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Think
of all the amazing character actors of
the Golden Age – Ward Bond, Allen
Jenkins, Una Merkel, Franklin Pangborn,
Frank McHugh, Ruth Donnelly, Warren Hymer,
Eric Blore, Edward Everett Horton, Frank
McHugh, Barry Fitzgerald, Una O'Connor,
Roscoe Karns, Thomas Mitchell, the wonderful
Iris Adrian (see the July edition of this
column) – the list goes on.
William
Bakewell (1908-1993) is never included
in this group, though from roughly 1935
to 1950 he certainly played enough character
parts to do justice to any actor's resume.
Billy Bakewell achieved his greatest fame
as one of the premiere juvenile (opposite
of ingénue) performers of the late Twenties
and early Thirties, during those very
crucial years that saw the transition
from silence to sound. From early roles
as 20-year-old Joan Crawford's boyfriend
to Norma Shearer's brother to landmark
roles in Douglas Fairbanks' The Iron
Mask and a key role in the starring
ensemble in the timeless 1930 Best-Picture-Oscar-winning
classic All Quiet on the Western Front
, William Bakewell became firmly
entrenched in the Hollywood firmament.
He
never achieved significant status past
the Depression years, although he became
familiar to film fans in dozens of films,
from Gone with the Wind (as
the cavalryman who warns Vivien Leigh
that the Yankees have almost arrived in
Atlanta) to the phenomenally popular Disney
Davy Crockett series. Bill
Bakewell represented a Hollywood that
passed into legend with the advent of
talking pictures – the days of Fairbanks,
Chaplin, Griffith. He was a young man
in those days, and he was a young man
of 81 years old when I had the abundant
pleasure of spending an afternoon with
him on April 19, 1989 in his home in West
Los Angeles, a modest but well appointed
apartment around the corner from the huge
Mormon temple off Santa Monica Boulevard.
At 81, after a career that saw him segue
from character actor to Beverly Hills
real estate agent, Bill Bakewell was a
true Hollywood story with a happy ending,
a truly blessed and fulfilled person.
He went on to publish his highly recommended
autobiography, Hollywood Be Thy Name
(1989, Scarecrow Press); I smile
to this day when I think of his hearty
laughter and unbridled joy in remembering
the good old days when the movies were
young.
JOHN
GALLAGHER: You're an L.A. native.
WILLIAM
BAKEWELL: Yeah, I was born here. I grew
up here. It was a lot different then.
Hollywood was a charming small town. My
mother and I could go to the movies at
night. Today, you'd be nervous about going
to the movies at night.
JG:
Whereabouts did you grow up?
WB:
Actually I was born slightly south of
Hollywood, which in those days was completely
different, and then we moved to South
Pasadena, and then I went to Harvard School.
Back then it was a military school. It's
an Episcopal school, and was the top private
school, ROTC military school in the state.
Doug Fairbanks Jr. went there. I was president
of the dramatic club and I wanted to be
an actor. As a kid, my mother and father
used to take me to restaurants long since
gone.
There
was one in Ocean Park called the Ship
Cafe, and it was designed like a boat.
It was a great hangout for picture people.
I'd see William S. Hart and Tom Mix, people
like that. In downtown Los Angeles, you
had Levy's Tavern, and when I was very
small, we'd go there and you'd see Wallace
Reid and Charles Ray, all the silent picture
people. On my days off from school, I
used to go to the studios and look through
the fence. I saw Doug Fairbanks shooting
Robin Hood (1922) and The
Thief of Baghdad (1924) at the Pickford-Fairbanks
Studio on Santa Monica Boulevard. After
Mary and Doug formed United Artists with
Griffith and Chaplin it became the United
Artists Studio. It was United Artists
Studio for years, then it became the Goldwyn
Studios.
After
Sam Goldwyn died, and his wife Frances
died, she left the studio to the Motion
Picture and Television Fund. It's a charity
organization, not a profit-making organization,
so they held it open for bids and sold
it to Warners. God, I practically grew
up in that studio.
I
did a picture for Fairbanks there called
The Iron Mask (1929). In fact,
there's the actual Iron Mask prop on that
shelf. You know who was here about three
weeks ago? Kevin Brownlow. Four or five
years ago he called me when he was going
to do the special on Chaplin and someone
said he should talk to me. Well, I didn't
really know Chaplin. When I was working
for Doug Fairbanks, which was the greatest
experience a teenage kid could have because
he was the idol of the time, at the end
of the day's work, there was a gym on
the lot and we would go there and he had
invented a game called "Doug",
which was a cross between tennis and badminton.
The high net of badminton, but the racket
was larger than a badminton racket. You
could hit the weighted bird with your
hand, dally it, then kill it. So it was
very fast. We'd take our makeup off then
go to the gym. Then afterwards everyone
would congregate in Doug's dressing room
and it was fun because Chaplin would come
by, Snowy Baker, a famous Australian athlete,
who taught Doug to snap the bullwhip for
Don Q, Son of Zorro (1925).
Johnny Mack Brown would come by. So it
was fun.
JG:
It must have been very much of a family
atmosphere at that lot.
WB:
The whole town and the whole business
was far more personal. It was smaller.
JG:
You must have spent time up at Pickfair.
WB:
I'm not bragging, but I was always invited
to Pickfair. I was very flattered. I used
to take Mary Brian.
