The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (245 page)

As the fire passed its peak, three visitors came to the backlot: Selznick’s brother, Myron, the top agent in town; one of Myron’s clients, Laurence Olivier, who was in Hollywood doing
Wuthering Heights;
and Olivier’s mistress, an English actress named Vivien Leigh. Myron called out to David, “Hey, genius, meet your Scarlett O’Hara!” It was likely a line he had used often over the last two years—that’s how long Selznick had been looking.

He saw Vivien Leigh’s face in the firelight: she was always a Technicolor hunch for a movie that would do reds and oranges better than they had ever been done on the screen. And wasn’t the girl named after the color? That very evening, Leigh read a few scenes for George Cukor who laughed at her English accent, then saw the beauty, the fire, and the need. For this English beginner had read the book when it first came out, and read it many times since. She knew she could do it. She had wangled a contact with the Myron Selznick Agency. She had come to America out of her own will. To see Larry? That’s what Olivier thought. But that evening, in the firelight, the newcomer began to lay hands on a size and importance in pictures that the great actor could never match.

By Christmas, Leigh had the part. She worked harder on the picture, and with more purpose, than anyone. Cukor was fired. His replacement, Victor Fleming, fell ill. Selznick was in agonies of exhaustion and indecision. But the gambler was rewarded: he had dreamed of a Scarlett, and waited, and one had stepped forward out of the darkness. She was Southern enough; she was beautiful, ambitious, bitchy, unforgivable, inescapable. She made the film work. The magic of casting was never on better behavior. Leigh won the Oscar. She was on the cover of
Time
. And then, more or less, she went home to be with Olivier. For she believed then that her greatest casting coup was being with him.

Before
Gone With the Wind
, she had been educated in Europe and briefly at RADA. As well as modest stage work (including an Ophelia to Olivier’s Hamlet), she married and had a daughter. She made a screen debut in
Things Are Looking Up
(34, Albert de Courville), and then played in
The Village Squire
(35, Reginald Denham);
Gentleman’s Agreement
(35, George Pearson);
Look Up and Laugh
(35, Basil Dean); attracting more attention, with Olivier, in
Fire Over England
(37, William K. Howard);
Dark Journey
(37, Victor Saville);
21 Days
(37, Dean);
Storm in a Teacup
(37, Saville); very fetching with Charles Laughton in
St. Martin’s Lane
(38, Tim Whelan); and personally demoted by Louis B. Mayer, from star part to supporting role, for
A Yank at Oxford
(38, Jack Conway).

As
Wind
was shooting, she tried hard for
Rebecca
—to play with Olivier. Instead, Selznick loaned her out to Metro for
Waterloo Bridge
(40, Mervyn Le Roy), a very successful romance that helped establish her. Then, after Emma to Olivier’s Nelson in
That Hamilton Woman
(41, Alexander Korda, with whom she had another contract and a brief affair), the married couple went back to an England at war.
That Hamilton Woman
—though shot in Hollywood—was meant as a flag for British morale.

Selznick went to court in efforts to get her to do more films. But she preferred to stay in England, to learn her craft as a stage actress, and to be Olivier’s consort. In the process, she had a miscarriage, she contracted tuberculosis, and she began to discover that she could not match Olivier: she was not in his class as an actor; and he was too competitive. She made two big films that never quite worked—with Claude Rains, vixenish and Sloane Square–ish, in
Caesar and Cleopatra
(45, Gabriel Pascal); but rather too placid and with a tame Vronsky in
Anna Karenina
(48, Julien Duvivier).

By then, her mental health was unstable. But she had played Blanche Du Bois on the London
Streetcar
(under Olivier’s direction), and so she beat out Jessica Tandy (and others) for the movie of
A Streetcar Named Desire
(51, Elia Kazan). She won a second Oscar for a second Southern lady. She is often touching—but very stagy; she does not seem to be in Brando’s film, and she may have felt innate resistance to Kazan’s approach.

There was a melodramatic affair with Peter Finch, and she had to abandon
Elephant Walk
from sheer madness. The marriage was on the rocks, and she was every bit as poignant a figure as Blanche—some said that role had allowed her own madness to get a surer grip. Olivier left her, for a younger woman, the actress Joan Plowright. Leigh would make only three more films:
The Deep Blue Sea
(55, Anatole Litvak); often intriguing with Warren Beatty in
The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone
(61, Jose Quintero), yet no match for his controlling skills; and ghastly in
Ship of Fools
(65, Stanley Kramer).

