The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (413 page)

For the characteristic Temple situation is not just of a child leading her life under adult shadows, but of a Lilliputian moralist in ringlets, tap-dancing into your heart and then delivering the sententious message that sorts out confusion. Of course, she had her skeptics. Anyone who thought that the difficulties of the time had more to do with economics and politics was offended by Shirley’s masquerade as the Statue of Liberty. Graham Greene, recently returned from Mexico, alleged that she was an adult impersonating a child—in
Wee Willie Winkie
(37, John Ford)—and the magazine that carried his article was bankrupted by the subsequent litigation.

But Greene’s opinion was penetrating, even if inaccurate. Shirley Temple was a supreme technical actress unequaled for the amount of sentiment she could dispense without disturbing gullibility. In
Wee Willie Winkie
, for instance, Victor McLaglen seems clumsy and maudlin, but Shirley Temple acts to the inch. The fact that in their big scene he is in bed and she sits beside him like a mother shows eerily the relationship that Shirley achieved with adults. It was not that a child spoke her lines, danced, mugged, and listened so shrewdly, but that she unnerved or outclassed the adults in her films so that they seem uneasy, shambling monsters beside her. Only Bill “Bojangles” Robinson could stand up to her. But no matter the costars, or whether her directors were journeymen (Irving Cummings and David Butler) or craftsmen (Ford and Allan Dwan)—she shapes and colors them.

Despite all the contrivance of her films, the evasions accomplished by so much sugar, she was a phenomenon who had only to be observed for an audience to be held. That is why so many of her big scenes—both musical numbers and emotional set pieces—are done in single setups. There was an elfin perfection about her. Once she grew older, it was replaced by an unremarkable teenager. The public was bewildered at the loss and rejected her. She returned as a cheerful, wholesome mother, first on TV, then in the political arena. If she failed to win enough votes for the Senate, perhaps it was because the public knew she was an irretrievably retired fairy godmother, too large now to handle the wand that had cast her spells. Nevertheless, in the week that one American ambassador was killed in Cyprus, she was asked to be ambassador in Ghana.

The driving force in her career was her mother, and at the age of three Shirley was working for Educational Films. She had small parts in
The Red-Haired Alibi
(32, Christy Cabanne) and
To the Last Man
(33, Henry Hathaway) before Jay Gorney recommended her to Fox for a featured spot in
Stand Up and Cheer
(34, Hamilton MacFadden). Fox put her under contract and after
Carolina
(34, Henry King) and
Change of Heart
(34, John Blystone), they starred her in
Little Miss Marker
(34, Alexander Hall). She rapidly achieved stardom:
Now and Forever
(34, Henry Hathaway) was a Paramount film that cast her with Gary Cooper and Carole Lombard, but Fox soon established a vehicle form for her
—Bright Eyes
(34, Butler);
The Little Colonel
(35, Butler);
Curly Top
(35, Cummings);
The Littlest Rebel
(35, Butler);
Captain January
(36, Butler);
Poor Little Rich Girl
(36, Cummings);
Dimples
(36, William Seiter); and
Stowaway
(36, Seiter).

Her apogee came in 1937–38 with
Wee Willie Winkie, Heidi, Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm
(38, Dwan),
Little Miss Broadway
(38, Cummings), and
Just Around the Corner
(38, Cummings). But after
The Little Princess
(39, Walter Lang),
Susannah of the Mounties
(39, Seiter),
The Blue Bird
(40, Lang), and
Young People
(40, Dwan), Fox and Miss Temple quarreled. Her rating was already declining, puberty beckoned, and war demanded the more knowing comforts of Grable and Veronica Lake.

In the event, MGM took Shirley on and kept her idle, save for
Kathleen
(41, Harold S. Bucquet). She made
Miss Annie Rooney
(42, Edwin L. Marin) and then passed her adolescence as a Selznick actress: awed by Claudette Colbert and Jennifer Jones in
Since You Went Away
(44, John Cromwell) and downright gauche in
I’ll Be Seeing You
(44, William Dieterle). Selznick noted, perhaps grudgingly, that Temple still drew more fan mail than his other three ladies—Jennifer Jones, Ingrid Bergman, and Joan Fontaine. Even so, she did not mature, and remained in movies another four, mistaken years:
Kiss and Tell
(45, Richard Wallace);
Honeymoon
(47, William Keighley);
The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer
(47, Irving Reis);
Fort Apache
(48, Ford);
Mr. Belvedere Goes to College
(49, Elliott Nugent);
Adventures in Baltimore
(49, Wallace); and
A Kiss for Corliss
(49, Wallace).

