Jean Negulesco (1900 - 1993)

 

Date of Birth
26 February 1900, Craiova, Dolj, Romania                     

Date of Death
18 July 1993, Marbella, Andalusia, Spain (heart failure)

Jean Negulesco belonged to the great age of Hollywood directors - Zinnemann, Kazan, Wilder, Mankiewicz, Huston - who transformed the American cinema by choosing their own material. As often as not they selected from properties already owned by their bosses, as did Negulesco when making the handful of pictures which drew him to the attention of the critics. He was more than a competent film-maker, but unlike those named above unable either to stamp his own personality on his work or squeeze that extra something from the material.

_{John Huston, Roberto Rossellini, Jean Negulesco}

He began his career in Paris as a painter and scenic designer, taught by his fellow Romanian Brancusi and friendly with Modigliani. In 1927 he left for the United States to exhibit his work in New York, where he was asked to prepare some drawings for the rape scene in The Story of Temple Drake (1933), based on William Faulkner's Sanctuary. (Paramount at that time had studios on both coasts.) He had to depict the scene in discreet visual terms so that it could be passed by the censor. The producer of the film, Benjamin Glazer, liked the result so much that he made Negulesco his assistant, enabling him to gain experience in almost all aspects of movie-making. His work as second-unit director at Paramount and then at Universal brought him to the attention of Gordon Illingworth, producer of short subjects at Warner Bros, who put him in charge of those with pretensions to art, ie featuring ballet and/or orchestra. Negulesco also chalked up some credits at Warners as a writer.
In 1941, when the withdrawal of the European market had caused profits to drop, Jack L. Warner decided to find some new directors who could bring a fresh approach to low-budgeted subjects. Negulesco started work on The Maltese Falcon, only to find it taken away and given to another director making his debut, John Huston. Negulesco was assigned to a remake of Dangerous, Singapore Woman (1941), but was removed during filming and demoted, that is, returned to the shorts department - for the second time in his career.
Three years later he was given a third chance at a feature, and almost wrecked that by submitting a poor test of the leading actors. Negulesco felt 'naturally upset', after waiting 15 years to make a feature, that he should run the risk of being removed yet again. The film concerned was The Mask of Dimitrios (1944). Anatole Litvak had advised him to look at Eric Ambler's exciting but complex mystery story, which no writer at the studio had managed to lick. Negulesco took it to Henry Blanke, the producer of The Maltese Falcon, and told him that he would keep the budget low - the action took place over much of Europe - by filming among shadows and darkness, instead of elaborate sets. He also suggested it as a co-starring vehicle for Peter Lorre ('the most talented man I have ever seen') and Sydney Greenstreet, whose amused approach to the sinister roles they played was so effective in both cases. The result retained the gritty tone of the original, at its best in the banter between Lorre and Greenstreet, two intelligent but wary men. It is also the only cosmopolitan Warner thriller of this era not to imitate Casablanca (in which these two actors had also appeared, as well as The Maltese Falcon).
Negulesco's other Warner pictures included Humoresque (1946), in which a spoilt society woman, Joan Crawford, takes up with a poor but proud musician, John Garfield ('Do you like martinis, Mr Boray? They're an acquired taste, like Ravel'); and another Lorre-Greenstreet teaming, the aptly named Three Secrets (1946), with an acrid script by Huston. He then landed the studio's plum assignment, The Adventures of Don Juan, an expensive swashbuckler meant to re- establish Errol Flynn after several years in drab contemporary films. But Flynn did not like his approach to the Don, whom Negulesco thought of as victim rather than victimiser. Jack L. Warner said to Negulesco: 'Johnny, I cannot make Don Juan without Flynn, but I can make it without you.' So Negulesco found himself looking at some scripts commissioned by the producer Jerry Wald.

