LA TIMES review of Otto Preminger biography

'Otto Preminger' by Foster Hirsch

A portrait of the fiery Polish-born director and an assessment of his
cinematic legacy.
By Liz Brown
October 14, 2007
Otto Preminger

The Man Who Would Be King

Foster Hirsch

Alfred A. Knopf: 572 pp., $35

Otto Preminger was not what you'd call a mild man. The director of
"Laura" (1944), "Anatomy of a Murder" (1959), "The Man With the Golden
Arm" (1955) and "Carmen Jones" (1954) had an effect on others that
was, shall we say, palpable. Elaine Barrymore remembers the
forbidding, bald Preminger as "so Germanic that I felt he was more a
nation than a human being." Years after the filmmaker's death in 1986,
a bilious Leon Uris had this to say: "Otto was a terrorist -- he's
Arafat, a Nazi, Saddam Hussein." Perhaps more existentially telling is
Carol Channing's experience of being directed in the "fascinating
train wreck" of "Skidoo" (1968) by a man who made a side career
playing Nazis and "Batman" villain Mr. Freeze: "For me it was like
having a nightmare in which you open your mouth and no sound emerges."

In "Otto Preminger: The Man Who Would Be King," Brooklyn College film
historian Foster Hirsch weaves interviews with industry players and
family members into a straightforward chronology of Preminger's wide-
ranging career. This comprehensive biography of the redoubtable
impresario is the first since Preminger's ghostwritten account in
1977. It begins not in Vienna, where Preminger hinted that he was
born, but in the "depressed backwater" of Wiznitz, Poland. As the book
often demonstrates, circumstance was rarely an obstacle. In 1915, when
Otto was 10, his father, an ambitious lawyer, relocated the family to
Vienna, where he prosecuted insurgents on behalf of the Austro-
Hungarian Empire -- a formidable rise, considering that he was a Jew
who refused to convert to Catholicism.

As his father navigated the legal system, so Otto moved through the
Viennese theater world, first as a 17-year-old protege of Max
Reinhardt and later as a director. In 1935, facing rising anti-
Semitism, the wunderkind did not so much flee as saunter out of the
country, accepting an offer to direct on Broadway. This coincided with
an invitation from Joseph Schenk, head of 20th Century Fox, to come to
Hollywood. After shouting back at Fox Vice President Darryl F. Zanuck,
Preminger was essentially banned from the film industry. He took
refuge directing on Broadway, returning to Hollywood when Zanuck
enlisted during World War II and rapidly ascending through the studio
system. As Hirsch notes, not only was Preminger known for finishing
productions on time and under budget but he also was "temperamentally
suited to the highly regularized approach of the so-called classical
Hollywood style, defined by objective, centered compositions,
'invisible' continuity editing, and unobtrusive camera work."

Hirsch does not position Preminger as "an artistic renegade determined
to dismantle the system's visual codes," but he takes the director's
films seriously, offering cogent analyses not only of the classics but
also of the underrated (1979's "The Human Factor") and the unratable
(1975's "Rosebud"). Unlike Ernst Lubitsch, his next-door neighbor in
Bel-Air, Preminger had no eponymous "touch." Film scholars do not talk
about "Premingerian" suspense. Preminger, Hirsch writes, "was immune
to theory," and Method acting was beside the point. "His comments,"
says actor John Martello,"were about blocking, not about acting values
or theme or character." Keir Dullea, the object of Preminger's abuse
during the filming of "Bunny Lake Is Missing" (1965), says: "Nobody
ever gave the performance of his career in a Preminger film."

Dullea was hardly the director's only target. Preminger bullied Jean
Seberg, Dorothy Dandridge and Marilyn Monroe, as well as his crew. On
the set of "Angel Face" (1952), he insisted that Robert Mitchum
actually slap Jean Simmons. After repeated takes, Mitchum turned and
smacked Preminger. Usually the director is described as purple-faced,
although his son Erik, product of a one-night stand with Gypsy Rose
Lee, recalls him in one outburst as "bright red." But for each such
anecdote there's a counterexample of his generosity and courtliness --
such as his patience with Kim Novak (on the set of "The Man With the
Golden Arm"), of whom he said, "She'd been treated like a nincompoop,
but she's really quite shrewd." When Liza Minnelli was rushed to the
hospital with a kidney-stone attack during filming of "Tell Me That
You Love Me, Junie Moon" (1970), Preminger went with her. A notorious
womanizer, he wed three times, the last time to costume designer Hope
Bryce, who outlived him. He is depicted repeatedly as a loving family
man.

Preminger, who so often deployed his power against individuals, did so
against the institution of Hollywood as well; the resulting legacy is
profound. In 1953, he defied the Production Code Administration,
premiering "The Moon Is Blue" despite its having been condemned by the
Legion of Decency and denied a Code seal. He was the first independent
producer-director to emerge from the collapsing studio system and the
first to break the blacklist, crediting writer Dalton Trumbo on
"Exodus" (1960).

If there is a signature Preminger genre, it may be the well-crafted
legal melodrama. As his father had commanded crowd-drawing trials in
Vienna, so Preminger exuded an autocratic style that adroitly
marshaled large ensemble casts in such procedurals as "Anatomy of a
Murder" and "Advise & Consent" (1962). Hirsch's treatment, based on
myriad interviews, might have suited him. "Otto Preminger" approaches
oral history; it's a smart tactic for a subject "who hardly wrote a
letter in his life."

What ultimately emerges from the many voices and extensive quotes in
this book is not so much a portrait of the man as of his reflection
flickering in the eyes of the people who loved and feared him.
Preminger's widow, moving in her devotion, attempts so often to evoke
her husband's tenderness that the book at times seems an exercise in
posthumous reconciliation. "Otto thought Keir was terrific" in "Bunny
Lake Is Missing," she says of Dullea -- to which the actor responds,
"Why didn't he ever tell me?" *

Liz Brown's reviews have appeared in Bookforum, Newsday, the New York
Times Book Review and other publications.

On Oct 15, 3:54 pm, Manfred Polak <ma... RemoveThis @gmx.com> wrote:
> Richard Carnahan wrote:
> >'Otto Preminger' by Foster Hirsch
>
> >A portrait of the fiery Polish-born director and an assessment of his
> >cinematic legacy.
> >By Liz Brown
>
> Polish-born? Preminger was Austrian, of course. His native language
> was German.
>
> >It begins not in Vienna, where Preminger hinted that he was
> >born, but in the "depressed backwater" of Wiznitz, Poland.
>
> Wiznitz was in Austria-Hungary then, and it's in Ukraine now. Either
> Foster Hirsch or Liz Brown should take some geography lessons.
>
> Manfred



Half way through the premiere of the very lengthy _EXODUS_ a Jewish
comedian went up to Preminger and said "Otto. Will you please let my
people go?"

Forgotten who it was.

Dave in Toronto