‘Moguls’: How the Schenck Brothers Helped Invent Hollywood While Building an Empire of Their Own

Brothers Nicholas and Joseph Schenck. They went from owners
of an amusement park to giants of the Hollywood film industry.

Book Review:

'Moguls' (2024), by Michael Benson and Craig Singer,  Citadel Press

By Paul Parcellin

The Schenck brothers, Joseph and Nicholas, stood among the most powerful executives of the 20th Century’s movie industry and played a key role in shaping the Hollywood that we know today. Yet their names are hardly household words.

With their engrossing new book “Moguls,” authors Michael Benson and Craig Singer shine a light on the Schenck brothers’ rise in show business, from scrappy, small time entrepreneurs to captains of the movie industry during the glory days of Hollywood. The book contains a wealth of knowledge not only about the Schencks rise in the industry but the history of Hollywood itself.

The Schencks’s story begins in a land far removed from the sun drenched Southern California coast. Ossip Schencker, who became Joseph Schenck at Ellis Island, was four years older than his brother Nikolay (Nick). Both were born in Rybinsk, Russia, and came to America before the turn of the last century, eventually landing in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. 

Tough times forced Nick to leave public school and hit the pavement. Joe had arrived in America before him and had already begun scratching out a living. The two hawked newspapers on their jealously guarded prime street corner, chasing away rivals who tried to muscle in — good preparation for careers in Hollywood.

Joseph M Schenck,
Oct. 1917

Ever the entrepreneurs, they eventually landed in the pharmacy business, vending potions and remedies of dubious value, then operated a beer concession. They invested their money wisely, eventually owning the amusement center at Palisades Park, N.J. As they did with each of their business endeavors, the Schencks expanded and improved what was at first a fairly modest enterprise, turning it into a bonanza for them and a major attraction for adults and children, alike.  

They saw great potential in the “flickers” as they called early short films screened in New York storefront arcades. First, they became exhibitors and eventually got into the business of making moving pictures. Their keen instincts brought them to the forefront of the nascent business, yet they preferred to stay in the background, running their operation from afar while letting others bask in the spotlight.  

Nicholas Schenck

Joe, the producer, was a gifted at spotting and contracting stars; Nick oversaw real-estate acquisition and was tremendously successful at it, eventually partnering with movie theater magnate Marcus Loew. Nick helped create the expansive Lowes theater chain, building many extravagant movie and vaudeville palaces. 

The brothers’s rise was nothing short of meteoric. In their heyday, the Schencks controlled about a third of the motion picture business, the fourth largest industry in America. That included controlling interests in three major studios: Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Twentieth Century-Fox and United Artists. 

While they preferred to remain out of public view, they closely monitored their businesses and kept them under tight control. MGM studio head Louis B. Mayer may have had the reputation for being a dictatorial leader, but he made no decisions without first “checking with New York,” and that meant Nick Schenck.

Joseph Frank 'Buster' Keaton

Their pals included William Randolph Hearst, Lillian Gish, Jacob Paley, John Huston, Fatty 
Arbuckle (more on him later), Douglas Fairbanks, Irving Thalberg and Irving Berlin. Joe was silent-film legend Buster Keaton’s first producer and best friend. He produced such Keaton classics as “Sherlock Jr.” (1924), “The Navigator” (1924), “Go West” (1925), “The General” (1927) and “Steamboat Bill, Jr.” (1928), among many others. But, ironically, it was Joe who inadvertently put an end to Keaton’s career as a filmmaker when he moved him from independent productions to MGM. From then on, Keaton felt stifled as he appeared in commercial films that lacked the spark and creativity of his earlier work.

While Keaton's career took a less than desirable turn, the Schencks motored on, becoming all the wealthier. Nick, who was the more prudent of the brothers, became the eighth richest man in the country — Joe wasn’t far behind, despite his penchant for high-stakes gambling. Nick was head of more than 100 corporations and was reputedly the highest-paid theatrical manager in the world. 

