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(from the article "Mamoulian, Rouben") .for the Theatre Guild and made a deep impression in American theatre with his production in 1927 of the American folk play Porgy. He directed a . (www.britannica.....b/a-z/a/90)
Rita turned heads when she starred with Cary Grant in Howard Hawks ' Only Angels Have Wings . Soon she was in great demand and was borrowed by other studios until her part in Rouben Mamoulian 's Blood and Sand with Tyrone Power solidified her new-found stardom . (sweepeabartender.blogspot.com....chive.html)
Opening the series is its most interesting film, 1931's "City Streets," a nifty crime melodrama notable for being based on a story by Dashiell Hammett and for being the second sound film (after the groundbreaking "Applause") by one of the first directors to get the most out of the new medium: Rouben Mamoulian . (www.calendarlive.com....8930.story)
For the first time in the history of the Academy Awards, two actors tied for the top honor. March won his first best actor Academy Award for his dual role in the first sound version of Robert Louis Stevenson's classic. To play Hyde March spent three hours each day disguising his own leading-man good looks behind makeup. He did not, however, rely solely on the heavy makeup which was designed by Wally Westmore and included false teeth, a putty nose, and gorilla-like hair on his head and hands to differentiate the two characters. He used body language and savage posturing to make Hyde horrific and in sharp contrast to the sensitive, gentlemanly Dr. Jekyll . March's performance was widely admired, but later audiences had little opportunity to see it. MGM studios, which had acquired the rights to the movie (directed by Rouben Mamoulian for Paramount), long suppressed the film in favor of their own 1941 version starring Spencer Tracy . (www.britannica.com....le-9397434)
Trivia: For the famous closing shot of Greta Garbo at the prow of the ship, director Rouben Mamoulian had wanted the camera to begin with a long shot, and then, in one unbroken take, gradually dolly in on a two-thirds close-up of Garbo's face, holding on her at the end of the shot. Unfortunately, with the camera's 48mm lens that close to the human face , pores tend to resemble craters on the surface of the moon. Borrowing on aspects of the magic lantern, Mamoulian devised a large, ruler-shaped, glass filter strip that was clear at one end, becoming increasingly more diffused along its length. With this glass filter mounted in front of the lens, as the camera moved in on Garbo, the glass strip was gradually drawn through the filter holder, beginning with the clear end, and ending with the diffused end (close-up), softening Garbo's facial features with more flattering results more (us.imdb.com/title/tt0024481/)
Directed with tongue-in-cheek by veteran film maker Rouben Mamoulian , andwith an Oscar-nominated score by Fox's musical mainstay, Alfred Newman ,THEMARK OF ZORRO was a major studio hit (plans for a sequel were begun, butdropped when it was discovered that Fox only had the rights to the title,THE MARK OF ZORRO ; the name 'Zorro' belonged to another studio, ending anypossibility of a follow-up). (us.imdb.com/title/tt0032762/)
In the late 1920s and '30s the studio added to its roster such stars as Claudette Colbert , Carole Lombard , Marlene Dietrich , Mae West , Gary Cooper , Maurice Chevalier , W.C. Fields, and Bing Crosby and such directors as Ernst Lubitsch , Josef von Sternberg , and Rouben Mamoulian . Although it continued to produce films that were artistically and financially successful, it suffered losses from its chain of theatres during the transition to sound, and Paramount was declared bankrupt in 1933. It was reorganized two years later as Paramount Pictures , Inc., and was soon profitable again. Among the studio's successes from the 1940s and '50s were the satirical comedies of writer-director Preston Sturges e.g., The Lady Eve [1941]), Going My Way (1944), the cynical dramas and comedies of writer-director Billy Wilder Double Indemnity [1944], Sunset Boulevard [1950]), the road comedies of Bob Hope , Bing Crosby , and Dorothy Lamour Road to Zanzibar [1941], Road to Rio [1947]), Shane (1953), Alfred Hitchcock 's Rear Window (1954), and DeMille's remake of The Ten Commandments (1956) (www.britannica.com....le-9058408)
