Walter Wanger, Hollywood Independent

2000
•
Author:

Matthew Bernstein
Foreword by Robert Wise

A portrait of the trailblazing film producer whose career spanned five decades.

Bernstein packs an astonishing amount of solid film history into his lucid chronicle of Wanger’s whirlwind corporate liaisons. A fully realized, A-line biopic of a fascinating life in the movies.

—

Tom Doherty, Film Quarterly

The long, colorful career of Walter Wanger (1894-1968) is one of Hollywood’s greatest untold stories. An intellectual and a socially conscious movie executive who produced provocative message movies and glittering romantic melodramas, Wanger’s career started at Paramount studios in the 1920s and led him to work at virtually every major studio as either a contract producer or an independent. He produced a series of American film classics, including Queen Christina, Stagecoach, Foreign Correspondent, and Invasion of the Body Snatchers, as well as a few notable flops, such as Cleopatra. This comprehensive biography brings to life a distinctive film personality and offers a new appreciation of the role of the producer in the history of American cinema.

Matthew Bernstein teaches film studies at Emory University. He is editor of Controlling Hollywood: Censorship Regulation in the Studio Era (1999) and coeditor (with Gaylyn Studlar) of Visions of the East: Orientalism in Film (1997).

Bernstein packs an astonishing amount of solid film history into his lucid chronicle of Wanger’s whirlwind corporate liaisons. A fully realized, A-line biopic of a fascinating life in the movies.

—

Tom Doherty, Film Quarterly

A thorough and thoughtful biography. Well-written and insightful.

—

Library Journal

Contents

Foreword

Preface

Part One Personal History
1 The Gentleman from the West (1894-1911)
2 The Boy Manager (1911-1914)
3 Finding a Niche (1915-1919)

Part Two The Executive Apprentice

4 Giving the Movies "Class" (1920-1924)
5 Organizational Demands (1924-1931)
6 Too Much Interference (1932-1934)

Part Three Going "Independent"

7 Semi-Independent Production (1934-1936)
8 A Fine and Daring Producer (1936-1938)
9 An Independent in Every Sense of the Word (1938-1939)
10 Having It All (1939-1941)
11 Wanger at War (1941-1945)

IX Contents Part Four Bitter Teas and Reckless Moments, 1945-1952

12 Fritz Lang, Incorporated
13 Susan Hayward, Past and Present
14 The Price of Anglophilia
15 On the Way Down

Part Five Another Comeback: Three Films
16 Riot in Cell Block 11 (1954)
17 Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
18 / Want to Live! (1958)

Part Six Hollywood Merry-Go-Round
19 Arabian Nights (1958-1961)
20 The Kafka Play (1961-1962)
21 The Curse of Cleopatra (1962-1968)

Conclusion
Bibliographic Notes
Filmography
Illustration Credits

Index