Von Sternberg

The Lion Is Loose

The Lion Is Loose Play off everyone against each other so that you have more avenues of action open to you. —Howard Hughes ALTHOUGH EDITING ON Jet Pilot concluded on February 8, 1950, the film sat on the shelf until 1955, when General Teleradio bought RKO, primarily for its film library. The same year, CinemaScope arrived and permanently altered the form of the epic film, and Anthony Mann’s Strategic Air Command unveiled wide-screen flying scenes almost identical to those in Jet Pilot. Stung, Hughes paid Teleradio $12 million to buy back Jet Pilot and another John Wayne epic, The Conqueror. A new team prepared the former for belated release. Up-to-date air footage was added, and the film was reformatted for the wide screen. Supervising editor Jim Wilkinson and three assistants recut some dialogue scenes, and performers were recalled for yet more retakes—those who were still alive. Some, such as Jack Overman and Richard Rober, had died. Hughes also ordered the opening reels spiced up, emphasizing Janet Leigh’s impromptu striptease. Even thermal underwear can be provocative on a body like hers, and its removal, layer by layer, is achieved with erotic expertise—crudely undermined, however, by a sound track of simulated wolf whistles disguised as the noise of jets whizzing overhead. This sequence also incorporates some static close-ups of Leigh’s face in partial shadow. Since these don’t fit the style of the remaining footage, 257 Von Sternberg 258 they may have been salvaged from camera tests. Their irrelevance to the story makes Leigh’s status as a sexual object even more flagrant. French critic Luc Moullet was in no doubt that “Jet Pilot is a film on and for Janet Leigh.”1 More thoughtfully, François Truffaut observed, “It isn’t a likable film and it isn’t inspired by any ideology. . . . Still, amazingly enough, it is a successful, even a beautiful film.” It opened on September 25, 1957, in Los Angeles, followed by a Manhattan premiere at the Palace Theatre on October 4. Making a virtue of necessity, the distributor (Universal) tried to turn the film’s belated emergence into a selling point: “So BIG It Took Years to Make!” After moderate commercial success, it was again withdrawn by Hughes, at an estimated overall loss of $4 million. In 1957 von Sternberg gave up on Broadway and moved back to Los Angeles, driving alone cross-country in his Jaguar while Meri and the children traveled by train. The new owner of the Weehawken house was the Baroness Pannonica Rothschild de Koenigswarter, famous for befriending jazz musicians such as Charlie Mingus, Thelonious Monk, and, in particular, Charlie Parker, who died in her suite at the Stanhope Hotel in 1955. She continued to shelter ailing musicians in Weehawken, and Monk died there some years later. Jazz insiders knew it as “The Cathouse”—not only for their hostess’s liberal sexuality but also for the jazz cats who fetched up there and the felines to whom the baroness also gave a home. At a time when other directors of his age enjoyed active careers, von Sternberg’s languished. Few younger producers knew his work, and those who did were cautious of his reputation as a troublemaker. Hopeful of succeeding as an independent, he optioned a 1951 novel by Shelby Foote called Follow Me Down, which he planned to film as The Temptation of Luther Eustis. Eustis, a respectable, pious Mississippi farmer, retreats to a deserted island with a young girl and, after a three-week idyll, murders her. Foote, better known as a Civil War historian, based his book on a 1941 trial in Greenville, South Carolina. In describing events from the perspective of eight participants, the novel recalled Akira Kurosawa’s 1950 Rashomon, which may have been von Sternberg’s motive for acquiring the option. However, he had no luck finding a backer.2 The Lion Is Loose 259 In 1959 Twentieth Century–Fox planned a remake of The Blue Angel as a vehicle for Marilyn Monroe and Spencer Tracy. Both turned it down, so, after briefly considering Fredric March as Rath, the roles fell to the undistinguished Curt Jurgens and Swedish newcomer May Britt. Edward Dmytryk directed a screenplay by British novelist Nigel Balchin, who ignored Mann’s novel and simply adapted the 1929 script, moving the setting inland, to Landsburg, and making Rath a teacher of biology, the...