Ardel Wray

Ardel Wray
Ardel Wray, circa 1941
Born (1907-10-28)October 28, 1907
Spokane, Washington, U.S.A.
Died October 14, 1983(1983-10-14) (aged 75)
Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.
Resting place Ashes scattered at sea
Occupation Screenwriter, story editor
Years active 1930–1972

Ardel Wray (October 28, 1907 – October 14, 1983) was an American screenwriter and story editor, best known for her work on Val Lewton’s classic horror films in the 1940s. Her screenplay credits from that era include I Walked with a Zombie, The Leopard Man and Isle of the Dead. In a late second career in television, she worked as a story editor and writer at Warner Bros. on 77 Sunset Strip, The Roaring 20s, and The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters.

Wray died at the age of 75 in Los Angeles.

Early life and career

Born Ardel Mockbee on October 28, 1907, in Spokane, Washington, Ardel Wray was the only child of Virginia Brissac and Eugene Mockbee, both stage actors working in West Coast stock companies in the early 1900s. When her parents separated, she was brought to live with her maternal grandparents in San Francisco while her mother continued her career. She spent most of her childhood moving back and forth between her grandparents' home and a boarding school, and was raised primarily by her grandfather, B. F. Brissac, a prominent San Francisco businessman who was a surrogate father and mentor until his death in 1940.[1]

Divorced from Mockbee, her mother married theatre director-manager John Griffith Wray in 1915 and moved with him to Los Angeles when he accepted a directing job at the Thomas Ince Studios. Ardel came to live with them in 1920, later taking her stepfather's last name. After graduating from high school, she worked as a model for Hollywood fashion designer Howard Greer, briefly attended the University of California at Los Angeles, and lived for a while at The Rehearsal Club in New York, where she considered and ultimately rejected the idea of becoming an actress.[lower-alpha 1] She had two short-lived marriages in the decade following high school, both to California artists, Henry D. Maxwell (1928–1930) and Don Mansfield Caldwell (1933–1939).[lower-alpha 2]

Following her divorce from Maxwell, Wray found work in studio story departments. In 1931 she worked for Carl Laemmle Jr. as a staff writer developing properties for his reopening of Universal Studios[6] In 1933, she joined the Story Department at Warner Bros. where she became part of a circle of friends that included Dalton Trumbo who also worked in the department, and Mark Robson. Trumbo and Robson had met on the night shift at a bakery where they both worked[1]; Robson spent his days at college and in the prop room at Fox Studios looking for a way to get into the business of making movies;[lower-roman 1] Trumbo spent his days writing novels and magazine articles before taking the job at Warner Bros.[lower-roman 2]

An early draft of Trumbo's novel Johnny Got His Gun with a handful of Wray's margin notes was found among her papers after she died, and anecdotes in Wray's family history suggest that she and Trumbo became "an item" for a while, but if there was a relationship beyond their shared interest in writing it did not last. Wray moved to the story department at Fox Studios in 1936. Trumbo had his first screenplay produced at Warner Bros. that year, married Cleo Fincher two years later, and his novel Johnny Got His Gun was published in 1939.[lower-roman 2] Robson left Fox Studios for an opportunity to train as an editor at RKO Pictures.[lower-roman 1] Wray and husband Don Caldwell separated while she was at Fox Studios; she moved to RKO in 1938 and they were divorced in 1939.

Work at RKO and Paramount

Sometime after starting work in the story department, Wray became involved in RKO's Young Writers' Project,[1][7] a program designed to identify and cultivate writing talent at the studio. A treatment found in her estate papers puts her in that program in 1941,[lower-alpha 3] but her screenwriting career really began in 1942 when she was given an opportunity to work with Val Lewton who was just beginning what would become a legendary short career as a producer of low-budget horror movies.

Lewton had to recruit his production team from inside RKO,[9][10] but there is no information on how he found Wray. Like many people working in studio story departments at that time, Wray was educated and well-read, but she also came from a respected theatre and film industry family[lower-roman 3][lower-roman 4] and could deliver high quality work quickly[1]—all attributes which would have recommended her to Lewton, who relied heavily on literary source material for his films and was producing four and five programmers (B-movies) a year. She could have come to his attention from her work with the Young Writers' Project,[7]:146 but it is also possible that she was referred to him by the head of the story department, or by Mark Robson who Lewton had recruited from the editing department, along with Robert Wise.[10]

Wray's opportunity was, in effect, a writing audition under pressure: Lewton was behind on an ambitious schedule and Wray became the second writer to try to deliver a workable script from a short story about zombies that Lewton liked. The story had been written by an Ohio journalist named Inez Wallace who had borrowed heavily from Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, and Lewton wanted to capitalize on Bronte's moody and foreboding atmosphere.[7]:146 Wray delivered the script for I Walked with a Zombie and went on to become a regular in the Lewton group.

