“I have worked with many directors in my long career and it is difficult now to distinguish one from the other. The exception is Allan Dwan. He alone was responsible for the success of my career in the mid-1920s when I so badly needed an understanding director who could develop my talents the right way. If I am still remembered today, Allan Dwan is the man responsible.”
(Gloria Swanson, 1962)
Film historians believe that Allan Dwan directed more than 1,000 films in a fifty-year career that stretched from 1908, when he was twenty-three, to 1958, when he was seventy-three. Hundreds of these were silent era one-reelers that ran only ten minutes. None of these had any distinguishing mark to identify the director or even the performers. Most, unfortunately, have long since been lost by the ravages of time.
But well in excess of 400 films, both silent and sound, 100 of which are still available in archives or on videotape, are recorded as giving screen credits to this amazing director. By his own estimate, approximately 200 of these he also produced and wrote.
At ninety, in 1975, he was sought out by the Los Angeles Times for his opinions on Hollywood in the 1970s. His response was pithy, as usual. “You fellas get me out of my box every few years, dust me off, and put me on display like King Tut,” he said. “What the hell can I tell you now that I didn’t tell you five years ago? Except to remind you that creative talent is slowly vanishing from the entertainment scene, and television is getting worse and worse each year.”
Joseph Aloysius Dwan was born on April 3, 1885, in Toronto, Ontario. “I changed my name to Allan because nobody liked Joseph and even less could pronounce Aloysius, much less spell it,” he said in 1943 on the set of the film he was then directing, Abroad with Two Yanks. Asked how it was spelled, he snorted. “Hell, I don’t know. It was a stupid name anyway. You could ask my father, but he’s dead.”
His father was a merchant who sold exotic medical cures to gullible housewives in the province of Ontario. After the family moved to Chicago in 1893, he became a politician. “That was a natural progression,” said Dwan. “At first he was a con man, then a crook. But I’ll say this for him, when he wasn’t out there trying to sell his customers or his constituents something they didn’t want and needed even less, he was a good, kind, and very generous father.
“If today’s youngsters had fathers like mine there would be no wars in the world. We would all be too busy trying to swindle each other that there’d be no time left to build tanks, planes, ships, and guns. We’d be having so much fun that there wouldn’t be any desire left to fight anyone.”
The Dwan family prospered in Chicago. “All politicians at that time prospered in Chicago. People actually used to believe them then, incredible as it sounds,” he said. “We lived in a nice house, people used to bow and doff their top hats when mother and father passed by. I always walked behind, trying unsuccessfully to tread on the trailing hem of mother’s dress. My life would have been complete if only once I had caused her to do a pratfall while she was walking with such dignity on a main street.”
Dwan had no intention of entering the film industry when he arrived at Notre Dame University in 1904. “Frankly, I don’t think I’d ever seen a film at that time in my life,” he recalled. “Most of the nickelodeons, as they were called then, were nothing more than converted stores or garages, and the people who patronized them were not the elite of Chicago, as we thought, I repeat, thought, we were. I was fascinated by electricity, so what do you think I studied? Try electrical engineering on for size. If only I had known that Douglas Shearer was studying the same thing in Montreal, we might have set the world on fire with both our intelligent minds working together. More likely we would have blown up the world and you and I wouldn’t have been here today. I’ll think about that and let you know my feelings about that a little later.”
Dwan was a star of Notre Dame college theatricals. “I wasn’t really that good,” he recalled. “It was simply that everyone else was so bad.”
He also became a star of Notre Dame’s football team. “I wasn’t really that good,” he repeated. “It was simply that everyone else was so bad. Those definitely were not the golden years of Notre Dame college football, or theatricals.”
After graduation, in 1907, he stayed on to teach mathematics and physics, to coach the football team, and to teach drama. “I reasoned that having graduated in all these subjects and recreations who better than me to teach the newcomers to do things equally badly.”
In 1908, “having battered my head against many a brick wall trying to teach people with even thicker heads the rudiments of life, I decided the world was ready for me. I answered an advertisement placed by the Peter Cooper Hewitt Company of Chicago. They were looking for an electrical engineering graduate to help with their experiments in lighting. They liked what I had to offer, so I got the job.”
One of the company’s experiments in which Dwan played a major role was the development of the world’s first mercury vapour lamp. “It was like chalk and cheese, showing how much better our new lamp could light the local theatres,” said Dwan. “Everyone was raving about our lighting, except, perhaps, the aging prima donnas whose facial lines and grey hair had suddenly became more noticeable. Now if only I could have instantly invented a beauty cream to remove those wrinkles I might today be sitting on the beach on some exotic island having palm leaves waved over me by beautiful grass-skirted girls, instead of being here hoping to knock sense into a bunch of incompetent actors.”
George K. Spoor, one of the two owners of the Essanay-Spoor-Anderson Film Company, located on South Argyle Street in Chicago, heard about the new invention that was revolutionizing theatre lighting in the city and wondered if the same lights might also do wonders for the early emulsion film and primitive cameras.
“One day,” said Dwan, “a little man came to the theatre where the company was experimenting with the mercury vapour lamps and said ‘We need you, young man, in the moving picture industry.’ For a moment I was thrilled. Could it possibly be my features were what the fledgling industry was looking for? And all this without them even knowing how brilliant my acting was. Then I sobered up quickly and figured he was maybe offering me a job with a furniture removing company, handling exclusively the moving of pictures on the walls.
“It turned out that it was neither. Mr. Spoor — I later discovered this was his name — wanted me to take some of the new lighting to his studio, together with all the wires and gadgets we would need if we were to avoid blowing up the entire city. It turned out he wasn’t too concerned if we only blew up a building or two, perhaps even a block or two, but he assured me he would balk at the possibility of the entire city going ‘poof.’ At least, not until they had their cameras rolling.
“It was at that moment I became seriously interested in the ‘moving picture’ industry as a possible career. After all, hadn’t I always wanted to blow up a city?”
Next day at the “moving picture” studio, Dwan demonstrated the effects of his new mercury vapour lamp. “They agreed to experiment with four of the lamps,” Dwan recalled. “Until that time they had either gone on location to benefit from the sun or had waited for sunny days to light the interior of their studio through the glass roof that covered the entire floor area. That had one major drawback. When the sun was at its best for shooting, the studio was like a hothouse; in fact, I was told that one of the technicians did grow some excellent tomatoes in a corner of the studio. He sold them to the actors who were so poorly recompensed for their services at the time that they even considered being paid in cut-price tomatoes was an advantage.”
When the four lights were set up, George Spoor looked horrified. “Everyone looked like walking zombies,” said Dwan. “In the theatre we had coloured filters, here there was nothing but the blue light from the mercury lamps. Spoor was all for cancelling the experiment until I convinced him — conned him with shades of my father — into believing we had tried photographing scenes on stage and that photographically it was the greatest invention since the wheel.”
