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- Director
- Writer
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Jean Negulesco made his reputation as a director of both polished, popular entertainments as well as critically acclaimed dramatic pictures in the 1940s and 1950s. Born in Craiova, Romania, he left home at age 12, ending up in Paris. He earned some money washing dishes, which paid for his art tuition, on the way to fulfilling his dream of becoming a painter. World War I intervened, and he found himself in the French army working in a field hospital on the Western Front. Returning to Paris unscathed, he embarked on a more serious study of the arts, learning to paint under the guidance of his émigré compatriot Constantin Brâncusi (1876-1957), and subsequently returned home to Romania. Proving himself an adept pupil, Negulesco sold 150 of his paintings at his very first exhibition. Back in Paris by the early 1920s, he discovered another outlet for his creativity by working as a stage decorator.
In 1927, Negulesco took some of his paintings to New York in the hope of finding a wider audience. He liked it and decided to stay. Travelling across the US to California--all the while making money by painting portraits--Negulesco took years to arrive at his destination. In 1932, he was hired by Paramount Pictures (working for producer Benjamin Glazer) for his first job in the movie industry, as a sketch artist and technical advisor, notably designing the rape scene in The Story of Temple Drake (1933) without violating the Hays Code. Persuaded by an art critic, Elie Faure, to throw himself whole-heartedly into film work, Negulesco then financed and directed his own experimental project, "Three and a Day", starring Mischa Auer. Studio executives liked the picture and Negulesco advanced up the ladder to second-unit director, working on A Farewell to Arms (1932) and (on loan to Warner Brothers) The Sea Hawk. He served in diverse capacities during the remainder of the decade, including associate director, scenarist and original story writer. In 1940, he was approached by Warner Brothers and signed to a contract (until 1948) to direct shorts. Between 1941 and 1944, Negulesco turned out a string of shorts, generally of a musical nature and often featuring popular big bands, including those of Joe Reichman, Freddy Martin and Jan Garber.
Negulesco's road to directing feature films was a tortured one. He was replaced by John Huston two months into shooting The Maltese Falcon (1941) and suffered a similar fate with Singapore Woman (1941). His big break came when he landed the directing job for The Mask of Dimitrios (1944), a tale of international intrigue, based on the novel "A Coffin for Dimitrios" by Eric Ambler. The film was unusual in that it starred two character actors instead of romantic leads. The story, already convoluted by many flashbacks, was therefore not muddied further by built-in romantic angles not integral to the plot. The two films noir experts at the center of the action, Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre, contributed greatly to the success of the venture. Likewise did Negulesco's experience as an artist, which had provided him with a keen eye for effective shots and the ability to set a scene to create atmosphere. Critic Pauline Kael aptly commented that the picture "had more mood than excitement". "The Mask of Dimitrios" was a financial boon for Warner Brothers and led to further assignments for its director.
Continuing in the same genre, Negulesco was tasked with two more films starring Greenstreet and Lorre, The Conspirators (1944) and Three Strangers (1946). He also directed John Garfield and Joan Crawford in the brilliantly moody melodrama Humoresque (1946). This picture was in many ways a victory of style over content. The maudlin tale of an up-and-coming young violinist and his stormy, ultimately, ill-fated relationship with an unhappily married alcoholic socialite, could have been hackneyed soap opera under a lesser talent. However, Negulesco not only elicited electrifying performances from his stars, but also gave the film an edgy look, as well as effectively juxtaposing the ghetto background of the Garfield character with the lush, high-society settings of Crawford's. Aided by Ernest Haller's photography, a bitingly clever screenplay conceived by Clifford Odets and Zachary Gold, and with Franz Waxman's lavish orchestration of music by Antonín Dvorák and Richard Wagner, "Humoresque" was another major hit with critics and public alike.
'Mood" was again at the center of the success pf Johnny Belinda (1948), the story of a deaf-mute who is raped, has a child and later kills her assailant. Negulesco tackled what was at the time a taboo subject in films (considered box-office poison) with restrained sentimentality. Bosley Crowther pondered in his review why Warners had undertaken the project in the first place, but gave both it and its director an excellent appraisal (October 2, 1948). Unfortunately, Warners did not concur and, though "Johnny Belinda" made the studio $4 million, Negulesco was unceremoniously fired. He did have the last laugh, however, being nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director and seeing his star, Jane Wyman, walking away with a Best Actress Oscar.
Between 1948 and 1958, Jean Negulesco became a contract director for 20th Century-Fox, a studio where he found the pace more to his liking. His first assignment was Road House (1948), another robust film noir with a good cast, headed by Ida Lupino and Richard Widmark. He then helmed the realistic war drama Three Came Home (1950), which enjoyed good reviews by both "Variety" and the "New York Times". After a brief interlude in England, directing the idiosyncratic comedy The Mudlark (1950) with Alec Guinness, Negulesco had a less successful outing with his version of the sinking of the Titanic (1953).
From 1953, Negulesco effectively reinvented himself as a director of more commercial, glossy entertainments, beginning with the expensively made and deliriously enjoyable comedy How to Marry a Millionaire (1953). With Marilyn Monroe at the peak of her career, this was also one of the first pictures to be shot in CinemaScope. Not necessarily a critical hit but a hugely popular success was the Oscar-nominated Three Coins in the Fountain (1954), which was filmed on location in Rome and became another major hit for its director. This was followed, in a similar vein, by the excellent all-star Woman's World (1954). Negulesco's variable output during the remainder of the decade ranged from the CinemaScope musical Daddy Long Legs (1955) to the colorful Boy on a Dolphin (1957), which introduced Sophia Loren to American audiences. Among Negulesco's notable failures during this period were The Rains of Ranchipur (1955) and The Gift of Love (1958).
