CO-HOST JAMIE RICHARDSON: The JFK 35 podcast is made possible through generous support from the Blanche & Irving Laurie Foundation.
[PODCAST INTRO BEGINS]
[THEME MUSIC PLAYING]
GEORGE STEVENS JR.: It was a very important government agency. It was then folded into the State Department in the late '90s. And one wonders today whether the President of the United States wouldn't benefit from having that kind of an instrument at his hands as we try to communicate in a very complex world.
CO-HOST MATT PORTER: In the early '60s, George Stevens Jr. led the Motion Picture Services of the US Information Agency. The agency was tasked with documenting US activities at home and abroad for international audiences. The effort was part of a diplomatic strategy to share America's values and priorities to viewers around the globe. We talk with Stevens' about his work at USIA, some of which reached the highest critical acclaim, and why he thought the agency was crucial for US foreign relations. Next on JFK35.
PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY: And so my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. [CHEERING AND APPLAUSE]
[PODCAST INTRO ENDS]
MATT PORTER: Hello, I'm Matt Porter. Welcome to JFK35. When John F. Kennedy took office in 1961, he appointed well-respected journalist and broadcaster Edward R. Murrow to lead the United States Information Agency. The agency was young, established by President Dwight D. Eisenhower as a way to spread America's ideals internationally through journalistic entities supported by the US government.
Those entities included the Voice of America, which still exists today, a Foreign Press Service, and a Motion Picture Service. Murrow called on a young Hollywood producer, George Stevens Jr., to lead the Motion Picture Service. Joining me now to discuss USIA and the Motion Picture Service is George Stevens Jr.
The son of Hollywood great George Stevens, his career would lead him to be a founding director of the American Film Institute in 1967, putting him in a unique situation on the forefront of culture and politics in charge of safeguarding thousands of endangered films and training a new generation of filmmakers. He has a new book, My Place in the Sun, that documents his career and living a life that traverse the glitz and glamor of Hollywood and the most political city in the nation, Washington, DC. George, thank you for joining me.
GEORGE STEVENS JR.: Such a pleasure, Matt. Thank you.
MATT PORTER: We're glad to have you. Before we get into your career, I just want to touch briefly, as the son of director George Stevens, the celebrated Oscar director for 1951's A Place in the Sun, which is the influence for your book's title, and 1956's Giant, he was also noted for his work with the 1953 movie Shane and 1958's The Diary of Anne Frank. Both movies, which were required watching in my middle school classroom, by the way, what was it like being on the sets of these iconic movies with your father and growing up around the burgeoning movie industry in Hollywood?
GEORGE STEVENS JR.: Well it was-- my parents made an effort to keep me disentangled from the Hollywood world. We live in-- we lived in Toluca Lake in the San Fernando Valley. And though Amelia Earhart, the aviatrix, and Bing Crosby and Bob Hope and people were in the neighborhood, it was really kind of a normal place.
But I did become-- a film you didn't mention of my father's was Gunga Din. And a wonderful adventure comedy with Cary Grant and Victor McLaglen and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. from the Kipling poem. And that influenced me as a youngster, because we had a 16-millimeter print. And I gradually got drawn into the idea of the movies as a career.
MATT PORTER: You said it was Edward R. Murrow who brought you in the fold to run the Motion Picture Service in Washington, DC. You mentioned being inspired by one of Murrow's speeches at the Radio and Television News Directors Association's Convention. Tell us a little bit about that and how the famous reporter was able to convince you to cross the country to work in a very different city from Hollywood.
GEORGE STEVENS JR.: Interesting, Matt, and I give you a little background.
MATT PORTER: Sure.
GEORGE STEVENS JR.: I'm talking to you from Washington where I live. I was born in the Hollywood hospital a continent away and grew up in the movie world. And by the time I was 25, I was directing Peter Gunn and Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and then working with my father-- having worked with my father on A Place in the Sun, Shane, and Giant. I became his associate producer and I directed all of the location work for The Diary of Anne Frank in Amsterdam.
