When Shelley Winters died at 85 in 2006, much was made of the fact that the two-time Oscar-winner went from a va-va-va voom sex symbol to a matronly character actress. In fact, the Los Angeles Times obit stated she was a “blond bombshell of the 1940s who evolved into a character actress best remembered for her roles as victims, shrew and matrons.”
But truth be told, Winters was always a character actress. However, when she began in the acting in Hollywood in the 1940s, the studio system typecast actresses and actors on appearance. In fact, she once noted she often played the “the bad blonde bimbo usually going up against the sweet brunette.” In fact, before she got her big movie break as a tart waitress who is murdered by Ronald Colman in A DOUBLE LIFE (’47), she was playing the comedic character part of Ado Annie on Broadway in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical Oklahoma!. And speaking of A DOUBLE LIFE, Winters brought a depth to the character that other ingenues of the era wouldn’t have had the ability to play.
“She was a serious actress,” said Diane Baker, who made her film debut opposite Winters in George Stevens’ acclaimed THE DIARY OF ANNE FRANK (’59) for which Winters received her first supporting actress Oscar as Mrs. Van Daan. And it was her role as the zaftig middle-age Van Daan that was her watershed film – the movie in which she segued from glam roles and moved into the forefront of the character actresses. “I believe Shelley exemplified what it was to be a Method actress,” Baker added.
The charming Oscar-nominated 1936 comedy THREE SMART GIRLS made a star out of 14-year-old Deanna Durbin, who not only proved to be a first-rated comic actress but possessed an extraordinary operatic voice. She eventually became the highest paid actress in Hollywood before she bailed from the maddening crowd of Tinseltown with her third husband, director Charles David in 1950, and lived quietly in France until death at 91 in 2013. The only time she thought of returning to the limelight was when she was offered the 1956 Broadway musical My Fair Lady.
I have been a huge fan of Durbin’s since I was tiny when I watched her on TV. And through getting reacquainted with her on TCM and DVD, my love hasn’t changed. I always feel a lot happier when watching her movies.
But I want to sing the praises of THREE SMART GIRLS director Henry Koster. The classic made him a major player in Hollywood. Koster was a German-Jewish emigre who had left Germany when the Nazis came to power, and he eventually went to Budapest where he met Hungarian-born producer Joe Pasternak while working for Universal in Europe. When Pasternak left Europe to return to Universal in Hollywood, he brought Koster, who could not speak English at the time, with him. Their first collaboration was THREE SMART GIRLS, a delightful fluffy bauble of a comedy that did so well it saved the struggling studio from bankruptcy. (The film also boosted the career of young leading man Ray Milland, who is absolutely a doll in this film.)
Koster spent a lot of time coaching newcomer Durbin—she had only appeared with Judy Garland in the 1936 short “Every Sunday”—and all of his effort paid off handsomely. So handsomely that he directed six of the 10 films Pasternak made with Durbin, including Oscar-nominated ONE HUNDRED MEN AND A GIRL (’37), which cast Durbin opposite legendary conductor Leopold Stokowski.
In 1939, Koster directed Durbin in the fun sequel THREE SMART GIRLS GROW UP and the charming FIRST LOVE, in which the uber-handsome Robert Stack gave Durbin her first screen kiss. The last Pasternak/Koster/Durbin collaboration was the very funny IT STARTED WITH EVE (’41) with Charles Laughton and Robert Cummings.
Koster also brought Bud Abbott and Lou Costello to Hollywood. He had seen the comedy duo perform at a nightclub in New York and convinced Universal to put them under contract. Koster had great instincts. The comedy legends made their debut in ONE NIGHT IN THE TROPICS (’40), and Abbott and Costello went on to become one of the studio’s biggest moneymakers of the 1940s and early 1950s.
When Pasternak left Universal to head a musical unit at MGM, Koster went with him and Durbin’s career suffered after their departure. She did an enjoyable 1943 sequel to the SMART GIRLS series, HERS TO HOLD and a nifty film noir LADY ON A TRAIN (’45), which was produced by her second husband and directed by future spouse David. But audiences’ interest in Durbin waned and her later films were commercial and critical disappointments.
Koster’s career, though, soared. He earned his only Best Director Oscar nomination for the beloved 1947 Christmas movie THE BISHOP’S WIFE, starring Cary Grant, Loretta Young and David Niven. And he directed Loretta Young, Celeste Holm and Elsa Lanchester to Oscar nominations in COME TO THE STABLE (’49) a heart warmer based on a true story about two French nuns who come arrive in the small New England town of Bethlehem determined to build a children’s hospital.
Then came HARVEY, the sublime1950 adaptation of Mary Chase’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway hit about a whimsical man, Elwood P. Dowd, who has a six-foot invisible rabbit named Harvey has his best friend. Jimmy Stewart, who played the role briefly on Broadway, received his fourth Oscar nomination for his deliciously sweet turn as Dowd. And Josephine Hull is a hoot as his often hysterical and exasperated sister (she received the Best Supporting Actress Oscar). Koster and Stewart teamed up for the taut thriller NO HIGHWAY IN THE SKY (’51) and in the 1960s for three light comedies: MR. HOBBS TAKES A VACATION (’62), TAKE HER, SHE’S MINE (’63) and DEAR BRIGITTE (’65).
