I Walked with a Zombie

The first director Val Lewton hired for his RKO unit was Jacques Tourneur, and the first picture made by that unit was Cat People, an original screenplay by DeWitt Bodeen.

When Tourneur’s father, Maurice, returned to Paris after a number of years in America, Jacques had gone with him, working as assistant director and editor for his father. In 1933, he made a few directorial solos in the French language and then returned to Hollywood, where he became an assistant director at MGM. It was at this time that he first met Val Lewton, and the two young men worked as special unit directors for Jack Conway on A Tale of Two Cities ; it was Lewton and Tourneur who staged the storming of the Bastille sequence for that film.

Tourneur remained at MGM, directing over 20 short subjects, and Lewton eventually went on to become David O. Selznick’s story editor. When Lewton left Selznick to head his own production unit at RKO, he had already made up his mind that Tourneur would direct his first production. Tourneur came to RKO, where he served as director for Lewton’s first three films— Cat People, I Walked with a Zombie , and The Leopard Man. The front office held his work in such esteem that he was given the “A” treatment—solo direction of a high-budget film called Days of Glory , which was Gregory Peck’s first starring film. It was not held against him that Days of Glory bombed. Tourneur immediately turned to another high budget picture at RKO— Experiment Perilous , starring Hedy Lamarr with Paul Lukas and George Brent. Under Tourneur’s skillful direction, it became a suspenseful mood period film, certainly one of his and Hedy Lamarr’s best.

Tourneur stayed on at RKO to direct Robert Mitchum in one of his finest pictures, Out of the Past (aka Build My Gallows High ), as well as an excellent melodrama, Berlin Express , starring Merle Oberon and Robert Ryan with Paul Lukas. Filmed partially in Berlin, the work was the first Hollywood picture to be made in Germany since the end of the war.

Tourneur then directed three excellent westerns for his friend Joel McCrea— Stars in My Crown, Stranger on Horseback , and Wichita , which featured McCrea as Wyatt Earp. He also directed The Flame and the Arrow , starring Burt Lancaster, and Great Day in the Morning , another RKO western with Robert Stack and Virginia Mayo. He then went back to make another horror picture in England, Night of the Demon , with Dana Andrews. This film is rated as highly as those he made for Lewton.

Television direction occupied the greater part of Tourneur’s time for the next decade, but he retired in 1966 and returned to his native country, where he died in Bergerac on December 19, 1977. The best pictures which he directed were those of suspense and genuine terror, though he also did well with those that had a great deal of action. He wisely resisted scenes with long patches of dialogue. When confronted with such scenes, he typically frowned and said, “It sounds so corny.” —DeWitt Bodeen