George Dewey Cukor (July 7, 1899 – January 24, 1983) was an American film director. Cukor's career flourished at RKO Studios where he directed a string of impressive films including What Price Hollywood? (1932), A Bill of Divorcement (1932), Dinner at Eight (1933), Little Women (1933), David Copperfield (1935), Romeo and Juliet (1936), Camille (1937), The Philadelphia Story (1940), and My Fair Lady (1964).
LIFE AND CAREER
Cukor was born in New York City to Hungarian Jewish immigrants, Victor F. and Helen (Gross) Cukor. (His name means sugar in Hungarian.) As a teenager, he was infatuated with theater and often cut classes to attend afternoon matinees. Following his graduation from De Witt Clinton High School in 1916, he spent a year with the Students Army Training Corps. He then obtained a job as an assistant stage manager for a Chicago theater company. After gaining three years of experience, he formed his own stock company in Rochester, New York in 1920, and worked there for seven years. He then returned to Broadway where he worked with such formidable actresses as Ethel Barrymore, Dorothy Gish, Estelle Winwood, and Jeanne Eagels.
When Hollywood began to recruit New York theater talent for sound films, Cukor answered their call and moved there in 1929. His first job was as a dialog director at Paramount Pictures for the film River of Romance (1929), followed by All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) at Universal Pictures. He then co-directed three films at Paramount before making his solo debut directing Tallulah Bankhead in Tarnished Lady (1931). Cukor left Paramount after a legal dispute resulting from his dismissal from an earlier Paramount film, One Hour With You (1932), and went to work with David O. Selznick at RKO Studios.
Cukor's career flourished at RKO where he directed a string of impressive films including What Price Hollywood? (1932), A Bill of Divorcement (1932), Dinner at Eight (1933), Little Women (1933), David Copperfield (1935), Romeo and Juliet (1936), and Camille (1937).
By this time, Cukor had established a reputation as a director who could coax great performances from actresses and he became known as a "woman's director," a title which he resented.[1] One of Cukor's first ingenues was actress Katharine Hepburn, who debuted in A Bill of Divorcement and whose looks and personality left RKO officials at a loss as to how to use her. Cukor ended up directing her in her most successful films and they became close friends off the set.
Cukor was hired to direct Gone with the Wind by David O. Selznick in 1937 and he spent two years with pre-production duties as well as spending long hours coaching Vivien Leigh and Olivia de Havilland, the film's stars. Cukor was replaced after less than three weeks of shooting, but continued to coach Leigh and De Havilland off the set.
Following the Gone with the Wind debacle, Cukor directed The Women (1939), a popular film notable for its all female cast and The Philadelphia Story (1940) starring Katharine Hepburn. He also directed another of his favorite actresses, Greta Garbo, in Two Faced Woman (1941), her last film before she retired from the screen.
The 1940s was a decade of hits and misses for Cukor. He was off track with Two Faced Woman as well as Her Cardboard Lover (1942) starring Norma Shearer. However, he did achieve more success with films such as A Woman's Face (1941) with Joan Crawford, Gaslight (1944) with Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer, and Adam's Rib (1949) with Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy.
Cukor's reputation as an actor's director continued as he helped several actors win Academy Awards. James Stewart won a Best Actor Oscar for The Philadelphia Story, Ronald Colman won a Best Actor Oscar for A Double Life (1947) and Judy Holliday won for Best Actress for Born Yesterday (1950}. In 1954, Cukor made his first film in color, A Star Is Born which featured an impressive come-back performance by Judy Garland. A decade later, Cukor won an Academy Award himself, for Best Director, for My Fair Lady (1964), for which Rex Harrison won a Best Actor Oscar too.
He continued to work into his 80s and directed his last film, Rich and Famous (1981) with Candice Bergen.
Cukor was well known in his personal life as a man having a good time. During the heyday of Hollywood, his celebrated home was the site of weekly Sunday parties and his guests knew that they would always find interesting company, good food, and a beautiful atmosphere when they visited. Cukor's friends were of paramount importance to him and he kept his home filled with their photographs. Regular attendees at his soirees included Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, Joan Crawford and Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. , Lauren Bacall and Humphrey Bogart, Claudette Colbert, Marlene Dietrich, Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh, Richard Cromwell, Judy Garland, Noel Coward, Cole Porter, James Whale, Edith Head, and Norma Shearer, especially after the death of her first husband, Irving Thalberg.
During his Hollywood years, he and Cole Porter competed within the Hollywood gay elite, earning them the title "the rival Queens of Hollywood".
George Cukor died on January 24, 1983 at the age of 83. He was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.
Interred at Forest Lawn (Glendale), Glendale, California, USA, in the Garden of Honor, unmarked. (Private area. Not accessible to the general public). Frances Goldwyn [Frances Howard], wife of mogul Samuel Goldwyn, is buried next to Cukor at her request because of her long, but unrequited love for him.
He was replaced as director of Gone with the Wind (1939) because of constant disagreements with producer David O. Selznick over the script and direction (not as rumour had it because Clark Gable considered him better suited as a so-called woman's director).
Worked as Broadway director before going into the film business with Grumpy (1930).
He was famous for the parties he threw later in life for large groups of directors, many parties being attended by other directing legends such as Alfred Hitchcock, John Ford, Luis Buñuel, and George Stevens.