JG:
You were in pictures like West Point
(1927) and Annapolis (1927).
That was a trend in the late '20s, collegiate
pictures.
WB:
All young juveniles did their share of
football pictures. I started in 1925 and
my first work was at what later became
RKO, on Gower Street.
JG:
FBO.
WB:
I worked there all the time when it was
FBO. Originally it was called the Robertson-Cole
Studio. Then it became FBO, Film Booking
Offices. My first part was in a picture
called The Last Edition (1925),
a newspaper story. Emery Johnson was a
director whose specialty was melodramas,
and he used to dramatize mailmen, the
engineer of a locomotive, the fireman,
well, this was the newspaper reporter.
Ralph Lewis was a famous character man,
he was in The Birth of a Nation
(1915) and he played the old editor. We
worked in the presses of the Chronicle
newspaper in San Francisco.
JG:
Did you have to audition for the part?
WB:
No, someone recommended me to Emery Johnson
and I met him that way. I played the oiler
boy in the room with the printing presses.
We were on it two or three weeks. There
was an actress named Belle Bennett, who
was the original Stella Dallas, and at
FBO they did a picture called Mother
(1927), very melodramatic, and I
played her son. I did four pictures with
her, including The Iron Mask ,
in which she played the Queen Mother.
I played Louis XIV and his mad twin brother.
At that time, in 1928, D. W. Griffith
was making a comeback and my agent picked
me up to see him and we drove over to
the Ambassador Hotel. He was doing a picture
called The Battle of the Sexes
(1928) with Jean Hersholt and Belle Bennett,
a remake of one of Griffith's early, early
silents. I'll never forget, we went over
to the hotel and they were shooting a
scene where Jean Hersholt is being shaved
in the barber shop at the Ambassador Hotel.
I was so nervous and my agent took me
in the washroom and said, "Wash your
hands and face with cold water, that'll
help." Well, Griffith was so wonderful
to me, and I got the part and worked on
that.
JG:
Griffith was the big name director
when you were growing up.
WB:
He was the George Washington of the picture
business. He was making a comeback, and
Billy Bitzer, the original cameraman on
The Birth of a Nation ,
was working as a second cameraman on this
picture. He had had a drinking problem
but was making a comeback as well. He
was a very cute sweet guy. Karl Struss
was the main cameraman.
So during that phase I worked in the silents.
I used to work at Fox Western Avenue that
doesn't exist anymore. In fact, my mother
and I lived in that area. My father had
died, and we lived in a flat, an apartment
building, and I used to walk two or three
blocks to Fox and work all the time there.
I bridged the period from the silents
through the beginning of the talkies right
on through. As a result, I knew some of
the big personalities of that era. I worked
with May McAvoy, Madge Bellamy, Alma Rubens.
In those days, there was no sound so there
might be two companies on the same stage
at both ends. We'd visited the other company
between shots, and I'll never forget,
Walter Pidgeon was a new leading man,
I think he was under contract to Joe Schenck,
and he was doing a picture with Alma Rubens,
and I was doing a small part in a picture
with Madge Bellamy at
the opposite end of the stage. We'd break
for lunch and we'd all go to lunch together,
either at the studio commissary or the
Assistants League Tea Room behind the
Fox Western Studio. Walter would say,
"Come on Billy, let's have lunch,"
and we were friends through the years.
JG:
The two Griffith pictures you appeared
in, The Battle of the Sexes
and Lady of the Pavements (1929)
were done at the United Artists Studio.
WB:
Yes, they were both done at UA. I had
just been signed to do The Iron Mask.
I had worked at First National,
which later became Warner Brothers, out
in the Valley, in Burbank, I used to work
there a lot, and I was in Harold Teen
(1928) there, Mervyn LeRoy's second
picture.
JG:
He must have been a youngster.
WB:
Mervyn was 27. Arthur Lake, Alice White,
Mary Brian, and I were in Harold Teen
. Allan Dwan produced the picture,
he didn't direct it, he produced it, and
as a result of that he recommended me
to Doug Fairbanks for the king and his
twin brother in The Iron Mask ,
which Allan was directing.
West
Point was done at MGM. I had worked
at MGM when Garbo was doing her second
picture in America, and I played Norma
Shearer's brother in a picture called
The Waning Sex (1926). Sally
O'Neil and I played the junior romance
in the thing, and Conrad Nagel and Norma
Shearer were the leads. Bob Leonard directed
it, Robert Z. Leonard. A nice man. He
and Tay Garnett (on Seven Sinners
, 1940, and Cheers for Miss Bishop
, 1941) were sweet guys to work for.
Anyway,
William Haines, who was then a big silent
star, later became a decorator, used to
come over to the set of The Waning
Sex to say hello to Norma. There
used to be a little tearoom in Hollywood
called The Lighted Tree, and we'd go there
for dinner, and Haines was in there with
some guys, and the next thing I knew my
agent called me and said, "You're
getting a wonderful part, and you're going
to go to West Point for at least a month."
He asked me to bring my mother and sign
the contracts so we went over to his house,
not far from where I lived. I'd never
been to New York, and he said, "I've
arranged for your mother to go, all expenses
paid." I said, "My God, how
did you swing a thing like that?"
He leaned forward and said, "Mr.
