Tuesday, November 30, 2010
‘Rosebud’ and the Enigma of Citizen Kane
MOVIE TRIVIA
On a warm July day in 1939, a young man sat in the Hollywood office of George J. Schaefer, president of RKO Radio Pictures. His name was Orson Welles. Barely 24 years old, he had been summoned to discuss a contract. Only eight years before he had been in the graduating class of 1931 at the Todd School for Boys, a toney prep school in Woodstock, Illinois.
Welles’s Early Life
Orphaned at 15 and forgoing college, he made his way to New York. In three years, he was acting with Katherine Cornell in a lavish Broadway production of Romeo and Juliet. This was followed by formation of his Mercury acting company, which took its name from a small theatre on West 41st Street in New York. Radio work followed for the Mercury players, culminating in the sensational War of the Worlds broadcast that convinced the entire country that a Martian invasion was taking place.
Schaefer had lured Welles, by then widely described as a “boy wonder,” to Hollywood with a proposal guaranteeing a degree of artistic control unusual in the highly compartmented movie industry. Welles's first film is to be an adaptation of the Joseph Conrad novel, Heart of Darkness. But Conrad's books do not easily adapt to the screen, and the film’s budget of more than a million dollars made it difficult to find financing. The project was eventually abandoned, leaving Welles at loose ends.
Another project, The Smiler with the Knife, an adaptation of Cecil Day Lewis’s novel of that title, was considered and allowed to die largely because RKO lacked faith in Lucille Ball’s ability to carry the feminine lead. At this point, the idea for RKO Production #281, the movie that would eventually be known as Citizen Kane, came into being. Welles planned to cast it largely with his Mercury Theater players.
Screenwriting
Welles immediately sought the services of a screenwriting professional to create a script. He chose Joseph Mankiewicz, who had been writing screenplays since 1926. Mankiewicz came up with the idea of a biographical film loosely based on the life of newspaper and magazine publishing tycoon William Randolph Hearst, told in a series of flashbacks after his death by those who knew him best.
With Mankiewicz’s story line, Welles at last had found a subject that offered timeliness, vast wealth and fodder for tabloid gossip. The subject was also tailor-made to suit Welles’s own reputation for daring brashness and love of publicity.
Mankiewicz, aware of the cumbersome nature of multiple, repetitive flashbacks, also came up with the idea for an ingeniously simple plot gimmick. A mysterious deathbed utterance would be the key to Charles Foster Kane. The film opens with a tight close-up of an aged Kane voicing the single word, “Rosebud.” Not until the final scene is the significance of “Rosebud” revealed, when a child’s sled with that trade name is consigned to the flames of a bonfire during the disposal of items hoarded by now-deceased publishing magnate Kane.
Years later, in a 1989 article in The New York Review of Books, however, novelist Gore Vidal revealed that Mankiewicz had slyly chosen the word “Rosebud” because Hearst’s alcoholic mistress, Marion Davies, had told friends that it was Hearst’s pet name for an intimate part of her anatomy.
Mankiewicz, who had a serious drinking problem, was sent to a desert ranch at Victorville, California, miles away from the temptations of Hollywood. Welles’s Mercury Theatre associate John Houseman was delegated to watch over him. A secretary accompanied them to transcribe his dictation. Six weeks later Mankiewicz produced an overlong 250-page script with the working title of American--later changed to John Citizen, USA), embodying many of the elements that went into the final film.
Welles and Mankiewicz next set to work reducing its length. During this process, Welles supplied many details from his own life and experience, and his fingerprints are all over the script. Who made most of the changes in the revision of the script is still in dispute. There are proponents for each side, and the question may never be settled.
Three months later, the seventh draft, labeled “Third Revised Final Draft,” was accepted and became the shooting script. A total of $1,082,798 was budgeted. Ever since the fourth preliminary draft, the film had been titled Citizen Kane. More than a million dollars was not considered excessive for an A-type production, but a budget crisis at RKO reduced this number to $737,740.
The final film actually came in at $823,240 (over budget by $85,500). Set construction costs for Citizen Kane totaled only $59,207. Compare that figure to The Hunchback of Notre Dame for which the set cost was $243,838.
Art Direction and Cinematography
No small part of the critical success of Citizen Kane can be attributed to the work of two comparatively youthful professionals: art director Perry Ferguson, 39, and cinematographer Gregg Toland, 36. Director and lead actor Welles was 25.
Ferguson made Kane’s Xanadu even larger and more baronial than Hearst’s own castle at San Simeon in California. Welles later said proudly that Citizen Kane looked like it had cost more than it actually did. Toland broke many of Hollywood’s filming rules to give Citizen Kane a new and startlingly dramatic look.
A diminutive man (he stood a little over five feet tall), Toland was innovative and a veritable human dynamo as a cinematographer. Welles later called him “the greatest cameraman I ever worked with—and also the fastest.” Toland would die in 1948 of a coronary thrombosis at the comparatively young age of 44.
His cinematographer also introduced Welles to deep-focus photography. A series of new developments made this possible. In 1932, the Mitchell Camera Corporation introduced a new motion picture camera, the BNC, which incorporated a built-in noise-damping device. In 1938, Eastman Kodak introduced its new Super XX film stock, which was four times faster than its Super X. In 1939, light transmission in lenses was improved by coating lens surfaces with an ultra-thin layer of magnesium fluoride.
Toland had used BNC cameras on the film Wuthering Heights, for which he won the 1939 Academy award for black-and-white cinematography, and on John Ford’s The Long Voyage Home, nominated for the 1941 Academy award in the same category. These advances opened a new world of striking new visual effects for Welles in Citizen Kane, including long takes, daring camera angles, and the absence of conventional back-and-forth intercutting between players in a scene.
Release and ReceptionBy operating a closed set, limiting access to rushes (the first, unedited prints of a scene) and managing publicity, Welles had sagaciously downplayed William Randolph Hearst’s connection to the film, which was actually an amalgam of several well known wealthy tycoons. Having grown up in the Midwest, Welles had added details from the life of Samuel Insull, Chicago utility magnate, who had built that city’s huge Civic Opera House for his wife, an aspiring opera singer.
With a planned release date in February of 1941, it became necessary to make arrangements for advance screenings to meet magazine deadlines. A rough cut was prepared and previewed by a number of carefully selected writers. Hedda Hopper, one of the two bitter rivals among Hollywood gossip columnists (Hearst writer Louella Parsons was the other) had not been invited, and so a showing was hastily arranged for her. This made Parsons furious and so another showing was arranged for her. She stormed out while the film was still running when she realized how unhappy its thinly disguised portrayal of Charles Foster Kane would make her boss.
Citizen Kane quickly became too hot to handle. Newspapers in the Hearst chain retaliated by banning reviews of all RKO films. Realizing that a broad ban would make readers unhappy, Hearst editors soon limited it to a single film, Citizen Kane. Exhibitors declined to book the film after Hearst papers refused to accept advertising for it. Word next spread that Hearst’s papers were about to print editorials attacking Hollywood’s use of refugee directors and actors in jobs that could have been filled by Americans.
To placate Hearst, alarmed movie moguls got together and offered to reimburse RKO for the total cost of Citizen Kane if the studio would burn the negative and destroy all prints of the film. RKO President Schaefer later revealed that he had not disclosed this offer to his board of directors out of fear that they would have agreed to it.
When New York’s Radio City Music Hall succumbed to pressure and canceled its premiere of Citizen Kane, RKO opened the film at the studio’s own Palace Theater in Times Square, followed by openings in other major cities. Reviews were universally positive, with encomiums like “one of the most interesting and technically superior films that has ever come out of a Hollywood studio,” or “staggering and belongs at once among the great screen achievements,” and “one of the outstanding films of all times.”
Despite nine nominations for Academy awards, the film only earned one Oscar--for best original screenplay, shared by Mankiewicz and Welles. After its initial release, Citizen Kane was neglected and forgotten until RKO became one of the first studios to sell its film library to television. Over the years, this trail-breaking film has been recognized as one of the greatest films ever made. In an annual poll by the British magazine Sight & Sound, Citizen Kane has been named the top film in its Top Ten list since 1962. In 1997, the American Film Institute named Citizen Kane as #1 in its list of 100 best films in 100 years of filmmaking. In the AFI’s list of the top 100 movie quotes, “Rosebud” is #17.
Memorable Quotes
Charles Foster Kane: [last words] Rosebud.
Reporter: If you could've found out what Rosebud meant, I bet that would've explained everything.Thompson: No, I don't think so; no. Mr. Kane was a man who got everything he wanted and then lost it. Maybe Rosebud was something he couldn't get, or something he lost. Anyway, it wouldn't have explained anything . . . I don't think any word can explain a man's life. No, I guess Rosebud is just a . . . piece in a jigsaw puzzle . . . a missing piece.
Bernstein: A fellow will remember a lot of things you wouldn't think he'd remember. You take me. One day, back in 1896, I was crossing over to Jersey on the ferry, and as we pulled out, there was another ferry pulling in, and on it there was a girl waiting to get off. A white dress she had on. She was carrying a white parasol. I only saw her for one second. She didn't see me at all, but I'll bet a month hasn't gone by since that I haven't thought of that girl.
Charles Foster Kane: You know, Mr. Bernstein, if I hadn't been very rich, I might have been a really great man.Thatcher: Don't you think you are?
Charles Foster Kane: I think I did pretty well under the circumstances.
Thatcher: What would you like to have been?Charles Foster Kane: Everything you hate.
Charles Foster Kane: You're right, I did lose a million dollars last year. I expect to lose a million dollars this year. I expect to lose a million dollars next year. You know, Mr. Thatcher, at the rate of a million dollars a year, I'll have to close this place in . . . 60 years.
Bernstein: There's a lot of statues in Europe you haven't bought yet.
Charles Foster Kane: You can't blame me. They've been making statues for some two thousand years, and I've only been collecting for five.
Charles Foster Kane: As Charles Foster Kane who owns eighty-two thousand, six hundred and thirty-four shares of public transit--you see, I do have a general idea of my holdings--I sympathize with you. Charles Foster Kane is a scoundrel. His paper should be run out of town. A committee should be formed to boycott him. You may, if you can form such a committee, put me down for a contribution of one thousand dollars.
Charles Foster Kane: Read the cable.Bernstein: "Girls delightful in Cuba. Stop. Could send you prose poems about scenery, but don't feel right spending your money. Stop. There is no war in Cuba, signed Wheeler." Any answer?Charles Foster Kane: Yes. "Dear Wheeler: You provide the prose poems. I'll provide the war."
Charles Foster Kane: Are we going to declare war on Spain, or are we not?Jedediah Leland: The Inquirer already has.Charles Foster Kane: [jokingly] You long-faced, overdressed anarchist!Jedediah Leland: I am NOT overdressed!Charles Foster Kane: You are too! Mr. Bernstein, look at his necktie!
