Richard Brooks - Writing and Directing at MGM

Writing and Directing At MGM

Success as a screenwriter with Hellinger and Warner Brothers led Brooks to a contract with MGM and the promise of a chance to direct a film. He wrote two screenplays for the studio before he was given the opportunity to direct. His first film as writer and director, Crisis (1950), starred Cary Grant as a brain surgeon forced to save the life of a South American dictator, played by José Ferrer. His second film, The Light Touch (1951), starring Stewart Granger, was a caper film about art thieves and was shot in Italy.

Brooks came into his own when he directed an original screenplay, Deadline – U.S.A. (1952), a 20th Century-Fox film that starred his friend Humphrey Bogart. Based on the closing of the New York World, the film was part gangster picture, part newspaper drama. At its core was an issue Brooks cared about: the consolidation of the newspaper industry and its impact on the diversity of voices in the press. The film remains one of the more highly regarded dramas about American newspapers.

Brooks directed four more films before achieving an unqualified hit with Blackboard Jungle (1955) starring Glenn Ford. Based on a best-seller by Evan Hunter, the film was shocking for its time in its presentation of juvenile delinquency. It also offered a career-making supporting role for a young black actor, Sidney Poitier, and early roles for actors Vic Morrow, Jamie Farr and Paul Mazursky, later a writer and director. Brooks chose to begin and end the film with the song "Rock Around the Clock", thus bringing rock ‘n’ roll to a major Hollywood production for the first time and sparking a No. 1 hit for Bill Haley and the Comets. Blackboard Jungle also brought Brooks his first Oscar nomination, for its screenplay, and was MGM’s top moneymaker that year.

That success gave Brooks more freedom at MGM, but he recognized he would not have complete control of his films while under contract. He stayed away from writing original screenplays and focused on adaptations of best-sellers or classic novels. He later noted that adapting a novel gave him a head start on developing the story structure required for a screenplay.

He spent the rest of the decade at MGM, his most notable film an adaptation of the Tennessee Williams sexually charged play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958). A huge hit for MGM – it drew more money and a larger audience than any other film Brooks ever directed – the film re-energized the career of Elizabeth Taylor and made a star of Paul Newman. It also brought Brooks his first Oscar nomination for directing and the first Best Picture nomination for a film he had directed.