_{Jean Negulesco, 1951}

One was Johnny Belinda (1948), based on a half-forgotten play by Elmer Harris, about a deaf-mute who is raped by the village stud, and the kindly doctor who is thought by the villagers to be the father of her baby. Negulesco recognised the situations as melodrama, but believed that he could make it work - as well as satisfying the censor - if he presented an honest portrait of the small Nova Scotia community in which the tale takes place (it was actually filmed near San Francisco). 'Making it,' Negulesco said, 'was the happiest experience of my life. We all loved what we did in it. This was the only time in my career when everybody connected with the film felt themselves an integral part of the project.' This was apparent in the result: Jane Wyman and Lew Ayres were superb in the leading roles, she touching and he tender; and Agnes Moorehead and Charles Bickford brought off the difficult task of playing salt-of-the-earth types.
However, Warner loathed the film - just as he had hated Huston's The Treasure of Sierra Madre, also made on location, far from his supervision. And he saw Johnny Belinda, too, go on to achieve critical acclaim and immense popularity - and Wyman win an Oscar. Warner was to admit that he was wrong - especially as he had sacked Negulesco from the studio after seeing the first preview. Once the film was shown, Negulesco could have written his ticket at any studio; but on the strength of Deep Valley (1946) 20th Century-Fox had already taken him on to direct Road House (1948), an atmospheric small-town thriller with Ida Lupino, Cornel Wilde, Celeste Holm and Richard Widmark.
But after Johnny Belinda there would be no more melodramas, unless Negulesco wished there to be. He lighted upon Margery Sharp's cunning, panoramic novel of life in one particular part of West London, Britannia Mews (1949), reduced in Ring Lardner Jnr's screenplay to just two episodes, with Maureen O'Hara and Dana Andrews in a dual role as both her drunken husband and her puppeteer lover. Negulesco thought the result, which was badly received, 'quite bad', and it is certainly bizarre - as indeed was The Mask of Dimitrios, though it wasn't clear this time whether this was deliberate.

_{Jean Negulesco's home, Beverly Hill, 1952}

Negulesco then joined another civilised talent, the writer-director Nunally Johnson, to film Agnes Newton Keith's account of her imprisonment by the Japanese in Borneo, Three Came Home (1950). It had been a bestseller, but Negulesco and Johnson's motives were to duplicate the authenticity of the book, rendering as honestly as they could - by the standards of the time - the brutality of the captors and the sexual frustrations of the prisoners, both those who knew that their husbands were in neighbouring camps and those tempted by Australian POWs on the prowl. Claudette Colbert led an excellent cast, including Florence Desmond, Patric Knowles and Sessue Hayakawa.
Johnson and Negulesco came a cropper with The Mudlark (1950), with Alec Guinness as Disraeli and Irene Dunne stuffed with cotton wool inside her cheeks to play Queen Victoria; and there is nothing to be said in favour of Negulesco's return to Johnny Belinda territory, for MGM, Scandal at Scourie (1953), a schmaltzy vehicle for the fading team of Greer Garson and Walter Pidgeon. His other films for Fox were sound commercial jobs, and we should note Phone Call From a Stranger (1952), if only for Bette Davis's cameo as a bedridden widow recalling her marriage, and Titanic (1953), which added Barbara Stanwyck, Clifton Webb and some fictions to that tragic occasion. That the whole is as watchable as it is may be due to a screenplay partly by Charles Brackett and Walter Reisch, working together for the third time since writing Ninotchka with Billy Wilder.
Negulesco and Johnson were put in charge of Fox's second film in CinemaScope, How To Marry a Millionaire (1953), a comedy with Marilyn Monroe, Lauren Bacall and Betty Grable. Monroe's myopic blond gold-digger gave her her final thrust into stardom, and she was often deliciously funny, despite the fact that, as Negulesco himself put it, it was difficult to understand how 'to do intimate scenes on that great wide oblong'. The three stars had to do the opening sequence nine times as everyone tried to adjust to the new format. The answer seemed both to Fox and Negulesco to be to string the cast out across the screen, as in Three Coins in the Fountain (1954) and Woman's World (1954). The cast of the latter included June Allyson, Bacall, Wilde, Webb, and Fred MacMurray; among those throwing their coins in the Trevi were Jean Peters, Dorothy McGuire, Webb and Louis Jourdan - in what amounted to a romantic re- working of How To Marry a Millionaire, in itself a rehash of the story Fox had filmed at least three times before. Helped by Frank Sinatra's rendition of the syrupy title-song, this was one of Fox's biggest successes in its history. Negulesco remade it with even less enthusiasm as The Pleasure Seekers (1964), its story transposed to Madrid.
Other late films included The Rains of Ranchipur (1955), a remake of The Rains Came which startlingly teamed Richard Burton and Lana Turner, and Boy on a Dolphin (1957), a tale of ocean archaeology in which Sophia Loren's dripping-wet frocks out-acted a miscast Alan Ladd. As screen teams go, there should have been magic when the orphan Leslie Caron met up with Daddy Long Legs Fred Astaire in 1955. And there was, when they were allowed to dance simply together; but, in trying to wrest the crown for making the best musicals from MGM, Fox had brought in Roland Petit to choreograph two dream ballets which were both vulgar and derivative. Negulesco directed his last film, The Invisible Six, in 1970. In 1973 he played an actor in Un Officier de Police Sans Importance, while his son Julian has appeared in a number of French films.
In sum, Negulesco's career is very much like that of most of his peers: promising, then achieving and eventually flattened by the pressures of the front office to provide a succession of hits. Like Reisch, Brackett and those film-makers listed in the first paragraph, Negulesco was a man of culture and intellect; and though some of them may have old-age failures to their names they did not succumb to the Hollywood malaise.

