The New Biographical Dictionary of Film: Completely Updated and Expanded (457 page)

Come Fill the Cup
was followed by another lead, in
Holiday for Sinners
(52, Gerald Mayer); the cop in
The City That Never Sleeps
(53, John H. Auer); a rodeo rider in
Arena
(53, Richard Fleischer);
Torch Song
(53, Charles Walters), with Joan Crawford, but second to Michael Wilding; the boyfriend in
The Desperate Hours
(55, William Wyler); second lead in
Desk Set
(57, Walter Lang).

It was at this time that he became a fixture (secondary) in allegedly sophisticated comedies: very good with Doris Day in
Teacher’s Pet
(58, George Seaton), for which he got another supporting actor nomination; with Day and Richard Widmark in
The Tunnel of Love
(58, Gene Kelly); with David Niven and Shirley MacLaine in
Ask Any Girl
(59, Walters);
The Story on Page One
(59, Clifford Odets);
That Touch of Mink
(62, Delbert Mann), with Day and Cary Grant;
Five Miles to Midnight
(62, Anatole Litvak);
A Ticklish Affair
(63, Sidney);
Strange Bedfellows
(65, Melvin Frank);
The Shuttered Room
(67, David Greene).

He was working less in film and more on TV (
The Rogues
), but then in 1969 he got the chance of a lifetime (and maybe the confirmation of despair) with the MC in
They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?
On his third attempt, he won the supporting actor Oscar—defeating Jack Nicholson in
Easy Rider
among others.

After that, he made
Lovers and Other Strangers
(70, Cy Howard);
Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia
(74, Sam Peckinpah);
The Killer Elite
(75, Peckinpah);
The Hindenberg
(75, Robert Wise);
Game of Death
(78, Robert Clouse).

Then, in 1978, he was found in a New York City apartment with his fifth wife—both shot dead.

Loretta Young
(Gretchen Michaela Young) (1913–2000), b. Salt Lake City, Utah
In 1971, Loretta Young fought one of the most curious of legal actions: that her old films should not be shown on TV for fear of spoiling her current image. It was a nervy, defensive gesture from a woman who looked so lovely throughout the 1930s. Not that she was ever a profound screen personality, but Young was a genuine star, an elegant clotheshorse, and famously devout. Although she made ninety films, it is remarkable how consistently she kept company with moderate directors and costars. Her good films seem to have occurred by chance and owe their qualities to other people: thus
Platinum Blonde
(31, Frank Capra);
Taxi
(32, Roy del Ruth);
Zoo in Budapest
(33, Rowland V. Lee);
Man’s Castle
(33, Frank Borzage);
Suez
(38, Allan Dwan); and
The Stranger
(46, Orson Welles). It is a rag-bag for someone so persistently ladylike and wholesome—somewhere between Joan Crawford and Greer Garson.

The sister of an actress, she had a convent education and was working as an extra when she got a bit part in
Naughty But Nice
(27, Millard Webb) by answering a phone call meant for someone else in the family. Over the next few years she worked at First National and Warners, often with Douglas Fairbanks Jr. in romances, but playing the girl adopted by Lon Chaney in
Laugh, Clown, Laugh
(28, Herbert Brenon) and in
The Magnificent Flirt
(28, Harry d’Abbadie d’Arrast). Her first sound film was
The Squall
(29, Alexander Korda), at about which time she married actor Grant Withers—they were divorced before she was twenty-one. She was in
The Forward Pass
(29, Eddie Cline);
Kismet
(30, John Francis Dillon);
Loose Ankles
(30, Ted Wilde); with Lionel Barrymore in
The Man from Blankley’s
(30, Alfred E. Green);
The Truth About Youth
(30, William A. Seiter); and
Beau Ideal
(31, Brenon). Warners kept her hard at work in
The Hatchet Man
(32, William Wellman);
Life Begins
(32, Elliott Nugent and James Flood); quite tough in
Employees’ Entrance
(33, Del Ruth);
Heroes for Sale
(33, Wellman); to MGM for
Lady of the Night
(33, Wellman); and
She Had to Say Yes
(33, Busby Berkeley).

But in 1934 she joined Zanuck’s new Twentieth Century and had a hit in
House of Rothschild
(Alfred Werker). She made
Born to Be Bad
(34, Lowell Sherman),
Clive of India
(35, Richard Boleslavsky), and went on location with Clark Gable for
Call of the Wild
(35, Wellman). (While there, camped in the cold, they became personally close, and in a recent book her adopted daughter states that she is actually Young’s biological daughter by Gable.) Then she went to Paramount to play Berengaria in
The Crusades
(35, Cecil B. De Mille) and to MGM for
The Unguarded Hour
(36, Sam Wood). Back at Twentieth she made
Ramona
(36, Henry King);
Ladies in Love
(36, Edward Griffith);
Love Is News
(37, Tay Garnett);
Kentucky
(38, David Butler);
Four Men and a Prayer
(38, John Ford);
The Story of Alexander Graham Bell
(39, Irving Cummings); and
Wife, Husband and Friend
(39, Gregory Ratoff).

