GLOSSARY ITEMS: Shakespeare in Hollywood

Pg. 1: Grauman’s Chinese Theater

Known for its prestigious history, elaborate architecture, and the footprints and hand prints of various celebrities on its sidewalk, the theater operates as a regular cinema and has since 1927. The theater was built by Sid Grauman with architect Raymond Kennedy, and is modeled after a Chinese pagoda. The decoration on the interior also features Asian motifs—a Chinese chandelier, dragons, and various statues and friezes. The auditorium seats 2,200 and has four opera boxes for celebrities and other VIP's. The name of the theater was changed in the 1970s to the Mann Chinese Theater, when Ted Mann purchased it, but was changed back to the original name when it was purchased by Warner Brothers and Paramount. It hosted many movie premieres, and was home to the Academy Awards in the 1940s.

Louella Parsons

In 1914, Louella Parsons wrote the first movie gossip column in the United States for the Chicago Record-Herald. Ahead of her time, Parsons lost that job, moved to New York to write a similar column, and was soon working for the William Randolph Hearst paper New York American. She moved to Los Angeles in 1925 and began writing for the Los Angeles Examiner, another Hearst paper. She gained quick success, and her column ran in over 600 newspapers across the country, with a readership of over twenty million people. She also hosted radio programs promoting stars and their upcoming projects. By 1935, Parsons had become an enormous influence in Hollywood, with an uncanny ability to scoop other columnists. In 1937, however, struggling actress Hedda Hopper was hired as a gossip columnist for a rival paper, and although Parsons and Hopper had previously been friendly, their new rivalry deteriorated into an all-out feud. Still, Parsons continued writing her column until 1965. She died at the age of 91, and now has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for motion pictures and one for radio.

Dick Powell

At the time he appeared in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Dick Powell was a boyish tenor usually featured in Warner Brothers musicals, often opposite Ruby Keeler. He joined Warner Brothers as a contract actor in 1932, and quickly filmed a number of “backstage” musicals including 42nd Street, Footlight Parade, and Gold Diggers of 1933. He was a true “crooner” of the time, generally playing the part of a handsome, innocent and well-intentioned youth. Just prior to Midsummer, Powell had appeared in Broadway Gondolier, a film about a cab driver (Powell) who dreams of becoming a radio singer. However, Gold Diggers of 1935, a bigger movie, was also released earlier that same year. Frustrated by the monotony of his type-cast roles, Powell was thrilled with non-singing parts like Lysander in Midsummer. As he aged, he managed to broaden his range to include film noir, thrillers and crime films, portraying the tough-guy leads in movies like Murder, My Sweet and Johnny O’Clock. He also became a director and a producer in his later years, and was the head of Four Star Television, before dying of stomach cancer in 1963.

Anita Louise

Born Anita Louise Fremault, Anita began her film career as a child, appearing with Walter Hampden in the Broadway production of Peter Ibbetson, followed by silent films like The Sixth Commandment (1924) and Square Shoulders (1929). She later graduated to wide-eyed innocents and ingenue roles in the early 1930s, before playing her first ‘adult’ role as Marie Antoinette in Madame Du Barry (1934). After Midsummer, she played secondary female leads in a string of films, including The Story of Louis Pasteur, in which she played Pasteur’s daughter, but never become a top ranked star. She joined Columbia in the 1940s (the studio’s head Harry Cohn noted “we get them going up and coming down”), and in the 50s turned to television, starring in My Friend Flicka as Johnny Washbrook’s mother Nell McLaughin.

James Cagney

Raised in Yorkville, New York, Cagney started off his career as a song and dance man in vaudeville and on Broadway, before getting his big break in the Warner Brothers film The Public Enemy (1931), playing gangster Tom Powers. Cagney was instantly launched into stardom, and was featured as a hoodlum in a chain of hugely popular gangster movies. He appeared in over 20 pictures before being cast as Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, a decision critics disagreed on: some believed Cagney completely miscast, while others considered it a surprising but inspired choice. Immediately prior to Midsummer, Cagney had appeared in Frisco Kid, in which he played Bat Morgan, an opportunist who rises to fame and wealth on the Barbary Coast after killing a famous crime lord. Cagney’s appeal was broad. Joan Blondell described him this way: “His hair was a Van Gogh, Renoir, Titian red, with blobs of gold weaving through. His eyes were delft blue, fringed with the longest, thickest lashes I’ve ever seen,” but Darryl Zanuck thought differently: “Women love bums,” he explained. Cagney was not always happy at Warner Brothers; he and Jack Warner constantly fought over work conditions, roles and paychecks. But he stayed with Warners for many years, going on to make many non-gangster films, like Yankee Doodle Dandy in 1942. Cagney was never truly able to shed his “tough guy” image, however. He died of a heart attack at the age of 86.

