Don't ask
me how
she does
it.
a talent scout discovered
Before she was four she had her
her.
A N
two she was keeping time
music on the radio. At three she was en-
with her
KIDS AND
when
first
she turned
eight feature films
YouVe heard
film contract, six,
champions
she
and was awarded a
of chess
at eight
and
violin
virtuosos at lo? Well, she's
Oscar for bringing "more happiness to
millions of children
and millions of grownups than any
Ethel Barrymore at six."
child of her years in the history of the world."
Such was her popularity that Temple's studio, 20th Century-Fox, maintained scripts for her. plots,
but
if
a staff
for
1
of 19 writers to develop
These screenplays typically featured treacly
the films were forgettable.
"Sparkle, Shirley, sparkle!" her
And
Costar Adolphe Menjou on Shirley Temple
5 cents at their
Temple never was.
mother would remind
her.
neighborhood theaters Ameri-
cans could watch that sparkle and momentarily forget their woes.
It
was no wonder that she was photographed
more than anyone
in the world, including
her adoring
fan President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
By the time she reached puberty, Temple had earned three million dollars cy.
12;
and saved the studio from bankrupt-
Only then did she learn
that she
was actually
13,
not
her parents and the studio had shaved a year off her
age to
make
best days
her seem even
more
precocious. By then her
on the screen were behind
her.
In a reversal of the usual filmland scenario.
was succeeded by someone
as
Hollywood's most popular child
who was
ager with the stage Joe Yule
made
Jr.
Temple
actually older than she
name Mickey Rooney
—
a teen-
(right).
into a vaudeville family in Brooklyn,
his stage debut, playing a dwarf,
star
Born
Rooney
when he was
scarcely out of diapers. In 1926, at age six, he appeared in his first
movie, and his freckled face soon became familiar
In the famous malt-shop scene from Love Finds
ey Rooney as
Andy and Judy Garland
Andy Hardy, Mick-
as the girl next door share
one soda with two straws. Between 1937 and 1943 Rooney and in
such films as Boys' Town and Captains Courageous.
He made
the
first
of 15
Andy Hardy
Garland made a
total of nine films together
—five of them musicals.
films in 1937, play-
ing an all-American adolescent with such verve that he
was number one
at the
box
office three years
running. Opposite: Shirley TetJtple
Unlike Temple, Rooney stayed in show business. In
an up-and-down career spanning three-quarters of
a cen-
gles"
Robinson tap a
son said, "God
made
and favorite dance partner
classic
sequence
her just
all
in
The
by herself
Bill
"Bojan-
Little Colonel.
— no
Robin-
series, just one."
151
*
100
YEARS OF HOLLYWOOD
*
he had roles in 189 films. "I've been coming back
rubber
ball
Rooney's frequent costar, Judy Garland (page 151), was also the
off-
tury,
for years,"
he
said. "I couldn't live v^'ithout acting."
spring of vaudevillians. Born Frances
her two older
w^ith
But when she was
unsuccessful
sisters in the 1
3 her
Gumm
in
Minnesota, she sang
"Gumm
first
history to be signed without a screen test or
sound
test.
B.
Mayer of
in the studio's
Twice she was
in
teenage pictures before she found her unforget-
Dorothy
in
The Wizard of Oz
Garland was
MGM's
a tornado into the
work out
person
Kiddie Act."
Rooney
cast opposite
by
Sisters
emotive voice so impressed Louis
MGM that he signed her to a contract — the
table role as
like a
(right).
second choice for the role of the Kansas
girl
flung
Land of Oz. The studio wanted Temple but could not
a deal with 20th Century-Fox.
Garland was 16 when filming
started in 1938.
To mask her maturing
and make her
figure
fit
the role of 11 -
year-old Dorothy, the studio strapped
her into a corset and Later, the effort
der look
bound her
breasts.
of maintaining the slen-
demanded by Hollywood
be-
deviled Garland throughout a brilliant
and troubled adult such
A Natalie
classics as
Star
Is
abuse and,
an unintentional overdose of sleeping Playing Garland's
O'Brien,
who became
Margaret knew
how
young
career that included
Meet Me
Louis and
in St.
Amphetamines she took
Born.
to lose weight
Wood meets Santa
paved the way for alcohol
finally,
death
at
age 47 fi^om
pills.
sister in
Meet
Me
in St.
Louis was Margaret
the major child star of the 1940s. Even at seven,
to turn
on the emotional
spigot.
But
just to
sure he got copious tears during a key scene, director Vincente
make
MinnelH
once took the youngster aside before shooting and told her that her
dog had been
killed
by
a car.
It
worked. O'Brien's roles belonged to the
long Hollywood tradition of childhood innocence exemplified by Shirley
Temple. Nine-year-old Natalie Wood, as Susan Walker
worked the same vein
on 34th
(inset,
1947 and shown practically every Christmas since then,
In
The Wizard of Oz, Dorothy
Man
(Itidy
Garland) ministers
(Jack Haley)
and
above),
Street. In that classic, released
in
(Bert Lahr) as the Tin
152
in Miracle
I
to the
the Scarecrow
little
Susan's
Cowardly Lion
(Ray Bolger) watch.
'^K.
'^-
.*
'
'
ji; ^|:
i
?'*»
i.
\
*
skepticism about the existence of Santa Claus
KIDS AND ANIMALS
*
translornied
is
into fervent belief.
After
World War
screen roles for children began
II,
The new
evolving with the rapidly changing times.
more
screenplays reflected a
stripped of
some of
view of childhood,
realistic
the contrived
endearing charm
if
Land of Oz.
Shirley tap-dancing or Judy in the
of
little
In
The Parent
Trap, 15-year-old Hayley Mills
of British actor John Mills
— showed
—daughter
a shrewder aspect of
who
adolescence, portraying twins (below, right)
trick
their separated parents into reconciling.
In Paper
Moon
who
(1973), a natural con artist
smoked, cursed, and bilked lonely widows out of
money was up with
nine-year-old
Tatum O'Neal
a traveling swindler, played
(left).
by her
their
Teamed
real-life fa-
Helen Keller (Patty Duke) takes a lesson from her teacher, Annie
Ryan O'Neal, she demonstrated
ther,
that
old innocence was gone. Unlike Temple,
bered everyone's hers.
O'Neal had
lines,
more than
who remem-
an Oscar for Best Supporting Actress.
chilling
As
that year
One
was 14-year-old Linda
performance
in
The
Sullivan (Anne Bancroft), in The Miracle croft
were reprising
roles that
Worker Duke and Ban-
had won them acclaim on Broadway.
be bribed to learn
to
But she delivered them so persuasively that she
nominees
the
won
of the other Blair, for
her
Exorcist.
roles available to child actors
changed, so did the
youngsters' treatment in the media. Intimate matters that
once would have been hushed up, such
as Garland's pill
problems, became the everyday stuff of
TV
Perhaps the
first
Patty Duke. At
1
and
child star to endure such exposure
6 her performance in
and mute
was
The Miracle Worker
(1962) as the young Helen Keller (above, right) deaf,
tabloids.
—won the Academy Award
—
blind,
for Best
Sup-
porting Actress. But along with the accolades came reports that she threw temper tantrums
her
life
off
it
home when had
to
proved no she was
less troubled.
six,
was an
on the Her
alcoholic.
Duke
herself
Tatiim O'Neal puffs
drank
away
in
—and
father,
who
left
Her mother
be hospitalized repeatedly for mental
teenager,
set
heavily, suffered
illness.
