The Bad and the Beautiful

Plot synopsis:
Three much-sought-after people in Hollywood--a director, an actress, and a writer--each receive transatlantic calls from one Jonathan Shields. Each one refuses to talk to him. Yet when mutual friend Harry Pebbel asks them to meet him in Jonathan Shields' old office at the Shields studio, they agree, and even agree to share their grievances with Harry. Harry tells them that after two years of financial reorganization, Jonathan wants to produce a picture, and he wants the three to participate in it.Fred Amiel, the director, speaks first, having met Jonathan Shields eighteen years ago:Fred Amiel accepts a promise of eleven dollars to attend the funeral of producer Hugo Shields--but once there, he can't resist muttering jibes about the elder Shields under his breath. He doesn't know, of course, that he is standing right next to Hugo's son Jonathan. Jonathan tells him straight out that he didn't act like a mourner, so he won't be paid. Later that day, Fred goes to see Jonathan to apologize. Jonathan asks him to stay, and the two talk of their frustrations and dreams.For years they get by on what they make by making quickie Westerns on Poverty Row--and then Jonathan proposes to raise a stake to get into a poker game with noted B-movie executive producer Harry Pebbel. Fred and his friends raise the stake, and Jonathan proceeds to run up a debt of over $6,000--to Harry. Jonathan goes to Harry and makes a deal: Harry hires Jonathan, and Jonathan will pay Harry back. Harry does hire Jonathan, and asks him, "Just bring me a picture I can shoot."So for a few more years Jonathan produces, and Fred directs, several B movies for Harry. But when Harry assigns them to make a horror flick featuring five men dressed like cats, Jonathan substitutes his own ideas. The result is the best reception that a Harry Pebbel sneak preview has gotten yet. After the preview, Jonathan takes Fred to see the home of an actor named George Lorrison. There Jonathan cuts out a piece of loose wallpaper holding a drawing made by Lorrison of Hugo Shields, depicting him as the devil. They also meet the very resentful Georgia Lorrison--and Jonathan, despite her bitter manner, is fascinated with her.The next day, Jonathan and Fred get their next assignment: a sequel to the B movie they just made. Fred balks, and shows Jonathan his outline for a movie based on a novel that three studios have refused to adapt for film. Jonathan pitches it to Harry, and at first Harry refuses, and then tells Jonathan to go ahead and make the film and take the consequences if it fails. Jonathan and Fred polish their outline, and after Fred directs twelve disastrous screen tests for a leading man, the two agree to approach Victor "Gaucho" Ribera, a much-sought-after Latin actor. Gaucho agrees, and suddenly Harry has arranged for a million-dollar budget, a Vera Cruz location--and a director other than Fred Amiel. Fred, outraged, accuses Jonathan of stealing his idea--and that is why Fred resents Jonathan.After listening to that story, Harry reminds Fred that all that Jonathan did was to force Fred to make his own way--and, a happy marriage and family and two Oscars later, he ought to realize that Jonathan helped rather than hurt him.Georgia Lorrison speaks next:Five years after the encounter with Jonathan in her father's broken-down house, Georgia is a drunk and a tramp playing bit parts around town. Jonathan Shields casts her in a bit role and then surprises her by appearing in her apartment when she comes home at four a.m. Jonathan asks her to do a screen test for him, and then roars at her to stop living in the past and learn to laugh at live, as her father used to. Georgia goes through the test, which is atrocious, but Jonathan insists that she has star quality and casts her in a leading role anyway.Although he supports her in every way--even telling a worried costumer, "Miss Lorrison will hold herself like Miss Lorrison!"