Start writing today. Use the button below to create your Substack and connect your publication with Thats Another Fine Mess The first movie studio I ever got to drive onto because I was “on the list” was Warner Brothers. I’d been invited to come talk to Tom Gray, the Unit Publicist for “the Right Stuff,” and I knew so little about things in Hollywood, I had to ask a friend about how to get from Glendale, where I was living at the time, to the studio. (Take the 134 West, get off at Hollywood Way, drive down to the main gate, give them your name because you’re “on the list” and then drive into Wonderland)
I always love the story Julius Epstein told me of how he and his brother Phillip came up with "Round up the usual suspects." They were driving down Sunset Blvd arguing about the script (they were a whole 2 days ahead of shooting most of the time, when they weren't they were only a day ahead) and got stopped at the light at Cherokee, just west of the Hollywood Athletic Club, then Hollywood and Vine. Phillip looks around at the "Hollywood types" on the sidewalk and says "Round up the usual suspects!"
You can do that today - the only things that've changed are the clothing fashions, the hair styles and the cars.
There's a great book about the production, "We'll Always Have Casablanca."
For those interested, if you have TCM, they're showing restored prints of the great WB movies all this month for the centenary. I just saw "Confessions of a Nazi Spy" for the first time ever.
damn! it happened again! I was working on my post and while I was doing it, you beat me to the punch with the Epsteins.
TCM also has two good documentaries about WB available to stream.
in the '60s at CCNY, they were still telling stories about Edward G. Robinson crying in class while "Macbeth" was being discussed because he "knew" that "they" would never let him be an actor.
David Thomson (a critic and film scholar I LOVE for many reasons and you probably know him) also has a brief but pithy book about WB called--appropriately enough--"Warner Brothers").
We know every scene and all the dialogue. And we watch it whenever we stumble across it on TV. That’s the grip Casablanca has on us. Was Billy Wilder employed at WB? He’s my favorite screenwriter. Loved reading your tribute. Thank you for reminding us of the value immigrants bring to American life. xoxo
I thought Wilder was a loyal Paramount guy, but personnel DID keep changing. Zanuck, for example, learned the job when he worked at WB, before giving Fox its whole identity as the Great Writers' Studio.
Wow! I had no idea about Warner Bros! Casablanca - the greatest movie of that time for sure and we still watch it - even when we get the chance on the big screen. OMG! Lucky you!!
What a charming story! I thoroughly enjoyed reading this aloud to my 98 year old mother who remembers when Falls Church VA was a small town without a commercial theater and movies were shown in the church by her older brothers, who handled printing tickets and ordering many of these same movies. She'd murmur recognition and appreciation at the mention of each title and name but if I'd pause she'd say "Go on"! Thank you from the both of us.
When I was a young woman, I was such a fan of 'Casablanca' that friends bought me a copy of the movie poster which I promptly tacked up in my apartment. " I remember every detail. The Germans wore grey, you wore blue"... Sigh... Thanks for the great history lesson today. 😊
I've been thinking about WB all day myself, probably because EVERYBODY is talking about this centenary. you got to have a conversation with Jimmy Cagney, damn your eyes. I loved him so much when I was a little kid that I started to think of him as some sort of honorary uncle (Jimmy Durante was already my "adopted" grandpa) I also hadn't known that Hammett was actually a writer on "The Maltese Falcon," although I know perfectly well that MANY tremendous writers worked on movies they never got credit for. in this new biography of Faulkner, Carl Rollyson goes into great detail about Faulkner's actual screenplays and they were apparently very, very good (the old myth is that Hawks only called him to Hollywood so they could hunt and drink together). I'd heard years ago that Faulkner wrote the screenplay for "The Southerner," which is one of my favorite movies, and certainly, Jean Renoir hardly knew English well enough to have pulled off that extremely authentic piece of work.
