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Albert Zugsmith's Opium Dreams
Any fair assessment of Albert Zugsmith should begin with the fact that once upon a time in Hollywood, in a brief period lasting from 1956 through 1958, this man produced at least four genre masterpieces: Jack Arnold's The Incredible Shrinking Man, Douglas Sirk's Written on the Wind and The Tarnished Angels, and Orson Welles' Touch of Evil. "Zug" not only provided the climate in which these strange flowers grew; in most cases it was he who originated the projects. It was a remarkable achievement, one that any producer could be proud of. But was he honored for it? Did the Academy shower him with awards? Hardly.
Hollywood preferred to view Zugsmith as an exploitation filmmaker, one who was all too willing to capitalize on unwholesome subject matter — miscegenation, drug abuse, disturbed sexuality — in a word, the FORBIDDEN. In those days the arbiters of taste rarely considered that sleaze could coexist on the same plane as visual fluency and high artistic expression. Indeed, what can one say about a producer who voluntarily made no less than seven films with Mamie Van Doren? Only, as Dietrich says at the end of Touch of Evil, that he was "some kind of man."
Albert Zugsmith was born on April 24, 1910, in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and educated at the University of Virginia. He worked as a newspaper reporter and editor while still in his teens and eventually became the owner and manager of several newspapers, and radio and television stations. A man of diverse interests, he was also the New York attorney who represented the writer/artist team of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster in their 1948 lawsuit against D.C. Comics over profits generated by the Superman character. By the early '50s, "I had enough money to do what I pleased," and what it pleased Zug to do was to enter the world of motion picture production. In 1952 at RKO, under the auspices of Howard Hughes, Zug produced his first film, an hysterical anti-communist fantasy called Invasion U.S.A. Other early projects included Top Banana (1952), an independent production adapted from a Phil Silvers stage hit, shot (but not shown) in 3-D, and Paris Model (Columbia 1953) starring Eva Gabor. The Square Jungle (1955), a boxing film, began Zug's six-year association with Universal Studios and its production head, Eddie Muhl. At Universal, Zug made women's films (Female on the Beach), science fiction (The Incredible Shrinking Man), and westerns (Star in the Dust), but the genre to which he gravitated most regularly was film noir (Slaughter on Tenth Avenue, The Tattered Dress). He brought Douglas Sirk the story that became Written on the Wind starring Rock Hudson, Robert Stack, and Dorothy Malone. That film was so successful that Sirk proposed to Zugsmith that they adapt William Faulkner's Pylon to the screen (The Tarnished Angels) starring the same three principals.
Zug cast Orson Welles as the racist ranch owner in Man in the Shadow (1957), a contemporary noir western directed by Jack Arnold. During the shooting of the film, Welles and Zugsmith became drinking buddies. Welles asked Zug if he could direct one of Zug's unproduced projects. Zug handed Welles a Paul Monash script called Badge of Evil. That script, rewritten, became Touch of Evil, Zug and Welles' noir masterpiece, and the first and only film Welles directed for an American studio after the late 1940s.
1958 was clearly Zug's peak year, with Touch of Evil and The Tarnished Angels both shooting on adjoining sound stages at the Universal lot. That same year MGM hired him to produce a series of teen-pics including the remarkable High School Confidential! (Jack Arnold), The Beat Generation, and Girls' Town. For MGM, Zug also produced two noir social dramas, The Big Operator, with Mickey Rooney as a Hoffa-like labor leader, and Night of the Quarter Moon (Hugo Haas).
By 1961, the power of Zug's patron at Universal, Eddie Muhl, had considerably diminished. Zug produced one last film at Universal, the sex comedy The Private Lives of Adam and Eve, which he also directed. Adam and Eve was promptly condemned by the Catholic Legion of Decency — the kiss of death at the time. Thus ended Albert Zugsmith's association with the major studios.
In 1961 and '62, Zug directed two films for Allied Artists, Dondi, a family-oriented film, and Confessions of an Opium Eater aka Souls for Sale. Throughout the rest of the decade, the films he produced or directed, including the disastrous Fanny Hill (Russ Meyer) and Movie Star American Style (Zugsmith), were low-budget independent productions, often shot outside the United States. The last films he directed, e.g., Two Roses and a Golden Rod (1969), were softcore porn.
Among his peers, the filmmaker Zug most resembles is Sam Fuller. Like Fuller, Zug had a background in journalism — the films of both men have the immediacy of tabloids. Like Fuller, he was attracted to exotic subject matter that revealed the dark side of the American Dream. Zug was also a genuine auteur, as demonstrated by the themes and motifs that recur obsessively in the films he produced, directed, and/or wrote.
BLONDES IN CONVERTIBLES
The Blonde — hair blowing in the wind, image of unbridled, aggressive feminine sexuality. The Convertible — symbol of America's postwar affluence. Together, they embody the threat and promise of a New Age. In Written on the Wind, wealthy Marylee Hadley (Dorothy Malone) tools around her father's oil fields in a red sportscar. Similar images of beautiful Elaine Stewart driving her convertible open The Tattered Dress (Arnold, 1957). The famous tracking shot that opens Touch of Evil follows a wealthy contractor and his blonde mistress as they drive a convertible toward an explosive end. Later, in the same film, platinum-haired Janet Leigh is driven by convertible to a motel where she will be drugged and raped. In Girls' Town, a bleached-blonde Elinor Donahue drag-races in a convertible driven by Mel Torme. The deliberately absurd image that concludes High School Confidential! has undercover cop Russ Tamblyn sharing a convertible with a blonde trio — Jan Sterling, Diane Jergens, and Mamie Van Doren.
THE MENACE
More often than not, Zug's films are about some menace to society at large, generally reflecting the headlines of the time. In Invasion U.S.A. (1958) and The Girl in the Kremlin (1957), it was communism. Fallout and chemical pollution trigger The Incredible Shrinking Man. Racism haunts Man in the Shadow, Touch of Evil, and Night of the Quarter Moon. High School Confidential! is about dope pushers who target high school students, while College Confidential confronts changing sexual mores. Corrupt labor is the subject of The Big Operator, while Movie Star American Style deals — comically — with the "psychedelic revolution." Even Confessions of an Opium Eater, a period film, deals with the social injustice of Asian women abducted and sold into slavery.
ABUSES OF THE LAW
Most likely, it was Zug's background as an attorney that drew him so often to stories of frame-ups, false accusations, and abuses by officers of the law. In Written on the Wind, Rock Hudson's character is falsely accused of murder. In The Tattered Dress, a local sheriff (Jack Carson) frames attorney Jeff Chandler for jury tampering. Touch of Evil's Detective Quinlan has built his entire career on the planting of false evidence. In College Confidential, a professor (Steve Allen) is falsely accused of showing pornography to his students, based on evidence planted by the local magistrate.
DRUGS
Alcohol in Written on the Wind. Alcohol, marijuana, and heroin in Touch of Evil. Marijuana and heroin in High School Confidential!. Opium in Confessions of an Opium Eater. LSD in Movie Star American Style aka LSD, I Hate You.
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