Leland: You don't care about anything except you. You just want to persuade people that you love 'em so much that they ought to love you back. Only you want love on your own terms. Something to be played your way, according to your rules.
Charles Foster Kane: Hello Jedediah.
Jedediah Leland: Hello, Charlie. I didn't know we were speaking . . .Charles Foster Kane: Sure, we're speaking, Jedediah. You're fired.
[On Kane finishing Leland's bad review of Susan's opera singing]
Thompson: Everybody knows that story, Mr. Leland. But why did he do it? How could a man write a notice like that?Leland: You just don't know Charlie. He thought that by finishing that notice he could show me he was an honest man. He was always trying to prove something. The whole thing about Susie being an opera singer, that was trying to prove something. You know what the headline was the day before the election, "Candidate Kane found in love nest with quote, singer, unquote." He was gonna take the quotes off the singer.
Susan Kane: Forty-nine thousand acres of nothing but scenery and statues. I'm lonesome.
Susan: I don't know many people.Charles Foster Kane: I know too many people. I guess we're both lonely.
Susan Kane: Love! You don't love anybody! Me or anybody else! You want to be loved - that's all you want! I'm Charles Foster Kane. Whatever you want - just name it and it's yours! Only love me! Don't expect me to love you.
[Susan is leaving Kane]
Kane: [pleading] Don't go, Susan. You mustn't go. You can't do this to me.
Susan: I see. So it's YOU who this is being done to. It's not me at all. Not how I feel. Not what it means to me.[laughs]
Susan: I can't do this to you?
[odd smile]
Susan: Oh, yes I can.
Leland: I can remember everything. That's my curse, young man. It's the greatest curse that's ever been inflicted on the human race: memory.
Bernstein: Old age. It's the only disease, Mr. Thompson, that you don't look forward to being cured of.
Reporter 1: What's that?Reporter 2: Another Venus.
Reporter 1: Twenty-five thousand bucks. That's a lot of money to pay for a dame without a head.
Thompson: Sentimental fellow, aren't you?Raymond: Hmmm . . . yes and no.
Raymond: Throw that junk in the fire.
On a warm July day in 1939, a young man sat in the Hollywood office of George J. Schaefer, president of RKO Radio Pictures. His name was Orson Welles. Barely 24 years old, he had been summoned to discuss a contract. Only eight years before he had been in the graduating class of 1931 at the Todd School for Boys, a toney prep school in Woodstock, Illinois.
Welles’s Early Life
Orphaned at 15 and forgoing college, he made his way to New York. In three years, he was acting with Katherine Cornell in a lavish Broadway production of Romeo and Juliet. This was followed by formation of his Mercury acting company, which took its name from a small theatre on West 41st Street in New York. Radio work followed for the Mercury players, culminating in the sensational War of the Worlds broadcast that convinced the entire country that a Martian invasion was taking place.
Schaefer had lured Welles, by then widely described as a “boy wonder,” to Hollywood with a proposal guaranteeing a degree of artistic control unusual in the highly compartmented movie industry. Welles's first film is to be an adaptation of the Joseph Conrad novel, Heart of Darkness. But Conrad's books do not easily adapt to the screen, and the film’s budget of more than a million dollars made it difficult to find financing. The project was eventually abandoned, leaving Welles at loose ends.
Another project, The Smiler with the Knife, an adaptation of Cecil Day Lewis’s novel of that title, was considered and allowed to die largely because RKO lacked faith in Lucille Ball’s ability to carry the feminine lead. At this point, the idea for RKO Production #281, the movie that would eventually be known as Citizen Kane, came into being. Welles planned to cast it largely with his Mercury Theater players.
Screenwriting
Welles immediately sought the services of a screenwriting professional to create a script. He chose Joseph Mankiewicz, who had been writing screenplays since 1926. Mankiewicz came up with the idea of a biographical film loosely based on the life of newspaper and magazine publishing tycoon William Randolph Hearst, told in a series of flashbacks after his death by those who knew him best.
With Mankiewicz’s story line, Welles at last had found a subject that offered timeliness, vast wealth and fodder for tabloid gossip. The subject was also tailor-made to suit Welles’s own reputation for daring brashness and love of publicity.
Mankiewicz, aware of the cumbersome nature of multiple, repetitive flashbacks, also came up with the idea for an ingeniously simple plot gimmick. A mysterious deathbed utterance would be the key to Charles Foster Kane. The film opens with a tight close-up of an aged Kane voicing the single word, “Rosebud.” Not until the final scene is the significance of “Rosebud” revealed, when a child’s sled with that trade name is consigned to the flames of a bonfire during the disposal of items hoarded by now-deceased publishing magnate Kane.
Years later, in a 1989 article in The New York Review of Books, however, novelist Gore Vidal revealed that Mankiewicz had slyly chosen the word “Rosebud” because Hearst’s alcoholic mistress, Marion Davies, had told friends that it was Hearst’s pet name for an intimate part of her anatomy.
Mankiewicz, who had a serious drinking problem, was sent to a desert ranch at Victorville, California, miles away from the temptations of Hollywood. Welles’s Mercury Theatre associate John Houseman was delegated to watch over him. A secretary accompanied them to transcribe his dictation. Six weeks later Mankiewicz produced an overlong 250-page script with the working title of American--later changed to John Citizen, USA), embodying many of the elements that went into the final film.
Welles and Mankiewicz next set to work reducing its length. During this process, Welles supplied many details from his own life and experience, and his fingerprints are all over the script. Who made most of the changes in the revision of the script is still in dispute. There are proponents for each side, and the question may never be settled.
Three months later, the seventh draft, labeled “Third Revised Final Draft,” was accepted and became the shooting script. A total of $1,082,798 was budgeted. Ever since the fourth preliminary draft, the film had been titled Citizen Kane. More than a million dollars was not considered excessive for an A-type production, but a budget crisis at RKO reduced this number to $737,740.
The final film actually came in at $823,240 (over budget by $85,500). Set construction costs for Citizen Kane totaled only $59,207. Compare that figure to The Hunchback of Notre Dame for which the set cost was $243,838.
Art Direction and Cinematography
No small part of the critical success of Citizen Kane can be attributed to the work of two comparatively youthful professionals: art director Perry Ferguson, 39, and cinematographer Gregg Toland, 36. Director and lead actor Welles was 25.
Ferguson made Kane’s Xanadu even larger and more baronial than Hearst’s own castle at San Simeon in California. Welles later said proudly that Citizen Kane looked like it had cost more than it actually did. Toland broke many of Hollywood’s filming rules to give Citizen Kane a new and startlingly dramatic look.
A diminutive man (he stood a little over five feet tall), Toland was innovative and a veritable human dynamo as a cinematographer. Welles later called him “the greatest cameraman I ever worked with—and also the fastest.” Toland would die in 1948 of a coronary thrombosis at the comparatively young age of 44.
His cinematographer also introduced Welles to deep-focus photography. A series of new developments made this possible. In 1932, the Mitchell Camera Corporation introduced a new motion picture camera, the BNC, which incorporated a built-in noise-damping device. In 1938, Eastman Kodak introduced its new Super XX film stock, which was four times faster than its Super X. In 1939, light transmission in lenses was improved by coating lens surfaces with an ultra-thin layer of magnesium fluoride.
Toland had used BNC cameras on the film Wuthering Heights, for which he won the 1939 Academy award for black-and-white cinematography, and on John Ford’s The Long Voyage Home, nominated for the 1941 Academy award in the same category. These advances opened a new world of striking new visual effects for Welles in Citizen Kane, including long takes, daring camera angles, and the absence of conventional back-and-forth intercutting between players in a scene.
Release and ReceptionBy operating a closed set, limiting access to rushes (the first, unedited prints of a scene) and managing publicity, Welles had sagaciously downplayed William Randolph Hearst’s connection to the film, which was actually an amalgam of several well known wealthy tycoons. Having grown up in the Midwest, Welles had added details from the life of Samuel Insull, Chicago utility magnate, who had built that city’s huge Civic Opera House for his wife, an aspiring opera singer.
With a planned release date in February of 1941, it became necessary to make arrangements for advance screenings to meet magazine deadlines. A rough cut was prepared and previewed by a number of carefully selected writers. Hedda Hopper, one of the two bitter rivals among Hollywood gossip columnists (Hearst writer Louella Parsons was the other) had not been invited, and so a showing was hastily arranged for her. This made Parsons furious and so another showing was arranged for her. She stormed out while the film was still running when she realized how unhappy its thinly disguised portrayal of Charles Foster Kane would make her boss.
Citizen Kane quickly became too hot to handle. Newspapers in the Hearst chain retaliated by banning reviews of all RKO films. Realizing that a broad ban would make readers unhappy, Hearst editors soon limited it to a single film, Citizen Kane. Exhibitors declined to book the film after Hearst papers refused to accept advertising for it. Word next spread that Hearst’s papers were about to print editorials attacking Hollywood’s use of refugee directors and actors in jobs that could have been filled by Americans.
To placate Hearst, alarmed movie moguls got together and offered to reimburse RKO for the total cost of Citizen Kane if the studio would burn the negative and destroy all prints of the film. RKO President Schaefer later revealed that he had not disclosed this offer to his board of directors out of fear that they would have agreed to it.
When New York’s Radio City Music Hall succumbed to pressure and canceled its premiere of Citizen Kane, RKO opened the film at the studio’s own Palace Theater in Times Square, followed by openings in other major cities. Reviews were universally positive, with encomiums like “one of the most interesting and technically superior films that has ever come out of a Hollywood studio,” or “staggering and belongs at once among the great screen achievements,” and “one of the outstanding films of all times.”
Despite nine nominations for Academy awards, the film only earned one Oscar--for best original screenplay, shared by Mankiewicz and Welles. After its initial release, Citizen Kane was neglected and forgotten until RKO became one of the first studios to sell its film library to television. Over the years, this trail-breaking film has been recognized as one of the greatest films ever made. In an annual poll by the British magazine Sight & Sound, Citizen Kane has been named the top film in its Top Ten list since 1962. In 1997, the American Film Institute named Citizen Kane as #1 in its list of 100 best films in 100 years of filmmaking. In the AFI’s list of the top 100 movie quotes, “Rosebud” is #17.
Memorable Quotes
Charles Foster Kane: [last words] Rosebud.
Reporter: If you could've found out what Rosebud meant, I bet that would've explained everything.Thompson: No, I don't think so; no. Mr. Kane was a man who got everything he wanted and then lost it. Maybe Rosebud was something he couldn't get, or something he lost. Anyway, it wouldn't have explained anything . . . I don't think any word can explain a man's life. No, I guess Rosebud is just a . . . piece in a jigsaw puzzle . . . a missing piece.