As
a
from manic-
Paper Moon. The actress admitted
she had already been smoking secretly for three years.
With the help of cinematic twin
sisters Sitsan
sleight of hand,
and Sharon
in the
Hayley Mills portrays
1961 classic The Parent Trap.
155
*
100
YEARS OF HOLLYWOOD
„-^.
1
*
and was, she
depressive illness,
-.,
-
charged, sexually
later
abused by her managers.
47 iM M
The media
The
caulay Culkin.
IJN
tered in the hit
fV
9p ^^
also
went
town on 10-year-old Ma-
to
encoun-
hilarious difficulties he
Home Alone
(below,
left)
paled along-
side the highly publicized feuding that followed in his real-life family. Culkin,
who
$50 million in his
years as a child
first five
earned an estimated star,
retreated
^**:«*' 1
_
from the movies while
t
over custody of
his parents
him and
waged
his six siblings;
a bitter fight
he then mar-
ried at the age of 17.
In kids' roles, too, the kid gloves were ly,
Increasing-
off.
children were being cast in R-rated films that, by law,
they were not even allowed to view in theaters.
1
^^ mm
^
-year-old
a
new range of acting
abilities.
Anna Paquin of New Zealand took
In
the
Oscar for Best Supporting Actress for her performance
drama The Piano
(left).
in
Pa-
The
their roles in to
Tatum
O'Neal, the youngest winner of the Best Supporting Actress award.
Culkm
is
—when confronted with
cunning
1
demanded
of
quin had to develop a Scottish accent and learn to inter-
won Oscars for
was Best Actress; Paquin became, next
Ten-year-old Macaulay
1994,
1
the passionate 19th-century
An«fl Paquiti and Holly Hunter Piano. Hunter
1
these roles
Many
—and
pret the gestures through
communicated. Yet her only previous acting experience
had been the
adept at demonstrating fear burglars in
Home Alone
which her mute screen mother
role of a
Unprecedented
skunk
in a school play.
roles as child prostitutes
were played
(1990).
by Brooke Shields and Jodie
Both began
Foster.
—
professional careers precociously
Shields as a
their
baby
model, Foster as the bare-bottomed three-year-old in a suntan-lotion commercial.
prostitutes
—
Shields in Pretty
Driver (1976)
—
to direct her
appeared
in front
later
Foster in Taxi
went to Ivy
Shields to Princeton, Foster to Yale.
Shields later starred in her
Susan. Foster went
Baby (1978),
Both actresses
(right).
League universities
and
Both played 12-year-old
on
own
to
own TV
series,
Suddenly
win two Best Actress Oscars
films. Appropriately,
when
of the camera as well as behind
her directorial debut, Linle
Man
she it
in
Tate (1991), she played
the mother of a child prodigy.
Jodie Foster, 13, plays a child prostitute in Taxi Driver. In her next films she
156
was a gangster's moll and a
nnirderer.
•^*"1
4
'•^'•i
^?
ll:^*
>'fcj
«*
*
10
Yl-ARS OF I-IOLLYWOOD
*
A Menagerie of
joined the gang of mischief-loving kids in 1927.
terrier, first
He had
a distinctive ring
around
his right eye that
had been
applied with liquid dye for another movie and would not
Matinee Idols
come
off.
Over the next decade,
ent terriers played Pete,
Hollywood's
animal superstar was a
first
German shepherd
(opposite, top), saved
bombed-out building
War
I.
in
him Rin Tin Tin
after a character in a
pilot,
in the silent
named
popular French story to his
of his descendants would follow
The Adventures of Rin Tin
and Tin.
more than
street
him
a successor appeared in TV's
But none could top the orig-
from Jean Harlow and received
a million pieces of fan mail annually.
Pete the
Pup
of
ring
the series of short
comedies produced between 1922
and 1944.
Pete, a
gende
in the
same
film.
"We
around whichever eye would show
ducer Hal Roach
said.
young comrades, each trick:
As
if
to say
on
all
the circle shifted back and forth between
"Oh
just painted the it
off the best," pro-
Whenever trouble loomed Pete
would perform
no, not again!" he
for his
his primar)'
would
The best-known animal performer of all, was
actually a female impersonator.
Come Home had
female was cast in the
pit bull
role.
lie
down,
first
to break the
and a pedigreed
critical scene,
owner had hired
re-
the director
trainer
Weatherwax have him
when opportunity knocked,
He swam
Rudd
dog of chasing motorcycles and
furniture, then let
of payment. But through.
script for Lassie
her stand-in. Pal, a male with a somewhat ques-
Weatherwax chewing up
Lassie (right),
But when the starring canine
fijsed to go near the water in a
summoned
The
called for a female collie,
tionable resume. Pal's
(below) was the featured canine
Our Gang,
of them wore the trademark
put his paws over his head, and close his eyes.
inal. At the height of his nine-year career, Rinty lived in a
mansion across the
first,
—sometimes
eyes
"Rinty" single-pawedly brought Warner Bros, back from
into the character in films,
differ-
dogs but the
a
adventure film Wfiere the North Begins
Two
dozen
from
(1923). His 21 subsequent movies were so popular that
near bankruptcy.
as a
eye-encircling paint. Audiences scarcely noticed that
and taught him hundreds of tricks. Audiences flocked debut
all
many
refiagee
France during World
His rescuer, Lee Duncan, an American
and
as
the swollen stream.
Pal
in lieu
came
KIDS AND ANIMALS
*
liikiiii^
he
(I
somnl
tc>l in
ready for the
is
sileitt-screett stars
'We
192^.), liiii
can't
Tin Tin sliows
Matty of his fellow
talkies.
could
*
ttoi tiinkc
the switch.
even house-
break him. Do you think
you can
train
him?"
owner of Pal (Lassie) Rudd Weatherwax First
The
origiital Lassie
to
was paid more for
Come Home
ill
the 1943 classic Lassie
1 1
-year-old costar, Elizabeth Taylor.
his
work
than his
159
Peggy ihc chimp drapes an arm around Ronald 'i-r
costar in
Bedtime
for Bonzo.
'0^^^-^
*
emerged
KIDS AND ANIMALS
tioni the water, and, instead of shaking himself as
any normal, red-blooded hausted on cue.
down
would, slumped
ex-
got the role and shared the screen with
le
I
do\j,
two other promising newcomers
— Roddy McDowall and
Elizabeth Taylor. Pal starred in seven Lassie films. Later, five
generations of his descendants
—
male
all
—played
Lassie in
movies or on TV.
Other animal Bedtime
roles. In
Peggy
stars
have
for Boiizo
(
made 1951
),
mark
their
chimpanzee named
a
became the only animal ever
(left)
comic
in
to share top billing
with a future president. Ronald Reagan played a psychologist
who
raises a
chimp
environment rather
to prove that
than genes shapes behavior. Reagan found Peggy "adorable to
work with" but unpredictable: She once grabbed
Francis the Talking
Mule
(rigJit,
advises fellow sailors
in Francis in the
Navy
costars in seven
came from
films during the 1950s. His voice
the veteran
the critters so well he sometimes ignored the script
libbed Francis's dialogue. the trainer manipulated
the muscles
—
on the
The mule's
lips
and ad-
"What trick is there to Any fool can do it."
talking?