In 1989, George H. W. Bush appointed her to be ambassador to Czechoslovakia.

Ted Tetzlaff
(1903–95), b. Los Angeles
1941:
World Premiere
. 1947:
Riff Raff
. 1948:
Fighting Father Dunne
. 1949:
The Window; Johnny Allegro; A Dangerous Profession
. 1950:
The White Tower; Under the Gun
. 1951:
Gambling House; The Treasure of Lost Canyon
. 1953:
Terror on a Train/Time Bomb
. 1955:
Son of Sinbad
. 1956:
Seven Wonders of the World
(codirected). 1957:
The Young Land
.

Ted, or Teddy as he was known circa 1930, had a long apprenticeship in photography and camerawork at Fox. From 1926–50 he was an active lighting cameraman, not in the first rank but an accomplished exponent of low-key black and white with a feeling for intrigue. That culminated in the lustrous, shadowy interiors of
Notorious
(46, Alfred Hitchcock), even if the subtlest visual effects in that movie may have come from Hitch, thus prompting Tetzlaff’s “Getting a bit technical, aren’t you, Pop?” A telling remark, since Hitchcock’s genius rested more in his technique than a technician—already beginning to direct—could see. Tetzlaff’s twenty-five years with the camera included
The Power of the Press
(28, Frank Capra);
The Donovan Affair
(29, Capra);
The Younger Generation
(29, Capra);
Mexicali Rose
(29, Erle C. Kenton);
Tol’able David
(30, John G. Blystone);
Fugitive Lovers
(34, Richard Boleslavsky);
Paris in Spring
(35, Lewis Milestone);
My Man Godfrey
(36, Gregory La Cava);
Easy Living
(37, Mitchell Leisen);
Fools for Scandal
(38, Le Roy);
Remember the Night
(40, Leisen);
I Married a Witch
(42, René Clair); and
The Enchanted Cottage
(45, John Cromwell).

World Premiere
, at Paramount, was John Barrymore’s penultimate film, an undoubted trial for a new director up from the ranks. Tetzlaff seems to have been much happier at RKO after the war, where he was hired by Dore Schary to work as director and photographer. His films there are B pictures, mostly thrillers, with such stars as George Raft and Pat O’Brien. But
The White Tower
is six people climbing an Alpine peak—including Valli, Claude Rains, Glenn Ford, and Cedric Hardwicke. And
The Window
is a genuinely original film, about an overimaginative child not believed when he sees a murder. At a modest scale, it is a Hitchcockian subject, and the maker of
Rear Window
may have liked it enough to remember the idea. (Both came from stories by Cornell Woolrich.) Bobby Driscoll is pop-eyed with fright as the boy, but Tetzlaff deserves special credit for his use of Paul Stewart as the villain, the yes-and-no sentimental butler from
Kane
, and a face of sly malice.

Irving G
. (Grant)
Thalberg
(1899–1936), b. New York
Thalberg was the son of a German immigrant lace importer. A blue baby, Thalberg never enjoyed good health, was always pale and slender, and only grew to five feet six inches. At the age of seventeen he had rheumatic fever, but was educated while ill by his ambitious mother. He began working as a clerk for his grandfather’s department store and did a business course by night at New York University, as well as studying typing and Spanish. In 1918, he met Carl Laemmle, the head of Universal, and so impressed him that he became Laemmle’s private secretary in New York. A year later, he went to California with Laemmle and, while still twenty, Thalberg was appointed studio manager at Universal City, effectively in charge when Laemmle was in New York.

