Paul Henreid will not play the part when he reads it

Austrian-born Paul Henreid is best remembered for his roles in two Warner Bros. pictures: as Jerry Durrance opposite Bette Davis in Irving Rapper's romantic drama Now, Voyager (1942) —on loan from RKO— and as Ingrid Bergman's husband and resistance leader Victor Laszlo in Michael Curtiz's Casablanca (1942). The latter film was not a film the actor had wanted to make, though. Having been previously cast in two leading roles (i.e. in Joan of Paris (1942) and Now, Voyager), Henreid was offered a relatively small part in Casablanca and was afraid it would affect his status as a leading man. Besides, he found the script lousy and also didn't want to play second fiddle to Humphrey Bogart. It was only after the studio assured to build up his role and to give him above-the-title billing along with Bogart and Bergman that Henreid accepted.

The actor whom Warner Bros. had initially wanted for the role of Victor Laszlo was the Dutch actor Philip Dorn but he was unavailable. Convinced that Henreid wouldn't be interested in the role, producer Hal Wallis complained to director Michael Curtiz in a memo that there was no one else available (".. aside from Philip Dorn, whom we cannot get, and Paul Henreid who I am sure will not play the part when he reads it, there is no one else that I can think of.") Screen tests with unknown European actors, including French actor Jean-Pierre Aumont, had led to nothing. So eventually a deal with Henreid was made —his co-star billing with Bogart and Bergman had clinched it— and Warners next signed him to a seven-year contract. (Henreid was reluctant to sign with Warners but was encouraged to do so by his agent Lew Wasserman.) 

While the studio began building him as a new leading man —casting him in such films as In Our Time (1944) and The Conspirators (1944)— in the end Henreid never became a major star. As his chances to be cast as a romantic lead diminished, the actor eventually turned to producing and directing. In the early 1950s, he started directing both film and television productions, including tv episodes of Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Bonanza and The Big Valley, and for the big screen Dead Ringer (1964), starring his friend and former co-star Bette Davis.

Shown below are three memo's regarding the casting of Henreid in Casablanca. First up is the memo mentioned above from Hal Wallis to Michael Curtiz, in which Wallis complained about nobody being available for the role. Next is a memo from Steve Trilling (Jack Warner's executive assistant) to Wallis regarding the deal with Henreid, followed by Wallis' short reply.  

Philip Dorn 

DATE: April 22,1942  

SUBJECT: "Casablanca" 

TO: Mike Curtiz 

FROM: Hal Wallis

Dear Mike: 

I have been going over with Trilling the possibilities for the part of  "Laszlo" and, aside from Philip Dorn, whom we cannot get, and Paul Henreid who I am sure will not play the part when he reads it, there is no one else that I can think of. I think you should satisfy yourself on this point; that is, that there is no one available, and then begin to adjust yourself to the thought that we might have to use someone of the type of Dean Jagger, Ian Hunter or Herbert Marshall, or someone of this type without an accent. 

I am as anxious as you are to have a type like Philip Dorn in the part, but if there is no one available there is just nothing that we can do about it. 

Hal Wallis

__________

DATE: May 1, 1942

TO: Hal Wallis

FROM: Steve Trilling

RE: Paul Henreid for Casablanca

Discussed making a separate picture deal with his agent first before talking to Henreid. As you know, we have been trying to work out a deal to take over his RKO contract —and one of the deterrents was Henreid's reluctance to assign himself here exclusively— and then possibly be relegated to small parts. In this respect, you are aware by this time, he is a bit of a ham —and until the negotiations for the RKO deal are behind us— which should be in the next few days— I think we should let this separate picture deal ride...

An obstacle we encountered in consummating the original deal was the billing situation —and after great persuasion, we got him to accept a special billing clause for the first two pictures — thereafter, he was to be starred or co-starred and I think if he gets assurance of co-star billing with Bogart and Bergman, it would clinch the matter. This might not be such a bad idea if we really are attempting to build him.