Her next assignment for Lewton was to write the story and screenplay for The Leopard Man based on Black Alibi, a novel by Cornell Woolrich. Later in 1943, she was loaned out to Maurice Geraghty's production group to write the story and screenplay for The Falcon and the Co-Eds, the seventh in his popular 'Falcon' detective series.[lower-alpha 4] Back with the Lewton group in 1944, she developed Isle of the Dead (story and screenplay inspired by Boecklin’s symbolist painting), Bedlam (historical research for a story inspired by A Rake's Progress, the paintings by William Hogarth), and wrote dialogue for Youth Runs Wild (Mark Robson's directorial debut). In 1945, she wrote an original screenplay, Blackbeard The Pirate, for an A-movie property inspired by the life of the notorious English pirate Edward Teach and set to star Boris Karloff.[7]:406[1][11]

Remarried and living in Hollywood, Wray left RKO shortly before she gave birth to her daughter in May 1945. Her last produced screenplay for Lewton, Isle of the Dead, was released in September of that year, a few days after Japan surrendered, ending WWII. Lewton's films had played a major role in returning RKO to profitability during WWII, but the audience appetite for horror movies waned after the war ended. When Bedlam lost money, RKO did not renew Lewton's contract[12] and his group disbanded.

In 1948, Wray was again approached by Lewton, then at Paramount Pictures, who was trying to rescue a project he was working on about the life of Lucrezia Borgia. Most of what is known about this project is found in chronicles of Lewton's career where, with minor variations, the authors suggest that the project initially belonged to some other producer, that Goddard or the studio didn't like Wray’s script or the project was cancelled, and that Lewton tried to rework an "unused" script, but that somehow “the project slipped out of his hands.”[7]:406[13][lower-roman 5] These accounts do not align with Paramount records[lower-alpha 5] or with Wray's personal history.

Paramount Pictures production records show that Wray signed a contract in February 1948 to rewrite a script titled A Mask for Lucrezia, originally written by Michael Hogan.[17] By the time she completed that assignment a month later, Lewton had already been taken off the project,[lower-alpha 6] and Wray had been optioned to continue working at Paramount on a new Alan Ladd project, reporting to Sydney Boehm.[21] She began work on the Ladd project in April, and submitted several treatments and outlines between April and August 1948.[22] Lewton went on to finish work on My Own True Love, his contract was not renewed and he left Paramount.[lower-alpha 7]

The McCarthy era

Sometime after completing her work on A Mask for Lucrezia, and before it was set to go into production in early September, Wray was summoned to the business office at Paramount where, with little explanation, she was handed a list and asked to point to the names of people who were communist sympathizers. She declined. The Ladd project (working title "DEAD LETTER") was given to new writers,[lower-alpha 8] and she was released from her contract in early October,[27] after which her agent severed their relationship and returned all her scripts and work papers to her via U.S. mail,[1] signaling the end of her career as a screenwriter.[lower-alpha 9]

Meetings of this kind were kept under wraps by the studios in order to avoid litigation,[lower-roman 8] and Wray never said anything to suggest that she knew why she had been called in, other than that it had something to do with Paulette Goddard, who was lined up to play the title role in A Mask for Lucrezia, and that there was some connection to Dalton Trumbo's troubles.[1] - an explanation which is supported by the documented history of the early McCarthy era. Dalton Trumbo and a dozen or so other industry professionals had been named as communist sympathizers in the Hollywood Reporter in July 1947 and the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) had seized upon this list as the starting point for their investigation into communist influence in Hollywood.[lower-roman 9][lower-roman 10][lower-roman 11] Goddard, who was a rising star at Paramount,[29][30] had been summoned to testify before the HUAC in September of 1947 and called un-American for her association with "leftist" friends[29]; in October 1947, her husband Burgess Meredith was "named" by the HUAC and joined the Hollywood Ten in their protest.[31][15][lower-roman 12][ix] Along with Dalton Trumbo and the Hollywood Ten, Val Lewton and Mark Robson had been under suspicion of communist activity as early as 1945.[32] In November of that year, industry producers issued the Waldorf Statement, and when Wray went to work at Paramount three months later what came to be known as the witch-hunt of the McCarthy era was well under way in all studios.