Francis the Talking Mule,
in
Francis Joins the
them with thread or by
pressing
side of the head. After her first film,
in reality a female
named Molly
—
let
stardom go
She put on the feedbag with such gusto that
for her next
movie she had
The
title
character of Babe cuddles
up with Fanner Hoggett, played by
James Cromwell.
the Hollywood
almost
hills
all
to lose
and sweating
Molly could climb
cabinet.
stairs,
of the other necessary
200 pounds by jogging
in a
The
to
custom-made steam
wink on tricks.
standards; she stubbornly refused to
had
sit
cue,
and execute
But she had her
down, and
that
be performed by a stand-in.
title
role in
Babe (1995) belonged
than 48 different white Yorkshire
grow so
pigs.
to
no fewer
Because York-
quickly, four-week-old shoats
were
trained in groups of six so they could begin filming
about late
1
2
weeks
later.
Each wore a toupee to simu-
the tuft of dark hair
(right).
Wacs (1954)
moved because
to her head.
shires
(1955).
mule skinner who knew
character actor Chill Wills, an old
feat
Donald
top) dispensed advice
Donald O'Connor and other human
Francis
Mule {Molly)
O'Connor and Martha Hyer
and nearly strangled him.
necktie
to
his
Francis the Talking
on Babe's forehead
Animatronic clones and computer
graphics created facial expressions and the
*
— *
100
YEARS OF
HOLLYWOOD
*
appearance of speech for Babe and the 800 other animals cast in this
charming
A
12-year-old boy helps the whale gain his freedom
(right). In real life,
fable.
it
turned out, after the film was shot
films tended to reflect envi-
Keiko was returned to a seaquarium
ronmental concerns. Fly Away
Home
he lived in a cramped,
experiences of Canadian artist
Bill
During the 1990s, animal
domesticated flock of geese
how to
(1996) grew out of the
Lishman,
who
taught a
migrate by leading them
south to winter quarters in an ultralight plane. In the film,
Anna
Paquin,
156), finds
Academy Award winner
grate, they don't
the
way
know where
in a little
When
to go, but
goose-shaped
Life imitated art in the saga star
for
The Piano (page
an abandoned nest of goose eggs and becomes
surrogate mother to the goslings.
it is
time to mi-
Anna shows them
of Keiko the
killer
whale
amusement park with an unscrupulous own-
Piloting a goose-shaped ultralight aircraft,
Anna Paquin
a severe skin disease. oft"
a
in
filthy pool, lost
An
Mexico
weight,
City,
where
and developed
expose in Life magazine touched
worldwide campaign to rescue Keiko. Millions of dol-
lars in
contributions poured
Foundation was formed
in,
and the Free Willy-Keiko
to return the
whale to the North
Atlantic near Iceland,
where he had been captured
Keiko was
1996 to a rehabilitation
airlifted in
in 1979.
facility in
Ore-
gon, where he recovered, gained weight, and learned to hunt.
Two
aircraft (below).
of Free Willy (1993). In the film, Keiko plays Willy, a
captive in an
162
er.
years later he was flown to Iceland to
temporary enabled
home
him
in a
huge
floating pen.
to acclimate to the ocean
underwent preparation
move
into a
Nylon mesh
around him
as
new
sides
he
for release into his native waters.
leads a flock of Canada geese on their first migration south in Fly .Away
Home.
In Free Willy, a
young friend
leap to freedom. This scene
robot stand-in for the
star,
in-ges the
whale
to
was filmed using a Keiko.
The
Lights in
Hollywood's Sky CELEBRATING THE STARS
IP I
he headline
*
ported a
in the
November
new phenomenon
21, 1913, issue of the
—an outrageous one,
the day: "Picture Actors Are Asking for
Names on
showbiz newspaper Variety
in the
re-
minds of the studio bosses of
the Screen." Farsighted in
many
ways, the
pioneer movie moguls nonetheless did not yet perceive that their business would ride to riches primarily on star power.
Although those early actors had not asked
them
:
it
began
—did not stop
the camera, they were a
^ '(H
—once
well
Tfi 1
to
known
watch
their
about their
an apt
as their faces,
work but and
lives
celestial
new kind
at
much, the process of celebrating
mere recognition. Smiling or sneering
—
Americans were willing
and
frailties
and
them
follies.
indeed, eager at play
The
and
ment, they were
With
their
the serious actors
and equally out of
stars
pay not only
and hear
to read
now
called stars,
ehisive
reach.
of change
—
And in
like
became
literally suf-
as familiar as
the heavens in perpetual
one film beggar,
in
move-
another prince.
reaped almost unimaginable wealth, adulation, and, for some of
among them,
The very essence of that
to
metaphor, for as they stood before the camera they were
in a constant process
fame the
—
actors were
fused with light and seemed to sparkle. Hollywood's galaxy the night sky
a token of recognition almost equally valued
something called star
qiuihty, 26-year-oid
—an Oscar
(inset).
Ehzaheth Taylor exudes a smol-
dering sexuality as Maggie in the 1958 film version of Tennessee Williams's Cat on a Hot Tin Roof
164
into
of popular hero. After their names became as
also to see pictures of
loves
for
•
YEARS
10
()
I-
O
II
I,
I
Y VV
()
(.)
D
*
lywood Reporter. Asked
The Making of a Movie Star
replied simply,
"I'll
if
she'd like to be in pictures, she
have to ask
my
The fortunate few who survived screen test
/
^
%
the beginning,
stardom exerted
tlie
—were taken
possibility of film
a gravitational pull
on American
.A. youth. Although some of the biggest Holly-
— James Stewart and Katharine Hepburn, thousands of example— came from the
wood names for
in
the promise of a
life
dreamed of being one story
dream
like
alive.
in the
"discovered."
She was spotted
Coke
it
A
sunboniwt
set
Few
in
Billy
at 15,
hand by the strong arm of the
They
ever were, but just
cutting school, sipping
Wilkerson, publisher of the Hol-
amid her auburn
curls, Julia
girl
might come off the assembly
ress in a skintight
over, into images.
and
tu-
glamorous tempt-
line a
gown.
Thus reconfigured, new
stars
went into the studio
ventory and were protected from mishap with great
"You
can't
days," said
imagine
and guarded, the
care.
the studios cosseted us in those
"They had
fans
would
to. If
we
weren't looked after
tear us to pieces."
fans were ravenous indeed,
and
satiable curiosity, the publicity function
(right),
in-
Robert Taylor, born Spangler Arlington Brugh
in Filley, Nebraska.
The
how
Jean Turner 16, stands before the camera for her 1937 screen
The Postman Always Rings Twice
studio.
tored in makeup, voice, and comportment, an Iowa farm
Schwab's Drugstore, as legend
seductive but cold-blooded wife in 1946'}
166
irresistible.
Lana Turner's was enough to keep the
—although not would have — by a
movies was
quarterbacks,
casting couch
Restyled, renamed, buffed to dental perfection,
stage, for
hometown prom queens and handsome
the compulsory
— and sometimes the notorious
There they were made, and made
A Imost from
mother."
Lana Turner had made
test (left).
By
to gratify their in-
expanded beyond
the time she starred
cts
the
the real-life journey from virgin to vixen.
*
The Hollywood publicity madiinc would manage wistful vulnerability,
Marilyn Monroe seems
to
crank out only one prize graduate from
to project the
most affecting
—and genuine—
this
1111
1949
1
class
U,
11
1
S
of starlets
IN
II
()
1,
1.
—but what
Y VV
()
O
1)
•
S
SKY
a one: With her
expression.