--the night before shooting is to start, she goes on a bender and vanishes. Jonathan agrees to let Harry Pebbel (who now works for him) sound out the talent agents for another actress, but when press agent Syd Murphy lets slip that Georgia often locks her door for days at a time, Jonathan rushes to her apartment, kicks in the door, and finds Georgia in the one place no one thought to look. He takes her back to his estate, where he throws her into a pool to shock her out of her fog, and then accepts her professions of love for him. He then tells Harry by telephone, "I know just how to handle her now."Shooting is by turns an ecstatic and a grueling time, made worse by Jonathan's perfectionism and endless retakes. But eventually the shooting gets done, and Georgia gets to have her first opening-night party with herself as the honoree. But Jonathan is not there--so she goes to visit him at his home. And there she discovers that Jonathan has taken a lover--a truly cheap woman who snidely says, "You're business; I'm company." Jonathan bellows at her that she hasn't the right to decide what he's like, and throws her out of his house--whereupon she gets into her car, drives into a heavy driving rain, and almost crashes until she finds the presence of mind to pull over and stop.Harry Pebbel gently reminds her of the day that she broke her contract--a legally actionable act that Jonathan did not sue her for--and of the millions of dollars that she since made for another studio--where Fred Amiel has been the star director.James Lee Bartlow now tells his own story:James Lee Bartlow, professor of history at the University of Virginia, has sold a novel about early Virginia history. He is surprised at its brisk sale, and even more surprised when Hollywood buys it, and Jonathan Shields himself calls him and offers him an expenses-paid trip to Hollywood. At first James Lee refuses, but his wife Rosemary wants the trip so much that he goes anyway. There James Lee is very much impressed by Jonathan, in spite of himself, and eventually he finds himself signed on with Shields Productions to write a screen treatment of his novel. But whenever he tries to get any work done, Rosemary always interrupts him with a wish to see some tourist trap or other.Finally, Jonathan has had enough, and he asks his old friend Gaucho to "squire" Rosemary around town, while he and James Lee take off for a cabin on a lake so that they can work without interruption. The treatment completed, Jonathan and James Lee return--and then James Lee reads the shocking news that Gaucho and Rosemary have died in a plane crash. Syd Murphy suppresses the flight plan that clearly shows that Gaucho was flying Rosemary to Acapulco to get a quickie divorce. Jonathan denies any knowledge of the affair that Gaucho and Rosemary were having, and insists that James Lee get to work on writing the script.With the script finished, James Lee tries to interest Georgia Lorrison in it, but she refuses--and also denies his suggestion that she is still in love with Jonathan. Then, four days into shooting, Jonathan has a falling-out with the director and decides to direct the film himself. The result is a disaster, and Jonathan, mortified, orders the picture shelved, though this means bankruptcy. James Lee offers to have Jonathan join him in another mountain retreat while James Lee writes his second novel--but in that conversation, Jonathan lets slip that he tried to stop Gaucho from making the fatal airplane flight. James Lee punches Jonathan in the jaw, and Jonathan, refusing to retaliate, insists that Rosemary had been a fool who wasted James Lee's time and wasted James Lee himself.James Lee perhaps has the best reason to resent Jonathan, but Harry still reminds James Lee that the professor does, after all, have a Pulitzer Prize under his belt and is now the most sought-after writer in Hollywood.Jonathan Shields is now on the line from Paris, France, and Harry asks the three straight-out whether they will participate or not. They refuse, and leave the office. But Jonathan will not stop talking, even though a transatlantic telephone call costs a fortune. Outside, Georgia, true to her habit, picks up on the other extension and starts to listen--and not long after that, all three are listening to Jonathan's pitch.

Tags: storytelling

Review:
The same drive, the same ambition, the same overwhelming ego that Selznick was legendary for is a part that was tailor made for Kirk Douglas.The three betrayed people, director Fred Amiel(Barry Sullivan), star Georgia Lorrison(Lana Turner), and screenwriter James Lee Barlow(Dick Powell)all ring very true.
Lana Turner, a beautiful presence in any movie, is good, but at times she appears to be overwhelmed by the range of emotions she has to project, especially with that phony car scene.Dick Powell and Gloria Graham put in an excellent appearance as the Bartlows.
