Otto Preminger Read online

  ALSO BY FOSTER HIRSCH

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  Laurence Olivier on Screen

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  The Hollywood Epic

  George Kelly

  Elizabeth Taylor

  Edward G. Robinson

  A Portrait of the Artist: The Plays of Tennessee Williams

  Joseph Losey

  Kurt Weill on Stage

  For Kristofer

  Contents

  List of Illustrations

  Acknowledgments

  PROLOGUE An Encounter

  ONE Ring from the Emperor

  TWO Rise and Fall

  THREE Seizing the Day

  FOUR On the Job (1)

  FIVE On the Job (2)

  SIX The Declaration of Independence

  SEVEN Lightning Strikes Twice

  EIGHT “Chicago”

  NINE Miss Iowa

  TEN Censored!

  ELEVEN On Trial

  TWELVE In the Promised Land

  THIRTEEN Playing Washington

  FOURTEEN The Prodigal

  FIFTEEN Location/Location

  SIXTEEN In Klan Country

  SEVENTEEN Father and Son

  EIGHTEEN Endgames

  NINETEEN After the Fall

  Notes

  Bibliography

  Directed by Otto Preminger

  List of Illustrations

  Otto’s father, Markus

  Mr. and Mrs. Preminger

  The Preminger family

  Otto Preminger in Vienna

  The Theater in der Josefstadt

  Max Reinhardt

  Otto with pipe

  Otto, balding

  Marion Mill

  Darryl F. Zanuck and Joseph Schenck

  Scene from Libel!

  Darryl F. Zanuck

  Lobby card for Under Your Spell

  Window scene from Under Your Spell

  Group shot from Danger—Love at Work

  Laurette Taylor in Outward Bound

  John and Elaine Barrymore in My Dear Children

  Preminger in Margin for Error

  Preminger directing The More the Merrier

  Preminger in The Pied Piper

  Preminger directing Margin for Error

  Preminger in a scene from Margin for Error

  Otto and Marion

  Vera Caspary

  Jeanne Crain in In the Meantime, Darling

  Clifton Webb and Dana Andrews in Laura

  Camera on track for Laura

  Judith Anderson and Vincent Price in Laura

  Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews in Laura

  Gypsy Rose Lee in costume

  Gypsy Rose Lee as author

  Ernst Lubitsch and Marlene Dietrich on the set of Angel

  Tallulah Bankhead and Preminger on the set of A Royal Scandal

  Tallulah Bankhead and Anne Baxter in A Royal Scandal

  Alice Faye and Anne Revere in Fallen Angel

  Linda Darnell and Dana Andrews in Fallen Angel

  Premiere parade for Centennial Summer

  Preminger at premiere of Centennial Summer

  Family at piano in Centennial Summer

  Avon Long in Centennial Summer

  Peggy Cummins and Peter Whitney in scrapped footage from For ever Amber

  Preminger at his desk

  Preminger directing Linda Darnell and Cornel Wilde in Forever Amber

  Amber onstage

  Preminger with his Daisy Kenyon stars, Dana Andrews, Joan Crawford, and Henry Fonda

  Ruth Warrick, Dana Andrews, Peggy Ann Garner, Connie Marshall, and Nicholas Joy in Daisy Kenyon

  Joan Crawford and Martha Stewart in Daisy Kenyon

  Otto with Ingo Preminger

  Otto with his niece Eve Preminger

  Douglas Fairbanks Jr. in That Lady in Ermine

  Madeleine Carroll and Jeanne Crain in The Fan

  Gene Tierney in Whirlpool

  Lobby card for Where the Sidewalk Ends

  Preminger and his cast on location for The Thirteenth Letter

  Michael Rennie and Mary Gardner

  Preminger with F. Hugh Herbert and Barbara Bel Geddes at work on The Moon Is Blue for Broadway

  Markus and Josefa Preminger

  Preminger in Stalag 17

  Jean Simmons and Robert Mitchum in Angel Face

  Court scene from Angel Face

  Preminger directing Maggie McNamara in The Moon Is Blue

  Preminger in Manhattan

  Location shooting in Canada for River of No Return

  Marilyn Monroe and Tommy Rettig in River of No Return

  Dorothy Dandridge

  Dorothy Dandridge in costume for Carmen Jones

  Preminger, Dorothy Dandridge, Harry Belafonte, and Robert Mitchum on the set of Carmen Jones