167
*
100
YEARS OF HOLLYWOOD
*
the control of the studios into a journaHstic genre of
No one
own.
press than the
—
(inset),
and Louella Parsons. Hopper and
rival scoopsters,
gargoyles of gossip
Tinseltown celebrities in their
American
the celebrity
newspaper columnists: Walter Winchell,
Hedda Hopper Parsons
power of
better represented the
its
own
—became
Winchell was an
right;
institution.
Because Parsons and Hopper together had a daily readership of 75 million people
population in the 1940s favorable
an
mention by
—more than
half the U.S.
—they had tremendous power. A
either
actor's career; a slight
was an incalculable boost
could end
it.
to
Hopper candidly
referred to her Beverly Hills
man-
sion as "the house that fear built."
Winchell wielded vast influence
entertainment
political as well as circles.
Once, accosted by an angry
film fan, he cried,
me
in
"You
can't talk to
God!"
that way! I'm
After Life magazine was
launched
seem
in 1936,
that the
it
soon came to
magazine and Holly-
wood were made
for each other
Hedda Hopper
Many would-be by
publicity shots taken
help
them win
Life's staff
that all-important
stars
found that
photographers could
first
part.
And many
of
the magazine's most popular covers (right) featured the screen's
best-known
faces.
The end of World War
II
brought changes to Holly-
wood. The studio system began a period of decline from
would never
which
it
scene,
many
recover.
New
came on
trained by top acting coaches in
dependent, schooled in theory, and tinsel
actors
less
the
New York.
In-
obsessed with the
than their predecessors, stars such as Marlon Brando,
James Dean, Paul
Newman, Dustin Hoffman, and Joanne
Woodward eschewed publicity.
Gone were
press agents.
the usual contrivances of mainstream the fantasies concocted by studio
The new breed
insulated themselves with en-
tourages of assistants, pressed for creative control of their
i68
Whether featuring a supcnio\'a or an a fond place for the weel
movie
iiigeiiiie,
star portrait.
magazine devoted 290 covers
Life
During to
its
ahvayi found
36 years as a
Hollywood
royalty.
This controversially racy 1943 publicity Russell reclining in a haystack
made
still
of Jane
.
sief
:^^'
her a sensation
before her first picture, The Outlaw, was released.
^Mk
•
170
10
YEARS OF HOLLYWOOD
*
— *
projects,
I
II
I,
I
I
But Americans
The
glasses.
came,
if
IN
r S
II
II
O
I
I.
Y VV
under the direction
wanted
still
to see
O D
()
and tivqucnlly produced and directed
instead ol acting
liliiis
(i
their
SKY
S
*
own
of others.
behind the dark
public's interest in the stars' private lives be-
anything, a greater obsession than ever. And, in
the relatively forthright spirit of the times,
were surprisingly candid
many
stars
in their selfrihcT Uolocau*ti
revelations. For a long time the job
p^^|a^
of conveying the stories to the public
|^»"tw?«'
remained the province of the magazines. Life
ended
1972, but
two years
rived to
in
later People ar-
the gap.
fill
Later,
weekly run
its
magazines
like
Vanity Fair
and Entertainment Weekly added impetus to the trend, elevating celebrity to a
With
fetish.
a seemingly inexhaustible
supply of uninhibited and insanely rich young stars eager to tell
—and show—
all,
the magazines published fresh
ten audacious interviews
tographers
and cutting-edge
who were famous
in their
own
pictures right.
and
of-
by pho-
Coverage
of film stars began to be given equal
weight with
articles
about world leaders,
captains of industry,
and
aristocrats.
With seemingly no end the public's craving for the
in sight to
lowdown on
the stars, television got into the act
with nightly entertainment-news pro-
grams, followed soon after by countless sites
on the World Wide Web.
In-
ternet users could get the purported
inside
dope on
their favorite stars
everything from
latest love affair to
choice of shampoo.
Whether they were the studio-controlled glamour pusses
of Hollywood's golden age or the independent- minded
actors of a latter day, the stars' appeal ost engulfed in
a
With nd John the
Travolta (foreg
,
^
^
,
iw various
stars,
a trade-offfor fame.
their wealth, their
pure visual impact, and their fame,
reactions at
Cannes fihn festival. Constant intrusion by the media was a fact
of life for the
remained the same.
Kobiti Wright Penn,
se
movie
stars
gave their fans vicarious access to dreams, a
high-flying slice of
life
to titillate an
earthbound audience.
171
*
10
YEARS OF HOLLYWOOD
*
cc Laurence Olivier Hamlet, 1948
More
Stars
Than
in the Heavens" the days
InMGM
when each
studio had
its
roster of actors
under contract,
used the headline above as a slogan. Those days are long
gone, but the stars
still
and the following pages.
shine.
Some of the
best
known adorn
these
-;
' ,
wj!
W n Queen, 1951
»*
r
%
m
'^^!l^^
*
--f
-^o
175
Robert Redford and Paul
Newman
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance
Kid,
1969
N
*
Sidney 7b
Sir,
I
1
1
I
I
I
(
,
I
I
I
S
IN
1
1
()
I,
I.
Y
WOO
U
S
SKY
*
Poitier
With Love, 1967 Al Pacino
The Godfather Part
II,
1974
Dustin Hoffman and
Tom
Cruise
Rain Man, 1988
Clint
Eastwood
The Outlaw losey Wales,
1976
I
177
:
;
1
ilk.
i 1
w
*
100
YEARS OF HOLLYWOOD
Bette Davis All
About
Eve,
1950
^«n»r-
Mae West She Done Him Wrong, 1933
Joan Crawford
Sudden
Fear,
1952
Audrey Hepburn Breakfast at Tiffany's, 1961
*
100
YEARS OF HOLLYWOOD
*
1^"^-
r
--V W
c i.l^)f^'"<
i
WeryiStreep r/ie
French Lieutenant's
Woman, 1981
r^^ tJP'
*
I
II
1
I,
I
CUTS
IN
II
()
I,
I.
V
W
() () I)
ulia
S
SKY
*
Roberts
Pretty
Woman, 1990
Susan Sarandon and Geena Davis Thelma & Louise, 1991
185
*
100
YEARS OF HOLLYWOOD
Michelle Pfelffer
Dangerous
Liaisons,
1988
————
——
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The
editors wish to
thank the following ituliviiiimb and institutions for their vaiiiable
assistance in the preparation of this vohime: Calif.;
Lynden, Wash.; Jeanne Cole, Lucasfilm, Nicasio,
Tom
Calif.;
Museum
Mary
Corliss,
Marlene Eastman, Warner
Bros.,
Burbank,
Calif.;
Mo.; Christopher Holm, Lucasfilm, Nicasio,
of
Richard Allen,
Conroy, Movie
Modern
New
Art,
York;
Bruce Hershenson, West Plains,
Mary
Calif.;
and
Ison
Staff,
Library of
PICTURE CREDITS
Warner
da,
Bros. Animation, Burbank, Calif.;
Washington, D.C.; Ellen Pasternak, Lucas
Warner
Bros.,
Digital,
San Rafael,
Burbank,
Calif.;
Archive, West Plains,
Mo.
book appear below. Credits from
Tile sources for the illustrations in this
left to
right are
New
York (Kobal Collection); Movie
New
Harrison, Nebr.; Kobal Collection; Photofest,
Still
Archives,
Movie
York; Kobal Collection;
New
Archives, Harrison, Nebr; courtesy Globe Photos,
Still
York
—CORBIS/
Photofest,
New
York. 6-9: Kobal Collection. 10: Photofest,
New
partment of the
11-18: Kobal
Archives, Hol-
Park Service, Edison National Historic
Interior, National
Site. 24:
Modern Art (MOMA) Film Stills Archive, New York. 25: Brown BrothSterling, Pa.— MOMA Film Stills Archive, New York. 26: MOMA Film Stills
ers,
of
—
New York
Archive,
Department of the
U.S.
