George Cukor is the biggest idiot of all time ?

Yes, he's a real nobody in the history of Hollywood, OP.

Hi, good morning. aren't we lucky?

Going to work with... uh... someone or other.

Paramount is paradise!

Movies from A to Zukor!

Well, he didn't do "Mame" so is that an idiot?

Gary told him not to do The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind.

"He could have been the greatest director of all time. Now he is just a footnote"

He is better remembered than Victor Fleming....I bet if you asked people who directed Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz, 99% of them couldn't tell you

Cukor did not elect to leave either project, reducing OP's entire premises to garbage. He was never actually the director of Oz. The original director was fired and Cukir was assigned to Oz on a temporary basis until Victor Fleming was available.

r5 Fleming doesn't have a filmography that includes Philadelphia story, My fair lady, A star is born, Adam's rib, Gaslight, Little Women

R6 is right, Cukor was never meant to be the replacement, he was just brought it to keep the production from hemorrhaging money after Thorpe was fired.

Cukor had worked for years on pre-production of GWTW and had already clashed with Selznick numerous times, so it wasn't a huge shock when he was fired. I know there's a rumor that Cukor made some snide comment to Gable about his rentboy past and Gable got him fired, but we'll never know for sure; besides, Cukor was already on thin ice by that time anyway.

He’s hardly a footnote.

I may be wrong, but I think Clark Gable, insisted that George Cukor be fired form GWTW...He didn't want a gay man directing him..it was rumored that Gable had a past that included men who had sex with men...again I may be wrong.

Fleming and Cukor both had great careers: I doubt either had many serious regrets, with so many fine films on their resumes.

r9 You know that how ?

Only an idiot would call him a footnote - he is one of the best known directors of that era

There are two rumors about Gable and Cukor. One is that Cukor knew Gable had been a rentboy early in his career and that's how he got his start; the other rumor is that Gable was homophobic and got Cukor fired.

A third rumor incorporates those two and says Cukor knew Gable had been a whore because he attended some of the same parties Gable was a boytoy at, and when Gable made some homophobic comment to him he snotted off with something along the lines of, "You should know, you were there." Gable complained and Cukor was fired.

No, OP. Obviously, you are the biggest idiot of all time.

An older friend of mine had a cousin who was stationed in the Los Angeles area during WW II and somehow got invited to one of Cukor's infamous Sunday afternoon pool parties. The estate was filled with gorgeous young men, many of them pairing off. George took a fancy to one in particular and they disappeared into the house for quite a while.

And then there's Camille, The Women, A Double Life, A Woman's Face, Holiday, Born Yesterday, It Should Happen To You, The Model and the Marriage Broker, Les Girls. What a loser!

OP thinks movies are only worthwhile if they're huge commercial successes. He can't understand why the Star Wars movies haven't nailed down all the Best Picture awards.

I was watching the Wizard Of Oz blu ray recently (the 70th anniversary edition) and was stunned to learn that both Wizard of Oz and Gone With The Wind both temporarily had multiple directors who steered the films at various points in their productions. TWOZ apparently had a total of five directors working on it when all was said and done.

I’m not sure about the number of directors on GWTW. At least two, right?

The Wizard Of Oz was my first favorite movie from age 3 in 1982, and I got quite obsessed with it, but I never knew this about the multiple directors who worked on it. Didn’t know that about GWTW, either, but I’ve never been that big a fan and haven’t read much about the making-of.

r19, King Vidor, who directed the tornado sequences in [italic]the Wizard of Oz[/italic], survived the Great Hurricane of 1900. He made a movie about the hurricane as a teenager.

Another GWTW rumor is that Gable objected to Cukor because he was throwing the film to Vivien Leigh.

There should be an alarm for stupid posts like this.

Didn't Cukor fire Bette when she was in summer stock as a kid?

Didn't Vivien Leigh and Olivia de Havilland continue to ask Cukor for advice even after he left the production?

Yeah, the other GWTW rumor is that Gable was jealous of the attention Cukor was giving to the women, and since Gable never wanted to be in the movie to begin with, was just looking to stir up trouble.

[quote]I was watching the Wizard Of Oz blu ray recently (the 70th anniversary edition) and was stunned to learn that both Wizard of Oz and Gone With The Wind both temporarily had multiple directors who steered the films at various points in their productions. TWOZ apparently had a total of five directors working on it when all was said and done.

Sort of disproves the old "too many cooks spoil the broth" maxim.

Didn't OP think she could only listen to AM radio in the morning?

Cukor's vision is all over Oz. He made a lot of the changes that stayed with the production til the end.

George Cukor did fire Bette Davis while they were summer stock. Bette never forgot it and never forgave him. George wanted to work with again, but she refused. She took potshots at other actresses, such as Joan Crawford (no surprise there) who loved and respected George. She dismissed them as sycophants.

2/10. You know he was fired from GWTW because Clark Gable didn’t like him....

He translated a lot of his GWTW ideas into the color fashion show in "The Women." It's a commentary, with its exaggerated style and poses, of the deadly self-delusion of the hegemonic class.

If you believe Hollywood Babylon II, movie star William Haines told George Cukor that he gave a young and ambitious Clark Gable a blow job. This knowledge made Gable extremely uncomfortable. This, he had Cukor fired. It did not help that Gable’s Wife, Carole Lombard, was very close friend of William Haines. (He was also Joan Crawford’s best friend and was very close to Marion Davies.)

