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[Azat]

Rouben (Zachary) Mamoulian (1898-1987)
Impeccable Style

by William Hare

Mamoulian was a stunningly original film director. When his crew on his first film, Paramount’s Applause, found out what he was up to, they rebelled. His ideas seemed so alien, they couldn’t accept them. To the credit of Paramount’s executives at their Astoria, New York studios, they saw merit in the young director and acceded to his wishes. The result was a richly original film that helped the new medium of the sound film throw off its shackles. Some of the more perceptive critics began to realize that watching a Mamoulian creation on the screen was like visiting one of the world’s great art galleries, but with paintings that moved with a rhythmic beauty.

Rouben Mamoulian was in every respect an internationalist. His broad educational background carried him to the finest schools in the world. He loved great art, great theater, and great music. His films would reflect the vibrancy of a man at home in the creative centers of the world. The cultural ambience afforded by Tiflis and Paris powerfully shaped Mamoulian’s development.

Mamoulian grew up in a family immersed in both the cultural and commercial life of southeastern Europe. The son of Armenian parents, Mamoulian’s father, Zachary, was a bank president in Tiflis, Georgia who served with distinction in the Russian Army in World War One. He lived a long, rewarding life and reached the age of 100. Mamoulian’s mother, the former Virginia Kalantarian, was for many years President of the Armenian Theater in Tiflis.

Mamoulian’s education was broadly based, producing a man of cosmopolitan interests whose eclecticism would shape the daring originality of his work. "I went to school in Paris as a child," Mamoulian explained. "The whole family lived there for five years. I attended the Lycee Moritaigne in Paris. Then the family returned to Tiflis, and I graduated from a gymnasium there. After that I spent two years at the University of Moscow studying law."

An outstanding student, Mamoulian was encouraged by his family to pursue a practical field of study outside the creative arts, despite his mother’s background. He spoke at length to me about that crucial period of his educational development: "You know, it’s a strange thing because as life unfolds, you seem to be subject to accidents, circumstances, coincidences, lucky breaks, and so on. And yet, after years go by, and you look backward, you suddenly find that there is little more than just accidental coordination of events and breaks. It always becomes like you see a red line that logically carries through to the present. Now, I actually never thought I would be a professional in the theater. Even though my mother was at the head of the Armenian theater in Tiflis, and, therefore, my whole childhood and school years had been surrounded with playwrights and writers, actors, directors, and so on, and I used to frequently go to the theater as a child. When it came to the university my parents wanted me to become an engineer. I had no leaning that way, so we finally compromised, and I thought I’d become a criminal lawyer."

Mamoulian pursued legal studies at Moscow University for two years, after which his strong creative streak cried out for expression. He began spending his evenings at the Moscow Art Theater. "I read an announcement that they were organizing this studio, and I decided to join. I spent three months there under the tutelage of (Eugene) Vakhtangov. And, of course, I saw the productions of the Moscow Art Theater directed by Stanislavsky. As you know, the Stanislavsky theater is built on a very naturalistic method of acting, production, and presentation. Of course, to me it felt like the ultimate theater, theater at its best. So, I was definitely under the influence of the Stanislavsky theater and his approach to the theater."

Despite his natural propensity, he held back from pursuing a life in the arts. "The decision for me to study law at Moscow University had a lot to do with the attitudes those days about theater," Mamoulian explained. "Theater was not something to aspire to; it really was not the thing to do. Even in Hollywood as recently as the mid-Thirties the Hartman Houses used to have signs saying, ‘No Dogs or Actors Allowed.’ You know, acting and the theater was kind of a secondary profession, not fit for a decent guy. Luckily attitudes have changed."

A Secret Critic

Mamoulian’s exposure to the theatrical world, led to a fascinating offer which carried with it a bond of secrecy. "When I went back home to Tiflis, curiously enough, a drama critic on a very important paper had died," Mamoulian said. "The editor, who was a friend of the family, took me into a study and said, ‘Look, this is going to be a secret, but I’ve lost my critic and I can’t find anybody else right now. Would you take on the job of writing the news of the theater?’ I asked, ‘Why me?’ He said, ‘You’ve been interested in it, and your mother has been in the theater.’"

Agreement was reached, and Mamoulian at 20 became an unusually young leading drama critic for a major city newspaper. He covered the Tiflis theater scene for an entire season, yet he was not happy about it. "The editor who hired me to become his drama critic told me that I would have to change my name because, if the readers knew who I was, there would be a revolution in the theater with a youngster of 20 doing the reviews. So, I used a nickname, a pseudonym, and reviewed plays for a whole season. I must say I didn’t care very much for it because of the deadlines involved. You know, you see a performance, then you have to knock this review off in 15 minutes to make the morning paper. So, I thought this was tiresome."

