Hedy Lamarr: The Most Beautiful Woman in Film

To the Casbah!

70 6 To the Casbah! In early 1938, Hedy began seeing Reginald Gardiner, the suave English star, who, like her, was on the rise in Hollywood. She credits him with introducing her to Walter Wanger, who was preparing to shoot Algiers with her old friend from Switzerland, the French matinee idol Charles Boyer.1 It was Wanger who transformed Hedy’s career. A cultured Hollywood maverick and the scion of a wealthy secondgeneration German-Jewish family, Wanger was at the height of his success when he signed up Hedy. He had sealed a distribution deal with United Artists that would see him produce such films as Fritz Lang’s You Only Live Once (1937), John Ford’s Stagecoach (1939), and Hitchcock’s Foreign Correspondent (1940). Wanger was holding Charles Boyer to a twopicture contract and had finally persuaded Boyer to play Pépé Le Moko (Pepe Le Moko in the American version) in a shot-by-shot remake of the 1937 French film of the same title. This method, Wanger hoped, would substantially reduce production costs. Boyer was justifiably anxious about reprising a part famously performed by Jean Gabin and only consented with the understanding that he would have “director approval.”2 It was Boyer, therefore, who chose John Cromwell to direct. In the end, Algiers was not an exact remake of Pépé Le Moko; the original’s heady sensuality and moral ambiguity were more than the Breen office would permit. “We have received and read the script for your proposed picture PEPE LE MOKO,” Joseph Breen wrote to Walter Wanger. “In its present form, you will understand that it is not acceptable from the standpoint of the Production Code by reason of the definite suggestion that your two leading female characters are both kept women [ . . . ] The dialogue should be changed, so as to get away from the suggestion that Ines is Pepe’s mistress.”3 To the Casbah! 71 To tone down the film, Wanger hired James M. Cain to rewrite the opening twenty minutes. Next, Wanger’s regular collaborator John Howard Lawson intensified the relationship between Pepe Le Moko and the European beauty Gaby to stress that his love for her sparked his desire to return to Paris. Lawson also changed the ending so that Pepe no longer committed suicide but was shot by the police.4 Even with these changes, the film promised an exoticism that was guaranteed to play well with Depression-era American audiences: “ALGIERS. Where blazing desert meets the blue Mediterranean, and modern Europe jostles ancient Africa ,” the opening credits declare. “A stone’s throw from the modern city, the native quarter, known as the Casbah, stands like a fortress above the sea. Its population includes many tribes and races, drifters and outcasts from all parts of the world—and criminals who find this a safe hiding place from the long arm of the law. Supreme on these heights rules one man—Pepe le Moko—long wanted by the French police.” The French authorities were instantly provoked and objected to Joseph Breen that it would misrepresent “the character and moral standing of all French people and customs in that locality.” Wanger’s response was pragmatic: “As remarkable as it may seem, I assure you the majority of Americans do not know where Algiers is.”5 Before Hedy had been cast, producer David O. Selznick had proposed that his new discovery from Sweden, Ingrid Bergman, should take the part. After Hedy gained the role, a furious Sylvia Sidney refused to play the secondary character of Ines, a thankless part that makes her little more than a doormat for Pepe. Boyer himself was horrified at what he had signed up for, as Cromwell remembered: Boyer was the unhappiest man in southern California. He felt doomed to imitate a Jean Gabin performance, and never appreciated how different his own Pépé was from Gabin’s. Boyer showed something like genius to make it different. It was a triumph of nuance. The shots are the same, the dialogue has the same meaning, but Boyer’s Pépé and Gabin’s Pépé are two different fellows, but in the same predicament.6 Further, there was a problem with the leading lady. “Hedy didn’t make trouble, didn’t have an ego problem,” Cromwell recalled. “The 72 Hedy Lamarr problem was that she couldn’t act, and we knew it before we started shooting or even...