Millie Perkins and Diane Baker remember "The Diary of Anne Frank"

In his epic exam­in­a­tion Histoire(s) du cinéma, Jean-Luc Godard mord­antly observes of dir­ect­or George Stevens, “if [Stevens] had­n’t been the first to use the first six­teen mil­li­meter col­or film at Auschwitz and Revensbruck, there’s no doubt that Elizabeth Taylor’s air of well-being would nev­er have found…A Place In The Sun.” A cryptic pro­nounce­ment to be sure. Some take it to mean that it was Stevens’ first-hand wit­ness­ing of man’s inhu­man­ity to man that enabled the pre-WW II dir­ect­or of such bouyant com­ed­ies as Damsel in Distress and The More The Merrier to really “go deep” for his still gal­van­ic adapt­a­tion of Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy, star­ring Taylor, Montgomery Clift, and Shelley Winters. It is for cer­tain, though, that his exper­i­ences as a war­time film­maker stirred Stevens’ social con­scious­ness and led to the cre­ation of such films as the bigotry-condemning Giant (1956), the ambi­tious Christ tale The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965), and, of course, his 1959 adapt­a­tion of The Diary of Anne Frank, the true, first per­son story of one Holocaust vic­tim: a 13-year-old girl hid­ing from the Nazis in an Amsterdam attic.  In con­junc­tion with its 50^th anniversary, 20^th Century Fox Home Entertainment recently released a new edi­tion of the pic­ture on DVD and Blu-ray disc. As the crit­ic Dave Kehr observes in a review in The New York Times this week, Diary is a prob­lem­at­ic film, a (pos­sibly neces­sary, he argues) Hollywoodization of the sub­ject mat­ter. But Stevens’ sin­cer­ity and cine­mat­ic assur­ance come through in much of the pic­ture. One need only watch the word­less open­ing scene, as sur­viv­or Otto Frank returns after the war to the house where the film’s action takes place, to under­stand one is in the hands of a kind of master.

Two of the film’s stars were first time act­ors: Diane Baker, who plays Anne Frank’s sis­ter Margot, and Millie Perkins, who at age 20 played Anne her­self. I recently got to chat with them both.

“I had nev­er acted before that,” says Perkins.  “And I had nev­er thought of being an act­ress. I had been doing mod­el­ing. I moved into Greenwich Village with my sis­ters. I had­n’t thought of act­ing or being an act­ress; Hollywood was not my cup of tea.  And two or three people approached me to test for the film and I just thought, well that’s crazy, I’m not an act­ress. I was young, you know. And finally someone got a hold of me from MCA and they said, ‘You’ve been reques­ted for an inter­view test, and you should be thrilled, because the pro­duc­tion has looked at 10,000 girls already, they’re look­ing for an unknown’ and blah-blah-blah. And I finally said yes, OK, I’ll go do the test. But, you know, I had nev­er heard of Anne Frank. I had­n’t seen the Broadway play, which had Susan Strasberg in it and was, by every­one’s account, won­der­ful. I was aware of what World War II was; my fath­er was in the mer­chant mar­ine, he was a com­modore, so he shipped in Japan, when Japan sur­rendered he was one of the first Americans to set foot in Japan. So I was­n’t really aware of just how import­ant this pro­ject was, only that I was being told it was import­ant. So although I agreed for the test, I was late for my appoint­ment, and when I got to the appoint­ment all these makeup people and the hair people star­ted doing this Hollywood stuff on me and I just wasn’t–I just was­n’t that kind of per­son. I said, I’m sorry, I don’t like what you’re doing to me and I really don’t think this is what I want to do. If you don’t mind, I’m going home. And they said OK, OK. Do your own hair and makeup. They did­n’t like me!”

After the less-than-ideal first go-round, Perkins set off to Europe for more modelling—“I for­got about the whole thing, nev­er dream­ing any­thing would come of it”— and then learned that Stevens now wanted to per­son­ally inter­view her about the part.  “[He] found me in Paris and asked me to please come to California to test for the part. And I read The Diary on the plane…and I under­stood imme­di­ately what that was about and it just kind of hit me in my heart and my soul, and I knew, finally, that this was not just a Hollywood movie, it was some­thing import­ant. I did­n’t know much about Hollywood, except I did know that George Stevens had dir­ec­ted one of my favor­ite films in high school, which was A Place in the Sun.  And it was really one of my favor­ite films, from a time when I did­n’t have any favor­ite films.  And so I thought, well this is a very spe­cial per­son. I was the kind of per­son you could­n’t tell anything–I did what I wanted to do and nobody could tell me what I could or could­n’t do.  And George Steven under­stood who I was, and he treated me won­der­fully. And a few months later called me up in New York and I met him at the Plaza and had tea. It was a snowy day.  And he said he was going to give me the part.  Which was a sur­prise to me.  But it was­n’t a sur­prise that George Stevens and I had a con­nec­tion that was right.  He knew who I was and he got it.  So there I was.”

