Lewis Milestone

Lewis Milestone was born into a Jewish family in Bessarabia, Russia, on 30th September, 1895. He emigrated to the United States in 1912. During the First World War he enlisted in the U.S. Signal Corps and was employed as an assistant director on Army training films.

After the war he went to Hollywood, where he first worked as a film cutter. The first film he directed was Seven Sinners (1925). This was followed by The Caveman (1926) and The New Klondike (1926). The producer, Howard Hughes, employed Milestone to direct Two Arabian Knights. The film, starring William Boyd, Mary Astor and Louis Wolheim, was a great success and Milestone won an Academy Award for Comedy Direction.

This award made him a much sort after director and his films included The Garden of Eden (1928), The Racket (1928), Betrayal (1929) and New York Nights (1929). During this period he began to experiment. He later told Kevin Brownlow: "Before (the introduction of the moving camera) the film had been like the stage.... the camera was in the position of the audience and photographed everything from the same position. We learned how to use the camera from the point of view of the actor. We built our sets differently. We could not just move on one wall, but all of them. We could shoot from any one position and follow the actor around."

Milestone's next film, All Quiet on the Western Front, was based on the anti-war novel by Erich Maria Remarque. The film follows a group of German schoolboys, talked into enlisting at the beginning of First World War by their jingoistic teacher. As Lary May, the author of The Big Tomorrow: Hollywood and the Politics of the American Way (2000), has pointed out: "Erich Maria Remarque's anti-war novel focused on German youth who believed in the patriotic call to war in 1914. But as Milestone noted, the aim was to have 'new ideas... build up in the consciousness' of the audience. Reversing normal narrative strategies, he took the youth into battle at the start of the film: the action 'wanes emotionally' but 'ideas wax intellectually.' That is, the youth realize that rich financiers and their patriotic leaders have created death, leaving the new generation angry and antagonistic toward their elders' civilization."

According to James Monaco it "is perhaps the greatest anti-war film ever made" and points out: "The film is emotionally draining, and so realistic that it will be forever draining etched in the mind of any viewer. Milestone's direction is frequently inspired, most notably during the battle scenes. In one such scene, the camera serves as a kind of machine gun, shooting down the oncoming troops as a glides along the trenches. Universal spared no expense during production, converting more than 20 acres of a large California ranch into a battlefields occupied by more than 2,000 ex-servicemen extras." Milestone won the Academy Award for the best director for the film.

Other films by Milestone included The Front Page (1931), Rain (1932), Hallelujah, I'm a Tramp (1933), The Captain Hates the Sea (1934), Paris in Spring (1935), Anything Goes (1936), The General Died at Dawn (1936). Milestone was also active in politics and joined with Dorothy Parker, Alan Campbell, Walter Wanger, Dashiell Hammett, Cedric Belfrage, Donald Ogden Stewart, John Howard Lawson, Clifford Odets, Dudley Nichols, Frederic March, Oscar Hammerstein II, Ernst Lubitsch, Mervyn LeRoy, Gloria Stuart, Sylvia Sidney, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Chico Marx, Benny Goodman, Fred MacMurray and Eddie Cantor to establish the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League.

On 26th May, 1938, the United States House of Representatives authorized the formation of the Special House Committee on Un-American Activities. The first chairman of the Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) was Martin Dies. In a statement made on 20th July 1938, Dies claimed that many Nazis and Communists were leaving the United States because of his pending interrogations. The New Republic argued that the right-wing Dies, who it described as "physically a giant, very young, ambitious, and cocksure" would target those on the left. It was no surprise when Dies immediately announced that he intended to investigate aspects of the New Deal that had been established by Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Milestone was one of the first people in Hollywood to criticise the HUAC. "It seems to me that the hysteria of the Dies Committee's investigations have only succeeded in strengthening public belief in the organizations and movements they have attacked. For myself, and for members of the motion picture industry, if our aid to democracies now victims of fascist aggression can be misinterpreted as un-American acts, then perhaps the Dies Committee has its own translation of the word democracy."

Milestone also directed Of Mice and Men in 1939. Based on a novel by John Steinbeck it received excellent reviews and was nominated for four Academy Awards. Variety Magazine argued: "Under skillful directorial guidance of Lewis Milestone, the picture retains all of the forceful and poignant drama of John Steinbeck's original play and novel, in presenting the strange partnership and eventual tragedy of the two California ranch itinerants. In transferring the story to the screen, Eugene Solow eliminated the strong language and forthright profanity. Despite this requirement for the Hays whitewash squad, Solow and Milestone retain all of the virility of the piece in its original form."

