Just Making Movies: Company Directors on the Studio System, by Ronald L. Davis
Review by Jeffrey M. Anderson
Buy Just Making Movies: Company Directors on the Studio System, Ronald L. Davis
At first I only wanted to read this book, which collects
interviews with twelve old-time studio film directors, for one reason: Budd
Boetticher. Boetticher is the only one of the twelve who could be considered an
auteur, or a filmmaker with a personal
style that translated from film to film. Most of the guys in this book made
very few classics between them, and certainly no films with any personal style.
But as I flipped through the other interviews, it occurred
to me that there's something to be said for a studio director who showed up on
time, did his work and got movies made. Even directors with the most boring
output at least have interesting stories to tell; they've met and worked with
some of the greatest talent of the 20th century. And stories by Frederick de
Cordova (Bedtime for Bonzo), Gordon
Douglas (Them!), Michael Gordon (Cyrano
de Bergerac), Henry Hathaway (Kiss
of Death), Henry Koster (The
Bishop's Wife), Arthur Lubin (Hold
That Ghost), Joseph Newman (This
Island Earth), Irving Rapper (Now,
Voyager), Vincent Sherman (All
Through the Night), George Sidney (Annie
Get Your Gun) and Charles Walters (Easter
Parade) all have something worthy to say.
Sherman in particular says something quite moving:
"I would have loved to have done Casablanca. I would have loved to have done Treasure of the Sierra Madre, but I didn't get those. I don't think that there
was any concerted effort not to give me top pictures. It's just the way the
schedule worked out. It's true that if you did a successful picture, you could
demand a little bit more in the next one. I was always what I thought was a
pretty good company man."
Though Boetticher's crusty interview is the best in the book,
I was embarrassed to realize that these other guys had something to teach that
was just as valuable as anything Boetticher had to say. And in some cases, more
so.
April 29, 2005
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