Some Like It Wilder Page 6
Wilder secured Ray Milland to play Major Philip Kirby by a rather unorthodox means: He followed Milland’s car out of the Paramount parking lot one afternoon. He caught up with Milland at a stoplight and yelled at him, asking if he would like to be in his picture. Milland remembers smiling and responding, “Sure!”7 It did not matter to him, Milland explained, that it was the first picture Wilder was directing in Hollywood, since Milland had acted in Arise, My Love (1940), a very good film about the Spanish civil war that Brackett and Wilder had written. Benchley, a celebrated humorist and sometimes movie actor (Foreign Correspondent), was content to play the lascivious Albert Osborne because he and Brackett had both been on the staff of the New Yorker in the 1920s.
Wilder endeavored to round up the best crew he could muster at Paramount for his first venture as a Hollywood filmmaker. “I needed all the help I could get,” he said. Cinematographer Leo Tover, film editor Doane Harrison, and camera operator Ernest Laszlo had all done good work on Hold Back the Dawn. (Laszlo would later serve as director of photography on Wilder’s Stalag 17.)
In February 1942, the studio drew up a budget of $928,000, a rather standard budget for an A picture. Brackett, who had seniority over Wilder at Paramount, was to receive $27,000 for coauthoring the screenplay, while Wilder was allocated $17,200 as coauthor of the script. Wilder’s services as director merited a measly $9,800. Hence his combined salary for cowriting and directing the film came to the same amount Brackett would receive for cowriting the screenplay. As Wilder noted sardonically, that meant that he virtually directed the picture for free.
Wilder confided to Lubitsch that he was terrified at the thought of directing his first Hollywood film. Lubitsch invited several immigrant directors to come to the set on March 12, 1942, the first day of shooting, to give Wilder moral support. Among them was William Wyler (Wuthering Heights). Preston Sturges, a native-born American, showed up on his own because he wanted to encourage Wilder, only the second screenwriter to become a writer-director at Paramount. As it happened, Sturges’s The Lady Eve was the leading moneymaker for Paramount at the time. Wilder cleared the set of well-wishers by 10:00 A.M., and at 10:25 he called Ginger Rogers to the soundstage for the first shot.
The first thing Wilder learned about directing was that there could be only one boss on the soundstage. He knew he would be lost if he allowed the actors to push him around. “Making a movie is like flying a plane,” he explained. “Once you get off the ground you must be in full control of the flight if you are to avoid a crash.”8 Even though The Major and the Minor was Wilder’s first Hollywood film, said Rogers, “from day one I saw that Billy knew what to do.” He was very self-confident but would listen to the actors’ suggestions.9 He began each rehearsal by having the actors read the scene together; then he had them walk through it on the set; finally he would figure out where to put the camera and where the camera moves would be. At that point he would do the first take.
Charles Coleman Jr. was appointed Wilder’s assistant director, a post the dependable individual would hold for fifteen years, through The Spirit of St. Louis (1957). Coleman was also second unit director on The Major and the Minor; he was sent to Delafield, Wisconsin, to shoot background exteriors at St. John’s Military Academy, which stands in for Wallace Military Academy in the movie.
It was during the making of The Major and the Minor that film editor Doane Harrison became an important member of Wilder’s production team. Harrison, a lanky, laconic individual, had begun as an editor of Mack Sennett comedy shorts in the 1920s; he spent most of his career at Paramount. Wilder asked Harrison to be by his side while he was shooting and frequently conferred with him about composing the shots and selecting the camera angles. He planned each scene with Harrison’s advice because he wanted to make the film on the set and not allow the editor to remake it in the editing room—under the watchful eye of the producer. Wilder, from the outset of his career as a director, learned from Harrison to shoot just enough footage to enable the editor to put together a given scene one way—his way. For example, if Wilder decided that he did not want a close-up in a particular scene, he simply did not film one. In his opinion, a close-up was a special thing that should be used sparingly, like a trump in bridge. Wilder did not give the producer extra footage “to monkey around with” in the cutting room: “When I finish a film there is nothing on the cutting room floor but cigarette butts, chewing gum wrappers and tears.”10
Beginning with Sunset Boulevard (1950), Harrison would be designated as supervising editor; he would continue to advise Wilder as associate producer from The Seven Year Itch (1955) through The Fortune Cookie (1966). Wilder’s creative association with Harrison was one of the most enduring professional relationships of his career. “I went to Doane Harrison College,” said Wilder in tribute.11 In all, Harrison collaborated with Wilder on twenty-three pictures over three decades.
