Screenshot for a Fortnight: "IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT" (1934) (26 October-08 November 2020)

 

Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert in
It Happened One Night (1934).
C: Joseph Walker.  D: Frank Capra.

Joseph Walker was one of the best and luckiest cinematographers in Hollywood history.  His list of credits would have been any cinematographer's dream, and they included Platinum Blonde (1931);  Lady for a Day (1933); It Happened One Night (1934); Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936); Lost Horizon (1937); The Awful Truth (1937); You Can't Take It With You (1938); Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939); His Girl Friday (1940); Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941); It's a Wonderful Life (1946); The Lady from Shanghai (1947); and Born Yesterday (1950).  He was Frank Capra's favorite cameraman.  They worked together on eighteen films.

It Happened One Night showcases Walker's talent perfectly.  Watch his subtle camerawork in these scenes—at the bus stop on the road when Peter Warne (Clark Gable) chases a thief; Warne carrying Ellie Andrews (Claudette Colbert) over a moving creek; at the haystacks; and at the wedding venue.  It is beautiful work that doesn't scream, "Look at me!  See what I can do with a camera!"

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Clark Gable worked on this movie as a punishment.  He was an up-and-coming matinee idol at MGM when he filmed Dancing Lady with Joan Crawford in 1933.  During filming he developed a life-threatening case of pyorrhea and was rushed to the hospital where he had all his teeth removed.  After surgery, he had to wait two weeks for his dentures to be made.  Instead of laying about Hollywood he took his wife on a two-week Alaskan cruise and did so without getting the approval of studio boss Louis B. Mayer nor of the head of production Irving Thalberg.

Filming of Dancing Lady continued in Gable's absence.  When he showed up on set again, Mayer docked him two weeks' salary.  But that wasn't punishment enough.  It was customary for Mayer to show his displeasure with an actor by lending him out to Columbia Pictures, one of the "poverty row" studios.  Everyone, including Gable, would know why he'd been temporarily demoted to "poverty row."  And everyone, including Gable, would read it as a career insult.  When he arrived on the set of It Happened One Night he said, "Let's get this over with."

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Paramount Pictures didn't lend Claudette Colbert to Columbia for punishment.  She had four weeks free between movies, and she became aware that Capra was making a movie during those weeks.  After a quick negotiation, Capra promised her work would be done in four weeks, and Harry Cohn offered her $50,000 for it, roughly $975,000 in today's money.

She complained every day of filming.  She didn't get along well with Gable.  She didn't get along with Capra at all.  After her last day on set  she told a friend, "I just finished making the worst movie I've ever made."

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It Happened One Night marked a major turning point in Hollywood.  It was the first romantic comedy to win the Oscar for Best Picture.  It singlehandedly lifted Columbia Pictures out of "poverty row."  It made major stars out of both Gable and Colbert.  (Gable and Colbert reprised their roles for Lux Radio Theatre in 1939).  And it became the first of only three movies to win all five of the top Oscars at the Academy Awards ceremony—Best Picture, Director, Actor, Actress, and Screenplay.  (The others were One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest [1975] and The Silence of the Lambs [1991].) 

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 12 October 2020: "THE PHILADELPHIA STORY" (1940)

 

James Stewart and Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story (1940).  C: Joseph Ruttenberg  D: George Cukor

Question: What do The Women (1939), The Philadelphia Story (1940), Mrs. Miniver (1942), Gaslight (1944), That Forsyte Woman (1949), Julius Caesar (1953), Brigadoon (1954), The Last Time I Saw Paris (1954), Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956), Gigi (1958), and BUtterfield 8 (1960) have in common?  Answer: They were all filmed by Joseph Ruttenberg, one of the greatest cinematographers of the Golden Age.  He was known for his black and white photography and for his talent with lighting.  Until the breakup of the old studio system, he worked his entire career at MGM.

Ruttenberg worked with the great directors and actors of the Golden Era—John Ford, Fritz Lang, William Wyler, George Stevens, George Cukor, Vincente Minnelli, plus Spencer Tracy, Clark Gable, Katharine Hepburn, Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, William Powell, Cary Grant, James Stewart, Ronald Colman, and many others.  He won four Oscars for his work, more than any other cinematographer.

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James Stewart won a Best Actor Oscar for his leading performance in this film.  Stewart had made twenty-five feature films before The Philadelphia Story (1940).  But only one of them allowed him to show his true talent: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), in which he gave a career-making performance as the junior Senator from Missouri, Jefferson Smith.

