Don Siegel Mitarbeit an Filmen anderer Regisseure und Fernseharbeiten

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GESCHEITERTE PROJEKTE

FERNSEHEN

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Mitarbeit an Filmen anderer Regisseure, Fernsehserien:

1.All the King's Men (1949) (second unit director) (uncredited)

2.This Is the Army (1943) (montage)

3.Action in the North Atlantic (1943) (montage)

4.Background to Danger (1943) (montage)

5.Mission to Moscow (1943) (consultant)

6.Northern Pursuit (1943) (montage)

7.George Washington Slept Here (1942) (montage)

8.Gentleman Jim (1942) (montage)

9.Now, Voyager (1942) (montage)

10.Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) (montage)

11.Across the Pacific (1942) (montage)

12.Casablanca (1942) (montage)(Regie: Michael Curtiz)

13.Hard Way, The (1942) (montage)

14.Blues in the Night (1941) (montage)

15.Sergeant York (1941) (second unit director) (uncredited)

16.Brother Orchid (1940) (montage) (uncredited)

17.Roaring Twenties, The (1939) (montage) (uncredited)(Regie: Raoul Walsh)

Montage nach Lovell: Confessions of a Nazi Spy, Knute Rockne,
All American, Edge of Darkness, They Drive By Night,

Rom 1939-1943 Siegel also worked as 2nd unit director on some
40 Warner Bros films including Passage to Marseille, Sergeant York,
Saratoga Trunk

Montage/Second Unit

Confessions of a Nazi Spy
In a montage we made for this film, our purpose was to shoot hundreds of Nazi posters fluttering down from a building to the busy Los Angeles street twelve storeys below. The pamphlets bore the Nazi swastika with such charming slogans as 'KILL THE JEWS', 'BURN THE NIGGERS', 'THE NORDIC RACE RULES THE WORLD', ad nauseam.(...) The sequence could have been shot in several cuts, but I insisted on shooting the entire sequence in one shot, which increased the difficulty enormously. I wanted to start on an insert of the pamphlet which would flutter away, revealing hundreds of other pamphlets filling the screen. The people below, who were totally unknown to us, and unpaid by us, would hopefully pick up the pamphlets, look up at us and shake their fists, as traffic came to a halt. (...) We made the shot in one take, thank god. it worked perfectly. People not only waved their fists at us, they also screamed obscenties vilifying us."

(Siegel Film S. 57-9)

Roaring Twenties

There were many montages in Roaring Twenties, mostly the kind taht bore me. Whirling papers, newsreel shots, narration announcing the end of World War I, more of the same about the rise of crime and, finally, the Wall Street crash. I decided, without front office permission but with Haskin's knowledge and support, to do the Wall Street crash using symbolism to get over the disaster; not using newspaper headlines or newsreel shots, and, if possible, no narration.
We built a huge ticker-tape machine, which spewed tape over hordes of people trying to climb steps to reach the machine looming over them. We had wind machines blowing full blast against teh sprawling mob, forcing them tumbling, sliding and falling. It was exciting to shoot and somewhat scary too. haskin pointed out that not only did we not have any money to pay for the shots I was making, but no one, including the director and producer (Wallis and Warner), had the slightest clue what we were doing. But I kept right on shooting.
Finally, Wallis ran the montage and said it was great. Need I add that all his sycophants, plus Walsh and Hellinger, vigorously agreed. it dawned on me that with film properly executed, anything was possible. I walked on air for weeks."

(Siegel Film 60)

Knute Rockne

"In the first montage I showed their backfield, famed as the Four Horsemen (...), go through their intricate formations. it was like a ballet: precise movemnts, speed, grace, spendid blocking and vicious, elusive running. (...) The second montage was a fascinating one. i had an idea that by using a series of blackouts I could show how proficient they were under actual game conditions. By sticking the football directly into the matte box covering the lens, everything was black. When the ball was thrown away from the camera, it fell into the arms of a running back, who was immediately tackled. i cut to a closer shot of the Notre Dame man who was tackled falling on to a camera which was totally blacked out. From that blackout, I went to the back of one of the Notre Dame players, who was pressed against the matte box, making it black, and as he ran away from the camera it revealed him running towards the goal line. As he ran across the goal line, we saw him fall to the ground and, in a closer shot, fight his way towards another camera blacking it out. (...)"

