THE BAD AND THE BEAUTIFUL: Blu-ray (MGM, 1952) Warner Archive

Sex, greed, lust and betrayal: how Hollywood loves to tell tales about itself – the more sordid, the better. Keeping in mind that the reality of the picture-making biz is, arguably, far greater than its mythology, the legends who toiled there long ago were, at least for a while, seemingly immortal and larger-than-life in their own right. But in the early 1950’s the tabloids began to intrude upon Tinsel Town’s Teflon-coated paradise, exposing its stars – even its B-listers – to the public’s scrutiny as imperfect creatures, prone to sin and corruption. The deification of glamour in Hollywood begun in earnest in the mid-teens had sought, with a certain level of press-relations’ voracity, to fabricate a faux reality, building its creatives as imperious gods and goddesses of impeccable repute. Alas, every once in a while, a scandal slipped through their nets and proved too great, even for the studio-sanctioned PR to conceal. Just ask Fatty Arbuckle or Errol Flynn. And Hollywood at large – if hardly proper, once described by Grace Kelly as “holier-than-thou for the public and unholier-than-the-devil in reality”, elected to adopt the ‘if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em’ mentality – celebrating its home-grown tragedies as well as its triumphs. Ostensibly, David O. Selznick crossed this threshold in the mid-1930’s with What Price Hollywood? (1932) and the original, A Star Is Born (1937). Then, the tragedies yet to befall aspiring bright young things, having left the relative safety of their commonplace obscurity to venture into the wilds of filmdom, was still treated with a level of immaculate glamour and a certain level of sincerity – perhaps lacking in truth (or perhaps not), lurking just beyond the peripheries. So, life in Hollywood was depicted as genuine – if glammed up – and fraught with the same hardships to be found outside its cloistered community. Still, as far as Hollywood was concerned, stars were just plain folk with above average bank accounts. And realistically, there was some veracity in this – as no ‘first generation’ movie actor could lay claim to having begun life with aspirations of becoming ‘a movie star.’ After all, there was no such thing.

However, the movies that emerged from Hollywood about Hollywood in the 1950’s chose a different path entirely; one, perversely to strip away the patina of uber-sheen and reveal some – if not all – of the ugliness behind the curtain. So, if ‘first generation’ Hollywood was all about the glam; its second generation now slowly began to warm to the tabloid-esque exposure of its scandals as just another way to market its talent for public consumption…and this in an era when much of the stars’ past lives – including their transgressions – were still aggressively being rewritten by press agents to maintain the illusion of their perfection to the outside world. One of the earliest, and greatest of these latter-day exposés is Vincente Minnelli’s The Bad and the Beautiful (1952); a superbly constructed melodrama, made from Hollywood’s own patchwork of truths, half-truths and outright lies, to be re-organized and plumped by screenwriters, George Bradshaw and Charles Schnee. The Bad and The Beautiful tells the tale of Jonathan Shields’ mesmerizing self-destructive ambition, and the unsuspecting fame and folly it derives.  Shield’s unrelenting desire to be at the top of his game eclipses all sense of moral decency. Whether cheating on his gal pal, Georgia Lorrison (Lana Turner), whom he professes to love, merely to build into a great profit center to fatten his studio coffers, or, in instigating the perfect storm, resulting in the untimely death of screenwriter, James Lee Bartlow’s (Dick Powell) wife – the naïve Rosemary (Gloria Grahame), or even, to have double-crossed long-time colleagues, Harry Pebbel (Walter Pigeon) and Fred Ameil (Barry Sullivan) – without whom his early successes in the industry would not have been possible, Jonathan Shields is a creature of Hollywood…or rather, one that only the climate of Hollywood could have spawned, promoted, and then toppled from grace, before moving on to the next best thing.

The Bad and the Beautiful represents Vincente Minnelli at his most cynical. MGM’s insistence on an uber-glamorous affair, tricked out in all the finery the studio could then muster, is slightly at odds with these darker revelations steadily unearthed by our triumvirate of Shields’ ever-devoted friends. Interestingly, despite his trespasses against them, they cannot entirely bring themselves to trespass against him.  From the outset, Pebbels concurs, each of their lives is forever impacted by Shield’s ruthlessness. But he also reminds his colleagues they are all in Shields’ debt for his guidance and tutelage. Jonathan Shields is a bastard – yes. But one without whom none of these others could have made inroads into the biz. And so, Minnelli draws a parallel for his audience between the epitome of fame, that outward sign of enviable success, and, the unscrupulous necessary evil to achieve it. Minnelli makes no judgment call here. He neither favors the virtues nor the vices of these pacts with the devil incarnate. He merely presents the variables that conspire to bring the unlikely adventurers together; sad-eyed desperation and an unhealthy self-indulgence to be regarded as ‘the best’ without actually remaining true to their personal best. It’s the pain of sacrifice that rings true here – the elemental humanity that gets traded, downgraded, and finally, discarded to satisfy an insatiable greed.

