Wikipedia

Irving Pichel

Irving Pichel(June 24, 1891 – July 13, 1954) was an American actor and film director, who won acclaim both as an actor and director in his Hollywood career.

Irving Pichel
Pichel in the 1940s
Born
Irving Pichel

(1891-06-24)June 24, 1891
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,U.S.
DiedJuly 13, 1954(1954-07-13)(aged 63)
Hollywood, California,U.S.
Resting placeMountain View Cemetery,Oakland,Alameda County, California,U.S.
Occupations
  • Actor
  • Director
Years active1920–1954
SpouseViolette Wilson
Children3

Career

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Pichel was born to aJewishfamily[1]in Pittsburgh. He attended Pittsburgh Central High School withGeorge S. Kaufman.The two collaborated on a play,The Failure.[2]Pichel graduated fromHarvard Universityin 1914 and went immediately into the theater. He had a feature role from January through May 1915 in the Boston production ofCommon Clay,appearing withAlfred LuntandMary Young.[3][4]

Pichel's first work inmusical theatrewas as atechnical directorfor the theater of the San FranciscoBohemian Club;he also helped with the annual summer pageant, held at the eliteBohemian Grove,in which up to 300 of its wealthy, influential members from finance and government participate. With this expertise, he was also hired byWallace Riceas the main narrator in Rice's ambitious pageant play,Primavera, the Masque of Santa Barbarain 1920.[5]He founded the Berkeley Playhouse in 1923 and served as its director until 1926.[6]

Actor

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Pichel (left) inDracula's Daughter(1936)

Pichel moved to Los Angeles where he studied acting at thePasadena Playhouse.It was there that Pichel achieved considerable acclaim as the title character in the landmarkPasadena Playhouseproduction ofEugene O'Neill's playLazarus Laughedin 1927. Two years later, when the studios were hiring any theater-trained actors suitable fortalkies,he was signed to a contract withParamount.

Pichel worked steadily as a character actor throughout the 1930s, including the early version of theTheodore Dreisernovel,An American Tragedy(1931),Madame Butterfly(1932), in a low budget version ofOliver Twist(1933) asFagin,inCleopatra(1934), alongsideLeslie HowardinMichael Curtiz'sBritish Agent(1934), as the servant Sandor inDracula’s Daughter(1936), in theBette DavisfilmJezebel(1938), as the proprietor of a seedy roadhouse in the once scandalousThe Story of Temple Drake(1933) and as a Mexican general inJuarez(1939).

Pichel also performed on radio, played small parts in several of the films that he later directed, often without credit, and was the narrator in theJohn FordfilmsHow Green Was My Valley(1941) and the Western,She Wore a Yellow Ribbon(1949).

Director

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Pichel was a friend of the screenwriter George S. Kaufman and joined the circle of those witty and iconoclastic friends who had abandoned theAlgonquin Round Tablein New York to make small fortunes in the talkies. Pichel was soon drawn to directing and his character acting dropped off after 1939. He co-directed several B-movies until he signed with20th Century Foxin 1939 and began directing their established stars.

Much of his directing work was in anti-Nazi and pro-British-themed films in the years before the United States entered the war.The Man I Married(1940), for example, starringJoan Bennett,Francis Lederer,andOtto Kruger,centers on an American wife slowly discovering her German husband is a Nazi, and incorporated 1938 newsreel footage of the rise of Nazism.Hudson’s Bay(1941) was a highly pro-British, much-fictionalized historical adventure of the British founding of Canada withPaul MuniandGene Tierney.

The Pied Piper(1942) recounts the story of an aged Englishman trying to get five children out of Nazi-occupied France.Monty Woolleyplayed the lead role, andOtto Preminger,himself a refugee from occupied Austria, plays a Nazi commandant. The film, with aNunnally Johnsonscreenplay, was highly praised and also nominated for an Oscar for Best Picture and for best black-and-white cinematography byEdward Crongjager."For the most part," wroteBosley CrowtherinThe New York Times,"Irving Pichel, the director, has muted the frightfulness of war and shown it through suggestion instead of displaying it realistically in all its horror...Few films have come out of this war that are as bright, touching and suspenseful asThe Pied Piper."[7]

The Moon Is Down(1943) was an adaptation ofJohn Steinbeck’s novel. The book was based on the Nazi invasion of neutral Norway in 1940, published in March, 1942 and subsequently translated into French and distributed in Europe as an inspiration for local resistance to Nazi occupation. In both film and novel, a small Norwegian village gradually discovers how to organize resistance to Nazi invaders; the film starsSir Cedric HardwickeandHenry Traversand also markedNatalie Wood’s debut as a child actress (though she was uncredited), whom Pichel had discovered. With a screenplay by future blacklisted writer,Nunnally Johnson,this was named as one of the top ten films of the year by theNational Board of Review.It played in Sweden in November of 1944.