National Historic Site
(2). 27:
The
Academy of Motion
Archives
—
MOMA
Calif. 30:
Film
Picture Arts
Stills
and
Archive,
Movie
New
Still
Still
Ar-
— Kobal Collection Wash. — courtesy Eddie
Hollywood,
Seattle,
Calif.;
(3). 49:
photograph
THE RAIN ©
SINGIN' IN
Corp.
Kobal Collection. 53: Paramount, courtesy Kobal Collection
©
New
York. 54, 55: Studio
rights reserved.
AND
New York.
58:
Bros., courtesy
E.state
Picture Arts
Still
—
and
Sciences, Beverly Hills, Calif 56, 57:
Life
Magazine. 59: Bison Archives Still
Archives, Harrison, Nebr.
courtesy Globe Photos,
Archives, Harrison, Nebr. 63:
1962
Columbia
Kobal Collection
©
70:
Columbia
— MOMA Film Artists,
Archives, Harrison, Nebr. 69:
New York.
Warner
Movie
Still
New York.
62:
Archives, Harrison, Nebr.
Pictures Industries, Inc. All rights re-
New York. 65: RKO, courNew York MGM, courtesy
Pictures. 64: Culver Pictures,
Kobal Collection. 66: United
©,
HE WHO
of Garry Winogrand, courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco. 61:
served. Courtesy
Still
Archives;
1920 Turner Entertainment Co. All
Archives, Harrison, Nebr.;
Kobal Collection. 60: Movie
LAWRENCE OF ARABIA tesy
Still
W. Eugene Smith,
Universal, courtesy Kobal Collection
Movie
— Bison
Navarro, John Gilbert, and Roy
1924 Turner Entertainment Co. All rights reserved. Photo cour-
Academy of Motion
Photofest,
MR. HYDE ©
Photo courtesy Movie
GETS SLAPPED ©
Warner
Ramon
Collection.
Stills
Archive,
—
courtesy Kobal Collection. 67, 68: Movie
The
Joel Finler Collection,
Bros., courtesy
London
—Susan Gray
Kobal Collection. 71: Hershenson-Allen
Still
CABARET ©
1972
—photography by Harry Benson.
Plains,
Mo.
Movie
(5);
89:
(5)
(4)
—
Warner
103:
Movie
Nebr.
A Time Warner Company 93:
Pictures Corp.
ABC
and Allied
Movie
New York.
Estate. 101: Photofest,
—Warner courtesy Kobal —© Roland Neveu/Liaison Agency,
Collection.
Bros.,
Archives, Harrison, Nebr. 105: lerry Ohlinger's
Still
106: Louis
Goldman.
107:
Movie
— Miramax, courtesy Kobal Collection— United
Still
and
Artists, courtesy
All rights reserved.
Austin— GONE
at
Grant, Life Magazine
© Time
Biblioth^que du Film, Paris
All rights reserved. 112,
A Time Warner
Photo courtesy the Academy of Motion Picture Arts
THE WIZARD OF OZ © All rights reserved.
Ransom Humani-
1959 Turner Entertainment Co.
Sciences, Beverly Hills, Calif., except right center
Company.
Kobal Col-
WITH THE WIND
A Time Warner Company.
NORTH BY NORTHWEST ©
114, 115:
Movie
Archives, Harrison,
Gregory Heisler/CORBIS Outline. 110, 111: Courtesy Always Su-
1939 Turner Entertainment Co.
Company.
Plains,
102:
Kobal Collection
Research Center, University of Texas
113:
West
West
100: Hershenson-Allen Archive,
perior Books, Marietta, Ga.; David O. Selznick Collection, Harry
©
Artists
94, 95: Hershenson-Allen Archive,
© Halsman
Halsman
New York.
lection. 108, 109:
ties
Still
Pictures, cour-
Archives, Harrison, Nebr. (4). 98: Photofest,
Still
New York.
Photofest,
Bros., courtesy
104:
90:
Archives, Harrison, Nebr. 99: Hershenson-Allen Archive, West
Still
Philippe
Mo.
Mo.
Archives, Harrison, Nebr. (2). 96, 97: Hershenson-Allen
Still
Archive, West Plains, Mo.;
ABC
Still
Columbia
Archives,
New York.
Everett Collection,
Michael Abramson/Onyx, Los Angeles
Pome-
— Movie —Movie
courtesy Kobal Collection. 92: Movie
Stills
1926 Turner Entertainment Co. All rights reserved. Photo courtesy Kobal
Collection— DR. JEYKLL
tesy the
of
Still
—
Inc.,
Film
at Your Feet.
Erwitt/Magnum Photos,
New York
1952 Turner Entertamment Co.
MGM
All rights reserved. 91:
MOMA
Brandt's Saturday Matinee, North
Ben Martin from Hollywood
Archives, Harrison, Nebr. 83:
Elliott
Plains,
—
Dick Busher, courtesy 5th
Archives, Harri-
Plains,
Mo.
Famous Players/Paramount, courtesy Kobal
granate Press, Ltd. 50, 51:
©
(Q
©
Still
Plains,
J.
Still
— 20th Century Fox Stu-
— Movie Harrison, Nebr. — Hershenson-Allen Archive, West MGM, courtesy Kobal Collection — Hershenson-Allen Archive, West
Mo.
Sciences,
Movie (3)
New York
(2);
and
Still
1954
Pictures, courtesy Kobal Collection
Courtesy Globe Photos,
York
Picture Arts
©
Mo.
Susan Gray ©,
85:
New
Archives, Harrison,
Pictures,
Archive, West
Archives, Harrison, Nebr. 87: Paramount, courtesy Kobal Collection. 88:
New York; Movie
38: Culver Pictures,
40: Kobal Collection. 41:
— courtesy the Academy of Motion
courtesy Kobal Collection
Still
Archives, Harrison, Nebr. 86: United Artists, courtesy Kobal Collection
tesy Kobal Collection;
Archives.
Archives, Harrison, Nebr. 44, 45: Culver Pictures,
Avenue Theatre,
New York.
Archives, Harrison,
Archives. 37:
—
D'Arcy
Archives, Harrison, Nebr. 80:
Still
York. 84: Photofest,
Material Store,
Photofest,
— Hershenson-Allen
Kobal Collection. 81, 82: Movie
New York.
52:
Movie
Archives, Harrison, Nebr. (2);
Still
New York; Movie Still Archives, Harrison, Nebr. W. Sandison Collection, Whatcom Museum of History and Art, Bellingham, Wash.; MOMA Film Stills Archive, New York. 46, 47: MOMA Film Stills Archive, New York; Brown Brothers, Sterhng, Pa. 48: MGM, Movie
Archives, Harrison, Nebr.
Still
George Eastman House.
New York.
dios, courtesy
Beverly Hills, Calif. 42: Hershenson-Allen Archive, West Plains, Mo.; Bison Archives. 43:
Still
— Movie
Brothers, Sterling, Pa.
Joel Finler
Archive,
Stills
Movie
Archives, Harrison, Nebr. 72, 73:
Still
Mo.— BLOOD ALLEY © 1955 Batjac Productions, Inc. 78, 79: BONNIE AND CLYDE © 1967 Warner Bros.-Seven Arts and Tatira-Hiller Productions. All
Archives, Harrison, Nebr.