Glossy MGM soaper has many things to recommend it, not the least of which is a surprisingly grounded, natural Lana Turner (looking great, even in ordinary jammies) playing a successful movie actress who, along with a top screenwriter and director, help producer-on-the-skids Kirk Douglas stage a comeback.
Turner is a revelation and deserved at the very least an Oscar nomination for her work; the picture did go on to win Academy Awards in five categories, including Gloria Grahame as Best Supporting Actress; Charles Schnee, Best Screenplay; Robert Surtees, Best Cinematography, Black-and-White; Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Black-and-White; and Best Costume Design, Black-and-White.
There's the director whom Shields promised a directing job but betrayed him, the writer who lost his wife to Shields's actions, and the actress whom Shields drove to madness.I thought that one of the most effective scenes in the movie was Kirk Douglas holding Lana Turner in his arms.
Here the producer Jonathan Shields is played  by Kirk Douglas as someone with big ideas at first- he even has an idea  to help make a scary movie about cats even more frightening by not  showing the cats (echoes of Val Lewton).
But more than Douglas, it's also tremendous, memorable screen  time for Lana Turner, perhaps in her most successful performance in  just sheer acting terms (not necessarily just in presence or style like  in other pictures), and for Dick Powell, who with this and Murder My  Sweet has two defining roles outside of his usual niche.
With many sweet camera moves, a script that crackles with the kind of  scenes and dialog that makes one wish for the glory times of  Hollywood's Golden Age, and at least four or five really excellent  performances, The Bad and the Beautiful might not be as astounding and  near-perfect as 8 1/2 or as funny as Bowfinger, but it ranks up there  with the best movies about movie-making, and can make for some fine  entertainment even for those who aren't really interested in how movies  are made..
2 Out Of 3 Ain't Bad. A bit of a soap opera, this film was divided into three segments as people recalled their experiences with "Jonathan Shields," played well by Kirk Douglas."Shields" was a guy interested in making movies and he used people to get to the top.
Now this isn't meant as a criticism, but this is more a description of all the plot twists and betrayals--sort of like a season of a typical soap squeezed into one movie.Kirk Douglas does a really good job of portraying a sociopathic user--a Hollywood big-shot who stomps on all his friends and enemies alike in order to get ahead.
Known more for his stylish MGM musicals, director Vincente Minnelli pulled out all the stops for this classic 1952 melodrama about a ruthless film producer, Jonathan Shields, who alienates all of those around him to build his fortunes and legacy in Hollywood.
Ignited by Kirk Douglas's terrifically brutal performance as Shields, the film is incessantly watchable - similar in structure and perspective to Orson Welles's "Citizen Kane" - as the story tracks his rise to the top and fall from grace through three primary relationships - the first with Fred Amiel, a director with whom Shields partners early in their careers, the second with Georgia Lorrison, an alcoholic bit player and daughter of a Hollywood legend whom Shields grooms to become a big star, and the third with James Lee Bartlow, a writer whom Shields tries to make a screenwriter in spite of the constant interruptions by Bartlow's southern belle wife Rosemary.Filmed in a rich black-and-white by veteran cinematographer Robert Surtees, the film is slick and penetrating at the same time, a deep-dive character study of not only Shields but the people who come to admire his tenacity and creativity only to be betrayed by his lack of character.
Ideally cast as Georgia in what is likely her career-best performance, Lana Turner is surprisingly effective in what must have been quite a stretch for her meager acting talents - from pathetic drunk to clinging starlet to haughty diva.Longtime leading man Dick Powell and familiar character actor Barry Sullivan respectively portray Bartlow and Amiel with precision and an alternating sense of brotherly obligation and resentment toward Shields.
Take that Kim Basinger!The CD now available includes a quite interesting Turner Classic Movies documentary, "Lana Turner...A Daughter's Memoir," with Cheryl Crane gracefully sharing some memories, a scoring session with music cues, and two theatrical trailers: for "The Bad and The Beautiful" and its CinemaScope/Metrocolor "sequel," also starring Kirk Douglas, scored by David Raksin and directed by Minnelli, "Two Weeks in Another Town," which was far and away more over-the-top than its predecessor..
