George Stevens Jr. on I REMEMBER MAMA (1948)

Added: 2026-05-17

[00:00:06]Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. I'm Ryan Bjan, host of Cowtown Movie Classics. And tonight, we are honoring the mothers in our audience with a very special presentation of I remember Mama from RKO Pictures in 1948, featuring Academy Award nominated performances by Barbara Belgettis and Irene Dunn. I remember Mama is just one of a number of timeless classics from legendary director George Stevens whose diverse career included the likes of Gungadin, A Place in the Sun, Shane, The Greatest Story Ever Told, and of course, Giant.

[00:00:42]And we're in Texas, so we know all about Giant. Joining me now is a very esteemed, award-winning filmmaker in his own right. His many grand accomplishments include the founding of the American Film Institute and co-creating the Kennedy Center Honors.

[00:00:58]In January of this year, he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom for his ongoing dedication to film preservation. It is my honor truly to be sitting here with Mr. George Stevens Jr.

[00:01:11]How are you doing tonight, George?

[00:01:12]>> Well, I'm doing very well after that introduction. Makes me feel very, very good. Thank you.

[00:01:19]>> Oh, thank you. Thank you so much. And you were fortunate enough to work with your father under your father sort of at the height of his career as well I say the height he had such a you know such a wonderful career spanning from the 1930s essentially as a director through what the 197 when was his last film that he did?

[00:01:39]>> 19 68 I believe. Yeah.

[00:01:42]>> Oh 68. I mean still uh he was fortunate to work with some of the greatest stars in old Hollywood and and you were right there with him working under him. So what do you remember about I remember mama?

[00:01:55]>> Well I was uh a teenager when I remember Mama was made. It was [clears throat] first film my father made when he came back from the war and he um he uh he landed on D-Day and gone all through the war in France rode a jeep all across Europe [clears throat] and ended up at the Dow concentration camp. So he [clears throat] saw a lot and he came back um you know with with that experience and he was supposed to uh started a company with Frank Capra and William Wiler called Liberty Films and Irene and um Ingred Bergman was the most popular actress at the moment and she wanted to make a comedy with my father and uh so he went to New York to see her and he had the script and he said he'd work on the script on the train. But when he got to New York and they had dinner after her play, she said, "Well, how was our little comedy?" And he said, "Engred, we don't have a little comedy."

[00:03:04]And he just wasn't ready for that kind of work that he'd done before the war.

[00:03:10]Um and so that he found uh the story I remember mama which had been a play on Broadway which deals with San Francisco, the San Francisco of his youth where he grew up and his parents were stage actors in San Francisco.

[00:03:28]And so he uh [clears throat] was not g experienced. Um he was dealing with the past. uh the time of his youth and you know it's an especially beautiful film.

[00:03:45]It's very uh it's what got wonderful humor. There's comedy in the film that uh makes it very special and and it's a story of an immigrant family um played with the mother Irene Dunn um carrying the main role. Uh, and so that was really how he got back into making pictures after the war.

[00:04:11]>> Certainly. And Irene Dunn is wonderful in this film. And since you were a teenager, I take it you were in high school at that time.

[00:04:19]>> Yes.

[00:04:20]>> Were you ever on set at all for this one? Did you get to visit? Did you get to meet Irene Dunn?

[00:04:24]>> Yeah, I did. I went to San Francisco when he was shooting up there. Then we stayed in the Fairmont Hotel and um yeah, I was around and watched a lot of the shooting.

[00:04:36]>> And I'm curious too, having been there firsthand, especially in 1948, the film was shot in black and white and you're looking at it decades later, say you see it now on TCM or something like that, do the memories come back to you? I I I imagine how much different it must have been to see it in full living color, living, breathing life, and then now we're left with this black and white image. How does something like that compare? What does it bring back in your own life?

[00:05:04]>> Well, I mean, I always, you know, it's a black and white film and I've always thought of it that way.

