Producer-Director Gottfried Reinhardt Dies

Gottfried Reinhardt, producer of several well-known films, biographer of his internationally celebrated father, Max, and himself the parent of a distinguished jurist, died Tuesday.

A family spokeswoman said Reinhardt was 81 and died at his Brentwood home of pancreatic cancer.

Known to movie fans as the producer of several films, among them “Two-Faced Woman,” Greta Garbo’s last movie, and “Situation Hopeless--but Not Serious,” Robert Redford’s first, Reinhardt was a legend among industry insiders as one of Hollywood’s pioneering and most successful hyphenates: writer-producer-director.

His reign in pictures saw the rise and dominance of Louis B. Mayer at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where Reinhardt labored throughout the 1930s, and the demise of the handful of moguls who, like Mayer, held stars, writers and directors with often unrewarding but tightly written contracts and threats of banishment.

Yet in an interview for the Lillian Ross book “Picture,” a widely heralded 1952 account of the making of one of Reinhardt’s epics, “The Red Badge of Courage,” he seemed to lament the passing of the efficacy of the old regime:

“Everybody in Hollywood wants to be something he is not. . . . The writers want to be directors. The producers want to be writers. The actors want to be producers. . . . Everybody is frustrated. Nobody is happy.”

Reinhardt evolved from being a screenwriter of the 1935 film “I Live My Life,” learning how to direct and produce from such giants as Ernst Lubitsch and Walter Wanger, respectively.

He was raised in his father’s shadow--Max Reinhardt was considered Germany’s most important stage producer and director during the first three decades of the century--and said in a 1982 Times interview that his relocation to the United States was “a fluke.”

He had heard about the ascendancy of Adolf Hitler while riding the subway in New York on a 1931 vacation. “I never went home,” he said.

His Jewish father had also emigrated, first to Austria and then to the United States, but both men found Broadway mired in the Depression so both eventually came to Hollywood. (Gottfried Reinhardt later wrote several Broadway plays, among them “Rosalinda” and “Helen Goes to Troy.”)

Max Reinhardt made a film of his famed “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” and produced a spectacular version of the drama at the Hollywood Bowl while his son, who spoke excellent English, found work with Lubitsch. Gottfried Reinhardt also helped arrange visas for Thomas Mann and Bertolt Brecht, fellow Germans who had been forced to flee Hitler. But cultural differences prevented the two writing giants from assimilating into the film community, while Reinhardt adapted more easily and found regular work at MGM.

During World War II, he served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps making documentaries.

By 1950, when he began work on “Red Badge,” Reinhardt had produced “Comrade X,” “Rage in Heaven” and “Command Decision.” Actors in his films included Clark Gable, Lana Turner, Alec Guinness, Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas.

It was on the “Red Badge” set that Reinhardt saw Mayer undermined and overruled.

The Founding Father of MGM had refused to let Reinhardt make the relatively high-budget Civil War drama, but Dore Schary went to New York executives and had the picture reinstated. Reinhardt recalled the incident as a turning point in the decline of Mayer’s influence.

After that Reinhardt left MGM and went to Europe, where he made several German and French pictures before returning for Redford’s 1965 debut in films. He directed at the Salzburg Festival, which was founded by his father, and wrote a loving tribute to his father: “The Genius: A Memoir of Max Reinhardt” in 1979.

He also wrote a book published in Germany about German refugees in Hollywood, many of whom he had assisted.

His friendships crossed national boundaries: the British writer and emigre Christopher Isherwood; Irving Thalberg, the boy genius of MGM; Chaim Weizmann, founding president of Israel; Arturo Toscanini, Albert Einstein and Adlai Stevenson.

And he lived to see his son, Judge Stephen Reinhardt, become one of the most outspoken members on the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. A major figure in Los Angeles Democratic politics for three decades, Stephen Reinhardt became known for controversial rulings that often put him at odds with the conservative wing of the U.S. Supreme Court.

Judge Reinhardt remembered his father as “one of the very last of a remarkable breed (who) combined the best of old European culture with an American spirit of freedom and opportunity at a time when Hitler and his fellow Nazis sought to eliminate both.”

One of Gottfried Reinhardt’s final honors came on his 80th birthday in March, 1993, when Mayor Tom Bradley presented him with a city proclamation honoring his films, his diverse talents and his humanitarianism.

Reinhardt is also survived by his wife, Silvia, three grandchildren and two great-grandchildren. His daughter-in-law is Ramona Ripston, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California.

Funeral services are scheduled for 11 a.m. Thursday at Hillside Memorial Park.