Screenshot of the Fortnight: "LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN" (1945)

Leave Her to Heaven (1945) is film noir in color.  Purists argue that film noir in color is an oxymoron, that a noir film is by definition a black-and-white film.  Plenty of critics and scholars agree.  Well, I disagree.

I say that if a color movie would undoubtedly qualify as film noir if it had been filmed in black-and-white, then it's film noir.

Only one other color film that I'm aware of—Niagara (1953), with Joseph Cotten and Marilyn Monroe—is routinely included in lists of noir films.  Some critics and scholars even include Vertigo (1958).

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Gene Tierney plays so far against type in Leave Her to Heaven that audiences must have wondered where this actress had been for five years.  She always played a beautiful, captivating … someone.  [SPOILER ALERT!]  In this film she plays Ellen Berent, a beautiful, captivating psychopath and child-murderer.  In an American film in 1945, who kills a kid?  The scene in which she commits this heinous act is shocking.  You knew Ellen was bad.  But you didn't know she was that bad. [END SPOILER ALERT!]

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If you say that Gene Tierney was the most beautiful woman of all time in the movies, I would not argue the point.  My pick would be Hedy Lamarr.  But Tierney would surely be one of the top five or six.  (I would nominate her, Hedy Lamarr, Ava Gardner, Elizabeth Taylor, Norma Shearer, and Grace Kelly.)

Tierney was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1920.  In 1940 she played the leading female role in the Broadway production of The Male Animal.  Two weeks after its opening, Darryl F. Zanuck, studio boss at 20th Century Fox, was in the audience.  He was so taken by Tierney's beauty and physical presence that he told his assistant to note her name.  Later that night he went to the Stork Club and saw a beautiful woman dancing.  Zanuck told his assistant, "Forget that girl from the play.  See if you can sign that one."  The woman was Gene Tierney.

In her early films she worked with some of Hollywood's best directors: Fritz Lang (her screen debut in The Return of Frank James [1940]), John Ford (Tobacco Road [1941]), Henry Hathaway (Sundown [1941], China Girl [1942]), Josef von Sternberg (The Shanghai Gesture [1941]), Rouben Mamoulian (Rings on Her Fingers [1942]), and Ernst Lubitsch (Heaven Can Wait [1943]).  From Belle Starr (1941), her fourth film, to the mid-1950s when she all but retired from Hollywood, she was the leading lady in all her work.

Her big breakthrough came in 1944 when she played the title role in Laura, directed by Otto Preminger.  Like her next film, this was classic film noir. [SPOILER ALERT!]  In it, Laura is the victim of a murder.  Police detective MacPherson (Dana Andrews) is investigating.  Laura's fiance (Vincent Price) and a friend, Waldo Lydecker (Clifton Webb), are hanging around, making themselves useless.  And then, less than halfway into the film, Laura appears, alive and well.  Someone had tried and failed to kill her.  Who?  The investigation continues till its inevitable conclusion. [END SPOILER ALERT!]

After Leave Her to Heaven, Tierney enjoyed success in film after film, starting with The Razor's Edge (1946) with Tyrone Power; followed by The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947) with Rex Harrison; and a pair of films directed by Otto Preminger, Whirlpool (1949) and Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950).

Her acting career effectively came to an end in 1953 when she began to descend into severe mental illness.  She dropped out of her role in Mogambo (1953), a remake of  the pre-Code classic Red Dust (1932).  Tierney's mental illness led to numerous hospitalizations over the years and more than thirty electroshock therapies.  She died in 1991, 2 weeks before her 71st birthday.

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Leon Shamroy was the Director of Photography on this film, and he won an Oscar for his work.  Shamroy has the distinction of sharing the record for most Oscar nominations for cinematography (18, with Charles Lang) and sharing the record for most Oscar wins for cinematography (4, with Joseph Ruttenberg).

His list of credits includes The Story of Alexander Graham Bell (1939), The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939), The Black Swan (1942) (Oscar), Stormy Weather (1943), Wilson (1944) (Oscar), A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (1945), State Fair (1945), Leaver Her to Heaven (1945) (Oscar), Forever Amber (1947), Twelve O'clock High (1949), Cheaper by the Dozen (1950), David and Bathsheba (1951), The Robe (1953), There's No Business Like Show Business (1954), Daddy Long Legs (1955), Love Is a Many Splendored Thing (1955), The King and I (1956), South Pacific (1958), North to Alaska (1960), Cleopatra (1963) (Oscar), The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965), and Planet of the Apes (1968).

