Mark Sandrich: Film History

Mark Sandrich, “Shall We Dance”, May 7, 1937, Starring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, “They All Laughed” Dance Sequence, Film Clip Gifs, Cinematography David Abel and Joseph F. Bloc, Music George Gershwin, Lyrics Ira Gershwin, RKO Radio Pictures

Born in New York City in October of 1900, Mark Sandrich was an American film director, writer and producer. He is considered one of the most gifted and least heralded directors of the 1930s and early 1940s. A splendid technician, Sandrich’s cinematic craftsmanship and intuitive sense of rhythm helped chart the golden era of Hollywood musicals.

Born Mark Rex Goldstein, Mark Sandrich was the son of England-born Rabbi Jacob Goldstein and Hungarian-born Klara Jacobson Sandrich. Trained as a physicist at New York’s Columbia University, he began his career in the film industry in 1922 as a prop man after offering advice during a studio film shooting. Sandrich began directing short two-reel silent comedies in 1926 and 1927, the first of these being “Jerry the Giant” for Fox Film Corporation. In 1928, he directed his first feature film, the silent one-hour drama “Runaway Girls”, distributed by the newly founded Columbia Pictures.

Sandrich continued directing short films in 1929 and eventually directed more than thirty-five shorts by the middle of 1933. His first title as screenwriter was a co-credit with Nat Carr for the 1930 short film “Gunboat Ginsberg”. In 1933, Sandrich directed and co-wrote his last short film, “So This is Harris!”, a pre-code musical comedy produced by Lou Brock and released in August by RKO Radio Pictures. The film won an Oscar in 1934 for Best Short Subject (Comedy) at the 6th Academy Awards.

With the shooting of “So This is Harris!” finished, Mark Sandrich began to focus on feature films. In 1933, he directed his first feature film with sound, “Melody Cruise”, a successful musical comedy that established him as a commercial director. In the same year, Sandrich did some uncredited second unit work with Thornton Freeland’s musical “Flying Down to Rio” which, although they were not the headliners, was the first screen pairing of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. In 1934, he directed the first proper Astaire-Rogers musical “The Gay Divorcee”. This successful film received five Academy Award nominations, winning the Music (Song) Oscar for Con Conrad and Herb Magidson’s “The Continental”.

In 1935, Sandrich’s “Top Hat”, a film specifically written for Astaire and Rogers, was released to major box office success. In addition to its many dance numbers, this Oscar-nominated musical included comedic scenes that added to its appeal. Sandrich followed this film with the 1936 “Follow the Fleet”, an Astaire-Rogers film that featured Lucille Ball and Betty Grable in early screen roles. He reunited Astaire and Rogers in two more films: the 1937 “Shall We Dance” with orchestral work and lyrics by George and Ira Gershwin, and Sandrich’s last collaboration with the dance duo, “Carefree”, which focused less on musical numbers and more on comedy.

Mark Sandrich directed three comedy musicals featuring comedian Jack Benny: the 1939 “Man About Town” and, both in 1940, “Buck Benny Rides Again” and “Love Thy Neighbor”. His 1941 skillful romantic comedy for Paramount Pictures, “Skylark”, featured Claudette Colbert and Ray Milland. In 1941, Sandrich directed one of his best and probably most watched film, the musical :Holiday Inn” with Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire. An enormous success, the film featured Irving Berlin’s Oscar-winning song “White Christmas”.

During the years of World War II, Sandrich produced several films, the first of which was the 1943 “Proudly We Hail”, a patriotic drama about a group of nurses in the Pacific war zone. Paulette Goddard was nominated for an Academy Award for her supporting role as nurse Lt. Joan O’Doul. In 1944, Sandrich directed two films, the 1944 “Here Come the Waves”, a musical comedy featuring Bing Crosby and Betty Hutton, and “I Love A Soldier”, a soap opera set in the war with Paulette Goddard and Sonny Tufts.

In 1945, Mark Sandrich began pre-production work on the Irving Berlin musical “Blue Skies” with Fred Astaire and Bing Crosby. At that time, he was also serving as president of the Directors Guild as well as attempting to maintain a good family life with his wife and two sons. One of the most influential and trusted Hollywood directors, Mark Sandrich died suddenly of a heart attack on the fourth of March at the age of forty-four. His body was interred at the Home of Peace Memorial Park in East Los Angeles, California.

Notes: Mark Sandrich’s sister Ruth Harriet Louise (Goldstein) was the first woman photographer active in Hollywood and, later, chief studio portrait photographer for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios. His two sons, Mark Sandrich Jr. and Jay Sandrich, are both directors in film and television.