Steve Trilling

__________

 

DATE: May 1, 1942

SUBJECT: "Casablanca"

TO: Steve Trilling

FROM: Hal Wallis

If we can get Henreid for Casablanca, we will give him co-star billing with Bogart and Bergman.

Hal Wallis

 

Source: Inside Warner Bros. (1935-1951) (1985), selected and edited by Rudy Behlmer. 

Humphrey Bogart and Paul Henreid play a game of chess on the set of Casablanca, while Hal Wallis (center) and Michael Curtiz (right) look on. (Don't know who the other guy next to Wallis is.)

Audrey Hepburn is fabulous! Truly!

In a film career that spanned forty years during which she starred in such classics as Roman Holiday (1953), Sabrina (1954), Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961) and My Fair Lady (1964), Audrey Hepburn had declined many a film role. One of the roles she turned down was that of spinster Alma Winemiller in Summer and Smoke (1961), a film based on the 1948 play of the same name by Tennessee Williams. Both Williams and producer Hal Wallis had wanted Audrey to play the role of Alma and visited her at her home in Switzerland in 1955 to discuss the project. In the end, Audrey declined the role, which (years later) went to Geraldine Page who had also played it on stage. 

In the summer of 1955, Tennessee Williams wrote a letter to his agent Audrey Wood, part of the letter concerning Summer and Smoke and Audrey Hepburn. Here is the part that deals with Hepburn, who was 26 years old at the time and married to her first husband Mel Ferrer.

 

Wallis is here and we were at the Ferrers for dinner last night because Hal wants to sign Audrey Hepburn for Summer and Smoke. I think it's an excellent choice ...

Audrey Hepburn is fabulous! Truly! She was Miss Alma in the flesh! I can't think of better casting for this part. She has long thin arms, a long thin neck, long thin body and long thin legs - and eyes that break your heart with their youth and sweetness. No accent: exquisite grace. I almost found myself admiring Hal Wallis for thinking of her for it. Her price is $350,000 and he is willing to pay it! The deal is not yet completed but I had a distinct feeling that both she and Mel were very favorable to it. We discussed directors. Do you think the man who directed "Marty" [1955, Delbert Mann] would be right for it? Another one mentioned was William Wyler who directed her in "Roman Holiday". 

[The 1961 film Summer and Smoke was directed by English director Peter Glenville.]

Source: The Selected Letters of Tennessee Williams, Vol. 2: 1945-1957, edited by Albert J. Devlin and Nancy M. Tischler (2004).

Playwright Tennessee Williams (above) and Geraldine Page and Laurence Harvey in the 1961 film Summer and Smoke (below).

Ava Gardner's letter from the set of "Mogambo"

Ava Gardner once said that John Ford's Mogambo (1953) was as close to a pinnacle as anything she had ever done. The film, for which she received her only Oscar nomination, was not an easy shoot, though. During production in Africa, cast and crew had to deal with the Mau Mau uprising, the excruciating heat and heavy rainfall, and wild animals that formed a constant threat of danger. And besides all that, Ava also had to face the most personal crisis of her life.

A year earlier, Ava had married Frank Sinatra who had accompanied her to the shoot in Africa. The couple was having marital problems and on the set they were constantly fighting. After Sinatra went back to Hollywood to do a screentest for From Here to Eternity (1953), Ava discovered she was pregnant. With Sinatra in Hollywood, she decided to have an abortion in London, keeping her husband out of the loop and telling the press she was receiving medical treatment for a tropical infection. Ava said in her autobiography Ava: My Story (1990) that she wasn't ready to have a child, unable to offer it a stable home life. Mogambo cinematographer Robert Surtees claimed, however, that she had the abortion because she couldn't stand the thought of having Sinatra's baby. It was Surtees' wife who had gone to London with Ava and to whom Ava had said: "I hated Frankie so much. I wanted that baby to go unborn." (After Mogambo had wrapped, Ava said in her book that she got pregnant a second time and had a second abortion, this time with Sinatra being in the know.) 