Still
New York
Archive,
Archives, Holly\vood, Calif.
Plains,
Sciences, Beverly Hills,
Still
MOMA Film
Calif.; Judith Singer,
Photofest,
and
— The Granger Collection, New York; Movie Archives, Harrison, Nebr. — Culver
Nebr. 39: Movie
—courtesy
— Bison Warner Bros./Archive Photos, New York —The CORBIS/Bettmann — Bison Movie
chives, Harrison, Nebr.; courtesy
York
—Movie —
Picture Arts
Collection, London. 36:
New
New York
Archive,
Stills
Sciences, Beverly Hills, Calif. (2). 29: Bison
New York
Brown
Nebr. 31, 32: Bison Archives. 33: 34: Bison Archives. 35:
London; David Francis
loel Finler Collection,
Academy of Motion
courtesy the
National Park Service, Edison
Interior,
MOMA Film
Richard Koszarski Collection. 28: the
188
New York.
Marc Wanamaker/Bison
York. 20, 21:
(Bison Archives); The JoeJ Finler Collection, London. 22, 23: U.S. De-
Calif.
Museum
San Rafael,
son, Nebr.; Hershenson-Allen Archive, West Plains,
Collection. 19: Photofest,
lywood,
Movie
rights reserved;
Bettmann. 3:
Digital,
Paul C. Spehr, Fairfield, Pa.; Suzy Starke, Lucas
New York; Movie Still Archives, Harrison, Nebr. (2). 74: Rex Hardy Jr., Life Magazine © Time Inc. 75: RKO, courtesy Kobal Collection Columbia Pictures, Inc., courtesy Kobal Collection. 76: Photofest, New York. 77:
Cover: The Kobal Collection,
Masu-
—
bottom by dashes.
to
Rochester, N.Y.; Diane
Madeline Matz, Library of Congress,
Marc Wanamaker, Bison
Calif.;
Archives, Harrison, Nebr.
separated by semicolons, from top
of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Beverly
Madhu, George Eastman House,
Hills, Calif.; Janice
Still
Academy
Krueger,
Calif.; Kristine
Margaret Adamic, Disney Publishing Group, Burbank,
Archives, Harri.son, Nebr.;
Congress, Washington, D.C.; Michael Key, Make-up Artist Magazine, Sunland,
©
Michael Webb, Los Angeles.
1939 Turner Entertainment Co.
Photo
p.
Inc. 117:
1
A Time Warner
15 courtesy Kobal Collection. 116: Allan
Sketch
©
Estate of Edith Head, courtesy
— Paramount, courtesy Kobal
Collection. 118: Sketch
by Cecil Beaton, by courtesy of the National Portrait Gallery, London/photo from BFl, London; 119:
© ©
MY
George Zeno,
FAIR
New
LADY © CBS
Broadcasting
Inc.,
courtesy Kobal Collection.
York; design and drawing by Theadora
1999 Christopher Casler;
Van Runkle, photo
INDIANA lONES AND THE TEMPLE OF
1984 by Paramount Pictures and
®
Lucasfilm Ltd.
& TM. All
Used under authorization. Courtesy Paramount Pictures and Lucasfilm Sketch
©
Estate of William Travilla,
AND CLYDE © rights reserved.
lONES
©
photo
1999 Christopher Casler;
Still
AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM ©
Dick Smith, Branford, Conn.
—
Ltd.
BONNIE
1967 Warner Bros.-Seven Arts and Tatira-Hiller Productions. All
Photo courtesy Movie
Archives, Harrison, Nebr.;
Lucasfilm Ltd.
Used under authorization. Courtesy Lucasfilm
York
DOOM
rights reserved.
(3). 122:
courtesy Globe Photos,
& TM. All
INDIANA rights reserved.
Ltd. 120, 121: Photofest,
New York; New
Express Newspapers/ Archive Photos,
New York;
Universal, courtesy Kobal Collection (3).
Bob Romero
123: Photos by
Make-up
reprinted from
Magazine. 124, 125:
Artist
Photos by David iamcs for the motion picture Saving Private Ryan
Works, reprinted with permission of Dream Works
BOYZ
THM HOOD
N'
served. (A)urtesy
129: Louis
Nebr.
1991
Columbia
(ioldman
«
Columbia
Warner Entertainment (Aimpany,
HERO
1993
1..P.
Columbia Pictures
(<)
«
Archives, Harri.son, Nebr.
Still
Still
A
1998 Warner Bros.
Archives, Harrison,
division of lime
Industries, Inc. All rights reserved. Courtesy
lumbia Pictures; 20th Century Fox Studios courtesy Lucas Digital
Used under authorization. 136:
tesy Lucas Digital Ltd. 137:
Still
from Terniinalor
Canal Plus Distribution, courtesy Lucas Digital Robert Patrick;
stills
from Terminator
&
ludgnient
2:
Ltd.,
Co-
& TM.
Century Fox Studios, cour-
2()th
Day appears
courtesy
LLC. Used with permission of
hutgment Day appear courtesy Canal Plus
2:
©
Distribution, courtesy Lucas Digital Ltd., LLC. (2). 138, 139: Copyright
1999 by
Universal C'ity Studios, Inc. Courtesy Univer.sal Studios Publishing Rights. All rights
Photo courtesy Lucas
reserved.
Lucas Digital Ltd. 142:
photo courtesy Kobal Collection Inc.
—© Disney
PORKY all
PIG
in
—® Disney
©
Looney Tunes
Enterprises, Inc.;
Bros.
©
Hope
Freleng Shan.
u.sed
1
990 Warner Bros.
—
BUGS BUNNY BUGS BUNNY Model
—
Bergman and
courtesy Sybil Freleng
SYLVESTER & TWEETY "HE DID
TM & ©
(2). 144:
with permission of
Archives, Harrison, Nebr.
Still
1992 Warner Bros. All rights reserved
Friz Freleng
York
—courtesy Blanc Communications.
photo of Mel Blanc with carrot
1992 Warner Bros. All rights reserved. 145:
Sheet
Disney Enterprises,
LOONEY TUNES, characters, names, and of Warner Bros. © 1999; BUGS BUNNY Model
Photo courtesy Movie
©
Model Sheet
in
©
New
Bull's Eye,
1992 Warner Bros. All rights reserved
Bugs Bunny's likeness
Warner
Inc. 143:
Enterprises, Inc., photos courtesy Photofest,
related indicia are trademarks
Sheet
New Line Cinema, courtesy © Disney Enterprises, Inc.,
Digital Ltd. 140, 141:
Disney Enterprises,
(t)
IT" Limited Edition Cel by
Inc. All rights reserved;
courtesy Sybil Fre-
BUNNY & YOSEMITE SAM "HIGH DIVING HARE" Limited Edition Cel by Friz Freleng © 1993 Warner Bros. Inc. All rights reserved (3); BUGS BUNNY Model Sheet © 1992 Warner Bros. All rights reserved. 146, 147: © Disney Enterprises, Inc.; © Disney Enterprises, Inc. and Amblin leng
Bergman and Hope Freleng Shan. BUGS
Entertainment, Inc. 148, 149: Hershenson- Allen Archive, West Plains, Mo.; Photofest,
New
York. 150-151:
Movie
Archives, Harrison, Nebr.;
Still
Archives, Harrison, Nebr. 152, 153:
THE WIZARD OF OZ ©
A Time Warner Company.
