The film’s overriding fetishism makes it clear that Hughes truly did have a very different picture in mind than anything Hawks would have made, and the result
confirmed Hawks’s belief that his intermittent friend had no talent as a director: “My idea of a good director is a man who chooses his own story and works on it, and casts his own picture and does everything about it, and he didn’t do that, you know.”
It took Hawks no more than a week to land a new film, whereas it had taken its producer nearly twenty-two years to set it up.
Sergeant York
had been a passion of Jesse Lasky’s ever since he watched from his Fifth Avenue office window on May 22, 1919, as the war hero Alvin York was showered with confetti by the population of New York City; Howard Hawks simply stepped into the
breach when his departure from
The Outlaw
freed him to fill it. Not only was Hawks ready for this inspirational story of a Tennessee mountain man who overcame his religious objections to serve in the army and become famous by capturing 132 German soldiers; with war spreading in Europe, the public was also ready for it. As Helen Buchalter of the
Washington Daily News
noted the day after the film’s
dignitary-studded premiere in the nation’s capital on August 1, 1941,
Sergeant York
hit the screen “at the precise moment when the American frame of mind is ripe to receive it.” By becoming available at the critical moment, Hawks walked into the biggest hit of his career.
Lasky, of course, had given Hawks his first job in the industry, in the Famous Players–Lasky property department, during the
twenty-year-old’s summer vacation from Cornell, and had employed him again at Paramount as a story executive before Hawks became a director. Upon witnessing the extraordinary outpouring of emotion for York in 1919, Lasky had spent the next two days trying to convince York to star in a motion picture version of his life story.
Lasky was not the only showman who tried to make hay from York’s sudden
fame. Florenz Ziegfeld had wanted him to team up with Will Rogers in a folksy, inspirational sketch for his stage extravaganza, and Lee Shubert had offered to feature him in a revue. Despite his genuine need for money, York had categorically refused these and all other commercial proposals, stating, “Me, I don’t allow Uncle Sam’s uniform for sale.”
Ten years later, after the arrival of sound
films, Lasky once again approached York and was again turned down. Squeezed out of his job at Paramount in 1932, the once great executive soon became a pathetically marginal figure in the industry, losing his house and falling heavily into debt. In the winter of 1939–40, with the outbreak of war in Europe, it occured to Lasky that he might be able to prey upon York’s patriotic sentiments as a way
of finally bringing him around. The producer received no replies to his numerous letters and wires, so in February 1940, Lasky flew to Nashville and made the three-hour drive to Pall Mall, Tennessee, to court the man in person. The recalcitrant York, who had recently opened a modest Bible school, reacted coolly, but at least he didn’t turn his guest down cold—partly because, for the first time,
Lasky was not proposing that York play himself on-screen.
When Lasky returned two weeks later with a prepared contract, York wouldn’t sign. Undaunted, Lasky continued to cajole the principled man, and when he came back a third time with a simpler contract, York, citing the need to combat Hitler as the reason, finally signed it, on March 21, 1940, in the old state house in Nashville in the presence
of Governor Prentiss Cooper. York would receive fifty thousand dollars and a sliding percentage of the gross starting at 4 percent after the picture grossed three million dollars and growing to 8 percent after nine million dollars, with proceeds going to the York Bible School. Lasky announced that the picture, which would probably be filmed in Technicolor for RKO release, would downplay the
war theme and instead be a “document for fundamental Americanism.”
Still in financial straits, Lasky had to borrow in order to pay York the first half of his advance, as well as to wrap up control of three essential York-related properties:
Sergeant York And His People
, by Sam K. Cowan,
Sergeant York: Last of The Long Hunters
, by Tom Skeykill, and
Sergeant York: His Own Life Story and War Diary
, edited by Skeykill.
RKO quickly cooled on what executives envisioned would be an expensive production, so Lasky started his hunt for studio backing at the top. MGM’s Louis B. Mayer was enthusiastic but, as he had done with David O. Selznick on
Gone with the Wind
, demanded a heavy price for his participation. Not wishing to lose control and a sizable share of any profits, Lasky weighed his other
options, immediately ruling out Paramount, which had dumped him, as well as Universal, 20th Century–Fox, and Columbia, where various personality conflicts existed between him and top executives. With few possibilities left, he went to Warner Bros., where the ultrapatriotic Harry Warner prevailed upon his brother Jack to make the deal. The studio paid
Lasky $40,000 for the written material, gave
York his second $25,000, and agreed to an $88,500 producer’s salary as well as to paying Lasky 20 percent of the rentals after $1.6 million domestic and $150,000 foreign. After $2.5 million in rentals was reached, Lasky’s share would increase to 25 percent.
