Charles Lederer

Charles Davies Lederer (December 31, 1910 – March 5, 1976) was an American screenwriter and film director. He was born into a theatrical family in New York, and after his parents divorced, was raised in California by his aunt, Marion Davies, actress and mistress to newspaper publisher William Randolph Hearst. A child prodigy, he entered the University of California, Berkeley at age 13, but dropped out after a few years to work as a journalist with Hearst's newspapers.

Lederer is recognized for his comic and acerbic adaptations and collaborative screenplays of the 1940s and early 1950s. His screenplays frequently delved into the corrosive influences of wealth and power. His comedy writing was considered among the best of the period, and he, along with writer friends Ben Hecht and Herman Mankiewicz, became major contributors to the film genre known as "screwball comedy".

Among his notable screenplays which he wrote or co-wrote, were The Front Page (1931), the critically acclaimed His Girl Friday (1940), Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), The Spirit of St. Louis (1957), Ocean's 11 (1960), and Mutiny on the Bounty (1962).

Early life Charles Davies Lederer was born in New York City to two prominent figures in the American theater, Broadway producer George Lederer and singer Reine Davies. After his parents were separated, Lederer and his older sister Pepi moved to California and were raised by his mother's sister, actress Marion Davies. He grew up in Hollywood, spending much time at San Simeon, the "enchanted castle on the hill", where his aunt reigned as publisher William Randolph Hearst's mistress. He was a child prodigy and was admitted to UC Berkeley at the age of 13, but dropped out a few years later to work as a journalist for Hearst's newspapers.

According to biographer William MacAdams, "Hollywood was home to Lederer, where for most people it was a place they moved to in order to work for the movies. Virtually none of the film community had grown up in Los Angeles, but Lederer had been brought there when he was 11 by Marion Davies, his mother's sister... Lederer thus knew the movie colony inside out as seen from the top and wasn’t impressed ..."

Screenwriting career When he was 19, Lederer became friends with Ben Hecht, who introduced him to the New York literati. His friendship with Hecht led to his being hired to write additional dialogue for the film The Front Page. He later moved back to Hollywood to become a full-time screenwriter.

Lederer is recognized for his acerbic wit, with adaptations and collaborative screenplays written mostly during the 1940s and early 1950s. His screenplays frequently delved into the corrosive influences of wealth and power. His comedy writing was also among the best of the period, and he, along with Hecht and Herman Mankiewicz became major contributors to the film genre known as "screwball comedy".

He was friends with screenwriters Joseph and Herman Mankiewicz. Herman would later become co-screenwriter of Citizen Kane. After becoming friends with Lederer, "Herman told Joe to come to the office of their mutual friend Charlie Lederer ... " Herman, who met Hearst as a result of his friendship with Lederer, later "saw Hearst as ‘a finagling, calculating, Machiavellian figure.’ But also, with Charlie Lederer... wrote and had printed parodies of Hearst newspapers ..."

After finishing the script for Citizen Kane, Mankiewicz gave a copy to Lederer, which Kael explains was foolish: quote|He was so proud of his script that he lent a copy to Charles Lederer. In some crazily naive way, Mankiewicz seems to have imagined that Lederer would be pleased by how good it was. But Lederer, apparently, was deeply upset and took the script to his aunt and Hearst. It went from them to Hearst's lawyers. . . . It was probably as a result of Mankiewicz's idiotic indiscretion that the various forces were set in motion that resulted in the cancellation of the premiere at the Radio City Music Hall [and] the commercial failure of Citizen Kane. At the suggestion of the film's director, Howard Hawks, Lederer changed the sex of the lead character in the play, Hildy Johnson, from male to female.

Lederer's father, George Lederer, produced her first film, Runaway Romany. Hearst, who at that time had not known Davies, saw the film and offered Davies a one-year acting contract, leading to their future relationship and further roles for Davies. During another summer trip to Europe in 1934, Hearst and Davies considered having Lederer write a scenario for a movie project called Movie Queen, a proposed film and vehicle for Davies that had been discussed in Hollywood. Hearst also asked Lederer to help rewrite the script for another Davies film, Hearts Divided (1936), which he did without credit. Lederer, at the time, was a "good friend" of Welles, notes Welles biographer Peter Bogdanovich According to Guiles, "she married Charlie… coming back to the Lederer home on Bedford Drive [in Los Angeles] with her young daughter, Chris, Welles’ first-born child.”