Gable had bad breath and did you was uncut. He did clean his foreskin well. After George was fired, he sent gable a bar of soap and a bottle of mouthwash.

George Cukor was one of Hollywood’s greatest directors, OP. Before you make false and erroneous statements, do your research.

Idiot? Cukor was a fat ugly queen who got tons of consensual sex from hot young men. He couldn't have been that dumb.

R34, I thought George Cukor was a gentleman and was handsome. He was very classy, intelligent and very talented.

Cukor was hardly an idiot, in spite of this.

cukor was an asshole. On the film lets make love he fell hard for Yves Montand. Marilyn monroe and Yves were having an affair during the filming and it pissed Cukor off endlessly. WHen he directed somethings got to give 2 years later he got his revenge on Monroe. He refused to direct the wardrobe tests and the producer Weinstein had to do it. It was a major breach of studio protocol and Monroe should have walked off the film right then and there.........Monroe and other stars considered the wardrobe camera tests to be like a diviing rod for the films outcome.

On the set of somethings got to give he was rude to Monroe and hateful to the child actors. He also was responsible for rewriting the script and turned it into a piece of shit and it was remade line for line 2 years later by doris day as move over darling and it was a pathetic flop. Monroe was off put as Cukor would read lines to the stars including the female ones in a bitchy girly way and expect them to play it exactly the way he had just done it.. She considered him an overrated director that did it by the book and was completely uninspiring.

Nobody knew what these movies would become. "DWTW" had the book but "Oz" were far forgotten children's books. In fact "The Wizard Of Oz" was a major box office disappointment and didn't get classic status until the yearly holiday showings.

"...he was...hateful to the child actors."

Well, there's that in his favour.

Move Over, Darling with Do was not a pathetic flop.

Overrated, I think. A good actor's director, could pick up on what a performance needed. Had insight. So glad he was there to tell Paulette Goddard she was "too hard" in her Scarlett screentest. But Good God, he was the wrong person to direct the screen version of My Fair Lady. That thing is embalmed up there. I think if he had a stage play to translate into a movie with lots of dialogue, he was great. If he needed to really use the film medium, be epic, he was the wrong man for the job. And did he really start to gab about all of his 1930s and 1940s pals after they died? I feel like I'm always reading George Cukor quotes where he is revealing their secrets, like saying Katharine Hepburn never stopped being in love with the brother who killed himself.

I don't believe it about Gable's breath. The only time it comes up is with Gone with the Wind, and I'M guessing to hide an affair with the equally promiscuous Vivien Leigh (I have a reason for thinking this but it's a whole different anecdote I may have already described on dl.) Gable/Lombard's marriage has been endlessly dissected, including her jokes(?) that he was a bad lover, but never did the breath come up. Joan Crawford talks about the electric charge she'd feel around him; weak in the knees - never said it made up for the bad breath. Some 1960s sexpot who claimed to have an affair with him never mentioned his breath. Only comes up with GWTW. Not even Marilyn was like "She found out her idol had "feet" of clay when she discovered his bad breath."

What was embalmed in MFL was Rex Harrison.

(R37) "Move Over, Darling" was actually one of the year's biggest box-office successes.

"I don't believe it about Gable's breath."

No, other people have mentioned it

Clark Gable had Cukor removed from Gone With The Wind because Cukor was aware of Gable dong some male hustling early in his career. Gable did not want that little tidbit to ever get out.

^^^^^ aware of Gable doing some male hustling

* with his dong

[quote]Gable did not want that little tidbit to ever get out.

Gable had micropenis?

There were no directors that had that much power in the studio system. It was a producer's medium.

It was not at all uncommon for a director to take a film to a certain point, then move onto another film while the first film was finished without him. And on musicals it was common to bring in a particular director just to stage one number.

[quote]I bet if you asked people who directed Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz, 99% of them couldn't tell you

In fairness, most people who could potentially tell you are now so old they can't remember their own names either.

Cukor was removed not because of Gable but because of David O'Selznick who didn't think the rushes had the momentum, propulsion, drama, etc. It was all talky and stagey. He also nearly fired the costume designer because he thought the designs were pedestrian. He was afraid of ending up with a Parnell (not sure if Parnell had even be made at the time, but). The costume designer turned it around and started producing stuff that Selznick liked, but Selznick ultimately decided Victor Fleming was the right guy for GTWT, which he was. The past couple of years I went on a 1930s MGM movie binge which includes not just classics, but ordinary movies, and Fleming was one of the busiest directors in Hollywood. He was very good at keeping things moving, at creating big set pieces. He was actually very good with actors but he didn't get bogged down and wasn't all about close-ups all the time. Olivia deHavilland said he gave her excellent notes. For instance, when Melanie first appears and greets people, DeHavilland was playing it as if Melanie was being social. Fleming took her aside and said, "Melanie means everything she says." So that was the key - Melanie was completely sincere at all times.

Cukor was good with lots of dialogue, he was good at psychology and subtext, but maybe didn't have the full skill set for an epic pot boiler soap opera.

What other people, R43?

R48, Gable was known as the King. Supposedly, Carole Lombard, who did love him, said to a friend that if Gable had one inch less, he'd be called the Queen. Who knows.

Did Gable have the stank sleeve along with the bad breath?

Selznick was high as a fucking kite on dolls during the making of GWTW, let’s remember. Pep pills. Constant interference and pages of rewrites every day.