In 1946 he shot Marilyn Monroe's first Technicolor screen test.  In reflecting on this later, he said, "I thought, 'This girl could be another Harlow.'  Her natural beauty plus her inferiority complex gave her a look of mystery.  I got a cold chill.  This girl had something I hadn't seen since silent pictures."

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Screenwriter Jo Swerling was one of the greatest in movie history.  He was also one of the most overlooked and underappreciated screenwriters of all time.  His credits include Platinum Blonde (1931), Lady by Choice (1934), The Westerner (1940), Blood and Sand (1941), The Pride of the Yankees (1942), Lifeboat (1944), Leave Her to Heaven (1945), It's a Wonderful Life (1946) (additional scenes), and Guys and Dolls (1955) (adaptation).  He was nominated for one Oscar, The Pride of the Yankees (along with co-writer Herman J. Mankiewicz).

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Leave Her to Heaven was the highest-grossing film of the 1940s for 20th Century Fox.

Screenshot for a Fortnight: "FROM HERE TO ETERNITY" (1953) (30 November-13 December 2020)

Robert E. Lee Prewitt (Montgomery Clift) and Sergeant Milton Warden (Burt Lancaster) in From Here to Eternity (1953).  DoP: Burnett Guffey.  D: Fred Zinnemann.

From Here to Eternity (1953) is the film adaptation of James Jones's sprawling 950-page novel of the same name.  Set on Oahu, Hawaii, in 1941, it tells the story of Robert E. Lee Prewitt, an Army soldier whose strange blend of individualism, a lofty moral code, and devotion to the Army leads him into one bind after another.  The novel, which I haven't read, is reputed to be borderline pornography, graphically depicting sex and violence while using all the swear words imaginable.  Screenwriter Daniel Taradash had the challenging job of bringing this novel to the screen.  Ironically, From Here to Eternity has been a favorite movie of mine since I was a kid.

The movie was filmed entirely on location on Oahu.

Before director Fred Zinnemann got hold of the project, no one in the film or book industries thought a film version of the novel could be made that would get past the censors.  Libraries around the country had banned the novel.  James Jones himself tried and failed to adapt it.  Because I haven't read the book, I don't know what the movie omitted.  I can testify, however, that I have seen the movie at least fifteen times.  It stands on its own and has no obvious holes in the plot nor in the development of any character.  It is a great movie.  Including Best Picture and Best Director, From Here to Eternity won 8 Oscars, equaling Gone with the Wind (1939) for the most Oscars won by any film up to that time.

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Burnett Guffey was the Director of Photography on this film.  He won one of its 8 Oscars, for Best Cinematography.  Before Guffey became a cinematographer and director of photography he was a long-time camera operator.  Though uncredited, he worked as a camera operator on John Ford's The Informer (1935), Alfred Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent (1940), he helped photograph That Hamilton Woman (1941) with Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh and Cover Girl (1944) with Rita Hayworth, among other films.

As a cinematographer or director of photography his credits include All the King's Men (1949), In a Lonely Place (1950), From Here to Eternity (1953), Human Desire (1953), The Harder They Fall (1956), Birdman of Alcatraz (1962), and Bonnie and Clyde (1967), for which he won his second Oscar for Best Cinematography.

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Once upon a time there was a great prejudice in Hollywood.  No, I don't mean any of the obvious ones.  They're too obvious and they're still there.  No, I mean prejudices like the prejudice that stage actors had against film-only actors and the one that film actors had against TV actors.  The prejudice at issue here was the one that traditional film and stage actors had against "the method" of the Actors Studio.

Montgomery Clift was a triple threat to Hollywood's leading men who played alongside him.  He was a great actor, already having a reputation for greatness and intensity on the set.  He was rumored to be gay (he was), which, in those bigoted close-minded times, would've freaked out the men he worked with who weren't gay.  And he was a "method" actor.

Burt Lancaster was so intimidated by Clift's reputation and presence on the set that in their first scene together, he was visibly shaking.  Years later, Clift also inadvertently intimidated Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe with his intensity and his acting ability during the filming of The Misfits (1961).  Oscar-winning co-star Donna Reed described Clift's concentration on the set of From Here to Eternity as "positively violent."   For their performances in this film, both Clift and Lancaster earned Oscar nominations for Best Actor.

