The Christmas Album

[movieman1957]

I have caught several of Lupino's episodes of "Have Gun Will Travel." Save for one the other night where I felt Paladin was working his eyebrows overtime in bewilderment and surprise It all comes across as solid work.

[moira finnie]

Does Donati's bio dig into detail regarding Ms. Lupino's career behind the camera, both in film and TV? I love her as an actress, but I admire and respect her that much more for the few works I've seen that she directed. If the book gets into that, it goes on my Wish List immediately.

Yes, Chio, the author researched that aspect of her career very extensively. Copies of this well written bio, with an extensive bibliography, notes, appendix and several primary sources are readily available on the internet.

I have caught several of Lupino's episodes of "Have Gun Will Travel." Save for one the other night where I felt Paladin was working his eyebrows overtime in bewilderment and surprise It all comes across as solid work.

I like the episode of Have Gun Will Travel that she directed called The Lady on the Wall, about a bunch of old geezers hanging around a bar mooning over a Mona Lisa-like portrait behind the bar. It was written in part by Richard Matheson and Charles Beaumont so it was quite sharp, (though it seemed odd that no credit was given to Sidney Howard's play, "The Late Christopher Bean" --even though it clearly inspired the episode). Richard Boone apparently enjoyed working with Lupino since he was quoted as saying that "Ida stimulates me as an actor because she knows acting. In a weekly show you get into acting patterns. Ida gets you out of them.".

[klondike]

It was written in part by Richard Matheson and Charles Beaumont so it was quite sharp,

Wow!
Matheson and Beaumont - two of Serling's "far-out 5", the group that, individually, turned out so many of the teleplays for the first 3 years of "The Twilight Zone".

[charliechaplinfan]

I can't believe that it was 12 months since we were last here.

[moira finnie]

Thank you. I'll post more of these as time allows.

[knitwit45]

Thanks for starting this again, Moira. Wouldn't be Christmas without our Christmas album!

[charliechaplinfan]

So I am sitting here, completely flabbergasted. First at how you can write such a wonderful post, and second, that Ida Lupino was once married to Louis Hayward (!!!!!!). How could I have missed yet another Hollywood marriage?

I only just found out that Anouk Aimee and Albert Finney were married, never in a million years would I have put them together.

[JackFavell]

What!!??? What a weird world we live in. I didn't know that one, and I would never have put them together either.

[moira finnie]

On our second day in that dimly remembered country called Christmas Past, we pause at a scene that might seem illusory, until you realize that the real life couple shown here bantering with a slightly amateurish member of Santa's league of helpers were Joel McCrea (1905-1990) and Frances Dee (1909-2004).

I'm dating this photo by the looks of those somewhat sharp-featured early Mickey Mouses (or would it be Mickey Mice?) lining the shelves of this well-stocked branch of Santa's Workshop, so I suspect this may have been a day in December in the mid to late 1930s. By that time the married couple, who had met on the set of the drama, The Silver Cord (1933), had reason to purchase a teddy bear or two...

They had two of the three boys they would raise at home: Jody, born in 1934, David, born in 1935, and Peter, who would come along in 1955, when Dee was 47 and McCrea had just entered his 50s. This latter occasion caused a raised eyebrow or two among the smart aleck set in Hollywood, though the McCreas certainly seemed to handle this event with their customary public equanimity. It may be that this photo was taken to garner some publicity in 1937, when Wells Fargo, the second of the four films the couple made together, opened at Christmas time in theaters around the country. The pair would eventually make two more screen appearances together on screen, in Cattle Drive (1951)--a Western without a shot fired!--and in perhaps their best collaboration, Four Faces West (1948), a tidy oater that highlighted the naturalistic acting skills of both marital partners, warmed by an interesting spark that passed between them.

The appearances of the perennially beautiful Dee on screen diminished as her family grew, but those who have seen her sometimes startlingly original acting in diverse films such as An American Tragedy (1931),* Little Women (1933), Blood Money (1933), Finishing School (1935), a nearly mute but indelible presence in So Ends Our Night (1940), and the cult favorite, I Walked With a Zombie (1943), cherish the quality of her portrayals.