Many critics say the film is a captivating and realistic look at what goes on behind-the-scenes in Hollywood.When I read comments like these and heard it had a cast that included:Kirk Douglas,Lana Turner,Walter Pidgeon,Dick Powell,and Gloria Grahame,I decided to watch it when it came on TCM(Turner Classic Movies)three months ago.The film tells the story of a studio executive(Pidgeon)of Sheilds Pictures,trying to convince three celebrities:an actress(Turner),a director(Barry Sullivan),and a playwright(Powell),to do a film with a greedy producer(Douglas),whom they all greatly despise.To show the audience why they hate this producer,there are three flashbacks.The film starts out very promising,but then just goes into pure boredom.The plot,itself,is fascinating,and if the film would have been done differently,it could've have been great.The flashbacks are extremely slow-moving,and you don't see the terrible things Kirk Douglas does until the very end of each of them.There isn't much detail about them,either.
I., well, anyway.It's a wonderfully told (mostly in flashback) story of a driven young producer Jonathan Shields (Oscar nominated-Kirk Douglas) and his relationships on his way to the top with an actress (Lana Turner), a director (Barry Sullivan), and a writer (Dick Powell).Scorsese mentions this film more than once in his `A Personal Journey with Martin Scorsese through American Movies', which I wholeheartedly recommend.Charles Schnee's screenplay won the Academy Award.
Minnelli's direction is superb, the cinematography is intriguing, the all-star cast turns in top notch performances, and the separate stories of how a director, an actress, and a writer each was both screwed over and started on the path to greatness by the producer Jonathon Shields, played by Kirk Douglas, each work like their own individual films, much like three intertwining stories of the veterans of The Best Years of Our Lives and the different experiences of those who knew Charles Foster Kane in, of course, Citizen Kane.
Trying to get three people who's careers he single handedly guided to super star stardom actress Georgia Lorrison, Lana Turner, director Fred Amiel, Barry Sullivan, and screen writer James Lee Bartlow, Dick Powell, to work on his big comeback motion picture all Shields gets from them is snide and insulting responses.It's then the movie goes into flashback mode where we see what kind of relationship Shields had with the three that got them to dislike the man so much.
That's when the three after turning down his offer to work with him eavesdrop on a telephone conversation he's having with film producer and good friend, probably the only friend he has left in the world, Harry Pebbel, Walter Pidgeon, about his new project and seem to be grudgingly interested in being part of it!Kirk Douglas really lets it all out in the movie by griding his teeth jutting out his chin, as if changeling you to hit it, as well as making himself crazy especially in the last scene he's in with Lana Turner that will take your breath away in just how off the wall he really is!
Will you work with him just this once?"Three people: a Pulitzer Prize winning writer (Dick Powell), a beloved actress (Lana Turner), and an Oscar winning director (Bernard Sullivan) ; all connected by one man (Kirk Douglas).
The Bad and the Beautiful, a film about the behind-the-scenes artifice, technique and environment of the celluloid universe was based upon a short story titled Tribute to a Bad Man. The main character, a freshly dead, underhanded, exploitative Broadway producer, was adapted into a living, vainglorious Hollywood producer desperate for a return in a versatile, restless performance by eternal youth Kirk Douglas.In Hollywood, screenwriter Dick Powell, played with an exacting self-honesty despite his old-fashioned style, movie star Lana Turner and director Barry Sullivan each decline to speak by phone to Douglas' Jonathan Shields.
Honorable mention must be given to Gloria Grahame, Walter Pidgeon, Gilbert Roland, Barry Sullivan, Dick Powell and the rest of the cast whose performances help make this movie a powerful and outstanding work of art..
