- Born
- Died
- Birth nameJames Burton Lenhart
- Nickname
- Burt
- Paul Gregory was born on August 27, 1920 in Waukee, Iowa, USA. He was a producer and writer, known for The Night of the Hunter (1955), Ford Star Jubilee (1955) and The Naked and the Dead (1958). He was married to Kathryn (Kay) Williams Obergfel and Janet Gaynor. He died on December 25, 2015 in Desert Hot Springs, California, USA.
- SpousesKathryn (Kay) Williams Obergfel(March 6, 1998 - June 19, 2001) (her death)Janet Gaynor(December 24, 1964 - September 14, 1984) (her death)
- Robert Mitchum was cast as Preacher Harry Powell -- the itinerant minister who had "Love" tattooed on one hand fingers and "Hate" on the other. At one time, Laurence Olivier was mad for the Preacher's part. Gregory originally wanted Olivier to do it. "The whole performance would have taken on a different sound and form." But Gregory couldn't wait two years for Larry to complete other projects. Robert Mitchum was very eager for the part of the preacher. When he auditioned, a moment that particularly impressed Charles Laughton was when Laughton described the character as "a diabolical shit." Mitchum promptly answered, "Present!" Laughton liked Mitchum for the role. "So, I'm stuck with him," Gregory said. "I had taken out a loan for $700,000 to make the picture. I had scheduled a starting date to start filming the feature using that money. We were paying interest on the bloody money. On one side of the business, it's an absolute hierarchy of bookkeeping, and on the other, it is a bunch of children playing around in the mud building mud castles. It's timing is ridiculous." Mitchum was one of the first Hollywood nonconformists, before Marlon Brando or James Dean. In the late 1940s Mitchum did two months in county jail for possession of marijuana. In the interview, Gregory continued, "You know, all these people today want to know -- if -- Mitchum was a wonderful guy. Bob was awful. He'd be drunk. He'd urinate on the set. I had to hire a policeman to go by his house in the morning to make sure he was up and ready to go to work. I was from another mold. You pay people a lot of money and you have a right to get back what you paid them for. Mitchum didn't behave that way. It was all a lark all the time...fun fun fun. I don't know what Mitchum's range was as an actor. I consider him a lucky man. He played himself and was very effective in the part." Mitchum worried Charles to death. Gregory thought Mitchum tired Laughton who went into a long lapse after the film was completed. "Charles didn't even want to read a book. He started going to a doctor and got shots. It took a lot out of Charles." Laughton used to say to Gregory: "That goddamn Mitchum: he's got so much stuff." And: "That son of a bitch. Why is he the way he is?" Laughton had to pull to get out of Mitchum what he got out of him. James Gleason, a veteran character actor, played Uncle Birdie. Mr. Gleason was an old pro. The difference between Gleason and Mitchum was night and day; Lillian Gish was wonderful. At their initial meeting, Lillian Gish asked Charles Laughton why he wanted her for the part; he replied, "When I first went to the movies, they sat in their seats straight and leaned forward. Now they slump down, with their heads back, and eat candy and popcorn. I want them to sit up straight again." Shelley Winters was the widow Harper. Gregory said, "Shelley was filled with all that Strasberg baloney. I call it the armpit school of acting. Production designer Hilyard Brown said Shelley would hold up in the bathroom, preparing for her role. Charles Laughton would say, 'Come on, Shelley. You're in the mood. Let's shoot it!' ".
- Gregory remarked: " 'The Night of the Hunter' is still shown at film schools and universities. The movie lasted because Its appeal is in its honesty, its truth. The film ensconced all of the natural fears we have as people. I don't like to use the word symphonic, but it all seemed harmonized. It had a flow of the innocence of the time -- the barren innocence." After "The Night of the Hunter," Paul Gregory produced only one other movie, "The Naked and the Dead," based upon Norman Mailer's war novel. Why did Paul Gregory leave movie making? Gregory responded: "I didn't like movies. There's so much compromise. Today, people have gotten used to it which is why there are so many so-so movies. And I didn't like the cut-throat people who make the movies. I had a man, my production designer Hilyard Brown, who built a house out of the budget for 'The Night of the Hunter.' In the theater, I dealt with more literate people, Mr. Lee Shubert. I had a wonderful group of backers. I was anxious to get out of movies and come back to my natural self. Let me say this: I went to Hollywood a gentleman and didn't want to wind up like the rest of them".
