Lewis Milestone

Lewis Milestone (born Leib Milstein (Russian: Лейб Мильштейн);[1] September 30, 1895 – September 25, 1980) was a Russian-American film director. He is known for directing Two Arabian Knights (1927) and All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), both of which received Academy Awards for Best Director. He also directed The Front Page (1931 – nomination), The General Died at Dawn (1936), Of Mice and Men (1939), Ocean's 11 (1960), and received the directing credit for Mutiny on the Bounty (1962), though Marlon Brando largely appropriated his responsibilities during its production.[2]

Lewis Milestone
Milestone in 1930
Born
Leib Milstein

(1895-09-30)September 30, 1895
Chişinău, Bessarabia Governorate, Russian Empire (now Moldova)
DiedSeptember 25, 1980(1980-09-25) (aged 84)
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Occupation
  • Director
  • screenwriter
  • producer
Years active1918–1964
Spouse(s)Kendall Lee (m. 1926 – died 1978)

Early life

Milestone was born Lev (or Leib) Milstein near the Russian Black Sea port of Odessa, Ukraine into a wealthy and distinguished family of Jewish heritage.[3]

In 1900, when Milestone was five, his father moved his household to the provincial town of Kishinev, capital of Bessarabia of the Russian Empire (now Chişinău, Moldova). Milestone’s primary education at Jewish schools reflected his parent’s liberal social and political orientation, and included a study of several languages. Milestone’s early love of theater and his desire to follow the dramatic arts was discouraged by his family, who dispatched their son to Mittweida, Saxony to study engineering.[4]

Neglecting his classes to attend local theater productions, Milestone failed his coursework. Intent on pursuing a theatrical career, he purchased a one-way transatlantic ticket to the United States, arriving in Hoboken, New Jersey on 14 November 1913, shortly after his eighteenth birthday.[5][6][7]

“You are in the land of liberty and labor, so use your own judgement.”—The elder Milestone’s laconic reply from Russia to his 18-year-old son who had cabled him from New York City for financial assistance [8][9][10]

Struggling to support himself in New York City, Milestone worked odd jobs—“janitor, door-to-door salesman, lace-machine operator”—before finding a position as portrait and theater photographer in 1915. He enlisted in the Signal Corps in 1917 shortly after America’s entry into World War I. Stationed in New York City and Washington, D. C., he was assigned to its photography unit and trained in aerial photography, assisted on training films and edited documentary combat footage. His cohorts at the Signal Corps included future Hollywood directors Josef von Sternberg and Victor Fleming.[11][12]

In February 1919, Milestone was discharged from the army and immediately obtained his US citizenship, legally changing his surname from Milstein to Milestone. An acquaintance from the Signal Corps, Jesse D. Hampton, now an independent film producer, secured Milestone an entry level position in Hollywood as an assistant editor.[13][14]

Hollywood Apprenticeship 1919-1924

Milestone arrived in Hollywood in the same financial straits as he had in Hoboken, New Jersey as a Russian émigré in 1913. He recalled in later years that in order to sustain himself until his studio job commenced, he worked briefly as a card dealer at a oil field gambling joint.[15][16]

Despite a number of mundane assignments from Hampton—at $20 per week—Milestone’s trajectory from assistant editor toward director proceeded steadily. In 1920 he was tapped to serve as general assistant to director Henry King at Pathé Exchange.His first credited work was as assistant on King’s 1920 Dice of Destiny.[17][18][19]

During the next six years Milestone “took on jobs in any capacity available” with the Hollywood film industry, working as editor for director-producer Thomas Ince, as general assistant and co-author on film scripts by William A. Seiter and as a gag-writer for comedian Harold Lloyd. In 1923 he followed Seiter to Warner Brothers studios as assistant director on Little Church Around the Corner (1923), assuming most of the filmmaking tasks on the production.[20][21] Milestone’s reputation as an effective “film doctor” skilled at salvaging movies was such that Warners began offering his services to other studios at inflated rates.[22]

Director: Silent Era, 1925-1929

By 1925, Milestone was writing numerous screen treatments for films at Universal and Warners studios, among them The Mad Whirl, Dangerous Innocence, The Teaser and Bobbed Hair. The same year, Milestone approached Jack Warner with a proposition: he would provide the producer with a story gratis if he was allowed to direct it. Warner agreed to sponsor his directorial debut, Seven Sinners (1925).[23]

Seven Sinners (1925): One of three films Milestone directed with Marie Prevost, and a former comedienne with Mack Sennett. Jack Warner appointed Darryl F. Zanuck as screenwriter. A “semi-sophisticated” comedy incorporating elements of slapstick, Seven Sinners proved sufficiently successful with critics and the public to warrant Milestone, now 29-years-old, additional directing assignments.[24][25]

The Caveman (1926): Milestone delivered his second Prevost comedy The Caveman quickly and efficiently, earning him praise for its “adroit direction”. During production, Milestone broke his contract with the studio over his exploitation as a “film doctor”: Warners sued for damages and won, forcing Milestone to file for bankruptcy. The Caveman would be his last film for Warners until Edge of Darkness in 1943. Undeterred, Milestone was quickly acquired by Paramount Pictures.[26]

The New Klondike (1926): A sports-themed drama based on a Ring Lardner story was filmed on location in Florida. Despite a “lukewarm” response from critics, Paramount was enthusiastic regarding Milestone’s prospects, showcasing him with other young studio talent in the promotional Fascinating Youth (1926). A subsequent contretemps with screen star Gloria Swanson on the set of Fine Manners (1926) led to Milestone walking off the project. Director Richard Rosson received credit when he completed the picture.[27]

Two Arabian Knights (1927): Considered Milestones most outstanding work during the silent era, Two Arabian Knights was inspired by he Anderson-Stallings stage play What Price Glory? (1924), and director Raoul Walsh’s 1924 screen adaption. The first film in a four-year contract with Howard Hughes’ The Caddo Company—and his only film of 1927— it garnered Milestone an Academy Award for best comedy direction in 1927, prevailing over Charlie Chaplin’s The Circus (1927). Set during World War I, doughboys William Boyd and Louis Wolheim, and love-object Mary Astor form a comic triangle.[28][29]

The Garden of Eden (1927): Made under a Caddo releasing agreement with Universal Pictures, The Garden of Eden, “a variation on the Cinderella story...of acidic sophistication”, was adapted by screenwriter Hans Kraly and resembles, in both script and visual production, the works of Ernst Lubitsch. The project benefited from the lavish sets designed by William Cameron Menzies and the cinematography of John Arnold. The film stars the popular Corinne Griffith.[30][31] Milestone’s cinematic rendering of Two Arabian Knights and The Garden of Eden established him as a skilled practitioner of “rough and sophisticated” comedy.[32]

The Racket (1928): Wary of being stereotyped as a comedy director, Milestone shifted to an emerging genre popularized by director Josef von Sternberg in his gangland fantasy Underworld (1927).[33] The Racket, a “taut and realistic” depiction of a mobster-controlled police department distinguished Milestone as an able practitioner of the genre, but its reception was blunted by a flood of less superior gangster films released in the late 1920s. Nonetheless The Racket was nominated for Best Picture at the 1928 Academy Awards.[34]

Early Sound Era: 1929-1936

New York Nights (1929): Segue to Sound

Milestone’s first foray into sound productions, New York Nights proved inauspicous. A vehicle for silent screen icon Norma Talmadge (spouse to producer Joseph Schenck), Milestone attempted to accommodate United Artists’ desire to blend “show-biz” and gangster genres in an adaption of “the justly forgotten” Broadway production entitled "Tin Pan Alley". Film historian Joseph Millichap appraises Milestone's effort:

“In several ways New York Nights is best considered with Milestone’s silent efforts, as it seems an obviously unimportant transitional piece. Like many early sound films it is shot from a few camera settings, and it is full of static scenes in which the cast is all too obviously speaking into hidden microphones. Milestone was so displeased with the final cut that he asked to have his name removed from the credits...”[35]

Millichap adds that “the film is not worth considering as Milestone’s first sound work.”[36][37]

Chef-d'œuvre: All Quiet on the Western Front (1930)

Milestone’s anti-war picture All Quiet on the Western Front is widely recognized as his directorial masterpiece and ranks as one of the most compelling dramatizations of soldiers in combat during the The Great War.[38] Adapted from Erich Maria Remarque’s classic 1929 novel, Milestone conveyed cinematically the “grim realism and anti-war themes” that characterize the literary work. Universal studio’s head of production Carl Laemmle, Jr, purchased the film rights so as to capitalize on the international success of Remarque’s book.[39][40]

“When he was preparing to shoot his wrenching anti-war film All Quiet on the Western Front from the point of view of German schoolboys who become soldiers, Universal co-founder and president Carl Laemmle pleaded with him for a 'happy ending.' Milestone replied, 'I’ve got your happy ending. We’ll let the Germans win the war.'[41][42]

All Quiet on the Western Front presents the war from the perspective of a unit of patriotic young German soldiers who become disillusioned at the horrors of trench warfare. Actor Lew Ayres portrays the naive and sensitive youth Paul Baumer.

