Recorded at the Historic Camelot Theater, Palm Springs, CA on March 3, 2024
TRANSCRIPT
(ALIECE PICKETT:) I’ve seen the movie many times.
But seeing it on the big screen, and like a smile, laughter is contagious, when you’re in a room with such a hilarious movie.
I loved it.
The Film Society of Screwball Comedy’s mission is to catalog every Screwball Comedy.
How interesting to see the spectrum.
This is on the far end of the spectrum.
We are well into farce. It’s very physical.
It’s so fast.
It’s on the edge, right with “Bringing Up Baby” (1938), also with Cary Grant.
And his expertise. It’s interesting because he’s in so many Screwball Comedies.
And seeing him go from role to role. He is a magnificent actor.
People who say he only plays the “Cary Grant” persona aren’t looking closely.
(STEVEN C. SMITH:) He was a professional acrobat before he was an actor.
>> AP: And doesn’t it show in this film.
The physicality is amazing.
That, and “Holiday” (1938), when he’s doing the handsprings.
He is so agile and quick on his feet. In addition to being impossibly handsome and charming. What a pleasure to see him on the big screen.
You mentioned in your introduction that Cary Grant was not the first choice for the role of “Mortimer”.
Tell me about the Raymond Massey role of “Jonathan”, the brother.
What about him?
>> SCS: [To audience] Did you like Raymond Massey as “Jonathan”?
A TV version that he’s (Boris Karloff) in–I think Peter Lorre is also in it–that’s a little harder to find. But it exists.
So he (Boris Karloff) did get to record his performance in a way.
And I think Raymond Massey’s terrific.
>> AP: Raymond Massey is menacing.
He is ideal for the role.
Especially with Max Steiner’s music coming in every time you see that horrible, murderous brother.
>> SCS: It reminded me about Max Steiner as a composer.
This is the guy, in case you don’t know, who came to Hollywood at the dawn of the talkies.
No one had really any idea how to combine music and film, other than having people sing.
He was the one who said, “I think scenes would be better if there was an underscore”.
The producers said, “But Max, won’t the audience wonder where the music is coming from”.
As if they hadn’t heard music for silent films for 30-years.
Finally, he worked with David O. Selznick, who took over RKO.
Max was the Musical Director.
Together, they created Hollywood film music as we know it.
That was about a decade before this film.
It only took Max a couple of years to realize that one of the successful ways to score a movie was, he determined on a musical scale where an actor’s voice was, what their pitch was if it were a note.
Then he would write below and above the actor’s voice, so it never interfered.
And even though Warner Bros liked a big brassy sound–we know that Warner Bros sound from the “Fanfare”, which Max Steiner wrote.
All through Steiner’s handwritten scores, which survived, which I went through for his biography, in addition to lots of bad jokes.
Somehow he found time to scribble endless jokes in the margins, just to stay awake all night, I think, writing.
He often says, “Quietly, quietly.” And I just love the quietness of the scoring of those scenes, the bodies being taken in the dark.
He does a great job with that.
>> AP: Didn’t you say in your book that the notations on the scores helped give you insight into his motivation as he’s writing?
>> SCS: Absolutely.
Max will somehow write thousands and thousands of notes under deadline, with an orchestra possibly hours away from playing the cue.
And the person who’s going to be turning his handwritten score into music parts, Hugo Friedhofer, went on to be an Oscar-winning composer, his orchestrator.
He’s writing Hugo.
He’s writing studio gossip, frustrations about his love life, bad puns and great puns.
I think being Austrian, having to learn the English language made him sensitive to wordplay.
He was very funny. And in a business that had a lot of, a majority of rather ruthless, driven people, Max was driven to succeed.
But he was a lot of fun and he was great company for the 5-1/2 years I worked on his biography, because he was a really empathetic person.
He was in desperate financial straits for most of his life, because he couldn’t resist giving a handout to friends who hadn’t made it, as he had.
He worked on Broadway.
He worked on operettas in Vienna.
He knew lots of people.
So when he was successful, first with RKO, then with Selznick, he scored “Gone With The Wind” (1939).
Then for the longest time at Warner Bros.
He gave away a lot of his money.
He lived so well.
