Gregory Ratoff — Quadruple-Threat Man of the Movies (1937) 🇬🇧
Witness, for example, the contract which calls upon him to be actor, director, writer and producer.
Journalistically speaking, Gregory Ratoff can be the most irritating man in Hollywood. Consider the reporter who goes out to the studio to have lunch with the gentleman. He goes because he has been invited, and therefore he expects the gentleman to be there.
Poor deluded creature. He arrives to find that Mr. Ratoff has calmly gone off to lunch with someone else.
Perhaps the second appointment will be on the set. Once there, the reporter sits and waits and sits and waits. Three or four hours later That Man will approach. With elaborate gestures he will lament thusly: "There vill be no time. I vork too hard — twelf, maybe seexteen hours a day. I am not tired — I'm dead. Pleese forgif."
He looks so distraught about it that the reporter "forgifs" in spite of his deadline.
So it goes. But just as the correspondent has it definitely settled that he's an old run-arounder, Mr. Ratoff will protest that he'll be "seemply charmed, positifely DElighted — come along on Vednesday." Well, all right.
In his vexation, the reporter begins making polite but pointed remarks about Terribly Important People who can't be reached. He ends, as they all do, both male and female, by falling madly in love with Mr. Ratoff. Gregory makes him laugh — and how can a man stay mad when he's amused?
It would take a more experienced pen than this to set forth the infinite number of facts in the make-up of this boisterous Russian. You know him as that effusive comedian who mangles the English language with such hysterical artistry. Hollywood knows him as an executive of versatile brilliance. Local hostesses know him as the number one asset to any party.
Although he didn't make a very auspicious start, Mr. Ratoff has a list of solid accomplishments to his credit.
He was born in Samara, Russia, April 29, 1897. He studied law at St. Petersburg University and graduated with honours. While a student, he made his theatrical debut as a member of the St. Petersburg Dramatic School — as a butler in Ostrovsky's Mad Money.
It wasn't much of a part. He had no lines. It was the first and last role he ever interrupted without an accent. But it was enough to make him yearn after the footsteps of Thespis.
He resumed his dramatic studies after leaving the university, only to have them interrupted by the war. He enlisted in the Russian army as a private. When the soldiers threw down their rifles for the revolution, he was a captain.
After the war he spent two years with the Harkoff stock company. Then he went to Berlin, where his first job was that of an entertainer in a cafe. He sang, if you please, and danced. It was one way of eating, but it wasn't his idea of a theatrical career — so he organised his own company — a company of varied accomplishments. They could put on singing and dancing acts, humorous skits and dramatic plays. But no matter what kind of an act it was, it always was written by Mr. Ratoff. He was the director, the producer, the stage manager and the main character.
Wavering back and forth between moneyed engagements and penniless flops, the company played Berlin, Vienna, Budapest, London and Paris.
It was in Paris, in 1922, that two "vonderful tings" happened to Mr. Ratoff. First, he met and fell in love with the beautiful Russian actress, Eugenie Leontovitch. After a week's courtship she became Mrs. Ratoff.
The second vonderful ting (pardon), the second wonderful thing happened a week after he was married. The Schuberts, then in Paris, offered Gregory a contract to appear in New York. But Mr. Ratoff wouldn't go without his beloved Eugenie. So the Broadway producers wrote her a contract — for 65 dollars a week It was really just an inducement for Gregory because no stage roles came of it.
At the time, Gregory couldn't speak a word of English. The Schuberts put him in a Broadway musical, and he might have been awfully good, had anyone been able to understand him. The Schuberts deleted his act and told him to learn English. He did — in a way. Then they put him in Blossom Time and he played in that production for three years. After a series of successes the producer urge got the best of him. With the help of his wife he staged eight plays in New York, appearing in most of them.
In 1931 David Selznick brought him to Hollywood to play Ricardo Cortez' father in "Symphony of Six Million."
Mr. Ratoff isn't likely to forget his first day inside a Hollywood studio, nor the first motion picture sequence in which he ever appeared. The scene took place in an operating room and Gregory was the patient.
They rehearsed. Just as Gregory was wheeled into the room on a stretcher, a nurse was to pat his hand and say, "Don't worry. Everything's going to be all right." An hour later they were still rehearsing because the director couldn't get the nurse to speak the line as if she meant it. Meantime, Mr. Ratoff, the soul of martyred patience, slowly chilled on his unresisting couch. At the end of two hours, with rehearsals still going on, Gregory stuck his head out from under the sheet. Addressing the director, he said: "Pardon, how much you pay dis girl?"
"Sixty-five dollars a day," responded the director.
"Veil, pleese," begged Mr. Ratoff, "von't you consider a girl for 100 dollars a day who can talk! "
Following his first picture, Mr. Ratoff enjoyed considerable Hollywood success. He became a highly paid man as featured comedians go. He earned £750 a week.
Then he went to England for a film. Returning, he continued to draw £750 a week — but could get nothing but "bit" parts.
So a year and half ago he went to Darryl Zanuck and asked what was the matter.
Mr. Zanuck smiled and said, "All right, Gregory, you can begin here — at a cut."
Within fifteen minutes Mr. Ratoff walked out of Zanuck' s office with a contract, and what a contract!
Once in a while a Hollywood producer writes a contract such as that — and usually he's sorry for it. Considering that, Gregory Ratoff turned out to be a very remarkable fellow. In fact, he's just short of being cataclysmic. In his year and a half with 20th Century-Fox he prepared the scenario for, and co-directed "Sins of Man;" he wrote the original stories for "Cafe Metropole," "You Can't Have Everything" and "Winter Garden," the latter not yet in production. He also acted in Cafe Metropole and in "Sing, Baby, Sing," "Road to Glory" and Seventh Heaven." In the meantime he found enough spare time to direct a picture called "Lancer Spy."
Gregory Ratoff turned out to be the kind of a director that the average layman expects a Hollywood director to be. Certain it is that as the director of Lancer Spy, Mr. Ratoff gave the performance of his career. During rehearsals he took all the parts himself. He wore an admiral's cap, dark glasses, and carried a whistle.
He had a way with the cast. He kept them in a constant flurry between despair and elation. At 12 noon he'd promise to stop work at 6 p.m. At 7 p.m. they'd still be making pictures. At 9 p.m., which was about the time Director Ratoff would sense a definite revolt, he'd pull his coup. He'd throw out his arms in a supplicating gesture, and with a suspicion of mist in his eyes he'd say — "Pleese, I vant theese picture to be magneefeesant. You are my fraands — please, my dear, kind noble fraands, we make just von more little sanshashunal scene — for Gregory…"
Whereupon the cast would practically burst into tears and do it again — for Gregory.
Gregory Ratoff in one of his more reposeful moments.
Collection: Picturegoer Magazine, December 1937