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Mark Sandrich on Set”, Studio Photo, Gelatin Silver Print

Second Insert Image: Mark Sandrich, “Here Come the Waves”, December 1944, Film Poster, Cinematography Charles Lang, Music Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer, Paramount Pictures

Third Insert Image: Mark Sandrich, “Melody Cruise”, June 1933, Film Poster, Cinematography Bert Glennon, Music Max Steiner, RKO Radio Pictures

Bottom Insert Image: Mark Sandrich, “Holiday Inn”, August 1942, Film Poster, Cinematography David Abel, Music Irving Berlin, Paramount Pictures

Ádám Mányoki

Ádám Mányoki, “Self Portrait”, circa 1711, Oil on Canvas, 87 x 61.5 cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest

Born at the village of Szokolya in 1673, Ádám Mányoki was an Hungarian portraitist, one of the most prominent figures of Hungarian Baroque art. His work is known for its refined style and accomplished depiction of human emotion.

Born into the family of a rural Protestant preacher, Ádám Mányoki’s early life was one of hardship as the family struggled financially. Recognizing the family’s situation and Mányoki’s artistic talent, a German staff officer named Dölfer took the responsibility for Mányoki’s upbringing and education in Hamburg and Lüneburg. Exposed to the classical ideas of beauty and proportion, Mányoki developed his skills under court painter Andreas Scheits in Hamburg and painter Nicolas de Largillière of the Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in Paris. Both of these artists were acclaimed for their innovation within the Baroque tradition.

Mányoki’s formal education ended with a journey to Amsterdam where the Age of Enlightenment was flourishing. The Dutch Republic had a vibrant art scene with new ideas, literary salons, coffeehouses, and experiments with new techniques in the arts. Mányoki’s exposure to this atmosphere solidified his commitment to the art of portraiture as a means to capture the subtleties of human psychology. In 1703, he decided to relocate to Berlin where he secured patronage from King Frederick William I and established himself as a prominent member of the Prussian cultural elite. Mányoki painted several portraits of royal family members that were celebrated for their precision and sense of dignity.

After establishing his reputation in Germany, Ádám Mányoki traveled extensively in Europe seekings new opportunities. He traveled to both Prague and Vienna where he received commissions from Emperor Charles VI, ruler of the Austrian Habsburg monarchy, and Empress Maria Theresa, who ascended to the throne after Charles VI’s death. Mányoki’s travels expanded his knowledge of both European history and the diverse approaches to painting. Between 1724 and 1731, he remained in Hungary where he created portraits of the Hungarian nobility and members of the Podmanitzky family, an influential lineage that played a key role throughout Hungary’s history.

After leaving Hungary, Mányoki resided in Dresden and Leipzig. He received royal patronage from Augustus III, King of Poland and Grand Duke of Lithuania, and continued to paint works that were in keeping with the style of that era. Due to unresolved salary disputes, Mányoki resigned his position as court painter in 1753, an act which marked the end of his career. Ádám Mányoki died peacefully in Dresden, at the age of eighty-four, in August of 1757.

Notes: Ádám Mányoki painted his 1711 “Self Portrait” while he was residing in Berlin. Influences from his studies of seventeenth-century Dutch and Germany painting can be seen in its composition. Mányoki used a technique of self-portraiture that had been popular since Rembrandt; a soft velvet hat with an upturned rim that casts a warm, brown shadow over the upper half of the face. The choice of colors and some of the portrait’s formal details can be traced to the work of the French portraitist to the Prussian court, Antoine Pesne. In the portrait, the posture of the figure and the shirt’s loose front opening may have been inspired by Mányoki seeing German Baroque artist Philip Kilian’s engraving of landscape painter Johann Heinrich Roos’s self-portrait.

Originally owned by Ádám Mányoki, the painting is documented in the Galerie Schleißheim from 1775. It was bought by the Association of Friends of the Art Museums, and from 1931 was on permanent deposit in museums with which the Friends were associated. From 1974 it has been in the Hungarian National Gallery.

Top Insert Image: Ádám Mányoki, “Portrait of János Podmaniczky”, 1724, Oil on Canvas, 91 x 76 cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest

Second Insert Image: Ádám Mányoki, “Porträt einer Hofdame König August de Starken (Portrait of a Lady-in-Waiting to King Augustus III, the Strong)”, circa 1715, Oil on Canvas, 64 x 62 cm, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Ádám Mányoki, “Portrait of Prince Ference Rákózci II”, 1712, Oil on Canvas, 75.5 x 67.5 cm, Museum of Fine Arts, Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest

Aage Storstein

The Paintings of Aage Storstein

Born at the historic city of Stavanger in July of 1900, Aage Storstein was a Norwegian painter, draftsman and graphic artist who focused his studies on historical art as well as his own contemporary style. Although particularly interested in early Renaissance art, Storstein found inspiration in the work and unique style of Picasso.

Although he lived the majority of his life in Norway, Aage Storstein traveled to Paris to study during the 1920s. He studied at Académie Ranson, the private art school founded by painter Paul Ranson in 1908; the Académie de la Grande Chaumière which was free from the strict Academic rules of painting; and the Académie Colarossi, a school founded as an alternative to the government-sanctioned, more conservative École des Beaux Arts. In 1926, Storstein studied under Norwegian painters Henrik Sørenson and Per Lasson Krohg, both of whom had been students of Henri Matisse.

In Paris, Storstein was greatly influenced by the modernist paintings of that period and began his own distinctive style of Cubism. Although best know for his figurative compositions, Storstein’s landscapes were always central to his art. His landscapes, a blend of nature with human structure, were painted with analytical precision, simplified forms, and soft colors.

Aage Storstein’s first exhibition was held at the 1924 Høstutstillingen (Autumn Exhibition) in Oslo, Norway. the first of twelve exhibitions at this venue in his lifetime. In 1937, his work was exhibited at the International Exhibition in Paris, a significant event in which forty-four countries participated. Storstein won the 1938 competition for the design of the West Gallery of the Oslo City Hall. For this site, he created a series of Cubist murals that depicted Norwegian life and the country’s history and mythology.

Beginning in 1946, he taught at the Norwegian National Academy of Fine Arts where he later became head professor. Among Storstein’s students were such artists as modernist abstractionist Gunnar S. Gundersen, painter Halvdan Ljøsne, and painter/photographer Rolf Aamot, known for his electronic tonal images and film work.

In 1961, Aage Storstein was given a retrospective exhibition of his work at Norway’s largest gallery, Kunstnernes Hus, that contained works drawn from both public and private collections. Aage Storstein died in Norway in May of 1983 at the age of eighty-two. His work is in many private collections as well as the collections of the Oslo National Gallery and the Moderna Museet in Stockholm.

Top Insert Image: Aage Storstein, “Self Portrait”, 1931, Oil Cardboard and Paper on Panel, 21 x 17 cm, Private Collection

Second Insert Image: Aage Storstein, “Human Rights”, 1949, Mural Fresco, Detail, Oslo City Hall

Bottom Insert Image: Aage Storstein, “Mannshode (Man’s Head)”, Date Unknown, Oil on Plate, 30.5 x 23.5 cm, Private Collection

Aleksei Ivanovich Borodin

Aleksei Ivanovich Borodin, “Tractor Drivers”, 1965-1980, Oil on Board, 95.3 x 132.1 cm, Private Collection

Born at Kirilovka, Samara Region in January of 1915, Aleksei Ivanovich Borodin was a Russian painter known for his figurative work and scenes of Russian rural life. After being orphaned during the Russian Civil War, he was placed in the care of a military educational orphanage for boys that trained them for military service.

After leaving the orphanage, Borodin entered Saratov Art and Industry High School and graduated in 1936 with a teacher’s diploma in painting and drawing. He also briefly studied under Russian Post-Impressionist painter Igor Grabar noted for his distinctive style of painting that bordered on Pointillism.

During World War II, Borodin was wounded during his service with an armored division of the Red Army. After the war, he returned to Saratov where he taught at his alma mater until the 1960s. Borodin relocated to Stalingrad, now Volgograd, where he was given a teaching position.

A member of the Russian Union of Artists since 1939, Aleksei Borodin participated in local, regional, Republican and Union-sponsored exhibitions from the early 1950s through the 1980s. Honored for his work, he was given a solo retrospective in 1986 at the Volgograd Art Museum, which now houses his most famous painting, the 1964 “Volgograd Farmers”.

Aleksei Ivanovich Borodin died in Volgograd at the age of eighty-nine in 2004. His paintings are in numerous private collections around the world. The majority of his oeuvre, however, is in the Saratov Art Museum, Volgograd Art Museum, and the Museum of Defense in Volgograd.

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Wilfried Sätty

The Collages of Wilfried Sätty

Born at Bremen in April of 1939, Wilfried Sätty, birth name Wilfried Podriech, was a German graphic artist who became known for his assemblages, black and white collage art, and lithographs. After the end of World War II, Sätty’s early life took place within the surreal landscape of Bremen’s heavily-bombed ruins.

In the mid-1950s, Wilfried Sätty entered into a three-year apprenticeship as a mechanical engineer. After his training, he worked as an engineer in the construction of Brasilia, a modern, planned city development in Brazil to replace Rio de Janeiro as the nation’s capital. Sätty relocated in 1961 to San Francisco, California where he settled in North Beach’s artistic bohemian community and worked as a draftsman for the Bay Area Rapid Transit system. Inspired by the creativity of the city’s psychedelic sub-culture, Sätty began in 1966 to create pictorial collages; some of these were sold as poster prints.

After establishing a studio on San Francisco’s Powell Strret, Sätty created the first of his assemblage installations, “The North Beach U-Boat”, a warren of rooms containing mirrors, dolls, oriental carpets, and other discarded material found in the trash bins of wealthy residents. During the 1970s, he created animations, colored artwork, lithographic prints, and hundreds of black and white collages. These collages were well-received and were used as illustrations in both establishment periodicals and counter-culture publications.

Poster artists accepted Wilfried Sätty as a peer due to his designs for rock concert advertisements. However, his work was rooted in the more somber and utopian German Surrealism, an art expression that he accented with bits of the bizarre and grotesque. Generally excluded from gallery exhibitions, Sätty turned to publishing his work. Using printing presses to multiply and overprint his collages, he published two volumes of collages; the first of which was “The Cosmic Bicycle”, a collection of seventy-nine collages published in 1971 through “Rolling Stone” magazine’s imprint Straight Arrow Books. Sätty’s second volume from Straight Arrow Books was the 1973 “Time Zone”, a collection of collages in the form of a wordless novel akin to the collage books of Max Ernst.

Sätty created illustrations for the 1976 “The Annotated Dracula” which contained an introduction, notes and bibliography by Romanian-American author and poet Leonard Wolf. He also created eighty black and white illustrations for Crown Publishing Group’s 1976 “The Illustrated Edgar Allan Poe”, a collection of Poe’s horror and literary short stories. Sätty is, however, perhaps best known for his commissioned work for Terence McKenna’s anthology book “The Archaic Revival”, published in May of 1992 by Harper Collins. This collection of essays, interviews and narrative adventures is illustrated through Sätty’s black and white collages depicting themes of ancient cultures seen through modern technology, optical art, and sacred religious architecture.

Beginning in the late 1970s, Wilfred Sätty’s work drew inspiration from the dramatic and often unruly events in the history of San Francisco; these collages cover the period from the 1848 Gold Rush to the 1890s. Sätty died in January of 1982, at the age of forty-two, from an accidental fall from a ladder at his Powell Street home. His final work, “Visions of Frisco: An Imaginative Depiction of San Francisco during the Gold Rush & the Barbary Coast Era”, was published posthumously in 2007 by art historian Walter Medeiros.

Notes: The Wilfried Sätty website is located at: https://satty.art/#top

The online “FoundSF”, a San Francisco digital history archive, has an article on Wilfried Sätty and his “North Beach U-Boat” project: https://www.foundsf.org/Satty_and_the_%22North_Beach_U-Boat%22

“Melt”, an archive of esoteric and contemporary culture, has an article on Wilfried Sätty that includes a biography as well as several images of his artwork: https://visualmelt.com/Wilfried-Satty

San Francisco artist and educator Ryan Medeiros has an article on Wilfried Sätty entitled “Wilfried Sätty; The Psychedelic Alchemist of Collage” on his website: https://ryanmedeiros.substack.com/p/wilfried-satty-the-psychedelic-alchemist

On John Coulthart’s “(feuilleton)” website, there is an article entitled “Wilfried Sätty and the Cosmic Bicycle” that examines Sätty’s life and the publishing of his 1971 book of collages: https://www.johncoulthart.com/feuilleton/2025/09/10/wilfried-satty-and-the-cosmic-bicycle/

Top Insert Image: Photographer Unknown, “Wilfried Sätty”, circa 1960-1970s, Gelatin Silver Print

Second Insert Image: Wilfried Sätty, “Listen, Sweet Dreams”, 1967, Lithographic Psychedelic Poster, 88 x 59 cm, Orbit Graphic Arts, Private Collection

Bottom Insert Image: Wilfried Sätty, “Stone Garden”, circa 1960s, Lithographic Psychedelic Poster, 88 x 58 cm, Printed at East Totem West, California, Private Collection