  Preminger and Pearl Bailey on the set of Carmen Jones

  Dorothy Dandridge in Carmen Jones

  Preminger directing Ginger Rogers and Gig Young in Tonite at 8:30

  Preminger directing Gary Cooper in The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell

  Preminger with Frank Sinatra on the set of The Man with the Golden Arm

  Preminger on the set of The Man with the Golden Arm

  Saul Bass’s logo for The Man with the Golden Arm

  Auditioners hoping to play Saint Joan

  Jean Seberg

  Preminger directing Jean Seberg in Saint Joan

  Preminger preparing Jean Seberg for a scene in Saint Joan

  The burning scene from Saint Joan

  Deborah Kerr and Jean Seberg in Bonjour Tristesse

  Dorothy Dandridge, Sidney Poitier, and Brock Peters on the set of Porgy and Bess

  Dorothy Dandridge and Sidney Poitier in Porgy and Bess

  Brock Peters in Porgy and Bess

  Preminger at dinner with cast members from Anatomy of a Murder

  The courtroom in Anatomy of a Murder

  James Stewart and Duke Ellington in Anatomy of a Murder

  A banquet honoring Anatomy of a Murder

  Ben Gazzara and George C. Scott in Anatomy of a Murder

  Awaiting the verdict in Anatomy of a Murder

  Preminger with Meyer Weisgal and Prime Minister and Mrs. David Ben-Gurion in Israel

