Escape Artist: The Life and Films of John Sturges

5. Columbia Years

5 Columbia Years U nlike the returning soldiers battling survivor’s guilt and posttraumatic stress in William Wyler’s The Best Years of Our Lives, Capt. John Sturges had no trouble slipping back into civilian life. He knew what he wanted; he had had plenty of time in the service to contemplate his next step. In November, he signed with Columbia to direct his first feature. On December 1, in less than twentyfour hours, he collected his discharge papers and married Dorothy Lynn Brooks, a secretary at Warner Bros. who had left her screenwriter husband, Charles Grayson, for the aspiring filmmaker. Following a simple ceremony in Glendale, the couple drove to Death Valley and honeymooned at the Furnace Creek Inn. They rented a bungalow in Laurel Canyon for a couple of years, but after Deborah was born they purchased hillside property in Studio City. Their redwood ranch house, designed by Sturge, opened onto a patio and kidney-shaped pool and blended with the eucalyptus trees. It afforded a panoramic view of the valley. A veranda with mahogany bar, brick barbecue, and poster of Picasso’s Guernica opened onto the pool. John—his back to the wall, gunfighter fashion—often read here as Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd’s Jazz Samba poured from the patio speakers. The couple would become known for their poolside brunches. Sunday guests might include Spencer Tracy, Gene Autry, director Mel Shavelson , and, from across the street, William Roberts, who would be brought in for rewrites on The Magnificent Seven. 36 Sturges, however, was in no mood to relax; there was ground to be made up. In his absence, Robson and Wise had both directed four features and were about to begin their fifth. Sturges had no way of knowing it at the time, but he was fated to play a frustrating game of catchup with his old friends for much of his career: He would do the routine boxing melodrama Right Cross as Robson landed the powerful, Oscar-nominated Champion and Wise the gritty, innovative The Set-Up. Sturges would go against his better judgment and make the indifferently received soap operas A Girl Named Tamiko and By Love Possessed, as his old friends raked in millions with Peyton Place (Robson) and Executive Suite (Wise). Tellingly, the genres in which Sturges bested Robson and Wise were the Western and large-scale war epic. (Robson’s Von Ryan’s Express was little more than The Great Escape in miniature.) Sturges had seen men in combat; they hadn’t. Harry Cohn, Sturges’s famously coarse boss at Columbia, also knew what he wanted. With television threatening Hollywood’s hegemony and ticket sales beginning to reflect the public’s divided allegiance, King Cohn—or “His Crudeness,” as Capra called him—was determined to take his studio up market with pricier star vehicles. The year Sturges reported for work, A Song to Remember and Counter-Attack filled this niche. Such titles were the exceptions, however. The rule: B Westerns, Three Stooges shorts, new installments in the Jungle Jim, Blondie, and Boston Blackie series. These films paid the rent and kept such novice directors as Budd Boetticher and William Castle busy. Now joining their ranks was the slightly older war veteran in the Harold Lloyd horn-rims. Cohn was intrigued by Sturges. He was everything the studio chief wasn’t—patient, soft-spoken, urbane. The big fellow might have a future in the picture business, Cohn told Sam Briskin, who oversaw Columbia’s “B” slate. Even more to Cohn’s liking, “the kid” had yet to receive his first directing credit, which meant an entry-level salary, and Cohn—known for “short-term contracts, tight budgets and limiting directors to one take”—was on the prowl for bargains. He signed Sturges for a rock-bottom $300 a week. In retirement, Sturges was philosophical about this. He had to start somewhere, and the second-tier but scrappy Columbia, like RKO, offered something better than remuneration: on-the-job training and the opportunity for speedy advancement. “This was a time when studios Columbia Years 37 1 were making 30 to 40 pictures each a year,” he recalled. “By attrition, if nothing else, you’re going to wind up getting a crack at directing.” He still had to pay dues, and this meant making the best of the decidedly limited material thrown at him. “Hard to believe they even did...