a few very minor corrections, though. in one of the more recent Hollywood histories (either Jeanine Basinger's "Hollywood: An Oral History" or "Oscar Wars," the story about Reagan being seriously considered for the role of Rick is just a story (and he was NEVER an A-lister at WB...he's not even the lead in "Kings Row"). it WAS offered to that schmuck George Raft, who turned it down because he didn't get the girl. a year or two previously, he turned down "High Sierra" because he didn't want to die at the end. so one could argue that Bogie owes his iconic status to George Raft being an idiot (I'll grant that his coin-flipping was first-rate). there's actually even a third thing he turned down that Bogie took, but I'm forgetting it at the moment. Ann Sheridan, however, WAS the original first choice for Ilsa. but Ingrid Bergman wasn't unknown at that point...she'd already gotten done "Intermezzo" for Selznick, repeating the part that had made her a big star in Sweden (I THINK WB "borrowed" her) and had gotten raves for playing the whore in "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." in the same year as "Casablanca," she played Maria in "For Whom the Bell Tolls" (a very "important" movie in which a Greek and some Russians played Spaniards and a role which EVERYBODY coveted) and got an Oscar nomination. the next year, she won for "Gaslight." if you're saying that "Casablanca" got her immediate recognition as a huge movie star, you're probably right.
the more you know about the actual "Casablanca" production, the better the stories get. I love the one about the Epsteins simultaneously yelling out the last line after being stumped about it for a fairly long while (which, in those days at WB, was probably about a day or two). what amazes me about WB in general was how FAST they turned stuff out. I forget how long it took from inception to opening (and don't feel like doing that bit of research NOW), but it was, like, a quarter of what most post-production takes today.
feeling guilty for being so lazy, I just looked it up and principal photography was about nine weeks. it wrapped in August and opened the first week in January. I'm now seeing that on Wikipedia, the George Raft story is considered apocryphal, but I'd heard it from too many other sources. for example, some people will tell you that the screenplay was based on a "hit play" ("Everybody Comes to Rick's," which might be one of the worst titles of all time...it could be the title of a play about fraternity hazing or something), but that play was never produced.
it's totally remarkable that you're so into "Attack!" I saw it when it came out and Jack Palance's death mask haunted me for many, many years (I was almost certainly too young to have seen it, but my parents' laissez-faire attitude about my movie viewing isn't one I'd ever want to change...having said this, I think my father might've been sorry he took me to see "Vertigo" when it came out; it's a movie that could have ruined my life and maybe it did--I watch it at least once a year). I was about eight, which would make you about twelve, which is a much more appropriate age for something that intense. in any event, I saw "Attack!" again recently and it was fabulous. in the end credits, I discovered it was also based on a play, "The Fragile Fox," by somebody named Norman Brooks and that the screenplay was written by James Poe. the army was so pissed off about the movie that it refused to allow any of its resources to be used in production (it IS pretty devastating about nepotism and incompetence) which hurt the production badly, but Aldrich was a very clever man and the whole budget was about two million bucks, although it looks a lot more expensive. I might have just talked myself into buying the DVD.
three nights ago, I watched Sam Fuller's "The Steel Helmet" on Criterion. also pretty hard-assed. but it LOOKS like it was a pretty limited budget and "Attack!" doesn't.
and since I'm going on at great length, let me add that you have it completely right about the vexed relationship between the well-heeled German Jews in NYC and the dirt poor Pale of Settlement folks, but there's one exception. the German Jews did feel a little bad about the sufferings of the Eastern European immigrants and helped out with ONE THING. but a VERY VERY BIG THING...food.
what we all think of as "Jewish deli" is not native to Eastern Europe...it's the Jewish version of German deli. the actual Eastern European deli is what we usually referred to as "appetizing" (used as a noun, of course)...lots of dairy and smoked (or otherwise processed) fish. what's always struck me as a little insane is what the Observant folks use to break their Yom Kippur fast...massive quantities of dairy which, added to an empty tummy, will produce all kinds of "difficulties."
the horrible thing is that any discussion of pastrami, etc. is soon going to be purely historical. in NYC, a "neighborhood" was once defined by its having a Jewish bakery and a Jewish deli close by. but they're pretty much all gone. of course, Katz's is still there, but it's ALWAYS as packed as a rush hour subway car...
