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Otto Preminger
Preminger in 1976, by Allan Warren
Born	Otto Ludwig Preminger 5 December 1905(1905-12-05) Wiznitz, Austria–Hungary (present Vyzhnytsia, Ukraine)
Died	23 April 1986(1986-04-23) (aged 80) New York City, New York, U.S.
Occupation	Director, producer, actor
Years active	1931–86
Spouse	Marion Mill (m. 1932–1946) «start: (1932)–end+1: (1947)»"Marriage: Marion Mill to Otto Preminger" Location: (linkback:http://en-wiki.db.wn.com/index.php/Otto_Preminger) Mary Gardner (m. 1951–1959) «start: (1951)–end+1: (1960)»"Marriage: Mary Gardner to Otto Preminger" Location: (linkback:http://en-wiki.db.wn.com/index.php/Otto_Preminger) Hope Bryce (m. 1971–1986) «start: (1971)–end+1: (1987)»"Marriage: Hope Bryce to Otto Preminger" Location: (linkback:http://en-wiki.db.wn.com/index.php/Otto_Preminger)

Otto Ludwig Preminger (5 December 1905 – 23 April 1986) was an Austro–Hungarian-American theatre and film director.

After moving from the theatre to Hollywood, he directed over 35 feature films in a five-decade career. He rose to prominence for stylish film noir mysteries such as Laura (1944) and Fallen Angel (1945). In the 1950s and 1960s, he directed a number of high-profile adaptations of popular novels and stage works. Several of these pushed the boundaries of censorship by dealing with topics which were then taboo in Hollywood, such as drug addiction (The Man with the Golden Arm, 1955), rape (Anatomy of a Murder, 1959) and homosexuality (Advise & Consent, 1962). He was twice nominated for the Best Director Academy Award. He also had a few acting roles.

Early life[link]

Preminger was born in 1905 in Wiznitz (Vyzhnytsia), a town west of Czernowitz, northern Bukovyna, in today's Ukraine, then part of the Austro–Hungarian Empire, into the Jewish family of Markus and Josefa Preminger. Preminger's father was born in 1877 in Galicia, at a time when it was part of the Austro–Hungarian Empire. As an Attorney General of Austria–Hungary, Markus was a proud public prosecutor on the cusp of an extraordinary career defending the interests of the Emperor Franz Josef. The couple provided a stable home life for Preminger and his brother Ingo.

"My father believed that it was impossible to be too kind or too loving to a child. He never punished me. When there were problems he sat down and discussed them with me reasonably, as though I was an adult. I don't think my mother agreed completely with this method but she acted, as always, according to his wishes. I adored him. I had an affectionate relationship with my mother; she was a wonderful, warm-hearted woman, but she did not really play a large part in the formation of my character. Intellectually my father influenced me more than my mother."^[1]

After the assassination in 1914 of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the throne, which led to the Great War, Russia entered the war on the Serbian side, and tsarist armies began to invade Eastern Europe. Perilously close to Russia, Czernowitz was especially vulnerable. Like other refugees in flight, Markus Preminger saw Austria as a safe haven for his family. He was able to secure a job as a public prosecutor in Graz, capital of the Austrian province of Styria. Preminger prosecuted nationalist Serbs and Croats who had been imprisoned as suspected enemies of the Empire. When the Preminger family relocated, Otto was nearly nine, and was enrolled in a school where instruction in Catholic dogma was mandatory and Jewish history and religion had no place on the syllabus. Ingo, not yet four, remained at home.

After a year in Graz, the decisive public prosecutor was summoned to Vienna, where he was offered an eminent position, roughly equivalent to that of the United States Attorney General. Markus was told that the position would be his only if he converted to Catholicism. In a gesture of defiance and self-assertion, Markus refused. He received the position anyway. In 1915, Markus relocated his family to Vienna, the city that Otto later claimed to have been born in. Although now working for the emperor, Markus was a government official, respectable, but not part of the highly-prized inner city. As a result, the family started their new lives with rather modest quarters. Vienna was still an imperial capital with an array of cultural offerings that tempted Otto, at ten already incurably stagestruck.

Career[link]

Theater[link]

Preminger's first theatrical ambition was to become an actor. In his early teens, Otto was able to recite from memory many of the great monologues from the international classic repertory, and, never shy, he demanded an audience. Preminger's most successful performance in the National Library rotunda was Mark Antony's funeral oration from Julius Caesar. As he read, watched, and after a fashion, began to produce plays, he started to miss more and more classes of school. Austria's failing fortunes during the war had no impact on the Premingers. Markus moved his family to a more fashionable district in 1916.

As the war came to an end, Markus formed his own law practice. Markus instilled in both his sons a sense of fair play as well as respect for those with opposing view-points, and rather than becoming reactionary conservatives, as their privileged upbringing might seem to be foreordained, Otto and Ingo became lifelong liberal Democrats. As his father's practice continued to thrive in post-war Vienna, Otto began seriously contemplating a career in the theater.

In 1923, when Preminger was seventeen, his soon-to-be mentor, Max Reinhardt, the renowned Viennese-born director who had established his base of operation in Berlin, announced plans to establish a theatrical company in Vienna in a rundown 135-year old theater. Reinhardt's announcement was seen as a call of destiny to Preminger. He began writing to Reinhardt weekly, requesting an audition. After a few months, Preminger, frustrated, gave up, and stopped his daily visit to the post office to check for a response. Unbeknownst to him, a letter was waiting with a date for an audition Preminger had already missed by two days. Feigning illness, Preminger skipped classes and began to hover near the stage door hoping to encounter Reinhardt associate Dr. Stefan Hock, begging for another audition.

Preminger explained to his father that a career in theater was not just a ploy to excuse himself from school. This was a way of life, and it was the only one he wanted. In order to obtain his father's full blessing, Preminger finished school and completed the study of law at the University of Vienna. He juggled a commitment to the University and his new position as a Reinhardt apprentice. The two developed a mentor-and-protege relationship, becoming both a confidant and teacher. When the theater opened, on April 1, 1924, Preminger appeared as a furniture mover in Reinhardt's comedia staging of Carlo Goldoni's The Servant of Two Masters. His next, and more substantial appearance came late in the next month with William Dieterle (who would also later move to Hollywood) in The Merchant of Venice. Other notable alumni who Preminger would work with the same year were Mady Christians, who committed suicide after having been blacklisted during the McCarthy era in Hollywood, and Nora Gregor, who was to star in Jean Renoir's La Règle du jeu (1939).

Reinhardt may have had reservations about Preminger's acting but he quickly detected the young man's abilities as an administrator. He appointed Preminger as an assistant in the Reinhardt acting school that opened in the theater at Schönbrunn, the former summer palace of the emperor. The following summer, a frustrated Preminger was no longer content to occupy the place of a subordinate and he decided to leave the Reinhardt fold. His status as a Reinhardt muse gave him an edge over much of his competition when it came to joining German-speaking theater.

His first theater assignments as a director in Aussig were plays ranging from the sexually provocative Lulu, and from Berlin he imported Roar China, a pro-Communist agitprop. Preminger displayed pleasure in discovering new talent, but also created pitfalls with his unruly temper and disdain for directorial collaborations.

Preminger did not have the same passion for the medium as he had for theater. He accepted the assignment nonetheless. The film premiered at the Emperor Theater in Vienna on 21 December 1931, to strong reviews and business. From 1931-1935, Preminger directed twenty-six shows. Among the performers he hired were Lili Darvas, Lilia Skala, Harry Horner, Oskar Karlweis, Albert Bassermann, and Luise Rainer, who was to win back-to-back Academy Awards in 1936 and 1937.^{[citation needed]}

It was not until the spring of 1931 that Preminger's carefree bachelor lifestyle was threatened when he met a Hungarian woman named Marion Mill. The couple married soon afterwards in the summer of 1932 in a plain ceremony on the bride's birthday, August 3, only thirty minutes after her divorce from her first husband had been finalized. The couple moved into an apartment of their own. Preminger immediately informed his wife that she could not pursue a theatrical career.^{[citation needed]}

Hollywood[link]

In April 1935, as Preminger was rehearsing a boulevard farce, The King with an Umbrella, he received a summons from American film producer Joseph Schenck to a five o'clock meeting at the Imperial Hotel. In 1924 Schenck had become the president of United Artists, and in 1934 had founded a new company called Twentieth Century. Two years later (only several months before his meeting with Preminger), Schenck had taken over William Fox's ailing studio and with a partner, Darryl F. Zanuck, had set up a new entity, Twentieth Century-Fox. At the new studio, Zanuck handled all film production while Schneck managed the finances. The duo, now in competition with already well-established studios such as Paramount and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, were on the lookout for new talent. Within a half-hour of meeting Schenck, Preminger accepted an invitation to come to work for Fox in Los Angeles.^{[citation needed]}

Sam Spiegel, later himself a film producer, accompanied Preminger from Vienna to Paris by train. From Paris, Preminger on his own took another train to Le Havre, where he joined up with Gilbert Miller and his wife, Kitty Miller, who sailed with him to New York on the Normandie. The Normandie arrived in New York on October 21, 1935. Upon the Premingers' arrival in Hollywood, Schenck introduced the couple to Fox's array of movie royalty, including Irving Thalberg, Norma Shearer, Gary Cooper, Joan Crawford and Greta Garbo.

