Posts from arthurarnell in thread „Reap The Wild Wind (1942)“

  • Reap The Wild Wind (1942)

    Hi

    At the risk of crossing threads Duke as a villian and deliberately sinking his ship in Reap the Wild Wind is unacceptable to many of his fans, but as a villian in Wake of the Red Witch when he also sinks his ship deliberately and is possibly even more of a villian, or at least a blacker character than his role in Reap the Wild Wind, is accepted quite happily. Perhaps it a point worth debating.

    Regards

    Arthur

  • Reap The Wild Wind (1942)

    Hi

    Iv'e just been doing some research on this film regarding the final scene added for additional information.

    REAP THE WILD WIND
    or
    HERE’S INK IN YOUR EYE MR de MILLE


    In 1940 the authoress Thelma Strabel completed the second and possibly best known of the three stories she would ultimately write and be remembered for posterity. Subsequently serialised in The ‘Saturday Evening Post‘, the story was titled ‘Reap The Wild Wind’ and told a tale of swashbuckling adventure and skulduggery on the high seas off the Florida Keys during the mid 1830’s. Paramount later purchased the film rights and set about turning the story into a film.
    The story moves forward. Approximately one year later and the scene is set.
    In the lee of Santa Catalina Island a sixty foot schooner rigged yacht lies moored, aboard six men struggle to bring Thelma Strabel’s story to the screen. The yacht was the ‘Seaward’ owned by the director Cecil B de Mille, also onboard was screenwriter Jesse L Lasky jr who had worked in collaboration with de Mille previously on films such as ‘Union Pacific’, ’Unconquered’ and ‘North West Mounted Police’ and would do so again on ’Samson and Deliah’ ‘The Buccaneer’ and ’The Ten Commandments’ and Alan LeMay who had previously been a short story writer for Colliers Magazine and ‘The Saturday Evening Post’ and who had been brought in by de Mille to work with Jesse Lasky on ’The North West Mounted Police’ but would probably become most famous for the short story that later John Ford would make into one of the greatest westerns ever made ’The Searchers’. Both men were well aware of the directors vicious mood swings and also of de Mille’s dictatorial attitude. The third screen writer Charles Bennett was a suave debonair Englishman, born in Shoreham Sussex in 1899, he had both acted and directed, and began writing in 1911, after seeing service in the British Army in France during the First World War he had come to the fore writing plays including his most famous work ’Blackmail’ in 1929 which introduced him to Alfred Hitchcock and which was later turned into a film by that director. When Hitchcock left England and moved to Hollywood in the 1930s Bennett had accompanied him. Among his personal staff on board the yacht de Mille also included his field secretary Bernice Mosk whose job was to make copious notes and produce drafts that would aid the screen writers in their efforts. The complement was made up by Captain Fred Ellis acting as technical advisor for the picture. DeMille, himself a keen sailor, had invited the screenwriters aboard the yacht in order that they might get the flavour of life at sea. For their part initially, the screenwriters were in a dilemma, Thelma Strabels’ novel appeared to have everything and all that was required was a tightening of the dialogue and descriptive scenes. De Mille however, had other ideas. In his view all that the author had furnished was ‘pretty pictures of sails and seas and sunsets shining through a ladies auburn hair’1. the director had a clear picture of what he visualised. ‘What I want in this subject are storms and sinkings and salvage. I want to smell the brine and hear the creak of rigging. I want to feel the bite of hurricanes. I want the birth of America’s lifeline on the seas - and to see it threatened by the toughest tribe of murderous pirate wreckers that ever gutted a ship to steal a cargo’2.
    Standing with his hands on the ships wheel with his eyes narrowing as he viewed the horizon de Mille showed the three men his concept of the way ahead. Laying down the guidelines, he continued - ‘I want to see the teeth of a reef bite though a ships bottom - photographed from underwater and brushing aside all protest of the technical difficulties of photographing such a scene, continued. ‘I want broken skulls and skulduggery! I want it to contrast with the tinkle of tea cups in Charleston drawing rooms. And I want two love stories. The first - ending in death and drowning. The second - a man and a woman finding and losing, and finding each other again. Through hell to heaven!’3.