At this point, she broke with the studio—over parts and money—made
Eternally Yours
(39, Garnett) for Walter Wanger and was a year out of work before Columbia came to her rescue (with half-pay) with
The Doctor Takes a Wife
(40, Alexander Hall),
He Stayed for Breakfast
(40, S. Sylvan Simon),
The Men in Her Life
(41, Ratoff), and
A Night to Remember
(42, Richard Wallace). She was uneasy but still handsome opposite Alan Ladd in
China
(43, John Farrow) and
And Now Tomorrow
(44, Irving Pichel), and with Gary Cooper in
Along Came Jones
(45, Stuart Heisler). Unmarked by her encounter with Welles on
The Stranger
, she made
The Perfect Marriage
(46, Lewis Allen) and then, by surprise, took the best actress Oscar for her Swedish accent in
The Farmer’s Daughter
(47, H. C. Potter).

The award hardly delayed her movie decline. After
The Bishop’s Wife
(47, Henry Koster),
Rachel and the Stranger
(48, Norman Foster),
The Accused
(49, William Dieterle),
Mother Is a Freshman
(49, Lloyd Bacon),
Come to the Stable
(49, Koster), and
Key to the City
(50, George Sidney), she began her retreat. Her last films were
Cause for Alarm
(51, Garnett);
Because of You
(52, Joseph Pevney);
Paula
(52, Rudolph Maté); and
It Happens Every Thursday
(53, Pevney).

After that came the
Loretta Young Show
on TV for eight years and three Emmys. She came through a door in a fabulous gown to introduce the story. Years later, when she realized that old shows (and old gowns) were in syndication, she sued—and won $600,000! As for the uplift of the stories, that never dated.

She made a comeback, on TV, in
Christmas Eve
(86, Stuart Cooper).

Robert Young
(1907–98), b. Chicago
Father Knows Best
and
Marcus Welby, M.D
. are sufficient demonstration of Young’s survival power—from 1954 to 1963 and then from 1969 to 1976. Young looked smart, sympathetic, and honest, the sort of man a girl can talk to without great risk. Of course, Young often won the girl in movies—eminently Dorothy McGuire—but never with such ardor as to threaten them, and seldom without the saving readiness to be disappointed. Over eighty films in romantic parts, more in B pictures or male leads than in starred roles, trained him as a stayer. So long on the slopes of the industry, he learned to take nothing too seriously, and that showed—as lightness, indifference, or amusement.

King Vidor once called him “a director’s dream … Popular regard, which sets its idols aside in the awe-enthralling class, sometimes demands a quality of neuroticism which Bob healthily doesn’t possess”:
The Black Camel
(31, Hamilton MacFadden);
The Sin of Madelon Claudet
(31, Edward Selwyn);
The Wet Parade
(32, Victor Fleming);
Strange Interlude
(32, Robert Z. Leonard);
The Kid from Spain
(32, Leo McCarey);
Today We Live
(33, Howard Hawks);
Hell Below
(33, Jack Conway);
Tugboat Annie
(33, Mervyn Le Roy);
The Right to Romance
(33, Alfred Santell);
Carolina
(34, Henry King);
Spitfire
(34, John Cromwell);
House of Rothschild
(34, Alfred Werker);
Lazy River
(34, George Seitz);
Whom the Gods Destroy
(34, Walter Lang);
Calm Yourself
(35, Seitz);
Remember Last Night?
(35, James Whale); to Britain for a surprise villain in
The Secret Agent
(36, Alfred Hitchcock) and
It’s Love Again
(36, Victor Saville);
Three Wise Guys
(36, Seitz);
Dangerous Number
(37, Richard Thorpe);
I Met Him in Paris
(37, Wesley Ruggles);
The Emperor’s Candlesticks
(37, George Fitzmaurice);
The Bride Wore Red
(37, Dorothy Arzner);
Navy Blue and Gold
(37, Sam Wood);
Josette
(38, Allan Dwan);
The Toy Wife
(38, Thorpe);
Three Comrades
(38, Frank Borzage);
The Shining Hour
(38, Borzage);
Bridal Suite
(39, William Thiele);
Miracles for Sale
(39, Tod Browning);
Northwest Passage
(40, King Vidor);
The Mortal Storm
(40, Borzage);
Western Union
(41, Fritz Lang);
The Trial of Mary Dugan
(41, Norman Z. McLeod);
Lady Be Good
(41, McLeod); very good at showing the decency of
H. M. Pulham Esq
. (41, Vidor);
Joe Smith, American
(42, Thorpe);
Cairo
(42, W. S. Van Dyke);
Journey for Margaret
(42, Van Dyke);
Slightly Dangerous
(43, Ruggles);
Claudia
(43, Edmund Goulding);
Sweet Rosie O’Grady
(43, Irving Cummings);
The Canterville Ghost
(44, Jules Dassin);
The Enchanted Cottage
(45, Cromwell);
The Searching Wind
(46, William Dieterle);
Claudia and David
(46, W. Lang);
They Won’t Believe Me
(47, Irving Pichel);
Crossfire
(47, Edward Dmytryk);
Sitting Pretty
(48, W. Lang);
Adventure in Baltimore
(49, Richard Wallace);
That Forsyte Woman
(49, Compton Bennett);
And Baby Makes Three
(49, Henry Levin);
Goodbye My Fancy
(51, Vincent Sherman);
The Half Breed
(52, Stuart Gilmore); and
Secret of the Incas
(54, Jerry Hopper).

