Word: director
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...around to the opening of the Metropolitan Opera (see Music) even though it meant her first public appearance in a wheelchair. When 30 photographers swooped down on her and let go with flashbulbs, she brandished her cane and cried: "I ought to take this to you." Carleton Smith, director of the National Arts Foundation, who escorted Mrs. Vanderbilt to the opening, said she had decided to attend only after he told her that Queen Mary, who recently gave him an audience in England, had remarked sadly that "so few were left to uphold tradition...
...Scripter-Director-Producer Robert Rossen's efforts to keep Stark from being a facsimile of the late Huey Long often turn the character into a colorless man who lacks the political charm of a people's favorite and looks like a cross between a schoolteacher and a gangster. But when Actor Crawford is allowed to swing around in the role, he has some fine scenes-notably, the seedy politico resting off a nightlong drunk in a playground swing, gesturing the children to go off and leave him alone...
...newfangled techniques which Director Rossen seems to have borrowed from the modern Italian directors have given the movie vitality and power. Since it was shot outdoors in all sorts of weather, the film credibly suggests the passing of time simply because no two scenes show the same sky or lighting. The camera, often threading through Stark's career like a fond mamma looking for her child in a crowd, turns up all kinds of unpredictable and realistic touches. Occasionally, Director Rossen plunges spiritedly into a scene as though, in the Rossellini manner, he were making up the script...
...away from Hollywood's familiar faces, Scripter-Director-Producer Robert Rossen filmed most of his picture in Stockton, Calif, (pop. 66,000), casting townsfolk in all but the principal roles. He used a railroad brakeman as Pa Stark, the city's sheriff as the sheriff, a local preacher as the preacher. In the big crowd scene just before Willie Stark's assassination, he turned four cameras loose at once on Stockton's non-professional extras to get their unrehearsed reactions to Crawford's speech...
...unsuccessful playwright on Broadway, he joined Warner Brothers as a scripter in 1936, piled up plenty of screen credits (They Won't Forget, Dust Be My Destiny, Edge of Darkness) but not much satisfaction. In 1946 he branched out as a writer-director (Johnny 0'Clock), then tried just directing (Body and Soul). Next, having set up Robert Rossen Productions through a financing-distributing deal with Columbia, he became a producer (The Undercover Man). His latest film is his first crack at writing, producing and directing all at once...