Unusually constructed around three separate lengthy flashbacks of past associates (a director, actress and writer, played by Barry Sullivan, Lana Turner and Dick Powell) of boy-genius Jonathan Shields (a composite, perhaps of David O Selznick and Orson Welles) played with total conviction and no little vigour by an emergent Kirk Douglas, these serve to lay bare, warts and all, his larger than life character by the conclusion, leaving the viewer to decide for themselves whether this golden boy with feet of clay is deserving of our admiration or derision.
Jonathan Shields, played remarkably by Kirk Douglas, goes from poor, unknown movie producer, to becoming one of the richest and most powerful men in Hollywood.
It's all told in flashback of how he made...and destroyed...three people--actress Georgia Lorrison (Lana Turner), business associate Fred Amiel (Barry Sullivan) and writer James Lee Bartlow (Dick Powell).Purportedly this was an accurate portrayal of what Hollywood was like at the time--I have my doubts.
Lana Turner, Dick Powell, and Barry Sullivan play three victims of an ambitious producer (Kirk Douglas) in "The Bad and the Beautiful." This 1952 film sports great direction by Vincente Minnelli and a top-notch cast, including the above and Walter Pidgeon, Gloria Grahame, Gilbert Roland, and Elaine Stewart.Kirk Douglas was never better or more handsome than as producer Jonathan Shields, who manages to alienate a lot of people he meets on his climb up.
A director entrusts a producer and gives him his baby project but sees his own name dropped out because there's a bigger one, an actress tries to get bigger parts without passing any couch casting and a writer reaches success with his private life as a collateral damage.And the film opens with a "who's who?" of the Hollywood major players: the director (Barry Sullivan), the actress (Lana Turner), the writer (Dick Powell) all invited by the producer (Walter Pidgeon).
The film only got an Oscar nomination for Jean Hagen and yet she lost to Gloria Grahame who played the writer's wife for a nine-minute screen time!So a good performance, an uneven narrative fluidity, and a script too manipulative, melodramatic or sloppy to be redeemed by its great insightful moments about Hollywood business.
A story of betrayals and misunderstandings in the festering underbelly of Hollywood; this is Vincente Minnelli's cool expose of the workings of a producer (Kirk Douglas, as one of the movies' great detestable characters) and the effect he has on those who come into contact with him: a director who feels abandoned yet goes on to produce his greatest work (Barry Sullivan); an actress who is rescued from semi-alcoholism and turned into a star (Lana Turner, in one of her trademark parts); and a prize-winning novelist who is uprooted to shape his book for the screen (Dick Powell, in one of his last film roles before moving into television and film directing).We see their stories in a series of flashbacks, linked by the three enemies of Douglas coming together in the office of studio biggie Walter Pidgeon – who coolly reminds them of the good things the producer brought to their lives along with the bad.
A story of betrayals and misunderstandings in the festering underbelly of Hollywood; this is Vincente Minnelli's cool expose of the workings of a producer (Kirk Douglas, as one of the movies' great detestable characters) and the effect he has on those who come into contact with him: a director who feels abandoned yet goes on to produce his greatest work (Barry Sullivan); an actress who is rescued from semi-alcoholism and turned into a star (Lana Turner, in one of her trademark parts); and a prize-winning novelist who is uprooted to shape his book for the screen (Dick Powell, in one of his last film roles before moving into television and film directing).We see their stories in a series of flashbacks, linked by the three enemies of Douglas coming together in the office of studio biggie Walter Pidgeon – who coolly reminds them of the good things the producer brought to their lives along with the bad.
The systematic rejection of the individual as a business partner henceforth tells us precisely where each tale is headed when it is we finally flashback for each account, the beginning with director Fred Amiel (Sullivan) before moving onto actress Georgia Lorrison (Turner) and then finishing with that writer named Jim Bartlow (Powell) eventually coming to formulate the heart of a film making the same point three times, but from the perspectives of three wildly differing people with roles within the film industry spanning both genders.In being able to hear each story, the three gather in Jon's office at the Shields production studio; the bevy of industry professionals gathered around one another, in front of an on-listening Shields official, talking drearily of their lifetime experiences echos that of a kind of addicts seminar.
