|
Printed Matter
Henry Hathaway: A Directors Guild of America Oral History
Edited and annotated by Rudy Behlmer
Interview conducted by Polly Platt
Scarecrow Press $39.50
When Polly Platt met Henry Hathaway over lunch one day in 1973, it was, as Platt recently told DGA Magazine, "a very fortuitous meeting." The compatible connection -- borne of Platt's considerable film knowledge and frames of reference -- with the then 75-year-old Hathaway, resulted not only in fascinating stories of the veteran director's movie-making, but in an invaluable, entertaining history of the movie industry itself.
The multi-talented Platt, who is the first woman production designer in the Art Directors Guild, had known John Ford and had "seen how reticent he was to talk about his work." Hathaway, she was delighted to find, was eager to discuss his films at length, as well as those of other directors. And, icing on the cake, "he had a really good memory of his whole life. He didn't drink and was incredibly coherent." Platt arranged to conduct a series of taped interviews with the enthusiastic Hathaway through the American Film Institute's (AFI) oral history program. At the AFI, Platt screened as many of his films as possible, then went up to Hathaway's Neutra-designed house in Bel Air and talked for hours on a biweekly basis for around six months about a career that spanned nearly 65 years. "Almost anything was sufficient to get him going," Platt says. "He was divine to work with." Platt believes that the reason Hathaway spoke to her so frankly and openly was that she was "so incredibly interested in what he had to say."
Platt had intended to edit the oral history herself, but her increasingly active movie schedule prevented it. When the Directors Guild of America's oral history program was started by David Shephard, the tapes were transferred from the AFI to the DGA. A few years ago, Adele Field, then of the Guild's Special Projects, asked film historian Rudy Behlmer to edit and annotate the interviews, which he completed with intelligence and grace. (In an important postscript, Behlmer "blended and edited into a mosaic" Hathaway stories from other sources to fill in what was unable to be concluded in the oral history. He also supplies a filmography of Hathaway's work as an AD.)
The director of such classics as Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935) and True Grit (1969), Hathaway began as a child actor in 1911 one-reelers for Allan Dwan. As a young prop man at Paramount, he showed the industriousness that would mark his future: "You can sit out on the bench and play cards or you can work. Every time that I had nothing to do when we were slow, I went down to the prop bins, of my own volition, and I'd clean them out..." In 1924 he became an assistant director, most notably for Victor Fleming and Josef von Sternberg, and in the late 1920s was involved in early attempts to organize an assistant directors union.
Through Platt's astute questions, we have marvelous, specific examples of ways Hathaway learned from his mentors and incorporated their ideas when, in 1932, he became a director in his own right. "Never forget," Hathaway recalled Fleming telling him about lighting, "that it's better to have one tree in a cross or backlight than a forest in a flat light." (Platt told Hathaway that people believed that his training under Fleming, who had a reputation for cruelty, was one of the reasons that he was so mean.)
After directing 17 pictures for Paramount -- including the striking fantasy-romance, Peter Ibbetson (1935) -- whose non-optical ethereal photographic effects are detailed here -- Hathaway worked mostly for 20th Century Fox, where he made more than 30 films. It was at Fox that he pioneered the documentary-style drama with such films as The House on 92nd Street (1945) and Call Northside 777 (1948), and gave us that epitome of noir, Kiss of Death (1947).
Behlmer, who listened to some of the tapes for "speech melodies" while editing the transcripts, expressed to DGA Magazine how impressed he was by Hathaway's "total devotion to his craft, particularly in the days of the contract directors." He considers him "one of the best representatives of the Hollywood studio directors during the Golden Years because of his grasp of the medium, meticulous work habits and a love for what he did that never burned out."
Both Behlmer and Platt believe that Hathaway, who died in 1985, has much to say to today's aspiring directors: learn from others, put your head down and just keep on making as many pictures as you can. In this only major work on Hathaway, we can all learn straight from Henry himself.
Editor's note: As an actress, Lisa Mitchell worked for Hathaway who cast her as a saloon cancan dancer in North to Alaska (1960).
|