Spoor decided to gamble a full day’s shooting under the lights. “All he had to lose was a few thousand feet of film,” said Dwan. “It was too cold and dark outside to shoot exteriors. Next morning when I went to the studio to see what had developed, figuratively and literally, I stuck my head carefully around the studio door and walked in, making sure there was no one between me and the exit in case I had to beat a hasty retreat.
“Spoor rushed over and I stepped back a few yards until I realized he was smiling like a Cheshire cat. If he’d had a tail he would have been wagging that like a dog. ‘Allan,’ he said. ‘It’s magnificent. Come and look.’ We went into a little projection room and he rolled the film. Suddenly my tail was wagging, too! The clarity of the pictures was incredible. The entire studio staff and actors crowded in to see what was happening and everyone cheered. I looked around to see if the president had entered the studio, but, no, it was my lighting results they were cheering.”
With the blessing of the Peter Cooper Hewitt Company, Dwan stayed at the studio for a week, adjusting the lamps for best effects. During that week he decided the movies had a definite place for him. “But it wasn’t as a director,” he recalled. “It was some time before I realized that the man in the chair, fast losing his already grey hair, was the director. He could have been the bailiff waiting to collect the rent, for all I knew about films. What I did discover was that the so-called stories they were filming had been bought from amateur writers who just dropped them off and came back a week later to see if any had been accepted.
“The so-called scripts were very primitive, but I discovered they brought their writers anywhere from $15 to $25. They wouldn’t, at that time, have paid Peter, John, or Paul more than $25 for their entire contributions to the Bible.
“I had written quite a lot of short stories for Notre Dame’s college newspaper, and still had all the originals. So I went home, picked out the twenty best stories, and trotted back to the studio like a mare in heat. I was more like a stallion when I went home. Spoor read the lot before lunch and came to me waving a fistful of dollars. ‘I’ll buy ‘em all,’ he said. ‘Every one. How about $300 for the lot?’ He seemed so eager I decided to play hardball. ‘Five hundred,’ I said. ‘Four hundred,’ he countered. ‘Done,’ I said, and he counted out $400 from the pile of notes in his hand. When he’d finished I realized he still had several hundred bucks in his fist. That was my first lesson in negotiating with producers. Never accept any offer without first walking away from the bargaining table to see if they follow you, still talking.”
Dwan took some more stories into Spoor the next day. “Hold it,” said Spoor. “Keep them till Monday. We’ve never paid anyone more than $300 in one week, but I’ll tell you what, how about becoming our script editor and I’ll pay you $305 a week plus $10 for every script you write that is acceptable. You’ll have to read about fifty scripts a week that are sent in to you. How about that for an offer?”
“This was lesson two in negotiating,” recalled Dwan. “‘Four hundred plus fifteen for each script,’ I countered. He shook his head, so I turned and walked away. He trotted along behind me. ‘Three-fifty plus twelve,’ he said. ‘Three-seventy-five plus thirteen-fifty,’ I said, still heading for the door. As I got my hand on the doorknob he said ‘Done,’ and I knew I was on my way to making a success of my career in ‘moving pictures.’
“I hadn’t been there more than a couple of months when something happened to my dreams of being mayor of Chicago. I’d worked out a good system of script buying by that time. I put all the scripts I wrote in one pile — and I was turning them out at home in colossal numbers — and all the scripts that came in from other writers in another pile. The system was easy. I bought two from my pile, one from the outside pile, two more from my pile and one more from the other writers. It didn’t do anything for the company’s bank balance but it certainly helped mine.
“The something that changed my life? Well, I was approached by three top executives of the Essanay-Spoor-Anderson Company, the men with the money. They had quietly formed a corporation called the American Film Company and wanted me to join them as script supervisor and writer. I think it was $600 a week they were offering, something like that, certainly enough to drag me, with little reluctance, away from Essanay-Spoor-Anderson.
“At that stage in the evolution of the movies, there were a lot of problems for independents like the new American Film Company. A group of the bigger companies like Kalem, Biograph, and, I think Vitagraph, certainly Essanay, had banded together under one umbrella they called The Patents Company. They owned exclusive rights to half a dozen patents, which made it very difficult for independents to operate because they needed to infringe on the rights The Patents Company owned just to get the film to work in the camera.
“A man called George Latham invented a loop that was necessary for any film to be threaded in the camera. The Patents Company bought his licensed invention and weren’t about to let anyone not in the ‘movie mafia’ use it. The big companies tried, and succeeded in many cases, in stopping production on dozens of what they called ‘illegal’ sets. So little companies like ours moved out of the big cities to remote locations where they hoped the cartel wouldn’t hear about their operations until the film was ready for showing.
“Thus I — and a band of actors and technicians — fled Chicago for the wilds of Arizona. And when I say ‘wilds’ I mean ‘wilds.’ My new mercury vapour lamp, by now making a fortune for the Peter Cooper Hewitt Company in every film studio in the nation, would have been no use down there unless you could plug it in to a cactus tree or the rear end of a pack mule. There was no electricity, and no indoor or outdoor plumbing, which taught us all some very unpleasant habits. Putting this in simple words, we all had to be toilet-trained again when we got back to civilization.”
The Patents Company was not averse to using strong-arm tactics to ensure the “loop” or any of their other licensed inventions were not used by unauthorized film units. “They had a bunch of hoodlums who smashed up more than one outlaw studio in New York,” recalled Dwan. “They would even go out into the wilds of New Jersey — yes, there were wilds there too just after the turn of the century — where some of the companies shot their western films that were all the rage. They infiltrated the company’s extra ranks and when the cowboys chased the Indians there were real bullets flying. Thank God they only aimed at the camera. They had won the war if it, and the loop, were destroyed.”
There are no records showing that any actor, director, or technician was ever hurt by the gunmen, “but a lot of good cameras bit the dust,” said Dwan.
On arrival in Arizona the American Film Company found it had a major problem. “Our director, who shall be nameless, had been drunk all the way down on the train,” said Dwan. “He was so soaked that even when he was sober, a few rays from the sun, and there were plenty in Arizona, had him reeling from side to side. And that was the only reeling he did. He couldn’t have directed the cameraman to start the film reel turning if it was to save his life.
“I sent an urgent message back to Chicago. It read something like this: ‘Director unable to direct due to sunstroke. Send new director. We are waiting, Dwan.’ The reply came within hours. ‘We have no new director. You are now director. Money increased by four hundred dollars provided you turn out minimum of three films a week,’ and it was signed by the company president whose name I forget, as I would anyone who did such a gross trick on a poor scriptwriter.