All rights reserved.
Still
1939 Turner Entertainment Co.
Photo courtesy Movie
Harrison, Nebr. 154: Steve Schapiro/Black Star,
Movie
New York.
155:
Still
Movie
Archives,
Still
—© Disney
Archives,
BIBLIOGRAPHY
New
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Internet
INDEX
Berkeley, Busby, 90, 92
Cruise,
Biograph film company, 24, 25, 31, 42
Cukor, George, 65, 67
Bison Company, 36
Culkin, Macaulay, 156
Numerals
in italics indicate
an
illustration
of the subject mentioned.
Bitzer, Billy, Blair,
Allen,
Woody
61, 68,
1
10;
quoted, 69
Linda, 129, 155
Altman, Robert, 61,96 Anderson, David LeRoy,
Bogart,
Tom,
Available: http://imdb.com
103, 177; quoted, 104
August 24, 1999.
Edison,
Thomas
Alva, 23-25, 28, 30;
quoted, 23
Curtis, Tony, 66, 69
25
Blanc, Mel, 144
Humphrey,
6, 59, 80, 81,
173
Curtiz, Michael, 79; quoted, 59
Fairbanks, Douglas, 44, 45, 50
D
Farrow, Mia, 185 Fellini, Federico, 106,
Bolger, Ray, ;52-;53
Dahl, Arlene, quoted,
1
17
Fields,
Borgnine, Ernest, 72, 94
Daniels, Bebe, 53
Fleming, Victor, 63
Bow, Clara,
D'Arcy, Roy, 54
Foley, Jack, 127
Arbuckle, Roscoe (Fatty), 38
Boyle, Robert, quoted, 113
Davis, Bette, 180
Fonda, Henry, 172
Arzner, Dorothy, 6
Brando, Marlon, 83, 85, 86, 87,
1
22
Ayres, Agnes, 50-51
52
50,
96, 168,
175
Browning, Tod, 98
B
Davis, Geena, 185
Ford, Harrison, 179
Day, Doris, 182
Ford, John, 59-60, 70, 71
Dean, James, 168, 175
Fosse, Bob, 92, 93; quoted, 93
DeMille, Cecil
Foster, Jodie, 61, 156, ;57, 185
B., 29, 30, 53, 62, 63;
quoted, 56, 118
Bacall, Lauren,
7
Cagney, James,
19, 76,
77-79
107
W. C, quoted, 148
Andrews, Dana, 80
Astaire, Fred, 90, 128, 129
De
Fox,
Niro, Robert, 86, 179
Waiiam, 30-31, 48
Freed, Arthur, 90, 92
Baker, Rick, 122; quoted, 123
Cameron, James, 136-138
Dietrich, Marlene, 14
Freleng, Friz, 144; quoted, 145
Bancroft, Anne, 155
Campion,
Dippe, Mark, quoted, 136, 138
Friedkin, William, S5-86; quoted,
Bara, Theda, 30
Capra, Frank, 59, 65, 74, 75; quoted,
Barrymore, John, Basinger,
10, 35,
54
Kim, 186
Bassett, Angela,
Beatty,
Warren, 79
Benigni, Roberto, 107
Berenger,
Jane, 61
60
Tom, 103
Donen, Stanley
/ 1
90,
Douglas, Kirk, 175
Chaney, Lon, 54-55, 98
Duke.
Chaplin, Charlie, 33, 38, A\, 44-45
Dullea, Keir, 105
Coogan,
Dunaway,
Jackie, 9,
45 71
,
Bergman, Ingmar, 107
Crawford, Joan,
Bergman, Ingrid,59,
Crosby, Bing,
1
8,
72
180
Patty,
91,92
;55-156
Faye, 78-79,
96,
1
10
86
G Gable, Clark,
13, 63,
65
Garbo, Greta, 16 Garland, ludy,
119,186
Duvall, Robert, 96
72
Coppola, Francis Ford, 61, 86,
100, 182
142, 143; quoted,
Carrey, Jim, 140-141
Cooper, Gary,
Berg, Jon, 135
Disney Walt, 142
Capshaw, Kate,
186
Beaton, Cecil, 118
190
Movie Database.
Powers, Tom. Special Effects in the Movies. San Diego, Calif: Lucent, 1989.
E Eastwood, Clint, 71, 177
90, 115, 151,
155
Gibbons, Cedric, Gibson, Mel,
130,
1
14
179
Gilbert, John, 54 Gillespie,
Arnold, 129
152-153,
Gwyneth, 186
Gish, Dorothy, 53
Paltrow,
Gish, Lillian, 53: quoted, 42
Paquin, Anna, /56, ^62
Sturges, Preston, 67
Paramount
Swanson, Gloria, 53
Goldblum,
leff,
IM
139
Laemmle,
Goldfish (Goldwyn), Samuel, 28, 29, 30,
33-35
Carl, 25, 3i-33; quoted, 31
152-153
l,ahr, Bert,
1
10
Lancaster, Burt,
Talmadge, Norma, 50
Penn, Arthur, 60, 79
Tarantino, Quentin, quoted, 89
Penn, Sean, 170-; 7;
Taylor, Elizabeth,
Lasseter, lohn, quoted, 146
Perkins, Anthony, 101
Taylor, Robert, quoted, 166
Lawrence, Florence, 25, 31
Pfeiffer,
Lean, David, 63, 96
Pickford, Mary, 31,44, 50
Grauman,
Lasky, Blanche,
Usky,
Greenstreet, Sydney, 81
Grey,
loel,
93
Griffith, D. W., 21, 38, 42-43, 44, 5e>
H
Jessica,
86
85,
Hale, George, 26
28 30
Jesse, 28, 29.
Lee, Spike, 89,
Hackman, Gene,
i
02- 103
Michelle, 187
Pollack, Sydney,
Lemmon,
Porter,
Jack, 66, 67, 69, 175
Edwin
Thurman, Uma, 89 Tierney, Gene, 80
26
Tracy, Spencer, 65, 67,
Preminger, Otto, 56, 80
J
72
Travolta, John, 89, /70-;7J
Haley, Jack, 152-153
Loew, Marcus,
Hamilton, Margaret, 129
Loren, Sophia, 183
R
Turner, Lana,
Hanks, Tom,
Lorre, Peter, 81
Rains, Claude, 59
Turpin, Ben, 38, 41
Lucas, George, 61, 86, 132, 133, 136, 138
Reagan, Ronald, ;60; quoted, 161
Lugosi, Bela, 98, 99
Redford, Robert, 72-73, 117, 776
Lumet, Sidney, quoted, 60
Reeves, Keanu, 131
Ullmann,
Resnais, Alain, 107
United
Rice, John, 23
Universal Pictures, 3J-33
Harlow, Jean,
158
i2,
Harris, Ed, 136
Hart, William
Hawks, Howard,
Hawn,
37
36,
S.,
59, 65, 71,
77
Goldie, 185
Hayworth,
Rita,
33, 35;
quoted, 33
M
Head, Edith, ;]6; quoted, 117
McDowall, Roddy,
Hedren, Tippi, quoted, 100
McDowell, Malcolm, 104
Hepburn, Audrey,
MacLaine,
118, 181
Hepburn, Katharine,
65, 67, 166, 180;
quoted, 90
Truffaut, Franijois, 107
Roberts,
67
Shirley,
Bill
(Bojangles), 150: quoted,
Voight, Jon, 84, 85
Rooney, Mickey, ;5i-152; quoted, 152
Hitchcock, Alfred, 56-57, 100, 101, 113,
Mason, James,
Rothapfel,
168, 177
64, 65,
67
13
Mary
Rox7
Elizabeth, /36
B., 21, 32, 33, 35,
152
1
17
Samuel (Roxy),
theater,
Russell, lane,
46,
48
Henry
Walthall,
169
Warner, Abe.