Haines is rumored to be a homosexual"
( laughter ). My mother gulped
and said, "A homo-what-sual?"
She didn't even know what it was ( laughter
). There were sissies, but no one
knew! We went to West Point and we were
there for five weeks, shooting on location
at West Point, a marvelous experience.
We stayed at the Thayer Hotel.
The
leading lady was Joan Crawford, who had
only been Joan Crawford for a few months.
Her real name was Lucille LeSeuer. We
got to be great friends. It rained a bit
so one week they said, "You guys
can go into New York if you want".
I'd never been there, so Joan, my mother
and I went on the train to New York, and
Joan arranged for us what shows to see.
I did two other pictures with Joan in
later years, and we stayed good friends.
Then I did another picture with Norma
Shearer called The Latest from Paris
(1928). Ralph Forbes was the leading
man and I played Norma's brother again.
It was a good part. Norma and I were good
friends. This is like "then I wrote
..." ( laughter ).
I
did a lot of silent stuff, and then The
Iron Mask . That was the last big
silent Fairbanks costume epic. During
the shooting of the picture sound was
coming in like the cavalry, Al Jolson
was singing "Sonny Boy" at Warner
Brothers Hollywood. Every picture at that
point had at least one sequence or one
scene in sound. So Doug wrote an opening
for the picture. The credit sheet came
on, Douglas Fairbanks in The Iron
Mask , and it was a tapestry with
the Three Musketeers and D'Artagnan, then
suddenly D'Artagnan came to life, leaped
forward, faced the audience and with his
sword swished the air a couple of times
and he said, "Out of the shadows
of the past as from a faded tapestry of
time's processions, slow and vast, I step
to bid you bear with me for while your
fancy I engage, to look upon another age,"
then the picture went on, silent with
a music score and sound effects. They
botched the sound and they had Doug Jr.,
who is a good friend of mine, we see each
other whenever he comes out here, dub
his voice to do his father's speech. Fairbanks
Sr. was from the theatre but he was so
involved with the action and his acrobatics,
ideal for the silent movies.
JG:
It's well known that Fairbanks was the
guiding force behind his pictures but
at the same time I'm sure Allan Dwan was
a very strong director.
WB:
I loved Allan Dwan. He was a little Napoleon.
At one time he had played football for
Notre Dame so he was a rugged little guy.
He could be caustic but there was always
a little tongue-in-cheek twinkle. We got
along. He liked me. We got to be very
good friends. Several years later I did
another picture he directed called While
Paris Sleeps (1932) with Vic McLaglen.
JG:
How did he get along with Fairbanks?
WB:
Oh they got along fine. They had Robin
Hood together. They were devoted
to each other. As a matter of fact, you
know something? He's one of the all-time
greatest directors in the picture business.
He really knew his job. He wasn't like
Tay or Bob Leonard in his manner, but
he was terrific. He lived to be about
96!
The heavy in The Iron Mask was
a German actor, Ulrich Haupt, who died
not long after in a hunting accident.
Allan Dwan had an idiosyncrasy. He used
to joke, and even though he sounded tough
it was always tongue-in-cheek. He used
to say, "I never talk to actors."
And there was a scene and Ulrich Haupt
had a question about a scene they were
about to do and Allan's
assistant, Bruce "Lucky" Humberstone,
who later became a director himself. Allan
always communicated with his actors through
Lucky. He'd say "Go tell him this
or that." Well, Ulrich got his back
up over this and for a moment we thought
there was almost going to be a fight on
the set. Dwan could have done all right,
he was a tough little guy, but then it
simmered down and Ulrich pouted and walked
off, came back later. But I was very fond
of Allan Dwan. When you talk about D.
W. Griffith and Allan Dwan, you're talking
about giants in the overall history of
the picture business.
JG:
It must have been such a thrill for you
to be working in a picture with Douglas
Fairbanks.
WB:
I can't exaggerate enough. My first day
on the picture I was so nervous my mouth
was as dry as alum, and when we broke
for lunch, in those days there wasn't
a restaurant on the lot. A couple of blocks
up the street above Santa Monica Boulevard
there was a little tea room and I was
going to go there, and Doug said, "Hey,
Billy, wait a minute, where you going?"
I said "To lunch". I had my
costume on and everything. He said, "No,
no, no, come to the bungalow.' Invariably
in those days there was a steady stream
of distinguished visitors. It could be
Cochet the tennis player, it could be
Jack Dempsey, and I had lunch that day
with a cousin of the King of Spain, my
first day's work there!
JG:
Fairbanks always made sure he used Charlie
Stevens, didn't he?
WB:
Charlie Stevens was a little guy who looked
like either and Indian or a Mexican. He
was about Doug's build, nice little guy.
He usually played Doug's valet or something,
but he worked in picture after picture
with Doug. I guess he's long since gone.
Doug had a trainer, Chuck Lewis, who had
been a decathlon man at Princeton, and
he was very much in evidence.
JG:
Fairbanks started Victor Fleming off in
the business as a cameraman, and then
Fleming's first two pictures as director
were for Fairbanks.
WB:
I only worked for Vic once. I knew him
socially, but I worked for him in Gone
with the Wind (1939). I only had
one scene. My agent called and said "Vic
Fleming has a part for you in Gone
with the Wind , well everybody wanted
to be in Gone with the Wind.