Pichel also directedAlan LaddinO.S.S.(1944), written and produced by the later James Bond screenwriter,Richard Maibaum,and featuring an introduction byOffice of Strategic Services(O.S.S.) founder,Wild Bill Donovan.The film showed Ladd finding love in occupied France under the auspices of the nascent O.S.S., which was the precursor to theCentral Intelligence Agency.Bosley Crowther ofThe New York Timestermed it "tense, tightly written and swiftly paced," and credited the film as the very first on the O.S.S.[8]

Several more war-themed films followed, including the sentimentalA Medal for Benny(1945) which led toJ. Carrol Naishgaining a Best Supporting Actor nomination.Tomorrow Is Forever,(1946) starredOrson Wellesas an American soldier who is presumed killed in WW1 only to return to America andClaudette Colbertas his wife who remarries; Natalie Wood, in her first credited role, plays an Austrian child with a German accent.Mr. Peabody and the Mermaid(1948), another film from a Nunnally Johnson script in which a married man, played byWilliam Powell,accidentally catches a mermaid on his fishing line. Made about the same time wasThe Miracle of the Bells(also 1948), a big budget film which failed at the box office about an impoverished coal town withFrank Sinatramiscast as a priest. "St. Michael ought to sue", wrote the reviewer inTimemagazine.[9]

Despite his patriotic war oeuvre, Pichel soon came under scrutiny by the House Committee on Un-American Activities, cofounded and steered by Mississippi CongressmanJohn E. Rankinwho routinely and specifically attacked Jews in the Congressional Record and had bitterly resisted America entering World War II.[10]Like many of those who came under HUAC investigation by the late 1940s, Pichel moved intofilm noir,inThey Won't Believe Me(1947). Here, Pichel had the benefit of longtime Hitchcock collaborator and screenwriter,Joan Harrison,as his producer, who would go on to produce the television seriesAlfred Hitchcock Presents.[11]Susan Hayward,Jane Greer,andRobert Youngstarred, with the added skills of cinematographerHarry J. Wild,who worked on such key films noir asMurder My Sweet(1944) andJohnny Angel(1945).

The low-budget, black-and-whiteQuicksand(1950) featured one ofMickey Rooney's finest performances as a desperate good kid going bad, and emigrePeter Lorreas an unforgiving arcade operator. Rooney and Peter Lorre put their own money together to finance it, and thus gave Pichel, the blacklist already looming over him, one of his last Hollywood films.

Striking out in another nascent genre, Pichel pioneered scientific authenticity in an earlyTechnicolorscience fiction filmDestination Moon(1950), produced byGeorge Pal.It won the Oscar for Special Visual Effects, for effects director,Lee Zavitz.The film was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Art Direction, forErnst FegteandGeorge Sawley.At the 1st Berlin International Film Festival it won the Bronze Berlin Bear Award, for "Thrillers and Adventure Films."[12]Pichel chose as collaboratorsRobert A. Heinlein,who did uncredited work on the script, and astronomical illustratorChesley Bonestell,[13]who contributed the painted lunar backdrops.

Pichel's last Hollywood film was forRandolph Scottin an unexceptional, though profitable, Columbia western,Santa Fe(1951), but his Hollywood career ground to a halt in the face of the blacklist. His last films as a director were independent European productions:Martin Luther(1953), funded by the Lutheran Church, in one of its rare forays into film production, andDay of Triumph(1954), about the life of Christ. Shot on location in Wiesbaden, Germany,Martin Lutherwas nominated for Oscars for both its black-and-white cinematography byJoseph C. Brun,and its art direction and set design recreating the early 1500s by Fritz Maurischat and Paul Markwitz. It was named as fourth in the top ten films of the year by the National Board of Review.

Pichel, a lifelong Christian Socialist, died one week afterDay of Triumphwas completed and before the premiere.