After that, Young returned only for a few Marcus Welby movies for TV and for
Mercy or Murder
(86, Steven Gethers) and
Conspiracy of Love
(87, Noel Black).

Sergei Yutkevich
(1904–85), b. St. Petersburg, Russia
1924: an episode from
Give Us Radio!
. 1926:
Predatel/The Traitor
(codirected with Abraham Room). 1927:
Tretya Meshchanskaya
(codirected with Room). 1928:
Kruzheva
. 1929:
Chernyi Parus
. 1931:
Zlatye Gory
. 1932:
Vstrechnyi/Counterplan
(codirected with Friedrich Ermler). 1934:
Ankara, Serdtsye Turki
(codirected with Lev Arnshtam) (d);
Shakhtory
. 1938:
Chelovek s Ruzhom
. 1940:
Yakov Sverdlov
. 1943:
Novye Pokhozhdeniya Shveika/New Adventures of Schweik
. 1944:
Dmitri Donskoi
(d). 1946:
Ozvobozhdennaya Frantsya/France Liberated
(d);
Zdravstvui Moskva/Greetings, Moscow
(d);
Molodost Nashi Stranyi
(d). 1947:
Tvet Nad Rossiei
(unreleased) (d). 1948:
Tri Vstrechi/Three Encounters
(codirected with Vsevolod Pudovkin and Alexander Ptushko). 1951:
Przhevalskii
. 1954:
Velikii Voin Albanii Skanderbeg/The Great Warrior Skanderbeg
. 1956:
Otello/Othello
. 1957:
Yves Montand Sings
(codirected with M. Slutzky) (d). 1958:
Rasskazi o Leninye/Stories About Lenin
. 1960:
Rencontre avec la France
(d). 1962:
Banya/ The Bath House
(codirected with Anatoli Karanovich). 1964:
Lenin v Polshe/Lenin in Poland
. 1969:
Siuzhet Dlya Nebolshovo Rasskaza
. 1975:
Mayakovsky Smejotsja
(codirected with Anatoly Karanovich). 1981:
Lenin v Paridzhe/Lenin in Paris
.

Not many came through the vicissitudes of Soviet cinema as unscathed as Sergei Yutkevich; or retained such enthusiastic memories of “astonishing and wonderful days … a period of tumultuous expansion for Soviet art” when theatre and cinema rushed forward uncertain of whether they were on the edge of chaos or revelation. In childhood, Yutkevich worked in puppet theatre, and went on to study painting and stage design. As a young man he was a founding member of the Factory of Eccentric Actors with Grigori Kozintsev and Leonid Trauberg. Its aims were to inspire actors with the spirit of circus and music hall; naturally enough, it enjoyed American slapstick comedy and Yutkevich wrote a book on the virtues of Max Linder. In addition, he had enormous enthusiasm for the Pearl White serials and for the work of Louis Feuillade. He worked in the theatre, with Eisenstein and Meyerhold, and began to work in movies in the mid-1920s: “I experienced the feelings of a simple mortal who has liberated magic powers which are beyond his control, on the memorable, icy morning of the winter of 1924, when I found myself for the first time alone with a camera.” That thrill is more winning than much of the work that Yutkevich did. Bolshevik art is so vibrant with liberation that it is often out of control. Time has led to a grim reassessment, just as the Revolution betrayed Victor Serge’s lyrical account of its Year One.