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"Acting Like Children": Dana Andrews on Working With Otto Preminger
From: Columbia University
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Columbia University Oral History Research Office |
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION |
In the 1940s, Dana Andrews (1909-92) became famous as a leading man in such Hollywood films as The Ox-Bow Incident (1943), Laura (1944) and The Best Years of Our Lives (1946). His career continued during the '50s with My Foolish Heart (1950), Beyond a Reasonable Doubt (1956) and While the City Sleeps (1956). In this 1958 interview with the Columbia University Oral History Research Office, Andrews talks about making Westerns and working with director Otto Preminger. |
Dana Andrews talks about Otto Preminger.
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 t was while I was down in Tucson, Arizona, making The Westerner that I got a call from my agent, and he said that Goldwyn was thinking of selling half of my contract--or sharing it--with 20th Century Fox, and what did I think about it. I don't know how much I really had to say about it; I think it was his prerogative, not mine. But it seemed like a good thing to me, and as it turned out it was a very good thing, because of the sit-down strike of Mr. Goldwyn. Actually, the sit-down strike happened after The Westerner. He held The Westerner for a year because of it and wouldn't release it. In my opinion, one of the best pictures I've ever made was a Western, called The Ox-Bow Incident. That's one of the classic Westerns. |
It has certainly a very strong social consciousness, and is against mob violence and the injustice caused by that. It was Walter van Tilberg Clarke's first novel. I was greatly honored to get the part. |
I have done other Westerns, but Westerns have a way of either being done on a grand scale, as Mr. Goldwyn made them, or being just another Western--and my misfortunate has been, in some cases, to be in just another Western, which they don't publicize, really. Some of the Westerns I made were good. Another one I made, which you would call an outdoor picture, was up in Oregon, Gold Canyon Passage, which was a big picture, with Susan Hayward and Brian Donlevy, and very good. |
But I have not really been typed in any particular type of character or picture. I've played detective stories, and I've played lawyers. During the war, I was in every branch of the service, I think--I played everything but a general. Mr. Skouras, the head of 20th Century Fox, chairman of the board, once told me this, after it had happened. The picture that made me what is called a star, he told me once at his house in Mamaroneck, was The Purple Heart. |
Well, this was rather surprising to me. I knew it was a pretty good picture, but it was a war picture and very similar in some respects to 30 Seconds Over Tokyo, and so didn't receive great national acclaim in Life magazine or something. The reason for that was that the part I played in this was a captain in charge of a whole group of men, and it was a very kindly treated character. The women all over the country, whose men were away at war, identified their husbands as being that sort of a man. For some reason, this made a terrific impression on them. There was no romance in it at all. There was not even a woman in it. There was a very short little flashback, I think about 30 seconds, of my being back home. But this was the picture that he said put me over. |
I was there when they really discovered it for sure. We were in Philadelphia, making an appearance with Woodrow Wilson. I was not in Woodrow Wilson, but studio personnel would be sent around with a picture to ballyhoo it. We had quite a group, with George Fitzgerald and Alexander Knox, who were in the picture, and George Jessel and various people under contract at 20th Century Fox. When I was introduced on the stage at Philadelphia, there was quite an ovation--people stamping their feet and whistling and screaming little girls and so on--and George Jessel, who was introducing me, looked at me very querulously and said, "What is this for? Do you sing?" |
At this time Frank Sinatra was getting squeals from little girls. I was a little nonplussed myself. This was an unexpected thing. |
The movie people, Mr. Zanuck and Mr. Skouras, were there because of their interest in Wilson, and it was lucky for me, I guess, that they were, because they noted this and tried to find a reason for it. The reason was that in this theater and in Philadelphia, the week or a few weeks before, they had shown The Purple Heart, and this was a reaction to the showing of Purple Heart. This gave them an idea, and--boom--I got a better part in the next picture. |
These things are very curious, the way they happen. That's the way it's done. People very often say to me that Laura was my first picture. Well, it's the first one they saw, which is why they think that. |
There's a curious little thing about that: Everybody thinks the song "Laura" was from the picture. It was not. There was no such song written at the time. |
This was directed by Otto Preminger; it was started by Rouben Mamoulian. This is the second time this has happened. Since this is not for publication, I think it's a very interesting little sidelight, because this happened to me and it's one of the things that I know for sure and not hearsay. I have great admiration for Mr. Preminger, but this is a true incident. Mr. Preminger was the producer of this picture, and Mr. Mamoulian was the director. I think Mr. Preminger wanted to be a producer-director. (This is my own opinion, that he wanted to.) In any case, he became one on this picture. I talked to Mr. Preminger and Mr. Mamoulian for some time about the character, and they wanted to do this in a different way. What conversations they'd had between themselves, I don't know, but they were in agreement in talking to me that they wanted this character played as though he were a student of criminology from Yale or Harvard or something like that, and not at all the hard-boiled detective that you generally see. But this was something that I think Mr. Preminger wanted to be different, in this respect--to blaze a trail. This was very interesting to me, too. I didn't know how it would come out, but I knew what they meant and, having been a college man, I had some idea of how college men conducted themselves. |
So this is the way the part was played, more or less, for the first two weeks, and we shot, at some expense, two weeks on the film. All of a sudden, Mr. Zanuck, who was out of town, came back into town, and a great commotion was heard. He saw the rushes of what had been shot, and suddenly in the middle of the afternoon the picture was stopped, and the director and the producer were over with Mr. Zanuck. And the word came to us that they were going to take Mamoulian off the picture. |
