Henry Koster Practices Exactly What He Preaches (1950) 🇺🇸

“There comes a day in everyone’s career when he has to go like H - to stay where he is.” These are the sage thoughts of director Henry Koster, who believes in practicing what he preaches.

by Paul Manning

Koster has risen to the very top of the heap in the highly competitive field of motion picture directing and considers that from this point on every new picture will be subjected to a more withering type of criticism than anything he has done during the long, hard pull to his present enviable position.

Sitting on the charming terrace of his hillside cottage, I could readily see why many of Koster’s close friends refer to him as the personification of that word which Walt Disney has made world famous, animation! Henry Koster exudes the very essence of this active word. Thoughts flash through his agile mind like streaks of colored lightning, and when he drives home a point, it is with a quality of enthusiastic inspiration which instantly defies dullness or boredom on the part of anyone within earshot.

This is the personality which carried Koster through a series of experiences from the puzzled day he left Hitlerized Germany in 1933, through varied jobs in European motion picture production, and on to a permanent place in Hollywood. This virile personality made me curious as to the whys and wherefores of its development, and my course of questioning naturally brought up the matter of his childhood and motion picture background.

He was born in Berlin, Germany, to Albert and Emma Koster. Early in his life, they recognized in him the desire and ability to create artful designs, tell every day occurrences with zest, and to write realistically. He found as much beauty in the hustl6 and bustle of the Berlin crowds hurrying as he did in the gaudy splendor of the Royal Ballet at the Opera House. “All kinds of people make fascinating beauty. Everyone moves around in a little private world, builds his own situations which eventually encompass every known human emotion. We are part of many of these private worlds, and every day add our influences to the structure of new people who enter our sphere of activity.”

This, I realized, was the deep human interest quality responsible for Henry Koster’s success. The understanding that each different type has his own part to play has given Koster the patience to work at once with the drones, the frustrated and the unpredictable.

Koster supplied himself with a strong knowledge of many fundamental things, such as commercial art, cartooning, newspaper reporting, and newsreel photographing. By his practical application of these knowledges, he was able to gain the necessary experience in the Berlin and French industry which brought him to the attention of Universal, which brought him to Hollywood in 1936. His first Hollywood directorial job was “Three Smart Girls.” Teamed with an equally enthusiastic man, producer Joe Pasternak, these two made motion picture history with a rapid succession of hit films, “One Hundred Men And A Girl,” “Music For Millions,” The Rage of Paris, “First Love,” and others.

All veteran exhibitors will remember with pride the box-office records broken with wonderful regularity when these grand Koster-directed and Pasternak-produced films played. They were a great team together, and even though today their fortunes have separated their paths, individually their efforts still account for many millions of dollars happily spent by a public. Some of Koster’s later triumphs were “Two Sisters From Boston,” “Unfinished Dance,” “The Bishop’s Wife,” “Luck Of The Irish,” “Happy Times,” “Come To The Stable,” “Wabash Avenue,” “My Blue Heaven,” and “Harvey.”

Even as we spoke, his bags were being packed for departure for England to direct “No Highway,” with Marlene Dietrich and James Stewart. When Darryl Zanuck entrusts a top-notch suspense thriller to a man who has in the past been principally associated with musical comedies and human interest dramas, it is a sure sign that the man can handle the chore.

“But,” said Koster as I bade him bon voyage, “it only goes to prove, Paul, my original thought, that there comes a time in everyone’s career when he has to go like H — to stay where he is.”

My conclusions at this writing are that not only will Koster stay where he is, at the top of the mound, but by enlarging the scope of his talent with such thrillers as “No Highway,” he will widen the pinnacle where he now stands into a sort of a lofty plateau, which strategically, is a lot safer to live on and is easier held than a vulnerable, unsecure peak. I know that Henry Koster won’t mind if Paul Manning signs off with a little philosophy of his own. — P. M.

At left, director Henry Koster pauses on the set of 20th-Fox's "Wabash Avenue" for a chat with Victor Mature and Gloria Yarbrough, and at center, Koster assists Betty Grable during the filming of a musical scene from the same picture.

At right, the director discusses an outdoor scene with Loretta Young and Celeste Holm during the production of "Come To The Stable." He is currently at work in England on thriller, "No Highway."

Source: The Exhibitor, August 1950