The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (48 page)

Borzage was the son of Swedish parents. As a teenager he went on the stage and he began his movie career as an actor. Thomas Ince gave him his chance as a director and, by the mid-1920s, Borzage was one of the most successful Hollywood directors—as witness the fact that he won the newly created Oscar for direction twice in its first five years—for
Seventh Heaven
and
Bad Girl
. War, and the consequent taste for realism, destroyed the world he had created and after
The Mortal Storm
, only one other film—
Moonrise
—properly revealed his talent.

The loss of romance during the war is all the more ironic in that Borzage’s most poignant films of the 1930s involve lovers under the shadow of Hitler, fascism, or the slump. There is a dreamy preoccupation in those films, based on what Andrew Sarris called “a genuine concern with the wondrous inner life of lovers in the midst of adversity.” Above all, this faith in the enchanted complicity of sentiment is borne out in three films starring Margaret Sullavan—
Little Man, What Now?, Three Comrades
, and
The Mortal Storm
. Just as Borzage ended the decade with Sullavan, so he had begun with Janet Gaynor—in
Seventh Heaven, Street Angel
, and
Lucky Star
. Among the rest, he emphasized the romantic undertones of Hemingway’s
A Farewell to Arms
(with Gary Cooper and Helen Hayes); directed Mary Pickford’s last movie,
Secrets;
made
Man’s Castle
as true a picture of hope amid the Depression as
You Only Live Once
(37, Fritz Lang) is of fatalism; directed Dietrich in her best non-Sternberg film,
Desire;
and teamed Jean Arthur and Charles Boyer in the uncanny
History Is Made at Night
. That film, beginning as a romantic comedy but turning to tragedy once love has been proved, is typical of Borzage’s serene confidence in the imagination when faced by material destruction. (
Living on Velvet
gets that, too.) The delicate pathos of
Three Comrades
should not conceal the chance that it might have been better still. Its central scenarist was Scott Fitzgerald, harrowed by the way MGM and his producer, Joseph Mankiewicz, handled the script: “Oh, Joe, can’t producers ever be wrong? I’m a good writer—honest. I thought you were going to play fair.” Fitzgerald’s letters show some of the things lost between script and film, and certainly
Three Comrades
is the bones of a marvelous, Nicholas Ray–like movie.

Borzage’s political intuition is reliable, even if he treats it in conventional romantic terms.
The Mortal Storm
is a more perceptive and frightening study of fascism than, say,
The Great Dictator
(40, Charles Chaplin) or the Capra films. The shot of James Stewart and Margaret Sullavan, emotionally and philosophically hemmed in by a forest of saluting arms, is typical of Borzage’s faith that love is a manifestation of political nature.

In recent years, at festivals, he has been recognized as a master.
Moonrise
(hard to find) is worth the wait—but where did this stunning noir fatalism come from?

The Boulting Brothers: John
(1913–85), b. Bray, England, and
Roy
(1913–2001), b. Bray, England
Roy—1938:
The Landlady
(s);
Ripe Earth
(s);
Seeing Stars
(s);
Consider Your Verdict
(s). 1939:
Trunk Crime
(s). 1940:
Inquest; Pastor Hall; Dawn Guard
(s). 1942:
Thunder Rock; They Serve Abroad
. 1943:
Desert Victory
(d). 1944:
Tunisian Victory
(codirected with Frank Capra) (d). 1945:
Burma Victory
(d). 1947:
Fame Is the Spur
. 1948:
The Guinea Pig
. 1951:
Singlehanded
. 1954:
Seagulls Over Sorrento
. 1955:
Josephine and Men
. 1956:
Run for the Sun
. 1957:
Happy Is the Bride; Brothers in Law
. 1959:
I’m All Right, Jack; Carlton-Browne of the F.O
. 1960:
Suspect; A French Mistress
. 1966:
The Family Way
. 1968:
Twisted Nerve
. 1970:
There’s a Girl in My Soup
. 1973:
Soft Beds, Hard Battles
. 1979:
The Last Word
. 1985:
The Moving Finger
(TV);
Brothers-in-Law
(TV).

John—1945:
Journey Together
. 1947:
Brighton Rock
. 1950:
Seven Days to Noon
. 1951:
The Magic Box
. 1956:
Private’s Progress
. 1957:
Lucky Jim
. 1963:
Heavens Above!
. 1965:
Rotten to the Core
. 1979:
The Number
.