Creative Birth in London

Mamoulian reached a milestone in his artistic career when he ventured to London in 1920. He visited his sister there, who had married a Scot. While he was there he received an allowance from his father, but things changed, and he decided to stay in London.

"Through a series of circumstances that seem rather incredible when I look back, I wound up directing a play at the St. James Theater on London’s West End in 1922 at the age of 24 with an all-star English cast," Mamoulian said. "This is what started me professionally. So, to speak about being born again, professionally I was born in London."

The young director’s breakthrough work was Austin Page’s The Beating on the Door, which opened in November 1922. His effort was summed up in "World Film Directors: Volume One, 1890-1945": "Mamoulian directed the play with a relentless naturalism worthy of Stanislavsky himself."

Mamoulian received two offers after this. One was an offer to direct a play in Paris, and the other offer was extended by George Eastman of the Eastman Kodak Company. Eastman was seeking to develop the cultural attractions of the company’s home base, Rochester, New York. Eastman offered Mamoulian a position of helping to organize and direct at the new American Opera Company he was establishing in Rochester in a new theater.

"I received an opportunity to direct a play and another to direct operas in English in Rochester," Mamoulian said. "I decided to see the New World so I came to this country, and I’m very glad I did. In Rochester I directed grand operas, operettas, Viennese operettas, Gilbert and Sullivan for two and a half years."

The brilliant young craftsman was learning his trade, and faced a real challenge. His London directorial effort would be the last in which he would adopt the naturalistic Stanislavsky technique. The Rochester experience, with its music and lavish costumes, prompted Mamoulian to discard naturalism for the rich rhythmic and poetic stylization that would thereafter become his trademark: "I integrated dialogue and singing, and it worked; one production I did was Sister Beatrice by Maurice Maeterlinck, and this most fully exemplified my musical ideals."

With this learning experience behind him, Mamoulian headed for New York’s Great White Way. His very first production established him as a coming giant of the stage. The play was Porgy with an all-black cast, and it proved to be such a hit that Mamoulian would later reprise it as an even more famous musical with George Gershwin.

Following the success of Porgy, Mamoulian directed over a dozen more stage productions, bringing him to the attention of the film studios. The rising young industry needed a steady infusion of fresh blood, and the young man from Tiflis was a prime candidate. Jesse Lasky and Walter Wanger of Paramount visited Mamoulian, offering a seven-year contract for his signature. Under its terms the first three years would be spent learning how to make pictures, in which he would serve as dialogue director. Mamoulian recalled his response: "If I should direct dialogue only, why should I want to leave the stage?" He then offered a proposal of his own: "I’ll sign for one picture. You’ll let me go everywhere in the studio and watch. When I feel I’m ready, I’ll direct the whole picture."

The executives reflected on the offer for 24 hours, then accepted. The young man spent time researching Paramount’s Astoria studio facilities on Long Island, and then began preparing a debut that would shock studio executives already traumatized by the demise of the silent movie. "The studios were caught in a kind of panic because of the introduction of dialogue on the screen," Mamoulian explained.

The young director was given free rein to roam the lot until he felt he was ready to direct a film. After five weeks, he said he was ready. The studio execs laughed at his presumption, and reminded him that he was still a novice. "The mechanics of films anybody can learn, and five weeks is plenty of time," Mamoulian replied casually. "So, now I’m ready."

And ready he was. In his first film, Applause, he incorporated the spontaneous rhythm of street activity, which impressed reviewers and continues to impress film historians aware of the static quality of many early talkies. Mamoulian took the hermetically sealed camera out of the studio and onto the bustling streets of Manhattan, giving a breath of fresh air to what could have been another studio-bound production of the time. He was able to film interesting scenes at Pennsylvania Station, and go from the bowels of the New York subway system to shots atop skyscrapers. He was particularly proud of footage shot of a steel Gothic cathedral, and lamented, "It’s a crime it’s now gone." The coming of sound to film convinced all too many film makers that film was now a verbal medium. Mamoulian showed that the camera was still the real star of film and that it could never be replaced.

The Essence of Stylization

A believer in reincarnation might suspect that Mamoulian had been a painter in a past life. He believed that film was closer to painting than the stage. Mamoulian persistently referred to the camera as "the essence of film making." The camera was his brush, and light was his paint. It is no coincidence that when Mamoulian married it was to an accomplished painter, Azadia Newman.

