Forgotten Masters: Rowland V. Lee

This week I managed to watch two adventure films by Rowland V. Lee back-to-back: Son of Monte Cristo and Captain Kidd.

For me, the most interesting part—especially given the current situation in my country—lies in Lee's fascination with romantic rebellion against tyranny and oppression. He transforms the old formula of “master swordsman vs. bad guys” into a fight for freedom and country in both Son of Monte Cristo and Captain Kidd.

These pictures have everything we expect from escapist films, and at the same time they remind us how somber the real situation is—because there won’t be any master swordsman in the streets of pain and anger (sorry, I can’t explain more than that!).

Rowland V. Lee (September 6, 1891, in Findlay, Ohio – December 21, 1975, in Palm Desert, California) was an American actor, director, writer, and producer. He directed 59 features, with Captain Kidd (1945) being the last. Only eight of his films have been released on DVD, and just one of them in decent condition. Most available titles have been transferred from fading public-domain prints. Horror fans will recognize him for his two important entries in the genre: Son of Frankenstein and Tower of London (featuring Boris Karloff, Basil Rathbone, and Vincent Price).

Because many of his films dealt with British themes or characters, some historians have incorrectly referred to Rowland V. Lee as a British director. According to McMillan, however, he was born in Ohio. Coming from a show business family (his parents were stage actors), he began his career as a child actor in stock companies and on Broadway. He interrupted his stage career for a stint as a Wall Street stockbroker, but gave that up after two years and returned to the stage. Educated at Columbia University, he spent several of his early professional years as a Broadway actor. After a brief “intermission” as a Wall Street stockbroker, Lee entered films as a member of producer Thomas Ince’s stock company.

His show-business career was interrupted again by World War I; afterward, he returned to Ince, this time on the directorial staff. Lee’s silent and sound output was varied, embracing war melodramas, romances, musicals, westerns, and horror films. He was clearly influenced by the “Germanic” school of the late 1920s, carrying this impressionistic style into such sound films as Zoo in Budapest (1933), Love from a Stranger (1937), and Son of Frankenstein (1939). He served as producer on several of his films, notably the 1935 version of The Three Musketeers (a foredoomed effort, as Lee was denied the cast and production facilities he requested), Service Deluxe (1938), and The Sun Never Sets and Tower of London (both 1939). Tower of London is a marvelous example of how to make a Shakespearean film without using a single word from Shakespeare.

Inactive in films between 1945 and 1959, Rowland V. Lee made a comeback as the producer of The Big Fisherman (1959), a lavish adaptation of Lloyd C. Douglas’s book about Simon Peter. Unfortunately, it suffered from threadbare production values, a largely uninspiring cast, and heavy competition from another 1959 biblical epic, Ben-Hur.

One of the legends about him concerns his ranch. He owned a 214-acre movie ranch in the San Fernando Valley in California. He purchased the property in 1935 and called it Farm Lake Ranch, but the film industry knew it as the Rowland V. Lee Ranch. With its pale brown hills of barley chaff, olive and eucalyptus trees, and two scenic lakes, it was strangely seldom used for westerns. For I’ve Always Loved You (1946), Republic Pictures built an extensive farmhouse and barn set. They also constructed a stone-and-wood bridge over one of the lakes, which was often photographed as a river. The farmhouse set would be adapted and modified over the years. RKO used it as a period French farmhouse for its modest swashbuckler At Sword’s Point (1952). Its most famous use was as an Indiana Quaker family farm during the Civil War in Allied Artists’ Friendly Persuasion (1956). To give it an “Indiana look,” director William Wyler had cornfields planted, sycamore trees brought in, and large areas covered with green grass. The wooden farmhouse was also given a fake stone façade. You’ll also see the ranch used to great effect in Alfred Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train (1951) and in Charles Laughton’s The Night of the Hunter (1955). After Lee died of a heart attack at the age of 84, the ranch was developed into an expensive gated community called Hidden Lake Estates.

This gentleman had taste, and it is evident in the way he uses his camera and its relationship with décor (the marvelous sets of Son of Monte Cristo were nominated for an Oscar). I recommend watching his two “sons”—The Son of Monte Cristo and Son of Frankenstein—to anyone looking for pure entertainment made by the modest professionals of the golden age. And like any other work from that period, these films carry many underlying meanings which, like fairy tales and folklore, often do not reflect the auteur’s or creator’s original intentions, but rather the unavoidable impressions of their time—impressions that still speak to us.