No matter what the genre, I tend to prefer small movies to big ones. For instance, I’ll take No Name On The Bullet (1959) over, say, Warlock (1958), or It! The Terror From Beyond Space (1958) over Alien (1979). But lately I’ve been immersed in one of the really big Westerns, The Big Country (1958). It’s an epic that wears its hugeness quite well. I must admit (again), this is a picture I was convinced to revisit by posts on other blogs (thanks, Laura and Colin).
John McElwee of Greenbriar Picture Shows recently admitted that “Boeing, Boeing took on added interest after all I’d read about its troubled production.” Similarly, my interest in The Big Country was enhanced by its behind-the-scenes stories — seven writers, Jean Simmons refusing to talk about it for decades, a lasting feud between producer/star Gregory Peck and director William Wyler, etc.
Researching this one has been a blast. Here’s just a sampling.
Gregory Peck: “After seven writers, I don’t think either of us [Peck and Wyler] was completely satisfied with the script. But by this time, we had made expensive commitments with an all-star cast and a cameraman. We had financing from United Artists. So we got ourselves painted into a corner, where we were obliged to go ahead with a script that neither of us were fully satisfied with.”
Jean Simmons: “We’d have our lines learned, then receive a rewrite, stay up all night learning the new version, then receive yet another rewrite the following morning. It made the acting damned near impossible.”
Charlton Heston: “Charlie Bickford was a fairly cantankerous old son of a bitch.”
Jean Simmons: “Willie Wyler was downright nasty and impossible to work with. He always selects a victim to go after on each picture. This time it was me.”
Burl Ives: “I found Willy delightful. I never got annoyed at him. I learned a helluva lot from him. He was enigmatic sometimes, but that’s what he did to make me figure things out.”
Gregory Peck: “We have one hour of film — one million dollars worth — that was absolutely wasted, thrown on the cutting room floor. That’s the difference between profit and loss for me.”
William Wyler: “Would I cut it today? Yes, I would cut it. I would probably cut 10 to 15 minutes out which would make you feel as though you cut half an hour out.”
Gregory Peck: “I suppose that any movie that grosses $9,500,000 can’t be classed as a failure. The exhibitors made money, the grips made money. Everybody on the picture made money but me — the producer and star.”
Sources: A Talent For Trouble, The Big Country laserdisc*, A Charmed Life, The William Wyler Interviews, The Ocala Star, classicimages.com
* If you have this old laserdisc, don’t discard it in favor of the DVD. The LD boasts a ton of supplemental stuff, while the DVD is as bare bones as they get. UPDATE: The Blu-ray, which is gorgeous, didn’t include any of that material, either.
What kind of supplements are on the LD? I was really disappointed in the complete lack of DVD extras for such an important film.
Although I own the DVD I taped the print shown on TCM the other night, given my understanding it was the first showing of a newly restored & remastered print by the Academy. I wonder how it compares to the DVD? (And how much of the improvement will be lost by watching it on tape?)
So glad you have been revisiting this film! Loved the quotes you collected. It’s fascinating that the production of some films was utter chaos (GWTW wasn’t exactly smooth sailing…) and yet it doesn’t show on the screen — just the opposite.
Best wishes,
Laura
PS Composer Jerome Moross’s daughter can be contacted on the Web…
The old laserdisc has interviews with much of the cast (from the American Masters episode on Wyler), along with stills, the pressbook, a featurette, the screenplay (haven’t sorted out which draft), even an isolated track with the score! I think there’s even something from the mighty Saul Bass, who did the titles. As laserdiscs go, it was a real Cadillac.
The DVD is nothing to write home about. The print they used has lines in a number of places, and there’s some trouble with the tinting in the titles. No extras at all.
The new transfer SHOULD be beautiful, with the work they did to preserve the original Technirama negative a few years ago. The stereo tracks are sadly missing (they say there are 35mm stereo prints in the hands of collectors). I’d love to see it in a theater.
I’ll have to see if I can get something from Moross’s daughter.
The only thing I don’t like about The Big Country is Chuck Connors’ mustache.
I’m fascinated by how a train wreck production can somehow make for a smooth picture. The chaos of the production of Jaws (one of my favorites) helped guide it towards the great film it became. If it had gone smoothly, it would’ve been a lot different (and I’m sure not near as good). Cleopatra, on the other hand, is more interesting to read about that to watch.
Chuck Connors is hard to bear in the picture but that might not be his fault.
Last minute script rewrites–actors are funny–if the movie makes a pile they credit the tinkering, and if it flops it’s the same. And they’re probably right either way.
One thing you can say about troubled productions, they’re a lot more fun for people like us to read about and research. Jaws still astounds me. I guess from what they say, there would have been a lot more shark if Bruce had functioned, but I watched The Leopard Man the other night, the Val Lewton movie, and like The Cat People it’s an instruction manual on how to create chills with minimum exposition. Once the cat disappears in the beginning, you actually see it only once (and for good reason, but still…). The scene where the young girl is screaming for her mother to unlock the door as the cat stalks her stayed with my dad his entire life. That same sort of thing is all over Jaws.
Connors is a creep, but that might’ve been the point. That part might’ve benefited from a Peckinpah approach similar to the Hammonds in Ride The High Country. But the picture as a whole appeals to me as a monster film that doesn’t collapse under its own weight.
The Lewtons demonstrate what’s wrong with so many movies today just because you CAN show something (through CGI or budget), it doesn’t mean you SHOULD.
Like you, I’m fascinated by Jaws. You could build a film school around that one picture and Spielberg should be forced to attend. Not teach, attend.
The fact that none of the behind the scenes shenannigans impact negatively on what appears on screen is in itself testament to the skill of all those involved. When you watch the movie it’s hard to believe that everything wasn’t operating as smoothly as clockwork.
The film has a couple of scenes that are simply sublime and show what cinema is really capable of – the Peck/Heston fight, and the Major riding off alone. The lack of what I’d call genuine villains also works well for me. Chuck Connors’ Buck is indeed a creep, but there’s something a bit tragic about him too.
Anyway, this is a top film.
I really like the way Wyler put small, personal scenes in the middle of these giant vistas. The characters are always dwarfed by their surroundings. It must be incredible on a big screen.
Your point about Connors is a good one he is a tragic character.
I don’t know if you caught it, but I saw a chunk of a documentary about Jaws on TV a week or two ago that had a lot of material I hadn’t seen before. It went a lot farther into Shaw’s juicing and his relationship with Dreyfuss. It showed Dreyfuss on a talk show bad-mouthing the movie before it came out. What a wanker.
After a few minutes of googling I guess what I saw was a shortened version of The Shark Is Still Working, which is apparently a longer, three-hour version of a documentary that was originally part of the laserdisc package.
http://www.sharkisstillworking.com/
Have you seen this? The website has some fun stuff that didn’t make the final cut.