Les Petits Mouchoirs (Little White Lies), Guillaume Canet, France 2011

It's one thing to have a film with an interesting premise and another to take this premise and turn it into a tight, coherent, screenplay.

While Canet succeeded in the first point, he failed utterly in the second. Although, to be fair, his film starts off on the right foot: For about 90 minutes or so Les petits Mouchoirs comes along as a latter-day version of Woody Allen's best soul-searching tragicomedies of the 1980s. But about one and a half hours into the film, Canet runs out of steam, and what until then was a witty, often funny, yet light attempt at dealing with the mishaps and shortcomings of today's city-dwellers, becomes heavy-handed, almost maudlin, conventional, family entertainment, one that ties up all the loose ends in the plot, making the direct opposite of Allen's films, where more often than not, no problems are solved; if anything, they've become worse over the course of the film. But then, that's life, isn't it?

I've wondered if it was the producers, with their eye forever on the box-office, who requested Les petits mouchoirs to have a more upbeat ending. The result however, is an ending that comes across as hopelessly contrived and unrealistic and, worse, tacked-on, so as if it was added as an afterthought.

And yet, Les petits mouchoirs was this close to becoming a French version of Hannah And Her Sisters - if only it ended after 90 minutes, as do literally all Woody Allen films. Well, it was Shakespeare after all who already knew that "brevity is the soul of wit" ... and I couldn't agree with him more.

City of Angels: The Studio Era, Part 1

Films arrived in Southern California in 1907.

The completion of the Santa Fe railway in 1885 triggered a massive land boom within the Los Angeles area, and was fuelled by the subsequent discovery of oil wells, all of which had already begun to alter the nervous system of the prospering city prior to the arrival of the first film folk.

There can be little doubt, however, that the Pacific metropolis wouldn't be what it is today without its film industry.

The studio era officially began in 1923/ 24, a time that marks the formation of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Columbia, Warner Brothers, and the arrival of Joseph Schenk at United Artists. During its heyday, the Hollywood studios were divided into majors and minors. The so-called Big Five were MGM, Warner Brothers, Paramount, Twentieth Century Fox, and RKO, the latter of which joined the ranks of the majors with the advent of sound. The three minors consisted of Columbia, Universal, and United Artists. One of the things all studios had in common is the fact that the corporate power was divided between the money boys in New York and the moguls who presided over the studios in Los Angeles. Not only was New York America’s, if not the world’s, financial hub as much back then as it is now, but before the centre of movie-making shifted from the East Coast to the West Coast, most of the companies were based in New York.

On the fringes there were a number of others, also-rans, like Republic, Eagle Lion and Monogram, film companies which operated on a much smaller scale, cranked out B-pictures, and whose company history was in many cases even more bumpy than that of their bigger brothers and sisters. In the pool of majors and minors, almost each studio had its own specific handwriting, serving as a signature or stamp, which made it relatively easy to identify a film’s birthplace.

MGM, with its impressive line-up of skilled technicians, its awe-inspiring roster of stars, and its charismatic production chief, Irving G.Thalberg, quickly established itself as the glamour studio and the proverbial dream factory, while Warner’s toiled mainly on the dark and gloomy side of the street, focusing on jailbirds, crooks, and gangster molls.

Fox, under the tutelage of Darryl F. Zanuck, for many years lacked a specific look other than being the studio of Sonia Henie and Shirley Temple, until later Zanuck acquired a certain reputation for producing message pictures. Columbia, with a tiny roster of stars, operating on a single block, and the miserly Harry Cohn at the helm, was simply known as the black hole of Calcutta, until, of course, the tremendous success of Frank Capra’s films changed all that.

Universal, besides being the home of Deanna Durbin, whose musicals saved the studio from ruin during the 1930s, also made a name for itself as the studio of horror movies. Paramount, referred to as the country-club of studios, had a wide range of European talent under its roof, and became known as the studio with the continental sheen.

Apart from the big dream factories, Hollywood also hosted a number of independent producers like David O. Selznick, Samuel Goldwyn and Orson Welles Mercury Productions. United Artists, RKO, and Columbia would all become havens for independent producers. Lacking sufficient resident talent to keep their operations going, they rented out their facilities to independents, and often co-produced and distributed their films. With the onslaught of television, which arrived in tandem with the Hollywood witch hunt and the Government Consent Decree that forced the studios to divest themselves of their theatre chains, all of which spelling the end of the studio era, independent productions became the norm in Hollywood. As Billy Wilder once observed, “In the olden days you went to see an MGM picture. It had its own handwriting. Or you knew it was a Warner Bros.picture – Cagney and Bogart and the small actors that were under contract there. Now studios are nothing but the Ramada Inn – you rent space there, you shoot, and out you go”. Billy Wilder chose to ignore the fact that independent productions were precisely what -rightfully- made him the rich man he eventually became.

