Walter Wanger

1931–1932: Columbia

After he left Paramount, Wanger attempted to become an independent film producer but was unable to secure financing. In December 1931, Wanger joined Columbia Pictures when Harry Cohn, the studio's co-founder, had wanted to improve his studio's prestige from its Poverty Row past by producing special, large-budget productions each year to complement the bulk of the studio's low-budget films.

Hired as a vice president, Wanger worked in Columbia's New York story department, where he searched through literary material to adapt into films. At Wanger's insistence, they interviewed and hired inexperienced writers, one of which was Dore Schary. Within three months, he signed playwrights S. N. Behrman and Preston Sturges, and actors Bryan Foy, Bert Wheeler, and Robert Woolsey to Columbia. Also, he instituted a profit-sharing system to reduce production costs and sign non-contracted talents to Columbia.

In April 1932, Cohn asked Wanger to move to Hollywood as a production supervisor. There, Wanger acquired the screen rights to Grace Zaring Stone's 1930 novel The Bitter Tea of General Yen. Herbert Brenon was hired to direct the adaptation, but he quit Columbia because of the profit-sharing contract. Frank Capra took over as director, so Wanger consented provided he received screen credit as the producer. Released in January 1933, the film lost money because it was banned in the United Kingdom and the British Commonwealth due to its racial subject matter.

Inspired by the politically themed films, Wanger turned his attention to producing a political drama. Adapted from the novel Robert Sharon Allen and Drew Pearson, Wanger produced Washington Merry-Go-Round (1932). The film depicts Button Gwinnett Brown, a young congressman, whose campaign was supported by Prohibition bootleggers, who arrives to rid Washington, D.C. of corruption while he courts Alice Wylie, a senator's daughter. Released one month before the 1932 presidential election, the film earned favorable reviews from critics. Prior to the film's success, in August 1932, Wanger's contract with Columbia was renewed. Shortly after, Jack Cohn blocked his brother Harry's nomination of Wanger to Columbia's board of directors. Columbia later closed the New York story department, and Wanger decided to leave.

1933–1934: MGM

In December 1932, Wanger turned down an invitation from David O. Selznick to join RKO Radio Pictures. Instead, he accepted Irving Thalberg's offer to join MGM. In January 1933, Wanger was open to producing another political melodrama. He asked MGM's story editor Samuel Marx to purchase the film rights to the novel Gabriel Over the White House by Thomas F. Tweed. The film starred Walter Huston as U.S. President Judson "Judd" Hammond, who has a near-fatal automobile accident and becomes a benevolent dictator under the divine influence of the archangel Gabriel. Eventually, he resolves the nation's crises and achieves world peace before he dies. Wanger decided not to receive screen credit, following Thalberg's mantra: "Credit you give yourself is not worth having."

In October 1932, Thalberg hired Bess Meredyth to collaborate with Salka Viertel on Queen Christina (1933), a biopic of the Queen of Sweden starring Greta Garbo. After Meredyth and Viertel submitted their third draft, Wanger hired several screenwriters Ernest Vajda, H. M. Harwood, and Joseph L. Mankiewicz to drastically rewrite it. At Garbo's request, Rouben Mamoulian was hired to direct the film. Near the end of production, Mayer objected to the film's ending, but Mamoulian and Wanger supported it. The ending was notably similar to the conclusion of The Bitter Tea of General Yen.

Before the film's release, Joseph Breen of the newly formed Production Code Administration (PCA) objected to one bedroom scene featuring Christina and her lover Antonio Pimentel de Prado after they had spent the night together in a country inn. Wanger refused to alter the scene, and in violation of the Code, the scene was sent to a jury of producers to decide. Representatives from RKO, Universal, and Fox agreed that no further cuts should be made.

Wanger next produced Another Language (1933). As filming for Queen Christina concluded, Wanger produced Going Hollywood (1933), which starred Marion Davies and Bing Crosby. For his follow-up project with Davies, Wanger and Raoul Walsh had creative differences with William Randolph Hearst. Ten days into filming, Hearst fired them both. Before he resigned MGM in May 1934, he supervised the script completion for Stamboul Quest (1934) and Vanessa: Her Love Story (1935). Wanger's resignation was due to his personal conflicts with Louis B. Mayer, and in his own words, "too much interference" from associate film producers. That same month, Variety reported that Wanger would become an independent film producer.

1934–1936: Independent producer for Paramount Pictures

During the summer of 1934, Wanger and Jay Paley, the uncle of CBS president William S. Paley, formed JayPay Productions. They planned to produce four films in one year, which would be financed by selling $800,000 (nearly $19.9 million in 2026) of private stock to themselves and their immediate family. JayPay signed with Paramount, in which they would receive 65 percent of the profits while Paramount, as the distributor, would receive 35 percent.

