George Cukor

At 83 years old, George Cukor has this physical status:

George Dewey Cukor (July 7, 1899 – January 24, 1983) was an American film director.

He mainly concentrated on comedies and literary adaptations.

When David O. Selznick, the studio's Head of Production, recruited Cukor to direct many of RKO's major films, including What Price Hollywood, he flourished at RKO. (1932), A Bill of Divorcement (1932), Our Brothers (1933), and Little Women (1933).

Cukor followed and directed Dinner at Eight (1933) and Juliat (1936) for Irving Thalberg (1933) and Camille (1936) when Selznick returned to MGM in 1933. He was shot at the Wind (1939), but he went on to direct The Philadelphia Story (1940), Gaslight (1944), Adam's Rib (1954), and received the Academy Award for Best Director for My Fair Lady (1964).

He continued to work into the 1980s.

Early life

Cukor was born on Manhattan's Lower East Side, the younger child and only son of Hungarian-Jewish immigrants Viktor, an assistant district attorney, and Helén Ilona Gross. In honor of Spanish-American War hero George Dewey, his parents selected his middle name. The family was not particularly religious (pork was a staple on the dinner table), and Cukor learned Hebrew phonetically as a child, but without having a clear idea of what the terms or what they represented, they had no idea what they meant. As a result, he was ambivalent about his faith and dismissive of old world traditions from childhood, and as an adult, he adopted Anglophilia to move closer to his roots.

Cukor performed in many amateur plays and dance lessons as an infant, and at the age of seven, he performed in a recital with David O. Selznick, who later became a mentor and friend. Cukor used to be taken by his uncle to the New York Hippodrome as a youth. He was often deterred by theatre and dropped classes at DeWitt Clinton High School to attend afternoon matinees. He spent 50 percent per appearance at the Metropolitan Opera in his senior year, and $1 if he were expected to perform in blackface.

Following his high school graduation in 1917, Cukor was expected to follow in his father's footsteps and pursue a career in law. He halfheartedly enrolled in the City College of New York, where he joined the Students Army Training Corps in October 1918. His military experience was limited; Germany surrendered in early November; and Cukor's service was overdue by only two months. He left school right after.

Personal life

Cukor was gay, at a time when culture was against it, but as producer Joseph L. Mankiewicz said, he was "never carried it as a pin on his lapel." He was a celebrated bon vivant whose luxurious home was the scene of weekly Sunday afternoon parties attended by late celebrities and the attractive young men who were socialized in bars and gyms and carried with them. At least once, during his time with MGM, he was arrested on vice charges, but studio executives were able to get the charges dropped and all evidence of it exoned, but the incident was never reported by the media. Cukor became involved with George Towers, a much younger man in the late 1950s. Towers funded his education at the Los Angeles State College of Applied Arts and Sciences and the University of Southern California, where he obtained a law degree in 1967. Towers married a woman and his Cukormanship developed into a one of father and son during the remainder of Cukor's life, and the two stayed close for the remainder of his life.

Cukor was not established as a leading producer in Hollywood's gay subculture until the mid-1930s, but more as an unofficial head of the gay subculture. Many gatherings for the industry's homosexuals were held at his home, which was redecorating by gay actor-turned-interior designer William Haines' gardens, conceived by Florence Yoch and Lucile Council in 1935. Haines, his collaborator Jimmie Shields, writer James Vincent, screenwriter Rowland Leigh, costume designers Orry-Kelly and Robert Le Maire, and actor John Darrow, Anderson Lawler, Grady Sutton, Robert Seiter, and Tom Douglas were among the close-knit group members who allegedly included Haines and his partner Jimmie Shields, author James Vincent, director James Vincent, writer James Vincent, writer W. Somerset Maugham, screenwriter Rowland director James Vincent Frank Horn, Cary Grant's secretary, was also a frequent visitor.

Cukor's relatives were of utmost importance to him, and he kept his house stocked with their photos. Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, Joan Crawford, Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart, Patrick Bacall, Matthew Ferguson, Matthew Carter, Vivien Leigh, actor Richard Cromwell, Stanley Holloway, Judy Garland, Nol Coward, and Norma Shearer were among the regular attendees at her soiree, including actor Richard Cromwell, Jeffrey Thalberg, Jr., Gregory Buchart, Lawrence Ferguson He often entertained literary figures such as Sinclair Lewis, Theodore Dreiser, Hugh Walpole, Aldous Huxley, and Ferenc Molnár.

