The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (358 page)

On her own, Ginger could be brash—as many post-Astaire movies proved; and she had a rather nasty edge. But she contrived to complement Astaire rather than alarm him. In rehearsal, their relations were sometimes strained by Astaire’s perfectionism (though Ginger was a fast, sure dancer). On the screen, her robustness rubbed off on his remoteness so that he seemed warmed by her, just as she gained cool in his draft. As a result, they became one of the clearest expressions of 1930s style in the way they blended two contrary archetypes: the man about town and the girl next door.

But before her first film with Astaire, Ginger had made nineteen pictures. Her mother was always immensely ambitious for her, and young Virginia was in Hollywood at the age of six. In her teens she toured in vaudeville, and by the late 1920s was working in New York as a singer. (In 1930 she was the original ingenue in Gershwin’s
Girl Crazy
, Ethel Merman’s first show.) Paramount hired her, and in the early thirties she was a blonde with a disbelieving face and a fast line in smart dialogue: she steals many scenes in
42nd Street
(33, Lloyd Bacon) on that basis, and her apprenticeship also included
The Young Man of Manhattan
(30, Monta Bell);
The Sap from Syracuse
(30, Edward Sutherland);
Follow the Leader
(30, Norman Taurog);
Honor Among Lovers
(31, Dorothy Arzner);
The Tenderfoot
(32, Ray Enright);
Hat Check Girl
(32, Sidney Lanfield);
You Said a Mouthful
(32, Bacon);
Gold Diggers of 1933
(33, Mervyn Le Roy);
Professional Sweetheart
(33, William A. Seiter); and
Sitting Pretty
(33, Harry Joe Brown).

This last was made at RKO, who put her under contract and later in 1933 introduced her and Astaire as second leads in
Flying Down to Rio
(Thornton Freeland). Their success was such that after
Chance at Heaven
and
Rafter Romance
(both 33, Seiter) and two at Warners
—Twenty Million Sweethearts
(34, Ray Enright) and
Upperworld
(34, Roy del Ruth)—the partnership was resumed in earnest:
The Gay Divorcee
(34, Mark Sandrich);
Roberta
(35, Seiter);
Top Hat
(35, Sandrich);
Follow the Fleet
(36, Sandrich);
Swing Time
(36, George Stevens);
Shall We Dance?
(37, Sandrich);
Carefree
(38, Sandrich); and
The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle
(39, H. C. Potter).

This is the peak of the 1930s black-and-white musical. The stress on plastic glamour, lighthearted stories, and cosmopolitan high life was unashamed and insignificant. It is trite to say that the films were cheerful, anti-Depressive, and insubstantial. Like Marx Brothers movies, they run together, so casual was the story line and so subservient the direction. But the films are very strong in character: they glisten with glass, polished floors, satin dresses, celluloid costume flowers, and Astaire’s hairstyle. They also enjoyed some of the greatest songs by Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, and the Gershwins. The look of the films, and the way it conspired toward the rapid-fire choreography, is a self-sufficient personality: in short, the film in which dance comes first, such as Gene Kelly strove for in the 1950s.

Not that anyone thought of that at RKO in the 1930s, least of all Astaire. But he was like an anonymous Gothic decorator, so intent on making every dance step right that he did not see the astonishing entirety. Only Astaire’s subsequent difficulty in finding partners shows how important a contribution Ginger made—she was always princess for the moment in this rapt genius’s arms, and that contrived to make him seem prince charming rather than the puppet who had to dance. There were even moments when Ginger had a few jokes at Fred, as in
Roberta
where she says of him, “A piccolo player! How
charmante!”

Their run ended with the Castles biopic: there had been tensions and Ginger was eager to prove herself as an actress. In 1937 she had had her best part to date in
Stage Door
(Gregory La Cava), and in 1938 George Stevens made the best of her youthful flexibility in a comedy,
Vivacious Lady
. For the next five years, she managed to be a leading actress, usually in comedy. She worked hard and the effort showed a little too much for easy viewing, especially when she was doing one of her child impersonations. She was in
Bachelor Mother
(39, Garson Kanin);
Fifth Avenue Girl
(39, La Cava);
Primrose Path
(40, La Cava);
Lucky Partners
(40, Lewis Milestone);
Kitty Foyle
(40, Sam Wood), a women’s pic for which she won the best actress Oscar;
Tom, Dick and Harry
(41, Kanin);
Roxie Hart
(42, William Wellman);
The Major and the Minor
(42, Billy Wilder);
Once Upon a Honeymoon
(42, Leo McCarey);
Tender Comrade
(43, Edward Dmytryk);
Lady in the Dark
(44, Mitchell Leisen); and
I’ll Be Seeing You
(44, William Dieterle).