Read more about Jean Negulesco on http://cinecollage.net/jean-negulesco.html

Working on a caricature drawing of Jack Carson during lunch break while working on the 'Doughboys'

Drawing a caricature of Paul Henreid between takes on the set of 'The Conspirators'

Spouse

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Dusty Anderson    (21 July 1946 - 18 July 1993) (his death) 2 children

Trivia

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Former painter, stage designer, 2nd-unit director, assistant director

Biography in: John Wakeman, editor. "World Film Directors, Volume One, 1890-1945." Pages 827-832. New York: The H.W. Wilson Company, 1987.

After working as a technical advisor, production assistant and assistant producer for nearly a decade, Negulesco was finally offered a chance at directing. Jack L. Warner wanted his newest series of moderately budgeted films to be directed by his newest crop of directors. Although Negulesco received directorial credit for his first film, Singapore Woman (1941), he was fired in mid-production. He was also removed from his next assignment, The Maltese Falcon (1941) after working on that film for 2 months and replaced by John Huston as reward for his successful adaptation of High Sierra (1941). Dejected, Negulesco's friend, director Anatole Litvak suggested a book by Eric Ambler, "The Coffin of Dimitrios" and pitched the story to producer Henry Blanke. Retitled as The Mask of Dimitrios (1944), it remains one of the best films ever made by a novice director.

Was approached to direct Adventures of Don Juan (1948).

Personal Quotes

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[on Marilyn Monroe] She's the girl you'd like to double-cross your wife with.