(Siegel Film 61)

Meet John Doe

When Capra read the monages, he surprised me. He liked them. However, before I left, he suggested more old-fashioned ideas of whirling posters, emphasizing 'Meet John Doe', dollying quickly into newspaper headlines, 'Meet John Doe'. So I left sowmewhat puzzled. I rewrote the montages the way I thought he wanted them. They seemed more old-fashioned than ever, more on the nose. But when Capra read the monages, he liked them much better than before. (...) I finished the new montages as quickly as possible. I didn't feel comfortable with them. Nevertheless, i felt the only proper course was to give the man what he wanted. After all, Capra was Capra. His pictures spoke for him. He was indubitably the best. (...) Then one day an unusually large manilla envelope, addressed simply to the Montage Department, was delivered to me. I opened it to discover two blueprints. i knew I hadn't had anything to do with them. (...) In the lower right-hand corner was a signature, 'Slavko Vorkapitch'. (...) Obviously Vorkapitch was doint the montages for Capra. There was nothing wrong with that, but I was disturbed that I hadn't heard a word from Capra, nor even from his charming secretary. I knew the business was cruel, but I didn't expect this sort of treatment from Capra. I felt a little sick in my stomach. One never knows."

(Siegel Film, S. 63)

Blues in the Night

"Later, when Litvak was dubbing the picture, he told me that he was worried about the title song, 'Blues in the Night'.
ME: I wouldn't worry about that. It's the best blues I've ever heard. If I were you, I'd worry about your picture, which is five per cent as good as the song...
LITVAK: (Annoyed) You think you're pretty good, don't you Don?
ME: (Fresh as usual) You said some pretty nice things about the montages.
LITVAK: True, but when you dolly into the poster you could have had someone walk past the poster. And you should have started on that person and ended on the poster. You must always have a reason for your camera movement, be it a dolly or a pan.
And you know something, he was right. he taught me a lesson I used for the rest of my life.
Incidentally, one of the musicians in the jazz group was played by Elia Kazan."

Siegel Film 65

They Died With Their Boots On

"When doing montages and second units, I tried to shoot in the style of the director. Raoul Walsh usually shot from eye-level and didn't move his camera much. he had his actors come up to the camera rather than dolly or pan. Michael Curtiz, on the other hand, dollied in on his actors and did considerable panning. Howard Hawks didn't make many set-ups, nor did he shoot much footage. Anatole Litvak shot endless takes."

Siegel Film 65/6

Flight From Destiny

"Siegel muß für einen Tag für den Regisseur Vincent Sherman einspringen, ohne das Buch zu kennen. Mit dem Hauptdarsteller, Thomas Mitchell, muß er eine Schlüsselszene drehen:
ME: When you're walking the 'last mile', are you thinking of the dreadful woman you murdered? Or are you thinking that you knew you only had a few months to live anyway? Or do you think of Geraldine Fitzgerald or Jeffrey Lynn? And, most important, how do you show who or what you're thinking about as you're on your way to being electrocuted?(...)
MITCHELL: When I worked for John Ford on The Long Voyage Home, I had a similar problem. I was on a ship, having a glorious fight with certain members of the cast and lots of burly stuntmen when, according to plan, I crashed into the main mast. I was presumably knocked senseless. When I regained consciousness, i was supposed to think of many things that had happened in my life(...). So I went to Mr Ford and explained that I had a problem knowing how to portray my wonderful memories. Ford said, 'You don't'. 'Then what do I do, sir?', I asked. 'Nothing', he replied. 'You don't have a thought in your head. Your mind is blank. If the audience thinks you are thinking of the fight, fine; of your wife, fine; of the joy of sailing the seas, finde. Whatever the audience thinks, fine.' So you see, it's quite simple.
ME: What a brilliant idea!

