“You’re just a decorative”: Epstein, Mad Miss Manton, 32.
“she had to watch”: Lambert, Norma Shearer, 269.
“Too many stars stay”: Ibid., 220.
They wanted, they said: Ed Sullivan, Hollywood Citizen-News, July 16, 1938.
Thirteen: Pomp and Glory
Barbara and Marion entered six: Ella Wickersham, Los Angeles Examiner, May 30, 1938.
“Let it be noted”: New York Times, August 5, 1938.
She took pleasure when Bob: Larry Kleno to author, January 1, 2004.
A few years before: Walter Goodman, Committee, 40.
Also named by the committee: Charles Darnton, “Stand Up and Fight,” Screenland, February 1939.
The various studios responded: Los Angeles Evening Herald Examiner, August 22, 1938.
Among those named were: Los Angeles Times, August 15, 1938.
“No one has anything”: “Anti-Nazi Leaguers Fight Red Aid Charge,” Los Angeles Times, August 16, 1938.
“all the Hollywood rumors”: Los Angeles Times, August 16, 1938.
A former member: A. E. Kral, “Robert Taylor: A Golden Era Hollywood Movie King From Nebraska,” Supplement, Beatrice Daily Sun, Oct. 8, 1993.
“I want to get parts”: Hall, “Has Bob Had a Change of Heart?,” 27, 78.
“I’m gonna play the part”: Wayne, Robert Taylor, 94.
The Rogerses ended the evening: Hedda Hopper’s Hollywood, Los Angeles Times, October 12, 1938, 21.
Barbara saw the Western: Bernard Drew, Film Comment, March–April 1981, 45.
“America’s ‘royalty’ ”: Stanwyck, foreword to Sweethearts of the Sage, by Rainey.
Her appeal to prevent: Certified copy of opinion I.A. no. 16650, D 137906, November 9, 1938.
Eight years later, in 1925: Bernard Drew, Film Comment, March–April 1981, 45.
“He taught us how”: John Kobal, unpublished biography of DeMille, chap. 8, “Man, Woman, and Sin,” 34.
“Say it with props”: John Cromwell, interview with Leonard Maltin, Leonard Maltin’s Movie Crazy (Winter 2007): 5.
“That America is still”: Kobal, biography of DeMille, 216.
DeMille even re-created: Ibid., 35.
He sold the airline to Rogers: Ibid., 636.
“esteem for his sheer”: The Autobiography of Cecil B. DeMille, ed. Donald Hayne (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1959), 326.
DeMille didn’t like: Kobal, biography of DeMille, 142.
“When you have a hundred”: Frank S. Nugent, New York Times, December 21, 1947.
“A lot of actors”: John Kobal interview with Joel McCrea.
One of the students: Ibid., 45–46.
“If there were 500 people”: Bernard Drew, Film Comment, March–April 1981, 45.
“The actors arrived wearing”: Peter Bogdanovich, John Ford (Berkeley: U. of California Press, 1968, 44.
Ford worked from a private: Andrew Sinclair, John Ford, 34–35.
a budget of a million dollars: Roughly $16.5 million in 2013.
“Legend rides the trail”: Bosley Crowther, New York Times, May 7, 1939.
a popular ditty that said: Kobal, biography of DeMille, chap. 8, “Man, Woman, and Sin,” 8.
“hardfisted and outspoken”: Autobiography of Cecil B. DeMille, 363.
“it would slip the way”: Kobal, biography of DeMille, 1672.
A real trestle was built: Ibid., 1674.
The cold and wet and mud: Ibid., 1673.
Barnes went where Barbara went: Wally Westmore to R. L. Johnson, memo, October 11, 1938.
Harriett was married: Michael Coray to author, September 2006.
“It’s too much of an effort”: Harriett Coray, “The Woman Who’d Dare the Devil,” as told to Jane Ardmore, magazine clipping, 1965.
After a day or two of that: Harriett Coray as told to Jane Ardmore, Motion Picture, March 1966, 70.
Harriett Coray, circa 1939: Michael Coray to author.
“Whenever you’re acting”: New York Times, March 23, 1987, B7.
“a tyrant . . . a despot”: Evelyn Keyes, Scarlett O’Hara’s Younger Sister (Random House, 1978), 21.
“In the small interior”: Films in Review, March 1968.
“Because there were no”: Kobal, biography of DeMille, 1670.
He hired an actor because: Swanson, Swanson on Swanson, 101.
DeMille believed that no: Chierichetti, Mitchell Leisen, 23.
“her work with all”: Autobiography of Cecil B. DeMille, 364.
“The first thing every”: Kobal, biography of DeMille, 333.
“Don’t look at the fucking”: Ibid., 334.
“another two-fisted role”: Los Angeles Evening Herald Examiner, February 9, 1939.
“I’m not sure Barbara”: Kotsilibas-Davis and Loy, Myrna Loy, 156.
The sadness was real: Kobal, biography of DeMille, 1675.
Fourteen: Champion of the “Cockeyed Wonder”
“pretty bad. The title”: New York Daily News, December 12, 1938, 3.
Bob had given Barbara: Wayne, Robert Taylor, 95.
She and Maree had become friends: Jane Ardmore Papers, ca 1920s–1960s, 6–7, Margaret Herrick Library, AMPAS.
“We haven’t made a lot”: G. D. Hamman, Los Angeles Evening Herald Examiner, 79.
She would arrive: Gladys Hall, “Information, If You Please, About Barbara Stanwyck,” Gladys Hall Papers, 1918–1969, Margaret Herrick Library, AMPAS; Modern Screen, March 3, 1940, 14.
When the Stars made: Tony Fay to author, January 9, 2006.
“But who knows where”: Stanwyck, “Things I Don’t Like About Myself,” 78.
“Well, he loved us”: McCrea, unpublished manuscript, 254.
“A week’s work shot”: Ella Smith, Starring Miss Barbara Stanwyck, 120.
It was a hot day: June Allyson with Frances Spatz Leighton, June Allyson (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1982), 180–81.
She understands cruelty: Stella Adler notes on Golden Boy.
Cohn asked the blond: Pete Martin, “Hollywood’s Most Improbable Star,” Saturday Evening Post, September 4, 1954.
“I’ve got a boy here”: Ibid.
“less than a waitress”: Joe Hymans, “Hollywood’s Busiest Leading Man,” 12.
“had a special glow”: Elia Kazan: A Life (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988), 163.
“hot and cold”: Odets, Time Is Ripe, 62.
“It is the background”: Brenman-Gibson, Clifford Odets, 469.
“felt this disgust”: Elia Kazan, 164.
“What Odets was trying”: Harold Clurman, The Fervent Years (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1945), 174.
Arthur was then to star: McBride, Frank Capra, 386.
Most crucial of all: Oller, Jean Arthur, 101–2.
Mamoulian came to see: Mamoulian, interview with Raymond Rohauer, A 40th Anniversary Tribute to Rouben Mamoulian, 1927–1967 (1967).
Capra decided to trade: McBride, Frank Capra, 401–2.
In Golden Boy, Mamoulian: Rouben Mamoulian, oral history, December 1958, Columbia University.
It was sharp and ungrammatical: Clifford Odets, interview with Arthur Wagner, Lincoln Center Review, no. 42 (Spring 2006): 13.
The trick was for: Peter Bogdanovich to author, October 5, 2005.
“strictly stock”: Margaret Brenman-Gibson, Clifford Odets: American Playwright (New York: Applause Books, 2002), 195.
“elevated and poetic”: Odets, interview with Wagner, 10.
his conversation was punctuated: John McCarten, “Revolution’s Number One Boy,” New Yorker, January 22, 1938.
a bust of Beethoven: Elia Kazan, 86.
“Something is cooking”: Brenman-Gibson, Clifford Odets, 170.
“crouched over his typewriter”: Elia Kazan, 87.
“with a sense of disgrace”: Odets, interview with Wagner, 13.
“ordinary,” “middle-class”: McCarten, “Revolution’s Number One Boy,” 22.
“blunted his impulses”: Odets, Time
Is Ripe, 100.
“I could be a better”: Ibid., 71.
“He wanted to be”: Clurman, Fervent Years, 249.
“You have just given”: Brenman-Gibson, Clifford Odets, 426.
“the Halvah king”: Ibid., 461.
Many commented that: Odets, Time Is Ripe, 294.
“He is no good”: McCarten, “Revolution’s Number One Boy,” 21.
“You’re out of your”: Daniel Taradash to author, March 11, 12, 1998, 8.
Cohn referred to the writing: Thomas, King Cohn, 155.
“In Frank Capra’s pictures”: Taradash to author, March 11, 12, 1998, 12.
Shooting for Golden Boy: Variety, April 4, 1939, 7.
“It was a phony”: Taradash, oral history, 58.
Each morning Holden got: Frank S. Nugent, “Golden Holden,” Collier’s, June 2, 1951.
They and Spencer Tracy were: New Yorker, October 21, 1961, 113.
In his hometown: Nugent, “Golden Holden.”
The most demanding part: New Yorker, October 21, 1961, 117.
“If audiences don’t like”: James F. Scheer, Motion Picture, May 1941, 70.
Bob would sometimes: Hedda Hopper, “Holden Wasn’t Fooling by Starting His Career,” Los Angeles Times, April 1, 1953, D1.