In the late 1960s he moved to Marbella, Spain, to paint and to collect art. He made three more films after 1963, The Pleasure Seekers (1964), The Invincible Six (1970) and Hello-Goodbye (1970), which are best forgotten.
Jean Negulesco reminisced about his Hollywood experiences in an autobiography in 1984, "Things I Did...and Things I Think I Did". He died in Marbella of a heart attack at the respectable age of 93.- Davis Roberts was born on 7 March 1917 in Mobile, Alabama, USA. He was an actor, known for Westworld (1973), Star Trek (1966) and What's Happening!! (1976). He died on 18 July 1993 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.
- Tôru Abe was born on 28 March 1917 in Fukuoka, Japan. He was an actor, known for Tokyo Story (1953), Shogun (1980) and Yomigaeru kinrô (1979). He died on 18 July 1993.
- Actress
Gertrude Ann Plugge (nee Muckleston) was an English Silent Film Actress ; Socialite ; husband of Conservative MP Captain Leonard Plugge (RN) and mother of Gale Benson. Plugge appeared in The Arcadians 1927 and A Little Bit of Fluff (1928 film) both under the stage name of Nancy Rigg. In 1934 she married the Conservative MP and commercial radio pioneer Leonard Plugge MP in New York City and spent part of her honeymoon as a guest of Randolph Hearst and Marion Davis at Hearst Castle. In 1940 the Plugge family moved to the USA where she and her husband became friends and house guests of the financier Bernard Baruch. Her husband returned to the UK and later that year she ,and her son Frank settled in East Hampton, NY. She returned to England in 1943 to her family home at Hamilton Place, Park Lane, London where she and her husband regularly hosted extravagant parties whose guests included King George II of Greece, HRH Paul of Greece and Archduke Franz Josef of Austria, Prince of Tuscany. Later her home at 15 Lowndes Square ,Knightsbridge, London was the filming location where all interior scenes of the 1970 film Performance were shot. Molly Parkin described Plugge as " a chic and charming hostess , a green eyed beauty with a lithe body like the Duchess of Windsor." In January 1972 her daughter Gale Benson was murdered in Trinidad by activist Michael X and members of his Black Power group. The murder and subsequent trial caused newspaper headlines around the world. John Lennon paid William Kunstler's fee as defence lawyer.- Actor
On January 1, 2000 a Public Radio Show, THIS AMERICAN LIFE, carried a memoir by a daughter of Keith Aldrich, describing his life and how he periodically would leave his family behind to start a new life, usually with a new wife and starting a new family, and the effect that he had on the children of these families as he changed and moved on. He was physically abusive to some of them. It described him as a Hollywood bit player who had appeared in BRIDGES OF TOKO-RI and who could've had a good studio contract but his ears stuck out and he refused to plastic surgery to change them. Other changes were his being a book editor, a would-be hippie, a community-theatre actor, a religious fundementalist, and a producer of phonograph albums where he would do the voice of the comic book character Batman. He died around 1994.- Producer
- Writer
John Beck was the American producer who facilitated the making of the original King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962), which he then released in a heavily edited form in the United States in 1963 as King Jong vs. Godzilla (1963). Beck's other claims to fame are producing the 1950 James Stewart film Harvey and his involvement in the 1946 merger between Universal Pictures and International Pictures. Stop-motion animator Willis O'Brien had contacted Beck with a film treatment for King Kong vs. Frankenstein, which they made a handshake deal to work on. Beck recruited sci-fi screenwriter George Worthing Yates to write the script which became King Kong vs. Prometheus. After failing to pitched it to several American studios, Beck did not further contact with O'Brien. Instead he found a buyer in Japan, Toho, who substituted Godzilla for Frankenstein and started from scratch. Beck, having secured the rights to the film in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom and Israel, sold them to Universal for $200,000. He also produced the English-language version of the film, which was extensively recut and featured new scenes in a United Nations newsroom directed by Thomas Montgomery. After learning of King Kong vs. Godzilla, O'Brien contemplated suing Beck but he didn't have enough money and passed away shortly thereafter. Beck himself died of cancer at the age of 83 on July 18, 1993.- Production Manager
- Director
Hal Elias was born on 23 December 1899 in Brooklyn, New York, USA. He was a production manager and director, known for Scat Cats (1957), Mucho Mouse (1957) and The 52nd Annual Academy Awards (1980). He was married to Rheba. He died on 18 July 1993 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.- Casting Director
- Casting Department
Betty Pagel was born on 21 January 1912 in Detroit, Michigan, USA. She was a casting director, known for Marty (1955), Timbuktu (1958) and I, the Jury (1953). She died on 18 July 1993 in Anaheim, California, USA.- Actress
Connie Crowell was born on 23 January 1914 in Oklahoma, USA. She was an actress. She died on 18 July 1993 in the USA.- Annabel Bishop was born on 15 June 1937 in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, England, UK. She was an actress, known for BBC Sunday-Night Theatre (1950), Studio 4 (1962) and Probation Officer (1959). She died on 18 July 1993 in Westminster, London, England, UK.