The Major and The Minor - Production

Production

Billy Wilder had arrived in Hollywood in 1934 shortly after directing his first film, the French language Mauvaise Graine. During the ensuing years, he and Charles Brackett had collaborated on eight sceenplays, including Ninotchka and Ball of Fire, but Wilder was anxious to try his hand at directing again and producer Arthur Hornblow, Jr. agreed to give him a chance. Wilder was determined to make a mainstream film that would be a box office success so he wouldn't be relegated to a typewriter for the rest of his career. Paramount Pictures owned the screen rights to the play Connie Goes Home, which Wilder thought was the perfect vehicle for Ginger Rogers, and he and Brackett wrote the role of Philip Kirby with Cary Grant in mind. Their dialogue includes the oft-quoted line "Why don't you get out of that wet coat and into a dry martini?"

Rogers recently had won the Academy Award for Best Actress for Kitty Foyle and now was in a position to select her own director. Agent Leland Hayward represented both Rogers and Wilder, who asked him to intercede with her on his behalf, and Brackett also urged her to meet the neophyte director. She agreed, and she and the screenwriters met during the filming of Roxie Hart. They pitched the film during lunch at an Italian restaurant, and Rogers later recalled Wilder "was charming, a European gentleman . . . I've always been a good judge of character. I decided then and there that we would get along and that he had the qualities to become a good director . . . I felt he would be strong, and that he would listen. He certainly understood how to pay attention to a woman." What also appealed to Rogers was the basic concept of the film. As a younger woman, she had pretended to be eligible for a child's fare when traveling by train with her cash-strapped mother on more than one occasion, so she easily identified with the plot and agreed to make the film.

Wilder was driving home from the studio one evening and pulled up at a red light next to Ray Milland. Impulsively, he called out, "I'm doing a picture. Would you like to be in it?," and the actor responded, "Sure." Wilder sent him the script, which Milland liked. Three years later the two men would collaborate on The Lost Weekend, which would win Oscars for both of them.

As a neophyte director, Wilder heavily relied on editor Doane Harrison for guidance. Harrison had edited Hold Back the Dawn (1941), which Brackett and Wilder had written. Unusually for an editor, Harrison was on the set for filming as well as working in the cutting room. Wilder later said, "I worked with a very good cutter, Doane Harrison, from whom I learned a great deal. He was much more of a help to me than the cameraman. When I became a director from a writer my technical knowledge was very meagre." Harrison taught him how to "cut in the camera," a form of spontaneous editing that results in a minimal amount of film being shot and eliminates the possibility of studio heads later adding footage the director deemed unnecessary. In later years, Wilder commented, "When I finish a film, there is nothing on the cutting room floor but chewing gum wrappers and tears." Wilder's and Harrison's unusually close and important collaboration continued for every subsequent film directed by Wilder through The Fortune Cookie (1966).

Leo Tover was the cinematographer for the film; Tover had also worked on Hold Back the Dawn. The campus of St. John's Military Academy in Delafield, Wisconsin was used for exterior location shots. Principal photography was completed quickly and efficiently. Rogers later recalled, "We had a lot of fun making the picture. It was that kind of story. And even though it was his first film, from day one I saw that Billy knew what to do. He was very sure of himself. He had perfect confidence . . . I've never been sorry I made the film. The Major and the Minor really holds up. It's as good now as it was then."

The film was remade as You're Never Too Young in 1955. The gender-reversal version starred Jerry Lewis as the adult disguised as a child and Diana Lynn, who portrayed teenager Lucy Hill in the original.