Frances Goldwyn, second wife of studio mogul Sam Goldwyn, had long considered Cukor to be the love of her life, but their marriage remained stifled. According to photographer A. Scott Berg, Frances also arranged for Cukor's burial to be located near her own plot at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery.

On Cukor, Robert Trachtenberg's 2000 film about his life and work titled On Cukor.

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Career

Cukor gained experience as an assistant stage manager and bit player with a touring production of The Better 'Ole, a classic British musical based on Old Bill, a cartoon created by Bruce Bairnsfather. He was hired as the general manager of the newly formed Lyceum Players, an upstate summer stock company, in 1920, in 1920. He founded the C.F. in 1925. Z. and A. Walter Folmer and John Zwicki's Production Company, which gave him his first opportunity to direct. He made his Broadway debut with Antonia by Hungarian playwright Melchior Lengyel and then moved to Rochester, where C.F. George Lengyel was born. Louis Calhern, Ilka Chase, Phyllis Povah, Frank Morgan, Reginald Owen, Elizabeth Patterson, and Douglass Montgomery, all of whom worked with Cukor in later years in Hollywood, transformed into the Cukor-Kondolf Stock Company. Bette Davis, the company's only one season, had been with the firm for just one season. "Her talent was evident, but she did not buck at direction," Cukor later shared. She had her own ideas, and although she only did bits and ingenue roles, she didn't hesitate to share them." Davis resigned for several decades, and although Cukor never understood why she attached so much emphasis on an event he considered so minor, he never worked with her again.

Cukor alternated between Rochester in the summer months and Broadway in the winter for the next few years. Owen Davis' 1926 stage adaptation of The Great Gatsby attracted the New York critics. "Each unique piece of work by a director not widely known as he should be," drama critic Arthur Pollock wrote in the Brooklyn Eagle. Cukor produced six more Broadway shows before moving to Hollywood in 1929.

Cukor immediately responded when Hollywood began to recruit New York theater actors for sound films. Paramount Pictures paid him for his airfare in December 1928, but he didn't get any screen credit until he turned six months old. He came to Hollywood in February 1929, and his first job was to teach the cast of River of Romance how to speak with a decent Southern accent. The studio lent him to Universal Pictures in October to conduct the screen tests and act as a dialogue director for All Quiet on the Western Front, which was published in 1930. He co-directed three films at Paramount this year, and his weekly income was increased to $1,500. Tallulah Bankhead appeared on Tarnished Lady (1931), his first solo directorial debut.

When original director Ernst Lubitsch decided to concentrate on filming instead, Cukor was sent to One Hour With You (1932), an opera with Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald. Both men were good together at first, but two weeks into filming, Lubitsch began to appear on the set on a regular basis, and Cukor soon started directing scenes with Cukor's permission. Lubitsch approached Paramount general manager B.P. Upon completion of the film. Schulberg threatened to leave the studio if Cukor's name was not deleted from the credits, so Cukor's name was not removed from the credits. Cukor did not comply when Schulberg ordered him to help, so Cukor filed a lawsuit. He eventually settling for being billed as assistant director and then went back to David O. Selznick at RKO Studios, where he went on to work with him.

Cukor resented as a director with the ability to coax great performances from actresses and became known as a "woman's director." Despite this fame, he oversaw more appearances for the Academy Award for Best Actor (1940), Ronald Colman in A Double Life (1947), and Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady (1964). Katharine Hepburn, one of Cukor's younger ingenues, debuted in A Bill of Divorcement (1932) and left RKO officials in a limbo as to how to use her. Cukor directed her in several films, some of which were hit, such as Little Women (1933) and Holiday (1938), as well as tragic, such as Sylvia Scarlett (1935). Cukor and Hepburn were best friends off the set.

Even before the book was published, Cukor was hired by Selznick to direct Gone with the Wind. He spent the next two years with pre-production, as well as the supervision of numerous screen tests of actresses aspiring to play Scarlett O'Hara. Cukor favored Hepburn for the role, but Selznick, who is worried about her fame as "box office poison," would not recommend her without a screen test, and she refused to film one. Cukor loved Paulette Goddard, but Selznick, who appeared to be secretly married, was among those that did, but she was concerned about her allegedly illicit friendship with Charlie Chaplin (they were, in fact, secretly married) worried Selznick.

