JIM BAWDEN

PHILIP DUNNE FROM WRITING TO DIRECTING       PHILIP DUNNE ...surrounded by posters from classic films he scripted.

He scripted great movies,
then started directing them

By JIM BAWDEN
of TheColumnists.com

Among fans of classic movies, the name Philip Dunne always stands high on the list of the really great screenwriters, which is why I was delighted to learn he was willing to do an interview with me in 1990, even though his heatlh wasn't good and he wasn't doing much press in those days.

He was hesitant at first, but finally invited me to lunch with him at his home in Malibu the following day. Dunne lived on a sprawling cliffside estate with the heavy surf of the Pacific pounding hundreds of feet below.

As I walked up the trail from the road, a ferret stuck its head out of a rock pile to say hello and sea gulls squawked over the skies. After lunch, we repaired to his scholarly writer’s hut, crammed with mementoes of a lifetime in the movies.

Born in New York City in 1908, Dunne was the younger son of syndicated Chicago columnist Finley Peter Dunne. He got his education at Harvard University and after graduation took the first train for Hollywood.

Here are highlights of our conversation:

BAWDEN: You really wanted to become a screen writer?

DUNNE: Always, although perhaps not as much in the silent days. And it’s true I took the train, bummed around a bit and first wrote dialogue for the 1932 Spencer Tracy movie "Me and My Gal." I did snippets of talk, particularly when we hear what the characters are really thinking–a spoof of "Strange Interlude."

I got my first credit for "The Count of Monte Cristo" in 1934. It was a small budgeted movie and our star, Robert Donat, hated making it so much he forever refused to come back to Hollywood The producer, Eddie Small, was economical and shot it at RKO-Pathe in Culver City, later the Selznick studios.

That got me another historical epic, "The Last of the Mohicans" (1936), which I think pretty swell for this kid writer of 28. I followed the book meticulously or as much as I could. George B. Seitz got a lot out of his relatively modest budget and shot extensively at Crescent City, Iowa. His cast included Randy Scott and Binnie Barnes.

Authenticity was the key here right down to the Indians and what they wore and how they spoke. Bruce Cabot was fabulous as the villain, Magua. With costs so low it made a fortune and I was on my way. And Darryl Zanuck saw it and hired me for his new company which was an amalgam of his new Twentieth Century plus the old Fox Films.

(Director Michael Mann insisted Dumne be given a credit for his screenplay in the writing credits for the 1992 remake of "Last of the Mohicans," which Mann and Christopher Crowe wrote.)

BAWDEN: Originally you were teamed with a writer named Julien Josephson. Who was he?

DUNNE: An old geezer of a silent writer. When talkies came in he wrote a lot of the George Arliss biography movies at Warners. Darryl was epic crazy and knew Jules from those days. But he hadn’t worked much recently, so I was to do the dialogue. Sometimes we worked together, other times he’d do a draft, then I’d counter and we’d blend that.

It worked on "Suez," which was complete historical nonsense about Ferdinand de Lessep’s desire to grab the Suz canal. With Ty Power and Loretta Young how could it not be fictional? A huge profit maker, it angered Loretta so much she left the studio the next year to freelance.

"Suez" worked so we next rewrote "Stanley and Livingstone" (1939). It was always intended as a vehicle for Spencer Tracy, but before he appeared on set he demanded $10,000 from Fox. When he was under contract years before he had smashed an entire set and been docked that much in pay by the old Fox regime. So, his first day in deepest darkest Africa, courtesy of the Fox backlot, he’s wandering around holding a big fat check and looking very pleased with himself. About Stanley, he started slave labor in the Congo and is hated to this day. None of that went into our fable. When I watched it recently on TV I just hated all the back projection.

Dunne wrote the screenplay for "Stanley and Livingstone," one of Hollywood's greatest adventure sagas.

