The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (247 page)

Originally an actor, Leonard worked at Universal, Paramount, and for his own company, Tiffany, before joining MGM in 1925. He was married first to Mae Murray, who played in
Jazzmania, Fashion Row, Circe the Enchantress
, and
Mademoiselle Midnight
. For most of his career he was an efficient exponent of Metro’s line in effulgent glamour; five times Irving Thalberg entrusted Norma Shearer to him
—The Demi-Bride, Lady of Chance, The Divorcee, Let Us Be Gay
, and the ill-advised O’Neill adaptation,
Strange Interlude
. In fact, near the end of her working life, in 1942, Shearer was reunited with him for
We Were Dancing
. In addition, he directed Marion Davies in
The Cardboard Lover, Marianne
, and
Peg o’ My Heart;
and Jeanette MacDonald in
Maytime, The Firefly, The Girl of the Golden West, Broadway Serenade
, and
New Moon
—enough to make him master of that MGM high key in which blonde hair seems to have caught fire. Without ever exceeding romantic splendor, Leonard was capable of bringing a fond light to high-class cheesecake. He also directed Garbo and Gable in
Susan Lenox
, a subject worthy of von Sternberg;
Dancing Lady
was a Joan Crawford musical, squired by Gable and Astaire;
The Great Ziegfeld
, a good biopic with William Powell, Myrna Loy, and Luise Rainer; a garden party
Pride and Prejudice;
and
Ziegfeld Girl
, with Judy Garland, Hedy Lamarr, and Lana Turner.

Sergio Leone
(1921–89), b. Rome
1960:
Il Colosso di Rodi
. 1964:
Per un Pugno di Dollari/A Fistful of Dollars
. 1965:
Per Qualche Dollaro in Piu/For a Few Dollars More
. 1966:
Il Buono, Il Brutto, Il Caltivo/The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
. 1968:
C’Era una Volta il West/Once Upon a Time in the West
. 1971:
Giu’ la Testa/A Fistful of Dynamite
. 1984:
Once Upon a Time in America/C’era una Volte in America
.

Leone has been tossed back and forth as camp amusement and spacey visionary. This enigma was enhanced by the gaps between films—reason enough for those who scorned him to be confirmed in the opinion that he was an opportunist who simply yoked samurai gestures to Western iconography and was helped alike by the deco solitariness of Clint Eastwood in a poncho and the inability of that actor to understand what the director was saying. The “dollars” trilogy are less silent films than studies of face masks looming up, gross and hysterical with detail, in sunblanched CinemaScope frames and drugged revenge plots. Leone also had the eerie fatalism of Ennio Morricone’s music menace dropped in a deep well and echoing back. The films made Eastwood: they gave him boxoffice authority and an excuse for minimal acting. Impassivity went with the poncho, and cheroots kept the face still. But Leone himself came to America without conquering.

Once Upon a Time in the West
is his best film: a mess of double-crossing stars, manic close-ups, and Rothko-like masses of color and space. I think Leone really despised the Western, and let the smart mockery exploit his remarkable eye. Despite Monument Valley and the stars, we never feel we’re
in
America or with people who think in American. He makes fun of the very mythology and obsession that underlie film art, and he knows too much about his tricks to be persuasive. Leone’s films force you back from the screen with hieratic compositions and sly contempt for “il West.” Those who honor Leone should study Anthony Mann’s
Man of the West
, but those who cherish CinemaScope will always luxuriate in Leone’s inscrutable spaces.

Once Upon a Time in America
was so long, and so obscure, that it had to be released first in a short version. But not even the restored cut made everything clear. Its would-be Jewish gangsters seemed very Italian; the attitude to women was horrendous—the two rape scenes are among the screen’s nastiest. The leading actors do not seem at ease. But there are wonderful sequences, especially those involving the gangsters as kids in New York.

I think, in hindsight, that Leone is a key figure in the camp demythologising of
all
movies—yet he tried to slip in a new myth: that of his grandeur.

Irving Lerner
(1909–76), b. New York
1948:
Muscle Beach
(codirected with Joseph Strick) (s). 1949:
C-Man
. 1953:
Man Crazy
. 1958:
Edge of Fury
(codirected with Robert Gurney Jr.);
Murder by Contract
. 1959:
City of Fear
. 1960:
Studs Lonigan
. 1963:
To Be a Man
. 1968:
The Royal Hunt of the Sun
.