And that seemed to me my charted path, and then Edward R. Murrow came into my life. As you know, President Kennedy enlisted Ed to head the United States Information Agency, which was charged with telling America's story abroad. And a friend of mine-- and I wrote to Ed in 1961, having read that Jackie Kennedy was going to India, and we proposed making a pro bono film about Jackie's trip feeling that it would tell the world about her and her interest in other cultures.
And we didn't hear from Ed, but then we heard he was coming to Hollywood to speak to the motion picture moguls at a big dinner at Chasen's, and we wrote and said, it is the new frontier. Would you like to meet with some younger people? And a group of us gathered on a Friday afternoon. Paul Newman was there, Richard Zanuck, and other contemporaries of mine, and we had this wonderful talk with Murrow.
And the next morning, I was sitting in my bachelor pad in Hollywood and the phone rang and it was Samuel Goldwyn Jr. And he said that Ed was staying at his father's house and Ed wondered if I would come by and see him on Sunday. And I said, well of course, but could you tell me what it's about? And he said, well, he's looking for somebody to head motion picture service of USIA.
And I said, Sam, I'm like my father's partner now and we're starting The Greatest Story Ever Told. And I couldn't do it and I just don't want to-- wouldn't want to waste Ed's time. And he said he understood. And five minutes later he called back and said, Ed says you won't be wasting his time.
Well, I went and saw Ed at Sam Goldman's House on that next Sunday and he offered me the job, and I gave him reluctantly the same answer. But two days later, I was with my father on the 20th Century Fox lot we were walking to lunch. And this came up-- we hadn't discussed it. And my father looked at me and he said, I think you'll have to do it.
And it was a father understanding-- a famous father understanding that a different opportunity might be to his son's benefit, although quite a sacrifice to him at that time.
MATT PORTER: Mm-hmm.
GEORGE STEVENS JR.: And so the next thing I knew, I was-- at age 29 in February of 1962, I walked into USIA and Ed swore me in.
MATT PORTER: Yeah. You mention your book walking into the office that day in 1962 where you saw the inscription on the building telling America's story to the world. For those unaware of USIA, who don't know much about it, tell us a little bit about the purpose, and then what it was like for you to join at the time, and what was your plan as the new head of the Motion Picture Service?
GEORGE STEVENS JR.: Well, Ed had told me that the Motion Picture Service produced over 300 documentaries a year for showing overseas, attempting to persuade the public that the United States is a good nation that deserves their respect, and also discussing specific policy issues. And also, there was the Voice of America at an international press service and other media. And it was a very important government agency.
And I might say parenthetically, one-- it was then folded into the State Department in the late '90s, and one wonders today whether the President of the United States wouldn't benefit from having that kind of an instrument at his hands as we try to communicate in a very complex world.
MATT PORTER: I want to get to that, but I'm going to hold that thought for the end, for the finale of the interview. You just mentioned, they wanted you to produce 300 documentaries a year. Obviously a lot of these are short-form. Were you intimidated by that task? To me, it almost sounds like an impossible one to try to meet.
GEORGE STEVENS JR.: Surprisingly I wasn't. I just felt that this was something that I would learn how to do. And I had a wonderful civil service man named Anthony Guarco that-- much older than I who was my deputy. And I had all of these ideas, and Tony Guarco knew his way around the Civil Service and the USIA, and he would find ways to do it.
For example, at that time at USIA, all of the films were made-- or most of them were made on government contract. And they all went to the lowest bidder. And I wanted to bring young filmmakers and new filmmakers into USIA, and Tony worked it out through the bureaucracy that I had a great deal of authority in selecting and contracting with filmmakers.
And we did enlist wonderful people, among them Charlie Guggenheim who was a fellow from St. Louis who made documentaries. And he made a number of ones during the Kennedy years, including Nine from Little Rock, which is the story of the children being admitted to Little Rock High School, which won the Academy Award.
So we had a great deal of success and it was very exciting to-- it was like running a small studio. And with all of these projects going on and filmmakers coming in and out, it was a very good job.
MATT PORTER: You mentioned Nine from Little Rock, so let's touch on that because it did win the Academy Award for short film documentary. What was it like producing that in the atmosphere at the time where the country was bitterly divided over segregation? Swaths of the country, the Civil Rights Act didn't really-- hadn't taken a lot of effect yet. This was just the beginnings. What was it like documenting that? And how did you as an agency representing the entire government deal with such a controversial issue?
