Jumping from Boyer as Boyer to Boyer as Napoleon shows his range. He makes fun of his own great lover persona in Lucy’s TV show, and he’s hilarious. In the movie, however, he has the opposite task—to keep the role of Napoleon, a much-parodied cliché, from becoming a joke. And his dialogue doesn’t help. When he first encounters Garbo, she’s standing in the snow, wrapped in luxurious furs. “Are you real,” he asks, “or born of a snowdrift?” (Try to put that one over.) Boyer takes regal command of the character of Napoleon. He is angry and aggressive, then passionate, then playful. He is selfish and self-centered. He is coy and cunning. He charms, and he demands. He manages to depict a martinet who is also irresistible. As Napoleon ages, Boyer plays him as slightly slower in his actions, but without any Tim Conway mannerisms or a powdered wig or heavily etched-on age lines. As the movie ends, he brings into play his own particular personal specialties. Using his sad eyes and his beautiful voice, invoking the wisdom of the truly world-weary sophisticate, he says to Garbo, “This love of ours. Why hasn’t it broken my heart by now?” His delivery of this single line made his performance worthy of its Oscar nomination.* Boyer’s range explains his remarkable endurance. He is genuinely different in performance style in these two different projects, and yet ultimately he is exactly the same. He is Charles Boyer, French lover, who just happens also to be a great actor.
Charles Boyer in costume and makeup, prepared to play Napoleon opposite Greta Garbo in Conquest.
Boyer was born in southwestern France in 1899, and after appearing successfully onstage, made his first movie in France in 1920, L’Homme du Large. Between 1920 and 1929, he appeared in five silent films. In that final year, he was approached by an MGM representative on behalf of Irving Thalberg and offered a remarkable deal: $400 per week to come to Hollywood. The transition to sound had focused the studios on foreign actors with beautiful voices. The offer was made by Paul Bern, the Metro employee who spoke fluent French and who was famous for developing stars. Boyer was invited to become a key figure in the filming of the French-talking versions of MGM projects, most notably to become a possible “French-speaking” leading man for Garbo. Boyer felt he couldn’t possibly turn down so much money and reassured himself that other French friends—among them, Maurice Chevalier—were already happy in America. Yet he dreaded and feared Hollywood. Although he could speak German, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese in addition to his native French, English eluded him, and he felt no urge to learn it. He made a brief journey to America, where he appeared in the French-speaking version of The Trial of Mary Dugan (1929).* He stayed only a few weeks in California, however, because before he completed Mary Dugan, he received an offer from the prestigious UFA studios in Germany. He had no special reason to stay in Hollywood, and it looked as if the UFA contract would take him back to Europe on someone else’s dime. Those who knew Boyer always said—and he himself concurred—that he was glad to have seen the famous “Hollywood factory” but was happy to leave and never expected to return. In Germany he made what would become the first talking film released in France (in Germany it was called Brand in der Oper, and in France, La Barcarolle d’Amour). His UFA contract called for two more films, which were already scheduled.
In the meantime, however, The Trial of Mary Dugan (French version) had become a success, and Thalberg had revisited the idea of Charles Boyer on film. He bought out the actor’s UFA contract, planning to turn Boyer into a major MGM asset. Boyer, however, was not particularly enthusiastic and still didn’t speak much English. Undeterred, Thalberg brought him once again to Hollywood and assigned him to the French-language version of The Big House (1930), with plans for him to participate in more such projects. In the meantime, the practice of making second versions of successful American films in other languages was proving costly and unnecessary. The Swedes had begun dubbing them, a much simpler, much cheaper process. There was suddenly no need for Boyer as a “duplicator.” Boyer, however, was good-looking, experienced, reliable. Once he was in Hollywood, he inevitably would come under consideration for a wider range of casting. He made his American film debut in 1931’s The Magnificent Lie, a Paramount movie starring the then-popular Ruth Chatterton. Although it was shot on Hollywood soundstages, the movie was set in France, so Boyer’s accent was not a problem. He played an unsympathetic character—a sinister con man who knew how to charm women, territory he would explore later in one of his greatest films, Gaslight. The Magnificent Lie was a flop.* Since his English was still not very good, and nothing seemed to be happening for his career, he returned to Europe. Once there, he moved between Paris and Berlin, making some of his best movies of the period, Le Bonheur (1933) and Liliom (1934) directed by Fritz Lang. In 1934, he was again invited to Hollywood, this time to play opposite Loretta Young in Caravan, which also turned out to be a flop. His role—that of a curly-haired Gypsy—required him to stand around in the moonlight playing a fiddle. He later said that he “never looked more ridiculous” and that he had never “felt more uncomfortable” in any part he’d played. “I wasn’t the type to play mad music in cinema moonlight.” To the women in the audience, however, he looked exactly like what they would like to find fiddling in their own backyards. They noticed him, and Caravan marked the true beginning of his American film career, although he didn’t realize it at the time.