Max Reinhardt

Max Reinhardt was one of the first major directors in the current sense of the term, and undoubtedly the most famous in the world in 1935. His first great success was a production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Berlin in 1905. This became his favorite play: he called it “an invitation to escape reality, a plea for the glorious release to be found in sheer fantasy" and directed it 29 more times, in 18 cities in Europe and the U.S., in addition to filming it for Warner Brothers. Nicknamed “The Great Magician” for his stagecraft, Reinhardt has been called “perhaps the most versatile director the theatre has seen” for the ease with which he moved between styles of plays and stagings that ranged from the intimate (Ibsen’s Ghosts with a stage design by Edvard Munch) to the epic (Everyman at the Salzburg Festival – which he founded – or Midsummer in the Hollywood Bowl). He had an immense influence on stage and theater design, created the contemporary notion of repertory theater and the idea of theaters housing multiple stages of different sizes and configurations for different styles of plays and productions, and helped create the 20th century standard of Shakespearean production and acting. His Berlin theaters were confiscated by the Nazis after they took power in 1933; he worked in his native Vienna for a year before moving to the U.S. While his film of A Midsummer Night’s Dream is star-studded, it does not compare to the “dream cast” he initially wanted, which included Charlie Chaplin as Bottom, Greta Garbo as Titania, Joan Crawford as Hermia, Fred Astaire as Puck, and (perhaps most enticing to imagine) W.C. Fields playing Flute and, of course, Thisbe.

Pg. 2: “I’m young and healthy, and you’ve got chaaaarm!”: Dick Powell is singing “Young and Healthy” from 42nd Street. Powell was in the film version in 1933, in which he played the role of the male ingenue in the musical being directed by Warner Baxter. In the film, he repeatedly helps the heroine, a newcomer to show business, get through her audition and champions her as a replacement when the star breaks her ankle the night before the show opens.

Pg. 3: Jack Warner and Warner Brothers Pictures

The Warner Brothers story begins in 1903, when Sam, Jack and Rose Warner, using a moving picture projector Sam bought off of his old employer, first showed moving picture entertainments between the acts of traveling shows in New Castle, Pennsylvania. Children of impoverished parents, the Warner siblings tried numerous stints to help support the family, but nothing suited them like moving pictures. During these early motion picture showings, gaps between pictures were often filled by Jack, singing and dancing in his young soprano voice, under the name Leon Zuardo. Sometimes the siblings used Jack’s less-than-stunning act to clear out the house between shows. Brothers Sam, Jack, Albert and Harry moved on from Pennsylvania, gradually claiming their place as legitimate Hollywood producers. With the help of dog turned pop-culture icon Rin-Tin-Tin, by the mid-1920s Warner Brothers had became one of the major, but still second tier, Hollywood movie studios.

What really launched Warners, and established its place alongside Paramount and Metro Goldwyn Mayer (MGM), was the talking picture. Sound was long regarded as a pipe dream by movie makers, but in 1927, Warner Brothers announced the first major talking picture: The Jazz Singer, with Al Jolson. Tragically, Sam Warner, one of the major champions of sound, died the day before the movie's premier. Jack, dominant in the company from the beginning, took an even more authoritative position after Sam’s death, solidifying his reputation as an unrelenting boss. Actors, writers, cameramen, musicians and directors worked long hard days and at least six days a week. Employees and artists were hired and fired almost as quickly as movies were turned out. The success that Vitaphone brought Warner Brothers, along with Jack’s tough but superb management, allowed the company to buy First National studios in 1929.