Predictably, The Bad and The Beautiful opens on a Hollywood that never was; the sanitized realm of an A-list studio’s executive suite where burnt-out director, Fred Amiel, screen siren, Georgia Lorrison and embittered screenwriter James Lee Bartlow are gathered at the behest of producer, Harry Pebbel. Apart from their work in the industry, all have a common thread to connect their pasts; a former alliance with one-time wunderkind, Jonathan Shields, who left a very bad taste in everyone's mouth. Pebbel is the most empathetic toward Shields current predicament; ostracized by the Hollywood community and forced to go the route of a cast-off/has-been indie for hire. Oh, how the tables have turned. Where once all of the aforementioned were dependent on Shields for their livelihood, now it is he who desperately needs them to sign on to his latest movie project to resurrect his career. With their combined cache, Shields just might be able to stage a comeback. While virtually all of these ex-friends protest, they will have absolutely nothing to do with Shields, in tandem, they resist the urge to simply walk out, and, in fact, agree to allow Pebbel to put through his long-distance call, if only to gain the particulars of the proposed project before rendering their final verdict.

The rest of the movie is told in flashback; vignettes exploring the various valid reasons why none should want anything to do with him now.  We learn Jonathan was practically born with a chip on his shoulders; the son of a notoriously disgraced studio mogul who brought shame upon the household while Jonathan was only a boy. Indeed, the elderly Shields was considered such a pariah, Jonathan had to hire 'extras' to be his father's pallbearers and attend the stately funeral. Ah, me - 'the sins of the father.' And Hollywood, unaccustomed to forgive and forget, holds the younger Shields in as little regard. Despite seemingly insurmountable odds, Shields is determined to carve a credible niche for himself on his own terms. Indeed, he will make Hollywood pay for what they did to his father’s legacy. To hedge his bets, Shields partners with aspiring director, Amiel, whom he first meets at his father's funeral. Next, Shields intentionally blows a poker game against film exec, Harry Pebbel, convincing the old-time producer that the best way to recoup his losses is by letting him work off his debt as a line producer.

To prove a point, namely, that Pebbel suspects Shields is a fraud who will fall flat on his face given half the chance, Shield’s agrees to any terms. But then, in a chapter torn from the career case files of RKO’s producing-maestro, Val Lewton, Shields is ordered to make B-grade horror movies on a C-grade budget – turning hackney scripts with atrociously bad titles into box office gold by the very cleverness of his art. At first, Shields is absolutely confounded how best to proceed; more so, when he and Amiel observe the cat costumes for their picture are moth-eaten and ridiculous, so as not to possibly fool even a fifth grader. But then, Shields lights upon an idea – never to show the monster on the screen; rather, imply everything through light and shadow. Their picture is a smash hit. Flush with newfound success, Amiel suggests to Shields the time is right to venture into their co-planned project – a picture of genuine stature, surely to put their names on the map. Shields agrees, pitches the idea to Pebbels, but then betrays Amiel. In order to secure the $1 million budget, Shields hires an already established director to helm the picture. Bitterly disappointed, Amiel withdraws from their friendship and looks on as the picture he slaved to conceive becomes a colossal hit, allowing Shields to pursue his dream of owning his own studio. Undaunted, as an independent, Amiel establishes himself as an Oscar-winning director.

Meanwhile, Shields is confronted by the alcoholic starlet, Georgia Lorrison, still mourning the untimely death of her father – a great actor Shields admired. Georgia is insecure and full of self-pity. But she is also gorgeous – a definite asset. Shields works night and day to mold Georgia into a fine actress. Over Pebbel’s strenuous objections, Shields hires Georgia to star in his next picture. Her ego, bruised and fragile, Shields lets Georgia go on falling in love with him, even though he does not feel the same way about her. It’s all for the art – or rather, the profit to be derived from it, and, Georgia, imbued with renewed vigor, plunges headstrong into the part that ultimately makes her a star. Seemingly on top of the world, Georgia hurries away after her triumphant premiere to Shields’ fashionable mansion for a little late supper, only to discover him in the arms of bit player, Lila (Elaine Stewart) – presumably, his next ‘discovery’. Shields is cruel, confessing he has never possessed any feelings for any woman – much less, Georgia. Shocked, ashamed and frantic, Georgia drives off in a huff, suffering a minor breakdown in her car. Regrouping, Georgia walks out on her studio contract. Rather than fight her decision, Shields releases her from her iron-clad contract to pursue work at a competitor, netting big bucks while continuing her upward trajectory as a full-fledged super star.

