The Directors: George Stevens

He stood alongside John Ford, William Wyler, Billy Wilder, Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks, John Huston and a few others as one of the great American directors of Hollywood's Golden Age, a genius craftsman of some classic cinema.  He was legendary for his sharp eye for detail that enhanced his visual storytelling.  With a couple of exceptions, he had a strong rapport with some of Hollywood's most renowned actors which produced memorable performances.  Three of his films in the 1950s, darlings among the critics and public, are among my favorites ever.

It was not possible to pigeon-hole George Stevens into a certain type of genre.  He amassed a lifetime of work that ran the gamut.  He cut his teeth on movie shorts for the first half of the 30s and then on a series of B comedies before delivering the goods with screwball comedies, dramas, romance, period adventures, musicals, soap operas and westerns.  Much of his work dealt with the outsider and even if it didn't always work out for the protagonist, one knew Stevens was rooting for him or her.

Stevens was nominated five times for best director, winning twice, and six of the movies he produced and directed were nominated for Oscar's best picture.  He directed some of Hollywood's greats including Astaire and Rogers, Katharine Hepburn, Spencer Tracy, Jean Arthur, Cary Grant, James Stewart, Irene Dunne, Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift, eliciting from them some of the best performances of their careers.

To say that filmmaking was in his blood is an understatement.  He was born in 1904 in Oakland, California to two stage actors.  One of his brothers was a film editor and another a drama critic.  Additionally he had an uncle who was a director and another who was a cinematographer.  If you think it was predetermined he'd have a life in show business, you are right.

Stevens learned much of what he knew from good ol' on-the-job training.  In early years he went on tour with his parents.  Stevens's later fascination with the outsider likely stemmed from these early years when he and his family were usually considered outsiders as most in acting troupes were.  To help out his parents, particularly after the family moved to Southern California, young George dropped out of school.  Forever more he was skittish about his lack of education but he studiously made up for it by learning all he could about theater and soon the movies.  He also loved literature and read all he could.

At 17 he got on with the Hal Roach Studio as an assistant cameraman which is where he learned his own future stock in trade, visual storytelling.  Within a short time he became director of photography for the studio and also wrote gags for Laurel and Hardy and was soon directing them in a series of shorts.

In 1930 Stevens married for the first of two times.  This union would produce a son two years later, George Stevens Jr., who would grow up to be a writer/producer/director and one of the founders of the famed Kennedy Center.  I was always impressed how much he loved and honored his father and how thorough and impressive he was as a chronicler of his father's life and work.

Stevens moved over to RKO and made his first significant feature,  Alice Adams (1935), a comedy based on a Booth Tarkington novel about social pretensions in small-town America.  Katharine Hepburn stars as a social climber and Fred MacMurray is her unsuspecting, upper-class suitor.  Hepburn and most of her fan base consider it one of her best films.  In their two films together, she would not give Stevens as much guff as she gave other directors.  She would adore him for the rest of his life.

Stevens took on a musical, the sublime Swing Time (1936), the sixth of 10 Astaire-Rogers films.  The lady, the one who danced backwards and in heels, said it was her favorite of their collaborations.  As usual Stevens's perfectionism resulted in multiple takes, even for the musical numbers.  The Never Gonna Dance number, in fact, took 47 tries before the director was pleased.  Rogers' feet were bleeding.  Believe it or not, the American Film Institute ranked this the 90th best film of all time.

Rogers rejoined Stevens for Vivacious Lady (1938) about a nightclub singer who surprisingly marries a mild-mannered college professor (James Stewart) much to the consternation of his family and friends.  Rogers got Stewart the job because they were dating at the time.  It may not be regarded as one of Stevens's classics but it is an invigorating comedy.  When I saw one of his comedies, I would think this is the genre he needs to stick with.  He is so adept.  And then I'd see one of his dramas and think he should stick with them.

Gunga Din came in 1939, a fine addition to the greatest year in movie history.  An adventure film of the highest order, it concerns three British soldiers and good friends, Cary Grant, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Victor McLaglen, stationed in India when an uprising develops sending everyone into a tailspin.  It was, up to that time, the most expensive movie RKO ever made and luckily box-office receipts were high.