Yet unlike painting, film is a powerfully kinetic art, and Mamoulian understood this important difference. "What fascinated me was that throughout the history of the world, you had all the arts, that are thousands of years old," he said. "You can take sculpture, painting. They are immortalizing a static phase of life. A portrait does not move; it’s static. I mean, there is an in-born action in good sculpture, like a Michelangelo, but it’s crystallized. In writing books you use words which are symbols. So in the theater you use real actors. Now, suddenly we have this miracle of motion pictures, by which the art of the screen can recreate life. This is actual movement, not static, but people, nature, animals, all in movement. That to me was the fascination of motion pictures; that and the fact that its main essence was visual, that you should express everything through imagery and only use words when they are necessary, so that the camera was something that fascinated me."

Mamoulian was well equipped to discuss differences between film and the stage. His career was a twofold love affair for each. In addition to his 16 memorable films, was his outstanding stage work. Mamoulian directed the Rogers and Hammerstein blockbuster Oklahoma, which set a record for number of performances that would not be eclipsed until a generation later by Fiddler on the Roof. "Some people think that the stage and the screen are very closely related," Mamoulian began. "To me they’re not. I love the screen because it’s different from the stage. And that’s why I love the stage because it’s different from the screen. The great difference is not only the fact that you have a flat picture on the screen and no real three dimensional actors, but the fact that on the stage you only have one movement, one type of action, and that is the action of the actors as directed by the director. There is no other action. You have one point of view, which depends on the kind of ticket you bought. If you’re in the gallery you’ve got a long shot. If you got in front you can see a closeup. The thing you can always see is the long shot. You can pick what you want to look at. As for the screen, you have three movements which should be harmoniously synthesized in one unit. One is the movement of actors on the screen. Another is the movement of the camera, which means angle, close-up or long shot. The third element is the movement of editing, montage, in other words, the order in which one image follows another. They’re all three of equal importance, and the whole delight of films is in the rhythmic, harmonious combination of all three movements, which is a very rich medium."

Due to the ingenuity of it moving camera and sound mixing, Applause received enthusiastic reviews. Audiences, on the other hand, were often slow to appreciate what Mamoulian was doing. Innovation is something that often requires time for the average person to fully appreciate. Mamoulian was amused by a telegram he received from Walter Winchell, then connected to Paramount, after Applause debuted. Winchell wrote, "I suppose you wouldn’t want to do another film until you’ve invented a way of putting the camera into a tennis ball." Winchell and other complacent viewers had not yet grasped the fact that Mamoulian was leading film into a more interesting future.

Despite his visual orientation Mamoulian was also aware of the creative potential of sound. In a touching scene from Applause, Helen Morgan, the fading burlesque star, sings a lullaby to her daughter who is reciting a prayer and holding a rosary. Mamoulian overlapped the song and the prayer on the soundtrack to create a powerful expression of a mother’s love.

Young Director Meets Rising Star

Following Applause, Mamoulian, whose career would shift back and forth between film and the stage, returned to the latter. Beginning in November 1929 with The Game of Love and Death by Romain Rolland at New York’s Guild Theater, he would direct six productions on the Great White Way through the fall of 1930. One of them saw him return to native Russian subject matter with a March, 1930 adaptation of Ivan Turgenev’s A Month in the Country at the Guild Theater.

About a year after Mamoulian’s last contact with Paramount, he was approached by studio executives. Prior to directing Applause, the director had been offered a seven-year contract by Paramount. On this occasion the offer was for a five-year pact. Mamoulian’s response was identical to his earlier proposal of a picture-by-picture pact, which the studio accepted, and slated his next film for production in Hollywood.

Initially, Mamoulian, who had been asked by the studio to find a suitable property to film, was unable to locate anything. Then he encountered Dashiell Hammett, who was working at Paramount at the time, and later would become famous as the novelist who provided Hollywood with Nick and Nora Charles and a Maltese Falcon. The director told Hammett that he was looking for ideas, and Hammett soon provided him with a four-page outline of a gangster story set on the mean streets of a large city. Oliver H.P. Garrett and Max Marcin then broadened Hammett’s outline, crafting it into a finished screenplay.

"Dashiell wrote a familiar gangster story, and I accepted it, deciding to treat it in an original manner," Mamoulian explained. Shunning exploitation of violence, Mamoulian kept the film’s murders off screen. His indirect methods could often be very evocative, as when he focused the camera on two china cats while two bitchy women engaged in decidedly catty conversation. (He loved cats and they became a trademark of his movies. I recall visiting his elegant Beverly Hills home where I was promptly introduced to Missy, a black feline recently rescued from the pound. He considered cats to be good luck pieces for his films.)

