George Stevens
George Cooper Stevens was an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and cinematographer. He won the Academy Award for Best Director for A Place in the Sun and Giant.
Born in Oakland, California, George Stevens worked in his parents' West Coast touring stock theater company as a child actor and stage manager. When cinema was replacing live theater, Stevens's parents relocated to Los Angeles. At the age of 17, Stevens was hired as an assistant cameraman, working on several Western films produced by Hal Roach. Within three years, Stevens became a cameraman on the Our Gang series. Impressed with Stevens's visual knowledge, Roach then appointed him to direct installments of The Boy Friends series.
Stevens next moved to Universal Pictures and then to RKO Pictures. There, he directed several genre films, including Alice Adams starring Katharine Hepburn; Swing Time starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers; and Gunga Din starring Cary Grant. Stevens was loaned to MGM to direct Woman of the Year based on Hepburn's suggestion, whereby she was paired with Spencer Tracy for the first time. He also directed The Talk of the Town and The More the Merrier.
In 1941, the United States entered World War II, in which Stevens joined the U.S. Army Signal Corps and headed a film unit. Using his personal 16 mm film camera, Stevens shot color footage of the Liberation of Paris and the entry of American soldiers into the Dachau concentration camp. Stevens returned to Hollywood and directed more serious films, starting with I Remember Mama.
Between 1951 to 1956, Stevens directed his American Trilogy, which includes A Place in the Sun, Shane, and Giant. He next directed widescreen biographical films, The Diary of Anne Frank and The Greatest Story Ever Told. His final film was The Only Game in Town starring Elizabeth Taylor and Warren Beatty. Stevens died on March 8, 1975, at the age of 70.
Famed film critic Pauline Kael says of Stevens, that he made films with "good moments" and later became highly regarded for creating expansive films with "obese nuances."
Early life
Stevens was born on December 18, 1904, in Oakland, California, the son of Landers Stevens and Georgie Cooper, both stage actors. A brother of theatre critic Ashton Stevens, Landers Stevens began his acting career at age 20, and established his own theatrical stock company when he was 24. Landers met Cooper where she was performing at the Tivoli Theatre in San Francisco, and the two were married in 1902. He also had two brothers, Jack, a cinematographer, and writer Aston Stevens. He learned about the stage by watching his parents, and himself, acting in plays in San Francisco. George remembered, "As a kid I helped my father, setting up the entrances and marking the script and holding the lines. Because he was usually acting in the play and because he also was directing, I helped, holding the script."At the age of 5, George made his stage debut in the play Sappho, appearing alongside Nance O'Neill, at the Alcazar Theatre. At the age of 10, his mother gave him a Brownie camera, and he began photographing the city and portraits of his mother. Landers's theatre troupe toured throughout the West Coast, Utah, Vancouver, and Canada. By 1920, the theatre stock company had waned in popularity, and Stevens's parents set up a tent show in downtown San Francisco.
Stevens's parents relocated to Sonoma County, California, where Jack and George were enrolled in the Flowery School and then Sonora Union High School. The 1920–1921 theatre season was financially unsuccessful, so much that Landers closed his theatre company. Decades later, George reflected: "A movie palace was built right across the street from the theatre where my father worked. First one was built on this corner, then one was built on that corner, and the people were going to them in great numbers. I remember my father peeking out through the brass ring before the curtain went up on his stage show, and there weren't many people out front."
In 1921, the family relocated once more to Glendale so Landers could pursue work in Hollywood. By the age of 16, George was forced to drop out of high school to drive his father to acting auditions. To compensate for his lack of a formal education, George regularly visited the Glendale Public Library.
Career
1922–1933: Assistant cameraman
Stevens worked as an assistant cameraman on Heroes of the Street, a silent drama directed by William Beaudine. He then moved to Ince Studio where he worked on The Destroying Angel and several Westerns, including The Virginian released by Preferred Pictures. His first onscreen credit as an assistant cameraman was the 1923 short film Roughest Africa, starring Stan Laurel.At the age of 17, Stevens was employed at Hal Roach Studios as an assistant cameraman to Fred Jackman. His first project was The Battling Orioles and was followed by The White Sheep. Within a year, Stevens worked on Black Cyclone, an installment of a silent Western film serial featuring Rex the Wonder Horse. The next installment was The Devil Horse. Directed by Fred Jackman, Stevens was one of the two cameramen, collaborating with Floyd Jackman. While trick photography had been used previously, Stevens experimented with using filters on the panchromatic film, by which he filtered "the sky black for night sequences, instead of just tinting it blue, and using long telephoto lenses to bring the background up, things that a kid would do."