“I gathered the actors and crew together and told them if they didn’t accept me as their director they would all be returned to Chicago unpaid. Unanimously they agreed, even applauded, if I recall correctly. ‘So what does a director do?’ I asked. ‘Direct,’ came the intelligent answer in unison from all present. One actor with a bit more on the ball than the others told me to stand beside the camera and I would soon learn the rudiments of directing. He taught me to shout either ‘OK, let’s go’ or ‘Action’ if I so preferred. He said that the actors will do what the script says. The only other thing you need to know is to shout ‘OK, let’s stop’ or ‘Cut’ if I so preferred. ‘That will save a lot of film,’ he said. ‘Most cameramen keep on cranking until they hear those words.’
“For the chase scenes, where the cowboys pursued the Indians or the Indians hunted the cowboys, where they couldn’t hear my cries of ‘Hit the trail’ or ‘Whoa,’ I learned to hold a red flag high in the air where they could see it. When I dropped it they had to start riding, when I raised it, they had to quit the chase. That explains why, in all my early westerns, the cowboys and Indians always had their heads turned toward the camera, regardless of which way their horses were going. They had to be able to see the red flag to know when to quit the chase.
“Unfortunately, on many occasions they were over the hill and gone before I could raise the flag, and who knows how many miles they might have galloped if I hadn’t decided that all chase scenes would, from then on, be directed from the top of the hill, with the action taking place in the valley.
“The cameraman, with his eye glued to the lens, was a problem until we hired a little Indian boy who kept his eyes on the flag and when it dropped he nudged the cameraman, which probably accounted for some rather shaky film at the beginning of my early films.”
Dwan made quite a number of one-reel films in Arizona before the gunmen arrived. “They never did manage to hit the camera,” recalled Dwan, “but they did hit the rear end of one of our pack mules and we never saw it, or the water supplies it carried, again. I was getting a little fed up with the hoodlum activities so I told my cowboys and Indians to load up with real bullets and sharp arrows and when the next raid came to ride full tilt for their shooting positions and fire.
“I don’t believe our sharpshooters were so sharp, for we never heard of any of the hoodlums getting hit, but one of our Indians reported recording a direct hit on the posterior of one of the fleeing men. It was confirmed the next day that a doctor in the nearest town had removed such a spike from an unidentified male.
“I had all the cowboys and Indians lined up waiting the arrival of the gunmen and when the first bullet arrived I hollered out ‘OK, boys, lets go.’ Our cameraman, who had his head under the black cloth at the time of my call, started cranking the camera and since I never shouted ‘stop’ he would have gone on filming for ever if the film hadn’t run out.
“That was the first film ever released that had a combined posse of Indians and cowboys fighting side-by-side against the bad men. Once we knew it was in the can I wrote a script to fit the occasion. One of the Indian chiefs, who had lent us part of his tribe for our films, presented me with a peace pipe for showing that Indians and the ‘white men’ could work together for the good of all mankind. Not that my early films could really have been called for the good of all, or any, mankind.”
Never again did Dwan run into the ‘movie mafia’ hit men. After the battle in Arizona, Chicago ordered the unit to head for California. “I don’t think we ever did discover Hollywood on that trip,” said Dwan. “There were film units working like mad to produce westerns all around the city of Los Angeles, and after a bit of searching, during which time I developed saddle sores that have stayed with me throughout my career, we found San Juan Capistrano. That’s why I have an air donut on my director’s chair. I have my name on it in case there are any other saddle-sore directors still around.
“Unfortunately, no one told me that thousands of swallows come back to that delightful community in March of each year. They chose the day we started shooting to arrive. Now if you’ve never seen the swallows come back to Capistrano you won’t know that they work themselves up to such a pitch of excitement at being home that they dive bomb every living creature for miles around. Our second and third days were spent waiting for the actors’ clothes coming back from the wash. After a few rather futile attempts to film a western in this gorgeous little Spanish town, we gave up and moved south. Every time a gun was fired the entire swallow family rose up and attacked us.”
The unit moved south to a small community near San Diego called La Mesa. “We checked out the possibility of any bird arrivals, but since none were scheduled we moved in. We were there from late September 1911 to just before Christmas 1912. In those fifteen months we must have made, at a guess, perhaps 200 one-reel films. I wrote about half of them, and if you like to call what I did at that time producing, I produced and directed every one.
“We got our ideas and scripts wherever we could. I recall buying one from a twelve-year-old Mexican boy that was just as good as anything else we were writing. For some reason he never did come back with another offering. Possibly because we were only paying twelve-year-olds at that time $5 a script!
“We got away from the western theme with about eighty percent of the films. Chicago had notified us that barring another masterpiece like the one in which the Indians and cowboys rode together, we should try to think of something different.
“Even the westerns we filmed had comedy in them, but in one-reel you can’t hope to get more than a couple of real belly-laughs if you hope to get a bit of shooting and a chase in as well. We even tried producing documentaries, if you can call ten minutes of United States battleships sailing into San Diego harbour a documentary.
“They had dozens of parades in the small Californian villages and towns and we wrote scripts around these parades. I don’t think we were ever asked to pay any one of the musicians or paraders one red cent. Often we had a cast of thousands with less than ten people getting paid.”
By this time Allan Dwan was being touted as one of the nation’s top ten directors. Invited by the University of California to speak to a class of students learning the secrets of filming, he was asked to explain his personal techniques as a director.
“I wasn’t aware until that moment that there were any techniques to making a film. Certainly I had none. So I told them I decided where to put the camera, where to place the actors who, hopefully, knew what they were supposed to do, and what we were hoping to achieve. Then I told them to go ahead while I ate a sandwich. I don’t think I was a great success because when I asked for questions I only got one. A student, obviously enthralled by my knowledge, asked: ‘What kind of sandwich?’ I was never invited back until this year [1943] when presumably the 1911 professors had all been put out to pasture and my initial class had long since left the area. I accepted, hoping that the new students wouldn’t have any idea what an idiot I’d made of myself thirty years earlier.”
In 1913 the American Film Company unit, which had changed very little since it left Chicago late in 1908, moved up the coast to Santa Barbara. “We had a bit of luck that we didn’t expect in Santa Barbara. I had an idea to do a film called something like Pouring Oil on Troubled Waters. It was to be based on the oil drilling that was going on just off the coast. I had a rough idea what I wanted the story to be about and I was contemplating how to write it when a nationally-renowned author, Stewart Edward White, dropped by the hotel where we were staying. I showed him my rough notes, and asked if we paid him a few hundred dollars could we put his name on the film as the writer. He didn’t seem too enthused about that, possibly because he wasn’t too enthused about my writing. Then he came up with a gem of an idea. ‘Why don’t I write the story along the lines you suggest, I’ll sell it to a national magazine, retaining the film rights, then I’ll sell those to you for a thousand dollars, and you’ll have my name on your film.’
“I wasn’t too sure about the thousand bucks, but when he sold the story to Saturday Evening Post, and we were able to promote the picture as being the first national magazine story by a well-known author to be filmed, Chicago didn’t quibble. White got paid twice for the same story and we had a film, eventually called Oil on Troubled Waters, that made the company a great deal of money.”