We regress into the third and final flashback. James Lee Bartlow, a thoroughly contented college professor is basking in the aftermath of fame from his bestselling novel, already snatched up by Shields to be made into a movie of stature. Problem: Shields wants Bartlow to write the screenplay too.  Bartlow, however, has no interest in Hollywood. Too bad his Southern wife, Rosemary is star-struck. To appease her, Bartlow agrees to write the movie. But Rosemary is easily distracted and, in turn, proves a thorough distraction for her husband. To keep her occupied, thus expediting Bartlow’s work on the screenplay, Shields introduces Rosemary to his uber-suave actor/friend, Victor ‘Gaucho’ Ribera (Gilbert Roland). Before long, Rosemary and Gaucho begin an extramarital affair. Having immersed himself in his work, Bartlow scarcely has time to realize what has happened until he receives a ‘Dear John’ letter from Rosemary, professing her love for Gaucho; the two, apparently, run off together when they are killed in a private plane crash. Rather ominously, this episode predates the untimely – if uncannily similar demise of producer, Michael ‘Around the World in 80 Days’ Todd; the husband of Elizabeth Taylor, who died when his plane went down in a snowstorm on March 22, 1958.

A thoroughly distraught Bartlow makes hasty plans to return to his former academic life. But before he can leave the business, Shields coaxes him into partaking of the mammoth production for which his screenplay has already been completed. As a first-time director, Shields is a disaster and his cost-overages and time-consuming delays result in the picture going way over budget; enough to bankrupt the studio and close its doors temporarily. Letting it slip he was instrumental in orchestrating Rosemary’s love affair with Gaucho, Shields and Bartlow come to blows. The altercation ends with Bartlow vowing never again to work for Shields. Nevertheless, opening up to the breadth of Shields’ betrayal allows Bartlow a more clairvoyant perspective on his former marriage. His career as a writer takes off and before long, he is considered one of America’s preeminent authors, winning the Pulitzer. We regress to the present; Pebbels, chiding his cohorts for their outright refusal to even consider working for Shields again. Pebbels reminds, that whatever his motives, he has Shields to thank for his job. Georgia owes him her career, as does Bartlow and Amiel. While Pebbels is quick to realize Shields merely used them to advance his stakes in the picture-biz, the residual fallout has benefited everyone in the long run.  Shields call interrupts. Pebbels implores Georgia, Bartlow and Amiel to stick around. Instead, they casually walk out; Pebbels, informing Shields his impassioned effort to win them over has failed. Or has it? For although Pebbels does not know it, George, Amiel and Bartlow have gathered around a telephone in the outer office to eavesdrop on their conversation. Clearly, they remain undecided, and likely, to rejoin the man for one last hurrah.

Based on George Bradshaw’s 1949 magazine story, ‘Of Good and Evil’ - The Bad and The Beautiful was nominated for - and won - 5 out of 6 Academy Awards; though oddly, it was never even considered for Best Picture or Best Director; oversights, likely due to the industry’s natural aversion to celebrating its own peccadilloes in public. Using them to make a buck is one thing. Legitimizing their importance with Oscars, quite another. And indeed, The Bad and The Beautiful is a far tamer affair than Billy Wilder’s Sunset Boulevard, made only a scant two years earlier. By then, L.B. Mayer, who had vehemently chastised Wilder for ripping loose the golden image of Hollywood’s faux respectability, had himself been deposed as MGM’s raja; the new management, assessing studio profits, already in decline, eager to capitalize – if not yet, go full disclosure on its scandals of yore, eager to make a like-minded picture. The Bad and the Beautiful falls into the middle of Hollywood’s deliciously self-destructive need to expose its dark undercarriage; a plot device in Bert E. Friedlob’s independently produced, The Star – featuring Bette Davis as a penniless Hollywood has-been who eventually, and painfully recognizes her fame in Tinsel Town is at an end – no comeback forthcoming. Two years later, George Cukor would provide the ultimate Hollywood tragedy with Warner Bros. remake of A Star Is Born (1954), the Selznick chestnut remade as a bittersweet musical valentine that, in hindsight, appears to foreshadow the real-life implosion of its star, Judy Garland, far more poignantly than it does that of the fictional Norman Maine, played to perfection by James Mason.