Look at all the evidence and it is clear how restricted she was as an actress, and how easily she could seem fake or ladylike if she didn’t feel a Scarlett excitement. But she was the center of one of show business’s great events, and of one of its most fascinating, if tragic, marriages. Either one of those would ensure her fame.

Mitchell Leisen
(1897–1972), b. Menominee, Michigan
1933:
Cradle Song
. 1934:
Death Takes a Holiday; Murder at the Vanities
. 1935:
Behold My Wife; Four Hours to Kill; Hands Across the Table
. 1936:
Thirteen Hours by Air; The Big Broadcast of 1937
. 1937:
Swing High, Swing Low; Easy Living
. 1938:
The Big Broadcast of 1938; Artists and Models Abroad
. 1939:
Midnight
. 1940:
Remember the Night; Arise, My Love
. 1941:
I Wanted Wings; Hold Back the Dawn
. 1942:
The Lady Is Willing; Take a Letter, Darling
. 1943:
No Time for Love
. 1944:
Lady in the Dark; Frenchman’s Creek; Practically Yours
. 1945:
Masquerade in Mexico; Kitty
. 1946:
To Each His Own
. 1947:
Suddenly It’s Spring; Golden Earrings; Dream Girl
. 1949:
Bride of Vengeance; Song of Surrender
. 1950:
No Man of Her Own; Captain Carey, U.S.A./After Midnight
. 1951:
The Mating Season; Darling, How Could You?
. 1952:
Young Man With Ideas
. 1953:
Tonight We Sing
. 1955:
Bedevilled
. 1957:
The Girl Most Likely
. 1963:
Here’s Las Vegas
. 1967:
Spree!
.

Leisen was trained as an architect and he worked on interior design before entering movies. His first credits came for the costumes on
Male and Female
(19, Cecil B. De Mille) and two Douglas Fairbanks swashbucklers:
Robin Hood
(22, Allan Dwan) and
The Thief of Bagdad
(24, Raoul Walsh). He then joined De Mille as art director and worked on
The Road to Yesterday
(25),
The Volga Boatman
(26),
Chicago
(27, Frank Urson),
Dress Parade
(27, Donald Crisp),
King of Kings
(27),
Dynamite
(29),
The Godless Girl
(29),
Madame Satan
(30),
The Sign of the Cross
(32), and
This Day and Age
(33). After being assistant director on
Tonight Is Ours
(33, Stuart Walker) and
The Eagle and the Hawk
(33, Walker), he became a director.

If Lubitsch has too generous a reputation as the mastermind of Paramount in the 1930s, then Leisen is surely a neglected figure, and a minor master. From the early thirties to the early forties, Leisen was an expert at witty romantic comedies, too reliant on feeling to be screwball, too pleased with glamour to be satires—and thus less likely to attract critical attention. Leisen was temperamentally more generous than Lubitsch, or Wilder. He loved sets and clothes; he was especially good with actors like Fred MacMurray and Ray Milland, who often grew bored in other films, being told to stand there and look good; and Leisen was as good with actresses, as kind and tender, as George Cukor—like Cukor, he was homosexual (or bisexual).

Take
Swing High, Swing Low
, the enchanting, bittersweet story of a feckless trumpet-player (MacMurray) and his love for Carole Lombard. When it is funny and happy, it is as light as play; in love it nearly swoons; but when it turns somber it is a love story noir in 1937!
Murder at the Vanities
is a raunchy variety show—Leisen was always good at musical numbers, and at integrating them in a story. In
Hands Across the Table
, Lombard is a manicurist going after MacMurray—those two players, both a little shy, both at ease in quick comedy with deep feelings, never had a more supportive director than Leisen.

Easy Living
, from a Preston Sturges script, is a delicious comedy about a fur coat in a hypocritical society, and one of Jean Arthur’s best films.
Midnight
is the closest Leisen came to screwball, an elaborate web of deception and flirtation, beautifully played by Claudette Colbert, Mary Astor, John Barrymore, and Don Ameche—it is also one of the gentlest comedies ever written by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett (which is to guess that Leisen warmed them up).
Remember the Night
is a prosecutor (MacMurray) in love with a shoplifter (Barbara Stanwyck); it is close to a great film, and arguably the most human love story Preston Sturges ever wrote.
Hold Back the Dawn
(another Wilder-Brackett script) has Charles Boyer marrying Olivia de Havilland to get into America.

The case has been made—not least by some of the writers—that Leisen depended upon good scripts. Perhaps. But delighting in good material is no crime, and there are seven or eight Leisen films from this period (with many different writers) that have a distinct refusal to go stale or dry.
Swing High, Swing Low
, one of the best, was written by … Virginia Van Upp and Oscar Hammerstein II.

