Victor Fleming: An American Movie Master (Screen Classics) (97 page)

288
“The primer provided”: Harmetz,
Making of
“
The Wizard of Oz.
”

289
A Matter of Life and Death:
Released in the United States as
Stairway to Heaven.

289
in his memoirs: Powell,
Life in Movies
and
Million Dollar Movie.

289
his
jumping-off point: Harmetz,
Making of
“
The Wizard of Oz.
” In a
Washington Post
interview published on Feb. 12, 1939, Langley chalked up the framing of
Oz
in a dream sequence as a “compromise” to “box office.” But that compromise has haunted the vision of filmmakers as cutting-edge as Guillermo del Toro (
Pan’s Labyrinth
).

290
Harburg, likewise: Meyerson and Harburg,
Who Put the Rainbow in
“
The Wizard of Oz
”
?

291
“the place where we belong”: Hearn,
Annotated Wizard of Oz.

291
Jane Withers could pack: When I asked Shirley Temple Black in 2003 about a publicity still, circa 1938, that posed her with Fleming, she said she had no memory of him, “but I am certainly an admirer of his work.” Jane Withers, on the other hand, asserts, “They tried many times to borrow me from Fox to play Dorothy, but MGM had Judy under contract, and I loved Judy Garland.”

291
“an Orphan in Kansas”: Fricke, Scarfone, and Stillman, “
The Wizard of Oz.
”

292
“It is a song”: Meyerson and Harburg;
Who Put the Rainbow in
“
The Wizard of Oz
”
?

292
“If Miss B will sing my song”: Berlin to Arlen, April 28, 1969, Irving Berlin Papers, Library of Congress. Arlen’s parody lyrics evidently are lost. A letter from Berlin to Arlen indicates that he sent the parody to Streisand in early June.

293
“artistically curled mane”:
The New York Times,
Aug. 18, 1939.

293
“I viewed the replacement”: Worsley,
From Oz to E.T.

294
“to light 550”: McClelland,
Down the Yellow Brick Road.

294
“I worked in a shiny suit”: United Press, Jan. 6, 1939.

295
“I then told Vic”: Haley,
Heart of the Tin Man.

295
“I tried to get a sound”: Harmetz,
Making of
“
The Wizard of Oz.
”

295
“Smith’s Premium Ham!”: Lahr,
Notes on a Cowardly Lion.

295
“Vic Fleming had never”: Ibid.

296
“I’m a professional dancer”: Burke,
With a Feather on My Nose.

296
“Ah—the hot seat!”: Paul Harrison column, Feb. 21, 1939.

296
Langley would regale: The
Norfolk Virginian-Pilot
entertainment writer Mal Vincent expanded on the details of his Nov. 12, 1998, article about Langley to me in 2002. According to Vincent, “Langley loved to put on a gruff persona . . . he didn’t have anything good
or
bad to say about Fleming.”

297
Schindler was a junior: Ambrose “Amblin’ Amby” Schindler, a standout high-school athlete from San Diego, was the starting quarterback at USC in 1936, 1937, and 1939 and is best remembered as the MVP of the
1940
Rose Bowl, when USC defeated Tennessee 14–0. Even
Oz
experts have often misidentified Schindler as one of the Winkie Guards of the Wicked Witch of the West; he said he didn’t even know what a Winkie was when first asked about his appearance in the film.

298
“I disparaged the work”: Haley,
Heart of the Tin Man.

299
“a very good director”: Undated interview with Margaret Hamilton by Gregory J. M. Catsos. It was reprinted in slightly shorter form as “That Wonderful Witch: A Lost Interview with Margaret Hamilton” in
Film-fax,
Oct./Nov. 1993. My copy of the original interview, supplied by John Gallagher, does not contain publication information.

299
“Get back on your champagne kick”: Harmetz,
Making of
“
The Wizard of Oz.
”

299
“Fleming would sometimes tell you”: Catsos interview.

299
“I want the shot done”: Harmetz,
Making of
“
The Wizard of Oz.
”

300
“At first, I didn’t realize”: Catsos interview.

300
Betty Danko: Harmetz,
Making of
“
The Wizard of Oz.
”

300
During Hamilton’s first day back: Catsos interview.

301
“Once I lay down”: Interview in
Los Angeles Times,
Oct. 8, 1939.

302
“Now, darling, this is serious” to Fleming “because of what I did to her,” and Garland, “I won’t do that but I’ll kiss your nose”: Fricke, Scarfone, and Stillman, “
The Wizard of Oz.
”

302
“favorite moments in all movies”: Whitfield was studying the work of the deadpan genius Buster Keaton when she made this observation and was keen to the subject of entertainers who hit the comic bull’s-eye with the most colloquial means.

303
“I love him like a father”: Sheilah Graham column, Nov. 7, 1939. Fan magazines went along with the story line about Garland’s crush on Fleming (as well as her well-publicized crush on the bandleader Artie Shaw). In an interview in
Screenland
in August 1939, Garland was quoted: “If you really want to know a perfectly wonderful man, you should meet Victor Fleming . . . He has the nicest low voice, and the kindest eyes. Besides, he realizes that a girl who is sixteen is practically grown up. He shows me all of the courtesies he would to Hedy Lamarr. That’s very important to me. He rises when I enter the room and places a chair for me. He notices my clothes and the way I do my hair and remarks about them.”

303
“Vic was like a schoolboy”: Fricke, Scarfone, and Stillman, “
The Wizard of Oz.
”

303
“You’re—you’re—browbeating me”: Harmetz,
Making of
“
The Wizard of Oz.
”

303
“probably the most difficult set”: McClelland,
Down the Yellow Brick Road.
“I’d forgotten how great were the composition of those crowd shots of Munchkins and the great mob at the Emerald City and the excitement and sheer opulence of the chase through the witch’s castle,” wrote the
New York Herald Tribune
television critic John Crosby after the film’s 1959 showing on CBS.