Billy Wilder

After the studio system had become dust, Hollywood was up for grabs as independent producers were calling the shots, striking up deals between director, studio, actors and writers, each of whom was entitled to their share of the cake, whereas during the studio era, it was the studio that reaped the profits of other people’s labour, but it also shouldered the potential risks. Looking at Hollywood’s output today, it stands to reason that the quality of the films during the studio era was superior, and that today’s free-for-all atmosphere has turned Hollywood into a very shallow gold-mine. Not that all that glittered was gold, of course. And yet, it seems to me that every so often art was being produced not in spite, but because of the studio system. Outside the mogul’s genuine interest in film and their willingness to take risks, with an annual average of forty to fifty releases per studio, they could afford a few box-office duds without losing too much sleep over it. Besides, everybody involved in a film was usually under contract to the studio, which greatly minimised a film’s cost. The studio system’s finely wrought mesh of rules, regulations and restrictions were a safety net as well as a cobweb from time to time.

D.W. Griffith

Above all, the story of Hollywood and its studios is a story of immigration, and thus reflects the story of America itself, as a fact virtually all moguls had in common was, even though they chose to play it down, that they were all first or second generation Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, with the exception of Twentieth Century Fox’s Darryl F. Zanuck and the founders of United Artists: Pickford, Fairbanks, Griffith, and Chaplin.

Darryl F. Zanuck


The Tsar of all moguls, MGM’s Louis B. Mayer, was born in Russia in 1885, but left his native village of Demre a mere three years later to settle in the US by way of Nova Scotia. He started his career by working in his father’s scrap iron business before selling tickets at a Boston cinema, and buying his own movie theatre as early as 1907.

Paramount’s Adolph Zukor, born in Ricse, Hungary, arrived in the US in 1888, and started working in the fur trade before investing in a penny arcade in 1904.

Coming from the Polish village of Krasnashiltz, the Warner family emigrated to the United States 1882, settling first in Baltimore, were the four Warner brothers eked out a living by doing menial work ranging from shining shoes and selling soap to cobbling. In 1904 Sam Warner opened up a nickelodeon in Youngstown, Ohio. Joined by his brothers, they eventually ran a larger cinema, until they gradually expanded into distribution.


Samuel Goldwyn

Also born in Poland, Schmuel Gelbfisz grew up in a Warsaw ghetto. At the age of twenty, in 1899, by way of Hamburg, London, Birmingham and Liverpool, he arrived in New York, where, changing his name to Samuel Goldwyn, he began working as a gloves salesman. Later, he got married to Blanche Lasky, the sister of film pioneer Jesse Lasky, with whom we would eventually go into business. In the eyes of Katherine Hepburn, Goldwyn was “the most compelling and colourful of all the movie moguls”. And, she added, “of all those pirates, and they were all pirates, he was the only one with a sense of humour”.

Goldwyn went on to enchant and amuse Hollywood with what was dubbed Goldwynisms, which were largely the result of his struggle with the English language. Not only did he refer to Miss Brontë’s classic as "Withering Heights”, when he was about to acquire the film rights to Lilian Hellmann’s The Little Foxes, he was cautioned by Edwin Knopf that "it is a very caustic play", prompting Goldwyn to reply, “I don’t care how much it costs. Buy it!”. In fact, Goldwynisms have become classics just like most of his films. When showing a painting he recently purchased to one of his friends, he proudly announced that this was his “new Toujours Lautrec”. During the House Committee of Un-American Activities(HUAC) hearings, Goldwyn was the only one of Hollywood’s producers to speak up against its activities, releasing a press statement that said, “…The most un-American activity which I have observed in connection with the hearings has been the activity of the Committee itself…. I assure you that as long as I live no one will ever be able to dictate what I put on the screen as long as I continue to honour and obey the laws of our country”.

Unlike most of his peers, Columbia’s Harry Cohn was born in the United States, in 1891 in New York, to a Russian-Jewish mother and a German-Jewish father. Having been a pool hustler and song plugger along the way, Harry Cohn wound up in Hollywood, where he started out on Poverty Row, a label which he didn’t manage to shake off for a long time.