Feeling both a kin­ship to her char­ac­ter and a respons­ib­il­ity, Perkins nev­er­the­less “left [things] totally up to George Stevens. If he had wanted an act­ress for the part that was exper­i­enced, that’s one thing. But he wanted an unknown but he also knew imme­di­ately that I could do it. I had con­fid­ence in those days about what I did and I had integ­rity to do what I did right. And I remem­ber when we were shoot­ing the film, some act­or came up and said, ‘Oh, I hear you’ve been shoot­ing this film for the longest time.  I guess because you nev­er acted, George Stevens must have to work with you real hard.’  I said—innocently enough—I just looked at him and I said, ‘Oh no, I said, I do everything in one or two takes. And Shelley Winters, she has to take 30 takes, not me.’  But that’s what it was like, that’s what it would be required.  You have a real act­or and you’re going to work with them and try this and try that.  And with George if he did­n’t think or know that I could do it without hav­ing to know how to act, he had to know that I could do it.  Otherwise he would­n’t have hired me and he could­n’t spend 30 takes on someone who’d nev­er acted before, you know what I mean?  It was–he knew imme­di­ately and instinct­ively I would do it and it would be nat­ur­al. And if it was­n’t nat­ur­al, then he should­n’t have hired me. But he did.”

After the film’s release, Perkins toured the world, a stu­dio ingénue, and got some inter­est­ing tastes of what the inter­na­tion­al press could get up to. “Believe me, 20^th Century Fox paid me noth­ing to do this movie; I think I got $350 a week to star in the pic­ture.  I did­n’t know any bet­ter.  And I remem­ber I got off the plane in London and one of the inter­view­ers said to me, ‘Miss Perkins, what are you going to do with all this money you’re mak­ing now that you’re a movie star?’  And I was young, I did­n’t think; I did­n’t know press or any­thing.  I just said, ‘Well, I don’t know, I nev­er even thought about that.’ I did­n’t relate to the ques­tion at all! And  I remem­ber the head­line of, I think it was the Telegraph, the front page said, ‘Millie Perkins does­n’t know what to do with her money.’ As in, why does­n’t she give it to war-torn Europe, to help rebuild war-torn Europe?  I said, what?  I don’t have any money.  What are you talk­ing about?  It was crazy.” And unfor­tu­nately the fare that Fox had pre­pared for her post-Anne Frank was not all that sat­is­fy­ing. “I stayed under con­tract to Fox for I think a couple years and they kept try­ing to put me in junk and stu­pid movies.  Believe me, I was­n’t that kind of per­son.  And if you told me I was going to go vis­it Vladimir Horowitz, I would have said yeah!  Or Artur Rubinstein or…Jean Cocteau, I was a fan of his.  But I was­n’t a fan of Hollywood so when they tried to make me do stu­pid teen­age movies, I said no, and I got the repu­ta­tion of being dif­fi­cult.  So they dropped me.  Other stu­di­os tried to bor­row me.   That John Huston  movie, The Unforgiven, that Audrey Hepburn was in, the pro­du­cers of that film wanted me for it.  Of course Fox said no, we’re going to find our own prop­erty for her.  Well they did­n’t.  I finally said yes to doing an Elvis Presley movie.” (Interestingly enough, Hepburn was reportedly the first choice of Otto Frank, Anne’s fath­er. Joseph McBride has some intriguing inform­a­tion on the cast­ing of Stevens’ film in the com­ments thread of the Frank post at Dave Kehr’s website.)

The Anne Frank ensemble: Diane Baker, Richard Beymer, Gusti Haber, Perkins, Joseph Schildkraut, Shelley Winters, Lou Jacobi (at bot­tom). 

Diane Baker had come off of a long series of act­ing classes in New York and Los Angeles when she signed a seven-year con­tract with Fox in the late ’50s. “And I met him, George Stevens, in the actu­al com­mis­sary of the stu­dio.  And he stood up from his table and said hello, and the next thing I know two days
later I’m in his office doing a test with Millie.  That day was a very import­ant day because Mr. Frank, Anne and Margot’s fath­er, was on the set  And he was vis­it­ing and he came up to me with tears in his eyes and said, ‘You are so like my daugh­ter Margot.’  it was a very spe­cial moment.  No expect­a­tion on my part, just being there and being involved, I had no idea what was going to come. And I think that was Mr. Stevens’s whole point at hav­ing young people, new­comers.  We wer­en’t stars, we had­n’t become that thing that hap­pens in Hollywood when people work a lot.  Which is self-awareness.”

Despite the social and world-historical import of the sub­ject mat­ter and the tra­gic end of many of its char­ac­ters, the main storyline of Anne Frank at least par­tially resembles a domest­ic drama, with touches of light­ness and humor. “Mr. Stevens very care­fully planned that we would have those ‘up’ moments and he played music, waltzes. That was the atmo­sphere he needed to cre­ate, with his private phono­graph on the set, to keep us light and not to become so heav­ily, deeply mor­ose.” Nevertheless, Baker recalls, “I began to live the part. I nev­er changed my clothes.  I walked around with black stock­ings and no makeup.”

