[To read Part One of this essay, click here. To read Part Two, click here. For Part Three, click here, and for Part Four, click here.]
V. Later Comedies and Lubitsch's Legacy After Trouble In Paradise and Design For Living, "comedies without music" he called them, Lubitsch returned to the comfort of the operetta form he had perfected during the first days of sound. The story of a randy army officer ordered to woo a wealthy widow in order to save the country from bankruptcy, The Merry Widow—made while on loan to MGM—was the most polished and least suggestive of his five musicals. The Hays Office, by 1934 enforcing the Production Code, objected to several scenes and required extensive cutting before it would approve the film for release. (Fortunately, this footage was saved and has been restored.)
The Merry Widow received good reviews and won an Oscar for art direction, but with production costs of $1.6 million, it was the most expensive musical made to date and wound up losing money. It was also the last pairing of stars Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald. The former found himself relegated to smaller and smaller parts and eventually returned to France; the latter paired up with Nelson Eddy and made commercially successful movies for the next decade, though in retrospect, none are as satisfying as those she made with Lubitsch.
After the commercial failure of The Merry Widow, Lubitsch did not direct another movie for three years. In the meantime, he took a job as production manager at Paramount, becoming the only director to ever run a major studio. I'd like to say it was an inspired choice, but in fact, Lubitsch had never been able to delegate authority easily and wound up interfering in many of the sixty productions a year he oversaw without really being able to contribute anything substantive, a result that pleased no one.
"I think I am possessed only of a fascination for the work I have chosen to do," he said later. "I am so engrossed by the production of a film that I literally think of nothing else. I have no hobby, no outside interests and want none."
He was unceremoniously dismissed as head of production in early 1936.
The time away from the director's chair, though, gave Lubitsch time to consider what kind of film he really wanted to make. Whipsawed on the one hand by the enforcement of the Production Code which had effectively forbidden the racier aspects of his style; and on the other by the aggressive style of the screwball comedy which made his gentle approach passe, Lubitsch temporarily lost confidence in his ability to make a successful picture.
He eventually figured it out, though not at Paramount, moving in 1939 to MGM, where he directed Greta Garbo in Ninotchka and James Stewart in The Shop Around The Corner, two of his best comedies, both preserved in the National Film Registry. In 1942, he made what is arguably his best movie, To Be Or Not To Be, an anti-war comedy starring Jack Benny and in the last role of her career, Carole Lombard. Blasted by critics at the time as being in bad taste, To Be Or Not To Be has become a particular favorite of critics over the intervening years and was included in the National Film Registry in 1996, one of five Lubitsch movies so honored.
"None of us thought we were making anything but entertainment for the moment," John Ford said later. "Only Ernst Lubitsch knew we were making art."
"Lubitsch had the greatest sense of humor of any individual I've ever met," said director Joseph M. Newman. "The actors all loved him. He had a very human quality about him. He was the type of man that became your friend after you met him once. A great man."
His most faithful disciple was fellow German refugee Billy Wilder, who wrote the screenplay to Ninotchka and later directed such classics as Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Some Like It Hot and The Apartment. Over his desk, Wilder posted a sign "How would Lubitsch do it?" But despite winning six Oscars during his career, Wilder ultimately concluded he had never measured up to his mentor. "His art is lost," he said. "That most elegant of screen magicians took his secret with him."
In 1943, Lubitsch received an Oscar nomination for Heaven Can Wait, the third nomination of his career, but once again, he did not win. In March 1947, as it became clear that Lubitsch's health was failing, the Academy presented him with a special award "[f]or his distinguished contributions to the art of the motion picture."
"With the passing years," wrote his biographer Scott Eyman, "it became increasingly clear that Ernst Lubitsch had accomplished something only vouchsafed the greatest artists: he had created a self-contained universe with a sensibility so singular, behavioral beauties so intense, that it forever altered the world view of those lucky enough to experience it. He believed in his dreams so strongly that millions of others came to believe in them as well, and the fact that the values and style of Lubitsch's work constituted the finest examples of the discarded heritage of elegant screen comedy made his everlasting, gentle brilliance even more poignant."
Ernst Lubitsch died of a heart attack in November,1947.
"No more Lubitsch," Billy Wilder lamented at the funeral.
"Worse than that," said William Wyler. "No more Lubitsch films."
Next up was supposed to be Part Two of my essay on Ernst Lubitsch, which is well in hand and maybe you'll still get it today if I can squeeze it in before Katie-Bar-The-Door and I head to Nationals Park with Mister Muleboy and MicheleMishka to see Stephen Strasburg.
But it's Jeanette MacDonald's birthday today and since she and Lubitsch are inextricably linked, I just have to stop here and tell her hello.
She was a discovery of Lubitsch's, don't you know. Actor Richard Dix had seen her on the Broadway stage in 1928 and had her make a screen test for Paramount, but nothing came of it until Lubitsch happened upon it a year later and immediately saw her star potential. He flew to Chicago where she was working and signed her to star in his first sound production, The Love Parade with Maurice Chevalier. The picture was a hit, she was a hit and the rest is history.