“She pulled me through”: Time, February 27, 1956.
Barbara knew he would: Stanwyck telephone conversation with Shirley Eder, March 28, 1983.
“He was a dedicated”: Barbara Stanwyck to Shirley Eder, n.d.
“She would never expose”: Ella Smith, Starring Miss Barbara Stanwyck, 133.
Holden’s sincerity came through: Los Angeles Times, September 11, 1939, 8.
“Don’t let me fool”: Liberty, August 11, 1945; Vivian Crosby, Screenland, June 1942, 7.
The Union Pacific train was: Autobiography of Cecil B. DeMille, 365.
“and not necessarily”: “Robert Taylor,” Film Fan Monthly.
“His usual kiss seemed”: Stephen Michael Shearer, Beautiful: The Life of Hedy Lamarr (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2010), 59.
“little opus . . . colorful”: New York Times, May 11, 1939, 31.
“a full payload”: Time, May 8, 1939, 66.
DeMille introduced Preston: Films in Review, March 1968.
Men were in beards, string ties: Autobiography of Cecil B. DeMille, 366.
Keyes left the way she: Keyes, Scarlett O’Hara’s Younger Sister, 34.
DeMille and the cast: Budington Swanson, “The Glory of Golden Spike Days,” Sunday World-Herald Magazine of the Midlands, April 22, 1979.
She accepted and stayed: Evelyn Keyes to author, March 27, 1998, 16.
“Karl, you are a great”: Mamoulian, interview with Ronald L. Davis, August 19, 1980, 46, DeGolyer Library, Southern Methodist University.
“the old couplet come”: Gladys Hall, “Sunny Side Up,” Modern Screen, October 1939, 97.
“He’d never met anyone”: Kutner, “Her Neighbors—the Taylors.”
“Who’d figure Spangler Brugh”: Buck Mack, Screen Guide, 1948.
During the ceremony Judge: Wayne, Robert Taylor, 96.
On her first day back: Gladys Hall, “Sunny Side Up,” Modern Screen.
Bob loved jewelry: Barbara Vaslett to author, November 13, 1996.
She happily put a gold: Julia McCarthy, New York Daily News, November 11, 1939.
William Holden sent a telegram: Wayne, Robert Taylor, 96.
As he had during childhood: Ibid., 97; and Jane Ellen Wayne to author, January 24, 2004.
“my beautiful nickels”: BS to Cecil B. DeMille, May 28, 1939, Kobal biography of DeMille, 1678.
“Technically,” she said, Mamoulian: Bernard Drew, Film Comment, March–April 1981, 45.
“I don’t want us”: Gladys Hall, Modern Screen, October 1939, 97.
Fifteen: Ain’t She a Peacherino
“I do appreciate your”: BS to Eddie Mannix, May 16, 1939.
“new found happiness”: Emily Post to BS, July 5, 1939.
“but it certainly wasn’t”: Newspaper clipping, February 1, 1942.
Barbara didn’t know how: Jim Burton, Modern Screen, July 1951, 98.
“I gave up fooling”: Newspaper clipping, February 1, 1942.
“He couldn’t have been”: Tony Fay to author, October 15, 2005.
He saw Dion’s sadness: Ibid.
When Barbara’s nephew Brian: Judith Stevens to author, September 28, 1998, 16.
Barbara was furious: Tony Fay to author, August 2005.
They were kind to the boys: Tony Fay to author, October 30, 2005.
Fleischmann also ran: Robert Stack, with Mark Evans, Straight Shooting (New York: Macmillan, 1980), 34–35.
Stack’s grandfather had won: Ibid., 41.
“A country boy”: Robert Stack to author, May 5, 2003.
“She had no bullshit”: Stack to author, May 5, 2003.
“Don’t tell my wife”: Stack to author, May 5, 2003.
“Beyond these tears, sweet”: James Curtis, Between Flops (New York: Limelight, 1991), 124.
The studio paid West $5,000: A. M. Botsford to Albert Lewin, memos, October 11, 1937, and October 28, 1937; Manny Wolfe to Jacob Karp, memos, August 5, 1937, and August 15, 1938; AMPAS.
“Mr. Sturges has not”: Amusements, New York Times, September 19, 1929, 48.
“as a little old man”: Preston Sturges, Preston Sturges (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990), 265–66.
“There’s only one thing”: Paramount publicity notes on Remember the Night, October 3, 1939.
“When can we get rid”: Sturges, Preston Sturges, 278.
Sturges also wrote a few: Ibid., 287.
Long after Leisen stopped: Leisen, in Kobal biography of DeMille, 1396.
Because of Leisen’s obsessive: Curtis, Between Flops, 113.