Wray's early friendship with Dalton Trumbo, her work with Lewton, and her acquaintance with others at RKO made her an easy mark—studio bosses freely employed 'guilt by association' and the threat of blacklisting to coerce cooperation in ridding Hollywood of Communists[33][16][lower-roman 9]; but what Paramount would gain from Wray pointing at some names on their list seemed to be a puzzle, even to the person who handed it to her. In recounting the experience to her daughter years later, Wray described that person as obviously embarrassed by what they were doing, at one point offering whispered advice that "they've already been named, dear - you won't be hurting anyone."[1][lower-alpha 10]

Wray's reasons for not taking that advice were simple: Such personal knowledge as she had of Trumbo was over a decade old, everything else she knew was hearsay, and whatever was said about him or anyone else in The Hollywood Reporter was almost certainly based on gossip, if not entirely made up. Abstract philosophical ideas hotly debated over too many drinks at studio parties did not, to her mind, constitute subversive activity; and to just wave her finger in the direction of a name she didn't know—something they actually suggested—was unthinkable.[1]

As it did for so many, Wray's unwillingness to "name names" had personal consequences as well as professional ones. Long divorced from John Wray and moving toward the end of a second career as a character actress in Hollywood, Wray's mother was frightened by the incident. Concerned for her own career, she did not support her daughter's decision, and publicly questioned her loyalty.[lower-alpha 11] Wray's husband had just returned from serving in the Philippines in WWII and was unemployed; the situation put a strain on their marriage, which ended in divorce a few years later. Her circle of friends scattered.

Wray would not work as a screenwriter again for fourteen years—a phenomenon that would come to be known as the "graylist."[lower-roman 13] To support herself and her daughter, she worked as a reader in various studio story departments and took occasional side-jobs doing research and novelizing films for newspapers. She never remarried and, although she continued to look after her mother, their relationship never fully recovered from this period.[1]

Career in television

In the late 1950s, Wray returned to the story department at Warner Bros. and, by that time, the political climate in Hollywood had begun to change. Broadcast journalist Edward R. Murrow's 1954 exposé of Senator Joseph McCarthy[38] had embarrassed the motion picture industry and soul-searching about its complicity in the HUAC 'witch hunt' had gone on for years. Some, like actor Sterling Hayden, never made peace with themselves for caving in to the inquisitional-style politics and testifying against friends;[39][lower-roman 14] others spent the rest of their lives in denial of the damage they had done. But many did what they could to help restore careers that had been destroyed.[40]

In the fall of 1960, Wray was loaned out to Roy Huggins' production team to do some work on scripts for his television series Cheyenne and Maverick—a small writing contract that, although uncredited, marked the end of her tenure on the 'graylist'.[lower-alpha 12] When Huggins left Warner Bros. at the end of that year, producer-director Boris Ingster hired her to be the story editor on The Roaring 20s, a new series at Warners for which she also wrote two episodes.

Roy Huggins was just starting his career when Wray was at Paramount, but he had his own encounter with McCarthyism a few years later and ultimately took the advice that Wray could not and named names.[41] Boris Ingster's career[42] had not been affected by the McCarthy era, but he had worked as a writer and director at RKO and Paramount in the 1940s and knew what had happened to her,[lower-alpha 13] and there is little doubt that, together, he and Huggins orchestrated her return to screenwriting.

In the winter of 1960, a few months after Huggins asked Wray to work on some scripts for him, Dalton Trumbo received screen credit under his own name for the first time in fourteen years for his screenplays for Exodus and Spartacus, events made possible in part by the efforts of Otto Preminger and Kirk Douglas and which came to mark the beginning of the end of the era of the Hollywood blacklist.[lower-roman 15][lower-roman 16]

Wray continued to work with Boris Ingster for the next six years, as a story editor and writer on The Roaring 20s, 77 Sunset Strip, The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters, and the movie Guns of Diablo at MGM.

Retirement and death

While working at MGM, Wray was diagnosed with cataracts. When her contract on Guns of Diablo ended, she returned to Warner Bros., which was closer to home and did not require driving at night, and she continued working as a story analyst there, and at The Walt Disney Studios until her failing vision forced her to stop. To go through the then long and complicated cataract surgery and recovery process, she retired in 1972 and lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico for the next several years – an area she remembered fondly from her trip there in 1943 to find and photograph the places that would become the sets and backdrops in The Leopard Man.

Wray returned to Los Angeles in 1980, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1983 and died on October 14 the same year. As she wished, her ashes were scattered at sea.

Contribution to the Lewton legacy

Wray wrote three of the collection films[44] celebrated in Martin Scorsese’s 2007 documentary film Val Lewton: The Man in the Shadows,[45] two of them groundbreaking screenplays that helped define the genre of the psychological thriller and establish Lewton's reputation as the master of horror.[13][46][lower-roman 5] In Wray, Lewton found a writer with a gift for character development who was also willing to take on challenging or controversial subject matter: the supernatural, a serial killer, the plagues of war and superstition, and the relationships in the notorious Borgia family[lower-alpha 14]—all were out of the mainstream when Wray sat down to write about them. Her ability to seduce 1940's audiences into following Lewton down a path to some of the darker corners of human experience was evident in the unexpected critical and box office success of those films.[12]

Wray was also a member of one of the most famous B-movie units at work during what is now viewed as the 'Golden Age' of Hollywood—a group whose creative energy and inventiveness made Lewton's success possible.[lower-alpha 15] She spoke about working with the group in a conversation with her daughter many years later, a recollection that shines a clear light on the group's chemistry and skill, and the special place it held in Wray's heart:

She rarely spoke about her early career or the McCarthy era. But when I asked once what it was like working with Lewton, she smiled -- thought about it for a long moment -- and then told me about the night the group spent figuring out how to build to the first murder in The Leopard Man.[lower-alpha 16] The scene she had written was pure psychological terror, trading on very basic fears -- of the dark, of being punished unjustly, locked out of your own home, abandoned by people you trust -- and at the same time it sets up the mystery that is the premise of the entire film. They were under pressure to get this sequence right, and almost everyone was there that night.[lower-alpha 17] The session went well into the small hours of the morning, was filled with laughter, and included a hilarious riff as one of them experimented with a set of castanets, which turned out to be the key to building the tension and suspense. They worked their way through a dozen different shot sequences before they were satisfied and, listening to her, I had the very strong impression that they would have come up with that same elegant, powerful scene even if they had been working with an A-movie budget and had more time. As Agee[lower-alpha 18] so famously observed about Lewton, these were people who understood film and cared about human beings. I can still see the smile on her face as she recalled that night. -- Stefani Warren, September 2016[1]

Filmography

With one exception, the credits listed are per Wray's Internet Movie Database Filmography;[51] where there is a discrepancy with other sources, clarifications can be found in individual footnotes.

Writer

Story Editor

  1. ↑ The Rehearsal Club was a boarding house established in 1913 to support women coming to New York to work in the theatre. Mary Shaw, a New York actress and a relative of Wray's grandfather by marriage, had played a part in the founding of The Rehearsal Club and was a reference for Wray when she applied there. The Rehearsal Club was closed in 1979 but its legacy continues to be preserved by many of its most famous residents, including Blythe Danner and Carol Burnett.[2]
  2. ↑ Henry Maxwell was the grandson of Nebraska Congressman and Chief Justice of the State Supreme Court Samuel Maxwell, for whom his father, Jacob Maxwell, worked.[3] Henry's career as an artist is unnoted; however, he may be the "Earnest John Henry Maxwell" listed in Edan Hughes' compendium of "Artists in California, 1786-1940" as a cartoonist.[4] Don Mansfield Caldwell’s paintings were exhibited in the Nicholson Gallery in Pasadena, California in 1934 and he is also listed in "Artists in California 1786-1940."[5]
  3. ↑ Wray's 1941 treatment was titled Dover Road -- a romantic comedy set in New York and Maryland that bears some similarity to The Dover Road, an A.A. Milne play set in England and produced in London and New York in the early 1920's. Milne's play had been the basis of two movies by this time; one of them, Where Sinners Meet, produced by RKO in 1934. A New York Times article in June 1941 confirms the studio's interest in a remake set in America.[8] The studio-bound treatment has only Wray's authorship and the date, and John Humphrey, who was reported to have also been assigned to the project, did not participate. This was, most likely, a Young Writers' Project assignment.
  4. 1 2 A short history of Maurice Geraghty's popular Falcon detective franchise can be found at Digital Deli Too, a small website devoted to classic radio and film.
  5. ↑ Lewton undoubtedly fought to keep control of the Borgia project, as his biographers' accounts indicate,[13] but the story about it having been cancelled or abandoned has no basis in fact. A Mask for Lucrezia was the 'working title' in production records from the first production date in 1947 to its distribution in foreign markets in the fall of 1949;[14][7]:406 everything indicates that Paramount was committed, and that Paulette Goddard, Ray Milland, and director Mitchell Leisen were at least tentatively onboard,[15] right up until August of 1948. The implication of Lewton's 'cover' story was that the script Wray wrote had somehow been inadequate ("unused," "abandoned," or "did not appeal to the front office") and that his rework was more to Goddard's liking,[7]:406[13][lower-roman 5] a conceit which cleared him of any responsibility for his project's failure and preserved his reputation at the expense of Wray's, a tactic often used by producers under pressure during the McCarthy era.[16]
  6. 1 2 3 Following Lewton's release from the Borgia project, Paramount producer Richard Maibaum took over and went back to using Michael Hogan's original script which was then rewritten by Cyril Hume. Ray Milland subsequently refused the leading role, and the script was revised again as Maibaum and director Mitchell Leisen attempted to find co-stars for Goddard.[15] By the time it was released in April 1949, the Borgia project had been turned into a "romantic drama." Paramount was ridiculed in the New York Times review by Bosley Crowther, and the movie was panned.[18]
    [Milland's refusal to play the lead in Cyril Hume's version of A Mask for Lucrezia was never explained at the time and made no obvious professional sense. It cost Paramount well over thirty thousand dollars[19] and Paramount suspended him.[15] Milland would later say that he just didn't think it was going to make a good movie.[20]]
  7. ↑ The Lewton that emerges from Paramount is not the sensitive soul that his associates and admirers frequently describe;[9][10][13] this is the Lewton that became the inspiration for Kirk Douglas's portrayal of Jonathan Shields, the success-driven and "slightly insane" Hollywood producer in the 1952 film The Bad and the Beautiful.[23][24][lower-roman 6][lower-roman 5] But that portrait, and the image that Lewton's biographers leave -- of a sad, desperate, and ultimately defeated man beset by personal demons[9][lower-roman 1][lower-roman 5] -- makes no mention of the role that the McCarthy era may have played in crippling his career. Lewton died of heart failure at the age of 46 in March of 1951, two years after Bride of Vengeance opened, and a few weeks after longtime friend and Lewton group member Josef Mischel was Blacklisted.[lower-roman 7]
