The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (333 page)

The biter bit, perhaps, and typical of the amused sophistication that Powell projected. He retired in 1955, having made ninety-four films, in danger of being forgotten. His glossy comedies of adultery and deception, even the
Thin Man
series, were then strangely out of fashion. Powell expresses 1930s American cinema rather better than some of the larger names of the era. While other stars have been undermined by time, Powell remains as alive and sour as a cocktail put down momentarily for a telephone assignation, or an Abdullah still burning while its destroyer engages in a condescending kiss. (William Powell could be the patron saint of those politically incorrect, but very cinematic, habits—smoking and drinking.) Powell began on the stage and had worked a few years in small parts when he made his movie debut in
Sherlock Holmes
(22, Albert Parker). In the silent cinema, he was villainous, treacherous, and sneering, and never more than a supporting player: among others,
The Bright Shawl
(23, John S. Robertson);
Under the Red Robe
(23, Alan Crosland);
Romola
(25, Henry King);
Too Many Kisses
(25, Paul Sloane);
Faint Perfume
(25, Louis Gasnier);
Aloma of the South Seas
(26, Maurice Tourneur); as Wilson in
The Great Gatsby
(26, Herbert Brenon);
Sea Horses
(26, Allan Dwan);
Beau Geste
(26, Brenon);
Love’s Greatest Mistake
(27, Edward Sutherland);
Paid to Love
(27, Howard Hawks); an Arab lusting after Bebe Daniels in
She’s a Sheik
(27, Clarence Badger).

The Last Command
was a big step forward—in fact, Powell worked for Sternberg once more, in
The Dragnet
(28)—but it was sound that really established him. It is a commentary on the artistic consequences of the technical innovation that, without altering his screen character, articulacy made Powell more appealing—the lofty, well-mannered cad. He was in Paramount’s first all-talkie,
Interference
(29, Lothar Mendes and Roy Pomeroy), and was then cast as Philo Vance, a detective, in
The Canary Murder Case
(29, Malcolm St. Clair). After
The Four Feathers
(29, Merian Cooper, Ernest Schoedsack, and Mendes),
Charming Sinners
(29, Robert Milton), and another Vance role in
The Greene Murder Case
(29, Frank Tuttle), Paramount starred Powell in
Pointed Heels
(29, Edward Sutherland). He now made a team with Kay Francis in
Behind the Make-Up
(30, Milton),
Street of Chance
(30, John Cromwell), and
For the Defense
(30, Cromwell). With his wife-to-be, Carole Lombard, he added to his comic range with
Man of the World
(31, Richard Wallace) and
Ladies’ Man
(31, Mendes).

Powell was then traded to Warners, along with Kay Francis and Ruth Chatterton—significantly, he was the only one of the three to disprove Paramount’s long-term judgment. At Warners he made
High Pressure
(32, Mervyn Le Roy); with Kay Francis in
Jewel Robbery
(32, William Dieterle) and
One Way Passage
(32, Tay Garnett), a quintessential weeper: he’s headed for the chair, she’s dying;
Lawyer Man
(32, Dieterle); and at RKO,
Double Harness
(33, Cromwell). He was Philo Vance again at the new studio in
The Kennel Murder Case
(33, Michael Curtiz) and for the same director in
The Key
(34).

But Warners found him too expensive and he was on the point of going to Columbia when Selznick and W. S. Van Dyke called him to MGM to make
Manhattan Melodrama
(34) opposite Myrna Loy. The match was perfect: two slender sophisticates, smiling haughtily at each other through a mist of wisecracks. They were not the Nick and Nora Charles that Dashiell Hammett had in mind, but that did not prevent them from making one of the most enjoyed screen marriages in
The Thin Man
(34, Van Dyke). The studio kept them together in
Evelyn Prentice
(34, William K. Howard) and then Powell came into his own:
Star of Midnight
(35, Stephen Roberts);
Reckless
(35, Victor Fleming);
Escapade
(35, Robert Z. Leonard);
Rendezvous
(35, Howard); the title role in
The Great Ziegfeld
(36, Leonard);
The Ex-Mrs. Bradford
(36, Roberts); with Carole Lombard again in
My Man Godfrey
(36, La Cava), where his intelligence was nearly Shavian; with Loy, Harlow, and Tracy in
Libeled Lady
(36, Jack Conway); and
After the Thin Man
(36, Van Dyke).