"We'll always Have Casablanca" documents pretty well that "Everybody Goes To Rick's" was the original property the movie was based on. The two writers were very good about getting it seen in Hollywood while they were trying to get it on the road.
I once interviewed Eddie Albert when he did "Dreamscape," and started by telling him I wanted to ask him about my favorite movie he did. He was very attentive at that, and when I said "Attack" he got the biggest smile. He told me "I was a serving officer in World War II and this was the first war movie script I had been offered in Hollywood that showed war as I had seen it." Palance and Marvin were also combat veterans, and were attracted to it for the same reason, he said. Marvin played that role of the slick operator the year after he played the sailor "Meatball" in "The Caine Mutiny." "Attack" is based on the events of the Battle of the Bulge where the 45th Division, a National Guard outfit, was the first unit to be hit by the Germans. (That was also the unit a young GI who had been in the Army's education program got put in when the program was cancelled because they could see the war was going to end and they were running out of cannonfodder - Kurt Vonnegut)
oh, there's no doubt about the name of the play it was based on...I was just commenting about what a shitty title it was. and I actually do remember seeing someone call it a "hit play," which it couldn't have been if it was never performed. "Casablanca, however," is a great title, and was even greater because of the Casablanca conference, which occurred shortly before or after (I forget which) the movie was released, and which helped the movie to earn even more money.
I read "We'll Always Have Casablanca" when it came out, and I remember few details, except how enjoyable it was. increasingly, people tend to name Curtiz as one of the great directors because he made SO MANY movies, and was actually a real bug about doing careful research, even if he was famous for slaughtering the English language in his everyday use of it. his everyday use of aspiring starlets on his lunch breaks was, of course, just considered normal back then; Zanuck was famous for the same reasons.
on TCM, there's also a superb documentary on Max Steiner. I was always a fan of his (how can you NOT be?), but when you see ALL the movies he scored, you realize what an essential part of movie history he is. in the doc, it's mentioned how much he hated having to base his "Casablanca" score on "As Time Goes By," which he considered a cheesy piece of shit tune (it was already about ten years old when they made the movie and isn't exactly distinguished melodically. but at this point, whenever anyone talks about it, they're really talking about all the feelings generated by the whole movie. I'd completely forgotten that he wrote that lonely, heartbreaking melody for "The Searchers" (which I saw FOUR times when it came out and which I'll still watch, despite its problematic aspects). and would "The Searchers" be the same movie without Steiner? I think not.
Eddie Albert always struck me as a real mensch and a pretty smart guy. I'm glad he actually was. he had his own problems during the McCarthy era, but it is thought that his war record was a big help. even Wyler had his problems back then, despite his having been deafened by flying those 8th AF missions (a whole flophouse sequence had to be cut from "Carrie" in 1952 but has now been restored to the DVD).
Max Steiner and The Searchers. Incredible. My sentimental favorite of Steiner’s was A Summer Place. No particular reason for it but as a tyke it was ubiquitous. Another great Eastern European film composer was Dimitri Tiomkin. A couple years ago I found a CD of his score for Red River. But I’m getting way off topic. Sorry.
I love Notorious also. The Birds isn’t one of my favorites except it was filmed in Bodega Bay where we used to go a lot when I was growing up. So I like to to see the familiar scenery. I love birds so it bothers me otherwise.
I used to know Veronica Cartwright, the actress who was in "the Birds". She said the movie scared them making it. The scene where the birds peck their way through the wall really scared her - they were bird heads mounted on hammers.
Doing OK. Wrote "The End" to the current manuscript last night and sent everything to England this morning. Went out to dinner Saturday a week ago with a woman friend here who told me "You need to go out" so we had dinner at my favorite Italian restaurant here I hadn't been able to go to for years. Turns out one of the reasons we get along so well over the years we've known each other is we both survived the same kind of mother - a narcissist with a borderline personality. Big Sis is coming down in two weeks to get her stuff taken care of and then I can reorganize the house. Every once in awhile one of the cats will yowl and it sounds like her calling "Tom." I even went out to the living room to check the first time that happened.