Mamoulian shunned the canned music used so often in the Thirties, and instead used more interesting pieces like Richard Wagner’s famed overture to Die Meistersinger. "Most of the music in the studio at the time was in small labeled boxes, as in a pharmacy. Fire music, moonlight music, and so on. Different bits from hackneyed themes, mostly."

On the surface it might be said that Rouben Mamoulian, the well educated, international intellectual and the tall, lanky star of City Streets, Gary Cooper, constituted a teaming of opposites. Cooper was indeed born on a ranch in Montana, but he came from a prominent family, and he was well educated in British and American schools. Like Mamoulian, Cooper had a cultured side, and it was employed in some of his more debonair roles.

Appearing opposite Cooper as his love interest was a sensitive young performer in her first lead role, Sylvia Sidney, who, like Cooper, was destined to achieve a successful Hollywood career. Another casting coup occurred when Guy Kibbee was lured from Broadway to accept his first film role as chief villain.

Ever the daring innovator, Mamoulian had Sidney play against expectations by smiling when she was sad, and crying when she was happy. In addition to introducing some interesting tracking shots, Mamoulian used subjective sound in the film as Sidney, while in jail, is shown in a long closeup of her face. Rather than hearing her voice, we instead hear that of her lover, Cooper.

Whereas Applause was saluted for its daring technical innovation while failing to emerge as a box office success, City Streets secured both financial and critical acclaim. It was selected by the National Board of Review of Motion Pictures as one of the ten best films for 1931.

Twin Stellar Achievements

Mamoulian’s next film would be even more of a breakthrough. Already acknowledged for his daring innovations, Mamoulian would go on to create what is probably his most memorable and technically innovative film ever, the Robert Louis Stevenson classic, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. He helped hone a script into shape with Samuel Hoffenstein, a close Mamoulian friend and author of a book of poems widely admired by the director, In Praise of Practically Nothing.

When I was privileged to view this great film five years before my first interview with Mamoulian at a special Writers Guild showing, I was stunned by the graphic presentation of the streets of London. I felt almost as if I could reach out into the hanging fog and walk on the streets. This is all the more amazing considering that the entire film was shot on the Paramount lot in Hollywood. The special effects and photography were particularly impressive, so much so that Jekyll and Hyde seems to make other films of its era appear dated in comparison.

"Robert Louis Stevenson’s story is concerned with a middle-aged, plump doctor who is inclined to have a good time with women, drinking and gambling, but can’t do it because of Victorian restrictions and the concern of losing his reputation. So in order to allow himself this free debauchery he invents that drink he takes to allow himself this free debauchery," Mamoulian concluded. "That idea seemed to be rather old fashioned, and I thought it would be more interesting if the film concerned not the contrast between good and evil, but that of the primitive and the spiritual, with the animalistic in man and the spirituality in man."

Mamoulian’s special insight was to realize that the story has a universal appeal and he could make it relevant to audiences seeing the film in different times and different places. Dr. Jekyll was seen by Mamoulian as trying to free his better self by disposing his primitive urges.

The original choice of Paramount’s executives to play Jekyll-Hyde was Irving Pichel, a middle aged character actor who would later become a successful director. Mamoulian wanted a handsome leading man and rejected Pichel. "A young, handsome guy can play Hyde, but a middle-aged character actor can only play Hyde and not Jekyll," he explained, "so I’ve got to have a young, handsome actor to play Jekyll. I’m not worried about Hyde."

The director was then asked if he had anyone in mind. "I said I wanted a fellow called Freddie March," Mamoulian recalled. "Now, Fredric March had made a film called Laughers in Astoria. It was a light comedy, and March was then a light comedian. The Paramount executives said, ‘Are You crazy? He’s a light comedian. How is he going to do this?’ I said, ‘It’s Freddie March or nothing.’ I’d never even met the guy, but my instinct told me he was right for the part. Finally, after a week they called me back and said, ‘Be it on your head, we’ll forget him.’"

Mamoulian retained his head, and Paramount execs were the last people who would ever want to forget Fredric March after he rendered one of the greatest performances in screen history in the highly difficult double role, for which he won one of the better deserved Academy Awards for Best Actor. "Of course, he worked his head off," Mamoulian said of March, "and it was a tough job, but the results were marvelous."

The film won Oscars for cinematography, Karl Struss, and for Best Adapted Screenplay by Mamoulian’s friend, Samuel Hoffenstein, and Percy Heath. The film also earned Best Picture honors at the Venice Film Festival and was named one of the Ten Best Films of 1931 by Film Daily, The New York Times, and the National Board of Review.

Director’s Choice

One of the most difficult challenges for any interviewer is to get a director to answer the question, "What is your favorite film?" The more successful the director, the more difficult the question becomes. I approached this gingerly, and asked Mamoulian: "Suppose a Martian landed on Earth and said, ‘Mr. Mamoulian, I have two to three hours to spend here, and I’d like to view one of your films.’ Which one would you suggest that he see?"