GEORGE STEVENS JR.: Yes. And even within USIA, we had regional directors, area directors, much like the State Department, and they weighed in on the films because they were the-- really, the clients in the sense who would serve them-- show them in their regions. And many of them worried because we opened the film and included in the film some of the footage of the mistreatment of African Americans in the South.
And they said, we don't want to show that overseas. And I said, they're already seeing it overseas, we're doing it in this film to gain some credibility and set the premise for the story of these young people who will be admitted controversially into Little Rock High School and go on to have good careers. And with the Congress, you also had to worry about those matters.
MATT PORTER: Did anyone look at you and say, electorally, this is a dangerous thing to put out there? Was there anyone who were worried about the politics of it?
GEORGE STEVENS JR.: Yes. And Murrow and I had conducted showings in Washington to members of Congress and won them over. Most of them. And we later had an even more contentious time with a film called The March that we made in August 1963 in the last months of President Kennedy, which is absolutely wonderful. I think it's the best film we made during my time there, telling of that remarkable day when white people and black people joined together to call for change.
MATT PORTER: How do you feel that the movies like The March or The Little Rock Nine can resonate today with filmmakers and people who are interested in social justice and film? How do you think those films can be an example for people who are looking at tackling the tough issues today?
GEORGE STEVENS JR.: Oh, I think both of them are good examples. One of the rules of USIA's operation was that the films we made could not be shown in the United States. The idea being-- and I think it was a sound one-- that you are giving funds to the United States Information Agency to tell America's story abroad. And the Congress did not want an administration to divert that money to be making films or other materials that would be helping their political aspirations.
But there were two exceptions to that rule during my time. One was the film we made about Jackie Kennedy's trip to India and Pakistan, which the Congress authorized being shown to the United States. And the other was John F. Kennedy, Years of Lightning, Day of Drums, the first feature-length film that USIA made that was remade in the wake of the assassination and told the story of Kennedy's years as president.
MATT PORTER: Let's talk about that movie, John F. Kennedy, Years of Lightning, Day of Drums in 1964, which the National Review called one of the 10 best films of the year. What did you and your team want to convey about an issue that clearly not only affected the entire country, but was-- the entire world had been in mourning after that day? And what did you guys think about knowing that your film would likely live on as a Memorial for future generations to learn about the day?
GEORGE STEVENS JR.: May I tell you about how I got the film approved to make?
MATT PORTER: Yes.
GEORGE STEVENS JR.: It was the day after-- the day of the assassination, I started thinking about what my job was in terms of what USIA should be doing. And I asked to see Ed Murrow on the day after the assassination. Ed had been out sick having his lung removed because of throat cancer. I went to see him and he did not have on the Savile Row suit that he usually wore. I remember he had a green cardigan sweater.
And we sat down in his office-- Ed never sat behind his desk when he had a visitor. And we sat across from one another. And he handed me a letter. And I read it, and it had the White House at the top and was dated two weeks earlier. And it said, Dear Ed, I saw The Five Cities of June last night. It's one of the most impressive documentaries I've ever seen. We so appreciate the good work you are doing, and I'm glad you're back and you'll be helping us as things go forward. And it was signed John Kennedy.
Well, you can imagine how moving it was to be holding that letter that had been in his hands just days earlier. And I handed the letter back to Ed and he put up his hand and he said, you keep the letter, you made the movie, which tells you a lot about Ed Murrow, who I worshipped.
And then I told him of my idea, and I said, I'd like to make USIA's first feature length film. And we have cameramen in 13 foreign countries shooting color film of the reaction, and we will film the four days of the funeral. And we've, within that, the story of the Kennedy presidency.
And I waited for Ed to answer, and he took few moments and he said, first, make a 10-minute film about Lyndon Johnson, which was the sage, experienced person tempering the enthusiasm of youth and reminding me what our first job was, and it was to show that we've had a peaceful transition. And he said, then you can make your film about President Kennedy.
MATT PORTER: And it got made clearly. Knowing that that film had such success and that it's still there, how do you feel about it as the final product for what it is and for what people can view-- if they viewed it now as a memorial to President Kennedy, how do you feel about it today?
