Arts & Culture

Earlier this year, George Stevens Jr. released a book about his experience growing up in the golden era of Hollywood with an acclaimed director for a father.

Photo courtesy George Stevens Jr.

Author looks back on a Hollywood life well led

By Jim Gordon and Leeta Liepins

Published 2:12 PDT, Fri October 28, 2022

Last Updated: 4:06 PST, Mon November 14, 2022

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George Stevens Jr. recently authored a new book, My Place in the Sun: Life in the Golden Age of Hollywood and Washington.

Stevens Jr. is the founder of the American Film Institute and creator of the AFI Life Achievement Award and the Kennedy Center Honors. The Our City Tonight team sat down with Stevens Jr. to talk about his experience growing up in Hollywood and working with his father, the legendary director George Stevens Sr.

OCT: What was it like growing up in that time known as the golden era of Hollywood?

GS: I grew up in North Hollywood—to me it was a normal neighbourhood. After I graduated I didn’t have a job, so my dad gave me an assignment: read and outline Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy, as he was looking to make the movie version which would be called A Place in the Sun (1951). He also asked me to read other books sent to him for screenplays. One day I picked up a small book and read it in an afternoon. I said to my dad, “This is a really good story.” He asked me to tell him about it, and I found myself reconstructing the novel for him. It would be another of his movies, Shane (1953). It was my first job on location for a major motion picture.

OCT: One of the great takeaways from your recent book is the loving relationship you had with your father. The way he included you to work with him on what would become classic films is truly a beautiful part of the book.

GS: He was a great father. There came a time when I was working with Dad, and directing TV shows, and a tremendous change came my way. Legendary newsman Edward R. Murrow asked me to come to Washington (D.C.) during the (John F.) Kennedy administration to run the motion picture division of the United States Information Agency. But I was my father’s partner, so I told him about the offer—he looked at me and said, “I think you have to do it.” He saw this as an opportunity to perhaps get out from under his shadow. It was such an act of generosity.

OCT: There’s a great story in the book about you and your father driving home from the Academy Awards the night he won the (Academy Award for) Best Director for A Place in the Sun, and between you on the car seat was that Oscar.

GS: I was about 17 at the time. My dad had gone up to accept the Oscar, and a few hours later we were driving home. He looked at me and said about the film, A Place in the Sun, “We’ll have a better idea what kind of film this is in about 25 years.” He was talking about the test of time. And of course he would have had no way of knowing that the young fella sitting beside him that night would one day become the founder of the American Film Institute, where the test of time was cemented in American history, preserving the great films.

As of 2022, Stevens Jr. has been nominated for 38 Emmy Awards, winning 14. He has received two Peabody Awards and eight awards from the Writers Guild of America, and in 2012 he received an honorary Oscar for his lifelong contributions to the film industry.

For the full video interview, visit richmondsentinel.ca/videos.

Jim Gordon and Leeta Liepins are contributing writers to the Richmond Sentinel.