But with Hollywood’s carefree lifestyle and tendency toward excess, scandal always seemed to be percolating just under the surface.

Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle.

Joe produced films starring Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle, one of the country’s most popular comedy entertainers, second only to Charlie Chaplin. But in 1921 a public relations fiasco not only threatened Paramount, the studio where Arbuckle made his pictures, but the industry as a whole. He was charged with the rape and manslaughter of actress Virginia Rappe. 

He was tried three times between Nov. 1921 and April 1922. The first two trials resulted in hung juries, but the third trial acquitted Arbuckle. But public opinion was against the corpulent actor and his career never fully recovered. The movie business also took a hit, with the public and politicians decrying Hollywood’s moral decay, a theme that still resonates today.


Another item that became fodder for tabloid scandal sheets was the mysterious death in 1935 of actress Thelma Todd, known as “Hot Toddy,” mistress to both Joe’s close friend, director Roland West, and gangster Lucky Luciano. Many suspected it was murder, not suicide as a Grand Jury ruled. 

There was good reason to be skeptical due to her association with mobster Luciano. 

Eddie Mannix
the fixer

The authors maintain that studio fixers — probably including legendary Schenck enforcer Eddie Mannix  — swarmed the scene and scrubbed it of evidence before police investigators arrived. Mannix, a bulldog Irishman, worked for Nick as a youthful and enthusiastic bouncer during Nick’s Palisades Park days. 
It was his job to smooth over anything that might put the studio in a bad light. He had doctors, reporters, cops, DAs and judges under his thumb. Gay performers were provided beards. In the case of untimely deaths, the fixer got to the scene before the police. 

Stars were kept out of jail, and names out of the paper. According to the authors, suppressed scandals also include the suspicious death of Jean Harlow’s husband, Paul Bern; the murder of Ted Healy (creator of the Three Stooges) by actor Wallace Beery and others; Judy Garland’s drug addiction; and Loretta Young’s illegitimate baby fathered by a married Clark Gable. 

Scandal once again reared its head in 1959 with the mysterious suicide of George Reeves, TV’s Superman, at age 45. He died in his Benedict Canyon home from a theoretically self-administered gunshot wound. As circumstances had it, this was another scandal linked to the brothers. 

George Reeves
suspicious suicide

Many believed that Reeves had grown depressed by his typecasting in the Superman role. But over the years, what really happened to Reeves has remained a mystery. Schenck fixer Mannix was — at the very least — tangentially involved. Reeves had recently ended a long affair with Mannix’s second wife, Toni. 

The brothers’ tenure in the industry coincided with earth-shaking world and national events, and as Hollywood grew in worldwide stature the movie business played an ever larger part in the politics and issues of the day. 

The Schenks are credited with helping to ward off a Nazi takeover of the movie industry. Hitler had his eye on Hollywood, recognizing it as world’s biggest influencer of public opinion. Joe, Nick and other studio executives, urged on by attorney Leon Lawrence Lewis, organized a covert campaign to undermine American Nazi sympathizers’ efforts to use the studios to disseminate Hitler’s propaganda. The American Nazi threat fizzled as did the Fuhrer’s plans for worldwide domination.

Frank Nitti

A mob shakedown of the projectionists union in the 1930s, masterminded by Chicago gangster Frank Nitti, was a prelude to organized crime’s control of the movie industry’s trade unions. The Schenks and others decided it was better to play along than fight it. In fact, studio management benefitted by mob control. If the unions were troublesome, mob muscle could exert pressure. Studios saved money on raises that would otherwise have been paid to workers, while mob-controlled unions extorted the wage earners. 

A federal Grand Jury indictment helped put a lid on the corrupt practices. Nick testified under immunity, however those eventually found guilty of racketeering were soon pardoned by the Truman administration. The authors contend that Truman’s attorney general, Tom Clark, was in the hip pocket of organized crime.

Marilyn Monroe,
Joe's 'special friends.'