I was all excited. I had friends that
had been on it for weeks, Cliff Edwards,
Roscoe Ates, you don't even hardly see
them in the picture.
So
they sent me out to the Selznick Studio
in Culver City to the back lot where they
were shooting on this replica of Peachtree
Street in Atlanta, and he told me what
the scene was and I thought, "Gee,
is that all I have to do?" and they
sent me over to wardrobe and makeup and
I was only on it a couple of days. But
you know an interesting thing? Anyone
who was in the cast of Gone with the
Wind you'd think they signed the
Declaration of Independence! Honestly!
I've been in 110 features, All Quiet
on the Western Front (1930), The
Iron Mask, Davy Crockett (1955),
but that's the one. You get a steady stream
of mail, anyone who was in that picture.
At that time I was sort of chagrined,
I thought, "Geez, is that all I have
to do?" And now I'm glad because
it's historic.
JG:
Is there any particular scene in The
Iron Mask that stands out for you
in terms of a challenge?
WB:
Well certainly the dual role was challenging,
but there's no particular moment. I was
so thrilled to be working in a picture
for Doug Fairbanks. In those days there
was no bigger star in the world. You know
something ironic? I told you I'm on the
board of the Motion Picture and Television
Fund. It's basically a charity organization
for people in the business, not just actors,
but grips, cameramen, electricians, everybody.
It's for people who don't have the wherewithal
to pay for their medical needs or their
economic needs, but they do take care
of people who do have assets if they pay
their way because the other people can't,
and it's cheaper there than it would be
on the outside. Now Norma Shearer had
been in a sanitarium I think in Pasadena
and it was costing her thousands a month
with nurses around the clock, so she went
out there where it was much less, the
Motion Picture and Television Country
House and Hospital in Woodland Hills.
Some people say "The Home" but
they try to avoid that because it has
a depressing sound.
JG:
It's a beautiful facility.
WB:
Unbelievable. Jean Hersholt and Ralph
Morgan put me on the board in 1947. Anyway,
we had a meeting out there and I heard
that Norma was there in the hospital,
so I broke away and went over to see her
because I had played her brother in two
pictures. And here she was in a wheelchair,
same profile but white hair, but she was
blind. She had had some strokes and was
very confused. She had a black nurse with
her. I said, "I'm an old friend,
may I say hello?" I leaned over nose
to nose to Norma and I said to her, "Norma,
it's Billy Bakewell,” because that what
I was known as then. She just looked off
blankly into space and I repeated my name
and said "I was your brother in two
pictures." Suddenly she grabbed me
and said, "Please, can you stay?
Don't go," and she kissed me. When
I left I was crying. A few nights later
Diane and I were at a dinner party and
I mentioned this to some grown people,
40, 45 years old, and they didn't know
who she was. They said, "Norma who?"
It shows you how fleeting it really is.
My God, she was the empress of MGM! She
did Idiot's Delight (1939), Private
Lives (1931), Barretts of
Wimpole Street (1934), Marie
Antoinette (1938), Romeo and
Juliet (1936). And they said, "Who?"
That's depressing!
JG:
When talkies came in, everything changed.
WB:
Right after The Iron Mask , Mervyn
LeRoy wanted me to appear with Alice White
in a silly college thing called
Hot Stuff (1929). It wasn't
so hot! Louise Fazenda was in it, she
was married to Hal Wallis later. Suddenly
they decided they should shoot one sequence
in sound. Well, there were no sound-proof
stages out in Burbank so we worked from
eight o'clock at night until dawn. Nervous?
You can't imagine how nervous we were.
We shot it over and over again, our mouths
were
dry,
and then we'd sit down and listen to the
Vitaphone playback. So that was my introduction
to sound. Then I did some more pictures
for Warners in the big white building
on Sunset at Van Ness, one called Gold
Diggers of Broadway (1929). I did
On with the Show (1929) at about
the same time at a studio on Commonwealth
on the other side of Vermont Avenue, the
old Vitagraph Studio. That belonged to
Warner Brothers too, and they had a fabulous
theater set for On with the Show .
Sally O'Neil was the hat check girl and
I was the usher. That was the romance.
Arthur Lake and Betty Compson were in
the cast, and it was one of Joe E. Brown's
first pictures. Ethel Waters sang "Am
I Blue? in the picture, it was introduced
with that picture. I have a video of that
movie. It's very dated but it's fun. I
was also in The Show of Shows
(1929) at Warners, a big revue-type picture.
I was in a scene with Grant Withers and
a bunch of other guys, and we're riding
on bicycles with a group of actresses.
Then I did another picture there for Mervyn
called Playing Around (1930),
they had all kinds of silly titles. Chester
Morris was the heavy and I played opposite
Alice White again. It was right after
that I got All Quiet on the Western
Front .
JG:
Were these Warners pictures down on Sunset
or out in Burbank?
WB:
These were out in the Valley.
JG:
How did you get All Quiet ?
WB:
I went to a party and Lewis Milestone
was there. At that time, my career as
a juvenile was going along nicely. Millie
came up to me and he said, "I have
a great part for you. I'm going to do
All Quiet on the Western Front
for Universal." So I was all set.
You've seen the picture. There are seven
German schoolboys who go to war. Well,
they made about 200 tests for the boys,
but I was set. I don't mean it immodestly
but I was in a sense established as a
juvenile because of the Fairbanks picture
so I didn't have to take a test for the
part.