[00:05:10]>> Yeah.

[00:05:11]>> I never felt the absence of color.

[00:05:13]>> Oh, sure.

[00:05:14]>> Yeah.

[00:05:15]Well, no. I just meant in terms of like your own personal rec uh recollections of seeing the set, seeing the costume, seeing it in real life versus seeing the image that we're left with.

[00:05:26]>> No, I you know, I'd seen black and white films made and it it didn't >> Yeah, I was not conscious of of what you described.

[00:05:35]>> The medium itself, it it is what it is.

[00:05:38]It's it's like a painting. You're capturing a moment in time, but it is sort of different from actually having been there. So, I was always curious about that. If there's anyone in the audience who's never seen I Remember Mama, what do they have to look forward to?

[00:05:51]>> They will be watching a very shorthanded storyteller. And the uh these are an immigrant family from Norway or Sweden, I forget which. And uh and there's wonderful comedy and humor in it. Um, and uh, it's a picture you just have to uh, you know, let it wash over you. Just be there [snorts] and be ready for it.

[00:06:20]>> That's fabulous. Well, George, thank you so much for your time. If you're in the audience, please stick around after the film so you can hear the rest of her conversation. Without further ado, from 1948, director George Stevens, I remember mama. You know, I've been fortunate enough to speak with a lot of individuals who are tangentially maybe related or they had family in show business and of course as a child our natural instinct we want to rebel against our parents and go in a different direction. Um but obviously you seem to have had an affinity for the film making process.

[00:06:55]Yeah, I was uh I was blessed by having two wonderful parents and um and my father uh you know for being a very you know obviously a very strong and effective person and uh a leader. Um we got along wonderfully and uh he encouraged me and uh he was pleased when I made a decision to to leave Hollywood and go to Washington to serve with Edward Ar Muro and President under President Kennedy in the new frontier making the documentaries that were shown around the world for the United States information agency. Um, so I had no uh one of the rare ones I guess I had no issues with my father.

[00:07:48]>> Oh well, yeah, that's that's certainly good to know. And your father, again, I mentioned the diversity in his body of work. Nowadays, we like to pigeon hole directors. We say, "Okay, Alfred Hitchcock was the master of suspense.

[00:07:59]John Ford of course was the king of the western." But when when we look at the work of George Stevens, he could tackle any genre, any subject matter um on any scale and the one thing they had in common was that they they were exceptionally wellmade. And to me, he was as much of a master of the art form as someone like Michael Curtis again who could take on any genre. The one thing these movies all had in common is that they end up becoming classics.

[00:08:29]>> Yeah. and and they had there's a humanity that goes through all of his work whether it's comedy or drama and u he had a kind of an understanding of the outsider there's so many you know starting with Alice Adams the young woman trying to make her way in the 1930s in a male world you know and uh >> and this was Katherryn Heer correct >> yes Katherine Yes.

[00:08:59]>> Yeah.

[00:09:00]And then uh I mean Jet Rink and Giant was an outsider in Montgomery Clif, you know, people trying to make their way in the world and um and I think that was uh an important part of his sensibility >> and certainly the humanity shines through even something like when he's tackling a darker subject matter like a place in the sun, right? based on an American tragedy. There is a humanity and sympathy to it. Even in a character like George Eastman, we're still, you know, we're we're horrified, but we're on the journey with these characters and we're still able to empathize with them.

[00:09:40]>> Isn't that interesting? And you know, that that it's sort Nichols when asked, you know, how he he had never made a film. He'd never been on a movie set when he when he went to do Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolf >> and he's quoted in Mark Harris's biography of him and and said well how did you [clears throat] have such a facility for film making and he said I watched a place in the sun 150 times.

[00:10:16]Mhm.

[00:10:18]>> Yeah. Well, I mean that's certainly Yeah. You're you're going to pick up a lot of nuance.