Far away from the scandals and Hollywood hype, Nick lived the quiet life of a family man in Great Neck, Long Island. United in their business partnership, the two brothers could hardly have been more dissimilar in personality. Joe was the man about town in Los Angles and was involved directly or indirectly in more than his share of trouble. He lived in a nine-bedroom, ten-bathroom Italian Renaissance-style mansion known as Owl-wood in the enclave of Holmby Hills overlooking Sunset Boulevard. It was there that, after a failed marriage to actress Norma Talmadge, he lived the life of a swinging bachelor and master of the casting couch. As he did with many starlets, Joe became Marilyn Monroe’s mentor and “special friend.”

Not only did Joe play fast and loose on the dating scene, some creative book keeping landed him four months and five days in the federal penitentiary for tax evasion. But, he was quickly released after allowing the USO to use one of his houses in Palm Springs. 

Over the decades, the brothers remained entrenched in the industry despite scandals, shifts in studio management, evolving audience tastes, friction with labor unions and perhaps most upsetting of all, the advent of television. Throughout it all they persevered and made their mark on the entertainment industry as few before or after them have done. 

Joe died in 1961 at his Beverly Hills home, where he lived alone except for household and medical staff.  At his funeral service the rabbi called Joe “part of a dying generation, a part of an epic of Hollywood that is fading fast.”

Despite his career misfortunes, Keaton eulogized Joe, saying, “I have never met a finer man in show business.” 

 Nick passed away in 1969 at 87, delusional that he lost his money although he was still a very rich man. He often refused to go anywhere or do things because he thought he couldn’t afford it. In his eulogy for Nick, famed attorney Louis Nizer said, “Nicholas Schenck was a great man. The architect of and the civil genius behind this country’s motion picture industry. He was a quiet, humble, but noble man. He truly was The General.” 

 

 

 

Noir Must Be Shot in Black and White, Right? Guess Again

Marilyn Monroe, "Niagara" (1953).

Raw Emotions Sizzle When Noir is in Color

By Paul Parcellin

I can already hear the howls of protest over the idea that film noir can be in color, so those who insist that color is verboten in noir will probably want to sit this one out.

We all know that noir is usually shot on black and white film, but the luscious hues of those shot in color at times add a new layer of depth to the stories they tell. In noir, color can be a cruel, ironic counterpoint to dark deeds taking place in lavishly photographed settings. After all, what could decimate the postcard-ready beauty of a landscape bursting with leafy greenery than a corpse splayed out amongst the flora?

Conversely, color makes cities appear less shadowy than those in black and white films while lending an urban landscape a brash, unidealized look. If color makes the countryside look luxuriously bountiful, it can make cities appear raw and unforgiving and desert landscapes more forbidding. 

With that in minds, here are some films bursting with color that show us the bleakest of noir worlds: 

Lizabeth Scott, "Desert Fury."

“Desert Fury” (1947)

Broad barren landscapes dotted with cacti, wild flowers and other flora are apt settings for this lush Technicolor noir soap opera that captures the sun-baked beauty of a small Nevada town. 

Film scholar Foster Hirsch notes that “Desert Fury” is shot in the lurid, over-saturated colors that would come to define the 1950s melodramas of Douglas Sirk. As in Sirk’s films, ravishing color sets the stage for emotional conflicts that crackle like heat lightning. 

When gangster Eddie Bendix (John Hodiak) and his henchman Johnny Ryan (Wendell Corey) arrive in town, Fritzi Haller (Mary Astor), owner of the Purple Sage casino, is less than enchanted to see them. She’d been involved with Bendix until he was forced to leave town under a cloud of suspicion over his wife’s death. 

To further complicate matters, Fritzi’s daughter, Paula (Lizabeth Scott), has quit yet another college and returned home to work in the family business. She and Hodiak become an item, with both parties mostly wanting to spite Fritzi.  

This emotional potboiler comes to a head at the site of Bendix’s wife’s death, a bridge on the road to town, an appropriate location to finally put a lid on this tangled affair.