Carl Laemmle

Carl Laemmle, founder of Universal, was born in 1867 in the South-German village of Laupheim. Coming to the United States in 1884, he began his career as an errand boy, and by 1906 worked as a nickelodeon operator in Chicago.

None of the film industry’s founding fathers had much of an education to speak of, although not for want of trying but simply because they lacked the necessary means.
Having grown up in poverty, all of them shared a determination combined with an astute business sense and a willingness to take risks. Fascinated by the fledgling film industry, which is hardly what it could be called back then, through hard labour and foresight they slowly became part of it, and eventually shaped it and made it their own. As screenwriter Nunnally Johnson’s daughter, Marjorie Fowler, observed, “The Cohns and Mayers may have been tough sons-of-bitches, but they had instinct".


For Part 2 of City Of Angels: The Studios - The Studio Era, please log on to FILM-TALK on Tuesday!

Larry Crowne, Tom Hanks, US 2011

When I first saw the trailer to Larry Crowne, I had high hopes that Tom Hank's new stab at directing might actually turn out to be a feel-good movie with some relevance and, also, with some credibility. One that doesn't - as these films have a tendency to do - underestimate its audience by dismissing them with the felling that in actual fact, what they've just seen was yet another fairytale with a Hollywood ending.

Alas, I'm sorry to say, this is precisely what Larry Crowne is: A fairytale, and one that isn't even particularly well told.

It's a real pity, for a film that tackles the subject of economic depression and unemployment has long been overdue, but sadly, Hanks and his fellow-scriptwriter Nia Vardalos (My Big Fat Greek Wedding) have wasted a first-rate opportunity to comment on the world we live in, a world that is run by big corporations and where losing one's job is not just a dim possibility but a reality for many, including all its dire consequences.

Tom Hanks plays Larry Crowne, who is part of the security staff in a Walmart-like company. Because he has never been to college he is deemed expendable and so he is the first one to be let go. Eager to catch up on the college education he never had the privilege to enjoy, Larry enrols in a class that is supposed to teach him free speech. That is where the problem starts already. I would have thought that for a man in his early fifties, enrolling in such a class is of little help, if any. To succeed in the college-degree obsessed world of today - a fact which the film did well to point out - Larry would have been better off, in my opinion, to work towards a degree, one that offers a realistic chance of future employment. Julia Roberts plays Larry's teacher, Mercedes Tainot, and needless to say, they eventually end up falling in love. However, equally needless to say, they both have to go through the all too familiar ups-and-downs, required by the 'Hollywood-School-Of-Scriptwriting', before they're finally allowed their first kiss. This being a movie aimed at a somewhat more mature audience, a kiss is consequently all we get to see. Not that that would be of any importance. It is just another indicator of how predictable the screenplay is and to what extent it follows a pattern that has become at least as stale and as boring as Mercedes Tainot's marriage has become over the years - the perfect match, one should think, a disenchanted teacher and wife and a washed-up, middle-aged, security officer on the dole. Only that with all due respect to Julia Roberts - who to me remains one of the major attractions to come out of Hollywood within the past 25 years - theirs is not a relationship that's in any way believable. Unless you assume that following insult and humiliation by her husband, it is pure desperation that prompts Tainot to fall for Larry.

Tainot's marriage is thus another level where the film falls apart. While I concede that it may be possible to get bored with being married to even so beautiful a woman as Julia Roberts, accusing her, as her husband does, of not having 'big enough knockers' to hold his attention, is completely ridiculous. Since Larry Crowne never pretended to be a sequel to Scenes From A Marriage, the film can be excused for not delving into the marital problems of the Tainots, let alone discussing them at length. However, rendering these problems at least remotely believable is something that any film owes its audience. This lack of credibility is reflected in another sub-plot, involving a hip, trendy, 20-something girl, at least 30 years Larry's junior, he meets on his first day at college and who takes him under her wings to teach him how to dress, subsequently making him over entirely including even Larry's house. Stuff like this may happen in a fairytale, but I don't think I can be accused of cynicism if I say that this has little bearing on reality.

Having ripped this film apart, I have to say that Larry Crowne is at least entertaining - as long as you switch off your brain - and even has moments of which I simply wish there would have been more: interesting and also relevant comments on our society dominated by Facebook and Twitter rather than literature, as well as some scenes that expose the shenanigans of Larry's bank - or any bank, for that matter - which, his unemployment notwithstanding, still tries to squeeze a buck out of him. Unfortunately, the screenwriters either didn't think it worthwhile to make more of these points or else, didn't deem them 'box-office'. But focussing on these themes would have turned Larry Crowne from a run-of-the-mill Hollywood 'product' into an important social commentary.

