Winter Meeting - Production

Production

William Grant Sherry introduced his wife Bette Davis to the novel Winter Meeting and suggested it as a possibility for her next film. Davis enlisted her friend Catherine Turney to write a screen adaptation and stayed in close touch with her throughout the process, sending her memos about sequences that concerned her. "I am very rested and very ambitious to do something really outstanding - and I don't feel this, the way it is, answers the requirements," the actress noted at one point. She later recalled, "Winter Meeting was a great book . . . We should never have tried to make it. This is where censorship really hurt us. We were not allowed to be honest about the differences of opinion between a Catholic and a non-Catholic. It was, therefore, a dull and meaningless film." Davis spoke at length about the censorship problems with Winter Meeting in a later interview with Thomas M. Pryor of the New York Times, insisting the original story "would have made an engrossing film drama, but unfortunately much of the novel had to be bowdlerized to meet production code requirements."

The casting of Slick Novak proved to be problematic. Richard Widmark tested well, but studio executives were concerned his portrayal of a sadistic killer in the previous year's Kiss of Death would make it difficult for audiences to accept him in a sympathetic role. Thirteen additional actors were considered, and of them all Davis thought James Davis was best suited for the part. New York theatrical director Bretaigne Windust had been assigned the film because of his intimate knowledge of the Manhattan social scene, but Davis felt he ultimately was responsible for her leading man's lackluster performance. "Because of the overanalytical approach of Bretaigne Windust," she later observed, "Jim Davis never again during filming showed any signs of the character he portrayed in the test that made me want him for the part. No help I tried to give him could offset the effect of the detailed direction of Windust. He was lost and openly admitted it."

The film cost $1,927,000 but earned only $1,083,000 at the box office. It was Davis' first film to lose money and commercially her least successful Warners release. As a result, Jack L. Warner lost confidence in Davis as an asset to the studio, and Winter Meeting marked the beginning of her final days as a Warners star.