The female audience’s response to Boyer’s character brought him under the scrutiny of the Hollywood star making machine. Boyer definitely saw Hollywood as a temporary abode, and he made immediate plans to leave. But suddenly, in January 1934, something happened that made him want to stay. He met and fell in love with a British actress named Pat Paterson, and twenty-two days later he married her. (He was thirty-four, and she was twenty-three.) As a result, he planned to settle down in Hollywood, at least for a while. Since his experiences to date had not been satisfactory, he refused to sign anything more than a one-picture contract. When producer Walter Wanger came to him looking for an unusual actor to play a key role in his prestigious up-and-coming movie about a mental institution, Private Worlds, Boyer was willing to be cast.
From the release of Caravan in 1934 to the end of 1937, Boyer became a movie star—an American movie star.† After Private Worlds (for which his co-star and fellow French countrywoman, Claudette Colbert, was nominated for Best Actress), he began to be cast in romantic support for big-name women stars. In his other two 1935 films, he played opposite Katharine Hepburn in Break of Hearts and Loretta Young (again) in Shanghai. In 1936, he was the romantic interest of Marlene Dietrich in The Garden of Allah. In a great year for his career, 1937, he made three excellent movies: History Is Made at Night, opposite Jean Arthur; Conquest, with Garbo; and Tovarich, again paired with Colbert. He earned his first Oscar nomination (Conquest), and solidified his image: romantic, foreign, debonair, capable of both humor and a touch of cruelty. Everything American men were not supposed to be, Boyer was. In addition, 1937 was the year in which his superb French film, Mayerling, was released in the United States.
Boyer could be louche. In Mayerling,* he played Archduke Rudolph, heir to the Austrian throne, and he was beautiful, the perfect picture of a dangerously bored young noble out on the town with his male friends even though it’s his fifth wedding anniversary. Eyes heavy, slightly drunk, drawing deeply on a cigarette, and lounging against a pillowed chaise, he intones, “I’m bored. I’m bored to death.” He’s present yet ironically distanced from their wild partying. When he later falls in love with a young baroness who can’t resist him (“He has such sad eyes and such a sweet smile,” something his fans might say), his ennui gives way to passion in a credible manner. He uses the character of an imperfect young royal as a base and weds it to this newfound passion that is desperately afraid that nothing is ever going to turn out right. “What shall I do if you leave me?” he asks his young mistress. “Save me,” he begs of her. These are lines that women in the audience ate up. In his close-ups in Mayerling, Boyer almost has the face of Garbo—the jaded look of the beautiful pe
rson who has seen too much yet still needs newer, fresher excitements. Like Garbo, he began to be thought of as extraordinarily beautiful. This amused him. He said, “I do not know when I became so nice-looking as they all say. I suppose it was when I lost my hair and began experimenting with toupees. In silent films, I looked like a bandit who eats little children.” This modesty, this self-deprecating quality infused his screen lovers, making them seem boyish, unthreatening, and even more charming.
By the end of 1937, Boyer was a major Hollywood asset, but he was not under a typical studio contract. He had worked for Walter Wanger in two Paramount releases and one United Artists project. He had worked for RKO Radio, for David O. Selznick (also releasing through United Artists), for MGM, and for Warner Bros. Despite his great success and obvious appeal, the movie business wasn’t sure what could be done with him. The studios assessed him and saw only “foreign.” That meant potentially limited: no westerns, no small-town roles without building explanations. It meant an accent and baggage to explain. They saw the lover in him, of course. They knew the movies had a long tradition of exotic and foreign lover-type leading men. But they wondered and worried if he could really be an American star, and so did he.
