Never The Twain Shall Meet

[Leslie Howard and Conchita Montenegro
in Never the Twain Shall Meet, 1931]

[For those following my blog by email, this is my only scheduled post for the week and will be posted to Facebook in sections.]

The next Leslie Howard film to be shown on TCM (Monday, July 25, 11:00am PST) will be the 1931 MGM remake of Never the Twain Shall Meet with Conchita Montenegro. The Peter B. Kyne novel of the same
name was adapted for the screen by Edwin Justus Mayer.

Norma Shearer's brother, Douglas Shearer, served as Sound Director. Shearer, who came up with a recording system that eliminated background noise, was a pioneer in sound technology and during his career received seven Academy Awards, with many more nominations. Shearer's credits include every notable MGM film made between the years 1930 to 1953. He won an additional seven technical Academy Awards during his time as MGM's Director of Technical Research (1955 to 1968).

Arthur Freed whose works include "Singin' in the Rain," "You Were Meant for Me," "All I Do Is Dream of You" and the song my all-time favorite movie character Ripley sings while preparing to blast the Alien into outer space, "You Are My Lucky Star," wrote the theme song, "Islands of Love."

Woody Van Dyke, who directed the film, is better known for his work on Tarzan the Ape Man (1932) starring Johnny Weissmuller, The Thin Man (1934) with William Powell and Myrna Loy, and San Francisco (1936) starring Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy, receiving Oscar nominations for the latter two movies. Van Dyke was known as "One Take Woody" because he brought his films to completion on time and under budget. He directed four actors in their Oscar nominated performances, not a bad résumé.

[Leslie Howard, Conchita Montenegro, Mitchell Lewis

and Hale Hamilton in Never the Twain Shall Meet, 1931]

The film centers around Dan Pritchard (Leslie Howard) who is a partner along with his father, played by C. Aubrey Smith, in a San Francisco based shipping company and who has been in an extended engagement with socialite Maisie Morrison, played by Karen Morley. Dan is called to the ship of his father's friend who informs him he has contracted leprosy and needs someone to look after his daughter, Tamea, whose mother was a Polynesian queen. Tamea, who is played by Conchita Montenegro, is a barefoot native girl, skimpily dressed, her hair wild and her aspect wilder. Pritchard and Tamea seem to be taken by each other from the start. Once Pritchard agrees to care for and educate Tamea and see to it that she marries respectably, her father unexpectedly goes topside and kills himself.

Over the next few days, Dan can't help becoming infatuated with Tamea who constantly throws herself at him. She seems to have grown up with no filters or concept of personal space and proceeds to maul Dan who is shocked and surprised by her behavior but can't seem to control her. While attending a party, Dan is put off by his friends' prejudice and his affections transfer from his fiancé to Tamea, who then seduces him. Dan's father, afraid that his son is losing control, puts Tamea on the next boat back to the Islands. Dan soon follows.

The two live together happily at first, although it is evident from the start that Dan feels out of his element in the tropics with nothing to do but lay about all day and drink in the local bar. (I can see that you have all paused right here to consider nothing to do but lay about a tropical island all day and drink in the local bar. But just remember, there was no Internet back then.) Things start to go terribly wrong when Dan realizes that because Tamea has none of the sexual repressions of his Western world she is a bit too free with one of the barely dressed native Island boys and Dan becomes jealous of her attentions towards him. The enchantment has worn off and Dan proceeds to become an angry drunk.

Fortunately for Dan, his fiancé Maisie did not give up on him when he deserted her, and she follows him to the Island rescuing him from the tropical paradise which has become his nightmare. Although Tamea is sad about Dan's departure (for about thirty seconds), she immediately takes up with her bare chested native boyfriend to help her forget.

[Leslie Howard and Conchita Montenegro
in Never the Twain Shall Meet, 1931]

Although it is still available for purchase(1), I haven't read Peter B. Kyne's novel and do not know if the prejudice Pritchard and Tamea experienced in the early part of the film is a main theme in the book. If it was Kyne's goal to expose racism I find it ironic that the Hays office, the studios' self regulating morality enforcer, itself displayed racism in their statement approving the film.

According to the file in the MPAA/PCA Collection at the AMPAS Library,(3) the film was only approved by the Hays office because MGM's treatment of the picture was "all right from the point of view of miscegenation because the father of the girl is white and he is the only one shown in the picture. The mother was a Polynesian queen and Polynesians are not black."(4) Hays office official, John V. Wilson, also stated that "it might be dangerous to have the son [Leslie Howard] already married and that it would be better to retain the idea in the original story that he has been engaged to the girl a long time and is just on the point of marrying her...If in the beginning of the picture a great deal of audience sympathy is created for the situation surrounding the son and if in the end of the picture the audience is made to feel with him the fallacy of his action is deserting his former life, the tone of the picture will be kept at a level sufficient to satisfy the standards of the Code."(4)

In other words, Wilson and the Hays office approved the film only because the viewer would naturally fall in love with Leslie Howard in the beginning and would realize along with him that where he went wrong was in following Tamea to the Islands and would celebrate his reformation and subsequent return to happiness. Mr. Wilson expected the movie to serve as a cautionary tale to anyone and everyone who had it in their mind to follow a skimpily clad native girl to an island where they could plant themselves on a beach bar stool, order up a drink and watch natives dance, and where bathing, shaving and washing one's clothes were optional. It is obvious that Mr. Wilson was way out of touch with the common man.

[Leslie Howard and Conchita Montenegro
in Never the Twain Shall Meet, 1931]

I would like to go back a moment and discuss "One Take Woody," the director of the film, Woodbridge Strong Van Dyke II.