Robert Ryan, "Inferno."

“Inferno” (1953)

Color is used to its best advantage in “Inferno” to show cruel contrasts in starkly different environments, one is the tortuous Mojave Desert landscape, and the other the plush surroundings of an upper crust resort hotel. 

Wealthy businessman Donald Whitley Carson III (Robert Ryan) is stranded in the desert. His leg is broken and his wife, Geraldine (Rhonda Fleming) and businessman Joseph Duncan (William Lundigan) have abandoned him there after a riding accident. 

The two are having a secret affair and Carson’s accident offers them an opportunity to get rid of him and pocket his vast fortune. But neither counted on the stranded tycoon’s resourcefulness. Driven by furious anger, Carson resolves to survive and make the two answer for their crime.

The desert canyon walls are a symphony of stunningly beautiful red rock. We can almost feel the heat radiating from the stoney landscape that threatens to swallow him whole.

The film cuts between the struggling Carson, parched, haggard and covered in brown dust and sweat, and the couple who abandoned him there, who are relaxing poolside, bathed in shades of turquoise and dappled with sunlight. 

Similar cuts reinforce the brutality of the injured man’s plight. As he forages for food, the film cuts to Geraldine enjoying a sumptuous meal at the resort’s dining room. 

Color helps make Carson’s desert prison seem more hellish than it would in black in white. In contrast, the luxurious resort takes on the look of a place where only the very wicked can relax and drink in its pleasures after leaving a man to die of starvation under a blazing sun.

Joseph Cotten, Marilyn Monroe, "Niagara."

“Niagara” (1953)

Niagara Falls never looked more postcard perfect than it does in director Henry Hathaway’s vision of the storied honeymoon retreat. Saturated color abounds in this pristine resort town lacking in any visible scuff marks or blemishes. 

It’s a storybook land carved out of nature, on the surface at least. The only exception is the nasty looking scar on the forehead of George Loomis (Joseph Cotten) after an assailant tries to send him into the churning waters of the falls.

The story is about an unhappy couple staying at a cabin retreat near the famous tourist attraction. Emotionally troubled George and his sexpot wife Rose (Marilyn Monroe) are a most unlikely couple. He’s dour and cranky and she’s bubbling with erotic energy and ever ready to party, even with a band of younger folks staying in the next cabin.

Unsurprisingly, Rose has a man on the side and the pair are scheming to send George over the falls.

Shot in Technicolor, the film’s palette of saturated hues really pops, especially in Rose’s scenes, with her sexy fuchsia dress and luscious red lips. It’s a bit comical that she awakens in the morning in full makeup, her lipstick glistening like a candy apple. Soon, it’s apparent that the perfect makeup and faux sweet demeanor are a false front meant to deflect attention from her marriage on the rocks and the deadly plot she has set in motion.

In “Niagara,” color is used to set the dramatic tone of each scene and to help define the characters. Strategically placed swatches of red punctuate the scenic design that tends to favor deep charcoal blues and forest green backdrops.

 Heightened color is at its peak during action sequences, when chiaroscuro lighting casts deep, dark shadows and saturated colors give the frame a stark, comic book-like appearance.

Rose’s electrifying wardrobe contrasts with George’s gray and oatmeal hued clothing. It’s certain that he’s no match for this ball of fire, and before long someone’s going to get burned.

Robert Ryan, "House of Bamboo."

“House of Bamboo” (1955)

The slightly washed out color in “House of Bamboo” fits well with it’s documentary-like framework, as director Samuel Fuller presents us with a crime story set in post-war Japan that is bleak and rife with gangsters. 

We see a nation struggling to get on its feet after a crushing defeat some 10 years before. The pale, snow-covered landscape under a sunless sky in the opening sequence informs us that this will be an unsentimental portrait of Tokyo and its denizens.

A military supply train is robbed and an American soldier guarding the cargo is killed, setting the stage for the widespread investigation that is to follow. 