  Otto and Hope Preminger

  Lee J. Cobb in Exodus

  Paul Newman and Paul Stevens in Exodus

  Filming Exodus in Israel

  Exodus logo by Saul Bass

  Otto’s twins, Mark and Victoria

  Preminger’s Manhattan town house

  Exodus premiere

  Burgess Meredith, Paul Stevens, and Henry Fonda in Advise and Consent

  Preminger on the set of Advise and Consent

  Preminger with Charles Laughton during filming of Advise and Consent

  Gay bar scene in Advise and Consent

  New York opening of Advise and Consent

  Nazis at the Vatican in The Cardinal

  Preminger with Romy Schneider in the Theater in der Josefstadt

  Tom Tryon in The Cardinal

  Tom Tryon in The Cardinal

  Tom Tryon and Romy Schneider in The Cardinal

  Tom Tryon and Romy Schneider in The Cardinal

  The attack on Pearl Harbor in In Harm’s Way

  Patricia Neal in In Harm’s Way


  Preminger directing Laurence Olivier on the set of Bunny Lake Is Missing

  Keir Dullea and Carol Lynley in Bunny Lake Is Missing

  Lunch break on the set of Hurry Sundown

  Preminger directing Faye Dunaway and John Phillip Law in Hurry Sundown

  Preminger directing Beah Richards and Robert Hooks in Hurry Sundown

  Court scene from Hurry Sundown

  Gypsy Rose Lee on the set of Screaming Mimi

  Otto with Erik

  Preminger with Groucho Marx on the set of Skidoo

  Carol Channing in Skidoo

  Dyan Cannon on the set of Such Good Friends

  Preminger’s house in Cap Ferrat

  The five hostages in Rosebud

  Nicol Williamson and Boris Isarov in The Human Factor

  Preminger directing

  Preminger directing

  Otto Preminger, portrait

  Acknowledgments

  For candid, generous interviews I would like to thank the following: the late Elaine Barrymore; Trumball Barton; Peter Bogdanovich; Donald Bogle; the late Phoebe Brand; William Doran Cannon; Lewis Chambers; Carol Channing; Kathryn Grant Crosby; Christian Divine; Keir Dullea; the late Douglas Fairbanks Jr.; Vera Fairbanks; Nina Foch; Horton Foote; Larkin Ford; Mona Freeman; Rita Gam; Gilbert Gardner; Ben Gazzara; Howell Gilbert; Tony Gittelson; Wolfgang Glattes; Elaine Gold; Paul Green; George Grizzard; the late Kitty Carlisle Hart; Jill Haworth; Bill Hayes; Diana Herbert; Celeste Holm; Robert Hooks; Geoffrey Horne; Harry Howard; Kathleen Hughes; the late Kim Hunter; Olga James; Leslie Jay; Ken Kaufman; the late Marjorie Kellogg; Robert Lantz; Lionel Larner; the late Paula Laurence; Arthur Laurents; John Phillip Law; Beck Lee; Arlene Leuzzi; David Lewin; Nicola Lubitsch; Carol Lynley; Mike Macdonald; John Martello; Virginia McDowall; Biff McGuire; Eva Monley; Rita Moriarty; Don Murray; Patricia Neal; the late Barry Nelson; Hilde Odelga; Wolfgang Odelga; the late Charlie Okun; Jennifer O’Neil; Austin Pendleton; the late Brock Peters; Barbara Preminger; Erik Lee Preminger; Eve Preminger; Hope Preminger; the late Ingo Preminger; Kathy Preminger; Mark Preminger; Victoria Preminger; Harold Prince; the late David Raksin; Val Robins; Bud Rosenthal; Stanley Rubin; Eva Marie Saint; John Saxon; the late Martin Schute; Madeleine Sherwood; Jean Simmons; the late Peter Stone; the late Leon Uris; Michael Wager; the late Ruth Warrick.

  For help in locating interviewees: Bruce Goldstein; Jane Klain; Marvin Paige; Sam Staggs; Jim Watters; Joanne Zyontz.

  For research assistance: Irene Cohen; Donald R. D’Aries; Samuel Lorca; Janet Lorenz, the Fairbanks Center for Motion Picture Study, Beverly Hills; Piero Passatore; Richard Prolsdorfer, Twentieth Century-Fox.

  For help in locating hard-to-find films: Tom Toth; Charles Silver at the Museum of Modern Art.

  For photographs: Otto Preminger Films, Inc.; Photofest.

  The staff of the Billy Rose Theatre Collection at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, Lincoln Center; the staff of the Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Beverly Hills; the staff of the Theatre in der Josefstadt, Vienna.

  At Alfred A. Knopf: Victoria Wilson, my wise and exacting editor.

  PROLOGUE

  An Encounter

  I was in the presence of Otto Preminger only once. Because he was listed as the director, in November 1980 I went to see a play at an acting studio where Preminger was then teaching called The Corner Loft, located at Twelfth Street and University Place in New York City. The play a routine psychological thriller called The Killer Thing, turned out to be beside the point, because during the intermission, with the audience members squashed together in the minuscule lobby, a drama far more enticing than the one onstage erupted suddenly. As if in response to some deep atavistic instinct, patrons parted to make room for the tall, commanding figure—unmistakably Otto Preminger in person—who entered the lobby and began, with purposeful stride, to make his way across the room that seemed almost too small to contain him. With his large, bald, ovoid head, piercing blue eyes, lips that formed a faint half-smile that seemed poised between charm and contempt, and his imperial bearing, Preminger radiated a lifetime of privilege, wealth, fame, and power. There was no disregarding this man’s deeply engrained sense of self, his unassailable amour propre. The milling crowd, evidently as pleased as I was to catch a glimpse of a director who at the time was as recognizable as Alfred Hitchcock, looked at him with the respect, and the wariness, that his reputation as a terrible-tempered tyrant seemed to warrant. Such a large man in such a small space seemed pregnant with possibilities for a collision of Grand Guignol magnitude.

  And indeed, within a few seconds of his appearance, Preminger’s booming voice—“You always louse things up, don’t you?”—reduced the room to a hushed silence, quickly shattered by another insult delivered in Preminger’s thick Austrian accent. “Lousing things up and getting in the way is your particular specialty, isn’t it?” Evidently trying to wish himself into invisibility, the minion who was the object of the director’s blasts crumpled into an almost fetal position as he walked (hobbled?) to a nearby door, fumbled briefly with the doorknob, then disappeared from view. (And from history. No one I talked to who had worked at the Loft in the Preminger era, including its director, Elaine Gold, or John Martello, who starred in the play was able to identify the unlucky subaltern.)

  Frozen, we all waited for Preminger’s next move. His half-smile in place and behaving as if the scene we had witnessed had not happened, the director calmly helped himself to coffee and cookies at the refreshment table. In what seemed at the time excruciating slow motion, the room began to fill once again with the murmur of conversation as the audience feebly pretended to do what Preminger had accomplished with such remarkable aplomb—dismiss the scene he had just played.