Twin brothers, the Boultings worked in harness whenever possible, and their work—good and bad alike—is interchangeable. They formed Charter Productions in 1938, with John producing for Roy, and after the war took turns swapping the roles of director and producer and often collaborating on the scripts. Their wartime documentaries are distinguished and, between them, they have mustered a clutch of economical, tightly plotted films, strong on local atmosphere and full of good acting:
Thunder Rock
, from Robert Ardrey’s play, uses the lighthouse setting very well;
Singlehanded
exploits the potential of C. S. Forester’s
Brown on Resolution; Run for the Sun
is an energetic and violent reworking of
The Hounds of Zaroff
, well played by Richard Widmark, Jane Greer, and Trevor Howard;
Brighton Rock
has the tang of fish and chips and captures British gang society with unusual accuracy; while
Seven Days to Noon
is a brilliant idea that exerts every extra half screw of tension. But, on the debit side, they both make limp, contrived comedies, bare of wit and true character, that encourage insecure comedians to overact. The later work of Roy is especially disappointing and the comedy series of
Private’s Progress, Brothers in Law, I’m All Right, Jack
, and
Carlton-Browne of the F.O
. plays up to the most slapdash, fuddled views that the British like to hold of themselves. Since then, he has shown an unwelcome taste for brazen nastiness in
Twisted Nerve
, and established which twin he is by marrying its star, Hayley Mills—though the union did not last.

Clara Bow
(1905–65), b. Brooklyn, New York
Silent cinema pushed emotional character to extremes that could become prisons. Mary Pickford was sentimental, Gloria Swanson adventurous, Lillian Gish noble, and Pola Negri brooding. Clara Bow’s identity was chiefly that of sexual advertisement. Her appeal may no longer operate urgently, but she is the first actress intent on arousing sexual excitement who is not ridiculous. She still looks pretty and her fevered agitation—the fluttering eyes, the restless fingering of men, and teasing angled glances—does seem to speak for the liberated lascivious energies of the new American girl of the twenties. She has a speed that is sensual. She is very funny. And she knows, and likes, more than her movies can admit.

For Bow herself and the women she played, the 1920s was an age of brutal but enticing opportunism: a girl with bounce, or energy, could make it, provided she had that much-talked-about but still hidden ingredient—“it”—a willingness. “It” was the promise of sex; and it was a ploy of advertising. Thus Bow’s career demonstrates the busy collaboration of movies and publicity. She was the first mass-market sex symbol, and she complained that it was “a heavy load to carry, especially when one is very tired, hurt, and bewildered.” Her hurt was a dry run for that awaiting Marilyn Monroe, whose mother came of sexual age in Bow’s brief glory. Bow’s mother and Marilyn’s had something else in common: mental illness.

Clara Bow won a beauty contest and by 1922 she was in pictures: a tiny part in
Beyond the Rainbow
(22, W. Christy Cabanne); and a better one in
Down to the Sea in Ships
(23, Elmer Clifton). She was then signed up by B. P. Schulberg who worked her very hard in a succession of cheap films and loan-outs. B.P.’s son, Budd, has said that Bow was none too bright—“an irresistible … little know-nothing.” But onscreen, she had a very knowing eye; if nothing else, she understood being photographed. The best films of this time are
Grit
(24, Frank Tuttle);
Black Oxen
(24, Frank Lloyd);
Wine
(24, Louis Gasnier);
Helen’s Babies
(25, William A. Seiter);
Eve’s Lover
(25, Roy del Ruth);
Kiss Me Again
(25, Ernst Lubitsch);
The Plastic Age
(25, Wesley Ruggles); and
My Lady of Whims
(26, Dallas M. Fitzgerald).

Then, in 1926, Schulberg and Bow moved together to Paramount and her status improved:
Dancing Mothers
(26, Herbert Brenon);
Mantrap
(26, Victor Fleming); and
Kid Boots
(26, Tuttle). Next year, she was Betty Lou, the shop girl, who wows her boss, Antonio Moreno, in
It
(27, Clarence Badger). The film had the sixty-year-old Elinor Glyn appearing to explain what “It” was. But Bow carried the weight of education like a lipstick butterfly veering between old adages and fresh opportunities.