    Of the three screenwriters aboard without doubt the most extravagant was Charles Bennett. In his book ‘Whatever Happened To Hollywood’, Lasky describes him thus:-
    ‘The newly arrived Charles Bennett would appear wreathed in scarves, draped in a dashing blazer, or dustily booted fresh from a polo match. He flew planes, rode like a Cossack, and could on occasions come dangerously near stealing scenes from the Boss, who had always been second to none in ‘office performances’.
    Charles would swagger and glower in an impersonation of the heavy to be played by Raymond Massey. Then Charles would mince out a delicious imitation of Paulette Goddard’ Florida belle. He’d ape Ray Milland’s effete aristocrat, or the heavy-shouldered jaw jutting challenge of John Wayne’s first mate. But too often his office performances were better than the scenes themselves. The written word missed the swaggering, struttings, eye rollings of our spell binding Charles. deMille would complain that we hadn’t got it on paper, quite ignoring the fact that this would have been next to impossible.’4.
    For days the three man laboured under the task, ever mindful of the fact that they were always under the glare of de Mille, when the slightest tap on the typewriter would bring the director down upon them, ever aware that they were no nearer solving the problem of bringing about a spectacular conclusion to the picture than they were when they started and ever aware that they knew that de Mille also knew of their situation.
    Finally de Mille could stand it no longer, sitting in his directors chair he began talking:-
    ‘”I couldn’t sleep last night,” he intoned sadly.
    ………”I kept asking myself the question. What, in Reap The Wild Wind, would galvanise head hunters in an Amazon jungle?”
    “What”, he continued, “would fascinate Eskimos in their igloos, harness harassed housewifes, rivet restless children? What can we offer to match…….. Our great waterfall escape in ‘Northwest Mounted‘, or our train wreck in ‘Union Pacific’? The opening of the Red Sea in my silent picture ‘The Ten Commandments?’ Because until we’ve got that, gentlemen, we just haven’t got a moving picture. 5.
    De Milles’ sadistic streak was now in full flow, he had asked the question knowing that his three screenwriters didn’t have the answer, but now he had to lead and prompt as well as gloat.
    ‘..”I refer to the situation at the end of your script,” he said ominously. “When the court trial adjourns to the wreck, and your leading men dive to search for the evidence - of murder! They screw on their helmets, plunge over the side, go down, to find the evidence, a girls body - and what happens next? That was the question that kept me awake, gentlemen, and I am curious as to whether any of you can provide an answer. Because if you can’t we have a five million dollar picture without an ending. 6
    The three men had devised an ending in which after finding the body of Drusilla in the wreck of the Southern Cross, Stuart and Tolliver would begin to fight, hacking away at each other with their axes and knives while the ship rocked on the edge of the reef. They were aware that de Mille would not be happy. Their fears proved to be well founded. Jessee Lasky seeking support from his two companions and finding none began to explain that the two men would begin to fight.
    De Mille interrupted:-
    “And they go into a life-or-death struggle. That is your great plan is it? To end this picture or me? Because that is what everyone expects, and it’s as old as Noah’s Ark! So if you can’t do better than that, I’d say we haven’t got a moving picture”7.
    During these proceedings Lasky’s two companions had said nothing Alan Le May had sat in his chair eyes closed, while Charles Bennett lay sprawled in his chair. Sitting up he now spoke:-
    ‘ ….But you haven’t heard the end of our plan C.B.”
    De Mille focused his attention of Bennett.
    “Haven’t I?”
    “No. The underwater fight between the two divers is what you’d expect to happen. Indeed, it is what starts to happen. But in the moment, the first instant that the divers start to hack at each other, suddenly you see behind them - rising out of the belly of the dead ship, one great long red tentacle - and then another.” Charles had come to his feet now, his hand snaking through the air to illustrate his words.
