Mark Griffin (36 page)

Although van Gogh’s fiery, volatile temperament could not have been more dissimilar from Minnelli’s dreamy passivity, spiritually the two would appear to be working from the same palette. Van Gogh’s
Wildflowers
and
Starry Night
radiate with an almost tangible electricity and intensity of feeling, and Minnelli’s
Lust for Life
is alive with the same kind of passion, sensuousness, and mastery of color.

The ultimate nonconformist in Minnelli’s long line of iconoclasts, van Gogh was profoundly talented, operatically tortured, and, like the director, chronically frustrated by his attempts to communicate his artistic intentions to others. “It is practically always so painful for me to speak to other people,” van Gogh wrote to his brother Theo in 1883.
²
Instead, he communicated on canvas, and the messages he left behind are hopeful, mystical, and heart breaking.

Virtually all of Minnelli’s movies had been influenced by painting to some degree or patterned after the works of specific artists.
Meet Me in St. Louis
paid tribute to the paintings of Thomas Eakins.
An American in Paris
and its climactic ballet allowed Vincente to honor the Impressionists. A Minnelli movie might contain a reference to Goya or a nod to Caravaggio. But never before had Vincente been so determined to present “art”—spelled out in reverent capital letters—on the screen. In a complete reversal from his calamitous approach to
Kismet
, Vincente’s total immersion in van Gogh’s story proved contagious. Despite the objectionable presence of CinemaScope (which practically screamed lurid spectacle), everyone involved sensed that this would be an inspired, faithful account of the last twelve years of van Gogh’s life. No
Naked Maja
was this
Lust for Life
.

Pointing to the success of John Huston’s Toulouse-Lautrec biopic,
Moulin Rouge
, Minnelli and Houseman sold Dore Schary on the idea of adapting Irving Stone’s semifictional 1934 van Gogh biography for the screen. And not a moment too soon. As a property under option,
Lust for Life
had been languishing on the studio shelf since 1946.

“They were in danger of losing their option,” screenwriter Norman Corwin recalls:

Even as a secondary source, Irving Stone’s biography posed problems. Metro’s legal department had discovered that the studio’s ten-year option would expire in nine months. Stone was unwilling to grant an extension, so the race was on. From casting to cutting,
Lust for Life
would be an example of grace under pressure.

Two years earlier, Kirk Douglas’s production company (the Bryna Company) had announced that Jean Negulesco would direct Douglas in its own van Gogh biopic. That project never materialized, and when Schary green-lighted
Lust for Life
, it was clear that the Russian-born Douglas, who bore an uncanny resemblance to Dutchman van Gogh, was ideal casting.

Van Gogh’s friend and rival Paul Gauguin had been convincingly played by George Sanders in
The Moon and Sixpence
in 1942. However, in bandying about casting suggestions for
Lust for Life
, Minnelli and Houseman decided that their Gauguin should be earthier, more physically imposing, and exhibit a smoldering sexuality. Paging Anthony Quinn. The Mexican-born actor had already copped an Oscar for his role as Marlon Brando’s brother in
Viva Zapata
. After casting Quinn as Gauguin, Houseman dubbed him “perfect in looks and manner,” though the actor’s seemingly endless Method preparations would later exasperate the producer.

If Minnelli had lost the battle to shoot
Brigadoon
on location, he was not going to make the same mistake twice. Director and producer convinced the studio that in the name of authenticity, a film biography of an immortal European artist must be photographed in a more naturalistic setting than Stage 29. Miraculously, permission was granted.

With production on
Lust for Life
limited to basically five months, the shooting schedule redefined breakneck. Minnelli landed in France on a Saturday and cameras were expected to roll on Monday. The rigors of commanding an ambitious, on-location production—and one barreling ahead at warp speed—immediately agitated Minnelli. According to Houseman, even before shooting a single frame, the director was already “exhausted, harassed and vile-tempered.”
⁴

In some ways, the whiplash-inducing pace of the picture harkened back to Minnelli’s frenzied days at Radio City Music Hall. Or perhaps even further back than that. As the crew dashed from one location to the next with an array of costumes at the ready, Vincente likened the experience to “the travels of a third-rate repertory company.”
⁵
It was the Minnelli Brothers Mighty Dramatic Company all over again, and everything Vincente had learned about redressing reality back in Delaware would prove invaluable as the company sped from one picturesque location to another.

As Minnelli later revealed, “Houseman and I had the script but when we saw the real settings, we changed everything in response to them”: “We went to Paris, Arles, St. Remy and Belgium. We shot in Amsterdam and in the actual coal mine in which van Gogh worked.”
⁶
Along the way, Minnelli, Freddie Young (later to become David Lean’s cinematographer of choice), and Russell Harlan captured some breathtaking images: Upon his arrival in Arles, Vincent throws open his shutters to reveal an orchard with row upon row of fruit trees in full bloom. Van Gogh, sporting a straw hat rimmed with illuminated candles, captures the shimmering waters in
Starry Night over the Rhone
, the fierce autumn winds stirring up the crimson-colored brushwood—and Vincent’s restless psyche.