B.,
34,
43
35
Warner, Harry, 34, 35; quoted, 35
Menjou, Adolphe, quoted, 151
Hope, Bob, 772
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer,
Horning, William,
w
46-47
Melius, Georges, 129
Holden, William, 72
Hopper, Hedda, 168; quoted, 168
Peebles, Melvin, 89
Rogers, Ginger, 90,
Masina, GiiJietta, 107
Mayer, Louis
45
Van Runkle, Theadora, 119
Marx, Groucho,
69, 84, 85, 120, 121,
107
Robinson, Edward G., 77
Herrmann, Bernard, 127
Hoffman, Dustin,
Liv,
Artists, 44,
quoted, 5
Van
151
HUl, George Roy, 71,72
1
u Valentino, Rudolph, 20-21, 50-51;
iS5
Julia,
Robinson,
Maltese, Michael, quoted, 144
Mastrantonio,
66; quoted, 166
Robbins, Jerome, 92
161
Marshall, Penny, 61
129; quoted, 56, 117
J
Roach, Hal, quoted, 158
McCarey, Leo, 67
180
;64-(65
Thalberg, Irving, 59
69
S.,
18, 159, 161,
1
Shirley, 148-149, 150, 151, 152, 155
Temple,
177
Poitier, Sidney,
Leigh, Vivien, 63
Lloyd, Harold, 41
6;, 179
1
Peckinpah, Sam, 60, 71,72
Lange,
49
1
Peck, Gregory, 174
69
Grant, Gary, 17,65. 112, 113 Sid, 48,
Sylberl, Anthea, quoted,
137
Patrick, Robert,
75
i
Pictures Corporation, 21,
28-30, 48
Lake, Veronica, 18
Goldman, William, quoted,
Stroheim, Fxich von, 56, 59; quoted, 59
Warner,
21, 33-35, 114,
Saint,
Eva Marie, 112. 113
Warner
Sarandon, Susan, 185
152, 172
Jack, 34. 35, 59; quoted,
Warner, Sam,
1
10
35
34,
Bros. Pictures, 34, 35, 77, 79.
Milestone, Lewis, 96
Schaffher, Franklin, 96
Hoskins, Bob, 146-147
Mills, Hayley, J55
Schlesinger, John, 84, 85
Washington, Denzel, 102, 178
Hunter, Holly, 156
Minnelli, Liza, 92, 93
Schwarzenegger, Arnold, 131. 179
Wayne, lohn,
Hurrell, George, 6
Minnelli, Vincente, 90-92, 152
Scorsese, Martin, 61, 86, 89; quoted, 85, 86
Weatherwax, Rudd, 158; quoted, 159
Huston, John,
14
1
60, 80;
quoted, 59, 61
Hyer, Martha, 161
Ince,
Thomas
Harper, 36, 38
Irwin, May, 23
Jackson,
Samuel
L.,
89, 179
Maurice, 126-127
Monroe, Marilyn,
66, 69, 119, 167,
182
Scott,
George C,
Mountbatten, Louis, 50
Sellers, Peter,
Murphy, Eddie,
Selwyn, Edgar, 33
J22, 123
95,
144-J45
96
70, 71
Weismuller, Johnny, 75 Welles, Orson, 58; quoted, 60
104
Wellman, William, 76, 77
Murray, Mae, 21
Selznick,
N
Sennett, Mack, 38, 39, 41; quoted, 38, 41
West, Mae, 780; quoted,
Shaw, Robert, 129
Westmore, George,
Neeson, Liam, 61
Sheen, Martin, 96
Whale, James, 98
Neilan, Marshall, 32
Shields, Brooke, 156
Wilder,
Newman, PauL
72-73, 117,:
8,
;76
David O., 110, 111
Sinatra, Frank,
94
Wertmuller, Lina, 6
Billy, 66,
1
17
20
1
67-69, 80
Williams, John, 127
Upton, quoted, 30-31
Nicholson, Jack, 177
Sinclair,
Jenkins, George, 113
Normand, Mabel,
Singleton, |ohn, 88, 89
Wills, Chill, 161
Johnston, Julanne, 45
Novarro, Ramon, 54
Spielberg, Steven, 61, 86, 94-96, 108-109,
Winchell, Walter, quoted, 168
Jarre,
38, 39: quoted, 41
124, 129, 138; quoted, 109, 146
K
o
Kaminski, Janusz, quoted, 124
O'Brien, Margaret, 152
Steiger,
Karloff, Boris, 98
O'Connor, Donald, 161
Sterling, Ford,
Olivier, Laurence, 172
Sternberg, Josef von,
O'Neal, Ryan, 155
Stewart, Anita, 32
O'Neal, Tatum,
Stewart, James, 75,
Kazan,
Elia, 82, 83, 85;
quoted, 82
Keaton, Buster, 40, 130 Kelly,
Gene,
90. 91.
92
Kelly,Grace, 71,100, 7i7, 182
Keystone Pictures,
38, 39, 41
P
Kurosawa, Akira,
Pacino,Al,
07
;
54, 155, 156
O'Toole, Peter, 63
Kubrick, Stanley, 60-61, 104, 105 1
Stanwyck, Barbara,
77
Natalie, 752, 782
Woods, Eddie, 76
Woodward, Joanne,
39
1
1
13
J
168, 782
Wyler, William, 60; quoted, 60
66
Stone, Oliver, 103-104
86
Streep, Meryl, 184 J
Wise, Robert, quoted, 92
Wood,
1
Rod, 83
Stone, Sharon,
Willis, Bruce, 89, 737
Streisand, Barbra, 60, 61
Zanuck, Darryl
Zinnemann,
F.,
77, 90, 94
Fred, 71, 96
Zukor, Adolph, 21, 28-30, 29, 33, 48; quoted, 28
191
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data 100 years of Hollywood / by the editors of Time-Life Books, (Our American century) p. cm.
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Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-7835-5515-6 Motion pictures United 1
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George Constable (writing and editing); Ronald H. Bailey, Mimi Harrison, James Michael Lynch, Ellen Phillips, Robert Speziale, Henry Wiencek (writing); Jane Coughran, Corinna Luyken, Norma Shaw (research); Marti Davila, Richard Friend (design); Susan Nedrow (index).
hundred years of Hollywood. PN1993.5.U6A17 1999 791.43'0973— dc21
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Streetcar
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Separations by the Time-Life Imaging Department
Broadway performance
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Brando
Nominated for a 1951
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—
attitude perhaps conveyed by one of his lines in Streetcar
he was not taken in "by
this
Holly'wood glamour
across the top of the cover are other film greats: Bacall, Alfred Hitchcock,
Grace
Denzel Washington. Humphrey Bogart
192
smol-
Humphrey Bogart in The African care? He represented a new breed of movie star, his
Best Actor Oscar,
Lauren
Ten-
thin sheen of civilization barely
covered a powerfully coarse, brutish nature.
Queen. Did he
in
Named Desire, Marlon Brando
Kelly, is
stuff."
that
Pictured
Rudolph Valentino,
Sophia Loren, and
shown on
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03777 ^32
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