The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (282 page)

Adolphe Menjou
(1890–1963), b. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Menjou was Paramount’s glittering mannequin, sleek, dapper, hair smoothed back, the face slit by a smile and the suggestion of a sharp triangle of moustache. Menjou was famous as a dandy. Even without
The Ace of Cads
(26, Luther Reed) among his credits, it would be hard to remember him as anything other than the meticulous exploiter of the screen’s ladies. But he is the dignified victim of Dietrich in
Morocco
(30, Josef von Sternberg), the first example of the amused, fatalistic man observing the sex goddess in Sternberg’s work—and, like John Lodge, in
Scarlet Empress
, bearing an odd resemblance to Sternberg himself.
Morocco
shows the finesse Menjou was capable of, like a man taking stock of a snooker.

But he was typecast for suggestive deference over some twenty years; no wonder he became a stylized little man. As Louise Brooks remembered: “Look at Adolphe Menjou. He never felt anything. He used to say, ‘Now I do Lubitsch number one.’ ‘Now I do Lubitsch number two.’ And that’s exactly what he did. You felt nothing, working with him, and yet see him on the screen—and he was a great actor.”

Menjou was on the stage before coming to the movies:
The Amazons
(17, Joseph Kaufman);
Courage
(21, Sidney Franklin); as Louis XIII in
The Three Musketeers
(21, Fred Niblo);
The Eternal Flame
(22, Frank Lloyd);
Is Matrimony a Failure?
(22, James Cruze);
Bella Donna
(23, George Fitzmaurice);
The Spanish Dancer
(23, Herbert Brenon);
A Woman of Paris
(23, Charles Chaplin);
The World’s Applause
(23, William C. De Mille);
Broadway After Dark
(24, Monta Bell);
For Sale
(24, George Archainbaud);
The Marriage Circle
(24, Ernst Lubitsch);
Forbidden Paradise
(24, Lubitsch);
Open All Night
(24, Paul Bern);
Are Parents People?
(25, Malcolm St. Clair);
The King on the Main Street
(25, Bell);
A Kiss in the Dark
(25, Frank Tuttle);
Lost—a Wife
(25, W. C. De Mille);
The Swan
(25, Dmitri Buchowetzki);
The Grand Duchess and the Waiter
(26, St. Clair);
A Social Celebrity
(26, St. Clair); as the Devil figure in
The Sorrows of Satan
(26, D. W. Griffith);
A Gentleman of Paris
(27, Harry d’Arrast);
Service for Ladies
(27, d’Arrast);
His Private Life
(28, Tuttle);
A Night of Mystery
(28, Lothar Mendes);
New Moon
(30, Jack Conway);
The Easiest Way
(31, Conway); as the editor in
The Front Page
(31, Lewis Milestone);
Prestige
(32, Tay Garnett);
Forbidden
(32, Frank Capra); as the impresario in
Morning Glory
(32, Lowell Sherman); as Rinaldi in
A Farewell to Arms
(33, Frank Borzage);
Easy to Love
(33, William Keighley);
Convention City
(33, Archie Mayo);
Journal of a Crime
(34, Keighley);
The Mighty Barnum
(34, Walter Lang);
Gold Diggers of 1935
(35, Busby Berkeley);
Broadway Gondolier
(35, Lloyd Bacon);
The Milky Way
(36, Leo McCarey);
Wives Never Know
(36, Elliott Nugent);
One Hundred Men and a Girl
(37, Henry Koster);
Stage Door
(37, Gregory La Cava); the producer in
A Star Is Born
(37, William Wellman);
The Goldwyn Follies
(38, George Marshall); and
Letter of Introduction
(38, John M. Stahl).

That was his last romantic role, after which he slipped into supporting parts or as the nonsinger in musicals:
Golden Boy
(39, Rouben Mamoulian);
The Housekeeper’s Daughter
(39, Hal Roach);
A Bill of Divorcement
(40, John Farrow);
Road Show
(41, Gordon Douglas);
You Were Never Lovelier
(42, William A. Seiter);
Roxie Hart
(42, Wellman);
Syncopation
(42, William Dieterle);
Hi, Diddle Diddle
(43, Andrew L. Stone);
Step Lively
(44, Tim Whelan);
Heartbeat
(46, Sam Wood);
The Hucksters
(47, Conway);
State of the Union
(48, Capra);
To Please a Lady
(50, Clarence Brown);
The Tall Target
(51, Anthony Mann);
Across the Wide Missouri
(51, Wellman);
The Sniper
(52, Edward Dmytryk);
Man on a Tightrope
(53, Elia Kazan);
The Ambassador’s Daughter
(56, Norman Krasna); as the corrupt general in
Paths of Glory
(57, Stanley Kubrick); and
Pollyanna
(60, David Swift).