If The Bad and The Beautiful is more genteel in its approach than any of the aforementioned classic tales about Hollywood, it nevertheless packs a wallop, thanks chiefly to Kirk Douglas’ unrelentingly cruel portrait of Shields as a man compelled by ego to derail his own chances at happiness – something he knows absolutely nothing about – and even more ironically, ‘success’ – which he craves beyond all else. Douglas would later recall shooting a scene in the film with Francis X. Bushman, cast in a cameo as the eulogist at Shields’ father’s funeral. In his era, Bushman had been considered among the greatest of silent stars, dubbed ‘the king’ of the movies long before Clark Gable even appeared on the scene, and, playing – among his many roles – Messala, in MGM’s lavishly appointed 1925 version of Ben-Hur. But Bushman’s star was to fall on very hard times when, at the height of his fame, he elected to keep L.B. Mayer waiting. To prove his power greater than anyone’s, Mayer effectively banned Bushman from MGM, and, is rumored to have blackballed him from procuring work at any of the other majors in Hollywood.  “This was his first time on the lot in 25 years,” Douglas later recalled, “Bushman’s story gave me some useful insight into the ruthless, selfish character I was playing — still another tough-guy antihero. I was doing well with these roles.”

The picture’s success then, would today have spelled an immediate sequel to follow. And while The Bad and The Beautiful did eventually receive something of a follow-up – 1962’s Two Weeks in Another Town (also directed by Minnelli, with Douglas, producer John Houseman, screenwriter Charles Schnee, and composer David Raksin all returning to form) – by then, the era for telling tales out of school had decidedly cooled. Indeed, this latter effort is set in Europe – not Hollywood – and is not altogether ‘a sequel’ as much as a new chapter in Shields’ self-destructive pursuit of perfection. Initially, The Bad and The Beautiful began production under the ‘working title’ – Memorial to a Bad Man; MGM’s top brass, feeling the title suggested a western, electing instead to rename it. So too, did the original plot go through a metamorphosis. Likely influenced by the runaway success of Joseph L. Mankeiwicz’s Oscar-winning All About Eve (1950), the first draft concerned the Will and Testament of a New York theatre producer who tried to explain away his reckless nature to a writer, actor and director whom he had wronged. In its preliminary stages, Metro signed Dan Hartman to produce. Only Hartman had other ideas, leaving MGM for Paramount before the project could get off the ground. From here, newly ensconced MGM production chief, Dore Schary pitched the picture to John Houseman, who agreed to helm it, but only after his executive decision to alter the movie’s backdrop from New York to Hollywood had been green-lit by Schary. In the preliminary stages, The Bad and The Beautiful was considered for either Clark Gable or Spencer Tracy – two of Metro’s heaviest hitters – each, turning it down.

Indeed, a certain pall lingered, as many in Hollywood felt The Bad and The Beautiful was shaping up to be an ugly little movie about the evils of picture-making folk, casting aspersions on the industry as a whole. “People who read the script asked me why I wanted to do it,” Minnelli later explained, “It was against Hollywood, etc. I told them I didn't see the man as an unregenerate heel - first because we find out he has a weakness, which makes him human, and second, because he’s tough on himself as he is on everyone else, which makes him honest. That's the complex, wonderful thing about human beings—whether they're in Hollywood, in the automobile business, or in neckties.” Regardless of its basis as ‘a work of fiction’, The Bad and The Beautiful did ruffle some minor feathers in Hollywood. Alerted to the picture early on, David Selznick screened a rough cut to see if it was, in fact, a thinly veiled and unflattering bio about him. And while Selznick could likely recognize certain parallels between the late Shields and his own life’s work – particularly, a father - ruined by the biz, he found no grave parallels to warrant any libelous legal action. Minnelli would go on record that the picture was an amalgam of incidents involving Selznick, Orson Welles and Val Lewton, with Houseman reasoning that when working in a legendary town, comparisons to its gods and goddesses were inevitable.