On 29 October 1953, after a very tumultuous marriage, Ava and Frank formally announced their separation. While Ava filed for divorce in June 1954, the divorce wouldn't be finalised until 1957. The two would remain good friends until Ava's death in 1990, at age 67.

Above: November 1952, Ava Gardner and Frank Sinatra at London Airport on the first leg of their journey to Nairobi, Kenya. Below: (left to right) Donald Sinden, Grace Kelly, Clark Gable, Denis O'Dea, Ava Gardner and Eric Pohlmann on the set of Mogambo. While circumstances during production were difficult, Ava said that everyone in the cast got along famously. She and Grace Kelly even became lifelong friends.

In January 1953, from the set of Mogambo, Ava wrote the following letter to her sister Myra. Ava came from a North Carolina family, the youngest of seven children, and was very close to her siblings. In the letter, she talks about having been "sick" in London; about Africa getting "more unbearable every day"; about Sinatra leaving her again for months (he got the Maggio part in From Here to Eternity and had gone back to Hollywood); and about the presents he gave her, for their first anniversary, her birthday (on 24 December she had turned 30) and Christmas. 

Incidentally, Sinatra was broke at the time so he had to borrow money to pay for Ava's presents. For the diamond anniversary ring Ava had to advance the money herself (to Robert Surtees she had said: "You know what that son of a bitch did? I got the bill for the ring!"). Still, Sinatra did make sure everybody on the set had a wonderful Christmas. He secretly went to Nairobi to get a tree and decorations and also arranged for an African choir to sing French Christmas carols.

Transcript:

Jan. 1953

Myra dear -

I just got your very first letter today- It was sent to me in London (from Africa) while I was sick + just got back to Africa today. But anyway I got your others + incidentally I sure do enjoy them 'cause this place gets more unbearable every day + any word from home is like a breath of fresh air. Frank just left a few days ago + now I'm really lonesome- This time he is going to be gone for four months or more -

Looks like we'll never be together long enough to really find out if we can live together or not-

Honey, if I didn't tell you in my last letter- I got all your cards at Xmas + birthday time + tell Jean [Myra's daughter] I got hers too + I do hope she's a little happier- She deserves it- to sacrifice so much- I never did receive the [illegible] but maybe they will catch up with me like the letter did- Mail is not too reliable in this part of the world- thank you anyway honey-

We're hoping to get out of here in another week or ten days- I'm going back by the jet plane as far as Rome where I'll spent a couple of days having fun + eating some good food- then back to London

My address in London will be

4 Abbey Lodge

Honour Gate

Regents Park

London N.W.

I never did tell you about my anniversary present. It was a beautiful diamond ring- I can't draw very well but it looked something like this [sketch] - That's a side view - It is dome shaped + is filled with little round diamonds- And for my birthday he brought me another diamond ring like this [sketch] - A marquis diamond with three baguettes on each side + for Xmas a beautiful mink stole - We really had a wonderful Xmas- as you can imagine even tho' it was in the middle of Africa-

Sweetie, I must stop + get ready to leave on the plane - we're going to our last location and I sure am glad it's the last- it's another safari where we live in tents right out in the open with all the lions + hippos + everything-

We were in one safari for 8 weeks - that's where we spent the holidays - Take care of yourself + give my love to Beatrice + the kids

love + kisses

Ava 

Source: Leading Lights Autographs

Ava Gardner with her sisters Myra and Inez (above) and Beatrice "Bappy" (below)

Your letter brought tears to my eyes

While I'm not familiar with his work, François Truffaut was one of France's most respected filmmakers and one of the founders of the French movement La Nouvelle Vague (The New Wave). His films include such classics as The 400 Blows (1959), Jules and Jim (1962) and Day For Night (1973). Not having seen any of his films yet, I must say I only associate Truffaut with Alfred Hitchcock with whom he conducted a series of interviews in the summer of 1962. 