William Cameron Menzies
(1896–1957), b. New Haven, Connecticut
1931:
The Spider
(codirected with Kenneth McKenna);
Always Goodbye
(codirected with McKenna). 1932:
Chandu the Magician
(codirected with Marcel Varnel). 1933:
I Loved You Wednesday
(codirected with Henry King). 1934:
The Wharf Angel
(codirected with George Somnes). 1936:
Things to Come
. 1940:
The Green Cockatoo
. 1944:
Address Unknown
. 1951:
Drums in the Deep South; The Whip Hand
. 1953:
Invaders from Mars; The Maze
.

Menzies’s most famous film,
Things to Come
, is known for the futuristic splendor of its sets. In the 1920s he built up a reputation for lavish art direction:
Serenade
(21, Raoul Walsh);
Kindred of the Dust
(22, Walsh);
Rosita
(23, Ernst Lubitsch);
The Thief of Bagdad
(24, Walsh);
Cobra
(25, Joseph Henabery);
The Eagle
(25, Clarence Brown);
Her Sister from Paris
(25, Sidney Franklin);
The Bat
(26, Roland West);
The Son of the Sheik
(26, George Fitzmaurice);
The Beloved Rogue
(27, Alan Crosland);
The Dove
(27, West);
Two Arabian Knights
(27, Lewis Milestone);
The Awakening
(28, Victor Fleming);
Drums of Love
(28, D. W. Griffith);
The Garden of Eden
(28, Milestone);
Sadie Thompson
(28, Walsh);
Tempest
(28, Sam Taylor);
Alibi
(29, West);
Condemned
(29, Wesley Ruggles);
Lady of the Pavements
(29, Griffith);
The Taming of the Shrew
(29, Taylor);
Abraham Lincoln
(30, Griffith);
Du Barry, Woman of Passion
(30, Taylor); and
The Lottery Bride
(30, Paul L. Stein).

In the 1930s he diversified.
Chandu the Magician
was a Bela Lugosi film. In 1933, he helped to write the script for
Alice in Wonderland
(Norman Z. McLeod), and in 1936 he was invited to England by Alexander Korda to design and direct
Things to Come
. With an H. G. Wells script, music written in advance by Arthur Bliss and photography by Périnal, the film was top-heavy with Korda’s lusting after prestige. It is underdirected but the sets are very beautiful. As well as directing, Menzies was involved in the production of
The Thief of Bagdad
(40, Michael Powell, Tim Whelan, and Ludwig Berger);
Ivy
(47, Sam Wood);
Raw Deal
(48, Anthony Mann);
Reign of Terror
(49, Mann); and
Around the World in 80 Days
(56, Michael Anderson). But he was most successful as an art director:
Gone With the Wind
(39, Victor Fleming), on which Selznick admitted that Menzies “spent perhaps a year of his life in laying out camera angles, lighting effects and other important directorial contributions”;
Our Town
(40, Wood);
Foreign Correspondent
(40, Alfred Hitchcock)—remember that Dutch windmill?;
So Ends Our Night
(41, John Cromwell);
For Whom the Bell Tolls
(43, Wood); and
Arch of Triumph
(48, Milestone).

Burgess Meredith
(1909–97), b. Cleveland, Ohio
Educated at Amherst, Meredith went into the theatre and played in
Winterset
with great success after Maxwell Anderson had written the play for him. He made his movie debut in the adaptation of that play (36, Alfred Santell) and also appeared in
Idiot’s Delight
(39, Clarence Brown). At that time he played Hal to Orson Welles’s Falstaff with the Mercury Theater—John Houseman rated his Hal the best he had ever seen.

Meredith was an occasional and outstanding character actor in movies, excellent as George in
Of Mice and Men
(39, Lewis Milestone), and also in
Castle on the Hudson
(40, Anatole Litvak),
That Uncertain Feeling
(41, Ernst Lubitsch), with Paulette Goddard and Astaire in
Second Chorus
(41, H. C. Potter), and Ginger Rogers in
Tom, Dick and Harry
(41, Garson Kanin).