[00:10:21]>> Everything I needed everything I needed to know was there.

[00:10:25]>> Certainly. Certainly. That's an incredibly powerful film. And then you think about something like, you know, you go from A Place in the Sun to Giant a few years later. again the scale the the scope is completely different but he's still able to focus on the the very human performances of Elizabeth Taylor of of course James Dean and Rock Hudson who I find to be very underrated as an actor.

[00:10:50]>> Yeah. and and Elizabeth plays a part.

[00:10:53]This was 1955 56 >> an independent woman before there was talk of feminism and uh was was not common then and goes out to Texas and she has her own ideas and she's going to help the immigrant families and so it's a very con when you watch Giant today it's a very contemporary film Well, it's still relevant. And you know, I say this as a Texan. I'm half Hispanic myself. So, I think it's a very bold movie, especially for its time period, that it actually it's one of those rare stories that deals with anti-Hispanic racism, which there's a lot of films made about the civil rights movement and of course the black community, but I think Giant is sort of unique in that aspect and how it focuses on how Mexican-Americans were treated.

[00:11:47]>> Yes. Yeah.

[00:11:49]>> Very powerful film. Now, looking at your father's body of work, is there a particular Do you have a favorite? Is there something that stands out that you like to revisit?

[00:11:57]>> Well, there's just so many because, you know, all of his films are good. The more the marrier is just delightful and and we've watched the talk of the town at the Turner Classic Movies Fest with Carrie Grant and Gene Arthur and Ronald Coleman. A film made 85 years ago. Yeah.

[00:12:16]>> And it just played with the audience in Los Angeles so perfectly. Um, the first film that I actually had a paid job on was Shane when we went up to Jackson Hole and shot that wonderful western up there beneath the T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T T Ton Mountains >> and that has a particularly a special place in my heart.

[00:12:39]>> It's a wonderful film. And you mentioned the TCM Film Festival. I actually shot I saw Shane for the first time when they played it at the festival. might have been like 10 years ago at this point, but that was such a wonderful experience getting to see it on the big screen.

[00:12:54]>> Yes, that's so important.

[00:12:57]>> Yeah. And and that's a film like even today it's still being quoted and referenced. Uh did I don't know if you're a fan of the Marvel movies or anything, but in the film Logan with Hugh Jackman, they they make a reference to Shane in the film. The characters are watching it and they pay homage, which I thought was really nice.

[00:13:12]>> Right. And uh we do the George Stevens lecture each year at the Motion Picture Academy in Los Angeles >> and we were going to show Shane on its 70th anniversary and I was looking for the right person to speak about Shane and I saw this article uh in which Christopher Nolan is quoted when he was making the Dark Knight. He said that uh Shane was his touchstone in how he showed evil.

[00:13:44]>> Um and so Nolan did the the Steven's lecture on Shane and he had wonderful insights into the film.

[00:13:53]>> Oh, certainly. And he's another great film fan and champion of the art form.

[00:13:58]>> Sure he is. And so as I mentioned uh your relationship or your creation of the American Film Institute and you've done so much work in essentially grooming the careers of the next generation of filmmakers. So as you're nurturing the art form in that aspect, you're also very heavily involved with film conservation, film preservation. When did that interest come about?

[00:14:26]Well, it was when I was really in the government working for President Kennedy and Edward R. Muro and I became conscious of the fact that all the so some so so many of the films that had been made in the first three decades were missing or lost or or deteriorating because they were made on nitrate film. Mhm.

[00:14:49]>> And I and Kennedy spoke so eloquently about the arts that uh you know I had this feeling that it was important to uh to save these great expressions of our culture >> and you've done some tremendous work.

[00:15:07]Again, going back to the TCM Film Festival, I was fortunate enough to be there. Was it two years ago when they did the new restoration of Giant? And I believe Stephen Spielberg introduced it and that was a wonderful experience, >> wasn't that? Yeah.