Then came "The Rains Came" (1939), Ty Power as an Indian raj who really wants to be a doctor. Maria Ouspenskaya as his mother! You see why I’m laughing. All back lot stuff. Fox rented a herd of elephants from some circus. Darryl wanted Garbo as the nympho Lady Edwina. Myrna Loy and director Clarence Brown were borrowed from MGM. It won an Oscar for its special effects. The flood is worth waiting for. Ty Power was so spectacular with this deep tan, he just had to stand there. I had a problem how to portray Lady Edwina’s nymphomania. I had Nigel Bruce as her husband merely open his diary where he keeps a list of her conquests–and he thumbs through pages and pages of names. The censors never caught on! You know they remade it in 1955 as "The Rains of Ranchipur" and Lana Turner was so obvious. I liked that come hither look in Myrna’s eyes! After that , Jules was dropped and was reduced to writing a Gildersleeve movie!*

BAWDEN: You have your own explanation why "How Green Was My Valley" (1941) is a near perfect picture.

DUNNE: Orson Welles recently told me it’s one of his favorites. He said he didn’t mind not winning for "Citizen Kane" when "How Green Was My Valley" was the winner! I told him the secret was we had two directors. Let me explain: Zanuck borrowed Willie Wyler from Goldwyn to make it and Willie toiled for six months on the casting, sets, requesting script rewrites. By the time production started, he was wanted back at Goldwyn for "The Little Foxes" and Jack Ford came in just days before shooting and had to use our script, the cast, the sets. And Wyler was the supreme technical director and his layered approach holds the film together while Jack was the great sentimentalist and that gives the film its broad humanity.

RODDY McDOWALL was introduced in "HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY," the 1941 classic scripted by Dunne, which won the Best Picture Oscar.

Nothing about the film is quite authentic. But it works so wonderfully well. Maureen O’Hara, Barry Fitzgerald , Arthur Shields and Sara Allgood were Irish. Anna Lee , John Loder, Patric Knowles and Roddy McDowell were English. Walter Pidgeon was Canadian. Only Rhys Williams was Welsh. No Welsh village looked quite like this! It was all pretend to the highest degree.

During the war I was visiting Jack in his office in Washington and grousing as usual. And Jack snapped, “Well, you won the (writing) Oscar for 'How Green Was My Valley,' didn’t you?” And I snapped back, “No, Jack, 'Citizen Kane' took that!” And he sat straight up and looked dumbfounded and he thought for a minute and then handed me the directing Oscar he’d received and you can see it over there and I’ll keep it until I die and then pass it back to the Ford family.

Winning the Best Picture Oscar was no surprise. "Kane" got booed that night and, besides, it didn’t make the money "How Green Was My Valley" did –almost $6 million by the end of 1943, I was told.

I’d adapted only the first part of the story. It had always been Zanuck’s idea to use Ty Power as the older Huw in a sequel. Then the war came and the fashion for this kind of movie passed. By the time Ty came back from the war he looked too old to play it. So my second adaptation just sat there on the shelf. You do know there are three full length book sequels out there? British TV made the whole first book in 1975 on actual locations. But it was too much of a good thing. I still prefer our concise snapshot, I really do.

BAWDEN: When you returned from war work you did the adaptation of "The Ghost and Mrs. Muir" (1947). Wasn’t director Joe Mankiewicz mad about this?

DUNNE: Joe wanted to be a one man band. Zanuck said no. He was the orchestra leader at Fox. He told me to stick closely to the novel. And I had R.A. Dick right there to help me–that was the nom de plume of Josephine Leslie, who wrote the original 1945 novel. And every time Joe strayed from script, Zanuck would catch him at it as he watched the dailies and order him to redo the scene as he had approved. I wrote the screenplay scene by scene and every 20 pages or so Darryl would read and heavily comment on the pages and order more rewrites. He was very into scripts. Directors, he said, could easily be replaced. This was always intended as a Gene Tierney vehicle although Maureen O’Hara really wanted to do it. Gene got sick and we just waited around for weeks until she recovered. I always stood by in case rewrites were needed but I’d done all the heavy lifting in advance, you see. I didn’t like the 1968 TV series and besides I got no residuals for it.