They hadn't cast the lead character, Paul
Baumer. At one time there was a rumor
that Doug Fairbanks Jr. was going to do
it but he had other commitments. Well,
there was an agent named Ivan Kahn, one
of the great early day agents of the late
twenties. It was in a day when many of
the agents were managers of boxers who
lived or starved with their stable. Ivan
Kahn was a kind of a baldheaded, bullet-headed
guy, looked like a punch drunk prizefighter,
wonderful, one of the nicest, sweetest
guys, and he had a genius for detecting
movie material in the raw. Gilbert Roland,
Alice White, Ann Sothern, and, in later
years, Olivia DeHavilland and Joan Fontaine.
He really had a talent for that. When
they were trying to think of someone to
play Paul Baumer, Ivan was in the Blossom
Room of the Roosevelt Hotel one night
and Lili Damita was sitting in there at
another table and there was an orchestra
playing, Henry Halstead's Orchestra, a
dance band. There was a young guy up there
playing banjo and guitar named Lew Ayres.
Lili said to Ivan, "Look at that
good looking young man up there?"
He said, "You want to meet him?"
and he went and arranged for Lew to come
down and dance with her. This was before
she married Errol Flynn. So then Ivan
said to Lew, "Have you ever thought
of becoming an actor?" He said, "I
sure have.” He said, "Come and see
me." So he signed him.
Shortly
thereafter he got him a stock contract
at the Pathe Studio in Culver City, which
later became the Selznick Studio. Lew
did a small part in a picture with Eddie
Quillan called The Sophomore
(!929) that Leo McCarey directed. Then
Ivan got Lew a part in a Garbo silent
picture called The Kiss (1929)
that Paul Bern produced. Paul was a young
guy with a big crush on Garbo.
Now we dissolve to Millie making tests
to find somebody to play Paul Baumer and
Paul Bern calls Millie and says, "Look,
a young actor named Lew Ayres just worked
for me. Make a test of him, I think you'll
be impressed" and he did, and Lew
got it.
JG:
Was there a camaraderie between the actors
who played the German boys?
WB:
There sure was. We were on it together
for five and a half, almost six months,
and it was a rough picture. And I mean
rough . Our battlefield was down
at what now is the Irvine Ranch, where
University of California at Irvine is.
It was just rolling hills then. They made
a marvelous battlefield with shell holes
and all that. They had a tent city for
the crew, and the cast and directorial
staff were in a hotel in Laguna. They
would pick us up in the morning at the
crack of dawn and take us to our battlefield
location. When they assigned us to our
rooms in the hotel alphabetically, Lew
and I became roommates. We were all like
brothers ever since. Lew and I are the
last people alive from that picture. Russell
Gleason, Ben Alexander, Owen Davis, Jr.,
Scott Kolk. Owen and Scott left after
the picture and went back east, they didn't
hang around here much, but Russell Gleason,
Ben Alexander, Lew Ayres and I were all
very close, like we were related. To this
day Lew and I are pals.
JG:
What was Lewis Milestone like as a director?
WB:
He was marvelous. Not many people know
this. They decided to start the picture
officially on November 11, 1929, because
it was Armistice Day and it was an anti-war
picture. Then we were told that a man
had come out from New York to be a dialogue
director, to coach us in our lines, and
work throughout the picture. And boy,
was he a perfectionist. He rehearsed us
and rehearsed us and rehearsed us, and
it was about two weeks before we shot
anything. In fact, one day out in the
parking lot, Lew said to me, "You
know, Bill, I don't think I can ever please
him. I think they oughta get another actor."
I said, "Are you out of your mind?
Do you want to go back to the banjo?"
( laughter ). He had a
good night's rest and everything was fine.
Well, the man I'm speaking of is George
Cukor. Now, he's not even on the credit
sheet, I'll never know why, but he was
the dialogue director, not just at the
beginning but throughout the picture,
and he was a big factor in the success
of All Quiet . And Milestone
was wonderful, of course.
JG:
How did they work when you were actually
on the set shooting?
WB:
There was one general and that was Millie,
but George would run the scene with us
before hand. Millie had been a film editor
originally and he was a great proponent
of movement in pictures. There had been
a huge, orange-colored crane that Universal
had built for a picture called Broadway,
and he commandeered that crane.
They would have alongside the trenches
a concrete runway and this crane was movable
and could dip down into the trenches for
our intimate scenes and then when we would
go into the battle it would zoom up with
a telephoto lens and follow us. There
was a powder man named Walter Hoffman
who was a big factor in All Quiet
and before a battle scene he would
say, "All right, Bakewell, look.
See that tree stump over there? There's
a stick of dynamite there. And that dummy
of a dead Frenchman, there are two sticks
there. Stay in the middle and don't look
back whatever you do." Well, by the
time they said, "OK! Quiet! Action!,”
it scared the hell out of you! It was
like being in World War Six!
JG:
Of course that was before the Screen Actors
Guild.
WB:
There was no guild then. We worked from
dawn til midnight. We didn't care, we
were young and enthusiastic. Whoever heard
of overtime at that time?
JG:
Was Junior Laemmle around on the production?
