nino tempo and april stevens
4 for Texas Trivia.
When I’m researching a movie I love to read the Trivia on IMDB
(Internet Movie DataBase) It can tell you a lot:
IMDB Trivia
Opening credits say: “The characters and events depicted in this photoplay are fictitious. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, or events is purely coincidental.”
MFW: I’m mystified why this would need to be posted? Maybe somebody will confuse some politicians for the 3 Stooges.
Director Robert Aldrich intensely disliked Frank Sinatra’s non-professional attitude and tried unsuccessfully to have him dismissed from the film.
MFW: Not very hard to believe.
Before Frank Sinatra was in the picture, James Stewart and Robert Mitchum were pursued for the lead.
MFW: Always interesting to see who else MIGHT have been in a film – but this just doesn’t make sense? I thought it was a Rat Pack movie?
Sophia Loren turned down a paycheck of $1m for four weeks work.
MFW: Sofia was smart. She had previously worked with Sinatra in The Pride and the Passion (1957)
She was also an anomaly – a beauty who turned out to be a good Actress.
Anita Ekberg and Ursula Andress both did nude screen tests, Hollywood’s first. However, the censors removed all nudity from the finished film.
MFW: Wonder if the Europeans got a uncut version?
The role of Maxine Richter (Ursula Andress) was originally intended for Gina Lollobrigida.
MFW: I probably would have gone with Gina. But they never asked me.
The riverboat “Sultana” shares the same name with an overloaded Mississippi riverboat side-wheeler that exploded and sank on April 27, 1865, whilst transporting Union troops returning from Confederate prison camps during the closing days of the Civil War.
MFW: Overloading Riverboats was possibly a common practice in those days, and was likely deemed a necessity during the American Civil War.
Wikipedia: “On April 27, 1865, the boat exploded in the worst maritime disaster in United States history. Although designed with a capacity for only 376 passengers, she was carrying 2,427 when three of the boat’s four boilers exploded and she burned to the waterline and sank near Memphis, Tennessee, killing an estimated 1,700 passengers. This disaster was overshadowed in the contemporary press by other events, most particularly the killing on the previous day of President Lincoln’s assassin, John Wilkes Booth.
The Universal Studios prop steamboat was called the ENTERPRISE, since it was most remembered for its role by that name in the RIVERBOAT television series (1959-1961). Universal built the replica boat for the MISSISSIPPI GAMBLER (1953) staring Tyrone Power. It sat on a lake on the back lots of Universal Studios. Ultimately the ENTERPRISE was lost to fire on the Universal lot.
Bette Davis declined a role in this film to do Dead Ringer (1964).
MFW: Bette was 55 at the time. I’m unsure what role that might have been?
But Hell! we’re talking about Bette Davis.
Next: The Sons of Katie Elder