In collaboration with screenwriters Maxwell Anderson, Del Andrews and George Abbott, Milestone (uncredited) crafted a scenario and script that “reproduces the terse, tough dialogue” of Remarque’s novel, so as to “expose war for what it is, and not glorify it.”[43] Originally conceived as a silent film, Milestone filmed both a silent and a talkie version, shooting them together in sequence.[44]

The most outstanding technical innovation of All Quiet on the Western Front is the success to which Milestone integrated the rudimentary sound technology of the early talkies with the advanced visual effects developed during the late silent era. Applying post-synchronization of the sound recordings, Milestone was at liberty to “shoot the way we’ve always shot...it was that simple. All the tracking shots were done with a silent camera.” In one of the film’s most disturbing sequences, Milestone uses tracking shots and sound effects to graphically show the devastating effects of artillery and machine guns on advancing troops.[45][46][47]

The picture met with immense critical and popular approval, earning a Best Picture Oscar and a second Best Director award for Milestone.[48][49]

All Quiet on the Western Front established Milestone as a genuine talent in the film industry. Howard Hughes rewarded him with a prime property for adaption: Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur 1928 play, The Front Page.[50]

The Front Page (1931)

One of the most sensational and influential pictures of 1931, The Front Page introduced the Hollywood archetype of the hard-boiled and fast-talking reporter in Milestone's depiction of the backroom denizens of Chicago newspaper tabloids. The film's script retained the “sparkling dialogue [and] hard, fast and ruthless pace” that characterized Ben Hecht’s and Charles MacArthur’s stage production of 1928.[51] The Front Page set the foundation for a virtual “journalism genre” in the 1930s, imitated by other studios and spawning a number of remakes, among them Howard Hawks’ His Girl Friday (1940) and Billy Wilder’s The Front Page (1974).[52]

The selection of Pat O'Brien to play the hard-bitten reporter "Hildy" Johnson was disappointing to Milestone, whose request to cast James Cagney or Clark Gable in the role was vetoed by producer Howard Hughes, in favor of O’Brien, who had performed in the Chicago stage production The Front Page.[53]

More than a product of Milestone’s fidelity to the play’s lively and profane dialogue, he endowed the work with an Expressionistic cinematic style. Biographer Joseph Millichap evaluates Milestone’s technique:

Milestone employs “several framing devices, a quick cross-cutting between scenes, a moving camera intercut with close-ups, juxtaposition of angles and distances, and a number of trick shots...Overall, the deft combination of Realistic mise-en-scene with an Expressionistic camera draws the best out of the realistic, melodramatic and comedic elements of the original [play]...creating the most cinematically interesting, if not the most entertaining, version of The Front Page.[54][55][56]

Both the opening tracking shots of the newspaper's printing plant and the confrontation between Molly Malloy (Mae Clarke) and a phalanx of reporters demonstrate Milestone’s mastery of the technique.[57][58]

The Front Page received a Best Picture nomination at the Academy Awards and Milestone was listed among the “The Ten Best Directors” by a Film Daily poll of 300 movie critics.[59]

Troubled by film directors declining control within the studio system, Milestone gave his full support to King Vidor’s proposal to organize a filmmaker’s cooperative. Supporters for a Screen Directors Guild included Frank Borzage, Howard Hawks, Ernst Lubitsch, Rouben Mamoulian and William Wellman, among others. By 1938, the guild was incorporated, representing 600 directors and assistant directors.[60][61]

Paramount Pictures was experiencing a financial crisis during the mid-Thirties that inhibited their commitments to their European film stylists such as Josef von Sternberg, Ernst Lubitsch and Milestone.[62] Under these conditions, Milestone embarked upon the final phase of his early sound period, a phase that would expose his difficulties in locating compelling literary material, production support and proper casting. The first among these films was Rain (1932).[63][64][65]

Rain (1932): The short story Miss Thompson by Somerset Maugham has gone through several adaptive permutations, both for stage and film, before and after Milestone filmed the work in 1932.[66][67]

Milestone was assigned rising star Joan Crawford by Allied Artists, known for her silent film roles as a flapper, to play the prostitute Sadie Thompson. Her suitability for part has been widely scrutinized, and according to film critic Joseph Millichap “almost every comment on the film says she was miscast.” Crawford herself registered disappointment with her interpretation of the role.[68][69]

Milestone was not encumbered as yet by the Production Code, and his portrayal of the overwrought Puritan missionary Reverend Davidson (Walter Huston) and his rape of Thompson blends violence with sexual and religious symbolism through adroit intercutting.[70] Termed “slow and stage-bound”[71] and “stiff and stagey”,[72] Milestone offered his own assessment of Rain:

“I thought [audiences] were ready for a dramatic form; that now we could present a three-act play on the screen. But I was wrong. People will not listen to narrative dialogue. They will not accept the kind of exposition you use on the stage. I started the picture slowly, too slowly, I’m afraid. You can’t start a picture slowly. You must show things happening.”[73]

Hallelujah, I'm a Bum (1933): Released during the depths of the Great Depression, Hallelujah, I’m a Bum was an attempt by United Artists to reintroduce early talkie singer Al Jolson after his three-year hiatus from film roles.[74] Based on a Ben Hecht story, with a score by Rogers and Hart featuring innovative “rhythmic dialogue” delivered in song-song, its sentimental and romantic theme of a New York City tramp met with indifference or dismay among moviegoers.[75] Film historian George Millichap observed that “the problem of this entertainment fantasy was that it brushed aside just enough reality to confuse its audience. Americans in the winter of 1933 were not in the mood to be advised that the life of a hobo was the road to true happiness, especially by a star earning $25,000 a week.”[76] Milestone’s miscalculated effort to make a “socially conscious” musical was generally ill-received at its New York opening and Milestone was left struggling to locate a more serious film project.[77]

Attempts by Milestone to make a film about the Russian Revolution (working title: Red Square), based on Stalinist Ilya Ehrenberg’s The Life and Death of Nikolai Kourbov (1923), and an adaption of H. G. Wells’s The Shape of Things to Come (1933) proposed by Alexander Korda, neither project materialized.[78][79] In lieu of these unrealized films, Milestone proceeded to make “a string of three insignificant studio pieces” from 1934 to 1936.[80]

The Captain Hates the Sea (1934): Milestone accepted a lucrative deal to film a John Gilbert vehicle and left United Artists for Harry Cohn’s Columbia Pictures.[81] The Captain Hates the Sea was conceived and recognized by critics as a spoof of the 1932 star-studded anthology, Grand Hotel, which showcased Hollywood’s emerging screen legends Greta Garbo, Joan Crawford and John Barrymore. Milestone’s largely improvised film featured an ensemble of Columbia’s character actors, among them Victor McLaglen and The Three Stooges. Described by critic Geroge Millichap as “a very uneven, disconnected, rambling piece”, the cost overruns on The Captain Hates the Sea—complicated by heavy drinking by the cast members—soured relations between Milestone and Cohen. The movie is notable as the final film of Gilbert’s career.[82][83]

Milestone next embarked on two films for Paramount, his only musicals of his career, but relatively undistinguished in their execution. Milestone himself described them as “insignificant”: Paris in Spring (1935) and Anything Goes (1936).[84]

Paris in Spring (1935) and Anything Goes (1936): Milestone was assigned Paris in Spring, a romantic musical farce. Leading man Tullio Carminati had just completed the operetta-like One Night of Love (1934) with Grace Moore at Columbia studios. Paramount paired their own Mary Ellis with Carminati, and it was Milestone’s task to make a picture rivaling the Columbia success.[85][86] Aside from a credible replica of Paris created by art directors Hans Dreier and Ernst Fegte, Milestone’s camera work failed to overcome “the essential flatness of the tale.”[87][88][89]

Anything Goes, a musical starring Bing Crosby and Ethel Merman and adapted from his 1934 Cole Porter Broadway musical, enjoyed the advantage of some enduring numbers, including I Get a Kick Out of You, You're the Top, and the title song. Milestone’s work is conscientious, but he showed little enthusiasm for the genre.[90][91]

Milestone’s personal life was more gratifying than his artistic endeavors in the mid-Thirties. In 1935 he and Kendall Lee Glaezner, an actress whose professional name was Kendall Lee, were married. She and Milestone had been a couple since they met on the set of his 1932 film Rain, in which Lee had played the role of Mrs. MacPhail. They remained married until Mrs. Milestone’s death in 1978. They did not have any children. Biographer George Millichap reports that “over the years the Milestones were the most gracious of Hollywood hosts, giving parties that attracted the cream of the film community.”[92]

