George Cukor

Born on July 7, 1899 in New York, George Dewey Cukor was the son of a Jewish couple of Hungarian origin. He inherited his passion for the show from her mother, who apparently liked to dress up to liven up her meetings with her friends, ladies from the New York bourgeoisie, for whom he used to impersonate famous actresses. Although young George began studying law in New York, he soon discovered that he was more into theater than law, and decided to drop out to join a Rochester comedy troupe. He starts out as an actor, but soon discovers his ability to direct other colleagues, which is why he ended up starting his own productions. In the early 1920s, he moved to the Broadway stage, where he chained one hit after another for a decade.

From 1929 the executives of the ‘majors’ were worried because the talkies were having a lot of success after the premiere of the historical The jazz singer . The companies set their sights on the theater, from which they mainly drew actors who knew how to recite texts and directors who knew how to guide them, such as Cukor, who was signed by Paramount, first as a dialogue writer and assistant director. Adolph Zukor himself, father of the company, personally commissioned him to undertake his first project as a director – together with Cyril Gardner . It is about Grumpy , from 1930, a failed melodrama based on a work by Horace Hodges . For Paramount he was also going to shoot An hour with you, but shortly after shooting began Cukor was fired and replaced by Ernst Lubitsch . He decided to put himself under the orders of his great friend, producer David O. Selznick , who he followed at RKO and MGM. The union gave rise to great titles like Hollywood Naked , Double Sacrifice , Temptation and Dinner at Eight . Ultimately, the two stopped speaking to each other when O’Selznick fired Cukor as director of Gone with the Wind .

Cukor became one of those artisans at the service of the producers. There were many like him (Hawks, Walsh, etc.) who in the golden age of Hollywood did not consider themselves authors, and yet they were capable of transforming any script into very personal masterpieces. “I am not an ‘author’ and it scares me that they want to apply that term to me. I never write my screenplays and I have too much respect for good writers to try to imitate them. I limit myself to making suggestions; Only on the set am I the boss,” said the director.

Declared homosexual, Cukor was given the label of ‘director of actresses’ that he never found very funny in life. And although it would be reductionist to speak only of Cukor for that reason, with him they achieved several of their best performances by actresses such as Greta Garbo , Katharine Hepburn or Joan Crawford . And there is no doubt that he solidly dealt with the female universe in great classics such as Margarita Gaultier , A Star Is Born , Dying Light , The Billionaire , The Woman with Two Faces , Little Women , The Girls , Born Yesterday ,A Blonde Phenomenon , Confidence as a Woman , The Actress , the musical My Fair Lady –for which he won his only Oscar, for Best Director– The Rich and Famous –his latest work– and Women , with which he took this facet to the extreme, since it starred only actresses. The fame that he specialized in women once played against him. For example, the aforementioned dismissal of Gone with the Wind was due – according to rumors – to Clark Gable fearing that he gave more importance to the female characters than his own.

The versatile Cukor also has great films starring male characters, such as Double Life , for which Ronald Colman won an Oscar for Best Actor, the adaptation of Charles Dickens ‘s novel David Copperfield (1935) , the western The Cheyenne Gunslinger , or the drama Edward, my son , where Spencer Tracy shines as an ambitious businessman who is overprotective of his son. He also directed Tracy in what are perhaps his best works with Katharine Hepburn, The Impetuous , The Sacred Flame , and above all the unforgettable Adam’s Rib, a subtle comedy about a married couple made up of a prosecutor and a lawyer who agree to represent both sides of the same case, which will bring them face to face in court.

When it comes to talking about Cukor’s comedies, it is necessary to refer to Live to enjoy , with Cary Grant and the aforementioned Katharine Hepburn, a close friend of the filmmaker, who had problems signing her for this film. Harry Cohn, the head of Columbia, completely refused to hire her because Variety magazine had published that Hepburn was “box office poison” due to a series of flops. Cukor finally convinced him, and thus he was able to shoot this acid portrait of high society. His best comedy on this subject is undoubtedly the legendary Philadelphia Story.–where Grant and Hepburn repeat–, which is one of the great titles of ‘screwball comedy’. It follows the adventures of a man from high society (Cary Grant), who, although he had a fight with his wife (Katharine Hepburn), tries to prevent her from marrying another man, while a journalist ( James Stewart ) and his partner cover the news.

A heart failure ended the filmmaker’s life on January 25, 1983, when he was 83 years old. Just a couple of years before, he had directed Rich and Famous , the culmination of a filmography of more than fifty titles.