WB:
That's an interesting thing. Junior became
nominally the producer of All Quiet
, but Millie
never let him come around ( laughter
). When it was announced that Universal
was going to do All Quiet , there
was a lot of criticism in the press, because
there was no romance, and Universal was
having economic troubles, going into the
red at the time, and also another studio
was shooting Journey's End (1930),
another World War One picture, which had
been a big hit in London and New York
on the stage. James Whale was directing
the film version. So the press poked fun
at Universal for doing All Quiet .
They referred to it as Junior's End
( laughter ), but it turned
out to be one of the greatest pictures
ever made.
Incidentally, it was butchered when it
was shown on television and released to
video originally, so cut down. One day
at a meeting of the Motion Picture and
Television Fund, Edie Wasserman, Lew Wasserman's
wife, is on the board with me. I said,
"Edie, you tell Lew that he oughta
be ashamed of himself to let one of the
great Universal classics to be so butchered."
A few months later in the Los Angeles
Times it said, "The new restored
All Quiet on the Western Front .”
It's restored, but it's still short.
JG:
ZaSu Pitts was originally in the picture.
WB:
I loved ZaSu. There's a sequence where
Lew comes home on furlough and his mother
is dying of tuberculosis, and he has a
nice scene with her. She was known primarily
for comedy, but ZaSu had done Greed
(1924) for Stroheim, and Milestone
remembered that and cast her as Lew's
mother. They shot the scene and when it
was previewed in San Bernardino, I was
at the preview, and the main feature was
a Nancy Carroll picture called Honey
( 1930), a comedy with Stanley Smith,
and ZaSu played a silly comedy maid. When
the preview picture came on, All Quiet
, and ZaSu's scene appeared, the
audience laughed just at the sight of
her, those wispy hands, that character
that she did. So they had to reshoot it,
and Beryl Mercer did it.
The finish of All Quiet at that
time had Lew leaning against the parapet
of the trench and suddenly he looks up
and sees an apocalyptic vision in the
sky of the war dead, skeletons on horses
carrying tattered flags. That was the
original finish. Then there were some
retakes and added scenes to shoot, as
was usually the case, and Arthur Edeson,
our cameraman, was already on another
picture. So Karl Freund, the great German
cinematographer from UFA in Berlin, was
here, and Millie prevailed upon him to
shoot the additional scenes and retakes.
In order to have him match the original,
Millie ran a rough cut of the picture
and Karl saw the scene where Lew comes
home on furlough and in his boyhood room,
he takes a wistful look at his butterfly
collection. He said, "I've got a
great idea for a finish!" That was
Lew reaching for the butterfly in the
trench, which is the most hauntingly beautiful
scene in the picture. That was thanks
to Karl Freund.
JG:
That was daring to make a picture about
World War One from the German point of
view only ten years after the war ended.
WB:
That's true. About four years ago, a camera
crew came over from Germany to interview
Lew and I about All Quiet on the Western
Front . We met out in the garden
of Lew's house, like we're talking now.
The film didn't play in Germany for a
long time. You know what really bugs us?
Kevin Brownlow sent me a letter from a
man in New Zealand who is doing a book
on the making of All Quiet on the
Western Front apparently, a man
named James Sheehan. He sent a list of
questions, and there were more errors
and misunderstandings than you can imagine.
He kept referring to the silent version.
There never was a silent version! Ever!
Maybe someone ran it without a soundtrack
but it was never a silent film. They must
be thinking of The Big Parade
(1925). It was all talking. My God, Cukor
was the dialogue director. There were
many things like that. So I sent a letter
correcting them.
JG:
The scene early in the picture where the
teacher rouses the schoolboys to enlist
is very powerful.
WB:
"Go forth for the Fatherland!"
The troops are marching outside and the
camera pulls in to the classroom. If they
ever colorize it, it would be absolutely
awful because of the starkness. And however
primitive it looks, it gives it an authenticity.
You'll never see better synthetic battle
stuff in your life. Very damn good if
I do say so.
JG:
You worked at Universal, MGM, Warners,
Fox, RKO ... were you ever under contract
or did you freelance?
WB:
My agent was Myron Selznick, David's brother,
and after All Quiet for about
three months, I didn't hear anything and
it upset me. I went to Myron and he actually
was very preoccupied with his big name
people. I got a little irritated and I
asked for a release, and I got it. I got
in the elevator of that building in Hollywood,
it stopped at a floor and two guys got
in, Harry Weber and his son, Herbert.
Harry Weber was one of the top vaudeville
agents for years, and they were opening
an agency here. "Who's your agent?"
he asked, and I said, "I just left
him." They said, "Come with
us." A week later I was signed at
MGM and I was there for a long time. When
I signed at MGM I did a couple of pictures
with Marie Dressler and Polly Moran, Reducing
(1931) and Politics (1931),
then I did a picture called The Great
Meadow (1931) about Daniel Boone,
with Johnny Mack Brown and Eleanor Boardman.
The director was Charles Brabin, the husband
of Theda Bara, who had long since retired.
I did a thing called Daybreak
(1931) at MGM with Ramon Novarro, Karen
Morley, Jean Hersholt, directed by Jacques
Feyder from a Schnitzler play. I played
a pal of Novarro, we were Hussar guards
in Vienna. I have a gambling debt and
I'm all upset about it. Feyder was very
nice. I don't remember much more. This
is going way back.
JG:
Guilty Hands (1931) was an interesting
picture you did at MGM.