He continued with Joan Crawford in
The Last of Mrs. Cheyney
(37, Richard Boleslavsky),
The Emperor’s Candlesticks
(37, George Fitzmaurice), and with Loy in
Double Wedding
(37, Richard Thorpe). Illness meant that he never worked as hard again:
Another Thin Man
(39, Van Dyke); a double role—as con-man and pillar of society—in
I Love You Again
(40, Van Dyke);
Love Crazy
(41, Conway);
Shadow of the Thin Man
(41, Van Dyke);
Crossroads
(42, Conway);
The Heavenly Body
(44, Alexander Hall);
The Thin Man Goes Home
(44, Thorpe); as Ziegfeld in heaven introducing the celebrity acts in
Ziegfeld Follies
(46, Vincente Minnelli);
The Hoodlum Saint
(46, Norman Taurog); and
Song of the Thin Man
(47, Edward Buzzell).

He then went to Warners and to Michael Curtiz for
Life With Father
(47), a delicious comic performance. Sadly, his career suffered some relaxation. He worked for Universal International:
The Senator Was Indiscreet
(47, George F. Kaufman);
Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid
(48, Irving Pichel);
Take One False Step
(47, Chester Erskine);
The Treasure of Lost Canyon
(51, Ted Tetzlaff); with Elizabeth Taylor in
The Girl Who Had Everything
(53, Thorpe); and ended with two respectful farewells—in
How to Marry a Millionaire
(53, Jean Negulesco), and as the doctor in
Mister Roberts
(55, Mervyn Le Roy and John Ford).

Tyrone Power
(1913–58), b. Cincinnati, Ohio
The son of Tyrone Power, a theatre matinee idol, there was never any doubt about the career he should follow. With resplendent looks and parentage, he went years before anyone thought to ask whether Power Jr. was more than a handsome, unexceptional man. After early work on stage and radio, he followed his father to Hollywood. When Power Sr. died while filming, the son was given a bit part debut in
Tom Brown of Culver
(32, William Wyler). He returned to the stage, understudying Burgess Meredith in
The Flowers of the Forest
and playing a small part in
St. Joan
.

A Fox scout saw him and by 1936 Power was under contract to the studio that diligently boosted him throughout most of his career. (He was especially the protégé of Zanuck.) He had energy, humor, and an honest faith in adventure and romance. At first he was a romantic lead opposite Loretta Young in
Ladies in Love
(36, Edward H. Griffith);
Love Is News
(37, Tay Garnett);
Café Metropole
(37, Griffith);
Second Honeymoon
(37, Walter Lang); opposite Sonja Henie in
Thin Ice
(37, Sidney Lanfield) and
Second Fiddle
(39, Lanfield); and a rather staid companion for Alice Faye in
In Old Chicago
(38) and
Alexander’s Ragtime Band
(38)—both for Henry King—as well as Gregory Ratoff’s
Rose of Washington Square
(39).

He was already best displayed in romantic costume films. In 1936, Henry King—who remained loyal to Power for twenty years—had used him in
Lloyds of London
, and he was then loaned to Metro to appear in the Norma Shearer
Marie Antoinette
(38, W. S. Van Dyke). Back at Fox, he played de Lesseps (with Loretta Young and his first wife, Annabella) in Allan Dwan’s
Suez
(38);
Jesse James
for King; and most successfully the Indian Prince in Clarence Brown’s
The Rains Came
(39). This was his classic period when athletic ardor and his persistent smile were enough: two films for Henry Hathaway,
Johnny Apollo
(40) and
Brigham Young
(40); two for Mamoulian that show him at his iconographic best,
The Mark of Zorro
(40) and as a bullfighter in
Blood and Sand
(41); opposite Joan Fontaine in Litvak’s
This Above All
(42); as a pirate in
The Black Swan
(42), a Sabatini novel by way of Henry King; and in a submarine in
Crash Dive
(43, Archie Mayo).

