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This writer became acquainted with Albright in 1948 at the Art Institute, where the artist sometimes came to visit his mentor, Finnish painter Elmer Forsberg. That Which. . . and Dorian Gray were both on exhibit there. One day Albright brought in a self-portrait in which pimples, pustules and eye-bags were so intricately rendered that it made him appear almost as awful as Dorian. Actually, the artist was a pleasant, balding little man of about 50, with twinkling eyes and a puckish sense of humor. He and his identical twin, Malvin, a sculptor also known as Zsissly, lived and worked in an abandoned pre-Civil War Methodist church in nearby Warrenville. Their father, a profanity-spouting calendar artist who had become wealthy by painting nostalgic rural scenes of children and dogs, left them a considerable fortune. The brothers never had to earn a living, so they bought the church and worked as they pleased, sometimes taking years to finish a painting. When they did consent to sell anything the price was enormous.
Lewin commissioned Ivan to paint four portraits showing stages of Dorian's dissolution. MGM would pay a $75,000 fee for exclusive motion picture rights, and let Albright retain ownership of the paintings. When Ivan arrived at Los Angeles' Union Station in November of 1943, he had Malvin with him. Both introduced themselves as Ivan Albright. A studio was soon set up in a scenery loft at MGM.
Meanwhile, preproduction moved forward. Lewin wrote the script himself. He followed Wilde's book faithfully in most respects, but added the characters of Hallward's niece, Gladys, and a young romantic foil, David Stone, to provide a semi-happy ending. He hired Gordon Wiles, winner of a 1932 Academy Award for his art direction of Transatlantic, as his personal assistant. A fine illustrator trained in Paris and Rome, as well as a producer-director in his own right, Wiles made numerous sketches and storyboards that prefigured the groupings and camera angles of the film.
Fortunately, Lewin asked for and got the versatile Harry Stradling Sr., ASC as director of photography. Stradling began his career in American films in 1921. Ten years later he was in Europe working with great directors such as Alexander Korda, Jacques Feyder, Abel Gance, Marcel l'Herbier, Christian-Jaque and others. From 1937 to 1940 he photographed 10 important British pictures, including Pygmalion, The Citadel and Alfred Hitchcock's Jamaica Inn. After returning to Hollywood he worked on numerous films, including two more Hitchcock pictures, for various countries before signing with MGM in 1942. When Stradling started work on Dorian Gray, his son was assisting Joseph Ruttenberg, ASC on another notable thriller, Gaslight. Stradling Sr. died in 1970. Harry Stradling Jr., ASC has carried on the tradition of outstanding cinematography.
Art department chief Cedric Gibbons assigned Hans Peters, whose previous work included Heidi (1937) and Hound of the Baskervilles (1939) for Twentieth Century Fox, to design the sets. World War II was in full swing, however, so Peters had the formidable task of creating visually sumptuous sets under the government's wartime conservation restrictions, which limited new set construction to $5,000 per picture. Fortunately, MGM's three backlots were filled with exteriors that could be redressed, and the studio maintained a vast inventory of walls, fireplaces and other interior parts. Many of the interiors were literally pieced together from the inventory.
Unit set decorators Hugh Hunt and John Bonar had the task of supplying authentic period trappings, from fine furniture to bric-a-brac. Lewin was determined that the style of the film would be as exquisitely detailed as the painting. "I really went to town on every setup," he said in an interview in The Real Tinsel, a 1970 book by Bernard Rosenberg and Harry Silverstein. "I was even careful about the table linen and the cutlery and whatever was on the wall. All the upholstery was built for me… I packed it full of symbols." Even the initials formed by the building blocks on the floor of the fateful playroom symbolize the characters of the story.
A key symbol was the statuette of Sohkmet, the Egyptian cat goddess, which is not in the book but which Lewin wrote into the movie. Unwilling to settle for a mere prop, Lewin found that the two known authentic statuettes of the deity were in the Louvre (then in enemy hands), and in the St. Louis Art Museum. The latter facility's acting museum director, Charles Nagel Jr., objected to a request to make a cast from the 2,500-year-old artifact for fear of marring its patina. Permission was granted after prolonged negotiations when a special moulage material was found. The cat, which leans forward menacingly, is featured in as many scenes as were feasible, sometimes merely as a passive observer and other times as a malignant force.
The pivotal role of Dorian was played by Hurd Hatfield, who had debuted alongside Katharine Hepburn in 1944's Dragon Seed and would later appear in such notable pictures as Diary of a Chambermaid (1946), El Cid, The King of Kings, The Boston Strangler and Thief. George Sanders, though not an easy actor to work with, had played Strickland so well that Lewin persuaded MGM to secure him to portray the caustic Lord Henry. Hard-boiled and easily riled, Sanders had only recently slugged producer Robert Bassler at Fox. Sir Cedric Hardwicke, who does not appear in the film and is not listed in the screen credits, was chosen to be the anonymous narrator. Angela Lansbury, a remarkable young English actress who had just made a stunning debut as a promiscuous maid in Gaslight, is equally fine in the completely opposite role of a betrayed innocent. Promising contract players Donna Reed and Peter Lawford were given the juvenile leads, while a Broadway actor relatively new to the screen, Lowell Gilmore, was well-cast as Hallward. Supporting roles were handled by an unusually large cast of mostly British players, including Lansbury's mother, Moyna McGill.
During prep, the valuable publicity generated by the Albright twins' Hollywood sojourn brought smiles to the powers at MGM. Makeup chief Jack Dawn furnished Ivan with models: two costumed mannequins equipped with Hatfield life-masks made up as young and old Dorians. At Ivan's insistence the studio also provided a bit-player named Skeets Noyes as a live model for detail work.
Nothing, however, causes more anxiety among studio supervisors than the passage of time. To the consternation of producer Pandro Berman and the studio executives, it became evident that Albright could not be hurried. When it became obvious that the artist would not have time to paint more than one of the portraits, the studio rushed in Portuguese portraitist Henrique Medina to paint the young Dorian. Medina's portrait, done in the Sargent tradition, is excellent, although Dorian's body is turned more to the left than it is in the Albright, and the techniques of the artists are totally dissimilar.
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