(Siegel Film 67/8)

Yankee Doddle Dandy

"Working with Cagney was electric. He is truly one of the great actors of our time. I worked with him on a number of films, including Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), Each Dawn I Die (1939), but I didn't really get to know him until we worked together on Yankee Doodle Dandy in 1942.(...)
The most difficult montage in Yankee Doodle Dandy was a continuus dolly shot across the roofs of Broadway, panning down to the various marquees, identifying the theatres on both sides of Broadway. On each marquee, in lights, was the name George M. Cohan, starring in the hit show that was playing at that particular theatre. (...) The effect was truly exhilarating. it was accomplished by painting a huge matte shot of the roofs on both sides of Broadway. Each of the lighted marquees was painted in with the names of the shows realistically lit up with real lights. The camera, on a boom, would sweep across the roofs and swoop down to each marquee long enough to read it."

Siegel Film 69/70

The Adventures of Mark Twain

"Two of the montages that I did i felt were interesting, not only because they turned out well, but because the front office had no idea how I did them and were very upset at the possible cost.
For one, I found five camels, took their picture in dozens of poses, printed the pictures, cut them out and mounted them on a camshaft to have them move. Then I set up a scene with Fredric March projected on a miniature screen on a minature minaret. As the camera pulled back, it picked up the camels and came through a cut-out crowd of Arabs - it looked as though there were thousands of them. The camera stopped at two of the five real actors, who turned to each other and laughed at mark Twain's joke. (...) The second montage apparently took place in London's Albert Hall. I used cut-outs for the audience, which numbered over 1,000 people because the balconies were also filled; and I had a matte made, which in essence means that I had the structure, walls, etc., of the Alber Hall painted in. On the stage stood Fredric March. i made my reverses on his face when he talked, as well as making shots from the stage at the huge audience facing him."

(Siegel Film 71)

Mission to Moscow

"Don had erected an enormous machine plant in back of a stairway that led up a treadmill. We walked on the treadmill and the process screen in back of us teemed with action. At a signal from Don, Huston and I started up the real stairs, Don followed us with a camera on a crane. he was sitting right on top of it. At the top of the stairs, the door to what was supposed to be my office was rigged to break away so the camera could follow us right in."

Tom Tully, Darsteller eines Ingenieurs, zit. nach Siegel Film 73

Passage to Marseilles

"I thought that the trouble with Passage to Marseilles was its construction: flashbacks into flashbacks into more flashbacks, etc. I wrote a number of montages that covered those sequences ineptly and I didn't particularly like the picture; but there were two second units that were reasonably well done and in some ways were physically quite difficult.
In the first, Humphrey Bogart leads four of his comrades (...) to make an escape from Devil's island. This meant going through slime and muck and mud and swamp - very difficult physically not only for me, but certainly for the acots. But they didn't complain (...).
The second one took place on the French freighter. A mutiny erupts and, in addition, the freighter is attacked by German aircraft. this was quite difficult to do. We had miniature aeroplanes attacking and when the bullets from the planes hit the ship you could see the bullets cutting through the wooden deck, the mast and other areas."

Siegel Film 75

Saratoga Trunk

"There was a large sequence of two trains, one carrying the 'bad guys', headed by Frank Hagney, the other carrying the 'good guys', headed by Gary Cooper. We used 175 stuntmen representing both the good and the bad. (...) So we made long shots and close shots of the engines supposedly crashing into each other. We had shots of stuntmen jumping off the moving freight trains, shot from outside up as they jumped. We had shots from inside the moving freight cars from behind the men, showing them jumping off. this posed a new problem for me. When shot from outside the moving freight cars, jumping off, the men were moving camera right to left. Yet when I made the reverse shot of the same men jumping off from inside the freight cars, they were jumping off camera left to right. The script girl, the cameraman and, of course, the assistant dirctor said I couldn't do it; it would never cut together. (...) Actually, when I cut it together, the geography being established, it worked.(...) I (...) watched Sam Wood direct Ingrid Berman and Gary Cooper on his set without being invited to be there. I noticed that in explaining the scene to his stars he seemed almost inarticulate. When he walked back to the camera, Cooper smiled knowingly at Berman, who smiled back and shrugged helplessly.
Yet Sam Wood directed many fine films. What talent or knowledge did he have that enabled him to be so successful? he had good taste, a requisite for a fine director. he had the patience and the stubbornness not to give up until he got the scene. The front office meant nothing to him. Wood was fearless."