Congratulations on getting the manuscript done! And happy to hear you are getting out with friends. It is very cool when you can stay close with someone over the years and discover you share a similar history that impacted your life. I’m sure the cats are yelling “Tom”. Lots of change and they sense more to come. They will be fine though as long as they have you.
I am too, but much more selectively than a lot of friends. but I did see "North By Northwest" three or four times when it came out, even if I was less than ten.
during my summers in Detroit, I'd take advantage of their fabulous late-night movie channel. one morning I was telling everybody about this really good actor I hadn't previously known about and how I couldn't understand why he wasn't a really big movie star. they asked me who it was and I said Henry Fonda. I was really offended when they couldn't stop laughing.
I used to be a member of the Alex Film Society here - we did screenings at the Alex Theater an old restored movie palace in Glendale. We did "North By Northwest" and I got Ernest Lehman to come over and tell the story of how they came up with the end. He and Hitchcock argued for weeks about how to get them off George Washington's face - finally Lehman just stopped and said "Hitch, it's a movie - of course they get off! If we've done it right, the audience will let us do anything." And Hitchcock realized that was right, and so they did the "give me your hand up" into the sleeper car on the train. Which totally works. Martin Landau steps on Grant's hand, a shot rings out, cut to Leo G. Carrol and the boys on the bluff, Landau falls over, Grant pulls her up and.... there you are. Landau was also great for the interview - he was there with Lehman. But the best interview I got to do there was when we had "Singin' in the Rain," (my all time favorite movie) and got Donald O'Connor (who was still touring with a dinner theater show) and Cyd Charisse - I got to go over and pick her up from her really really nice home and drive her to Glendale. In her 80s and still - wow!
I too loved working on the WB lot, like Paramount and Sony it had the old Hollywood feel from the moment you entered the gates, Universal not so much so and sadly not even close with the Mouse House which was my least favorite by a long shot. You are spot on about Dalton Trumbo, he was brilliant.
I know how you felt, the place was run like a police state. By the way have you ever read Trumbo’s “Johnny Got His Gun”, I’m sure it was part of the reason McCarthy went after him with the HUAC.
Every time I hear La Marseillaise, my first thought is Casablanca. And it nearly makes me tear up. Those brave people standing up for Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité.
And all the actors in that scene are refugees from Nazism. Conrad Veidt, the actor who played Major Strasser was one of Germany's leading movie stars, chased out of the country for having a Jewish wife. He dedicated his work throughout the war to portraying Nazis as scum.
Reflecting on Warner Bros., it’s much easier to see how conservatives have come to see the entertainment media, whether film, TV, Broadway, etc., as inherently biased against them. Because it is. Art seeks truth, light, compassion. Conservatism, certainly in the US, misdirects, hides in the dark, appeals to selfishness.
My only Warner story, and it’s a bit of a stretch to call it my story: My predecessor as Chair of the Board at La Jolla Playhouse (c. 1993) was Dr. Willard VanderLaan, by that time a leading endocrinologist . However, in the 50’s he was a physician in Los Angeles. One of his patients was Jack Warner. Dr. VanderLaan delighted in telling the story of how the Tyrant of Tinseltown, the famously ruthless and cutting Jack Warner, would always stand when Dr. V entered the room. The gesture of respect was quite welcome.
I always love the story Julius Epstein told me of how he and his brother Phillip came up with "Round up the usual suspects." They were driving down Sunset Blvd arguing about the script (they were a whole 2 days ahead of shooting most of the time, when they weren't they were only a day ahead) and got stopped at the light at Cherokee, just west of the Hollywood Athletic Club, then Hollywood and Vine. Phillip looks around at the "Hollywood types" on the sidewalk and says "Round up the usual suspects!"