If you've seen some of Lancaster's movies, you know that intensity is one of the hallmarks of his performances.  But all that intensity is consciously expressed as he pretends to be the character in the script.  In the "method," an actor doesn't pretend to be a character: he becomes the character, as though demonically possessed by it.  At which point, when delivering lines, he isn't pretending: he's being himself.  The transformation of an actor from a guy just doing a job to becoming a completely different person can be jolting.  Clift became so completely Prewitt that months after filming ended he confided in friends he was finding it impossible to let go of Prewitt and he still carried his bugle around and wore Aloha shirts. 

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Lancaster was a traditional actor and a "pro."  In acting-speak "pro" means—at the very least—the actor gets to the set on time, knows his or her lines (and maybe everybody else's), gives something a little different with every take, hits all marks, and is not disruptive in any way.

Lancaster never drank alcohol.  On the other hand, Frank Sinatra and Clift frequently went out drinking after work and would've been late to the set most days if Lancaster hadn't taken it upon himself to get those two to the set every morning, on time.  For years afterward, Sinatra—whose performance in this film earned him an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor—sent Lancaster an annual Mother's Day card.

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Lancaster had been an acrobat before becoming an actor.  Most of his roles took some advantage of his athleticism, and he did all his own stunts well into his fifties.  He had a rope in his office, suspended straight down to the floor from some kind of steel housing bolted to the ceiling.  Every day, once a day, he would sit on the office floor with the end of the rope in front of him, and while remaining in a seated position pull himself up to the ceiling hand-over-hand and then let himself down to the floor the same way.

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Fred Zinnemann seems to have had two careers as a director, the first as a short film specialist and a second as a feature film director.  He was nominated for an Oscar as Best Director 8 times and won 3, one of them being From Here to Eternity. 

His list of credits, after he switched from shorts to features, is impressive, and includes, The Search (1948) with a young Montgomery Clift making his screen debut; The Men (1950) with a young Marlon Brando making his own screen debut; High Noon (1952) for which he should've won an Oscar; The Member of the Wedding (1952) with Julie Harris; From Here to Eternity, which earned him his first feature-film Oscar; Oklahoma! (1955) with Gordon MacRae and Shirley Jones in her first feature film role; A Hatful of Rain (1957) with Eva Marie Saint; The Nun's Story (1959) with Audrey Hepburn; The Sundowners (1960) reuniting himself with Deborah Kerr; A Man for All Seasons (1966) with Paul Scofield and Robert Shaw, for which Zinnemann won a pair of Oscars, one for Best Director and one for Best Picture, which went to him as producer; and his edge-of-your-seat thriller, The Day of the Jackel (1968) with Edward Fox. 

Screenshot for the Week of 19 October 2020: "THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI" (1957)

 

Alec Guinness as Colonel Nicholson in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957).  C: Jack Hildyard.  D: David Lean.

[SPOILER ALERT!]  The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957) has been a controversial film in the UK since its premiere.  British film critics and war veterans excoriated it for its portrayal of a British officer who collaborates with the enemy under the delusion he's actually advancing the British war effort.  British audiences, however, loved the film, making it the box-office winner in the UK in 1958.

The film was based on a French novel by Pierre Boulle and told a fictional version of the real-life wartime saga of British Lieutenant Colonel Philip Toosey and the forced construction of the Burma-Siam railway.  Survivors of the brutal project swore that any senior allied officer who behaved as Nicholson behaves in the film would have been "eliminated."  Toosey in fact made it his constant goal to sabotage the project, one way or another, even resorting to planting termites in the bridge stanchions. [END OF SPOLIER ALERT!]

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Jack Hildyard won the Oscar for Best Cinematography for his work on The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957).  It was his only Oscar.  He had worked for director David Lean three times before, and I'm curious why the pair never made another movie together.  Lean's next three films won Oscars for his new cinematographer, Freddie Young—Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Dr. Zhivago (1965), and Ryan's Daughter (1970).

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Alec Guinness was reluctant to make this movie.  There are all sorts of stories out there that other actors had first been offered the role of Colonel Nicholson, including Charles Laughton, Laurence Olivier, and Orson Welles, all of whom supposedly turned it down before it was offered to Guinness.  But there's another story which I choose to believe, namely, that Guinness was always the first choice for the role of Colonel Nicholson, the role that earned Guinness his only Oscar (Actor in a Leading Role).

