My idea of the greatest snub involved one of Hollywood’s greatest films.
It happened on Thursday night, March 2 1944 at Grauman’s Chinese Theater (seen above), where the 16th Academy Awards ceremony was in full swing.
Casablanca, a top contender, had already won “Best Screenplay” and “Best Director”. Then the winner for “Best Picture” was called out …
Jack Warner accepts Casablanca’s “Best Picture” Academy Award from Oscar host Jack Benny
… and producer/ awards participant Hal B. Wallis described what happened next.
After it was announced that Casablanca had won the Academy Award for Best Picture of the Year, I stood up to accept when Jack [Warner] ran to the stage ahead of me and took the award with a broad, flashing smile and a look of great self-satisfaction.
I couldn’t believe this was happening. Casablanca had been my creation. Jack had absolutely nothing to do with it. As the audience gasped, I tried to get out of the row of seats and into the aisle, but the entire Warner family sat blocking me. I had no alternative but to sit down again, humiliated and furious ... Almost forty years later, I still haven't recovered from the shock.
Oscar night: Jack Warner elated; Hal Wallis suppressing his anger
Hal Wallis had worked at Warner Bros. for 20 years. The head of film production for a decade, he’d stepped down from the job in 1941 because he “had no rest, had no home life”. Wallis then negotiated his own independent production deal with the studio, creating his own unit inside Warners where he would only produce four pictures a year.
One of those four was Casablanca, and Mr. Wallis had overseen every aspect of its production, from choosing the property and developing the script, to selecting actors and director, supervising the final edit, and signing off on the music and sound mix.
So, yeah. Wallis was ticked off at Jack Warner. Hugely.
And the snub by Warner was obvious. So obvious that it got noted in the L.A. Times, which caused Wallis (maybe under company pressure?) to fire off a note to Times columnist Edwin Schallert on March 4:
I have been with Warner Bros. for twenty years and during this time it has been customary here as elsewhere for the studio head to accept the Academy Award for the Best Production. Naturally I was glad to see Jack Warner accept the award this year for “Casablanca”. … I am happy also to have contributed my bit toward the making of that picture. Your comment in your column this morning on rivalry at Warner Bros. is totally unjustified. …
But Wallis was, of course, spewing misinformation. He was neither “happy” nor “glad”. And a month later, he resigned from Warners, though there was still two years left on his production deal:
I … felt I could no longer work under the conditions imposed upon me by Jack Warner. … Jack did not live up to the terms of our contract. He often acquired material I never saw and never had an opportunity to consider for my own productions. … Jack began to inject himself into my company’s decision making. Matters came to a head that Oscar night. …
I broke clean, left for New York without any plans, and holed up at the Waldorf Towers for eight weeks. ...
Word of the rupture got around, with tales and jokes about the Wallis-Warner breakup circulating widely. Five years after the fact, novelist and screenwriter Raymond Chandler related one of them to his British publisher:
My favorite Hollywood story is about the Warner Brothers, Jack and Harry. The day after Hal Wallis ankled and left them flat, there was deep gloom and a horrid sense of catastrophe at the executive lunch table. … Jack and Harry come in. Jack turns to Harry.
Jack: That sonofabitch, Wallis.
Harry: Yes, Jack.
Jack: A lousy fifty dollar a week publicity man. We built him up from nothing. We made him one of the biggest men in Hollywood. And what does he do to us? He picks up his hat and walks out and leaves us cold.
Harry: Yes, Jack.
Jack: That’s gratitude for you. And take that sonofabitch Zanuck. A lousy hundred a week writer and we took him in hand, built him up and made him one of the biggest men in Hollywood. And what did he do to us? Picked up his hat and walked out on us cold.
Harry: Yes, Jack.
Jack: That’s gratitude for you. Why, we could take any sonofabitch we liked and build him up from nothing and make him one of the biggest men in Hollywood.
Harry: Yes, Jack.
Jack: Anybody at all. (Jack turns and looks at writer/associate producer Jerry Wald, sitting there at the executive table.) What’s your name?
Wald: Jerry Wald, Mr. Warner.
Jack: (to Harry) Jerry Wald. Why, Harry, we could take this fellow here, this Jerry Wald, and build him up from nothing to be one of the biggest men in Hollywood, couldn’t we, Harry?
Harry: Yes, Jack. We certainly could.
Jack: And what would it get us? We build him up to be a big man, give him power and reputation, make him one of the biggest names in Hollywood, and you know what would happen? The sonofabitch would walk out on us and leave us flat.
Harry: Yes, Jack.
Jack: So why wait for that to happen, Harry? Let’s fire the sonofabitch right now.
In actual fact, Jack Warner did his share of seething. He commenced making snide comments about his former studio chief, and allegedly refused to let his one-time studio head have a picture taken with the Casablanca Oscar. It got to the point where Jack Warner’s actual brother Harry fired this cable off to him, soon after Wallis ankled the Warner Bros. lot.
MY ADVICE TO YOU IS NOT TO MENTION THAT PARTY’S NAME [Hal Wallis] EVEN IN FORM OF KIDDING. ATTEND TO YOUR OWN BUSINESS. I ASSURE YOU HE WILL DO VERY WELL. IT COMES ACROSS THE WIRE MANY PEOPLE SEE IT AND THEY THINK YOU ARE JEALOUS. YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO BE A BIG MAN.
Harry Warner’s predictions regarding Hal Wallis proved correct. Soon after resigning from Warner Bros., Wallis set up a production unit at Paramount Pictures, and went on producing highly regarded films into the 1970s.
And somewhere along Hal W.’s new road to further success, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences sent Mr. Wallis his own Casablanca “Best Picture” Oscar, along with a letter of apology.
End Note: Yeah, this isn’t a “snub” in the way the question intends, but a snub nevertheless.
End Note Too: Warner was technically justified in getting up to accept the “Best Picture” award, since other studio heads had done it. But elbowing out the person who actually did the work was incredibly bad form. Independent producers had accepted Oscars before, and Wallis was within his rights being ticked off at Jack Warner. (Academy rules didn’t officially acknowledge individual producers until 1951.)