You can do that today - the only things that've changed are the clothing fashions, the hair styles and the cars.
There's a great book about the production, "We'll Always Have Casablanca."
For those interested, if you have TCM, they're showing restored prints of the great WB movies all this month for the centenary. I just saw "Confessions of a Nazi Spy" for the first time ever.
damn! it happened again! I was working on my post and while I was doing it, you beat me to the punch with the Epsteins.
TCM also has two good documentaries about WB available to stream.
in the '60s at CCNY, they were still telling stories about Edward G. Robinson crying in class while "Macbeth" was being discussed because he "knew" that "they" would never let him be an actor.
David Thomson (a critic and film scholar I LOVE for many reasons and you probably know him) also has a brief but pithy book about WB called--appropriately enough--"Warner Brothers").
We know every scene and all the dialogue. And we watch it whenever we stumble across it on TV. That’s the grip Casablanca has on us. Was Billy Wilder employed at WB? He’s my favorite screenwriter. Loved reading your tribute. Thank you for reminding us of the value immigrants bring to American life. xoxo
Yes - Wilder worked there.
I thought Wilder was a loyal Paramount guy, but personnel DID keep changing. Zanuck, for example, learned the job when he worked at WB, before giving Fox its whole identity as the Great Writers' Studio.
"At the same time they did “Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo,” written by Dalton Trumbo, the greatest screenwriter ever."
We agree on this point. I learn a lot from your walks down history lane. Thank you.
What a wonderful story of character, purpose, and success and to honor that tradition. It really did have an effect on you. Thanks.
Wow! I had no idea about Warner Bros! Casablanca - the greatest movie of that time for sure and we still watch it - even when we get the chance on the big screen. OMG! Lucky you!!
What a charming story! I thoroughly enjoyed reading this aloud to my 98 year old mother who remembers when Falls Church VA was a small town without a commercial theater and movies were shown in the church by her older brothers, who handled printing tickets and ordering many of these same movies. She'd murmur recognition and appreciation at the mention of each title and name but if I'd pause she'd say "Go on"! Thank you from the both of us.
When I was a young woman, I was such a fan of 'Casablanca' that friends bought me a copy of the movie poster which I promptly tacked up in my apartment. " I remember every detail. The Germans wore grey, you wore blue"... Sigh... Thanks for the great history lesson today. 😊
Wow, that was fun to read, just gallops along!
Great story TC. An excellent combination of history and screenplay.
Fascinating!
This is a timely and really nice homage to the Warners' Studio, the incubator of your own writing skills.
Wonderful survey of Hollywood forgotten. Thank you.
This is a great essay Tom. Thank you.
I've been thinking about WB all day myself, probably because EVERYBODY is talking about this centenary. you got to have a conversation with Jimmy Cagney, damn your eyes. I loved him so much when I was a little kid that I started to think of him as some sort of honorary uncle (Jimmy Durante was already my "adopted" grandpa) I also hadn't known that Hammett was actually a writer on "The Maltese Falcon," although I know perfectly well that MANY tremendous writers worked on movies they never got credit for. in this new biography of Faulkner, Carl Rollyson goes into great detail about Faulkner's actual screenplays and they were apparently very, very good (the old myth is that Hawks only called him to Hollywood so they could hunt and drink together). I'd heard years ago that Faulkner wrote the screenplay for "The Southerner," which is one of my favorite movies, and certainly, Jean Renoir hardly knew English well enough to have pulled off that extremely authentic piece of work.