I’ll just say that the great payoff of his life is that after spending decades in debt, his money-people messed up his taxes, he had three alimonies.
There was no way this person could ever get out of the enormous mountain of debt that he had.
In 1959 he was asked, at the age of 71, to score a movie called “A Summer Place” (1959).
He dashed off a little tune for the young lovers in minutes, for this.
They released it as a record, and that record won the Grammy for Record of the Year.
It sold, I think, 6 million copies in the U.S. alone, and millions all over the globe.
It became what Billboard magazine said was the most successful instrumental of the rock ‘n’ roll era. Written by a 71-year-old Austrian.
It made him millions of dollars.
He spent his final years in security.
He deserved it, after scoring hundreds of movies.
The deadlines Jack Warner and others put him under were just incredible.
They would have literally killed other people.
He would have two weeks, for example, to score “White Heat” (1949), the great James Cagney film.
He had one week to score a Selznick movie.
It was insane.
He scored three other movies while writing three hours of music for “Gone With The Wind” (1939), with that film’s producer, David O. Selznick, changing his mind every other day about what he wanted in the music.
It’s incredible that Max lived to 83.
I think he loved life so much. He loved people. He loved creating. He and Capra–I wouldn’t call them friends because they didn’t hang out together–but they had tremendous admiration for each other.
Max was so happy to score a Frank Capra movie on this, in spite of the deadlines and everything, was a joy for him.
>> AP: He has in his filmography many Screwball Comedies and comedies that he writes.
So Max Steiner does touch on that genre.
He moves very easily into the dramas, into suspense films.
>> AP: From “King Kong” (1933), to “Gone With The Wind” (1939), to “Arsenic and Old Lace” (1944), to “A Summer Place” (1959), and “Casablanca” (1942).
Did you notice the way he took that song “There is a Happy Land”, and incorporated it in the score?
He was really good at taking themes like that, and weaving them in, so they sound like his own music, and make a fabric of it.
The ultimate example was using the Herman Hupfeld song, “As Time Goes By”, written for a flop Broadway show in 1931, using that in “Casablanca” at the insistence of the film’s producer, Hal Wallace.
As hard as it is to believe, Max Steiner is the only person I’ve ever known of who hated the song “As Time Goes By”.
He absolutely did not want to use it. But it was in the play that “Casablanca” was based on. Hal Wallace thought it was perfect.
Max, coming from Austria, said, ‘What’s romantic about Tah-tah, tah-tah, ta-tah, ta-tah?
That’s not a love theme.” Then when he incorporated it into the score, it sounds not only like he loved the song, it sounds like he wrote the song.
He does such a brilliant job weaving it into his score.
Ultimately, and typically, he had a sense of humor about it.
On the final page of his handwritten score to Hugo Friedhofer, the orchestrator, he writes, “Dear Hugo, I am very happy with all your work.
Sincerely, Herman Hupfeld”.
>> AP: The way he paced it, depending on where it is being interwoven in “Casablanca”, it’s so creative.
>> SCS: Only in those those moments between “Rick” and “Ilsa”.
>> AP: We’ve talked about Max Steiner and pacing, and how important that is for Screwball Comedy.
Also, the editing of the film.
You are an expert producer.
You’ve produced over 200 documentaries, so you’re sensitive to editing.
Tell me about your observations regarding Daniel Mendell and his editing.
He is a master.
Three-time Oscar winner. Two additional nominations.
What did you observe there?
Because the cutting changes throughout the film.
>> SCS: I was admiring, as I hope you felt as moviegoers, that this film, although it’s frenetic in a lot of places, it isn’t relentless.
I think the mistake some farcical plays that become movies, the mistake made is that they never let up.
What I think is so smart about this movie is it breathes in places, then the farce scenes play and really work.
>> AP: It’s not overcut.
It’s not these quick cuts that are so frenetic it exhausts you just watching.
There are some long takes if you study these scenes.
>> SCS: Yes.
It’s interesting because overall, Warner Bros did cut their movies faster than the other studios.
That’s part of the reason so many Warner Bros. films play wonderfully for an audience today, because our sensibilities watching things are faster than people’s were in the 1930s and 40s.
