Oscar Profile #78: Otto Preminger

Born December 5, 1905 in Wiznitz, Bukovina, Austria-Hungary, now Wyschnyzja, Ukraine, Otto Preminger was born into a wealthy Jewish family. His father was a prosecutor who became Attorney General of Austria-Hungary.

Although he originally intended to follow in his father’s footsteps, he fell in love with the theatre and made his first film as a director in Austria in 1931 and emigrated to the U.S. in 1936 to accept an offer from Fox studio chief Joseph Schenk.

A dispute with production chief Darly F. Zanuck led to Preminger’s acrimonious dismissal from Fox after which Preminger made a name for himself on the Broadway stage. Having received rave reviews for playing a Nazi in Margin of Error as well as directing it, Fox, in Zanuck’s absence during World War II, offered him the part of another Nazi in 1942’s The Pied Piper. He accepted and when filming was completed was asked to reprise his stage role in the film version of Margin of Error to be directed by the legendary Ernst Lubitsch. He accepted, but Lubitsch left the project before filming began and with the production in shambles, Preminger was asked to direct. His salvage of the film led to his being allowed to produce, but not direct, Laura. Zanuck, now back from the war, had forgiven him but was still wary of him. Rouben Mamoulian was to direct the film, but clashes between Mamoulian and Preminger were resolved when Zanuck sided with Preminger’s choice of Clifton Webb over Mamoulian’s choice of Laird Cregar to play the pivotal role of Waldo Lydecker. Mamoulian was fired and Preminger got to direct what would become the lynchpin of his legendary career.

It was during this period that Preminger had a well-known affair with Gypsy Rose Lee, resulting in the birth of a child, Erik, whom Lee gave the last name of Kirkland after the husband she divorced shortly before his birth. It wasn’t until 1966 when Erik was 22 and Otto was 60 that he learned who his real father was.

Preminger’s mid-forties career at Fox reached its zenith in 1947 with the box-office hit Forever Amber, which he hated, and the critically lauded Daisy Kenyon with Joan Crawford, that had been his pet project.

Preminger received critical acclaim for two late Fox entries, 1949’s Whirlpool and 1950’s Where the Sidewalk Ends before moving on as an independent producer/director.

He created controversy with 1952’s Angel Face when he shot so many takes of Robert Mitchum slapping Jean Simmons that Mitchum turned and slapped the director in the face asking “is this how you want it?” Howard Hughes, then the head of RKO, refused to allow Preminger to fire Mitchum because of the incident.

That was nothing compared to the controversy surrounding 1953’s The Moon Is Blue which Preminger made from the rather mundane Broadway comedy about a girl with two suitors. The film ran into trouble with the Hays Office and the Catholic Legion of Decency for the off-handed use of words like “pregnant” and “virgin” which Preminger refused to change, releasing the film without the Hays’ office’s seal of approval.

Preminger then took a supporting role as the Nazi Commandant in Billy Wilder’s Stalag 17 opposite his Moon Is Blue star, William Holden.

While directing the film version of Broadway’s Carmen Jones he had an affair with the film’s star, Dorothy Dandridge, which lasted four years until she finally realized he was not going to divorce his wife and marry her. Preminger was to direct her one more time in 1959’s Porgy and Bess. In the meantime he courted more controversy with The Man With the Golden Arm, the first film to focus on the taboo subject of drug addiction, which was his second film released without a Hays office seal of approval. He followed that with Saint Joan, a critically lambasted film that caused controversy when star Jean Seberg was almost literally burned at the stake when the embers beneath her feet accidentally caught fire. Preminger refused to call “cut” until he was convinced he had gotten enough of a reaction from the terrified actress to print.

The 1959 courtroom drama, Anatomy of a Murder, brought Preminger some of the best notices of his career and his first Oscar nomination since Laura fifteen years earlier. 1960’s Exodus failed to impress critics but became a huge box office success nonetheless.

Preminger’s 1962 film version of Advise and Consent met with critical huzzahs and 1963’s The Cardinal, although it received mixed notices from critics, was liked well enough within the industry to earn Preminger his third Oscar nomination. Subsequent films were hit and miss, with In Harm’s Way and Bunny Lake Is Missing earning both critical and audience support, while Hurry Sundown and Skidoo received the wrath of both critics and the public.