On location, Minnelli prepares Pamela Brown for a scene in
Lust for Life
. PHOTO COURTESY OF PHOTOFEST

When he wasn’t protesting the rearrangement of his script, Norman Corwin had an opportunity to witness much of the shooting in progress as well as to observe collaborators Houseman and Minnelli up close. “I knew John Houseman from the Mercury Theatre days. He had a patrician quality. He had very expressive nostrils and he used them to good effect. An unusual intellect. Perhaps the best intellect of any film producer of his time, in fact.”
⁷

While Corwin remembered Minnelli as an “impeccable” director, he also glimpsed the overworked auteur in a less composed moment. “I would say Vincente was punctilious to a point of distress at times. For example, I heard him roundly ball out a routine actor who was playing a small part. My sympathy is always with the man who is trying. This poor guy shriveled under Minnelli’s attack. But then I realized that Minnelli was a perfectionist. If something didn’t go well, he looked around for a target to blame.” As for Minnelli’s rapport with the French-Anglo crew, “he drove them half-mad with his exacting and often unreasonable demands,” Houseman noted. Usually they caved into the director’s requests but when Vincente ordered that a standing bridge be razed and then reconstructed elsewhere, they drew the line.
⁸

Just as there had been a friendly rivalry between van Gogh and Gauguin, so there seemed to be some professional competitiveness between the actors inhabiting those roles. “Ever since I’ve arrived here, I’ve been hearing nothing but how great Kirk is,” Quinn lamented to Minnelli. “I’m beginning to feel like Gauguin must have felt when he came to Arles.”
⁹
It wasn’t long before Quinn claimed to be communicating with the spirit of Gauguin, who made a point of letting the actor know he was holding the paintbrushes all wrong.

Minnelli’s leading man had some hair-raising encounters of his own. “I evidently have a marked resemblance to van Gogh,” says Kirk Douglas:

Is it any wonder that Minnelli couldn’t wait to get to
Lust for Life
?
An American in Paris
aside, this was Vincente’s first real opportunity to explore the life of a painter. Since he had picked up Whistler’s biography in Paul Stone’s studio, he had been completely intrigued by the lives of the artists he idolized. Even as he was being proclaimed the master of the Broadway musical, Minnelli had admitted to a reporter that he “would rather paint one good canvas than have his name above the show title of the smash hit of the season.”
¹¹
Through van Gogh’s story, Minnelli would be allowed to say what making art meant to him.

In
Lust for Life
, the creative process offers refuge from disappointing relationships, spurned affections, and a world that would never really understand. But the struggle for artistic expression is actually a secondary theme in
Lust for Life
. The main theme is loneliness and social alienation, a leitmotif Minnelli would turn to repeatedly throughout the ’50s. In addition to van Gogh’s story, there would be Sinatra’s conflicted novelist in
Some Came Running
and John Kerr’s frustrated folk singer in
Tea and Sympathy
. Simply by being who they are, Vincente’s characters are in immediate opposition to the world around them. The eventual exile that a Minnelli protagonist endures is often self-imposed, as each extraordinary misfit instinctively knows that he or she must ultimately turn inward to attempt to heal themselves and achieve some kind of life-altering liberation.

Table for One: Kirk Douglas as lonely outcast Vincent van Gogh in
Lust For Life
. PHOTO COURTESY OF PHOTOFEST

It’s no accident that iconic pictures about rebels, loners, and mavericks emerged in the 1950s, a period described by screenwriter Jay Presson Allen as “an era of such towering dullness.”
¹²
It’s also no accident that Vincente Minnelli would be pressed into service to direct movies about people who were naturally nonconformist. Who better to explore the world of the extra - ordinary outcast than a man whose very being had been in question all the way from Delaware, Ohio, to the Director’s Guild of America?

Despite some last-minute studio tinkering (including the removal of several scenes that Minnelli had begged Dore Schary to retain), the director was confident that
Lust for Life
contained some of his best work. “I didn’t need any critics to tell me it was a great film,” Minnelli boasted. “It looked and smelled right. We’d pulled it off.”
¹³
Even if he didn’t need the critical reassurance, it was there. “Two hours of quite shattering and exciting entertainment,” raved Alan Dent in the
Illustrated London News
. “Hollywood’s most profound exploration of the artistic life,” said
Newsweek
. “One of the most beautiful films ever made,” gushed the
New York Times
.