The great dictators

Michael White

INSIDE WARNER BROTHERS by Rudy Behlmer

Weidenfeld & Nicolson, L15.95

This book, which explains better than any other the business of film production, is based on the simple but clever idea of culling the inter-office memoranda of War- ner Brothers from 1935-1951. This was obviously inspired by the examples dic- tated by the most insane memo-writer in the history of show business, David 0. Selznick.

The central characters are Jack L. War- ner who ran the Hollywood studio and Hal B. Wallis his chief of production up until the war. Unlike letters, there is no arriere- pens& of eventual publication so a lot of this is raw, real and sometimes cruel. There is the manner in which bosses discuss actors and directors which is crude and unpleasant and hasn't changed much, except that the power has switched very much in favour of the creators as opposed to the days of the major studios when everyone was under contract and actors were loaned to other studios like paintings to an exhibition. Here is Jack Warner to his brother:

I agree with you wholeheartedly about not suspending anyone, but all you have to do is let actors play the parts they want and you won't be in business very long.

Then there is George Raft protesting that he doesn't want to be in The Maltese Falcon as it isn't an important picture — so Humphrey Bogart was taken off suspen- sion, cast in the role of Sam Spade and, as they say, the rest is history.

The heroine of the book is Olivia de Havilland, to whom the acting profession owes a great debt. In 1943 she challenged her contract on the basis that under Cali- fornian law no employers could hold an employee for more than seven years. The seven-year-law was called the Anti- Peonage law and in the law books the Supreme Court's verdict is referred to as 'The de Havilland decision' — it isn't too late for Equity to erect a statue to Miss de Havilland.

Hal B. Wallis emerges as a brilliant and super-tough producer. He fell out with Jack Warner over what Warner felt was Wallis's cult for self publicity and vice versa. There are bitter exchanges at the end of his tenure over who deserved the Oscar for Casablanca. Obviously the chap- ter on Casablanca is fascinating not least because it gives the budget in all its detail.

Then there's William Faulkner unhappi- ly asking to be released from his unsatisfac- tory contract as the work he'd done was not being used. He received a speedy and short answer — no release.

From Ann Sheridan in John Kobal's People Will Talk:

I had to fight for everything at Warners. From the casting director up to Jack Warner. Of course, at Warners everybody seemed to have to fight. That's the only way it was done. A knock-down, drag-out fight. You didn't always win, but it let them know you were alive.

But things didn't go all that smoothly as Loretta Young in People Will Talk states:

I went to a most interesting dinner and it was a tribute to Jack Warner. They ran some film clips of the thousands of pictures that have been made at Warners. If they hadn't shown this film, I don't think most of the 1,500 people there would have had any idea of what this man meant to this industry. Be- cause everybody fought with him all the time. I never did, I must say, when I was there, because I wasn't in a fighting mood in those days. For the motion-picture actor at that time, it was the greatest that ever happened. Because they made stars. If you weren't any good, they put you into enough pictures and brainwashed people into think- ing you were.

Jack Warner knew about films. On his first viewing of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre he wrote to New York 'This is the greatest — it is the one we have always wished for.'

Warners was very much a junior studio compared to Paramount and MGM. They were on their uppers when they made The Jazz Singer, the first talkie, which helped to save the studio, but their fame in the Thirties came from their naturalistic gangs- ter movies with Edward G. Robinson, James Cagney and George Raft.

Unlike today, when the film industry is ruled by committee, Warner had the power to initiate and make film. He did have to refer to his brothers in New York but generally if he wanted to make a picture it got made. Warner never had the power of Louis B. Mayer nor was he as crude as Harry Cohen who ran Columbia, but he was very opinionated. In spite of the tremendous number of pictures they were making he kept well informed.

Here is a memo from Warner to Hal Wallis:

I saw the Paul Henreid and Bette Davis Test. I am much afraid of Davis' hat, where you will have to guess what she is thinking about. A large hat may be all right and again it may not, but we must see the people's eyes when they are acting.

To the literary department:

. . . Note, we have secured the right to use 'Elizabeth and Essex', and I have added the words, 'Private Lives of to it. We ran into a big snag in using 'The Lady and the Knight', which I could not overcome. Furthermore, in case we both do not know, you cannot call a Queen a lady . . .

This book is compulsive reading for those who work in the cinema and I hope that MGM have kept everything and that Rudy Behlmer can get into the vaults and bring out the next book.

Michael White's last production in the West End was On Your Toes.