Bernstein: A fellow will remember a lot of things you wouldn't think he'd remember. You take me. One day, back in 1896, I was crossing over to Jersey on the ferry, and as we pulled out, there was another ferry pulling in, and on it there was a girl waiting to get off. A white dress she had on. She was carrying a white parasol. I only saw her for one second. She didn't see me at all, but I'll bet a month hasn't gone by since that I haven't thought of that girl.
Charles Foster Kane: You know, Mr. Bernstein, if I hadn't been very rich, I might have been a really great man.Thatcher: Don't you think you are?
Charles Foster Kane: I think I did pretty well under the circumstances.
Thatcher: What would you like to have been?Charles Foster Kane: Everything you hate.
Charles Foster Kane: You're right, I did lose a million dollars last year. I expect to lose a million dollars this year. I expect to lose a million dollars next year. You know, Mr. Thatcher, at the rate of a million dollars a year, I'll have to close this place in . . . 60 years.
Bernstein: There's a lot of statues in Europe you haven't bought yet.
Charles Foster Kane: You can't blame me. They've been making statues for some two thousand years, and I've only been collecting for five.
Charles Foster Kane: As Charles Foster Kane who owns eighty-two thousand, six hundred and thirty-four shares of public transit--you see, I do have a general idea of my holdings--I sympathize with you. Charles Foster Kane is a scoundrel. His paper should be run out of town. A committee should be formed to boycott him. You may, if you can form such a committee, put me down for a contribution of one thousand dollars.
Charles Foster Kane: Read the cable.Bernstein: "Girls delightful in Cuba. Stop. Could send you prose poems about scenery, but don't feel right spending your money. Stop. There is no war in Cuba, signed Wheeler." Any answer?Charles Foster Kane: Yes. "Dear Wheeler: You provide the prose poems. I'll provide the war."
Charles Foster Kane: Are we going to declare war on Spain, or are we not?Jedediah Leland: The Inquirer already has.Charles Foster Kane: [jokingly] You long-faced, overdressed anarchist!Jedediah Leland: I am NOT overdressed!Charles Foster Kane: You are too! Mr. Bernstein, look at his necktie!
Leland: You don't care about anything except you. You just want to persuade people that you love 'em so much that they ought to love you back. Only you want love on your own terms. Something to be played your way, according to your rules.
Charles Foster Kane: Hello Jedediah.
Jedediah Leland: Hello, Charlie. I didn't know we were speaking . . .Charles Foster Kane: Sure, we're speaking, Jedediah. You're fired.
[On Kane finishing Leland's bad review of Susan's opera singing]
Thompson: Everybody knows that story, Mr. Leland. But why did he do it? How could a man write a notice like that?Leland: You just don't know Charlie. He thought that by finishing that notice he could show me he was an honest man. He was always trying to prove something. The whole thing about Susie being an opera singer, that was trying to prove something. You know what the headline was the day before the election, "Candidate Kane found in love nest with quote, singer, unquote." He was gonna take the quotes off the singer.
Susan Kane: Forty-nine thousand acres of nothing but scenery and statues. I'm lonesome.
Susan: I don't know many people.Charles Foster Kane: I know too many people. I guess we're both lonely.
Susan Kane: Love! You don't love anybody! Me or anybody else! You want to be loved - that's all you want! I'm Charles Foster Kane. Whatever you want - just name it and it's yours! Only love me! Don't expect me to love you.
[Susan is leaving Kane]
Kane: [pleading] Don't go, Susan. You mustn't go. You can't do this to me.
Susan: I see. So it's YOU who this is being done to. It's not me at all. Not how I feel. Not what it means to me.[laughs]
Susan: I can't do this to you?
[odd smile]
Susan: Oh, yes I can.
Leland: I can remember everything. That's my curse, young man. It's the greatest curse that's ever been inflicted on the human race: memory.
Bernstein: Old age. It's the only disease, Mr. Thompson, that you don't look forward to being cured of.
Reporter 1: What's that?Reporter 2: Another Venus.
Reporter 1: Twenty-five thousand bucks. That's a lot of money to pay for a dame without a head.
Thompson: Sentimental fellow, aren't you?Raymond: Hmmm . . . yes and no.
Raymond: Throw that junk in the fire.
Labels: Movie Trivia
Monday, June 01, 2009
'Frankly, My Dear, I Don’t Give a Damn'
MOVIE TRIVIA
Few books are so closely identified with a geographical region—Georgia and the Old South—as Gone with the Wind. Published in 1936, this 1,037-page tome was discovered by Macmillan editor Harold Latham on a swing through the South in search, of new writing talent. Its author, Margaret Mitchell, was a petite (4 feet 9-1/2 inches tall) native of Atlanta who had labored between 1926 and 1929 on her massive manuscript and then put it aside. So large was the Mitchell manuscript Latham had to buy another suitcase in which to carry it.
One of the most popular books of all time, the novel was priced at three dollars and sold more than a million copies in the first six months, a phenomenal feat considering that in 1936 the country was just emerging from the Great Depression. This Civil War-era masterpiece has been translated into twenty-seven languages. More than 30 million copies of have been sold worldwide in 38 countries. Approximately 250,000 copies are still sold each year.
Among the titles Mitchell had considered for her novel were Tomorrow Is Another Day, Tote the Weary Load, Milestones, Ba! Ba! Blacksheep, Not in Our Stars, and Bugles Sang True. She finally chose a phrase from a favorite Ernest Dowson poem, “Cynara”: “I have forgot much Cynara! Gone with the wind.” In Mitchell’s early drafts, the main character was named “Pansy O’Hara,” and the O’Hara plantation, later known as Tara, was called “Fountenoy Hall.”
Pirated galleys of the book turned up at some Hollywood studios, but Macmillan’s asking price was an exorbitant $100,000. Few studios expressed interest even after Macmillan reduced the figure to $60,000. Daryl F. Zanuck of 20th Century Fox offered $35,000 for film rights to the book. One week after Gone with the Wind was published, MGM producer David 0. Selznick topped this with a bid of $50,000, the highest sum that had ever been paid for an author’s first novel.
Realizing later that he had grossly underpaid Mitchell, in 1942, Selznick paid her an additional $50,000 as a bonus. Selznick had already produced three big movies based on classic novels, Little Women, David Copperfield and A Tale of Two Cities. Before becoming an independent producer, Selznick had worked at MGM, the company run by his wife’s father. The joke at MGM was “the son-in-law also rises,” a play on the title of the Hemingway novel.
The Screenwriters
Sidney Howard agreed to write the screenplay for a salary of $2,000 a week. To be free from studio interference, he insisted on writing it at his Berkshire farm in Massachusetts, 3,000 miles away from studio interference. His first draft would have made a movie more than five hours long. Howard reluctantly agreed to leave his Massachusetts farm and come to Hollywood to work on another draft with Selznick and George Cukor, the director assigned to the picture.
The second draft turned out to be 15 pages longer than the first. Sidney Howard received sole screen credit. However, in typical Hollywood fashion, a total of eleven other screenwriters (including Selznick) would work on the script. Tragically, Howard never saw the finished film. He died on his farm near Great Barrington, Massachusetts, in August of 1939. One of his farm workers had left the heavy farm tractor in gear, and when Howard started it by cranking it, the machine lurched forward and crushed him against a barn wall.
The StarsThe four principals were billed on the film’s posters in this order: Clark Gable, followed by Leslie Howard (birth name: Leslie Howard Stainer), Olivia de Havilland and “Presenting Vivien Leigh.” Leigh’s billing was quickly changed to just below Gable’s when she won the Oscar for best actress. Three of the four top-billed actors died at relatively young ages: Leslie Howard at 50, Vivien Leigh at 53, and Clark Gable at 59. Olivia de Havilland remains alive at the age of 93. Ironically, her character is the only principal character that dies in the film. David Selznick died at 63. Accident-prone author Margaret Mitchell died at 49, struck by a car while crossing Peachtree Street in Atlanta.
Leslie Howard was a passenger on KLM flight 777 from Lisbon to London on June 1, 1943. It was shot down by German fighter planes over the Bay of Biscay in the mistaken belief that Winston Churchill also was a passenger. Frustrated by ethnic typecasting, Butterfly McQueen, who played Prissy in Gone with the Wind, left films for occasional roles on TV. At the age of 64, she earned a B.S. in political science from New York's City College in 1975. She died in 1995 from burns received when a kerosene heater in her cottage in Augusta, Georgia, malfunctioned and burst into flames . She suffered burns over 70% of her body, which she willed to medical science.
Of the many actresses screen-tested for the role of Scarlett O’Hara, only Paulette Goddard and Vivien Leigh were tested in color. One theory holds that producer David Selznick had already secretly signed Vivian Leigh for the role as early as February 1938. The nationwide “Search For Scarlett O’Hara,” during which thousands of dollars were spent “testing” aspiring actresses for the part, was actually a clever publicity stunt on Selznick’s part designed to maintain interest in a very expensive film for which he did not yet have the money to produce.
The only actors producer Selznick ever seriously considered for the role of Rhett Butler were Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, Errol Flynn and Ronald Colman. Gable didn’t see himself in a period film, nor did he believe he could live up to the public’s anticipation of the character. Two years earlier, hopelessly miscast, Gable had played in a costume drama, Parnell, with Myrna Loy. The film was roundly panned by critics and avoided by the movie-going public. Gable later regretted accepting the role. Selznick persuaded him to sign on to Gone with the Wind by offering a $50,000 signing bonus that enabled him to divorce his second wife, Maria Franklin, and marry Carole Lombard.
Very few of the principal cast members were happy with the characters they were portraying. Leslie Howard privately felt that he was much too old to play Ashley Wilkes (the character was supposed to be about 21 at the start of the film and Howard had been born in 1893, making him 46)). He wore extra make-up and a hairpiece to make him appear younger, but complained that his costumes made him look like “a fairy doorman” at a hotel. Selznick was able to persuade him to take the part by offering him credit as producer of another film, Intermezzo: A Love Story, in which he would star with Ingrid Bergman. Rand Brooks, who played the role of Charles Hamilton and died early in the story, was actually a rough outdoorsman and didn’t like playing a wimpy character. Butterfly McQueen disliked the negative stereotype of her character.
Judy Garland was the leading contender for the role of Scarlett’s younger sister, Carreen, but was tied up with commitments to The Wizard of Oz, another film being directed by Victor Fleming. Her “Andy Hardy” series co-star, Ann Rutherford, was cast. Veteran actress Hattie McDaniel was cast as Mammy after other African-Americans including Louise Beavers, Etta McDaniel, Ruby Dandridge, and Hattie Noel were briefly considered for the part. McDaniel became the first African-American to be nominated for—and win—an Academy Award. The fact that McDaniel would be unable to attend the premiere in racially segregated Atlanta annoyed Clark Gable so much that he threatened to boycott the premiere unless she was invited.
