Stanley Kramer
Stanley Earl Kramer was an American film director and producer, responsible for making many of Hollywood's most famous "message films" and a liberal movie icon. As an independent producer and director, he brought attention to topical social issues that most studios avoided. Among the subjects covered in his films were racism, nuclear war, greed, creationism vs. evolution, and the causes and effects of fascism. His other films included High Noon, The Caine Mutiny, and Ship of Fools.
Director Steven Spielberg described him as an "incredibly talented visionary" and "one of our great filmmakers, not just for the art and passion he put on screen, but for the impact he has made on the conscience of the world." Kramer was recognized for his fierce independence as a producer-director, with author Victor Navasky writing that "among the independents...none seemed more vocal, more liberal, more pugnacious than young Stanley Kramer." His friend Kevin Spacey honored him in his acceptance speech for the 2015 Golden Globe for Best Actor in a TV Drama, calling him "one of the great filmmakers of all time."
Despite uneven critical reception, both then and now, Kramer's body of work has received many awards, including 16 Academy Awards and 80 nominations, and he was nominated nine times as either producer or director. In 1961, he received the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award. In 1963, he was a member of the jury at the 3rd Moscow International Film Festival. In 1998, he was awarded the first NAACP Vanguard Award in recognition of "the strong social themes that ran through his body of work". In 2002, the Stanley Kramer Award was created, to be awarded to recipients whose work "dramatically illustrates provocative social issues".
Early life
Kramer was born in New York City. His parents were Jewish, and having separated when he was very young, he remembered little about his father. His mother worked at a New York office of Paramount Pictures, during which time his grandparents took care of him at home. His uncle, Earl Kramer, worked in distribution at Universal Pictures.Kramer attended DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, where he graduated at age fifteen. He then enrolled in New York University, where he became a member of the Pi Lambda Phi fraternity and wrote a weekly column for the Medley magazine. He graduated in 1933 at the age of nineteen with a degree in business administration. After developing a "zest for writing" with a newspaper, biographer Donald Spoto wrote, Kramer was offered a paid internship in the writing department of 20th Century Fox and moved to Hollywood. Until receiving that writing job, he had planned to enroll in law school.
Film career
Move to Hollywood
Over the following years, during the period of the Great Depression, Kramer took odd jobs in the film industry: He worked as a set furniture mover and film cutter at MGM, as writer and researcher for Columbia Pictures and Republic Pictures, and associate producer with Loew-Lewin productions. Those years as an apprentice writer and editor helped him acquire an "exceptional aptitude" in editing and develop the ability to understand the overall structure of the films he worked on. They enabled him to later compose and edit "in camera," as he shot scenes.He was drafted into the U.S. Army in 1943 during World War II, where he helped make training films with the Signal Corps in New York, along with other Hollywood filmmakers including Frank Capra and Anatole Litvak. He left the army with the rank of first lieutenant.
After the war, Kramer soon discovered that there were no available jobs in Hollywood in 1947, so he created an independent production company, Screen Plays Inc. He partnered with writer Herbie Baker, publicist George Glass and producer Carl Foreman, an army friend from the film unit. Foreman justified the production company by noting that the big studios had become "dinosaurs," which, being shocked by the onrush of television, "jettisoned virtually everything to survive." But they failed to develop cadres of younger creative talent in their wake.
Producer
Kramer's new company was able to take advantage of unused production facilities by renting time, allowing him to create independent films for a fraction of the cost the larger studios had required, and he did so without studio control. Kramer also saw this as an opportunity to produce films dealing with subjects the studios previously avoided, especially those about controversial topics.However, Kramer soon learned that financing such independent films was a major obstacle, as he was forced to approach banks or else take on private investors. He did both when necessary. But with studios no longer involved, rival independent companies were created which all competed for those limited funds. According to Byman, "there were no fewer than ninety-six" other companies in competition during that period, and included some of Hollywood's biggest names: Frank Capra, John Ford, William Wyler, Howard Hawks, Leo McCarey, and George Stevens. Kramer explained how he tried to differentiate his new company from the others, explaining he was less interested in the money than having the ability to make a statement through his films:
The first movie produced under his production company was the comedy So This Is New York, directed by Richard Fleischer, and based on Ring Lardner's The Big Town. It failed at the box office. It was followed with Champion, another Lardner story, this one about an ambitious and unscrupulous boxer. Written by Foreman, it was tailored to the talents of Kirk Douglas, a former amateur wrestler who was now an actor. Filmed in only 23 days with a relatively small budget, it became an immense box-office success. It won an Academy Award for Best Editing, with four other nominations, including Douglas for best actor and Foreman as screenwriter.