Now it was time for a romantic drama and one of the great weepies, cherished by moviegoers the world over, Penny Serenade (1941).  In their third and final pairing together were Grant and Irene Dunne (one of Stevens's favorite actresses).  This would also be Stevens's first film at his new studio, Columbia.  The story concerns a woman who is listening to records at home as she's preparing to leave her husband.  Each one promotes a flashback of both very sad and happy events.  What a hit it was.

Working it out with Hepburn and Tracy

Hepburn personally requested Stevens to come to MGM and steer her and Spencer Tracy in their first film together, Woman of the Year (1942).  An Oscar-winning screenplay has a gruff sportswriter marrying an upper-crust political columnist with the results being a comical look at a couple's lack of compatibility.  Stevens orchestrated a breakfast scene that is a riot.

He found Jean Arthur to be the most gifted comedienne he ever worked with.  His next two films would feature her.  She is joined by Grant and Ronald Colman in the very funny The Talk of the Town (1942).  It concerns a spirited schoolteacher who rents out a couple of rooms to a stuffy law professor and an escaped criminal.  It was a feather in the caps of all who participated.

Stevens's third comedy in a row was The More the Merrier (1943) and it was for some reason the last comedy he would ever make.  It arguably contains Arthur's best performance and the only one for which she received an Oscar nomination.  It's even similar to the prior film since a woman and two men (Joel McCrea and Charles Coburn) share an apartment during the housing shortage in wartime Washington D.C.  

This ended his three-pic deal at Columbia and Stevens joined the Army Signal Corps.  In the two years he served, he made four documentaries and filmed the Normandy landings, the liberation of Paris and the closing of the Nazi extermination camp, Dachau.  Stevens was awarded the Legion of Merit.  The horrors he encountered caused him to withdraw once he returned stateside and he didn't seek work for a couple of years while he regrouped.  Perhaps this is why his work in comedy stopped.  Now he only wanted to make films that were meaningful.

Stevens came out of his funk to direct the charming I Remember Mama (1948) about a Norwegian family trying to make ends meet living in San Francisco.  Greta Garbo declined his offer to sign on as the title star so he enlisted his old pal Dunne.  She, Barbara Bel Geddes, Oscar Homolka and Ellen Corby all copped Oscar nominations.  The film proved irresistible to critics and while the public liked it, it didn't recoup its costs, which were extensive.  Good as it is, it hasn't managed to capture the attention that some of Stevens's other works have.  But his magical powers were about to comfort the great director and dazzle the public at the same time.

Clift and Taylor: a beauty that blinded

A Place in the Sun (1951) is a melancholy story of a poor lad, an outsider, who goes to work for his rich uncle and falls in love with a rich girl while a poor girl loves him and makes too many demands.  Stevens turned Theodore Dreiser's literary masterpiece, An American Tragedy, into a movie experience of the highest order.  He teamed Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor for the first time and gave Shelley Winters her first great role.  

The film is renowned for its gorgeous closeups, said to be the first time they were ever accomplished so brilliantly.  Of course, most of them had Clift and Taylor in them so how tough could it have been?  The black and white photography is also impressive.  Stevens would win his first Oscar, richly deserved. 

Shane (1953) did for color what the former did for black and white and features another outsider, a gunslinger who comes to Wyoming to help a farming family, also outsiders, stand up to town bullies.

Stevens, Alan Ladd and Van Heflin worked well together

The film has many a western cliché which could have put it in B movie status but together they all worked so well as Stevens invested it with touching sentiment, some Freudian complex issues.  I loved how Shane yearned to be a regular, settled-down guy, how he and the farmer's wife had an unspoken thing for one another and how he handled his friendship with the young son.

One of best westerns ever made in Hollywood's Golden Age, Stevens wanted Clift and William Holden (the heart races).  When they proved unavailable, Paramount regulars Alan Ladd, Van Heflin and Jean Arthur were hired, along with a winsome Brandon De Wilde and a scary Jack Palance and no one ever looked back.  Arthur said she did the film strictly for Stevens and then retired.  Ladd and Heflin became good friends for the rest of their lives and Ladd turned in the best performance of his career.  He said I learned more about acting from George Stevens in a few months than I had in my entire life up until then. 

