John Lodge(1903-1985)
- Actor
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Soundtrack
John Davis Lodge was the grandson of Massachusetts Senator Henry Cabot
Lodge ) and the brother of Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.
There was a saying in Boston, portraying the capital of the Bay State
as "the land of the bean & the cod/Where the Lodges talk only to the
Cabots/And the Cabots talk only to God." John Lodge was both a Cabot
AND a Lodge, a thorough and thoroughly bred blue-blood to boot.
However, before realizing that politics flowed through his veins, John
Lodge - who was born in Washington, D.C. - humored himself with acting,
that other public speaking sport that ranks among the world's oldest
professions, and it was as an actor that the general public first got
to know him.
John was born a year after his brother, debuting in the world on
October 20, 1903. His father was the patrician playwright and poet
George Lodge and his mother was the former Matilda Frelinghuysen Davis.
He grew up in Washington and in Paris before being educated at the
Evans School in Mesa, Arizona and the Middlesex School in Concord,
Massachusetts. He attended Harvard College (Class of 1925) and Harvard
Law School ('29), with a year of graduate study at Paris' Ecole de
Droit in between. At Middlesex, he had indulged his interest in school
theatricals, and he continued as an amateur thespian while
matriculating at Harvard, playing leads in Hasty Pudding Club shows and
French Club productions.
It was in Cambridge, Massachusetts during his undergraduate days that
he met his future wife, the Italian-born Francesca Braggioti. While men
played female roles in drag at Hasty Pudding Club shows, this was not
so at the French Club theatricals (where the plays were presented in
the French tongue). Francesca, who was both a dancer and a
choreographer, often appeared in the French Club plays when there was
wont of a female. The couple were married in 1929.
The newlyweds settled in New York City, where Lodge obtained employment
as a law clerk in a prestigious Wall Street firm. In 1930, the couple's
daughter Lily Lodge, a future actress and drama coach, entered the world
with a kick of her wee legs and a hearty scream. Lily's mama Francesca,
ever the trouper, pursued her own dance career after recovering from
the birth, branching out into acting on Broadway and at small theaters
when she wasn't kicking up her own heels. While Lilly's papa John
didn't join his wife for any professional tripping of the light
fantastic, he did indulge his own acting bones by joining Francesca in
the New York Amateur Comedy Club's production of Noël Coward's "The Young
Idea." The Coward comedy (the credits for which claim "The Snarks" as
producer) played three performances on Broadway in March 1932.
It was the Great Depression, and despite John Lodge's patrician
background, Francesca felt the need to generate some coin (gold specie
wasn't outlawed until 1933 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt - Groton '00; Harvard
'03, though he claimed allegiance to the Class of '04 despite finishing
his undergraduate studies in three years - who most people of Lodge's
class considered a class traitor) by hiring on to dub Greta Garbo's newly
made sound films into Italian. Garbo had been a silent-film superstar
in Francesca's native Italy, and the task was an important one, as the
proper presentation of a speaking Garbo was critical to her future
success in Italy. The job necessitated that Francesca move to Culver
City, California for six months to perform the task at the
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio.
Thus, fate intervened in John Lodge's life, separate from the accident
of his birth. In the late summer of 1932, he took a vacation to
California to join Francesca. In Santa Monica, while playing in a
celebrity tennis tournament, he was spotted by talent agent Ad
Schulberg. Lodge agreed to a screen-test, which was scripted by his
prep school buddy John Lee Mahin, a successful screenwriter. The screen-test
led to an offer of a six-month contract from Paramount Pictures at $75
a week.
Lodge's patrician family was aghast that he would even think of such as
thing as leaving his law career for the then-disreputable "profession"
of movie-making. For
six weeks, Lodge dithered over accepting the offer. Paramount, anxious
to sign the tall and handsome blue-blood, upped its offer to $275 a
week (approximately $3,300/week in 2005 dollars), which at the time was
a considerably greater sum than most New York City lawyers earned.
Lodge signed the contact. While he did understand his family's dismay
over his uprooting himself from a respectable avocation in the upright
and proper Establishment East for a Prodigal Son-like journey to the
Babylon on the sun-kissed and faintly wicked Left Coast to live the
life of a Hollywood player, what he didn't count on was Mae West. His
family was concerned over his new career route, while - if gossip was
correct - Miss West was sure to be concerned over another root
entirely.
As soon as the Paramount publicity department began ballyhooing the
signing of their latest discovery, Mae West - who was not only
Paramount's biggest star but had single-handedly taken the studio out
of bankruptcy - decided she wanted the handsome young Lodge to play the
male lead in her new movie, "She Done Him Wrong," an adaptation of her
notorious stage hit "Diamond Lil." Lodge heard about West's interest,
and as he was in no desire himself to further humiliate his family by
associating with the notorious Mae West (West had been arrested and
jailed for obscenity in New York in 1928 over her play "Sex"), he
decided to nix the role. Lodge informed Paramount that he would not
accept West's offer to co-star in her new picture and that he would
prefer to learn the movie-acting craft by being cast initially in
smaller parts.