Filmography

Hello-Goodbye (1970)
The Invincible Six (1970)
... aka The Heroes
The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) (some scenes) (uncredited)
... aka George Stevens Presents The Greatest Story Ever Told (USA: complete title)
The Pleasure Seekers (1964)
Jessica (1962)
... aka La sage-femme, le curé et le bon Dieu (France)
The Best of Everything (1959)
Count Your Blessings (1959)
A Certain Smile (1958)
The Gift of Love (1958)
Boy on a Dolphin (1957)
The Dark Wave (1956)
... aka CinemaScope Specials (Third Series) (#9): The Dark Wave (USA: series title)
The Rains of Ranchipur (1955)
Daddy Long Legs (1955)
Woman's World (1954/I)
... aka A Woman's World (USA: alternative title)
Three Coins in the Fountain (1954)
River of No Return (1954) (uncredited)
How to Marry a Millionaire (1953)
Scandal at Scourie (1953)
Titanic (1953)
Full House (1952/I) (segment "Last Leaf, The")
... aka O. Henry's Full House (USA: complete title)
Lure of the Wilderness (1952)
Lydia Bailey (1952)
Phone Call from a Stranger (1952)
Take Care of My Little Girl (1951)
The Mudlark (1950)
Under My Skin (1950)
Three Came Home (1950)
Britannia Mews (1949)
... aka Affairs of Adelaide (USA)
... aka The Forbidden Street (USA)
Road House (1948)
Johnny Belinda (1948)
Deep Valley (1947)
Humoresque (1946)
Nobody Lives Forever (1946)
Three Strangers (1946)
The Conspirators (1944)
The Mask of Dimitrios (1944)
South American Sway (1944)
... aka Melody Masters: South American Sway (USA: series title)
Grandmother's Follies (1944)
Roaring Guns (1944)
Listen to the Bands (1944)
Over the Wall (1943)
Food and Magic (1943)
Cavalcade of Dance (1943)
Women at War (1943)
Army Show (1943)
... aka Broadway Brevities: Army Show (USA: series title)
Childhood Days (1943)
All-Star Melody Masters (1943)
The All American Bands (1943)
Three Cheers for the Girls (1943) (framing story)
... aka Broadway Brevities: Three Cheers for the Girls (USA: series title)
Ozzie Nelson and His Orchestra (1943)
... aka Melody Masters: Ozzie Nelson and His Orchestra (USA: series title)
The United States Army Band (1943)
The United States Navy Band (1943)
The United States Service Bands (1943)
The Voice That Thrilled the World (1943)
The United States Marine Band (1942)
... aka Melody Masters (1942-1943): The United States Marine Band (USA: series title)
Six Hits and a Miss (1942)
... aka Melody Masters (1942-1943 season) #2: Six Hits and a Miss (USA: series title)
Glen Gray and His Casa Loma Orchestra (1942)
... aka Melody Masters: Glen Gray and His Casa Loma Orchestra (USA: series title)
The Daughter of Rosie O'Grady (1942)
Spanish Fiesta (1942)
Calling All Girls (1942) (uncredited)
... aka Broadway Brevities: Calling All Girls (USA: series title)
Borrah Minnevitch and His Harmonica School (1942)
Carl Hoff and Band (1942)
The Spirit of Annapolis (1942)
The United States Army Air Force Band (1942)
At the Stroke of Twelve (1941)
... aka Broadway Brevities: At the Stroke of Twelve (USA: series title)
Carioca Serenaders (1941)
University of Southern California Band and Glee Club (1941)
... aka Melody Masters: University of Southern California Band and Glee Club (USA: series title)
Those Good Old Days (1941)
... aka Melody Masters: Those Good Old Days (USA: series title)
Hal Kemp and His Orchestra (1941)
... aka Melody Masters: Hal Kemp and His Orchestra (USA: series title)
Singapore Woman (1941)
Marie Green and Her Merry Men (1941)
... aka Melody Masters: Marie Green and Her Merry Men (USA: series title)
Freddie Martin and His Orchestra (1941)
... aka Freddy Martin and His Orchestra (USA: copyright title)
... aka Melody Masters: Freddie Martin and His Orchestra (USA: series title)
Cliff Edwards and His Buckaroos (1941)
Jan Garber and His Orchestra (1941)
... aka Melody Masters: Jan Garber and His Orchestra (USA: series title)
The Dog in the Orchard (1941)
... aka The Broadway Brevities: Dog in the Orchard (USA: series title)
Skinnay Ennis and His Orchestra (1941)
... aka Melody Masters: Skinnay Ennis and His Orchestra (USA: series title)
The Gay Parisian (1941)
Alice in Movieland (1940)
... aka Broadway Brevities: Alice in Movieland (USA: series title)
The Flag of Humanity (1940)
City for Conquest (1940) (fill-in director) (uncredited)
Joe Reichman and His Orchestra (1940)
Henry Busse and His Orchestra (1940)