In an era when many husbands felt awkward about a wife who worked, Joel McCrea had the grace and wisdom to be supportive. Later in life, Frances Dee mentioned that "I wanted to give up my career when I married Joel, but he wouldn't let me. I thought marriage, a home, husband and family were all I wanted. Joel knew I was sincere in my belief but he was wise enough to realize that sooner or later I might miss my work and blame him." An appreciative husband was not the only one who looked forward to seeing Dee's work. The noted film critic for Time Magazine and columnist for The Nation, James Agee, once wrote that Dee was "one of the very few women in movies who really had a face...and always used this translucent face with delicate and exciting talent...[she] has something of a novelist's perceptiveness behind the talent...[though] she has never been around nearly enough."

Rediscovered by the resurgence of interest in pre-code movies in the last two decades, Ms. Dee was once chided by a friend who scolded the actress "for playing a prostitute in Blood Money (1933)," but she denied playing such a disreputable character, explaining that she had actually 'played a masochistic nymphomaniacal kleptomaniac, not a prostitute.'" Frances Dee was equally down-to-earth when questioned about her role in one of her most famed pictures, producer Val Lewton's twist on Jane Eyre, in the Jacques Tourneur-directed movie, I Walked With a Zombie. While aficionados questioned her on subtext, symbolism and motivation, Dee simply divulged that the picture was chosen by her not because of the undercurrent of romantic doom that laced the black and white film--but because of the salary--just enough to buy her mother a new car!

Perhaps that shared levelheaded quality was one of the things that kept the handsome couple together. After buying out his contract with Sam Goldwyn in the late '30s, with whom Joel McCrea had made some excellent films (especially when directed by William Wyler), such as These Three and Dead End, the actor became one of the bigger names to freelance in the studio era. A sparkling array of films resulted in the next decade as McCrea followed his own instincts, including Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent (1940), La Cava's Primrose Path (1940), Sturges' Sullivan's Travels (1941), The Palm Beach Story (1942), and Stevens' The More the Merrier (1943). Though he said that he liked doing comedies, the modest, soft-spoken actor began to feel awkward about his movie career. "I got older I was better suited to do Westerns," he believed. "Because I think it becomes unattractive for an older fellow trying to look young, falling in love with attractive girls in those kinds of situations." In addition to his own maturity, when McCrea looked around at the changing postwar landscape of the movie business, he concluded that "After World War Two I didn't have Preston Sturges. La Cava had gone. Those fellows sometimes burned themselves out, or, for some reason got out of it..." In private he told his wife "If I'm gonna do claptrap, I might as well do claptrap on horseback," and began to appear solely in Westerns. Several of these idiosyncratic genre movies were entertaining, and a few have become classics of their kind, including Colorado Territory (1949), Stars In My Crown (1950), and Ride the High Country (1962). Each of these movies highlighted McCrea's fidelity to two things: his seamless craftsmanship as an actor and his own spiritual values.

Joel McCrea had earned the right to be independent. A naturally frugal man, the California native could still remember another holiday season when he was a newsboy. A customer had tipped him with silver dollar for Christmas in appreciation of the youth's efforts to deliver newspapers on the porch when it rained. McCrea never forgot that generous reward for his conscientious attention to detail. He had a chance to remind the customer of this incident when Joel was just beginning to get work on film sets. Director Cecil B. DeMille, who liked his news dry, was moved to give the big, good-looking lad his first screen credit. DeMille's hit, Union Pacific (1939) starring McCrea and Barbara Stanwyck, also helped to raise McCrea's profile in Hollywood at a time when his career was poised to accelerate. Despite the opportunities and rewards that Hollywood continued to give him, the actor managed to keep his distance from the place.

That perspective was partly achieved by choosing investments of time and money with care. The same year as the McCrea's initial meeting and rapid courtship, they purchased a thousand acres in eastern Ventura County in California. The McCrea property eventually grew into about a three thousand acre spread where the family would ride horses, work the land and raise their boys away from much of the Hollywood hubbub. The grandson of a stage coach driver who had helped to settle the frontier, McCrea would often deride his own acting, sometimes claiming that he his profession was rancher, and his hobby was acting. "The minute I got a horse and a hat and a pair of boots on, I felt easier. I didn't feel like I was an actor anymore. I felt like I was the guy out there doing it." So modest about his abilities he sometimes claimed that "I have no regrets, except perhaps one: I should have tried harder to be a better actor." At a more perceptive moment, he acknowledged that he was "a one-note actor, but the way I figure it, those other guys are just looking for that one right note."