Eddie Spanier (Robert Stack), recently released from an American prison, shows up in Tokyo and finds his way into an American gang operating there. Gang leader Sandy Dawson (Robert Ryan), like others of his ilk, is a foreigner exploiting a country decimated by war.

The film’s scenic design hints at the dramatic tensions taking place in the story. A palette of restrained shades, including pale grays, deep earth tones and beige, often fill the widescreen frame. But in a heist scene, touches of scarlet are incorporated into the set and they reflect the violent action that develops.

Likewise, the interior of Dawson’s home is decorated with the same pale tones that contrast with deep red accents that echo the blood that has been spilled during the gang’s exploits. For Dawson, that’s a color scheme that could hardly be more appropriate.  

This article was originally published in the May/June 2024 issue of The Dark Pages. Check out The Dark Pages newsletter at: www.allthatnoir.com/newsletter/

 

 

Is It or Isn’t It? “Clash by Night” is a Gripping Drama, Alright, But Some Insist It Doesn’t Make the Cut as an Authentic Noir Because It Lacks One Crucial Element

Barbara Stanwyck, Paul Douglas, Robert Ryan,
"Clash by Night" (1952).

Contains Spoilers

By Paul Parcellin

“Clash by Night” has  the look and feel of noir, but not everyone thinks of it that way. It stars Barbara Stanwyck and Robert Ryan, two giants of the shadowy crime dramas of the 1940s and ‘50s that define those dark films. Some might say they make the perfect brooding noir couple.

If that’s not enough to establish the film as noir, note that Fritz Lang, dean of saturnine German expressionist films and American made noirs, directed. The Austrian-born Lang came to America in 1934 and brought the angst and shadows of German Expressionism with him. With an immigrant’s objective eye, he saw beyond the glossy surface of American life depicted in Hollywood films and instead turned his focus to the alienation and desperation seething within common folk. 

Fritz Lang,
master of noir.

He directed noir classics such as “The Woman in the Window” (1944), “Scarlet Street” (1945), “The Big Heat” (1953) and “Ministry of Fear” (1944), not to mention his German expressionist masterpieces, “M” (1931) and “Metropolis” (1927), among many others. Set in Monterey, Calif., “Clash by Night” is about working class people who toil on fishing boats and in a cannery, away from the big cities where noir tales typically unfold. 

Director and film historian Peter Bogdanovich, speaking on the DVD’s commentary track says that, although he’s a fan of “Clash by Night,” it’s not a noir. Unfortunately, he doesn’t explain his reasons for that judgment call. The disc was released as part of a box set called “Film Noir Classic Collection, Volume Two,” and Bogdanovich’s pronouncement must have dismayed the distributor.

What others who doubt the film’s noir pedigree say is that because no one gets murdered it’s not noir. 

Hand to hand combat with the intent to murder erupts at one point, and there’s even a kidnapping, although neither turns into much of an actionable offense.

Even if the film comes up short in the homicide department, it’s got atmosphere galore and conflicted, alienated characters living under a cloud of existential dread, all of which makes it an awful lot like a noir.

The story begins when Mae Doyle (Stanwyck) returns to town after a decade long absence. Her hopes of marrying a rich man and enjoying the good life somewhere far from the fish cannery have turned to ash. She runs into Jerry D’Amato (Paul Douglas), a kindly but unsophisticated bachelor fisherman who wants nothing more than for Mae to be his wife. She warns him it would be a mistake, but Jerry is too smitten to take her advice. 

Meanwhile, his friend, Earl Pfeiffer (Ryan), a projectionist at the local cinema, turns up. He’s the polar opposite of teddy bear Jerry. Earl is arrogant, disenchanted with life and he harbors a hatred of women — he’s separated from his burlesque dancer wife. In his typically sardonic sense of humor, Earl mutters, “Some day I’m going to stick her with pins and see if blood runs out.” He’s joking, of course, but with Earl there’s a fine line between comedy and tragedy.