GEORGE STEVENS JR.: I see it from time to time and I worked with the Kennedy Library and Warner Brothers, and we made what's called a digital package of the film, which is really a way of showing it like in 35mm color on the big screen. We restored it effectively, and the Kennedy Library now has one of those DCPs that can show it whenever it likes.
MATT PORTER: And you must be pretty proud that that exists and that's going to be available for future generations?
GEORGE STEVENS JR.: Yes. It was really a source of great satisfaction to be able to make it. And in President Kennedy's charm on the screen, it's just so out of proportion to what you expect from a president. And we have wonderful footage of him with his children and him in Latin America trying to say a phrase in Spanish and being amused by the response of the people.
MATT PORTER: I am a former journalist, and I can only imagine would have been like to be your age working alongside Edward R. Murrow. So I gotta ask you, what was that like? What did you and Ed learn from each other? What did you learn from working with Murrow?
GEORGE STEVENS JR.: Murrow had integrity. And here he was, running a government agency, and he just-- he was there to serve the country and do it right, but in a kind of uncompromising way. And we used to testify before Congress. I would go with him and testify about movies, and it was really fascinating.
Because Ed was, I believe the second most famous person in the administration after President Kennedy. And when he would come to Capitol Hill to testify, it would be quite an event. But he was a real leader of people. He would say to the Foreign Service Officers at USIA, he said, I could staff a network with you men-- most of them were men at the time, and it would be every bit as good as any network operating. So he had just a wonderful quality of leadership.
MATT PORTER: That's--
GEORGE STEVENS JR.: Your audience would probably want to know that Ed died of lung cancer two years later, and it was a great loss. And often through the years, I've thought, in times of crisis, what would Ed Murrow say?
MATT PORTER: That's a good thing to ask yourself in those times. Thinking about-- before we get into a little bit more of your career after the USIA, but what did your friends think about-- your friends in Hollywood, anyway, think about you leaving that-- leaving the West Coast, leaving the movie industry, sort of, and packing up and starting this career in film over in DC?
GEORGE STEVENS JR.: I mean, they were very surprised, but the Kennedy presidency had such an aura that I think they were a little envious that I was going to become part of that. And I had no idea what I was in for, but as I said, I was rather confident that I could do the job. When I arrived in Washington and I went and I was sworn in by Ed Murrow and plunged into the job. Then I found I would get invitations. and I was a single man. I was 29. And these nice invitations would come along, because I guess hostesses were looking for extra men, as we were called.
And I got one from the R. Sargent Shriver's-- Eunice, the president's sister, married to Sarge Shriver, the founder of the Peace Corps. And it was a black tie dinner on a Thursday night, and I was staying in a hotel. And I had a little rental car. And it was snowing. And I'm a Californian, it was a bit of an experiment making my way out to River Road.
And I walked into this party. And there was an orchestra playing, and I look over and there's McGeorge Bundy, and there's Avril Harriman, and there's Ethel Kennedy. Of course, I don't know any of these people. And I sat across-- I was seated across-- a long table-- across from Newton I. Minow, the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. I think he was 27-year-old Newt Minow, and he'd made this famous vast wasteland speech about television. So I was delighted to have a chance to talk to Newt.
I noticed that the woman on my left or place guard said Mrs. Smith. And had I known she was the president's sister, Jean Kennedy Smith, I would not have talked so much with Newt Minow, and it took me several years to get over that carelessness with the president's rather opinionated sister Jean, who became a great friend.
And after dinner, they passed Scotch around in those days, and I was just standing there enjoying seeing all these people in the entryway of the Shriver's House, and it had a kind of circular room. And suddenly, the door, it seemed that it blew open. And in walks, without a coat and black tie, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, which kind of took one's breath away. And behind him was Lyndon Johnson. They had had a dinner for I think the King of Saudi Arabia.
And he circled this room, and I was kind of in the second row, so our eyes didn't meet and I didn't say hello to him, but it felt to me like my time in Washington was complete, that I'd seen the president. And he was-- it was the era of black and white television, and something about seeing him in color was so arresting.