No unknown had ever turned down such a big role before, but Paramount
acquiesced. Lodge would later express regrets over his refusal of the
part in "She Done Him Wrong," which became one of the top box office
hits of 1933 and made the man whom Mae West chose to replace him in the
role - Cary Grant - a star. Her first film at Paramount, "Night After
Night," had introduced George Raft to Hollywood. No, John Lodge never
became a star, but he did become the governor of Connecticut. Politics
turned out to be his fate, after all. But before that milestone, there
were movies to make, and a war to be fought.
After making three minor pictures at Paramount, the studio lent him out
to R.K.O, where he made George Cukor's classic "Little Women" (1933). The
apogee of his career came in 1934-35, when he appeared in two more
classics: Josef von Sternberg's "The Scarlet Empress" (1934) in support of the
legendary Marlene Dietrich at Paramount, and "The Little Colonel' at 20th
Century-Fox, where he portrayed the father of another future
actor-turned-politician (and yet another screen legend), Shirley Temple. That
was about it. He made one more movie for Paramount, the mystery
"Menace" (1934), and then became a freelance. In all, he appeared in 21
movies altogether between 1932 and 1940, including several that were
shot in Europe, such as Maurice Tourneur's "Königsmark" (1935), which was made
in France, and "Bulldog Drummond at Bay" (1937) and "Queer Cargo"
(1938), which were shot in Great Britain. (John Lodge thus becomes an
answer to a trivia question: name the actors who have played Bulldog
Drummond.)
In January 1941, Lodge returned to Broadway after his less than
auspicious 1932 interlude to appear as "The Young Man" in the musical
"Night of Love." The musical, produced by the Schuberts, lasted twice
as long as Lodge's previous engagement, closing after seven
performances. He had better luck in his next play, Lillian Hellman's
anti-fascist drama "Watch on the Rhine," in which he played David
Farrelly. The play opened at the Martin Beck Theatre on April 1, 1941
and closed eleven months later, on February 21, 1942, bowing out after
a total of 378 performances. John Lodge was ending his acting career
with a hit.
World War II came to the United States during the run of his last play,
and Lodge became a naval officer in August 1942. Capitalizing on his
language skills and his molarity with Europe, the U.S. Navy made Lodge
a liaison officer between the French and U.S. Fleets. In his
over-three-years of service, Lodge reached the rank of Lieutenant
Commander and was decorated with the rank of Chevalier in the French
Legion of Honor and with the Croix de Guerre with Palm by General
Charles de Gaulle. (He would later make the rank of Captain in the U.S Naval
Reserve.) After he was demobilized, in January 1946, Lodge made his
home in of Westport, Connecticut and joined the family business:
politics.
In November 1946, he became the second movie actor ever elected to high
office, winning a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives as a
Republican. (The Democrat Helen Gahagan Douglas had become the first
when she was elected from California's 14th District in 1944.) He won a
second term in 1948, but resigned his seat in 1950 to run for governor.
He was elected, and took office as Connecticut's 50th governor in
January 1951. His wife, Francesca, proved to be the most active First
Lady in Connecticut history, opening the governor's mansion to the
public. She served as a patron of the arts, promoting concerts and
theater and serving as a founding member of the American Shakespeare
Festival in Stratford, Connecticut.
After his bid for a second gubernatorial term ended in defeat in 1954,
President Eisenhower appointed Lodge U.S. Ambassador to Spain, where he
served from 1955 to 1961. While the Republicans were out of power in
Washington during the 1960s, Lodge was the National President of Junior
Achievement, Inc. from 1963-64, served as a Delegate and Floor Leader
at the 1965 Connecticut Constitutional Convention, and was the Chairman
of the Committee on Foreign Policy Research Institute at the University
of Pennsylvania from 1964-69. After Nixon was elected President in
1968, he appointed Lodge as U.S. Ambassador to Argentina, where he
served from 1969 to 1974. Later, for the most successful
actor-cum-politician in history, President Ronald Reagan, he served as
the U.S. Ambassador to Switzerland from 1983-85 and as a member of the
U.S delegation to the United Nations. (Lodge's tours as the ambassador
to Spain and Switzerland were fitting, as he was a bigger star in
Europe than he had ever been in the United States.)
John Davis Lodge died in New York City on October 29, 1985, nine days
after his 83rd birthday, and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
The Connecticut Turnpike (Interstate-95) was named the Governor John
Davis Lodge Turnpike in his honor. His widow, Francesca Lodge, died on
February 25, 1998 at her home in Marbella, Spain. She was 95 years
old.