BAWDEN: You’re also listed for the screenplays of "Kiss of Death" (1947) and "Forever Amber" (1947)–all in the same year!

RICHARD WIDMARK created an indelible portrait of evil as Tommy Udo, the psychopathic killer in Dunne's screenplay for "Kiss of Death," a classic film noir.

DUNNE: On "Kiss of Death." Darryl called me in to do some “moping up” work. Ben Hecht and Charlie Lederer had done the first draft, but as shooting progressed Darryl noticed gaping holes in continuity. One result was the wife played by Patricia Morison was almost written out of the story. I went to the Astoria studios in Queens where shooting was going on and (director) Henry Hathaway was really giving it to Vic Mature, who actually gives a great performance for possibly the only time in his career.

For "Forever Amber," I thought of it as "Gone With the Wind" goes Regency. Amber was luxuriantly promiscuous in the book. The censor sent up all sorts of roadblocks. Zanuck told me to write it. Ring Lardner Jr. had already tackled one draft. He wanted Lana Turner, but MGM yanked her at the last minute. We started shooting with Peggy Cummings and John Stahl directing. It didn’t work. Peggy was fired and Linda Darnell brought in. Linda was 23 by then, so voluptuous, but her acting range was small. When I first watched it with Darryl in a screening room even I was squirming. But it made back its huge costs because the public thought it slightly tarnished. The Legion of Decency urged boycotts which only increased business. We had to delete scenes suggesting she had slept around!

BAWDEN: You seem like a strange choice to write the screenplay of "Pinky."

DUNNE: Jack Ford asked me to tackle that. After "Gentleman’s Agreement." Zanuck went haywire with these message movies. My script had to have some fancy dancing over the contentious issues. There actually was a story conference about whether Pinky could be shown kissing her white boyfriend. I thought it was curious that Fox lacked the guts to use a black actress. Jeanne Crain, who was popular right then, played a black girl disguising herself as white. Linda Darnell did a test but couldn’t handle the dialogue, although Zanuck wanted her. Jeanne was white so it didn’t really make sense. She did kiss Bill Lundigan.

Jeanne Crain pl;ayed a black girl pasing for white, shown here with Ethel Waters in "Pinky."

All the sets, including the huge house where Ethel Barrymore lived. were built on stages. Filming this one in the Deep South would have been incendiary. Ford started shooting under the greatest reluctance and then just walked away. Elia Kazan came in and did a workmanlike job. It has no soul but Jeanne got an Oscar nomination. So did our two Ethels, Barrymore and Waters. We weren’t being at all brave with that one. We went as far as we could have gone in 1949. To our surprise it was a huge box office hit, grossing over $4 million.

BAWDEN: "David and Bathsheba" (1951) is fairly respectful of the Bible.

DUNNE: Henry King (the film's director) was such an old poop. He directed in such an obvious fashion. It was written for Greg Peck, who never really got into the part, I feel. Anne Baxter was replaced by Susan Hayward, who was Hollywood’s version of slinky, you understand? Best of all there was Ray Massey as the prophet and he stole all of his scenes. I mean I had to balance this story. How many wives did David have? 200? And we’re trying to portray him as a hero? I wanted to avoid all that rot which Cecil B. DeMille used and that dreadful dialogue he loved. Maybe I was a bit too respectful. It’s a handsome film, it moves along a bit slowly. We delivered a huge hit for Fox at a time TV was making a real dent in the company’s profits.

BAWDEN: Does it bother you "The Robe" (1953) was your biggest money maker?

DUNNE: Don’t blame that one on me! Albert Maltz wrote a great first draft that I used extensively, but he never got credit because of the blacklist. (In 1997, the Writers Guild of America restored Albert Maltz’s name to the credits with the support of Dunne’s widow.) It was CinemaScope. That process was a bugger to shoot in. The cameras could not move and there are no close ups. It has dated so badly and yet it saved Hollywood or at least CinemaScope did. The budget was $5 million and it wound up grossing $36 million. But if you’re asking is it any good, well, no. I mean it’s stupid, but it’s pretty wonderful. It enthralled millions. It’s beyond criticisms. People still tell me they love it as a favorite film.

