William Cameron Menzies by James Curtis

William Cameron Menzies: The Shape of Films to Come
by James Curtis
November 2015
432 pages
Pantheon

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"His name is William Cameron Menzies, whose name wouldn't cause a ripple among the screen's cash customers, but he is certainly one of the most important creative figures in Hollywood." - Irving Hoffman

Imagine the most entrancing movie scene you've ever laid your eyes on. You might credit the director or the cinematographer. But chances are that much of the credit should go to the production designer.  William Cameron Menzies took on my roles in his long career in Hollywood. Director, art director, producer  and even writer, he wore many hats and worked on many films. From the silent era until the late 1950s, Menzies contributed a vast amount of his enormous skill as a visual artist. His contributions varied from small to overwhelming and he worked tirelessly to create movies that enchanted audiences with their visual grandeur. Menzies was the master of forced perspective and set design. Sometimes he was a victim of his own talent and focused more on his art than on the functionality or bringing out the best in the actors. However Menzies single-handedly gave birth to the job of production designer and set the course for decades of films to come.

"As an art director I am interested in the photoplay as a series of pictures -- as a series of fixed and moving patterns -- as a fluid composition, which is the product of the creative workers who collaborate in production." - William Cameron Menzies

Author James Curtis took on the enormous task of telling the story of William Cameron Menzies impressive and lengthy career in Hollywood. Much like with his excellent book on Spencer Tracy, Curtis received help from the Menzies family, most notably Menzies' youngest daughter Suzanne. He had access to the family's collection of Menzies' art and letters and with all of that source material he was able to create a rich and thorough account of Menzies career.

While this book is less than 400 pages of actual reading, it is crammed with details that will take some time to absorb. It's also full of storyboard art, sketches, paintings, production stills and other photographs that illustrate Menzies' skills as a production designer and art director. These are presented in black and white images throughout the book as well as in a few full color inserts.

And the movies covered? There are so many. Most notably you'll learn about Menzies work on the following: The Thief of Bagdad, The Son of the Sheik, Bulldog Drummond, Puttin' on the Ritz, Chandu the Magician, Alice and Wonderland, Things to Come, Our Town, Kings Row, For Whom the Bells Tolls, The Pride of the Yankees, Spellbound, The Story of Ivy, It's a Wonderful Life, Reign of Terror, The Whip Hand, Invaders from Mars... oh and a little movie called Gone With the Wind.

William Cameron Menzies poses with some of his work from Gone With the Wind.

This was a fascinating book. I have to admit I have very little interest in GWTW which takes up a lot of the book. But it's the most important project Menzies worked on his career and the author is right to devote as many pages to it as he did. My list of to-be-watched films grew exponentially and I furiously took notes of what I wanted to watch.

Needless to say I highly recommend James Curtis' William Cameron Menzies: The Shape of Films to Come. Curtis is beloved in the classic film community and rightly so. This book is an spectacular achievement.

This is my sixth review for my summer reading challenge.

King of Jazz by James Layton and David Pierce

King of Jazz: Paul Whiteman's Technicolor Revue
by James Layton and David Pierce
foreword by Michael Feinstein
November 2016
304 pages
Media History Press

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King of Jazz (1930) was an ambitious project. The darling of Carl Laemmle's heir Carl Laemmle Jr., it sought out to showcase jazz superstar Paul Whiteman. The bandleader's popularity was staggering, boosted by his penchant for publicity and his ability to add to combine jazz with symphonic style. His name carried so much clout that night clubs were eager to be connected with him. Even his sideline bands and his singing trio the Rhythym Boys, made up of Al Rinker, Bing Crosby and Harry Barris, were in high demand. In 1927, Whiteman was at peak popularity and with the advent of sound in the film industry the Laemmles pounced on booking Whiteman for King of Jazz. But what exactly would this movie be about?

At first Universal tried to give King of Jazz a plot but what stood in their way was Whiteman himself. He wasn't particularly good looking so a romantic lead would be out of the question. He also wasn't much of an actor. Universal tried several times to make a musical out of King of Jazz. One of my favorite directors, Paul Fejos gave it a shot. As did other directors and other writers. Nothing was quite right. It didn't help that Whiteman turned everything down. It wasn't until musical theater director John Murray Anderson came on board and King of Jazz became a musical revue instead of a musical movie with a plot that the film started to take form. It featured a bevvy of talents, including Paul Whiteman himself, some from Universal's stock including John Boles, and others from theater and vaudeville. After many delays, King of Jazz released in 1930. Unfortunately, the onslaught of musicals and musical revues in the early talkie era created a fatigue for this genre of film. There were major flaws with the final production and critics and audiences alike took notice. As a result, it didn't perform well at the box office. However, this two-strip Technicolor movie was innovative and served as a time capsule of the era's entertainment industry. It would prove to be a historically important film.

In Layton and Pierce's follow up to The Dawn of Technicolor, this book explores all that went into the making of King of Jazz and beyond. Readers are treated to a history of Universal Studios, a full background on Paul Whiteman and a soup to nuts look at everything that went into the production of King of Jazz down to the smallest detail. For example, we learn all that took to make the Rhapsody in Blue number as blue as possible which was nearly impossible with two-strip Technicolor. Only red and green would show. In order to mimic blue, they juxtaposed a light green with silver. Also, did you know that Bing Crosby was going to have a bigger role in King of Jazz? He caused a car wreck and upset a judge which landed him in jail. He would be released from jail each day to work a bit on the movie only to go back after he was done.

