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A graduate of Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, Walter Wanger was among the more literate and socially conscious American film producers of his time. At the peak of his career, his salary was exceeded only by that of Louis B. Mayer at MGM. Wanger had served in the air force on the Italian front during World War I. He joined the staff of President Woodrow Wilson as an attaché after the armistice, attending the peace conference in Paris. Having already staged theatricals at college and briefly directed on Broadway, he began in the film industry at Paramount as assistant to studio vice president Jesse L. Lasky in 1921. He worked his way up to a senior executive position, with the power to hire and fire writers, directors and stars. A disagreement with Lasky brought about his departure, but he was re-hired after having success in England as a theatrical producer and agent.
In 1923, he was appointed head of Paramount's Long Island Studio. Shortly after, he was made chief of production, holding that position until 1931. After leaving the company due to personality clashes with new senior management, he had brief spells with Columbia and MGM, producing several big hits, such as The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1932) and Queen Christina (1933). Nonetheless, he didn't get on particularly well with either Harry Cohn or L.B. Mayer and decided to turn independent, releasing his films through Paramount and United Artists. By 1936, Walter Wanger's own production company had the most substantial star roster of any independent filmmaker in Hollywood, including Madeleine Carroll, Charles Boyer, Henry Fonda and Sylvia Sidney.
Wanger's first major success as an independent was The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1936), the first Technicolor feature for Paramount, and also the first to be shot primarily outdoors. In between solid black & white action films and dramas like You Only Live Once (1937) and Algiers (1938), Wanger also produced several expensive all-colour extravaganzas, not all of which paid off at the box office (point in case, Vogues of 1938 (1937), which failed to recoup its cost of $1.4 million). This rather forced United Artists to keep a closer reign on his future expenditure. However, by the end of the decade, Wanger's reputation increased, with films like Stagecoach (1939) and The Long Voyage Home (1940) (for John Ford) and Foreign Correspondent (1940) (for Alfred Hitchcock). Between 1946 and 1949, Wanger succeeded both in strengthening his own production company and in establishing a distribution network (in conjunction with the independent owners of Film Classics), the Wanger-Nassour Releasing Organisation.
Inevitably, the financial vagaries of independent production were beginning to take their toll. Already hamstrung by the financial woes of one of his subsidiaries, Diana Productions (formed in partnership with his wife Joan Bennett, screenwriter Dudley Nichols and director Fritz Lang),Wanger badly overextended himself in his financing of the 145-minute studio-bound Technicolor epic Joan of Arc (1948), starring Ingrid Bergman. The venture effectively bankrupted another of his production companies (Sierra Pictures), set up with Bergman exclusively for the making of the expensive fiasco. "Joan of Arc" ended up being shunned by audiences (who found it long and boring) and critics (who thought it naïve and altogether missing its spiritual mark) alike. Wanger's financial miscalculation was further compounded in 1951, by his shooting of his wife's paramour. It landed him in jail for four months for attempted murder.
That notwithstanding, Wanger bounced back, finagling a $5 million deal with Allied Artists. After his release from jail, he produced a socially conscious prison film, Riot in Cell Block 11 (1954), on a relatively modest budget. He followed this with one of the most iconic science fiction films ever made, the marvellous Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956), directed by Don Siegel. On the flipside, Wanger's last throw of the dice, Cleopatra (1963) , with its excessive cost and production difficulties, almost ruined 20th Century Fox and brought about his own premature retirement. After his death from a heart attack in November 1968, a mere $18,000 remained of his estate.
In spite of its highs and lows, the career of Walter Wanger had been nothing but amazing. During his early days at Paramount (then Famous Players Lasky), he had bought the rights to The Sheik (1921), which made a star out of Rudolph Valentino. At the time of his second spell with the studio, he introduced headliners like Claudette Colbert, Hedy Lamarr, and The Marx Brothers to the screen. As a man of strong intellectual inclinations, he recognised the value of good writing. Indeed, many of his films combine a socio-political message with good entertainment. James Mason thought, Wanger had always longed 'to be European'.
In later years, Wanger openly criticised the established Hollywood hierarchy for being over-reliant on star power. His own self-proclaimed rebelliousness also engendered the enmity of practically every major studio boss and his liberal leanings got him into trouble during the HUAC witch hunts of the early 1950's. Nonetheless, Wanger was twice elected president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and, at the height of his influence, was able to successfully lobby the Academy to introduce Best Foreign Film and Best Documentary as Oscar categories.