I had become acquainted with Mamoulian’s excellent sense of humor, and to my relief, he laughed robustly, then replied, "Usually I am asked which of my films is my favorite. I can never answer that because I’ve got eight favorites out of the sixteen I made, but you’ve put it very slyly, and if you say that a visitor from Mars asked me, you’re not asking me to choose my favorite. You’re asking me to choose an example. Even now it is a difficult question because different films I love for different virtues. You can’t compare Jekyll and Hyde with Love Me Tonight. You can’t compare Queen Christina to Gay Desperado. They’re utterly different. It’s like saying, you know, pick your favorite fruit. I happen to love practically all the fruit there is, so it’s difficult to pick."

To discuss Rouben Mamoulian one must always return to "stylization" based on a framework of a fast-paced story whose main star is the camera, so I was not surprised when he finally boiled down his choice to my favorite Mamoulian film. "If you were to twist my arm and say, now look, here he is, this visitor from Mars, and he has only time to see one picture, then I’d probably say as a kind of a credo, artistic visiting card, as it were, that sums up my basic approach to what I do on films, I’d say, all right, I’ll let him see Love Me Tonight," Mamoulian concluded. "My reason is that the whole thing is utterly stylized. The music and action follow unified, constant rhythm and structure. It is a long distance removed from naturalism, and yet it comes over as very true and very plausible. It is full of humor from beginning to end. It is like one long production number from beginning to end. There is no interruption. Whether it’s a dialogue scene, an action scene, or a song, it all looks like it’s all musical."

The captivating opening sequence with its symphony of sounds was something that did not originate with Love Me Tonight, but was created for the Mamoulian New York stage success Porgy. As an inventive stylist, Mamoulian saw how he could capture the mounting rhythm of a city coming to life in a play. In Porgy, we hear a man snoring, the sound of a hammer, a woman with a broom, the sharpening of knives, and someone shaking pillows. The activities were treated as a symphony, culminating with a fully orchestrated depiction of the rhythm of Charleston, S.C. on stage. For Love Me Tonight, he switched the scene from Charleston to Paris. Rooftops are scanned, the Seine is observed, and the sound of a clock is heard. Windows open, women shake dust from rugs, others hang up the morning wash, babies cry, men cobble shoes, all done in a rhythmic flow. Before long the sun is out, and the streets are crowded. Maurice Chevalier puts on a sweater, opens his window, and bursts into song. The selection, appropriately, is "Song of Paree."

In his book "Mamoulian" critic Tom Milne called Love Me Tonight, "the Lubitsch film that Lubitsch was always trying to pull off but never quite did." The film is indeed beautiful and seamless. The song, "Isn’t It Romantic," starts out as a conversation in a tailor’s shop in the city, and is transformed into a song by Maurice Chevalier, and then transported by the characters to a taxi cab, a train, a field with marching soldiers singing the tune, a gypsy camp at night, and finally to a castle where Jeanette MacDonald picks up the tune in her lovely soprano voice. The whole sequence is a beautiful example of how integrating action and music can transport the viewer. Watching it, you feel as if you are soaring above the dull plodding style that hobbles so many other films.

Working With Garbo

After Mamoulian scored a success directing European star Marlene Dietrich in Song of Songs opposite Brian Aherne at Paramount, another international screen beauty asked to work with the brilliant director. And so, Mamoulian moved over to MGM to begin shooting photographic tests of Greta Garbo for his next film. He soon discovered the incredible qualities of the Swedish beauty’s face. Working with a Garbo favorite, cinematographer William Daniels, he at first tried to find what lighting would suit her best. "I have that test on film right here in my storeroom," Mamoulian told me. "It was incredible! No matter how you lit the set or her, the result was beautiful. It became really puzzling so I told (cameraman) Billy Daniels I would like to try something. ‘Can we spoil that face?’ I asked him. The results had been so incredible that I decided to try this experiment, so we put a light overhead, under her face, sideways, every imaginable way, and the final test when you look at it is that it’s all beautiful. It is an incredibly photogenic face. No lighting could spoil it. With most stars lighting is a complicated process. Like with Marlene Dietrich, it takes a long time to get the lights right. You have to slave over properly lighting them. It is a very complicated process, but with Greta Garbo, it’s just one of those exceptional, unique faces."

In Garbo, Mamoulian had found the perfect film face. Her face was not just beautiful, it was infinitely expressive. Most amazing of all, Mamoulian found an ambiguity in her features that he realized could be used to express almost anything. This realization led to one of the most unforgettable closing scenes in film history.