In 2007, studio repertory divisions and film archives around the globe continued to make available an unheralded variety of vintage movies in new film prints and restorations that can only be seen in theaters. New York boasts no fewer than six screens devoted to keeping up with that welcome output and access. With major retrospectives devoted to Max Ophuls, Rouben Mamoulian , Mikhail Kalatozov , and Fritz Lang , 2007 was the repertory year of the moving camera. Mindful as always of cineaste-turned-director Paul Schrader 's observation that "list making is the junk food of criticism," let us nevertheless unwrap this year's 10 most toothsome classic-film-going experiences. (www.nysun.com/article/68712)
Thereās nothing so tantalizing as films that go missing . Truant, uncut versions of shows we revere are all the more enticing. Few send pulses racing like reclaimed pre-codes. Bawdy to begin with, what ecstasies await the retrieval of even more intact prints, such as Library Of Congress staffers discovered when they stumbled across the censor-suppressed Baby Face a few years ago? As I watch Warnerās DVD of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde , the question taunts me surely as those lingering effects from Fredric March ās potion - Is there more? Could there be more? Well, first of all, how much is enough? For most of us, nothing less than every moment exposed before that rolling camera will do. What of Hyde trampling that little kid? Weāve seen stills of it. One turned up in Famous Monsters years ago. Bryan Senn published a shot in his book, Golden Horrors . The trade ad showing it here dates from December 1931. So did they shoot this? Did folks see it? A perhaps-embarrassed Rouben Mamoulian (here with cast and crew at an on-set birthday party) claimed the moment was limited to publicity (greenbriarpictureshows.blogspot.com....chive.html)
The filmās reputation was maintained by way of mouth-watering stills that turned up in late fifties/early sixties publications like Famous Monsters Of Filmland and Castle Of Frankenstein . Few were aware that MGM now owned the negative . I well remember my motherās vivid account of seeing the March version theatrically in 1932. It seemed Iād never share that thrill , for we all assumed it was a lost film. Controversial pioneer archivist Raymond Rohauer unearthed a print during a search at Metro and cleared a single run for a late 1967 tribute to director Rouben Mamoulian , but his was not the first reclamation of Jekyll and Hyde . Once again, it was collector/scholar William K. Everson who led the way with his showing that took place during a regular gathering of The Theodore Huff Film Society . Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was thus reborn among a small group of Manhattan film buffs on March 8, 1966 ā¦ (greenbriarpictureshows.blogspot.com....chive.html)
Fredric March owned a 16mm print of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde . He acquired it from MGM some years before his death in 1975. It was never easy getting prints out of studios . You had to sign all sorts of pledges not to exhibit them publicly, loan them out, etc. Worth noting is the fact that Marchās acquisition was the truncated 1935 re-issue version. A collector friend who knew the actor and visited him on several occasions inspected it. The 1931 Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde had been budgeted at $557,000 with a shooting schedule of 44 days, from August 24 to October 13. It ran seven days over that. Fredric March received $1,480,77 per week to play the lead. Miriam Hopkins got $1250 and Rose Hobart $700. Character support included Holmes Herbert ($750), Edgar Norton ($500), and Halliwell Hobbes ($500). All these were per week salaries. Rouben Mamoulian realized a total of $30,769.20 for directing Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde with a guarantee of eight weeks at $3,846.15 per. Cinematographer Karl Struss was paid $400 (greenbriarpictureshows.blogspot.com....chive.html)
Queen Christina (1933) is one of Greta Garbo 's quintessential, most-remembered screen portrayals (and one of her finest films), with glowing scenes (enhanced by her favorite cinematographer William Daniels ) that reflect the mystique of the lovely, enigmatic actress. This MGM film, Garbo's first and only film with director Rouben Mamoulian , luxuriously captures the graceful allure and persona of one of Hollywood's most famous and lovely performers especially in its final enigmatic closeup. However, the romantic tragedy was poorly received if measured by its box-office appeal. But Garbo would go on to make some of her greatest films: including Anna Karenina (1935) , Camille (1936) , and Ninotchka (1939) . (www.filmsite.org/quee.html)
The HOUSE OF USHER painting that started it all on the cover of FAMOUS MONSTERS OF FILMLAND #9 is a classic case in point: in its coarse caulky outlines, bleachy tonalities, and uncanny flecks of irrational color, it seems to define in visual terms the relationship between Roderick Usher's (Vincent Price 's) disintegrating mind and family hearth. One of Gogos' greatest works, his rendering of Fredric March 's Mr. Hyde for the cover of FAMOUS MONSTERS #62, facets the distorted, bedraggled features of Dr. Jekyll 's alter ego with so many daubs of fantasmagorical color (lavenders, lime greens, sunny yellows) that we can imagine how Rouben Mamoulian 's B W film might have looked under the painterly direction of Mario Bava . (videowatchdog.blogspot.com....chive.html)
Directors such as René Clair and Rouben Mamoulian were pioneers in the effort to use sound creatively and in conjunction with the image, but most films simply recorded dialogue to accompany static images, as early sound recording methods required that the camera be encumbered within a soundproof booth. As the technological difficulties of sound recording receded, the image regained its prominence and the stalled work begun in the twenties went forward. (www.encyclopedia.com....ixpho.html)
The charming, sparkling screenplay that satirizes the Communist political system with sexual humor was written by Billy Wilder (before he became a director), Charles Brackett and Walter Reisch, based on a screen story by Melchior Lengyel. They returned to a slightly similar theme two years later in their screenplay for Ball of Fire (1941) . Other spin-offs of the Ninotchka theme include MGM's Comrade X (1940) with Clark Gable and Hedy Lamarr (in the Soviet Union), and The Iron Petticoat (1956) with Katharine Hepburn and Bob Hope (in London ). The storyline also became the foundation for the Broadway (Cole Porter) stage musical Silk Stockings that was later filmed by director Rouben Mamoulian in a 1957 film version with Cyd Charisse in Garbo's role opposite Fred Astaire . (www.filmsite.org/nino.html)
The finest Chevalier-MacDonald comedy is Rouben Mamoulian 's 1932 romp Love Me Tonight , released on DVD by Kino in 2003, but The Love Parade and three other titles in Lubitsch Musicals (from Eclipse, a subsidiary of the Criterion label) remain a treat. They were filmed before the censors clamped down on dialogue of the sort spoken here, or flimsy nighties of the sort MacDonald wears, or plots that treat infidelity and caddishness with the European offhandedness Lubitsch favoured. The plots are set in artificial kingdoms where people break into song as easily as they speak and where servants echo their employers' love affairs and spats. Sample lyrics from a Love Parade ditty sung by Lupino Lane (aide to the military attaché played by Chevalier) and Lillian Roth (handmaiden to MacDonald's monarch): &Squeeze me once, squeeze me twice/ Most improper, but oh it's nice/ Let's be common and do it again .& (www.theglobeandmail.com....l=nofollow)
In the post-World War I period the production genius of such men as Samuel Goldwyn , Louis B. Mayer , Adolph Zukor, and Jesse L. Lasky, and the innovative talents of Cecil B. De Mille , Erich Von Stroheim , and Ernst Lubitsch were dominant. The year 1926 brought experiments in sound effects and music, and in 1927 spoken dialogue was successfully introduced in The Jazz Singer with Al Jolson. A year later the first all-talking picture, Lights of New York , was shown. With the talkies new directors achieved prominence—King Vidor , Joseph Von Sternberg , Rouben Mamoulian , Frank Capra , and John Ford . Sound films gave a tremendous boost to the careers of some silent actors but destroyed many whose voices were not suited to recording. Among the most celebrated stars of the new era were Clark Gable , Jean Harlow , Marlene Dietrich , Mae West , W. C. Fields , and the Marx Brothers . (www.encyclopedia.com....picts.html)
Rouben Mamoulian ās second film City Streets (1931), with a screenplay by Dashiel Hammett, screened yesterday at Film Forum as part of a larger Mamoulian retrospective. In it Gary Cooper plays a straight arrow and sharp shooting carnival man who is roped into the mob when his girlfriend is framed for a murder committed by her bootlegging father. Mamoulian famously remarked that the film contains 10 murders, none of which are seen. (tativille.blogspot.com/)
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