And in times like these, an audience deserves those at least as much as fairytales.

The Tree Of Life, Terrence Malick, US 2011

Having not been to the Cannes Film Festival I am of course unable to say anything about all other films in this year's Competition, let alone comment on their quality. However, I can only presume that the members of this year's jury, still in a daze provoked by the ballyhoo surrounding Lars von Trier's press conference that somehow, they ended up awarding the Palme D'Or to Malick's film for reasons I am entirely incapable to comprehend.

The Tree of Life is a film in search of a story, for its narrative can be told in just a few sentences: In 1950's Texas a father, played by Brad Pitt, keeps his sons on a tight leash raising them in a strict manner. Some 40 years down the line, the eldest of the three sons Jack, played by Sean Penn, looks back on his childhood and starts to question - you guessed it! - the meaning of life.

Malick takes nearly three hours to tell this story which apparently is partly autobiographical, filling the gaps with psychedelic images which at times come across as a blend between Jurassic Park and 2001, A Space Odyssey. Others have suggested that Malick's film seems like a Discovery Channel Special, a comparison that is not far off the mark.

While Malick takes great pains to forge a link between the film's actual narrative and its imagery, to me, at least, there is little connection between the two. The incessant stream of psychedelic and Discovery Channel images, employed to visualise Jack's reflection on the meaning of life, come across as hopelessly pretentious and disconnected, and only the consumer of substantial amounts of illegal substances may be able to see the link between the film's - pitifully thin - storyline and the endless succession of images of deserts, waterfalls, rain forests and the like and, more importantly, to perceive these as mesmerizing or in any way relevant to what the film may want to say.

I feel compelled to add here that I am not usually a fan of typical conventional, linear, Hollywood storytelling. On the same token, putting images where the story ought be by making the film twice as long as necessary, doesn't automatically result in art.

On Polanski

After having recently finished reading Isaac Bashevis Singer's The Manor, I wondered what to read next. Having just read a novel - Singer's - I decided I needed to go back again to the topic I feel passionate about most - Film - and somehow I ended up buying Christopher Sandford's monography on Roman Polanski.

For as long as I can think of, Polanski has always been among the directors whose work I most admire. Others include Kubrick, Hitchcock, Chaplin, Lynch, Lumet and Wilder. This doesn't necessarily mean that I love all of their films - though I do most of them - it's simply that these directors' level of artistry has been unusually high and just as consistent. Certainly in comparison to most of their peers. In my opinion, anyway!

Paul Werner's book on Polanski was one of the first film-books I picked up when I was still in my early twenties. Although I'd already been obsessed with Polanski prior to reading it, Werner's book really opened my eyes. His insight, his analysis of Polanski's films and the way he forges links to Polanski's life without reading too much into them, helped me to better understand not only Polanski's work but also Polanski, the man. Additionally, it buttressed my opinion - already firm back then - that Chinatown, Rosemary's Baby and Repulsion are masterpieces and quite simply milestones in film history. To this day, they remain among my all-time favourite films: Excellently crafted stories which never underestimate the viewer, keeping you at the edge of your seat from beginning to end.

Once I'd started reading Sandford's book it dawned on me that my subconscious must have been playing a trick on me as Sandford's book took me straight back to Poland, though not the Poland of The Manor, but rather the Poland of the German invasion and subsequent occupation. I'd previously known, of course, that Polanksi was of Polish descent and that he spent part of his youth in the Warsaw Ghetto, but it nevertheless startled me how neatly Sandford's account picked up where Singer's book left off.


Roman Polanski and his second wife, Sharon Tate, who was brutally murdered by the Manson family in 1968


Anyhow, unlike Werner's, Sandford's book focusses on Polanski rather than offering sharp analyses of his films. However, it is one of the strengths of his book that Sandford manages to avoid one of the biggest pitfalls in biography-writing: The tendency to become anecdotal. While avoiding anecdotes is, of course, almost impossible in any biography, Polanski - such is the apt title of Sandford's book - introduces these anecdotes with caution and, where possible, even offering corroboration. Moreover, Sandford's is not one of those kiss-and-tell stories - the literary equivalent of a bodice ripper - but rather a well researched account of the life of one of the greatest directors of our time, told by someone who has nothing but admiration for his subject, something which suffuses every page of Sandford's book.

Roman Polanski and Ewan McGregor on location on the German island of Sylt, shooting Polanski's latest, The Ghost. To read my review of The Ghost, click HERE!