The Directors
Production of the film started on January 26, 1939, with George Cukor as director. Gable’s and Cukor’s personalities were poles apart. Cukor was a fussy, intellectual type and vague in his instructions to actors. He was also openly gay with effeminate mannerisms and was also considered to be a “woman’s director.” Cukor’s slow, methodical style reminded Gable of John Stahl, director of the ill-fated Parnell.
Legend has it that Clark Gable complained about director George Cukor, but nothing in Selznick’s internal memos indicates or suggests that Clark Gable played any role in the dismissal of Cukor. Instead, they show Selznick’s mounting dissatisfaction with Cukor’s slow pace and the quality of his work. After two weeks of shooting, Cukor was already five days behind in the schedule, a delay blamed by David Selznick on Cukor’s perfectionism and fondness for retakes. Louis B. Mayer, head of MGM was also unhappy with the rushes he had seen.
Selznick asked Gable, now an old hand in the movie business, for a suggestion. He recommended Victor Fleming, who had directed Gable in Red Dust and who was almost finished with The Wizard of Oz. To appease Cukor, MGM gave him another film to direct, The Women, with an all-female cast. On March 2 David Selznick restarted Gone with the Wind with Victor Fleming as director.
When Victor Fleming took over as director, he rejected the shooting script, telling Selznick, “David, your (expletive) script is no (expletive) good.” Selznick panicked and called novelist Ben Hecht, offering him $15,000 for a quick rewrite. Production was shut down for 17 days while Ben Hecht rewrote it. Hecht thought Sidney Howard’s original script was superb and used it as the basis for his rewrite, which was largely a scissors and paste-pot job. Hecht cut Sidney Howard’s screenplay to give more focus to the story of Scarlett and Rhett and to eliminate some of the historical pageantry.
Almost half of Cukor’s scenes were scrapped or later re-shot. When Fleming received the revised script, he calculated that there were 650 separate scenes to be filmed. In order to complete the picture in time for a Christmas release, he would have to shoot three pages of script a day, each the equivalent of only two minutes of film time.
Although he had been dismissed from the production, George Cukor privately continued to coach both Vivien Leigh and Olivia de Haviland on weekends at their request. One of the few scenes directed by Cukor to survive to the final cut of the film is the birth of Melanie’s baby. Cinematographer Lee Garmes was fired a month into production because his footage was deemed to be too dark. Ernest Haller and Technicolor Company cameraman Ray Rennahan replaced him.
First Facts and HonorsHalf a million feet of film were shot. This was edited down to 20,000 feet. There are more than 50 speaking roles and 2,400 extras in the film. All seven of Hollywood’s then-existing Technicolor cameras were used to film the burning of the Atlanta railroad depot. Estimated production costs were an unprecedented $4.25 million. Up until that time, only Ben-Hur (1925) and Hell’s Angels (1930) had cost more. It was the longest and most expensive film ever made. It went on to earn the highest receipts and the most Academy awards.
The premiere in Atlanta on December 15, 1939, at the 2,500-seat Loew’s Grand theater had been planned for months—almost as long as the shooting of the film. The governor declared a state holiday. Programs were prepared showing the najor performers in the film, but the programs distributed at opening eliminated McDaniel’s photograph. The cast flew to Atlanta—that is, the white members of the cast. Hattie McDaniel, Oscar Polk, Butterfly McQueen and the other blacks in the cast remained in Hollywood. Their presence would have caused problems in racially segregated Atlanta. Clark Gable was upset at the exclusion of McDaniel and threatened to boycott the ceremonies until McDaniel persuaded him to participate.
The movie’s line “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” was voted as the #1 movie quote (out of 100). by the American Film Institute. The word” frankly” does not appear in the book; a screenwriter added it. Contrary to popular belief, Gone with the Wind was not the first film to use the word “damn”. The expletive was used in numerous silent title cards and in several talkies, including Cavalcade in 1933 and Pygmalion in 1938.
Gone with the Wind was ranked #4 on the American Film Institute’s 1998 list of the greatest films in 100 years of filmmaking. It was the first color film to win the Best Picture Oscar. It ranks third in the Academy Award most nominated films list with 13 nominations. It won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Screenplay (Sidney Howard), Best Art Interior Decoration (Lyle Wheeler), Best Film Editing, Best Color Cinematography, and a special award for William Cameron Menzies and the Irving J. Thalberg Memorial Award for David Selznick. It was the first film to credit a production designer, mainly to highlight the major contributions of William Cameron Menzies, who not only art-directed the film but also directed some of the second units.
The 1940 Academy Award ceremonies were held on Feb 29, 1940 at a banquet at the Coconut Grove nightclub in the Ambassador Hotel with Bob Hope as master of ceremonies, White cast members of Gone with the Wind sat together. Hattie McDaniel and a black companion sat at a separate table at the rear.
At nearly four hours in length, Gone with the Wind is the longest running movie to win the Academy’s Best Picture award. At a time when the average price of movie tickets in the U.S. was 23 cents, admission to Gone with the Wind was set at 75 cents at matinees and $1.10 at night. The film, had a long running time and an intermission of ten minutes so one complete show took four hours. Most theaters could only fit in three performances a day. Despite this handicap, in its first run, it sold 202 million tickets—an amazing figure considering that the population of the U.S. at that time was a little more than 130 million. And its total box office gross, adjusted for inflation, has soared to a stunning $1,329,453,600.
Few books are so closely identified with a geographical region—Georgia and the Old South—as Gone with the Wind. Published in 1936, this 1,037-page tome was discovered by Macmillan editor Harold Latham on a swing through the South in search, of new writing talent. Its author, Margaret Mitchell, was a petite (4 feet 9-1/2 inches tall) native of Atlanta who had labored between 1926 and 1929 on her massive manuscript and then put it aside. So large was the Mitchell manuscript Latham had to buy another suitcase in which to carry it.
One of the most popular books of all time, the novel was priced at three dollars and sold more than a million copies in the first six months, a phenomenal feat considering that in 1936 the country was just emerging from the Great Depression. This Civil War-era masterpiece has been translated into twenty-seven languages. More than 30 million copies of have been sold worldwide in 38 countries. Approximately 250,000 copies are still sold each year.
Among the titles Mitchell had considered for her novel were Tomorrow Is Another Day, Tote the Weary Load, Milestones, Ba! Ba! Blacksheep, Not in Our Stars, and Bugles Sang True. She finally chose a phrase from a favorite Ernest Dowson poem, “Cynara”: “I have forgot much Cynara! Gone with the wind.” In Mitchell’s early drafts, the main character was named “Pansy O’Hara,” and the O’Hara plantation, later known as Tara, was called “Fountenoy Hall.”
Pirated galleys of the book turned up at some Hollywood studios, but Macmillan’s asking price was an exorbitant $100,000. Few studios expressed interest even after Macmillan reduced the figure to $60,000. Daryl F. Zanuck of 20th Century Fox offered $35,000 for film rights to the book. One week after Gone with the Wind was published, MGM producer David 0. Selznick topped this with a bid of $50,000, the highest sum that had ever been paid for an author’s first novel.
Realizing later that he had grossly underpaid Mitchell, in 1942, Selznick paid her an additional $50,000 as a bonus. Selznick had already produced three big movies based on classic novels, Little Women, David Copperfield and A Tale of Two Cities. Before becoming an independent producer, Selznick had worked at MGM, the company run by his wife’s father. The joke at MGM was “the son-in-law also rises,” a play on the title of the Hemingway novel.
The Screenwriters
Sidney Howard agreed to write the screenplay for a salary of $2,000 a week. To be free from studio interference, he insisted on writing it at his Berkshire farm in Massachusetts, 3,000 miles away from studio interference. His first draft would have made a movie more than five hours long. Howard reluctantly agreed to leave his Massachusetts farm and come to Hollywood to work on another draft with Selznick and George Cukor, the director assigned to the picture.
The second draft turned out to be 15 pages longer than the first. Sidney Howard received sole screen credit. However, in typical Hollywood fashion, a total of eleven other screenwriters (including Selznick) would work on the script. Tragically, Howard never saw the finished film. He died on his farm near Great Barrington, Massachusetts, in August of 1939. One of his farm workers had left the heavy farm tractor in gear, and when Howard started it by cranking it, the machine lurched forward and crushed him against a barn wall.
The StarsThe four principals were billed on the film’s posters in this order: Clark Gable, followed by Leslie Howard (birth name: Leslie Howard Stainer), Olivia de Havilland and “Presenting Vivien Leigh.” Leigh’s billing was quickly changed to just below Gable’s when she won the Oscar for best actress. Three of the four top-billed actors died at relatively young ages: Leslie Howard at 50, Vivien Leigh at 53, and Clark Gable at 59. Olivia de Havilland remains alive at the age of 93. Ironically, her character is the only principal character that dies in the film. David Selznick died at 63. Accident-prone author Margaret Mitchell died at 49, struck by a car while crossing Peachtree Street in Atlanta.
Leslie Howard was a passenger on KLM flight 777 from Lisbon to London on June 1, 1943. It was shot down by German fighter planes over the Bay of Biscay in the mistaken belief that Winston Churchill also was a passenger. Frustrated by ethnic typecasting, Butterfly McQueen, who played Prissy in Gone with the Wind, left films for occasional roles on TV. At the age of 64, she earned a B.S. in political science from New York's City College in 1975. She died in 1995 from burns received when a kerosene heater in her cottage in Augusta, Georgia, malfunctioned and burst into flames . She suffered burns over 70% of her body, which she willed to medical science.
Of the many actresses screen-tested for the role of Scarlett O’Hara, only Paulette Goddard and Vivien Leigh were tested in color. One theory holds that producer David Selznick had already secretly signed Vivian Leigh for the role as early as February 1938. The nationwide “Search For Scarlett O’Hara,” during which thousands of dollars were spent “testing” aspiring actresses for the part, was actually a clever publicity stunt on Selznick’s part designed to maintain interest in a very expensive film for which he did not yet have the money to produce.
The only actors producer Selznick ever seriously considered for the role of Rhett Butler were Clark Gable, Gary Cooper, Errol Flynn and Ronald Colman. Gable didn’t see himself in a period film, nor did he believe he could live up to the public’s anticipation of the character. Two years earlier, hopelessly miscast, Gable had played in a costume drama, Parnell, with Myrna Loy. The film was roundly panned by critics and avoided by the movie-going public. Gable later regretted accepting the role. Selznick persuaded him to sign on to Gone with the Wind by offering a $50,000 signing bonus that enabled him to divorce his second wife, Maria Franklin, and marry Carole Lombard.
Very few of the principal cast members were happy with the characters they were portraying. Leslie Howard privately felt that he was much too old to play Ashley Wilkes (the character was supposed to be about 21 at the start of the film and Howard had been born in 1893, making him 46)). He wore extra make-up and a hairpiece to make him appear younger, but complained that his costumes made him look like “a fairy doorman” at a hotel. Selznick was able to persuade him to take the part by offering him credit as producer of another film, Intermezzo: A Love Story, in which he would star with Ingrid Bergman. Rand Brooks, who played the role of Charles Hamilton and died early in the story, was actually a rough outdoorsman and didn’t like playing a wimpy character. Butterfly McQueen disliked the negative stereotype of her character.