Principal photography was finished on The Major and the Minor on May 9, 1942. Perhaps because the war does not figure in the plot in any significant way, Richard Armstrong incorrectly states that Wilder “completed shooting a month before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor” on December 7, 1941.12 Rather, it is because the film’s literary sources date from the 1920s that it more or less ignores the impending war.
For the record, Wilder brought in his first Hollywood movie within striking distance of the budget and only six days behind schedule. Perhaps his experience a decade earlier of making Mauvaise graine, a low-budget independent picture in Paris, had taught Wilder how to cut corners during filming. He fell behind schedule, he pointed out, only while filming the scenes set in the military academy, such as the school dance, which involved two hundred teenagers as extras.
After principal photography wrapped, Wilder plunged into postproduction. Since he and Harrison had planned the total editing scheme during shooting, Harrison cut the film at a brisk pace, conferring with Wilder along the way. Robert Emmett Dolan wrote the background music for the picture after consulting with Wilder. Dolan was a young composer fresh from providing the incidental music for the Bing Crosby–Fred Astaire vehicle Holiday Inn (1942). Dolan employed Victor Shertzinger’s waltz “Dream Lover” as one of the numbers played at the cadets’ school dance. Then he did variations on it throughout the rest of the background score. Dolan borrowed the melodious waltz from Ernst Lubitsch’s 1929 musical The Love Parade. Perhaps Wilder suggested it to Dolan as an homage to his mentor.
Wilder’s first Hollywood picture opens with a printed prologue, a practice he would follow intermittently throughout his film career. This prologue states, “The Dutch bought New York from the Indians in 1626, and by May 1941, there wasn’t an Indian left who regretted it.” The first shot of the movie focuses on a street sign that reads “Park Avenue.” It is night, and the camera pans down to Susan Applegate on her way to Albert Osborne’s apartment to give him a scalp treatment.
Osborne attempts to ply Susan with liquor and clumsily tries to coax her into doing a rumba with him (“We could make beautiful music together”). But Susan resists Osborne’s blandishments and reads the riot act to him in a speech that provides a nifty example of Brackett and Wilder’s crisp, clever dialogue. Susan declares that she has had quite enough of wicked New York City: “From the bargain basement to the Ritz Tower, I got myself stared at, glanced over, cuddled up against.” She is fed up. “This is Susan Applegate signing off!” But the libidinous Osborne is not to be deterred, so she baptizes him with a generous dollop of egg shampoo. She escapes his clutches by hightailing it to the nearest elevator, while Osborne literally has egg on his face. By now Susan is determined to escape the bevy of male admirers who constantly plague her.
Susan soon boards the train for Stevenson, Iowa, disguised as a preteen named Sue-Sue, and encounters Major Philip Kirby on board. Wilder said that, when he first saw Ginger Rogers with her bosoms taped down, wearing pigtails and bobby socks, carrying a balloon and sucking on a lollypop, “I knew I had a picture”—a favorite phras
e of Lubitsch’s.
Donning a disguise is a recurring element in Wilder’s movies. As we have seen, in Midnight, Claudette Colbert masquerades as a Hungarian baroness. In addition, Wilder’s very next film, Five Graves to Cairo, features a British officer who impersonates a deceased espionage agent.
The plot of The Major and the Minor goes into overdrive when Susan accepts Philip’s invitation to spend the weekend visiting the exclusive Wallace Military Academy for Boys in High Creek, Indiana, where he is on the faculty. Susan must maintain her charade while at the institute. Philip’s vision is impaired in one eye, which suggests that he is not perceptive in sizing up others; he fails to “see through” Susan’s disguise. He calls himself Sue-Sue’s “Uncle Philip.”