  8. ↑ In July 1948, an article in the industry trade paper Variety reported that Wray had been assigned by Paramount to write the script for this project, along with Robert L. Richards.[25] Neither Wray nor Richards is credited on the film which was ultimately released under the title Appointment with Danger in 1951.
    [Appointment with Danger didn't start shooting until summer of 1949[26] and was not released until May of 1951, an extended delay reminiscent of Bride of Vengeance, Blackbeard, the Pirate and other projects with blacklist-related production shakeups.]
  9. ↑ The blacklist was an 'understood' but carefully undocumented practice; agents and agencies, the institutional go-betweens for studios and talent, were both silent partner and messenger; if they terminated a relationship in this fashion, the message was clear.[28]
  10. ↑ In summoning Wray to the business office, Paramount was most likely on a fishing expedition, looking for a justification for terminating people suspected of being communist sympathizers. In addition to the Hollywood Ten, the list likely included Goddard, Lewton, Josef Mischel, Robert L. Richards (with whom she wrote a first draft script for the Ladd Project titled DEAD LETTER), and Sydney Boehm, who was supervising Wray's work on DEAD LETTER at the time. Boehm had been the writing partner of 'Hollywood Ten' screenwriter Lester Cole who had been accused by the HUAC of putting subversive messages into scripts. Robert L. Richards' name would appear on the Hollywood Blacklist sometime after 1950;[lower-roman 7] he tried writing under various pseudonyms for a number of years, but eventually gave up and left the industry in 1968[34]. Josef Mischel (personal friend of Lewton and former member of the Lewton group) left RKO in 1945 and had some success in other studios, but when Lewton brought him in to work with him on My Own True Love at Paramount, his career stalled.[35] His name was added to the Hollywood Blacklist early in 1951,[lower-roman 7] and he died three years later, at the age of 55.
    [Most people who lost their careers at the beginning of the blacklist era were victims of ordinary studio politics mixed with various forms of opportunism and political posturing.[33] Almost seventy years later, the son of William Wilkerson (The Hollywood Reporter's founding editor) acknowledged that, in publishing the list of suspected communist sympathizers ("Billy's List"), his father had been seeking revenge for his own thwarted ambition to own a studio.[lower-roman 9] But rising public hysteria was also beginning to play a part. In September of 1947, Goddard and husband Burgess Meredith were reported to have been confronted by a "baying crowd" shouting "Communists!" as they arrived at a studio premier.[lower-roman 12] (Goddard's own political posturing took the form of witty 'capitalist' retorts about hitting her accusers with her diamond bracelets).[30][lower-roman 12] Goddard divorced Burgess Meredith two months after Bride of Vengeance opened; the movie lost money,See also [lower-alpha 6] Paramount let her go, and her career faded.[30]]
  11. ↑ Virginia Brissac's concerns for her career were not unfounded. Character actresses in Hollywood depended on their reputation for the steady stream of work required to make a living. It was a very small town in 1947, word got around quickly, and it is reasonable to assume that, fearful of being blacklisted herself, she panicked. Whether due to distancing herself from her daughter or not, Brissac's career survived and she went on to work in film and television for another eight years.
    [As an illustration of how small the Hollywood community was at this time: Brissac had worked with Bride of Vengeance director Mitchell Leisen on Remember the Night in 1940, and Take a Letter, Darling in 1942, and she would work with him again in 1950 on No Man of Her Own (a movie based on a novel written by Val Lewton titled "No bed of her Own"[36]). Pursued, one of the movies she worked on in 1947, was directed by Raoul Walsh, for whom she had worked in 1941 (They Died with their Boots On) and who in 1952 would direct a revised version of her daughter's screenplay, Blackbeard the Pirate, after it was given to Edmund Grainger (with whom Brissac had worked in 1939 on The Forgotten Woman) in the purge of tainted projects at RKO.][37]
  12. ↑ Wray shared the information that "they are going to let your mother write some dialogue..." in a 'news-from-home' letter she wrote to her fifteen-year-old daughter, who was away at camp in the summer of 1960. Wray made light of it, wryly referring to western-style dialogue as "deathless prose." The significance of the news was lost on her daughter who, at the time, knew little about the House Un-American Activities Committee and nothing about the impact it had on her mother's career and their lives.[1]
  13. ↑ Ingster and Wray had taken similar paths through the studio system. They were both at Fox Studios from 1936-1938, they were both at RKO working on B-movies in the early 1940's, and when Wray joined Lewton at Paramount, Ingster had just left, having completed work on John Farrow's California, the Paramount picture that Ray Milland had starred in before he started work on The Big Clock in 1947.