WB:
Woody Van Dyke directed that. "One
Take" Woody. Half the time you didn't
know if it was a rehearsal or a take.
He'd say, "OK, print it!" You'd
say, "My God, was the camera rolling?"
He was a wonderful guy. But doing it that
way gave it a spontaneity. There was quite
a cast in Guilty Hands, Lionel
Barrymore, Kay Francis, Alan Mowbray,
C. Aubrey Smith, Polly Moran, and I played
opposite Madge Evans. We were the romance
in the thing. It had an interesting gimmick.
It was set at a weekend house party and
Lionel turned out to be the murderer.
He cut a silhouette of himself in a recording
turntable with a light behind it, so people
outside could see him walking around the
room at the time of the murder. That was
his alibi. Alan Mowbray was the murderee,
and Lionel had put the revolver, the murder
weapon, in Alan's hand, as if it were
a suicide. Alan had said he would come
back and get revenge. We're all crowded
around the coroner's inquest and rigor
mortis sets in, and the gun goes off and
kills Lionel Barrymore. That was Guilty
Hands . I'd like to see that picture
again.
JG:
Are there any of your other pictures you'd
like to see?
WB:
I did a picture at MGM with May Robson
called You Can't Buy Everything
(1934), and it was the story of Hedy Green,
the famous miser in New York, a little
old lady who kept all
her money. I played opposite Jean Parker.
Lewis Stone was my father and May Robson
was my mother. The picture was no great
shakes but it was a good part. I'd like
to see that picture. I did a couple of
pictures with Karen Morley, Four Walls
(released as Straight is the
Way , 1934), with Franchot Tone.
JG:
You did a picture at Pathe called A
Woman of Experience (1931).
WB:
Helen Twelvetrees. John Farrow wrote it.
In fact, I had gone with Maureen O'Sullivan,
then she married him. He insisted that
I get the male lead in this. It was about
a prostitute and a young naval officer
in Vienna and they fall in love. It wasn't
all that great. It was a Pathe picture,
but we actually shot it at Universal.
It was a Charles Rogers production. He
was an independent producer with a releasing
deal with Pathe.
JG:
Tell me about Back Street (1932).
WB:
John Boles plays my father and I hear
that my father is keeping a woman, Irene
Dunne, and I go to see her and ask her
to get out of my father's life. He's had
a stroke and he sends for his son and
wants me to pick up the phone band let
him speak to his mistress. Finally I do,
and at the finish of the picture I go
to see the mistress and I say, "I
know he'd like to see you've been taken
care of, I'll pay you so much a month."
I didn't come in til the last part of
the picture but it's a very good part.
It was very successful, and was remade
twice, once with Maggie Sullivan (1941)
and later with Susan Hayward (1961).
John Stahl directed that. If I had to
recommend the most trying experience an
actor can have, it was with John Stahl.
Oh! I mean really! At the beginning of
the picture the assistant director came
and said, "Now, he's known to be
very rough, don't let it throw you."
Well the first day was fine. Everyone
said, "My God, that's not like John
Stahl." Then he settles down and
it was like someone picking the wings
off flies ( laughter ). Oh! Irene
remained a very dear friend of mine. She's
not well at all. I talk to her quite frequently.
She's a lovely woman. We were good friends
through the years.
JG:
Three Cornered Moon (1933) was
one of the first screwball comedies.
WB:
It was the My Man Godfrey (1936)
era. It was strictly during the Depression.
Elliott Nugent was a wonderful guy to
work with. It was about the Rimplegar
family. Mary Boland played the mother,
Claudette Colbert was my sister, Tommy
Brown, Wally Ford and I were the three
brothers. Dick Arlen was the leading man.
That was fun. It still is a good picture,
but it's dated.
JG:
You worked for the independents as well.
WB:
Yeah, I made a lot at Republic, and I
did four serials. I did one with "Bring
'Em Back Alive" Frank Buck, who was
no actor, a thing called Jungle Menace
(1937). It was a producer named
Louie Weiss. It was a Columbia release
and an interesting thing happened. I'm
the 44th member of the Screen Actors Guild.
When sound came in all the actors came
out here from New York and they wanted
to have Equity expanded to include movie
actors. But the business is different.
They never got that off the ground. Finally,
one day at the Masquers Club in Hollywood,
some actors were sitting around, Ken Thomson,
Leon Ames, Jimmy Gleason, Ralph Morgan,
Boris Karloff, and we said "Why don't
we form our own union and call it the
Screen Actors Guild?” and that's where
it started. We'd have meetings in people's
houses like Chester Morris', and then
finally we had our first mass meeting,
about 60 people. Russell Gleason, Bill
Alexander and I went because we were close
to the Gleasons from All Quiet ,
Russell was Jimmy's son. That's how I
became number 44. There are now 70,000
members of the Screen Actors Guild. That
was 1933. The producers did not sign the
contract with the Guild until '37, and
I was on this serial Jungle Menace
. We were on it for weeks, dawn to
midnight, and suddenly they signed the
contract and overtime became retroactive.
I got more money in overtime ... Louie
Weiss went out of business! He wound up
with a monkey farm in the Valley with
the monkeys supplied by Frank Buck!
JG:
How did you like the studio system?