Similarly, Dore Schary concurred that certain aspects about The Bad and the Beautiful thinly borrowed from Selznick’s life story. Schary also pointed out that Georgia Lorrison’s narrative vaguely mirrored that of Diana Barrymore – the daughter of John Barrymore – whose career had begun the same year as her own father’s death. Minnelli remained circumspect about inferences that his picture cribbed directly from his tumultuous years as the husband of Judy Garland. Indeed, the ink from their divorce decree was barely dry when Minnelli began shooting The Bad and The Beautiful. And, while Minnelli and Garland had separated with a modicum of lingering bitterness, in years yet to follow, Minnelli would remain one of Garland’s greatest champions to the end. Gilbert Roland’s Gaucho was something of a self-parody. Indeed, Roland was regarded in Hollywood as a notorious seducer. But his fictional last name – Ribera – seemed to pay homage to another of Hollywood’s infamous Lotharios, Porfirio Rubirosa. Rumors too abounded that the minor character of director, Henry Whitfield (Leo G. Carroll), a caustic perfectionist, and his close collaboration with Miss March (Kathleen Freeman) were modeled on Hitchcock and his wife, Alma Reville. Perhaps – although, there is little to debate another of the fictional directors - von Ellstein (Ivan Triesault) – briefly glimpsed, is unmistakably a riff on Erich von Stroheim. In the eleventh hour of post-production, MGM’s legendary head of publicity, Howard Dietz, stealing from F. Scott Fitzgerald, came up with the title: The Bad and The Beautiful, which Houseman thought “…dreadful…loathsome, cheap (and) vulgar.”

After the movie’s runaway success, Minnelli would critique the picture-making biz at least 3 more times in his career. But The Bad and The Beautiful remains his first, best, and ostensibly, final word on that roiling cesspool of creatives that builds into a pressure-cooker crescendo in which disparate, and occasionally ‘desperate’ forces, align to hew a work of art from the collaborative chaos brewing behind the scenes. Minnelli is particularly engaged here, his camera capturing all the dizzying highs and lamentable lows of this manic and megalomaniac mélange in artistic temperaments. Kirk Douglas’ performance is so intensely wrought and genuinely tragic, even during the movie’s bookends, in which his character does not appear – except as a disembodied voice to be reinterpreted for the audience by Harry Pebbels, we can still sense the magnetic pull of his personality coming through the telephone. At its best, The Bad and The Beautiful evolves into a sort of episodic powerhouse of the atypical Hollywood tragedy, precisely structured into an artifice of immense struggle and strife – the building blocks of fame, fortune and folly, into which Minnelli’s pours his own visual finesse, spilling forth the frothy uber-sheen of a champagne cocktail – a very thin veneer, lain over the festering underbelly of characters, as unscrupulous and dishonorable as any already working in Hollywood. A delicious, deceptively glamorous affair with darker themes unearthed, The Bad and The Beautiful remains a cornerstone in Hollywood’s self-reflexive storytelling masterpieces of yore.   

The Warner Archive has once again achieved something very special with this Blu-ray. Too often, we poo-poo WAC for seemingly holding back on its embarrassment of riches still unearthed in hi-def from its back catalog. Ostensibly, we do not mind the wait when such miracles as The Bad and The Beautiful finally emerge, yielding pristine reference quality imagery.  Culled from an original camera negative, WAC’s 4K remaster in 1080p of The Bad and The Beautiful represents a stunning achievement that shows off the high artistic merits of Robert Surtees' cinematography. The staggering amount of finite detail, wed to a perfectly contrasted B&W image, with exceptional tonality in its gray scale, plus film grain that – in projection – looks too good to be believed as a ‘digital copy’ of the actual nitrate elements - and ‘wow!’ - does this movie sparkle as never before. We have seen this level of commitment from WAC on virtually all of their deep catalog releases; though arguably, rarely, have the results produced so superb a rendering. Prepare to experience the performances and David Raksin’s plush and jazzy score as never before. The DTS 2.0 audio is phenomenally nuanced, given the limitations in the original mono recording. We get the TCM original documentary, Lana Turner...A Daughter's Memoir – hosted by Cheryl Crane, plus isolated scoring session cues and a theatrical trailer. All were included as part of Warner Home Video’s original, and now defunct DVD release from 2002. Bottom line: infinitely more ‘beautiful’ than ‘bad’, WAC’s Blu-ray of The Bad and The Beautiful is a top-tier effort that belongs on everyone’s top shelf this holiday season. A great classic finally given its due. Emphatically, very ‘VERY’ highly recommended!

FILM RATING (out of 5 – 5 being the best)

5+

VIDEO/AUDIO

5+++

EXTRAS

3