Preminger’s 1970 film Tell Me That You Love, Junie Moon met with generally favorable critical notices, but by then it was too late. The film bombed at the box office and his nextt three films torpedoed his career.

Suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease and lung cancer, Otto Preminger died in 1986 at 80.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

LAURA (1944)

One of the great films noir, Preminger’s film from Vera Caspary’s novel succeeds on many levels from David Raksin’s haunting score to the performances of its five stars, Gene Tierney, Dana Andrews, Clifton Webb, Vincent Priced and Judith Anderson, all of whom received some of the best notices of their careers. Although stage veteran Clifton Webb had appeared in occasional films and shorts from 1917-1930, this was his first important role, a role he received at the insistence of the producer/director who cast him over the objections of original director Rouben Mamoulian and production chief Daryl F. Zanuck. The film’s theme song with lyrics added after the film’s release, became one of the seminal songs of the decade.

ANATOMY OF A MURDER (1959)

After courting controversy with such films as The Moon Is Blue and The Man With the Golden Arm earlier in the decade, Preminger was the ideal director to tackle the controversial drama about the trial of a man accused of murdering the man who allegedly raped his wife. Casting Hollywood’s favorite good guy, James Stewart as the defense lawyer and legendary Army vs. McCarthy hero Joseph N. Welch as the judge helped make the film a must-see as did the headline making departure of original star Lana Turner who allegedly objected to her lack of a nice wardrobe. She was replaced by Lee Remick who was given her first starring role. With the film’s box office assured Preminger played ball with the Hays office this time, allowing one word “penetration” to be replaced while other, then controversial words like “rape” and “semen” remained.

ADVISE AND CONSENT (1962)

Preminger’s fairly faithful version of the Pulitzer Prize winning novel is a taut, suspenseful political thriller about the attempts of a sitting U.S. President to get his candidate for Secretary of State confirmed by the U.S. Senate. It was also the first major Hollywood film to present a gay character, played by Don Murray, in a favorable light. It was also the first to be filmed in an actual gay bar.

The film provided the brilliant Charles Laughton with a memorable and fitting swan song as a conniving senator from the South. Henry Fonda was the candidate and Walter Pidgeon was the Senate Majority Leader. Veterans Franchot Tone and Lew Ayres as the President and Vice President were also prominently featured and Gene Tierney had a late career cameo.

THE CARDINAL (1963)

Henry Morton Robinson was an English professor at Columbia University and a senior editor at Readers Digest as well as a novelist whose most famous work, The Cardinal was made into a film shortly after the author’s death from third degree burns suffered when he fell asleep in his bathtub at the age of 62. The sprawling novel was based, in part, on the life of Francis Cardinal Spellman.

Preminger’s film covers all aspects of the rich novel about a young priest who rises to become a Prince of the Church, from the personal anguish of the young priest who refuses to give consent to save the life of his sister at the expense of her unborn child to his confrontations with Georgia lynch mobs to his tactful handling of Nazi prelates.

Tom Tryon, John Huston, Burgess Meredith, Carol Lynley, Romy Schneider, Ossie Davis, Cecil Kellaway, Raf Vallone, Tulio Carminatti, Dorothy Gish and others all given special moments in this truly eclectic cast. Jerome Moross’ score is one of the best of the era and Leon Shamroy’s cinematography is among the best of his celebrated career.

TELL ME THAT YOU LOVE ME, JUNIE MOON (1970)

Liza Minnelli’s second starring role, made before the release of her first, The Sterile Cuckoo, is actually a better, if lesser known, film. It is the one film made in the latter part of Preminger’s career in which the story, rather than the latest controversial hot potato, informs the narrative. It’s a film about misfits that is comparable to the contemporaneous Harold and Maude or the more recent The Station Agent.

Minnelli plays a disfigured young woman, who after spending time recuperating from the acid attack that left one side of her face in monstrous condition, takes up residence with two other misfits – a wheelchair bound gay man (Robert Moore) and a young epileptic (Ken Howard). James Coco, Kay Thompsn, Ben Piazza and Fred Williamson stand out in support.