Siegel Film 79/80

To Have and Have Not

"My next assignment was o Have and Have Not. This picture, an excellent one, was produced and directed by Howard Hawks. It starred Humphrey Bogart and a new, lovely young girl, Lauren Bacall. Hawks handled his stars very differently from Mike Curtiz. Before starting to direct a new sequence, hawks would have them sit around a large table with himself at the head and would discuss the various important things that he hoped to get over int he sequence. he would seek their input, encourage them to voice their ideas. I noticed, for the forst time, that Bogey was happy and full of ideas. If Hawks didn't agree, he would explain very carefully and lucidly why it wouldn't work. if he liked any of their ideas, he thanked them praised them and used their ideas.
Thas was all new to me. Curtziz talked to his cast in broken English, which they didn't understand, only when they were rehearsing, with the result that his actors, like bogey, were unhappy and disgruntled. (...) All I did was sit in a chair where I wouldn't disturb Hawks or his cast." (Siegel stand noch unter Acht von Jack Warner weil er den Vertrag nicht unterschrieben hatte.)

Siegel Film 88/9

Vendetta
Howard Hughes, nachdem er The Verdict gesehen hat, bittet Siegel, ihm mit seinem Film Vendetta zu helfen (Regie haben dabei Preston Sturges und Max Ophuls geführt). Hughes bittet ihn, ein von ihm erdachtes Ende zu drehen. Siegel hat keine Zeit, schreibt aber immerhin ein 3-Seiten-Memo mit dem letzten Satz: 'Whether, Mr Hughes, you have read this far in this letter is unimportant. Nothing can save Vendetta.'
Siegel Film 109

Interessante Hintergrundinformationen zu diesem katastrophalen Projekt liefert Faith Domergue, die Hauptdarstellerin:
This would be Vendetta and would eventually turn out to be a tortured, horrible experience for me.
"Howard had formed a company with Preston Sturges called California Pictures, and Preston had an idea to do what was then called Columba [Prosper Mérimée, who wrote Carmen, also wrote the original story to Vendetta, which was called Columba]. Preston Sturges, who was part French and lived in France, was also very well versed in French literature and quite brilliant. Preston approached Howard wanting to do Columba and told Howard that he wanted to do a film with his girlfriend, Francis Ramsden, and Harold Lloyd called The Sin of Harold Diddlebock [1947; cut to 79 minutes and reissued in 1950 as Mad Wednesday]. He said to Howard that if Howard would let him produce and direct Sin, Preston would produce Columba withme and told Howard, `I will make a star of her.' Well, this is what one likes to hear, of course.
"Preston took Max Ophuls as the director on this film originally and worked with Max on the script. It was heavy with dialogue, and it was a beautifully done script. I also worked with Max a great deal on the script before shooting started and just before we were all ready to get to work, Howard crashed into the house on Whittier and remained between life and death for weeks to come. He couldn't be reached, and production on Sin of Harold Diddlebock had been finished, and we had started out to begin shooting way out in the Valley for Vendetta, and when this occurred with Howard, we all thought he was going to die. There was no doubt in anyone's mind that Howard was not going to make it, and now Preston had total control of the whole production. Well, at this point something happened to Preston. He lost his bearings. So much hubris came into his actions -- this arrogant pride, and he and Francis would go off on horseback for hours, and the whole company would have to just sit around. We would get only one shot before the sun went down and call it a day!
"Now, I had not made a picture before, so I'm thinking that this is the way it's done. Then Preston wouldn't allow Max to direct any scenes. Max would only be allowed to yell `Action,' but that was it! He never allowed him to say `cut' or instruct any of the actors, and Max was suffering terribly over this.
"This situation kept getting worse and worse, and people were wanting to leave, and the technicians didn't want to work anymore. Max had been a Jewish refugee from Germany and would have been killed if he had remained there, and here he is [after the war] getting this awful treatment. He was such a wonderful director, and I felt so badly for him. And Nigel Bruce was getting short tempered with it all, and he and George Dolenz wanted to leave. This was to be for my benefit, and it was goingdown the drain.
"Finally, when it was all about to explode one Friday, when we were closing up shop, Max came into my dressing room and asked me if I could get a message to Howard to inform him as to what was going on, but I couldn't. We had been out there shooting for six weeks, and we didn't have one completed scene. I once made 95 takes of one little short scene!
"I truly lost the `sacred fire' making this picture which was my first film, and so I wrote a letter about all this to Howard's secretary, Toni Guest, and when I came to work Monday morning, all of Preston's people were packing up and leaving. The entire company had been dissolved; and, alas, Max was with Preston's company, and he was fired too. There remained George and myself and Howard's people, and the money they had put up for the film. Then they hired a nice gentleman named Stuart Heisler to direct. Then we laid off. Then we went back and shot some closeups. Then we laid off again and went back two years later and shot some really nice stuff with Mel Ferrer as director, and he took credit now and shot six weeks of retakes.(...) What you see in Vendetta is bits and pieces of everything with nothing of what Preston shot at all except a couple of long shots. But by the time this was all over, I had no drive left, and to be perfectly frank, I lost a child with Vendetta. My first child. I had a miscarriage, and this was very heartbreaking. The only other person I've told this to regarding what went on with Vendetta was a professor of motion picture history in Germany who was doing research on Max Ophuls and wanted to know of that particular part of his life, and only I knew it.
"Vendetta is not a good film, but we all were quite good. Unfortunately, all of the performances that Max and I worked on were out the window."