Then came 1938 with the role that became his signature and the movie that was his breakthrough to the very top ranks of stardom: Algiers. His only release of that year, it is perhaps the most famous of all Boyer movies, an elegant remake of the famous French film Pépé le Moko, which starred Jean Gabin as a jewel thief trapped in the native quarter of Algiers known as the Casbah. Algiers is gorgeous, shot in black and white by the great James Wong Howe, with sensitive direction by John Cromwell, additional dialogue by James M. Cain, and a stunning wardrobe for leading lady Hedy Lamarr designed by Irene. Boyer plays Pépé, the king of all the criminals who are hiding in the Casbah. He’s been wanted by the French police forever, but no one can trap him when he’s protected by his cohorts in the labyrinthine native quarter. As we are told, the Casbah is “another world,” with its own forty thousand inhabitants, who live where it is “colorful, sordid, dangerous … a place where it is easy to go in and not so easy to come out.” With his French accent and heavy-lidded eyes, Boyer is opulent and exotic, which in the movies means erotic. Hedy Lamarr is stunningly beautiful, and Algiers is the film that made her Hollywood reputation. Decked out in fur-trimmed satin, pearls, and diamond earrings and bracelets, she is a visual dream. Hedy Lamarr in Algiers is what people think all movie stars are, but there actually haven’t been too many of her kind. Nature, after all, doesn’t turn out too many Hedy Lamarrs. She isn’t untalented, but she’s limited. And she’s hard to cast. A woman who looks like Lamarr can’t just be banging around the old tuna cannery* the way Joan Crawford could. When Lamarr says to her girlfriend,“Remember … the two of us behind the counter … the bargain basement … handkerchiefs?” the line comes as a shock to the viewer. Lamarr selling hankies in a department store basement? (Her friend warns, “And don’t you forget it—don’t marry for fun.”)
One of the greatest of all movie love scenes is in Algiers. Boyer tells Lamarr that, yes, she is beautiful, “so beautiful,” but she must have heard that many times. To him, he says, she is more. She reminds him of the Paris subway. (Boyer was an actor who could tell a woman she reminded him of a subway and make it the greatest compliment she’d ever received.) The two stars, gorgeous, exotic, foreign, their speech heavily accented, lean toward each other in this scene, cooing and murmuring—reciting the names of the consecutive Paris subway stops! It’s awesome.
Charles Boyer and his exquisitely beautiful leading lady, Hedy Lamarr, in the movie that made him a household name and ushered his alleged “Come wiz me to zee Casbah” line into movie history.
The beauty of Lamarr is essential to Boyer’s performance, once again demonstrating the importance of beauty as a performance tool in motion pictures. Lamarr’s looks provide the credibility Boyer needs to endorse his romanticism. She embodies Paris, escape, freedom, return to home, to the subways of his youth. Because she is unparalleled in her glamour, seen in softly lit, lingering close-ups, Boyer’s yearning is made palpable. Lamarr can also match Boyer in his bored sense of resignation, his defeated quality, his acceptance of the consequences of choices made in life. He’s a criminal, but she has her own decadence. She wanted clothes. She wanted jewels. She has them because she has agreed to marry a very fat, very rich old man. (“Look at yourself and look at me,” she tells him after facing his anger when he learns of her love for Boyer. “I’ve never lied to you.”)
Although foreign in setting and attitude, Algiers felt right to Americans just emerging from the Depression. Its characters seemed lost and tired. They had wanted a future and reached out for it, only to see it slip away. No one watching could seriously believe these two would find a happy ending, and audiences identified with their defeat. And Boyer and Lamarr were so, so beautiful, exotic, otherworldly. They managed to do what stars must do: provide a direct connection to what viewers felt while lifting them totally up and away from that emotional constraint. One scene aches with the desire of Depression-era moviegoers to have what they didn’t have. Lamarr, all in white, leans back. Boyer, playing the jewel thief, tears his eyes from her face and studies her jewelry. He knows how she got it, but he wants to hope there was a more innocent time in her life. “What did you do before … ?” he asks, trailing off. Does he dare to say it? “Before what?” she challenges him, languorously. “The jewels,” he replies, and they have traveled miles in explaining themselves to each other. She can give him no easy answer, no reassurance of either her innocence or her reliability. What did she do before the jewels? Her simple answer is one Depression audiences could understand: “I wanted them.”
