Production
When Temple’s mother Gertrude Temple read the script, she tried to persuade Fox Film production head Winfield Sheehan to trim the role of Joy Smythe, a rich, mean, snobbish child and the complete opposite of Shirley’s winsome, lovable character. Sheehan however would not do so, believing the contrast between the two girls would enhance audience sympathy for Temple’s character.
Thirty girls auditioned for the role of Joy with the part being given to eight-year-old Jane Withers, an experienced stage performer but a relative newcomer to films. Mrs. Temple hovered ever closer to Shirley as filming began and ordered Withers to wash her hands before performing in any scene with her daughter. Director Butler later told Withers, "You stole the picture". In a 2006 interview on TCM's Private Screenings, Withers recalled that she was hesitant to take the role because she had to be so "mean" to Temple and the public would hate her for it.
Read more about this topic: Bright Eyes (1934 film)
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“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)
“Perestroika basically is creating material incentives for the individual. Some of the comrades deny that, but I can’t see it any other way. In that sense human nature kinda goes backwards. It’s a step backwards. You have to realize the people weren’t quite ready for a socialist production system.”
—Gus Hall (b. 1910)