The setting was replete with drama. Queen Christina, who has given up her throne for the man she loves, joins him on a ship and learns that he is dying from wounds suffered in a duel. After her lover, played by her real life ex-fiance John Gilbert, has died, we see Garbo walk to the bow of the ship. She has just lost the man for whom she has given up everything.

Mamoulian realized that if he had instructed Garbo to break down into fitful sobbing, some would consider her a mere weakling, collapsing under the weight of tragedy. Had he instructed Garbo to resist emotion in an attempt to display inner strength, viewers might find her cold as marble. So he told her, "Your face must be like a mask, completely blank. Think of nothing, feel nothing, and don’t blink your eyes. We will do a closeup on your face and hold it for 90 feet."

Mamoulian realized that Garbo’s magnificent face would be like a blank page upon which viewers could write in their own emotions. "If you feel she is heartbroken, that’s what you will see," Mamoulian said, "and if you feel she’s serene and above it all, that’s what you will see, for there’s no contradiction from the face itself."

Transition

Mamoulian’s greatest period, was by this time, already behind him. He worked with Fredric March again in We Live Again, but the results didn’t measure up to Jekyll and Hyde. Mamoulian next directed the first feature film using the new three-strip Technicolor process, Becky Sharp. He made an impressive use of color to heighten the drama, especially in the grand ball scene, but this RKO film was a disappointment. In 1935 Mamoulian moved back to New York to make Broadway history, staging the superb Gershwin musical Porgy and Bess. His next films, The Gay Desperado (1936, United Artists) and High Wide and Handsome (1937, Paramount) didn’t really cause much of a stir, though the latter film is highly regarded by Mamoulian’s supporters.

A daring innovator, Mamoulian astounded Columbia Studio boss Harry Cohn by recommending a young Paramount contract player William Holden for his next film. Holden had never previously appeared in a film and suddenly he was up for the title role opposite Barbara Stanwyck in the adaptation of the Clifford Odets Broadway drama, Golden Boy. Cohn howled, but finally gave in. Holden gave a convincing performance as a sensitive young man thrust into boxing during the Depression in New York City who instead longs for a career as a professional violinist. Much of the pretentious Odets dialogue is deleted from the film, yet it is remembered today only for its excellent performances.

After Golden Boy, Mamoulian went to work at Twentieth Century-Fox. His first film was The Mark of Zorro with Tyrone Power and Linda Darnell. One year later the young stars were reunited under Mamoulian in what would become one of the artistic masterpieces of the director’s career, Blood and Sand, an epic story of the trials and tribulations of a Spanish bullfighter skillfully played by Power.

Some Mamoulian watchers consider this 1941 release to be his best film. Rita Hayworth was unforgettable as the spoiled femme fatale who comes between the bullfighter and wife Darnell, while Anthony Quinn shines as Power’s rival.

The inventive Mamoulian, sensing an opportunity to merge painting and cinematic storytelling, planned a film to resemble the works of the great Spanish and Italian painters, contrasting darkly ominous tones alongside vivid reds. The color red was symbolic of Spanish passion, as well as the blood of the spectacle of bullfighting. One can imagine Mamoulian, with pen and notebook in hand, roaming Madrid’s vast art gallery, The Prado, studying the paintings of Goya, El Greco, and Velasquez, in order to weave them into the fabric of a film.

This Technicolor master work was bound to impress cameramen, and so an article in the June 1941 issue of American Cinematographer was written to explain the film’s stylistic influences. Murillo bronzes, browns, and blacks represented young Juan Gallardo’s impoverished boyhood. The passionate Goya was the ideal model for bull ring action, while Velasquez, master of light and shadow, represented the richness of court life. El Greco was the artistic model for the matador’s chapel, while 16th Century Venetian artists inspired Juan’s dressing room, and the luxurious colors of Titian and Veronese highlighted Juan’s ceremonial robing.

Mamoulian next set to work directing the classic Laura at Fox when trouble erupted. Differences of opinion with the film’s producer, Otto Preminger, led Preminger to seize the reins from Mamoulian and keep them in his own hands. Mamoulian spent a great deal of time directing on stage during this period, achieving astonishing success with Oklahoma! and Carousel. Returning to Hollywood, Mamoulian adapted Eugene O’Neill’s play, Ah! Wilderness into a musical, Summer Holiday, a 1947 MGM release starring Mickey Rooney and Gloria De Haven.

