While fans in the U.S. were lining up to watch Gene Kelly dance in a Hollywood version of Europe in An American in Paris (1951), the musical star was assaying a rare dramatic turn on real locations in Germany and Austria for the 1952 thriller, The Devil Makes Three. He was even shooting on location when he learned that he had been voted a special Oscar® for his choreography on the earlier film, which also captured Best Picture.

The Devil Makes Three pioneered in the kind of runaway production that would become increasingly prevalent among the cash-strapped Hollywood studios during the '50s. With millions of dollars in assets frozen overseas, the studios were looking for a way to increase their international productions. At the same time, recent tax law changes, designed to encourage American investment in a Europe still recovering from World War II, made it possible for U.S. citizens who worked overseas for 18 months continuously to waive income tax payments. Suddenly Hollywood's stars wanted to work overseas, and Kelly was one of the first to take advantage of the situation. He had hoped to follow An American in Paris with a dramatic project, anyway, and The Devil Makes Three and his other European films became useful bargaining chips in his fight to get the studio to finance Invitation to the Dance (1956), an innovative collection of three stories told entirely through dance.

It was perfect timing, then, when MGM writer Lawrence P. Bachmann, sold the studio a story set in Germany just after World War II. Based on actual news events and public documents, he created a fictionalized version of the U.S. Army's hunt for gold smuggled out of Germany by former Nazi officers. The story gave MGM the perfect excuse for location shooting and a timely topic with international appeal (though director Andrew Marton would later claim there were efforts to make the villains Communists rather than neo-Nazis in light of fifties politics).

For Marton, The Devil Makes Three marked a chance to return to his native Austria almost 20 years after he had fled Hitler's Third Reich. Since then, he had built a solid reputation as an action director, particularly with the success of King Solomon's Mines (1950), and as a second-unit director (he would later direct the chariot race in Ben-Hur, 1959). He even stopped off in London on the way to shoot some second-unit scenes of Esther Williams swimming in the Thames for Million Dollar Mermaid (1952). Once in Germany, he arranged to have some of his colleagues from earlier days work on the film.

Marton also tried to convince MGM executives to let him shoot in a European color process called Gevacolor that many considered superior to the U.S.-based Technicolor. He shot an impressive test reel, but the studio eventually decided to keep costs down by filming in black and white. He did, however, convince them to have the dailies developed in Germany, the first time a U.S. studio had film developed on location. Not only did this allow him to keep up with the dailies in a timely manner, but also it meant that Marton could cut the film himself while still filming it. When he got back to Hollywood, studio head Dore Schary informed him that they had their own cut ready to go, but when Schary saw Marton's version, he decided to stick with the director's cut.

Marton made particularly effective use of his European locations. While auditioning musical acts for the nightclub that serves as the neo-Nazis' front, he found a jazz group performing American songs in German. For the film, they were featured performing a song written for MGM's The Harvey Girls (1946), "The Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe," entirely in German.

The film's climax was set in The Berghof, Hitler's home in the Alps. When Marton learned that it was slated for demolition by the occupation forces, he got his sister, a prominent figure in the post-war German government, to intercede for him. She did such an effective job that not only did the military leave it up long enough for him to shoot there, including a spectacular shot through the main picture window, but they turned it into a national shrine. This was particularly appalling to Marton since his sister had spent time in a concentration camp.

While doing research for The Devil Makes Three, Marton had seen a newsreel of Swedes motorcycle racing on an icy lake. The sport was also popular on the Hinterlake, not far from the Berghof, so Marton decided to build the film's central action sequence around just such a race. During location shooting, he had the crew remove script pages dealing with the neo-Nazis and their attempt to use the race to mask a murder attempt on Kelly's character. Marton didn't want to start a riot if any of the on-lookers at the actual race suspected the film's subject matter. All of those scenes were shot later in a studio they rented.

Ultimately, The Devil Makes Three became nothing but a tax break for Kelly. He almost missed out on it altogether when he developed appendicitis while traveling from his new apartment in London to the location. Production had to start without him as he recovered in a French hospital. Then he arrived to discover that the script was less than satisfactory and needed some retooling. He tried to push MGM to send another writer to the location, but all the executives cared about was using their frozen assets. Finally, he had to content himself with using the shoot as an extended paid vacation for himself and his family. The reviews bore out his opinion, with praise for his and co-star Pier Angeli's performances and the action sequences, but complaints about an unfocused script and flat dialogue scenes.

Producer: Richard Goldstone
Director: Andrew Marton
Screenplay: Jerry Davis
Based on the novel by Lawrence P. Bachmann
Cinematography: Vaclav Vich
Art Direction: Fritz Maurischat, Paul Markwitz
Music: Rudolph G. Kopp
Principal Cast: Gene Kelly (Capt. Jeff Elliott), Pier Angeli (Wilhelmina Lehrt), Richard Rober (Col. James Terry), Richard Egan (Lt. Parker), Claus Clausen (Heisemann), Wilfried Seyferth (Hansig).
BW-90m.

by Frank Miller