Richard Brooks - Character

Character

No matter what the medium – newspapers, radio, novels, film – Brooks considered himself a storyteller. As important to him, he believed his work should be and was truthful at its core. He also sought to use film as well as other media to say something he believed was important. While his films were easily categorized by genre and were most often based on another writer’s story, his screenplays often became vehicles for a message he wanted to offer to audiences.

Brooks hated bigotry, which was a central theme of his novel The Brick Foxhole, his co-written screenplay for Storm Warning (1951) and his first western, The Last Hunt (1956). Racial division and reconciliation was also at the heart of Something of Value (1957). He saw Blackboard Jungle as encouraging teachers to continue striving to help their students and as reassuring them that they can make a difference. Opposed to the death penalty, he used In Cold Blood to suggest that executing criminals solves nothing and only creates more violence.

While he worked in the studio system for most of the 1940s and 1950’s, Brooks often clashed with studio policies about the look and feel of films and the stories they presented. He also chafed against the Production Code’s limitations on subject matter and expression. His goal as a filmmaker was total control of a production, and he achieved that with most films after the success of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. The failure of Lord Jim threatened that independence. Brooks responded by becoming a fast and efficient filmmaker, operating with a tight budget and often forgoing a high up-front salary in exchange for a guarantee of control.

Brooks was developing a reputation as a hard-driving, difficult and perpetually angry man as early as his tenure with radio station WNEW in the late 1930s. He was not averse to quitting a job when in conflict with those in charge—as he did while directing at the Mill Pond Theater in 1940 and writing for Universal in 1943. At MGM he was known for almost daily eruptions of anger, often aimed at his crew and sometimes at his cast. That did not change even after he was the producer of his films, and he was known throughout the industry as a talented filmmaker yet a difficult man to deal with. Many people also found him trustworthy, generous and loyal and thought his temperament was a way of blowing off steam as well as fending off those who wanted to diminish his creative power or try to control him.

Brooks was much the same way in his personal life. He readily acknowledged that he was a trying husband and that his work was the most important activity in his life. He was not interested in Hollywood’s social scene, preferring to entertain guests at his home with tennis and movies when he wasn’t working on screenplays or other projects. Yet his wife Jean Simmons found him to be a humorous, stimulating husband and a loving father to their daughters. But from all accounts, he was a 'tough as nails' father as well.

Richard Brooks was one of the relatively few filmmakers whose careers bridged the transition from the classic studio system to the independent productions that marked the 1960s and beyond. He was also among the postwar writer-directors who made some of their best films as they struggled to break free of industry censorship. His legacy is that of a filmmaker who sought independence in a collaborative art and tried to bring his own vision to the screen.