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[struth]

Donovan's Reef, 1963... Directed by John Ford.







When John Ford offered Lee Marvin the role of Gilhooley, he told the actor it didn't matter what the story was as it would be a good excuse for the cast and crew to have a free holiday in Hawaii.

Because of the age difference, John Wayne felt very uncomfortable with the romantic scenes with Elizabeth Allen, and asked John Ford to cast Maureen O'Hara opposite him instead. Ford refused and replied "Are you going to be the one who tells her she's perfect because she's old?". After this movie, Wayne made the decision to confine his romantic interests to mature women.

In a fight with Lee Marvin, John Wayne underestimated an uppercut. He crashed through a table and fell down. Director John Ford decided to leave the scene in the movie.

[walpurgis]

Good fun movie. A bit corny maybe, but they all looked like they enjoyed being in it. Bar punch-up was a laugh!

[struth]

Marathon Man, 1976. Directed by John Schlesinger.





Producer Robert Evans was set upon getting Sir Laurence Olivier to play the role of Dr. Szell. However, because Olivier at the time was riddled with cancer, he was uninsurable, so Paramount Pictures refused to use him. Desperate, Evans called his friends Merle Oberon and David Niven to arrange a meeting with the House of Lords (the upper body of the British parliament). There, he urged them to put pressure on Lloyd's of London to insure Britain's greatest living actor. The ploy succeeded, and a frail Olivier started working on this movie. In the end, not only did he net an Oscar nomination for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, but his cancer also went into remission. Olivier lived on for another thirteen years.
Olivier took the role of Dr. Szell in part to leave a great deal of money to his wife and children, as he expected to die from the cancer that afflicted him throughout production. He performed the role while undergoing treatment for his cancer, which included heavy doses of painkillers to allow him to work every day. The pain medication affected his memory, and at times Olivier could not remember more than one or two of his lines at a time. In a testament to his fierce concentration, his performance garnered rave reviews and an Oscar nomination, and despite working under such aggressive medical treatment, he experienced a full recovery, allowing him to enjoy the success of this movie, and a series of leading roles that followed.

[struth]

Once Upon a Time in the West, 1968.. Classic western from Sergio Leone...






Sergio Leone originally wanted Sophia Loren to play Jill McBain, and Carlo Ponti, her husband, was willing to provide a considerable amount of financial backing if she was in the film. However, Leone decided not to cast her because he feared that she would try to gain too much dominance and influence on how the film was made, given her famously headstrong and temperamental personality. He instead cast Claudia Cardinale, a personal friend of his, whom he convinced to play Jill without showing her the script.

Claudia Cardinale's first day of filming was her nude love scene with Henry Fonda. This also marked the first time Fonda had done such a scene. His wife insisted on being on-set during the filming of it.

[struth]

Al Mulock(one of the 3 gunmen at beginning) died by suicide by jumping from his hotel room in Guadix, Granada, Spain in May 1968, while filming for Once Upon a Time in the West. He was wearing his cowboy-style costume at the time of his fall. Mickey Knox, screenwriter for the film, and production manager Claudio Mancini witnessed Mulock's suicide as his body passed their hotel window near the end of the shoot. Mulock survived the fall, but suffered a pierced lung from a broken rib during the bumpy ride to the hospital. Before being taken away in the ambulance, director Sergio Leone shouted, "Get the costume, we need the costume." The reasons for his suicide, as well as for his choice of killing himself while wearing his costume, are unknown. About a year before Mulock’s suicide his wife had died of cervical cancer. However they had been separated for some time before her death so this may or may not have had an influence on his decision to end his life. Mickey Knox also claimed in his book, The Good, the Bad and the Dolce Vita, that Mulock was a drug addict, and committed suicide out of desperation, as he was unable to acquire drugs in Guadix. He was also the one armed bounty hunter in the good, the bad and the ugly.

[Barry]

Marathon Man, 1976. Directed by John Schlesinger.