Lederer's second wife was actress Anne Shirley whom he married in 1949.

Friendships

Orson Welles Welles biographer Barbara Leaming states that after Lederer married Welles's first wife in 1940, "earnestly trying to protect the best interests of Virginia and particularly of his daughter Chris, Lederer had angry run-ins with Orson, whom he accused of not living up to the divorce settlement. Now, in the unlikeliest of turnarounds, Orson and the witty, intelligent Lederer became great chums." Welles himself said of the Lederers, "I liked them together," and he soon entered into a friendly relationship that he describes as a "strange design for living at the beach."

Welles became famous in the movie world after the release of Citizen Kane in 1941, a story based in part on the life of William Randolph Hearst. The story attempts to solve the mystery of newspaper publisher Charles Foster Kane's last dying word: "Rosebud". Film critic David Thomson calls the word "the greatest secret in cinema." In 1989, author Gore Vidal disclosed that "Rosebud" was in fact a nickname which Hearst playfully used for the clitoris of his mistress, Marion Davies. Vidal said that Davies told this intimate detail to Lederer, who mentioned it to him. The claim about the meaning of "Rosebud" was repeated in the 1996 documentary The Battle Over Citizen Kane and again in the 1999 dramatic film RKO 281.

Years later, after Welles's second marriage to actress Rita Hayworth ended in 1948, he moved to a beach house next door to the palatial Marion Davies estate where his first wife Virginia and Lederer, her husband, resided.

quote|He seemed to be great pals with my stepfather, Charlie Lederer. No one observing them together would have guessed that my mother and Charlie had sued my father for an increase in my child support. . . . Mother and Charlie had given up, and so it was back to "Orson, darling!" and a daily invitation to join them in the ritual of martinis on the front porch at sunset. He was more likely to arrive unannounced and then madden the cook by staying for lunch or dinner. Always casually dressed in summer slacks and an open shirt, he behaved as though he were a member of our household, coming and going as he pleased with no need to give an account of himself. There were also awkward periods that Welles remembers:

Final years According to Mankiewicz' biographer Richard Meryman, Lederer "isolated himself in his last years, contorted from arthritis, addicted to narcotics." He died in 1976, aged sixty-five.

Filmography

Writer

Kiss of Death (1995) (1947 screenplay) Kismet (1967) (TV) (musical libretto) A Global Affair (1964) (writer) Mutiny on the Bounty (1962) (screenplay) Follow That Dream (1962) (writer) Ocean's 11 (1960) (screenplay) Can-Can (1960) (screenplay) It Started with a Kiss (1959) (writer) Never Steal Anything Small (1959) (writer) The Fiend Who Walked the West (1958) Tip on a Dead Jockey (1957) (writer) The Spirit of St. Louis (1957) (adaptation) Gaby (1956) (writer) Kismet (1955) (musical libretto) (screenplay) Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) (screenplay) O. Henry's Full House (1952) (uncredited) Monkey Business (1952) (screenplay) Fearless Fagan (1952) (writer) The Thing (1951) (writer)

Wabash Avenue (1950) (screenplay) (story) Red, Hot and Blue (1949) (story) I Was a Male War Bride (1949) (screenplay) The Lady from Shanghai (1947) (uncredited) Her Husband's Affairs (1947) (writer) Ride the Pink Horse (1947) (writer) Kiss of Death (1947) (screenplay) Slightly Dangerous (1943) (screenplay) The Youngest Profession (1943) (screenplay) Love Crazy (1941) (screenplay) Comrade X (1940) (screenplay) I Love You Again (1940) (screenplay) His Girl Friday (1940) (screenplay) Broadway Serenade (1939) (screenplay) Within the Law (1939) (screenplay) Double or Nothing (1937) (writer) Mountain Music (1937) (writer) Baby Face Harrington (1935) (additional dialogue) Cock of the Air (1932) (writer) The Front Page (1931) (additional dialogue)

Director Never Steal Anything Small (1959) On the Loose (1951) Fingers at the Window (1942)

Actor City Lights (1931) (In unused scene) Telegraph Delivery Boy, included in 1983 Unknown Chaplin documentary.