1. Lewis Milestone directed The Front Page, The General Died at Dawn, Of Mice and Men, Ocean's 11, and received the directing credit for Mutiny on the Bounty, though Marlon Brando largely appropriated his responsibilities during its production.
70 Facts About Lewis Milestone
1. 2.
Lewis Milestone was intent on pursuing a theatrical career and bought a one-way ticket to the United States.
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When Lewis Milestone arrived in Hollywood, he was still in financial difficulties.
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Lewis Milestone later said to sustain himself until his studio job commenced, he briefly worked as a card dealer at a Los Angeles City Oil Field gambling venue.
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Lewis Milestone accepted mundane assignments from Hampton at $20 per week, and progressed from assistant editor toward director.
6.
Lewis Milestone's first credited work was as assistant on King's film Dice of Destiny.
7.
In 1923, Lewis Milestone followed Seiter to Warner Brothers studios as assistant director on Little Church Around the Corner, completing most of the film-making tasks on the production.
8.
Seven Sinners is one of three films Lewis Milestone directed with Marie Prevost, Mack Sennett and a former female comedian.
9.
An argument with screen star Gloria Swanson on the set of Fine Manners led Lewis Milestone to walk off the project, leaving director Richard Rosson to complete it.
10.
Lewis Milestone's cinematic rendering of Two Arabian Knights and The Garden of Eden established him as a skilled practitioner of "rough and sophisticated" comedy.
11.
Lewis Milestone was wary of being stereotyped as a comedy director, and he shifted to an emerging genre director Josef von Sternberg popularized with his gangland fantasy Underworld.
12.
Lewis Milestone attempted to accommodate United Artists' desire to blend the "show-biz" and gangster genres in an adaptation of "the justly forgotten" Broadway production Tin Pan Alley.
13.
Lewis Milestone cinematically conveyed the "grim realism and anti-war themes" that characterize the novel.
14.
Originally conceived as a silent film, Lewis Milestone filmed both a silent and a talkie version, shooting them together in sequence.
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In one of the film's most-disturbing sequences, Lewis Milestone used tracking shots and sound effects to graphically show the effects of artillery and machine guns on advancing troops.
16.
The Front Page, in which Lewis Milestone depicted backroom denizens of Chicago newspaper tabloids, is considered one of the most influential films of 1931 and introduced the Hollywood archetype of the experienced, fast-talking reporter.
17.
Lewis Milestone was disappointed with the casting of Pat O'Brien as reporter "Hildy" Johnson; he wanted to cast James Cagney or Clark Gable in the role but producer Howard Hughes vetoed this choice in favor of O'Brien, who had performed in the Chicago stage production of The Front Page.
18.
Lewis Milestone's technique is demonstrated in the opening tracking shots of the newspaper's printing plant, and the confrontation between Molly Malloy and a throng of reporters.
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Lewis Milestone was troubled by film directors' declining control within the studio system and supported King Vidor's proposal to organize a filmmakers' cooperative.
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Under these conditions, Lewis Milestone experienced difficulty in locating compelling literary material, production support and proper casting.
21.
In lieu of these unrealized films, Lewis Milestone directed "a string of three insignificant studio pieces" from 1934 to 1936.
22.
Lewis Milestone accepted a lucrative deal to direct a film starring John Gilbert and left United Artists for Harry Cohn's Columbia Pictures.
23.
Lewis Milestone's largely improvised film stars an ensemble of Columbia's character actors, among them Victor McLaglen and The Three Stooges.
24.
Lewis Milestone was assigned Paris in Spring, a romantic musical farce.
25.
Lewis Milestone's adversary is the complex, Chinese warlord General Yang.
26.
Lewis Milestone's brings to the adventure-melodrama a "bravura" exposition of his cinematic style and technical skills; an impressive use of tracking, a five-way split screen and a widely noted use of a match dissolve that transitions from a billiard table to a white door handle leading to an adjoining room; it is "one of the most expert match shots on record" according to historian John Baxter.
27.
Lewis Milestone was served by cinematographer Victor Milner, art directors Hans Dreier and Ernst Fegte, and composer Werner Janssen in, according to Baxter, creating "his most exquisite and exciting if not most meaningful examination of social friction in a human context".
28.
Lewis Milestone had been impressed with Steinbeck's novella Of Mice and Men and its 1938 stage production, a morality play set during the Dust Bowl, and he was enthusiastic about the film project.
29.
Lewis Milestone solicited Steinbeck's support for the film; Steinbeck "essentially approved the script", as did the Hays Office, which made only "minor" changes to the scenario.
30.
Lewis Milestone placed great emphasis on visual and sound motifs that develop the characters and themes.
31.
Critic Kingley Canham noted the importance Lewis Milestone placed on his sound motifs:.
32.
Lewis Milestone was provided with his own production unit, and quickly satisfied his contractual obligations, directing Ginger Rogers in Lucky Partners and Anna Lee in the "totally disarming frolic" My Life with Caroline.
33.