Baker, who these days, among a great many oth­er things, teaches film at The Academy of Art University in San Francisco, is still pro­foundly impressed by the use of sound in Anne Frank. “[Stevens] placed a great deal of import­ance on sound effects, and par­tic­u­larly those that would intrude on the brief peri­ods of ‘nor­malcy’— the blast­ing police sirens, the march­ing in the street, the hor­rible sounds. The soundtrack was vital. Because of their situ­ation, their hid­ing, every sound was import­ant,  from the crunch­ing of the toast on the plate to the sound of a cat meow­ing. All of that was very care­fully arranged and cre­ated by George Stevens.”

As for Stevens’ war­time exper­i­ences, “He did­n’t dis­cuss it with me.  He may have dis­cussed it with oth­ers.  But it just seemed apparent—rather obvi­ous, because we heard—we knew what his past had been and what his his­tory. We did talk about it later. I remem­ber I was in the Academy theat­er watch­ing Battle of Algiers and he was there alone, I was there alone, and we talked briefly, about war and gen­o­cide” Baker’s social com­mit­ment, which she says was first spurred by her work on Stevens’ film, con­tin­ues to this day; she serves on the board of Roots Of Peace, a non­profit organ­iz­a­tion devoted to wip­ing out land mines in Afghanistan. “It’s just all sort of com­ing togeth­er.  I think I know what the rest of my life is really going to be.  I have stu­dents that are com­ing out of vari­ous coun­tries.  And I have kids from Israel, I have a boy from Palestine.  And I’m just telling them, your thes­is film has to be on how you bring these cul­tures together.”

Perkins and Baker both went from Anne Frank to very dif­fer­ent but equally fas­cin­at­ing film careers. After drop­ping out of movies after her Fox con­tract was done, Perkins decided to study act­ing, and “met a group of people that are still my friends, some of them.  Jack Nicholson, and Harry Dean Stanton, and the late Warren Oates, Rupert Cross,  Carole Eastman, who wrote Five Easy Pieces, and Monte Hellman.” Hellman dir­ec­ted Perkins in sev­er­al pic­tures, includ­ing the mid-’60s exist­en­tial­ist Westerns The Shooting and Ride In The Whirlwind. “We did these films back to back, 2 weeks each, no makeup, no hair, no cos­tumers. Jack [Nicholson] and I went over to Western Costume and picked out our own cos­tumes!” Perkins later starred in a bizarre quasi-horror pic­ture, 1976’s The Witch Who Came From The Sea, dir­ec­ted by B‑movie maes­tro Matt Cimber and writ­ten by her then-husband Robert Thom, who died shortly there­after. “I did that movie for the money!  And I remem­ber I did­n’t even tell any­body I did that movie cause it was pretty raunchy.  I mean, I did­n’t tell a soul that I did it, I did­n’t even tell my kids that…nobody saw the movie. And lo and behold, a couple years ago I get this call from the dir­ect­or, Matt Cimber. And he said, the Cinemuerte fest­iv­al in Canada, is show­ing that film, you have a big fan club from that movie. Did you know that?  And he said, they’re show­ing it in Canada and they want you to come up. So I went up there. And lo and behold, there are these people that knew of this movie, and they gave me some kind of award for it!”

As for Ms. Baker, she can now be seen occa­sion­ally as the put-upon moth­er of the obstrep­er­ous Dr. Gregory House (Hugh Laurie) on the series House. Soon after Frank, she was work­ing with anoth­er cinema mas­ter, Alfred Hitchcock, on Marnie. “I think that Mr. Hitchcock was hav­ing a very, very rough time at the end of the film, the dif­fi­culties that he and Tippi were hav­ing.  And I was sort of stuck in the middle which comes out in Donald Spoto’s latest book [Hitchcock’s Women]. I have to say, Mr. Spoto got me to say more than I nor­mally would, ever. It’s been a long time and I don’t like going over old stuff, but I have to say, he got me to say a lot and of course Tippi and I are friends so we know what went on. But it just; it was a dif­fi­cult time.” For all that, Baker remains a great admirer of the Master of Suspense. “I’ll be teach­ing  a course start­ing in the fall on Hitchcock, who I think is still vital. His work is still very great, very import­ant. And work­ing with him was a fas­cin­at­ing exper­i­ence and I learned a lot from him.  I learned a lot.  Like there’s a line of his that I love, and I use it in my act­ing classes when I talk to act­ors.  He  said to an older act­ress who I was on the set: ‘There is so much writ­ing on your face I can­’t see the expres­sion.’  So when I see people, kids, ham­ming it or mak­ing faces, I say, first of all, it’s not about the words, it’s about what’s going on under­neath.  What’s the story, what is your ima­gin­a­tion, what are you—what’s your research on this char­ac­ter?  In Hitchcock’s mind is was the same: it was ‘don’t ham it up; I can­’t see what you’re feel­ing.’  So I always remem­ber that won­der­ful line.”