a few very minor corrections, though. in one of the more recent Hollywood histories (either Jeanine Basinger's "Hollywood: An Oral History" or "Oscar Wars," the story about Reagan being seriously considered for the role of Rick is just a story (and he was NEVER an A-lister at WB...he's not even the lead in "Kings Row"). it WAS offered to that schmuck George Raft, who turned it down because he didn't get the girl. a year or two previously, he turned down "High Sierra" because he didn't want to die at the end. so one could argue that Bogie owes his iconic status to George Raft being an idiot (I'll grant that his coin-flipping was first-rate). there's actually even a third thing he turned down that Bogie took, but I'm forgetting it at the moment. Ann Sheridan, however, WAS the original first choice for Ilsa. but Ingrid Bergman wasn't unknown at that point...she'd already gotten done "Intermezzo" for Selznick, repeating the part that had made her a big star in Sweden (I THINK WB "borrowed" her) and had gotten raves for playing the whore in "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde." in the same year as "Casablanca," she played Maria in "For Whom the Bell Tolls" (a very "important" movie in which a Greek and some Russians played Spaniards and a role which EVERYBODY coveted) and got an Oscar nomination. the next year, she won for "Gaslight." if you're saying that "Casablanca" got her immediate recognition as a huge movie star, you're probably right.
the more you know about the actual "Casablanca" production, the better the stories get. I love the one about the Epsteins simultaneously yelling out the last line after being stumped about it for a fairly long while (which, in those days at WB, was probably about a day or two). what amazes me about WB in general was how FAST they turned stuff out. I forget how long it took from inception to opening (and don't feel like doing that bit of research NOW), but it was, like, a quarter of what most post-production takes today.
feeling guilty for being so lazy, I just looked it up and principal photography was about nine weeks. it wrapped in August and opened the first week in January. I'm now seeing that on Wikipedia, the George Raft story is considered apocryphal, but I'd heard it from too many other sources. for example, some people will tell you that the screenplay was based on a "hit play" ("Everybody Comes to Rick's," which might be one of the worst titles of all time...it could be the title of a play about fraternity hazing or something), but that play was never produced.
it's totally remarkable that you're so into "Attack!" I saw it when it came out and Jack Palance's death mask haunted me for many, many years (I was almost certainly too young to have seen it, but my parents' laissez-faire attitude about my movie viewing isn't one I'd ever want to change...having said this, I think my father might've been sorry he took me to see "Vertigo" when it came out; it's a movie that could have ruined my life and maybe it did--I watch it at least once a year). I was about eight, which would make you about twelve, which is a much more appropriate age for something that intense. in any event, I saw "Attack!" again recently and it was fabulous. in the end credits, I discovered it was also based on a play, "The Fragile Fox," by somebody named Norman Brooks and that the screenplay was written by James Poe. the army was so pissed off about the movie that it refused to allow any of its resources to be used in production (it IS pretty devastating about nepotism and incompetence) which hurt the production badly, but Aldrich was a very clever man and the whole budget was about two million bucks, although it looks a lot more expensive. I might have just talked myself into buying the DVD.
three nights ago, I watched Sam Fuller's "The Steel Helmet" on Criterion. also pretty hard-assed. but it LOOKS like it was a pretty limited budget and "Attack!" doesn't.
and since I'm going on at great length, let me add that you have it completely right about the vexed relationship between the well-heeled German Jews in NYC and the dirt poor Pale of Settlement folks, but there's one exception. the German Jews did feel a little bad about the sufferings of the Eastern European immigrants and helped out with ONE THING. but a VERY VERY BIG THING...food.
what we all think of as "Jewish deli" is not native to Eastern Europe...it's the Jewish version of German deli. the actual Eastern European deli is what we usually referred to as "appetizing" (used as a noun, of course)...lots of dairy and smoked (or otherwise processed) fish. what's always struck me as a little insane is what the Observant folks use to break their Yom Kippur fast...massive quantities of dairy which, added to an empty tummy, will produce all kinds of "difficulties."
the horrible thing is that any discussion of pastrami, etc. is soon going to be purely historical. in NYC, a "neighborhood" was once defined by its having a Jewish bakery and a Jewish deli close by. but they're pretty much all gone. of course, Katz's is still there, but it's ALWAYS as packed as a rush hour subway car...
"We'll always Have Casablanca" documents pretty well that "Everybody Goes To Rick's" was the original property the movie was based on. The two writers were very good about getting it seen in Hollywood while they were trying to get it on the road.