The General Died at Dawn (1936)

Following his two lackluster musicals, Milestone returned to form in 1936 with The General Died at Dawn, a film that in theme, setting and style is reminiscent of director Josef von Sternberg’s The Shanghai Express (1932).[93][94]

The screenplay written by Leftist playwright Clifford Odets is derived from an obscure pulp-influenced manuscript by Charles G. Booth. Set in the Far East it carried a sociopolitical theme: the “tension between democracy and authoritarianism.”[95] Actor Gary Cooper plays the American mercenary O’Hara, a man possessing genuine republican commitments and whose character Milestone adroitly establishes in the opening frames.[96] His adversary is the complex and multidimensional Chinese warlord General Yang played by Akim Tamiroff. Actress Madeleine Carroll is cast as the young missionary Judy Perrie ``trapped between divided social forces” who struggles to overcome her diffidence and ultimately joins O”Hara in supporting a peasant revolt against Yang.[97][98]

Milestone’s brings to the adventure-melodrama a “bravura” exposition of his cinematic style and outstanding technical skills: an impressive use of tracking, a 5-way split-screen and a widely noted use of a match dissolve that serves to transition action from a billiard table to a white door handle leading to a adjoining room, “one of the most expert match shots on record” according to historian John Baxter. [99][100]

Though disparaged by Milestone in retrospect, The General Died at Dawn is perhaps one of the “masterpieces” of 1930s Hollywood. Milestone was well-served by cinematographer Victor Milner, art directors Hans Dreier and Ernst Fegte, and composer Werner Janssen in creating “his most exquisite and exciting if not most meaningful examination of social friction in a human context.”[101][102]

Directorial Hiatus: 1936-1939

After completing The General Died at Dawn, Milestone encountered a series of professional setbacks—“unsuccessful projects, broken contracts and lawsuits”—that placed his film career in abeyance for three years.[103][104]

A number of serious projects which Milestone did pursue, including directing a film version of Vincent Sheean’s Personal History (1935) (later directed as Foreign Correspondent (1940) by Alfred Hitchcock) went unfulfilled, as did a screenplay written by Milestone and Clifford Odets for a film adaption of the Sidney Kingsley Broadway hit Dead End (1935) for Sam Goldwyn that went to William Wyler, a director, like Milestone, of literary texts.[105][106]

The Night of Nights (1939): In an effort to remain employed, Milestone accepted Paramount’s offer to direct Pat O’Brien in a show business programmer The Night of Nights. A “second-line” studio production, the film was best served by Hans Dreier’s stage settings.[107][108]

After signing a contract with Hal Roach in late 1937 to film a version of Eric S. Hatch’s novel Road Show (1934), Milestone was dismissed by the producer for straying from the comedic elements of the work. Litigation ensued, and the matter was resolved when Roach presented Milestone with another project: to adapt to film John Steinbeck's novella Of Mice and Men (1937).[109][110]

Of Mice and Men (1939)

Milestone had been favorably impressed with both Steinbeck’s novella Of Mice and Men and its 1938 stage production, a morality play set during the dust bowl, and he embraced the film project with enthusiasm.[111] Producer Hal Roach hoped to emulate the anticipated success of director John Ford’s adaption of another Steinbeck work, The Grapes of Wrath (1940). Both films drew upon the political and creative developments that emerged in the Great Depression, rather than the approaching 1940s and the impending conflict in Europe.[112][113] Milestone enlisted Steinbeck support for the film and the author “essentially approved the script” as did the Hays Office who made only “minor” changes to the scenario.[114]

The film opens with what was at the time an innovative device, a visual prologue that sets the “mood, tone [and] themes”, identifying the lead characters, George and Lennie (played by Burgess Meredith and Lon Chaney, Jr., respectively) as itinerant laborers, even before the credits are displayed.[115] As a cinematic interpretation of a literary work, Of Mice and Men managed to convincingly blend the elements of each art form. Milestone maintains the “ anti-omniscient” detachment that Steinbeck applied to his novella with a cinematic viewpoint that matches the author’s literary realism.[116] Milestone placed great emphasis on visual and sound motifs that serve to develop the characters and themes . As such, he conferred carefully on image motifs with art director Nicolai Remisoff, and cameraman Norbert Brodine and persuaded composer Aaron Copland to provide the musical score.[117] Critic Kingley Canham points to the importance Milestone placed on his sound motifs:

“...the [musical] score, one of several scored for Milestone by Aaron Copland, played a decisive role in the form of the film: natural sounds and dialogue sequences were interpolated with the music to act as complimentary motifs to the visual and narrative development.”[118]

The picture garnered Copland nominations for both Best Musical Score and Best Original Score.[119]

Milestone, who preferred to cast “relative unknowns”—in this case influenced by budgetary restraints—Lon Chaney, Jr. to play the child-like Lennie Small and Burgess Meredith who plays his keeper George Milton. Actress Betty Field, in her first important feature, plays Mae, the faithless spouse of straw boss Curly ( Bob Steele).[120][121]

Though nominated for Best Picture of 1939, Of Mice and Men had the shared misfortune of competing with a veritable pantheon of Hollywood films: The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming), Stagecoach (John Ford), Goodbye, Mr. Chips (Sam Wood), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (Frank Capra), Dark Victory (Edmund Goulding), Love Affair (Leo McCarey), Ninotchka (Ernst Lubitsch), Wuthering Heights (William Wyler), and the winner, Gone with the Wind (Victor Fleming).”[122]

Despite critical accolades for Milestone’s Of Mice and Men, the tragic narrative that ends in the mercy-killing of the doomed Lennie at the hands of his comrade George was less than gratifying to audiences, and it failed at the box office.[123]

“This particular pair of comedies [Lucky Partner (1940) and My Life with Caroline (1941)] were of the kind you did if you hoped to stay in motion pictures, in the expectation that the next film might give you a chance to redeem yourself.”— Lewis Milestone [124]

Lucky Partners (1940) and My Life with Caroline (1941): Milestone’s reputation as a director was undiminished among Hollywood executives after Of Mice and Men, and he was signed by RKO to direct two light comedies, both of which were vehicles for Ronald Colman .[125] Provided with his own production unit, he quickly satisfied his contractual obligations, directing Ginger Rogers in her post- Astaire period in Lucky Partners, and marshaling Anna Lee in the “totally disarming frolic” in My Life With Caroline.[126]

My Life With Caroline was released in August 1941, just four months before Pearl Harbor and America’s entry as a belligerent in World War II. [127]

World War II Hollywood Propaganda: 1942-1945

Milestone’s reputation as the director of All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), though an emphatically pacifist and anti-war film, positioned the director as an asset in Hollywood’s “patriotic and profitable” production of anti-fascist war films. [128] Film curator Charles Silver noted Milestone’s “facility for capturing battle’s intrinsic spectacle...there is an inevitable pageantry to cinematic warfare that works against whatever pacifist intentions the filmmaker may have.” Milestone himself reflected “how can you make a pacifist film without showing the violence of war?”[129] Responding to the “general climate of opinion in wartime Hollywood" Milestone abandoned any reservations as to his commitments to the US war effort and offered his services to the film industry's propaganda units.[130]

Our Russian Front (1942): Our Russian Front is a war documentary assembled from 15,000 feet of newsreel footage taken on the Russian front by Soviet citizen-journalists during Nazi invasion of the USSR in 1941. In collaboration with Dutch filmmaker Joris Ivens, working with The Government Film Service in 1940, Milestone depicted the struggle of Russian villagers to resist the German invasion of the Soviet Union. Actor Walter Huston narrated the documentary and the composer Dmitri Tiomkin provided the film score. [131][132]

Edge of Darkness (1943): Milestone returned to Warner Brothers in a one-film contract after seventeen years, his last feature with the studio the silent movie The Caveman (1926).[133] The first of three successful films he made in collaboration with screenwriter Robert Rossen, Edge of Darkness signaled a change in Milestone’s attitude toward his war films, both professionally and personally.[134] The director of the anti-war film All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) made this explicit in 1943:

“Edge of Darkness has done away with disillusionment. We know the enemy we are fighting and we are facing the stern realities of the present war. The moral of Edge of Darkness is ‘United we stand, divided we fall.’ That is the great lesson of our time and the keystone for victory for the democratic cause.”[135]

Edge of Darkness is Milestone’s fulsome demonstration of these sentiments that exposed “the severe limitations” created by Hollywood’s self-imposed propaganda requirements.[136] Film critics Charles Higham and Joel Greenberg comment on this phenomenon:

“The majority of films set in Europe [during World War II] were concerned mainly with emphasizing two things: Nazi cruelty to civilians and the latter’s organized clandestine resistance...set usually in a small town or village, these films were well-meaning but stereotyped exercises in predictable propaganda. Occasionally, in Milestone’s Edge of Darkness, they did achieve eloquence and power, but they suffered from the too frequent casting of Americans as Europeans, and from an ultimate sameness that detracted from their propaganda value.”[137]

Edge of Darkness unfolds in a remote Norwegian village where its inhabitants are brutalized by Nazi occupiers, inspiring collective resistance among the townspeople who liquidate their oppressors in a single, violent uprising. Milestone employs an “anti-suspense” device, that shows the ultimate carnage suffered by the inhabitants, then reveals the story in flashback. A melodramatic film fantasy, Milestone’s “thematic oversimplification”, reflected Hollywood’s penchant for melodramatic propaganda.[138]

Milestone was ambivalent regarding the cast and their characterizations for Edge of Darkness. The picture stars Errol Flynn and Ann Sheridan, who had been costars in the western Dodge City, here portraying Norwegian freedom fighters. Helmut Dantine appears as the sociopathic Nazi commandant. Biographer George Millichap reports that “the frequent rasp of New York accents from Norwegians and Nazis” distracts from the picture's authenticity. A number of the players, including Flynn, were embroiled in personal and legal issues that detracted from their work on the production.[139]

Milestone’s overall cinematic execution renders the story adequately in a realist style, but lacks his bravura use of the camera.[140] In one exceptional scene, Milestone reveals the dramatic epiphany experienced by the villagers when the Nazis publicly burn the local schoolteacher’s library collection. Through expert cutting and panning, Milestone documents a collective transformation that will spur the outraged residents to plan an armed uprising against their oppressors.[141]

Edge of Darkness delivered effective war propaganda to Warner Brothers studios and fulfilled Milestone’s contract. His next project would be set on the Eastern Front in a Sam Goldwyn production at RKO: The North Star (1943).[142]

Directing career
2003 stamp

Then in the war years Milestone made The North Star, The Purple Heart, and A Walk in the Sun, movies made during and set in World War II. In these films, he defended the world's fighting both Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. After the war, he was blacklisted under the suspicion that he was a communist sympathizer. Deciding to wait for anti-communist hostility to cool, he and his wife left for Europe: here he made a few films. In the U.S., he made other films before leaving for Europe, but his postwar films did not have the same power as the early works. He worked extensively in television from the mid-1950s on.

He returned to the U.S. to make two more films: Ocean's 11 starring the Rat Pack including Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin, and Mutiny on the Bounty starring Marlon Brando. The original Ocean's 11 worked, but Mutiny on the Bounty became a box office bomb. With no other work to do, he turned to TV work which he disliked, then left directing as his health began failing. Milestone died from natural causes on September 25, 1980, five days short of his 85th birthday.

Lewis Milestone's final request before he died in 1980 was for Universal Studios to restore All Quiet on the Western Front to its original length. That request would eventually be granted nearly two decades later by Universal and other film preservation companies, and this restored version is what is widely seen today on television and home video. Milestone is interred in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles.

Several of Milestone's films—Seven Sinners, The Front Page, The Racket, and Two Arabian Knights—were preserved by the Academy Film Archive in 2016 and 2017.[143]

Academy Awards
Year Award Film Result
1927–28 Academy Award for Best Director (Comedy) Two Arabian Knights Won
1929–30 Academy Award for Best Director All Quiet on the Western Front Won
1930–31 Academy Award for Best Director The Front Page Nominated
1939 Academy Award for Best Picture Of Mice and Men Nominated