Truffaut was a huge fan of Hitchcock and was the first to recognise him as a complete and serious filmmaker and not just a mainstream director of entertaining suspense films. By the early 1960s, Hitchcock was at the height of his career but many critics (both American and European) still belittled his work, feeling it lacked substance. To prove the critics wrong, Truffaut came up with the idea to do in-depth interviews with Hitchcock during which they would explore and analyse his work. The interviews were recorded and eventually compiled into the book Hitchcock/Truffaut, which is still considered the definitive study on Hitchcock (the French edition was published in 1966, the English edition in 1967). As had been Truffaut's objective, critics started to change their attitude towards Hitchcock and eventually took his work more seriously.

To entice Hitchcock into doing the interviews, on 2 June 1962 Truffaut (then 30 years old) wrote a letter to Hitch (then 62), containing a detailed proposal of the project. Below is Truffaut's letter as well as Hitchcock's reply by telegram. The interviews were eventually held that summer during a period of eight days at Hitch's office at the Universal Studios. As Truffaut spoke hardly any English, Helen Scott of the French Film Office in New York was hired to translate. While it had been Truffaut's intention to publish his book that same year, it wasn't published until 1966. In order to keep the book up-to-date, before its publication Truffaut held further interviews with Hitchcock to discuss Marnie (1964) and Torn Curtain (1966). Of all the recordings (which Truffaut said lasted 50 hours) less than 26 hours of tapes survived, nearly 12 hours of which can be listened to here.

Paris, 2 June 1962

Dear Mr Hitchcock,

First of all, allow me to remind you who I am. A few years ago, in late 1954, when I was a film journalist, I came with my friend Claude Chabrol to interview you at the Saint-Maurice studio where you were directing the post-synchronization of To Catch a Thief. You asked us to go and wait for you in the studio bar, and it was then that, in the excitement of having watched fifteen times in succession a ‘loop’ showing Brigitte Auber and Cary Grant in a speedboat, Chabrol and I fell into the frozen tank in the studio courtyard.

You very kindly agreed to postpone the interview which was conducted that same evening at your hotel.

Subsequently, each time you visited Paris, I had the pleasure of meeting you with Odette Ferry, and for the following year you even said to me, ‘Whenever I see ice cubes in a glass of whisky I think of you.’ One year after that, you invited me to come to New York for a few days and watch the shooting of The Wrong Man, but I had to decline the invitation since, a few months after Claude Chabrol, I turned to film-making myself.

I have made three films, the first of which, The Four Hundred Blows, had, I believe, a certain success in Hollywood. The latest, Jules et Jim, is currently showing in New York.

I come now to the point of my letter. In the course of my discussions with foreign journalists and especially in New York, I have come to realize that their conception of your work is often very superficial. Moreover, the kind of propaganda that we were responsible for in Cahiers du Cinéma was excellent as far as France was concerned, but inappropriate for America because it was too intellectual.

Since I have become a director myself, my admiration for you has in no way weakened; on the contrary, it has grown stronger and changed in nature. There are many directors with a love for the cinema, but what you possess is a love of celluloid itself and it is that which I would like to talk to you about.

I would like you to grant me a tape-recorded interview which would take about eight days to conduct and would add up to about thirty hours of recordings. The point of this would be to distil not a series of articles but an entire book which would be published simultaneously in New York (I would consider offering it, for example, to Simon and Schuster where I have some friends) and Paris (by Gallimard or Robert Laffont), then, probably later, more or less everywhere in the world.

If the idea were to appeal to you, and you agreed to do it, here is how I think we might proceed: I could come and stay for about ten days wherever it would be most convenient for you. From New York I would bring with me Miss Helen Scott who would be the ideal interpreter; she carries out simultaneous translations at such speed that we would have the impression of speaking to one another without any intermediary and, working as she does at the French Film Office in New York, she is also completely familiar with the vocabulary of the cinema. She and I would take rooms in the hotel closest to your home or to whichever office you might arrange.