The director helped with other ventures as a result of his Wind duties. Following Richard Thorpe's dismissal of the original director of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938), Cukor spent a week on the set of The Wizard of Oz (1939). Despite the fact that he made no film, Dorothy made important improvements to her appearance by cutting Judy Garland's blonde wig and adjusting her make-up and costume, enabling her to act in a more natural way. In addition, Cukor softened the Scarecrow's makeover and gave Margaret Hamilton a new hairstyle for the Wicked Witch of the West, as well as changing her makeup and other facial features. Cukor also suggested that the Tin Man, Jack Haley, be on loan from 20th Century Fox.

Vivien Leigh and Olivia de Havilland spent many hours teaching before starting filming Wind, but Clark Gable resisted his attempts to get him to understand a Southern accent. However, amid rumors that Gable is uncomfortable with Cukor on the set, no one in David O. Selznick's internal memos says Clark Gable had anything to do with Cukor's removal from the film. Rather, they display Selznick's growing dissatisfaction with Cukor's stumbling speed and quality of work. "George [Cukor] finally told me everything about it after being sent in a private letter from journalist Susan Myrick to Margaret Mitchell in February 1939. He disliked [leaving the company] very much, but he couldn't do otherwise, but he couldn't do otherwise. In effect, he said he is an honest craftsman and he cannot work unless he knows it is a lucrative career and that the present one isn't correct, and he feels the present situation is not correct. He told me he had looked into the rushes and thought he was failing, but the system didn't work as it should. He grew to believe that the script was the culprit, and he told David he would not continue to work any longer if the script was not improved and he wanted the [Sidney] Howard script back...but not let his name go out over a bad picture...and bullheaded David said, 'OK get out!'"

Selznick was already unhappy with Cukor ("a huge luxury") for not being more responsive to other Selznick positions, even though Cukor had been on salary since early 1937; and although Selznick had been on pay for four months before principal photography was introduced, Selznick entertained the prospect of replacing him with Victor Fleming in a private memo released in September 1938. "I believe the Cukor affair is the biggest black mark against our leadership to date, and we should no longer be sentimental about it." Cukor was fired from his positions, but he continued to work with Leigh and Olivia de Havilland off the set. Various rumors regarding the causes of his dismissal have circulated in Hollywood. Selznick's relationship with Cukor had deteriorated slightly when the director refused other roles, including A Star Is Born (1937) and Intermezzo (1939). Given that Gable and Cukor worked together before (on Manhattan Melodrama, 1934) and Gable had no objection to working with him, and Selznick's veto to get Rhett Butler out of him, no doubt would have been raised until Cukor's. However, writer Gore Vidal recalled that Gable be fired off Wind because, according to Vidal, the young Gable had been a male hustler and Cukor had been one of his johns. E.J., a Hollywood biographer, has confirmed this. Fleming, who has recalled that it was a particularly difficult moment, erupted publicly, screaming: "I can't go on with this picture." I will not be led by a fairy. "I have to work with a real man."

Cukor's dismissal from Wind made him direct The Women (1939), a female romance film based on The Philadelphia Story (1940). Greta Garbo, another of his favorite actors, appeared in Two-Faced Woman (1941), her last film before she resigned from film.

Cukor enlisted in the Signal Corps in 1942 at the age of 43. Following basic training at Fort Monmouth, he was taken to Astoria, Queens, (where he had produced three films in the early 1930s), but he was allowed to stay at the St. Regis Hotel in Manhattan. Cukor produced army and instructional films for army troops, including Irwin Shaw, John Cheever, and William Saroyan. Since he did not have an officer's license, he found it difficult to give orders and directions to his superiors. Despite his attempts to rise above the rank of private, he even ordered Frank Capra to intervene on his behalf—he never received an officer's or any citations during his six months of service. Cukor feared that his homosexuality barred him from receiving any advances or awards in later years, but that has yet to be confirmed.

Cukor's remainder of the decade was a series of hits and misses. Both Two-Faced Woman and Her Cardboard Lover (1942) were commercial failures. A Woman's Face (1941), Joan Crawford and Gaslight (1944), about a woman who is suspecting of skepticism with Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer, were more popular. Cukor formed an association with screenwriter Garson Kanin and Ruth Gordon, who had lived in Cukor's house in 1939 and married three years later. The trio worked on seven films together, including A Double Life (1947) starring Ronald Colman, Adam's Rib (1951), and It Should Happen to You (1954), two Cukor favorites who received the Academy Award for Best Actress for Born Yesterday.