The Jackman brothers left Hal Roach Studios, but Stevens stayed to photograph a series of short comedies starring Laurel and Hardy. Oliver Hardy had been under contract with the studio, but Roach hired Stan Laurel from Universal Pictures to write gag stories. Stevens's first project with the duo was Slipping Wives, whereby he worked as director of photography and a gag writer on 35 of their short films, including Bacon Grabbers and Night Owls. According to Stevens, he learned from this experience that comedy could be "graceful and human".
Filming for one short proved difficult when Laurel's blue eyes failed to register on orthochromatic film, but Stevens made a successful test of him using panchromatic film. By 1930, Stevens began directing film serial installments of The Boy Friends. At one point, Stevens grew tired of directing two-reel gag comedies and refused to direct another film that Roach had asked him. He told Leonard Maltin, in 1970: " told me a story he wanted me to do. I couldn't see it at all, and I'd just started on something else. So I thought it over, and I said, 'Hal, I can't do it. I don't understand it. A half-hour later, Stevens was informed by a studio manager that he was fired, with the termination effective on New Year's Eve 1931.
1933–1935: Early feature works
Six months later, Stevens was hired by Universal Pictures and collaborated with Warren Doane, a former Roach general manager, and James W. Horne, Stevens's cousin, on several two-reel comedies, such as Yoo Hoo and Should Crooners Marry?. These comedies featured several actors, including James Gleason, Richard "Skeets" Gallagher, Louise Fazenda, and Vince Barnett. Impressed with Stevens's efficiency, Universal hired Stevens to direct his first feature film, The Cohens and Kellys in Trouble, the final installment of The Cohens and Kellys comedy serials, which had starred George Sidney and Charles Murray. Principal photography began in December 1932 and wrapped in March 1933.When asked about his directorial process, in an interview with the Los Angeles Daily News, Stevens stated: "In reading over a screenplay I constantly look for the little things of a story; small situations, common incidents, or places where the shrug of a shoulder properly done will give an audience a chance to laugh. For, despite the prolonged depression, everyone is still anxious to laugh." Later that same year, Stevens signed a contract with RKO Pictures with an eight-month guarantee to direct six shorts and one feature film. In September 1933, RKO loaned Stevens to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer to direct a segment featuring Laurel and Hardy in Hollywood Party.
In 1934, Stevens returned to RKO to direct Bachelor Bait, which he filmed from April 30 to May 18. The film starred Stuart Erwin, portraying a kind-hearted man who loses his job at a marriage license office. He then opens Romance Inc., his own matrimonial agency, where he falls in love with a wealthy client, played by Grace Sutton. A review in The Hollywood Reporter called the film " nice, pleasant little comedy that takes time out every once in a while to bowl you over completely with several hilarious wisecracks, thrown in amongst the mild humor which is its general tone." His next film was Kentucky Kernels starred the comedy duo of Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey, playing out-of-work men living on a decrepit houseboat and hope to earn money by catching fish. Along the way, they adopt a young boy who inherits a fortune, while they head for Kentucky, where two families are locked in a bitter feud.
Stevens's next film was Laddie, an adaptation of the 1913 novel Laddie: A True Blue Story by Gene Stratton-Porter. The novel had been previously adapted into a 1926 film. Produced at RKO, George Nicholls Jr. had been set to direct, but it was reassigned to Stevens. Set in the late 19th-century rural Indiana, John Beal stars in the title role as a farmer who falls in love with his English neighbor, Pamela Pryor, but their romance is opposed by Pryor's father. The film premiered at the Hilbert Circle Theatre, and was well-received by critics and audiences.
Stevens then re-teamed with Wheeler and Woolsey on The Nitwits. The duo, along with Betty Grable, portray three record company employees who are unwittingly involved in a murder plot as a mysterious serial killer lurks in New York.