Kramer next produced Home of the Brave, again directed by Mark Robson, which became an even bigger success than Champion. The story was adapted from a play by Arthur Laurents, originally about anti-Semitism in the army, but revised and made into a film about the persecution of a black soldier. Byman notes that it was the "first sound film about antiblack racism." The subject matter was so sensitive at the time, that Kramer shot the film in "total secrecy" to avoid protests by various organizations. Critics generally liked the film, which, notes Nora Sayre, "had a flavoring of courage."
His renamed Stanley Kramer Company produced The Men, which featured Marlon Brando's screen debut, in a drama about paraplegic war veterans. It was the first time Kramer and Foreman worked with director Fred Zinnemann, who had been directing for twenty years and had won an Oscar. The film was another success for Kramer, who took on a unique subject dealing with a world few knew about. Critic Bosley Crowther noted that its "striking and authentic documentary quality has been imported to the whole film in every detail, attitude and word."
Zinnemann said he was impressed with Kramer's company and the efficiency of their productions:
Also released in 1950 was Kramer's production of Cyrano de Bergerac, the first English language film version of Edmond Rostand's 1897 French play. It made a star of José Ferrer, who won his only Oscar for Best Actor.
Films with Columbia Pictures
In 1951, Columbia Pictures president Harry Cohn offered Kramer's company an opportunity to form a production unit working with his studio. Kramer was given free rein over what films he chose to make, along with a budget of nearly a million dollars each. Kramer agreed to a five-year contract during which time he would produce 20 films. However, Kramer later stated that the agreement was "one of the most dangerous and foolhardy moves of my entire career." He agreed to the commitment because of his "deep-seated desire to direct," he states, along with the security of ready studio financing.His last independent production was High Noon, a Western drama directed by Fred Zinnemann. The movie was well received, winning four Oscars, as well as three other nominations. Unfortunately, High Noons production and release intersected with McCarthyism. Writer, producer and partner Carl Foreman was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee while he was writing the film. Foreman had been a member of the Communist Party ten years earlier, but declined to "name names" and was branded an "un-cooperative witness" by HUAC, and then blacklisted by the Hollywood companies, after which he sold his interest in the company. Kramer, a long time friend and business partner of Carl Foreman removed Foreman's name from the credits as co-producer.
Kramer continued producing movies at Columbia, including Death of a Salesman, The Sniper, The Member of the Wedding, The Juggler, The Wild One and The 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T.. With a larger budget, his films took on a "glossier" more polished look, yet his next 10 films all lost money, although some were nonetheless highly praised.
In 1953, Cohn and Kramer agreed to terminate the five-year, 20-film contract Kramer had signed. However, his last Columbia film, The Caine Mutiny, regained all of the losses Columbia had incurred as a result of his earlier projects. The Caine Mutiny was an adaptation of the book written by Herman Wouk and was directed by Edward Dmytryk.
Kramer observed that during the 1940s and 1950s, "cinema was the producer's medium:"
Director
After The Caine Mutiny, Kramer left Columbia and resumed his independent productions, this time in the role of the director. Over the next two decades, Kramer reestablished his reputation within the film industry by directing a continual series of often successful films dealing with social and controversial issues, such as racism, nuclear war, greed and the causes and effects of fascism. Critic Charles Champlin later described Kramer as "a guy who fought some hard battles. He took on social issues when it was not popular to do so in Hollywood."Among some of those controversial films were Not as a Stranger, The Pride and the Passion, The Defiant Ones, On the Beach, Inherit the Wind, Judgment at Nuremberg, and Guess Who's Coming to Dinner. In addition to dramas, he directed It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.
His first film as director was Not as a Stranger, the story of medical students and their career, some of whom lose their idealism and succumb to blind ambition, adultery, and immoral behavior. The film was a "smash hit," but reviews were mixed. Pauline Kael claimed it "lacked rhythm and development."