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| THE PRODUCER: Lesser made six features and 198 TV
episodes from 1947 to 1959. |
| Courtesy Bud Lesser |
PRODUCERS WATCH FILMS to ascertain how to
make successful ones themselves, but viewers determine which films do
succeed. And readers can decide if I succeed in naming five top pictures
from the Golden Years. My criteria: each was a huge hit, penetrated its
subject deeply and broke new ground in its time.
Sunset Boulevard (1950). Faded silent-film star Gloria Swanson
forces struggling screenwriter William Holden to be her gigolo, with fatal
consequences. For unexpected realism, director Billy Wilder cast old-timers
Erich von Stroheim as her butler, Buster Keaton as her companion, and
Cecil B. DeMille as himself, her idol.
All About Eve (1950). Takes viewers into a witty backstage milieu to watch
duplicitous ingenue Anne Baxter in her attempt to dethrone theater queen
Bette Davis. Viewers feel drawn to the startled responses of the actresses’
mutual friends as they watch the challenge materialize.
The Bicycle Thief (1948). Filming in impoverished postwar Italy
on a minuscule budget, director Vittorio De Sica tells the realistic story
of a simple workingman whose job depends on his bicycle. When it is stolen,
his young son spends a fretful week trying to recover it. The film’s
fascinating, wry sequences were shot documentary-style on city streets
with a no-name cast. A tour de force.
Lawrence of Arabia (1962). The story of the legendary British World
War I soldier, T.E. Lawrence, who dressed as an Arab and gained Arab assistance
against Britain’s then-enemy Turkey. Leads Peter O’Toole, Alec
Guinness and Omar Sharif spent months in the Saharan heat on camels and
horses, blowing up railroads and troops. Enormous landscapes, enormous
action, enormous hit.
Broken Arrow (1950). Giant U.S. movie audiences during World War II
shriveled after 1945, until this film suddenly filled theaters. In this
pure Western, Indian agent Jimmy Stewart befriends Indian outlaw Cochise
(Jeff Chandler), becomes his blood brother and marries an Indian princess.
Then the Indian war breaks open. Readers, take pride! The film was directed
by Delmer Daves, ’26, and produced by Julian Blaustein, who later
headed film studies at Stanford.
Bud Lesser, class correspondent for 1936, is a third-generation
California film executive who served as an Oscar nominator for 14 years.
He produced feature films starring Guy Madison, Rory Calhoun, Louis Hayward
and Diana Dors, and the late 1950s TV series I Search for Adventure
and Bold Journey.
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