He was famous as a sophisticated, witty personality but was also in the habit (mainly to be naughty) of blurting out unexpected profanities.
Was voted the 18th Greatest Director of all time by Entertainment Weekly.
Did a few days work as intermediate director on The Wizard of Oz (1939) (although he never actually filmed any scenes) after original director Richard Thorpe had been dismissed. Victor Fleming was eventually hired to direct the picture. Coincidentally, Cukor's next film, Gone with the Wind (1939), also went on to be directed by Fleming after Cukor was fired due to disagreements with the film's producer, David O. Selznick.
He did not make a musical, or fully direct a film in color, until A Star Is Born (1954).
Directed 21 different actors in Oscar-nominated performances: Fredric March, Basil Rathbone, Norma Shearer, Greta Garbo, James Stewart, Katharine Hepburn, Ruth Hussey, Ingrid Bergman, Charles Boyer, Angela Lansbury, Ronald Colman, Deborah Kerr, Judy Holliday, James Mason, Judy Garland, Anthony Quinn, Anna Magnani, Rex Harrison, Stanley Holloway, Gladys Cooper and Maggie Smith. Stewart, Bergman, Colman, Holliday, and Harrison won Oscars for their performances in Cukor's movies.
In 1968, he accepted the Oscar for "Best Actress in a Leading Role" on behalf of Katharine Hepburn, who wasn't present at the awards ceremony
Enjoyed a successful working partnership with Katharine Hepburn, directing her in ten films over a period of 47 years: A Bill of Divorcement (1932), Little Women (1933), Sylvia Scarlett (1935), Holiday (1938), The Philadelphia Story (1940), Keeper of the Flame (1942), Adam's Rib (1949), Pat and Mike (1952), Love Among the Ruins (1975) (TV), The Corn Is Green (1979) (TV).
He was largely responsible for the ultimate "look" of the characters in the film The Wizard of Oz (1939). Richard Thorpe, the film's first director, had decided on how the makeup should look, and had made some rather catastrophic decisions. He was eventually fired, and during a stopover at the film's set, Cukor gave some directorial suggestions (such as removing Judy Garland's blonde wig), which ultimately were used in the finished film.
He was rather heavy set when he first began directing. In fact, he looked very much like producer David O. Selznick physically. In later years, he lost weight and much of his hair.
Cukor was fired as director of Gone with the Wind (1939) only a month before The Women (1939) was scheduled to begin filming. Producer Hunt Stromberg enlisted Cukor's services immediately upon his sudden availability.
Interviewed in Peter Bogdanovich's "Who the Devil Made It: Conversations With Robert Aldrich, George Cukor, Allan Dwan, Howard Hawks, Alfred Hitchcock, Chuck Jones, Fritz Lang, Joseph H. Lewis, Sidney Lumet, Leo McCarey, Otto Preminger, Don Siegel, Josef von Sternberg, Frank Tashlin, Edgar G. Ulmer, Raoul Walsh". NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1997
Tried unsuccessfully to launch a big movie project starring Maggie Smith as complex and troubled author Virginia Woolf.
"...you direct a couple of successful pictures with women stars, so you become a 'woman's director'...Direct a sentimental little picture and all you get is sob stuff. I know I've been in and out of those little compartments. Heaven knows everyone has limitations. But why make them narrower than they are?"
"Give me a good script and I'll be a hundred times better as a director."
"You'd like to think you're pretty much an original, everything about yourself distinctive and individual. But it is surprising to realise to what extent you echo your family, and how, from childhood, you have been shaped and molded..."
On the rivalry between Joan Crawford and Bette Davis: "It seemed to me that each one coveted what the other possessed. Joan envied Bette's incredible talent, and Bette envied Joan's seductive glamour."
"Don't just do something, stand there!" (Favorite bit of direction he'd give to hyperactive actresses)
"Margaret Mitchell's only casting suggestion for Gone with the Wind (1939) was for her favorite star to play Rhett: Groucho Marx."
"Jack Lemmon is not one of those actors who'll bore you to death discussing acting. He'd rather bore you to death discussing golf."
"There's been an awful lot of crap written about Marilyn Monroe, and I don't know, there may be an exact psychiatric term for what was wrong with her but truth to tell, I think she was quite mad."
"W.C. Fields had his own ideas about playing Mr Micawber in The Personal History, Adventures, Experience, and Observation of David Copperfield, the Younger (1935). He wanted to include a juggling routine and when I said Dickens never mentioned Micawber juggling, he said, 'He probably forgot'."
[on Louise Brooks] "A beautiful nothing."
"You can always land on your feet if you know where the ground is."
"Alas, I am not an auteur, but damn few directors can write. They're very clever and they can go through the paces. As a director, you've got to think of your own limitations. There are certain things you're sympathetic with, and there are certain things you say to yourself. 'Well, I can do it because I'm perfectly competent, but there's so many people who can do it much better than I can.' I've been sent a script I think is charming and I said, 'I think you ought to get an Italian director; it's madness to ask me to do it'."
How is my favorite Hollywood director doing? I haven't seen you in so long, dear, it's such a shame! That's it, when I'm flying into L.A. next week to visit Larry on set we are going to do lunch! You get no say in this! Ha ha. Hope you're well, darling.