MacDonald made four movies for Lubitsch, The Love Parade (1929), Monte Carlo (1930), One Hour With You (1932) and The Merry Widow (1934), each better than the last. For those of you who only know her through her later work with Nelson Eddy, I strongly suggest you track down these musicals, and one other, Love Me Tonight, a Rouben Mamoulian musical in the Lubitsch style. She's beautiful and sexy and is allowed to show a naughty side you never get to see again once the studios began to enforce the Production Code in late 1934.
Born in Philadelphia in 1903, MacDonald began acting at the age of six and was winning singing contests by the age of thirteen. After her successful association with Lubitsch at Paramount, Irving Thalberg lured her MGM where she became known as the Iron Butterfly thanks to her skill at negotiating favorable contracts.
She's best remembered now for her association with singer Nelson Eddy. They made eight pictures together, including Naughty Marietta, Rose-Marie and Maytime. She also made San Francisco with Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy, which includes a spectacular recreation of the 1906 earthquake.
A weak heart forced MacDonald into semi-retirement in the 1950s, although she did occasionally perform with Eddy. She died of a heart attack in 1965.
Trivia: MacDonald's sister Blossom, who performed under the name Marie Blake, played Grandmama on the television show The Addams Family.
So since for the 1932-33 awards year I'm using the expanded "Golden Globes" format (splitting up awards for picture, actor and actress between drama and comedy/musical), I'm sure most have you have been wondering who would have won for the previous five years if I'd been doing the Golden Globes thing all along.
Good question, thanks for asking.
It's kind of a mixed bag, as it turns out, which is why I didn't use this format in the first place. For every inspired choice, such as Marion Davies (comedy, Show People) or Edward G. Robinson (drama, Little Caesar), you get somebody like Maurice Chevalier (comedy/musical, The Love Parade) who'd have readers running for the exits. And then you start wondering whether I would really have given Marie Dressler the best supporting actress award of 1929-30 knowing I'd also give her an award for 1930-31. And on and on.
Clearly, I have too much time on my hands.
Anyway, here they are. Make of them what you will. At least Al Jolson dressed for the occasion.
1927-28 Picture (Comedy): The Circus (prod. Charles Chaplin) Actor (Comedy or Musical): Al Jolson (The Jazz Singer) Actress (Drama): Janet Gaynor (7th Heaven and Sunrise: A Song Of Two Humans) 1928-29 Picture (Comedy): Steamboat Bill, Jr. (prod. Joseph M. Schenck) Actor (Drama): Erich von Stroheim (The Wedding March) Actress (Comedy): Marion Davies (Show People) 1929-30 Picture (Comedy or Musical): Hallelujah! (prod. King Vidor) Actor (Comedy/Musical): Maurice Chevalier (The Love Parade) Actress (Comedy/Musical): Jeanette MacDonald (The Love Parade) 1930-31 Picture (Drama): M (prod. Seymour Hebenzal) Actor (Drama): Edward G. Robinson (Little Caesar) Actress (Comedy): Marie Dressler (Min and Bill) 1931-32 Picture (Comedy/Musical): À Nous La Liberté (prod. Frank Clifford) Actor (Comedy/Musical): Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy (The Music Box) Actress (Drama): Mae Clarke (Waterloo Bridge)
This was supposed to be my post on the Katie-Bar-The-Door Nominees of 1932-33, but rather than leave you without anything to chew on while I'm finishing that mammoth essay, I'm jumping ahead in my notes and letting you vote on the "Best Original Song Of 1932-33."
Yes, you get to tell the Monkey where to put it when he hands out the award for best song of 1932-33. And you just know you've been waiting for the chance.
In choosing, you'll have to decide what you think we should mean by "best" when we talk about "best song"—is it a song so successful everybody knows it ("Who's Afraid Of The Big Bad Wolf"); a beautiful standard recorded by anybody worth talking about ("Isn't It Romantic"); the memorable wedding of sound and imagery ("We're in the Money" and "Remember My Forgotten Man"); or a pivotal moment in film history ("42nd Street").
The nominees:
"Forty-Second Street" music by Harry Warren, lyrics by Al Dubin (42nd Street)
"The Gold Diggers Song (We're In The Money)" music by Harry Warren, lyrics by Al Dubin (Gold Diggers Of 1933)
"Isn't It Romantic" music by Richard Rodgers, lyrics by Lorenz Hart (Love Me Tonight)
"Remember My Forgotten Man" music by Harry Warren, lyrics by Al Dubin (Gold Diggers Of 1933)
Katie nominee, singer/actor Maurice Chevalier, is 121 today, and given the frequency with which long-dead actors such as Lon Chaney and Douglas Fairbanks pop up in the comment section, he's no doubt still out there somewhere, partying like it's 1899.