Algiers was a howling success, and Charles Boyer and Hedy Lamarr became household names. They came into small towns everywhere and presented themselves as an immoral, jaded Romeo and Juliet with no illusions except the illusion that they could love each other without complications. The success of the movie had two lasting effects on Boyer’s life and reputation. On the good side, he became iconic, and his type was fine-tuned to the star level. He was not only French, he was “French lover extraordinaire.” He had never signed himself over to studio ownership, but he ended up right where the star machine would have put him anyway. He was an unexpected bonus for Hollywood casting, a freebie. The irony would always be that, avoiding the star machine and the studio contract, Boyer nevertheless became as fixed in type as he would have been by submitting. The other effect was one he hated: For reasons no one can trace or fully understand, nightclub comics and impersonators began doing “Boyer” by saying, “Come wiz me to zee Casbah,” a line never once uttered by Boyer in the film. (It’s an equivalent to the better-known “Play it again, Sam” problem from Casablanca.) Over his lifetime, this drove Boyer crazy, and he pointed out time and again, “I did not say that line!” Nevertheless, “Come wiz me to zee Casbah” did much to keep Charles Boyer in the public’s mind and on the official Hollywood roster of great movie stars.
After Algiers, Boyer embarked upon a lifetime of stardom in which he would play lovers. Lovers and lovers and lovers. He proves himself to be a master of romance. He can be honest and true, or kick it up a notch to become a cad who can be reformed, or kick it up yet another notch to be a cad who is cruel (Gaslight), and kick it over the top to do comedy. He has at least four tones on the romantic scale, from “sincere” to “gigolo” to “killer” to “caricature.” He could vary his lover first by playing him romantically, then as evil and manipulative. He could vary him further by adding a comic touch to it, and ultimately he could stamp it forever with its Gallic origins by playing elderly lovers who just appreciated women.
To American audiences, Charles Boyer seemed the perfect lover for many reasons, Algiers chief among them. But women also thought he was a gentleman. If he had been a gangsterish kind of lover back there in the old Casbah—if he had shoved a grapefruit in Lamarr’s face, or
given her a quick Gable-ish once-over and a grin—his stardom might have had nowhere to go. But he had that gentlemanly quality, that elegance, that sense that he was offering his arm to a lady. He was an exotic French lover Americanized, democratized, and because of that, he seemed to be perfect to play in support of female movie stars.
Of course, Boyer had been perceived as good support for female stars earlier in his career. Now, as an authentic star, he was once again thought of as a perfect foil for a leading woman, and in the next woman he was cast with, he could not have been luckier. She was Irene Dunne. Dunne and Boyer would become one of Hollywood’s most popular teams, making three lovely films together: Love Affair and When Tomorrow Comes in 1939, and Together Again in 1944.* Certainly they loved working together, and Boyer always thought of Love Affair as his favorite movie. For herself, Dunne narrowed her many leading men down to two favorites, Cary Grant and Charles Boyer, calling them very different types. In their personal lives, Boyer and Dunne, both devout Catholics, became lifelong friends.
Love Affair is a beloved classic, well directed by Leo McCarey, and with a wonderful screenplay by Donald Ogden Stewart and Delmer Daves (based on a story by Mildred Cram and McCarey). Unavailable for viewing for many years, it began to have a legendary status among fans, who always spoke of it with reverence. Restored to circulation in the 1990s, it did not disappoint, and it has been remade twice.† In its year of release, 1937, Irene Dunne was thirty-nine, and had been on top for about six years; Boyer was forty and in the midst of his biggest star surge. They weren’t kids and they didn’t have to pretend they were. They represented the best of what Hollywood could give to audiences in portraying a mature woman and a mature man.
The Star Machine Page 51