303
“In Baum’s book”: Rogers,
L. Frank Baum.

305
“I guess it’s like any group”: LeRoy,
Take One.

306
“They all went into the local bars”: Unpublished memoir held by the Culver City Historical Society. (Ed Meese the motorcycle cop was not related to the future U.S. attorney general Ed Meese.)

306
“hell-raisers”: Mal Vincent to author, 2002.

306
“twins Ike and Mike Matina”:
Washington Post,
June 20, 2001.

306
“King of the Munchkins”: Mal Vincent to author.

309
“Vic Fleming would stand there”:
Palm Beach Post,
March 13, 2006. Some of the little people became grand tall-tale tellers, none more so than Carroll, who has also taken credit for advising Fleming that the troupe should skip down the Yellow Brick Road: “They can come out and have some motion.”

309
“That is when I learned”:
Washington Post,
July 18, 1986.

310
“Victor was a good friend”: Interview in Schickel,
Men Who Made the Movies.

310
“Instead of telling me”: Harmetz,
Making of
“
The Wizard of Oz.
”

311
At a Santa Barbara preview, “Mr. Fleming walked into the office”: Meyerson and Harburg,
Who Put the Rainbow in
“
The Wizard of Oz
”
?

312
“it’s your show”:
The New York Times,
July 4, 1943.

312
preopening push: Newspaper ads from 1939 demonstrate that the film was not regarded the same way it is today. One ad touted, “Broadway’s great musical masterpiece,” adding, “Alluring dancers!” When the film was rereleased in 1949, Garland had top billing, but some ads trumpeted the recent Broadway successes of Bolger, Haley, and Lahr.

312
“a stinkaroo”:
New Yorker,
Aug. 19, 1939.

313
“owes its coherence”: Meyerson and Harburg,
Who Put the Rainbow in
“
The Wizard of Oz
”
?

314
“modernized, American”: David B. Parker,
Journal of the Georgia Association of Historians,
vol. 15, 1994.

314
“We must be satisfied”: Tolkien, “On Fairy Stories,” in
Tolkien Reader.

314
“one of the early-day screen directors”: Carle to Jones, May 1, 1939, Victor Fleming file, Margaret Herrick Library.

22
Saving Tara and
Gone With the Wind

317
“nervous as a thoroughbred”: Sheilah Graham column, Feb. 10, 1939.

317
Mahin recalled: Flamini,
Scarlett, Rhett, and a Cast of Thousands.

318
3:00 a.m. visit: International News Service, March 5, 1939. This entertaining version of events even has Selznick and Gable drinking “a quick toast to their benefactor” after LeRoy was able to extract Fleming from
The Wizard of Oz.

318
“My God”: Flamini,
Scarlett, Rhett, and a Cast of Thousands.

318
“Victor Fleming has one of the very best”: Selznick Archive.

318
“looked at the rushes”: Harwell,
Margaret Mitchell’s “Gone With the Wind” Letters, 1936–1949.

318
“I think Ashley”: Ed Sullivan column, June 5, 1954.

318
“David talked generally”: Interview with Joyce Haber,
Los Angeles Times,
Feb. 11, 1968. Years later, Cukor was the evident source of the story in Jesse Lasky Jr.’s book
Love Scene
(New York: Crowell, 1978) that the firing wasn’t done by Selznick himself but by Henry Ginsberg, Selznick’s general manager.

319
“We couldn’t see eye to eye”:
The New York Times,
Oct. 26, 1947.

319
“didn’t seem to understand”: Canutt,
Stunt Man.

319
“He was in disagreement”: David O. Selznick, unpublished interview with Charles Samuels, March 25, 1961, Selznick Archive.

319
“simply could not agree”: Unused Crowther notes, Bosley Crowther Papers, Brigham Young University.

320
“George would have done”: McGilligan,
Backstory.
Fleming’s evaluation of Cukor’s talent at that point of his career is spot-on. The total of Cukor’s footage in the finished film is slight. But it includes two memorable dialogue scenes (Mammy dressing Scarlett for the barbecue, Rhett presenting Scarlett with her Parisian hat) and two intense small-scale scenes (Scarlett and Prissy serving as Melanie’s midwives, Scarlett gunning down the Union deserter at Tara).

320
“The best performance”: Brooks to Brownlow, April 19, 1972.

320
Gable . . . had a brief erotic encounter: McGilligan,
George Cukor.

320
“it’s clear
something
happened”: Mann,
Wisecracker.

320
“It would be too naïve”: Ibid.

324
“In our garb”: Olivia de Havilland,
Look,
Dec. 12, 1967. It’s possible that Leigh and de Havilland
were
in widow’s weeds if preparing to reshoot the Atlanta bazaar, but Haver in
David O. Selznick’s Hollywood
says the scenes being shot were Scarlett and Melanie’s hurried preparation to
leave
Atlanta. Cukor himself liked the story of his female stars in mourning clothes so much he repeated it to Lambert in
On Cukor.

321
“looking for a bad director”: Unused Crowther notes, Crowther Papers.

321
never worked in Hollywood again: Walker,
Vivien.

321
“a mere workaday hack”: Bushell to Michael Dempsey, March 12, 1993, David Stenn collection; in another letter to Dempsey, dated September 9, 1991, Bushell articulates Leigh’s perspective: “It was [Gable’s complaints], bred of years of unbroken star-success, that Cukor was making it a ‘woman’s picture,’ that led Selznick, D. to the preposterous course of firing Cukor and replacing him with a run-of-the-mill MGM staff director.”