He served in the Army Air Corps and returned to films as war correspondent Ernie Pyle in
The Story of G.I. Joe
(45, William Wellman). Married now to Paulette Goddard, he played with her in and produced
The Diary of a Chambermaid
(46, Jean Renoir). That film is unique in American cinema for its tone of macabre surrealism; it is also Renoir’s best American film. Meredith’s own performance—as the infantile Captain—is as swift and inquisitive as a sparrow. He was in
Magnificent Doll
(46, Frank Borzage), the psychiatrist in the excellent
Mine Own Executioner
(47, Anthony Kimmins), and an episode of
On Our Merry Way
(48), which he also coproduced.

Thereafter, he seems to have lost his roots: in 1949 he went to France to direct Charles Laughton and Franchot Tone in
The Man on the Eiffel Tower
, and was away from the United States for some years, possibly for political reasons, although in 1955 he was in
Joe Butterfly
(Jesse Hibbs), and in 1956 he produced a documentary,
Alexander Calder
. He returned in the 1960s as a small-part player of unusual distinction, especially for Otto Preminger: first as the informing witness in
Advise and Consent
(62), a weak-willed man trying to live up to the one truth he has to tell, and also in
The Cardinal
(63),
In Harm’s Way
(65),
Hurry Sundown
(67),
Skidoo
(68), and
Such Good Friends
(71).

In addition, he appeared in
Madame X
(65, David Lowell Rich);
A Big Hand for the Little Lady
(66, Fielder Cook);
The Torture Garden
(67, Freddie Francis);
Stay Away, Joe
(68, Peter Tewkesbury);
MacKenna’s Gold
(69, J. Lee Thompson);
There Was a Crooked Man
(70, Joseph L. Mankiewicz); and
The Day of the Locust
(75, John Schlesinger). He also directed one more film,
The Ying and the Yang
, made in Hong Kong.

It is a wayward, independent but personal career, as eye-catching as his TV appearances as the Penguin in
Batman
(66–68) and as an enthusiastic editor hunched over the video, patching data and action, in
Search
(72–73). He was in
B. Must Die
(73, Jose Luis Borau);
The Hindenburg
(75, Robert Wise);
The Sentinel
(76, Michael Winner); the bird on the rhinoceros’s back, trainer to Stallone, in
Rocky
(76, John G. Avildsen);
Burnt Offerings
(76, Dan Curtis);
Golden Rendezvous
(77, Ashley Lazarus);
The Manitou
(78, William Girdler);
Magic
(78, Richard Attenborough);
Foul Play
(78, Colin Higgins); and
Rocky II
(79, Sylvester Stallone).

He was in
When Time Ran Out
(80, James Goldstone);
Final Assignment
(80, Paul Almond);
Clash of the Titans
(81, Desmond Davis); very good as a stubborn priest in
True Confessions
(81, Ulu Grosbard);
The Last Chase
(81, Martyn Burke);
Rocky III
(82, Stallone); narrating
Twilight Zone—The Movie
(83, John Landis);
Wet Gold
(84, Dick Lowry);
Santa Claus
(85, Jeannot Szwarc);
Outrage!
(86, Walter Grauman);
King Lear
(87, Jean-Luc Godard);
Mr. North
(88, Danny Huston);
Full Moon in Blue Water
(88, Peter Masterson);
State of Grace
(90, Phil Joanou);
Rocky V
(90, John G. Avildsen)—he had missed
Rocky IV; Grumpy Old Men
(93, Donald Petrie);
Ripper
(96, Phil Parmet).

Paul Meurisse
(1912–79), b. Dunkerque, France
It is a prim, rather posed face; it could be that of a provincial fusspot or a smalltown bank manager—and, lo, it turns out that Paul Meurisse’s father had exactly that profession. According to every family plan, Meurisse was cast in that mold, too, but at the last minute he took a trip to Paris and plunged into the music hall. It was sink or swim, but lo, the scrappy figure of Edith Piaf seized on him, took him as her lover, and hired him as the handsome silent male in her version of Cocteau’s
Le Bel Indifferent
. What a start! And then in 1941, he made a first movie—with Edith Piaf
—Montmartre-sur-Seine
(41, Georges Lacombe).