Delighted that his perseverance had paid off so handsomely, Lasky returned once more to Tennessee, this time in the company of the writers
Harry Chandlee and Julien Josephson. A veteran screenwriter, Chandlee was chosen partly because he had spent part of his youth near the Tennessee-Virginia border and had written a 1915 picture,
A Magdalene of the Hills
, that evinced knowledge of mountain folk. For ten days, the Hollywood men interviewed locals, scoured back issues of newspapers, and talked with former Governor Roberts of Tennessee,
who had performed the Yorks’ wedding ceremony. After exercising “considerable persuasion,” Lasky convinced York to give them a thorough look at the love letters York had written to his sweetheart, Gracie, while overseas. York himself entertained them by staging a down-home turkey shoot before their departure in late April.
Prodded by Warners’ and Lasky’s desire to begin production before year’s
end, Chandlee and Abem Finkel, who replaced Josephson, handed in a 105-page, scene-by-scene treatment in mid-July. Studio enthusiasm for
York
was high; Robert Buckner, an intelligent writer and valued story editor, advised production chief Hal Wallis that the film could emerge as a
Mr. Deeds Goes to War
. Implicit in this view of the project was the expectation that Gary Cooper would play the lead.
Cooper was the only actor Lasky could envision in the role, but landing him posed a major problem. Cooper was under contract to Sam Goldwyn, Lasky’s former brother-in-law, and the two men had been on bad terms for twenty-five years, since Lasky had pushed Goldwyn, then Samuel Goldfish, his treasurer and film salesman, out of his company. Furthermore, Goldwyn had just loaned Cooper to Warner Bros.
for
Meet John Doe
, and Jack Warner was certain he wouldn’t be able to get him a second time, as he was then ranked as the number-five box-office name in America, after Gable, Garbo, Deanna Durbin, and Errol Flynn. Goldwyn, however, coveted Warners’ biggest star, Bette Davis, for his upcoming adaptation of
The Little Foxes
. Warner made it a policy never to loan Davis out, but he made his one and
only exception in this case, and the two players were exchanged in a direct swap.
Unexpectedly, Cooper himself was against it. Approaching his fortieth birthday, he was wary of playing a famous and younger man (York was thirty-one at the time of his exploits) and was frankly scared of the demands
the role would make on him. “In screen biographies,” the actor opined, “dealin’ with remote historical
characters, some romantic leeway is okay. But York’s alive and I don’t think I can do justice to him. He’s too big for me … he covers too much territory.” Throwing a monkey wrench into their plans, he gave Warner Bros. and Lasky a flat “no” when first approached. Lasky kept working on him, however, and in August brought York to Hollywood for a brief visit to meet the actor, during which they
spoke of virtually nothing but hunting. To generate publicity, Lasky variously announced that Cooper was the only movie star York liked or even knew about and that one of the conditions of his deal was that Cooper play him (the two looked not at all alike, and York sported a trim little moustache). Cooper began to weaken, later saying, “What got me to change my mind was York, who wanted me to do
the picture. Even then I wasn’t convinced. When we met I realized we had a few things in common. We were both raised in the mountains—Tennessee for him, Montana for me—and we learned to ride and shoot as a natural part of growin’ up.”
Warner Bros. announced Cooper for the lead in September. But still without a director or final script, the studio privately hedged its bets, considering both James
Stewart and Henry Fonda, although neither was under contract to the studio; as late as November 15, Ronald Reagan did a screen test for the role.
A great deal of similar skirmishing went on concerning the appropriate director. In August, Lasky approached Goldwyn’s top director, William Wyler, but he was in New York preparing for
The Little Foxes
and, while claiming interest, begged off until
he could see a finished screenplay. Wallis’s first choice was Victor Fleming, but he was already preparing
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
at MGM. Henry Hathaway was tied up at Paramount, Henry Koster had obligations at Universal, and after giving consideration to Norman Taurog and Henry King, Jack Warner personally wooed King Vidor in November, to no avail.