RICHARD BURTON starred in "The Robe," the 1953 Biblical spectacle that became the most popular film Dunne ever wrote for the screen. Burton also starred in "Prince of Players," the first film Dunne directed and wrote. It was a box office failure.

BAWDEN: How did you get to direct your first film in 1955, "Prince of Players"?

DUNNE: I cashed in my success chips from "The Robe." And Darryl Zanuck joked he couldn’t find anybody else to do it. Moss Hart, no less, wrote the first draft. It was about the Booth actors in the nineteenth century. Ray Massey was superb as the drunken patriarch Junius. But Richard Burton declaimed all over the place as Edwin. He had yet to make that smooth transition to film acting. John Derek was OK as John Wilkes but I think he could have been better. It wasn’t much of a hit but it got me started and I made a lot of mistakes in camera placement, editing, pacing. I don’t look at it fondly these days.

BAWDEN: The same year you made "The View From Pompey’s Head"?

DUNNE: I was getting better. You know Dana Wynter says this one had a different title for every country. I felt this was the one that would put Dana over big with American fans. But it just did not happen. For various reasons. I think she was wrongly perceived as too aristocratic. The original novel was tough to adapt because of all the flashbacks. I loved its Southern authenticity and just plunged ahead. Joe MacDonald gave us breathtakingly authentic cinematography. I think Dick Egan wasn’t quite up to it as Anson. Darryl thought he’d be the next Gable and that never happened. People are very nostalgic about it but it did not make much money on its initial release and because of that Fox brushed off Dana and Dick in short order, I’m afraid.

BAWDEN: "Hilda Crane" (1956) was next.

DUNNE: A Jean Simmons melodrama. In person, she’s saucy and ironical, not like these films. She’s a double divorcee returning home to live with her mother. Divorce in 1956 was still a big issue. Guy Madison was the next fella and Jean complained he was prettier than she was! I saw it as an investigation into the role of women. Really! Evelyn Varden was Guy’s truly nasty mom and the Canadian actress Judith Evelyn was Jean’s mom. Two crabby moms in one picture both named Evelyn! Jean Pierre Aumont was the moony professor she really loves. It did make money because of Jean’s popularity.

BAWDEN: Next came "Three Brave Men" (1956).

DUNNE: Ray Milland, Ernie Borgnine, Frank Lovejoy were our three men. Nina Foch was the gal. The movie on the cinema marquee was "The Robe" –figured I’d promote one of my own. I did this one because I was a vociferous foe of the blacklist. Ernie was accused of disloyal behavior, Ray was his defending attorney. A film like this couldn’t have been done a few years earlier. I thoug."ht it exciting stuff, the public disagreed. Ernie had just won his Oscar for "Marty so it was marketed off his name and that attracted the few people who saw it.

BAWDEN: How did "Ten North Frederick" (1958) come about?

DUNNE: Well, it was all Spencer Tracy’s fault. We bought the John O’Hara novel for him in 1956 and he initially was very enthusiastic about it. And I recall going on the set of "The Old Man and the Sea" at Warners and we discussed changes in the draft, which he wanted. Then came the doubts. Katharine Hepburn phoned me one night to say, “Spence is wavering but don’t worry he always does that. He needs to be stroked.” And that’s what I did. In 1956 he had argued for Grace Kelly as his young love but MGM wouldn’t loan her and she was busy decamping from Hollywood to become a princess. Fox wanted their new discovery Suzy Parker, but Spence wasn’t enthusiastic. I was starting to get concerned.

Then about two weeks before shooting started, his agent phoned and said he was quitting. We had a case to sue him, but why bother? I couldn’t think of anybody else until Buddy Adler suggested Gary Cooper. Now Spence had had affairs on the side and felt guilty about that. So had Coop. Everyone knew of his romance with Pat Neal, which had ended by then. A manuscript was sent to his home and he eagerly accepted. I think he saw the whole thing as cathartic.