Judy Garland was the leading contender for the role of Scarlett’s younger sister, Carreen, but was tied up with commitments to The Wizard of Oz, another film being directed by Victor Fleming. Her “Andy Hardy” series co-star, Ann Rutherford, was cast. Veteran actress Hattie McDaniel was cast as Mammy after other African-Americans including Louise Beavers, Etta McDaniel, Ruby Dandridge, and Hattie Noel were briefly considered for the part. McDaniel became the first African-American to be nominated for—and win—an Academy Award. The fact that McDaniel would be unable to attend the premiere in racially segregated Atlanta annoyed Clark Gable so much that he threatened to boycott the premiere unless she was invited.
The Directors
Production of the film started on January 26, 1939, with George Cukor as director. Gable’s and Cukor’s personalities were poles apart. Cukor was a fussy, intellectual type and vague in his instructions to actors. He was also openly gay with effeminate mannerisms and was also considered to be a “woman’s director.” Cukor’s slow, methodical style reminded Gable of John Stahl, director of the ill-fated Parnell.
Legend has it that Clark Gable complained about director George Cukor, but nothing in Selznick’s internal memos indicates or suggests that Clark Gable played any role in the dismissal of Cukor. Instead, they show Selznick’s mounting dissatisfaction with Cukor’s slow pace and the quality of his work. After two weeks of shooting, Cukor was already five days behind in the schedule, a delay blamed by David Selznick on Cukor’s perfectionism and fondness for retakes. Louis B. Mayer, head of MGM was also unhappy with the rushes he had seen.
Selznick asked Gable, now an old hand in the movie business, for a suggestion. He recommended Victor Fleming, who had directed Gable in Red Dust and who was almost finished with The Wizard of Oz. To appease Cukor, MGM gave him another film to direct, The Women, with an all-female cast. On March 2 David Selznick restarted Gone with the Wind with Victor Fleming as director.
When Victor Fleming took over as director, he rejected the shooting script, telling Selznick, “David, your (expletive) script is no (expletive) good.” Selznick panicked and called novelist Ben Hecht, offering him $15,000 for a quick rewrite. Production was shut down for 17 days while Ben Hecht rewrote it. Hecht thought Sidney Howard’s original script was superb and used it as the basis for his rewrite, which was largely a scissors and paste-pot job. Hecht cut Sidney Howard’s screenplay to give more focus to the story of Scarlett and Rhett and to eliminate some of the historical pageantry.
Almost half of Cukor’s scenes were scrapped or later re-shot. When Fleming received the revised script, he calculated that there were 650 separate scenes to be filmed. In order to complete the picture in time for a Christmas release, he would have to shoot three pages of script a day, each the equivalent of only two minutes of film time.
Although he had been dismissed from the production, George Cukor privately continued to coach both Vivien Leigh and Olivia de Haviland on weekends at their request. One of the few scenes directed by Cukor to survive to the final cut of the film is the birth of Melanie’s baby. Cinematographer Lee Garmes was fired a month into production because his footage was deemed to be too dark. Ernest Haller and Technicolor Company cameraman Ray Rennahan replaced him.
First Facts and HonorsHalf a million feet of film were shot. This was edited down to 20,000 feet. There are more than 50 speaking roles and 2,400 extras in the film. All seven of Hollywood’s then-existing Technicolor cameras were used to film the burning of the Atlanta railroad depot. Estimated production costs were an unprecedented $4.25 million. Up until that time, only Ben-Hur (1925) and Hell’s Angels (1930) had cost more. It was the longest and most expensive film ever made. It went on to earn the highest receipts and the most Academy awards.
The premiere in Atlanta on December 15, 1939, at the 2,500-seat Loew’s Grand theater had been planned for months—almost as long as the shooting of the film. The governor declared a state holiday. Programs were prepared showing the najor performers in the film, but the programs distributed at opening eliminated McDaniel’s photograph. The cast flew to Atlanta—that is, the white members of the cast. Hattie McDaniel, Oscar Polk, Butterfly McQueen and the other blacks in the cast remained in Hollywood. Their presence would have caused problems in racially segregated Atlanta. Clark Gable was upset at the exclusion of McDaniel and threatened to boycott the ceremonies until McDaniel persuaded him to participate.
The movie’s line “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” was voted as the #1 movie quote (out of 100). by the American Film Institute. The word” frankly” does not appear in the book; a screenwriter added it. Contrary to popular belief, Gone with the Wind was not the first film to use the word “damn”. The expletive was used in numerous silent title cards and in several talkies, including Cavalcade in 1933 and Pygmalion in 1938.
Gone with the Wind was ranked #4 on the American Film Institute’s 1998 list of the greatest films in 100 years of filmmaking. It was the first color film to win the Best Picture Oscar. It ranks third in the Academy Award most nominated films list with 13 nominations. It won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Screenplay (Sidney Howard), Best Art Interior Decoration (Lyle Wheeler), Best Film Editing, Best Color Cinematography, and a special award for William Cameron Menzies and the Irving J. Thalberg Memorial Award for David Selznick. It was the first film to credit a production designer, mainly to highlight the major contributions of William Cameron Menzies, who not only art-directed the film but also directed some of the second units.
The 1940 Academy Award ceremonies were held on Feb 29, 1940 at a banquet at the Coconut Grove nightclub in the Ambassador Hotel with Bob Hope as master of ceremonies, White cast members of Gone with the Wind sat together. Hattie McDaniel and a black companion sat at a separate table at the rear.
At nearly four hours in length, Gone with the Wind is the longest running movie to win the Academy’s Best Picture award. At a time when the average price of movie tickets in the U.S. was 23 cents, admission to Gone with the Wind was set at 75 cents at matinees and $1.10 at night. The film, had a long running time and an intermission of ten minutes so one complete show took four hours. Most theaters could only fit in three performances a day. Despite this handicap, in its first run, it sold 202 million tickets—an amazing figure considering that the population of the U.S. at that time was a little more than 130 million. And its total box office gross, adjusted for inflation, has soared to a stunning $1,329,453,600.
Labels: Gone with the Wind, Movie Trivia
Monday, April 20, 2009
'Pay No Attention to That Man Behind the Curtain'
MOVIE TRIVIA
A century ago, a book took America by storm. A new kind of children's fantasy told in conversational style, it captivated adults and children alike. Its decorative illustrations in color were unlike any that had appeared before, weaving the story into a wealth of beauty and form, of sense and nonsense, of joy and seriousness.
When it was published in 1900, L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz enjoyed instant success. The first edition of 10,000 copies sold out in bookstores in the first two weeks. At the end of 1901, sales totaled nearly 90,000. After the author turned the book into a stage play titled The Wizard of Oz in 1903, starring Fred Stone as the Scarecrow, it played three seasons on Broadway and then toured for eight years. By the time the book’s copyright expired in 1956, a total of 4,195,667 copies had been sold, making it one of the best-selling children’s books of the twentieth century.
As a movie, however, the children’s classic has had a checkered history. In all, eight versions were filmed in the silent era before the 1939 Technicolor classic was made. The first, in 1910, was a filmed version of the 1903 Broadway musical. Nine-year-old Bebe Daniels, who later would star in films such as Rio Rita and 42nd Street, played Dorothy. In 1925, popular comedian Larry Semon directed a film version in which he played the Scarecrow. Rotund comedian Oliver Hardy, later one-half of the Laurel and Hardy team, played the Tin Woodman. Appropriately named 19-year old Dorothy Dwan played Dorothy. She and Semon were married just before the film’s release in January of 1925.
Sam Goldwyn bought the movie rights to the book for $40,000 in 1933. Five years later, he sold them to MGM for $75,000--a quick and easy profit, considering that he had done nothing about making a movie during that time. The eventual MGM film became the studio's second feature in three-strip Technicolor. The first had been Sweethearts, a 1938 adaptation of the Victor Herbert operetta, starring Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald.
With limited space on movie marquees in mind, the film's title was shortened to The Wizard of Oz. Before it was completed, it would require the services of ten screenwriters, four directors and—in addition to the ten featured players—a small dog and 124 dwarfs of both sexes playing the Munchkins. The “little people,” as the studio referred to them, were mostly refugee circus performers from Central and Eastern Europe who presented housing headaches for MGM, often staging scandalous orgies in the Hollywood hotel in which they were quartered.
The Screenwriters
Screen credits show Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf as writers of the screenplay. In typical Hollywood fashion, others who worked on script revisions, often simultaneously, included Herman Mankiewicz (who would later write Citizen Kane and All About Eve), humorist Ogden Nash, Herbert Fields, poet Samuel Hoffenstein, Jack Mintz, Sid Silvers and John Lee Mahin. The title role was written with box-office draw W.C. Fields in mind. Producer Mervyn LeRoy wanted Ed Wynn, who turned down the role. MGM executive Arthur Freed wanted Fields, and offered him $75,000. Fields supposedly demanded $100,000, which was too steep for MGM’s budget.
The DirectorsThe film had four different directors: Richard Thorpe, George Cukor, Victor Fleming and King Vidor. When filming started, Judy Garland wore a blonde wig and heavy "baby-doll" makeup. Before he was fired, Thorpe, a workmanlike director, shot two weeks of material, none of which appears in the final film. The studio found his work unsatisfactory and called on George Cukor temporarily until a new director could be found. Cukor did not actually film any scenes. What he did was to modify Judy Garland's appearance by getting rid of the wig and the baby-doll makeup, and telling her to just be herself. Victor Fleming took over from him and filmed the bulk of the movie until he was assigned to Gone with the Wind. Veteran director King Vidor served briefly to wrap up the monochromatic Kansas scenes.
The CastIn 1938, MGM had 120 salaried stars and feature players under contract. From these, the studio managed to cast six of the major roles in The Wizard of Oz. It had to turn to agents only for the Wicked Witch of the West (Margaret Hamilton), the Cowardly Lion (Bert Lahr), Auntie Em (Clara Blandick) and the little dog Toto. Surprisingly, the top salaries of $3,000 a week went to Ray Bolger (the Scarecrow) and Jack Haley (the Tin Woodman), followed by $2,500 to Frank Morgan (the Wizard and several other roles) and Bert Lahr (the Cowardly Lion). Margaret Hamilton received $1,000 a week, and held out for and got a guarantee of six weeks’ work. As it turned out, she was on the picture for four months and racked up a salary of $18,541.68. For each week’s work, Billie Burke (Glinda) took home $766.67 and Charley Grapewin (Uncle Henry) $750. Judy Garland (Dorothy) had to be content with a mere $500 a week. Toto, the little Cairn terrier, earned her trainer $125 a week.