Lerner’s involvement with cinema remained that of a disapproving outsider, waiting for the medium to come round to his way of thinking, but bowing to its crazy rules occasionally and finding that he rather enjoyed them. Although Lerner is most associated with fringe activities—whether arty, educational, or technical—in 1958–59, he made two films on seven-day schedules that proved engrossing, interesting thrillers:
Murder by Contract
and
City of Fear
. Both photographed with distinction by Lucien Ballard, they showed the potential of the genre quickie when made by accomplished technicians. Lerner may have concluded that cheapness was viable, whereas the real lesson is that genre is intrinsic and can make elaborate screenplays redundant. But Lerner sought to apply the same working economy to a different type of subject, the period novel
Studs Lonigan
, which proved a tasteful failure.

Lerner was originally an academic, making films for the anthropology department of Columbia University years before Jean Rouch. He hovered around the industry as editor and second-unit director:
One Third of a Nation
(39, Dudley Murphy);
Valley Town
(40, Willard Van Dyke); and
The Children Must Learn
(40, Van Dyke). During the war, he produced two Office of War Information documentaries:
Toscanini: Hymn of the Nations
(44) and
A Place to Live
(44). After that, he was head of the Educational Film Institute at New York University, before teaming up with Joseph Strick to make the artfully edited
Muscle Beach. C-Man
and
Man Crazy
were second features, apparently now lost. Lerner was technical advisor on
The Savage Eye
(59, Strick, Ben Maddow, and Sidney Meyers) and editor and second-unit director on
Spartacus
(60, Stanley Kubrick).

To Be a Man
was a minor war picture,
Royal Hunt of the Sun
a disastrously serious epic. He also produced and did second-unit work on
Custer of the West
(68, Robert Siodmak), produced and edited
Captain Apache
(71, Alexander Singer), and edited
Executive Action
(73, David Miller) and
New York, New York
(77, Martin Scorsese), which is dedicated to his memory.

Mervyn Le Roy
(1900–87), b. San Francisco
1927:
No Place to Go
. 1928:
Flying Romeos; Oh, Kay!; Harold Teen
. 1929:
Naughty Baby; Hot Stuff; Little Johnny Jones; Broadway Babies; Playing Around
. 1930:
Showgirl in Hollywood; Numbered Men; Broken Dishes; Top Speed; Little Caesar
. 1931:
A Gentleman’s Fate; Tonight or Never; Five Star Final; Broad Minded; Local Boy Makes Good
. 1932:
High Pressure; Heart of New York; Big City Blues; Three on a Match; Hard to Handle; I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang; Two Seconds
. 1933:
Elmer the Great; The World Changes; Gold Diggers of 1933; Tugboat Annie
. 1934:
Heat Lightning; Hi, Nellie!; Happiness Ahead
. 1935:
Sweet Adeline; Oil for the Lamps of China; I Found Stella Parrish; Page Miss Glory
. 1936:
Anthony Adverse; Three Men on a Horse
. 1937:
The King and the Chorus Girl; They Won’t Forget
. 1938:
Fools for Scandal
. 1940:
Waterloo Bridge; Escape
. 1941:
Blossoms in the Dust; Unholy Partners; Johnny Eager; Random Harvest
. 1943:
Madame Curie
. 1944:
Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo
. 1945:
The House I Live In
(d). 1946:
Without Reservations
. 1948:
Homecoming
. 1949:
Little Women; Any Number Can Play; East Side, West Side
. 1951:
Quo Vadis?
. 1952:
Lovely to Look At; Million Dollar Mermaid
. 1953:
Latin Lovers
. 1954:
Rose Marie
. 1955:
Mister Roberts
(codirected with John Ford);
Strange Lady in Town
. 1956:
The Bad Seed; Toward the Unknown
. 1958:
No Time for Sergeants; Home Before Dark
. 1959:
The FBI Story
. 1960:
Wake Me When It’s Over
. 1961:
The Devil at Four O’Clock; A Majority of One
. 1962:
Gypsy
. 1963:
Mary, Mary
. 1965:
Moment to Moment
.