The budget was tight even with a star of Coop’s magnitude because this one went against the grain of the Fifties. The story was quite nasty at times. I had already cast everyone else. Geraldine Fitzgerald was marvelous as the wife. Buddy wanted Claire Trevor, but I needed a true WASP and a viper and I got both. (Gerry actually is Irish). Diane Vari was coming off "Peyton Place." Boy, was she marvelous! I thought she’d go to the top and stay there. As the confused son I had Ray Stricklyn and he has one great scene. But Coop confused his fan base, He’s not heroic here,. He’s a true gentle man, facing middle age and needing somebody to hang onto. Coop told me he’d never played a person so vulnerable. People see this movie on The Late Show and they see how morals have changed so much since then. Buddy hated it, let it sort of disappear. It was set in the 1940s, but he ordered modern hair styles and costumes for the women. Even the cars are Fifties!

BAWDEN: Did you like "In Love and War" (1958)?

DUNNE: The way you are phasing the question I can tell you don’t. Well, neither did I. It was an assignment. Buddy said he had a lot of high priced young talent on the lot and he had to use them or pay them off. It was the saga of shore leave for three young Marines in San Francisco in World War II. Again the historical accoutrements were all wrong. But what could I do. The three guys were Bob Wagner, Jeffrey Hunter and a new recruit, Bradford Dillman. And the gals they hitch up with were Dana Wynter, Hope Lange and Sheree North. A callow bunch, I grant you. But there was some acting talent there. Dana just did not click with American audiences and Sheree was Fox’s weapon in case Marilyn Monroe got uppity. Bob and Jeff were long standing rivals but good natured about it.

We had some good battle scenes done at the Fox ranch. Other stuff was at Westwood. Bob had to play the coward and I think he did it just fine and Dana had trouble putting her character across because of script rewrites. It was from a good novel, "The Big War," by Anton Myrer. I remember Brad was the socialite and Jeff the real hero type. The book certainly had to be watered down. The movie came and it went with very little reaction.

BAWDEN: What about "Blue Denim" (1959)?

DUNNE: Well, what about it? I got to do it because Buddy thought it was a risque situation. Young teen Brandon DeWilde gets Carol Lynley pregnant. Marsha Hunt and Macdonald Carey were his parents. Today it would be chock full of bad jokes and salacious situations. But it reflects the times. I broke the blacklist by hiring Marsha and nobody hollered. Don’t forget at that time it was the "Father Knows Best" era. It was taken from a long running play and I think that shows. I concentrated on the pain of these two. Abortion wasn’t an option at the time; neither was being a single teen mom. It was about babies having a baby. It got good box office, people were affected. Buddy saw this one as a morality play for kids but many theaters wouldn’t let kids in without adult accompaniment.

BAWDEN: In "Wild in the Country" (1961) you even get Elvis Presley to act.

DUNNE: That was the intention. And the film drew such poor box office Elvis vowed never to do that again. The scenes where they find an illegal abortionist are tough to watch, I wanted it that way. I mean it’s a bit crazy–Clifford Odets writing for the Pelvis! Elvis was a bad boy who has a gift for writing. It was based on a pretty good novel, "The Lost Country." He had three sweeties: Hope Lange, Tuesday Weld and Millie Perkins, who’d played Anne Frank. He sings but it definitely is not an Elvis Presley musical.

On set he was sweet, did everything as required, no demands. Maybe if he’d been a bit more assertive we might have made this thing work . He had one great bit talking about trying to save his mother and he pulled it off beautifully. He also soared in a drunk scene. The rest of the time he was just there, you know what I mean? He was too nice to be convincing as a bad boy.

BAWDEN: You claimed recently in The Los Angeles Herald Examiner that you’re responsible for Ronald Reagan becoming president.

