Watchingwell
Curated classic films
IN
CHARGE
Some notice has been taken of the admirable work in recent
films of women directors – Ava DuVernay for A Wrinkle
in Time, and Selma, Kathryn
Bigelow for Hurt Locker and Detroit, and Patty Jenkins for Wonder Woman, for examples, and it’s
high time. The recent nomination at the 2018 Academy Awards of Agnes Varda, a
trailblazer director from Belgium and the recognition of her body of work in
less enlightened times also points to the rarity of women in the position of
‘auteur’ in film.
This is, as I have said, as it should be, but I would like
to remind everyone of two women who worked regularly as directors in the less
enlightened times. The first, and
probably, most difficult to explain, is the career with the largest body of
work of a woman director, occurring during Hollywood’s so-called Golden Age,
Dorothy Arzner. For some reason that no
one seems to explain convincingly, Arzner was
given regular work as a director
in the studio system. Born in San Francisco in 1897 and raised in Los Angeles,
she was introduced to William DeMille (brother of Cecil B.) and hired as a
stenographer for what eventually became Paramount Pictures. Her first assignment was to type up scripts. She worked her way up from there to writer,
script girl, editor (she was the first Hollywood editor to be credited
on-screen). In 1927, she was given a
chance to direct a silent film, which was so successful that she was given
another film to direct, Paramount’s first talkie in 1928, the first woman to
direct a sound picture. Strangely, women
directors were not that uncommon in silent films, but Arzner seems to be the
only one to have transitioned to the sound era.
After making Merrily
We Go to Hell from pre-code
1932, the story of a man who marries and drags his
new wife down the destructive path of alcoholism, with fine performances from
Fredric March and Sylvia Sidney, Arzner left Paramount to freelance. She was hired by RKO to direct Katherine
Hepburn in her second role as an aviatrix having an affair with a married man,
in Christopher Strong (1933), a film
which stands out in my memory as the one with Hepburn in a moth costume. It is
not clear in my mind whether she wears this to a costume party or just had
strange ideas about party clothes. Colin
Clive, her co-star, does not strike one as someone that would inspire a brave
aviatrix to engage in illicit love, particularly with the husband and father of
friends, but it was a fun picture, if just for the costumes.
Although Arzner is reputed to have had a difficult relationship
with Hepburn, she formed a long friendship with Joan Crawford, during the
filming of two pictures from 1937, which extended to the commercials she
directed for Pepsi Cola while Crawford was married to the boss and after Arzner
had left film directing.
The Last of Mrs. Cheney, also starring
Robert Montgomery and William Powell is a rare comedy for Crawford who plays a
rich, American widow – or is she? The
other film from 1937 is The Bride Wore
Red, co-starring Franchot Tone and Robert Young. In this story, Crawford is
a poor girl who has two weeks to find a rich husband at a resort, although she
is in love with a poor postman.
“What’s it for?” Judy demands.
“So you can go home when the show’s over, strut before your wives and
sweethearts and play at being the stronger sex for a minute? I’m sure they see
through you. I’m sure they see through you just like we do!”
With
these lines, Arzner’s 1940 semi-comedy, Dance
Girl Dance, became forever celebrated as a feminist commentary as well as a
veiled critique of Hollywood’s male hierarchy.
Spoken before a burlesque audience that had booed her ballet dance while gearing up for the real attraction, Bubbles, played by
Lucille Ball, Maureen O’Hara changes from the mere warm-up act for her successful friend to the strong woman who finally sees things as they really are.
It is assumed by some that this perception was possible because of the combination of the Vicki Baum story, the screenplay by the married team of Tess Slesinger and Frank Davis, and the woman director, and that this angle would not have been as strong if the creative team had been comprised of all
men.
