The story goes that at a party for the movie studio MGM, several of the partygoers were talking about how they needed someone to direct Horror movies for them. While at the party, someone happened to point out Val Lewton and mentioned that he wrote horrible books.
Val Lewton wrote what were known as “bodice rippers” in those days, romance novels. His big seller was titled “No Bed of Her Own,” and it was truly horrible.
The director misunderstood and thought he wrote horror novels, and he offered Val Lewton a job producing movies.
That might sound like a funny way to hire somebody, but you need to understand that the job he was offering was for the very lowest work on the lot. He wanted someone to produce low budget horror movies for people just old enough to go to the movie theater by themselves. They knew that kids would choose to see movies based on the poster art and name of the movie. After they bought a ticket, they didn’t care what anyone thought.
When the desperate Val Lewton took the job, they simply showed him a poster with the name Cat People on it, and he was left to write the story. They sent a makeup crew to help create a movie monster, gave him the keys to their least valuable movie lot, and Lewton literally didn’t see anybody from that studio again for months.
He had a budget of $150,000 which was mostly spent on salaries. He could only afford to use furniture and scenery created for other movies. If you look closely, you might recognize the stairs used in the Magnificent Ambersons in Cat People.
He ended up spending $141,000 and gave the rest back. The movie made four million dollars and was RKO’s top moneymaker of the year. He never used the makeup crew they sent him because he didn’t want to show a monster in his movie.
He filmed mostly a night, a difficult task in the early days of black and white film. His plan was that the audience would never see the monster, but would only see it suggested. The look and feel of the film was beautiful, with every shot carefully planned and lit. Later generations of directors used the film as a model when making film noire.
Alfred Hitchcock, the master of suspense, later built on may of the ideas that Val Lewton used.
The studio considered his incredibly successful film a surprise, but still had no respect for the genre. They continued to give him a movie title and poster art with no actual script. He took the skeleton they gave him and made a body of work from it. Pretty much all the movies he made were far better than the studios deserved based on what they gave him to work with.
A later film was titled Bedlam, and was intended to be a movie about a crazed lunatic based on the poster art. He threw the art away, and made a movie about the horrors of a psychiatric institution. The villain was the sadistic head of the institution played by Boris Karloff. For the plot, he drew on actual incidents which had occurred in real mental institutions of that day. He refused to make the mentally ill the villains, and made them sympathetic instead.
Boris Karloff’s career had been failing when Lewton cast him. He later credited Lewton with saving his career. He went on to do three more movies with him, enjoying the more complex roles he received.
When RKO head Charles Koerner died in 1946, senior management was swept aside and a new crew were put in charge. Lewton became unemployed, and then had a series of heart attacks which ruined his health. In later years he kept trying to produce one movie after another, but wasn’t able to get them done without studio backing. He died after a final heart attack in 1951.
Martin Scorcese narrated a documentary called Man In The Shadows, a film entirely devoted to Val Lewton’s work. He described how after Lewton was gone, a group of film directors visited the studio and mentioned that at one time, one of the best producers in the business had worked for them.
They had no idea who they were talking about. The fact that they had produced some good movies off their rear lots was a total surprise, and was probably very frustrating for them.
While he received no recognition during his life, you can still see the original black and white Cat People as well as most of the other movies he produced even today. A trashy sequel to Cat People was made starring Nastassia Kinsky which left nothing to the imagination, including the sexual habits of the Cat People involved. Please don’t watch it. I’m aware there is a trailer for that version but chose not to include it, and would appreciate it if nobody else linked it.
Though Lewton had to know nobody believe din him, Lewton cared about his work anyway. For that reason, he left a great legacy behind him. Other Directors and fans of film learned from what he did, and his work improved theirs.
Have a good morning everyone.