The Directors: Rudolph Maté

I was aware of Rudolph Maté early in my moviegoing because I seemed to constantly see the movies he directed.  His specialties and mine were aligned... westerns and film noir.  Additionally both of those genres tended to be B films and B's were also my specialty, particularly back in the days of double (and sometimes triple) bills.

I came to learn that there was never any press on him, in my opinion, ever.  I saw his name on the screen and that was it.  Apparently he never appeared in movie magazines or gave interviews, never showed up at Hollywood night spots and there was zip on his personal life.

It wasn't until I started researching his life for this piece that I was astonished to realize that there is NO information on his personal life.  I found nothing on his childhood whatsoever or whether he was ever married or if he was gay.  One always questioned gay in those days when a Hollywood personality was so secretive about his private life, doncha know?

I almost decided to not write about him at all except that I knew I wanted to.  A few of you may know his name and as a result find something worthwhile here... or not.

Maté was born in Poland in 1898.  His nationality was Hungarian and he attended the University of Budapest.  He began working in films when producer and fellow Hungarian Alexander Korda hired him as an assistant cameraman in 1919.  Maté spent years working in Berlin and Vienna before moving to France in the late 20s.  He would eventually handle the camera  for Carl Dreyer, Karl Freund, Fritz Lang and René Clair.

He came into his own when he followed Lang to Hollywood in 1935 and became one of Hollywood's most gifted cinematographers.  It is 

his expertise in this area for which he is most famous, not as a director.  

While he never won an Oscar he was nominated five years in a row as a cinematographer for Foreign Correspondent (1940), That Hamilton Woman (1941), Pride of the Yankees (1942), Sahara (1943) and Cover Girl (1944).  He would also handle the cameras on Come and Get It, Dodsworth, Stella Dallas, My Favorite Wife and Gilda.

Maté pulled double duty on It Had to Be You (1947), the only time he did so.  With this film he would end 12 years as a cinematographer and begin 16 years as a director.  Hollywood historians would generally consider that a true shame.  The producer, Don Hartman, started out as the director but quickly turned the reins over to Maté.  The fantasy-romantic comedy stars Ginger Rogers as a woman who leaves fiancés at the altar until she meets Cornel Wilde.  I didn't care for it.  Rogers was not a favorite and Wilde seemed out of place in a comedy.

The Dark Past (1948) is a talky film noir with William Holden in a rare bad- guy role as a disturbed killer who holds the household of an analyst (Lee J. Cobb) hostage.  Cobb uses the power of psychoanalysis to outwit the killer.  I found it compelling thanks to the writing and the two actors.

I want to report a murder... mine.  So begins the ultra-dark, brooding, totally engaging film noir, D.O.A. (1949), considered by many to be the best directing job Maté ever pulled off.  Edmond O'Brien stars as a man who has 48 hours to discover who poisoned him and why before he dies.  When those lists of the best-ever film noirs come about, D.O.A. should be on them.  Bravo to Maté for a razor-sharp sophisticated thriller.

Another noir, Union Station (1950), stars Holden and Barry Fitzgerald as cops at L.A.'s famed train depot who have been alerted that a kidnapped, blind heiress is being hidden there by a gang of thugs led by one of the movies' best bad guys, Lyle Bettger.  The tension-packed noir also stars Nancy Olson (in her second of four films with Holden) and Jan Sterling.

In 1953 Maté made three B films that became childhood favorites of mine that I have loved all my life.  Cahnt help it.  

When Tyrone Power ended his long servitude at 20th Century Fox, Universal quickly scooped him up with a 3-picture deal and more riches than he would ever earn.  The Mississippi Gambler is supposedly set in New Orleans where Power comes to town with the intention of opening up riverboat gambling.

Three beauties... Laurie, Power & Adams

A rich family comes into his life.  He starts fencing and enjoying time together with the family's widowed father (Paul Cavanaugh), and has acrimonious relationships with the man's spoiled, troubled children.  Power gets into it with the son (John Baer) and falls madly in unrequited love with the fiery daughter (Piper Laurie) who hates him (or so she says).  At the same time, Power's business partner, Julie Adams, is in love with him.

The film's sumptuous look I have no doubt is due to the director not being able to completely step away from his cinematographer years.  The two leading ladies... their gowns, jewels, hairstyles, attitudes... are a far cry from most actresses in westerns.  Actually, this is a southern.  Laurie is presented at the pinnacle of her youthful beauty.