In
1943, Arzner joined the war effort by making training films for the WACs. After the war, health problems prevented her
from returning to directing feature films, although she did direct documentaries
and commercials for television. During
the 60s and 70s, she taught filmmaking at UCLA. Dorothy Arzner died in 1979 at
the age of 82.
uuuuu
The
English actress, Ida Lupino, having co-written the script of the 1949, Not Wanted, was
given her first directing job when the director, Elmer Clifton, fell ill during the filming. The results were successful enough that Lupino was able to secure more work as a director, and, although these were generally considered ‘B‘ pictures, she quickly showed a distinct point-of-view, creating
well-regarded work in stylish, black and white noir-y pictures.
In the 1950
film, Outrage, the script, which
Lupino co-wrote, focuses on a rape, which had to be called “criminal assault”
in 1950, which suggests how rare it was for Hollywood to deal with the subject,
and its aftermath, with very little held back, emotionally. It portrays the terror of the act and the distress
that follows for the main character, played by Mala Powers, in a manner that would have seemed
uncompromising at the time, and undoubtedly a manner resulting from a very
personal female vantage point of the writer/director.
In 1951,
Lupino directed Claire Trevor and Sally Forrest in the unfortunately-titled, Hard, Fast, and Beautiful, the story of
a talented tennis protégée, Forrest, whose mother, Trevor, sees a big future
for them both and keeps a tight rein on her daughter’s life to protect that
dream. Naturally, romance rears its ugly
head and Forrest realizes she has a conflict.
Two of
Lupino’s films were released in 1953, one of which, The Hitch-Hiker, starring Edmond O’Brien
and Frank Lovejoy as two
men on a fishing trip who pick up psychotic, William Talman (Hamilton Burger on
Perry Mason) on the road, is a real thriller and a genuine film noir, the only one directed by a woman.
.
Lupino also co-wrote this with her writing partner,
Collier Young, with whom she wrote the other film of 1953 that she directed, The Bigamist. Again starring Edmond O’Brien
as the title character and co-starring Joan Fontaine and Ida, who was
still acting, as the two women who are each unaware of the other.
By 1956, she
turned to television where she directed episodes in many popular shows such as The Untouchables, Thriller, and The Fugitive.
Through the seventies, Lupino continued to act, in guest appearances on television
and small parts in a few movies. During this period, she did direct one
particular feature film that is one of my inexplicably, personal favorites, The Trouble With Angels (1966), starring
Hayley Mills and Rosalind Russell. When
I first saw this, I laughed till I cried in the cigar scene, but not in
subsequent viewings.
It is a heartwarming film, I suppose, and Hayley Mills was
great at pulling off the right tone for zany, comedy scenes (I still use the term,
“scathingly brilliant idea”, which she did frequently in the film.). But, if you ever saw Ida Lupino and her
then-husband, Howard Duff, when they guest-starred on The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour in 1959, or the couple’s short-lived sit-com,
Mr. Adams and Eve, you will remember
what a hoot Ida Lupino was as a comedienne and wish she had been given the
chance to try her hand at directing comedies.
The second woman
to be admitted into the Director’s Guild, after Dorothy Arzner, Ida Lupino died
in Los Angles in 1995 at the age of 77.
uuuuu
Oh, FYI, there was another version in 1968 with Omar Sharif
and Catherine Deneuve, directed by Terence Young. Nice to look at, but IMHO,
not as good. 
Just before she chose to marry a real prince, Grace Kelly starred in 1956 as a princess who wanted desperately to marry commoner, Louis Jordan, in The Swan. But Alec Guiness, the unromantic royal to whom she was betrothed, convinces her that duty calls and one day, Louis Jordan will be old and then, what’s the difference, or words to that effect. Anyway, he convinces me. Directed by Charles Vidor. 
Then there’s the story of Philadelphia society bride-to-be, Katherine Hepburn in the aptly titled, The Philadelphia Story (1940) in which the groom at the end is not the groom in the middle, but is the groom at the beginning. Confused? Only if you’ve never seen it. You should. It’s a classic, directed by George Cukor, and co-starring Cary Grant, James Stewart, and Ruth Hussey.
Two happy brides?
