7/29/22
Newsletter56
The Crack of Dawn
A nun decides to quit the order. She goes to the old Mother Superior and says, “I want to quit being a nun. I want to become a prostitute.” The Mother Superior looks horrified and says, “That’s terrible.” The nun asks, “What’s terrible about being a prostitute?” The Mother Superior sighs and smiles, “I misheard you. I thought you said, ‘Protestant.’”
The reason coming attractions are called “Trailers,” even though they are shown at the front of movies, is back in the silent era they used to come at the end of movies. When they saw that the audience stood and left before the trailers showed, they moved them to the front.
Sam Spiegel was Jew from Jarosław, Galicia, Austria-Hungary, who became the biggest, most successful, independent producer after Sam Goldwyn. After producing two movies in Germany in 1933, Hitler was elected Chancellor and Sam wisely immigrated to Europe where he produced a number of low-budget British and French films. He arrived in the U.S. in 1938 and used the name S. P. Eagle. He bummed around Hollywood for a few years, working various film jobs, trying to figure out how to become a producer. Simultaneously, WWII occurred. Sam knew a number of good writers stuck in Nazi-occupied France. He got the rights to many of their stories for free, then convinced thirteen big-shot Hollywood writers, like Ben Hecht and Donald Ogden Stewart, to adapt the stories into an anthology script, all for free. Sam Spiegel convinced everybody that their participation was a patriotic blow against the Nazis. With this script, Tales of Manhattan (1942), Sam then pulled off a truly astonishing production deal with 20th Century Fox, and listen to this cast: Charles Boyer, Rita Hayworth, Ginger Rogers, Henry Fonda, Charles Laughton, Edward G. Robinson, Ethel Waters, Paul Robeson, and W. C. Fields.
After ten years and several crummy movies (making good connections), Sam Spiegel and John Huston form a company in England called Horizon Pictures and produce The African Queen (1951). Gigantic hit, makes lots of money, Bogart wins Best Actor. Spiegel and Huston have an explosive falling out. When the smoke clears, Spiegel owns Horizon and makes most of the money on the film. Sam finally stops with the S. P. Eagle and becomes Sam Spiegel. He then gets the hottest, best theater and movie director working, Elia Kazan, and they make On the Waterfront (1954). Wins Best Everything. His next movie is my favorite movie, The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957). Wins Best Everything and is the biggest-moneymaker of 1958. And how does he follow that up? Lawrence of Arabia (1962). Not bad.
It looks like a lovely day.