Preminger's first assignment was to direct a vehicle for Lawrence Tibbett, a renowned opera singer Zanuck wanted to get rid of. Tibbett had achieved mild success for MGM in musicals throughout the early 1930s and then returned to the stage. Zanuck later lured Tibbett back to films with a generous contract. Preminger worked efficiently, completing the film well within the budget and well before the scheduled shooting deadline. The film opened to tepid notices in November 1936. Preminger, proving to Zanuck's satisfaction that he was not a typical rebellious European hotshot, graduated.^{[citation needed]}

Zanuck promoted him to the A-list, assigning him a story called Nancy Steele Is Missing, which was to star Wallace Beery, who had recently won an Academy Award for The Champ. Beery, however, refused to do the film, saying, "I won't do a picture with a director whose name I can't pronounce". Zanuck instead gave Preminger the task of directing another B-picture comedy called Danger - Love at Work. French starlet Simone Simon was cast in the lead but was later fired by Zanuck and replaced with Ann Sothern. The premise told the story of a lawyer who must persuade eight members of an eccentric rich family to hand over land left them by their grandfather to a corporation for development. Reviews of the disposable farce, released in September 1937, were surprisingly pleasant.

In November 1937, Zanuck's perennial emissary Gregory Ratoff brought Preminger the news that Zanuck had chosen him to direct Kidnapped, the most expensive feature to date for the studio. Zanuck himself had adapted the Robert Louis Stevenson novel, set in the Scottish Highlands. After reading Zanuck's script, Preminger knew he was in trouble; a foreign director directing in a foreign setting? During the shooting of Kidnapped Preminger had the first of his notorious tantrums. While screening footage of the film to Zanuck, the studio head accused Preminger of making changes in a scene between child actor Freddie Bartholomew and a dog. Preminger, composed at first, explained he had shot the scene exactly as written. Zanuck insisted he knew his own script, and disagreed. The confrontation escalated quickly and ended with Preminger exiting the office and slamming the door. Days later the lock to Preminger's office was changed and his name was removed from the door. After his parking space was relocated to a remote spot, Preminger stopped going to the studio. At that point, an official of Zanuck's offered Preminger a buyout deal which he rejected: Preminger wanted to be paid for the remaining eleven months of his two-year contract. Preminger searched for work at other studios, but received no offers. Only two years after his arrival in Hollywood, Preminger was unemployed. He focused on the stage with great success. Success came quickly on Broadway for Preminger, with long-running productions including Outward Bound with Laurette Taylor and Vincent Price, My Dear Children with John and Elaine Barrymore and Margin for Error, in which Preminger played a shiny-domed villainous Nazi.

A week after the opening of Margin, Preminger was offered a teaching position at the Yale School of Drama. He began commuting twice a week to Yale to lecture on directing and acting. Nunnally Johnson, a Hollywood writer impressed with Preminger's performance in Margin, called to ask if he would be interested in playing another Nazi in a film called The Pied Piper. In need of money, Preminger accepted on the spot. The film was to be made for Twentieth Century-Fox, the studio which had banished him. Even in the absence of Zanuck, who joined the Army after Pearl Harbor, Preminger did not expect to remain in Hollywood. After collecting a sizable salary for his work, Preminger was preparing to return to New York when his agent informed him that Fox wanted him to reprise his role in the upcoming film adaptation of Margin for Error. Famed director Ernst Lubitsch was set to direct and Preminger was to appear onscreen with Joan Bennett and Milton Berle. Lubitsch withdrew not long after production began and Preminger saw his chance to gain back what he had lost in his falling-out with Zanuck, a chance to direct again. William Goetz, who was running Fox in Zanuck's absence, was persuaded by Preminger and took the bait.^{[citation needed]}

With the script of Margin in shambles, Preminger hired a movie novice named Samuel Fuller, who was on leave from the Army, to rework the entire script. Goetz was soon impressed with his views of the dailies each night and offered Preminger a new seven-year contract calling on his services as both a director and actor. Preminger took full measure of the temporary studio czar and accepted. Preminger completed production on schedule with a slightly increased budget in November 1942. Critics were dismissive upon the film's release the following February, noting the bad timing of the release, coinciding with the war.^{[citation needed]}

Before his next assignment with Fox, Preminger was asked by movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn to appear as a Nazi yet again, this time in a Bob Hope comedy called They Got Me Covered. Preminger hoped to find possible properties he could develop before Zanuck's return, one of which was Vera Caspary's suspense novel Laura. Before production would begin on Laura, Preminger was given the green light to direct and to produce Army Wives. Army Wives was another B-picture morale booster for a country at war, showing the sacrifices made by women as they send their husbands off to the frontlines. Cast in the lead was Jeanne Crain, a contract star for Fox who was being groomed for the A-list. Veteran character actor Eugene Pallette played Crain's father. Preminger clashed with Pallette and claimed he was "an admirer of Hitler and convinced that Germany would win the war". Pallete also refused to sit down at the same table with a black actor in a scene set in a kitchen. "You're out of your mind, I won't sit next to a nigger", Pallette hissed at Preminger.^[2] Otto furiously informed Zanuck, who fired the actor, whose scenes had already been shot. Army Wives was given a new title, In the Meantime, Darling, and opened in September 1944, with an estimated budget of $450,000. Aside from the incident with Pallette, no other complications arose during the filming; the hurdles would instead come soon after during the shooting of Laura.

[edit] Laura

Zanuck returned from the armed services with his grudge against Preminger intact. Although he had been forgiven by Zanuck, Preminger was not granted permission to direct Laura, but only allowed to produce the picture. Instead, Rouben Mamoulian would direct. Mamoulian began ignoring his producer and even started to rewrite the script. Although Preminger had no complaints about the casting of Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews, he balked at their choice for Waldo: Laird Cregar. Preminger explained to Zanuck that audiences would immediately identify with Cregar as a villain, especially after Cregar's role as Jack the Ripper a year earlier in The Lodger. Preminger instead was ideally taken by stage actor Clifton Webb. Even after Zanuck made crude remarks about Webb's homosexuality, Preminger persuaded his boss to at least give Webb a screen test. The persuasion paid off and Webb was cast (and earned a long-term Fox contract), and Mamoulian was fired for creative differences.^{[citation needed]}

Laura started filming on April 27, 1944, with a projected budget of $849,000. After Preminger took over, the film continued shooting well into late June. The film was an instant hit with audiences and critics alike, earning Preminger his first Academy Award nomination for direction, Clifton Webb a Best Supporting Actor nomination and Lyle Wheeler an art direction nomination. Joseph La Shelle won the Academy Award for his cinematography. The film propelled its two relatively unknown young actors Gene Tierney and Dana Andrews to the top of the Hollywood box office. David Raksin's haunting theme song would become one of the most memorable in Hollywood history. Laura's theme is one of the most recorded songs, with over four hundred known renditions from Frank Sinatra to Carly Simon.^[3]

Peak years[link]

Preminger expected that acclaim for Laura would promote him to work on better pictures, but his professional fate was in the hands of Darryl Zanuck, who had Preminger take over for the ailing Ernst Lubitsch, who had recently suffered a heart attack, on A Royal Scandal, a remake of Lubitsch's own 1924 silent Forbidden Paradise, starring Pola Negri as Catherine the Great. Before his heart attack, Lubitsch had spent months in preparation, and had already cast the film. Preminger, who had known Tallulah Bankhead before the start of the Nazi invasion into Austria, got along well with her. The film received lackluster reviews and failed to earn back any gross revenue. Bankhead would appear in only one more film, two decades later.

