Memories of Hollywood and Washington by AFI Founder George Steven Jr.

The term “Hollywood royalty” is easy to understand, but few entertainment figures have a stronger claim to show business aristocracy than George Steven Jr., director, producer, screenwriter, playwright, and recipient of the American Film Institute and Kennedy. Center. differences. His father, George Stevens Sr., directed some of the most enduring classics of American cinema, including. lie in the sun s The greatest story of all time. All three grandparents were Tespion, including silent film actress Alice Howell, who played Charlie Chaplin. Her great-grandmother was Ophelia to Edwin Booth Hamlet. The neighbors of George Jr., who grew up in Toluca Lake, were Bing Crosby and Al Jolson. When he fell into the pool as a child, Johnny Weissmüller, Tarzan himself, rescued him from drowning.

In May, the 90-year-old multi-hypertensive can add an author to his resume. Steven memories, My Place in the Sun: Life in the Golden Age of Hollywood and Washington ($35, University of Kentucky Press) tells the story of his journey from Tinseltown to the county seat. The book is full of anecdotes, including the embarrassing showing of the film. marines come This prompted John F. Kennedy to say, “Tell Jack Warner to go get himself,” as well as stories of how he met everyone from Orson Welles and Catherine Hepburn to Barack Obama and Leslie Munoz.

As a young man, Stevens planned to become an athlete, but got involved in the family business when his father got a job reading scripts and reading books for Paramount. One of the books he took from the pile was Wild West Adventures. შენAnd he was regularly on the set of an adaptation of his father’s 1953 cult film. In the 1920s, Stevens himself directed the episodes. Introduced by Alfred Hitchcock s Peter GannyAmong other series.

Stevens continued his career on the road in his father’s shadow. “I thought I was going to dedicate my life to becoming the second best filmmaker in my family,” says Stevens. But in 1962, Edward R. Knowing Mirow set him on a different path. The respected network, which left CBS to head the United States News Agency (USAI), hired Stevens to raise the quality of the agency’s films in an effort to present American politics positively to a global audience. Stevens moved to DC, where he still lives, and produced about 300 short documentaries a year, including the Oscar-winning 1964 documentary. Nine Little RockOn the Arkansas High School Integration in 1957.

Beginning with the Kennedy administration, Stevens wondered not only what a movie could do for his country, but also what his country could do for a movie. He played a crucial role in the US government’s recognition and support of film, which at the time was considered a second-class art form. “I was very surprised at how the movie was stored on the page,” he said. It wasn’t uncommon for someone to say, “Okay, we never go to the movies.” There was a kind of snobbery about him. And of course I had a reason to feel different.” Stevens successfully lobbied for the film to be included in the National Endowment for the Arts, which was created in 1965 and has served as the founding director of AFI since that year. the Kennedy Center Honors from its inception in 1978 until the board (in search of new blood) toppled it in 2014 due to many concerns in the industry.

Stevens never left the family business. He produced two Emmy-winning miniseries in 1988. The Murder of Mary FaganWith Jack Lemon and 1991 separate but equalWith Sidney Poitier. Stevens later wrote the play Turgudi – On the first African-American Supreme Court justice, Turgud Marshall – Considering Poitiers. But when the actor admitted he was too old to remember a one-man show, Stevens took him to James Earl Jones, who played the role at the Westport County Playhouse, and then to Lawrence Fishburne, who took him to Broadway.

Since his mother, actress Yvonne Howell, lived to be 106, Stephen probably had a few more chapters to write. More recently, Stevens has assisted Steven Spielberg and Martin Scorsese in a 4K restoration of his father’s glorious work. GiantWhich premiered at the Turner Classic Movies Festival in Los Angeles in April.

After watching Hollywood transform for nine decades, Stevens says he still believes in the power and longevity of movies despite prevailing winds: “My dad was never very enthusiastic about the people who ran the studios. “And he said the only reason the film industry survived was because it was inviolable.”

A version of this story first appeared in the May 17 issue of The Gossipify. Click here to subscribe.