It was an appointment that owed nothing to nepotism, private wealth, or experience in the film industry. Add to that Thalberg’s youth, modest education, and frail appearance and it is clear that he had the charm, insight, and ability, or the appearance of it, to captivate the film world. He is the most difficult of all the moguls to appraise: in part his life is inextricably confused with Scott Fitzgerald’s Monroe Stahr in
The Last Tycoon;
no other production chief earned so much admiration from colleagues and rivals for his immediate skill with a script or a cut; and yet it is difficult to point to any one film as bearing Thalberg’s personality. It was part of his carefully maintained search for sophistication and gentlemanly prestige that he did not credit himself on the screen. Theoretically, everything that came out of MGM from 1924–33 passed under his eye. But it is easier to attribute the overall preeminence and high production standards at MGM to Thalberg than any film, director, or—apart from Norma Shearer—star. Thalberg was an exponent of accountancy propriety. The mogul with a passion for film, glory, and an actress is David Selznick.

At Universal, the young Thalberg first crossed swords with von Stroheim, especially when the Austrian insisted on a replica of Monte Carlo being built on the Monterey peninsula for
Foolish Wives
. Thalberg urged Stroheim to begin editing his vast accumulation of material and remained suspicious even when
Foolish Wives
proved successful. When Stroheim’s extravagance was resumed on his next film,
Merry-Go-Round
, Thalberg replaced him—an action entirely in his power, and one that most Hollywood executives would have taken earlier, but that added to Thalberg’s growing reputation for rationalization and firmness. Against this case of ruction, it was while at Universal that Thalberg sponsored Lon Chaney in
The Hunchback of Notre Dame
(23, Wallace Worsley), and deliberately enlarged the movie to ensure that the New York office promoted it.

Thalberg’s beneficial effects on the profits of Universal were noticed less by Laemmle than by Louis B. Mayer, and in 1923 Thalberg was persuaded to become vice-president of the Mayer Company with special responsibilities for production. A year later, Mayer had merged with Metro and Goldwyn, and Thalberg was appointed production supervisor. Von Stroheim’s
Greed
was by then a ten-hour monster and Thalberg duly ordered it to be reduced to a practical length.

One of his earliest challenges in the uniquely powerful post at MGM produced a characteristic response. The Goldwyn Company had been laboring with
Ben-Hur:
the rights had been expensive and so was the location shooting in Italy. Mayer reappraised the film. He replaced star George Walsh with Ramon Novarro and director Charles Brabin with Fred Niblo. Eventually, he brought the unit home to film the Colosseum sequences in California and then devoted himself to supervising the shooting and editing. The strain was so great that Thalberg had to watch the rushes from a hospital bed.
Ben-Hur
was not profitable (it had cost too much), but it drew huge audiences and great prestige for the new studio.

What gave Thalberg such a reputation? In part, of course, he was lucky to head a studio of great financial and creative resources at a time of boom economy. At the same time, alone among the major studios, MGM stayed out of the red during the Depression. Thalberg was lucky in having a remarkably sympathetic Louis Mayer to fight the grueling administrative battles for him and to draw off the inescapable antagonism toward the Company of its creative staff. Mayer’s truculence and crass commercialism enabled Thalberg to enjoy an unusual rapport with directors, writers, and actors without really proving that he had a special understanding of them. He appears to have earned respect by clear-eyed editorial instinct, the ability to appreciate and improve a script or rushes in a rapid, decisive, and yet tactful way. In addition, he worked dangerously hard on the premises without often sacrificing his good manners. Perhaps this was the real distinction in that the MGM enterprise flourished less through traditional brutality and deceit than with the effect of a sensitive and brilliant young man in charge. In that sense, he and Mayer were opposites using each other to maintain the balance of the Company. But Thalberg did initiate that blunt instrument—the producer. He gave MGM the enervating administrative ingredient of producers responsible to him and his office for every film. Thus the diminished influence of directors at the studio during the thirties, something that may have made accountants smile, but that now leaves the standard MGM film bland and characterless.

Ironically, the decisions that can be pinned down to Thalberg with confidence are often negative: for instance, the unavoidable interference in Stroheim’s
Greed
, the enthusiasm for
Grand Hotel
, the rescue of the Marx Brothers that entailed filling out their films with romantic subplots and songs, and last but least credible, the elevation of Norma Shearer to one of the studio’s first ladies. In fact, Thalberg married Shearer in 1927 after romances with Isabelle Laemmle, Peggy Hopkins Joyce, and Constance Talmadge.