Philip takes Sue-Sue to stay with the family of his huffy fiancée Pamela Hill (Rita Johnson). Philip belongs to the local elite social set, as does Pamela. She and her precocious kid sister Lucy (Diana Lynn) are alone in suspecting that Sue-Sue is a phony. Pamela says pointedly to Philip at one point, “When you felt the urge to become an uncle, you should have found a less inflammatory niece.” Lucy confronts Susan directly. When Sue-Sue gazes into Lucy’s fishbowl and says the goldfish “wants his din-din,” Lucy snaps, “Stop that baby talk, will you? You’re not twelve just because you’re acting like six. Maybe you can fool the grown-ups, but you can’t fool me!” Yet Lucy does not give Susan away. As a matter of fact, Lucy does not approve of the way that her older sister bosses Philip around and in no time at all decides that Philip would be better off with Susan. “You’re much more my sister than Pamela,” she tells Susan later.
Susan must fend off the hot-blooded cadets who begin making advances on her as Sue-Sue. One of the cadets, Clifford Osborne, turns out to be the son of Albert Osborne. Clifford even uses one of his father’s lines on Sue-Sue: “We could make beautiful music together”—like father, like son! Another cadet, a randy young man named Anthony Wigton (Raymond Roe), maneuvers Sue-Sue into a clinch and a kiss on their first encounter. The second time around, she distracts him by coaxing him to tap-dance with her.
Dismayed by the manner in which the cadets are pursuing Sue-Sue, Philip summons her to his office for a helping of paternal advice. In the course of his mini-lecture on the facts of life, he confesses, “When I look at you with my bum eye, you look almost grown-up; Sue-Sue, you’re a knockout!” William K. Everson observes, “The sexual implications . . . of the major’s growing fondness for a girl he believes to be only twelve [are] surprisingly risqué for a film of 1942.”13
Sue-Sue is invited to the cadets’ school dance, where Albert Osborne, who has come to the institute to visit his son, shows up. He inevitably recognizes Susan in the guise of Sue-Sue and informs Pamela who Sue-Sue really is. Pamela accordingly issues an ultimatum to Susan: she must depart immediately, or Pamela will reveal her true identity to Philip. Susan hotfoots it out of town, without bidding goodbye to Philip, and presses on for her home in Stevenson. When Susan’s mother asks her what happened to her on the trip from New York City, Susan replies cryptically, “I went to a masquerade.”
Philip decides to stop over in Stevenson on his way to the West Coast to see Sue-Sue. Susan dispatches her mother to the attic so that she can impersonate her mother with Philip, since she does not want her mother to meet him. Susan dons her mother’s apron and spectacles and waits for Philip on the front porch. Philip informs her that Pamela broke their engagement to marry Anthony Wigton’s wealthy father. He proceeds to the depot. While standing on the platform, awaiting his train, Philip notices an attractive woman dressed in a tailored suit and picture hat who bears a strong resemblance to Sue-Sue. She tells him she is off to marry a major. Philip instantly recognizes her and cries, “Sue-Sue!” With that, they board the train together. A cloud of steam billows up from the train engine and blots the couple from view; they vanish, as if by magic.
The critics found The Major and the Minor a fresh, funny comedy, as did the mass audience.14 Rogers gave a refreshingly flavored and rounded performance as the preadolescent Sue-Sue, as the mature Susan Applegate, and as Susan’s mother. Her one regret was that she never had the opportunity to work with Wilder again. She remarked on TV talk shows that, as a star at the time, she helped his career along while he was making his first Hollywood film, but Wilder did not seem to appreciate the favor she did him. Asked about this, he answered, “I showed my appreciation—she got top billing.”
The Major and the Minor is a startlingly assured film, with none of the cheap tricks or showiness of a tyro director desperate for a studio calling card. “Everyone expected me to make something ‘fancy-schmancy,’ ” said Wilder. “Yet I made something commercial; I brought back the most saleable hunk of celluloid I could.”15 Wilder always stubbornly maintained that his films did not qualify him to be named the heir of Ernst Lubitsch, but with The Major and the Minor, Wilder proved what he inherited from Lubitsch: Wilder brought to his first Hollywood picture a sophistication and wit that were totally lacking in the film’s literary sources. For his film, “Wilder wrote dialogue that ran the gamut from wisecracks to double entendre,” Bernard Dick writes. It was the sort of dry wit and banter that would come to define the Wilder touch in his subsequent films. For example, when Philip asks Sue-Sue how she feels, she responds, “Sue-Sue is so-so.” Moreover, the scene between Susan and Albert Osborne is peppered with Osborne’s saucy bons mots. In the present film, Wilder’s wit is not heavy-handed, says Dick; “Wilder winks rather than leers.”16 The Major and the Minor is a crazy screwball comedy in the best tradition.