In collaboration with Dutch filmmaker Joris Ivens, working with The Government Film Service in 1940, Lewis Milestone depicted the struggle of Russian villagers to resist the German invasion.
34.
Seventeen years after directing The Caveman for Warner Brothers, Lewis Milestone returned to Warner in a one-film contract.
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Lewis Milestone employs an "anti-suspense" device that shows the carnage suffered by the inhabitants then reveals the story in flashback.
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Lewis Milestone uses a tracking shot to follow the aged comic figure Karp as he rides his cart through the village, a device Lewis Milestone used to introduce the film's key characters.
37.
Lewis Milestone used an overhead camera to record the circular symmetry of the happy revelers.
38.
Lewis Milestone's next project, the United Artists production Guest in the House, is a psychological thriller in the style of Alfred Hitchcock.
39.
Lewis Milestone was removed from the project when he underwent an emergency appendectomy during filming.
40.
Lewis Milestone invested $30,000 of his own savings, a measure of his enthusiasm for the novel and its cinematic potential.
41.
Lewis Milestone's trademark handling of tracking shots is evident in the action scenes.
42.
The Russian-born Lewis Milestone, always a liberal intellectual with Leftist inclinations, was a natural target for the witch hunters of the HUAC.
43.
In 1948, the anti-communist writer Myron Fagan implied that Lewis Milestone was a Red sympathizer, [a claim made explicit] by Hedda Hopper in her nationally syndicated Hollywood column.
44.
Unlike the Hollywood Ten and many others, Lewis Milestone was able to keep working.
45.
Millichap said, "Lewis Milestone refused to comment on this side of his life: evidently he found it very painful".
46.
The movies Lewis Milestone directed in the late 1940s represent "the last distinctive period" in his creative output.
47.
Rossen's and Lewis Milestone's script provided the cast, which features Barbara Stanwyck, Van Heflin and Kirk Douglas in his first screen appearance with a "taut, harsh" narrative that critiques post-war, urban America as corrupt and irredeemable.
48.
Lewis Milestone excised "the bars, brothels and operating rooms", and the sordid ending from the screenplay.
49.
Lewis Milestone delivered a four-hour version of Arch of Triumph Enterprise Productions had approved.
50.
Lewis Milestone cannot be completely absolved of responsibility for the disaster.
51.
Lewis Milestone continued working with the studio, accepting an offer to produce and direct a Dana Andrews and Lilli Palmer comedy, No Minor Vices.
52.
Lewis Milestone's novella, composed of four short stories, is "unified only by continuities of character, setting theme".
53.
Lewis Milestone moved to 20th Century Fox where he made three films: Halls of Montezuma, Kangaroo and Les Miserables.
54.
Lewis Milestone denied Halls of Montezuma addressed his "personal beliefs" on the nature of war; he agreed to direct the movie as a financial expedient.
55.
Lewis Milestone reverts to the formulaic war movie with a standard "Give 'em Hell" climax, accompanied by the strains of the Marine Hymn.
56.
Lewis Milestone attempted to evade the poor literary vehicle by concentrating on "the landscape, flora and fauna" of the Australian outback at the expense of dialogue.
57.
Lewis Milestone directed a biography of a diva, a World War II action drama and an international romance-melodrama.
58.
The film is based on a script by Robert Westerby; Lewis Milestone delivered an action-packed climax in the final minutes of the film that recalls his early work in this genre but the film had a poor reception from critics and audiences.
59.
Millichap said Lewis Milestone delivered a film that equivocates between a pure satire of American acquisitiveness or its celebration.
60.
In February 1961, the 65-year-old Lewis Milestone took over directorial duties from Carol Reed, who became disillusioned with the project due to inadequate scripting, inclement weather on location in Tahiti and disputes with leading man Marlon Brando.
61.
Lewis Milestone was tasked with bringing good order and discipline to the production, and with curbing Brando.
62.
Rather than inheriting a largely completed film, Lewis Milestone discovered only a few scenes had been filmed.
63.
Mutiny on the Bounty is the final completed film for which Lewis Milestone was credited but according to Canham, it is not considered representative of Lewis Milestone's oeuvre.
64.
In 1957, Lewis Milestone directed episodes of television drama series, including Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Schlitz Playhouse and Suspicion.
65.
Lewis Milestone found television productions unappealing but returned to that medium after completing Mutiny on the Bounty, directing one episode of the series Arrest and Trial and one episode of The Richard Boone Show, both in 1963.
66.
Lee and Lewis Milestone had met on the set of his 1932 film Rain, in which Lee had played Mrs MacPhail.
67.
Lewis Milestone experienced declining health in the 1960s and suffered a stroke in 1978, shortly after the death of Kendall Lee, his wife of 43 years.
68.
Lewis Milestone is interred in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles.
69.
Lewis Milestone is almost the classic example of the uncommitted director.
70.
Koszarski offers a metaphor Lewis Milestone had applied to his own final works: "the latter part of [Lewis Milestone]'s career was marked by only sporadic flashes of creativity, a veritable forest of saplings graced by only one or two solitary oaks".