We also learn about the film's release, subsequent re-releases and the nine foreign language versions. The film's legacy is a complicated one. King of Jazz was chopped up and prints and scenes went missing. It took decades to put it back together and it's still not fully complete. The authors also delve into the expensive and impressive recent restoration effort conducted by NBC Universal. I had the pleasure of seeing the restored film at last year's Capitolfest.

 (The video above is not from the restoration rather from the color corrected re-release. 

This is one of my favorite numbers from the revue.)

King of Jazz: Paul Whiteman's Technicolor Revue is a monumental feat. It's mind-boggling how much research went into this book. As I read through it I kept thinking to myself, what great lengths it took the authors to dig up all this information and present in such a composed and orderly fashion.

I contributed to the Kickstarter campaign for the creation of this book and am so pleased to see the final result. I loved reading The Dawn of Technicolor and I had high expectations for Layton and Pierce's new book. Needless to say these expectations were met and then some. This book is gorgeous. It's full of black-and-white photographs, drawings, sketches, music, portraits and color stills from the film. It's smaller in trim size than The Dawn of Technicolor which makes for much more comfortable reading. A lot of love and attention was put in this book and it shows from the self-cover down to the appendix.

For anyone who is interested in the early history of film, King of Jazz: Paul Whiteman's Technicolor Revue is a must-have for your library. Even if you have never seen the King of Jazz, the insights into the history of it will teach you a lot about this era in film making. Now maybe one day soon we'll get a Blu-Ray release of the fantastic restoration.

This is my fifth review for my Summer Reading Challenge.

Five Came Back by Mark Harris

Five Came Back
A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War
by Mark Harris
Penguin Press
511 pages
February 2014

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World War II was over and director John Huston was heading home. The army had one more assignment for him before he repatriated to good old Hollywood. They needed him to make a documentary about shell shocked servicemen being treated at a psychiatric ward. With soldiers coming back home and some dealing with serious mental trauma, the army was anxious to show employers across the nation that these men were treatable and would make fine employees. Propaganda films during the war became “a matter of strategic necessity” and this didn’t change when things were winding down. Huston was excited to show a reality of war that had been swept under the rug. The army’s vision of The Returning Psychoneurotic because Huston’s vision of Let There Be Light. Huston spent three months filming psychologists working with patients at Mason General Hospital. He had unfettered access and countless hours of precious footage. Once it was filmed, edited and in the can, a premiere at MoMA in New York City was arranged. At first the army approved the final result. But then they urgently tried to supress it. First they said they didn’t have music copyright permission for public screenings. Then they said the releases the soldiers signed were not legally binding. Even though Huston ended the film on an uplifting note, the army wasn’t ready for the public to see what Huston wanted them to see. Let There Be Light was supressed for 35 years. Huston fought for decades to have it released and finally got his wish when Vice President Walter Mondale gave his approval in 1980.

“The men were seeking adventure, but more than that, they were reaching for relevance in a world that had become rougher and more frightening than anything their studio bosses would allow them to depict on film.” – Mark Harris

The story of Huston’s Let There Be Light is one of many stories contained in Mark Harris’ book Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War. Before the United States was involved in the war, there was an understanding that the film industry would be a crucial ally in building pro-War sentiment with the general public. After the attack on Pearl Harbor, five Hollywood directors enlisted and lent their talents as filmmakers to capture scenes of the war for the folks back home. These included John Ford, William Wyler, John Huston, Frank Capra and George Stevens. Harris follows their stories from just before the war, through to their assignments on the battle field and their eventual return to Hollywood. Told in chronological order the narrative intertwines their stories to tell the bigger story of WWII.

Anyone with an interest in 1940s film will be fascinated by how the war influenced pictures including feature films but also documentaries and shorts. Many films are discussed at length and what’s particularly fascinating is how the director’s involvement in the war affected their films. Did you know Frank Capra wanted to make Arsenic and Old Lace so his family could have some income while he was away? Or that Harold Russell was first part of William Wyler’s Diary of a Sergeant before he was added to The Best Year’s of Our Lives? Or that George Stevens witnessed the horrors of the concentration camps and after that couldn’t bring himself to make comedies in Hollywood?

“As long as they lived, the war lived in them.” – Mark Harris

William Wyler (left)

George Stevens (center)

John Ford (left)

John Huston (second from left), Frank Capra (right)

Films discussed at length include Meet John Doe (1941), Mrs. Miniver (1942), The More the Merrier (1943), They Were Expendable (1945), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) and more. Then there are the documentaries that brought home the story of the war. These included Capra’s Why We Fight series and The Negro Soldier, Huston’s The Battle of San Pietro and The Report from the Aleutians, Ford’s The Battle of Midway, Stevens' Nazi Concentration Camps and Wyler’s The Memphis Belle: A Story of a Flying Fortress and others.

Mark Harris’ book is a result of five years of archival research and it shows. It’s incredibly detailed and while it’s not overly long it does take quite a bit of time to read. Mostly because of it’s structure and how much information is packed in its pages. I’m fascinated by this era so it was essential that I read Five Came Back. The book inspired a Netflix mini-series which I’m keen to watch. It does help to have seen some of the films and documentaries mentioned in the book. Many of the docs are available on YouTube including Huston’s Let There Be Light which I highly recommend you see and have included below.

Five Came Back is a fascinating book about Hollywood directors contributing to the war effort during WWII and how their experiences affected them.

This is my fourth review for my Summer Reading Challenge.