aus einem Interview mit Faith Domergue

-oben-

Gescheiterte Regieprojekte

The Conspirators

"(Hal Wallis) gave me a book entitled The Conspirators, by Frederic Prokosh. it was to be filmed starring Hedy Lamarr. The rest of the supporting cast would be of the same calibre as Casablanca. (...) To be given the opportunity on my first picture to work with Hal Wallis, which made it automatically an A picture, was reason enough to direct it. (...)"

(Die Vertragsbedingungen, die Siegel für sieben Jahre an Warner gebunden hätten, waren, was sein Gehalt betrifft, lächerlich. Er weigert sich, den Vertrag zu unterschreiben. Er wird für sechs Monate unbezahlt beurlaubt.)

"The second three-month suspension was up and I was assigned to The Conspirators as an assistant director, a role I had never had before. This, of course, was the picture I was to have directed for Hal Wallis. I guess Warner or Trilling or Wright felt this manoeuvre would break my spirit. (...) On the set I saw Negulesco turn his back to me. I felt strange that at no time did he express to me any feeling about his taking over what was to have been my picture. he could have at least offered me some condolences. The phrase 'If you have a Romanian for a friend, you don't need an enemy' seemed to be only too true in Jean's case.
One pleasant note. The picture turned out to be a complete failure, both financially and artistically."