After the war her star waned. She made
Weekend at the Waldorf
(45, Robert Z. Leonard),
Magnificent Doll
(46, Frank Borzage), and
It Had to Be You
(47, Rudolph Maté and Don Hartman). Then came a two-year gap before a reunion with Astaire in
The Barkleys of Broadway
(49, Charles Walters). By then, however, she was mixing comedies and souped-up dramas, for which she was not really suited. Only
Monkey Business
(52, Howard Hawks) is memorable among her late films. Otherwise, she was seldom at ease:
Perfect Strangers
(50, Bretaigne Windust);
Storm Warning
(50, Stuart Heisler);
Dreamboat
(52, Claude Binyon);
Forever Female
(53, Irving Rapper);
The Beautiful Stranger
(54, David Miller);
Black Widow
(54, Nunnally Johnson);
Tight Spot
(55, Phil Karlson);
Teenage Rebel
(56, Edmund Goulding);
Oh, Men! Oh, Women!
(57, Johnson); and
The First Traveling Saleslady
(56, Arthur Lubin). Since then, she has made only two oddities:
Quick, Let’s Get Married
(65, William Dieterle) and
Harlow
(65, Alex Segal).

Will Rogers
(1879–1935), b. Cologah, Oklahoma
Although his films are seldom revived these days, and many younger filmgoers will never have seen him, Will Rogers was one of the most reflective and influential of American film stars. He was a superbly skillful presentation of guileless good sense. Every American instinct that there ought to be an earthy, unsophisticated wisdom residing on the range and on the verandas of small towns, and that this untutored, natural empathy with order should at the same time be utterly winning, charming, and accomplished, was vindicated in Will Rogers. He is the marketable noble savage, the casual raconteur who steps neatly between cracker-barrel and fascism, and who leaves us puzzling out whether his diffident ramble was spontaneous or cunningly scripted.

Rogers’s philosophy was reactionary, dispiriting, and provincial, despite every affectation of bonhomie and tolerance. It scorned ideas and people who held them, it relied on vague evolution rather than direct action, its fixed smile concealed rigidity of opinion that middle America need not be disturbed from its own prejudices and limitations. But the style was beguiling. Rogers had so digested the role of cowboy philosopher that it is dangerous to make charges of conscious deception, such as mar the portrait of Lonesome Rhodes in Kazan’s
A Face in the Crowd
.

The essence of the style is that it convinces the performer: as with Rogers, so with every notable American public figure since the 1930s, Kane or H. Ross Perot. The bowdlerization of democracy, the professionalism of delivery, and the assumption of homeliness were the ingredients of the threadbare benevolence of Richard Nixon as well as the slapdash gestures toward compassion in the films of John Ford. Indeed, in cinematic terms, Rogers’s persona played a part in Ford’s development, and his pious, sly presentation of mediocrity as humanity is the most persistent vice of American cinema. You must discover the old men in Faulkner to realize what charlatans Ford’s veterans are.

Rogers had been cowboy and merchant seaman before Wild West Shows led him into vaudeville. Beyond lariat tricks, his method was to “pause a while” and speak up for the droll intuition of cowboys everywhere. This gauche demagoguery found many listeners toward the end of the First World War. Samuel Goldwyn, unable to discern in Rogers’s success the necessity of speech, signed him up for a string of films that proved how plain Rogers was without time to yarn:
Laughing Bill Hyde
(18, Hobart Henley);
Jubilo
(19);
Jes’ Call Me Jim
(20);
Cupid the Cowpuncher
(20);
Honest Hutch
(20);
Guile of Woman
(21, Clarence Badger)—it was part of the Rogers America that women were essentially tricky and dishonest, whereas male deceptions were only playful:
Boys Will Be Boys
(21, Badger);
An Unwilling Hero
(21, Badger); and
Doubling for Romeo
(21, Badger).

Goldwyn eventually saw his error and dropped Rogers. The lonesome cowboy made two more films—
One Glorious Day
(22, James Cruze) and
The Headless Horseman
(22, Edward Venturini)—before he went, disastrously, into production himself. He returned to the stage, apart from some shorts he made for Hal Roach. Meanwhile, his legend grew. He published a monstrous collection of homilies that chimed neatly with widespread aversion to 1920s permissiveness:
Rogers-isms: The Cowboy Philosopher on the Peace Conference
. He worked as a wry surveyor of the European scene for the
Saturday Evening Post
and, while in England, made
Tiptoes
(27, Herbert Wilcox). Back in America, he played a rancher who goes to straighten out Washington in
A Texas Steer
(27, Richard Wallace).

