Classic Film of the Week: "Life With Father"

Hot Property
During the late 1940s, one of the most sought-after properties was the film rights to Life With Father, the longest-running non-musical play on Broadway. The play written by Howard Lindsey and Russel Crouse, based on stories by Clarence Day, opened in 1939 and ran for seven years. The story has a relatively simple plot: a wife, after discovering her husband hasn’t been baptized, does her best to convince him he needs to, if he wants to see his family in heaven.

From the earliest days of its run, Hollywood was interested in obtaining the film rights. William Powell, after seeing the play, wanted his home studio, MGM, to buy the property for him. He thought the part of Clarence Day (Father) would be the role of a lifetime.

America's Sweetheart No More
While the play was still on Broadway, sisters Lillian and Dorothy Gish both portrayed Lavinia (Mrs. Day) in out-of-town productions. Lillian, who was headlining the Chicago production, thought the role of Lavinia would be perfect for her friend, Mary Pickford. Pickford, the silent-film icon, was looking for a property to make a movie comeback. Gish advised her friend to buy the film rights, but Pickford didn’t act swiftly enough. Soon all the major studios were actively negotiating with the playwrights and members of the Day family. With all this competition, the price skyrocketed and the contract stipulations were too much for most. Warner Bros. eventually bought the rights with a down payment of $500,000 plus half of the film’s profits. Warner Bros. thought Life With Father had the potential to be as big as Gone With The Wind, so they were willing to pay the price.

Powell is Clarence Day

When William Powell found out that Warner Bros. obtained the rights, he asked MGM to consider loaning him out for the role. They did, Warner Bros. accepted, and Powell was in. The choice of Powell to play Clarence Day proved popular with the movie-going public, but the casting of Lavinia would prove more troublesome.

Davis Drops Out
Bette Davis, the top female star on the Warner Bros. lot at the time, was offered the role of Lavinia Day. Davis struggled to adequately portray the character’s gentleness and decided not to take the role. Mary Pickford, who missed out on buying the film rights, was in the running. Apparently, her screen tests were good, but director Michael Curtiz (Casablanca) didn’t think she had any box office appeal. She had, after all, been away from the screen for thirteen years.

From Anna to Lavinia: Irene Dunne Takes a Chance

From most accounts, Curtiz wanted Irene Dunne to play Lavinia. Dunne said she had no interest in playing a woman who seemed to cry when things didn’t go her way. But Curtiz thought she would be perfect in the role. Curtiz admired Dunne’s talent as an actress, but he also wanted her because she was a top box office draw. Dunne’s recent success in Anna and the King of Siam was one of the reasons the director pursued her. Curtiz kept asking Dunne to reconsider and he eventually wore her down. In a 1978 interview, Dunne revealed that Curtiz motivated her on the set “because I didn’t like the role very much and he had to placate me to make it more palatable.” Dunne's acceptance of the role meant there would never be a movie comeback for Mary Pickford.

The supporting players were easier to find. Elizabeth Taylor, (who was barely 15 years old) was loaned out by MGM to play Mary Skinner, a role created on the stage by Teresa Wright. Zasu Pitts, Jimmy Lydon, and Edmund Gwenn rounded out the rest of the cast.

Impeccable Production

Life With Father was one of Warner Bros.’s most important and costly films during the late 1940s. The set decoration and costume designs were impeccable. A huge outdoor set was built to recreate New York City’s Madison Ave. during the 1880s. Elaborate indoor sets for Delmonico’s restaurant and McCreery’s Department Store were built, adding to the historical accuracy. The set decorators and the Warner production crew went to great lengths with even the small details. For example, there is a scene where Powell’s character takes a horse-drawn trolley to work. As he enters the trolley to sit down, you notice, in the background, advertisements inside the trolley, but only for a fraction of a second. You can argue whether that detail was necessary, but it shows the seriousness with which Warner Bros. handled the material.

Star Billing at the Flip of a Coin

Both Irene Dunne and William Powell were major movie stars when Life With Father went into production. Dunne, never regarded as a diva, but a shrewd negotiator and business woman where her career was concerned, insisted on receiving top billing. It could be argued that, at this time, she was the bigger box office draw. Powell on the other hand had the title role, the movie was Life with Father. A compromise was struck. Fifty percent of the movie prints would give Dunne top billing and fifty percent would have Powell’s name in front of Dunne’s! This held true for the movie posters (illustrated at left and below) and publicity releases as well. Supposedly, for the New York premier, they flipped a coin to see which print would be used.

A Success for All

Life With Father premiered in August 1947 and was an immediate critical and financial success. Not quite the blockbuster the Warner Bros. studios had expected or hoped, but one that was profitable enough to make all the accountants happy. For Powell it did turn out to be the role of a lifetime and he received his third Best Actor Academy Award nomination (Ronald Colman won for A Double Life). For Dunne, one of her best roles would come two years later in the George Stevens production, I Remember Mama.

