Alternate Versions and Edits
After May wouldn't show Paramount Pictures a rough cut of the film ten months into editing, Robert Evans took the film away from her and recut it. May's version was rumored to run an unwieldy 180 minutes. It is not known if the original cut still exists. Supposedly, at one point May hid the negative under her bed in order to gain negotiating leverage. Evans shortened it to 102 minutes. Angered by the alterations, May tried to take her name off the film and unsuccessfully sued Paramount to keep it from opening.
The original story included a subplot in which Henry discovers from the household accounts that Henrietta is being blackmailed on dubious grounds by the lawyer, McPherson, and another character played by William Hickey; Henry poisons both of them. This darkly casts Henry's eventual acceptance of a conventional life with Henrietta as his "sentence". By eliminating the subplot, Paramount fixed the excessive running time, avoided the awkwardness of Henry getting away with murder and transformed the ending into a rather sweet affirmation of love and personal redemption.
Roger Ebert discusses this issue in his review: "Miss May is reportedly dissatisfied with the present version; newspaper reports indicate that her original cut was an hour longer and included two murders. Matthau, who likes this version better than the original, has suggested that writer-director-stars should be willing to let someone else have a hand in the editing. Maybe so. I'm generally prejudiced in favor of the director in these disputes. Whatever the merits of Miss May's case, however, the movie in its present form is hilarious, and cockeyed, and warm."
Vincent Canby remarked: "Not having seen Miss May's version, I can only say that the film I saw should be a credit to almost any director, though, theoretically at least, Miss May is right. The only thing that gives me pause is the knowledge that its success will probably be used in the future as an argument to ignore the intentions of other directors, but with far less happy results."
Read more about this topic: A New Leaf
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