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(Chuck Koplinsky). Also, later on, Sinatra in
one of his books said that Clift really helped him greatly
with his performance.
He taught him about beats as far as delivering his
lines of dialogue, talked to him about the importance of pauses,
talked to him about how you would deliver a line and
emphasize certain words, and he really was grateful for
Clift's advice and really gave him a great deal of credit
privately to his friends that he really couldn't
have done it without him.
And then we have this... one of the iconic moments
in American cinema.
You know, I sometimes hate talking about moments like this
because you don't want to ruin it, you know, it's just
burned in our minds, it's burned in our memories
as one of those great, great moments.
And it's been parodied, of course, time and time again.
I know it's popped up in "Shrek 2".
I think in "Airplane" it pops up.
Did Carol Burnett do a bit once on her show, I think?
Yeah, yeah.
Initially, this scene was supposed to be shot standing up.
There was not supposed to be laying down or
anything like that.
And it was at Lancaster's suggestion.
He said, well why don't we try it laying down in the surf,
to which they said well, okay, let's give this a shot.
When you read about this moment in the book,
it really doesn't come off this well.
If I remember correctly, Jones complains about them
being sandy and wet.
The characters are thinking this, and of course
there's none of that here.
This was a scandalous moment.
I know it's probably hard to imagine at this late date,
but it was a scandalous moment in the movie.
They were still under the control of the production code
office, which at that time was run by Joseph Breen.
And if you notice this sequence when you watch the movie,
it's done very choppily--that's not a word, I'm not sure--
but it's very choppy.
We see them kiss, and then we cut away to something that's
happening in the bar with Frank and Monty,
then we go back to them.
It seems as though Breen wanted this or they thought that
they could get away with having this scene by not showing it
as a prolonged sequence.
If they show it in just little bits, maybe we can
sneak some of this by and it won't be as scandalous.
Well, it didn't quite work.
There were still area censor boards around the country,
and there are many prints that went around with this
entire sequence cut out, just gone.
Zinnemann said later on that he heard, and he had actually
found some prints that he had seen, and he noticed
that the scene seemed choppy or short, and he went back
and he found out by asking people that projectionists in
local theaters would actually clip off the tails of
this scene to keep the frames as souvenirs.
[audience laughter].
So that's just how scandalous this was.
Lancaster was asked about this later in the 1980s and he said,
"I was cold, and I was wet."
[audience laughter].
That's what he said.
Deborah Kerr later said that she knew that there was something
going on between them.
She said--let's see if I can find this quote here--
she said about their chemistry that
"there was a chemistry that happened between us.
"I wasn't conscious of it and neither was he, but he had
"such a good and forceful attitude towards his part
and I toward mine."
Lancaster later confessed to a few friends that he and Kerr
had a rather torrid brief affair during the filming of the movie
and keeping that in mind if you go and watch it tonight,
I think you see a certain subtext there within those
scenes, keeping that in mind.
And there it was.
This is the final poster that was used for the release.
And everything really with all the difficulties as far as
getting this thing into a script form, as far as
getting on location, as far as casting, really the 41 days
went rather smoothly.
Zinnemann was very happy with the final production,
he thought that he really had a hit on his hands.
He thought that everything was going well, and then here comes
Harry Cohn again who you see sitting below the camera here.
And he decided that he was going to open the film on August 5.
Nowadays, summer is the big time for the big blockbusters,
and that's where movie studios make their hay.
It used to be not that way.
Major films were not opened in the summer, and everyone was
just shocked that he decided that he was going to open
this film on Broadway at the Capitol Theatre on August 5
with the Capitol Theatre having no air conditioning.
[audience laughter].
They thought that he had lost his mind.
And there was no official premiere either.
There was no red carpets, there weren't any celebrities there,
there weren't any limousines.
The movie opened August 5 with very little fanfare.
On the evening of August 5 at around 11 o'clock at night,
Zinnemann got a phone call in California from
Marlene Dietrich, who was in New York at the time
on that evening.
He said that he barely knew her, was surprised to get the call,
and she said that he had an absolute sensation on his hands.
She was down there, she said that there was a line around
the block, that the theater was just bursting at the seams,
and that they actually had scheduled a 1 AM showing
of the film which they hadn't scheduled initially.
And Zinnemann was just stunned by this and said
how could this be with such little publicity?
And Dietrich said, people can smell a hit and
they can smell this one.
And she was right, it was a huge hit.
It ended up earning eight Academy Awards and ended up
earning $17 million on its initial release.
Quite a good return on that $2.5 million that was spent
during the production and basically changed the career of
most everyone who was involved with it.
Won 8 Academy Awards as I said, the most since "Gone With Wind".
Donna Reed there, with her Oscar.
And of course Sinatra, he won as well and as I said earlier,
changes everything for him.
Lancaster and Kerr were both nominated.
They both lost to, Lancaster lost to William Holden
for his turn in "Stalag 17", and Audrey Hepburn won the
Oscar that year for "Roman Holiday".
Clift was really upset over the results of the Academy Awards.
He and Lancaster were both nominated for Best Picture,
and the theory is that they ended up splitting the vote
between them for Holden to win.
He really did.
He was concerned about being accepted by his peers,
being accepted by the Hollywood community, and
apparently after losing he said to some friends, what is it
that I have to do to prove to them that I can act.
So perhaps it was a bit of insecurity there,
obviously unwarranted.
There's the re-release poster.
Again, they re-released this thing I think at least
three times before it ended up on TV where it was shown,
it's shown quite regularly.
There is a rumor that Jones is in the movie.
I talked to Kiley about this last night.
I have stumbled across it in an article and in a book that
I had read in preparing for this.
And I also mentioned it to her last year when she was in
Champaign that apparently James Jones is in the movie.
I talked to her last night.
She says "you know, I don't know."
I was trying to get a hint as to where she thought he might
appear and she said, "I'm not sure."
She said when you said that last year I got to thinking,
and she said I remember my father mentioning it once
but I don't know where he is.
Can we go to?
So I went home last night and I rented the movie
and I think I found him... I think.
[movie dialogue-- unclear audio].
Hang on, I'll get it.
Did you see him?
Yeah...yeah.
Like I said, in most photographs from this era
he has a mustache, and to be an enlisted man here,
he would have had to have been clean shaven.