Dwan had introduced three men to his company who went on to considerable fame in the years that led up to World War Two. J. Warren Kerrigan was the leading actor of the unit. Wallace Reid, a competent actor who became an international star until he died from using too many drugs, and Marshall Neilan, an actor who later became a successful director until drink and drugs made him such a liability to the companies that hired him, helped make Dwan’s unit into one of the most successful then producing one-reelers.
In June 1913, Dwan was lured away from the American Film Company by the fast-growing Universal Picture Company. “Mickey [Marshall] Neilan, by then directing at Universal, set it all up. I was getting around $1,000 a week with American and considered I was doing rather well. But Mickey ballyhooed my abilities to Universal and told them I was making around $2,000. He said there was no way they could get me for less than $3,000. They swallowed the bait, and I accepted when I found I was leaving onereelers behind and would be directing two-, perhaps three-reelers at the new studio that was just being completed.
“I was offered the use of a house on the lot if I wanted it, provided I didn’t object to it being used as a set for occasional films, a car and, get this, a secretary to type my scripts. That is definitely what sold me. I had never had the luxury of a secretary before. This surely was heaven. I even got to choose my own girl from a pool — not a swimming pool, a typists’ pool — although the former might have been more interesting. I chose one not so beautiful that it would interfere with my train of thought, and ugly enough that she must have some skills as a typist. It worked out well. I got a peach of a secretary who stayed with me for more than ten years until she got married and moved to San Francisco.”
Dwan’s first film at Universal, late in 1913, was The Call to Arms. “I gave Mickey Neilan a good part. He was dividing his time between acting and directing at this stage of his checkered career. I hired Pauline Bush to play the female lead and Wallace Reid to play the leading male role. I had conned Universal into hiring my lighting man, my cameraman, and two other technicians, I forget now what they did, but it must have been something useful. Perhaps they got me my cups of coffee. I don’t recall. But we all stuck together and we made more than fifty films as a team.”
In his early films at Universal, Dwan introduced Lon Chaney, Sr., who later became world-renowned as “the man with a thousand faces.” “Chaney had an incredible ability to become the character he was portraying,” said Dwan in 1943. “The first time I saw him on my set was in 1913. He was our property man, but not just an ordinary property man. He would come in day after day wearing different disguises and sometimes he was so good I spoke to him without realizing who he was.
“One day I said to him, ‘Lon, what’s the idea of all these get-ups? Do you want to get in front of the camera? Do you want to be an actor?’ ‘Gee, Mr. Dwan,’ he said, ‘I thought you’d never ask.’ After that, what could I do but put him in my next picture?”
The picture was Back to Life with Warren Kerrigan in the lead and Pauline Bush as his wife. Lon Chaney played his evil rival and totally stole the show. So I convinced Universal to put him under contract. This marvellous man, marvellous actor, used to go back into the prop room to work when we didn’t have a film for him. He was the most down-to-earth man I ever met. Although he was fast becoming a film favorite he saw no reason why he shouldn’t revert to being a prop man now and then. He was so utterly unspoiled that everyone shook their heads in disbelief. I don’t think I ever enjoyed working with anyone as I did with Chaney. I believe we did sixteen pictures together. Every one was a privilege for me. I knew I was working with one of the nicest people in the business, and also one of the most talented.”
By late 1913 Pauline Bush was Dwan’s favourite on-screen heroine, and off-screen they became a twosome seen together in all the right places. Magazines gossiped about their romance and tried to guess when, or if, they would get married.
“She had first worked for me in 1911 at La Mesa, California. She just came in off the street and told me she wanted to be an actress,” he recalled. “She was absolutely beautiful, and a remarkably good amateur actress. Told us she had played in little theatres in Los Angeles but believed the movies were where she would have her greatest successes. She was right. I used her in more than fifty of the films we made at La Mesa and Santa Barbara, and when I went to Universal in 1913 she was part of the deal. I was able to get her a contract for a year, starting at $500 a week.”
Between 1913 and 1915 Pauline Bush starred in more than twenty films with Dwan as her director. “Around March 1914, when both our contracts ended with Universal, we decided to move on together. Famous Players had been talking to me for several months and we both agreed their offer, which guaranteed I would make nothing shorter than three reels unless I requested it for some specific reason, was a step up the ladder for both of us. Famous was delighted to get Pauline, so we signed lucrative contracts for one year, with an option, on our side, for a second year.”
“Both of us were excited to be going to New York for the first year of our contract. Believe it or not, neither of us had ever seen the big city. That first week we were there we played the part of tourists. If the Empire State Building had been built by then we probably would have visited it each day. But there were hundreds of other things to see and we saw them all. I learned to love New York and, of course, I was already in love with Pauline and she with me. We both knew it but didn’t say it out loud.
“Famous Players studio in New York was the top story of a building on West 23rd Street. I was somewhat disillusioned after the splendour of Universal in California, but they had a very competent group of people working for them and it only took me a couple of weeks to realize that sometimes small is better than big. I could get at anyone I wanted in minutes. Sometimes that took days at Universal.”
In his first film for Famous Players Dwan introduced world audiences to Marguerite Clark, the girl at one time expected to rival Mary Pickford in popularity. “She had the world at her feet. I don’t know what happened. Perhaps it was because Famous already had Pickford under contract and just signed Clark so no one else would get her. Perhaps it was that she didn’t make her debut until she was thirty-one. The film I made with her, Wildflower, was a great success. It brought her lots of fan mail. Perhaps Mary stepped in, I don’t know, but only once more was I allowed to use her in any of my films. She made quite a lot of films with other directors, competent men, but I believe to this day I was the only one who really understood her potential, and I was the only one who could have made her a really big star. Unhappily, it wasn’t to be, and, tragically, she died just three years ago [1940] following a bout of pneumonia.”
Wildflower also brought Dwan face to face with another potential star. Jack Pickford was at that time being pushed into important roles in anything Mary Pickford wanted him to be in. He was cast as the young male lead in the picture, but after two days of rehearsals Dwan went to Adolph Zukor, head of the studio, and told him he wanted Pickford off the set.
“He must have been around eighteen at the time,” said Dwan. “He had a bottle of liquor with him all the time. He was arrogant and told me I didn’t realize his great talents when I suggested he was creating a totally wrong image for his character. He disrupted the entire cast. There was no way I was going to let him play the lead in a film I believed would make Marguerite Clark into an international star.
“Zukor told me plainly that my request put him on the spot, but I reminded him I had total control, in my contract, over all casting for my films. He said the casting, in this case, was Mary’s decision, and she had an even better contract than mine that gave her total control over casting of all Famous pictures.
“I told him I would see a lawyer as it appeared my contract had been broken. I shook hands with him, wished him goodbye, and went to join Pauline in the apartment we had rented. He shook his head as I left but said nothing.
