(The long, colorful career of Walter Wanger (1894-1968) is...)
The long, colorful career of Walter Wanger (1894-1968) is one of Hollywood's greatest untold stories. An intellectual and a socially conscious movie executive who produced provocative message movies and glittering romantic melodramas, Wanger's career started at Paramount studios in the 1920s and led him to work at virtually every major studio as either a contract producer or an independent. He produced a series of American film classics, including Queen Christina, Stagecoach, Foreign Correspondent, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, as well as a few notable flops, such as Cleopatra. This comprehensive biography brings to life a distinctive film personality and offers a new appreciation of the role of the producer in the history of American cinema.
My Life with Cleopatra: The Making of a Hollywood Classic
(Cleopatra faced countless problems during its filming and...)
Cleopatra faced countless problems during its filming and production: passionate casting disputes, broken contracts, a costly re-location from London to Rome, an emergency tracheotomy for its star, Elizabeth Taylor, scandal-ridden gossip surrounding relationships on set, and a budget of $2 million that ballooned to final costs of $44 million. Legendary producer Walter Wanger recalls the drama that occurred both on and off the set, including the incredible obstacles he had to overcome and the exhilaration of producing a cinematic triumph. A revealing story about Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton’s tempestuous romance and an insightful filmmaker’s journal, now back in print for the 50th anniversary of Cleopatra’s release, My Life with Cleopatra shares the true story of the relationship and film that enthralled the world. “I have been told by responsible journalists that there was more world interest in Cleopatra, which I produced, and in its stars—Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, and Rex Harrison—than in any event of 1962.” —Walter Wanger
I'M IN MOOD FOR LOVE Lyric and Melody by Jimmy McHugh and Dorothy Fields George Raft and Alice Faye in the Walter Wanger Production "Every Night at Eight"
(Sheet music 1935 5p. 12.00x9.00. Frances Langford,Patsy K...)
Sheet music 1935 5p. 12.00x9.00. Frances Langford,Patsy Kelly the 3 Radio Rogues and Harry Barris A Paramount Picture.
History is made at night (1937) Charles Boyer, Jean Arthur - Region 2 compatible Import
(Find History is made at night (1937) Charles Boyer, Jean ...)
Find History is made at night (1937) Charles Boyer, Jean Arthur - Region 2 compatible Import at Amazon.com Movies & TV, home of thousands of titles on DVD and Blu-ray.
Walter Wanger was an American film producer active in filmmaking from the 1910s to the turbulent production of Cleopatra in 1963. Wanger developed a reputation as an intellectual and a socially conscious movie executive who produced provocative message movies and glittering romantic melodramas.
Background
Wanger was born Walter Feuchtwanger in San Francisco, and pronounced "Wanger" to rhyme with "danger". He was the son of Stella (Stettheimer) and Sigmund Feuchtwanger, who were from German Jewish families that had emigrated to the United States in the nineteenth century.
Education
Wanger was from a non-observant Jewish family, and in later life attended Episcopalian services with his wife. In order to assimilate into American society, his mother altered the family name simply to Wanger in 1908. The Wangers were well-connected and upper middle class, something which later differentiated Wanger from the other Jewish film moguls who came from more ordinary backgrounds.
Wanger attended Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, where he developed an interest in Amateur theatre. After leaving Dartmouth, Wanger became a professional theatrical producer in New York City where he worked with figures such as the influential British manager Harley Granville-Barker and the Russian actress Alla Nazimova.
Career
Hollywood was proud ol him, and a little protective. Observing Wanger one day in 1932, Morris Safier (a small-time bustler) remarked: “Mr. Wanger is certainly a very fine gentleman and while I hope I am wrong for his sake, it is my opinion that he has too much class for this gang around here and I doubt very' much whether they even understand his English.”
A case can be made that Wanger only qualified for the men’s club in 1951. That was when he shot Jennings Lang in or close to the groin. Lang was an agent, above all the agent to Wanger’s wife, actress Joan Bennett, and the producer had some reason to think that affections were being alienated. The bullet put Wanger in prison for a spell, but it seems to have impressed Ms. Bennett. And prison moved the educated man: he came away inspired to make a picture advocating prison reform. Still, anger was one of the boys bv then, a trusted con, a guy who could believe in making Cleopatra (not quite honorary degree material).