This I didn't know for sure, but at any rate I got a call to go to Mr. Zanuck's office. I went to his office and there sat Mr. Preminger and Mr. Mamoulian, and Mr. Zanuck was sort of presiding. He proceeded to tell me how he thought the character should be played--Zanuck did. Gene Tierney and I were the leads, and Clifton Webb. This was his first picture, by the way. He'd never done a picture before. He'd been under contract to MGM for 18 months and never done a foot of film--never had seen himself on the screen. |
They were sitting and listening while Mr. Zanuck told me how he thought the character should be played. |
What he had in mind was something I was used to--the right-down-the-alley type of detective that you'd seen. As a matter of fact, he said, "Like Pat O'Brien." It was not particularly interesting. He named some picture, Broadway, I think, in which Pat O'Brien played a detective. They are still doing this: it's one of the things it takes you time to get used to, that everything has to be explained within the frame of something they know. I guess it is the only way it can be done succinctly and laconically, so that everybody understands what they're talking about. You can at least start from that. |
Anyway, this description by Mr. Zanuck was made, and Otto came up and said, "Why, that's what I was telling Rouben." Rouben became livid and said, "That's a lie. You did not! You explained to me that you wanted this man played in the other way." |
I saw that a big fight was going on here, and I didn't want to be in the middle, because I didn't know how it was going to come out, and there wasn't anything I could do about it anyway. So I said to Mr. Zanuck, "I think I understand what you mean, and I don't want to get mixed up in this, so if it's all right with you, I would like to retire." |
He smiled and said, "I understand. All right, go ahead." |
So I left the conference. The next morning, Mr. Mamoulian was out, and Mr. Preminger was the producer-director of the picture. A very curious little thing, this. Of course it upset everybody in the picture, because we were very fond of Rouben. He's a very fine gentleman. We were really upset. As a matter of fact, I think the whole cast, including the principals, got together and bemoaned the fact that he was taken off the picture, and didn't quite understand why. Judith Anderson practically refused to act. She made her appearance, technically, but wouldn't take Mr. Preminger's direction. He said, "Miss Anderson, you know that you're capable of ..." She'd answer, "I just don't see it that way," or something like that. This of course was rather childish, but it was her way of rebelling at the change that had come about. But she got over this very quickly, and in a couple of days he had everyone won over. This was designing and it was ambitious; but he did a wonderful job. |
My relationship with Mr. Preminger is about as close as actor and director usually get in Hollywood, I guess. I've done a number of pictures with him. At one point in Laura, we more or less disagreed on a certain point of direction he'd given, and I said, "I don't understand, Otto, why this man would do this," and he said, "You are not expected to understand. You just do what I tell you, and it'll be all right." |
I said, "I can't do it that way, just take direction that says, 'Turn your finger here ...' " |
He said, "Don't bother me," or some such irritating phrase. |
I said, "Look, I can stay here as long as you can." |
He said, "Can you? We shall see. Sit down." |
So I sat down. We sat there for two hours or more. Nothing happened. My wife chose this day to visit the set, and she said, "What's going on?" I said, "We're having a little disagreement." So I sat chatting with friends, and finally Mr. Preminger came over and said, "Dah-na"--he never was able to say, "Dana"--"we are acting like children." |
I said, "I quite agree with you." |
So he said, "Now, what is it you want?" |
So I told him I just didn't understand. He said, "Well, what do you want to do?" I said, "I see it this way ..." It was patched up. Since then, with the success of Laura, Mr. Preminger got me into three pictures, none of which I wanted to do. One was Daisy Kenyon, another was Fallen Angel, which I was very adamant about and practically took a suspension over, and only on the advice of my lawyer and my agent did I finally do the picture, because I thought it was pretty bad. It was bad. It put Alice Faye out of business completely. That's her last picture. I had long conversations with her, and I found out later why there was pressure for me to do the picture: it was because Alice, who had been semi-retired, said unless she found something she wanted to do she wouldn't do it. Well, Alice was a big box-office draw for 20th Century Fox, and they didn't want her idle. So they sent her every script that came in, practically, hoping she'd find something interesting she might like to do. Well, this little story came along. She had seen Laura, and she liked me in this part. It was a good part--almost anybody could have done it. She said, "I'll do this one if you can get Dana Andrews." This I didn't know. So this is why it happened. |
When the script was sent to me, I said no. Otto called me in. I had a number of conversations with him. He didn't understand why I didn't like it. I said, "In the first place, I don't think it's a picture for Alice Faye, but besides that, I don't like the part for me. I don't like the picture. It's terrible. It's in bad taste, it's unbelievable. I just can't see it at all." |
Well, it got to the point where they were going to put me on suspension if I didn't do it, and my agent said, "You won't work for a year, probably, or six months anyway. It can't be that bad. With Alice Faye they'll give it a big ballyhoo." |
Well, as it turned out--situations change--they didn't give it a big ballyhoo, and it just fell. There were long conversations I had with Miss Faye, when I said, "Why did you ever do this?" "Oh, you wait and see, this is going to be great, it's terrific." As it turned out, Linda Darnell was the best thing in the picture, and the scene I had with her was the only good thing in the picture--at least it was showy. |
When she saw the picture, she made the statement "I'll never do another picture." And she hasn't since then. When she saw it she knew it was bad, but she didn't realize it while she was making it. She was really in tears. |
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