I once interviewed Eddie Albert when he did "Dreamscape," and started by telling him I wanted to ask him about my favorite movie he did. He was very attentive at that, and when I said "Attack" he got the biggest smile. He told me "I was a serving officer in World War II and this was the first war movie script I had been offered in Hollywood that showed war as I had seen it." Palance and Marvin were also combat veterans, and were attracted to it for the same reason, he said. Marvin played that role of the slick operator the year after he played the sailor "Meatball" in "The Caine Mutiny." "Attack" is based on the events of the Battle of the Bulge where the 45th Division, a National Guard outfit, was the first unit to be hit by the Germans. (That was also the unit a young GI who had been in the Army's education program got put in when the program was cancelled because they could see the war was going to end and they were running out of cannonfodder - Kurt Vonnegut)
oh, there's no doubt about the name of the play it was based on...I was just commenting about what a shitty title it was. and I actually do remember seeing someone call it a "hit play," which it couldn't have been if it was never performed. "Casablanca, however," is a great title, and was even greater because of the Casablanca conference, which occurred shortly before or after (I forget which) the movie was released, and which helped the movie to earn even more money.
I read "We'll Always Have Casablanca" when it came out, and I remember few details, except how enjoyable it was. increasingly, people tend to name Curtiz as one of the great directors because he made SO MANY movies, and was actually a real bug about doing careful research, even if he was famous for slaughtering the English language in his everyday use of it. his everyday use of aspiring starlets on his lunch breaks was, of course, just considered normal back then; Zanuck was famous for the same reasons.
on TCM, there's also a superb documentary on Max Steiner. I was always a fan of his (how can you NOT be?), but when you see ALL the movies he scored, you realize what an essential part of movie history he is. in the doc, it's mentioned how much he hated having to base his "Casablanca" score on "As Time Goes By," which he considered a cheesy piece of shit tune (it was already about ten years old when they made the movie and isn't exactly distinguished melodically. but at this point, whenever anyone talks about it, they're really talking about all the feelings generated by the whole movie. I'd completely forgotten that he wrote that lonely, heartbreaking melody for "The Searchers" (which I saw FOUR times when it came out and which I'll still watch, despite its problematic aspects). and would "The Searchers" be the same movie without Steiner? I think not.
Eddie Albert always struck me as a real mensch and a pretty smart guy. I'm glad he actually was. he had his own problems during the McCarthy era, but it is thought that his war record was a big help. even Wyler had his problems back then, despite his having been deafened by flying those 8th AF missions (a whole flophouse sequence had to be cut from "Carrie" in 1952 but has now been restored to the DVD).
Max Steiner and The Searchers. Incredible. My sentimental favorite of Steiner’s was A Summer Place. No particular reason for it but as a tyke it was ubiquitous. Another great Eastern European film composer was Dimitri Tiomkin. A couple years ago I found a CD of his score for Red River. But I’m getting way off topic. Sorry.
Vertigo was a masterpiece, although in my young life I had a love hate relationship with it. Now I just love watching it. But I’m a Hitchcock groupie.
Jurate could recite the dialogue of "Rear Window."
I love it! We could have recited it together. I could recite North by Northwest!
I'm a HUGE "Notorious" guy. and "Vertigo" every year is essential. it's DEFINITELY Bernhard Herrmann's moment of glory
I love Notorious also. The Birds isn’t one of my favorites except it was filmed in Bodega Bay where we used to go a lot when I was growing up. So I like to to see the familiar scenery. I love birds so it bothers me otherwise.
I used to know Veronica Cartwright, the actress who was in "the Birds". She said the movie scared them making it. The scene where the birds peck their way through the wall really scared her - they were bird heads mounted on hammers.
How are you Tom? I have been thinking about you and Jurate. Losing someone we love is heartbreaking even when we know it’s the right time.
