Although Dame Elizabeth Taylor always said she was not involved with either of her co-stars, during location shooting, her husband, Michael Wilding , invited two strippers to their home for an evening while the children were visiting Taylor's parents.
The strippers later sold their story to Confidential Magazine, which ran it after this movie had been completed. Although Taylor said at the time that she would not let the scandal destroy her marriage, the two divorced in Despite the worries of studio head Jack L. Warner , it became Warner Brothers' biggest hit up to that time.
George Stevens wanted to cast fading star Alan Ladd , who he'd cast in Shane , as Jett Rink, but his wife advised against it. The screenplay had only seventy pages of dialogue for a three hour and twenty-one minute movie. According to Rock Hudson and Dame Elizabeth Taylor , the day after James Dean 's death was announced, producer and director George Stevens required a distraught and inconsolable Taylor to complete reaction shots for a scene she had played with Dean, and that she never forgave him.
George Stevens had a hard time directing James Dean. The problem started with Stevens' ordering Dean to get rid of his Actor's Studio mannerisms like moving his head from side to side or hopping while walking. The two argued constantly, and at one point, Dean went on strike for three days. Dean even ordered his agent to come to the location to help him deal with Stevens.
He also referred to Stevens as "Fatso" behind his back. In defiance, Dean would often hold up production for hours, causing this movie to go over schedule.
The heat in Texas was so great that during one day of shooting, Mercedes McCambridge 's make-up melted into her skin, creating a serious infection that left her neck scarred.
George Stevens made this movie for no upfront salary, but a percentage of the substantial profits. James Dean called the shooting style of producer and director George Stevens the "around the clock" method, because Stevens would film a scene from as many different angles as possible, which made everything seem to take longer to do. At one point, James Dean was said to have ruined an outdoor scene by yelling "Cut! Production designer Boris Leven 's design for the living room at the Benedict ranch house "Reata" was used again as the grand entry hall for the Von Trapp family home in The Sound of Music Both used the same split staircase, proportions, scale, and mezzanine hallways.
However, the color scheme, details, and decorations were different for each movie. Each were also independently constructed in different studios nine years apart. James Dean was so completely immersed in his character that he hardly ever changed out of his costume.
One night during location shooting, Mercedes McCambridge and James Dean were so mad at producer and director George Stevens , they sat up consuming a jar of peanut butter, a box of crackers, six Milky Ways, and twelve Cokes.
This movie spent an entire year in the editing suites. Although Dennis Hopper played the son of Dame Elizabeth Taylor , in real life, he was only four years younger. Although they had enjoyed a congenial relationship making A Place in the Sun , Dame Elizabeth Taylor and producer and director George Stevens quarrelled a good deal during filming.
Most of their fights stemmed from his practice of demanding multiple takes without explaining why or offering additional direction to the actors and actresses.
Jordan "Bick" Benedict, Jr. Kleberg, Jr. Like the over half-million-acre Reata, King Ranch comprises eight hundred twenty-five thousand acres and includes portions of six Texas counties, including most of Kleberg County and much of Kenedy County, and was largely a livestock ranch before the discovery of oil. Orson Welles was inspired by this movie to make The Other Side of the Wind , one of his many unfinished opuses.
It tells of an old director trying to complete an epic movie and being taunted by his young male lead who keeps calling him "Fatso". The director encourages his star to buy a sports car. In what exists of the movie, the director was played by lean, lanky John Huston. The start date of this movie was delayed a few months so that Dame Elizabeth Taylor could give birth to a son. Ewing on Dallas and Dallas Production notes claimed that of the hundreds of Texans hired to play extras in this movie, ten were millionaires.
Features Rock Hudson 's only Oscar nominated performance. James Dean 's rebellious behavior started with the press luncheon announcing the start of production. Not only did he arrive late, but when a photographer asked him to remove his glasses, he responded by putting a set of clip-on sunglasses over them. He also refused to take a bow when producer and director George Stevens introduced him.