Fallen Angel (1945) was exactly what Preminger had been anticipating. In Fallen Angel, a con man and womanizer ends up by chance in a small California town, where he romances a sultry waitress and a well-to-do spinster. When the waitress is found killed, the drifter, played by Dana Andrews, becomes the prime suspect. Zanuck gave Preminger the task of convincing Alice Faye, the studio's top musical star of the late 1930s and early 1940s, to play the role of the spinster. Zanuck hoped Faye's appearance would boost the film's box-office appeal but many of her scenes were cut, which ultimately led to her departure from Fox. Linda Darnell was given the role of the doomed waitress.

Centennial Summer, Preminger's next film, would be his first to be shot entirely in color. Hoping to duplicate the success of MGM's 1944 musical Meet Me in St. Louis, Zanuck enlisted both Preminger and composer Jerome Kern. The musical detailed two sisters in an idealized all-American working-class family, who become rivals over the same man. The cast included Darnell and Jeanne Crain as the dueling sisters, Cornel Wilde as the object of their affections, and veteran stars Walter Brennan, Constance Bennett, and Dorothy Gish in supporting roles. The reviews and box office draw were tepid when the film was released in July 1946, but by the end of that year Preminger had one of the most sumptuous contracts on the lot, earning $7,500 a week.^{[citation needed]}

Forever Amber, based on Kathleen Winsor's internationally popular novel published in 1944, was Zanuck's next investment in adaptation. Preminger had read the book and disliked it immensely. Preminger had another best seller aimed at a female audience in mind, Daisy Kenyon. Zanuck pledged that if Preminger did Forever Amber first, he could go to town with Daisy Kenyon afterwards. Forever Amber had already been shooting for nearly six weeks when Preminger replaced director John Stahl. Zanuck had already spent nearly two million dollars on the production. First, Preminger decided the script needed to be completely rewritten, and that Peggy Cummins, the film's leading lady, would have to be replaced, because he regarded her to be "amateurish beyond belief". Only after turning to his revised script did Preminger learn that Zanuck had already cast Linda Darnell in place of Cummins. The heroine in the novel was blonde, and Preminger was convinced it was necessary to cast a true blonde, Lana Turner, who was under contract to MGM. Zanuck protested, and was convinced that whoever played Amber would become a big star, and wanted that woman to be one of the studio's own. Zanuck had bought the book because he believed its scandalous reputation promised big box-office returns, and was not surprised when the Catholic Legion of Decency condemned the film for glamorizing a promiscuous heroine who has a child out of wedlock. Forever Amber opened to big business in October 1947, and garnered decent reviews. Preminger later recalled that Forever Amber was "by far the most expensive picture I ever made and it was also the worst".^{[citation needed]}

Throughout the five-month shoot on Forever Amber Preminger maintained a busy schedule, working regularly with writers on scripts for two upcoming projects, Daisy Kenyon and The Dark Wood. Preminger was finally relieved to be working on Daisy Kenyon. Joan Crawford stars in the title role as a magazine illustrator facing a romantic conflict: Will she choose a prominent, married lawyer or an unmarried neurotic veteran? Crawford was enthusiastic about the role, coming only two years after she had won an Academy Award for Mildred Pierce.^{[citation needed]} Dana Andrews is the unfaithful lawyer whose unloved wife, played by Ruth Warrick, takes her anger out on her daughters and beats them hysterically. Henry Fonda is a grieving widower and war vet plagued by nightmares. Variety magazine proclaimed, the film is "high powered melodrama surefire for the femme market".^{[citation needed]}

After the modest success of Daisy Kenyon (1947), Preminger, an avid careerist, saw That Lady in Ermine as a further opportunity. Betty Grable was cast as a countess who saves her small mythical country when she seduces the Hungarian colonel in charge of the occupation, played by Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. The film had previously been another Lubitsch project, but after his sudden death in November 1947, Preminger took over direction. When the film opened to modest business in July 1948, it received better notices than it deserved as reviewers scrambled to discern traces of Lubitsch's hand. Preminger's next film would be another period piece based on a literary classic, an adaptation of Oscar Wilde's 1897 play Lady Windermere's Fan. Over the spring and early summer of 1948 Otto renovated Wilde's play into The Fan. Madeleine Carroll plays Mrs. Erlynne, who tries to save her married daughter Lady Windermere (Jeanne Crain) from ruining her reputation. As Preminger fully expected, The Fan (1949) opened to poor notices.

Later career[link]

Starting in the 1950s, Preminger's reputation rose to the point that he was commissioned to direct a number of prestigious projects with A-list casts and based on successful novels or stage works. Some of his most significant films of this period include:

• The Moon Is Blue (1953): controversially bucked the Legion of Decency's moral standards
• Carmen Jones (1954): a reworking of the opera Carmen in an African-American setting
• The Man with the Golden Arm (1955): based on the novel by Nelson Algren, one of the first Hollywood films to deal with heroin addiction
• Porgy and Bess (1959): a Hollywoodization of the George Gershwin opera
• Anatomy of a Murder (1959): critically acclaimed, quite explicit courtroom drama about murder-rape. Nominated for the Best Picture Academy Award
• Exodus (1960): filming of the Leon Uris bestseller set around the founding of the state of Israel
• Advise & Consent (1962): a political drama from the Allen Drury bestseller with a homosexual subtheme
• The Cardinal (1963): a drama set in the Vatican hierarchy which earned Preminger his second Best Director Academy Award nomination
• Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965): a naturalistic return to the mystery/thriller genre, set in England.

Preminger and author John D. Voelker in the trailer for Anatomy of a Murder

Several of these films broke new ground for Hollywood in tackling controversial and taboo topics, thereby challenging both the Motion Picture Association of America's Production Code of censorship and the Hollywood blacklist. Forever Amber (1947) was condemned by the Catholic Legion of Decency, which successfully lobbied 20th Century Fox to make changes to the film. The League also condemned the 1953 comedy The Moon Is Blue, based on a Broadway play which did not inspire mass protests, for its use of the words "virgin" and "pregnant", and the film was notably released without the Production Code Seal of Approval.^{[citation needed]} The Man with the Golden Arm (1955) broke new ground with its exploration of the then taboo subject of heroin addiction, as did Anatomy of a Murder with its frank courtroom discussions of rape and sexual intercourse — the censors objected to the use of words such as "rape", "sperm", "sexual climax" and "penetration". Preminger made but one concession (substituting "violation" for "penetration") and the picture was released with the MPAA seal, marking the beginning of the end of the Production Code. On Exodus (1960) Preminger struck the first major blow against the Hollywood blacklist by openly hiring banned screenwriter Dalton Trumbo, who was credited under his own name for the first time in a decade.

From the mid-1950s, most of Preminger's films utilized distinctive animated titles designed by Saul Bass, and many had modern jazz scores. At the New York City Opera, in October 1953, Preminger directed the American premiere (in English translation) of Gottfried von Einem's opera Der Prozeß, based on Franz Kafka's novel The Trial. Soprano Phyllis Curtin headed the cast.

Preminger also acted in a few movies; his most memorable role is that of the warden of a German POW camp in Stalag 17. In the 1960s Batman television series, Preminger was the second of three actors who played Mr. Freeze, in the two-parter "Green Ice/Deep Freeze." Adam West, who portrayed Batman, remembers Preminger as rude and unpleasant, especially when he disregarded the typical thespian etiquette of subtly cooperating when being helped to his feet in a scene by West and Burt Ward. This feeling was echoed by Laurence Olivier, who played a police inspector in Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965). In his autobiography Confessions of an Actor Olivier recalled Preminger as "a bully", as did Bunny castmember Noël Coward.^{[citation needed]} Ingo Preminger, who produced the 1970 M*A*S*H movie, was Otto Preminger's younger brother.

Beginning in 1965, Preminger made a string of films in which he attempted to make stories that were fresh and distinctive, but the films he made, including In Harm's Way (1965) and Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon (1970), became both critical and financial bombs. In 1967, Preminger released Hurry Sundown, a lengthy drama set in the U.S. South and partially intended to break cinematic racial and sexual taboos. However, the film was poorly received and ridiculed for a heavy-handed approach, and for the casting of Michael Caine as a Southern patriarch. Hurry Sundown signaled a rather precipitous decline in Preminger's reputation, as it was followed by several other films which were critical and commercial failures,^{[citation needed]} including Skidoo (1968), a failed attempt at a hip sixties comedy (and Groucho Marx's last film), and Rosebud (1975), a terrorism thriller which was also widely ridiculed. Several publicized disputes with leading actors did further damage to Preminger's reputation. His last film, an adaptation of the Graham Greene espionage novel The Human Factor (1979), had financial problems and was barely released.

