Victor Fleming: An American Movie Master (Screen Classics) (102 page)

447
“Ingrid’s natural talent”: Selznick to Kay Brown, Feb. 6, 1940, Selznick Archive.

447
“We never got around to it”: Victor Saville, National Film Archive program, British Film Institute. He was planning to do Shaw’s
Saint Joan
in a manner close to the stage version of
Joan of Lorraine:
“The style was a treatment of light and close-up leaving it to Shaw and the imagination to provide the scenery.”

448
“I naturally want you”: Anderson to Bergman, April 23, 1945, in Avery,
Dramatist in America.

448
“I’m not making any of this up”:
The New York Times,
Dec. 1, 1946.

448
top box-office attractions: As named by
Boxoffice.

449
“She was the kind of young woman”:
The New York Times Magazine,
Dec. 29, 1946.

449
bored GIs: Adler,
It Ain’t Necessarily So.

450
“that she was the reincarnation”: Hesper Anderson,
South Mountain Road.

450
“Six years ago”:
The New York Times,
Nov. 19, 1946.

450
“She is regarded”:
Variety,
May 9, 1947.

450
Louis Kronenberger:
PM,
Nov. 18, 1946.

450
“a Readers’ Theatre performance”:
New York Journal American,
Dec. 2, 1946. Percy MacKaye wrote a 1907 pageant-like play about Joan of Arc. Julia Marlowe, its star, was forty at the time.

452
“constant search for happiness”: Bernstein,
Walter Wanger.

452
wooed Noël Coward:
The New York Times,
May 27, 1946.

452
“Walter, I could never play”: Wanger to Robert Haggiag, Aug. 18, 1955, Walter Wanger Collection, Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, Wisconsin Historical Society, Madison.

453
“The good doctor”: Steele,
Ingrid Bergman.

453
“Business, business”: Ibid.

453
“was always going off half-cocked”: Davidson,
The Real and the Unreal.

453
“not good enough for you”: Steele,
Ingrid Bergman.

454
“Ingrid, you were magnificent!”: “Ingrid Bergman Had a Dream” is
included
in
Hollywood Album,
a 1947 collection of publicity pieces compiled by Ivy Crane Wilson, Hollywood correspondent for the London
Star.

454
“The white-maned lion”: Steele,
Ingrid Bergman.

455
“You must play Joan”: Bergman and Burgess,
My Story.

455
“Wonders will never cease”: Anderson’s account of the travails of
Joan of Lorraine,
Fleming’s work in New York, and the writing of the script of
Joan of Arc
in California in this chapter are from his 1947 diary, with his papers at the Harry Ransom Center.

455
“This was in my pocket”: Fleming’s three letters to Bergman are all as published in
My Story,
but here, for the first time, put in their correct sequence. The letters are not now with Bergman’s collected papers at Wesleyan University.

456
“wore a simple gray suit”: Dorothy Kilgallen column, Feb. 8, 1947.

456
Wanger was the biggest investor: He also bought out Fleming’s shares after his death. Stressed from his
Joan of Arc
debts, Wanger served a four-month term on a prison farm after shooting Jennings Lang, his wife Joan Bennett’s agent at Music Corporation of America, in a jealous rage in 1951 because he believed they were having an affair. Newspapers decorously reported that Wanger shot Lang in “the groin.” Shortly after that, the radio wit Fred Allen wrote Groucho Marx (in his customary lowercase) on December 27, “There is a rumor around here that because of missing members, mca is going to erect a statue of jennings lang to be called ‘penis de milo.’ this rumor, I might add, is not sweeping the city. there is no handle on it.” (Groucho Marx Papers, Library of Congress.) Wanger lost his clout as a producer after the financial disaster of
Cleopatra
in 1963. He kept developing projects, though, until he died of a heart attack in 1968, age seventy-four.

456
“As poor Victor Fleming used to say”: Wanger to Rank, Jan. 18, 1949, Wanger Collection.

457
“What peasant wears red chiffon?”: Bentley,
Costumes by Karinska.

457
“to better facilitate conferences”: Steele,
Ingrid Bergman.

458
He shot craps: Ibid.

458
“September Song”: Evidently this serenade took place in the restaurant at the Hampshire House, since Anderson recorded that he also saw the producer Peter Cusick there.

458
“Marvelous, just marvelous!”: Steele,
Ingrid Bergman.

458
“I had assumed”: Miller, unpublished memoir.

459
“When we came to the hotel”: Steele,
Ingrid Bergman.

459
“a clean operation”: Spoto,
Notorious.

460
“Joe! Goddamn it”: Steele,
Ingrid Bergman.

461
“Just how long”: Undated, probably April 6, draft of a letter from Anderson to Fleming, Anderson Papers, Harry Ransom Center.

462
“I get so angry”: Bergman and Burgess,
My Story.

464
“four years since you heard”: From Anderson’s pen-script first draft of the
Joan of Arc
script included in his papers at the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress.

464
“a disaster”: Marilyn Horne,
My Life
(New York: Atheneum, 1983).

464
Barnes’s biographer states: Kessler,
Happy Bottom Riding Club.

465
“it was plain”: Laurence Stallings, “The Real Ingrid Bergman Story,”
Esquire,
Aug. 1950.

465
the nettlesome voices: Anderson’s pen-script draft.

465
analogizing her to King David: From 2 Samuel 7:8 (King James Version): “Now therefore so shalt thou say unto my servant David, Thus saith the Lord of hosts, I took thee from the sheepcote, from following the sheep, to be ruler over my people, over Israel.”

