Pauline Frederick in Madame X
Frank Lloyd: Q&A with Anthony Slide – Part I
Frank Lloyd's greatest strengths as a filmmaker? His greatest weaknesses?
I have partly answered this question above. And I suppose, in a way, one might argue that his greatest strength — as a studio director — is also his greatest weakness. He put the studio first. He seldom went over-budget. He brought his films in on schedule. He worked well with actors and actresses, some of whom were known to be temperamental.
Frank Lloyd directed numerous melodramas of various subgenres, but do his films — or at least a majority of them — share any sort of directorial or thematic element(s), e.g., the way male or female characters are portrayed, or the focus/setting of the stories?
The term "melodrama" is a pretty sweeping one, which, as I point out in the book, falls into various sub-categories. A good melodrama is a good melodrama, and I don't think that it necessarily shares a thematic element with another film that might be considered a melodrama. I suppose one might argue that a good melodrama should make one cry, but it should also make one smile, at least gently, and it should make one cheer. There is no better example of a melodrama with all these qualities than Frank Lloyd's Cavalcade. And yes, I'll also give credit for that to Noel Coward.
Charles Laughton, Clark Gable in Mutiny on the Bounty
Frank Lloyd worked with top talent in front of the cameras. What was his relationship with his actors like? Was he considered an actor's director like George Cukor or William Wyler, or …? What did his actors think about him? Were you able to find any quotes from actors discussing their work with Lloyd?
Frank Lloyd obviously had a good working relationship with some actors known for their temperament. I am thinking particularly of Corinne Griffith. But I would not describe him as a woman's director, like George Cukor. Lloyd's early films demonstrate his ability to work steadily with male performers, notably Dustin and William Farnum. Lloyd certainly liked actors from the stage, as were the Farnums.
I don't think — and this is a supposition — that he was too happy with male stars with large egos. Thus, Mutiny on the Bounty was not the happy experience it might have been thanks to his having to deal with Clark Gable and Charles Laughton, who didn't like each other, and, when the opportunity arose, didn't like their director.
Richard Barthelmess, Marion Nixon in Young Nowheres
Frank Lloyd was credited as the director of four films starring top First National star Richard Barthelmess. How did that association come about? What was their relationship like?
I don't know how the association came about. It appears that it was Barthelmess who selected Lloyd as his director, and that may have been simply because Barthelmess was intelligent enough to know that Lloyd was a good director, on a par with Henry King, who had made Barthelmess a star [in Tol'able David in 1921], and in the tradition of D.W. Griffith, with whom the actor had started his career. Interestingly, both men lived away from the film community, owning homes in [the eastern Los Angeles suburb of] Whittier (the birthplace of Richard Nixon).