Personal life[link]

As they continued living together, Preminger and his wife Marion became more and more estranged. It was an open secret that the two had an arrangement, whereby as long as he promised not to seek a divorce, Preminger was free to see other women. In effect, he lived like a bachelor, as was the case when he met burlesque performer Gypsy Rose Lee and began an open relationship with her. Lee had already attempted to break into movie roles, but she was not taken seriously as anything more than a stripper. She appeared in B pictures in less-than-minor roles. Preminger's liaison with Lee produced a child, Erik.^{[citation needed]} Lee rejected the idea of Preminger helping to support the child, and instead elicited a vow of silence from Preminger: he was not to reveal Erik's paternity to anyone, including Erik himself. Lee called the boy Erik Kirkland, after her separated husband, Alexander Kirkland. It was not until 1966, when Preminger was 60 years old and Erik was 22 years old, that they were to meet finally as father and son.^{[citation needed]}

Although Preminger and Marion had been estranged for years, he was surprised when in May 1946 she asked for a divorce. On a trip to Mexico she had met a very wealthy (and married) Swedish financier, Axel Wenner-Gren. The Premingers' divorce ended smoothly and speedily. Marion did not seek any alimony, just a few personal belongings that would be picked up in a few days by her fiancé's private plane. Mrs. Wenner-Gren, madly jealous of her rival, began to stalk Marion and was not willing to grant a divorce. Marion even went as far as to claim that Mrs. Wenner-Gren attempted to shoot her at a post office in Mexico. Marion returned to the Preminger home feeling embarrassed and shamed. She resumed her appearances as Preminger's wife, and nothing more. Preminger was enjoying his escapades as a freewheeling man-about-town and had begun dating Natalie Draper, a niece of Marion Davies.^{[citation needed]}

While filming Carmen Jones (1954), Preminger began an affair with the film's star, Dorothy Dandridge, which lasted four years. During that period, Preminger advised her on career matters, including an offer made to Dandridge for the featured role of Tuptim in the 1956 film of The King and I. Preminger advised her to turn down the supporting role, as he believed it to be unworthy of her. Dandridge later regretted accepting Preminger's advice.^[4] She ended the affair with Preminger upon realization that he had no plans to leave his first wife to marry her.^{[citation needed]} Their affair was depicted in the HBO Pictures biopic, Introducing Dorothy Dandridge, in which Preminger was portrayed by Austrian actor Klaus Maria Brandauer.

Death[link]

The niche of Otto Preminger in Woodlawn Cemetery

Otto Preminger died in New York City in 1986, aged 80, from cancer after suffering from Alzheimer's disease. He was cremated and is interred in a niche in the Azalea Room of the Velma B. Woolworth Memorial Chapel at Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx, New York.

Filmography[link]

• Die große Liebe (1931)
• Under Your Spell (1936)
• Danger - Love at Work (1937)
• Kidnapped (1938)
• Clare Boothe Luce's Margin for Error (U.S.) also known as Margin for Error (UK) (1943)
• In the Meantime, Darling (1944)
• Laura (1944)
• A Royal Scandal (U.S.) also known as Czarina (UK) (1945)
• Fallen Angel (1945)
• Centennial Summer (1946)
• Forever Amber (1947)
• Daisy Kenyon (1947)
• The Fan (U.S.) also known as Lady Windermere's Fan (UK) (1949)
• Whirlpool (1949)
• Where the Sidewalk Ends (1950)
• The 13th Letter (1951)
• Angel Face (1953)
• Stalag 17 (1953) (acting only, directed by Billy Wilder)
• The Moon Is Blue (1953)
• Carmen Jones (1954)
• River of No Return (1954)
• The Court-Martial of Billy Mitchell (U.S.) also known as One Man Mutiny (UK) (1955)
• The Man with the Golden Arm (1956)
• Saint Joan (1957)
• Bonjour Tristesse (1958)
• Porgy and Bess (1959)
• Anatomy of a Murder (1959)
• Exodus (1960)
• Advise and Consent (1962)
• The Cardinal (1963)
• In Harm's Way (1965)
• Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965)
• Hurry Sundown (1967)
• Skidoo (1968)
• Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon (1970)
• Such Good Friends (1971)
• Rosebud (1975)
• The Hobbit (1977) (actor only)
• The Human Factor (1979)

Awards[link]

Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Picture. He was twice nominated for Best Director: for Laura and for The Cardinal. He won the Bronze Berlin Bear award for the film Carmen Jones at the 5th Berlin International Film Festival.^[5]

Notes[link]

Further reading[link]

Journals

• Denby, David (2008-01-14). "Balance Of Terror: How Otto Preminger made his movies". The New Yorker (New York, NY: Condé Nast Publications). http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/atlarge/2008/01/14/080114crat_atlarge_denby. Retrieved 2011-09-18. 
• Rich, Nathaniel (2008-11-06). "The Deceptive Director". The New York Review of Books (New York, NY). http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2008/nov/06/the-deceptive-director/. Retrieved 2011-09-18. 

Books

• Carluccio, Giulia; Cena, Linda (1990) (in Italian). Otto Preminger. Firenze: Nuova Italia. OCLC 24409124. 
• Frischauer, Willi (1973). Behind the Scenes of Otto Preminger: An Unauthorised Biography. London: Joseph. ISBN 978-0-7181-1170-0. 
• Fujiwara, Chris (2008). The World and Its Double: The Life and Work of Otto Preminger. New York: Faber and Faber. ISBN 978-0-571-22370-1. 
• Grob, Norbert; Aurich, Rolf; Jacobsen, Wolfgang (1999) (in German). Otto Preminger. Berlin: Jovis. ISBN 978-3-931321-59-8. 
• Hirsch, Foster (2007). Otto Preminger: The Man Who Would Be King. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ISBN 978-0-375-41373-5. 
• Legrand, Gérard; Lourcelles, Jacques; Mardore, Michel (1993) (in French). Otto Preminger. Paris: Cinémathèque Française. ISBN 978-2-87340-089-7. 
• Lourcelles, Jacques (1965) (in French). Otto Preminger. Paris: Seghers. OCLC 2910388. 
• Pratley, Gerald (1971). The Cinema of Otto Preminger. New York: A.S. Barnes & Co. ISBN 978-0-498-07860-6. 
• Preminger, Otto (1977). Preminger: An Autobiography. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. ISBN 978-0-385-03480-7. 

Interviews

• Preminger, Otto (1967-04-10). Censorship and the Production Code: Otto Preminger. Interview with William F. Buckley, Jr. New York, NY. Firing Line. WWOR-TV. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnmk0LQpt7E. Retrieved 2011-09-25. 

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Otto Preminger

• Otto Preminger at the Internet Movie Database
• Otto Preminger at the Internet Broadway Database
• Otto Preminger at Find a Grave
• Cinema Retro: Keir Dullea Recalls Starring in Preminger's Bunny Lake is Missing
• Literature on Otto Preminger

William Holden
Holden in a publicity photo, 1954
Born	William Franklin Beedle, Jr. (1918-04-17)April 17, 1918 O'Fallon, Illinois, U.S.
Died	November 12, 1981(1981-11-12) (aged 63) Santa Monica, California, U.S.
Cause of death	Exsanguination following a fall
Occupation	Actor, wildlife conservationist
Years active	1938–81
Spouse	Brenda Marshall (m. 1941–1971) «start: (1941)–end+1: (1972)»"Marriage: Brenda Marshall to William Holden" Location: (linkback:http://en-wiki.db.wn.com/index.php/William_Holden) (divorced)

William Holden (April 17, 1918 – November 12, 1981) was an American actor. Holden won the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1954 and the Emmy Award for Best Actor in 1974. One of the most popular and well known movie stars of all time, Holden was one of the biggest box office draws of the 1950s, he was named one of the "Top 10 Stars of the Year" six times (1954–1958, 1961) and appeared on the American Film Institute's AFI's 100 Years…100 Stars list as number 25. He starred in some of the most popular and critically acclaimed films of all time, including such blockbusters as Sunset Boulevard, The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Wild Bunch, The Towering Inferno, and Network.