And Guinness himself initially turned it down.  He thought the French novel on which the film was based was anti-British, which by all accounts it was.  He also thought no one in their right mind would sit and watch a stiff-upper-lip British officer for 2½ hours.  Producer Sam Spiegel, a born salesman, took Guinness and David Lean to dinner, and by the end of the meal, Guinness was sold.

Even after filming began, however, Guinness continued to have doubts.  Lean invited Guinness and his family to watch some rough cuts of the early footage.  After having watched them, the group stood up and walked out of the screening room without saying a word.  Lean didn't know what to think.  Later, Guinness returned to Lean and told him that he and his family agreed Nicholson was the finest work he had ever done.

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William Holden was brought into the project to give it a solid box-office earning potential and to bring a little sex appeal to the film.  Holden was apparently the only person on the film shoot in Ceylon—cast, crew, extras—who got along with director David Lean.  And by Lean's own account, Holden was the only person there that he liked.

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Sessue Hayakawa was a legendary silent film star and producer, in America and Japan, before William Holden had been born and while Alec Guinness was still in nappies.  In fact he was one of the highest-paid film stars between 1910 and 1920.  In the early 1920s, with the rise of racism in Europe and the U.S., the flow of Hayakawa's career slowed to a trickle.  He went back to Japan for a several years, acting in and producing films and staging Japanese-language productions of Shakespeare's plays.  His career never again reached the heights of the period 1910-1920.

While filming that scene near the beginning of the movie, when Nicholson meets Colonel Saito and Saito strikes him with a pocket-size copy of the Geneva Convention,  Hayakawa did in fact accidentally strike Guinness and draw genuine blood.  Guinness never broke character, the camera kept rolling, and the footage stayed in the film.

Current imdb fans rank: #181/250.

C: Jack Hildyard   D: David Lean

Screenshot for the Week of 17 August 2020: "TO CATCH A THIEF" (1955)

Cary Grant and Grace Kelly in To Catch a Thief (1955)

Alfred Hitchcock had his "A" team on this movie—his favorite actor, Cary Grant; favorite actress, Grace Kelly; favorite assistant director/second-unit director, Herb Coleman; favorite screenwriter, John Michael Hayes; favorite cinematographer, Robert Burks; favorite film editor, George Tomasini; favorite costume designer, Edith Head; plus the best process photographer in the business, Farciot Edouart, shooting French Riviera rear-projection film for Grace Kelly's driving scenes.  So why is To Catch a Thief only a so-so movie?

Why?  Because unlike Rear Window and The Man Who Knew Too Much, nothing has been added to the plot of To Catch a Thief to make resolution of the mystery urgent.  And so the movie is in no hurry.

[SPOILER ALERT] In Rear Window, Jeff and his deputies Lisa and Stella have to investigate and solve the crime before Thorwald flees the city, which could happen at any time.  There's a real sense of urgency.  And in The Man Who Knew Too Much, what could be more urgent than stopping the assassination of a prime minister and rescuing a kidnapped child? [End SPOILER ALERT]

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(More to come.)

C: Robert Burks.  D: Alfred Hitchcock.

Screenshot for the Week of 10 August 2020: "WUTHERING HEIGHTS" (1939)

 

Laurence Olivier as Heathcliff and Merle Oberon as Cathy in Wuthering Heights (1939).  C: Gregg Toland.  D: William Wyler.

I have said that when I'm lucky and I capture a great screenshot, it is a collaboration between myself and the cinematographer.  I neglected to add that great cinematography is a collaboration between the cinematographer and everyone else.  You're looking at not only Oscar-winning cinematography, but great acting, direction, art direction, and visual effects (matte painting).

Gregg Toland was one of the greatest cinematographers of all-time.  He won an Oscar for Wuthering Heights (1939).  He might easily have won five more Oscars.  I think he did his best work on Citizen Kane (1941).  In addition to using unique, often distorted camera angles in that film, he invented a cinematography technique that became known as "deep focus"—when the depth of field is so enlarged that the foreground, subject, and background are all in focus.  It has been used routinely by cinematographers ever since.

