Production
Before casting began the young Douglas Fairbanks Jr. wanted to audition for the role of Handsome O'Hara. However Swanson felt he was too young and not right for the role. Lionel Barrymore had been first picked to play Davidson but was thought to be too ill at the time though he did eventually win the role. Barrymore wore the same outfit for an entire week, aggravating Swanson. She asked some of the crew to tell him to change and wash; which he did indeed do. Despite this Swanson was happy with his performance. Walsh hadn't acted in front of a camera in 8 years and feared he wouldn't be able to both direct and act at the same time. However 2 days into filming his fears were quelled.
Filming took place on Santa Catalina Island near Long Beach, California. Swanson took ill shortly after and met a doctor who started her lifelong love of macrobiotic diets. A week into shooting Sam Goldwyn called cameraman George Barnes away. Swanson was furious but the loan contract had allowed Goldwyn to call him away as he pleased. Not wanting to let a hundred extras sit around for days Swanson and Walsh tried to hire another two cameramen but both were unsatisfactory. Mary Pickford had offered the services of her favorite cameraman Charles Rosher who was called in but despite doing a decent job couldn't match Barnes work. Through Loew MGM loaned Oliver Marsh who completed the picture.
The entire cameraman experience was extremely costly to the production, yet the picture went on. With the picture half finished it was already way over budget and Schenck was wary, as Swanson's first picture had also been overbudget and underperformed. Swanson talked with her advisors and sold her farm Croton-on-Hudson, and offered to sell her New York penthouse as well.
Despite reports that dirty words can be read on the characters' lips, Swanson claims the censors went over everything with a fine-tooth comb. However Swanson admitted one line while she was shouting at Davidson went, "You'd rip the wings off of a butterfly, you son of a bitch!" when recounting a conversation with Walsh later in life. If the word 'rain' was used in a title they asked it removed. They also wanted to change Davidsons name to something else but Swanson and Walsh refused.
Read more about this topic: Sadie Thompson
Famous quotes containing the word production:
“The myth of unlimited production brings war in its train as inevitably as clouds announce a storm.”
—Albert Camus (1913–1960)
“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)
“Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul.”
—W. Somerset Maugham (1874–1965)