Here is the work schedule. Just a very detailed interview in chronological order. To start with, some biographical notes, then the first jobs you had before entering the film industry, then your stay in Berlin. This would be followed by:

1. the British silent films;

2. the British sound films;

3. the first American films for Selznick and the spy films;

4. the two ‘Transatlantic Pictures’

5. the Vistavision period;

6. from The Wrong Man to the The Birds.

The questions would focus more precisely on:

a) the circumstances surrounding the inception of each film;

b) the development and construction of the screenplay;

c) the stylistic problems peculiar to each film;

d) the situation of the film in relation to those preceding it;

e) your own assessment of the artistic and commercial result in relation to your intentions.

There would be questions of a more general nature on: good and bad scripts, different styles of dialogue, the direction of actors, the art of editing, the development of new techniques, special effects and colour. These would be interspaced among the different categories in order to prevent any interruption in chronology.

The body of work would be preceded by a text which I would write myself and which might be summarized as follows: if, overnight, the cinema had to do without its soundtrack and became once again a silent art, then many directors would be forced into unemployment, but, among the survivors, there would be Alfred Hitchcock and everyone would realize at last that he is the greatest film director in the world.

If this project interests you, I would ask you to let me know how you would like to proceed. I imagine that you are in the process of editing The Birds, and perhaps you would prefer to wait a while?

For my part, at the end of this year I am due to make my next films, an adaptation of a novel by Ray Bradbury, Fahrenheit 451, which is why I would prefer the interviews to take place between 15 July and 15 September 1962.

If you were to accept the proposition, I would gather together all the documents I would need to prepare the four or five hundred questions which I wish to ask you, and I would have the Brussels Cinémathèque screen for me those films of yours with which I am least familiar. That would take me about three weeks, which would mean I could be at your disposal from the beginning of July.

A few weeks after our interviews, the transcribed, edited and corrected text would be submitted to you in English so that you might make any corrections that you considered useful, and the book itself would be ready to come out by the end of this year.

Awaiting your reply, I beg you to accept, dear Mr Hitchcock, my profound admiration. I remain

Yours sincerely,

Francois Truffaut

 

Dear Monsieur Truffaut – Your letter brought tears to my eyes and I am so grateful to receive such a tribute from you – Stop – I am shooting The Birds and this will continue until 15 July and after that I will have to begin editing which will take me several weeks – Stop – I think I will wait until we have finished shooting The Birds and then I will contact you with the idea of getting together around the end of August – Stop – Thank you again for your charming letter – Kind regards – Cordially yours – Alfred Hitchcock. 

Source: New Wave Film.com 

__________

And here is a letter from Hitchcock to Truffaut regarding the French edition of the book. Ever the perfectionist, Hitch even detected an error.

Source: Cinephilia and Filmmaking

In 2015 filmmaker Kent Jones made a documentary Hitchcock/Truffaut based on Truffaut's 1966 book. Directors like Martin Scorcese and David Fincher discuss how their work was influenced by the book.

I have such a strong, tender, wonderful memory

During four months in 1960, Marilyn Monroe and Arthur Miller lived in a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel while the bungalow next door was occupied by their French friends, famed film couple Yves Montand and Simone Signoret. Miller had met Montand and Signoret in Paris in 1956, when the two starred in the play Les Sorcières de Salem, a French adaptation of Miller's own 1953 play The Crucible. (They would later also star in the 1957 French film version.) Miller became friends with the couple, sharing the same leftist political views. Several years later, in the fall of 1959, Montand and Signoret came to New York where Montand would enjoy great successes on Broadway with his one-man show An Evening with Yves Montand. It was then that the Montands also met Marilyn and eventually befriended her too.

While the two couples were living side by side at the Beverly Hills Hotel in bungalows No. 20 and 21, Marilyn and Montand were filming Let's Make Love (1961) and Miller was one of the writers working on the film's screenplay. Production of the film was plagued with difficulties, including the usual problems with Marilyn (her lateness and inability to remember her lines) and the fact that Montand didn't speak English, having to learn his lines phonetically. It is said that the issues Montand and Marilyn were each having during filming eventually caused them to bond. When their respective spouses left for other commitments, the two grew closer and started a much-publicised affair.  