Filmography

Footnotes
  1. Leib Milstein at RootsWeb'sConnect Project
  2. "Behind the Camera - Mutiny on the Bounty ('62)". Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved June 27, 2020.
  3. Millichap, 1981 p. 26: “...born in Odessa [into] a clan of prominent Russian Jews....his father a well-off manufacturer..." And: “...until 1919, Milestone retained his surname, Milstein.” And: his cousin Nathan Milstein, an accomplished violinist.
    Silver, 2010: “Lewis Milestone (1895–1980) was born Lev Milstein near Odessa, Ukraine.”
    Barson, 2020: “Lewis Milestone, original name Lev Milstein, born September 30, 1895, in Kishinyov, Russia [now Chișinău, Moldova].”
    Robinson, 1970 p. 141-142: ”Lewis Milestone was born in Kishmev, Ukraine...”
    Canham, 1974 p. 72: “...born in the Ukraine, near Odessa…”
  4. Canham, 1974 p. 72: “His formal education took place in Russia [then] his parents sent him to a German engineering school in Mittweida, Saxony...”
  5. Robinson, 1970 p. 141: “after commercial studies in Europe reached America, apparently as an illegal immigrant, just before the First World War.”
  6. Canham, 1974 p. 72: Milestone abandoned his academic studies and “used his return fare home at the end of the [school] term to emigrate to New York...on arrival he was [temporarily] financed by an aunt but ran out of funds…” His appeal for financial support from his father in Russia was rejected.
  7. Millichap, 1981 p. 26-27: See section The Director’s Early Life And p. 27: “...free of family restrictions [in the United States], he felt he might realize his dream of a theatrical career…”
  8. Millichap, 1981 p. 27: Milestone recalls cable as “You are in the land of opportunity, so use your own judgement” from his interview with Millichap in 1979. And: Milestone had borrowed money from an aunt in New York and “had a holiday” in the City. “When the money ran out, he cabled his father for more funds.”
  9. Canham, 1974 p. 72: Canham offers a variation of the quote: “You are in the land of labor and liberty, so use your own judgement.”
  10. Strago, 2017: “...his father, a clothing manufacturer, advised him by letter, ‘You are in the land of liberty and labor, so use your own judgment’...”
  11. Millichap, 1981 p. 26-27: he held a series of odd jobs, including janitor, door-to-door salesman and machine operation in a lace factory...In 1915 [he secured a job] as a photographer’s assistant...more to his liking... [then became] a theatrical photographer...” And p. 27: In 1917, upon America’s entry into WWI “he enlisted in the photography section of the Signal Corps [performing] aerial photography [and shooting] training films...also edited combat footage...” And: Sternberg and Fleming mentioned.
  12. Canham, 1974 p. 72: “He began work as a factory sweeper, then became a salesman and finally a photographic assistant. The latter job stood him in good stead when he enlisted in the Signal corps in 1917” where he worked as “an assistant in the making of army training films.”
    Barson, 2020: “During World War I he served as an assistant director on training films for the U.S. Army.”
    Whiteley, 2020: Milestone “received a thorough grounding in all aspects of filmmaking [with the Signal Corps], which would prove invaluable in the years to come.”
  13. Millichap, 1981 p. 27-28: Upon discharge from the Army in 1919 “Milestone became a [US] citizen and changed his name [from Milstein to Milestone] at the suggestion of the [immigration] judge…” And: “Jesse D. Hampton, an independent film producer...Milestone asked for a job in [Hollywood] movies; the only thing available was assistant editor…”
  14. Canham, 1974 p. 72: “...he left the army in 1919 and headed for Hollywood, where he found employment as a cutter with Jesse Hampton” a former army comrade, now ‘independent producer.’..”
  15. Millichap, 1981 p. 28: An unpublished interview with Mark Lambert, see Millichap footnote. And: See p. 28 for comparison to 1913 arrival in America.
    Silver, 2010: Silver describes Milestone as “émigré, not “immigrant”
    Koszarski, 1976 p. 317: “...Milestone was a Russian émigré...”
  16. Strago, 2017: “Like most great pioneer filmmakers, Milestone led an adventurous life before he hit the soundstage.”
  17. Millichap, 1981 p. 28: For Hampton he performed “a multitude of off jobs...sweeping floors and running errands...editing work consisted merely of splicing films...[but] “personal contacts would prove valuable in his steady advancement...became King’s general assistant” in 1920
  18. Canham, 1974 p. 72: Began work as “a cutter”...And: “...promoted to the role of general assistant” for Henry King.
  19. Barson, 2020: “He launched his Hollywood career in 1920, working for Henry King.”
  20. Millichap, 1981 p. 28
  21. Canham, 1974 p. 72:. “For the next six years [1921-1926] Milestone took on jobs in any capacity available: he assisted William A. Seiter, wrote scenarios and treatments and did some editing...”
  22. Millichap, 1981 p. 28-29: “Warners often lent out the young editor to other studios at several times his salary...”
  23. Robinson, 1970 p. 141-142: “...After varied work in Hollywood, he emerged as a writer on Alan Crosland’s Bobbed Hair (1925) and a director on Seven Sinners, made later the same year…”
    Barson, 2020: “In 1925 Milestone made his directorial debut with Seven Sinners; he also wrote the screenplay.”
    Millichap, 1981 p. 30: “Milestone offered Warner a story idea he had created himself if he could direct it himself. Warner took the bait...”
    Rhodes, 2020: “Milestone had honed his career in comedies, writing the scripts for The Mad Whirl (1925), The Teaser (1925), and Bobbed Hair (1925), all of which humorously depicted the jazz-crazed youth of the Roaring Twenties.”
  24. Canham, 1974 p. 72: “.. he was given a chance to direct a Marie Prevost vehicle, Seven Sinners (1925).”
  25. Millichap, 1981 p. 30: “Milestone’s career as a director was launched.”
    Strago, 2017: “The New York Times critic called Milestone’s first feature, Seven Sinners (1925), made for Warner Bros., the best recent picture he’d seen at Warner’s flagship theater, but Milestone chafed at studio demands. Happily, Hughes soon formed his own company and, in 1927, the young director went to work for him.”
  26. Millichap, 1981 p. 30-31: “By 1926 [Warners] was paying Milestone $400 a week [but] loaning him out as a film doctor at the rate of $1000 a week and more...Milestone demanded the difference…” and broke his contract when Warners refused.
    Canham, 1974 p. 72-73: “...Warners and Milestone capitalized [on the success of Seven Sinners by finishing a second comedy vehicle two months later...The Caveman (1926)....contemporary reviewers lavished praise on Milestone’s adroit direction, and his ability to switch from sophisticated comedy through slapstick to suspense."
  27. Millichap, 1981 p. 31: Milestone “a rising talent”...and one of “the years graduates of Paramount ‘School of Stars” “...And: “...he quarreled with [Swanson] and left the film...”
    Canham, 1974 p. 73: Critics were less pleased with Milestone’s The New Klondike (1926) “[but] the fact that it was filmed on location in Florida gives some indication of Milestone’s rising status as a director.”
  28. Canham, 1974 p. 73: “He made only one film during 1927, but it proved to be his most important silent work [Two Arabian Knights].” And: “He left Warners after the Prevost pictures, working under several banners over the next few years [among them] the Caddo Company...owned by Howard Hughes...” And: “his first war film...the comical adventures of two American doughboys..." And p. 73-74: Two Arabian Knights “was made to cash in on the popularity of director Raoul Walsh’s What Price Glory (1926), for the relationships between the central characters are identical, and the two films shared one of the writers, James T. O’Donahue. Whereas Walsh’s film won plaudits for an earthy, rugged humor, Milestone’s relied on intelligent acting at the expense of any slapstick comedy, a quality which helped win him the Academy Award for best direction.”
  29. Silver, 2010: “... he had won a “Best Comedy Direction” statuette for Two Arabian Knights (1927), beating out Charles Chaplin’s The Circus.
    Barson, 2020: Barson notes that “In 1930 the comedy and drama categories were merged” by the Academy of Arts and Sciences.
    Millichap, 1981 p. 31-32: “Milestone’s talents were recognized when he signed a four-year contract [with] Caddo...” And p. 32: “...triangle...”
    Koszarski, 1976 p. 317: “...his silent films were hailed for their freshness and vigor...the best of them The Caveman, Two Arabian Knights, The Racket...”
  30. Canham, 1974 p. 74-75: Written by “one of Lubitsch’s favorite writers,... The Garden of Eden was a comedy-drama...written by Hans Kraly, and once more Milestone’s deft direction of players enhanced the often acidic sophistication of his material.”
  31. Millichap, 1981 p. 32: “...Milestone’s visual production obviously recalls the work of Lubitsch...” And: “...impressive production included lavish sets [by] Menzies and excellent camera work by John Arnold.”
  32. Millichap, 1981 p. 32
  33. Robinson, 1970 p. 43: “The most distinguished early gangster films were unquestionably the von Sternberg series (Underworld, The Drag Net, The Docks of New York) and Lewis Milestone’s The Racket. Gangster films were however to reach their notable peak in the next decade.”
    Canham, 1974 p. 75: “Possibly to avoid type-casting as a comedy director, he change pace with his third picture for Hughes, The Racket (1928), a gutty drama of gang-war and political corruption...”
    Millichap, 1981 p. 32: “The Racket...influenced by Josef von Sternberg’s Underworld (1927)...”
    Cady, 2004 TCM: “The Racket (1928) was one of the movies that started the cycle of gangster pictures that would lead to Little Caesar (1931), The Public Enemy (1931) and Scarface (1932).”
  34. Canham, 1974 p. 75: Reception was “marred by a release date among a plethora of similar gangster films of variable quality.”
    Millichap, 1981 p. 34: Best Picture nomination.
  35. Millichap, 1981 p. 34-35: Millichap notes that “for some reason” Milestone was credited for the film. And: Tin Pan Alley “justly forgotten.”
  36. Millichap, 1981 p. 35
  37. Canham, 1974 p. 75: Milestone’s “first talkie, New York Lights (1929)...a highly dramatic gangster film, scripted by Jules Furthman and photographed by Ray June, but it gave little indication of Milestone’s ability in adapting to sound techniques.”