For the next three years, Clara Bow was a top star:
Children of Divorce
(27, Lloyd);
Rough House Rosie
(27, Frank Strayer); as an ambulance driver in
Wings
(27, William Wellman);
Hula
(27, Fleming);
Get Your Man
(27, Dorothy Arzner);
Red Hair
(28, Badger), with a color sequence to show off Bow’s own red curls;
Ladies of the Mob
(28, Wellman);
The Fleet’s In!
(28, Malcolm St. Clair);
Three Weekends
(28, Badger), another Glyn script;
The Wild Party
(29, Arzner);
Dangerous Curves
(29, Lothar Mendes); and
The Saturday Night Kid
(29, Edward Sutherland).

Her career faltered in 1930. She was only twenty-five, but she had made forty-eight films. Sound exposed her rough Brooklyn accent, and curtailed her reckless energy, for the unwieldy apparatus meant she could not move about the set so freely. Most damaging was the backlash of bourgeois hypocrisy. She had to buy off an aggrieved wife, she was dogged by gambling debts, and in 1931 she sued her former secretary, Daisy DeVoe, for selling stories about Bow fucking movie stars and most of the USC football team. DeVoe was trying blackmail on Bow, and it is possible that the secretary was jealous of Bow’s romance with cowboy actor Rex Bell. The court hearings were sensational, and lurid accounts of Bow’s private life became common currency.

Her last good year was 1930:
True to the Navy, Love Among the Millionaires
, and
Her Wedding Night
—all directed by Frank Tuttle.
No Limit
(31, Tuttle) and
Kick In
(31, Richard Wallace) were neglected by a prudish public and her last two films were made for Fox:
Call Her Savage
(32, John F. Dillon) and
Hoopla
(33, Lloyd). Comeback attempts failed and she grew only in weight, reclusiveness, and melancholy, married to Bell, residing in Nevada, and suffering breakdowns. All so sad, and unlikely, if one looks again at her astonishing vibrance. It was people like Clara Bow who taught cameras how lucky they were.

Charles Boyer
(1897–1978), b. Figeac, France
Although his screen image was often frivolous and lightweight, Boyer’s career speaks for the durability of a dedicated professional. But he did more than survive: he kept intact that very “continental,” flirtatious waywardness that made him a Hollywood exotic. It is no small accomplishment to have maintained his rather vacant intimations of Gallic romance in the face of constant parody and imitation. Even at the height of his comic notoriety in America as
the
French lover, sighing with thoughts of “the Casbah,” he was a terrific and generous actor.

It is not the easiest career to record, simply because of Boyer’s ingenious pursuit of work in all quarters. He studied at the Sorbonne and the Paris Conservatoire and, in his twenties, was a star of the French stage and screen:
L’Homme du Large
(20, Marcel L’Herbier);
L’Esclave
(22, Georges Monca);
Le Grillon du Foyer
(25, Jean Manoussi);
Le Capitaine Fracasse
(27, Alberto Cavalcanti); and
La Ronde Infernale
(28, Luitz Morat). He then joined UFA to make French versions of German movies, only to be lured away by MGM to play in French versions of
The Trial of Mary Dugan
and
The Big House
. When these duplications were stopped, Paramount used Boyer in his first American film,
The Magnificent Lie
(31, Berthold Viertel). He went back to UFA but was at Paramount again in 1932 for
The Man From Yesterday
(Viertel) and at MGM for a small part in
RedHeaded Woman
(32, Jack Conway). A little bemused, he went back to UFA and thence to Paris where, at least, he was a lover in his own language:
L’Epervier
(33, L’Herbier);
Le Bonheur
(33, L’Herbier);
La Bataille
(33, Nicolas Farkas); and
Liliom
(33, Fritz Lang). Twentieth Century now called Boyer back to the United States for
Caravan
(34, Erik Charrell), another American flop. At this point, he put himself in Walter Wanger’s hands and gradually built up his reputation for sultry romance:
Private Worlds
(35, Gregory La Cava);
Break of Hearts
(35, Philip Moeller);
Shanghai
(35, James Flood); in Paris,
Mayerling
(36, Anatole Litvak); opposite Dietrich in
The Garden of Allah
(36, Richard Boleslavsky);
History Is Made at Night
(37, Frank Borzage);
Tovarich
(37, Litvak); as Napoleon opposite Garbo in
Conquest
(37, Clarence Brown); back in France with Michele Morgan for
Orage
(37, Marc Allégret); with Hedy Lamarr in
Algiers
(38, John Cromwell). Wanger dropped Boyer, but the actor flourished, with Irene Dunne, in
Love Affair
(39, Leo McCarey) and
When Tomorrow Comes
(39, John Stahl).