  14. ↑ Historical accounts indicate that Lucrezia Borgia had an incestuous relationship with her brother, Cesare Borgia, who contracted syphilis in his twenties and, in the later stages of the disease, wore a mask to hide the disfigurement of his once handsome face. It is believed that Lucrezia's inability to conceive and bear children was due to the fact that she had contracted the disease from her brother, and the "Mask" referenced in the script title alludes to that, as well as the social facades Lucrezia adopted in pursuit of her ambitions.[47][48] Incest and venereal disease were still taboo topics at this time, but syphilis began to be discussed publicly when its cure, penicillin, came onto the market in the early 1940s, and two films with stories involving incest, Kings Row and Day of Wrath, had been released and well received a few years earlier -- all of which may have opened the door for Paramount to pursue making a film about this exotic but controversial historical figure. But they still needed a writer with a command of history and culture, and the willingness to do it.
  15. ↑ B-movies (also known as "programmers") had to be produced quickly and cheaply to realize a profit (The Leopard Man is reported to have been produced in under a month for $150,000). The celebrity of the unit at RKO -- which included cinematographers, art directors, editors, lighting and sound engineers, and composers, as well as writers and directors -- comes mainly from the group's ability to deliver films of exceptional quality and artistry despite those limitations.[12]
  16. ↑ This sequence in The Leopard Man follows Theresa Delgado, a local girl in a small New Mexico town who, after struggling to find her way home in the dark, is found dead outside the door of her home by her mother, who sent her into the night to run an errand as punishment and would not open the door upon her return, despite her frantic knocks. The scene is invariably remarked upon in reviews of the film, one recent reviewer describing it as "so powerful that the rest of the film seems anticlimactic."[49]
  17. ↑ Along with Wray, the team for The Leopard Man included Jacques Tourneur (Director), Robert De Grasse (Cinematography), Mark Robson (Editor), Albert D'Agostino and Walter Keller (Art Direction), A. Roland Fields (Set Decoration), and Roy Web (Music).
  18. ↑ Reference is to James Agee, the highly regarded author and American film critic of the 1940s. Agee considered Val Lewton to be one of the three foremost creative figures working in Hollywood at the time, and his oft-quoted observation in 1946 was "I think that few people in Hollywood show in their work that they know or care half as much about movies or human beings."[50]
  19. ↑ I Walked with a Zombie is Wray's first screenplay for Lewton and it is her script that went into production; however, she shares a screenplay credit with Curt Siodmak who wrote an initial draft that Lewton didn't like.[52][7]:147 Credits for the film also include "original story" by Inez Wallace (an Ohio writer and entertainment columnist),[53] who borrowed elements of her story from Charlotte Bronte's novel, Jane Eyre (uncredited).
  20. ↑ Wray wrote the screenplay for The Leopard Man. Edward Dein wrote additional dialogue. The story is based on Black Alibi, a novel by Cornell Woolrich.
  21. ↑ Wray is credited with both story and screenplay on 'The Falcon and the Co-Eds but shares a screenplay credit with Gerald Geraghty (a regular writer for the Falcon film franchise produced by his brother, Maurice Geraghty) who would have done a continuity polish. The series was based on the Falcon character created by Michael Arlen.See [lower-alpha 4]
  22. ↑ Wray's credit on Isle of the Dead is "written by" (a credit for both story and screenplay), with some sources including Josef Mischel and producer Val Lewton for 'uncredited' participation. In Bansak's account,[7]:268 Wray and Mischel were drafted to write an early draft together, but there is no evidence that they did, and it is more likely that Mischel stepped in and worked with Lewton to complete the project as Wray withdrew in the latter stages of her pregnancy and then left to give birth to her daughter.
  23. ↑ Wray's "contributing writer" credit on Bride of Vengeance is a post-release correction. The reason/basis for the correction is unknown. Paramount production records show that Michael Hogan protested the screenplay credit going to Hume but was denied, that Maibaum removed Wray's name from the proposed credit list in a memo dated October 11, 1948 and was himself added to the tentative list of contributing writers a day later.[54] Wray did not protest the original credits or request the correction.[1] See also [lower-alpha 6]
  24. ↑ RKO's Blackbeard, the Pirate project, developed by the Lewton group, was put on hold following the death of studio executive and Lewton supporter Charles Koerner and Lewton's subsequent release from RKO.[13] Two years later, during Howard Hughes' purge of communist influence at RKO in 1947/48,[12][lower-roman 17][lower-roman 8] the project was discovered by new studio executives and Wray's script was given to an independent film unit[lower-roman 18] where production eventually resumed. When it was finally released in December 1952, the story had been changed but the movie had only a slightly altered title, Blackbeard, the Pirate[55]. The RKO shooting draft of Wray's screenplay for the project was found among her papers and is thought to be one of the items returned to her in the mail following her release from Paramount in October 1948.[1]
  25. ↑ Ritual, a remake of I Walked with a Zombie produced by Bob Weinstein, Robert Zemeckis and others, was released internationally between 2001 and 2012 and distributed on DVD in the U.S. There is very little written about this remake and Wray's family has no knowledge of it; however, all the original writing credits are included in the listing along with additional screenplay credits for Rob Cohen and director Avi Nesher.