Lana Turner as Georgia was also not at her best, being too histrionic for my taste.I would not rate "The Bad and the Beautiful" quite as highly as either "Sunset Boulevard" or "Singin' in the Rain", but it is one of those films which, although nearly sixty years old, still remains highly watchable even today, both as a vivid picture of Hollywood in its Golden Age and as a psychological portrait of a megalomaniac tycoon reminiscent of Orson Welles's Charles Foster Kane.
In the closing scene when Lana Turner, Barry Sullivan, and Dick Powell abruptly get up from their chairs and leave second generation film producer Jonathan Shields' (Kirk Douglas) Hollywood office while Kirk's producer/accountant, Harry Pebbel (Walter Pidgeon), who arranged the overseas phone conference meeting, and Kirk are trying to convince them while he is still in Paris through an overseas phone call to make just one more picture with him.
The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) **** (out of 4) A movie star (Lana Turner), a top-notch director (Barry Sullivan) and the highest paid screenwriter (Dick Powell) are brought together in hopes that they'll agree to work again with the producer (Kirk Douglas) who made all of them what they are but in doing so also did stuff to harm them.
Unfortunately, an interesting story and outstanding performance by Kirk Douglas in the lead role are largely wasted by a mishandled attempt to structure the movie in a film-noir style.The telling of the story is based around a highly contrived setting which gives 3 characters a chance to narrate flashbacks.
The three come together at the producer's request; he wants them to work together on mutually hated Jonathon Shields' newest big-budget productionStars: Lana Turner, Kirk Douglas, Walter Pidgeon, Dick Powell, Gloria Grahame .
The start of the movie shows Lana Turner, Dick Powell, and Barry Sullivan, all successful in their Hollywood careers, refusing to take a call or speak to the character of Jonathan Shields.
In Hollywood, director Fred Amiel (Barry Sullivan), movie star Georgia Lorrison (Lana Turner), and screenwriter James Lee Bartlow (Dick Powell) each refuse to speak by phone to Jonathan Shields (Kirk Douglas) in Paris.
"B&B" offers as much adultery and sumptuous sets as the censors and budgets will allow while it traces the rise and fall of an amoral film producer (Kirk Douglas) as he destroys a director (Barry Sullivan), actress (Lana Turner) and writer (Dick Powell) in pursuit of cinematic immortality.
Particularly postmodern is the characters' penchant for criticizing Lana Turner's performance: "wooden," "terrible," "even when you're awful, you're all the audience sees." (Indeed, that rack of hers literally and figuratively obscured many a movie set.) As Hollywood self-laceration goes, "The Bad and the Beautiful" presages "The Player" by forty years, and manages to be a far better film by upping the melodrama and burying the self-referential cleverness.Douglas' character,Jonathan Shields, is the son of some dead, disgraced studio exec who sets out to avenge his father's humiliation.
Georgia's performance makes her a success in Hollywood, but she never will work for Jonathan again.Finally we have the story of novelist James Lee Barlow (Dick Powell) and his wife Rosemary (Gloria Grahame).
The movie starts in Hollywood, screenwriter James Lee Bartlow (Dick Powell), movie star Georgia Lorrison (Lana Turner), and director Fred Amiel (Barry Sullivan) has been gather up by movie producer Harry Pebbel (Walter Pidgeon) to help Jonathan Shields (Kurt Douglas) with his newest movie, but each refuse, and tells Harry the reason why.
I really liked the way the story was told in this movie - three vignettes that feature different characters, all of whose lives are affected by film producer Jonathan Shields.
A tautly written tale of a movie producer (Douglas) down on his luck who tries to talk three outstanding filmic talents -- director Barry Sullivan, actress Lana Turner, and screenweriter Dick Powell -- into working on his new comeback picture.