W.S. Van Dyke

W.S. Van Dyke (born March 21, 1889, San Diego, California, U.S.—died February 5, 1943, Los Angeles, California) was an American film director who was a reliable craftsman known for his quick and efficient style of shooting. He made a number of commercial hits, though arguably his best-known films were those in the Thin Man series.

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Early work

Van Dyke was named for his father, a judge who died before he was born; his mother worked as a touring vaudeville actress to support herself and young son. At the age of three he began appearing onstage in San Francisco. As he grew older, he alternated music-hall appearances with work as a miner, lumberjack, and door-to-door salesman, among other jobs. After touring with his mother’s theatrical company, he broke into films as an assistant director (uncredited) on D.W. Griffith’s The Birth of a Nation (1915). In 1917 Van Dyke began directing features, his first being The Land of Long Shadows. That led to work directing serials for Pathé, including Daredevil Jack (1920), with heavyweight boxing champ Jack Dempsey; The Avenging Arrow (1921; codirected with William Bowman); and White Eagle (1922; codirected with Fred Jackman). Van Dyke susbequently carved out a niche as a director of two-fisted tales, primarily westerns.

One Take Woody

In 1926 Van Dyke joined MGM, where he would become well known for his versatility and for a quick and casual shooting style that enabled him to complete films on time and under budget. Known as “One Take Woody,” he was popular with studio executives, who often hired him to reshoot scenes for troubled movies. However, Van Dyke’s approach sometimes resulted in sloppy productions, and he never developed a signature style.

Van Dyke made several westerns for MGM before accompanying documentary pioneer Robert J. Flaherty to the South Pacific to make the melodrama White Shadows in the South Seas (1928). When Flaherty left the production, Van Dyke was asked to complete what became the studio’s first sound film. The film was a critical and commercial success, and Van Dyke was subsequently given quality material, beginning with The Pagan (1929), another on-location South Seas adventure. Next came Trader Horn, which was even more of an event, requiring seven months of arduous on-location filming in the jungles of Africa and another year of postproduction to make sense of the immense amount of footage Van Dyke had shot. But when the film, which centres on two traders in Africa who search for the missing daughter of a missionary, was finally released in 1931, it became a huge box-office hit and received an Academy Award nomination for best picture.

Van Dyke had less success with the melodramas Guilty Hands and Never the Twain Shall Meet (both 1931). The former starred Lionel Barrymore as a defense attorney turned killer, and the latter was memorable only as stage actor Leslie Howard’s second Hollywood film. The Cuban Love Song (1931) was the director’s first foray into musicals, but it was an inauspicious debut and proved to be opera star Lawrence Tibbett’s swan song at MGM. With Tarzan the Ape Man (1932), Van Dyke returned to the African jungle setting, blending unused Trader Horn footage with studio-set work. The action adventure was the first sound film to star Edgar Rice Burrough’s fictional character, and it was a huge box-office success. Tarzan made stars of Olympic swimmer Johnny Weissmuller and Maureen O’Sullivan, both of whom appeared in a lucrative series of sequels.

Less popular was Night Court (1932), a gripping film noir about a crooked judge (Walter Huston) who frames an innocent girl (Anita Page) for prostitution when she learns compromising information about him. Penthouse (1933) was a change of pace for Van Dyke: a snappy screwball-crime hybrid, with Warner Baxter as a lawyer who requires the help of a moll (Myrna Loy) to bring down a mobster (C. Henry Gordon). The Prizefighter and the Lady (1933) featured heavyweight boxer Max Baer as a former sailor who fights his way to the top only to turn his back on those who helped him get there, including his wife (played by Loy) and coach (Huston). The boxing finale between Baer and Primo Carnera, who played himself, was especially well done. The following year Carnera, the real-life reigning champ, was knocked out by Baer in a championship match.

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Eskimo (1933) was Van Dyke’s most-ambitious project to date. He and his crew traveled on a whaling schooner to the northern tip of Alaska, where the ship was iced until the spring thaw. The drama featured a number of native Inuits, whose dialogue was translated into subtitles. Paying audiences largely avoided the drama, despite the spectacular location photography. Van Dyke, however, had another big hit with Manhattan Melodrama (1934), which tells the now-familiar tale of a charismatic gangster (Clark Gable) whose boyhood friend (William Powell) becomes the district attorney who must prosecute him; Loy played the woman they both love. (Although George Cukor worked on the film, he was uncredited.)