With Dorothy Vernon, he: Chierichetti, Mitchell Leisen, 32.
“The trick,” she said: Thomas Lawley, “Stanwyck Warns Starlets—Don’t Fall Up Hill!,” Screen Life, October 1940, 75.
Head designed belts: Chierichetti, Edith Head, 42.
“Nobody understands my figure”: BS to Shirley Eder, October 28, 1981.
“And what difference did”: Stanwyck, “Things I Don’t Like About Myself,” 37.
“I have the face that”: Lawley, “Stanwyck Warns Starlets,” 75.
“I shall use a lot”: Edith Head, Los Angeles Times, February 17, 1939.
He and MacMurray were: Chierichetti, Mitchell Leisen, 86.
Her (“windbag”) lawyer’s: Willard Robertson is Lee Leander’s defense attorney who goes on in court in a brilliant comic performance—six full minutes of film time—in an early scene of the picture. Robertson had been an attorney before becoming an actor and writer, working for the government and the railroads in the world war. Remember the Night publicity file, October 31, 1939.
“When I dream about”: “Back Home Again in Indiana,” lyrics by Ballard MacDonald; music by James Hanley.
“The title doesn’t do”: Memo, August 8, 1939, from A. M. Botsford.
They worked well together: Beulah Bondi to Ella Smith, August 17, 1972.
“Mitch left the acting”: Chierichetti, Mitchell Leisen, 124.
Leisen preferred a first take: Olivia de Havilland to author, April 2010.
Leisen knew how to use: Chierichetti, Mitchell Leisen, 87.
“Memorize the script”: Idwal Jones, New York Times, February 23, 1941, 4.
“Come on, you sonofabitch”: Leonard Maltin, “FFM Interviews Mitchell Leisen,” Film Fan Monthly, January 1970, 3–21.
In between scenes, instead: Chierichetti, Mitchell Leisen, 130.
Every time Leisen dismissed: Ibid.
“For Christ’s sake”: Ibid.
When the day arrived: Ibid., 133.
“Let’s do the love scenes”: Lupton A. Wilkinson, “Let’s Do the Love Scenes First,” Los Angeles Times, December 3, 1939.
MacMurray wasn’t temperamental: Remember the Night press book, 5.
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Leisen thought his lack: Maltin, “FFM Interviews Mitchell Leisen,” 10.
Leisen did away with: Mitchell Leisen, interview with David Chierichetti, 21, AFI Archive.
Leisen used MacMurray’s natural: David Chierichetti to author, December 2, 2005.
Had Sturges directed: Chierichetti, Mitchell Leisen, 127.
“God help me. After”: Jerry Asher, “The Amazing Mrs. Taylor,” Silver Screen, 68.
“love reformed her”: Sturges, Preston Sturges, 288.
Both were possessive: Curtis, Between Flops, 89.
The combination of Barbara: Sturges’s script may have been long, but it was deliberately, leisurely paced. Leisen didn’t rewrite the script, but he shortened and simplified some of Sturges’s scenes and chose not to film several sequences: a scene where Lee Leander goes to church with John Sargent’s family and is moved to tears by the choir’s singing “Holy Night”; and an organ accompaniment followed by the minister’s recitation of the Lord’s Prayer. Leisen shot other sequences and took them out of the final cut: a scene in which Lee Leander, in the women’s detention room, is told she’s been bailed out; an apple-bobbing scene at the farm where Barbara and Fred lose their balance and duck their heads in the tub; a scene in his bedroom, where he is stripped to the waist and she comes in to dry her hair in front of the fire. She brings up the court date after the New Year, which he hadn’t even thought of, and she, out of affection, takes his hand and kisses it and comments, looking into the fire, that no one would believe they’d traveled this far together, slept in adjoining rooms, “and never had an evil thought.”
“As it turned out”: Sturges, Preston Sturges, 288.
“Elaborate melodrama”: New York Times, September 17, 1935.
Nothing came of West’s play: Rebecca West, “The Art of Fiction No. 65,” interviewed by Marina Warner, Paris Review, no. 79 (Spring 1981).
“I must be lousy”: James Reid, Silver Screen, June 1941, 74.
Sixteen: Darkening Lands
“You’re lucky, you have”: Ruth Waterbury, “Redheaded Rebel,” Movie Mirror, March 1941, 56.
“If anything glowed through”: Michael Troyan, A Rose for Mrs. Miniver (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1999), 98.
“I will gladly come”: Ibid., 94.
“I’ve always wanted”: Ibid., 100.
Garson had come from: Hollywood Citizen-News, April 4, 1939.
A Life of Barbara Stanwyck: Steel-True 1907-1940 Page 115