The front office was more than satisfied with Wilder’s handling of The Major and the Minor, which he brought in nearly on schedule and only slightly over budget. “They were obviously not going to send me back to my typewriter, but allow me to continue directing,” he said, since the picture was a commercial success. After directing this film, he convinced the studio to allow Brackett to act as the producer of the subsequent films they coscripted, to make doubly certain that their screenplays would be committed to celluloid without interference from the front office.
Wilder wanted a change of pace for his next film. He did not want to be typed as a director of romantic comedies, so he was looking for a solid melodrama. The literary source for his next film was an obscure play by the Hungarian playwright Lajos Biró, Hotel Imperial, a World War I espionage drama. It had never been produced on Broadway. Biró had written the play after the First World War and brought it with him when he immigrated to Hollywood in 1924 to become a screenwriter.
Paramount had made a silent film of Hotel Imperial in 1926 starring Pola Negri, which was directed by Mauritz Stiller and produced by Erich Pommer. This was one of the two American films that Pommer, for whom Wilder worked at Ufa in Berlin, produced in his brief sojourn in Hollywood in the 1920s.17 Ernst Lubitsch planned to remake the picture at Paramount in 1936 as I Loved a Soldier, with Marlene Dietrich in the lead. But Lubitsch abandoned the production when Dietrich bowed out of the project. Journeyman director Robert Florey eventually filmed it in 1939 with Isa Miranda replacing Dietrich, and it flopped.
Both the 1926 and the 1939 versions of Hotel Imperial follow the original play pretty carefully. The play is set in a Balkan border town; by sheer coincidence, the town is Sucha, Wilder’s birthplace. “Sucha is a small Galician town” that, in the play, the Russians capture from the Austrians.18 The town’s shabby hotel serves as the Russian army’s headquarters. An Austrian officer stays on at the hotel in the guise of a waiter to spy on the enemy. When the officer kills a Russian soldier who has uncovered his identity, he escapes to the Austrian lines. A Polish chambermaid is accused of the murder by the Russian general; she is about to be shot when the Austrian officer returns with a squad of soldiers and rescues her.
Five Graves to Cairo (1943)
Biró himself brought the play to Wilder’s attention in 1942. He suggested that Wilder update the story to World War II and build it around Field Marshal Erwin Rommel and his Afrika Kor
ps, who were then fighting the British in the desert. The play appealed to Wilder because it involved a character perpetrating a deception by assuming a disguise—already a favorite theme of his. Still, to transplant the story from World War I to World War II would require considerable overhauling. Brackett and Wilder changed the title to Five Graves to Cairo to dissociate their project from the 1939 fiasco.
Paramount officially assigned Brackett and Wilder to the film on August 10, 1942. The studio allocated a budget of $825,000 for the production. The budget for The Major and the Minor had been somewhat larger, mostly because Rogers commanded a star’s salary; there were no expensive stars in Five Graves to Cairo. For example, Erich von Stroheim, who would play Rommel and be featured prominently in the publicity layouts for the film, would receive a mere $30,000 for his efforts. Wilder was to receive a bigger piece of the pie than he had on the previous film. He would pocket $31,500 for coauthoring the screenplay and $21,000 for directing the picture, for a total almost twice the amount he had been paid for cowriting and directing The Major and the Minor. Clearly, Wilder’s status was improving at Paramount.
Brackett and Wilder changed the setting from a Balkan village to a town on the Libyan border in North Africa. The Austrian officer in the play became a British officer, John Bramble; the Polish chambermaid was now a French servant girl named Mouche; and the Russian general was transformed into Rommel, the Desert Fox.