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Sylvia Sidney, one of the few who survived Fury in good humor, came to the director's rescue. The actress had signed an exclusive contract with producer Walter Wanger, who was preparing to star her in a story about a Bonnie-andClyde -like couple fleeing from justice. Sidney was the prime mover in recommending Lang as the film's director. Wanger was something of an anomaly in Hollywood. While many of the ruling elite of the motion picture studios hailed from shtetls and had dropped out of high school, he was Jewish but socially advantaged and Dartmoutheducated . After producing Broadway plays early in his career, Wanger had served as an intelligence officer during World War I and was a member of President Woodrow Wilson's staff at the Paris Peace Conference. Returning to civilian life, he filled successive executive positions at Paramount (where he had supervised the U.S. release of Metropolis), Columbia, and MGM. When talkies came in, Wanger had turned producer, guiding a number of noteworthy films, including the Marx Brothers' debut in The Cocoanuts, the politically explosive Gabriel Over the White House and The President Vanishes, and Rouben Mamoulian's luminous Queen Christina with Greta Garbo. Dapper and charming—"the most elegant and learned of the movie satraps," in Ben Hecht's words—Wanger was widely known for taking chances on films that explored social ills and topical themes. He was a stalwart New Dealer, who wore his bleeding heart on his sleeve. Like Selznick or Goldwyn, the producer functioned best autonomously, outside studio channels. Wanger's strength lay in selecting worthwhile material, handpicking a cast and crew, then molding all the ingredients into an attractive box-office package. Unlike Selznick, Wanger did not hover over his writers and directors. He didn't fire off endless script memos; he was notorious, in fact, for his lack of interest in story conferences (and was "almost completely devoid of story sense," according to Ben Hecht). He concentrated on managing the the financing, budget, post-production, exhibition, and distribution. Wanger had just made an audacious career move, quitting his studio job at Paramount to set up an independent production unit under the distributorship of United Artists. The producer had signed several up-and-coming personalities, including Joan Bennett—younger sister of the more established C H A P T E R 1 2 1936 1938 I 9 3 6 - I 9 3 8 241 actress Constance Bennett—and Henry Fonda, a gangly newcomer attracting attention. And Wanger had also managed to lure away one of Paramount's stars, signing Sylvia Sidney to a contract that gave her desirable loan-out approvals . According to Sidney, the genesis of what became Fritz Lang's next film, You Only Live Once, might have been a chance encounter between her, Wanger , and novelist Theodore Dreiser. The actress and producer were dining out together one night, when the author of Sister Carrie and An American Tragedy stopped by their table. Dreiser mentioned he had been researching the mid1934 Southwest robbery spree of Bonnie and Clyde for a magazine piece he intended to write, and commented that if anyone ever made a film about the two bank robbers, Sidney would be perfect to play the role of Bonnie Parker. As it happened, a Paramount screenwritingteam, Gene Towne and Graham Baker, had written a 1935 Sylvia Sidney vehicle, Mary Burns, Fugitive, which had Bonnie and Clyde overtones. Wanger had produced the film. Now, starting out as an independent, the producer made a point of stealing Towne and Baker away from Paramount to rework their earlier hit shamelessly. Towne and Baker had a reputation as "two of the most colorful screenwriters in Hollywood," in the words of Matthew Bernstein, author of the biography Walter Wanger, Hollywood Independent. They were madcaps known for using toilet paper to post notes on the walls, and working in bizarre costumes , bathing suits, sometimes even brassieres. Their scripts were churned out with astonishing alacrity; one journalist remarked that they made the notoriously speedy Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur "look like snails." Towne had been a title writer and gag man for Mack Sennett; Baker was an ex-reporter and cartoonist for New York newspapers. They met at Warner Brothers sometime in the late 1920s and had been a team ever since. Towne was the "hyperactive idea man," according to Bernstein, while Baker functioned as the "quiet, more dignified sounding board." Their credited pictures ranged wildly, from Ali Baba Goes to Town, a musical...

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