I thought I’d try to write or at least start this post off by writing from memory without using Google. I could only come up with 6 directors so I added another who acted but not in his own films. I decided to exclude actor/directors like Woody Allen and Clint Eastwood but then I broke that rule by adding Orson Welles. Now that the parameters are clear for this post, well fairly clear, let’s get going . . .
Alfred Hitchcock
Hitchcock was a British director who began in the days of silent films and came to be known as the master of suspense. Blackmail made in 1929 was the first British Talkie and 10 years later producer David O Selznick lured him to Hollywood where he made many films that are now regarded as classics, films like North by Northwest, Dial M for Murder, Rear Window, The Birds and Pyscho. Hitchcock might also be seen as one of the first celebrity directors. He became popular because of his habit of appearing, however briefly, in all of his films, sitting on a bus for instance, just missing the bus in another. He also became well known by introducing his television series, Alfred Hitchcock Presents. He is probably the most famous director to appear in his own films. He never played a speaking role but he appeared in every one of his films in some small way.
Hitchcock was knighted in 1980 and died in March that same year.
Quentin Tarantino
Tarantino is an interesting filmmaker in many ways, writing and acting as well as directing. His films also seem to follow an unconventional path with many extended scenes and dialogue to fill in character background. I haven’t seen many of his films but Pulp Fiction from 1994 is one of my favourites and it involves a number of overlapping storylines. Tarantino plays the part of Jimmie, a friend of two gangsters played by John Travolta and Samuel Jackson. Travolta’s character accidentally shoots someone in the back of their car and the two turn to Jimmie for help who then calls another gangster played by Harvey Keitel who sorts out the situation.
Oliver Stone
Oliver Stone is one of my very favourite filmmakers, responsible for directing such films as Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July and JFK. In Wall Street Stone takes a close look at the American stock market and the world of stocks, shares and stockbroking. A young ambitious trader dreams of working with big time corporate trader Gordon Gekko,
The young ambitious trader is Bud Fox played by Charlie Sheen and he manages to wangle himself into the world of the high flying Gordon Gekko played by Michael Douglas who won an Oscar for his portrayal. The two find that rival stockbroker Sir Lawrence Wildman is buying Anacot Steel and they buy shares and then leak information to the press which drives up the price. In a montage of shots, Oliver Stone himself appears as an investor who is buying shares.
Stone also had a cameo in the film Dave in 1993 in which the President of the USA has a stroke and an impersonator takes over until the President is well enough to return. Stone plays himself as a ‘conspiracy theorist’ claiming that the President has been replaced by a doppelganger.
Martin Scorcese
Scorcese is one of the great filmmakers of all time having directed numerous classic films such as Goodfellas, Raging Bull, The Aviator and many others. In Taxi Driver, Scorcese follows a disturbed former Vietnam veteran called Travis Bickle played by Robert De Niro. Bickle works nights in New York City as a taxi driver and as he drives around we hear his voice on the soundtrack lamenting the moral decay of the city and his desire to rid the streets of the scum that he sees nightly. Later he plans to assassinate a political candidate but eventually shoots the pimp of a young girl. Wounded by the pimp, he falls into a coma but awakens to find he has become a hero to people in the city.
In one scene, Scorcese plays a passenger in Bickle’s cab who asks to stop below an apartment where his wife is apparently involved with another man.
Martin Scorcese continues to make films and his latest release in 2023 is Killers of the Flower Moon.
John Huston
Born in 1906, John was the son of the Walter Huston and his wife Rhea. Walter was an actor and Rhea a sports editor for various magazines. His parents divorced when he was young but Huston spent time with both his parents. He wrote stories for various magazines and decided to try his hand with the new film business starting up in Hollywood. Huston had a contract with Universal, his father’s studio, and wrote dialogue for various films but after a drunken incident driving a car which left an actress dead he left to live in Paris. Later he returned and began writing for Warner Bros with great success. After the hit film Sergeant York starring Gary Cooper for which he wrote the screenplay, he managed to convince the film company to let him direct a picture. Huston chose The Maltese Falcon and the result was an absolute classic film starring Humphrey Bogart.
In 1948 Huston directed The Treasure of The Sierra Madre. He adapted the book by B Traven for his own screenplay and also cast his father, Walter Huston, as the old time prospector who takes two others, Humphrey Bogart and Tim Holt, on a search for gold.
In the opening scenes Bogart is down on his luck in the Mexican town of Tampico and approaches a smartly dressed American asking ‘could you stake a fellow American to a meal?’
Later Bogart, as Fred C Dobbs, approaches the same man again until the man asks ‘can’t you occasionally go to someone else?’ The smart American was played by Huston himself.
Huston had various other roles as an actor, one I remember was in the 1960’s spoof version of Casino Royale. Various directors contributed to the chaotic film including Huston. He was to shoot a segment about M, the head of the Secret Service but Robert Morley was unable to play the part so Huston played it himself.
Huston directed numerous films but died in 1987 aged 81.