Paramount wanted JayPay to have their first film ready by November 1934. Therefore, Wanger fast-tracked The President Vanishes (1934), which he considered as the third installment of his "trilogy of political productions." The film tells of President Craig Stanley, a noninterventionist, who disregards pressure from Congress to engage in a European war. When President Stanley is late for a congressional meeting, it is feared that he has been kidnapped, and a conspiracy unravels. Due in part to the film's depiction of corrupt businessmen, Wanger again faced opposition from the Production Code Association, led by Joseph Breen. Contractually obligated to have Paramount make censorship changes, one phrase which read "Join the Communist Party" was removed, though another phrase "capitalist bloodsuckers" was kept in the final film.

Having triumphed over the PCA, journalist Frank S. Nugent observed Wanger "still burns with a crusader's zeal to go out and break up this entire censorship business. He was not reticent in expressing his opinion of film censorship and, being hot-eyed with combat, those opinions, if reduced to paper, would reduce that paper to ashes." Released in December 1934, The President Vanishes received positive reviews. Andre Sennwald of The New York Times wrote the film was "an exciting example of the topical cinema, a racy and biting melodrama which assaults the war-makers with picturesque violence."

JayPay Productions was later renamed Walter Wanger Productions, with its company logo adorned with an eagle. For his next production Private Worlds (1935), Wanger cast Claudette Colbert, Charles Boyer, and his future wife Joan Bennett. Before the film's release, Paley left Wanger Productions in March 1935, frustrated by Paramount's share of the profits and The President Vanishes failing to recoup its production costs. Regardless, Wanger was promoted to a unit producer within Paramount.

Impressed with the 1934 film La Cucaracha, Wanger embraced the "three-strip" Technicolor film process with The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1936). Departing from his usual productions filmed at the General Service Studios, Wanger decided to shoot on location at Big Bear Lake in southern California. While his productions with Paramount were box office successes, Wanger retained only $50,000 in profit for his independent studio. Despite Paramount's request, he decided to leave the studio.

1936–1938: United Artists

In July 1936, Wanger signed a ten-year contract with United Artists (UA) to produce films independently, relocating his production unit to the studio lot. As the "executive producer in charge of production," Wanger approved the marketing campaigns for his films and exercised his right to negotiate with theater exhibitors to distribute films singly rather than block booking. At the time he signed with UA, Wanger had seven films in development—You Only Live Once (1937), Walter Wanger's Vogues of 1938 (1937), History Is Made at Night (1937), Arabian Nights (1942), A Woman Loves Once, Desert Intrigue, and an adaptation of Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights. His roster of contracted actors included Joan Bennett, Charles Boyer, Madeleine Carroll, Henry Fonda, and Sylvia Sidney.

One month later, in August 1936, Wanger signed Fritz Lang direct You Only Live Once, which starred Fonda and Sidney. According to Sidney, the genesis came from a chance encounter between her and Wanger seated at the table, and Theodore Dreiser. At the time, Dreiser was researching Bonnie and Clyde for a magazine story and commented that if anyone ever made a film about the bank robbers, Sidney would be perfect to portray Bonnie Parker.

Years earlier, Sidney had starred in Mary Burns, Fugitive (1935), which told of a small-town coffee shop owner who falls in love with a handsome customer, unaware that he is a wanted fugitive. Wanger had produced the film at Paramount and hired screenwriters Gene Towne and Charles Graham Baker to write You Only Live Once. The new scenario involved a paroled inmate named Eddie Taylor who attempts to go straight. Married to Joan Graham, a secretary in a public defender's office, Eddie fails to land a steady job. Accused of driving a getaway car for bank robbers, Eddie pleads his innocence but is found guilty. Joan believes in her husband's innocence, breaks him out of jail, and they go on the run from the police.

Because of his success with Fury (1936), Wanger assured Lang his creative autonomy and refused to allow outside tampering with the footage during the editing process. Principal photography began in September 1936 and wrapped 15 days of retakes, which totaled 46 days of filming. When You Only Live Once was released in January 1937, the critical reception was positive, with Fonda's performance being universally applauded by film critics. However, it failed to break even at the box office.

For History Is Made at Night, Wanger hired Frank Borzage as director and reteamed with Towne and Baker to write the script. Production went ahead without a completed script on November 4, 1936. A romantic comedy-drama, Colin Clive portrays a jealous ex-husband who is determined to win back his wealthy divorcée (Jean Arthur) who falls for a charming Parisian (Charles Boyer). Wanger had cast Boyer based on his performance in The Garden of Allah (1936) while Arthur replaced Madeleine Carroll. Filming lasted until December 30, 1936.

After History Is Made at Night, Wanger released a follow-up titled Stand-In (1937) directed by Tay Garnett. A satire of Hollywood, Leslie Howard played a humorless accountant sent to save a floundering movie studio whose chief assets appear to be a hotheaded producer (Humphrey Bogart) and an attractive stand-in (Joan Blondell). Wanger and Garnett reteamed for the 1938 screwball comedy Trade Winds, which centered on a detective (Fredric March) as he chases a murder suspect (Joan Bennett) from San Francisco to Asia.