Somehow life's full of coincidences ... or is it? After reading up on Polanski had got me back into the mood of watching some vintage Polanski on the big screen - Polanksi is strictly for the movie theatre only! - I ran a google search and what did it throw up? Sadly no Polanksi retrospective anywhere near my home, but nevertheless, I found out that there currently is an exhibition on Polanski, organised by the film museums of Potsdam and Duesseldorf in collaboration with Polanski's alma mater, the Lodz Film School.



Deneuve going off the rails in Repulsion (1965)


The Beckett-inspired Cul-De-Sac (1966), which won the Grand Prix at that year's Berlin Film Festival


Mia Farrow playing the girl who, to use former Paramount executive Charles Bluhdorn's words, "was shtupped by the devil" in Rosemary's Baby (1967)

Until his untimely death in 1968 composer Kryzstof Komeda was a friend and frequent collaborator of Polanski's. Listen to Komeda's hauntingly beautiful score for Rosemary's Baby which much contributes to the cult status the film has since attained:





Faye Dunaway, playing the tragic heroine Evelyn Mulwray in Polanski's film-noir-to-end-all-film-noirs - Chinatown (1974)

Watch an original 1974 trailer of Chinatown here:




Yet another tragic heroine. Polanski's early films are full of women at the verge of a nervous breakdown. In the case of The Tenant (1976), this woman's called Simone Choule (though he's actually called Trelkovsky ...) and is played by none other than Polanski himself.


Adrian Brody walking the streets of the Warsaw Ghetto in one of The Pianist's most devastating scenes.


Recommended books about Roman Polanski:

Sandford, Christopher: Polanski, Palgrave Macmillan, 2009 (in English)
Werner, Paul, Roman Polanski, Fischer Cinema, 1984 (in German)

Roman Polanski, An Exhibition:

- Filmmuseum Potsdam, until 3 July 2011

City of Angels: The Studios, Part 8: Universal

Universal Pictures was founded in 1912 when Carl Laemmle, a German-Jewish immigrant born in Laupheim in the South-German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg, merged his IMP (= Independent Motion Picture Company) with a string of smaller film companies like Bison, Powers, and Nestor, with himself at the helm.

Prior to that, back in 1906 Laemmle ran a nickelodeon in Chicago before moving on to opening a chain of cinemas and subsequently branching out into distribution shortly after. His outfit, Laemmle Film Service, eventually turned into the country’s biggest distribution company.

With Edison’s Motion Picture Patents Company (referred to as The Trust), formed in 1908, out to get anybody who wouldn’t play by the rules and regulations imposed by The Trust, it was a sorry time for anybody trying to break into film. Undeterred by The Trust’s shenanigans, Laemmle started to produce his own pictures in 1909, signing The Biograph Girl, Florence Lawrence, (so called because she had heretofore starred in flicks of the Biograph Company) in 1910, and putting Mary Pickford under contract soon after.

Carl Laemmle Senior

Laemmle's efforts to defy the Trust’s monopoly proved successful when in 1912 the Justice Department deemed Edison’s practices unlawful, giving Laemmle wings to further expand his ever-growing company, which subsequently led to the foundation of Universal.

In 1914 Laemmle bought a 230 acre parcel of land north of Hollywood in the San Fernando Valley, with the intention of building an enormous film studio, called Universal City, which he opened in 1915. In about 1920 a young Irving Thalberg, who would soon makes waves at Metro, was appointed manager of the studio, after having previously worked at Universal’s head office in New York. Driven, and with a fire in his head, Thalberg ran the studio efficiently, which was reflected in the high box office returns, enabling Universal to further assert its position on the increasingly competitive motion picture market.

Irving G. Thalberg

Thalberg went on to run a tight ship during his relatively brief stint at Universal, and his torrid run-ins with Erich von Stroheim, one of Universal’s resident directors, are legend. Thalberg firmly believed that a director was nothing but a hired hand, and any attempt on his side to let his imagination, not to mention the cost of the film, run wild, had to be nipped in the bud. After having gone way over budget already on his opulent Foolish Wives (1922), where Stroheim insisted on a painstakingly precise recreation of Monte Carlo, on his next picture, Merry-Go-Round (1923), Stroheim found himself discharged by the hard-headed Thalberg. The Merry-Go-Round disaster spelled the end of Stroheim’s career in the US. But before returning to Europe he would go on to do a couple of films for MGM where he clashed once again with Thalberg, who had since joined the Mayer Company just prior to its merger with Goldwyn and Loew.