Although Mr. Van Dyke was a great director, as evidenced by his Academy Awards and nominations, and the fact that he directed four different actors (William Powell, Spencer Tracy, Norma Shearer and Robert Morley) into Oscar nominations themselves, he was not the best choice of a director from Leslie Howard's standpoint.

In 1931, Howard was new to Hollywood, having only appeared in two films, Outward Bound (1930) and Devotion (1931). He had come from the theater where an actor of necessity became intimate with his audience. Generally, the author of the play was present during the development of the stage production and could communicate to the actor over time a detailed knowledge of the character the actor was to portray. Actors didn't learn their lines by heart. Instead, the actor became so familiar with the character that s/he would know in any given situation how the character would respond. Howard stated in Trivial Fond Records that the actor would unconsciously absorb the dialogue simultaneous with the physical movements and the psychological motives of the character. The actor also had the time to explore the nature of the play itself. The actor would work for several weeks without pay during rehearsals which ran 7 to 8 hours per day fine tuning his portrayal of the character until the out-of-town opening in which criticism was expected. Everyone involved in the play would then have the opportunity to correct any shortcomings before the play, and the actors, made their Broadway debuts.(5) Leslie Howard stated that "It is at this moment that the actor comes into his own as artist."(6)

Contrarily, when performing a role for the screen, the actor may be shooting three or four movies at the same time. In the spring of 1931, Howard was filming Never the Twain Shall Meet, A Free Soul with Norma Shearer and Clark Gable, and Five and Ten with Marion Davies—shooting one movie in the morning and another in the afternoon.(7) A movie actor didn't have the luxury of learning anything, except where to show up and when he was supposed to be there. Leslie Howard developed a distaste for film acting, the studio system, contracts, schedules and waiting, waiting and more waiting early in his Hollywood career. Howard said that a "typical 'talkie'...is manufactured on the conveyor-belt system" and that the script is "handed to the actor anywhere from a few days to a few hours before he reports for work...The cast is not even gathered together to read the script before it goes into production."(8) Add into the mix a director who gets the scene in one take and you can just feel Howard's frustration. It is obvious why Howard would return to the theater over and over again during his career.

[Leslie Howard and Conchita Montenegro
in Never the Twain Shall Meet, 1931]

Movie making wasn't without it's rewards, however. An actor of Leslie Howard's stature and popularity could make very good money. And although Howard complained about his fame on more than one occasion, I am sure that like any famous person, he was not averse to its perks.

This brings me to Conchita Montenegro, the sexy barely 18 year old Spanish actress who played Howard's love interest in the film. I have seen rumors that Leslie Howard and Montenegro had a brief affair either during or just after filming Never the Twain Shall Meet. I have never seen this actually confirmed in any of the books written about Leslie Howard that I have been able to obtain. It is clear that Howard and Montenegro were fond of each other as evidenced in the photos below, but whether they actually had an affair is unclear. Spanish author José Rey Ximena refers to an affair in his book, El Vuolo de Ibis [The Flight of the Ibis], but the book has never been translated into English. (I have done extensive revisions to Leslie Howard's Wikipedia page and I am still waiting for the person who placed that bit of gossip there to come up with a citation.) Don't get me wrong. Howard was not always faithful to his wife. It is obvious from pictures and other sources that Howard had an affair with Merle Oberon (pictured below) while they were filming The Scarlet Pimpernel in 1934, but Howard ended it when Oberon expressed a dislike for Howard's young and cherished daughter, Leslie Ruth.(9) Howard also had an open affair with Violette Cunnington(10) (pictured below) while filming Pygmalion (1938) which lasted to the end of her life just six months before Howard himself was killed on June 1, 1943.

[Leslie Howard and Merle Oberon holding hands, England — 1934]

[Leslie Howard with Violette Cunnington]

But Montenegro was obviously a friend. They are seen together here in Madrid, Spain, in May, 1943, shortly before Howard's death.

[Leslie Howard and Conchita Montenegro, Madrid — May 1943]

[Leslie Howard and Conchita Montenegro, Madrid — May 1943]

And that brings me to the end of the story. José Rey Ximena reported that shortly before Montenegro's death in 2007 she granted him a rare interview in which she stated that Howard had been assigned the task by Winston Churchill of meeting Spanish dictator Francisco Franco during Howard's visit to Spain in 1943 to convince Franco not to enter WWII on the side of the Axis powers. Rey Ximena claims in his book, El Vuolo de Ibis [The Flight of the Ibis], that "Thanks to him [Howard], at least in theory, Spain was persuaded to stay out of the war." Montenegro gave no details of the time, date or location of the meeting, only that she used her influence with Ricardo Giménez Arnau, Ambassador to the Holy See (later becoming her husband), to arrange the meeting. Montenegro had no idea what happened in the meeting, only that Howard had been there. In Ronald Howard's book, In Search of My Father: A Portrait of Leslie Howard, he states that his father was carrying a diplomatic pouch on that trip. Ronald Howard states that his father did miss some appointments during that time period but didn't give any explanation as to his whereabouts.

I will end the story here. To see my own personal thoughts on this incident and Leslie Howard's death, please view My Mission on my blog.

Rey Ximena, José. El Vuolo de Ibis [The Flight of the Ibis] (Spanish). Madrid: Facta Ediciones SL, 2008. ISBN 978-84-934875-1-5.

[ I have added Plot, Production and Reception Sections, along with pictures, to the Wikipedia article Never the Twain Shall Meet (1931)] 

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