It was sound that capitalized on his style and Fox who seized him for themselves. He died in a plane crash in 1935, but for six years he had been a huge American hero, a counseling voice during the Depression, a reassurance to the bewildered, and a considerable asset in the 1932 election campaign of Franklin Roosevelt. The films are period pieces, but to deny their impact would be to conceal the basic hostility to enlightenment in America:
They Had to See Paris
(29, Frank Borzage);
So This Is London
(30, John Blystone);
Lightnin’
(30, Henry King);
A Connecticut Yankee
(31, David Butler);
Young As You Feel
(31, Borzage);
Business and Pleasure
(32, Butler);
Down to Earth
(32, Butler);
State Fair
(33, King);
Doctor Bull
(33, John Ford);
Mr. Skitch
(33, Cruze);
David Harum
(34, Cruze);
Handy Andy
(34, Butler);
Judge Priest
(34, Ford), the character revived by Ford, incredibly, in
The Sun Shines Bright
(53);
Life Begins at Forty
(35, George Marshall);
Doubting Thomas
(35, Butler);
Steamboat Round the Bend
(35, Ford); and
In Old Kentucky
(35, Marshall).

There is a fascinating memento of Rogers’s influence in the early 1930s in Peter Bogdanovich’s
Paper Moon
, where
Steamboat Round the Bend
is playing in some dusty prairie town to narrow-minded farmers and hopeful confidence tricksters.

Eric Rohmer
(Jean-Marie Maurice Scherer) (1920–2010), b. Nancy, France
1950:
Journal d’un Scélérat
(s). 1952:
Les Petites Filles Modèles
(codirected with P. Guilband, uncompleted);
Presentation
(s). 1954:
Bérénice
(s). 1956:
La Sonate à Kreutzer
(s). 1958:
Véronique et Son Cancre
(s). 1959:
Le Signe du Lion
. 1962:
La Boulangère de Monceau
(s). 1963:
La Carrière de Suzanne
. 1964:
Nadja à Paris
(s); “Place de l’Etoile,” episode from
Paris Vu Par.…
1966:
Une Étudiante d’Aujourd’hui
(s);
La Collectionneuse
. 1968:
Fermière à Montfauçon
(s);
Ma Nuit Chez Maud/My Night at Maud’s
. 1970:
Le Genou de Claire/Claire’s Knee
. 1972:
L’Amour, L’Après-Midi/Chloe in the Afternoon
. 1976:
Die Marquise von O
. 1978:
Perceval le Gallois
. 1980:
La Femme de l’Aviateur/The Aviator’s Wife
. 1981:
Le Beau Mariage
. 1982:
Pauline à la Plage/Pauline at the Beach
. 1984: an episode in
Paris Vu Par … 20 Ans Après; Les Nuits de la Pleine Lune/Full Moon in Paris
. 1986:
Le Rayon Vert/Summer
. 1987:
L’Ami de Mon Amie/My Girlfriend’s Boyfriend; 4 Aventures de Reinette et Mirabelle
. 1990:
Conte de Printemps/A Tale of Springtime
. 1991:
Conte d’Hiver/A Tale of Winter
. 1993:
L’Arbre, le Maire et la Médiathèque
. 1995:
Les Rendezvous de Paris
. 1996:
Conte d’Eté
. 1998:
Conte d’Automne
. 2001:
L’Anglaise et le Duc/The Lady and the Duke
. 2004:
Triple Agent
. 2005:
Le Canapé Rouge
. 2007:
Romance of Astrée and Céladon
.

Without wishing to prejudice the prospects of cinema as intelligent as Eric Rohmer’s, it is remarkable that
Maud, Claire, L’Amour, L’Après-Midi
, and so on have been so successful. It would not be difficult to advertise these films in a way calculated to alarm prospective spectators; it is only honest to describe them as semiformal, literary inquiries into the sensibilities and thoughts of a group of people gathered round some modest action—so modest, indeed, that an outsider might not notice it. There are real dangers in such a method: of prettiness, or an archly natural debate in adolescent psychology, and of a rather passive opting for discussion instead of behavior. Rohmer can be criticized, to some extent, on all those grounds. But he has not been challenged, as it happens, and I am perplexed as to whether that speaks for a rare homing in of a select audience on worthy material, for a genuine raising of standards, or for the serious, if scarcely evident, flaw of complacency in Rohmer’s work.