Selling The Role

Mamoulian’s film career ended with the brilliantly choreographed 1957 MGM musical Silk Stockings, a musical remake of Ninotchka, the Garbo comedy hit directed by Ernst Lubitsch. Mamoulian lined up Cyd Charisse to reprise the Garbo role, but was unable to secure his preferred leading man because Fred Astaire felt the lead should go to a younger man. Mamoulian met this challenge with gusto, despite having heard that Astaire believed that the part provided little for him to do. Never having met Astaire, Mamoulian had MGM arrange a luncheon meeting at the studio commissary.

"As we started having lunch and I began talking to Fred Astaire about the part, I told him that one of the things that interested me in doing Silk Stockings was that it gave me the opportunity to do something new," Mamoulian revealed. "I let him know my belief that if one is interested in doing a film, you had better have something original in mind. If you don’t, then why do it at all? I said that the whole essence of this film would lie in the dance numbers. What I was proposing to do was to dramatize dance. I intended to have love scenes performed not through dialogue but through dancing. I told him that I would be able to convey much characterization through the dancing if I had the necessary advantage of two great dancers, which I would have if I had him along with Cyd Charisse."

Good sales technique frequently includes a dramatic use of visuals. Mamoulian brought along an example of a scene, revealing how the male lead wooed his lover not with words, but through dance. The director then dealt with Astaire’s other reason for rejecting the role.

"I told him that, for heaven’s sake, Mr. Astaire, at your age you’re more glamorous and attractive than any young actor I have seen on the screen today," Mamoulian said. "He’s got that quality, he’s got that appeal. Plus, of course, what he has is what I consider the greatest thing in the arts, and what I always try to follow, and that is style. Astaire has impeccable style, and that’s what has made him so outstanding."

In the end, Mamoulian won over his reluctant star. Dance was imaginatively used to tell the story of a brittle, unromantic Russian woman overcoming Marxist dogma and learning to become human again in the carefree and romantic setting of Paris. With its emphasis on stylized dancing, the film marked a triumphant return of film’s master of style, Rouben Mamoulian.

Silk Stockings was a great way to bow out. While never directing any more films, Mamoulian remained busy through the rest of his life lecturing at the college and university level, helping youngsters understand more about the art of film. In 1958 Mamoulian seemed ready to return to the source of one of his great triumphs when he prepared a shooting script for Sam Goldwyn’s production of Porgy and Bess. Creative differences with Goldwyn led to Mamoulian’s dismissal, and for a second time, Otto Preminger replaced him in the director’s chair. In another misfire, Mamoulian spent a year in London in pre-production for what became the Joseph Mankiewicz film, Cleopatra, starring Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. Creative disagreements prompted his departure, marking a frustrating end to a glorious career.

Mamoulian died December 4, 1987. His body of film work included a few of the most beautiful films ever made. It was said of him that he was an innovator who ran out of innovations, but this is not a very perceptive comment. True, his film career quickly faded after a few years of startling innovations that helped push the sound film out from under the shadow of the microphone. But to imply that he was a mere innovator is to be blind to a technical and artistic mastery that still has the power to stun anyone with a strong visual sense. The best of Mamoulian’s films have a style and grace that only makes them improve with age.


Films:
-APPLAUSE, 1929 - written by Garrett Fort, novel by Beth Brown
-CITY STREETS, 1931 - written by Max Marcin, Oliver H.P. Garrett, Dashiell Hammett, story 'Ladies of the Mob' by Enest Booth
-DR. JEKYLL AND MISTER HYDE, 1932 - screenplay by Samuel Hoffenstein, Percy Heath, novel by R.L. Stevenson
-LOVE ME TONIGHT, 1932- written by Samuel Hoffenstein, Waldemar Young, George Marion Jnr, play 'Taylor in the Château' by Leopold Marchand and Paul Armont
-SONG OF SONGS, 1933 - screenplay by Leo Birinsky, Samuel Hoffenstein, play Edward Sheldon, based on the novel 'Das hohe Lied' by Herman Sudermann
-QUEEN CHRISTINA, 1933 - screenplay by H.M. Harwood, Salka Viertel and S. N. Behrman, based on the story by Viertel and Margaret Levin
-WE LIVE AGAIN, 1934- screenplay by Preston Sturges, Maxwell Anderson, Leonard Praskins, based on the novel Resurrection by Leo Tolstoy
-BECKY SHARP, 1935 - screenplay by Francis Edward Faragoh, play by Landon Mitchell, based on Vanity Fair by W.M. Thackeray
-THE GAY DESPERADO, 1936 - screenplay by Wallace Smith, story by Leo Birinski
-HIGH WIDE AND HANDSOME, 1937 - written by Oscar Hammerstein II
-GOLDEN BOY, 1939 - written by Lewis Meltzer, Daniel Taradash, Sarah Y. Mason, Victor Heerman, play by Clifford Odets
-THE MARK OF ZORRO, 1940 - written by John Tainton Foote, Garrett Fort, Bess Meredyth, starring Tyrone Poerr, Basil Rathbone, J. Edward Bromberg
-BLOOD AND SAND, 1941- screenplay by Jo Swerling, based on the ovel by Vicente Blasco Ibanez
-RINGS ON HER FINGERS, 1942 - written by Ken Englund
-SUMMER HOLIDAY, 1948- written by Frances Goodrich, Albert Hackett, Ralph Blane, play 'Ah Wilderness' by Eugene O'Neill
-SILK STOCKINGS, 1957 - written by Leonard Gersche, Leonard Spiegelgass, play by George S. Kaufman, Leueen McGrath, Abe Burrows, original play by Melchior Bronner