After a number of popular stars rejected the role of the Wizard as too small, MGM decided to include the roles of Professor Marvel, the doorman and palace guard, as well as the coachman who would perform a musical number. This was to increase the screen time for the actor playing the title role to match the rest of the cast. Even so, the film occupied little of contract player Frank Morgan’s working time—less than a week as Professor Marvel and a few more weeks as the Wizard in the other roles. Morgan (real name, Wuppermann) was an heir to the Angostura bitters fortune.
Usually playing jovial or befuddled characters, Frank Morgan, like many Hollywood stars, had a secret--a drinking problem. His favorite drink was Champagne, and he always carried a supply in small attaché case fitted with a minibar. From time to time on the set he would repair to his dressing room “for a little snifter,” but his drinking never caused him to muff his lines. His occasional attempts to stop drinking, however, would leave him short-tempered and irritable. On the Oz set, director Victor Fleming once told him to “get back on the Champagne kick so we can live together.” He died of a heart attack in 1949 at the age of 59. Unlike many movie stars, Frank Morgan is not buried in California but in the family plot in Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery (Sect. 168, Lot 1447).
Makeup ProblemsElaborate makeup was a problem for the players in the film. Long hours were spent in the makeup chair while elaborate facial changes were made to the Scarecrow, Tin Woodman and Cowardly Lion. Judy Garland’s dumpy teenage figure required a tightly laced corset that also flattened her breasts. Ray Bolger was originally cast as the Tin Woodsman, but insisted that he would rather play the Scarecrow. His childhood idol, Fred Stone, had originated that role on Broadway in 1903. Lanky dancer Buddy Ebsen, who had been cast as the Scarecrow, switched roles with Bolger. But the special makeup for the Tin Woodsman was toxic. Ebsen had a violent reaction to the aluminum powder dusted on his face and hands and wound up in intensive care in the hospital. In the makeup used on his replacement, Jack Haley, aluminum paste was substituted for the aluminum dust that had poisoned Ebsen.
Memorable Quotes
Dorothy’s line, "Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore." was voted as #4 on the American Film Institute’s 100 Greatest Movie Lines. "There's no place like home" was voted as #23. “I’ll get you my pretty, and your little dog, too” squeaked in at #99.
SongsThe songs in The Wizard of Oz were the result of the collaboration between prolficic songwriter Harold Arlen, who was only 33 years old, and lyricist E.Y. “Yip” Harburg. Arlen would work with 31 lyricists over his long career. (Harburg was earlier responsible for the lyrics of the hauntingly beautiful “April in Paris” and the anthem of the Great Depresion, “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?”) Among the dozen Oz songs, the wistful classic “Over the Rainbow” would become a Judy Garland standard. It was voted #1 in the American Film Institute's list of "The 100 Years of the Greatest Songs."
It may come as a surprise to learn that Ferncliff has represented the final curtain call for many stars of stage and screen, including Joan Crawford, Ona Munson (who played Belle Watling, the good-hearted bordello madam in Gone with the Wind), Basil Rathbone, Jerome Kern, Preston Sturges (whose The Lady Eve is still one of the most delirious screwball comedies ever made), Paul Robson, Ed Sullivan, and Frances Ford Seymour, mother of Jane and Peter Fonda. Other perhaps less well-remembered names include Richard Barthelmess, Irene Bordoni, Connee Boswell, Lya De Putti, Hugh Marlowe and Raymond Walburn.
A century ago, a book took America by storm. A new kind of children's fantasy told in conversational style, it captivated adults and children alike. Its decorative illustrations in color were unlike any that had appeared before, weaving the story into a wealth of beauty and form, of sense and nonsense, of joy and seriousness.
When it was published in 1900, L. Frank Baum’s The Wonderful Wizard of Oz enjoyed instant success. The first edition of 10,000 copies sold out in bookstores in the first two weeks. At the end of 1901, sales totaled nearly 90,000. After the author turned the book into a stage play titled The Wizard of Oz in 1903, starring Fred Stone as the Scarecrow, it played three seasons on Broadway and then toured for eight years. By the time the book’s copyright expired in 1956, a total of 4,195,667 copies had been sold, making it one of the best-selling children’s books of the twentieth century.
As a movie, however, the children’s classic has had a checkered history. In all, eight versions were filmed in the silent era before the 1939 Technicolor classic was made. The first, in 1910, was a filmed version of the 1903 Broadway musical. Nine-year-old Bebe Daniels, who later would star in films such as Rio Rita and 42nd Street, played Dorothy. In 1925, popular comedian Larry Semon directed a film version in which he played the Scarecrow. Rotund comedian Oliver Hardy, later one-half of the Laurel and Hardy team, played the Tin Woodman. Appropriately named 19-year old Dorothy Dwan played Dorothy. She and Semon were married just before the film’s release in January of 1925.
Sam Goldwyn bought the movie rights to the book for $40,000 in 1933. Five years later, he sold them to MGM for $75,000--a quick and easy profit, considering that he had done nothing about making a movie during that time. The eventual MGM film became the studio's second feature in three-strip Technicolor. The first had been Sweethearts, a 1938 adaptation of the Victor Herbert operetta, starring Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald.
With limited space on movie marquees in mind, the film's title was shortened to The Wizard of Oz. Before it was completed, it would require the services of ten screenwriters, four directors and—in addition to the ten featured players—a small dog and 124 dwarfs of both sexes playing the Munchkins. The “little people,” as the studio referred to them, were mostly refugee circus performers from Central and Eastern Europe who presented housing headaches for MGM, often staging scandalous orgies in the Hollywood hotel in which they were quartered.
The Screenwriters
Screen credits show Noel Langley, Florence Ryerson and Edgar Allan Woolf as writers of the screenplay. In typical Hollywood fashion, others who worked on script revisions, often simultaneously, included Herman Mankiewicz (who would later write Citizen Kane and All About Eve), humorist Ogden Nash, Herbert Fields, poet Samuel Hoffenstein, Jack Mintz, Sid Silvers and John Lee Mahin. The title role was written with box-office draw W.C. Fields in mind. Producer Mervyn LeRoy wanted Ed Wynn, who turned down the role. MGM executive Arthur Freed wanted Fields, and offered him $75,000. Fields supposedly demanded $100,000, which was too steep for MGM’s budget.
The DirectorsThe film had four different directors: Richard Thorpe, George Cukor, Victor Fleming and King Vidor. When filming started, Judy Garland wore a blonde wig and heavy "baby-doll" makeup. Before he was fired, Thorpe, a workmanlike director, shot two weeks of material, none of which appears in the final film. The studio found his work unsatisfactory and called on George Cukor temporarily until a new director could be found. Cukor did not actually film any scenes. What he did was to modify Judy Garland's appearance by getting rid of the wig and the baby-doll makeup, and telling her to just be herself. Victor Fleming took over from him and filmed the bulk of the movie until he was assigned to Gone with the Wind. Veteran director King Vidor served briefly to wrap up the monochromatic Kansas scenes.
The CastIn 1938, MGM had 120 salaried stars and feature players under contract. From these, the studio managed to cast six of the major roles in The Wizard of Oz. It had to turn to agents only for the Wicked Witch of the West (Margaret Hamilton), the Cowardly Lion (Bert Lahr), Auntie Em (Clara Blandick) and the little dog Toto. Surprisingly, the top salaries of $3,000 a week went to Ray Bolger (the Scarecrow) and Jack Haley (the Tin Woodman), followed by $2,500 to Frank Morgan (the Wizard and several other roles) and Bert Lahr (the Cowardly Lion). Margaret Hamilton received $1,000 a week, and held out for and got a guarantee of six weeks’ work. As it turned out, she was on the picture for four months and racked up a salary of $18,541.68. For each week’s work, Billie Burke (Glinda) took home $766.67 and Charley Grapewin (Uncle Henry) $750. Judy Garland (Dorothy) had to be content with a mere $500 a week. Toto, the little Cairn terrier, earned her trainer $125 a week.
After a number of popular stars rejected the role of the Wizard as too small, MGM decided to include the roles of Professor Marvel, the doorman and palace guard, as well as the coachman who would perform a musical number. This was to increase the screen time for the actor playing the title role to match the rest of the cast. Even so, the film occupied little of contract player Frank Morgan’s working time—less than a week as Professor Marvel and a few more weeks as the Wizard in the other roles. Morgan (real name, Wuppermann) was an heir to the Angostura bitters fortune.
Usually playing jovial or befuddled characters, Frank Morgan, like many Hollywood stars, had a secret--a drinking problem. His favorite drink was Champagne, and he always carried a supply in small attaché case fitted with a minibar. From time to time on the set he would repair to his dressing room “for a little snifter,” but his drinking never caused him to muff his lines. His occasional attempts to stop drinking, however, would leave him short-tempered and irritable. On the Oz set, director Victor Fleming once told him to “get back on the Champagne kick so we can live together.” He died of a heart attack in 1949 at the age of 59. Unlike many movie stars, Frank Morgan is not buried in California but in the family plot in Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery (Sect. 168, Lot 1447).
Makeup ProblemsElaborate makeup was a problem for the players in the film. Long hours were spent in the makeup chair while elaborate facial changes were made to the Scarecrow, Tin Woodman and Cowardly Lion. Judy Garland’s dumpy teenage figure required a tightly laced corset that also flattened her breasts. Ray Bolger was originally cast as the Tin Woodsman, but insisted that he would rather play the Scarecrow. His childhood idol, Fred Stone, had originated that role on Broadway in 1903. Lanky dancer Buddy Ebsen, who had been cast as the Scarecrow, switched roles with Bolger. But the special makeup for the Tin Woodsman was toxic. Ebsen had a violent reaction to the aluminum powder dusted on his face and hands and wound up in intensive care in the hospital. In the makeup used on his replacement, Jack Haley, aluminum paste was substituted for the aluminum dust that had poisoned Ebsen.
Memorable Quotes
Dorothy’s line, "Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore." was voted as #4 on the American Film Institute’s 100 Greatest Movie Lines. "There's no place like home" was voted as #23. “I’ll get you my pretty, and your little dog, too” squeaked in at #99.
SongsThe songs in The Wizard of Oz were the result of the collaboration between prolficic songwriter Harold Arlen, who was only 33 years old, and lyricist E.Y. “Yip” Harburg. Arlen would work with 31 lyricists over his long career. (Harburg was earlier responsible for the lyrics of the hauntingly beautiful “April in Paris” and the anthem of the Great Depresion, “Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?”) Among the dozen Oz songs, the wistful classic “Over the Rainbow” would become a Judy Garland standard. It was voted #1 in the American Film Institute's list of "The 100 Years of the Greatest Songs."
