Production
Tallulah Bankhead starred as Judith Traherne in the 1934 Broadway production, which ran for 51 performances at the Plymouth Theatre.
In 1935, David O. Selznick wanted to cast Greta Garbo in Dark Victory, but Garbo chose to play the lead in Anna Karenina instead.
Dark Victory was the eighth on-screen teaming of Bette Davis and George Brent. Davis had recently ended affairs with William Wyler and Howard Hughes and her husband Ham Nelson had filed for divorce, and after the first few days of filming she begged to be released from her contract, claiming she was too sick to continue. Producer Hal Wallis responded, "I've seen the rushes—stay sick!" She found comfort with Brent, who had just divorced Ruth Chatterton, and the two embarked on an affair that continued throughout filming and for a year after.
The tune, "Oh, Give Me Time for Tenderness" sung by Judith was written by Edmund Goulding and Elsie Janis. The voice of Vera Van was dubbed for Davis.
Another scene for the ending was filmed but ultimately deemed anticlimactic and not used. After Judith's death, her horse was seen winning a race, and her stablehand Michael (Humphrey Bogart) was shown crying. The scene met with negative response with sneak preview audiences and was cut.
The film premiered at Radio City Music Hall.
Read more about this topic: Dark Victory
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“Constant revolutionizing of production ... distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses, his real conditions of life, and his relations with his kind.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“The society based on production is only productive, not creative.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)