Miriam Hopkins III: BECKY SHARP
Miriam Hopkins: Q&A with Allan Ellenberger Part II
Becky Sharp was the first feature film in three-strip Technicolor. Why was Miriam Hopkins selected for the title role? And what was filming like?
Hopkins was producer Jock Whitney’s choice for the role from the beginning; I’m not aware of anyone else being mentioned. However, she almost lost it when she couldn’t come to an agreement with RKO over her salary. The studio then considered replacing her with Myrna Loy (who had starred in a modern-day version in 1932) or Claudette Colbert, who turned down the role after reading the script. Finally, Hopkins and RKO came to terms and she was reinstated.
Jock Whitney and his Pioneer Pictures’ first attempt at Technicolor was an RKO-released short, the Academy Award winner La Cucaracha. They were so pleased with the results, they proceeded with plans for a full-length film — Becky Sharp, which was based on William Makepeace Thackeray’s 1848 novel Vanity Fair.
Production began in early December 1934 at the RKO-Pathe Studios (now the Culver Studios) with Lowell Sherman signed to direct. Not long after filming began, Sherman developed a cold, but continued working (with a nurse on the set) until he collapsed on December 27 and died the following day of pneumonia. It was another week until Whitney hired Rouben Mamoulian as Sherman’s replacement.
Mamoulian discarded all of Sherman’s footage and started from scratch.
Shortly after, Hopkins also developed pneumonia and collapsed in the middle of a ballroom scene; she was off the set for ten days. A sequence edited from 6,000 ft. of negative was burned in a projector and had to be recut, which took a week. In one scene, the sleeve of Hopkins’ dress caught fire when she reached over a lit candle. (Fortunately, it was quickly put out and Hopkins wasn’t injured.) Then, the film’s premiere was delayed a month because of problems with a new recording process. So, the production had its share of problems.
Also, a bit of trivia – in the scene where Hopkins and Cedric Hardwicke [above right] are dancing around the ballroom, among the 400 extras are two young women looking on. One of them was Thelma Ryan, better known today as Pat Nixon, former First Lady of the United States.
Whereas Becky Sharp received mixed reviews, Hopkins herself was praised for her performance and received her only Academy Award nomination. [She lost to -- who else? -- Bette Davis in Dangerous.]
Miriam Hopkins in The Children’s Hour
Miriam Hopkins went from stardom to supporting roles rather rapidly. In the early 1940s, she was still an alluring star, but later in the decade she was playing older women in relatively small roles. Why such a drastic drop in status?
I don’t necessarily see it that way. She did take a five-year break in making films, but certainly wasn’t idle. Hopkins made Old Acquaintance in 1943 and literally left Hollywood until she returned to co-star in The Heiress (1949). During that time she put her resources into the legitimate stage, appearing in three Broadway plays and several major road-show productions. [Among those was The Heiress, with Hopkins in the title role, which went to the younger Olivia de Havilland in the film version.]
When she did return, it was in supporting roles in several important films. Besides The Heiress, she played an interfering mother-in-law in The Mating Season (1951), an aging hooker in The Outcasts of Poker Flat (1952), and what I believe is one of her most evil roles, Laurence Olivier’s scornful wife in Carrie (1952).
During the remainder of the ’50s she did television and toured in several plays, ending the decade on Broadway replacing Jo Van Fleet in the Pulitzer Prize-winning play Look Homeward Angel. In this production she received the best reviews of her career, later taking the play on the road for a year. So, even though she no longer reigned at the box-office after the mid-40s, she continued to succeed in the projects she chose.
Fredric March, Miriam Hopkins, Gary Cooper in Design for Living
To say that Miriam Hopkins has the reputation of having been a total bitch would be an understatement. Would you say that assessment of Hopkins’ character is accurate, inaccurate, or somewhere in-between? How did she get along with studio heads, her directors — e.g., Rouben Mamoulian, Ernst Lubitsch, William Wyler, Vincent Sherman — and co-stars — e.g., Edward G. Robinson, Fredric March, Joel McCrea?
I would have to say it’s mostly in-between. For whatever reasons, Hopkins felt she had to fight for what she wanted – she knew that she wasn’t about to have it handed to her. That’s the way she thought and the way she lived. Perhaps she was paranoid in many situations and overreacted, which caused flare-ups on the set. As far as studio heads and directors, in most cases there were few problems unless she felt they were trying to railroad her. She walked out on Paramount on several occasions, going to the desert or to New York in order to think things out.
Sometimes, moguls would get frustrated when she turned down scripts that they bought expressly for her. I think this contributed to her problems with Samuel Goldwyn and her being loaned to Warner Bros. for the remainder of her contract. When Goldwyn first signed her, she was his main female commodity (she was Anna Sten’s replacement). Goldwyn bought Come and Get It (1936) for her, but she refused the part so he borrowed Frances Farmer [from Paramount].
Directors were a different story. In addition to writers, she loved spending time with directors — she married one and had affairs with several others. Problems arose if a director couldn’t “handle” her. However, if she worked with a director she trusted and admired, such as Lubitsch, Mamoulian, and Wyler, the results could be magic. Just look at the films she made with them; they were able to get a controlled, stylized performance from her.
With actors, I truly believe it was a matter of ego, which most actors have in abundance – including Hopkins. Everyone knows about her feud with Bette Davis. Reportedly, Fredric March would complain about her scene-stealing, and it’s no secret that George Raft and Paul Muni hated her. However, she got along well with Carole Lombard, Kay Francis, Ray Milland, Rex Harrison, and Joel McCrea.
In his autobiography, Edward G. Robinson wrote about his troubles with Hopkins on the set of Barbary Coast (1935). In one scene he has to slap her; Robinson was so frustrated with Hopkins egging him on that he really gave her a hard smack. In later years, they evidently cleared up their problems since Robinson was a frequent guest at Hopkins’ famous Sunday afternoon parties. [In his bio, Robinson claims that Miriam Hopkins was a right-winger. That is not true. See next page.]
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Tags: Allan Ellenberger, Becky Sharp, Cedric Hardwicke, Classic Movies, Edward G. Robinson, Fredric March, Interviews, Lowell Sherman, Miriam Hopkins, Rouben Mamoulian, Samuel Goldwyn
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