  38. Millichap, 1981 p. 38: “generally regarded as...his masterpiece...in terms of both subject and style.” And: p. 53: “...remains Lewis Milestone’s most important film.”
    Baxter, 1970 p. 132-133: “All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) is still one of the most eloquent of anti-war documents...one of the acknowledged classics of the American cinema.”
    Thomson, 2015: “It is still one of the best films about the Great War.”
  39. Millichap, 1981 p. 38: “the director had his first chance to translate a powerful literary statement into cinematic language...perhaps the best war film ever made.” And: Editor’s Forward: Milestone: “Throughout my career I’ve tried, not so much to express a philosophy, as to restate in filmic terms...my agreement with the author of a story I like is trying to say.” And from Preface: “...like William Wyler, a cinematic interpreter of literary texts.”
  40. Thomson, 2015: “The novel sold 2.5 million copies in twenty-two languages...it was purchased for pictures by Carl Laemmle Jr., head of production at Universal and son of the studio’s founder.”
    Silver, 2010: “On top of the worldwide success of Remarque’s novel, the film made lots of money.”
  41. Strago, 2017
  42. Koszarski, 1983: “It was a standing joke in Hollywood that Laemmle’s studio was staffed with personal relatives and lansmen...as a German speaking émigré himself, Erich von Stroheim was able to play directly to Laemmle’s sentimental attachments [to his German roots]”.
  43. Thomson, 2015: “For English and American audiences (it was banned for years in France), a part of the novelty in All Quiet is watching ‘enemy’ soldiers and realizing they are just like our own.”
    Millichap, 1981 p. 38: quoting Milestone, from an interview with Charles Higham and Joel Greenberg, See footnotes. And p. 39: “terse, tough” is Millichap’s appraisal. And: “the horrors...of the trenches...”
    Canham, 1974 p. 80: “...the script wisely chose to concentrate upon the effects of war on individual characters, instead of making wordy statements about the nature of war.”
  44. Canham, 1974 p. 78: “shot on location at the Irving Ranch...almost unique in the they were largely shot in sequence.” (italics in original)
    Thomson, 2015: “Except that All Quiet on the Western Front was shot with two cameras, one for a sound film, and the other for a film that has music and sound effects, but no dialogue.”
  45. Canham, 1974 p. 81: “Above all it was the technique of Milestone’s film that rightly led to his fame [overcoming] the problems of adapting photographic needs to the demands of [early] sound recordings.” And: “...crane shots of soldiers being mowed down as they try to cross a field...” And:“...above all it was the technique of Milestone’s film that rightly led to his fame. The [camera] movement became the message at a time when talkies were reputed to be static and stage bound because of the problems of adapting photograph needs to the demands of sound recording” suggesting that the limitation of early sound technology “may have been exaggerated by early sound historians and that “certainly Milestone’s work is one those exceptions.”
  46. Millichap, 1981 p. 37-38: “...Milestone was able to combine the Realism of sound in both dialogue and effects with the [[German Expressionism|Expressionistic visual techniques he had learned as a silent editor and director.” (Capitalization of keywords in original) And: see these pages for Milestone quotations.
  47. Thomson, 2015: “The film was a triumph and you feel its sophisticated vision...with a feeling for depth and striking compositions that were new in 1930. Milestone became famous for aerial tracking shots of troops crossing no man’s land...”
  48. Silver, 2010: “In addition to Milestone’s directing Oscar, it won for Best Picture was nominated for screenplay and cinematography.
  49. Millichap, 1981 p. 38
    Thomson, 2015: “The film was a triumph...as much of a sensation as the novel...audiences came in huge numbers. All Quiet took an Academy Award for best picture and Milestone won for director. It is still one of the best films about the Great War,”
    Whitely, 2020: “This magnificent movie remains a powerful indictment of war. It was adapted from the novel by Erich Maria Remarque, and won Academy Awards for Best Picture and Best Director for Milestone, and received a special commendation from the Nobel Peace Prize committee.”
  50. Canham, 1974 p. 82:”The high quality of Milestone’s directorial abilities [after All Quiet on the Western Front] had opened up a broad spectrum of opportunity for him, but the pitfalls of fame and the studio system were not to be forgotten.”
  51. Canham, 1974 p. 82: “Probably the most famous of all newspaper dramas...backed by sparkling dialogue [and] hard, fast, and ruthless pace...Milestone’s control of dialogue and performances set a new “house standard” at Warner Brothers [and] sparked off a cycle of newspaper films,,,”
    Wood, 2003: “The definitive fever-pitch newspaper comedy, [the] 1928 play The Front Page is a cornerstone of the screwball [film] genre."
    Strago, 2017: Hughes and Milestone “stuck close to the original play... a trendsetter when it first hit the screen in 1931. It became famous, sometimes infamous, for its frankness about sleazy backroom politics and reckless, sensationalist newspapers...it made rapid-fire, overlapping dialogue fashionable.”
  52. Millichap, 1981 p. 60: “The success of The Front Page created a spate of newspaper films, so that the type became almost a genre during the 1930s.” And p. 54: “Milestone’s The Front Page remains the finest film, the best artistic success of the three.” And p. 53: On Hawks’ and Wilder’s remakes
    Wood, 2003: “...serving as the foundation for several big-screen classics...innumerable imitations that followed in its wake, transforming the fast-talking, conniving reporter into a bona fide cinematic icon.”
  53. Millichap, 1981 p. 53: “...Hughes considered Cagney ‘a little runt’ while Gable’s ears reminded him “of a taxi-cab with both doors open’...” And: O’Brien’s film debut. And: “Casting became the major production difficulty in the Milestone filming of The Front Page…[leading man] Pat O’Brien was too clean-cut and sincere [for the part of] Hildy Johnson, but his antagonist, the ruthless editor Walter Burns, was toned down considerably by the dapper Adolph Menjou, who had played only sophisticated ladies men…”
  54. Millichap, 1981 Composite quote form pp. 53, 55 and 60. Note: capitalized words in the original.
  55. Strago, 2017: Milestone “maintains a cinematic style even when the setups are utterly theatrical.”
  56. Baxter, 1970 p. P. 133: “Howard Hawk’s remake His Girl Friday (1940) succeeded far better because of his skill with fast conversation and the Hawks-invented idea of making the reporter character a woman Rosalind Russell
  57. Canham, 1974 p. 82: “The visual signature of [Milestone’s] long tracking shots is there at the opening, with a stunning track through the newspaper machine room…”
  58. Strago, 2017: Milestone “achieves some spectacular effects, like the camera traveling with Molly as she confronts a row of reporters—it’s as if she were a prisoner facing down a firing line [and] when Milestone takes you on a tour of the Morning Post, the camera follows Menjou’s Burns as he strides through the printing plant, with the heavy machinery of a thriving industry rumbling behind him.”
  59. Millichap, 1981 p. 54: Milestone “at the height of his creative powers with The Front Page. And p. 60: Section on Rain (1932), listed as top director with Film Daily.
    Strago, 2017: The Front Page “augmented Lewis Milestone’s stature as a director and Howard Hughes’s as a producer.”
    Strago, 2017: “...Dwight Macdonald said it was ‘widely considered to be the best movie of 1931’...”
    Koszarski, 1976 p. 317: “...his most important films were from the early talkie period,     All Quiet on the Western Front and The Front Page...”
  60. Baxter, 1970 p. 48-49: “...Frank Borzage, Lewis Milestone and King Vidor [had attempted to creat with DeMille] an independent production group called The Director’s Guild...”
  61. Millichap, 1981 p. 60: “Milestone [sought] to form a small independent production unit under the creative control of the directors themselves.”
    Durgnat and Simmon 1988 p. 172-173: “The colleagues most actively committed to the plan [The Screen Directors Guild] were Lewis Milestone and director Gregory La Cava...” And: Milestone “among its founding members...” And other directors who favored a guild were Herbert Biberman and Henry King.
    Whitely, 2020: “Milestone was a founding member of the Directors Guild and was one of the few major directors of the Golden Age to work as a freelance, refusing every opportunity to sign long-term contracts with the big studios.”
  62. Canham, 1974 p. 85: “...the strong European influence at Paramount was on the wane, a factor that might be very relevant in accessing Milestone’s apparent decline in the mid-Thirties.”
  63. Canham, 1974 p. 82: “The high quality of Milestone’s directorial abilities opened up a broad spectrum of opportunity to him, but the pitfalls of fame and the studio system were not to be forgotten.”
  64. Millichap, 1981 Preface: “When Milestone combined strong literary matter with his cinematic style, the result was memorable cinema. When stuck with a weak literary vehicle, an indifferent production team, or studio miscasting, he often produced mediocre results. “
    Koszarski, 1976 p. 317: “...by the late 30s the innovative flair that had marked his earlier work had dampened...”
  65. Baxter, 1971 p. 135: Regarding Paramount finances, bankruptcy.
  66. Millichap, 1981 p. 62: Dramatists John Colton and Clemence Randolph, with Maugham’s blessing, mounted a stage production of the work in 1922, entitled Rain, that ran for three years with Jeanne Eagels in the lead role. The play was revived in 1935 with Tallulah Bankhead. A silent film adaption appeared in 1928, directed by Raoul Walsh starring Gloria Swanson and Lionel Barrymore. A 1944 musical version was staged with June Havoc in 1944, and Rita Hayworth starred in the 1953 film adaption Miss Sadie Thompson.
  67. Canham, 1974 p. 83
  68. Millichap, 1981 p. 63: “Crawford’s “performance in Rain, like the film, has been generally panned, and almost every comment on the film insists she was miscast...[v]eiwed today, Crawford’s interpretation generates considerable power…it seems hard to discover a screen actress who could have done better with the role.”