Blacklist

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In 1947, Pichel was one of 19 members of the Hollywood community who were subpoenaed by theHouse Un-American Activities Committeeduring the United States' secondRed Scare.This group became known as the "Hollywood Nineteen" and the "Unfriendly Nineteen" because they refused to name suspected Communist agents to the committee. Though it was not clear that Pichel had ever been a Communist,[14]the committee assumed he had communist sympathies because he had directed the anti-Nazi film,The Man I Married(1940), and investigated him as a case of "premature antifascism." Pichel was cleared, but soon after developed a chronic heart condition which was treated until his death in 1954.[15]

While Pichel was ultimately not called to testify,[16]he wasblacklisted,forcing him eventually to leave the United States in order to direct his final pictures.[17]Pichel's friend Joseph C. Youngerman, a prop handler and assistant director in Hollywood, later confirmed that Pichel had in fact been a member of theCommunist Party.[18]

Personal life

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Irving Pichel married Violette Wilson, daughter ofJackson Stitt Wilson,a Methodist minister and Socialist mayor ofBerkeley, California.Her sister was actressViola Barry.Irving and Violette had three sons: Julian Irving Pichel, Marlowe Agnew Pichel, and Pichel Wilson Pichel.[19]

Posthumous awards

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A special 1951 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation was retroactively awarded by the 59th World Science Fiction Convention 50 years later, in 2001, toDestination Moonfor being one of the science fiction films eligible during calendar year 1950. (50 years, 75 years, or 100 years prior is the eligibility requirement governing the awarding of Retro Hugos.)

The film was also nominated for AFI's Top 10 Science Fiction Films list.

Martin Lutherwas given a special 50th anniversary re-release on DVD by Gateway Films, including a book that is a biography of the film itself.[20]

Filmography

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Actor

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Director

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Notes

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  1. ^Cones, John (April 2015).Motion Picture Biographies: The Hollywood Spin on Historical Figures.Algora. p. 13.ISBN9781628941166.
  2. ^Luarence Maslon (2004). George S. Kaufman (ed.).Kaufman and Co.: Broadway Comedies.Library of America.ISBN1-931082-67-7.
  3. ^"First Performance of" Common Clay "".The Boston Globe.Boston, Massachusetts. January 8, 1915. p. 2 – viaNewspapers.
  4. ^"Last Week of" Common Clay "".The Boston Globe.Boston, Massachusetts. May 4, 1915. p. 3 – viaNewspapers.
  5. ^Starr, Kevin.Material Dreams,Oxford University Press US, 1990, p. 276.ISBN0-19-504487-8
  6. ^"Berkeley Daily Planet".October 22, 1929.RetrievedSeptember 28,2015.
  7. ^"The Pied Piper".The New York Times.August 13, 1942.RetrievedApril 4,2017.
  8. ^"'O.S.S.,' War Spy Thriller, With Alan Ladd, Miss Fitzgerald in Leading Roles, Makes Its Appearance at the Gotham ".The New York Times.May 27, 1946.RetrievedApril 4,2017.
  9. ^Movie review and production notes forMiracle of the Bells(1948).The Pirate Bay.Retrieved April 4, 2017.
  10. ^ Hollywood Independent Citizens Committee of the Arts, Sciences, and Professions (HICCASP)(June 1945),Introducing... Representative John Elliot Rankin(PDF),retrievedApril 4,2017{{citation}}:CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  11. ^"Film Noir – An Encyclopedia Reference to the American Style" p. 285, Alain SIlver and Elizabeth Ward, editors
  12. ^"Destination-Moon – Cast, Crew, Director and Awards".The New York Times.
  13. ^Spudis, Paul D. "Chesley Bonestell and the Landscape of the Moon." Airspacemag. June 14, 2012. Retrieved: January 12, 2015.
  14. ^Ceplair, Larry; and Trumbo, Christopher.Dalton Trumbo: Blacklisted Hollywood Radical,Univ. of Kentucky Press (2015) p. 187
  15. ^Lambert, Gavin.Natalie Wood,Knopf Doubleday Publ. (2004) e-bk
  16. ^Pells, p. 302
  17. ^Buhle, et al., p. 184
  18. ^David Luhrssen (2013).Mamoulian: Life on Stage and Screen.University of Kentucky Press, pp. 131–133
  19. ^"Irving Pichel,"NNDB.Retrieved April 4, 2017.
  20. ^"Classic Martin Luther film 50th anniversary re-release on DVD | Christian Film News™".christianfilmnews.Archived fromthe originalon November 20, 2010.

References

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  • Buhle, Paul and Dave Wagner (2002).A Very Dangerous Citizen: Abraham Lincoln Polonsky and the Hollywood Left.University of California Press.ISBN0-520-23672-6.
  • McBride, Joseph (2003).Searching for John Ford: A Life.Macmillan.ISBN0-312-31011-0.
  • Pells, Richard H. (1989).The Liberal Mind in a Conservative Age: American Intellectuals in the 1940s and 1950s.Wesleyan University Press.ISBN0-8195-6225-4.
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