The AFI board described "Over The Rainbow" as having "captured the nation's heart, echoed beyond the walls of a movie theater, and ultimately stands in our collective memory of the film itself. It has resonated across the century, enriching America's film heritage and captivating artists and audiences today.” Another Arlen song, “Ding-Dong! The Witch Is Dead” was voted #82 on that list. Paradoxically, “Over the Rainbow” was almost removed from the final print by MGM head Louis B. Mayer because it had been shot “in a barnyard.”
Honors“Over the Rainbow” won the film’s only Oscar. The Wizard of Oz was voted #6 in movies in the AFI’s 1998 list of top movies in 100 years of film making, #1 in fantasy films, #26 in inspirational movies, and #3 in movie musicals. Judy Garland was voted # 8 in the AFI’s list of 100 top movie stars.
AftermathThe film began shooting on October 13, 1938, and was completed on March 16, 1939, at a record-breaking cost of $2,777,000. It earned only $3,017,000 on its initial release. After the costs of distribution, prints and advertising were added to its production cost, the loss to MGM came to nearly a million dollars. The film came close to making a profit during its first re-release in 1948-49, when it brought in another $1,500,000. It did not really begin to make money until 1956 when it was leased to TV. By 1976, theatrical distribution had yielded MGM a total of $4,800,000. The combined take from leasing the film for TV, first to CBS and then to NBC, was more than twice that--$9,950,000.
The Wizard of Oz received only a single mention in The Guinness Book of World Records. Ironically, this was for the dubious honor of being the film to which a live-action sequel was added after the longest period of time. The 1985 sequel titled Return to Oz was released 46 years after the original.
Born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Judy Garland's real name was Frances Ethel Gumm. (Her father's name was Francis and her mother's name was Ethel.) She hated her name and changed it as soon as she could. She made her first movie for MGM in 1936 when she was 14 years old. To control her tendency to chubbiness, the studio alternately dosed her with amphetamines to speed up her metabolism and control her weight, followed by sleeping pills to bring her down from the amphetamine high. As a result, she became addicted to prescription drugs and continued to abuse them during most of her adult life.
Judy Garland died in London of an accidental dose of barbiturates on June 22, 1969, a dozen days after her 47th birthday. Fans who lvisit the graves of the famous don't have to go to California to find Judy Garland's last resting place. She is buried at Ferncliff Cemetery on Secor Road in Hartsdale, N.Y., in Unit 9, Alcove HH, Crypt 31. By coincidence, prolific composer of "Over the Rainbow," Harold Arlen (real name: Hyman Arluck), is also buried at Ferncliff in Grave 1666 of the Hickory Plot.
Honors“Over the Rainbow” won the film’s only Oscar. The Wizard of Oz was voted #6 in movies in the AFI’s 1998 list of top movies in 100 years of film making, #1 in fantasy films, #26 in inspirational movies, and #3 in movie musicals. Judy Garland was voted # 8 in the AFI’s list of 100 top movie stars.
AftermathThe film began shooting on October 13, 1938, and was completed on March 16, 1939, at a record-breaking cost of $2,777,000. It earned only $3,017,000 on its initial release. After the costs of distribution, prints and advertising were added to its production cost, the loss to MGM came to nearly a million dollars. The film came close to making a profit during its first re-release in 1948-49, when it brought in another $1,500,000. It did not really begin to make money until 1956 when it was leased to TV. By 1976, theatrical distribution had yielded MGM a total of $4,800,000. The combined take from leasing the film for TV, first to CBS and then to NBC, was more than twice that--$9,950,000.
The Wizard of Oz received only a single mention in The Guinness Book of World Records. Ironically, this was for the dubious honor of being the film to which a live-action sequel was added after the longest period of time. The 1985 sequel titled Return to Oz was released 46 years after the original.
Born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, Judy Garland's real name was Frances Ethel Gumm. (Her father's name was Francis and her mother's name was Ethel.) She hated her name and changed it as soon as she could. She made her first movie for MGM in 1936 when she was 14 years old. To control her tendency to chubbiness, the studio alternately dosed her with amphetamines to speed up her metabolism and control her weight, followed by sleeping pills to bring her down from the amphetamine high. As a result, she became addicted to prescription drugs and continued to abuse them during most of her adult life.
Judy Garland died in London of an accidental dose of barbiturates on June 22, 1969, a dozen days after her 47th birthday. Fans who lvisit the graves of the famous don't have to go to California to find Judy Garland's last resting place. She is buried at Ferncliff Cemetery on Secor Road in Hartsdale, N.Y., in Unit 9, Alcove HH, Crypt 31. By coincidence, prolific composer of "Over the Rainbow," Harold Arlen (real name: Hyman Arluck), is also buried at Ferncliff in Grave 1666 of the Hickory Plot.
It may come as a surprise to learn that Ferncliff has represented the final curtain call for many stars of stage and screen, including Joan Crawford, Ona Munson (who played Belle Watling, the good-hearted bordello madam in Gone with the Wind), Basil Rathbone, Jerome Kern, Preston Sturges (whose The Lady Eve is still one of the most delirious screwball comedies ever made), Paul Robson, Ed Sullivan, and Frances Ford Seymour, mother of Jane and Peter Fonda. Other perhaps less well-remembered names include Richard Barthelmess, Irene Bordoni, Connee Boswell, Lya De Putti, Hugh Marlowe and Raymond Walburn.
Labels: Movie Trivia, The Wizard of Oz
Monday, March 30, 2009
'Play it again, Sam'
MOVIE TRIVIA
Every once in a while a movie will come along that matches the mood of the moment so perfectly it captures this nation’s heart. Just such a film was Casablanca. Made in 1942 while the country was still reeling from the disastrous attack on Pearl Harbor, this rare and perfect example of movie making gave a disheartened populace the powerful morale boost it needed.
The Script
Irene Lee, head of the Warner Brothers story department, discovered a play script titled "Everybody Comes to Rick's,” by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison, languishing on a shelf in the company’s New York office. She touted it to studio head Jack L. Warner, who agreed to buy it for $20,000--the most any studio had ever paid for an unproduced theatrical work.
Nothing in the planning and shooting of the film Casablanca gave a hint of greatness to come. Seven screenwriters worked on the film script, often simultaneously. Some actors in featured roles had not been signed before shooting started. Script changes were frequent, with actors being handed new versions of the dialogue for a scene on the day it was to be shot. As a result, shooting ran 11 days over schedule.
To Casablanca’s stars, Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, the dialogue seemed ridiculous and the situations unbelievable. Despite the obvious on-screen chemistry between them, they hardly spoke on the set. One reason may have been the insane jealousy of Bogart’s wife, actress Mayo Methot, who repeatedly accused him of having an affair with Bergman.
The Players
Studio publicity claimed that Ronald Reagan and Ann Sheridan had been scheduled to appear in this film, and Dennis Morgan was named the third lead. This false story was planted merely to keep their names before the public. Producer Hal Wallis had been assigned to search for Humphrey Bogart’s next starring role. When he discovered that George Raft was angling for the part, he told Warner that he had found the perfect script and role for Bogart—that of the cynical, world-weary café owner, Rick Blaine. After that, no other actor was ever considered for the part. Bogart’s salary was $2,200 a week.
In those days, players were under contract to studios or producers who traded them back and forth almost like baseball cards. Producer David O. Selznick owned Ingrid Bergman’s contract, Wallis sent the film's principal writers, Philip and Julius Epstein, to persuade Selznick to lend her to Warner Brothers for the picture.
After 20 minutes of describing the plot to Selznick, Julius gave up and said, "Oh, it's going to be a lot of s**t like Algiers." Selznick immediately understood and agreed to the loan. French star Michèle Morgan had asked for $55,000, an amount Wallis refused to pay since he could get Ingrid Bergman for $25,000. Warner agreed to lend Olivia de Haviland to Selznick in return.
Bogart was actually about two inches shorter than Bergman. To create the illusion that the opposite was true, Bogart stood on boxes, wore platform shoes and sat on pillows in some shots, or Bergman slouched down (as when she sits on the couch in the "a franc for your thoughts" scene).
Finding an actor for the part of resistance leader Victor Laszlo was a problem. Herbert Marshall, Dean Jagger and Joseph Cotton were all under consideration until Selznick lent Warners an unhappy Paul Henreid for the role. Having just starred in Now Voyager with Bette Davis, he was worried that playing anything less than a lead character would ruin his budding career.
Dooley Wilson, who played the part of Sam, the pianist at Bogart’s café, was borrowed from Paramount at $500 a week. His name came from his act in which he sang Irish songs in white makeup. Wilson had to fake playing the piano. The songs were actually played by pianist Elliott Carpenter hidden behind a curtain, but positioned so Wilson could see and copy his hand movements. Wallis briefly considered making the character Sam a female with Hazel Scott, Lena Horne or Ella Fitzgerald in the role.
On loan from MGM, veteran actor Conrad Veidt played the role of Major Strasser. His wife, Lily Prager, was Jewish, and they had fled Germany for England. A fervent anti-Nazi, he spent the last years of his life playing Nazis. His salary, $5,000 a week for five weeks' work, made him the highest-paid actor on the set. Another competitor for the part had been Otto Preminger, under contract to 20th Century-Fox, who wanted $7,000 a week for his services.
Production had already started when Claude Rains was signed as the corrupt Vichy Captain Renault at a salary of $4,000 a week and S.Z. “Cuddles” Sakall as Carl, Rick’s maitre d’, at $1,750 a week. Joy Page, who played the young Bulgarian wife, was the stepdaughter of studio head Jack L. Warner, but earned only $100 a week. Page, Bogart and Dooley Wilson were the only American-born actors in the credited cast.
The Songs
"As Time Goes By," the love song shared by Bogart and Bergman, was written by composer Herman Hupfeld and introduced by Frances Williams in the 1931 Broadway musical "Everybody's Welcome." It had long been a favorite of playwright Murray Burnett. Max Steiner, who composed the background music for the film, was against using the song. He wanted to compose an original song (which would qualify him for royalties). "As Time Goes By" is #2 on the American Film Institute's “100 Years/100 Songs” list.
For the “contest between the anthems" sequence, Warner Bros. had intended to use the "Horst Wessel Lied," the anthem of the Nazi party. But a German music publisher owned the copyright, so they switched to the rousing "Die Wacht am Rhein." After the emotional playing of “La Marseillaise,” many of the actors, refugees from Europe, were in tears.
Thanks to a stroke of luck, just before the film’s release Allied forces landed at Casablanca and elsewhere in North Africa. The studio moved up the release date to take advantage of this unexpected publicity.
Memorable Lines
Casablanca yielded more memorable quotes than any other film. Interestingly, nobody in the film ever says, "Play it again, Sam.” What Bergman says to pianist Dooley Wilson is, "Play it, Sam. Play 'As Time Goes By.'" Later, a melancholy Bogart tells Wilson: "You played it for her. You can play it for me. If she can stand it, I can. Play it!"
