“The Lady from Shanghai” (Orson Welles)
I do love this scene in The Lady From Shangai
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3_p66HjTweo
Not the best Orson Wells film, the melodrama a bit thick, and the plot is slightly muddled, but there are several great moments. The final reel1 alone is worth the price of rental. If you haven’t seen it recently, give it a whirl (Netflix). Rita Hayworth probably would have looked slightly more delicious as a red-head, but maybe not. Everett Sloane is no relative to Marty Feldman, as far as I can ascertain.
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ac1YgegzmE
From the Wikipedia entry:
The Lady from Shanghai was filmed in late 1946, finished in early 1947, and released in the U.S. on June 9, 1948. Release was delayed due to heavy editing by Cohn’s assistants at Columbia, who insisted on cutting about an hour from Welles’s final cut. The film was purported to have links to the Black Dahlia murder at the time as the scenes cut from the film made significant references to the murder, months before it happened. The studio was also located near two areas (one a restaurant) the victim often frequented before she was murdered.
Welles cast his then-wife Rita Hayworth as Elsa, and caused controversy when he made her cut her famous long red hair and bleach it blonde for the role.
and Wells apparently just pulled the idea of the film out of his hat, under pressure. Must have been a hell of a talker:
In the summer of 1946, Welles was directing a musical stage version of Around the World in Eighty Days, with a comedic and ironic rewriting of the Jules Verne novel by Welles, incidental music and songs by Cole Porter, and production by Mike Todd, who would later produce the successful film version with David Niven.
When Todd pulled out from the lavish and expensive production, Welles supported the finances himself. When he ran out of money at one point and urgently needed $55,000 to release costumes which were being held, he convinced Columbia Pictures president Harry Cohn to send him the money to continue the show, and in exchange Welles promised to write, produce, direct and star in a film for Cohn for no further fee. On the spur of the moment, he suggested the film be based on the book a girl in the theatre box office happened to be reading at the time he was calling Cohn, which Welles had never read.
Too bad over an hour of the finished work was eradicated by Harry Cohn.
Footnotes:- the last 20 minutes of the film, more or less [↩]