Rouben Mamoulian

Some people have legacies larger than you might expect given their actual output. Making twenty-one movies over nearly forty years, even counting the ones you were fired from, is not that noteworthy in the Golden Age of Hollywood. There are directors who have easily twice as many credits in that time. Actors, too, of course, but even the directors tended to work faster in those days. There was no room in the studio system for a Terence Malick, is what I’m saying. But honestly there wasn’t entirely room for a Rouben Mamoulian, either.

Mamoulian was born in what is now Tblisi, Georgia, of Armenian descent—as is obvious from the last name. As a child, he already spoke three languages—Russian, Armenian, and Georgian. His father was a bank president. The family fled to Paris for three years due to the First Russian Revolution, where Mamoulian learned French. His father wanted him to be a lawyer; he wanted to be a writer or on the stage. In 1917, they fled again. George Eastman, of all people, invited Mamoulian to become co-director of the American Opera Company.

Mamoulian’s first directorial credit is “The Flute of Krishna,” an early experimental two-strip colour film from Eastman-Kodak. It was a filming of a Martha Graham-choreographed dance. It seems to have been the thing that clinched Mamoulian’s love of film. He continued directing for the stage, including directing some huge hits for Rodgers and Hammerstein—Carousel and Oklahoma!, for the curious—but the possibilities of film directing were obvious.

He would be a worthy historical footnote if the only other film he’d directed was Becky Sharp, the first-ever three-strip Technicolor feature film. I haven’t seen it, but obviously it’s significant in the history of cinema. Mamoulian was probably chosen to direct it because of his association with Eastman-Kodak, but he had also already made some stone-cold classics. His version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde is iconic, having the advantage of being pre-Code, and of course there’s Love Me Tonight with Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald and City Streets with Gary Cooper.

I don’t know why he was fired from Laura; probably it’s just that Otto Preminger wanted to do it himself. He was fired from Cleopatra, which would have been his last film. His actual last film was Silk Stockings, the musical version of Ninotchka, which he did not himself much like. He’d be much happier to know he was remembered for Queen Christina, as indeed who would not. I’d also like to note that apparently he considered cats good luck and put them in all his movies, because that’s adorable.