Production
Nicholas Schenck, MGM's president at the time, nearly did not allow the picture to be made because he felt the story was subversive. The film's producer, Dore Schary, wanted Spencer Tracy for the leading role. Concerned that Tracy might not accept, Schary ordered the script changed so that Macreedy was a one-armed man. He concluded that no actor would turn down the chance to play a character with a handicap.
Just before shooting began, an indecisive Tracy tried to back out of the picture. Schary made clear that he was willing to sue the actor if he quit the film. According to Robert Osborne of the television network Turner Classic Movies in the introduction to the film's airing on its weekly segment "The Essentials," Tracy, weighed down by his growing alcoholism, refused to give MGM an answer. In order to close the deal, according to Osborne, an MGM executive contacted Tracy shortly before filming was to begin and said, "Don't worry, Mr. Tracy, a copy of the script has been sent to Alan Ladd and he has agreed to do the picture." The next day, Tracy committed to "Bad Day at Black Rock". Ladd, however, apparently never even saw the script.
It turned out to be Tracy's last film for MGM. This was the studio's first motion picture to be filmed in Cinemascope.
Preview audiences reacted negatively to the film's original opening sequence. A revised one, showing the speeding train rushing at the camera, replaced it. The shot was taken from a helicopter as it flew away from the moving train. The film was run in reverse to create the opening shot.
Bad Day at Black Rock was filmed in Lone Pine, California and the nearby Alabama Hills, one of hundreds of movies that have been filmed in the area since 1920. The "town" of Black Rock was built for the film. Today nothing remains of the set, erected one mile north (36°38′2.84″N 118°2′23.74″W / 36.6341222°N 118.0399278°W / 36.6341222; -118.0399278Coordinates: 36°38′2.84″N 118°2′23.74″W / 36.6341222°N 118.0399278°W / 36.6341222; -118.0399278) of the Lone Pine railroad station, a stop on the Southern Pacific Railroad's Jawbone Branch, which served the northern Mojave Desert and Owens Valley.
Read more about this topic: Bad Day At Black Rock
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“The heart of man ever finds a constant succession of passions, so that the destroying and pulling down of one proves generally to be nothing else but the production and the setting up of another.”
—François, Duc De La Rochefoucauld (1613–1680)
“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)
“The society based on production is only productive, not creative.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)