Early life and career[link]

With George Raft in Invisible Stripes

Holden was born William Franklin Beedle, Jr. in O'Fallon, Illinois, the son of Mary Blanche (née Ball), a schoolteacher, and William Franklin Beedle, Sr., an industrial chemist.^[1] He had two younger brothers, Robert and Richard. Holden's paternal great-grandmother, Rebecca Westfield, was born in England in 1817, while some of his mother's ancestors settled in Virginia's Lancaster County after emigrating from England in the 17th century.^[1] Growing up, Holden was raised in the Methodist church, and while some sources cite him as a Congregationalist, Holden identified himself as a Methodist throughout his life. His family moved to South Pasadena when he was three.

After graduating from South Pasadena High School, Holden attended Pasadena Junior College, where he became involved in local radio plays. Contrary to legend and theatre publicity, he did not study at the Pasadena Playhouse, nor was he discovered in a play there. Rather, he was spotted by a talent scout from Paramount Pictures in 1937 while playing the part of an 80-year-old man, Marie Curie's father-in-law, in a play at the Playbox, a separate and private theatre owned by Pasadena Playhouse director Gilmor Brown. His first film role was in Prison Farm the following year.

Hollywood's "Golden Boy"[link]

This unreferenced section requires citations to ensure verifiability.

Holden's first starring role was in Golden Boy (1939), in which he played a violinist turned boxer. That was followed by the role of George Gibbs in the film adaptation of Our Town.^[2]

With Gloria Swanson in Sunset Boulevard

After Columbia Pictures picked up half of his contract, he alternated between starring in several minor pictures for Paramount and Columbia before serving as a 2nd lieutenant in the United States Army Air Forces during World War II, where he acted in training films for the First Motion Picture Unit. Beginning in 1950, his career took off when Billy Wilder tapped him to star as the down-at-the-heels screenwriter Joe Gillis, who is taken in by faded silent-screen star Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson) in Sunset Boulevard, for which Holden earned his first Best Actor Oscar nomination.^[3]

Following this breakthrough film, his career quickly grew in stature as he played a series of roles that combined good looks with cynical detachment, including a prisoner-of-war entrepreneur in Stalag 17 (1953), for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor, a pressured young engineer/family man in Executive Suite (1954), an acerbic stage director in The Country Girl (1954), a conflicted jet pilot in the Korean War film The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1954), a carefree playboy in Sabrina (1954), a wandering college football star in Picnic (1955), a dashing war correspondent in Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955), his most widely recognized role as an ill-fated prisoner in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), a World War II tug boat captain in The Key (1958), and an American Civil War military surgeon in The Horse Soldiers (1959), which also starred John Wayne.

With Audrey Hepburn in Sabrina (1954)

He also played a number of sunnier roles in light comedy, such as the handsome architect pursuing virginal Maggie McNamara in the controversial Production Code-breaking The Moon is Blue (1953), as Judy Holliday's tutor in Born Yesterday (1950), as a playwright captivated by Ginger Rogers' character in Forever Female (1953) and as Humphrey Bogart's younger brother, a playboy, in Sabrina (1954), which also starred Audrey Hepburn. In 1954, Holden was featured on the cover of Life.

With the pinnacle of his career in 1957 with The Bridge on the River Kwai, Holden starred in his share of forgettable^{[neutrality is disputed]} films during the 1960s such as Paris When It Sizzles (1964), also co-starring Audrey Hepburn, which he was forced to do by studio contracts. By the mid-1960s, his roles were having less critical and commercial impact.

Later career[link]

1960s

In 1969, Holden made a comeback when he starred in director Sam Peckinpah's graphically violent Western The Wild Bunch, winning much acclaim. Also in 1969, Holden starred in director Terence Young's family film L'Arbre de Noel, co-starring Italian actress Virna Lisi, based on the novel of the same name by Michel Bataille. This film was originally released in the United States as The Christmas Tree and on home video as When Wolves Cry.^[4]

Five years later, he starred with Paul Newman and Steve McQueen in The Towering Inferno, which became a box office smash and the highest grossing film of Holden's career. He was also praised for his Oscar-nominated leading performance in Sidney Lumet's classic Network (1976), a prescient examination of television written by Paddy Chayevsky, playing an older version of the character type he had become iconic for in the 1950s, only now more jaded and aware of his own mortality.

In 1974 Holden won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie for his portrayal of a cynical, tough veteran LAPD street cop in the television film The Blue Knight, based upon the best-selling Joseph Wambaugh novel of the same name.

In 1980, Holden appeared in The Earthling with popular child actor Ricky Schroder, playing a loner dying of cancer who goes to the Australian outback to end his days, meets a young boy whose parents have been killed in an accident, and teaches him how to survive. Schroder later named one of his sons Holden.

During his last years, Holden also appeared in When Time Ran Out and Blake Edwards's S.O.B.. His second Irwin Allen film, When Time Ran Out was a critical and commercial failure and heavily disliked by Holden himself; his final film, S.O.B., directed by Blake Edwards, was more successful and a Golden Globe-nominated picture.

Personal life[link]

Brenda Marshall, 1952

Holden was married to actress Ardis Ankerson (stage name Brenda Marshall) from 1941 until their divorce (after many long separations) in 1971. They had two sons, Peter Westfield (born November 17, 1943) and Scott Porter (born May 2, 1946; died January 21, 2005, San Diego, California). He also adopted his wife's daughter, Virginia, from her first marriage.

Holden was best man at the marriage of his friend Ronald Reagan to Nancy Davis in 1952; however, he never involved himself in politics.

In 1954, during the filming of Sabrina, Holden and Audrey Hepburn became romantically involved, and she hoped to marry him and have children. She broke off the relationship when Holden revealed that he had undergone a vasectomy.^[5]

Holden met French actress Capucine in the early 1960s. They starred in the films The Lion (1962) and The 7th Dawn (1964). They began a two-year affair; after it ended, she and Holden remained friends until Holden's death in 1981.^[6]

In 1964, Holden was again paired up with Hepburn in Paris When It Sizzles, but behind the scenes, the set was plagued with problems. Holden tried without success to rekindle a romance with the now-married Hepburn. That, combined with his alcoholism, made the situation a challenge for the production.

Holden maintained a home in Switzerland and also spent much of his time working for wildlife conservation as a managing partner in an animal preserve in Africa. His Mount Kenya Safari Club in Nanyuki (founded 1959) became a mecca for the international jet set.^[7]

While in Italy, Holden killed another driver in a 1966 drunk driving incident. He received an eight-month suspended sentence for vehicular manslaughter.^[8]

In 1972, Holden began a nine-year relationship with actress Stefanie Powers which sparked her interest in animal welfare.^[9] After his death, Powers set up the William Holden Wildlife Foundation at Holden's Mount Kenya Game Ranch.^[10]

His younger brother, Robert W. "Bobbie" Beedle, was a Navy fighter pilot who was killed in action in World War II, on January 5, 1945. After The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1955) was released, Beedle was remembered by his squadron-mates as having been very much like Holden's character, Lt. Harry Brubaker.

Death[link]

On November 12, 1981, according to the Los Angeles County Coroner's autopsy report, Holden was alone and intoxicated in his apartment in Santa Monica, California, when he slipped on a throw rug, severely lacerated his forehead on a teak bedside table, and bled to death. Evidence suggests he was conscious for at least half an hour after the fall. It is probable that he may not have realized the severity of the injury and did not summon aid, or was unable to call for help. His body was found four days later.^[7]

Holden had dictated in his will that the Neptune Society cremate him and scatter his ashes in the Pacific Ocean. No funeral or memorial service was held, per his wishes.

Holden is the actor "who had died while he was drinking," mentioned by Suzanne Vega in the 1987 song, "Tom's Diner".^[11]

In 2007, his stepdaughter, Virginia Holden Gaines, wrote a book, Growing Up with William Holden: A Memoir, reliving her memories of life with her father.