WB:
There's a writer named Mel Shavelson who's
on the board of the Fund with me and he
took a page in Variet y and
The Hollywood Reporter in which
he said back in those days working for
Sam Goldwyn and Jack Warner, I thought
"Holy mackerel, let me out of this.
Now I look back on them with reverence."
Because however crude their backgrounds,
and you know, Harry Cohn was a crude man,
they loved picture-making and were totally
involved in the studio and in every picture.
Of course this is a different era, but
L. B. Mayer would never stoop to pornography
because he wanted to elevate his image.
They were completely involved with everything.
Today they're all conglomerates. Coca
Cola owns Columbia (now it's Sony), Gulf
and Western owned Paramount, there's nothing
personal. Even Sam Goldwyn with all the
jokes about him had an involvement. I'm
living in the past, it's a terrible thing
to do, but I want to tell you, it was
better. There was more romance. It was
personal.
JG:
You did The Bat Whispers (1931)
with Roland West directing. He was an
interesting character.
WB:
That was the first picture I did after
All Quiet . I signed with MGM
while I was doing The Bat Whispers
. I played opposite Una Merkel, who's
a darling. Roland West was an enigmatic,
taciturn, silent little guy who had certain
idiosyncrasies. He would only work at
night. So at United Artists Studio we
would work from seven o'clock at night
until seven in the morning. We went home
like we'd crawled out from under a rock.
I'd pick Una up at her apartment and bring
her to work. Chester Morris was in it.
West was not unpleasant. You'd shoot a
scene and he'd walk away to the other
side of the stage and he'd say "OK,
Cut! Print it!" and he didn't look
at it, he just listened to it. I knew
Thelma Todd quite well and I've been asked
if Roland West really murdered her, but
I don't know. I don't think so. I would
doubt that he did anything terrible. Ida
Lupino is an old friend of mine and the
night of Thelma Todd's death, Ida Lupino
had a party at the Trocadero and there
was a lot of champagne. Thelma went home
and I think she fell asleep with the motor
running. Now that's what I think. Of course
they always dramatize, that National
Enquirer sort of thing, but I don't
think so. Why would he do that?
SAM
FULLER FOLLOW-UP: Fuller's personal epic
The Big Red One (1980) has long
been morned for Lorimar's insensitive
re-edit (see my interview with Peter Bogdanovich
in the August edition of “Between Action
and Cut,” and my Fuller story in the April
column). When Richard Schickel was compiling
his recent Chaplin documentary, he discovered
much of the missing footage, and The
Big Red One has finally been reconstructed
to a closer approximation of his original
vision. The new version made its premiere
at this year's Cannes Film Festival, and
will screen at the New York Film Festival
this month before hitting DVD in spring
2005. For detailed coverage of the reconstruction,
see Michael Pye's article at http://news.telegraph.co.uk/arts
.
NEW
BOOKS: A quartet of outstanding film books
have just hit the stores. Alan L. Gansberg's
Little Caesar: A Biography of Edward
G. Robinson (Scarecrow Press) is
a little light on production details about
the films of this great actor ( Little
Caesar, Double Indemnity, Key Largo, The
Ten Commandments ), but assumes larger
significance with its thorough examination
of Robinson's persecution by the House
on Un-American Activities in the late
40s and early 50s. Robinson's integrity
shines through, along with his personal
passion for painting, which resulted in
a vastly prized collection of paintings
that he was forced to slowly sell off
as his Hollywood fortunes waned.
There have been more than two dozen books
already written about director Martin
Scorsese, so do we really need another
one? If it's Ben Nyce's Scorsese Up
Close: A Study of the Films (Scarecrow
Press), the answer is an unequivocal yes.
In only 176 pages, the author gives us
a concise study of the cinematic text
of the Scorsese oeuvre, from his early
student works through Bringing Up
the Dead , with a brief postscript
on Gangs of New York . This is
a perfect introduction to films like Mean
Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, Good
Fellas, Age of Innocence and all
the maestro's other pictures. I really
like Nyce's ability to study each picture
through certain key sequences, giving
us an overview of each project's roots
and reception. I also like the fact that
Nyce gives high ratings to two of my favorite
(and underrated) Scorsese movies –
New York, New York and New
York Stories: Life Lessons .
This book is also a nice supplement to
the newly released five-disc Scorsese
Collection on DVD.
There is a very good book available on
director Robert Aldrich ( Kiss Me
Deadly, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?,
The Dirty Dozen, The Longest Yard )
called Whatever Happened to Robert
Aldrich? by Alain Silver and James
Ursini, published in 1995 by Limelight.
Tony Williams' new study Body and Soul:
The Cinematic Vision of Robert Aldrich
(also Scarecrow Press) is a great
companion volume, a thoughtful and literate
analysis of the filmmaker's complex body
of work. The most admirable aspect of
the new book is the totally convincing
argument that Williams makes for the enormous
and ongoing creative influence of playwright
Clifford Odets on Aldrich's movies –
films that were on the surface re-workings
of popular genres like the crime thriller,
the Western and the war film, but as the
author demonstrates, were much more complicated
works.
That
brings me to what is, in my opinion, far
and away the best film book published
so far this year, Robert S. Birchard's
stunning Cecil B. DeMille's Hollywood
(University Press of Kentucky). Birchard
spent years working on this epic, and
gives us a film-by-film study of each
of DeMille's 70 pictures. He had full
access to DeMille's papers and records,
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