466
Joan of Arc: Self Portrait:
“William R. Trask: A Universal Garland,”
Literary Review
(Winter 1957). The article doesn’t quote Trask, a famous translator of his time, but evidently he was the source of a quoted Bergman letter in which she called his book “her Bible, and kept it by her bed” as she prepared for the role of Joan. The National Legion of Decency recommended to Fleming a 1944 book by T. Lawrason Riggs,
Saving Angel: The Truth About Joan of Arc and the Church,
but he relied instead on the Quicherat transcripts.

466
“feel compelled,” “We’ve had no quarrel”:
The New York Times,
July 27, 1947.

467
“I chose him”:
New York Herald Tribune,
Nov. 11, 1948.

468
“My father got out of the car”: Hesper Anderson,
South Mountain Road.

468
“It is a question”: Father Paul Doncoeur’s remarkable “Lettres de Hollywood” written to his Jesuit brothers in Paris from July 21 to the end of November 1947, as used in this chapter, were published in June 1979 in
Cahiers Paul Doncoeur.
Doncoeur came to Hollywood at the recommendations of the Production Code chief, Joseph Breen, and Tom Lewis, Loretta Young’s producer husband, who was a regular at a Jesuit retreat near Los Angeles. He also was used to promote the film to Catholic audiences. Of Fleming, Doncoeur wrote in the Catholic weekly
America
on November 13, 1948: “How often have I seen him on the set, anxious,
his
face drawn, running a fever perhaps, but striving to draw from a scene its maximum of dramatic truth.” Doncoeur died in 1961, age eighty. (Translation by Elizabeth Anthony.)

468
“While no right-minded person”: Quigley to Selznick, Oct. 8, 1946, from the National Legion of Decency file on
Joan of Arc.

469
“was an ambitious and venal tool”:
The New York Times,
Aug. 10, 1947. Doncoeur’s comment, while historically accurate, raised concerns with Devlin. “Evidently the historian in Father Doncoeur refuses to be dominated,” Devlin wrote on August 13 in a letter to his superior, Father Patrick J. Masterson, executive secretary of the National Legion of Decency. Masterson suggested in a letter on September 4 that Devlin look into the possibility of having the Los Angeles archbishop “put him under your paternal guidance and jurisdiction.” But that was not done. Letter, National Legion of Decency file.

470
“Mark Twain’s version”:
New York Herald Tribune,
Nov. 11, 1948.

470
“The whole thing amazes me”: Fleming also arranged a screening of
Gone With the Wind
for Doncoeur, since he had never seen it. Doncoeur found it “mammoth,” but also “downright unendurable. Excess itself.” He wrote that he promised Fleming he would tell him how he felt, but his letters don’t record Fleming’s reaction.

471
“the whole picture, as visualized by you”: Devlin to Fleming, Aug. 22, 1947, National Legion of Decency file. Doncoeur wrote that Devlin “is very proud of the movie
Song of Bernadette,
which 100 million Americans and English loved. ‘I care little what they thought of it in France,’ he says.” Doncoeur also wrote that Devlin told him, “What I want is not historical accuracy; it is the service of the Catholic Church.”

472
“too old and too feminine”: Gordon,
Joan of Arc.

472
“Before beginning”: Doncoeur described Fleming and Bergman on the set on the first day of shooting.

473
“At first, Ruth mentioned,” “I was never perfect”: Spoto,
Notorious.

474
“She’s not superhuman”: Pete Martin, “Big, Beautiful Swede,”
Saturday Evening Post,
Oct. 30, 1948.

474
“Except for
Joan of Arc
”: Truffaut,
Hitchcock/Truffaut.

474
She chalked that comment up:
Times,
Jan. 13, 1971.

474
“a magnificent crane shot”: Stallings, “Real Ingrid Bergman Story.”

474
“Vic Fleming wore himself out”: Bergman and Burgess,
My Story.

475
“I think the pressures”: Ibid.

476
“Brother, she is bulletproof”: Stallings, “Real Ingrid Bergman Story.”

477
“She’s no bovine girl”: Martin, “Big, Beautiful Swede.”

479
“If Ingrid hadn’t insisted”: Anderson to Brown, May 18, 1949, in Avery,
Dramatist in America.
(Alan Anderson adds: “He called her ‘that Swedish bitch’ to the end of his life.” Anderson died in 1959, age seventy.)

479
“England’s Harry”:
Saturday Review,
Dec. 18, 1948.

479
whether her saints had hair: The French historian Régine Pernoud writes in
Joan of Arc and Her Witnesses
that because Cauchon himself was asking the questions that day—March 1, 1431—Joan’s answer was sarcastic and hostile: “It is good to know that they do!” In Fleming’s version, Bergman answers it defensively, not sarcastically. Anderson’s diary entry of October 14, 1947, records that Solt mentioned “giving Joan a bit more comedy.”

480
“That fell apart”:
Globe and Mail
(Toronto), Oct. 25, 1980.

480
“I started on second unit work”: Hoch to John Gallagher, courtesy of Gallagher.

482
“This is May 30, 1431”: Associated Press, Dec. 15, 1947. The reporter Bob Thomas added, “It made a lovely blaze.”

483
“Wotzis about a red-hot feud”: Jimmie Fidler column, Dec. 28, 1947. On January 10, 1948, Erskine Johnson fired back: “Oops, sorry. Ingrid Bergman and director Vic Fleming definitely are not feuding—despite what the Hollywood grapevine may say.”

483
Despite Anderson’s objections: Anderson to Wanger, Jan. 7, 1948: “
Joan of Arc
is a stale, flat, worn handle—with no freshness, no promise of a new slant or any entertainment value. It’s a chapter out of a history assignment which bored the children in the fifth grade.” On January 3, Anderson wrote in his diary, “Seems I’ll have to take my name off it.” Anderson Papers, Harry Ransom Center.