Cleopatra was a project Wanger had nursed for fortv years and that, between 1958 and 1963, he brought laboriously to life. It was his dream; since seeing A Place in the Sun, he had imagined Elizabeth Taylor in the lead. Wanger published a hilarious account of My Life with Cleopatra, which shows Hollywood’s confusion at the time. No one man could be held to blame for the monstrous swelling of the budget. It was as if, in its death throes, Hollywood wished to demonstrate how' it had always been administered by incompetent men. Wanger’s presence eventually proved sacrificial. He w'as at that time an independent producer who hired himself out to Fox to make the movie. He survived the resignation of director Rouben Mamoulian, the wholesale recasting and rewriting, Tavlor’s London illness, the miserable Pinewood weather, even the paparazzi-haunted romance between his Antony and Cleopatra. It was late in a very long day that Fox dismissed him and Darryl Zanuck arrived to cut off all loose ends. Although technically fired. Wanger could not be denied a credit, and thus his name fronts this monument to expensive dullness, a dream rendered null by misapplied resources. And even at the end of his career, the “thoughtful” Wanger seemed short of real cinematic judgment. The one man on Cleopatra wrho might have made it spectacular w'as Mamoulian. Manldewicz, bv contrast, was a forlorn resort to order and respectability. And vet here is Wanger’s comment on the “difficulties” that Mamoulian posed to the smooth running of the Fox zoo:
“Rouben is an Armenian w'lio is verv set in his ways but he has great integrity. He cannot tolerate not knowing what is going on, he doesn’t like interference, and he doesn’t like to be ‘pushed’ as Rogell one of many studio herd-riders is ‘pushing’ him. He takes great pride in his artistry. Like many directors, he fancies himself an expert on the entire art of cinema. He considers himself a cameraman and is not always tactful about speaking out."
Mamoulians films amply justify such confidence, and it is proof ofWanger’s limitations that he could not recognize that, even though My Life with Cleopatra is littered with references to his own vast experience and achievement. Wangers record is good, but hit and miss; and the hits coincide with directors of exceptional talent. Time leaves producers as stranded as Ozymandias.
Wanger worked in the theatre, served in the First World War, and was on Woodrow Wilsons Peace Mission before, in 1921, he joined Paramount as a purchaser of material and talent. He claimed to have brought Valentino to the studio for The Sheik, to have bought the rights to Beau Geste, and to have insisted that the studio film Dreiser’s An American Tragedy (no wonder he liked A Place in the Sun).
He took a holiday in the theatre, but returned to Paramount as manager in charge of production and was responsible for, among others. Applause (Mamoulians first film). Between 1929 and 1934, he held executive positions at Columbia and MGM where he produced a loftv political allegory, Gabriel Over the White House Gregory La Cava), and Garbo in Queen Christina Mamoulian) and it was then, with a third period at Paramount, that he began to function consistently as a producer: The President Vanishes (William Wellman); Even/ Night at Eight (Raoul Walsh); Private Worlds ( La Cava), which starred Joan Bennett; Mary Burns. Fugitive (35, William K. Howard); and The Trail of the Lonesome Pine ( Henry Hathaway).
He left Paramount for United Artists and produced a string of interesting pictures; You Only Live Once ( Fritz Lang); History Is Made at Night ( Frank Borzage); Standhi (Tay Garnett); Blockade (William Dieterle), a sententious parable about the Spanish Civil War; Trade Winds ( Garnett); Algiers ( John Cromwell), Hedy Lamarr’s American debut; Eternally Yours (Garnett); Stagecoach (John Ford); Foreign Correspondent (Alfred Hitchcock); 7he Long Voyage Home (Ford), that strange rehearsal of deep-focus photography by Gregg Toland; and Sundown (Hathaway).
In 1941, Wanger and Joan Bennett married. He was president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Apparently at his peak, he moved to Universal and to smaller fry: Squadron (Arthur Lubin) and Maria Montez and Sabu in Arabian Nights (John Rawlins). With his wife and Fritz Lang he formed Diana Productions, who mi ide Scarlet Street (Lang) and Secret Beyond the Door (Lang). But his other films at Universal were more conventional: Gung Ho!
(Ray Enright); Salome, Where She Danced (Charles Lamont); the excellent Canyon Passage (Jacques Tourneur); Smash-Up (Stuart Ileisler); The Lost Moment (Martin Gabel), a misguided and slow rendering of The Aspern Papers; and Tap Boots (48, George Marshall).
He left Universal in 1948 and free-lanced for small companies: the Ingrid Bergman Joan of Arc (Victor Fleming) for RKO; Tulsa (Heisler) for Eagle Lion; and Reign of Terror (Anthony Mann). He produced his wife in The Reckless Moment (Max Ophuls) for Columbia, and not long afterwards served some three months in prison. W hen he emerged, he made Riot in Cell Block 11 (Don Siegel), out of social conscience, and The Adventures of Hajji Baba (54, Don Weis), out of cell daydreams perhaps. Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Siegel) was his last really interesting film. But in 1958 he had great success with I Want to Live (Robert Wise), which won an Oscar for Susan Hayward star ol Canyon Passage, Smash-Up. The Lost Moment, Tap Roots, and Tulsa.
After that, he made Cleopatra, final cost not much short of $40 million. Cleopatra had many handicaps, including Wanger s faith that immense vulgar spectacle could be harnessed to distinguished psychological case histories that these gods could talk. Whereas, in smaller films like Scarlet Street and The Reckless Moment Wanger had seen the eloquence of fallen angels.
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Connections
Wanger married silent film actress Justine Johnstone in 1919. They divorced in 1938 and in 1940 he married Joan Bennett to whom he remained married until their divorce in 1965. They had two daughters, Stephanie (born 1943) and Shelley Antonia (born 1948), and Wanger adopted Bennett's daughter, Diana, by her marriage to John Fox. In 1950, Bennett signed with MCA agent Jennings Lang.