Wanger produced Blockade in 1938, the first major Hollywood feature film to depict the Spanish Civil War. A year earlier, the production was scheduled to begin filming as The River Is Blue and directed by Lewis Milestone, based on a script by playwright Clifford Odets. However, it was postponed when Wanger and Milestone disagreed over the casting. Wanger revived the project and hired John Howard Lawson, who envisioned a new story about a peasant's involvement with the Spanish Republicans against Francisco Franco's Nationalist insurgency when they enforce a blockade against their town.

Directed by William Dieterle, and starring Henry Fonda and Madeleine Carroll, Blockade generated controversy from the Production Code Association, which demanded rewrites to remove references to the Italian and German-backed Francoists. The film was condemned by the Catholic Church and various U.S. Catholic organizations including the Knights of Columbus within the New York City Council, all of whom supported Franco. The Knights of Columbus characterized the film as an "excursion of the motion-picture industry into the field of Leftist propaganda." They organized protests and proceeded on a measure to have the film banned in Boston. Blockade was ultimately banned in Somerville, Massachusetts.

In response, Wanger defended the project as a humanitarian plea against war's atrocities, reflecting his growing alarm over European fascism. Despite the protests, Blockade was successful at the Loew's State Theatre and the Orpheum, both in Boston. On the other hand, Fox–West Coast Theatres refused to book the film for its first-run engagements and was widely banned abroad.

In January 1938, Wanger purchased the distribution rights to the French film Pépé le Moko, starring Jean Gabin, and pursued a remake in which he bought all prints of the film to prevent it from competing with his film in the United States. When the first draft of the script was submitted to the PCA, Joseph Breen wrote back to Wanger that it was not acceptable as the film's two central female characters were "kept women". To tone down the script, Wanger hired James M. Cain to rewrite the first twenty minutes and later John Howard Lawson to intensify the central romance.

Retitled Algiers (1938), Charles Boyer starred as Pepe le Moko who falls for Gaby, a Parisian woman, portrayed by Hedy Lamarr, whom Wanger borrowed from MGM. Initially, Sylvia Sidney was considered for Gaby but after Lamarr was cast, she was again considered for the role of Ines. However, Sidney declined the part and Sigrid Gurie was cast. Released during the summer of 1938, Algiers was praised for the performances of Boyer and Lamarr.

By the end of 1938, Wanger's unit had released seven films, yet only two films returned a profit. The musical revue Walter Wanger's Vogues of 1938 went over budget, costing $1.4 million. Due in part to Wanger's disregard for budgets, his unit ran $640,000 in considerable debt to United Artists, Consolidated Film Industries, and the Bank of America. Most of the financial overhead was due to the actors' salaries. Eager to keep Wanger's unit financially solvent, UA permitted Wanger to borrow $2 million from the Bank of America to finance his next slate of films.

1939–1945: Continued success, president of the Motion Picture Academy

In 1937, director John Ford purchased the screen rights to Ernest Haycox's short story "The Stage to Lordsburg." During the summer of 1938, Ford approached Wanger about the project. Wanger read the story and approved Ford's decision to hire Dudley Nichols to adapt the script, although he was apprehensive about Ford's decision to cast John Wayne as the Ringo Kid. Ford tested other actors out of courtesy to Wanger, but Ford stuck with Wayne. Nevertheless, at Wanger's insistence, Ford cast Louise Platt, a contract actress who had appeared in Wanger's earlier production I Met My Love Again (1938). Filmed in Monument Valley during the fall and winter of 1938, Wanger favored a hands-off approach.

Released in 1939, Stagecoach received universal acclaim from film critics. Variety called the film "[a] sweeping and powerful drama of the American frontier." It grossed $1.1 million at the domestic box office, and returned a net profit of $300,000. The film received seven Academy Awards nominations, including for Best Picture. It won two for Best Supporting Actor (Thomas Mitchell) and Best Scoring.

1946–1950: Financial difficulties

Their follow-up project Secret Beyond the Door (1947) fared less successfully, in which it went over schedule and over budget. Released in January 1948, the film received the worst reviews of Lang's career at that point. Bennett and Wanger departed from Diana Productions, and Wanger later moved to Eagle-Lion Films. In October 1947, Wanger signed with Eagle-Lion to produce four films a year, and was made a shareholder within Pathé Industries, Eagle-Lion's parent company. His contract also extended Wanger's contract with actress Susan Hayward. Earlier, in 1945, Wanger had placed her under a seven-year contract. Hayward was cast in Canyon Passage (1946), Smash-Up, the Story of a Woman (1947) and The Lost Moment (1947).