Doing OK. Wrote "The End" to the current manuscript last night and sent everything to England this morning. Went out to dinner Saturday a week ago with a woman friend here who told me "You need to go out" so we had dinner at my favorite Italian restaurant here I hadn't been able to go to for years. Turns out one of the reasons we get along so well over the years we've known each other is we both survived the same kind of mother - a narcissist with a borderline personality. Big Sis is coming down in two weeks to get her stuff taken care of and then I can reorganize the house. Every once in awhile one of the cats will yowl and it sounds like her calling "Tom." I even went out to the living room to check the first time that happened.
Congratulations on getting the manuscript done! And happy to hear you are getting out with friends. It is very cool when you can stay close with someone over the years and discover you share a similar history that impacted your life. I’m sure the cats are yelling “Tom”. Lots of change and they sense more to come. They will be fine though as long as they have you.
I am too, but much more selectively than a lot of friends. but I did see "North By Northwest" three or four times when it came out, even if I was less than ten.
during my summers in Detroit, I'd take advantage of their fabulous late-night movie channel. one morning I was telling everybody about this really good actor I hadn't previously known about and how I couldn't understand why he wasn't a really big movie star. they asked me who it was and I said Henry Fonda. I was really offended when they couldn't stop laughing.
again, I was, like, eight.
I used to be a member of the Alex Film Society here - we did screenings at the Alex Theater an old restored movie palace in Glendale. We did "North By Northwest" and I got Ernest Lehman to come over and tell the story of how they came up with the end. He and Hitchcock argued for weeks about how to get them off George Washington's face - finally Lehman just stopped and said "Hitch, it's a movie - of course they get off! If we've done it right, the audience will let us do anything." And Hitchcock realized that was right, and so they did the "give me your hand up" into the sleeper car on the train. Which totally works. Martin Landau steps on Grant's hand, a shot rings out, cut to Leo G. Carrol and the boys on the bluff, Landau falls over, Grant pulls her up and.... there you are. Landau was also great for the interview - he was there with Lehman. But the best interview I got to do there was when we had "Singin' in the Rain," (my all time favorite movie) and got Donald O'Connor (who was still touring with a dinner theater show) and Cyd Charisse - I got to go over and pick her up from her really really nice home and drive her to Glendale. In her 80s and still - wow!
I too loved working on the WB lot, like Paramount and Sony it had the old Hollywood feel from the moment you entered the gates, Universal not so much so and sadly not even close with the Mouse House which was my least favorite by a long shot. You are spot on about Dalton Trumbo, he was brilliant.
Whenever I was at Disney, I kept waiting for the Staatzpolizei to tap my shoulder.
I know how you felt, the place was run like a police state. By the way have you ever read Trumbo’s “Johnny Got His Gun”, I’m sure it was part of the reason McCarthy went after him with the HUAC.
Every time I hear La Marseillaise, my first thought is Casablanca. And it nearly makes me tear up. Those brave people standing up for Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité.
And all the actors in that scene are refugees from Nazism. Conrad Veidt, the actor who played Major Strasser was one of Germany's leading movie stars, chased out of the country for having a Jewish wife. He dedicated his work throughout the war to portraying Nazis as scum.
And Veidt was SO good at it.
Reflecting on Warner Bros., it’s much easier to see how conservatives have come to see the entertainment media, whether film, TV, Broadway, etc., as inherently biased against them. Because it is. Art seeks truth, light, compassion. Conservatism, certainly in the US, misdirects, hides in the dark, appeals to selfishness.
My only Warner story, and it’s a bit of a stretch to call it my story: My predecessor as Chair of the Board at La Jolla Playhouse (c. 1993) was Dr. Willard VanderLaan, by that time a leading endocrinologist . However, in the 50’s he was a physician in Los Angeles. One of his patients was Jack Warner. Dr. VanderLaan delighted in telling the story of how the Tyrant of Tinseltown, the famously ruthless and cutting Jack Warner, would always stand when Dr. V entered the room. The gesture of respect was quite welcome.
That's a good story and kudos to you for supporting LaJolla Playhouse.
It kind of gets in your blood, you know.