See also

  1. 1 2 3 Mark Robson Accessed 26 August 2016
  2. 1 2 Dalton Trumbo Accessed 26 August 2016
  3. ↑ Virginia Brissac Retrieved 3 August 2016
  4. ↑ John Griffith Wray Accessed 26 August 2016
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 Val Lewton Accessed 3 September 2016
  6. ↑ Relation to real-life personalities (in The Bad and the Beautiful) Accessed 15 September 2016
  7. 1 2 3 Others blacklisted... (in Hollywood blacklist) Accessed 9 October 2016
  8. 1 2 HUAC and Howard Hughes (in RKO Pictures) Accessed 7 September 2016
  9. 1 2 3 The blacklist begins (in Hollywood blacklist) Accessed 3 September 2016
  10. ↑ House Un-American Activities Committee (in Hollywood blacklist) Accessed 3 September 2016
  11. ↑ Political advocacy and blacklisting (in Dalton Trumbo) Accessed 3 September 2016
  12. 1 2 3 Paulette Goddard Accessed 3 September 2016
  13. ↑ HUAC Returns (in Hollywood blacklist) Accessed 6 October 2016
  14. ↑ Breaking the Blacklist (in Hollywood blacklist) Accessed 3 September 2016
  15. ↑ Hollywood blacklist Accessed 3 September 2016
  16. ↑ Later career (in Dalton Trumbo) Accessed 3 September 2016
  17. ↑ RKO (in Howard Hughes) Accessed 7 September 2016
  18. ↑ Blackbeard the Pirate Accessed 7 September 2016