  69. Miller, 2007: Crawford: “I don't understand to this day how I could have given such an unpardonable bad performance. All my fault, too -- Milestone's direction was so feeble I took the bull by the horns and did my own Sadie Thompson. I was wrong every scene of the way."
  70. Miller, 2007: “Although the Rev. Davidson was made a reformer rather than a missionary and references to his sexless marriage were dropped, it was still quite clear that he raped her and then committed suicide.”
    Canham, 1974 p. 84: “...subjects involving the Church had to be handled with kid gloves” even in the Pre-Code period.
    Millichap, 1981 p. 63: Huston’s “characterization of the maniacal missionary Davidson has also received scant approval.” And p. 67: On the rape of Thompson.
  71. Canham, 1974 p. 84: “The resulting film was slow and stage-bound, enlivened only by the fervor of Walter Houston’s bigot.”
  72. Baxter, 1970 p. 133: Rain (1932) with Joan Crawford as Sadie Thomson and Walter Houston as the minister, was stiff and stagey.”
  73. Canham, 1974 p. 84: “Milestone was definitely courting fate when he took the material completely seriously since the language had to be toned down considerably” whereas as a silent film treatment could eliminate explicit verbal passages through “visual suggestion...but the talkies had to talk.”
  74. Arnold, 2009 TCM: “Al Jolson vanished from movie screens for nearly three years. When he finally did reappear, it was in perhaps the most offbeat and innovative film of his career...it proved to be the biggest nail in his professional coffin. Hollywood producers no longer considered him a star of the first magnitude.”
  75. Millchap, 1981 p. 69: Milestone engaged Rogers and Hart “to liven the script through the device of rhythmic dialogue” which they had used to good effect in Rouben Mamoulian’s Love Me Tonight (1932). (Milestone specifically denies the influence of Mamoulian Lubitsch” on his 1933 film.
  76. Millichap, 1981 p. 69: “...the public chose not to be diverted.” And p. 70: “sing-song fashion” in delivery. And: “The 1930s seemed a strange time to be sentimentalizing tramps...” Also see p. 77: “...the film’s ambiguity about economic issues...shattered any artistic unity Milestone might have created...”
    Arnold, 2009 TCM: “he songwriters not only penned several new songs...but they wrote sections of rhythmic, rhyming dialogue - much as they had for their recent pictures Love Me Tonight (1932) and The Phantom President (1932). This is where much of the film's innovative effect lies.”
  77. Baxter, 1970 p. 133: “...an attempt at a socially conscious Depression [era] musical...seemed like half-baked Rouben Mamoulian.”
    Canham, 1974 p. 84-85: Milestone “struck out again [after Rain] with Hallelujah, I’m a Bum...at this point in his career, Milestone seemed to be faltering...”
    Arnold, 2009: “...on Feb. 8, 1933, the picture finally opened in New York City. Most of the reviews were poor...”
    Millichap, 1981 p. 69:”...only interesting as a rather bizarre failure.” And p. 77: “Hallelujah, I’m a Bum is not so much as bad film as it is a strange one.” And p. 79: “After completing Hallelujah, I’m a Bum, Milestone began work late in 1933 on a more serious project...”
  78. Millichap, 1981 p. 79
  79. Canham, 1974 p. 85
  80. Millichap, 1981 p. 82
  81. Millichap, 1981 p. 79-80: “...promised 50% of the profits...”
  82. Millichap, 1981 p. 79-80: See p. 80 for use of alcohol by the cast on set. And: “...in all the film has a sort of improvised air...” And: “...ill feelings...” between Milestone and Cohen.
    Canham, 1974 p. 85: “...a ship-board fairy tale starring John Gilbert and Victor McLaglen, The Captain Hates the Sea ended Gilbert’s career…”
    Baxter, 1970 p. 133-134: “...the last picture of a declining John Gilbert, ulcer-ridden and alcoholic, lurching through his last screen appearance.”
  83. Steffen, 2010 TCM: “It didn't help that the cast was full of legendary drinkers, ...According to Milestone, at one point Cohn wired him: HURRY UP. THE COSTS ARE STAGGERING. To which Milestone wired back: SO IS THE CAST.” (Capitals in original)
  84. Millichap, 1981 p. 81: “His first two efforts [in sound] for Paramount were musical Programmers...might have shot by almost anyone in the studio.” And p. 82: “...his only work in the genre...”
  85. Canham, 1974 p. 110: Filmograph section: “...designed to boost the careers of the two leads; Carminati had just made a similar, highly successful film with Grace Moore, and Mary Ellis was being launched as Paramount’s answer to Moore.”
  86. Millichap, 1981 p. 81: “Paramount was using Mary Ellis...in the same type of role” as Grace Moore.
  87. Millichap, 1981 p. 81: “the proceedings are pretty even Milestone’s tries to liven things up with some fancy camera work.” And: Dreier creates “a reasonable facsimile of Paris...”
  88. Baxter, 1970 p. 134: “Paris in Spring and Anything Goes were innocuous…”
  89. Canham, 1974 p. 85: “Paris in Spring ...did little for Milestone…”
  90. Canham, 1974 p. 85: “...Anything Goes...did little for Milestone...”
  91. Baxter, 1970 p. 134: “Paris in Spring and Anything Goes were innocuous...”
    Millichap, 1981 p. 82: “It seems that Milestone has little feel for the musical genre...[Anything Goes] might have been created by any studio workhorse.”
  92. Millichap, 1981 p. 82
  93. Baxter, 1970 p. 134: Paris in Spring (1935) and Anything Goes (1936) were innocuous, but then, late in 1936, Milestone gave a film which, for style and content, is one of the Thirties undoubted masterpieces.” And: “Milestone considered the film of little consequence, having adapted it from a pulp magazine story to keep himself occupied between pictures.”
    Canham, 1974 p. 85: “...The General Died at Dawn displayed a marked return to form, and heralded a European revival continued by Lubitsch and Billy Wilder”
  94. Millichap, 1981 p. 83-84: His three previous films “insignificant” And: Josef von Sternberg “an old friend…[Milestone] might have been influenced in [his] choice of materials and...styles of handling them...”
    Canham, 1974 p. 86: “It was a stylized drama, visually as well as thematically reminiscent of Josef von Sternberg’s The Shanghai Express (1932).”
  95. Millichap, 1981 p. 82-83: Millichap refers to Odets as “Leftist” And: the film’s “pulpy background” source
  96. Baxter, 1970 p. 134: Baxter provides a detailed description of the opening Cooper/O’Hara sketch.
  97. Millichap, 1981 p. 82: “...the film holds up well both as entertainment and art…”
  98. Baxter, 1970 p. 134-135: Carroll’s Judy Perrie characterization is “perfectly realized...”
    Canham, 1974 p. 87: “...the skill of the script...and the acting itself combine to lift it out of the mainstream of adventure pictures that used the inscrutable Orient as a backdrop…” And p. 86: “The effortless ease with which [Milestone] sketches the Gary Cooper character...” And p. 87: “The biggest impact is in Madeline Carroll’s portrayal of Judy Perrie as a frightened lost girl...”
  99. Canham, 1974 p. 87: “...bravura camera techniques such as split screen images or a dissolve match cut from a billiard ball to a white door knob…”
    Millichap, 1981 p. 83: “The General Died at Dawn remains bravura effort of split screens and match dissolves, almost a compendium of things a camera could do to tell a story.” And p. 87: See here for description of “billiard ball” match cut.
  100. Baxter, 1970 p. 134-135: “Milestone engineers one the most...expert match shots on record, dissolving from a billiard ball to a round white door knob, which then turns to take us into the bar next door. And: “In terms of cinematic invention, The General Died at Dawn is a fascinating technical exercise [and] shows the breadth of that technique.” And: On a 4-way split screen. And: “The [film’s] finale.. is a bravura piece of direction...”
  101. Baxter, 1970 p. 134: “...for style and content, one of the Thirties’ undoubted masterpieces.” And p. 135: “The finale, with Victor Milner’s camera tracking sinuously through the Hans Dreier and Ernst Fegte Chinese junk sets, is a bravura piece of direction, a fitting finale to this, Milestone’s most exquisite and exciting if not most meaningful examination of social friction in a human context.” And p. 134: “Milestone considered the film of little consequence…”And p. 136: See here for final quote “human context.”
  102. Millichap, 1981 p. 82: Millichap considers Baxter’s “masterpiece” designation “somewhat lavish” but he agrees that “the film holds up very well both as entertainment and art.
    Canham, 1974 p. 87: “The first symphonic musical score composed for a film by Werner Janssen...”
  103. Millichap, 181 p. 92: “...three-year hiatus...at the height of his career.”
  104. Canham, 1974 p. 87-88: “The success of The General Died at Dawn should have revitalized Milestone’s career; instead he found himself involved in a series of unfulfilled projects that kept his work off the screen for three years…”
  105. Canham, 1974 p. 88: Censorship prevented [Milestone] from filming Vincent Sheean’s Personal History (1935) for Walter Wanger...” And p. 88: “Sam Goldwyn commissioned [Milestone] and Clifford Odets to write a screenplay for Dead End, but then turned the project over the William Wyler...”
  106. Millichap, 1981: from Preface: “...like William Wyler, a cinematic interpreter of literary texts.”
  107. Canham, 1974 p. 88: “...the film is very infrequently shown today, and was merely a stand-by piece that Milestone filmed solely to keep working.”
  108. Millichap, 1981 p. “Hans Dreier’s sets are the best feature of the film.”
  109. Canham, 1974 p. 88: “...in 1938 Hal Roach asked him to film a project entitled Road Show...after some initial work on the screenplay, Roach shelved the project...then directed it himself…...
    Millichap, 1981 p. 93: Details of Milestone/Roach litigation and resolution.
  110. Criterion Collection, 2014: “Director Lewis Milestone took on the project to fulfill a contractual obligation to producer Hal Roach as part of a lawsuit’s settlement.”
  111. Millichap, 1981 p. 94: Milestone work “almost completely a personal project, a labor of love.” And: “...immediately concluding that the story would make an excellent film.”
    Tatara, 2009 TCM: “...this adaptation of John Steinbeck's grim but strangely humanistic novel is a bit dated in its moralizing...”
    Higham and Greenberg, 1968 p. 77-78: “...the film’s acting is more stylized than naturalistic...this is perfectly in keeping with its essential character as a morality play, a bit contrived perhaps, but nonetheless sincere and affecting.”