Filmography[link]

Features[link]

Short subjects[link]

• Reconnaissance Pilot (1943)
• Wings Up (1943)
• You Can Change the World (1951)

Awards and nominations[link]

Academy Award[link]

• Best Actor Nomination for Sunset Boulevard (1951)
• Best Actor Award for Stalag 17 (1954)
• Best Actor Nomination for Network (1977)

BAFTA Award[link]

• Best Foreign Actor Nomination for Picnic (1955)
• Best Foreign Actor Nomination for Network (1976)

Emmy Award[link]

• Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actor – Miniseries or a Movie Award for The Blue Knight (1974)

References[link]

Notes[link]

Bibliography[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: William Holden

• William Holden at the Internet Movie Database
• William Holden at the TCM Movie Database
• Profile @ Turner Classic Movies
• William Holden Wildlife Foundation

Jean Dorothy Seberg^[1] (November 13, 1938 – August 30, 1979) was an American actress. She starred in 37 films in Hollywood and in France, including Breathless (1960), the musical Paint Your Wagon (1969) and the disaster film Airport (1970).

Jean Seberg is also one of the most well-known victims of FBI COINTELPRO project. Her victimization was rendered as a well-documented retaliation for her support of civil rights and activist groups in the 1960s.

Early life[link]

Jean Seberg was born in Marshalltown, Iowa, the daughter of Dorothy Arline (née Benson), a substitute teacher, and Edward Waldemar Seberg, a druggist.^[2][3][4] Her family was Lutheran and of Swedish, English, and German ancestry.^[4][5][6] Seberg studied at the University of Iowa.^[7][8]

Film career[link]

Seberg made her film debut in 1957 in the title role of Saint Joan, from the Shaw play, after being chosen from 18,000 hopefuls by director Otto Preminger in a $150,000 talent search. Her name was entered by a neighbor.^[9] By the time she was cast, on October 21, 1956, her only acting experience had been a single season of summer stock performances.^[10] The film was paired with a great deal of publicity about which Seberg commented that she was "embarrassed by all the attention".^[9] Despite a big build-up, called in the press a "Pygmalion experiment", both the film and Seberg received poor notices.^[11] On the failure, she later told the press:

"I have two memories of Saint Joan. The first was being burned at the stake in the picture. The second was being burned at the stake by the critics. The latter hurt more. I was scared like a rabbit and it showed on the screen. It was not a good experience at all. I started where most actresses end up."^[12]

Preminger, though, had promised her a second chance,^[11] and he cast Seberg in his next film Bonjour Tristesse the following year, which was filmed in France. Regarding his decision, Preminger told the press: "It's quite true that, if I had chosen Audrey Hepburn instead of Jean Seberg, it would have been less of a risk, but I prefer to take the risk. [..] I have faith in her. Sure, she still has things to learn about acting, but so did Kim Novak when she started."^[11] Seberg again received atrocious reviews and the film nearly ended her career.^[12] Her next role was in the 1959 comedy, The Mouse That Roared, starring Peter Sellers.

Deciding she had no luck in English-language films, Seberg moved to France, where she scored success as the free-love heroine of French New Wave films.^[12] Most notably, she appeared as Patricia in Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless (original French title: À bout de souffle), in which she co-starred with Jean-Paul Belmondo. The film became an international success and critics praised Seberg's performance, François Truffaut even hailing her "the best actress in Europe."^[13] Despite her achievements in this genre, Seberg did not identify with her characters or the film plots, saying that she was "making films in France about people [she's] not really interested in."^[12] The critics did not agree with Seberg's absence of enthusiasm, and raved about her performances, inspiring Hollywood and Broadway to make her important offers.^[12]

In 1961, Seberg took on the lead role in her then husband François Moreuil's debut film, La recréation. By that time, Seberg had been estranged from Moreuil, and she recollected that production was "pure hell" and that he "would scream at [her]."^[12] After moving back to the United States, she starred opposite Warren Beatty in Lilith (1964), which prompted the critics to acknowledge Seberg as a serious actress.^[13]

In 1969, she appeared in her first and only musical film, Paint Your Wagon, based on Lerner and Loewe's stage musical, and co-starring Lee Marvin and Clint Eastwood, but her singing voice was dubbed by Anita Gordon.^[14] Seberg also starred in the disaster film Airport (1970) opposite Burt Lancaster and Dean Martin.

At the peak of her career, Seberg suddenly stopped acting in Hollywood films. Reportedly, she was not pleased with the roles she had been offered, some of which, she noted, bordered on pornography.^[15] Conversely, she was not offered any great Hollywood roles, regardless of their size.^[15] Some have said she was blacklisted due to an infamous FBI smear campaign revolving around issues in her personal life.^[15] Others have dismissed that any blacklist occurred. Seberg was willing to work in a Paramount production whose screenplay she had been sent but the film was never made.^[15]

Seberg was François Truffaut's first choice for the central role of Julie in Day for Night but, after several fruitless attempts to contact her, Truffaut gave up and cast British actress Jacqueline Bisset instead.^[16] Her last US film appearance was in the TV movie Mousey (1974). Seberg remained busy during the 1970s, but only in European films.

Seberg later appeared in Bianchi cavalli d'Agosto (White Horses of Summer) (1975), Le Grand Délire (Die Große Ekstase) (1975, with husband Dennis Berry) and Die Wildente (1976, based on Ibsen's The Wild Duck^[17]).

FBI COINTELPRO Investigation[link]

FBI inter-office memo: "... cause her embarrassment and cheapen her image"

"There is no indication that Richard Wallace ever considered [the Seberg scam] to be anything other than an extremely successful COINTELPRO operation"^[18]

During the late 1960s, Seberg provided financial support to various group supporting civil rights, such as the NAACP and Native American school groups such as the Mesquaki Bucks at the Tama settlement near her home town of Marshalltown, for whom she purchased $500 worth of basketball uniforms. FBI management was very upset about several gifts to the Black Panther Party^[19], totalling $10,500 (estimated) in contributions; these were noted among a list of other celebrities in FBI internal documents later released under FOIA. This financial support, and her alleged interracial love affairs or friendships were evident triggers to a large-scale FBI program deployment in her direction.

FBI inter-office memo: "Usual precautions to avoid identification of the Bureau"

The FBI operation against Seberg used COINTELPRO program techniques harass, intimidate, defame and discredit the well-known actress.^[20] The FBI's stated goal was an unspecified "neutralization" of Ms. Seberg; all intended to be done while hiding FBI involvement. One stated FBI subsidiary objective was to "cause her embarrassment and serve to cheapen her image with the public", while taking the "usual precautions to avoid identification of the Bureau".^[21] FBI strategy and modalities can be found inFBI inter-office memos, since declassified and released to the public under FOIA^[22] .

"Jean Seberg... should be neutralized"[link]

In 1970, the FBI created the false story^[23] from a San Francisco-based informant, that the child she was carrying was not fathered by her husband Romain Gary, but by a member of the Black Panther Party, Raymond Hewitt.^[24] The story was reported by gossip columnist Joyce Haber of the Los Angeles Times,.^[25] It was also printed byNewsweek magazine.^[26] She gave birth to a girl named Nina on August 23, 1970 in Geneva, but the infant died two days later.^[27] She held an open casket funeral in her hometown to allow the curious to see the infant's white skin, to disprove the rumors.^[28] FBI organization of the defamation is detailed in a series of FBI memos, released to the public under FOIA.

Surveillance, U.S. and abroad[link]

It should be noted that 'investigation' of Ms. Seberg went far beyond the publishing of defamatory articles. According to her friends, interviewed after her death, Ms. Seberg experienced years of aggressive in-person surveillance (constant stalking), as well as break-ins and other intimidation oriented activity. FBI files show that not only was she wiretapped, but aggressive U.S. official surveillance was deployed while travelling in Switzerland,^[22] and Italy, and while she resided in France.^[22] i.e. FBI files show that the FBI cross-contacted the "FBI Legat" (legal attachés) in U.S. Embassies in Paris and Rome, to monitor the actress while abroad; the FBI also provided files on Seberg to the CIA, U.S. Secret Service and U.S. Military intelligence to assist in monitoring Ms. Seberg while travelling abroad.^[22] Newspaper reports after her death make clear Seberg was aware of the surveillance; in 1980, the Los Angeles Times published FBI logs of her Swiss wiretapped phone calls:

"It doesn't matter you know, I've got little friends who follow"^[22]

Hoover, Nixon involved[link]

FBI records released show that J. Edgar Hoover himself kept U.S. President Richard Nixon informed of FBI activities related to the Jean Seberg case via President Nixon's domestic affairs chief John Ehrlichman; John Mitchell, then Attorney General, and Deputy Attorney General Richard Kleindienst were also kept informed of FBI activities related to Jean Seberg.^[29]

Lurid aspects[link]

FBI files are full of judgmental and derogatory statements about Seberg's intimate personal life. For example, she was referred to as "the alleged promiscuous and sex-perverted white actress".^[22] It should be noted that not all the information about her case was released to the public; principally, only the files related to the newspaper libel affair were released.