Claude Rains as Capt. Renault had two widely quoted lines: “"I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here!" and "Major Strasser has been shot! Round up the usual suspects!" When Rains, as Capt. Renault, attempts to probe Bogart about his reasons for coming to Casablanca, Bogart's response is, "My health. I came for the waters." Rains is incredulous. "The waters? What waters. We are in the desert." Bogart: "I was misinformed."
Then there are the other classic gems from Bogart: ”Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine." And the two he says to Bergman, recalling the last time they met: "We’ll always have Paris." and “I remember every detail. The Germans wore gray, you wore blue.”
Few will forget Bogart's memorable parting from Bergman, “I've got a job to do. Where I'm going, you can't follow. What I've got to do, you can't be any part of, Ilsa. I'm not good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Now, here's looking at you, kid." Bogart had ad-libbed the farewell toast to Bergman earlier in the film. The line worked so well it was repeated in the airport sequence as he sends her away with Henreid.
The film concludes with Bogart’s optimistic line predictive of eventual victory over the forces of evil, "Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship." Three weeks after shooting had finished and unhappy with the film’s final scene, producer Hal Wallis decided to add that line at the end of the film, as Bogart and Rains walk across the airport tarmac together. Bogart was called back from vacation and recorded what would become one of the most famous last lines in movie history.
The Film's Impact
Warners had paid $20,000 for the play, $47,281 to six writers and $73,400 to director Michael Curtiz to pull everything together. The bill for cast salaries was $91,717. Total cost of the film was $878,000. The take from the first domestic rentals came to a cool $3.7 million, a number that made the brothers Warner very happy. It won Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay awards for 1942. It was a war picture, a love story, and even had elements of a musical. Most of all, it was a riveting drama about a different kind of bravery: little people willing to take a stand against injustice in a world rapidly falling apart.
Unlike the blatantly propagandistic movies made by Hollywood during the war, Casablanca's celebration of a timeless romance, idealistic self-sacrifice to a greater cause, and the inevitable triumph of good over evil has stood the test of time. With a running time of only 102 minutes, it is a work of art that still speaks to us today. For good reason, the American Film Institute voted it #2 in the 100 best films from the first hundred years of movie making.
Out of the near chaos that attended the making of this movie has come a story of a love that gives, rather than takes, even though the giving is not without heartbreak and pain. A story of a man who loves a woman so much he cannot bear to have her live with what he knows will be vain regret. A story of a woman torn between that love and her worship of a man and the cause he is fighting for. Casablanca is a film that idealistically portrays the beauty of sacrifice for a love that will live forever. Viewers everywhere are glad that it embodies these sentiments. Otherwise, we wouldn't have come to love it so much.
Every once in a while a movie will come along that matches the mood of the moment so perfectly it captures this nation’s heart. Just such a film was Casablanca. Made in 1942 while the country was still reeling from the disastrous attack on Pearl Harbor, this rare and perfect example of movie making gave a disheartened populace the powerful morale boost it needed.
The Script
Irene Lee, head of the Warner Brothers story department, discovered a play script titled "Everybody Comes to Rick's,” by Murray Burnett and Joan Alison, languishing on a shelf in the company’s New York office. She touted it to studio head Jack L. Warner, who agreed to buy it for $20,000--the most any studio had ever paid for an unproduced theatrical work.
Nothing in the planning and shooting of the film Casablanca gave a hint of greatness to come. Seven screenwriters worked on the film script, often simultaneously. Some actors in featured roles had not been signed before shooting started. Script changes were frequent, with actors being handed new versions of the dialogue for a scene on the day it was to be shot. As a result, shooting ran 11 days over schedule.
To Casablanca’s stars, Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman, the dialogue seemed ridiculous and the situations unbelievable. Despite the obvious on-screen chemistry between them, they hardly spoke on the set. One reason may have been the insane jealousy of Bogart’s wife, actress Mayo Methot, who repeatedly accused him of having an affair with Bergman.
The Players
Studio publicity claimed that Ronald Reagan and Ann Sheridan had been scheduled to appear in this film, and Dennis Morgan was named the third lead. This false story was planted merely to keep their names before the public. Producer Hal Wallis had been assigned to search for Humphrey Bogart’s next starring role. When he discovered that George Raft was angling for the part, he told Warner that he had found the perfect script and role for Bogart—that of the cynical, world-weary café owner, Rick Blaine. After that, no other actor was ever considered for the part. Bogart’s salary was $2,200 a week.
In those days, players were under contract to studios or producers who traded them back and forth almost like baseball cards. Producer David O. Selznick owned Ingrid Bergman’s contract, Wallis sent the film's principal writers, Philip and Julius Epstein, to persuade Selznick to lend her to Warner Brothers for the picture.
After 20 minutes of describing the plot to Selznick, Julius gave up and said, "Oh, it's going to be a lot of s**t like Algiers." Selznick immediately understood and agreed to the loan. French star Michèle Morgan had asked for $55,000, an amount Wallis refused to pay since he could get Ingrid Bergman for $25,000. Warner agreed to lend Olivia de Haviland to Selznick in return.
Bogart was actually about two inches shorter than Bergman. To create the illusion that the opposite was true, Bogart stood on boxes, wore platform shoes and sat on pillows in some shots, or Bergman slouched down (as when she sits on the couch in the "a franc for your thoughts" scene).
Finding an actor for the part of resistance leader Victor Laszlo was a problem. Herbert Marshall, Dean Jagger and Joseph Cotton were all under consideration until Selznick lent Warners an unhappy Paul Henreid for the role. Having just starred in Now Voyager with Bette Davis, he was worried that playing anything less than a lead character would ruin his budding career.
Dooley Wilson, who played the part of Sam, the pianist at Bogart’s café, was borrowed from Paramount at $500 a week. His name came from his act in which he sang Irish songs in white makeup. Wilson had to fake playing the piano. The songs were actually played by pianist Elliott Carpenter hidden behind a curtain, but positioned so Wilson could see and copy his hand movements. Wallis briefly considered making the character Sam a female with Hazel Scott, Lena Horne or Ella Fitzgerald in the role.
On loan from MGM, veteran actor Conrad Veidt played the role of Major Strasser. His wife, Lily Prager, was Jewish, and they had fled Germany for England. A fervent anti-Nazi, he spent the last years of his life playing Nazis. His salary, $5,000 a week for five weeks' work, made him the highest-paid actor on the set. Another competitor for the part had been Otto Preminger, under contract to 20th Century-Fox, who wanted $7,000 a week for his services.
Production had already started when Claude Rains was signed as the corrupt Vichy Captain Renault at a salary of $4,000 a week and S.Z. “Cuddles” Sakall as Carl, Rick’s maitre d’, at $1,750 a week. Joy Page, who played the young Bulgarian wife, was the stepdaughter of studio head Jack L. Warner, but earned only $100 a week. Page, Bogart and Dooley Wilson were the only American-born actors in the credited cast.
The Songs
"As Time Goes By," the love song shared by Bogart and Bergman, was written by composer Herman Hupfeld and introduced by Frances Williams in the 1931 Broadway musical "Everybody's Welcome." It had long been a favorite of playwright Murray Burnett. Max Steiner, who composed the background music for the film, was against using the song. He wanted to compose an original song (which would qualify him for royalties). "As Time Goes By" is #2 on the American Film Institute's “100 Years/100 Songs” list.
For the “contest between the anthems" sequence, Warner Bros. had intended to use the "Horst Wessel Lied," the anthem of the Nazi party. But a German music publisher owned the copyright, so they switched to the rousing "Die Wacht am Rhein." After the emotional playing of “La Marseillaise,” many of the actors, refugees from Europe, were in tears.
Thanks to a stroke of luck, just before the film’s release Allied forces landed at Casablanca and elsewhere in North Africa. The studio moved up the release date to take advantage of this unexpected publicity.
Memorable Lines
Casablanca yielded more memorable quotes than any other film. Interestingly, nobody in the film ever says, "Play it again, Sam.” What Bergman says to pianist Dooley Wilson is, "Play it, Sam. Play 'As Time Goes By.'" Later, a melancholy Bogart tells Wilson: "You played it for her. You can play it for me. If she can stand it, I can. Play it!"
Claude Rains as Capt. Renault had two widely quoted lines: “"I'm shocked, shocked to find that gambling is going on here!" and "Major Strasser has been shot! Round up the usual suspects!" When Rains, as Capt. Renault, attempts to probe Bogart about his reasons for coming to Casablanca, Bogart's response is, "My health. I came for the waters." Rains is incredulous. "The waters? What waters. We are in the desert." Bogart: "I was misinformed."
Then there are the other classic gems from Bogart: ”Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine." And the two he says to Bergman, recalling the last time they met: "We’ll always have Paris." and “I remember every detail. The Germans wore gray, you wore blue.”
Few will forget Bogart's memorable parting from Bergman, “I've got a job to do. Where I'm going, you can't follow. What I've got to do, you can't be any part of, Ilsa. I'm not good at being noble, but it doesn't take much to see that the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. Now, here's looking at you, kid." Bogart had ad-libbed the farewell toast to Bergman earlier in the film. The line worked so well it was repeated in the airport sequence as he sends her away with Henreid.
The film concludes with Bogart’s optimistic line predictive of eventual victory over the forces of evil, "Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship." Three weeks after shooting had finished and unhappy with the film’s final scene, producer Hal Wallis decided to add that line at the end of the film, as Bogart and Rains walk across the airport tarmac together. Bogart was called back from vacation and recorded what would become one of the most famous last lines in movie history.
The Film's Impact
Warners had paid $20,000 for the play, $47,281 to six writers and $73,400 to director Michael Curtiz to pull everything together. The bill for cast salaries was $91,717. Total cost of the film was $878,000. The take from the first domestic rentals came to a cool $3.7 million, a number that made the brothers Warner very happy. It won Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay awards for 1942. It was a war picture, a love story, and even had elements of a musical. Most of all, it was a riveting drama about a different kind of bravery: little people willing to take a stand against injustice in a world rapidly falling apart.
Unlike the blatantly propagandistic movies made by Hollywood during the war, Casablanca's celebration of a timeless romance, idealistic self-sacrifice to a greater cause, and the inevitable triumph of good over evil has stood the test of time. With a running time of only 102 minutes, it is a work of art that still speaks to us today. For good reason, the American Film Institute voted it #2 in the 100 best films from the first hundred years of movie making.
Out of the near chaos that attended the making of this movie has come a story of a love that gives, rather than takes, even though the giving is not without heartbreak and pain. A story of a man who loves a woman so much he cannot bear to have her live with what he knows will be vain regret. A story of a woman torn between that love and her worship of a man and the cause he is fighting for. Casablanca is a film that idealistically portrays the beauty of sacrifice for a love that will live forever. Viewers everywhere are glad that it embodies these sentiments. Otherwise, we wouldn't have come to love it so much.
Labels: Casablanca (film), Movie Trivia