Koster directed one of my favorite films, MY COUSIN RACHEL (’52), a beautifully-acted adaptation of Daphne Du Maurier’s romantic thriller starring Olivia de Havilland and Richard Burton. The Welsh actor earned a supporting actor Oscar nomination for his first Hollywood film. In 1953, Koster guided Burton to his second Oscar nomination for the lavish religious blockbuster THE ROBE, which was the first film in CinemaScope. The film earned five Oscar nominations including Best Film and earned Oscars for art direction/set decoration and costumes.
And I’ve always had a soft spot in my heart for Koster’s religious drama A MAN CALLED PETER (’55), for which he received a Directors Guild of America nomination for his work. Based on Catherine Marshall’s best-selling book about her late husband, the Scottish émigré Peter Marshall who became the chaplain of the US. Senate. A MAN CALLED PETER features moving performances from Richard Todd and Jean Peters. And I adore Alfred Newman’s score and still have the soundtrack album.
Koster continued to make movies until 1966. His final film was the flop THE SINGING NUN (’66) with Debbie Reynolds. He may have retired from films, but Koster didn’t retire from artistic pursuits. He moved to Camarillo, California and became a painter. He died in 1988.
Sidney Poitier was the first African-American to win an Oscar for a lead role for 1963’s LILIES OF THE FIELD. Five years later, he was the No. 1 box-office champ thanks to a trio of hit films that were released in 1967: IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT, GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER and the baby boomer fave, TO SIR, WITH LOVE.
But early in his career, Poitier and actor/activist Canada Lee had to be listed as indentured servants in order to make the lauded 1951 drama CRY, THE BELOVED COUNTRY in apartheid South Africa for director Zoltan Korda. If they had been described as actors, both Poitier, Lee and Korda probably would have been arrested and held without trial.
When I interviewed Poitier in 1997 for the L.A. Times, he recalled the horrors he encountered in South Africa in 1950. “The experience in South Africa made an impact,” said Poitier. “I mean, it was stunning in its brutality. The law required that we live 26 miles outside the city of Johannesburg. They rented us a farm for that purpose. A car would come and get us in the morning and take us to Johannesburg to the studio. When we were done, we would get in the car and it would take us out of the city and back to the farm.”
Poitier, who was 23 when he made the film, described himself as a “fairly alert kid when I was that age, so I knew what to expect [and] that it would be different from where I came from, but I really wasn’t ready for the extent of it.”
He made his feature film debut in the 1950 gritty racial drama NO WAY OUT, written and directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz, in which he played a young hospital intern forced to take care of a wounded, bigoted criminal played by Richard Widmark, who became a good friend of the young actor. They would go on to work on other projects including 1965’s THE BEDFORD INCIDENT.
The New York Times was effusive in its praise of Poitier, writing that he “gives a fine, sensitive performance …and his quiet dignity is in sharp, affecting contrast to the volatile, sneering, base animal mentality and vigor that Mr. Widmark expresses so expertly as Ray Biddle.”
(Ossie Davis also made his film debut in NO WAY OUT, which also featured his wife Ruby Dee.)
Poitier told me in a 1991 interview I did for the L.A. Times that some areas of the South refused to screen NO WAY OUT. “But it was not closed out entirely,” he noted. “There were areas in the white community in the South where pictures with black stars played, but they didn’t get uniformly wide distribution in those days. Much of it depended on what the films were about. NO WAY OUT was an explosive film about race relations. I am sure it was not shown in every corner of the South.”
The film also ran into trouble in the North. The New York Times reported on Aug. 30, 1950 that “Capt. Harry Fulmer of the censor division of the Chicago Police Department announced today that the showing of the motion picture NO WAY OUT would be permitted in this city with a small portion of the film deleted.”
Richard Brooks’ 1955 BLACKBOARD JUNGLE starring Poitier as a bright but troubled inner-city high school student also ran into controversy. “That picture has kind of carved a little place for itself in the consciousness,” he said. “But it was recommended by Claire Boothe Luce that the picture not be screened in Europe.” Of course, TCM fans may know Luce for her hit play The Women that was adapted into the hit 1939 film comedy. But in 1955, she was President Dwight Eisenhower’s Ambassador to Italy.
“She thought it was showing America in a bad light,” Poitier explained. “We were just not accustomed in America to deal with tough social questions. The question of race was avoided altogether. The word ‘damn’ was not allowed in a film. So that was the mind-set then.” Poitier continued: “In such a mind-set, a film like BLACKBOARD JUNGLE could be considered controversial, but to be considered sufficient to have a US. Ambassador recommend that it be censored or denied exposure? So, you see we have grown some.”
I first saw Poitier when I was 11 in LILIES OF THE FIELD as the second feature on a double bill with Disney’s 1966 comedy, Lt. Robin Crusoe, U.S.N. The latter is just a blip in my memory, but encountering Poitier in his endearing turn as a sweet itinerant handyman who helps East German nuns living in Arizona build a chapel is etched in my mind.
When I asked Poitier about the film, he explained “director Ralph Nelson, in order to make the movie, put his house up as collateral to United Artists. We rehearsed that picture here in town. Then we got on a plane and went to Arizona where he had gone to a deserted area and built a little church. We were so well-rehearsed that it took us 14 days to make the movie.”
Poitier admitted that “the guys who were forerunners to me, like Canada Lee, Rex Ingram, Clarence Muse and women like Hattie McDaniel, Louise Beavers and Juanita Moore, they were terribly boxed in. They were maids and stable people and butlers, principally. But they, in some way, prepared the ground for me. I like to think I may have turned a pebble or two for those who have come behind me.”
mothermishy
