Happy Birthday, William Dieterle! Born today in 1893 aw Wilhelm Dieterle, this German-born stage actor, stage director, film actor and film director emigrated to the United States in 1930 to leave a worsening political situation.
Dieterle was the youngest of nine children of parents Jacob and Berthe Dieterle. They lived in poverty, and when he was old enough to work, young Dieterle earned money as a carpenter and a scrap dealer. However, he dreamed of better things, though, and theater caught his eye as a teen.
By the age of sixteen, he had joined a traveling theater company. He was ambitious and handsome, both of which opened the door to leading romantic roles in theater productions. Though he had acted in his first film in 1913, it was six more years before he made another one.
In that year he was noticed by Austrian-born theatre and film director, intendant, and theatrical producer Max Reinhardt.
At the time, he was the most influential proponent of expressionism in theater; while in Berlin, Reinhardt hired him as an actor for his productions.
In 1920, Dieterle resumed German film acting, becoming a popular and successful romantic lead and featured character actor in the mix of German expressionist/Gothic and nature/romanticism genres that imbued much of German cinema in the silent era.
He was interested in directing even more than acting, however, and he had the iconic Reinhardt to provide inspiration. Dieterle had acted in nearly twenty features before he also began directing in 1923, his first female lead being a young Marlene Dietrich.
With his wife Charlotte Hagenbruch he started his own film production. He was said to have tired of acting; he appeared in nearly fifty films over the course of his career.
This was mainly in the 1920s, and in several of his films he also functioned as director. As an actor he worked with some of the greatest names in German film.
Most notably, this included working with German film director F. W Murnau in his 1926 German silent black and white drama/fantasy horror film 'Faust – Eine deutsche Volkssage' ('Faust – A German Folktale' or simply 'Faust').
By 1930, however, Dieterle had emigrated to the United States--now rechristened as William Dieterle--with an offer from Warner Bros. to direct their German-language versions of the studio's popular hits for the German market.
Most notably, Dieterle even stood before the camera for another of these features. This was for the now-lost 1931 American/German black and white drama film 'Dämon des Meeres' (aka 'Demon of the Sea', a version of Moby Dick).
For 'Demon', Dieterle played Captain Ahab and also co-directed. The film was directed by another European who was soon to become one of Warner Bros. most successful filmmakers. This was the Hungarian-born American film director Michael Curtiz.
Having taken to the Hollywood brand of filmmaking with ease--helped by his own brilliance in defining and executing the telling of a story--into 1931, Dieterle was soon promoted to directing some of Warner Bros. "regular" films.
His first, the 1931 American black and white drama film 'The Last Flight' (aka 'Single Lady' and 'Spent Bullets') is now regarded as a masterwork) and is considered to be one the best forgotten films of the 1930s.
Among his credits of the 1930s, Dieterle is known for directing the 1931 American black-and-white biographical history film 'The Life of Louis Pasteur'.
Dieterle would average directing six pictures a year for the studio through 1934.He worked in Hollywood primarily as a director for much of his career, becoming a United States citizen in 1937.
That same year, Dieterle directed the film of which he is best known. This was the 1937 American black and white biographical political drama film 'The Life of Emile Zola'.
Set in the mid through late 19th century, after struggling to establish himself, the film depicts author Emile Zola (Paul Muni) winning success in writing about the unsavory side of Paris. He afterwards settles into a comfortable upper-class life.
However, Zola's complacency is shaken when Jewish officer Alfred Dreyfus (Joseph Schildkraut) is imprisoned for being a spy.
Realizing that Dreyfus is an innocent victim of anti-Semitism, Zola boldly pens a newspaper article exposing the truth, is charged with libel and must defend himself in a dramatic courtroom testimony.
Produced during the Great Depression and after the Nazi Party had taken power in Germany, the film failed to explore the key issue of anti-Semitic injustice in France in the late 19th century, when Zola became involved in the Dreyfus affair and worked to gain the officer's release.
Early 21st-century studies noted this film as an example of Hollywood's timidity at the time: anti-Semitism was never mentioned in the film, nor was "Jew" said in dialogue.
Some explicitly anti-Nazi films were cancelled in this period, and other content was modified. This was also the period when Hollywood had established the Production Code, establishing an internal censor, in response to perceived threats of external censorship.
The film had been based on Matthew Josephson's 1928 book Zola and His Time: The History of his Martial Career in Letters.
Josephson was an American journalist and author of works on nineteenth-century French literature and American political and business history of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He had also popularized age term "robber baron".
'The Life of Emile Zola' premiered at the Los Angeles Carthay Circle Theatre to great success both critically and financially. Contemporary reviews ranked it as the best biographical film made up to that time.
The following year, 'The Life of Emile Zola' won the Oscar for Best Picture at the 10th Academy Awards. This was the second biographical film to do so.
It also won Oscars for Best Actor in a Supporting Role and Best Writing Adapted Screenplay. This occurred in mid-March 1938.
One year later, Dieterle moved on to direct another film of which he is known.
This was the 1939 American black and white romance/drama film 'The Hunchback of Notre Dame' for RKO. It starred English stage and film actor Charles Laughton ('The Night of the Hunter') as Quasimodo,
Through the 1940s, Dieterle moved around among Hollywood's studios, turning out vigorously wrought pictures, such as his two 1940 biographies with Edward G. Robinson at Warner Bros.
Among his credits of the 1940s, Dieterle is known for directing the 1941 American black and white fantasy film 'The Devil and Daniel Webster'.
Dieterle also later became associated with independent American film producer, screenwriter and film studio executive David O. Selznick and American film, stage, radio and television actor Joseph Cotten.
Dieterle's 1940 American black and white romance/fantasy film 'Portrait of 'Jennie' was one of his masterpieces, bringing into play a fusion of all his artistic fonts.
In the late 1940s, Dieterle co-directed the 1946 American Technicolor psychological Western/romance film 'Duel in the Sun' (nicknamed 'Lust in the Dust').
Starring Jones and Cotten, the film also featured Gregory Peck, Lionel Barrymore, Lillian Gish and Butterfly McQueen. Jones would eventually become Selznick's soon-to-be wife in 1949.
For 'Duel in the Sun', Dieterle had shared directing but not credit with American film director, film producer, and screenwriter King Vidor
Through the 1950s Dieterle's work--two more with Cotten--though sturdily in the director's hands, came off like good Hollywood fare, but were inspired more by the films' tight shooting schedules than by any artistic pretensions.
However, his output during that decade was small. This was partly due to bane of McCarthyism, of which he was never blacklisted.
In 1958, Dieterle returned to Germany and directed a few films here and therein in Italy before retiring in 1965.
In 2000, 'The Life of Emile Zola' was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".
Though regrettably not as well-known as his German and European directorial compatriots in Hollywood, Dieterle had great artistic style and works with much energy in providing some of Hollywood's and the world's Crown Jewels of cinematic art.
Dieterle had been active from 1911–1966.
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