The producer Hal Wallace, he didn’t produce this film, but he made “Casablanca” (1942), “Yankee Doodle Dandy” (1942), and “Adventures of Robin Hood” (1938).
He was a master of saying, “Take 12 frames out here. Take 6 frames out here.” He had a sense of rhythm.
As you said, they had superb editors.
Their ability to just know the rhythm of a movie was great.
And that was another thing Max Steiner was so good at. He had to score a lot of plays.
Many movies were adapted from plays.
Some of them were really difficult, because if the film wasn’t done well.
I’ll just mention a drama that I don’t think works well called “Watch On The Rhine” (1943).
You’ll never show it as a Screwball Comedy because it’s a heavy Lillian Hellman play about Nazis.
But it’s just a filmed play.
No one stops talking.
And Max said, “This is the hardest movie I’ve ever had to score because there was no way to try to help it have a rhythm.” Whereas a movie like this, you could help smooth it all out into consistency.
>> AP: We can’t finish without talking about the writing.
That is the backbone of all Screwball Comedy: witty, rapid-fire dialogue.
There was severe censorship imposed during the time.
That was one of the strong motivators of this genre being created.
You have the Epstein Brothers (Julius and Philip).
This movie has so many masters from the director Capra, the editor. You’ve got Sol Polito doing cinematography.
And then you have the Epstein brothers.
>> SCS: To me, this is a perfect adaptation.
Because they kept all the best parts of the play. And then they embellished it, not in a way to just gratuitously add scenes.
I think all the scenes where you leave the house or they’re in the graveyard, work.
As I recall, the play is not set at Halloween.
That was their idea.
And Capra loved it, even saying, “More wind machines.
I love this.
Make the graveyard really spooky”.
They loved that atmosphere.
But the Epsteins were so smart.
These are the twin brothers who a few months later couldn’t figure out how to end “Casablanca”.
As the legend goes, they looked at each other while driving and said in unison, “Round up the usual suspects”, a line they had earlier in the film.
They were so smart.
May I just say something about censorship on this film?
Looking at the censorship papers on any movie is really fun at this time.
You would think the main thing they’d be upset about would be all the killing.
All the death.
And it was true that one of the things in the Production Code was you couldn’t show how a murder was being carried out and done.
Well, they kind of do.
There are notes from Geoffrey Shurlock, who worked for Joseph Breen, the really censorious censor, saying, “Here’s some fictitious poisons you could use.” But the main thing they were concerned about– and this is in almost every movie–like a movie where it doesn’t even come up.
“We object to the sex-suggestiveness of this film.” They were upset that the film made it too clear that that “Mortimer” and “Elaine” want to go consummate their marriage.
And they’re married, but that was still problematic for the censors. (laughter) It was like, “Can you take out all that dialogue where they want to start their honeymoon?” That tells you what filmmakers were up against. That’s why I think Max’s music is helpful, in being romantic in their scenes. But it was in there. You get it.
And that’s the wonderful thing about Screwball Comedy is it’s all sublimated in performance, in dialogue.
>> AP: It’s nuanced.
It’s so much more pleasurable than having overt, in-your-face sexuality, or sexual dialogue that’s forceful.
I like the nuance, the double entendres, the innuendo.
It’s clever, it’s funny.
Take the last line of the movie.
I think that embodies the essence of Screwball Comedy.
The play ends where “Mortimer” announces, “I”m a son of a bastard!” That, the censors objected to.
So the Epstein brothers cleverly re-wrote the ending to, “I’m a son of a sea cook!”, which is, to me, funnier.
It’s clever word play.
And it almost sounds slightly profane.
But it’s not.
>> SCS: And that was so much fun for audiences in 1941, 1944 as it turned out.
They knew about censorship. They picked up on anything that sounded kind of dirty or salacious.
And that got a huge laugh in 1944.
Because it was dancing at the edge of saying things that they knew that people said.
If you read books at the time, or a play at the time, the language is often there–many of the words anyway. But Hollywood had to push it down.
>> AP: Steven C. Smith, thank you so much for joining us.
>> SCS: My pleasure.🎥
Film Society of Screwball Comedy®
Edited by Aliece Pickett
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