To be sure, Thalberg’s tight reign at Universal was a prelude to his years at MGM, where he was known for keeping its directors on an equally tight leash, exercising his power as production chief wherever and whenever he saw fit. History, however, has been kinder to Stroheim than to his nemesis, Thalberg, as his films are hailed by critics and film historians alike as unique and outstanding masterpieces, while Thalberg’s input and influence has of late become regarded as overvalued.

Other pictures of note of that period in Universal’s history include Wallace Worsley’s The Hunchback Of Notre Dame (1923), and Paul Leni’s films, The Cat And The Canary (1927), and The Man Who Laughs (1928), starring fellow-German Conrad Veidt (of The Cabinet Of Dr. Caligari fame). Thus started Universal’s love affair with the bizarre, the macabre and the twisted.

James Whale

Carl Laemmle had a reputation for filling all kinds of positions in his company with family members, inspiring a witty unknown to coin the term, “Carl Laemmle has a very big faemmle”. In 1929, the ageing Carl Laemmle Sr. put his son, Carl Jr. in charge of production, who went on to win the studio its first best picture Oscar in 1930 with the anti-war drama All Quiet on the Western Front, based on Erich-Maria Remarque best-selling novel. A year later Laemmle’s nephew, William Wyler, arrived from Europe, to begin what would eventually turn into a successful career as one of Hollywood's leading film directors. His western Hell’s Heroes (1930), stands out amidst all the monsters and dead bodies that tended to fill Universal’s screen during the early 1930s. British import James Whale, since then elegantly and aptly portrayed on screen by fellow Brit Ian McEllan in the elegiac Gods And Monsters (1999), was largely responsible for Universal's reputation as the studio of horror flicks as his string of horror movies, beginning with Dracula (1931), followed by Frankenstein (1931) and The Bride Of Frankenstein (1932) rippled the film world.

Bette Davis in the early 1930s

In 1930 Universal lured the young Bette Davis, then appearing on the New York stage, to Hollywood in order to add her name to the studio’s pitiful roster of stars. Legend has it, that once the aspiring actress, accompanied by her mother, Ruthie, arrived at the Pasadena station, after a strenuous five-day journey from New York, nobody from Universal bothered to show up to greet them. Universal’s negligent treatment of the budding actress was an antecedent of the studio’s cluelessness as to what to do with her, studio boss Laemmle being said to have uttered that “she has as much sex appeal as Slim Summerville”. Consequently, after only a few pictures, most of which on loan-out to other studios, and not one even remotely exploiting her potential, Universal dropped her contract and Bette Davis was ready to go back east, when, in the nick of time, Warner Brothers snapped her up, and turned her into their Queen of the lot.

During the mid-1930s Universal had little to offer in terms of quality pictures.
My Man Godfrey (1936), Gregory LaCava’s hilarious screw-ball comedy, starring Carole Lombard and William Powell, both on loan-out from Paramount and MGM respectively, was one of the rare exceptions. And with box-office returns slackening continuously, there was no denying the fact that Universal was in dire need of funds. The year My Man Godfrey was released, Carl Laemmle Sr. was pressed to sell his interest in the company he founded.

By 1938 Universal was run by Nate Blumberg, and the company slowly climbed out of the red, but with the ailing studio in dire need of stars and talented directors, its output would remain second-rate until the mid/ late forties, when Universal released a couple of exciting thrillers, thereby once again resorting to the dark side of the screen. Fritz Lang’s classic Scarlet Street (1946) and Robert Siodmak’s The Killers (1946) were among the most outstanding Universal releases during that period.

Joan Bennett and Edward G. Robinson in Fritz Lang's Scarlett Street (1945)

Bearing in mind that the history of the Hollywood studios being also part of the history of corporate America, it was in 1946 that Universal merged with International Pictures, founded a mere three years earlier by William Goetz and Leo Spitz, who both took control over the studio operations in Hollywood while Nate Blumberg continued to be president of Universal, based at the company’s New York headquarters. In an attempt to boost Universal’s performance at the box-office, the studio reached an agreement with the British film company J. Arthur Rank to distribute its films in the US, which also added some much needed cachet to Universal’s chipped reputation.
The deal quickly paid off, though not necessarily in cash, but in giving Universal a long overdue ego-boost, when Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet (1948) won a best picture Oscar in 1948. Other British productions released by Universal included like David Lean’s Great Expectations (1948), Emeric Pressburger’s Black Narcissus (1948), and Carol Reed’s masterpiece Odd Man Out (1947).

