Joseph H. Lewis:
Overview, Interview, and Filmography
by Francis M. Nevins
Scarecrow Press
152 pps., cloth, $32.50
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Although much has been written about director Joseph H. Lewis in magazines, programs and omnibus chapters, this tome is the first sizable account of his life and career. The author, a Professor of Law whose writings include a superb biography of writer Cornell Woolrich, rightly calls it an "overview, interview and filmography." It's quite fine while it lasts — so much so that it leaves one wishing there were more. Nevins's narrative is interleaved with recollections and comments by Lewis, who is still with us. Lewis speaks honestly about the people with whom he worked, but with less vitriol than one encounters in too many Hollywood reminiscences.
Born in New York City to Russian immigrants, Lewis came to Hollywood in 1925 and got a job as a gofer in MGM's editorial department. Ten years later, Nat Levine mistook him for his older brother, a leading film editor, and hired him as supervising editor at Mascot Pictures and then Republic. His first directorial effort was "fixing" a botched Grand National picture in 1937. While working on Bob Baker and Johnny Mack Brown Westerns at Universal, Lewis earned the nickname of "Wagon-Wheel Joe" because he shot so many scenes through wagon-wheel foregrounds.
There were more wagon wheels at Columbia with Charles Starrett and Wild Bill Elliott. Many low-budget pictures followed, including Bela Lugosi and East Side Kids pictures at Monogram, melodramas for PRC, a Lionel Atwill thriller for Universal and a Falcon film for RKO.
Regardless of whether or not these pictures had anything of narrative substance to offer, all of them boasted outstanding photographic composition. It was at Columbia in 1945-46 that the real Lewis emerged with My Name is Julia Ross and So Dark the Night, ostensible B-pictures that were A-1 in both suspense and savvy, and The Jolson Story, for which he directed the production numbers. As a freelancer, he gained a large following with Gun Crazy/Deadly is the Female (1949), a legitimate ancestor of The Big Combo (1954), Bonnie and Clyde (1967) and others. Lewis also did more Westerns, but this time his wagon wheels appeared in big-time stuff like 7th Cavalry and The Halliday Brand (1957).
This book's filmography is terrific, with 56 pages of information not only about the 40 features Lewis directed, but also the 34 features and serials on which he served as a film editor, as well as the mass of TV segments he directed later in his career.
Science-Fiction Serials:
A Critical Filmography of the 31 Hard SF Cliffhangers...
by Roy Kinnard
McFarland
223 pps., library binding, $39.95
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Some of the first movies ever made, beginning in 1896 with the efforts of French filmmaker Georges Méliès, were science-fiction-oriented. Serious attempts at sci-fi (or SF) were made much later, mostly in Germany, America and England. In 1950, George Pal launched a new and more realistic approach with Destination Moon.
In the meantime, science-fiction played a major part in those little-noted movies known as serials. Kinnard focuses on 31 "hard SF" chapter plays, beginning with Universal's The Vanishing Shadow (1934) and ending with Republic's Panther Girl of the Congo (1955). The more influential entries include The Phantom Empire, the three Flash Gordon serials, The Undersea Kingdom, Dick Tracy, Mysterious Dr. Satan, Superman and King of the Rocket Men. Casts, credits, synopses and historical commentary are given for each. These shows, which represent a segment of the industry extinct since 1956, sometimes delved into otherwise unexplored territory. Ranging from wonderful to woeful, they were generally looked down upon by the industry, even though their proceeds dependably offset many of the running costs for the Universal, Republic and Columbia studios.
Also featured in this overview is a filmography of 37 additional titles "with incidental science-fiction elements." Quite a lot of interesting material is packed between the covers for cliffhanger connoisseurs.
Hollywood Diva: A Biography of Jeanette MacDonald
by Edward Baron Turk
University of California Press
486 pps., cloth, $35
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There was once a time when large-scale musical films were as eagerly awaited as MGM's bi-annual Tarzan epics and the occasional adventure extravaganzas such as Gunga Din and The Adventures of Robin Hood. The queen of the high-class musical was Jeanette MacDonald. The statuesque, green-eyed redhead with the great voice was an all-American girl, born in West Philadelphia in 1903. She could sing anything from a pop song to grand opera in several languages, but her real forte was the operetta style exploited in most of her films — the music of Rudolph Friml, Victor Herbert, Oscar Straus, Herbert Stothart, Jerome Kern, Franz Lehar, Sigmund Romberg and Richard Rodgers.
Turk, utilizing the singer's personal papers and unfinished memoirs, as well as interviews with many of her associates, covers her life and career in considerable detail. MacDonald emerges as a person of charm, intelligence and boundless energy. Very much a lady, she nevertheless stood up for her rights with the moguls and earned the sobriquet of "Iron Butterfly." In her early film career at Paramount, Ernst Lubitsch put her into so many boudoir comedies that she also became known as the "Queen of Lingerie." Her teaming at Paramount (1929-1932) with Maurice Chevalier in The Love Parade, Love Me Tonight and One Hour With You was extraordinary: the pair were opposites in almost every way, including musically, but onscreen they were superb together.
Her one picture for United Artists, The Lottery Bride, is among the worst of all time, and a sojourn at Fox resulted in a disappointing succession of lingerie pictures. At MGM in 1934, she and Chevalier were reteamed in the delightful The Merry Widow. MacDonald then co-starred in eight legendary films with operatic baritone Nelson Eddy — beginning with Naughty Marietta (1935) and ending with I Married an Angel (1942). She made other pictures, too, including the spectacular San Francisco (1936), in which she and Clark Gable were lovers onscreen and enemies off the set. She was also a success in concert and on the operatic stage.
Anyone searching for scandal will find little. Lubitsch and Louis B. Mayer were among the many who tried and failed to make time with the "Iron Butterfly," who remained true for years to her manager-boyfriend, Robert Ritchie. In 1937, she married Gene Raymond, and the pair remained together until her death 27 years later. MacDonald comes off in these pages as a curious and likable combination of toughness and tenderness. Incidentally, her favorite cinematographer was Oliver Marsh, ASC.
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