Production
Before casting began the young Douglas Fairbanks Jr. wanted to audition for the role of Handsome O'Hara. However Swanson felt he was too young and not right for the role. Lionel Barrymore had been first picked to play Davidson but was thought to be too ill at the time though he did eventually win the role. Barrymore wore the same outfit for an entire week, aggravating Swanson. She asked some of the crew to tell him to change and wash; which he did indeed do. Despite this Swanson was happy with his performance. Walsh hadn't acted in front of a camera in 8 years and feared he wouldn't be able to both direct and act at the same time. However 2 days into filming his fears were quelled.
Filming took place on Santa Catalina Island near Long Beach, California. Swanson took ill shortly after and met a doctor who started her lifelong love of macrobiotic diets. A week into shooting Sam Goldwyn called cameraman George Barnes away. Swanson was furious but the loan contract had allowed Goldwyn to call him away as he pleased. Not wanting to let a hundred extras sit around for days Swanson and Walsh tried to hire another two cameramen but both were unsatisfactory. Mary Pickford had offered the services of her favorite cameraman Charles Rosher who was called in but despite doing a decent job couldn't match Barnes work. Through Loew MGM loaned Oliver Marsh who completed the picture.
The entire cameraman experience was extremely costly to the production, yet the picture went on. With the picture half finished it was already way over budget and Schenck was wary, as Swanson's first picture had also been overbudget and underperformed. Swanson talked with her advisors and sold her farm Croton-on-Hudson, and offered to sell her New York penthouse as well.
Despite reports that dirty words can be read on the characters' lips, Swanson claims the censors went over everything with a fine-tooth comb. However Swanson admitted one line while she was shouting at Davidson went, "You'd rip the wings off of a butterfly, you son of a bitch!" when recounting a conversation with Walsh later in life. If the word 'rain' was used in a title they asked it removed. They also wanted to change Davidsons name to something else but Swanson and Walsh refused.
Read more about this topic: Sadie Thompson
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“An art whose limits depend on a moving image, mass audience, and industrial production is bound to differ from an art whose limits depend on language, a limited audience, and individual creation. In short, the filmed novel, in spite of certain resemblances, will inevitably become a different artistic entity from the novel on which it is based.”
—George Bluestone, U.S. educator, critic. “The Limits of the Novel and the Limits of the Film,” Novels Into Film, Johns Hopkins Press (1957)
“It is part of the educator’s responsibility to see equally to two things: First, that the problem grows out of the conditions of the experience being had in the present, and that it is within the range of the capacity of students; and, secondly, that it is such that it arouses in the learner an active quest for information and for production of new ideas. The new facts and new ideas thus obtained become the ground for further experiences in which new problems are presented.”
—John Dewey (1859–1952)