Douglas Sirk

In 1952 Universal was in for yet another shake-up when Decca Records seized control over the studio by becoming its major shareholder. The old guard exited, and Milton Rackmil and Edward Muhl entered the studio, the former being its new president and the latter Universal’s new studio chief. It was during the 1950s that Universal finally became a major player again and a force to be reckoned with, when a new breed of producers and directors marched in, headed by Ross Hunter and Douglas Sirk, who brought a new meaning to the term melodrama dazzling 1950s audiences with their polished, impeccably staged soap operas such as Magnificent Obsession (1954), Written On The Wind (1956), and Imitation Of Life (1959). Their films would have a lasting influence on future generations of directors. German film-maker Rainer Werner Fassbinder is said to have been greatly influenced by the films of his fellow-German, inspiring him to his acclaimed Veronica Voss (1981) and The Marriage Of Maria Braun (1978).

Marlene Dietrich in Welles' A Touch of Evil (1958)

Another remarkable film of Universal’s 1950s period is Orson Welles’ A Touch Of Evil (1958). A low-key thriller with a brilliantly crafted screenplay -including a meaty part for Orson Welles’ pal Marlene Dietrich- the film is every bit a masterpiece. But, of course, as Welles’ films go, A Touch Of Evil wasn’t exactly breaking records at the box-office.

Ten years after Decca took control of Universal, it was now the giant Music Corporation of America (MCA), run by the charismatic Lew Wasserman, that swallowed up both companies in one fell swoop in 1962. A highly regarded and well respected man, the bespectacled, magnetic Lew Wasserman was generally agreed to be the most powerful man in Hollywood, in fact, its King. He would continue to run MCA until 1995, five years after the conglomeration’s takeover by Japanese electronics behemoth Matsushita, when Wassermann was named ‘chairman emeritus’.

Like an ancient rock in the surf, Universal stood firm in spite of the numerous takeovers the company had been through over the years, and if anything, these seem to have injected some new life into the ailing film studio, as the 1960s went off to an even better start than the previous decade.

Tippi Hedren in Hitchock's The Birds (1963)

Alfred Hitchcock began his association with Universal in 1962 with his shocker The Birds. Universal granted Hitchcock the freedom he craved, and in turn Hitchcock’s films reaped healthy profits. It was thus a partnership both sides were happy with, and one that would last until Hitchcock’s last film 14 years later, Family Plot (1976).

The Doris Day and Rock Hudson comedies were also universally popular, Miss Day having been rated the most popular film star in three consecutive years, between 1960 and 1963. In terms of artistic merits, however, another Universal release of the 1960s which more than warrants a mention, is Robert Mulligan’s subtle adaptation of Harper Lee's instant classic, To Kill A Mockingbird (1963), for which Gregory Peck rightly won the Academy Award for best actor.
To Kill A Mockingbird also won for best picture, which was the studio’s first best picture Oscar after 43 years.
It was clear that Universal was finally out of the woods.


Steven Spielberg came on board in the 1970s, ringing in the block-buster age with hits like Jaws (1975), and later, E.T. (1982) and Jurassic Park (1993). His much subtler, and better, film, Schindler’s List (1994) was also produced by Universal, winning the studio yet another best picture Oscar, its fifth, after having won again in 1979 for the melancholy The Deer Hunter, and also in 1985, for the melodrama to end all melodramas, Out Of Africa, in which Meryl Streep gives a towering performance of the Danish writer Tania Blixen’s years in East Africa.

Meryl Streep and Robert Redford in Sydney Pollack's Out of Africa (1985)

Universal’s unbroken string of successes made it a likely, not to mention lucrative, object of desire for investors, and in 1990, after almost 30 years of MCA’s unswerving reign, Universal and MCA were both bought up by Matsushita.
But after only 5 years the electronic giant lost interest in the film company and sold it to the Canadian Seagram Corporation, managed by Edgar Bronfman Jr.
The financial success of Apollo 13 (1995) was dampened by the departure of Spielberg, who left to form Dreamworks with partners Devid Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg. However, an agreement was reached that their pictures would continue to be released through Universal.

Julia Roberts in Soderbergh's Erin Brockovich (2000)

Five shaky years later, in 2000, the French media giant Vivendi swallowed Seagrams’ drinks along with Universal’s films, gulping it down to the tune of $ 34 billion.
With the company bouncing back and forth, and a lot of back-scratching as well as back-stabbing going on at the top, Universal had a couple of respectable hits over the past few years, most noteworthy of which is Steven Soderbergh’s Erin Brockovich (2000), which won Julia Roberts her richly deserved Oscar as best actress. Universal was also one of the first Hollywood studios to tap the public’s fascination with films and filmmaking, and already during Carl Laemmle’s times as studio chief, the public was granted a peek behind the scenes.