Other films by Milestone include Night of Nights (1939), Lucky Partners (1940), My Life with Caroline (1941), Our Russian Front (1942), Edge of Darkness (1943), The North Star (1943), The Purple Heart (1944), Guest in the House (1944), A Walk in the Sun (1945) and The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (1946).

In 1947 nineteen members of the film industry were called to appear before the House of Un-American Activities Committee. This included Milestone, Herbert Biberman, Alvah Bessie, Lester Cole, Albert Maltz, Adrian Scott, Dalton Trumbo, Edward Dmytryk, Ring Lardner Jr., Samuel Ornitz, John Howard Lawson, Larry Parks, Waldo Salt, Bertolt Brecht, Richard Collins, Gordon Kahn, Robert Rossen and Irving Pichel. It has been pointed out that ten of the nineteen were Jews (Milestone, Collins, Kahn, Maltz, Rossen, Ornitz, Lawson, Bessie, Biberman, Cole) and two others had been involved in the recent film, Crossfire (1947), that was an attack on anti-Semitism (Scott and Dmytryk).

Ring Lardner Jr. was surprised that Milestone was included in the list as he had never been a member of the American Communist Party. "He (Milestone) had signed a petition or two that were deemed leftist, but there were dozens of other offenders on the same level of intellectual guilt... Milestone was also the director of The North Star, a sympathetic portrait of life in the Soviet Union... Milestone had the added liability of being both Jewish and Russian-born."

The first ten witnesses called to appear before the HUAAC, Biberman, Bessie, Cole, Maltz, Scott, Trumbo, Dmytryk, Lardner, Ornitz and Lawson, refused to cooperate at the September hearings and were charged with "contempt of Congress". They were all found guilty and given the maximum sentence of a year in prison. The case went before the Supreme Court in April 1950, but with only Justices Hugo Black and William Douglas dissenting, the sentences were confirmed.

Milestone commented: "A fear and psychosis pervades the town, engendered by the recent witch hunts on the national, state and community level. Producers are asking for and getting pictures without ideas. In the frantic effort to offend no one, to alienate no groups, to create no misgivings in Congressional minds, studios are for the most part obediently concentrating on vapidity. The public... did not not ask that pictures be sterilized of ideas; the notion was self-imposed."

Milestone was blacklisted from working in Hollywood and therefore he decided to move to Europe. Films he made in exile included Melba (1953) and They Who Dare (1954) in London and La Vedova X (1955) in Rome. After the blacklist came to an end, Milestone directed Ocean's Eleven (1960) and Mutiny on the Bounty (1962).

Lewis Milestone died on 25th September, 1980.

Primary Sources

(1) Lary May, The Big Tomorrow: Hollywood and the Politics of the American Way (2000)

The traditions of the older generation also reveal that patriotism is a sham in the Academy-Award-winning a best picture of 1930, All Quiet on the Western Front. Directed by Lewis Milestone, a young immigrant Jew from Russia, this adaptation of' Erich Maria Remarque's antiwar novel focused on German youth who believed in the patriotic call to war in 1914. But as Milestone noted, the aim was to have "new ideas ... build up in the consciousness" of the audience. Reversing normal narrative strategies, he took the youth into battle at the start of the film: the action "wanes emotionally" but "ideas wax intellectually." That is, the youth realize that rich financiers and their patriotic leaders have created death, leaving the new generation angry and antagonistic toward their elders' civilization.

(2) Lewis Milestone, interviewed by Kevin Brownlow (1969)

Before (the introduction of the moving camera) the film had been like the stage.... the camera was in the position of the audience and photographed everything from the same position. We learned how to use the camera from the point of view of the actor. We built our sets differently. We could not just move on one wall, but all of them. We could shoot from any one position and follow the actor around.

(3) Lewis Milestone (October 1938)

It seems to me that the hysteria of the Dies Committee's investigations have only succeeded in strengthening public belief in the organizations and movements they have attacked. For myself, and for members of the motion picture industry, if our aid to democracies now victims of fascist aggression can be misinterpreted as un-American acts, then perhaps the Dies Committee has its own translation of the word democracy.

(4) Lewis Milestone, speech (1948)

A fear and psychosis pervades the town, engendered by the recent witch hunts on the national, state and community level. Producers are asking for and getting pictures without ideas. In the frantic effort to offend no one, to alienate no groups, to create no misgivings in Congressional minds, studios are for the most part obediently concentrating on vapidity. The public... did not not ask that pictures be sterilized of ideas; the notion was self-imposed.