Michael Sragow - Victor Fleming: An American Movie Master

V ICTOR FLEMING

V ICTOR FLEMING

An American Movie Master

MICHAEL SRAGOW

Copyright 2013 by Michael Sragow

First published in 2008 by Pantheon Books

The University Press of Kentucky

Scholarly publisher for the Commonwealth, serving Bellarmine University, Berea College, Centre College of Kentucky, Eastern Kentucky University, The Filson Historical Society, Georgetown College, Kentucky Historical Society, Kentucky State University, Morehead State University, Murray State University, Northern Kentucky University, Transylvania University, University of Kentucky, University of Louisville, and Western Kentucky University.

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Library of Congress has cataloged the Pantheon Books edition as follows:

Sragow, Michael.

Victor Fleming: An American Movie Master/Michael Sragow.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references, filmography and index.

ISBN: 978-0-375-40748-2 (alk. paper)

1. Fleming, Victor, 18891949. 2. Motion picture producers and directorsUnited StatesBiography. I. Title. PN1998.3.F62S63 2008

791.4302'32092dc22 2008015255

ISBN 978-0-8131-4441-2 (pbk.: alk. paper)

ISBN 978-0-8131-4443-6 (pdf)

ISBN 978-0-8131-4442-9 (epub)

Book design by Soonyoung Kwon

This book is printed on acid-free paper meeting the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence in Paper for Printed Library Materials.

Manufactured in the United States of America.

Member of the Association of
American University Presses

To my mother, Kaye Sragow, who taught me how to read; to my wife, Glenda Hobbs, who taught me how to write; and to my friend Pauline Kael, who taught me, by example, to trust my most personal reactions to the movies.

Contents

V ICTOR FLEMING

INTRODUCTION

The Real Rhett Butler

A composite between an internal combustion engine hitting on all twelve and a bear cubthats how a screenwriter once described the movie director Victor Fleming. An MGM in-house interviewer discerned that he had the Lincoln type of melancholiaa brooding which enables those who possess it to feel more, understand more. Known for his Svengali-like power and occasional brute force with actors and other collaborators, Fleming was also a generous, down-to-earth family man, even in a sometimes-unfathomable marriage. He was a stand-up guy to male and female friends alikeincluding ex-lovers. He was a mans man who loved going on safari but could also enjoy dressing as Jack to a female screenwriters Jill for a Marion Davies costume party. After he married Lucile Rosson and fathered two daughters, he reserved most of his social life for the Sunday-morning motorcycle gang known as the Moraga Spit and Polish Club. His ambition in the early days of automobiles to become a racetrack champ in the audacious, button-popping Barney Oldfield mold grew into a legend that hed really been a professional race-car driver. (Well, he had, but just for one race.) He was one of Hollywoods premier amateur aviators. Studio bosses trusted him to deliver the goods; many stars and writers loved him.

Victor and Lu Flemings younger daughter, Sally, encouraged me to write this book after she read an appreciation of her father that Id written for The New York Times on the occasion of The Wizard of Ozs sixtieth anniversary in 1999. She asked what led me to take on Fleming as a subject. For decades Id known and loved the half-dozen great movies hed directed before salvaging The Wizard of Oz for MGM and Gone With the Wind for the producer David O. Selznick in 1939movies like The Virginian (1929) and Red Dust (1932) and Bombshell ( 1933). But as I told Sally, Id only recently seen the first film he made after that historic yearDr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1941)and Id been astonished by its candid sexuality and by how much better it was than its reputation. Sally, who sprinkles frank convictions with spontaneous wit, laughed and said, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hydethats the film thats most like Daddy. It didnt take long to find out that Fleming was a man of more than two parts.

In 1939, the MGM publicist Teet Carle, trying to sell Fleming as a subject for feature stories, noted how remarkable it was, even in what we now consider the golden age of Hollywood, for a director to be a man like Fleming who has really lived through experiences. Moviemakers like Fleming, who came of age in the silent era, forged their characters beyond camera range. Andrew Solt, the co-writer of Flemings disastrous final picture, Joan of Arc (1948), told his nephew Andrew Solt, the documentary maker (Imagine), Victor Flemings story is the perfect Hollywood story, from A to Z; it represents the picture business of his time better than anyone elses. What the elder Solt meant, of course, was that Flemings story wasnt merely about the picture businessit was about what men like Fleming brought into the picture business.

Fleming was born on February 23, 1889, in the orange groves of Southern California, and became an auto mechanic, taxi driver, and chauffeur at a time when cars were luxury items and their operators elite specialists. During World War I, he served as an instructor and creator of military training films as well as a Signal Corps cameraman, and after it, Woodrow Wilsons personal cameraman on his triumphant tour of European capitals before the beginning of the Versailles peace conference. Fleming became a friend to explorers, naturalists, race-car drivers, aviators, inventors, and hunters. His life and work are the stuff not just of Hollywood lore but also of American history. It may seem puzzling that he hasnt inspired a full-length biography until now. But he left no paper trail of letters or diaries, and he died on January 6, 1949, before directors had become national celebrities and objects of idolatry.

Long before sound came into the movies, Fleming had mastered his trade, directing Douglas Fairbanks Sr. in two ace contemporary comedies, When the Clouds Roll By (1919) and The Mollycoddle (1920). Fleming was part of the team that perfected Fairbankss persona as the cheerful American man of action, deriving mental and physical health from blood, sweat, and laughs in the open air. The director and the international phenomenon were friends from Flemings early days as a cameraman and Fairbankss as a star. They became merry pranksters on a global scale, whether hanging by their fingers from hurtling railroad cars or turning a round-the-world tour into one of the first full-scale mockumentaries (Around the World in Eighty Minutes). Fleming forever credited Fairbanks with establishing action as the essence of motion pictures. Fairbanks also set his pal an example of the art of self-creation. The son of a New York attorney who abandoned Douglass family in Denver when the boy was five, Fairbanks turned himself into a model of dash and vim. Fleming was born in a tent; his father died in an orange orchard when he was four. But he metamorphosed from a Southern California country boy into a Hollywood powerhouse known for mysterious poetic talent, a courtly yet emotionally and sexually charged way with women, and a macho sagacity that spurred the respect and fellowship of men.