Did FBI abuse lead to Seberg's death?[link]

Did a rumor planted by Hoover's aides lead to her death?^[30]

Six days after the discovery of her body in a car in Paris, dead from an apparent suicide by overdose, the FBI released documents under FOIA admitting the well-planned defamation of Ms. Seberg,^[31][32] while making statements attempting to distance themselves from practices of the Hoover era. FBI COINTELPRO scholars were unimpressed with this rhetoric.^[18] FBI abuse of Ms. Seberg was further explored at this time by Time Magazine in a front page article, "the FBI vs. Jean Seberg".^[33] Media attention surrounding the abuse she suffered at FBI hands led to examination of the case by the United States Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities, a.k.a. "the Church Committee", which noted that notwithstanding FBI claims of reform, that, "COINTELPRO activities may continue today under the rubric of investigation".^[34][35]

Los Angeles Times Editor Jim Bellows, in his autobiography,^[35] described events leading up to the Seberg articles, in which he expressed regret that he had not vetted the Seberg articles sufficiently. He echoed this sentiment in subsequent interviews.^[36]

"This is not about gossip," Halberstam said recently. "This is really about political reporting of a very dubious kind.

The Times did not set out to destroy her. One powerful institution manipulated another. The result was the destruction of a fragile human being."^[37]

Jean Seberg's family blames the FBI smear campaign for her death.^[38]

The Seberg case remains a hallmark case, examined to this day,^[39] vis-à-vis U.S. intelligence abuses directed towards U.S. citizens.

Personal life[link]

Seberg married François Moreuil, a French movie director who directed her in La récréation, in 1958; they divorced in 1960. According to Seberg, the marriage was a "violent" one, and she complained that she "got married for all the wrong reasons."^[12] On living in France for a period of time, Seberg said in an interview:

"I'm enjoying it to the fullest extent. I've been tremendously lucky to have gone through this experience at an age where I can still learn. That doesn't mean that I will stay here. I'm in Paris because my work has been here. I'm not an expatriate. I will go where the work is. The French life has its drawbacks. One of them is the formality. The system seems to be based on saving the maximum of yourself for those nearest you. Perhaps that is better than the other extreme in Hollywood, where people give so much of themselves in public life that they have nothing left over for their families. Still, it is hard for an American to get used to. Often I will get excited over a luncheon table only to have the hostess say discreetly that coffee will be served in the other room. [..] I miss that casualness and friendliness of Americans, the kind that makes people smile. I also miss blue jeans, milk shakes, thick steaks and supermarkets."^[12]

In 1962, she married French novelist and diplomat Romain Gary, who was 24 years her senior. Their only child together, a son, was named Diego. During her marriage to Gary, Seberg lived in Paris, Greece, Southern France and Majorca.^[40]

In 1972, she married film director Dennis Berry.

In 1979, Jean had "a form of marriage" to Ahmed Hasni while separated from her legally-wed husband.^[41] Hasni persuaded her to sell her second apartment on the Rue du Bac, and he kept the proceeds (reportedly 11 million francs in cash), announcing that he would use the money to open a Barcelona restaurant.^[42] The couple departed for Spain but she was soon back in Paris alone, and went into hiding from Hasni, who she said had grievously abused her.^[43]

Death[link]

Grave of Jean Seberg

In August 1979, she went missing and was found dead eleven days later in the back seat of her car, which was parked close to her Paris apartment in the 16th arrondissement. The police report stated that she had taken a massive overdose of barbiturates^[24] and alcohol (8g per liter). A suicide note ("Forgive me. I can no longer live with my nerves.") was found in her hand, and "probable suicide" was ultimately ruled the official cause of death by the French coroner. However, it is often questioned how she could have operated a car with that amount of alcohol in her body, and without the corrective lenses she needed for driving.^[44] One year later, her former husband Romain Gary committed suicide.^[24]

Seberg was interred in the Cimetière du Montparnasse, Paris, France.^[45]

Legacy[link]

In 1995, a documentary of her life was made by Mark Rappaport, titled From the Journals of Jean Seberg. Mary Beth Hurt played Seberg in a voice-over. Appropriately, Hurt was also born in Marshalltown, Iowa, in 1948, attended the same high school as Seberg, and Seberg had been her babysitter. A musical, Jean Seberg, by librettist Julian Barry, composer Marvin Hamlisch, and lyricist Christopher Adler, based on Seberg's life, was presented in 1983 at the National Theatre in London.

Mexican author and diplomat Carlos Fuentes mirrored their short-termed alleged love story in his 1994 novel Diana o La Cazadora Solitaria (Diana, or The Solitary Hunter).

The short 2000 film Je t'aime John Wayne is a tribute parody of Breathless, with Camilla Rutherford playing Seberg's role.

In 2004, the French author Alain Absire published Jean S., a fictionalised biography. Seberg's son, Alexandre Diego Gary, brought a lawsuit unsuccessfully attempting to stop publication.

In 1991, Jodie Foster, a fan of her performance in Breathless, purchased the film rights to the David Richards' biography about Seberg, Played Out: The Jean Seberg Story.^[46] She was going to produce and star in the film. The project was cancelled two years later.

In 2011, filming began in New York City on a biopic tentatively titled, 'Jean', starring artist and heiress Daphne Guinness as Jean Seberg.

Since 2011, her hometown of Marshalltown, Iowa began to hold an annual Jean Seberg International Film Festival (JSIFF).^[47]

Filmography[link]

• Saint Joan (1957)
• Bonjour tristesse (1958)
• The Mouse That Roared (1959)
• Breathless (A bout de souffle) (1959)
• Let No Man Write My Epitaph (1960)
• Les Grandes Personnes (Time Out for Love) (1961)
• La récréation (Playtime / Love Play) (1961, with husband François Moreuil)
• L'Amant de cinq jours (1961)
• Congo Vivo (1962)
• In the French Style (1962)
• Les Plus Belles Escroqueries du Monde (The World's Greatest Swindles) (1964)^[48]
• Lilith (1964)
• The Beautiful Swindlers (1964)
• Échappement libre (Backfire) (1964)
• Moment to Moment (1965)
• Un Milliard dans un Billard (Diamonds are Brittle) (1965)
• A Fine Madness (1966)
• La Ligne de démarcation or Line of Demarcation (1966)
• Estouffade à la Caraïbe (Gold Robbers) (1967)
• La route de Corinthe (The Road to Corinth, also released as Who's Got the Black Box?) (1967)
• Birds in Peru (1968, with husband Romain Gary)
• Pendulum (1969)
• Paint Your Wagon (1969)
• Ondata di Calore (Dead of Summer) (1970)
• Airport (1970)
• Macho Callahan (1970)
• Kill! (1972)
• Questa Specie d'Amore (This Kind of Love) (1972)
• L'attentat (The French Conspiracy) (1972)
• Camorra (1972)
• The Corruption of Chris Miller (1973)
• Mousey (or Cat & Mouse) (1974)
• Les Hautes solitudes (1974)
• Ballad for the Kid (1974) (also contributed to script, direction, editing)
• White Horses of Summer (1975)
• Le Grand Délire (Die Große Ekstase) (1975, with husband Dennis Berry)
• The Wild Duck (1976)
• La Légion saute sur Kolwezi (1980 – scenes shot before her suicide were never shown)

Bibliography[link]

• McGee, Garry (2008). Jean Seberg – Breathless. Albany, GA: BearManor Media. ISBN 1-59393-127-1. 
• Munn, Michael (1992). Clint Eastwood: Hollywood's Loner. London: Robson Books. ISBN 086051790x. 
• Richards, David (1981). Played Out: The Jean Seberg Story. Random House. ISBN 0-394-51132-8. 

References[link]

External links[link]

• Jean Seberg at the Internet Movie Database
• 1958 Mike Wallace interview January 4, 1958
• Website dedicated to Jean Seberg
• Movie Star: The Secret Lives of Jean Seberg Documentary Film

Dyan Cannon (born Samille Diane Friesen on January 4, 1937) is an American film and television actress, director, screenwriter, editor, and producer.