Later, he tried to rationalize his behavior by claiming he had come directly from the set of Rebel Without a Cause and was concerned about being seen unshaven and tired. In fact, he had finished work on the movie the night before and was exhausted. With the earlier filming running over schedule, he was shooting wardrobe and make-up tests for this movie while finishing Rebel Without a Cause and did not get a promised vacation between the two movies. George Stevens felt he could be convincing as both a younger version of Bick in his early twenties and as a grandfather in his sixties.
More established actors like Gary Cooper , Clark Gable , and William Holden were suggested by the studio for the role, but Stevens rejected them as being too old to convincingly play Bick during his younger years. Dame Elizabeth Taylor was said to be so upset the day after James Dean was killed that she was excused from working on this movie for the day. Warner Brothers then pulled the Canadian release, causing fans to scurry to buy the disc from Canadian distributors.
The DVD quickly disappeared from stores, and became a rare item on auction websites for nearly two years, until its official North American release on DVD in Shelley Winters tried out for the role of Vashti Snythe. James Dean objected to being kept waiting for his scenes. After being called to the set three days in a row without being used at all, he skipped his next call.
When George Stevens objected, he argued that with the amount of preparation he did to create his character's emotional life, it was gruelling to be kept waiting that long. Although not really sympathetic to the Method Acting Dean had learned at the Actor's Studio, Stevens tried to keep him on a more reasonable schedule after that.
Wanting to emphasize the height of the Benedict mansion, the oil wells and Rink's hotel, producer and director George Stevens deliberately avoided the use of the CinemaScope format, as he felt that the lenses tended to distort the image. In terms of his story, he felt that height was much more important than width. This was one of the few s epics not filmed in that process.
With Dame Elizabeth Taylor spending time with her two co-stars, rumors flew that she was involved with one or both. Amazingly, one person who claimed to believe it was Phyllis Gates , Rock Hudson 's future wife, who never acknowledged her ex-husband's homosexuality. Far from squelching the rumors, a visit from her husband Michael Wilding and children just fanned the flames, with gossips claiming Wilding had come to win her back.
In truth, she had asked him to visit for moral support because the role and location filming were so difficult. James Dean tragically died eight days after the completion of this movie, in his brand new Porsche Spyder. Dean was pronounced dead on arrival at Pasa Robles Hospital, California, he was only 24 years old.
George Stevens had the Palace, an old movie theatre that had been boarded up two years earlier, reopened so he could screen the daily rushes there. The first scenes Rock Hudson shot were his reactions as an outsider at the Maryland home where he meets Leslie. To get the right "fish-out-of-water" sense, George Stevens shot Hudson's reactions independent of the other actors and actresses, with the camera far away from him and Stevens feeding him the other characters' lines.
While in Marfa, Texas, Rock Hudson learned how to ride a horse from a local rodeo champion and "horse whisperer", James Weldon Mitchell. George Stevens considered casting Audrey Hepburn as Leslie, before deciding that she was too sophisticated for the role. Carroll Baker told interviewers that at the premiere, many fans turned up thinking that James Dean 's death had been a publicity stunt and that he would make an appearance. A near riot ensued when he obviously did not appear.
So he decided to fund his own Hollywood movie. In this way, he had the movie debut and hotel grand opening at the same time. And Hollywood came. Howard Hughes even gave him a good deal on one of his planes so he could fly stars to Houston. McCarthy chartered a Santa Fe party train that brought in hundreds of stars for the St. The evening was regarded as the most prestigious event in Houston social history.
And it likely remains so. Everyone who was anyone was there. But ultimately the film belongs to Dean, which even his harshest critics — namely Stevens and Hudson — would eventually acknowledge. Dean, who was 24 during filming, was obsessed with racing and forever trying to fill the void in his life left by his mother, who died when he was 9. His ambiguous sexuality has proved a source of endless public fascination. His final film has found a similar fate. Condensing all of that into just three-and-a-half hours, Stevens earned that Academy Award twice over.
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