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 Ardel Wray family history, estate records and personal recollections. (Provided by Wray's daughter, Stefani Warren).
  2. ↑ "A Celebration of the Legendary Rehearsal Club". The Rehearsal Club. Retrieved August 26, 2016.
  3. ↑ "Marriage notice" (December 2, 1898). The Edgar Post (Nebraska Newspaper). |access-date= requires |url= (help)
  4. ↑ "Earnest John Henry Maxwell". AskArt. Retrieved August 11, 2016.
  5. ↑ "Donn Mansfield Caldwell". AskArt. Retrieved August 11, 2016.
  6. ↑ "23 U writers Readying Scripts For Studio Reopening April 20". The Film Daily. April 13, 1931. .
  7. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Bansak, Edward G. (October 9, 2003). Fearing the Dark: The Val Lewton Career (Edition 1 ed.). McFarland & Company, Incorporated Publishers. ISBN 0786417099.
  8. ↑ Churchill, Douglas W. "News from Hollywood" (June 3, 1941). The New York Times. |access-date= requires |url= (help)
  9. 1 2 3 Viera, Mark A. "Darkness, Darkness: The Films of Val Lewton: Looking Back at a B-Movie Master". BrightLights. Bright Lights Film Journal. Retrieved 15 September 2016.
  10. 1 2 3 Gifford, Barry. "The prince of Poverty Row". The Guardian (6 April 2006). Retrieved 26 August 2016.
  11. ↑ "Blackbeard, the Pirate (Notes)". AFI Catalogue of Feature Films. Retrieved 7 September 2016.
  12. 1 2 3 4 "RKO Radio Pictures: Wartime Recovery - Val Lewton". Film Reference. Retrieved 26 August 2016.
  13. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Weems, Eric (2008). "Val Lewton Biography - Paramount, MGM, and Universal". Val Lewton. Copyright©1998-2008 by Eric Weems. Retrieved August 26, 2016.
  14. ↑ "Bride of Vengeance". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 3 September 2016.
  15. 1 2 3 "Bride of Vengeance - Notes". Turner Classic Movies (TCM). Retrieved 26 August 2016.
  16. 1 2 Navasky, Victor (1980). Naming Names (Chapter 4: The Social Costs). New York: Viking Press (Online Excerpt, University of Pennsylvania). Retrieved 3 September 2016.
  17. ↑ "Wray, Ardel - Writer" contract agreement dated 2-2-48 and related correspondence. Paramount Pictures contract summaries, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
  18. ↑ Crowther, Bosley. "THE SCREEN IN REVIEW; Paulette Goddard, Macdonald Carey Play Borgias in 'Bride of Vengeance,' at Paramount". NYTimes. The New York Times, April 7, 1949. Retrieved 3 September 2016.
  19. ↑ Letter to Richard L. Johnston August 30, 1948. Paramount Pictures production records, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
  20. ↑ Staff, Writer. "Ray Milland Dies of Cancer : Actor Won Fame for 'Lost Weekend' Role" (March 11, 1986). Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 31 August 2018.
  21. ↑ Letters and memos re "DEAD LETTER" project option. Paramount Pictures contract summaries, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
  22. ↑ Various outlines and treatments by Ardel Wray (April-August, 1948). Paramount Pictures scripts, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
  23. ↑ "Cinemathique (film screening blurb)". University of Wisconsin at Madison. Center for Theatre and Film Research. Retrieved 15 September 2016.
  24. ↑ Dirks, Tim. "The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)". AMC Filmsite. Retrieved 15 September 2016.
  25. ↑ "Appointment with Danger - Notes". Turner Classic Movies. Retrieved 15 October 2016.
  26. ↑ "Appointment with Danger". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 9 October 2016.
  27. ↑ Letter requesting contract close dated 10-4-48. Paramount Pictures contract summaries, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
  28. ↑ "Blacklisting". AdAge Encyclopedia. Advertising Age, September 15, 2003. Retrieved 20 October 2016.
  29. 1 2 "Paulette Goddard". American National Biography Online. Retrieved 15 September 2016.
  30. 1 2 3 "Paulette Goddard". Turner Classic Movies (TCM). Retrieved 3 September 2016.
  31. ↑ Vosburgh, Dick. "Obituary: Burgess Meredith". The Independent. The Independent. September 11, 1997. Retrieved 3 September 2016.
  32. ↑ Lee, Michael E. (2013). "How the FBI Tried to Label Val Lewton "A Communist!"". FilmFax+. 2013: 42–88.
  33. 1 2 Perlman, Allison. "Hollywood blacklist". Britannica. Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 10 October 2016.
  34. ↑ "Robert L. Richards". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 9 October 2016.
  35. ↑ "Josef Mischel". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 3 September 2016.
  36. ↑ "Val Lewton -- No Bed of Her Own". KinglyBooks.com. Kingly Books. Retrieved 3 October 2016.
  37. ↑ "Virginia Brissac". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 29 September 2016.
  38. ↑ "A Report on Senator Joseph R. McCarthy". See It Now. CBS. March 9, 1954. Retrieved August 29, 2016.
  39. ↑ "Sterling Hayden Biography". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 29 August 2016.
  40. ↑ Simkin, John. "Roy Huggins". spartacus-educational.com. Spartacus Educational. September 1997 (updated August 2014). Retrieved 3 October 2016.
  41. ↑ "Roy Huggins Biography". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 3 October 2016.
  42. ↑ "Boris Ingster". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 29 September 2016.
  43. ↑ Gonzalez, Ed. "The Val Lewton Horror Collection". Slant Magazine. October 8, 2005. Retrieved 26 August 2016.
  44. ↑ The Val Lewton Horror Collection DVD, Warner Home Video 2005.[43]
  45. ↑ "Val Lewton: The Man in the Shadows". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 26 August 2016.
  46. ↑ Dirks, Tim. "The History of Film - The 1940s, Part 4". AMC Filmsite. Retrieved 26 August 2016.
  47. ↑ Dunant, Sarah. "Syphilis, sex and fear: How the French disease conquered the world". The Guardian. Retrieved 10 September 2016.
  48. ↑ Cavendish, Richard. "Death of Cesare Borgia". History Today. Volume 57 Issue 3 March 2007. Retrieved 10 September 2016.
  49. ↑ "The Leopard Man (1943)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 29 September 2016.
  50. ↑ Agee, James. “Agee on Film”. New York : Grosset & Dunlap, 1969.
  51. ↑ "Ardel Wray". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 15 August 2016.
  52. ↑ Siodmak, Curt. "I'm a Poor Writer: Siodmak on Siodmaks". Blogspot. Retrieved 3 September 2016.
  53. ↑ "Inez Wallace and Frank Hubbell Papers". Ohio Link Finding Aid Repository. Retrieved 3 September 2016.
  54. ↑ Memo to Frank Cleaver from Richard Maibaum dated October 11, 1948 and related correspondence. Paramount Pictures production records, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
  55. ↑ "Blackbeard, the Pirate". Internet Movie Database. Retrieved 3 September 2016.

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