[00:15:20]>> See Giant on the big IMAX screen.

[00:15:25]>> And you know, I I don't want to get too political. I mean, it's hard in this climate, but as someone who has been very involved with like the National Endowment of the Arts, I noticed now a lot of institutions, I work for museums, art house, theaters, places like that, and it seems like very recently a lot of that funding has been cut. And I'm I'm wondering what can we do to raise awareness of how important it is to have that funding to to support the arts?

[00:15:50]What can we do uh as citizens to let our government know how important it is?

[00:15:55]>> Yeah. Well, people are going to have to stand up and what is taking place in our country is un unthinkable. I mean, it's uh violation of the law. Uh you know, the Congress appropriated this money and for Trump to say, "No, I want to take it and build statues to Pete Rose and other favorites of his."

[00:16:19]>> Yeah. and give it to the to provide it to the arts by the process which is of congressional approval. And uh you know we're we're seeing a reckless uh misuse of uh government power and we're going to have to stand up.

[00:16:40]>> Oh certainly. Absolutely. Well, I just wanted to give a shout out also. you've wrote written this wonderful book, My Place in the Sun, uh, A Life in the Golden Age of Hollywood and Washington by George Stevens, Jr. Um, would you like to tell our audience a little bit about this book and um, the work that went into it? Well, it just I I realized at a certain point that I'd led a very interesting life that the just the people I've been associated with o over the over the years both in Hollywood and in Washington >> and so I started writing it and uh uh and found that it really came together and people love it. I mean they really do they some listen to it as an audio book and some read it but they seem to like those stories and like to find out about uh you know the the Kennedy era and the golden age of Hollywood and of different uh aspects of their country's life.

[00:17:45]Certainly, there's a lot of wonderful stories, a lot of wonderful anecdotes in there. And I have to ask you this too, again, this is always a point of curiosity. And as a regular person, as an everyman, right? You know, you grow up with your family, you take for granted maybe like what your dad does for a living, what your parents do.

[00:18:04]You're just happy to be there, but you have nothing else to compare it to. I was wondering when you were very young and you're growing up in Hollywood, was there a certain point when you realized, oh, my parents or you know my father does something very interesting for a living? When did you realize your childhood was different?

[00:18:19]>> I think I realized it you know when I was nine or 10 11 but then when I was 11 he went away to war for three years.

[00:18:27]>> So uh you know but uh it uh you but I've always considered myself very fortunate.

[00:18:36]Um >> well that's yeah no absolutely and um you know speaking about your father's amazing career in 1984 you directed and narrated this incredible documentary on your father's life and I understand that's recently had its own restoration.

[00:18:52]Yeah, it did on it for its 40th anniversary in 1984 and we did a 4K restoration and it's we showed it at the Turner Classic Festival and [snorts] it's now going to be next this summer it's going to be coming out on Blu-ray >> and it's just [clears throat] you know people really do find it uh you know a wonderful some say it's you know the best film about a filmmaker um and uh whether it's the best or not, but it's a good one and I'm very happy that it's around.

[00:19:26]>> It's certainly up there. And the name of the documentary, it's George Stevens, a filmmaker's journey. Is that the >> right >> George Stevens, a filmmaker's journey. I watched it recently myself. And you were so fortunate in 1984 because I've done some documentary stuff. I know how hard it is to coordinate these things, to reach out and get interviews, but I mean at that time so many of Hollywood's great icons, those stars, the fact that you were fortunate enough to sit down with them and that they were happy to talk about your father, I think that says a lot about you as a filmmaker and your father as a director that they were they had such wonderful things to say about him all these years later.

[00:20:04]>> Yeah. and uh that uh and we sh shot the interviews in 35 millimeter color which means that they're so spectacular to look at today. Katherine Hepburn and >> Jo Gray and Fred a stair and [snorts] it's a great pleasure to see these people >> certainly and I always admire when I when I see old interviews of him I always think of Douglas Fairbanks Jr. He must have been the best dressed man in Hollywood, right?