And so we went on, and a little later I'm talking again with Newt Minow, and he asked me if I've met the president. And I said no and kept on talking. And then I realized the president was standing beside us. And Newt turned to him and he said, Mr. President, this is George Stevens. He's come from Washington to work with Edward R. Murrow, and the president interrupted him and said, I know about George. First, he said, I want to ask you a question. CBS made $190 million last year, why can't they afford to broadcast Jackie's tour of the White House in color?
And this was so what we came to know of President Kennedy. His mind was always on whatever's near him, and he just saw Newt and he got a message that he wanted to send. And then we turned and we had a conversation. And he did want to talk to me. And later we would address that at the White House.
MATT PORTER: Well, that's pretty amazing. A really cool story. Before we move on to your work at the AFI and beyond, I just want to come back and-- the USIA doesn't exist as it did when you were there. It's now the US Agency for Global Media. Still under the State Department purview and still obviously aimed at broadcasting to the rest of the world, not to the United States. Do you believe filmmakers still play-- can still play a big role within the Civil Service to do what you were doing in the '60s
GEORGE STEVENS JR.: No, they don't. And the agency you described within the State Department, I imagine, has about 1/200 of the horsepower that USIA had when it was a full agency. And it does occur to me today when we're dealing with so many international issues and trying to earn the respect for our position of leadership, that the president is lacking the tools he needs and should have something more akin to what the USIA was in those days.
MATT PORTER: As you mentioned that, so what are the things that if the industry-- if the-- sorry. If the agency existed now as it did with you when you were there, what do you believe are the types of issues that filmmakers could be looking at that would be important to the US's diplomatic interests?
GEORGE STEVENS JR.: Well, I would say filmmakers, social media, all of the contemporary tools of communication-- addressing ourselves to the Muslim world, making ourselves better-- I would-- this should have occurred years ago. Making ourselves better understood in their eyes. Certainly the need for NATO, which has been restored and rejuvenated recently. There just-- almost everything that relates to our relationship with China, it just-- you could make a long list. But that every day we are trying to communicate in one way or another to advance the interests of the United States abroad.
MATT PORTER: And as you grew in your career, one of the next stops was at the American Film Institute where you were the founding director. Given your background, what did you hope to accomplish at the AFI?
GEORGE STEVENS JR.: Well, the film was a very different place at that time. When they prepared the list for the National Endowment for the Arts, they mentioned all of the arts, but not film. There are people who proudly said, well, we never go to the movies. It is so different than it is today, and I think one reason it is different is because of the 50-year existence of the American Film Institute.
But our first job was to-- when we started the AFI, less than 1/10 of the films-- the motion pictures that had been made up to that time were preserved in an archive. And we started a major film restoration project which now there are 40,000 feature films in the Library of Congress in the AFI Collection, films that we preserved. And we encourage the other fine archives-- the Museum of Modern Art and Eastman House that preceded us. But film preservation was one.
The training of filmmakers, we started the Conservatory for Filmmakers in Los Angeles and the early students were Terrence Malick and David Lynch and Paul Schrader, and on through the years, to the woman who directed the Academy Award-winning CODA the other night is a graduate of AFI's Directing Workshop for Women that we started in the '70s.
MATT PORTER: Oh, that's amazing. I love the movie. I just watched it recently, and being from Massachusetts, it was a really well-told story from Gloucester, Massachusetts. So I really enjoyed it. We know the Hollywood blockbusters will never die. Movies that made $80 billion today will probably not ever go away.
But you mentioned the importance of preserving the endangered films or films that are maybe lesser known, but dealt with really important issues like social justice issues that you mentioned. What was it like for you to make sure that those type of films, the ones that don't necessarily ever get critically acclaimed but were just as important, what was it like to make sure that those films were preserved?
GEORGE STEVENS JR.: Well, we included those, the independent Stan Brakhage and people like that, along with other archives. And today, Marty Scorsese's film foundation is doing great work in that. But you say the big films that-- I discovered, having been working on preserving the films from the '20s, the Chaplin films and the Lillian Gish films at USIA, then I find out that Paramount Studios has lost the soundtrack to Shane and they don't have the original negative of A Place in the Sun. The studios were very neglectful in preserving their films. So you really needed to pay attention to the blockbusters.