In the forties, Leisen came to grief trying bigger pictures.
Lady in the Dark
, from the Moss Hart play, is terribly uneven, consistently pretentious, and no vehicle for Ginger Rogers—it needed Margaret Sullavan or even Judy Garland.
Frenchman’s Creek
is rubbish and endless.
Kitty
is a case of costume smothering interest and proof that the pretty, funny Paulette Goddard could not carry a film.
Golden Earrings
seems bizarre … until you see
Bride of Vengeance
, which is absurd.

However, two other films stand out.
To Each His Own
is a super weepie, with Olivia de Havilland playing young and old, and John Lund as the father and son to whom she is devoted. De Havilland won the Oscar for herself, but the film as a whole has that rueful romance that Leisen understood so well.
No Man of Her Own
(adapted from Cornell Woolrich) has Stanwyck masquerading her way into a wealthy family and being blackmailed by Lyle Bettger. This is a richer noir than many more famous works, lovingly composed from coincidence, menace, and calm, and Stanwyck’s equal skill at being tough and wounded.

His last years were spent as a nightclub proprietor and an occasional director for TV. The falling off should not conceal Leisen’s proper position as a leading American director, or the need for proper revaluation of his lyrical treatment of romantic luxury.

Claude Lelouch
, b. Paris, 1937
1956:
U.S.A. en Vrac
(d);
Une Ville Pas Comme les Autres
(d). 1957:
Quand le Rideau Se Lève
(d). 1960:
Le Propre de l’Homme
. 1963:
L’Amour avec des Si
. 1964:
24 Heures d’Amants
(d);
Une Fille et des Fusils; La Femme Spectacle
. 1965:
Pour un Maillot Jaune
(d);
Les Grands Moments
. 1966:
Un Homme et une Femme/A Man and a Woman
. 1967:
Vivre pour Vivre; Loin du Vietnam
(codirected with Jean-Luc Godard, Joris Ivens, William Klein, and Alain Resnais) (d). 1968:
Treize Jours en France
(codirected with François Reichenbach). 1969:
La Vie, l’Amour et la Mort; Un Homme Qui Me Plaît
. 1970:
Le Voyou
. 1971:
Iran; Smic, Smac, Smoc
. 1973: “The Losers,” episode from
Visions of Eight
(d);
La Bonne Année
. 1974:
Toute une Vie/And Now My Love
. 1975:
Le Chat et la Souris/Cat and Mouse
. 1976:
Si C’Était à Refaire/Second Chance
. 1977:
Un Autre Homme, Une Autre Chance/Another Man, Another Chance
. 1978:
Robert et Robert
. 1979:
A Nous Deux/An Adventure for Two
. 1981:
Les Uns et les Autres/Bolero
. 1983:
Edith et Marcel; Vive la Vie!
. 1984:
Partir Revenir
. 1986:
Un Homme et une Femme: Vingt Ans Déjà/A Man and a Woman: Twenty Years Later
. 1987:
Attention Bandits
. 1988:
L’Itineraire d’un Enfant Gâté
. 1990:
Il y a des Jours … et des Lunes
. 1993:
Tout Ça … Pour Ça!
. 1995:
Les Misérables
. 1996:
Hommes, Femmes, Mode d’Emploi
. 1998:
Hasards ou Coïncidences
. 1999:
Une pour Toutes
. 2002:
And Now … Ladies and Gentlemen
. 2004:
Les Parisiens
. 2005:
Le Courage d’Aimer
. 2007:
Roman de Gare
.

Conceivably, more people were introduced to French cinema in the sixties and seventies by Lelouch than by any other director.
Un Homme et une Femme
was a lavishly admired movie, and it is never a pleasant task to deflate enjoyment. But Lelouch is a sapping director, slick, meretricious, yet high-minded. French cinema and innocent audiences alike need to be defended against him. His work is as clammy, strident, and wearying as color Sunday supplements and, like them, it manages to be profitable by smothering the prickly realities of people and by insinuating the style of advertising into fiction. His two early features—
Un Homme et une Femme
and
Vivre pour Vivre
—were extended commercials for the hope that pain is absorbed by prettiness. His characters are emotional stewpots always on the go in some heady, ultra-modern kitchen. They are beautiful people in glamorous jobs, able to travel at will. Their petty affairs and the entirely mechanical obstacles that are inserted and then withdrawn from their world are passed off as being typical of the emotional and intellectual demands of life.