“Later that afternoon, the doorbell to our apartment rang. I opened the door and there was Mary Pickford, standing with her face as long as a fiddle. I hardly knew her. I’d only met her when I was introduced to the bigwigs at Famous when I arrived in New York. ‘Can I come in?’ she asked. ‘Sure, Pauline will make you a cup of coffee,’ I said. ‘I’d rather have a glass of whisky,’ she said. ‘I need something a little stronger than coffee.’
“Now I had never before that day had a drink of hard liquor and Pauline was a non-drinker too, but we sensed this was to be a moment to remember, so we poured Mary a double and ourselves enough to wet the bottom of the glasses.
“She started talking the second the whisky got down inside her and gave her the courage she needed. ‘Mr. Dwan,’ she said. ‘I realize the problems with Jack, but mother and I are afraid he’ll do something drastic if we take him off your film. I want you to help me, Mr. Dwan. I need you to help me.’
“I had to think pronto. This was only the biggest star in the industry I was talking to. Maybe my future, as well as brother Jack’s, was on the line. I paced up and down a bit and I’m not a very good pacer; if I’d had a cocked hat I probably would have looked like little Napoleon. Then it came to me. Why couldn’t I create a special part in the film for Jack? The bell rang! I would write in a comedy role of the leading man’s valet for Jack. Was I thinking fast! I told Mary it would give him the chance to use some of the comedy abilities I’d heard he had. It wouldn’t be the lead, but people would, I promise, remember him.
“Well, Mary broke down and cried. Pauline had to take her in the bedroom to repair the damage to her makeup. Eventually they both surfaced, smiling. ‘You’re a very bright man, Mr. Dwan,’ said Mary. ‘I think I’d like you to direct me in one of my films. Now what do you say about that?’
“I told her there were very few female valet parts available, but I was sure I could find something that would do. ‘And you will find a part for Jack in our first film, won’t you, Allan.’ That was the first time she had called me by my first name.
“Really, she was quite a stodgy old prima donna of twenty-something at that time. But we became good friends from that moment on. I still talk to her on the phone now and then. If I visit her home, Pickfair, she still drinks a glass of hard liquor but there is always a cup of coffee for me.”
As promised, Dwan created the valet role for Jack Pickford in Wildflower, and convinced him that his future lay in comedy and this special role would enhance his career in that direction. “Actually, I was right,” he said. “He had all the makings of a fine comedy actor and his contribution to the film was singled out for praise by most of the critics. But the top critical acclaim was kept for Marguerite Clark.
“I only got to direct her once after that,” recalled Dwan. “I know she went to Zukor requesting that I be assigned as her director, but through the grapevine I learned that Mary had vetoed the proposal.”
Pauline Bush suddenly realized she enjoyed not working more than she enjoyed working. “She told me she felt it was time for her to retire,” said Dwan. “That was the announcement that I had been waiting for. I had vowed that I would never marry an actress. But now, she was no longer an actress, so I popped the question. She said ‘yes’ and we were married three weeks later.
“She told me years later that she had heard me say so many times that no wife of mine would be an actress that she had been waiting patiently for her contract to expire, so she could quit work to see if anything happened.
“We lived happily, not ever after, but for six years, then things started to come apart. In the 1920s I was travelling all over the country for location shooting and she didn’t like being left at home. But since she hated travelling, I was in a spot. I had to work, but if I did I knew I would lose her. Unhappily work won out and I lost Pauline.”
After the divorce Dwan and Bush remained good friends. “I gave her, and still give her, a monthly allowance that helps her to live very comfortably in retirement. I bought her a waterfront home in Santa Monica and paid for a live-in maid to make sure she would never be alone. I still call her on the phone now and then to see if she is in need of anything.”
In 1963, when she was living in retirement in San Diego, Pauline Bush Dwan (that was the name on her mailbox) recalled her years with Dwan. “I remember Allan with very pleasant and wonderful memories. I never made a film in which he wasn’t my director. He had a philosophy that I, and other actors, loved. Unlike most directors, he didn’t think all actors were dumb. He allowed us a great deal of freedom in our actions and movement. He wasn’t constantly telling us how to move our hands, or how to walk. His only concern was seeing that we did our best to make a good film. And because he was not interfering with us, or nagging us to act the way he demanded, we were all relaxed and he got the results he wanted. It wasn’t hard to fall in love with this man.
“I worked with him first in La Mesa, and later in Santa Barbara, but it wasn’t until he got to Universal that he really came into his own. He never raised his voice to correct an error, however stupid it was. He made us perform well, because we loved working with him and hoped to continue working for him in the future. When our marriage broke up we did it in a civilized way, and we stayed good friends. He has looked after me very generously, and since I don’t think I could ever find another man as wonderful as Allan, I’ve never even considered re-marriage. He calls me quite often, and I’ve had a Christmas and birthday card from him every year since we were divorced. There is always a note inside that makes me laugh. He’s that kind of man.
“Do I ever regret not going on with my career? At times I like to wonder how famous I might have been if I’d let work take priority in my life. But, no, I must be truthful. I don’t regret a thing. Except perhaps that Allan and I couldn’t make a go of our marriage. It would have been wonderful if we could have grown old together.
“When his second wife, Marie Shelton, a former Ziegfeld Follies showgirl, died in 1954, I wondered whether I should go and see him. I did write him a long letter, but if I had any dreams of us getting together they ended at that time. I realized it was far too late to revive a marriage that had died more than three decades earlier.”
Dwan remained with Famous Players for the duration of his contract, although he returned to California for the final six months to complete his assignments there. “I did get to direct Mary Pickford twice in 1915. The Girl of Yesterday was, though I say it myself, a real stinker. Of course Jack was in it, and that didn’t help.
“It had a sterling cast, including Donald Crisp who went on to greater success and won an Oscar two years ago [1941] for his role in How Green Was My Valley. A great Scotsman who bought us all kilts to wear on the set on Robbie Burns Day. I still have that kilt. Wouldn’t part with it for a million. Last year when he got home after receiving his Oscar I was waiting on his front lawn, decked out in the kilt he had given me. Mickey Neilan had the same idea, and there we were both standing there resplendent in our Scottish outfits, each flanked by a bagpiper we had hired. Fortunately there was one Scottish song they both knew so at least they were in harmony when he arrived home. If I had been a drinker that was the night I would have been stoned out of this world. Never did win any awards myself, and I don’t think Mickey did either, so we were thrilled to the bone for Donald.”
The second film Dwan directed for Mary Pickford, The Foundling, was, according to Mary Pickford in 1943, one of the best she had ever made. But it was never released. “It was given great reviews in the trade papers after a special studio showing, and we were optimistic for its chances. But before we could get prints made the negative was destroyed in a fire at the studio. The entire film was lost. We made it again about a year later, but Allan wasn’t available and the second version, directed by a competent man, John O’Brien, just didn’t have the Dwan touch and it was not a success.”
