Jean & Company

Jean Negulesco is not mentioned among the all-time great directors, but he was far closer to that designation than most filmmakers get. His long road before he landed in Hollywood is fascinating. Born in Romania in 1900, he left home at twelve. Can you imagine that? His first influential stop was Paris, where he attended art school. His studies were interrupted by WWI. He worked for the French army in a field hospital on the Western Front. Surviving physically unscathed, he resumed his studies, then returned to his homeland. He sold 150 of his paintings at his first exhibit. Back in Paris in the early ‘20’s, he became a stage decorator. In 1927 he went to New York in hopes of advancing his art career. He traveled across the USA by rail, in part paying his way by doing portraits. In 1932 he was hired by Paramount as a sketch artist and technical adviser. He worked in diverse capacities in Tinseltown, including second unit director, until 1940 when he was hired by Warner Brothers to do shorts. After being replaced at the helm of a couple of big movies, he hit his stride. Last night Movies!, channel 5–2 on over the air antennas in NYC, ran one of his modest efforts, Three Strangers (1946), starring Geraldine Fitzgerald, Sidney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre, the latter of whom Negulesco described as “… the most talented man I have ever seen in my life.” Here are some of the most notable titles among the 87 listed under his name at IMDb: Johnny Belinda (1948), starring Oscar-winning Jane Wyman as a rape victim; How to Marry a Millionaire (1953), starring Marilyn Monroe, Lauren Bacall and Betty Grable; Three Coins in the Fountain (1954), starring Dorothy McGuire, Jean Peters and Maggie McNamara as secretaries on vacation in Rome; Boy on a Dolphin (1957), whose famous publicity photo featured the well-endowed Sophia Loren in a wet shirt. I’m not a big fan of the latter three flicks, which were box office hits, and I don’t recall much of Johnny Belinda. Of all the films in his impressive canon, I regard only Humoresque (1946) as a classic. It stars John Garfield as a violinist and Joan Crawford as his patron (and more). At the time Crawford was as big a star as there was — and she does not appear on screen for the first half hour or so. I thought that was way cool. Negulesco had an autobiography published in 1984, Things I Did…and Things I Think I Did. From 1946 until his death he was married to actress Dusty Anderson (13 film credits, none notable). She too was a painter. They adopted two kids. They moved to Marbella, Spain in the late ‘60’s, where Negulesco died in 1993 at 93. (Facts from IMDb) Here he is with Marilyn Monroe, of whom he said: “She’s the girl you’d like to double-cross your wife with.”

And here is one of his art works, Continuous Line Drawing:

And here’s the aforementioned photo of the Italian bombshell, subject of many boomer fantasies:

And here’s Mrs. Negulesco, a favorite GI pinup during WWII:

And I believe this is one of her paintings. Apologies to the artist if I’m wrong:

And this is the late Dusty Rhodes, the American Dream, whose image popped up on the same page as Anderson’s and had me LOL:

My thanks to the woman who bought five books in Russian on this gorgeous mid-spring-like day; and to the young man who purchased The Dark Tower IV: Wizard and Glass by Stephen King; and to the young woman who, after much deliberation, selected In Her Shoes by Jennifer Weiner.

My Amazon Author page: https://www.amazon.com/Vic-Fortezza/e/B002M4NLJE

FB: https://www.facebook.com/Vic-Fortezza-Author-118397641564801/?fref=ts

Read Vic’s Stories, free: http://fictionaut.com/users/vic-fortezza