DUNNE: Oh, I might not go that far. You see Ronnie hadn’t made a movie in years and then he became hot again in that Lee Marvin thing with Angie Dickinson ("The Killers"). And so Lew Wasserman at MCA, where I was now attached ,asked me to audition him for the villain in "Blindfold" (1965), which was going to be a Rock Hudson vehicle. And Ronnie sauntered in to my office. And we talked. Adorable guy, even if his politics are cuckoo. But I just felt he lacked the necessary gravitas and chose Jack Warden and Ronnie subsequently said that losing that part was so rough he decided to run for California governor. Which he did and won and now (1988) he’s president. So blame me if you want to.

BAWDEN: I forgot to ask you this: Why did you leave Fox? You’d been there since 1937?

DUNNE: Fox left me. (Fox Pres.) Spyros Skouras didn’t know diddley squat about making movies. He almost bankrupted the studio with "Cleopatra." At the same time as I was making "Lisa" (1962), he had Marilyn Monroe’s last movie in endless production. He hated "Lisa" and truly butchered it and shipped it out without any publicity. The novel by Jan De Hartog was wonderful. It was about Jews trying to get into Palestine after the war. It turned out to be Dolores Hart’s last movie before she became a nun. I always wanted to ask her if it somehow influenced her decision. Had she stayed in movies she could have become as big as Grace Kelly. She was that good. I know Stephen Boyd never quite got over her. Spyros wanted to cut the Auschwitz flashbacks because he thought they’d scare off patrons. The lurid ads were terrible. I simply marched away. Nobody at Fox wanted me to stay anyhow.

BAWDEN: Why was "Blindfold" your last picture as director?

DUNNE: Why not? I was offered TV things after that, but refused. I liked "Blindfold" well enough and it made a profit based on Rock’s personal popularity. He felt he had made too many comedies and was segueing back into drama. Selling him as a psychiatrist was hard to take. He didn’t project that kind of scholarly intelligence. It was all very slick in the fashion of "Charade." The Lucille Fletcher story was a bit too fragile to last two hours on screen. I thought it clever--the plot had Rock mentally noting down sounds to later track his kidnappers. After that I got no further orders. I came here to Malibu and puttered around, I’m still doing just that–nothing.

BAWDEN: But you did write one more script, for "The Agony and the Ecstasy."

DUNNE: (Director) Carol Reed asked for me. He hated the adaptation he was given. Told me he’d screened "David and Bathsheba" and thought I could get the dialogue right without provoking laughter. I did it by reciting the lines around my study, then putting them down, trying to keep it colloquial. Critics said it was two great men arguing which is true. It’s mostly fact with some bits of interpolation. I tried, I really tried and in some scenes I think succeeded more than others. I thought the novel by Irving Stone quite a fun read. Fox told me they wanted Spencer Tracy as the brutish Pope Julius II. And I just laughed at them. By that time Spence was an invalid. He could hardly have led armies into battle. And I must say Chuck Heston was not my idea of Michelangelo, who in real life was quite effeminate. Chuck was born from a square womb, you know, but his name sold tickets for these epics. Rex Harrison as Julius wasn’t brawny but he could act in those long scenes that seemed to go nowhere. Fox simply did not know how to sell this one.

BAWDEN: Then you retired?

DUNNE: From the movies. Forcibly. My kind of feature wasn’t being done any more. Our Malibu home became quite a gathering for the few literates in Hollywood. Anybody blacklisted was always welcomed. I’ve been writing reminiscences recently for The Herald Examiner. I look out at the ocean a lot. No regrets really except I’ve got a pack of ideas for movies I never could make. I’ve moved on and out of movies. But if one of mine appears on TV, I’ll take a gander, provided it’s on at a reasonable hour.

(Philip Dunne died of heart problems on June 2, 1992, at his Malibu home. He was 84. Daughter Philippa Dunne is an actress and writer while daughter Jessica Dunne is a stunt performer.)

©2012 by Jim Bawden. This column first posted Jan. 2, 2012.

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