As a reward for his work with Mary Pickford, and for his perseverance with Jack Pickford, Dwan was given Marguerite Clark as the star of his final contract film for Famous Players. “Needless to say I had Jack to contend with again. Apparently he had decided Marguerite was to be his plaything, and it made shooting very difficult. He was constantly telling her how to do this and that and I could see the spark going out of her performance day by day. She had a little weep at least once a day and I finally went to Mary and told her Jack was ruining the film. She must have spoken to him because he was a little better behaved after that.
“But what really did the trick was when the previously demure Marguerite slapped him twice across the face after he had pawed her too much, and she screamed at him using words I’m not sure he or I had heard before that day. It worked. Jack was a subdued actor long enough for us to finish the film. But it wasn’t a success.”
Late in 1915 Dwan accepted an offer to become a principal director with the Triangle Company. “I didn’t get any more money, but I was to go back to New York and work in their Yonkers studio. It gave me a chance to work with D. W. Griffith, whose films I had admired for several years. Griffith was actually my supervisor and I was able to discuss with him his techniques. You see, by now, I’d realized there were techniques to film making.
“I was on the set when he made Intolerance and though I can’t claim to have had anything to do with the direction of the film I did solve a technical problem for him. He built a gigantic set for the film, and it was all done in secret. Only the construction workers and Griffith were allowed to see it until it was ready for unveiling. There was no such thing as a boom to raise the camera in those days and Griffith was stymied because he desperately wanted to bring the camera in from a long-distance shot of the entire set to a close-up of one person’s face. So I told him I had an idea. He listened and agreed to try it out. We put an elevator on top of a railroad track that was to carry the camera. This way the camera could go forward and upward at the same time, allowing him to come in very close to the principal players without having to cut the film. If you’ve seen Intolerance you know how effective it was. We had every director in the nation trying to figure out how we did it. Of course Griffith took the credit!”
It was at Triangle, after his return to California, that he first met the great screen lover, Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. “He was already well known, although he had only made three films since coming from the New York stage,” said Dwan. “I’d watched him work and he was so natural that I asked to be given one of his films. Griffith assigned me to a light-hearted piece of froth called The Habit of Happiness. I always insisted on at least two days of rehearsals, during which we ran through the entire script with the actors and camera operator, before we actually started filming. Doug came up to me. ‘Have you read this crap?’ he asked. I told him I had. ‘Then what are we going to do about it?’ he demanded. ‘We’re going to make it the funniest bit of crap ever to stick to a movie screen,’ I said. He laughed, gave me a slap on the shoulder that nearly dislocated the joint, and sat down. ‘I’m going to enjoy this film,’ he said.”
The film was a great success. “Possibly this was the first time I realized that I loved comedy and I enjoyed even more having an actor as competent as Fairbanks to work with,” said Dwan. “Triangle knew they were on to a good thing so they sat us down together and asked if we would like to work on a series of films. ‘Yes,’ we both said in unison. ‘But I want to approve all scripts,’ said Fairbanks. ‘And I want to approve all casting,’ I said. We shook hands!”
Over the next decade the great screen lover and Dwan combined on twelve films. Every one was a success. “But Triangle also gave me more of their top stars to work with,” said Dwan. “People like Sam De Grasse, the evil genius who never missed a Fairbanks film, Norma Talmadge, Bessie Love, Wilfred Lucas, and Hedda Hopper. Hopper is the same one who is now a vicious, backbiting columnist who I blame for the break up of my first marriage. She’s a real bitch and a hazard to the film industry. I had people like Erich Von Stroheim and Arthur Rosson as my assistant directors. Both of them went on to greater glory on their own. Those days at Triangle surely were the most satisfying of my career. The work was easy, the companionship wonderful. It was the right time of life for a man to be in the position I was in.”
Late in 1917 Dwan moved over to the combined Artcraft-Famous Players-Lasky Company. “Fairbanks had gone to this unit and wanted me to go with him. By that time he was the hottest thing on the screens of the world. He would produce, he said, and I would write and direct. In 1917 I was earning half-a-million dollars a year. That was an incredible sum at that time.”
Fairbanks only worked for about ten weeks out of every year, but maintained Dwan on a year-round contract. “He allowed me to accept any outside work I was offered and never took a cent of the fees I made.
“Perhaps my saddest experience in the film industry was working with William Randolph Hearst’s paramour, Marion Davies. She is still alive but hasn’t worked since 1937. I told her to her face that she didn’t have any talent, none at all. Surprisingly, she accepted my comments with a laugh and we remain good friends to this day. She visited me on the set only yesterday and I enjoyed lunch with her. Marion told me once I was the only person she knew in Hollywood who would tell her the truth. If she hadn’t been Hearst’s girlfriend she wouldn’t even have had work as an extra.
“Over the years I only knew one director who ever achieved a good film with her as the star. That was Sidney Olcott and I believe, in Little Old New York, he actually hypnotized her into becoming a competent actress. I’m not the only one who believes Olcott has hypnotic powers and uses them on incompetent actors. When he refused to make any more movies with her, for personal reasons I believe, she never did make another good one.”
Hearst had created Cosmopolitan Films especially for Davies. Louis B. Mayer, guaranteed by Hearst that his columnists would never write scathing or scandalous things about Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer or its stars, agreed to let him use the MGM studios as the company’s base.
“I made two films with Marion at MGM,” said Dwan. “That was the first time I had come face to face with Mayer. We had something in common, we were both ‘little people.’ I suddenly realized, when I went into his office block, that everyone was my height or less. When I met Mayer I knew why. I got on the right side of him from the start. He had a huge mirror in his office, so knowing I was hired by Hearst, not him, I beckoned him over to the mirror. We stood side by side. He didn’t look too happy, until I said, ‘Mr. Mayer, I believe you’re half an inch taller than me.’ I could see in the mirror that he was standing on his toes almost like a ballet dancer, but I didn’t let on that I had noticed. He looked at me and gave me a broad grin. ‘And don’t you forget that, Mr. Dwan. Don’t you forget that,’ he said.
“From that day to this we have been Louie and Al to each other. I hardly ever worked for him directly, but I knew I was always welcome at MGM if I was assigned there by another company.”
Dwan stayed with Fairbanks for almost a decade. In between films he set up his own production company and made several films that he produced, wrote, and directed. Two, A Broken Doll and A Perfect Crime, which starred actor Monte Blue, who had been blacklisted by Warner Brothers, made a lot of money. “The audiences wanted to see Blue,” he recalled. “They weren’t happy that he couldn’t get work, and when the films were released they flocked to the theatres.”
Other ventures with his own company were less successful, and by 1922 he had put the company in limbo. It was that same year that he made the first of a number of films that became collectors’ items in the years that followed. By this time Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks, Charlie Chaplin, and D. W. Griffith had founded United Artists to distribute their own films and others that they felt reached the quality they demanded from their own productions.
