The Savvy Sphinx: How Garbo Conquered Hollywood by Robert Dance

Author:Robert Dance
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
Published: 2021-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

SUSAN LENOX

Garbo had a five-month rest before starting her fifteenth film, Susan Lenox (Her Fall and Rise). In April the studio reported the film would be directed by King Vidor,68 but by the next month Thalberg replaced him with Robert Z. Leonard, one of the most reliable in MGM’s stable of directors. As we have seen, during its first decade, the studio subordinated the role of the director to that of producer. Although Leonard is also listed as producer on Susan Lenox, he worked for Thalberg, and it would be Thalberg alone who would approve the film’s final cut. Garbo’s films had a sameness that was attributable in part to the stories. But individual style, typically associated with a director’s work, was usually crushed by the weight of the MGM brand. What was consistent, and consistently distinguished in Garbo’s films, was the cinematography and set design. Daniels photographed nearly all Garbo’s films, and Cedric Gibbins oversaw the art direction. Adrian designed the wardrobe of Garbo and the other leading ladies, and Douglas Shearer (Norma’s brother) was in charge of sound. Each of the major studios had an individual style that was rigidly controlled by the front offices. History would know a different version of Garbo had she been signed originally by Warner Brothers.

Susan Lenox, like many of Garbo’s films, was based on a popular novel. David Graham Phillips finished the manuscript in 1911 but was murdered that year, contributing to the book’s notoriety. Published in two volumes in 1912, Susan Lenox is the story of a young woman, Helga, born illegitimate, who, shortly before entering into a marriage forced by her father, escapes and has a series of romantic adventures—joining the carnival, appearing on stage, living in a Park Avenue penthouse, traveling to South America—before finding true love (and redemption, thus the “fall and rise” of the title) with Clark Gable. Clean-shaven Gable was a new recruit at MGM, one of the generation of actors hired during the transition to sound. In his first year at the studio, he was rushed through a half dozen films and costarred successfully with Norma Shearer, Jean Harlow, and Joan Crawford. MGM’s producing team was looking for replacements for John Gilbert, William Haines, and possibly Ramon Novarro, the latter two considered possibly too effeminate for talking pictures. A new breed of leading man was born in Hollywood around this time, and masculine and handsome (with moustache) Gable would turn out to be the archetype. Thus far in talking pictures, Garbo had worked well with rugged Charles Bickford, disastrously with the effete Gavin Gordon, and satisfactorily with the youthful Robert Montgomery, but she needed a strong costar to reignite the magic moviegoers had witnessed in her silent love scenes with Gilbert. Would Gable be the answer?

Clarence Sinclair Bull, for Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise.

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