Regardless of the legacy they have left as actors, this man and wife were quite human. They stayed married for 57 years until McCrea's death in 1990, even though their long marriage included separations and a near divorce. They have left us with a wealth of memorable portrayals on film that have become more burnished with time, creating, as Joel McCrea once slyly pointed out about his films on television, "a sneak up comeback" on the public consciousness. The National Register of Historic Places has announced plans in the last year to build a visitors center on their former ranch land where they lived, raised children and cattle, and rode horses. The McCreas had donated several hundred acres of their personal property to the newly formed Conejo Valley YMCA for the city of Thousand Oaks, California, both of which celebrated their 46th anniversaries of service and community in 2010. You can see a lovely photo of part of the McCrea ranch here at R. Cooper's photography site.


Frances Dee and Joel McCrea in graceful old age.
~~~~~~~

* The McCreas First Meeting:
While stopped at a traffic light in Los Angeles in the early 1930s, Frances Dee noticed that the young man in the car next to her at the intersection was Joel McCrea. They had never met, so when the 6'3" blue-eyed star of The Most Dangerous Game and Bird of Paradise had the temerity to tip his hat at the beautiful, well bred young actress she thought him very fresh, since they had not been introduced. Dee, who was reportedly being courted by cosmopolitan men like Joseph Mankiewicz, Josef von Sternberg and Charles Boyer, proceeded to turn haughtily away and stepped on the gas, according to Andrew Wentink, a family friend and archivist who is said to be working on a biography of the actress. According to other sources, McCrea may have asked RKO to cast Dee in her role in The Silver Cord, facilitating their meeting after he had seen her performance in An American Tragedy and developing a crush on this intelligent beauty.

Sources:
Film writing and Selected Journalism by James Agee, (Library of America, 2005)
Focus on Film, Issues 26-37, (Tantivy Press, 1977)
"Frances Dee, 96, Film Star of the 30's and 40's", The New York Times, March 9, 2004
"Interview with Joel McCrea" by Gerald Peary, The Boston Herald, March 22, 1983
Last Of The Cowboy Heroes: The Westerns Of Randolph Scott, Joel McCrea, And Audie Murphy by Robert Nott, (McFarland, 2005)

Online Sources:
Remembering Frances Dee
Laura's Miscellaneous Musings

[Lzcutter]

Moira,

Thanks for remembering one of my favorite couples, Joel McCrea and Frances Dee. I would love to see McCrea as a Star of the Month in 2011 as he is long, long overdue.

He is also long overdue for a detailed biography done by someone who truly appreciates his contributions to American film.

[pvitari]

Lz, there was a bio by Tony Thomas published in 1991 called Joel McCrea: Riding the High Country but it's out of print and second hand copies are expensive.

This current book from McFarland covers McCrea's life career, along with Randolph Scott and Audie Murphy: Last of the Cowboy Heroes: The Westerns of Randolph Scott, Joel McCrea and Audie Murphy, http://www.mcfarlandpub.com/book-2.php? ... 864-2261-6

But you're right, it's time for a new and updated biography.

[movieman1957]

Thanks Moira. Joel McCrea has always been one of my favorite actors. I was first drawn to him because we share the first name but I found him to be very enjoyable, mild mannered and gentlemanly. Characteristics I hope we share.

[JackFavell]

You definitely do, Chris.

Moira, I loved this article, I am saving it forever. And that ranch photo!!!!!! Wow! Is that the most beautiful place in the U.S.? I think it just may be. You make me want to read more about these two wonderful, quiet stars.

[knitwit45]

Moira, thanks for a wonderful article on the McCrea's. I have to admit, Joel McCrea has always made me stutter... he was such a gorgeous, gentlemanly gentle man. Reading about the two of them is a lovely Christmas gift. I think the fact they separated but came back to each other says volumes about real love, don't you?
I also hope they each get a SOTM day, maybe in August??? A whole day of his movies = heaven!