Early life[link]

Cannon was born in Tacoma, Washington. Her mother Claire (née Portnoy) was a homemaker; Cannon's father Ben sold life insurance.^[1] Cannon was raised in the Jewish faith of her mother, who had emigrated from Russia; Dyan's father was Baptist.^[2] She attended West Seattle High School.

Career[link]

Cannon made her screen debut in 1960 in The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond; however her small screen debut was in the late 1950s including a guest appearance on Bat Masterson in 1959, in the episode entitled "Lady Luck". She also made a 1959 guest appearance on Wanted: Dead or Alive starring Steve McQueen in episode 54 "Vanishing Act" as Nicole McCready. Another role was as Mona Elliott, with fellow guest star Franchot Tone, in the episode "The Man Behind the Man" of the 1964 CBS drama, The Reporter, with Harry Guardino in the title role. She also made appearances on 77 Sunset Strip, the perennial western series Gunsmoke, The Untouchables and the syndicated Two Faces West in the 1960 episode entitled "Sheriff of the Town".

In 1969, Cannon played Alice in the film Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice. She received Academy Award and Golden Globe nominations for her performance. In 1971, she starred in The Anderson Tapes (with Sean Connery), The Burglars, and Such Good Friends, receiving a Best Actress Golden Globe nomination for the last performance. Two years later, she was co-starred with Burt Reynolds in Shamus and was one of the many stars in The Last of Sheila. In 1974, she gave a critically acclaimed performance in Child Under a Leaf. In addition, she became the first Oscar-nominated actress to be nominated in the Best Short Film, Live Action Category for Number One (1976), a project which Cannon produced, directed, wrote and edited. It was a story about adolescent sexual curiosity. In 1978, Cannon starred in Revenge of the Pink Panther. That same year, she appeared in Heaven Can Wait, for which she received another Oscar nomination and won a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actress.

In 1976, she hosted Saturday Night Live during its first season. She was a guest in the fourth season of The Muppet Show in 1979.^[3]

In the 1980s, Cannon, who is also a singer/songwriter, appeared in Honeysuckle Rose (1980) with Willie Nelson, Author! Author! with Al Pacino, Deathtrap (1982) with Christopher Reeve and Michael Caine, Caddyshack II (1988), as well as several made-for-TV movies.

In the 1990s, she appeared on the popular television shows Diagnosis: Murder and The Practice, as well as being a semi-regular on Ally McBeal. She made appearances in films such as That Darn Cat (1997), 8 Heads in a Duffel Bag (1997), and Out to Sea (1997) with Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon. In 2005, she appeared in Boynton Beach Club, a movie about aging Floridians who have just lost their spouses.

Personal life[link]

On July 22, 1965, she married Cary Grant, who was 33 years her senior. They had one daughter, Jennifer (born February 26, 1966), also an actress. They were divorced on March 21, 1968, but the custody disputes over their daughter went on for years.^{[citation needed]} In 1972, she told an interviewer that she was involved in Primal therapy.^[4] Cannon married real estate investor Stanley Fimberg in 1985. They divorced in 1991.

Her brother is jazz bassist David Friesen.

Cannon is now a devout Christian.^[2]

Filmography[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official website^{[dead link]}
• Dyan Cannon at the Internet Movie Database
• Dyan Cannon at AllRovi

Monty Woolley
as Sheridan Whiteside, 1949.
Born	Edgar Montillion Woolley August 17, 1888(1888-08-17) New York City, New York
Died	May 6, 1963(1963-05-06) (aged 75) Albany, New York
Nationality	American
Occupation	Actor, stage director
Known for	The Man Who Came to Dinner

Monty Woolley (August 17, 1888 – May 6, 1963) was an American stage, film, radio, and television actor.^[1] At the age of 50, he achieved a measure of stardom for his best-known role in the stage play and 1942 film The Man Who Came to Dinner. His distinctive white beard was "his trademark."^[2]

Early life[link]

Woolley was born Edgar Montillion Woolley^[3] in New York City to a wealthy family (his father owned the Bristol Hotel) and grew up in the highest social circles. Woolley received a Bachelor's degree at Yale University, where Cole Porter was an intimate friend and classmate, and Master's degrees from Yale and Harvard University.^[4] He eventually became an assistant professor of English and dramatic coach at Yale.^[5] Thornton Wilder and Stephen Vincent Benét were among his students. He served in World War I in the U.S. Army as a first lieutenant assigned to the general staff in Paris.^[4]

Acting career[link]

Hollywood Walk of Fame, 6542 Hollywood Blvd.

Woolley began directing on Broadway in 1929,^[6] and began acting there in 1936 after leaving his academic career. In 1939 he starred in the Kaufman and Hart comedy The Man Who Came to Dinner for 783 performances. It was for this well-reviewed role he was typecast as the wasp-tongued, supercilious sophisticate.^[7][8]

Like Clifton Webb, Woolley signed with 20th Century Fox in the 1940s and appeared in many films through the mid-1950s. His most famous film role was one which he first performed on Broadway, that of a cranky radio wag restricted to a wheelchair because of a seemingly-injured hip in 1942's The Man Who Came to Dinner, a caricature of the legendary pundit Alexander Woollcott. The film received a good review from the New York Times.^[8] He played himself in Warner Bros.' fictionalized film biography of Cole Porter, Night and Day (1946).

He was also a frequent radio presence as a guest performer, from the time he first appeared in the medium as a foil to Al Jolson.^[9] Woolley became a familiar guest presence on such shows as The Fred Allen Show, Duffy's Tavern, The Big Show, The Chase and Sanborn Hour with Edgar Bergen and Charlie McCarthy, and others. In 1950, Woolley landed the starring role in the NBC series, The Magnificent Montague. He played a former Shakespearean actor whose long fall onto hard times forced him to swallow his pride and take a role on daily network radio, becoming an unlikely star while sparring with his wife, Lily (Anne Seymour); and, his wise-cracking maid, Agnes (Pert Kelton). The show lasted from November 1950 through September 1951.^[10]

Hand and beard print at Grauman's Chinese Theatre.

Woolley appeared on television at first in cameos, then his own dramatic play series On Stage with Monty Woolley.^[5] He starred in a CBS TV adaptation of The Man Who Came to Dinner in 1954,^[11] which he and some reviewers lambasted,^[12][13] and appeared in other televised dramas in the series Best of Broadway.^[7][11][14]

After completing his last film, Kismet (1955), he returned to radio for about a year, after which he was forced to retire due to ill health.

Woolley was nominated twice for an Academy Award, as Best Actor in 1943 for The Pied Piper and as Best Supporting Actor in 1945 for Since You Went Away. He won a Best Actor award from the National Board of Review in 1942 for his role in The Pied Piper.

His handprints and beard were impressed in the pavement of Grauman's Chinese Theatre in 1943.^[2][15] Woolley received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1960, officially listed in the "Motion Picture" category,^[16] though his star bears the television emblem.^[17]

Death[link]

Monty Woolley, "affectionately known as 'The Beard,'" died due to complications with kidney and heart ailments on May 6, 1963, in Albany, New York, aged 74.^[18] He is interred at the Greenridge Cemetery, Saratoga Springs, Saratoga County, New York.

Personal life[link]

Woolley and Cole Porter enjoyed many adventures together in New York and on foreign travels, although Porter reportedly disapproved of Woolley taking a black man as his lover.^[19] Woolley has been described in scholarly and other works as gay, and closeted.^[20][21][22]

According to Bennett Cerf in his 1944 book Try and Stop Me, Woolley was at a dinner party and suddenly belched. A woman sitting nearby glared at him; he glared back and said, "And what did you expect, my good woman? Chimes?" Cerf wrote, "Woolley was so pleased with this line that he insisted it be written into his next role in Hollywood."^[2][23]

Stage[link]

• Fifty Million Frenchmen (1929) - Director
• The New Yorkers (1930) - Director
• The Second Little Show (1930) - Director
• America's Sweetheart (1931) - Director
• Champagne, Sec (1933) - Director
• Walk a Little Faster (1933) - Director
• Jubilee (1935) - Director
• On Your Toes (1936) - Sergei Alexandrovitch
• Knights of Song (1938) - His Royal Highness, Albert Edward
• The Man Who Came to Dinner (1939) - Sheridan Whiteside^[24][25]

Filmography[link]

References [link]

Notes

External links[link]

• Monty Woolley at the Internet Movie Database
• Monty Woolley at the Internet Broadway Database
• Monty Woolley at Find a Grave