I mention Chevalier because looking ahead I see it's unlikely I'll otherwise have occasion to write about him and I think that given most people only remember him now, if they remember him at all, for a rather creepy rendition of "Thank Heaven For Little Girls" in the 1958 Oscar winner Gigi, that would be a real disservice to a man who in his youth was really quite a remarkable talent.
Chevalier was born in Paris on this day in 1888 and by the age of thirteen was already a professional singer and acrobat. He was wounded in combat during World War I and taken prisoner by the Germans; during his two years in a POW camp, he learned English from his fellow prisoners and despite what you hear in the movies, actually spoke the language fluently and without an accent.
After the war, he worked on the stage in Paris and London, and yearned to tour America, but he turned down an offer from Douglas Fairbanks to work in silent movies, fearing he wasn't actor enough to succeed without benefit of his singing voice. He worked in France, occasionally making movies there, until the premiere of The Jazz Singer, then finally left for Hollywood.
He made his best movies with legendary director, Ernst Lubitsch, who starred Chevalier in four musical comedies, The Love Parade, One Hour With You and The Merry Widow with Jeanette MacDonald and The Smiling Lieutenant with Claudette Colbert and Miriam Hopkins. The movies are light, naughty sex comedies and very funny, with Chevalier invariably playing a randy army lieutenant who winds up chasing (and being chased by) a virginal member of royalty who is about to discover what she's been missing.
Jeanette MacDonald is more famous now for her pairings with Nelson Eddy, and I'll write about that Hollywood screen team at a later date, but frankly her pre-Code musicals with Chevalier are much more interesting. The two didn't get along very well, though, Chevalier calling MacDonald a "prude," and MacDonald calling Chevalier "the quickest derriere pincher in Hollywood," and despite making four successful pictures together (including Rouben Mamoulian's Love Me Tonight), the two went their separate ways.
Chevalier's Hollywood career suffered after censors began to enforce the Production Code and he returned to France in the late 1930s. After World War II, he was accused of collaborating with the Nazis and although acquitted, he was wasn't allowed to return to the U.S. until 1954. He worked in a dozen films after his return, including Love in the Afternoon and Gigi, and continued working until his death in 1972 at the age of eighty-three.
Personal Note: My own introduction to Maurice Chevalier came not from Gigi but from the movie Annie Hall during the scene where Woody Allen and Diane Keaton are watching Marcel Ophuls documentary The Sorrow and the Pity. "Boy, those guys in the French Resistance were really brave," says Woody, "you know? Got to listen to Maurice Chevalier sing so much."
I'm working on the essay for Best Actress of 1929-30. It might be ready today, but more likely it won't show up until tomorrow. So in the meantime, here are the nominees:
Louise Brooks (Pandora's Box and Diary of a Lost Girl)
After Trouble In Paradise and Design For Living, "comedies without music" he called them, Lubitsch returned to the comfort of the operetta form he had perfected during the first days of sound. The story of a randy army officer ordered to woo a wealthy widow in order to save the country from bankruptcy, The Merry Widow—made while on loan to MGM—was the most polished and least suggestive of his five musicals. The Hays Office, by 1934 enforcing the Production Code, objected to several scenes and required extensive cutting before it would approve the film for release. (Fortunately, this footage was saved and has been restored.)
After the commercial failure of The Merry Widow, Lubitsch did not direct another movie for three years. In the meantime, he took a job as production manager at Paramount, becoming the only director to ever run a major studio. I'd like to say it was an inspired choice, but in fact, Lubitsch had never been able to delegate authority easily and wound up interfering in many of the sixty productions a year he oversaw without really being able to contribute anything substantive, a result that pleased no one.
He eventually figured it out, though not at Paramount, moving in 1939 to MGM, where he directed Greta Garbo in Ninotchka and James Stewart in The Shop Around The Corner, two of his best comedies, both preserved in the National Film Registry. In 1942, he made what is arguably his best movie, To Be Or Not To Be, an anti-war comedy starring Jack Benny and in the last role of her career, Carole Lombard. Blasted by critics at the time as being in bad taste, To Be Or Not To Be has become a particular favorite of critics over the intervening years and was included in the National Film Registry in 1996, one of five Lubitsch movies so honored.
His most faithful disciple was fellow German refugee Billy Wilder, who wrote the screenplay to Ninotchka and later directed such classics as Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard, Some Like It Hot and The Apartment. Over his desk, Wilder posted a sign "How would Lubitsch do it?" But despite winning six Oscars during his career, Wilder ultimately concluded he had never measured up to his mentor. "His art is lost," he said. "That most elegant of screen magicians took his secret with him."
"With the passing years," wrote his biographer Scott Eyman, "it became increasingly clear that Ernst Lubitsch had accomplished something only vouchsafed the greatest artists: he had created a self-contained universe with a sensibility so singular, behavioral beauties so intense, that it forever altered the world view of those lucky enough to experience it. He believed in his dreams so strongly that millions of others came to believe in them as well, and the fact that the values and style of Lubitsch's work constituted the finest examples of the discarded heritage of elegant screen comedy made his everlasting, gentle brilliance even more poignant."