[00:20:35]So, um, that's wonderful. I'm glad we're able to see it. And your father again, he was a constant filmmaker as we see in the documentary. He took his own film camera to World War II to document. And I believe what that is that some of the only footage we have of World War II in color.

[00:20:51]>> The what they shot is some of the the very rare color footage from World War II.

[00:20:58]>> Yeah. [clears throat] And what is this?

[00:21:00]And can you explain the process? Was it a 16 millimeter camera? What did he use to take some of these home movies?

[00:21:05]>> Yeah, 16 millimeter camera. And you get home movie film. It come in a yellow box.

[00:21:10]>> Yeah.

[00:21:11]>> And you'd put it in the camera.

[00:21:13]>> Then you'd send it to Kovac and they develop it >> and send that same reel back to you as a positive reel that you you can show. It was a unique process and a and a very good one. Mhm. Certainly. And the quality as you see now in this 4K restoration, >> it looks so gorge. I mean, the colors are vibrant. It looks so lifelike. And we were talking earlier when I see the behind-the-scenes footage of Gungaden, it makes me wish the whole movie was shot in color.

[00:21:42]>> Yeah. Yeah.

[00:21:44]>> Well, George, I don't want to take up uh too much more of your time. Do you have any closing thoughts on I Remember Mama?

[00:21:51]Well, it's just I think it's nice that you're showing it for Mother's Day >> and I I think people, you know, where there's so much kind of frenzy in movies today and kind of creating excitement um just to see a film that unfolds in this way and tells a human story without fireworks but with tremendous emotional um emotional integrity. Um I think they'll have a good time with it. Oh, certainly. Um, I know. I I' I've certainly had a good time revisiting it. You know what?

[00:22:24]Actually, before we close out, if you don't mind, now the technology and the way we consume media, it's changed so much even within the last five or 10 years. How do you feel about like the direction of the movie going experience?

[00:22:38]Do you feel like we need to preserve seeing these films with an audience or do you think people get just as much pleasure watching them at home streaming? No, I think that that that the communal experience of watching films together with in front of a large screen is very important and I think it's very important that we work in all different ways to retain it for the future.

[00:23:03]>> Absolutely. And what do you think we can do that like culturally? How can we we reach out to like you know the regular people because even now people at home we have 75 in 85 in TVs they take it for granted and a lot of people don't like leaving the house but obviously this is something that I adore it's something that I feel like is very important and >> I feel like sometimes it is an uphill battle to like how how do you reach out to your community and make it more appealing.

[00:23:30]>> Yeah. Well, it's well we're going to have to see how it plays out. But I I have a certain amount of confidence that it's going to work out well.

[00:23:39]>> I hope so too. Especially with guys like Christopher Nolan on your side. I know he's a big champion of that as well.

[00:23:45]>> Right.

[00:23:46]>> Are are there are there any particular restorations of your father's work that you're working on right now that you're allowed to talk about? Yeah, that we're working on uh the the um 70 millimeter negative of the greatest story ever told.

[00:24:04]>> Oh, wow. Yeah.

[00:24:05]>> Is at MGM and we're doing an 8K restoration off of that negative that'll be ready uh later this year, which is the 60th anniversary of the film.

[00:24:19]>> Perfect. And I don't Is it too early to say? Do you think we could see that at next year's TCM Film Festival?

[00:24:24]>> It's a possibility. Yeah.

[00:24:26]>> Yeah. Well, I'll certainly be the first in line. Once again, Mr. George Stevens Jr., thank you so much for your time and your work.

[00:24:33]>> Well, I've enjoyed talking with you and and have a good evening.

[00:24:38]>> You, too. Thank you so much for the audience. I hope you enjoyed tonight's conversation as much as we had having it. Once again, I'm Ryan Bjan. We'll see you next time.