Neglected Classic
Due to the unusual contractual arrangements between Warner Bros. and Lindsay and Crouse, the movie, after its initial release and re-release in 1948, pretty much vanished into obscurity. And for reasons not known to this writer, it fell into the public domain. Since Life With Father went into the public domain, there have been numerous inferior prints of the movie classic. With most, the color and sound are inferior. One can hope that someday a restored version will be available so modern viewers can see this wonderful American classic the way audiences did in 1947.



Sources used for this post: Romantic Comedy in Hollywood: From Lubitsch to Sturges (1987) by James Harvey; Life With Father Audience Guide (2008) compiled and edited by Jack Marshall;
Irene Dunne: First Lady of Hollywood by Wes D. Gehring

Bogart, Bergman, and Henreid...none wanted to be in "Casablanca"

Today, Casablanca is one of the best-loved movies of all time, so it's hard to believe that its three main stars didn't want to be in it.

Bergman, still relatively new to Hollywood, had her sights set on the role of Marie in Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls.  Gary Cooper and Vera Zorina had been cast, which disappointed Bergman who had been author Hemingway's choice to play Maria. For Bergman, filming Casablanca was an ordeal to get through as quickly and pleasantly as possible. Although she had no real conflicts with Bogart, Bergman didn't sense any real camaraderie with her chain-smoking costar. Another problem for Bergman and the other actors was that the script wasn't completed when filming started. No one knew what was happening, which caused Bergman some anxiety. She didn't know which actor she would end up with in the end. She assumed it would be Bogart because he had the male lead, but we all know how that turned out.

Zorina dropped out of For Whom the Bell Tolls, so Bergman eventually got the role she wanted, the one she thought was the role of a lifetime.  For Whom the Bell Tolls was a big hit and one of the biggest productions of 1942, and Bergman received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress for her performance, but it hasn't weathered the years nearly as well as Casablanca. For years, the popularity of Casablanca alluded Bergman until she finally viewed the film objectively for herself. She realized that it really was a great film and audiences had been right to praise it as such

Henreid started out his career in America as Paul Von Henreid, appearing in Goodbye Mr. Chips and several other films under his given name. By 1940, he was being billed as Paul Henreid and earnestly pursuing a career in Hollywood as a leading man. When he was offered the role of Victor Lazlo, Henreid thought playing the second male lead would do nothing for his career, especially after all the buzz from his costarring performance opposite Bette Davis in Now Voyager. It was Davis, a close friend of Henreid's, that convinced him to take the role. Davis convinced him there was more to the role than what was written in the script and it would be good for his career. Henreid finally agreed with Davis, but only after the studio promised him star billing equal to that of Bogart and Bergman. Davis's advice was confirmed after the film's release and Henreid went on to play male leads opposite some of Hollywood's most popular leading ladies.

Bogart's reasons are not as clear as Bergman's and Henreid's, but from all accounts, Including Bergman's, he wasn't thrilled with the idea of playing Rick. Bogart, who was just emerging as a major star in his own right, could not have anticipated the impact Casablanca would have on his career. Almost overnight, he became a romantic lead, something that had seemed impossible with his far-from-handsome face and years spent playing second leads and gangsters killed in the second reel. It didn't hurt that he had Bergman, arguably one of the screen's great beauties, convincingly acting as if she really loved him. After Casablanca, Bogart went on to become one of the biggest movie stars of all time. He is ranked number one male movie star of all time by the American Film Institute, topping fan favorites Cary Grant, James Stewart, Henry Fonda, and Spencer Tracy.

Only during the golden age of Hollywood could a film, regarded as just another movie that its contract players had to endure, remain so popular over 65 years after its initial release.

"Casablanca" next "Meet Me at the Movies" feature

The Prairie District Neighborhood Alliance (PDNA) invites you to "Meet Me at the Movies," Friday October 2 at 6:30 p.m. at Sherwood Conservatory recital hall, 1312 S. Michigan Ave.

An American film classic

Casablanca, the 1942 classic directed by Michael Curtiz and starring Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, and Paul Henreid is the third film to be shown in this continuing monthly series. Winner or three Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Casablanca has become part of the American consciousness, its dialogue ("Here's looking at you kid.") part of our lexicon.

Just another movie?

What started out as just another movie during Hollywood's golden age, turned into an instant classic. It made  Bogart a credible leading man, and pushed him out of the shadows of fellow contract players James Cagney, George Raft, and Edward G. Robinson. Bergman in only her fourth American film, became a superstar and one of the most popular movie actresses of the 1940s. For Hungarian-born director Curtiz, Casablanca was his only Best Director win in a career that spanned more than four decades.

Click here to see the original movie trailer.