    “Then faster than a striking cobra, it sweeps around the body of one of the men. It heaves him right up, light as a doll in the fist of a giant - for giant it is - giant squid! The largest monster of the deep. Great eyes like illuminated green balloons, full of malevolent intelligence. Massive, slack, big as a circus tent, but with tentacles strong enough to squeeze an elephant to pulp! And now Steve and Jack are fighting for their own lives, against the most terrible creature nature has ever produced. The enemies have become allies against the common danger ……..this ink throwing behemoth, this leviathan! The sea bottom has become an area where man is pitted against nature. Nature with yellow glazed eyes, and probing tentacles thick as pine trees!” 8.
    De Mille was ecstatic. Le May and Lasky looked at Bennett in amazed silence, amazed that while the others had struggled for the answer he hadn’t said a word,. Then in stunned awe when they suddenly realised that until he stood up to speak, Bennett had no idea of what he was going to say.
    Within a month as de Mille and his screenwriters returned to the yacht to put the finishing touches to the script the Paramount prop depart swung into action to produce the giant squid Charles Bennett’s monster from the deep. Straining all of the studios resources plans for the giant squid were put in operation.
    The scene would be shot as de Mille had envisaged in a tank at the Santa Monica Pacific Marine Museum which had a capacity of eight hundred thousand gallons. The squid would be made of bright red sponge rubber….‘it was made so that it could lash out and encircle a full size man with its 30’ tentacles 9‘. Initial teething problems in making the squids tentacles move convincingly were solved. ‘A 24 button electrical keyboard operated the creature, and a complex forest of hydraulic pistons activated cables extending into the thirty foot tentacles, so that they could be curled in any direction. The squid’s large and evil eyes were operated from the switchboard. 10.‘
    Paramount budgeted $11,000 for the construction of the squid but hopelessly underestimated the cost. De Mille was asked if he would accept a smaller model that would only move one way - ‘He would not. He had to have a 55 footer that could swim in all directions, roll its eyeballs, and wrap its tentacles around its victims on cue’. 11.
    Eventually the task was finished at a cost of $70,000. In order to add a touch of realism real fish were added in the tank including a couple of white bellied sharks one of which swum between Ray Millands’ legs during the shot.12.
    The film consisting of thirteen reels of 35mm was 3381.45m long and ran for 123 minutes. It was shot between June and August 1942 at an estimated budget of $4,000,000. When completed de Mille had made wholesale changes from the authors original story. Beside leaving out characters he had changed Raymond Milland and John Wayne’s names from Stephen Ogier and Jack Babcock to Stephen Tolliver and Jack Stuart. Other changes included changing the Robert Preston character from being Loxi’s older brother to Cutler’s younger brother and Ben Cutler renamed King and described originally in the story as a ‘"…..a little man in his late fifties, with a seamed and weathered face and a thin hawk's nose. His hair rose in a stiff, grizzled shock and his eyebrows protruded like protecting hedges over his pale gray eyes." Was played by six feet tall Raymond Massey wearing a sharks tooth on a watch chain which he would use to emphasize his point by sticking it into a wooden barrel or table while issuing instructions and glowering fiercely. De Mille’s other change was setting the film in the year 1840 rather than the original mid 1830’s.
    De Mille defended his changes. In a three page foreword to subsequent publications in novel form, director Cecil B. DeMille wrote: "Those who read the book and see the picture, will discover certain radical differences between the two -- differences as to characters and situations as well as in general story line. For that, no apology is necessary, if you believe in dramatic license. Miss Strabel wrote a narrative; I have made a play. "
    Reap the Wild Wind premiered on the 18th March at El Capitan Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard. The occasion attended by an audience of almost 3000 were privy to two further celebrations as the film marked Paramount’s being in business for thirty years and also Cecil B DeMille’s thirtieth year in the film industry.