 

Stevens's sharp eye took you places.  You weren't just watching a movie, you were there.  If you didn't think you were out in the rolling hills of Virginia watching a fox hunt or on the parched plains of Texas in Stevens's monster hit Giant (1956), you couldn't have been paying much attention.  This man takes you along.  Watching Elizabeth Taylor in Virginia approaching the camera on her magnificent black stallion gave me goosebumps.  Or in Texas admiring Taylor and her near-equal in the looks department, Rock Hudson, in just about any scene together.  Who could forget when the newlywed Benedicts opened the window shade on their train and saw the vastness of nothing... oh just the occasional tumbleweed blowing by and that horse prancing in the wind?  How about how small you felt inside that cavernous house?  What about the Mexican village, the oil-rich Little Reata and Hudson's knockdown fight in the cafe?

Again Stevens won Oscar's best director and again Taylor was his lucky charm.  And again his film didn't make the cut for best picture.  To recall that the winner was producer Mike Todd's (Taylor's husband) overblown Around the World in 80 Days just grosses me out.  One of Oscar's great fu... um, mess-ups.  Poor George.

Always bargaining with Dean

Film history has a special chapter on Giant because of  Dean, who would, of course, be killed a short time after completing his role.  The new actor and longtime director clashed from Day One.  It was largely a difference of style.  Dean was vocal and unapologetic about accusing Stevens of being old school.  The actor would even occasionally refuse to perform in the manner Stevens wanted and off they'd go.  Eventually, for some scenes, the director would film a scene Dean's way and also his own way, partly to placate the rebellious actor, and then use the one he wanted in the first place.

Stevens, of course, was thunderstruck over this young upstart making just his third film.  Stevens knew that Elia Kazan kissed his ass on East of Eden and Nick Ray did more than that on Rebel Without a Cause and none of that was happening on this one.  Dean didn't understand or chose to ignore that George Stevens was in charge of a George Stevens production.  All in all, the boss said, it was a helluva headache working with him.

Even with these five paragraphs and a prior posting on Giant, I haven't the words to tell you how much I love this movie.

More outsiders, of course, populate The Diary of Anne Frank (1959), a superb production of two families hiding in an attic during WWII.  I remember seeing it once and finding it slow and too long but at the same time a lovely salute to heroism, compassion and endurance.  The most cogent of the characters are Anne and her father although title star Millie Perkins didn't fully engage me.  Winters won an Oscar which she donated to the Anne Frank Museum.  Unfortunately, it would be Stevens's last good film and there were just two more.

After more time away from filming, Stevens worked on doing some writing on his next, The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965).  Filming actually completed in 1963 but it took two more years to handle editing and other post-production issues.  Its casting of most of Hollywood impressed me but I had a difficult time sitting through four hours and 20 minutes, of a religious epic. So I didn't particularly care for it.  It was ridiculed (some scenes were so embarrassingly bad) and not a great success at the box office although it's one of those where public attitudes have softened some in later years.

Stevens didn't work for another five years or so.  I would guess some of that was due to the less-than-pleasing reviews of his biblical epic.  He did manage in May, 1968, after 21 years of bachelorhood, to  remarry again and would remain so until his passing.

For his final movie, one has to ask... Mr. Stevens, Sir, what were you thinking?  And what were Elizabeth Taylor and Warren Beatty thinking to appear in The Only Game in Town (1970), more a trashy TV movie if I've ever seen one.  I watched it with my hands over my face.  The town of the title is Las Vegas and she is a chorus girl and he is a compulsive gambler and poor piano player.  He immediately moves in with her because she doesn't like to smoke in bed alone.  They're messing with us, right?

Taylor's star had dimmed considerably at this point and the idea that she could be a showgirl, tall and willowy, is so misguided and laughable.  Beatty seems like he wandered on to someone else's film set.  His attempts at being a comic are the only thing that's funny.  Does he remind you of a funny guy?

Stevens's magical pairing with Taylor proves that the third time isn't always the charm.  Whether he intentionally stopped making movies or it just worked out that way as time passed I don't know.  He did manage to make two documentaries on D-Day.  

I found it sad that this great director was no longer working and that Hollywood seemed to turn on him.  He makes a couple of bad films and all his good work, all his magnificent films, all his history, mean nothing?  Sometimes I just don't understand that town, its short memory and its cruelty.

Stevens probably didn't much understand it either and hopefully he gave the town the finger as he drove north 70 miles or so to Lancaster and bought a ranch where he lived until the end of his life.  Stevens died at home of a heart attack in 1975 at age 70.

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A guilty pleasure