I expect it was a favorite for Maté because, despite what's seen on the screen, everyone got on so well.  Power was the big hit... rarely had he worked swathed in such praise.  Laurie had a respite from hating her Universal movies and she and Adams became lifelong pals.

It's just grand, good fun.

The next two films are similar in that they deal with women on the run from a gangster who, in turn, has sent a man off to foreign lands to bring her back to the states.

Linda Darnell is on the lam in Mexico with a very menacing Jack Palance hot on her trail in Second Chance.  Traveler Robert Mitchum gets involved as a good Samaritan.  It's not as good as it might have been but few could forget its finale on a cable car.

Palance terrorizing Darnell in 3D

The Mitchum-Palance pairing is about as tense as good v.s. bad gets.  Darnell, also out from her own Fox contract, seemed tired or maybe she was tired of being chased by Palance.

It is a Howard Hughes production and he always tinkered with his films to the point of sometimes rendering them incoherent. But it was also an early 3D film and that, along with the exciting cable car sequence, made Second Chance a crowd favorite.

The third of Maté's 1953 films and my favorite of all those he directed is Forbidden.  Starring Tony Curtis, Joanne Dru and Bettger and set in Macao, it is a minor film noir that I was drawn to because I was crazy about Dru and she was never more beautiful than in this film.  

Curtis is sent to find her but not only is he not menacing as Palance was in the prior film but he is an ex-boyfriend who is still in love with her.  She lives with her fiancé, Bettger, who owns a gambling nightclub where Curtis manages to get a job.  How to get her out of Macao will be the problem but when Dru and Curtis realize they are in love, hiding it from Bettger who has eyes and ears everything, is a bigger problem.

Lyle Bettger, Joanne Dru & Tony Curtis

Forbidden's haunting theme, You Belong to Me , is played to good advantage throughout.  It was the second of four movies the director would make with Curtis.

Squabbles over land is at the heart of The Violent Men (1955).  It has "B" written all over it but Glenn Ford, a vicious Barbara Stanwyck, a paralyzed Edward G. Robinson, Dianne Foster and Brian Keith bring it all to life.  Western lovers will like it.

Fred MacMurray and Charlton Heston are rather unconvincing as surveyors Lewis and Clark in the colorful The Far Horizons (1955).

If you think they're bad, how about Donna Reed as Sacagawea?  With another cast this could have been a good movie.  

As it turned out, Three Violent People (1956) ended up being Maté's final western and it was better than some of his other ones.  Heston plays a Confederate soldier returning to his Texas ranch after the war with a wife (Anne Baxter) he hardly knows, carpetbaggers after his land, corrupt government officials and a brother (Tom Tryon) with whom he has a hateful relationship.

Baxter & Heston with Maté

Known as a woman's picture, Miracle in the Rain (1956) stars Jane Wyman as a lonely secretary who falls in love with a soldier (Van Johnson) and is inconsolable after his death.  I didn't see this one until a couple of years ago and being a sucker for romantic tearjerkers, I liked it more than I thought I would.

For the First Time (1959) stars Mario Lanza in his final film (he would be dead four months after its release).  It is also the only time Maté directed a musical and the temperamental Lanza wore out his director.  While the story of an opera singer who falls in love with a deaf girl is only so-so, Lanza is in great voice.  With Maté's trained eye, location filming in Italy, Germany and Austria is most pleasing.

Maté's last film of any note was The 300 Spartans (1962) which starred Richard Egan and Diane Baker.  It was one of those epic historical films with a cast of gazillions and one with decidedly mixed results.  It's Greece v.s. Persia in 480BC with 300 courageous Spartans against an immense Persian army.  Egan, sadly, also in his final film of any note, is impressively kingly as Leonidas.  Some action scenes are exciting and the Greek locations magnificently presented but the dialogue is surprisingly wooden and hurt the movie's prospects.

A favorite, Richard Egan

Maté directed a couple more poorly received films before retiring in 1963.  A year later, at age 66, he died of a heart attack at his Beverly Hills home.

Again, while acclaimed as a cinematographer, his years as a director were generally considered rather lackluster.   Those films, while they often turned out striking and visually attractive, had, for the most part, a general unevenness which revealed to some that he lacked a strong directorial personality.  

I am still amazed at how he managed to keep his private life so private in chatty, catty Hollywood.   But good for you, Rudy, good for you.

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Their final big-screen pairing