The hoped-for December 2 start date had come
and gone when Lasky learned that Hawks was out of a job and available. Wallis, who had happily avoided working with Hawks in the five years since
Ceiling Zero
, reluctantly agreed to allow Lasky to offer the script to the director, principally because he knew that Hawks’s participation would virtually guarantee the willing cooperation of Gary Cooper, who was still hemming and hawing despite his
commitment to the project. The initial problem, however, was that Hawks found the Chandlee-Finkel script “bad.” In his self-serving account of his initial meeting with Lasky, Hawks claimed to have told the producer,
“Look, close your door, and tell the secretary no calls, and tell me why the hell you bought this story.” Lasky proceeded to relate the drama he wished to film, something Hawks found
at total variance with the screenplay he had read. “Jesse,” Hawks said, “I’ll make the picture if it’s O.K. with you that I just do the story you told me.” Startled, Lasky immediately agreed.
The way Hawks always told it, he also promised to deliver Gary Cooper, even though, by this point, the star would have had serious problems backing out of his agreement. The story is worth relating, however,
in that it illustrates both Hawks’s egocentrism and his obsession with getting the upper hand over studio executives in general, and Hal Wallis in particular. Hawks said, “I called Cooper, and I said, ‘I just talked to Lasky. Didn’t he give you your first job?’ Coop said yes. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘he’s broke, he’s got the shakes, he needs a shave, and he’s got a story that I don’t think would hurt
you to do, or me.’ He said, ‘I’ll come over and talk to you.’ And he came over, and he said, ‘Where’s that new gun of yours?’ He didn’t want to talk about anything. Finally I said, ‘Look, Coop, we have to talk about this.’ He said, ‘What the hell is there to talk about? You know we’re gonna do it.’ So I said, ‘Well, come with me, and if I say “Isn’t that right, Mr. Cooper,” you say, “Yup.” So we
went over and saw Hal Wallis, and I said, ‘We’ll do the picture for you if you stay out of our way and don’t interfere at all. Isn’t that right, Mr. Cooper?’ ‘Yup.’ ‘We’re gonna change the plot, the story around. Isn’t that right, Mr. Cooper?’ ‘Yup.’ ‘I’m gonna use Johnny Huston as a writer.’ Well, they had to say yes, and we started to work on it.”
Hawks’s deal, dated December 16, paid him $85,000
for twelve weeks’ work; with overages, he ended up receiving nearly $110,000 for directing
Sergeant York
. The picture was also to be billed as “A Howard Hawks Production,” even though Lasky and Wallis would be the producers of record, and Hawks demanded extra time to prepare a new script. To this end, he recruited thirty-four-year-old John Huston, who was then a fast-rising fair-haired boy among
Warner Bros. screenwriters. Hawks had had a passing acquaintance with him since directing his father, Walter, on
The Criminal Code
and was pleased when Wallis teamed him with Howard Koch, the writer of the legendary Orson Welles radio broadcast
The War Of The Worlds
who had made a strong impression with his scripts for
The Sea Hawk
and
The Letter
in his first year in Hollywood. Working practically
round-the-clock, including weekends, through Christmas and the New Year, the two writers delivered eighty-three pages of the rewrite by the end of the first week of January 1941, less than a month before the new start date of February 3.
Embittered over having been taken off the picture, writer Abem Finkel got hold of the new draft and fired off a nine-page memo to Wallis in which he attacked
what was being done to his and Chandlee’s work: “I have, of course, long since despaired of protecting the script from the blundering stupidities of Messrs. Cooper, Hawks, Huston and Koch.” Finkel complained that the simple Tennessee mountain folk were being changed into “background color … for laughs,” that York was being shown drinking when he had actually quit in 1914, that it was now made to
appear as if Gracie “came on” to York, and that Pastor Pile was being turned into a “hell and brimstone shoutin’ preacher” when, in fact, he had written to President Wilson defending York’s conscientious-objector status. “It is my considered opinion,” he wrote, “that you must be on your guard against any ‘bright idea’ on the part of Messrs. Hawks, Huston or Koch if you would avoid a helluva mess.”