Cukor was approached by Sid Luft, who suggested that the director direct a musical revival of A Star Is Born (1937) with his then-wife Judy Garland in the lead role in December 1952. Cukor had to postpone the earlier film because it was too similar to his own. What Price Hollywood? (1932) However, he accepted the opportunity to produce his first Technicolor film and collaborate with screenwriter Moss Hart and especially Garland. It was difficult to get the latest A Star Is Born (1954) to the screen. Cukor wanted Cary Grant for the male lead and went so far as to read the entire script with him, but Grant, who agreed that it was the job of a lifetime, didn't want to do it, and Cukor never forgave him. Either Humphrey Bogart or Frank Sinatra could have played the role, but Jack L. Warner turned down both. Stewart Granger was the front runner for a brief period of time, but he backed out when he was unable to adapt to Cukor's habit of acting out scenes as a form of direction. James Mason was eventually laid off, and filming began on October 12, 1953. Cukor was obliged to deal not only with regular script changes, but also with a very tumultuous Garland, plagued by chemical and alcohol dependenceencies, extreme body changes, and real and imagined illnesses. Cukor had mixed feelings about it when it was first established in March 1954. A rough cut was still missing multiple musical figures was assembled, and Cukor had mixed feelings about it. Cukor had left the film and was unwinding in Europe when the final scene was shot in the early morning hours of July 28, 1954. Despite enthusiastic feedback from the audience, Cukor and editor Folmar Blangsted trimmed it to 182 minutes for its New York premiere in October, the first preview ran 210 minutes. The reports were the best of Cukor's career, but Warner executives, concerned that the running time would limit the number of daily showings, made drastic cuts without Cukor, who had left Pakistan to scout locations for the epic Bhowani Junction in 1954-1955. The film had lost musical numbers and key dramatic scenes in its final running time of 154 minutes, and Cukor referred to it as "very painful." He was not included in the film's six Oscar nominations.

Cukor produced a handful of films with varying success in the ten years. Les Girls (1957) received the Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy, and Wild Is the Wind (also 1957) received Oscar nominations for Anna Magnani and Anthony Quinn, but neither Heller in Pink Tights nor Let's Make Love (both 1960) were box-office hits, but neither Heller in Pink Tights nor Let's Make Love (1960) received Oscar nominations. Something's Got to Give, an updated version of the comedy My Favorite Wife (1940), was another project during this period. Marilyn Monroe, Monroe's leading lady, found it difficult to cope with her erratic work habits, frequent absences from the team, and Monroe's acting coach Paula Strasberg's constant presence. The director had only 712 minutes of usable footage after 32 days of shooting. Then Monroe travelled to New York to attend President John F. Kennedy's birthday at Madison Square Garden, where she serenaded Kennedy. After Monroe's death, Fox executives announced that her participation in the political fundraising effort had been allowed by Fox executives. When Cukor had shot every scene not involving Monroe, the performance came to a halt, and the actress remained unemployed. Peter Levath, the 20th Century Fox executive, fired Levathes and hired Lee Remick to replace her, prompting co-star Dean Martin to leave because his job promised he would be playing opposite Monroe. The studio pulled the plug on the project after the production was already $2 million over budget and everyone else back at the start of the project. Monroe was discovered dead in her house less than two months after.

Cukor achieved one of his finest victories with My Fair Lady (1964), two years later (1964). There were increasing tensions between the producer and designer Cecil Beaton during filming; Cukor was delighted with leading lady Audrey Hepburn, but the crew was less concerned with her diva-like demands. Despite multiple critiques being critical of Cukor's direction, Pauline Kael said it was "staggers along" and Stanley Kauffmann said the film was a box-office hit and earned him the Academy Award for Best Director, the Golden Globe Award for Best Director, and the Directors Guild of America Award after being nominated for each several times.

Cukor became less active after My Fair Lady's death. Maggie Smith was directed by Maggie Smith in Travels with My Aunt (1972) and he helmed the critical and commercial flop The Blue Bird (1976), the first joint Soviet-American production. He reunited with Katharine Hepburn twice for the television series Love Among the Ruins (1975) and The Corn Is Green (1979). Cukor produced Rich and Famous for MGM in 1981, starring Jacqueline Bisset and Candice Bergen at the age of 82.

The American Academy of Achievement's Golden Plate Award in 1970 was given to him.

In 1976, Cukor was given the George Eastman Award, which was given by George Eastman House for his contributions to the field of film.

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