- Born in 1920, deceased in December, 2015 (at age 92), Paul (James Burton Lenhart) Gregory was the son of a part-Cherokee mother and a ne'er-do-well father. Gregory's father ran off with his wife's $240,0000 Indian allotment -- "disappeared after he had spent my mother's Indian money," Gregory recalled, and then "showed up along the Mississippi towns as a roving preacher" going from one small Lutheran colony to another. Years later, when Gregory was looking for his first film property, he read a book in galleys about an itinerant preacher who preyed on the innocent--and "it touched me." He immediately bought the rights to Davis Grubb's first novel, "The Night of the Hunter".
- In December 1964, Gregory married Oscar-winning actress Janet Gaynor. In 1982, the couple, along with actress Mary Martin and her manager, were going out to dinner in San Francisco when their taxi was hit broadside. Gregory suffered extensive injuries. America's first "sweetheart" of sound and silent films, Janet Gaynor, survived until her death two years after the 1982 San Francisco car accident. Gregory's second wife, art gallery owner Kathryn Obergfel, died in Palm Springs, California, where Gregory has lived in 2012 for 48 years. Paul Gregory lives in a middle-class neighborhood in Desert Hot Springs, belying his elite position in show business history. Gregory, who turned 93 on Augugust 27, 2012, and Janet Gaynor played host at their former 100-acre ranch in Desert Hot Springs to a span of cinematic heroes Walter and Leonore Annenberg of Palm Desert would have envied - legends ranging from Greta Garbo to John Travolta and Marilyn Monroe. But Gregory, who walks with a cane but can clearly recall casting calls from 60 years ago, never really enjoyed working with actors. Ask him his favorite stars from such colleagues as Henry Fonda, Jack Lemmon, Tallulah Bankhead and Ed Harris, and he can't pick one. Laughton was his most talented actor, he said, and Mitchum, well, Gregory says he was overrated. Miracle Springs is sort of a home away from home for Gregory. He has his own table at its restaurant and is on a first-name basis with the wait staff. Gregory gave a talk there in March of 2012, sponsored by the DHS Historical Society, and told a story illustrating Mitchum's "coarseness." It's such a famous tale that film historian Alan K. Rode added its punch line in a telephone conversation to the reporter covering Gregory's appearance. "Mitchum got drunk and got into a snit about something," said Rode, director of the Arthur Lyons Film Noir Festival, "Mitchum walked out of the RKO-Pathe Culver City Studio's (owned by Howard Hughes) stage , walked over to Paul Gregory's Cadillac parked next to the stage's elephant load-in doors, opened the car's driver side door, urinated on Gregory's driver-side's front-upholstered leather seat. Laughton said, 'You know, Bob, we all have our skeletons in our closet, but, Bob, you must not brandish your skeletons publicly." Mitchum and Laughton were both known for being difficult, Gregory deserves the utmost respect for their collaboration. "Anyone that can bring Charles Laughton and Robert Mitchum together to work harmoniously on a project in the order and magnitude of 'The Night of the Hunter' deserves everyone's unvarnished respect," Rode said. "'The Night of the Hunter,' I don't think there's ever been another movie quite like that. Certainly it's noir, or noir-stained, but it's really almost lyrical - a phenomenal achievement as far as movie-making goes".
- Gregory and Charles Laughton had formed a partnership years earlier after Gregory saw Laughton recite from the Book of Daniel on "The Ed Sullivan Show." Gregory went to the New York theater where Laughton was appearing and told him he'd be "throwing away a million dollars" if he didn't talk to him about doing a series of readings. Laughton listened, Gregory quit MCA and, a year later they had $200,000 worth of bookings for Laughton's readings. Their most notable reading was taken from George Bernard Shaw's 1903 play, "Man and Superman." Gregory got the idea after walking past a Tiffany's window and seeing four sparkling diamonds on black velvet. He decided to book four stage stars - Laughton, Charles Boyer, Cedric Hardwicke and Agnes Moorehead - to read just the third act of the play, featuring a philosophical dialogue between Don Juan and the devil. Shaw, at 93, didn't want to let Gregory do it, especially with Boyer, who he thought was too French to play the smooth-talking Don Juan, and Laughton, whom he resented for not fighting in World War II, playing the devil. But a promise of 5 percent of the gross got "Don Juan in Hell" a premiere in Santa Barbara and six months on Broadway. It toured the U.S. three times and ran six months in Europe. It's still frequently presented with other stars.
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