By the 1930s, Warner Brothers was a major player in Hollywood, with a distinct style both on and off the screen. The studio pushed through the Depression with a furious work ethic, tough management, and brilliant writers, actors and directors. Under the dominant direction of Production Head Darryl Zanuck, and, after 1933, Hal Wallis, Warner Brothers movies were turned out at an astonishing pace. Employees were paid less and worked longer hours, and budgets for movies were relatively small; it was “the only major lot that was run on a quickie lot's budget,” according to Ethan Mordden. Still, the company paid attention to the quality of its films; Warners wasn’t content producing the king of flashy, sensational pictures that other studios were known for. Its movies were consistently more honest, cynical and intelligent.

Warners specialized in gangster movies. While other studios realized the popularity of the genre and produced them as well, only Warners had the true grit and the city smarts to make first-class movies like Little Caesar and The Public Enemy (both in 1931). James Cagney, who engaged in frequent arguments with Jack Warner over the low pay and long hours typical at Warners, was the foremost star of this genre: a tough, streetwise hoodlum. Like most other studios, Warner Brothers also made musicals. Featuring crooners like Dick Powell and elaborate choreography, often by Busby Berkeley, films like 42nd Street (1933) and Gold Diggers (in three versions: 33, 35 and 37) were some of Warners’ biggest hits of the 30s. Finally, Warners was known for its “prestige pictures”: biographical films, epic adventure stories, and screenplays adapted from literature. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, under accomplished directors Max Reinhardt and William Dieterle, was among the earliest of these prestige pictures, which also included films like the costume adventure Caption Blood (1935) with Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland and The Life of Emile Zola (1937), with Dieterle directing.

Darryl: The producer Darryl Zanuck began his career at Warner Brothers, where he became Head of Production in the late 20s, earning as much as $5,000 per week. He was Jack Warner’s right-hand man in terms of keeping directors within budget, but seems to have been anything but a “yes man,” and had quit Warner’s, in a dispute over salary cuts, in 1933.

Pg. 4: Adolph Zukor at Paramount: (1873-1976) Born in Hungry, Zukor became one of the most important movie moguls of all time. He formed Famous Players Studio in 1912, which then merged with Lasky Feature Play Company to become Famous Players-Lasky Corporation: finally the name Paramount was acquired. Zukor served as President until 1935, at which time he became chairman of the board, and then chairman emeritus, until his death at 103. For some reason, his nickname was "Creeping Jesus."

Pg. 5: Photoplay Magazine

Founded in Chicago in 1911, Photoplay was one of the first film fan magazines and was one of the most popular in the country by the early 1920s. Articles had titles like “Certainly It’s True That a Chorus Girl Learns a lot About Acting,” and

“Ladies in Hades.” Photoplay also gave out awards, first called Medals of Honor and then Gold Medals, which were given out for best movie and favorite stars. (See pictures of Photoplay covers in this packet)

Warner starlets: Among them: Joan Blondell, who made her debut in the 1930 Warners movie Sinner’s Holiday with James Cagney. She was later married to Dick Powell for ten years. Redhead Anne Sheridan played small roles in Paramount movies before signing with Warner Brothers in 1936. Warners’ publicity machine called her the “Oomph” girl. Bette Davis, who regularly fought with Jack Warner, was a major Warners star who played a great variety of roles. Olivia de Haviland, who played Hermia in Midsummer, was cast as the beautiful heroine in such Warners movies as Captain Blood, The Charge of the Light Brigade, and The Adventures of Robinhood. Ann Dvorak played a variety of roles—conventional heroines, ill-fated ladies, dancers—for Warner features in the 1930s. The stoic, throaty-voiced Kay Francis played opposite William Powell in One Way Passage, and was cast as Florence Nightingale in The White Angel. Ruby Keeler was the sweetheart of Warners’ 1930s musicals, often playing opposite Dick Powell in such movies as 42nd Street. Jean Muir, who played Helena in Midsummer, was the leading lady in many 1930s Warner films, including Son of a Sailor with Joe E. Brown and Stars Over Broadway. Barbara Stanwyck was known for her no-nonsense demeanor and played the wronged girl in many 1930s Warner films. Loretta Young was a major Warners star in the early 30s, before leaving the studio for Fox in 1933.