Siegel Film 82-88

Fernsehen
UNITED STATES STEEL HOUR (1953) Siegel schrieb an einer Story der Serie mit. Titel: The Bogeyman. Regie Alex Segal "According to the US Steel Corporation and the Theater Guild which supervised the series, no tape, film or script for the show still exists." Kaminsky, S. 317 THE DOCTORS (1954) Siegel inszenierte drei halbstündige Episoden. "The very first television show I did was on a series titled The Doctors. I did three half-hour shows. They were narrated by Warner Anderson... In one of them I had Lee Marvin playing the lead opposite Dorothy Malone. The alternate direcor (who was also the production manager and directed many, many more than I did) was Robert Aldrich." Kaminsky, S. 316/7 THE LINE UP (1954) Siegel führte Regie beim halbstündigen Pilotfilm mit Warner Anderson, Tom Tully und Charles Bronson FRONTIER (1961) Regie bei der ersten Episode, 'The Paper Gunman'. Produzent Worthington Miner CODE THREE (1961) Regie und Co-Drehbuch des Pilotfilms für Hal Roach jr. THE MAN FROM BLACKHAWK (1961) Co-Autor des Pilotfilms, mit Herb Meadows. BUS STOP (1963) Regie beim 50minütigen Pilotfilm nach dem Originalskript von William Inge. Kamera: J. Peverell Marley. Produzent: Roy Huggins. Drehbuch: Robert Blees. Cast: Tuesday Weld, Gary Lockwood, Buddy Ebsen, Joseph Cotten, Marilyn Maxwell, Rhodes Reason. BREAKING POINT (1963) Regie der ersten 50minütigen Episode: 'There are the Hip and there are the Square', geschrieben von Mark Rodgers. Produzent: George Lefferts. Kamera Robert Houser. Cast: John Cassavetes, Carl Lawrence, Paul Richards, Arthur Franz, Woodrow Parfrey, Virginia Gregg, Seymour Cassel, J. Pat O'Malley. UNCLE SIMON (15.11.63) Autor: Rod Serling Produzent: Bert Granet Kamera: Robert W. Pittack Musik: stock Cast: Uncle Simon Polk: Cedric Hardwicke Barbara Polk: Constance Ford Schwimmer: Ian Wolfe "Dramatis personae: Mr. Simon Polk, a gentleman who has lived out his life in a gleeful rage; and the young lady who's just beat the hasty retreat is Mr. Polk's niece, Barbara. She's lived her life as if during each ensuing hour she had a dentist appointment. There's yet a third member of the company soon to be seen. He now resides in the laboratory and he is the kind of character to be found only in the Twilight Zone." Uncle Simon tries to strike Barbara with his cane. She grabs it and he falls down the stairs to his death. His will stipulates that she must care for his latest invention - a robot. The robot begins to take on Uncle Simon's traits. Barbara finally pushes it down the stairs, but that only gives it a limp identical to Uncle Simon's. She finally realizes that she will never be rid of Uncle Simon. "Dramatis personae: a metal man, who will go by the name of Simon, whose life as well as his body has been stamped out for him; and the woman who tends to him, the lady Barbara, who's discovered belatedly that all bad things don't come to an end, and that once a bed is made it's quite necessary that you sleep in it. Tonight's uncomfortable little exercise in avarice and automatons - from the Twilight Zone." THE SELF-IMPROVEMENT OF SALVATORE ROSS (17.1.64) Drehbuch: Jerry McNeely (nach der Kurzgeschichte"The Self-Improvement Of Salvadore Ross" von Henry Slesar) Produzent: Bert Granet Kamera: George T. Clemens Musik: stock Cast: Salvadore Ross: Don Gordon Leah Maitland: Gail Kobe Mr. Maitland: Vaughn Taylor "Confidential personnel file on Salvadore Ross. Personality: a volatile mixture of fury and frustration. Distinguishing physical characteristic: a badly-broken hand which will require emergency treatment at the nearest hospital. Ambition: shows great determination toward self-improvement. Estimate of potential success: a sure bet for a listing in Who's Who - in the Twilight Zone." In the hospital, Ross trades his broken hand, for a cold from his roomate. Using his new-found talent, he trades forty-six years of his life to a millionaire for a million dollars and a nice apartment. He then buys back the years from a variety of young men, a few years at a time. Realizing the girl of his dreams wants a man with compassion, he convinces her father to sell him his. When he goes to ask for her father's blessing, the old man, compassionless now, shoots Salvadore and kills him. "The Salvadore Ross program for self-improvement. The all-in-one, sure-fire success course that lets you lick the bully, learn the language, dance the tango and anything else you want to do - or think you want to do. Money-back guarantee. Offer limited to ... the Twilight Zone." THE LLOYD BRIDGES SHOW (1964) Regie bei einer Episode mit Lloyd Bridges und Glynis Johns. DESTRY (1965) Einstündiger farbiger Pilotfilm: 'Johnny, I hardly Knew you'. Produzent: Roy Huggins. Kamera: Bud Thackery. Cast: John Gavin, Tammy Grimes, Broderick Crawford, Neville Brand. CONVOY (1965) Regie und Produktion des 50minütigen s/w-Pilotfilms. Cast: John Gavin, John Larch, Linden Chiles, Gia Scala. Kamera: Bud Thackery. THE LEGEND OF JESSE JAMES (1966) Produktion und Regie des halbstündigen Pilotfilms. Drehbuch: W.R. Burnet, basierend auf dem Drehbuch von Nunnally Johnson zu Henry Kings Jesse-James-Film Jesse James von 1939. Kamera: George T. Clems. Cast: Christopher Jones, Allen Case, John Marley, Woodrow Parfrey, Don Haggerty, Ann Doran. Siegel produzierte die 34 Folgen der Serie mit Regisseuren wie Robert Totten, Curtis Harrington und Larry Peerce.