However, 1964 marks the year Universal officially began their organised studio tours, which now have evolved into a theme park emulating Disneyland. There is little, unfortunately, in terms of studio history, as the tour - and the rides - focus on recent studio successes as Back To The Future, Jurassic Park, and the like.

City of Angels: The Studios, Part 7: Pickford & Fairbanks Studios (United Artists), Now: The Lot

In 1922 Hollywood’s royal couple, Mary Pickford and Dougals Fairbanks, purchased this modestly sized studio which had been built two years earlier by Jesse Hampton, a now sadly forgotten film pioneer.

Fairbanks’ Robin Hood (1922) and The Thief Of Baghdad (1924) were both filmed here.
In 1927 the studio was renamed United Artists, after the company Pickford and Fairbanks had founded in 1919 in partnership with David Wark Griffith and Charlie Chaplin, who continued producing his films in his own studio on La Brea, but releasing them through United Artists.


The Lot, today

While space on their studio could be rented, United Artists was first and foremost a distribution company, the vertical integration of production, distribution and exhibition was never a priority. The purpose of United Artists, as the choice of its name suggests, was gaining complete control over the marketing and distribution of their own pictures without having to report to an array of studio bosses and production chiefs yet at the same time enabling United Artists to keep a larger share of the grosses.

Mary Pickford

Although they relished the complete artistic control their own company afforded them, with only a handful of talent under its roof, United Artists was in dire need of product to meet the minimum amount of releases to keep their operation going.
To solve the problem, next to a few new arrivals on the lot such as Gloria Swanson, they were also attracting early independents like Walt Disney, Samuel Goldwyn, David O.Selznick, or British producer Alexander Korda, and, much later, Walter Mirisch.

D.W. Griffith

In 1924 Griffith left United Artists to sign up with Paramount. Left in the lurch, independent producer Joseph Schenk (brother of MGM’s Nicholas, who would replace Marcus Loew in 1927) joined the company, bringing with him his associate, Buster Keaton.

One should imagine that with this high voltage of talent united under one roof, the studio was on a sure-fire road to success. But if anything, the high voltage led to personality clashes and ensuing fights over the way United Artists should be run, as the wispy Pickford was in reality a shrewd business woman, whereas Charlie Chaplin simply cherished the creative freedom United Artists provided him with. That, to him, who loathed working for large conglomerations for their artistic shackles, would always have precedence over profits.

Joseph Schenk, having shunted the startled Keaton off to MGM in 1928, left United Artists in 1935, to fuse his independent Twentieth Century Pictures (formed with Darryl F. Zanuck) with the Fox Corporation. Schenk’s departure left a void, and an endless wrangling started over United Artists’ management that, in a way, is spilling over to the present day.

The incessant management changes, the constant bickering and fights, are also reflected in the equally frequent changes of the company logo. While most other Hollywood studios would hang on to their logo even in the most tempestuous of times, United Artists seems to have changed their with every change of management. All this casts a shadow over the studio’s history, belying the fact that as a distributor, United Artists probably released more quality pictures than any other studio in Hollywood. Among its impressive output are classics like The Gold Rush (Chaplin, 1925), Nothing Sacred (La Cava, 1937), Spellbound (Hitchcock, 1945), Red River (Hawks, 1948), and Some like it Hot (Wilder, 1959). It has more best picture Oscars to its name than any of its rivals, including Rebecca (Hitchcock, 1940), The Apartment (Wilder, 1960), West Side Story (Wise, 1961), Tom Jones (Richardson, 1963), and Midnight Cowboy (Schlesinger, 1969). The fact that they are all independent productions goes to show that the founders of United Artists seem to have realised at an early stage that a certain level of artistic freedom is required in order to produce art.

Samuel Goldwyn

Having first joined United Artists as an independent producer in 1925, Samuel Goldwyn bought the United Artists studio in 1955 for a reported $1.92 million, outbidding Pickford by $400.000.

Purchased in 1980 by Warner Brothers, it was commonly known as the Warner Hollywood studio(complementing their headquarters in Burbank).

In the meantime it finally became a registered historical landmark, but was sold once more in 1999, and is since named simply, The Lot, with Warner Brothers as a tenant, continuing to use its post-production facilities.