MATT PORTER: That's amazing that they've lost things like that.
GEORGE STEVENS JR.: Yeah. It's really hard-- and we've worked and we restored and we have next-- near-perfect. And just in the last year, cooperating with Steven Spielberg, who loved my father's film Giant, we have been involved in a 4K restoration of Giant. For the audience that doesn't know, it was my father's second Oscar-winner, and starred Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, and James Dean.
And it's really a remarkable film, and we're showing it at the Turner Classic Movies Festival in the middle of April. They're going to have what one of those DCPs, and you can someday show it at the Kennedy Library, and I bet it'll be at one of your Boston theaters before the end of the year.
MATT PORTER: Oh, wow I'm going to keep an eye out for that, then. Yeah, thinking about film preservation, what can films, when they were made, tell us about the era that they were made in? Like I imagine there's a lot that films can tell us just by their topics or how they were produced, and it can tell us a lot about the history, the eras that they were produced in, correct?
GEORGE STEVENS JR.: Yes. Another product of AFI is the AFI Catalog of Motion Pictures made in the United States, which is online. And you can go on-- and it's free. And you can go online and find any film made from 1911 or 1913 and read a synopsis and how it was made and why, and on up to the present. So that's a good resource for people who are interested.
MATT PORTER: Yeah, we'll have that on our website so people can find it. One more question. This is a podcast about President Kennedy and his legacy. So I want to ask you, is there a particular part of President Kennedy's presidency or his legacy that you remember or that continues to resonate for you 60 years after he took office?
GEORGE STEVENS JR.: Well, since you're talking to an author promoting his book, I'll be self-referential in this.
MATT PORTER: Sure.
GEORGE STEVENS JR.: One of my great satisfactions in life is that I conceived and started and wrote and produced for 37 years the Kennedy Center Honors, the event at the Kennedy Center where we honor the great people in the performing arts. And a non-relative, Roger Stevens, who President Kennedy had appointed to head his National Arts Council, was the head of the Kennedy Center.
And I went to him one day and said, you should have a television show. And I reminded him of the wall-- of the words on the wall of the Kennedy Center, I look forward to an America that will not be afraid of grace and beauty, an America that will recognize achievement in the arts the way we recognize achievement in statecraft and business. Of course, words of John F. Kennedy.
And it was President Kennedy who inspired me with the idea of the Kennedy Center Honors, because he spoke so eloquently about the arts. And I was so pleased, and I do write about it in my book of Jackie one day writing me the most beautiful letter saying how much Jack would have admired and respected the Kennedy Center Honors, because they weren't like the Oscars, they had such a feeling of dignity in the arts.
So he really greatly influenced me. I was asked to serve on-- by Jackie on the committee to plan the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, and I was asked to serve-- by Steve Smith to serve on the committee to plan that John F. Kennedy Library. In fact, I wrote a letter to Bobby just after the assassination expressing my condolences, I guess, and he called me, much kind of typical of the Kennedy family. At their times of grief, they are so conscious of the grief of others.
And he-- and I had mentioned the Kennedy Library and how films could be a part of it, and he called and asked me if I would serve on the planning of the Kennedy Library. So the Kennedy family has been a great influence, a nourishing influence on my life and my career.
MATT PORTER: Thank you, George. It was a pleasure speaking with you about your time at the USIA and American Film Institute. Your book will be out and available to purchase this Tuesday, May 17. Thank you again for sharing your time and your memories of your work during the Kennedy administration.
GEORGE STEVENS JR.: Thank you, Matt. It's a great pleasure.
MATT PORTER: If you are interested in learning more about the films we've spoken about, including the links to the Oscar Award-winning film, Nine from Little Rock, and the film on First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy's trip to India, we have them now on our podcast page. We also have more information on the American Film Institute and the Kennedy Center Honors.
If you have questions or story ideas, email us at jfk35pod@jfkfoundation.org, or tweet at us @JFKLibrary using the hashtag #JFK35. If you like what you heard today, please consider subscribing to our podcast or leaving us a review wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening and have a great day.
[THEME MUSIC PLAYING]