VAL LEWTON at RKO
(Header: Robert Wise, Mark Robson, and Val Lewton)
Cat People (1942)
I Walked with a Zombie (1943)
The Leopard Man (1943)
The Seventh Victim (1943)
The Ghost Ship (1943)
The Curse of the Cat People (1944)
Mademoiselle Fifi (1944)
Youth Runs Wild (1944)
The Body Snatcher (1945)
Isle of the Dead (1945)
Bedlam (1946)
My Own True Love (1948)
Please Believe Me (1950)
Apache Drums (1951)
Cat People * The 7th Victim * I Walked with a Zombie
Val Lewton was born in Yalta in 1904. He was brought to America in 1909 by his mother and was raised by his mother and his aunt, the famous actress/writer/producer Alla Nazimova. He grew up to be a writer of novels, radio scripts, and news articles. One of his novels, No Bed of Her Own became a film called No Man of her Own in 1933 directed by Wesley Ruggles and staring Clark Gable and Carol Lombard.
He began working as a story editor for MGM through the influence of his famous aunt. Working on David O. Selznick’s staff as a story editor (actually writing scenes for Gone with the Wind), he eventually left to work as a producer at RKO. The first film he made there was Cat People (1942). From 1942 to 1946 he was instrumental in saving the ailing studio in the wake of Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons. Ironically two of his editor/directors had worked as editors on the two films that almost bankrupted the studio. Robert Wise and Mark Robson found themselves on Lewton’s team when Orson Welles left the Studio.
While Cat People is said to be a title that was suggested to Lewton who suffered from ailurophobia, because of his morbid fear of cats it is not surprising that he would choose it when he was put in charge of a B picture unit specializing in horror. His job was to create films to compete with the successful and popular Universal horror films. His dread of cats is transferred to the screen in one of the most memorable horror films of the period. A tremendous feat considering that he was limited to a budget of no more than $150,000.00 per film.
Cat People (1942) Produced by Val Lewton. Directed by Jacques Tourneur. Screenplay by DeWitt Bodeen.
Cast: Simone Simon, Tom Conway, Kent Smith, Jan Randolph, Jack Holt and unbilled, Elizabeth Russel.
Jacques Tourneur was the director on the first three Lewton films at RKO. Cat People remains one of the most enigmatic and atmospheric of horror films. Due in part to the low budget, much is left to the viewer’s imagination. The swimming pool scene remains one of the most terrifyingly chilling moments in horror. The impact of the unseen is still evident even as we watch it from the distance and experience of more than half a century.
Lewton and Tourneur had worked together on the second unit at MGM on A Tale of Two Cities. Tourneur went on to direct I Walked with a Zombie and The Leopard Man for Lewton. Later, Tourneur would direct Out of the Past (1947), an exceptional Film Noir in a career that would continue through the mid 1960’s.
The Seventh Victim (1943) Produced by Val Lewton. Directed by Mark Robson. Screenplay by Charles O’Neal and DeWitt Bodeen.
Cast: Tom Conway, Jean Brooks, Isabel Jewell, Kim Hunter, Evelyn Brent, Erford Gage, Ben Bard, Hugh Beaumont.
In an interview for The Celluloid Muse, Mark Robson spoke of Lewton, “Val didn’t know much about film, physically speaking. He knew stories very well; he had a great fondness for directors and writers. But he was fundamentally a writer, a poet, a novelist poet, an historian.” Robson went on, “He thought of his unit –and he had his own little horror unit—in terms of the producer, the writer, the director and the editor; a kind of team in which we all worked extremely closely together.”
Mark Robson was assigned to Lewton’s unit as an editor and by 1943 was promoted to direct The Seventh Victim. Prior to this, he had been editor with Robert Wise on Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane and The Magnificent Ambersons. Also doing the final editing on Ambersons to restore it to Welles’ vision. This was at a point when Welles all but abandoned the project.
Jean Brooks starred in The Seventh Victim, a problematic film that purports to be about a group of devil worshipers but really feels like it is about something else. What? Well, that’s just it. The evidence on the surface is minimal, but looking into Lewton’s development sheds some light on what is mostly conjecture. In an interview for the book, Women in Horror: 1940’s, Val Lewton Jr. told writer, Gregory William Mank that he felt that the Jean Brooks character (Jacqueline) was based on his father’s famous aunt, Alla Nazimova.
Nazimova was not only a star of the stage and silent screen, but also is credited with coining the term ‘sewing circle’ as a cover for the lesbian activities in Hollywood. She claimed among her lovers, Dolly Wilde, Oscar Wilde’s niece.
I Walked with a Zombie (1943) Produced by Val Lewton. Directed by Jacques Tourneur. Screenplay by Curt Siodman and Ardel Wray.
Cast: Frances Dee, Tom Conway, Edith Barrett, James Bell and Christine Gordon.
After Cat People, Jacques Tourneur‘s next project for Lewton was the uniquely atmospheric, I Walked with a Zombie. Although its title and short running time of 69 minutes may put some off–it is a mistake to miss this classic. This is a chilling and well produced entry in the horror genre that stars Frances Dee, Tom Conway, and Christine Gordon. Like Lewton’s Cat People and The 7th Victim, it remains in a class by itself.
Once again, Lewton’s production has much more that the usual B movie in every facet of the film; the shadowy photography by J. Roy Hunt, inspired art direction by Albert S. D’Agostino and a solid script by Curt Siodman and Ardel Wray.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY:
A Biographical Dictionary of Film, David Thomson, Alfred Knopf, 1995.
The Celluloid Muse, Charles Higham and Joel Greenberg, Henry Regnery Company, 1969.
Showman: The Life of David O. Selznick, David Thomas, Alfred Knopf, 1992.
The Sewing Circle, Alex Madsen, Birch Lane/Carol Publishing Group, 1995.
Women in Horror, 1940’s, Gregory William Mank, McFarland & Company, 1999.