  Was the tantrum for real, or had the maestro favored us with a command performance of “Otto Preminger,” the world-renowned filmmaker who was as noted for his outbursts as for his work? Were we privileged witnesses of a reprise of the Hollywood Nazi roles Preminger had played with such conviction that some of his enemies regarded these performances as the real thing? Or had we just observed an aging director losing his grip? The explosion was awesome, but also ambiguous: that secret-sharer smile, the post-tirade ease and obliviousness with which he helped himself at the coffee table. “Real people don’t behave this way,” I remember thinking at the time. What had the unfortunate young man done, or failed to do, to warrant such withering public abuse? Couldn’t the dressing-down have waited until Preminger and the miscreant were discreetly out of sight? Or was a public forum precisely the arena in which Preminger wanted to stage his anger? That night, Preminger certainly stole the show. Over twenty years later I recall nothing of the play while the memory of those few moments remains vivid.

  Little did I suspect that two decades later I would be eager to write the story of Preminger’s life and that the high drama of my one encounter with him would be echoed many times over in the recollections of the colleagues and family members I interviewed. Nearly everyone I spoke with had a story about a Preminger outburst, while to the informed moviegoer “Otto Preminger” still connotes an image of a Teutonic tyrant capable in a flash of eliciting fear and trembling among the groundlings.

  It has been part of my job to rescue Preminger from his persona, and to present him as the complex, variegated, often endearing, sometimes infuriating person who lurked behind the role of the temperamental titan he played with incomparable vigor. Rages, to be sure, defined one component of Preminger’s personality, but conviviality, courtliness, great generosity, loyalty, compassion, and accessibility were other, equally tangible traits, attested to many times over by family, friends, co-workers, and even, sometimes, enemies. With his legendary temper on the one hand, and his dazzling Viennese charm on the other, he was like a character in an epic Russian novel: a man of many parts.

  To borrow E. M. Forster’s terms for describing fictional characters, Preminger was decidedly “round” rather than “flat
.” Flat characters can be defined by a few broad strokes, and remain unchanged and unchanging on each appearance; round characters, in contrast, are richly mercurial, perplexing, dense with conflicts, and always capable of surprises. A round character to the ultimate degree, Preminger provoked wildly divided reactions—indeed, the ability to inspire controversy seemed as much a part of his birthright as his rock-solid self-confidence. He was a fine man, a true humanitarian, I was told; no, others claimed, when he played Nazis no acting was necessary. He was a Continental sophisticate, according to some; no, a compulsive philanderer, according to others.

  As “himself,” abetted by his genius for self-promotion, he had size and flair, and “Otto Preminger” may have been his most successful production. Big-boned, and with a stentorian voice that retained the staccato rhythm and spitting consonants of his native German, Preminger was not only physically but also psychologically and existentially titanic, a force of nature. As the elder son of a prominent Austrian lawyer, Preminger was born into a world of wealth and status which, in living his own life on a grand scale, he never once abandoned. Hotel suites sparkling with Old World opulence, a baronial mansion in Bel-Air, a Manhattan town house of severe modern design, sleek modern offices with large marble desks, and a white marble villa on the French Riviera were among the infernally elegant settings in which he lived and worked. At fashionable restaurants in the great cities of the world, “Mr. Preminger” was an always honored guest. Before he settled down with Hope Bryce, his third wife, and became a devoted husband and father, he was famed as a man-about-town, first as a bachelor in Vienna and then, in New York and Hollywood, as a straying spouse in two long-distance marriages. He gained (unwanted) fame for two of his affairs. The first was a brief liaison with the stripper Gypsy Rose Lee (with whom he fathered a son); the second was a stormy relationship with the beautiful and doomed Dorothy Dandridge, who became the first black female star in Hollywood history when Preminger cast her in Carmen Jones.

  Preminger’s imperial temperament—he was born to give rather than to follow orders—had a significant impact on the business of filmmaking in America. Chafing under the restrictions of his first job in Hollywood, as a studio employee at Twentieth Century-Fox, Preminger broke away when he could in order to set up in business for himself. Relocating his base from Los Angeles to New York, he became an industry pioneer, the first fully independent producer-director in American films, and in the process created a model for the way motion pictures are produced that endures to the present.