    Eight days later the film opened for business at the Music Hall New York City to successful acclaim. The following day in his review critic Bosley Crowther wrote:-
    ‘After thirty years of making motion pictures, Cecil B. De Mille has pretty well learned the trade. He has learned that the camera has no motive unless there is plenty of movement in front of it; that drama, reduced to essentials, is just two strong men contending for a maid and, lately, that Technicolor is the dish for serving lavish spectacle. Thus it is not surprising that "Reap the Wild Wind," his anniversary film, which roared into the Music Hall yesterday as the feature of a profuse Easter show, is the essence of all his experience, the apogee of his art and as jam-full a motion picture as has ever played two hours upon a screen. It definitely marks a DeMillestone. It is the master turned loose, with no holds barred.
    For onto a gorgeous panorama representing the southern coast around 1840, Mr. De Mille has crowded a story filled with sea storms, ship wrecks and gang fights, and peopled with picaresque characters, dashing gentlemen and ladies in crinoline. He has worked a chattering monkey into it, and also a giant squid. He has sent two men, desperate rivals, into the bowels of a sunken ship in diving suits and there, in the greenish opalescence, has let them manifest the stuff of which they are made. He has splashed it with every color, from that of red coal oil to that of a yellow buttercup. …….Mr. De Mille has indicated that the novel from which the picture is derived—a novel by Thelma Strabel—does not adhere very closely to the film. Of that we wouldn't know—and of that we don't much care. For the story here unfolded has little distinction or definition; it is simply a running romance about a girl on the Florida Keys, two men of different types who love her and of shipwrecking as a trade. And in spite of a ponderous foreword which tries to tie it up with freedom of the seas, it is still just a bold adventure fable in which deeds loom much larger than aims.’
    Crowther continued:-
    ‘……Mr. De Mille and his writers plot a picture very carefully for scenic effects. And, in this particular instance, they have favoured themselves magnificently. "Reap the Wild Wind" bulges with back-grounds which have the texture of museum displays. Rooms reek of quality and substance, gardens look like the annual flower show and the scenes of ships on the high seas exude a definite suggestion of salt air. The gentleman spends money on his pictures. Dollar signs are distinguishable everywhere.’
    And concluded:-
    ‘Reap the Wild Wind" is a picture which represents the quintessence of make-believe. But, who, in this time of trouble, is going to take exception to that?’
    A year later at the 1943 Academy Awards Reap The Wild Wind was nominated for three Academy Awards Best Effects, Best Art Direction - Interior Decoration Colour and Best Cinematography. Ultimately the film won one award - for Best Effects the award shared by Farcuit Edouard, Gordon Jennings, William L Pereire and Louis Mesenkip.
    Later Ray Milland would blame the studio and the film for cutting his career as a leading man short because he had to have his hair waved before appearing on set, stating that this caused him to go prematurely bald.


    Of the squid - it came to a valiant end being donated to the United States war effort shortly after.
    The film was spectacular and guaranteed to take the audiences mind off the war for two hours. The previous hardships were forgotten what was remembered was the incident when after Cecil B DeMille had heard Charles Bennett describing his monster of the deep, the large tentacles emerging from the Southern Cross, the spectacle of two men fighting for their lives the director had a look of ecstasy on his face and had been able to say only three words:-
    ‘And in Technicolor.’
    Select Bibliography
    1. Whatever Happened to Hollywood ?Jessy L Lasky p 216
    2. Ibid 216
    3 Ibid 216
    4 Whatever happened to Hollywood? - Lasky 217
    5. Whatever Happened to Hollywood? - Lasky 219
    6. Ibid 219
    7. Whatever Happed to Hollywood? - Lasky 220
    8. Whatever happened to Hollywood - Lasky 220-1
    9. Of Devilfish and Octopi The Trail Beyond 2000 Lilley p4-5
    10 Of Devilfish and Octopi The Trail Beyond 2000 Lilley p5-6
    11 Of Devilfish and Octopi The Trail Beyond 2000 Lilley p6
    12 Of Devilfish and Octopi The Trail Beyond 2000 Lilley p7