  112. Higham and Greenberg, 1968 p. 75: “Although belonging technically to the succeeding decade [1940s], films like...Of Mice and Men were really Thirties projects, deriving their intellectual and emotional sustenance from the era of the New Deal and the Group Theater (New York City.” And: “...takes place against a background of economic misery...”
  113. Millichap, 1981 p. 95: “...Of Mice and Men...presents a topic that was common in the 1930s- the lives and deaths of little people disoriented and dispossessed by the conditions of the modern world.”
    Canham, 1974 p. 88: Hal Roach insisted upon “a small budget and a rapid shooting schedule...the timing and haste of the project [may have] stemmed from [Roach’s] desire to cash in the on the possible success of John Ford’s The Grapes of Wrath, a film with similar themes...”
  114. Millichap, 1981 p. 94: See here for remarks in quotations.
    Criterion, 2014: “Steinbeck, so often ambivalent to adaptations of his work and having had little to do with the successful adaptation of Of Mice and Men to the stage in 1937 (much to the chagrin of play’s producer), approved of Milestone’s film most of all.”
  115. Millichap, 1981 p. 97: “...perhaps the first use of this now common [prologue] device…”
  116. Millichap, 1981 p. 96: “Milestone’s film version Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men in its anti-omniscient viewpoint...increasing the complexity and the ambiguity of the work because of the lack of editorial judgement.” And p. 104: “...Milestone’s version Of Mice and Men [is] as powerful as Steinbeck’s...one which demonstrates the convergence of realistic fictional and cinematic styles.”
  117. Millichap, 1981 p. 94: As such, Milestone “conferred carefully on image motifs” with art director Nicolai Remisoff, and cameraman Norbert Brodine] competently filmed the piece...and Milestone “was much concerned with sound motifs” enlisting Aaron Copland to do the musical score.”
  118. Canham, 1974 p. 89-90
  119. Criterion, 2014: “...Lewis Milestone’s Of Mice and Men (1939) was a critical success and the film garnered four Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Sound Recording (Elmer A. Raguse), Best Musical Score (Aaron Copland), and Best Original Score (Aaron Copland).
  120. Canham, 1974 p. 88: Roach insisted on “a small budget and a rapid shooting schedule...” And p. 89: “...the stylized acting (in this] morality play)...was well-served by the...talents of Lon Chaney, Jr. in his only major roles in an “A” film...”
  121. Millichap, 1981 p. 94: “...Milestone cast very carefully...Lon Chaney, Jr. played Lennie in a Los Angeles production of the play, and the film offered this ill-used actor a chance to escape monster roles...the supporting cast...are uniformly excellent.”
    Tatara, 2009 TCM: “Milestone saw something in [Burgess Meredith and Lon Chaney, Jr.] and both men deliver arguably the best work of their respective careers in the film.”
  122. Criterion, 2014: “...Lewis Milestone’s Of Mice and Men (1939) was a critical success and the film garnered four Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Best Sound Recording (Elmer A. Raguse), Best Musical Score (Aaron Copland), and Best Original Score (Aaron Copland). While this achievement might sound reasonably impressive alone, it’s downright stellar when one considers that the film received these recognition in 1939, Hollywood’s greatest year.”
  123. Tatara, 2009 TCM: “The film's tragic, violent ending is one of the most memorable in all of movie history. Audiences at the time were so troubled by this narrative of slowly-rising defeat, the film failed miserably at the box office. Apparently, it was one thing to read such a thing, but another altogether to watch it unfold onscreen.” And: “...the film failed miserably at the box office.”
    Higham and Greenberg, 1968 p. 77-78: “...George’s (Burgess Merideth) mercy-killing of Lennie (Lon Chaney, Jr.) takes place against a background of economic misery [and] as a morality play, a bit contrived perhaps, but nonetheless sincere and affecting.”
  124. Millichap, 1981 p. 104, quoting a Charles Higham source, see Millichap footnotes.
  125. Millichap, 1981 p. 104: “Milestone’s Hollywood reputation took another upward turn after Of Mice and Men [when] he signed a contract with RKO, where he was given his own production unit.”
    Canham, 1974 p. 90: “A two picture deal with RKO offered Milestone a double comedy package with Ronald Colman as star...”
  126. Canham, 1974 p, 90-91
    Millichap, 1981 p. 104: “In quick succession he ground out two light comedies with the aging Ronald Coleman as the lead.” And: “Either film might have been directed by any dozen of studios regulars...overall they are simply uninspired fare...once again Milestone’s career seemed in the doldrums.”
    Barson, 2020: “...the forgettable comedies Lucky Partners (1940) and My Life with Caroline (1941),..
    Tartara, 2011. TCM: “Milestone was more of a technical innovator than anything else, and never showed much flair for comedy. His movies were hardly light on their feet.”
  127. Millichap, 1981 p. 105: “...My Life With Caroline was released in August 1941. Within a few months America would be at war, and one of the home-front industries would become the production of war movies...Milestone, his reputation for All Quiet on the Western Front [and he would] enter another career cycle...”
  128. Silver, 2010: “World War II provided the opportunity to rejuvenate the reputation he had established with All Quiet.”
  129. Silver, 2010: Silver quotes Sarris’s observation that in Milestone’s All Quiet on the Western Front “the orgasmic violence of war is celebrated as much as it is condemned.”
    Canham, 1974 p. 104: “All Quiet on the Western Front contains as many scenes of violence as any of his other war films; as Milestone himself said in an interview in Action (July-August 1972): ‘How can you make a pacifist film without showing the violence of war?’”
  130. Higham and Greenberg, 1968 p.96: “Although the U.S. did not officially enter WWII until 1941, Hollywood was well aware of what was happening in Europe...”
    Silver, 2010: “casting a cold eye on warfare...was a problem for Lewis Milestone [in 1930 and All Quiet on the Western Front], and it remains a problem today [for filmmakers].”
    Millichap, 1981 p. 107-108: “...climate of opinion...” And see here for “...the transformation of his attitude toward war…” And: During the Second World War “Milestone’s efforts [during WWII] tend more toward propaganda than art” And re: Hollywood’s and Milestone’s shift to anti-Nazi war films. And: Milestone “a liberal intellectual...viewed the rise of totalitarian Fascism with considerable alarm...after Pearl Harbor... [Milestone] became convinced that armed resistance to Fascism was the only course of action…[and] he placed his art at the service of an [anti-fascist] ideal...”
  131. Millichap, 1981 p. 108-109
    Canham, 1974 p. 91
    Barson, 2020: “...Milestone collaborated with Dutch director Joris Ivens on Our Russian Front (1942), a documentary (narrated by Walter Huston)...”
  132. Silver, 2010: “World War II provided the opportunity to rejuvenate the reputation he had established with All Quiet, but Edge of Darkness, The North Star, The Purple Heart, A Walk in the Sun, Arch of Triumph (another adaptation of a novel by All Quiet author Erich Maria Remarque), and, later, Halls of Montezuma only intermittently tipped the scales in Milestone’s favor.”
  133. Millichap, 1981 p. 30-31
  134. Erickson, 2010. TCM: “Edge of Darkness adopts an entirely different approach to laud the fierce resistance of proud Norwegian patriots. Robert Rossen's unsubtle, humorless screenplay takes every Nazi-imposed hardship in deadly earnest”
  135. Millichap, 1981 p. 109: See footnote, quoted from an interview with Ezra Goodman in Theatre Arts Magazine, February, 1943.
  136. Higham and Greenberg, 1968 p. 104: “...a stereotyped exercise in predictable propaganda.” And see p. 99-100 for description of stereotypes and scenarios typical of Hollywood propaganda.
    Millchap, 1981 p. 109: “...severe limitations imposed by the propagandist weight of [the film’s] message.”
  137. Higham and Greenberg, 1968 p. 104
  138. Higham and Greenberg, 1968 p. 104
    Erickson, 2010. TCM: “The intent of Edge of Darkness is to shock the audience with oppressive Nazi measures...Stoic solidarity is the only response; as the screenplay emphasizes the need for a communal vengeance.” And: ‘“The revolt of the townspeople is very much a fantasy.”
    Millichap, 1981 p. 109
    Canham, 1974 p. 91: The film uses “a formula of the Hollywood propaganda movie…’
  139. Higham and Greenberg, 1968 p. 100: “...Bronx accented [European] patriots...’p. 104: “...the too frequent casting of Americans as Europeans...”
    Millichap, 1981 p. 109: Milestone described the cast as “extremely mixed.” And p. 110: Millichap reports “...difficulties of characterization and casting...” And; Other than Walter Huston “the rest of the cast is eminently forgettable...” And: “severe personal problems” that plagued cast members. And: “New York accents
    Erickson, 2010 TCM: “The movie would probably have been better without any recognizable stars.
    Millichap, 1981 p. 115: “...weighed down by its single-minded theme...”
  140. Millichap, 1981 p. 111-112: Overall “...Milestone does only a competent job in terms of cinematic style [with] an undistinguished realist style...few extreme effects are attempted [and] seems more motivated by a failure of creativity than a commitment to realism.”
  141. Erickson, 2010. TCM: “Director Lewis Milestone keeps his camera moving, over-using the signature fast-tracking shot he introduced to startling effect in his classic All Quiet on the Western Front. Shot after shot rakes across lines of charging patriots, turning the camera into a machine gun. Cameraman Sid Hickox frequently employs a zoom lens, a gadget that didn't see much use until the 1960s. The technically slick movie employs plenty of unconvincing but dramatic miniatures.”
    Millichap, 1981 p. 113: See here for description of the scene.”...unfortunately, the rest of the movie falls off from this high point...”
  142. Canham, 1974 p. 91
  143. "Preserved Projects". Academy Film Archive.

References

Bibliography

  • Genovés, Fernando R. (2013), Mervyn LeRoy y Lewis Milestone. Cine de variedades vs. de trinchera, Amazon-Kindle. ISBN 978-84-616-7452-7
  • Harlow Robinson (2019), Lewis Milestone :Life and Films,The University Press of Kentucky ISBN 9780813178332
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