One of the company’s first successes was Robin Hood, which Dwan directed for the Fairbanks Corporation. The story was written by Dwan and Elton Thomas (a pseudonym for Fairbanks) and transferred to a screenplay by Lotta Woods. “It had a terrific cast,” said Dwan. “Fairbanks, of course, doing his own very risky stunts, Wally Beery as King Richard, Enid Bennett as Marian, Sam De Grasse, in his greatest role as the evil Prince John, and in there as an extra was Mary Pickford. I believe she sensed this was going to be a memorable film and wanted to have a part, however small, in its success. I forget how much it cost, but it was the most expensive film made to that time. Even Fairbanks cringed when the bills came in.”
In 1923 Dwan made the first of six films for Paramount Pictures. The star was Gloria Swanson. “They were superbly written comedies,” said Dwan. “Once again I realized how much I loved comedy and how lucky I was to get the best performers for my direction. Gloria Swanson had a delightfully wicked sense of humor, and it came through in every film. They were a roaring success, and made me a lot of money and millions for Paramount. Manhandled, which I made in 1924 with Gloria, has to be one of my favourites of all time. I even put my wife, Marie Shelton, into this one, and she and Swanson are still the greatest of friends.”
In 1950, when Swanson was asked to make Sunset Boulevard, playing the role of an aging star of the silent era, she urged that Allan Dwan, still directing at the age of sixty-five, be hired to direct the film. “This was not to be,” she said in 1965. “Billy Wilder, who wrote the script, wanted to direct, and, of course, no one could dispute his abilities to do a good job, so I acceded to his wishes. After all, I badly wanted to do the film, I needed the publicity.
“But I must tell you something that I don’t believe anyone else but Allan and I know. When all the newsmen and photographers are waiting for me to leave the mansion at the end of the film after I have been charged with murder, one of the photographers, and you can see him very clearly, is Allan Dwan. I paid the extra hired to do the job to hand over his camera to Allan. He told me it was the only time in his entire career that he had been seen on camera.”
Dwan had his first experience working with colour film in 1925. “There was little colour around at that time,” he said. “Paramount wanted us to try it for Stage Struck, which was to star Gloria Swanson. Most of the film was on location in West Virginia. It is possible, but I can’t swear to it, that this was the first time any studio tried the newly patented Technicolor. We used a real showboat on the Columbia River and got some magnificent scenes. The only problem was that we couldn’t see rushes the next day of what we had shot. All the film had to go back to the Technicolor processing unit in Hollywood, and that sometimes took a week.
Allan Dwan (left) with Gloria Swanson on the set of Stage Struck (1925).
“Our scenic designer, back in the studio in California, built us a few interior sets we needed for a dream sequence. Unfortunately, no one remembered to tell him we were using colour and they turned out to be the drab, black and white sets like most were at that time. I solved that by telling our lighting man to project some colour on the white walls. I suggested he might try changing the colours as the scene went along, and in Technicolor it was quite unearthly, perfect for a dream scene, and rather unexpectedly the big scene stealer of the film.”
Dwan entered the world of sound much earlier than most directors of his repute. “I knew it was coming, and I’d heard that Fox were experimenting in recording sound for their Movietone newsreels that were shown in the theatres every week before the feature. I asked William Fox if he would let me direct just one reel of the news. He seemed fascinated that a feature film director, and I had quite a big reputation by that time, would want to do something like that, so he gave the OK. I spent a week at West Point and came up with a sound newsreel that really had audiences jumping in their seats. I had time to experiment with the microphones and the cadets marched around for us so many times in that week I’m surprised they could stand up. It prepared me for the sound revolution that was to come less than a year later.”
William Fox was so impressed by Dwan’s achievements with a simple newsreel that he signed him to a long-term contract early in 1928 and put him in charge of all sound film production at the Fox Studio. He was allowed out of his contract in 1929 to direct The Iron Mask, the last of the great swashbuckling films that starred Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.
“We shot half the film without sound. Doug wasn’t sure how his voice would come over, despite his years as a stage actor before he came to the movies, and we had decided we would simply add a musical background after the film was completed. But halfway through he made a decision to add sound to the rest of the film. I should explain that Fairbanks, with his stage background, was one of the few actor-producers who insisted on his films being shot in the sequence they would be shown on the screen. This was shockingly extravagant, we had to keep moving everything back to a set we’d used days before, but he insisted and he was the boss. So halfway through we added sound. He needn’t have worried, his voice came through with a richness that I was amazed we were able to capture with the primitive apparatus of that time.
“In the long run it was a great success. We didn’t stress the sound aspect of the film in advertising and when audiences suddenly heard Fairbanks’s voice after sitting through the first half with nothing but a musical background, they actually stood up and cheered and applauded. It was a result we never expected, but it packed the theatres and made Fairbanks a lot of money.”
Dwan stayed at the Fox studio until 1941, occasionally being loaned out for films at other studios. One was at the request of Gloria Swanson, who wanted him to direct her first sound film, What a Widow. It was a big success and re-started Swanson’s career.
In 1933 William Fox allowed Dwan to travel to England to make three films. Her First Affair introduced to the screen the beautiful Ida Lupino. A few years later Dwan brought her to Hollywood and introduced her to producers who made her into a star who survived well into the 1970s.
In Human Cargo, a 1936 film he made at Fox Studios, by then 20th-Century-Fox, he gave a role as a Mexican dancer to a young girl he had spotted in a dance line at a Hollywood nightclub. Her name, Rita Cansino, was later changed to Rita Hayworth.
In 1968 Hayworth spoke of Allan Dwan. “I had hit my head against a brick wall for two years when Allan gave me a chance to show I had some ability. He guided me through my part as if I were the star. In fact, both Claire Trevor and Brian Donlevy, who were the stars, protested to him that they should be getting the attention, not me. I was having some trouble at home at the time, and he drove me home to his wife after he had found me crying in a corner. I lived there for more than a month. It was Allan who introduced me to the producers and directors who later built up my career.”
Hattie McDaniel, the African-American actress who later made her name immortal by her superb performance in Gone with the Wind in 1939, a role which won her an Academy Award, credited Allan Dwan in her acceptance speech “with giving me the will to continue in my chosen profession back in 1936 when he directed me in High Tension. It was the first time any director had treated me like a lady. He gave me acceptance by inviting me to join him in the studio commissary for lunch. For the first time I was an equal member of the company.”
In 1932 Dwan was chosen to direct 20th-Century-Fox’s biggest star, the inimitable Shirley Temple. “It was probably my greatest challenge,” he recalled. “Surely this million-dollar miss couldn’t be anything other than a spoiled brat. I prepared for the worst. And I got the best. She was, and is, a genuine angel. I loved her from day one. I have always loved kids, but can’t have any of my own. If I’d been able to choose I would have chosen one just like Shirley.”