Stewart spent the World War 2 years as a flight instructor for the U.S. Army Air Corps, forerunner of the Air Force.  Afterward, he picked up where he left off in Hollywood and continued to ride high for the next twenty years, starring in films like It's a Wonderful Life (1946), Call Northside 777 (1948), Rope (1948), The Stratton Story (1949), Winchester '73 (1950), Harvey (1950), The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), The Naked Spur (1953), The Glenn Miller Story (1954), Rear Window (1954), Strategic Air Command (1955), The Man from Laramie (1955), The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), The Spirit of St. Louis (1957), Vertigo (1958), Bell Book and Candle (1958), Anatomy of a Murder (1959), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), How the West Was Won (1963), and Shenandoah (1965).  

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The Oscar for Best Actress of 1940 went to Ginger Rogers for Kitty Foyle.  I would have given it to Katharine Hepburn.  But she had been labeled "box office poison" within the industry in 1938, despite three Oscar-nominated performances and one win for Morning Glory (1933).  She was a great actress whom the public hadn't warmed up to.

Her performance as Tracy Lord in The Philadelphia Story changed the public perception of her.  (Hepburn, Stewart, and Cary Grant reprised their roles in a radio play of The Philadelphia Story for Lux Radio Theatre in 1942.) Her popularity went up—it couldn't have gotten any lower—and then began to soar with  Woman of the Year (1942), playing opposite Spencer Tracy.

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George Cukor directed Hepburn in Woman of the Year.  He directed her in The Philadelphia Story.  He directed her in her debut film, Bill of Divorcement (1932).  In fact, he directed her ten times and was Hepburn's favorite director.  He directed the early Hepburn-Tracy films.  In addition to those, Cukor directed Dinner at Eight (1933), Little Women (1933), Holiday (1938) with Hepburn and Cary Grant, The Women (1939), Gaslight (1944), Born Yesterday (1950), A Star Is Born (1954), and My Fair Lady (1964).  Ten of his films were nominated for Best Picture Oscars.  And he was one of six directors to work on The Wizard of Oz (1939), five of whose work went uncredited, including his.

ANSWERS—DAY 8

 

I thank you all for playing these two weeks.  Congratulations to catbert and Fred for once again correctly identifying all 10 movies.  I hope all of you enjoyed the games because they will be back in January.

Here are the titles of yesterday's movies:

1.

Some Like It Hot (1959)

2.

Patton (1970)

3.

Rear Window (1954)

4.

Full Metal Jacket (1987)

5.

Let's Make Love (1960)

6.

All the President's Men (1976)

7.

Touch of Evil (1958)

8.

The Aviator (2004)

9.

Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

10.

To Catch a Thief (1955)

I'll see you around the forums

Thursday, 8 October 2020—DAY 8

 

Hello everyone.  Welcome to the finale, this second dreaded Thursday edition of Bookman's Movie Screenshot Game.  These two weeks have rocketed by.  Congratulations to catbert and Fred for getting all 10 movies again yesterday.  Great job!  And, by the way, here are those movies:

1.

Gypsy (1962)

2.

To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

3.

The Hustler (1961)

4.

Good Night, and Good Luck (2005)

5.

Kalifornia (1993)

6.

The Professionals (1966)

7.

What's Eating Gilbert Grape? (1993)

8.

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953)

9.

Out of Sight (1998)

10.

The Americanization of Emily (1964)

And here are today's buffer images:

All right,

One last time,

Are you ready to play?

Then, let's play!

Good luck, and have fun!

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Wednesday, 7 October 2020—DAY 7

 

Welcome back.  This is Wednesday, and that means we're about to get serious.  I hope today's board sharpens you for tomorrow's finale.

Congratulations to catbert and Fred for correctly identifying all 10 of yesterday's movies.  And for the record, here they are:

1.

Vertigo (1958)

2.

Shaft (1971)

3.

Back to School (1986)

4.

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017)

5.

Inherit the Wind (1960)

6.

The Defiant Ones (1958)

7.

Private Benjamin (1980)

8.

Bridesmaids (2011)

9.

Donovan's Reef (1963)

10.

La La Land (2016)

And now here are today's buffer images:

All right,

Are you ready to play?

Then, let's play!

Good luck and have fun!

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Tuesday, 6 October 2020—DAY 6

 

Hello movie fans.  Welcome to our second Tuesday edition of Bookman's Movie Screenshot Game.  Prepare for a noticeable but moderate jump in difficulty.  Let's get started.

Congratulations to gweimer1, catbert, and Fred for correctly identifying all 10 of yesterday's movies.  And here are those movies:

1.

The Maltese Falcon (1941)

2.

Apocalypse Now (1979)

3.

The Wizard of Oz (1939)

4.

The Sound of Music (1965)

5.

Top Gun (1986)

6.

Network (1976)

7.

The Birds (1963)

8.

Fargo (1996)

9.

As Good As It Gets (1996)

10.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)

And now today's buffer images:

All Right,

Are You Ready to Play?

Then Let's Play!

Good Luck and Have Fun!

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