Le Roy was in vaudeville from his early teens (like Gypsy) and his first film work was as wardrobe assistant and actor:
The Call of the Canyon
(23, Victor Fleming);
Going Up
(23, Lloyd Ingraham);
Little Johnny Jones
(23, Arthur Rosson and Johnny Hines), which Le Roy later remade;
Broadway After Dark
(24, Monta Bell); and
The Chorus Lady
(24, Ralph Ince). From 1925–27, he was engaged as writer and gagman for Colleen Moore on seven of her pictures:
Sally
(25, Alfred E. Green);
We Moderns
(25, John Francis Dillon);
Ella Cinders
(26, Green);
Irene
(26, Green);
It Must Be Love
(26, Green);
Twinkletoes
(26, Charles Brabin); and
Orchids and Ermine
(27, Alfred Santell).

That led to a contract as director with Warners, and he stayed at the studio until 1939 when he joined MGM, returning to Warners in 1955. It is an indication of his professional neutrality that Le Roy served such different masters without apparent difficulty. Thus, he dealt equally happily with the social foreboding of
I Am a Fugitive
and the floral daydream of
Random Harvest
. Of course, the “realism” of Warners in the 1930s was a carefully contrived style, but Le Roy drew punchy performances from Paul Muni (the
Fugitive
), Edward G. Robinson (in
Little Caesar
and
Five Star Final
), and Cagney (in
Hard to Handle
). Le Roy also revealed a taste for musicals and comedy: indeed,
Gold Diggers of 1933, Tugboat Annie
, and
Sweet Adeline
all show a predilection for glamour, as evident in the rosy treatment of such “uglies” as Wallace Beery and Marie Dressler as in that of Irene Dunne in
Sweet Adeline
. But
Chain Gang
still throbs with anger, and the melodramatic present tense of the title is sustained by the film’s fatalistic ending. While
Hard to Handle
is a scathing satire on money-grubbing, with Cagney as a glittering con-man who says, “The public is like a cow bellowing to be milked.” The same pessimism colors
They Won’t Forget
, a story of lynching in a Southern town, and further proof of how suddenly Le Roy could uncover a serious side.

But at MGM he abandoned any pretence to realism or brutality, and in Greer Garson he found the perfect leading lady for wartime romances.
Blossoms in the Dust
and
Random Harvest
are as dazzling as table decorations made out of sugar;
Escape
is smooth sentiment; while
Madame Curie
is a biopic such as Le Roy never had the chance to make at Warners.
Johnny Eager
is a fatuous gangster movie, with Robert Taylor looking like a male model after memories of Cagney and Robinson. After the war, Le Roy went into a decline, making some horribly insipid musicals at MGM as well as a tame
Little Women
. But Warners revived him:
Home Before Dark
is an unusually somber women’s picture, with a good performance from Jean Simmons; and
Gypsy
was a robust musical that handled Rosalind Russell with some tact and reaffirmed Le Roy’s faith in razzmatazz and roses.

Le Roy produced a number of his own films, and when he first joined MGM in 1939 he worked as a producer—on
The Wizard of Oz
(Fleming) and
The Marx Brothers at the Circus
(Edward Buzzell). That suggests how prominent a figure he was during the 1930s; famous enough to be introduced as a visiting celebrity to the dance contest in Horace McCoy’s
They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?

The House I Live In
was a documentary short that won an Oscar—it featured Frank Sinatra, preaching tolerance to kids. Thirty years later, in 1975, Le Roy won the Thalberg award. So Hollywood liked him. It never hurt that he had been married to Doris, Harry Warner’s daughter.

Richard Lester
, b. Philadelphia, 1932
1959:
The Running, Jumping and Standing Still Film
(s). 1962:
It’s Trad, Dad!
. 1963:
The Mouse on the Moon
. 1964:
A Hard Day’s Night
. 1965:
The Knack; Help!
. 1966:
A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum
. 1967:
How I Won the War
. 1968:
Petulia
. 1969:
The Bed-Sitting Room
. 1973:
The Three Musketeers (The Queen’s Diamonds
). 1974:
Juggernaut
. 1975:
The Four Musketeers; Royal Flash
. 1976:
Robin and Marian; The Ritz
. 1979:
Butch and Sundance: The Early Days; Cuba
. 1980:
Superman II
. 1983:
Superman III
. 1984:
Finders Keepers
. 1989:
The Return of the Musketeers
. 1991:
Get Back
(d).