Earl is attracted to Mae, but she deflects his bravado and thinks he’s a lout. Earl harbors contempt for his so-called buddy Jerry, and it’s obvious to everyone but Jerry, who remains oblivious to the emotional stirrings around him. Mae resents Earl’s condescending attitude toward Jerry, probably because she secretly harbors similar thoughts and feels guilty about it.

She finally agrees to marry Jerry because she wants a safe harbor that will protect her from the uncertainty and disappointments life dishes out. Earl may be the more exciting of the two gents, but he’ll never be the protector that Mae believes she needs. But we know she’ll have trouble sticking to her promise to be the kind of wife that Jerry wants.

Later, Mae’s brother, Joe (Keith Andes), gets engaged to his sweetheart, cannery worker Peggy (Marilyn Monroe), and for a while she shares Mae’s darkest view of marriage, that of being trapped in the small fishing village with nothing to relieve the dullness.

When Peggy’s doubts surface, Joe tells her he’d kick down the door to get her back, and with that her indecision is vanquished — a testimony of true love if there ever was one, she feels.

Marilyn, scandal followed her.

This was Marilyn’s first above-the-title billing, and in her small role she makes a fine showing as the naive but plucky hometown girl. The casting was tough luck for Andres, however. Whenever Marilyn’s on the screen everyone else in the shot might as well be invisible. 

Adding more spice to the mix, Marilyn was the source of a scandal during production. The actress was on loan to RKO from Fox, and during production some nude photos she’d posed for a few years prior came to light. Fox protected her reputation and kept the photos under wraps. But RKO, then headed by Howard Hughes, had no long-term investment in the actress and leaked the story to the press to reap publicity from it. Consequently, reporters mobbed Marilyn and the film’s star, Stanwyck, got the short end of the publicity stick. Stanwyck took it all in stride and continued to perform like the trouper that she was. 

It’s easy to imagine Stanwyck rolling with the punches and getting on with the job, and that same sense of self-reliance carries over to her characterization of Mae. She’s in control and unflappable in the face of temporary agitations. But even Mae has her limits. As the story progresses she stoically resists Earl’s advances. Now married to Jerry and the mother of a baby girl, Mae puts the boorish Earl in his place. She calls him “crude” when he suddenly comes on too strong. “You impress me as a man who needs a new suit of clothes or a love affair and he doesn’t know which,” she tells him. 

Clifford Odets,
poetic dialogue.

The streetwise poetic flair in the dialogue comes in part from playwright Clifford Odets — others worked on the screenplay — whose play was adapted into the movie. Typical of Odets, words coming out of the characters’ mouths are strangely flamboyant and display the writer’s idiosyncratic manner of capturing the cadence of working class speech.

Verbal fisticuffs ensue when Jerry invites Earl to visit the couple, Earl has had too much to drink and is allowed to sleep it off. The next morning, with Jerry away at work, Earl, still impetuous as ever, tells Mae that she and him are alike, “You’re born and you’d like to be unborn,” he says. His gloomy outlook is an apt description of both her and him, and that shared sense of alienation causes Mae to let her guard down. 

Tensions among the three grow stormier like the roiling ocean just beyond their doorsteps, and the film’s occasional cutaways to the briny deep signal trouble on the horizon. Partly shot on location, the film opens with a montage of fishing boats in the harbor, Jerry and Joe hauling in a catch and Peggy laboring in the cannery, in essence we see the community in a nutshell. 

Lang’s career began in the silent era, and it shows in the way he tells stories without dialog. It’s a cliche to say that you can almost smell the air, but this composition of coastal shots have just that effect.

If you’re still in doubt that “Clash by Night” is in fact noir, consider this:

In the absence of felonious behavior — murder, robbery, assault — other forms of anti-social behavior — adultery, violence, betrayal and corruption are at the core of noir. Add to that the sense of existential dread and misanthropy that runs throughout “Clash by Night,” and yes, it is noir, through and through. In the end, it’s the emotions and mood, not the murder that counts.