Post by Admin on Oct 31, 2020 23:29:57 GMT -6
From a 2002 "The Independent" (London) interview with Jules Dassin, director of 1942's "Reunion in France":
On the first day we rehearsed, John Wayne - a very interesting man, extreme right-wing but really just a nationalist - was going through the script with Joan Crawford. It wasn't going well, so, of course, I said, 'Cut'. And the whole set just froze.
My assistant panicked and pretended to call up at some imaginary guy, telling him to be quiet. John Wayne took me to one side and muttered, 'Never say cut to Miss Crawford. You just give a hand sign.' I thought this was just nonsense. But when I said 'cut' again, Joan Crawford walked off the set, and Louis B. Mayer called me to the office and fired me. But then Crawford rang me at my house that night, and asked me to come to dinner.... And she asked me into the library, where she had thousands of books, and she said, 'Mr Dassin, do you think I'm a bad actress?' And I said, no, I don't. And she said, 'Don't ever say cut to me again. Just do this'." Dassin pauses to draw two fluttering fingers across his brow, like a diva having a neuralgia attack. "So that's what I did."...
But the problems didn't end after this rapprochement, which saw him rehired. Quite quickly, Dassin discovered that Crawford was busy avoiding her Dutch co-star Philip Dorn - he was an embarrassing ex-fling and she'd just remarried. He began to notice that Crawford kept mysteriously moving out of frame when she was in scenes wih Dorn, so the camera would never capture them together. "I got so mad," recalls Dassin, who was perched on a camera crane at the time. "I jumped off the crane and the crane flew up - and I yelled, I'm gonna punch you on the jaw'. And then that whole New York gangster thing came out in her, and she took off her hat, and she put down her purse, and she pointed to her jaw, and said GO AHEAD!'.
On the first day we rehearsed, John Wayne - a very interesting man, extreme right-wing but really just a nationalist - was going through the script with Joan Crawford. It wasn't going well, so, of course, I said, 'Cut'. And the whole set just froze.
My assistant panicked and pretended to call up at some imaginary guy, telling him to be quiet. John Wayne took me to one side and muttered, 'Never say cut to Miss Crawford. You just give a hand sign.' I thought this was just nonsense. But when I said 'cut' again, Joan Crawford walked off the set, and Louis B. Mayer called me to the office and fired me. But then Crawford rang me at my house that night, and asked me to come to dinner.... And she asked me into the library, where she had thousands of books, and she said, 'Mr Dassin, do you think I'm a bad actress?' And I said, no, I don't. And she said, 'Don't ever say cut to me again. Just do this'." Dassin pauses to draw two fluttering fingers across his brow, like a diva having a neuralgia attack. "So that's what I did."...
But the problems didn't end after this rapprochement, which saw him rehired. Quite quickly, Dassin discovered that Crawford was busy avoiding her Dutch co-star Philip Dorn - he was an embarrassing ex-fling and she'd just remarried. He began to notice that Crawford kept mysteriously moving out of frame when she was in scenes wih Dorn, so the camera would never capture them together. "I got so mad," recalls Dassin, who was perched on a camera crane at the time. "I jumped off the crane and the crane flew up - and I yelled, I'm gonna punch you on the jaw'. And then that whole New York gangster thing came out in her, and she took off her hat, and she put down her purse, and she pointed to her jaw, and said GO AHEAD!'.