Here are some of the best films showcasing the talents of Gregg Toland, with the directors he worked for:

• The Wedding Night (1935) [King Vidor]
• Les Misérables (1935) [Richard Boleslawski]
• Dead End (1937) [William Wyler]
• Intermezzo (1939) [George Ratoff]
• Wuthering Heights (1939) [William Wyler]
• The Grapes of Wrath (1939) [John Ford]
• The Westerner (1940) [William Wyler]
• The Long Voyage Home (1940) [John Ford]
• Citizen Kane (1941) [Orson Welles]
• The Little Foxes (1941) [William Wyler]
• Ball of Fire (1941) [Howard Hawks]
• The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) [William Wyler]
• The Bishop's Wife (1947) [Henry Koster]

Toland was subject to bouts of deep depression, which he medicated with alcohol.  Biographers credit his alcohol intake with contributing to the fatal heart attack that cut his brilliant career short at age 44.

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I first saw Merle Oberon on Channel 11 as a kid in Los Angeles, back in the 1960s, in one of the hundreds of old movies that were shown on local TV there.  Her face was arresting and exotic.  If I'd seen it only once I'd still remember it.

By the way, Channel 2, the CBS-owned station in L.A., showed one movie a week at 11:35 P.M. on Friday night in a program called "The Late Show." It showed the best movies, but I couldn't stay up that late until I was a teenager, well into my movie buff years.  Channel 9's "Million Dollar Movie" showed the best movies in my viewing time periods.  Channel 11 was a distant third place, but still pretty good.  Between Channels 5, 9, 11, and 13, I could see a couple of different movies every day seven days a week.

The Merle Oberon movie in question was The Cowboy and the Lady (1938), co-starring Gary Cooper and William Demarest.  Over the years of my youth I watched it several times, as I did all the old movies I liked.  Since those years I've seen other Oberon films, most notably The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934) with Leslie Howard, one of my all-time favorite movies.  And I still like The Cowboy and the Lady.

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William Wyler should be a household name.  His credits as a director are impressive.  Any movie buff worth the label has seen several of his movies even though he or she might be unaware of the Wyler connection.  Here are some of his better films:

• Dodsworth (1936) with Walter Huston, Ruth Chatterton, and Mary Astor.  Oscar for Best Art Direction.
• Dead End (1937) with Joel McCrea, the "Dead End Kids," Claire Trevor, and Humphrey Bogart.
• Jezebel (1938) with Bette Davis, Henry Fonda, and Faye Bainter.  Oscars for Davis (Best Actress) and Bainter (Supporting Actress).
• Wuthering Heights (1939) with Laurence Olivier and Merle Oberon.  Oscar for Cinematography (Gregg Toland).
• The Westerner (1940) with Gary Cooper and Walter Brennan.  Oscar for Brennan (Supporting Actor).
• The Little Foxes (1941) with Bette Davis, Herbert Marshall, and Teresa Wright.
• Mrs. Miniver (1942) with Greer Garson, Walter Pidgeon, and Teresa Wright.  Oscars for Garson (Best Actress), Wright (Supporting Actress), Wyler (Director), plus Best Picture, Screenplay, Cinematography (Joseph Ruttenberg), and Music Score.
• The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) with Fredric March, Myrna Loy, Teresa Wright, and disbaled Navy veteran Harold Russell.  Oscars for March (Best Actor), Russell (Supporting Actor), Wyler (Director), plus Best Picture, Screenplay, Editing, and Musical Score.
• The Heiress (1949) with Olivia de Havilland and Montgomery Clift.  Best Actress Oscar for de Havilland.
• Detective Story (1951) with Kirk Douglas, Eleanor Parker, and William Bendix.
• Roman Holiday (1953) with Audrey Hepburn and Gregory Peck.  Oscars for Hepburn (Best Actress), Screenplay, and Costume Design.
• Friendly Persuasion (1956) with Gary Cooper, Dorothy McGuire, and Anthony Perkins.
• The Big Country (1958) with Gregory Peck, Charles Bickford, Jean Simmons, Carrol Baker, Charlton Heston, Burl Ives, and Chuck Connors.  Oscar for Ives (Supporting Actor).
• Ben-Hur (1959) with Charlton Heston.  Won 11 Oscars including Heston (Best Actor), Wyler (Director), Cinematography (Robert Surtees), and Best Picture.
• The Children's Hour (1962) with Audrey Hepburn and Shirley MacLaine.
• Funny Girl (1968) with Barbara Streisand and Omar Sharif.  Oscar for Streisand (Best Actress co-winner with Katharine Hepburn).

How many of these have you seen?

