Josh Logan, who was directing, came to me and said, “Would you like to do Pic—” and I said “Yes” so fast he never got the nic out. Rosemary, the frustrated schoolteacher, is an awfully good part. (The way I understand it, Bill Inge had sisters who were teachers, and the play was originally written about Rosemary.)
The company went to Kansas to shoot the picture, and for the second time in my life (it hadn’t happened since The Women) I heard that I was just too gorgeous for a role. My first scene was shot at the picnic grounds, where my sweetheart, Howard (played by Arthur O’Connell), and I were sitting in an old grandstand. My first line was “Look at that sunset, Howard.” To get a sunset glow on our faces, a pink filter had been put over the camera lens, and when Harry Cohn, back in Hollywood, got a look at the rushes, he exploded. “Tell Russell she looks too good.”
There was no reason why Rosemary shouldn’t have looked good in that scene—she was on her best behavior, she was wearing her best dress, and she hadn’t yet touched a single drink. It was the day she hoped to coax a marriage proposal out of Howard. I’d had every intention of going to pot when the time came, no rouge, runny mascara, lipstick smudged in the corners of the mouth, but once we’d got the word from Harry Cohn, we really went to work on my face. I was a wreck. We drew streaks under my eyes with lead pencil (not black crayon or eyebrow pencil) because lead pencil makes the lines look like veins.
The drunk scene, shot in one take, almost played itself. The woman’s loneliness, her desperation, welled up in me and took over. When I asked to do the scene again, Josh said no. “You’ll never get it that good again.”
izzy806
stormborns
pixelskylines
gummygunk
germansingergirl
dailybridgerton
jbbartram-illu