Power then entered the marines, and after the war his vein of romance was never as undiluted. Fox assembled labored costume vehicles for him:
Captain from Castile
(47) and
Prince of Foxes
(49), both for King, and
The Black Rose
(50) for Hathaway. But other films attempted, without much success, to create a more troubled Power: Somerset Maugham’s mystical dropout in
The Razor’s Edge
(46) and as the geek in
Nightmare Alley
(47)—both for Edmund Goulding. He made two comedies,
The Luck of the Irish
(48, Henry Koster) and
That Wonderful Urge
(48, Robert B. Sinclair), but returned to adventure films, no longer as dashing or devastating as he had been. After the minor
American Guerrilla in the Philippines
(50) for Fritz Lang, and
Rawhide
(51) and
Diplomatic Courier
(52) for Hathaway, Power’s stay at Fox ended. He made
The Mississippi Gambler
(53) for Rudolph Maté at Universal and thereafter freelanced.

In his last years he tried to work again in the theatre, he was a solid pillar of West Point for John Ford in
The Long Gray Line
(55); smiled his way across the ivories of
The Eddy Duchin Story
(56, George Sidney); starred in and produced
Seven Waves Away
(56, Richard Sale) in England; was reunited with Henry King as a thoroughly lacking Jake Barnes in
The Sun Also Rises
(57); and proved an implausible murderer in Billy Wilder’s
Witness for the Prosecution
(57). He died while filming (like his father): the last project was a hopeful return to the films that had made him famous—King Vidor’s
Solomon and Sheba
, in which he was replaced by Yul Brynner.

Otto Preminger
(1906–86), b. Vienna
1931:
Die Grosse Liebe
. 1936:
Under Your Spell
. 1937:
Danger, Love at Work
. 1943:
Margin for Error
. 1944:
In the Meantime, Darling; Laura
. 1945:
A Royal Scandal/Czarina; Fallen Angel
. 1946:
Centennial Summer
. 1947:
Forever Amber; Daisy Kenyon
. 1948:
That Lady in Ermine
(begun by and credited to Ernst Lubitsch, but completed by Preminger after Lubitsch’s death). 1949:
The Fan/Lady Windermere’s Fan; Whirlpool
. 1950:
Where the Sidewalk Ends
. 1951:
The 13th Letter
. 1952:
Angel Face
. 1953:
The Moon Is Blue
. 1954:
River of No Return; Carmen Jones
. 1955:
The Court Martial of Billy Mitchell/One Man Mutiny
. 1956:
The Man with the Golden Arm
. 1957:
Saint Joan
. 1958:
Bonjour Tristesse
. 1959:
Porgy and Bess; Anatomy of a Murder
. 1960:
Exodus
. 1962:
Advise and Consent
. 1963:
The Cardinal
. 1964:
In Harm’s Way
. 1965:
Bunny Lake Is Missing
. 1967:
Hurry Sundown
. 1968:
Skidoo; Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon
. 1971:
Such Good Friends
. 1975:
Rosebud
. 1979:
The Human Factor
.

Preminger was never bashful about presenting himself as a commercial moviemaker. From the mid-1950s onward—from the piquant novelty of
The Moon Is Blue
and
Carmen Jones
—he chose a mixture of prestigious and popular literary projects, balancing action/excitement and “food for thought,” taking pains to preserve authenticity of locale and drawing together superb casts. Thus,
Bonjour Tristesse, Anatomy of a Murder, Exodus, Advise and Consent
, and
The Cardinal
were in the best Hollywood tradition of intelligent entertainment. But the question of whether they were substantially more was one of the great critical issues of the early 1960s. Preminger’s enthusiasts were not helped by the startling decline in his work from 1965 onward. Of all the Hollywood veterans, none lost his way as completely as Preminger.

But, even at the time, it was difficult to imagine where he could go after having treated justice (
Anatomy of a Murder
), nationalism (
Exodus
), democracy (
Advise and Consent
), and religion (
The Cardinal
).

Although
Laura
—the first film to which Preminger liked to own up—is clothed in the sumptuous, dream atmosphere of Joseph La Shelle’s photography and the famous theme tune, it excels in the matter-of-fact observation of characters. The lingering feeling of the supernatural in the film may reflect Mamoulian’s preparation of the project. Preminger is much more interested in the flawed ordinariness of Dana Andrews and Gene Tierney: the fact that Laura proves slightly commonplace and the detective insecure and immature.