By his own statements, George Cukor resists the kind of analysis that tradi¬tional authorship study has fostered. Rather than devising a distinct style or pursuing a consistent set of thematically rich motifs, Cukor claims to serve the actor, his presence as an auteur dissolving in the process. And yet, considered in the context of recent scholarly discussion of film authorship, studio-era craft contributions, and screen performance, George Cukor's reputation as an “actor's director” commends him as an ideal case study. Never one of the auteur theory's “pantheon” directors, Cukor remained on Andrew Sarris's “far side of paradise” precisely because his talent seemed aimed at serving the material more than shaping it to his own purposes. And, as many Cukor scholars have pointed out, the material Cukor has served often existed on page or stage prior to its cinematic presentation. In 1971, Gary Carey calculated that of the forty-eight films Cukor had directed up to that point, thirty-four were adaptations. Equally revealing: over a quarter of Cukor's films feature actors as leading characters (9). Cukor's own theater training, established prior to his arrival in Hollywood during the first years of sound filmmaking, buttresses the tendency to see his work as invested inordinately in the appeal of acting; as Sarris notes, “even when Cukor's characters do not appear formally behind the footlights, they project an imaginative existence” (The American Cinema 90).

In interviews, Cukor would repeatedly affirm that he was not interested in asserting himself stylistically (through bravura camera movements or self-conscious editing [in Long 116; in Stevens Jr. 286]). And he differentiated himself from those directors thought to engage in extensive preplanning (such as Hitchcock) at the same time that he foreswore indulging improvisation by his actors. Instead, he asserted fidelity to the script as the logical starting point: “I start from the text, and, of course, I have a general idea about how the film should go. The things that happen on the set enrich it or change it or surprise me a little.