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According to Ben Mankiewicz of Turner Classic Movies, Charlton Heston actively sought a role in The Big Country (1958), just for the chance to work with the great William Wyler.  To do so, he swallowed his pride and took on the supporting role of Steve Leech.  Their working relationship was so good, Wyler picked Heston to star in his next picture, Ben-Hur (1959).

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For the 1940 Academy Awards (film year 1939), Laurence Olivier and his wife Vivian Leigh were nominated for acting Oscars—Best Actress for Leigh (Scarlett O'Hara in Gone with the Wind) and Best Actor for Olivier (Heathcliff in Wuthering Heights).  Leigh won.  Olivier didn't.  He did win a Best Actor Oscar for his performance in the title role of the Oscar-winning Best Picture of 1948, Hamlet.

Screenshot for the Week of 1 June 2020: "WEST SIDE STORY" (1961)

Tony Mordente, George Chakiris, and an unknown dancer in West Side Story (1961)

A gang of white New York street thugs think they're entitled to "own" a few square blocks in their west side neighborhood. But a Puerto Rican gang of street thugs has moved in.

What could go wrong?  It doesn't take long for them to break into song.  Why can't we all get along?

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West Side Story has taken its knocks over the past twenty years.  Everyone already knew that Natalie Wood hadn't done her own singing, that Marni Nixon had dubbed her singing voice.  But many fans of the movie were disappointed and somewhat shocked by the news (revealed in background features on the 2003 DVD release) that all the of leading actors' singing voices had been dubbed.  Tony?  Not Tony!  Yes, Tony too.  Not Riff!  He sounds just like Riff!  Yeah, Riff too.

Also, the movie has been called to account for using white actors to play the Puerto Rican roles.  This criticism is especially relevant now because a new version of West Side Story, directed by Steven Spielberg, to be released this Christmas, will feature Puerto Ricans in the Puerto Rican roles.

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West Side Story was the first serious movie I saw at the theater.  It was the film that most influenced me as a moviegoer as I was growing up.  Yet even in January 1962 when I saw it at the age of 7, I was not comfortable with white actors wearing heavy brown makeup and using phony accents to play Puerto Ricans.  I must admit, however, that I only spotted a few of these phonies back then.

I'm glad I saw West Side Story with my sisters and before I learned I wasn't supposed to like musicals.  Thanks to this movie and The Wizard of Oz (1939), I unwittingly paved my way to enjoying The Sound of Music (1965), Damn Yankees! (1958), Fiddler on the Roof (1971), My Fair Lady (1964), the Astaire-Rogers dance musicals, La La Land (2016), the Broadway show Les Misèrables, and many others.

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Most Hollywood musicals were produced before the advent of the widescreen movie in 1953.  They can be fully enjoyed at home even on a smallish TV monitor (e.g., 42" diagonal).  However, West Side Story—shot on location in New York City in 70mm with a cut 2.35:1 aspect ratio—can be fully appreciated only on the big screen in a movie theater.  I don't want to talk you out of watching the movie at home.  By any means necessary see this film, please see it.  However, though not shot in 3D, West Side Story is very nearly 3-dimensional during the dance sequences.  The dance numbers take up a lot of 3rd-dimension space on those New York City streets, the rooftop, and the playground.  Oddly enough, this depth of field is visually enhanced by the big screen.  If you ever get the chance to see it on the big screen, take it.

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Most of the players in West Side Story were professional dancers.  Many had worked with choreographer Jerome Robbins in the Broadway production of the musical, which Robbins had staged.  For the film he would direct the dancing and singing scenes for which he earned the credit of co-Director.  Producer and co-Director Robert Wise would direct the drama scenes.

Robbins worked his dancers rigorously during rehearsals, but his choreography was so exacting and thrilling that he garnered a lifetime's worth of respect and allegiance from those dancers.

The intense rehearsals paid off.  Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise developed "creative differences" during the filming, and Wise, as producer, fired Robbins.  The leading dancer then took over supervision of Robbins's choreography for the rest of the filming.  As of the 2011 release of the restored version of the movie on Blu-ray and DVD, the dancers and the leading actors as well still had hard feelings over Robbins's dismissal.

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West Side Story was nominated for eleven Academy Awards and won ten of them.  Best Director Oscars went to Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins.  This was the first time two Oscars were given for Outstanding Direction.

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The movie played for 249 consecutive weeks in Paris, the longest theatrical movie run in French history.

C: Daniel Fapp.  D: Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise.