Conversations with Classic Film Stars by Miller Ron Bawden James

Author:Miller, Ron,Bawden, James
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2016-03-14T04:00:00+00:00

Anna Lee with John Wayne in Flying Tigers (1942). Courtesy of Republic Pictures.

LEE: Yes, he getting some very good assignments, starting with Tom Brown’s School Days [1940], the 1941 remake of Back Street, and Jane Eyre [1944] with Orson Welles, Joan Fontaine, and two new child stars, Margaret O’Brien and Elizabeth Taylor.

MILLER: Selznick was famous for cashing in on the stars he had under contract by loaning them out to other studios. Did that work against you after the one good loan-out to Fox for How Green Was My Valley?

LEE: I found myself at RKO for the next three years, mostly taking suspensions because I didn’t like the things they were offering me.

BAWDEN: You made Flying Tigers [1942] at Republic.

LEE: Even then it was hardly considered a top feature. But I got to know the Duke, who was very resentful he couldn’t go into the real war. Had a number of children and a wife. But he was making peanuts compared to Coop or Gable. He really wanted to be considered a good actor. To me Big John was terrific. I mean, did you ever see Larry Olivier in a western? He was, at thirty-five, one of the best-looking men in movies, and he knew it. The fact is he was irreplaceable.

BAWDEN: Then came a real anti-Nazi film—Hangmen Also Die [1943]?

LEE: It very accurately depicted life inside the Nazi regime. Director Fritz Lang was dramatizing the assassination of Gestapo head Reinhard Heydrich. Let me just say it was a horror to make. I’d been warned about Lang in advance. Behind his back the crew called him the Prussian, but he really was virulently anti-Nazi. But he made it plain from the beginning he did not want me.

One example: I had a simple piece of business where I had to smash my hand through a glass pane. Ordinarily, candy glass would have been used, but Fritz insisted on the real thing. I did it perfectly on the first take. He grimaced and asked for a second. There were mumblings from the crew. This time I cut myself rather badly and the blood just flowed. He ran over and lapped up the blood.

Another story: I wasn’t there at the time, but he was punched out by one of the crew he started berating for not obeying his instructions. Cinematographer Jimmy Wong Howe said the cast and crew simply went about their business while Fritz lay unconscious on the floor. Many years later at a soiree at Joan Bennett’s home, I accidentally bumped into him and he told he’d never forgive me for the way I was standoffish. In his mind I was the villain!

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