Lodge ) and the brother of Henry Cabot Lodge Jr.
There was a saying in Boston, portraying the capital of the Bay State
as "the land of the bean & the cod/Where the Lodges talk only to the
Cabots/And the Cabots talk only to God." John Lodge was both a Cabot
AND a Lodge, a thorough and thoroughly bred blue-blood to boot.
However, before realizing that politics flowed through his veins, John
Lodge - who was born in Washington, D.C. - humored himself with acting,
that other public speaking sport that ranks among the world's oldest
professions, and it was as an actor that the general public first got
to know him.
John was born a year after his brother, debuting in the world on
October 20, 1903. His father was the patrician playwright and poet
George Lodge and his mother was the former Matilda Frelinghuysen Davis.
He grew up in Washington and in Paris before being educated at the
Evans School in Mesa, Arizona and the Middlesex School in Concord,
Massachusetts. He attended Harvard College (Class of 1925) and Harvard
Law School ('29), with a year of graduate study at Paris' Ecole de
Droit in between. At Middlesex, he had indulged his interest in school
theatricals, and he continued as an amateur thespian while
matriculating at Harvard, playing leads in Hasty Pudding Club shows and
French Club productions.
It was in Cambridge, Massachusetts during his undergraduate days that
he met his future wife, the Italian-born Francesca Braggioti. While men
played female roles in drag at Hasty Pudding Club shows, this was not
so at the French Club theatricals (where the plays were presented in
the French tongue). Francesca, who was both a dancer and a
choreographer, often appeared in the French Club plays when there was
wont of a female. The couple were married in 1929.
The newlyweds settled in New York City, where Lodge obtained employment
as a law clerk in a prestigious Wall Street firm. In 1930, the couple's
daughter Lily Lodge, a future actress and drama coach, entered the world
with a kick of her wee legs and a hearty scream. Lily's mama Francesca,
ever the trouper, pursued her own dance career after recovering from
the birth, branching out into acting on Broadway and at small theaters
when she wasn't kicking up her own heels. While Lilly's papa John
didn't join his wife for any professional tripping of the light
fantastic, he did indulge his own acting bones by joining Francesca in
the New York Amateur Comedy Club's production of Noël Coward's "The Young
Idea." The Coward comedy (the credits for which claim "The Snarks" as
producer) played three performances on Broadway in March 1932.
It was the Great Depression, and despite John Lodge's patrician
background, Francesca felt the need to generate some coin (gold specie
wasn't outlawed until 1933 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt - Groton '00; Harvard
'03, though he claimed allegiance to the Class of '04 despite finishing
his undergraduate studies in three years - who most people of Lodge's
class considered a class traitor) by hiring on to dub Greta Garbo's newly
made sound films into Italian. Garbo had been a silent-film superstar
in Francesca's native Italy, and the task was an important one, as the
proper presentation of a speaking Garbo was critical to her future
success in Italy. The job necessitated that Francesca move to Culver
City, California for six months to perform the task at the
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio.
Thus, fate intervened in John Lodge's life, separate from the accident
of his birth. In the late summer of 1932, he took a vacation to
California to join Francesca. In Santa Monica, while playing in a
celebrity tennis tournament, he was spotted by talent agent Ad
Schulberg. Lodge agreed to a screen-test, which was scripted by his
prep school buddy John Lee Mahin, a successful screenwriter. The screen-test
led to an offer of a six-month contract from Paramount Pictures at $75
a week.
Lodge's patrician family was aghast that he would even think of such as
thing as leaving his law career for the then-disreputable "profession"
of movie-making. For
six weeks, Lodge dithered over accepting the offer. Paramount, anxious
to sign the tall and handsome blue-blood, upped its offer to $275 a
week (approximately $3,300/week in 2005 dollars), which at the time was
a considerably greater sum than most New York City lawyers earned.
Lodge signed the contact. While he did understand his family's dismay
over his uprooting himself from a respectable avocation in the upright
and proper Establishment East for a Prodigal Son-like journey to the
Babylon on the sun-kissed and faintly wicked Left Coast to live the
life of a Hollywood player, what he didn't count on was Mae West. His
family was concerned over his new career route, while - if gossip was
correct - Miss West was sure to be concerned over another root
entirely.
As soon as the Paramount publicity department began ballyhooing the
signing of their latest discovery, Mae West - who was not only
Paramount's biggest star but had single-handedly taken the studio out
of bankruptcy - decided she wanted the handsome young Lodge to play the
male lead in her new movie, "She Done Him Wrong," an adaptation of her
notorious stage hit "Diamond Lil." Lodge heard about West's interest,
and as he was in no desire himself to further humiliate his family by
associating with the notorious Mae West (West had been arrested and
jailed for obscenity in New York in 1928 over her play "Sex"), he
decided to nix the role. Lodge informed Paramount that he would not
accept West's offer to co-star in her new picture and that he would
prefer to learn the movie-acting craft by being cast initially in
smaller parts.
