Oscar Profile #568: W.S. Van Dyke

Born March 21, 1889 in San Diego, California, Woodbridge Strong Van Dyke II was the son of a superior court judge who died the day his son was born. His mother, actress Laura Winston, returned to her former career, taking him with her. They traveled up and down the west coast and into the Midwest. At five, he appeared with her on stage at the San Francisco Grand Opera House in Blind Girl.

When Van Dyke was fourteen years old, he moved to Seattle to live with his grandmother. While attending business school, he worked several part-time jobs, including janitor, waiter, salesman, and railroad attendant. His early adult years were unsettled, and he moved among jobs. At twenty, He married actress Zine Ashford, and the two joined various touring theater companies, arriving in Hollywood in 1915.

Van Dyke found immediate success in Hollywood as an assistant director to D.W. Griffith on 1915’s The Birth of a Nation, and was his assistant director on 1916’s Intolerance. In 1917, he directed his first film, The Land of Long Shadows. Having fully learned his craft by the advent of the talkies, he was known as “One-Take Woody” for the speed with which he completed his projects.

One of MGM’s top directors, his films at the studio during the first six years of the Oscar era included MGM’s first sound film, White Shadows in the South Sea (Oscar winner for Best Cinematography); the Roman Novarro starrer, The Pagan; the filmed in Africa Harry Carey starrer, Trader Horn (Oscar nominee for Best Picture); the Edward G. Robinson starrer, Guilty Hands; the Johnny Weismuller-Maureen O’Sullivan starrer, Tarzan the Ape Man; the Phillips Holmes-Walter Huston starrer, Night Court; the Warner Baxter-Myrna Loy starrer, Penthouse; the Myrna Loy-Max Baer starrer, The Prizefighter and the Lady (Oscar nominee for Best Original Story); and the filmed in Alaska, Eskimo, the first Oscar winner for Film Editing.

In 1934, Van Dyke’s Clark Gable-William Powell-Myrna Loy starrer, Manhattan Melodrama won an Oscar for Best Original Story while his Powell-Loy starrer, The Thin Man received four Oscar nominations including Van Dyke’s first for Best Director.

Divorced from Ashford in 1935, in 1936 Van Dyke married second wife Ruth Mannix in 1936. He would receive his second Oscar nomination for that year’s Clark Gable-Jeanette MacDonald-Spencer Tracy starrer, San Francisco, which was nominated for six Oscars overall, winning for Best Sound.

In 1938, Van Dyke’s Norma Shearer-Tyrone Power starrer, Marie Antoinette was nominated for four Oscars.

Van Dyke’s last completed film was the 1942 Margaret O’Brien starrer, Journey for Margaret. He fell ill while filming Dragon Seed in early 1943. Diagnosed with heart disease and cancer, he committed suicide on February 5, 1943.

ESSENTIAL FILMS

TARZAN THE APE MAN (1932)

MGM originally planned this film as a follow-up to Van Dyke’s Trader Horn in which that film’s title character, played by Harry Carey, would appear as a friend of Tarzan’s. The idea was abandoned and this film starring Olympic champion Johnny Weismuller in the lead became the first of a series of film in which would star through 1948, after which the role was played by numerous other actors through 2016. Although Weismuller and Maureen O’Sullivan as his Jane made an immediate impression, their best outing together was in 1934’s Tarzan and His Mate directed by Cedric Gibbons.

THE THIN MAN (1934)

Van Dyke’s relaxed style of directing reached its apex with this film from the Dashiell Hammett novel. It would be the first of six Nick and Nora Charles mysteries that would end in 1947. William Powell and Myrna Loy were the screen’s ideal couple, making a total of fourteen films together. The title refers to the film’s missing, later to be discovered murdered, scientist, not to Powell’s former detective character. Subsequent films in the series all had Thin Man in their title but it wasn’t until 1945’s The Thin Man Goes Home that Powell’s character was directly referred to as the Thin Man.

SAN FRANCISCO (1936)

The screen’s first major disaster film, its highlight being the devastating San Francisco earthquake of 1906, proved conclusively that Van Dyke could direct a film in any genre. It earned him his second Oscar nomination, two years after receiving his first for The Thin Man. Clark Gable as a casino owner and Jeanette MacDonald as an opera singer were the film’s stars, but Spencer Tracy in a supporting role as a priest who was friends with them both, received the film’s sole lead acting nomination. The film won for Best Sound, but not for Visual Effects, as that award hadn’t yet been established.

MARIE ANTOINETTE (1938)

Van Dyke received his second nomination for Best Film at the Venice Film Festival with this one, having received his first for San Francisco two years earlier. The film would go on to receive four Oscar nominations for Best Actress (Norma Shearer in the title role), Supporting Actor (Robert Morley as Louis XVI), Art Direction, and Score. The crowd scenes at the guillotine were lifted from A Tale of Two Cities. Despite a splendid cast that included Tyrone Power, borrowed at great expense from 20th Century-Fox, John Barrymor,e and Gladys George, the film was a colossal flop for MGM.

JOURNEY FOR MARGARET (1942)

Van Dyke’s last completed film starred Robert Young and Laraine Day as a New York based war correspondent and his wife who after losing their unborn child in the London blitz, decide to adopt orphans Margaret O’Brien and William Severn from an orphanage run by kindly Fay Bainter. Young, O’Brien, and Severn all received acting prizes from the National Board of Review. O’Brien is especially memorable in her first credited film role. Her troubles during wartime provide the basis for the film. She is especially heartbreaking in the scene where she learns that while she can leave for America with Young, her young friend must stay behind.