Orson Welles
Primarily Welles was known as an actor but he directed many films, including his very first one, Citizen Kane which has become known as one of the greatest films of all time. Welles was known for having one of the most incredible contracts in Hollywood history, not in terms of money but for the creative control that Welles had. In Citizen Kane the film opens with the death of Kane, a millionaire newspaper magnate. His last words were ‘Rosebud’. The makers of a cinema newsreel decide to find out what or who Rosebud was.
To do so they research Kane’s life; his inheritance of a huge fortune, his takeover of a newspaper, his great wealth, his power and influence, his marriage and divorce and ultimately his death. The reporters never find the answers to their questions but we, the cinema audience, have the secret revealed to us right at the end of the picture.
Citizen Kane is a wonderful piece of cinema with an outstanding visual style and the only criticism I can put forward is that for all its visual fireworks it is a film with a cold centre, a cold heart. Does the viewer feel sympathy for Kane? I’m not sure he does.
Welles went on to make many films but never again achieved the directorial success he had with Kane. He died on the morning of October 10th, 1985 from a heart attack. He left behind numerous unfinished films and screenplays.
Cecil B DeMille
Cecil was born in 1881 and is known as one of the founding fathers of American cinema. He was famous as a director of epics from the silent Ten Commandments in 1923 to Samson and Delilah and another version of The Ten Commandments, this time with sound and shot in colour in 1956.
DeMille actually appeared in many cameos doing prologues or trailers but in 1950 he starred as himself in Sunset Boulevard directed by Billy Wilder. In the film, retired silent star Norma Desmond wants to return to the screen. She has written a screenplay which she has asked Joe Gillis, a writer desperate for some income, to edit. The script is terrible but after a phone call from the studio, Desmond arrives at the Paramount lot to see DeMille. DeMille finds that the phone call was actually a request to hire her grand old car for use in a film and not, as Norma thought, a call for her to return to films.
I went to another funeral this week. It was someone I knew only very slightly and in fact Liz knew the deceased much more than me. His name was John and he was a pretty nice guy. The funeral service though seemed to me to be a little bit flat, a little lacking in soul. There was no priest or reverend at the service, just the celebrant. She read out a history of John’s life and family, someone came up to read a sad poem and his Grandson played a tune on his guitar.
Ida Lupino, like Roddy MacDowell, was born in England, in fact both lived in the Herne Hill area of London. She wanted to be a writer rather than an actress but went into acting as she was part of a theatrical family and it seems that becoming an actor was expected of her. She appeared in many British films before moving to the USA in 1933.
Myrna studied dance in Los Angeles. She had small parts in many silent pictures but some stills of her appeared in Motion Picture magazine and led to a contract with Warner Bros.
I’ve always been fascinated by transformations either in fiction or in real life but what do I mean by transformations? Well, I have written about transformations before in a previous post. I talked then about Professor Higgins who helped Eliza Doolittle change from a street flower seller to a lady in George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion but with this new post I thought I’d start with the story of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.
I thought I’d start with Gone with the Wind and see where it takes me. Gone with the Wind was a major film adaptation of the book by Margaret Mitchell. The book was a huge hit and producer David O Selznick bought the film rights. Production was delayed for a long while as Selznick was determined to get Clark Gable for the part of the roguish Rhett Butler. Another delay was a distribution deal with MGM which couldn’t be finalised until Selznick’s then current deal with United Artists had expired. Selznick used the delay to begin a huge search for an actress to play the part of Scarlett O’Hara, the spoilt daughter of a plantation owner in the deep south of America. Scarlet has a crush on Ashley Wilkes played by British actor Leslie Howard in possibly his most famous role. The film was one of the major hits of 1939 and was the highest earning film up to that time.
In 1938 Leslie Howard played the part of Professor Higgins in the film production of Pygmalion based on the play by George Bernard Shaw. A musical version was a big hit on the stage in the 1960s. Julie Andrews played the part of Eliza Doolittle to great acclaim on the stage but when the time came to make a film version in 1964, the producers wanted a major star and so the part went to Audrey Hepburn.
James Bond has been in the news this week. The books by Ian Fleming are apparently being rewritten as they might be considered offensive to a modern generation of new readers and the producers are still looking for a new actor to play their famous secret agent. OK, time for another James Bond 007 post.
David was born in 1908 and spent his early life in Croydon (actually 38 Blenheim Crescent, Croydon) until his parents divorced. His father moved out and left the family in 1923 which must have been an upsetting moment in Lean’s young life. Another perhaps more significant moment was when an uncle gave him a camera when David was aged 10 and then Lean began to develop and print his own photographs.
The film did however win two Oscars for cinematographer Freddie Young and supporting actor John Mills. The poor reception of the film prompted David to meet with the New York critics at the city’s Algonquin Hotel. I’m not sure if David wanted to reason with them or just find out why they didn’t like the film but they spent two hours attacking his production. David came away devastated and would not make a film again until A Passage to India in 1984.
Letters from an Unknown Author! 