The affair between Montand and Marilyn reportedly ended after shooting of Let's Make Love had wrapped. Marilyn's marriage to Miller was already in trouble when filming began and the two would divorce in early 1961. The Montands returned to France and remained married until Signoret's death of cancer in 1985. While Simone was very hurt and embittered by the affair and the scandal that followed, she never blamed Marilyn. In her autobiography Nostalgia Isn't What It Used To Be (1975) Signoret wrote:  

She never knew how thoroughly I had understood the story that was no one's business but ours, the four of us. Too many people were concerned with it during troubled times when many more important things were happening.

She's gone without ever knowing that I never stopped wearing the champagne‐colored silk scarf she'd lent me one day when I was being photographed. It went well with what I was wearing; so well that she made me a present of it. It's a bit frayed now, but if I fold it carefully, that doesn't show.

Marilyn was wracked with guilt after betraying the trust of her friend. After Marilyn died, Simone famously said: "She will never know how much I didn't hate her." Photos above and below by Bruce Davidson, Beverly Hills Hotel, 1960.

Below are a few pieces of correspondence, the first one a letter from Marilyn to Yves Montand written on 24 September 1959. Three days earlier Marilyn had attended the premiere of Montand's one-man show at the Henry Miller Theater on Broadway. Her escort mentioned in the letter was Montgomery Clift. 

Source: Cursum Perficio

Transcript:

September 24, 1959

Dear Mr. Montand:

First, I want to ask you to forgive me for not coming back stage the other night, but my escort was rather upset by the crowds and insisted we leave the theatre as soon as possible. 

I especially wanted to come back stage in order to give you my husband's deep regrets that he was not able to be with me on opening night (he had a deadline to meet). For myself, I want to tell you how marvelous you were and how wonderful it is that Americans will have an opportunity to see you.

When my husband does come to your performance I shall be there again. We are both looking forward to meeting you and Mrs. Montand at that time.

Warmest good wishes to you both.

Mr. Yves Montand

Algonquin Hotel

59 West 44th Street

New York City

__________

A Christmas card and drawing from the Montands to Marilyn. I don't know who was the artist here, Yves or Simone.

Source: Julien's Auctions

Simone and Yves sent Marilyn some flowers or perhaps left them at her bungalow when Marilyn was out. At any rate, the flowers were accompanied by the following card. 

Source: Julien's Auctions 

And a few lines from Marilyn regarding Montand. The lines were part of a P.S. in a letter she had written to her psychiatrist Dr. Ralph Greenson in 1961. Marilyn was reportedly in love with Montand, hoping against hope he would marry her. 

Source: Cursum Perficio

It's a great feeling once you make the other side

Robert Taylor holds the record of having the longest running contract with one studio, i.e. MGM, having been on their payroll from 1934 to 1958. Dubbed "The Man with the Perfect Profile" by the studio's publicity department, Taylor appeared in films of different genres in the 1930s, always playing a nice guy. Moving into the next decade, MGM decided Taylor needed an image change, so the 1940s saw him tackle more gritty parts, including a criminal on parole in Mervyn Leroy's Johnny Eager (1941) and Katharine Hepburn's villain husband in Undercurrent (1946). 

In a letter to an admirer dated 15 September 1941, Taylor, who was in the midst of filming Johnny Eager, talks about this transition from "college boy" type of roles to "more mature" roles and about being recognised by one's peers. In the end, Taylor would never receive the ultimate peer recognition, i.e. an Oscar or a nomination. The only recognition he did receive during his career was the Golden Globe Henrietta Award for World Film Favorites in 1954, a prize he shared with Alan Ladd. 

Robert Taylor: The Man with the Perfect Profile

Robert Taylor and Van Heflin in a scene from Johnny Eager. While Taylor delivered a fine performance, it was Van Heflin who stole the show with his Oscar-winning performance as Eager's loyal and sensitive friend.

Source: icollector.com