No unknown had ever turned down such a big role before, but Paramount
acquiesced. Lodge would later express regrets over his refusal of the
part in "She Done Him Wrong," which became one of the top box office
hits of 1933 and made the man whom Mae West chose to replace him in the
role - Cary Grant - a star. Her first film at Paramount, "Night After
Night," had introduced George Raft to Hollywood. No, John Lodge never
became a star, but he did become the governor of Connecticut. Politics
turned out to be his fate, after all. But before that milestone, there
were movies to make, and a war to be fought.
After making three minor pictures at Paramount, the studio lent him out
to R.K.O, where he made George Cukor's classic "Little Women" (1933). The
apogee of his career came in 1934-35, when he appeared in two more
classics: Josef von Sternberg's "The Scarlet Empress" (1934) in support of the
legendary Marlene Dietrich at Paramount, and "The Little Colonel' at 20th
Century-Fox, where he portrayed the father of another future
actor-turned-politician (and yet another screen legend), Shirley Temple. That
was about it. He made one more movie for Paramount, the mystery
"Menace" (1934), and then became a freelance. In all, he appeared in 21
movies altogether between 1932 and 1940, including several that were
shot in Europe, such as Maurice Tourneur's "Königsmark" (1935), which was made
in France, and "Bulldog Drummond at Bay" (1937) and "Queer Cargo"
(1938), which were shot in Great Britain. (John Lodge thus becomes an
answer to a trivia question: name the actors who have played Bulldog
Drummond.)
In January 1941, Lodge returned to Broadway after his less than
auspicious 1932 interlude to appear as "The Young Man" in the musical
"Night of Love." The musical, produced by the Schuberts, lasted twice
as long as Lodge's previous engagement, closing after seven
performances. He had better luck in his next play, Lillian Hellman's
anti-fascist drama "Watch on the Rhine," in which he played David
Farrelly. The play opened at the Martin Beck Theatre on April 1, 1941
and closed eleven months later, on February 21, 1942, bowing out after
a total of 378 performances. John Lodge was ending his acting career
with a hit.
World War II came to the United States during the run of his last play,
and Lodge became a naval officer in August 1942. Capitalizing on his
language skills and his molarity with Europe, the U.S. Navy made Lodge
a liaison officer between the French and U.S. Fleets. In his
over-three-years of service, Lodge reached the rank of Lieutenant
Commander and was decorated with the rank of Chevalier in the French
Legion of Honor and with the Croix de Guerre with Palm by General
Charles de Gaulle. (He would later make the rank of Captain in the U.S Naval
Reserve.) After he was demobilized, in January 1946, Lodge made his
home in of Westport, Connecticut and joined the family business:
politics.
In November 1946, he became the second movie actor ever elected to high
office, winning a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives as a
Republican. (The Democrat Helen Gahagan Douglas had become the first
when she was elected from California's 14th District in 1944.) He won a
second term in 1948, but resigned his seat in 1950 to run for governor.
He was elected, and took office as Connecticut's 50th governor in
January 1951. His wife, Francesca, proved to be the most active First
Lady in Connecticut history, opening the governor's mansion to the
public. She served as a patron of the arts, promoting concerts and
theater and serving as a founding member of the American Shakespeare
Festival in Stratford, Connecticut.
After his bid for a second gubernatorial term ended in defeat in 1954,
President Eisenhower appointed Lodge U.S. Ambassador to Spain, where he
served from 1955 to 1961. While the Republicans were out of power in
Washington during the 1960s, Lodge was the National President of Junior
Achievement, Inc. from 1963-64, served as a Delegate and Floor Leader
at the 1965 Connecticut Constitutional Convention, and was the Chairman
of the Committee on Foreign Policy Research Institute at the University
of Pennsylvania from 1964-69. After Nixon was elected President in
1968, he appointed Lodge as U.S. Ambassador to Argentina, where he
served from 1969 to 1974. Later, for the most successful
actor-cum-politician in history, President Ronald Reagan, he served as
the U.S. Ambassador to Switzerland from 1983-85 and as a member of the
U.S delegation to the United Nations. (Lodge's tours as the ambassador
to Spain and Switzerland were fitting, as he was a bigger star in
Europe than he had ever been in the United States.)
John Davis Lodge died in New York City on October 29, 1985, nine days
after his 83rd birthday, and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
The Connecticut Turnpike (Interstate-95) was named the Governor John
Davis Lodge Turnpike in his honor. His widow, Francesca Lodge, died on
February 25, 1998 at her home in Marbella, Spain. She was 95 years
old.