Producer Robert Evans was set upon getting Sir Laurence Olivier to play the role of Dr. Szell. However, because Olivier at the time was riddled with cancer, he was uninsurable, so Paramount Pictures refused to use him. Desperate, Evans called his friends Merle Oberon and David Niven to arrange a meeting with the House of Lords (the upper body of the British parliament). There, he urged them to put pressure on Lloyd's of London to insure Britain's greatest living actor. The ploy succeeded, and a frail Olivier started working on this movie. In the end, not only did he net an Oscar nomination for Best Actor in a Supporting Role, but his cancer also went into remission. Olivier lived on for another thirteen years.
Olivier took the role of Dr. Szell in part to leave a great deal of money to his wife and children, as he expected to die from the cancer that afflicted him throughout production. He performed the role while undergoing treatment for his cancer, which included heavy doses of painkillers to allow him to work every day. The pain medication affected his memory, and at times Olivier could not remember more than one or two of his lines at a time. In a testament to his fierce concentration, his performance garnered rave reviews and an Oscar nomination, and despite working under such aggressive medical treatment, he experienced a full recovery, allowing him to enjoy the success of this movie, and a series of leading roles that followed.

But "Is it safe?"

[struth]

A treat for me as it was a film bought with birthday money. Alfred Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent, 1940. This is a Reg A bluray from Criterion Collection. Joel McCrea stars in lead...(Gary Cooper admitted he made a mistake turning the role down).






Shooting was completed on May 29, 1940, after which director Alfred Hitchcock made a visit to England. He returned on July 3 with the word that the Germans were expected to start bombing at any time. Ben Hecht was hurriedly called in and wrote the tacked-on final scene set at a London radio station. It was filmed on July 5, and the real-life bombing started on July 10, 1940.

In a 1972 interview on The Dick Cavett Show (1968), Alfred Hitchcock revealed that the plane crash scene was filmed by using footage shot from a stunt plane diving on the ocean, rear projected on rice paper in front of a cockpit set. Also, behind the rice paper were two chutes aimed at the cockpit's windshield connected to large tanks of water. With the press of a button at the right moment, water came crashing through the rice paper, into the plane simulating the plane crashing into the sea from the cockpit view.

When the plane crash sequence was shot, a special tub within the studio tank had to be built for Herbert Marshall, who couldn't swim because he only had one leg (he'd lost a leg in combat in World War I).

According to press release information, more than 600 laborers, electricians, plumbers, carpenters, and prop men worked on the sets for this movie. A 600-foot by 125-foot stage was used to re-create Waterloo Station for a few scenes, and even more extravagantly, an entire square in Amsterdam was constructed on a ten-acre site at a cost of $200,000. The scenes in the square, including the elaborate assassination and getaway shots, took place during a rainstorm, so the set had to be rigged with an elaborate drainage system.

[struth]

Another classic from Criterion REG A, Ministry Of Fear, 1944 directed by Fritz Lang.. Its based on a Graham Greene novel and set in England during the Second World War .... A good film but could have been better had Lang been given his head. Lang was a genius.
According to Lang, propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels called Lang to his offices to inform him – apologetically – that The Testament of Dr Mabuse was being banned but, nevertheless, he was so impressed by Lang's abilities as a filmmaker (especially Metropolis), that he offered Lang the position of head of German film studio UFA. Lang said it was during that meeting he had decided to leave for Paris – but that the banks had closed by the time the meeting was over. Lang claimed that, after selling his wife's jewelry, he fled by train to Paris that evening, leaving most of his money and personal possessions behind.





Director Fritz Lang was disappointed in "Ministry of Fear" because the producer and the screenwriter, Seton I. Miller, were the same person, and Miller the producer wouldn't let Lang rewrite Miller the writer's script, which Lang said "had practically none of the quality of the Graham Greene book."
Paramount paid Graham Greene £10,000 for the film rights to his novel, money he was very glad to have in wartime England. However, he was very disappointed in the film, especially as it had been directed by Fritz Lang, a film-maker he especially admired. Years later, Greene briefly met Lang, and the director made a point of apologizing to him for the film, by which Greene was touched.

[struth]

One of the greats now(again lol) Young Frankenstein, 1974.






Gene Wilder and Mel Brooks got into only one fight during the movie's production, but it was a big one with Mel throwing a huge temper tantrum, yelling and raging and eventually storming out of Gene's apartment (where the men had been working on the script). Roughly ten minutes later, Gene's phone rang. The caller was Mel, who had this to say: "WHO WAS THAT MADMAN YOU HAD IN YOUR HOUSE? I COULD HEAR THE YELLING ALL THE WAY OVER HERE. YOU SHOULD NEVER LET CRAZY PEOPLE INTO YOUR HOUSE, DON'T YOU KNOW THAT? THEY COULD BE DANGEROUS." That, as Gene later put it, was "Mel's way of apologizing."

[struth]

Dynasties, Chimpanzees.