Background
Hunter, Ross was born on May 6, 1926 in Cleveland. Son of Isadore and Anna (Rosen) Fuss.
Hunter, Ross was born on May 6, 1926 in Cleveland. Son of Isadore and Anna (Rosen) Fuss.
Master of Arts, Western Reserve University, 1942.
Hunter is famous for being the top producer at Universal, not just Sirk’s best patron, but the driving force behind some of the best melodramas and romances of that decade. But he was more than that. He had an earlier career, in the mid forties, as an actor in B pictures—things like Louisiana Hay ride (44, Charles Barton), A Guy, a Gal and a Pal (45, Budd Boetticher), Hit the Hay (46, Del Lord). When he Hopped, he went away and taught school for a few years before returning to Universal as an associate producer.
Universal then was the last walled city in old Hollywood, a place famous for dotty adventures and its stable of young talent. He learned his trade as the associate producer on a group of authentic entertainments: Flame of Araby (51, Charles Lamont), a really gorgeous desert adventure, with Jeff Chandler and Maureen O’Hara; Steel Town (52, George Sherman); Untamed Frontier (52, Hugo Fregonese); Son of Ali Baba (52, Kurt Neumann), with Tony Curtis and Piper Laurie; The Duel at Silver Creek (52, Don Siegel); The Battle at Apache Pass (52, Sherman).
He was promoted to producer and that’s when he and Sirk really took off. but it was always mixed in with other directors: All I Desire (53, Sirk); Tumbleweed (53, Nathan Juran); Take Me to Town (53, Sirk); Magnificent Obsession (54); The Yellow Mountain (54, Jesse Hibbs); Taza, Son of Cochise (54, Sirk); Naked Alibi (54, Jerry Hopper); Captain Lightfoot (55, Sirk); The Spoilers (55, Hibbs);
All That Heaven Allows (56, Sirk); Battle Hymn (57, Sirk); Tammy and the Bachelor (57, Joseph Pevney); Interlude (57, Sirk); My Man Godfrey (57, Henry Koster); This Happy Feeling (58, Blake Edwards); The Restless Years (58, Helmut Kautner); A Stranger in My Arms (59. Kautner); Imitation of Life (59, Sirk).
Sirk retired, and Helmut Kautner was no replacement, but Ross Hunter carried on, with Doris Day and Sandra Dee as his new motors: Pillow Talk (59, Michael Cordon); Portrait in Black (60, Gordon); Midnight Lace (60, David Miller); Back Street (61, Miller); Flower Drum Song (61, Koster); Tammy Tell Me True (61. Harry Keller); If a Man Answers (62, I lenrv Levin); The Thrill of It All (63, Norman Jewison); Tammy and the Doctor (63, Keller); The Chalk Garden (64, Ronald Neame); I'd Rather Be Rich (64, Jack Smight); Madame X (66, David Lowell Rich)—which really is the end of its genre’s line.
There were a few more years left in movies: Thoroughly Modern Millie (67, George Roy Hill); Airport (70, George Seaton), a new kind of genre and a smash hit; Lost Horizon (73, Charles Jarrott), proof that you can go to the remake well too often. After that, there were a few years in TV: The Li ves of Jenny Dolan (75, Jerrv Jameson); Arthur Hailey's The Moneychangers (76. Boris Sagal); A Family Upside Down (78, Rich); Suddenly, Love (78, Stuart Margolin); The Best Place to Be (79, Miller).
It was Douglas Sirk who said Ross Hunter was “like iron.” Take Magnificent Obsession (54). Hunter, an established producer but only just, came to Sirk and said that the studio, Universal, had some availability with Jane Wyman. Sirk was interested. And then Hunter gave him the Lloyd C. Douglas novel Magnificent Obsession to read. Sirk couldn’t get anywhere with it. So Hunter gave him a short treatment of the movie John Stahl had made from the same book in 1935, with Irene Dunne. Now Sirk got it. He liked it. He could see what he wanted to do with it. That’s fine, said Hunter, but lie knew the way Sirk's mind began to go gloomy. So here was the iron. “Just keep the ending happy,” said Hunter.