On the set of Heidi and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm, two of Temple’s biggest successes, Dwan created a police department. “Shirley was Chief of Police. I was only a captain. Dear old Jean Hersholt was a member of the force, as were Arthur Treacher, Randolph Scott, and Slim Summerville. We all had to wear our badges; in fact in Heidi there is one scene in which you can clearly see Arthur Treacher’s badge. Since we figured no one would ever know what it was, we didn’t reshoot the scene.”
Dwan recalled an occasion when he was driving to the studio, wearing his captain’s badge, when he was stopped for speeding. “The cop who pulled me over took one look at the badge, saluted, and apologized for stopping me. He waved me on. I always wore it after that when I was breaking the law but never got caught again. I still have the badge in my box of special souvenirs. I must ask Shirley one of these days if she still has hers.”
After 1941 Dwan freelanced from studio to studio. “I can’t see myself signing any long-term contracts,” he said in 1942. “I don’t have to worry about money any more, I’m living in comfort, so I can stay home with my wife if I wish, or work if I wish. In a year or two I expect I’ll retire, perhaps teach at one of the universities that have made film production an important part of their programs.”
Allan Dwan in 1943, with starlet Daun Kennedy.
But he didn’t retire, and he didn’t become a college teacher. Through the forties and fifties he made a number of first-class comedies, several starring his great friend, Dennis O’Keefe.
O’Keefe said of Dwan in 1957, “He is a kind, quiet, and dignified man. I was Bud Flanagan when I first worked for him in 1936. He told me if I wanted to be Irish I should be an O’Keefe. After weighing up a few first names he settled on Dennis. And that’s who I’ve been ever since. I know of nobody who ever had a bad word to say about Allan. Even his ex-wife thinks he’s a real gentleman. He is one of our industry’s unsung heroes, the nice guy who never made the headlines but certainly didn’t finish last.”
In 1949 Dwan and John Wayne teamed up to make Sands of Iwo Jima. A few months after the film had become one of the biggest box office successes of the year, Dwan told the New York Times that “This is the one I’ll be remembered for. If I never make another film this will be my epitaph. Wayne was the best kind of actor to work with. He didn’t know too much and didn’t pretend he did. You know something, Wayne actually told me that he had once had a small part in one of the Swanson pictures I made. Said he was sixteen and his name was Marion Morrison then. Hell, even with that name, surely I wouldn’t have forgotten that big lug.”
There were no more Iwo Jimas for Allan Dwan. He continued to make two or three films a year, but many of them were for smaller companies like Republic. “His wife was very ill for some months before she died in 1954,” said Dennis O’Keefe. “My wife, who had acted under the name of Steffi Duna, had worked with him several times early in her career, and she spent many days at his home looking after Marie. We were thrown together a lot at that time and it was obvious to both of us that he was losing interest in the industry.”
In 1955 Dwan agreed to direct a film for television’s “Screen Director’s Playhouse.” He chose Dennis O’Keefe and Fay Wray, the girl who will always be remembered from the original King Kong film in 1933, as his stars. It was one of only two films he directed for the growing medium of television.
“I don’t think television agrees with me,” he told the Hollywood Reporter in 1956. “I felt like I was back in the one-reel days, except that the money men were tugging at my sleeve every minute warning me how much money I was wasting if I dared shoot a scene twice.”
Thirty years before pay television came on the scene, Dwan predicted its arrival. “It may be the salvation of television,” he said. “It will make possible the resurrection of the creative minds of the industry where bankers and investors won’t be sitting around watching every penny spent. I may direct another film when pay television arrives.”
In 1958, when he was seventy-three, Allan Dwan directed his final film, Enchanted Island, for producer Benedict (Ben) Bogeaus. He had worked on several Bogeaus films earlier but had not achieved real success with any of them. Offered a cast that included Dana Andrews and Jane Powell, he decided to try once more. The film made enough money to convince Bogeaus that Dwan, at seventy-three, was far from washed up.
Dwan worked on three more unfinished projects for Bogeaus. Will You Marry Me in 1959 was scripted by Dwan from a story he had purchased. It was shelved when the producer failed to find the necessary financing. The Bridge of San Luis Rey, a big hit for the producer in 1944, was rewritten by Dwan, but the remake never materialized owing to lack of backers. The Glass Wall came to the same disappointing ending.
Allan Dwan made an independent film in 1957, Most Dangerous Man Alive, but it was not released until 1961. In some biographies this film is erroneously listed as Dwan’s final film. It did not get distribution until Columbia Pictures purchased it in 1960.
In 1967, when he was eighty-two, Dwan was asked to write a screenplay from the biography of General Puller, a hero of the Korean War. He was to direct the film for Warner Brothers. Jack Warner was enthusiastic about the plan, saying to Variety that “Allan Dwan, at eighty-two, has more know-how that ten directors half his age.” But Warner, himself seventy-five, decided to sell his studio before the film could be started. The new owners pulled the plug on the project.
When he was ninety, a writer with Associated Press decided Dwan’s career deserved remembering. Dwan told a story of his early days, and the stars he had worked with, that brought him thousands of letters.
The Los Angeles Times ran a photograph of the aging director surrounded by heaps of letters. On each of the arms of the settee in which he relaxed, sat a beautiful secretary complete with notepad and pencil. The caption read: “Allan Dwan, famed director of the silent film era, prepares to answer the mail which has poured into his home following a story printed about his career last month.” It quoted him as saying: “These secretaries are far too beautiful to waste their time on answering letters. I must see if I can find them something more useful to do.”
In 1976, when he was ninety-one, he received the first public tribute accorded him in his entire career. The Los Angeles Film Critics Association announced their intention to give him their highest honor, the much-coveted Career Achievement Award. He had little to say at the ceremony, but his brief remark brought the audience to its feet. “What took you so long?” he asked. The applause had continued for almost five minutes when he waved his arms at the audience. “Shut up, for heaven’s sake,” he said. “When you get to my age, if you get to my age, you’ll understand why I need to sit down.”
Dwan was interviewed again in 1980, when he was ninety-five. He told the reporter to go away and come back in five years. “By then I may have thought up something exciting to tell you. If I’m not here, I’ll leave my forwarding address.”
He was not around in 1985. On December 21, 1981, the man said to have directed more films than any other man, living or dead, said goodnight to his housekeeper of many years and fell asleep, never to awaken. He left a letter, undated, addressed to the reporter he had asked to interview him on his one hundredth birthday. “Sorry to disappoint you,” he wrote. “I really had some important things to tell you. And, regrettably, I must tell you my future address is, as yet, unknown.”
There was no funeral. He left a will requesting that his body be given to a medical school for research. “There must be something in there useful to somebody,” he wrote. The remaining contents of his will were never divulged, nor was the amount of his estate published, but it is believed that he left all his considerable wealth to the same place as his last earthly remains.