Works as a writer:
-SADIE THOMPSON, 1944 (collaboration)
-ARMS AND THE GIRL, 1950 (collaboration)
-ABIGAYIL, 1964 (a children's story)
-HAMLET REVISED AND INTERPRETED, 1965 (a drama textbook)

Links for More Information
IMDB - http://us.imdb.com/M...moulian, Rouben
E! Online - http://www.eonline.c...2,41050,00.html
Picture of his grave - http://www.findagrav...tures/4119.html
Summary of few of his movies - http://www.filmsandt.....ben Mamoulian

[Yervant1]

New Biography Remembers the Life of Rouben Mamoulian

By Tavit Minassian
Mention Rouben Mamoulian and most people will respond with a blank stare. But mention what the director did on Broadway and in Hollywood, and those same faces light up in recognition. Mamoulian directed the premieres of such groundbreaking musicals as “Oklahoma,” “Carousel,” and “Porgy and Bess,” and classic films including “Mark of Zorro,” “Queen Christina,” and “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” His importance has finally been acknowledged in David Luhrssen’s new biography, Mamoulian: Life on Stage and Screen, published by University Press of Kentucky.

<img class="size-medium wp-image-23526" alt="cover Mamoulian 200x300 New Biography Remembers the Life of Rouben Mamoulian" src="http://www.armenianweekly.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/cover-Mamoulian-200x300.jpg" width="200" height="300" title="New Biography Remembers the Life of Rouben Mamoulian" />


The cover of Mamoulian: Life on Stage and Screen
Life on Stage and Screen paints a panoramic picture of Mamoulian’s many accomplishments. He was born in Tiflis, Georgia, in 1897, a time when Armenians dominated the city’s political and economic life. His mother, a vigorous patron of Armenian theater, was an important early inspiration. Mamoulian studied theater in Moscow in the studio of the influential director Konstantin Stanislavsky and left Russia during the turmoil of the civil war that followed the Bolshevik coup of 1917. After debuting as a director on the London stage, Mamoulian was offered an appointment at the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y., which became a steppingstone on the way to Broadway.
After a successful career as a theater director, Mamoulian accepted offers from Hollywood. His first movie, “Applause” (1929), displayed his flair for innovation and helped restore motion to talking pictures, which had been static and slow moving because the early recording devices were cumbersome. Life on Stage and Screen shows that Mamoulian helped pioneer many things taken for granted today, including multi-track recording, voiceovers, and full-color feature films. Unlike many Broadway directors who went to Hollywood, Mamoulian kept one foot in the theater world and returned to New York in between movie assignments to direct a remarkable run of productions.
During his time in Hollywood, Mamoulian directed many of the era’s prominent stars, including Marlene Dietrich, Greta Garbo, Fredric March, Gary Cooper, Gene Tierney, Henry Fonda, Mickey Rooney, and Fred Astaire. Always a perfectionist, he was a thorn in the side of studios and producers, and eventually paid for his dedication to the art of filmmaking by being cold-shouldered by the industry. He made no pictures after being fired from the 1963 movie “Cleopatra,” whose star, Elizabeth Taylor, he had recommended for the role. But Mamoulian remained busy through the end of his life in 1987, publishing a children’s Christmas book and a translation of Shakespeare into contemporary English, as well as giving talks at film schools and film festivals.
Life on Stage and Screen is the first book to consider Mamoulian’s ethnic background, including the influence of Armenian theater and the pageantry of the Armenian Church, and explores his failed attempt to film Franz Werfel’s novel The Forty Days at Musa Dagh. The book’s author, David Luhrssen, is film critic for Milwaukee’s Shepherd Express newspaper and has written several books, including Hammer of the Gods: Thule Society and the Origins of Nazism and Elvis Presley: Reluctant Rebel. He has been a contributor to the Armenian press, covering Armenian events in Milwaukee for the national papers.