The second act of Mitchell Leisen (1898-1972) has arrived posthumously, but to misappropriate an attrocious line of Robin Williams, beter latent than never? Numerous in-depth articles about Leisen have been written in recent years, usually in the context of queer studies, but apart from that his body of work as a designer and director are deserving of big respect, as opposed to the hack status some condemned him with in his own time.
The Michigan native was a solitary boy, afflicted with a club foot and other illnesses. He enjoyed playing with toy theatres, and making floral arrangements. Presumably in order to butch him up, his parents sent him to military school. From there he went on to served as an army drill instructor during World War One. Following the Armistice he worked at an architectural film in Chicago, where he acquired skills that would prove useful in his future career.
Leisen was only 21 when he started working for Cecil B. DeMille as a costume designer and art director. Let that sink in for a second. Not for the obvious reason, i.e., that it was an impressive job to have landed at such a young age. Think of the significance of it. DeMille’s films are all about sumptuous spectacle, and Leisen was the guy who contributed that element to his productions. His pictures with DeMIlle included Don’t Change Your Husband (1919), Forbidden Fruit (1921), Saturday Night (1922), The Road to Yesterday (1925), The Volga Boat Man (1926), King of Kings (1927), The Godless Girl (1928), Dynamite (1929), Madame Satan (1930), the 1931 remake of The Squaw Man, and The Sign of the Cross (1932). In this capacity he essentially apprenticed under DeMille. When he became a director himself, it was largely in his mold.
Liesen’s numerous other pictures as designers included three with Douglas Fairbanks: Robin Hood (1922), The Thief of Bagdad (1924), and The Taming of the Shrew (1929), as well as other notable silents such as Lubitsch’s Rosita (1923), The Courtship of Miles Standish (1923), Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall (1924), Chicago (1927), Show Folks (1928, one of several films he would make with Carole Lombard, with whom he shared a birthday), and Ned McCobb’s Daughter (1928).
Leisen’s first film as director, Cradle Song (1933) flopped, but his next severeal were successes. They included Boldero (1934), with Lombard, George Raft, and Sally Rand; and the remarkable Death Takes a Holiday (1934), which George S. Kaufman kidded with a line in You Can’t Take It With You.
Leisen’s body of work is too diverse and impersonal to regard him as an auteur per se, but I am particularly interested in several movies he made for Paramount that expand upon the vaudeville/ revue format for the cinema, and which star many of my favorite vaudeville veterans. These include Murder at the Vanities (1934), The Big Broadcast of 1937, The Big Broadcast of 1938, and Artists and Models Abroad (1938). He is also notable for his highly excellent direction of two scripts by Preston Sturges: Easy Living (1937) and Remember the Night (1940). It was presumably Sturges’ dissatisfaction with Leisen’s direction of these films that drove the former to demand the right to direct his own scripts, but they are both extremely enjoyable, and have absolutely stood the test of time, unlike some of Leisen’s other screwball comedies, melodramas and musicals.
Leisen made dozens more major pictures with top stars over the next couple of decades, and virtually all of them are forgotten. They include the Oscar nominated Hold Back the Dawn (1941); Frenchman’s Creek (1944, based on a Daphne Du Maurier novel); No Man of Her Own (1950); and The Mating Season (1951). By the late ’50s aesthetics were beginning to change in favor of realism and location shooting. Leisen’s highly wrought concoctions had become to be regarded as old hat. The Girl Most Likely (1958) was his last Hollywood film, as well as the last movie to be produced by RKO.
Like many Hollywood people at this time, Leisen moved on to television. He directed the 1957 pilot of The Eve Arden Show (1957), followed by episodes of Shirley Temple’s Storybook, The Twilight Zone, Thriller, Wagon Train, and The Girl from U.N.C.L.E..
Leisen also took pleasure in designing and staging night club acts. One of these was the dance team of Mary “Punkins” Parker and Billy Daniel, with whom he is said to have had a long term relationship. Some of his work with night club acts can be seen in the 1967 film Spree, shot on location in Las Vegas at The Dunes, The Tropicana, and elsewhere, and featuring Jayne Mansfield and Mickey Hargitay, Juliet Prowse (doing a Cleopatra number), Vic Damone, Constance Moore, and others, along with scenes of gambling, cock-fights, and bare knuckle boxing. It was shot in 1962-63. Daniel had died by that point. Mansfield died around the time of the film’s release, although that seems to be a coincidence. Leisen’s wife Sandra Gahle (Stella Yeager) was an opera singer. He also had affairs with actress Marguerite DeLaMotte and costume designer Natalie Visart.
For more about show business history consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous.