Tag: irving berlin

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

Calendar: March 21

Year: Day to Day Men: March 21

Cool and Refreshed

The twenty-first of March in 1867 marks the birth date of Florenz Edward Ziegfeld Jr. who was an American Broadway impresario. 

Born in the Illinois city of Chicago, Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. was the son of Roselie de Hez, the Belgian grandniece to General Count Étienne Maurice Gérard, and German-born Florenz Ziegfeld, son of the mayor of Jever, the capital city of the Friesland district, Germany. The father founded Roosevelt University’s Chicago Academy of Music 1n 1867 and later opened the Trocadero nightclub to profit from the 1893 World’s Fair. 

During a trip to London in 1896, Florence Ziegfeld Jr. met the Polish-French singer Anna Held and brought her to the United States as his common-law wife. Held enjoyed several successes on Broadway including the 1901 “Little Duchess” and 1906 “A Parisian Model”. One of Broadway’s celebrated leading ladies, she became both a well-known and wealthy woman. It was Held who presented the idea of an American version of the Parisian Folies Bergère to Ziegfeld. 

Ziegfeld’s stage spectaculars, which became known as the Ziegfeld Follies, began with ‘Follies of 1907’ which opened in July of that year and continued annually until 1931. These productions with their elaborate costumes and sets featured beautiful women, the Ziegfeld Girls, chosen personally by Ziegfeld. The extravaganzas were choreographed to the works of such popular composers as George Gershwin, Irving Berlin and Jerome Kern. The Follies featured many well-known theatrical performers including Fanny Brice, W. C. Fields, Eddie Cantor, Will Rogers, Bert Williams and Ann Pennington.

In 1927, the sixteen-hundred seat Ziegfeld Theater opened on the west side of  Manhattan’s Sixth Avenue between 54th and 55th Streets. Designed by architects Joseph Urban and Thomas W. Lamb, the Art Deco theater’s auditorium was egg-shaped with the stage at the narrow end. A large medieval-styled mural by Lillian Gaertner, “The Joy of Life”, covered the walls and ceiling. To finance the construction cost of of 2.5 million dollars, Ziegfeld borrowed money from newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst, who took control of the theater after Ziegfeld’s death.

The Ziegfeld Theater’s opening production in February was Ziegfeld’s “Rio Rita” which ran for almost five hundred performances. The second production, “Show Boat” with stage sets by Urban and a score by Jerome Kern, was a success with a run of five hundred seventy-two performances. This musical continues to be revived on Broadway and has won multiple Tony Awards. In May of 1932 during the Depression, Ziegfeld staged a revival of “Show Boat” that ran for six months. In the same year, a production with the Follies’ theatrical stars entitled “The Ziegfeld Follies of the Air” was broadcast on CBS Radio.  

Anna Held divorced Florenz Ziegfeld in January of 1913. In April of 1914, he married stage and screen actress Billie Burke; they had one child, Patricia Burke Ziegfeld. The Ziegfeld family lived at their New York estate in Hastings-on-Hudson and their residence in Palm Beach, Florida. In 1932 after spending a period in a New Mexico sanitarium, Florenz Ziegfeld traveled to Los Angeles, California. A few days later, he died in Hollywood from an existing lung infection, pleurisy, on the twenty-second of July in 1932.

Ziegfeld’s death left Billie Burke with substantial debts, one of the reasons that she steered her career toward film acting. She moved to Beverly Hills and returned to a successful career as an actress with such films as George Cukor’s “Dinner at Eight”, Norman Z. McLeod’s 1937 “Topper”, Victor Fleming’s 1939 “The Wizard of Oz”, and William Keighley’s 1942 “The Man Who Came to Dinner”. In the late 1950s, failing memory led to Burke’s retirement from show business; she died of natural causes at the age of eighty-five in May of 1970. Burke is interred beside Ziegfeld at Kensico Cemetery in Valhall, New York.