Port of Seven Seas - Production

Production

Although the credited basis of Port of Seven Seas was Marcel Pagnol's 1931 play Fanny, the screenplay incorporated some incidents from three French films written by Pagnol based on his plays: Marius (1931), directed by Alexander Korda, Fanny (1932), directed by Marc Allegret, and César (1936), which Pagnol directed. The play "Marius" was a great success and was played more than one thousand times in Paris.

William Wyler was slated to direct the film at the time that Preston Sturges was brought into the project, the working titles for which were "Fanny", "Madelon", "Life on the Waterfront" and "Man of the Waterfront". Ernest Vajda had been reported to one of the screenwriters, but was not credited. The project was considered by Universal Studios in late 1933 or early 1934, but was dropped sometime after Joseph Breen, who supervised the Production Code, rejected the submitted script. Paramount Pictures had some interest in it, before the script ended up at MGM by July 1936. Although the MGM script was still essentially the one that Universal had submitted to the Hays Office, this time the censors found it "acceptable", and it was approved on 15 March 1938. This did not prevent the Legion of Decency from protesting that the film "lower the standards" that the Production Code was designed to uphold.

Port of Seven Seas was in production from late December 1937 through 28 January 1938, with retakes completed on 23 February. Shortly before production started, Luise Rainer, who was to have played "Madelon" was replaced by Maureen O'Sullivan because of a bad cold.

The film was released on 1 July 1938, the long delay coming about because the studio considered the subject matter "dangerous" for the film industry while Congress was considering legislation which had implications for film censorship.

The movie was premiered on July 1, 1938 in New York City. Marcel Pagnol and Raimu (the great French actor who played Cesar in the French plays and movies) were invited but did not come, supposedly for fear or air travel. The movie was premiered in France in Marseilles, later in 1938 at the movie theatre "Le Noailles" with Wallace Beary, Marcel Pagnol and Raimu.

Read more about this topic:  Port Of Seven Seas

Famous quotes containing the word production:

    From the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
    Charles Darwin (1809–1882)

    ... if the production of any commodity necessitates the sacrifice of human life, society should do without that commodity, but it can not do without that life.
    Emma Goldman (1869–1940)

    ... this dream that men shall cease to waste strength in competition and shall come to pool their powers of production is coming to pass all over the earth.
    Jane Addams (1860–1935)